Voodoo Tales: The Ghost Stories of Henry S Whitehead (Tales of Mystery & The Supernatural) (72 page)

Cornelis’ mouth went dry. He managed to nod at the girl, who reached for his sun helmet and hung it on the hallway hatrack.

‘Mistress say de brekfuss prepare’ in few moments, sar,’ announced the girl.

Honoria, in his absence, it appeared, had engaged this girl as a house servant. There was no other explanation of her presence in the house. She had been carefully dressed, rustling with starch, the very picture of demureness. Cornelis strode upstairs to wash before late breakfast, which came at eleven.

His equanimity was sufficiently restored after breakfast to inquire of Honoria about the new housemaid. The girl had been engaged that morning, taking the place of one Anastasia Holmquist, a Black girl, who had sent a message, by this girl, Julietta Aagaard, that she was leaving the service of Fru Hansen, and had obtained Julietta to take her place.

‘She seems a very quiet, good girl,’ added Honoria, ‘and she knows her duties.’

‘She is not of our village, eh?’ inquired Cornelis, tentatively.

‘No. She says she lives with her mother, somewhere up in the hills,’ Honoria indicated with a gesture the section of the island behind Fairfield.

Cornelis found his mind relieved. The girl was not of his village. Only one thing remained to be explained. He understood now why he had not observed the girl about the estate. But what had she been doing ‘bathing in the sea’ at night? Such a practise was unheard of among the Negroes. Few, indeed, would venture abroad or even out of their houses, unless necessity compelled, after dark. The houses themselves were closed up tightly, at nightfall, the doors of the cabins marked with crosses to keep out jumbee – ghosts; their corrugated-iron roofs strewed with handfuls of sea-sand, the counting of which delayed the werewolf marauding nightly. A vast superstition ruled the lives of the Santa Crucian Negroes with chains of iron. They believed in necromancy, witchcraft; they practised the obeah for sickness among themselves, took their vengeances with the aid of the Vauxdoux; practises brought in through Cartagena and Jamaica; from Dakar to the Congo mouths in the slave days; Obayi from Ashantee; Vauxdoux, worship of the Snake with its attendant horrors, through the savage Dahomeyans who had slaved for King Christophe in the sugar fields of Black Haiti.

To go from up in the hills to the sea, at night, for a bath – it was simply unheard of. Yet, the girl, seeing him there on the gallery, had been plainly startled. She had come from the sea. Her lithe body, the towel about her head, had been sea-damp that night. It was unheard of, unless – Cornelis had learned something in the six months of his residence on Santa Cruz.

‘Who is Julietta’s mother?’ he inquired suddenly.

Honoria did not know anything about Julietta’s mother. This was the West End of Santa Cruz, and Honoria had lived all her life near Christiansted.

But, three days later, from a brow-beaten Alonzo, Cornelis learned the truth. The deference with which the young Julietta had been treated by the other servants, the Black People of his village, had been marked.
Reluctantly
Alonzo
told
his master the truth. Julietta’s mother was the
mamaloi
, the witch-woman, of this portion of the island.

Beyond satisfying his curiosity, this news meant little to Cornelis. He was too much a product of civilization, too much Caucasian, for the possible inferences to have their full effect upon him. It was not until some days later, when he surprised the look of sullen hatred in Julietta’s swiftly drooped
eyes,
that it recurred to him;
that the thought crossed his mind that Julietta had come into service in Fairfield House to retaliate upon him for her rejection. Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned! There was no Danish equivalent to the English proverb, or if there was, it lay outside Cornelis’ knowledge. Yet, although a European Dane – despite the fact that his residence on Santa Cruz had not been long enough for him to realize what such deadly dislike as he had surprised in Julietta’s glance might mean – Cornelis, no imbecile, did realize at the least a certain sense of discomfort.

Honoria, born on the island, could have helped the situation. But – there was no developed ‘situation’. Cornelis wished this girl at the bottom of the sea; transplanted to another and distant island of the archipelago, but beyond that there was no more than the sense of discomfort at the girl’s quiet, efficient presence about her duties in his house. He could not, of course, explain to his young wife his reason for wishing lithe Julietta away.

But the sense of discomfort, somehow, persisted strangely. He could not see Julietta, demure, neat, submissive to her young mistress, without being unpleasantly reminded of what he came to think of as his folly.

Then, without rime or reason, the sense of discomfort localized itself. Cornelis, annoyed during the night by a vague itching on his upper arms, discovered in the early-morning light a slight rash. Prickly heat, he told himself, and anointed his burning arms with salve. Useless. The rash persisted, annoyed him all through his morning field-inspection.

That late-morning, in his shower bath after his ride among the cane-fields, he noticed that the rash was spreading. It ran now below his elbows, was coming out about his neck. It burned detestably. He was obliged to towel himself very softly on the arms and neck that morning before he dressed for breakfast in his spotless white drill.

Julietta, waiting on table, did not look at him; went about her duties like a cleverly made automaton, her look distant, introspective.

Honoria reported an annoyance. One of Cornelis’ shirts had disappeared. They discussed it briefly over breakfast.

‘But – it must turn up.’ Cornelis dismissed the topic, spoke of his plowing of the field abutting on Högensborg.

That night he was nearly frantic with his itching. Pustules, small, hard, reddish knobs that burned like fire, covered his arms and neck, were spreading across the firm pectoral muscles of his chest, down his sides.

Honoria offered sympathy, and some salve for prickly heat she had brought from her father’s house. Together they anointed Cornelis’ burning skin.

‘You must drive in to Frederiksted and see Dr Schaff in the morning,’ commanded Honoria. She dusted her husband’s body with her own lady-like rice-powder.

The dawn after a sleepless night discovered Cornelis’ torso a mass of the small, red, hard pustules. He was in agony. Honoria it was who drove in the five miles to Frederiksted, fetched Dr Schaff from his duties at his municipal hospital, leaving his assistant, Dr Malling-Holm, in charge of the cases there assembled. Cornelis, Old Strach’s nephew, must not be kept waiting. Besides, Honoria had been insistent. She had seen something of the suffering of her man.

Schaff had been on the island five years; had earned his promotion there to be Chief Municipal Physician. He knew much about tropical mischances in his field of medicine. He looked with interest at the pustules. Cold-bloodedly he punctured several. He wanted an analysis. He left a new kind of salve, drove back to the hospital with his specimens.

He drove back late in the afternoon, when the hospital day’s rush was over. He found Cornelis writhing in bed, his body tortured with the solid spread of the infection. Curiously, his hands and face were free of the now solidly massed red pustules. They stopped at his wrists, and again at his neck. Below the waist, at the sides, his body was free of the infection, which extended, however, down the front and back of his thighs.

‘It iss verree curious, this!’ commented the doctor, speaking English on Honoria’s account. ‘It iss as though he had worn an infected shirt.’

Cornelis, through his three degrees of fever, spoke to Honoria.

‘Have you discovered my shirt? You said there was a shirt gone.’

‘Ha – so-o-o!’ muttered the doctor. ‘And where?’

‘I cannot say,’ said Honoria, her lips suddenly dry. She and the doctor looked at each other.

‘A servant, perhaps?’

‘It must be.’ Honoria nodded. ‘No one else – ’

Honoria disappeared while the doctor anointed Cornelis, writhing, afresh; soothed him with a long, bitter draft.

Below, Honoria had resolutely summoned all the servants. They stood before her, expressionless.

‘The master’s shirt is to be returned this night,’ commanded Honoria imperiously. ‘I shall expect to find it – on the south gallery by nine o’clock. Otherwise’ – she looked about her at each expressionless face – ‘otherwise – the fort. There will be a dark room for every one of you – no food, no sleep, until it is confessed. I will have none of this in my house. That is all.’

She came upstairs again, helped the doctor assiduously. At the door when he took his departure, she whispered: ‘I have ordered them to return the shirt by nine tonight.’

The doctor looked at her meaningly, an eyebrow lifted. ‘So! You understand, then, eh? It is bad, bad, this Black “stupidness”. Burn the shirt.’

‘Yes – of course,’ said Honoria.

At nine she descended the stairs, went out upon the south gallery among the scents of the white-flowering jessamine; the sweet grass. All was silent. The servants had left the house, as usual, about an hour before.

The shirt hung over the stone gallery-coping. She ran down the steps, found a stick, lifted the crumpled shirt on its end, carefully, carried it into the house. It bore no marks, save the crumpling. It had been soiled before its disappearance.

She carried it into the kitchen, carefully lowered the corner of the thin garment until it caught fire from the embers of a charcoal-pot. The thin linen flamed up, and with her stick she manipulated it until every particle of it was consumed, and then stirred the embers. A few sparks came out. The shirt was completely burned.

Her face drawn, she returned to the bedroom above. Cornelis was asleep. She sat beside his bed for two hours; then, after a long look at his flushed face, she departed silently for her own room.

In the morning the fever was broken. Many of the smaller pustules had disappeared. The remaining rash was going down. Cornelis, at her beseeching, remained in bed. At noon he arose. He felt perfectly well, he said.

‘All that vexation about a little prickly heat!’ Honoria sighed. She had four brothers. Men! They were much alike. How often had she heard her mother, and other mature women, say that!

That night Cornelis’ skin was entirely restored. It was as though there had been no interval of burning agony. Cornelis, apparently, had forgotten that painful interval. But the reaction had made him especially cheerful at dinner-time. He laughed and joked rather more than usual. He did not even notice Julietta as she waited, silently, on the table.

Two nights later, at the dinner-table, Cornelis collapsed forward in the middle of a phrase. He went deathly white, his lips suddenly dry, a searing pain like the thrust of a carving-knife through and through his chest. Sudden froth stood at the corners of his mouth. The table-edge athwart him alone kept him from falling prone. He hung there, in intolerable agony, for seconds. Then, slowly, as it had ‘gone in’, the white-hot ‘knife’ was withdrawn. He drew in a labored breath, and Honoria supported him upright. She had flown to him around the table.

As she stood upright propping him back into his chair, she saw Julietta. The brown girl’s lips were drawn back from her even, beautiful teeth, her wide mouth in an animal-like snarl, her amber eyes boring into Cornelis’ face, a very Greek-mask of hatred. An instant afterward, Julietta’s face was that of the blank, submissive housemaid. But Honoria had seen.

At a bound her hands were clenched tight about the girl’s slender arms and Julietta was being shaken like a willow wand, in a great, gale. Her tray, with glasses, shot resoundingly to the stone floor, to a tinkle of smashed glass. The Fighting Macartney blood showed red in Honoria’s pallid face.

‘It’s you, then, you deadly creature, is it, eh? You who have done this devilish thing to your master! You – in my house! It was you, then, who made the rash, with your double-damned “magic”!’

In the primitive urge of her fury at one who had struck at her man, Honoria had the slim brown girl against the room’s wall now, holding her helpless in a grasp like steel with her own slender arms.

Cornelis, faint after that surge of unbearable, deadly pain, struggled to speak, there in his chair. Well-nigh helpless, he looked on at this unaccountable struggle. At last he found his voice, a voice faint and weak.

‘What is it? – What is it, Honoria, my dear?’

‘It’s this witch!’ cried Honoria, through clenched teeth. ‘It is she who has put the
obeah
on you.’ Then, ‘You she-devil, you will “take it off” or I’ll kill you here and now. Take it off, then! Take it off!’

Honoria’s voice had risen to a menacing scream. The girl cowered, wiltingly, under her fierce attack.

‘Ooh Gahd – me mistress! Ooh, Gahd! ’Taint I, ma’am, I swear to Gahd – I ain’t do it, ma’am. Ooh, Gahd – me boans! Yo’ break me, mistress. Fo’ Gahd-love leave me to go!’

But Honoria, unrelaxed, the fighting-blood of her clan aroused, held the brown girl relentlessly.

‘Take it off!’ came, ever and again, through her small, clenched teeth. The brown girl began to struggle, ineffectually, gave it up, submitted to be held against the wall, her eyes now wide, frightened at this unexpected, sudden violence.