The Ghost of the Mary Celeste (16 page)

Of course, diligent journalist that I am, I spent the following morning tracking down the ailing Zachary, which wasn’t difficult, as the family was eager to give out the glad news that the boy’s fever had broken during the night, that he was cheerful, hungry, eager to be out of bed, and that his full recovery was confidently anticipated by all who loved him.

After that first trance-lecture in Mr. Wilbur’s lavish New York flat, I didn’t see or hear of Violet Petra, nor did my thoughts linger upon her, for ten years. During that time the Spiritualist movement flourished until its adherents were so numerous that a confession of orthodoxy was called for and briefly embraced. As Mr. William James has observed, “When a religion becomes an orthodoxy, its day of inwardness is over; the spring is dry,” and so it was for the quarrelsome Spiritualists. In 1872, failing to achieve unanimity at their national convention, they splintered into diverse camps. And by camps, I don’t mean associations of coreligionists with conflicting views, but actual meeting places, complete with grounds, tents, and cottages, materializing like ectoplasm at a séance on the shores of sparkling New England lakes, and serviced by railroads, restaurants, furniture movers, cleaners, farmers, farriers, florists, resident musicians, photographers, and butchers. No one knew where the spirits of the dead spent the winters, but once the last trace of frost had retreated from the hinterlands, they gathered at Silver Lake and Lake Pleasant in anticipation of their devotees among the living. These camp meetings were so popular that they came to the attention of the press, and so one hot afternoon in August, having boarded the train at Fitchburg, I alighted at Lake Pleasant clutching my valise, and followed the wooden walkway through a shady grove of white pine, past the open-air dance pavilion, and down the sturdy staircase to the wide and welcoming veranda of the gleaming new Lake Pleasant Hotel.

Inside was a bustle of people and a few barking dogs, all evidently acquainted with and enthusiastic about the prospect of long summer days and nights passed in one another’s company. As I approached the desk, the strain of a violin rose above the chatter, weaving a cheerful, countrified ribbon of sound through the general uproar. The mustached clerk greeted me with extreme affability; my reservation was in order and my key at the ready. He regretted that I had requested only four nights; or rather he maintained that
I would regret it. “Once our guests arrive, they generally don’t want to leave. You won’t find better company or a more beautiful setting in the state.”

“It is a lovely spot,” I agreed.

“And no end of entertainments,” he continued, folding a printed sheet and pressing it upon me. “Here’s the daily program, and the list of speakers for the week. There’s a band concert at the shell twice a day, and the orchestra in the evening at the dance pavilion. Everyone enjoys the dancing, young and old.”

I opened the sheet and glanced at the headings: “Instrumental Music,” “Vocal Music,” “Illuminations,” “Public and Test Mediums,” “Entertainments,” “Boating,” “Board and Lodging.”

“I had no idea it was so festive,” I observed.

“Well, Miss Grant,” replied the sharp-witted clerk. “You’re not among the Methodists here.”

I smiled knowingly. The Methodist and Spiritualist brethren were notoriously antipathetic, though they have at times shared the same campgrounds. Some years ago their summer meetings overlapped at Lake Pleasant and the results were, especially on the Methodist side, rancorous. “They have given themselves over to Satan,” the Methodist preacher complained to the local newspaper in a letter printed beneath the caustic heading “The Devil Takes Lake Pleasant.” The editor responded that most townspeople preferred the Spiritualist meetings, as “all are welcome at the dances and musical events.” After that, the Methodists retreated, and the Spiritualists virtually owned Lake Pleasant.

Considering the increased level of eccentricity facilitated by residence among the like-minded, I climbed the stairs and turned the key to my small but comfortably furnished room. If one person in a crowd of skeptics falls on the floor and declares that the spirit of Black Feather has a message for Mrs. Green, he may be presumed mad and carted off to an asylum. But if all the bystanders agree that Black Feather is as reliable as the newspapers, then the message will be duly delivered to Mrs. Green, and it won’t be long before someone else receives a message from Black Feather, or
White Arrow, or Pocahontas, and the circle will begin to close out anyone who doesn’t find recourse to dead Indians a perfectly legitimate practice. There I was, unpacking my blouses in a sunny room in an efficiently run hotel booked solid with pleasure seekers who, on a summer day dedicated to the salubrious pastimes of boating, singing, dining, whist playing, and dancing, would find time for a séance or a session with the spirit photographer. I gazed from my window at two women seated on a wooden bench shaded by towering pines: a white-haired dowager with hooded eyes and a hawkish nose, engaged in feverish conversation with a plumpish matron in a billowing white lawn dress, the bodice trimmed in pink satin, languorously fanning her face, which was partially obscured by the wide brim of her straw hat. Farther down the dirt-packed lane, an elderly man with a flowing white beard, his plain farmer’s flannels covered by a long striped linen apron, pulled a wagon laden with colorful vegetables toward a cluster of bright summer cottages fronting on the lake. It didn’t look like an asylum, nor did it resemble a religious community, but it was, in my view, surely a little of both.

When I had unpacked my valise and hung my apparel in the wardrobe, I took a seat at the writing table and perused the program, which I noted was professionally printed on good-quality paper. There was a long list of speakers’ names and a short one of “Public and Test Mediums,” most of whom were men. Some qualified their listing with their specialties. There was Mr. Cyrus Walker,
Slate Writing Medium
, and Mrs. J. J. Spence,
Clairvoyant Physician
, and Dr. Charles Hodges,
Magnetic Healer
. I’d done a little research in preparation for my assignment, and some of the names were familiar to me.

My editor would be satisfied with a lively description of the scene, but my curiosity was aroused, and I had in mind a longer, investigative piece, something I might offer freelance to a journal—I knew of a likely one—devoted to debunking all things unscientific.

But how, exactly, might I best carry out my investigations? Should I fake an illness and seek the services of the “clairvoyant physician,” or simply appear at a test séance as what I was, a skeptic requiring persuasion? How close was the community, how incestuous
the chatter among the practitioners? Upward of five thousand visitors were expected through the season; should I seek anonymity in the crowd or declare my intention to herald the glories of the Spiritualist movement to the world at large?

At length, noting in the column headed “Board and Lodging” the possibility of dining at the Lakeside Café, I made up my mind to do nothing more investigative than seeking out my supper. It was too warm in my room and lakeside dining might include a breeze.

This dining establishment consisted of a tent with low wooden sides and a wide, planked floor. The canvas on the lakeside, raised to form an awning, gave the diners a view of the various boating parties gliding on the smooth water. The tables were set with clean linens and vases of wildflowers, and the ceiling strung with Japanese paper lanterns that were not yet lit, as the sun was still low in the western sky. Though several groups were already seated, the room was by no means full. A young woman in a starched apron showed me to a table near the water. I ordered my food—there was no menu, only a few choices, fish or roast beef, two soups, potatoes or green beans—and settled myself, glancing about at my fellow diners. A breeze, as I had hoped, rustled among the lanterns, but it was stale and damp, like a human breath. I could feel my hair frizzing along my forehead and at the nape of my neck. At the table nearest me, an elderly couple earnestly spooned up soup as if engaged in a competition to empty their bowls. Beyond them, his back to me, a gentleman with wavy silver hair and wide shoulders stretching the seams of a striped linen jacket laughed abruptly. I leaned out past the soup-eaters to take in his entertaining companion, a young woman I could see only in profile. She was small and willowy, dressed in an odd, vaguely Grecian gown of white crepe, her heavy dark hair bound in a topknot and pierced by two large white feathers. She gazed at the man, who was dabbing his napkin to his lips in an attempt to stifle his laughter. Her own lips were slightly parted, her eyebrows lifted, her expression hesitant, as if she had not expected to provoke hilarity.

“I beg your pardon,” he said, spreading the napkin in his lap with feigned solemnity.

“I don’t see what’s funny about it,” she protested, but amiably, willing, with his assistance, to discover the lighter side of her own discourse.

“It’s just that you are so charming, my dear,” he said.

“Ah,” she replied.

Their waitress arrived with two plates of meat swimming in pale gravy. “Here’s your dinner,” the man said.

A crush of guests gathered at the opening of the tent filtered into the room, joyful and cacophonous, swooping down upon the tables like an invasion of crows on a calm summer evening. The waitresses went among them, taking orders, filling water pitchers and glasses, lighting the lanterns with long tapers, and in a few moments the scene was transformed and what had seemed a triste, tacked-together affair became a lively, glittering hall. My fish arrived, its flat dead eye gazing solemnly up at me. The flesh looked a little dry, I thought, though the waitress assured me it had been pulled from the lake only hours earlier. As I consumed my former fellow lake resident, I allowed myself the pleasure of anonymity in a place where strangers are few. I guessed at the relationships between various couples, wondering as I watched them which were the mediums and which their patrons. Or were they called clients? Sitters, perhaps, as séances involved sitting. Or seekers. It would be useful to know the agreed upon euphemisms of the Spiritualist trade.

I could no longer hear the conversation between the couple nearest my table, but my wandering eye returned to the fetching young woman, who had finished her dinner and was now tucking into a large slice of pie. As her jaws worked, the feathers in her hair shifted lightly from side to side. I couldn’t see the face of her companion, whose hands moved among the tea service, pouring out a cup for each of them, pinching sugar cubes from the bowl with the silver tongs—two for her, I noted. I thought he must be amused to see the relish with which his companion—was she his daughter?—devoured her dessert. She scraped the fork across the plate, gathering up the last crumbs, her free hand moving out to pull in the cup of tea.

There was something familiar about her, but I couldn’t place her. She was an intriguing combination of a child and an adult. Her back was perfectly straight and strong; there was nothing gangly about the long pale neck that rose above the artfully arranged folds of her gown, or in the muscular forearms visible beneath the gauzy sleeves. The top-heavy mass of luxuriant hair gleamed with health. She looked strong enough to climb a tree, yet she was so slender, her movements so graceful, her hands small, manicured, the fingers tapered; all this gave the impression of delicacy and fragility. With her jaunty top feathers, she was like a hummingbird that hovers over the lily, whirring gently, its feathers smooth and sleek, its bony chest quivering over a heart the size of a grain of rice, giving no sign of the power and tenacity that allow it to fly the length of a continent. Her napkin slipped from her lap, and as she leaned down to retrieve it she felt my eyes upon her and glanced up at me. She smiled affably, as one safely smiles at a stranger in a sociable setting. I felt my own lips compressing at the corners, returning the courtesy. Still, her wide gray eyes lingered a moment beyond the smile, and I was conscious of a change in every detail of her expression, an alarming, speaking change, best described as a shift from “Have we met?” to “Save me.” Then she fished up the napkin and, straightening effortlessly, returned her attention to her table companion.

And that was when it came to me who she was: Violet Petra. That simple girl I’d seen in a rich man’s parlor so many years ago. She was much altered, thinner, paler, lovelier, a woman with a style all her own, and evidently a new patron, for Mr. Wilbur had been a round, balding man who by no feat of nature could have transformed himself into the impressive and well-coiffed individual who rose from his seat, extending his arm, and his protection, to the youthful Miss Petra. As they passed through the summer dining room, heads came up; greetings and hand flutterings were exchanged. And then the handsome couple passed out into the firefly-lit night.

On my return to the hotel, I learned that Miss Petra neither lectured nor advertised as a “test medium.” “She’s a reclusive lady, and much sought after. She only does private sittings,” my loquacious
clerk informed me. “Folks make their appointments months ahead of time. She’s that much in demand.”

“And why is that?”

“Well, they say it’s because she is such a powerful clairvoyant and there’s no showmanship about her. She just asks you a few questions and then she knows all about you and your loved ones.”

“Dead and alive?” I said.

“Mostly the former, I’d say. You can find out about your living relatives fast enough with the telegraph these days.”

“That’s true,” I agreed, taking up my heavy room key. “We live in marvelous times.”