Uncertain Glory

by Lea Wait

  I was thinking just that as I walked into our dooryard. Then it hit me: Today Ma had been expecting a big shipment of spring fabrics in on the Portland stage. She’d asked me to help her get those heavy bolts of fabric to the store.

  I hadn’t been there.

  I felt lower than the smallest spring peeper singing his heart out somewhere down on Water Street. I’d been thinking so much about printing the handbill, and then putting out the special bulletin, that I’d fully forgotten Ma’s shipment.

  I splashed through deep puddles in our yard and picked up an armload of small logs from our woodpile. It’d been a long, cold winter, and the pile was low. In May we’d buy newly cut wood from Mr. Grayson, a lumberman Pa knew, and I’d begin splitting it for next winter.

  I pushed open the kitchen door and dumped the wood in the box next to our iron cookstove, trying not to trip over Trusty, my happy nuisance of a small brown-and-white dog. He’s been with me four years now, and doesn’t understand why he can’t go to the Herald office. He wriggled all over in excitement at seeing me.

  “Good boy,” I said, scratching the little spot right behind his left ear, where he loves to be rubbed. “Sorry I couldn’t take you with me today. You would have just been in the way with all those papers flying around.”

  Ma and Pa had already gone to bed. A lantern was burning low on the kitchen table, and salt cod with pork gravy for my supper was in an iron pot on the stove.

  I pulled off my wet boots, put copies of the news flyer and the advertisement about Nell Gramercy’s meeting on the table for Ma and Pa to read in the morning, and filled my stomach.

  What was happening now at that fort down in Charleston Harbor? South Carolina seemed far away. The country might have troubles, but for me, in Wiscasset, Maine, it’d been a good day. Coins were filling my pocket.

  A good day except I’d forgotten Ma.

  I determined to unpack the new merchandise for the store before I collapsed into bed.

  Was anyone sleeping tonight down at Fort Sumter?

  Chapter 4

  Wednesday, April 10, morning

  Charlie’s father manages the Mansion House, the grandest inn in Wiscasset. He and his father live there, too, in small rooms on the first floor. Charlie’s never talked about having a mother, but by all odds of nature I assume he had one once. Before last July, when he and his father arrived in Wiscasset, they’d lived wherever an inn or small hotel needed managing. Charlie calls Wiscasset “the most boring town in the world.” He’s never been real clear as to where those other places he lived were, but I have a suspicion none of them were up to his standards either.

  On Wiscasset’s side, Charlie does grudgingly admit that Mrs. Giles, the Mansion House cook, is one of the best he’s ever encountered in her profession. He turns on whatever charm he can manage when she’s about. As a result, he’s pretty well-fed, and as his friend, I sometimes benefit.

  That Wednesday morning he’d wheedled a half-dozen rolls out of her, two of which he tossed to me. I caught them before they joined the dried mud and scraps of paper left on the office floor the day before. Ma makes good bread, but not the soft white rolls they serve at the Mansion House. The rolls were still warm. I took a generous bite.

  “I stopped at the telegraph office. Only news is that some actor named John Wilkes Booth is performing Richard III in Portland tomorrow night, and he’s announced he’ll include a patriotic tribute to the soldiers at Fort Sumter. Telegraphic dispatch said Portland folks are lining up for tickets,” Charlie said.

  I shook my head. “Nothing important enough for an extra edition. Nobody from Wiscasset’s going to go fifty miles to see a play. Even with a patriotic tribute. How much money’d you take in last night?”

  “Twenty-nine cents. You?”

  “Thirty-two.” I pointed to the coins on the corner of the desk.

  “Your part of town had more houses. But I got some of the men in the tavern and at the inn to buy sheets.” Charlie added his coins to mine. “Not a bad day’s work.”

  “Especially since I’d already been paid four dollars in cash to print and deliver the broadside,” I agreed. “Too bad rich city folks don’t come here every week to pay for their printing.” I opened my ledger to check the tally. Sixty-one more cents in the plus column meant I had $42.88. Every cent counted, but I still had a long ways to go. I’d already figgered in the $4 from Mr. Allen.

  “I saw your Mr. Allen at the inn this morning,” said Charlie. “He’s pleased with the broadside. People are already asking that Miss Gramercy conduct a smaller, more private, session—one that’s open to folks who can afford to pay more than twenty-five cents.”

  “Is she going to do it?” At 25 cents a ticket, how much money were Miss Gramercy and her uncle going to make? Sounded like the spiritualism business sure was an easier way to make a living than the newspaper business.

  “Father’s trying to set it up for tomorrow evening. Mr. Allen’s insisting on having a special room, arranged a certain way.”

  “So, what do you think? Can that girl really talk with the dead?”

  “Nah . . . how could she?” Charlie started taking the fonts we used yesterday out of the chase so we could clean and file them.

  “Lots of famous people believe in spiritualists. I read in the Boston Transcript that President Lincoln’s wife consults them. She even invited one to dine at the White House,” I pointed out.

  “The Transcript said that this Nell Gramercy was one of the best,” Charlie acknowledged. “It said no one had been able to prove she wasn’t honest.” He suddenly slammed his fist down on the printers’ table, bouncing the trays of fonts. “That’s it! That’s it, Joe!”

  “That’s what?” I was used to Charlie going off in all directions at once. Soon enough he’d tell me what bee was in his bonnet this time.

  “We’re newsmen, right? This is a story! You don’t want to run a little four-page weekly in Wiscasset, Maine, all your life! Here’s our chance to show the world we can be serious journalists. If we can prove the famous Nell Gramercy is a fraud and is getting good Maine people to pay her money to invent stories, our article will be picked up by other newspapers. Editors will recognize our names when we look for jobs at bigger papers, in bigger cities.”

  Charlie walked to the window and put his hand on the cold glass. “Wiscasset is fine for now, but I want to write stories that are important. To do that, you have to be where exciting things happen. In Boston, or New York. Or Washington!”

  He turned back toward me, his voice rising with excitement. “A newspaperman can do anything if he has enough respect. Hannibal Hamlin, President Lincoln’s vice president, started as a newspaperman right here in Maine.”

  “As I recall he stopped off between the newspaper business and Washington to study lawyering,” I reminded Charlie. “Wiscasset is plenty exciting enough for me.” I rescued the fonts that had ended up on the floor when Charlie’d hit the table. “People know each other here, and care what happens to their neighbors. Besides, what if Nell Gramercy is talking with the dead? What if it isn’t a trick?”

  “People who’re dead are dead. Forever. Gone. Somehow she’s fooling people. I’m going to find a way for us to go to that session her uncle’s setting up for tomorrow night, Joe. Once we see what she’s doing, then we can tell whether she’s honest or not.”

  “I have enough to do, keeping up with news from the South, and putting out the regular issue of the Herald on Saturday.”

  “I’ll stop at the telegraph office, then I’ll go to the inn. I’ll find a way for us to see this Nell Gramercy ourselves.”

  The door slammed shut. Charlie was gone as quickly as he’d arrived.

  The trays of type we’d printed from yesterday still had to be taken apart, cleaned, and the fonts re-filed. The floor needed to be swept.

  Working with Charlie was exciting. He always seemed to be all fired up about something. And he was a help. But truth was, he did vanish whenever there wasn’t fun o
r excitement involved.

  Did I really want to fool with someone who could talk with the dead?

  Charlie was right about sales, though. An article on the Gramercy girl might sell copies—and more copies meant more money.

  I picked up the broom and started preparing the office for whatever would come next.

  I had a feeling I wouldn’t have long to wait.

  Chapter 5

  Thursday, April 11, evening

  “Move over! Your knee’s jabbin’ my back.” I tried to stretch without moving the cloth covering the table Charlie and I were hiding under. My shoulders were cramping. “Real reporters wouldn’t do this! We’ve been here an hour, and nothing’s happened. We can’t write an article about nothing.”

  I’d fed Trusty before I left home, but I hadn’t eaten supper myself. My belly was aching. Instead of eating Ma’s beef and dumplings, I was curled up under a table in the parlor of the most elegant hotel in Wiscasset, listening to my stomach growl. No doubt everyone else at the Mansion House was savoring oyster stew or chicken with gravy and biscuits in the dining room.

  “We’re newsmen on a story,” said Charlie. “We’re tough. We don’t have to be comfortable.” He was clearly enjoying himself. “While we wait we can set the scene. Listen.” He began to whisper what he’d already scribbled in his notebook: “The parlor at the old Mansion House was dark, lit only by seven whale oil lamps, their flickering light reflected in old-fashioned mirrored wall sconces. A round table and eight chairs were set in the center of the large room, waiting for whatever was to come.”

  A gust of wind rattled the shutters and swayed the heavy velvet draperies covering the windows.

  “Outside, spring winds howled,” Charlie continued, wiping his pen on his already-ink-stained waistcoat. “The editor of the New York Tribune or Boston Transcript will have to be impressed. How can anyone refuse to hire us after they read this?”

  “Shouldn’t the session have started by now?” I asked.

  When Charlie was excited he forgot everything else—including food. Besides, if Charlie smiled sweetly, Mrs. Giles would ensure he didn’t starve, even if he appeared in the inn kitchen after the supper hour. I hoped Ma’d left something for me to eat. This would be the second day in a row I’d missed a meal. She wouldn’t think kindly of that.

  The clock over the marble fireplace chimed the quarter-hour.

  “It’s almost eight,” I pointed out. “Shouldn’t people be here by now?”

  “All day, people who haven’t been talking about South Carolina have been talking about Nell Gramercy. Father said folks have been asking for her uncle, trying to reserve a seat for tonight’s spirit reading. Everyone wants to be among the first to hear her.” Charlie smiled knowingly. “And we’ll be able to see how she tricks them.”

  I’ll admit, the whole situation was making me nervous. And it wasn’t just the hiding under a table. Communicating with dead people might sound exciting when you’re sitting comfortably in a safe place, like the print shop office. But in this dark room, with the wind banging against the windowpanes like a wild creature trying to get in, I was beginning to question the whole idea of being here at all.

  Charlie tried to stretch the arm he was leaning on. “Anyone who says they can hear the dead talk is crazy, or just out to make money. Or both. Mr. Allen’s charging a whole dollar to attend this session. A dollar could pay for a whole year’s subscription to the Herald.”

  He didn’t need to tell me that.

  Finally, one after another, six people entered the room and silently took their places at the table. We took turns peeking through a small hole in the red embroidered tablecloth to see who they were.

  Captain Tucker and his wife lived up on High Street and were the wealthiest people in town. Old Mrs. Quinn and her daughter, Miss Rachel Quinn, were both dressmakers and midwives. Mrs. Dana was the wife of Wiscasset’s leading pharmacist.

  But the biggest surprise was the last person to enter the room. Charlie grabbed my arm, and I stifled a gasp as my own pa, Abiel Wood, joined the other five.

  The six smiled self-consciously at each other in the light of the flickering lamps. None of them suspected we were spying on them from under a table in the far corner of the dark room.

  Mr. Allen, a tall man wearing elegant gray trousers and a long frock coat with an embroidered waistcoat, entered through a door on the other side of the room. He bowed to those already seated.

  He cleared his throat. “In these particularly difficult days for our country, when our hearts are torn asunder by our concerns for the future of our beloved nation, you in Wiscasset are especially fortunate to have in your midst the renowned spiritualist, Miss Nell Gramercy. The wealthy and powerful have sought out Miss Gramercy’s services, but this evening her special talents are yours. Please understand that using the rare abilities she possesses puts an enormous strain on the nervous system of one so young and innocent, so tonight our spirit circle will last only so long as her strength will allow.”

  As he finished speaking, the door in back of him opened.

  All the gentlemen at the table rose as Nell Gramercy entered the room. She was small for twelve, and dressed entirely in white. Her pale blonde hair was worn down, tied with a piece of white lace at the back of her neck, as was appropriate for her age, although her hooped skirts reached the floor. No Wiscasset girl wore her skirts that long until she was at least sixteen.

  I couldn’t keep my eyes off the hole in the tablecloth, but Charlie jostled me so he could look, too. Nell’s dress and fair hair reflected the dim lamplight, giving her a ghostlike glow in the dark room.

  “I’m honored you have all come to welcome me, a stranger to your town. Please be seated.” The men took their seats. She nodded at her uncle, who placed a cushion for her on the chair closest to a wall sconce, and took the chair next to hers. Even seated on the pillow, Nell Gramercy was tiny next to the adults.

  But her firm, soft voice demanded attention. “Before we begin, I must warn you that I have no control over what might happen tonight. The spirits choose when they communicate, and with whom. No doubt you are all hoping for messages from loved ones lost to you, but not all those souls may wish to join us tonight. Do not be frightened by any noises or vibrations or movements within this room. The spirits have many ways of communicating. I cannot predict their actions.”

  She raised her thin arms above the round mahogany table, and then lowered them, slowly, reaching out to Mrs. Dana and her uncle, who were seated on either side of her. “Let us join our hands in a circle, so the departed know it is safe to come to us. First, we will have a moment of silence, to show respect for those who may choose to reveal themselves tonight.”

  The men and women clasped each other’s hands on top of the table. A chill draft wafted through the room. Light from the lamp wicks dimmed, although no one had touched them.

  No one spoke.

  My muscles tightened. Everyone was waiting . . . watching for something to happen. We didn’t know what.

  Mrs. Tucker giggled nervously.

  Nell frowned. “For the spirits to join us, they must sense that everyone present believes in their possibilities.”

  Everyone was silent. Flickering lamplight was the only movement in the room.

  Suddenly Nell bent over the table and began to retch. Deep coughs racked her body. She reached deep into her throat and began pulling out strands of a thin white substance, forming a cloud-like pile on the table in front of her. I couldn’t take my eyes off her. Finally, the trail of whatever was emerging from her mouth ended. What was that stuff? What was happening?

  As the others at the table watched in fascinated horror, she started to mold the pile of—what?—with her fingers. The elderly Mrs. Quinn, who attended the Congregational Church every Sunday, clutched a handkerchief to her heart.

  “A letter is coming to me,” Nell said. Her eyes stared into the distance, like blind Mr. Gould did. “It may be the first letter of a name. It’s h
azy . . . I’m trying to see . . . I believe it may be an ‘N.’ ” The room was silent. “No—an ‘M.’ ”

  Mrs. Quinn gasped. “Michael? Is it you, Michael?”

  “Does the letter M mean something to you, then? A spirit has a message for someone in this room,” said Nell, turning to the old lady. Then she hesitated, as though listening to something no one else could hear. “But, no—there seem to be two M’s . . . perhaps two spirits . . .”

  “My dear husband and my boy; both were Michaels,” Mrs. Quinn whispered.

  “A male spirit, of some years, is with us,” continued Nell. Her voice was low and steady, as though she were repeating words she’d heard somewhere else. “He desires his wife to know he is well, and dwells with a much younger spirit. I believe the younger spirit may be your son. Your husband wants you to know he loves you, and will see you again, in Heaven.”

  Tears dripped down the widow’s lined face. “Does he say anything else?”

  Nell paused. She then pulled the white substance on the table apart and it fell into dust. “That spirit has now gone from us. Gone, with the ectoplasm. He has nothing more for us today. Perhaps another time.” She looked at Mrs. Quinn, who was dabbing her eyes with her handkerchief. “I’m afraid spirits do not often stay with us long. Their sense of time is eternal, unlike ours. But other spirits are waiting. The spirit circle must not be broken.”

  Mrs. Quinn nodded. She dropped the handkerchief in her lap and reached for the hands of those next to her.

  Nell’s voice was low. “I now see a harbor, filled with ships.”

  Charlie grinned and elbowed me. I figgered I knew what was in his mind. Nell could guess pretty easy that someone in this room had a connection to ships. Wiscasset Harbor was filled with ships, even in winter when ice held them captive.

  Captain Tucker leaned toward the girl. Three generations of Tucker men had owned and captained vessels.

  “I see a ship, far from home.” Nell’s voice was now a low moan, hard to separate from the crying wind. “It lies heavy in the waters. I see darkness. Smoke. The heaviness of storm clouds . . .”