The Shakespeare company left Philadelphia the following morning. Rose watched the city disappear with a sense of relief, and of regret. Part of her wished that she had taken the time to contact her mother, while another part told her that it would have been a foolish idea. Cal had almost gotten his hands on her anyway, and she was lucky that Richard had stepped in.
Rose was still a bit worried when they reached Pittsburgh—after all, Cal did have mills there—but it still felt safer than Philadelphia. At least it was a different city.
The troupe was scheduled to begin performances in Pittsburgh on April sixteenth. They spent the few extra days rehearsing, preparing to face the audience from a new stage.
Rose was glad for the delay for another reason—it was a year since she had sailed on the Titanic, since she had met Jack, and since the Titanic sank—and the anniversary caused her more emotional upheaval than she expected. She had grown and changed a lot in the past year, and was no longer the spoiled, naive rich girl that she had once been, but the anniversary, and the subsequent explosion of newspaper headlines commemorating it, brought back a lot of memories. Evelyn had learned a song about the sinking, which she sang on the train to Pittsburgh, unaware of how it was affecting Rose.
Rose had felt a sense of shock when she had first heard the song, but soon formed the opinion that it was a good way to remember those who had died on the ship. She had quickly memorized the lyrics of the song, entitled The Titanic (It Was Sad When That Great Ship Went Down), and sang along with Evelyn, who commented that Rose seemed to inject just the right amount of sadness into the song, almost as though she had been there, or knew someone who had been. Rose just shrugged, unwilling to talk about the experience.
When the troupe reached Pittsburgh, a pleasant surprise awaited them. For the four weeks that they would be in Pittsburgh, the management had rented private rooms for each company member in a small, inexpensive hotel. While less luxurious than their usual accommodations—there wasn’t any room service, and they had to clean their own rooms and change their own sheets for the duration of their stay—at least they had more privacy than usual.
Rose was grateful for the greater privacy. While she didn’t mind sharing a room with Evelyn, she was finding the first anniversary of the Titanic’s sinking difficult to deal with, and was glad to be alone.
Rose went to the rehearsals, and acted with her usual enthusiasm and skill, but after the rehearsals were over she wanted only to retreat to her own room and think about the past. Evelyn and Richard encouraged her to accompany them to various places in the city, and Rose did for the first three days in Pittsburgh, accompanying Evelyn to the moving pictures on April twelfth, and accompanying Richard to dinner on April eleventh and thirteenth. But on April fourteenth, she refused to go anywhere, and after rehearsals were done, she retreated to her room, reliving in her mind every moment of that last night on the Titanic, from flying with Jack on the bow, to the drawing, to the Renault, and finally the horrible moment when the ship had struck the iceberg, followed by Cal’s attempt to frame Jack, her rescue of him, the moment that she had jumped from the lifeboat to be with Jack, and the ship’s final plunge into the sea.
Rose sat up all night, watching the clock and remembering each moment as it had happened a year earlier. The water had been so cold that night; she hadn’t thought that she would survive. But she had, and instead Jack had died, frozen to death in the frigid waters of the North Atlantic. She remembered her frantic attempts to wake him up, and then letting go of his hand and watching him sink into the icy waters. The next morning, Cal had found her on board the Carpathia and she had been trapped in her old life again until she had summoned the courage to run away on her wedding day and begin a new life.
The sun was rising on the morning of April 15, 1913 when Rose came to a decision. She would never forget Jack, but he was gone. He wasn’t coming back, and she could spend her whole life mourning and missing out on the joys of life, or she could move on and experience everything that life had offer. That morning, at sunrise, Rose said a silent good-bye to Jack. Part of her would always love him, but she was alive, and she needed to move on, to live.
Evelyn commented upon the change in Rose. Rose had always had a lot of enthusiasm for life, but it had always been tinged with a bit of sadness, which had grown more pronounced over the past few days. Now, Rose seemed to be at peace with life, and with herself. She laughed more freely, and had more of a spring in her step. The sadness that had always been just below the surface was gone, replaced by an enthusiasm for the joys and pleasures of life.
Rose had finally admitted to herself that, yes, she was attracted to Richard. She didn’t love him, of that she was certain, but the chemistry that the director had noted was genuine, and, despite their frequent arguments and their exchanges of insults, there was a mutual attraction that neither could deny.
After the first performance in Pittsburgh, of As You Like It, Rose allowed Richard to escort her to dinner to celebrate. The performance had been a resounding success, with a packed theater and the audience demanding eight curtain calls. Rose had received several bouquets of flowers, some of which she generously tossed to members of the audience before finally retreating backstage.
Richard took her to one of the pricier restaurants in Pittsburgh, earning the glares of several members of the upper class who did not feel that common actors belonged in their midst. Rose ignored the glares—she had long since stopped worrying about what high society thought—and concentrated upon enjoying her dinner. She had been to this restaurant before, with Cal, but it was far more pleasant with Richard, even though he couldn’t afford the more expensive entrees.
Rose had a good idea of how Richard wanted to end the evening, and she intended to let it happen, not in payment, and not out of gratitude, but because she wanted to. She had no intention of ever playing the whore again, but entering into an affair because she wanted to was a different matter entirely.
Rose was a little nervous, and drank more wine than usual, but at the end of the evening, when she followed Richard to his hotel room, she did not regret doing so. She didn’t delude herself into believing that Richard loved her, or that she loved him, but there was a mutual attraction between them that translated itself into a lusty affair.