The next few days were a haze. Cal could not remember ever feeling this way, except when he had had a bad cold and they gave him this strong medicine that made him numb to the big picture of things and yet made every individual noise, image and light jump out at him with painful intensity.
He did not search for Rose on the ship again. The knowledge that she was there and that he could do nothing to bring her to him was enough. He did now know how she managed to avoid being recognized by other first class passengers, but guessed that wearing rags and remaining on the steerage board of the Carpathia made it pretty easy for her. Not many first class dandies would lower themselves to such filthy regions anyway. For all he knew, Rose might have been reunited with Dawson already. He did not know if the gutter rat had lived or died, but if he had in fact survived, he would make sure she'd be protected from Cal and his society.
What remained for him to do these last few days aboard Carpathia was to soothe the mourning Ruth while constantly cursing himself for concealing from her the truth of her daughter's rescue… Ruth was inconsolable and sometimes her despair got so unmanageable that Cal was on the verge of bursting out and revealing the whole truth to her.
However, he knew what would follow if he did. Ruth would insist on Rose's return into the fold, and Rose, in revenge would reveal to all American society how her beloved fiancé tired to kill her with a gun while she ran for dear life into the bowels of a sinking ship. No, despite everything that night did to Cal's mental state, he wasn't deranged enough to destroy his own future (whatever it may be) or to threaten his family's name in this manner. All he could do was go out onto the freezing deck when Ruth's hysterics got especially intense and call up a steward requesting another portion of that potent, wonderfully numbing anti-cold medicine and a glass of brandy.
Sitting on a deckchair in the shivering weather with alcohol and some doubtful-quality drug in his system were actually the most bearable moments of that journey.
Within the haze, he found enough presence of mind to wire messages to his father – first about the loss of their luggage, paper money in the safe and the diamond, of course - he knew his father's priorities.. Then he informed him about the sad demise of Rose, her maid Trudy and his own manservant, Lovjeoy. He also managed to communicate to his father the hour upon which Carpathia would descend on the New York pier and arrange for a transport with bodyguards which would whisk him and Ruth away from the press mayhem with as little fuss as possible.
Quite the efficient Hockley male he was, Cal chuckled over his brandy, drawing appalled glances of some first class widows. How could one laugh at such a time? Then they noticed the brandy in his hand and the several empty glasses standing on the floor by his deckchair and nodded to each other. Each person grieved their own way.
The day finally came. Or rather night. The rainy, pelting night when Carpathia finally docked in New York. Cal was just emerging from his brandy –cough syrup haze and was beginning to experience the first stages of a massive hangover. Each step down toward the pier and each flash of the photographers' camera was like an icicle inserted into Cal's brain and it was all he could do to keep the sobbing Ruth upright on his arm, walk straight and make the impression of his face as solemn and impassive as possible.
Luckily Nathan Hockley hired the very best bodyguards and very soon the whole party was whisked off into the waiting Hockley limousine and departed with one final "no comment" spoken in the harshest Nathan Hockley tone into the ear of a particularly insistent reporter.
Even so, Cal did manage to turn his head toward the pier where steerage passengers were being shepherded into crooked coaches to be deposited in New York's cheapest hotels or hospitals. He was never quite sure if it was wishful thinking or an actual image, but he did manage to see a female figure with a flash of untamed red hair escaping the huge black coat enveloping her getting into one of those unfortunate carriages. He turned his head away quickly, and focused on Ruth's latest enquiry, but the sense of a door snapping closed on a cage suspended in an immense space yet again enveloped him before he shook it off and attempted to focus on the present moment.