Note: I just want to thank those who reviewed and favorited this story. I hope you continue to enjoy it, and tell me what you think. Your reviews made me very happy.
Disclaimer: I own nothing at all. Though Robert, Anna and Elizabeth's personalities were invented, they are composite characters of real people. The song Elizabeth sings is a lyrical version of a seventeenth century poem, called "Comin' Thro' the Rye".
The empty corridor swam before Robert's eyes as he followed Mr. Guggenheim down it, the colours swirling together in a mess of light and shadow. He kept seeing them; faces of people who had walked this way before, both happy and sad, but always full of life.
Henry, staggering under a stack of blankets and his teeth clenched against the stream of obscenities he wanted to spit out as he tripped and stumbled along. Was Henry dead? Quite possibly, but please, God, let it have been quick.
Anna, her red curls bouncing around her flushed cheeks as she giggled and whispered with her friends. They would all have gotten onto the lifeboats, surely. Surely.
Elizabeth herself, her irreverent grin in place as she trailed her fingertips against the creamy wall paper.
Was she-? No, don't think about that; you'll go mad.
Hum, Robert, hum to keep the ghosts away. You'll join them soon enough.
Gina body meet a body Comin' thro' the rye, Gin a body kiss a body, Need a body cry?
"Comin' thro' the rye, poor body," Elizabeth sang, turning down the soft sheets as crisply as she could "She draigl't her petticoatie/Comin' thro' the rye!"
The Rye Song had been one that she had been sung many times by her mother, when she'd been a little girl and now, so far away from home, it gave her a comfortable and familiar feeling.
However, not everyone shared her views on the song...
"Stop it, Bessie!" her fellow stewardess, Anna hissed, shifting the stack of linen in her arms slightly so that she could glare at her musical colleague "Passengers might hear you."
The two of them had met shortly after Elizabeth, still a little flushed from her embarrassing adventure in the docks, had hurriedly boarded and been shown to the cabin she would share with three other women. During their first conversation, Elizabeth, judging the other girl unfairly perhaps, had decided that though Anna appeared to be the gossipy, delicate sort, who's company she usually avoided, it would be useful to have a friend onboard.
Oh, well.
Elizabeth straightened up, punching the large, feather stuffed pillows a few times for good measure and then turning to grin at Anna.
"Then they'll applaud my marvelous singing, won't they?" she said, trying to put a bit more cockiness into her voice just to annoy the girl "Anyway, they're all up on their promenade decks, admiring the charming view."
Most of the first class passengers had indeed chosen to spend the morning strolling along the sunny deck, or sitting the cafe sipping tea and making small talk. This gave the stewards and stewardesses ample time to tidy their richly decorated rooms.
Anna sighed, but chose not to pursue the point, instead laying her burden down gently on a chair and moving to help Elizabeth put a new sheet on the next bed. The sweet smelling white cloth floated through the air as they pulled it up and over, and Elizabeth was reminded once more of her childhood, when she and her younger sister would curl up on the bed they shared, and let their mother tuck them in.
She felt a pang of homesickness in her heart as she remembered this, and frowned to herself. This is ridiculous, she thought, I spent the last five years moaning about how I couldn't wait to get out of that damp, dreary village. I practically jumped for joy when I got this job, thinking happily about how I'd never have to look at a sheep again for the rest of my life.
She tucked the sheets down a little more quickly than maybe she should have, and stepped back hastily to tidy a stack of books on a nearby shelf.
"It doesn't even make sense, that song," Anna said after a few few minutes of work "It's all nonsense."
"It's all poetry," Elizabeth corrected, now examining the mantelpiece with a critical look in her eyes "Often, there's not much difference between the two. Here, pass me that ghastly vase, will you? I suppose I'd better stick a few fresh flowers in it, if only to distract the eye from that hideous pattern..."
"Don't let your hero, Mr. Andrews hear you say that," Anna advised, raising her eyebrows and passing the vase in question delicately "He probably picked it himself, poor man."
They had been introduced to Mr. Thomas Andrews shortly after boarding, and Anna and the rest of the crew had found Elizabeth's monopolization of the conversation and her many avid questions extremely amusing.
"Rubbish," Elizabeth said, briskly, still smarting slightly over the many taunts she had endured all through breakfast "Mr. Andrews is a gentleman of high taste and refinement. Whereas, whoever bought this thing was clearly either blind or insane."
Anna, knowing better thanb to argue, rolled her eyes and headed into the next room to ensure that there were enough fresh towels in the bathroom. Her exclamations of surprise over how many towels had been used, though rather muffled, none the less made Elizabeth laugh.
She held the vase in one hand and began arranging a selection of scarlet carnations and dawn tinted roses in it, admiring the way that the colours complimented each other. Dawn colours, she decided, were by far the prettiest.
Ah well, since I'm alone, Elizabeth thought, as she rotated the vase this way and that so as to see it from all angles known to man.
"Gin a body kiss a body/The thing's a body's-"
"That's very beautiful, miss."
What?
Robert had been walking along the corridor on the way to the gymnasium, and had been pleasantly surprised by the melody issuing from Mr. Guggenheim's room. Upon going to investigate, he'd been even more surprised, but maybe less pleasantly so, to see that the singer was the girl he'd encountered the day before, in the docks.
The vase slipped from Elizabeth's startled fingers and smashed into shimmering multi coloured shards at her feet. The flowers very nearly went the same way (without the smashing, evidently) but she managed to keep hold of them as she spun around and found herself face to face with foreign looking gentleman she'd bashed the previous day.
God help me, he's a passenger, she thought, already feeling a blush creep up her cheeks.
She looked from him, to the nigh on irreparably broken vase, then back. Already, she could see the dollars flying out of her relatively small wage; she'd have to pay for the dratted thing, of course.
"Damn and blast," Elizabeth swore, deciding that she couldn't possibly make the situation any worse by a touch of blasphemy. In the spirit of doing the job properly, she stamped her foot for good measure, and instantly regretted it, as she heard glass crunch into powder under her heel.
Robert blinked in surprise, having never heard a young woman swear before in his life. He'd never seen one stamp her foot before for that matter, and had previously thought it an action reserved only for the stage.
"I'm-I'm sorry I startled you, miss," he said, weakly, and he was too "I only wanted to congratulate you on your singing."
Elizabeth glared at him darkly, the words: And you should be, you oaf, teetering dangerously on the tip of her tongue. But she was an employee of the White Star Line, and when her duties had been outlined, a lot of emphasis had been out upon politeness to passengers.
"Thank you," she muttered at last, rubbing her nose inelegantly on her starched white sleeve. She wondered if she should apologize for hitting him, but then again, maybe he had forgotten the whole business, and would be annoyed to have it brought up again.
Robert also strove for something to say; his limited experience of talking to ladies hindering him slightly. Could he remark upon the fine weather? No, she'd think he was an idiot.
Both of them were saved from further awkward silences by an unexpected interruption.
"I heard a crash," Anna said, anxiously sticking her head through the bathroom door "Have you broken …something…" She let the sentence trail off as she stared at the scene before her and Robert saw her eyes move from him, to her friend, to the vase and her mouth fall open unflatteringly.
A valet must exhibit gallantry at all times.
"I apologize most sincerely for disturbing you, miss," Robert said quickly "I just returned to my employer, Mr. Guggenheim's rooms to fetch a pair of evening gloves. Unfortunately I was clumsy enough to break this, um, charming vase."
Now, it was Elizabeth turn to stare at him, her mouth open and her brown eyes questioning and surprised.
What's he playing at? she wondered.
Anna, who was no fool, could see that the spider web of shattered glass was much closer to her fellow stewardess' feet than the gentleman's but was not about to argue with anyone who was connected to Benjamin Guggenheim.
"That's quite all right, sir," she mumbled, stooping over to tidy up the mess and vowing to question Elizabeth thouroughly about the whole matter later.
Robert felt guilty at causing her extra work, but could hardly get down on his knees and offer to do it for her. Gallantry could, after all, only be taken to a certain extent.
"Good day, ladies," he said, nodding to both of them and managing a polite smile. He opened his mouth to say something else, then shut it again, shaking his head slightly and hurrying out the door. Well, he'd done her a favor, and they were even now. Mr. Guggenheim wouldn't be happy about it, but Robert was prepared to deal with that.
There were a few moments of silence after his departure, as both of the girls ran the whole conversation through in their heads. Then-
"He didn't get the gloves," Anna noted, wincing as a shard of glass sliced the pale flesh of her thumb and allowing a drop of crimson blood to roll across her palm.
Her friend, who had been lost in thought, considering the unfathomable mysteries of the male mind, looked up at her remark.
"Hmm? Gloves? Oh yes, his gloves," Elizabeth muttered, sarcasm creeping into her voice as she considered this. She picked up a pair of fancy looking evening gloves from the dresser and tucked them into her pocket "Tell you what, I'll go after him and bring him these."
And ask him a few questions too, she thought, And blast it, but I suppose I ought to thank him again.
"Be quick about it, though," Anna cautioned, but before she'd even finished the sentence Elizabeth was gone, and her rapid footsteps were already receding into the distance.
Anna sighed and bent to her work, secretly slightly pleased that she could get on with things undisturbed and unimpeded.
Note: In case you are wondering who Henry is, he will appear soon enough; I just didn't have room to fit him in here