Carol was alone. Lady Augusta had vanished, leaving her in the middle of the square. At first all was silence. Then, slowly, sound returned. The first noise Carol heard was a car horn, followed by the cries of a small child having a tantrum and the cajoling voice of the child’s mother.
Bewildered, Carol stared at her surroundings. The fog was lifting and the street lamps were lit. The small bulbs on the Christmas tree shone with multicolored holiday brightness. On all sides of the square the old houses rose, whole and well cared for. Wreaths graced many of their doors and lights glowed in the windows. Directly ahead of her stood Marlowe House. All four stories of it and the roof were solid, complete, undamaged by warfare or time.
Reaching out, Carol touched the Christmas tree, feeling with a new delight its prickly needles and the heat of an electric bulb.
“You’re real,” she said to the tree, “not metal, and not something thought up by an uncaring Government. You mean something. Thank God for Christmas!”
She did not enter Marlowe House by the servants’ entrance. She knew Nell would probably be in the kitchen with Mrs. Marks and Hettie, and she did not want to talk to anyone for a while. There would be time enough for conversation later, after she’d had a chance to assimilate everything that had happened to her.
She found her house key in the purse that was still slung over her shoulder and, mounting the front steps, went in by the main door. She paused for a moment in the hall, looking at the clean black and white marble floor and the paneling that Nell did her best to keep well polished. There was no one in the hall. Crampton was probably in the kitchen with the women. Carol crossed to the drawing room entrance and opened one of the double doors.
The room was unchanged and unused since Lady Augusta’s funeral. The walls were still pale yellow silk, the carved paneling accented with white and gilt paint.
Her sense of time having been distorted by supernatural events, Carol was forced to count the days on her fingers in order to determine exactly how long it had been since she had stood in this same place during the reception after the funeral and rudely refused to make a donation to St. Fiacre’s Bountiful Board. It was three days ago. And only last night—no, one hundred seventy-five years in the future—she and Nik had danced in the small, partitioned section at the far end of this room before falling upon his bed to make intense, passionate love. And in the morning they had left his room and gone out to fight and die.
Carol walked across Aubusson carpets, past gilded Regency chairs and tables, to the rear of the long, narrow drawing room. There she stopped, noting that the window which would one day be the single window of Nik’s small bedroom was not covered with layers of wood for security reasons, but instead was draped in heavy yellow silk and gold fringe.
“Oh, Nik,” she whispered, her voice breaking. Gently she touched the windowsill, and then the wall where the head of his bed would one day be. “No. I can’t let it happen. The future has to be different. I will do anything I can to save him from that terrible end. And Pen and Bas, too. All of them.”
“Good evening, Miss Simmons.” Crampton stood in the drawing room doorway. “I thought I heard you come in.”
Carol did not respond. The lump in her throat prevented her from speaking.
“Will you be wanting a late supper, miss?” asked Crampton.
“Late?” Carol repeated. “What time is it?” An interesting question, she thought, and in a metaphysical sense, an unanswerable one.
“It is just past nine o’clock, miss.”
“Oh. I see. Well, I did eat a rather substantial tea at a late hour, so I think I will skip another meal tonight. I am going to bed now, so you may as well lock up the house.”
“Yes, miss.” Crampton showed no sign of surprise at her claim to have eaten elsewhere when she took almost all of her meals in her own room, but then Crampton rarely showed any emotion at all.
For the first time in her almost six years at Marlowe House, Carol wondered what the butler really thought: about his late employer, about Marlowe House itself, and about the end of his career, for it seemed certain that he and Mrs. Marks would retire when the house was closed after Lady Augusta’s estate was settled. On her way out of the room she went past him with a curious look, but Crampton, who was pulling the double doors shut behind her, did not appear to notice her interest.
On the upper floors of the house the corridors were lit only by single bulbs in wall sconces. The emptiness and the deep shadows did not bother Carol. After her recent experiences she was beyond fearing anything. Even death could not frighten her now. Opening the door of her own room, she reached out and pushed the light switch. Lamps sprang to life next to her bed and by the wing chair beside the fireplace, illuminating the familiar room that at the moment appeared entirely strange to her.
A guest awaited her. Across the hearth from the wing chair Lady Augusta sat upon her invisible sofa.
“Shut the door and take off your coat, Carol. We have much to discuss.”
“I wondered when you would show up again.” Carol took her time undoing the buttons and the sash of her raincoat and hanging the coat in the closet. She needed those few minutes to collect her thoughts. She was not as calm or as unaffected by recent events as she pretended to be. She was very much afraid that Lady Augusta knew this and would take advantage of her weakness.
“Do sit down, Carol. You are wasting time.”
“I thought you had all eternity.”
“Certainly not. I explained to you on my first visit that I have been given only until Twelfth Night to convince you to change your ways. I said, sit down!”
Carol was planning to remain on her feet, but Lady Augusta gave her no choice. She felt herself being moved to the wing chair, felt her body bending and an invisible force pressing her downward until she sat as she was bidden. Once she was seated the force released her.
“Very clever,” said Carol, glaring at her visitor. Then, intrigued, she looked more closely at the ghost. Lady Augusta’s gray hair was no longer hanging around her face in lank strands. Instead, it was piled into her usual neat chignon. She was still robed in the same gray and black she had been wearing during all her time in the future with Carol, but the robes had undergone a subtle transformation. They were not so heavy as they once were, and the long streamers of dark fabric no longer looked much like tattered rags, but now assumed a more elegant, drifting appearance, like chiffon dyed to the color of dark smoke or of thick, swirling fog. These garments were never still. The skirt and the long, loose sleeves and the newly sheer cloak around her shoulders all lifted and blew gently in a nonexistent breeze, and then settled back around Lady Augusta’s figure, only to rise again a moment later. The effect was both ghostly and disorienting. Carol suspected Lady Augusta of wanting it that way.
“How are you, Carol?”
“How do you expect me to be? I’m not sure whether I’m dead or alive.” Lady Augusta did not respond to this deliberately provocative statement, but only sat watching her, and after a minute or two Carol added, “I want you to tell me what I can do to prevent the tragedy I just witnessed.”
“As I recall it, you were a willing participant in those tragic events. You were willing to give your life to save those whom you loved.”
“Love,” Carol corrected. “I love them still and will until I… but I’ve already done that, haven’t I? I have already died. Much good my sacrifice did them. You saw their final fate. That’s what I want to change, and you have to tell me how.”
“You have learned the lessons I intended you to learn.” Lady Augusta moved, sending a flurry of sheer black and gray fabric into the air. To Carol’s eyes, the colors seemed to be fading into lighter shades even as she regarded her visitor with growing frustration. Nor did Lady Augusta’s next words shed more light on any possibility of changing the future. “The rest is up to you, Carol. You have only to look into your own heart. There you will discover all you need to know.”
“I want Nik to live,” Carol cried. “And Pen— and Bas and Jo and Al and Lin. Luc, too. All of them, all of my friends in that time.”
“Then you must take immediate action, for if you do not change the present, when time moves on to Nik’s day, he and all his friends will die in that failed uprising or will be executed after it is put down. Only you can change the future you saw this evening. If you wish it to be so, Nik and his friends will live under a democratic, representative government. No uprising will be necessary because there will be no repression. Nor will the cities of the world be in ruins or the weather patterns changed by the weapons used in terrible wars. And Christmas—along with all other holidays—will still be celebrated. The future depends upon you, Carol.”
“You are being unfair,” Carol said, feeling more frustrated than ever. “One person alone cannot solve all of the world’s problems.”
“You are not expected to do so. What you are expected to do is care about those whom you know you could help. Begin with those around you and go on from there, always doing the best you can. The slightest change can make a bigger difference than you realize.”
“My best,” Carol repeated thoughtfully. “I haven’t always done my best in the past, have I?”
“Do it now. It is never too late to begin.” Lady Augusta rose, her garments floating around her. “Sleep now, Carol. The pain of this second parting from your love will ease, especially since you know that you have the means within yourself to save him a second time. And to save the life of Car.”
“Are you telling me that there will be a Car?” Carol stared at her. “A real Car?”
“I thought you were the real Car.” Head tilted to one side, Lady Augusta regarded her with a piercing look. “Didn’t Nik explain all of this to you when you first arrived in that future time? Surely he mentioned the dreams he had, foretelling your meeting?”
“Yes, he did.” Carol sighed, remembering. “I listened to his beautiful words, but I didn’t really understand them until this minute. Is it true, then? Nik and I will meet again in the future, and we might both live beyond those days when I was there? And Pen and the others, too?”
“Whether possibility becomes reality is up to you, Carol.” Lady Augusta raised one hand and Carol began to grow sleepy. It was all she could do to keep her eyes open. She yawned, too weary to lift her own hand to cover her mouth.
“Sleep will mend your present grief,” Lady Augusta said.
“Don’t go. Will I see you again? Didn’t you say… ?” Carol was so sleepy that she could no longer remember what Lady Augusta had said.
“I am heartened to learn that you now desire my company where once you despised it.” There was amusement in Lady Augusta’s fading voice, and a kindness and warmth Carol had not heard from her before. “I will return once more. For the moment, my presence is required Elsewhere. You have until Twelfth Night, Carol. Do your very best, child. Remember, I am depending upon you.”
The voice grew fainter and fainter, until Carol could just barely hear the last words.
She sighed and turned over, snuggling down beneath the bedcovers. Questions floated through her mind, but she was too tired to ask them just yet. Tomorrow would be soon enough. For the moment, her pillow was soft and the bed and her flannel nightgown were warm.
Pillow? Nightgown? Hadn’t she been sitting by the fire?