Page 38 of The Missing Pages

Harry had knocked back once. So he had been in love.

Violet felt triumphant. As far as she could tell, there had never been anything written about Harry’s having a paramour of any kind.

Of course, nothing like that ever would have appeared in his correspondence with Rosenbach, Livingston, or Quaritch.

But in all the other materials about him that she’d come across, including articles in the Harvard Crimson from his time as a student as well as those written more recently by Madeline, no one had mentioned a fiancée, a girlfriend, or anyone else he might have had a courtship with.

Violet looked up at Harry’s portrait. He was young and handsome, and bore an expression of soulfulness. It would only make sense that he had loved someone, and that the feeling had been reciprocated. But who was she?

After Mr. Berns reprimanded her, she left Harry’s desk, losing the chance to ask him any more questions.

But Violet’s mind was racing with all the things she wanted to find out from him.

Her body tingled with excitement. Scant details of Harry’s personal life had ever been revealed in the eighty years since his death.

Could she actually be the one to now uncover something new to the Harry Elkins Widener story?

Before she began transcribing the Rosenbach letters for Madeline, Violet had done a cursory library search for information about Harry.

She learned that while the Wideners’ archives contained ample material about the library’s construction and a large amount of letters from Mrs. Elkins Widener describing what she wanted the memorial to represent and pledging her full financial support, there was only a handful of materials that illuminated Harry’s life beyond his tireless love of books.

From what Violet had read in old editions of the Harvard Crimson now stored on microfiche, Harry had been a member of the Owl Club and the Hasty Pudding, where he’d performed in The Lotus Eaters with his fellow troupe members.

But she could find nothing referring to a marriage engagement, or even any newspaper article that mentioned he’d been spotted in a social setting with one particular woman, as some of the gossip columns of the day often liked to report.

Violet discovered A. Edward Newton’s tribute to him, in the September 1918 edition of The Atlantic.

The author, a former friend and classmate, shared that Harry had once shown him one of his beloved treasures—a copy of Cowper’s Task that previously belonged to W.M.

Thackeray. The acclaimed novelist had written on the dedication page, “A great point in a great man, a great love for his mother. A very fine and true portrait. Could an artist possibly choose a better position than the above?”

According to his friend, Harry pointed out the dedication and said, “Isn’t that a lovely sentiment? And yet they say Thackeray was a cynic and a snob.”

No one, certainly anyone who had done any digging about Harry or Eleanor Elkins Widener, would deny that the mother and son were close.

After all, she’d created a Taj Mahal–like memorial to her beloved son after his death, ensuring his name was forever associated with books.

But was there ever anyone else who owned Harry’s heart?

As Violet pushed open the heavy wooden door, the maple-scented fall air flooded through her nostrils, invigorating her.

She would not tell her suitemates about what had just happened in the Memorial Room.

They’d think she was crazy, maybe even report her to Health Services out of genuine concern.

She needed to figure out on her own a way to ask Harry more questions and see whether he communicated back.

As she entered the quad, she noticed Theo walking in the quad holding an elaborately carved pumpkin. He must have seen her, too, as he called out to her as she approached the main gates.

“Vi!” he hollered.

She stopped and waited for him to come closer.

“Hey,” he said. “I thought that was you.”

“Are you delivering jack-o’-lanterns?” she asked, pointing to the pumpkin in arms.

He laughed. “Oh this? Well, I was put in charge of ‘spookin’ out’ the house,” he said. “We’re having a Halloween party at the Owl on Friday night. You should stop by.”

Violet offered a weak smile. She wasn’t sure she had it in her to attend another party at the Owl.

“Come on,” he nudged. “It’s a costume party. It’ll be fun. Your suitemates will all be there.”

“I appreciate the invitation. I really do. It’s just hard.”

“Promise, you’ll think about it?” He smiled and lifted the pumpkin in her direction. “I’d hate for all my carving to go to waste.”

Had she not run into Theo, Violet would have forgotten completely that Halloween was just two days away.

True, the shops in Harvard Square had been outfitted in goblins and witches for weeks now, but the orange and black seasonal trimmings had quickly grown tired.

Soon they’d be putting up cardboard turkeys and pilgrim hats, and Thanksgiving would mean it was time to venture home again for a few days, where she’d sit at the table with her parents and try to pretend she had recovered from Hugo’s death and was their happy daughter once again.

It was strange to think that only last year, she and Hugo had been huddled up in his dorm room, his arms wrapped around her, and they were musing on who they should dress up as for the Owl’s annual Halloween fest. Violet had suggested Lucille Ball and Desi Arnez, thinking her red hair and his thick black curls already made up half the costume needed.

She was sure she could find a polka-dotted dress in the Salvation Army thrift store.

“Maybe it’s too on the nose,” Hugo said, stroking the inner part of her arm. “We can do better.”

“I’m just not going as a French maid, or Catwoman to your Batman, okay?” she teased and nuzzled deeper into his chest.

He knew she was more the girl next door than the femme fatale. “I got sidetracked with the red hair thing. It’s just one less thing to have to buy for a costume.”

He laughed. “Well, let’s work with that.” Hugo glanced at his bookshelf. The Dante Rossetti poetry book she’d given him for their first anniversary was right next to his poli-sci textbook.

“I always call you my Elizabeth Siddal.”

She smiled. They could go as Rossetti and Siddal. She was the poet’s muse and his beloved. It would be perfect.

“Oh my god, that’s brilliant,” she said. “And it’s so us.”

“Yes. No one else could be them but us.”

“Probably best to accentuate the painter side of Rossetti, rather than the poet. It gives us more to work with.” Violet was already dreaming of how they could pull this pairing off.

She could so easily imagine Hugo with his tousled dark Byronian curls, a white artist’s smock with maybe some paint blotches on it for good measure, and an oil brush tucked into the side pocket.

She couldn’t picture him carrying a palette and brush around throughout the party, though.

It would be gone within minutes, replaced with a red Solo cup of beer as soon as his teammates greeted him at the door.

“And you could dress like Siddal in one of his portraits of her,” he said.

“Yes.” A half-dozen images quickly came to mind.

In the end, she chose the portrait that Rossetti had done of Siddal in his 1869 painting, Bocca Baciata.

Violet had teased out her auburn hair and parted it down the middle, clipping a gold-colored comb on one side and a white silk flower on the other.

She’d found a bottle green robe at the thrift store and accented it with a vermeil necklace.

Unlike Hugo, she didn’t need both of her hands free at the party, so she was happy to carry the pomegranate around all night, to make it seem like she’d just been lifted off Rossetti’s canvas.

It was strange to think back now that Hugo had mentioned later on that evening that it was too bad the famous portrait Siddal had posed for depicting a drowned Ophelia floating in a stream of water, one hand clutching a nosegay of brightly colored flowers, had not been painted by Rossetti but instead by his friend, John Everett Millais.

“You would have been gorgeous as Ophelia tonight,” he said.

But now Violet cringed thinking about the image of the tragic girl drowned in the water. The foreshadowing of one of them lost to water was impossible to bear.

That Friday night, Violet had put zero thought into whether or not she would be going to the Owl Halloween party.

She certainly hadn’t contemplated a costume.

The few hours of free time she’d had that week, after finishing up her homework and working for Madeline, were spent looking for books in the library about the different ways over the centuries mediums had allegedly communicated with the spiritual world.

She’d taken over the coffee table in the common area with her books on ghosts, Victorian séances, and the history of the occult.

Violet had been most intrigued by the Ouija-like reportings of spirits seizing a tablet and spelling out answers through alphabetized tiles.

If she could ask Harry specific questions, like what was the name of the woman he’d been in love with, perhaps he would spell it out for her.

One of her most fascinating discoveries centered on another ghost who was particularly close to home.

She was amazed by several articles in the Harvard Crimson reporting that students believed that Lowell House was haunted by the ghost of Amy Lowell, the famous poet and sister of the former Harvard president Abbott Lawrence Lowell, who was in charge of the college when Harry was there.

Although she was an avid reader and passionate learner, her traditional parents forbade her from attending college.

The paper claimed students and faculty over the years claimed they had seen apparitions of Amy floating through the hallways and even smelled the thin, hand-rolled cigars she liked to smoke.

Violet no longer felt she was hallucinating that Harry’s ghost might indeed be communicating to her now.

Countless Harvard students and scholars before her had for years reported their own encounters with spirits from the other side.

Digging through the stacks, she’d even found papers written by the nineteenth-century Harvard-educated philosopher and psychologist William James, who devoted much of his life to exploring the existence of the paranormal.

Violet spent an hour reading about James’s experiences following the death of his son, Herman.

The devastation of losing his child had propelled James to seek the guidance and comfort of a famous medium by the name of Leonora Piper.

Despite being initially skeptical, William James came to believe that Piper had a true gift for connecting with the dead. “She had knowledge that she couldn’t have known without some assistance from the other side,” he’d written.

When James founded the American Society for Psychical Research in 1910, the Harvard academic community did not simply write off his inquiries and curiosity in the occult. Instead, they remained open to his findings and supported him.

Violet only wished the current climate was so open. As Lara and Jenny’s skepticism had been revealed in the cafeteria, she knew most people would think she’d lost her mind.

She was just about to dig into another research book, when the door swung open and Lara and Jenny stepped inside.

Violet was hardly surprised when she saw Lara was in a short French maid’s costume holding a feather duster, and Jenny was in a black spandex catsuit with little kitten ears attached to a headband, whiskers drawn on her cheeks, and a tail attached to her backside.

“Aren’t you coming tonight?” Lara’s voice was impatient.

“No. I’m really not in the mood. Going to just stay in and read.”

“Come on,” Jenny whined. “Halloween’s the perfect night to come out. Maybe you’ll get lucky and even see your ghost from the library…”

Violet was still in her sweatpants reading when Sylvia walked into the common area. It was nearly 10 p.m. and Violet had assumed she would not see her suitemates for several more hours. It wasn’t uncommon for parties at the Owl to end close to 1 a.m.

“I came back to check on you.” Sylvia flopped down on one of the living room chairs.

“Thanks, I’m good.” Violet looked up from her book. Sylvia was dressed in a trench coat over pajamas.

“Just come out for a little bit. It’s not good for you to be holed up inside all the time.

You’re either in class or at the library.

” She eyed Violet’s reading material. “What’s this?

” She reached over and picked up one of the articles James had written in 1910 for the American Society for Psychical Research that Violet had photocopied.

Another book lay next to it, called Spiritualism and Psychical Research in England.

“I’m just doing a little digging,” Violet said. She was intentionally being vague.

“For a paper?”

“I’m not sure yet. Maybe.”

Sylvia switched gears. She hopped back up and did a little shake so the folds in her trench coat relaxed.

“Throw something on, Vi. Come on.”

“All right, fine.” Violet shut her book. “But just for an hour or so, and I’m not doing a big costume or anything.”

“You won’t get any objections from me.” Sylvia opened her jacket and pointed to her pink pajamas. “If anyone asks about mine, I’m a cross between a flasher, a detective, and an exhausted mother at daycare drop-off.”

Violet laughed. Sylvia had made the bar so incredibly low for a costume, she couldn’t protest.