To Dream Again (6 page)

Everything seemed to be moving. She blinked three times, wondering if she were dreaming, but each time she opened her eyes, swirling colors and dancing objects dazzled her, and suddenly she realized what she was seeing.

The room was filled with toys. A clown on a music box danced in time to the melody of a calliope. A puppet on a string winked and waved at her. Drummer boys drummed, carousels turned, and acrobats tumbled.

Toys rested atop stacks of unopened wooden crates, steamer trunks, and furniture. They were scattered across the floor and piled in the corners among countless books, loose papers, and machinery. To her left stood a table where a toy train moved around an elaborate track surrounded by tiny buildings.

A narrow path cut through the clutter from the door to an empty space in the center of the room, where her bizarre neighbor sat cross-legged on the floor. All around him, tops spun, little tin-plated animals scurried to and fro, and trains moved across the floor. A tall wooden statue of an American Indian stood nearby, presiding over the chaos in dignified contemplation.

Toys? She wouldn't have believed it of a grown man, but she was seeing it with her own eyes. A grown man playing with toys.

In his hands was a little tin-plated dog, and he seemed to be winding a knob in its side. Speechless, she watched as he set the dog on the floor and released it. The animal immediately began moving, wagging its tail as it headed straight toward her. It hit the toe of her shoe and came to a halt, unable to go any farther.

She lifted her gaze from the toy dog to the man seated on the floor. He looked up at her over the gold rims of his spectacles and smiled. "Hullo," he greeted in a voice loud enough to carry over the din.

He pulled off his spectacles and gestured to the dog at her feet. "Terribly sorry," he shouted to her, "but you're in the way. Would you mind moving your foot?"

She frowned in puzzlement, uncertain she had heard correctly. "I beg your pardon?" she called back.

"I want the dog to go out the door, and I'm afraid you're in the way." He turned and set the spectacles on a crate behind him. "So, if you wouldn't mind stepping aside?"

Mara glanced over her shoulder. "But it will go down the stairs."

"Exactly."

She knew it. The man was crazy, nutty as a Christmas fruitcake. She stepped over the dog and turned, watching through the doorway as it crossed the landing, reached the first step, and went tumbling down.

Mr. Chase went past her and down the stairs to retrieve the toy. He came back, holding the tin-plated animal in his hand. "That's the fifth time," he declared as he halted several feet from her. He set the dog on the floor, sending it off in a different direction. "And it's still running. Clockwork mechanisms are usually much more fragile."

She turned her head and watched the dog dubiously for a moment, as it ran between the legs of a large telescope standing nearby and disappeared.

She couldn't think of anything to say. Just how did one talk to a lunatic? She cleared her throat and looked up to find that he had moved closer. He was standing only a foot or two away, watching her, utterly still amid the motion surrounding them.

The morning sun through the windows caught the brown of his hair, turning it to burnished gold and gilding the tips of his thick lashes. His vivid blue eyes held hers with that look of perception she'd seen once before, as if he knew exactly what she was thinking. It was most disconcerting.

"I want my buttonhook," she blurted out.

A frown crossed his handsome face, and he slapped a hand to his forehead. "I forgot to return it to you, didn't I? Terribly sorry."

He moved past her and walked to the desk, navigating his way around the toys still moving across the floor. Then he began to search amid the mess. "It proved to be very useful." He waved a hand vaguely toward the locomotive on the table. "As you can see, my train is working now. Thank you."

"You're welcome," she replied in an ungracious tone, ignoring the warm smile he gave her.

"Meant to return it first thing, but I became distracted." He lifted his head and paused in his search. "Trying to decide which toys are worth making. My meeting, you know. We won't be able to make them all, more's the pity."

"I see." Mara didn't see at all. She felt a bit like Alice in the Lewis Carroll story. She wondered if Mr. Chase owned a rabbit.

He seemed to sense her confusion. A smile lifted the corners of his mouth as he looked at her. "Though this be madness, yet there is method in it." His smile widened at her skeptical expression. "Hamlet," he added and resumed his search.

He looked for several moments more but couldn't seem to find it, a fact which did not surprise Mara at all. He turned around, facing the bookshelf beside the window and began to rummage through the books and toys piled there.

"Ah, here it is!" he exclaimed, pulling the tool off one of the shelves. "I knew I'd put it over here somewhere."

Just then something out the window caught his attention. He stepped closer and looked down into the alley below. Before she could even begin to wonder what he was watching with such fascination, he turned back around and walked past her, thrusting the buttonhook into her hand as he headed for the door. "Thank you again," he said absently. "I have to go out for a moment, but I'll be back. You're welcome to stay if you like."

He walked out of the room, leaving Mara standing there alone, dumbfounded by his abrupt exit. She walked to the window and looked down. She saw nothing but the empty alley below.

"Nutty as a fruitcake," she muttered. She took one more glance around the untidy room before following him out the door, but he had disappeared. She went down the stairs to her own flat, wondering again who would agree to have a meeting with a man who was touched in the head.

She put her buttonhook back in the drawer where it belonged, then made her usual breakfast of tea and toast. As she ate, she wondered if whoever was meeting with her strange neighbor had any idea what he was in for.

***

When Nathaniel reached the alley, it was empty. The boys were gone. Leaning his back against the brick wall of Mrs. O'Brien's lodging house, he closed his eyes. "Damn."

He'd seen them through the window, half a dozen of them, surrounding a younger, much smaller boy, and he'd known at once what was happening.

Laughter rang in his ears, taunting, childish laughter from long ago. His eighth birthday.

“
G...g...give it b...back! It's m...mine
.” He could see himself watching in frustration and rage as a group of older boys, his brother among them, played catch with his birthday gift. They tossed the wooden locomotive from hand to hand, keeping it just out of his reach.

“
M...mine
,” Adrian had mimicked him, making all the other boys laugh. They had eventually tired of tormenting him, and his brother had smashed the toy against a rock, then the boys had wandered off. Nathaniel could still remember picking up the broken pieces of his birthday present.

Opening his eyes, he pushed away thoughts of his past. He walked to the other end of the alley and glanced up and down the street, but he could find no trace of the child whom he'd seen the other boys tease so mercilessly.

He left the alley and returned upstairs to find that Mara had gone. He wasn't surprised. From her manner he could tell that she thought him rather bizarre, but he had long ago ceased to care what other people thought of him.

He looked down at the toys on the floor, their motion stilled now. Unbuttoning the cuffs of his shirt, he rolled up his sleeves and put thoughts of his melancholy neighbor and the tormented little boy out of his mind. He still had work to do if wanted to be ready for his meeting with Mrs. Elliot.

***

But it seemed that all his work had been for naught. Three hours later, Nathaniel stood in front of Elliot Electrical Motors and stared in disbelief at the neatly lettered sign tacked to the locked front door.

"With the utmost sadness, we announce the death of our founder, James Samuel Elliot," he read aloud. "In memory, Elliot Electrical will be closed for this 11th day of July, 1889. Business will resume July 12. Direct all inquiries to Mr. Henry Finch, Solicitor, Bloomsbury. A service will be held at nine o'clock this morning, St. Andrew's Church, Houndsditch."

Nine o'clock. It was certain to be over by now. Nathaniel stared at the sign, thinking with sorrow of the man he'd met in San Francisco.

James had seen the potential in Nathaniel's ideas at the point in his life when Nathaniel himself had doubted them most. He'd been hiding from the world ever since his toy company in St. Louis had gone bankrupt, working on inventions and selling them to others, convinced all his dreams were lost to him, when James had first come to see him.

James had believed in him and had brought him out of the dark hole of despair he'd fallen into, a debt he would now never have the chance to repay. James had convinced him to hold on to his dream, to try once more to achieve it. Now, staring at the sign and the black wreath that hung below it, Nathaniel felt the doubts and the despair return, the frustration of dreams once again out of his grasp.

What the hell was he to do now? There was nothing in writing. The two men had formed a partnership based on nothing more than a gentlemen's agreement and a handshake. No one at Elliot's seemed to know who he was or why he was there. Nathaniel wasn't sure what his legal position was in all this, but he figured it wasn't a very strong one.

He stared at the sign. There was only one way to find out. It was time to pay a visit to James's solicitor.

Mara was bone-weary. She had gone to the memorial service with Mr. Finch and Percy that morning, expecting them to be the only ones there. But several dozen people had attended, many of them employees of Elliot's.

When it was over, they had crowded around her to express their sympathy and tell her their stories of what James Elliot had done for them. Mara couldn't fathom how a man who never stayed in one place long enough to make friends could have so many.

After the service, she'd spent the rest of the day meeting with potential investors. But her efforts had been in vain. Men with money to invest were not enthusiastic about having a female partner.

As twilight descended, she trudged home through the narrow, twisted streets of Whitechapel, tired, discouraged, and even frightened. She had one day left, and she was out of options. The bank would take the company, and she would have nothing but the twelve pounds and six in her little tin bank.

Mara passed an abandoned warehouse, and she paused to glance at the boarded-up windows and the "For Sale" sign on the door, fully aware that Elliot's would soon look much the same. A cackle of laughter caused her to glance down, and she saw a thin, disheveled figure huddled amid the trash in the shadowy doorway. She froze, unable to tear her gaze away from the empty, hopeless stare of the old woman sitting there.

'"ave ye tuppence for me, dearie?"

Mara's heart twisted with compassion. She fumbled in her pocket and pulled out a sixpence, more than the woman had asked for, enough for a night's lodging. She stepped forward and thrust the coin into the gnarled hand reaching up to her. "Find yourself a room, ma'am."

"Room?" The woman clutched the coin to her breast and shook her head fretfully. "No, no, I must feed the pigeons." She laughed again. "Tuppence for the pigeons, dearie."

Mara shivered and quickly walked away, but the vision haunted her all the way home.
Tuppence for the bank, Mara. Tuppence for the pigeons, dearie
. Tuppence was never enough. Her future had never looked more bleak.

She arrived at her lodging house. By the light of the street lamp, she could see the gray kitten she'd first noticed two days before. It was sitting on the front stoop. It hissed at her as she approached.

"Scat!" she ordered, waving a hand to urge the kitten away. It jumped back, but it did not run. Instead, it backed up into a corner by the door and watched as she mounted the steps and stepped inside her lodging house.

She closed the door behind her and climbed the stairs to her room, knowing it was time she faced facts. She would lose the company. The bankers would not change their minds, she would not be able to find investors. No guardian angel would magically appear and save her from poverty.

She reached the landing and turned toward her room, then halted in surprise at the sight before her. Her neighbor from upstairs was kneeling in front of her door, a screwdriver in his hand. Beside him stood her solicitor, Mr. Finch, holding a lamp to light the dim landing.

"Use your free hand to hold the latch in place while I insert the screws," the former instructed, and Mara watched in astonishment as the dignified Mr. Finch knelt on the floor beside Mr. Chase. The two men remained there for several moments, then rose to their feet.

Mr. Chase must have sensed her presence for he suddenly turned and glanced in her direction. Looking at her over the rims of his spectacles, he smiled. "We've fixed it," he announced proudly and stepped back so that she could see the shiny new brass handle that now graced her door.