Voodoo Tales: The Ghost Stories of Henry S Whitehead (Tales of Mystery & The Supernatural) Read Online Free PDF Page B

and I no more than a child of eighteen, Mr Canevin. It was in ’sixty-four I was married, and all I know of my Aunt Camilla Lanigan I learned from the sayings of my mother before that year when I was a girl at home.
    ‘There was little she did not know about the Obeah of the black people, so ’tis said – nor, indeed, of the voodoo as well, belike! Their mother being long dead and my own mother the younger of the two sisters, there was no one to stop my Aunt Camilla from doing much as she liked. The black people held her in great respect, so ’twas said.
    ‘As to the picture itself, I can tell you but little about it. It was in the house when I was born, in ’forty-six that was, and my mother had a great dislike for it. ’Twas I who would be taking it out of an old dust-box where it was kept, now and again, and frightening myself, as a child would, with the queer little figures and the hanging!
    ‘When I was married I begged for it, and I think my mother was glad to be rid of it, for the memory of my Aunt Camilla was still in the house there in St Thomas.
    ‘James Desmond, my husband, would never allow it to be hung on the wall, saying that it was indelicate of a lady to have painted such a scene. And I believe he was in the right of it, Mr Canevin, with all respect to my Aunt Camilla!’
    I thanked the dear old lady for her information as I bowed over her withered hand at parting. Her last remark was cryptic and somewhat startling: ‘ ’Twas more than paint, belike, went into the composition of that picture, Mr Canevin!’
    I called up Miss Gertrude as soon as I was back at Melbourne House.
    ‘I have some information about the picture and the artist,’ said I.
    ‘Come as early as you can manage it,’ said Miss Gertrude, and after dinner I started.
    ‘Oh, Mr Canevin,’ said she eagerly, when I had recounted what Mrs Desmond had told me. ‘How I wish I might see it again now at once!’
    ‘I had anticipated that,’ said I. ‘It lies on the table in the entryway.’
    We laid it out on the mahogany centre-table and looked down at it together in silence. At last Miss Gertrude spoke.
    ‘What do you see now in his expression, Mr Canevin?’
    I did not need inquire in whose expression.
    A baffling, elusive change appeared to have taken place now that we were looking down at him under the electric light.
    ‘Expectation,’ said I slowly.
    I hesitated. It was not quite expectation. Interest? Not quite that, either. I pondered the matter, the bizarre whimsicality of it making its natural appeal to my mind the while.
    ‘Hope!’ I cried at last. ‘And, coming through the hope, a wish!’
    ‘Yes, yes!’ cried Miss Gertrude, clasping her hands excitedly. ‘It – it seemed to me almost as though there were something – something he wanted to tell us!’
    She hurried over these hesitating words and, now that they were spoken, there was a look of relief on her lovely face.
    ‘Your moral courage is better than mine, Miss Gertrude,’ said I. ‘For that is what was really in the back of my mind. It seemed to me too – well, too preposterous to put into words.’
    Her eyes glowed with an enthusiasm almost childish. She placed her hand upon my arm.
    ‘Do you suppose we could find out what it is?’
    Her voice was very low.
    ‘We could try,’ said I.
    The whimsicality of the proposal had intrigued me.
    ‘But how?’ cried Miss Gertrude.
    ‘That’s what I’m puzzling my poor brains about,’ I answered. ‘One cannot converse with a little figure two and one-half inches high and made of paint!
    ‘No! We cannot just talk to him – and expect him to answer. He hasn’t the – the apparatus. He’s only a brittle little manikin fastened down flat on some very tender old canvas. He can’t speak and he can’t write. But, somehow, he does seem able to change his expression.
    ‘If there really is something in him – something besides paint, as old Mrs Desmond hinted – at least we’re not meddling with