The Second Mrs. Astor(71)
“What?” she said, bewildered.
“I’m sure it’s nothing. Just some scratches along the paint. But the captain has ordered everyone to collect our lifebelts and go abovedeck.”
“Our lifebelts?” She noticed now that the door behind him was open—the source of that bright shaft of light—with Rosalie beyond it, moving back and forth, carrying bundles in her arms. Madeleine wondered fuzzily if maybe this was all still part of her dream, but Jack’s hand was cold, very cold. It was that, more than anything else, that began to wake her.
“Purely a precaution,” he was saying in his soothing low voice. “I told you Smith was experienced, and with experience on a liner like this comes a solid dose of prudence. The insurance companies require all these little steps and measures. We’re utterly safe. This is Titanic, after all. We’ll go upstairs and wait in the lounge for a bit while they sort it all out, and then we’ll just come right back here. We were moving ahead at about half speed for a while, but I believe we’re now stopped. Maybe it’s not too late to catch a glimpse of the berg itself. It’ll be a fine story to tell our daughter one day.”
She sagged back against her pillows, feeling the heat of the mattress warmed by her body, the softness cushioning her head. The notion of even having to poke her bare feet out from beneath the covers seemed overwhelming.
Jack leaned over, brushed his lips against hers. She tasted the brandy, felt the small pleasant sting of his moustache, and lifted an arm to his shoulder to bring him closer.
“It’s only for a bit,” he said again, pulling away.
The electric lights overhead switched on, cut glass glinting. Rosalie, in her uniform but yawning widely, came to the bed.
“I will help you dress, madame.”
Madeleine yawned with her, sitting up. She ran a hand over her face, then crawled out of the bed.
“The mint woolen tailor-made, madame?”
“Yes, all right.”
She stood there swaying some, her body still half-surrendered to slumber, letting the nightgown come off, the combinations on, her corset (not tight), stockings, all the rest. As she slipped her feet into her buckled shoes, Jack entered the chamber again, changed out of his formal evening wear for a lounge suit of blue serge and brown flannel. He carried three lifebelts, handed one of them to the maid.
“Ready?” he asked.
“Yes.” She yawned again, unable to help it. “What about Kitty?”
The dog stood between them, her ears pinned back, her head low. Jack bent down to stroke her nose. From outside the suite, Madeleine heard fists pounding on doors, men’s voices talking about lifebelts and coats. Kitty didn’t even cock an ear to it.
“There’s no sense in dragging her out into all this,” Jack said. “She’ll be warmer and safer in here. We’ll be back soon.”
*
Just before they walked out the door, he pivoted to the wardrobe, pulling out her jewelry box. He grabbed a handful of things and returned to her with them: the platinum-and-diamond collar, a necklace of South Sea pearls. Five rings, a pin, and the strand of carnelian.
Madeleine accepted them all wordlessly, wearing what she could, fitting the rest into her pockets. As he opened the door to the hallway, she hurried back into the bedchamber, opened the dressing table drawer containing her Irish lace jacket and the baby blanket.
She yanked the blanket free from its layers of tissue, rolled it into a ball and crammed it on top of the pearls next to her hip.
From the center of the rug, Kitty watched them leave, her head still down, her tail tucked between her legs.
*
Carrie joined them in the corridor, already wearing her lifebelt with a beaver coat on top of it. As the four of them climbed the grand staircase up to A deck, they passed masses of people standing, talking, looking bored or worried or simply impatient. Stewards pushed by, bumping into them without apology, hurrying on. The cheerful sounds of the orchestra grew louder and then softer, then louder again. They entered the first-class lounge to find even more people gathered, the carved rococo ceiling fogged with smoke, almost as if a real fire burned in the fireplace and the flue had jammed. Apparently the occupants of the smoke room had spilled outward into the main area, and none of the gentlemen had cared to put out their cigars and pipes.
Everyone seemed to be in various states of dress—or undress. Madeleine saw women with furs tossed over their nightgowns and lifebelts, men in pyjamas and silk scarves and smoking jackets. They were people she knew (or at least had met), leaders of society stripped down to their basics, modish matrons with their faces scrubbed and their hair woven into plaits. Tycoons of industry cradling glasses of cognac between their spread fingers and flapping around in velvet slippers.
A glance at her corsage watch told her it was not quite twelve-thirty in the morning.
What an eon has passed, she thought, between our dinner and now.
Jack led her to one of the green-pillowed chairs arranged around a small table. She sank into it, Carrie on the other side, Rosalie still standing. Robins found them eventually, looking somewhat disheveled as he wandered through the crowd. He joined them, straightening his tie.
Jack placed the lifebelts on the table but then stood without moving amid the languid commotion all around, his head only just slanted away, the yachtsman in him perhaps attuned to some deep phonic resonance that the rest of them could not discern.