The Ghost of the Mary Celeste Page 4

  At this Hannah let out a strangled sob, pressing her forehead toward my uncle’s armpit, as if she thought to hide there.

  “Oh, no!” I gasped. It was a shock and seemed at once so sad and so final that I could scarce take it in. “But he was well, I thought. Wasn’t he?”

  My sister released my uncle and turned to me with an expression so stricken it hurt me to see it. “Darling,” I said, as I folded her into my arms. “I’m so sorry, so sorry.”

  Uncle stood silent as Hannah allowed herself to be comforted. Over her bowed head we cast each other looks of comprehension and relief. “I must go back to your aunt,” he explained. “She is heartbroken.”

  “Yes,” I said. “You should go back.” I turned to the house and Hannah loosened her grip, though she kept one arm around my waist.

  “Ask your father to come to us when he can,” my uncle called from the path.

  “I will,” I promised. Hannah balked when I turned her toward the house. “Dearest,” I said. “Come home now.” Her frantic eyes searched my face, then she nodded and yielded to my guidance.

  Dinah met us at the door. Behind her, the chorus of Father’s Latin students filled the air. Hiemem sensit Neptunus et imis, they proclaimed. “Lord,” Dinah whispered. “What has happened?”

  “Natie has passed away,” I said.

  “Oh, the poor babe,” she cried, then covered her mouth with her palm, as Father forbids raised voices when his study is doubling as a classroom. Graviter commotus, droned the scholars.

  Hannah was silent as I steered her toward the staircase, Dinah fretting along at my side. “As soon as Father has dismissed his students,” I instructed her, “tell him to go at once to my uncle’s house.”

  “Oh, I will,” she promised. “I surely will.”

  We were halfway up the stairs when the door of Father’s study was thrown open and we heard the shrieking of his half-savage students racing for the kitchen, where a tray of ginger biscuits was set out for them. I turned to watch over the rail. Strangely, Hannah didn’t appear to notice the uproar. When we entered her room, she released me and took a step toward her bed. Then she turned to me, raising her hands to press either side of her skull. “What have they done to him?” she asked.

  “He is there,” I said. “In his grandmother’s house.”

  “Is he sleeping?”

  I wasn’t sure how to answer. She appeared so distracted and nonsensical I feared the truth, which surely in some way she knew, must not be repeated. “You should rest now,” I said. “Sit on the bed and I’ll bring a basin to wash your feet.”

  She backed onto the edge of the bed and sat looking down at her feet, which were gray with dry, cracked mud. Dinah’s steps resounded in the hall; then she appeared in the doorway carrying a tray with a cup, saucer, and two biscuits on a plate. “I’ve saved these from the scholars,” she said pleasantly. “And I’ve brewed a nice cup of valerian tea. It will settle you.” Hannah, who usually resisted Dinah’s remedies, took the cup without comment and sipped it obediently. Dinah turned upon me a quizzical look.

  “We should wash her feet,” I said.

  A glance at the feet in question sent Dinah to the washstand. She removed the basin and filled it with water from the pitcher. Then she dropped the hand towel into it and set it on the floor by the bed. Hannah looked on distantly, unprotesting as Dinah swabbed each foot with the cloth.

  “Your father has gone,” Dinah said to me. Her tone was cautious. The extreme volatility of our patient was so obvious that the room felt like a tinderbox and one feared to strike a spark.

  “Thank you,” I said. She wrung the cloth out in the basin and went over Hannah’s feet a last time, leaving them clean and damp. “There you are,” she said. “Have you finished your tea?”

  Hannah took a last swallow, draining the cup and handing it back to Dinah. “It’s vile stuff,” she said.

  “That it is,” Dinah agreed. “But it will help you sleep.”

  Hannah glanced toward the window, where the curtain billowed in the warm breeze. “Why should I sleep?” she asked. “It’s daytime.”

  I crossed the room and pulled the shutter in, splintering the soft morning light into bright strips across the floor. “I’ll stay with her,” I said to Dinah.

  “Very well,” she said, taking up the basin. “I’ve work to do.” And she left us in the darkened room.

  Hannah drew her legs onto the bed and turned onto her side facing me. Her gaze was so unfocused I could only marvel at the efficacy of valerian. I lifted the coverlet, pulling it up to her waist as she rested her head on the pillow. “I don’t understand what Mother was trying to tell me,” she said.

  I took in a breath to keep from showing my alarm. “When?” I asked.

  “Last night,” she replied. “I woke up and she was in my room, by the window. Her back was to me, but I knew it was her.”

  “How did you know?” I said.

  “Oh, you know. Just the way she was standing. She was wearing her blue wool morning dress. I remember it so well. And I thought it odd, because it’s much too warm for a dress like that.”

  I knew exactly the dress she was speaking of; it was one of Mother’s favorites. She wore it with a pink scarf about her waist that last Christmas when we went to church.

  “I called out to her,” Hannah continued. “But she didn’t turn round. She said ‘Golden dreams,’ just the way she used to. It was her voice. Then she was gone, and I went back to sleep. But she must have come to tell me something.” Her eyes had closed as she spoke. She added a few words as darkness embraced her. “She wanted me to sleep, just like everybody else.”

  I stood by the bed looking down at her as her breath grew shallow and her lips parted softly. I brushed back a stray tendril of hair from her cheek. I think I have never been so perfectly miserable.

  Hannah was seven when Mother died, and I was thirteen. It was in the spring. Everything on earth was coming back to life, the trees disported themselves in fragrant flowers, buds pushed up sturdy green shoots through the damp soil, but my mother was wasting away. In the cemetery there were daffodils waving their gay heads in the air, and the day was bright. As her coffin was lowered into the grave, which was the only dark place in the world, or so it seemed to me, I hid my face in Father’s waistcoat. Hannah stood by my side, holding my hand. She didn’t turn away, she didn’t cry, as I did. She was too young to understand, and I knew that, but her stolidity irked me. As the brutal raps of the clods being shoveled onto the coffin assaulted the mourners, I turned to look at her. She raised her hand, and in a theatrical little voice with a slight catch of emotion in it, but not a sob, not a tear, she said, “Good night, Mama. Golden dreams.”

  Father is right, I thought. She’s not steady. This world is not enough for my sister, because her mother has gone from it.

  Natie’s funeral was a sad affair. Father arranged everything, including the coffin, which Lon Eadley stayed up late in his shop manufacturing. It was very small, of cherrywood and lined with light blue silk. Mother Briggs dressed her grandson in the embroidered loose blouse and skirt he wore on those occasions when he was well enough for church meeting. We gathered at Rose Cottage in the morning and followed the casket, which rested upon a bed of hay in a cart belonging to our parishioner Mr. Bedford and drawn by his old dray horse. Mother Briggs thought a hearse too big for such a tiny passenger. Mr. Bedford had a black band around his arm and he’d fastened two black bows to the horse’s halter, which struck me as both thoughtful and rather silly. Our group was only the family, at Mother Briggs’s request: Father, Hannah, the grandparents, Dinah, and myself. The grave was next to the marker that commemorates Natie’s drowned parents. Horace Beade, the gravedigger, stood with us, his hat in his hand, as Father read the service.

  All of us were anxious about Hannah, who stood at my side in her black dress and black veil, which she had drawn down to cover her face. She was too calm. There was something ominous about her solemn composure. Ev
en at the house, when she had looked down upon the dead child in his coffin, she had shown no emotion. Though I had not known the babe so well, the sight of his pallid innocence swaddled in linen and silk brought tears to my eyes. Mother Briggs stood at the head of the coffin as we each filed by. She was haggard, her lips compressed into a thin line, her eyes sunk deep in their sockets. When we had all bid farewell to the departed child, my uncle laid the lid upon the frame and drove in the nails, each stroke of the hammer resounding in the still air of the parlor. Hannah took my hand and held it, pressing tightly as each nail was driven home.

  It was a cool, damp day, overcast and gloomy. As Father led the prayers, a few drops sprinkled over the company. The drizzle increased and he concluded speedily. How much could be said of such a brief life? We turned and walked away stolidly, while Horace took up his shovel to fill the narrow grave. It wouldn’t take him long.

  At home, Dinah and Mother Briggs disappeared into the kitchen to prepare us a breakfast of biscuits, jam, and coffee. The gentlemen went off for a private confab in Uncle’s study, which left Hannah and me alone, sitting on the couch before the fire my uncle had laid in the morning and lit at once on our return from the mournful outing.

  I pulled off my gloves and pried my hat loose from the pins that held it in place. Hannah sat perfectly still, her hands folded in her lap.

  “You can take your veil off now,” I suggested as my hat came free of my hair.

  “No,” Hannah said softly. “I don’t want to.”

  “Why not, dearest?” I asked. “It’s not appropriate in the house.” She gave no answer. Dinah came in from the kitchen to call us to breakfast. Seeing Hannah motionless in her heavy veil, she cast me a questioning look, which I answered by lifting my eyebrows. “Will you come to breakfast?” I asked my sister.

  “Oh yes,” she said, rising from her chair. And so she sat at the kitchen table, pushing bits of bread under the veil and into her mouth while the rest of us pretended we didn’t notice.

  This morning in the post there was a letter for me from Captain Benjamin Briggs, passed into the mailbag at Messina. Why such excitement beneath my ribs? I carried it home, left the others on the hall table, and hurried up to my room to open it in secret.

  A letter, if I may call it that. It is a single page with a simple drawing of the artist standing in the prow of his ship, his face raised to a circlet of stars in the heavens above. At the bottom in an admirably neat hand is written SALLIE’S MUSIC GUIDES ME HOME.

  To think of him, in the night, amid the dark, pummeling waves, taking his position from distant stars, recalling our charming comparison, then, perhaps before sleep, pulling a sheet from his drawer, a pen from his holder, and sketching this delightful drawing, this dear message. After that, folding it, addressing the envelope, adding it to the stack destined for the mailbag. How this touches me!

  And how I shall treasure it, and also hide it away. Not to be shared.

  But how will I reply? I cannot draw.

  We passed this day at church and I here testify that Rev. Huntress’s sermons could bring sweet slumber to a herd of wild beasts. Hannah and I kept ourselves upright by frequent exchanges of pained glances, which became so intense that we had hard duty to keep from laughter. Father, who was sitting behind the speaker, did not fail to notice our amusement and sent a mighty frown our way. On the walk home we were privileged with a private sermon on the virtue of sobriety. Hannah listened, her lips pursed and her eyes narrowed, as if she were being offered distasteful medicine. She’s fine, I tell myself, she’s a little petulant sometimes, but she’s also affectionate and playful. She’s returned to ordinary life and she balks at the change, because it is so … ordinary.

  Stars, as they make their rounds

  Confound the world with stories

  Of archers, bears, and hounds,

  Of heroes and their glories.

  Why won’t they sing of homely cares,

  Of darning socks and shelling peas,

  Of she who sews and watches there

  For one who sails upon the seas?

  Well, it’s not wonderful and there is a false rhyme, but perhaps my cousin will see past my clumsiness to the true sentiment.

  And I’ll wager I spent more time on it than he did on his drawing.

  I made a fair copy of my poem and put it in an envelope, then walked to Rose Cottage to get an address from my aunt. She was in the yard passing linens through the wringer, and her expression when she saw me was not entirely one of delight. Father has told me that she suffers from pains in her joints, so I took that to be the source of the paucity of her greeting. “Is all well at your house?” she asked as I approached.

  “Very well,” I replied. “May I help you with your washing?”

  Her expression softened, but she refused my offer. “That’s kind of you,” she said. “But I’ve my own way of doing it and no one can suit me but myself.”

  An odd answer, I thought, also not a particularly gracious one. And why did she imagine I’d come with bad news?

  “And how is your poor sister?” she asked next.

  “She’s well. She misses Natie, I think.”

  “Why does she refuse to accept God’s will? It bodes ill for her.”

  “Oh,” I said. “I think she’ll come round to it soon enough.” My aunt is a puzzle to me. One can’t deny that she is a devoted, even a fierce, Christian, but her entire apprehension of God’s will is that it is inscrutable and must be submitted to without comment or question. Perhaps she’s right, but is it wrong for Hannah to miss the orphan she cared for? In what way does her sadness affect the God who has bereaved her? I can’t make any sense of it.

  “Whom the lord loveth, he chasteneth,” my aunt concluded.

  “Exactly,” I agreed, though I didn’t agree at all. “I’ve come to see if you have an address for a letter to Benjamin. He sent me such a kind note and I’d like to reply before he gets back.”

  She dropped her fresh-wrung sheet into the basket and brushed her hands together to dry them. Her sharp eyes swept over me so that I straightened my spine, but then she smiled and in a most amiable tone bid me follow her to the house. “He dotes on letters from home,” she observed as we entered the house. “I think if you go straight to Dr. Allen’s there should be time for it to get to Livorno. That’s his last stop before he turns for home.” She went to the kitchen cupboard and took out a page of printed addresses, then carefully copied out the one I required. I accepted it gratefully, wondering at her changeability. All her children love her, that I know, and surely that speaks well for her. “I’ll go at once,” I said, and I did. On the walk I wondered what she would think of the lines I was sending to her son. And what, after all, did I think of them? Would he have preferred a long, newsy screed about the family doings, the town gossip? I thought I should consign my silly poem to the rubbish; it would only make him think the less of me. But in the end, I arrived at Dr. Allen’s office, where he tends to the sick and the mail, copied the address onto the envelope, and consigned it to the whims of the postal service. I consoled myself with the notion that it might reach its destination too late.

  This morning a dreary young man appeared at the door and announced that he had come to see the Reverend Leander Cobb. When I asked if he was expected, he said he should be, but probably was not. His name was Richard Peebles and he had spoken with Father after his sermon in Wareham last Sunday. Father goes over there every few weeks; he and Rev. Huntress exchange congregations so as not, Father says, to become “stale.” I informed Mr. P. that I would alert the Reverend to his presence and invited him to wait in the parlor.

  With reluctance, I tapped at Father’s door. He dislikes being disturbed when he is working on his sermons, but I saw no alternative. “Come in,” he barked, and I stepped inside, closing the door behind me.

  “What is it, Sallie?” he asked, laying down his pen.

  “A Mr. Peebles is here to see you.”

  “Mr. who?” />
  “Peebles. He said he spoke to you after service in Wareham.”

  “Peebles,” he repeated, scanning his brain for a recollection.

  “Short, stocky, thick yellow beard, dressed all in gray, a very odd hat, like a basin, yellow hair protruding at sides.”

  Father nodded at each detail, checking it against a mental list. At the hat, he sighed. “Oh merciful heavens,” he said. “Mr. Peebles.”

  “Shall I show him in, or will you join him in the parlor?”

  “He knows I’m at home?”

  “I’m sorry, Father. I didn’t think …”

  “To lie, Sallie. Well, that’s as it should be. And it’s base of me to want to avoid Mr. Peebles, but he’s one of a company I truly believe to be comprised entirely of charlatans and fools.”

  “Is he a lawyer?”

  Father laughed. “Worse, much worse. He goes about writing on slates and he tells his poor victims the messages are from their dead relatives.”

  “He’s a medium.”

  “Why did they choose that word? It irritates me.”

  “What shall I tell him?”

  “Hannah’s not in the house, is she?”

  “She’s at the Academy.”

  “Good. I’ll have him out of here before she returns. She has enough nonsense in her head.”

  “Why does he want to see you?” I asked.

  “I foolishly gave a sermon on Ezekiel over there. I didn’t know it, but it’s one of their sacred texts. Mr. Peebles accosted me afterward and I was polite; I was mollifying. I didn’t tell him I think his view is a sacrilege, but now it looks as though he’s going to push me to it.”

  “What can we do?”

  “Nothing. I’m trapped. There’s no way out of it. Send the fellow to me.”

  I found Mr. Peebles inspecting the bookshelf, his hands clasped behind his back, his head tilted at an odd angle to take in the title on the spine before him.

  “Mr. Peebles,” I said softly. He turned upon me with an expression of alarmed inquiry.