by Rex Baron
“Oh, there are seldom apparitions. I have not seen one at any rate,” Lucy stated matter-of-factly, “only a Medium or someone through whom the spirits speak.”
She returned to opening her letters as if the phenomenon had been sufficiently explained.
“And how does one know that this Medium isn't pretending to be in a trance, telling you any manner of rubbish they choose?”
“Oh, but they do,” Lucy laughed. “Most of them are fakes... nur fette Frauen... just thick old ladies, who surround themselves in mystery in order to get invited into the fine houses, like that of Mrs. Mullridge. Anyway, I shouldn't think it would be too difficult to trace the history of one of those prominent families and shock them all by telling them something that most everyone in the room already knows.”
“Rubbish,” Celia sniffed with contempt.
“You are probably right, but in many ways it can be fun.”
“You will accept then?” Celia asked.
“I expect I might. Why don't you come with me?” Lucy suggested. “Then, at least, you might see for yourself how silly much of it is. It's not in the least frightening.”
Celia sighed her disapproval and answered that she would consider it.
After a moment of comfortable silence, Celia spoke again. “Do you believe that one can truly contact the dead?”
Lucy's face seemed to darken.
“Yes, I do,” she answered simply.
“But you just finished telling me that it was all a load of rubbish, nothing more than a free dinner in Society.”
Lucy gathered her thoughts as she leaned back into the primrose pattern of the window seat. The morning sun through the gauze curtains backlit her silhouette in a halo of light, and her pale face, now cast in shadow, seemed to Celia eerily altered and unfamiliar.
“I said that most dabblings with the supernatural are meant to amuse and little more. They are not disappointing, if they are regarded in that spirit from the onset,” Lucy said. “But there is more... more in the Heavens and Earth than we can know. Death is everywhere, all around us, all the time. It is not a state of being, a condition of the body, like most people think, but rather a place of consciousness that we have access to, and has access to us in the dreams of our sleep. The dead are just a thought, a dream away. There is no need to conjure them up. They are around us all the time, helping us, inspiring us to do great things. Do not ask me how I know, but it is so.”
Lucy saw Celia's eyes widen. Her hand reached, in her customary fashion, for the pearls around her neck, but fastened instead on a tiny gold crucifix at her throat.
“You must understand,” Lucy added hesitantly, in an attempt to soften the effects of her discourse, “in Germany we are very morbid. Death for the Germans colors everything. It's as if we have an allegiance with it. Especially after the Great War that ended only a few years ago. There are so many who are gone. Most of our young men were taken by Death, and those they leave behind still talk to them and look for them in places that are familiar and remembered.”
“Yes, the war must have been intolerable in Germany,” Celia stated without real knowledge of what she spoke about. “We lost many of our boys here too, but, I suppose we were very fortunate because we joined the war effort so late and only participated for such a short time.”
Lucy nodded her head.
“It is not only Death that holds fascination for the German people, but the past and all that is long gone,” Lucy continued to explain. “We are a people who are steeped in mythology. Lohengrin and the great warriors, like Siegfried, are also the basis for our stories of love and romance. The word ‘romance’ comes from the German word for a novel... ein Roman. It is a book that tells of love and death. In the German mind, war and valor... and love and death are all seen as partners in the same story. War, and the possibility of a noble death, makes life worth living, and Death, as a constant companion for the warrior, only serves to make love eternal in death. Love and death are inseparable for us. It is celebrated in our poetry and literature. After all, we have Goethe and Wagner for inspiration and you can’t get any more melodramatic than that.”
Lucy tried to laugh, to brighten the mood, but Celia did not return her lightness.
“The séance is really little more than an amusement for me,” Lucy said, hoping to change the subject and reassure her hostess. “I have no desire that you should disapprove of me.”
She rose and held out her hand to the older woman who, after a moment, took it and softened toward her young visitor.
“I was just thinking, a moment ago, how the new and modern world has passed me by. I suppose this is just another thing that I don't understand. I, of all people, ought to know how morbid a life in the opera can be, with all those heroines leaping off parapets and divas taking four hours to cough themselves to the end of a brilliant life.”
She stroked the youth's hand.
“You have a brilliant life, my dear. I, as your friend here in America, only want you to take a strong interest in Life and for it to triumph over Death. At least while it lasts. I want to see you put the emphasis where it belongs for a young woman, on the living, and leave the journeys to the beyond to those who are ready for more permanent travel.”
“You are very kind to me,” Lucy replied.
“I'm just being silly.” Celia smiled. “You go along to your party and have fun.”
“Then I shan't disappoint you?” Lucy asked.
“Child, you couldn't disappoint me. Now, go on back to opening your post and we'll have no more talk about this nonsense.”
Lucy returned to the window and silently shuffled through her stack of morning letters. She stopped at the sight of a blue linen envelope with a tiny crown printed on the flap. It was from the Prussian Prince, Henry, the younger brother of the Emperor. She tore at the paper flap to get it open.
The letter was formal and a bit old-fashioned. It told of the older man's devotion and kindness, his interest in her career, and a slight longing, if she only allowed herself to read below the text, that hinted at an infatuation that his position and his discretion would not permit him to express.
He was her benefactor and her friend. It had been his generosity and interest in her singing that had set her on the path of her career, and his money that had financed this trip to America. He had traveled the world, as a younger man, and had often spoken fondly of an exciting trip he had made to America in 1902, where he had been received with great acclaim, not only by the German-American population, but the press as well, and was even given an honorary Doctorate from Harvard University. He loved the Americans, even after the debacle of the War and the shattering of his family dynasty, following the German Revolution in 1918. He had many long conversations with Lucy about his interest in American motor cars and their modern technologies, so it was no surprise that when the offer came for her to sing at the Metropolitan in New York, he was more than willing to cover the cost of her passage, and include a small stipend as well.
Lucy held the letter in her hand and stared at the sky blue paper upon which it was written. She let her mind wander back to when she had first met the handsome and dignified man who must now be in his late fifties. He had first appeared at a performance she had given at the voice academy where she studied in Stuttgart. It had been four years ago now, when she was just seventeen. She remembered that he had worn a cobalt blue Imperial naval uniform, with rows of buttons on his chest that were interrupted at intervals by brass medals and a great red sash that was draped diagonally across the front. His hair and moustache were impeccably groomed, and he was lean and polished in a way that men of her own age had not yet learned. When he was first introduced, he had complimented her on the beauty of her voice and clicked his heels together, ever so slightly, then bowed, as if she had been a lady of his own social rank.
“But how did you come to know of the recital in such an out of way place as this school?” she had asked, a bit breathless.
He took her hand and came closer, dispelling her nervousness with his smile.
“It seems I was told about you by my nephew, the Crown Prince, Wilhelm. He appears to be a bit of an opera fan at the moment, and knows people who move in these circles. Perhaps you know the American opera star Geraldine Farrar? He is a great admirer of her, I am told. At any rate, my nephew is the source of the information that led me here today... and I must remember to thank him at the first opportunity for suggesting what has turned out to be a most delightful afternoon.”
That being said, he kissed the back of her gloved hand gently, clicked his heels and departed without another word. It was several days later that she had come home from vocal practice at the Institute to find a bouquet of flowers and an invitation to attend a small party. Even then, he had the decorum to suggest that a companion of sorts might be in order, as a chaperone, and that many of the aristocratic patrons of the arts would be in attendance. From the very first moment he met her, he had thought of nothing but being kind to her and furthering her singing career. She felt sad that she could offer little more than her sincere gratitude in return.
She put his card aside with a familiar sigh and addressed a note to Mrs. Mullridge accepting the engagement for Saturday night.
CHAPTER THREE
1921 New York, Mrs. Mullridge’s
Mrs. Mullridge was stouter than Lucy remembered from their brief first meeting at the Belmont races. It had been one of many such social encounters, arranged by David, to introduce her to the favored subscribers of the opera and theater, and she only vaguely recalled this woman as one more matronly face, smiling from under a wide-brimmed hat as they sat over a lunch of Shrimp Louie.
But tonight she seemed bigger, more animated than had been expected. She greeted her guests warmly and laughed loudly at marked intervals, not in response to any particular witticism, but as if in dread of missing a tender morsel of sarcasm tossed just out of earshot. She would throw her head back at random moments and laugh, causing the silver, beaded stars on her shapeless gown to rage in a stormy torrent across the panoramic midnight blue satin of her ample bosom.
The house, in itself, was truly worth the excitement of an invitation. With its carriage entrance, marble foyer and music room, it held its position on Fifth Avenue as one of the few remaining bastions of the brownstone splendor of the former century. As office buildings and department stores sprang up to replace the grand houses of the very rich, the Mullridge townhouse, curiously named Willow Place, remained. No one in recent memory had any recollection of where the name came from, or even why one might burden a city dwelling on New York’s busiest street with such a fanciful moniker. There was not a willow tree within sight and, by collective recollection, there had never been since the house was built in the mid-eighteen fifties.
But where respectability and correctness had been the watchwords of her mother's generation, Mrs. Mullridge's tastes ran more to the experimental, and she furnished the vast rooms in singular themes, creating a Celtic drawing room, a Turkish smoking room and even outfitted what had once been a ballroom with several dozen fruit-bearing trees, referring to it as “the grove.” In many ways, she cast aside the restrictions of what was deemed correct and opened her doors to artists and intellectuals of even the most inflammatory sort.
At first appraisal, Lucy was not disappointed with the diversity of the dozen or so guests who spanned the social spectrum, from the elegantly attired members of Mrs. Mullridge's usual set to the shabby little bearded man, who she had inadvertently caught pocketing a handful of fine cigars from a box in the Chinese library, as she wandered about looking for a place to freshen up.
A nervous small woman of indeterminate age, dressed as if in mourning, stood off in the shadows of the main salon, peering out with bruised eyes, like a small animal cornered for a fight; while in the very center of the light, a woman from Texas, surrounded by attentive admirers, drank a glass of champagne and spoke of money and amusements, the pursuits of the living.
“I find the idea of speaking with the departed very romantic don't you?” A pretty young girl remarked to the lady from Texas.
“Don't you mean necromantic,” a gentleman with a heavily waxed moustache suggested slyly.
The girl stared back puzzled.
“A Romancer,” the man explained, “makes love to you in any number of clever and pleasurable ways. A Necromancer communicates with the dead... hopefully, in less physical ways.”
“It sounds horrible when you put it that way,” the girl said, dropping the expression of amusement from her face.
There was a momentary silence as the realization spread among them. The lull was broken by an older woman with a fire-burst diamond brooch clasped to her bosom.
“How do we know we aren't going to get something evil, a devil, or worse yet, some disembodied saint who'd never let you hear the end of participating in a pagan setup like this?”
The man with the moustache, who clearly had some experience in these matters, chuckled.
“What could be more pagan than the saints? Don't you realize they are all taken directly from the ancient gods and goddesses of Greece, Rome, and God knows where else, even down to their function?”
There was no reaction from those around him, so he continued.
“For instance, Saint Elias, worshipped in the mountains by shepherds, has replaced Apollo, the sun god of Greece. Saint Michael has replaced Mercury as the messenger. Fortuna, the goddess of common good and happiness in Antiquity, has now become Saint Felicity. And Saint Anthony is said to have taken the place of Neptunis Equester, the god of the Roman circus, and become the patron saint of horse racing.”
“I'll have to be more pious the next time I go to the track,” the lady with the diamond brooch remarked.
At dinner, Lucy surveyed the odd assortment of faces around the table for some telltale sign of who the Medium might be. They all seemed more or less accustomed to this social set, with the exception of the Trotskyite with the beard and the hungry-looking little woman in black. She was apparently the one most likely to lead a journey into the beyond, although, by the look of her clothes and the unfathomable expression of remembered horror on her face, one might easily mistake her for the conjured rather than the conjurer.
After a hasty meal, with only the most perfunctory attention to conversation on the part of the hostess, they were herded into the library and sat around a large mahogany table, six people along its length and one at either end, fourteen in all.
Mrs. Mullridge had tried to restrict the number to the mystical, unlucky thirteen, but none in the company was willing to sacrifice their place at the table, so she was forced to content herself with the thought that fourteen was a multiple of the magic number seven, representing some spiritual property that at the moment escaped her memory entirely.
Lucy was flanked on one side by a stout man wearing silver-grey evening spats over his shoes, and on the other side by the unsettling diminutive woman in black.
To Lucy's astonishment, the Medium proved not to be the creature from the shadows who sat beside her, but the bright and bubbly woman from Texas, with her henna-colored hair and a hand covered in diamonds.
Lucy could find no bit of small talk that might lighten the burden of the strange woman's company at her side. When the possibility had existed that she might be the Medium, called there to entertain this superficial group of seekers with eerie stories about their own dead and departed, she had seemed somehow validated, but now her penetrating gaze and insinuating presence were intolerable.
“Take hold of each others’ hands, creating a link of safety,” the Texas Medium instructed them. “Do not, under any circumstances, break the link.”
The light from the chandelier overhead slowly dimmed, leaving only the flame of a single candle in the center of the table and the glow of a small table-lamp, positioned near the door, where a maid sat precariously outside the charmed circle, clutchin
g a bottle of smelling salts.
The room was airless. Lucy felt dizzy, a lightness in her head that made her question the contents of the chowder.
The hand that linked her to the pale creature beside her felt damp, and a shiver of electric shock ripped through her body, as if racing through her blood.
This woman has murdered her mother, Lucy thought with sudden clarity. The thin, anguished face turned to regard her, without expression, aware of the thought that had conveyed itself as if by the electric current from her mind into Lucy's.
Lucy tried to pull her hand away, but the strange woman held it firmly in her grasp.
“We'll be starting presently,” she said in a low whisper.
Lucy diverted her attention from the fearful thought and occupied her mind, concentrating on the painted wings of a harmless porcelain bird on the mantle. Within a moment, her strange companion was proven right.
“Breathe deeply,” the woman from Texas instructed. “We have to set the atmosphere to become receptive to the spirit world.”
Each of them sat motionless, each concentrating on their own questions, each in their own world of memory and imagination.
Suddenly, the Medium's head dropped back on her shoulders. Her voice lowered in pitch. Her face contorted in an agony of expressions and she spoke.
“I am a spirit from the Iroquois nation, come to lead you to the other side.”
“Why are they always Indians?” Mrs. Mullridge muttered audibly.
A hiss of annoyance from around the table silenced her commentary.
Without warning, a loud thumping sound issued from under the table in the vicinity of the Medium, then, once again, at the opposite end. The Iroquois took responsibility for these noises, then lifted the table slightly, just to insure general belief in his presence.
