Voodoo Tales: The Ghost Stories of Henry S Whitehead (Tales of Mystery & The Supernatural) by Henry S. Whitehead, David Stuart Davies Read Free Book Online Page B

light of a full moon and to the intoxicating accompaniment of jessamine and night-tuberose odors, faced me.
    ‘I have something for you,’ said I, and laid the necklace across her hands. ‘This is for you, Miss Gertrude, with all my gratitude and all my admiration.’
    ‘But – I cannot accept this,’ she said, looking at the emeralds as they glowed in the moonlight.
    ‘You will wear it, I was hoping, on your wedding day.’
    ‘But, Mr Canevin, I am not considering being married. I am only nineteen.’
    ‘But you will be married some day – God send, happily. Keep the necklace and bring it out when that delightful young gentleman who may be half-way worthy of you comes along. Let it be a portion of your trousseau.’
    ‘But – I am not interested in “delightful young gentlemen”, Mr Canevin.’
    This conversation, it seemed to me, had got rather far away from what Miss Gertrude had summoned me out there on the gallery to talk about.
    She was speaking again.
    ‘I do not see why you should suggest such a thing to me, Mr Canevin.’
    Women! I should never understand them! This, at that moment, I felt instinctively, hopelessly. I remembered, sharply, that almost telepathic feeling I have mentioned on my arrival.
    ‘I am sure I ask your pardon if I have offended you,’ I said lamely and stood aside, waiting for her to precede me back into the drawing-room.
    I bowed slightly to indicate that I was waiting for her to pass. I think I even may have made a slight, indicative motion of the hand.
    But she did not move, and I looked down at her, troubled, vaguely puzzled. Was this the simple, sweet Miss Gertrude who had entered into the comedy of that picture with an almost childish enthusiasm?
    That picture! I think I shuddered slightly. She reached out the necklace toward me, but I did not take it back. With the strangest, most poignant look on her face, she was speaking again.
    Like ‘Annie Laurie’s’, her voice is low and sweet. All the phrases of that ballad of sentimental nonsense, as I was suddenly reminded, looking down at her, fit her like a glove.
    ‘I think you have failed to understand me, and that is why you are vexed, Mr Canevin. You see – I cannot accept your gift. I am no longer a child, you will remember, and such a gift could come only from a near relative, or – or . . . ’
    She looked down. Her courage had given out. I saw her face, red as a red rose in the faint whiteness of that pouring moonlight.
    The delicate, moaning coo of a disturbed wood dove came through the silent mahogany trees, and a little, faint puff of the evening trade wind came wandering across from the sea, across acres of sweet grass.
    Light came to me then and blinded me.
    ‘ – or one who is to be your husband,’ I finished for her, bending my head toward her. She did not move, and I reached out and took both her dear hands in mine, where they lay like lilies. The necklace hung across her wrists between us.
    It was, suddenly, as though ‘Annie Laurie’, played very softly and sweetly and yet, somehow, madly, played by many well-tuned violins and fairy horns, surged all about me, and it went to my head like strong wine.
    ‘And will you let me be that one?’ I asked her quietly.
    She left her hands where they were, and raised her lovely face and looked at me, all her shame gone now, and I took her into my arms . . .
    A little after we went back into the drawing-room. Mr and Mrs Maclane were chatting quietly, precisely as we had left them. I bowed to both of them.
    ‘I must not delay the happiness I have in informing you,’ said I, and the words seemed to come to me with a clarity almost uncanny – the right words, for such an announcement – ‘that I expect to have the honor of becoming your son-in-law.’
    But, I assure you, no one, not even a Canevin, can get ahead of a real Crucian of the Old Scottish Gentry when it comes to these matters of courtesy.
    ‘We are happy to welcome you into the family, Gerald,’