The Second Mrs. Astor(93)
The rector had fallen silent. Everyone was looking at Madeleine. She rose out of the chair, walked the few steps it took to stand before the coffin. With the carnelian necklace wrapped around her hand like a rosary, she rested her palm against the lid. The stone beads made the tiniest, tiniest clacking sound as they met the wood.
She bent over. Through the fabric of her veil, she touched her lips to the mahogany.
“Asalamu alaykum,” Madeleine whispered. “Goodbye, my heart, my guide. Goodbye, beloved.”
*
She could not sleep. It was amazing that she couldn’t; as she’d prepared for bed that evening, she felt as if she struggled through air as thick as cotton wool, dragging her slower and slower, pushing her down toward the center of the earth. Her eyes burned red and dry. Her skin felt too tender, the flannel of her nightgown rough as burlap.
But she’d thought at least that after the long, long day of ritual farewells to her husband, at least at the end of it, she could rest her head against her pillow and finally be released into unconsciousness.
Every time she closed her eyes, the visions came. The falling stars, the darkened ship tipped upright. The bodies. The casket.
Doctor Kimball had left her a tincture for moments like this, but she didn’t want to take it. She didn’t want drugs, only sleep.
Madeleine sat up, pushed back the covers. She found her kimono and slippers and crossed the moonlit chamber out into the hall. She came to the stairs at the end of it and went up instead of down, to the third floor, where Carrie was sleeping, and Vincent, too. She walked the long corridor until she reached the oak doors of the library. She pushed them open, just enough to slip inside, then closed them silently behind her.
Like most of the chambers in the mansion, the library was chilled and gilded and tremendous. There were lamps wired for electricity and wall sconces for gas, but she left them all off, moving through the shadows, trailing a hand along the chairs, the spines of the books, the knee-hole writing desk, until she reached the fireplace.
It was mottled red marble, scrolled with sculpted leaves. A pair of carved lion’s heads snarled from the columned ends. She rubbed her thumb over the open mouth of one of the lions, pressed the pad against its pointed teeth, then looked up at his portrait, hung just above her.
Bonnat had painted Jack life-sized, seated, his legs crossed, gazing back at her with his calm winter look. He had his right arm slung along the back of a blue satin chair, his left hand resting on his lap, his pose relaxed, his outfit formal, and even though it had been painted over a decade before they’d ever met, the resemblance to the man she had married was so crisp and true, she felt her heart squeeze.
The bay tree in its Ming jar by the desk gave a dry, rustling sigh; nothing ever stopped the drafts in this place. Madeleine turned away from Jack’s painted face and went back to the desk, sitting down before it as he used to do, drawing herself close. The entire surface was bare. Even the jasperware canopic vase he used to hold his pens had been removed.
She opened the top drawer, finding the pens rolling, blank sheets of stationery neatly stacked.
She opened the next and found a series of letters and invoices, some still in their envelopes, from the managers of his various hotels and properties.
She opened the next and found Kitty’s spare collar, heavy brown leather with a dangling brass tag. The tag had been engraved:
KITTY
J. J. Astor
840 5th Ave.
N.Y.
Madeleine hunched over it, the collar cradled in her hands. She didn’t even realize that she was weeping until her tears began to spatter the leather.
CHAPTER 32
I hid in the mansion. Society began to caper on without me. At first, it was a relief; I’d had my fill of people already at the services, and honestly, it’s no great hardship to hide in here. You’ll find out about that. It’s rather like being a princess locked in a tower, only the tower is made of money and bereavement, and the dragon keeping you inside it is the unending obsession of everyone else in the world.
Instead of the masses forgetting about me, as a teenaged-widowed-almost-mother, I became even more of a fascination. There were still so many articles being printed about me, about unborn you, about Jack. I received letters and telegrams practically every day from absolute strangers. Some were genuinely offering their condolences and good wishes.
Some were worse. Some were from other survivors (so they said), usually people from Titanic’s third-class, telling me that they, too, had lost their loved ones. That they had lost everything. These letters would invariably conclude with the authors begging me for financial support.
Some were worse still. At least three different sailors claimed to have found a piece of Titanic’s drifting debris—a plank of wood, a portion of a deck chair—incised (perhaps by a knife or a nail) with a final message from Jack to me, or to his children, which they would be pleased to deliver to me in person for only a modest fee.
I told Vincent it was a waste of time. That it was ridiculous to suppose any of these stories to be true and that, if Vincent gave in, he would be handing money to the most vile of men. Frauds, hucksters. Opportunists willing to blackmail our grief.
I told him the night had been too dark for scratching out messages. The deaths had come too relentlessly quick.
But Vincent, you know . . .
I do believe our shared sorrow has changed us both, reshaped us. Linked us, even, in a way neither of us anticipated. I don’t think your brother despises me quite as he used to do.