‘Your woman does!’
‘That is an admission that she has reason to fear you.’
‘It is an admission of nothing! You have come here to quarrel with me on her account; putting her against me! Do you understand that that is an insult?’
‘Then you refuse to help her?’
She studied his face for some moments, and again her attitude changed. Again she became soft and clinging.
‘Robert, if you want me to help her, of course I shall; but you have misunderstood me much. How have I been able to injure her? It is her own guilty mind, and her own beliefs, that have afflicted her. I left Rosehall two nights ago, yes, but it is only an assumption that I went to Takoo’s place. There was someone with me, a boy from this estate. Let me call him and you can ask him where I went; he was with me all the time. Can I not leave Rosehall without people thinking, and you above all, that it is to commit a crime? Good God! have you no faith in me whatever, Robert?’
He made no suggestion that the lad should be summoned; she knew he would not. That would have shown brutally that he disbelieved her. Not that she was afraid of any interrogation, for the boy had been carefully trained as to what he was to say and would not have dared to add a word of his own.
‘I hate the woman,’ she continued, ‘but is not that natural? Remember, she was with you when I came to your house; she had been in your arms. And you, just the night before that, had been in mine. What woman could easily tolerate that, if she really loved you? That girl was trying to take you away from me; you know that. And she defied and cursed and abused me before your face—she. Then fear came upon her; she believes I am a witch. I have told you before that we have to rule these people by fear, and I, a woman, must encourage their foolish ideas if I am to hold my own amongst them. Don’t you ever think of my position here, in spite of all that I have said to you? And now you come to tell me of my strange powers, and to ask me to help her! I answer that I will try for your sake, but how am I to know that I shall succeed? I cannot control her mind; I know nothing about what diseases she may be suffering from; I only know that she has tried to injure me. But because you ask it I will do my best for her. How shall I do it: send her a message, bid them to bring her to see me—for you would hardly expect me to go to her, would you?’
He saw the difficulty. ‘I can make no suggestion,’ he said. ‘I must leave it to you to find a way.’
‘Very well. I will send to Takoo and ask him to come to me; I promise you that I will try my best. I can do no more. Are you satisfied?’
He was grateful. She had spoken with a great show of sincerity; there was an appeal to him in her voice, in her look. ‘When will you do this, Annie?’ he inquired.
‘Tomorrow. You may depend upon it that there will be no unnecessary delay. And if I succeed—what happens to me, Robert; what are you going to do with this girl?’
‘Nothing.’ He was emphatic. ‘I don’t think she will want to remain in this neighbourhood.’
‘And you—are you going to remain with me at Rosehall?’
She perceived his hesitation, knew that he wished to speak the truth, did not believe that he spoke the truth when he answered, heavily, ‘Of course.’ She felt, as she had done before, that he was slipping away from her; though she still fascinated him when he was in her presence and she appealed to his chivalry and his desire. She realised that the one man she had ever loved was being wrenched from her by circumstances stronger than herself.
‘You don’t want to,’ she said bitterly.
He tried to deny this, did deny it, and she let him go on with his protestations for a while.
Then she rose and came and stood before him, lifted his head towards her with her hands and bent her face towards his. ‘I have promised to do what I can for this girl,’ she said; ‘are you not satisfied? You are all the world to me; would you leave me now?’
‘I will remain, Annie,’ he replied, helpless. For the life of him he could say nothing else.
‘Stay up here with me tonight, and go on staying,’ she pleaded; ‘whatever happens, let us love one another. You can do what you like with me, Robert, and you are the only man of whom that has ever been true.’
‘I will stay at Rosehall, but not with you tonight,’ he urged. ‘I am weary and worried; I have been living the devil of a life since I have been here. It seems as though I had been at it for months, not merely weeks.’
‘Sweetheart, stay! I want you, I want you ever so much! Don’t leave me in my loneliness tonight, for I am very unhappy. Tell me that you will stay!’
She was on his knees and pressing close to him, her arms about his neck, her face against his, and the pleading note in her voice. All her great power of allurement seemed alive and intent upon his surrender. He spoke no word in reply. But she knew that again she had won her way with him.
Chapter Sixteen—ANNIE’S PROMISE
AT about nine o’clock the next morning Robert was at his work in the cane-fields. His face was drawn, his brow dark with anger and self-loathing. He had weakly yielded to the blandishments of Annie after having made up his mind to break away from her, and he hated himself in consequence. Yet he kept saying to himself that only by doing what she wished at present could he help the unfortunate young woman who believed herself to be on the point of death. He remembered that Rider had said, on the night before, that for any assistance for Millicent for which he might ask Annie Palmer he would have to pay a price.
The price would have seemed nothing a week before; indeed it would have been a privilege. But now he knew too much. Annie startled even while attracting him. He wished to get away from her; today he was thinking of England with an almost overpowering nostalgia. He had had enough of Jamaica. Yet, only a few hours before, he had promised this woman to remain with her, and now he felt that he must break that promise, come what might. It is true that on her side she had pledged herself to help Millicent, and so rid him of his feeling of self-reproach. And if she kept her word would he not be morally obliged to keep his?
He was afraid of her: he admitted that to himself quite frankly. He was as courageous as most other men who were accounted brave. But all these dark powers of the mind, which Rider was convinced were possessed by Mrs. Palmer, and all these darker uses that she made of them, seemed to him to be not dangerous only but loathly. There was something unclean about them, and consequently about her. She was still young, she had had three husbands, and all of them had died violent deaths. Love could turn to hatred. Her vanity, wounded through any rejection of her by him, a rejection in the spirit if not in actual fact, would arouse the worst devils in her heart. She would know what he felt; he sensed that she had followed pretty closely the various changes of his mind the night before. She would feel scorned, spurned, and then might come to her the irresistible temptation to show him that he could not treat her lightly and escape. Yes; he admitted that he was afraid of her, as seemed most or all of those who had come into close contact with her. That perhaps accounted for her escape up to now from the consequences of her acts; that and the unsettled condition of the country and the difficulty there must be in collecting trustworthy evidence against her, who was as wily as she was bold.
He noticed that Ashman openly scowled at him this morning. Ashman knew where he had been last night, and raged at the failure of his hopes and plans to alienate him from Annie Palmer. Millicent had gone, and Ashman had heard, for he had sought the, information, of Millicent’s plight; he concluded that Millicent would shortly disappear from the scene and that Robert would reign at Rosehall; last night, he argued, there must have been a complete reconciliation between Rutherford and Annie Palmer. Burbridge also, Robert observed, had spoken to him nervously this morning; Burbridge, who had been so very outspoken on the previous night. It was not that Burbridge actually believed that his words would be reported to Mrs. Palmer, though, in the jealousy that sometimes raged among the minor employees of an estate, anyone was quite capable of mean treachery towards another. Bu
t Burbridge knew that a woman might eventually wheedle out of a man the very secrets of his mind. He cursed himself for having been so brutally frank, for having at last denounced so openly a woman whom he detested and feared.
But Rider’s demeanour had not been at all different. Perhaps Rider knew that Robert had done his best; perhaps Rider had guessed what would happen. Anyhow, there had been no restraint about him when he had greeted Robert an hour or so before.
And now it was Rider who came up to him, cantering smartly on his horse. ‘Ashman has sent me to summon you, Rutherford,’ he said quietly, when he drew up at the young man’s side. ‘An important message has come from Montego Bay, and all the white men on the estate are wanted up at the Great House. Burbridge already knows. Let’s ride along together. These fellows’—he indicated the field labourers—‘may go on working for a few minutes without our eye on them.’
They rode off, Rider making no allusion to anything that had previously passed between them, and Robert, though wishing to do so, not knowing exactly how to open the subject that was uppermost in his mind.
In the dining-room of the Great House, where they were told that Mrs. Palmer was awaiting them, they found Ashman, Burbridge, the chief mechanic and the chief carpenter, both young Scotsmen who usually kept to themselves and who, though their status did not seem to imply it, were much better paid than the bookkeepers. There was a stranger there also, a man of middle age, who had come in about fifteen minutes before.
Mrs. Palmer opened the conversation. Rider keeping himself in the background, watched her closely. He could not but admire her coolness, her matter-of-fact attitude. Everybody there knew, with the exception of the stranger, that she had made one of her bookkeepers her lover, but that did not in the least embarrass her. What they knew and what they felt was a matter to which she seemed to give no attention at all.
‘I have got a message from the magistrates in Montego Bay,’ she began, in her clear, carrying voice, ‘that the slaves of this parish have made up their minds not to work after New Year’s Day. They believe that their freedom has been granted to them from that day, and it is feared that there may be trouble.’
‘Yes,’ broke in the stranger, who was a planting attorney and connected with the local militia, ‘and the slaves have already heard that Sunday next is to be counted by us as one of the three days’ holiday they are allowed at Christmas time. We have heard that they will refuse to accept that decision.’
‘Refuse!’ Mrs. Palmer laughed a little scornfully.
‘I think they mean it,’ said the man,’ but of course we must not give in to them. These infernal ministers and missionaries are the curse of Jamaica. They are giving us any amount of trouble and may cause bloodshed. But there you are. We have got to face this insubordination and put an end to it. We can only do it if we stand together.’
‘Sunday is Christmas,’ said Ashman; ‘and today is Friday. I don’t see why we should give these people from Sunday to Wednesday night to go idle and get drunk; I have already made mine to understand that they will have to be at work on Wednesday morning. That’s fixed, and they know better than to grumble about it to my face. I have known for some time that there have been palavers and plottings all around; I have surprised one on Palmyra myself. But there won’t be much trouble here or on Palmyra, I fancy.’
‘No,’ said Mrs. Palmer quietly; ‘we have put the fear of God—or of the Devil—into their hearts. We know how to manage our people on these properties, Mr. Hancock.’
‘So I have been told,’ replied Hancock, a little dryly. ‘Well, there isn’t one proprietor or attorney we have sounded who does not agree that we must include Sunday as one of the Christmas holidays. Considering it is Christmas Day, and that the law is that we must give three days including Christmas Day, we are well within our rights. I believe that the parsons want Sunday to be spent in prayer, and the lazy brutes we have want to pray the first day and debauch the next three. We won’t have it, that’s all! But we think it would be a good thing for all the white men on the estates to be prepared for any emergency; that is why we are sending round to them. You now understand what the situation is.’
‘And we’ll have it well in hand, never fear,’ added Ashman. ‘Have you sent to Spanish Town to let the Governor know what may happen in these parts?’
‘No; we don’t think that is necessary; in fact, we think we’d better not. The Government, Mr. Ashman, is secretly with these missionaries and slaves—we are in a devil of a position when it comes to getting justice and our rights, I can tell you. The Government backs up the negroes whenever it can; this Governor seems to have been sent out to do nothing but that. We’ll never get fair play from him any more than from the English Government; so we have to do what we can for ourselves. But there’s a good lot of fight left in us still!’
‘I for one,’ said Mrs. Palmer coldly, ‘am prepared to make no concessions at all. The better you treat these people, the worse they are. If you give way on one point they expect you to give way on all. They will be at work on Wednesday morning on Rosehall and Palmyra, whatever happens; I shall myself see to that.’
‘See also that the white men here are armed on Tuesday,’ insisted Mr. Hancock, ‘that is why I asked to see them myself; and, of course, any of the chief negroes you can trust.’
The conference was over; Mr. Hancock rose to say good-bye. He would visit some other properties during the rest of the day. He was doing this as a duty and as a labour of love. He believed that the estate proprietors and attorneys were being treated with the gravest injustice for the sake of slaves who, so far as he could see, had nothing in the world to complain of. The unfortunate owners had all Mr. Hancock’s sympathy. He was virtuously proud of being able to do something for them, his own class.
The men were dismissed; but Annie gave Robert a signal to linger behind. When the others had ridden away she said to him:
‘You see now, I need your presence in the Great House. You wouldn’t like to leave me unprotected, would you?’
‘No,’ he answered quite truthfully, for if a woman needed protection he would not hesitate in affording her what he could of it. ‘But you suggested only a while ago that there was no danger here.’
‘It would not do to confess any fear,’ she retorted readily, ‘and there may be no real danger. But how can I be certain? If I am alone in this house and the slaves were to get out of hand suddenly, what would happen to me? There should be someone here with me, at this time especially. You will remove your things up here today?’
He shook his head. ‘That is impossible, Annie. That is the one thing I cannot do.’
She looked at him long and searchingly. ‘Very well,’ was all that she said.
Before leaving he asked her, endeavouring to speak casually: ‘You have sent for Takoo as you said you would?’
‘This morning. Two messengers went, one to his daughter’s house and one to his own. I’ll let you know if he is coming to see me.’
‘Thank you, Annie,’ he said, with real appreciation, and left feeling far more kindly disposed towards her than he had been an hour before.
He did not believe that she ran any risk; she had indicated as much. But he did not realise she had divined that, whatever had been the reason of his objection to living at the Great House before, it was now his reluctance to be constantly with her. Perhaps if she had begged and cajoled him again, as she had done last night, he might have yielded; he did not find it easy to resist a woman’s imploring. But Annie Palmer had her upsurgings of pride, and now she was bitterly angry. She was more used to being sued than to suing.
On going back to his work he met Rider, and paused for a few words. He now said what he had been wanting to say to Rider. ‘I got her to promise to help Millicent,’ he remarked, ‘but I don’t think she is altogether pleased with me, Rider. I don’t seem able to say or do the right thing all the time.’
‘None of us are,’ said Rider sententiously, ‘but I am sure you have done your
best. Leave it there, Rutherford. We are likely to have our hands pretty full with other things during the next week or so. Our lives may be in jeopardy, for all we know.’
‘You seriously think it is as bad as that?’
‘I do; we are in for serious trouble.’
‘It may do good,’ said Robert grimly; ‘it may end a lot of things.’ Rider knew that he was thinking of himself and his relations with Annie; he was entangled and did not quite know how to break out of the net.
It rained again that night, and Robert kept to his quarters. The next day, Christmas Eve, not much work was done on the estate. The slaves had become excited, and no expostulations or threats could move them to continuous labour; the spirit of the season affected them, as well as some secret understanding of momentous events that were to come to pass. But the spirit of the season affected the white men on the estate also; it was Christmas Eve, and those who were from the Old Country were thinking of how it would be just then in England and in Scotland; little given as they were today-dreaming, their minds went back to their homes and to the past, and for the time they ceased to be mere cogs in the machinery of a sugar estate. During the late afternoon Robert caught a glimpse of Annie on horseback; she was riding about the property. She passed fairly near to him but seemed oblivious of his presence. He concluded that she was still displeased with his last refusal to come to live at the Great House. He wondered if she had yet heard from Takoo. He thought it likely that she had not.
For he too had heard nothing from Takoo. That the old man had removed Millicent he knew; Rider had told him; Rider had heard this from Burbridge. The latter had been spoken to by Rider, who had made a point of assuring him that Robert would never betray his friends. When night had fallen on Christmas Eve, therefore, the three men forgathered in their quarters talking of trivialities. Then, somewhat to Robert’s surprise, Burbridge mentioned that he had again heard that afternoon about Millicent; Psyche had told him.
The White Witch of Rosehall Page 16