Voodoo Tales: The Ghost Stories of Henry S Whitehead (Tales of Mystery & The Supernatural) (25 page)

Again he paused, sat for a moment very quietly in a natural silence which neither Rand nor I desired to break.

Then, in a hushed tone, his words coming slowly and very reverently, he spoke again.

‘And if,’ he began, as though concluding a thought already partly uttered, ‘ – and if she
has
been enabled to see it all – from her place in Paradise, as one might say – she is rejoicing now, and thanking you. She would have moved Heaven and earth to help me.’

Then, as I looked into the face of Sir Harry Dacre, I saw a slow flush mounting upon it. That curious sense of shame which seems common to every Englishman who allows himself to show others something of his inmost feeling, had overtaken the young man. He resumed his discourse in an entirely different and rather restrained tone.

‘But that, of course, is impossible,’ said he. ‘I hope that I have not made myself ridiculous. Naturally I should know better than to bore you in this way. Reasonable people should not allow themselves to be moved by such old sentimentality. And, I – I was educated Modern Side.’

‘I do not think we are bored by what you have said,’ remarked Rand, quietly, and added nothing to that.

Dacre paused, rose, and replaced on the desk the framed photograph which he had been holding and looking at while he spoke. As yet, except from the back, I had not had a view of it. Returning to where we were seated, Dacre took a chair between Carruth and me.

‘Curious!’ exclaimed our host, breaking a brief silence. ‘I mean to say, my aunt, there, was very active in the War, you know. As a matter of fact, she visited every front, and never received as much as a scratch! People used to say that she seemed to bear a charmed life. Then back home here in England, driving one afternoon through Wolverhampton in her old town-car – it was just two days before the Armistice, in 1918 – I was just twelve at the time – a bomb from a raiding German airplane took her, poor lady; and along with her old Baines, her footman – been with her thirty-four years – and the chauffeur. Killed all three, snuffed ’em right out, and there wasn’t enough of the old Napier town-car left to identify it! The way things happen . . . ’

Carruth nodded, sympathetically. It was plain that young Dacre had been much moved by his recital. He must have had an extraordinarily high regard for the splendid woman who had mothered him. At this moment Dacre’s butler appeared with a tray and bottles, ice, tall glasses and siphons of carbonated water.

While he was arranging these on a table, I walked over to the desk and took up the large framed photograph.

There, in the uniform of the British Red Cross, looked out at me the splendid face of a middle-aged lady, the face of a true aristocrat, of one born to command. It was kindly, though possessing a firm, almost a stern expression, the look of one who would never give up!

I replaced the photograph, my hands shaking. I turned about quickly and walked across the room. I wanted rather urgently to be quite close to living, breathing human beings like Carruth and our host – fellow-men, creatures of common, everyday flesh and blood. I stood there among them, between Rand and Dacre, and almost touching the urbane butler as he prepared our Scotch and soda with admirable professional deftness. I confess that I wanted something else, besides that sense of human companionship which had come upon me so compellingly that I had found my hands shaking as I set the framed photograph back into its original place on Sir Harry Dacre’s desk.

Yes – I wanted that high cool, iced tumbler of Scotch whiskey and soda the butler was handing me. I barely waited, indeed, until the others had been served to raise it to my lips, to take a great, hasty drink which emptied the glass halfway to its bottom.

For – I had seen that photograph of Dacre’s aunt, the Lady Mary Grosvenor, that firm gentlewoman who had, in the goodness of her noble heart, stolen precious time from the counsels of a great Empire to comfort a pathetic little motherless child; who would have moved Heaven and earth; a woman who would never give up . . .

‘ . . . old Baines, her footman – been with her thirty-four years . . . ’

‘ . . . killed all three, snuffed ’em right out . . . ’

‘ . . . not enough of the old Napier town-car left to identify it . . . ’

And I had looked at that photograph.

I finished my Scotch and soda and set my glass down on the butler’s silver tray. I drew in a deep breath. I was coming back satisfactorily to something like normal.

I raised my eyes and looked over at Rand. It had just occurred to me that he, too, was now aware of the identity of the lady who had sent us here in that old Napier with the two perfectly trained servants in its driving seat, to save Sir Harry Dacre. Rand had seen the photograph, too, well before I had picked it up and looked at it.

I found quite as usual the facial expression of the man who had held the Indian Empire together resolutely for twenty years – the man who had learned that iron composure facing courageously all forms of death and worse-than-death in the far, primitive places of the earth, places where transcendent evil goes hand in hand with ancient civilizations.

Even as I looked, James Rand, Lord Carruth, was turning to our host and addressed him in his firm, courteous, even voice.

‘I take it that – with Mr Canevin to corroborate what I would say, speaking as an eye-witness – you would accept my word of honor – would you not, Dacre?’

Young Dacre stared at him, almost gulped with surprise when he replied to so unusual a question: ‘Of course, Lord Carruth; certainly, sir. Your word of honor – Mr Canevin to corroborate! Of course such a thing would not be necessary, sir. Good Heavens! Of course, I’d believe anything you chose to say, sir, like the Gospel itself.’

‘Well, then,’ said Rand, smiling gravely, ‘if it is agreeable to Mr Canevin, I think we shall change our minds and remain to luncheon with you. There is something I think you should know, and the period of luncheon will just give us time to tell you the circumstances behind our arrival here at about the right time for our business this morning.’

Rand looked over at me, and I nodded, eagerly.

‘Splendid!’ said Sir Harry Dacre, rising alertly and ringing the bell for the butler. ‘I had, of course, been awfully keen to know about that. Hardly cared to ask, you know.’

‘My reason for suggesting that we tell you,’ said Rand gravely, ‘goes rather deeper than merely satisfying a very reasonable curiosity. If by doing so we can accomplish what I have in mind, it will be, my dear fellow, a more important service in your behalf than ridding you of that Wertheimer.’

The butler came in and our host ordered the places set. Then, very soberly, he inquired: ‘What, sir, if I may venture to ask, is the nature of that service?’

Rand answered only after a long and thoughtful interval.

‘It may seem to you a rather odd answer, Dacre. I want to clear up in your mind, forever, the truth of what the religion we hold in common – the religion of our ancient Anglican Church here in England – teaches us about the souls in Paradise . . . ’

The Ravel
Pavane

In order to recount suitably the extraordinary case of the pianist Marie Boutácheff, it becomes necessary that I should set out first, in their order, certain facts. These are not without interest and are essential to its complete understanding. They have to do with the effects of sound upon a highly sensitive organism.

I first met Miss Boutácheff in the early Spring of the year 1928. I had come over from Santa Cruz, the southermost of the Virgin Islands, to St Thomas, the colony’s capital, after a Winter’s residence on the other island. It was my intention to remain in St Thomas for about three weeks, to see the Spring tennis tournaments and for the renewal of social relationships with my friends in the capital. Then, about the first of June, I planned to take ship for continental United States, there to remain until my return to the Caribbean the following Autumn.

Miss Boutácheff had been spending the Winter in St Thomas, where she had been induced to come by several women friends, all painters. These friends of hers, as Rachel Manners, the landscapist assured me, had brought her, ‘two jumps ahead of a nervous breakdown’ from overwork, to our West Indian climate of spice and balm for the purpose of restoring her shattered health.

Miss Boutácheff, at that time very well known to and very greatly admired by a select circle of artistic people, was a serious artist, a pianist of great promise. She had, in fact, already ‘arrived’ professionally. She had given successful concerts in New York and elsewhere. She
was a
tall,
blonde,
rather slender
woman
of twenty-eight
or
twenty-nine, of that type which possesses enormous nervous energy coupled with a relatively low degree of physical vitality. She appeared, too, to be entirely free of that drawback which so frequently accompanies the make-up of people seriously engaged in the arts, and commonly named ‘the artistic temperament’. In a very marked degree she possessed the intangible assets of charm and personality.

We took to each other at once. Miss Boutácheff had read everything of mine, she assured me. I had heard much about her and had even attended two of her concerts in Aeolian Hall. She had been making every effort not to think of music for five months!

‘Hasn’t that let your technic down?’ I asked her.

‘No, I do not think so. I hope not! You see, I have been using a clavier – a silent keyboard – all winter. That, being merely mechanical, does not trouble me. In fact it is soothing, restful. It is only sound, Mr Canevin, that – excuse me, if you please; let us talk of something else if you don’t mind.’

It was I, as it happened, who started her later on, to ‘thinking of music’ again.

We were discussing
Pelléas et Mélisande
, and we got a little at cross-purposes because, to her,
Pelléas et Mélisande
meant the music of Claude Debussy and such performances as that splendid one of Mary Garden and the notable cast in that great seven nights’ performance of the Hammerstein production in New York City; while to me, from the writer’s viewpoint, most prominent was the written text of the story as it came from the hands of Maeterlinck. This, of course, as I might have known, Marie Boutácheff thought of merely as the
libretto
. We recognized at once that we were discussing two different problems of artistic expression.

‘I grant you,’ said she, ‘that I do not know accurately the Maeterlinck text! I have never even read it through once. The story, yes, of course I know that; in a general way, as one knows the “plot” of any opera. One has to remember, though, that Maeterlinck is a symbolist. I confess I do not know, exactly, what he is trying to express in his “opus”. I think it is jealousy; but, perhaps, it’s something else! To be frank, Mr Canevin, I never gave the subject any particular thought.’

‘From the writer’s viewpoint,’ I put in, ‘it is difficult to know what he is up to! It has never been clear to me, for example, just why, at the very beginning, the castle doorkeeper is discovered struggling with a refractory door; or why the maid servants are assembling for the purpose of pouring water on the threshold! It is, undoubtedly, symbolism – it could hardly be anything else. But – what, please, does it symbolize?’

‘I haven’t the slightest idea!’ said Marie Boutácheff, and we laughed together understandingly. Then she told me about a little group of six pieces by the composer Arnold Schönberg. She told me how she had studied these very carefully; and failed utterly to ‘get’ what the composer was trying to express. It was ‘overtonal’ composition, much, in fact, like Debussy’s in
Pelléas et Mélisande
.

Then she proceeded (I recall clearly how the experience she related interested me then and later) to tell me how she had noticed their inclusion in a program played by the very famous
virtuoso
Orféo Mattaloni. The six little pieces required only a few minutes to play through. They were little scraps of expression; ideas; chiefly interwoven phrases.
She had
gone to hear
Mattaloni play
them.
She wanted, she said, to see if she could understand the composer’s meaning by listening to them. She described her experience at that concert –

‘Mattaloni paused just before that number on his program. He came down to the front of the platform and said to that big audience – it was in Carnegie Hall – “I beg that you will humor me! Keep silent, please, quite silent,
between
the numbers of this
suite
I am now going to play. No comment at all, if you will be so kind! I have studied them with the very greatest care. I will try to play them for you as they must be played. When I have finished all six – four minutes for them all – then, of course, such comment as you please.”

‘Then he sat down and played the six pieces through, very beautifully. He is a very great artist. They are, really, quite simple little things. And, do you know, perhaps it was merely my frame of mind at the moment, my “temperament” if you will! – I had come deliberately to find out Schönberg’s meaning, you will remember – I closed my eyes and did not open them until Mattaloni had finished the six. I knew them all, of course, intimately. I had played them many, many times. Well I “got” six little pictures, Mr Canevin, like sketches; little, sharp, cleanly-etched line-drawings. Street, vista, sunset, a church! It was really extraordinary.