The Time Travelers, Volume 2 Page 11

  Hugh-David did not travel far from the trusted path, and that included the trusted roads of New York or London. He would never have entered a neighborhood in which he would not entertain.

  The streetlamps which graced the nice side of town did not exist near the docks. No one had shoveled the horse manure from the roads. Rats and starving dogs competed for garbage. A miasma of damp stinking air settled over the carriage. Groups of men rustled half seen and half sensed in black corners.

  They could not find the ship.

  Warehouses, huge and sprawling, ran on block after block. Immense stacks of enormous crates blocked the way. Wharf after wharf lay empty, or its space was filled with a garbage scow or a coal tub. Watchmen yelled at them and beggars howled threats.

  We are fools, thought Hugh-David. These people live in shacks or in the street, with no money, no food and no hope. These men I can only half see, they’re wild unfed packs of dogs, and I with the chain of my pocket watch glittering gold in the night.

  At last, at last, the ship that belonged to Mr. Van Stead! An ugly graceless heap. Its gangplank was drawn. They had to stand on the edge of the dock, while the filthy water slapped against the pilings, and shout through their cupped hands to get attention. Nobody believed the owner could be here.

  They were inspected by the dim light of a kerosene lamp held grudgingly by louse-ridden deckhands.

  Looking at the men he had hired, Hugh-David had to wonder if Mr. Van Stead was wise to admit being the owner.

  Finally they were permitted on board.

  In the yellow failing glow of that lantern, they walked on decks that tilted as if eager to endanger their balance.

  It was far into the night before Hugh-David Winden and Elmer Van Stead finally saw Gianni Annello face-to-face.

  Into the captain’s cabin—mattress smelling of mildew, clothing bundled into corners without first being washed, a basin for shaving that had not been rinsed out in many months—a young man was brought.

  Yes. It was the boy from the stonecutters’ crew. And he had definitely intended to meet Flossie. He was not wearing the overalls, work shirt and boots of his daily life, but a dark suit, shiny with age, pitifully out of style, perhaps loaned him by a relative from another generation. It was torn now, stained from his imprisonment, but still a suit in which a man might get married.

  Hugh-David waited while Mr. Van Stead screamed at Gianni. Mr. Van Stead had a long list of names to call Gianni Annello. He did not get far.

  Nobody had expected Gianni to scream back. Gianni Annello leaped upon Elmer Van Stead, grabbing him by the neck. The celluloid collar came off in his hands. Gianni threw it aside and gripped the lapels instead, lifting Mr. Van Stead to his toes. Gianni’s unshaven face was two inches from Mr. Van Stead’s sculptured mustache. Muscles that lifted stone lifted a man without trouble.

  It was not Gianni who risked being thrown overboard.

  “You stopped me,” said Gianni Annello, “without stopping her? You do not know where Flossie is? It is night, and she is out there alone?”

  “It is your fault,” blustered Mr. Van Stead. He had no hope of freeing himself.

  “It is yours,” said Gianni Annello, “and if anything has happened to my bride, I get you for it.”

  “I suppose you think you could call the law upon me,” said Mr. Van Stead.

  “I suppose that you will find a knife through your ribs, and it will be mine.”

  Hugh-David loved threats, and often made them himself. But he never followed through, and nobody ever thought he would. Gianni, however, was not making a threat. This was a statement.

  Elmer Van Stead knew it, and when Gianni released his jacket, Flossie’s father backed away, breathing hard and pretending not to.

  “You just wanted Flossie’s money,” said Hugh-David, trying to gain control of the situation.

  Gianni Annello stared at him. “No,” said Gianni. “That was you marrying for money.”

  Hugh-David flushed. He could not believe he was being put in his place by some immigrant. He rallied. He had intended to torture the truth out of this weakling. Clearly, another approach was called for. “We came because my bride is also missing. Miss Devonny Stratton. She vanished when Flossie did, during the wedding march at the church. There is a claim that she was kidnapped, but when we found that you were involved, we thought you would know Miss Devonny’s plans as well as Miss Flossie’s.”

  In the dim light, Gianni looked shocked. “I know nothing,” he said. The rough threatening voice was gone, replaced by anxiety. “I do not believe she had such plans,” said Gianni, sounding young. “The only plan was for Flossie. They were so excited about it, the girls. It seemed to them full of romance and danger.”

  Lord Winden stared at the boy. “Then—she did not have—She was not interested—There was no young man—”

  “No, sir. She spoke of the wedding vows she would take, and how they frightened her, but she was brave. Her father had made a threat to her, which she would not reveal.”

  It came to Hugh-David again that he was not the one who had insisted on having the wedding so speedily.

  “What was this claim of kidnap?” said Gianni Annello.

  “Mr. Stratton received a letter,” said Hugh-David. He imagined the worst: savage curs who wanted a ransom and, until they received it, would hurt a beautiful young girl in every way there was to hurt. He imagined the best: that he had been jilted, and that Devonny was happy on her wedding night, but not with him.

  There was space in his heart for horror: He would prefer Devonny caught in the terror of kidnap than safe in the arms of love.

  I am not a gentleman, he thought.

  “You have wasted time,” said the boy to Flossie’s father. “You have wasted this entire night. Even now you waste time. You are not looking for her.” Gianni opened the cabin door and strode out. “Where have you searched so far?” he demanded. They had no choice but to follow him. No choice but to admit that they had not really looked anywhere.

  “Flossie is not first for you?” demanded Gianni. “You, her father?”

  They had reached the deck, where the gangplank had been pulled back, and only the huge ropes attached the ship to the pier.

  How restless was the night. Waves splashed, flags slapped, docks shifted, ropes creaked. Unless they were other noises—the gathering of gangs, the sharpening of knives, a bullet slid into the chamber of a pistol.

  “Then—then where is Devonny now?” cried Hugh-David.

  With the deckhands, Gianni maneuvered the gangplank back into position. “I would listen to the kidnapper, Mr. Winden.”

  “It is very dangerous here,” said the captain. “The area is full of cutthroats. You must remain safely on board till morning. You are lucky you survived getting here.”

  Hugh-David shivered. On a cold and vicious night, some cold and vicious person possessed Devonny. And he, her intended husband? How cold and vicious was he?

  Was she afraid? Hungry? In pain? Did she hate him? Did she pray that he would come for her? Or did she know that Hugh-David was no hero, merely a man who pretended to give away diamonds?

  “You must have quarters where we can sit in comfort, then, man,” demanded Mr. Van Stead. “Take us there.”

  “Comfort?” said the captain. “On this ship?”

  “Comfort!” said Gianni Annello. “You dare to think of your comfort? The father of a girl missing at night? My children will never know that you are their grandfather. I will not shame them with that.” He went down the narrow wooden bridge and disappeared into the night.

  On Monday, although Tod did not feel that Devonny was ready for high school, or that high school was ready for Devonny, he inspected her clothing, made her change out of a dress and into cords, shirt and pullover sweater, and put her in the huge old station wagon.

  “Now we’ll have to have another story for school,” he said. “I don’t know what we’re going to do when the home story and the school story cross, but most
ly my parents are too busy to check on things and mostly the school doesn’t get around to it, either. So you’re my cousin Devonny and you’re here for a week, and you’ll go to my classes. Don’t say anything stupid.”

  “Saying stupid things is your role,” said Devonny.

  He grinned. Back home, Devonny thought, an insult had an effect: A cad tried to behave as a gentleman. Tod just enjoyed being insulted.

  In school, however, she found that saying stupid things was universal. Who would dream that young gentlemen and young ladies would have foul mouths? Would shout rudely in front of their betters? And constantly talk back to their teachers!?

  If Tod had disapproved of her clinging habit in his own house, it was clear that in school, should she cling to him, he would sever her hand from her wrist.

  Students yelled and took quizzes and passed in papers and argued and gave excuses and turned on computers that spat out reams of information, and then the students leaped to their feet and charged down a hallway to do this again in another room.

  In each room, an introduction of Devonny, a round of applause; a seat was found, a textbook shared. She had never encountered such complete friendliness. All of it was slightly rude. Many people said how sorry they were for Devonny, related by blood to Tod Lockwood.

  But the clothing girls put on their bodies! The homeless of New York in 1898 did not wear the torn layers and hanging drooping shirts of the average girl in Tod’s day.

  Two girls asked if she wanted to go with them after school to McDonald’s. The students seemed to regard McDonald’s as a club. She was touched, in a horrified way. But she did not want these girls for her friends. She wanted Flossie, and Gertrude, and Ethel. She wanted Harriett, who was dead, who had died so young from bad lungs.

  But I am dead to my world, too, she thought, for they shall never see me again.

  She was a ship without a rudder, doomed to drift on the sea of this harsh and demanding time.

  Harriett had stepped forever through Time, and into Death. Could she, Devonny, step back? What threshold could she use to step back in Time?

  She knew of none.

  She let go, knowing herself a prisoner, and worked hard to do precisely what everybody else did, for it was her only hope: that she could fit into this Time instead of her own.

  By the end of the day, Tod had been suspended from high school. Devonny was shocked to find that she, too, had been bad. “You didn’t tell me it was wrong!” she yelled at him on the way home.

  “Come on, Dev, how many squirt gun wars did you ever have in your living room?”

  “Everything here is so ridiculous that I thought you probably did use the school auditorium for squirt gun wars.”

  “You had great aim, Dev. I loved how you went after the cheerleaders.”

  “They shouldn’t paint their faces like that. I enjoyed soaking their hair.” Tod laughed so hard he nearly drove the station wagon off the road.

  Devonny grabbed the wheel and corrected his aim. “And staying home tomorrow is to be a punishment? In my day, if you disobeyed your elders, you would suffer a real punishment. You would be whipped, or confined to a cellar, or if you had my father for a father, you would be confined to an asylum.” For the first time, something about Strat’s torture was funny.

  “I must say that a person who sells squirt guns in school in order to market his designer water ought to be confined to a lunatic asylum.”

  Tod was indignant. “It was a great idea.”

  “You lost money on the water pistols.”

  “Well, nobody would pay me any more than I paid at the discount store. But I really did expect to make money on the water. I explained to everybody that the squirt guns worked only with Stratton Point Spring Water.”

  But his classmates had filled their pistols at the water fountains, and then had a squirt gun war in the auditorium on the day the state safety inspector was there.

  This had not proved profitable in any way.

  Tod stopped laughing after a while and made it home, and once they were inside the Lockwood house, Devonny was surprised by the silence. The family always had a television, radio, fax, phone, dishwasher, computer, or conversation going, or all at once, while they were doing whatever drudgery was necessary to keep their difficult lives moving along.

  Tod fixed her a snack. He didn’t work very hard at it. He opened a bag of potato chips, with which Devonny had fallen in love during school lunch, and they sat down together in front of what Tod said was a soap opera. Nobody sang and there was no soap.

  Tod took her hand.

  His hand was square and plain. It was scraped up from the last soccer practice, cut deep from sloppy technique in woodworking class, chapped red from his refusal to wear gloves.

  She thought of Lord Winden, whose manicured fingers had held a horse’s reins, or a fine fountain pen, but which would never scrape a dirty dish or change oil in a car.

  “I’m glad you’re here, Dev,” said Tod. His hand had not entirely closed on hers, as if he needed permission for an actual squeeze.

  Devonny Stratton did not hear a marching band. There were no cymbals. But if she faced in Tod’s direction for a week, or a year, would she hear them?

  Every instrument in joyful harmony? Would she fall in love with Tod Lockwood?

  Had she crossed Time in order to meet Tod? Was he the reason? What great force, what incredible strength, could have ripped her from her own Time and brought her here?

  She had taken too long. He panicked, and withdrew his hand, and hastily offered her a Coke, and jumped up to get it, and the moment was over, and she did not know how to get it back.

  Hugh-David obtained the names and addresses of the stonecutters from Mr. Stratton’s secretary. He sat at his hotel through several days of sleet and snow, but finally the weather cleared and he boarded a train to Connecticut. Here, in the fall, he had spent a delightful month at the Stratton summer estate, its towers glittering against the green sea and the blue sky. The Annellos lived only a few miles from the Mansion, and they too were on the waterfront. But theirs was a black and oily river, bubbling with sewage and dead fish.

  He climbed to the third floor. A fat old woman opened the door and looked him up and down without approval. She called for others to come inspect and see whether this stranger should be allowed in.

  “Lord Winden!” cried Flossie, darting forward.

  “You’re here!” he said, stunned.

  “Of course I’m here. Where did you think I would be?”

  Dead, he thought. Murdered, raped, thrown into a canal.

  “When Gianni didn’t come,” said Flossie, “I knew something terrible had happened, so I came straight to his family.” She beamed at him, as if they were friends; as if he had done good deeds in her presence.

  “My family now,” she said proudly. She bowed her head and a flush of joy pinked her cheeks. She looked back up into Hugh-David’s eyes. “We’re married,” she said, as if speaking the most beautiful words on earth.

  Hands parted the babbling relatives. Gianni Annello moved forward. He stood behind his bride, wider, taller and stronger. Hugh-David was not sure how to behave. Slowly he extended his hand in congratulation, and slowly Gianni Annello took it. Flossie kissed them both, for now she was a married woman and need not behave so carefully.

  “Now you must come in and have something to eat,” she said, “and tell us everything you know about Devonny.”

  “I know nothing,” he said.

  Flossie cried out. “There has been no clue? No news?”

  “Flossie, I continue to hope. I continue to hope that perhaps she left as you did, for a finer embrace than mine. Because if that is not the case, then she is lost to us.” He had not rehearsed that speech. It had come to him as he struggled to look Gianni Annello in the eye.

  “You are being very brave,” Flossie told him. “And I know that Devonny is being brave also. She did not seek any other arms than yours. She had promised her father. She wou
ld not break a promise.”

  They fed him.

  Everybody ate, and ate a great deal, and the food was strange and delicious, cheeses and sausage he had not tasted before, and the rooms were hot with people and cooking and friendship. No matter how much they fed him, he felt a queer hunger, and by the end of the meal, he understood. He wanted this love and closeness, this worry and concern, these hugs and this noise: a family.

  “I don’t know,” he said to Flossie, “if Devonny would expect anything from me. I don’t know if she prays to hear my step, or if she wants to see me in the door of her rescue.”

  “She wants to see anybody at all rescuing her,” said Gianni.

  “Promise me you will continue to look for her,” said Flossie. “She intended to repeat her vows: to love, honor, cherish and obey.”

  Cherish, thought Hugh-David Winden, and in that moment he knew that nobody had ever cherished him.

  “You, sir, must behave as if you, too, had taken those vows. Present or missing, Devonny Stratton is yours,” said Flossie Van Stead Annello. “You must be faithful. You must save her.”

  Mrs. Lockwood was prepared to kill Tod for getting suspended, so Tod confused her by talking about how wonderful it would be for a British exchange student to have the splendid opportunity of going into New York City instead of school! Seeing a professional woman at work in a competitive and exciting field! Mom owed it to Devonny, to England, to Anglo-American relations, to take Devonny to work in the morning.

  Mom fell for it. Tod thought maybe along with his career in designer water he would become a con artist, because if you could con your own mother in a crunch, you had skill.

  Devonny was eager. She would see New York City a hundred years later! She would see if they really did have telephones. She would see what it was like to be a Self-Made Woman.

  And she would see if on the right street at the right moment, she could mesh with Time and step back through.

  Devonny had a parasol to match every dress. She had petticoats of satin and lace and taffeta. She had white gloves to the elbow, a new pair once a week. She had miles of lace, ruffles and flouncing.