Christmas Bells (13 page)

Right before lunch, the winner was announced—a boy from one of the other sixth-grade classes who had written a story about a young tollbooth operator who overcame a lifelong stutter in order to wish a Merry Christmas to the drivers traveling on the holiday, the last of whom was Santa Claus in disguise. Charlotte knew everyone had expected her to win, but she ignored their curious glances and pretended she didn't care. If anyone asked, she would tell them that she had written her story the morning it was due and hadn't really expected to win. Fortunately, she was spared from telling that lie because no one asked.

Of course she shared the devastating accusation with Emily, who became outraged on her behalf and insisted that she go to Mrs. Collins immediately and explain that she had not cheated, that the poem was her own creation. “I did base it upon Longfellow's poem,” Charlotte reminded her as they stood side by side at their lockers, packing up at the end of the day. “Maybe that's cheating.”

“Maybe ‘Christmas Bells' inspired you, but your poem is nothing like his. His verses have five lines and yours have four. He repeats that line about peace and goodwill and you don't. Your poems have the same meter and they're both about Christmas, but that's it.”

“Maybe that's enough.”

“Inspiration is not plagiarism. Explain to her. I'll come with you.”

“Right now?” Charlotte said, dismayed, as Emily slammed both of their lockers shut and seized her hand.

“Yes, right now.”

“We'll miss the bus.”

“My mom's driving me home today. She'll give you a ride.”

Emily was determined, and Charlotte was heartened by her support, so she allowed herself to be towed along to Mrs. Collins's room. Their teacher was erasing the blackboard when Emily knocked firmly on the open door, and her eyebrows rose at the sight of them.

“I'm glad you came by, Charlotte.” She gestured to a desk in the front row. “Please sit. Emily, you may wait outside.”

“Charlotte didn't cheat,” Emily declared.

“Emily,” Mrs. Collins said distinctly, “you may wait outside. Please close the door.”

As Charlotte took her seat, Emily reluctantly obeyed, throwing her one last encouraging look through the window as the door closed.

Mrs. Collins sat down behind her desk, the ancient electric typewriter of school legend at her right hand. “Well, Charlotte? Did you have something you wanted to tell me?”

Charlotte took a deep breath. “You wanted to know if the poem is mine. Well, it is. Every word. The rest of the story too.”

Mrs. Collins regarded her with disappointment but not the least bit of surprise. “It would be better if you told the truth.”

“I am telling you the truth.” Her voice sounded very small and meek and not at all convincing.

“Charlotte, that C was generous, an acknowledgment that most of the story is clearly your own writing. I could have given
you an F and reported you to the principal.” Mrs. Collins sighed, frowning. “Perhaps I should invite your parents in and we can all discuss this together.”

“No,” Charlotte blurted. The knowing look Mrs. Collins gave her in reply told her the teacher completely misunderstood her urgency. “Please don't tell her. My mom is really stressed out and this will make everything worse.”

Mrs. Collins folded her arms. “Then I understand why it would feel especially important to you to receive a good grade, and maybe even to win the contest, but plagiarism is never an acceptable means to that end.”

“I didn't steal someone else's poem.” Suddenly inspired, she dug into her backpack, took out her English binder, and took out a handful of loose-leaf papers covered in cursive and cross-outs. “See? These are my rough drafts. You can see how I started and how I changed it and how it became better.”

Mrs. Collins barely glanced and the pages. “Charlotte, we both know you could have written all that after your assignment was returned to you.”

“How could I have done that?” Charlotte protested, forgetting herself. “When would I have had time? I was in class all day.”

“At lunch. In the passing periods.”

“That's not what happened.” Charlotte felt tears gathering. “It's my poem and my story, every word. I didn't cheat. I swear I didn't.”

Mrs. Collins sighed and rose. “You should go now. If you want to discuss this matter further, we'll invite your parents to join us.”

Charlotte rose, her vision blurry with tears, and zipped her backpack shut with force. “My dad can't come here all the way from Afghanistan to tell you I'm not a liar,” she snapped icily.

“Charlotte—”

But she had heard enough. Wiping her eyes with the back of her hand, she stumbled from the classroom, nearly crashing into Emily, who put her arm around her shoulders. “You should tell your mom,” she said as they made their way outside to the curb.

“I can't. My mom has enough to worry about with my dad being gone and Alex—being Alex.”

“Then tell another teacher. Every other teacher at this school who's had you in class knows you're smart and honest. They'll stick up for you to Mrs. Collins. They'll—”

“We can't tell any other teachers,” insisted Charlotte. “The first thing they'll want to do is call my mom. You know that.”

Emily clearly wanted to argue the point, but their arrival at the car brought their debate to an abrupt end. Emily's mother took one look at Charlotte's tear-streaked face and her daughter's indignant scowl and agreed to drive Charlotte home, no questions asked.

•   •   •

Charlotte had been so proud of her story, especially the poem, but Mrs. Collins had ruined everything. There would be no wonderful honor to brighten her mother's bleak season, no prize-winning story to read to her proud father over the Internet, no beautifully engraved plaque to present to her mother on Christmas morning. She was in disgrace, and there was no coming back from it.

Charlotte had considered that the worst day of her life. She never thought she would ever feel as horrible as she had at that moment, trying to convince her teacher of her innocence and hearing only bland rejections in reply.

Her mother's lie—and the unknown cause of it—had proven that she could feel worse, so very much worse.

She took a deep breath in the middle of the verse and tried her best to sing, but her heart wasn't in it. She couldn't bear to
give voice to the sweet, poignant melody when she knew that eventually the secrets would come out, and as bad as she felt now, she would feel worse, infinitely worse, when her mother finally confessed the real reason why they had not heard from her dad in so long.

August–December 1861

Nahant. Aug 18. 1861.

Mrs. Robert Mackintosh

2 Hyde Park Terrace

London

Dearest Mary,

I will try to write you a line to-day, if only to thank you for your affectionate letter, which touched and consoled me much.

How I am alive after what my eyes have seen, I know not. I am at least patient, if not resigned; and thank God hourly—as I have from the beginning—for the beautiful life your beloved sister and I led together, and that I loved her more and more to the end.

I feel that only you and I knew her thoroughly. You can understand what an inexpressible delight she was to me, always and in all things. I never looked at her without a thrill of pleasure;—she never came into a room where I was without my heart beating quicker, nor went out without my
feeling that something of the light went with her. I loved her so entirely, and I know she was very happy.

Truly do you say there was no one like her. And now that she is gone, I can only utter a cry “from the depth of a divine despair.” If I could be with
you
for a while, I should be greatly comforted; only to you can I speak out all that is in my heart about her.

It is a sad thing for Robert to have been here through all this. But his fortitude and his quiet sympathy have given us all strength and support. How much you must have needed him! He goes back to you with our blessing, leaving regrets behind. We all love him very much.

I am afraid I am very selfish in my sorrow; but not an hour passes without my thinking of you, and of how you will bear the double woe, of a father's and a sister's death at once. Dear, affectionate old man! The last day of his life, all day long, he sat holding a lily in his hand, a flower from Fanny's funeral. I trust that the admirable fortitude and patience which thus far have supported you, will not fail. Nor must you think, that having preached resignation to others I am myself a cast-away. Infinite, tender memories of our darling fill me and surround me. Nothing but sweetness comes from her. That noble, loyal, spiritual nature always uplifted and illuminated mine, and always will, to the end.

For the future I have no plans. I can not yet lift my eyes in that direction. I only look backward, not forward. The only question is, what will be best for the children? I shall think of that when I get back to Cambridge.

Meanwhile think of me here, by this haunted sea-shore. So strong is the sense of her presence upon me, that I should hardly be surprised to meet her in our favorite walk, or, if I looked up now to see her in the room.

My heart aches and bleeds sorely for the poor children. To
lose
such
a mother, and all the divine influences of her character and care. They do not know how great their loss is, but I do. God will provide. His will be done!

Full of affection, ever most truly,

H. W. L.

As mournful and bleak as it had been to spend the late summer at the cottage at Nahant, with its constant reminders of countless blissful, happy days lost forever to the past, Henry knew that returning home to Craigie House would be infinitely more painful.

In the aftermath of his beloved Fanny's death, Henry had plunged into a grief so deep and so complete that he had had no strength or presence of mind to demur when Charles Sumner and Tom Appleton and other friends had urged him to retire to the seashore. There, they had said, he could convalesce from his injuries and escape the distressing scenes of so much former happiness and present horror.

He had acquiesced, believing desperate flight preferable to paralysis, hoping that a change of scenery would ease the children's suffering, knowing that nothing could mitigate his own. For a time he had become so wildly melancholic that he had believed he was going insane, and he had feared that his friends would be obliged to commit him to an asylum. Only by sheer force of will had he stumbled back from the precipice of madness. He was greatly bereaved—entirely, wholly bereft—yet so were the children, and they needed him. They were Fanny's greatest legacy. He could not forsake her by leaving them orphaned and alone in a world that had changed utterly in the matter of a few terrible hours.

At Nahant the fog of shock and laudanum faded, his burned skin itched and ached and yet healed. The relentless stream of letters of condolences followed them to the cottage, but there
were few callers. Charley and Ernest sailed and fished and fervently discussed the war. The girls brought Henry shells they had collected upon the shore, begged him for stories, and went on various excursions with Miss Davies. The cottage was too quiet with the children gone, and though he sat at his desk with paper and pen, and tried to write poetry or respond to letters, he found himself counting the silent minutes until they returned. Miss Davies and his friends thought peace and quiet would ease his recovery, but what he desperately craved was his children's noise and activity, their liveliness and youth, the glimpses of their mother he perceived in a daughter's smile, in a son's clever witticism. He clung to such ephemera as if they would tether him to the Earth, restraining him from drifting away to join his beloved wife too soon, before his duty to his children was fulfilled.

At last that bleak, empty August ground to a halt, and with a rising sense of sickening dread, Henry made arrangements for their return to Cambridge. Charley would resume his studies at Harvard when the new term commenced, albeit reluctantly, and the younger children too would return to school. And since Henry must provide for them, he would have to take up his pen, though it seemed impossible that he would ever again find it within himself to write. It seemed that all poetry had drained from the world, that life had lost its flavor and color and fragrance. What was there to write about but misery and loss?

He brooded in silence as he and the children traveled homeward. He was grateful that Charley and Ernest were as ever boon companions, and that dear, good, wise little Alice distracted her younger sisters by pointing out interesting sights she glimpsed through the windows and reading aloud to them when they tired of watching the passing scenery. Henry smiled when the children spoke to him, and caressed their heads whenever they came near, but he was distracted by the conundrum of how, upon their
arrival at Craigie House, he would make it across the threshold without collapsing in paroxysms of grief.

Upon their arrival in Boston they boarded a carriage for the last stage of their journey, and as they drove to Cambridge, the children peered through the windows and called out familiar landmarks they passed, as if they had been gone a year and everything they beheld was both new and familiar. Henry's heart pounded as the carriage turned onto Brattle Street. Their home would be barren, so bleak and desolate, without the loving presence that had once graced it. He was not sure he could set foot within the once cherished walls.

Too soon the carriage halted in front of Craigie House.

Henry found himself unable to move. The children did not seem to notice; Charley opened the door and bounded out, Ernest on his heels, and as the boys helped with the luggage, Miss Davies assisted the girls. They were halfway up the front walk, and then they were climbing the stairs, and still Henry had not yet descended from the carriage.

Then the front door opened and a woman emerged from the house. For a moment Henry felt as if his heart had stopped, and then recognition struck, and he inhaled deeply, both shaken and profoundly relieved. His sister Anne stood on the front porch, holding out her arms to her nieces and nephews, welcoming them home. She glanced past them, and her eyes met Henry's, and she managed a tremulous smile.

Anne. He descended from the carriage, steadying himself on his carved walking stick. What a compassionate sister, what a truly good woman she was! She had been widowed young, after only three years of marriage, and she had been the legal guardian of their nephew, Henry, ever since their brother Stephen's wife had divorced him on grounds of alcoholism and adultery. The poet's namesake was twenty-one now, and Anne had assumed the role of caretaker of the old family home in
Portland, Maine. Now, it seemed, she had come to take care of her grief-stricken brother and his children. Her kindness knew no bounds.

As the children embraced their aunt and went into the house, she held out her hands to her brother. “Henry,” she said, her eyes glistening with tears.

“My dear sister.” He set aside his walking stick, took her hands, and kissed her cheek. “I cannot say how very happy and relieved I am to find you here.”

“You're growing a beard,” she said, studying him. “It ages you twenty years at least.”

“It's not the beard that has aged me.”

•   •   •

The house had been closed so long that the air tasted stale, but after the windows were opened to the fresh, autumnal breezes, the lingering scent of neglect dissipated. Henry marked changes that had occurred in his absence: The hearth rug had been discarded, the floor of the library and at the foot of the stairs scoured bare and refinished so that no trace of the fire remained. His wife's clothing had been removed from her wardrobe—by whom and where taken, he did not know. Her jewelry remained, packed carefully into two velvet-lined cases, one she had brought with her as a bride, another he had given her for Christmas five years before. When his daughters came of age, he would pass the jewels on to them.

Later Anne gently told him that she had packed away Fanny's wedding gown in her trunk, along with a few other precious mementos. “They're in her trunk in the attic,” she said. “It may pain you to look upon them now, but someday they'll evoke fond memories, and they may bring you some comfort.”

Henry could not imagine such a day, but he thanked her. “The girls will cherish the gown,” he said. “Perhaps they'll wish
to wear it in her honor when they marry—in twenty or thirty years, when I've reconciled myself to the idea of them marrying at all.”

Anne smiled, her relief so evident that his breath caught in his throat. Truly he must appear most desperately bereft of all hope for such a simple, ordinary jest to bring her such relief.

The days passed, and grew somewhat easier in the passing, though no less lonely. The children returned to school. The servants bustled about industriously, ever solicitous of the family's grief, the master's strange bewilderment. Henry tried to resume his familiar routines and found that he could not, for Fanny had been involved in every aspect of his life, even those solitary pursuits of reading and writing. Fanny had been the perfect companion of his daily existence, his partner in every endeavor, the sharer of all his successes.

He did not know how to pick up and carry on without her. He was not sure he could.

He knew that he must.

He began with the simplest of tasks—responding to letters on matters of business. The burns to his hands had not yet completely healed, but he could hold a pen. There were accounts to settle, requests for charitable donations to honor, stationery to order, invitations to decline.

He resumed his customary morning walks before breakfast, feeling unsteady without Fanny on his arm. Sometimes Anne accompanied him, but often he went alone. The scenery became increasingly beautiful as autumn colored the countryside, but to him its splendor was inexpressibly sad. He took his daughters out for drives to enjoy the noonday warmth and sunshine, and together they strolled the gardens of Craigie House, admiring the glimmer of golden leaves in the sunlight, the lilac hedges shot with crimson creeper, the river sketching silver curves in the
meadow. Everything he beheld was full of loveliness and sublimity, but within him was naught but hunger, the famine of the heart.

He knew he did not suffer alone. Charley hid his grief best, believing stoic strength to be the proper demeanor for a young man of seventeen contending with loss. In this Ernest tried to emulate him, but his mask of bravery often slipped, especially when he thought no one was watching. Tenderhearted Edith often wept, and was comforted by Alice, but of all the children, little Annie suffered the most. Sometimes, when Henry and his youngest child were alone and quiet, she would repeat her unhappy confession that she had killed her mother. He gently pleaded with her not to say such a terrible, untrue thing. He told her emphatically that whatever had happened, it had been an accident. She would nod obediently in response to his attempts to comfort and reassure her, but although she stopped professing her guilt aloud, he knew she still blamed herself, and the sense of her culpability oppressed her. “I used to call you Allegra,” he told his melancholy child ruefully, drawing her onto his lap, kissing her brow when she rested her head on his shoulder. “I shall now have to call you Penserosa.”

A few friends visited, Charles Sumner and Richard Dana one evening, James Fields the next day. All were kind and solicitous, and he found some solace in their company. He apologized for neglecting to respond to their letters and begged them to understand that his silence did not signify indifference. To a man, they hastened to assure him that there was no need for apologies, or even replies. Their only wish was to offer him whatever comfort and help they could.