Chapter 21
Anna drew a sad sigh when she joined the other servants for dinner.
"Where in the devil's name have you been? We're nearly finished here, you'll have to hurry up if you want any food." said Carson with an annoyed tone.
"Sorry Mr Carson." said Anna as she quickly scooped up some soup on her plate and dug in.
"Took you long enough to walk up some stairs to give lady Grantham her food. Next time, do it quicker." added Carson.
"I couldn't have done it any quicker." said Anna, trying to defend herself, "I had to.."
Her voice trailed off when she realised every single person in the room was waiting eagerly for what she was about to say. No one had missed what had happened last night and everyone was eager for any kind of news.
"Yes, you were saying?" said Carson, but Anna shook her head. She didn't want to gossip about Cora's condition, it felt wrong. Carson gave her a demanding look, urging her to speak up, and she reluctantly replied.
"I had to feed her."
No one in the room said anything for a few seconds, but then some of the people started whispering to one another and the way people spoke of Cora like a headline in the newspaper made Anna so angry she got up and slammed her hand down on the table.
"Look at yourselves, I can't believe how you're behaving. That woman is broken, do you understand? His Lordship might not have killed her physically with his beatings but he killed her inside. And all you can do is gossip. Shame on you, on all of you!" she shouted as she threw her soup on the floor before leaving the room, closely followed by John and later Mrs Hughes.
John grabbed hold of her arm just when she reached the stairs.
"They're all chocked, you know that." he said.
"Neither of them mean it, we're all worried." said Elsie as she caught up with them.
"It doesn't matter, does it? None of it does. It can never be the same here." she said as she freed herself of John's hand and ran up the stairs. She didn't want to spend time with anyone, she was so sad and angry at everything. Why was life so unfair? She had always been a proud servant of the Crawley family but now she didn't even know if she wanted to stay.
Mary excused herself early and went up to see her mother. It only took her a matter of seconds to realise that something was different with her, different from the last time she had seen her. Her mother was staring out into space with empty eyes and no matter what Mary said she remained silent. She fetched Sybil and Edith but neither of them managed to reach their mother. They fetched their father and Matthew and even as the accusations towards their father came flying from all of their mouths, and he desperately tried to defend himself, their mother remained silent.
"Look at her, she's not even here anymore! What have you done to her?" Sybil yelled at the top of her voice.
"I didn't do anything, I found her like this, I thought she was angry with me.."
"Which she has every damned right to be! But she's not angry, can't you see? She's not here!" she continued, her voice was getting sore and Edith held her tight as she surrendered to tears.
"I think we should let her rest, don't you? Let's just try to calm down, this isn't helping." said Matthew as he grabbed Robert and forced him out of the room, followed by Edith who still held Sybil tightly in her arms. Mary went last, after giving her mother one last kiss on her cold cheek.
"Please be alright mama." she whispered as she joined the others.