by Richard Peck
Because these last moments hung heavy on me, I drew from my coat pocket the leaflet that advertised the famous ship we were to sail in. I began to read, “The Titanic will depart on her maiden voyage from Southampton. . . .”
* * *
As the White Star Line boat train rolled out of Waterloo, I sat with my back to the engine, facing Miss Amanda, the jewel case firmly on my knees for safekeeping. How she must have dreaded a journey with me! But in our compartment we were surrounded by Americans, and she allowed herself to be caught up in conversation with the lady beside her. I was interested in her too and would have been far more interested had I known my fate and the fate of this stranger were to be entwined—long after I was free of Miss Amanda.
She was Miss Rebecca Reed of New York, a journalist who supported herself by her pen and her curiosity. Not yet thirty, she was at home in the world and spoke with the experience of twice her years.
Miss Reed was not handsome, but she wore glossy furs and a hat with an enormous black-and-white-striped bow that escaped the outrageous by a hairbreadth. “What fun,” she was saying, “to cross on the Titanic. I’d have booked first-class passage with my last dollar for the joy of rubbing elbows with all those Social Register types!”
Miss Amanda blanched at the mention of money and the thought of rubbed elbows. But the blanching British didn’t bother Miss Reed. “Even if you’re not traveling with any of your menfolk, you’ll find plenty of courtly swains to look out for you on the crossing. It’s a perfectly respectable custom, you know.”
She took a moment to withdraw from her hand luggage a peculiar, not very handsome stuffed toy to show Miss Amanda. A music box in the shape of a pig and too realistic to be droll. She twisted the tail, and the pig played a tinkling tune. “One of the glories of the Titanic,” she said, “is that it’s unsinkable. Still, I go nowhere without my lucky pig!”
Then she whispered that the young couple sitting among us, a Mr. and Mrs. Daniel Marvin, were returning from their wedding trip. The wedding ceremony, it seems, had been cinematographed as a moving picture. Mr. Marvin’s father was the head of an important American cinematograph company.
Miss Reed went on to describe other notable passengers on the ship. The Wideners and the Fortunes and the Ryersons and the Strauses, Major Archibald Butt and the Thayers and the Countess of Rothes. And against this roll call of the mighty, I passed the remainder of our train journey.
I rejoiced bitterly at the miles separating me from John Thorne. I vowed if he followed me—followed her—into our new life, I would never let him touch me again. I would be no one’s easy convenience. I would play my role as lady’s maid and no more, until the moment when I would rise up. I only hoped I’d know that moment when it came. And I rather thought I would.
The passengers began to stir. The train shuddered to a stop at Southampton. We were beside the quay. Above us, seventy feet out of the water, loomed what seemed the largest creation ever wrought by man: the Titanic.
* * *
When we left the moorings, the ship seemed not to move at all. It only throbbed gently like a great, gilded whale breathing deep in its throat.
I lost myself in the duties I was to perform. Servants seemed to outnumber passengers in this astonishing floating city of endless corridors and grand stairways that rang with the easy laughter of the very rich. I stood in the line of ladies’ maids at the purser’s counter, where a ransom in jewels was to be banked in the ship’s safe by a Mr. McElroy.
I spent the rest of the afternoon settling my young lady in her stateroom on B deck. It was compact, but luxurious, with a four-poster bed, a dressing table, and even hot water piped directly in. My cabin, between Miss Amanda’s and the main corridor, was scarcely less comfortable.
At the forward end of our corridor was the grand staircase, the central crossroads of the ship. Above it was a great clock set in under a glass dome from which daylight struck at the heart of the ship. At the other end of the corridor was a French restaurant, an alternative to the main dining saloon on D deck below. It was filled with French furniture of a bygone century, grouped in an ocean of white linen. Beyond the silk-draped bays on one side was the less formal Café Parisien, with wicker furniture and potted palms. And beyond or beneath it all were a Turkish bath and ballrooms and lounges and smoking rooms and writing rooms—more luxury than I had ever imagined.
I dressed my young lady for tea in a gown with a large bouquet of silk flowers at the waist, then attended to her hair. Our eyes never met in the looking glass. My hands stung from having to touch her. When she was ready to join her fellow passengers, she wrenched her diamond engagement ring from her finger. “Put it in the safe with the rest of my jewelry. I do not choose to be an engaged woman during the crossing.” Then she was gone, and the lovely, meaningless diamond lay winking in my palm.
After a trip to the safe, I went to the open promenade of A deck above, to stand in the sea winds and watch the coastline slide past. I caught a scent of land, of England in April, and I seemed to know where we were.
Yes, this was the Isle of Wight sweeping by. And there was Shanklin pier, not five miles from where I was born. And Dunnose Hill, where my father’s wagon had lost its wheel. I couldn’t see the Wisewoman’s cottage, but I could hear again her prophecy. “Your future lies . . . beyond a mountain of ice, where you will die and live again. I see you in a world so strange and distant . . .”
The ship knifed on with uncanny speed. There ahead was one last pier. Ventnor, where Betty and I had had our photograph made.
But I would look no more. I knew I would never go back. Already I was drawing the glove off my left hand. I twisted the worn ruby ring off my finger. Never mind that it had once been Granny Thorne’s. John Thorne had put it on my hand, and it had no business being there. He had never given me a wedding band. Perhaps Miss Amanda had forgotten to tell him to give me one. I dropped the ruby ring over the side, into the churning sea.
* * *
The Titanic was like a small world in the great universe of the Atlantic. A journey on it was a little lifetime. A bugle sounded to announce every meal, and the ladies changed their clothes as often as if they were visiting a country house. The orchestra played graceful melodies, and after each meal the lounges were thronged with friends gathered to drink their coffee. In this false, beautiful shipboard world, even I was treated with great civility.
In a sort of drawing room set aside for servants, I was soon on pleasant terms with Miss Annie Robinson, the stewardess in our corridor, and with Mademoiselle Victorine, the French maid of Mrs. Ryerson, wife of the American steel magnate. Annie told me harmless gossip about the passengers, including the tall, languid Colonel John Jacob Astor, who was honeymooning with a bride younger than his own son, Vincent. Like the Ryersons, the Astors had boarded the ship in Cherbourg, and so had their friend Mrs. Margaret Brown, a wealthy American. Victorine was a fashion plate and the soul of propriety.
Miss Amanda’s beauty did not go unnoticed. Miss Reed had been right about a lady traveling alone. Miss Amanda was surrounded by swains of all sorts, eager to shelter her from the hardships of this luxurious voyage, and she was determined to be a carefree young girl again.
Her admirers included Mr. Jack Thayer of Philadelphia, a handsome boy of no more than seventeen, and Major Archibald Butt, the American president Taft’s military aide. But my young lady had settled on a different kind of “protector,” who was neither as courtly nor as respectable as the others. He was Mr. Clem Sawyer of San Francisco, and he was by far the handsomest man on the Titanic.
On Friday they dined in the Café Parisien, and I waited up for her till two o’clock in the morning. On Saturday night it was later still. I opened a porthole for the brisk ocean air to keep me awake. The weather was growing colder every minute.
There was a knock and Miss Reed stood at the door, looking agitated. I asked her to step inside, though my young lady had not returned.
“How well I know!” Miss Reed t
hrew herself into a chair. “Your name is Miranda, isn’t it?”
“Yes, miss.”
“Are you a married lady?”
I hesitated, and she noticed. “Yes, miss.”
“Well, I suppose that should put me at my ease a little,” she replied. “I know I’m a busybody, but the fact is, Miranda, that your Amanda Whitwell is about to disgrace herself. The kind of people on this ship pretend to be tolerant, but they are as stiff-necked as a Quaker meeting, with the forgiving spirit left out. Many of them will see Amanda again in New York. But they’ll refuse to know her if she makes a fool of herself with Clem Sawyer. Good grief! Sawyer’s a famous menace with women. His usual taste runs more to chorus girls and worse. But a young lady. . . ” Miss Reed seemed nearly overcome with concern.
“I suppose your Amanda has led a sheltered life up to now, and is carried away with that good-looking devil. But, Miranda,” she continued in a rush, “can’t you have a word with her? Just to warn her. I know how close Englishwomen are to their maids. You even look alike! The poor child doesn’t know the danger she’s in.”
I smiled bitterly to myself. Should I tell Miss Reed that no man on earth could have the least influence over Amanda Whitwell? That she was maddened by self-love and ruined already? No. I couldn’t tell the truth. Miss Reed would have thought me crazed. I stood there, silent, like any tongue-tied servant, and Miss Reed only sighed.
At that moment Miss Amanda entered the room. Her face was blurred with champagne and she staggered slightly. But then she turned a bright, mechanical smile on Miss Reed, who soon beat a hasty retreat.
“What did she want?” my young lady demanded as the door was closing behind Miss Reed.
“I couldn’t say, miss.”
“Oh, couldn’t you? You have very little to say for yourself these days. However convenient you are to me, Miranda, I advise you not to take advantage of my good disposition. You’re becoming a bore, and a terrible prig into the bargain.”
“I expect you are tired, miss,” I said in an empty voice.
“I am very tired indeed, mostly of you.” She tore at the pearls looped around her neck till they jerked loose. She threw them at a chair. Her eyes never left me, and I saw so much madness in them that I could scarcely hold my ground.
“Shall I speak to the stewardess about drawing your bath, miss?”
“You shall speak to me,” she barked, “and truthfully, about what that Rebecca Reed was doing here.” She dropped her voice, for she must have heard it echoing about the stateroom like a fishwife’s. “Do not make me ask you again.”
After a lengthy pause I said, “She came in friendship, miss. She fears your association with a certain gentleman on the ship has left you open to criticism.”
“The certain gentleman being Mr. Sawyer, I trust.”
“Yes, miss, so I believe.”
She hooted with false laughter. “That pathetic old maid! What wouldn’t Rebecca Reed do for one idle glance from a man like Clem Sawyer? What did you tell her when she was kind enough to meddle in my affairs?”
“It was not my place to tell her anything, miss.”
“How right you are to remember that, Miranda. Yet, what would you have told her if you had not been such a mealymouthed, sniveling little servant?”
“I would have told her, miss, that if anyone needed protection, it would be Mr. Sawyer.”
Her eyes went black. She stepped toward me, and all I could see was her distorted face. Her hand flashed, and she struck me with all her might. “You insolent, pious little upstart,” she whispered. But her words came from a great distance. The great gap that had always been there between us opened up at last to reveal its depths. I was still the servant. But Amanda Whitwell had finally lost control of herself—giving me a terrible glimpse of my future in her grip. Now she’d come past being able to manipulate others without showing her hand. “Not another word from you,” she said in a low, hateful voice. “I will not hear your voice until we are docked in New York and must make a favorable impression upon Mr. Forrest. And no, you are not to ring the stewardess for my bath. I shall not be sleeping in my stateroom tonight.”
She turned to jerk open the cabin door. Clem Sawyer stood there, a study in black and white. He was a tall, lithe figure in evening clothes. A spiral of smoke rose from his cigarette. He reached out to claim her, slipping his arm around her thickened waist. The door closed behind them.
* * *
Sunday, April 14, 1912, was a brisk, brilliant day upon the gray, shadowless sea. I entered my young lady’s stateroom at the regular hour, mainly out of habit. It was empty, of course.
I picked up the pearls from the chair and returned them to the suede bag where they were kept. I laid out my young lady’s clothes for the day and went to leave the necklace with the purser.
I felt footloose with an odd freedom that Sunday morning. As I was taking a turn on the boat deck, bundled in a thick scarf, I met the Countess of Rothes’s maid. We stood chatting for a while in the shelter of the davits that held the lifeboats in place. At midday I returned to my young lady’s stateroom to find that she’d been there, changed her clothes, and gone away again. I wondered if she was making herself scarce because of me. She’d decreed that I not speak to her. Perhaps it had occurred to her that there would be unnatural silences now.
But that evening she was waiting for me to dress her for dinner. “I shall not wear the black tonight.” She paused, waiting. “Black is all the rage among the American women.” Another pause as I stood silent. “The pink, I think,” she said at last.
I drew out the long pink gown, and she reached for it. She was, I suppose, determined to show that she could give herself careful attention, and she managed to get into the gown on her own. She even found a pair of silver slippers and plunged her feet into them. “I won’t require jewelry,” she said to her looking glass. And she took her long fur wrap and made good her escape, though the bugle from the dining room would not sound for quite another half hour.
We were trapped, she and I, in the middle of the ocean, on a vast ship that had become too small. I wondered how we would last out this voyage in quarters growing ever closer. For we’d gone beyond the point of no return with each other.
But I was never to be in that stateroom with her again.
That night there was hymn singing in the second-class dining saloon. Victorine was there, and she and I shared a hymnal. Afterward we strolled the boat deck. Victorine was discretion itself in her talk of the Ryersons and their three children. I was discreet to the point of stony silence about Miss Whitwell, and I expect Victorine noticed.
“I wonder where Mademoiselle Reed is keeping herself this evening?” she was saying now. “Inside, out of the cold, perhaps. And she travels with that small musical pig! Is it not amusing?” She laughed.
But I couldn’t pay attention to her. The sea’s immense emptiness drew all my thoughts. The Atlantic that night was as calm as the mere at Whitwell Hall. Somehow it called to me, but I turned from its silent voice. Our teeth chattered with the cold.
Farther along the deck a couple stood together beside the rail. I saw the long fur wrap and silver slippers, and I walked quickly past the pair. But Victorine’s eyebrows were high. “Was that not your Mademoiselle Whitwell?”
I nodded, and she said, “Ah, she is a one, with that Mr. Clem Sawyer.”
Miss Amanda had snared Mr. Sawyer for yet another night. She would betray Mr. Forrest again, and I would be her unwilling accomplice. But I could not think of it anymore. There was something in me that would no longer serve. There was a stranger in me struggling to be born. A self that lurked in mystery behind the matching masks she and I wore.
The night was arctic cold. Just before Victorine and I went inside, I looked up. Above us in the crow’s nest a sailor stood watch. His lofty perch seemed terribly cold, very lonely, very reassuring. “Eight hundred miles to New York,” I heard a strolling passenger say to his companions.
It was so
metime past eleven o’clock when I returned to my cabin. Miss Amanda’s stateroom was silent. There was nothing to hear except the faint whir of the ship’s engines below. I drew on a flannel nightgown, a castoff of Miss Amanda’s, for the rosebud pattern had faded.
I went into her room and automatically looked about for some task. I busied myself in freshening Miss Amanda’s gowns, trying to remove the odor of Mr. Sawyer’s cigarette smoke. But after I closed a steamer trunk that was gaping open, there was nothing more to do.
I stood there in her room as if I were waiting for something to happen. And almost at once something did. I heard a noise, and whatever it was came from far off. The room seemed to shift, and I staggered. Suddenly the ship was still, utterly still.
The hum of the engines below had stopped. I opened the door to the sound of hurrying feet in the passageway. I heard a steward say, “Ice.” Then the engines ground into life again, a curious half life, and labored. I sat down in a chair, neither alarmed nor quite comfortable.
But in the next moment Victorine was at the door. “Oh, Miranda,” she said wildly, “my lady—Madame Ryerson—is in such a state! I must go back at once, but I come to tell you. The steward, he was at Monsieur and Madame Ryerson’s door. He says there is a great iceberg, and we have stopped so we do not run it down!”
“Is it serious?” I asked her.
“Oh, no. This ship cannot sink. But everyone is pouring onto the decks. It is said there is ice everywhere!”
Then she was gone. I stood there, undecided, and staggered again as the stateroom tipped slightly toward the port side. A glass fell from a shelf and shattered. I returned to my room and drew on my stockings and shoes. I was about to reach for my dress when the stewardess burst in. “You are to put on your life preserver at once. Captain Smith’s orders.” She took a cork vest from the cabinet and fitted it onto me, jerking the straps tight at the waist. “Where is Miss Whitwell?”
