The Adventures of Langdon St. Ives

then a shriek and, through the sound of the rain, the tearing and banging of the cabriolet going over in the street. He could picture it in his mind — his past-time self running forward, hesitating to shoot until it was too late, and…

He rounded the corner now, his pistol drawn, and nearly ran Narbondo down as he crouched over Alice, whose leg was pinned under the overturned cabriolet. Narbondo pointed his pistol at her head, staring at the rainy street where Langdon St. Ives ought to have been, but wasn’t. Hasbro and Kraken stared at the street, too, but there was nothing at all there save the empty coach, and although St. Ives alone knew why that was, he didn’t give it a moment’s thought, but lashed out with the gun butt and hammered Narbondo across the back of the head.

St. Ives’s hand was in the way, though, and he managed only to hit Narbondo heavily with his fist. Narbondo’s head jerked down, and his hands flew outward as he tumbled away from Alice. He rolled forward, still holding his pistol, struggling to one knee and looking back wild-eyed at St. Ives, then immediately aiming the pistol and shooting it wildly, without an instant’s hesitation.

Already St. Ives was lunging toward him, though, and the shot went wide. Three years of pent-up energy and fear and loathing drove St. Ives forward, unthinking. Narbondo staggered backward, sprawling through the water, starting to run even before he was fully on his feet. St. Ives ran him down in three steps. Too wild to shoot him, St. Ives grabbed the back of Narbondo’s coat and clubbed him again with the pistol butt, behind the ear this time, and Narbondo’s head jerked sideways as he brought his pistol up, firing it pointlessly in the air. St. Ives hammered him again, still clutching his jacket as Narbondo slumped to his knees, his pistol falling into the street. A hand seized St. Ives’s wrist as he raised his gun yet again, and St. Ives turned savagely, ready to strike. It was Hasbro, though, and the look on his face made St. Ives drop his own pistol into the water.

“He shot her,” St. Ives mumbled. “I mean…” But he didn’t right then know what he meant. He was vastly tired and confused, and he remembered the child drinking medicinal beef broth in Limehouse. He looked back down the street. Alice wasn’t shot — of course she wasn’t shot. Kraken bent over her, lifting off the top end of the cabriolet and then stooping to untie her. St. Ives walked toward them, as old suppressed memories freshened and grew young again in his mind. Mercifully, the rain let off just then, and the moon shone through the clouds, lightening the street.

“That were a neat trick, sir,” Kraken said to him enthusiastically, standing up and making way for him. “I could have sworn you was in the coach. Why, I even seen you stepping out through the open door. Then you was gone, and then here your honor was again, smashing your man in back of the head.” He looked at St. Ives with evident pride, and St. Ives kneeled in the flooded street, feeling for a pulse, fearing suddenly that it was too late after all. The crash alone might have…Then Alice opened her eyes, rubbed the back of her head with her hand, winced, and smiled at St. Ives. She struggled to sit up.

“I’m all right,” she said.

Kraken let out a whoop, and Hasbro, who had dragged Narbondo to the roadside, helped both St. Ives and Alice to their feet, pulling them into a doorway out of the rain.

“Tie Narbondo up with something,” St. Ives said to Kraken.

Kraken looked disappointed. “Begging your honor’s pardon,” he said, taking St. Ives aside, “but hadn’t we ought to kill him? I should think that would be recommended, seeing as who he is. You know he would have shot her. A life don’t mean nothing to the likes of him. Give me the word, sir, and I’ll make it quick and quiet.”

St. Ives hesitated, then shook his head tiredly. “No, he’s got too much to do yet. All of us do. Heaven alone knows what will come of the world if we don’t all play our parts — heroes, villains, spectators, and fools. Perhaps it’s already too late,” he said, half to himself. “Perhaps this changes the script utterly. So tie him up, if you will. He’ll spend some time in Newgate before he escapes.”

Kraken nodded, although he looked confused, like a man who understood nothing. St. Ives left him to it and faced Alice again. He sighed deeply. She was safe. Thank God for that. “I’ll have to go,” he said to her.

“What?” Alice looked at him in disbelief. “Why? Aren’t I going with you? We’ll all go, the sooner the better.”

St. Ives was swept with a wave of passion and love. He kissed her on the mouth, and although she was surprised by the suddenness of it, she kissed him back with equal passion.

Hasbro cleared his throat and went off abruptly toward where Kraken was tying up Narbondo with the reins from the wrecked cabriolet.

I will stay, St. Ives thought suddenly. Why not? His past-time self — now nothing but a ghost — wouldn’t be any the wiser. He was already gone, flitted away, into the mists of abandoned time. Why not start anew, right now? They would take a room in the West End, make it a sort of holiday — nothing but eating and the theater and lounging about all day long. He suddenly felt like Atlas, having at last shrugged off the world, ending what had turned out to be merely a lengthy nightmare.

Alice was regarding him strangely, though. “You look awful,” she said, squinting at him as if she realized something was wrong but had no notion how to explain it. He knew what she had meant to say. She had meant to say that he looked old, worn-out, thin, but she had caught herself and had said something more temporary so as to preserve his feelings. “What’s wrong?” she asked suddenly, and his heart sank.

He looked out into the street, where his past-time self lay invisible in the water and muck of the road. You fool, he said in his mind. I earned this, but I’ve got to give it to you, when all you would have done is botch it utterly. But even as he thought this, he knew the truth — that he wasn’t the man now that he had been then. The ghost in the road was in many ways the better of the two of them. Alice didn’t deserve the declined copy; what she wanted was the genuine article.

And maybe he could become that article — but not by staying here. He had to go home again, to the future, in order to catch up with himself once more.

“I won’t be gone but a moment,” he said, glancing back toward where he had left the machine. “And when I appear again, I might be confused for a time. It’ll pass, though. When you see me next, tell me that I’m a mortal idiot, and I’ll feel better about it all.”

“What on earth are you talking about?” she asked, looking at him fearfully, as if he had lost his mind.

He almost started to explain, but it was too much for him. Now that he had made up his mind to leave, the future was calling to him, and the shortest route back to it sat in the middle of the street a block away. “Trust me,” he said. “I won’t be gone a moment.” He kissed her again, and then stepped out of the doorway, turned, and loped off, not looking back, his heart full of gladness and regret.

Epilogue

He landed on the meadow, half expecting heaven knew what. There was no telling what was what anymore. Maybe Parsons would leap out of the bushes and claim the machine. Maybe Narbondo, or Frost, or whatever he called himself now, would menace him with a revolver. Maybe anything at all — he didn’t care. They could have the machine. He didn’t want it anymore. His work was done, and he was ready to confront the results, whatever they were, and then to give up his chasing around through time. At least for the moment.

What he couldn’t do, though, was face himself. There were two present-time copies of him now, and he was determined to let the other one depart gracefully and, he hoped, privately. What sort of man had he become? A happy man, perhaps, who wouldn’t relish the idea of this copycat St. Ives popping in at the window to replace him? Or, just as easily, a miserable man, who might gladly hand over the reins and disappear forever.

Fragments of his memory were even now starting to wink out like candle flames in a breeze. His nightmares about the Seven Dials, the very fact of his returning there, his whole tiresome rigamarole life during the past three years — all of it would become vapor.

And good riddance, too. He would welcome new memories, whatever they were. He realized that this was bluff, though. He thought one last time of the child Narbondo, huddled in dirty rags in Limehouse, and of his mother and the sailor in the doorway. There were memories worse than his own. That’s partly why he was still sitting there in the machine, wasn’t it? He had no idea what he would find inside the manor — who he would discover himself to be.

He climbed through the hatch into the wind. It was sunny and fine with just the hint of a smoky autumn chill