Ghost Stories of Old New Orleans

The Golden Brown Woman

(i8od) The Golden Brown Woman In the seven-hundred block of rue Royale stands an old mansion built more than a century ago. It rears its solid bulk on the uptown river corner of Royal and Sainte-Ann streets, and in the long ago was the domicile of a wealthy widower. But along with its heavy ancient bolts and its fan windows, its old-world archways and its vine-hung courtyard, it has a ghost. Not a pale, feminine wraith with snowy hands and chalk-white countenance, nor yet the phantom of some tall young swain bled ashen in a duel for love's sweet sake. Not these. And not when the blaze of summer sunshine has left all things hot and breathless. Nor when the spring rains fall. Nor when the waters of the river creep like hungry tongues, licking higher and higher up the straining levees. Not then. Only in December, when the winds whistle bitter about the square old chimneys of the Quarter, does this ghost walk— the golden brown woman whose feet tread so lightly along the edge of the slanting roof. She is naked, they say—her round, sleek limbs graceful as whips, her bosoms like plump oranges, her lithe brown back glistening in the moonlight, only the gold double-hoops in her small ears clinking like fairy bells. On December nights, when it is very, very cold, this golden brown phantom rises from the narrow old staircase which leads from the attic to the roof. Around and around the edge of the roof it walks, swaying and bending against the icy wind, teetering around the perilous corners, shivering in chilled misery, wrapping its arms about itself for protection, struggling and stumbling, hour after hour, night after night. Then, 29 3O Ghost Stories of Old New Orleans when comes that still and awful hour just before the dawn, the brown woman bends lower and lower, her feet grow heavier and heavier. And finally she sinks slowly to the roof, a forlorn heap, desolate and beaten. Certain sane and callous watchers, talking glibly and planning sagely, have immediately climbed the winding mahogany stair and come out at the narrow door opening onto the roof. They have searched minutely with flashlights every inch of the silent old roof—and not a scrap of anything have they found. Yet the next night the lithe, naked brown woman has again taken up her walk round and round the roof, shaking and shuddering in the biting wind. Who was she? Why does she choose bleak December nights for her eerie promenade? The story is that the rich widower who lived in this house so long ago owned many slaves. To him they were merely property . They served him, did his bidding, made his great establishment possible. But there was one slave, Julie, whose nature ran to dreams. Romance filled her strangely blended soul. She was an octoroon —seven streams of white blood, one stream of black. But her spirit cleared the black barrier at a single leap. She fell in love with her master—passionately, hopelessly, without reason or reserve. The master accepted her gift, laughing because she was, after all, merely something he had purchased and which he could sell again when he wearied. He humored her because it suited his fancy to do so—set her at the head of his household, gave her a spacious and beautiful apartment adjoining his own, bought more slaves to wait upon her, loaded her with costly trinkets and clothed her in silks and velvets and delicate laces. Only, of course, when his friends came to call or to visit, Julie was shunted severely into oblivion. Not a glimmer of her must appear—not a breath of the heady perfume she so loved, nor a clink of the jewel encrusted ornaments with which she loved to deck herself. The doors to her chamber were locked and bolted, and the windows were barred and shuttered. Still, whispers began to drift around. Female cousins and sisters-inlaw can be intensely inconvenient in such circumstances. She is naked, they say— 32 Ghost Stories of Old New Orleans Then one day the bewitching octoroon faced the man she loved and demanded that he make her his wife. It had come to be her one thought, her overwhelming ambition. Why not his wife? Only one thin stream of Negro blood against seven that were white...