“I’m sorry. I couldn’t tell you on the phone, or you would have thought I was mad or drunk when I called you,” Sybil said, and he nodded. “But I wanted you to come and meet everyone and see the house. I didn’t know then if they’d be willing to meet you or not. But even so, I thought it would be worth a trip to visit the house, and maybe you could write the family history.”
“It certainly is worth the trip,” he agreed. “And this is so much more…important…and exciting…and so moving. What an extraordinary experience,” he said quietly, and smiled at Sybil. “Thank you for sharing this with me. I would never have known otherwise.” He was sorry his mother wasn’t there, but he understood why. She had always been so adamant, even with him, about not having any tie to the house in San Francisco, and no interest in it, not being there since she was a baby, not being American, and being French. Her emotional ties were to the Lambertins, her adoptive father’s family, and not the Butterfields.
And then he wondered about something else and asked Sybil quietly, as his guide through their extraordinary world. He felt privileged to be there above all else, and felt a bond to them he never knew he had. Laure seemed to as well and loved her new friends. “What year are we in? I haven’t been able to figure it out.”
“It took me a while too. It’s 1919 for them, exactly a hundred years behind us, to the day,” which made sense from the clothes they were wearing and the events they discussed. It felt to him like asking about the time difference with another country where you were planning to travel. Only in this case it was measured in centuries, not hours. And if it was 1919 for them, he understood why his grandmother wasn’t there. She was in France then.
For the rest of the evening, Samuel joined in the conversation, and Laure and the young people had fun together. Angus offered to play the bagpipes for them in celebration, and everyone said another time. Having Samuel and Laure there had energized them all, and after the Butterfields had retired for the night, as mysteriously and instantaneously as they always did once they left the dining room, Samuel sat with Sybil and Blake for a long time in the kitchen, talking about it and drinking wine. He had never had an experience like it before, and doubted he would again, away from this house.
“Thank God you bought it. Imagine if we’d never known,” he said to his hosts. “And what do you do about the things you know and they don’t? We’ve both read the book,” he said, looking at Sybil. “If they’re in 1919, they don’t know what’s coming in 1929 and after that. Have you warned them?”
Sybil shook her head. “Blake and I have talked about it a lot. It doesn’t seem fair if we don’t tell them, but wrong if we do. We can’t change it for them. The war, the stock market crash, the accidents, the deaths. They all happened a hundred years ago. We can’t rewrite history. We can only try to gentle it for them when it happens, and console them. But, oddly, they have much to teach us, so we don’t make the same mistakes.” He hadn’t thought about that, and when he did, he realized she was right. In a way, it was a blessing for all of them. “And even when they die, they come back,” she explained. “They’re so tightly bound to one another and this house, they don’t leave for long. It took Josiah about four months to come back. And when Augusta died of Spanish flu, she was back in a month. She’s a strong soul.” They all laughed, and Samuel went upstairs that night, shaking his head over the remarkable evening he’d had, and slept till noon the next day. He came downstairs and found Sybil in the kitchen. He had a terrible headache and a hangover.
“Did I dream all that last night?” he asked her. “How drunk was I?”
“No, you didn’t, and you weren’t drunk.” She smiled at him. She had a slight hangover too, but he had drunk more wine. “Laure is out with my kids, by the way. And we’re taking you out tonight.” They wanted to show him and Laure a little of San Francisco, and she suspected that the Butterfields were worn out from the night before too. It cost them something to appear that strongly and be so connected to someone new. Gwyneth had come to see her that morning, and they had agreed to skip dinner that night. The next day was New Year’s Eve, and they’d all be up late again.
Sybil made him a cup of strong coffee and scrambled eggs, and he felt better afterward. And Blake suggested they go out for a drive and look around.
“I feel like I’m in another world, or caught between two worlds,” Samuel said to them and Blake nodded.
“You are, to some extent. Your old world is still here, just as ours is, but this other world that they’re part of is open to you too. We don’t know how it happened, but we’re very glad it did.”
Samuel thought about it for a minute, as he looked at the Golden Gate Bridge and smiled at them. “So am I. Thank you for finding me and getting me here,” he said, as Sybil patted his hand, and they drove back to the house. He wasn’t sure which world or dimension he was in, but he felt oddly at peace.
Chapter 19
After a very entertaining dinner with Samuel and Laure in Chinatown the night before, the Gregorys and all the young people planned to go all out on New Year’s Eve.
Samuel had rented a set of tails with Blake’s help. Caroline lent Laure another dress. Sybil had bought a new evening gown the week before, and everyone met in the dining room for a fabulous dinner with oysters, caviar, lobster, pheasant, baked Alaska for dessert, and a great deal of very fine champagne, which they continued drinking in the ballroom as they had on New Year’s Eve for three years. Samuel was still trying to decipher what he was seeing, and asking Sybil for explanations constantly. She was still encouraging him to write a book, based on Bettina’s but going further and in greater depth about all of the family members, their histories and the people they had touched in some way and those who had touched them, and what they had done in their lives. And the key that linked them was the house.
They all kissed and hugged at midnight, and danced for long hours afterward. Samuel asked Augusta to dance the first waltz with him, and won her heart forever. She told everyone proudly that he was her great-great-grandson from France, which she managed to make sound like a compliment, which was a first for her. And she wouldn’t allow Uncle Angus to dance with Laure, so he danced with Sybil instead, and in a little while Blake cut in, to save her from Angus’s lustful remarks.
The evening seemed exceptionally festive, and everyone was in a good mood. There was no war on, everyone was healthy, Blake was out of danger with his business and had moved on, and Sybil had finally finished her book, which was cause for celebration in itself.
Samuel thoroughly enjoyed the evening with them, and was already sad that they were going back to France in a few days, but he said he had to return to the Sorbonne to teach his final classes, give one more exam, and say goodbye to the office and colleagues he had enjoyed for so long.