Carnegie's Maid

by Marie Benedict

  The laughter subsided as Mrs. Vandevort asked, “Any word from the war?”

  Mrs. Jones responded. “My husband believes that the appointment of Ulysses S. Grant to general-in-chief of the Union Army by President Lincoln will bode well for our forces. General Grant plans on grinding down the Confederates with offenses on many fronts—Eastern, Western, and Mississippi.”

  “Your husband’s views are, of course, well founded, Mrs. Jones. But I cannot help but wonder whether this strategy of multiple fronts won’t lead to more casualties,” Mrs. Vandevort said.

  “So many young men lost already,” Mrs. Jones whispered with a slow shake of her head.

  None of the ladies in this room had lost sons or husbands, but certainly they knew many people who had. I watched as Mrs. Carnegie’s always-erect posture stiffened further. War talk made her uneasy. She felt as though she had to explain the presence of her sons at home instead of on the battlefield, even though no one would ever openly challenge the choices of Andrew and Tom Carnegie.

  Mrs. Carnegie interjected, “Andra dined with General Grant here in Pittsburgh when the general was journeying to and from Washington. General Grant, of course, knew Andra from his War Office days when he was in charge of military railroads and telegraph lines.”

  “How did Mr. Carnegie find General Grant?” Mrs. Vandevort asked politely. I sensed that the ladies understood what Mrs. Carnegie was trying to do.

  “During their dinner, the general spoke freely about his war plans. Andra found him to be shrewd and deliberate in his strategizing but without any affectation.”

  Mrs. Jones sighed. “Perhaps we are in good hands then.”

  Mrs. Carnegie looked relieved that her contribution was well received. I watched her gaze shift from her visitors to the mantelpiece clock. When she glanced toward me, I knew that I needed to find out why the tea and pastries had yet to be delivered.

  As I scuttled through the opulent entryway into the plainer back hallways that led to the kitchen, I thought how, most days, the war didn’t touch Fairfield. This luxurious cocoon was well-nigh immune to what was transpiring across the country. The war only impacted the Carnegies on their balance sheet.

  “Good afternoon, Mr. Ford.” The cook stood before his vast stove, alone in the kitchen, a rarity.

  “Good afternoon, Miss Kelley. Let me guess, the mistress is wondering where her tea has gone to.” Mr. Ford ambled over to the enormous wooden table commanding the kitchen’s center upon which sat a tray of bite-sized cakes. Miraculous how he managed to turn out magnificent foodstuffs with the war rationing.

  “You have guessed correctly, Mr. Ford.”

  “It seems as though our housemaid Hilda has gotten lost at the market. Lord only knows how she can take so long finding some onions,” he explained as he began filling the silver tea urn with hot water from the stove.

  “I would be happy to take the tea in to the ladies myself, Mr. Ford.”

  “Are you certain?” He looked surprised. It was outside the purview of the lady’s maid to actually carry trays and serve tea to larger groups, but I thought Mr. Ford understood by now that I did whatever was necessary to please Mrs. Carnegie.

  “It’s no trouble at all.”

  As he placed the silver sugar bowl and creamer upon the tray, he asked, “How is the call with Mrs. Jones and Mrs. Vandevort going?”

  “The talk has turned to the war.”

  He shook his head and whistled. Everyone at Fairfield knew the war was not Mrs. Carnegie’s favorite topic. “That’s got to be a tough subject right now.”

  “What do you mean, ‘right now’?”

  “Well, the elder Mr. Carnegie was just drafted into the Union Army.”

  My stomach lurched. Although I worried about his deployment for the sake of his mother, I’d grown fond of Mr. Carnegie since our exchange on the railcar and didn’t want him to risk his life. “You mean he’s going to fight in the war?”

  “No, Miss Kelley. Things would be a bit easier for the mistress with her society friends if he were. No, he’s paying for a replacement to take his place, though it’s possible the ladies don’t know about it.”

  “Won’t he get in terrible trouble for doing that?”

  “No, miss. The government created the Enrollment Act so that rich folk could avoid fighting. Perfectly legal.”

  “Who on earth would agree to take his place?”

  “Plenty of folk who need the money. Heard an Irish fellow right off the boat got $850 to fight for him.”

  I felt sick. Such an enormous sum of money would be hard for any desperate immigrant to resist. I shuddered thinking of that fate befalling Patrick. How could Mr. Carnegie, who proclaimed to staunchly support the Union cause and equality among all men, lure a desperate immigrant with no stake in America’s war to his near-certain death so that he might emerge from the war unscathed?

  Lifting the heavy silver tray, I thanked Mr. Ford and walked down the back hallway. As I drew nearer the receiving room, I heard a man’s voice among the ladies. I said a silent prayer that it was the younger Mr. Carnegie who’d stopped to chat with the neighborhood women. I didn’t know how I’d react to the elder after hearing Mr. Ford’s news. Even as I made my wish, I knew it wouldn’t be the notoriously shy Tom Carnegie regaling the ladies with stories.

  It was indeed Andrew Carnegie, standing in the room’s center, captivating the ladies with a tale about how his iron reinforced the beam of an unstable bridge minutes before the Union forces crossed it for a battle. He nodded to me as I lowered the silver tray to the sofa table but didn’t greet me by name. A personal welcome to a servant would have been most unorthodox, even for the democratically minded Mr. Carnegie.

  “There is no coffee on the tray, Miss Kelley,” Mrs. Carnegie said in a tone I knew to be condemnatory.

  “I am sorry, Mrs. Carnegie. I thought the ladies wanted tea,” I answered, blushing at the thought of Mr. Carnegie witnessing this chastisement.

  “Mrs. Vandevort is a coffee drinker. You should know that,” she said.

  “My apologies. I will return to the kitchen straightaway.”

  Moving as quickly as was appropriate toward the kitchen, I heard the heavy footsteps of a man echoing in the vast entryway behind me. I assumed Mr. Carnegie had taken his leave of the ladies and was heading into his study. Instead, the clop of his shoes followed me into the servants’ hallway.

  “Miss Kelley, a minute of your time, please,” Mr. Carnegie said.

  I turned toward him, shuttering my disappointment in him behind a small smile. “Of course, Mr. Carnegie. I am at your disposal.”

  “I have something for you.”

  “For me?” Had I left something behind in the receiving room?

  Reaching inside his jacket, he slid a wrapped parcel from his inner pocket and handed it to me. It felt surprisingly heavy in my hands. What was this item? And why was he giving me anything at all?

  “It’s a gift for you.”

  “A gift?” I was confused as to why the master of the house would be giving a present to a servant. Suspicion grew within me, and I instinctively took a step backward. Old Galway gossip about preyed-upon servant girls loomed in my mind.

  “Yes,” he said with a broad, innocent grin. He seemed unaware of the possible implications of his gift, but how could he be? He was no neophyte in the world, surely. “I’d be honored if you’d open it.”

  I didn’t know what to do. It was unsuitable for the master of the house to bestow a present upon a maid, particularly the lady’s maid who was under the specific control of the lady of the house. But I couldn’t very well reject his overture out of hand, improper though it was.

  Deciding upon a middle ground, I demurred. “While I’m most honored, Mr. Carnegie, I’ve done nothing to warrant such generosity.”

  “Oh, but you have, Miss Kelley. You’ve opene
d my eyes to the wonder of Mrs. Barrett Browning’s poetry.” He pressed the package into my hands. “I found a first edition of Aurora Leigh, and I want you to have it for your personal collection.”

  “No, sir, I am not deserving. Please allow me to return it to you. Perhaps you can place it in the library for the entire family to enjoy.”

  “It is my intention, Miss Kelley, that this book inhabit your room. You are used to a world larger than the one in which you now serve my mother. I insist that you broaden it, beginning with this gift. As Mrs. Barrett Browning says, ‘The world of books is still the world.’”

  Chapter Thirteen

  April 18, 1864

  Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania

  The day of service had been long, and I was weary. Still, I slid my sister’s letter out from between the pages of my green, embossed leather copy of Aurora Leigh where I placed it for safekeeping. I wanted to reread her strangely stilted words to see if a second reading would leave me with the same unsettled feeling. Her letter was short on personal information and long on questions about our cousin, my situation, anything but home. This was peculiar for Eliza, who knew me as well as she knew herself and would understand how desperately I craved news from Tuam. What was Eliza keeping from me?

  When the letter failed to give me comfort, I endeavored to secure answers.

  Dearest Eliza,

  Your last letter was woefully reticent on details about home, dear Sister, and heavy on the questions about this strange American land. While I know this country holds a natural curiosity for you, I sense a withholding on your part. Am I wrong to intuit this? I will indulge you, but only if you promise to spare nothing on every facet of life at home in your reply, especially Dad’s dealings with Lord Martyn.

  You ask about the similarity of the American people to our own. They share our language and certain of our customs, but there, the commonalities stop. The American people, all of whose ancestors, of course, hail from elsewhere, save the Indians, are cruder, plainer speaking than our own kind. At first, I found their manner brusque and off-putting, without any of the softness, nuance, and humor of our fellow Irish folk. Once I grew accustomed to it, however, I embraced its rough honesty, its lack of mystery about one’s standing. I have also come to appreciate the directness of the American people’s ambition. We Irish assume our status is immoveable and therefore bristle at any effort to climb above one’s natural-born station. There is no such assumption in America, and in fact, ambition is not only encouraged but rewarded. For men, I mean.

  This quality of ambition is abundant in droves in my masters and mistress, about whom you have peppered me with questions. Their ambition to succeed in business is, in fact, so intense that, but for their Scottish accents, I would not be able to distinguish them from the American born. The elder son of my mistress, Mr. Andrew Carnegie, is a natural leader and charismatic in his way, caring for his younger brother in an almost paternal manner. He also bears an innate kindness and sense of justice that I admire, although he was quick to shirk his responsibilities to fight in the American Civil War. He actually paid for some poor Irish immigrant to take his place in battle. Can you imagine Dad or Daniel paying someone to take their place in a war for democratic ideals? What does this say about the man?

  I paused in writing. I wanted to share more about Mr. Carnegie with Eliza, the sort of secrets we would share alone at bedtime. But I knew that Mum, Dad, and Cecelia would be reading this letter as well and stopped myself.

  Mrs. Carnegie is fierce and intelligent, nearly her son’s business partner in truth, but stingy with her affection. Only the elder Mr. Carnegie receives her unstinting love. She is demanding of my time and skills and demeans me everywhere but her bedchamber, where she solicits my opinions almost gently. I find her confusing, but I respect her. Together with her elder son, she means to change the American business landscape, and she will use this war that the northern part of America conducts with the south for this end.

  No, I have not made any friends among the staff. They hold me in strange regard. I am not the first Irish they’ve encountered, but I am perhaps the only educated Irish they have met. They are used to rural Irish like ourselves working in kitchens and as maids, but they are unaccustomed to domestics with the sort of rigorous education Father gave us. And they are suspicious of the freedom Irish women have to immigrate alone. They cannot understand how our menfolk allow us to travel so far from home unattended. They do not understand that, though we are far from our homeland, the tether binding us to our families and our values remains strong. Our duty never wavers.

  Please, in your next letter, tell me of home. Tell me of Mum, Dad, Cecelia, and the farm. Tell me of Daniel and your wedding plans. Tell me all the village gossip, no matter how trivial. Please tell me that your reticence does not mean something is wrong.

  Your loving sister,

  Clara

  Chapter Fourteen

  May 5, 1864

  Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania

  “Do you think a picnic would be appropriate, Clara? It may be early days, but it seems as though the Union’s position is quite strong, and it is well past our turn to host an event.” Mrs. Carnegie was staring out the window at the spring-bright morning, fresh with promising magenta and ivory buds.

  The verdancy of the day reminded me of early summer mornings in Galway, and with the reminder of home, my mood darkened. The gnawing sensation that something was amiss with my family had grown in the days since I had sent my letter to Eliza.

  “Revelry, of course, has been out of the question in recent weeks, but General Grant’s leadership of the Union armies seems to have lightened people’s spirits,” my mistress continued.

  She and I were alone. She was always at her softest, most vulnerable, when it was just us two. In public, she preferred wagging an accusatory finger at me for any number of invented violations. My mistress enjoyed wielding her newfound power and flaunting her status, and while I didn’t enjoy being the brunt of her displays, it added to my sought-after indispensability. Particularly since, in private, she relied upon my expertise, even though it was pretend.

  “I believe so, ma’am,” I answered as I turned my thoughts away from home and started brushing her hair the requisite two hundred strokes of the morning. “Not to mention that many would find the Senate’s recent approval of the Thirteenth Amendment to be reason enough for conviviality.”

  Several weeks earlier, I had overheard Mrs. Carnegie and her boys toast to the Senate’s decision to pass the constitutional amendment prohibiting slavery and involuntary servitude. That evening, I’d planned my own private celebration for the hour after I’d shepherded my mistress into bed. Once I bade her good night, I’d padded down to the kitchen to make myself a steaming cup of tea to sip on while rereading the moving discourse on slavery in Aurora Leigh. But the kitchen wasn’t empty. To my astonishment, Mr. Ford was sitting at the kitchen worktable—a first for the hardworking cook—and he was crying.

  The sight of the enormous man, usually jovial, wracked by emotion shook me. “Are you quite all right, Mr. Ford?”

  He smiled through his tears. “I’m better than all right, Miss Kelley. I never thought I’d live to see the day that the federal government would ban slavery.”

  Relieved that his tears were happy ones, I sat down next to him. “It’s wonderful news, isn’t it?”

  “It’s more than wonderful, Miss Kelley. It’s miraculous. It means that if the Union wins this war, I might see my wife and daughter again. Walking free down the streets of Pittsburgh, just like me.”

  His disclosure surprised me. “I didn’t know you had a family, Mr. Ford.”

  “It’s too painful to talk about it most days.” He wiped his face with the edge of his apron and sighed deeply. “But not today.”

  To encourage him, I placed my hand over his and asked, “Do you mind telling me about your family?”

&nbs
p; He didn’t answer at first, just stared down at my pale white hand atop his wide, brown one. Keeping his eyes fixed upon our hands, he said, “My wife, Ruth, has golden eyes. Not the usual chocolate brown of my people, but flecked with gold so they sparkle in the sunlight. And my daughter, Mabel… Well, she’s got those eyes too. On a warm summer evening with the sun setting, you should see the pair of them all lit up.” He chuckled.

  I smiled. “They sound lovely.”

  “Lovely, yes, but tough too. Ruth anyway. Mabel was just five back then. Ruth was the one who made the plans and pushed us to run.”

  “Run?” I didn’t understand what he meant.

  He looked up from our hands and stared into my eyes. “Run from the plantation, of course.”

  I felt stupid. How could I have not understood that Mr. Ford had once been a slave? And that his family was still enslaved? It made my worries about my own family pale by comparison.

  My eyes welled up with tears. “I’m so sorry. Where are they now?”

  He withdrew his hand from mine. “I don’t know. The last I saw them was on the underground rail. We were in a tunnel in North Carolina that connected to the basement of a church that took in runaways, and we heard dogs barking overhead. I was the master’s cook, and I knew he wouldn’t let me go without a chase from his precious hunting dogs. The barking got louder and louder. So loud, we knew the men and the dogs were down in that tunnel with us. I pushed Ruth and Mabel onward—toward the passageway into the church—while I stayed behind to fight off the men and dogs as best I could. I knew it was their only chance. When the dogs came tearing at me, I realized that Ruth and Mabel hadn’t gone ahead like I’d told them to, that they’d returned to fight alongside me.” He grew quiet. “The next thing I remember is lying under a collapsed section of the tunnel. Ruth and Mabel were nowhere to be found. Believe me, I looked.”

  Words failed me. But I couldn’t let his story go unacknowledged, so I stammered out a few inadequate condolences. “I’m terribly, terribly sorry, Mr. Ford.”