Jonathan and Bram’s discussions continued late into the night over several bottles of Sherry, to the point that even the wolves were no longer baying.
Two days later, Jonathan and Evelyn bid their host adieu and took a coach to Aberdeen, a local train to Edinburgh, and the Flying Scotsman back to London.
“Jonathan, do you think Bram
thinks a book about blood-sucking creatures of the night who can turn into bats
or whatever and sleep in coffins will be a successful novel? It sounds too
fantastical to make any sense.”
“Well, he has made a name for himself in writing this sort of horror or whatever it is called. And now there are those new sleuthing stories by some, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. I think those may hold up better as a type of novel. Murderous thieves and criminals, and a mystery to be solved along the way.”
“I guess you are right, Jonathan. People would rather read stories of criminals and thieves walking among society and in the corridors of power than grasp onto the notion that there are groups of mystic immortals baking their bread, writing their plays, and tending to their needs all out in the open,”
The next few years moved slowly;
the Nineteenth century did not want to pass on.
Her Majesty Victoria had been on the throne of the Empire for more than sixty years, and the Empire was thriving. The world was changing incredibly, with new and marvellous ideas, thoughts, and products and greater and greater achievements in science, literature, and the arts. Life was indeed at the climax or apex of what civilization could be. The world had been discovered, the lands walked upon, and all the seas had been sailed.
Evelyn looked at herself in the
mirror on her dressing table, put down her hair brush and looked at herself momentarily.
Speaking earnestly to her
reflection, “I will be seventy-five this year; I look exactly as I did at twenty-four.
Almost everyone I have known from what Jonathan calls ‘me before times’ is
gone.
I have met perhaps one hundred
people with whom I could talk of this, yet I feel guilty of living on while so
many pass. I am sure that at some point, they will all ponder this question. What
is the nature of this immortal blessing?
How can we help others learn
from the past without being considered mad? How can we convey to others the
brief and priceless gift of life, of three or four scores of years and then
darkness? Perhaps that is why humanity needs to procreate and create art so
that we can, in some form, carry on—not as a species but as individuals
standing against the void.
But if a short-lived Standard needs to make a mark to be remembered, what then of Devi? What is our purpose? Books, art and histories of man remind the present of the past. Children serve as proof of the lineage of ancestors, but what is the call of the Devi? What manner do we serve time?”
Jonathan interrupted her darker
musings on questions she could not answer by entering her salon room.
“I have a message here. A
cable from the American Collette in Boston. Late last week, November 27/28, a
fierce storm laid upon the area, and more than 150 ships were sunk or damaged,
and a body recovered seems to be that of Orlan Marcano.”
“Then we have nothing to fear
from his crazed anger?”
“Perhaps not. Perhaps we are safe.”
Time progressed, and 1898 slipped
into 1899 and then the new century. It promised new hope and stability
worldwide, the end of wars, empires set and firm, India secure, and China and
Nippon open to new trade. The war between the Old World and the New World, the
Spanish-American War, was resolved, and this century would hold nothing but
peace for all mankind.
The century of the ‘Nineteen Hundreds” would be a glorious lit path leading to the far future of the 2,000s and a peaceful third millennium of modern times. At her society meetings, the most significant debate was how to pen a “nine.” From the top circle and then the retrograde tail. Or up from the tail to the final circle. Tea and ink were spread as a cold thought dawned upon Evelyn: all the women in the room would be long dead by the time she someday needed to start her year dates with a “2.”
London, England, and the Empire were awash in sorrow in 1901 as the Great Lady, the Great White Mother, the Imperatrix under whose eye most of the Empire subjects had been born, had died.
The sense of bereavement was
almost palatable to any Devi in London. The black buntings on every building
and rail gave the city an even more sullen look than any usually sunless day. But
it had been thirteen years, and it was time to move somewhere new.
Europe was Europe, and they had
been recently in Lisbon. They had left America forty years earlier, so the far
western coast was an option. Russia and the Far East were out, as were the
Middle East and India. The best of a diminished list was Australia and New
Zealand.
Ranching, mining, and shipping
offered several possibilities, and spending time in one country would make the
following move to the other relatively easy.
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