Conjurer

by Cordelia Frances Biddle

  But Martha doesn’t heed this plea. “Will you help me find my father, Mr. Kelman …? Living or not, as may be?”

  We can only pray, Martha thinks as she clambers into her canopied bed that night. As sacrilegious as the notion is, the idea of prayer as solace and solution brings not one speck of relief. Besides, what should I pray for? she asks herself. Should I do as Mr. Simms suggests, and beseech God to grant that my father’s demise was mercifully swift? Should I not beg for a miracle instead? Or yearn that Father be immediately restored to his home? Or perhaps I should wish that he’d never gone hunting in the first place!

  Martha shuts her eyes, although not in piety. Instead, she’s willfully closing out her thoughts as she moves her toes across the cold sheets and sniffs at the comforting scent of starch and the flatiron. She might as well be an unhappy ten-year-old instead of a lady of twenty-six.

  Then suddenly panic catapults her back into her adult self. If Father is truly gone, then what of his affairs? her brain demands. How will I manage them? How will I deal with Owen Simms? If I haven’t the faintest notion of how to order my own existence, how can I hope to run the business of a successful man? Worrying thus, Martha collapses into sleep.

  But dreamland proves no more peaceful a place. A tomb springs up before her closed and sleeping eyes; it’s a cave dug into a hillside, and two girls are trapped within its rocky walls. Near them, lying on a stone bed and wrapped in a gray and flimsy winding sheet, is a corpse. Martha knows it’s her father, although she cannot see his face.

  She also understands that she’s the younger of the two children imprisoned in that inhospitable place. “There, there, don’t cry,” she hears her taller companion say. “Mary, my dearest, don’t you cry—”

  “But I’m Martha,” she protests with the high-pitched whimper of someone very young.

  Dressed in a plain gown of old-fashioned cut, the older girl turns her back in irritable contempt. She doesn’t respond to Martha’s weeping pronouncement but instead embarks upon a remarkable transformation: growing gray-haired and stiff-boned beneath garments that also alter, leaving her clad in a rough woolen tunic and heavy felt shoes.

  Martha witnesses this change with dismay though little surprise. “I liked your other dress better,” she states, then adds a vigorous “And I’m not Mary. I’m—”

  But the old woman interrupts with a bitter “First me, then you!”

  In her Father’s house, beneath the layers of down and wool and freshly ironed lace, Martha doesn’t wake.

  The Conjurer

  EMILY DURAND SITS RAMROD STRAIGHT, staring fixedly into the looking glass as her maid dresses her hair for the evening: two ringlets on each side of her face; a single long braid coiled at the nape of her neck and then woven upward to be pinned in another curl at the top of her head. Within this plait is a string of pearls. Additional pearls dangle from Emily’s earlobes; more grace her neck. The dress she will soon don—a new figured gauze over lilac satin—is also trimmed in pearls. Emily Durand prides herself on being an arbiter of fashion, and not only an arbiter, a vanguard of all that is glittering and lovely. The home in which she now allows herself to be attired, and that she shares with her husband, John, reflects this attitude. The pallor of her skin, the soft blondness of her hair, the proud manner in which she carries herself, her well-chosen gestures, her walk: all attest to a lady of noble birth but with decidedly cosmopolitan leanings. Emily is a queen in the realm that is social Philadelphia.

  “Good” is all she says to her maid as she observes her image with a critical eye, trying out various poses to make certain she shines from every angle. The maid might as well not exist, so unconscious is Emily of an audience. Or perhaps the audience is precisely what she craves.

  “Is my husband ready and waiting?” Emily touches the tip of a finger to her left eyebrow, leaning closer to the glass and glinting into its surface to make certain she looks as perfect as she should.

  The maid watches in frozen apprehension. Oh, she doesn’t want to begin redoing her mistress’s locks at this late hour! Or preparing another gown. Or laying out more laces and ribbons and gloves. Or shaking out the long Russian plumes that continuously make her sneeze. Let alone pulling out all those shoes. Or the manchettes or capottes or the mantillas trimmed with fur.

  “Is he?” Emily repeats. Her voice is sharper now, and the maid jumps as though startled out of a heavy sleep.

  “Yes, madam. I believe Mr. Durand is already downstairs.”

  Emily nods briefly. The maid moves away to fetch the dress while her mistress remains enthroned, her beringed hands resting gracefully on the chair’s arms, her gaze imperiously watching her mirror image.

  Then all at once, something terrible happens to Emily Durand. She looks into her own hard, blue eyes, staring past the color, past the lauded almond shape as if her sight were tunneling inward, seeking out her deepest thoughts, her soul.

  Emily is rooted to her place. The self she sees she doesn’t know; the cheekbones and mouth are those of a stranger, the elaborate coiffure that of a mannequin, the neck like one belonging to a statue. There is no comforting, familiar woman to be found. Emily blinks, but the foreign creature merely blinks coolly back. Disdain drips from her countenance. Then the disdain suddenly melts into aching sorrow. The mirror eyes seem on the verge of weeping. Emily observes this weird permutation with something akin to terror. It will not do to have her maid see her so distraught, so ungoverned, so lost.

  She grips the chair tighter and tighter, and when the satin gown is at length produced, she springs up with a greater degree of gaiety and verve than her maid has ever observed.

  “I’m worried about that young woman, Frederick,” Henrietta Ilsley is saying to her husband, the renowned professor of Greek and Latin at the University of Pennsylvania. Ilsley is a man of imperious intellect, his white beard long and carefully manicured, his eyebrows patriarch-like and prominent. Only little Henrietta dares address him with such temerity and ease, but that is the result of a marriage that has lasted more than thirty years. “After all … Well, I would have imagined some trace of her father would be discovered before now, awful though the truth might be …” The remark remains unfinished.

  Professor Ilsley gazes down upon his plump and fretting wife. He doesn’t speak, and so Henrietta continues as if she were in conversation with herself.

  “I must call upon her and extend my condolences. I wonder, is she still residing at Beale House, or has she repaired to her father’s residence in town?”

  Although her husband realizes that no reply is necessary—Henrietta will soon ascertain Martha Beale’s whereabouts—he finally stirs himself to answer. The tone is deep and sonorous, a voice accustomed to respectful audiences. “I’ve been told she continues to dwell in the country, my dear. After all, it has only been three days since—”

  “A mistake, Frederick. A bad mistake. A reclusive young lady like Martha Beale needs friends. Especially now.”

  “She has Owen Simms to comfort her.”

  “Oh! Owen Simms, indeed! What solace can a man like Simms provide? She needs to be about in the world. Attend concerts and so forth, musicale evenings and such like. Indeed, she should have been successfully married and out of her father’s domain long ago.” Henrietta gives her husband a pointed glance. She looks so much like a mother hen that for a moment he wonders whether she’s about to peck him. “Beale should have urged her to wed when she was still in her prime and not in her middle twenties. Late twenties, I should say.”

  “Perhaps he didn’t wish it, Henrietta.”

  “Nonsense, Frederick. All parents wish the best for their children.”

  “That term is open to interpretation, my dear little wife. It could be that Lemuel Beale considered it ‘best’ to have his sole child and heir remain under the safety of his roof rather than see her committed to a marriage that might not have been a fortunate one.”

  “A most selfish motive, Frederick, in my opinion. Besides,
marriages, either good or ill, are the creation of two people, not one—”

  “That is not always the case, my dear,” her husband interjects, but Henrietta ignores the interruption.

  “And now, with her father missing, how is she to move about in society? Certainly not upon the arm of Owen Simms!”

  This time Ilsley succeeds in silencing his wife. “My dear Mrs. Ilsley, we don’t know the circumstances surrounding Martha Beale’s current or past state. I therefore caution you to take care before interfering.”

  Henrietta tilts her round and speckled face. “I do not interfere, sir. Rather, I am engaged.”

  “Ah, an interesting turn of phrase, that. ‘Engaged.’ I must remember it when I seek to quibble with a colleague.” Frederick Ilsley says no more on the subject, and neither does Henrietta.

  She has a good deal on her mind this evening, and her household is aflutter with nervous anticipation. This is no time for semantic jousting with her husband. She turns her back on her spouse’s statesman-like form and gazes anxiously across the dining salon of their home.

  None other than the heralded conjurer, clairvoyant, necromancer, and somnambulist Eusapio Paladino is to join the Ilsleys’ weekly soirée. Securing his presence at the party is a decided coup for Henrietta and has enabled her to finally obtain the promised attendance of the prickly Emily Durand.

  In preparation for this singular event, Henrietta has memorized every facet of Paladino’s career: how when he appears in a public arena, his popularity forces him to maintain the strict perimeters of the stage lest audience members despairing of lost husbands or runaway wives attempt to storm the platform with requests for aid; how he communes with stones, walls, even lamp shades all the while averring in his native Italian “Mi Parlano,” “They speak to me”; and how, most thrillingly, in Buffalo, New York, during the previous winter, Paladino’s psyche was invaded by the executed murderer Mack MacGuinness, who screamed out in guttural English, “They hung me and scooped out my brains! Damn the doctors! Damn the preachers! Damn them, and bring them to me in Hell!”

  With the aid of the conjurer’s assistant and translator, and of the Ilsleys’ servants, the dining room that Henrietta now examines has been transformed. Gone is the simplicity of the Federal-era home; gone the view of gas lamps and the measured greensward of Washington Square; gone the world beyond. Because Paladino can only communicate with the departed in dim light (the dark containing the “negative energy necessary for such discourse”), black velvet drapes have been erected to cut the room in half. The oak dining table has been repositioned at the center of the remaining portion, while near Eusapio’s chair are placed, in artful significance, a guitar, a tambourine, and a zither. The requisite writing slates and pencils are laid flat in the center of the table, which has also been draped in black.

  Henrietta circles round and round with her short, hurrying steps, overseeing, checking and rechecking. Every detail must be correct if the conjurer is to commune with the spirit world. But Henrietta has another and more private motive in seeking the talents of Signor Eusapio Paladino. As the sole survivor of a goodly number of siblings as well as two parents who left a firm mark upon their offspring, she yearns to have communication with her vanished family. At the age of fifty-three, she feels this hunger growing daily.

  “Do you think, my dear—?” she begins, then answers the unfinished query herself. “No, we’ll put Emily there … and John here … It would never do to place a couple in too close a proximity … At least, that is the fashion in the Durands’ circle.”

  “I concur,” her husband says. He stands at some distance from her, surveying the scene as though from an Olympian mountain height.

  Henrietta pays no heed to his reply. ‘“Gauche’ would be Emily’s term, I believe.” She smiles briefly as she envisions that grand lady’s haughty visage. “But what is your opinion, Frederick?”

  “On the word ‘gauche’?”

  “Good gracious, no! On whether we should breach those rules of etiquette and seat husbands with their wives—merely for the conjuring, of course. Not for the supper following.”

  “I’ll leave that decision in your hands, my dear.”

  Henrietta smiles again, albeit uncertainly. “We’ll follow the Durands’ lead, then.”

  “A wise choice.”

  “Goodness, look at the time. Our guests should be at the door in mere moments!”

  “Everything appears in perfect readiness.” Ilsley’s sage face nods.

  “Yes.” Henrietta sighs. In fact, her home suddenly looks far less than ideal: the Queen Anne furniture outmoded and plain, the carpet showing age, the chandeliers too simple and unstylish. She’s beginning to severely wish she hadn’t been so presumptuous as to include such a sharp critic as Emily.

  At length, Henrietta pushes those fears aside and adds a quiet “I do so hope Signor Paladino can aid me in securing news from my dear sisters and brothers in the spirit world … and dear Mama, as well … and Papa. That odious Countess de St. Dominique whose séance I attended last year was such a bitter disappointment.”

  “She was not of the first order.”

  “A fraud, Frederick,” his wife admits quietly. “I do believe the lady was a fraud … Ah, well, I believe I hear the door.”

  Less than a minute later, the Ilsleys’ foyer is a hive of activity. Driving mantles, hats, bonnets, and fur-lined gloves are whisked off and carted away by footmen while the guests begin to gape unabashedly at one another as their garments are revealed. Little Florence Shippen, Henrietta’s cousin and dearest friend, breaks into a peal of high-pitched and nervous laughter as she smoothes her wide skirt with two pudgy hands. “Pink gros de Naples! And in this weather! I feel as though I’ve been transformed into an actress upon the stage. I might as well be wearing a dressing gown in public; it would only be a trifle less appropriate than this summer gown—”

  “Ah, my dear,” her hostess responds, “you’re attired in perfect harmony with Signor Paladino’s commandments. His assistant informed me that by wearing the lightest of pastel shades the ladies will consume dangerous ‘positive energy’—which will permit our mesmerist to work unhindered. It’s the same reason the gentlemen are requested to display an inordinate amount of white collar and cuff.”

  “Signor Paladino will be the only person dressed exclusively in black?” The question is posed by the sumptuously clad Emily; her voice is brittle, her smile polite but commanding. Everyone gathered in the foyer, including her husband, reads censure in the question.

  “And his assistant, naturally.”

  Emily’s blue eyes glitter down. “Of course.”

  Florence Shippen blinks at the assembled company; the tilt of her head has turned defiant and brave. Florence is a great champion of her cousin. “This is a thrilling occasion you’ve afforded us, dear Henrietta. We ladies must aid Signor Paladino in any manner he deems fit—even if it means wearing summer attire.”

  It’s Emily who answers. “Let us hope Signor Paladino has as much success with his clairvoyance tonight as you with your wardrobe.”

  “Oh!” is Florence’s stunned reply. “You do like it, then?”

  Emily merely smiles her chilly smile. She looks around her at the old-fashioned rooms and dull little group and wonders why on earth she accepted the invitation. The query makes her stand more erect, causing her to appear far more terrifying to her hostess.

  The twelve men and women—the same number, following Eusapio’s orders, as the Apostles—move into the converted dining salon and seat themselves around the table in accordance with their hosts’ design. There are comments upon the unusual appearance of the room, upon personal anxieties and apprehensions, upon the many reports of Paladino’s successes, and, naturally, upon Lemuel Beale’s mysterious disappearance. The rumors that there may be more sinister work afoot than an accidental drowning is on every tongue.

  But as the company talks, the minutes tick by and Paladino fails to arrive. In his absence, a worried
and self-conscious restraint settles over the group. Henrietta notes this change of mood immediately, and she graces her guests with a number of placating smiles in the hopes of reassuring them that the evening is proceeding precisely as planned. Despite their hostess’s effort at assurance, the guests begin to eye the tambourine, the zither, the guitar, and the writing slates in growing discomfort while they clasp and reclasp white hands upon the ink-black table. The tall-case clock in the corner ticks, tocks, ticks until John Durand clears his throat and suggests that they question the conjurer about the financier’s peculiar circumstances. “As a test, don’t you know?” he states in the plain and unadorned speech that’s as much his trademark as his wife’s is formality and artifice. “We’ll put some words on one of those magical slates. No point in our venturing personal information until we know where we stand with the fellow.”

  “I was hoping that I might myself begin” is Henrietta’s tenuous reply; and all but the Durands immediately concur. Lemuel Beale must wait until their hostess is satisfied that she has reached her long-lost family.

  After nearly an hour of further conversation in which Henrietta minutely describes her adored relatives, Emily takes it upon herself to critique the conjurer for behaving so inappropriately. “I find it an outrage, dear, dear Henrietta, that this … Paladino should be so tardy. After all, he’s been hired to entertain us. Not we to dance attendance upon him.”

  “Oh!” is her hostess’s wounded reply, and Professor Ilsley’s snowy beard quivers in protective empathy.

  “It appears that Mrs. Durand is a skeptic of the clairvoyant’s art.” He leans back in his chair, affixing her with the caustic stare he gives his students.

  But Emily is his match; she bends her tall, bare neck in her habitual pose of calculated flirtation. “Not necessarily, sir. Mesmerism, conjuring, and artificial somnambulism are comme il faut, n’est-ce pas? Ladies and gentlemen of society must acquaint themselves with all current fashions. It’s no different than studying silver hallmarks or family pedigrees.”