Voodoo Tales: The Ghost Stories of Henry S Whitehead (Tales of Mystery & The Supernatural) (71 page)

His new friends did not, perhaps, realize the overpowering effect of the sudden change upon this northern-bred man; the effects of the moonlight and the soft tradewind; the life of love which surrounded him here. Love from the palm fronds, rustling dryly in the continuous breeze; love was telegraphed through the shy, bovine eyes of the brown girls in his estate-house village; love assailed him in the breath of the honeylike sweet grass, undulating all day and all night under the white moonlight of the Caribbees, pouring over him intoxicatingly through his opened jalousies as he lay, often sleeping, through long nights of spice and balm smells on his mahogany bedstead – pale grass, looking like snow under the moon.

The half-formulated yearnings which these sights and sounds were begetting were quite new and fresh in his experience. Here fresh instincts, newly released, stirred, flared up, at the glare of early-afternoon sunlight, at the painful scarlet of the hibiscus blooms, the incredible indigo of the sea – all these flames of vividness through burning days, wilting into a caressing coolness, abruptly, at the fall of the brief, tropic dusk. The fundament of his crystallizing desire was for companionship in the blazing life of this place of rapid growth and early fading, where time slipped away so fast.

At first he had wondered, vaguely, how other men had met this primal urge. Very soon he saw that the answer to that was all about him, here in his own estate-village. Here were ruddy
zambos
, pale-brown mulattos, cream-colored octoroons –
mestizos
of every type, of every shade of skin. That was one answer; that had been the great answer, here in the West Indies, from time immemorial; the answer here on Santa Cruz of the Spaniards and the Dutch, as many names showed; of the French and of his own people, the Danes. He wondered, whimsically, what had been the answer in the case of those austere Knights of Malta who had owned the island for a season.

But, for Cornelis, fastidiousness intervened. Across the edge of that solution hung the barrier of his inertia, his resistance, his pride of a Caucasian. The barrier seemed insurmountable to Cornelis.

Marriage? Was he not young for that? He asked himself that question many times. One did not marry, ideally, without love; love true and deep and trustful; love founded on acquaintance, appreciation, some conviction of permanence. Those were the backgrounds of marriage.

Some daughter of one of the gentry planters, perhaps? Those girls had the domestic virtues. But – he was comfortable enough with his good servants at Fairfield House. His yearnings had little relation to somebody to preside over his household. Somehow, to Cornelis, these young ladies of the planter gentry were not alluring, vital. The most attractive of them, Honoria Macartney, he could hardly imagine beside him perpetually. Honoria had the dead-white skin of the Caucasian Creole lady whose face has been screened from the sun since infancy.

‘And how are you enjoying the island?’ she had asked him on an afternoon when he had been visiting the Macartneys, eating some of Honoria’s perfect small frosted cakes; drinking her rather too-strong tea on the east gallery of her father’s estate-house near Christiansted.

Cornelis reassured her. He was enjoying himself very much indeed. Everything Honoria said, did, wore – he felt instinctively – was –
suitable
. That was the English word for it. Yes.

Looking at her, as he had looked at her various other afternoons, Cornelis was certain his mother in Copenhagen would approve of her as a daughter-in-law. Most of the Crucian young gentry ladies were like that. Suitable – that was the precise word . . .

That night he lay, sleepless, on the mahogany bed. The grass on the rolling hillsides seen through the opened jalousies under the full moon of February was at its palest, more than ever suggesting snow. That he had observed driving up the straight road from the sea to his house less than an hour before. He had dined with the Macartneys – a placid, uneventful evening. Mrs Macartney had mentioned that Honoria had made the dessert. It had been a Danish dessert, for him: ‘red grout’ – sago pudding stained purple with cactus-fruit. Honoria had made it perfectly. He had complimented her upon her pudding.

The warm, pulsing breath of the sweet grass surged through the open windows in a fashion to turn the head of a stone image. It was exotic, too sweet, exaggerated, like everything else in this climate! Cornelis turned over again, seeking a cool place on the broad bed. Then he sat up in bed, impatiently throwing off the sheet. A thin streak of moonlight edged the bed below his feet. He slipped out of bed, walked over to a window. He leaned out, looking down at the acres of undulating grass. There seemed to be some strange, hypnotic rhythm to it, some vague magic, as it swayed in the night wind. The scent poured over him in great, pulsing breaths. He shut his eyes and drew it in, abandoning his senses to its effect.

Instinctively, without thought or plan, he walked out of his open bedroom door, down the stairs, out upon the south gallery below. The smooth tiles there felt caressingly cool to his bare feet. Jessamine here mingled with the sweet grass. He drew a light cane chair to the gallery’s edge and sat, leaning his arms on the stone coping, his shadow sharply defined in the cold moonlight. He looked out at the sea a long time. Then he shut his eyes, drinking in the intoxicating, mixed odors.

A sound secured his attention. He raised his head, looked down his narrow private road toward the sea. Clearly outlined in the moonlight a girl, possibly fifteen, came along the road toward him. About her lithe body hung a loose slip, and around her head, carelessly twined, turban-wise, was draped a white towel. She was quite close, making no sound on the sandy road with her bare feet.

His shadow moving slightly, perhaps, startled her. She paused in her languorous stride, a slender neck bearing erect a fawnlike head, nostrils wide, eyes open, taken unawares.

Then the girl recognized him and curtsied, her sudden smile revealing white, regular teeth set in a delicate, wide mouth, a mouth made for love. In the transforming magic of the moonlight her pale brown skin showed like cream.

‘Bathing in de sea,’ she murmured explanatorily.

Lingeringly, as though with reluctance, she resumed her sedate, slow walk, the muscles flowing, rippling, as though to pass around the house to the village at the rear. Her eyes she kept fixed on Cornelis.

Cornelis, startled, had felt suddenly cold at the unexpected, wraith-like sight of her. Now his blood surged back, his heart pumping tumultuously. A turbulent wave of sea air sweetened from acres of sweet grass surged over him. He closed his eyes.

‘Come!’ he whispered, almost inaudibly.

But the girl heard. She paused, looked up at him, hesitating. He managed to nod his head at her. The blood pounded in his veins; he felt detached, weak, drowned in the odor of sweet grass and jessamine.

The girl ran lightly up the gallery’s stone steps. The pattern of the small jessamine leaves played grotesquely upon her when she paused, as moonlight filtered through them and they moved in the light, irregular sea breeze.

Cornelis rose and looked down into the girl’s eyes. Their amber irises were very wide and eery light played in them; a kind of luminous glow, a softening . . .

Trembling, he placed a tentative hand on her shoulder, gently. She leaned toward him; his arms went about her firm, slender body. Young Cornelis Hansen felt, for the first time, a girl’s heart tumultuously beating against his breast.

A hush enveloped the quiet of the pure, clear night. No dog muttered from the sleeping estate-village. A fresh breath, enervating, redolent of the acres of waving grass, fanned the gallery. A delicate beam of moonlight seemed, to young Cornelis, entranced, bewitched, to usher them into the open doorway of his house . . .

Then, suddenly, almost brutally it seemed, even to him, he thrust this pale, brown girl of gossamer and moonlight away from him. He stood clear of her, no longer bemused by the witchery of the breeze and the moonlight’s magic.

With more of gentleness he laid again his hand on the delicate, rounded shoulder. As gently he turned the girl about and marched her, resolutely – like a Dane – toward the gallery steps. His fastidiousness had reasserted itself.

‘Good night – my child,’ said Cornelis.

The girl looked up at him shyly, out of the corners of her eyes, puzzled and resentful.

‘Good night, sar,’ she murmured, and slipped down the steps and like a shadow around the corner of the house.

Cornelis walked firmly into his house and shut the door behind him. He went into his dining-room and poured himself a glass of French brandy and rinsed out the glass from the earthenware water-gugglet, throwing the water onto the stone floor. Then he mounted the stairs to his bedroom, got into bed, rolled over on his side, and went to sleep.

In the morning, after his tea, he was riding about his fields so early that he was finished with his managerial inspection before nine. Ten o’clock saw him, very carefully shaved, and wearing spotless white drill and his best Danish straw hat instead of a sun helmet, driving a pair of horses in the light phaeton toward Christiansted.

That same afternoon, during the period devoted to swizzels of old rum or brandy and, especially among the Danes, tea and coffee and cakes – the period of sociability before the company at the various great houses broke up before its various dinner-parties – Cornelis called at the Nybladhs’. The Administrator and his wife were pleased to see him, as always. Several others were present, quite a company in fact, for the swizzel-hour at Nybladhs’ was almost an official occasion.

After a quarter of an hour, Cornelis drew the Administrator aside and they spoke together briefly, then returned to the company gathered about an enormous mahogany table which held the silver swizzel jug and the afternoon’s lunch.

At the next pause in the conversation Nybladh rose, focusing his guests’ attention upon himself. He held up his glass.

‘Be pleased to fill all glasses,’ he commanded, importantly.

There was a considerable bustle about the great round table. Nybladh noted the fulfilling of his command. Servants hurried about among the guests. When all were freshly served he cleared his throat and waved his own glass ceremoniously.

‘I announce’ – he paused, impressively, all eyes dutifully upon him. ‘I announce – the engagement of Herr Hansen and Miss Honoria Macartney. Skoal!’ He boomed it out sonorously. Every glass was raised.

Cornelis bowed from the waist, deeply, to each of his pledgers, as they drank the health of himself and his bride-to-be.

Thus did Honoria, daughter of the great Irish-West Indian family of the Fighting Macartneys, become the Fru Hansen, after an exceptionally brief engagement, and leave her father’s house to live at Estate Fairfield with her husband who was the nephew of Old Strach.

A West Indian family does not pick up titles from the populace by knocking about their estates and doing nothing. The Fighting Macartneys were well worthy of theirs. Even Saul Macartney, their ancient black sheep, who had paid the penalty of piracy by hanging in St Thomas in 1824 along with the notorious Fawcett, his chief, and who, as some believed, had been strangely magicked even after his death by his cousin Camilla Lanigan who was believed to practise obeah and was immensely respected by the Negroes – even the disgraced Saul was no poltroon. The jewels Saul and Captain Fawcett buried under Melbourne House, Saul’s Santa Cruz mansion, had not been handed that miscreant over the counter!

This young Honoria was of that sanguine blood, even though her sheltered life had made her walk somewhat mincingly and there was no color in her cheeks. She began her reign at Fairfield like a sensible young housewife, studying Cornelis’ likes and dislikes, satisfying him profoundly, beyond his very moderate expectations. The ardent yet self-contained young man had linked to himself something compounded of fire and silk. Honoria brought to her housekeeping, too, great skill and knowledge, from her young lifetime in her mother’s great house near Christiansted.

She was a jewel of a wife, this young Honoria Hansen, born Macartney. Cornelis came suddenly to love her with an ardency which even he had never dreamed of as possible, like flame. Then their love was tempered in a fearful happening.

One morning when Cornelis was riding early about his sugar fields, it came to him, traversing a cane-range on his black mare, Aase, that never, before or since that sleepless night when he had called the girl to him on the gallery, had he laid eyes upon that girl. That he would recognize the girl whom, for a moment of abandoned forgetfulness of his fastidious reserve, he had held in his arms, whose body had lain against his heart, was beyond question in his mind. Then it occurred to him that he had thought of the girl as living in his village. That night when he had dismissed her, she had walked away around the house toward the cabins at the rear. He shuddered – those cabins!

Yet the fact remained that, cogitate the matter as he might, riding along at Aase’s delicate walking pace, he could not recollect having laid eyes upon her, either before or since that night when he had sent her away. It was very curious, inexplicable indeed – if the girl lived in his village. There was really no way to inquire. Well, it did not greatly matter, of course! A brown girl was – a brown girl. They were all alike. Cornelis rode on to another canefield.

Telepathy, perhaps! When he arrived at Fairfield House toward eleven under the mounting brilliance of the late-morning sunlight, and tossed his bridle-reins to Alonzo his groom at the front gallery steps, the girl stood beside the door of Fairfield House, inside the high hallway. She curtsied gravely to him as he passed within.