The White Witch of Rosehall
Chapter 17: The Arrangement
Christmas day dawned cool and bright, the wind coming in briskly from the sea which, stirred and fretted by it, flashed and sparkled in a glory of green and purple and broke in noisy billows upon the shore. The burnished surfaces of long green leaves, narrow spears of the cane plants, and of swaying fronds of palms, reflected back the sunlight, so that the whole earth seemed bathed in splendour and steeped in flaming light.
There was brightness everywhere; every object was suffused with it. In the hollows of the hills which formed the background to the land-and sea-scape in the midst of which was Rosehall, masses of mist had rolled and ascended and floated about an hour before, shrouding the view and spreading like a soft wide cloud; but soon this mist had melted away before the triumphant progress of the sun which had swiftly transformed the opal and faint pink of the morning sky into a dazzling blue. The tang of the salt sea was in the air, poinsettia trees and other flowering plants flamed red in the sunshine in which they rejoiced. And though noises broke the stillness, noises shrill and piercing, dominant, insistent, they were not those of labour but had a special implication of their own.
For this morning no horn or conchshell sounded its far-carrying melancholy note to summon the slaves to their daily task. No crack of driver’s whip or harsh command was heard. In the pastures the cattle stood idle, from the chimneys of the boiling-house arose no smoke. Banked were the fires today, and banked would they remain for some three days. In the negro village on the estate men and women wandered about at will. Their time was theirs to do with entirely what they wished.
The Christmas holidays had come, the three days of grace which were given to the people by law, to pass in frolic and in merry-making, or in complete rest.
Even as Rutherford gazed from his room upon the scene outside, striving hard to realise that this was Christmas, he caught sight of a crowd of people who came towards the book-keepers’ quarters, singing and dancing. Burbridge joined him, and together they waited to see what would happen.
At sight of the white men the crowd raised a cheer and came hurrying onwards. Arrived, they stood displayed as a variety of figures, some utterly ludicrous, others rather tastefully attired in garments of variegated colours, and every one of them as cheerfully vociferous as if none had a care in the world. Two of them had got themselves up as animals. One was garbed in a dried cow’s skin, with the horns towering upon his head and the tail sticking out behind; he leaped and bellowed as though he were a bull in pain, though probably he intended to impersonate a bull in ecstasy. Another one had rigged himself up as a horse, with mane and head complete, and he capered about upon his two legs neighing merrily, whirling round and round, and kicking out with feet that were quite human and bare. Some