Carnegie's Maid

by Marie Benedict

  How does life fare at Fairfield for you and Tom, Mother? Do you still attend and host tea with the Reynolds Street ladies? Does your lady’s maid, Clara, continue to meet your high standards? Does she fare well herself?

  Mrs. Carnegie stopped reading aloud and looked over at her younger son. “How kind of Andrew to inquire after the staff, Tom. Don’t you think? He could have just as easily spared the paper. Such a generous spirit.”

  I wondered at Mr. Carnegie’s question, which I understood he meant for me. How did I fare, in these bleak days without him?

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  December 2, 1865

  Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania

  Mrs. Vandevort held out her teacup for Hilda to refill. The kitchen maid glanced over at me with an unpleasant look visible only to me. It was a familiar expression, one that telegraphed her irritation at having to pour tea when she had piles of work in the kitchen while I was merely standing there doing nothing, chatelaine in hand. If her glowers weren’t so commonplace, I might have sympathized with the inequity in our positions.

  “It sounds as if the boys’ recent time in Germany was particularly well spent,” Mrs. Vandevort said to my mistress, Mrs. York, Mrs. Coleman, and her daughter, Lucy. The ladies had gathered around the parlor after dinner for tea and sweets, while the men retired to the library for cigars and port. In the low gaslight, enveloped by the scarlet and golden hues of the parlor walls and furnishings, even the wrinkly Mrs. York appeared softly attractive.

  “Indeed. Andra sent us fine accounts of their tour of Dresden. It sounds as if the boys enjoyed their evening at the Semperoper,” Mrs. Carnegie answered.

  I flinched at her botched pronunciation of the Dresden opera house. Although I was no student of German, even I knew her delivery was awful.

  “Oh, it did sound wonderful,” Mrs. Vandevort concurred, sipping from her teacup.

  My mistress placed her cup in its saucer, reached into the generous folds of her black silk gown, and retrieved a letter. I knew this moment would arrive. Due to the frequency of Mr. Carnegie’s letters, she usually had the upper hand in terms of information on the boys’ travel, and she delighted in wielding it.

  “May I share with you a snippet from a letter I just received from Andra?”

  Mrs. Vandevort could not suppress a sigh, whether of frustration or resignation, I could not tell. “Of course,” she said. “I welcome any news of our sons.”

  Mrs. Carnegie cleared her throat and said, “I will skip directly to the most interesting part… Ah, here it is.”

  To stand on Mount Vesuvius in the early morning mist, looking down on the once-great city of Pompeii, is to brush against history. The boys and I could almost hear the rumblings of that fatal morning when the eruption began. With the azure ocean on the horizon and the picturesque mountain to our backs, we could envision how the Pompeiian people might have been lulled to complacency even with the first rumble of the volcano. But once we descended from the mount to the city below, we sensed no complacency. Instead, examining the discoveries of the archaeological excavations, we felt the urgency of their ancient plight, almost as though we were reliving that horrific day along with the poor Pompeiian citizens. Because volcanic ash fell from Mount Vesuvius upon the Pompeiians, burying them intact, we can see precisely how the Pompeiians lived and how they died. The House of the Faun with its astonishing mosaics, in particular, provides the most intact, incredible example of the sophistication and erudition of these earlier people. How unexpectedly advanced they were. This visit to Pompeii made us all reflective—history seemed alive and close to us—and the boys were uncharacteristically quiet on the train ride back to Naples. It seems we were all wondering how history would view us.

  “A most moving rendering of their visit,” Mrs. Vandevort said.

  My mistress sat back in her chair, a self-satisfied, almost smug grin forming on her thin lips. “It is, isn’t it?”

  “I only wish I’d brought my latest letter to share with you.” Mrs. Vandevort set her teacup down on the table to reach for a cocoa flummery, one of the pastries laid out by Hilda. “What do you make of this ‘Committee on Matrimony’?”

  Mrs. Carnegie stopped chewing her almond cake midbite. “What matrimony committee?” She attempted to sound nonchalant, but I heard the alarm in her tone.

  “Do you mean your Andrew hasn’t written to you about it?” Mrs. Vandevort tittered, reveling in her rare superiority of information.

  “Of course he has,” she bluffed. “I just can’t recall the details at the moment.”

  The word matrimony jolted Mrs. Coleman out of her seeming somnolence, perhaps because of the specter of Miss Coleman’s marriage to the younger Mr. Carnegie. “Please do tell, Mrs. Vandevort. I am certain Lucy and I would be interested in hearing about this committee,” Mrs. Coleman urged, leaning into the conversation.

  “It seems that our European travelers have formed themselves into a committee of sorts, making lists of the beauties of Pittsburgh and discussing their qualities as potential brides.” Mrs. Vandevort glanced over at Lucy and said, “No doubt you’d be at the top of the list, my dear, except that you are very nearly a married woman.”

  Miss Coleman’s fair skin turned a vivid shade of pink. Even though she’d conducted meetings with a dressmaker to design her bridal gown, she couldn’t stop herself from blushing at the thought of what an actual marriage would bring.

  Given that the “Committee on Matrimony” did not involve her own daughter’s marital plans, Mrs. Coleman’s interest faded, and she went back to her usual stillness. The floor returned to Mrs. Carnegie. “It sounds as though young Mr. Vandevort is having a bit of fun with you. I cannot imagine our sons and young Mr. Phipps making lists of eligible brides.”

  “Oh no, Mrs. Carnegie, the boys are in earnest. In fact, I understand that at least two of the young men have identified serious prospects.”

  For once in her life, my mistress was shocked into silence. And although I had not consciously thought about Mr. Carnegie in the specific context of marriage, I found very unsettling the idea of him marrying one of the Pittsburgh “beauties” I’d seen at various social functions. The exchange he and I shared during his send-off dinner returned to me, and my cheeks burned. My reaction to this talk of Mr. Carnegie paired with someone else made patent my continued affection.

  “Although,” Mrs. Vandevort continued, “my son confessed that it is possible that the young ladies they have designated may not be aware of their intentions. And may not agree.”

  The ladies laughed, and I watched as my mistress attempted to laugh along with them. The talk turned to the travelers’ next destination, and much to Mrs. Carnegie’s relief, her youngest son strode into the room to call the evening to a close. He had an early morning train to catch, he announced, and he offered his apologies to the group.

  As my mistress bid farewell to her guests, I readied her bedchamber for her evening’s ablutions. Uncharacteristically quiet when she entered the room, I removed her dress and undergarments in complete silence. She still did not speak as I rubbed her favorite rosewater cream into her face and hands, brushed her hair two hundred licks, and buffed her nails to a sheen with a chamois. If she did not wish to initiate conversation, it was not my place to do so, and in any event, I knew why she was so quiet. I did not wish to speak of it either. My own mind was muddled with the idea of Mr. Carnegie marrying.

  As Mrs. Carnegie stared absently into her mirror, I curtsied and turned to leave. I felt her hand on my arm, holding me fast. “You don’t really think he’ll come home with a bride in mind, do you, Clara?”

  I hoped not, but I didn’t know. I knew that wasn’t what she wanted me to say, so instead, I said, “I cannot imagine he has the time or inclination for anyone or anything but his work or his family.”

  She met my eye in the mirror. “Truly?”

  “Truly.”

/>   “What would I do without you, Clara?”

  A year ago, those words would have been the fulfillment of my dream. I had become indispensable. But I had changed.

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  December 26, 1865

  Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania

  “The Carnegies are really making their mark on you, Clara,” Maeve called across the single room that served as the entire first floor of their tiny Rebecca Street home. She was washing the potatoes and carrots I’d brought with me for our belated holiday meal in the water she kept on low boil over the hearth. None of the Slab Town houses had running water, and the well water used by the local families smelled foul without extensive boiling.

  “Why do you say that, Maeve? Is it the fancy cut of meat?” I yelled back, a necessity given the noise of the five children and the loud grinding of the mill that served as their backyard. Knowing where I was headed for the single holiday day I’d been granted by the Carnegies for the Christmas season, Mr. Ford wished me a “Happy Christmas” as I walked toward the servants’ door to catch my train and slipped a wrapped joint of roast beef inside the basket in which I carried some vegetables and a loaf of bread.

  Hands full of scrubbed potatoes and carrots, Maeve marched over to the kitchen table and laid them out for me and her eldest daughter, the almost seven-year-old Mary, to peel.

  “No,” she said with a laugh. “Although I do appreciate the beef. I can’t say that I’ve ever tasted such a fine cut before, and I cannot wait until Patrick sees it when he comes home from the foundry.”

  Patrick’s employer was not as generous as the Carnegies. He worked not only Christmas Eve and the day after Christmas, which was traditionally a holiday, but also worked Christmas Day too. The mill had a backlog of contracts, making a day off—even Christmas—unfathomable for its employees.

  “Then what do you mean that the ‘Carnegies have made their mark on me’?” I asked her, scrubbing furiously at the grime covering the kitchen table once Maeve turned her back toward the hearth. While I could not bear to allow the clean potatoes and carrots to touch the black-smut-covered table surface a second longer, I also couldn’t bear to embarrass Maeve by washing the table in her line of sight. I never wanted her to think I judged her or her home and found them wanting.

  “It’s your speech, Clara. You sound so posh. Like some fancy Dubliner instead of a farm girl from Galway,” she said with a glance at me. Slender after the birth of her fifth child, who had displaced the fourth one from her hip, Maeve still had the same dark circles under her eyes. If anything, the circles had gotten blacker from the exhaustion of another child. “You even carry yourself like one of them Carnegies.”

  I’d grown so accustomed to acting the part of Clara Kelley, lady’s maid, that I’d almost forgotten how to behave as the real Clara Kelley. “I hadn’t realized. I’m sorry.”

  “No need for apologies, Clara. It’s just an observation. Funny, really. Anyway, Patrick tells me that you and your sisters were always a bit different. Your father educated you to think like men, he says.”

  Maeve’s words took me aback. Not that she meant any offense; no, that wasn’t her intention at all. Maeve was a plain speaker, and she was just repeating the generally held perception of my family. It seemed that I’d been an outsider for longer than I’d realized.

  “We might have to bring out the farm girl again if we’re ever to get you a husband,” she said with a laugh.

  A husband? I stopped scouring the table, praying to Mary that Maeve and Patrick hadn’t planned any matchmaking for the evening. But Maeve’s eyes were elsewhere. She was busy juggling the baby on her hip and tending to the beef sizzling over the fire. Perhaps she was simply joking.

  The front door slammed, sending a shudder throughout the rickety house. Patrick kneeled on the floor so that Mary, Anthony, and John could fly into his arms. As he allowed his children to crawl all over him, Maeve smiled, not seeming to notice or mind that each child’s face came away smeared with the filth of the foundry that had seeped into every pore of Patrick’s body. Even though he’d washed in the communal neighborhood well before entering his home.

  I was relieved that Patrick arrived home alone. After Maeve’s remark, I had half expected a fellow foundry worker in tow. I wasn’t looking for a potential mate in Slab Town, although I could never say that to Maeve and Patrick.

  Patrick stood up, the children clinging to him like flowering jasmine on a vine. He hugged me, leaving a dark smudge on the white cuffs of my servant’s gown. “You’ve been too scarce, Clara.”

  “I’ve come when I can. You know how stingy employers are with holidays,” I answered with reference to his own overworked situation.

  “True enough. We’ve had to celebrate the season in fits and starts around here.” He sniffed the air. “What’s that I smell?”

  “Clara’s brought us a joint of roast beef for our holiday meal,” Maeve said.

  Patrick whooped. “I’ll have nothing but fine compliments for the Carnegies today, even if they have been withholding you from us.”

  I did not correct Patrick’s belief about the Carnegies’ largesse. “They might be stingy with free time but not worldly goods,” I echoed Patrick.

  “How is your master, Mr. Andrew Carnegie? A regular brick, is he?” He asked the question with a snide tone, expecting the worst. As he did from all employers.

  Warmth spread across my cheeks as I answered. “He’s not a bad fellow. When he’s around. He is still on that long European trip.”

  “You’re blushing, Clara,” Maeve accused me.

  “I most certainly am not.” The protest only made my cheeks feel more fiery. “It’s warm in here, Maeve.”

  Patrick interjected, “There better be no funny business, Clara. You know how those toffs can be.”

  “He’s no toff. He comes from a background like ours.”

  “Except he’s Scottish, not Irish. He’s rich now, not poor.” Patrick crossed his arms and stared at me. “And he’s your master, not your equal.”

  “It’s not like that. We just have the occasional pleasant conversation. Used to, anyway, before he left.”

  “Sounds to me like it’s a good thing he’s gone, Clara. Nothing good can come of a ‘pleasant conversation’ between a master and his housemaid. Not to mention that your father would kill me if I didn’t give you a stern talking-to.”

  “Well, consider your duty done. But you’ve wasted your breath for no sensible reason.”

  An awkward quiet descended as I busied myself with peeling the potatoes and carrots, little Mary at my side, and Maeve returned to tending the roast beef. Patrick tickled little John, and as his peals of laughter filled the room, the tension broke.

  “What do you hear from home, Clara?” Patrick called over to me from the spindly wooden chair he’d pulled close to the hearth.

  I froze. Uncertain of how widely known my family’s situation was and keeping in mind how maniacally private Dad was, I lied. “The usual. A rundown of which crops provided the best yield and what they’re laying in the cellars for the winter. Some village gossip about a family squabble over some land.”

  Patrick and Maeve glanced at one another.

  “Nothing else?” His voice held a peculiar tone.

  I stopped peeling and stared over at him. “What else should I be hearing?”

  Patrick, usually so fast with a quip, didn’t answer me.

  Maeve spoke instead. “She deserves to know.”

  He sighed. “The Fenians had planned an uprising simultaneously in New York and Ireland. They were backed by arms smuggled in from the United States and by American soldiers who’d just finished with the Civil War and were willing to fight as mercenaries. English authorities caught wind of it, and now they’re looking for Fenian leaders.” He paused. “Like your father.”

  “You’ve got your informati
on wrong, Patrick. Dad’s sympathetic to the Fenians but certainly isn’t active in the movement, let alone a leader. Sure, he dabbled a bit in the years after the famine, because he was furious with England for its unwillingness to help us when we were starving. The Fenian message of equality and freedom for all people made sense at that time, he told me. But that was years ago, although it is true that rumors of past Fenian sympathy were enough to make the Martyns take away some of the family land recently.”

  “So you know about the land?”

  “I know the Martyns were mistaken.”

  “Clara, I think your dad told you that to protect you. According to the letters we’re getting from home, your dad never really gave up his leadership role with the Fenians. The organization just went underground. And now, even though they’ve got no proof, the Martyns are under pressure from the Crown to crack down on your father. More than they have in the past.”

  My hands and voice trembled. “What does that mean?”

  “It means the Martyns have rescinded your family’s lease. No more tenancy, no more land, I’m afraid.”

  “Eliza told me,” I confessed. “But she said nothing of Dad’s current Fenian sympathies. She said the Martyns canceled the lease on the strength of old rumors.”

  “It is possible she doesn’t know, Clara.” He paused, shaking his head. “I know the lease rescission is precisely the sort of practice your father hoped to stop with his Fenian plans. He wanted fixity of leases’ tenure and the right for all people to own land, not just lease it. I’m so sorry, Clara. We all are. Your dad is a good man.”