We Hear the Dead (21 page)

“Are you asking for her hand in marriage now?” inquired Calvin gently. As the gentleman of the house, it was his privilege to ask.

“Two circumstances stand in the way,” Elisha said regretfully. “First and foremost, I am already committed to a lengthy and perilous undertaking. An expedition to the Arctic Circle is set to leave in May of next year under my command. I will be gone for a year at least, quite possibly longer.”

May of next year? So soon?

Leah opened her mouth finally and prompted Elisha. “And the second circumstance?”

He shuffled his feet and looked briefly at the floor. “This is more embarrassing,” he admitted. “Through no action of my own, I find that an arrangement has arisen between my father and a political acquaintance that I will marry the man's daughter.” Elisha turned to speak directly to me when he emphasized, “I have not even met the lady in question! I am sure that she will be as relieved as I to have the contract dissolved, but you can see that such a thing requires delicacy. To announce my engagement to another woman would dishonor someone who has never harmed me. I would like to handle it personally and discreetly.”

“So what you are saying, Doctor,” Leah inserted, “is that you cannot marry our Maggie because you are leaving on a potentially lethal adventure some years in length, and you are engaged to someone else, besides?”

Elisha flashed her the same bare grin he might have used on the Mexican rebel Domínguez right before shooting at him. “You are correct, Mrs. Brown, with your usual frankness. But I have not come empty-handed.” Slipping a hand inside the right breast pocket of his coat, he strode decisively across the room toward me. I rose to meet him, feeling Kate's hand on my back encouraging me. He stopped a few scant inches from me, devouring my face with his gaze and holding between his forefinger and thumb a small ring of black enamel, set with a dainty but brilliant diamond. “This is my promise to you,” he said softly, “that if you are willing to wait for me, when I return from the Arctic I shall make you my wife.”

“I would wait for you until the end of the earth,” I whispered.

He took my hand and boldly kissed my fingers before placing the ring upon one. “My promise,” he said again and kissed the ring in its place. Without letting go of my hand, he turned back to his host and hostess. “With your permission, I would like to spend an hour or two with Maggie.”

Perhaps Leah was grudgingly beginning to accept the inevitable, or maybe she just could not stand to be in the same room with him a moment longer. Whatever her motives, she helped Calvin to his feet and brusquely signaled for Kate to join them, leaving us with only Mother as our chaperone.

Together, we sank down upon the sofa in the corner of the room, while Mother busied herself with her embroidery, humming happily and occasionally wiping tears from her eyes. Elisha had not let go of my hand since he had taken it, and I had not taken my eyes from his face.

“Maggie,” he began, “the things I wrote to you…you must believe me—”

“Let us not speak of it,” I told him. “I understand it is customary for young couples to have what is called a lovers' quarrel, which is all thunder and lightning but rains little on them and amounts to nothing. We have had ours now, and the weather is set to be fair from this moment on.”

“Wisely and ably spoken, my darling,” he whispered and, leaning forward, he kissed my forehead with only a token squeak of protest from Mother.

Maggie

We were not precisely engaged but began to behave as if we were. I wore his promissory ring with pride, blushing anew each time I caught sight of it on my finger. As for Elisha, with his typical contradictory nature, he treated me with the tenderness and possessiveness of a future husband, all the while expressing mild vexation that so many people knew or had guessed our relationship.

“I think your sister has been telling people about us,” he said to me as we sat in the park with my mother across the walkway on a separate bench.

“I think not,” I replied. “Leah is displeased with the arrangement and does not desire it widely known.”

That was an understatement. The hostility between Elisha and Leah had been so palpable during their enforced interactions that on his last visit to me they had exchanged fewer than a dozen words. To be sure, I was myself unhappy about some other woman planning to marry my love. Elisha counseled patience. He had been in correspondence with his father and was trying to clear up the misunderstanding. “I am sure my father was counting on some political favor in this alliance and is loath to give it up. He is probably trying to sell off one of my brothers in my place even as we speak!” Elisha joked brightly.

“If people know our intentions, it is because of your own loose tongue, Elisha!” I chided him gently. “Why, just the other day, you introduced me as ‘the future Mrs. Kane!'”

“Oh, Dr. Grey is the soul of discretion! He would not give away our secret.”

“There were ten other people in the room at the time!” I laughed.

“Were there?” he smiled. “I scarcely noticed. I am so happy, Maggie! Happier than I have been in the longest time! When I ended our correspondence last spring, I had decided to give up romance entirely and devote myself more completely to the serious business of my mission. But I was so miserable, Maggie, so alone even when the room was crowded with tiresome people, that I regretted my decision within days. Only pride prevented me from taking the first train to your side. I don't know if I was selfish then or if I am selfish now, but I am so joyful I hardly care! If it were not for the inconvenience of courting you under the jealous eye of the Tigress, I would be in heaven!”

Whenever possible, Elisha tried to take me from the house to avoid my sister. In New York, there was never a shortage of places to go, events to see, entertainments to sample, but the problem was acquiring a chaperone. Mother accommodated us as she could, but more and more often she was required to supervise Kate in the spirit sessions while Leah was nursing Calvin. All told, it was a difficult time for the family, and Leah had not hesitated to prey upon my guilty feelings for slipping off with Dr. Kane while her husband was slipping away from life.

Adding to the increasing burdens upon my conscience, Elisha did not waste time in asking me to give up the rapping once and for all. “You must not engage yourself to be my wife unless you can give me all your love and your whole heart,” he said to me.

“Of course!” I told him. “I will never rap for the spirits again after we have married. I will devote myself to you, your endeavors, your dreams, and your children.”

“No, Maggie, you must give up your calling
before
we can be married. I cannot bring you to my family unless you are beyond all criticism and suspicion. I will tell you—my friend Mr. Grinnell was most impressed by you. Everybody who really knows you is, for you are a lady in all but a finishing education, and after you've had a course in music and French and art, no one will know you as the original spirit-rapping phenomenon.”

I found this troubling. “Is that what you want, Ly, that no one should know me for who I am?”

“My darling, you will always be yourself, and all who meet you love you. But to be Mrs. Elisha Kane, you must sever your ties with ghosts and knocks and collecting money at the door.”

“How will I live? Who will pay for this education?” I protested.

“Surely after all these years of taking fees, your mother has a tidy sum.”

“No. Leah has it all.”

Elisha raised his eyes to heaven. “Of course she does. Then I shall pay for your schooling.”

“Where will I live?” I pressed on. “I will not be your kept woman!”

He was just as shocked as I was by the suggestion. “Never! But you challenge me with difficult questions, my ever-practical Maggie! On these matters I will ponder. The path of rightness will find a way for us.”

Relieved that I had managed to forestall an immediate renouncement of spiritualism, I dared to say, “This would be a bad time for me to abandon my family. Leah's husband is so ill…”

“Mrs. Brown has lived off your labor for years,” Elisha replied with feeling. “I have no doubt she will feel the loss of your income, and that has been the true reason behind her objection all along. For all your intelligence and considering all the years you have advocated the cause of abolition, it is surprising to me that you do not recognize the shackles you wear yourself.”

He gave me much to think about. When I returned to Leah's house that day, I met her coming heavily down the front stairs, looking not at all like a tigress or a slave mistress but merely a very weary woman who had finally lost the vestiges of her youth. “Maggie, I will need you to lead the sittings this evening,” she said by way of greeting. There were dark circles under her gray eyes.

“Is he worse?” I asked at once.

“No, he is sleeping now. He is…the same.” Leah brushed her hair back from her face. “But I am spent. I must take my rest now, in case he needs me in the night. Mind you, keep a rein on Kate, or she is liable to flights of fancy and wild risks.”

“You can count on me to handle it,” I assured her, glad for once that Dr. Kane had plans elsewhere in the city that night.

“You're a good girl, Maggie,” Leah said fondly, turning to make her way back upstairs, where she would sleep in a chair beside her dying husband.

Perhaps Elisha was right and there were shackles upon me, but they were no more than the bindings worn in any family, and I bore the burden willingly.

***

The months of that fall passed quickly. Elisha was in and out of the city, making preparations for his voyage. He had provisions to order, sailors and scientists to procure, and always money to acquire. When he was out of town, he sent letters and gifts. Leah threw up her hands in exasperation at the embroidered handkerchiefs, music, books, and trifles that entered the house. Elisha was not stingy in his attention and did not forget either Mother or Kate in his generosity.

I was often overwhelmed by the extent of his generosity. I thought the ermine collar he sent me was excessive, until he sent me the canary.

“Wonderful,” Leah remarked. “Another mouth to feed.”

Throughout November and December, whenever he was in New York, Elisha was a constant visitor, often bringing Cornelius Grinnell along to distract and consternate my sister. Leah disapproved of him on principle, because she knew he had smuggled letters to me from Elisha, but Mr. Grinnell was so frank and amiable that he won unwilling smiles even from my dour sister.

While his friend provided a distraction for Leah, Elisha shared the plans for his expedition with me. Often, he brought maps to show me. Seeing the plans on paper and hearing of the extended preparations under way, I could not help but feel a certain panic as I realized the time of his departure was quickly approaching. He would be gone at least a year—a year! Elisha pointed out to me the hazards, almost without care, but I could imagine my own disasters aplenty. Freezing to death was only the mildest of fates, compared to falling into an ice crevasse, suffering a painful demise by scurvy, or simply vanishing forever like Sir Franklin. I was never able to view those maps without the urge to throw myself against Elisha's knees and beg him not to leave. I refrained from such a pitiful display of emotion solely because I understood that if he had not wanted so desperately to undertake this mission, he would not have been the Elisha I loved.

“What will I do without you?” I whispered in anticipation of future despair.

My love looked up at me brightly, his hand resting upon the map of Greenland, where he would last see civilization before heading into the frozen North. “I imagine you will have your nose in a book, as you did when I first met you. You will be busy enough, dearest, with your studies.”

“Shhh,” I hushed him, not wanting Leah to hear his words. She did not yet know his plan to send me to school, and I wasn't even sure that I had agreed to attend. Elisha assumed that I would, just as soon as he had made the arrangements. I was not certain what course I would take but hoped that when the time came to commit myself, the path would be clear to me.

“As for myself, I plan to take your image with me.” Elisha rolled up his maps and tapped them on the table absently. “I have spoken with several artists, and I have decided to commission a portrait that I can have aboard the ship with me.”

I gasped, pleased and surprised. “A portrait of me?”

“I could not bear to be without you,” he smiled, obviously delighted by my response. “I will let you know where and when you will sit for the painting.”

“Oh, but when do you think it will be? I shall be in Washington for part of March.”

“Washington?” Elisha looked puzzled. “Why would you be in Washington?”

I realized that he would not like the answer. “Mother and Kate and I will be the guests of General Waddy Thompson.” Quickly I explained that the trip had been planned for some weeks and that originally I had not planned to participate. “But Leah cannot leave her husband, so I must take her place.”

Elisha was indeed displeased. Despite my efforts to dissuade him, he sought out Leah across the room and expressed his feelings on the matter with some forcefulness. Washington was a disreputable city, he argued, and we ladies would not find ourselves as protected as we had been in the bosom of the gentle Quakers in Philadelphia. He urged her to cancel the trip at once.

Leah dismissed his concerns curtly, irritated by his interference. “Maggie will do her duty. We have a business to conduct, Dr. Kane, and expenses to meet. Surely you can appreciate that.”

“I do not approve,” Elisha said firmly.

“With all due respect, Doctor,” Leah replied, “your position in this family is not one that commands any authority. Were you truly betrothed to my sister, I would recognize your right to object. But as things stand…”

Elisha's eyes burned in anger. He removed from his inside coat pocket the small daybook he carried, consulted its pages briefly, and then snapped it closed. “I find that I can divert some time from my traveling appointments to meet the ladies in Washington during their second week there,” he informed her gruffly. “I will make arrangements to check on their well-being.”

“As you wish, Doctor,” Leah said, “as long as you do not interfere with their obligations.”

Elisha cast me a significant look. I merely wrung my hands in distress and dropped my eyes.

***

Dr. Kane was correct. Washington was a mean city, rough and unfriendly. Of course, the gentleman who had invited us was warm and generous enough. General Thompson and his friend Senator Tallmadge were keenly interested in spiritualism. They made every effort to include us in their social circle, escorting us to parties and plays most evenings.

Unfortunately, the same gentility was not found in all the inhabitants of the capital. Kate, Mother, and I found ourselves treated with disdain by General Thompson's social acquaintances. The people who inquired at our public sittings were raucous and crude, apparently mistaking us for some kind of curious circus exhibit.

There was only one spirit sitting of any significance. It came late in the afternoon on a day we had planned a shopping trip. Kate and I were putting on our gloves and bonnets when Mother rushed into our room, calling us to come down to the parlor. “We have a last-minute private sitting, girls!” she announced breathlessly. “Come quickly!”

Kate let out a breath of exasperated air. “Any time that we get a chance to have some fun…” she complained.

“Mother!” I called from the top of the stairs. “Can't you bid them to come back another time? We were dressed to go out. The carriage is waiting.”

My mother turned back and hissed up at me with uncharacteristic forcefulness. “Margaretta, come at once!” And then, as if it would make a difference, she added, “It is Mrs. Pierce!”

I looked back grumpily at Kate. “Do we know a Mrs. Pierce?” She shrugged, and together we descended to the boardinghouse parlor, stubbornly refusing to remove our cloaks and bonnets.

In the parlor, we found a quiet commotion of agitated people, including Mother, Senator Tallmadge, and the owner of the boardinghouse, all gathered around a central tiny figure dressed in the black of deepest mourning. As she turned toward me, I saw an unremarkable lady with dainty, grief-stricken features. There was a certain familiarity to her, which I could not place, until Kate's sudden gasp of understanding prompted my recognition.

Oh,
that
Mrs. Pierce.

I promptly whipped off my hat and cast my cloak aside. “Madam, it is an honor,” I said, leading the way to the table. “Please, come and be seated.”

***

Dr. Kane, when I told him, was appalled. “You rapped for Mrs. Franklin Pierce? You deceived the wife of the president of the United States? Maggie, how could you?”

Surprised by his reaction, I defended myself. “Elisha, the poor woman saw her son killed before her very eyes!”

“Yes, I know. The entire nation grieves for her. It was a terrible tragedy. But how can you justify lying to her—her, of all people? Maggie, this life of yours is worse than bad; it is sinful!” Elisha paced the room in his vexation. “Entertaining strangers for a dollar a head is disgraceful enough, but to take advantage of the deeply bereft!”