CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
IWAS IN FACT TRYING TO MAKEVIOLET REALIZE THATnone of these things she was experiencing—the sound of my voice in her ear during class, the smell of smoke, the falling of the laurel leaf—were coincidences. The one thing a ghost learns rather quickly is that the living fail to appreciate subtlety when it comes to receiving otherworldly communications.
My mother would have never believed I was trying to send her a sign if a mere solitary dove had landed on her windowsill and tried to peck out a message in Morse code. I needed to send a hundred chirping birds to her garden to make her realize without a doubt that it really was me.
And a single sign often isn’t enough. Most people, particularly a twenty-year-old college student like Violet, need a series of bewildering, if not downright bizarre, things to happen to them before they can even begin to contemplate that someone from the other side just might be trying to tell them something.
So I would not give up on Violet taking notice of me. I had been waiting for her to step into my room at the library for quite some time, longer than I care to admit.
But now I sensed a change in her. She was finally starting to realize that the latest string of bizarre incidents was not just in her imagination, and that maybe the spirit of Harry Elkins Widener really was attempting to communicate with her.
And, of course, I was.
I needed one more thing to bring her into the realm of truly believing. And, being the book lover that I was, I knew no better way than by making sure a particular tome fell into her hands.
The following week, as Violet was in the stacks at Widener, a book fell off one of the metal carts slated for return.
It was W.T. Stead’sAfter Death: Letters from Julia.
The book was a reprint of the late nineteenth-century original, a paperback edition published by a small independent press. Violet picked it up and studied it. On the front, the image of an old man with a white beard bearing an eerie resemblance to Walt Whitman, flashed from the cover.
W.T. Stead was a pioneer. Born in England in 1849 and the son of a minister, he achieved great success as an investigative journalist by exposing myriad scandals that plagued British society, like child prostitution and the extreme poverty in London’s slums. Later in life, he developed an interest in spiritualism. On his way to giving a talk on that subject at the Carnegie Institute in New York, he perished when the RMS Titanic sank in the North Atlantic.
Violet picked up the book, glancing at Stead’s life story on the back cover. Her mind instantly made the connection that he and I had perished on the same night and in the same circumstances.
Violet took the book and was about to replace it on the cart, when I pushed it from her hands and it landed on the floor again. This time it opened to the exact page I wanted her to read.
Sometimes a person is chosen to receive information from a spiritual entity. There is knowledge that they want to share.The person could be visited by a smell, a sense that someone is occupying the space with them, as if they’re not alone.
And now because I really needed her to understand that I was in the room with her, I sparked a loud cracking sound. She lifted her head toward my portrait and watched as one more laurel leaf fell to the ground.
“Harry?” she asked softly. “Are you actually here?”
I wanted to break out in song and dance and hoot with glee that I’d finally broken through to Violet. It was as if a huge doorway had opened up, and I knew now that if I could continue to find creative ways to communicate with her, she would be listening.
I forced the book to the ground a third time and again it landed on another specific page I wanted her to see.
She bent down and read the text:
A ghost will often find ways to be noticed…
Violet’s eyes looked up from the book and then scanned the room, as if she were searching to see me flying around the bookshelves of my study.
My portrait above the mantel remained perfectly still, but my spirit was reverberating in infinite, tiny shakes. Violet shivered.
Now, I knew she could feel me.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
SO MANY WRITERS AND POETS HAVE SPENT EVERY LASTdrop of their ink writing about the thrill of love. And although I was not blessed with a Byronesque talent for words, I knew as I boarded the RMSMauretaniabound for England that every other thought in my head was about seeing Ada again.
I had wrapped the children’s book I had purchased from Rosenbach and already sent it by mail to Ada. Inside, I put a note with a little drawing of a steamer ship with a stick-figure fairy holding a wand and sprinkling stars over it. “See you soon” was all the note said along with my initials, H.E.W.
Though before I left New York I’d sent a letter confirming where we’d eat dinner together that Saturday, I knew I’d see Ada first at Quaritch’s shop on Griffin Street on Thursday, when I went there to inspect what Bernard Alfred had put aside for me.
Adrenaline rushed through me as I imagined seeing Ada in her element. I did not fantasize about being on a tropical island with her, or sailing on a yacht together in the Mediterranean. Instead, I preferred to close my eyes and envision her moving through the stacks at Quaritch, smiling as she pulled down books she knew we’d both love.
My parents were preoccupied during the first days into our voyage with so many things other than me; my sister’s wedding, the building of their Newport mansion, and theongoing quest to find a French chef for the new Ritz-Carlton in Philadelphia Father was backing. It was a blessing to be able to nurture my own excitement as I inhaled the briny air and counted the days until we reached land.
