The Second Mrs. Astor(61)
She fed a cheese and pickle sandwich to Kitty, who didn’t bother to chew at all.
The pretty plaster trimwork decorating the walls began to spin. She shoved to her feet but had to bend over as spots took her vision, balancing herself with all ten fingertips pressed against the rim of the table.
“Ma’am?” Carrie seized her by the arm at the same time Jack said urgently, “Madeleine,” taking her other arm.
She wet her lips. “I think I must go above. I—I need to be outside.”
Later on, when she tried to remember how she made it from the first-class lounge to the deck, all she would recall was a blur of colors, of voices, and that both of her elbows were caught in two very hard grips. The next clear memory was of sucking in cold, bracing breaths of sea air, half-collapsed against Jack with Carrie hovering nearby, a vial of smelling salts in her hand.
“I’m all right,” she said, the words coming out without any actual evidence of truth. She said it again, more slowly. “I’m all right.”
The wind scoured her skin, and it felt like waking up from a bad dream. She turned her face into it, blinking. The sun was low now, casting terra-cotta light against the darkening blue clouds, and the water splashed and hissed as it was sliced in two by Nomadic ’s bow.
She was cold, but it felt good to be cold. It felt like she could take a deep breath again without gagging.
“Come sit here.” Jack urged her toward a cushioned chair that a steward had produced from nowhere, and then a blanket, quickly whipped over her lap.
“I’m sorry,” she said, holding a hand to her forehead. “I’m so sorry for the bother.”
“Nonsense,” said her nurse. “It was no fit environment for even the heartiest of us in there, so stuffy and enclosed and choked with all the gentlemen’s smoke. I have no notion why they don’t bother to take themselves out of doors to enjoy their tobacco, I truly don’t. You’ll do better out here, ma’am, I promise. I’ll stay with you, to make certain you’re not too chilled.”
“As will I,” said Jack. “We’ll watch for Titanic together. A dollar to the person who sights her first.”
“All right,” said Madeleine, still savoring her long, deep breaths.
“You have a deal, sir,” said Carrie, replacing the salts into her coat pocket.
An hour or so later, Carrie Endres, with her sharp blue eyes and smiling ways, won the dollar.
*
It came at them as a fortress, as a castle, as a painted feverscape towering above the ocean. It was the tallest, scariest thing Madeleine had ever seen, bearing down on them in a crest of freshly slaughtered saltwater.
Titanic arrived eating up the flat horizon.
Titanic arrived swallowing the waves.
*
In the gray-foamed disturbance churned to life by the steamship, the gangway between the liner and the Nomadic would not cease its uneasy shifting. A group of sailors held it down at both ends, but it popped and bucked as much as it could, groaning with the pressure of the waves. Several other passengers had already defied it to board, Margaret Brown included, but Madeleine eyed the platform with trepidation. The tender’s repeated hard collisions against the side of Titanic did nothing to lessen her fears, or her nausea. Many of the ladies negotiating the gangway did so with stifled squeals and yelps.
Madeleine made it across, though, with no squealing and her head high (because they were watching already; all those distinguished society people turning in place to watch her), her husband basically propelling her along, Kitty clipping at her heels. She could do no less.
The wind lashed her skirts hard against her ankles in just the eternity it took to hurry along the gangplank, but then it was over. She made it into the vestibule of the liner, her feet finding what felt like firm land, although it wasn’t.
But the black-and-white floor of Titanic’s first-class entranceway did not shift, not even by a hair. It felt real and solid. She was nearly in tears at the relief.
“Colonel Astor, Mrs. Astor,” greeted an officer in a frock coat, inclining his head and gesturing with his hand where they should go. “Welcome aboard. This is the way.”
They entered the reception room, Madeleine clinging to Jack’s arm. It was an opulent, soaring hall of thick rugs, wicker chairs and tables, men and women dressed for dinner holding aperitifs and listening to a piano and string quartet discreetly playing against a background of potted palms.
Madeleine felt, bizarrely, as if she had stepped back in time. She was back in some mansion in Newport or Manhattan, the same stony people, the same stony expressions. She had plunged right back into the world she had worked so hard to escape. She actually came to a complete halt, her right foot half-lifted, the toe of her shoe dragging against the floor, physically unable to finish her step.
She wanted to turn around, retreat, fly back to the tender and hide ashore.
The stony gazes descended, one by one, to the unmistakable bulge of her stomach beneath her coat and dress.
She lowered her foot.
Bruce Ismay, speaking with a steward against one of the arched windows, caught sight of them and hastened over. He and Jack shook hands, quick and hard.
“So delightful to see you again, so delightful,” he was saying. He turned to Madeleine, bowing over her hand in a fluid swoop. “Mrs. Astor. You are as radiant as ever.”
Ismay offered a smile from beneath his heavy moustache. Madeleine made herself smile in return, even though she had seldom seen anyone lie with less conviction.