Chapter 4 #3
She needed time to think, and Bert was giving her all the time she needed.
He would be busy running his mills in Manchester, while she settled into her life in London without her father.
She needed to be at home, and breathe again, and adjust to everything that had happened.
She wanted to be in familiar surroundings when she made the decision.
She would have liked more time to get to know Bert better, but she knew how much her father liked him, which meant a great deal to her.
The young women from her world often barely knew the men they married.
A few dances at a ball, a walk in the park, chaperoned at all times.
The decision was made by their parents, based on lineage, title, and fortune, how large their estates were, and whether it was an advantageous match.
If it met those criteria, the young couple would get to know each other after they were married, often with disastrous results, or it would be a banal relationship at best. A flock of children would be the result, tended to by nannies and seldom seen by their parents.
Now and then a love match flourished among the rocky terrain of marriages arranged by fathers.
The risks had always seemed too great to Victoria, who preferred her comfortable life with her father, even if it meant being a spinster later.
Bert was offering her a very different life, married to a man much older than she was, from a less respected social class, tainted by industry and money, but a man who seemed to genuinely care about her, respected who she was, her values and her point of view, and wanted to make her happy, whatever that meant to her.
If ever she was going to marry, Bert was the most appealing prospect she had ever had, and was probably the last proposal she would ever get.
At twenty-three, she was no longer considered in the first bloom of youth on the marriage market.
Her time had come and gone, and she had never regretted it, and didn’t now.
Bert walked Victoria back to her cabin, and didn’t kiss her in case someone would see them. She thanked him for a most interesting evening with a warm smile and a glimmer of mischief in her eyes.
As she gently closed the door behind her, Bert walked back to his cabin, grateful that it had gone as well as it had.
She hadn’t been offended, rejected him, or stormed off in a fury.
She wasn’t outraged that a man of his lesser origins compared to her noble ones had dared to propose to her, and she had liked the versatility and generosity of his offer.
It was very creative and open-minded. She didn’t even mind the vast difference in their ages.
He could see a happy union ahead of them, if she decided to accept his offer.
Bert knew that her father’s approval weighed heavily with her, and his urging Bert to marry her was akin to a deathbed wish in the circumstances, since he had died about an hour later, and had been almost sure he would when he begged Bert to take care of her.
Victoria’s answer remained the only mystery.
She was a strong, independent woman with her own considerable fortune.
What she lacked was a companion and a protector, and Bert wanted to be both to her if she would let him.
That was the final question, in her mind and his, and only time would tell which way the pendulum would swing, in his favor or not.
* * *
They took separate trains in Liverpool, he to Manchester, and she to London.
They said goodbye to each other at the boat.
He kissed her cheek and squeezed her gloved hand, hoping to see her again soon.
Their eyes met and held for a moment, as she remembered every word he had said to her the night before.
She thought about it all the way to London.
* * *
When the train arrived in London, she almost expected to see her father there to greet her, and she had tears in her eyes when their chauffeur walked toward her.
He had worked for them since she was a child.
A second car was waiting to carry the trunk she had bought in New York, and the few extra suitcases.
She was wearing the black hat with the veil again, and the long black coat.
She suddenly realized how hard it would be to go home without her father, to the empty house, all alone now.
It made Bert’s offer even more appealing, but she didn’t want to be swayed for the wrong reasons.
It had to be the right decision for both of them.
The chauffeur helped her into the car, and the two cars left the station and drove home.
The big black hat made her look somber with her young pale face.
Her father’s death felt all too real to her again, as it had on the day they got to New York.
She thought of Bert. He was so big and strong and full of life.
He was the symbol of the future, while she mourned the past. The urn with her father’s ashes was safely packed in her trunk, and she wanted to get to Hampshire soon to bury them.
* * *
She was wide-awake as they drove through London, and she glanced at the familiar streets.
It was bittersweet being back there. When the car stopped in front of the palatial home, the servants all came outside and stood in line to greet her, each one with a message of sympathy.
The servants were sad about the loss of Robert and Bridget too.
London was still talking about the shocking sinking of the Titanic.
It was at the forefront of everyone’s mind.
Everyone seemed to know someone who had been on it.
Victoria walked through the house after she took her hat and coat off.
There was a stack of letters on her desk, with black borders.
The butler, Parker, had left them there for her to read when she felt up to it.
The housekeeper, Mrs. Babbitt, had a tray of tea sandwiches and biscuits brought to her with her favorite tea.
The tray looked incomplete without a second cup for her father, and she wandered into the library half expecting to find him there.
The room was empty and the shades drawn.
He might have been on a trip somewhere, except that Victoria knew he was never coming back.
After wandering around the rooms on the main floor for a little while, she went upstairs to her bedroom.
The new maid Mrs. Babbitt had hired to replace Bridget was already unpacking her trunk and bags.
Victoria had brought pitifully few clothes home from New York, all of them black, compared to the many trunks she had taken on board the Titanic.
She had noticed the wreath on the front door when she arrived, with black ribbons, to indicate they were a house in mourning.
She ate dinner alone in the dining room that night, and had no appetite. She got up quickly from the meal. She hated to eat alone, and had only done so on rare occasions when her father had dinner with a friend at his club.
She sat down to read the condolence letters after dinner.
There were more than a hundred of them, and she didn’t read them all.
For the rest of the week, she wandered through the house like a ghost. She gave Parker permission to pack her father’s clothes to give them away.
She kept a few sentimental items from his dressing room, the top hat he wore to parties and balls, another hat of his she loved.
She took the box where he kept his watches and cufflinks, and put it in the same drawer with her mother’s jewelry.
* * *
At the end of the week, she decided to go to Hampshire with the ashes.
Parker called the staff there to tell them she was coming, so they’d be ready for her.
It was a beautiful May day, and she longed to see the gardens and decide where she wanted the ashes.
There was a chapel on the estate with a mausoleum and a small cemetery where her ancestors had been buried for centuries, but she thought it was too gloomy, and she wanted to bury him in one of the small gardens he had loved.
The estate was in the South Downs, near Jane Austen’s former home in Chawton, with views of the Hampshire Downs. Victoria had spent her happy childhood there.
The driveway to the house was lined with beautiful old trees which formed an arch over the road.
It was a long drive until they reached the house, and the servants were all lined up as they had been in London.
They were happy to see her, and she took a walk in the gardens shortly after she arrived and found the perfect spot for her father.
It was a small, secluded area with a bench nearby.
She could go to visit him, sit on the bench and talk to him.
She was going to have a small discreet marble plaque made that would be hidden by the flower garden in summer, and you wouldn’t notice it unless you knew it was there.
When she returned to the house, she asked Mrs. Pierce, Mrs. Babbitt’s Hampshire counterpart, to send for one of the gardeners.