Ch 12- Grateful
February 8th, 1915
"Shu, shu my Charlie, shu you've had a hard day but Mummy's got you, she's got you." Elsie shushed, rocking her four-day-old baby very gently.
She was exhausted and scared. It'd been hours since the incident but her heart had yet to stop racing. She wasn't entirely sure that it ever would. Charlie had been such a surprise in the first place…. the new mother found herself shaken still, her nerves raw and rattled to the core. The words that'd been on her heart the whole time, but remained unspoken rang unceremoniously through her subconscious still: "The lord giveth and the lord taketh away…"
"My strong boy. Mama's got you Charlie and she's not going to let you go not for anything in the world."
Charlie sighed, nestling peacefully into his mother's arms. The day's ordeal had left the newborn shaken and taught him, at a young age, what fear was. It had dealt his mother and father a similar, terrifying lesson.
Carson stood poised on the edge of the stairs, quietly watching his wife as she tearfully cuddled their newborn son. He was jealous and wanted to be the one to hold their boy on this most difficult of days. It had, in fact, been one of the most painful days of his whole life and he was still reeling from its affects. Nonetheless, he found himself grateful, more than anything else, that his son was still alive.
"Bitty boy, my bitty surprise boy." She soothed, kissing his mostly baldhead. She smiled, taking a breath and just looking at him in disbelief. The baby fussed. "You're okay, you're okay now and your Mummy is ever so grateful."
…
February 13th, 1915
"How's it coming along?" Carson asked, sticking his head in the nursery door.
A little more than a week had passed since the twin's birth and things were still rough for the new parents, not to mention the twins. In fact, rough was an understatement at this point.
"Not latching on well, I'm afraid." She said of their daughter.
Nursing had come natural to her brother, but Charlotte was not taking to it well. Elsie had given up all hope of abandoning nursing, which was still painful for her, days earlier when they'd discovered that Charlie was allergic to the formula and could not be bottle-fed.
"How's Charlie?" She asked, still on pins and needles about him.
"He's happy, he's full and asleep downstairs, by the fire…has Charlotte eaten anything?" He asked carefully.
"I can't tell, I just know she's starving." Elsie mumbled sadly, playing with her little girl's fingers.
Charlotte was fussy and desperate for food. She tried to suckle but couldn't very well, even though her little life literally depended on it and she was on the verge of screaming.
"Shu, shu, my sweet one, it's alright, it's alright." Elsie sighed. She buried her face in their daughter's not wanting her husband to notice she was crying too.
"Mrs. Carson, may I make a suggestion?" He asked and she nodded simply. He thought she needed a break more than anything else. "How about you go and make a bottle and I take over holding her for a while."
"Alright." She sniffled. "Just, just try and see if you can get her to nibble on your finger a little, Mrs. Crawley said that might finally get her suckling enough to nurse."
"Alright, I'll see what I can do."
Carson felt terrible when his wife handed him their daughter, kissed her tiny head and then left the room crying. She was truly overwhelmed and nothing he did seemed to help her much.
"Charlotte." He whispered. "Please eat, just a little tiny bit when Mummy brings back the bottle. I know you can't help what's happening, but you really need to try harder."
Things had started out rough with the twin's feeding and had not gotten much better in the nearly ten days since their birth. If anything, they'd gotten much worse. Charlie had been a natural born eater from the start, which was fine if only you fed him the right thing… and Charlotte had had problems suckling that kept her from being properly nourished. The first few days, Elsie had thought there simply wasn't enough milk, but as soon as she'd switched Charlotte to the bottle, she'd discovered she just couldn't eat.
Mrs. Crawley had told them it was because she was a preemie and that some preemies had trouble with their suckling mechanism until they hit the date they were supposed to have been born at. Carson sighed, lamenting they were still weeks away from the twin's original due date.
Breastfeeding was nearly impossible for Charlotte, but she was able to get some nourishment from a bottle (although not nearly what she needed). So a few days after they were born, Elsie had decided to switch exclusively to bottle-feeding, and soon made the horrific discovery that Charlie was very allergic to the formula his sister depended on. Formula had made the then four-day-old boy spit up uncontrollably, to the point where Dr. Clarkson had had to be called… Carson and Elsie had been terrified that they were going to loose their newborn boy, but he'd finally recovered at very last minute. It had nearly been too late.
When he recovered, Charlie had wanted nothing but to rest in his mother's arms. She had sat there with him in the dark for hours, an eerie quiet blanketing the room and in fact the whole house, as she lavished him with as much comfort, warmth and love as she cold muster. The infant didn't make a sound and not another peep was to be heard save his mother's gentle whispers and quiet tears.
Elsie thought the look on his tiny face, both during the ordeal and after, was permanently etched in her memory. He'd looked up at her, helpless, with frightened, wide eyes, the terror in his tiny face broke her heart in a way she'd never understood that it could be broken.
She had thought she understood a mother's love, and held it in her heart many times before: when she was still pregnant, when she'd gone into labor too soon and worried they wouldn't live, and yet again when she held them for the first time and fell in love with two little souls instead of one…. But having her son be so little and so deathly ill brought things to a new level for her. The whole thing made her fall ten times more in love with them than she'd ever thought she could be, and in truth, made her a bit overprotective just as she'd accused her husband of being.
"My beautiful boy." She whispered. She checked in on Charlie as she made Charlotte's bottle.
He was fast asleep in his basket in front of the fire. The baby boy slept pleasantly and his mother noted he'd grown quite a bit since his allergic reaction days before. Elsie wished that Charlotte would follow suit, and begin to eat and grow and flourish in the way her brother was just starting to. She'd been born strong and bigger than both Charlie and Benjamin Crawley. Now she was beginning to flounder and was likely the smallest of the three babies: it was starting to scare Elsie to death.
Seeing her baby girl suffer from hunger and struggle to eat made her sick and paranoid, just as Charlie's allergic reaction had. She was trying desperately to hide her growing fear and frustration from her husband, but after days upon days of worry, compounded with sleepless nights, she didn't think she could handle it anymore. She thought she was going to crack soon.
Elsie surveyed her house as she warmed the bottle over the stove. It was a chaotic mess: there were piles upon piles of laundry everywhere. She never could've imagined how much laundry she'd be doing in the first few weeks alone, or how much work twins would be. Carson did more than his share, and Anna and Daisy came to help, but it still wasn't much of relief.
Elsie looked up sighing sadly when she heard Charlotte start to wail; noting her screaming didn't disturb Charlie one bit. She rushed upstairs, exhausted, bottle in hand, but ever the loyal mother.
"Mummy's back and she's ready to start trying again." She said, coming back into the twin's room.
"Are you sure?" Carson asked over Charlotte's screaming.
He'd hoped to give Charlotte her bottle. With Charlie nursing around the clock, Elsie no longer had any break to speak of. Feeding Charlotte, he figured, was one of the few things he could do.
"I'll do anything I have to do to get her to eat." She reminded, biting her lip.
He watched carefully as she took Charlotte back into her arms and sat in the rocking chair, it being obvious to him the lengths she was going to try to hide her emotions. She'd said very little about how she was feeling, but Mrs. Crawley had warned him it was normal for her to be very emotional, even without the twin's circumstances.
"Elsie, Elsie love it's going to be alright: I promise." He attempted to soothe.
"It's our fault isn't it Charlie?" She asked, sniffling as she offered the bottle to the baby.
"What is?" He raised an eyebrow.
"That our babies are suffering. The fact that they're… that our stupidity almost killed our son, that…" She was shaking now and could not find the words.
"Mrs. Carson. Stop." He said calmly, sitting on the ottoman across from her rocking chair. "We didn't know he was allergic to the formula, we would've had no way of knowing, especially not when it's been a saving grace for Charlotte. And its no fault of ours she can't suckle yet; we're doing the best we can for them." He smiled suddenly before continuing.
"They're here, Elsie. They're here and they're not perfect. They're human remember? And tiny ones at that! Sometimes I don't think we were expecting humans: just perfect little living dolls."
"Perhaps you're right, Mr. Carson." She sniffled, looking down at Charlotte.
"First weeks are tough." He reminded, sitting next to her and taking their fussy daughter's head in his hand. Elsie laughed, swallowing her tears, finding it precious that Charlotte's head fit totally in the palm of her husband's giant hand.
"She's so tiny." She whispered. "I just don't want to let them down…"
"And we're not." He promised. "We'll figure it out. I know you're worried you don't have time to nurse both when we go back to work. " She nodded. "But I promise that by then it'll all be sorted out."
Elsie gulped. If it weren't sorted out by then…well then she'd probably have lost a baby. She stopped as her lip began to quiver, unable to bear the thought. Carson reached out and placed his hand on his wife's cheek softly, it wasn't lost on him that she was usually the one to comfort him when he was worried about something; he was usually the one that needed talking down.
"Remember how loud she was when she was born?" He laughed. She nodded. "It was the most reassuring thing in the world to me. Especially when I figured out that was my baby crying…She's a strong, healthy baby and so is Charlie. We just have to learn their limits and they have to catch up to who they're supposed to be…they're not supposed to be learning anything yet, remember, they're supposed to be inside you still."
"And that's my…"
"It's not your fault." He said quickly. "It's the nature of twins."
At least that's what Dr. Clarkson and Isobel had both assured them.
"They'll catch up, they'll eat, and then after that they'll smile." He promised.
"I want to see my girl's smile most especially." She admitted.
"And she'll make it there. I have a feeling she'll make it a lot of places." He smiled, looking down at his daughter who'd fallen asleep once again. In addition to being a lousy eater, she was also far more tired than her twin brother and slept a lot compared to him. In the beginning, it had been the other way around and that's why Elsie was worried, she already knew it wasn't in her daughter's nature to be like this.
"Don't make promises you can't keep." She whispered.
"She struggles because she's strong." He stopped and watched his wife smile when she realized he was speaking of her too. "I promise you she'll go places. Wonderful places you'd never expect."
Elsie bit her lip, holding back a smile she wasn't sure she could show: she didn't, after all, want to tempt fate. This was her dream for her children, a life full of wonderful places, people and things they never would've expected. Was it too much to hold out hope that that was possible for them?
"You know I was afraid this wouldn't happen." She reflected.
"What wouldn't?"
"That she wouldn't win your heart, not like Lady Mary…"
"Of course she has! You're right in that I do have a soft spot for Lady Mary, but Charlotte's my own little baby!" He assured, smiling down at the child whose tiny head still rested in his hand. "No one could ever win my heart in the precise way she has, dare I say, not even you."
"Well that's the way it's supposed to be isn't it Charlotte?" She asked, comforted by his words. "For you to be the apple of Daddy's eye."
"And that she is."
…..
"Isn't he just the cutest?" Cora fawned.
Sybil and Edith sighed, looking back at their new baby brother from over their mother's shoulder. The two youngest sisters had taken to baby Benjamin in a way they thought Mary never would. Unlike her, they didn't resent his birth or assume he was taking their place; instead they were simply happy to welcome a new sibling into the family and looked forward to loving him and teaching him things.
The family sat in the sitting room now, just the five of them together minus Robert. Cora, Edith and Sybil looked over Benjamin's bassinet, fussing over him, talking to him, caring for him. Mary remained on the other side of the room, a glass of wine in one hand and the end of her necklace in the other. She toyed with it nervously as she leaned against the fireplace, staring back at her mother and siblings, but too lost in her own thoughts to focus on them. She was almost off in her own world and Robert felt much the same.
Lord Grantham had just joined his family and had so far gone unnoticed. He was trying to decide if he should wait for his mother's arrival before discussing his news. Instead of saying anything he stood, poised but completely unconfident in the doorway, watching his wife and daughters fawn over his long awaited son. He loved his son, more than life its self, but life had seemed to start crashing down on him from the moment he'd been born…first there'd been Cora's near death experience during labor, then the news of expanded war and now…and now this. Just about the last thing he needed was this.
"Papa whatever is the matter?" Edith asked, finally noticing he was there.
Mary turned her head, her eyes widening with alarm when her sister asked this. She also hadn't noticed he was there at first. Robert paused. They'd been through this before, he was sure, if they recovered, they would go through it again. He thought about getting his wife alone and telling her the news but he figured there was no sense in that: it was everyone's burden.
"It seems that…it seems that we're running out of money." He explained.
He'd just returned from seeing his attorney and other advisors in London. He'd left early that morning to make Benjamin his official, legal heir.
"What?!" Cora looked up, her tone completely different than the baby talk she'd just been using on her son.
Robert sighed. "It's funny isn't it?"
He went and poured himself a drink, not waiting for anyone to come into the room and make it for him. Sybil noted that Benjamin was wide-awake and followed his father's pacing with his tiny eyes, seeming to look around the room confused.
"Now that I have an heir…well a natural heir I was to have assumed all my problems would just slip away."
"Papa what is it?" Mary's eyes widened and she put down her drink.
"The land is not…productive enough." He said. "If we don't start to think of ways to improve, to innovate, to make money well…. Benjamin will have a title when he takes over, and the estate, but not a cent to his name."
"What are we going to do?" Mary asked with alarm. She'd been wondering about this for some time.
Edith looked back almost surprised, her attitude toward their new brother had been almost callous and she would've assumed she didn't care.
Robert sighed, looking down at his tiny son. "We'll have to diversify, work hard, and invest in the land, weed out tenants who don't pay… make sure it runs like a well-oiled machine."
"Will that make a difference?" Edith asked.
"That and investing. It's not that our money is gone, per say its that times are changing and we must change with them. And then there's Benjamin's job." He said his wife and daughters listened carefully. "He must marry..." Robert paused, not knowing how to phrase this. "The right girl."
Mary sighed, wondering how she could've ever forgotten that little requirement. Her father, after all, had married for money and then happened to fall in love with her mother later. She supposed it was Matthew who made her think less about all of that. She was coming to face that he was slowly changing her as a person and that maybe it wasn't a bad thing.
"Oh but darling." Cora complained, rocking Benjamin's bassinet. "I want him to marry for love!"
…..
"Hello." He whispered so softly Charlotte couldn't possibly hear.
Elsie and the twins were fast asleep, Charlie in one crib, Charlotte in the other. Carson was tired, but too overwhelmed to sleep. Instead he sat awake, peering down into his newborn daughter's cradle at his bedside. Charlotte slept soundly, her tiny eyes sealed shut. He couldn't help but just sit and marvel over her very existence. He knew he'd feel this way, but he had no idea she'd have him wrapped around her tiny fingers so quickly, it'd been literally instant. He'd found it funny that Elsie had asked him about this earlier. He didn't know how she could've thought he was anything but infatuated, not just with Charlotte but with Charlie too. In fact, even a week after birth, he was still, in a word: amazed.
He hadn't known what he thought she'd look like all this time but was so awed that she looked so much like well… them. Charlotte had his eyes, Elsie's coloring and her smile (he thought) but the look on her face while she slept was all him. He'd never expected the child could have so much of him while looking just like her at the same time and it was amazing, especially since both twins were that way.
Carson's eyes widened when Charlotte began to stir.
"Oh hello my little darling baby." He whispered as she fussed. "No, no lets not wake up your Mummy and brother. How about a bottle, hum?" He asked, rocking the fussy newborn as he picked her up. "No, Charlotte, come on, that's it don't cry." He soothed, trying to calm her to no avail.
"Shu…that's it." He soothed as he came downstairs. "Now's not the time for a cry, but it might be time to try eating again." He talked to her as he bounced her gently, trying to keep her from sobbing. "You'll be spending some time with Auntie Beryl tomorrow. Because it's Valentines Day." Carson yawned. "And I have a surprise planned for your Mummy…"
Carson went downstairs, hoping, once again to try to feed Charlotte. But by the time he got there, he found that she was drowsy and near sleep once again.
"Did you just need a bit of comforting in the night my love? It's okay to just want to be held."
He was disappointed and had hoped she'd been hungry enough to eat. It would've been the perfect gift for his anxious wife on Valentines Day. He sighed and continued rocking the baby, figuring there was no point in pleading with her about food. He knew she was desperate and doing the best she could, and like his wife, it made him sick to watch it.
"You're just what I always hoped you'd be Charlotte Carson, did you know that? You're everything your father ever hoped for and more." He whispered, resting his forehead against hers.
Late at night he felt like he could really let his guard down. He was scared too and didn't feel he could be emotional in front of his wife at a time like this. Carson cried softly, rocking Charlotte back to sleep as he whispered to her.
"I know you're strong and you're smart and doing the very best you can, but Daddy hopes so much you're alright. He's waited for you too long and you're the only you he will ever have."
Elsie woke up to find her husband and daughter gone. Concerned for Charlotte, she crept downstairs to peak at them. She wanted to rush over to them, but decided to leave them be when she heard her husband whispering the sweetest things she could think of to their little girl. She was exhausted and didn't realize he was crying and upset for all the same reasons as she. So now, even in the midst of his own sorry, his words comforted his wife, warming her heart and bringing her much needed peace. Suddenly, she wasn't so worried about where they were going, but grateful to just be where they were, in that moment.
