I MAKE THE ACQUAINTANCE OF THE HA'NT
We had a sensation at supper that night, and I commenced to realize that
I was a good many miles from New York. In response to the invitation of
Solomon, the old negro butler, we seated ourselves at the table and
commenced on the cold dishes before us, while he withdrew to bring in
the hot things from the kitchen. As is often the case in Southern
plantation houses the kitchen was under a separate roof from the main
house, and connected with it by a long open gallery. We waited some time
but no supper arrived. The Colonel, becoming impatient, was on the point
of going to look for it, when the door burst open and Solomon appeared
empty-handed, every hair on his woolly head pointing a different
direction.
"De ha'nt, Marse Cunnel, de ha'nt! He's sperrited off de chicken. Right
outen de oven from under Nancy's eyes."
"Solomon," said the Colonel severely, "what are you trying to say? Talk
sense."
"Sho's yuh bohn, Marse Cunnel; it's de libbin' truf I's tellin' yuh. Dat
ha'nt has fotched dat chicken right outen de oven, an' it's vanished in
de air."
"You go out and bring that chicken in and don't let me hear another
word."
"I cayn't, Marse Cunnel, 'deed I cayn't. Dere ain't no chicken dere."
"Very well, then! Go and get us some ham and eggs and stop this fuss."
Solomon withdrew and we three looked at each other.
"Rad, what's the meaning of this?" the Colonel demanded querulously.
"Some foolishness on the part of the niggers. I'll look into it after
supper. When the ha'nt begins abstracting chickens from the oven I think
it's time to investigate."
Being naturally curious over the matter, I commenced asking questions
about the history and prior appearances of the ha'nt. Radnor answered
readily enough, but I noticed that the Colonel appeared restless under
the inquiry, and the amused suspicion crossed my mind that he did not
entirely discredit the story. When a man has been born and brought up
among negroes he comes, in spite of himself, to be tinged with their
ideas.
Supper finished, the three of us turned down the gallery toward the
kitchen. As we approached the door we heard a murmur of voices, one
rising every now and then in a shrill wail which furnished a sort of
chorus. Radnor whispered in my ear that he reckoned Nancy had "got um"
again. Though I did not comprehend at the moment, I subsequently learned
that "um" referred to a sort of emotional ecstasy into which Nancy
occasionally worked herself, the motive power being indifferently ghosts
or religion.
The kitchen was a large square room, with brick floor, rough shack walls
and smoky rafters overhead from which pended strings of garlic, red
peppers and herbs. The light was supplied ostensibly by two tallow dips,
but in reality by the glowing wood embers of the great open stove
bricked into one side of the wall.
Five or six excited negroes were grouped in a circle about a woman with
a yellow turban on her head, who was rocking back and forth and shouting
at intervals:
"Oh-h, dere's sperrits in de air! I can smell um. I can smell um."
"Nancy!" called the Colonel sharply as we stepped into the room.
Nancy paused a moment and turned upon us a pair of frenzied eyes with
nothing much but the whites showing.
"Marse Cunnel, dere's sperrits in de air," she cried. "Sabe yuhself
while dere's time. We's all a-treadin' de road to destruction."
"You'll be treading the road to destruction in mighty short order if you
don't keep still," he returned grimly. "Now stop this foolishness and
tell me what's gone with that chicken."
After a great deal of questioning and patching together, we finally got
her story, but I cannot say that it threw much light upon the matter.
She had put the chicken in the oven, and then she felt powerful queer,
as if something were going to happen. Suddenly she felt a cold wind blow
through the room, the candles went out, and she could hear the rustle of
"ghostly gahments" sweeping past her. The oven door sprang open of its
own accord; she looked inside, and "dere wa'n't no chicken dere!"
Repeated questioning only brought out the same statement but with more
circumstantial details. The other negroes backed her up, and the story
grew rapidly in magnitude and horror. Nancy's seizures, it appeared,
were contagious, and the others by this time were almost as excited as
she. The only approximately calm one among them was Cat-Eye Mose who sat
in the doorway watching the scene with half furtive eyes and something
resembling a grin on his face.
The Colonel, observing that it was a good deal of commotion for the sake
of one small chicken, disgustedly dropped the inquiry. As we stepped out
into the gallery again, I glanced back at the dancing firelight, the
weird cross shadows, and the circle of dusky faces, with, I confess, a
somewhat creepy feeling. I could see that in such an atmosphere, it
would not take long for superstition to lay its hold on a man.
"What's the meaning of it?" I asked as we strolled slowly toward the
house.
"The meaning of it," Radnor shrugged, "is that some of them are lying.
The ha'nt, I could swear, has a good flesh and blood appetite. Nancy has
been frightened and she believes her own story. There's never any use in
trying to sift a negro's lies; they have so much imagination that after
five minutes they believe themselves."
"I think I could spot the ghost," I returned. "And that's your precious
Cat-Eye Mose."
Radnor shook his head.
"Mose doesn't need to steal chickens. He gets all he wants."
"Mose," the Colonel added emphatically, "is the one person on the place
who is absolutely to be trusted."
We had almost reached the house, when we were suddenly startled by a
series of shrieks and screams coming toward us across the open stretch
of lawn that lay between us and the old negro cabins. In another moment
an old woman, her face twitching with terror, had thrown herself at our
feet in a species of convulsion.
"De ha'nt! De ha'nt! He's a-beckoning," was all we could make out
between her moans.
The other negroes came pouring out from the kitchen and gathered in a
frenzied circle about the writhing woman. Mose, I noted, was among them;
he could at least prove an alibi this time.
"Here Mose, quick! Get us some torches," Radnor called. "We'll fetch
that ha'nt up here to answer for himself.--It's old Aunt Sukie," he
added to me, nodding toward the woman on the ground whose spasms by this
time were growing somewhat quieter. "She lives on the next plantation
and was probably taking a cross cut through the laurel path that leads
by the cabins. She's almost a hundred and is pretty nearly a witch
herself."
Mose shambled up with some torches--pine knots dipped in tar, such as
they used for hunting 'possums at night, and he and I and Radnor set out
for the cabins. I noticed that none of the other negroes volunteered to
assist; I also noticed that Mose went on ahead with a low whining cry
which sent chills chasing up and down my back.
"What's the matter with him?" I gasped, more intent on the negro than
the ghost we had come to search.
"That's the way he always hunts," Radnor laughed. "There are a good many
things about Mose that you will have to get used to."
We searched the whole region of the abandoned quarters with a
considerable degree of thoroughness. Three or four of the larger cabins
were used as store houses for fodder; the rest were empty. We poked into
all of them, but found nothing more terrifying than a few bats and owls.
Though I did not give much consideration to the fact at the time, I
later remembered that there was one of the cabins which we didn't
explore as thoroughly as the rest. Mose dropped his torch as we
entered, and in the confusion of relighting it, the interior was
somewhat slighted. In any case we unearthed no ha'nt that night; and we
finally gave up the search and turned back to the house.
"I suspect," Radnor laughed, "that if the truth were known, old Aunt
Sukie's beckoning ha'nt would turn out to be nothing more alarming than
a white cow waving her tail."
"It's rather suggestive coming on top of the chicken episode," I
observed.
"Oh, this won't be the end! We'll have ha'nt served for breakfast,
dinner and supper during the rest of your stay. When the niggers begin
to see things they keep it up."
When I went upstairs that night, Rad followed close on my heels to see
that I had everything I needed. The room was a huge four windowed
affair, furnished with a canopied bed and a mahogany wardrobe as big as
a small house. The nights still being chilly, a roaring wood fire had
been built, adding a note of cheerfulness to an otherwise sombre
apartment.
"This was Nan's room," he said suddenly.
"Nan's room!" I echoed glancing about the shadowy interior. "Rather
heavy for a girl."
"It is a trifle severe," he agreed, "but I dare say it was different
when she was here. Her things are all packed away in the attic." He
picked up a candle and held it so that it lighted the face of a portrait
over the mantle. "That's Nan--painted when she was eighteen."
"Yes," I nodded. "I recognized her the moment I saw it. She was like
that when I knew her."
"It used to hang down stairs but after her marriage my father had it
brought up here. He kept the door locked until the news came that she
was dead, then he turned it into a guest room. He never comes in
himself; he won't look at the picture."
Radnor spoke shortly, but with an underlying note of bitterness. I could
see that he felt keenly on the subject. After a few desultory words, he
somewhat brusquely said good night, and left me to the memories of the
place.
Instead of going to bed I set about unpacking. I was tired but wide
awake. Aunt Sukie's convulsions and our torch light hunt for ghosts were
novel events in my experience, and they acted as anything but a
sedative. The unpacking finished, I settled myself in an easy chair
before the fire and fell to studying the portrait. It was a huge canvas
in the romantic fashion of Romney, with a landscape in the background.
The girl was dressed in flowing pink drapery, a garden hat filled with
roses swinging from her arm, a Scotch collie with great lustrous eyes
pressed against her side. The pose, the attributes, were artificial; but
the painter had caught the spirit. Nannie's face looked out of the frame
as I remembered it from long ago. Youth and gaiety and goodness trembled
on her lips and laughed in her eyes. The picture seemed a prophecy of
all the happiness the future was to bring. Nannie at eighteen with life
before her!
And three years later she was dying in a dreary little Western town,
separated from her girlhood friends, without a word of forgiveness from
her father. What had she done to deserve this fate? Merely set up her
will against his, and married the man she loved. Her husband was poor,
but from all I ever heard, a very decent chap. As I studied the eager
smiling face, I felt a hot wave of anger against her father. What a
power of vindictiveness the man must have, still to cherish rancour
against a daughter fifteen years in her grave! There was something too
poignantly sad about the unfulfilled hope of the picture. I blew out the
candles to rid my mind of poor little Nannie's smile.
I sat for some time my eyes fixed moodily on the glowing embers, till I
was roused by the deep boom of the hall clock as it slowly counted
twelve. I rose with a laugh and a yawn. The first of the doctor's orders
had been, "Early to bed!" I hastily made ready, but before turning in,
paused for a moment by the open window, enticed by the fresh country
smells of plowed land and sprouting green things, that blew in on the
damp breeze. It was a wild night with a young moon hanging low in the
sky. Shadows chased themselves over the lawn and the trees waved and
shifted in the wind. It had been a long time since I had looked out on
such a scene of peaceful tranquillity as this. New York with the hurry
and rush of its streets, with the horrors of Terry's morgue, seemed to
lie in another continent.
But suddenly I was recalled to the present by hearing, almost beneath
me, the low shuddering squeak of an opening window. I leaned out
silently alert, and to my surprise I saw Cat-Eye Mose--though it was
pretty dark I could not be mistaken in his long loping run--slink out
from the shadow of the house and make across the open space of lawn
toward the deserted negro cabins. As he ran he was bent almost double
over a large black bundle which he carried in his arms. Though I
strained my eyes to follow him I could make out nothing more before he
had plunged into the shadow of the laurels.