Had She But Known by MacLeod Charlotte;

Author:MacLeod, Charlotte;
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Head of Zeus
Published: 2016-10-25T04:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 19

A Painful Good-bye, A Dubious Welcome

When Mary sent Tish to war, her heroine took along Lizzie, Aggie, and a bottle of blackberry cordial. Mary herself would be traveling alone, but no less encumbered. Not having any idea what, if anything, she’d be getting herself into, she prepared for all contingencies. Her outfit for the trenches included a tan coat and skirt of sturdy fabric, high-laced boots, a long, dark military cape, a man’s brown velour hat, a mackintosh, and an umbrella. She’d been told it rained a lot in the war zone. Along with her battle fatigues, Mary packed a few modish gowns, including one of white velvet, plus a set of ermine furs, a black velvet suit, and a tasteful assortment of jewelry. One never knew which foreign dignitary one might happen to meet; a member of the Sewickley Country Club in good standing could hardly go to visit a queen, much less a king, in high-laced boots and a mackintosh.

By the time Mary got through packing, her luggage consisted of a mammoth trunk, her hatboxes, her fitted dressing case, and one suitcase. At the last minute before boarding, she dashed into a New York store and snatched up a fur coat, which she casually charged off to the Curtis Publishing Company. This coat turned out to be the most practical thing she took with her. Next most useful, as it turned out, would be her umbrella. The white velvet gown remains an enigma.

Getting a cabin on the steamer Franconia had been no problem. Mary’s biggest difficulty was in saying good-bye to her family. Maggie the cook presented her with a small religious medal to hang around her neck and never, never take off because she’d need all the divine protection she could get. Stanley Junior sent a telegram from school, demanding to be taken along as his mother’s bodyguard. Stanley Senior came to stow his wife safely aboard, his stiff upper lip much in evidence. He hoped she’d stay out of trouble, but he had a dark foreboding that she wouldn’t.

So prominent a figure as Mary Roberts Rinehart had naturally been getting a good deal of publicity about her projected visit to the war zone. Her stateroom was filled with the customary bon voyage telegrams, bouquets of flowers, baskets of fruit; she added to the accumulation a complete suit made of rubber that she’d bought herself. As soon as the ship got torpedoed, assuming that it did, she was supposed to put on the suit and inflate it by blowing into an attached rubber tube. Since the United States was at this time still a neutral country, its vessels were supposed to be inviolate, but Mary’s innate distrust of things in general was still operating at full force.

As it happened, the old Franconia did get torpedoed and sunk, but at a later time on a different run when Mary was not aboard. This was a break for her; that rubber suit, had she ever managed to get it on, might have proven no more reliable than those fragile inner tubes in the Premier’s tires.

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