UNTITLED STORY
Chapter Seven
April 18, 1912
The steerage passengers were the last to
leave the Carpathia. Rose stayed close to Cassie’s side, more than a little
bewildered by the crowds and commotion.
Rose wanted her freedom, it was true, the
freedom to do as she pleased, live as she pleased, and love who she wanted, but
she was fast realizing that freedom had a price. A person had to know how to
survive on their own, or they wouldn’t get far.
Beyond that, Rose liked Cassie. The girl had
been there for her during those terrible days on the Carpathia, when she had
often felt as though she couldn’t go on, as though there was no reason to.
Cassie, too, had lost her loved ones in the
sinking, and sometimes Rose felt guilty for how much she grieved for Jack, a
man that she had known for only three days, when Cassie had lost her entire
family and was alone in the world. Deep inside, Rose knew that she could return
to her old life if things were too hard, but Cassie didn’t have that option.
She couldn’t even return to her old town—there was no way she could afford the
fare back to Ireland.
As the two young women left the Carpathia,
Rose pulled Cal’s coat up around her head to shield herself from the flashing
cameras of reporters. To be sure, there weren’t as many reporters trying to get
stories from the steerage survivors as there had been for the first and second
class survivors—it was late, many of the steerage survivors didn’t speak
English, and their stories weren’t considered to nearly so important as those
of the upper classes—but some still lingered, and Rose didn’t want to take the
chance of having her picture in the paper. She was determined to have her
freedom, and she wouldn’t get it if her mother or Cal found out that she had
survived and came looking for her.
An officer stopped them at the end of the
ramp, getting one last list of the survivors. "Can I take your names,
please, ladies?"
Cassie ducked her head, looking at the ground
as though to hide her tears. "C-Cassandra Daly," she stammered.
"I’m Cassandra Daly."
Rose came to a decision as the officer turned
to her. She couldn’t go back to her old life, and this was the final step to
breaking away. "Dawson. Rose Dawson."
"Thank you." The officer turned to
the next survivors coming down the ramp, and Rose reached into her coat pocket,
holding tightly to the cold diamond. It was done. Her old life was behind her.
*****
Rose guided Cassie through the crowds and
away from the pier. She may have been new to surviving on her own, unnerved and
bewildered by the new life facing her, but she did know the way away from the
docks. This had not been her first trip to Europe—she had been there twice
before on vacations, and had gone to an expensive Swiss boarding school for a
year before her parents had brought her home due to lack of money, though she
hadn’t known it then.
Cassie stared at the crowds and the
reporters, even more bewildered by them than Rose was. Rose had been a member
of high society, a group fawned over and adored by the papers, while Cassie had
come from a small Irish town where getting any sort of notice in a major paper
was a rare and shocking event.
"All these people…" she whispered,
staring in a combination of fear and fascination at the milling crowds. Her
eyes filled with tears as she saw an elderly woman who had survived the Titanic
run into the arms of two young men, probably her grandsons. How fortunate she
was to have them!
Rose had seen it, too, as had a number of
reporters. Cameras flashed, capturing the scene, and Rose took the opportunity
to duck farther into the crowd, pulling Cassie along with her. The steerage
passengers were supposed to go through another health inspection, and then be
herded along to various shelters if they had no friends or relatives waiting
for them. Both Rose and Cassie were tired and grieving, and in no mood to wait
for the health inspection or to be sent to whatever shelter might be provided.
They’d had enough, and Rose feared that her mother or Cal might still be
nearby, still holding out hope that she had survived.
When they were finally beyond the crowd, Rose
stopped, pulling the coat down from over her head and letting the cold rain run
down her face. They stood together in the darkness, not sure where to go next.
"What should we do now, Rose?" Cassie
asked, shivering in her thin dress and shawl. "I don’t know about you, but
I haven’t a penny to me name…"
"I do." Rose reached into one of
the inner pockets of Cal’s coat, pulling out a wad of bills. Glancing around to
be sure no one but Cassie was watching, she counted it quickly, knowing that
there was another wad in the other inner pocket.
The amount came out to just over a thousand
dollars—more than enough for them to survive on for a while. She turned to
Cassie, whose eyes were wide.
"Another gift from your fiancé?"
she asked, staring at the bundle of money.
Rose tucked it back into her pocket. "An
inadvertent one, I can assure you." She looked up and down the street,
looking at the lights shining from the windows of the closely crowded
buildings. "Why don’t we try to find a hotel room for tonight, and
tomorrow we can look for more permanent lodgings?"
"I couldn’t let you pay my way."
"You’ve been a good friend to me,
Cassie, and friends stick together. I can’t let you wander alone in a strange
city when I have the means to help you."
Cassie, too tired to argue, just nodded.
"All right, Rose. But just for tonight. I’ll find some kind of job soon
and pay you back."
"You already have, Cassie. You already
have."
Cassie just nodded, understanding what Rose
meant, and the two women headed down the street, looking for a place to stay
for the night.