I really should have studied Nineteenth Century. All I could remember was a civil war, and several gold rushes. “It is definitely a country where everyone is free to voice his opinion,” I said, “and does so. Particularly in the western states. Mrs. Mering would like tea,” I told him and then went out on the rear platform and stood there with my pipe, pretending to smoke and looking at the rain myself. It had subsided into a misty drizzle. Heavy clouds hung grayly over the muddy roads we rattled by. Retreating to Paris.
Verity was right. We had to face it. Mr. C wasn’t going to show up at Reading or anywhere else. We had attempted to mend the tear in the continuum by tying the broken threads together again, getting Tossie to the appointed place on the appointed day.
But in a chaotic system, there was no such thing as a simple tear. Every event was connected to every other. When Verity waded into the Thames, when I walked down the tracks to the railway station, dozens, thousands of events had been affected. Including the whereabouts of Mr. C on 15 June, 1888. We had broken all the threads at once, and the fabric in the space-time loom had come apart.
“ ‘Out flew the web and floated wide,’ ” I said aloud. “ ‘ “The curse is come upon me,” cried the Lady of Shalott.’ ”
“Eh, what’s that?” a man’s voice said, opening the door and coming out on the platform. He was stout, with an enormous set of Dundreary whiskers and a meerschaum pipe which he tamped down violently. “Curse, did you say?” he said, lighting his pipe.
“Tennyson,” I said.
“Poetry,” he growled. “Lot of rot, if you ask me. Art, sculpture, music, what use are they in the real world?”
“Exactly,” I said, extending my hand. “Ned Henry. How do you do?”
“Arthur T. Mitford,” he said, crushing my hand in his grip.
Well, it was worth a try.
“Don’t believe in curses,” he said, sucking fiercely on his pipe. “Or Fate, or destiny. Lot of rot. A man makes his own destiny.”
“I hope you’re right,” I said.
“Of course I’m right. Look at Wellington.”
I knocked the tobacco out of my pipe onto the rails below, and started back to the compartment. Look at Wellington. And Joan of Arc at Orléans. And John Paul Jones. They had all succeeded when everything looked lost.
And the continuum was tougher than it looked. It had slippage and backups and redundancy. “Missing you one place, we meet another.” And if so, what I’d told Verity might be true, and Mr. C might be on the platform at Reading. Or in our compartment at this very moment, punching our tickets or hawking sweetmeats.
He wasn’t. Baine was, handing round china cups and dispensing tea, which was having an unfortunate revivifying effect on Mrs. Mering. She sat up straight, arranged her plaid shawl around her, and set about making everyone miserable.
“Tossie,” she said. “Sit up properly and drink your tea. You were the one who wanted tea. Baine, didn’t you bring lemon?”
“I will see if there are any for sale in the station, madam,” he said and departed.
“Why is this such a long stop?” Mrs. Mering said. “We should have taken an express. Verity, this shawl gives no warmth at all. You should have told Jane to bring the cashmere.”
The train started up, and after several minutes, Baine reappeared, looking like he had had to run for it. “I’m afraid they hadn’t any lemon, madam,” he said, producing a bottle of milk from his pocket. “Would you care for milk?”
“From who knows what sort of cow? Hardly. This tea is lukewarm.”
Baine produced a spirit lamp, and proceeded to heat more water while Mrs. Mering looked around at us for another victim. “Mr. St. Trewes,” Mrs. Mering said to Terence, who had retreated behind his book of poems, “it’s far too dark to read in here. You will ruin your eyes.”
Terence closed the book and put it in his pocket, looking like a man who was just beginning to realize what he had let himself in for. Baine lit the lamps and poured more tea.
“What a dull group you all are,” Mrs. Mering said. “Mr. Henry, tell us about the States. Mrs. Chattisbourne says you told her you were out West fighting Red Indians.”
“Briefly,” I said, wondering if she were going to ask about scalping next, but she was on a different course.
“Did you have the opportunity while you were in the West of attending one of Baroness Eusapia’s séances in San Francisco?” she asked.
“I’m afraid not,” I said.
“Pity,” she said, and it was clear she thought I had missed all the best tourist attractions. “Eusapia is famous for her apports.”
“Apports?” Terence asked.
“Objects transported through the air from distant locations,” she said.
That’s it, I thought. That’s what happened to the bishop’s bird stump. It was apported to a séance in San Francisco.
“…flowers and photographs,” Mrs. Mering was saying, “and once she apported a sparrow’s nest all the way from China. With the sparrow in it!”
“How do you know it was a Chinese sparrow?” Terence said dubiously. “It didn’t chirp in Chinese, did it? How do you know it wasn’t a California sparrow?”
“Is it true that servants in America don’t know their proper place,” Tossie said, looking at Baine, “and that their mistresses actually allow them to express opinions on education and art as if they were equals?”
It looked like the universe was going to collapse right here in this compartment. “I… uh…” I said.
“Did you see a spirit, Mrs. Mering,” Verity said, trying to change the subject, “when you had your premonition?”
“No, it…” she said, and got that odd, inward look again. “Baine, how many more stops does this horrid train make?”
“Eight, madam,” he said.
“We shall be frozen before we reach home. Go and tell the conductor to bring us a stove. And fetch a rug for my knees.”
And so on. Baine fetched the rug, and a warmed brick for Mrs. Mering’s feet, and a powder for the headache which Mrs. Mering had given all of us, but which she took herself.
“I certainly hope you do not intend to keep dogs after you are married,” she told Terence, and made him turn down the lamps because they hurt her eyes. At the next station, she sent Baine to purchase a newspaper. “My premonition said that something dreadful was going to happen. Perhaps there has been a robbery. Or a fire.”
“I thought you said your premonition had something to do with water,” Tossie said.
“Fires are put out with water,” she said with dignity.
Baine came in, looking like he had nearly missed the train again. “Your newspaper, madam.”
“Not the Oxford Chronicle,” Mrs. Mering said, pushing it aside. “The Times.”
“The newspaperboy did not have the Times,” Baine said. “I will attempt to see if there is a copy in the smoking car.”
Mrs. Mering sank back against the seat. Terence picked up the discarded Oxford Chronicle and began to read it. Tossie went back to looking uninterestedly out the window.
“It’s stifling in here,” Mrs. Mering said. “Verity, go fetch my fan.”
“Yes, Aunt Malvinia,” she said gratefully, and made her escape.
“Why do they insist on overheating these railway cars?” Mrs. Mering said, fanning herself with her handkerchief. “It really is a disgrace that we must travel in such uncivilized conditions.” She glanced across at Terence’s newspaper. “I simply do not see—”
She stopped, staring blindly at Terence.
Tossie looked up. “What is it, Mama?”
Mrs. Mering stood up and took a staggering step backward in the direction of the door. “That night at the séance,” she said, and fainted dead away.