Pinkerton detectives hired by the Vanderbilts scattered the homeless and the beggars, which was good, because their presence ruined a party. And one never knew, there might be criminals or anarchists among them. Gangs were trying to take over the streets of New York.
And then, beyond Walker Walkley, Devonny saw something that even Pinkerton detectives would not know what to do about.
Miss Lockwood.
Lurching through the snow, peering, staring … lost.
Her clothes were ridiculous, frozen into pathetic shapes. Of course she had no hat, and her hair hung like an immigrant’s from Ellis Island. I expect her to rescue us? thought Devonny.
And now the foolish girl was about to ask Walker himself for directions! Walker would recognize her! That must never, never happen, Walker was too dangerous. Any hope would be ruined.
Devonny stood tiptoe, making herself as tall as she could, hoping her cheeks were pink and romantic from the cold. She brought those cheeks very close to Walk’s. “Walk, I have been hard of heart because of Strat.” She managed to let her hood slip, so that her hair was fetchingly free in the romantic snow. “But I have had many long talks with the minister’s wife and she has helped me understand how very, very kind you were to intervene in a desperate situation.”
Walk looked startled, as well he might. Devonny never went to church if she could avoid it, and certainly never discussed anything with the minister’s wife, who was a fool and a shrew. But this was the best Devonny could manage under pressure. Devonny withdrew one hand from her muff and gently stroked Walk’s cheek. The intimacy of this gesture shocked him; shocked Devonny too. She felt as if she were stroking the devil.
“After all,” said Devonny sadly and loudly, “when a young man loses his mind, and cannot speak intelligibly, and cannot think clearly, it is the duty of his closest friend to act swiftly. I see now that it was quite wonderful of you to find Evergreen Asylum and help Father bring Strat there for treatment.”
Walk recovered quickly. It was one of his best skills. He smiled. “All is forgiven, Devonny my dear. Of course we cherished Strat, but lunacy must be taken off the streets and away from loved ones. I am confident the doctors will find a way to bring Strat back from his insanity.”
You’re hoping he dies first, thought Devonny. She tucked herself against Walk’s heavy coat. Luckily beaver was so thick she could feel nothing of the man himself. Otherwise she would have become quite faint. “It will be a great relief to me to leave in the morning. The train trip to the West Coast will restore me. You were so clever to convince Father that what I need is to be in California with him and Florinda and not here in New York, sitting alone and worried at Number Forty-four, fretting about my poor unfortunate brother. Thank you, Walker.”
Well, she just hoped Miss Lockwood was listening. This was for her benefit and if Anna Sophia Lockwood was not paying attention, they were both in trouble, because Devonny could hardly run through her instructions again.
Devonny dared not look up from her position. She just had to pray that the pedestrian who swept behind them was Anna Sophia Lockwood.
“Your brother …,” said Walker Walkley.
If she had to listen to Walker talk about Strat, Devonny might just seize Walk’s cane and ram it down his throat in revenge. “Flossie and I went to the Museum this afternoon, Walk,” she said. “How I wish you had been with us. I do adore mummies. I want to go to Egypt shortly. I’ve shopped in Paris and seen theater in London and that’s enough of that. I think a cruise on the Nile would be just right. I want to dig among the pyramids. I feel I am destined to find an important mummy of my own.”
Actually Devonny would have liked to embalm Walker, and turn him into a mummy.
While her tongue rambled, her mind got sharp. Like her father, Devonny had always been able to think of several things at once. When she was little, Father had taken her often to his office. She had run around filling the inkwells, while people beamed at her. Little girls are so amusing when they play Office. But young ladies are not. Young ladies must be kept at home and taught to play Wife.
Devonny intended to be an excellent wife but she felt she could also run an excellent office. Right now she was going to run a superior rescue.
Somehow she would whip Miss Lockwood into shape. It did not look, from her brief glimpse in the dark, as if there were much to work with, but Anna Sophia Lockwood was all Devonny had. She would send Miss Lockwood to the insane aylum. This would prove that Strat had not made the girl up. Strat would then be released.
Devonny worried for a moment that the Asylum might keep Miss Lockwood instead, because what sane person would behave as she had? But Evergreen was a private asylum and cost a great deal of money, and her father was unlikely to pay the bill for Miss Lockwood. So that was fine, then, and soon Strat would be out and of course would rush to Harriett’s side, and Harriett would be restored by love and get completely well, and everybody would live happily ever after.
It was a fine plan.
Devonny swept into the Vanderbilt Mansion as if it were her own. She was stunning in her peach brocade gown, with its intricate layers of lace and its careful stitching to show off her tiny waist. Naturally Devonny had eaten a cracker beforehand, so she would not feel hunger. Having food tonight was out of the question. Chewing was not pretty.
“Gussie!” she cried, kissing a friend. “Mildred! Alice!” Devonny kissed busily in circles, even people she disliked or had hoped would move to Philadelphia. Quickly she had lots of space between herself and Walker Walkley.
Her mind flew.
Miss Lockwood would need money. This was difficult. Devonny did not often have access to cash. Miss Lockwood would need a wardrobe. This was difficult too. Devonny’s things were packed for the great journey, some already shipped, much else in trunks and valises and hatboxes. Miss Lockwood would need directions. Devonny did not precisely know where Evergreen was. Miss Lockwood would have to be resourceful.
The real looming problem was that Miss Lockwood’s century was an ill-mannered place where ladies behaved improperly and wore horrifying pieces of cloth instead of fashion.
Devonny hoped that Anna Sophia would be an eager learner when it came to dress. Surely she would want to cast off those street-urchin rags.
Walker Walkley cut through the press of ladies, and there was no doubt from his stride that he meant to repossess Devonny.
Walker Walkley actually living in her town house! Disgusting! How dare Father treat Walk like a son? How dare Father take Walk’s word for things instead of Strat’s?
Devonny felt herself turning into her father, a ferocious human being, who, if the whiskey or claret did not suit him, would stomp his huge boot on the floor until the servants came running and improved themselves. Her features turned hard as a railroad baron’s as she thought what she would like to do right now.
But Walk must suspect nothing. His whole mind must be consumed with rapture for Devonny.
She let her strong shoulders sag. She opened her rosebud mouth to soften her lips, lowered her long lashes and fluttered her wrists. She trembled so he would see his dominance.
It was a dance of sorts. He danced with strength. She danced with weakness.
But I will win, thought Devonny Aurelia Victoria Stratton. In the end, Walker Walkley, I will make an Egyptian mummy out of you.
Strat stumbled after Ralph, his feet bumbling around as if he didn’t ordinarily walk. And of course, for several months, he hadn’t ordinarily walked. Ralph, too, was bumbling along. He was smiling, because Strat, whipped and beaten, had asked to be jailed once more. But he was not looking. What was there to look at? Every fiber of Strat awoke.
Every molecule of energy raced to the surface. His apathetic soul leaped toward the most important thing: escape.
Evergreen was no remodeled mansion where difficult people had bedrooms. It had been constructed to store the insane. Its walls were thick stone, its windows high and narrow. Its doors were heavy with keyed
locks, and the keys hung from brass circles which attendants like Ralph strapped through their belts.
Beyond the buildings were very high, iron grille fences, and twenty yards beyond those, walls of mortared stone in which glass shards were imbedded.
Every guard carried something to hit with: flat sticks, circular bats, linked steel balls. Ralph was armed with a club.
When they passed from the snow garden into the building, Ralph actually held the door for Strat. Strat slammed the door into the attendant’s face and knocked him out in a shower of blood. Strat stepped quickly back outside and surveyed the obstacles between himself and freedom.
Snow was in his favor.
Shoveled by trusted inmates against the iron fences, it was packed high enough for a three- or four-foot boost. Strat could easily grasp the top horizontal bar and swing himself over onto the white expanse. Then the only problem would be the glass-studded wall.
So he would cut himself. What were cuts in the hand compared to freedom?
Even as he ran, even as he found to his joy that the snow would hold him and his hands did have strength and he could vault over the eight-foot fence, he was planning his future.
He would never go home. What was there for him? A mother who had not come, a fiancée who had not written, a sister who had not visited, and a father who had chosen this.
No. He was going into the wilderness. He would vanish forever and build a new life, a manly life.
Not in America. It had no more wilderness, it was boring, there was no more Wild West. Alaska was a possibility, and of course Africa. The source of the Nile had been discovered, but surely there was something left for Strat to do.
Thinking of the Nile, of crocodiles and pyramids, Strat slogged through white drifts. It was slow going. The narrow windows of Evergreen had advantages. Even those who were allowed to look out rarely did.
He reached the stone wall. His bare fingers scrabbled against the jutting rocks, gripping a one-inch protrusion here and a half-inch ledge there. The cold he did not notice. When he hoisted himself up, supporting himself by shoving his toes in cracks supplied by the stonemason, he discovered that the glass was in a neat, straight line, and he could avoid it without the slightest difficulty.
Laughing, Strat tipped himself over, landing in a snowdrift, not getting a single bruise.
He had escaped.
Number Forty-four, thought Annie, and saw the immense building right away.
The town house looked as if several architects had owned their own quarries and each man had thrown his own stone at the walls and steps. Brownstone, limestone, granite and marble. Above that, stained glass and wrought iron.
Annie had known the Strattons were well-to-do, but she had not realized that their beach mansion was a simple summer cottage. A throwaway. Here was the real wealth and the real Mansion.
Devonny and Walker Walkley disappeared into the snow. Oh, Strat! thought Annie. I’m doing this for you, and you’re not here!
She tried to cling to the memory of Strat, but there was nothing to cling to here, nothing at all.
High frightening steps climbed steeply to an immense front door. There was no comfy porch. Either the doorman admitted a caller promptly, or there was a risk of falling backward onto the distant sidewalk.
Annie knocked on Number Forty-four.
The door opened. Electric light from cute little pointy bulbs illuminated a huge hall. Hideous wallpaper shrieked at her. Immense oil portraits of frightening ancestors, a stag’s head with sprawling antlers, and an enormous glass display stuffed with dead pheasants crowded the walls.
Annie dripped onto the carpet.
Two people regarded her with suspicion. The man wore a tailcoat, a high starched white collar and a fat black bow tie; the woman had on a floor-length black gown with a shiny black overdress. They looked like people on their way to a fashionable evening funeral, but she was pretty sure they were just servants, and the shiny overdress was actually an apron.
Frozen, slush-covered and torn, Annie tried to think of a way to make these people keep her. Or at least warm her up. “Good evening,” said Annie. Her mind was time-sloshed. Strat, suffering loss of mind and thought? Strat, in an insane asylum? “I am Miss Anna Sophia Lockwood,” she managed at last. “I am a very dear friend of Miss Devonny’s from Connecticut. A dreadful thing has occurred. I most desperately require your aid.”
The man was already taking her black coat, shaking off the snow and brushing it down with his gloved hand. “What is that, Miss Lockwood?” he said sympathetically.
What is that? wondered Annie. “I was robbed!” she improvised. “Some dreadful individual, some wicked man!”
“Oh, miss, how awful!” cried the maid, accepting her story right away. “The streets is full of such these days. No matter what the hour, criminals and gangs wander those sidewalks.”
They escorted her into an immense, amazing room. The ceilings soared so high Annie felt as if she were in Grand Central Station again. Indigo-blue skies were painted with gold-leaf stars and crescent moons and suns with trembling rays. Layers of rugs covered the floors, and collections—Chinese bronze here, Tiffany glass there—were distributed as casually as schoolbooks.
Every piece of furniture was rounded: drawers on magnificent desks bowed outward and sides of enormous arm chairs puffed and heaved. Everything that could have gold on it did. Gold mirror frames, gold umbrella stands, gold feet on fern stands and gold statues and gold braid festooned on gold-threaded curtains.
“Are you all right, miss?” asked the butler anxiously. “Did he hurt you?”
“No,” said Annie quickly, lest they send the police looking for her fictional attacker. “But he took my reticule. I have no money and no ticket for the train home.” Annie was rather pleased with the word reticule, but the maid looked confused. Perhaps Annie was wrong about what they called a purse. Oh, well. Moving right along, she thought. “I’m soaked,” she said. “I must have a hot bath.” She counted on being beautiful to carry her through. Beauty was useful in life. People thought it said things about you, and now she wanted these two servants to think it said, You want me for a houseguest. I am the sort of houseguest you usually have. “Miss Devonny will be delighted to let me stay the night,” she assured them, “and now I am simply too weary to go on. You must get me dry clothing. Hers will fit me; we often exchange gowns when Miss Devonny visits me in Connecticut.”
The servants were used to obeying and believing. Annie was whisked up the front stairs into a charming guest room while a bath was quickly drawn. Tall radiators against the walls clacked and bonged as hot water boiled through them. The bedroom was stifling. It had to be eighty degrees, the air stale with old perfume.
“What’s your name?” she asked the maid.
“Schmidt.”
Annie made her first error of the century by requesting Schmidt to open the windows. “It’s so stuffy, Schmidt.”
It was not windows but Schmidt’s mouth that opened, in amazement. “We don’t open windows, miss. You mustn’t let in night air. Surely you don’t open your windows out there in the country! Why, you have swamps and marshes and all manner of unhealthy air out there.” The horror of night air upset Schmidt so much that she unloosened vast, heavy draperies and yanked them shut over the offending sight of windows.
Schmidt undressed her for the bath, appalled at the lack of decent undergarments. No corset, no chemise, no long drawers, no woolen stockings. Annie’s lovely blue knit dress Schmidt treated as an appalling rag, and held it with her fingertips. “It’s ruined!” cried Annie. “That dreadful man ripped off all the ribbons and all the lace and all the—I can’t talk about it.”
Schmidt felt much better about the gown now that she knew the good parts had been torn off.
“I’ll just rest in the hot water for a while,” said Annie, hoping Schmidt would leave. But Schmidt sat on a three-legged stool next to the tub as if she were going to play the piano. It was difficult to have a witn
ess. It made for a short, efficient bath. Annie was tucked into a bed so occupied by pillows there was hardly room to lie down.
A knock on the door was supper on a footed tray. The tray was beautiful. A tiny brass railing kept crystal glasses from slipping off. A frail bone-china cup held tea. There was a bowl of thick creamy soup and a funny little white pudding decorated with colored sugar fruit that Annie associated with inedible Christmas cakes. Annie sipped the dark red liquid in the smallest glass and nearly gagged. It was thick as syrup and absolutely disgusting. Was it medicine?
“The best claret, miss, good for chills.”
“Lovely,” said Annie. “Thank you so much.” She took no more risks, and sipped tea. It tasted as if it had been brewing since it left India. “I was so fond of young Mr. Stratton, Schmidt. I know the dreadful course of action that was taken. Please tell me how he is doing now. Is he all right?”
“Oh, miss, it’s such a shame. His poor mother has tried to visit, but Mr. Stratton’s instructions are no visitors. Poor lady sold her jewelry to get the train ticket, went all the way up north, and was not permitted in. But she said the Evergreen place was beautiful, and they reassured her that he is receiving the very best of treatment.” Schmidt tended to the pillows, fluffing and rearranging.
Annie could not eat. She could only cry.
“Now, miss,” said the maid comfortingly, “he’s in the best of care. These asylums as they have for gentlemen, they’re not like the state asylums.”
Asylum. It conjured up cold gray stones and thin lumpy mattresses: crazy people screaming through the night.
She felt stalled, ruined. How was she supposed to cope with insanity? She hadn’t brought tranquilizers. She had never counseled anybody in her life, just gossiped with her girlfriends.
Did I do it? she thought. Did falling in love with a girl who fell through Time send him over an edge of his own? Oh, Time. Did you bring me back to make me look at what a vicious thing I did, interrupting their lives? “And Miss Harriett?” asked Annie, sick with worry.
The Time Travelers: Volume One Page 19
