by Bess McBride
“You know, Robert, I’m beginning to think I woke up in another dimension...in a time warp. You’re good, I’ll give you that. I’ll find my seat, if Mr. Bingham here points out the way.”
She put out a hand. Robert looked at it for a moment, and then took it in his own warm grasp. She caught her breath.
“Thank you for everything, Robert. Again, it’s been fun.” Ellie reluctantly pulled her hand from his.
Robert tipped an invisible hat in her direction.
“As you say, Ellie, it has been fun. I will see you again.” He turned away and strode down the length of the dining car, leaving Ellie to stare in his wake, temporarily robbed of breath, a delightful tingling in her hand.
“Miss Standish?”
She turned bemused eyes up to the solemn face of the tall conductor.
“Yes, Mr. Bingham?”
“Shall we?” He indicated a doorway at the nearest end of the train.
“Oh, but I have to pay for my meal.” Her face burned. “Except I have to find my purse first.”
“Of course. We can see to that shortly.”
“Oh, okay.” Ellie staggered and grabbed the table as the train lurched to a stop. Mr. Bingham reached out to steady her.
“Thanks.”
He pulled his watch out of his pocket and studied it for a moment. “It seems we have arrived. We should be here for thirty minutes. I think I’d better take you down to the tourist cars to see if you recognize your seat.”
“Oh, great!” Ellie said.
“I wonder if you could wait here for me until I return. Now that we have arrived, I have one or two duties to attend to in the station and then I can return for you. I shouldn’t be more than a few moments at the most.”
Ellie scanned the room, now empty of diners. Stewards moved about, cleaning tables and setting out new dinnerware.
“Can’t I wait outside the car? I could use some fresh air and it looks like they’re pretty busy cleaning up in here.”
He barely glanced at the busy stewards. “I don’t think it would be wise for me to leave you alone outside. It would be better if you were to wait in here.”
She shrugged and sank back into her seat, wondering if he worried she would disappear without paying her bill or providing proof of her train fare. With a tip of his wheel cap, he consulted his watch again and hurried out the door.
Ellie strained to see out the windows, but dust impeded her view. She glanced at the stewards again, who paused occasionally to stare at her. Feeling as if she’d worn out her welcome, she jumped up and pushed open the door with the intention of waiting for the conductor outside, no matter what his wishes.
She stepped out onto the landing and was immediately assaulted by the thick smell of coal. To her surprise, the car appeared to connect to another historical carriage. How many of them were there?
A peek through the glass of the door to the left revealed a dusty field of harvested corn. She turned to the right and opened the door, gingerly descending the sturdy iron stairs down to gravel. The train depot caught her eye first—a small old-fashioned wooden structure with a boardwalk in front. Several people rested on benches or milled about stretching their legs.
She shook her head with a sigh. For the most part, they also wore Victorian era costumes, mostly as she had seen in the dining car, but a few men leaning against the walls of the station sported ragged felt hats, western-style flannel shirts, and thick dungarees that seemed the worse for wear. With a deepening sense of the surreal, she noticed a tall man, obviously Native American, with unkempt long dark hair, wearing a ragged flannel shirt and dark, baggy trousers. He was standing at the edge of the platform with a short, stout woman half hidden by the grubby blanket that covered her frame, a baby’s face peeping out from her arms. The man raised his hand occasionally, bringing it to his mouth in a universal gesture requesting food. Everyone generally ignored the family.
An overwhelming atmosphere of dry dust permeated the air, and Ellie sneezed vigorously. Nothing at the minuscule station seemed remotely modern. The weathered wood and grimy windows of the building gave way to the warped boardwalk that led across a dirt road toward the gravel around the train tracks. She moved away from the train to investigate further. As she did so, she looked to her right and saw Robert on the ground assisting the ladies of his party down the steps of their carriage. He seemed not to see her, and that was fine with Ellie.
What she saw next took her breath away...perhaps even her sanity. She turned around to see twenty or so old-fashioned carriages just like hers, stretching away toward the front of the train. Gone were the modern gleaming silver cars like she’d boarded in Chicago. Every single car seemed to have come straight out of a vintage railroad photograph.
Ellie’s knees started shaking as she stood in the middle of the tracks staring helplessly at the train. She broke out into a cold sweat; her mouth tasted of a nasty mixture of pungent coal, dry dust and bitter bile. A wave of nausea overtook her, and she turned toward the station to beg someone to save her from the nightmare. No sounds came from her frozen throat. The station blurred and grew suddenly dark.
Chapter Five
“Ellie. Ellie.” A familiar masculine voice penetrated her consciousness. She rubbed her face against the warm hand touching her cheek.
“Miss Standish, wake up.” Not Miss Standish again, she thought with confused dismay. Heavy eyelids refused to open, and she stopped fighting them for a moment as she listened to the hazy murmur of the voices in her dream.
“Robert, come away. Give the girl some air. Is there a physician on this infernal train?”
“No, Grandmother. I have already made inquiries.”
“Do you think she is malnourished, Robert? She seemed so strange, so confused...almost delirious.”
“No, Melinda, I do not think she is malnourished. She certainly looks well fed.”
Ellie forced her eyes open to find Robert’s concerned green eyes close to her face as he bent over her.
“Is that a fat joke?” Her parched throat thickened her voice.
Robert startled and blinked. “Ellie...Miss Standish, are you all right?” He withdrew his hand and straightened slowly. “A fat joke? Good gravy! Certainly not!”
Melinda hovered behind him, her smooth white brow knitted above troubled blue eyes. Ellie tried to sit up.
“Stay there, Miss Standish, until we are sure you are feeling better,” Robert said.
“I’m fine, Robert. I need to sit up. I feel queasy.”
“Very well, madam. Here.” Robert helped her into a sitting position. She recognized her original bench seat, which was fortunately long enough for her to recline on. Amy and several of the other young women peered around the corner with anxious faces. Mrs. Chamberlain sat on the bench opposite and stared at her with a frown.
“Here, Robert, a glass of water.”
“Excellent, Melinda. Thank you.” He handed the glass to Ellie, who took a drink. She wrinkled her nose at the metallic taste but obediently drank a few sips. Anything to rid her mouth and throat of the dust.
The dust...
She looked up at Robert. “How did I get back on board?” A sudden lurch of the carriage jerked her toward reality, and she realized the train had been rumbling along the tracks since she’d been conscious. She bolted upright and gasped. “The train is moving, isn’t it?”
“Robert picked you up off the ground like a limp rag doll and brought you back onto the train,” Mrs. Chamberlain said. “You’ve been unconscious...or asleep, for some time.” The older woman folded pale hands on the black silk of her lap and surveyed Ellie with sharp blue eyes.
“We pulled out of Wenatchee almost a half hour ago, Ellie.” The quiet sympathy in Robert’s voice threatened to break down her reserves. “I’m sorry we were not able to locate your seat. We thought it best to bring you back on board.”
Ellie stared at him with wide eyes. His well-groomed clothes... So vintage. So new! She looked past him to Mrs. Chamb
erlain. Impossible to think she could ever have worn a polyester leisure suit. And Melinda? A short, frisky platinum blonde color and cut to her gorgeous hair?
Never!
“Ellie?”
Robert’s insistent voice brought her back to a nightmare come true. The train...her seat. Where did they go? She returned her stricken gaze to his face. The kindly inquisitive tilt of his head as he looked at her broke the floodgates.
“I-I’m lost. I don’t know where I am,” she wailed before she burst into tears. She pulled her knees to her chest and buried her face in her hands. She hadn’t known terror like this since she was a child waking up from a nightmare. Her mother would come to her then, sit on the bed beside her and tell her it was only a bad dream...that it would go away. And it always did...then.
But her mother didn’t come this time. Robert did.
“Don’t cry, Ellie,” Robert spoke soothingly near her ear. “I am going to help you find your way home, wherever that is. Don’t cry. Everything is going to be all right.”
He’d lowered himself to one knee and leaned against the bench beside her. She turned a water-stained face to him, wishing he would take her in his arms as her mother once had.
“I hope you can help me, Robert. I’m done pretending I have a clue. I’m so confused. I don’t know where my seat is anymore. I don’t know where I am.”
“What is she going on about, Robert?” Mrs. Chamberlain asked. “Ellie— Is that her name? Ellie, what do you mean, you are lost? Melinda, give her that blanket there to cover her legs. No well-bred woman sits that way.”
In a daze, Ellie watched Melinda spring into action and pick up a dark blue wool blanket which she carefully spread over Ellie’s hunched legs beneath her long skirt.
“Give her some time, Grandmother. She seems to have had quite a shock. This is hardly the time to worry about proper behavior.”
“Hmmppfff. I have had a shock or two in my time, Robert, and I never forgot my manners.”
Luckily, Ellie’s view of Mrs. Chamberlain was blocked by Robert’s face...his handsome face.
“Grandmother, why don’t you and Melinda return to the observation lounge? I would like to talk to Miss Standish in private.” Robert kept a searching gaze on Ellie’s face while he spoke over his shoulder.
“Well, I hope you are able to make some sense of what she says,” Mrs. Chamberlain said in a querulous voice. “Mind you keep that blanket on her. She probably needs the warmth.”
Robert rose to his full height and extended his arm to the older woman to help her rise. She peered around him one more time to examine Ellie before he led her to Melinda, who took her arm and retreated to the rear of the car. A swell of female voices greeted their return, and then settled into a hum of questions and answers.
Robert turned back to Ellie, allowing his gaze to rest momentarily on the open bench beside her before he tightened his lips and moved to take a seat on the opposite bench. Ellie would have welcomed his nearness— in fact, she craved his very real presence in a world gone mad.
“You can sit here, Robert.”
“I think you might feel more safe if I keep some distance from you, Ellie. My presence seems to disturb you, and I think you have had enough of a shock.”
“Oh.” Her face burned, and she pulled the soft woolen blanket toward her cheeks. She threw him a quick glance before she lowered her eyes to study the threads of the blanket.
“Ellie.” The gravity in his quiet voice terrified her. She didn’t want him to talk. Anything he had to say would be bad news. She was certain of it.
“Yes?” She raised reluctant eyes to his face. A muscle flexed in his jaw. His dark-lashed eyes watched her with a mixture of curiosity and concern. She burst into babble.
“I know you think I’m crazy, Robert. I can’t even find my train, the one I boarded yesterday in Chicago. You know, the bright shining modern train that we all know and love. That one?”
He watched her patiently, his legs crossed, hands clasped in his lap.
Ellie hardly stopped for breath before she began again with an unladylike snort. “Of course, I think you guys are a bit whacked out myself. Or at least, I did...until I discovered I’d lost my train. It’s not possible for me to fall asleep and wake up on another train...especially a vintage one.”
She paused for a gulp of air. Robert tilted his head in that charming way, a hint of a smile on his face.
“I mean it’s really not possible, unless I’m still dreaming. And I could be dreaming, Robert. Don’t think I haven’t thought about that. For all I know, I could be having a conversation with a dream. Do you know what I mean?
She ended on a winded note with a quick glance in Robert’s direction. To her surprise, instead of responding, he rose and walked into the observation lounge, returning in seconds with a newspaper in his hands. He laid the paper on his bench and sat back down.
“Ellie.” He began again in that same serious note that boded no good for her. “What year is it?”
Ellie’s eyebrows shot up. She didn’t know what she had expected, but that question wasn’t it. She told him the current date.
Robert’s eye’s widened for a second and then narrowed. It seemed as if he held his breath for a moment and then released it with a hiss. Propping his arms on his knees, he leaned forward intently as if to say something. Then he straightened abruptly and his eyes fell to the paper at his side.
Ellie watched his dark bent head nervously. What was he thinking?
With a slight shake of his head and a sigh, he picked up the paper and stared hard at it, passing it from one hand to the other.
“I don’t think so, Ellie.”
“You don’t think what?”
“I wonder if you could be ill, as Melinda suggested. Have you been eating well? Had a recent illness, a bout with fever?”
Ellie kept her eye on the hands that handled the paper. What was it about that paper that worried him so much? She shook her head.
“No, I don’t think so. I haven’t been sick.”
He opened the newspaper and handed it to her. She pulled her hands out from under the blanket and took it with an uncertain look in his direction. At first glance, the paper resembled a local free weekly such as one might find at the entrance to the grocery store. The uneven print caught her eye, garish and old-fashioned, as if it had been typed on a manual typewriter. The bright, bold title caught her eye: The Seattle Weekly. Vivid headlines read “MOUNT BAKER PUFFS AGAIN.”
Ellie glanced at Robert curiously. He gave her an encouraging nod.
“What do you want me to look at?” She turned a page. The paper felt coarse, unlike the smooth newsprint from her local Chicago newspaper.
“The date, Ellie. Look at the date.”
Ellie returned to the front page and searched above the oversized headlines for the date. She found it in the middle, the print italicized and difficult to read.
April 20, 1901. She mouthed the words silently. Nineteen hundred and one. That would be about right for their costume period. The late Victorian/early Edwardian era. The year of Queen Victoria’s death.
She turned to Robert, who had moved to the edge of his seat.
“Do you see the date, Ellie?”
“Yes, April 20, 1901.” She held up the paper and smiled wanly. “I assume this is part of your reenactment.”
“Ellie, this is no reenactment. We do not prance about in Napoleonic costumes pretending to relive glorious days of the past.” He pushed himself back against his bench and crossed his arms, directing a frank stare in her direction.
“So, what are you trying to say?” Ellie swallowed hard. Black dots swam before her eyes.
“I think you know what I’m trying to say. I believe you are being deliberately obtuse.”
“I am not. I haven’t got the faintest idea what you’re talking about,” she retorted hotly. Of course she did, but the reality just seemed too bizarre to comprehend.
Robert tightened his lips and eyed
her speculatively. He leaned forward again.
“Have you ever read H. G. Wells?”
“Yes. Don’t even try that, Robert.” Ellie shook her head, a warning note in her voice.
“Have you read his book called The Time Machine?”
“Read it, watched the movie, loved it.” She stared at Robert with narrowed eyes. She wasn’t going to allow what would surely follow.
“I don’t know about this moovee you mention, but you’ve read about his concept of time travel, then?”
“It’s fiction, Robert. Time travel doesn’t exist, as far as we know. Not even in the twenty-first century.”
“That is my point, Ellie. This is not the twenty-first century. It is April 25, 1901.” He crossed his arms again and regarded her with a strange light in his green eyes. “Now, either you are delirious as Melinda suggested, or...” He left his sentence hanging as he eyed her with concern.
“Or I’ve traveled back in time?” She clapped a hand over her mouth to stifle a hysterical giggle. “Are those my only options?”
“Do you have an explanation for your appearance here...in your strange costume? Where is this seat you say you have lost?”
“My costume!” Ellie almost shrieked. She ran her eyes up and down his handsome figure. “How about I fell asleep and somehow accidentally walked off my own train in the middle of the night, crossed the tracks and climbed into your historical party here?” Ellie stared at him, trying to hide the fright she knew must be showing on her face.
Robert’s lips twitched. “Ellie,” he murmured. “Do you really think that’s likely?”
“There’s a third alternative, Robert. One that makes more and more sense, now that I think about it.”
“And what is that, my dear Miss Standish?”
“Well, Mr. Chamberlain, the other alternative is that this is all just a dream.” She dropped the edge of the blanket and raised her hands expansively to encompass the train.
Robert’s eyes crinkled when he laughed, and he shook his head patiently. “That is not possible, Ellie. It is simply impossible. I am real. I am no dream.”
Having found an answer she could live with, Ellie prepared to defend it like a faithful follower. She relaxed her grip on her knees and rested her head against the high back of the velvet bench with a self-satisfied nod.
