I am being treated as something of a guest of state and have no paucity of opportunity as a dinner guest and an occasional evening of music. All meals are provided by the school, if one wishes them, and some are part of my required duties, so that sometimes a quiet evening by myself is a relief. The advent of the American Thanksgiving is upon us with the promise of vacation on every boy’s mind and what I gather is to be a rich family gathering. The two Burden daughters, who are ages six and four, have prepared me by saying that it is “better than Christmas.” I will spend the entire time with the Burden family on Beacon Hill, and I must admit to a certain quivering of anticipation. Frank Burden has invited me to the annual football game between his Harvard and the rival Yale, and he has warned me that it is “quite a stirring event.” I will admit there also is a keen anticipation.
So you can see that my Americanization has gone well. One of my youngsters said to me the other day, “Mr. Esterhazy, you are never going to wish to leave.” Fear not that my conversion is that extreme, but I did have to admit to my students that I have found their way of life most compelling.
Yours ever,
Arnauld
As time passed and one year led to two, and two led to three and four, everywhere he went in Boston people of all ages loved his warm personality and cultured manner. Parents from the school would invite him for dinner, friends of Frank and Eleanor would invite him for weekends on Cape Cod or north to Gloucester and Portsmouth, New Hampshire. He grew up to enjoy the life of a bachelor teacher at a fashionable boys’ school, and Eleanor smiled inwardly as she witnessed, sometimes from afar, sometimes up close, the success of her bold experiment.
Since the idea of his coming to Boston to teach at her husband’s alma mater was again completely at Eleanor’s instigation, a wild departure for an introspective Viennese intellectual, it was nevertheless one he claimed he wished to take on, for a short time at least, “to do something new and different.” That was the part he admitted, but also there was his adolescent dream of being close to the woman he adored, the part he kept entirely to himself, and the part Eleanor knew she would be exploiting to fulfill what she knew of destiny.
21
GRANDIOSE CONJECTURES
From the beginning, long before she had any idea what it meant, she knew from a number of references in the journal she kept such a dark secret that a ship named the Titanic would sink on its maiden voyage in 1912, and that the famous J. P. Morgan would not be on board only because of a warning he was to receive from her. That one single journal prediction weighed as heavily on her as any.
Like so many details that would eventually appear on her path, she had to keep an eye out for mention of that fateful name Titanic. There was nothing. Then, in April 1908, a few years after her marriage, she noticed a small reference in the Boston Globe. White Star Line, the great English shipping company owned by Mr. Morgan, was planning the construction of three enormous luxury liners, the biggest ever built, each more than over eight hundred feet in length. They were to be built in a shipyard in Belfast, Ireland, named Harland and Wolff. The first two would be called the Olympic and the Titanic, both names fittingly derived from Greek mythology. She followed the construction as she could and learned just how the ships would be “unsinkable,” with separate sealable compartments within their massive hulls. She watched with the rest of the world as first the Olympic was launched in 1911, with its sister ship, the Titanic, soon to follow.
She could see in hindsight how the whole business had led to the unraveling of her partnership with Will Honeycutt, as had, again in hindsight, the events of 1907, four years previous.
She had brought the challenge of unsinkability to Will early on, back in 1910, when she first read of the two gigantic ships being constructed in Ireland. And her questions had lured him into the drama, she concluded later, although at the time she had thought the gesture on her part one caused by genuine curiosity rather than acquiring a partner in her new task of worrying about the ship.
“Unsinkable,” he said immediately and with authority upon hearing her question. “Unsinkable is unsinkable. It’s all in the design, the science,” he said, as he too had read of the forthcoming miracle ships, and in greater detail than she. “There are separate compartments within the hull, each controlled by automatic doors. Beautiful and expensive engineering.” But when she insisted on asking just how the “unsinkable” could sink, impossible as it was, he took the question on with surprising thoroughness, as a challenge, and said he would take some time with it. The next day, applying his tenacious energy for research to the task, Will Honeycutt made his report.
“Well, here is how it would be, as I see it, the highest improbability, mind you, but here it is. First, there is the steel—impregnable, they say. Then there are the watertight compartments. Struck from the side, even hit by a huge wave, the ship would remain upright and afloat. But let’s add a little imagination. If the ship steams across near-freezing water, which it will in the North Atlantic, we can assume, the hull is exposed to near thirty-two degrees Fahrenheit. At that unusual temperature some steels, depending on their components, become very brittle, as do the steel rivets that fasten them. If only one compartment is ruptured and floods, the ship remains upright and stable, but if a number of compartments flood—three or four, say—and the ship tilts…” He gestured by tilting one flattened hand. “Look at this. The compartments, secured as they are by automatic doors, are not sealed at the top. The water spills over the top of each bulkhead into the next compartment. The ship keeps tilting until all the compartments flood. The unsinkable sinks.” He paused to see that she understood, and Eleanor, hearing far more than she wished, grimaced her acknowledgment.
“In Moby-Dick, Ahab’s ship, the Pequod, is sunk by a great white whale, based on a real incident, I hear, the whaling ship the Essex, in 1820 or something. The whale rams it with one giant head-on blow, breaks open a hole in the hull, and the ship sinks. For the Titanic that could not happen because of the compartments. Brilliant design, and they are thus saying, ‘Unsinkable.’”
Eleanor nodded. “That is what they say.”
As with many other times when Will Honeycutt was engrossed, he barely paused to see if his audience was listening. “Unless the giant whale strikes a glancing blow and the brittle steel tears open in a number of compartments. That would be a different story.”
“That would be quite a monstrous whale,” Eleanor said.
“Right. But there is another ship, the sister Olympic, say, or any ship, even a small one. The massive object strikes a glancing blow; the frozen steel now brittle from the cold, the rivets compromised also from the extreme cold, rends, tears open three or four compartments; they flood, tilt the ship; the remaining compartments flood; and there you have it—the ship is doomed.”
“But what are the chances of two ships colliding in the open ocean?”
“Not much, but there is the example of the Republic.”
“Remind me,” Eleanor said. “I remember only a bit of the story.”
“The Republic of the very same White Star Line, same as your ship. And also, like your ship, built by Harland and Wolff in Belfast, and lost off Nantucket, rammed by another ship in heavy fog in 1909. An ‘all stations’ distress, CQD, call was issued on the new Marconi radio device, the first such broadcast ever recorded. It stayed afloat until all passengers were removed, then it sank, in two hundred and fifty feet of water. At the time, the Republic was one of the largest and most luxurious liners afloat, though she was designed more for safety and sturdiness, they said, rather than beauty. It happens.” He paused and thought. “But it is still highly unlikely.”
“But it could happen again.”
“Highly unlikely. But you asked me what would sink the unsinkable ship. It’s a theoretical question, I assume.”
“Of course.” She nodded. “So it is unlikely?”
Will Honeycutt paused again. “Another ship, an anarchist’s bomb, a rocky shoal—which is
hard to imagine—an enemy torpedo, or an iceberg. But since we’re not at war, and since a large luxury liner is an unlikely target for anarchists, I’d rule out the bomb and the torpedo.”
This took her a moment to absorb. “Fog, crowded sea lanes, a glancing blow from another ship?” she said suddenly. “How do you deduce such things?”
“What else is there?” Will Honeycutt said in conclusion. “This is scientific analysis, remember?”
So Will Honeycutt, having already done a good deal of research and speculation, wrote an article for the New England Maritime Quarterly entitled “How the Unsinkable Would Sink,” not referring to the great ship specifically, but making clear the implication. The editor wrote him back and thanked him for the “well-thought-out submission” but noted that its grandiose conjectures were too wild and too demoralizing to print in a serious maritime magazine.
Then a few months later Will Honeycutt rushed to her with a copy of the Boston Globe. “Look at this,” he said excitedly. “The Olympic. That is the sister ship of your Titanic, the one about to be launched.” The article described how the Olympic, the largest ship in the world, had been rammed off the coast of Southampton and a huge hole rent in the stern. “It didn’t sink,” Will said. “Why? Because of the engineering, the compartments. That’s why. That’s the unsinkable part.”
“It must be reassuring to the White Star Line.”
“Yes,” Will said. “But it wasn’t the glancing blow I described, and it was not in freezing water. The steel held. The ship remained upright. In my scenario, remember, the offending ship grazes the side and tears into four or five of the supposedly sealed compartments. That would be an entirely different story.”
“Still improbable? Are you changing your opinion?”
“Absolutely not. It is still the highest of improbabilities,” Will said distinctly. He looked at her suspiciously. “Are you predicting something here?” he said.
“Oh my, no,” she said quickly, cringing for a moment. “Nothing as sure as that.”
“Good,” Will Honeycutt said. “Because if you were predicting, with your record, I would want to tell Jesse Livermore immediately. He would want to place a large wager on it.”
22
A MOST AUSPICIOUS MEETING
Secretly, almost obsessively, Eleanor kept track of all the details of the launch in Ireland of this monstrous ship whose fate she knew, its elaborate outfitting, and the proposed sailing date, one eagerly awaited now by all of America and Europe. The Titanic would sail on its magnificent maiden voyage on April 10, 1912. How, she ran through her head over and over, could such a ship ever be sunk, especially on the maiden voyage? This bit of foretelling seemed so improbable as to cause her doubt about the accuracy of all information in the journal. If this one predicted event did not happen, which seemed now highly likely, what then? And if it did happen, what an awful tragedy that would be, one she perhaps could have prevented.
And what of the supposed warning of J. P. Morgan? He was only the wealthiest, most powerful, and most easily recognized man in America. In 1912, at seventy-five years old and near the end of his life, he still wielded power and majesty, the mighty Zeus of the banking world. Although he was often seen publicly in New York and Europe, he was very difficult to see privately. For any ordinary mortal, getting any sort of message to him would indeed be a difficult, virtually impossible, task. Was she really supposed to warn him not to sail on his own magnificent luxury ship?
But with this as with many other events over a lifetime, Eleanor knew she must. She had no choice. So, in the winter of 1912, she began with Will Honeycutt. “I have an assignment for you,” she said with the kind of seriousness he had come to expect. “I need to meet with Pierpont Morgan.”
“Impossible,” Will said without thinking. “Why would he meet with a mortal such as you?” And then, seeing the determination on her face and adjusting, he changed to “I will begin working on it.”
And a few days later he came back to report that Jesse Livermore had been an invaluable help, with his connections on Wall Street. “It is nigh unto impossible, but there is a chance. You will probably get nowhere with your efforts, but I know what you are like when you set your mind to a task, and if anyone could make it happen it would be you.” And he laid out for her the details of what Jesse Livermore suggested.
She began exploiting that slight chance with a letter, not asking for an appointment, but announcing rather that she would be in his office on a Monday morning, a moment her research told her he would be in residence. Admitting to a great deal of nervousness that she hoped she was able to conceal, she arrived and announced her presence and sat in a reception area for well over half an hour before an assistant, a short, slight, neatly dressed man with slicked-back hair and a rather large mole on his cheek, came out to state with dismissive formality that Mr. Morgan was not available. She handed over a letter. “Please deliver this to Mr. Morgan,” she said confidently. “This is for his consideration only. It is an extremely private and an extremely urgent matter.”
The letter introduced her as the representative of the Hyperion Fund, a name that would perhaps—because of the whole Northern Pacific business—resonate with members of the Morgan camp. In it she said, “I have personal knowledge of an extremely confidential nature to share with you and you alone.”
One more hour passed before the assistant returned. “A representative from Mr. Morgan will see you,” he said.
“But I must see Mr. Morgan himself,” she said.
“Be grateful for what you receive,” he said solicitously, turning to escort her. “This is very much closer than most people get.” And he ushered her into an inner wood-paneled room that looked very much like the library where Mr. Morgan met from time to time with important men of finance to browbeat them into seeing things his way. She sat for what must have been twenty minutes, although her heart was racing so that recalling accurate time was a near impossibility.
After whatever time had passed, a side door opened and a man walked in. He was almost like a shadow, sliding soundlessly across the carpet with a surprising suppleness and grace, approaching the chair where she sat. Suddenly, Eleanor found herself looking into the face of the most powerful and most intimidating man she had ever met.
She rose and extended her hand. “Mr. Morgan,” she said, struggling mightily to look him square in the eye, “I am honored to meet you.” She had prepared well, yet still found herself nonplussed in the presence of this Olympian figure. He was a large man, a “whale of a presence,” as a United States senator had once called him. The boldest of men were likely to become humble under his piercing gaze, she had heard, the imperious ground to humility. And she knew to expect the nose.
J. P. Morgan’s rosacea, a condition in which certain facial blood vessels enlarge, had given him the most unsightly and bulbous outcropping of a nose, about which he was very sensitive. She had prepared herself to take not even the slightest notice of the ugly protuberance, and somehow she held fast and made sure that her eyes did not budge from his, as if looking into the most handsome face in the world.
“You have something you deem very important to tell me,” he said coldly, his eyes taking in her full presence. She had heard that Mr. Morgan would grant an audience with some ease but that the recipient had better have something significant to offer.
“I do,” she said. “A matter of great importance. I feel it my duty.”
“Well, you may now perform that duty.” Morgan gave a barely noticeable smirk and waited. “You may have noticed that you have my full attention.”
“You may know that the Hyperion Fund I represent made some dramatic predictions,” she said, and now she waited. “If you will remember, our fund predicted the Northern Pacific corner and the crash of 1907.”
“The Hyperion Fund,” Morgan repeated noncommittally, nodding to signal that he knew exactly her reference.
“Yes, the Hyperion Fund.” She continued with confidence, positive Mr
. Morgan had done his research before admitting her to his inner sanctum. “Discretion is of utmost importance, I am sure you realize. I do not wish any of this known. In fact, I come here at great risk to the privacy of my fund. But what only you may know, a fact most urgently protected, is that it is I alone who have made the predictions.”
“You, Mrs. Burden?” Morgan said, eyeing her with suspicion.
“I know,” she said. “It is in your experience unlikely for a woman. I know certain details of the future. And I know something about you that you must accept and must act upon.”
Morgan, a man not accustomed to hearing “you must” in his presence, gave a small harrumph but did not turn away, allowing his guest to continue.
“It regards your ship the Titanic. I know you are planning to be on board for its luxurious maiden voyage.” Morgan nodded ever so slightly. “I know that you have built for yourself and those who travel as your guests a most beautiful stateroom. Well, I have traveled from Boston just to tell you this.” She paused, taking a breath, her eyes still fixed on his. “If you sail on that voyage, you will die.”
There followed a most awkward silence. For the first moment, the famous J. P. Morgan reacted. “Good lord, madam. What on earth causes you to say that? Are you suggesting some anarchist on shipboard?”
The Lost Prince Page 16