Her Heart for a Compass

by Sarah Ferguson

  Arrayed in a gown in her favourite turquoise with a dark-blue jacket, she set out for Delmonico’s, where she had arranged to meet Mary Louise and Jane for dinner. The restaurant, on Fourteenth and Fifth, near Union Square, was a ten-minute walk away. Last year Jane had, despite her best efforts, failed to persuade the Press Club to invite any female writers to the dinner given in honour of Charles Dickens unless they stayed hidden behind a curtain. Defiantly, she had, with Mary Louise and several other like-minded businesswomen, formed the Sorosis Club. Lorenzo Delmonico has offered them the use of the private dining room for their inaugural meeting, the first restaurant in New York to admit a ladies’ only club, and since then Jane and Mary Louise had become regular customers.

  Tonight was not a club event, with just the three of them for dinner, which meant waiting in line with the rest of the diners, for Delmonico’s policy was to offer tables on a first-come, first-served basis. When Margaret had first explained this in a letter last year, Julia had been outraged, not only by the notion of ladies actually queuing up to eat but by the idea of ladies dining in public. Victoria, in contrast, made no secret in her letters that she envied the various freedoms Margaret enjoyed and relished reading every detail of her shopping trips as well as the delights of Delmonico’s extremely expensive menu. In fact, Margaret found the atmosphere of hushed reverence in the luxurious restaurant rather overpowering, and the food too rich for her taste—though Marion had revelled in it—but she was looking forward to catching up with Jane and Mary Louise.

  She arrived early, and having ascertained that neither of them were in front of her, she took her place. Her friends had still not arrived by the time she reached the head of the line, and she was in the process of informing the maître d’hôtel that she was expecting two friends, when a stranger approached her. Dressed in an expensive brown wool suit, he looked to be around thirty. With short dark hair and brown eyes, he had the kind of frank, open expression that made him neither classically handsome nor memorable but genially attractive.

  “Excuse me, miss. I wonder, if you are still waiting on your friends to arrive, would you mind giving your position up?” he asked, indicating three older men standing some way back in the queue.

  “I beg your pardon?”

  “Ah, you are English. A visitor to New York, no doubt. I hope you are enjoying your stay in our fine city. Now, if you could oblige me, I would very much appreciate—”

  “I am Scottish actually,” Margaret interrupted, irked by his smooth, urbane manner, “and I am not a visitor but a resident with no requirement to oblige you. The policy, as every New Yorker knows, is that you wait in line at Delmonico’s no matter who you are.”

  “I am aware of the policy,” the man replied equably, his smile remaining annoyingly fixed in place. “I dine here regularly. If you could see your way to accommodating my request, I would be happy to pay for your meal—and for your friends, too, for I assume you are not dining alone.”

  “Whether I am or not,” Margaret said, her hackles rising, “is frankly none of your business.”

  “Your dining companions are late, or you are early,” the man persisted. “Why take up a table when you could—”

  “Surrender it to someone who can’t be bothered waiting?” Margaret snapped, by now thoroughly rattled.

  “Do a fellow a good turn, will you not, miss? I wouldn’t normally ask, but we are running late, and are expected at another engagement in just over an hour, so—”

  “Then you will have to choose between arriving late or arriving hungry. And here are my friends,” Margaret said, waving to Mary Louise and Jane. “If you will excuse us. Come, ladies,” she said, turning her back and following a waiter into the dining room.

  “What on earth was that all about?” Mary Louise asked, as they sat down. “You look quite flustered.”

  “Some entitled fellow in a suit tried to bribe me into giving up our place in the line. The gall of him!”

  “Who was he?”

  “I have absolutely no idea.”

  “Oh my, we are in exalted company tonight!” Jane nodded over at the doorway, where a party of four were being ushered in. “The one with the whiskers is Cornelius Vanderbilt. I’m surprised you don’t recognise him—he’s the richest man in New York.”

  “And the one on his right is his eldest son, William,” Mary Louise informed her. “I think that’s Goelet on his left, the founder of the Chemical Bank.”

  “The young man with them, raising his glass and smiling over at us, is the man who accosted me. Clearly the people next in line had no qualms about accepting a free dinner,” Margaret said, glowering.

  “That’s Randolph Mueller,” Jane said. “He’s an attorney, a well-known deal maker. He creates trust funds, ties up property acquisitions, that sort of thing. Makes sure the rich stay rich and no doubt amasses a small fortune for himself in the process.”

  “There’s nothing wrong with earning an honest crust,” Mary Louise said.

  “If it is honest,” Jane said darkly, before shaking her head. “No, that’s not fair. One of the reasons he’s so successful is that Randolph Mueller is said to be clean as a whistle and sharp as a needle. Did he really try to bribe you with a free dinner, Margaret?”

  “Three free dinners,” Margaret said contemptuously.

  “We could have run up an enormous bill, and those four wouldn’t have batted an eye,” Mary Louise said. “Champagne, a couple of bottles of good burgundy. And I could have had the woodcock. I’ve never had the woodcock here, for it is hideously expensive.”

  “Mary Louise! You are surely not suggesting I should have accepted that man’s offer?”

  “No, no, of course not. Goodness, Margaret, that man has got right under your skin.”

  “He most certainly has not!” Margaret picked up her menu. “I probably wouldn’t even recognise him again if I passed him in the street.”

  Chapter Thirty-Eight

  New York, May 1869

  When Margaret was first accepted as a volunteer at the mission, her offer to help out “in any capacity” was treated with some scepticism. Despite her previous experience in Lambeth and Enniskerry, the board found it difficult to believe that the daughter of a duke would be happy to assist in the most menial of tasks and willing to mingle with the dirtiest and most bedraggled of the children. Realising that she had to prove herself, she determined to do so. By the second month of working there, she was no longer greeted with mild surprise when she turned up on time every morning, nor did she suffer an embarrassed silence when she entered the staff room.

  She had grown to relish the variety of the tasks and the excitement of not knowing what each day would bring. Today, she had been helping out with new admissions, which tended to be both harrowing and heartwarming. There could be as many as four hundred and fifty children of all ages attending the school on any given day; and at times they were forced to turn children away because they had reached capacity, though they did everything to avoid doing so. The first day could be daunting for the mothers as well as the children, for they were essentially handing their little ones into the care of strangers, sometimes against the wishes of their family. The Irish and Italian communities in particular had to overcome the resistance of their church to having the children educated by Methodists. Some mothers, deeply ashamed of the ragged and filthy condition of their children, would nudge them over the threshold and hurry off, while others were defiant, aggressive, and demanding.

  Not even Lambeth had prepared Margaret for the condition of some of the poor souls she helped to treat: their clothes and hair alive with lice and fleas, their feet caked in mud, all of them under-nourished. Once the children were cleaned up, fed, and clothed, Margaret was on very familiar ground with them—the naughty ones and the shy ones and the clever ones and the sullen ones alike, each a challenge and a reward. Kindness, she had been told, was the watchword of the mission, and it was that which brought the children back each day.

  Hav
ing completed the admissions, Margaret had gone on to her storytelling hour with the infants class, and was descending from the schoolroom when the door to the superintendent’s office on the third floor opened, and none other than the man who had tried to buy her place in the line at Delmonico’s stepped into the corridor. Unremarkable is how she would have described him if asked, yet she recognised Randolph Mueller instantly. And it seemed, from the way he was smiling at her, that she was not alone.

  “Well, well,” he said, “we meet again, Lady Margaret.”

  “How do you know my name?”

  “Titian-haired, Scottish accent, and feisty. Your reputation preceded you.”

  “No it didn’t. You had no idea who I was when you tried to bribe me.”

  “I offered to buy you dinner in return for a small favour, hardly a capital offence,” Mr. Mueller said, holding up his hands in surrender. “You’re right. I didn’t know who you were when I very politely asked you to switch places, but it wasn’t too difficult to find out. What are you doing here, may I ask? You’re a long way from your natural habitat.”

  “As are you. I help out here four days a week. What’s your excuse?”

  “I guess you could say I’m helping out, too. Look, I know we got off on the wrong foot, but do you think we could start over?”

  “Does that mean you are going to offer to buy me dinner again?”

  “What an excellent suggestion.”

  “I assume you’re joking!”

  “I wasn’t. Why not?”

  “Dinner, just the two of us? In London that would be tantamount to a proposal.”

  “I don’t have any designs on you other than to get to know you, but when you put it like that, maybe it’s a bad idea. Though this isn’t London.”

  “Very true.” Margaret was tempted. Though she had no shortage of friends and acquaintances, since Marion had left she’d had no confidante, and even Marion had been no substitute for the one person she had always confided in. In Donald she had found a kindred spirit and it was that closeness that was lacking in her life. She had no idea whether the man still smiling encouragingly at her was the solution, but she was drawn to him, and she’d never find out if she snubbed him.

  “I’ll tell you what, Mr. Mueller. I think dinner is a step too far, but if you are free now, you could take me to lunch.”

  She saw with quiet satisfaction that her answer had both surprised and pleased him. “How long do you have?”

  “I’m finished for the day, actually, but if you were thinking of Delmonico’s . . .”

  “I know it’s sacrilege to say so, but I only dine at Delmonico’s when I’m doing business. Personally, my taste is for something a bit less formal.”

  “Really?”

  He laughed. “Don’t judge me by the company you’ve seen me keep. There’s more to me than that, I promise.”

  “Where are we going?” Margaret asked ten minutes later.

  “There’s a place on Canal Street. It’s not too far if you don’t mind walking. Just watch your purse, though I guess you know to do that if you’ve been working here for a while.”

  “Since the start of the year, though to be honest, aside from my route from the streetcar stop to the mission, I don’t venture far. I’ve never been on this street, for example.”

  “This is Bowery. Don’t worry, you’ll be safe enough in daylight. It’s been cleaned up quite a bit in the last twenty years. It’s where people come to shop who can’t afford Broadway prices.”

  “Like the market in Lambeth.” Margaret eyed the plethora of small stores, stalls, street vendors. “Only on a huge scale.”

  “Lambeth?”

  “It’s a district near London. Poor but hard-working.”

  “Yeah, same here by day, but you’d encounter a very different atmosphere if you came here after dark. Which I wouldn’t recommend.”

  “You seem to know it well.”

  “I was raised not far from here, in the Kleindeutschland—the district known as Little Germany. I’m a second-generation immigrant.”

  “Oh. I had no idea.”

  “You thought I was born with a silver spoon in my mouth? My father was a clerk. I’m an only child, which is why he could afford to put me through college and then law school. I told you not to judge me too hastily. Although I’m guessing that you get judged regularly yourself, being a member of the aristocracy and all.”

  “A little, though not nearly so much as back home.”

  “What brought you here in the first place?”

  “Lots of reasons.”

  “In other words, it’s none of my business.”

  “To be fair, Mr. Mueller, we have only just met.”

  “True, but I have a good feeling about you. I reckon we’re going to be friends, don’t you?”

  He smiled down at her, a frank smile that met his eyes, making them crinkle at the corners, and her planned equivocal response died on her lips. “Do you know,” she said, “I think you might be right.”

  “I usually am, Lady Margaret. So if we’re to be friends, do you think we can dispense with the formalities. Could you call me Randolph?”

  “I could if you will call me plain Margaret.”

  “Plain Margaret! That’s a misnomer if ever I heard one. Now, let’s eat.”

  “Here? Isn’t this a theatre?”

  “Yes, the Old Bowery, and next door is the Atlantic Garden beer hall, but we’re going here, to the lunch counter. Or wait, did I read you wrong?” Randolph asked, for the first time looking uncertain. “I thought you’d enjoy something a bit different, but if you’d prefer . . .”

  “No, different is good. After you.”

  It was clear from the way he was greeted with a warm handshake and a slap on the back that her new friend was a regular here. Though he spoke in German to the waiter who showed them to a small booth at the back of the room, Margaret could hear any number of other accents and languages. The table was bare wood but scrubbed clean. A number of men were dining alone with quiet concentration at the counter, but at the tables there was a variety of customers, mostly though not all men, several families, and one group of women.

  The food, served on large platters, was copious, fragrant, and completely alien: ham knuckles smothered in red cabbage; sausages of every size, shape, and colour, served with mashed potato and pickled white cabbage; cold roasts; boiled onions; black bread, rye bread, and bread with the texture of a biscuit twisted into an elaborate shape.

  “I wouldn’t know where to begin,” Margaret said, when the waiter appeared with a jug of foaming beer and two glasses, and asked her what she would like to eat. “Please, will you order for me?”

  “Happily,” Randolph answered. “Would you like to try the lager?”

  “Oh yes! I developed a fondness for a glass of porter when I lived in Ireland, but I’ve never had this kind of beer. What shall we drink to?”

  “Freundschaft.”

  “Friendship?” When he nodded, she raised her glass. “Cheers.”

  “Prost.”

  Margaret set down her cutlery with a happy sigh. “That was absolutely delicious. I am going to ask Mouse to buy some of those smoked sausages.”

  “Mouse?”

  “Her real name is Mary. She cooks and keeps house for me, along with her sister, Bina. I rent a place on Washington Square.”

  “I’m on Bleecker.”

  “Goodness, really? But that’s just on the other side of the square. It’s a very unusual choice for a lawyer of your standing, isn’t it? Oh no!” Margaret laughed. “Please, I beg you don’t tell me again not to judge.”

  “My parents would agree with you. They think I should live uptown, nearer my clients, but I see enough of them during the day—though that’s only one of the reasons I live on Bleecker. I guess what I like most about it is that it’s such a mix. Not uptown and not down. Not poor and not smart. There’s all sorts, from writers and artists to families, and I guess there are also some whose morals w
ouldn’t stand up to scrutiny, but it’s a decent place all the same. People look out for each other, but they don’t—” Randolph broke off, looking sheepish.

  “They don’t pass judgement?”

  “I know, I know, but it’s true. You can dress and live as you please. You’re thinking it all sounds very Bohemian and not at all suitable for a slick attorney who makes his money from the Vanderbilts and their ilk, but that doesn’t mean I want to live cheek by jowl with them. Quite the opposite.”

  “No more than would I wish to, even if I could afford to, which I can’t,” Margaret said. “How strange that we’ve been living just a few yards apart and yet we’ve never bumped into each other.” She drained the last of her beer. “I like it, but I think I still prefer porter. Tell me, what business did you have at the mission this morning? Surely they can’t afford to hire you to represent them?”

  “I wasn’t acting for them. My client is the mother of one of the kids they’ve had adopted.”

  “From Five Points? How can she possibly—”