Fitcher's Brides (16 page)

T
HE NEXT MORNING
M
R
. C
HARTER
gave his daughters money and told them to go into town and purchase whatever they needed for Vern's veil and train. She had no shoes to go with the dress, either, but that might not be something they could help. Still, they were to look for slippers or mules that would be appropriate.

The sky was overcast, but it wasn't raining. They dressed warmly and walked into Jekyll's Glen.

Although she'd noticed that Van Hollander had some nice material for a dress, Vern couldn't recall seeing anything like the lace for a veil in his store, so she led the girls to the other store, Eggleston's. Mrs. Eggleston helped them find suitable lace. It didn't match the lace trimming the dress, but wouldn't clash with it, either.

She also served up a pair of Spanish satin slippers that would go beautifully with their mother's dress; and some black net stockings of the kind that had been popular in Boston. They bought those, too. Mrs. Eggleston fairly cooed over Vern's betrothal, telling the girls how excited she'd been on her own wedding day, how Vern had the whole world before her—strange, romantic stuff coming from such a large and otherwise seemingly dour woman.

It was as Vern was paying for the goods that Kate pointed at a handbill on the wall and said, “Look, it's today. It's the poster you brought home before, and the demonstration of mesmerism is going to take place this noon at the home of a Mrs. Shacabac. Oh, let's go. We're here already, and it's not much longer.”

“It's mesmerism, Kate,” said Amy, as if that should be enough to dissuade her.

“Which is what?”

Amy had no ready answer, but Kate would certainly not have let it go if she had, so Vern weighed in. “We'll go. I want to hear what they have to say, these mesmerists. If they can speak with the other side.”

“Like you do?” Amy asked.

Vern ignored her. The truth was, in Boston where mesmerists were plentiful Lavinia would have called such a meeting “a blasphemy” and forbidden them to attend. Even though Lavinia was being nice to them today, no greater motivation than to defy her was necessary. “Can you tell us, Mrs. Eggleston,” she asked, “where this house would be?”

 

Even without directions, they would have found it. Eight people were walking on the gravel at the side of the road ahead of them, on their way toward a stately brick house near the end of the road. A semicircular drive ran past the front of it. As the girls approached, a carryall with a family of six on board pulled into the drive, and those on foot scurried to the side. At the front steps the family got down, except for the father, who drove the wagon back around and out onto the road again. He eyed the sisters with a pained expression as he drove by them.

Inside, more people milled about in the main hall and the parlor. A woman with auburn hair streaked gray, and wearing a dark green dress with a large bustle, came up to them and said, “I don't believe I know you girls.”

They introduced themselves.

“Oh, my, yes,” the woman exclaimed, “the Pulaski house. Why, that poor couple, that was just a terrible thing.”

“Ma'am?” Kate asked.

“The way they just up and disappeared. So young, and how sweet a couple. Why, I'd spoken to Adele on the street that very day. It's a sin to Moses.”

The girls nodded and muttered that, indeed, it was.

“Well, now, my name is Emma. And this is my house. You peart girls just make yourselves right at home. Have you ever seen Dr. Castleman speak before?”

“No, ma'am,” replied Vern. “But in Boston, where we hail from, there were at least a hundred mesmerists this past year.”

“Oh, my. A hundred? Oh, goodness. And you come from Boston? So much culture and excitement there, isn't there? I haven't been to Boston for quite so many years now. Well. There's tea and cakes in there, and then Dr. Castleman will be speaking along the hall, where we have set up a lecture room. You'll want to be sure you can see him.” She glanced away from Vern, at the entrance. “Howard, my dear!” she called, and walked between the girls to greet her new guest.

“I should like some tea, I think,” said Amy.

Kate sighed. “Just don't get crumbs and jam on Vern's veil. Better still, why don't you give it to me to carry?”

Amy handed her the folded material before plunging through the crowd.

“I could do with tea, too,” Vern said. “Should I give you my things as well?”

For a moment Kate stared at her with feigned incomprehension. Then the two of them laughed. She wasn't being mean, Vern insisted, but Kate was right—Amy didn't want tea half so much as she wanted to stuff herself with cakes.

They followed her into a vast and crowded dining room.

 

The lecture room was probably bigger than their parlor and dining room combined, and contained more chairs than they had sticks of wood for the stove, thought Vern. She and her sisters chose three seats on the far side of the room but near the front. By the time things started many people had to stand around the fringes. She wouldn't have thought there were so many people in Jekyll's Glen interested in seeing a mesmerist, and many of them looked as if they had traveled to be here. She wondered how far away the handbills had been distributed.

The woman in the green dress walked in front of the audience. A curly-headed man, his hair pasted forward in ringlets, walked after her. He wore a dark red waistcoat and held his hands just beneath the lapels as if holding his heart in. Everyone fell silent.

“Ladies and gentlemen, friends and neighbors, I thank you all for coming today. This is quite exciting, isn't it? Our dear friend Mr. Bayard has secured for us this rare opportunity to learn about a most exciting science that is going on around us right now in larger cities. Why, I was told just this day that there are over one hundred mesmerists practicing in Boston.” She glanced coyly at the girls as she said it. “Our lecturer is the eminent Dr. David Castleman, a philosopher from Philadelphia. He has studied with Charles Poyen, that famous professor of animal magnetism, who toured here some five years past.” Members of the audience shifted and whispered to each other at the sound of that name—it clearly meant something to them. “He tells me that he has recently spent time with Phineas Quimby as well. And I gather he is going to perform some feats of mesmerism to demonstrate this remarkable art to us. Dr. Castleman?”

Light applause followed. In a clipped and erudite voice, he thanked his hostess, then waited patiently, surveying the audience, until all was quiet.

“Each of you here today,” he began, directing a finger across the room, “has a remarkable power lying within you. A power, I might add, which can find hidden meanings, cure disease, and even—if tapped deeply enough and in the right way—allow you to hear others' thoughts and see into the future, performing what will seem on the face of it to be parlor tricks. But they aren't. There's no
magic
at work. No devils. No illusions. There is only the incredible magnetic power of the mind.

“I have spent now a decade as a student and five years as a practitioner of mesmerism. For most of that time, I've traveled quite a bit, first through England, and now to bring the knowledge I possess to communities across our young country. What I behold is a nation in chaos. Our religion is in chaos. I see a number of your pastors in the audience today, some of whom were perhaps hoping to find the devil at work here. I regret to tell you, you will not. I have no doubt some of you reverend gentlemen will concur with my…diagnosis of our worship. Go to any large city and you will find street-corner evangelists by the cartload, framing in their particular cant some absurd revelation upon the Gospels while they practice an artful hypocrisy that simply astonishes. These unlettered bipeds almost invariably predict the pending doom of mankind. It should take a learned man no effort at all to dismiss them. Any physician should be able to tell them that mankind is not doomed, but rather on the brink of an era of revelation of a different sort: one of unparalleled inner discovery. If physicians were not themselves without integrity—half of them peddling worthless nostrums and serving up superstitious cures—they would know this already. In the cities, physicians even pay beggars to pass out handbills announcing some fantastic elixir they've concocted, which will cure gout and whooping cough and even consumption with the very first spoonful! Travel a block farther and some other beggar working for some other fraud will be passing out news of a different curative. What is the result? It is that many have died from drinking poisons promised to them as medicines—potions for common ailments that not only don't cure but inflict suffering—dissolving teeth, burning holes in throats and stomachs. In a word, murdering. And the most alarming element of quackery is that absolutely none of it is necessary. You have within you the ability to eradicate disease by
tapping
”—and he knocked a finger twice against his temple—“tapping into this private apothecary. Disease is nothing more than a contagion of belief. You hear that someone has a cold, and soon you find yourself developing the selfsame symptoms. You catch a cold because you believe in it. Cure you of your belief, and we cure you of your cold without a drop of some unholy noxious nostrum ever passing your lips.

“Is there religion and is there medicine? Yes, of course, to both. I would never advocate you quit your church. You pastors shift uneasily without cause, I assure you. Today, right here, I shall present you with a singular demonstration of a phenomenon which encompasses, I think, both elements—faith and science—and I'll leave it to you to decide what interpretation you render. To accomplish my task, I must first ask for some assistance from you. I should like a dozen of you, men and women, to come forward.”

The audience shifted again, looking at one another. A few people stood. Amy said, “Oh, Kate, you ought to go,” but Kate shook her head.

The family that had preceded the girls up the driveway—the mother and her children—moved to the front of the room as a group. One of them, a young boy, was coughing into a handkerchief, and looked deathly pale, Vern noticed. The handkerchief appeared to be spotted, and she tensed with recognition. The child was coughing blood. His sunken eyes made contact with hers and she looked away.

Castleman paid the woman no mind. He was engaged in conversation with two men who had come forward immediately. The mother called out over the noise of the crowd, “Sir.”

One of the men speaking with the mesmerist directed his attention to her.

“Madam, how may I assist you?” asked Castleman. The crowd fell silent. Those standing remained on their feet, waiting to see what would happen.

“Sir, my husband brought us all this way from Norwich to hear you today. We come because of our Timmy here, who's very ill, and the doctors don't expect him to live long.”

“I see. And you'd like me to use my—or rather,
his—
powers on him?” He smiled benevolently and gestured for the boy to come forward. The child shuffled past his brothers and sisters. Castleman knelt before him. He spoke gently to the boy. So soft were his words that Vern couldn't make them out. He moved his fingers in front of the child's eyes as he spoke, and she thought she saw the dark eyelids flutter. Castleman stood up. “I have to tell you in all fairness, madam,” he said to the mother, “that he is deathly ill, and that there are some things neither hope nor skill can salvage once they've passed a critical point. He is, however, a positive subject and I will apply myself to the task.” When she remained there, he said, “You may leave him. We'll give him a chair to sit in so as not to tire him, and I'll work with him first.”

“Thank you,” she replied. Her eyes brimmed with tears. Vern's heart went out to her.

Castleman renewed his call for subjects. When he had a dozen, he lined them up and walked down the row of them. He had them grab his finger or squeeze their hands together. To each, he spoke solemnly and softly as he had done with the boy. Then he either directed them to stay or return to their seat. In the end, he kept four adults—two women and two men—and the boy. The four stood calmly, their eyes closed as if listening intently.

“Now, as I promised, I will work with young Timmy. But first, let us make sure our new friends don't wander off.” And he walked down the row of the foursome once again. This time, he stayed with each of them a little longer. Castleman then returned to the boy. He spoke with him, and this time Vern made out the words “sleep” and “fluid.” The child coughed into his handkerchief again. The mesmerist seemed to have a different voice for this quiet speech, much deeper and less animated than when he spoke to his audience. She wished she had gone up there.

After a few moments he stepped back. The child now sat, like the adults, with his eyes closed. His hand clutching the kerchief lay limp in his lap. Castleman turned back to the audience. “When the French Doctor Mesmer in the last century first made his discovery of this power, he posited the notion of magical fluid floating through the air, surrounding us. He had no idea of what he was contacting, and so made up the best theory he could under the circumstances. In fact, what you perceive here before you is an altered state of
mind
. Of being. Of spirit. You are looking upon the souls of saints, of those we know from our Bibles, who were guided by voices and forces that others around them could not hear or see. The ‘magnetic state' as it's called frees the mind from the physical world and lets it visit the higher planes. As you shall see.”

He turned back to the child, and Vern realized that while he'd spoken the boy hadn't coughed once. Others in the audience must have recognized this, too; people were pointing at him and whispering to each other.

“Lad,” said Castleman. “Where are you now?”