‘Heavens! What is that?’ Robert was startled into an expression of fear. He had started back, but she placed a quick hand upon his shoulder as though to steady and reassure him. ‘The wind is stronger now,’ she answered, a puff of it caused one of the doors downstairs to bang. I have spoken to the women about that before; they should fasten the doors so that they should not bang; I shall have to see that this does not happen again.’
‘It sounded as though it were up here, as though someone had struck a terrific blow somewhere near to us, opposite. I thought it was an earthquake: I have heard of them. You are sure it was not up here, Annie?’
‘Quite sure. I know it seemed as though it were very close to us; but sounds are peculiar in this house.’
‘They would be with those three rooms kept always closed,’ he muttered, for a dread of something inexplicable had come upon him, a dread born of the memory of three dead men, one a lunatic, who had, as she had told him, stabbed her and then taken his own life.
‘Let us think of ourselves,’ she whispered, nestling up to him. ‘Let us think of ourselves only in all the world, and of our love for one another. There is nothing to fear.’
But now the sound of a horse’s hoofs came distinctly to their ears, and immediately a murmur of voices below was heard. That someone had arrived unexpectedly was clear. Annie Palmer did not seem inclined to allow that incident to trouble her, but Robert made haste to light once more the candles, then looked at her questioningly. She answered his look with an acquiescent nod; she knew that he would not remain up there with some visitor or messenger waiting for her downstairs. They went down together and found Ashman in the dining-room, standing. He bowed to her as they entered.
‘I have just come from Palmyra,’ he said at once; ‘I found the slaves there in a very bad frame of mind. I surprised some of them at a secret meeting they were having in one of their huts—the ringleaders, I mean. They heard me coming, so I didn’t quite catch what they were plotting, but I know it’s some rascality. All over the parish there is trouble brewing, Mrs. Palmer, as I have told you before, and I think we should do something about it right away.’
‘So that’s it, is it?’ she asked. ‘But you could have waited till tomorrow to tell me this. I can’t do anything tonight.’
‘I thought it was right you should know tonight.’
‘You thought you would pay me a visit,’ she replied.
‘Have you got the ringleaders, as you call them, locked up so that they can’t get away?’
‘I took jolly good care about that! I told them you were certain to give it to them hot tomorrow and no nonsense about it.’
‘There’s going to be no nonsense about it! It is their skins or our lives, and I prefer our lives. Very well, Mr. Ashman; thank you. You can call for me tomorrow morning, and we’ll ride over to Palmyra together. I’ll be ready at seven.’
‘You’re going down, Rutherford?’ asked Mr. Ashman, now addressing Robert for the first time. ‘Our way is the same, and I want to talk to you about some work in the still-house that’s got to be done tomorrow.’
‘Mr. Rutherford is my guest tonight, Mr. Ashman,’ said Mrs. Palmer, not giving Robert a chance to reply. ‘He will go when he is ready, and you need not wait for him.’ The rich tones of her voice which Robert so much admired, were rather hard now. There was a metallic imperiousness in her voice which neither man could fail to recognise.
‘But the estate’s work has to be done,’ said Ashman stubbornly, ‘and it is late already.’
‘Late! Are you going to dictate hours to me or to my guests?’
‘I am in charge of the estate, An—Mrs. Palmer.’
‘Under me. I give final orders here. Overseers may come and overseers may go, but I remain; do you understand? Your manners need mending, Mr. Ashman.’
‘Thank you for discovering that! Well, you are the owner and so can do what you like. And you are quite right when you say that overseers can go. I can go, for instance.’
‘I am not getting rid of you, at any rate,’ she answered, softening her tones a little. For Ashman was angry now and seemed prepared to go to any lengths.
She went up to him. ‘Mr. Rutherford is out here to learn the planting business; he is not an ordinary bookkeeper,’ she explained. ‘I know about him and his people in England, and that is why I take an interest in him. Don’t be silly, John! I know how devoted you are to my interests, but you need not let that cause you to forget your good manners. So you will call for me at seven in the morning? And then we can talk matters over—everything? Where is your horse?’
She had been gently impelling him towards the door as she spoke, and he could do nothing save move in the direction that she wished him to. But he did not bid Robert good night. When he had ridden off she returned.
‘Competent overseers are not too easily picked up in Jamaica,’ she explained, a little breathlessly, ‘and just at this time I don’t want to get rid of Ashman; but if he continues to be insolent he will have to go. I suppose that because I just won’t put up with everything he says, he will become one of my enemies. Don’t pay any attention to what he does or says; just keep away from him.’
‘That is not easy, for he is the overseer,’ Robert pointed out; ‘but I am not likely to seek his company. I disliked the man from the first moment I met him.’
‘Keep on disliking him. Where shall we go now?’
‘Look at those doors, Annie,’ he cried, not answering her question. He had just noticed that the doors were fastened backwards, so that these at least could not possibly have made the reverberating noise that had startled them a while before. ‘Those doors did not bang.’
‘You forget the drawing-room doors. They are much heavier than these.’
‘Let us look at them.’
But those, too, were securely locked.
‘Now what made that noise?’ asked Robert; ‘could it have been an earthquake?’
‘I tell you it was one of these doors. The women must have heard the noise and run in and fastened it so that they could not be blamed for neglect. And it is no use asking them anything about it; they would lie for the mere sake of lying. Do you wonder now that I have sometimes to punish them?’
He saw that that must be the right explanation. ‘Shall we sit in the drawing-room?’ he asked.
‘Wherever you please,’ she answered softly, ‘but I should like to look at the night; it is very beautiful, and I want to look at it with you. Come with me where we can see the sky and the stars and talk about the little things that concern ourselves. Won’t you come?’
‘Anywhere that you wish!’
She lifted her face towards him; he bent down and kissed her. The doors leading to the courtyard stood wide open, but he forgot that or did not mind it now; her disregard of peering slave eyes affected him also; what did it matter what they saw? She slipped her arms round him and clung to him; he lifted her sheer off her feet and kissed her again and again.
‘Carry me upstairs in your arms,’ she pleaded, ‘I love to feel how strong you are. You can go with daybreak, Robert; not before. My darling, my dearest, how I love you!’
Chapter Seven—THE BROWN GIRL
THE West Indian dawn was breaking when Robert mounted his horse and rode away towards his quarters. He glanced back and upwards when he had reached the lower ground; from the front window of the room above there peeped out a face, and a hand came forth waving farewell to him.
Early as it was the house servants were astir; one of them had even offered him coffee before he should leave, but he had been anxious to get away. He was not yet hardened to the callous frankness of a Jamaica liaison; he now felt ashamed that these menials, slaves though they might be, should see him, know whence he came, and be able to talk about it freely to their companions. The elation of the hours before had vanished; he was secretly startled that he had so quickly succumbed to what he had heard at home were the manners and customs of this country, with a disregard of all concealment,
a careless acceptance of any conditions and circumstances that might appeal at the moment, however flagrantly might be violated every principle of circumspect conduct. He was suffering now from a reaction. His mood was depressed, his attitude towards himself critical.
But for a moment this mood of censorious introspection vanished before the moving influences of the scene that disclosed itself to his admiring gaze. The sun was surging upwards away to the right; along the edge of a bank of nacre there ran a line of gold. Clouds of soft blushing pink floated lazily against a background of delicate blue; to the left the skies were golden and the green of the earth was alternately dark and light, with deep greys here and there, and splashes of bright scarlet where a giant poinsettia reared its long branches high above the fields of cane.
There had been heavy dew in the long hours of the night. It sparkled now on every leaf and twig; it shone, a million crystal globules, as the sunlight swept down upon the earth; silver and emerald glowed everywhere; it was as though all the land had been bathed in celestial waters. There was a tang in the air from the sea beyond. With the dawning, a light wind had sprung up; it fanned the sweeping expanse of the Caribbean, fretted it here into frosted azure, transformed it there into glittering jewels. The breeze came laden with the scent of saline waters, cool and exhilarating. And even as Robert stood to gaze, his horse motionless in obedience to his mood, the sun soared swiftly into sight.
It came with a triumphant impetus, as though it knew it were the lord of day, beneficent mainly, but cruel at times when its burning rays would wither the countryside, consume the liquid in rivers and in ponds, cause man and beast to perish, and, day after day, week after week, would flame downwards out of a hard and brazen sky with heat like a blast from hell. But now it was all glorious, and the birds hailed it with song, and the cattle lifted up their voices in a deep, grateful lowing, and men and women rejoiced in its gentle warmth.
Robert drew a deep breath. He knew that in a little while all the moisture at his feet and on the vegetation around would have disappeared, that the softness and sweetness of the early morning would be gone. But for this brief hour the feel of life was perfect, the impulse in one’s heart was to shout aloud for the mere joy of being alive. Something of this must have been felt even by those in bondage, for while he stood and looked about him he heard a chorus of merry noises which seemed to come from carefree hearts. Then he gave his horse rein and began to move forward again. And his thoughts returned to Annie and his adventure of the night.
Annie Palmer had not appeared to him to be quite so young in the chilly dawn of the December morning as she had the night before, or when he had seen her on horseback in the fields. There were little lines across her brow, slight it is true, but indisputably there; and just the tiniest of crow’s feet about the corners of her eyes. Her full lips which quivered with passion had hinted to him of fervent overwhelming desire; they were the lips of a woman in whom sensuality was temperamental and dominant. She was all fire; there was no restraint about her; but she excused it, defended it, on the ground that she loved him madly; again and again had she told him so, and he believed her absolutely. He believed that she loved him, that he loved her also; yet, he knew, felt, that hers was a volcanic passion, that hers was a tempestuous temperament, wild as the sea fronting Rosehall when it was lashed to fury by the winds that rushed down from the north, fierce as the storms that sometimes ranged over this country, devastating it in an hour or two.
He had pledged himself to her. He had gone to the Great House the night before with no such intention in his mind, although she had fascinated him. He had entered it as a guest; he had left it as a lover pledged, as a lover to whom she belonged and who was hers without reservation; so both of them had passionately asseverated. He was tired now and weary in mind and body. For two nights he had hardly slept, and even his abounding energy was taxed by the exhausting excitements through which he had passed. She had laughed at his protests that he would have to work that day, asking him why he should wish to ride about sun-baked fields or sit sweltering in a boiling-house redolent with the odour of bubbling cane juice and of sweating human bodies; but he had insisted that he must play the game with Burbridge, and she had given in. Nevertheless the task before him was distasteful. This estate life and its exigencies were new to him, and the malaise in his mind conflicted with the necessities of a day’s laborious and sordid routine.
She was beautiful, strong, passionate, wealthy, self-reliant, and she loved him. He would not live in the Great House with her; on that he had made up his mind; for one thing, he did not wish to leave Burbridge, who so obviously wanted to be friendly with him and who would feel that he had become, in some sort, a master instead of a colleague. There was also his persistent impulse towards personal independence. He had not come to Jamaica to accept anything from a woman; he could not stay in the Great House and not be, in a manner of speaking, a recipient of a hospitality which he could not return.
But how long, in any case, he asked himself, could this life, that had just begun, endure? Annie was a white woman; she had been married; she was still young. Women like her did not, even in Jamaica, contract open, unlegalised connubial relations with men; he knew enough of the colony to be aware of that. Whatever might be done in secret, there was some respect shown by them to such public opinion as existed. Their husbands and sons and brothers cared nothing what might be said about them. Robert had been told in Montego Bay, by his friend the rector, that these men, even if married, openly maintained other establishments; talked about them, could not imagine why there should be any secrecy or shame in regard to them. But a somewhat different standard for women of the upper orders obtained, and Annie belonged to those orders, was assuredly in the front rank of them. Here was something of a problem; how was it to be solved? By marriage? He had not thought seriously about marriage in his life; he had certainly not considered it a likely, or even possible, consequence of his journey; neither of them had hinted at it last night. But she had been three times married, and if he loved her, and she him, what more logical, more natural, than that this suddenly developed relationship of theirs should end in marriage? But what would his father say?
Robert knew. His father would be startled at hearing any suggestion of an alliance between him and a woman who had already had three husbands and who had herself admitted that she had many enemies in this island who traduced her and kept away from her—who shunned her. His father would be grieved, resentful; there would be an estrangement between them. And he himself; did he really wish for marriage with Annie? Would he willingly, gladly, make her his wife, vow to be everything to her, select her as the companion of a lifetime? He dismissed the question hastily, saying to himself that it was mean and unworthy of him to ask it, feeling indignant that it should have obtruded itself into his mind. Yet the very hastiness and indignation with which he strove to eject it, put it from him, instead of facing it and answering it fairly, caused him an uneasy twinge of conscience; he felt, though he tried not to feel, that he was endeavouring to deceive himself. He said to himself that it was unnecessary, premature, to think of such a thing as marriage now. He meant, and was secretly conscious that he meant, that he did not wish to think of it at all.
He rode very slowly, his horse going at a walk. A delicious coolness was in the air, the sky in front of him was all rosy, with soft white clouds shining in a mellow light, the green of the cane-fields stretching away, a wavering sea of vivid colour on either hand. He could see the wavelets of the Caribbean break gently upon the white margin of beach; the tropical birds had awakened and were calling to one another and singing their morning song, the cattle lowed plaintively as they were driven from their pens to begin the day’s work. Now and then a shouted order, sharp, but the words unintelligible, reached his ear.
He suspected that his figure, clearly outlined as it must be from his eminence on a horse’s back, was perceptible to every eye that was turned in his direction; perhaps Ashman saw him, Ashman wh
o had arranged to be at the Great House that morning to accompany Annie over to Palmyra. Ashman’s conduct last night had been extraordinary; he had acted as though jealous of his presence in the house. Ashman had seemed disposed to make trouble, would probably seek for a reason to do so. Ashman would know by now that he had spent the night at the Great House, and draw his own conclusions. There was some complication to be expected here. Conflict was being ingeminated between him and this aggressive, bullying man.
He hitched his horse to a post standing by his quarters when he arrived at them; he observed that the door of Burbridge’s room stood ajar and guessed that Burbridge himself must have already repaired to his duties. But before he could reach his own door that of the middle apartment opened and Millicent appeared. She wore a looser dress than she had worn the day before, and her head was lightly bound up in a coloured handkerchief which she must have tied on just a moment or so ago.
He was surprised to see her; he had not expected her to take up her work as housekeeper so early.
Millicent looked worried, anxious: there was a strained expression on her face.
He would have passed her with a nod, but she stopped him. ‘You was all night at the Great House, Squire?’ she asked.
‘Yes,’ he replied shortly, resenting the question. ‘You can get some coffee for me.’
‘It’s boiling already; I soon give it to you. I come here at about eight o’clock last night an’ find you gone to the House. I hardly sleep a wink all night.’
‘Well, I don’t see that that concerns me,’ he said irritably; ‘is it the custom here for servants or housekeepers to sit up when their employers are away?’
He walked into the room and seated himself on the edge of the bed. There was a close musty smell about the place; it disgusted him; the contrast between the Great House and these wretched diggings was overwhelming.
The White Witch of Rosehall Page 6
