Titanic: True Love Forever

Chapter 23: Extra Story(1)

For Calhokely, there was nothing in the world that money couldn't buy. When he shot the Heart of the Ocean in France, that bird-hunting fool King George and his May-born Queen Mary were in India accepting the kneeling of the natives. Of course this has nothing to do with him, a slice of the British aristocracy in his eyes are a group of richly dressed, but like an empty shell of poor people.

His father was the most prestigious steel tycoon in Pittsburgh, USA, his family employed tens of thousands of people and produced steel that was sold in almost every country you could name. He had grown up with money since he was a child and was the sole heir to his family. If there was a kingdom of money, the assets he owns and is about to inherit could make him king.

To him, there were only two kinds of people in this world, the poor and the rich. Of course in addition to wealth he needed a little bit of honor to spice things up, in this day and age the United States no longer needed to fight the War of Independence to hang its stars and stripes, and there was no such thing as a military service to brag about. Instead, all he can do is have an aristocratic wife to add flowers to his business empire.

When he first met Rosebucket, he thought she was that flower.

Rose was very pretty, beautiful.

Carl had never seen a maiden so appetizing, and he remembered the painting he had seen in the home of an English nobleman when his mother had taken him to visit him as a boy. The painting was of a young blonde girl with a baby face, clean and clear, with light green eyes and skin as white as snow.

Like an angel, he was so young at the time that he just thought he had never seen anyone so beautiful. It was then that he asked his mother to buy him, to buy this young girl to him.

Then his mom told him that it was a painting, something the artist had painted from his own imagination, and that there was no such person in the world. What his reaction was at the time, Cal Kippen forgot all about it. Anyway, that kind of childish, brainless deed, he was glad he wasn't in the habit of keeping a diary, so he pretended he hadn't done it.

Rose then had green eyes, and snow white skin, which was very much Carl's aesthetic. He'd spent a lot of money on her, and planned to take her to the States to get engaged after a trip around Europe. As for his fiancée's bad habit of being depressed all the time, Karl thought it was always a bit of an inexplicable problem with noble girls arriving at a sentimental age.

He would never think that the reason for his fiancée's unhappiness was in himself; he was young and rich, had a huge inheritance, and was simply unbeatable in the circle of women. Everyone else really liked his charming way of treating people, and his wealth.

He had been invited to witness that magnificent moment when the Titanic was commissioned, the largest vehicle ever built at the Belfast shipyard, and the largest in the world, enough to crush two of Crown Tat's large cruise ships. And most of the steel on this ship came from his family's factory.

For this reason Karl also made it a point to have several American newspapers that were on good terms with his family to trumpet the great wonders of the Titanic, such as the state-of-the-art sixteen automatic watertight compartments. This would bring unexpected benefits to his family's industry, and as long as Titanic's maiden voyage went well, then the suppliers of Titanic could play a good role in publicizing it.

He had booked several of the most luxurious rooms on the ship early on, and when he passed through Belfast half a month before returning to the United States, he had even gone to the shipbuilder's headquarters to see some of the drawing designs for the upper class cabins. Ismay had said that for the decoration of the ship's upper class cabins, White Star had issued a blank check to the Harlan Waugh shipyard.

He was going to say to Rose when he got back, Look, my family supplied all the steel on the largest vehicle in the world.

So cheer up, there's nothing money can't fix.

When he arrived in Southampton, he asked the driver to drive the car faster so that his fiancée could see the Titanic a little earlier and be mesmerized by its massive and beautiful steel form. The outside of the car was packed with people and he looked out the window with some impatience. There were quite a few third class tickets sold out, so the people crowding the docks were civilians who were going to get a room in the Commodore's cabin. I heard that the designer of the Titanic decided to improve the environment of the cabin in order to make the ship even more perfect, and the third class cabin was equipped with a marble washbasin and a heater, which was almost like the second class treatment of other ships.

Carl scoffed, there was no need for that kind of design, many of them might not even know how to use a faucet.

The car kept slowing to a standstill, Carl sat in the car and tapped on the door with his cane with some displeasure and said to the driver, "You'll have to hurry up, don't make me think you're not cut out for this job."

The driver hurriedly honked his horn to disperse the crowd in front of him. Unfortunately, there were so many people that the car still couldn't go faster, and even got slower and slower as it went along, and finally, in order not to be squeezed into a ball with a mail truck, the driver could only stop first to let the mail truck pass. As a result, before the car stopped, Carl suddenly heard the driver's exclamation of surprise, he followed the driver's line of sight to look over, only to see a black shadow quickly scurrying from the front to the roof of the car.

What is it? Carl felt a distinct sound coming from the roof of the car, and soon he realized that someone was standing on top of his head. The feeling of being stepped on pissed him off so much that he immediately opened the door and walked out, shouting harshly, "What's going on?" He hated any accident that would disrupt the steps of his plan, and it was enough to annoy him that the car was crowded with people, but to have an inferior person run onto the roof of his car and stand on top of him.

He looked up as soon as he stepped out of the car, intending to teach this bold fellow a lesson. The next thing he saw were those eyes, a light green that was on the verge of bursting into flames, incredibly hot in the murky light of the April harbor. For that second, his mind stopped functioning, even as he quickly rewound to find the blurry painting of the young girl from when he was a few years old, the exact same light green color.

Then a large shadow came splitting his face, and he instinctively tried to avoid it, but before his body could escape, a weight crushed him completely, and all he could see was a blur of one color, the green from a moment ago seeming to remain in his pupils. The blinding pain in his chest was frightening, which made him reflexively go to order his most familiar manservant, "Lovejoy ......"

What the hell is this ...... For a moment, he lost his voice completely as a large swath of gold tilted down, a color brighter than sunlight, covering his face and trapping him in a confined area, where he could only be forced to collide face-to-face with those light green eyes.

Blonde hair and blue eyes, that was his initial perception of beauty.

That dull ache in his chest where the weight had hit him was even more pronounced, and Cal felt like he couldn't breathe, or even forget what he was doing lying here. Forced, struck by this forceful light green color.

For a moment, Carl thought he was drowning, breathing hard and unable to avert his eyes.

It wasn't until an exclamation from the attendant that immediately pulled him out of this horrible state, and he got a good look at the other man's face ...... so black that he couldn't even make out the outline, a damned, rat out of a coal pile. Carl finally knew it was time to be angry, that he had been pinned to the ground by such a lowlife, or the docks of Southampton, which, if anyone he knew well saw it, would be another damned gossipy joke for the social circle.

Almost unable to hold back a curse, Carl angrily intended to push this guy out of nowhere when the other man's eyes changed, that very life-like light green color becoming particularly harsh, and then he felt a tightness in his chest as a strand of long blonde hair got caught in his pocket watch chain, and some of the rest of the long hair was still hanging down into his face, which gave him the feeling of cutting off the hair that was very much in line with his aesthetics, but was growing on a f*****g black rat of hair and cut it off.

Without waiting for him to resist, the guy who had knocked him down reached out and grabbed the long strand of hair that had gotten stuck with force, pulling it right off. Then a sudden sharp pain came from his abdomen, and a hand crushed the softest part of his stomach so hard that the breakfast in his gut almost didn't get crushed and spit out. Then he watched as his watch was grabbed by the other party and ran away, and by the time he got up with the help of his attendant, the bandit had already burrowed into the crowd.

In broad daylight, he was robbed like this?

Damn the Cockneys, damn the independence of Northern Ireland, and damn the criminals.

Carl covered his stomach hating the fact that he could have driven the blonde, green eyed black rat over himself, he ...... or she had actually embarrassed him so much.

Rose got out of the other car, her sultry figure wrapped in a dress tailored by one of Paris's most famous fashion designers, her eyes cold and unwavering under a wide-brimmed hat with purple ribbons. Holding a delicate parasol of the same color, she looked quizzically at Carl, who was covering his stomach, and politely inquired, "What's the matter with you?"

Instead, there was a sudden, crisp cry in her ear, "Don't get on the boat."

By the time Rose turned her head to look for the source of this voice, all she saw was the noisy flow of people at the docks, and then she gently lifted her head, revealing the pair of dark green eyes under her visor, as a huge, brand new cruise liner walked right into her sight.

TITANIC.

Carl hastily put away the unseemly image of himself grimacing, straightened himself up, came over to Rose, and said with feigned calmness, "I'm fine, looks like I should meet the prosecutor in charge of dock affairs for a while, they should make this place a little better. Better build a long road that can be graded to separate all these civilians."

"You should have them build the road all the way up to the sky so you can never have to see what you call civilians in your eyes." Rose couldn't help but sneer at him before reaching out to help the driver by the back of his hand and getting back into the car. The door closed immediately, shutting out Carl's puzzled expression.

Carl watched as his fiancée played up again, and he snatched the civilized stick that Lovejoy had helped pick up with some irritation, over exerting himself so much that the vague pain in his stomach became obvious, and he hastily covered his stomach and looked around. That damned robber, thief, dead rat ...... don t get caught by him, or send her to prison to serve a lifetime sentence.

Looking at a design is always different from being there, Carl finished his tour of the private deck of his luxury suite and took a look at the decorations in the room, both the Georgian style furniture and the large bathtub made him feel that the ticket price hadn t been spent in vain. Everything was so perfect, except for the oddly shaped paintings that Rose had taken out to decorate. Taking advantage of the fact that his fiancée had gone to get changed, Carl made it a point to walk up to the room and take a closer look at what magic that so-called Picasso or Monet painting had made her fall in love with it.

After looking at it for a while, he averted his eyes with a headache. What the hell was the painting, if the one called Monet was even remotely recognizable, Picasso's was a mess of garbage. What strange and useless taste, Carl pretended to walk away from the ugly paintings as if nothing had happened, pretending he'd never studied the drop deads.

Seeing the paintings reminded him of the painting of the young girl when he was a child, and as he grew up he realized how deeply his aesthetics seemed to have been influenced by that painting. So he chose Rose because Rose's green eyes were beautiful, much more beautiful than those grotesque paintings.

Green eyes, those light green eyes on the dock suddenly crashed into his brain, and Carl hastily shook them out of his mind. The thief!

Dinner was at seven o'clock, in the large, luxurious dining room in the center of Level D. He'd spent the afternoon with the Baron and his wife in the Palm Tree Restaurant on Level A for afternoon tea, and then met for dinner together. Karl was comfortable with these social encounters, and he always had the quickest time to mingle with nobles of equal status, or those favored by the royal family.

It was never him who had problems, but he seemed to have found a fiancée who always had problems. When he got to the dining room, he realized that Rose, who had entered the elevator first, hadn't entered the dining room at all. He let out a low curse at the door to the dining room, then excused himself apologetically to the passing countess, turned and headed aggressively up the grand staircase, where his servant had come to report that Rose was headed for the upper deck at the stern of the ship.

As his future wife, it was simply capricious to not even show up for a social evening. Exasperated, he made his way to the strolling deck and caught a glimpse of Rose standing by the deck railing, with two members of the Titanic's hired orchestra standing beside her. A piano player and a bandleader named something like Hallett.

That was one thing he couldn't understand about Rose, being a very polite and famous woman, always enjoying the company of guys who had no use for her at all.

Carl feebly put his hands on his waist and waited behind Rose for a while, but it turned out that she didn't turn around at all, looking downwards with a focused face. What was there to see, wasn't it a third class lounge area down there? There might as well be rats running around, what else was there to see but a bunch of working class immigrants.

Carl approached and was just about to call out to her when Hallett, who was standing next to Rose, suddenly turned around and then nodded down at him as a greeting, holding out his hand in a quiet gesture. The bandleader followed this impolite gesture with a tilt of his head and placed his palms to his ears, a listening position.

Carl looked at him inexplicably as he stopped and followed, peering over to the deck below. The last rays of the setting sun gilded the deck with a golden hue, and everyone-immigrants, paupers, men, women- stood in a scattered huddle along the railing not far from the flagpole.

No one spoke, so still that even the ocean was silent.

It was this silence that kept the slightly bleak harmonica melody drifting away. Carl came to the railing and placed his hands on it, and by concentrating, the notes played by the harmonica drilled into everyone's ears.

Then he saw her, dressed in rags, sitting at the stern rail, her head down, playing the harmonica. The last of the afterglow rested on her long blonde hair, as if the world was going to stop for her until she finished the piece.

Carl suddenly felt that she was familiar, and this familiarity caused an eerie dull ache in his chest.

"That's a beautiful piece, what's its name." Rose inquired out loud, her expression very gentle, as if even her soul was moved by the harmonica sound.

"Never heard it before, it's telling us a story, a very beautiful story." Hallett replied softly, and he also inquired towards the pianist next to him, "Percy, have you ever heard it?"

The pianist pondered for a moment and shook his head with great regret.

"It seems to be a story that belongs only to this girl." Hallett gazed down with a genuine smile.

"But it's for sale." Carl listened and came to a decisive conclusion, looking at the dirty clothes, it looked like a vagrant sleeping on the streets or under a bridge, it was simply commonplace for vagrants to play the harmonica and beg for this kind of thing.

Hallett and Percy Taylor looked at him in surprise, then shook their heads in mutual agreement. The bandleader took the pianist by the shoulders, "Percy, we're going to start, let's play the Blue Danube for our first piece tonight.

"

"Can we play this harmonica?"

"That's something we'll have to ask the boy; guests don't listen to music without a name."

"You're wrong, Henry, it's the names they don't listen to." The pianist laughed and walked back with the bandleader and soon disappeared off the deck.

Carl saw Rose turn her head to look at him as well, with the exact same look in her eyes as the two hired hands had just given him. He fought back the breathless feeling and said to Rose, "I think the Scottish baron is waiting for us, don't miss the main event by watching these performances."

"Business? Is that what you call business, those false entertainments?" Rose looked at him incredulously, then removed her hands from the railing and turned to walk away, "You will never understand what the best things are."

"What ...... hypocrisy? The beautiful things?" Carl let out a disdainful laugh as he quickly followed in Rose's footsteps, intent on letting his fiancée know that being so indiscreet would piss him off. Within two steps, he stood still, and he covered his chest, frowning slowly as that familiar feeling ran out again. With a jolt, Cal suddenly realized what he had overlooked.

The blonde hair, the dirty ragged clothes, the light green eyes. He turned, and suddenly he saw the figure standing upright, standing on the railing, she stood so straight as if she was going to fly away the next second.

Carl reached out and grabbed the railing, holding his breath as he watched the back of that figure, illusory in the waning light of twilight, ready to disappear at any moment. The picture of the young girl that had been imprinted on his mind since childhood reappeared.

He heard his trembling voice ring out, "Lovejoy, get her." Immediately sobered by what he said, he added in a raised voice, "She's the thief."

What painting of a young girl, she was just a thief.