The Time Travelers: Volume One

by Caroline B. Cooney

  The only place to be was New York City. Those upper regions of acreage should be called something else entirely, as it cast a pall over the great name of New York to include that pointless wilderness and those endless dull farms.

  One might receive postcards from idiots who did go there, but one should not be forced to go oneself.

  He had been forced. Devonny and Anna Sophia Lockwood had backed him into a corner.

  Albany. And to think that the state capital was there, up where nobody lived or mattered.

  Luckily Miss Lockwood had taken the boat. He, Walk, would take a night express train. It would be less comfortable. In fact, it would not be comfortable at all. It would be hideous and filled with the lower classes.

  But it would be fast.

  He would arrive in Albany before her.

  And then there would be two patients in the lunatic asylum, put there by Walker Walkley.

  He would see just how far through time or space the beautiful Miss Lockwood could travel once she was in a straitjacket.

  How Stephanie enjoyed dressing Miss Stratton in the morning. She had put the thick straight hair up into an elaborate twist, and fastened it with a dozen long U-shaped pins. She chose a dress of deep green, layers of watered silk and velvet and taffeta. How Miss Stratton rustled when she moved! How her skirt filled the entire hallway. And for her coat, black, and also layered, with two capes, one short, one long. But no hood. Instead, from the hatbox, a delirious hat: a hat gone crazy with itself, a hat of velvet and ribbons and veiling and green wreathing plumes like ferns, and silk roses jauntily perched on one side.

  Miss Stratton looked like a million dollars. And Miss Stratton had actually given Stephanie the mink coat. Its cut was so huge it actually fit Stephanie. Stephanie had protested, but not much. She wore the coat now, thrilled by its warmth.

  The steamboat had arrived in Albany three hours behind schedule, slowed by the slushy river. It was remarkable that they had gotten upriver. Usually, ice closed off the Hudson. But although the winter had been the snowiest in memory, it had not been the coldest. At Albany, the water was still open.

  Miss Stratton and Stephanie stood in a glassed-in parlor to watch the docking maneuvers. Railroads were not far, and all manner of horses and carriages and wagons awaited passengers and cargo. The activity was delightful: other people’s labor was always so much more interesting than one’s own.

  How prettily the snow fell. Stephanie loved snow as long as she did not have to be out in it.

  The dock was complete chaos. People were slipping on snow. Baggage was sliding on ice. The clanking of the great steam engines melded with shouts of porters and cries for taxis and yelling of drivers and swearing of teamsters. Hundreds of travelers were crossing narrow spaces cluttered with their hundreds of trunks and bags and boxes and cartons.

  A few intrepid people had come to greet loved ones as they left the ship. A most handsome young gentleman in a thick fur coat and splendid hat strode back and forth, peering this way and that.

  “Oh, no,” said Miss Stratton. She stepped away from the window and put her hands up to block her face.

  “What’s wrong?” said Stephanie Rosette.

  “That man on the dock.”

  “What about him?”

  “He’s— Oh, Miss Rosette, what shall I do? He would— I can’t— He mustn’t—”

  Ladies, thought Stephanie Rosette. They are so helpless. She doesn’t have a prayer of retrieving her brother. She can’t even get down the gangplank.

  “Will you help me?” whispered the girl. “Please. I am desperate. He is dangerous. We must run back to my stateroom before they take my trunk off the ship. You will take the trunk because I cannot be burdened with it. Yes, you are to have the trunk and everything in it. Will you lie for me? Please, Miss Rosette?”

  Stephanie Rosette was actually rather fond of lying. It gave excitement to an otherwise dull life. “I,” she said proudly, “am an accomplished liar.”

  Charlie kissed the pale cold cheek of the sleeping Harriett.

  Moss said, “I want you to go back to your cottage in a wheelchair, sir.”

  Charlie shook his head. He was not going down that way. He would walk till death took him.

  Snow had fallen again. In the Adirondacks, it often seemed to snow without thinking about it, the air full, as if snow just lived there, defying gravity.

  Out on Clear Pond, where ice had been harvested all day long, snow covered the gaping hole in the ice. The hole had been marked out with sweet little treetops. It looked like rows of petite Christmas trees waiting for candles and ribbons and sparkling glass orbs. Neither Harriett nor I, thought Charlie, will have another Christmas.

  And Charlie hated Strat for letting Harriett slide toward her death without his love.

  Walk examined every departing passenger. He would know Miss Lockwood even if she dressed as a cabin boy, but she had no reason to be looking out for Walk. She would be the lady Devonny had dressed her to be.

  A woman in a splendid mink coat approached him. Walk bowed, respecting the sum of money it had taken to acquire such a coat. “Madam,” he said.

  “Could you be Mr. Walkley, sir? A most strange thing has occurred on board, and if you are Mr. Walkley, I believe that none except you can handle this situation.”

  He was suspicious. “How do you know my name?”

  “A young lady on board has had a fit of confusion. A most disturbing episode. Fortunately I was present.”

  “A fit of confusion?” repeated Walk. It had a ring of Miss Lockwood. Or rather, how people felt when they were around her.

  “I really did not understand what happened,” said the woman. “She is a very confused young girl, Mr. Walkley, and I consider it most fortunate that you are here to take control.”

  “What is the young lady’s name?” breathed Walk.

  The woman turned and walked back toward the ship. “We are not altogether sure. She gave us several choices. Stratton was one. Lockwood was another. It was necessary,” she explained, “to lock the young lady in her cabin.” She glanced briefly back at Walk, looking him up and down to be sure he was useful. “It will require strength to subdue her,” she added.

  Walk was smiling again. Gloating changed his face. His cheeks turned into heavy jowls. He followed the mink coat.

  “I do not know what can have happened to the young lady’s mind,” said the woman severely. “I do hope, sir, that she will be kept confined in the future.”

  Walker Walkley was delighted to reassure the good woman that the young lady would be confined in the future.

  The instant Walk disappeared into the cabinway, Annie floated out. She might have only seconds of safety.

  “Just the valise and hatbox going with you, then, miss?” said Annie’s porter.

  “Please.” The huge trunk required too much of her. Stephanie Rosette could sell the gowns or remake them. Annie could not be managing that vast container and the porters it required. Not in the middle of this nightmare. Walker Walkley! Here! Right upon her! It was too much.

  The porter and carriage driver lifted her into a carriage without doors, designed to allow the huge fashions of ladies enough room, and her valise and hatbox were laid on the carriage floor by her feet. Annie wondered what was in them, and whether she needed it.

  Off they went. The station, and the train north, were barely a street away.

  She was stunning in her travel outfit: fabulous dress, sumptuous hat, veil, caped coat, boots, mitts, brooches. Nobody could miss her. Walker Walkley could so easily find her again. Yet Devonny had insisted that Annie needed to be dressed like this to impress the staff at the asylum.

  It was a regular local passenger train. No private cars here, no staterooms, no sleeping cars, no dining car. Just transportation.

  He will be only one train behind me, she thought. Please, Stephanie, hold him long enough that he doesn’t make this one.

  With the help of two conductors, she climbed the high
steps into the gleaming, snow-trimmed passenger car.

  It took Annie several minutes to adjust her yards of fabric: her skirts and capes and coats and bindings. She slithered on her own satin, but finally established herself in a seat meant for two. She took up all of it and could have used more.

  With a cloud of steam-borne cinders, they were off for the mountains.

  For some time, Annie simply sat, exhausted and safe.

  When she tried to plan or think, her mind did not cooperate. Like the rhythmic wheels drumming on the tracks, her mind simply ran over and over the same fact.

  Walk was upon her.

  Walk recognized Devonny’s clothing immediately. The beautiful gown strewn across the unmade bed was the same one Devonny had worn to the Vanderbilts’ goodbye party. It enraged him that Devonny had given that to Miss Lockwood. He wanted to rip it up or strangle Miss Lockwood with it.

  He was barely in the stateroom, however, when he registered the fact that no Miss Lockwood was within. No girl was bound to a bedstead, awaiting Walk’s decision about her future.

  He wasted precious seconds, thinking that Miss Lockwood had gotten out of her bonds by slipping through Time, hating her for having power that he did not. Nobody should have anything that Walker did not have more of.

  The woman in mink was smiling. He recognized that smile as if it were his own in a mirror. It was danger. He tried to react, but he was too late.

  Her scarf—a hideous, orange, unladylike color—was upon his face. He knew nothing except pressure and cloth and drugs.

  Chloroform.

  He tried not to breathe, but hungry lungs obey nobody, not even Walker Walkley, and he shuddered and went limp and then he was simply flesh on the floor.

  It was good to be a nurse, and be equipped for such occasions.

  A man who had accused that lovely girl’s brother of being insane? A man who had kidnapped the helpless boy? Used lies and ruses so he could marry the beautiful thing and have her fortune to himself?

  Such a man deserved a long-term delay.

  Stephanie Rosette dusted her hands. She hung the DO NOT DISTURB sign on the outside of the cabin door. She followed her new trunk out onto the dock, summoned a carriage, and had the trunk placed within.

  She hoped that the poor young lady’s choices were wise ones. Most of all, she hoped that the young lady understood that she had hours of safety now—but not days.

  And she, Stephanie Rosette, must make speed also. The man would be dangerous when he awoke.

  Stephanie Rosette felt the wonderful sleek warmth of her new mink coat and thought of the money she could get when she sold the fabulous clothing in the vast trunk, and she prayed for the safety of a young lady who had no idea what she was about to face.

  It seemed to Annie Lockwood that her train had gone so far north, she should be seeing reindeer.

  Thick forests and logged forests.

  Rocks piled in great slabs. Pencil-thin birches and the stunted tips of young spruce poking through the snow.

  It was not beautiful so much as cruel.

  Annie’s heart and hopes seemed to have traveled to some cold and dread place also. She had no plans, only velocity. She was rushing forward as if she actually knew what she was doing.

  Strat seemed like a myth. She was afraid of all that snow and ice. She was afraid of getting off the train. She was afraid of Walker Walkley behind her, and the asylum before her.

  “Evergreen, miss,” said the conductor.

  The train stopped.

  It was a genuine whistle-stop. The train stopped because somebody on board yanked the whistle.

  The railroad station at Evergreen was a charming, tall cottage with scalloped shingles and a dragon’s back roof. These were iced with snow, like a gingerbread castle.

  Only Annie disembarked. The two conductors deposited her beneath a porch roof, set her valise and hatbox at the hem of her coat, accepted her tips, and the train left.

  “I don’t care,” said Peggy Bartten, actually stomping her foot. Mr. Lockwood had never really seen a person stomp a foot in fury. It was not attractive. “You file for divorce now, David.”

  “Peggy, the thing is, I don’t want a divorce.”

  “Then what are you having this affair for?” she yelled.

  He was perplexed. He was having it for fun, of course. Why must she get all serious about it?

  This time she put her hands on her hips. “Then get out,” she said. “It’s over. I want a husband. If it’s not going to be you, then I have to start looking elsewhere.”

  He tried to laugh. All of a sudden he realized that she was going to rip up the only clothing he had left: everything that his wife had missed. Quickly he stuffed his possessions into a suitcase. “What about tonight?” he said nervously. “We have tickets for that new play at—”

  “Here’s the play,” said his gym-teacher girlfriend very seriously. “Either you file for divorce, or you’re not on my team. Got it?”

  He got it.

  He went to his car with his suitcase and wondered what to do next. Vaguely he recalled his wife saying he ought to be staying with the children while she was away. Was that now or later? What sort of risk would he run stopping off at the house? Perhaps he would call Annie and Tod from a pay phone first, to make sure that his wife was gone.

  “Yup,” said his son, Tod.

  “Yup what?” said Mr. Lockwood, feeling testy. What had given his children the right to get rude?

  “Yup, Mom’s gone.”

  Mr. Lockwood brightened. He had a place to stay. He didn’t want to do this motel stuff: too lonely. Maybe he could get Tod or Annie to go to the play instead. The tickets had been expensive; he didn’t want to waste them.

  Devonny stared out the train window. She had expected this to be an adventure and it wasn’t. Instead of great cities, they passed through slums and warehouses. Instead of spacious farmland, recently logged stretches that were harsh stubs under dirty snow. Instead of pretty villages, worn and tired houses whose laundry had frozen on the line.

  And she, too, was frozen on the line.

  She seemed to have forgotten so many details. And what if she had not given Anna Sophia enough money? What if Miss Lockwood failed? Or lost her courage?

  As the miles clicked by, Devonny realized that crossing the continent was the worst choice. She literally could never reach her brother now. She should have disobeyed Father and gone by herself to Evergreen. But Mother had done that. And they had not let a woman in.

  “Oh, Schmidt,” Devonny said sadly, “I’m worried about Miss Lockwood.”

  Schmidt burst into tears.

  Her confession was short and terrible.

  Devonny had truly forgotten something. She had forgotten what a skunk Walker Walkley was, and how his stink rested on anyone around him.

  The train hurtled westward.

  “At the next station,” said Schmidt desperately, “I could get off and send a telegraph.”

  “To whom?” said Devonny. “I do not know where Miss Lockwood is. I have no way to warn her.”

  “We could notify the asylum,” said Schmidt.

  “They would just keep her from seeing my brother. Perhaps they would lock her up too. Certainly they would telegraph my father.”

  “Notify Miss Harriett?” asked Schmidt.

  But a dying woman could not do anything.

  And Devonny’s friends in New York and Connecticut were also women and could do nothing without the permission of a father, brother or husband.

  I don’t want to travel through Time, thought Devonny. But oh! if I could travel through space! If only there were some way to fly off this train and fly to Evergreen and fly my brother away!

  But time and miles were not on Devonny’s side. Even if Stephens would let her off the train, she would be days behind.

  “Schmidt,” said Devonny, for the first time in her life using a handkerchief to wipe away the tears of a servant, “I do not hold you responsible. Walker Wa
lkley makes people do terrible things.”

  Schmidt shook her head. “If I were a good person, I would have stood up to him, no matter how terrible he is.”

  They were nothing then but two women who had failed. “Because Walk is a man,” said Devonny, “I agreed that he must be in charge of me. I must stop such behavior. From now on, I must say, I am a woman, therefore I am in charge.”

  It was too ridiculous. They both laughed out loud.

  And the train continued west, and they continued to be women, and helpless.

  I am here just before machines, thought Annie. No chainsaws, no snowmobiles, no cars.

  But there were lights. Not electric lights, but soft yellow gaslights in a strip of buildings across the snowy road. She walked to the hotel, grateful for its big painted sign.

  How warm it was inside. How softly lit. She went to the desk to check in. She would have a hot dinner and a hot bath and think things through. She was perilously close to tears, and that must never happen.

  “Yes, miss?” said a clerk most courteously. “Your booking?”

  “I don’t have a reservation. I would like a single room, please.”

  The clerk stared. “You are not expected by anyone?”

  She started to shake her head, but this was difficult with the vast hat. A motionless profile was the only way to go while wearing a tower. “I am not,” she said.

  “You are traveling—alone?” said the clerk, enunciating his syllables as if to be sure of each and every one. He sported a thin waxed mustache. It really did curve in circles, like a cartoon of old-time barbers. “You cannot stay here, miss.”

  She stared at him. “You’re full?”

  “No.” He pointed toward the door. She looked at the door for an explanation, saw none, felt very confused, and said once more, “I’d like a room for the night, please.”