Voodoo Tales: The Ghost Stories of Henry S Whitehead (Tales of Mystery & The Supernatural)

by Henry S. Whitehead

  ‘I do not see why you should suggest such a thing to me, Mr Canevin.’

  Women! I should never understand them! This, at that moment, I felt instinctively, hopelessly. I remembered, sharply, that almost telepathic feeling I have mentioned on my arrival.

  ‘I am sure I ask your pardon if I have offended you,’ I said lamely and stood aside, waiting for her to precede me back into the drawing-room.

  I bowed slightly to indicate that I was waiting for her to pass. I think I even may have made a slight, indicative motion of the hand.

  But she did not move, and I looked down at her, troubled, vaguely puzzled. Was this the simple, sweet Miss Gertrude who had entered into the comedy of that picture with an almost childish enthusiasm?

  That picture! I think I shuddered slightly. She reached out the necklace toward me, but I did not take it back. With the strangest, most poignant look on her face, she was speaking again.

  Like ‘Annie Laurie’s’, her voice is low and sweet. All the phrases of that ballad of sentimental nonsense, as I was suddenly reminded, looking down at her, fit her like a glove.

  ‘I think you have failed to understand me, and that is why you are vexed, Mr Canevin. You see – I cannot accept your gift. I am no longer a child, you will remember, and such a gift could come only from a near relative, or – or . . . ’

  She looked down. Her courage had given out. I saw her face, red as a red rose in the faint whiteness of that pouring moonlight.

  The delicate, moaning coo of a disturbed wood dove came through the silent mahogany trees, and a little, faint puff of the evening trade wind came wandering across from the sea, across acres of sweet grass.

  Light came to me then and blinded me.

  ‘ – or one who is to be your husband,’ I finished for her, bending my head toward her. She did not move, and I reached out and took both her dear hands in mine, where they lay like lilies. The necklace hung across her wrists between us.

  It was, suddenly, as though ‘Annie Laurie’, played very softly and sweetly and yet, somehow, madly, played by many well-tuned violins and fairy horns, surged all about me, and it went to my head like strong wine.

  ‘And will you let me be that one?’ I asked her quietly.

  She left her hands where they were, and raised her lovely face and looked at me, all her shame gone now, and I took her into my arms . . .

  A little after we went back into the drawing-room. Mr and Mrs Maclane were chatting quietly, precisely as we had left them. I bowed to both of them.

  ‘I must not delay the happiness I have in informing you,’ said I, and the words seemed to come to me with a clarity almost uncanny – the right words, for such an announcement – ‘that I expect to have the honor of becoming your son-in-law.’

  But, I assure you, no one, not even a Canevin, can get ahead of a real Crucian of the Old Scottish Gentry when it comes to these matters of courtesy.

  ‘We are happy to welcome you into the family, Gerald,’ said Mrs Maclane, without the flicker of an eyelash.

  She rose and made me a quaint, Old World courtesy, and I bowed in return as she resumed her chair.

  Mr Maclane took his wife’s hand in his and said: ‘My wife has spoken for both of us, Mr Canevin.’

  ‘Gerald has given me this,’ said Gertrude, and laid the necklace, blazing now under the electric chandelier, in her mother’s lap.

  Mrs Maclane examined it with interest, polite interest. Its value would easily have purchased Estate Montparnasse – yes, and several other contiguous estates thrown in.

  ‘It is very kind of him,’ said she, and handed the necklace back to her daughter.

  Gertrude gave it to her father to examine. He looked at it with much the same type of merely courteous interest, and then clasped the lovely thing about his daughter’s neck, which is ‘like the swan’, as ‘Annie Laurie’ has it. He kissed her gravely on her white forehead.

  ‘We must have in a bottle of champagne to drink your health,’ said he, and paused to bow to me again as he left the room to get it.

  Of course I told Mrs Desmond about everything.

  But no information could I derive from her that would throw any light on anything. She would only say: ‘After I am dead, Mr Canevin!’

  But on the matter of the picture’s destruction she waxed eloquent.

  ‘God be praised,’ said she, ‘that the fearful thing is no more! ’Twas my poor mother, God rest her soul, that was always wishful of having it destroyed and never daring; and as for me, Mr Canevin, as I’ve told you, there was more than paint went into it.

  ‘But I believe every word. ’Tis enough of my Aunt Camilla’s cap-abilities that I’ve heard about to leave no doubt in my mind. After I’m dead, Mr Canevin – after I’m dead, and not before!’

  And that was all we were able to learn.

  We had been married less than two months; the restoration of my estate was only just beginning to be under way, when Mrs Desmond departed this life at the age of seventy-six.

  The English Church was full – St Paul’s – and so, too, was the churchyard itself, for virtually the entire island turned out to pay its last respects to one of its most notable old inhabitants, a member of the Old Island Gentry who pass, these days, one by one.

  Gertrude and I had come back on foot from the funeral – it is only a step to Melbourne House, where we were living until the estate-house should be ready – to be met by a young colored fellow, a clerk in Lawyer Esperson’s employ. He handed me a long envelope and asked for a receipt, which I gave him.

  The envelope, addressed to me, was one of Lawyer Esperson’s. I tore it open, and within was a brief document, also addressed to me, and in the fine, beautifully formed, almost continental handwriting of Mistress Desmond herself.

  I called Gertrude and we sat down together and I read it out.

  Dear Mr Canevin

  I have left instructions with Esperson that this is to be handed to you after my burial. I told you that I would clear up certain matters for you after I was gone.

  There are two mysteries connected. One is why I would not touch a penny’s value of what you discovered under Melbourne House. The other is how the evil takings of a ‘Freetrader’ could come there, to the residence of a respectable family.

  I shall hope to clear up both of these. As to how it was done, God – and Satan – know. I cannot tell you that.

  But this much I can, and will, tell you.

  Even before my time, we of the gentry have been constrained to marry among ourselves. It’s new blood, like your own, these islands are needing. I hope you will remain, now that you are to be married, and to one of a blood as good as your own.

  For the reason I mention, we are mostly related like royalty!

  I was courted by my cousin, James Desmond, whom I married. It was the uncle of my husband, Saul Macartney, who sought to marry my Aunt Camilla Lanigan in the generation before mine. This Saul was the only living child of his father, Thomas Macartney, who lived here on Santa Cruz, and was a merchant and shipowner in the island trade.

  It is because James Desmond was his nephew that Melbourne House came to us by inheritance. It belonged to Saul Macartney.

  This young gentleman was accustomed to go about the islands in charge of his father’s vessel, the Hope. And in the intervals of these voyages he would be courting my Aunt Camilla Lanigan in St Thomas. A young man he was, so it is said, with but little of the fear of God, and none of the love, in his heart.

  When his father died, leaving him Melbourne House, the ships, three sugar estates and a grand store here in Fredericksted, he was not content to marry my Aunt Camilla and settle down.

  Off he went in the Hope again before his father was well settled in his grave. And on that very voyage, from which my Aunt Camilla had sought to disuade him, the Hope was captured off Caracas by Fawcett himself.

  Saul Macartney, willing as always to turn to his own advantage what might betide, ‘joined’ Fawcett and rose to be second in com
mand to the bloodiest villain that ever scourged the Caribbean.

  Now, I am thinking, you begin to see light. The connection with the picture. What depended on that bitter fact?

  It had not been known to me before you dug it up that treasure had been placed under Melbourne House. But consider, Mr Canevin, where better? It was Saul Macartney’s property and only came, indeed, into the hands of my husband, James Desmond, his nephew, on Macartney’s disgraceful death on the gallows in St Thomas.

  Nothing could have been easier than for him to come ashore here, and Captain Fawcett with him belike, and do as he pleased on his own property. The people would bow to the ground before a ‘Freetrader’ in those days, and the fat of the land was not too good for them. Many had their fine houses ashore. Was not Henry Morgan himself knighted and made Leftenant Governor of Jamaica?

  Saul Macartney went and came as he wished, and even sought to continue his courtship with my Aunt Camilla Lanigan. It was that which roused the bitter hatred of her against him, Mr Canevin, and – woe betide the man that roused my Aunt Camilla Lanigan to hate!

  For she knew how to hate, and how to make her hatred count, and may God our Heavenly Father have mercy on her soul.

  Ann Jane Desmond

  That was all. Granting it was true – and it was plausible enough, to be sure – it cleared up much that had been obscure; the identity of the pirate mate, for example.

  But, as Mrs Desmond herself had said, it could not clear up how the thing had been brought about. Granted that Camilla Lanigan had acquired skill in black magic, and that is a great deal to grant in any such case, or any case at all, the rest fitted together like the halves of a trysting ring. I saw it all, from that point of view, and I shuddered internally.

  I raised my head and looked at my dear wife. Her eyes were shining, and there was in them rather more than a suspicion of tears.

  ‘What a vengeance!’ she said, in her low, sweet voice. ‘Saul Macartney choosing the life of a Freetrader as against that of a decent merchant! Reduced to what appeared on that canvas!

  ‘Well – he is released now, Gerald. We released him. And he has rewarded us. I think we should pray for the repose of his soul. He is a century behind the others in Purgatory!’

  ‘You believe – ’ said I.

  ‘If I were not certain you would call me “Victorian”, ’ my dear wife smiled through that suspicion of tears, ‘I should say: “There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio!” ’

  ‘We shall have to let it go at that, I imagine,’ said I, ‘but I am going to give St Paul’s Church a complete new set of altar hangings in brocades, with some such idea as you have suggested.’

  ‘Which idea?’ inquired my wife.

  ‘For the repose of his soul,’ I answered.

  ‘Williamson’

  The death of Mrs Williamson Morley occurred in the early part of October, in San Francisco, only a couple of weeks before I was due to sail from New York for St Thomas, Virgin Islands, my usual winter habitat. It was too far to get to the funeral, although, being an old friend and school mate of Morley’s, I should have attended under any ordinary circumstances. I do not happen to know what the Morleys were doing in San Francisco. They lived in New York, and had a summer place on Long Island and I never knew Morley to move about very much. I wrote him at once, of course, a long and intimate letter. In it I suggested his coming down to stay with me in St Thomas. I was there when I received his reply. He accepted, and said that he would be arriving about the middle of November and would cable me accordingly.

  When he arrived he made quite a flutter among my negro house-servants; an impression, it seemed to me, that went much deeper, for some strange reason, than his five huge trunks of clothes would cause among such local dandies as my house-man, Stephen Penn. I am anything but ‘psychic’, despite some experience with various out-of-the-way matters among the Caribbean Islands and in various parts of the globe. Indeed, one of my chief aversions is the use of this word by anyone as applying to one’s own character. But, ‘psychic’ or not, I could not help but feel that flutter, as I have called it. Mr Williamson Morley made a very striking impression indeed. I mention it because it recalled to me something I had entirely dropped out of my mind in the year or more since I had seen Sylvia, Morley’s late wife. My servants, very obviously, showed an immediate, and inexplicable dread of him. I cannot, honestly, use a less emphatic word. When you notice your cook making the sign of the cross upon herself when she lays rolling, anxious eyes upon your house-guest, observe an unmistakable grayish tinge replacing the shining brown of your house-man’s ‘Zambo’ cheeks as he furtively watches that guest at his morning setting-up exercises which Morley performed with vigor and gusto – when you notice things like this, you can hardly help wondering what it is all about, especially when you remember that the late wife of that house-guest was as unmistakably afraid of her genial husband!

  I had never known Sylvia very well, but I had known her well enough to realize that during Williamson Morley’s courtship there was no such element of fear in her reception of his advances preliminary to a marriage. I tried, when I did notice this thing, beginning not long after the wedding, not so much to explain it – I regarded it as inexplicable that anyone should have such feelings toward Morley whom I had known since we were small boys together in the same form at Berkeley School in New York City – as to classify it. I found that I could give it several names – dread, repulsion, even loathing.

  It was too much for me. Williamson Morley inspiring any of these feelings, especially in the wife of his bosom! The thing, you see, was quite utterly ridiculous. There never was, there could not possibly be, a more kindly, normal, open-hearted and reasonable fellow than Morley himself. He was, and always had been, good-natured to the degree of a fault. He was the kind who would let anyone smack him in the face, and laugh at it, without even the thought of hitting back. He had always had a keen sense of humor. He was generous, and rich. He had inherited good-sized fortunes both from his father and mother, and had made a good deal more in his Wall Street office. Williamson Morley was what some people call ‘a catch’, for any woman.

  Knowing him as well as I did it seemed rather tough that his wife, whom he plainly loved, should take things the way she did. Morley never said anything about it, even to me. But I could see what certain novelists name ‘the look of pain in his eyes’ more than once.

  Morley’s good-nature, more like that of a friendly big dog than anything else I could compare it to, was proverbial. His treatment of his wife, in the six or seven years of their married life, a good deal of which I saw with my own eyes, was precisely what anyone who knew him very well would expect of him. Sylvia had been a comparatively poor girl. Married to Morley, she had everything a very rich man’s petted darling could possibly desire, Morley indulged her, lavished upon her innumerable possessions, kindnesses, privileges –

  And yet, through it all there ran that unmistakable note of a strange unease, of a certain suggestion of dread in his presence on Sylvia’s part.

  I put it down to perverseness pure and simple after seeing it for the first year or so. I wasn’t doing any guessing, you see, about Morley’s ‘inside’ treatment of his wife. There was no bluff about the fellow, nothing whatever in the way of deceit or double-mindedness. I have seen him look at her with an expression which almost brought the tears into my eyes – a compound expression mingled out of respect and devotion, and puzzlement and a kind of dogged undertone as though he were saying, mentally, ‘All right, my dear, I’ve done all I know how to make things go right and have you happy and contented, and I’m keeping it up indefinitely, hoping you’ll see that I love you honestly, and would do anything in the world for you; and that I may find out what’s wrong so that I can make it right.’

  That invincible good-nature I have spoken of, that easy-going way of slipping along through life letting people smack you and not smacking them back which was always characteristic of Williamson Morley, was, I
should hasten to make clear, not in the slightest degree due to any lack of ability on Morley’s part to take care of himself, physically or otherwise. Quite the contrary! Morley had been, by far, our best athlete in school days. He held the interscholastic record for the twelve-pound shot and the twelve-pound hammer, records which, I believe, still stand. He was slow and a trifle awkward on his feet, it is true, but as a boxer and wrestler he was simply invincible. Our school trainer, Ernie Hjertberg, told me that he was the best junior athlete he had ever handled, and Ernie had a long and reputable record.

  Morley went on with this in college. In fact, he became a celebrity, what with his succession of record-breaking puts of the sixteen-pound shot, and his tremendous heaves of the hammer of the same weight. Those two events were firsts for Haverford whenever their star heavyweight competed during his four years at that institution. He quit boxing after he had nearly killed the Yale man who was heavyweight champ in Morley’s Freshman year, in the first round. He was intercollegiate champion wrestler of all weights for three and one-half years. Watching him handle the best of them was like watching a mother put her baby to bed! Morley simply brushed aside all attempts to hammerlock or half-nelson him, took hold of his opponent, and put him on his back and held him there long enough to record the fall; and then got up with one of those deprecating smiles on his face as much as to say: ‘I hated to do that to you, old man – hope I didn’t hurt you too much.’

  All through his athletic career at school, for the four years we were together there, he showed only one queer trait. That, under the circumstances, was a very striking one. Morley would never get under the showers. No. A dry-rub for him, every time. He was a hairy fellow, as many very powerfully-built men are, and I have seen him many a time, after some competition event or a strenuous workout at our athletic field or winter days in the gymnasium shining with honest sweat so that he might have been lacquered! Nevertheless, no shower for Morley! Never anything but four or five dry towels, then the usual muscle-kneading and alcohol rub afterwards – invariably with his track or gym shoes on. That, in its way, was another, and the last, of Morley’s peculiarities. From first to last, he never, to my knowledge, took off even for muscle-kneadings at the capable hands of Black Joe, our rubber, the shoes he had been wearing, nor, of course, the heavy woolen stockings he always wore under them.