“No other statesman,” one of the papers would later write, “has been mourned with such sorrow—Abraham Lincoln excepted.”
On the day of the burial, Governor Claflin said a few words before the funeral procession departed from the State House. Behind the governor hung two tattered flags, which Massachusetts soldiers had reclaimed from the battlefields. “These flags,” Claflin said, “represent what this great son of Massachusetts achieved. Union—never to be divided. A land that is free.”
The procession from the State House to King’s Chapel seemed without end. All of Boston was draped in mourning. The bells tolled. The city’s flags flew at half-mast. And Elizabeth followed the stream, like a dying fish caught in a current.
And then at last it came—the procession to Mount Auburn, where Senator Garrett would be interred, at the base of the little hill. A great mob of freedmen, headed by Frederick Douglass, followed the hearse past the Public Garden, and then over the bridge to Cambridge. The procession was mighty—a nation unto itself. An army of freedmen, and soldiers, and citizens … all passing through the college grounds where Garrett had found his voice.
At Mount Auburn, Longfellow stood by the grave, along with Whittier, and Emerson, and Holmes. The greatest literary men of the day had themselves looked upon Garrett as a kind of political prophet. Longfellow read a poem—an apostrophe addressed toward the river—as the sun disappeared behind the trees.
River that stealeth with such silent pace
Around the City of the Dead
Linger and fold him in thy soft embrace
And say good-night, for now the western skies
Are red with sunset, and gray mists arise
Like damps that gather on a dead man’s face.
Good-night! Good-night! as we so oft have said
Beneath this roof at midnight, in the days
That are no more and shall no more return.
Thou has but taken thy lamp and gone to bed;
I stay a little longer, as one stays
To cover up the embers that still burn.
“Ma’am,” Jenny said, “the carriage is around front.”
It was all over now—it had been over for days. And yet Elizabeth insisted on going back. She would have one final look at that grim, spare monument. He had prohibited any tributes—simply his name, and the two stark dates.
She ordered the driver to take a different route. She did not want to retrace his procession.
The cemetery was empty and now she was alone. The trees were green with leaves. The late morning light found its way through the trees and dotted the stone monument with moving and carefree shapes. JAMES BLAINE GARRETT. There were two columns on either side of his name. The whole thing looked like some sort of altar, too strong ever to fall.
“Why did you do this?” she asked.
Though she did not speak the words aloud.
She was trying … even now in the quiet and the solitude, she was trying. But try as she did, she could not remember a time when she did not hate him.
“Hello, my dear,” he said.
She turned around. It was Dovehouse.
“I startled you … I am sorry,” he said.
She was wrong, for it had not ended.
Dovehouse stepped closer … toward her, and the grave. A bird whistled from somewhere in the trees.
“It was so good of the vice president to escort you through these days,” he said. “And the colored soldiers. I would have offered my own arm many times, if I had thought—”
“Thank you, Mr. Dovehouse.”
“There are no thanks due here,” he said. “It is you who deserves to be thanked.”
“I?” she said.
“Yes, you—for carrying James as far as you carried him.”
“He carried himself.”
“Now,” Dovehouse said, “we both know that’s not entirely true.”
At the funeral, she had avoided him, and she was sure that he had felt it. And now he had followed her back to the cemetery, because Dovehouse was pernicious, and never gave up.
Together they stared at the embossed letters of Garrett’s name.
“People will remember him with admiration,” she said.
Dovehouse was silent for a moment, and then breathed.
“People will remember what they want to remember,” he said.
He wasn’t finished with her, and here was proof. He was baiting her. How heartless—to still be playing his games at a time like this.
“He didn’t know when to stop,” Dovehouse said. “It’s one thing to give the negroes their own land and things like that, but moving them into their former masters’ houses was a bit much, don’t you think?”
She despised him.
“You benefitted—and you know it,” Dovehouse said.
Elizabeth felt the searing eyes of his judgment, even though she could not look at him. She could not look at him or she would break. And he could not see her break.
“Yes,” Dovehouse said, “that’s right—”
Elizabeth put her hand to her mouth.
“He betrayed us all,” Dovehouse said.
Elizabeth turned to him.
“He is gone,” she said. “Just go away now and let him be.”
“Let him be?” Dovehouse said. “Now isn’t that a pretty sentiment. You confound me, woman. Your husband might still be alive today if you hadn’t been such a fool.”
The words stabbed into her. Dovehouse was right. It was her sentiment—the one sentiment she had retained at the expense of all others—that had resurrected everything, and set the whole hideous play in motion.
“He is gone now,” she repeated.
Her weakness was amusing him.
“On the contrary, my dear,” Dovehouse said. “The old boy lives on—”
And he smiled at her.
“—in others.”
The man was despicable. He knew. But most of all, he wanted her to know that he knew … wanted her to know that he held the entirety of Garrett’s legacy, as well as her future, in his hands. But it was silly to worry about it, because he had already played his cards. The looks from some of the wives at the funeral told her that some of it—if not all of it—had already gotten out.
“My condolences, Mrs. Garrett,” Dovehouse said.
And he tipped his hat, and left her.
It would not take long—everyone would soon know—and the gossip about Garrett would spread through Boston like the smell of fire. That quickly, a forty-year career would be dismantled, and any righteousness he had maintained would be undone.
“You mean he—?” they would whisper.
“Garrett? Senator Garrett?”
“Did she know?” they would ask.
“Of course she did,” they’d say.
And what’s more, once people decided to start remembering, the girl’s disappearance would become a thing of significance. They would speculate and conjecture as to what happened during that time, and some of them might even give nods to foul play. They would say horrible things, and they would say that Elizabeth had deserved it. There were so many women who had never liked her to begin with.
And so this was not the last time she would find herself alone, for loneliness would become her practice now, enforced by the fate she had created. Some people would call, and an invitation or two might follow, but eventually that would all come to an end. For Elizabeth Garrett, something beyond life had ended, while for everyone else, it was nothing more than the end of another August.
XXVII
THIS GIRL HAS promise,” Mrs. Lovejoy said. “Mr. Moody, did you see this rendering of the new engravings? She has captured the rosettes with incredible fidelity.”
Moody took up the piece of paper, which Vivi had been drawing on with graphite. The paper showed the handles of forks and knives and spoons—all of which had been engraved with beautiful and elaborate patterns.
Moody studied the paper, looked at Vivi, then glanced back at the dr
awing.
“She has a gift,” he said.
And he returned the sketch to Vivi.
The gallery was empty now, the spirits all gone, the dark room dismembered. On the walls that had once held the best examples of Moody’s art, discolored shapes haloed the spots where the elaborate frames had hung.
The portraits were packed now—going off to a collector who had purchased them all in one swoop.
“Mr. Winter,” Mrs. Lovejoy went on, “The girl has an extraordinary hand.”
“I know her hand well,” Joseph said. “As Edward says, it is a gift.”
Vivi smiled—her mother’s smile. It was such a strange thing to see her again in this room.
Trunks lay scattered about the floor, and the wagon would be arriving in a moment. The train tickets to California had already been purchased, and the train would take less than a week to travel from east to west. For Vivi, it would be only her second ride on a train. For Joseph and Moody, perhaps the last.
There was land there … lots of land. A small tract of it, somewhere in the headlands north of the great bay, had been given to a young senator from Boston. It had been ages ago, and the senator had all but forgotten it, until the time came when he needed to remember. There were very few who knew anything about that gift, but now Edward Moody was one of them.
“He left it to you—for the girl,” the lawyer had said. “It was a last-minute change, and I didn’t understand. But he said you’d know what to do with it.”
There was a noise in the street. The wagon had arrived. Joseph Winter went downstairs to greet the drivers.
“Come along, my child,” Mrs. Lovejoy said. “You do look so lovely in that new dress. How I wish I could be going with you!”
Then Mrs. Lovejoy and Vivi went downstairs too, and Edward Moody was alone.
It had started and it was ending here—in this space above the traffic. Moody looked about the room. They had been begging him to stay, but there was no going back to doing what they wanted him to do. Joseph had been talking of the need for more photographers—out west. There were many opportunities there, he said—lots of money to be made. But Moody had promised to leave photography behind. He would never take a photograph again.
Those empty walls were ghostly now … more ghostly than they had ever been. In their emptiness they glowed with the luminosity of a fading light. They were not chastising Edward Moody this time. Instead, they were embracing him.
Moody stood by the window, looking down upon the traffic, while the drivers emptied the rest of his belongings from the room.
“Mr. Moody, are you coming?” Mrs. Lovejoy called from downstairs.
“One moment,” Moody replied.
For he was not quite ready.
He took one last turn around the empty gallery. He saw the Fanshaw portrait, and Arabella Livermore, and the hundreds of other faces that he had brought back from the dead. There had been a time when he hadn’t believed in anything. Now there was very little that he didn’t believe in.
He was standing in front of the panel—the panel that led to the passage. He pulled it, and it opened, and the thought of his journey confronted him.
There was nothing there—just darkness—leading down to a place that he could not see.
He stepped into the passage and touched the walls inside. They were rough with the cracks of broken plaster and exposed wood. The light from the open panel partially illuminated the passage. It may have been the first time that such free light had come into this space.
Ahead of him—the step that had somehow seized him. He remembered Joseph, reaching up toward him. Unfreezing him from that spot.
He moved toward it.
Behind him now, the light washed his back. The last time it had been entirely dark, but this time he could see.
That top step was in front of him, a little ways down the corridor. It was sagging—a makeshift board that had been nailed to other pieces of wood, however many years ago. It had perhaps born the weight of hundreds. It had born his weight, and held him. And beyond it, stronger than any wood or mortar, was the darkness that led down to the tunnel.
Moody moved toward the step and stood upon it.
The step cracked.
From the darkness, a hundred voices echoed words he could not understand. There was no Joseph there this time to unfreeze him. But Moody had been empowered to move. He eased a few steps down the staircase, turned around, and examined the break. The step had collapsed upon what looked like something shiny—something dirty, but shiny. The thing inside was reflecting light.
He was almost afraid of it … the way it called out to him through the splinters. Something silver. Something buried there. Something that no one was ever supposed to find.
He touched the splinters. Then the board came up with no effort. Before him, in the step, there was a shining silver box. He did not need to open the box to know that it was hers.
But he did remove it from the step. He held it in his hands and opened it. There was nothing telling him not to. In fact, it was just the opposite.
Ah, so she had done it then. She had been doing it all along! At first what was in the box shocked him, and then—it came as no surprise.
He would give this box to Vivi, for there was only one explanation: that the box had survived for her. Vivi … Isabelle’s Vivi. His Vivi. His last hope of bringing Isabelle back. There were many great things in store for this young woman, who had chronicled crimes that she never should have seen. Yes, Moody would see to it that Vivi realized her greatness. If such a thing were within his power.
But he imagined it in a way that she, and perhaps even Joseph, could not, for he knew the places to which true talent could lead her. The scene was clear before him as he sat in the tunnel’s shadows. Vivi is an artist. She is illustrating catalogues. And she is drawing portraits for people, when the opportunities present themselves. She has money, and she has a sense of her own dignity, though the road for her will not be easy. Why, even when she passes a storefront window, and sees the picture frame with the somehow familiar glass inside of it, she wonders whether they will sell it to her, or if they will even let her in. She opens her purse. She has the money, and she enters. The woman in the store is kind to her. The woman reminds her of people and places she once knew.
Maybe the glass in the frame is an old glass—recycled, reused, its history erased. And maybe it isn’t. Maybe the glass is brand new, like so much else in this new country.
Moody looked down into the box. The faces stared back at him. There were a hundred of them in there—maybe more. These were not negatives; these were photographs. Printed photographs. They were the faces of the unbroken—the faces of everyone who had traversed those steps.
Of course she had done it … but how had she done it? Had he really taught her so much? Had his trivial demonstrations invested her with the power to do this?
And so he went on again, the old selfish Moody, failing to realize that it had not been his demonstrations at all. His tutelage may have been part of it, but here was the evidence: Isabelle had truly possessed a gift.
He lifted the photographs out from their container. The faces—so many of them. Their eyes stared into his. There was something unshakeable in every expression—a defiance and an energy that no crime could subdue. They had been terrified in that tunnel … on their trains, and in their wagons. Those photographs recorded their fear—and their hope.
“Eventually all is lost,” she had said to him that day in the meadow. “It’s why the photographs are important. They help us see things. Keep things.”
Isabelle had managed to capture something that his pictures never could have. She had captured the spirit of an entire people. To think that he had ever tried to put a price on what he photographed.
He thumbed through the pile—he was frozen there, once again. They were like playing cards—lives on playing cards. Their lives had been a gamble. He stopped at one. The face was familiar. It was a young man with a ver
y different look in his eye. The sullenness was there, yes, and a bit of the terror too, but something else was there. What could it have been?
Moody held the photograph up to the light. There in the corner was the inscription in her hand: “Winter ’52.”
He already knew what Joseph’s response would be.
“I did not remember, until recently.”
Or—
“It was ours.”
Or perhaps even—
“It was not my place to tell you.”
No—it had never been Joseph’s place to tell Moody anything. That had always been part of something else.
Moody closed the box and stood up. There were no voices in the tunnel. No cries from those in hiding, or soft moans from the distressed. But Moody heard them. The tunnel drew him, though he knew that he was leaving, and the eyes looked up from the darkness and watched him. There were countless eyes down there … countless faces, countless photographs. An endless flow of traffic that one could no longer hear. But he would not bury them. He would bring them out into the light. The box would go to Vivi and the box would remain open, and whatever had been behind it all might one day be understood.
And so he sees her again. She has purchased the frame, and the frame is just small enough to fit into her bag. She exits the store and there is traffic all around her. And people—many people—struggling for a place on the street. The world has been changing before her eyes. It is easier to disappear nowadays, for there are crowds in the great cities—everywhere. There is promise for her out there. There is promise, fear, and hope. And he watches: the moving girl is there until she isn’t, until she’s faded into the background of the righteous and the believing.
HISTORICAL NOTE
THOSE INTERESTED IN learning more about William Mumler and nineteenth-century spirit photography might wish to consult the following important works: Clément Chéroux et al.’s The Perfect Medium: Photography and the Occult (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2005); Martyn Jolly’s Faces of the Living Dead: The Belief in Spirit Photography (New York: Mark Batty Publisher, 2006); Louis Kaplan’s The Strange Case of William Mumler, Spirit Photographer (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2008); and most recently Peter Manseau’s The Apparitionists: A Tale of Phantoms, Fraud, Photography, and the Man Who Captured Lincoln’s Ghost (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2017).
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