We Hear the Dead (27 page)

Maggie

I returned for a third time to Crooksville, despondent, reluctant, and more than a trifle resentful. I spent long hours of the journey contemplating the fate, not of Sir Franklin, but of his widow. In 1845 her husband had left her for the arms of the cruel mistress of the North, the elusive Arctic Passage, and only now, nearly ten years later, did she finally ascertain that which her heart must have known all along. Would nine years find me forgotten in Crooksville, fluent in seven languages and composing my own music for the piano, a used-up and faded old maid still waiting for the return of my love?

As it turned out, that was not going to be a possibility. Waiting for me upon my return to the Turner house was a letter anxiously held in my tutor's hands, her curiosity barely restrained. Clearly, from the markings, it had originated from the Kane household at Rensselaer.

Naïvely, I was excited by this, my first contact with Elisha's family. I opened it with expectations of commiseration in this time of great apprehension. Having been amply warned by Miss Leiper, I should have known better.

Dear Miss Fox,

I am writing to you at the behest of Mr. Henry Grinnell, who manages the funds held in trust for you. The monies placed in Mr. Grinnell's care will soon be exhausted, and as the protracted absence of Dr. Kane has extended the duration of his guardianship, Mr. Grinnell has sought my recommendation on the matter.

After due consideration I have decided that in deference to the affection I feel for my brother, I will donate my own personal funds to the cause that he espoused: the redemption of a young lady by providing her with the means of leading an honest life and resisting the temptations that beset a poor girl with a pretty face and an already disreputable association. I am certain you will find great relief in this safeguard to your comfortable home and education, but now that I am cograntor of your trust, I will remind you that as a dependent of my brother's kind charity your expenses should be subjected to restraint. As you are neither relation nor mistress to Dr. Kane, you of course realize that this generosity must in due time end and apply yourself to that eventuality.

In the meantime, I would like an itemized account of your expenditures since June of 1853, which you can forward to me through your regular correspondence with Mr. Grinnell.

Your servant,

Robert Kane

“Is something amiss?” inquired the shrewd Mrs. Turner, watching my face closely.

I could not have prevented the flush that burned on my cheeks, but I called upon all the control I had learned in many years of deceit to look up from this letter with an expression of serenity. Even in a moment of acute humiliation my instinct for self-preservation led me to understand I could not let Mrs. Turner know her income was in jeopardy. “Not at all,” I said lightly. “Just an amiable letter from Dr. Kane's brother, inquiring after my well-being in light of the recent unpleasant developments in the North. He also asks after his aunt. Do you think it would be possible for Mr. Turner to take me in his carriage tomorrow, to call upon Miss Leiper and commend to her Mr. Kane's regard?”

***

“What a detestable young man!” exclaimed Miss Leiper.

I looked at her with some surprise, and Miss Leiper smiled, clearly amused at my reaction to her words. “I know, Miss Fox,” she said, bending her head with its still-golden hair to the teacup in her veined hands. “I should not have a favorite among my nephews, let alone a
least
favorite! Yet I can safely say that Robert is a man who would try the most patient and virtuous soul. He is a Philadelphia lawyer, through and through.”

“Does he not know?” I asked. “Is he unaware of Elisha's regard for me?”

“Oh, he knows, Miss Fox. I assure you, they all do. Have I not told you that Elisha begged their permission to present you at Rensselaer House? But my nephew Robert Kane would not admit such a relationship in a letter that could be read by others. I hate to slander all lawyers. I am sure there are many men in the profession who are warm and generous and kind to children and dogs alike. But Robert was born a lawyer, or born with the personality of one at any rate, and thus chosen for the role in the cradle.”

To the extreme irritation of Mrs. Turner, I spent a week with Elisha's aunt. She was transparently glad for the company. I read to her, and she regaled me with stories about Elisha's childhood, her own youth, and her father's exploits in the War for Independence.

We also worked together on my reply to Robert Kane. I thanked him for his intervention in the matter of the dwindling trust fund and assured him that I would inform his brother of the treatment I received at his hands. I also conveyed to him his aunt's regards and passed along her request to be notified if any further funds were needed, as she had promised Elisha she would treat me as her own niece. Furthermore, I suggested he apply to Mr. Henry Grinnell for a list of my expenditures since 1853, for as trustee of the fund, he certainly must have such a record. Finally, I assured him that I was bearing up well under the strain of Elisha's long absence and that despite the speculations of the press I was certain that he would return in the spring. “It will be a joyous reunion for us all,” I wrote, “and I greatly look forward to making your acquaintance during the happy celebrations to come.”

Thus, I answered the kindly letter he should have written to me rather than the acerbic one he had actually composed. There was not a single word to suggest the injury I had received from his cold note, or any acknowledgement of the low way in which he addressed my character. However, I knew that he would read between the lines to grasp the meaning I wished him to comprehend: Elisha would learn of any insult he gave to me. I lived under the protection of his aunt, Eliza Leiper, who was fully aware of my true relationship with her nephew. And upon the triumphant return of Elisha's expedition, I would meet Robert Kane on equal terms as the wife of his brother.

I received no further correspondence from Mr. Kane, and money for my expenses continued to arrive from the Grinnells with no interruption.

***

The months crept on. I had lived so long with the Turners that I had become a member of the family. This meant that the gloves came off, in a certain respect, and Mrs. Turner and I clashed as heartily as any mother and daughter. By turns she cajoled and threatened me.

“I trust in kind Providence that Dr. Kane will return in the course of this next year,” she enticed me. “He will expect to find a companion whose conversational powers have been cultivated. I know that you will not wish to disappoint him.”

On another day, she spoke with more bluntness, using a variation of that time-honored threat of every mother: “You just wait until Dr. Kane gets home and hears about this!”

This is not to say that I did not apply myself to my studies. But under the circumstances, what young lady could continue day after day, week after week, with no occupation save the endless tasks given by a relentless tutor and no social engagements except visits to a kind elderly lady? I was living the prime years of my life in exile, practically confined to a convent like some maiden of medieval days. While my sister Kate attended plays and operas in the city, I stared moodily out through a pane of glass at a bleak, rainy autumn of bedraggled greenery, a pile of books in my lap and nothing to break the monotony except dire imaginings of Elisha's plight.

The cold was not his only enemy. As lethal and malignant as it was, with its constant threat of frostbite and gangrene, there was also the danger of illness, especially scurvy. The bane of explorers since the time of Ferdinand Magellan, this disease had cost more lives than the forces of nature or mishap in expeditions of the North. Without fresh food, its insidious poison would eat away at its victims, weakening their ability to remedy themselves by hunting for the food that could cure them. I
had
listened to Elisha when he spoke of provisioning his ship. And I knew that his stores of fresh foods must surely have been expended by now. He had known from the start that this would be his greatest deficiency and his most dire need.

I began to pester Cornelius Grinnell obsessively with demands for information on a possible rescue mission. He counseled me to practice self-control and not give way to “female jitters.” He promised to apprise me of developments as they became known to him and advised that I commit myself to my studies and leave the matters of men to men.

December buried Crooksville under snow deep enough to make the roads impassable by man or beast, and so I passed my birthday, Christmas, and the end of 1854 in even more solitude than usual. It was not until January that the Turners were able to retrieve their accumulated post from Philadelphia. My first bit of news came not from the Grinnells, but in the form of a telegram from Leah, my first communication with her since the
Tribune
spiritual contest of 1853.

Its message was short, simple, and baffling:

Married Daniel Underhill on Christmas Day.

Because I had never heard of Daniel Underhill and the whole thing seemed so unlikely, I was inclined to think the telegraph office had made a mistake and confused her message with that of someone else. But a letter from Kate followed fast upon the heels of the telegram, confirming the truth of the statement.

Daniel Underhill, president of the New York Fire Insurance Company, had been a longtime client of Leah's. His sudden proposal of marriage had been no less surprising than Leah's prompt acceptance. Kate wryly commented that Mr. Underhill's bank account and fine brownstone home on West Thirty-seventh Street may have had some influence on her answer. Mr. Underhill was an attentive and doting soul, who had kindly opened his home to Leah's mother and sister, but Kate reported that she and Mother would soon be seeking their own private lodgings.

Leah, forty-two years old and as broad as a carriage, was now on her third husband.

It was two weeks before I could manage a polite letter of congratulations to my sister.

***

Throughout the month of January, preparations for a possible rescue expedition continued to stall. Although Mr. Henry Grinnell and Elisha's father had enlisted the support of the secretary of the navy and several prominent scientists, Congress was slow to give its approval or assign any funds for such a mission. I strove to keep my rising panic from leaking into my letters to Cornelius Grinnell. “What can I do to assist?” I wrote with forced calmness.

His answer was typical:

You can but do what you are best equipped to do. Work hard at your studies, say your prayers, and look to Providence. Take comfort where you can in the association with others like yourself, women who have trusted in their loved ones and stood ever faithful by their side.

Buried in his useless and condescending reply was one small item of advice, albeit unintended. I sat down promptly and wrote a letter, presuming upon an association with another like myself, a woman sorely tried by circumstances beyond her control. To better ensure the successful delivery of my plea, I enclosed the letter inside a second one to a man of my acquaintance, the kindly and well-meaning Senator Tallmadge.

It was a matter of a few weeks before I received any response, but in the final week of January, a letter in a small, nondescript envelope was delivered to the Turner home:

Dear Miss Fox,

My influence in such matters is slight, but I will do what little I can.

May God grant you what you seek,

Mrs. Jane Appleton Pierce

On February 3, which was by coincidence Elisha's birthday, President Franklin Pierce signed a resolution for the relief of the second Grinnell Expedition and allocated one hundred and fifty thousand dollars to the rescue effort.

Maggie

On the thirty-first of May, two years to the day after the departure of Elisha's expedition, a pair of ships, the
Release
and the
Arctic
, sailed from New York on a mission of rescue. Among the crew were several officers who had served with Dr. Kane on the first Grinnell Expedition and who had requested the assignment out of “loyalty to a brother officer and a gallant friend.”

The weeks of the summer passed in a heightened state of excitement and anticipation. I may have been the person most intimately concerned with Elisha's well-being, excepting only his family, but the entire nation seemed to rest on pins and needles, anxiously awaiting news of his fate. The sensationally gruesome end of the Franklin mission made for endless speculation among the American public. Even Elisha's romantic life was not safe from the conjectures of the press, as I discovered in a column from the
New York Daily Whig
harvested by Kate: “A gentleman from this city informs us that Dr. Kane, when he returns from his Arctic expedition, will walk down the aisle with Miss Margaretta Fox, the second sister of the ‘Fox girls,' at whose residence in Hydesville, Wayne County of this state, the spirit rappings first manifested.”

I cannot say that the articles concerned me in any way other than irritation at their nosiness, but they did prompt Cornelius Grinnell to write me a curt letter asking me to restrain “this self-serving ploy for publicity by Mrs. Brown.”

I had to reply that Mrs. Underhill (for the Grinnells were one marriage behind in regard to Leah) had no use for such publicity. Kate had written to me that Leah, in her new role as wealthy and pampered wife, had given up public spirit rappings and only performed as a medium now for private sittings with friends. There was no indication that she had any interest at all in whether I did or did not marry Elisha Kent Kane.

Kate and Mother moved out of Daniel Underhill's home and took lodgings in a house just a few blocks away from my friend Mrs. Walters. “It is not that Mr. Underhill is ungenerous,” Kate wrote me, “but we feel like interlopers in Leah's happy state of wealth and prosperity. After all she has done for us, I cannot begrudge her the house and all its stuffy contents.”

***

As June and July gave way to the sticky misery of August, my thoughts turned more and more toward the promise of the future. Schoolbooks sat upon my lap, open but disregarded, while I fantasized various scenes of reunion with my love. I worried, too, about meeting his parents. Although I could usually endear myself to anyone if I set my mind to it, Judge and Mrs. Kane loomed large and frightening in my mind. During my visits to Miss Leiper, that dear lady coached me on my manners and behavior with a mind to making my first introduction to Elisha's parents as smooth as possible. She warned me to expect rudeness that would make Robert Kane's letter seem cordial. “His engagement to you will thwart their plans for him,” she explained. “It will be as if he tried to marry the upstairs maid.”

That information was not particularly helpful. I alternated between the verge of nervous collapse and overwhelming despair as the summer passed with no word from the rescue expedition. I had been warned by the Grinnells that the
Release
and the
Arctic
could not be expected to return until fall, but I was beginning to wonder whether they would simply vanish as well. Perhaps we would have to send another vessel after them, and another after that one, as ship after ship disappeared in the search for the one previous.

It was thoughts like these that occupied my mind in late August during a Pennsylvania heat wave. I had abandoned my studies and fled from the close quarters of the house to the overgrown meadows of the property. The air was heavy and still, and it was in vain that I sought a breeze to cool my fevered brow. Realizing that there was no relief from the heat to be found out of doors, I made my way back to the house. As the piazza came into view between the tall grasses and shrubs, I heard voices raised in emotion. I recognized my own name, shouted over and over, and at the same moment, I saw Mrs. Turner come out the front door, her husband on her heels. Mr. Turner's wagon was at the front door, with the horse still in its traces. He was home unexpectedly early from the mill, and a sense of alarm overcame me.

Despite the heat, I lifted my skirt from the ground and broke into a run, my heart pounding in panic at thoughts of illness, death, or war. But as I approached the house and as the Turners caught sight of me, the occasion for their excitement became clear. It was evident in the way Mr. Turner slung his arm fondly about his wife, grinning broadly. It was evident in the way Mrs. Turner triumphantly waved a newspaper above her head while cupping one hand to direct her shout.

Now her words carried clearly across the front lawn. “They've found him! Maggie, they've found him! Dr. Kane is alive!”

***

In the end, Elisha had rescued himself.

While the relief ships dispatched at great cost and effort were pushing their way northward through the ice floes of Baffin Bay, Elisha and his men were trudging southward, by sledge and open boat, through treacherous Arctic water and over great fields of ice. They had abandoned their icebound ship in May and traveled over one thousand miles and for eighty days, carrying their sick and injured, finally paddling into the settlement of Upernavik in the first days of August.

He was alive. He was safe. He was a hero.

It is not an exaggeration to say that the entire nation rejoiced. Reporters from all over the country raced by railway and steamer to Newfoundland, where the
Release
was scheduled to make first landfall in North America, each newspaper vying to carry the first accounts of the expedition.

I cannot describe the transports of joy I felt in those first days, knowing that he was alive and on his way home to me. I knew, distantly, that two of his crew had died and several more were gravely ill, but this scarcely concerned me. All reports suggested that the commander himself was in reasonably good health, and that it was only through his levelheaded leadership that their retreat from the ice had been achieved. He had managed to do what Sir John Franklin had not done: bring his men safely home.

The
Release
docked in September, and crowds of newspaper reporters swelled the population of Newfoundland, Canada, desiring to attend the first interviews with the returning heroes.

It was, as I knew it would be, another hair-raising tale. Headlines blazed: “Dr. Kane Is Home Again!” “The
Advance
Left in the Ice,” “New Lands Found,” “An Open Sea Discovered,” “Life in the Frozen Regions,” “Dr. Kane's Own Account.”

The newspapers told a tale of bravery, suffering, and endless ingenuity. The
Advance
became ice locked in September of 1853, in a small bay off Smith Sound. At first the expedition suffered only the discomforts to be expected when wintering in the Arctic. In the spring, Elisha and his crew pressed forward in their explorations, until an unexpected drop in temperature caused them to succumb to the cold. Two men died, and many other members of the crew were so badly weakened that further exploration was hampered.

That summer, while Elisha tended the injured men in his capacity as commander and doctor, two of his crew achieved the crowning success of the expedition: a trip to the northernmost edge of Greenland, where a great expanse of open water was discovered. The newspapers hailed this as the open polar sea, so long sought after and finally discovered by two of Elisha's men, including that efficient young man William Morton! Through the achievement of these valiant men, Elisha's expedition received recognition as the northernmost exploration to date.

Unfortunately, the condition of the ice did not allow for the escape of the
Advance
in 1854, and so the expedition was forced to settle in for a second winter. It was during those months that they suffered the most, and as I had anticipated, scurvy was their greatest enemy.

By April, plans were under way for their escape, and nearly simultaneously with the efforts in the United States to supply their rescue ships, Elisha and his men were packing their few remaining stores to begin a perilous journey across glaciers and seawater to achieve their own emancipation.

The newspapers made Elisha their darling, praising him for “the Yankee ingenuity and fortitude” that had enabled him to succeed where his British counterparts had failed so tragically. They also admired his frank modesty, stating, “As well as he has earned his laurels, Kane wears them with a meekness that adds redoubled luster to his fame, for in his own heart he says, ‘I did no more than my duty.'”

I laughed. My Elisha knew how to handle an audience. In my mind I could just imagine him, with his self-deprecating laugh and his sheepish grin, saying to the wide-eyed reporters, “No, gentlemen, I would not call it bravery to take on a bear armed only with a knife. Rather it was desperation, born of near starvation. And I expect I made a foolish spectacle when I was forced to turn tail and run from his sharp-clawed embrace, for he was just as hungry as I was!” And there would not be a man present who did not admire this humbleness and wish in his own heart that he could be as courageous as Dr. Kane!

To the great distress of Mrs. Turner, I began to pack my belongings and plan my return to New York. My tutor wanted me to remain in her house, virtuously working on my studies until the moment when Dr. Kane arrived. However, there was not enough patience within me to wait in Crooksville. I was determined to meet him in New York, where the
Release
was due to dock in early October.

The unhappiness of Mrs. Turner was offset by the rapture of Mrs. Walters, who realized that her home would be the setting for a reunion of the renowned Dr. Kane and his love. Mother and Kate descended upon me with a flurry of excitement, and Kate weeded through my out-of-fashion gowns, replacing them with new dresses of her own, graciously sacrificed for her soon-to-be-married sister.

On October 11, 1855, the
Release
sailed into American waters with the little
Arctic
steaming behind. The greeting of cannon fire could be heard at Mrs. Walters's house, where Ellen and Mother had forced me to stay. “It would not do for you to stand at the docks like a common girl,” Mrs. Walters insisted. “You must do the proper thing and wait for him to call upon you.”

Oh, but it was torture, to hear the cannon and know that I could have been there to see him waving at the crowd and accepting their adulation. I imagined him spotting me among the masses and leaving his post, to push his way through the people and take me into his arms…

“We could tie the bedsheets together and skin down them from the upstairs bedroom window,” Kate suggested, only half in jest. Perhaps the old Maggie might even have considered it.

Instead, I waited in my proper place until the lateness of the hour assured us all that he would not be coming for me that night.

The next day we discovered that the crew of the lost
Advance
had been taken to a welcoming party at the Astor House, where family, friends, and admirers had gathered to meet them. I was shocked and wounded that the Grinnells had forgotten to invite me, and Mrs. Walters realized it was possible no one knew of my presence in the city. “They think you are still in Crooksville!” Just as quick as she thought of it, she sent off a note to Henry Grinnell, rectifying this little oversight.

Again, we sat down to wait: Ellen, Mother, Kate, and myself.

There were no callers.

As the hours passed, my distress grew palpable. There was a weight in my chest that I thought had left me forever once news of his rescue had come to me. Ellen and Mother offered excuse after excuse: Dr. Kane must be in high demand; he was probably detained in meetings with the navy, reunions with his family, reports to the backers of the second Grinnell Expedition. But Kate and I looked at each other, and we both knew that nothing could stop Elisha from anything he truly wanted to do.

How long would it have taken to send a note, if he could not come in person?

He had once given up an entire day just to bring me a canary.

And now he did not come.

By evening, I was nearly prostrate with despair. I retired to my room and lay down with a damp cloth over my eyes, trying to quell the doubts and fears in my heart. There were countless silly things that might have delayed him, although I could not understand why he did not send a carriage for me, at least. In spite of my distress, I must have dozed for a few minutes, because when I first heard the voices, it was as if in a dream. Then, heart pounding, I suddenly realized that Mrs. Walters was speaking to someone downstairs; a man's voice responded to her. Throwing off the towel, I flew to the door and nearly tripped down the staircase in my haste, all pretense at being a refined lady gone.

Mrs. Walters was alone and just turning from the front door when I appeared. She looked strangely agitated and red-faced. “Oh, Maggie. I'm sorry if that disturbed you,” she said. “It was just a gentleman come on business, nothing to do with Dr. Kane at all.”

I burst into tears, and Mrs. Walters put her arms around me. “There, there, child. We shall figure all this out in the morning. Put yourself to bed and do not cry any longer.”

It was strange that a gentleman should call on business with Mrs. Walters at this time of the night. But I was too self-absorbed to see it then, and I climbed the stairs dejectedly. In the hallway upstairs, I nearly bumped right into Miss Clementine Walters, who was unexpectedly lurking in the darkness outside of my room. As usual, the socially awkward spinster had been hiding upstairs all day, not liking Kate and my mother any more than she liked me.

Now, after speaking hardly a word since my arrival, she approached me as though she were some confidant of mine, saying, “She didn't give him the letters. She lied to him.”