We Hear the Dead

by Dianne K. Salerni

  I only wondered: If Dr. Kane had his way, would the bright light of my sister’s spirit be snuffed out? Would her lively mannerisms and wit be squashed beneath a weight of respectability, so that she faded in among the empty women of society, reserved and lifeless? How could he profess to love our Maggie and still wish to change her? Leah had choice words to say on this subject, and I had heard them aplenty. For my part, I had been fond of the doctor until he had called me a fraud, but even now it was hard to hold a grudge. Like Maggie, he possessed an irresistible charm. He would not be a bad brother, I thought, as long as he did not use his flame to put Maggie’s out.

  He brought me a cup of tea while I stood at the casket. “It is a shame,” Dr. Kane said. “He was still a young man.”

  “He was only thirty-three,” I replied. “But, of course, he was deathly ill a few years ago and expected to die then. The doctors said it was a miracle he lived this long.”

  Dr. Kane started, and suddenly looked more closely at the man in the casket. The teacup in his hand rattled in its saucer, and I reached out to take it, watching him curiously.

  “They said the same of me,” he murmured, almost too softly to hear. Then, louder, “He never fully regained his health, did he?”

  “He had frequent relapses,” I confirmed, sipping at the tea and looking back and forth between Calvin’s gray, shrunken features and the suddenly pale countenance of Dr. Kane. The chatter of voices in the room behind us seemed to fade away from my hearing. For that moment, we two and the dead man beside us were the only people in the world.

  “Are you all right?” I asked, my own voice sounding tinny and small.

  “Yes, quite. I’m fine,” the doctor said automatically, his eyes fixed with horror on the casket. But he was not fine. He was seeing his own death upon him, and as I watched him shudder at the thought, I saw it, too.

  A shadow passed over him, such as might be made by a reflection in a window that obscures the image beyond the glass. I saw him in his casket, his face waxen with death, haggard and ravaged by illness that left him, like Calvin, old before his time. Then the real man turned away from the coffin, his ghostly image dispersing like tendrils of mist, and with a resolute set to his jaw, Dr. Kane crossed boldly to Maggie’s side.

  Taking her hand, he drew her out into the center of the room. Interrupted in midconversation, Maggie tilted her head in puzzlement, her eyes searching his face with concern. Addressing the room, Dr. Kane abruptly began to speak of the brevity of life and the precious gift of love. He rambled, making little sense and seeming quite addled in his thoughts, although some of the people who guessed where this muddled monologue was leading began to smile among themselves.

  Finally, calling upon the gathering of friends and family to witness his word, he pledged his love to Maggie and swore before all present that he would marry her on his return from the Arctic. Maggie beamed with joy, her face flushing prettily, but the doctor seemed nearly broken by emotion. “I will be true to you,” he vowed, his voice choked with feeling, “until death.”

  Well-wishers closed in among them, although Leah did not, clearly outraged to have her widowhood overshadowed by the happy couple. And I hung back near poor Calvin, shaking in dread.

  She was my dearest sister, for all that he had taken her away from us. How could I tell her that I had seen a vision of him in his coffin?

  So I huddled with a cup of stone-cold tea by the side of my dead brother and shivered miserably all to myself—cursing my gift.

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  Maggie

  After Calvin’s funeral and burial in Rochester, Leah announced that she, Mother, and Kate would be continuing on to Hydesville, where they would visit with the family. “Are you coming or not?” she demanded with her usual bluntness.

  I wanted to go, of course, but felt obliged to consult Elisha. Unexpectedly, he gave his blessings. “Go, spend time with your family before you move to Mrs. Turner’s. I have a dozen things waiting in New York that need my immediate attention. I will see you once more in the city when you return from Hydesville, and it is there we will have our good-byes. I cannot bear to think of them now.”

  My brave, bold explorer had been highly emotional for days and, in fact, had unexpectedly proposed marriage to me before the entire congregation of family and friends at Amy Post’s house. This led me to tease him a bit afterward, remarking that crypts and wakes seemed to bring out his true romantic nature! In truth, however, I realized that he was suffering apprehension about his upcoming voyage, a sentiment I heartily shared. We had spoken at great length about the future we would enjoy after his return, but we had avoided the topic that preyed upon both our minds: the chance that he would not return at all.

  I was not the least bit surprised when Elisha insisted that he still wanted to keep our engagement discreet, even though he had announced it publicly at the Posts’ house. “I do not think there is anyone left for me to tell,” I said wryly. However, I knew that although Elisha spoke his intentions freely among my acquaintances, he was strictly closemouthed to his own family.

  ***

  We returned to New York in the early days of May after three weeks in the country only to find that Elisha had suddenly been called to Philadelphia. I had missed him by only a day. A traveling trunk had been delivered to Leah’s house at Elisha’s behest, and I began to pack my belongings with a heavy heart.

  “I guess I’ll be taking you with me,” I said to Lovey, my little canary bird. His constant twittering was a nuisance, but I would not have wanted Elisha to know that his gift was unappreciated. Mother and Kate had refused to keep him, and Leah said she would pop him into a stew if I left him behind. “I just hope Mrs. Turner doesn’t have a cat,” I teased him.

  There was nothing else for me to do. I would not depart for Crooksville until I had the chance to see Elisha. Leah and Kate recommenced their spirit sittings, from which I excluded myself. I tried to fill my days with letter writing, reading, and social calls. Mostly, however, I brooded over Elisha’s impending departure.

  The Advance would sail from New York Harbor at the end of May, heading to Newfoundland. From there, it would make its way to Greenland and push northward, along the frozen coast of that wasteland. I traced the route with my finger on one of the maps Elisha had left for me, past settlements with strange names like Fiskenes and Upernavik until the map trailed off into speculation, sketched in by Elisha with only his best guesses.

  Although he had been planning this trip since before I met him, delays with supplies and disappointments in funding had caused a mad scramble of frantic activity in the final weeks. The expedition needed to be under way in time to take advantage of the short Arctic summer. In addition, news of a competing British expedition had driven Elisha mad with jealous rivalry. In spite of its established goal of finding the missing Franklin mission, it could not be denied that the second Grinnell Expedition was foremost a journey of exploration. The desire for fame consumed him. If he were able to discover the fate of Franklin or prove the existence of an open polar sea with Arctic lands above it, he would be hailed as the most celebrated explorer of our day.

  For my part, however, I could not look at the blank stretches of the polar map without a deep, primal fear. Something in that desolate void had swallowed two British ships and all their crew without a trace. My beloved Elisha could vanish just as easily into that unknown.

  Scarcely two weeks before his planned departure, my fiancé returned to New York and came to see me. He arrived wearing his navy uniform and carrying two packages under his arm, one small and the other twelve inches square. Immediately I noticed that he moved with a greatly restrained and impatient energy, like an overwound clock mechanism. Still, he greeted me warmly with an embrace and his usual whispered endearments. The smaller package proved to be a gift to me, a book of verse in which Elisha had inscribed little messages and comments. The larger one, as I
had guessed, was his present to himself, the portrait of me. I had finished sitting for it the week before my Washington trip, but I had never seen the completed work.

  The girl in the painting was a fragile and delicate creature who resembled me in some superficial features and might have been a romanticized ideal of my person. I bit back a comment that my alter-image looked pale and ready to faint, as if her corset had been fastened too tightly, because Elisha had paid for it and he was greatly pleased. “My Darling Little Spirit,” he called the portrait fondly. “This will never leave my side until God brings me back to you!” Smiling appreciatively, I only hoped that this shy and swan-necked girl did not so overtake his affection that the rosy-cheeked sturdiness of the original disappointed him upon his return!

  We enjoyed a quiet supper. He entertained us with anecdotes of his travels during the past weeks, recounting amusing antics of fellow train passengers and frustrating experiences with railroad timetables. As much as possible, he avoided speaking of the journey yet to come; nevertheless, it overshadowed everything he said. After the meal, Mother shooed us out the door, encouraging us to stroll around the block to the bakery, from where she had asked us to acquire a small cake. Elisha arranged a cloak around my shoulders and folded my arm into his own as we stepped down into the street.

  We did not hurry, even though the air was brisk and the light was fading with the onset of evening. “I did not want to make overmuch of our parting,” he confessed to me as we walked. “But seeing you tonight, I only know that I am about to leave you, and I realize how very, very much I love you.”

  “I have been frightened,” I admitted. “And I have been despondent. But those are my own failings, for I have never seen you unsuccessful at anything you have desired to achieve. You will undoubtedly find what you seek and return in triumph. I will not mar your departure with tears nor have you remember me for the next year for my red and swollen eyes!”

  “A year is a long time,” he reflected solemnly. “You won’t forget me, will you Maggie? Marry some other young swain who catches your eye while I am gone?”

  I smiled up into his face. “You know I could not.”

  “No,” he said complacently. “You hold half of my soul and I hold half of yours. It is only when we are together that each one of us is complete.”

  We returned to the house with a luscious lemon cake, which Mother served to us in the parlor with coffee. When at last the time came for Elisha to make his departure, Mother rose from her seat and motioned Kate to the door. “It is a little irregular,” she said, giving us a knowing smile, “but, then, your circumstance is a bit irregular, what with Dr. Kane’s voyage and a lengthy separation to face. After all, you are engaged, so I think a few minutes of privacy would not be unreasonable!” She followed my sister to the door and—after cooing back over her shoulder, “Just a few minutes, mind you”—closed it behind her, leaving us entirely alone.

  It can be safely said that those few minutes were well spent, although the tears came after all, and my eyes were indeed red and swollen when he left.

  ***

  The next morning Mother and I left New York by train. I was listless and useless after a long night of weeping into my pillow. It was for this reason that I was careless with my luggage and did not realize until the train was well under way that I had left the birdcage with my canary sitting on the floor of the terminal. This new loss set about a fresh round of wailing that Mother could not subdue. “It cannot be helped now, Margaretta!” she kept saying, obviously confounded that I should grieve so much for a bird that had annoyed us all. But Lovey had been a gift from Elisha, and to lose him so thoughtlessly seemed a terrible betrayal. Nothing would comfort me, and I immediately began to compose a tear-stained letter to Elisha confessing my sin, which I posted upon our arrival in Philadelphia.

  There was little conversation on the trip, due to my moroseness and Mother’s waning tolerance for it. She was still dressed in the deepest black, mourning her son-in-law just as if he had been her own flesh and blood. Her reproach could not have been clearer: my loss could not compare with Leah’s, and my continued self-pity was unseemly.

  Neither of us was cheered by the sight of the picturesque Turner home with its handsome trees and welcoming piazza covered in honeysuckle vine. Despite hearty greetings from Mr. and Mrs. Turner, we expressed our desire to promptly turn in for the night. I cannot imagine what Mrs. Turner thought of us, but in her kindheartedness she forgave us any breach of courtesy and ushered us to our beds. The next morning Mother announced her intention to return at once, and Mr. Turner drove her to Philadelphia himself.

  My first week at the Turners was a dark and gloomy one. The weather turned gray and wet, trapping us indoors and drowning the cheerful little honeysuckle blossoms on the piazza. I was tearful and distraught, which Mrs. Turner took for homesickness. In actuality, I was numbering each day until Elisha’s departure. There had been no letter from him since my arrival, which probably only indicated his intensive involvement in readying his ship but seemed to me an early taste of the silence I could expect when his expedition disappeared into the North.

  On the last Saturday in May, only four days before the scheduled departure of the Advance, I was listlessly applying myself to scales on Mrs. Turner’s piano. Rain streamed down the windows in a torrent, and so it was rather a surprise when my tutor opened the door to the sitting room and called out, “Miss Fox, here’s a guest come to visit you!”

  I straightened up and turned around, expecting that Miss Leiper may have come to see me settled in with the Turners.

  Instead, standing in the doorway, dressed in a dripping uniform with a self-satisfied grin, was Elisha. He had one hand on the doorframe, and in the other he held up a birdcage, slightly battered and worse for wear but still containing that endlessly twittering canary!

  “Oh, Lovey!” I cried, at the last moment substituting the bird’s name for his own. I overturned the piano stool in my rush to the door, but then, unable to fling myself into his arms, came to a stop just in front of him and covered my face with my hands. Mrs. Turner must have thought me a brainless fool, watching me sob so heartily for a silly bird.

  “The little wanderer has returned to the fold!” Elisha announced, unable to squelch his glee at surprising me. “Make it an evidence of my thoughtful attention to your every need, Miss Fox, and an omen of my own eventual homecoming.”

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  Maggie

  On Tuesday, the last day in May 1853, Elisha sailed away from New York in command of his first ship, the Advance, on a route to Greenland by way of Newfoundland. The newspapers were full of the story, even in Crooksville. Even before he had accomplished anything at all, Elisha Kent Kane was a hero, a dashing adventurer who had already captured the hearts of Americans with his great feats.

  For me, he was a hopeless romantic who had given up a night’s sleep amid all his important occupations to bring me a lost bird, one that he had located by the simple expedient of advertising a reward. I was simultaneously overjoyed and embarrassed by this diversion of his attention to duty. “I am shamed to have been so careless,” I agonized to him. “I have dragged you away from your ship and your preparations! Everyone who needs you aboard the Advance must be furious!”

  “I account to no one for my whereabouts,” Elisha reminded me. “I am the commander. Besides, I was wishing for a handy excuse…I wanted to see you here, to know by my own observation that you were well and happy. Your mother told me that it was a tear-filled journey.”

  “I was distraught,” I admitted. “But the Turners have been nothing but kind. Their home is lovely and welcoming, and I am content to be at my studies.” I turned to Mrs. Turner at this point, to acknowledge her presence and my gratitude, and I was startled to find her observing me shrewdly. It had not escaped her notice that the despondent, weepy student in her house was suddenly flushed with color and come alive
with animation.

  “I am pleased to be able to depart knowing that you are comfortable and contented,” Elisha said.

  He stayed only long enough for tea, then departed in his hired carriage for Philadelphia to return by train to his point of origin. All those hours of travel for an afternoon’s visit! I tried making a lame explanation to Mrs. Turner regarding his kindly patronage and true friendship.

  She was having none of it. “I hope you will pardon me if I am being too forward, Miss Fox, but it is plain to anyone with eyes to see that Dr. Kane holds you in tender regard.”

  I sighed. “People keep telling us that.” That was the end of keeping any secret from Mrs. Turner. It was a relief to admit my feelings, and on Saturday, when we knew the Advance was under way, I did not have to hide my tears.

  “Now, now, Miss Fox,” my tutor comforted me, “you just look at that canary and remember what Dr. Kane said.”

  ***

  I lived for letters.

  It was not to say that the Turner house was unpleasant. Although I was a paying boarder, I had not been brought up to idleness, and so I helped with the household duties. My studies had been chosen by Elisha with my consultation, and so were precious to me—in theory. However, in practice, it could not be denied that I had never been a diligent student. I loved to read, but only the things that pleased me, and submitting to another’s tutelage at my age chafed a bit.