Carnegie's Maid Read online

  Also by Marie Benedict

  The Other Einstein

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  Copyright © 2018 by Marie Benedict

  Cover and internal design © 2018 by Sourcebooks, Inc.

  Cover design by Sourcebooks, Inc.

  Cover images © Mark Owen/Trevillion Images, Claire Morgan/Trevillion Images

  Sourcebooks and the colophon are registered trademarks of Sourcebooks, Inc.

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means including information storage and retrieval systems—except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews—without permission in writing from its publisher, Sourcebooks, Inc.

  Andrew Carnegie’s memo used as published in Autobiography of Andrew Carnegie, published in 1920 by Houghton Mifflin Company. Text is in the public domain.

  The characters and events portrayed in this book are fictitious or are used fictitiously. Apart from well-known historical figures, any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental and not intended by the author.

  Published by Sourcebooks Landmark, an imprint of Sourcebooks, Inc.

  P.O. Box 4410, Naperville, Illinois 60567-4410

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  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Names: Benedict, Marie, author.

  Title: Carnegie’s maid / Marie Benedict.

  Description: Naperville, IL : Sourcebooks Landmark, [2018]

  Identifiers: LCCN 2017014665 | (hardcover)

  Subjects: LCSH: Carnegie, Andrew, 1835-1919--Fiction. | Housekeepers--Fiction. | Man-woman relationships--Fiction. | GSAFD: Biographical fiction. | Historical fiction.

  Classification: LCC PS3620.E75 C37 2018 | DDC 813/.6--dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2017014665

  Contents

  Front Cover

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Prologue

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Chapter Thirty-One

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  Chapter Thirty-Six

  Chapter Thirty-Seven

  Chapter Thirty-Eight

  Chapter Thirty-Nine

  Chapter Forty

  Chapter Forty-One

  Chapter Forty-Two

  Chapter Forty-Three

  Chapter Forty-Four

  Chapter Forty-Five

  Chapter Forty-Six

  Chapter Forty-Seven

  Epilogue

  Author’s Note

  Reading Group Guide

  A Conversation with the Author

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  Back Cover

  Prologue

  December 23, 1868

  New York, New York

  The gentle melody of a Christmas song lifted into the air of his study from the street below. The music did nothing to change his mood or his actions. Ensconced behind the black walnut desk in his luxuriously appointed St. Nicholas Hotel suite, fountain pen in hand, Andrew Carnegie wrote like a madman.

  He paused, searching for the correct word. Glancing around the study lit by the very latest in gaslights, he saw it as if anew. The walls were hung with a heavy, yellow brocade wallpaper, and dark-green velvet curtains framed the windows, tied back by heavy, gold cords, affording him a fine view of Broadway. He knew this suite was superior to any found in America or even Europe. Yet this fact, which had so pleased him during his earlier visits to New York, now repulsed him. The curtain’s gold cords seemed like binding ropes, and he felt trapped inside a rarified prison.

  He had argued with his mother that they should stay elsewhere, somewhere less ostentatious. He longed to reside somewhere that was not haunted by memories of Clara, although he did not say that aloud. It no longer seemed right to stay at the St. Nicholas, not without her. He had spent the better part of a year searching for her, with no success. Not even the detectives, his top security men, or bounty hunters—the best in the business—could locate a hint of her trail.

  But his mother would have none of it. Andra, she called him in her inimitable brogue, the trappings of wealth are the Carnegies’ right and due, and by God, we will secure our place. He acquiesced, depleted of the energy to argue. But on their arrival at the St. Nicholas Hotel earlier that day, Andrew had taken the extraordinary step of banishing his mother to her adjoining suite of rooms and ignoring her pleas that they attend a holiday dinner at the Vanderbilts, an invitation to the near-highest echelon of New York City society that had been hard-won. He needed to be alone with his thoughts of Clara.

  Clara. He whispered her name, letting it roll over his tongue like a fine cordial. In the privacy of his study, he let his very first memory of her wash over him. Clara had trailed behind his mother into the parlor of Fairfield, their Pittsburgh home, with a step so light that he barely noticed the tap of her shoes or the swish of her skirts as she crossed the room. Her demure manner and averted gaze did nothing to draw his attention until his mother had barked out some order in Clara’s direction. Only then, when Clara lifted her eyes and met his square on, did her presence register. In that fleeting moment, before she quickly lowered her eyes again, he witnessed the sharp intelligence that lay beneath the placid demeanor required for a lady’s maid.

  Other, more intimate memories of Clara began to take hold, along with a longing so intense, it caused him physical pain. But then a roar of laughter and the clink of crystal glasses from the Grand Dining Room below his study interrupted his reverie. He wondered who might be celebrating in that gilded room. Could it be one of his business colleagues visiting from out of town, or perhaps one of the elusive “upper ten” families deigning to leave their cosseted, insular world of brownstone dinners to peer into the latest in sumptuous New York City dining establishments? Should he go downstairs to see?

  Stop, he chastised himself. This is precisely the sort of status-seeking, greedy thinking that Clara would have loathed. He had vowed to her that he would carve out a different path from those materialistic industrialists and society folk,
and he would keep that vow, even though she was gone. He returned to his mission of honoring her, one he’d attempted countless times as he drafted and redrafted this document. Pressing the tip of the fountain pen so hard that the ink bled through the fragile paper, he wrote:

  Thirty-three and an income of $50,000 per annum! By this time two years I can so arrange all my business as to secure at least $50,000 per annum. Beyond this never earn—make no effort to increase fortune, but spend the surplus each year for benevolent purposes. Cast aside business forever, except for others.

  Settle in Oxford and get a thorough education, making the acquaintance of literary men—this will take three years’ active work—pay especial attention to speaking in public. Settle then in London and purchase a controlling interest in some newspaper or live review and give the general management of it attention, taking a part in public matters, especially those connected with education and improvement of the poorer classes.

  Man must have an idol—the amassing of wealth is one of the worst species of idolatry—no idol more debasing than the worship of money. Whatever I engage in I must push inordinately; therefore should I be careful to choose that life which will be the most elevating in its character. To continue much longer overwhelmed by business cares and with most of my thoughts wholly upon the way to make more money in the shortest time, must degrade me beyond hope of permanent recovery. I will resign business at thirty-five, but during the ensuing two years I wish to spend the afternoons in receiving instruction and in reading systematically.

  Lifting the pen from the paper, Andrew read. The words were rough and imperfectly formed, but he was satisfied. Although God had willed that he could not have Clara, he would brandish her beliefs like a sword. He would worship the idols of status and money—for their own sake—no longer. Instead, he would amass and utilize reputation and money for one higher purpose only: the betterment of others, particularly the creation of ladders for the immigrants of his adopted land to climb. Through the heavy fog of his despair, Andrew permitted himself the smallest of smiles, the tiniest of appeasements. The letter would have pleased his Clara.

  Chapter One

  November 4, 1863

  Philadelphia, Pennsylvania

  I shouldn’t be here. Cecelia or Eliza could have been swaying on this stinking vessel instead of me. It was their right—Eliza’s duty anyway, as the eldest daughter—to make the voyage and take the chance on a new land. But Mum and Dad offered a litany of excuses for my sisters—the twenty-one-year-old Eliza was on the brink of a marriage that would allow the family to keep our farm tenancy intact, a status that had eluded me due to my overcleverness, Dad said, and Cecelia was too young for the voyage at fifteen and too weak-spirited in any event—and so, knowing my parents were right, I boarded the Envoy in their place. Forty-two days later, I regretted the preening and arrogance to which I subjected my sisters when I’d learned of my parents’ decision. I knew now that being considered my parents’ síofra—their changeling capable of transmuting into whatever America required—was no prize. And I desperately missed my sisters.

  Light snuck through the hatch into the steerage cabin, blinding me for a moment. My eyes closed spontaneously. Even as the light faded a bit, I chose to keep my eyes shut, surrendering to the remnants of the sun’s heat. I wanted the fading rays to burn me clean. I wanted them to burn away the sour smell of the long Atlantic passage and the recurrent tears of leave-taking.

  The steward clanged the ship’s bell to signal our disembarking. I opened my eyes and reluctantly glanced around the cabin. Mothers with listless infants in their arms pushed themselves to standing, while their older, hollow-eyed children clung to their skirts, scared by the relentless ringing of the bell. Fathers and old men struggled to smooth their filthy, rumpled suits into some sad approximation of dignity. Only the few young men, the fir òga, were strong enough—and eager enough—to readily form a queue.

  The journey had been rough, taking its toll on even the fir òga. Nearly three weeks prior, after an already tumultuous crossing, a storm hit the Envoy, tumbling those of us in steerage out of our beds into a hold with two feet of water. As the crew and my fellow passengers began working the pump in the pitch-dark of the moonless night, the ship began rolling from side to side like the heavy log it was, causing one Dublin girl of about sixteen, traveling alone like myself, to crash into one of the wooden posts keeping the ceiling firm above our heads. Moaning as she fell with a splash onto the still-flooded floor, she never regained consciousness. When she died the next morning, the captain sent the first mate and a sailor to steerage to sew her up in a sheet, with some rocks at her feet to weigh her down, and throw her overboard without a single word or prayer. This loss and her treatment bore heavily upon me, upon all of us really, as it seemed a portent of the treatment we might expect in the new land.

  Footsteps clapped on the wooden deck above our heads, followed by the thud and drag of trunks. My cabinmates rushed to assemble their meager belongings: rucksacks, wicker baskets, tools, treasured pictures, and Bibles, even the odd battered trunk. But I knew we needn’t hurry. We would bide our time until all the other classes had left the ship. Steerage always waited: for the dry biscuits, putrid water, and rancid oatmeal that serve as sustenance; for sleep uninterrupted by hacking coughs and crying babies; for air uncontaminated with the stink of vomit and full chamber pots; for storms to break and the hatch to be unlocked to grant us a few blissful moments above deck; for privacy that never came.

  I was tired of waiting, but we had no choice but to stand in the queue, immobile but for the rocking of the ship in the harbor. I glanced at the young mother beside me, her tattered brown dress stained with the evidence of her baby’s constant seasickness. At seventeen or so, she was a couple of years younger than my nineteen years, but her eyes looked older. There, lines had given way to furrows. All alone throughout this terrible voyage, she bore the weight not only of her own worries and suffering, but also those of her child. I felt ashamed at wallowing in my own discomfort and longing for home.

  “Ádh mór,” I said, having nothing to offer her and her baby but luck. No worries here that we’d receive tallies on our bata scóir for speaking Irish instead of English and then receive the corresponding punishment, as teachers at the hedge schools for the Irish were instructed to do. Not that this poor mother had ever been beaten for speaking Irish in school, as it wasn’t likely that she’d attended school of any sort.

  She looked surprised at my words. I’d maintained my distance from fellow passengers, at Mum’s request, and this young mother and I had never spoken. This separation kept me healthy if unpopular among my gregarious countrymen, who resented my standoffishness. Too weary to speak, she nodded her thanks.

  The hatch flew open, and crisp, salty air filled the cabin. I inhaled deeply, and for a long minute, the fresh breeze was enough. The air smelled of home, and I gulped it down hungrily.

  “Line up, people!” The steward yelled at us. His pinched, sallow face had terrorized steerage for forty-two days, withholding food, water, and deck time if he deemed us not compliant enough. If he didn’t hold the power to deny us admission to our new land, I would have shared with him my thoughts on his cruelty. I’d refuse to still my tongue as Mum and Dad often chided me to do.

  We tidied the queue and waited again. Some silent signal finally reached the steward, and he motioned for us to climb the stairs and mount the deck. Single file, we left the stinking pit of steerage for the last time and walked into the muted light of the Philadelphia harbor.

  The gangway leading to shore felt unsteady underfoot, as did the rocky ground once I reached land. It felt almost as if the earth was rocking rather than the ship. My legs seemed to have grown more accustomed to the swaying of sea than the constancy of land.

  Black-uniformed officials guided us into a building labeled Lazaretto. In the long, dark nights, my shipmates had spoken with fear of Lazaretto, a quara
ntine station. From relatives’ earlier crossings, they had learned that any sign of illness in the ship’s passengers could mean weeks or months at Lazaretto, a place where people often entered well and left sick. Or worse.

  I didn’t worry that I harbored some disease. Mum’s instructions kept me safe. Even so, I’d heard too much coughing to think the rest of the passengers were brimming with health, and our fates rose and fell with one another. If the inspector found one contagion in one steerage passenger, it was in his discretion to hold all of us at Lazaretto until every last person in steerage recovered.

  One by one, we moved up in line toward the health inspectors. I winced as the officials inspected my cabinmates like they were Dad’s farm animals, lifting up their gums and eyelids for signs of disease, sifting through their hair for evidence of lice or other vermin, examining their skin and fingernails for yellow fever or cholera, and pawing through their belongings. Any infraction could be enough to condemn us all to Lazaretto, and I said a silent Hail Mary that the toddler prone to coughing all night managed to keep quiet.

  The line shifted forward, and it was my turn. I took off my crumpled bonnet and heather-gray outer coat, extended my arms, and submitted my body for examination.

  “You look well enough,” a heavily bearded inspector said in my ear as he unpinned my heavy, dark-red hair. The gesture and the whisper felt strangely intimate and wholly inappropriate. But I couldn’t object. It could ruin everything for which Mum and Dad sent me here. It could render useless all the sacrifices made to pay for my ticket.

  I nodded in acknowledgment, as if his remark were perfectly fine. Just a simple statement on my health. But my hands shook as I repinned my hair, and he continued his review of my skin. Only when he turned his attention to my rucksack did my shallow, fast breathing slow.

  With the shadow of a smile, he waved me forward. It seemed I’d passed the test, but what of my shipmates?

  With the rest of steerage, I was herded into a large, dingy waiting room that reeked of unwashed bodies and urine. Once again, we waited. I promised myself that, if I ever made it through Lazaretto and onto American soil, I would not wait anymore.