Familiar Spirits (11 page)

voice possible just what sort of confirmation Margaret might mean.

There was something about the widow’s expression that suggested to Joan that she wanted very much to say, but was afraid. For a moment Margaret’s large gray eyes took on a strangely distant look. Joan restated her question. “This confirmation you speak of—the certainty you possess of your brother’s state—”

“Ah, yes,” said Margaret. “I am certain indeed.”

“But how?”

Margaret leaned back in her chair while a thin smile of satisfaction played at the corners of her mouth. Joan felt her friend would presently tell—tell all. She could feel the revelation coming, like the distant rumble that plays herald to a summer storm. “I have had confirmation,” Margaret repeated.

“I don’t understand,” Joan prompted, affecting confusion.

“It passes understanding,” Margaret replied mysteriously. The satisfied smile returned.

“Oh, won’t you tell me?” Joan pled.

The older woman continued to smile mysteriously.

Frustrated but not willing to give over her effort, Joan decided to resort to an invention, praying the innocent falsehood would be redeemed by whatever truth it uncovered. “I too had a brother,” she said sadly. “He died very young.”

“Did you?” Margaret responded with what seemed genuine interest. “I never knew. Strange, in all these years I never knew.”

“He was only a child when he died.”

With her sad expressive eyes, Margaret communicated her regret and sat upright in her chair, as though to welcome Joan’s further confidence.

“I would I knew
his
immortal state,” Joan said, trying to make the wish sound casual.

“There is prayer, the consolation of the Church,” Margaret said hopefully.

“Yes, there is that,” Joan agreed. “And yet the confirmation of which you speak—”

“Oh, yes, it was a confirmation indeed,” said Margaret.

“If one were only to have a more direct knowledge, to speak with the souls of those we loved. Lift the veil, so to speak. ”

“Lift the veil,” Margaret echoed thoughtfully. “Yes.” Suddenly her reserve vanished, or seemed to. She leaned forward so that her face was very close to Joan’s and said, “Oh, dear friend Joan, I must tell you. I cannot keep from it for my very life. It is hard to lose a brother and then live in doubt as to the fate of his soul. We trust in Christ and the sacraments, and yet what secret sins may bar the most seeming-virtuous from the heavenly mansions must remain in doubt unless some surer witness be sought—and found, as I have.”

“As you have?”

Margaret nodded and looked beyond Joan to the kitchen passage, as though to insure that the message she was about to communicate would be heard by Joan alone. “My fears were assuaged by my brother Philip’s own lips.”

“But how could that be?” Joan exclaimed.

“I swear it is true.” Margaret then began a disjointed account of her dealings with Ursula, which started with her discovery that the Crispins’ servants and her own were meeting at night in the barn. She had investigated, determined at first to put an end to such mischief, but when she discovered the nature of the meetings her curiosity had got the best of her. By some strange instinctive sympathy, Ursula had known of her long-standing concern for her murdered brother, and one day when Margaret was chastizing the girl for luring her own servants into idle pastimes, Ursula had told her everything that was in her heart.

“Everything! Certainly she was a witch, then,” Joan said, shuddering at the memory of the barn loft.

“She knew of my concern for my brother,” Margaret replied defensively, a hurt expression in her gray eyes. “How could she have known
that
unless she had had some communication herself with the other side?”

“With the Devil?” Joan suggested.

“With the other side,” Margaret insisted. “I do not think

it is of the Devil. If it were so, why would I have been assured my brother was in heaven? It is not the Devil’s labor to console the bereaved with hopes of heaven, where I must go if I am to see my dear Philip again,” the widow reasoned earnestly.

“By what means did your brother converse with you?” “With his very lips, as I said before.”

“But how could that be?” Joan asked impatiently.

“It was his spirit that came.”

“You saw it with your own eyes.”

“No—yes, yes, I did
see."

Joan looked at the older woman. Her eyes were luminous now with the recollection of the miracle. She stared into the space between them as though the vision were recurring even as she spoke.

“You said both yes and no, as though you were confused,” Joan persisted. “Tell me, what was the circumstance of this most remarkable apparition?”

“More than once Ursula had spoken of my dead brother,” Margaret said quietly, “how it might be possible to have intelligence of his soul, where it was now, in what abode and what happiness he enjoyed or was deprived of. I begged her to tell me how this might be done, and for a long time she refused to say, explaining that she feared offending the spirit.”

“But what of her familiar?”

“Oh, he. She said he came to her of his own will—originally, that is. Afterwards he was at her beck and call. But only after. To summon a spirit from his place of rest was not easily done, she said.”

“What caused her finally to agree to summon your brother?” Joan asked.

“I had to make certain offerings.”

“Offerings?”

“Yes.”

“To whom?”

“Why, to God. It was all of God—not of the Devil, as they claimed at the trial.”

“What sort of gifts?”

“The offerings? Money, jewels, trinkets. To me it was all worth it.”

“This money went to Ursula, then?”

“No, it went to the poor. She told me so.”

“I see,” said Joan, trying to hide the skepticism she felt. “And after you gave Ursula money—for the poor—she agreed to conjure up the spirit of your brother to satisfy your doubts as to his condition.”

“That is what I did.”

“Where was this thing done—in the barn loft?”

“No, although it was there Ursula first spoke of it, taking me aside from the others. They were not to be permitted the vision, you see. Not even my husband.”

“Why not?”

“It was my brother's will. Ursula said he wished to see only me, and no other soul. That was one of the conditions.” “And the other?”

“That the thing would be done in her mistress's house.” “At the Crispins'. That seems to me a strange condition.” “About that I do not know, but that was the condition. Oh, yes, I remember now what it was Ursula said. She said the disbelief of my husband’s nephew had so offended my brother’s spirit that he would not visit the house.”

“So you went to the Crispins’.”

“I did.”

“And they—your sister and her husband—were also witnesses?”

“No, only I.”

“I wonder that your sister Jane did not have as great a longing to visit with her brother’s spirit.”

“I think she did, for she loved him as much as ever I did. Yet her husband had little patience for such business and she feared to offend him.”

“How were you able to have the house for yourself?” Joan asked.

“Oh, that wasn’t difficult,” replied Margaret, smiling her thin smile again. “Ursula knew well my sister and her hus-

band’s comings and goings. It happened one night when they were at a friend’s house for supper, having taken their two little ones with them. The servants had the house to themselves. On this night she beckoned me to follow her, and we went into the great bedchamber of the house. There I saw my brother’s shape as I remembered it, and heard his voice tell me that all was well with him. I asked him what heaven was like, and then he described such a place of wonder and beauty that I almost wished myself dead to enjoy it with him. I asked him if the streets were indeed paved with gold, and he said they were but for such toys the blessed have only contempt, loving gold for its color and brilliance alone and not as a purchase of wickedness. Then I asked him how it was he died and he said he was murdered for his purse. Had I been less amazed at speaking to him, I would have asked the name of his murderers but I forgot myself.”

“And his spirit stood before you?” Joan asked, quite caught up in her friend’s account.

“In a manner of speaking,” Margaret answered after a moment’s hesitation. Her brow furrowed and she looked as though she were trying hard to remember exactly how it was. “The chamber was dark and very cold, for no fire had been laid. I remember asking Ursula if we might have a taper the better to see by, but no, she insisted that the darkness would help her put her mind to the conjuring. We sat at two sides of a little table my sister uses to write upon. Ursula held her face in her hands and mumbled beneath her breath.”

“Did you hear any of these words?”

“Some I heard but did not understand them. It was a foreign language I think she spoke—or a language of spirits.” “And after she conjured?”

“The conjuring went on for some time. Ursula’s voice grew louder, more insistent. I began to doubt, but it was about then that—that—”

Joan urged Margaret to continue.

“I heard a voice behind me. It was my brother’s voice.” “How were you sure it was your brother’s voice and not some other’s?”

“I was not sure, at first, but he called me Meg, by which name I had not been called since a child. I said, ‘Who calls me Meg so familiarly?’ And he answered, ‘What, Meg, do you not know your own dear Philip’s voice?’ Then I remembered that thus he used to call me. Meg. He used the name when we conversed familiarly. I knew then that it was my brother indeed. The voice sounded distant, as though strained. It came from behind me in the chamber, and when I turned around to see for myself Ursula shouted at me, ‘Nay, Mrs. Waite,’ she said, ‘do not do so, for the spirit expressly forbade it!’ ‘What?’ cried I, ‘my own brother forbidding his sister to look upon him?’ ‘It is for your own good,’ she said, ‘for spirits, even those of the blessed, are horrible to look

y yy

upon.

“So you believe then it was Philip Goodin himself that you heard behind you?”

“And
saw
, Joan, for before she could warn me of the danger of looking I had turned and glimpsed my brother’s form. The spirit was of middle height and dressed as my brother used to dress. The face was in shadows, but oh, I tell you, Joan, I know it was my brother indeed. Never had I felt such joy as then. My gratitude knew no bounds. The agonizing doubt that for years I suffered was suddenly lifted from me.” Joan grasped her friend’s hands, which were trembling with excitement generated by the recollection, but Joan could not help asking, “Could it not have been some other standing there, someone who slipped in the door of the chamber and out again without your knowing it?”

The widow gave Joan a sudden sharp look of reproof and said, “The table where I was stood between him and the only door to the chamber. No mortal thing could have slipped by me, for my eyes were never closed and I would have heard him tread upon the floor. No, what you suggest, Joan, is not possible. It
was
my brother’s spirit I saw and heard. His words proved it, as did his strange appearance and disappearance. It was the last time I saw the spirit. I did not seek a second interview, nor did Ursula offer to provide one. Within a week she was arrested.”

“At her trial you testified against her,” Joan said.

Margaret sighed deeply. “That’s true,” she said. She did not elaborate. Her face was full of guilt.

Joan would have liked to ask more about the apparition, for in her own mind she was less than convinced. The existence of spirits and their ability to communicate with the living she did not dispute, but she reserved the right to doubt whether any single manifestation was a spirit in truth, a figment of the imagination, or a fraud. She was not sure how to interpret Margaret Waite’s experience, but somehow she felt it was no true ghost the widow had seen. She was considering this when voices were heard coming from the shop. It was the nephew. With him was Brigit Able. The girl was carrying a heavy parcel, which turned out to be funeral garments. She said she had spent a good hour or two at the tailor’s shop waiting for Mr. Osgood to complete them and she was now distraught for all her chores left undone. Margaret told the girl not to trouble herself about the chores but to lay the garments on her great bed upstairs. As Brigit left to do this, John Waite commenced a discussion with his aunt regarding funeral arrangements. Joan rose to go. Margaret rose too and embraced Joan. “Thank you,” Margaret said, looking at Joan in such a way as to plead with her not to tell anyone of what she had said. Joan received the message and nodded. Then Margaret showed Joan to the door.

In the street, Joan thought back to the unnerving experience in the barn, and her disquiet returned to do battle with the skepticism aroused by Margaret’s account of ghostly happenings. She thought Margaret’s encounter with her dead brother had all the earmarks of a fraud—perpetrated doubtless by the clever girl for whom Joan had come to feel less sympathy than before. Ursula’s brother Andrew, she suspected, was also involved, and probably played the part of Philip, disguising his voice and using the childish name he and his sister might have discovered from any of a number of persons who had known Margaret as a child. Given Margaret’s state of mind, she might have supposed any young man of her brother’s years, height, and girth, to be Philip