She turned into a narrower street, looking for something familiar. Four blocks and a turn to the left farther on, she found it: the pawnshop she remembered from the buggy ride to the blacksmith’s. She descended the two steps from street level, pushed open the door and went in.
It was very dim inside. A counter topped by a high railing separated the main room from the area just inside the door. Crowded shelves rose ceiling-high on both walls, receding back into the dimness. In the center of the counter was a window like a bank teller’s cage.
A bell had rung when the door swung closed. Now an old man shuffled out from the rear of the shop, wearing a vest and garters on his sleeves. “Yes?” he said. “May I help you?”
She opened her handbag and laid out on the counter the jewelry she had brought from her own time, which had been left her by her mother. “I wonder if you could evaluate these for me?”
He picked up a brooch from the small pile, eyed her through his rimless glasses. “Evaluate? You want to pawn them?”
“Yes. I’d like to sell them.”
He fingered the brooch. “Beautiful craftsmanship. But you understand, with a jewel, the craftsmanship means not so much. It is the stone itself. I have a glass in the back of the shop. Would you be so kind to wait?”
The jewelry brought almost three hundred dollars, in large unfamiliar bills. With the money safely secured in her handbag, she found her way back to the street of small shops, just up from the lake. Here she bought a parasol, a nightgown, some underthings, and another dress. When she had all the clothes she needed, she bought a valise in which to carry them whenever she made the transition from one time to another. They could be left in the Miller house each time she returned from the past. The white dress, the magic dress, she always took home with her. It was much too precious to let out of her sight. She found a small stationer’s, where she bought a writing tablet, a pencil, and a packet of envelopes; then she descended the sun-dappled street to the edge of the lake and mounted the steps to the restaurant’s terrace.
A red-and-white striped awning shaded the terrace. She chose a table near the railing, just above the dock and the glittering lake extending beyond it. The other customers were mostly women, three and four at a table, like floral clusters in their resplendent hats and dresses. Beyond the dock, several ducks skimmed among the lily pads at the water’s grassy edge. Farther up the shore was a boathouse and a smaller dock; a group of boaters—young men in white trousers, girls in summer dresses—were pulling a canoe up onto the dock. From across the water drifted the murmur of voices, a quiet splash, the slap of a paddle against the resonant side of the canoe. How she loved this time, and how she wanted to remain here. And it wasn’t only because of the beauty by which she was surrounded; she knew this beauty was not to be found everywhere in 1899. But she felt at home here, as she had never felt anywhere else. It had to be that she was meant to remain here and live on in this time.
And it was worth whatever was necessary to save David’s life and make that possible. She opened the tablet and began to write:
Dear Mr. Hubbard:
I think you would be interested to learn that Lt. Charles Stickney has not returned to West Point as you have been led to believe. He is staying secretly at the Copper Inn. I understand your concern about keeping this outsider away from your family.
A friend
She excused herself to the waiter who had arrived just as she finished sealing the note in an envelope, then made her way back through the tables of women to the steps leading down from the terrace. It was strange to feel that they had not been able to see beyond her own nineteenth-century exterior to what she really was: a woman from a time in which they had all been dead for years.
Carrying the valise with her purchases, she returned up into town to the offices of Matthew Hubbard & Co., which she had located earlier. She found a boy idling on the street and gave him a dollar with instructions to deliver the note to Matthew Hubbard in person. As she watched him disappear into the building, she tried to convince herself that it had been the right thing to do.
There was no way she could envision being responsible for David’s death. It had to have been Hubbard, and the elopement had to have been the cause. And the only way to prevent it was to prevent the elopement. Surely that was not wrong. Hubbard knew nothing of any plans for an elopement; he had already defeated Stickney’s attempts to see Rachel; her note gave him all the information he needed to foil any further attempts. Surely, given these facts, he would not harm Stickney physically. Whatever harm she was doing to Stickney and Rachel was probably only temporary; but even if it separated them permanently, what was the loss of one’s first love against the necessity of saving David’s life?
But as she went to find a hansom cab to take her around to the other side of the lake, where she could make the transition back into her own time, she carried still within her the anxiety which had become almost a permanent part of her being. She had no certainty that Hubbard would react as she hoped—or that it was possible to alter the past at all.
• • •
On the following Monday, the day before the rendezvous with Rachel was scheduled, she told Michael she was leaving to spend another two days at Fire Island. But as soon as she was home from her session with Dr. Salzman, she made the return into 1899, to David. She was afraid to ask about Stickney, for fear he would read in her face the guilt she felt at what she had done, but she could tell that her note had had no effect: he was full of plans for their going away together. They spent the afternoon traveling about in the buggy while he visited a man who had expressed interest in buying the buggy and the mare, and arranged with his landlord the termination of the lease on the house. At each stop she waited alone in the buggy seat, unable to share his enthusiasm because she knew that unless Hubbard had acted on her note as she had hoped, none of this was going to matter.
That evening they sat on the porch in the hazy blue twilight while David cleaned some brushes he had been using that morning. He had placed a kerosene lantern on the porch railing, where its soft glow attracted a swarm of night insects, but it was still just light enough to see without it. She had just finished chipping ice from the icebox in the kitchen for the pitcher of iced tea she was carrying out onto the porch when Lieutenant Stickney rode into the yard and dismounted.
If he was surprised to see her there, his greeting gave no indication of it. He took a chair across the table from David, and Jennie set the pitcher down between them, retreating back against the wall, out of the light. His arrival created a confusion of feelings within her: hope that her note had succeeded, fear that it had not, or that it had and he knew she had sent it.
Stickney balanced a half-smoked cigar on the edge of the table, withdrew a crumpled yellow paper from his tunic pocket and handed it across to David. “Read that.”
David read it through and looked up, surprised. “You’re ordered back to the Point. I don’t understand it. I thought you’d got leave.”
“I don’t understand it, either,” Stickney said. “The wire arrived this morning. You note it implies the reason is something in my conduct here. Now what the devil have I done, and how have they learned of it?”
Beyond the circle of lantern-light, fireflies winked in the dark; Jennie pressed herself against the wall, wishing to be invisible.
David smoothed the telegram out on the table. “It’s Hubbard. You remember, Jennie? We encountered Hubbard in town,” he said to Stickney, “at the blacksmith’s, shortly after you were here last. I told him you’d gone, but evidently he wired the Point to make sure. When he found out you hadn’t returned to duty he must have gotten suspicious and applied pressure to have you ordered back. He said he knew your commanding officer.”
“Damn,” Stickney said. “I beg your pardon, Miss Logan. I hadn’t thought of that, but it’s true, he does.” He took a last drag on the cigar and threw it angrily out into the yard. “The man has defeated me again.”
“What do y
ou mean?” David said.
“Read the wire, David. I’m ordered back by tomorrow noon. The rendezvous with Rachel was set for tomorrow night. How am I ever going to see her again? I’m forbidden to contact her, you’re forbidden to contact her. Hubbard’s even threatened to send her to live with an aunt in Virginia. What if he makes good that threat before I can get away from the Point again and devise another way to get to her?”
Jennie remained in the shadows, afraid they would see the conflicting emotions on her face. Inside her, guilt fought with a rising elation: now even if the elopement did eventually succeed, she would have extricated David from its fatal consequences because it would have to happen long after the story said it had caused his death.
“That doesn’t mean the man has won,” David said. “There’s no reason I shouldn’t meet with Rachel instead of you. I’ll keep the rendezvous tomorrow night. I can make the arrangements, spirit Rachel away myself and put her on the train to you at the Point.”
Stickney had stood up to pace about the porch; now he leaned back against the railing, moodily lit another cigar. “I’m grateful for the offer, David, but it’s me Hubbard is set against. The risk is mine to take, not yours.”
“Don’t be stubborn, Charles. Let’s not confuse this as a matter of honor.” David grinned. “I’m a civilian in any case—I’m not bound by your officer’s code.”
“It has nothing to do with that, David. We both know Hubbard’s a dangerous man—”
“Not really.”
“All right, we suspect it. Don’t deny it, your impression of him is the same as mine. He was always a forbidding man. He saw Pamela’s marriage as a desertion, and her death has by all indications left him unbalanced. We both know he’s capable of violence if he’s crossed now on the subject of Rachel.”
“All the more reason I should keep the rendezvous. As you say, it was my marriage to Pamela that’s made him what he is. I owe this to you and Rachel.”
“That’s not what I meant to imply, David.”
“Be sensible, Charles. This wire means he seriously suspects you of plotting to steal Rachel away. You don’t know what kind of pressure he’s applied. He may have arranged to have you transferred, sent out West for all you know.”
“If it came to that, I’d resign my commission rather than lose Rachel.”
“That will do you no good if he sends Rachel to Virginia. Do you know the name of this aunt, or where she lives?”
“No,” Stickney said. “No, I don’t.”
“You see what I mean. Even if she’s Hubbard’s sister, I assume she’s married, she no longer bears that name. And it would be no help if she did, without even knowing what part of Virginia to search.”
“Yes,” Stickney said. “Yes, you’re right. I can’t risk that, can I?”
“No, you can’t. You have to let me keep that rendezvous. Now sit down, and let’s decide how best to do what has to be done.”
“Excuse me,” Jennie said. “I think this ice has melted. I’ll get some more.” She carried the pitcher back into the darkened house, set it down on the kitchen table, and sank into a chair. It had been all she could do to keep silent outside, to keep from crying out at the knowledge that, far from removing David from danger, her act had thrust him even closer to that death the story said was coming.
• • •
After Stickney had gone, they retreated in the flickering shadows of an oil lamp up the stairs to the attic studio. She was silent all during preparations for bed, and it was only when they were lying side by side, the lamp turned very low on the bedside table, that she could bring herself to really look at him. He leaned above her, regarding her with fiercely gentle eyes while he stroked the hair back from her temples. The small circle of lamplight seemed charged with that magic aura she had always felt in his presence.
“It won’t be long now,” he said. “Another few days. Then we’ll never be apart again.”
The affection in his voice and touch sent a new spasm of guilt worming through her. Wordlessly, she took his face in her hands and pulled him down beside her, wanting to say so many things: that she was sorry, that she was frightened by this thing she didn’t understand, that she would yet find a way to undo what she had done. She welcomed the warm descent of his mouth on hers, the soft yielding of her breasts under his chest, the sleek slide of his fingers down the curve of her hip to bring about that final fusion of body to body, softness to solidity; she wanted this, to express in physical touch what she could not say in words, to lose herself in lovely bliss, where nothing seemed to matter except this sweet and soaring tenderness they created together. There was here no distance between his time and hers; time ceased to be, all incompleteness ceased to be and they were lifted up toward that level where all existence seemed one and inseparable—timeless, immortal.
As always, it seemed a long time before she descended again into that separate being she recognized as herself. He lay beside her, examining her face with soft and meditative eyes. She reached out to touch the curve of his chest, sad to be back once more where time mattered and moved again in its inexorable sequence of events.
“Do you really have to go?” she said. “Tomorrow night?”
“You know I do.”
“I wish you didn’t have to.”
“I know. But Charles exaggerates the danger.”
“Are you sure? Even if Rachel’s father doesn’t discover you, even if you’re only seen near the McIver house the night she runs away, he’ll know you did it.”
“I doubt I’ll get Rachel away tomorrow night, on such short notice. She’ll have arrangements to make. It may take another day, even two.”
“But even so, if you’re seen in that neighborhood tomorrow night, he’ll make the connection when Rachel’s gone. He’ll know you got to her then.”
“That’s possible.” He was silent for a moment. “There’s a way around that. Elizabeth’s invitation was for tomorrow afternoon. The Hartleys live just down the road from the McIvers. I’ll go to Elizabeth’s picnic; that will explain my being in the vicinity.”
She toyed with his hair. “I was invited to that picnic, too, you know.”
He smiled. “And I suppose you’re going to accept.”
“You know I’m going with you. To the picnic, and to the McIvers’. You said there was no danger, so you have no right to stop me. You can’t stop me, because I’ll hire a cab if I have to and follow you there.”
He smiled again. “You really would, wouldn’t you?”
“Yes, I would.”
“In that case, I guess I have no choice If you’re going to be there, I don’t want you following me alone.” He pulled her over against him, caressed the slant of her neck just below her hair. “You’re magic, you know. There’s never been magic for me like this.”
The flame lurched above the wick of the lamp, sending a flicker of light around the shadowy walls. How peaceful this would be, lying face to face, if only she could escape the fear that her attempt to save his life was doomed to fail. Or if she could only believe in something which would explain, and help her to accept, whatever was meant to be.
“David, do you believe in . . . in immortality?”
“I don’t know. I can’t imagine a heaven that wouldn’t have trees and fields and oceans just like the earth. I don’t think I believe in the God of the churches, but whenever I’m engaged in a genuinely creative act I feel I’m part of something larger than myself, that I’m expressing some immortal creative force we’ve come to call God. I felt it just now, with you. And I think that’s what the phrase ‘let your acts glorify God’ really means: that when you act out of love, creatively, you express a part of that immortal force, whatever it is. I think that’s why I paint. Sometimes, working on a painting, I feel blessed, touched by a creativity greater than my own.” He stirred beside her. “I’ve been working on a painting that gives me that feeling. It still needs a touch or two, but I want you to see it.”
He threw o
n a robe, removed a cloth from a painting mounted on the easel, and brought the painting back across the room. “I was working on it this morning. I’ve been doing it from memory—the memory of you that second day you came, as you were leaving after feeding the chickens. Do you remember?”
He knelt beside the bed, balancing the frame on his knees, and turned up the wick of the lamp. Jennie was awed. The painting showed her standing in the dappled shade of the tree at the rear corner of the house, half-turned away, looking back over her shoulder. It was the painting she had first seen in Mrs. Bates’ historical society, the painting which hung there even now, three-quarters of a century into the future.
• • •
That night she lay awake long after the even rhythm of his breathing told her he was asleep. She lay as close to him as she could, pressed against the warmth of his body, listening to his breathing. The house was silent except for that. Once she heard a dog bark on a distant farm and old Napoleon rouse from his slumber at the back of the house and answer, and then the world was silent again. The moon was out, and through the skylight she could see its pale light silvering the crown of the tree in the yard. Once or twice she felt herself drifting off into the heaviness of sleep and stirred to hold it away.
She didn’t want to sleep. For weeks her imagination had been creating terrible visions of David being killed, of herself fleeing through the dark; it was just possible that those visions were destined to become reality at the McIvers’. And if so, this was to be her last visit into the past; she would never sleep through the night with him again. And she was reluctant to let go of consciousness, to say goodbye to this darkened room, the silvered tree, the quiet night under the nineteenth-century moon.
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