We Hear the Dead (32 page)

“Come now, Miss Fox, that is not true. I can see from here that you have a diamond bracelet, purchased at great expense with my father's money, and a locket that once belonged to my grandmother. I am sure you can get a pretty penny for the bracelet, although I would request that you consult me before selling the locket. I would give you more than a pawnshop, seeing as it is a treasured family heirloom.”

I placed a hand protectively over the locket, staring at him in wide-eyed shock. “I think it is time you left,” I whispered.

He rose but made no move toward the door. Closing his little daybook and slipping it back inside his coat, he said, “You have no hold on our family, Miss Fox. We do not recognize any contract of marriage between you and my late brother. If you take your claims to the courts or to the press, or if you try to make public my brother's letters, we shall take legal action against you.”

“Make public the letters…” I repeated incredulously. “Is that what you think of me? Those are personal and deeply private letters, Mr. Kane. I would not sell them to anyone…least of all you. You mistake me for…for someone like yourself, a hard-hearted and vile individual with no human feeling at all!”

I rose from my chair and pierced him with an imperious glare. “You shame yourself, sir, in this callous betrayal of your brother's wishes. I
am
Elisha's wife…in the eyes of God
and
the law. You cannot unmake that sacred bond. Not by wishing it away, and not by intimidation!”

His mouth twisted in an ironic smirk. He turned and bowed politely to Mrs. Walters, who was huffing indignantly at him, then replaced his hat on his head and started for the door. He strode past me as though I were a house servant unworthy of notice, without acknowledgment or farewell.

Mrs. Walters was up and out of her seat in the blink of an eye. “Oh, Maggie,” she gasped, taking my two hands in her own, “what a horrid man! I hope I did not speak out of turn…”

“No, Ellen,” I assured her, giving her a grateful hug even though I was trembling with belated reaction from head to toe. “You were wonderful!”

“Forgive me, dear,” she said, “for I know how much you loved Dr. Kane, but his brother is a nasty piece of work! And from his behavior I would conclude that the rest of his family is not much better!”

“I was warned as much,” I murmured, clasping my cold hands to my bosom and gripping Elisha's locket.

Yes, I had been amply warned.

Maggie

I did not lack for advice. Everyone had some sort of opinion on what I should do next. It seemed that in the whole of my life, there had always been someone telling me what to do. At last, I had reached the end of my tolerance for it.

Mrs. Walters asked her lawyer acquaintance from church to call upon me and offer his professional counsel. He kindly waived his consulting fee in exchange for a slice of Mrs. Walters's chiffon cake and a cup of tea. I do not know what he thought of his side of the bargain, but for my part, I found his advice singularly unappetizing.

“I think you should take Mr. Kane's offer,” he said, with no hesitation or preamble. “Mind you, the Kanes can do better than five hundred dollars. I would not accept less than twenty percent of the original legacy. Nor would I turn the letters over directly to Mr. Kane. Rather, you should place them in trust with a person or bank agreed upon by both parties.”

“But you said the marriage contract was legally binding,” I objected.

The lawyer raised a finger. “That is true, but you would have to prove it actually occurred. The executor of Dr. Kane's estate is not going to acknowledge the marriage, because you might then claim more than the original five-thousand-dollar legacy. There may be nothing in the estate at present, but when Dr. Kane's book is published, I think you can anticipate that its value will substantially appreciate. I fear that the Kanes would be willing to spend rather more money than you have at your disposal to prevent you from gaining control of that estate.”

“Oh, Mr. Blake,” exclaimed Mrs. Walters, “that seems so unjust! If she is entitled to more…”

The gentleman shook his head regretfully. “I cannot recommend that a young woman in Miss Fox's circumstances attempt to best a family like the Kanes in court. It would be of no great difficulty for them to drag the case on for years, until Miss Fox's resources are expired. Consider as well that the marriage may be legally binding but not socially acceptable. There are many people who equate the term ‘common-law wife' with ‘mistress,' if you will excuse my use of that vulgar term. In my opinion, good ladies, it would be in Miss Fox's best interests to strike an agreement with the Kanes over the inheritance and drop the matter of the marriage, lest she damage her future prospects. When given a choice between money and the good opinion of society, a lady must always choose her reputation.”

Ah, better poor than dishonored. Not a surprising bit of advice, coming from a man and given to a woman!

***

Honestly, I did not know what path my life should take. I was cast adrift among equally dismal futures. My father wrote and asked me to return to Hydesville now that my prospects for marriage had been disappointed, no doubt hoping I would spend my spinsterhood keeping house for him. Mother wanted me to forget my “Quaker marriage,” as she called it, and find some respectable Methodist husband—although I could not see myself as anyone but Elisha's wife, today, tomorrow, or ever.

One day during this time of uncertainty, I returned from a morning at church, where I failed to find an answer to my troubles, and discovered Mrs. Walters quite worried over a visitor who had come in my absence. I removed my hat and veil with a listless lack of emotion while she dithered incomprehensibly.

“I told him I wasn't sure it was the best thing,” she said. “You have been so much calmer, and I would not like to see you upset again! But it's not my place to turn him away. Maybe it will do you some good, but I am quite afraid—”

“Who is it, Ellen?” I asked, hardly caring. I walked around her before she could bring herself to express an answer and entered the parlor. It was William Morton, seated with his hat in his hand and two packages at his feet.

Two opposite emotions gripped me at once. Dread and longing made a painful vise around my poor, afflicted heart. This man had come to tell me Elisha's last story.

He rose politely at my entrance and greeted me simply. “It is good to see you, Mrs. Kane.”

I caught my breath, taken by surprise, and my eyes filled unexpectedly with tears.
Mrs. Kane
. He knew, of course. He was the one person Elisha would have trusted with this secret.

Morton was distressed to see me burst into tears. He looked apprehensively at Mrs. Walters, who promptly chastised him. “I told you!”

“No, please!” I said hastily. “I will compose myself. Be seated, Mr. Morton. I…I am glad that you have come.”

I sat opposite him, my eye immediately drawn toward the packages. One was a small bundle of letters; the other was twelve inches square and wrapped in an old sheet.

“The last thing I want to do is upset you, Mrs. Kane,” the young man said with a wary look at Mrs. Walters, who seated herself discreetly, as always, in the corner. “But I felt it was my duty to come…it is the last duty I can do for him, in fact.”

I nodded and blotted at my eyes with a handkerchief. “I cannot promise that there will be no tears, Mr. Morton. But there are some things I must know. I cannot live without knowing them.”

“His thoughts were with you to the last, I can assure you.”

“Please…he did not think I had abandoned him?” I begged shamelessly. “I had a letter from him…it said he had received no letters and asked why I did not come to him…” I fumbled to retrieve it from my reticule. I had it with me always, unable to leave my guilt behind.

Morton looked puzzled as he accepted the note from my hand, and his brow creased when he saw the coarsely shaped letters and poor spelling. “It must have been a servant at the hotel who wrote this for him,” he mused. “I did not know of it, and I was with him nearly always. His mother was also with him most of the time, but he clearly sent this out secretly.” Elisha's secretary raised his eyes to me. “I would have spared you the pain of this if I could. Do not think he was accusing you—or that he thought you had not written. We knew your letters had gone missing. I think—the person who wrote this just did not understand what Dr. Kane was trying to say.”

“Because he did not speak the language?”

“Because…” the young man sighed and then went on with great reluctance. “Because the doctor suffered a stroke aboard ship en route to Havana. By the time we reached Cuba, he had lost the use of all four limbs and was able to speak only with great difficulty.”

I cried then. I could not help it. Ellen quickly moved from her accustomed place in the corner and sat beside me, lending her strength with one arm about my shoulders. But Morton was committed now to telling the tale and struggled onward, as if climbing through drifts in the Arctic. There was little good to it: a rough Atlantic crossing, damp weather and the soot of London, doctors consulting and disagreeing while Elisha became ever weaker. Switzerland was swapped for Cuba, and my husband boarded this second ship on a stretcher, too ill to walk. Still, he directed Morton to write none of this to me, not wishing to worry or alarm me.

“He was convinced even then that he would recover,” Morton said. “He planned to send for you in Cuba, hoping that he would have regained some of his strength by the time you arrived. He directed me to find a seaside hotel, but everything changed after his stroke. I ordered a telegram sent to you by way of the American consulate on our arrival. It was lost—or canceled, I suppose. I did not know that you had been left uninformed until you telegraphed me.

“By the time your letter reached us—and it was clever of you to address it to me—Dr. Kane had suffered a second stroke.” Here Morton flushed in embarrassment and his gaze wavered, but he went on. “I read your letter to him. The one you enclosed for me to give to him. So, you see, he knew that you had not forsaken him. He knew that you were on your way.”

With great self-control, I managed not to wince. It had been a very private letter, meant only for Elisha's eyes. I simply never imagined that he would be unable to read it himself. Still, I lifted my chin and smiled as best I could through my tears. “Thank you, Mr. Morton. There is no other person I would have trusted with it.”

“There is something else,” the young man said, still uncharacteristically distressed. “I knew by then that your ship was not going to arrive in time, that it wasn't even going to depart from the United States in time. But I lied to him. I told him you were already on your way—that you were only a couple days from Havana. It seemed to bring him some comfort, and I knew that he would not live long enough to learn of the falsehood. Did I do right, Mrs. Kane? It has weighed heavily upon my conscience.”

The poor distraught man looked trustingly to me for comfort. Did he know the irony of asking me, of all people, whether it was right to deceive a person in order to ease his pain? “Yes, Mr. Morton,” I said to him. “Heaven forgives the falsehoods told in kindness. You were…a good friend to him, William. You have been a good friend to both of us.”

“I saved a few items for you,” he said then, clearing his throat and making a conscious effort to recover his usual reserved manner. He reached down and picked up the bundle of letters. “These are your letters. They include the last one to Havana as well as those he was carrying on his person at the time of his trip. They are the ones he always carried, the ones he favored. There was a lock of your hair in one of them. I removed it and…” he drew a breath “…it was entombed with him. I saw to it personally.”

I accepted the package gratefully, aware of how the tears ran freely down my face. “Thank you,” I whispered. Then I nodded at the larger item on the floor. “That cannot possibly be what I think it is.”

Morton smiled proudly and for his answer, unwound the sheet to reveal the portrait beneath. It was faded and cracked and worse for wear, but still, it seemed impossible for it to be here at all. I looked up at Elisha's secretary, completely dumbfounded. “I cannot believe it. Surely it was abandoned with the
Advance
?”

He shook his head. “When we prepared to leave the ship and make our final journey southward, Dr. Kane allotted eight pounds of personal items for each man. This portrait used up most of his allowance, but he never considered leaving it behind.” Morton's gaze was fixed somewhere over my shoulder and thousands of miles to the north. “You have to understand. Dr. Kane kept his personal life private. He never spoke of you to them—and yet there was not a man among us who didn't know he was carrying that portrait with him. Every time we unloaded and repacked our cargo, we took special care that “The Commander's Little Lady” should come to no harm.

“He took it with him to England,” Morton went on, “planning to have it repaired or duplicated. He had the portrait with him in his room at Havana. It was the one thing his mother did not dare take away,” Morton's eyes narrowed in remembrance. “After he…was gone…she gave it to me and ordered me to burn it.”

Morton met my gaze proudly and lifted his chin. “But she forgot one thing. I didn't work for
her
. I worked for Dr. Kane.”

Maggie

Two days after my visit with Mr. Morton, I rose from my bed at dawn and walked out from the house. Five blocks from Mrs. Walters's street there was a cemetery, and at this time of day, I knew that I would be the only living soul on its premises.

The ground was wet with dew, and beads of moisture lingered on cobwebs spun between the headstones. I wandered, directionless, feeling the hem of my dress grow damp as I meandered through the patchy spring grass. I read each name, the dates, the inscriptions, idly noting the stories revealed by the stones. Here lay a husband and wife with one child between them, all deceased within days of each other. An illness, surely, something deadly and contagious. Here lay a man with a wife on either side of him, the first one dead scarcely more than a decade after her successor was born. A second marriage in middle age for this man, with a much younger wife. But he had outlived both of them just the same, surviving twenty years beyond the passing of the second woman.

The graveyard was full of sad stories. Mine was no more tragic than any other. With a sigh, I sat down upon a stone chosen at random, sat and waited patiently. If the ones who slumbered beneath me had any voice to speak, I would listen. I was ready to receive their messages; I prayed for a sign, any sign.

There was nothing, of course. This was not my first pilgrimage and would probably not be my last, but nothing ever came from it, no glimmer of understanding. Even he who was most precious to me could not reach me, and the echoes of his voice in my mind were nothing more than memories.

No, the dead do not return. God has not willed it. I have never done anything but rap out messages from my own willful imagination. I have used my influence to spread my own sentiments and ideals, and however well intended I may have been, I have done nothing but sell lies to the weak, the desperate, and the gullible.

Now Kate…Kate possessed some gift denied to me…or else she was mad. Yes, that traitorous thought had hidden for some time in my mind, fearfully suppressed. She trusted the voices that spoke in her head; she believed the images that flickered across her vision. My dearest sister needed close watching, and I knew it was my duty to be her guardian and confidant, to protect and shield her when this burden threatened to overwhelm her. Kate was my anchor to life. She was perhaps the sole reason I did not flee to Elisha's tomb and pound upon the door, demanding to be let in so that I might lie down beside him…

I lifted my hand, idly wiping a tear with a wrist bare of ornamentation. The diamond bracelet was gone, traded for the money I needed to hire a lawyer. I had literally ground my teeth in frustration as I handed it over at a pawnshop, just as Robert Kane had predicted I would do, and I cursed the man for forcing me to lower myself to his expectation. But my legal suit would be filed at the Philadelphia Orphan's Court within the week, the bracelet sacrificed for the chance to hold my head up as the wife of Dr. Kane.

I had already been told it was a slim chance.

Sunlight crept weakly across the cemetery grounds. Here and there green bundles of pointed leaves thrust upward from the ground where devoted relatives had planted daffodils and tulips beside their loved ones. Life went on. Every inhabitant of these grounds had left someone behind to shoulder grief and struggle on. How many of those little yellow and red flowers were planted here to serve as markers for futures blighted, diverted, and cut short by an untimely death?

He had left me with nothing but a dubious inheritance and an even more dubious marriage. With even the bracelet gone now, I had not the wherewithal to support myself save by that means that he had so despised. It would have broken Elisha's heart to see me back where he first found me, taking money for lying to people in the dark, living a life of sinful deceit and secret shame.

But Elisha had been no saint. Although he had raised money from the public for an adventure grandly titled “the Second Grinnell Rescue Expedition,” I knew very well that his eye had been on a more selfish prize—the glory and fame of discovery. Franklin's fate mattered less to him than forging a reputation for himself. He was not as virtuous as I had once naïvely thought, his motives not nearly as pure as he pretended.

We both were frauds. He was a hero in the public eye, and I, a counselor to the bereaved. But in private, Elisha had not enough courage to defy his family, no matter how heartily he persuaded me to desert my own kin. And I was unable to recognize wise counsel when I heard it. I didn't even follow the advice I gave others. We had been a well-matched pair indeed; all our good intentions blended so neatly with our faults that we never anticipated the dead end of the road upon which we walked.

Every decision in our separate lives had led inexorably to this: that he lay on that cold pallet he had so feared, while I remained trapped in a web of falsehood I had woven long ago with an unthinking, high-spirited prank.

If I could have foreseen it, would I have avoided it? At what point would I have paused in midstep and then put my foot down upon some other path?

With a sigh, I rose and brushed idly at my skirts. There was time enough later for pointless speculation and self-recrimination. I had years to reflect on what I had done with my life, and whether there had ever been a moment when I could have diverted from my fate and chosen a happier future. This morning I had an important errand to complete, and my stop in the graveyard had only been to bolster my resolve, to remind me of the consequences of procrastination.

Today I was going to follow a bit of advice that I had given others countless times. I had rapped out this message over and over again to grieving souls, believing it to be sage advice and yet never heeding it myself. For some time, this failure had preyed upon my conscience, and today I intended to unburden myself of at least one regret.

I was going to make my amends to one who had never done me any harm.

***

It was a huge brownstone home, larger than I had expected, in a very expensive neighborhood. I faltered for just a moment on the sidewalk outside, then resolutely mounted the front steps, trying to shake out the damp and bedraggled hem of my skirt.

I wondered if I would have to explain myself to some servant and dreaded finding the words to do so, but this much, at least, I was spared. My knock was answered by a tall, portly gentleman with a round face framed by sideburns and kindly eyes. He was trying to button up a waistcoat over his shirt while smiling a puzzled and tentative greeting to his unexpected early morning visitor.

“I'm Maggie,” I said simply.

For a long moment he stared at me blankly, and then recognition and astonishment lit his face. He gave up fumbling with his buttons and stammered for an appropriate greeting. “Of course—I should have known you at once,” he finally said. “Please, Miss Fox—Maggie—come in.”

He ushered me into the house and down a hallway amply adorned with mirrors and sconces and narrow, elegant tables filled with vases of flowers and small china ornaments. These, I supposed, were the trappings of success, but they were not the sort of things that tempted me. I would have traded them all for another day with Elisha.

My host was eyeing me anxiously. “We were just at breakfast,” he said.

“I'll be happy to wait in the parlor,” I murmured.

“No, no, of course not! I will just set another place—”

I was about to explain that I might not be welcome when we rounded the corner into a large dining room. An oversized table dominated the space, set with candles and tea service and surrounded by nearly a dozen chairs. There was only one person seated there, however.

She looked up quizzically at her husband as he entered, but when I appeared beside him, she laid down her fork hastily and rose to her feet. She was grayer than I remembered and more plump, but her face was unchanged. While I stood there, suddenly struck dumb with too many emotions to explain, her eyes abruptly filled with tears.

“Oh, Maggie!” she cried. “I am sorry! I am so truly sorry!”

And Leah opened her arms wide in welcome.