The Dark

by Claire Mulligan

  “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.

  CHAPTER 25.

  “Come, 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.

  CHAUNCEY BURR 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.

  “DID LEAH SEE CHAUNCEY 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.”

&n
bsp; “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.

  “WELL, 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.