by Mark Dunn
Saturday, July 18
Oh miracle of miracles! While Aunt Carolyn, Mother, and I were leaving the School of Household Science late this morning after attending a demonstration on bread-making, I spied M.K. carrying a basket of laundry across the footbridge that goes to the Inn. I excused myself and went directly to her. I apologized for missing our appointment and she accepted my explanation with jolly grace. I vowed that I would see her at the Pagoda the very next day at 2:00.
It is after one o’clock in the morning as I write this. I can scarcely sleep. It has now been three weeks since I got here and M.K. is the first real friend I can claim for myself. I don’t care that she works here. It is not her fault that diminished circumstances have required she support herself in this way. I just know that she is funny and wise, and I absolutely cannot wait to spend the afternoon with her.
Sunday, July 19
I reached the Pagoda at the appointed time and M.K. wasn’t there. My heart sank. I wondered for a moment if she was playing a trick on me for what I did to her, but then at five minutes past the hour she arrived, breathless, her face red with cheer. She picked me up and spun me around and set me down and said how happy she was to see me.
We took a hike deep into the woods beyond the bluff and I knew that the farther we went the more trouble I was going to be in when I returned, especially since I was destined to miss the late afternoon vesper service and set Mother to worrying over what had become of me. I knew Aunt Carolyn would be particularly unhappy (which she was), for she alone has come to the conclusion that I am an apostate child, a deserter of my faith.
M.K. taught me how to smoke a cigarette, as sophisticated women in the big cities do and working women do throughout the land. I coughed and choked and felt woozy in my stomach, but I wanted so much to please her. I cannot say this with certainty but I’m feeling a fondness for her that I’ve never felt for anyone before. It frightens me and makes me joyously happy at the same time.
Before we hiked back down to the Chautauqua grounds, M.K. kissed me again, this time upon the lips, and I could hardly demur at such a concerted and affectionate overture. I kissed her back with wanton abandon and felt dizzy in her embrace.
M.K. said the word. She said it boldly and without a moment’s hesitation.
Love.
Monday, July 20
This is the week that the Epworth League Institute descends upon New Piasa Chautauqua and there are hundreds of people coming and going who were not coming and going only a couple of days before. There are to be lectures throughout the week about temperance reform and Christian citizenship and Methodist missions, and there will be prayer meetings and sermons and addresses and Bible study. And M.K. cannot see me until Sunday. She doesn’t even get her usual Tuesday afternoon off because of all the new lodgers at the inn, all of them expecting their rooms to be just as clean, says M.K., as their whiter-than-snow Christian souls. M.K. is a Roman Catholic and she laughs when she contemplates hanging a picture of Pope Pius X in each of these rooms to see how the Epworthians will react.
This morning Mrs. Ford talked about “Milk as a Food.” I could scarcely concentrate.
Tuesday, July 21
Mrs. Ford talked about “Meat as a Food” this morning and demonstrated receipts that naturally included meat. Mother said that I seemed inattentive. I said I wasn’t feeling well and then stole away to the Inn in hopes of seeing M.K. Alas, I couldn’t find her. M.K. said that sometimes she is kept in the laundry room for long hours. I think I will call her Cinderella the next time I see her. I wonder if the original Cinderella was also a Roman Catholic.
Wednesday, July 22
This morning Mrs. Ford gave a demonstration having to do with “Cornmeal as Food.” Afterwards when I was walking back to the hotel, who should stop me upon the lawn, but M.K.! She said she missed me desperately and that it was a tragedy we should only be able to see one another on Sunday afternoons. She asked if I might be able to steal away this evening and come to the boardinghouse where she lived with some of the other housemaids. She said she would be waiting for me on the porch in the rear no matter what time I should come.
I missed her so terribly and said that I would try, but I didn’t know how in the world I was going to make it happen, for I am sharing a bedchamber with my aunt. Aunt Carolyn has already asked where I spent the previous Sunday afternoon. (I wouldn’t tell her.) I absolutely deplore my aunt, whom I have begun to call behind her back “Miss Nosy Parker,” and several other things that I cannot put down here.
The day crept by so slowly. When night finally came I had to endure “An Evening of Dramatic Entertainment by the Morse School of Expression” with my mother. I returned afterwards to discover that Aunt Carolyn was already fast asleep in our room. Shortly thereafter my mother retired for the night and an hour later I felt that it was safe enough for me to creep out, traverse the hotel lobby—dodging the eyes of the night desk clerk—and make my way to the rooming house beyond the cottages. As promised, M.K. was there with open arms. We waited until the coast was clear and then stole up to her tiny room. There was a little crucifix on the wall and a framed photograph of an old woman on the bed stand. M.K. said that the picture was of her grandmother, who had raised her but who had died two years ago and left M.K to her own devices.
M.K. rolled cigarettes for the both of us, and we sat and smoked and talked about how different our life-journeys had been so far. Then M.K. put out her cigarette and took mine and put it out as well, and came to me and began to unbutton and unfasten me with tender, loving hands. A chill came over me, not only because nights at New Piasa Chautauqua are cool, but because there was a frisson of something absolutely wonderful that goosed my flesh—happiness made palpable in the presence of one who cared so deeply for me and whom I loved with equal ardor.
As we lay together in the dark, quiet room, things were whispered between us that seemed to meld our hearts from that moment forward. I fought the caress of sleep’s sweet entreaty, wanting so much to surrender to it in M.K.’s arms. In Mary Katherine’s arms. In Mary Katherine Healy’s protective embrace.
But I had to go. It was time.
“Don’t go,” she said. “Run away with me.”
“When? Now?”
“Tomorrow morning. You and me. We’ll go anywhere you like. I’m a vagabond, Jennie. Let’s be vagabonds together.”
“But what of my family? I’m my mother and father’s only child.”
M.K. pulled a strand of hair from my eyes. “You’ll write them. You’ll see them. But on your terms. You aren’t their little girl anymore. You’re a beautiful woman. And now you are mine.”
M.K. was robbed of my answer by a hard knock upon the door. “Who is it?” she called, pulling the covers up around us to shield us from potential interlopers.
“It’s Mrs. Barnes. Unlock the door or I shall unlock it myself.”
“Just a moment, please!” called M.K. There was trepidation in her voice. I had never seen her afraid before. “I must dress.”
M.K. pointed to the window with urgency. But how was I to dress and escape in so short a span of time? How was I to negotiate the fire escape from the third floor of this large house? It was an impossibility. M.K. saw that the broth was made. We would have no choice but to eat what we had set upon our table.
After she had drawn on her frayed dressing gown, she said, “Will you? Will you come with me?”
I didn’t answer. I couldn’t answer. I simply could not make such an important decision in the blink of an eye. In the blink of her eyes. Eyes that spoke so sweetly yet so urgently to me.
The door flung upon. Mrs. Barnes, the lady of the house, had company: my mother and my Aunt Carolyn. Mother appeared distraught. Aunt Carolyn seemed cool and self-possessed. This was, no doubt, the moment that confirmed whatever it was she had speculated about me—whatever she had finally said about me to my mother.
“Gather yourself up, Jennie,” said Mother in a voice that sounded broken and dispirited.<
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“You are never to see this girl again,” crowed my aunt, who appeared to be taking special delight in saying that which my mother in her present distressed state could not bring herself to say.
“That shouldn’t be a problem,” said Mrs. Barnes. “I will speak to Mr. Gillen this very night. Miss Healy will wake tomorrow morning to find that she is no longer in the employ of the New Piasa Chautauqua.”
“Come, Jennie,” said my aunt, her lips unpursing to utter her edict, then pursing themselves again in comical rectitude.
“Stay,” countered M.K.
“Upon my word!” ejaculated my horrified aunt.
“Come,” said my mother calmly, putting her hand out to me.
“Stay,” M.K. repeated through plump, Irish lips that only an hour before had blissfully explored every inch of my hungry, yielding body.
Time stood still.
The room grew silent.
I could not speak.
And then.
And then my heart cried out its need. It trumpeted its desire. I listened in ecstacy.
I attended.
And I obeyed.
“I am a grown woman now,” I said to my mother, taking care not to dignify my odious aunt with even an acknowledgement of her presence. “And I choose to be with M.K.”
Mother swooned, not nearly so melodramatically as did Miss Maude Willis when reading the part of the young mother who received news of her husband’s death upon the battlefield, but frightfully and painfully so. Yet in the end this display of maternal injury was insufficient to wring from me a change of heart.
I belonged to M.K. now.
And so I stayed.
Thursday, July 23
This morning Miss Dawson led the girls’ clubs in “rhythmic work.” The boys enjoyed “freak races.” My Aunt Carolyn listened to Mrs. Ford of the School of Household Science speak on the “value of fruit in the diet.” I understand there was a canning demonstration, as well. Mother didn’t attend. She spent that time saying goodbye to me. Papa, who had gotten word in the night, was there to bid me adieu as well. They didn’t need to tell me how strongly they opposed my decision to follow my heart. I commend them for registering their objection only through tears and plaintive expressions.
I don’t know if I’ll ever come back here. I suspect that the time of my “Chautauqua summers” has come to an end. There is so much I’ve learned in this place. Though I think, in the end, the heart is the best teacher of all. M.K. agrees. (That last sentence was penned by her own hand.)
1915
HAVING A SINKING FEELING IN THE NORTH ATLANTIC
And so they all sat down. And so the conversation began.
Elaine opened the gates to her memories of the trip and the dastardly act that abruptly ended it. Rich choked back tears and cursed the headache that underscored the pain of his own recollections, but held back not a single detail of his own part of the story. Will and Olive Donnell added their own harrowing account of the eighteen minutes that passed from the moment the torpedo hit to the last gasp of the great liner before she sank beneath the humanity-clogged waters off Old Head of Kinsale.
There was fresh corn soup and deviled clams. But the soup grew cold and the clams went untouched.
It was a chance meeting that brought the two couples together four years after the trip that nearly claimed their lives. One hundred and twenty-eight other American men, women, and children had not been so lucky. In all, the deliberate wartime sinking of RMS Lusitania took the lives of 1,198 of her passengers and crew.
Over the intervening years, none of the four had found the right time or place to share with family or friends the particulars of that tragic day, and so they—Elaine and Rich, and Olive and Will—had kept it largely to themselves.
The memories were the most oppressive for Elaine. The sinking was a ghost, haunting her and keeping her anxious, and frequently tearful. It sabotaged social gatherings. It stole all the joy from her heart.
At first Rich didn’t think that his wife would remain in the Donnells’ hotel room once the two couples had gathered for drinks. He worried that once conversation steered itself to the ill-fated voyage, Elaine would excuse herself to go and drink alone in the saloon downstairs and wait. She would wait until her husband had completed his visit. She would hide there in the saloon so that the couple couldn’t see the residual pain in her eyes or the look of practiced impassivity that so often characterized her public face.
But Elaine surprised her husband. She stayed. In fact, she remained for the entire evening, which was long and cathartic and, in the end, just the emollient her long broken spirit had required. Some of the things remembered and shared within that hotel room were these:
As the Lusitania backed herself into the Hudson River just after 12:20 p.m. on the afternoon of her departure, the ship’s band played “Tipperary” at one end, while a Welsh male chorus entertained passengers on the opposite end with “The Star-Spangled Banner.” The vessel’s final voyage began in brilliant sunshine.
One always approached Captain Will Turner with caution. As a rule, the crusty captain disliked most passengers, whom he called “bloody monkeys.” (The recounting of this fact constituted one of the evening’s few moments of levity.)
Elaine made the observation that there was an unusually large number of children on board for this particular crossing.
Elaine and Rich accepted an invitation to dine onboard with Alfred Vanderbilt. The multimillionaire was on his way to attend a board meeting of the International Horse Show Association for which he served as director. He was also planning to offer a fleet of vehicles for use by the British Red Cross. Vanderbilt had, coincidentally, booked passage on the Titanic in 1912 but changed his mind before it sailed. The dinner was a delight.
Just as they hadn’t bothered to heed the notice published in New York newspapers by the German Embassy warning American passengers against traveling on British vessels while a state of war existed between Great Britain and Germany, few bothered, as well, to read posted instructions on how to put on their life jackets. When the time came, many passengers tied them on backward or upside down, with fatal consequences.
As the Lusitania entered waters off the coast of Ireland and the dreaded danger zone, passengers were puzzled by the fact that there was no discernible increase in speed. They were told that the enveloping fog made such an increase a hazardous prospect. Additionally, the ship was conserving its coal in this way and keeping reserve steam up so that if a submarine were spotted she would have ample power at the ready to remove herself from harm’s way.
The Irish coast was the most beautiful shade of green Olive Donnell had ever seen. Its nickname “the Emerald Isle” was well deserved, she asserted.
In spite of London’s promise, there was no British escort.
Rich was among those who witnessed the approach of the U-boat’s torpedo. It cut through the water with moderate speed, followed by a spumy wake, akin to the trail of an outboard motor. At the time of impact, Elaine was lunching with friends she had made during the voyage. The explosion threw several of the women to the floor.
Will watched a plume of coal and debris rise high above the ship’s Marconi wires. This was followed by a wall of water that knocked him violently to the deck. A few moments later came a second explosion from somewhere within the ship.
The list to starboard made for great difficulty in launching lifeboats from the port side. Will and Olive watched in horror as the boats slammed into the side of the ship, spilling passengers—mostly women and children—into the waters below. Ropes snapped or slipped from the hands of those guiding the boats down. The lifeboats smacked the water like heavy stones.
Rich, on his way to meet up with Elaine in the dining room, chanced upon the ship’s doctor and its chief purser strolling up the Promenade Deck calmly chatting and smoking cigarettes. Rich asked the men if they had taken leave of their senses, only to be told that the captain had assured them the ship wasn’t going d
own. It would right itself soon and the worst would be over. Rich said that even if this were true there were still injured people both on deck and in the water in need of medical assistance. Rich, who was also a doctor, had, for his part, just finished attending to two such passengers only a moment before. The ship’s doctor took a breezy drag on his cigarette, announced his lack of desire to go anywhere, and indicated with a dismissive flick of the wrist that the colloquy was over. Rich, an amateur pugilist in college, responded by punching the doctor in the nose. The purser received a cuff to the jaw.
Having witnessed one deadly launch after another, both the Tattersalls and the Donnells realized that the lifeboats offered little guarantee of survival.
“And yet this is where they kept putting all those poor women and children,” said Olive. “I began to beg people to stay out of the boats—to wait until the right moment to jump, and then swim quickly away from the ship.”
Will nodded. “I watched a boat on the starboard side laden with passengers smash itself against the superstructure and splinter to pieces. I saw another fall stern-first directly on top of those poor souls who had just spilled out of the boat right next to it.”
“I remember the sounds of the day with the most clarity of all,” said Rich, the pages of his own catalogue of memories turning quickly before him. “The deafening scrape of wood against metal, the banging and clanging as the crew members tried to release the boats from the listing ship. The cries and shouts of frantic fathers and mothers; the bawling of lost children; the anguished moans of those suddenly crushed and mangled.”
Elaine took a sip of her Old Fashioned to moisten her dry mouth. “The little girl said her name was Harriet. She couldn’t find her mother. I instructed her to stay with Rich and me. She had no life jacket. Rich went off to find her one. The boat began to tilt at such a sharp angle that Harriet and I had to cling tightly to the rail to keep from being knocked off our feet. She said she was eight. I waited for Rich and he didn’t return.”
