Chapter 1 - An Introduction to my Situation
I was just a few days past my sixteenth birthday when first I arrived in Saratoga. My journey had been sped by the marvel of a rapid and smooth rail coach, and I often wondered at the miracle of such a speedy and modern appliance. My entire trip had been by such new means, first a steamship to the Americas and then a railroad trip. Why, even the nature of my appointments had been made by transatlantic telegraph! It was no wonder that the world marveled at these impetuous Yankee engineers. There seemed no end to what their ingenuity would conjure.
I should explain. My name is Caroline Pendrake, and I was born in the Year Of Our Lord 1880. Now, as I look back at that time, even as our world speeds alarmingly towards an almost inevitably terrible conflict, I am still awed by how my own small piece of it changed that summer.
In a way, it all started several years before, when my parents died in the London typhus epidemic of 1893. Looking back with the benefit of hindsight, I can realize it was only a minor outbreak, yet for my loving parents it was major enough. Certainly hundreds died, and countless thousands were laid ill. The only reason I survived is that by then I was living in a boarding school, Mrs. Pembleton's School for Young Ladies, a finishing school as it was called.
My father was a military attaché attached to the Foreign Office, and as such was routinely posted to embassies all over the Continent. Once I was old enough to live on my own, albeit in a supervised environment, I was placed in a boarding school. Both he and my mother felt that a military lifestyle in lands where the Queen's English was unknown was no life for me. Summers I would spend with them, viewing castles and forts with my father, and attending various embassy functions with my mother.
In many ways I was quite content. They were both quite affectionate with me, but some of the places they were stationed were terribly horrid. Most people would think of a military attaché as being stationed in one of the great capitals, such as Paris or Berlin, but my father, bless his dear departed soul, was an over-aged captain in an era without a war. He was stationed in places such as Carpathia, or Ruthenia, or even, try as I might to forget it, Slovenia.
Oddly enough, when they died in the plague, he was between assignments and they were living in London. Since my mother was an only child, and had no surviving family (most having died in the Sepoy Mutiny in India years before), one of my father's few relatives, a second cousin was named my guardian. Little did this change my life, since what few savings my parents had were spent in sending me back to school immediately after the funeral. It was perfectly obvious that for a young woman in my situation, that is, a middle class orphan with a good name and respectable education yet little money, I would most likely need to earn my way in life as a school teacher or governess until I married. Realistically, this was little different than my prospects before my parents died, and I had never expected any other, and was perfectly content with my life.
In truth, everyone seemed to think I would have little difficulty in finding a marriageable husband, even without a penny to my name. I must admit, that I have a good education, although at the time it was rather conventional, a keen sense of humor, and an agreeable disposition. Most others never seemed to take note of these qualities and instead focused on those qualities which a woman does best to blush at, my face and my figure. Yet, even then, when brushing my hair in front of the looking glass, in my heart of hearts, I would often agree with my flatterers.
I am not a tall person, being only a bit over five foot, and barely weigh more than a hundredweight. Nowadays, women look back on the corsets worn by proper Victorian ladies with horror, yet at the time it was little imposition on me, as I was, and am, very narrow-waisted and could easily fit into the smallest corset. I must report, however, that this tended to make my bosom quite conspicuous, forcing what few pounds I possessed up and out as it were, and inasmuch as a generous Creator has already blessed me with a considerable ampleness in this regards, my figure seems much like the proverbial hourglass, with more time to pass than had passed. My limbs are lithe enough, and I still have slim and elegant wrists and ankles. My hair is a golden yellow, and hangs to my waist when unfettered, which is often, and my eyes are a deep blue.
Mind you, in those days, little of a women's figure could be seen. Certainly, anything above the ankle was cause for a scandal, if not a public stoning! In fact, the fashion of the day was that even married couples would not see each other, but would perform their marital relations in the dark. I have always felt that this has been a precept more often obeyed in the breach than not.
So it was expected that once I left Mrs. Pembleton's, with a few introductions into polite society, I could be assured of marrying an up-and-coming young man with prospects, or perhaps an older widower with money. Some of my more worldly friends suggested that I try for both, an older man to provide me with an income, and a younger man, to be more "vigorous".
Things changed for me only a few years later, when my second cousin suffered a stroke at Christmas time. He was a rather elderly gentleman for whom I felt not the love for a parent but rather a more distant affection. For his son, I had less emotion than that. He was a cold man, old enough to be my father, and at our first interview, he informed me that at the end of the school year I was to be matriculated, regardless of my feelings. He saw little use in the education of females, he said, and would certainly not keep up the needless expense. I was welcome to stay with him and earn my keep, but the cold glint in his eyes as he perused my form told me of the sordid way he intended for me to do so.
I politely thanked him for his offer, ignoring the obvious plan he had in mind, and contacted my father's solicitor, whose name I obtained from Mrs. Pembleton. In a letter, I explained my situation and asked whether there were any other relatives yet existent upon whom I could turn in my hour of despair. I also discussed with Mrs. Pembleton my circumstances, and she promised to begin searching for a situation to my liking.
You cannot imagine the extent of my surprise when a few months later, Mister Carruthers, my father's solicitor showed up at the school and asked to see both me and Mrs. Pembleton. It turned out that there was another relative, a rather distant cousin from an offshoot Scottish branch of the family that had settled in the Americas. He had forwarded my letter to this cousin and a reply had just arrived.
"It is really quite unusual.", he commented. "There was no letter, simply a quite lengthy telegram specifying that you and an accompanying adult be provided with first class steamship tickets to New York. Once there, you are to stay the night in a place called the Waldorf Astoria, then the next day take a rail coach to a place called Saratoga Springs, where you will be met, presumably by the gentleman, a Mister James MacAllister. I can't say as I've ever seen anything quite like this before."
"An accompanying adult? I don't understand.", I replied.
