Carnegie’s Maid: A Novel

January 21, 1864

Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania

“Letter for you,” Mrs. Stewart said as I passed her in the kitchen, arms laden with a tray from Mrs. Carnegie’s afternoon tea.

“For me?” I asked, incredulous. I had waited months for a reply from the letter I sent my family upon securing my position with the Carnegies, and now that one had arrived, I could not quite believe it. Day after day, letters arrived for other staff members, but nothing for me. My feelings had swung like a pendulum between worry over my family’s well-being and relief that no one from the real Clara Kelley’s family had written, looking for her.

“Two actually,” she answered, her doleful expression unchanged by my excitement. The nature of our few exchanges, usually limited to discussions over Mrs. Carnegie’s meal requests, petitions for fresh sewing supplies, and comments delivered on behalf of my mistress about various cleaning inadequacies, meant that our relationship was practical at best. Mrs. Stewart, like the rest of the staff, viewed me as aligned with my mistress, not as one of them. They kept a cautious distance.

Could Eliza and Dad each have sent letters? It was unlikely that they’d waste the expense of posting two separate letters. Perhaps they were family letters sent at two different times.

Mrs. Stewart pulled the travel-tattered letters from the deep pocket in front of her apron and held them up to a nearby wall sconce. Squinting, she read, “One from someplace called Tuam and the other from Dublin.”

My exhilaration at the prospect of reading my dear sister Eliza’s words plummeted when I heard “Dublin.” I knew no one in Dublin. But the other Clara Kelley certainly did. That letter could only be for her.

After delivering the tea tray to the scullery, I glanced at the two letters, one with script so familiar, it could nearly be my own and one with utterly foreign lettering, and slipped them into my skirt pocket. My steps felt leaden as I trudged up the back staircase to tend to my mistress. As I settled Mrs. Carnegie for her late-afternoon rest—loosening her dress a bit, propping pillows behind her back, and fetching her copy of a railroad contract that sat on her escritoire—I felt the letters burning in my pocket. Had I been discovered as a fraud? Would this be my last day of service in the Carnegie household? The news from home—for which I’d been waiting impatiently since I landed—now hardly seemed to matter in light of the other missive that had arrived.

Mrs. Carnegie pointed to a pile of laddered stockings near her armoire and said, “Tend to those while I take my rest, won’t you, Clara? I’ll ring when I’m ready to dress for dinner.”

“Yes, ma’am,” I answered with a quick curtsy. Grabbing the pile and closing the bedchamber door behind me, I raced up the servants’ stairs to my room.

My hands shook as I sat on the heavily patched blanket covering my bed and pulled the letters from my pocket. I ran my fingertip along my sister’s elegant rendering of my name, a script Dad had made us practice over and over, and decided to put aside my fear and open it first. Whatever fate lay in store for me with the letter addressed to the other Clara Kelley could wait a few more minutes, and if the situation on the family farm had improved, then the sting of the other letter would be lessened.

With the edge of my sewing shears, I slit the letter open. There, in cramped writing that spoke to the scarcity and expense of both paper and postage, were my beloved sister’s words. I imagined her auburn hair falling over her shoulder as she hunched over the paper to write. Although the perfectly formed letters were as exquisite as ever, the tightness of the script made the words hard to decipher until I settled into a rhythm.

Dearest Clara,

We feared the worst when no letter came for over two months. We had felt certain that you would send word of your safe landing the moment your foot touched upon American soil. When nothing arrived for us at the parish church, well, you can imagine the state in which we found ourselves. We wondered that a terrible fate had befallen you or that, in the land of plenty, you had forgotten us. We very nearly bore the expense of another letter and wrote our cousin in Pittsburgh to see if he had word of you. But now, with your first missive firmly in our grip, we see that communication will not be easy, that it will be subjected to the vagaries of the sailing packets and hand-to-hand deliveries, and we will not fret so. We will trust in your stalwart nature and constancy while we await your next words, confident that they will come.

How I long for you, Sister. The house is quiet and mournful without your quips and your bustle and your high-minded notions. To be sure, the house remains busy. Mother continues with her constant mending, cooking, and drying of herbs. Dad tills the soil until not a single leaf dare abandon its assigned post whilst he laments our shrinking acreage. And even sunny, young Cecelia diligently tends to her chores without a single complaint. But the mirth is gone. We are as deflated as an empty sack of wine without you. My longing for you is selfish, I know. You are the one who has taken the great risks of ocean crossing and made the tremendous sacrifice of leave-taking all that is familiar for the benefit of us, your family. The very least I should do is suffer your absence quietly. But I cannot.

I find solace in the sort of domestic service into which you have landed. The Carnegie family sound a fair if demanding lot. If the stories that the Mullowneys shared with us about the perils of service are true, then you have sidestepped the worst of American masters and found a steady haven, no matter the uneven disposition of your mistress. You will manage her mercurial disposition better than most—after all, you have managed Dad’s temperaments well enough—and they are lucky to have you.

I know that you are meant for grander places than the scullery of the Carnegie household, my dearest Clara, and more than anything, I am sorry that Dad decided to send you instead of me. I have had to accept his explanation that I should stay because my anticipated union with Daniel gives him the best opportunity to pass on the farm intact, well able to survive the crop changes necessitated by the famine, yet it does not seem fair. You are the brightest of us Kelley girls, Clara, the most deserving of an ambitious destiny exceeding the tenant farmer status into which we were born. If I had been stronger, that destiny would not have been stolen from you, and you would not have been pressed into service across the sea, a service that grows more important as Lord Martyn’s veiled threats about the tenancy increase. I pray nightly that you forgive me my weakness.

Write, please write.

I remain, ever, your devoted,

Eliza

Her words brought tears to my eyes. How could Eliza blame herself for Dad’s decision to send me to America? No one had ever thought me suitable for marriage to a local Irish farm boy who might help take over the tenancy. The family was fortunate that Eliza had made such a well-timed, appropriate match. As I brushed my tears away, intending to write her back straightaway to assuage her guilt, I noticed a tiny postscript in the unmistakable, rough handwriting of Mum.

We miss you something awful but do not fret. Do nothing to forfeit your soul. Pray to the one and only true Roman Catholic Church.

Mum would be devastated by the Protestant role I’d had to play in the Carnegie household and even more so by my weekly attendance at the local Presbyterian church with the rest of the staff, even though the Carnegies themselves did not attend any church. No domestic’s wage could be high enough to risk one’s soul in such a way, Mum would undoubtedly think. But my duplicity would be revealed to the Carnegies and my position terminated if I insisted on attending Catholic mass.

Fishing my tiny, silver Agnus Dei medallion necklace out from the folds of my chemise where I kept it hidden from Mrs. Carnegie’s searching eyes, I fingered the little lamb symbol on its surface, a symbol only a Catholic would wear, and thought on Mum’s words. Was I risking my soul by pretending to be someone I was not? If what Eliza said was true and Lord Martyn’s wrath over Dad’s long-forgotten Fenian ways still simmered, then the farm could be lost, and my family along with it. I could be their sole hope. I would have to take that risk and pray for forgiveness.

I resolved to write Eliza back before the five o’clock post, to send her the reassuring words she needed as soon as I could. Picking up the ink, pen, and paper I had squirreled away in my chamber, I began to write:

My dear Eliza,

How could you have feared that I had forgotten you? I think of nothing but you, Dad, Mother, Cecelia, and our land many times every day. Memories of home, even those more recent recollections of farm days filled with worry as Lord Martyn chipped away at Dad’s hard-won acreage, sustain me. As I lie awake in my bed in this strange house in this strange land, I pretend that you lie beside me in our shared bed at home, exchanging a late-night laugh or worry. And I am consoled. But then the moment fades, and I must be buoyed by the knowledge that my work here will assist our family should Father’s worse concerns manifest: that Lord Martyn will rescind the farm tenancy altogether on rumors of Dad’s past Fenian allegiances.

Eliza, dare not chastise yourself for Dad’s decision to send me to America instead of you. Father believes that, if he passes the tenancy to you and your future husband, Lord Martyn will stop his persecution of our family’s right to the full twenty-acre tenancy. Your marriage to Daniel and your assumption of the farm are our family’s future; surely, you see this. After the famine, small, one-acre farms no longer survive since potato crops no longer grow, and thus Dad cannot resort to the traditional gavelkind to divide the farm equally among us. He must keep the farm intact, and your marriage is the only way. How could Dad have possibly designated me as the one to marry instead of you? Who in the name of Mary would have agreed to wed the odd, intellectual daughter instead of the kindly one? I am not viewed as good stock for a farmer’s wife. No, you have long favored Daniel and he you, and thus your marriage will secure our family’s legacy in the land.

This domestic work of mine in America is meant only to tide us until the time of your union when Lord Martyn’s ire abates. Then I can return home. But until those events transpire, it is my duty. Have Dad and Mum not instilled in us the gravity and centrality of duty? It is my privilege to fulfill it, and I cannot think of a nobler destiny, as you so grandly called it.

I will write you as often as this schedule of mine allows. While not as physically grueling as the work that the poor Irish men must face in the mines and the mills, it is relentless in its demands on my time. Until then, you will be in my thoughts.

Your loving sister,

Clara

After I sealed the letter to Eliza, I stood up, eager that it make the five o’clock post even though I knew the letter would not reach Ireland’s shores for weeks. I had very nearly left the room when I realized I had momentarily forgotten about the letter from Dublin. It poked out from beneath the bedding under which it had slipped, and I reached for it. My stomach churning with dread, I sat down again and slit it open.

The words were few and spare. They took no more than half the page, requiring none of the cramping of Eliza’s lettering. The script was rougher than the formal style Dad taught me, Eliza, and Cecelia. But the letters were well formed.

Dearest Clara,

You have every right to leave Dublin and start a new life in America, where I have no doubt your skills would be valued highly. I should have told you that I had a child living in the country with his grandmother. No matter the gossip you heard, the child is no bastard. I was married to the child’s mother when I was but a child myself, but she died during childbirth, and the grandmother took the child in so I could enter service. I send the child most of my wages. But still, I lied to you and in the same breath asked you to be my wife. I know I do not deserve you, but if there was a glimmer of hope that you’d forgive me, I would take the first ship to America. Forgive me, Clara, and allow me to join you so that you will no longer be alone in this world.

I am still your,

Thomas

The tears I had brushed away moments before returned. Not because fear of my fraud being discovered had mounted—I assumed this Thomas would need a letter of encouragement before setting sail to Pittsburgh, one he would never receive—but because, for the first time, the other Clara Kelley felt real. And her death seemed real as well.