The Dark (46 page)

Guffawing and knee-slaps. Mother Margaret croaks a protest that no one attends. Why would they? Maggie wonders. She looks like a harried scullery maid in her brown-stuff gown, her hands twisting in her apron.

Dandy-Man pounds a minstrel tune on the parlour organ. Maggie sits cross-armed and sullen-faced at the table. She pushes up the rug with her foot as General Hamilton saunters to his seat. He stumbles. Looks mystified. Mother, beleaguered, tries again. “Sirs! You’ve come to ask questions of the spirits, haven’t you? Compose yourselves, will you? And behave as gentlemen. Please?”

Poor Ma, Maggie thinks, a few years back she would never have spoken forcibly to those above her station, which means nearly everyone.

The men smirk and dally and finally settle. One asks if ghosts are wanting the vote. Women were, why not ghosts? There is much laughing at this.

A soldier whom-ever says, “I hear you ladies can manifest up ghosties that look like nymphs or pagan princesses. I hear you can see through their getups. That, I’d pay mightily to see! How about it?”

The spirits do not dignify this with an answer, nor the next question from Dandy-Man: “Can these spirits be trained to come when called, like dogs? Because all this is taking a deuced long time.”

Senator Penworth rattles the cuspidor with a well-aimed spit. “Hah, that brings to mind my favourite bitch what died not long ago. Call her up, will you please, ladies?”

“Dogs have no souls, Penworth!” a young senator asserts.

“This one did. She was smarter than most people, and I loved her like my own daughter.” Penworth pretends an aggrieved tone. “I move that we not support any Paradise that disallows dogs.”

Cheers of “hear, hear” and such. More laughter. And then a sound alike a hammer blow, followed by five more blows. The table shudders and the glassware trembles. The room quiets. The men look at each other in astonishment.

Maggie glowers at Senator Penworth. “That’s for every time you hit poor Clementine with a shovel. She’s furious you killed her and she’s coming back to haunt you snap-quick. She’ll rip you to bloody pieces while you sleep, just see if she doesn’t!”

“I’ll be damned,” Penworth says. “And now how’d you know her name, you pretty minx?”

“The spirits told her, who else?” Katie puts in.

Penworth looks about. His friends are shrugging, half smiling. “Now, now,” he says. “I’d not meant to thwack Clementine so hard.”

Maggie rises in a huff from the table. The men stand also, at least those who still can. Katie sits back and drinks her brandied coffee. Mother looks, of course, bewildered.

“What say we take a roam about the White House, gentlemen,” General Hamilton suggests. “Damn fine claret to be found in the Blue Room.”

Maggie sweeps by Hamilton, and then Penworth.

“And damned pretty maids to be found in the White House hall,” she hears Penworth say, to more laughter.

In the vestibule Maggie grabs her package. She will try on the new kid gloves and lace collar above-stairs. She wishes now she had bought more accessories at the arcade—a chatelaine perhaps, or some gimping, some zigzag ricking. Nothing puts her mind at ease more quickly than shopping, except, of course, trying the latest cocktail.

She makes to rush above-stairs, nearly careers into Mrs. Sullivan.

“This came for you, Miss Fox.”

“What? When?”

“Just now. My stars, but I just can’t say what I make of you and your sister.”

“You’re in swell company, then.” His fingers tremble as she takes the intricately folded handkerchief and finds, inside, an intricately folded note.

After all the “gentlemen” leave, Maggie and Katie help their mother tidy the parlour of glasses and bottles.

Katie says, “If Leah had been here they wouldn’t have dared insult us. Oh, fiddle-dee, but I need a clean glass. My lips won’t touch anything those nasty men have touched. Ma, where are the clean glasses? My nerves are all in shreds!”

“Here, now settle yourself, will you? But only a half-glass, poppet … that is enough … Leah said you’re not to overindulge even if it’s for your constitution.”

Katie drops into a chair. “But I hate it here. I wish I were dead. I wish I were lying in a cold, cold grave.”

“Never say such things, Katherine. It tempts Fate, doesn’t it?”

“Can even Fate be tempted?” Maggie muses. She is looking out the window, smiling away.

“That is not what I mean—oh, never mind.”

“Fine and damn-dandy, then.” Katie’s face is flushed, her words overloud. “I don’t wish I were dead, but I wish I were poor as a church mouse then. Yes, I’d rather live on a crust of bread and old water than endure this life.”

“You wouldn’t last a day on bread crusts, would you? Come, lamb, the spirits have honoured you. They’ve chosen you. Don’t forget that. It scarcely matters if some louts make sport, does it? I
promise, I’ll let no more wretched senators or soldiers come to our sittings, no matter what honeyed words they offer. I’ll be as vigilant as that dog, won’t I?”

Katie looks up bewildered. “Clementine? Mr. Penworth’s dog?”

“No, she was hardly vigilant, was she? Otherwise she wouldn’t have got herself thwacked by a shovel. No, the one with the three heads. Down in Hades, is it?”

“Cerberus?” Maggie puts in, trying not to laugh. She presses the handkerchief to her lips. It is of the whitest linen and squared with Belgian lace and smells of Elisha’s hair pomade.

“Cerberus, that’s it, now … Laws, Maggie … where did you get that handkerchief?”

“This one? Well, Elisha, Dr. Kane … he brought it because … well.”

“Brought it? What do you mean, ‘brought it’? Is he here? In Washington? Here now? Why isn’t he in New York preparing for the Arctic? And where is he staying? And why hasn’t he announced his presence to me? I’m the mother, aren’t I?”

“It’s just that … the truth is, he needed to come for some last-minute fund-garnering and legal maneuverings. He’s with his brother Tom-the-lawyer and—”

“Margaretta Fox. Tell me. Tell me this instance. Where is he staying?” Mother’s voice has that tone that beggars argument, and so Maggie points slowly upwards.

“Here? God help us! Here? Has Dr. Kane no concern at all for your reputation?”

“There was nowhere else! All the hotels were full-up.”

“He’s the one who’s full-up, isn’t he? Yes.”

A short time later they are all huddled in the boarding-house vestibule: Maggie, Katie, their mother, and Elisha himself. His brother Tom stands at a tactful distance.

Maggie is relieved that Mother’s indignation does not last; but then her indignation never does. Elisha takes Mother’s hand. Repeats his honourable intentions. Insists that he would never endanger Maggie’s reputation. Insists that, indeed, all the hotels are full.

“Now, Maggie,” Elisha says. “You must never knock at a gentleman’s private parlour, nor ever call upon them in any manner. You must wait for them to call upon you.”

“Oh, I know that. Everybody does.”

“Them?” Mother Margaret puts in. “What do you mean, them? Will there be many? That won’t do, not at all, not at all. Will it? I am quite perplexed, sir.”

“No, no,” Elisha says. “There is only one
them
, which is
I
. It is a matter of speech, and of no … matter. I assure you, my dearest Mrs. Fox, I will be so engrossed in this dreaded business of raising funds that you shall scarcely notice my presence.”

Maggie doubts that, but is glad Mother seems mollified for now. Maggie and Katie truss on their bonnets. Elisha and Tom assist with the wraps. The four of them are off to tour the sights of Washington.

Their mother is nearly asleep at a writing desk by the time Maggie and Katie noisily return, cheeks red from an unexpectedly brisk May wind. Elisha and Tom bid them elaborate good-nights and ascend to the gentlemen’s chambers.

“We saw that Capitol thing they’re building,” Maggie announces to Mother. “I told Elisha it looked queer with all that scaffolding, like a cracked-open egg with nothing inside but air. He said that was just the place for politicians.” She covers her mouth to laugh.

“And we saw the Potomac,” Katie puts in. “It looked really glorious in the sunset. All wine-coloured. And, oh, the aqueduct. It isn’t as nice as Rochester’s, but I didn’t say. Elisha’s going to take us to the cosmoramas soon as we’re back in New York. Fiddle-it, but my fingers are chilled. What say we have a toddy or two.”

Over the next week Elisha, promises forgotten, makes no secret of his ardour for Maggie. Nor of his disdain for the spirits. He interrupts sittings, demands her attentions, admonishes her for attending too many dinner parties. On the tenth day of his presence, a letter arrives from Leah. Friends have informed her of the drunken, debauched sittings in Washington. Of Elisha’s arrival. Mother and the girls are to return to New York forthwith:
And do not neglect to pack your reputations, dear girls.
That is, if you can find those priceless items amid the mess you have made
.

Maggie, Katie, and Mother pass the letter hand to hand in silence. Leah’s words are tight-knit and ink-splattered; Maggie can almost see her writing in one of her rousing furies. Katie sighs and asks Mrs. Sullivan for a spruce beer. Mother Margaret insists they pack that very instant. “Our Leah’s right, isn’t she? Gracious evers, but I miss your father sometimes. And Arcadia. And those quiet, ordinary days. Don’t you, girls?”

The girls don’t answer.

“Well, laws, but I do. I’d even prefer that peddler’s ghost to all this, wouldn’t I?’

Katie brightens. “I nearly forgot. Mag wanted to ask you about dopplegangers. Or you know, fetches? Do they always warn of disaster or death or something really bad? Maggie reckons she saw one.”

“Kat? What are you—”

“Saw one. Where? When?”

Maggie reassures Mother. Katie misunderstood her story of the old lady with the basket. Katie pouts at this. Sips her spruce beer.

“That’s how stories become something else,” Maggie adds. “People change them up. They grow them, one word at time, until they’re no longer a little inconsequential story, but something else entirely. Something everyone thinks is important, but wasn’t at the outset, not at all.” She is babbling, she knows, and Mother and Katie are giving her the puzzle-eye. And so she falls quiet, says nothing more. And nothing, she thinks, is exactly what she and Katie should have done when Mother woke up in alarm that night in Hydesville five years past and shook awake their father. He did not wake straightaway. He had about him an unfamiliar smell that Maggie understands now was that of whisky. Mother was often making a fuss out of night noises—the scratching of branches, the pattering of rats, the sound of wood collapsing in the stove—and so neither Maggie nor Katie believed her when she proclaimed she had heard footsteps. Instead they smirked and then colluded. The loud and inexplicable raps sounded shortly after. Mother decided then and there, that the sounds were made by the peddler rumoured to be buried in their very own cellar. There was no convincing her otherwise.

“C
ome, Mrs. Mellon. Try,” my patient said this day, and propped Dr. Kane’s tome open on her lap. “Katie and I, we had such a lark doing this.”

“That’s all chalk and nonsense,” I said. Many of my older patients practised sortilege (albeit with the bible) but I did not hold with such superstition, and I told her this fact. “It’s no more possible than divining from a tin-type, as you said.”

“Oh, I agree, it’s a mere amusement. Before I met Elisha we did this with Byron’s books.” She smiled. “The passage I fell on would ever indicate I would love a doomed, adventuring poet sort. Imagine that. Now, here.”

“Very well.” I put down my knitting and hefted
Arctic Explorations
from her lap and decided not to remind her that Byron was known for other doings besides being adventurous and doomed: fornicating with his half-sister, for example, and with any other woman who fell to his eye.

“You must close your eyes for the magic to work.”

“Of course. And my mind, to boot.” At which I fast-shut my eyes, then opened Kane’s book at random and traced my finger round and round and then stopped and read what I had settled on:
“Refraction with all its magic is back upon us; the Delectable Mountains appear again; and, as the sun has now worked his way to the margin of the north-western horizon, we can see the blaze stealing
out from the black portals of these uplifted hills, as if there was truly beyond it a celestial gate.”

I stopped then. Perhaps that is all my son saw—a refraction. To explain: I had been thinking about dopplegangers and fetches since she mentioned them the day before, thinking on how, when my son was twelve, he spied me standing on the rocky shore. As he waved from the hummock above, I walked straight into the sea and vanished. He raced on home, all in tears, and there I was, making lobster pie, not drowned in the least. Nonetheless, as one might expect, he looked at me askance for a good few weeks after.

“A vision is often a natural occurence, nothing more. That is what this means,” I said.

“Why, that is exact to what I might have said.”

I handed her the book. “Your turn, Mrs. Kane.”

She closed her eyes and let her fingers hover before finding their place. Read:
“Hans has not returned. I give him two days more before I fall in with the opinion that Godfrey has been waylaid or seized upon his sledge. This wretched man has been the very bane of the cruise. My conscience tells me that almost any measure against him would be justified.”

She mused for a short time. “I have it. One should not see enemies where none exist. That is what this indicates.”

“Or that we make enemies of ourselves.”

“Yes. You might have been a star in my profession, Mrs. Mellon. We might have worked together as a perfect team.”

I was oddly pleased at this, and so listened all-attentive while she brought out Chauncey for his last bow.