An Embarrassment of Riches

by Margaret Pemberton

  ‘After what, Charlie?’ she prompted curiously.

  Alexander saved him from making any reply. His shadow fell across them and as they looked up towards him, he said tautly, ashen-faced, ‘My father’s dead. I’m returning to New York immediately.’

  Chapter Fourteen

  ‘How? What happened?’ Charlie asked pantingly as he tried to keep pace with Alexander on the return to the house.

  ‘Pa’s private train derailed. He was concussed when they pulled him from the wreckage and never recovered consciousness.’

  ‘Jesus!’ No-one Charlie knew had ever died before. Victor Karolyis had been old by his lights, but he had certainly not been sickly or infirm. The thought of him being struck down by death without so much as a warning was distinctly unpleasant. If it could happen to Victor, it could happen to anyone.

  ‘I’ll come with you, of course,’ he said breathlessly as he strode into Tarna hard on Alexander’s heels. ‘What are you going to do about the funeral? Your pa was the richest man in New York. The entire city will want to turn out for it.’

  Maura, half-running in order to keep up with them, had questions of her own she needed answering. Was she to accompany him to New York? Was he now deeply regretting the scene that had taken place in the Chinese drawing-room, between himself and his father? Was his father’s death going to change their own happy way of life at Tarna?

  ‘I’ll write you,’ he said to her, answering the first of her questions. ‘There’s going to be a devil of a lot to sort out.’

  Maura nodded. She knew from Lord Clanmar’s death that there always was a lot to sort out when a man of means died unexpectedly.

  The attorney was waiting in the inner hall, suitably attired in a black frock-coat, his top hat held in the crook of his arm.

  ‘I’ll be right with you, Kingston,’ Alexander said to him tersely, striding past him towards the grand staircase.

  In his bedroom Teal had already laid out suitable clothes for him to change into. Maura watched as he exchanged comfortable riding clothes for a white shirt with a stiff high-collar, a black necktie, a black cut-away coat and suit. The change was dramatic. He suddenly looked forbidding, almost a stranger.

  As if sensing her thoughts he looked across at her. ‘I can’t be sorry,’ he said, speaking to her as she knew he would speak to no-one else, not even Charlie. ‘Because of him Genevre died without me being at her side. I can’t forgive him, Maura. Not now. Not ever.’

  She crossed the room towards him and put her arms around him, uncaring of Teal’s presence, saying fiercely, ‘There’s no need to explain. I understand.’

  He held her close, knowing that she did so and that she would always understand. ‘I must go,’ he said reluctantly.

  It was only when the Rosetta was steaming full speed towards New York that he realized his action in saying goodbye to her had been bizarre. They were married. She should have accompanied him. She should most certainly attend the funeral.

  ‘Damn!’ he said aloud, cursing himself for being an idiot.

  ‘What’s the matter? Have you forgotten something?’ Charlie asked, roused from his reverie as to the likely consequences of Victor’s death.

  ‘No, I’ve just remembered something.’

  Charlie looked across at him. It was odd to see Alexander so formally and soberly dressed. He looked almost as much of an attorney as Lyall Kingston. ‘I wondered when you would,’ he said, supposing Alexander to be thinking of his father’s will. ‘Has Kingston been able to give you the lie of the land?’

  Alexander stared at him blankly. Lyall Kingston was seated in an adjoining saloon, as befitted a minion.

  ‘About what? I was thinking of Maura. I was thinking how stupid I’d been not bringing her with us.’

  Now it was Charlie’s turn to stare. All his life he had regarded Alexander as being his mental superior. Where he was naturally slow-witted, Alexander was rapier-sharp; where he was academically dull, Alexander was effortlessly brilliant; or so he had always assumed. Now he was beginning to wonder if he hadn’t been making a grave error of judgement.

  ‘The will,’ he said, unable to believe that it wasn’t Alexander’s sole preoccupation. ‘Has your father cut you out of it, or hasn’t he?’

  Alexander took a sharp intake of breath. Incredibly he hadn’t even given the question a thought. He did so now. In growing horror his eyes held Charlie’s. ‘Christ! I don’t know! He threatened to cut me out of it if I married Ginnie.’

  ‘Then he must have done,’ Charlie said glumly. ‘If he’d take such action over Ginnie, he certainly wouldn’t hesitate to take it over Maura.’

  Alexander’s handsome face was white. ‘But surely if he had done he would have told me?’

  ‘Not if you weren’t on speaking terms with each other,’ Charlie said, refusing to be hopeful.

  Beads of perspiration broke out on Alexander’s forehead. When his father had threatened to cut him off without a dollar if he married Genevre, he had been contemptuous of the threat. He would have had Genevre and Tarna and nothing else would have mattered. Now things were different. No matter how he had felt then, no matter how he had felt when he had confronted his father with Maura, he couldn’t afford to be cut off from the fortune his grandfather had founded. He was a Karolyis. He needed to be rich. Riches were his right.

  ‘Christ!’ he said again, springing to his feet. ‘If Kingston knows and hasn’t dared to tell me …’

  ‘But surely you must have expected your pa to cut you out of his will …’ Charlie began, baffled by Alexander’s shock at the prospect.

  Alexander wasn’t listening to him. He was already striding in Lyall Kingston’s direction.

  At Tarna, Maura walked listlessly from room to room. Despite the

  large number of live-in servants the house seemed empty without Alexander. She wondered how he was going to come to terms with the guilt he was most certainly feeling, and suppressing, with regard to his father. If only Victor had lived a little longer then they would almost certainly have been reconciled and Alexander wouldn’t have been left with such a hideous memory of their last meeting.

  It was early evening and she walked out beneath the portico, gazing over the lawns and paddocks to the distant mountains. Victor Karolyis had brought the ugly scene on himself. His interference with Alexander’s and with Genevre’s mail had been despicable. As for telling Genevre and her father that Alexander was engaged elsewhere, and his informing the whole of New York of the untruth, it was an act of such malice that Maura felt sick whenever she thought of it.

  She walked down the broad and shallow stone-steps to the gravel drive, crossing it and walking over the lawn towards the nearest of the paddocks. Not for the first time she wondered about Genevre Hudson. Alexander had told her that she and Genevre would have liked one another, and from what he had told her of Genevre, she believed him. And Genevre had died believing that Alexander no longer loved her.

  Despite knowing that if Genevre had not died as she had, she herself would not now be Alexander’s wife, Maura’s heart ached for her. Genevre had loved Alexander and she, Maura, knew only too well what it was like to love Alexander. She wondered if Genevre had also felt loving amusement whenever Alexander had displayed a flash of almost childish petulance. Remembering his indignant declaration as to how he had thought of nothing else since his return home but of joining the Army, a smile touched the corners of her mouth. His over-vehement protests had been those of an adolescent. Both she and Charlie had known that during the last few weeks he had thought of little else but the happiness he was experiencing at being back at Tarna. At being with her.

  A curious foal nuzzled up within reach of her hand. She stroked its soft muzzle and wished she had had the forethought to have brought some carrots or apples with her.

  There were other times, too, as when he had looked across at her in the bedroom admitting that he could still not forgive his father, when he aroused almost maternal tenderness in her. And the
re were times when the emotions he awakened in her were far from maternal.

  At the thought of their nights together she was filled with deep, delicious yearning. She loved touching him; being touched by him. She loved the sleek, curling blackness of his hair, the echoes of Eastern Europe discernible in his high Slavic cheek-bones; the finely chiselled cut of his mouth; the ownership she sensed in his fingers whenever he reached out for her. As she thought of the assurance of his love-making she was suffused with damp, urgent longing. It was so wonderful to be one with him; to be united; indivisible.

  The foal moved away, disappointed at receiving no titbit. As she watched him Maura wondered if the passionate tenor of their love-making would change as her pregnancy progressed. Even more, she wondered what Alexander’s reaction to the news was going to be.

  She turned away from the paddock fence, beginning to walk back towards the house. She had been going to tell him the instant Charlie’s visit had come to an end. Now she had no idea how long it might be before she could tell him. It might be days or it might be weeks. She refused to think of it being any longer. When the funeral was over, he would return to Tarna. By this time next year they would be a family.

  She awoke next morning to the news that there was a message for her from Alexander.

  ‘The poor man must have had to travel all through the night to be here with it for this time,’ Miriam said, handing her the letter in one hand and holding a lace-trimmed bed-jacket at the ready in the other.

  Maura ignored the bed-jacket. It was the first time Alexander had ever written to her. The first time she had ever seen her name written in his large, flamboyant handwriting. Without waiting for Miriam to bring her a letter-opener she broke the seal.

  ‘It was crass of me to return here without you,’ he had written peremptorily without even heading the letter with her name. ‘Come immediately. I want you with me. Alexander.’

  It was a letter that told her all she needed to know; a letter she would treasure life-long.

  ‘We’re returning to New York!’ she said exuberantly to Miriam, swinging her legs from the bed in a manner Miriam considered far too girlish to be dignified. ‘Don’t waste time packing too many things. I’m only going to need mourning clothes.’

  Miriam breathed in deeply through her nose. Maura’s hastily purchased New York wardrobe never seemed to contain anything that was needed. First had been the lack of plain boots, now mourning clothes.

  ‘You will have to wear the dark grey day-gown for travelling in, madam,’ she said, wondering if there was going to be time to be able to make it more suitable by trimming it with a little black velvet. ‘The minute we arrive back in New York I will arrange for a dressmaker’s visit.’

  Maura was already pouring water from the ewer into the wash-bowl. Despite the reason for Alexander being in New York, and the memory of the three deaths they had suffered between them in recent months, she could feel only elation. He was missing her. He needed her. Before the day was out they would be together again.

  ‘We must make sure that your mourning wardrobe is chic and elegant, madam,’ Miriam said, helping her into the sombre and previously unworn grey dress. ‘Mr Karolyis’s funeral will be attended by the cream of New York society and as Mrs Alexander Karolyis you are going to be the centre of attention.’

  Maura stood before the cheval-glass. The grey dress made her look like a schoolmarm. She wondered how long a period of mourning New York etiquette decreed for a daughter-in-law. Alexander would most likely be expected to observe mourning for a year but surely she would not. Even observing mourning for a short time would be an act of hypocrisy considering that she had met Victor Karolyis only once and had liked nothing she had known about him.

  ‘My mourning will be for Ma and Lord Clanmar,’ she said aloud to herself. At the thought of the two graves, so many thousands of miles away, her elation at the prospect of being reunited with Alexander was swamped by very real grief. She wondered who was tending their graves. She wondered how long it would be before she was next able to visit them and to lay flowers on them.

  ‘I’ve packed all you will be needing of your existing wardrobe, madam,’ Miriam said, noting with interest that Maura’s mother had died and speculating as to what the relationship had been between Maura and Lord Clanmar.

  ‘Then let’s go,’ Maura said in undignified haste. The sooner she was gone, the sooner she would be back again. She had become accustomed to life at Tarna and had grown to love it. Life in New York was going to be far different and her instincts told her that it was going to be far less pleasant.

  Her only companions on her return to New York were Miriam and the young boy who had brought Alexander’s message to Tarna.

  ‘Terrible it’s been in New York, ma’am,’ he said in answer to Maura’s polite and general query. ‘What with the Irish and the Negroes the city has been like a battlefield.’

  At the reference to Maura’s nationality, Miriam nearly choked. Maura said quickly, before Miriam could silence him, ‘In what respect? What has been happening?’

  ‘It’s the draft, ma’am,’ the boy said, enjoying the novelty of being talked to by a social superior as if he were an equal. ‘The Irish don’t like it. They say they don’t mind fighting to save the Union but they don’t relish the idea of fighting to free slaves who will then come North and be given jobs that they should have. There were lynchings on Charleston Street …’

  ‘Of Negroes or Irish?’ Miriam interjected, wide-eyed.

  ‘Of Negroes,’ the boy said a trifle impatiently. ‘The Irish set fire to the draft office and seized weapons from the armoury. Terrible it was.’

  ‘Is there still rioting?’ she asked, wondering how Victor Karolyis’s funeral was to be conducted with dignity if there were.

  ‘No, ma’am. The President recalled units from the Army of the Potomac and they soon put a stop to the Paddies’nonsense.’

  ‘And is there now a lot of ill feeling?’ she asked, thinking of the women and children she had travelled with aboard the Scotia and hoping that they weren’t on the receiving end of virulent anti-Irishness.

  ‘Oh yes, ma’am, plenty,’ her informant said zestfully. ‘No-one wants either blacks or Catholics in the city, but as they are not wanted anywhere else either, it’s difficult to drive them out.’

  Miriam closed her eyes. Didn’t the boy know anything? How could he possibly be in ignorance of Mrs Karolyis’s nationality and religion? She waited for Maura’s furious response but it didn’t come. Instead Maura said quietly: ‘New York is a big city and America is a big country. If there is room for those of Dutch and English and Hungarian descent, then there is room for Negroes and Irish as well.’

  ‘Yes, ma’am,’ the boy said dutifully, wondering if the new Mrs Karolyis was perhaps a little touched in the head. It would explain why she was allowing him to sit with her and talk to her as if he were her equal. It would also explain why her maid was looking so tense and strained. ‘There isn’t room for Confederates though,’ he said with a big grin. ‘We’re going to whip those Confederates all the way into Union.’

  On the carriage drive from the pier to the Karolyis mansion Maura thought about her compatriots. The friends she had made aboard the Scotia would have settled by now. The few who had been able to give her the address of relatives with whom they intended staying would now be at the addresses they had given. She could visit them. She could offer financial assistance if it was needed. Alexander could offer jobs if jobs had still not been found.

  ‘Whereabouts are the Bowery and Five Points?’ she asked Miriam as their crested carriage bowled past the wedding-cake-like edifice that was the Stuyvesant family home.

  ‘The B … B … Bowery, madam?’ Miriam stuttered, paling at the thought of what might be coming next. ‘Why, it’s in an area that respectable people don’t visit, madam.’

  ‘I’m aware of that, Miriam,’ Maura said wryly, ‘but whereabouts is it? Is it far from Fifth Avenue?’

 
; ‘No, madam. It’s … it’s … excuse me for being impertinent, madam, but can I ask why you want to know?’

  ‘I travelled from Ireland with people who were going to live with relatives in the Bowery and Five Points. I want to visit them.’

  Miriam had feared as much. She said weakly, ‘Five Points is near the East River, at the junction of Baxter, Worth and Park Streets. But you can’t go there, madam. Only the poorest of the poor and freed slaves live there. It’s full of murderers and thieves and … and …’ She turned her head to see if the messenger-boy, sat next to the coachman on the box, was within earshot. He wasn’t. Nevertheless she lowered her voice to a fraught whisper. ‘And ladies of light virtue, madam.’

  ‘Then I shall ask Mr Karolyis to accompany me and afford me protection,’ Maura said, smiling politely at an elderly lady in a nearby carriage who was rudely staring at her.

  Miriam physically sagged. It was no use hoping she was being teased, for she knew that she wasn’t. Mrs Karolyis had no understanding of New York or New York society and she was not up to the task of explaining it to her. Mr Karolyis would have to do so and she knew that he would do so very speedily once he was asked to visit the Bowery and Five Points.

  Receiving no answering smile from the lady in the nearby carriage Maura disregarded her and continued to think of her fellow Irish. She knew from what Lord Clanmar had told her that the Irish were no higher thought of in America than they were by the Anglo-Irish of their own country.

  ‘It’s going to take the Irish a long time to lift themselves from the pit of poverty they are accustomed to,’ he had said unhappily. ‘That they are so ignorant is the fault of landowners like myself. No education is provided for them bar the hedge-schools and then only if they are lucky. The English have a lot to answer for where the Irish are concerned.’