We Hear the Dead

by Dianne K. Salerni

  Arrangements had been made with the manager of the Corinthian for our reappearance that evening. A previously scheduled event had been postponed because of the popular demand to see the rappers revealed or confirmed, and the carriage arrived for us at the Post house promptly at seven. Mr. Whittlesey himself called upon us, and when he discovered only Leah, Amy, and Isaac dressed in their cloaks, with me cowering upon the stairs, he exclaimed, “Why, Miss Margaretta! Aren’t you coming this evening?” I shook my head vehemently, wide-eyed and petrified. The lawyer looked startled. “You cut me to the quick, child! I will not let any harm befall you!”

  I looked from his face to Leah’s, then to Amy and Isaac, feeling more and more foolish. No one else seemed frightened, and for a moment I felt like a small child who had been terrified by a bogey tale. “Oh, for land sakes!” I burst out in a sudden decision. “I cannot let you go without me. Let me get my cloak and I shall come, although I expect I will probably be killed!”

  ***

  A line of people had already formed outside the Corinthian, jostling their way out of the wind and into the rather narrow entranceway to the hall. As before, our carriage brought us around to a side entrance, and we hurried into the shelter of the building.

  My companions seemed calm and at ease on the journey to the hall, and I thought that only I retained a sense of nervous apprehension about the evening’s event until we met Mr. Capron inside the hall. He hastened to speak to Mr. Whittlesey as soon as we arrived, his face drawn and pale. The lawyer responded with surprise and alarm. Unable to hear them, I pulled away from Leah and tried to get closer, but all I overheard was Mr. Capron saying that he had “removed it from the hall and dumped it into the street.”

  Before I could make sense of this, the manager of the hall took our cloaks and once again directed us through the corridors that led to the platform. Even more so than the previous evening, the hall echoed with the voices of an excited audience. It seemed to me that the first row of seats was filled with a different sort of group than the night before, composed of rough-looking young men with no female companions in sight. Resolving to keep my gaze cast downward, I seated myself as demurely as possible and waited patiently for the presentation to begin.

  Mr. Whittlesey joined Mr. Capron at the lectern and raised his hand for silence. The audience quieted but did not completely stop talking. Thus, it was evident even from the first minute that the two men did not have the control over the event that we had been promised.

  Mr. Whittlesey began by summarizing the previous evening and then describing the examinations conducted that day. When he stated that neither he nor his colleagues had discovered any evidence of deception, several members of the audience rose from their seats and started to make catcalls. The lawyer stammered a bit, taken aback by this reaction. I had given up holding my gaze in my lap and was staring at him and Mr. Capron with growing horror. They had been warned! They both had been warned! How could they have been so foolishly unprepared after promising to ensure our safety?

  A sudden battery of loud cracks, like gunfire on a battlefield, erupted at the back of the hall, echoing riotously off the vaulted ceiling. Women screamed in fright, but from my position on the platform I could clearly see the cause of the disruption: firecrackers, set alight at regular intervals along the back row of the auditorium. Instantly, the promised police protection appeared from behind the red curtain. They rushed across the platform, leaped down into the audience, and sprinted toward the back of the hall.

  No sooner had the policemen run to the back of the hall than Mr. Bissel appeared out of the crowd and clambered up onto the front of the platform. “This is a fraud!” he shouted. “Perpetrated by frauds, with the collaboration of more frauds! Mr. Whittlesey is a friend of these women! He arrived here tonight in their company, in the same carriage! His committee is a farce! I say we form a new committee right here and now and examine these females to our satisfaction!” Before anyone could react or stop him, Mr. Bissel grabbed me by the arm, dragging me from my chair and thrusting me toward the raised edge of the platform. “Who wants to examine this one?” he challenged, spittle flying from his lips.

  I screamed, teetering on the edge of the platform, staring straight down at a sea of faces, ugly with violence.

  Then firm hands took my shoulders, pulled me out of Bissel’s grasp and backward to safety. Mr. Bissel snarled and aimed a blow at my rescuer, but Mr. Post dodged the poorly aimed fist and responded by punching the smaller man directly in the eye. For a moment, I don’t know who was more shocked—Bissel or my gentle Quaker friend! Then Mr. Post took my hand and ran with me toward the back of the platform. “Come, Maggie! This way!”

  I could see Leah and Amy ahead, running along the backstage corridors, which had already filled with smoke from the firecrackers. Mr. Capron and the manager of the hall waved us along after them, herding us toward that same side door by which we had entered. As we stumbled outside, the acrid smell of smoke was joined by a sharp, stinging odor that burned my eyes. While Mr. Post pulled me toward the waiting carriage, I turned back and saw quite clearly the source of the other pungent smell.

  In the street outside the hall lay an overturned barrel and, in a thick puddle spilling out onto the street, a large quantity of warmed tar.

  ***

  That night, I shivered in my bed for long, long hours, unable to achieve warmth in spite of the number of blankets my mother and sister had piled upon me. Mother sat beside me for most of the night, horrified by the story that had spilled from my lips as soon as I saw her. She was furious with Leah, and rightly so. Over and over again, I saw the faces of those horrible men in the first row, reaching up for me as Mr. Bissel threatened to cast me down. I smelled the tar, which Mr. Capron had discovered before we arrived, and in my nebulous dream state, I imagined having it poured upon my skin…

  “Maggie, wake up. It’s noon.”

  I startled awake, strangling a shriek as I realized that sunlight filled the room and that Leah was seated upon the bed beside me. Mother was gone, and the blankets had been cast aside in my turbulent sleep. I pursed my lips in preparation for some sharp remark, but my sister calmly unfolded a newspaper and held it out in front of my face. “You’ve made the papers, Maggie. Look.”

  The headlines were bold and numerous: “Riot at Corinthian over Validity of Spirit Rapping,” “Firecrackers Cause Panic,” “Pillar of Community Invites Assault of Young Girl on Stage.”

  “Mr. Reynolds, the manager of the Corinthian, is pressing charges against Josiah Bissel, because witnesses all state that he handed out the firecrackers to the boys who set them off,” Leah went on as I scanned the article in the paper. “The police chief has all but charged Bissel with inciting a riot and soliciting an assault on you. I doubt anything will come of it, but public opinion has already convicted him. The people of Rochester now believe that Bissel and his friends were conspiring to keep them unaware of the truth behind spirit rapping!”

  “I suppose you consider that good news!” I snapped, tossing down the paper and trying to hide the fascination of seeing my name in print. “Never mind that we were nearly tarred and feathered, or assaulted—or killed outright!”

  “I am sorry you were frightened.” Leah picked up the paper and folded it neatly. “Nobody expected him to jump onto the platform like that. No one was prepared for that.”

  “Nobody was prepared at all!” I retorted. “Except possibly Mr. Post!”

  Leah laughed with sudden mirth. “For a pacifist, he packs a mean right cross!”

  “It is not funny!” I cried. “We might have been killed!”

  My sister shook her head gently and rose from the bed. “I have not led as sheltered a life as you have. I have no illusions about life and death, respectability or poverty. Last night was frightening—no two ways about it—but in the end we came out victorious and virtuous. If you want to lie abed and think about what mi
ght have happened, then do so. But if you ever want to grow up, Maggie, then you can get dressed and come downstairs, where the friends who protected you are waiting to be assured of your well-being.”

  She strode to the door and then called back over her shoulder, “I believe there are five different floral bouquets downstairs, all with calling cards from young gentlemen wishing you a quick recovery from your harrowing experience. It is a shame that you are not well enough to receive any visitors. I shall have to send them away when they call.”

  Swearing softly with words that would greatly distress Mother, and words that I had, after all, learned from Leah, I swung my legs out of bed and reached for some clothing.

  Chapter Eighteen

  Kate

  Life in Auburn with Rebecca Capron and her daughters was pleasant and lively, and an opportunity for me to explore my powers without Leah telling me what to say. Although I missed Maggie no less, it was difficult to be lonely with the four Capron girls always about, laughing and teasing and including me as one of their own. They were impressed with my gift but not terribly impressed by me—within hours of my arrival they had teased me, petted me, borrowed my dresses, and lent me their own. I was just another girl.

  This is not to say that I didn’t sit with Mrs. Capron and other interested parties in spirit circles most evenings. If anything, they believed me all the more for my ability to channel the spirit messages with reverence and then, a little while later, join the girls in a mock battle with pillows and flying shoes. “She’s such an innocent thing,” I overheard Mrs. Capron tell her friends. “She doesn’t understand the significance of what she does.”

  In spite of this, Mrs. Capron did not think I was a featherhead and praised my schoolwork. She said that I was a very apt pupil. There was a particular girls’ school near New York City that she wanted me to attend the next fall, and she knew of a newspaper editor and his wife who might be willing to have me stay in their home.

  Such a move held little appeal to me. Although it would be exciting to live near a big city, New York was much too far from my family, and I was not quite the city girl that Maggie was. My home would always be with my family, although I was resigned to life in Auburn for now, with the Capron girls making a temporary substitute for my sisters.

  It was easy enough to bribe the girls with sweets and other promises to tell me all the stories they knew of their mother and her friends, who gathered each night to speak to the spirits. The Capron sisters hardly had to be enticed at all to listen at keyholes and repeat gossip they had heard, and no one ever linked this girlish pastime with the intimate knowledge of the rapping spirits. Without Leah to direct me, I was free to deliver messages from the spirit world that fostered my chosen purpose: to comfort the grieving, proving by the words of their beloved departed that there was life beyond death.

  One might fault me for continuing the carnival tricks that Leah had encouraged, but Mrs. Capron had come to expect them, having learned of the spirit antics from her husband. There was little enough I could do on my own. Leah had made me rip out the hidden seams in my dresses and remove all balls before I left for Auburn, and it was a good thing that she had, because the Capron girls viewed anything belonging to one as available for use by all. Often, the best I could do was to cause the candles to go out while we sat holding hands, and then duck my head under the table in the darkness and bump it around a bit.

  I altered the candles myself at night, after everyone else was asleep. Being as cautious as possible, I took them to the kitchen and laid out slabs of bread and jam before going to work on my task. Thus, if anyone came downstairs unexpectedly, I could scoop the candles into my pockets and be scolded for nothing more than an unladylike appetite. It was lonely work. I longed to tell Maggie of things I dared not write in my letters—how I had known the answers to some questions not through reading the face of the asker or listening to gossip but simply through knowing. Maggie would have argued as she always did. “Everyone gets a bit of luck sometimes!” she would have cried, or “You must have been told the story and just forgotten.” I missed her stubbornness and the challenge of a good debate with my closest and dearest friend.

  Letters could not replace her, although I savored each correspondence as a breath of air from home. Things had apparently taken a bad turn at Corinthian Hall, and Maggie was badly frightened by the experience. However, Leah’s letter said that the event had only converted more people to a belief in the spirits, and I would venture to guess that she was correct, for even in Auburn people were outraged over the riot. And because Maggie’s letters spoke mainly of the flowers and candy she had received from sympathetic visitors, I assumed she had recovered from her shock and was determined to make as much profit from her misadventure as possible.

  After several weeks, Mrs. Capron began pressing the issue of the private girls’ school in New York City again. The newspaper editor of her acquaintance had offered me a home while I attended that school next year, provisional upon his meeting me.

  Eventually I was coerced into meeting this Mr. Horace Greeley, despite my reservations, and it turned out that he was no different from any of the people who came to see me. He had lost his son to cholera and, more recently, a dear friend to a shipwreck at sea. As a newspaperman he wanted to be skeptical, but even more badly, he wanted to believe.

  After our successful spirit sitting, Mrs. Capron and Mr. Greeley spoke enthusiastically about my scholarly potential, worthy of a position as governess or schoolteacher. And yet what each of them wanted most from me was something I was already capable of giving them—spiritual peace. How odd it was that those who most needed my spiritual gifts tried so hard to educate me into a role where I could not use them!

  Chapter Nineteen

  Maggie

  I missed my younger sister dearly. My confidant, coconspirator, and greatest ally was far away and living a merry life with a gaggle of girls her own age. There were many occasions when I speculated that Leah was well pleased by our separation, for all that she had originally opposed it. Our entire family was under a sort of bondage to Leah, and she ruled over us as expertly as any benevolent despot in history. When she showered us with gifts, it was easy to forget her moments of anger and coercion. However, any person with absolute power over others is a tyrant, even if that person is amiable and pleasant much of the time.

  The months passed quickly, and news of our spirit communications spread across the state of New York. Abolitionists, feminists, Quakers, and forward thinkers everywhere had readily accepted the idea of spiritualism. We had made some enemies, it is true: the Bissels and Langworthys of our city still claimed that we were frauds, and the Catholic Church had denounced us as possessed or depraved. But still, we had many admirers and eventually imitators. We learned that other women, girls, and sometimes boys claimed to attract spirits that would rap messages from beyond the grave.

  “It is inevitable that anything successful will be copied,” Leah said philosophically. “I am not overly vexed, except that ineptitude by other mediums will give us a bad name. Otherwise, it should not have much impact on us, for we are the original rappers and still greatly in demand.”

  Yet the possibility of competition caused Leah to consider action that she had previously shunned: traveling to other cities to demonstrate the spirit rapping. For many months, Leah had refused to consider the numerous invitations we received from persons in other cities and towns. “We are not a traveling carnival,” she would say. But by the time Mr. Greeley arrived from New York, the possibility of being overshadowed by newer and more interesting spirit mediums had begun to gnaw upon her resolution. The prestigious newspaper editor from New York City merely hastened her decision.

  I had received a letter from Kate describing her sitting with Mr. Greeley, and so it was a simple matter for me to impress him with an astounding knowledge of his personal life. Mr. Greeley claimed to think very highly of Kate and desperately wa
nted to remove her to a private school, but he still never guessed she was capable of writing a letter that included all the information I needed to be successful at his sitting in Rochester. What fools were those men of self-importance who did not credit two half-grown girls with any cleverness!

  In addition to his desire for Kate’s education, Mr. Greeley dearly wanted us to visit New York and demonstrate our supernatural talent. After much debate, Leah finally agreed to his request.

  That summer we embarked on a memorable journey across the state of New York. Departing as soon as we could after Kate’s return from Auburn, and leaving behind Calvin, who was suffering from a persistent chest ailment, we traveled first to Albany, then to Troy, and finally to New York City itself. At the height of the summer, after traveling by steamboat down the Hudson River, we arrived in Manhattan, where we docked in a flurry of excitement and bustling activity. I fear that we gawked like poor country mice, amazed by the sights and smells of the trade goods and the tradesmen on the wharf, until Leah managed to acquire a hansom cab and wrestle our trunks aboard.

  I admit to being seriously spoiled by life in the great city. Our visitors brought gifts, ranging from ribbons and lace to tickets for musical revues and boxes of sweet confections. Leah banned the chocolates in a fit of temper when it became difficult to tighten her corsets. Still, we smuggled in our treats, and once Kate and I made off with an entire bottle of champagne, which we drank after Leah had retired to bed.

  During our weeks in New York, we met with newspapermen flushed with pomposity, church leaders endeavoring to reconcile their beliefs, and an array of artists, writers, and performers, all curious and itching to participate in the most fashionable activity in town. There was no end of gentlemen jostling one another to spend an hour or two with Leah, who was described in the newspapers as “a vivacious woman of more than average attractiveness.” Kate and I were not ignored either. Several young men inquired of my older sister whether “pretty Maggie” would soon be of an age to accept the attention of beaux.