Ghosts by Gaslight - Jack Dann [136]
“Ugh,” said Mary. “You’re making me shiver!”
“But even if he is a ghost,” I said, “whose ghost is he? And why is he haunting the four of us?”
“We don’t know that he is,” said Eleanor. “Maybe the other girls have had dreams as well, and they’re just not talking about it.”
So we went around asking the other girls about what they had dreamed the night before. None of them had dreamed of a man with curling black hair, or brown skin that made him look like a foreigner, or black eyes that looked as though they were laughing at you, although one of them had dreamed of her brother who was in India.
No, it was just us four.
We made a pact. Each morning we would compare notes. We would tell each other what we had dreamed, all the details, no matter how embarrassing. And we would try to remember what the man had said, those poetic words that seemed to slip out of our heads on waking, like water.
“HE TOLD ME that my eyes are like bright stars,” said Tollie.
“Oh, for goodness’ sake,” said Eleanor. “Your eyes are like eyes. He told me that my hair was like a fire burning down a forest, except he used different words. And they rhymed with something, but I don’t remember what.”
“You have to try to remember,” I said. “I wish all of you had Mary’s memory.”
In my notebook, I had written down what we dreamed each night, and the fragments of what we thought must be poetry:
Eleanor: tower, dark but moonlight
“the cascade of your gown”
something about “sweet surrender” and “sweetly die”
Mary: in front of fireplace, kissed neck “like a swan’s,” “proud and fair”
“luxuriance of your hair”
Tollie: passed in hallway and dropped letter
“hide it in your bosom, sweetheart”
“the moon’s a secret lover, as am I”
Lucy: kissed several times, passionately
“elements of love” (but hard to hear, could be “dalliance of love”?)
By this time, we had all been kissed, and we blushed as we told each other.
“It was—soft,” said Mary. “This is wrong, isn’t it? Even if it’s just a dream.”
“Forceful,” said Eleanor. “I don’t think he would have stopped if I’d wanted him to. How can it be wrong if it’s only a dream?”
“Is that what it’s like, when boys kiss?” asked Tollie.
“No, it’s nothing like that,” said Eleanor, who had boy cousins. “That’s disgusting.”
“I don’t think we’re any closer to working out who he is,” I said. “We know he’s a poet, because of what he’s saying. I mean, neck proud and fair, and all that. So, if he is a ghost, we need to find out if there were any poets who died at Collingswood.”
“There’s no such thing as a ghost,” said Eleanor.
“What about Miss Halloway’s book?” asked Tollie.
I was sent to ask Miss Halloway for the book, as the one most likely to, as Eleanor said, “read boring stuff.”
“Of course, Lucy,” she said. “I’m glad you’re interested in the history of the school. Some of the other girls, well, they’ll graduate and get married. But I think you are capable of doing something different, some sort of intellectual work. I hope you’ll think about that. There are so many opportunities for women nowadays that did not exist when I was your age.”
“Yes, Miss Halloway,” I said, hoping to escape a lecture. Miss Halloway’s advanced educational theories, we had discovered, involved teaching girls the subjects boys were usually taught, and she had a tendency to lecture us about the advancement of women. I did not quite escape one, but it was not as long as I had feared. I closed the door of her office with “and you really should think about a university education, Lucy,” in my ears.
“And who’s going to read that?” asked Eleanor, when I had brought The History of Collingswood House, from the Crusades to the Present Day to our room. The book had been covered with dust, and now I was covered with it as well.
“How many pages is it?” asked Mary.
I had already looked. “Seven hundred and ninety-two. And there’s no index.”
By the way they all looked at me, it was obvious who was going to read The History