Philip Van Doren Stern (ed)

by Travelers In Time

  "Spare us a copper or a mouthful o' food, kind gentleman!" the

  woman whined. "I've got two dear little bybies starvin'-- "

  Trimmer made a gesture towards the door.

  " 'Op it!" he said. "I've got precious little for myself, let alone for you."

  "I'll give you a wish in exchange, pretty gentleman—a good wish,

  a wish o' wonderment for you. You wouldn't grudge a bit o' bread

  for my precious children, pretty gentleman? You--- "

  Trimmer advanced upon her almost threateningly.

  "Pop orf!" he cried. "Did you 'ear what I said? Pop orf!"

  The ragged woman drew herself up so that she seemed to grow much taller. She stared at him with an intensity that made him fall back a step as if her very gaze were a concrete thing which had pushed him. She raised her open hands above the level of her shoulders.

  "Then may the bitterest curse----- "

  In a moment the boy had caught one of her hands and was trying to clap his own hand over her mouth.

  "Mother, mother," he cried, "for God's sake------ "

  Trimmer stared at the pair in something like horror. He did not believe in curses. He had all the materialism of the true Cockney. But the intensity of the woman's manner, the sudden queemess in her eyes for which the cast did not wholly account, and the boy's evident fear worked on his undeveloped imagination.

  "All right, missus," he said, a little surprised at his own soothing tone. "You don't want to tyke on like that."

  The intensity of the woman's manner subsided a little.

  "A bite o' food for me and my starvin' family. 'Twas all I asked."

  Trimmer persuaded himself that he was sorry for her. He was not essentially ill-natured. Casting about in his mind for something that he could give her without leaving himself the poorer, he bethought him of some biscuits which had gone soft and pappy through having been kept too long in stock. He went to the tin, emptied its contents into a large bag, and handed the bag to the woman.

  She took it without thanks, picked out a biscuit, and nibbled at it. He saw the queerness come back into her eyes.

  "A strange gift you have given me, master," she said, "and a strange gift I give you in return. When night turns to morning, between the minute and the hour is your time."

  Once more the boy seemed disturbed.

  "Mother!" he cried, in expostulation.

  "I have said what I have said," she answered. "The end shall be of his own seeking. Between the minute and the hour!"

  With that, slowly, they passed out of the shop. Trimmer, as he locked the door behind them, reflected that it was a "rum start." He noticed that his hand trembled as it turned the key.

  For no reason that he could translate into the language of his own thoughts the woman's words haunted Trimmer. He denied to himself that he was in any way afraid; he was merely curious as to what meaning might be attached to what she had said. Had she a real thought in her head, or had she been trying to frighten him with meaningless rubbish?

  Several days passed and Trimmer, in his leisure, still vexed his mind with the conundrum. He answered it in a half satisfactory manner. When night turned to morning was technically twelve o'clock midnight. After that it was called A.M., which to him meant nothing. Between the minute and the hour! That must mean the minute before midnight. But why was that his time? What had she meant by her vague threat, if, indeed, she had meant anything at all?

  Trimmer was generally in bed before eleven and asleep very shortly afterwards, but about ten days later he sat up late in the closed shop, working at his accounts. He was almost done when he glanced up at the little striking clock which he kept on the shelf behind the counter. It wanted just two minutes to the hour of midnight.

  Trimmer was not nervous by temperament, but a man sitting up late alone and at work may be excused if he finds himself the victim of strange fancies. In another minute it would be what the old woman had called his time, and once again he asked himself what she had meant by that. Had she meant that he would die at that hour?

  He rose and went to the door of the shop, his gaze still on the clock. The upper panels of the door were glass and screened by a green linen blind. Outside he could hear a late tram, moaning on its way to the depot. He was grateful for this friendly sound from the familiar workaday world.

  He lifted the curtain and peered through the glass, and then, before his eyes were accustomed to the darkness outside and he could see anything save his own wan reflection, something happened which sent a sudden rush of blood to his heart. The noise of the tram had ceased, and ceased in such a way that the crack of a pistol would have been less startling than this sudden silence. It was not that the tram had suddenly stopped. Afterwards, fumbling for phrases, he recorded that the sound "disappeared." This is a contradiction in terms, but it is sufficiently graphic to serve for what he intended to express.

  A moment later, and he was looking out upon an altered world. There were no tram-lines, no pavement, no houses opposite. He saw coarse, greyish grasses stirring in a wind which cried out in an unfamiliar voice. Trembling violently, he unlocked the door and looked out.

  A slim crescent of moon and a few stars dimly illumined a landscape without houses, a place grown suddenly strange and dreadful.. Where the opposite villas should have been was the edge of a forest, thick and black and menacing. He stepped out, and his foot slid through spongy grass, ankle-deep in mud and slime. He looked back fearfully, and there was his shop with its open door, standing alone. The other jerry-built shops which linked up with it had vanished. It seemed forlorn and ridiculous and out of place, a toy shop standing alone in a wilderness.

  Something cold fell on to his hand and made him start. Instantly he knew that it was a drop of sweat. His hair was saturated, his face running. Then he told himself that this was nightmare, that if he could but cry out aloud he would wake up. He cried out and heard his voice ring out hoarsely over the surrounding desolation. From the forest, the cry of some wild animal answered him.

  No, this was no dream, or, if it were, it was one of a kind altogether beyond his experience. Where was he? And how had he come to step out of his door into some strange place thousands of miles away from Nesthall?

  But was he thousands of miles or—thousands of years? An un-wontedly quick perception made him ask the question of himself. The land around him was flat, after the dreary nature of Middlesex. Fronting him, a few miles away, was the one hill which he had seen every day of his life, so that he knew by heart the outline of it against the sky. But it was Harrow Hill no more. A dense forest climbed its slope. And over all there brooded an aching silence charged with terror.

  Curiosity had in him, to some extent, the better of fear. Cautiously he moved a little away from his shop, but cast continual backward glances at it to make sure that it was still there, while he stepped lightly and carefully over the swampy ground. Away to the left were open marshlands, and he could see a wide arc of the horizon. He could see no river, but vaguely he made out the contours of what he knew to be the Thames Valley. And not a house nor any living thing in sight!

  He turned once more to look at his shop. It was still there, its open door spilling light on the bog grasses which grew to the edge of the threshold. And as he turned he saw a low hill away to his half-left—a hill which he could not recognize. He had taken a dozen steps towards it when his heart missed a beat, and he heard himself scream out aloud in an agony of terror. The hill moved.'

  It was not a slow movement. There was something impetuous and savage in this sudden heaving-up of the huge mound. With movement the mass took shape from shapelessness. He saw outlined against the dim sky a pair of blunt ears set on a flat, brainless, reptilian head. Shapeless webbed feet tore at the ground in the ungainly lifting of the huge and beastly carcase. Two dull red lights suddenly burned at Trimmer, and he realized that the monster was staring at him.

  As it stared he saw the long slit of a mouth open, and a great tongue, a
dirty white in colour, passed in slobberly expectation over the greenish lips. There was that about the movement which caused the soul of Trimmer to grow sick within him.

  New terror broke the spell cast by the old. The nerves of motion were given back to him. He turned and ran, screaming wildly, arms outflung, towards the open door of his shop.

  Behind him he heard the Tiring lumbering in clumsy pursuit. The ground reverberated suddenly under its huge webbed feet. He heard the long reptilian body flopping heavily in his wake, heard its open mouth emitting strange wheezing cries full of a hateful yearning.

  It was moving quickly, too. The sounds behind him gained upon him with a maddening rapidity. He could smell the creature's hot foetid breath. With one last despairing effort he gained the door of his shop and flung himself across the threshold into what seemed but a paltry chance of safety. Frenziedly he kicked out behind him at the door, closing it with a crash, and fell gasping across his counter.

  Almost on the instant the little clock on the shelf began to strike. And sharp upon the stroke he heard a sudden moaning outside. His strained heart leaped again, but in the fraction of a moment he had recognized the sound. It was the tram resuming what had seemed to him its interrupted journey.

  The clock went on striking. He looked at it in blank bewilderment. It was striking the hour of twelve, midnight.

  Now he had paid little attention to time, but estimated that he had spent something like half an hour in the strange and awful world outside his shop. Yet it had turned a minute to twelve when the change happened. And now here was his clock only just striking the hour.

  He staggered to the door, and as he did so the tram passed, throwing a procession of twinkling lights along the top of his window. The curtain on the door was still raised a little, showing where he had peeped out. He looked through and saw gleaming tram-rails, the familiar pillar-box on the comer, the garden gate of Holmecroft opposite. Wherever he had been he was—and he thanked God for it—back in To-day.

  The clock finished striking the hour, the sounds of the tram grew fainter in the distance, and silence recaptured her hold upon the night.

  Trimmer edged away from the door. He was still sweating profusely, and his heart was still racing. He looked down at his feet. His cheap, worn boots were quite dry.

  "God!" he ejaculated aloud. "What a dream!"

  A fit of shuddering seized him.

  "That thing! Ugh! It was like one of them things on the postcards what chase the pre'istoric blokes—only worse! I didn't dream that! I couldn't have done! I couldn't have run like that and yelled like I did, in a dream. I couldn't have been so surprised, and reasoned things out so clear! Besides, 'ow could I have fallen asleep like that in one second? No, it wasn't no dream! Then what—what in God's name was it?"

  3

  Next day Trimmer s few regular customers noticed that he looked ill and preoccupied. He handed the wrong article and the wrong change. His lips moved as if he were talking to himself.

  As a matter of fact, he was trying to convince himself that his experience of the night before was a dream—trying and failing. What he half believed was something at which his Cockney common-sense rose in rebellion. By some law contrary to that of Nature he had been free to wander in another age while Time, as we count it, had stood still and waited for him. Either that or he was mad.

  He determined to keep his clock exactly right according to Greenwich time, and be on the watch that night just before the stroke of twelve to see if the same thing happened again. But this time he would not venture out of To-day, would not leave his shop and risk the nameless dangers that awaited him in another age.

  Eagerly and yet fearfully he awaited the coming of night. At nine o'clock he went down to the Station Hotel and stayed there until closing time, drinking brandy. Having returned to his shop, he paced the parlour at the back until ten minutes to twelve, when he took a candle into the shop and waited.

  Fearfully he stared through the lifted blind on the door and out

  over the steam-tarred road. It was raining gently, and he saw the

  drops dancing on the surface of a puddle. He watched them until

  he had almost hypnotized himself; until----------

  He felt himself start violently. It was as if the road and the house opposite had given themselves a sudden, convulsive twitch. Suddenly and amazingly it was not dark, but twilight. Opposite him, instead of a row of houses, was a hedge, with a rude rustic gate set in it. He found himself looking across fields. He saw a cluster of cows, a haystack, beyond a further hedge the upturned shafts of a derelict plough.

  The road was still there, but it had changed out of knowledge. It was narrower, rutted, and edged with grass. As he looked he heard a jingling of bells, and a phaeton, with big yellow wheels, drawn by a high-stepping white horse, came gliding past.

  Wonder rather than fear was his predominating emotion. The musical tooting of a horn startled him, and he heard the crisp sound of trotting horses and the lumbering of heavy wheels.

  Into view came a coach and four, with passengers inside and out, a driver, with many capes, and a guard perched up behind pointing his long, slim horn at Harrow Hill. Immediately he recognized their clothes as something like those he had seen in pictures, on the covers of the boys' highwaymen stories he read and sold.

  "It's safe enough," he reflected, with a strange elation. "Why, it ain't more than a hundred and fifty years ago!"

  He wrenched open the door of his shop and passed out into the twilight of a June evening in the eighteenth century. Looking back, he saw that his shop stood alone as before, but this time it broke the line of a hawthorn hedge, on which red and white blossom was decaying and dying. The scent of it blended in his nostrils with the odour of new-mown hay.

  He felt now eager and confident, entirely fearless. He was safe from the prehistoric horror that had attacked him the night before. Why, he was in an age of beer and constables and cricket matches.

  With light steps he began to walk up the road towards London. It was his privilege now to wander without danger in another age, and see things which no other living man had ever seen. An old yokel, leaning against a gate, stared at him, went on staring, and, as he drew nearer, climbed the gate and made his way hurriedly across a hayfield. This reminded him that he looked as strange to the people of this age as they looked to him. He wished he had known, so that he could have hired an old costume and thus walked inconspicuously among them.

  He must have walked half a mile without coming upon one single familiar landmark. A finger-post told him what he already knew— that he was four miles from Ealing Village. He paused outside an inn to read a notice which announced that the stage-coach Highflyer, plying between London and Oxford, would arrive at the George at Ealing (D.V.) at 10.45 A-M- on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays. He was turning away, having read the bill, when he first saw Miss Marjory.

  She was, if you please, a full seventeen years of age, and husband-high according to the custom of her times. She wore a prim little bonnet, a costume of royal blue, and carried a silk parasol which, when open, must have looked ludicrously small. He had one full glance at her piquantly pretty face and saw, for the fraction of an instant, great blue eyes staring at him in frank wonderment. She lowered her gaze abruptly, with an air of conscious modesty, when she saw that he had observed her.

  Hitherto, as far as the strange circumstances permitted, Trimmer had felt entirely normal. That is to say that his emotions and outlook were in keeping with a man of his age, station, education and habit of mind. Now came a change, sudden, bewildering, well-nigh overwhelming.

  Once he had been in a state which, for want of a better phrase, he called being "in love." He had "walked out" with a young lady who was a draper's assistant. After a while she had deserted him because of the superior attractions of a young clerk in a warehouse. He had been wounded, but not deeply wounded. Marriage was not necessary to his temperament, or, as he put it, he could get along without women.
Not for the last sixteen years had he thought of love until that moment, when he, the waif of another century, beheld Miss Marjory.

  It was as if some strange secret were revealed to him on the instant. The ecstasy of love which engulfed him like a wave told him that here was his true mate, his complement according to Nature, bom into this world, alas! one hundred and fifty years too early for him. Yet, for all that, by a miracle, by witchcraft, by some oversetting of the normal laws, the gulf had been bridged, and they stood now face to face. He walked towards her, fumbling in his mind for something to say, some gallantry preliminary to street flirtations such as happened around him every day.

  "Good evening, miss," he said.

  He saw the blush in her cheek deepen, and she answered without regarding him:

  "Oh, sir, I pray you not to molest me. I am an honest maiden alone and unprotected."

  "I'm not molestin' you, miss. And you needn't be alone and unprotected unless you like."

  The maiden's eyelids flickered up and then down again.

  "Oh, fie on you, sir!" she said. "Fie on you for a bold man! I would have you know that my father is a highly respected mercer and drives into London daily in his own chaise. I have been brought up to learn all the polite accomplishments. 'Twould not be seemly for me to walk and talk with strangers."

  "There's exceptions to every rule, miss."

  Once more she gave him a quick modest glance.

  "Nay, sir, but you have a pretty wit. 'Tis said that curiosity is a permitted weakness to us women. I vow that you are a foreigner. Your accents and strange attire betray you. Yet I have not the wit to guess whence you come, nor the boldness to ask."

  "I'm as English as you are, miss," Trimmer protested, a little hurt.

  The ready blush came once more to her cheek.

  "Your pardon, sir, if I did mistake you for one of those mincing Frenchies. Nay, be not offended. I have heard tell that there is something vastly attractive about a Frenchy, so, if I made the error, I