The Second Mrs. Astor(82)

Kinder hearts are stronger, her mother had once said.

Maddy needed to be strong.

She crept on.

*

A deck below, in what might have been the second-class lounge, Madeleine at last encountered a pair of women awake, wrapped in blankets and nestled in chairs in a corner, holding hands and conversing in whispers. She paused at the entrance, then turned away to grant them privacy.

“Madeleine.”

She turned back, uncertain in the low light. The woman spoke again, her voice scarcely a murmur above the steady thudding of the liner’s engines.

“Madeleine, it’s me.”

“Margaret?”

The woman stood, shedding her blanket. She wore black velvet and diamonds and opened her arms, smiling sadly, and Madeleine, all at once and without warning, lost her courage.

She rushed forward to embrace her, barely missing three people along the way.

“They didn’t tell me,” she said into her friend’s shoulder. Her body trembled; her face felt wet and hot. Margaret’s auburn hair was loosely bound into a plait, and Maddy turned her face into the rough silk of it, scented of rosemary and brine. “They didn’t tell me you were here. I asked and they said they thought so but didn’t know. They said they’d find out for me but didn’t know.”

Margaret patted her on the back. Maddy hardly felt it through the thick ruin of the coat.

“I’m sorry,” Margaret whispered. “I should have come to you before. But the doctor said you were to be left undisturbed, and there’s been so much to be done down here with everyone, with all these poor people from steerage. But I should have come. I am sorry.”

Maddy was crying now, trying not to, trying not to make any noise at all so that no one around them would wake, her lungs burning and shrinking. She pulled back, scrubbing her hands along her face. She felt the stare of Margaret’s companion, candidly curious, and ducked away from it.

“Have you seen Jack? Is Jack here?”

“No, my dear heart. No. I’ve been up and down this ship, top to bottom. And . . . no.”

Madeleine nodded, wiping at her cheeks again. She lifted her gaze to a painting of a Spanish galleon battling lapis-colored waves. It hung just a fraction crooked on the wall, the ormolu frame a peeling glimmer against the darker wood behind it.

“Come on.” Margaret touched her arm. “Come with me, little mother. We need to get you back to bed.”

*

The rain turned into fog, and the fog consumed the ship and everything around her, forcing the Carpathia to slow. Hours and hours were added to their voyage home.

Madeleine slept more, hidden beneath her blankets. Occasionally she’d wake, either from the booming blasts of the foghorn or else whenever Carrie or Rosalie or the doctor would show up. She’d eat the food they’d brought and answer the physician’s questions, and then fall back into her ocean of slumber.

It was Carrie who told her there was no sign of Victor Robins, the valet, either. Madeleine could only nod.

If she suffered any nightmares during those damp gray days, she couldn’t remember them, and for that Madeleine was intensely grateful.

Her visitors brought any tidbits of news they could glean about Jack, about what had happened to him after Lifeboat Four had launched.

He had helped load the last boats with frantic women and children.

He had placed a woman’s hat atop the head of a boy so that the child would be allowed to board with his mother.

He had sawed tangled ropes free from the davits with his penknife.

He had freed all the dogs from the kennels.

He had stood back calmly amid the pandemonium after all of the lifeboats were gone, smoking a cigarette with two other gentlemen.

Margaret and Carrie and the rest—they must have thought they were comforting her. But the only common thread Madeleine found to connect any of their stories was that no one knew what actually became of her husband. No one saw him again once the ship foundered.

Or, if they had, no one would tell her about it.

*

Late at night, shrouded in fog, she could go out.

Hardly anyone else did, which meant she mostly walked the decks alone, wrapped in her coat and the concealing blanket, her skin and hair clammy with the cold moisture but not caring, because in these moments no one cried, and no one spoke of drowning or freezing or who was to blame. The only sounds she had to listen to were the ordinary ones of the ship herself. Creaking ropes. Thrumming engines. The water below, soughing past.

In the pre-dawn hours of Thursday, the day they were due to dock at last, Madeleine stood at a railing along the promenade deck, contemplating the smooth misted nothingness that erased the sea and sky. That erased the world that would be waiting for her, clawing for her, scrabbling, such a short while from now.

The mast lights behind her lent the deck and rail and darkness a silvery, prismatic glow.

“Mrs. Astor?”

It was a woman’s voice, unfamiliar. Madeleine didn’t turn from the railing.

“My name is Katherine Hurd. I’m with—”

“I know who you are,” Madeleine said, quiet.

“Oh.” The woman paused, then rallied. “I’m very sorry to bother you. I was wondering if you’d—if you’d care to say something. For the record.”

Madeleine closed her eyes. “Such as?”