We Hear the Dead (29 page)

Maggie

In the following months, everyone was angry with me.

My family, understandably enough, was furious that I continued to accept calls from the man who had broken—in fact,
denied
—our engagement.

“Take one of my suitors,” Kate begged me. “Land sakes, Maggie, take three and have some to spare! But, please, send Dr. Kane packing and be done with him!”

My mother and Mrs. Walters, who had come to regard herself as a member of the family, were united in their feelings. They firmly insisted that I should decline any visits from the doctor, for the sake of my health and my reputation. “This emotional turmoil has been very distressing for you,” said Ellen. “You have faded away before our eyes!” Meanwhile, my mother feared that my name would be blemished if I continued to accept Dr. Kane's attentions under the current cloud of controversy.

Yet to break off our relationship completely was unimaginable. I could no sooner forbid Elisha from calling at the house or writing his eloquent love letters than I could imagine renouncing light and air.

This is not to say that I succumbed entirely to his charms or that I had forgotten how he had spurned me. I sent back his gifts, and after that one breach of propriety on the day he tore up his offensive document, I did not allow him to kiss me or even hold my hand. As a man very used to getting his own way, he found my coolness nearly irresistible. Elisha certainly had a penchant for pursuing what he could not have, as Leah had once warned me.

Of course, Elisha was angry at me also, because I had expressed my intention to recommence spirit rapping. I had no choice that I could see. It was necessary for me to make a living, and I could neither move into Mother's crowded apartment nor stay in Ellen Walters's spacious house without contributing to the household income of either.

I joined Kate at private sittings, and I found that the old habits came back easily. Together, Kate and I produced an eerie array of simple phenomena. Still, we looked at our sad accumulation of cash with some consternation, wondering how Leah had deftly produced so much more.

Finally, as if it were not enough to have angered my family by association with Elisha, and angered Elisha by association with the family business, the Kanes were still infuriated by the insinuations of the press.

Elisha's family had forced the newspaper that had reported our engagement to retract the statement. Unfortunately for everyone concerned, the matter did not rest there. Several papers persisted in reporting an engagement, or a broken engagement. In the end, it nearly became a battle between reporters of rival papers to acquire the truth. Elisha found himself accosted in his daily activities by journalists, and one tenacious young man attached himself to the doctor as he walked down the street toward Mrs. Walters's house one afternoon and could not be shaken. When Elisha realized that the reporter would not be dissuaded from following him, he decided to change his destination rather than lead the reporter to the house where I lived. Unfortunately, Mother and I emerged from the front door just at the moment they were passing, and I was quickly recognized. An unpleasant scene occurred, Mother chastising both the doctor and the reporter while I tried to scurry back into the house.

However, the damage was done. We scarcely had a moment's peace after that, with reporters calling at Mrs. Walters's house and applying for private sittings with the Fox sisters. It was a terrible nuisance, in spite of the extra income and in spite of Mrs. Walters's secret delight in her new role as my doorkeeper and guardian. The reporters only had one question for the spirits anyway, and it concerned my past, present, and future marriage plans.

The problem was that anything to do with Elisha Kent Kane was news. The newspapers wrote about his expedition, about his last remaining sled dog, and even resurrected the stories of his past adventures. The volcano, his exploits in the Mexican War—all were fair game.

Amid all this public adoration, there was one person who remained unmoved in her opinion of Elisha, and that was my mother. Therefore, shortly after signing a prestigious book deal, he tried to explain to her, as best he could, why he had broken our engagement.

She listened patiently. It was doubtful she understood the complexities of his finances, but she was clearly more concerned about Elisha's family than his bank account. “Regardless of your financial expectations,” she said, “I do not understand your continued attentions to my daughter when your family is not willing to receive her as your wife. I fear I should not allow Margaretta to see you at all under these circumstances. You are young, Dr. Kane, and do not fully appreciate the far-reaching consequences of your actions.”

Elisha laughed lightly. “I am old enough to know my own mind.”

“You did not know your own mind the day you returned to New York,” my mother reminded him, causing him to drop his gaze in shame. “I daresay you may have traveled to the North Pole and back,” she went on, once again proving her faulty geography, “but I imagine I understand a little more of life than you do. If your family disowns you, it will be a great misery for you, and I am not speaking of money now. For this pain, you will blame my daughter, if not in the first flush of her bridehood, then in the years to come. And you, Margaretta, will you not learn from the mistakes of your mother and your sister Leah? Must you also choose unwisely?”

I spoke as I knew I must, whether it was the truth of my feelings or not. “I would not see him wretched in that way. If his family will not have me as a daughter, then it would be better if we were parted forever.”

As I had expected, Elisha did not warm to the words “parted forever.” He stirred uneasily in his chair. “It will not come to that,” he assured us. “My mother will bend in time. I cannot imagine she would maintain her disapproval once there were children to be considered.”

His mother, I had come to realize, was the true author of the wreckage of my engagement. Robert Kane may have engineered the execution of it, but Mrs. Kane had provided the impetus with her histrionics. I thought I understood her well, thanks to my friendship with Eliza Leiper, and I recognized Mrs. Kane as a formidable enemy. But she could snatch herself bald next time, for all I cared. I hoped never to be bested by her again.

After all, I did have a few advantages when it came to vying for her son's affections.

Elisha was extremely jealous and could scarcely stand to admit that the dissolution of our understanding meant that I was open to the courtship of other men. In spite of my mother's objections, he called upon me regularly and was not pleased if he found another gentleman visitor. On one occasion, I opened the door in farewell to a particular young man and found Elisha on the front step, just preparing to knock. My other caller tipped his hat politely in greeting as he passed, only to be disconcerted by Dr. Kane's unfriendly stare.

“Who was he?” Elisha asked coldly as he entered.

“Mr. Carter?” I said blithely. “Just an acquaintance of mine.”

Elisha found his own way to the parlor and stuck his head inside, looking around suspiciously. “And where is Mrs. Walters? Or the esteemed Miss Clementine?”

“Upstairs, I imagine,” I replied offhandedly, sweeping into the parlor with total disregard for his displeasure. Of course, Mrs. Walters had been in my company for the entirety of Mr. Carter's visit and had retired to her room only a minute ago. But I did not bother to share that with Elisha. I crossed to the tea table and began to clear the dishes. There were three cups, if he cared to notice, but he was too distracted.

“Was he here for a sitting?”

“Hmmm,” I murmured noncommittally.

He moved quickly toward me and spoke urgently. “You are tormenting me, Maggie, and I know you do it on purpose. I cannot bear the idea of you sitting in the dark, squeezing other people's hands. I touch no hands but yours, no lips but yours. Can you say as much?” He reached out and took the tea tray from my hands, setting it back down with a decided rattle of china. “Will the spirit answer?” he mocked me.

“Come now, Doctor!” I said brightly. “Are you saying you did not hold the hand of the lovely lady with the fiery red curls you took to the opera on Tuesday last? What a missed opportunity!”

That brought him up short. He stared at me a moment, then said in a milder tone, “Kate saw me?”

I nodded with a curt smile and watched him bare his teeth in a familiar fierce grin. “It was an evening of fine intellectual stimulation,” he declared. “That particular young lady thought the Franklin I went to rescue in the Arctic was
Benjamin
Franklin
.
”

I burst out into peals of laughter. I could not help it. Stricken with a most unladylike hilarity, I collapsed weakly on the sofa and wiped tears from my eyes.

Elisha nodded at me wryly. “That's right, Maggie. Laugh. Just imagine me fumbling in vain for conversation in words of one syllable. I asked you to the opera that night, but you would not come. Do you remember?”

“Yes,” I gasped. “I remember. I am truly sorry, Ly, that I condemned you to such company.”

“Now,” he said, towering over me with his arms crossed across his chest, “I know you are just toying with me, but answer me truly. Who is Mr. Carter to you? If you will not tell me, than I will have to go out now and knock him down in the street.”

I sobered quickly, sensing that he was only half joking. There was a dangerous edge to him since he had returned from the Arctic, something I should have guessed was always there, considering the stories he told, but that he had never revealed to me before. “Mr. Carter is a cast-off beau of Kate's, and he wished me to intercede with her on his behalf,” I explained obediently. “I had to tell him that I have little influence with her.”

The lines of tension ran out of him. “Kate,” he murmured, shaking his head slightly. “It is a wonder she remembers seeing me at the opera at all. She drinks too much, your sister.”

I looked away. There was nothing to be said to that. It was true, but I could only repeat what I had said before. I had little influence over her. Kate was nineteen years old and a woman in her own right.

Elisha sighed and reached out a hand to smooth my hair, the first touch I had allowed him in over a week. “I still want to take you to the opera,” he whispered. “What is a Wagner without someone who can appreciate it? Someone as bright as she is beautiful…”

I gave in, of course. I was walking a precariously thin line, and this game could only be played so long without granting a small reward to the opposite player.

Maggie

The weeks passed, and, in some respects, it seemed I had come full circle in my life.

Spirit rapping had been the center of my world until Dr. Kane began to court me and persuaded me to give it up for his sake. But two years of private education had failed to make me more acceptable to his family. My engagement was broken, and I returned to rapping. The same man was even courting me again, so I had to ask myself, in five years, had I accomplished anything at all?

Somehow I believed that I had. When Dr. Kane first met me, I lived under the dominion of my sister Leah. And although she was never as terrible as Elisha made her out to be, there was no denying she directed all my affairs—how I behaved, what I believed, who I met—until the time she sent me to Philadelphia for my own health and lost me to someone else. After I met Elisha, he ruled my life. Yes, he battled Leah for the honor, and he won my loyalty and obedience for a time. However, when he broke his promise to me and cast me adrift, he also granted me a boon, the value of which I had not understood until now.

I was independent.

It was an unusual position for a young woman of my age and background. At twenty-two, I should have been living under the authority of a husband, or my parents if I was not yet married. I had not yet passed out of marriageable age and into spinsterhood, although the prospect was not so far off anymore. And yet I was not unhappy.

I continued to live with Ellen Walters, by her choice and by mine. We were close friends, despite the difference in our ages. The Grinnells may have thrown us together thinking only that Mrs. Walters was a trustworthy guardian, but our mutual affection had blossomed into a treasured companionship. I had moved to the third floor of her house and claimed a parlor of my own. The income I received from my labors went into Mrs. Walters's household account.

I had returned to rapping, but on my own terms and for clients I chose myself. I conducted my business in my own style. Leah's moving tables and Kate's glassy-eyed trances were not for me. My strength was a simple practicality and sensibility. I offered comfort, condolence, and sage advice.

“There now, Mr. Smithfield,” I said soothingly in a typical sitting, while the client, an overlarge banker, snuffled like a baby and cried huge tears into a walrus mustache. “Do not despair. It is unfortunate that your brother departed this earth before you could make your amends, but take comfort! He has heard your prayers and accepted your heartfelt apologies. Furthermore, he bids you make no more delay, but make haste to heal any other estrangements in your life before fate robs you of the opportunity.”

“Yes, Miss Fox,” replied Mr. Smithfield, wiping his face with his handkerchief. “I see the wisdom of your words. We must not waste the days given to us.”

“Every day is a gift,” I agreed. “We may not realize what doors are open to us until they have closed.”

***

Meanwhile, Dr. Kane was feverishly working on his book, claiming that the proceeds from the sales would give him the financial independence he needed to make me his wife. Repeated entreaties to his parents had accomplished nothing. They refused to receive me at their house and threatened to disown their eldest son if he actually married me.

“If I have my own income,” he assured me, “I would not mind so much. And I am convinced it would be a short-lived banishment in any case. My mother has engaged me in a pitched battle of wills, which she believes she can win with dire pronouncements. Once she has lost the war, her surrender will be prompt and dizzying in its sudden reversal of opinion. She will not cut off any heirs she receives from me, no matter how she has taunted me with Robert's infant.”

Robert Kane had produced offspring? What a repugnant idea! Still, Kate was quick to point out that Elisha could end the conflict immediately by making good on his original promise to me. “He is weak,” she said caustically. “He is not man enough to defy his mother.”

She was wrong, though. Elisha was strong-minded, absolutely positive that he would get his own way in the end. I was the weak one, for I could have concluded the affair myself by sending the doctor away as everyone advised me to do, thus ending our awkward romantic entanglement once and for all.

But I could not.

On two separate occasions, I accepted invitations from other gentleman callers and stepped out with them, accompanied by my mother or Mrs. Walters. Each of these excursions ended poorly, my lack of enthusiasm so evident that neither man ever called upon me again. I had once told Dr. Kane that I would wait for him until the end of the earth, and apparently I was inclined to keep my word. It would be him or no man. I would be Mrs. Kane or a spinster for life.

We conducted our visits in my third-floor parlor alone, against all rules of propriety. I imagine that we felt ourselves above such matters, although Mrs. Walters and Mother were not at all pleased and strove to blunder in on us as often as possible. They never found us closer than two separate armchairs, for we were sensible enough not to tempt ourselves. Often, he brought pages from his manuscript for me to read aloud to him. He liked the sound of his words in my voice, he said, and he usually tipped his head back, closed his eyes, and listened with intense concentration. If he did not like what he heard, he would sit up and ask for the manuscript back, making immediate changes.

Thus, I finally learned the story of his time in the Arctic, at least the parts that he was willing to commit to publication. There was as much hardship and danger as I had imagined, and it was almost painful to read of it. A tale of adventure lost its appeal when your beloved was the protagonist. Some details were distasteful, and I rather thought Elisha was testing my devotion by revealing these intimate secrets.

“You ate rats?” I asked in disbelief, breaking off in the middle of my reading.

“Yes,” he confirmed, eyeing me speculatively. “In my soup.”

I returned his gaze steadily. “How did you season this concoction?”

“With horseradish.”

I tipped my head quizzically. “How curious! That would not have been my first choice.”

Elisha indulged in a small grin. “Horseradish was the only seasoning we had left by the time we came to eating rats.”

“I will make a note of it,” I told him. “As your wife, I will want to be able to prepare your favorite meals as you like them.”

We often still spoke of marriage casually, as though the whole world were not set against our union and as though Elisha had not already broken our engagement for his own convenience. On this occasion he laughed brightly, saying, “Then I will make an effort to stay out of your ill graces, lest I find to my chagrin that you're not making a jest!”

He lay his head back against the back of the chair and cast his gaze toward the ceiling. “I made mistakes, of course. We would not have been in such desperate straits if we had not stubbornly engaged so much of our energies toward the scientific explorations for which we had come and too little toward the acquisition of food while it was available. If I had applied more man power to better organized hunts in the summer, we could have laid in enough fresh meat to supply all our wants for the dark time of the year. A starving, scurvy-filled explorer is of no use to himself or to the scientific establishments that commissioned him. I will not make that mistake next time.”

Next time.

With two words, my secret visions of a quiet physician's practice in Philadelphia or New York crumbled to dust. Elisha had not made his last expedition to that hellish region of darkness and cold. No mission would ever be his last, until the one that defeated him. Life with this man would be nothing but eternal waiting and agonized apprehension, and even with such foreknowledge, I could not turn away from my fate. I suddenly felt a kinship with my mother's sister, the one who supposedly learned in a dream that marrying a particular man would herald her certain death. I had always considered the story a foolish family folktale, but whether or not Aunt Elizabeth had truly been gifted with the sight was beside the point. I now understood her dilemma.

With all my skill at deception, I allowed no sign of distress to pass over my face or enter my voice as I bent my head and continued to read aloud the Arctic adventures of the man who was destined to break my heart—over and over again.

***

In the spring of 1856, he was quite ill, stricken with an attack of inflammatory rheumatism. I was in Rochester at the time, visiting with Amy Post when I received his letter. His hands were so swollen that he was unable to write, and he had dictated the words to his secretary, Morton. Consequently, he was a little more reserved and formal than he normally was, and I wouldn't have recognized the extent of his illness had Morton not written his own note at the bottom of the letter—a note that I am certain Elisha had not seen: “Miss Fox, I have taken Dr. Kane to the Grinnells' house for care that I am unable to provide alone. Please seek him there at your earliest convenience. W. Morton.”

I left Rochester at once, arriving in New York the very next day. I wasted no time stopping at Mrs. Walters's house to change my clothes or deposit my luggage but directed my carriage driver immediately to the Grinnells' residence, an address well known from many letters to my erstwhile guardians but never before visited.

The servant who answered the door was not at all sure what to do with me, an unknown young woman on the doorstep with her luggage, no chaperone, no invitation, but only a persistent demand to be let in. Luckily, William Morton was attracted by the sound of my voice and soon expedited my entry. I followed the secretary into the inner chambers of the house, noting the pronounced limp he suffered, a result of frostbite and infection in the Arctic. I shook my head in aggravation, wondering at how these men had abused their bodies for the love of such a cruel and deadly land.

Morton introduced me to Mrs. Sarah Grinnell and took responsibility for inviting me. “I thought it best to send for Miss Fox,” he explained in his mild manner, and there was nothing Mrs. Grinnell could say to argue with that, for Elisha had already spotted me.

“Maggie, is it you?” he called, struggling to rise from a sofa in Mrs. Grinnell's private parlor. He was clothed in an overlarge crimson dressing gown, possibly borrowed from his host, and he had evidently been dozing when I arrived. He raised one hand to rub at his eyes in some confusion, and when I saw the swollen joints of his wrist and knuckles, I rushed around Mrs. Grinnell with a total lack of decorum and flung myself down at his side.

“Oh, Elisha, please don't get up!” I gasped. “Lay back and rest! I wouldn't disturb you for the world!”

There ensued a small struggle, as I tried to shoo Elisha back into a reclining position and he just grinned back at me and insisted on sitting up. “I am not so bad,” he said. “I have been far worse. There is no better cure than fresh air and sunlight, and you are both those things to me!”

After this initial scene of comic behavior, we settled down to a more sedate and respectable visit. A servant brought tea, which I poured out for everyone, deftly taking over from Morton, who, in my outspoken opinion, needed to sit down and rest his foot. Mrs. Grinnell recovered from the shock of my unexpected intrusion, slowly warming to my presence, and Elisha was determined to prove that he was not an invalid. However, by the time an hour or two had passed, I could easily observe how the pretense was wearying him. I pled exhaustion in my own right, then, and excused myself with the need to remove my luggage and myself back to Mrs. Walters's house. “If I am welcome,” I said, with a careful glance at our hostess, “I will call again tomorrow.”

“You are most certainly welcome,” Mrs. Grinnell heartily replied. “You are a remarkable tonic for ill health. We ought to bottle you up and apply you at will!”

Mrs. Grinnell rose to accompany me to the door and spoke privately out of the hearing of the men. “I owe you an apology, Miss Fox,” she said with a brisk manner covering some embarrassment. I looked at her with surprise, and she continued. “I am afraid I had made up my mind about you. With no evidence at all, I was convinced I knew what kind of woman you were. In all those months you were in correspondence with my husband and son, all that time when you might have appreciated a woman's comfort, I never wrote you even once, never introduced myself, never expressed a word of counsel or encouragement. I am quite ashamed, now that I have met you. You are not at all what I expected.”

“I am honored to make your acquaintance finally,” I replied politely. “And I am pleased if I have gained a small measure of your approval.”

“Miss Fox, look at him!” Mrs. Grinnell and I turned, gazing back down the hallway at the open parlor door. Elisha was standing in conversation with Morton, leaning heavily upon a cane, unaware of our observation. “He could not stand this morning without assistance,” she told me. “Now, one look at you, and he is back on his feet.”

I smiled. “I am sure that your kind nursing and generous care have had much to do with his recovery.”

“Miss Fox, I do entreat you to call again tomorrow,” Mrs. Grinnell said firmly. “And this evening, I intend to write Judge Kane's wife and tell her of my thoughts on this matter.”

I nodded my head respectfully at my hostess and made my way toward the front door. I never knew whether Mrs. Grinnell kept her word, but any letter she might have written Elisha's mother never made any difference.

***

Elisha improved slowly over the course of a few weeks. I called upon him often at the Grinnell house, and when he returned to his own lodgings, I began to visit him there, bringing Kate along as chaperone and once, when desperate, even coercing the reluctant Clementine Walters into accompanying me.

His two-volume narration,
Arctic Explorations
, was only three-quarters done, but Elisha's publishers were already demanding changes. They were not interested in producing a work of scientific data. They wanted something to satisfy the appetite of the American readers for travel and adventure. “I must attempt to be more popular and gaseous,” he complained to me. “They want polar bears and hunting seals and descriptions of the Eskimo's savage way of life. And faster, ever faster, they want it!”