Second Sight

by David Williams

  He finished making the tea and brought two steaming cups to the table. Now that she was here, in this house, she felt awkward. She looked down at her cup. She could feel that hint of a blush on her cheeks. He must think her very strange; surely women in 1899 did not come unannounced and unaccompanied to visit alone with a man. Whatever the circumstances. The silence in the room was making her uncomfortable. She looked up—into his direct, intense eyes. He had the most unguarded face she had ever seen, yet there was something in his openness that radiated strength and force: he was not afraid of strong emotions.

  Then she did blush. “You must think me very improper.”

  “Why?” His gaze never left her face. “Because you came here? I’m grateful. At least now I know I am not going mad.”

  She grasped at that straw. “I had heard you’d broken off with your friends because they believed that. About going mad, I mean. I felt obligated to come, knowing I was the cause of it.”

  “Friends,” he said. “They don’t know what it is to desire something strongly. They couldn’t understand that I would have welcomed madness if it had brought her back to me.” He stopped, as if to check his passion. “Forgive me. I’ve been too long alone with these feelings.” A brief smile flashed under his moustache. “I’m afraid I’ve forgotten the amenities of social intercourse.”

  Uncertain how to respond, she looked down again, fiddling with her cup.

  “You must understand that your coming was something of a shock to me,” he said. “And, in a strange way, a disappointment. Since that first day on the road, seeing you, I’ve lived in a kind of unreal fever. I thought that somehow Pamela had found her way back to me, in whatever form the afterlife allows us. I was prepared to believe in anything—ghosts, spirits, the devil himself—if it would bring her back to me. So you see I cannot be too happy to learn that I was wrong.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “And I’m sorry. It’s just that, for a few days, a few weeks, that gave me hope. However bizarre.” He smiled again. “You must forgive me. You see me in a difficult time.”

  “There’s no need to forgive you. You didn’t ask me to come. I came because . . . because I chose to.”

  His eyes held hers for a moment. “I’m glad you came.”

  “I’m glad, too,” she said. The force of his gaze sent a spasm of excitement through her; her hand trembled as she set the cup down, and she felt the heat of a blush rising to her face. She was abruptly aware of her breathing, quick and agitated, of a faint dizziness beginning to spin in her head; panic nipped at her throat at the thought that she might be about to disappear before his eyes. She felt the room blur, blood draining from her face.

  “You’re very pale,” he said. “Are you all right?”

  She rose abruptly from the table. “I don’t feel well. I had better go.”

  “Can I get you something?”

  “No. Please. I have to go.”

  She wanted desperately to run, but she forced herself to walk to the door, where he stopped her, touched her gently on the arm. “You’d better wait. Let me drive you home. I’ll have to fix the buggy, but—”

  “No. Please. I can’t explain, but I have to go alone.” Panic was beating in her ears. She was only dimly aware of him beside her, his hand on her arm, opening the door for her. “Promise me,” she said, fighting the dizziness. “Please don’t follow me.”

  “You’ll come again?”

  “Yes. Tomorrow. Please. I can’t explain. . . . ”

  “I won’t follow.”

  She forced herself to walk to the corner of the house; and then she was running, skirts clutched up in one hand. She was dimly aware of the grape arbor, the tree at the back of the yard; clutching the hedge on each side, she darted down the flagstone steps and ran along the narrow dirt road toward the curve at the brow of the hill. After only a few steps the dizziness overcame her, and she sank to her knees, her head in her hands, nausea welling up in her, heart hammering in her chest, afraid she would faint dead away if it did not stop.

  And then it stopped. Suddenly. The nausea was gone; the dizziness faded quickly away. The world around her seemed very quiet. Her face still buried in her hands, she felt hardness under her feet. Pavement. From above her head came a faint steady hum. She lifted her head. The smooth paved road stretched away before her, toward the shady length of Summer House Road. The hum was coming from a transformer box on an electric pole beside the road.

  Slowly she stood up. The scrape of her boots against the pavement seemed very loud. She looked back toward the steps leading up to the yard. The house stood fat and innocent in the sun. A tremor of wonder grew inside her, rose to a quivering elation. It was real; he was real; she had actually gone back and seen him, talked to him, felt his touch on her arm. Hugging herself, she twirled in an ecstatic circle on the road, the white skirts swishing about her legs, elation singing through her.

  • • •

  That night she sat at the table after dinner, watching Michael read the latest copy of Esquire. He had edged the chair out away from the table, his legs crossed, the magazine in his lap, one hand playing with a lock of hair above his ear. Every now and then he would turn a page and reach for the cup and take a sip of coffee; then he would return to playing with his hair, his attention never having left the page. She had been watching him for some time, filled with a kind of odd, distant affection. He seemed changed, or she, having experienced what she had, was seeing him now with changed eyes. How she wanted to tell him what had happened to her. But even if he could believe it was real, she couldn’t tell him. How could she tell him that she was in love with David Reynolds, that for the first time in her life she knew what love was?

  It was strange—he would feel betrayed, and yet she knew she didn’t want to hurt him, wanted only to share the experience with him. Somehow her feeling for him hadn’t changed, and she knew now that that meant she was not in love with him, had never been in love with him. She was fond of him, but there had never been that emotion so strong it felt like a hand twisting in her insides. It had never been love, and she knew now that he would never be able to understand what love was.

  That knowledge made her faintly sad. She felt she had grown in this experience; she knew more than he did now, and she knew she had to conceal it from him, to protect him.

  But later, in bed, the lights out, her thoughts already beginning to drift toward the memory of David Reynolds, she felt herself stiffen when he nuzzled the back of her neck. His hand slid around to cup her breast through the nightgown.

  “Honey?” he murmured. “I love you.”

  “Hmmmn.”

  “Is that any way to greet your lover?”

  She heard the attempt at humor in his voice, his old impulse to tease where she had always wanted open and intimate communication. “I’m sorry, Michael. I’m very tired.”

  He began planting kisses along the nape of her neck, and she was surprised at the strength of her resistance, her own inability to respond. I’m sorry, she thought, please forgive me, I didn’t choose this. “Please, Michael. Not tonight.”

  “No?”

  “No. I’m sorry.”

  She felt his hand withdraw and slide down to rest, hesitantly, at her waist. She reached down and, sadly, feeling sorry for him, for what he did not know and she could not tell him, brought his hand to her mouth and kissed it. “I love you, Michael,” she said, like a duty, to protect him, to shield him from the truth.

  “I love you, too,” he said, and pulled away, rolling over to face the wall and go to sleep.

  She lay awake for a long time. Even though she was very tired, she couldn’t seem to sleep. Her mind was alive and restless, thinking of the look in David Reynolds’ eyes, of the story Mrs. Bates had told her, of what confronted her in the morning. She knew now what the purpose of all this was. She was faced with the task of solving a crime committed half a century before she was born—and, moreover, of solving it before it happened.

  12<
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  * * *

  WHEN SHE WOKE the next morning, the pale dawn was just seeping into the room. For an instant she was poised between sleep and waking, some half-forgotten expectation nibbling at her memory, and then, like a bubble rising to the surface of her mind, she remembered and it came flooding back, the events of the day before. She stirred, turned, and looked at Michael asleep in bed beside her. His innocence, in sleep, stirred that curiously protective urge within her again. Softly, remorsefully, she leaned down to kiss his cheek. He murmured something unintelligible and turned over, winding the blankets around him. She got out of bed and tiptoed to the window. Dew still glistened on the grass outside. She was impatient for day to begin.

  She made herself wait until ten o’clock, to make sure nothing unexpected brought Michael back from the city. When she was sure it was safe, she changed into the dress and walked down the road to the bottom of the hill. If David Reynolds saw her coming from there, she would say she had walked along the lake from town. The day was cool and gray, with a stiff wind blowing waves diagonally across the lake. The transition into the past made her apprehensive—she was still uncertain of her control—but when she closed her eyes and concentrated she felt the impulse rise naturally within her and followed it, allowed it to take her, through the dizziness, nausea and pain, to the other side. When she opened her eyes she had emerged into a clear and sunny morning, where the lake lay still and calm beneath a blue and cloudless sky. Holding her skirts out of the dust, she started up the hill toward the house.

  No one answered her knock on the door. She went around to the rear of the house. The buggy David Reynolds had been working on the day before was partially visible beyond the carriage house and, tethered to it, tail switching against the summer flies, was a saddled horse. Voices came from near the buggy. She crept across the dusty drive to the near wall of the carriage house and peered around the corner, through a protective screen of ivy climbing a lattice-work trellis. David Reynolds, dark vest hanging open over a white shirt with the sleeves rolled up, was kneeling beside the buggy, prying the hubcap from the right front wheel. On a box behind him sat a young man in what seemed an army uniform—long belted jacket with a pistol holstered at one side, a sword at the other, a wide-brimmed hat, and knee-high boots with spurs. As she watched, he struck a match against the heel of his boot and cupped it around a thin black cigar. When the cigar was lit, he flicked the match away.

  “I have half a mind to bring a squad of cavalry down here and raid that place,” he said. “I’d get her out of there.”

  David Reynolds hammered at the pry bar, popping loose the hubcap, which rolled in diminishing circles and waggled to a stop in the grass. “What did Hubbard say?”

  “I went to his office,” the young man said. “Had the very devil of a time getting in. That young clerk he’s got, Wiggins—snide little fellow if I’ve ever seen one—tried to tell me Hubbard wasn’t in, but I knew better. I’d been waiting across the street when he opened the office this morning, so I knew he was there. But I had to threaten violence to get past that Wiggins. The old man saw me then all right. He had no alternative.”

  Jennie found herself trembling. Sunlight filtered in a filmy blur of green through the ivy; a june bug traversed the endless plain of a leaf an inch away from her eyes, took wing to light in her hair. She brushed it away, scarcely able to believe she was really here again. The young man’s uniform was vaguely familiar from pictures in history books. David Reynolds, with his full sideburns and moustache, his open vest and boots, was unmistakably a figure from another time. Watching them—two nineteenth-century men beside a buggy in the morning sun, with a saddled horse waiting patiently nearby—was like peering not through a leafy trellis but through a window into history.

  David unflared the cotter pin in the hub-nut and began tapping it through with a wrench. “I don’t suppose Hubbard found it in him to be friendly.”

  “Friendly? The man was barely civil. But I expected that. He’s never hidden his dislike for me since I started courting Rachel.”

  “When had you seen him last? I suppose it must have been—”

  “Yes, poor Pamela’s funeral. Even under those circumstances he was rude. Went out of his way to keep Rachel away from me, and she in grief as she was.”

  “I suspect he wants very much to hold her to him—his oldest daughter now Pamela is gone.”

  His oldest daughter now Pamela was gone. Jennie was suddenly alert, thinking. Hubbard had to be David Reynolds’ father-in-law. It was frightening, hearing him mention so casually the man who, in a few days or weeks, was quite possibly going to kill him. A man she had first heard of three-quarters of a century from now.

  “He absolutely forbade me to come near the house,” the young man said. “I’m not to write to Rachel nor contact her in any way. He actually threatened to have me arrested if I tried to see her again. I don’t like it. The man seems almost mad.”

  “I believe he very nearly is,” David said. “At least where his daughters are concerned.”

  “I’m glad now he wasn’t home when I tried to see Rachel yesterday. That housekeeper he’s hired, Mrs. Trapp, came near setting the dogs on me as it was. But the old man might have taken a pistol to me. He implied as much this morning.” The young man shaved the ash from his cigar against his boot-heel. “The thing is, what am I to do now? I can’t see her, we can’t correspond. She’s held a virtual prisoner in the house.”

  David removed the hub-nut and placed it with the cotter pin in the hubcap. “Charles, you know I feel a certain responsibility toward Rachel. And I think nothing better could happen than for her to become your wife.” Wiping his hands on a rag, he turned to the other man. “How would you feel about spiriting her away?”

  “Eloping? But how, when I can’t even get close to her?”

  “Then you would do it?”

  “I’d do anything to get her away from that man. It’s unnatural for a father to act as he does. But how?”

  “I haven’t been to the Hubbard place since . . . since Pamela’s funeral. I haven’t yet met this Mrs. Trapp. There’s a chance I could get in and talk to Rachel. Arrange some way to do it.”

  “If it’s to be done, it has to be soon. I have to be back at the Point in a week.”

  Jennie felt something touch the hem of her dress—a dog, sniffing at her feet, looking up at her with mournful eyes. It was the same dog she had seen in the grape arbor that day at the upstairs window. Quickly, to keep it from barking, she crouched and took its head between her hands. She dodged an affectionate swipe of its tongue and was relieved to see its tail begin to wag.

  “I’ll try to see her tomorrow,” David was saying. “I’ll let you know what happens as soon as I can. In the meantime, try to keep out of sight. We’ll want Hubbard to believe you’ve given up and gone back to the Point.”

  Jennie buried her faced in the dog’s neck. If the town’s suspicions about Pamela’s father were correct—and everything she had heard seemed to confirm that they were—she might be overhearing the start of the very thing that led him to kill David. Surely this was no accident; surely she was being brought to this time in order to save his life. From the direction of the buggy came the nicker of the horse, the jingle of the young man’s spurs. He was preparing to leave. She couldn’t allow them to discover her eavesdropping. She stood up and straightened her dress. Then, the dog at her heels, she went around the corner toward the buggy.

  The two men were standing beside the horse, talking; the other man, facing her, noticed her first, and then David turned, saw her, and smiled.

  “Good morning,” he said. “So you did come back.”

  “I wanted to apologize for my . . . hasty departure yesterday.”

  “I’ll admit you gave me something of a scare. I hope you’re well.”

  “Yes, thank you.”

  He introduced the army officer as Lt. Charles Stickney. “Miss Logan is the young lady I told you about, who came to visit yesterday.�
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  Lieutenant Stickney removed his hat. “I’m pleased to make your acquaintance, Miss Logan. I was very glad to hear you had explained the mystery of David’s visions. We were all beginning to worry.”

  David grinned. “It’s a relief not to have my friends worrying about me anymore.”

  “Your first season in Chesapequa?” the lieutenant asked.

  “Yes.”

  “A pleasant place. The large hotels can be very nice. I’m afraid army pay relegates me to the Copper Inn, but I always enjoy Chesapequa. I’m sorry to be leaving just as we meet, but I’m afraid I have to get back in town.” He had untied the reins from the rear of the buggy; now he swung up into the saddle. “David, I’ll wait for your word.” He touched a finger to his hatbrim. “I hope to see you again, Miss Logan.”

  When he had disappeared through the gate, Jennie turned to find David smiling at her. Up close, she saw fine lines of gray in the deep blue of his eyes, radiating outward from the pupil like spokes from a wheel. She felt that strange, sweet tremor of excitement in her stomach again; it was a warm, lovely feeling, but disconcerting, and it made her shy.

  “It’s a pleasure to see you again,” he said.

  “I didn’t mean to interrupt your work. I’d be happy to watch if you’d like to finish.”

  The old wheel still hung from the axle hub; a new one, meant to replace it, lay in the grass.

  “I would like to get this buggy back on its wheels. You’re welcome to watch, if you’re sure you don’t mind. It would certainly make the work more enjoyable for me.”

  She seated herself on the box vacated by Lieutenant Stickney, and the dog ambled over to lay his head in her lap.