We Hear the Dead (24 page)

It seemed that Miss Leiper had chosen not a school for me but a private tutor. She was recommending a woman named Susanna Turner. On Miss Leiper's recommendation, Mrs. Turner was willing to take me on as a boarder in her home and provide an education tailored to my needs.

“To discourage gossip,” she said, “it would be best to cast Elisha as a disinterested benefactor, but I think that I can improve upon your story. We shall say that Miss Fox was recommended to me by Mrs. Post and that Elisha has helped to set up a fund for her education merely to please me. That should be enough for Mrs. Turner, and if no one sees how you look at each other, it might even be believed.”

The next two days passed by blissfully. Except for a brief jaunt taken with Miss Leiper to meet my prospective tutor in the neighboring town of Crooksville, I spent my days with Elisha, enjoying the spell of fine weather on the Leiper estate. It was heavenly to live for a time in the same house as my love, to take meals together and know that he was always somewhere nearby. Accompanied by the lumpish Miss Walters, we enjoyed long walks on the property. Elisha shared his boyhood memories, pointing out his favorite place for fishing and the tree from which his brother had fallen and broken an arm.

For this fleeting interval, the outside world had no hold on us, although I knew that the Arctic expedition lingered in the background, ready to extend its icy grip and drag him back. In the end, however, it was not his life that intruded but my own.

On the third afternoon, I was reading aloud to Miss Leiper with Elisha seated on a footstool by my side, his head resting against my chair, when Morton knocked apologetically upon the door.

“A telegram has arrived for Miss Fox,” he said.

Elisha jumped to his feet and accepted the telegram on my behalf as naturally as if he were already my husband. “Thank you, Morton,” he said, neatly slitting open the message with his pocketknife.

I lay down Miss Leiper's book expectantly and waited while Elisha looked over the paper. It was not until I saw his shoulders drop and his face lose its cheerful animation that I realized what the message had to be. I knew it before he spoke. “Maggie, your sister's husband…”

I gasped aloud in sudden guilt, realizing that it had been days since I had given him a thought. “Oh, Calvin!” I cried. “Poor Calvin!”

“I am so sorry, my darling,” Elisha said, dropping to one knee beside me.

I took the telegram from his hands and read it, tears spilling freely. “Oh, my poor family!” I looked up at Elisha. “They are taking him to Rochester for the services. I shall have to leave at once and join them.”

He hesitated, looking stricken. “I hadn't planned on you returning to your family,” he said. “I thought you would start with Mrs. Turner as soon as I left here. But I suppose you will have to go. In fact,” he took my hand, “I will go with you.”

“Oh, Ly, will you?” I cried gratefully.

“Of course,” he said. “Some day it will be my family, too.”

Kate

On the evening Calvin died, a portent lit the sky in the form of a shooting star. It crossed the black patch of night outside my window, and I sat up in bed at once, knowing what had happened. Hurriedly, I put on my dressing gown and went down one floor to my sister's bedchamber, where I found her trembling and shaken, drained of all color. “He has left us,” she whispered to me hoarsely, “just now.” Her hand was still upon his brow, which grew cold and still beneath her touch.

His spirit, I knew, was at peace, well content for having lived four years past his projected death—and married to the woman he loved besides. So I wept only for our sadness, that we would no longer have him among us.

Leah decided that Calvin should be laid to rest in his hometown, and the city of Rochester offered a sympathetic welcome home to its beloved mediums. The Posts opened their home to us, and Calvin's casket lay there for two days while all our good friends came to pay their respects.

Maggie arrived shortly after us. We were glad for her presence, but relations between us could best be described as strained. Leah and Maggie had argued bitterly on the day we returned from Washington, and neither one had gotten over it. Maggie confessed to me that she would not soon forgive the things Leah had said, while Leah told me that Maggie had mocked her in a high-handed manner that could have been learned from only one source.

Dr. Kane himself had come with Maggie to Rochester. Leah tolerated his presence for the sake of dignity and respect for the occasion of our gathering. For his part, Dr. Kane was civil and kind to her, in a cool, bloodless way. They spoke to one another as little as possible—and only with the barest truths.

“I was saddened to hear of Mr. Brown's passing,” Dr. Kane said to her upon his arrival.

“Mr. Brown would be touched by your sentiment” was Leah's reply.

For all his talk of a secret engagement, the doctor took no pains to hide his feelings. He stood with the family when greeting guests and often placed his hand familiarly on Maggie's shoulder. No one who saw them together could mistake the relationship between them. My sister Maggie was, as always, the light at the center of the room. Even dressed in mourning black, with her usual bell-like voice pitched low, she possessed more life and color than half the people in the room. Men were drawn to her like bees to a bright flower, and women could not feel jealous of her, for she was so earnest and friendly. Falling in love had flushed her with a joy she could not suppress, even on this sad occasion, but I thought that among all of us, Calvin would have been most pleased to see her this way. He had been a secret romantic, our quiet and bashful foster brother.

I only wondered: If Dr. Kane had his way, would the bright light of my sister's spirit be snuffed out? Would her lively mannerisms and wit be squashed beneath a weight of respectability, so that she faded in among the empty women of society, reserved and lifeless? How could he profess to love our Maggie and still wish to change her? Leah had choice words to say on this subject, and I had heard them aplenty. For my part, I had been fond of the doctor until he had called me a fraud, but even now it was hard to hold a grudge. Like Maggie, he possessed an irresistible charm. He would not be a bad brother, I thought, as long as he did not use his flame to put Maggie's out.

He brought me a cup of tea while I stood at the casket. “It is a shame,” Dr. Kane said. “He was still a young man.”

“He was only thirty-three,” I replied. “But, of course, he was deathly ill a few years ago and expected to die then. The doctors said it was a miracle he lived this long.”

Dr. Kane started, and suddenly looked more closely at the man in the casket. The teacup in his hand rattled in its saucer, and I reached out to take it, watching him curiously.

“They said the same of me,” he murmured, almost too softly to hear. Then, louder, “He never fully regained his health, did he?”

“He had frequent relapses,” I confirmed, sipping at the tea and looking back and forth between Calvin's gray, shrunken features and the suddenly pale countenance of Dr. Kane. The chatter of voices in the room behind us seemed to fade away from my hearing. For that moment, we two and the dead man beside us were the only people in the world.

“Are you all right?” I asked, my own voice sounding tinny and small.

“Yes, quite. I'm fine,” the doctor said automatically, his eyes fixed with horror on the casket. But he was not fine. He was seeing his own death upon him, and as I watched him shudder at the thought, I saw it, too.

A shadow passed over him, such as might be made by a reflection in a window that obscures the image beyond the glass. I saw him in his casket, his face waxen with death, haggard and ravaged by illness that left him, like Calvin, old before his time. Then the real man turned away from the coffin, his ghostly image dispersing like tendrils of mist, and with a resolute set to his jaw, Dr. Kane crossed boldly to Maggie's side.

Taking her hand, he drew her out into the center of the room. Interrupted in midconversation, Maggie tilted her head in puzzlement, her eyes searching his face with concern. Addressing the room, Dr. Kane abruptly began to speak of the brevity of life and the precious gift of love. He rambled, making little sense and seeming quite addled in his thoughts, although some of the people who guessed where this muddled monologue was leading began to smile among themselves.

Finally, calling upon the gathering of friends and family to witness his word, he pledged his love to Maggie and swore before all present that he would marry her on his return from the Arctic. Maggie beamed with joy, her face flushing prettily, but the doctor seemed nearly broken by emotion. “I will be true to you,” he vowed, his voice choked with feeling, “until death.”

Well-wishers closed in among them, although Leah did not, clearly outraged to have her widowhood overshadowed by the happy couple. And I hung back near poor Calvin, shaking in dread.

She was my dearest sister, for all that he had taken her away from us. How could I tell her that I had seen a vision of him in his coffin?

So I huddled with a cup of stone-cold tea by the side of my dead brother and shivered miserably all to myself—cursing my gift.

Maggie

After Calvin's funeral and burial in Rochester, Leah announced that she, Mother, and Kate would be continuing on to Hydesville, where they would visit with the family. “Are you coming or not?” she demanded with her usual bluntness.

I wanted to go, of course, but felt obliged to consult Elisha. Unexpectedly, he gave his blessings. “Go, spend time with your family before you move to Mrs. Turner's. I have a dozen things waiting in New York that need my immediate attention. I will see you once more in the city when you return from Hydesville, and it is there we will have our good-byes. I cannot bear to think of them now.”

My brave, bold explorer had been highly emotional for days and, in fact, had unexpectedly proposed marriage to me before the entire congregation of family and friends at Amy Post's house. This led me to tease him a bit afterward, remarking that crypts and wakes seemed to bring out his true romantic nature! In truth, however, I realized that he was suffering apprehension about his upcoming voyage, a sentiment I heartily shared. We had spoken at great length about the future we would enjoy after his return, but we had avoided the topic that preyed upon both our minds: the chance that he would not return at all.

I was not the least bit surprised when Elisha insisted that he still wanted to keep our engagement discreet, even though he had announced it publicly at the Posts' house. “I do not think there is anyone left for me to tell,” I said wryly. However, I knew that although Elisha spoke his intentions freely among my acquaintances, he was strictly closemouthed to his own family.

***

We returned to New York in the early days of May after three weeks in the country only to find that Elisha had suddenly been called to Philadelphia. I had missed him by only a day. A traveling trunk had been delivered to Leah's house at Elisha's behest, and I began to pack my belongings with a heavy heart.

“I guess I'll be taking you with me,” I said to Lovey, my little canary bird. His constant twittering was a nuisance, but I would not have wanted Elisha to know that his gift was unappreciated. Mother and Kate had refused to keep him, and Leah said she would pop him into a stew if I left him behind. “I just hope Mrs. Turner doesn't have a cat,” I teased him.

There was nothing else for me to do. I would not depart for Crooksville until I had the chance to see Elisha. Leah and Kate recommenced their spirit sittings, from which I excluded myself. I tried to fill my days with letter writing, reading, and social calls. Mostly, however, I brooded over Elisha's impending departure.

The
Advance
would sail from New York Harbor at the end of May, heading to Newfoundland. From there, it would make its way to Greenland and push northward, along the frozen coast of that wasteland. I traced the route with my finger on one of the maps Elisha had left for me, past settlements with strange names like Fiskenes and Upernavik until the map trailed off into speculation, sketched in by Elisha with only his best guesses.

Although he had been planning this trip since before I met him, delays with supplies and disappointments in funding had caused a mad scramble of frantic activity in the final weeks. The expedition needed to be under way in time to take advantage of the short Arctic summer. In addition, news of a competing British expedition had driven Elisha mad with jealous rivalry. In spite of its established goal of finding the missing Franklin mission, it could not be denied that the second Grinnell Expedition was foremost a journey of exploration. The desire for fame consumed him. If he were able to discover the fate of Franklin or prove the existence of an open polar sea with Arctic lands above it, he would be hailed as the most celebrated explorer of our day.

For my part, however, I could not look at the blank stretches of the polar map without a deep, primal fear. Something in that desolate void had swallowed two British ships and all their crew without a trace. My beloved Elisha could vanish just as easily into that unknown.

Scarcely two weeks before his planned departure, my fiancé returned to New York and came to see me. He arrived wearing his navy uniform and carrying two packages under his arm, one small and the other twelve inches square. Immediately I noticed that he moved with a greatly restrained and impatient energy, like an overwound clock mechanism. Still, he greeted me warmly with an embrace and his usual whispered endearments. The smaller package proved to be a gift to me, a book of verse in which Elisha had inscribed little messages and comments. The larger one, as I had guessed, was his present to himself, the portrait of me. I had finished sitting for it the week before my Washington trip, but I had never seen the completed work.

The girl in the painting was a fragile and delicate creature who resembled me in some superficial features and might have been a romanticized ideal of my person. I bit back a comment that my alter-image looked pale and ready to faint, as if her corset had been fastened too tightly, because Elisha had paid for it and he was greatly pleased. “My Darling Little Spirit,” he called the portrait fondly. “This will never leave my side until God brings me back to you!” Smiling appreciatively, I only hoped that this shy and swan-necked girl did not so overtake his affection that the rosy-cheeked sturdiness of the original disappointed him upon his return!

We enjoyed a quiet supper. He entertained us with anecdotes of his travels during the past weeks, recounting amusing antics of fellow train passengers and frustrating experiences with railroad timetables. As much as possible, he avoided speaking of the journey yet to come; nevertheless, it overshadowed everything he said. After the meal, Mother shooed us out the door, encouraging us to stroll around the block to the bakery, from where she had asked us to acquire a small cake. Elisha arranged a cloak around my shoulders and folded my arm into his own as we stepped down into the street.

We did not hurry, even though the air was brisk and the light was fading with the onset of evening. “I did not want to make overmuch of our parting,” he confessed to me as we walked. “But seeing you tonight, I only know that I am about to leave you, and I realize how very, very much I love you.”

“I have been frightened,” I admitted. “And I have been despondent. But those are my own failings, for I have never seen you unsuccessful at anything you have desired to achieve. You will undoubtedly find what you seek and return in triumph. I will not mar your departure with tears nor have you remember me for the next year for my red and swollen eyes!”

“A year is a long time,” he reflected solemnly. “You won't forget me, will you Maggie? Marry some other young swain who catches your eye while I am gone?”

I smiled up into his face. “You know I could not.”

“No,” he said complacently. “You hold half of my soul and I hold half of yours. It is only when we are together that each one of us is complete.”

We returned to the house with a luscious lemon cake, which Mother served to us in the parlor with coffee. When at last the time came for Elisha to make his departure, Mother rose from her seat and motioned Kate to the door. “It is a little irregular,” she said, giving us a knowing smile, “but, then, your circumstance is a bit irregular, what with Dr. Kane's voyage and a lengthy separation to face. After all, you
are
engaged, so I think a few minutes of privacy would not be unreasonable!” She followed my sister to the door and—after cooing back over her shoulder, “Just a few minutes, mind you”—closed it behind her, leaving us entirely alone.

It can be safely said that those few minutes were well spent, although the tears came after all, and my eyes were indeed red and swollen when he left.

***

The next morning Mother and I left New York by train. I was listless and useless after a long night of weeping into my pillow. It was for this reason that I was careless with my luggage and did not realize until the train was well under way that I had left the birdcage with my canary sitting on the floor of the terminal. This new loss set about a fresh round of wailing that Mother could not subdue. “It cannot be helped now, Margaretta!” she kept saying, obviously confounded that I should grieve so much for a bird that had annoyed us all. But Lovey had been a gift from Elisha, and to lose him so thoughtlessly seemed a terrible betrayal. Nothing would comfort me, and I immediately began to compose a tear-stained letter to Elisha confessing my sin, which I posted upon our arrival in Philadelphia.

There was little conversation on the trip, due to my moroseness and Mother's waning tolerance for it. She was still dressed in the deepest black, mourning her son-in-law just as if he had been her own flesh and blood. Her reproach could not have been clearer: my loss could not compare with Leah's, and my continued self-pity was unseemly.

Neither of us was cheered by the sight of the picturesque Turner home with its handsome trees and welcoming piazza covered in honeysuckle vine. Despite hearty greetings from Mr. and Mrs. Turner, we expressed our desire to promptly turn in for the night. I cannot imagine what Mrs. Turner thought of us, but in her kindheartedness she forgave us any breach of courtesy and ushered us to our beds. The next morning Mother announced her intention to return at once, and Mr. Turner drove her to Philadelphia himself.

My first week at the Turners was a dark and gloomy one. The weather turned gray and wet, trapping us indoors and drowning the cheerful little honeysuckle blossoms on the piazza. I was tearful and distraught, which Mrs. Turner took for homesickness. In actuality, I was numbering each day until Elisha's departure. There had been no letter from him since my arrival, which probably only indicated his intensive involvement in readying his ship but seemed to me an early taste of the silence I could expect when his expedition disappeared into the North.

On the last Saturday in May, only four days before the scheduled departure of the
Advance
, I was listlessly applying myself to scales on Mrs. Turner's piano. Rain streamed down the windows in a torrent, and so it was rather a surprise when my tutor opened the door to the sitting room and called out, “Miss Fox, here's a guest come to visit you!”

I straightened up and turned around, expecting that Miss Leiper may have come to see me settled in with the Turners.

Instead, standing in the doorway, dressed in a dripping uniform with a self-satisfied grin, was Elisha. He had one hand on the doorframe, and in the other he held up a birdcage, slightly battered and worse for wear but still containing that endlessly twittering canary!

“Oh, Lovey!” I cried, at the last moment substituting the bird's name for his own. I overturned the piano stool in my rush to the door, but then, unable to fling myself into his arms, came to a stop just in front of him and covered my face with my hands. Mrs. Turner must have thought me a brainless fool, watching me sob so heartily for a silly bird.

“The little wanderer has returned to the fold!” Elisha announced, unable to squelch his glee at surprising me. “Make it an evidence of my thoughtful attention to your every need, Miss Fox, and an omen of my own eventual homecoming.”