Andrew lifted one of his hands from mine and wiped away my tears. “This is not a day for tears, my dearest Clara. It is time to tell my mother.”
Chapter Forty-Four
April 6, 1867
Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania
Muck and refuse still clogged the dirt roads of Slab Town. Filthy, fatherless children still ruled the alleyways, while unemployed men gambled on street corners. Fire still sparked from the mills and foundries, dangerously close to the shanties hastily constructed up and down Rebecca Street. The smell of rotting food and human waste still permeated the air. But Slab Town could not touch me today. Andrew and I had agreed that he would speak to his mother in one week’s time, and I had written to my family to let them know their boat tickets would come soon. Only one week until my life would change.
Could this be my last visit to my cousins while employed by the Carnegies? The thought distracted me while I sidestepped piles of horse dung and dodged laundry swinging in the wind. I considered the different ways I might rescue the Lambs from this hellhole with Andrew’s resources at our shared disposal. I still hadn’t decided how I’d handle the arrival of my family with Andrew. Would I confess about my real background or embroil myself in another lie? That, I decided, was a bridge I could cross—to use one of Andrew’s favorite comparisons—once my family arrived safely. Their well-being was paramount.
Hurrying down Rebecca Street to the familiar lean-tos, I reached the rough frame of my cousins’ house. The thin door to the Lambs’ home rattled when I knocked. No one answered, even on repeated banging.
Where were they?
To my surprise, Patrick rounded the bend of Rebecca Street. “I was hoping I’d catch you, Clara.”
I was confused. “Have I come at the wrong time? Or the wrong day?”
“No, no, you’re spot on.”
“Where is everyone, then?”
“It’s just that”—he shifted his gaze to the ground, kicking at a stone—“we aren’t living here anymore.”
I wanted to ask him what happened, but I reminded myself of his pride in providing a single-family home, plentiful food, and hard-soled shoes for his family. He was obviously uncomfortable, and my inquiry might be too injurious to Patrick’s dignity. Instead, I asked, “Where are you living?”
“Follow me. I’ll take you there. Maeve and the children are waiting for you.”
We crossed Rebecca Street to the opposite side, and after walking for five city blocks, we came to a ramshackle house not unlike the Lambs’ previous house.
“Here we are.” Patrick pointed.
As we walked the remaining distance, I wondered why Patrick moved his family from one lean-to into another, essentially across the street from each other. He pushed open the thin wood door, and I expected to see Maeve and the children inside. Instead, a chestnut-haired mother with three towheaded children scampering around her feet nodded at us. An entirely different family inhabited the first floor of the house.
Our footsteps echoed as we tromped up the flimsy wooden staircase to the second floor. Once there, Maeve opened the door with her usual warm embrace. “Welcome, Clara.”
The children gathered around my legs, stumbling over each other as they hugged them. I knelt down to return their embrace, and from my pocket, I pulled a bag of cakes that Mr. Ford had slipped me before I left. As the children fought over who should get the largest cake in the bag, I stood back up and handed Maeve a basket brimming with three loaves of bread, a salted ham, baking potatoes, a side of beef, early asparagus, and apples. Maeve peeked under the cloth keeping the food safe from the dirt and soot endemic to the train travel to Allegheny City and squealed, “Clara, you shouldn’t have brought all this! This will keep us in meals for a week. What did you do, rob the Carnegies?”
Patrick chimed in. “She’s blushing again, Maeve. Will you look at that? Didn’t we warn her about having eyes for her employer?”
While I understood they were only joking, I felt unusually sensitive about the comments about the Carnegies, even protective of them. “It’s nothing like that. Mr. Ford, the Carnegies’ cook, knew I was coming to visit you, and he stocked the basket.”
Maeve sensed my unease and interjected, “Of course, we understand. Please thank Mr. Ford for us.”
As Patrick took my coat and placed it on a shipping box turned upside down to form a table, the only surface not crowded with drying clothes and Maeve’s needlework, and Maeve returned to her cooking, I got my first look at their new lodgings, a single room. Cots stacked upon each other in one corner, like the beds in the steerage of a boat crossing the Atlantic, and the room contained no other furniture save the shipping box and a single chair, which Patrick occupied. The windowless room stank of unwashed bodies, fire, refuse, and charred food, as the room had no fireplace or ventilation. Maeve cooked on a small brazier in the center of the space, with no choice but to disregard the danger of the flames. Trunks containing the remainder of their belongings were stacked in another corner, but from the filthy state of Patrick, Maeve, and the children’s clothes, the trunks had not been opened since they moved. A greasy layer of black smuts covered every surface and every person.
I was speechless at their circumstances. Was this how my family was living? Perceiving my discomfiture, Maeve offered a conversational topic. “Good to have you back from New York. We’re all looking forward to hearing stories about the big city. We are in need of some entertainment around here, Clara.”
In an attempt to avoid my obvious questions, Maeve and Patrick busied themselves with the meal and children, respectively, while I talked. When I couldn’t stand their obfuscation any longer, I asked, “Are you two going to tell me what’s going on?”
Patrick would not—or could not, perhaps—meet my gaze.
Maeve spoke for him. “Patrick lost his job in the mill.”
I was shocked. “What? Last I heard, the mill was so busy that you had to work double shifts. What happened?”
I directed my question to Patrick, but Maeve answered for him again. “You know Patrick worked as an iron founder with Iron City Forge?” she asked.
Although I knew the title of Patrick’s job, I never realized that he’d worked for Iron City Forge, one of the iron companies with which Andrew and his younger brother once had some dealings. Still, because I assumed that detail was peripheral, I nodded yes.
“About a year ago, Iron City Forge merged with a rival iron company called Cyclops Iron, forming a new company called Union Iron. This merger happened at the end of the Civil War, just as the demand for iron dropped.” Maeve continued to explain, but I began to worry about how this part of the saga—a merger of which I was familiar and knew that Andrew had orchestrated—impacted Patrick. “It seemed a change in name only at first. The mill continued at the breakneck pace to which it had grown accustomed for some months. But then, when iron prices plummeted, Union Iron decided that physical consolidation of its two parts—Iron City and Cyclops—was necessary. This meant they had too many men doing the same job. Some of the iron founders had to go, and Patrick was one of those men fired from his position.”
Perhaps this loss of employment was only temporary. Grasping at this possibility, I asked, “Surely there is work for iron founders in other mills?”
Maeve answered in her usual matter-of-fact way. “There’s no work for iron founders anywhere in Pittsburgh. The consolidation put loads of iron workers of all types out of work. We are living off savings and my needlework for now. We had to give up the house and move in with the Connors downstairs, another family that’s in the same situation, to share expenses. If Patrick doesn’t find work soon, I don’t know how we will manage.”
I felt sick with worry and guilt. “What about going home?” I clutched at prospects.
Patrick finally piped into our exchange, his voice angry. “Home? What work is there for me in Galway, Clara? Farming? My
dad lost his tenancy in the famine, and my brothers have been living hand-to-mouth themselves. There’s no work in Ireland, as you yourself surely know.”
“Another city?”
“We don’t have the money for the tickets, even if there was a guarantee of a job. No, Clara, I have to find work here in Pittsburgh. Or we will be lost.”
Chapter Forty-Five
April 6, 1867
Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania
My shoes echoed throughout Fairfield as I marched from the servants’ hall to the library. I didn’t care if the other servants, the new Mr. and Mrs. Carnegie, my mistress, or Andrew could hear me. There would be no more stealthy creeping behind the scenes for me.
I was done with being invisible. I was done with waiting. And I was angry.
Flinging open the door to the library, I found Andrew reclining on one of the leather chairs, smoking a cigar, and reading from his beloved Burns. He smiled at me and patted the matching chair next to him. “Come sit with me. Mother will not be home for over an hour, so we have time.”
“I think I’ll stand, Andrew.”
“What’s wrong, Clara?”
“I spent today with a distant relative of mine from Ireland on Rebecca Street—”
Andrew interrupted me. “That’s where we first lived when we came to Pittsburgh.”
I could not allow the unfathomable idea of Andrew and his family living in the slums of Rebecca Street to deter me. Returning to my purpose, I said, “My cousin used to work as an iron founder. Do you know what that is?”
“Of course. An iron founder works with the molten ferrous metal and supervises other men. It’s one of the more senior roles on the iron foundry floor.”
“My cousin Patrick used to work as an iron founder at Iron City Forge,” I emphasized.
“Ah, the company Tom once ran.”
“Yes, Tom ran Iron City before it was merged with Cyclops, the company you founded to compete with Iron Forge, to form Union Iron Company. I believe you orchestrated that merger?”
“Yes, I did. Excellent memory, Clara,” he said approvingly. “Although sadly, you had to learn about that plan by witnessing a rather unfortunate conversation with my brother.”
“Yes, this is all rather unfortunate,” I said, not bothering to hide my irritation. “Did you know that the merger that formed Union Iron led to the firing of hundreds of iron workers?”
He puffed on his pipe, seemingly oblivious to my anger. Was I not displaying it as clearly as I felt it? Perhaps my years as a placid servant had blunted my ability to show emotion. My anger mounted as I saw no evidence on his face of concern.
“Actually, Union Iron Mills itself was very recently reorganized into the venture of Carnegie, Kloman and Company, when one of our partners, Tom Miller, could not reach an accord with the other Union partners. I had been meaning to tell you so that you could update your chart. So to answer your question, technically, Carnegie, Kloman and Company fired hundreds of iron workers. A certain amount of redundancy in positions existed after the various mergers, necessitating the terminations.” He said these words matter-of-factly.
His calm only made me more furious.
“You do realize that those ‘terminations’ will devastate hundreds of families? They will lead directly to their homelessness and the starvation of their children. I thought you espoused equality and opportunity for all people, beliefs that you yourself benefitted from when you arrived in this country,” I yelled.
Andrew stood up. “Don’t you think you are being a bit dramatic, Clara?”
“Is it dramatic to watch your family members worry what will happen in four weeks when they can no longer afford living in a single room on the second floor of a shared ramshackle house? Is it dramatic to show concern about what will happen to your family when their money runs out in six weeks and they still cannot find jobs because they have no access to libraries or education to retrain themselves for some other sort of work?”
“I’ve never heard you talk about family in Pittsburgh before, Clara. Who are they? Why have you never mentioned them before? I would have liked to have met them.” He was changing the subject intentionally.
I almost blurted out the entire truth. Not only have I been hiding my family, but I have been hiding my real identity. Instead, I played his game and ignored his attempt at diversion. I asked, “Aren’t you troubled by the fact that, by undertaking all those iron company machinations to further your control and your income, you are hurting actual people? Immigrants like yourself. I thought you came from a Chartist family who cared about equality and who understood how the poorer folk are harmed when those in control—whether in business or in government—unwittingly alter the world around them.”
“Clara, in business, sometimes hard decisions have to be made. You know that. And unfortunately, sometimes people bear the brunt of those decisions. Anyway, you know we can help your cousin. I wouldn’t let family suffer.”
He hoped to placate me with an offer of help to my family. Once, his reference to my family as his own family would have elated me, but it didn’t now.
“Where is the concern, Andrew? The remorse? Not only for my cousin but for the other lives damaged by the ‘terminations of Carnegie, Kloman, and Company’ and for the human beings impacted by the stratagems you inflicted upon Keystone Telegraph, Keystone Bridge, Coleman Oil, Piper and Schiffler, and Woodruff Sleeping Car Company? I could go on and on. Don’t you want to find out how the people affected are faring? Offer them assistance, food, housing, money, training, anything? Don’t you want to find out how that poor Irish immigrant who took your place in the Civil War for a few hundred dollars is doing? Whether he survived? I bet that the Andrew who first came to this country would have done all those things. I feel like you’ve forgotten they are people, that they are you.” I paused and asked, “Have you forgotten who you are?”
We squared off against each other in a situation reminiscent of his fight with his younger brother about Cyclops Iron and Iron City Forge. Andrew’s face turned an angry shade of purple, and his fists clenched. His mouth opened, and his eyes narrowed, but before he could speak, a sound emanated from the entryway.
“Andra, is that you I hear?” The voice of his mother carried into the library.
We froze, midsentence and midgesture. The sound of my mistress’s footsteps grew louder, and before either of us spoke again, I turned away and walked toward the closed door. Swinging the door open wide, I almost ran directly into Mrs. Carnegie. Instead of curtsying in deference or apologizing for the collision, I marched straight past her, up the stairs, and into my tiny servant’s bedroom.
Chapter Forty-Six
April 7, 1867
Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania
I should have been glad for the respite. Mrs. Carnegie left Fairfield by carriage directly after she shared breakfast with the new Mr. and Mrs. Carnegie in the breakfast room, gifting me with an expanse of time for the smaller tasks of a lady’s maid—sewing, darning, and mending. But I wasn’t glad. I was worried.
My mistress had been unusually quiet and rigid during her evening rituals last night and her daytime preparation this morning. I was not privy to the justification Andrew had offered for our presence alone in the library or to his explanation for my obvious upset. I had not seen him since I stormed out. Because I did not know what he proffered, and because I had no understanding of what might transpire next, I matched Mrs. Carnegie’s quietude as I served her.
This silence alone would have provided fodder for concern, but her sudden departure without informing me of her plans was very troubling. She kept me abreast of every aspect of her schedule so that I could tailor my time accordingly, and indeed, I accompanied her on most of her calls. Where had she gone?
After an anxious hour in her bedchamber organizing her gowns, gathering mending, and looking for evidence of her whereabouts, I walked do
wn to the kitchen. The staff was in a flurry, readying a luncheon for the new Mrs. Carnegie to share with her friends, some of the younger set from Homewood. I wondered if this displacement caused my mistress’s exodus. Maybe her departure had nothing to do with me and Andrew.
“Will my mistress be back for the luncheon?” I asked Mr. Ford as he arranged tea sandwiches on a silver tray.
Hilda tittered in the background as Mr. Ford answered, “She hasn’t told you?”
Mock whispering to the new scullery maid, Anne, Hilda said for my benefit, “Isn’t the lady’s maid meant to know her mistress’s schedule?”
“No.” I spoke directly to Mr. Ford. “Our paths crossed this morning before we could review today’s calendar.”
“I can’t be sure, but I think I heard her say to the younger Mrs. Carnegie that she had an appointment downtown.”
An appointment downtown? She hadn’t mentioned it to me, and I usually accompanied her on those outings. Part of me longed to send a message to Andrew to inquire—about his mother, about us—but another part of me sensed danger. What in the name of Mary was happening? What did I want to happen now, after my quarrel with Andrew? Had I jeopardized my family?
The housekeeper’s parlor was mercifully empty of Mrs. Stewart, who was busy taking inventory of the linen cabinets. Without her negative chatter and gossip, I could better hear the goings-on of the house. I listened to Hilda and Anne dust the parlor, Mr. Ford hum while chopping vegetables for the day’s soup, Mr. Holyrod instruct James in the proper way of polishing silver, and the new Mr. and Mrs. Carnegie sneak a kiss outside the door to the breakfast room.
I heard everything but my mistress.
Finally, at four o’clock, six hours after her departure, her distinctive footsteps crossed the entryway. Dropping my mending, I raced up the back staircase so I could meet her at her bedroom door. No matter what had transpired with Mrs. Carnegie yesterday, no matter what had passed between myself and Andrew, I needed to know where I stood.
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