The Time Travelers, Volume 2 Page 9

  All the ladies were weeping with fear for Miss Devonny Stratton’s reputation and life, so Flossie’s father did not object to his wife’s tears. But he refused to let her tell about Flossie.

  “We will not tell the police she is missing!” hissed Mr. Van Stead. “What are you thinking of? You told me you had her under control. As usual, you have done a very poor job of bringing up our daughters.”

  “I’m sorry,” she wept. “Flossie has always been sneaky. But we must find her, because the boy is enclosed upon the ship. We cannot have Flossie alone in the city! Think of the dreadful consequences.”

  “Flossie will suffer whatever she must suffer. By morning she will be on the doorstep begging forgiveness. In the meantime, we will not have our names dragged into this scandal. Look at the reporters! Look at the laughing guests! Look at Hiram—he’s taken his shoe off, he’s beating the wall with it. He’s going to attack the groom.”

  “But perhaps Devonny too had an unsuitable hope. Perhaps there is yet another stonecutter! Surely the girls are together. We cannot have poor Mr. Stratton crazed with fear when we might have the answer at hand. And Devonny’s mother! And the unfortunate groom! We must tell!”

  “We have three other daughters to consider. We will solve this on our own. We will not have anything as vulgar as police in our private lives. I forbid you to speak.”

  This time Devonny did not flinch when the radio burst into raucous shrieking music. She did not cry out when vehicles swept past each other on the road as if going to war. She told herself she could do nothing until Annie had sent the reply explaining how to reach Strat. This was a temporary hell, and shortly her brother would save her. “Tell me,” she said, “what is soccer?”

  The topic made him happy. A soccer smile decorated his face, and for a moment Devonny rather liked Tod. She imagined him running around a field, in the midst of laughing little girls. It was so sweet. They would wear long flowered skirts, possibly even split skirts, with white stockings to cover their ankles.

  “My team is sponsored by Laura’s Fabric Shop, so be sure you root for Laura’s. I’m only doing this because I have to, by the way. My mother is making me. The fathers only want to coach boys,” said Tod, “so opening day of soccer season, the program was short of coaches.”

  The fathers will volunteer only for their sons, thought Devonny. So one thing has not changed in a hundred years.

  The game included a parade of parents and critical observers. Laura’s Fabric Shop was up against Sam’s Garage, a group of six- and seven-year-olds from another neighborhood. It was immediately clear that Sam’s included born athletes: girls who knew where the ball was. Tod’s players might just as well have been wandering around Laura’s Fabric Shop.

  Tod stuck Devonny on the bleachers. Once he looked back at her, huddled and afraid, and he was furious with her, and furious with something else, too, though he wasn’t sure what. He knew one thing: No girl on his team was ever going to cringe and shrink like that! He was going to have fighters! “Laura’s!” he yelled. “C’mere. We’re gonna win this one. I wanna see goals!”

  But his little players clumped around the ball, preventing action. They’re little, he reminded himself, I’ve got to be generous, and not yell at them because—

  Letitia made a goal.

  Tod had never expected such a thing. The girls recognized Tish’s achievement and were wildly proud, hopping up and down and running to tell their parents.

  Even Devonny was yelling, “Go, Laura’s!” just like the parents.

  He had to herd his team back on the field, because they had assumed the game was over. They were surprised and a little irritated to find they had to play more. But they loved him, so they tried hard. Tod was surprised and a little irritated to find that he loved them back.

  After the game, the little girls shrieked good-bye, and waved, and told their parents—for the hundredth time—“That’s Tod, Mommy. Daddy, Daddy, look, there’s Tod!”

  “Oh, Tod!” cried Devonny as they got back in the car. She clapped her hands together prayer fashion, and stared at him worshipfully. “You were wonderful! The game was wonderful! I was allowed to run like that when I was little.”

  Normally Tod Lockwood was good at not thinking about things.

  When his parents separated last year, he had carefully not thought about it. When his father moved in with Miss Bartten, Tod had thought about it briefly, removed himself, and stopped thinking about it. When he was clearly going to fail Spanish III, he had stopped thinking about it; and when he didn’t have enough money for his car insurance, he had stopped thinking about driving, and instead thought about how to earn money. As each step of selling designer water collapsed, he stopped thinking about that, too, and moved right on to the next attempt.

  The key to success was deciding what to think about. Discard the side issues.

  Devonny Stratton had just stopped being a side issue.

  When she beamed at him, proud of him, and when she bravely did the seat belt by herself, and when she said, “Pass that car, Tod,” just like a regular person, who couldn’t stand going a mere forty in a twenty-five mile zone, Tod had the most surprising daydream of his life.

  Not money. Not power. Not school. Not sports. Not cars.

  He wanted to kiss her.

  He quickly turned his attention to the traffic. A guy let himself go down that path, he was finished. It was over. Tod was not falling into this trap.

  Flossie had stood in one place too long.

  She had attracted attention, something a lady without an escort must never do.

  Two men sidled up to her. Dirty strangers with dirty fingernails and bad teeth. Depraved. A lady had male relatives to protect her from this.

  Flossie did not move. Let them do as they wanted. She was ruined anyway.

  “Miss?” said one of them. “You in trouble?”

  She could not speak. No doubt this was the usual ploy, pretending to be kind.

  “What’s wrong, honey?” said the other man.

  A street person dared address her in such familiar terms? Her father would have him whipped.

  But if she went home, her father would have Flossie whipped. She could not bear it. She could not go home. She could not admit how stupid, how pathetic she had been. She thought of the rosy sunlit days at Devonny’s, dancing behind a holly tree, kissing a letter, holding Johnny’s cheeks in her hands. He shaved, but not closely, and when she touched him, it rasped her palms and made her shiver from limb to limb.

  It had meant nothing.

  “You look like you’re gonna jump off the Brooklyn Bridge. You gonna have a baby and no husband? It’s not the end of the world, honey. You go to the shelter for wayward girls, you have the baby and it goes into an orphanage and you have your life back.”

  A wayward girl, thought Flossie.

  “Come on, we’ll take you to a shelter. They got ’em for girls, you can’t stay on the street.”

  She let the men walk her where they chose. In her fragile cloth slippers, it was a terrible journey. It hurt her feet, and hurt her heart. She did not know, and hardly cared, how they might hurt her body.

  The pain of Johnny not showing up was so great that more pain hardly mattered. She deserved pain, acting without her parents’ permission.

  Whatever these men wish to do to me, she thought, I will submit. Girls must submit, and I have fought the rule.

  “Extra, extra!” shouted the newsboys on the corners of New York.

  They wore short pants, held up by suspenders. The sleeves of their white shirts were baggy and soft. Their bow ties were soiled and their caps were ancient.

  But they sold a lot of newspapers.

  BRIDE KIDNAPPED! said the headlines. GROOM OFFERS MILLION-DOLLAR DIAMOND NECKLACE FOR HER SAFE RETURN.

  SIX

  Gianni Annello had lost all his English.

  Not a syllable would come to him. All his hard-earned language, his night classes, his immigrant studies. Gone.
<
br />   He screamed in Italian. He kicked in Italian. He bludgeoned the door in Italian and then he broke everything in the tiny cabin in Italian.

  It did not matter what language he swore in.

  He was a prisoner.

  On his wedding day, going to his bride. The money for their marriage certificate in his pocket. The slender gold ring for Flossie’s finger, sewn by his mother to the inside of his vest … and he was a prisoner on a boat sailing to Europe.

  He wanted to be like his father: a man who could be counted on. Flossie would be alone in New York as night moved in. A girl like that. And he, Gianni Annello, responsible!

  Flossie was fragile. She had been cared for all her life and had never done a thing by herself. He thought of the rough edges of this city, and he thought of Flossie, who had never seen them, would not know how to handle them, could be raped or beaten, her clothes and jewels ripped from her slender body.

  Once more he attacked the door, and once more the door remained solid against his thrashing.

  He prayed: God, let Flossie not have the courage to leave the wedding after all. God, keep Flossie so afraid of her parents that she does not leave the church.

  But religion was for women, and if there was a God, God knew that Gianni didn’t believe.

  Flossie would slip away and run to meet him in the square, for the romance and the danger of eloping had appealed to her fancy.

  He hated himself. There truly had been danger, and he, Gianni, had laughed it off.

  Flossie must rescue herself, but she was from a world where girls did not. He had not had time to teach her what his mother knew. It was his mother’s courage that had picked up a suffering family, taken it to a foreign and terrifying shore, forced husband and sons to learn the English language and the American way. And in this hard hard country, in this hard hard world, Gianni’s mother had not only reared her sons, but saved enough money to buy the four-story tenement in which they lived. There was nothing his mother could not face.

  But Flossie …

  Hugh-David Winden had read a wonderful book called Beau Geste, in which the hero (Beau was his nickname, because he was so handsome; did such a nickname suit Hugh-David also?) gallantly saved his aunt from disgrace by covering up her theft of a valuable gem. To cast suspicion on himself, Beau left England to join the French Foreign Legion and die a grim but brave death in the desert.

  Hugh-David was not interested in the French Foreign Legion nor in death, but he wanted to be a hero. Surrounded by ruffians, he felt the need to demonstrate his noble heritage. He did not offer the diamonds for love, but because the gesture made him feel heroic. Or at least, facing in a heroic direction.

  Having made the offer, and impressed the entire city, he suddenly wondered how he would face his family, having very possibly given Granny’s pebbles to some cutthroat in Manhattan.

  Miles and Gordon had drifted away. They could slither between scandals and remain untarnished. He was alone. Because a hero deserved comfort, he moved his belongings into the Waldorf-Astoria, a magnificent hotel he usually enjoyed.

  He waited for the police to accomplish something intelligent, although they had not impressed him as capable of that. He found a deck of cards and began a favorite variety of solitaire.

  It was not sufficiently absorbing. In his head rang the voice of his bride: I will marry a man with spunk. You are horse manure.

  When they got home from soccer practice, Annie’s answer was waiting.

  Tod—

  Wow! How are you going to handle the parents? Tell Devonny Strat did not come with me; I think he’s an archaeologist in Egypt, although when I did library research about local history and the Stratton family, I couldn’t prove it. Anyway, she’s not going to find her brother in this century in our town. Did she actually jilt the guy at the altar? Way cool. Wish I had been there. Will he kill her if she goes home, and will she stay with us forever? I could use a sister. Don’t let her leave til I get there.

  Devonny clung to Tod, in spite of his yelling at her never to do that. “Strat is not here? What shall I do, Tod? I cannot manage without him! He must be here! That’s why I came! He must rescue me. And not just me! What about my mother?”

  “You came to get away from the wedding,” said Tod. “Nobody promised you Strat would be here. And you have to manage without him because he isn’t here. Now stop whining. My mother just drove up, and she doesn’t like people who aren’t self-sufficient.”

  Nellie Fish loved her clothing: a simple brown dress, fitted at the waist, with plain long sleeves, and over the dress, a snow-white apron, so heavily starched it could stand up by itself. The apron reached the floor and tied in the back with a wide sash that stood out behind Nellie like a Christmas bow. Buttoned to the waist of the apron was a bib so heavily starched it did not bend, and its straps were wide and crunchy over her shoulders. Buttoned to the wrists of the brown dress were cuffs as rigid as the bib, and buttoned to the neckline was her gleaming white collar, solid with starch. Nellie’s posture was vertical and rigid, to prevent any creases in the beautiful stiff starch of her beautiful stiff white uniform.

  Her black hair was piled high on her head, stuck with a dozen pins to keep it there, topped by a tiny white ruff that marked her out for the hotel guests as their own personal floor maid.

  She was stunned and thrilled to be maid for an English gentleman. A title! Think of it! Nellie had never been close to a celebrity before. It was wonderful. The gentleman’s clothing was simply amazing. And when it turned out that this was the very Lord Winden whose bride had vanished from the church during the wedding march … why, Nellie was the most important person on the staff. Everyone was counting on her to bring back the details and quote the conversations.

  Nellie was not going to let them down.

  She was eighteen herself, and very pretty. What if her beauty overwhelmed Lord Winden? Perhaps in his hour of need and betrayal, she, Nellie Fish, would fill his heart.

  But sadly, when she answered Lord Winden’s ring, he was not alone: Another lady and gentleman had arrived. Nellie rolled in a cart for late supper and began arranging the linens and silver and crystal and flowers.

  Not one word was spoken by any of the three guests. Nellie knew how to solve this: out of sight, a maid was out of mind.

  Nellie bustled into the bathroom to check towels and be sure that the gentleman (because men were not gentlemen in the way they treated their discarded underwear) had not left an unmentionable on the floor, which would shock the lady should she be forced to enter this room.

  Sure enough, the three began to talk, and Nellie stood quietly, memorizing each word, as she folded and refolded the towels.

  “Why, Tod, darling, I’m so proud of you!” cried his mother. “Of course you may stay with us for a few days, Devonny. How awful to have your host family turn out so rude and difficult. You may have our daughter’s room. Her name is Annie. You can probably wear her clothes, too. She left a completely full closet here even though she shipped a hundred boxes.”

  Devonny had a wardrobe like that. She could ship a hundred boxes and still have a full closet. She smiled and tried to maintain her British accent and not inadvertently use a swear word like secretary.

  “Whew. Dinner. Let’s go to McDonald’s,” said the mother. “I’m whipped, I can’t look a kitchen in the eye.”

  Tod whispered in Devonny’s ear. “Restaurant,” he explained.

  Devonny had dined in public. Some of her best memories were the restaurants of Paris. “I shall put on a dress,” she said happily.

  “Darling,” said Mrs. Lockwood, ignoring the dress idea, and swooping Devonny and Tod back into the dark and scary car stable.

  They drove through fireworks. There were lights everywhere. Inside buildings, words were lit up in red or blue. Huge signs stood by the side of the road, with their own lighting systems. Imagine having reading material stuck up in the air like that.

  People’s houses and offices were lighted, the str
eets were lighted, and most of all, the motorcars were lighted. Devonny had never imagined darkness without the dark. It was beautiful and wonderful. And a beautiful, wonderful thought came to her! Annie believed Strat was alive and well, digging up pharaohs in Egypt! So Annie had done her part—she’d saved Strat. But Strat was not here to do his part—saving Devonny.

  The restaurant was appalling.

  The tables were not set. There were no waiters. People kept their coats on and actually lined up to be given a tray of food, like beggars at the Salvation Army.

  Devonny was horrified. Families were bringing children into a situation like this.

  She did not recognize the food. She thought of Flossie—was she Mrs. Annello by now?—eating unknown foods with her new Italian family. She thought of Hugh-David, no doubt eating alone in his hotel room rather than facing the world that had seen him jilted; she thought of her mother—

  My mother, thought Devonny Stratton. My mother.

  She looked at Tod’s mother, striding around, knowing what to do. Devonny’s mother had never taken a step like that. Aurelia Stratton had never known what to do. The one step Aurelia took—threatening Hiram Stratton—had been the most stupid and dangerous of her life.

  Devonny was not sure she loved a mother who could connive a hard fate for a daughter, and yet Devonny loved her mother completely. She forgave her without needing facts. This was her mother, and Devonny could not let Mama suffer.

  I am caught here in this dreadful public place, thought Devonny, and where is my mother, and what can I do to save her from Father’s wrath?

  I can do nothing.

  Tod grabbed a tray overflowing with packages but not food. He elbowed Devonny toward a tiny pretend table.

  How much time had gone by on Devonny’s wedding day? What was happening in New York at this very moment, a hundred years ago? Was Father punishing Mama? Was he using a physical method? He had been known to use his riding whip. He had used his belt on Strat often enough.