CARPE DIEM
Chapter Fifteen
"Jack!" the DeWitt
Bukater girl shouted as we approached the Master-at-Arms office, both of us
struggling with the weight of heavy skirts, now drenched in nearly two feet of
water. She called again, "Jack!"
I considered asking just who it
was we were attempting to find, but the chattering of my teeth against the
frigidness of the water and the chill of the air quelled my curiosity. Each
step was painful. The ice water swirled around us viciously and rose steadily.
And honestly…I didn’t care at
all.
What in God’s name compelled
me to bring the girl down here anyway? I thought this bitterly. It had been instinctive, impulsive, and
entirely uncalled for. Did I want to be unhappy? Was that it? Because what I
had just done, in finding Thomas and then choosing to remove myself from his
presence almost immediately once again, without a Goddamned mention of anything
that needed to be said, seemed to indicate just that.
But he’s busy, I rationalized. Then I answered my
rationalization sardonically, And I’m a Goddamned masochist.
Ten years! Ten long years I’d
done this, hidden away, silenced myself, denied myself, and to what purpose?
No, truly, did I want to be unhappy? Because, although I would never believe
such a thing of anyone, myself included, my actions led to no other conclusion.
The day my brother had told me
Thomas Andrews was engaged to the daughter of John Doherty Barbour, the linen
manufacturer from Northern Ireland who lately fashioned himself to be a baron,
I had said nothing, I had not cried out against it. I finished the day as
planned, walked down to St. Paul’s to give alms to the beggars sitting on the
steps outside, and bought blackcurrant for cordial and rosemary for Julia’s
roasted chicken on the way back.
Thomas himself had told me in his
uncle’s office a couple of months later, after Bruce and the others had left
the room. He had waited for me customarily, since I had always lingered behind
after these meetings, gathering up my notes and arranging them in a
comprehensible manner. I had not offered my congratulations, or even
acknowledge that I knew my congratulations would be appropriate.
"You look well," he
mentioned. It was a sincere comment, a friendly turn of phrase.
I answered shortly. "Thank
you." I spoke without a smile, in an overly cold manner, half because I
was concentrating on the written documents in front of me and their necessary
order and half because I was enraged by his generous manner. Did he never get
upset with me? My apparent lack of care? My incivility?
"I’m getting married…"
He let the words hang in the air, and they lay suspended in the air between us,
settling slowly over my fingers and hands, my hair, my eyelids, my mouth, like
coal dust at a train yard, coating the platform with filth and grime. At his
words, a feverish depression assailed my mind, body, and soul. I said nothing
for a moment, pausing in my filing, my shuffling of papers only briefly to
close my eyes against a spinning room and clench my fist once in frustration. I
straightened up, meeting his gaze directly for the first time that entire day.
His brown eyes were unguarded, but unfathomable in their depths, and I turned
my gaze elsewhere soon enough, back to shuffling, back to filing.
"Well, I suppose it isn’t
wise for a man to remain unmarried, is it?" I asked rhetorically. I was
quoting the ladies of London society, parroting conventional wisdom, speaking
impersonally and without affectation. Emotionless, reserved, I was an empty
shell of a woman. At least…this was how I hoped to seem and must have seemed to
him. Suppression was a talent I was well versed in. After a long pause, he
spoke again, softly, quietly.
"The world can be a very
lonely place, Mary Catherine," he stated frankly. I did not look up this
time, though I knew he wanted me to, and he left me alone in his uncle’s office
quite soon thereafter. I’d rejected him, this time of my own volition.
I sometimes envisioned a
different ending to this memory. I sometimes imagined that after he spoke those
final words, I had looked up. I had removed my dark glasses to reveal the tears
in my eyes and held up my hands, palms upraised in intimation. And I hear
myself saying, "Goddamn you, Thomas! Goddamn you!"
He had forced me to live a
half-life, my arms aching for the husband he was to me, the children we should
have had. If he had loved me less, I could have borne it more. You couldn’t
defy fate and expect the road to be smooth. You couldn’t fight against a
current without drowning. My strength was waning; I had been drowning for quite
some time.
I had stopped wading through the
ice water without knowing it. I stood at the end of the corridor. That young
woman, with her brazen notions and shallow passions, was now far ahead of me. I
could take part in her fool’s errand no longer. I had been handed dozens of
chances, all wasted, all long forgotten. And if I continued with this girl, who
I did not know, and frankly, did not particularly like, I knew, with that
strength of certainty that tells us the sun rises in the east, that I would
never have another chance to waste.
"Rose!" I called after
her, my voice echoing in the relative emptiness of the corridors, off the water
and the walls. She had called the boy’s name again, but turned back at my
voice, surprised that I was so far back. She had thought I followed her
closely. She tipped her head, irritated that I was lingering behind. I smiled
sadly. What more could I do?
"Good luck, my dear," I
said sincerely, my voice paper-thin and distant, even to my own ears. The water
was playing tricks with our voices. She did not reply, nor yell after me, for
it was at that moment that the boy she searched for finally returned her call
and, distracted, she turned back and ran towards his voice. In turn, I walked
away, towards the stairwell near the crewmen’s west side quarters.
I never saw Miss DeWitt Bukater
again.