by Suzanne Weyn
“Your daughters have convinced me that there will, indeed, be a world war. I now believe that Mr. Taft’s attempt to sidestep or prevent it will probably be in vain.”
“Why go, then?” I asked.
“One must try one’s best despite the evidence,” he replied sadly. “It is always possible that what we do affects the future. It may be that in a future where we do nothing there will be war, but if we try to stop it, the outcome will change. My spirit guide, Julia, has implied as much to me, though she hasn’t stated it directly. At the very least, perhaps the misery will be lessened or shortened due to our efforts. One must always try.”
“You are a good man,” Mother told him.
“I’m just a man with many questions,” he replied. “All my life I’ve been driven to seek answers.”
It heartened me to hear him say that since I, too, had a million questions, took nothing for granted, and was always seeking. Sometimes I thought something must be peculiar about me that I was so driven. To hear Mr. Stead say he felt the same made me see myself as less odd.
Much less encouraging was his conviction that Emma and Amelie—or should I say Queen Victoria?—had convinced him war was coming. I didn’t want to think about what a world at war would be like.
Soon the horse-drawn cab arrived to take Mr. Stead, Mimi, and Blythe to their ship. “We will see you soon.” Mother bid them good-bye with hugs. “Mimi, you watch out for Blythe.”
“She won’t have to,” Blythe objected.
“I will,” Mimi promised, speaking over Blythe.
I hugged Blythe good-bye, but when Mimi approached for a hug, I didn’t make a move to enfold her in my arms. “Good-bye, Mimi,” I said stiffly, avoiding her hurt gaze. “I suppose we’ll see you in New York.”
“Come, ladies,” Mr. Stead urged. “Our cab waits.”
Mother, Agatha, Emma, and Amelie went out to say more good-byes at the curb, but I stayed behind in the study, dropping into a high-backed leather armchair. Now that Mimi was gone, I let my anger at her become what it had truly been all along: bitter sadness and disappointment. Dropping my head, I began to cry.
Minutes later, someone entered the study and I quickly brushed my tears away. It was Mr. Robertson inquiring for Mr. Stead. “You’ve missed him, I’m afraid. He’s left for the Titanic.”
He nodded somberly. “So he decided to go, after all.”
“What do you mean?” I asked, suddenly alarmed by the seriousness of his expression.
He held a large paper envelope tied in string. He placed it on Mr. Stead’s desk and began to untie it. As he worked the string, Mother, Agatha, Emma, and Amelie returned.
Mother gasped sharply when he produced the contents of the envelope. “Now I remember why your name is so familiar!” she cried. “I read that book on the train from New York to Buffalo many years ago.”
Standing, I looked to see what Mr. Robertson held. It was a slim novel with a picture of an ocean liner on the cover. Its title was Futility.
“In your novel, the ocean liner sinks, if I’m correct,” Mother recalled.
“I’m afraid it does,” Mr. Robertson confirmed.
Mother leaned heavily on the desk as though she needed its support to keep from fainting. “And the ship is named the Titan.”
“Yes,” he said. “I urged Stead not to travel on it. He himself has made predictions of his own death by drowning. It’s preoccupied him for many a year.”
“He never spoke of it to me,” Mother said. “I thought it was ice he feared.”
“He entertained both possibilities. It is a matter of public record. In 1886 he wrote an article titled ‘How the Mail Steamer Went Down in Mid Atlantic by a Survivor.’” He strode to the bookshelf and pulled down a magazine, Review of Reviews, that Mr. Stead had founded and edited. “This is a story he wrote in 1892 featuring a character that was clairvoyant.”
He quickly found the page he wanted and began to read: “‘I was saying,’ said Mrs. Irwin, ‘that last night, as I was lying asleep in my berth, I was awakened by a sudden cry, as of men in mortal peril, and I roused myself to listen, and there before my eyes, as plain as you are sitting there, I saw a sailing ship among the icebergs. She had been stove[d] in by the ice, and was fast sinking.’”
The quaver in Mother’s voice made me realize she was trembling. “An iceberg, you say?”
“Yes. The ship collides with an iceberg and sinks,” Mr. Robertson said.
“What is the name of the ship this book is about?” Emma asked.
“The Majestic,” Mr. Robertson told her.
Majestic. Titanic. It was much too close for me to feel comfortable about it. But I clung to logic. There was no sense in jumping to irrational, panicked conclusions. “Think about it,” I said, trying to convey a cool rationality I didn’t really feel. “These ocean liners have been growing bigger and bigger steadily. That could be cause for concern. Icebergs are a known hazard in the northern Atlantic. And these ships all have names that are similar: the Gigantic, the Olympic. It’s logical that anyone who thinks about the nature of these liners might come up with a similar scenario as these.”
I took a concluding breath, feeling satisfied with my dispassionate assessment of the situation. Sherlock Holmes—if not Dr. Conan Doyle—would have been proud.
“That sounds sensible, my dear,” said Mr. Robertson, “but the Titanic is considered unsinkable. If there were not an element of supernatural prophecy and clairvoyance in these stories, why would they be about an unsinkable ship sinking?”
“It’s only a fear,” I suggested.
“When I wrote Futility, it came to me like a waking dream. There was nothing logical about it,” Mr. Robertson insisted.
“It’s the fourth prophecy,” Mother said to Mr. Robertson, much alarmed. “In his speech the other day, he said he had documented a fourth prophecy. This has to be it.”
“I believe you are correct, madam. He and I discussed this only two nights ago.” He pulled open the top drawer of Mr. Stead’s desk and took out a hardcover sketchpad. “He showed me these drawings he’s been making while in a trance state over the course of the last ten years. He is quite a good artist, but that is hardly the point here.”
He opened the book of Stead’s sketches and showed Mother. A tortured, anguished cry came from her. Dropping the book, she covered her face with her hands. Agatha rushed to support her as she wilted to the side.
Frightened but overcome with curiosity, I retrieved the book. Emma and Amelie crowded me on either side, looking down at the pages of charcoal sketches along with me as I slowly turned them.
One drawing was a full-length self-portrait of Mr. Stead flailing helplessly under the water, his suit and tie floating around him. Another sketch showed a gigantic ocean liner sinking, its back half standing straight up at a ninety-degree angle. A third depicted an iceberg with some people climbing onto it while others floated in a frigid ocean.
“Let’s go! Right now!” I cried, all my misgivings about clairvoyance swept aside. “We can’t let Mimi and Blythe get on that ship!”
Chapter 22
Smoke billowed from under the hood of the motorcar as Agatha sped into Southampton at twenty miles an hour, as fast as her automobile would go. As soon as we got close to the dock, she had to slow down because there was a huge crowd of people milling in the streets of the plain, working-class town with its square, brick buildings. Some were laden with bundles, trunks, and suitcases. Others carried nothing and had probably come out simply to witness the maiden voyage of the reported wonder that was the Titanic.
“Oh, heavens!” Mother cried. She’d caught sight of the immense ship at dock.
The ship was, indeed, a sight to behold. My first impression was of a gigantic tiered wedding cake. The enormous ocean liner boasted white stacked decks above a great black hull that seemed to stretch on forever. At the very top were four very large smoke funnels. It appeared to be as tall as any building in London or New York City.
The train station connected directly to the ship and cranes were loading cargo and trunks from the train directly into the liner’s cargo hold. “Maybe we’re not too late, darlings,” Agatha said as she sharply turned the steering wheel in the direction of the station. As soon as we arrived, I jumped out of the back and ran to a stationmaster to ask if they were unloading cargo from the nine thirty train from Waterloo; I was told that the nine thirty had already arrived and had been unloaded.
Before returning to the automobile, I stopped but a quick moment to let my heart slow down. It wasn’t possible that we wouldn’t reach Mimi and Blythe in time to stop them from leaving. I couldn’t consider that possibility for even a second or I would fall to pieces.
When I gave everyone the bad news, Agatha turned the motorcar back toward the ship but was again stalled in a thick crowd of people moving forward. Although the Titanic was supposed to be the most luxurious liner of all time, the people in this crowd were clearly not wealthy. The women’s dresses were unstylish, their hair disheveled—some wore unattractive scarves—and they carried heavy bundles while they tried to manage messy children. The men, too, wore frayed, patched coats.
Agatha pulled the motorcar aside and turned it off. Getting out, we struggled through the crowd on foot. Emma, Amelie, and I made better progress than Mother and Agatha. When once we paused to wait for them, Mother waved us forward. “Go! Go!” she shouted. “Try to catch up with them before they board.”
With much breath sucking and squirming past, even sometimes crawling under legs, my sisters and I finally reached the boarding gateway. The gangways leading to the ship looked like wooden bridges with waist-high railings. The top gangways were occupied with rather grand-looking passengers, the middle gangways had less fancy passengers, while the lower one was packed with the people I guessed to be the third-class passengers. They were boarding the lower decks of the ship.
We went to where the people were showing their tickets and having their names crossed off a list. I tried to get the attention of the uniformed purser at the entrance to the gangway who was checking names but couldn’t distract him from his task no matter how hard I tried.
As an alternate, I located a uniformed officer, another seemingly junior purser, for he was not much older than me, with a clipboard and asked if Mimi or Blythe Oneida Taylor had boarded. He checked the passenger list and found their names. “They’re here, all right, on the ship already. First and second classes have already boarded. Third-class steerage passengers are going on now.”
I tried to impress upon him how urgent it was that I board the ship, just to talk to them, but he insisted it was impossible. I argued with him that it was of utmost importance. “Has there been a death in the family?” he asked in a tone that made it sound like he might accept this one reason to let us on board without tickets.
“Yes!” Emma cried, before I could even formulate a response. “Our father has died.” That was true enough. No one could fault her for lying. I quickly banished an inadvertent smile as Amelie subtly rolled her eyes at the lie.
“Let me speak to my superior,” he said. “Come with me.” We followed him back to the man checking names and tickets. The junior purser instructed us to stand a distance off while he spoke to him. As they talked, the purser at the gate kept shaking his head, refusing, it appeared, to let us board without tickets.
Emma tapped my shoulder but I was too intent on watching the two men debate to take my eyes from them. It didn’t look good. When I finally turned to say this to Emma and Amelie—they were gone!
Casting about frantically looking for them, I eventually spotted my sisters up ahead. They had somehow sneaked past and were on the gangway and now stood shoulder to shoulder, their heads bent low. Almost imperceptibly, Amelie glanced back over her shoulder and quirked her head, indicating that I should follow them. But how?
I couldn’t be too long about it, because once the officers ended their discussion and turned their attention back to the passenger line, there would be no getting past them. At that moment, a white-bearded man of military bearing in a white uniform with epaulets and a captain’s cap walked past with two other white-uniformed officers. “That’s Captain Smith,” someone in the halted line realized. The line pushed forward, breaking form, as people tried to gain Captain Smith’s attention with various questions.
It was my moment and I grabbed it, ducking low and scooting up the gangway. Just as I reached it, the line of people on the gangway moved forward. Others were admitted behind me.
We’d done it! We were on, though we dared not revel in our victory for fear of drawing attention. And besides, the job was not done yet. We still had to find Blythe and Mimi.
As we crept forward with the crowd, I craned my neck, scanning the upper gateways trying to find Blythe and Mimi. When we went into the ship, people were busily trying to locate their rooms, crowding past one another in the narrow halls.
I saw a steward locking a gate, closing off a stairway that would lead to the upper decks. “Why are those being locked?” I asked.
“Third-class passengers can’t leave steerage,” he informed me.
“Well, we must get up,” I told him.
“Sorry,” he said, looking none too sorry.
Nodding, I took the twins by hand and moved them out of the steward’s hearing. “We’ve got to find a gate that’s still open,” I said to them. “Hurry, follow me.” Nearly running, I rushed farther down the hall. When we were around a bend and out of the steward’s sight, I yanked at a gate and was relieved to find it had not yet been locked.
We climbed the narrow stairs toward the upper decks until we came out—quite by mistake, because we really had no idea of where we were going—onto the second-class outdoor walkway. A sign read: SECOND-CLASS PROMENADE. FIRST- AND SECOND-CLASS PASSENGERS ONLY. We were dressed better than most of the passengers in steerage; I hoped that fact would enable us to move freely into second class where we might at least find Blythe.
As I stepped onto the deck, I began to have second thoughts about our mission. It was almost inconceivable that this ocean liner would sink; it was so massive and sturdy. For it to be plunged under the water would be as if an entire town had sunk under the ocean.
I estimated that the ship was probably bigger and contained more people than all of Spirit Vale. Most of the people were not here on this particular part of the promenade at the moment, though. We were at the back of the ship, and the others were crowded at the bow and on the opposite side, waving good-bye.
Standing there, my emotions began to spin wildly. Like so many other times in my past, I was torn. Swept up in the conviction of Mother’s panic, I had been so convinced that getting my sisters off this ship was the most important thing on earth. But now, faced with the immensity, high level of efficiency, and utter solidity of the vessel, a feeling of being almost ridiculous was beginning to descend upon me.
It was not a good feeling.
A man walked by in a heavy overcoat with a cap pulled low over his face. I noticed him casually only because the heaviness of his coat seemed excessive for the pleasant weather.
Turning to Emma and Amelie, I was about to suggest that maybe our being on the ship wasn’t the best of ideas and that we should leave. But when I turned to them, both were locked in a rigid fixation on the man in the heavy coat.
Emma’s mouth opened and a voice came out, though she seemed to be barely moving her lips. It was the slightly higher voice she used when Amelie was speaking through her. “He’s the one,” she said eerily. “He will bring death to this ship.”
Beside her, Amelie had begun curling in on herself as she slowly sank to the floor, her hands over her bowed head, her head bending into her chest. It was as if she were trying to pull herself into a ball.
I swung my head back to get a better look at the man but he had turned a corner and was out of sight.
“Everyone must leave the ship now!” Emma cried and she began to shake uncontrollably. Her eyes
rolled back in her head until only the whites showed. “I don’t want to die! I don’t want to die!” she screamed and then dropped suddenly and hard onto the floor.
Bending over them, I tried to shake my sisters into consciousness. “Come on; wake up! Wake up!” They didn’t stir. I became worried that Emma had hit her head badly.
A young woman knelt beside me. She was Chinese. “I help,” she said, her English heavily accented. “You wait. I get friend.” She hurried toward the bow of the boat.
It was probably only a few moments but it seemed an eternity that I waited there beside the unconscious twins. Finally, the young woman returned, hurrying in front of a young man in a tweed cap, pants, and jacket. His blue tie flew out to one side in the breeze as he walked at a fast clip behind her.
Why was my skin suddenly tingling, gooseflesh forming on my arms?
It was the young man hurrying so quickly forward, with that same brisk, purposeful walk…
As he came closer, I blinked hard into the sunlight at the young man.
Had I fainted, too?
Was this a dream?
It was Thad.
Chapter 23
He came to a sudden halt in front of me, then staggered back a few steps in surprise. “Jane?”
“Thad, what are you doing here?” It had to be a dream.
“I can’t tell you exactly. Why are you here?”
“I can’t explain that right now, either. It’s a long story, and right now I need to get them some help,” I said, gesturing down at my prone sisters.
“What’s happened?”
“They’re my sisters. As I said, it’s hard to explain. They’re breathing, but they fainted when they saw—”
I suddenly realized who it was they had seen.
“You’re here with Tesla, aren’t you?”
“Don’t ask me that,” he replied, looking away.
I didn’t have to; I was now certain it was Tesla who had passed us by in disguise, not even willing to greet me. What was he up to that had caused the twins such overwhelming distress?