‘But how?’ He was interested in her remark. He was not very quick-witted, but it struck him suddenly that, if Robert truly liked Millicent, as it seemed he did, anything done against her by Annie might drive the young man in anger and disgust away from Rosehall, a possibility which Annie in her offended pride and jealousy had not perceived. Ashman himself had learnt a lot about Robert’s character in the last hour or so.
‘I don’t know how—yet. Perhaps you could say. But first of all we must find out where she is. She has left the estate, of course; she is out of it already. Can you find out where she is gone to?’
He did not wish to appear too eager. ‘If she has gone,’ he said, ‘why do you want to follow her? Isn’t that a good riddance of bad rubbish?’
‘And am I to rest content while that wretch spreads lies about me, and while everybody knows that she abused me to my face and was not punished? Besides—well, I have given you my reasons.’
But he finished her sentence in his mind: ‘Besides, my lover may seek her out and she may share him with me, and that I will not have at any cost.’
‘I will try to find out where she is,’ he said aloud; ‘but you have to be careful, Annie. You can do much as you like on Rosehall and on Palmyra, though even here, in these days, you have to be careful. Outside of the estates you run a great risk if you go beyond the law. The missionaries are very active now, and they force the magistrates to take action.’
‘Are you, also, suggesting that I murder people?’ she demanded harshly.
‘I suggest nothing. I am only thinking of your safety. After all, you know that I love you, Annie.’
‘And love yourself more,’ she sneered, ‘not to mention the estate wenches. But don’t be afraid. There are more ways of hanging a dog besides putting a rope round its neck. I will show you something, John; I will show you that I have other means of dealing with these people than the whip and even death—it is death to them in another form, and I cannot be hurt by the law She was wrought up to the highest possible tension; her eyes were blazing; there was an evil look in them. ‘Call up some of your people,’ she commanded, ‘on any pretext; send them outside, not too far. You’ll see.’
‘What is it? What do you intend to do?’ he demanded startled.
‘Do what I say! Don’t argue!’ she cried peremptorily; and he went outside and shouted for some people to come out. He thought, he said, that a cow had escaped from her pen and was roaming about the field near the house; that was the first excuse that came to his mind, and all the more readily, as cows were always breaking out.
Three or four men came tumbling out at the sound of his voice, and with them the Rev. Mr. Rider, the new bookkeeper. They ran towards the field indicated, though no sound came from it. Annie Palmer stood on Ashman’s veranda staring towards the field. Suddenly Ashman gave a gasp of astonishment and horror.
At the same moment a terrified shriek burst from the men who had gone to search the field for the errant cow, and they came flying back, all except Mr. Rider. They rushed up to the veranda, their teeth chattering, their eyeballs gleaming white in the faint light of the moon. ‘The Horse,’ they gasped, ‘The Three-footed Horse from Hell!’
And out yonder, glowing phosphorescently, loomed the figure of a gigantic horse, which seemed to have one leg in front and which loped slowly on, as though coming towards them, a horse like to the pale spectre described in the Apocalypse and ridden by Death, frightful to look upon, awe-inspiring, terrifying.
It stood out distinct, but made no sound. The frightened negroes shuddered abjectly and moaned. Even Ashman, who had turned pale, muttered blasphemies, as if that could protect him from whatever danger might threaten.
Then, in a flash, the apparition was gone.
Mrs. Palmer laughed softly. Leaning over the balustrade of the veranda she called out to the terrified slaves, ‘You see what you have to fear if you dare to forget yourselves? You have seen with your own eyes!’
‘Send them back to their beds, John,’ she continued, ‘they haven’t had a lesson like this since you have been here; but it was about time that they had one. They will tell others. Who is this man?’
She alluded to Rider, who was slowly coming towards them.
‘Rider, the man we employed tonight.’
‘The bookkeeper? He seems very nonchalant.’
‘He is probably drunk, or a fool. What was that thing out yonder, Annie?’
‘You heard what the niggers said—the Three-footed Horse.’
‘But I always believed that that was a foolish superstition,’ protested Ashman, trembling slightly, in spite of his efforts at self-control. ‘I never believed that mad story.’
‘You saw for yourself, didn’t you?’
‘And you—you summoned it? You knew it would be there?’
‘Yes; and now you know how I can deal with that wretched girl if only I find out where she is, if only I can bring her within my power; and, by God, I will do it!’
‘Annie,’ said John Ashman, and there was fear and revulsion in his voice, ‘they have said about here that you are a witch. I have never listened to that talk. But this, this—what does it mean? That thing that I saw out there came from hell, and you brought it!’
‘I brought it,’ she admitted, and there was mocking triumph in her tone; ‘and now you know more of me than even you did before. So be careful, John, and find that girl for me.’
‘If Rutherford still sticks to her—’ he began.
‘So much the worse for him also! ‘she flung out savagely. ‘I am stronger than he or you or anyone else here. Begin your inquiries tomorrow.’
He took her down to her horse, and she rode away, right through the spot where the strange animal had shone and then disappeared. Ashman shuddered. He would not have gone alone into that field that night for any recompense; he was too shaken in nerve. It came into his mind that Rider alone had not seemed much perturbed. And he did not really think Rider was drunk or a fool. ‘Perhaps,’ he thought, ‘it is because he is a man of God’—for again his queer respect for this dissolute priest asserted itself. He went to his sideboard and mixed himself a strong draught of rum and water.
Meantime Annie Palmer galloped home and in a very little while came to the Great House. Her servants knew her moods from the tones of her voice; hearing her call now they hastened out precipitately, nervous and apprehensive. She flung into the house and up the great stairs; arrived in her room, she threw open a front window from which she could survey the property down to the gate, and see in the distance the low small building in which Robert Rutherford lived. She half-leaned out, staring fixedly in that direction; her teeth bit into her lower lip, sobs of wild anger half choked her. She loved him. She cried aloud that she loved him, that he was the only man she had ever loved, and that he cared but little for her after all; was only taken with her as a child might be with a new toy, but was ready to desert her—she felt that in her heart. ‘But I won’t let him,’ she gasped, ‘I won’t let him! He is mine, and that wretch shall not take him from me, nor Ashman prevent me from doing what I please. Ashman! I don’t trust him; he is working for himself. Let him be careful! That woman will die in a week, and no one will ever dare to say that I had a hand in it.’
She felt deathly weak. Her vitality was enormous, but she had taxed it greatly that night. She had admitted to Ashman that it was she who had evoked that pale, vast spectre, a giant horse with but one leg in front, the Three-footed Horse of a profoundly held Jamaican belief, which had been seen on Rosehall before, and which, some said, had only been seen when one of her husbands was about to die. It had been associated with her; it was always the herald of some terrible happening; its appearance had inevitably served to strengthen her hold on her sullen, bitterly-discontented slaves. It was not only by bodily fear that she held them, by dread of the whip and the iron chain, but by far more potent spiritual terrors, by the report, the conviction, that she could summon fiends from the Pit to work her will if she were min
ded to do so. And tonight she had done so; but the effort, and the emotional stress through which she had previously passed, had exhausted her. Slowly she sank by the window, in a dead faint, and when she came to herself it was dawn.
She had been through a desperate crisis, and her waking brought her no surcease of agony and apprehension. She had never had to fear a rival before; it was she who in the past had sickened of the men she loved, or thought she loved; and when weariness and distaste supervened, when an uncontrollable aversion asserted itself, she had succeeded in ridding herself of them. Ashman had no claims as a husband, his existence could not trammel her actions: he could not venture to exercise authority: that perhaps was why he was still alive; besides, he was very useful to her in practical affairs, far more so than her husbands had been. He had to cease being her lover when she willed it so; he understood that clearly. But she wanted love, what she considered love, and this boy, some six years her junior, fresh from England, tall, manly, handsome—her senses had thrilled at the sight of him, her blood had grown hot with desire for him; she felt that she would gladly, willingly, make any sacrifice for him—and he did not love her! Attracted, yes; fascinated, undoubtedly; but nothing more. She had seen this in his attitude of a few hours before; she would be much exercised to hold him for much longer now. The girl with the brown complexion and the defiant look, that granddaughter of the negro most feared in all the parish of St. ‘James had deliberately challenged her, Annie Palmer, and might yet draw her lover from her. So again must she strike, and this time with weapons that might not succeed with a white man and by means that must not easily be detected. Through fear and horror she must rid herself of this rival. But what if those instruments failed, as they might fail? As Annie threw herself upon her bed, in the dawning, for a few hours of rest, she vowed that if the means she proposed to use should not succeed, other and more material ways should be found to achieve her object, however great the risk might be.
Chapter Twelve—WHO IS ANNIE PALMER?
THE three bookkeepers were sitting at dinner; it was about eight o’clock. A half-moon glowed in the east with the greenish tinge of the tropics. An hour or so later Mr. Rider would take up his station in the still-house; now he was making the acquaintance of young Rutherford; Burbridge he knew already.
Robert was in a silent, surly mood. He had lunched that day with Annie, as arranged, but the lunch had been a depressing function. Each party had something to say to the other, but had refrained from saying it; each felt that a barrier had sprung up between them since the night before; each was conscious of it, but wished to disguise the fact from the other.
Annie had, casually as it seemed, asked him if he were coming to the Great House that night; he had answered, no, he did not think so, and she had not pressed him to come. Indeed, she had seemed relieved at learning that that was not his intention. She had made no reference to the scene of the night before, although it would have been very natural for her to have done so. He himself did not, although he would have liked to ask one or two questions. But she was hardly the person whom he could question as to the whereabouts of Millicent.
He had gone about his work that day with a dogged determination, though he had no inclination for it. Psyche was looking after his room and his food now; he had asked her that morning to undertake that duty. Rider was to live in the small building attached to the overseer’s residence, but would take his meals with the other bookkeepers. At this moment he was trying to appraise Robert; already he had heard a good deal about him from Burbridge.
The talk on the estate that day had been of the appearance of the strange apparition so distinctly seen by many persons on the previous night. The news had spread with the rapidity of a cane-piece conflagration; there was not a slave, not a white man, on Rosehall who had not heard of it by this; on Palmyra also it was being discussed. The people could think and speak of nothing else. The slaves were frightened. The Horse with three feet, luminous, ominous, of which they had heard all their lives, and which they believed to be an infernal spirit, dominated their imaginations now that it had been seen by so many living witnesses.
‘And you yourself saw it?’ said Burbridge to Rider, not for the first time.
‘As I have said more than once before, yes. It was very distinct, very horrible; it had only three legs, and the foreleg seemed to grow out of the creature’s chest; it was just as negro tradition and superstition have described the Three-footed Horse as being.’
‘Then there is such a fiend,’ muttered Burbridge, troubled; ‘and it is seen on this estate of all others!’
‘Is there such a fiend?’ inquired Rider, with a slight smile.
‘You just said that you yourself saw it,’ Robert reminded him gloomily. ‘You should be far more convinced than we.’
‘I am merely wondering if it was a fiend,’ Rider explained. ‘That I did see something, I admit. Exactly what was its nature, I am not prepared to say. It may have been a fiend or a ghost, that is possible. But, again, it may not have been.’
‘Then what was it?’ demanded Burbridge irritably.
‘I do not profess to know; I think I have made that quite clear. But I heard today that these strange visions appear only when something dreadful is about to happen on this property. You have heard that too, haven’t you, Burbridge?’
‘Often.’
‘Then I suppose, we had better be looking forward to trouble, to dreadful occurrences?’
Burbridge glanced doubtfully at Robert. He did not want anything he said to be repeated to Mrs. Palmer.
The glance was intercepted; Robert spoke out.
‘From what I have heard,’ he said bitterly, ‘dreadful things seem a specialty in this place. No doubt all these tales are lies; they get on one’s nerves nevertheless. I am beginning to regret that I ever came to Rosehall.’
‘So soon?’ interjected Rider lightly. ‘Well, being sober and in my right mind—a dreadful state that will not last for long—I am inclined to agree that you are right. I can speak out plainly, you see, Rutherford, for my tenure of office here is not likely to be lengthy. I am very fond of resigning.’
‘You would not be here if I were doing-my work properly,’ said Robert, with a touch of self-contempt.
‘Please continue in your bad course for a little while yet,’ urged Rider. ‘I need to recuperate before I become a gentleman of insobriety and leisure again. Pardon the impertinence, Rutherford, but you have people in England, haven’t you—people in good circumstances?’
‘Yes; why do you ask?’
‘No offence intended, old man; but of course I know you are from a ‘varsity, like myself, and your sort don’t become bookkeepers—if our friend Burbridge will excuse a remark which is not intended to be rude. I am a bookkeeper now, but that is because of circumstances. “How art thou fallen, O Lucifer, son of the morning!” And I have no people in England to whom I could turn; a nephew and a couple of cousins only, and their interest in me is very properly nil. They do not specialise in the appreciation of black sheep. You are different. And since you have begun to regret coming to Rosehall you will certainly go on regretting that you ever came to Jamaica. The logical sequence is that you should leave Jamaica as soon as you can. But men, alas, are not guided by logic!’ Robert smiled, in spite of his depression; he rather liked this quaint parson who was so obviously down and out, and yet who spoke so well and seemed so intelligent.
‘You take a great interest in me, a stranger,’ he replied.
‘I do. Both sober and drunk I am one of the most curious of men. I don’t want to appear a Nosey Parker and that sort of thing, but I have heard all about last night’s little business in these rooms; it is all over the estate. And that, coming just before the appearance of that peculiar-looking ghostly animal, suggests trouble. I am not courageous! I would always avoid trouble precipitately; hence my warning to you. I don’t think you are quite ensnared by the tropics yet?’
‘What do you mean?’
‘W
ell, there are men like me who, having once got all this sunlight into their bodies, and a good deal of the fermented cane-juice into their veins, can never get rid of the fascination of the tropics. Add to those influences a pretty native girl or two, and they are completely lost. They are bound to these lands for ever. I have escaped the wiles of the feminine sex; the bottle has been too powerful a rival to them. But I am doomed to remain here; and so is Burbridge; with him it is financial disabilities mainly. You—you don’t seem to suffer from all these hindrances and drawbacks; therefore I don’t see why the devil you are here.’
‘But I am.’
‘Quite so. And last night—all right Burbridge; our friend Rutherford is not the sort that blabs; you need not signal caution—last night showed that you are in a somewhat dangerous position. But you can escape from it if you wish.’
Robert did not appreciate this direct interference with his affairs. He wondered if Rider could have any ulterior motive for speaking as he did? Had Ashman set him to it? He threw an angry, suspicious look at the ex-clergyman, who understood it in part, but smiled easily.
Rider sat facing the door. He rose quickly just then, staring towards the dusty path that led from the gate up to the Great House.
‘Our mistress seems to be going for a ride,’ he observed, indicating a figure on horseback which, followed by another, was riding towards the gates.
That it was Annie was quite evident. Another rider attending her was probably her boy.
‘This is the first time since I have been here that she has left Rosehall at night,’ said Burbridge, surprised, after the two figures on horseback had passed through the gates.
‘An unusual occurrence, eh? Then the object of her ride must be unusual also. That is a very singular and striking woman,’ said Rider.
The lady and her attendant had now turned their horses’ heads in the direction of Montego Bay. They rode at an easy pace; later on, the road being bad, they would have to go at a walk; they would not reach Montego Bay before eleven o’clock, if that place were their destination.
The White Witch of Rosehall Page 11