The Ghost of the Mary Celeste (4 page)

“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.