Christmas Bells

by Jennifer Chiaverini

  After calling on Fanny’s parents, Henry and Fanny took the children to the Music Hall for a special concert of patriotic music, with a program designed to appeal to the young. Afterward they enjoyed popped corn and ice cream sold by street vendors, and then went to the Common to view a hippopotamus, a magnificent creature that had come to America directly from touring the Continent and meeting the crowned heads of Europe. Henry and the children agreed that it was surely one of the most astonishing curiosities ever seen in Boston.

  The weather on Independence Day was hot but tolerably so thanks to freshening winds that swept in from the sea, but soon thereafter the weather took a turn for the unbearable. Temperatures soared, the humidity steadily rose, until Henry could not wear a shirt for five minutes before it was soaked through with perspiration, and Fanny fanned herself and complained that she felt as if she were trying to breathe underwater.

  “Perhaps we should retreat to Nahant sooner rather than later,” Henry suggested wearily to Fanny less than a week after Independence Day. They were sitting listlessly in his study where the open windows gave them something of a cross-breeze, Henry in his favorite armchair by the fireplace, dark and swept clean, Fanny on the sofa between seven-year-old Edith and Annie, all of five years. They had intended to retire to their summer home in early August so that Henry could devote July to his work, but the sultry air so enervated him that he could hardly focus his thoughts enough to compose the salutation of a letter, much less a few lines of poetry.

  “I’d like that very much,” said Fanny, stroking Edith’s limp curls. The back of the poor child’s neck was damp with perspiration. “I daresay the children would too. But would that not interrupt your writing?”

  “There’s nothing to interrupt,” he complained mildly. It was too hot to complain more vigorously. “If Nahant can afford us some relief, I may be able to tap into a wellspring of poetical inspiration.”

  “Say the word and I’ll begin packing.”

  “We’ll go as soon as I can make arrangements.” Henry folded his hands across his waist and sank deeper into his chair. “I feel cooler already.”

  “I wish I could say the same.” With a sigh, Fanny rose and reached for Edith’s hand. “In the meantime, I can give this little one some relief. Come, darling. Let’s go trim those overgrown curls.”

  Edith nodded obediently and slid down from the sofa. Little Annie promptly did too, taking Fanny’s other hand.

  “Save a lock or two, won’t you, dear?” Henry called after them as Fanny led the girls from his study.

  “I’ll seal a curl in paper, just for you.”

  “For us,” he mumbled drowsily. “For all posterity.”

  He smiled at the trill of her laugh, fading as she moved off down the hall.

  Alone, he dozed in the quiet of his darkened office, his thoughts drifting from Nahant to his unfinished poem to a few letters he ought to answer before the week was out. His friend George Curtis had written to lament that the Committee on the National Hymn had received more than twelve hundred manuscripts, yet not one was considered suitable. Henry suspected that he would be obliged either to submit a piece or contrive a better excuse for not doing so. Either way, he did not relish the effort—

  “Henry!”

  The anguished cry jolted him from his doze. Horrorstruck, he beheld in the hallway his beloved wife, her light muslin dress engulfed in flame.

  “Fanny!” He bolted to his feet, snatched up the hearth rug, and threw it around her in an attempt to smother the flames. The rug was too small; he could cover only a part of her.

  “Henry,” she gasped, her eyes rolling back into her head. Her skirt was but ash and charred steel hoops; the bodice burning yet as the flames crept upward to her face, her beloved face. The rug was too small. He flung his arms around her, crushing the flames with his chest, his arms.

  “Papa!” Annie shrieked.

  He glanced up to discover his daughter unharmed but watching in terror from the library doorway. “Get help,” he shouted.

  She darted off. As he fought to extinguish the flames, Fanny struggled in his embrace, pulling him with her as she staggered down the vestibule and into the front hall. At the foot of the stairs, she fainted; he eased her to the floor, flung the rug over her, ran to the dining room, snatched up a pitcher of water, and raced back to poured it over her. The smell of burning flesh stung his eyes and seared his nostrils.

  “Mr. Longfellow!”

  The servants were running down the stairs toward him; he was on his knees beside Fanny, dousing the last of the flames with the pitcher and the rug. “Fetch the doctor,” he ordered hoarsely. She was unconscious—oh, merciful God, Fanny, his beloved—and he bent over her to kiss her smooth, untouched face. “Fanny, darling, stay with me, it will be all right.” To the servants, he added, “Help me get her upstairs and into bed. Carefully, for the love of God, carefully!”

  As his servants lifted her, he tried to stand, but his legs collapsed beneath him. Suddenly he felt someone seize him from behind and help him to his feet—it was Miss Davies, the governess. “Thank you,” he murmured automatically, then hurried up the stairs after Fanny as quickly as he could. By the time he entered the room they had her lying atop their coverlet. The sight of her pale face and charred legs and torso nearly made his heart stop. “The doctor. Where is the doctor?”

  “He’s been sent for, sir,” said the butler, his voice breaking.

  With a sob, Henry knelt beside the bed and stroked Fanny’s brow, desperately listening for the sound of her soft breaths, to be sure she yet lived. It seemed an eternity until the doctor hurried in, his face a careful, impassive mask, his dismay betrayed only by the grim set of his mouth. Obediently Henry moved aside when asked to make way, but he paced at the foot of the bed, tormented, clenching his jaw so he did not scream.

  “Mr. Longfellow—”

  “Miss Davies.” Distraught, he turned about and seized her by the shoulders. “The girls. Are they all right? Were they also burned?”

  “The girls are safe, Mr. Longfellow. All the children are safe.”

  “You must take them away. They mustn’t see their mother like this.” His thoughts darted wildly. “Take them at once to the Dana home on Berkeley Street. Do you know it?”

  “Certainly, but Mr. Longfellow—”

  “What is it?” he barked.

  “You must let the doctor tend to you as well.”

  Henry stared at her, bewildered, and then glanced down at his hands. They were red and charred, as were his arms, as was his chest. Suddenly searing pain crashed down upon him, an agony of fire from his neck to his waist. He felt himself growing faint, but strong hands seized him and kept him on his feet. Distantly he was aware of stumbling along between two servants down the hallway to the guest bedroom, where he was eased onto the bed, and the blackened tatters of his shirt and waistcoat were peeled away. He cried out in pain, in misery, and then the doctor was at his bedside and he breathed in sickly sweet ether and darkness engulfed him.

  • • •

  When he emerged from the stupor of ether and laudanum several days later, he wished the silent blackness would engulf him again.

  His beloved wife was dead, taken cruelly from him after suffering beyond human endurance.

  She had been buried, he learned, at Mount Auburn cemetery on July 13, their eighteenth wedding anniversary. The funeral had been held at noon in the library of Craigie House, the scene of so much domestic happiness, and of one horrific tragedy. Her coffin, covered in a fragrant blanket of flowers, had rested on a table in the center of the room; white roses had adorned her bosom and she had worn a wreath of orange blossoms upon her head.

  As he grappled to comprehend the unimaginable, Henry learned that the family had suffered a second loss. After Fanny’s funeral, Nathan Appleton, of fragile constitution at eighty years of age, had sat for the rest
of the day clutching a lily saved for him from her coffin. “She has gone but a little while before me,” he murmured whenever anyone offered him condolences. He died the next day, and soon thereafter he was buried beside his daughter.

  As for Henry, when the doctor informed him that he was severely burned, but that he would live, and that his physical wounds would heal in time, he felt both relieved and utterly devastated.

  At first, he was dosed too heavily with laudanum to see anyone, but when he overheard that Fanny’s brother Tom was in the library, he asked for his brother-in-law to be shown to his sickroom.

  Tom looked pale and haggard as he sat down at Henry’s bedside, and his voice broke as he struggled to express his sorrow.

  Henry could not bear it. He raised a hand to silence him. “How?” he croaked.

  It was a single, despondent word, but Tom understood. It was a candle, he replied haltingly. Fanny had trimmed Edith’s curls and had saved a pretty lock for Henry. As was the custom, she had placed it within a piece of folded paper, intending to seal it with a stick of wax, melted over a candle. Somehow she had brushed the sleeve of her light muslin dress against the candle, or a sudden breeze from the open window had spread the candle’s flame, or the candle had fallen over—no one knew precisely—and her dress had caught fire.

  Henry nodded and thanked Tom for the story, knowing that it pained his brother-in-law to tell it almost as much as it grieved him to hear it.

  A candle. All his happiness lost forever because of a candle.

  A week after Fanny’s death, Cornelius Felton, professor of Greek literature and president of Harvard University, called at Craigie House. Since the accident, Henry almost never consented to see anyone other than family, but as Felton was one of Henry’s oldest and closest friends, he asked him to be shown upstairs.

  Felton expressed his condolences as gracefully as any man could, but each word was a stab in the heart. When Felton asked about his health, Henry gestured absently to his bandages. “I am still suffering from the burns, especially to my hands, but the doctor says I will recover.”

  “I’m very relieved to hear it.” Felton scrutinized him, his worry unmistakable. “Does the pain disturb your rest?”

  “On the contrary, I sleep best when the pain is greatest.” Just then Henry glimpsed Annie lingering in the hallway just beyond the doorway, her face contorted in misery, and he decided to say no more of his suffering. “I’m sorry I haven’t responded to your letter, but I have not felt up to it.”

  Felton hastened to assure him that no reply was necessary, that he had written in hopes of providing some small measure of comfort and would never dream of adding to Henry’s burdens. Henry thanked him, and they chatted for a while longer, but then Felton, ever a kind friend, rose and bade him farewell rather than tire him.

  Soon after Felton departed, Henry was sinking into a doze when he realized that Annie had reappeared in the doorway. Her face was streaked with tears.

  “Dear little one,” he said, holding out his bandaged arms to her. “Come. Come to Papa.” Obediently she entered the room. He patted the bed, and she drew closer, but would not sit. “I’m getting better day by day. Does my appearance distress you?”

  She nodded, and then she looked at the floor and shook her head.

  “What is it, then, my dear little chick?”

  “I killed Mama.”

  Henry felt as if he had been struck a blow to the heart with a blacksmith’s hammer. “Oh, my precious girl, you did no such thing.”

  “I did,” she sobbed. “I did.”

  “Annie, darling, it was an accident. A terrible accident. The candle—”

  “It wasn’t the candle. It was me.”

  He stared at her, wanting to draw her to him but powerless to move. “What do you mean?”

  “Mama was cutting Edie’s hair.” Annie gulped air, trembling. “She folded the paper and put the curl inside. She got out the candle. I was playing with the box of parlor matches—opening the box, closing it. One fell out onto the floor. I went to pick it up, but it rolled under Mama’s skirts and I don’t know if she stepped on it or if I struck it on the floor but it lit, and then Mama’s dress caught fire and she burned up and she’s dead and I killed her.”

  Unable to speak, Henry held out his arms to his weeping child. She came to him, and he ignored the sharp, stabbing pains to his chest and arms as he enfolded her in his embrace. “It was an accident,” he said in a voice that would allow no argument. “You are not responsible. You did not kill your mother. It was an accident.”

  Annie flung her arms around him and sobbed as if her heart had shattered from grief and guilt and would never be restored.

  Later that day, he woke up from a fitful sleep just as Miss Davies passed quietly by his door, which had been left ajar. He called to her, and when she entered, he asked, “Is it true that a candle ignited my wife’s dress?”

  “Why, yes, Mr. Longfellow,” she replied, puzzled, clasping her hands together at her waist.

  “You’re certain?”

  “I myself heard the police captain tell Mr. Appleton so.”

  Henry inhaled deeply and sank back against his pillow. “Thank you, Miss Davies.”

  She nodded and departed, leaving the door ajar exactly as it had been before.

  A few days after Annie’s strange, disordered confession, Henry was able to rise from bed and take a few hesitant steps around his bedchamber. Soon thereafter, he attempted the stairs, and was able to sit up in the parlor. It was decided that he and the children would go to Nahant as soon as he was able, to convalesce and to find, if they could, some comfort for their broken hearts.

  The day before they were to depart, Henry went to his library to search for a particular volume of Italian poetry he wanted to take on the journey. Suddenly, a few scattered objects on a table caught his eye—a candle, a slender bar of wax, a box of parlor matches, a piece of paper folded upon a golden curl.

  Henry froze in place, scarcely able to breathe. Then he forced himself to cross the room, to examine the artifacts of his beloved wife’s last day.

  The folded paper had not been sealed. The slender bar of wax was whole, untouched. The candle had never been lit, its wick pure white without the slightest char.

  Clenching his jaw to hold back a howl of anguish, Henry struck a match, lit the candle, melted the wax, and sealed his daughter’s golden curl within the paper Fanny’s gentle hands had folded.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  The Choirgirl’s Tale

  Charlotte first heard of the terrible tragedy that had struck the poet Henry Wadsworth Longfellow’s family when she was on a third-grade class field trip to the museum at Longfellow House. More than 150 years before, Mrs. Longfellow had died after her dress had caught fire in the library, and Mr. Longfellow had burned himself very badly trying to put out the flames.

  “I don’t see any burn marks,” her friend Emily had whispered, frowning skeptically at the library floor as the tour guide described the artifacts on display.

  “Mr. Longfellow probably cleaned them up,” Charlotte had whispered back. “Would you want to see, every single day, burn marks on your floor from the fire that killed your wife?”

  Emily had recoiled, shaking her head, and she might have replied except at that moment they had noticed Mrs. Hayes raising her eyebrows at them. Immediately Emily’s expression had gone blandly innocent and she had gazed at the tour guide with rapt interest, but Charlotte had felt herself flush with shame. She had not spoken another word for the rest of the tour, and afterward, as they were boarding the bus to return to school, Charlotte had hung back so she could speak to Mrs. Hayes alone.

  “Charlotte, it’s all right,” her teacher had replied, taken aback by her profuse apologies. “You and Emily weren’t talking that loudly, and I trust you were discussing something about Longfellow.”

&n
bsp; “We were, really.”

  “As I thought.” Mrs. Hayes had smiled and patted Charlotte on the shoulder. “You’re a good girl and an excellent student. Please don’t make more of this than I intended. We all need a little reminder about the rules now and then.”

  Miserable, Charlotte had nodded rather than blurt out that she didn’t need to be reminded, not usually, not ever. No one knew the rules better or followed them more earnestly than she did. Her parents knew it, her friends understood it, the bullies teased her about it, and her teachers relied upon it. Everyone who knew Charlotte knew that she was trustworthy, honest, and responsible.

  At least everyone had known that, until recently, until Charlotte had wound up in Mrs. Collins’s sixth-grade English class and the reputation she had carefully protected since kindergarten had been shattered with one accusation.

  Charlotte knew, deep down, that the trouble with the stern, mistrustful Mrs. Collins was not, as her mother would say if she knew about it, the end of the world. It was not a disaster. Alex almost burning down the neighborhood—that was a disaster. If her dad got wounded in Afghanistan, that would be one too. Mrs. Longfellow’s suffering and death, and the terrible grief that had descended upon her husband and children—disastrous, every bit of it. Charlotte’s failure and shame were nothing in comparison.

  And yet her heart ached anyway.

  The loss of his wife had broken Longfellow’s heart and aged him almost overnight. Charlotte and Emily and thousands of tourists could not miss the difference between his image in photos and portraits from before Fanny Longfellow’s death—handsome, dark-haired, elegant—and those that followed less than a year after, in which he appeared white-haired, stoop-shouldered, thickly bearded, deeply wrinkled, and utterly weary.

  Sometimes Charlotte wondered if her mom would grow old overnight if something terrible happened to her dad in Afghanistan, but the thought was too upsetting to contemplate, so she quickly shoved it aside whenever it arose, unpleasant and sinister, from the darkest recesses of her imagination where nightmares lurked.