This chapter's much more fun if you take a musical break during the dancing after dinner. All the performers and songs mentioned are appropriate to 1923, with the possible exception of Isham Jones' Swingin' Down the Lane, which may or may not have been recorded in 1923 with the lyrics quoted in this chapter. You can find them all on YouTube.
Fun aside, I should also tell you that this chapter is the most emotional.
Act 2, Scene 1: Saturday Morning
Mary found herself, the next morning, lingering over her breakfast tray. She was not by nature a very sluggish person, but she was also not particularly enthralled by the idea of running into Evelyn, or Virginia, until she'd had a chance to wake up a little more. Clonfinard was mercifully quiet when she finally went downstairs. Going into the drawing room, she was a little surprised to find only Charles' Aunt Julia, sitting by the window working on a piece of embroidery.
"I'm afraid you've missed the others, my dear," Lady Blake said, hardly looking up from her needlework. "The men left quite early, Christabel took the motor into town, Sarah MacInnes is upstairs writing letters, and Lillian took Miss Sibley on a tour of the house."
Mary nodded, glad, for once, to have missed everyone. "My apologies, Lady Blake – I slept rather poorly. Just anxious," she assured her hostess as Julia looked up, immediately concerned for her hospitality. The older woman's face moved to kind indulgence at the mention of anxiety.
"You must be missing your son," she said kindly. Finding that as good a reason as any for her fictional malaise, Mary nodded and tried to find her concerned, motherly look. "I remember when Sir Severus and I went on our first trip after Lillian was born. It was just a weekend away in Belfast, but I had the hardest time sleeping without seeing her in her bed for the night. I wasn't convinced anyone could take care of her like I could." She smiled again at Mary, who nodded, and went to go find a book, browsing the shelves but not really reading any of the titles, all too aware that Lady Blake was still watching her. She chose a book at random and went to go sit down, across from Julia. "Are you enjoying Clonfinard, Lady Mary? Apart from missing your son, of course."
"It's been a long time since I came to such a party," Mary said truthfully, which neither answered the question nor offended anyone with the answer, a move she was sure was not lost on Lady Blake.
"And could you…see yourself staying on?" Lady Blake asked, her eyes downcast but her words careful.
Mary glanced at her hostess with unhidden surprise. "Did Charles ask you to say that?" The question was out of her mouth before she even realized she wanted to ask it.
Lady Blake laughed. "Charles? Goodness, no, Charles hasn't trusted me with his romantic intrigues since he told me he thought Kitty Doncaster had pretty hair and I had the audacity to invite her to tea again. He was furious," she added. Mary nodded silently. "No, I was…was just wondering. For my own purposes. An aunt is allowed, I'm sure."
The older woman glanced at her embroidery, and then set it down. "They had a tremendous fight when he came home and announced he'd joined the Navy, you know, Severus and Charles. Right here in this room," she remembered aloud. Mary looked up from studying her book, still unopened on her lap.
"Severus was furious – he kept going on about how it would how it would hurt us, how he was ruining his education and letting down Clonfinard and how dreadfully selfish it was of him to go and put himself in harm's way. But it was what Charles wanted to do. It was, a little selfish, I think, but it was selfish of Severus to say it, too.
"Truth be told, I think Severus was a little disappointed he'd chosen the Navy. If it had been the Army, he could have had some influence, you see, about where Charles would be posted, spoken to friends and that. But the Admiralty doesn't know him, and I think Charles wanted that. He wanted to make his own way without any help. He usually does."
Mary nodded mutely.
"My husband loves Charles in his own way - more than he would have loved his own son, I think. Even if he doesn't show it sometimes. He sets a lot by him. We all do."
Is that a warning? Mary wondered.
"We don't usually hear about his work - he was never good at writing home, even when he was at university. But he made a quick visit this spring, to see the girls and catch up with them, and after dinner he talked for hours when they asked him." She paused, and caught Mary's eye. "Of all the houses he's studied, Downton is the only one we've ever actually heard about," she said softly.
"I … didn't realize." Mary's voice was creaky, and quiet, as though she'd forgotten how to speak.
Julia Blake smiled. "He knows his mind, and he won't budge when he's set to it – I suppose that's what made me think about that argument before the war. I think he's rather set on you."
"Are you trying to tell me you disapprove of me, Lady Blake?" Mary asked without guile, her voice just a little stronger. There were more delicate ways to ask the question, she was sure, but she found she couldn't think of any just at the moment.
"Disapprove? Quite the opposite – I approve of you a great deal. You and Charles seem very well suited. He knows his mind, and I think you're more than a match for him. You have strong opinions, and you defend them well. A marriage of equals is a very good thing. Especially when two large estates like yours are involved."
"I hold Downton in trust for my son, George," Mary explained, feeling as though she were under intense scrutiny. "The bulk of my late husband Matthew's fortune rests with him. If that changes your opinion of me, Lady Blake, then I am sorry for it."
And it would – she was sure of it. How many years had she had that argument with the men she was set to marry, with Patrick and Crowborough and Matthew and Richard and Matthew again? That least loved of subjects – money.
She kept her gaze level with Lady Blake's, expecting shock, censure, or disappointment – but none came. The baronet's wife, instead, smiled benevolently. "My dear, why ever should that matter? Charles has more money than he knows what to do with, and he's very capable of making more. He needs a woman who can run this house just as capably as she can run him."
"You don't …wish for him to …make a good connection?" In other words, is my family not good enough for yours, to consider a connection a worthy thing?
"I want him to be happy, Lady Mary. Everything else after that is… unexpected delight. " Lady Blake studied her for moment and returned her full attention to her embroidery, remarking, in an offhand manner, "I've heard from Charles that you and Mr. Napier are quite good friends. I'm so pleased you two got to have a chance to talk at dinner last night. Partnering a total stranger on the first night at a party is such an anxiety."
Now, that was unexpected. "Evelyn is a very old friend of the family," Mary replied, unsure where this was going.
"I'm so glad he was able to bring Miss Sibl ey," Lady Blake went on with a nonchalance that seemed far too practiced to be anything but for show. "They make a nice couple, don't you think? He seems much more content with the world when she's in the room." Mary didn't have time to make a reply – Lady Blake continued, "Charles said they met in Paris while Mr. Napier was on assignment for the Ministry. Rather lucky stroke for him – apparently no one from the office wanted to go. Charles seemed to think Mr. Napier might have suffered a setback of some kind to make him take the job – his acceptance was very sudden, apparently. But he won't tell me all the details."
"I'm sure I don't know. Evelyn and I don't speak as often as we'd like." What was she getting at?
"Yes, that is rather the trouble with men, isn't it? Sometimes they have such a hard time telling us what they want. And sometimes we have trouble hearing them," the older woman added with a smile. "I think that's enough time with a needle for me today. We'll leave at twelve for the luncheon. Enjoy your book."
And with that, she was gone. Well, that was cryptic, Mary wondered to herself, glancing at the book she'd chosen again, and reading the title properly for the first time. Practical Handbook of Bee Culture. She rolled her eyes, ashamed that she should be so preoccupied as to pick up something so wildly outside her taste, and tossed the offending volume on the couch.
What had Lady Blake been trying to say? Charles liked her – that much she knew. Charles would fight for what he wanted, and he wanted Mary. He'd told her as much already himself. Charles liked to win on his own merit – that was evident enough already. Charles' family would like her if Charles wanted them to – well and good. Lady Blake would rather they married quickly – she'd heard enough of all that talk of high hopes and We all think much of him before to know that it meant they wanted an heir.
But to speak of Virginia, and Evelyn? That was harder to read. In another context, it would have merely been small talk. But nothing about that exchange had been small – Lady Blake had calculated every word and off-hand glance. Old friends…nice couple…more content…some setback.
Oh, so that was it. Lady Blake thought that Evelyn had weighed his chances with Mary, given up, gone on assignment to Paris to get over it, and fallen in with Virginia to salve his wounded heart. And she thought Mary should do the same – give up and go on. Preferably with Charles. She thought Mary and Evelyn closer than they were, then, taking Mary's proprietary interest in Evelyn as the interest of a jealous lover, rather than a concerned friend.
Well, let her think what she liked. Mary knew what she wanted, and she was determined to see it done. She picked up the apiculture book from where she'd flung it on the couch and went to reshelve it.
Mary's the oldest. Sometimes she forgets she can't have all the toy soldiers in the box. Evelyn's words from last night echoed uncomfortably again. Was she really as selfish as that? No, no, of course not, silly to think so. He didn't know her at all. It was out of concern for his interests. They'd see.
Luncheon was to be out in the field, a proper meal with time afterwards for two or even perhaps three drives before everyone came in to dress for dinner. Appropriately hatted, immaculately gloved, and sensibly shod, they piled into the largest of the house cars so that Barnard could drive them out to the luncheon site, where a pair of tents – one for the meal itself and another for the kitchen staff to reconjure the remaining warmth from the hayboxes and then plate it all for proper serving. No picnic lunch on the grass this – a table with full service laid for sixteen had made its way all the way from the house down to the woods, probably over the last several days and with the help of more than several hallboys and carters.
"Who wished to hunt, I know where is a hind," Duff called out mischievously as the ladies alighted from the car, finding a spare bit of energy to jog over and help everyone down from the car.
"Oh, where? Can we go see?" Lillian asked eagerly, looking around for a glimpse of the promised animal.
"Lord Westicott is being ridiculous. Haven't been any hinds in these parts since the Stuarts," Sir Severus observed sharply as he came up behind them, sending his eldest daughter's face into despair that seemed all the more plaintive given her father's utter disregard for her.
"It's a quotation, Lillian," Virginia said kindly. "From a poem by Thomas Wyatt, I think. He wrote about Anne Boleyn and how he couldn't catch her as a lover." It was meant to cheer Lillian, but it didn't do much – the eldest Blake girl nodded and went gloomily into the tent to wait for the others.
"How was the shooting today?" Julia Blake was asking her husband.
"Not bad. Masterman's saved the best of the coveys for this afternoon. I haven't got the count so far, but Roberts might." Sir Severus looked around for his loader, but his wife had seen something else to capture her concern.
"My goodness, Mr. Napier, are you quite alright? You're white as a sheet!" Julia Blake exclaimed in surprise. And it was true – against the deep gray of his tweeds and in the half-light of the tent, Evelyn looked about as pale as death and just as pleasant, his eyes full of some hard determination, as if he were having trouble standing or focusing his vision.
"Just a little hungry, Lady Blake, nothing a good luncheon won't fix," the young man said bravely, coming out of his reverie with a start. "Pray don't trouble about it."
Julia looked unconvinced, but she let the matter drop, turning to ask her nephew for his impressions on how the morning's shooting had gone. Virginia, however, rushed in where her hostess had left off, talking in low, concerned tones to her traveling companion with worry evident in her face. When Mary looked back again, they had gone, the tent flap swinging a little with their passing.
She had hardly taken two steps in that direction when conversation pulled her back. "Lady Mary, do tell me where you had that suit made," Christabel drawled, looking Mary up and down like a dress-maker's mannequin. "It's perfectly darling."
By the time Mary had given Christabel the name of her tailor, her address, and let Christabel ramble through a diatribe on how hard it was to find someone who could keep up with the fashion and stay within a budget, where Virginia and Evelyn had gone was anyone's guess. Mary made some half-hearted excuse about having heard her name on the other side of the tent, and ducked out to look for them.
There were precious few places to disappear to – the beaters and loaders had all stretched themselves out on the turf away from the kitchen tent, helping themselves to a large plate of sandwiches, a keg of beer, and the transparent conversation of one or two of the kitchen maids who had been brought along to help serve the luncheon. They couldn't have gone to the woods, or Mary would have seen them against the fall color, and the car, parked behind the kitchen tent, yielded no one behind its large windows and wood paneling. That left only one more possibility – the kitchen tent itself.
She would not have been afraid of approaching such an installation at Downton – she was the master's daughter and it was her right to look in on things like that now and then. But this was someone else's party, and someone else's staff, and it was not done. Still - if Virginia was going to pull Evelyn into something unsuitable, then Mary would be there to save him from himself.
In between the hustle and bustle of Mrs. Morrow, the cook, ordering her staff about, there were two low voices on the other side of the tent wall, and one of them was very clearly Virginia's. Mary slowed her step and stopped to listen.
"You shouldn't have come, Ev, it isn't good for you." Something was clattering against china – a teaspoon being stirred, quite violently. Virginia was upset with something.
"I didn't want to let Charles down."
"To hell with Charles!" Virginia exploded, struggling to keep herself from being overheard. "To hell with all of them," she added, modulating her voice a little more. "Now, drink that. All of it. It'll help with the shaking."
Shaking? Was Evelyn ill? He must have done as she had asked, because Mary heard no further objections. "You'll go back to the house after luncheon - I'll tell them you're not well. They'll believe me; Mrs. Towser's convinced I'm practically a doctor."
A clatter of cup and saucer. "I can't just…it's very unsporting."
"Then I'll stay with you. You can't send me back to the house, Ev, I won't go."
But Evelyn wasn't listening. "Do you hear something?"
Well, it was now or never. Mary rounded the corner of the kitchen tent and just managed to see, after a stumble of sudden movement, the startling tableau of Virginia and Evelyn locked in a very enthusiastic kiss, the American pressing him back against one of the kitchen tables. One of the kitchen maids turned in their direction and gasped audibly, and Virginia broke away, looking back at Mary as if daring her to say she'd done something wrong while Evelyn looked extremely embarrassed.
"Oh, there you are," Mary said, as if what she' d seen was the most normal thing in the world, refusing to be ruffled. "Lady Blake was looking for you, Evelyn."
"Yes, thank you, Mary," Evelyn said, swallowing and adjusting his cuffs for a moment before pushing past both women to join the rest of the party. Mary gave Virginia another withering look and followed. She wasn't for a minute going to believe Virginia had torn Evelyn away from the party to sneak a kiss, but that was a confrontation for another time.
Virginia watched them both leave and, quite sure they were both gone, sighed and picked up the teacup Evelyn had left on the counter, the teacup she'd kissed him so suddenly to hide.
"Thank you so much for your help, Mrs. Morrow," she said, stepping further into the field kitchen and returning the cup and saucer to the cook. "I have been very irregular today, I realize. You've been most accommodating."
"Oh, bless you, Miss Sibley, it were only a cup of hot water with some sugar in," Mrs. Morrow assured her. "No trouble at all."
"Nevertheless, much appreciated. My… apologies for upsetting your staff." She pressed her hands against one of the creases along the front of her dress and glanced at the other women, several of whom were looking at her with dark, disparaging looks.
"Nothing most of them haven't done themselves of an evening, Miss Sibley, begging your pardon," the cook confided with a little grin. "And he's a handsome lad, that Mr. Napier. A shame about his…well, I had a nephew, like him. Came home from the war in such a state. Jumped every time someone dropped a spoon. He's dead now, poor man. They said it was the arsenic he took that killed him, but it was the war, and coming home after, no mistake. Didn't have anyone who cared for him."
"There's more of that around than I think we know, Mrs. Morrow," Virginia agreed. "Thank you again. I'm sure luncheon will be delicious." She gave a little bow with her head and stepped back outside, striding back towards the tent and squaring her shoulders as if nothing had happened.
"She's a good girl, that Miss Sibley. I hope he sees that." Mrs. Morrow observed to no one in particular as she watched the American leave, returning to the luncheon preparations.
"How is it we let her go around kissing fellows like a trollop and no one threatens her with a boxed ear?" One of the maids asked with a mutinous look on her face.
"Because Miss Sibley's kissing isn't getting in the way of her work," Mrs. Morrow threatened darkly. "Now if you don't hop to it heating that soup they'll be eating it when the sun goes down."
Hunger, as they say, makes the best sauce, but fine weather makes an equally good garnish. Both were plentiful around the luncheon table that afternoon as the sun put a constant glow behind the marquee's white walls. Mary made no comment about what she'd seen (and heard) between Evelyn and Virginia, though it seemed to be bothering Evelyn to no end – there were several times during the meal when he opened his mouth to say something and then shut it, usually without the pretense of putting any food in it. Mary didn't think he'd eaten half of what was on his plate, and he was still looking remarkably pale. Is he sick? She wondered silently, listening to him exchange thoughts with Duff on up and coming commodity markets. He had done his level best not to make eye-contact with her for most of the luncheon, but she had caught his gaze, once, while she was busy studying Virginia again, and he quickly ducked his head away with heat rising in his face. What was he hiding? A little thing like a kiss wouldn't make him as uncomfortable as he now seemed.
"Well, gentleman, shall we return to our sport?" Sir Severus asked, folding up his napkin next to his half-finished trifle and scraping his chair back from the table after the dessert and coffee had been cleared away. "And the ladies, of course," he added, clearly not relishing the thought of having his preserve poached upon by the female sex.
"Duff, you wouldn't mind seeing Lillian gets a good view?" Lady Blake asked from her end of the table, leaving Duff to nod his assent.
"Which leaves Virginia to stand by Evelyn, and Mary to stand by me," Charles announced, before Christabel could impose on him for company.
"Could I have a word with your gamekeeper, Sir Severus?" Virginia asked, as the rest of the party rose from the table to collect their furs and gloves and walk out to the next stand.
Their host looked absolutely mystified as to why a young female guest would wish to speak to the gamekeeper, but Sir Arthur beat him to it. "Don't tell us you're a hunter as well, Miss Sibley! Should we have Masterman set out another peg for you?"
"I don't think the rest of us could stand to be in the presence of such accomplishment," Mary remarked sarcastically. Virginia glanced at Mary with a contemptuous expression before turning her gaze to Sir Arthur, for whom she had a much more forgiving look.
"We hunt at Gracefields all the time, but sadly, Sir Arthur, I cannot hit the broad side of a barn, despite all of my cousins' best efforts. I am, however, now a first rate loader."
"You're going to load for Mr. Napier?" Sir Severus didn't seem to believe what he was hearing.
"Oh, let her go on, Severus. It adds a bit of drama!" Colonel Towser said with a smile. "Remember the memsahibs at Mafeking? I'm sure Miss Sibley will perform just as admirably."
Their host looked, for several moments, like a volcano about to erupt. "Oh, all right," he decided finally, cheeks flushed with the exertion of accommodating such a change. "Masterman!" Sir Severus strode off to have a word with the head keeper, presumably to dismiss one of the loaders for the day, since Evelyn hadn't brought his own. What is her game? Mary wondered bitterly, following everyone out of the tent to collect walking sticks and seats and the yipping pack of retrievers, keyed up at the thought of more sport. But Virginia herself offered no more explanation than to stay close to Evelyn, one arm twined through his while the other carried one of his Purdeys, properly broken open.
As a general rule, Mary disliked shooting – between the dogs, the beaters yelling, and the constant sound of gunfire, the only thing that really came out of a shoot was a headache. Her father had friends who suffered migraines from the amount of shooting they'd done – but those were old men, whose sole occupation for entire months of the year was to go out with a dog and a gun.
Charles had drawn an outside peg, further down the line, probably intentionally, to leave the lucrative spots in the middle to his uncle's friends. But it gave Mary an excellent vantage point over the rest of the shooters – Duff, more interested in cracking jokes with Lillian than actually hitting anything, Sir Arthur and Colonel Towser each tracking birds with single-minded purpose, Carroll limping through the motions like an unpracticed schoolboy and getting fed up with his loader when he wasn't hitting anything, arguing about a fouled gun or the wrong cartridges while his sister suffered on behind him, arms crossed yet again in boredom.
Mary looked over from Charles' peg and saw that Evelyn, on the far end of the line near the other stop, was moving in slow, determined motion. Virginia was close at his shoulder, whispering in his ear as if she were coaching him on his shots – he would put the gun to his shoulder, but the barrel never seemed to kick. He'd track a bird, pause, and then hand the gun back to Virginia, who gave him the other one in return, breaking open the barrel of the first to load it again. But something was wrong with her hands, somehow, something Mary couldn't really place.
The beaters' whistles, the sound of the guns, the tapping and rattling of the beaters in the brush all came to Mary in a sudden, vivid tableau of sound, and she suddenly knew why Evelyn had been so white, and why he would not fire. Matthew had spoken of it, once or twice, when he wasn't convinced Mary was really listening. This was it. The sound of battle.
And it had driven Evelyn to distress.
When the gamekeeper Mr. Masterson had called a stop to the drive, and everyone broke their guns to head to the next, Mary wandered over to Evelyn's peg, nudging the ground where he'd been standing with the toe of her shoe.
Not a single cartridge – Evelyn hadn't fired his gun once.
That was why Virginia had wanted to come. Another loader would talk, tell the others that his gun hadn't managed to hit anything or, worse still, didn't seem to want to fire. But Virginia could keep his secret for him. He'd suffered through the morning's drives on pure determined nerve, but that was frayed to threads, and Virginia, seeing him at lunch, had known it at a glance. So she would pantomime with him, and no one, in the clouds of smoke and sound, would be any the wiser that Mr. Napier hadn't once discharged his Purdeys that afternoon. As for having no birds in the bag, well, he could easily say he'd missed, or that he was out of practice, and everyone would shrug and say 'Sorry, old boy' and the world would go on, as it always did.
But there would be other shoots. There were always other shoots.
The dinner table was alive that evening on reminiscences of those 'other shoots' – Sandringham, for those who were lucky enough to have attended the late King Edward, but Molland, Chargot, and Nettleby made appearances as well. Mary didn't care about where Gilbert Hartlip had retired in Nairobi, or whether the unusual cold was going to be bad for the birds next year, and she was never so thankful as when Lady Blake advised the ladies of their adjournment to the drawing room.
Lady Blake had heard Virginia's comment, that afternoon, about hunting at her country house (if indeed it was a proper country house at all) outside of Chicago, and now was pressing her for details of the Chicago social calendar and all its vagaries.
"Chicago society doesn't think much of a country weekend, at least not the way the English do them," Virginia was saying, "We have the Hunt around, every so often, and the Chicago Golf Club's very close, but there's not much to do, otherwise, to tempt guests out. When I entertain, it's usually a dinner at my apartment in the city, with a bit of dancing afterwards, or a trip to the theater."
"Do you go out, for dancing?" Lillian wanted to know, falling in step with her mother as they exited the dining room. She could be silent as a mouse during dinner, but she had questions of her own that were better served by the more personal preserve of the drawing room afterwards, where no one could censure her for speaking out of turn.
"Sometimes," Virginia said, smiling encouragingly at the teenager. "But a lot of the jazz clubs, the really good ones, anyway, are a bit of a drive. And my friends are not the kind of people who turn up their nose at rolling back the carpets and just putting on the gramophone."
"And this is society where she's from," Christabel remarked with a sniff to Mary.
Virginia, thankfully, hadn't heard. "Actually, when - when Evelyn asked me to come, I thought I'd better bring something, as a thank-you gift. He said something about Charles' invitation including young people, so I brought a few new records for your gramophone. All fairly new, you won't have heard some of them."
But Lillian was enthralled. "Can we do that tonight, Mama? Carew can bring down mine, and it wouldn't be too much work to move the chairs. It would be such fun! We don't usually have anyone who can dance! And it's Charles' last night home," she added, playing her last ace with desperation.
Her mother looked ready to disagree, but the ace seemed to work. "Oh, all right. Carew! Please have Timothy bring down Miss Lillian's gramophone and put it in - no, not the library," Lady Blake seemed to be doing a mental tally of the amount of furniture in each room, and the relative value of the art, should the dancing get a little too wild.
"May I suggest the South Drawing Room, madam?" Carew said, obviously having done the same mental calculations himself.
"Yes, that's probably better - we can open the door to the veranda if it gets too warm."
"Very good, madam."
They milled around in the hall while the footmen attended to the drawing room and Virginia disappeared upstairs in pursuit of her unorthodox gift, coming back downstairs, not with just one or two records, but a sizable case which she presented, with a pleased flourish, for Lillian to open.
The seventeen year old sat down on the stairs and read the labels on the heavy shellac with evident relish, anticipating a new adventure in every recording. "Paul Whiteman, King Oliver's Creole Jazz Band, Isham Jones - what names!"
"I tried to get bands I'd heard before, and newer songs. Selection in London wasn't quite what we have in Chicago, so it's a quite limited – Dipper Mouth Blues, that's a good one. King Oliver usually plays Lincoln Gardens when he's in Chicago."
"Have you really heard all of them play?"Lillian looked up from her treasure trove with still limitless marvel.
"Not all, but most. If I'm traveling I like to ask around and see who's performing. Gives me names to pass on to our variety section. It's a new idea I'm trying out – we listen to all the records out on the market and tell you who's playing in town and what new talent the recording companies have picked up and that sort of thing. Like a motion picture review. It's not caught on just yet, but it's for younger readers who maybe wouldn't pick up a newspaper otherwise."
Lillian nodded and returned to her horde, turning the 78s over with the tenderness of an archeologist excavating a new dig site.
"Have we missed something?" Duff asked, as the gentlemen emerged from the dining room to find the ladies away from their usual post. "Are we having our after-dinner cocktails on the veranda by moonlight?"
"Lillian wondered if we might have a bit of dancing tonight. Since it's Charles' last night home for a while," Lady Blake said, playing her daughter's ace again, this time against the frown developing on her husband's brow. "Carew and the others are clearing the south drawing room for us."
"Oh, splendid! What've you got there, Lillian, or shan't you share with the rest of the class?" Duff asked, sitting down on the steps next to the teenager and getting his own look at the records.
"A gift, from Miss Sibley," Lillian explained. "New records!"
"Now I really will have to invite you to Threadneedle Street, Miss Sibley, if this is the kind of thanks your hosts get," Duff promised with what could only be termed a rakish grin. Virginia wisely ignored him.
"The drawing room is ready now, Madam," Carew said, reappearing in the hall.
They'd made short work of moving the furniture towards the walls – probably helped by at least one housemaid, the two footmen wouldn't have been able to get everything out of the way that quickly. Lillian's gramophone gleamed on one of the side tables, with a footman next to it to continue cranking as the evening went on. The elder Blake girl scampered over with her treasure-chest and sat down on the nearest couch to make the evening's first musical selection.
"We'll have a game of cards, Carew, I think," Sir Severus said, eyeing the empty drawing room with distrust and making a beeline for the table in the corner that had retained its chairs. The butler nodded and went for both the cards and the grog tray, which his master had not asked for but which his expression indicated he might soon need.
"Here, put this one on," Lillian said, balancing the box precariously on her knees for a moment while she struggled to get the record out of its sleeve.
There were a few premptory crackles as the needle settled into its groove, and suddenly Paul Whiteman's Bamablina filled the room like a breath of spring air as the needle bobbed over the shiny surface of the wax. Lillian's face filled with indescribable joy, and even Virginia couldn't help smiling at her.
"Come on and dance, Lillian, it's just a foxtrot."
"I don't think I –"
"I'll teach you if you don't know how, it's very easy," Virginia said, setting the box of 78s aside and pulling her off the settee. "Here, take my hand, like this, and we'll wait for the beat. Annnnd… step back, back, and to the side. Back, back, and to the side. There you are! Don't think about it too much, just listen to the music. Back, back and to the side. You'll have all the boys wild for you in no time. Back, back, and out!" She did a little flourish to the side and Lillian, concentrating on the steps she already knew, did half of her side step and then fumbled into what Virginia was doing. "Good!"
They performed a few more turns before the others deemed it safe to join them on the floor, still giving the two women a wide berth. "Mind if I cut in?" Charles asked, taking his cousin's hand from Virginia's with the wide smile of a protective older brother trying to shore up his sister's faith in herself.
"I'll step on your toes," Lillian predicted.
"Not if I step on yours first," Charles said with a ready smile.
"Then I'll take that, if you don't mind," Duff said, cutting in to sweep Virginia into a very enthusiastic version of the dance she'd been taking in baby steps with Lillian. Mary tried to catch Evelyn's eye, but he looked like he very much wanted not to be caught, hurriedly asking Lady Blake if she'd care to take a turn, which she accepted graciously as her husband watched censoriously from the corner behind his card game.
The song ended, too quickly for Lillian, and she rushed to have Timothy the footman replace the needle and start the record again so she could practice a second time, her steps much surer this time alongside Charles. Duff rushed to cut her off on her way to the gramophone for the third time, and stopped to replace the Whiteman record with one that he'd selected before offering his hand to Lillian.
Mary watched from the couch, her foot tapping idly as she tried not to feel too neglected as Christabel intercepted Charles on his way over to her and pulled him into this latest foxtrot.
But suddenly there was a kind of break in the music and a male vocalist started crooning,
Everybody hand-in-hand, swinging down the lane,
Everybody feeling grand, swinging down the lane,
That's the time I miss the bliss, that we might have known,
Nights like this, when I'm all alone!
Mary suddenly felt very cold.
When the moon is on the rise, honey, I'm so blue,
Watching lovers making eyes, like we used to do,
When the moon is on the wane, still I'm waiting all in vain,
Should be swinging down the lane with you!
The dance struck back into the instrumental, and Mary ducked outside, not trusting herself not to have a flushed face or a wet eye. Should be swinging down the lane with you was hitting her heart where it did not need to be bruised. Not here, and not now.
But someone was already outside – Virginia, too, had found the drawing room a little too stuffy with all the dancing, and was taking a breather out on the veranda, calmly inspecting the night sky. Mary hadn't really taken notice that Duff had lost his first partner – she'd been too busy watching Charles and Lillian laugh as they stepped on each others' toes.
"I forget about what the stars look like, when I'm in the city," the American said fondly. "Too much light to see them properly there."
Watching her there, serene as a still lake in her beaded gown, suddenly made Mary very angry. How dare she stand there without a care in the world, queen of all she surveyed? How dare she be happy and content when all of Mary's world seemed to be leaving her? "I wouldn't know. I'm not often in London."
Virginia, surprised by the sudden defensive tone, turned away from the railing.
"Was there something you wanted to talk to me about, Lady Mary?" she asked, fixing Mary with another one of the calm, challenging stares Mary was coming to know so well.
"I saw what you did for Evelyn today, at the second drive."
"Oh?" Virginia was trying for nonchalance, but Mary wasn't going to play games with her any longer. Everyone else was occupied with the gramophone, and she knew a good opening when she saw one – this might be the last spare moment she had with the American, without Evelyn to defend her.
"How noble of you - you must get such a thrill being able to add him to your charity cases. A tragically wounded British officer – your readers must love the drama." The orchestra wheedled on in the background, completely forgotten.
Evidently she'd pushed the right button. Virginia's eyes blazed. "Evelyn is no charity case. If you think that you're colder than I gave you credit for. And I'm not so cheap that I'd use a man's suffering for a story."
"So you just happened to meet him in Paris, and he just happens to benefit from your skills as a nurse. How perfect for you and how very lucky for Evelyn."
"I didn't know a thing about his condition when we met in Paris. In fact, I wouldn't have known at all if a car hadn't backfired in the street during one of our lunches. One minute he was sitting having the most normal conversation and the next he was hunched over my shoulder hiding from a barrage that wasn't there."
"And you sat and spread your cloak of sympathy around him?"
"No. I sat quietly and held his hand until he'd recovered himself," Virginia clarified. "And after he'd had his moment, do you know what he said? 'Thank God I don't have to explain myself to you.'"
The words brought Mary up cold, remembering so many soldiers at Downton, ashamed of being seen without their bandages hiding the worst of their scars or burns, ashamed to be found at night whimpering in their beds. They'd hated to accept help from her, who wore no uniform, but they'd sit by and talk to Sybil in her nurse's cap, because Sybil knew what they had been through, sympathized, and understood without a lot of awkward questions. Thank God I don't have to explain myself to you. What had Evelyn seen, that he should say that? What had Virginia seen? Battle, presumably, as a nurse, and probably hundreds of shell-shock patients. Virginia knew without asking, as Sybil had. Virginia needed no excuses – she'd taken him as he was and said nothing.
Mary reminded herself of the matter at hand. That wasn't part of the plan. There were other ears for Evelyn's troubles, and they weren't going to marry him. "You're not doing him any favors, covering for him like that. There'll be other shoots. It's part of who he is – part of who we are."
"And your people don't change, is that it?"
"We don't change just for change's sake."
Virginia looked at her a moment and took a long, cooling breath, trying to recover herself. "Did he never tell you why he didn't go back to the Foreign Office, when everyone said he was such a success there before the war?" she asked, face resolute. "Did you never wonder why he decided he'd apply to the Ministry of Agriculture and Fisheries instead?"
Mary didn't answer – she hadn't wondered, now that Virginia mentioned it. The thought had never even occurred to her that she should wonder. The change had been a little odd, now that she considered it, but – but who was she to argue with Evelyn's choices? Hundreds of men had been coming back and changing their lives about a little bit, in those years.
"Stress," Virginia pronounced sharply from inside Mary's silence. "His doctor told him he wouldn't be able to do it. Saving this happy realm, this England, day after day, from inside a little office with no view of the real fight but what others tell you, unable to move forward. Too much like a trench. The stress of the job would have strangled him."
It would have been easier to say 'killed him' but after four years of fighting the words had lost a little of their gleam. Strangled, though – that still had a sinister air of the unknown about it. Mary felt her skin fledge with goosebumps again, but she did not move. The women remained where they were, two duelists facing each other down in the dim evening air, neither one giving an inch of ground. Is this why they started digging trenches, Mary wondered idly, not wanting to take her eyes off of Virginia. Sheer determination not to give up ground? "I know you don't like me, Lady Mary, but that's no reason why we can't be civil to each other," the American suggested, turning away from Mary's gaze and drumming her fingers along the stone of the railing. She looked back at Mary, waiting for an answer.
"Don't like you? Whatever gave you that idea?" Mary asked with a superior tone.
The American snorted. "Whatever doesn't give me that idea?" she retorted, dropping her hand and taking a few steps towards Mary, closing a little of the gap between them. "You've thought from the moment you met me that I was some title-hunting tart who's after Evelyn for his house and his social cachet."
Now the gloves were coming off. Mary could see a little of the polite resolve that had kept Virginia so well through Friday's dinner wearing away piece by piece. Just as well - she'd wear her down and make her say something no amount of polite banter could take back. "Well, I'm not sure I would have used the word tart, but if the shoe fits…"
"Nothing could be further from the truth. I don't care about any of that – the title, or the estate, or –"
In the midst of her floundering, Mary pounced. "So you don't care about Evelyn, then, because I can assure you all of that matters a great deal to him."
Virginia opened her mouth as if she meant to shout, glanced quickly at the open door to the drawing room, and let out a long, low hiss of breath, fuming. "You are – you are so good at twisting words to make them mean what you want them to mean, Lady Mary. You look at me and all you see is a rival, and believe what you will about me and my motives, but I'm already on your side. We have more in common than you think."
"Really," Mary replied, unimpressed and unmoved. "How do you find that?"
"We're both women who know what we want, and who go out and get it. You play a longer game than I do, but you're English, it's in your nature. We have a strong sense of our family, our duties, our traditions, our commitments, and we keep them. We both want what's best for Evelyn. And we are prepared to go to whatever end to achieve it."
"And you think you're what's best."
Virginia let out another sigh and smiled desperately. Some of the determined set was gone from her shoulders, and she seemed weaker now, frailer. "I'll be honest with you – I don't know if I'm the best." Her voice, too, was softer, and her candor took Mary by surprise. But she went on. "He – has more good in him than anyone I've ever met, and I don't know that I deserve that. He's kind, he's generous to a fault, he laughs easily, and whenever he speaks, you know instinctively he means what he says. The war destroyed too many men like that, and I don't think I deserve the last one. He needs someone who loves him just as deeply as he loves her. But I don't need to explain myself to him, either – he takes me as I am."
"And you'd…give that up, if you thought he were better off with someone else." Mary's skepticism was apparent.
"Sometimes we must make decisions we don't like, Lady Mary, for the greater good." Virginia let her gaze drop, tapped the balustrade nervously a few times, and took a deep breath. "We didn't meet…just the one time, in France. It wasn't wise, but nothing about war is wise. You meet a man once and his face gets lost in a sea of faces, meet him twice and remember him vaguely, meet him three times and… wonder what you've done to give him such hope of living. You pray that you don't see him a fourth or fifth time, because by then it's gotten harder and harder to let him go back to the front. I let it get to seven." She had the look of a woman making a confession of the worst kind of sins, the kind that have weighed on her for a long time. Let her find enough rope, Mary found herself thinking, and she'll hang herself.
"I didn't mean for it to - I'd come all that way to be a nurse, not fall in love. But he wasn't like any man who'd ever been interested in me before. He didn't…diminish me. And…he made me forget…" she struggled for a word that wasn't there, shook her head, and continued. "The last time, he had a three-day pass, so we met for dinner, and then we were having such a nice time he missed his train, so I took him to my cousin's flat, where I was staying. It started pouring on the way home, and we were soaking wet, and…" she trailed off again, knowing, instinctively, that nice people don't speak of what she was trying to say.
But Mary had a pretty good idea. "Dear me."
Some of the fight flared back into the American's eyes. "You've never been in a war, Mary," Virginia rebuked sharply. "Perhaps it feels like it some days, but when it comes down to it, you have no idea what it's like, to spend days on end in mud that feels like ice, becoming a pair of arms to fetch and carry, forgetting what it's like to touch another person and not come away covered in blood." The younger woman's eyes were wild, and the night air around her seemed to crackle in the silence. "We did what two perfectly sane people who wanted to feel human again would do." Saying this, some of the anger in her face fell away, her eyes softening a bit. "Afterwards we talked, just talked and remembered, about home, and the people there, and he talked about you. Lady Mary Crawley. A woman of such charm, such beauty, a woman well-reputed. How you had gotten away from him and he wished you all the good things in the world in spite of it." She pronounced the qualities so lightly, so suspiciously, as to make them burn in Mary's ears. "And the way he spoke about you, the way his eyes lit up to say your name – I don't think I loved him then, but I wished for his sake he could have had you, if only to make him as happy as he seemed then."
There could be no witty reply to that. In the middle of a war, in the middle of an affair with another woman, he had been thinking of her. True North. Perseus to the end.
"After that night, I let him go back to the front, and tried to forget, to convince myself he'd be better off with a girl at home like you." She spat it out with venom and stepped back, letting Mary take it as she would.
Mary couldn't argue with that, or refute it, without making herself into an unfeeling monster who ate men's hearts, just for the selfish fun of it. And she couldn't argue with Virginia's candor about giving him up.
All the cool calm of the argument had left her. Her heart was pounding, as though she'd run a great distance instead of merely standing still, and she took a moment to steady her breathing. Her pulse roared at her temples for a moment like a wind out of heaven, and she clutched the railing, steadying herself. When it had finished, all other thoughts had washed out except the simple inclination to breathe. Slowly, the stars and the night sky settled back into focus.
He had wanted her, and she had not gone to him. It was that simple. She'd gone to Matthew. That had been her decision, and now, five years later, he was making his.
Speaking at a party, once, about old school things, Edith had said something to someone, about Mary's dolls and how she kept them in boxes as a child and wouldn't let anyone else play with them. 'She was afraid someone else would break them, you see. No matter how gentle we were with anything of hers she was always afraid we'd break it.'
She was afraid now that this was the same thing. It had thrilled her, as a child, to see them all lined up in their boxes, and be able to say that these were hers, and hers alone. It was the having that made them sweeter, not the use. But these were not dolls, but men. She couldn't keep all the soldiers in the box – that is not what toy soldiers are made for. They are made to be played with, to have their battles out and lose the shiny paint of youth and finally fall apart with life's use. And she didn't need all of them. She only needed one, and it wasn't the one Virginia wanted.
The silence seemed to reconcile them, a little bit, allowing the floodwaters to recede.
Her voice cracked to speak again. "He's very dear to me, Evelyn." It didn't cover the half of it. "I don't…think about him, that way, anymore. More like a brother, or a…a close friend. And I don't want to see him hurt. You understand that?"
"Nothing could be further from my mind."
"He sets a lot by marriage, you know. It wouldn't be separate bedrooms and scheduled midnight visits."
"His parents were like that. Yes, I know," Virginia said, responding to Mary's surprised glance. "A man shares a lot of things when he thinks his world's about to end. I told him I felt the same way. About love and marriage."
"Good." Mary seemed a little lost for words.
"I know you English don't like to talk about money, but the plain truth is that I am fortunate enough to be in a position that affords me the luxury to marry how I choose. I intend to use that fortune to good effect."
I believe a marriage should be based on love…Mary smiled a little, in spite of herself. "He'll be lucky to have you." The words did not sting as she thought they might, though Virginia's surprise made her prickle a bit. "I mean it."
"Thank you. That means a great deal, coming from you."
"So, does this make us friends, now, or something equally cozy?" Mary said, trying to regain a little of her ice-queen composure.
"Let us use… allies, instead, and consider the matter closed." Virginia turned to make her way back to the drawing room.
"Miss Sibley!" Mary caught her on her second step. "My late husband was in the war. There were places in his memories he wouldn't let me go – grant that I know that much. He hated to shoot, too."
Virginia found a scrap of smile. "You might remember that, a bit more."
Evelyn met her at the door, his heads bent towards hers in quiet, agitated conversation, his eyes darting outside to the darkness. But Virginia wouldn't oblige him, only shaking her head and taking his hand for the next dance. Even from out her Mary could hear the pop and crackle of a well-played record, obviously one of Lillian's collection taking a spin on the Victrola.
Every morn' my memories stray
Across the sea where flying fishes play.
And as the night is falling
I find that I'm recalling
That blissful all-enthralling day…
"You're missing the fun out here, you know," Charles said, coming to join her out on the veranda.
"Charles, do you think I'm really ridiculous?" Mary asked suddenly, turning to face him. The desperation in her own face seemed to echo back with the surprise in Charles' expression.
"What's brought this on? Was it something Miss Sibley said, just now? She did look like she'd been through a hurricane when she came back in."
Mary tried to think of a way to summarize the argument succinctly, stumbled for a few moments, and settled for a very brief explanation, the briefest explanation she could find. "She thinks I'm too protective of the things I love."
He considered this a moment, trying to determine what it was she wanted him to say. "That's probably true," he allowed, "But you are not now, and I cannot believe you have ever in your life been, ridiculous for it."
"Not even when you first met me?"
"A careful, calculating snob, perhaps," Charles allowed, "But that does not make you ridiculous." He studied her a minute more, but Mary gave him no further clues to her distress. "I thought I might drive you to the port, tomorrow, after everyone else has caught their trains."
Mary nodded, mutely. It was probably better that he had changed the subject – she wasn't even sure she wanted to talk about this with him.
"Shall I…leave you out here, for a bit?"
"I wouldn't mind being alone, just now."
"All right. I'll tell Carew you're out here, so you don't get locked out."
Mary nodded again, and Charles went back inside, leaving the door open behind him. The music beckoned, and Mary turned towards the party inside, watching through one of the windows as her fellow guests laughed and joked and danced along with their host.
She'd made a point of coming this weekend to gather her facts and her thoughts, and now that it came to it, everything was more jumbled than ever. The whole business of Virginia and Evelyn had distracted her, far more than it should have, and she had not taken the time she should have to seriously consider Charles and his suit. But she did know things, now, that she hadn't known before, about Charles and his family and his life here.
What was bothering her was quite simple, really, and yet complex in its own way. She had always thought of herself as a part in the larger mechanical working of society, thought that someone should want her because she would bring things into thier marriage, power and prestige and land and a good name, all variable bits of the clockwork that would make a rise to the top of the towers of the aristocracy quicker and smoother. That was the way she had been raised, the way in which her world worked. That someone should want her, not as Lady Mary Crawley of Downton Abbey in Yorkshire, eldest daughter of the Earl of Grantham, but as just Mary, almost beggared belief.
Almost.
Matthew had wanted her when she was just Mary. But she had been too young, and too proud, and too long in the marriage market to see Matthew as merely Matthew, the first time he'd asked her, Matthew the man who laughed with her over dinner, who danced with her, who always rushed in where other angels feared to tread. All she had seen, all she had been told to see, was that he would, or would not, have Downton. Laughter would cease, dancing diminish and heroics fade, but Downton, she was told, would be the only thing that remained secure.
Could she think of Charles the same way? But Charles had been different. Charles wanted her to come to love him as just Charles, and have the rest afterwards be - what had Lady Blake said? Unexpected delight. Could she love just Charles, if all of this disappeared tomorrow, as fortunes sometimes did?
Her mind wandered back to the kitchen at Downton - scrubbed table, a single plate, fork, and knife each, eating the only meal she could prepare by herself, the humble scrambled egg. But he had smiled with her, laughed with her, and, perhaps most importantly, he hadn't said a word about how beneath his dignity it was to eat what amounted to a nursery room meal in the kitchen. He had sat and eaten. Not all the men in her life would have done so.
She would have been secure without Downton - she knew that now. She would have lived a quieter life as the wife of a Manchester solicitor, and she was convinced, now, that she would have been happy had she thrown away the advice of others. If all this disappeared, Charles would still be Charles and all the things that made her smile when she was around him would remain with him. He wasn't tied to it, as her father was tied to Downton, didn't derive his lifeblood, the essence of his being, from the estate. Charles could go on – and probably happily, too – if Lady Blake suddenly had another child, if Clonfinard burned down overnight, if some long-lost cousin from overseas appeared. Mary would be a great heiress, and her children great heirs, or … she would not.
She had learned something, too, about the nature of women in the world. However much she had disdained Virginia's open talk of business, she had found herself thinking of Downton in the same terms. Once, perhaps, she would have needed to marry so that her husband would have the running of the estate. But she was managing quite well, with Tom's help, just as Virginia managed the paper with help from her cousins. Virginia would marry because she was in love, not for the good of her publishing empire. Downton did not need a manager – but there were other needs to consider. First and greatest among them – that George would need a father.
Among Robert and Cora's generation it was uncommon to lose a spouse early, whether to illness or, god forbid, divorce; Mary could not think of more than two or three families where one or another of the parents was gone permanently. She could, however, think of a great many families unlike her own where mother and father had separate bedrooms, separate houses, even, dividing two people who had married for expedience or money or any of a dozen other reasons. She wanted many things for her son, but one thing she knew he must have was a man who loved him as Matthew ought to have loved him.
She watched Charles, still wheeling around the room with Lillian, laughing over the music at something she'd just said. Did she want this father for him?
The scene before her yielded no answers, and the darkness behind her offered no solace, and the music in the drawing room continued crooning on into the night,
I found my love in Avalon
Beside the bay.
I left my love in Avalon
And I sailed away.
I dream of her in Avalon
From dusk till dawn.
So I think I'll travel on
To Avalon.