Page 34 of The Missing Pages
“Please pack these and have them shipped home to me,” I requested. “But the Bacon is so little, it can fit in the pocket of my dinner jacket. I think I’ll take that one with me.”
Both Ada and Bernard Alfred laughed when I said that, but my intention was true. What better way to hold a book—particularly one that had brought Ada and me even closer together—than to carry it next to my heart.
“You’re a wise man,” Bernard Alfred declared, smiling.
“I like to be prepared for all things,” I said. “This way, if I’m shipwrecked on my way home, I’ll have something to read.”
“Good idea!” Ada chimed in. “How dreadful it would be not to have a book with you.”
“And to otherwise be all alone.”
Bernard Alfred’s thick eyebrows lifted. Even he could sense the chemistry between Ada and me.
“Well, the Little Bacon will serve you well. It’s a marvel in printmaking. Setting the type alone on something so small would be a triumph even in today’s time. But the fact that it was created in the sixteenth century.” He shook his head. “It’s a feat.”
“Yes,” Ada agreed. “It truly is.”
Bernard Alfred took the book and handed it to Ada. “Will you wrap it for Mr. Widener and add the books he is taking to his account?”
She nodded, taking the Bacon before slipping out the door.
It was a curious thing. The room changed once the book was removed, and after Ada had departed as well.
I felt like I was standing in a painting that had been suddenly drained of its beauty. The colors that had seemed so alive moments before were now muted. The remaining figures—Bernard Alfred and me—held little interest. I could not wait for Ada to return.
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
Violet opened the W. T. Stead book to its copyright page. “First edition, printed 1867,” it stated in neatly typed letters. This edition was not the original printing, and Violet was certain it could not have been part of Harry’s collection, as a more careful inspection showed that what she held in her hands had been reprinted in 1972. But there wasn’t a shred of doubt in Violet’s mind that she was supposed to read this book.
When she went to the front desk to check the book out, she was greeted by Rose, one of the librarians who handled the student requests on Widener’s main reading level.
“Hi Violet,” she said. “How can I help you today?”
“I just wanted to take this one out.” Violet handed the book to her.
Rose took it and checked it out through the computer system, then stamped the index card in the back with the return date.
“Looks interesting,” she said, handing it back to Violet. “Is it for a class?”
“Just some research…”
“Let me know if you learn anything about the other side,” Rose whispered to Violet. “Between you and me, I sometimes think this place is haunted.”
“Really? Why’s that?”
Rose leaned across the counter. “Don’t think I’m crazy. But there’s been many times I’ve left a stack of books here on the cart,” she pointed to one behind her, “and when I came back, they’d all been alphabetized.”She shook her head. “Weird, right? It’s like Harry Widener doesn’t like anything to be out of order.”
In the Lowell House library room, Violet took the book out from her backpack. It was slender, no more than a hundred pages. But as soon as she began reading it, the words felt like they were meant just for her eyes.
The dead do not die. They simply shift from body to spirit. But the spirit lives and breathes.
According to the foreword in the book, W.T. Stead did not himself actually write a single sentence beyond the introduction. Every word was instead transmitted to him through a woman named Ellen from the other side, who wanted to assure her dear friend, Julia, that her spirit had not stopped living even after her body had expired.
Stead allegedly went into a trance and through automated writing, where Ellen’s spirit took over his hand, he began transcribing word for word what she wished to communicate.
Do not fear, dear Julia, I am beside you at every moment. Even without ears, I can hear. Even without eyes, I can see you as clearly as I did before. Death does not stop any of that!
Violet felt a warmth come over her. She thought of Hugo. She desperately wanted to believe Hugo was still with her, that the feelings they felt for each other were as true now as they were when he was alive. It was odd, however, the sensation she had now wasn’t that Hugo was in the room with her. It seemed different somehow. As though the warmth she felt was more familial than romantic. Her intuition wastelling her that the Stead book had been a message to her from Harry and that’s why she stumbled upon it at his library. Perhaps Harry was trying to communicate to her that even if Hugo was no longer physically there beside her, he was still present somehow? Maybe that was the reason he’d made sure she’d seen the book.
