I sometimes wondered.
Sometimes I wondered if I had missed her while surveying the people who survived on the ship that day.
That day, I had done an all-round survey of the people on Carpathia, but I was too disgusted by those… those third-class people on the ship. Filthy beings they were, and so many of them staying at the same place as us! I could not bear to look too closely, and I did not find her.
Rose Dewitt-Bukator, my ex-fiancée, had cheated on me with a third-class man.
My fists clenched. It was humiliating to be cheated with another man, but imagine that. She chose a filthy, dirty third-class man over me. And she chose to whore herself; to roger around with him in the sheets, and to allow him to draw a portrait of her, naked, except for the diamond I gave her which hung around her neck.
The diamond I gave her.
When I saw the picture, I was furious, enraged. I wanted to tear the whole ship down, looking for the adulterous pair. I wanted to kill him with my bare fists, to see him go white, gasping for breath, and die with his eyes wide open, afraid. I wanted to teach him a lesson.
Caledon Hockley was not one to be fooled around with.
I looked down the list of survivors they took down after we landed in New York, but I did not see the name Rose Dewitt-Bukater. There were several Roses on the list, but not one with Rose Dewitt-Bukator. I had gone away with an empty feeling in my stomach. The diamond had gone down with her.
Later on, I married another girl, Theresa Deswall, but she did not have as high a social standing as Rose had. Nor did she appeal to me as much as Rose did.
I saw Rose as a challenging task, a difficult horse that was hard to conquer. I thought I had her the first few days in Titanic, thought I finally had her under my control, and there was a triumphant feeling that came with the victory. I gave her the diamond that night, and saw it as a mark of my victory: Rose Dewitt-Bukator, who refused to listen to anyone, was finally docile.
Then I found out about him.
When I first saw him, I did not think him as any threat. Sure, he saved Rose, and he was almost handsome in a scruffy kind of way. And he could almost pass off for a gentleman that night in dinner.
When I came back from cards, and found that Rose was missing, and not in her room either, I immediately sent John to find her.
It was a disgrace to discover that she had been dancing, if you call that dancing, away at a third-class party. I was embarrassed, humiliated, and I took great care to warn her the next day.
To think she continued her affair, and even slept with him.
Caledon Hockley had never been insulted, and never will be.
Well, they got their punishment, I like to think it was God's way of punishing them, that night. At least, that was what I thought.
Until over eighty years later, I saw her again, on television.
She could well be a fraud. Somehow, she did not seem like one.
They were doing a documentary on Titanic. What was the big deal about it? Sure, thousands died, and it was a great big mistake made by fools steering the ship. Supposedly unsinkable, and would have been unsinkable had it not been for the fools.
Then they announced that they had found the woman who was the woman in the picture, and taking a closer look at that picture, I realized that it was the exact same picture that man drew on his death night.
Then I saw her.
There was no logic, no logic at all as to how she could still have been alive. I did not see her on the Carpathi, nor did I see her in the lifeboats that I could see. Rose Dewitt-Bukator had died that night. Or so I thought.
I sometimes wondered whether I had been wrong my entire life, and got cheated by her yet again, for over eighty years.
--End--