The White Witch of Rosehall

by Herbert G. De Lisser

  This woman, whose title in northern Haiti was that of baroness, gradually won an ascendancy over Annie. In her way she loved the white girl, though, on principle, she hated the white race, whom she regarded as the natural oppressors of her people. Annie’s mind dwelt on her now, even as she scanned the road and the landmarks to right and left. She remembered how the Baroness—she had taken the title seriously when she lived in Haiti—had talked to her about the spirits that wandered about the earth and the air, the spirits who inhabited and animated everything, and how human beings, by determination and practice, and especially by belief and faith, could acquire power over these spirits. The girl had been fascinated. In an atmosphere charged, so to speak, with the supernatural, where white as well as black believed in the occult, in the mysterious, in the traffic of earthly beings with those who were disembodied or of unearthly origin; in a strange, dark land where, among the mountains, in the dead of night, and in spite of the king’s decrees, the eerie sound of the voodoo drum could be heard stabbing through the silence and the darkness, it was not surprising that Annie should believe what she was told, especially as the Baroness showed her how the common people worshipped those who called them to the midnight orgies or blasted the disobedient into insanity or death.

  Then the Baroness told her that she too had the capacity to do wonderful things, and taught her the secrets of the Voodoo. And Annie came to believe that she possessed the power of a god.

  What would have happened to her eventually had she remained in Haiti she could never know. An epidemic of yellow fever had swept both her parents away within a few days. A month after, the old Baroness was also dead. A few white men in Cape Haitian saw that Haiti could be no place for a young unmarried white woman to live in; they suggested Jamaica to her. She had some means, and she was tired of dull and barbarous Cape Haitian. She came to Jamaica, met John Palmer shortly after, but soon found her new home more tedious and dull than ever the old one had been. Had the Baroness been living Annie might have returned to Haiti. The old woman had hinted to her that there was no height to which, in that country, she might not aspire, no power she might not attain. What would have been to others a fatal disability, her blood, her whiteness, would have aided her, with the papalois and mamalois, the priests and priestesses of Haiti, on her side; and with her superior intellect, her strength of will, her fearlessness, her beauty, she would have dominated them. But the Baroness was dead, the sturdy, coal-black female fanatic, and sometimes (it must be added) female fiend, was gone forever. So Haiti was out of the question, and Annie had no desire to go to England, where her mother was born, or to Ireland, from whence her father came.

  She always felt that in England she would count for but little; there would be no supremacy for her there. In Jamaica there was. Here she could live, almost unfettered, the life she loved, a life of domination and of sensuality. Here she could put to the proof the powers she possessed and of which she was inordinately proud. Tonight she was again about to put them to the proof. These people were quite as fearful, as superstitious, as those of the country of her girlhood. And one of them had dared to defy her. A few days would show everyone who knew of that defiance how temerarious and hopeless it was for any woman to pit herself against Annie Palmer of Rosehall.

  She had walked her horse slowly forward while giving free rein to her reminiscences and her thoughts; now, about a quarter of a mile away from the spot where she had halted, she checked her horse again. She was satisfied that she had arrived at her destination. She dismounted and flung her reins to the boy. From him she took a parcel that he had been carrying carefully; then she bade him wait for her and went on her way alone on foot. She had not far to go. Soon she came to a path that led into some small property, a path for which she had looked closely as she walked along.

  This narrow way, which ran between rows of heavy-foliaged trees, was as black as a tunnel cut through the bowels of a mountain. Here no friendly fireflies danced with cheerful illumination, here no gleam from the moon could penetrate. All was sombre and still, with a chilling silence. But Annie did not hesitate.

  She went slowly, carefully; in that dense darkness sight was of little assistance to her; she had almost to feel her way. But she had learnt the whereabouts of this place meticulously; her information had been precise. She did not think she had failed to find it.

  There might be dogs, but she was prepared for them. Not only was she armed with a heavy riding whip, but in the parcel which she carried were bits of meat. No poorly fed mongrel of the countryside would resist such a feast; besides, a peasant’s dog would hardly bark at a white man or woman. Nothing disturbed her progress, however; nothing broke the silence of the night. She seemed the only living creature moving about at that moment.

  Soon she sensed rather than saw a low three-roomed cottage standing to one side of a little clearing. That was what she sought.

  She stole up to the very door of the little house and paused. There was still no sound, no stir, though she knew that behind that door human beings were sleeping.

  From the parcel in her hand she now drew forth a queer round object; it was a child’s skull smeared with blood. To it was attached, by a piece of wire, a bit of white cardboard. She herself was completely merged in the environing darkness, but her movements were as noiseless as those of a cat. She ran her hands over the lintels of the door and window; her fingers came in contact with a nail; it was something of the sort she had been feeling for. The first part of her task, she knew, would now be easy.

  By the same bit of wire with which the little oblong cardboard was attached to the skull, she hung the gruesome object on to the nail: it would be the first thing to strike the eye of anyone emerging from the house in the morning, or approaching it. Then she did a strange thing. Concentrating her gaze upon the door, as though she would pierce with her vision through the solid wood, she stood there tense and erect. Her hands were clenched, her eyes fixed and glaring, as they had been on the night before when that weird, awful, glowing creature had appeared before the horror-struck regard of Ashman and the others at Rosehall. Her rigidity was that of a cataleptic.

  One minute, two, three minutes passed, and Annie did not stir.

  Of a sudden there came a cry from within the little dwelling, a cry of agony and terror and despair.

  Again and again it rose; someone was crying out in mortal fear, in heart-stricken panic.

  Annie Palmer heard, and slowly relaxed. She reeled slightly. But a smile of triumph wreathed her lips as she caught the sounds and exclamations of confusion that now broke out in the house; sharp calls and questions succeeding to those terrifying screams that had issued from the lips of a frightened, startled woman within. She stepped back silently, but more quickly than she had entered; she made her way back, sometimes stumbling, sometimes almost running, to where her patient slave stood with the horse; she mounted, struck her steed a sharp blow and went as quickly as she dared along the road, over the bridge, through the town and back to Rosehall It was in the early hours of the morning that she reached the Great House, and there she repeated her previous instructions to the boy.

  ‘Remember, you are not to say a word about where we went last night; I went for a ride and you accompanied me. Do you hear?’

  ‘Yes, missis,’ he agreed abjectly.

  ‘If you disobey—well, you know what to expect!’

  He knew. As a matter of fact he had seen nothing that she had done. But that she had been to the place where old Takoo’s daughter lived he was well aware, and when a few minutes later an elderly slave woman, who acted as a kind of housekeeper for Mrs. Palmer, seized hold of his arm as he was going to bed and asked him whisperingly about his nocturnal mission he told her what he knew. For he was afraid of this woman, who was hand in glove with Takoo, with Takoo who was dreaded by every man and woman on Palmyra and Rosehall. As dreaded as Mrs. Palmer, and even more in a peculiar sort of way. For the slaves believed that Takoo could read their minds; he was African, a witc
h-doctor, and it was madness to try to deceive him. They had often deceived Mrs. Palmer, and though she was dangerous she was less so, to them, than the gaunt negro of whom even some white men stood in awe.

  Mrs. Palmer might whip them cruelly. Takoo could send ghosts to haunt them, could plague them with remorseless evil spirits. Let them gravely offend him and they might end their lives in agony and pass to greater agony in another world.

  Chapter Fourteen—THE OLD HIGE

  ‘YOU want to go to Montego Bay?’ asked Ashman slowly. ‘It is unusual for bookkeepers to get off during the day in crop time, but I suppose you can do what you please.’

  Robert frowned slightly; he did not like the suggestion that he was a sort of privileged pet.

  ‘Thanks,’ he answered shortly.

  It was about one o’clock. Burbridge had been as good as his word; very early that morning he had dispatched a boy to where Takoo’s daughter lived, beyond Montego Bay, and the youth had learnt that Millicent was staying with her aunt. That had been easy enough to find out, for there were many people at the little place to which he had gone with some made-up story to disguise the real purpose of his visit, a story which he found he was not called upon to tell. Something had happened there the night before and the news of it had been bruited about. There were many free negroes in the neighbourhood; these had left all that they had to do and had assembled in Takoo’s yard to offer sympathy. Just what had occurred the boy had not been told.

  Of all this Burbridge said nothing to Robert. The young man would find it out for himself, if it concerned him, Burbridge thought.

  Robert lost no time in availing himself of Ashman’s permission to have the rest of the day. Ashman himself guessed that it was something connected with Millicent that was taking young Rutherford to the Bay; Ashman knew about the leaving of Rosehall by Annie Palmer the night before, knew how late it was when she returned, and had no doubt at all as to where she had been. It was he indeed who, at her command (which fitted in so well with his own desire), had found out whither old Takoo had taken his granddaughter. That some crisis was impending, if it had not yet actually arrived, he was certain. And he thought that it must result, and that quickly, in Robert Rutherford’s leaving Rosehall Estate.

  Robert himself knew that he was going to find Millicent, to warn her. About what and against whom? He faced the question quite frankly; he realised and admitted that he was taking this girl’s part against Annie, realised also that that was what few white men in Jamaica would openly have done. Secretly, yes, many would have done it. But he was not hiding his action, could not in the circumstances do so, as a matter of fact. If the truth must be told, he shrank from the course he was taking, shrank with every nerve of his body, though his determination held. He told himself that there was nothing else to do. He was convinced that in some sort of way he would be responsible if anything happened to Millicent; he felt he was performing an act of duty; anything like passion, like affection, he did not conceive to be a motive at all. Burbridge took a different view. Burbridge’s own opinion, mentioned to no living human being, was that Millicent had won Robert from Annie Palmer, that Annie had realised it, and that these two women, different in colour, in position, in power, in almost everything save a bold and defiant disposition, were embarked on a deadly struggle. Events were moving swiftly to a climax. In a way Burbridge pitied Millicent.

  Presently Robert rode out of Rosehall.

  At this hour, although it was late December, the sun’s rays were sharp, but the heat was tempered and made easily endurable by the wind which blew in freely from the wide, open sea, a sea that glittered and flashed deep blue and green and purple; whose waves, now agitated by the wind, curled and hurled themselves against rock-bound beach or heavy sand, breaking in a welter of fretted white, hissing as the flashing water retreated, to return again and again in its ceaseless intermittent rush and flow.

  To Robert’s left lay the cultivated fields of cane, a wide expanse of light glittering green backed by the low mountains that rose a little farther beyond. There were people on the road; slaves clad in grey or blue osnaburg, drivers conveying wagon-loads of newly made sugar and of rum to points of embarkation, to the little coves and piers from which estate produce was shipped into the sailing boats (the droghers) that would take it on to Kingston or the Bay. The wagons were drawn by long teams of oxen, at whose side walked men armed with great whips, who kept up a continuous shouting which seemed to be understood by the plodding, patient beasts. Robert rode by these, not perceiving that some of them eyed him surlily, never observing that there was in their demeanour a touch of insolent defiance and that but few of them gave him respectful salutation.

  Had he been less absorbed in his own thoughts he could hardly have failed to notice this behaviour. Other white men had remarked it for some time now. He himself had heard Burbridge speak of the change which had come over the slaves in the parish, a change which was attributed to the influence of the missionaries, to a rumour that the people had already been granted freedom but that their new rights were being withheld from them. But he had paid little attention to all this; he had been far too much occupied otherwise. And today, of all days, it would have taken some extraordinary action on the part of all these shouting drivers and trudging men to draw his attention specially to their attitude towards him.

  He neared the town, came up to the little fort with the cannon pointing towards its seaward approach, saw the red-coated soldiers about the place, and hurried on. He rode into Montego Bay, through its narrow, dusty streets; it was busy enough at this season, for the Christmas holidays were at hand and trade was brisk. Slaves moved about on their masters’ business; by the street corners squatted women, scantily, almost indecently, clad, with bowls and trays heaped with fruit or with sticky cakes made of sugar in front of them. Free negroes went about their pursuits dressed, some of them, in the cast-off clothing once worn by the white people; in this attire figured broad-rimmed tophats and heavy broadcloth overcoats.

  It was warm in the town. The buildings were small and dingy. A few vehicles drawn by horses were about, but the men of substance who had come into the town on business were on horseback: owners, overseers and attorneys, and these were not many.

  Robert knew the scene well, had observed it often during his week’s stay in Montego Bay. It appeared to him more sordid now than ever before. Once it had possessed the interest of novelty; Jamaica was then new to him, a land of promise, of glorious sunshine, laughing people and beckoning adventure. He had now begun to see that below the surface there was much about this life that was drab, unutterably coarse, grimly sinister. He feared, without quite knowing why, that he would shortly come into intimate contact with some of the tragedy that lay implicit in this half-somnolent, sun-suffused tropical life.

  A few persons in the town recognised and saluted him, invited him to stay and have a rum punch with them, for hospitality was ever the order of the day in the Bay. He thanked them and declined, not pausing; his goal was elsewhere and he wished to hasten to it, though not so quickly as to cause comment in a little place where curiosity could be so easily awakened. He pushed onwards, left the town, crossed the bridge that Annie Palmer had passed over the night before; after a while he halted and inquired from some people in the road where the old man Takoo’s daughter lived. The name, Burbridge had told him, would be well known about here. He found that it was.

  Those to whom he spoke eyed him curiously, wondering what a young white man could have to do with Takoo and his people. But they directed him willingly enough; he was to look, about half a mile farther on, for a path on his left hand that led inward to ‘a property’; he could not miss it; but did not massa want someone to take him there? That seemed a good suggestion; he agreed to hire a guide. But when he came to the place that he was seeking he paid and dismissed his guide. He wanted no garrulous witnesses to spy upon and talk about him.

  In a few seconds he was before the house.

  At once it st
ruck him that something unusual was afoot. The space in front of the little dwelling was crowded with people, all of whom looked at him in surprise and with keen, questioning, inquisitive glances. At the threshold of one door of the house a thick smoke was slowly ascending from a pan filled with what looked like herbs and bits of refuse. The stench given off was overpowering and bitter; it was like incense burnt in honour or propitiation of evil powers. Standing over it was the old man who had rescued Millicent from Annie Palmer two nights before. His face was set and brooding. Upon it was stamped terror and a mighty, smouldering anger.

  Robert felt embarrassed. He had not expected so many witnesses of his advent. And now that he was there he did not quite know what to say. How to explain why he had come? How to ask for the girl in the presence of all these people?

  Takoo saw him, looked at him intently, and seemed to guess why he was there. He waved his arm, and the little crowd drew back. He came up to where Robert sat on his horse; ‘You heard already, Squire?’ he asked.

  ‘No; I have heard nothing; what is it? ‘demanded Robert.

  ‘Come inside,’ said Takoo laconically.

  Robert leaped off his horse and followed the old man. In the room into which he was led, crouched in a chair by the side of a bed, was Millicent. Her head was hidden between her hands, a sound of moaning came from her lips, her body swayed to and fro, the movement of one in mental or physical anguish.

  Her grandfather touched her on the shoulder. ‘Look up,’ he commanded.

  She obeyed mechanically. She saw the young man’s face bending down with a look of consternation, of questioning, of horror, upon it. Her own face was of the colour of ashes, and drawn; she seemed bloodless, and a fear that almost amounted to madness glared out of her eyes.

  She uttered a cry and threw out her arms, clinging to Robert’s knees. ‘Oh, Squire, Squire,’ she cried, ‘help me, save me, for God’s sake save me! Do what you can for me. I am dying.’