What she really liked to do was dance, but even if she could find a dancing job that paid well, she supposed it wouldn’t be considered respectable. And, since her primary aim in coming to the United States was to create a new and respectable life for herself and, especially, Eunice, that left out dancing for a living.
No one here in America knew or needed to know a single thing about Isabel’s past. All they needed to know was that Isabel was a widow, and that Eunice was her daughter.
Anyhow, none of the ads in the Times mentioned needing a woman who could dance. None of them mentioned char work, either. Isabel suspected Americans called it something else. Perhaps she could apply at a domestic employment agency. She couldn’t find one of those, either. With a sigh, she shoved the newspaper aside, knowing she’d have to call on Loretta’s kindness yet again to explain the vagaries of the American language as used in employment advertisements to her.
Standing up, Isabel limped over to Loretta. “Here, let me help you, Miss Linden.” She reached for Loretta’s beaver-skin coat, a lovely item Loretta had purchased at Bloomingdale’s the day before. Isabel had never seen anything so fine.
“Nonsense,” said Loretta stoutly. “I am perfectly capable of hanging up my own coat, and you shouldn’t be walking on that ankle.”
Eyeing the scarf she’d just hung up, Marjorie, ever the tidy one, sniffed. Loretta tossed the coat over the sofa as she had the scarf. Before Marjorie could do so, Isabel snatched it up and headed for the closet.
“Will you two stop that?” Loretta sounded peeved. “I hate having people wait on me. I’ll try to be more orderly, but if I’m not, please don’t pick up after me.”
“Yes, ma’am,” said Marjorie, sounding as if she didn’t mean it.
Isabel finished with her small chore and turned back to Loretta. “You’ve done too much for us already, Miss Linden—”
”For heaven’s sake, will you stop calling me Miss Linden?”
Isabel started slightly, because Loretta sounded honestly irked. She looked it, too, although it was difficult to tell because her countenance didn’t lend itself to ill humor. Isabel had always assumed that women who wore spectacles were not attractive, but she thought Loretta was cute as a bug.
Short and well-rounded, Loretta had the thickest, glossiest dark-brown hair Isabel had ever seen, and the biggest brown eyes. Loretta’s eyes were almost as pretty as Eunice’s, but not quite. Isabel would like to have big brown eyes herself, but she’d been born with big blue eyes, and there wasn’t much she could do about them at this point. She was glad Eunice had inherited her father’s eyes, although she couldn’t help but pray that was all she’d inherited from him.
“My name,” Loretta continued, “is Loretta. I can’t stand it when you kowtow to me.”
Oh, dear. As Isabel had grown up kowtowing to people with money, this was certain to get complicated. It was one thing for Isabel to know in her heart that she was just as good as anyone else in the world. It was quite another to live as if she was. Her entire upbringing screamed out against such effrontery.
“Try it,” Loretta insisted. “Say Loretta. It’s not a difficult name.” Loretta yanked a hat pin out of the confection that sat atop her lovely hair and flung her hat at the sofa. She missed, the hat landed on the floor, and Marjorie pounced on it.
Isabel knew she was blushing and hated herself for it. Nevertheless, she laughed softly. “Loretta. I’ll try to remember.”
“See that you do.” Loretta shook a finger at her in the parody of a disciplinary gesture. She saw Marjorie with her hat. “Marjorie MacTavish! Do I have to speak to you by hand?”
Marjorie appeared to be as puzzled as was Isabel.
“Spank you,” said Loretta patiently.
Marjorie said, “I’ve been trained to be tidy. I canna help myself.”
Loretta aimed a quelling glance at her. “You may have earned your living as a stewardess with the White Star Line for a few years, Marjorie MacTavish, and you might have had to clean up after other people as part of your employment, but your ship sank. It has become painfully obvious that you won’t be able to go back to that kind of work any time soon, and that you’re probably going to remain in the United States for a good long while. I want you to get it through your head that you’re not my servant. You’re my friend.”
Marjorie blushed, probably at the mention of her inability to perform her duties as a stewardess. She said, “Thank you,” in a stifled voice.
Isabel felt a pang of sympathy for Marjorie, who had developed an absolute terror of the ocean. She hadn’t been able even to look at it when the three of them and Eunice had taken a cab to the harbor. Poor Marjorie had turned white and begun trembling and crying as soon as the ocean hove into view. Then she’d remained in the cab with Isabel, who couldn’t walk because of her ankle injury, while Loretta had taken Eunice to visit the famous Statue of Liberty.
Marjorie was ashamed of this newly developed problem and considered it both an embarrassment and a grievous flaw, although Isabel didn’t blame her for it. Loretta called Marjorie’s problem a phobia, but Isabel wouldn’t know about that. She herself wouldn’t mind if she never saw an ocean again, but Marjorie wouldn’t take any comfort from Isabel’s weakness. Isabel was pretty certain that Marjorie, although she attempted to disguise her opinion, considered Isabel below her on the evolutionary scale—if such a thing existed—and wouldn’t care to claim any similarities if they existed. Class distinctions, and all that.
“So please,” Loretta said once more, “call me Loretta.”
Marjorie said, “Yes, ma’am.”
“Ma’am?” Loretta made a moue with her rosebud mouth. “I’m going to have to have you two practice saying my name, I guess.”
“I don’t think Mama is used to calling people from your station in life by their Christian names, Miss Linden.”
Again, all three women turned toward Eunice, whose huge, chocolate-brown eyes observed them soberly. “In Great Britain, class distinctions are quite pronounced. Calling you Loretta would be considered impervious.” Her brow furrowed and she glanced at her mother. “Is that what I mean?”
“I believe you mean impertinent, dear,” Isabel said softly, amused but not wanting to show it.
Loretta and Marjorie exchanged a glance then looked at Isabel. Loretta asked—and Isabel wasn’t sure she was joking—”Are you sure your daughter is only six years old?”
Isabel was sure, although she understood Loretta’s doubt. A knock and a brisk, “Room service!” came from the hallway. Isabel started for the door at once but, because she couldn’t move very fast, Marjorie beat her to it. A uniformed boy pushed a cart laden with covered dishes—they looked as if they were made of silver, but Isabel wasn’t sure—cutlery, plates, and glasses into the room. Uncertain and a trifle overwhelmed, Isabel limped over to assist in any way she could. Eunice, too, gazed with wide-eyed wonder at the groaning board.
Not Loretta, who was used to such opulence. Rubbing her hands together, she said brightly, “Oh, good! I’m simply famished.” Glancing at her companions, she added, “I hope you don’t mind that I ordered for all of us.”
Marjorie made a noise signifying approval. As for Isabel, she’d never experienced the glories of room service before in her life—indeed, she hadn’t even known such a service existed on earth. She and Eunice were so delighted by the prospect of eating food neither of them had prepared, they wouldn’t have caviled if Loretta had ordered snails, which Isabel understood some French people considered a delicacy. They would.
“The doctor is coming to call on you after supper, Isabel.”
Distressed, Isabel said, “Oh, dear, I wish you hadn’t gone to the bother of calling him in again, Miss Linden.” She’d sprained her ankle when she’d tripped over that coil of rope during her mad dash to the too-few lifeboats.
“Loretta, if you please,” said Loretta. “And fiddlesticks. You injured your ankle, and it needs to be tended. How’s it doing, by the way?�
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“Quite well, thank you,” Isabel lied. Her ankle hurt like the devil, but she didn’t feel comfortable saying so.
She knew she’d never be able to pay Loretta back for her many kindnesses. Not only had Loretta, with the help of that angelic and unknown male benefactor, saved Isabel and Eunice from the terrors of the deep, but Loretta had established them in a suite in this fantastic, top-of-the-trees New York hotel, and she’d also paid for a doctor to tend to her ankle. Here. At the hotel. She wouldn’t even allow Isabel to go to the doctor’s office, but had him call on her, as if she was as rich as Loretta herself and was accustomed to having doctors call on her every day. Isabel had never heard of such a thing.
Besides all that, Loretta had bought clothes for Marjorie, Isabel and Eunice, all three. She also checked the casualty lists every single day, searching for names of people they knew. Since Isabel’s hero’s name remained unknown, there was no finding out about him. The knowledge made Isabel want to cry, so she tried not to think about it, which never worked.
“Let’s dig in,” said Loretta. “Eunice, dear, will you fetch that covered dish we kept over from luncheon and give it to the bellboy so he can return it to the kitchen?”
Eunice’s eyes opened wide, her mouth opened, and she stood up from her table, but she didn’t speak or rush to do Loretta’s bidding. Rather, she stood still, clasping her hands behind her back, and her glance slid from the bellboy to Loretta and back again.
Isabel gazed searchingly at her daughter. It was unlike Eunice not to do Loretta’s bidding instantly. She suspected perfidy of one sort or another, but hoped she was wrong. While Eunice was a very well-behaved child, her curiosity sometimes led her to do unusual things. “Eunice?” she said. “Go on and get the dish.”
The little girl licked her lips. “Um . . . may I give it back later? At our next meal?”
“Why?” Isabel’s voice was a trace sharp. Her suspicion grew stronger.
Eunice’s gaze wavered between her mother and Loretta. At last she sighed. “I’m afraid you won’t like it, Mama. I’m sorry, Miss Linden.”
“Good Lord, child, what did you do?” Isabel took a step toward her daughter, but she’d forgotten about her ankle and stepped out with her left foot. Her ankle shrieked, and she had to grab onto the back of the bloody chair to keep from falling over. The blooming chair, was what she meant.
“It’s nothing bad, Mama. It’s only that I found a . . .” Eunice looked to see where Marjorie existed in the room. Marjorie was more apt to disapprove of things than were her mother or Loretta.
“A what?” Isabel was becoming seriously annoyed. She and Eunice owed Loretta everything, and Isabel didn’t like this evasiveness on her daughter’s part.
“It’s only a little one,” Eunice said, her tone placating.
“It’s only a little what?”
Loretta began to laugh. “Oh, my, did you find a sweet little froggie or something in the park, dear?”
Isabel’s horrified gaze flew to Loretta’s face, then back to her daughter’s. “Eunice Golightly, if you dared to bring a frog—”
“Oh, no, Mama, it’s not a frog. It’s only a teensy little snake.”
Marjorie screamed. So did the uniformed bellboy. Loretta laughed harder. Isabel limped over to Eunice and gave her a gentle swat on the behind. “You go fetch that dish right this instant, young lady. I can’t believe you brought a snake into this hotel!”
With the assistance of her mother’s hand clamped to her arm and with her mother’s force behind her, Eunice headed to her bedroom, protesting as she went. “But we didn’t have any snakes in England, Mama! I didn’t think it would matter! The doorman said it wasn’t poisonous or anything. I thought maybe I could keep it. I wanted to look up its Latin name and study it!”
“Well, you were wrong.” Mortified, Isabel didn’t let go of Eunice’s arm until the deed was accomplished and the covered dish presented. Then, since the bellboy wouldn’t take custody of the dish as long as the snake remained inside, Loretta and Eunice carried it downstairs and let it loose in the park across the street.
They returned a few minutes later, Loretta grinning, Eunice chastened. “I’m sorry, Mama and Miss MacTavish,” she said.
Isabel figured Loretta had coached her in the apology. With more sternness than she generally used with her daughter, mainly because she seldom needed to, she said, “You’d better apologize to Miss Linden, too, Eunice. It’s only because of her kindness that we’re alive and here today.”
“Fiddlesticks,” said Loretta.
But Eunice, turning her big brown eyes gaze upon her mother’s mentor, murmured, “I’m very sorry, Miss Linden. Thank you for not killing my snake.”
Isabel rolled her eyes. Marjorie made a noise of disapproval—or perhaps it was disgust.
“It really was rather a nice little snake,” Loretta said. “For a snake.”
“I’m sure,” said Isabel, who thought Loretta Linden might possibly be some kind of saint.
# # #
A maid had made up the fire in their suite’s sitting room, and Loretta, Isabel, and Marjorie were reading peacefully. Isabel had been thrilled to discover that Loretta enjoyed Jacques Futrelle’s Thinking Machine stories—Futrelle was another who had perished when Titanic sank—and had bought several of them. “To keep us amused on the journey to San Francisco,” Loretta had said. Isabel couldn’t help but think how nice it must be to be able to buy books any old time you wanted to.
Be that as it may, she was engrossed in one of Futrelle’s stories when she heard Eunice’s muffled sobs. She put her book down and stood abruptly.
Loretta said, “Oh, dear, do you think she’s having another nightmare?”
Marjorie clucked and said, “Poor wee bairn.” Her sympathy rather surprised Isabel, who had suspected heretofore that Marjorie didn’t care for children or the disturbances they caused.
“I’m afraid so.”
Eunice’s nightmares worried Isabel almost as much as they worried Eunice, because the little girl had never been troubled by bad dreams before. Like Marjorie, however, the Titanic disaster had affected Eunice adversely. That made sense to Isabel, but her heart ached for her daughter. She rushed into the bedroom as fast as her limp allowed, sat on the bed, and took her daughter in her arms.
“There, there, dearie, it’s all right. Everything is all right. You’re safe now.”
“B-but the man isn’t,” sobbed Eunice, wetting her mother’s shoulder with her tears.
Kissing Eunice’s head, her heart aching, Isabel said, “What man is that, dearie?”
“That man. The nice one.”
Isabel thought she understood. “You mean the man who carried you to the lifeboat?”
Miserably nodding her head, Eunice sniffled. Her tears seemed to be drying up, although her unhappiness remained. “I saw him in the water. He was all frozen. Like all those other people.”
Closing her eyes and trying not to bring the images to mind, Isabel hugged Eunice more tightly. “He wasn’t there, dearie. It was only a dream.” She hoped she was right.
“I know. I know it now,” the little girl explained. “But I didn’t know it in my dream.”
Isabel sighed. “Dreams can be very frightening, sweetie. I hope that man is safe, just as we are.”
Eunice knuckled her eyes and nodded. “Me, too.”
“Perhaps we should pray for him, dearie.”
“If he’s dead, it won’t matter what we pray,” the ever-practical Eunice pointed out.
Isabel’s heart hitched. “Let’s pray that he’s safe—wherever he is.”
“But we don’t know his name.”
A shaft of pain shot through Isabel. “I know, sweetheart, but God will know who we mean.”
“Oh. That’s so.” After a moment, Eunice said, “I guess we can do that.”
So Isabel knelt next to her daughter beside the bed, and they both folded their hands and prayed. Sharing her daughter’s confusion on the subject
—if the man was already dead, they couldn’t very well pray him back to life—she nevertheless asked God to bless the fellow. Wherever he was.
Chapter Two
The train whistle sounded mournfully through the thick evening air. It had rained all day, and it looked as if it aimed to rain all night, providing the droplets could find their way through the fog. Isabel and Eunice stared out the train window as New York slipped away from them. They couldn’t even see it anymore.
Actually, they hadn’t seen much of it during their brief stay. The dock, the hotel, a few shops, the hotel’s restaurant—where they’d eaten better than either one of them had ever eaten in their lives until that point—and Grand Central Station. Loretta had taken them on a whirlwind tour of a few interesting spots, but Isabel’s ankle had hurt and they’d all been upset because of the recent tragedy. No one had been in much of a mood for sightseeing.
The final death tally was staggering. Over fifteen hundred people had been confirmed dead. The dead who had been fortunate enough to be incoffined had been taken to Halifax, Nova Scotia, and authorities were attempting to identify the bodies. Isabel’s heart hurt as she thought of loved ones anxiously waiting to hear what had happened to their kin.
When the rescue ships had run out of coffins, or when the corpses were too damaged to be recognizable—a notion that made her shiver—the dead had been buried at sea. Before the crew had let them slide into the deep, they’d searched pockets for any kind of identifying evidence. Every night Isabel prayed that those people had been identified so their loved ones could know their fates. Not knowing would be awful.
She prayed every night for the man who had reunited her with Eunice, too. Why hadn’t she asked him his name? But it had been a terrible night; she guessed it wasn’t surprising that, in her panic, she’d neglected the courtesy. She regretted it now, for she’d never know if he was alive or dead. As she and Eunice watched New York slip away into the distance, her heart and throat both ached, and she silently prayed that her hero had survived the tragedy.
Her hand ached, too, because Eunice held it so tightly. Isabel sighed. Until the Titanic disaster, Eunice had been a self-possessed, virtually fearless little girl, and almost more independent than Isabel liked, mainly because Isabel herself craved human companionship and didn’t understand her daughter’s pleasure at being by herself.
Perfect Stranger Page 2
