S.S. Campania , 1894

Mrs. Millicent Atlas of Brooklyn had come to Spiritualism by way of the suffragist movement, and though she had no doubts about the continuity of life, her chief interest was the struggle for justice on this side of the veil. William, her husband, had made his fortune in the shipping industry. He and her four exuberant daughters all supported her in every cause. Their home, a spacious brown‑stone set well back from the muddy street behind an iron fence, was a continual hubbub of visitors, meals, and heated conversations. One didn’t visit the Atlas residence; one was enfolded into it. For Violet Petra, who had spent so much of her time with the desperately bereaved, the atmosphere was unnerving and fraught with peril. She wasn’t sure what to expect or what was expected, and so, during her brief visit, she stayed in the cluttered, chintz‑festooned guest room as much as she politely could. The sound of talking, laughter, singing, guests or daughters trooping up and down the stairs in groups, shouts from room to room, the clatter of dishes in the dining room, where it seemed some version of a meal was continually under way, all rose up to Violet, tempting her. Join us , the voices seemed to say. This is life; this is joy. Let us meet and talk and strive. Let us change the world .

Mrs. Atlas, a stately matron with a large nose, close‑set brown eyes, and black hair cut short and curled in the Titus style, had the efficient manner of an aristocrat turned politician, which, indeed, she was. She knew who Violet was, why she had come, and where she was going, but she showed no interest in any of this, beyond commending the Society for Psychical Research for debunking “that dreadful Blavatsky woman.” Surely Mrs. Atlas knew Miss Petra was crossing the ocean to court the same fate as the disgraced Russian. “Do you know,” Mrs. Atlas continued, “she had actually hired an assistant to push spirit messages on slips of paper through a crack in the ceiling?” Violet acquiesced in her hostess’s condemnation of such fraudulent practices.

“And then poor Margaret Fox,” Mrs. Atlas concluded. “Such a confusing spectacle.”

“Indeed,” Violet concurred.

Mr. Atlas, a small, stout, explosive personage, with bulging eyes, tumid lips, and moist hands that he rubbed together when waiting for the opportunity to make a point, was most interested in Miss Petra’s ship, the Campania , which he declared to be as fine a vessel as one could hope for a crossing, with all manner of luxury and captained by one of the ablest men on the seas. He would escort his guest on her departure, and if Captain Hains was aboard, introduce her to him, thereby guaranteeing that she might want for nothing on her voyage. At lunch, the day before her departure, it was revealed that Violet’s ticket was for the second class, which news caused a distinct cooling in the general excitement about her trip. Though no one said it, she understood that Captain Hains was unlikely to take a “special” interest in a passenger who would never promenade on the saloon deck and must dine by the bugle, and not, as was the new fashion, à la carte. “I understand all the accommodations are excellent,” Mrs. Atlas assured her. “You’ll have a comfortable crossing, and really, it’s all the same food.”

When the hour came for her departure, Mr. Atlas was engaged at his offices and it was Mrs. Atlas, unacquainted with the estimable Captain Hains, who delivered their guest to the pier. A house servant loaded Violet’s luggage into the back of a phaeton drawn up to the gate. To Violet’s surprise, her hostess, having pulled on a cloak and a pair of sturdy boots at the door, strode across the slush beyond the curb and leaped onto the bench, taking the reins into her gloved hands with practiced confidence. Violet followed, careful of her skirts, and climbed into the space beside her indomitable hostess. The enforced zeal and energy of Mrs. Atlas irritated her, but she knew what she was expected to say and she said it. “You drive your own carriage!”

Mrs. Atlas’s dark eyes flashed combatively. “Don’t ladies drive in Philadelphia?” she asked. However, she evidenced no interest in the answer to this question, tightening the reins and snapping her horse’s head to attention.

It was a cold, damp morning with a sky as close and smoke‑stained as a tenement ceiling. The phaeton whirled along the narrow streets toward the waterfront and up the ramp to the bridge where the traffic was heavy but brisk. Mrs. Atlas occupied herself with her driving, and Violet was left to look out over the river, which was dotted with ferries, barques, brigs, schooners, barges, and steamers, all meandering upstream and – down in an orchestrated dance choreographed by some unseen, all‑knowing god of wind, water, and commerce. It made her head ache to look at it. She had slept poorly – the Atlas home was teetotal – and her nerves were frayed and raw. As the phaeton cleared the bridge and steered toward the wharf, the traffic thickened, and finally ground to a halt. Violet gazed listlessly at the pressed confusion of cabs, private carriages, men in caps pushing all manner of barrows and carts, men in top hats, and ladies wrapped in fur descending from the vehicles, clots of ragged children and clusters of gibbering foreigners, sharp young men in uniforms pulling luggage down from cabs, horses stamping their hooves and tossing their heads, or standing patiently while their drivers shouted at one another. “There she is,” Mrs. Atlas said, pointing over her right shoulder. “I’ll try to get you as close as I can.”

Violet turned to see what Mrs. Atlas pointed at, what everyone in this whirlpool of shouting, maddening humanity packed between a row of dreary warehouses and a behemoth was pushing toward. Indeed, there she was, her great black hulk topped by two gleaming white decks and towering above that, as tall as a lighthouse and raked at an angle that made them look already windswept, two great red smokestacks.

Scattered passengers and a few sailors were already aboard, leaning on the rail of the upper deck, breathing the better air above the mob. The steepest gangway was dotted with passengers, who were being admitted a few at a time. Another, lower ramp was manned by the sharp young men, passing in luggage from the carts. Mrs. Atlas maneuvered the horse a few steps closer and turned the phaeton to face the ship. She hailed one of the uniformed porters, who leaped a cordoned area piled with luggage and rushed to the carriage, pulling Violet’s bags from the back. Having accomplished this task, he came to the phaeton door and stood staring expectantly at the two ladies within. “He’ll need to see your ticket, my dear,” Mrs. Atlas said pleasantly. Violet handed down the ticket, which the porter examined momentarily, then returned to the luggage, slapped a white label on each piece, and wrote a few numbers across it with a thick crayon. “I wish I could get closer,” Mrs. Atlas assured Violet. “Can you make your way through this awful mob?” The porter turned back, holding out his hand to Violet with his cheerful, noncommittal expression. She cast the most fleeting glance at Mrs. Atlas, who was clearly eager to take up her reins and trot back to the world of those who needed and adored her. “I’ll be fine,” Violet said, but as her foot reached the ground she stumbled, and the porter, with a mumbled “Steady there,” caught her elbow to right her. “Thank you,” she said, but he had already turned away to whistle at a lad with a barrow.

“Bon voyage, Miss Petra,” Mrs. Atlas called out cheerfully. She clucked to her horse and the phaeton’s big wheels creaked against the wharf as it pulled away.

“I’ll be fine,” Violet said again, but no one heard her.

* * *

The journey through the crowded pier to the door of stateroom 144 on the second deck of the S.S. Campania took more than an hour, during which, Violet assured herself, she rubbed shoulders with every station of society. When she had turned the key, pushed open the heavy metal door, and stepped inside, she viewed the interior with a palpable sense of relief. Though the ceiling was necessarily low and the cabin small, everything in it was pristine, tasteful, and designed to take advantage of the limited space. Bouquets of violets were stenciled in a pattern above a creamy yellow wainscot that matched the two built‑in drawers and the cabinet beneath the commode. Every modern convenience was available: electric lights, a sink with two faucets, adequate ventilation, and a water closet. A pillow and a clean towel were laid out on the neatly made bunk. Another bunk attached to the wall above had been folded up and latched in place, as the management knew Miss Petra was traveling alone. Her luggage – how had they achieved it? – was already there, stacked on the long sofa that occupied one end of the room. There was no window, save a small curtained square that opened into the corridor – it was an interior cabin – but a view was provided by a painting of a pastoral scene, complete with two cows grazing in the background, full of light and serenity. This picture would be her daylight for the next week.

She sat down on the sofa next to her trunk, her hat box and the bulky travel bag containing a few books, writing tablets, fountain pens, and toilet articles. She leaned her arm upon the trunk and closed her eyes. She might, she thought, never leave this room. She wouldn’t be required to, though of course she would have to eat.

But for that she had only to present herself three times a day, or four if she took tea, at the dining room where, surrounded by strangers, she might contrive to be virtually invisible. She dreaded the condescending looks, the polite smiles that would greet the announcement that she was a medium en route to be investigated by the Society for Psychical Research. She had spent most of her adult life among believers – this would be different. Occasional intrusions, scoffers at public sittings, skeptical relatives or curiosity seekers, and, of course, Phoebe Grant, had operated upon her not as threats but as diversions. But here, the materialists, the unbelievers, would be in the majority, and since the Fox sisters’ recantation, they were sometimes bitter and vengeful.

There were upwards of fifteen hundred people on the ship, all settling into their respective places, the wealthy above her, out of reach, the poor below, and among them, at all levels, there were doubtless a few who might defend her, or even seek her out, but she wouldn’t risk it. She was out of her element here, in more ways than one, and she had no desire to become an object of interest and possibly derision to her fellow voyagers.

She opened her eyes and busied herself with pulling the pins out of her hat, removing it from the nest of her hair. She would have to come up with a story. She was traveling for her health, to visit family abroad, to take up a position of some kind, a governess perhaps, or she was going out to be married and then follow her new husband to India or Africa. A rich uncle had passed on and she was an heiress to his grand estate. Or small estate – hence the second‑class dining room. Why, why would a middle‑aged American woman be traveling to England alone?

Considering the amount of human activity that must be going forth all over the ship, the stateroom was remarkably quiet. She could hear a distant shout, the sound of the opposite door opening and closing, muffled footsteps moving away, then nothing. Warm air drifted in through the ventilation system; she could hear a faint hum. She stood up, removed her coat, went to the basin, and turned on the tap, lowering her hands into the stream of cool water. She would need one credible story with not much elaboration, a straightforward mission. Best not to include a death. A visit to a relative, a sister, living where? London? No, too vast. Bath. Yes. She had never been to Bath but had read Jane Austen and so had some idea what the atmosphere was like. Her sister was a widow or a spinster, like herself, living in Bath and she was going out to visit her. They had not seen each other in many years. How many?

Twenty‑two years.

No. Too long. Five years. Four.

The soap was of a good quality, lathering up thickly in her hands and leaving a faint fragrance of verbena as she rinsed it away. She raised her eyes to her reflection in the oval mirror affixed to the wall. Keep your chin up, she thought. Then she studied her face, which, she observed with conscious irony, was beginning to look unfamiliar. She gave her image a tentative smile. “Who do you think you are?” she said softly.

Outside the visitors were advised to repair to the wharf, the tugs drew alongside, and the lines were secured to haul the great steaming hulk out of the harbor. Violet could hear the deep thrumming horn announcing the imminent departure of the vessel. When she looked outside, the corridor was empty, the other passengers having made their way to the deck. She pulled her coat back on and hurried along the plush carpet to the staircase, compelled by a confusing combination of excitement, fear, and curiosity.

It was early evening and the lamps were glittering in the seedy establishments along the wharf, though there was enough light to make out the upturned faces of the gathered crowd, waving and calling out their farewells as the space between the dock and the ship’s hull gradually widened and the prow veered steadily away from the harbor. Steamer chairs were strewn on the deck nearest the house, and a handrail separated the lounging from the promenading area nearer the sea, where her fellow passengers were gathered in groups, chatting, leaning over the rail, pointing out the various features of the ship to each other. The intermittent fire of champagne corks and the lilting strains of a violin on the upper deck suggested that a ship’s departure was a joyful occasion, though, Violet thought, the crew must look on it as the commencement of responsibility and labor. The strip of dark water widened, but she had no sensation of motion; it was as if the dock was being pulled away from the ship. A mother and her teenage son, standing nearby, burst into laughter at some droll remark from the father. Violet smiled, turning to look at them, and catching, momentarily, the father’s gratified eye. She looked back at the wharf, where the crowd had begun to thin.

She had no special consciousness of being alone. She had spent much of her life among strangers and was accustomed to fitting herself to the habits and whims of her various patrons. She had a public identity that shielded her from their occasional thoughtlessness and cruelty. She kept up with the world – it was important to do so and indeed she was interested in literature, music, painting, even science. Being informed and engaged deflected the disquietude people felt around her – her urbanity set them at ease. When she met a doctor or a lawyer, or a suffragette, she had no particular feelings about their professions, but she knew they were convinced of the necessity to take a stand about hers. And what a range of emotions the presence of Miss Petra provoked in those who doubted the continuity of life. A little distance had to be declared, a social desperation set in when she entered the room. It was as though she practiced some shameful art: black magic, voodoo, or poetry. She knew things she shouldn’t know; she was not of this world. She had powers – she was to be envied; she was sensitive and suffered – she was to be pitied; she had visions, the dead talked to her – she was to be shunned.

When all she really was, she thought, as the night descended and the ship’s lights futilely stabbed at the darkness, was weary. The investigators had worn her down to a bundle of quivering nerves. They wanted her to tell them how she produced her effects, but it was like asking a composer to explain exactly how a sequence of musical notes appeared on the staff. Obviously he put them there. Did he hear them in his head? Well then, who put them there ?

She had impressions, she told them. She went into a space, a very clear, still, close space and she concentrated and listened. The messages, whatever they were, didn’t come to her; they came through her. Neither the living nor the dead had much interest in the medium.

She felt she had been created by the demands of others, by their insatiable appetite for something beyond ordinary life. They craved a world without death and they had spotted her, in their hunger, like wolves alert to any poor sheep that might stray from the fold and stand gazing ignorantly up at the stars.

“There she is,” someone said, and Violet’s thoughts were so turned inward that she assumed the remark referred to her. “Oh, look!” another passenger exclaimed. A murmur of approbation circulated along the deck. She looked up, following the eyes of her companions. It was Bartholdi’s statue, holding high her torch to light the world to her shores. Again the illusion was that the statue, not the ship, was moving, that she was floating toward her captive audience eerily over the water, her mouth stern, her heavy‑lidded eyes beneath the starry crown serious and sad. Holding up a torch , Violet thought. Forever . She sent the severe lady a sympathetic smile. The tugs let off a few cheerful hoots from their short stacks, saluting the symbol of liberty, as she, appearing to change her mind, slid silently away. On the saloon deck an orchestra struck up a march – what was it from? Aïda ? What an odd choice to commence an ocean voyage.

A ship’s officer holding a bugle appeared at the dining room door and latched it open. As the passengers alerted each other to his presence, he brought the instrument to his lips and blew three quick blasts, which collided out of tune with the strains of Aïda’s Triumphal March pouring out from the gods above. Dinner was served.

As the passengers filed toward the dining room they could see the first‑class passengers descending from above to their own superior accommodation, which the brochure promised had seating for four hundred and a crystal dome glittering above a room three decks high.

Violet had half a mind to skip dinner and spend the time leaning on the rail watching the outskirts of the city drift by. She’d heard one experienced passenger remark to another that it would be hours before they were on the open sea. But it was a cloudy, damp night and there were fewer and fewer lights from the shore. After a few minutes there was nothing to see and it seemed the best option to join her fellow passengers in the dining room. Meals, after all, were included in her ticket.

The room was long, the ceiling low, but it was brightly lit, with white‑clothed tables flanked by lines of upholstered swivel chairs. One sat, evidently, anywhere. She stood back as families or clutches of friends commandeered blocks of seats. Her goal was to find a place near the end of a row, preferably next to a woman.

A toothy young lady, in company with a burly white‑haired matriarch, whose black‑satin‑encased bulk put Violet in mind of the ship’s prow, took two seats at a near table, leaving one empty at the end. Violet slipped past a trio of gentlemen, who were bemoaning the state of the economy, and dropped into the chair. A paper menu lay in front of her and, at some invisible signal, waiters appeared in a line, working their way up and down the lengths of the tables, bending low to hear the orders over the din of conversation. Violet scanned the menu – boiling and roasting appeared to be the preferred methods of cooking. On the back of the page was a wine list, blessedly inexpensive. The prices brought a smile to her lips. Her stomach felt too weak for heavy food, of which there was plenty on offer, steak and oyster pie, roast beef, roast stuffed pork, boiled beef tail. Spaghetti in cream appealed to her, and boiled potatoes, a white meal. She could feel her seatmate’s eyes upon her, intent on opening a conversation. Bath , she reminded herself, my sister. Her name is Laura. I’m a widow, going out to visit . She raised her eyes to meet the candid scrutiny of the toothy lady – poor woman, it was an underbite that forced her lower lip to protrude so far her teeth were always visible. “Is this your first crossing?” this lady asked. Her accent told Violet she was on a return trip.

“It is,” Violet admitted, then, nodding at her menu, added, “What do you recommend?”

Her name was Celia Durham and she recommended the boiled cod. She accepted Violet’s story of the sister in Bath without question, eager to get to her own biography. She and her aunt Tilda, the satin‑clad lady, were returning from a visit to her grandparents, who live in Maine. She was trained as an illustrator and was going to London to finish her studies at the Kensington Design Institute.

Violet gave herself over to the pleasure of not having to attend too closely to the conversation. She wanted nothing from this young woman but that she shield her from the scrutiny of other passengers, which Celia was clearly eager to do. After the food and the wine appeared, it was easier still. Celia knew a lot about ocean travel; she had been crossing once or twice a year since she was ten years old. She’d come over on this same ship the month before and it was the best crossing she’d ever experienced. The ladies’ lounge was comfortable, and there was a good piano. She encouraged Violet to make an appointment with the steward for a bath. The tubs were divine and the hot and cold water came out of one spout, so you had no fear of being boiled or chilled.

Violet expressed surprise, interest, pleasure; she hardly had to say a word – it was perfect. It was a pity, Celia insisted, that Violet’s first crossing was so late in the year, because the weather could be very rough and it was often too wet and cold to walk out on the deck. A summer crossing was delightful and one could walk as much aboard ship as one might in town.

At some point Aunt Tilda distracted Celia with a question, and Violet was left to her spaghetti. She was on her second glass of wine; the familiar, welcome lassitude set in, and she felt positively cheerful. She looked about the room at her fellow diners, catching snatches of their conversation. Two young men, clean‑shaven and foppish – one had a checked silk scarf tied around his throat – were collapsed in laughter at some shared witticism. When the hilarity threatened to subside, one barked out a further inducement to the other and they were off again. Violet smiled, it was impossible not to, until her eyes fell on a hirsute, bespectacled gentleman a few seats down who was clearly not amused. As he lifted his fork, on which he had speared a wad of pork, dripping with juices, he glowered at the joyful young men. Then he stuffed the meat into the shocking red, wet hole in the black bramble of his beard, which opened and closed like a trap baited with the pinkish‑gray flesh of his tongue. She clamped her stomach muscles tight over a surge of nausea. A waiter leaned over her shoulder, lowering a plate of potatoes.

At the conclusion of the meal, Violet declined Celia’s invitation to join her in the ladies’ lounge by pleading fatigue. She made her way along the deck, glancing out at the sparkling lights of the tugs, like strings of fallen stars leading the way to the open sea. Various passengers strolled up and down in twos and threes. A gentleman with white whiskers doffed his hat on passing, as if she were meeting him in the street. The sea was of secondary interest to these voyagers, but Violet found she could think of little else. She could feel it out there, pressing and pushing at the ship, vast and changeable and cruel.

In her cabin she sat on the sofa, opened her travel bag, and took out her writing book, thinking she might work on a poem she’d begun at the hotel, and her copy of The White Company , which she was finding heavy going. Then she paused, looking down at the spine of a slim volume bound in dark brown cloth, tucked in between the folds of her mauve dressing gown and the tortoiseshell lid of her dressing case. Tenderly, as if it were fragile, she drew it out and held it in her open palm, resting her hand on her lap. The title engraved in gilt on the spine and again on the front board was A Pageant and Other Poems , by Christina Rossetti. She opened the cover and turned the blank page to the title page, inscribed in a clear, bold hand: For Violet, my muse, my love, from your Ned .

She touched her fingertips lightly to the handwriting.

How long ago, that brief, ecstatic time.

He was home from college for the school break. Bertha had been in a fever of anticipation for a week. Violet, who had an artistic sensibility, had been entrusted with the flower arrangements, and she was carrying a vase of daffodils into the dining room when he arrived. He passed swiftly from the door to his mother’s embrace, but his eyes met Violet’s over her shoulder in an éclat of recognition that he would later describe as “souls colliding on eyebeams.” She continued to the dining room, where she could hear him, calming his mother as he climbed the stairs to his room. In the afternoon, at the family gathering, she was introduced to him–“My dear friend Miss Petra, my son Ned Bakersmith”–and he took her hand, but they hardly spoke. For three days, though she heard him on the stairs or going out the door or conferring with his father in his study, she didn’t see him. He was a busy, popular, handsome, and wealthy young man about town. Once he completed his law studies at Harvard College, he was destined for great things.

On the fourth day of his visit, Violet sat alone, as she often did in the afternoons, reading in the library. She heard footsteps approaching from the hall. She was seated in a high‑backed chair with her back to the door, so he didn’t see her as he strode purposefully into the room, directly to the glass case containing the Bakersmiths’ modest collection of poetry. He opened the case and raised his hand to the very shelf from which Violet had taken the volume she had in her hands. His fingers paddled the empty space, as if to conjure what wasn’t there.

Violet placed the ribbon of her open book into the spine and snapped the cover shut, making a soft rap that sounded largely in the quiet room, startling the youthful poetry enthusiast, who wheeled about, his widened eyes taking in the unexpected challenge: a woman reading a book. “Miss Petra!” he exclaimed. “I didn’t know you were there.”

“I’m sorry,” she said. “I couldn’t think of a way to let you know without alarming you.”

“Please,” he said. “There’s no need to apologize.” His face softened and a gentle interest drew his brows together. He took her in, puzzled, intrigued, and she looked back, amused, imperious.

“I believe this must be the volume you’re looking for,” she said, turning the book so that he might read the cover.

“Yes. The Tennyson.” Wonder slackened his jaw. “That’s amazing, don’t you agree? That I should come at this moment in search of the very book you’ve chosen from all these …” He gestured at the cases lining the walls.

The truth, Violet thought, was that the Bakersmiths’ library was not so very extensive, and as Mr. Bakersmith’s passion was maritime law and his wife had been known to express her conviction that no one ever need look beyond the complete works of Dickens for moral edification and entertainment, the range was not wide, but Violet felt no desire to contradict this attractive, evidently sensitive young man. “It suggests your tastes are old‑fashioned,” she said. “I thought young men preferred Mr. Meredith these days.”

“I’m not so young as all that,” he replied. “Nor do I prefer cynicism to passion.”

Not yet, thought Violet, liking him for his combativeness. “ ‘Modern Love’ is stringent,” she agreed.

“What are you reading? Is it ‘Maud’?”

She opened the book to the ribbon, allowing the pages to fall open before him. “It’s ‘In Memoriam.’ ”

He touched his hand to his breast and recited, “I sometimes hold it half a sin to put in words the grief I feel.”

“I never tire of it,” Violet said. “Such a patient, determined grappling with a great loss; grief stricken but without self‑pity. I think that’s rare.”

“It is,” he agreed. “The first time I read it, I wept. I felt it was my friend who had died.” He bent over her, easing the book from her hands. “May I?” he said.

“Of course.”

“I love these lines …” He turned the pages back, searching for what he knew was there. As he scrutinized the neatly printed verses, Violet gazed up at his face. She noted that what made him handsome was not the regularity of his features, though these were fine enough – a wide smooth brow shaded by thick brown curls, thickly lashed dark eyes, a sharp bony blade of nose, a shapely mouth and solid jaw – but the animation with which he occupied them. His gaze was intense; his nose visibly breathed, his lips, when he alighted upon the exigent verse, pressed together as his brows lifted. He straightened his spine and bowed his head over the book in preparation for reading. Violet drew back, expecting some stentorian blast, but his voice, like the verse he had chosen, was soft, almost a whisper. “Here it is,” he said. “Calm on the seas, and silver sleep, / And waves that sway themselves in rest, / And dead calm in that noble Breast, / Which heaves but with the heaving deep.”

“Yes,” Violet said. “His dear friend’s body returning in the hold of the ship.”

And so it began.

* * *

Ned wasn’t as young as Violet had thought, but there was still a decade between them. For a time their attraction to each other passed as an innocent shared enthusiasm. Ned was still out every evening, as tantalizingly eligible as a rich young man could be, but in the afternoons he invariably sought Violet’s company. He had spent two years on the Continent, perfecting his French and German, and he introduced her to the great poets of these languages by seeking out English translations, which he borrowed from a lending library that specialized in such titles. Violet had school French and so they pored together over the poems of Musset, Mallarmé, Baudelaire, Rimbaud. Ned read the French aloud in his soft, husky voice while she followed the English translations, many of which, they agreed, were inadequate. They discussed the perils of translation and one day he showed her his own effort at this most exacting science – a short poem by Mallarmé titled “Brise Marine.” The flesh is sad, alas, and I’ve read all the books .

She suspected that he wrote poetry himself, and of course it wasn’t long before he confided that he did. To be a poet was the great longing of his soul, but not one he dared to reveal to his parents, or even to most of his friends, especially his lady friends, who were mostly interested in the latest fashions and thought the poetry of Mrs. Wheeler Wilcox the height of artistic sentiment. Together they scoffed at the pedestrian sensibilities of the average reader. They viewed the ordinary world from a distance.

Violet was wise enough to keep her own ambitions along these lines to herself; indeed, she had no desire to expose her efforts to the critical eye of her cultivated friend. But it wasn’t long before he arrived at the library with an envelope containing a sheaf of carefully printed pages and asked her if she would be willing to “pass judgment, showing no mercy,” on his poor verses. She agreed, taking the pages away to read in her room while he was dining at the home of yet another fashionable heiress.

It was an unseasonably warm, wet, windy night, and she opened her window for the fresh air, loosened her corset, and propped herself upon her pillows so that she could hold the pages close to the lamp.

Ned’s poems were imitative and competent, neither good nor bad. The subject matter was sometimes frustration and/or loneliness, sometimes rage against the hypocrisy of society, which, thought Violet wryly, must be difficult for a young man of means to endure. There were three pretty sonnets on dawn, noon, and sunset, which she thought the best of the lot; she would marvel at his strengths as a nature poet. Two poems, one titled “Affinity,” and the other “His Muse,” were dedicated “to VP.” “Affinity” described their first meeting. That book was flown. He found to his surprise, true poetry in those lambent, knowing eyes .

As she allowed this sheet to slip through her fingers and join the others scattered on the counterpane, she saw the future as clearly as if she’d just lived through it. It ended badly; it could not do otherwise. It was preordained, requiring no exercise of psychic powers to discern. How long would it be before Bertha Bakersmith realized that her son was smitten with the treacherous clairvoyant she sheltered under her own roof? A title–“The Fury of Bertha”–ran across her mind and made her smile. She gathered the pages together and replaced them in the envelope.

So be it, she thought. Ned might never be more than a middling poet, but she wouldn’t be the one to tell him. And indeed it wouldn’t be difficult to encourage him. He wasn’t vain; he was charming, perhaps too earnest, but his passion for poetry was sincere and he had introduced her to great poets she wouldn’t have found without him. Most wonderful was his complete lack of interest in her psychic powers. He knew she was occasionally closed up with his mother for some kind of consultation that included conversations with his dead sister, but he was as indifferent to this as if he’d been told they were occupied in sewing a quilt. She realized, with a shiver that should have been a warning to her, that she was never bored in his company.

Violet rose up on one elbow, passed the envelope to the nightstand, and fell back upon the pillows, resting her fingertips against her eyelids. Those lambent, knowing eyes , she thought. A smile lifted the corners of her mouth. “So be it,” she said to the empty room.

* * *

The first touch, his hand brushing hers, the first glancing kiss, his lips upon her cheek on parting. The first outing together, a chilly spring day, a long ramble near the river, stopping for tea at a charming teahouse. The first tender embrace, stolen behind a column in the picture gallery; the first passionate fumbling on the sofa in the library. The declarations: of affection; of devotion, commitment, determination; of love. Their passion had a deadline; Ned would be returning to Boston in a few short weeks. They contrived not to talk about this. One day he brought her the volume of Miss Rossetti’s poems – he’d found it at a bookstall and thought it an excellent edition. She opened it, read the incautious inscription. “I’ll treasure this,” she said.

Violet kept her head, allowing herself to be adored. It was an agreeable secret, because, of course, it must be kept a secret. On the occasional evenings when Ned dined at home, they addressed each other over the roast lamb with a distant politeness that was as shiny and impenetrable as steel armor. Ned really was a talented actor, Violet observed. The next day in the library, they choked with laughter over their performance.

They went out separately, meeting at appointed places so as not to be seen arriving and going out together. Ned complained that they were never alone. He wanted to find a place where they could meet without fear of apprehension.

Violet recognized this wish as what it was, a scandalous proposition, and it surprised her that Ned, who, in spite of his contempt for bourgeois respectability, was a conventional young man, would suggest it. More alarming was her realization that, should he actually come up with a plan, she would not refuse him. This revelation came to her late one evening after a particularly torrid session in the library from which they had both emerged – he to dress for an evening entertainment, she for a quiet dinner with his mother – shaken to their depths. She sat at her dressing table, languidly brushing out her hair, feeling again the pressure of his mouth against her lips, her neck, his fingers fumbling with the buttons of her bodice, her own palm resting on the warm flesh of his neck, the sensation of heat, of swelling in her lips and her breasts. She gazed at her own reflection, her hair loose, her eyes dreamy, the dressing gown loose over her shoulders. He should see me like this, she thought. Tears welled up. She laid the brush down and took up her handkerchief. “Don’t be a fool,” she chided her reflection, dabbing at the too ready tears. But then she thought, Heaven help me; I love him .

It was a week before his return to college. He said he didn’t want to go back, that he hated Boston, the college, and, most of all, the law. Yet he was miserable in his father’s house and bored by the endless social obligations, the rounds of dinners, dances, the banality of the conversations, the overheated, overconfident mothers plying their daughters like trade goods. It was inconceivable that he should spend his life yoked to one of these petty, indolent creatures with the endless tedium of the law as his only diversion.

They were walking along the river, bundled up in their coats, their heads beneath their hats inclined toward each other. Patches of crocus and snowdrops sparkled on the bank, the sun was bright, but the air was bitterly cold. Like the lovers, all nature was betwixt and between. Ned, holding her arm in his, pulled her in close, stopping her, so that they stood face to face. “I think we must run away,” he said. “We can go to New Jersey and be married by a judge there. Will you come?”

She laughed. “What an odd proposal,” she said.

“Is it? Oh. Of course it is. Violet, will you marry me? I can’t live without you; you know that. Shall I go down on my knee?”

“I think the ground is wet.”

“I don’t care,” he said, dropping to one knee, pressing her gloved hand to his lips. “Say, yes,” he said. “Say you’ll be my wife.”

She felt a sharp constriction in her chest and she thought, in a panic, That’s my heart breaking. “Oh, get up, get up,” she cried. “Come to your senses.”

He rose, grasped her arm, and pulled her along the path without speaking. They walked quickly, huddled against the cold. “So you won’t even consider it?” he asked, in a voice cold with injury.

“My dear,” she said. “You know nothing about me. I have no money. I have no family. I’m too old for you. Your father would disown you.”

This brought him up short, and he turned to her, holding her about the waist, his lips pressed against her cheek. “But you love me,” he insisted. “You can’t say you don’t love me.”

She raised her mouth to his. “No,” she said. “I can’t say that.”

They had drawn back into the shelter of a cherry tree laden with fragrant blooms. The drive to the teahouse was just beyond, and as their lips met, a cab pulled up and at a command from its passenger came to a halt. The driver leaped from his box, yanked open the door, and extended his hand to the large lady within, who was wrapped in furs from her neck to her pudgy ankles. She ignored his hand, glaring past him at the appalling sight of a man and a woman brazenly embracing beneath a tree. As she struggled for breath, the gentleman, if such he could be called, raised his head, glancing toward the cab. To her horror she recognized him – it was her nephew Ned Bakersmith. In the next moment he released the woman he held in his arms and steered her toward the river, but as they made their way to the path, the woman cast a fearful glance over her shoulder.

And fearful she should be, thought Ned’s aunt Lydia. Bertha would be apoplectic when she learned her son was disgracing himself in broad daylight with that too clever little clairvoyant friend of hers, Miss Violet Petra. And she would receive this unpleasant information before the afternoon was out. Aunt Lydia waved away the driver, who stood with outstretched hand, still as a statue. “Go back up at once, sir,” she said impatiently. “I’ve changed my mind.”

* * *

The fury of Bertha Bakersmith turned out to be a much colder, more calculated, and implacable force than Violet had reckoned upon. There were no scenes. At breakfast Ned was closed up with his father in the office. Over a plate piled with scrambled eggs and smoked trout, Bertha announced that she was planning an evening at‑home at which she would present Violet to a select circle of the family’s friends. “So many have expressed interest in your abilities, I’ve begun to feel selfish for keeping you to myself,” she said pleasantly.

At dinner – the gentlemen dined in town – Bertha expressed her annoyance that her son had been called back urgently to his college, as his course of study appeared to be under some sort of review. “I don’t understand it myself,” she confessed. “He’ll miss the dance at the Pendergasts’, which is a shame, as Irene is so fond of him.”

In the afternoon Bertha insisted that Violet accompany her on a shopping expedition. “I want your advice about my gown for the at‑home,” she said. “Mrs. Green tells me she has a few very fine Paris creations. Perhaps we’ll find something wonderful for you to wear as well.”

At supper it was revealed that Ned had departed for Boston, and that his father would follow him on the morrow. When Mr. Bakersmith joined them a little later, his wife regaled him with the successes of the day’s shopping. She had not been able to choose between two gowns that were equally stunning on Violet, so she had ordered them both. And the shoes this year were so thinly soled, she’d purchased two pairs for Violet and three for herself, as they would surely wear out before summer.

The next day was occupied in completing the guest list and writing the invitations. It was Violet’s practice to assist with the mail, and so she found herself inviting Bertha’s friends to a gathering to meet herself. As she addressed the envelopes, her patroness gave her a brief account of each guest. “Poor Dr. Macabee’s father died just a month ago, he was a surgeon in the war. Quite the tyrant, actually. He didn’t make Henry’s life any easier. Dora Winter, such a lovely woman. Her daughter is expecting a baby this month and Dora is anxious because she’s miscarried twice before.” Later, as Bertha fished the money for the postage from her bag, she remarked, “You’re looking pale, my dear. I hope you are perfectly well.” Their eyes met and Violet had the sensation that she was being scrutinized by a tigress, one who was in no hurry for her next meal, though she had identified it.

Surely Ned would write. Surely he wouldn’t allow himself to be silenced by his parents. It was as if they’d closed him up in a vault.

For five days Violet dithered between wild hope and despair. Each night she persuaded herself that a happy, ordinary life with a loving husband, perhaps even children, was within her grasp. She considered a trip to Boston, a surprise knock at his door, his delight when he opened it to find her there, laughing at her own daring. His silence, she told herself, was meaningful rather than meaningless, and he was searching for what he called “a way” for them to reunite. She pictured herself at the judge’s pretty little house in New Jersey, taking her vows in the new dress Bertha had provided.

But each morning she woke with the certainty that there had never been the slightest chance of such an outcome, and the proof was that Ned had fled the city without a word. Yet her nightly fantasies, which persuaded her that he might write, combined with her morning clear‑headedness, which suggested that Bertha would intercept such a letter if it came, resulted in a fierce determination to be at the door each morning before the mail arrived.

When the letter was finally handed in, buried in the usual stack of expensive envelopes addressed to Bertha, Violet carried it with trembling fingers and swiftly beating heart up the stairs to her bedroom, where she sat down at her writing table. For several moments she held the envelope before her, reading her own name as if there might be some doubt that it was actually written there, so much had she longed to see it. She took up the ivory knife from the tray, carefully slit the flap, and drew out the folded page within.

The letter was not long. It began and ended with the words “forgive me.” He had been in a pitched battle with his father for days; there was never anything like it; he had resisted with all his strength, but to no avail. She would perhaps be relieved to learn that he had wrestled from his stern progenitor the concession that he would henceforth change his course of study from law to theology. He had behaved shamefully, this he confessed. The only honor he could claim for himself, the one he would forever cherish, was that a woman of her magnificence had deigned to care for him.

Violet read the cowardly missive several times. The first two readings merely stunned her. She felt the blow physically, as if someone had slapped the back of her head with something dull and heavy, like a book. She folded the page, got up, and briefly paced the room. Then she sat down and read it three more times, searching for any evidence, however flimsy, that its author had given her feelings a moment’s serious consideration. But she could find nothing. It was, in fact, a model of unqualified duplicity. She rose again, this time to leave the room.

Stealthily she descended the stairs. In the kitchen, where the cook was already rolling out pie shells, she begged a cup of tea and carried it back to her room. As she sipped the restorative liquid, she read the letter three more times, committing it to memory. She noted that her lover’s defiance was a flexible instrument. Having been deflected from an inappropriate marriage, it had evidently fixed on throwing off the tyranny of law studies. She doubted that theology would prove a liberating alternative, though it would have the virtue of vexing his father.

After all, Violet thought, Ned Bakersmith was a good and dutiful boy; there was nothing remarkable about him. His parents could be justly proud.

When high hopes and great expectations are dashed, the effects may well be a reinvigoration of the will, but if a skeptical view of future prospects is confirmed, the result is more often an enduring loss of vitality. As Violet sat drinking her tea, she realized that in spite of everything she knew about the world and her place in it, she had truly longed to be proven wrong. But she had been right. All the energy drained from her body; it was as if she had opened a vein. She was too weary for tears. She finished her tea, setting the cup and saucer aside. Then she refolded the letter, replaced it in its envelope, and tore it into four pieces.

The rest was mercifully brief. The day before the at‑home, she came down to tea to find Bertha in languid conversation with a young woman of regal beauty, all golden curls and rose‑petal skin, who inspected and dismissed Violet in one swift stroke of her avaricious dark eyes. “Here’s my friend, Miss Petra,” said Bertha. “Let me introduce you to Miss Irene Pendergast.”

Violet took a step closer, but as Miss Pendergast’s neatly folded hands didn’t move, she merely nodded her head in acknowledgment.

Bertha’s eyes bathed the blond princess in an oleaginous beam of maternal solicitude. “It’s not official,” she continued, “but Irene will soon be Mrs. Bakersmith. We’ll be announcing the engagement when Ned comes down at the end of the term.”

After an excruciating hour during which Miss Pendergast’s mental vista was revealed to be neither as wide nor as deep as her teacup, Violet escaped on some fabricated errand. She walked where they had walked, through the park and along the river, her mind ablaze with unfocused and unmanageable rage. It was a blustery, wet, inhospitable afternoon, and when she came to the little bluff that looked over the swiftly moving river, where a forest of schooner masts bobbed at anchor, she had half a mind to jump in. Why not? she thought. Why ever not? She pressed out farther, allowing the toes of her boots to extend over the stone ledge. The void yawned before her and she could sense the pull it would exert if she simply took one more step. She felt Ned’s hands about her waist, his lips at the nape of her neck. She let herself sink into him. The heel of her left boot snagged in a fissure of the stone and she came down on her hands, twisting her ankle cruelly. For a moment she was still, half expecting some passerby to come to her rescue, mortified by that prospect. But no one came, no one saw her. She sat up, gazing at her boots. The ankle throbbed. She doubted she could bear much weight upon it. Gradually she rose, brushing the dirt from her coat, readjusting her hat, putting her weight on the good ankle, and easing the bad one alongside. She took a step, whimpering as a stab of pain shot across her instep. Carefully, slowly, she hobbled back toward the park gate, where she flagged a cab and with the aid of the driver collapsed upon the seat.

At the house, when she finally got the boot off, the ankle was revealed, swollen and bruised. Bertha, in consultation with the cook, packed it in ice, which brought the swelling down. The next day, miserable and feverish, she played her part in the drawing room, confounding the credulous. Afterward Jeremiah Babin waited half an hour to make her acquaintance.

* * *

And that, Violet thought, as she sat in her stateroom on the S.S. Campania , fondling the slim volume of poetry – the sole memento of her lost love – was the nearly comic end of it. She turned to the table of contents. Here was the poem “Echo,” which Ned had read so feelingly. Come to me in the silence of the night, / Come in the speaking silence of a dream . She turned to her own favorite and read it out to the empty cabin. What would I give for a heart of flesh to warm me through, / Instead of this heart of stone ice‑cold whatever I do! / Hard and cold and small, of all hearts the worst of all . She nodded, comforted by these lines. They made her feel less lonely. Then she closed the book and slipped it back into her bag.

She was conscious of the ship engine’s dull throb; how it must roar and fume at the stokers somewhere down in the dark hull, and how they must feel they were fueling the furnaces of hell. Yet in her narrow stateroom the air was cool, and as she stood at the basin unfastening her bodice, she had no sensation that this room was one of many, stacked chock‑a‑block in all directions – a small town’s worth of residents sealed in an iron‑and‑steel canister pushing through the bay to the open sea. It wasn’t really so bad, she thought, lowering her face close to the tap to splash the cool water onto her cheeks. No one knew anything about her; she was just another passenger, traveling to Bath to meet her sister. She patted her face with the towel, changed into her cotton gown, hung up her dress, and sat down on the bunk, fluffing up the pillow. When she lay with her ear against the pillow, she could hear the engines more clearly. If she turned flat on her back, she could feel the sway of the ship. It would probably get worse, she advised herself, but she was too tired to think about that. There was no going back now.

She awoke in darkness to the sound of voices. Her first thought was that passengers had gathered in the corridor, and the next was that she was on a ship and it was sinking. But the voices were not raised or excited; they were just talking. She sat up, swinging her legs over the edge of the mattress. There were all manner of voices; men, women, children, some deep, others high‑pitched, halting, low, all talking, though strangely she didn’t have the sense that they were talking to each other. She crossed the carpet to the curtained window, pulled back the cloth, and peered into the section of the corridor visible through the square of glass. Electric bulbs in copper rosettes studded the long passage, casting dim blobs of pink light upon the carpet. No one was directly outside her room. She unlatched the heavy door and pulled it open a few inches, then wide enough to see the length of the hall – no one was there. The voices were louder, but not clearer. She couldn’t make out a word. Were they coming from the gentlemen’s smoking room, or the dining room? She closed the door and went back to the bed, switching on the light over the sofa on the way and glancing at the clock. It was two fifteen.

Where were these talking people? What were they saying? It sounded like a crowd at a sporting event, before the game began. Was it coming from the upper deck? Were passengers gathered there and their voices funneled through the ventilation system to her room?

There was nothing to be done about it but to try to ignore them and sleep. But when she rested her head on the pillow, the voices grew louder, as if they came from the pillow itself. She sat up, keeping still, listening. Though she couldn’t detach a word from the general racket, she determined that more than one language was being spoken. Several in fact.

It must be coming through the floor. It was doubtless the steerage mob, sleepless, restless, as she was now. Would they talk all night?

She slipped from the bed, dropping to her hands and knees and pressing one ear to the carpet. It wasn’t coming from there. She stood, then sat on the sofa and took up The White Company , but she read only a few sentences before the mumbling voices distracted her.

It must be coming from the deck. She stood up, paced back and forth the few steps between the sofa and the bed, pressing her palms over her ears, which muffled the sound. So the voices weren’t coming from inside her head: that was a relief. Perhaps it had something to do with the electricity in the cabin. She pressed her ear against the wall nearest the sink, then nearer the door. It wasn’t coming from the wall.

It must be the steerage. They were closed up down there with no light but a row of portholes. They had their own section of the deck where they washed their dishes, so they probably went up in shifts, like the sailors, some sleeping while others were awake. That must be it. She should just ignore it. They were only talking, not fighting or shouting or even singing.

She returned to the bed, lay flat on her back, and closed her eyes. What were they saying? Her eyes flew open. She tried counting, got to a thousand, and started backward. Suppose this racket, this talking, went on for the entire trip? Eventually she slept a few hours. When she woke the voices were still talking. It was six a.m., two hours to breakfast.

She pressed one palm over her forehead, the other over her chest, breathing deeply, trying to calm the rising panic in her brain and heart. Her eyes rested on the bucolic scene in the painting over the sofa, a summer’s day, the cows in the distance, the green world, all serene. England, she thought. Will I have to stay there? Will I die there? Would that be preferable to going through this again?

She washed at the sink, not examining her pallid reflection in the mirror. She would dress, go out on the deck, and inquire into the source of the infernal noise. She laid her dress out on the bed and sat on the sofa in her chemise, pulling on her black stockings. The air in the stateroom was stuffy with a faint odor of fried fish. At least on the deck the air would be fresh.

When she opened her door and stepped into the corridor, the voices didn’t rise in volume, which meant they weren’t being piped into her stateroom through the ventilation system. At the end of the hall she could see the backs of two ladies ascending the stairs to the deck. She followed them, feeling an eagerness to be under the sky, to have the company of her fellow passengers, who must surely know something she didn’t about the incessant clamor of human voices. At the top of the steps, a steward, waiting to descend, smiled down upon her, but he didn’t speak. He moved aside as she reached the open door and stepped out into the lively atmosphere on the deck. The voices swelled excitedly, expectantly, like a swarm of hornets disturbed by an intruder in their nest.

On the inner deck the passengers, bundled in blankets and shawls like hospital patients, reclined in deck chairs, dozing or reading books. Outside the rail they promenaded, arm in arm, two or three abreast. Here and there small groups gathered for intense conversations. There were a few children, eyeing each other hopefully from behind their mothers’ skirts. Beyond them all, dazzling and undulating, neatly framed by the ship rail and the floor of the upper deck and occupying the recommended two‑thirds of the composition, was the sea.

Violet leaned for support on a nearby column, resting her hand on the cold metal of the rail. A passing steward stopped to inquire if madam would like to make an appointment for a bath. “Not just yet,” she said, relieved to hear her own voice so calm, so normal. “I haven’t planned the day.”

“Certainly, madam,” he said, touching his hat in some version of a salute and passing on. Violet peered past him, along the deck, where everyone appeared cheerful, animated, absorbed by reading and conversations. Their voices rose and fell; she could hear them in the ordinary way. The other voices, which dominated the airwaves, as an orchestra might drown out a string quartet, did not, evidently, distract them from their pleasant pursuits.

How was it possible? Violet thought. She pushed past the handrail, dodging a young couple so deep in conversation they didn’t notice her, and crossed the promenade deck to the outer rail. A gentleman in a felt cap and Norfolk jacket, leaning, as was the fashion, with his elbows propped behind him on the balustrade, the better to watch the passing parade, nodded approvingly at her as she found an open space nearby.

She gripped the rail and faced, at long last, the vast, churning expanse of the open sea. Her heart contracted as the voices rose, howling now, insistent and unintelligible, furious and terrible. She stood very still, breathing in slowly, allowing the roar to wash over her, recognizing the futility of resisting the cruel irony of her fate. The voices came from the sea. They had been waiting for her there. No one could hear them but her.

By the time she got back to her stateroom, Violet’s dress was soaked with a cold sweat. She shrugged off her coat, rushed to the WC, and vomited twice, then staggered to the basin to cup cool water into her mouth. Over the static of the voices she heard the bugle call to breakfast. The thought of food, and especially of fried fish – the sickening odor still wafting into her room left no doubt that fish was on the menu – made her stomach shudder. She collapsed on the sofa, falling over on her side. A numbing lethargy invaded her. Groaning, she sat up, unbuttoned and pulled off her shoes, unfastened her corset, and fell back among the cushions, where, attended by the timbreless drone of the voices, she lay in a fitful sleep for the rest of her first day at sea.

She woke in the night to the murmuring voices, punctuated by the repeated booming blasts of the foghorn. It was a dolorous sound, a long moan with a sharp m sound at the end, as if some wounded giant, struggling for breath, pressed his lips together after each painful exhalation. She recognized it from her youth on Buzzards Bay, where the fog socked in the coast like cotton batting and you couldn’t see your own feet. Had she been dreaming of that place, that sparkling little town where most of the men were sea captains and every house had some exotic article, a lacquer table from Japan, a tin lamp from Peru, linens from Brittany or Italy, a tea service from Britain, wooden sabots from Holland, a crystal vase from France? She remembered one cold winter afternoon, coming back home from school in a fog so thick she had to feel her way, one hand caressing the familiar fences and walls as she went along, smiling to herself at the unhelpful blaring of the lighthouse horn at Ned’s point. When she got to the garden gate, she ran smack into her sister, who was coming out to find her.

She sat up, moved by this vivid recollection to a sense of well‑being, which stayed with her for some moments, filling her senses like the scent of a fragrant flower carried on a current of nostalgia from the past.

A sharp rap at her stateroom window startled her so that she leaped to her feet, uncertain which way to turn. She stood stiffly, while the voices grumbled and the foghorn wailed, unable to move. Gradually who and where she was came clear to her, and her brain busily manufactured sensible explanations for the knock on the window – it was the steward, come to warn her about the fog, or perhaps he was still anxious for her to bathe, or it could be that the sway of the vessel, which she noted was much increased, had thrown some passerby off balance and caused an outflung hand to meet her window pane. She crossed to the curtain and pulled it aside, peering out in time to see a woman turning away from her door.

There was something familiar about the curve of the woman’s jaw, the slope of her shoulder, which was all Violet could see, something that confused her. She patted her hair and glanced back moodily at her shoes lying on the carpet. Then she unlatched the lock, yanked the heavy door open, and stepped into the corridor. The woman moved briskly down the passage. As she approached the stairs to the deck, she pulled up the hood of her old‑fashioned woolen cloak. Violet paused, one hand still on the door handle, as the lock clicked into place and she realized she’d left her key in the pocket of her coat. She would have to find a steward to get back in.

“Did you knock for me?” she called out to the woman, who paused on the stairs without looking back. Violet hurried after her, conscious of her stocking feet padding along the carpet. When she reached the stairs, the woman pushed the door open and stepped out ahead of her onto the deck.

Violet followed, bracing herself for cold air and wet feet, the raised volume of the murmuring voices, but she was unprepared for the curtain of white that hid everything – including the woman – from sight. The foghorn’s melancholy moan wasn’t so much louder as more penetrating; it seemed to go through to her bones. She put her hands out before her and took two steps, careful to put one foot in front of the other. That was all it took to leave the visible world behind. “Are you there?” she called out, for surely the woman must be close by. But there was no answer. A few more steps and her fingers found the inner rail, which she clutched, bringing her body in to press against it and standing with her feet apart, for the ship was rolling in a rhythm that felt calibrated to the blasts of the horn.

There might be other passengers on the deck, she thought, perhaps a sailor or two, and indeed she had the sense that there were others near, though shrouded in fog. “Is anyone there?” she said, but softly this time, as if there might be, unbeknownst to her, a comrade standing an arm’s length away.

She heard a sound, separate from the others, a sharp crack of metal against wood, such as a chain might make dropped on a plank floor. She stepped toward it, one hand lightly resting on the rail, straining her eyes to see into the fog, and she made out something, a darker patch, just ahead. She let go of the rail, took a few more steps, feeling the empty air befor

Date: 2015-02-16; view: 652