An hour went by.
Annie thought of Mexico, and warmth, and Harriett getting well.
“Moss,” called Strat wearily from the sickroom. “Annie.”
Harriett Ranleigh was dead.
She had managed to hang on for the only really important thing: the presence of the boy she loved. And when she had that, it was enough.
Death was not supposed to win!
Annie wanted to beat her fists against Death’s chest, and kick Death in the shins, and shriek obscenities at Death. But Death had so obviously come for Harriett. There was something so completely missing from Harriett now. Not just breathing, not just heartbeats.
The beautiful soul of Harriett Ranleigh was gone forever.
Annie had never seen death. In her century, death was kept neatly in the hospital. You didn’t actually ever get near it.
In 1898, death was casual. The nurse did not flinch. Other patients, a man named Charlie and a girl named Beanie, were not surprised. Even Strat, who wept, was not shaken. The girl-like thing in his arms was no longer dear Harriett. He held her—it—for some time, and then gently lowered what had once been Harriett back into the pillows and kissed the forehead and did not let go of the limp hands.
Then he faced Annie. He did not wipe away his tears. They lay motionless on his face, defying gravity, a memorial to Harriett. “She gave you her love, Annie,” said Strat. “She asked that I name my first daughter Harriett,” he said, “and I gave her my word.”
Annie could not look at them anymore. She stared out the window. White birches with black twigs gathered along a path. How feminine the birches were. Young girl trees. Harriett would not see spring. No color green. No sunlight on meadows, no birds singing, no warmth of summer.
If I had known, she thought, if Time had told me, I would have brought antibiotics and medications and cures. How cruel and vicious Time is, to let one generation get well, but not another.
Strat’s eyes were shiny with grief. “Annie, without you, I would not have had this great gift. You gave me this. We made peace, Harriett and I, and I held her. She did not cross the bar alone. I was with her.”
“You must let go now, sir,” said Moss calmly. “I will prepare the body. Lockwood, I will need your assistance. Mr. Stratton, here is Miss Harriett’s dear friend, Charlie, who will sit with you in your sorrow.”
Florinda fanned herself. California was astonishing. Every single day it was warm. It never once rained and the sky didn’t turn gray. Florinda felt that California had possibilities. Of course, they had no Society, and people here were vulgar. But each day you woke up with the sense that all would be well, whereas in New York you often woke up convinced that nothing could ever go well.
She could hardly wait for her stepdaughter, Devonny, to arrive. Florinda had met all sorts of adorable young men. They were all poor, and all needed Devonny’s fortune, but that was to be expected. The important thing was, they were not Walker Walkley.
She pondered the mysterious telegram.
FLORINDA TELL DEVONNY HER MONEY WAS WELL SPENT STOP FIRST GOAL REACHED STOP MUCH LOVE ANNA SOPHIA.
Well, of course, Florinda remembered every single detail of the beautiful Miss Lockwood, and the scandal and the excitement and the chase! And most of all, the delicious hour in which she, Florinda, saved them all from evil.
Anna Sophia is back! thought Florinda. Her mind could not compass such an incredible thing.
Any message insisting that money had a good use and that people loved each other was a good message. Still, Florinda wished she knew what the first goal was, and what the second would be.
“Florinda!” bellowed her husband.
She tucked the telegram safely away and hastened to his side. Hiram Stratton, Sr., had a very large side. He was consuming even more food and wine here in California than he had in New York. It was quite astonishing.
He just wanted to gaze upon her. Florinda did her very best to look lovely and pale. Staying pale was not an easy undertaking in southern California.
“I have just received a telegram!” he thundered.
Florinda quailed.
“My son has escaped from the asylum!” he shouted.
Florinda just managed not to smile in triumph. Undoubtedly, money well spent. “Ah, sir,” she said to her husband, “it comes from your side of the family. That courage in adversity! That determination! That physical strength. That relentless quality.”
He looked at her.
“No doubt,” said Florinda serenely, “Strat has recovered. I am so proud of him. Are you not proud, Hiram? How lovely it will be to have your son back among us.”
“He hurt Dr. Wilmott quite badly.”
Florinda shook her head. “Doctor should have known better than to interfere with a Stratton.” She kissed her husband’s cheek. It was huge, and rolled down into more than one chin. She said, “We are blessed, aren’t we, Hiram?”
Florinda felt the heat of the beautiful telegram in her pocket. She would spend the next few days saying fine, fine things about her stepson, Strat. Then it would be time to begin saying bad, bad things about Walk. She beamed at Hiram. “How clever you were to come to California, my dear. The people here are quite dim. You have completely conquered them.”
He glared, waving his telegram. “Did you have something to do with this?”
“Hiram, really. I’m only a woman. It takes a man to defeat walls and locks and chains and guards.”
“This is true,” said Hiram Stratton, recognizing the manhood in his son.
“Hi, Mom,” said Tod. “How’s Tokyo?”
Apparently Tokyo was wonderful. Work was wonderful. Everything was very exciting. And how was Tod?
“I’m fine.”
And was his father there in the house, as he was supposed to be? Mom didn’t want to talk to Dad, or anything like that, she just wanted confirmation.
“Dad’s here,” said Tod cheerfully. “He’s doing laundry right now.”
“Your father is doing laundry? I find that hard to believe.”
“Me too,” said Tod. The person who found it hardest to believe was of course Dad himself.
“Let me talk to Annie,” said Mom.
“She isn’t around, Mom. I’ll give her the message, though. She’ll be sorry she didn’t get your call.” Big lie. The days were piling up and he didn’t have the slightest idea where old Annie was. Tod hated her for it. But he wasn’t going to have Mom out there on the other side of the world having kittens over it.
“Everything’s cool, Mom.” He told her about school, and his job at Burger King, and how the ice hockey team was doing.
“It doesn’t sound as if you miss me at all,” she said, too casually.
“I miss you a lot, Mom. Especially in the morning when I get up and it’s cold and the house is empty.”
“Empty?” she said. “But—”
“Of you, I mean. You know. No coffee perking and stuff.” He was going to be almost as good at lying as his sister by the time his parents wrapped this up.
No.
Nobody could ever lie as much nor as well as Annie Lockwood.
Charlie listened to the description of the insane asylum. He was not sorry for young Stratton. Charlie didn’t care how many excuses were produced; the fellow should have been at Harriett’s side all along.
Charlie was full of grief.
He had seen so much death. And now Harriett was lost. Already the world seemed colder and thinner. Less worth the fight. One more good soul was gone.
Charlie was very, very tired.
For the first time, he admitted to himself that he was not going to make it either. He, too, would lie here forever, in the cold, cold ground, under the shadow of the mountains.
The Stratton boy stroked a brass ring four inches in diameter, thick as a thumb, hung with heavy, almost architectural keys. The doors they opened were probably just as thick and brutal as the keys.
Lockwood, the servant, came striding right up to t
hem. When had this girl gotten off the boat? She was remarkably rude. Charlie could not imagine keeping a servant who spoke like that. “Listen, Strat,” the girl said, “enough already. This is not my kind of thing, helping Moss with that. You get me out of this.” Charlie could just barely follow her dialect. He had no idea what part of the country spoke like that.
Strat nodded and took her hand. “Come. The grounds are lovely. Let’s wander. I have things to tell you.”
Charlie was glad Harriett could not see how those two held hands. It was shocking, a man of Strat’s station with a lower-class woman like that. On the other hand, she certainly was lovely, and Charlie had once had enough energy to be impressed by things like that.
Now he just missed Harriett. He wanted to howl like a wolf on the horizon, and let the entire heavens know that he opposed the death of Harriett.
Off the huge main building was a great covered porch, its screens stored for the winter. It would have a lovely view of the lake during the summer. Now it looked out only on snow, snow, and more snow.
Strat brushed snow from a bench, and they sat together in the heat of the sun, and were strangely warm in spite of the cold.
“Annie,” he said.
It was bad news. She knew from his voice, quiet and determined, and from his face, held away from her. She had his profile, and not his eyes, and the profile was beautiful and the eyes full of secrets and pain.
She waited. His hands curled around hers as if he had never held hands before. “I love you. I love you completely,” said Strat, and his eyes filled but did not overflow. “I love you forever.”
There was a but. She already knew what it was. She had known since she stepped through Time. She shrank from it; she still thought there must be a way to defeat it. She wanted to be a daughter of the twentieth century and get what was hers. But she was here; a daughter of the nineteenth century; she must, instead, do what was right.
“But you must go home, Annie,” he said. He had no air beneath his words, and the speech lay as faint as the cold mist before their faces.
“I love you too, Strat,” she whispered. “Completely and forever.” I want us to be us, she prayed. Please, please, let there be a way for us to be together.
He waited a beat before he went on, and it was the pause of gathering strength. It hurt him. “I must stay in my century, Annie. I have things I have to do.”
“I could do them with you.” Her voice was pleading, putting more burdens upon him, trying to force things to go her way.
“Yes. And that would be wonderful. Nobody would be better company than you.” Strat was trying to smile, but it wasn’t working; his face was falling apart in grief. “But you have your family to go to, and I have mine.”
He was separating from her because of his family? These people who had hurt him so? “You’re going to California?”
“No, no, not that family. I cannot make peace with a father who had me locked up rather than listen to my side of the story.”
Annie cried, “But what about Devonny? What about your sister who sent me here? She loves you. She needs you, Strat.”
Strat gave her the sweetest, saddest smile. “Devonny doesn’t need me as much as she once did. You taught her something, Annie. You taught it to Florinda too. You taught them to be strong. They thought only men could be strong.”
I was strong, thought Annie. Like my mother. In the end, the woman I admired most was the strongest. “And your mother?” she said softly.
“That hurts,” he said. “But I cannot see her now. They would just find me. She will have to wait. The day will come.”
It sounded like prophecy, like something already written, his mother waiting, and the day would come. Poor Strat’s mother!
“I no longer believe that my father’s money is worth having, and I will make no attempt to be his heir or his son,” said Strat. “I know now what has worth.”
“Love has worth,” she said desperately, “and we love each other.”
“Oh, yes,” said Strat, and this time his full voice was there, declaring love. “Oh yes, we do love each other.” He kissed her, and it was a wonderful kiss, but she was in too much anxiety to kiss back; it was his kiss, but not hers.
“I have debts, Annie,” he whispered, “and I must pay them. My greatest debt is to you, for saving me. For bringing me to Harriett in time. I can never repay that. I can’t even try. But there is one debt I can repay.”
He was not going to tell her what the debt was. She knew from the farness in his eyes that the debt was his secret; and he would carry it through Time and history, and she would never know.
Please don’t be a gentleman, Strat. Forget honor and valor and virtue. Forget debts. Stay with me!
But she said none of it aloud, for she would have to carry this secret through Time with her too: that she was not as nice as Strat; that she wanted herself and her plans to come first, not last.
“I want my previous life,” said Strat, his voice breaking on the syllables, “to be history.”
“History,” repeated Annie. Why didn’t people cooperate with her plans? Why must they always be themselves, instead of extensions of her?
“That’s what I am to you, anyway, Annie. You told me yourself. You looked me up in archives. Ancient dusty places where the records of dead people lie.”
“You’re not there,” she said quietly. She had, after all, another parting gift for him. “You disappeared from the written record. I couldn’t find you there. You are not in the archives, Strat. You are not in history.”
“Really?” Strat was stunned and relieved. “No trial for attacking a doctor? No jail record?”
“Nothing they wrote about in the newspaper, anyway.” He won’t tell me his secrets, thought Annie, but I’ll tell him mine. “My father damaged my mother so much, Strat. He damaged all of our lives. And I had to find out if I damaged the person I loved too. I had to find out if I’m just like my father—throwing away the things that count. I was so worried about you, Strat. I longed to see you, but I really came in order to see if it was my fault.”
He had taken off the thick gloves. His cold hands cupped her cold cheeks. Two colds made a warm. She could have sat forever with those big strong hands heating her face. But they were done with forever.
“You didn’t throw me away, Annie,” he said. “You stepped back into your own Time. It took such courage. Last time, you were the one brave enough to know. You told me that you loved me enough to give me back to Harriett. Now I, too, am brave enough. We must part once more.”
She would never hear a man speak like this again. A speech of poetry and honor. She took his hands and kissed his palms and the back of his hands and the flat of his thumbs and dried her tears against them. “What will you do?”
“I’m going to Egypt,” he said, switching from poetry to adventure, and giving her the greatest grin on earth. “I’m going to excavate for mummies and kings. I’m going to find great tombs and the entrances to pyramids.”
How could she agree never to see that grin again?
“I’ll bet,” said Strat, “if you look me up in books about Egypt, you will find me.”
She swallowed. The swallow didn’t happen. She was shut off from her heart and soul and hopes. She could only pat him and silently wish him well and weep for her own dreams.
“Do you still have money, Annie?” he asked anxiously.
She dug in her pocket. She had a hundred dollars. It was a fortune in this time.
“That’ll be fine,” said Strat. “I have money too. Harriett gave me all she possessed.”
She did, too, thought Annie. Harriett died for him. She waited till he came, and she gave him her last breath, and her last love, and she took with her a promise: name your daughter after me. Whose daughter will that be? Not mine. He’s sending me away.
“I wish I had something of you, Annie. I have memory and your stories. And I will hold you in my heart, but I would like a piece of you. But the clothing and the
jewelry you are wearing are Devonny’s, it is nothing of you.”
She felt his waist. On the stolen brass key ring was a pocket knife. For a moment she stared at the blade she switched out, the gleaming fearsome sharpness of it. Then she cut a lock of her long dark hair, wound it in circles, and put it in his hand. With both her hands, she closed his fingers over it.
When he opened his hand, the hair straightened itself, and hung, a black ribbon. “The color of mourning,” he said. “I will mourn for you. For us.”
There. He had said it. Us. The word she wanted more than anything else on earth. Two letters, she thought, and they matter so much.
“You will travel safely back, won’t you?” he said, still anxious. “You did the other times. You’ll just step through, won’t you?”
She nodded. If Harriett, after all, could cross the bar to death for her journey, could not Annie cross the bar of Time for hers? How could Annie pretend to be afraid, when it was only Time she faced?
But she was afraid. If only she were with Devonny and Florinda, warm and sunny. If only … if only …
“I must go now,” said Strat. “Walk and Doctor can’t catch up to you, but they can certainly catch up to me. They will be here by nightfall, I am sure of it.”
Once again, she had had only moments with him. Why did she always have to be strong? Why couldn’t she be the one for whom it worked out, and was just right, and went on to happily ever after?
Being strong was tiring. You couldn’t go on forever, being strong.
But I don’t have to be strong forever, she thought sadly. I just have to be strong till he’s out of sight. Out of Time.
“You can step through easily?” he said once more.
“You’re sure?”
“I’m sure.”
They stood together, in that awful moment of goodbye, when there is nothing left but one person leaving and the other person staying. “I love you,” she said. The words seemed alive in the air, like the coming of snow. I love you.
The Time Travelers: Volume One Page 29