Voodoo Tales: The Ghost Stories of Henry S Whitehead (Tales of Mystery & The Supernatural) (27 page)

She paused, and relaxed her tense body, and slowly and with a gentle sigh sank back against the thick, soft cushions of the divan. Her eyes were closed; her breath was coming and going in audible, light sobs. It was plain that Marie Boutácheff had been through an extraordinary emotional experience. I sat very quietly, making no comment whatever, for several minutes – quite a long time, it seemed, under such circumstances!

Then, abruptly, Marie Boutácheff aroused herself, turned to me again with her eager animation. She said: ‘What do you think of him, Mr Canevin?’

I was a trifle startled. I jumped to a conclusion which turned out to be the right one.

‘You mean Signor Mattaloni?’ I asked.

‘Of course,’ said Marie Boutácheff.

‘I liked him immensely,’ said I, at once, telling the exact truth. The big, handsome
virtuoso
had, indeed, impressed me very favorably.

‘He is a great, a very great artist,’ said Marie Boutácheff softly, and suddenly tears stood in her eyes. I began to suspect that she had a ‘temperament’ after all! She moved along the divan until she sat close beside me.

‘I will tell you something, Mr Canevin,’ she said, and was silent for a little space. She looked down at her hands lying in her lap. Then: ‘It was Orféo Mattaloni whom I wanted to know about
– inside the ballroom
. He was the other person.’

I said nothing, but while I was turning over this unexpected statement in my mind, very quietly from where she sat close beside me, her voice now little more than a whisper, Marie Boutácheff began to tell me the story of that nervous breakdown. She had been, it appeared, and was still, very deeply and honestly in love with Mattaloni; and she had no means of knowing whether or not the
virtuoso
returned her love. Between the lines I discerned in Mattaloni a very noble character. Plainly the great
virtuoso
was a man of honor as well as that very great artist whom the entire musical world had already recognized and acclaimed. The Mattalonis, too, Miss Boutácheff had told me, had been great lords in Umbria in the Middle Ages.

He had been what might be called ‘attentive’ to her; had shown her that he thought very highly of her; but, whether as artist or woman, perhaps because of Mattaloni’s punctiliousness, she had been quite unable definitely to ascertain.

And, now that the two of them were together once more in New York, it had begun all over again for her.

She ended with another allusion to her mental picture derived from the
Pavane
of Maurice Ravel.

‘It is almost as though Orféo and I had lived over together similar events in that ancient setting. There was, in that experience of it, there in St Thomas after the benefit concert, the same type of anxiety which is making me unburden myself to you now. O, Mr Canevin, I know that
if I could once get into the ballroom
and see whether or not he and I are there together, I would know definitely what is in Orféo’s heart! It will kill me if I do not know, Mr Canevin.’

She ended her story, her face now drawn and tragic. I waited for some time before saying anything. Then: ‘Are you expecting to see him again before he sails for Europe?’

‘He is coming to dinner here tomorrow. So is Rachel Manners. Will you make the fourth, Mr Canevin?’

‘With great pleasure,’ said I, and rose to take my departure. I had a dinner engagement that evening, and there was barely time for me to get back to my club and dress for it.

The dinner the next evening, with Orféo Mattaloni and Miss Manners as my fellow guests, was a thoroughly delightful one. Mattaloni was at his scintillating best. He shone as a conversationalist quite as brilliantly as at the pianoforte later. He played for us, one brilliant thing after another, the lovely, lucid notes rippling off his fingers like strings of pearls. He was, as Marie had said, a very great artist. Here, at his ease, away from the strain and stress of public performance, playing only for an audience in full appreciative
rapport
with him, his performance was truly magnificent. He ended with the
Fantasie Impromptu
of Chopin. There was a long pause after that. Mattaloni continued to sit at the grand piano, the three of us across the room from him, in a row on the divan.

I had an inspiration.

I spoke to him, very quietly. ‘Will you play for us Ravel’s
Pavane
, Signor Mattaloni?’

I could feel Marie Boutácheff’s body go rigid on the long divan beside me, hear her utter a little smothered cry under her breath. She put her hands convulsively up over her face. Mattaloni did not notice any of this, in the dusk of the big room.

‘Certainly – very willingly, Mr Canevin,’ said he, and at once began it.

I closed my eyes, relaxed myself.

Clearly, distinctly, authoritatively, the strange, dissonant, mentally challenging chords followed one another. Mattaloni was playing very quietly, almost reflectively; precisely, I imagine, as Ravel intended his
Pavane
to be played. The
idea
of the old dance filled my mind; its rhythm exact, precise, as though under the baton of some ancient
kapellmeister
now dust these many centuries. There were the violins, the
viola da gamba
, the tinkling, precise clavichord. It was all there, beautifully clear and distinct; yet somehow distant, mellow with the dust of the fragrant centuries; an antique, a curiosity; to be sensed delicately, understandingly, with the intellect. It seemed a deliberate archaism; very beautiful, almost whimsical in certain of its nuances; steadily working on to accommodate the squares of slow-moving, graceful, formal dancers; complete to the very last measure – the last languid, formal bow of rapiered cavalier; the last deep, drooping
courtoisie
of demure
signorina
  . . .

And then – there came the deliberate pause of the
Grave Assai
, the beginning of the final crucial, movement which ends with an abrupt, soft chord.

And then once more I ‘saw’ the dancers, this time more nearly as a literal picture than had been the case at the Bauer performance.

I became conscious of something very strange indeed.

I stood, mentally, as it were, leaning over a high stone gallery coping; and there, below me, was a black and white square-tiled floor, a graciously arched doorway with blowing curtains, the remote figures of slowly-treading dancers within. A faint, soft scent, perhaps of camphire and bergamot, was wafted up to me on the lift of the warm air from below; and there – paused, expectant, near the doorway, a woman, walking slowly towards the ballroom.

The woman was tall, slender, graceful, with very beautiful hands which she held clasped before her in a gesture indicative of some deep and carking anxiety.

I was entirely conscious of the firm notes, the dissonant chords, clear-cut under Mattaloni’s masterful hands at Marie Boutácheff’s pianoforte. I record definitely that I heard, plainly and clearly, every note. The two impressions, that of the eye and that of the ear, were synchronous, simultaneous; overlapping each other, so to express it. I could feel my scalp prickle, and the cold sweat starting out of the pores of my face. I was conscious of my own two hands gripped together in a vise-like clasp as I watched Marie Boutácheff down below me there, walking slowly, steadily, towards the ballroom doorway.

I was torn with a racking anxiety. Would Mattaloni’s notes and chords continue long enough? Would there be
time
for her to reach the arched dorway – to go through it into the ballroom? Mattaloni’s pearl-like notes, those clear-cut, precise chords of Maurice Ravel, followed one another in a relentlessly-timed procession. There were, I knew, only just so many of them.

She reached the doorway
– entered it
; and, abruptly, the sense of tenseness fell away from me; I felt myself relax, automatically. I unclasped my hands. There was no gallery, no ballroom. There was only Marie Boutácheff’s studio. I let my head sink back against the deep cushion of the divan; and then I became aware of Rachel Manners speaking in a low voice, speaking to Mattaloni who had just struck the last firm, soft chord of the
Pavane’s
abrupt ending: ‘It was magnificent – magnificent!’

A deep silence followed Miss Manners’ impulsive little speech. Mattaloni continued to sit at the piano, his leonine figure only dimly visible in the dusk of the high room. Very quietly, then, he began to speak.

‘Had you remembered, perhaps, that the
Pavane
is dedicated “For a Dead Princess”? I think of her, always, when I play it. She was a Venetian, Rosabella Doria, daughter of the Doge Ludovico Doria. Her portrait, by Botticelli, is in the Louvre. She married my ancestor, the Prince Piero Mattaloni. That is how she became a Princess.

‘She was very lovely – tall, blonde, slender – a woman of the most intense spirituality!’

Mattaloni paused there, and, as one could almost feel the palpable silence of the dim, quiet room restoring itself, turned about, slowly, on the piano-stool. Then quite abruptly, he threw out his long arms in a sudden, impulsive, purely Latin gesture towards the three of us, and said: ‘It was of you, who are her very counterpart, my dear Marie, that I thought when I stood before the Donna Rosabella in the Louvre . . . ’

Marie Boutácheff rose quietly and turned up the lights. I saw her face as she turned around. It was transfigured, rapturous!

There
is
a ballroom in that Umbrian castle of the ancient house of Mattaloni, a ballroom with an arched doorway after the manner of Torrigiano – another great artist, in stone and mortar. There are large, square, black and white marble tiles in the antechamber, and a daïs in the ballroom. I know because I asked Mattaloni when I went to see him and Marie off on the
Re Umberto
.

He was greatly moved, he assured me, by my very kind interest.

Sea Change

1

There were few secrets aboard the
Kestrel
, and her passenger Edward Renwick knew about the imminent typhoon almost as soon as the members of the crew. He had seen a kind of halo about the sun, which became more apparent as the day wore on. That was the first indication, and Captain Hansen had made no secret of its probable meaning. Hansen’s noon observations confirmed his own suspicions on the day the halo first appeared, when they were some two hundred miles north of the Paumotus Group. The barometer was falling steadily, and light squalls had come spanking down during the night. Today the sea was smooth and marked with delicate ripples like a marshy millpond. When the swell began late in the afternoon, all precautions had been taken.

Hansen explained the course of a typhoon to Renwick in snatches. He spoke of cross-currents, atmospheric pressure, and various other indications. Renwick gathered that it was the accompanying ‘revolving air-currents’ which wrought the greatest damage to ships caught in these seasonal hurricanes of the South Seas.

Marian, his young wife, appeared unimpressed. She leaned over the rail to windward, her brown hair blowing in the freshening breeze, and Renwick retailed to her what he had gathered from Hansen’s bits of nautical science. The sky had taken on a coppery glint which, despite its menace, allured them by its utter strangeness. Beneath, the sea seemed changed. One could no longer look down into its almost fathomless depths. It seemed deadened, obscure.

Everything had been made fast. Hatches were screwed down, lashings were renovated, and the davits examined. It was the provisioning of the three boats which first caused a catch at the girl’s heart. Renwick reassured her. This was routine. It was only to save time. It would be an easy matter to reship the stores when the blow was over.

It was nearly nightfall when a heavy cloud-bank appeared out of the north-west, ominous and dreadful, soaring up out of the nothingness on the other side of the horizon like a huge, elongated funnel. It was very clearly marked even in the failing light which soon obscured it. They gazed at it, fascinated; but when they turned away from the rail they turned back to a changed ship. A foreboding of disaster had laid hold upon the crew. They went about their duties white-faced, subdued, as though profoundly disturbed by a sense of something imminent that could not be stayed or avoided . . .

The last thing they saw before they went below was two men removing the stores from the smallest of the three boats. On their way to their cabins below decks Captain Hansen gloomily admitted to Marian Renwick’s question that this boat was unseaworthy. But there was ample room in the other boats, he assured her, if it should come to that!

They decided to remain awake and dressed during the night. They dined hastily on sandwiches and tea, and sat in their stuffy little cabin waiting for the typhoon to break.

The
Kestrel
’s sudden, wild swoop under its first impact came as a relief. The period of anxious waiting was over now. They were in for it.