Voodoo Tales: The Ghost Stories of Henry S Whitehead (Tales of Mystery & The Supernatural) (83 page)

Gradually, as I had anticipated, the spasm of weeping worked itself out, minimized itself and finally passed. Mrs Garde raised her head, composed herself, again looked at me, this time with a markedly greater degree of calmness and self-possession. The gust of hysteria, although it had shaken her, had, in its ordinary effect, done her good. She even smiled at me a little wanly.

‘I fear that you will think me very weak, Mr Canevin,’ she said finally.

I smiled quietly.

‘When it is possible, it would be of assistance if I could know of this matter as exactly as possible,’ I said. ‘Try, please, to tell me just what it is that you see on the wall, Mrs Garde.’

Mrs Garde nodded, spent a little while composing herself. She even used her vanity box, a trifling gold affair with the inevitable mirror. After this she was able to smile herself. Then, suddenly quite serious again, she said simply: ‘It is the head and part of the body – the upper, forward part, to be precise, Mr Canevin – of what seems to be a young bull. At first only the head; then, gradually, the shoulders and neck. It seems quite utterly grotesque, absurd, does it not?

‘But, Mr Canevin, extraordinary as that must seem to you, it is – ’ she looked down at her twitching hands, then, with a visible effort, back at me, her face now suddenly ghastly under the fresh make-up which she had so recently applied to it. ‘Mr Canevin, that is not the terrifying part of it. That, indeed, might, perhaps, be construed as some kind of optical illusion, or something of the sort. It is – ’ again she hesitated, looked down; then, with a greater effort than before back at me – ‘it is the – expression – of the face, Mr Canevin! It is, I assure you, quite
human
, terrifying, reproachful! And, Mr Canevin, there is blood, a thick single stream of blood, which runs down from the center of the forehead, over the creature’s poor nose! It is – somehow, pathetic, Mr Canevin. It is a very frightful experience to have. It has utterly ruined my peace of mind. That is all there is to it, Mr Canevin – the head and neck and shoulders of a young bull, with that blood running down from its forehead, and that expression . . . ’

At once, upon hearing this salient particularization of Mrs Garde’s extraordinary optical experience, that analytical faculty of mine began forthwith to run riot. There were points of contact with previous knowledge of the spectral beliefs of the blacks and similar phenomena of our West Indies in that picture, affairs wherein I am not wholly without experience. The bull, as at once it occurred to me, is the principal sacrificial animal of the main voodoo cults, up and down the islands, where the old African gods of ‘Guinea’ prevail.

But a bull, with such an expression on its face as my hostess had briefly described, with blood running down its nose, up there on the wall space above the high mantelshelf in Gannett House – this was, truly, a puzzler! I shifted, I remember, forward in my chair, raised a hand to command Mrs Garde’s attention. I had thought of something.

‘Tell me, if you please, Mrs Garde,’ said I. ‘Is the appearance which you have described close against the wall, or – otherwise?’

‘It is well out from the wall itself,’ replied Mrs Garde, striving to express herself with precision. ‘It seems, I should say, to be several feet away from the wall proper, toward us, of course – not as though
behind
the wall, I mean – and, I omitted to say, Mr Canevin, that when I look at it for any considerable length of time, the head and shoulders seem to sag forward and downward. It is, I should say, as though the animal were just freshly hurt, were beginning to sink down to its death.’

‘Thank you,’ said I. ‘It must have been a considerable ordeal to tell me about it so clearly and exactly. However, it is very simple psychology to understand that the process has done you good. You have shared your strange experience with someone else. That, of course, is a step in the right direction. Now, Mrs Garde, will you permit me to “prescribe” for you?’

‘Most assuredly, Mr Canevin,’ returned Mrs Garde. ‘I am, frankly, in such a state over this dreadful thing, that I am prepared to do anything to secure some relief from it. I have not, of course, mentioned it to my children. I have not said a word to anybody but you. It is not the sort of thing one can discuss – with anybody and everybody.’

I bowed across the table at this implied compliment, this expression of confidence in me, after all, the most casual of Mrs Garde’s acquaintances.

‘I suggest,’ said I, ‘that the entire Garde family take an excursion down the islands, like the one from which I have just returned. The
Samaria
, of the Cunard Line, will be at St Thomas on Thursday. Today is Monday. It would be quite a simple matter to make your reservations by wireless, or even by cable to St Thomas. Go away for two or three weeks; come back when you are ready. And leave me the key of Gannett House, Mrs Garde.’

My hostess nodded. She had listened avidly to this suggestion.

‘I will do so, Mr Canevin. I think there will be no argument from Edward and Lucretia. They were, as a matter of fact, envying you your visit to Martinique.’

‘Good,’ said I encouragingly. ‘We may call that settled then. I might add that the
Grebe
is going back to St Thomas tomorrow morning. It would be an excellent idea for you to go along. I will telephone the dispatching secretary at once for the permission, and consult Dr Pelletier who is chief municipal physician there. He has a broad mind and a large experience of affairs such as this.’

Again Mrs Garde nodded acquiescently. She had reached, it was obvious, the place where she would carry out any intelligent suggestion to the end of terminating that optical horror of hers.

The Garde family left on board the little Government transport, which runs between our Virgin Islands and from them to and from Porto Rico, at eight o’clock the following morning. I saw them off at the Christiansted wharf, and the following afternoon a wireless from St Thomas apprised me that Dr Pelletier had proved very helpful, and that reservations for a three weeks’ cruise about the islands had been secured for all three of them on board the Cunarder.

I breathed easily, for the first time. I had assumed a fairly considerable responsibility in my advice. I was now, for some three weeks, lord of the manor at Gannett House. I arranged, through Mrs Garde’s butler, a white man whom she had brought with her, to give the house servants a day’s vacation for a picnic – a common form of pleasure seeking among West Indian blacks – and requested him, quoting Mrs Garde’s desire – she had given me
carte blanche
in the entire affair – to take the same day off himself, or even two days. He could, I pointed out, go over to St Thomas on the next trip of the
Grebe
and come back the following day. There would be much to see in St Thomas with its fine shops.

The butler made this arrangement without any demur, and I called on Fr Richardson, rector of the English Church. Fr Richardson, to whom I told the whole story, did no more than nod his wise West Indian head. He had spent a priestly lifetime combating the ‘stupidness’ of the blacks. He knew precisely what to do, without any further suggestions from me.

On the day when the servants were all away from Gannett House, Fr Richardson came with his black bag and exorcized the house from top to bottom, repeating his formulas and casting his holy water in room after room of the great old mansion. Then, gravely accepting the twenty-franc note which I handed him for his poor, and blessing me, the good and austere priest departed, his services just rendered being to him, I dare say, the nearest routine of a day’s work.

I breathed easier now. God, as even the inveterate voodooists of Snake-ridden Haiti admit in their holy week practises – when every altar of the Snake is stripped of its vile symbols, these laid face downward on the floors, covered with rushes, and the crucifix placed on the altars – God is infinitely more powerful than even the mighty Snake of Guinea with his attendant demigods! I believe in being on the safe side.

After this, I merely waited until Mrs Garde’s return. Every few days I ran in and spoke with Robertson the butler. Otherwise I left the healing air of the sea to do its work of restoration on Mrs Garde, confident that after her return, refreshed by the change, there would be no recurrence of her horror.

The thing was a problem, and a knotty one, from my viewpoint. I should not rest, I was fully aware, until, by hook or crook, I had satisfied myself about the background for the strange appearance which that lady had recounted to me across her tea table. In the course of the cogitations, wherein I exhausted my own fund of West Indian occult lore, I remembered old Lawyer Malling. There was a possible holder of clues! I have briefly alluded to what I might call a vague penumbra of some ancient scandal hanging about Gannett’s. If there existed any real background for this, and anybody now alive knew the facts, it would be Herr Malling. He had passed his eightieth birthday. He had been personally acquainted, in his young manhood, with Angus Gannett, the last of that family to reside here. He had had charge of the property for a lifetime.

To old Malling’s, therefore, after due cogitation as to how I should present such a matter to the conservative ancient, I betook myself.

Herr Malling received me with that Old World courtesy which makes a formal occasion out of the most commonplace visit. He produced his excellent sherry. He even used the formula –

‘To what, Mr Canevin, am I indebted for the honor of this most welcome visit?’ Only he said ‘dis’ for ‘this’, being a Danish West Indian.

After chatting of various local matters which were engaging the attention of the island at the moment, I delicately broached the subject upon which I had come.

I will attempt no full account of the fencing which led up to the main aspect of that conversation. Likewise the rather long impasse which promptly built itself up between this conservative old solicitor and myself. I could see, clearly enough, his viewpoint. This cautious questioning of mine had to do with the sacred affairs of an old client. Policy dictated silence; courteous silence; silence surrounded and softened by various politic remarks of a palliative nature; silence, nevertheless, as definite as the solitudes of Quintana Roo in the midst of the Yucatan jungles.

But there was a key word.
I had
saved it up, probably subconsciously, possibly by design; a design based on instinct. I had mentioned no particulars of Mrs Garde’s actual account; that is, I had said nothing of the nature and quality of that which had been distressing her. At last, baffled at all points by the old gentleman’s crusted conservatism, I sprung my possible bombshell. It worked!

It was that word ‘bull’ which formed the key. When I had reached that far in my account of what Mrs Garde had seen over the mantelshelf in Gannett House, and brought out that word, I thought, for an instant, that the old gentleman who had gone quite white, with blue about his ancient lips, was going to faint.

He did not faint, however. With something almost like haste he poured himself out a glass of his good sherry, drank it with an almost steady hand, set down the glass, turned to me and remarked – ‘Wait!’

I waited while the old fellow pottered out of his own hall, and listened to the
pat-pat-pat
of his carpet slippers as he went in search of something. He came back, looking quite as I had always seen him, his cheeks their usual apple red, the benign smile of a blameless old age again triumphant on his old lips. He set down an old fashioned cardboard filing case on the mahogany table beside the sherry decanter, looked over to me, nodded wisely and proceeded to open the filing case.

From this he took a thing somewhat like a large, old fashioned gentleman’s wallet, which proved to be the binding placed by old-school lawyers about particular documents, and unfolding this, and glancing at the heading of its contents, and once again nodding, this time to himself, Herr Malling handed the document, with a courteous bow, to me.

I took it, and listened to what the old gentleman was saying, while I examined it superficially. It consisted of many sheets of old-fashioned, ruled foolscap, the kind of paper I have seen used for very old plantation accounts. I held it in my hand expectantly while Herr Malling talked.

‘Mr Canevin,’ he was saying, ‘I giff you dis, my friend, because it contain de explanation of what haff puzzled you – naturally. It iss de account off precisely what hov happen in Gannett’s, de Autumn of de year 1876, when Herr Angus Gannett, de late owner, haff jus’ retorn from de United States where he haff been wisiting his relatives an’ attending de Centennial Exposition at Philadelphia.

‘I t’ink you foind, sir, dis document, dis personal account, explain all t’ings now impossible to – er – grasp! I feel free to giff it to you to – er
– peruse,
because de
writer iss
dead.
I am bound,
as
you
will
observe – er – upon perusal, solely by the tenure off life in de testator – er – de narrator, I should say. Dis iss not a will; it iss merely a statement. You will, I imagine, sir, find dis of some interest. I did!’

With a bow to Herr Malling for his great courtesy, I proceeded to read.

2

Gannett House, Christiansted, D. W. I.

October 25th, 1876