Though the Moodys offered him every comfort in their parlor, Lowe didn't sit.
He stood by the window with a teacup he wouldn't touch.
His usually aloof gaze thawing with a subtlety of gentleness, as he watched Annie Moody take her time to prepare her tea.
Her pale hands shaking terribly as she used her spoon to dump in more cream and honey.
"So much is out of my hands now. Don't take this one last thing away from me, Evans," she called off the worried caretaker quietly, who lingered nearby to jump in and assist her. "I must feel that I am doingsomething,you know."
And seeing that Lowe would not sit or drink, Christopher assumed the man was buzzing to be relieved of his story and done with them at last.
"Nar'n, carry on, sir, and spare us no mere thing," he urged Lowe. "What about our James?"
"As I told you, Mr. Moody, the last time I saw James, we were working on the same ship, we as officers," Lowe said. "I was called off from the Mersey and ordered to the Oceanic as 5th officer, which I thought very strange. I knew right away it was a mistake, since I'de known from the beginning that Oceanic had her 5th officer already. The coal strike kicked up a great deal of fuss and confusion at headquarters, and one way or other, James and I were both assigned to her by clerical error. Our surnames are very near to the other alphabetically, you see. Little did I know, that wasn't the only case I'de known him like an arse."
"Eh?" Christopher objected at once to his way of speaking.
"You asked me to hold back no mere thing, sir," Lowe reminded him.
Putting it shortly, James and Lowe were each unwilling to wait for the marine superintendent to sort the whole mess out. They took matters into their own hands, and proceeded to order each other off the ship by the power vested in them both as 5th officer. Because with the coal strike going on and all, it is lucky that officers got any work to begin with, and neither of them were raring to go.
As such, both 5th officer Moody and 5th officer Lowe refused to pack up without his promised pay.
But by the time they had come to that point in their argument, the Oceanic had set sail with both of them still aboard-ship's wait for no one, you see.
And so, James and Lowe were forced to wait it out, sharing the 5th officer's cabin aboard the Oceanic from Liverpool to Ireland. Trying to decide who between them would be the first to get himself off in Tuskar Rock.
"We each competed with the other to bring our best. Reporting to our chief officer, and racing to be the first one to carry out the 5th officer's duties aboard," Lowe said. "I loathed him for it. That he would make me contend for the same post, when I had been at sea much longer than he. It wasn't very long, though, that we settled our differences, and soon became proper shipmates, somewhat cordial to the other. James had that way about him, you see. It was hard not to like the fellow. He managed to crack anyone open to him, and I reckon that's where he'd'e outdone me."
The settlement of their argument came when Lowe received word at last that he was being reassigned to report to the Belgic instead, and would get off in Ireland.
Until then, James and Lowe eventually came to an agreement to split the 5th officer's duties until they reached land.
"Until the fog came about and the Oceanic met her fate, that is."
"Fog, sir?" Christopher's brow peaked. "I was told there was a collision on a clear night and sea of glass."
"Not a soul can tell you, with any degree of accuracy, what they didn't see themselves," Lowe answered him.
And according to Lowe, as this mysterious fog crept in, he was sound asleep in the 5th's cabin, while Moody was out on watch.
"We officers do not have any too much sleep," he told the Moodys."And therefore when we sleep, we die."
And when it was Lowe's turn to sleep, he swore he'd done just that.
"Then, I should say, it was 20 minutes before midnight when she hit."
"But you heard nothing?" Christopher clarified the particulars.
"That's right, sir," Lowe answered. "I was awakened by hearing voices, and I thought it was very strange, and somehow they woke me up and I realized there must be something the matter; so I looked out and I saw a lot of people around, and I jumped up and got dressed and went up on deck."
Though what Lowe hadn't known as he left his cabin that night, Christopher had learned already.
The collision was caused by a smaller steamship, theKincora,ramming suddenly into the Oceanic's hull, damning the smaller vessel. The crew aboard Oceanic attempted a gallant rescue in getting their few lifeboats away to assist the stranded passengers of theKincora, as the ship began to sink.
"A seaman from Kincora stopped Moody and I, telling us 7 of his shipmates had gone down to the engine room to shut the boilers off. They fretted over the steam from Kincora building up, damaging both the Kincora and Oceanic, should her hull burst apart."
But since watching his 7 shipmates go below decks, this seaman hadn't seen one of them come back up, and had no way of knowing if the boilers were really shut off.
Realizing the dilemma of an impending explosion from within Kincora putting the Oceanic in dire straits, 5th officer Moody and the recently demoted 5th officer Lowe looked at each other, and shot off at the same time.
-"We don't have much time. We should inform the captain."
-"There's no time to inform the captain. We should rescue the crew."
And taking a moment to consider what the other had just said, they raced each other to fire off a reply next, only for their words to clash into each other again.
"That's not your job!"they chorused together.
"You're not even part of the crew anymore,"James informed Lowe.
"You weren't given orders to attempt a rescue in such a reckless situation,"Lowe had him know."The captain should know first, and it's damn near insubordination if he doesn't."
"Fair point,"Moody had agreed."I'll leave the captain to you then, old man."
"I'm not your errand boy."
"But you are a stowaway now, strictly speaking, and it's in your best interests to heed me, Mr. Lowe,"Moody had pointed out."And like any good passenger, should anything happen, get into a boat and don't stir up any trouble."
"Come off it, will you? It's not a bloody competition anymore, and it can't be won either,"Lowe had tried to reason with him."You know the odds as well as I do. By this point, if they haven't reached the boiler room yet, you won't get there in time to stop it. Better that we wait for orders here to load the boats. If the Oceanic goes down, these lifeboats will need boatmen to manage them, and as the so-called '5th officer', better that you're in one than not."
"I know the odds...just as you do," Moody had told him quietly. "But my mind's made up, Mr. Lowe. Something must be done. Besides, how else am I to settle this score between us on who'll rank captain someday?"
"You're a bloody fool, James, you always were."
And seeing there was no changing the young Englishman's mind, the more senior Welsh officer sent him off with one final word of advice.
"I'm not saying I condone you going, but if you will not listen, will you at least swear to me one thing?"Lowe asked him."If I am to stay here in your stead, and it becomes clear that the ship will not be saved, you'll take that boat of yours and fast get away. Don't wait. Be ye mindful at all times, understand?"
"Alright, old man, I know my way around a boat well enough. If it's just that you're only afraid to miss me, all you had to do was say it."
And watching Moody hurry off down the deck with the Kincora seaman, it was the last time Lowe had saw the fellow alive, before not long after, an explosion ripped through the hull of theKincoraboiler room and tore through the starboard bow of the Oceanic.
"She went down steadily," Lowe stated. "But we hadn't enough lifeboats for passengers of both theKincoraand the Oceanic. A distress signal was sent out, but the ship foundered a half hour before a rescue ship could come to her aid...I haven't stopped wondering how different it would be, had I came to the seamen's rescue instead of James. I was more experienced at rowing, and might've gotten there faster than he. Or I might've not. Nothing is certain now, save for how absolute it is that what is done can ne'er be undone."
What a total sack of lies! That isn't at all how I died!
And James couldn't understand for the third life of him why Lowe would invent such a dramatic tale and sell it to his family with such conviction, as if it were what really happened the last time they had spoken to each other?
What the blooming devil was Harold Lowe playing at?
If James remembered correctly his maritime history, the Kincora had indeed sailed blindingly through marine fog and collided with the Oceanic just off the shore of Ireland-In 1901, that is! The same year James had just turned 14, and signed away as a cadet recruit on the HMS Conway.
"Yes," Christopher nodded, baffling James even further when his brother appeared to affirm the validity of Lowe's story as entirely plausible. "That does give us some missing pieces as to what my brother was doing that night, and how it was he never made it to a lifeboat. I still have so many questions, but it seems we'll never truly get the answer we hoped for."
James's face went pale as the teacup that Christopher slowly and thoughtfully rose to his lips.
But that isn't how it happened!
It was on an entirely different ship that James had said similar words to Lowe.
And it was no wonder they all believed he was missing, with so many facts mixed up.
Because if this was indeed April of 1912, as he'd left it, then that would mean that everyone was looking for him aboard Oceanic, a ship he'd already retired from on March 23rd of 1912.
It was fromTitanicthat he'd gone lost at sea, not Oceanic.
So, how was it Titanic had never even been mentioned in any place Lowe or Christopher had looked for him?
As if there existed a very deep void in his timeline that only he seemed to remember.
As if in some strange alternative reality, Titanic had never before...existed?
Exactly what year then had he come back to?
If it wasn't his death on Titanic that had put his family in mourning, what was the meaning of all this?
Had he reversed time further than he intended...or had he somehow erased Titanic completely from time, shifting her fate instead onto the Oceanic?
"I suppose then, if that's really how it happened and those were my brother's actions that night, then that is what we must accept for now," Christopher said. "Still, we won't give up on James. Hope is all we have left to honor my brother with now."
"It's my fault, it is. I'm the one who told John all those years ago, that going to sea would be best for James. Let him work, I told him, rather than dwell all day on his dead mother. How can your father ever forgive me for it now?" Annie's voice shook as she dabbed her eyes with her handkerchief. "How should I explain this to him? Am I to tell him that his son is missing or that he is dead?"
Christopher frowned, his eyes brimming with condolences for his elderly stepmother.
"I reckon it's I who should tell him," Christopher answered her quietly. "No one is to blame here. James was happy at sea, and just as Mr. Lowe has said, a hero as well. And Iwon'tstop until I've found him, mum, one way or other. I promise you and papa. I mean fully to get to the bottom of all this."
And so, just as he had left it before, life again as James once knew it had gone terribly and disastrously array upon his return to 1912.
Leaving James floored once again by the damning mystery of hisLe Cœur de la Mer, and how complicated things kept getting for him, each time he traded over bad for worse.
There was something funny about the whole business.
Something a few sails short of a full mast, that was for sure.
"Did you see my brother's last moments?" Christopher found the courage to ask Lowe. "Did he suffer, sir? If you would only answer me that, I will ask you no more."
But Lowe had said everything he'd come to say, and could now say no more to comfort the Moodys.
Even if he had known the exact events of Moody's final moments, he could scarcely imagine telling them so.
And seeing the resolved look on the hardened sailor's face, Annie buried her face in her handkerchief again. Her shoulders shaking with each hard hiccup of utter devastation.
"Oh, how I wish it wasn't true, that it was James only playing another game of his now. My heart can't bear this. I may not be his mum, and he never wanted me to be, but it don't matter. Because despite our little tiffs, he was still just the same a child of mine. I wouldn't even be cross with him. Not in the least. So long as he came home alright in the end."
'Ah, the poor old gal,'a smug-looking James gave in to a little grin.'Somebody ought to tell her I'm not actually dead.'
And what better messenger for the telling than he?
As might be expected, she'd beat him back to yesteryear for pulling one over her like this, but he rather missed dodging her bludgeonings anyway, if truth be told.
And after hearing Miss Annie's confession, how could he resist sauntering right down there-cool as chilled custard-and ask the old girl what she reckoned they'd have for breakfast, now that he was back home?
That is, until another knock at the door stilled him after the first two steps.
"Excuse me, it could be papa," Christopher pardoned himself from the others, to which Annie graciously nodded.
The madam quickly wiping her eyes and trying to pull herself together, so as to appear strong for John, and not let him walk in and see her falling apart like this.
Christopher straightened up like a soldier at the door, and pulled it open.
Finding yet another gentleman unasked for at the Moody's threshold.
"Good morrow, sir, pardon my disturbance on your fine morning," the gentleman, who sounded jarringly American, removed his top hat hurriedly. "But where the hell is he?"
"I beg your pardon, sir!" Christopher shot back, under fire of yet another sudden and curt salutation from a visitor that morning.
"That damned scoundrel Englishman!" the gentleman declared. "James Moody!"
"For God's sake, sir, mind your language! There is a woman present! What is the meaning of this!" Christopher declared. "Is this any way to come calling at a respectable man's door?"
"Respectable?" the American gentleman hissed spitefully. "What rubbish! That Mr. James Moody is the dastardliest of all dastards, and I have come to make him answer for his lies!"
"And who are you to tarnish a good man's reputation?" Christopher demanded.
"I, sir, am Mr. Edgar Levinson!" the gentleman declared haughtily. "The cousin of Miss Lavinia Elizabeth Levinson. And I have of late learned the most contemptible news that has made my poor virtuous cousin a victim of scandal! It has come to my notice that the damnable Mr. Moody made my cousin a promise of marriage while she was staying with the earl's family at Downton Abbey, in the earliest years of her coming out. After which he took flight to sea like a rogue and, on behalf of her brother who has passed on, I have been hunting him down ever since!"
"What goat shite," James sighed under his breath, upon recognizing the despicable Levinson at the door.
Would there be no end to his luck today?
And Lowe, beingkingconnoisseurof a good expletive at the right moment, froze just as he was taking a sip of his cold tea.
Detecting the sweetest song, in the faintest sigh of a damned man cursing his very life against the injustices of the universe.
A man that sounded to him very much like...
The very edge of Lowe's vision caught a lucky glimpse of the starcrossed fellow on the Moodys' staircase. Recognizing in him the phantom image of none other than Officer James Paul Moody.
What the bleating hell?
Lowe's chocolate brown eyes narrowed.
Trying to decide, after so many bloody nightmares and flashbacks of that night, if it was the real James Paul Moody standing afar then or an actual ghost.
His hand kept remarkably steady as he took James Moody in, noting that Moody had to be the smoothest liar in all the history of god damned liars.
James put a finger to his lips.
His blue eyes wide as he hoped Lowe would not say anything, with Levinson upon the door.
Lowe's eyes only darkened.
Never before had he been happier to know a man was alive again, if for nothing else but the privilege of killing him all over again.
You bastard.
Lowe's thoughts must have been apparent in his darkened stare-down, because James held up both of his hands quickly, as if to push back with his own might all the fast conclusions Lowe was jumping to about him.
And in an effort to explain his precarious situation, James began signaling some sort of dramatic charade with his hands that left the squinting Lowe dumfound and unable to make any of it out.
Seeing that he wasn't getting through to Lowe's stubborn head, James sighed hopelessly and tried instead the broken morse code he'd once picked up from his good pal, Jack Phillips, when he'd convinced the Marconi wireless operator to let him have a go at sending a couple of messages to passing ships near Titanic.
Tapping his fingers in rhythmic thuds against the wooden staircase railing, James hoped to God that his fellow officer knew something of morse code, lest he be damned.
I can explain it all later. Just please will you...
Much to James's relief, Lowe's quick eyes seemed to track the encoded dashes and dots of James's dancing fingers, though he was unable to catch the last fewditsanddahsof James's message. Unsure if Moody's last bit of his words were, "Just please will you get help" or"Just please will you go to hell".
Discreetly, Lowe tapped his own fingers in morse code lightly against the body of his dainty porcelain teacup.
What the blazes are you playing at? Quit acting a bellend, and come down here yourself!
James sighed again, knowing it was a rather precarious situation to precariously put all of his faith in Harold Godfrey Lowe.
'Help,' he mouthed the word to his shipmate.
'What?'Lowe mouthed back.
James struck his fingers slowly but firmly in morse code against the staircase railing again, exaggerating the sound of each letter silently on his lips.
C...Q...D.
Lowe tapped his fingers against his china again to confirm the marine distress call every sailor knew well, 'CQD?'
Knowing that no matter how reckless the circumstance, invoking the call of CQD was to invoke the pact of fellow mariners. The untold duty of a good shipmate to come to his comrade's aid in the direst of situations, asking no questions, and holding the utmost confidence in telling no one after it, lest a man break his code to his fellows. It was a risky business, to ask another to sail like mad through the dark and come to one's rescue, but not without its advantages. CQD among sailors was a promise to return one favor for another, and James would have given anything to keep his personal problems (namely, Levinson) off of his family's doorstep.
Lowe sat in silence, taking one last sip of his tea, as he considered Moody's offer, and if he'd be willing to trust a man, who by all appearances, was caught up in something quite dodgy.
Lowe wasn't completely sure if he was willing to take on a problem of such "CQD" caliber this fine morning.
All the while, Miss Annie was busy charging at Levinson in defense of her family.
"What an outrageous accusation!" Annie objected. "Has your cousin any proof of an understanding between herself and Mr. Moody?"
"How dare you!" Mr. Levinson checked her. "Her honest word is proof enough!"
"How dareyoucome knocking at this door uninvited at a mournful hour like this," Christopher declared. "The arrangement you speak of was called off years ago by Miss Lavinia Levinson herself. How dare you spread rumors about my brother turning his back on a promise he no longer has an obligation to keep."
"Have you got it in writing that my cousin called off the engagement?" Levinson challenged Christopher. "The Moodys say one thing, while the Levinsons say another. Though the distance of countries has created some miscommunication, no doubt, I assure you that my cousin intends fully to marry Mr. James Moody, or deliver to his door a civil suit for a breach of promise."
"Absolutely absurd!" Annie huffed. "There was no written agreement, but it was my understanding that James and Miss Levinson came to a mutual agreement privately."
"Hush, woman," Mr. Levinson dismissed her. "This is a gentleman's discussion."
A remark that made James go red in the face, and his grip tighten on the winding oakwood stair railing. Forgetting all at once that he was still a man in his dressing robe, and that he was supposed to be dead, by all accounts.
But by that time, Lowe had heard enough.
And Harry's knuckles had been twitching to knock the cack out of some knobber, and there'd be no better chance today than this one.
Lowe tapped his fingers once against his teacup, revealing to Moody his answer at last.
Then he gently sat down Mrs. Moody's fine china on the lace dollie of the side table, popped his neck once or twice on each side, and marched off to the street door to join forces with James's family against this brute calledLevinson.
"You're lucky that's all you got from her, and haven't gotten anything worse from me," Harry went up against the American.
"Are you threatening me, sir?"
"Suppose I am? Mr. Moody is a mate of mine, and I won't allow you to soil his name as a White Star officer, when his unhappy fate has not yet been-"
"He's soiled it enough as it is!" Levinson swore. "And I haven't the slightest doubt that he has led my cousin along! I have it on good authority that Mr. Moody has been sweet on another woman before, pining and lusting after her, even after promising himself to my cousin! It wouldn't surprise me if he has been breeding English whores in this very house! Is that the behavior of a so-called respectable officer?"
"You're mistaken, sir," Annie answered firmly. "It is only I and my husband who let this house. Our James is...he's lived for the most part, at sea."
"And why should I believe your word against society's?"
"You'd do well to cool your tone, sir," Chistopher warned him. "This is most ungentlemanly!"
"Then I gentlemanly request that you kindly inform Mr. Moody that should he fail to marry my cousin as he promised before summer, he will rue the day I came to this door. My cousin has believed until now that she will marry him, and faithfully kept herself from other suitors. And she is all but past the ripe age for marrying now, no thanks to that evasive rascal Mr. Moody!"
"I assure you, sir, that is not the only reason why she has not been easily married off," Miss Annie remarked.
"I beg your pardon, madam?" Levinson's voice peaked dangerously, clutching his walking stick tighter.
And impatient with all this frivolous back and forth, Lowe grabbed the man by his coat collar and pushed him along.
"You'll go or you'll be escorted away," Lowe warned him. "The man you run your mouth about has gone missing at sea, presumed dead as we speak. And here you are harassing his family with nothing but bloody hearsay?"
"Missing at sea? Now that's a good one! I wouldn't count that scally dead until I've nailed him into a box myself!" Mr. Levinson declared. "Might I suggest an alternative truth? Perhaps he isn't dead or lost at all. Perhaps that is the very crux of Moody's ruse!"
"I beg your pardon!" Annie couldn't help but oppose. "Do you mean to suggest that our James is only playing dead?"
"Can you imagine the public scandal if a White Star officer really were so cowardly?" Mr. Levinson declared. "And when you think you fully know a man! Perhaps he could think of no better way to abandon his promise of marriage."
Annie's face boiled like a lobster in silent fury, ready to push young Mr. Lowe aside and take Mr. Levinson on herself.
"Like I said before," Mr. Lowe spoke first, saving the madam the temptation of making Mr. Levinson regret the steaming teapot close by in a numbly silent Mr. Evans's hands. "It is bad form to soil a good man's reputation by rumors alone, without a proper why and wherefore!"
"There's no rumor about it," Mr. Levinson was going on. "James Moody has made no secret that he wishes to avoid being wed to my cousin. A man of 24, living at sea perpetually? I find it rather hard to believe that he wouldn't try to stage his own death, at least once."
"But that will be no problem for you, sir, if you don't get on with it!" Lowe quickly turned him around before he could ever risk Mr. Levinson glancing up at the loft, and hastily walked him away from the house. "I can speak fully for Mr. Moody. He is a forever-gentleman and an exceptionally honorable man. Take it from another officer that a good officer's reputation is worth as much as his service. If he has agreed to marriage, he will honor his pledge. A man like Mr. Moody would surely never risk his career at sea by performing such a gambit. He's an honest man, even when he's honestly dead."
"Unhand me at once, sir! I will decide for myself if he's dead or not!" Mr. Levinson ripped his shoulder away from Lowe and marched back toward the house, calling out, "Moody! James Moody, you swindler, come out and face me at once!"
Levinson, That farthing-faced chit!
And by that time, James was spoiling for a fight to get down there and proceed the old seadog reputation of lowering the boom on Levinson all the way back to the states where he belonged.
Yet, though a sailor he might've been, James knew he wasn't an animal, and that he should at least carry on doing it with some manner of refinement by fetching his dress shoes first.
Quietly retreating to his bedroom and shutting the door behind him, James returned to his bed to hunt down his shoes.
Tugging at his wet socks tangled in his bundled bedcovers, which held fast with a strangely stubborn resistance between his blankets and sheets.
Never remembering the quilts on the old bed to be so...weighty?
James tugged at the entangled quilt again, and this time, the quilt stubbornly tugged itself back.
James froze.
Chilled to the bone.
His eyes wide.
Recognizing the drowsy sigh of an unsolicited bedfellow stirring awake within the bundled up bedcovers next to him.
And afraid to do it, but knowing no other alternative, James slowly turned his head away from his dress shoes to take note of someone yawning and stretching behind his shoulder. Coming nose-to-nose with his tug-o-war opponent.
As nothing said mornings like waking up to a woman he never remembered taking to bed with him.
"Miss Millie?"