Maggie
Dealing with skeptics was something to which I had grown accustomed, and although it was never comfortable, it was best to let them express their opinions and go their way. Likewise, with flirtatious gentlemen, it was advisable to remain aloof and cool, allow them to press their case, as it were, and then withdraw into a retreat of maidenly virtue.
Dr. Kane was a new sort of experience, a skeptic who was also persistently attentive. I was surprised when he turned up at our public sitting the day after our jaunt in the city but not terribly so. Somehow, when he appeared in the doorway of the parlor, hat in hand and looking unsure of himself, it seemed inevitable for him to be present. Even then, I must have sensed that our futures were destined to travel a common path.
I might have been nervous in his presence, but perversely, I was not. If he had come to scoff, I planned on being very angry. And if he had come to catch me in deception, then he would be sorely disappointed. I reminded myself firmly that dashing as he might be, Dr. Kane was merely a paying client, unconvinced as of yet but not beyond hope. Perhaps he wished to engage in flirtations, or thought he did, but more likely his grief for his young brother was driving him to pursue the only relief he knew.
My performance was flawless. Strong raps announced the arrival of the spirits. Candles extinguished themselves without a human hand to aid them. I made use of a handful of small tricks, all so simple and yet unsuspected. Lead balls in my petticoats produced a scraping sound when rubbed together.
Dr. Kane was quiet and unassuming. He spoke politely if addressed, but otherwise kept his silence. It was Mother who insisted on asking about Sir John Franklin, and the spirits replied: His resting place remains hidden for the present. In the darkness it was hard to read the doctor’s face, but I believe he nodded a grudging respect at the spirits’ deflection of the question.
Upon the conclusion of the sitting, the clients conversed amiably among themselves and with Mother and me. The good doctor, however, withdrew to a corner alone and spent some minutes writing intently in a small journal. I tried to ignore him but felt his presence distinctly. Even in reserve, the man possessed a luminous character, and I, poor moth, was irresistibly drawn to him.
At last he stood and with that energetic stride crossed the room to me. “Miss Fox,” he said, bowing over my hand, “It has been a revelation to see you at work again.”
“I am honored,” I replied with demurely cast-down eyes, feeling all the while the folded paper he had pressed into my hand. I turned back toward my other guests, but remained aware of his passage toward the door, his polite farewell to Mother, his leave-taking.
For an hour or more I held off the pleasure of reading his note. But when the other sitters had departed and Mother had retired to her room for a rest, I seated myself in the chair he had occupied and carefully unfolded the paper. I was ashamed to see that my hands were trembling.
A poem for Miss Fox.
Now thy long day’s work is o’er,
Fold thine arms across thy breast;
Weary! weary is the life
By cold deceit oppressed.
You have many traits that lift you above your calling, Miss Fox. If you would allow me the honor of nurturing your keen intelligence, I would be exceedingly pleased to have you attend my lecture at the Academy of Natural Sciences tomorrow evening. I will send a carriage for you and Mrs. Fox, with tickets, at seven of the clock.
E. K. Kane
A flush of irritation and pleasure sent the blood to my cheeks, as I did not know whether to be offended by his poem or impressed at his impertinent confidence in slipping it to me. One thing, however, was clear: perhaps I was the illumination and he the moth.
***
He was not what I had expected for my very first suitor. To begin with, he was from a social class distinctly beyond my own. He was a skeptic who had called me oppressed and deceitful in a poem written for me in his own hand. Did he think I would take that as flattery?
But of course, I did. He had written me a poem, passed it to me secretly, and informed me that he was aware of my trickery. I felt a perverse satisfaction in finally being acknowledged for my cleverness, and because he had not denounced me publicly, he had tacitly colluded with me. Although I had assumed that my first suitors would be young men I met through the spiritual circles, I suddenly realized how difficult it would be to feel affection for a man whom I had deceived.
I pretended to myself for a time that I was considering declining his offer. But there was never really any doubt that I would go.
Mother was delighted at the invitation. She and Mr. Simmons discussed it at length, with Mr. Simmons trying to take credit for introducing us in the first place. “His father is a celebrated judge here in Philadelphia and has served as attorney general of Pennsylvania,” Mr. Simmons informed us. “His mother is the daughter of a Revolutionary War hero who was a personal friend of Thomas Jefferson. Truly, Mrs. Fox, your daughter could not find a suitor from a better family in all of Pennsylvania!”
***
The carriage arrived at seven, and the driver presented an admittance ticket for two to the Academy of Natural Sciences. Scrawled across the back in handwriting I was now bound to recognize were these words: “Please seat with preference—E. K. K.” Upon our arrival at the academy, we handed over the noted ticket and were ushered to seats at the front of the lecture hall, sweeping past gentlemen and ladies far more elegantly dressed than my poor mother and I.
I spotted Dr. Kane as I was taking my seat, speaking with a gentleman off to the side of the raised platform. I dropped my eyes immediately upon locating him but did not overlook that he immediately turned in my direction, as though he had sensed my gaze.
When the time came for the lecture to begin, a representative of the academy introduced Dr. Kane in the most glowing of terms, beginning with his illustrious family connections and ending with a summary of his career with the navy.
Indeed, the doctor was attired in full navy regalia for his lecture this evening. He looked exceedingly smart, buttons polished, a high collar over which his thick, curled hair tumbled in a boyish manner at odds with his studied dignity. He approached the lectern with a gracious bow to the academy professor and then a second, deeper bow to the audience.
“Twenty months ago,” he began, “I had the honor of receiving special orders to participate in an expedition to the Arctic Sea in search of Sir John Franklin, whose 1845 mission vanished six years ago. As hope begins to wane, many rational persons have begun to assume the worst—that Sir Franklin and his crew have joined the lengthy list of casualties inflicted by the Arctic on courageous explorers since the time of Henry Hudson himself.”
Dr. Kane, who had been speaking over my head to the general audience until this point, dropped his gaze suddenly and met my eyes with a startling and personal intensity. “I am here this evening to explain to you why your fatalistic assumptions may be erroneous.”
Over the next hour, Dr. Kane laid out his logical groundwork for the existence of an Arctic land in the unexplored regions at the top of the world that was fully capable of sustaining life. He described for us the otherworldly beauty of the Arctic, not excluding the months when the sun disappeared beneath the horizon for the midnight of the year: “Noonday and midnight are alike, and except for a vague glimmer on the sky, there is nothing to tell you that the Arctic world even has a sun. The northern heavens resemble a dome of granite, almost forcing the beholder to imagine himself within a cavern of the earth.”
I already knew that Dr. Kane told a great tale of adventure, and I was not disappointed to learn that the frozen wastes of the North were no less exciting than sultry volcanic paradises. “We had more than fifty dogs aboard our vessels,” he said, “the majority of which might be characterized as ravening wolves. They were a mixed blessing, desperately needed for overland travel and yet providing their own inconveniences. No specimen could leave our hands without their making a rush at it and swallowing it at a gulp. I even saw them attempt a whole feather bed!
“To feed our canine companions it was necessary to lay in a supply of walrus and seal. One of these little excursions nearly came at the cost of my life!
“I was traveling upon a plain limitless to the eye and smooth as a billiard table when the dogs began to bark at the sight of seal ahead. I had hardly welcomed this spectacle of easy prey when I saw that we had passed from the firm ice of the plain onto a new belt of ice that was obviously unsafe. The nearest solid floe was a mere lump, standing out like an island a mile ahead. To turn was impossible; the dogs had to keep up their gait lest our weight cause the ice to break beneath us. I urged them on with whip and voice, the ice rolling like leather beneath the sled runners.
“The suspense was intolerable. There was no remedy but to reach the floe, and everything depended upon my dogs. A moment’s hesitation would plunge us into the rapid tideway.
“This desperate race against fate could not last. The rolling of the water beneath us terrified the dogs, and fifty paces from the floe, they faltered. The left-hand runner went through. The leader dog followed, and in one second the entire left side of the sledge was submerged. My first thought was to liberate the dogs. I leaned forward to cut the poor leader’s traces, and the next minute I was swimming in a little circle of pasty ice and water beside him!
“I cut the lead dog’s lines and let him scramble onto the ice, for the poor fellow was drowning me in his panic. I made for the sledge, but found that it would not support me, and I had no resource but to try the circumference of the hole. Around this I paddled faithfully, the miserable ice always yielding beneath my weight. During this process I enlarged my circle of operations to a very uncomfortable diameter!” Some nervous laughter acknowledged his little joke, but most members of the audience leaned forward anxiously in their seats.
“My strength was failing quickly. In the end, I owed my extraction to the rest of the dog team, who in struggling against their traces, managed to wedge the sled runners into the circumference of the ice hole. Only then did it bear my weight long enough for me to inch my way out onto the ice. Thus, the dogs saved my life and would have received my duly deserved gratitude, if it had not been understood that only the driving force of their voracious hunger had sent me out upon that hunt in the first place!”
The audience applauded heartily with laughter and relief, as if they had been living the ordeal along with Dr. Kane. After a smooth bow to acknowledge the accolade, the doctor retreated to a corner of the platform, where he retrieved an awkwardly long object wrapped in cloth. “I would like to present the Academy of Natural Sciences,” he said as he began to laboriously unwind the cloth, “with a relic of one of those hunts.” After a final effort, the cloth fell away, revealing to an audience that gasped in awe a winding, shimmering, spiral horn, fully one foot taller than Dr. Kane. “The tusk, or ‘horn,’ of the narwhal, a welcome supplement to our diet and the legendary source of the unicorn myth.”
The representative of the academy joined the doctor on stage to accept the gift as the audience thundered their approval. Together, the academy man and Dr. Kane lifted the narwhal’s horn over their heads and stepped to the edge of the platform to give everyone the most advantageous view. When the applause finally died away, Dr. Kane presented his plea for money.
It seemed that the Grinnell Expedition had not managed to find any signs or clues of the ill-fated Franklin Expedition. And thus, another expedition was planned.
“The search cannot, will not, be abandoned,” Dr. Kane boldly promised. “That great philanthropist Henry Grinnell has selflessly offered to provide the vessel, and I will have the honor of commanding it…” The doctor had to pause here to receive and acknowledge the applause of an audience totally under the power of his personality. “It is my hope that the academy will pledge its support to this cause. Our country has stained the plains of Mexico with blood to obtain more perishable honors, and men die daily upon the banks of the Sacramento River in pursuit of gold. But good deeds yield brighter laurels than war, and humanity’s triumphs are more valued than gold.”
Mother pressed her handkerchief to her eyes to blot her tears, and I could see that she was not the only person in the room to be affected by this patriotic call to nobility. I had no doubt that Dr. Kane would acquire the funds he desired from the members of the academy.
As I joined in the applause and lifted my eyes with a proprietary kinship with the doctor, I understood that he and I were, beyond all expectation, engaged in very similar professions.