The Dark

by Claire Mulligan

  “Fuss-it-all, you’d think the Queen was coming, the way Leah’s going on, and not just about the First Lady. Come, Mag, let’s go visit Calvin before she arrives. He’s had some more of that cognac delivered.”

  At two o’clock Lizzie returns. She heads straight up to Calvin, does not even wish Maggie and Katie a bonnychance, or whatever the word is in Lizzie’s beloved French.

  At three o’clock Katie decides to have a last lie-down before the Big Occasion, and so it is Maggie who must wait with Leah in the vestibule. And wait she does, her throat dry, her hands atremble. Her nervousness has nothing to do with their imminent guests, but with Elisha’s plans for her, which will be coming to fruition any moment now. And it doesn’t matter a bit what Katie heard, she tells herself. Elisha’s heart is true.

  Leah cracks open the entry door for the third time. No fine carriage as yet. Leah is arrayed in a day-gown of green and yellow tartan. The skirt yaws across the entire hall and is scalloped with bows the size of small cats. “Please be to God and the Spirits, you did not lunch on cider or toddies, did you, Margaretta?”

  “No. And no again. Is that a new timepiece?” Maggie abruptly asks, having just noticed the thick chain that loops over Leah’s pleated bodice down to a fat watch at her waist. It looks, Maggie realizes, like a medieval flail. The thought hardly eases her mind.

  “No, I have owned it for a good month now. It keeps perfect time, and now do cease looking down like a sullen housemaid. And what message were you giving to that post boy? And Katie? Where is Katie?”

  “She’s having a fortifying rest.”

  “She is fortified plenty, I am sure. And Lizzie?”

  “Dosing up Calvin, just like you asked.”

  “Ah, yes. A moment … there. I am near to fainting with nerves. I do hope the medicine is sufficient. We cannot have our Calvin coughing in such a horrid fashion, not while our guest is here.”

  “No,” Maggie says, and feels alike some doll-form, emptied of substance.

  Mother brushes past Leah with a platter of chutney and sweet pickles. “Laws, but I can’t imagine she would actually favour these, can I?”

  “What you imagine does not signify, Mother. A trusted source told me of Mrs. Pierce’s favourite edibles. Now, leave the platters in the front parlour sideboard, if you please. Here, let me help. And Margaretta, do lend us a hand.”

  Maggie nods, and all three of them go to the front parlour, where the birdcages are already shrouded in white cloth, the thick drapes drawn, the lamps primed, and the lily box in full view on the marble-slabbed sideboard. Maggie lifts the lid. “Have courage,” Elisha told her.

  “Close that, Margaretta.”

  “Dandy-fine, but I won’t be the one who reads the letters out like Calvin used to. I won’t, Leah.”

  “Did I ask you to?” Leah is breezing about the parlour, checking the table, the rugs. “Oh, I know you think the lily box trite, but a president’s wife will want assurances she is consulting ladies of the most stellar reputation, ladies who are highly thought of by the most moral people, that she is consulting the originals and not their imitators like Cora Hatch, that mincing coquette, with her cow-eyed trances, or that Daniel Home with his sideshow levitations. Heavenly spirits, why are men taking on mediumships? They have enough occupations of their own, and their manifestations are only theatre. They cannot manage a jot of the divine.”

  Maggie says nothing. What to say? Leah owns the floor, the house, Maggie’s fate.

  “Surely the First Lady will write a recommendation letter of her own,” Leah goes on. “It will be the pride of the lily box, a seal on our reputation. None will ever dare say again that our acceptance of currency is in any way untoward, or unladylike, or that our ghosts are in any way reluctant.”

  From upstairs comes hacking and a hoarse call for Leah.

  “Calvin wants you,” Maggie says.

  “Obviously.”

  “Do go up, will you, poppet?” Mother says.

  Leah checks her fat watch. “There is no time.” She hurries into the hall and calls up the stairs, “Lizzie, dear, shut his door. We must have quiet. Give him an extra measure of sleeping draught if you must.”

  Lizzie’s reply is muffled. But a door closes. The coughing quiets. Poor Calvin, Maggie thinks. How can any man linger so long? She studies her reflection in the hallstand mirror. The reflection is of a petite young woman, eyes wide and brown and long of lash. She is fetching, even pretty. She is also nervous, but resolute. She faces the door.

  “The carriage will be most elegant, but discreetly ornamented so as not to attract attention. Do you not think so, Margaretta?”

  “Well, yes.”

  Leah loops her arm through Maggie’s. “Dearest, I know we have had our little squabbles, what with that Dr. Kane of yours, but this marks a point of turning. Ah, I hear it. I hear it! No, do not look out. Katherina! Mother! Alfie!”

  The others rush in. Katie wears a delicate duff-coloured gown. She gives Maggie a questioning glance. Practises a curtsy. Alfie practises a faint bow. Mother worries at her lace-trimmed sleeves. No apron today; Leah has abolished it.

  Alfie opens the door before the bell is pulled. Stands aside.

  Leah is all dimpled smiles, until, that is, she recognizes the ruddy-cheeked young man. “You! You’re Morton!” She rounds on Maggie.

  Katie looks surprised. Though why? She saw Maggie write the note replying, Yes, come for me, Lish. Did she think Maggie would lose courage just because of some overheard gossip?

  “Don’t look at me so!” Maggie cries. “Any of you! Elisha asked me not to rap for Mrs. Pierce. I thought hard on it. I did. And then I promised him I wouldn’t. I couldn’t refuse him. And Elisha’s not feeling well. All those fevers he had, they nag him sometimes … And he needs me.”

  “He needs you? Margaretta Fox! We must appear in harmony. I, that is, we need you for the spiritual battery to be at its strongest. We cannot turn Mrs. Pierce away. It would be the gravest insult. She is the First Lady of our land. And she needs to speak to her poor dead son. To hear about the train wreck. How can she understand such a horror if … Sister! Do not leave. If you leave now … if you step out this door … Where is your damn head?”

  “Exactly here!” Maggie says as she pins her little hat onto her head, which is clearly on her shoulders. Morton takes her arm.

  They are nearly out the door to the brougham where Elisha awaits when Lizzie rushes down the stairs, calling for them all. Her bodice jacket is mapped red with blood.

  CHAPTER 27.

  “Poor soul,” I said. “To pass away amid all that brouha. You should have been with him.”

  My patient sighed and owned that was true, at which I felt badly. I was becoming far too familiar with her.

  “And I had the selfish thought, Mrs. Mellon, that Calvin’s last was part of some larger plan to thwart me, even punish me.”

  “Chalk and nonsense. It had naught to do with you.”

  “No. Nothing?”

  “No,” I said, surprised at my own firmness. To explain: I had often had similar “selfish” thoughts. For I viewed my son’s death as God’s way of teaching me a lesson for my pride, as if the Deity were merely the cruellest of schoolmasters. Thus, when I said “no” to my patient just then it became apparent that my mind had altered on this score, though when and how I couldn’t say.

  “No,” I said again. “We are none of us of such importance.”

  At this there came the lightest tap-tapping. Only the rain on the garret’s three linked windows, I realized; yet the tapping seemed as if in agreement with my words, and was comforting withal.

  “AND SO IT WAS FOR THE BEST, wasn’t it. John? That the séance was cancelled?”

  It is nearly June. John and his wife are taking the warming air on the near-completed veranda of his house. His wife’s weeds are rust-shaded at the elbows, the skirt spotted from rain. She can afford new mourning attire but her old weeds give her comfort. She peers through the crepe s
treamers on her black cap, her pale blue eyes aflutter, her round face anxious. It is a face John finds lovely even still.

  “You should have come to the funeral, John, oh, but you should have. You could at least have met us in Rochester for the interment. The coffin was so heavy with ice that—”

  John interrupts his wife to explain he’d had some employ at the village forge. An imperative, lucrative job. His wife resumes talking. Maggie is still living at the New York brownstone, yes, but she and Leah are cold as ice tongs with each other. And Maggie will not speak of her plans, not to any of them. And she is certainly no longer giving sittings or raising any spirits, what- or whom-soever.

  As John listens to his wife talk on, he measures the alcohol and turpentine for the lamps. Cautiously, mind. He is no fool. But this combination, though highly combustible, burns far cleaner and brighter than lard or rapeseed oil, and is far cheaper than whale oil or even this newfangled kerosene.

  The parlour behind them is crowded with tools and debris—sawdust and planks and wallpaper lengths. His women have shown no interest in decorating their home and so it has fallen to him. Thus far he has chosen some pictures of the British being cut down by the ragtag Americans at Bunker Hill, a brass cuspidor for male guests, a conversation chair, and some flocked paper for the keeping room, where the family will sit of an evening round the hearth, the women chatting and sewing while he reads scriptures. His pleasure in choosing patterns and furnishings has surprised him, as has the reasonable price of it all. Mechanicals have made things once available only to the tony set available for all. True, the woods are veneered, not solid; the pictures are lithographs, not oils; the wallpaper roller-printed, not painted by hand; and the ceiling roses are of papier mâché, not plaster. But who are his women to quibble about verisimilitude?

  “… and the eulogies were lovely, weren’t they? And given by important sorts, though our Lizzie was so distraught you’d think Calvin’s death had been unexpected.”

  Over at his son’s house, Leah’s silhouette, plump and stately, frames itself in a window. Above the house a gibbous moon rises. John prays for Calvin, certainly. He loved Calvin, this sort-of son. And thus he grieves, but it is an interior grieving. He cannot abide the theatre of lamenting and handkerchief crushing that has been going on since his women arrived.

  “… and here is the curious thing, John. When the main had left and it was just the family and the closest of friends, Dr. Kane stared into poor Calvin’s face, then ordered Maggie and everyone else to gather round the coffin. He said, ‘I have something to say, and it must be said in front of all who love truth,’ or some such. Anywise, he gripped Maggie’s hand overtop Calvin and toppled a candle as he did, too, didn’t he? And it fell on poor Calvin’s breast. Katie thought quick and tossed her cup, but it just made the flames worse—I can’t imagine what she was drinking—and Calvin’s waistcoat was singed. After all that, Dr. Kane asked our Maggie if she’d marry him when he returned from the Arctic. He declared he’d be true to his Maggie until he was as dead as the corpse before them. It was a definite promise this time and couldn’t be mistaken, could it?”

  John pours the mixture into the lamps’ reservoirs, his nostrils searing with the reek. “Young people are mortal romantic these days. They entertain gratuitous talk.”

  Margaret huffs. “I shouldn’t say Dr. Kane is so young. And I didn’t find it all that romantic, did I? Gracious evers, it was over a corpse … Oh, and then the doctor insisted this great secret of the engagement not leave the room. Oh, it was all very hush-hush, wasn’t it? I almost thought he’d want us to write out the promise in blood.”

  “Need it be so difficult? If he loves her, he should marry her. Be done with it. It were that way between us.”

  His wife pokes at the spindles on the work table between them. He is making rockers so that when she returns for good they can sit out here on a warm night and contemplate the stars in God’s sky. She has become less fearful of night, perhaps from living in an illuminated city where night and day differ little.

  “I suppose it was that way with us, John. Yes, it was. Did I say how pale our Maggie was? And how her smile was set as if she were a waxen figure of her own self? And our Leah simply gushed tears, didn’t she? And she kept claiming that life went on. And I kept asking if it were official then, and Katie kept asking where was that champagne because a toast was needed. And everyone was congratulatory, weren’t they? But I was in a perplexity, wasn’t I, John, because, really, shouldn’t engagements and funerals be kept to their separate occasions? Doesn’t this somehow bode ill?”

  John says it would be superstition to think so. That his wife should pray for some answers. It all comes out more abruptly than he intends, and his wife frowns in exasperation. “I suppose I must fetch up some food. Join us, won’t you? The night air is coming on, it’s bad for your lumbago. And, gracious evers, why are your fingers stained? Is that ink? Whatever are you using ink for?”

  John curls his fingers into his palm. “I was attempting it as preservative for … wood stuff.”

  “Humph, you’re always experimenting and concocting, aren’t you? That’s the man in you. Now, do come. You might lead us in prayer. Leah is up to singing again now—though only a hymn, of course.”

  “I’ll join at a later hour.”

  “Laws, John, you’re like a child.” She leaves him to his work, skirts swishing at the sawdust.

  A child? he thinks. Children, his children, are the ones who sawed up this family, who have created these blasphemous ideas that are reaching to all corners of the world. And it is John Fox, a man long grown, who has been left to right it all.

  He waits until his wife has crossed the yard, then sweeps aside the woodblocks and shavings on his desk. He takes out the ink pot that he keeps hidden from sight, the feeling much like when he stashed bottles of whisky, flasks of rum. He had ended his last letter with the story of the day when only he and Ambrose were left unconverted. Telling further is a difficulty, and he dips his pen several times before he starts at last.

  Dear Leah:

  Erastus didn’t bestir himself to dry-dock the Morning Star. He just left her in a feeder canal on the outways of Rochester. He didn’t care if she mudlarked. Leastaways he allowed me and Ambrose to live aboard her for the Winter of’31, but come Spring he was sure to sell her, his canalling days fait accompli. I hated the change in him. It seemed a betrayal and so I know how you felt about me, Leah-Lou, when I came back after my ten years gone, but I could no more have changed back then than a bird could have crawled back into his cracked-apart shell …

  John and Ambrose warmed themselves over the hatch-stove. Above them was the stink of the tanneries, the pall of coal smoke, the low din of the high falls. They listlessly debated going to town and decided against it. Work was near impossible to find for men who had not forsworn the bottle and embraced God’s grace. And neither of them could stomach the sights that greeted them in Rochester. Seeing both men and women on their knees was commonplace now. They clustered like pigeons around fountains and in squares, their prayers heard by all who passed. The theatres were closed clam tight, as were the ninepin alleys, the dramshops the billiard halls. The dry-wagon rattling through town was a common sight, the preacher aboard bull-horning for all to jump on. The pledge-seekers were declaring mere temperance was not enough. Called on men to mark a “T” beside their name to show a total abstinence. Erastus Bearcup had become one of these teetotallers. Proudly T’d his name, and in public view at that. All talk was of Reverend Grandison Finney. The churches couldn’t hold all the faithful and many knotted outside the doors, straining to hear, oblivious to the cold. Revivals lasted for days. All over the country the pattern was repeating.

  Years later it would be called the “Great Awakening,” but to John it was the Great Sleep, a time of interminable boredom. He had only Ambrose for company now and had no choice but to listen to his nostalgic jabber, mostly about the Indians whom he had warred against and for whom
Ambrose was becoming strangely sentimental. “I was their captive, see.”

  John poured out a ration of whisky for himself and then Ambrose. Finding any liquor at all took an ironclad determination and John and Ambrose were subsisting on the lone stash of whisky that Erastus had not found and fouled with salt. “I know it,” John said. “You tell of it damn near constant. Them and their torturing, tearing out your tooth and poisoning you, hot somethings on your prick, the old hag wanting your baby and how you clocked her and escaped. Got it fucking covered, haven’t I?”

  Ambrose’s stroked his unkempt beard. “I reckon I lived three months with them. I saw things you wouldn’t believe. This here Reverend Finney couldn’t work anything finer. I seen those Indians call up spirits by looking into smoke. I seen them walk over fire. Jesus could only manage water, couldn’t he? I seen them turn a dead man to life. That’s what I witnessed, I swear.”

  “Thought you were trussed like a hog in one of them fucking wigwams.”

  Ambrose stared out the small window at the moon-shining waters of the canal. “My tooth was festering and they yanked it out and buried it so it couldn’t come back to pain me. I got lost, see, when I was hunting away from the farm.”

  “You weren’t a soldier?” John asked flatly, his capacity for surprise long diminished.

  “I were just a stupid weedy boy, worse than that Brother Able we met, recall? Back in Syracuse? Anywise, I was out hunting and I stumbled and speared myself in the bowels and those Indians found me and took me to their camp and fed me some of their medicine, which was foul as shit, sure, but it healed me up, and there was a woman and she had hair shining like black water and she’d put moss on my wound, and every time I saw her it felt like hot tongs on my prick, just like I said, I swear. And then I healed up and they trusted me and I even learned to talk some like them. And then one day I find that woman alone and I … and I run afterwards, run east to here.”