We Hear the Dead

by Dianne K. Salerni

  This caused a great deal of guilty reflection on my part, exacerbated by Elisha’s insistence on the sinfulness of my actions. “You know I am nervous about the rappings,” he told me. “I believe the only thing that gives me fear is this confounded thing being found out! I would not know the truth myself for ten thousand dollars.” And he did not, in fact, know the truth. No admission ever passed my lips. I believe at that time it would have been a physical impossibility, my tongue stiffening in my mouth as if by some poison, were I ever to confess the method by which I manifested the raps. Unlike some other skeptics, Elisha never demeaned himself by trying to guess their source.

  Dr. Kane continued to attend our sittings when he was able and especially when he had failed to engage my companionship otherwise. Some of the Philadelphia spiritualists began to believe that he was a devoted believer, much to his consternation! However, astute participants commented, “Dr. Kane is far more intent on the medium of communication than the substance of the message,” and they would smile indulgently at the two of us. In any case, his continued presence could be interpreted only as tacit approval for the rappings, whether he realized it or not.

  Our time together was dwindling, for not only was my visit to Philadelphia due to end, but Elisha was scheduled to speak in several other cities across the Northwest in his crusade to raise funds. In the meantime, he escorted me to concerts and plays, and on two more occasions I attended his lectures as an honored guest. Mother usually accompanied us as our chaperone, although sometimes Elisha invited the wife of his cousin Robert Patterson as an escort.

  On a brisk October afternoon, just four days before Elisha was to leave for New York City, he took me on a carriage ride through the countryside with Mrs. Helen Patterson along in place of my mother. I found Mrs. Patterson to be a pleasant and agreeable companion, very elegant and gracious. She kept up a steady, cheery conversation throughout our journey, for once outpacing Elisha, who seemed more quiet and pensive than usual. I put it down to his imminent departure until the carriage rolled unexpectedly to a halt before one of the stately mansions on the outskirts of the city.

  Mrs. Patterson stopped speaking, almost in the midst of a sentence, and Elisha indicated the house outside the carriage window. “This is my family home, Rensselaer,” he said, in a voice that was uncharacteristically stiff.

  I took a startled breath and forgot to let it out. It was a magnificent estate, one that should have awed me with its elaborate gardens and aristocratic entryway, but I was terrified. Afterward I could not have described any part of the house, for in that moment, I was aware only that he meant me to disembark from the carriage and go inside to meet his parents. My legs felt as though weighted with lead. I smoothed my hands over my skirt, a fine new gown for a carriage ride in the country but unable to hold a candle to the elegant lines of Mrs. Patterson’s attire. I raised my eyes to Elisha in pitiful dread, frozen like a little rabbit. I was totally unprepared for this encounter.

  His face showed the same uncertainty, and he suddenly turned to look at his cousin’s wife for guidance. Mrs. Patterson dropped her gaze with only the briefest shake of her head, and abruptly Elisha rapped on the side of the carriage and signaled the driver to go on. “My parents are not at home this week,” he said gruffly, “so I am afraid there is no use stopping.”

  I murmured my understanding, grateful for the lie, beholden to the sensitivity of Mrs. Patterson, my heart thudding in a belated attack of nerves. I could not meet his parents without prior planning, without the proper clothing, without some guidance. I was so relieved that I felt no slight in recognizing that Elisha, too, knew a meeting at this time was not favorable.

  We continued on, our chaperone resuming her lonely discourse and Elisha and I answering belatedly, or not at all, as we recovered from what felt like a narrow escape from calamity. Finally, the carriage turned into a carefully tended garden lane and I realized that we were headed into cemetery grounds. This did not seem a typical stop for a country ride, and I turned to Elisha in some puzzlement, but he appeared to have recovered his poise and was smiling proudly. “Just a brief visit,” he assured me. “Would you accompany me on a stroll, Miss Fox?”

  He disembarked first. As I was the younger lady aboard the carriage, I paused to allow Mrs. Patterson to go before me, but she shook her head with a secretive smile. “I believe I will rest here for the time being,” she said. And when I showed my surprise, she leaned forward and put her hand on my arm. “I see no harm in allowing you a few private moments, especially here. Go with him. I expect he will wish to confess his feelings.”

  With a burning face, I climbed down from the carriage, placing my hand in Elisha’s for assistance. Smiling, he kept it even after I was firmly on the ground and tucked it into his arm. “This is not quite the gardens of Rensselaer,” he said, “but still family property for all that. It is perhaps best not to overwhelm you all at once, so a tour of the Kane vault will suffice for us today.”

  It soon became apparent that his hold on my arm was not entirely sentimental. The level ground of the cemetery dropped off abruptly, and Elisha led me to a stone path set into a steep hill. I twitched my skirts aside with my free hand, carefully placing my feet on the steps, but with Elisha’s firm grip I knew that I was safe enough. I could see our destination, a stone mausoleum set into the side of the hill, the family name carved proudly above the lintel in tall letters. Beyond the vault the hillside sloped sharply down to the wooded banks of the Schuylkill River.

  “When I was a boy, my brothers and I used to ice skate on the frozen river and then climb up here and build a fire to warm ourselves afterward,” Elisha reflected as he guided me down the inclining path. “We would sit right on the doorstep of the vault and pitch rocks down the hill. My grandparents are entombed here, and an infant brother I scarcely remember, and, of course, my dear brother Willie.”

  Approaching the vault with tenderness, Elisha placed a hand on the wooden door. “He was a bright, good child, full of innocence and a love of learning. It broke my heart when he left us. But you…” He turned to face me, taking my hand between his two and holding it between us. “You have been a godsend, more welcome than the northern sun after months of despairing night.”

  “Elisha, I know you cannot abide spiritualism,” I said, pitying his persistent grief, “but your brother loves you still. One does not have to be a medium to believe in heaven and to know that it is the ultimate destination of us all.”

  “I am a scientific man of facts and data and hard, worldly evidence. I’ve been trained to believe in what I can measure and observe and touch with my hands. Existence beyond death defies such quantification.”

  “But for all your facts and measurements, you believe in an Arctic land at the top of the world that you have never seen,” I argued. “Can you not muster a similar faith in a paradise for spirits enjoying their just reward?”

  “Let us hope it is a brighter, cheerier reward than this.” Elisha waved his hand at the family vault. “How much better to look toward the promise of heaven than to reflect upon this stone pallet, destined to be my final resting place, and that of a future Mrs. Kane as well.”

  “I am sure that the future Mrs. Kane would be deeply honored to lie in a crypt with you,” I said carefully, “especially one with such a picturesque view…not that she’d be in any position to enjoy it.”

  “Do not make me laugh when I am trying to be romantic!” he protested.

  “Your romance needs work if you ply your charms in a cemetery at the foot of a mausoleum, contemplating your future tomb,” I informed him.

  “All part of my plan,” he assured me. “What will you do when I leave the city, fair Maggie? Find another young man to twine about your finger with your bewitching eyes and clever conversation?”

  “Wherever would I find another companion such as yourself?” I retorted. “I could place a classified advertisement, I suppose. Wanted: a
philosophical but skeptical scientist and explorer, to swoon in volcanoes, swim with sled dogs, and dangle headfirst off giant Egyptian statues with one foot tangled in his climbing rope.”

  “Now, Maggie, I told you that tale in confidence!”

  “There are no living ears to hear us,” I said, “as you have cleverly left Mrs. Patterson in the rear.” I waved my hand at the slope above us. Our heads had passed below the level of the main cemetery, and we were now out of sight of the carriage and our esteemed chaperone.

  “Just so.” He took a step toward me and stopped, close enough that I had to tilt my head back to look him in the eye. “Miss Maggie, I have brought you here to steal a kiss.”

  Instinct made me continue with my lighthearted banter, although my ears were filled with the sound of my heart pounding in excitation. “It will have to be theft, as no young lady of good standing would give such a thing away willingly.”

  But Elisha was done teasing. He placed his hands lightly on my shoulders, stepped even closer, and bent his head toward mine. It was my first kiss, stolen in a graveyard by a man with warm lips and a clean, sharp scent. For a long moment, I was speechless, even after he had stepped decorously backward and dropped his hands to his sides. I just gazed at him, stunned and giddy with emotion. His brown eyes sparkled at me fondly. “I wish I could have a lock of your hair,” he whispered, “to take with me when I go. But I am not that brazen of a thief. It would have to be a gift.”

  I nodded timidly. “Call upon me tomorrow,” I said, in a voice rather hoarse with feeling, “and I will see if I can manage it.”

  He took my arm once more and directed me onto the stone steps, so that in a moment we ascended into the view of the carriage, seeming respectable and modest, as long as the observer did not look too closely at our foolish smiles.

  “Will you keep it with the others?” I dared to ask, feeling a sudden need to be bold with him.

  “What others?”

  “Why, the locks of hair you have collected from other girls that you have kissed in front of the family tomb.” I glanced sidelong at him, waiting to see if he would be angry or offended, but he just laughed out loud.

  “Wherever would I find another such girl? I could advertise, I suppose. Wanted: a young lady of more than average beauty, a strange mixture of child and woman, of simplicity and cunning, of passionate impulse and extreme self-control. But I fear that such a search would be fruitless. There can be only one of you in all the world.”

  “Ah, you haven’t met my sister Kate. Still, I am pleased to know that any token I give you would hold a place of honor.”

  “Do you doubt me? You must look deeper.”

  “Oh, but isn’t it true that you are an enigma past knowing, Doctor?” I fixed him with a mischievous gaze. “You know I am.”

  “You are not such a mystery,” he assured me. “You are refined and lovable, and with a different education—one absent of secret rappings and troublesome spirits—you would have been innocent and artless. If I had my way with you, I would send you to school and teach you to live your life over again.”

  He handed me up into the carriage, ending our discourse, as he usually did, with his persistent advice to give up the spirit rapping.

  ***

  What could I have replied to Dr. Kane? I pondered it often over the days of his absence as Mother and I prepared to depart from Philadelphia. We would arrive in New York City only to miss Elisha by a day, as he would be journeying on to meet with financial backers in Boston. Perhaps if chance had allowed us another meeting, I could have confessed my thoughts as a sort of fanciful tale, such as he was wont to do in his little notes to me.

  I could have said to him: “Once in the mornings of old, two naughty girls played a prank upon a third girl they disliked. So successful were they that they extended the prank to include their parents, and then their neighbors, until deception became their way of life, continued in desperation lest they be unmasked. At that point, an older sister presented them with a choice: to be revealed in their wickedness or celebrated in their goodness. And the girls chose goodness, turning their prank into an act of kindness, an opportunity to meet influential people, and a means of speaking out for abolition and other human rights. Until the day that a shining hero met one of the sisters and promised her…” What?

  That was the problem. He had promised me nothing.

  Leah did not hesitate to point that out to me, almost the first thing upon our arrival at her new home.

  “I hope that you have comported yourself with modesty and propriety,” she asserted primly, “as our business depends utterly on our reputation.”

  “Land sakes, Leah,” said Mother. “I was always with her as a chaperone.”

  “I am well aware of your shortcomings as a chaperone, Mother,” retorted Leah. “All the more reason for my concern.”

  My mother drew herself up with indignation, barely capable of uttering a syllable in her own defense. I moved in swiftly with assurances. “You are concerned over nothing, Leah. Dr. Kane is a gentleman, and I have been nothing less than a lady. Mother was a fine chaperone, and there was also a relative of the doctor. We were never alone,” I asserted, my lips nevertheless burning with his remembered kiss.

  Leah sniffed doubtfully and settled herself on the settee, her broad, hooped skirts resembling a hot-air balloon in descent. Kate hovered in the background, eyes twinkling with confidences to share in private. “I suppose,” ventured Leah, “that the house will be swamped with gentleman callers, now that Maggie has begun to collect beaux.”

  “I am not at home to gentleman callers, save Dr. Kane,” I stated carefully.

  She eyed me shrewdly. “Do you have an understanding with him, then?”

  “Oh,” Mother interjected, “Doctor is absolutely smitten with our Maggie! Anyone can see that!”

  Leah grimaced and waved frantically for Mother to be quiet, while I gave my truthful answer. “No, we do not have any formal understanding at this time.”

  “I thought not,” she said. “He didn’t give me any indication of an agreement between you.”

  I gasped. “He was here?”

  “Yesterday,” she affirmed.

  “He was dashing,” Kate said appreciatively.

  “He came to pay his respects,” Leah continued, shooting an irritated glance over her shoulder at Kate.

  Mother clutched at my arm. “Maggie, he is serious about you! Such an honor, for an important man like him to call upon your sisters, just out of courtesy!”

  “He did not state his intentions for Maggie,” Leah said firmly. “And I would just as soon not see her lose her head over him. Why, I know five respectable young men who would offer for Maggie’s hand with no hesitation, including Amy Post’s son Donald—don’t make that face, Maggie; his complexion has considerably cleared up! You don’t have to put all your eggs in one basket. Dr. Kane is not likely to engage himself to a girl of Maggie’s station. You have said yourself that he made no such promises, and I strongly doubt he ever will. He is a self-proclaimed explorer from an aristocratic family who is far more engaged in the pursuit of fame than respectable marriage. He could ruin Maggie’s reputation with a few careless words and put her entire future at risk!”

  “I liked him,” said Calvin.

  There was a long moment of silence from a tableau of startled women. Then everybody turned to look at the one person who rarely had a word to say and never, ever contradicted Leah. Up to that point, I had not even noticed he was in the room.

  “He was pleasant and courteous,” my brother-in-law continued. “He has shown courage and fortitude in his world explorations and has earned his fame as a hero. I am sure Maggie is proud of his regard for her.” Calvin graced me with his shy, brotherly smile while Leah looked like she was sucking lemons, and the subject was closed for discussion that evening, firmly concluded by the man of the
house.

  ***

  Quiet days of solemn spiritual discussion with Quakers and other believers in Philadelphia were decidedly over. New York City embraced me with a whirlwind of social engagements and entertainments. Spirit sittings were a lively affair, with Leah and Calvin expertly coordinating the supernatural phenomena. The dying candles awed the guests, and in the darkness Leah plied a collapsible pole to tip over a pewter jug and wave a phosphorescent cloth in the air.

  Mother, being singularly unobservant, remained oblivious to our artifice. She was an inconvenient presence nevertheless, often drawing attention where we did not want close inspection. For instance, she had a habit of fumbling with the candles after a sitting, complaining that she could not get them lit again. Calvin would smoothly intervene in his unobtrusive way, slicing the top off the offending instrument with his pocketknife before someone noticed the missing wick. “Candles touched by spirits are often troublesome thereafter,” Leah coolly remarked. It was a relief when Mother finally left for an extended visit to Hydesville.

  Meanwhile, Leah seemed determined to marry me off, or at least divert my attention from Elisha Kent Kane. The average age of guests dropped twenty years as a series of engaging young bachelors vied for my attention. These included the dreadful Donald Post but also enterprising reporters in the employ of Mr. Greeley, earnest psychology students recommended by Mr. Capron, and social activists of varied professions. Many of them were quite handsome, and some were very charming, but all truly believed that I was a spirit medium, and secretly I thought them all fools.

  Kate had a fair share of admirers herself. My little sister had developed into a winsome fifteen-year-old beauty while I was away. Her fair, translucent complexion and delicate features appeared almost luminous against raven hair and wide-set violet eyes. Grown men neglected their proper manners and stared openly at the first sight of her. One frequent visitor confessed to me, “I think this is all a humbug, but it is well worth a dollar just to bask in the light of Miss Kate’s eyes!”