Gaslit Horror (2 page)

It is not customary for Barbadians to court the heavy noxious dews and the bloodthirsty mosquitoes by being abroad after nightfall; but the unwonted events of ball and burial on two consecutive days had brought to that lonely plantation a concourse of people, some of whom were detained by the claims of friendship, others of business, to a late hour.

It was close upon midnight when Dr. Hawley and another friend shook hands with Mr. Walcot under the portico of the Corbyn mansion; and stepping into his light cane phaeton, he bade his black Jehu “Tear away home.”

Once clear of the sombre avenue, where accommodating fireflies hung out their tiny lamps, the white marly road shone like a streak of silver in the bright moonlight. They spun along rapidly, to the drowsy music of their own wheels, in concert with the droning trumpet of obsequious mosquitoes, and the thin metallic pipe of an occasional cicada, to which their pony's hoof beat time. Otherwise the stillness was unbroken, save by Sambo's involuntary ejaculations to the steed.

As they neared the point where the road branched off to the sea-coast, passing the mausoleum on its way through Corbyn Hall Wood, a shrill scream was borne up the bye-road on the clear midnight air.

The pony stopped involuntarily, quivering in every limb.

“Golla, massa! what am dat?” cried Sambo in a fright.

Before Dr. Hawley or his friend could reply, a second scream, louder and more piercing, smote upon the ear, and was followed by a succession of unearthly yells.

“Quick, Sambo! Turn to the left. There is some foul play going on down this road. Quick! or we may be too late to prevent a tragedy.”

But Sambo's white teeth chattered, all the more because the pony obstinately refused to obey the rein—willing to bolt down the road home, but determined not to turn to the left for either man or master. As he snorted, reared, and plunged, threatening the slight vehicle with destruction, and the shrieks still continued, the doctor and his companion leapt out, and ran at full speed down the road, athwart which sparsely set palmetto, or cocoa-nut trees cast spectral shadows.

A faint sea-breeze met them, laden with the mingled perfumes of fruit and flower, but with it came more hideously the strange discordant noise. Then two or three wild dogs darted past them, howling as they went. Then with garments flying loose and eyeballs glaring, a negro woman, blind with terror, ran against the doctor. A man, little less excited, was close at her heels.

“Hallo! what is the meaning of this outcry?” demanded the doctor, grasping the man by the arm, under the impression the negress was escaping from ill-usage.

The man—who proved to be the undertaker's foreman—could only gasp between his chattering teeth, “Dre'ful! Dre'ful, doctor; dre'ful!”

The woman—a seamstress whom the foreman was gallantly escorting home—had continued her flight.

“You black scoundrel, what have you been doing?” cried the doctor, giving him a shake.

The man's protest was drowned by a fresh outbreak of the same appalling cries.

Dr. Hawley, exclaiming, “Again! What is that?” released his arm, convinced that he at least was not the peace breaker.

“O! doctor, dre'ful down dere! Dead man's fight.”

“Pish!” “Rubbish!” from the doctor and his friend; and they rushed forward, drawing reluctant Cicero back with them.

But they too stood aghast as they approached the mausoleum. The noise—a demoniac compound of blows, groans, shrieks, and howls—evidently
issued from the bricked-up sepulchre!

It seemed, indeed, as though a desperate combat raged within the closed-up tomb; and the blood of the spectators curdled as they listened.

They were not the only auditors. A neighbouring planter and a sturdy sea-captain, named Hudson, on their way inland, had been arrested on their journey likewise, and seemed rooted to the spot with a mysterious dread.

Could anyone imagine a scene more terrible! The mausoleum, worn with age and weather, overgrown with moss and lichens, sentinelled by sandbox trees and blighted cocoa palms, whose shroud-like drapery of creepers gave them the aspect of ghosts of dead trees keeping watch for ghosts of dead men; and scared by the unearthly din, owls and monkeys screeched and chattered, to make if possible a greater pandemonium.

“I have seen the ocean in its fury, heard the winds break loose, and the artillery of heaven rattle, but never did I hear anything so terrific as this. It makes my very flesh creep,” said the captain, addressing Dr. Hawley. “Can you, sir, offer any solution of this mystery?”

What Dr. Hawley might have said was interrupted by a final burst of triumphant yells, followed by a peal of still more discordant laughter, which died away in feeble cachinnations, till silence scarcely less awful fell on all around.

A harmless snake then uncoiled itself on the mausoleum steps and dragged itself across the road, a pair of green lizards crawled over the dome of the mausoleum to bask in the moonlight; and the unaccountable noises having ceased entirely, the party drawn together so singularly moved away in a body.

As a natural sequence, conversation turned on the place they had just quitted, Archibald Corbyn's funeral, and that of Laura Walcot; and so much was Captain Hudson interested, that when they shook hands and separated at the fork of the roads, he had promised to call on Dr. Hawley at his house near Kissing Bridge before sailing for England.

Seven persons (including Sambo) went their several ways surcharged with the story of a horrible mystery.

What wonder that the succeeding midnight brought a crowd to the spot, to test, verify, or ridicule, as might be? Notwithstanding the previous shock to his nerves, Dr. Hawley made one. With him was Stephen Walcot, much concerned by this commotion over his sister's grave; and on the extreme verge of the assembly they saw a group of old Corbyn servants huddled together like a flock of timid sheep, with Cuffy and aunt Dinah at their head.

The doctor had lost no time in making Mr. Walcot acquainted with his nocturnal experience. Matthias had only curled his lip, shrugged his shoulders, and said, “Were I you, doctor, I would not repeat this nonsense. Your patients will not care to consult a medico who takes too much wine.” He had spoken to the sons. William laughed outright. Steve, subdued by his sister's loss, gave their informant a more respectful hearing, and, in spite of his brother's banter, volunteered to watch the tomb that night with the doctor, little surmising how many would share that watch.

Twelve by Dr. Hawley's repeater! The silent expectant crowd shrank back with affright as, without one moment's premonition, the air was rent with a volley of shrieks and yells, which wakened the echoes of the hills, and a chorus from owls and monkeys drove the raccoon from his bed, the pigeons from their nests, and sent batwings from the shadows to flutter in the moonlight.

For one whole hour the noises were unceasing. If superstition drew the crowd together, fear dispersed it. Only the most daring of the auditors remained, and amongst these were Cuffy and Dinah, who stood apart with hands upraised, as if invoking unseen protection.

Bearing Cuffy's adjuration and previsions in mind, Dr. Hawley—well acquainted with negro subtlety, and anxious to find a natural solution for the phenomena—drew the centenarian apart, and, with Stephen by his side, subjected him to a fire of cross-questions.

“Know nuffink 'bout it, doctor; 'cept Massa Corbyn not rest. Him angry; all him dead family angry,” was all they could elicit.

Yet, in spite of his genuine trepidation—for every nerve seemed to quiver—there appeared some reservation, of which the doctor took a mental note for question at a fitter time.

Mrs. Walcot was frantic. Sorrow for her daughter's loss was reduplicated by this scandal over her very grave. Mr. Walcot and William repudiated all notion of the supernatural, and ascribed the strange phenomena to a plot between Cuffy and his colleagues. Stringent orders were left with the overseers that no slave should quit the plantation after sundown, or approach within a given distance of the mausoleum, under penalty of a flogging.

But that did not quell the nocturnal riot. Matthias brought his own eyes and ears to the test, had the place examined by day, placed a cordon of military around, but all to no purpose.

For five nights the supernatural warfare continued. Trafalgar Square and the Bridgetown ice-houses were thronged with thirsty gossips, and Barbados throbbed with superstitious fear to its very finger-tips.

Then it ceased. The excitement gradually died out, business resumed its sway, the Walcots were condoled with, and the dead reposed in peace.

Still superstition held the haunted mausoleum in dread; and urgent must be the business and hardy must be the man that should travel that road by night.

Even over the Corbyn mansion crept a sort of eerie atmosphere. There was less laughter, and more whispering in secret corners. Every figure in mourning robes seemed to cast a shadow of death on the hearth. A cloud deeper than that of grief rested on the brows of Matthias and his wife; and the infection spread to the white tenantry on the estate.

A fortnight later Dr. Hawley rode out to the Hall. It was purely a friendly visit, so he said; but ere he went away he asked his host how he was progressing in his search for a legitimate heir, adding that a friend of his, a Captain Hudson, of the barque
Adelaide,
would readily undertake any commission in furtherance of that end in the mother country.

Mrs. Walcot bridled up, and Matthias, reddening, answered stiffly, “Thank you, doctor, but I can manage my own business without the intervention of strangers. I need no reminder of my duty. A sea captain is scarcely the person to institute inquiries of this nature.”

“Perhaps not,” assented the doctor dryly, with a peculiar smile, as he took his departure, much like one who has but done half his errand.

Had their voices wafted to Cuffy through the open casement, that he should quit the jasmine he was pruning by the portico to hurry to the avenue? Whether or not, he stopped the pony under shadow of the large trees, and whispered earnestly and mysteriously:

“Dr. Hawley, you good man; you lub ole massa. Him spirit angry; all de Corbyn spirits angry. Last night Dinah dream—dream of Massa Charlie. He wet an' white upon the steps; he ask to come in, and Massa Walcot shut the door—an' Death come in instead! Doctor, dere be nudder Corbyn
somewhere,
an' Massa Walcot no try to find him; an' spirits
berry
angry. Cuffy work Obeah charm to-night, to keep de evil doom from de black boys and girls dat lub ole Massa Corbyn!”

“I would advise you to have nothing to do with Obeah, Cuffy. It may breed ill-feeling and do mischief,” said the doctor, as Cuffy loosened his hold of the reins, and Sambo cracked his whip.

In Corbyn Hall Wood, remote from the Hall itself, close by a mountain streamlet which ran down to join the river, was a bubbling boiling spring. The spot was lonely and sequestered, shadowed by the palmetto and the machineel. Gourds and squashes trailed along the ground and hid the iguana, the green lizard, and the spotted toad. No pineapple or banana grew beside it; no seaside grape spread its branches low to the ground, hanging thick and ruddy clusters under every branch, glossy with leaves of green; but all that was dark or rank grew there.

It was a dismal spot. Yet hither dusky forms came stealthily in the middle of the night to watch and share with Cuffy in the dread rites of Obeah incantation. To his fellows he was known as a Mandingo priest, and the hold he had on their superstitious souls was strong and terrible. His hut was near at hand, and in this weird corner of the plantation had he been wont to concoct healing balms, philtres, and the yet more potent Obeah, whose spell, wrought in secret, was supposed to work in secret, and set human skill and precaution at defiance.

Dinah was there—a fitting priestess of these mysteries—and Dan and Scipio, and Chloe and Cassy, with others whose names are unrecorded.

There was a fissure in the ground close to the boiling spring. To this Cuffy applied a light, and instantly a jet of flame shot up, and the poor dupes bowed down to the fire-spirit. From a hollow tree was produced an iron pot. Half filling this from the boiling spring, it was suspended on a triangle of sticks over the natural naphtha flame, and the weird rites began.

There was a low monotonous chant in a strange tongue, a dance around the seething pot, which in the lurid light was half demoniac; and Cuffy, swaying to and fro, muttered words unknown even to his confederates, as one by one he threw into the pot snake-wood from the trumpet-tree, sap from the deadly manchineel, a snake cucumber, the poisonous sandbox leaves and rings, a living lizard and a toad, a turtle's egg, the root of the cat's-blood plant, a bat, a young owlet, a dead man's hair, pernicious scum from Long Pond, and other venomous ingredients with and without a name.

It was a horrible compound—a deadly poison; and as it bubbled in the pot, white teeth and eyes gleamed out from midnight faces, hideous from their own imaginings.

The charm wrought out, the mixture poured into a calabash bottle and closely stopped, the refuse buried in the ground, the pot restored to the hollow tree, the magic flame extinguished with wet sand, Cuffy dismissed his impish brood to their huts, and bore away his revolting decoction, to be buried the ensuing night under the threshold of the Hall. The doom hanging over Corbyn would then fall upon the fated mortals who should step across it first; and thus, Obeah satisfied, his followers would be protected.

Be sure there were early risers among the initiated, and sharp eyes to watch the threshold under ban, and warn off unwary footsteps.

Mr. William Walcot was the first to leave the house; but months went by and still he came and went healthily and haughtily, in spite of Obeah; and he was more frequently at the Hall than either his father or Stephen liked, the Folly being his home proper. The father considered that Will interfered too much on the plantation, to the neglect and detriment of his shipping agency; while Steve, aware of the comparative proximity of the Hall to the Parsonage, regarded him as a dangerous rival.

The fact was that the elder of the twain had determined most fraternally to “cut his brother out” of the favour of Miss Wolferstone, if the clergyman's rich and lovely ward had any leaning in that direction, and altogether comported himself as if he were his father's natural and certain successor on the estate.

But Mrs. Walcot sickened: an inexplicable disease, which caused her lower limbs to swell painfully, marred her enjoyment, and made her splendid mansion little better than a prison, although stately Augusta Wolferstone and lively Mary Fulton came like sunbeams now and again to brighten it up. Then Matthias grew aguish and shivery. Finally Steve, diverging from the wood-path on his way from the Parsonage one Sunday at the hour when sun and moon looked each other in the face, fell over a fern-covered boulder and broke his leg.

Cuffy and Scipio, out after dark on some occult errand, directed by his groans, found him lying amidst the rank vegetation, just over the spot where the Obeah refuse lay buried. “A coincidence,” the old man observed to his companion; with the addendum, “Sorry Massa, Steve hurt: him best cane of bundle.”

Cuffy moreover showed his sincerity by binding cooling herbs on the broken limb whilst Scipio ran for a litter, and by setting the said limb skilfully as a surgeon, long before Dr. Hawley could be found.

Superstition regarded these untoward circumstances as so many visitations of warning or admonition. Indeed, so freely did Barbadian society discuss the Walcot succession to the Corbyn property by the light of Walcot ill-luck, that Matthias found his bed of roses invaded by gnats stinging worse than mosquitoes, to say nothing of the private thorns planted by conscience under the rose leaves.

From the morning when Dr. Hawley entered his office like a spirit of evil, to tell how his dead child's rest was disturbed, his own rest had been disturbed by nightmare memories of Archibald's death-bed. The dying man had trusted him. He had ill-deserved that trust. He had not meant to defraud the heir, if there was one; he had only been lukewarm in his efforts to find him. But was there one? He thought not; and so advertising was only waste of good money. Besides, it might tempt some knave to worry him with fictitious claims. However, some day he would send Will or Steve to England to make inquiries; and there was time enough.

And so he tried to salve the conscience that would not be salved; especially as Dr. Hawley now and then gave it an unexpected prick, and Cuffy and Dinah looked unutterable thorns.

The rainy season had almost passed. Steve's leg was nearly well; he could move about by the help of crutches; and Scipio had more than once driven him, very gently, over to the Parsonage, to be especially petted, both by Miss Wolferstone and Mary Fulton, the English parson's English daughter.

It was Will's turn to be jealous. He “could not see why a broken leg and a pale face should be so devilish attractive to a woman. They didn't attract him!” It went to his heart to see Augusta Wolferstone place the easiest cane chair in the verandah ready for his brother, and adjust the softest cushions to his special need. He was exasperated, too, that business should keep him so much at the wharf, and an accident clear the way for Steve to woo the girl in his absence.

So persistent were his grumblings that Mr. Walcot, for the sake of peace, went back to his old office to lighten Will's labour and give him an occasional holiday. On one of these days, William, who slept chiefly at the Folly during the wet season, rode from Bridgetown to St. Andrew's, calling in to see his mother on his way. He there learned that Stephen, taking advantage of a fine day, had gone before him, and was then at St. Andrew's Parsonage.

This roused his domineering temper; and with scarcely a civil word to his ailing and querulous mother, and a very uncivil cut with his riding-whip to the creole groom who held his horse, he set off neck-or-nothing, resolved to try whether he or Steve had the best of it before the day was out. So vicious was he in his brotherly love that he cut at his horse as if it had been Stephen's self, and dismounted in front of the Parsonage, little improved by seeing Steve on a couch under the verandah holding a skein of purse-twist for Augusta, whilst Mary read aloud to both.

His first remark was a sneer at his disabled brother's womanish occupation, his next a rude retort to Augusta's defence of Stephen. A bad beginning this; and his consciousness that it was bad only paved the way for further discomfiture.

Later in the day, he demanded, rather than solicited, a
tête-à-tête
conversation with Miss Wolferstone, and with little delicacy and less tact urged his suit as one whose claims were imperial—urged it as Steve's elder brother, and heir to the Corbyn estate.

Whatever claim he might have had on the young lady's regard he lost in that interview. His rudeness and unbrotherly feeling were so palpable, she felt impelled to resent both.

“I have no desire, sir, to marry the heir to the Corbyn or any other estate; but I do choose to marry a gentleman. I must therefore decline the honour of your alliance”; and she swept from the library as she spoke, without giving him a chance for another syllable.

Without a word of adieu to the ladies he darted from the house, almost too impatient to wait for the saddling of his horse; certainly too much irritated to accept the genial invitation of Mr. Fulton to remain the night, even though the weather had changed, and the rain was the rain of the tropics.

A sane man would have remembered that previous rains had flooded lowlands, had swelled mountain runnels to rivers, and rivers to torrents, and, so remembering, have taken the safer high-road by which he came, however circuitous.

But he, blinded by passion, disappointment, and jealousy (had he not left his silken brother behind him?) dashed homewards the near way, across Church River and through the wood.

Over the bridge he went safely enough; but when he reached the Corbyn rivulet, fed from Haggart's spring, he found his way stopped by a formidable stream rushing tumultuously on towards Long Pond. In no mood to hesitate, he madly urged his reluctant animal to attempt the perilous crossing.

He must have either missed the ford, or the horse lost its footing, and been carried down by the force of the water. His body was found the following day at the entrance to Long Pond, blue, swollen, and swathed in a shroud of the poisonous green scum of the pond.