The Map of Time (Trilogía Victoriana #1)(61)

That other Andrew, who after all was him, his own flesh and blood, would be able to fulfill all his dreams. He would be able to make her his wife, to love her regardless of his father’s opposition and their neighbors” malicious gossip, and he only wished the other Andrew could know what a miracle that was. How during the past eight years while he had been tormenting himself, his luckier self had never stopped loving her for a single moment, populating the world with the fruit of all that love.

“I understand,” he murmured, smiling wanly at his friends.

Wells was unable to suppress a cry of triumph: “That’s wonderful,” he exclaimed, while Charles and Jane resumed again patting him on the back with encouragement.

“Do you know why during my journeys into the past I always avoided seeing myself?” Wells asked, without caring whether anyone was listening. “Because if I had, it would mean that at some point in my life I would have been obliged to walk through the door and greet myself, which thankfully for my sanity has never happened.” After embracing his cousin repeatedly in a renewed display of euphoria, Charles helped him up out of his chair, while Jane straightened his jacket with a motherly gesture.

“Perhaps those troubling sounds we hear in the night, the creaking noises we assume are the furniture, are simply the footsteps of a future self watching over us as we sleep, without daring to disturb us,” Wells mused, oblivious to the general rejoicing.

It was only when Charles went to shake his hand that he appeared to emerge from his reverie.

“Thanks awfully for everything, Mr. Wells,” said Charles. “I apologize for having burst into your house like that. I hope you can forgive me.” “Don’t worry, don’t worry. All is forgotten,” replied the writer, with a vague wave of his hand, as though he had discovered something salutary, revivifying about having a gun aimed at him.

“What will you do with the machine, will you destroy it?” Andrew ventured, timidly.

Wells gazed at him, smiling benevolently.

“I suppose so,” he replied, “now it has fulfilled the mission for which it was quite possibly invented.” Andrew nodded, unable to help being moved by his solemn words. He did not consider his personal tragedy the only one that warranted the use of the machine that had come into Wells’s possession. But he was grateful that the author, who scarcely knew him, had sympathized enough with his misfortune to have considered it a good enough reason to flout the laws of time, in order to change its very fabric and put the world in danger.

“I also think it’s for the best, Mr. Wells,” said Andrew, having recovered from his emotion, “because you were right. There is a guardian of time, someone who watches over the past. I bumped into him when I came back, in the doorway to your house.” “Really,” said Wells, taken aback.

“Yes, although luckily I managed to frighten him off,” replied Andrew.

With this, he clasped the author in a heartfelt embrace. Beaming all over their faces, Charles and Jane contemplated the scene, which would have been frankly moving were it not for the awkward stiffness with which Wells greeted Andrew’s affectionate gesture. When Andrew finally let go of the author, Charles said his good-byes to the couple, steering his cousin out of the house lest he throw himself once more at the alarmed author.

Andrew crossed the garden vigilantly, right hand in his pocket feeling the pistol, afraid the guardian of time might have followed him back to the present and be lying in wait for him. But there was no sign of him. Waiting for them outside the gate was the cab that had brought them there only a few hours before, a few hours which to Andrew seemed like centuries.

“Blast, I’ve forgotten my hat,” said his cousin, after Andrew had clambered into the cab. “I’ll be back in a jiffy, cousin.” Andrew nodded absentmindedly, and settled into his seat, utterly exhausted. Through the cab’s tiny window he surveyed the encircling darkness as day began to dawn. Like a coat wearing thin at the elbows, night was beginning to unravel at one of the farthest edges of the sky, its opaqueness gradually diluting into an ever paler blue, until a hazy light slowly began to reveal the contours of the world. With the exception of the driver, apparently asleep on his seat, it was as if this stunning display of golden and purple hues was being performed solely for his benefit. Many times over the past few years when Andrew had witnessed the majestic unveiling of dawn he had wondered whether that day he would die, whether that day his increasing torment would compel him to shoot himself with a pistol like the one he was now carrying in his pocket, the one he had removed from its glass cabinet the previous evening without knowing he would end up using it to kill Jack the Ripper. But now he could not watch the dawn and wonder whether he would be alive to see it again tomorrow, for he knew the answer: he would see the dawn tomorrow and the day after and the day after that, because he had no way of justifying killing himself now that he had saved Marie. Should he go ahead with his plan out of sheer inertia, or simply because, as Wells had pointed out, he was in the wrong universe? This did not seem like a good enough reason. In any event, it felt less noble, not to mention that it might imply a fundamentally absurd jealousy of his time twin. After all, he was the other Andrew, and he ought to rejoice in his good fortune as he would his own, or failing that, that of his brother or his cousin Charles. Besides, if the grass in next door’s garden was always greener, how much more luxuriantly verdant must it be in the neighboring universe? He should feel pleased at being happy in another world, to have at least achieved bliss in the adjoining realm.