After several minutes, the ropes began to fray and I drew in as deep a breath as possible, hoping to weaken them further. It didn’t help. I rubbed against the mortar edge some more, faster now.
I had to stop and lean my head against the shed; it swam with shadows and I knew that I was close to fainting. Not now, I thought; not when I was close to being free. I drew in shaking breaths. Don’t leave, Elise, I begged her with my mind. Keep the train from leaving. I’ll be there soon now. Very soon.
The swimming in my head decreased and I started rubbing the rope against the mortar edge again. A minute or so later, the loops had frayed enough for me to stretch them, work them down across my hips, step free of them. I filled my chest with air. My face and neck were dripping perspiration. Taking out my handkerchief, I patted it against my skin, then drawing in another lung-filled breath, started toward the hotel.
I thought, at first, that I was headed in the wrong direction, seeing no lights ahead. I stopped and turned. No lights in that direction either. A chill ran through me. How was I going to tell which way to go? Wait, I thought. The doorway to the shed faced the ocean approximately; I had to be going in the right direction. Turning again, I started to trot along the beach.
I saw that I was starting up a gradual slope; I must have been so sunk in despair I hadn’t noticed it earlier. I tried to maintain my pace but my legs felt like columns of lead. I had to stop and rest, pressing my left palm to the back of my head to ease the throbbing. The lump I found there startled me; it felt as though a baseball had been cut in half and sewn beneath the skin. Even prodding it as lightly as I could made me hiss with pain.
Moments later, I forced myself to start moving again. When I reached the top of the slope, I saw the hotel far off; it had to be at least a mile away, more likely two. With a groan at the distance I had to go, I started down the opposite side of the slope, skidding slightly as I descended. Reaching the bottom, I struggled through the sand to the surf line where the earth was packed and hard, then began to jog, trying not to jar my heels down as I moved. I tried to blank my mind to all pain and apprehension by staring at the hotel dome. She isn’t gone. It was the one thought I allowed myself.
By the time I reached the boardwalk, I was breathing so laboredly and my legs felt so dense, I had to stop despite my resolution. Now, flickering through me at odd moments, the feeling of disorientation came and went almost with the rhythm of my breath. I tried to analyze it in the hope that I could fight off its constant inroads. It had to be the shock of what I’d gone through that was causing it to happen. When I was with Elise again, it would pass, her love my anchor for this time.
Before my mind could counter with the suggestion that she might not be at the hotel, I broke into a clumsy trot along the boardwalk, teeth clenched, gaze fixed on the hotel. She’s still there, I thought. She wouldn’t go. The railway car would be there. She would have ordered it to stay until—
I stopped as a wave of dizziness swept over me. It isn’t true, I thought. My eyes could see, distinctly, that it was, however. The railroad siding was empty.
“No.” I shook my head. All right, the car was gone. Elise had stayed behind, logical or not. I’d read it, hadn’t I? She’d sent her company ahead of her to Denver. But she was still here.
I was running again; I didn’t remember starting. The hotel lights were nominal, its windows mostly dark; it could have been three or four in the morning. It doesn’t matter, I told myself. She’s in her room, awake. She’s waiting for me. I would not allow any other possibility; could not allow it. Deep inside me was a fear so vast that, if ever I permitted it to billow, it could consume me. She’s there, I thought. I concentrated on that, erecting a barrier against the fear. She’s there. She’s there.
As I ran across the roadway, I glanced down and saw how dirty and disheveled I was. If I ran across the lobby in this state, I might be stopped, and I had to reach her now. Turning left, I ran down the declining walk to the Paseo del Mar and curved around the corner of the hotel. Now its huge, white face drifted by on my right; I heard my boot-falls ringing on the walk. Breath burned and stabbed. Don’t stop, a voice said in my mind. She’s there, keep going. Almost there now. Run. I gasped for air, slowing down. Reaching the south steps, I began to climb them, hanging on to the railing. It seemed a century since we had climbed these steps together; a million years since I had met her on the beach. She’s there, the voice insisted. Run. She’s there.
The veranda door. Pulling it open with groaning effort, I lunged inside and headed for the side corridor. She’s there, waiting in her room. Just as I’d read it. My boots thumped on the floorboards. Everything was starting to blur. “November 1896,” I muttered anxiously. “It’s November 1896.” I turned onto the Open Court and ran along the walk. She’s there, I told myself. The blurring was caused by tears in my eyes, I realized as one of them rolled down my cheek. “She’s there,” I said. “There.” I turned into the public sitting room, almost staggered to her door, and fell against it, knocking. “Elise!”
I waited, trying to listen, heartbeat pounding in my ears. I knocked again. “Elise?” No sound inside. I swallowed hard, pressed my right ear to the door. She had to be inside. She was asleep then. She’d be up in a moment, running to the door to open it. I knocked again, again. She’d open it, be in my arms; my Elise. She wouldn’t leave. Not after that letter. She’s running to the door now. Now. Now. Now.
“God!” It swept across me in an instant. She was gone. Robinson had talked her into leaving. She was on her way to Denver; I would never see her again.
All strength left me in that moment. Turning, I fell back against the door, then slid down slowly to the carpet, staring at the blur before my eyes. I pressed both hands across my face and started crying. Just as I had cried, a lifetime earlier, in that hot and airless cellar room. Then I had wept with happiness, though, relief and joy, knowing I was going to reach her. Now I wept with bitter, hopeless grief, knowing I would never reach her again. Let time do what it chose now. It didn’t matter what year I died in. Nothing mattered now. I had lost Elise.
Richard!”
I looked up suddenly, too stunned to react. Literally, I couldn’t believe my eyes as I watched her rush across the public sitting room. “Elise.” I tried to get up but my legs and arms felt strengthless. I cried out, “Elise!”
Then she had reached me and was on her knees before me and the two of us were clinging to each other tightly, desperately. “My love, my love,” she whispered. “Oh, my love.” I turned my face into her hair and pressed against its silky, fragrant warmth. She hadn’t left. She’d waited for me after all. I kissed her hair, her neck. “Oh, God, Elise. I thought I’d lost you.”
“Richard. Love.” She drew back suddenly and we were kissing, her soft lips moving under mine. She drew away from it, gasping, and a look of sudden anxiety tensed her features as she touched my cheek. “You’ve been hurt,” she said.
“I’m fine, I’m fine.” I smiled at her, drew her hands to my lips, and kissed them one by one.
“But what happened to you?” she asked, her lovely face still marred by concern.
“Just let me hold you,” I said.
She pressed against me and we clung to each other once more, her fingers stroking my hair. “Richard, my Richard,” she murmured. I twitched as she touched the lump on the back of my head. She caught her breath and drew back again, a look of shock on her face now. “Dear Lord, what happened to you?” she asked.
“I was—taken,” I said.
“Taken?”
“Abducted.” I had to smile at the word. “It’s all right, all right,” I told her, stroking her cheek. “I’m fine. Don’t worry.”
“But I am worried, Richard. You’ve been struck. Your cheek is bruised, discolored.”
“Do I look terrible?” I asked.
“Oh, my love.” She placed both hands against my cheeks and kissed me gently on the lips. “You are the sweetest sight on earth to me.”
r /> “Elise.” I could barely speak. We held each other and I kissed her cheek and neck, her hair.
My laugh came unbidden; a broken sound. “I bet I do look terrible,” I said.
“No, no. I’m just concerned for you.” She returned my smile as I drew a fingertip across her cheek, wiping away her warm tears. “Come inside and let me put a cloth on your cheek.”
“I’m fine,” I repeated. No pain in the world had power to distress me now.
I had my love again.
November 21, 1896
She had taken my coat to brush it off; it was caked with sand and soil. Now, tireless, I sat on the sofa of her room, looking at her with adoring eyes as she gently washed my hands and face with warm water. When she touched my right hand, I winced, and, looking down at it, saw for the first time how bruised it was, several of the knuckles cracked. “What have you done to it?” she asked in distress.
“Hit somebody,” I told her.
Her expression grew somber as she washed the hand carefully. “Richard,” she finally said, “who … took you?”
I felt her tension. “Two men,” I answered. I saw her throat stir as she swallowed. She looked up then, her sweet face grave and pale. “By William’s order?” she asked very quietly.
“No,” I said without hesitation, reassuring her and surprising myself. Why was I protecting him? I wondered. Maybe, at the moment—it occurred to me—because I didn’t want to anger and distress her, the feeling between us too lovely to destroy.
She was looking at me with that expression I knew so well, laden with intense desire to know. “Are you telling me the truth?” she asked.
“Yes,” I said. “I went for a walk during the first intermission and these—two men decided to rob me, I guess.” A needling fear impaled me; had she seen the untouched money in my coat pocket? “Then I guess they decided to tie me up in a shed so they’d have time to get away before I told the police.”
I knew she didn’t believe me but I knew, as well, that I had to continue the deception. Robinson was still important to her professional life; it would dismay her terribly to be forced to think of him in terms of treachery after all these years. And he had done it for what he took to be her welfare, sincere if misguided in his concern for her. Perhaps it was the knowledge, always in the back of my mind, that he would die on the Lusitania, his worship for her unrequited. I wasn’t sure. I only knew that she mustn’t have his image shattered with such cruel abruptness. Not by me.
“He didn’t have it done,” she said. I knew that she was trying to convince herself now; she obviously didn’t want to believe that Robinson was guilty and the knowledge made me glad I’d lied to her. Our reunion should not be marred by such a revelation.
“No, he didn’t,” I said. I managed a rueful smile. “I’d blame him if I could.”
Her smile was cursory. “I was so sure he had,” she told me. “We had a dreadful row before he left. The way he insisted that you weren’t coming back made me positive he had seen to it in some way. I had to threaten to sever our business relationship before he’d leave without me.”
“And your mother?”
“She is still here,” she answered. My expression must have conveyed my reaction, for she smiled and gently kissed my hand. “She is in her room, sedated, sleeping.” She made a sound of strained amusement. “That was quite a scene too,” she said.
“I’ve done terrible things to you,” I said.
Quickly, she put the cloth in the bowl of water on the table and pressed against me, resting her head on my shoulder, her right arm across my chest. “You have done the dearest thing that anyone has ever done for me in my entire life,” she said. “You have brought me love.”
Leaning forward, she kissed my left hand, rubbed her cheek against it. “When I looked into the audience in act two and saw your seat unoccupied, I told myself that something minor had delayed you. Then, as time went on and you failed to return, I became more frightened with every minute.” Her soft laugh was one of, almost, anguish. “The audience must have thought me mad the way I kept glancing at them, something I would never dream of doing ordinarily. How I got through acts three and four is a blur in memory. I must have looked and sounded like an automaton.”
She laughed again, faintly, sadly. “I know the cast thought me mad the way I kept peering through the curtain during intermissions. I even sent Marie to look for you, thinking you’d been taken ill and gone to your room. When she came back and said you weren’t to be found, I was filled with panic. You would have sent a note to me if you had left; I knew that. But there was no note. There was only William telling me that you had left for good because he’d threatened to expose you for a fortune hunter.”
“Oh?” I cast my gaze to heaven. William wasn’t making it very easy for me to protect his name. Still, it was done. No point in inflicting wounds now.
“Can you visualize me trying to enact a comedy through all this?” Elise asked. “I am sure it was the ghastliest performance of my career. If the audience had been able to purchase vegetables, I’m sure they would have thrown them at me.”
“I’m sure you were magnificent,” I said.
“Oh, no.” She straightened up and looked at me; stroked my cheek. “Oh, Richard, if I’d lost you—after all these years of waiting—after the way we met, the strangeness, trying so hard to understand it. If I’d lost you after all that, I could not have survived.”
“I love you, Elise,” I told her.
“And I love you,” she answered. “Richard. Mine.” Her kiss was sweetly tender on my lips.
It was my turn then to laugh with recollected pain. “If you had seen me,” I told her. “Lying in a pitch-dark shed, bound so tightly that I could hardly breathe. Flopping around on the dirt floor like some newly caught trout. Kicking open the door, then struggling to release the ropes. Finally, getting the ropes off my legs. Rubbing the chest ropes against a mortar edge. Running like a madman for the hotel. Finding your car gone, finding no one in your room.” The laughter had ended now, there was only remembered pain. I embraced her and we held each other like two frightened children reunited after long, terrible hours of separation.
Abruptly then, remembering something, she stood and moved across the room, picking up a package on the writing table. Bringing it back, she held it out. “With my love,” she said.
“I should be bringing gifts to you,” I told her.
“You will.” The way she said it filled me with sudden joy as a vision of our years ahead flashed across my mind.
I opened the package. Beneath the paper was a red-leather box. Raising its cover, I saw, inside, a gold watch with a gold chain attached to it. I caught my breath.
“Are you pleased?” She sounded like an eager girl.
“It’s beautiful,” I said.
I held it up by its chain and looked at the faceplate, which was delicately scribed around the border, its center etched with figures that resembled flowers and curving swirls.
“Open it,” she said.
I pressed in on the stem and the cover plate sprang open. “Oh, Elise,” I said.
The face is white with stately Roman numerals around its edge, tiny, red Arabic numerals above each one. At the bottom of the face is a miniature circle with numbers, its second hand no bigger than a hair. The watch was made by Elgin and it has a weight and substance that is typical of this time.
“Let me wind it for you, love,” she said. Smiling, I handed it to her and watched as she flicked out a tiny lever at the bottom of the watch and set the hands after glancing across the room; it was almost quarter to one. Done, she pushed the tiny arm back in and wound the watch, her face intent, so enchanting to me in its concentration that I had to lean over and kiss the back of her neck. She shivered and pressed against me, then turned and held the watch out with a smile of love. “I hope you like it,” she said. “It was the best available at such short notice. I promise you the finest watch in the world when I can get it.”
/> “This is the finest watch in the world,” I said. “I’ll never want another. Thank you.”
“Thank you,” she murmured back.
I held the watch to my ear, delighted by its bright, efficient-sounding tick.
“Put it on,” she said.
I pushed down on the faceplate and it clicked into place. Her wince made me start. “What?” I asked.
“Nothing, love.”
“No, tell me.”
“Well—” She seemed embarrassed. “If you push the stem in when you close the cover …”She couldn’t finish.
“I’m sorry,” I said, disconcerted by this new reminder of how I lacked even the simplest awareness of details in 1896.
As I started to place the watch and chain on my vest, it occurred to me how fitting it was that, however unknowingly, Elise had chosen to give me the one gift most closely associated with time.
I couldn’t manage it. I looked up with a sheepish smile. “I’m not too bright, I guess,” I said.
Quickly, she unbuttoned one of my vest buttons and slipped the chain through the opening so the bar held it in place. She returned my smile, then glanced at the box. “You haven’t read my card,” she said.
“I’m sorry, I didn’t see it.” Opening the box again, I saw a card pinned to the underside of the cover. Removing it, I read the words she’d written with her graceful hand: And love most sweet.
I shuddered; I could not control it. Her dying words; the thought harrowed me. I tried to will it off.
She had seen the look. “What is it, love?” she asked.
“Nothing.” I have never lied so badly.
“Yes. There is.” She took my hand in hers and looked at me gravely. “Tell me, Richard.”
“It’s the phrase,” I said. “It moved me.”
I felt the air begin to charge. “Where did it come from?” I persisted. “Did you make it up?”
She shook her head and I saw that she, too, fought against a sense of foreboding. “It’s from a hymn. Have you ever heard of Mary Baker Eddy?”