Mary Robb - Down the Rabbit Hole

“Do you know when that will happen?” Weston hated to spoil her happy mood, but he could not resist asking.

“I have no idea.”

“That seems to be one of your favorite phrases, sir, and it is not at all reassuring.” Weston felt compelled to add, “Though I do appreciate your honesty.”

“I know it will happen, and it will not matter if you are in the library or in Paddington Station. You will return to exactly where they are standing, and they will return here.”

Alice stood up. “So there is no need for us to rush back to the town house? We may explore more of the twenty-first century?”

Excellent questions, the earl thought. If they could explore more he might be able to act on the idea he had had at the bookshop. Namely, did his visit to the future hold a way for him to repair the West family fortunes?

For the first time Mr. Arbuckle hesitated. “I am not sure how wise it is for you to know every detail of modern life.”

Alice sank back into her seat, looking quite disappointed.

“But you told us that we cannot change history,” Weston reminded him, and not just because he hated to see Alice disappointed. Before Arbuckle could answer, Weston went on, approaching the subject another way. “Tell me, sir, have canals prospered in the last two hundred years?”

“Oh yes,” Alice said. “Lord Bridgewater’s canal generated many imitators. It was a brilliant way to move coal.”

“It may have been brilliant then, but they are no longer used for transport in this country.” Arbuckle spoke with regret. “The canals today are no more than pleasant byways where people use the old barges for vacation houses and some even make permanent residences of them. They have no real economic value anymore.”

Thank the good Lord he found that out before he invested in them. Perhaps I am using the wrong approach, he thought. “Tell us what has changed lives the most.”

When Arbuckle pressed his lips together as though he would refuse to answer, Alice interceded. “Come now, sir, what does it matter? We have been dead so long it can hardly make a difference to the content of space and time.”

“Space-time continuum,” Weston corrected sotto voce again. Alice merely shrugged at the correction.

Arbuckle nodded. “I suppose you have a point, miss.” With his finger on his lips, he seemed to give the question some thought. “I think electricity has been the most significant invention. It is now used to power lights, provide heat in the winter and cooling in the summer, and further powers so much of what we use in daily life.”

“Electrical science is of some interest in my time,” the earl said, wondering if that was the key to repairing the West fortunes.

“Yes, but the true development of electricity in a practical way does not happen until the end of the nineteenth century.”

“Shall we walk among the crowd?” Weston suggested, hiding his disappointment. “Perhaps that will provide inspiration.” He spoke the last aloud without intent. Mr. Arbuckle was taking the used cups to a trash bin, but Alice heard him.

“Inspiration for what?”

“A way to repair the fortunes of the Earl of Weston,” he answered as he stood to help Alice from her chair. “There must be something here that I can invest in back in our own time.”

As Weston watched Mr. Arbuckle make his way back to them, a conversation from a nearby table distracted him.

“See, Ginny. That girl didn’t mind that the guy with her helped her up.”

The speaker was half of the couple he had observed earlier having such an intense conversation. Weston was sure the young gentleman had not intended him to hear.

“Yes, but that’s the least of it, Bryce. It’s not those old-fashioned things like helping a woman put on her coat or opening the door, it’s your overall attitude toward my work.”

“It’s not your work, Ginny. It’s the way it consumes you.”

With a glance at him, Alice sat back down in her seat, and Weston did the same. Yes, this was a little bit of twenty-first-century drama that he wanted to hear, rude as eavesdropping may be.

“Being a physician takes time,” the girl continued.

“But you’re done with your residency.”

“And now I’m going to spend a year or two as a colleague of the foremost physician in the field of head and neck surgery.”

Alice looked stunned. He probably did too. This woman was a physician? Beyond that, she was apparently about to specialize in a field of science he had never heard of.

“So if we want to marry we’ll have to wait?”

The girl shook her head. “I love you, Bryce. I want this to work. But your job with the foreign office and mine, well, it makes it hard to have much of a life together.”

“Shall we go?” Mr. Arbuckle asked as he came back to the table.

Embarrassed by his eavesdropping, Weston stood up with unnecessary speed. Alice was more decorous but made no demur, and they left the coffeehouse and the little drama behind them.

Alice took his arm and leaned closer and said, almost whispering, “Did you hear that, Wes? That woman, she could not have been much more than thirty. And she is a physician! It’s astounding.”

“It most certainly is. I’m not sure I would be willing to trust her to care for me.”

“And why not?” His comment brought Alice up short, and they stood in the middle of the walk, people streaming around them on either side. “She must have been well educated if she is to work with the best in her field. Do you not believe that a woman can do work with an expertise equal to a man’s?”

“I find it hard to believe that times have changed that much.”

“Oh, Weston, don’t be ridiculous. Look at those things that fly and the machines that hold more information than every book in your well-respected library. If those things are possible, then why not a woman doing a man’s work?”

“Shall we move along, my lord?” Mr. Arbuckle suggested. “We can walk to Green Park. It’s only a few blocks away, and we can continue the discussion there, if you wish.”

They followed behind Mr. Arbuckle, arm in arm, weaving through crowds that seemed to have grown in the short time they were in the coffee shop. As they walked Alice pressed her point. “All these women we see passing are so much better dressed than I am. Based on what we overheard it’s most likely that they have positions with responsibility outside of maintaining a home.”

“Hmm,” was the only response that occurred to him.

“They could be bankers, shop owners.” As they waited at the light she turned to a well-dressed woman. “I beg your pardon, miss, but would you tell me what you do with your day?”

The woman looked slightly nonplussed, but shrugged. “I’m the manager of an art gallery in SoHo.” As the light changed she hurried off. “Sorry, I’m quite late getting home.”

“There, you see, Wes? Though I am not sure what someone who manages an art gallery actually does, the word ‘manager’ indicates a position of some responsibility.”

As they entered Green Park, Mr. Arbuckle waited for them so they could all walk side by side on the wide path.

“Mr. Arbuckle,” Alice asked, “is it not true that women do all sorts of work now, work that used to be reserved for men in our time?”

“Yes, miss, that’s quite true.”

Weston wondered if the change was one-sided. “Next you will tell me that men are giving birth and nursing their young.”

Even as he spoke, they passed a park bench where a young man was holding a babe and feeding him with a bottle. Weston’s face must have shown the panic he felt, for Alice laughed out loud.

“No, my lord,” Mr. Arbuckle reassured him, “men do not give birth, but they are much more involved in child care now than they were in 1805.”