The Letter
by robspace54
The robotic arm nudged the sack and it seemed to drift slightly in the current, although it was mostly imbedded in thick mud as seen by Julie.
"What do you think?" said her assistant, a man named John. "Can we get it?"
Julie pursed her lips, and peered over the glasses perched on her nose. "Don't see why not." She keyed her microphone. "Frank, can you maneuver the retriever under that? I doubt it's intact enough to pick it up."
Julia was the staff archeologist on this shift of the operation. It was 2 AM local time, here on the Grand Banks of Newfoundland and she yawned. She'd thought she'd shifted her sleep schedule enough, but she was still fatigued.
"Think so," said Frank, his voice tinny from the robot van on the fantail. "Probably silt up quite a bit, though."
"Current's running strong, so shouldn't be a problem," she replied.
"Well, if it goes all black, forget it," Frank said. "Give me a minute to turn this thing." He touched a thruster control and joystick, and signals traveled from his console through various computers, and then down a 16 millimeter diameter armored fiber-optic cable to an encoder on the vehicle he was controlling.
Twelve thousand, nine hundred, and fifty-three feet below, in 34 degree F sea water at a crushing pressure of 6,000 lbs per square inch, a device of steel and titanium pivoted on its water jet thrusters and faced into the current.
Frank observed the turn on three color high definition monitors, giving him nearly a wrap around view. "Just about there."
He depressed a button on the joystick and the robot obeyed, far down in the black sea. A flap opened up on the front of the craft, turning into a scoop.
"Steady," said Julie over his headset.
"I'm good," said Frank. "Just about set."
John chimed in. "Silting some. Can you see?"
Frank ignored them. "Come on," he muttered as he drove the floating robot forward with the thrusters, forcing the scoop into the mud far below. The flaccid object seemed to stir on the mud, then the TV showed it sliding into his sample basket.
"Just about got it…" he looked at the overhead monitor beaming signals from an extra camera mounted on a boom at the front of the robot. This view gave him an oblique view of objects ahead of the ROV, the Remotely Operated Vehicle.
Julia was holding her breath. Who knew what might be in there, she wondered. This was the first object recovery they'd attempted today, it was going well so far… she crossed her fingers.
"Think I have it," Frank whispered into his microphone. An actuator on the flap moved, the ramp closed and the object was secure.
John looked over at Julia. "Great!"
Julia breathed a sigh of relief. "Good. Good. Log it. Now, turn to bearing 326 and drive ahead for ten meters. There's another one shown on the survey."
Frank cracked his knuckles and neck then drove the robot to the next target.
000
The young man sat down at the desk, dipped his pen in the ink well and began to write. He had thought quite long about what he would put onto the paper. At the last he felt finally able to write it all down.
Cousin,
The ship is fabulous and tremendous besides, but you know all that. I expect all the papers are chock-filled with glowing reports about how large, wide, tall – all that. How many lorries long, how many tons of coal she'll burn, how many revolutions of her propellers she will make on this voyage, her first.
That set me to thinking. I know you'll find that shocking, as there are those who may say, or you might have heard, that thinking is not quite my long suit. But sitting here on this lovely stateroom, the ship bucketing along, every seam of her quivering as we plunge along, makes me think about trips. This trip – this voyage – and others.
Father thought it best that I went with him to New York, said it would do me good, but I know the real reason. After dinner this evening he invited me for a walk about the decks. The air was bracing, quiet cold really, only a few stars visible if you shielded your eyes from the glare of the ship's lights and beacons. There is ice in the water, even this late in the season, the chunks rattling along in our wake as the ship charges straight on.
Father stood at the rail, smoking a cigar, then threw the burning stub overboard as he started to speak.
As I watched, it made a fiery trail in the air, falling towards the ocean many feet below, finally being snuffed out by water – the eternal battle of fire and water being won by water, this time.
They say that most of the Earth is water, and out here, I know it to be true. Each noon and evening they post the ship's position, and today is 14 April and we are approaching Newfoundland. Still over a thousand miles away, but we are approaching the New World. I'm told things are different over there, not just in locale, but in people and temperament, rather like your Ma-Ma. Lady Grantham is extremely nice to me, having forgiven my many peccadilloes, too many to list, but certainly not too many to remember.
Your Ma-Ma, with her American temperament, is far kinder to me and forgiving I believe, than I have any right to expect or receive. When mother was still living she used to send me out to the carriage house for the driver to whip. The man was kind, if a bit lax on the switch. But I found it far harder, time after time as a fractious child, to face the man.
Oh I could stand there in front of Nanny Swingel and Ma-Ma as well and lie quite easily through my teeth. It was never my fault, I never broke anything, etc. as I far too good at making up excuses.
But as I grew older, it became harder and harder for them to believe that any punishment I might receive did any good. I would take my lickings and forget them, all but one that is.
When Engel would see me heading into the carriage house, reporting for another switching, I would see the disappointment in his eyes. Time after time he'd question me, shake his had sorrowfully at me and then have me hold out my hands for the punishment. Even though he made me pick out the willow switch, he'd test the suppleness on his leg, and would lay on accordingly to account for the extreme flexibility of those I might hand him.
Your Ma-Ma has the same look in her eyes. The same so sad and disappointed look to her eyes. The same look of displaced shame that she must feel. Oh she has grown quite good at, living as she does a transplant, a stranger in a stranger land, trying to bury her own feelings to appease we Brits. Perhaps in America there are other moral codes – as well as a sense of redemption, fair play, the possibility of boundless possibilities and yes even forgiveness and resurrection.
Father's cigar dropping into the water reminded me of Halley's Comet two years back. It was quite bright in the sky, and I managed to glimpse it several times as it flew sunward. I was not that impressed by the thing, until my friend Timothy Greatnal (you know his family) pointed out that some comets, unlike the great Halley are never seen again.
The things fly out of the dark to the sun, circle it once and then proceed out into the outer darkness, never to be seen again. They have a brief moment in the sun, and that's it. Like the cigar – extinguished all too soon. And we as well - for we only get one chance.
And this brings me to the point of my writing.
I have hurt you far too many times. No bones about it, I have done terrible things behind your back, and but for the fate that ties us together, your father would have horse whipped me long ago and flensed the very meat off my back down to my bones.
I am not speaking of the childish tantrums that you likely remember on holiday or shoots. Or the time I tried to push you off Sir Swighten's yacht, but I was ten and you were eight, I suppose. No – none of those. Sadly none of those childish things.
Engel, our old carriage man, dead five years now, would look down at me, holding the switch and tears would run down the man's face. At least I had enough sense to finally ask him why he was crying. He dropped the switch and covered his face when I finally asked him after years and years.
You see, Engel was married, or had been once. He and she worked for Lord Taylor at his town house in London. There the old Lord was often gone and Engel and his bride felt like the huge old house was theirs. Well, here's the thing, Engel's wife, name of Emma, was carrying their first child when she was run over by a carriage. Stupid accident with a runaway horse and a fractured wheel against a stone curb. Emma, and the unborn child, sadly did not live.
Engel left town and traveled about until his pittance savings were exhausted and then he took work in my father's house. Being a devout man, he felt he should never marry again, being faithful to his dead wife. So, being the appointed punisher to me, he cried each time he had to do it – since I was the age of his dead son, who'd never been born.
Cousin, I wish I had the strength to change myself, but I do not. I am a rotter. I drink far too much, play at cards (and loose) far too many times, am a wastrel and a hedonist. I flirt and chase the women, any woman.
I sincerely wish that I could say that in my waster life I wave seen the error of my ways, all that. But I have not. I can only say that I recognize the demon that I am and that I carry within.
Engel could tell that even at the age of ten or twelve, or even fifteen, I was well on my way to being the worst, absolutely worst representative of English society.
But now I return to the trip and the ship.
Father took me by the arm and had it out with me. He told me in a slow steady voice that the only thing that he felt I was good for, a recent incident with a housemaid being brought up in icy tones, was to carry my sorry self to some poor girl – you – marry her, get her with child, then throw myself into the sea as any further existence on my part would be an embarrassment to the family and the Nation. My seed might be wanted if strictly for being an heir to my Father, who is the heir to yours.
I stood at the rail quite still as he dressed me down, and my old ways of putting on a good face started to rise. It was the girl's fault, and yes it was all hushed up, but I need to tell you this in spite of all that. Excuses started to bubble up in me like champagne, and then, I caught a glimpse of my father's face. His terribly sad and lined face staring out at the dark ocean.
A single tear ran down his face, and that tore the heart from my chest. Just like old Engel, father was ashamed for me and of me.
000
The object and others made their way up through the deep and dark water column, finally ending up in a conservation laboratory on the ship, being kept in refrigerated seawater. When the vessel made port in Boston, the conservators were quite certain that they had something they'd not seen before.
Ashore a technician opened the plastic cask and peered through several inches of smelly seawater at the thing. "Look at that!" he exclaimed pointing a gloved finger at the thing. "You can actually read the stitching on the bag! Royal Mail! Fantastic. Laying there all this time for us to pick it up!"
His supervisor sniffed at the water. "Lord, what a smell! Rotten eggs and who knows what else?" She wrinkled her nose and held it. "Phewww!"
The tech laughed. "Regardless of the stink, this might very well be the first bit of mail from the post office aboard the ship."
"Still smells though. Well," she sighed, "let's get this into the freeze dryer and see what we can do with it."
The technician smiled. "Heaven only knows what might be in there! Love letters, business correspondence, could be anything!"
"Dear John letters, too." They laughed then got to work.
000
Father looked very hard at his only child, the last vestige of his direct family, only being linked to you through cousins, and of course the entail of your grandfather.
I really do not know whatever the old man was thinking to entail the Abbey, but given the things that I have done, I can understand perfectly. Too perfectly understand. Some would have ravaged the estate for the land, the house, the goods, and yes, even the people.
So looking ahead, Father knew that I would be the destroyer of all that has lasted for centuries.
Then he told me that you would hate me in the end. He also said though he and Mother never were actually in love, they did like one another.
I know that our relationship is far less than that and the sight of that tear on his face undid me.
So I told my Father I was sorry. That I was so sorry.
He reminded me that he was not the one that I needed to apologise to.
So I sit here on this quivering ship, the largest moving vessel ever built by Man, and I am asking you to forgive me. For God knows that I am in need of forgiveness – wretched and low sinner that I am.
By the time this letter and ship has arrived in New York, I shall leave Father to his business in the city and take another trip. It may be that I will find some way to rebuild the awful person that I am, forswearing to take no strong drink, and make no dalliances with the fairer gender, until I am worthy of you.
Dear Cousin, for all my sins – those you know of and do not know of – please forgive me.
000
Patrick closed the inkwell, shuffled the pages together and slipped them into an envelope, sealing it and addressing it. He tapped on his father's door and it opened a crack.
"What absurd thing is it now? I am tired and am going to bed!" He stopped as Patrick held up his hand.
"Father, James, if I may call you that. I have here," he held out the letter, "an abject apology."
James sniffed at him with a look of utter disbelief. "You're serious?"
"Yes, I am," he sighed.
"So what's in the letter?"
"I've come clean to my Cousin."
"Have you now?"
"Yes, Father, I have."
"About the… well… all the…"
"Yes, that. And the girls, and the drinking, and the gambling."
"So what is your plan, Son? Dare I claim you as my son in public in future?" he cleared his throat. "Or hope that you are never seen again?"
"I'm mailing this just now. I'll take it to the post office. They can stamp it and throw it into the return mail sack, and I'll be unable to touch it."
"Casting it to the winds of chance, is it?"
Patrick rested his head against the steel wall. "Yes. I have to. Sea and wind can do their worst."
James looked carefully at the boy and realized that there might actually be some redemption possible. "Will you marry your cousin? Or are you throwing that aside?"
Patrick paused. "If she'll have me."
James held out his hand. "And in America?"
Patrick sighed. "Thought I'd travel. I hear this Chicago is interesting, or the forests of Michigan, or that big cave in Kentucky. Maybe I'll even get as far as the Grand Canyon or California."
"Will that help, my boy?"
Patrick laughed. "At least my so-called friends will be far away. Perhaps, I can…"
"Get a second chance? A fresh chance?" His father looked hopefully at him.
Patrick's eyes held a determined look as he gazed at his father. "I hope so."
000
Weeks passed as the leather bag dried and the contents were extracted with difficulty after being x-rayed and scanned.
There were a quantity of letters inside, they could see that. Bundles and bundles.
Eventually those were pulled out and separated. Some had turned to mush from soaking in seawater for a hundred years.
But a few were actually readable.
One, a multi-page document written in a firm hand on original White Star Line bond paper, was the most interesting. Curiously, the address was still current, though the recipient was unable to receive it.
000
I hope and pray that I may return from this voyage - this journey of self-discovery - a better man. And at the end I may present myself to you as a changed person. One that you are worthy of, for you are on a far better and higher plane than I may ever achieve.
And in time perhaps we may grow to love one another, not just because we are fated to, but perhaps because we want to – and we actually feel that most insubstantial and real of human emotions.
I close this letter at 9 PM ship's time, whose letterhead is emblazoned proudly across each page aboard this mighty vessel of steel.
So too may my nature be changed, as changed as the steel of this mighty ship was transmuted from weak and inferior iron and coke that it sprung from into sterner stuff.
000
Patrick rode the elevator, imagine an elevator on a ship he remarked to the elevator boy, to the post office and found the mail clerks hard at work.
"Bit late for sorting, isn't it?" He asked the man, who was American.
"Yes sir. We're still sorting mail we took aboard at Southampton, Cherbourg, and Queenstown. Now how can I help you?"
"I have this letter." He tapped it on his hand. "Going back to England."
"Yes, sir. We'll drop it into the return mail bag. Do this frequently."
"Right," Patrick replied.
The man held out his hand. "If you could just give it to me?"
Patrick looked at the address, written by his own hand. He rubbed the edge of the thing and then handed it over, feeling as it left his fingers that a tremendous weight had been lifted from him.
The clerk took it and looked at it. "Yorkshire."
"Yes," sighed Patrick. "I have family there."
The clerk looked at a book of rates. "Looks like a bargain sir. Twenty and three sir."
Patrick took out his wallet and took out a Pound and gave it to the clerk. "Paid in full."
The clerk opened a drawer and made change.
"No," said Patrick. "No. You keep it."
"Thank you sir. Thank you very much indeed."
Patrick smiled at the man and watched the letter go into a large leather bag marked with RMS stitched on the side. "Have a very nice evening."
"Thank you sir and you as well."
Patrick walked away and as he waited for the elevator, felt a far off rumble of some sort shake the ship.
000
When the conservator read the script of the letter, entirely intact, she pulled out her iPhone and searched for the name.
The name was found, later discoveries telling that it was a great-granddaughter of the original and the modern namesake was still living in Yorkshire.
The story was the top of the news that evening, rapidly being picked up by the wire services and then it went world wide.
"Lost Love Letter Surfaces!" screamed one headline. "Love From the Deep!" said another and on and on.
And that led others to research both the sender and the recipient and find the descendant.
The descendant wept as she read it.
"She never knew, you see," the young dark-haired woman told a telly news crew, "she never knew. Much later she married my great-grandfather, who was a war veteran. They lived here at the Abbey for many years."
A historic researcher found that one Patrick Crawley had been seen on deck that fateful evening helping women and children into lifeboats. They read several survivor statements describing a fair-haired young man dressed in evening dress, who'd waved to the descending boats after he helped to load them. He'd been offered a spot in the last one, but gave up the seat to a third-class passenger with a little girl.
His body was never recovered.
000
I know that you do not love me, for the entail has us grafted together from birth like some freaks of nature. We are both trapped by duty, but can we not turn duty into something far better? That will take time, so time is what I am giving to you and to myself.
Still I hope that when I return, I may be welcomed into your arms with genuine respect and love – respect and love that I am not worthy of only that due to the contract of an entail.
I pray then that when I return in a few months or perhaps a year, that I may be as worthy of you as an honored man and prospective groom should be. And at that time may merit some small measure of future love as you are able to give to me.
Please pray that I am able to fulfill the resurrection plan that I have written out above.
You deserve someone – someone who is good and kind – and I am neither. Not yet. Perhaps in time I may be that person, but for now, consider me a wandering vagabond.
Sincerely and with the deepest apologies for all that you may know, not know or merely suspect.
So Cousin Mary, I close this letter of apology, with humble respect and an optimistic outlook.
Would that I am welcomed back with opened arms and heart upon my return. Until we meet again.
Your dearest cousin,
Patrick
Patrick Crawley
Room 117, B deck
RMS Titanic
14 April, 1912
000
In 1912, a telegram arrived at the house and the message it held set the entire family on its head.
That evening Mary Crawley lay in her bed at Downton Abbey, tearlessly wondering what Cousin Patrick, her unloved fiancé, was doing the moment the great ship Titanic went down.
- The End -
The characters and situation of Downton Abbey are owned by Carnival and Masterpiece Theater.
The RMS Titanic is part of history. The actions of Patrick Crawley, springing from my over-active imagination, are furnished for entertainment purposes.