Harvard Yard (60 page)

“And she just
gave
him a quarto of
Love’s Labours Lost.
Isn’t that so, Victor?”

“She gave it to me because it was inscribed by two of my collateral ancestors,” said Victor. “One was a minor female poet, the other apparently an old actor.”

Harry Elkins Widener looked at the other gentlemen around the table. “I scour Europe for rare books, and he comes up with a treasure worth tens of thousands just by visiting some distant relative.”

“Distant in time, space, and blood.” Victor wrapped his hands around his snifter. “Rather distant between the ears, too.”

The other gentlemen all had a chuckle at the expense of Lady Townsend.

Outside, the stars glittered coldly, and RMS
Titanic
sliced through a calm sea at twenty-two knots.

In the first-class smoking lounge, Victor Wedge basked in the sound of sophisticated laughter, the taste of good brandy, the smell of fine cigars. This, he knew, was where he belonged, aboard the most luxurious vessel ever built, passing witticisms on topics great and small. This was why his grandfather had sent him on the tour—to remind him of his place on the great chain of being.

On boarding, Victor had gone over the passenger list and had found that the ship was like a floating Harvard Club. A good contingent of the best people, as his grandfather would have said, all of them connected by interest, income, breeding, background.

The night before, he had dined with family friends from Boston, the Pratts—George, ’90, his wife, their two young sons, and their eleven-year-old daughter, Katherine. Tonight, he was socializing with the Wideners of Philadelphia, beginning with a dinner in honor of Captain Smith and finishing now with brandy and cigars.

Harry Elkins Widener stood and said to the other gentlemen, “You’ll excuse Victor and me for a few moments. I must show him some of the treasures I’ve collected on the trip. Then we’ll be back for bridge.”

Taking their brandies in hand, the two young men sauntered down to B deck and Widener’s luxurious stateroom.

Though he had graduated in 1907, a few months before Victor arrived, they had hit it off immediately. Widener was a fine fellow all around, Victor had concluded, and plainly handsome—hair parted in the middle and slicked to the sides, orderly features, white tie and tails. A pity, Victor thought, that so few single women were aboard, for two such dashing young men as Harry and himself could cut a wide swath.

But Harry seemed more interested in books than in women. “Look here,” he said, taking a small dispatch box from the safe in his sitting room. “A first edition of
A Tale of Two Cities.
Mint condition, pages uncut, and—what’s best—it’s signed by Dickens.”

“Marvelous. Marvelous novel, too,” said Victor.

Next came a thin pamphlet. “
Heavy News of an Horrible Earthquake in the City of Scarbaria.
It’s from 1542. The only one in the world. I also sent back a complete first edition of Gibbon’s
Decline and Fall
and a Second Folio, which is not as valuable as the first that I bought a while back—”

“The First Folio brought a record price, didn’t it?”

“The most ever for a Shakespeare. But here’s the real treasure of this trip.” And like a little boy pulling a favorite toy from the bottom of his chest, Widener produced a small, nondescript brown book. “The 1598 edition of the
Essaies
of Sir Francis Bacon. Extraordinarily rare. More valuable than that quarto of yours.”

“Really.”

“Bernard Quaritch found it. Finest antiquarian in London, Quaritch.”

“I’ve heard of him.”

“He asked me if I should like to have the book shipped home with some of my other purchases. I said, ‘No. I’ll take it along. If the ship sinks, the book will go with me.’ Quaritch laughed and said I was going on the
Titanic,
which, of course, is—”

At that moment, the light fixture above them rattled and the brandy in the snifters sloshed back and forth. And from somewhere forward came a low but unmistakable groan, like a giant piano string plucked and vibrating against the side of the ship.

“What’s that?” asked Widener.

“Good God!” Victor looked through the window, across the B deck promenade. Something was scraping along the side of the ship, something white.

Widener looked over his shoulder. “Good God!”

They rushed up the staircase to the first-class promenade deck and hurried to the stern as a mountain of ice, towering as high as the ship itself, receded into the darkness.

“Good God,” said Widener again.

A dozen other gentlemen had come out of the smoking lounge, while down on the fantail, third-class passengers, mostly immigrants in rough clothes, had set up an indistinct chattering. But they were all talking about the same thing.

“A bloody big growler,” said George Pratt of Boston.

“I know I called for ice”—Mr. Carter of Philadelphia looked into his tumbler—“but this is ridiculous.”

“Well, she steams on,” said Archie Butt of Washington. “She can’t have sustained much damage.”

“Indeed not,” said George Widener, Harry’s father. “I’m going to bed.”

Someone suggested they return to the bridge table, and Victor said he’d play.

But Widener said he was going to turn in, too. “Enough excitement for one night. See you in the morning, Wedge.”

“Yes. Good night.” Victor was looking down at the crowd of immigrants who had come out onto the stern deck. Though it was bitterly cold, a dozen of them—Italians and Eastern Europeans and Irish—were starting a game of soccer, using a chunk of ice from the berg. It looked like more fun than four-handed bridge.

Victor was glad it was so cold, or he might have been tempted to join them. But he would be gladder still for another brandy.

As he turned to go back inside, the engines stopped.

Less than half an hour later, Victor Wedge was telling himself to act as his grandfather and his late father would have expected.

He had gone calmly to his cabin and put his topcoat on over his evening dress, then his heavy cork life jacket over his topcoat. Now as he stepped into the C deck companionway, he bumped into the Pratts, all five of them. They were hurrying along a deck that was now canted slightly forward, tilted slightly starboard, and packed with passengers, some of whom were putting on their life jackets and doing as they were told, others of whom were spending more energy complaining to the stewards about the inconvenience.

“Come with us, Victor,” said George Pratt. “We’ll be your family tonight.”

“Thank you.”

And the little girl, Katherine, slipped her hand into his. Then Victor stopped. He had not been acting as calmly as he thought.

“What is it?” asked Katherine.

“I have to go back to my room. There’s a book I’ve forgotten.”

“What book could be so important?” George Pratt called over his shoulder.

“A quarto”—Victor released Katherine’s hand—“of
Love’s Labours Lost.
”

“We’ll see you on the boat deck then,” said Pratt, “and hurry.”

It took Victor just moments to retrieve the book, but it was enough time to lose the Pratts. He went along the companionway to the grand staircase and looked for them, but there were scores of families gathering under the great skylight, lining the steps, crowding the vestibule that opened onto the boat deck, and raising a din of nervous conversation.

Then a male voice—very calm, very controlled, entirely British—ordered women and children to the lifeboats, causing the din to rise suddenly in pitch and volume, like a crosscut saw working smooth wood suddenly striking a knot. It was not a sound of panic, thought Victor, but of annoyance.

Stepping out onto the boat deck, however, Victor realized that this was far more serious than a series of precautions. He was struck first by the ferocious roar of steam venting from the stacks. And in the frantic movements of crewmen uncovering lifeboats, he saw fear. Then a white rocket shot startlingly into the sky and exploded above the ship.

Victor told himself again to do what would be expected of him. He helped put ladies aboard lifeboats on the port side. He lashed deck chairs together to form a sort of gangplank, so that when the list from starboard over to port grew more pronounced and the boats swung farther out over the water, passengers could climb from the A deck windows into the boats. And he told himself that if he remained calm, he would survive.

But when he began to notice second- and third-class people pressing upward onto the boat decks, he realized that there were not enough boats for everyone. By then, the roar of the steam had stopped, and the sound of ragtime from the ship’s orchestra provided strange accompaniment to the shouts of the officers, the creaking of the davits, and the cries of families separated.

Victor decided that it was time to consider his own survival—calmly, of course. No bad form allowed. So he made his way aft, away from the rising water, away from the crowd, over to the starboard side, near the stern, where the sense of panic was more controlled, and lifeboats were taking men aboard, especially men in expensive overcoats.

“Victor!” Widener was standing near a boat.

“Where are your parents?” asked Victor.

“My mother went onto one of the port boats. My father’s—”

“Here.” Mr. Widener stood at the rail with Mr. Thayer of Philadelphia.

“Do you have your book?” asked Widener.

Victor slapped his pocket. “Right here.”

“I have Francis Bacon,” said Widener. “I wish to God I’d brought the other two.”

Victor noticed three women coming along the boat deck. He said to Widener, “By the time they load those ladies, you could go and be back.”

“I’ve been thinking to stay with the ship, Victor.” Widener paused for a moment and said, “But if you can, hold the boat—”

“There’ll be no holdin’ anything, sir,” said First Officer Murdoch, who was in charge of the loading on the starboard side.

But Widener was already disappearing into the first-class stairwell.

“Harry! Wait!” shouted Victor.

Just then, a dozen people from third class, eight men and four women, came clamoring from somewhere, shouting in their brogues and accents and foreign tongues.

Seeing them, Murdoch shouted, “All right! Lower away.”

“Let us on!” cried an Irishman. “There’s room.”

Victor said, “Wait for Widener.”

“No more waiting,” cried Murdoch, looking down the canted deck. “We’re running out of time.”

“Here now!” screamed another Irishman. “Take the women, anyway.”

“All right,” shouted Murdoch. “But only the women.” And he showed them the pistol in his hand. “Women only.”

Victor watched the four women climb aboard while the men, by hand gestures and eye contact, told one another that they would rush the boat. Victor put himself behind Murdoch, in a position to fight them. But they made no move.

Once the women were aboard, Murdoch looked at George Widener and Mr. Thayer, as if offering them the chance to climb aboard, but neither of them moved. They were true to their class, thought Victor, and acted like gentlemen.

So Murdoch shouted, “Lower away!” and the lifeboat dipped below the level of the boat deck.

And then, thought Victor, the third-class males did what he should have expected of them. All eight rushed the boat.

Murdoch screamed for them to stop, but they kept coming. So he fired, not into the air—it was too late for that—but right into the biggest of them. The man stopped suddenly, but none of the others did, for in that night of rising panic, the collapse of one man was nothing, and the rest leapt past Victor for the boat.

And somehow, Victor was knocked backward, so that he was flying, twisting, reaching out.

He saw the black water below him. Then he struck the gunwale of the lifeboat, heard one of his ribs crack, and struck his head against the boot sole of the one who’d jumped ahead of him. At the same moment, he heard two loud splashes thirty feet below as two immigrants missed the boat.

And he was falling, too, sliding backward as the boat swayed crazily from the impact of several bodies.

Then one of the Irishmen, safe on the lifeboat, grabbed his sleeve. “Hang on.”

And an Italian grabbed the shoulder harness of his life vest.

And from somewhere above him, he heard Harry Elkins Widener’s voice. “Hang on, Victor, old boy. And good luck.”

“Aye, hang on,” said the Irishman who had almost killed him and was now saving his life.

Victor looked up into their faces—one dark and bearded, one ghostly white with a bulbous potato nose, and he thought, what a place for the Earl of Mount Auburn.

Chapter Twenty-four

“S
O . . . YOU’RE
telling us that Victor Wedge went back for a book?” asked Peter Fallon.

“Yes.” Katherine Pratt Carrington looked out over the Gulf of Mexico. “They say that people who survived the sinking either remembered every detail or buried it as if it never happened. All I need to do is think of a cold clear night, and it all comes back.”

Florida in early April: like Massachusetts in late August. Temperature in the eighties, breeze light, cumulus clouds floating over the Gulf. A good place for a weekend getaway, especially if it meant a chance to talk to someone who had actually looked into the eyes of Victor Wedge.

Peter and Evangeline were sitting with Katherine Pratt Carrington on the little veranda of her winter home on the island of Captiva.

“You know,” said Katherine, “I lost my whole family that night . . . father, mother, both brothers.”

“Didn’t your mother go onto a lifeboat with you?”

“Yes. But they filled the boat only halfway on the boat deck. As the ship settled, the lifeboats on the port side swung away from the hull. So they cranked the boat down to the promenade deck, A deck, and called for ladders.”

“Ladders?” asked Peter.

“Once the boats were level with the promenade deck, they wanted to run ladders out the windows for gangplanks. But no one could find any. So they lashed chairs together and used boathooks to draw the boat against the ship. Three more women climbed aboard, and then two men.