Page 42

He lost his footing and splayed across the sidewalk.

The bustling crowd parted like the Red Sea around him as he struggled to his feet.

Casting about for a safe haven, he spied a small gap between the bank and the building next to it and made for it.

Leaning against the solidness of the building, he tried to take stock of his situation.

He was furious at the teller, judging him by his clothes and his reduced circumstances and giving him no chance to explain himself.

Gaining access to his funds would have to wait.

Unfolding his small map, he decided on his next destination.

His sartorial expression might in fact be an asset for where he was going.

There it was, Hell’s Kitchen. After dusting off his trouser legs and his jacket, he made for the subway.

***

Seated at a desk overflowing with ragged papers arranged haphazardly in piles that overflowed onto the floor, the young man scrutinised Darcy.

“ You were taken aboard the Carpathia, you say.”

“ I assume so. I was unconscious when I was brought aboard. Whoever pulled me from the water kept me alive until the rescue ship came upon the scene. I’m told the Titanic had already sunk by that time.”

“ You were in the water?” The young man adjusted owl-like eyeglasses that threatened to slip down his nose.

“ The lifeboats were all gone.”

“ Amazing… amazing… Yes, of course, Mr Darcy. We will amend the lists of survivors to include you. It will be posted and distributed tomorrow. I’m sure your family will be relieved to hear that you are still with us… so many were lost…”

This was Darcy’s opportunity. “Yes, regarding that… I am looking for my… fiancée…a Miss Elizabeth Bennet. She was rescued. She had to be. I put her in a lifeboat myself… I was wondering if you might know her whereabouts…”

A rustle of paper came from behind the piles of documents that separated him from the Red Cross officer.

“Hmm…. Miss Elizabeth… Bennet did you say? Hmmm….” After some minutes of fruitless search, the young officer looked up at Darcy with a sheepish grin.

“I’m afraid I don’t have her exact whereabouts.

You see, we don’t have everything collected in a central location…

the swiftness of the accident and the great need, you know… If you could come back tomorrow.”

Darcy planted both hands on the piles of papers on the desk as he stood. “Can’t you tell me anything? By tomorrow, she may have left for England.”

“ Now, now, sir, don’t get excited…” He shuffled through more papers and retrieved one. “I can tell you that many of the survivors are temporarily housed in some brownstones on 58 th and 59 th Street near Central Park… but if you come back tomorrow…”

Darcy was already out the door. Here was something…

something he could finally hold on to. It would be a matter of minutes or perhaps hours and he would see Elizabeth again.

How difficult would it be to find her? He still had some hours of daylight left.

By the clock in the clerk’s office, it was nearing three.

He would find her soon. How big could this Central Park be?

***

Elizabeth needed to clear her head. Even though it looked like it might rain at any moment, she stopped at her temporary domicile for a quick bite of lunch and walked to Central Park.

How marvellous it was to have this gigantic green space in the heart of a bustling city.

The Red Cross was kind enough to provide her with an umbrella, and being English, she was no stranger to rain.

In fact, if truth be told, she preferred it when out for her strolls.

It enveloped her in kind of a hush that left her alone with her thoughts.

Elizabeth made her way around Columbus Circle and entered the park near 59 th Street.

She had only been in the city two days and had already visited the park twice.

She made her way toward the centre of the park, where she had learned from the grocer that a Literary Walk existed.

He suggested that she might want to visit a statue of Shakespeare there to make her feel more at home.

He couldn’t know how she longed for home.

Although this great metropolis welcomed the survivors with open arms, she couldn’t help but feel that the memory of their ordeal was already fading from the public consciousness.

Only she and the weeping widows of the Titanic would carry that night inside themselves forever.

Small paths and large avenues split the park into a picturesque mosaic, and many well-dressed men in bowler hats and tailored suits walked along with their wives or sweethearts on their arms. Children ran about, and she stopped to give a penny to an organ grinder’s monkey who made the children giggle as it danced about on the sidewalk with its tiny hat in its hand.

As she neared the leafy avenue, a gentle drizzle began to splash on the path.

Many around her began to hurry away at the first sign of rain, but she dreaded returning to her dark, lonely abode, and so walked on.

The wind intensified and threatened to puff her umbrella inside out, so she leaned it against the wind and, turning about, made for home.

***

Darcy rattled along in the electric streetcar, elbows on his thighs, and stared at the rubbery floor.

He’d never even considered this mode of transportation in his native London, and now, this was his second journey on such a conveyance in this strange city.

His compatriots spoke myriad of languages, some of which he never heard even though he’d travelled extensively.

Many of the men were dressed as he was, labourers, no doubt, come to seek their fortune in the Land of Opportunity.

From the looks of them, many hadn’t found it.

Etched in their faces was the grinding work of the factory or mill, relentless, back-breaking labour with little pay.

How many men, just like this, were at the bottom of the Atlantic?

The wooden car was strewn with lights that illuminated the map he retrieved from his pocket.

The nearest he could reckon, he should take the streetcar to Columbus Circle and begin walking there.

The car rattled to a stop. He gave a lady his seat and hung one-handed from a strap.

No one met another’s eye unless they were travelling together.

He focused his attention out the window on the bustling inhabitants as he rattled past.

With Christopher Columbus presiding from a monolith in the centre of the great traffic circle, he leapt off the streetcar, finding that the April weather wasn’t on his side.

A sharp gust of wind hit him. He missed his woollen overcoat, now at the bottom of the sea, and turned up the collar on his patched jacket, pulling his cap low over his eyes so as not to lose it.

The park stood on his right, and streets radiated out from every direction.

He found he was already on 59 th Street and began walking along.

The buildings in America were of a tremendous size and girth.

How he would find Elizabeth in this mass of brick and mortar was anyone’s guess.

The skies darkened with every step, and gusts of wind drove shards of cold rain into his eyes.

This wouldn’t do at all. A row of massive brick and stone buildings, more than ten stories high, lined the street, and he ran up some stone steps and ducked under the white archway of the nearest building to save himself from the onslaught.

Shivering, he leaned his head against the cold, ungiving stone, and gave way to despair.

What was he thinking? He should have sorted himself out before trying to find Elizabeth.

The man said “tomorrow”. Could he not wait until then?

When the rain stopped, he would return to Hell’s Kitchen and find a bed for ten cents a night. He would find Elizabeth tomorrow.

From his perch at the entrance to an apartment building, Darcy watched people rushing down the street, newspapers over their heads, umbrellas in their hands.

The rain spattered the pavement, making small, rapid splashes as it poured down.

A young woman, her face hidden beneath an umbrella, struggled against the wind.

A man running in the opposite direction was trying to hail a taxi, and they looked to collide at any moment.

“ Look out. Look out ,” Darcy cried.

The man looked up and splashed off the curb into the street, cursing. The woman lowered her umbrella and stopped dead in her tracks, looking about frantically.

Elizabeth? His heart pounded in his chest. “ Elizabeth .”

Elizabeth’s umbrella slipped from her fingers and somersaulted down the street with a gust of wind. Rain pelleted her cloche hat and ran in rivulets down her upturned face. She began to walk against the crowd as if in a trance, pedestrians jumping out of her way or pushing past her.

Darcy couldn’t move, then shaking off the shock, he ran to the bottom of the stairs and pulled her into the shelter of the stone archway.

“ D-Darcy?”

A buttery, soft light emanated through the windows of the apartment house lobby, bathing Elizabeth’s rain-splashed face in a supernatural glow.

She didn’t speak, but touched his face with both hands, examining it as if she were blind.

Then she patted his chest and ran her hands down his shoulders as if trying to convince herself that he was real.

“ Darcy?” she whispered again. “I… I thought… How…? How did you…” She staggered backward slightly, and he caught her in his arms.

He swallowed, eyes filling, and he opened his mouth to speak, but not a word would escape.

Instead, he kissed her cool, wet cheek and then her lips, softly, gently at first, and then with an urgency met equally by hers.

She broke away, and clasping the back of his neck, she pulled his head into the nape of her neck, winding her other arm around his waist and pulling him against her with all her strength.

“ Thank God. Thank God. Thank God.”

Darcy began to pepper her neck with soft kisses when a sharp jab with an elbow hit him just below the kidney.

“ For Christ’s sake, take the lady upstairs. Doncha have any class?”

Darcy turned his head as the man by the doorway unlocked the door of the building and slammed it behind him with a hard look back at Darcy.

All he could do was laugh, and laugh and laugh, almost to the point of hysteria. He fought to gain control of himself. Finding Elizabeth this way pulled every nerve from his body and exposed them to the air.

Elizabeth laughed softly with him and touched his cheek. “Come. Let’s go home.”

She took him by the hand and led him down the stairs into the dark street.