Titanic Embers

God’s Will

“Was that your first meeting with Dawson?” Lovett asked cautiously, drawing the old man back from the depths of distant memory.

“Jack—he preferred to be called Jack.” Carl’s lips curved into a faint smile, one so rare that even Edward could scarcely recall it. In that moment, a spark of excitement and vitality returned to the aged face. “Of course, I’m not a homosexual; in the past twenty-three years, I’ve never harbored such inclinations.”

“Love knows no boundaries of gender, Grandpa,” Edward countered lightly.

“And Jack?”

“He,” the old man chuckled again, this time without realizing it, “was a thoroughbred heterosexual.”

“…”

“Let us call it God’s will. I have never been a devout Christian—like the youth of today, I too have doubted His existence, even dismissed Him altogether. Yet I cannot help but think there is… perhaps… some strange coincidence, some fate, some unseen force that drew Jack to my side—or, perhaps, pushed me toward his. And that force, we name… God.”

The old man’s gaze drifted back to the wreckage. “There—that was the deck… the very spot where he once stood.”

A little further along, near the mast.

Jack’s hand swept across the sketch paper with swift, confident strokes, charcoal darting like a living thing.

The girl’s cuff—yes, the shadows there must be deepened still…

On the deck, laughter and chatter swirled.

Fabie idly conversed with fellow steerage passengers.

“It was built in Ireland.”

“So… not British?”

“Not ‘noble’ British. Fifteen thousand stout, stocky laborers built her in Ireland—solid as bedrock.”

A cluster of dogs, led by servants, came trotting across the deck for their afternoon airing.

“Hmph—first-class pedigree mutts coming down to our slums to foul the place.”

The remark caught Jack’s attention. He looked up at the young man smoking nearby and replied, “A reminder that class still exists.”

“As if we needed reminding?” The fellow took a fierce drag on his cigarette, then stood and extended a hand toward Jack. “Thomas Lane. You can call me Tommy.”

“Jack Dawson.”

Their hands clasped firmly.

“Smoke?”

“Gladly, thank you. Fabie, lend me a light.”

Meanwhile, in the first-class dining salon—

Crystal goblets clinked, skirts swirled in graceful arcs. German pale ales and Russian vodka, Italian caviar and French foie gras, Havana and Luzon’s finest cigars…

Seasonal pleasantries, hollow exclamations, and meaningless murmurs of assent wove together in the air.

Out on the deck, Jack—who had roamed from port to port across half of Europe—was animatedly recounting the wondrous tales he had heard. When the story ended, the small audience gradually drifted away. One of Jack’s new acquaintances, seated beside him, asked a little abruptly and with open curiosity,

“Do you sell your paintings?”

Jack, never one to be rude, did not answer.

“Hey—Jack?” Tommy waved a hand before his face.

Still, no response.

Puzzled, Tommy glanced up and found his friend staring blankly ahead. Following Jack’s gaze, he saw—bathed in the dying light of the sun—on the upper deck, a young woman leaning lightly upon the rail.

Beautiful—too beautiful.

Yet it was not merely her incomparable loveliness that held Jack’s gaze as if bound by an unseen tether. It was the rebellious spirit beneath her refined façade, the faint ripple of defiance that played upon her soft lips, the way her slender, shapely hands were clasped tightly together. Her expression was cool, remote. To an artist’s eye, Jack could see the lines etched by a stifled vitality, the shadows of cares far too heavy for her youth. Her head was tilted slightly back, her full bosom rising naturally with the motion—like a swan trapped within a gilded cage.

Rose had not noticed Jack’s transfixed stare, but nothing escaped Tommy’s eyes.

“A looker, no doubt—but best forget it,” he said with a half-mocking, half-pitying smile.

“You wouldn’t understand.”

True artists lack idle frivolity; they are moved, even undone, by beauty in any form. To them, all things become art, every image a living study for creation.

To one unversed in art, it is near impossible to fathom an artist’s fervent devotion to beauty.

Thus, when Cal ascended the deck with unhurried poise, encircling Rose in a possessive stance, and when his hand came to rest upon her arm—revealing a matching ring upon his finger—Jack felt neither jealousy nor grief. Only regret—that he could not capture in his sketchbook the fleeting goddess who had graced the deck.

The betrothed pair were clearly ill at ease, a quarrel flaring softly between them. Yet in Jack’s eyes, the scene took on another charm—the man and woman locked in subtle combat, like an urbane Apollo facing a cold Diana, or a robust Ares confronting a tender Venus.

Their exchange ended in discord. Rose swept away, and Cal hesitated, unsure whether to follow.

Her pace was quick.

He exhaled helplessly, turning his head—then froze. His pupils contracted. Once again, he saw the boy who had been disturbing his peace. No—more precisely, a young man.

The youth’s eyes were fixed with quiet longing on the path where Rose had vanished.

His fiancée belonged in a ballroom aglow with gold and crystal, basking in the admiration of gentlemen—not under the gaze of some nameless third-class drifter. A toad daring to covet a swan.

Cal’s black eyes grew darker still, nearly kindling with the black fire of the pit. He was seized by the urge—quite unbecoming of his station—to storm down and teach the boy a fitting lesson.

But at that moment, Jack lowered his gaze and reopened his sketchbook.

His face, barely past twenty, still held the softness of youth. Untamed blond hair fell carelessly over his brow; his broad forehead was yet unmarked by time. Two fine black brows drew together in handsome concentration above bright eyes—small, yet alight with unspoiled sincerity. A boyish face, absorbed in his task.

He was sketching the view from the deck—unaware that he himself had become part of another’s view, destined to remain vivid and unfaded in a dream.

“At that time, I paid Jack little heed—or perhaps, even I did not understand my own attention to him. Only later… every expression, every movement, I could recall with perfect clarity, even if I had only glanced once and thought nothing of it. I could remember more and more—the roll of his sleeves, the smudge of charcoal on his fingers, the way his brows would knot and release… I could live on my memories of him.”

The old woman’s voice, drifting across the curtain of history, had shed its desolate timbre. All that remained was a deep, unyielding remembrance—steadfast until death.