The Ghost of the Mary Celeste

THE GREEN BOOK

My sister has dreams she thinks are visions. In the dead of night she sees our cousin Maria wandering and wailing outside her bedroom window. Her hair and skirts are dripping seawater, and she cries out, “Help me, help me. I’ve come home. I’m cold, I’m hungry.”

“She wants to come inside,” Hannah told me.

“She’s with God,” I said. “Why would she want to be here?”

“She wants Natie,” she replied. “She’s come back for her little son.”

Little he is and not well. His mother may have him soon enough. He has hardly grown these eight months. His skin is like milk, and his dark eyes set in dark circles, his downturned mouth, his fits of sobbing, as if he knows his parents drowned and he was left among the bereaved; all these trouble our hearts. His grandmother is stalwart. In her view God knows what must be and what must not be and it is ours to bear it with faith in His wisdom. But she must be suffering, for Maria was her only daughter and dear to her. No one could make my aunt laugh like Maria.

Maria was named for my aunt’s sister, who died in childbirth and so did the child, leaving my uncle, Captain Nathan, a widower, first to mourn his loss with his sister-in-law and then to marry her. When their daughter was born there was no question that she would be named for the wife and sister whose untimely death had brought them together. Now of their six children they have lost two, both at sea. The first, Nathan, named for his father, was taken by fever on a brig off the coast of Galveston, his body committed to the Gulf of Mexico; the second, Maria, was swept overboard with her husband, Captain Joseph Gibbs, when their vessel was struck by a steamer as they sailed out from Cape Fear. That was eight months ago.

Our families, the Cobbs and the Briggs, are intimately, even intricately, connected. For a time, when Captain Nathan’s shore business failed, my aunt and her children lived in our house while he went back to sea to recover his fortune. My mother was fond of her sister-in-law and it was her idea that we should pull together as a tribe. Those were happy times; with two mothers and so many children in the rectory we slept three to a bed. Briggs children called my mother Mother Cobb and Cobb children called the Briggs mother Mother Briggs. Hannah hardly remembers those days. She was just a toddler when Captain Nathan, having recovered his losses, built their big house, with its piazza and terrace, and the trellises of roses so lush and fragrant all summer long that it came to be called Rose Cottage.

When our mother died, Hannah formed an attachment to Maria Briggs, who returned her affection with great kindness. Since Maria’s death, Hannah has devoted herself to the orphaned babe, which activity both my father and Mother Briggs encouraged, as they thought it would be a comfort to Hannah, and so she spends several nights a week at Rose Cottage, helping Mother Briggs and sleeping in the poor orphan’s room at night. But Hannah takes the baby’s frailty for a judgment against her caregiving. His fretfulness keeps her from both sleep and reason.

My uncle has written to the constables in all the shore towns where the remains of his daughter and her husband might have washed up, but to no avail. They have been swallowed by the sea. If we could lay them to rest, with a service and a stone, Hannah might recover her good sense, but as it is, she’s convinced herself their souls are yet adrift.

This morning Hannah had a conversation with Father in his study, which left them both tight-lipped and grim. I was working on the sleeves of a dress when she came into the parlor and threw herself down on the sofa in a huff.

“That didn’t go well, I take it,” I said.

“He doesn’t believe a word I say,” she replied.

I ran the needle round the curve of the cuff, raised the pressure foot, and cut the thread. “Well, how could he, dear?” I asked. “He’s committed to believing otherwise.”

“I don’t see why. Jesus raised the dead.”

“Oh my. Did you tell Father that?”

“I did.”

“What did he say?”

“He said Jesus did it only once and anyway I’m not Jesus.”

“Those are good points,” I observed.

“No, they’re not. What Jesus did just proves the dead can return. He didn’t have to do it more than once to make the case. And I’m not trying to raise the dead. That’s the furthest thing from my mind.”

“Surely you understand why such talk is disturbing to him.”

“I can’t help that. I can’t pretend I don’t know what I know or see what I see.”

I studied her a moment, considering her argument and her character. She’s always had a dreamy side. As a child she talked to trees and made up stories. She wrote sweet poems about the dew being dropped from the drinking cups of fairies, or enchanted woods where elves had tea parties using mushrooms for tables. It was charming, my sister the fabulist, and I encouraged her in her fantasies because she worked them out so prettily and it gave her such pleasure. She struck me as fairylike herself, with her dark hair and light eyes, her slender limbs, the liveliness of her step, as if she could scarce bear to touch the ground. She is of a capricious temperament, and now this loss of our dear cousin has lifted a latch that was never tightly fastened and a dark wind has swept in, carrying all before it.

She sat up on the sofa, resting her elbows on her knees, her forehead on her hands, the picture of despondency. “Do you believe me, Sallie?” she said.

“What does it matter?” I asked.

She lifted her face from her hands and fixed me with a look of puzzlement.

“Supposing it is true,” I said. “What does it matter who believes you? What can anyone do about it?”

“You mean I should just give Natie up to her?”

This response made me impatient. “You knew Maria, dearest,” I said. “Who knew her better? Was she ever cruel? Did she ever hurt anyone?”

“She was lively and clever,” Hannah said at once. “And she was fearless. She wasn’t afraid of anything.”

“Then who is this woman you see weeping and complaining? How can that be Maria?”

As I spoke I had a clear image of Maria in my mind. She was on the lawn at Rose Cottage, whispering some drollery into her young husband’s ear, her arm linked through his, leaning into him, raised up on her toes, for he was several inches taller than she was. And then the light in which memory bathed this moment of sweet intimacy went out, and I saw that my sister was sweeping tears from her eyes with her fingertips. I held out my arms to her and she lurched across the floor, collapsing at my feet. “I miss her so,” she sobbed, clutching my waist, hiding her face in my skirt. I stroked her hair back from her throbbing temples, muttering soothing words, letting her have what she has sorely needed these long, lonely months: a good cry. “It’s all right,” I said. But even as I spoke, I felt a stab of fear that nothing would be all right for my poor sister anytime soon.

After Hannah returned to Rose Cottage, Father emerged from his study, his eyes darting about the room nervously, as if in expectation of a swarm of insects.

“She’s gone,” I said. I’d finished the sleeves and was kneeling over the pattern on the floor, cutting out the bodice.

He approached and took the chair at my sewing machine. “Advise me, Sarah,” he said. “I’m at a loss with all this spookism your sister has manufactured.” I had pins in my mouth and when I sat up, Father laughed. “What a dangerous enterprise sewing is,” he observed. “Aren’t you afraid you might swallow one of those?”

I removed the pins solemnly, planting them in the cushion. “I need another hand,” I said.

“So you do,” he agreed. “But you’ve looked to yourself and utilized what you do have, which is the mark of a resourceful and industrious nature.”

I smiled. Industry is Father’s cardinal virtue. His name could be the Reverend Industry Cobb. It would suit him well.

“If only your sister had your temperament,” he concluded.

“She’s grieving,” I said. “She’s young. She’s only thirteen. And she worshipped Maria.”

“You think she’ll get over this maudlin fantasy, that time will cure her?”

“I don’t know that, but I hope it will.”

“She’s not steady,” Father said.

“She says you don’t believe a word she says.”

“Nor do I,” he confirmed. “Do you?”

“I believe she believes she has seen Maria.”

“I could insist that she stay home,” he suggested.

“And leave Natie? She would pine for him.”

Father clutched his beard, considering my argument. “It’s this insalubrious craze for talking to spirits: it’s loose in the world. The next thing we know old Abigal Spicer over in Mattapoisett will set herself up as a table-knocker.”

“Abigal does talk to people who aren’t there,” I agreed.

Father gazed at me, bemused by the world and its ways. “So your view is that I should do nothing.”

“If Natie thrives, life will bring Hannah back to life.”

“And if he perishes?”

“Then she will always believe Maria has taken him, and she will come home.”

Father nodded. “Women’s counsel is always patience.”

“We could wish more men would take it,” I said, turning back to my pattern.

Father rose from his chair and went out, his mind more at ease, but mine was less settled. I was thinking about ghosts. Who doesn’t whisper a confidence at the grave of the beloved when the wind rustles the trees and lifts the petals of the roses planted there? What draws the bereaved to seek the departed still in this world? Is it hope, I wondered, or is it fear?

A sunny day. I went to Rose Cottage to visit my sister and to my delight, both Olie and Benjamin were at home. Even Hannah’s spirits were lifted by the presence of our cousins, who could not be more different from each other, yet there is a strong bond between them. Olie is witty, full of jokes and fun, fond of music and singing, while Benjamin is a serious young man, though not unsmiling, and grown strong and handsome this past year when he has been largely at sea. His light blue eyes are like beacons, and when I feel them seeking mine, I’m as flustered as a chicken before a fox. He has command of the Forest King and Olie has the Wanderer; both are bound next week in different directions, Benjamin to Sicily and Olie to Peru. They regaled us with sea stories, to which my uncle Nathan added the coda from his own vast experience. Hannah came in with Natie draped over her shoulder. When he began his habitual fussing, Olie coaxed her to let him try his hand at consoling his nephew. To my surprise she passed the boy to him. He paced back and forth the length of the parlor, holding the child across his arm with his legs dangling and kicking. In a few moments the sobbing turned to burbling, and then Natie fell quiet, no doubt awed by the wonder of being transported in such a powerful embrace. I poured a cup of tea for my exhausted sister and handed it to her without comment. She sat taking small sips, her eyes never leaving Olie’s progress from one door to the other. Benjamin looked on, his fingertips resting on his lips, from Hannah to Olie and back again. I couldn’t tell what he was thinking, but oh, I’d like to know.

Today again to Rose Cottage. My uncle has been suffering with a spring cold but, now recovered, declared he wants to dine in a crowd, so we were off at his request to supply the numbers. I spent the morning baking rolls, and made two pies, one custard, which is Olie’s favorite, and one jam, which is Benjamin’s.

Dinah made a potato gallette from a recipe Mrs. Butter brought back from Havre. We packed two baskets, I tucked a few sheets of music into a pasteboard tube, and off we went, feeling we would make ourselves welcome, as indeed we were. Olie met us at the gate with his usual good cheer and at once had my father laughing about a certain lady who described his recent sermon as “a powerful oration,” that made her soul “leap up in terror.”

“I know the lady,” Father said. “She quivers, she grows pale: tears fill her eyes. And all I’ve said is ‘love thy neighbor.’ ”

“But you recommend it so vehemently,” I said, which made us all laugh.

Inside we found my uncle eager to drag Father upstairs for a consultation on the piazza, which Captain Nathan calls the quarterdeck. Olie, having passed our baskets to Dinah, who set off down the stairs to the kitchen, hauled me to the piano, demanding a song. Benjamin was lounging on a chaise near the fire, though it was a fair day. “Ladies love a fire, in my experience,” he said. Hannah proved his theory, bundled up in a wool shawl with Natie drowsing in her lap, her gaze fixed on the flames as if she saw an entertainment there.

“We should all be walking,” I protested. “It’s the finest day imaginable.”

“We’ll walk after dinner,” Olie agreed. “But first a song. Have you anything new?”

I had recourse to my roll. “It’s new to me,” I said, “and very lovely. It’s a duet. We each take a solo verse, then join on the third.”

Olie drew up behind me as I placed the sheets on the music rack. “See how beneath the moonbeam’s smile,” he read. I played the melody while we recited the words, “Yon little billow heaves its breast, and foams and sparkles for a while, then murmuring subsides to rest.” Then the refrain, “Thus man, the sport of bliss and care, rises on Time’s eventful sea, and having swell’d a moment there, thus melts into eternity.”

“It’s not very cheerful, is it?” observed Benjamin.

“But the melody is light and charming, that’s what makes it interesting,” I said. I played the introductory chords and Olie came in, singing confidently. At the duet our voices skirted each other, like waves dancing on the sea.

But our harmonizing didn’t suit Olie’s petulant nephew, who set up a caterwaul that couldn’t be ignored. We finished the refrain and I played a final chord; then all eyes were upon the suffering child. Hannah jollied him, laying him over her shoulder, patting his back, and murmuring sweet reassurances.

“Do let’s take him outside,” I suggested. “The fresh air will be the best thing for him.”

Benjamin raised his long self from the chaise and held out his arms. “Clearly he’s not a music lover,” Olie said.

“It’s your singing he can’t stand,” Benjamin suggested. He’d taken the baby from Hannah and lifted him high over his head, gazing coolly into his red and apoplectic face. “Isn’t that right?” he asked the child.

Natie’s eyes grew wide and his crying stopped abruptly, as if in answer to his uncle’s question. Hannah got up from her chair, following Natie, who now issued a sound more like a chortle than a cry. “He wants to sing too,” she said, and to my surprise and delight, a smile lifted the corners of her mouth and her eyes were soft rather than grim with anxiety. We set off in a troop through the entry and out the door into the golden day, Benjamin and Natie leading the way. I caught up with my sister as we crossed the lawn, slipping my arm around her waist. “Darling,” I said. “It does my heart good to see you smile.”

She leaned her head upon my shoulder, gazing at our cousins, whose long strides took them quickly out of earshot. “He is so dear,” she said.

“Which one?” I asked, thinking she meant Natie.

“Benjamin.” She sighed.

All night there was rain and thunder and lightning, so that I think no one in this house slept a wink. In the morning, after breakfast, I stepped out to inspect the house for damage. A gutter was loose over the kitchen, otherwise all was intact. The air was fresh-washed, cool and delicious. As I turned back to the walk, I saw my sister coming along the road, her face hidden in the folds of her cloak. In the past weeks Natie’s health has improved, and he has managed a few feeble smiles, sleeps more than two hours without a cry, holds down the pabulum Mother Briggs prepares for him, and excretes a substance thicker than water. All agree the credit goes to Hannah, and she appears less absorbed in the gloom of the sickroom.

So I expected better cheer from my sister as I approached the gate to greet her, but when she pressed her chilly hand upon mine and raised her face beneath the hood to apply a cold, dry kiss to my cheek, I sensed a gloom so intense and intractable that my heart sank in my breast.

“Oh, Sallie,” she whispered. “I’m so frightened.”

I passed my arm about her waist and drew her into the yard, latching the gate with my free hand. “On such a day as this,” I chided her, “what is there to fear?”

She sent me an uncomprehending glance, pulling her head back beneath the hood. “Come inside,” I urged, guiding her up the walk. “There’s a fire in the kitchen. You’ve taken a chill, that’s all. I’ll make us a pot of tea and you can tell me what is the matter.”

“Where is Father?” she asked, pausing at the sill.

I made no reply. Together we turned in to the kitchen, which was empty, as Dinah had gone out to the market. “Natie is doing well?” I asked, releasing her. She sank down in a chair at the table, pushing back her hood at last. Her hair was loose, and her cheeks flushed. “He wants to stay with me, but Maria won’t let him.”

My patience was much tried at this remark. “Maria is gone,” I said, but not unkindly. “She’s in heaven.”

“We don’t know where she is, do we?” she replied.

I turned away, took up the kettle, and set it on the hob. This was not a conversation I wanted to enter. “You make it hard on us all with this ghoulish fantasy,” I said. “Mother Briggs has lost two of her children, yet she doesn’t give herself over to useless fancy. She accepts her loss; it is God’s will.”

“Last night I woke up and she was in the room, standing over the crib.”

“You were dreaming,” I protested.

The kettle shrieked and she was still, her head bowed, while I filled the pot and set it on the table between us. Then she gave me a long, searching look, so penetrating I couldn’t meet it, and busied myself with the cups and spoons. “I woke up,” she said, “because I could smell seawater. Her clothes were dripping.”

“And did she speak to you?” I inquired, without looking up from the tea streaming into the cup.

“No. But she knew I was watching her. Then she went to the window and disappeared. When I got up, the carpet was wet.” She spoke calmly, delivering her final assertion with the confidence of a lawyer charging a jury after an irresistible summation.

I lightened my tea with a splash of milk from the pitcher. “The carpet was wet,” I said.

“Yes.”

“Did you taste it? Was it salty?”

Her brow furrowed. “I didn’t think of that,” she said.

Cheerfully I record the exchange I had with Benjamin this afternoon at Rose Cottage. I’d gone over to have tea with Hannah, but it was too windy to sit outdoors as we planned, so we brought the tray to the parlor. Olie has gone down to his ship in New York and Benjamin will be leaving for his voyage on the weekend. We talked about his vessel, the Forest King, which he has commanded for ten months, and the cargo, timber, and brass fittings. He described the crew, in which he is not entirely confident. Natie sat on the floor with some blocks his grandfather made for him. He was sniffling with a cold, but he played in a desultory way, putting one atop the other. He is stronger now, but he tires quickly. When we’d finished our tea and demolished the plate of cakes I’d brought, Benjamin asked me if I would play a song he particularly likes, a sweet nostalgic air called “In the Starlight.”

“Gladly,” I said, “if you will sing with me.”

“That’s Olie’s line,” he said. “He’s the nightingale in our family, and I am the crow.”

“I think you have a very nice voice,” Hannah said.

“You’ve a fine baritone,” I agreed. “You don’t sing off-key, so there’s no need for this false modesty.”

“Well,” he said, rising from his chair to follow me to the instrument. “Since you encourage me, I’ll essay it.” At the piano, I riffled the sheet music until I found the desired piece. I’ve played it many times, but I’ve a poor memory and the arrangement is pleasantly complicated. I launched into the opening while Benjamin looked on, waiting for me to start the lyric before chiming in. Though he has a very good ear, he can’t read music, which accounts for his shyness in taking part. He can’t sing harmony either. We bellowed out the melody, our voices rising at the refrain: “In the starlight, let us wander gay and free.” I detected Hannah’s thin voice behind me joining in at the last, and I glanced up to see Benjamin with his hands raised, chopping time in the air like a conductor, encouraging her on.

When the song was done, I dropped my hands to my lap. That sweet moment of silence that still carries the notes, though the musician has ceased to play, fell upon us. Hannah said, “That’s a lovely tune.”

Benjamin turned, smiling at me. “It’s a mystery to me how you can just sit down and play like that.”

“And it’s a mystery to me,” I said, “how you can sail a ship to a place you’ve never seen.”

“Well,” he said, pondering his answer. “I read the stars.”

“And I read the notes,” I countered. He leaned over me, examining the sheet music. “They are arranged in patterns,” he observed. “Like constellations.”

I raised my hand and glided my forefinger along the staff. “These are my stars. They guide me through tempestuous seas of discord.”

I looked up at him and for an exhilarating moment our eyes met. “And bring you safely home,” he concluded.

What a delightful comparison! That the notes on the staff, arranged in familiar combinations, guide my fingers and my voice to sweet harmonies, just as the stars in the heavens guide my dear cousin through all manner of tempests and gales to distant shores and back again.

I return to this account of my doings after weeks in which little of import has occurred. Our captains have sailed and our circle is thereby diminished. I divide my time between house cares here and visits to Rose Cottage, where my sister and her infant charge occupy a focus of familial interest. Natie hasn’t thrived, but he isn’t ill, only occasionally fretful. He can walk, though he is not adept. Now and then he sets himself the task of walking across the carpet to the divan, but he usually falls at least twice before reaching his goal. He doesn’t give in to anger, but, with patience and fortitude, pulls himself up and tries again. In this way he can pass an hour without complaint.

Hannah is no longer tormented by nocturnal visions, which is a great relief to all who care for her. But yesterday, when we had spread a blanket on the lawn and were lounging there in the warm air with Natie dozing, thumb in mouth, between us, to my dismay she brought up the subject of spirit communication. She has read an article about a Boston lady who is believed to have the power to communicate with what Hannah called “the other side.”

“Oh, Lord,” I said, scoffing. “The other side of what?”

“Of what we ordinarily see,” she replied.

“And where is this place we can’t see?”

“It’s not another place, I think,” she explained seriously. “It’s here, right here.” And she gestured with open hands, taking in the yard, the little copse of birches, the path to the garden gate. “They come and go, as we do, among us.”

“And what are they? Fairies?”

“Not fairies. Spirits. The spirits of the departed.”

“All the departed? The other side must be awfully crowded.”

She frowned at my levity. “It’s unkind of you to mock me,” she said.

“I’m not mocking you. I’m only applying practical consideration to the question of whether or not there are ghosts in this world. It’s not a new question, as I’m sure you know.”

“I don’t like that word ‘ghosts.’ ”

“No? Spirits then. Here’s my view, darling. If the departed are gone from us in flesh and blood but somehow not gone, somehow still available for consultation …”

“And consolation,” she added.

This vexed me. “Hannah,” I urged her. “If the dead see us and care for us and hang about in the air longing to reach us, how can their eternal homelessness be a consolation to us or to them?”

She raised her eyes to mine with a glittering fixity I found unnerving. “It is if we let them reach us. That’s what’s been discovered. We shun them, our religion bids us to shun them, but we needn’t. If we are open to them, they have much to tell us.”

I looked away from her earnest entreaty to the baby, who had rolled onto his side, gurgling in his sleep. Hannah’s eyes followed mine and this vision of sleeping innocence softened her aspect. I was thinking that she believed the spirit of his dead mother wanted to steal him away from us. “So, have you talked Maria out of taking him?” I asked.

To my surprise she took my question seriously. “I think she just wanted to know that he’s safe. That he’s loved.”

“So she went away?”

“I think she’s still watching over him. Perhaps she always will.” Hannah stretched out her hand to caress Natie’s pallid cheek. “I hope so,” she concluded.

The boy opened his eyes, wondering at first, but in a moment his mouth puckered and his forehead creased. He drew in a long breath, held it a split second, and released it in an ear-shattering wail.

How dreadful and sad. I can hardly believe it is true. Last night, when all were sleeping, without so much as a cry, Maria’s orphaned son, Natie Gibbs, passed away.

It was Hannah, of course, who found the dead child, no sooner had she waked. In her half-conscious state she couldn’t believe what was evident. She took up the little corpse and rushed out to the landing calling for help. My uncle came first. Seeing at once the true state of things, he relieved her of her burden, instructing her to run to Dr. Martin’s house, which is a mile down the road. She rushed out in her nightgown and ran the distance without a pause, arriving disheveled, breathless, and babbling. The doctor’s wife wrapped her in a blanket and sat with her on the sofa while the doctor saddled his horse and rode off to Rose Cottage. When he arrived, my uncle told him the unhappy truth, that Natie, who had never shown much affection for this world, had gone off in his sleep to the next. Mother Briggs, our stalwart Mother Briggs, was so afflicted by the death of her grandson that the doctor administered some sedative drops and sent her to bed.

My uncle, leaving his wife in the doctor’s care, set off to retrieve Hannah. He met her halfway, trudging toward him, head down, wrapped in a light cloak the doctor’s wife had insisted she wear, her bare feet brown from the dirt on the road. When he called to her, she raised her eyes, which were red from weeping, and seeing the distress and sympathy in his demeanor, she stretched out her arms, quickened her step, and collapsed in his embrace. “He is gone,” she said, and again, “he is gone.”

“Yes,” my uncle said, relieved that she was so sensible. “I’ve come to take you home.”

I was hanging clothes on the line in the side yard. As I lifted a wadded skirt, I spied my uncle and my sister approaching. He had his arm round her shoulders and she rested her head against his chest, her feet moving without her attention, like an automaton. I didn’t guess what had happened, but the vision the two presented, the barefoot girl in her cloak and nightdress guided with a steady and patient hand by the elderly captain, was deeply melancholic. I dropped the skirt into the basket and hustled through the yard to the path. I heard my uncle say, “Look, here’s your sister,” and Hannah’s head came up, but, though I hurried to her, she didn’t step away from my uncle; in fact, she turned her face to his shirtfront and closed her eyes.

“What is it?” I asked my uncle.

“Natie has passed away,” he said solemnly.

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. Even 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.

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.

“My father will see you in his study.”

“Really?” he said. “Not here in this charming room?”

“I’ll show you the way,” I said, stepping back into the hall. He came toward me with an odd creeping step, as if he didn’t want to make a sound, his eyes fixed on his feet. Poor Father, I thought, as I led Mr. Peebles down the hall. He came up close behind me and abruptly pushed out a puff of air from his nostrils, which so startled me, I stopped and looked back. He had brought his hands to cover his face and stood with hunched shoulders, humming through his fingers.

“Mr. Peebles,” I said. “Are you unwell?”

“I’m so sorry,” he replied, his face still hidden behind his hands. “I’m so sorry for you.”

This unnerved me. “I fear it’s not a good time for you to visit my father, Sir. You are not well.”

The hands came away from his tear-filled eyes. “Forgive me,” he said. “I had a premonition concerning you and it overwhelmed me.”

“A premonition of what?” I asked.

“Of loss. Of great loss.” He dabbed his eyes with a handkerchief drawn from his coat pocket and squared his narrow shoulders, coaxing a sad smile to his narrow lips. “Forgive me,” he said again.

Fueled by revulsion, I stepped away from him and rapped sharply on Father’s door.

“Yes, come in, Mr. Peebles,” Father called. Without a word, I ushered his visitor through the door and closed it upon him.

A premonition of great loss! That sounds a fairly safe prediction in this vale of tears.

Mr. Peebles’s visit has not had a good effect on Father. He has it in his head to preach against the spiritualist doctrine, which has turned the heads of too many good Christians, but as no one in our congregation espouses these views, there’s no point in such a sermon here. It might only alert his audience to the possibility of deviance from the straight path, which, Father points out, is not in the mission of the good shepherd. “Point the way!” is Father’s abstract of pastoral duty.

After Mr. Peebles left us, Father observed, “Ignoring such people is the best plan. I won’t speak to another of that persuasion. If they can’t get the sanction they seek from any Christian church, perhaps it will dawn on them that these messages they’re receiving are coming from the devil.”

“Is that what he wants? Your sanction?”

“He wants me to test his wife. She’s a mighty clairvoyant and he wants a confirmed skeptic to sit down with her in one of her unholy séances and attempt to prove she’s a fraud.”

“Where does she hold these meetings?”

“In their home, in New Bedford. He proposes to send a carriage to take me there and back.”

“I wonder why he’s chosen you. Surely there are skeptics at closer range.”

“It’s because he heard my sermon, and because he knows we’ve lost your mother. They prey on the bereaved. I hold that very strongly against them.”

So this Mr. Peebles has promised Father that his wife can put him in touch with my mother. Then he will hear her voice, possibly see her spirit clad in something diaphanous, or at least see her hand scratching out a message to him on a slate. And what might my mother have to say?

I think I know. “Leander, this is disgraceful. Go home at once!”

Our cousins have returned from their sea adventures, one after the other. Olie arrived by train from New York on Wednesday and Benjamin on the omnibus three days later. Mother Briggs sent a message that her plum trees are heavy with fruit and we are invited to harvest tomorrow morning. How fortunate that our captains have returned in time. This yearly harvest is a ritual; we’ve come together for it since we were children. We harvest one day and spend the next putting up the jam, of which there is always such a surplus that both our houses have a good supply for winter and there are enough small jars to tuck into the church Christmas baskets for the poor. When we were children, we were more numerous. Mother and Maria and Nathan, all passed away now, and my brother William, who is away at school in Philadelphia, as is our young cousin James. As children Benjamin and I always shared a basket and picked side by side, Benjamin scrambling up the tree to get the plums too high to reach. The family teased us, calling us plum sweethearts. Their teasing made me shy, but Benjamin never protested. It’s been four years since both brothers have been home for this harvest. So tomorrow I will pick plums with my “plum sweetheart,” and he will tell me what he thinks of my silly poem.

Benjamin has grown a beard! It makes him look serious, but the smile in his eyes as we approached Rose Cottage gave the lie to that impression. He stood in the open door as we made our way along the path and greeted Father with a warm handshake, Hannah with a soft kiss on the cheek. “Come in, come in,” he encouraged us. When my turn came I was surprised at the emotion I felt as he brushed his lips across my cheek and said, “Sallie, at last. Thanks for your message.”

“I feared I’d sent it too late.”

“No,” he said. “It was there at Livorno and it cheered me so much. But it was too late to write a reply. I had plenty of time for that on the trip home. I brought it with me. I’ll give it to you later.”

Of course I thought of nothing else the entire day. When we all set out to the plum orchard, Benjamin brought me an empty basket and Olie — who is frightfully thin, as his voyage was fraught with difficulty — paired up with Hannah, who looked cheerful for a change.

“Tell me about your voyage?” I said as we walked along.

“It was smooth enough,” he said. “There was only one incident of note. One of the mates had been on shore drinking his pay for far too long. He was sober when we sailed and he knew it was a dry ship. About three days out, he went raving mad.”

“Good Heavens,” I said. “What did he do?”

“He had the idea that he was being eaten by insects. He ran up and down the deck screaming, ‘Captain, save me! Captain, save me!’ and then, somehow, he got into the rigging, yelling that he was going to jump into the sea. I’ve never seen anything like it.”

“What did you do?”

“I had him hauled down and tied to his bunk. He screamed through the night, all sorts of profanity, and he shook so much his bunk rattled until morning. I had the steward bring him a pot of hot coffee and when I went in to see him, he was blubbering like a baby, begging me not to report him. I told him if he could do his work without trouble to me for the duration, that would be the end of it as far as I was concerned. And so he did, and a very grateful and subdued fellow he was. When I gave him his pay in New York, I said, ‘Now you see what drinking can do for a man, and I hope you will never touch another drop.’

“ ‘Nor will I, Captain,’ he promised, but of course, as I was leaving, I saw him ducking into the alehouse with his fellows, out to lose their pay and their wits in one bout.”

Of the evils of drink, Benjamin is much acquainted. His uncle Daniel has been a dissolute all his life, to the great sadness of his brother, Captain Nathan. Now and then Daniel tries to straighten up, and his brother is ever ready there to encourage him, but it always comes to naught. Though Benjamin is young to be a captain, he has been to sea since he was sixteen, so he has a vast store of experience upon which to draw, and like his father he allows no alcohol on his ship. There are sailors who find this proviso reason enough to stay away.

As he finished his story, we arrived at the orchard with the others and talked no more of travel. The trees were dripping heavy, dark fruit, and the morning passed quickly with the work. We had our lunch of bread, ham, and cheese at the outdoor table under the big maple in the side yard. Mother Briggs urged Olie to eat more, and he spoke of his adventure. His ship sprang a leak a week out and they pumped it for a fortnight, partly in foul weather that came up so fierce and so sudden, and the sailors so occupied with pumping, that the mainsail split before they could get it down. They limped into the Gulf of Mexico and got a tow to New Orleans, where the ship was pulled up for repairs. They spent ten days in port and every one was money lost. There was yellow fever in the city, so they stayed at the port and ate only the food they had in their ship provisions for fear of catching the disease. The rest of the journey was rough, a hurricane nearly capsized them and in the frenzy two sailors were lost overboard. “I always hate to write those letters,” Olie said. “One was married just a month before we sailed.”

Hannah, who had been listening closely with her eyes lowered, said softly, “And the two sailors were lost on June sixth.”

Olie gazed at her — we all did — with surprise; then he calculated dates in his head and replied, “Yes, it was. How did you know?”

Hannah blinked rapidly and touched her brow with her fingertips. “I’m not sure.”

“How strange,” Father said, “that you should know the day.”

“It came to me as you were speaking,” Hannah said to Olie.

I glanced at Benjamin, who gazed upon my sister with an expression of profound sympathy.

“I guess it was somewhere in my head and you read it there,” Olie said, patting her hand with his fingertips.

Hannah nodded, shy now that she had everyone’s attention.

Mother Briggs busied herself pulling in empty plates. “It’s a coincidence,” she said, and the matter of my clairvoyant sister was thus closed. But I was thinking Hannah’s premonition worked in reverse, it was a postmonition; she was mysteriously informed about an event already concluded. It was odd that she would announce the correct date, though perhaps it was not so difficult to figure, as she knew the date Olie sailed, the approximate time to New Orleans, the number of days there, etc., so she could, with a little calculation, arrive at a fairly accurate guess. She may have been counting the days of the trip from the start, mentally assigning dates to the chronology of Olie’s story. It probably wasn’t clairvoyance, just plain addition. But if this was so, why did she claim to have no idea how she arrived at the correct date?

We rose from the table and set out to the field to finish our labors. Just as Benjamin and I arrived at our overflowing baskets, he slipped his hand into his jacket pocket and produced a much-folded envelope. “Here’s my reply,” he said. “Read it when you get home. Let me know what you think of it tomorrow.”

I took the envelope and unfolded it, my hand trembling with curiosity. He had written SALLIE across the front in his bold script. “I will,” I said, depositing it in my apron pocket. Benjamin turned his attention to our baskets. “We’ll take this one first,” he said. Each of us took a handle and lifted the basket between us; then we began our descent to the house.

I’ve read it a hundred times. My cousin wants to take me away! And oh, how willingly I would go.

I woke this morning with a smile on my face, knowing we would soon be off to Rose Cottage for jam making and there I would see my cousin and tell him what I think of his invitation. Well, not exactly an invitation; his plan is to “steal” me.

He wasn’t at home when we arrived, but in the afternoon, when the whole house smelled of cooking fruit, he appeared at the kitchen door and looked in at us, highly amused. “Just as I suspected,” he said. “Ladies in a jam.”

I was putting wax seals on a squadron of jars; Hannah was pitting yet another battalion of plums at the table. Benjamin ducked away to the parlor, where we found him when we were done at last. There was casual talk on the most banal subjects. I did my best not to meet Benjamin’s eyes, which I felt steadily upon me, because I knew if I did, I would be too flustered to speak coherently. It was very torture until Dinah came up from the kitchen, brushing down her apron with her palms, and announced that we must set out for home to serve the reverend his dinner. “I’ll walk out with you,” Benjamin said, and off we went, all four, but we had not gone far before Benjamin, who was walking strangely slow, took my hand and drew me into the shade of a chokeberry tree. Dinah hustled along without pause, but Hannah turned back and cast me a look of perturbation, though she didn’t speak.

I couldn’t think of her, though I knew I would have to, and soon. Benjamin bent down to pick a few wild phlox, which he then presented to me. “What did you think of my poor poem?” he said.

“Not poor at all. And an interesting proposition.” I kept my eyes upon the sweet flowers, turning them between my fingers. They won’t last, I thought.

“Would you like to go to sea, Sallie?” he said softly.

“With you?” I asked, ridiculously, and he nodded. “I wish I could,” I said. “But how could I?”

In the annals of courting was there ever a more transparently leading question?

“You could if you were my wife.”

“I didn’t know you were thinking of marrying.”

“Nor did I. The idea first came to me that evening, when you played …”

“ ‘In the Starlight,’ ” we said together.

“Yes, it was then. And it’s been with me ever since.”

“It was the same for me,” I confessed. A pause came between us, as we each considered what had just been revealed.

“Then your answer is yes,” he concluded.

I looked up from the flowers into my cousin’s inquiring eyes. “It is,” I said.

“Lord, how I love that song!” he exclaimed.

I felt my heart literally swelling in my chest, and for some reason our childhood rambles came to mind, and I recalled how we would wander off from the others and make up games or play out Bible stories and pirate adventures. The final line of the song danced in my head: Let us wander gay and free. Benjamin had taken my hand and pressed it to his lips. “Sallie,” he said softly. I felt the impress of his lips brightly on my fingers and my face flushed with heat.

“What adventures we will have,” he said, leading me now to my father’s house. We had walked a little way without speaking when he said, “I’ll come and talk to the reverend in the morning. Do you think he’ll be pleased?”

Father, I thought. Left with Hannah. “I think he will be,” I said.

We walked on to the gate at the street, where Benjamin released my hand and turned to me. For a moment we looked into each other’s eyes, both of us smiling. Benjamin brought his fingers to my chin, and lifting it, leaned down to kiss my lips.

Merciful heaven! That kiss. In school, sometimes, boys stole kisses, little pecks, and once a brutish boy I disliked amused himself by forcing a kiss upon me in the church cloakroom after service. But this kiss was something of an entirely different order. Part of the pleasure was knowing it to be the first of many. Benjamin’s arm came about my waist, but loosely; he didn’t press me in any way, only our lips lingered together so deliciously. I blush to recall it. At last we parted and I stood, my head swimming with delight, a look of stupefaction on my face, I’m sure.

“Well, Sallie,” he said. “I guess you’d best go in.”

“Yes,” I said, sobering myself by lifting the latch on the gate. He stood watching me to the door, where I turned and blew him a kiss. Then he strolled off, humming to himself. “In the Starlight,” of course.

I stepped into the hall to find my sister, her back against the table, her face in her raised hands, weeping as if her heart were breaking.

All is well, all is explained, all is forgiven, all is arranged. Hannah’s tears, she confessed, were part joy and part sadness. Joy at my happiness and sadness to lose me, both outcomes she had intuited from watching Benjamin draw me aside on the road. In the morning Father conversed with Benjamin for only a few minutes before he called out the door, “Sallie, come here, this is wonderful news.” I am betrothed. Not this fall, but the next, I will be a bride, and after that, evermore — Mrs. Sarah Cobb Briggs.

This evening we went to Rose Cottage. Benjamin and I were seated on the settee when my uncle came to us and took our hands in his own. “This is a love match,” he observed. “I can see it in your faces.”

I blushed and couldn’t respond, but Benjamin said, “Like yours with Mother.”

“May you be as happy and blessed,” Uncle said, releasing our hands.

I was thinking that Uncle’s love match was with his first wife, Maria, my aunt’s sister, who died, though it can’t be denied that he cares the world for Mother Briggs.

“Where will the wedding be held?” asked that lady.

“At home,” I said. “As simple as possible.”

“She’s in luck there,” Father observed. “The minister comes with the premises.”

Today the weather was fine and in the evening Benjamin and I took a walk along the harbor. How boldly we walk, hand in hand, as we did sometimes as children, though it is very different now, this hand holding, entirely different. We talk of divers matters, having to do with the wedding and our plan for the honeymoon, which is to sail to the Mediterranean Sea. Some of the ports, says Benjamin, are rough, but beyond them the old Italian towns are bathed in sunlight and lemon trees perfume the air.

We fell silent a few moments, both of us watching a fishing schooner swooping into the harbor, and then, as we turned back, Benjamin said in a frank tone, “Sallie, I feel I must talk to you about Hannah.” I thought he might mean her place in the wedding, or perhaps that he knew she admired him and might be jealous of his choice of sisters — though Benjamin and Hannah have never been that close, being twelve years apart in age. “What about Hannah?” I asked.

“My mother told me something in confidence, but it’s so serious I fear it shouldn’t be kept back, especially from you, so it’s agreed between us that I may tell you.”

“Your mother is very judgmental of Hannah,” I said, without thinking, and regretting it at once.

“Is she? In what way?”

“She was impatient with her when Natie died, because she reacted so emotionally and wasn’t consoled by religion.”

“I didn’t know that,” he said. “But this has nothing to do with that. Quite by chance, Mother has learned that Hannah is corresponding with a man in Boston.”

“How could that be?” I asked. “I pick up the mail …” And then I thought that I didn’t always. Sometimes Hannah stopped at Dr. Allen’s on the way back from the Academy. “What’s the man’s name? Do you know it?”

“Yes, it’s Dr. Horace Chandler. Does that name mean anything to you?”

It did not.

“Mother went in the other day and noticed a letter on the stack waiting to be stamped, with the return address of Hannah Cobb. She asked Dr. Allen about it and he told her that there had been two or three letters from that address to Hannah in the last three months.”

“What shocking behavior.”

“Well, we don’t know that yet. Hannah may have a perfectly good reason.”

“I don’t mean Hannah. I mean your mother and Dr. Allen.”

“I’m sure they were thinking of her best interests. She’s only thirteen, after all. And she’s very vulnerable, I think. Very easily taken in.”

“Isn’t there a law against reading other people’s mail?”

“No one opened the letters,” Benjamin protested, making his voice serious and patient. “They only read the postmarks, which is public information.”

I knew he was right, but I felt put out that this secret correspondence, for which there was doubtless some reasonable explanation, should have been discovered by my future mother-in-law, whom I knew to be unsympathetic to my sister.

“You seem agitated by this, Sallie,” Benjamin went on. “As well you might. What do you think we’d best do?”

“It’s simple enough,” I said coldly. “I’ll ask her and she’ll explain it.”

We walked a few more steps in silence, and then Benjamin said, “Yes, I think that would be the best course.”

Our charming walk was ruined, though we changed the subject to Olie’s health, which is improved. It irked me that our first argument, for I saw it as that, should come over my sister and my aunt. It didn’t bode well and I was cast down, but when we arrived at the house Benjamin took my hands and pressed his lips to my cheek, so tenderly that I felt reassured, and he said, “Sallie, in all matters of importance, I will always consult you, and you must speak your mind plainly. Others may have secrets, but let there be none between us.”

How my heart lifted at these words. I looked up at him and said, “So let it be, my love.”

And this made my darling smile, and with a last, brief kiss we parted friends, as we have always been and will be forever and ever, amen.

Inside the house was quiet and I felt descend upon me, after the delight of Benjamin’s company, the burden he had put me under. Hannah was at school, Father at a vestry meeting, Dinah, doubtless, napping at the kitchen table as she does these days. Hastily I went up the stairs and stood at my sister’s bedroom door. Though I knew she was not in the room, I rapped my knuckles against the wood, hesitating as the expected silence greeted me from the other side. I turned the knob and stepped inside.

How many times had I entered this room without a thought, to borrow a book, or a skein of wool from the basket, or to leave a message on the writing table, advising Hannah of a meeting or an errand to be done? But now I stood in the doorway feeling like a criminal, angry at myself for so willingly taking on the role of spy, a role I’d chosen myself and which I evidently required as preparation for the direct confrontation to come.

The room was orderly, as it always was; the counterpane neatly spread, the washstand clean, the cloth folded over the edge of the bowl. The surface of the writing table was clear, but for the pen in its stand, the inkwell, and the blue leather book with the gold pineapple embossed on the cover — like mine that is green — in which Hannah writes her poems. She has often read to me from this book. The poems are on natural themes, the seasons, the beauty of the woods or the sea. They are odd, which they would be given Hannah’s peculiar view of the world. Much circling of death, also great value attached to liberty. There’s a dark romantic in my sister. When we read Jane Eyre together, she was sick for Rochester and believed that he was a real man. In Jane she had no interest.

Poor Father, I thought. He gave us each these books to write in daily, as he does, an accounting of our spiritual progress. Hannah fills hers with poems and in mine we have this incessant catalog of my doings. How disappointed he would be if he knew what all our scribbling was about.

Father says Hannah reads too many novels and not enough Bible, in which, he maintains, all the best stories are to be found. There on Hannah’s bookshelf was her small collection of fiction, the ones she borrowed first and then purchased with her allowance: Mr. Scott, Mr. Dickens, Mrs. Stowe, Mr. Hawthorne, Mrs. Gaskell, the Misses Brontë, and the poems of Mr. Poe, Lord Tennyson, Mrs. Browning, and Miss Rossetti. On the chest of drawers beneath the window was the sewing basket, on the bedside table, a book—The Moorland Cottage. Nothing hinted at anything amiss in my sister’s small territory.

In search of some evidence of her recent preoccupations, I decided to have a look at the last pages of her poetry book. I opened it from the back. Hannah writes draft after draft, going over them with changes until the lines are nearly indecipherable. Then she writes a final version. I read one titled “Dream Light,” much scribbled upon, but the final version was copied out neatly.

I turned to the last page and read:

This made only thin and unpleasant sense to me. The preceding page was covered in a scrawl that unnerved me, as it was unreadable, not English; though some of the letters were Arabic, others were obscure. What could it mean? Then, on an impulse, I held the book by its spine and fanned the pages. A folded page of newsprint fluttered to the desk.

It was a clipping, but from what source wasn’t clear. Everything but the section title MESSAGES had been cut away. The heading read “Received by Mercy Dale,” and the text was as follows:

A second message followed:

Why had my sister clipped and kept this article and none other? I truly dreaded our confrontation, but that we must have it was borne in upon me by this scrap of print and the strange writing in her book. I folded the paper and stuck it back into the book carelessly. I wouldn’t bring it up if there were a way around it. How much better if I hadn’t come snooping among her things. Shamed, anxious, entirely flummoxed, I left her room.

I said nothing to Hannah that evening, only watched her at dinner, careful not to stare, yet on the alert for anything that might hint at her true state. She talked about the songfest the students are planning for the end of the session, which Mrs. Tabor has kindly invited me to join. I attempted to express sufficient enthusiasm for this invitation, and indeed these singing rounds are great fun, but I was distracted and fearful of overdoing my responses. Hannah was natural, but I felt perfectly false.

I had resolved that our conversation should take place outdoors. Today was again bright and cool, pleasant in all its aspects and unlikely to incline any but the most obdurate heart to gloom. Occasionally, if I’m shopping in town, I stop by the school to walk home with Hannah, and it was my plan to meet her in this way. She came out of the schoolhouse in a group, chatting with Amy Wemberly, and she showed no surprise to find me waiting there. Farewells were said to Amy and we set off for home. Hannah, taking a package from my basket to relieve me of the weight, asked, “What’s in it?”

“A capon,” I said.

“Oh,” she said. She settled the package in her arms like a babe. “Poor fellow.”

I smiled, amused by her concern for the bird, and I thought that really nothing could be more normal, more companionable, than strolling through the town with my sister. She was looking particularly well, her cheeks lightly flushed, her gray eyes, which can sometimes be so dark, so brooding, now were clear and light. She’d wrestled her wild hair into a single braid but it had loosened and stray tendrils played about her neck and forehead. “How was school?” I asked.

“Mr. Finley lectured us on the subject of his rock collection.”

“Oh, yes,” I said. “I do recall Mr. Finley’s rocks.”

We could have gone on like this. I felt no desire to bring her to the subject of her correspondence with Dr. Chandler, though that name was burning in my brain, along with the clear consciousness that when I spoke it, my relations with my sister would be seriously altered, possibly forever. I reminded myself of the articles, the strange writing, and most of all, of Benjamin’s conviction that the problem of Hannah was best addressed by me.

And so I addressed it. We were passing the Universalist Church, which Father calls “the Univices,” and we both glanced up at the screech of a hawk circling near the tower. “Dearest,” I said, as we resumed our walk. “I have to ask you about something.”

“It sounds like something serious,” she said.

“It is. It’s that. Well. It’s been noticed that you are corresponding with a Dr. Chandler in Boston.”

“Noticed by whom?” she asked calmly.

I hesitated. Was I compelled to keep secret the name of the instigator of this conversation? “Mother Briggs,” I said.

Her lips compressed in a smirk; her eyelids lowered, then flashed open wide. “She’s lying,” she said.

This possibility hadn’t occurred to me, and for a moment I turned it this way and that in my mind, but unlikelihood remained its distinctive feature. “Why would she do that?” I asked.

“She dislikes me. She blames me for Natie’s death.”

“Surely not,” I protested.

“She made it up to hurt me. Have you told anyone else? Please tell me you haven’t told Father this libel.”

“No, I haven’t. I came straight to you. But evidently Dr. Allen has seen the letters as well. I don’t think he would lie about the mails.”

She pressed her upper teeth into her lip, her head bowed, the picture of guilt in search of an escape.

“Hannah?” I said.

“Everyone in this town is so small-minded and mean. I’m suffocating here. I can’t breathe.”

“That’s not true,” I countered. “Your family cares for you very much.”

“As long as I’m docile, as long as I sit through Father’s sermons without protest.”

“Why should you protest?”

She was silent. At the turn toward the house we both stopped, still without speaking. “Let’s walk to the harbor,” I suggested.

She nodded and we went on. “It seems to me you’ve something burdening your mind,” I said. “You must know that you’ll find no more sympathetic listener than me.”

Again she nodded. We walked out Harbor Lane, where the workers have wrapped the hotel in scaffolding, adding a third floor. The breeze off the water was fresh and brisk enough to make me wish I’d brought my shawl. Then my sister sent an icy dart to my heart.

“Mother talks to me,” she said.

“In dreams,” I suggested hopefully.

“In spirit,” she said. “I see her.”

“Oh,” I said.

“And others.”

“Others?”

“People who are with her. William and Harvey are there.”

William and Harvey were our brothers who died before we were born. “Where do you see them?” I asked.

“In the spirit world. They speak to me too.”

“Often?”

“Not so often. I have to concentrate very hard to hear them.”

“I see,” I said.

“But Mother is with me often.”

I looked out at the sun, still high enough to wash a pinkish light over a fishing schooner just setting out, its triangular sails churning up the masts. A charge of pity and fear ran through me and I was unable to speak. What could I say that might restore my sister, whom I loved with my whole heart, to sweet reason? She was of a fanciful nature, but she wasn’t a liar, at least not a good one; her effort to discredit Mother Briggs had folded almost at once. What tack should I take to relieve her of these delusions, which had evidently taken her over almost entirely? Sensing my hesitation, she spoke.

“I have a gift,” she said. “It’s like a gift for music or painting. I can’t just ignore it. I can’t make it go away because other people don’t like it.”

“Is that what Dr. Chandler says?” I asked, feigning an interest I hardly felt.

She gave me a quick, hard look. So Dr. Chandler could be admitted to without a fight. “He does say that. But I didn’t need him to tell me.”

“How did you come to be in touch with him?”

Here the glance was furtive. “I read an advertisement in the New Bedford paper. He prints a journal; it’s called Spiritual Condolence, and I was curious about it, so I wrote to him. Well, his name wasn’t in the advertisement. I wrote to the journal.”

“To offer your mediumistic services,” I suggested. “Is that the right word?”

“No, I didn’t do that. Not at first. I just inquired about the journal, about how it came to be.”

“And Dr. Chandler wrote back at once.”

She nodded. Something stronger than anger was closing my throat, not at my sister, but at this charlatan in Boston.

“Oh, Sallie.” Hannah sighed. “It’s such a relief to tell you. I send in messages that I receive, that I don’t always understand, because they’re not really for me, and he puts them in the journal.”

So my sister was Mercy Dale.

I took her arm in mine. We’d come to the end of the promontory and stood gazing out at the outer harbor. “I know everyone here thinks there’s something wrong with me,” she said. “And Father is so adamant against those who believe … who believe as I do. He wants us to keep our minds and efforts always directed upon the living, and there’s nothing wrong with that, but why should we turn our backs on those we have known, those we have loved, who are only waiting for us to listen to be heard?”

“What sorts of things does Mother tell you?” I asked, to show my goodwill.

“She’s pleased about your engagement.”

“That’s a blessing,” I said.

“She’s sad that she can’t reach Father.”

It’s difficult to describe my feelings at these tender messages, which might as well have been nursery rhymes, for all the import of them. So the dead were as banal as the living, I thought.

“She is happy in the place where they are,” Hannah concluded. Still holding her by the arm, I turned away from the harbor, and she came along without comment. As we entered Allen Street, she said sadly, “Even you don’t believe me.”

“I believe you miss our mother very much and wish she was still with us. And I share that wish.”

“So you think my seeing her is just wishful thinking.”

“If you like.”

“Well,” she said lightly. “It doesn’t matter, Sallie. There are people who do believe me. Quite a few of them in fact.”

“Not just Dr. Chandler,” I said.

“Many of them are ladies of excellent reputation and good society in Boston. No one makes a fuss there and my gift may provide great solace to many.”

Again I was at a loss for words.

“Are you going to tell Father?” she asked.

We had come to our house and I lifted the latch of the gate. “I don’t know, darling,” I said. “I don’t know what to do. I’m vexed past reason at you for being so credulous.”

She stepped back, as if struck. “I’m not credulous. I just can’t pretend I don’t see what I see. It’s cruel to try to stop me. If you tell Father, Sallie, I don’t know what he’ll do.”

“How can I keep such goings-on a secret, these letters to a man you know nothing about, these publications! Does he know your age? No, I thought not. How can I keep this from Father, who is responsible for you to God and man alike?”

“If I promise to give up writing to Dr. Chandler, will you not tell him?”

I felt I had been reduced to accepting a scurrilous deal in order to protect my sister from herself, and from Dr. Chandler, whoever he was. “That would be a start,” I said. “Yes. If you promise to cease this correspondence, I won’t tell Father what you have told me.”

“I may as well, then,” she said wearily. “If you do tell him, he’ll make me stop. He’ll snatch the letters from the box and lock me in my room, so I may as well give in.”

And with that agreement, unsatisfactory as it was, we went into the house.

There was such a fierce storm last evening, it seemed the heavens were in a rage. The thunder rolled, the lightning flashed in jagged bolts, and the rain poured down all at once as if a tub had been turned over. The west wind drove it in horizontal sheets. Father, Hannah, and I sat in the parlor, he reading, we pretending to embroider, and at each boom of thunder my sister raised her eyes and lifted her needle with a faint smile.

In the morning, Benjamin came calling, and we walked out to the graveyard to refresh the flowers on the markers of the Briggs and Cobb families. Of course he wanted to know what I’d learned from Hannah, but, perhaps for shame, I felt unwilling to say more than that she had agreed to cease all correspondence with the gentleman from Boston. “Well, what manner of correspondence was it?” he asked frankly.

“I’m not at liberty to say,” I replied. “Her promise that it would stop was very clear and final. I think we need worry no more about the subject.”

“Sallie,” he said, laying his hand on my arm as we arrived at the grave. “You’re so serious. Of course I won’t press you.”

I smiled. “I appreciate that,” I said. “I just can’t say more, not yet.”

Benjamin took up the old bouquets much pummeled by the storm. The stone vases were full of rainwater, so we had only to replace the flowers and we were done. At Mother’s marker, I pulled a few weeds that had cropped up among the columbine I planted there some years ago, which has done well there, being shade tolerant. The blooms are fading now, but the plants are healthy. Then Benjamin and I stepped back and gazed at the grave that contains the remains of my mother and the two boys I never knew. I couldn’t help thinking of Hannah’s remark, that Mother was pleased about my engagement. Well, she would have been, had she lived. Benjamin remembers her well; he was eighteen when she died and she was fond of him. He had his heart set on following the sea and she teasingly called him “shipmate,” and “sailor boy.” As if he read my thoughts, Benjamin said, “Your mother was light at heart. She always brightened a room when she came in.”

“She did,” I agreed. “When she could no longer leave her bed, she claimed her illness was a grand opportunity to read frivolous novels.” Whereas, I thought, Mother Briggs will still be chewing over the Bible at death’s door.

“Well,” he said, “I wish she was with us now.”

And oh, I did too. I need my dear mother to tell me what to do about my sister.

“By their fruits, ye shall know them.” That was a favorite saying of Mother’s, especially when her children were idle. She took her religion to be a practice, not a test, and she was an active, not a submissive, Christian. She wanted her children to be alive to the possibilities of life, to show in our actions our moral engagement with our fellows. And, of course, we were her fruits and by us she would be known; I do think that was implied in her remark. I’ve been thinking of her so much today, though, unlike my sister, I haven’t seen her lurking about the house. Does she watch over us here? Does Father believe that? After her death he said, “She will always be with us.” Presumably he meant in our memories and in our hearts.

I confess that there is a shred of jealousy in my conflict with my sister. Why wouldn’t Mother show herself to me, if she could? That is a thought not worth pursuing.

But what I’ve been thinking about Mother is how she would feel, and what she would say, if she were here to guide Hannah past this crisis in her young life. She never gave orders or forbade actions, unless we were rude in public, which merited a frank rebuke. She had a way of looking at you with sympathy and understanding and hope and then asking the exact question that placed the matter in a clear moral light. The answer came of its own accord, and one cheerfully mended one’s ways.

Have I done this with Hannah? Have I asked her the right question, the one that will bring her back to me?

I have not.

Last night I woke from a frightening dream. Benjamin and I were running through a forest, running away from something, an animal or a man. We held hands, but the ground was uneven and I tripped, losing his grip. When I got to my feet, I found he had gone ahead without me. I followed, but the space between us grew wider and wider and I could hear the pursuer, whatever he/it was, coming closer. There was a harsh sound, very close to my ear, a snarl of rage, and then I woke.

I lay still in the bed, waiting for my heart to slow, and wondering, in a dreamy sort of way, why Benjamin hadn’t waited for me. Gradually I became aware of an odd sound in the real world, a kind of scratching, like nails against wood. It was soft, barely audible, but insistent. I thought it might be a mouse nibbling inside the wall. I closed my eyes, waiting for the embrace of Morpheus, but the scratching distracted me. I listened and listened; was it in the hall? At last I decided to get up and investigate. I lit the candle, crossed to the door, and looked into the hall. A thin, milky light spilled across the floor from beneath Hannah’s door. She was still awake.

The sound paused, then resumed, paused again. I was barefoot and the floorboards were chilly under my feet. I stepped along quickly to her door. The scratching took up again. What was she doing? “Hannah,” I said softly, laying my palm against the door panel. The latch was up and the door drifted open before me, revealing bit by bit a nightmare far worse than the one I’d just escaped. Would that it had been a dream.

Hannah was seated at her writing table, where the lamp burned brightly, with a pen in her hand and a page before her. Strangely, her body leaned away from the table, supported by her right arm propped rigidly against the seat of her chair. Her head was thrown back as if she had been struck, her loosened hair tumbled past her shoulders, her mouth was agape, and her eyes, unnaturally wide, fixed on a corner of the ceiling. The muscles of her face were so strained and tense she was hardly recognizable. Her left hand, holding the pen, scribbled hurriedly, moving from right to left on the page, seemingly without her knowledge or her will.

I had the sense that I was entering the equivalent of a gale at sea. Nothing moved, save that demonic hand. My skin tingled the way it does when the barometer drops suddenly and those with old injuries claim to feel them anew. “Hannah,” I said again, firmly this time, but she gave no evidence of hearing me. I approached — what else could I do? — and though I stood looking down at the writing spiraling from the pen, I couldn’t read it. It was that same cryptic language I’d seen in her journal. I looked at her face, which was turned away from the light, as if to keep as far away as possible from the writing hand. Her eyes were utterly vacant, flat, and unmoving as the false eyes in a china doll.

I brought my palm down hard upon the writing hand. There was no resistance, her fingers sprawled. Hannah screamed, rose from the chair, and collapsed in my arms. I heard Father’s feet hit the floor in his bedroom, and then his hurried steps coming toward us in the hall.