The Time Travelers: Volume One

by Caroline B. Cooney

  “Devonny, wait a minute. You expect me to take on lunatic asylums and buy train tickets and carry my own trunk? Look at the size of that thing. I’d need a squad just to carry it.”

  “That’s what porters are for,” said Devonny irritably. “You pay people to carry your trunk.” Devonny grabbed her shoulders. “Listen. You started this and you have to finish it. I have not been able to leave the house without Walker Walkley escorting me! I have not been able to mail my own letters. Our mother, because Father divorced her, of course has no standing and can accomplish nothing. She had to sell a brooch in order to get money to travel to Evergreen, and then they would not break Father’s instructions just for a woman! They never let her see her son.”

  “I’m a woman too,” said Annie feebly. Where were the gala balls and fine gowns? She did not want responsibility! There was enough of that in other centuries. In this century, a woman was supposed to be sheltered and entertained.

  “I have been sent for,” said Devonny harshly. “Father is requiring me to come to California. I can make no choices. But you are different. You told us so. You said in your century you make the choices. We’re counting on you.”

  Annie hated being quoted at awkward times. I’ll choose to go home after all, she thought. This won’t be a romantic adventure. Strat isn’t even here! In every way, this will be dark and icy and slippery.

  “You said women can do anything,” Devonny told her.

  Annie flushed. She probably had said that. She had probably even believed it. But surely, when you changed centuries, you got to change burdens. Is that why I came? she thought. So it would be easier?

  Schmidt, who was not supposed to be listening, said, “I came from Germany, miss. I did not speak English. I learned how to get here and how to get a job. So you can learn how to get up the Hudson River.”

  Immigrants were always boasting about how hard they had struggled. In her own time, men rowed in leaky rafts across shark-infested waters in order to leave Haiti and find jobs in America and take better care of their families—and she, Annie Lockwood, wouldn’t even take a cab across Manhattan?

  “Thank you, Schmidt,” said Devonny when she saw that Annie was conquered. “You shall be rewarded.” This was as much attention as she gave a maid, however. “You’ll need money, Anna Sophia. I have taken everything I can find. Actually the only person with cash is Walker, so I have appropriated his. He owes it to me, anyway.”

  Devonny had appropriated Walk’s cash? What did that mean? Had she lifted his wallet? Emptied his checking account? Or wherever people kept their dollars in 1898? But that was stealing. Annie was supposed to spend those stolen dollars? Belonging to a man who had already kidnapped and Devonny thought would murder too?

  Annie said anxiously, “What if he has some household servant arrested for it? What if he suspects”—Annie tried not to look at Schmidt—“one of your maids or something?”

  “These things happen,” said Devonny, who, indeed, was very like her father. “Now, for Harriett. She has consumption. I know that she can be cured by true love. I absolutely know this. So once you get Strat out, you must journey onward to Clear Pond.”

  “Is that in the Adirondacks too?”

  “Everything is. Mountain air is of use both to the insane and to the consumptive. Questions?”

  Annie would like to have taken Devonny back to the twentieth century with her and have Devonny straighten Miss Bartten out. But the words that came from Annie’s mouth were nineteenth-century words. “I shall not let you down,” she said firmly. The words resounded in the Victorian bedroom, and Annie was proud.

  “Good,” said Devonny. “Schmidt, it is practically dawn. Let’s get her dressed.”

  It was morning in the Adirondacks too.

  Harriett was awestruck by the beauty of new-fallen snow. Everything was a choir robe, a child in a Christmas play. All dark branches of all dark trees bowed down with snow in their arms.

  And indeed, the sounds of children could be heard. In this silent isolation, a family had come to visit! They had come by sleigh, the snow and the sable furs all part of a great adventure.

  I would find it a great adventure, too, thought Harriett, if it had what all adventure requires—going home again.

  Children dashed through the snow, whooping and hollering.

  How wonderful their voices sounded to Harriett.

  When I die, she thought, will I hear the voices of children again? It takes such courage to stay here. It is so awful, so dull, so cold, so alone. We try to bolster each other, but it is hard. We patients want two things.

  To be well.

  To be home.

  And I … I want a third.

  Strat.

  Tod Lockwood knocked on his sister’s bedroom door.

  Nobody answered.

  It had that complete dusty silence of when nobody is there.

  Slowly, Tod opened Annie’s door.

  Nobody was there.

  He didn’t want to think about it. The other times—those two terrifying, maddening times when she had gone off by herself—the community and the police searching for her—Mom and Dad nuts with worry—himself realizing that he actually loved his sister …

  Well, she had done it again.

  And Tod Lockwood did not love her for it.

  “Fine,” he said to the silent room. “Be rotten. See if I care.”

  He slammed the door and stomped out of the house to school.

  He wouldn’t cover her tracks for her because he had no idea where her tracks were. She had covered them pretty darn well the other times.

  But he wouldn’t tell on her either.

  He wouldn’t let Mom in Japan worry and he wouldn’t allow Dad back into the family he’d deserted.

  So there.

  “How intriguing!” cried Beanie.

  The peddler beamed from beneath his mustache.

  “You’re not going to buy one, are you, Beanie?” said Harriett disapprovingly.

  “Harriett, darling, I’ll try anything.” Beanie fitted the glass helmet over her head. It didn’t go. She had to take off her earmuffs and scarf. Now it fit. Harriett giggled, looking at her.

  “What on earth?” demanded Moss the nurse. “Take that monstrosity away from your face immediately, Miss Beatrice.”

  “It’s a re-breather, Moss,” said Beanie. From behind the glass bowl, her voice was muffled. Her breath fogged the glass and it was so cold on the porch Harriett expected the glass to frost.

  “I beg your pardon,” said Moss, more frostily than the weather. “The point of the cure is to breathe fresh mountain air.”

  “Ah ha!” cried the peddler. “Except if it’s not working. And then the newest thing is to rebreathe your own used breath. Those special gases have healing properties.”

  “You are responsible for following all rules of the cure, Miss Beatrice!” said Moss. “I’m sure I cannot be responsible for what happens if you neglect the procedure.”

  Beanie rebreathed lustily.

  Fundamental to cure were the rules. The slightest break might lead down the path of death instead of the path of life. Beanie’s rebreather might remove the fragile barrier between herself and her Maker.

  Charlie, having just left the billiards room, came slowly up the path, smoking his pipe, assisted by his man and two canes. Of course he wanted to try on the rebreathing apparatus.

  Harriett distracted Moss. “Did you go to school, Moss?” asked Harriett.

  “I finished eighth grade, Miss Harriett. Then I nursed my mother, who died of consumption, my father, who died of it, and then my aunt, and then I decided to be a nurse here.”

  “You’re a wonderful nurse,” said Harriett.

  “Thank you,” said Moss happily. “I have climbed quite a ladder.”

  Harriett thought it a very short ladder. But the ladders of women usually were. “How is Lucy Leora?”

  Harriett asked. Lucy Leora had the cottage behind the fir trees and Moss often helped Luc
y Leora’s nurse.

  “She died in the night, Miss Harriett,” said Moss calmly.

  Beanie and Charlie were not listening. They were giggling and wasting lung energy over the glass helmet. They did not know that Death had come in the night.

  Moss bustled around, replacing Harriet’s cooled-off foot warmer with a hot soapstone just off the stove. “Lucy Leora had a good easy death. In her sleep. You may thank God.”

  Harriett did not thank God. He was too mean. Lucy Leora had been sixteen.

  Dear Lord, prayed Harriett (because even if He was mean and took sixteen-year-olds, He was all Harriett had), I am still betrothed to Strat. It still counts, I know it does. I still wear his ring, and if he has not written to tell me he loves me, at least he has not written to tell me he loves another! I must get well, and we will have children, and live happily ever after, I know we will!

  The traveling hat, which tied under her chin with broad wool streamers, had a wide black velvet brim and five garnet-red ostrich plumes. It gave Annie grace and dignity, explained Devonny. A swollen roll of veiling collected around the hat rim, waiting to be unwrapped. Annie had no intention of veiling her face. There was such a thing as going too far.

  Her dress was a pale-gray velvet, difficult swollen buttons streaming down the back, fastened not into holes but into silk loops. The lower twelve inches of the dress was skirted with moiré, which could be detached and cleaned if the street soiled the hemline. The dress ribbons were garnet to match the hat plumes.

  Beneath the dress of course was a corset laced tight enough to break ribs, a chemise to cover her limbs, and wool stockings held up above her knees with killer elastic bands.

  Her ankle-length coat was sleek dark mink. Her black gloves reached her elbows, and her mitt was mink inside and out. Annie figured the costume was a quick way to gain fifty pounds.

  Schmidt did not even smuggle Annie out of the town house. “Mr. Walker’s still in bed, miss,” explained Schmidt. “He’s fond of his brandy. It takes him time in the morning to open his eyes and he needs even more brandy to do that.” Servants carried Devonny’s trunk—now Annie’s—down the stairs.

  “But what if he comes out and sees me?” she hissed at Schmidt. “What will you say?”

  “I’ll say ‘Good morning, sir.’ ”

  I have to be that calm, thought Annie. I have to hold my chin high and my plumes high and my muff high, and say things like “Good morning, sir,” and swirl away in a haughty ladylike fashion.

  The butler ordered a taxi. To Annie, this meant a Yellow Cab. But of course, it was a horse-drawn taxi—without wheels.

  “A sleigh!” cried Annie, laughing. Bells on bobtail ring, making spirits bright, what fun it is to ride and sing a sleighing song tonight. Oh jingle bells, jingle bells …!

  And they did jingle.

  The two horses were adorned with leather straps hung with jingle bells bigger than anything on a door wreath: fat silvery bells, a hundred to chorus and jangle.

  Devonny had not come down to see her off. Devonny in fact had gone back to bed, and according to Schmidt was sleeping soundly. Annie did not think this was fair.

  The driver and his two horses seemed interested in suicide. They trotted between horse-drawn omnibuses and wired trolleys. They whipped under elevated railroads and sped between the convergence of tracks lying on the street. They aimed at pedestrians. People swore at them in various languages and shook their fists and once threw something.

  Annie could have used a seat belt. What with one hand steadying her plume tower and one hand gripping the sleigh rim, she was exhausted.

  The stench of New York was amazing. Annie bet that a hundred thousand horses had plopped dung into the streets. The sleigh hit all of it.

  There were homeless people. Annie could not look at them now any more than she could bear looking at them a hundred years later.

  The buildings were magnificent, and yet there was a gaunt, spare coldness to the city that frightened her. She could not tell, because they flew so fast over the packed snow, whether it was the newness of the buildings that was frightening or her own newness. She was as weak and vulnerable as the greenest immigrant to step off the boat.

  When they arrived at the pier, the steamboat was much larger than she had expected. Open and squat like an enormous ferry, it had two huge, factory-size smokestacks. Smoke billowed, thick with ash and soot. Real sparks flew. She could hear the steam engines, hear the boilers smacking with the metallic sounds of gears and grinding. What a fire trap, she thought. I’m getting on that?

  The driver stopped.

  She was ashamed of the trunk. It was so huge. And the hatbox and the valise—she could hardly manage that paper hatbox, what with staying erect under the weight of all this clothing.

  But it was immediately clear that people did not travel light in 1898.

  Mountains of luggage were piled at the gangplanks. One single family ahead of her had as much baggage as a 747 carries to Europe. Annie’s trunk and bag looked paltry and forlorn. She began to fret that she would not have enough to wear after all.

  Porters were everywhere, which was a good thing, considering how much work they had ahead of them. They wore fine uniforms, like Marine officers on parade.

  Every woman was veiled, and they were smarter than Annie. The soot and filth of the coal engines were coating her like paint. She tugged the veil down after all, and tucked it into her coat the way the other women did.

  She didn’t have to figure out how to buy a ticket; her driver and the porter accomplished this. She did buy a Coke, which cost a nickel. It made her happy to buy a Coke in a glass bottle and pay five cents for it. But that was the only happy thing.

  Don’t speak to strangers, Devonny had said sharply. It isn’t becoming behavior for a lady.

  But they were all strangers. How was she to manage without a single person in the world on her team? She could not possibly do this without Devonny.

  At least she had a great hat.

  It had taken Walker Walkley two whole years to convince Mr. Stratton senior that young Strat was crazy.

  Solid intense labor. Paper proof. Stealing Strat’s English essays at Yale. Seizing Strat’s diary from his locked room. He’d had to add a few sentences here and there, incriminating sentences in careful Strat-style handwriting.

  But Walk had won.

  Mr. Stratton could not allow the Stratton fortune to go to somebody whose mind was not intact. The man had fought and slashed his way to the top—he would never give that hard-won money to somebody at the bottom. Somebody to be ashamed of.

  Strat, in other words.

  So Strat would have none, Devonny would have it all, and Walker Walkley would marry Devonny.

  The plan was taking longer than Walk had thought, and Devonny had been more difficult, but he was close.

  He awoke slowly to his hangover. It was past noon before he could actually open his swollen eyelids. Following Mr. Stratton’s example, Walk banged hard on the wall to summon his manservant Gordon and blame the whole headache on him.

  Gordon was annoying, as were all servants, but he had been the one who actually subdued Strat. Hulking and iron-muscled, Gordon had literally sat on Strat to prevent the young man from causing difficulties on the long route to Evergreen. Nevertheless, Walk would get rid of Gordon as soon as he had the Stratton money. There were just too many people around who had been involved in delicate procedures.

  Delicate. How Walker Walkley liked that word. Last night, Devonny had been perfect in her delicacy. He had won there too.

  Walk smiled to himself. Women must be shaped into what men required of them. Once the shape was complete, they could be discarded. He would buy a house to keep Devonny in, or perhaps confine her to the beach cottage, so that he could live in freedom and not be nagged by a wife.

  “Mr. Walkley, sir,” said Gordon.

  The man was just too large. He took up too much space, towering like that; he made Walk feel small. “What are you w
earing?” snapped Walk. “How dare you attend me in those clothes? What do you think you are doing, buying fish?”

  “Miss Devonny had a visitor last night. I thought you would like to know. The visitor departed early this morning. I followed.”

  Walker Walkley paled. Could Gordon mean a male visitor?

  “A beautiful woman,” said the servant. “A Miss Lockwood.”

  The wind over the Adirondack Mountains had risen. It carved channels into the lake snow. Like fluted quilt patterns, the surface glittered silver and gold and diamond.

  Mario brought in yet another load of fresh laundry so that Moss could remake the stained bed. “Miss Harriett,” he said gently, “how pretty you look today.” He meant that the fever was back, rouge on her cheeks.

  He had such a New York City accent. “How did you end up in the mountains?” Harriett asked.

  “I was a Fresh Air Child.”

  “You were! How lovely. I always wanted to sponsor a child.” Her guardian, Mr. Stratton senior, had forbidden it. Fresh Air children were certain to be unclean, and carry lice, and use foul language. Plus they probably stole from you.

  The boy smiled at her. “Last year, fifteen thousand of us were sent to the country. The Herald Tribune does it. It’s wonderful.”

  “And they let you stay in the mountains?”

  Mario shook his head. “My parents died after I got back to the city. I wrote Moss, who had had me for the week, and she said to get on the train and come up to work for her.”

  “Moss,” said Harriett respectfully, “you work all week long nursing consumptives and yet you had time to sponsor a Fresh Air Child?”

  “Children deserve a summer,” said Moss. “Mario went fishing and wading and canoeing.”

  Children deserve a summer, thought Harriett, and young women deserve a life. Well, I cannot do anything about my life, because it’s over, but I can see that children have a summer.

  “Moss,” she said, “send for an attorney. I must write a new will.”

  Moss penned a note.

  Moss loved handwriting, especially her own. Hers was elegant and gracious, from years of penmanship in grammar school.