The Dark (47 page)

C
HAUNCEY
B
URR SPOTS HER
in a crowded New York omnibus. Lady Leah Lucko herself. He thrusts past the coated obstacles. She is seated. On her head is a brimless bonnet, its fat ribbon tied under her dimpled cheek. Even Chauncey can tell it is costly. On her lap is a parcel wrapped in parchment. Just the fucko size, Chauncey thinks, of some poor bastard’s head. Likely she plans to make it bloodyo sing or tell a prophecy or two.

Leah sits between two dozing women. Their three skirts take up the space of six men, men who must then stand in the aisle and study the advertisements plastered on the omnibus roof. Ah, but Leah Lucko is clearly not acquainted with these women, not given her scornful expression at their bobbing heads. She is unescorted, then. Fortunate for Chauncey Burr that an unescorted woman is allowable in this modern city, for ever since the court case in Columbus, those months ago, he has longed to speak with Leah face to face, without her phalanxes of supporters, and here she is on a shining May day, wedged and alone. Quite unlike how she sat in the courtroom, a chilly sun firing her russet silks, some jackanapes perched on her lap. What a picture of innocent womanhood she was! Was he the only one who noted how she kept stuffing the boy—Charlie, was it?—with sweets to keep him genial?

He pushes himself past two scrivener sorts. They mutter but allow the indignity. Though Chauncey Burr is sporting an unkempt look—his beard straggled, his Albert coat stained, his hessian boots unpolished—this suggestion of disrepute only makes him a more formidable presence than usual.

“Good day, Mrs. Fish, or should I say, Mrs. Brown? Or might it be Mrs. Brown Fishy Fox, or Browno Foxy Fish.”

Her glittery eyes fix on him.

“What ho! You look as if you’ve seen a ghostie, a real and factual one. Ah, do not be afeared. It is only I, the Reverend Chauncey Burr, at your service.” He gives a mock bow, no easy trick in the jolting omnibus.

Never has Chauncey Burr seen such a purled lip, such splendidly contemptuous eyes.

“You.”

“Me, indeedo. My proverbial hat is off to you, madame.” Yes, my hat, he thinks, as would my vest and trousers at half a chance. Damno, but she is a fine figure of a woman.

Leah gasps then, as if his thoughts are a signboard. Yanks the hanging bell-pull and forces past him. The horses halt.

Should Chauncey seize this moment to tell the truth? The truth being that he alone understands that Leah—and her sisters also—are
no vapour-headed ladies, as most would have it, as they themselves like to promote, that he alone sees through their guise completely, and that he has a true respect for them, their ingenuity and intelligence and sheer verve. Perchance he’ll don some skirts along with an aura of purity and innocence. Gnaw his knuckles in nervousness. Be a spiritual battery, empty and at the ready for energy to suffuse his form. Become a medium! Yes, indeedo! Become a “Spiritualist” and believe in modern “Spiritualism”—for it is now an official movement, a “something” beyond the Fox women and their imitators. It is now heading for the history books and dictionaries. But not the word “Chauncelogist.” Not the movement “Burrism.”

Leah Lucko steps into the street. Chauncey considers for a half-block, then jumps off the moving omnibus. Follows her up 23rd. Once the pedestrians have thinned, he quickens his stride, blocks her passage. His expression is one of contrition, even regret. “I was attempting an honest compliment, Mrs. Brown. Indeedo, I’ve never seen your like in the female department. Such is the truth of it.”

Leah’s look is indignant, but she does not flounce off. Seems interested in what he has to say. Is at least not behaving as the quavering heroine in distress.

“I am a plain and ordinary soul, Mr. Burr, surrounded by people of the highest standing, true, but I myself am plain.”

“I think not. No, indeedo. You’ve outwitted Chauncey Burr and that’s something neither ordinary nor plain. Made a pauper of me. Ten thousand dollars, does that ring a bell?”

“Oh, it is practically a tintinnabulation, sir. But then lies cost. Slander costs.”

“They do, they do. Righto, then! Have you settled yourself here in our grand metropolis? I have no doubt you can well afford it now.” His mild tone might indicate that he does not care that his money lines her frothy reticule.

“My friends encouraged me to move. I am needed where the most can find me.”

What a damnedo voice, Chauncey thinks, so melodious it could convince birds to shit golden droplets. “Find? But not find out, what ho! Your trick, and I’ve only just understood it, is that you’ve
convinced
yourself
, have you not? You’ve stood so long amid your own bullshit you can’t smell it at all! How else can you keep it up and up, eh?”

Her lips twitch, though whether to smile or snarl Chauncey can’t gauge. “Good day, sir. I advise you turn and leave now before I cry for a policeman.”

He doesn’t leave. She doesn’t cry. They face each other, neither willing to be the one to turn away. The crowds flow round them. Hawkers proclaim their wares from storefronts and handcarts. A team of greys stand square in the traces of a Phaeton. Three pigeons skim over Leah’s bonnet. She does not flinch.

“I shall good day awayo,” Chauncey says at last. “But allow me to add that we would make a fine team: Burr and Fox. Take your pick of phenomenon. None could challenge us.”

There, he has unnerved her. She grips her package. Meets his gaze for the span of a breath. Two. Tips her head with a taut and desperate expression, as if trying to catch a prompter’s voice from the stage wings. “A team? You have lost your senses! If I were a horse I would not stand in the same harness with you.”

“Haho! But you stood in the harness with that besotted wide-eyed—Calvin, was it? Hardly a matching pair, the two of you.”

“How dare you … you despicable, wretched man. And how dare you attempt to besmirch the reputation of a defenseless woman. I am delighted to have ruined you, for you well deserve your fate.”

“Indeedo. As for my fate? It is the same as any mortal’s—to become bones and dust and food for the crawling things.” He gestures to the pedestrians about. “All these others see Heaven in the clouds, God in the details and the Devil in the dark. But the flesh is all we have, Leah, and you know this as well as I.”

“All I know is that I am going home!”

“Good day, then, but I shall keep atrack of you, and your ascension in this damnedo life. What poor chap you marry next is anyone’s guess.” He bows and turns. Resists looking back, though she is watching him stride off, surely.

“D
ID
L
EAH SEE
C
HAUNCEY AGAIN?
Did any of you?” I asked.

“No. Though I heard he reinvented himself once again, as a biographer and then as a Unitarian of all things. And that he became, too, a great friend of that Mr. Poe.”

“The one who wrote those dreadful stories?”

“Yes, in which the mysteries are always solved.” At that my patient asked for her bible box and searched through until she found a small advertising card. She put the card atop the box and closed the lid. “This is for you to keep when I pass,” she said.
Pettifew’s Ingenuities
, it read, but nothing more, no hint of what these ingenuities might be. It was a mysterious little card.

“Thank you,” I said all-polite. “I’ll cherish it.”

She chuckled. “I meant this, the bible box, the lily box, and all its contents—the letters, the pamphlets, the lot. They may wend into the world when you see fit. It won’t matter a jot to me once I’m gone past the so-called celestial gate.”

I said I would be honoured to inherit her bible box. (I should add that some weeks later, once the box was in my possession, I noticed that, on flip side of Pettifew’s card, was an address. It was written in pen-ink and was for a less-than-savoury part of Manahattan. The letters “RM” were also written there.) “I’ll guard it as if my life depended upon it,” I added.

She said she hoped my life would depend upon other things besides that, and then recalled us back to Leah.

“W
ELL
, I,
SIR
, shall not be keeping ‘atrack’ of you!” Leah proclaims to Chauncey’s receding back. “You pass from history as of this moment!”

And yet she watches until the steam arising out of a grate half vanishes him, until the jostling crowd vanishes him entirely. Only then does she walk on, slow and cautious, the package held firm. My spirits, she thinks, why did Alfie have to get afflicted with the catarrh? This should have been his task. But the errand could not wait, she knows; the séance two days hence will be the most
important of her career. Everything must be ready for Leah’s illustrious guest. She must not put a single step wrong.

Leah catches her breath and leans against the stair-post of a brownstone that is the spit-image of her own. She wishes she could sit on the stoop, but that would look common. She presses her hand to her forehead. A pain chews away there, as it often does of late, often tempting her to take up soporifics again. One evening with her overindulging sisters, however, is enough to shoot that notion to penny-bits.

A couple stroll by, arm in arm, talking with close confidence. The gentleman tips his hat at her. Leah smiles benignly back, thinks: How dare that Chauncey, that so-called reverend, that Burr stuck in my side, how dare he suggest we would make a “team”? She considers how his buttons were askew, his fur collar bedraggled, his dark beard growing this way and that. He looked, in all, like the hard-used plaything of some giant child. A grand team! What damnable poppycock.

She shifts the package in her arms. The store was almost impossible to find. The advertising card Alfie gave her bore only the address and name. No directions at all. When she found the store at last, it was down an alley and up several outside stairs. The sign, “Pettifew’s Ingenuities,” was barely noticeable, the store not much larger than a horse stall. Only a few items were on display—thick canes, brass piping, women’s fans of unusual size, quires of waxy paper, spools of thread, jars of inks. And not a label to be seen. A man, Mr. Pettifew himself, as Leah rightly supposed, put aside his periodical. He greeted her without rising from his high stool. He had thick, stooped shoulders and a narrow-cut beard. A visor banded his near-hairless skull. The place was poorly lit by its one cheap gas fixture, but Leah could tell an ugly man in any light.

“I am Mrs. Miller. I have come for a package. I do hope it is ready. I have no time to tarry.”

“No one ever does,” Pettifew said, with what may have been a snicker. He brought out a package with great care. Gave her instructions and warnings along with her change. He eyed her as he did so, as if they were acquainted, as if he knew what she was about. “You care to take a gander at my other offerings? I’ve got the best and rarest, and since you’re … well. Let’s just say I’m honoured, Mrs.
Miller.” He cleared his throat. “There’s something I’m working on. It’s a secret listing for those of your ilk.” He showed her a book then; it was big as a ledger cheaply bound and blue.”

“I’m going to call it the Blue Book.”

“How very original.”

“You could add to it. It’d be a rare honour if you did. I want it to be the best, see, the finest.”

“I think not.”

“Consider on it, for the next time we see each other.”

The next time? Leah thinks now as she steps away from the stair-post of the brownstone. I cannot imagine there will be a next time. Her thoughts of Pettifew and even Burr have made her heedless and she stumbles on a protruding brick. The package lolls in her arms. She gasps and clutches it, sensing every dread ounce. Steady. Steady, she warns herself

At last she attains 26th Street and her lovely brownstone. “Thanks be the Spirits,” she murmurs. A chestnut tree arches over the stoop. Well-dressed people are dotted here and there. There is a lessening of refuse. A plentitude of gas lamps and decent paving.
I have already ascended in this damnedo life, Mr. Burr, as you can see
. Yes, such is what Leah will say to that Chauncey, if he dares come call upon her.

Once inside, Leah eases the package onto the hallstand, then takes her bonnet off with both hands, as if the bonnet were a helmet. She studies the woman in the looking glass. The face is not much lined for her thirty-eight years, provided she does not scowl. The hair is not much greyed, provided she is vigilant with the hennaed oil. The thickening of her features is something only Leah would note … and God and the Spirits why would she care how Chauncey Burr visions her?