A Great Love
A/N: the characters are not mine. This is an AU that I'm so glad never happened. It came to my mind after reading a book on a certain event in history and thinking over Robert's poignant line in the series four opener. As always, thank you so much to Granthamfan for being the best of betas. I couldn't do this without you. xxxxxxxxxx
The price of great love is great misery when one of you dies. ~Robert, Earl Of Grantham
Cora dreamt about it at night. About him. About the future they'd never have; three young girls who were now without a father. She had been made a dowager countess much too soon. It broke her heart further to watch Robert's heir, James, take over her home as she was shuttled to the dower house, sharing it with her mother-in-law.
When she was asleep, Cora still felt the rocking of the boat and the chill of a near-Arctic breeze blowing up from the frigid waters. The shouts of those attempting to endure the water were trapped in her mind. It was something she'd never forget as long as she lived.
If it hadn't been for their daughters, the length of Cora's life might have been cut short by her desperation to find Robert in the freezing ocean. She longed to jump out of the lifeboat and swim toward the empty, desolate sea where the biggest ship in the world had loomed in its distress only a few minutes before. Her Robert had to be there, among the men, women and children struggling to stay awake and alive. If only she could find him, embrace him, never caring whether they went down together to the unfathomable depths. Yet, for the sake of her children, she could not bring herself to do it. Her girls would almost certainly be orphans of she acted on impulse.
A couple of the women in her boat looked at Cora curiously, watching her quietly in order to discern the likelihood that she would abandon all common sense and jump into the water in search of her husband. But she did not even move, staring down into her lap through the long night until morning broke and help was inevitably on the way.
Cora had one thought that repeated in her mind as she sat in silent vigil. It was her fault that she and Robert had been on board the Titanic. After two dozen years in Yorkshire, Cora had longed for a trip home to America. She had insisted on booking passage on the ship's maiden voyage. Always bent on making her happy, Robert had cancelled everything in order to fulfill Cora's wish, even if it meant sailing on a ship about which he had been having strange, eerie dreams. However, Cora's happiness about going to America meant more to him than any concern of setting business aside or boarding a ship about which he wasn't entirely comfortable. One aspect of this yen for travel gnawed at him, the worry tore at him that he had not done enough to help her make a home in England.
Cora's one thankful emotion was centered on the fact that the girls were safe at home, warm in their beds. As Cora looked from lifeboat to lifeboat, she saw the faces of young women the same ages as her daughters. The thought of Mary, Edith and Sybil trapped in a tiny boat with everything turned upside down would have been more than she could have borne. It was enough that they were now most likely fatherless. They did not need to be part of this night of disbelief, waiting and impending mourning.
Suddenly, the doorknob to her bedroom in the dower house turned and Sybil poked her head through the opening.
"Mama?" The girl's soft voice echoed in the silent room. Compared to the house they had lived in for so many years, the dower house was small and cramped, especially for five people. But the deathly stillness made the room seem twice its normal size, and Sybil felt a sense of dread as she crept closer to her mother who laid perfectly still in the bed.
"Are you awake, Mama? I hope I haven't startled you," Sybil continued in a hushed voice.
Cora turned to look at her youngest daughter. "No, you did not. Do come in." Her words were genial and her manner inviting, but she spoke as one who might as well still be adrift in the North Atlantic for her lack of concentration on the present.
Sybil approached her mother with emboldened strides, her perseverant streak coming out even in the darkest of days. She sat down on the bed and wordlessly smoothed her skirt, glancing only occasionally at Cora's grief stricken face.
"Oh, darling," Cora nearly broke down in tears. "I am so sorry. The only comfort I can take from this is that you, Mary and Edith did not witness it. I'm so sorry," she repeated. "If only I hadn't wished to visit America." In that sentence, Cora felt a slight detachment from the people and places that had once been impossible to erase from her longings only a few weeks before. Perhaps this was becoming home in a new way, a solitary way gelled together by the loss Robert. This idea filled her with a new sense of desolation. If she was to thoroughly detach from America, must it be at the cost of her husband's life? If guilt did not bind her to this place, perhaps a sense of duty would. Cora would neither forget nor shirk the duty foisted upon her because she had lived and he had not.
Her mind drifted back to the final words Robert had spoken to her as they both stood on the deck of the sinking ship for the last time. He had smiled at her and kissed her before insisting that she go ahead to a lifeboat. At that point, early after striking the iceberg, no one had thought the situation would be extremely serious. The men who urged their wives and children into the boats had imagined that the ship would stabilize itself soon and that help would come to give them a tow into New York Harbor. Those occupying the lifeboats would be allowed back onboard in mere hours. It wasn't until long after Cora's lifeboat had been rowed away from the stalled ship that it became evident that the Titanic was going down to the bottom. There was no final goodbye, just an increasingly empty prospect that grew more dark with every second.
In her room, sitting beside Sybil in contemplative gloom, Cora thought back to something Robert had said only a few months before his death. An acquaintance of the couple had been in a carriage accident. The wife had survived, but her husband had not. On the way home from the man's funeral service, Robert held Cora close, stroking her hair as he usually did when she was in need of comfort. She had commented that the couple had shared a great love, a thought to which he had made an oddly prophetic reply. "The price of great love is great misery when one of you dies." Now she was drowning deep in the second half of that declaration.
Cora blinked back her tears and looked at Sybil. How delighted Robert had been with each of their daughters, from birth to young womanhood, never showing the disappointment Cora had feared when they were born female. They were all she had left of him. Mary's strong will, Edith's pragmatism and Sybil's gentle spirit echoed Robert in her view. Each girl was definitely a combination of both of their parents, but to the woman who had known Robert best, they had unmistakable parts of him within them. And that would have to be enough. The great misery would hopefully lessen, fade out but not disappear. But, perhaps the great love could reappear in the life she had created so far from her home.
The End