An Embarrassment of Riches

by Margaret Pemberton

  ‘The city will never be free of cholera and typhoid outbreaks until the tenements are either vastly improved or razed to the ground,’ she said vehemently to Lottie Rhinelander.

  ‘Improved in what way, Mrs Karolyis?’ Lottie asked vaguely. ‘I doubt if the people who choose to live there would appreciate the furnishings and fittings that cultured minds appreciate.’

  Maura took a deep, steadying breath. From the far side of the table Alexander glared at her.

  She ignored his unspoken warning.

  ‘I’m not talking about fine furnishings and fittings, Mrs Rhinelander. I’m talking about basic necessities. New York has had a reservoir for over twenty years, but there is still no piped water in the tenements. Elderly women, pregnant women and little children have to carry every pail needed from stand pumps that are few and far between, sometimes up six and seven flights of broken, rotting, unlit stairs.’

  ‘Maura, this is not the time or place …’ Alexander interrupted steelily.

  This time it was Lottie Rhinelander who ignored him.

  ‘How very disagreeable,’ she said, genuinely shocked. ‘Cannot the men carry the water for them?’

  ‘The men are out working or looking for work,’ Maura said patiently. ‘So are the women if they are young and fit. Have you ever imagined what it must be like keeping bedding and dishes and children clean when every pail of water is so arduous to come by?’

  The entire dining-table was staring at her open-mouthed. No-one could ever remember hearing such a conversation at a polite gathering.

  Lottie Rhinelander blinked. She didn’t have the first idea of how bedding and dishes and children were kept clean even when water was easily available. Those sort of tasks were carried out by maids and nurses.

  ‘My apologies, Lottie,’ Alexander was saying, rising from the table, intent on escorting Maura from the room.

  Lottie Rhinelander motioned him to sit again with an impatient wave of her hand.

  ‘If we could organize a Board of Health,’ Maura continued undeterred, ‘bring pressure to bear on the landlords and land-owners so that legally they would have to provide pumped water and sanitation, then the cholera and typhoid epidemics would cease.’

  ‘And that would benefit us all, Lottie,’ a frail, elderly voice said from the far end of the table.

  Maura looked gratefully towards Bessie Schermerhorn.

  ‘Bessie is quite right,’ Lottie Rhinelander said gravely, the diamonds threaded through her coiffure sparkling in the candlelight. ‘I shall write to Mayor Wood personally. That we should all suffer because of a lack of public spiritedness on behalf of landlords and land-owners is disgraceful. Your views have my support, Mrs Karolyis. And now shall we leave the gentlemen to their port?’

  Augusta Astor was even more supportive. Small, blonde and delicately built, she had a vivacity that Maura immediately warmed to.

  ‘Are the rats in the tenements really as big as babies?’ she asked, paling.

  ‘Yes, because they feed better than the babies,’ Maura said starkly, aware that only Alexander was landlord of more properties than Augusta’s husband.

  ‘Then we must do something. We must form a Children’s Aid Society. We must do everything in our power to help those poor little mites who cannot help themselves.’

  Alexander had been so enraged she had doubted if he would ever speak to her again.

  ‘I understand how you feel,’ Isabel had said, not altogether truthfully. ‘But is such a crusade worth the destruction of your marriage? I’m sure Alexander would be prepared to meet you halfway if only …’

  ‘You have only ever seen Alexander at his devilishly charming best,’ Maura said crisply. ‘Believe me, Alexander wouldn’t meet anyone halfway. He always wants his own way, completely and totally. I’m going to ensure that laws are passed which will force him, and landlords like him, to make the improvements they will not make voluntarily.’

  Isabel had not pursued the subject. There were times when she did not understand Maura. She knew that if she had been married to Alexander she would not have behaved as Maura was behaving. But then Maura had always behaved fiercely over issues it was hard to see a point in. It was like the issue being discussed at the moment as to whether or not girls should be admitted to Columbia’s law school. Three girls had applied for admittance and Maura vehemently believed they should be accepted. She, herself, couldn’t see what the fuss was about. She couldn’t understand why the three girls aspired to such a peculiar ambition, nor why Maura thought it so important that they achieve it.

  Alexander fumed inwardly. He would have liked to have let off steam to Charlie or Henry, but both Charlie and Henry were behaving like children and having nothing to do with him. As it was, whenever the subject of Women’s Rights was raised in the Union Club or the Hone Club, he agreed fiercely with his companions that the women in question were nothing but pests.

  There were other things he would have liked to talk to Charlie and Henry about. Unknown to Maura he had announced to Lyall Kingston that he wished to visit a handful of his properties and a handful of the properties built by sub-landlords on Karolyis land. Kingston had circumspectly selected the most respectable properties possible, but as Alexander had stipulated that the properties be in the Bowery and the Five Points area it had been a near-impossible task.

  Alexander still felt nauseous whenever he thought of his visit. That people were willing to live in such conditions was flagrant testimony as to their barbarism. He would certainly not have lived there for an hour. He would have done what his grandfather had done and he would have worked like the devil in order to be able to live like a gentleman, not an animal.

  Instead of his visit arousing compassion in him for his tenants, it only confirmed his previously held opinion of them. All Irish were rough, destructive, brutish and ignorant. His views about where his responsibility for them ended did, however, undergo a change. The stench from human waste had nearly overpowered him. Drains and modern privies were a Christian essential. As was piped water.

  Over the next few days he put a giant sanitation improvement project in hand. But he didn’t tell Maura. The last thing he wanted was for her to think she had browbeaten him into taking action.

  Instead he did something which he knew would estrange them even further. He altered his will, bequeathing Tarna to Stasha. He knew that if it had been merely money he had decided to leave to Stasha, that she would not have objected in the slightest, no matter what the amount. But Tarna was different. Tarna was where they had been happy. Tarna had been bequeathed to him by his grandfather and of all his possessions it was the one possession Maura would expect him to bequeath to their own son. And it was because of the link with his grandfather that he wanted to leave Tarna to Stasha. It would show Stasha just how very much he meant to him. And he owed it to Genevre to do that in the most emotive way possible.

  In early June the reunion that Maura had longed for took place. Kieron was given a week’s vacation by Henry and he travelled immediately down to New York.

  ‘Why on earth are we meeting him on a street corner?’ Isabel asked perplexedly as they left the Fifth Avenue mansion in a Karolyis landau.

  ‘Because the corner of Fifth and East 50th Street is where we always meet,’ Maura said, her eyes shining in joyous anticipation. ‘Oh Lord, Isabel. There was a time when I thought none of us would ever meet again and now here we all are, in the same city and about to be together once more.’

  ‘Have you visited the stud-farm Kieron manages? Is it near Tarna?’

  ‘No, I haven’t visited and no, it isn’t as far north as Tarna. What Kieron really wants is to buy and build up a stud-farm of his own.’

  ‘With a wife and family?’ Isabel asked, quirking a delicately shaped eyebrow.

  ‘I’m not sure if Kieron has marriage in mind. Bridget’s and Caitlin’s elder sister is in love with him, I think. But whether he is with her I don’t know.’

  ‘I shall ask him,’ Isabel sa
id mischievously. ‘Heavens, it will be wonderful to see him again. Though I can’t imagine him on a city street, nor without a dog at his heels.’

  Within seconds of stepping out of the landau they heard the whistled tones of ‘The Gypsy Rover’.

  Isabel clutched hold of Maura’s arm in a frenzy of excitement, scanning the crowds for a sight of him. The whistling drew nearer and then the crowds parted and Kieron was striding towards them, his cap perched jauntily on top of his thick curls, his jacket nonchalantly slung over one shoulder and held by his thumb.

  ‘Kieron!’ Isabel cried out, uncaring of the attention she was drawing to herself. ‘Oh, Kieron!’

  It was a moment of utter and complete happiness for all three of them. Kieron dropped his jacket to the ground, swinging Isabel round in his arms.

  ‘God save us, but what a fine lady you’ve grown into! His lordship would have been mighty pleased.’

  At his reference to Lord Clanmar Maura’s eyes shone overly bright. He would have been pleased if he could see them now, the three people who had been dearest to him, joyously reunited.

  She blinked the sudden onrush of tears away. Today was not a day for tears, no matter how filled with love they were.

  Kieron set a laughing Isabel back upon her feet and turned towards Maura, hugging her tight.

  ‘I’ve missed you, sweetheart,’ he said huskily.

  It was the first time he had held her so close since he had acknowledged the carnality of his feelings for her and he knew instantly it had been a mistake. Desire and longing roared through him and he could no longer even try and suppress it.

  She laughed radiantly up at him. ‘Isn’t this wonderful, Kieron? Isn’t this the happiest day of your life?’

  He grinned down at her. Everything was fair in love and war and she was no longer pregnant, nor was her husband sleeping where he should be.

  ‘It’s a grand day,’ he said, not letting go of her. ‘A day neither of us are ever going to forget.’

  Chapter Twenty-four

  The day had been just as grand as Kieron had promised. They had gone down to the river and watched the liners berthing and departing and Isabel had been entranced with the novelty of walking around the streets unchaperoned by anyone other than Kieron and Maura. When they had tired of walking they had gone to Kieron’s favourite eating-house for chicken-pot pies and had roared with laughter as they had shared old jokes, and then become tearfully sentimental as they reminisced of the dear old Ballacharmish days, gone beyond recall.

  There had been an undercurrent to the day that Maura had not been able to understand. It was as if a tide of excitement was flowing between herself and Kieron. Time and again she caught him laughing across at her, the expression in his gold-flecked eyes one of blatant intimacy.

  She had responded as she always responded to Kieron. Next to Isabel he was her best friend. And he was her family. She loved him as dearly as she loved Isabel. It was Kieron who had taught her to sail on Lough Suir; Kieron who had first taught her how to ‘whisper’horses.

  When the moment of parting finally came he had kissed her full on the mouth and she had instantly been transported back to the moment when they had sat side by side on the paddock fence at Ballacharmish. She wondered if he was aware that if he had asked her to marry him then, she very likely would have done so. It was a strange thought and one which for reasons she couldn’t define, she didn’t share with Isabel.

  At the end of the month Alexander left New York for Tarna, accompanied by Stasha and Stasha’s English nurse. He didn’t invite Isabel and herself and the children, nor did he give any apology for not doing so, or any explanation.

  As lonely week followed on lonely week she tried hard not to think of Tarna and of Alexander putting Stasha on his first pony and doing all the things with him that it now seemed they would never do, together, with Felix and Natalie. Her main source of comfort was Isabel and Kieron. Without them she could not possibly have borne the stultifying grandeur of the Fifth Avenue mansion.

  ‘I have a surprise for you, sweetheart,’ Kieron said to her on one of their afternoon walks. ‘Mr Schermerhorn says now the stud is up and running, he wants me to spend more time with him as a personal adviser. As that is going to mean my being in New York more often, especially during the winter, and as Mr Schermerhorn pays grand wages, I’ve rented two nicely furnished rooms off Fourth Avenue.’

  Maura’s eyes shone. She had known Henry would come to rely more and more upon Kieron.

  ‘What kind of personal adviser?’ she asked teasingly. ‘Don’t you mean that Henry simply relishes your company and wants you around as an available poker player?’

  It was so near to the truth that Kieron had the grace to redden slightly.

  ‘Sure, and if himself is partial to a mean hand of poker, who am I to deny him it?’

  Maura had laughed with him, making a mental note to hug Henry next time they met. Henry had always had a penchant for slightly raffish characters and it was typical of him that, finding Kieron congenial company, he had conveniently overlooked the difference in their social positions in order that he could enjoy that company.

  By the first week of October Alexander was back in town. He reoccupied his suite at the Fifth Avenue Hotel, visited Felix and Natalie and, to Maura’s crushing disappointment, made no attempt to put things right between them.

  ‘What do you want me to do with the invitations that are beginning to arrive, addressed to both of us?’ she asked with a coolness she was very far from feeling.

  ‘Invitations? Are there many?’ he asked with genuine surprise.

  A year ago, when the season had started, there had been none.

  Maura indifferently indicated his almost overflowing desk. ‘The Roosevelts have invited us to Mrs Roosevelt’s birthday ball, the Delafields have invited us to supper, the Stuyvesants have invited us to their annual ball as have the Van Cortlandts. The Beekmans have invited us to their daughter’s coming-out ball and the Astors have invited us to …’

  He crossed the desk and rifled through the pile of engraved cards.

  ‘Tell Stephen to accept on our behalf,’ he said abruptly.

  She raised an eyebrow. ‘For both of us? Won’t people think that a little strange when you’re still resident in a hotel?’

  ‘Damn it all, of course they won’t find it strange! Conrad Beekman hasn’t lived at home for twenty years, but the Beekmans still appear together socially. Such behaviour is society manners.’

  He was still frowning down at the mountain of cards and Maura was aware of a not very admirable flare of satisfaction. Well might he stare. In the months that he had been at Tarna the hesitant social acceptance extended towards her in the weeks after Isabel’s arrival had grown into an avalanche. The social ostracism she had once suffered from, and which had been the rock upon which their marriage had once nearly foundered, no longer existed. Word had passed quickly from hostess to hostess that the extraordinary and beguilingly beautiful Mrs Karolyis was a relative of the late Lord Clanmar, friend of Presidents and Kings and Tsars. Word had also gone round that she was extremely intelligent, witty and entertaining and that if Lady Isabel Dalziel was to be snared as a daughter-in-law, Mrs Karolyis was to be assiduously cultivated.

  Alexander had left the house, still frowning. Things were taking a turn he had never anticipated. If he wished his own social life to continue then it was obvious he and Maura were going to have to attend functions together as man and wife.

  He strode out into the courtyard, waving the waiting coachman away irritably. It wasn’t that he didn’t want to escort Maura to balls and parties, there was nothing he would enjoy more, but he was furious at the fact that her social acceptance had come by her own efforts, not via himself, and was even more furious that her active proselytizing on behalf of the poor had not socially rebounded on her.

  He was also in deep dudgeon over his affair with Ariadne. Enough of New York society now knew of the affair for it to have become highly
necessary to Ariadne’s pride that their relationship culminate in marriage. It was also very obvious to him that such a marriage would be tedious and stultifying.

  Despite her enthusiasm for bed, Ariadne was not the most entertaining of companions. She had inherited more than an acceptable share of unimaginative Dutch rationalism, and had absolutely no sense of the ridiculous. Neither did she have the remotest interest in horses and would no more have mounted one than fly to the moon. They neither laughed together nor rode together.

  During his months at Tarna he had missed Maura almost unbearably. More than anything else in the world he wanted them to be reconciled, but he knew that before he made any attempt at a reconciliation he would first have to tell her that he had bequeathed Tarna to Stasha. He strode out into the avenue, his hands deep in his pockets. If Maura had made the slightest gesture of affection towards him then perhaps he would have somehow found the courage to do so, but she had been frigidly cool and his courage had failed him.

  A horse-drawn bus clattered past him. He had been lonely at Tarna and it looked as though he was going to be just as lonely in New York. He couldn’t call on either Henry or Charlie, because ever since he had moved back into the Fifth Avenue Hotel neither Henry nor Charlie would give him the time of day. It seemed as if the only person who was going to be pleased to see him again was going to be Ariadne. With a heavy-hearted sigh he began to head joylessly towards the Brevoort mansion.

  From one of the Chinese drawing-room windows Maura watched him cross the courtyard and turn into the avenue. She loved to watch him from a distance, his blue-black hair gleaming in the sunlight and curling low on his high-starched collar, his tall, slim-hipped figure moving with athletic grace and confidence.

  Her heart hurt physically in her chest as he disappeared from sight. Where was he going? To the Fifth Avenue Hotel? To the Brevoort mansion? It had been over three months since they had last seen each other and instead of his telling her that he had been a complete fool, that he had never meant his crass remarks about Stasha and Felix, that of course he was going to join the Citizens’ Association or at the very least not object to her remaining on the association’s committee, he had greeted her and talked to her as coolly and indifferently as if she were a stranger and they were as far from a reconciliation as ever.