The Time Travelers, Volume 1

by Caroline B. Cooney

  No, he doesn’t! she thought. There were no utility poles leading out of Evergreen. And that lamp. It has no plug. It’s kerosene. So there is neither phone nor electricity,. But it is winter out there, and Strat has neither coat nor shoes, no hotel will take us, and Walker Walkley must be on my heels. Now what? Now what?

  “Doctor,” she whispered. “Doctor, I am overcome with emotion. You must help me deal with this perilous situation.”

  Only women got the vapors.

  Even here in the asylum, no matter how badly Strat was treated, nobody ever accused him of hysteria. A man was superior to a woman. No man suffered from silliness. That was for females. Even Doctor had acknowledged that Strat was not hysterical, but possessed.

  In the deepest recesses of his mind, Strat had worried that what possessed him might be something womanly. What if his father were right—there was no Anna Sophia Lockwood?

  But here she was.

  His Anna Sophia Lockwood. His century changer.

  He was not just starved for food. Strat was starved for reassurance. When her arms encircled him, when her soft cheek pressed his own, sanity returned to his body. His flaccid limbs, his tired brain, his fading eyes came to attention.

  He swayed among dreams come true. Hesitantly, he touched her cheek, as she was touching his. Yes. She existed. Anna Sophia—his Annie—his Miss Lockwood—was actually here.

  She was even lovelier than he had remembered. Her laughing bright eyes were real.

  And the jewels that glittered in layers below her throat were Devonny’s. She was calling herself Devonny. Saying that she was his sister. Strat had not one brotherly emotion. He wanted to dance with her—encircle her slender waist with his two hands and sweep her in joyful …

  His mind stopped spinning. It was no longer a whirling wind of nonsense and failure. It was capable once more of thought. And possibly, also, capable of action.

  What was her plan? How had she arrived? How was Devonny involved? What of his family? What should be done next? A hundred thoughts lined up in Strat’s mind, and the first was sports: I won. Inning after inning, they beat me.

  But I’m going to win now.

  Weeping was over. He wanted to laugh and shout—and escape.

  “My dear,” said Doctor, swiftly coming to the beauteous Miss Devonny’s side, his hand reaching her waist. He, too, was trembling. One of the loveliest young ladies he had ever seen was literally within his grasp. This must continue. She already worshiped him for what he had accomplished with her brother. Who knew how much more might be accomplished with her?

  A fortune was within his reach. What sane man wanted to spend his career among the insane? Doctor wanted to spend his life spending. And nobody had more to spend than the Strattons.

  If he had known there was a sister so brave, so loving, so beautiful, so rich …

  The door opened.

  His secretary said, “Telegraph boy, sir.”

  The boy (who was Doctor’s age) saluted like a private to a general. “Telegram, sir. A Mr. Walker Walkley in Albany.”

  Charlie, who had shot a thousand glass bottles into glass shatters at the river’s edge, looked at Harriett as she slept on her deck chair, wrapped in her furs and woolens.

  He had fallen in love with Harriett early on. But no gentleman could say such a thing to a lady who had a fiancé. Even if Hiram Stratton, Jr., had never written and never come, Charlie could say no word against the man, for Harriett loved him.

  Charlie despised Strat for hurting Harriett. He could not understand a man who would abandon a lady. Charlie understood not coming to visit: consumption could leap from person to person. Refusal to visit the sick girl was sane.

  But not to write?

  Not to send tiny gifts from the heart—the book of poems, the box of candy—that made a hard day easier?

  Every time he was with Harriett, Charlie yearned to speak his mind. Sentences lay in his heart like a stack of letters to be mailed.

  I love you, Harriett.

  I will take care of you, Harriett.

  I will not desert you, Harriett. You are beautiful, Harriett. I love your mind and soul.

  Harriett was dying.

  Over and over again, Charlie wrestled with duty. Was it his duty to speak the truth? To tell this girl so desperately in need of love that she was loved? Or was it his duty to go on pretending that Strat, whom she adored, had an excuse for this?

  What would God expect of Charlie? What would Harriett want?

  From Harriett’s porch, in the last spare light of day, Charlie shot bottle after bottle, all indigo-blue glass, broken pieces flying into the air, and thought how much he would like to do that to Hiram Stratton, Jr.

  “I cannot believe,” said Annie, in the hoity-toity-est voice she could manage, “that this secretary would interrupt so private and emotional an occasion!” Please let Doctor not recognize the name Walker Walkley. Please let him not realize this telegram has anything to do with me.

  She rested a gloved hand on Doctor’s forearm. Her hair was falling out of its twists. Was she unladylike, or romantic and appealing?

  The secretary said warningly, “Doctor, I believe it is essential to read this telegram now.”

  Doctor said, “Certainly not. Where is your sense of propriety? Leave the telegram, boy.” He shut the door on them and apologized to Miss Stratton for the coarse behavior of his clerk.

  “Oh, Doctor,” she said, unable to believe how far she was going with this absurd language of theirs, “you were masterful.”

  He smiled. He believed her. Annie slid across the century for a moment, and wondered what kind of things Miss Bartten had been saying to her father that had been so delicious to believe.

  “Where is your sister?” said Mr. Lockwood grumpily. The worst thing was laundry. You should not have to do your own laundry. Certainly Tod wasn’t doing his laundry. It was a mountain in the hallway in front of the bathroom, since Tod liked to strip en route to the shower.

  They were going to run out of clothing. It was a crisis. They needed a woman.

  “I don’t know where Annie is,” said Tod.

  “Well, you must know what friend she’s staying with.”

  “I don’t think I said that she’s staying with a friend.”

  “Well, where is she?” demanded Tod’s father.

  “I don’t know.”

  Mr. Lockwood disliked his son rather intensely at that moment. What made teenage boys so obstructive? At least Tod knew that men don’t do laundry and he was just leaving it there.

  “What did Annie say when you saw her last?” said Mr. Lockwood.

  “She said not to worry.”

  Mr. Lockwood was going to have to wash a load of underwear. There was no other option. Furiously, he kicked the dirty clothing in piles, not wanting to touch anything with his hands. It wasn’t his job. “When did Annie say that?”

  “I don’t remember,” said Tod. “I haven’t seen her in days.” Tod, personally, did not mind wearing the same clothing day after day. He could outlast his father on the washing-machine problem.

  “Very efficient,” said Annie.

  “I knew this moment would come eventually,” said Strat. He set the heavy brass lamp back on the polished desk.

  Doctor lay messily on the floor.

  “You didn’t hurt him badly, did you?” she asked.

  Strat truly did not care how badly Doctor was hurt, but on the other hand, a murder accusation would be even messier than Doctor on the floor.

  “Oh, Miss Lockwood! I thought of you so often! I could not discover whether I made you up or you really existed.”

  “I exist,” she said softly. And then, in that rather fierce way he so well remembered, she gave him orders. “And don’t call me Miss Lockwood. It’s too formal. Whatever happens now, you and I are in it together.”

  Together, thought Strat. Is there a lovelier word? “Anna Sophia, you do not know how much I have needed somebody with whom to do things together.” />
  Strat had touched Anna Sophia so gently, so carefully, during the other visits across Time. Now he hugged her fiercely. He needed to prove that his arms moved and he could still clasp, and tighten, and accomplish. He needed to prove that she really did exist, and could be felt and kissed and loved. No vapor, no dream, but a girl.

  He kissed her in a manner he had not permitted himself the last time she visited his century, as it would have compromised her virtue. How wonderful were kisses that strong! With each touch of lips, she was more his.

  A joyful thing happened. He found strength to pull away, and kiss no more. That was the definition of love: not touching a lady until marriage.

  They took Doctor’s pulse. He had one.

  “Take his boots, Strat,” said Annie. “His coat’s hanging on that repulsive twisted wood thing in the corner. Wear the hat too. Add that scarf.” She kissed his hair before the hat landed, and his throat before the scarf closed in, and they both laughed.

  Strat undid Doctor’s belt and yanked it out of the loops. A heavy ring of keys fell with a muffled clank onto the Persian carpet. Strat stared at them for a moment, thinking of the doors it had kept him behind. Before he threaded the belt to hold his own pants up, he slid the key ring on it.

  “Good idea,” said Annie. “Pretend to be a doctor yourself. That will please the sleigh driver.”

  “Why on earth would we want to please a driver?” he said, buttoning up the vast coat of Doctor’s. It was far too big for him, which worried Annie. They must not look like escapees. But this was the Strat Annie remembered: somebody who did not notice servants. “We want the driver to take us away,” she explained. “Very important part of the strategy.”

  Strat laughed.

  She had always adored his laugh. She tossed him Doctor’s gloves. “You’ll be Doctor— Doctor— think of a great name, Strat.”

  “Dr. Lovesick,” said Strat. “Dr. Timecross.”

  “Don’t be a jerk. Dr. Lockwood. We won’t forget that one. I know what we’ll say. You’re taking me for dinner in the village, where you will assuage my worries about my brother.”

  “Dinner is such a good idea,” said Strat. “I haven’t had a real dinner since they brought me here.”

  “I believe you,” she said, pinching his ribs before she closed the last button on the huge beaver coat.

  They dared not go out the door. Secretary would know he was no doctor. Secretary had read the telegram, which no doubt required a response. And no doubt the telegraph boy was standing right there in the reception room, waiting for Dr. Wilmott to emerge.

  They went out the window. Here in Doctor’s office, where sane people—people who gave him money—people who mattered—must sit, the windows must not be terrifying. No bars, no locks.

  Strat lifted the sash. He went out first with his immense coat flapping and his beaver hat falling into the snow. He didn’t look half so ridiculous as Annie, with her vast yardage to be squashed through, and her hat in her hands.

  Dark had fallen. They need not worry about being seen. No exterior lights illuminated the grounds. After all, what visitor would come here in the night?

  Deep snow soaked the hems of Annie’s clothing and would give them away if anybody looked. But who would look, or could, in the dark? They hastened around the corner of the building. Strat’s feet swam in the boots of Dr. Wilmott.

  The driver was pacing back and forth, slapping his arms against his chest to keep his blood moving, stomping his feet to keep them from freezing. He had lit lamps on the four corners of the carriage, small yellow orbs which made the sleigh gay and cheery.

  “The journey was so difficult!” Annie said to Strat. She handed the driver a five-dollar bill and prayed it was not so much that the driver would wonder, and think, and see the truth.

  On the other hand, a girl who had just helped bop the asylum’s superintendent over the head with a lamp and engineer the escape of a violent patient is not going to have a low profile whether she gives out pennies or gold bars. “Dr. Lockwood,” she said, for the benefit of the driver, “I had to travel alone. It was so distressing. I am in such need of comfort. I cannot bear more travail.”

  Strat, being of his generation and not hers, took her literally. “My poor lady!” he cried. He meant it. “Alone! It is unthinkable. What a sacrifice.”

  “I love my brother,” she said.

  The driver was awed by the five-dollar bill. He earned seventy-five cents a day. With five dollars, he could buy two acres of land. “Where are we headed?” he said in the tone of voice that said Chicago would be fine.

  Neither Strat nor Annie had made plans for this. Where were they headed? She could hardly say, “The farther the better. Just go.”

  She said, “We are famished, my dear man. Won’t you recommend a fine dining place to us?”

  “There ain’t such a fine one in Evergreen, madam. But we could go to Saranac. It’s not but four miles. A easy ride, what with snow. Smooth like. Take about a hour. First we head back to Evergreen, then west to Saranac.”

  “You are so clever, sir. Saranac it is.”

  She and Strat climbed in.

  They had a wonderful time adjusting each other’s clothing. The simple acts of pinning Annie’s hair back up, of stationing her tower hat once more—these took half a hundred kisses to accomplish. And Strat’s too-big coat—it had to be unbuttoned, so that Annie could snuggle next to his warm body instead of the fur of beavers.

  It was so romantic—a sleigh in the night! How the horses stamped on the crispy packed snow! How the silver bells rang! A slender moon and a thousand stars decorated the black sky, and the white snow smiled up from the cold, cold ground.

  Before long the little windows of the carriage frosted up from the hot breath of two excited occupants.

  “Oh, Strat!” said Annie, suddenly in tears. “It’s been so long!”

  He kissed each tear. That a girl would weep for joy at seeing him! It was too wonderful.

  He held her against him, knowing that in this strange moment, he really did need, along with Annie, a sister, and a mother, and a friend. It was not so much romance for which he was desperate as comfort. For he was not changing Time, like Annie, but changing worlds. He was leaving Hell behind.

  “Oh, Annie!” he said, his own thoughts too complex for him.

  They wept together, and in some way Annie knew that she was weeping for herself, too, and her own damaged family, and she said, “Oh, Strat!” and then they giggled helplessly, because they had only a two-word vocabulary between them.

  In the village of Evergreen, the driver paused for traffic. A train had just come in (from the opposite direction of Albany, Annie saw with great relief) and sleds were taking away baggage and crates.

  The little train station was lit by lovely romantic gaslights, and some of the carriages had torches. A trainman carried a lantern which swung by his side.

  The passengers were silhouettes cut from dark paper: trailing gowns, flowing capes, tall hats, pipes. Cuddled against Strat, Annie laughed with joy. This was what she had come for: the complete and total romance of the nineteenth century.

  Harriett dreamed.

  Once, years ago, they had all spent the summer at Walker Walkley’s old hunting lodge, only a dozen miles as the crow flew from her cure cottage.

  If it were summer, thought Harriett, if I were well … ladies in silks would rustle past, their ribbons fluttering, their laughter bubbling. Young bloods wearing corduroys and many-pocketed jackets would be returning with trophies of deer and woodcock. Fishermen would be flaunting their trout. Taxidermists would stop to collect these, and prepare them for walls. Stages laden with trunks and hampers and hatboxes, with folding tents and folding chairs and folding stools, and with rifle cases and cases of champagne, would be leaving the train station. Remember how we brought bales of china and huge rolled rugs, a dozen extra mattresses, chests of tea and coffee, and boxes of books and games?

  Oh, Strat! Let me at least giv
e you my last breath.

  Annie and the boy she loved forgot the Time of watches and telegrams, the Time of telephones and police response.

  They forgot the rage of a man who does not get his way. There is no rage equal to the rage of a man who has been made a fool of by a lady.

  Walker Walkley would see her dead before he let her have Strat or Harriett or any of their money.

  As for Dr. Wilmott, he was more sophisticated. He knew that Death is not the worst punishment. His own asylum would hurt her more.

  And so from two ends of the Adirondacks came telegrams and telephone calls. From Walker Walkley and from Dr. Wilmott came promises to pay well.

  And swiftly came men whose job it was to round up the dangerous and the insane.

  The police.

  Through the coziness and the clinging, Annie and Strat heard shouts. Their sleigh began to slow down.

  “Hey! Whoa there! Ho!” came bellowing voices.

  The driver was pulling back the horses’ reins. The horses could not simply halt because the sleigh, on a downhill, continued to move. But the pace slowed.

  Strat and Annie let go of each other, bolts of fear instead of love coursing through them.

  “Ethan!” A deep man’s voice. “Your passenger escaped from the Asylum!”

  A wildly excited tenor voice. “He’s violent!”

  “Tried to kill Dr. Wilmott!” A third voice.

  There was an actual posse after them.

  Strat jerked open the glass panel between the passengers and driver. “Keep going, Ethan. Please. We have money.”

  Annie handed him her final wad of bills and Strat tried to give it to the driver.

  But there are some things money will not buy, and driving into the night with lunatics is one.

  The sleigh reached the bottom of the slope, and stopped.