I knew nothing of these people, save their name and the name of the deceased aunt. They were strangers, people who had read about us in the newspaper and sent their calling card with a request for a private sitting. Yet I looked across the table at the woman, and even in the darkness, her avaricious little face showed such greed and spitefulness that my hand began to write of its own accord: It is not yours. You are not entitled to it. It is not yours. The woman recoiled as if some snake had appeared upon the table. The husband snatched up the parchment and rounded on his wife with the outcry, “I told you not to take that pearl ring! She left it in her will to LouAnna!”
His wife, white faced and thin lipped, retorted, “She didn’t deserve it! Who nursed the old hag through her final illness? Not your sister!”
“You’ll have to give it back!” the husband exclaimed, waving the paper with the spirit writing in the air.
“We told LouAnna it was lost! How are we supposed to give it back now?” shrieked the woman, clasping one hand firmly over the other, shielding her prize.
Needless to say, the two of them left our residence quickly. Leah looked at me in a pained way and explained that this was the sort of situation where she would very much like to slap me but found herself just too weary to manage it.
While we continued to comfort the bereft—and sometimes confound the unbelieving—letters from Philadelphia demonstrated that Maggie was finally recovering from the shock of her experience in Troy. Mother wrote that our morose sister had blossomed under the gentle welcome of the Philadelphia Quakers, who had conspired to keep her well amused, admired, and occupied. There was even, she confided, a suitor for Maggie’s affections.
I was taken aback by this disclosure. She was seventeen and clearly the age for it, but somehow it was still a shock. My constant companion for so many years and dearest friend was now eligible for marriage. It was true that one beau did not a marriage make, and a single courtship did not guarantee the end of Maggie’s youth. It was the beginning of great changes in our lives, however, and there was no way to deny it.
Leah was also concerned, particularly that all proprieties were maintained and that nothing occurred that might mar Maggie’s reputation. Calvin tried to reassure her, pointing out that Mother was there to chaperone any beaux who called upon Maggie. Leah’s response was a low, agonized groan. “Mother chaperoned Bowman Fish when he called upon me!” she stated, with no further explanation. However, Calvin and I both knew that Leah had ended up marrying Mr. Fish when she was only fourteen years old.
The letters from Philadelphia were not the only ones we received that spring. Mr. Greeley invited us back to Manhattan. His letter was followed by a dozen more, all from people we had met in New York City the previous summer: the author Mr. James Fenimore Cooper, for instance, and the beautiful singer Jenny Lind. Leah began to make travel plans and discuss with Calvin the possibility of renting a house in the city for a semipermanent residence. “The people of Rochester who would come out of curiosity have already done so,” she said. “We are left with only our regular clients and those persons willing to travel to Rochester to see us. It might be an excellent idea to relocate to a city with a fresh new population of sitters.”
It did not matter to me. I had my clients in Rochester, and I had my clients in New York City. There were spirits clamoring to speak wherever I resided. Calvin began to dismantle the contrivances he had built in the Rochester house, understanding it would be unwise to leave them where others could discover them, and we prepared for an extended journey across the state.
Our travel was pleasant and lively. We were met along the way by banners proclaiming “Welcome to the Fox Sisters” and treated by the residents of each small town with respect and reverence. There was no sign of the hostility that had afflicted Maggie the past fall, although I admit we took care to avoid Troy, and we arrived in Manhattan without mishap. With Leah as the gracious hostess, Calvin as our silent watchdog, and myself as the main attraction, we embarked on a successful second season in the busiest city in the United States. Spiritualism was the newest enthusiasm of intellectual people. The requests for sittings were so numerous that Leah immediately began to search for a house that we could rent and so extend our stay in New York indefinitely.
In the midst of this turmoil and confusion, more letters arrived from Philadelphia. Maggie was circumspect and uncharacteristically discreet, but Mother was more than anxious to give us the details regarding the eager new suitor.
When Leah realized who was courting Maggie, she became very worried indeed.
Chapter Twenty-Six
Maggie
Not a day passed without some word from Elisha Kane—a note, a visit, an invitation, or some token sent to our hotel. He observed proprieties meticulously, addressing his flowers and gifts to my mother. A book of verse, for example, arrived with a card for my mother that read, “I could not resist this little trifle for Miss Margaretta. Permit me to place it in your hands for your perusal first.” Mother, of course, passed the book along to me without hesitation, and between its pages there was a carefully folded note for my eyes alone:
Once in the mornings of old, I read in a newspaper that for one dollar the inmates of another world would rap to me the secrets of this one; all things spiritlike and incomprehensible would be resolved into hard knocks, and all for one dollar! With that, I wended my way to a hotel, and after the necessary forms of doorkeepers and fees—by Jove, I saw the spirit!
Bright Spirit, read these verses in the window of the hotel parlor with the light in your hair, as on that memorable day.
The doctor was as eloquent with the pen as he was in speech. His evenings were usually spent behind a lectern and his afternoons engaged in penning letters, all in the pursuit of money for his expedition. I was flattered that he deviated from his single-minded vocation to occasionally inscribe these whimsical little sentiments for me.
I imagine that he and I were the two most celebrated persons in the city of Philadelphia that summer. I collected the grief stricken, the philosophical, and the curious, while Elisha drew in the scholarly, the philanthropic, and the secretly adventurous. On occasion, the two groups intersected.
One evening, Elisha appeared at our hotel just as we were ending a private sitting. The doctor had written me earlier wishing to treat me to a carriage ride through the park. Regretfully, I had been forced to decline, having already committed to clients. As was often the case when I refused his invitation in order to complete my spiritual obligations, Dr. Kane was drawn to the hotel as if unable to resist investigating what occupied me.
In this particular instance, he met our sitters as they were exiting from our parlor, and the gentleman of the couple turned instantly toward him, calling him by name. Elisha immediately transformed from an anxiously waiting suitor into the dashing world explorer and came forward to shake the man’s hand. “Colonel Childs! I almost didn’t know you, sir, and I am surprised that you would recognize me after all this time.”
“I don’t often forget my officers,” the man replied gruffly. “And I especially remember you, Kane. Not many of my men are decorated with honors from both sides of a war, nor do I have very many officers known for running the enemy through with a sword and then stopping to stitch them back together again. It seems the navy has sent you far afield since the last time I saw you.”
Dr. Kane nodded. “I imagine they have loaned me out for exploration in the Arctic so that I cannot cause any more trouble for them.”
“They did not value you nearly enough,” grumbled the colonel. “Good luck to you, then, in the Arctic. You were a good officer, and Franklin’s wife is lucky to have you in charge of the rescue operation.” The colonel smiled and turned to include his wife, a petite and daintily featured lady with a dimpled smile, who hung patiently on his arm. “I hope you gain as much from your spirit sitting as we did. It is a modern miracle, is it not?”
&n
bsp; “Oh, indeed,” Elisha replied with an enigmatic smile and a quick glance at me. “Miracles have definitely taken place here; I cannot deny it.”
Colonel and Mrs. Childs departed then, comforted and gratified to have contacted the spirit of their dead son, and Elisha the impertinent unbeliever joined us in our parlor, pleased to have stolen a bit of my time after all. He seated himself across the spirit table from me, leaning against it casually. Mother retreated with a knowing smile to the farthest corner of the room and busied herself with her needlework, a corporeal but not very observant chaperone.
“It sounds like another hair-raising story,” I said, nodding my head toward the departed guests.
“Another story that makes a fool of me,” he replied with mock curtness. “You seem overfond of that type of tale, Miss Margaretta.”
“I have a weakness for adventures,” I admitted. “Are you going to tell me the story or not, Elisha? I warn you, if you refuse, I will be left to draw my own conclusions.”
“Then I hardly have a choice, do I, Maggie?” The doctor reached absently across the table and laid his fingers lightly across my own. I trembled at the touch and shifted my position so that Mother could not see the impropriety. “It was during the Mexican War,” he continued, as I met his steady brown gaze. “I was traveling on horseback with a party of officers led by a Mexican rebel named Domínguez, who was, frankly, little more than a bandit. To my considerable distaste, Domínguez and his pack of thieves were considered allies because they were willing to act as guides for the Americans. When we encountered Mexican forces and engaged in combat, I lost my horse underneath me but nevertheless accounted well for myself, taking down several men, including a young major.
“When the skirmish was over and the Mexican nationals were defeated, Domínguez began to slaughter the prisoners! We were appalled by such a dastardly act—to kill men who had surrendered! We shouted for him to stop, and finally I took up my saber and defended the enemy commander, an old Mexican general, who was trying to shield the major I had wounded. In the end, I had to draw my gun and fire at Domínguez, who cursed me vilely and swore that he would have me court-martialed.
“Thus, I saved the life of the enemy commander, General Gaona, and when it turned out that the young major was the general’s son, there was nothing else for it but to get out my kit and perform surgery on the field. I saved the general and the major, but I had humiliated our Mexican ally, who caused a great deal of trouble for me when we returned to our command post. The incident was an embarrassment to my commanders, doubly so after General Gaona gifted me with a horse from his own stables to replace the one I had lost. No officer ever made a good military career by endearing himself to the enemy, you realize!”
“But you only did what was right!” I exclaimed. “You did the noble thing, the civilized thing!”
“There is very little place in war for the noble and the civilized,” Elisha said. “Privately my commanders approved of my actions, but there was no denying that I had fired a gun at a superior officer. They were greatly relieved when I contracted a tropical fever shortly after the incident and quickly declared me unfit for service and shipped me home. I was unhappy to depart under a cloud of disapproval, and I even had to leave my Mexican horse behind.”
“I do declare, Dr. Kane! You lead the lives of ten men! Mr. James Fenimore Cooper should wish his heroes showed half your boldness! Think of the scores of pages that pass by before they have an opportunity to display their courage, while you can scarcely walk down the street without finding yourself in mortal straits!”
His face lit with laughter. “If my ears do not deceive me, Miss Margaretta, you just implied that I am haplessly prone to falling into embarrassing and exaggerated circumstances! I fear you view my life as a Shakespearean comedy!”
“Not at all,” I assured him, for in all honesty, I was in awe of his courage and flair. “I imagine you are just living in the harness.”
Here I was referring to another story he had told me, just a couple days earlier. Again I was astounded by the simple luminosity of his spirit as he talked about the rheumatic fever that had nearly taken his life a decade earlier and left him with a chronic heart disease. His physician had prognosticated that the remainder of his life would be brief and lived in bed as an invalid. However, his father, the commanding Judge John Kane, had rejected the diagnosis and ordered his eldest son to rise and go about his life. “If you must die, Elisha, die in the harness!” And Elisha had chosen the path his father had recommended, leading to medical university, the life of a navy officer, and ultimately to the Arctic.
“It is the harness in which you are living that concerns me,” he told me now. “It is a melancholy life, collecting fees from the bereft and desperate. Half the world thinks you are a fraud.”
I withdrew my fingers from his touch and pitched my voice low, beneath my mother’s range of hearing: “If Mother knew that you occupied that half of public opinion, our acquaintance would be brief, I assure you, Dr. Kane.”
“Then I will not address the issue now,” he demurred, “except to state that I would rather see you devoting yourself to an education that would prepare you for a higher position in society.”
I felt my breath entirely taken away as I imagined what high position he might have in mind for me. My hands trembled as I pressed them together and carefully folded them into my lap. What was I to think?
I was trying to be cautious, like any proper young woman in my position. A girl who gave her heart too willingly to an ardent suitor might find herself without a husband and without the unblemished reputation she needed to acquire one. Yet what an intoxicating thought, to be the wife of this magnificent man!
Folded in the interior pocket of my skirt, beneath my hands, was a small measure of sanity. Only that morning, I had received a letter from Leah. It was typical of my sister to reach out across the distance in an attempt to keep her thumb firmly upon my neck. I was well accustomed to her manipulation, but she still knew the words to write that would give me pause even in the middle of a flirtation with Elisha. As he rose to take his parting that evening, as I offered my hand in farewell and raised my eyes to his warm and passionate gaze, Leah’s letter haunted me, rapping its own message into my skull:
I understand that you are currently receiving the attentions of your first true suitor, an honor that has caused many a young girl to lose her sense unless guided by the feminine wisdom of her kin. As Mother is not always the best judge of these matters, I thought you might appreciate a few frank words from one who wants only the happiest future for you.
First, be prudent and modest. Do not confide your heart or any other private matters to this man. I mean him no disrespect but ask you to recall that young men can be fickle. You need not look too far backward in our own family history to see this truth for yourself. A man’s love is a transitory thing, often shaped by circumstance, and not to be relied upon at the expense of good judgment.
Secondly, look to your future. Although there may be excitement in finding yourself the favorite of an illustrious hero, consider that you might better be matched to someone of your own background. Your first suitor will not be your last, and I would rather see you married to a man who comes from our own circle of associates and is devoted to the same ideals of family that we value. Heroics are all well and good between the pages of a book, but I imagine the appeal fails in the face of managing a home and children.
Finally, do not forget that issues of social status are not easily set aside. Forgive my bluntness, dearest Maggie, but you would not be welcomed by this man’s family, nor would either of you be happy with such a union.
I hope you do not take these sentiments amiss and appreciate that I only hope to provide you with the sisterly advice I was lacking in my own youth. Enjoy your attention from Dr. Kane, whom I understand is quite a charismatic and entertaining gentleman, but comport yourself with the utmo
st propriety. Do not lose your head, your heart, or your reputation—nor do anything that would injure our family.
Respectfully and lovingly,
Your sister,
Leah
Knowing my sister as I did, I thought that she was less blunt than she might have been and that there had probably been other versions of this letter that had never made the post. I knew that her most pressing and self-serving concern was that I keep the family secret, and thus far I had done so, never confirming those doubts that Dr. Kane had expressed to me.
I might have been angry about the things Leah wrote in her letter, but perhaps my own habit of deceptiveness had made me a skeptic in all things. In fact, her letter was an anchor to which I clung, lest my heart fly away on wings of infatuation, borne aloft by the currents of dizzying possibility offered by one Elisha Kent Kane.
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Maggie
The fall of 1851 came upon us too quickly. Soon we would be finishing our business in Philadelphia and rejoining the rest of the family, not in Rochester, but in New York City, where Leah had rented a house.
Our popularity in Philadelphia had not diminished during our four-month stay. Spiritualists from all across the state of Pennsylvania had journeyed to the Quaker City for a meeting with one of the Fox sisters. Very few of these visitors had ever experienced any supernatural event before. When they arrived at Webb’s Union Hotel, it was with the reverence of attending church for the very first time, having only read about worship but wishing ardently to participate. When rapping in Rochester and New York, I had always presumed myself to be something like a performer. But in Philadelphia I understood for the first time that Kate and I, or perhaps Leah, had created a new religion.
We Hear the Dead Page 17