Louisa and the Crystal Gazer (5 page)

“I doubt it,” he said. “Emily was never so brief in her statements. No, this has been a great disappointment. The past should be buried with the dead, not bandied about for a game.” He seemed angry, and when he turned down the sidewalk he was muttering.

Miss Amelia Snodgrass was the last to come out of the house. She said not a word to us as she glided by in her brown hat and coat.

“Marriage,” whispered Sylvia to herself as we began our walk home. “Father wishes it,” she said to me.

“Don’t you require a beau first?” I asked, teasing.

“Quite right, Louy.”

I stitched at the reverend’s shirts the next morning till my back ached and I longed for fresh air. I allowed my mind to
wander over the events of the previous day, thinking of modest Miss Snodgrass, blustering but jovial Mr. Barnum, the loud Mrs. Deeds and her cringing husband, and the heroic Mr. Phips. What an assorted group Mrs. Percy had gathered!

A running stitch allows you to place six stitches at once on the needle, thus saving considerable time and speeding the work. My seams that morning were all running stitches, though they are not as fine as French stitches. I was impatient with the work and eager for life, for activity and event. I was bored, kind reader. Sewing is a fine activity, but not for me. And so I let my mind wander back to that character who had spoken to me yesterday, as soon as Sylvia gave me that interesting name, Agatha. She spoke again:

So my new story was to be a love story!

I went for a walk that afternoon through Boston Common, admiring the frosting of snow decorating the ancient oaks, and laughing at the children skating upon the pond, as they tumbled and shrieked and worried their proud mothers with the speed and skill of their activity. It seemed as though this new character, Agatha, walked beside me, and I felt her sadness and her terror and her passion. She was not one to wait for the legitimacy of vows. When her Philip declared her
face was charming, her singing sweeter than any he had ever heard, she gave him all her love freely.

Oh, Agatha. Foolish woman! Do you not know that men often least desire that which is easiest won? Hers would be no simple love story, I decided. There would be a terrible crime.

That led me to think about the woman who had inspired my new character, Mrs. Agatha Percy. I admired her skills at playacting, for there was more of spy work in her pronouncements than tidings from the deceased. Certainly it had required only listening to gossip to determine what message would most make Sylvia alert. Her mother had been pleading with her for four years now to accept one of the many men who had promised their hearts. Sylvia disdained their offers, suspecting that her railroad shares were more of an attraction than herself. As for my surprise visitor, certainly that was a common pronouncement at such circles and no great risk to state. So much, I thought, for crystal gazers.

During my walk I passed the shop window of Mr. Crowell’s Music Store, a favorite place of my sister Lizzie, and it reminded me that I had not yet selected a Christmas present for the musical member of the family.

The window was adorned with a gay green silk wreath and filled with sheets of music, metronomes in handsome mahogany casings, tuning forks, and the other paraphernalia enjoyed by Apollo’s tuneful children. But what caught my eye was a handsome portfolio, bound in red leather, of new piano pieces by Liszt.

Liszt, gentle reader, was one of Lizzie’s favorite composers. I entered the shop, the doorbell tingling merrily, and found Mr. Crowell at his counter, making a small arrangement of little boxes of violin strings.

“Ah! Miss Alcott!” he greeted me in friendly manner. “How is Miss Elizabeth?”

“Well, and in New Hampshire with Mother and Father,” I said. “And Mrs. Crowell?”

“Well, and in the back room, making plans for a party.” He sighed and grinned. “A party! In my shop! I never thought.”

“For Christmas?”

“For Christmas, and for the lottery. I’ve an announcement, Miss Alcott, one you may want to pass on to our Elizabeth. I’ve purchased three lessons, an hour each, from Signor Massimo, and I’ll hold a drawing to find a winner for those lessons. Isn’t that a fine idea? He takes so few students, and it is such an honor to study with him!”

Signor Massimo? The very same artist who had not arrived at Mrs. Percy’s séance?

“Has he been ill, our Signor Massimo?” I asked Mr. Crowell.

“Not at all. He’s in fine health.”

Then he is sensible as well as talented, I thought. He rejected Mrs. Percy’s invitation. And wouldn’t it be fine if I won those lessons for Lizzie? She could come to Boston for a week, and then return to Walpole.

“May I purchase a ticket for the drawing?” I asked Mr. Crowell, inspired.

He sighed and lifted his hands, palms up. “Tickets cannot be purchased,” he explained. “There will be only twelve issued, one to each of the persons who buys one of the new Liszt portfolios.”

That situation suited me even better. Should I not win the
lottery, I would still have that beautiful portfolio to give Lizzie.

“And the cost of the portfolio?”

“Five dollars.” He saw the expression on my face upon hearing that amount and patted my shoulder, as if to give me courage. “I know that is very expensive, but it is bound in calfskin, with gold letters, and a very small quantity has been printed.” He waggled his eyebrows.

Five dollars was three dollars and twenty cents more than I had. It was more than I had planned to spend on all the presents for my family that year. But I was already determined that Lizzie would have her portfolio, and if luck was with me, those three lessons from Signor Massimo. There could be no finer gift for her in all of Boston.

“May I put down fifty cents?” I asked.

Mr. Crowell sighed even more heavily, then spoke in a whisper so that his wife, who was more stinting than himself, would not hear. “You may, but with no guarantee. If it comes to the last portfolio and I have a customer, cash in hand, I must sell it. Your deposit would be returned, of course. It’s the missus. Set her heart on a new wallpapering for the house, and it doesn’t come cheap.”

“I understand.” I gave him two quarters and walked home light of heart, convinced that I could finish the reverend’s shirts and purchase that portfolio for Lizzie in time. Wouldn’t she be pleased! I missed her very much, perhaps even more so than my other sisters at that moment, for the approach of the Christmas season always awoke a passion for music in our home, with Lizzie singing or, when we had one, playing piano for hours every day. If I won the lottery, would Lizzie be willing
to come down to Boston from Walpole? She was very happy there in her quiet country abode.

A surprise awaited me. When I arrived home at sunset, chilled but exhilarated from my long walk, Auntie Bond greeted me at the door, flustered and smiling. “You have a visitor,” she said, pointing up the stairs. “A surprise visitor.”

Upstairs, delicate steps rushed forward and my sister Lizzie’s sweet face peered over the stairwell.

“Oh, Louy, I am so glad to see you!” Lizzie, as soon as I reached the top step, flung herself into my arms. She was still in her plaid travel costume, and her valise and hatbox were piled on the floor.

“Dear, whatever are you doing here? You are supposed to be in Walpole with Mother and Father! Is something wrong?”

“Yes,” said my younger sister in a dark and dreary voice. “Cousin Eliza was planning a social afternoon for me. A party!” With her placid round face and gentle gaze she looked so angelic that her timidity seemed appropriate. What angel wishes attention?

Reader, if you are unfamiliar with my family, know that of my three sisters, Elizabeth, known as Lizzie, was the shyest. Even school had terrified her, so she had been educated exclusively at home. So it was that she murmured the words
a party!
with all the loathing other girls would have reserved for a trip to the toothpuller.

“And Marmee said we must go along with it and not give offense. Louy, dear, I have run away! Don’t make that face, Louy. I left a note on the kitchen table and took the mail train. They know I am here with you. I may stay, mayn’t I?”

“Of course. We’ll have Auntie Bond bring up the camp bed. There is plenty of room. Oh, Lizzie.” We hugged and danced a bit till I tripped on her valise and we both tumbled to the ground.

“Like when we were children,” said Lizzie, leaning deeply into my embrace.

“Except then you had your lessons,” I said. “What will you do here?” Oh, how tempted I was to give away my surprise for her!

“Auntie Bond has a piano still, doesn’t she? I thought so.”

“At your disposal, dear child, at your disposal!” called up that good woman, who had witnessed our reunion.

“I will practice, Louy.” Lizzie grew dreamy eyed, thinking of new études and sonatas. And then a more practical look entered those pretty blue eyes. “And I will sew with you. My stitches are finer and faster, and I can take some of your work to leave you more time for writing.”

We set about unpacking her travel case and chatted cozily, as sisters do, about Marmee’s health, Father’s expectations, the news from Anna, who was nursing in Syracuse, and of May, the youngest, also known sometimes as Abby, usually in those moments when she most resembled our mother, Abba. She, still at home with Mother and Father, was our artist in the family and was painting lovely watercolors of the gorges and ravines of Walpole, where we had all summered.

A different thought soon preoccupied me.

“Lizzie, did you tell anyone of your surprise visit to Boston?” I asked when the many folios of her sheet music had been brought from the bottom of the old cloth valise.

“No. Else how could it be a surprise? But wait.” She frowned, making a tiny wrinkle between her pale winged brows. “I may have said something to Uncle Benjamin’s housekeeper. I did. She packed me a lunch for the train.”

Had Agatha Percy made a lucky guess? Or had she access to our very private household in Walpole? The thought made me uncomfortable.

I slept well and woke early. Quietly, without waking Lizzie, I sat at my little writing desk and opened the inkwell.

I placed a kiss on the paper, sealed it into an envelope for the post, and then lifted the volume of Dickens that served as paperweight to my barely begun story.

I had written before the séance. Now, having met Mrs. Percy, her imagined presence took firm hold in my mind. Her voice grew more assured as I imagined a story to fit the face and personality. Mrs. Percy, judging from her face powder and padded hair, knew the arts of adornment, yet even in the dim light I had seen the wrinkles about her eyes, the dry thinness of the skin on her hands. She spoke again, even as I dipped my pen into the ink.

I stopped and frowned, thinking.