TITANIC: A STORY TOLD
Chapter Forty-Seven
Rose, fully dressed now, returned to the
sitting room. They heard a key in the lock. Rose took Jack’s hand and led him silently
through the bedrooms. Lovejoy entered by the sitting room door.
"Miss Rose? Hello?"
He heard a door opening and went through
Cal’s room toward hers.
Rose and Jack came out of her stateroom,
closing the door. She led him quickly along the corridor toward the B deck
foyer. They were halfway across the open space when the sitting room door
opened in the corridor and Lovejoy came out. The valet saw Jack with Rose and
hustled after them.
Rose saw him coming. "Come on!"
She and Jack broke into a run, surprising the
few ladies and gentlemen about. Rose led him past the stairs to the bank of
elevators. They ran into one, shocking the hell out of the operator.
"Take us down. Quickly, quickly!"
The operator scrambled to comply. Jack even
helped him close the steel gate. Lovejoy ran up as the lift started to descend.
He slammed one hand on the bars of the gate. Rose made a very rude and
unladylike gesture, and laughed as Lovejoy disappeared above. The operator
gaped at her.
Lovejoy emerged from another lift and ran to
the one Jack and Rose were in. The operator was just closing the gate to go
back up. Lovejoy ran around the bank of elevators and scanned the foyer...no
Jack and Rose. He tried the stairs going down to F deck.
The F deck corridor was a functional space,
with access to a number of machine spaces (fan rooms, boiler uptakes). Jack and
Rose were leaning against a wall, laughing.
"Pretty tough for a valet, this
fellow."
"He’s an ex-Pinkerton. Cal’s father
hired him to keep Cal out of trouble...to make sure he always got back to the
hotel with his wallet and watch, after some crawl through the less reputable
parts of town..."
"Kind of like we’re doing right
now--uh-oh!"
Lovejoy had spotted them from a
cross-corridor nearby. He charged toward them. Jack and Rose ran around a
corner into a blind alley. There was one door, marked Crew Only, and Jack flung
it open.
They entered a roaring fan room, with no way
out but a ladder going down. Jack latched the deadbolt on the door, and Lovejoy
slammed against it a moment later. Jack grinned at Rose, pointing to the
ladder.
"After you, my lady."
Jack and Rose came down the escape ladder and
looked around in amazement. It was like a vision of hell itself, with the
roaring furnaces and black figures moving in the smoky glow. They ran the
length of the boiler room, dodging amazed stokers, and trimmers with their
wheelbarrows of coal.
Jack shouted over the din. "Carry on!
Don’t mind us!"
They ran through the open watertight door
into boiler room six. Jack pulled her through the fiercely hot alley between
two boilers, and they wound up in the dark, out of sight of the working crew.
Watching from the shadows, they saw the stokers working in the hellish glow,
shoveling coal into the insatiable maws of the furnaces. The whole place
thundered with the roar of the fires.
*****
Amid unparalleled luxury, Cal sat at a card
game, sipping brandy.
Colonel Gracie was praising the ship’s speed.
"We’re going like hell, I tell you. I have fifty dollars that says we make
it into New York Tuesday night!"
Cal looked at his gold pocket watch, and
scowled, not listening.
*****
The furnaces roared, silhouetting the
glistening stokers. Jack kissed Rose’s face, tasting the sweat tricking down
from her forehead. They kissed passionately in the steamy, pounding darkness.