“Ada, you may go,” she said.
But the maid-of-all-work planted herself where she stood. “Begging your pardon, missus, but my place is with you.” She was barely suppressing a smile. She had probably not had so much excitement in a long time.
At Martin’s request we drew chairs close to the sofa so that all of us could hold hands. “I ask that you all remain silent,” he said, “and concentrate on the manifestation. Focus your thoughts on Mr. Ingersoll. It may help to close your eyes.”
Thank goodness the little girls had been barred from the room, or we never would have had silence. As we all did as Martin had bidden us, I noticed that there were no signs of Aurelia’s presence, no tendrils or slender white arms encircling him. Of course, he had said that she did not always choose to manifest, but it seemed to me that this was precisely the sort of situation in which she would usually appear.
Then Martin began to address my father’s spirit. “Silas Ingersoll,” he intoned in a solemn voice. “Your family has gathered in hopes of communicating with you. We are here to listen and to release you if we can. Tell us why you cling to the world of the flesh. Tell us how we may help you.”
A breeze tickled the back of my neck, and when I opened my eyes I could see it fluttering the ruffle on Ada’s cap. It strengthened, taking on a soughing sound. The flames in the gas jets guttered. Tendrils of hair began to slip from my mother’s hairpins and blow about her face.
“Silas Ingersoll, is that you?” Martin asked. A lead soldier struck him on the arm, and he frowned without opening his eyes. “Speak to us with the tongue of man,” he said, with some asperity. “What can we do to help you pass over to your proper realm?”
Roderick shifted in his seat; he was growing restless. So, apparently, was the poltergeist, for the breeze grew into a wind, and the whistling shriek it made as it shrilled around the windows and doors forced Martin to raise his voice. “Answer me!” he commanded. “Will you not leave your family in peace? Why do you torment them?”
In the force of the wind, the pictures remaining on the walls shuddered. Abruptly the drawer of my mother’s desk flew open, and sheaves of black-bordered notepaper came flying out. They flung themselves at Martin, surrounding him in a cyclone, and he flung up arms to fight the papers away, breaking the circle of contact.
Polly giggled. I glared at her. All of us had our eyes open now, and Ada looked as if she were watching the most fascinating melodrama ever staged. As the wild wind flung itself around the room, there came the crash and tinkle of things breaking. Furniture began to shiver on its legs as though about to lift off the floor, and I felt the chair on which I sat quake.
I began to feel alarmed. Should we call a halt before someone was injured?
“Martin?” I asked, raising my voice to be heard over the sounds of destruction. “Is it safe to continue?”
He seemed not to hear me. His brow was furrowed in concentration, though his hair was blowing about in the gale.
And then Roderick leaped to his feet.
“ENOUGH!” he roared. “Is this what passes for manhood among the English—pranks and childish teasing? Is this how a paterfamilias treats his family? For shame, Mr. Ingersoll.”
Storms had kindled in his deep-set eyes, and the spectral wind ruffled his dark curls. He stood in the midst of the gale, jutting out his jaw as if daring the ghost to attack him.
I caught my breath. He was magnificent. If I had not already fallen in love with him long since, I would have done so now.
“I never thought to see such cowardly, contemptible behavior in an English home,” he shouted. “So far from protecting the women in your family, as is your duty, you behave like a bully. It is downright unmanly, sir, to prey upon the nerves of women and children, to harry them about in the selfish desire to make them live the rest of their lives as slaves to your demands. And I tell you”—here his chest swelled as he drew in a deep breath—“I... WILL... NOT... HAVE IT!”
There was sudden silence. The wind died so abruptly that my ears rang, and the only movement was sheets of notepaper drifting gently to the floor. We waited, scarcely breathing, wondering if the manifestation was over.
It was my mother who broke the silence. “Mr. Brooke,” she said, and her voice actually trembled. She pressed one hand to her heart. “That was... extraordinary.”
“I apologize if I spoke out of turn,” he said, with a return to his company manners. “I tried to address your husband in a way I thought he would respect.”
My mother was gazing at him in wonder. “You need not apologize, Mr. Brooke. I can’t tell you how much better I feel now that you have taken us under your wing.”
“It certainly seems to have had the desired effect,” said Martin, speaking for the first time in what seemed like a long time. He had a paper cut on one cheekbone, but his dignity was undiminished. Rising, he went to shake Roderick’s hand. “Well done,” he said warmly. “I congratulate you, Brooke.”
“But did it work?” Ada demanded.
“I know how we can tell,” said Polly. “Mother, won’t you reconsider and let me go into the theater?”
I was impressed at her daring—and her sharp sense of timing. My mother hesitated, then cast a sideways glance at Roderick. “Well,” she said, “I suppose there would be no harm in giving it a try...”
Polly’s hands flew to her mouth to stifle a gasp, and Ada exclaimed, “Lord love a duck!” I was just as astonished as they. Mother must have been greatly moved by what had just happened... and by Roderick’s presence.
“Do you mean that, Mother?” I asked, hoping that she would not change her mind. “I may help Polly toward a life in the theater?”
“That is exactly what I mean,” she said, and Polly gave a squeal and ran to embrace her.
“Thank you, Mother! I’ll make a success of it, I promise.”
This was a more startling development than the ghost itself. I was actually relieved when my mother said firmly, with a return to her usual manner, “You must make good in three months, mind you, or give up this theater idea for something practical.”
Three months was better than what I would have expected, though, and Polly hugged her again. “I shall, Mother, I promise. You won’t regret this.”
Ada shook her head in wonder. “There’s no play on the stage could be more thrillin’ than this,” she said, and clumped downstairs to the kitchen to make us all tea.
Later, as we were taking our leave, my mother drew me aside. “I must admit that I underrated your husband,” she said. “He is—quite masterful, isn’t he?”
I smiled inwardly. So Roderick had set my mother’s heart a-flutter. It was entirely understandable, of course.
“He is every bit as wonderful as he believes himself to be,” I said. “Perhaps even more so.”
But she frowned at my levity. “You ought to show him more respect, Sybil. It’s unseemly for a wife to poke fun at her lord and master.” When I blinked at her, struck dumb, she linked arms with me and said in a more confiding tone, “I confess I didn’t see his finer points at first, but now I must say that I’m most impressed by his ability to take command. You did well in marrying him.”
“Thank you,” I said faintly. This was proving to be a day of astonishment.
Nor was that an end to the surprising developments, as I learned when Roderick and I had insisted on paying Martin for his trouble and seen him off in a hansom cab. Once Roderick and I were on our way back home in a cab of our own, I took my courage in both hands and raised the subject I had been avoiding.
“I must confess something,” I said. “You won’t approve of it, I’m sure, and considering what happened you will be entirely right to censure me for it.”
“I doubt very much that you committed any hideous sin,” he said comfortably.
“I’m afraid it was foolish as well as dishonest.” But enough prologue—I must force myself to get to the point. “I lied about my father’s wishes for Polly,” I said. “I told h
er that before he died he’d said he was happy for her to follow her heart. That lie must have been partly responsible for his coming back as such an angry spirit.”
Roderick said nothing, and with my heart sinking I continued, “I really ought to have known better. I can’t think why it didn’t occur to me of all people that Father was perfectly capable of trying to overrule me even after death.”
I had expected the thunderclouds to gather on his brow, for his deep-set eyes to grow stormy again, but instead he... shrugged.
“It’s human nature to see things less clearly when they’re close to home,” he said. “And with Polly’s situation being so like your own, it makes perfect sense that you couldn’t be objective.”
The mildness of his tone amazed me. “I suppose so,” I said.
“The story you told her... it was kinder than the truth, and it was meant to save her from the loneliness you went through.” He put his arm around my shoulders and gave me a smile so affectionate, so unforced, that I knew he was truly not disappointed in me. Nor was he gloating even the least little bit, or using this as an opportunity to chide me. Perhaps he felt that the consequences of my decision had been dire enough without his adding a lecture to them.
Marveling, I said, “You are a wonderful husband.”
He laughed. “You don’t have to sound so surprised about it.”
“You would be utterly justified in saying ‘I told you so.’ And instead you show me such understanding.”
“Oh, I’m a veritable paragon. I thought you knew that by now.”
He might joke about it, but it was true. I said reflectively, “I did a very wise thing when I proposed to you.”
“So you finally admit it!” he almost shouted, so loudly that I half expected the driver to rein up in alarm.
“Admit that, of the two of us, I am the one who had the insight and courage to suggest marriage? I shall happily take the credit.”
“In that case,” he returned, “I think I deserve some credit for being so irresistible as to give rise to the idea in the first place.”
Naturally I could have pointed out that it was my charms that had inspired him to make himself irresistible to me, but I decided to let him win this round. After all, he had just routed my father’s ghost. To the hero go the spoils.
“I can’t argue with that,” I said.
The look he gave me then was oddly bemused. “But arguing with you is so much fun,” he said. “It’s more enjoyable than agreeing with anyone else.”
I took his hand. “Don’t worry,” I said. “I’m certain we won’t run out of things to disagree about any time soon.”
AFTER LUNCHEON I SET out once again, but this time on my own. As the St. Stephen’s bell struck two, my hansom cab drew up to the curb of Mrs. Atherton’s house.
After sending in my card, I sat wishing idly that I had either chosen a gown with a more restrained skirt or hired a hackney carriage, for the abundant skirts of my violet faille dress were crumpled by the half doors of the hansom. Then I caught sight of the butler approaching from the house, and frivolous thoughts of fashion fled.
“The mistress will see you,” he said.
Astonished but flattered, I told the driver to wait and accepted the butler’s hand to help me down from the cab. Discreetly I tried to fluff my skirts out as I accompanied him into Mrs. Atherton’s house.
I had expected her to send word that she was not at home, as many recent widows would have, but I was glad to have the chance to convey my sympathy to her in person. I ought to have called before now, but everything had seemed so chaotic that this felt like the first time I had really drawn breath since my father had died.
Mrs. Atherton looked ethereal in her mourning crape. Pale but composed, she bade me sit with her and even ordered tea, which suggested that she expected me to stay beyond the fifteen minutes that convention allotted to callers.
My feelings about Atherton were so conflicted that, left to improvise, I might have had difficulty condoling with his widow in a way that would neither make him out to be a better man than he had been nor leave her feeling that his memory had been slighted. It was precisely to deal with situations like this that the rules of etiquette had been created.
I said, “Please allow me to express my deepest sympathies on your terrible loss.”
“Thank you, my dear,” she said. Her eyes were slightly red, but otherwise she showed no signs of distress. But then, this marriage had not been her first, so perhaps its end was not unduly painful. Then she surprised me by adding, “I hope you will permit me to tell you how sorry I am for both your losses. First your father, then Gerhardt... this must be a dreadful time for you.”
I had forgotten her generous tendency to shift the focus of conversation to other people. “It has been difficult,” I admitted, “but I came here in hopes of bringing you solace, not myself.”
She smiled. “They needn’t be mutually exclusive, Miss Ingram. Won’t you tell me some of your happy memories of Gerhardt? I know you must have stories that you treasure from all of your years working and traveling together.”
As if by magic, the painful associations of the past year were swept out of my mind by a host of funny, heartwarming, absurd anecdotes. How very wise Mrs. Atherton was. She knew these memories would help me... and her as well. It was a great relief to feel that I had in my gift the power to brighten her mourning a little.
“When I first joined the troupe, Atherton—I beg your pardon, I’m so accustomed to calling him that—”
“It doesn’t matter, my dear. Pray go on.”
“He was far stricter about discipline and putting the play above everything else. He became more relaxed as we became more prosperous, so it’s funny to recall that he could be such a stern taskmaster in those first years that I knew him. I remember him docking the pay of one actress who refused to learn her lines and wrote all of her lines on the back of a fan that she carried onstage. And once when our lead actor was expecting to hear at any moment about the birth of his first child, a telegram came for him during the performance and Atherton refused to let him read it until the curtain fell.”
A pensive expression flitted across her face. “Do you know, I recall his telling me about something like that, though I don’t remember the man’s wife being confined. In retrospect Gerhardt reproached himself for it.”
It was a relief to learn that Atherton’s conscience did sometimes make its voice heard. “Perhaps that’s why he stopped doing it, then. He must have, for I don’t remember anyone else complaining. But I ought to be telling you the entertaining stories, oughtn’t I? There was the time when he had the stage painted the night before we opened, but it was the wrong type of paint and hadn’t entirely dried by the time the performance began.” I found myself smiling ruefully at the memory. “It was like walking on glue. Every step we took sounded like a silk curtain being ripped apart. The audience was in convulsions.”
“Was the play a comedy?”
“Heavens, no, it was a historical tragedy. And ‘tragic’ certainly describes the state of our shoes by the time the curtain fell.”
Mrs. Atherton was smiling over her tea. “Do go on, Miss Ingram.”
I took a bite of lemon cake to assist thought. “Once we played at a barn that had just been converted to a theater,” I recalled. “And when I say converted, I mean it had been swept out just that morning. During the second act it started to rain and all of the cows that had been driven into the field came back and tried to get inside. It was a test of our lung power to see if we could make ourselves heard over the bellowing.”
Her slender shoulders were twitching in silent laughter. “What happened?”
“Atherton, bless him, went outside and tried to drive the cows away by shouting at them, which was clearly audible to all of us inside, audience and actors alike. I suppose it was the rain that put him in mind of King Lear, for we could hear him roaring, ‘Blow, winds, and crack your cheeks! You cataracts and hurricanoes, spout!�
� But alas, the cows were not intimidated. Rather, they seemed to consider it a challenge...”
For the next two hours we drank tea, ate lemon cakes, and shared stories. In trying to please my hostess, I summoned up as many recollections as I could of Atherton at his best. The happy result was that by the time I prepared to leave, my own heart was much lighter.
“You’ve been very kind to indulge me,” I told my hostess as I finally prepared to depart. “Thank you for today.”
She kissed my cheek, the lightest brush against my skin, like a moth’s wings. “It is I who should thank you, my dear. You have done me a power of good, and I hope you will call again.”
“I should be delighted.”
“Oh, and this is for you.” She picked up a wooden box the size of a large book inlaid with mother of pearl and extended it to me. When I raised the lid, I recognized the contents at once: a script of The School for Scandal that had once belonged to the legendary Dorothea Jordan and contained notes and additions in her own hand.
“This was one of Atherton’s prize possessions,” I exclaimed.
“And now, I hope, it will be one of yours. I can think of no more fitting person to pass it on to than you.”
I thanked her as best I could for such unexpected largesse, but I was so overwhelmed that I doubted I expressed myself very well. When the butler had shown me out of the house I could not resist stopping on the front path and taking another peep inside the box at its precious contents.
“Ah, Miss Ingram,” said a masculine voice, and I looked up from my new treasure to see Mr. Richmond approaching. His cab was just drawing away from the curb. “It’s kind of you to call,” he said.
“The kindness is all your stepmother’s,” I said. “Our visit has done me a world of good. And thanks to her generosity I have a priceless memento of my old mentor.”
“Eh? Priceless?” His voice sharpened, and he loomed over me to peer into the box. The sight of its contents seemed to reassure him, however. “I was afraid you were going to tell me she was giving away the family jewels,” he said. “My stepmother’s generosity sometimes exceeds her good sense, especially where it came to that dam—to the late Mr. Atherton.”
A Haunting Reprise Page 18
