“I guess it is,” Harlan allowed.
Rawlings nodded, looking relieved. His hand wandered up to fiddle with the pipe at his mouth, which, when he withdrew it for a long look into its bowl, Harlan observed to be more chewed on the mouthpiece than usual.
“Glad to hear it,” Rawlings said finally. “Glad to hear it.” Another pause while Harlan waited, bringing a fingertip to his scabbed split lip.
“I’ll tell you,” Rawlings said, flexing his hand. “Just about broke my knuckle, there.”
Harlan didn’t say anything, waiting.
“Way I see it, Allston,” Rawlings continued, voice tight with embarrassment. “We’ve known each other a long time, and—”
When he saw where Rawlings was going, Harlan let out a sigh of relief. “See here, Rolly,” he said. “I should never’ve said that. About your sister. You know I think she’s a fine girl. And nothing at all like—like I implied.”
Rawlings looked at him, stricken.
Harlan shifted in his seat, uncomfortable under the judging gaze of the other young men.
“You’ve got to know I didn’t mean anything by it. I was just running my mouth off. Like a jackass. You know that, right? Rolly?”
After weighing what Harlan said, the other young man nodded, and stuck out his hand. Harlan got to his feet and took it, bringing in his other hand as well to clasp them together.
“Okay. I—I know,” Rawlings said. “And I’m sorry about all that . . . that business.” He gestured with his chin to Harlan’s battered face. “But I couldn’t very well let it stand, could I? I mean, could I? You didn’t give me much choice, you know.”
“Frankly,” Harlan said with a half-smile, “I never thought you had it in you. I’ve got you to thank for this new shape my nose’s in, huh?”
The group of clubmen watching this exchange let out a collective sigh of relief. The two former combatants smiled at each other, hands still clasped together. Then the smiles broadened into grins, and they flung their arms around each other in a quick, tight embrace. The boys watching their exchange had to restrain themselves from breaking out in applause. Instead they muttered a few phrases of hearty approval, slapping backs and laughing.
“It needed the help,” Rawlings joked, elbowing Harlan, who cried, “Oh, did it? You bounder,” to a round of guffaws.
The group then bent themselves back to the newspaper spread around the card table, gesticulating with excitement over their plans to travel across the Atlantic and wreak revenge on Germany as soon as they possibly could.
Sibyl sat in the front drawing room, attempting to knot the thread on the underside of her needlepoint, and failing. She tried again, bending closer and squinting her eyes for a better view. She was on the point of getting it when her hands trembled, slightly, and the needle fell from her grasp.
“Drat,” she muttered under her breath. At her feet, Baiji waddled past, pausing to tongue the end of Sibyl’s shoe to see if it might taste as good as a peanut shell. It didn’t, and so the bird continued on his meditative way, shimmering tail trailing behind him.
“You’d better not chew the carpet again,” Sibyl remarked to the passing macaw. “I’ll make you into a hat after all. You see if I won’t.”
As she said this the pocket door opened and Dovie flounced in, a fashion magazine tucked under her arm. She flopped into the armchair across from Sibyl and stuck her feet out straight in front of her with a long sigh.
“Feeling any better?” Sibyl asked without looking up.
“Mmmm? Oh,” Dovie said, waving her hand in dismissal. “Sure. Just ate something funny, I guess.” She paused, and Sibyl didn’t respond. “You know, I don’t think that Betty of yours likes me so much.”
Sibyl glanced up from her work and regarded the young woman draped over the chair across from her. Dovie’s face was faintly green still, but her color did seem to be coming back.
“Oh? What makes you say that?”
“Nothing in particular,” Dovie said, with a strange look on her face. “Just a feeling. She won’t look at me when I try to talk to her. And I don’t think— Well. You all seem to enjoy her food more than I do, is all.”
Sibyl laid her work in her lap and leaned back in her chair, thinking about Betty Gallagher. It was true that she’d seemed more curt than usual when Sibyl went to the kitchen to consult her on dinner plans. Once, Sibyl enjoyed loitering in the kitchen to soak up the details of Betty’s various affairs, which were always touched with drama and intrigue. But she’d been less good humored, and more likely to snap at the kitchen girls lately. Sibyl had gotten into the habit of keeping her conversations with the cook to a minimum over the past few weeks, if only to spare the sculleries Betty’s wrath.
She was on the point of saying this to Dovie when the two women were interrupted by the slamming open of the front door, followed by the sound of pounding feet. Harlan burst through the door into the parlor, the stubborn forelock of hair flopping into his eyes. He panted, out of breath, and his eyes sparkled with a new kind of determination that Sibyl didn’t recall ever having seen in her otherwise laconic younger brother.
“Harley!” Dovie turned and gasped, seeing his excitement. “Why, what’s happened?” She rose to her feet, balancing one hand on the back of the chair.
Troubled by the sudden outburst of excitement, Baiji squawked, flapped his wings, and returned with a leisured soar to the hat rack in the inner parlor.
“You haven’t heard?” Harlan burst, rushing across the room to take Dovie’s hands in his.
“Heard what?” Sibyl asked from behind her needlepoint at the same time that Dovie cried, “No, my darling! What is it?”
“The Germans. There’ll be no way we can keep out of the war now.”
“War!” Dovie exclaimed, looking confused.
“What’s happened, Harlan?” Sibyl frowned, dropping her work into her lap. She didn’t like seeing him so. . . . Sibyl struggled to find the right word to describe Harlan’s attitude, and her stomach rolled over when she realized that this was enthusiasm, what she was seeing in her younger brother. He was excited. Thrilled. He was almost . . .
Happy.
“Look here,” he said, eyes shining with excitement as he pulled the newspaper from under his arm. He hurried to the coffee table, and the three of them gathered around as he spread it out for them to read. The paper was black with two-inch headlines, of which she caught the words TERROR and SEAS in the commotion. “I tell you, Wilson’s mad if he thinks we can stay neutral now. Soon enough they’ll get a real taste of what we’ve got to offer, you see if they won’t.”
“But what—” Sibyl started to say, but she was interrupted by the sound of a man speaking from the doorway.
“Lusitania,” the man announced. Harlan, Sibyl, and Dovie all looked up at once in response to the sound and discovered Benton Derby standing in the drawing room entryway, hands propped on either side of the door jamb, his face ashen. He looked as though he had been kicked in the stomach. “They torpedoed it.”
“Torpedoed?” Sibyl breathed. “You mean, it sank?”
“In eighteen minutes,” the professor confirmed. “Broad daylight.”
“But—” Dovie started to say.
“How many passengers were there?” Sibyl asked, her voice hollow in her ears.
“One thousand two hundred fifty-three,” Benton said. “At least, that’s the number I heard. I don’t know how many crew.” A strange look crossed his face, as though he had something important to add. “Sibyl, there’s—” he started to say with some urgency, but she cut him off without meaning to.
“Great God in heaven,” Sibyl whispered.
“Well, Ben,” Harlan interjected, drawing himself up to his full height and thrusting his chin forward with manful determination. “Looks like we’ll be going to war after all.”
“What do you mean?” Dovie asked, looking up at him from where she was kneeling by the coffee table, her hand on the newspaper.
?
??Well, sure,” Harlan said, with a new determination in his voice. He folded his arms across his chest, and the gesture made him look broader. Older. “Think about it. I don’t see how we’ll stand for this. Why, there were Americans on that boat. A hundred of them at least. It was en route from New York! We can’t take that kind of thing lying down. I’d say it’s only a matter of time before we throw our hat in the ring. Should’ve done it a long time ago, if you ask me. Some of the fellows were down at the club talking, and we decided we’re all going to head to this camp they’ve got in New York, at Plattsburgh. It’s for civilians who want to start training. That way when it’s made official, we’ll be ready.”
“Harlan!” Sibyl exclaimed, aghast.
“Now wait one second,” Benton said, moving into the room and stopping behind Sibyl’s chair. He looked down at her, face haggard and drained. “Let’s just keep our shirts on.”
“Shirts on!” Harlan burst. “How can you say that, in the light of all this? Broad daylight, you said it yourself ! They don’t even know if anyone made it off alive. Why, the loss of life could be enormous. Are you going to stand here and tell me we should accept that kind of barbarity? Why, it’s an open act of war. It goes against every sense of common decency and humanity.”
Benton cleared his throat, lines around his eyes contracting with tension that Sibyl couldn’t entirely read. “Nobody’s saying otherwise, Harley. But remember all that fuss on campus last year, over the Mexican question. We’ve got to consider every angle. The torpedoing could be a mistake. I heard the boat had been repainted, making it look less like a passenger ship. Who knows if her name was even visible, or what flag she was flying. The Germans might try to make reparations. There’s no telling what will happen. I understand the president hasn’t even issued a statement yet.”
Harlan straightened where he stood, throwing a look of venomous spite at Benton. “I could care less about Wilson and his goddam statements,” the boy exclaimed. “There’s right, and there’s wrong. The Germans have crossed the line, and I’m not going to stand for it. Some of us were talking about joining up with the Canadians, to get over there even sooner. Show Fritz what we’re made of.”
“Harley,” Sibyl said, slowly rising to her feet and placing a hand on her brother’s sleeve. “What about school? I thought you were going to—”
“School!” he spat, throwing her off. Dovie stood up also, her eyes darting between the two Allstons, weighing where her allegiance should lie. She edged nearer to Harlan, looking on Sibyl with pleading eyes, willing Sibyl to calm her brother down. “What could I possibly learn by going back to school? You expect me to go back to Westmorly, write up my term papers like a good little boy? What have term papers to do with anything that’s real? Nothing. Don’t you see?”
“Harlan,” Benton said. “She only meant that—”
“No!” Harlan bellowed, cutting him off. His eyes flashed with a certainty and clarity that Sibyl had never seen in him before. “I wouldn’t expect either of you to understand. Sibyl, you never even set foot outside this goddam house. You’re like a ghost. And you!” He spun on Benton. “Shuttered away in your office with your books and papers. Don’t you see? I’ve been given a chance. I can do something about this. After all this time, I’ve finally been given a way to make it right!”
At this last word Harlan pounded his fist against the wall, so hard that Sibyl felt the vibration through the soles of her feet, turned on his heel, and stormed out of the room. Dovie looked around, a helpless expression on her young face, before hurrying after him. Harlan’s feet could be heard stomping up the front stairs, and Dovie disappeared through the parlor door behind him, calling out, “Harley, wait. Wait!”
In the sudden calm following Harlan’s departure, Sibyl exhaled and sat with an “Oof ” back down in her armchair. She leaned forward, her elbows on her knees, resting her head on her hands. She was aware of Benton’s moving to take Dovie’s chair, sitting, placing his hands on his knees. As always her gaze was drawn to the little hairs on his knuckles. He held himself more stiffly than usual, and his hands gripped his knees as though reminding himself to stay restrained.
“Sibyl,” he began. “I have something very difficult to tell you. The Lusitania . . .”
She sat back and dropped her hands with a sigh. “What a tragedy,” she said, looking at him. “Though I’m a little surprised to see Harlan taking it so hard. Whatever can that be about?”
“Yes,” Benton said, uncertain. “About that. There’s something else. That Harlan doesn’t know.” He looked down, working his hands together.
“Why, what is it?” she asked.
“It’s—I can hardly think how to tell you,” he stammered. Benton stopped speaking, and Sibyl waited. The only sound in the house was the omnipresent ticking of the mantel clock.
Finally Sibyl couldn’t stand the wait anymore. “Benton, I wish you’d tell me what’s—” she started to say, but she began speaking at the very instant that he said, “Tell me again, what was in that vision you’ve been having?”
“I beg your pardon?” she asked, confused.
He leveled his steely gaze on her, and she saw that his eyes were watery and pink behind his spectacles. She frowned.
“That vision of yours,” he said, voice nearly breaking. “The one you’ve been having. The one you had when I persuaded you to go to Mrs. Dee’s. Could you tell it to me again?”
“Well,” she began, uncertain why he’d be asking. “It starts with me skimming along the surface of the ocean.” Benton nodded, urging her to continue. “And then it shows me the ocean liner. And then I move up over the side and travel among the people inside. And I go looking for my mother and sister. But it—happens. The boat begins to founder. Before I find them. People running and screaming. And then, sometimes, right at the end, I see Professor Friend in the crowd.”
Benton hung his head, looking down at his hands. “Right. Yes. And what time of day did you say it was?” he asked.
“Time of day?” she repeated. “Why—well, that’s the odd part. When I first started, it was during the night. Late, but not so late that people weren’t still up. But the last few times, it’s been during the middle of the day. I couldn’t really figure out why that should be, but that’s how it’s seemed to go. I was beginning to think you might be right.”
“Has it,” Benton said, still quiet. “And did you never find your sister and your mother? Not even once?”
“No,” Sibyl said, her voice dropping to a whisper, her dark brows drawing together over her eyes. She leaned forward until she could just feel his soft breath on her face. “Why, Ben? Why are you asking me these questions?”
“Sibyl,” he said, meeting her eyes with his. “What time of day did Titanic sink?”
She sat and thought for a moment. “Why,” she said, “I’m not sure. But I believe the papers said they struck the iceberg a little before midnight. And then it”—she paused over the word, swallowing—“sank. Within a couple of hours. Before dawn, at any rate. Why?”
He nodded, searching her face. “Just so. And, for the sake of argument, why do you think the time of day would have changed?” he asked. “In your vision. If it was Titanic you were seeing, shouldn’t the vision have always been set in the middle of the night?”
A vague sense of ill ease spread through Sibyl, and her eyes widened. She sat back in her chair, feeling the same sickening dizziness that sometimes crept in on her when she hadn’t eaten enough. The dark, oily blackness started to swirl in on the edge of her consciousness, and she took hold of her armrests, willing herself to stay present. “Ben,” she said. “What are you saying?”
Benton leveled his gaze at Sibyl, boring into her as though if he stared into her eyes hard enough he would be able to see whatever strange images she was privy to.
“Sibyl,” he said. “I’m asking because of Edwin. You see, Professor Friend was traveling to Europe this week for a conference.”
“He was?” Sibyl a
sked, her voice sounding hollow in her ears.
“Sibyl,” Benton said, struggling over the words. “Edwin was on Lusitania.”
Interlude
North Atlantic Ocean
Outward Bound
April 14, 1912
Helen twisted her napkin between her hands and stretched taller, trying to see over the throng of dancers at the end of the gallery. She’d lost sight of them. Her instincts told her to stand up and see if she could get a better view, but she battled the impulse away. She mustn’t meddle. Or she mustn’t seem to be meddling. Oh, but it was too stressful to be believed. Where had those two sneaked off to? She hoped Eulah wasn’t talking the Widener boy’s ear off. Course, she also hoped he wasn’t boring her daughter stiff with all that book-collecting business. Eulah wasn’t such a book person. Gracious, who was?
Tinkling laughter reached Helen’s ears, and she turned to find Eleanor Widener laughing behind her dinner napkin. Her eyes were resting on Helen, bemused and kinder than when they first sat down.
“Oh, Helen.” She sighed, dropping the napkin back to her lap. “It’s hard, being the mother, isn’t it?”
Helen sighed with relief when she saw that the laughter was friendly, and reached for the glass of Madeira that had appeared at her place while she watched her daughter dance. “It is,” she admitted. “It really is.”
“I don’t know about you,” Eleanor said, leaning closer. “But I never expected it to be so difficult. Did you?”
“Difficult?” Helen said. “Why, I don’t know that it’s been as difficult as all that.”
“Perhaps difficult isn’t what I mean exactly,” the other woman said, resting her chin on a papery white hand, heavy with jewels. She ruminated on the question for a time, and Helen reflected that Eleanor Widener had the most rosy and exquisite skin she’d ever seen on a woman her age. In the candlelight she looked twenty years younger than she probably was, and her eyes were shining from the wine. “George, what word am I looking for?” the lady asked her husband.