I LOVED HER FIRST
Chapter 6 The World Beyond
They sat at his desk, one on either side of it, both of them bent over their work in silence.
He was often less busy in mid-afternoon and welcoming of a distracting visit from the little girl whose regular appearance had quickly become the highlight of his day. But occasionally he had work that could not be put off. Today it was writing a letter of reference for Simon, who was leaving in the morning. He was going to miss Simon. They'd come up together, as footmen, and had shared a room for almost a decade. The first footman knew his job and he was a source of support to the butler. But Carson understood why he was going. Their friendship had cooled slightly when Carson had vaulted over the other in the line of preferment, and though Simon knew the move was the result of His Lordship's interference rather than his friend's lobbying, he could not help but resent it. Carson's appointment as butler had finished them off. With so young a butler in place, Simon could never hope for advancement. He'd taken his time to find the right place and now he was going. Carson regretted the decision, but knew he would have done the same in similar circumstances. So he was writing Simon the very best letter he could.
Miss Mary had accepted that he could not always put aside his work for her. Perhaps she did not fully understand that he was an employee of the house, but she was already aware that adults had things to do that often took them away from children. At least Mr. Carson let her stay in his office while he worked and she was pleased just to spend time with him. He had set her to writing out her letters and a few simple words. She already knew her numbers. And she was proficient in her letters, too. But that wasn't enough, he'd told her. She must also have exemplary penmanship, and so she practiced. He'd bought her a notebook and a box of pencils, the latter more useful than his fountain pen in this instance, and she was hard at it. The chair was too low for her, and so she knelt on a pillow that gave her enough height to work comfortably at the desk. He'd broached the idea of having one of the estate workmen build her a more appropriately-sized chair, but she had rejected the idea.
"I won't always be small, Mr. Carson," she'd said solemnly. "It would just be waste."
He had yielded to her wise words.
He wrote the letter carefully, but kept an eye on the clock all the same. They would have tea when he was done and he had a present for her. He was looking forward to her reaction.
His concentration was broken by a knock on his half-open door and he looked up to see the new head housemaid standing there. Elsie Hughes. Miss Mary continued with her letters, unaffected by the disruption. If she reacted every time a servant wanted something from Mr. Carson, she would be in a continual state of high alert. She had already learned to ignore the staff.
"Elsie," he said, the name still unfamiliar on his tongue. He tried to sound congenial. "How may I help you?"
He had been making an effort to come over less intimidating. Mrs. Dakin had told him that the younger maids thought him formidable and Mrs. Yardley had already set him straight on the kitchen staff for the same reason. But he had the feeling, still only an impression, that he did not frighten Elsie Hughes in the least. He did not yet know if that were good or bad.
Her eyes flickered briefly in Miss Mary's direction. "I'm sorry to interrupt, Mr. Carson."
"Not at all."
"Mrs. Dakin is out."
"She's at the home farm."
"But I expect this may be within your jurisdiction in any case."
He raised his eyebrows in a silent query.
"I was in the drawing room just now, making sure that all was in readiness for this evening."
He nodded approvingly.
"And I noticed that two of the small panes of glass in the decorative window in the far corner, toward the front of the house, were broken."
Mr. Carson frowned. This was serious. And it was his within his responsibilities. "And no one else had noticed this?" He spoke almost to himself, wondering how this was possible.
"They're in the top corner and they're obscured by the shutters."
She had an answer for everything. "How did you discover this?" It didn't really matter. The important thing was getting them fixed. But he was curious.
"I went over to look out the window," she said bluntly, "and I looked up."
He stared at her for a moment. "To look out the window," he repeated. The staff at Downton Abbey did not look out the windows. They were usually busy fulfilling their duties. Still, he was of two minds here. She had made a discovery of some importance, after all.
"The estate is lovely. I wanted to see it from that perspective."
Well, she had no difficulty speaking up for herself, did she? He decided not to press the issue for the moment. "Thank you for bringing this to my attention," he said instead, and then added, surprising himself, "How are you getting on?"
"Very well, thank you, Mr. Carson," she replied smoothly, as though such a question from the butler were to be expected. "Downton Abbey is a well-ordered house. That makes it a pleasure to work here."
That was a compliment to him, although she did not say it outright. He appreciated that. "You came from Holmwood House, I believe. In Glasgow?"
"You are well informed," she noted, gazing at him with an appraising eye.
He was not used to this. "It is my business to be informed," he said, perhaps a little more curtly than he should have.
Her eyes shifted to Miss Mary again.
He stood up. "Miss Mary."
The child look up at him and smiled.
"Permit me to introduce you to our newest member of staff, Miss Mary." He gestured to the doorway and the little girl turned obligingly. "This is Miss Elsie Hughes. She is our new head housemaid. You may call her Elsie when you see her about the house." His gaze returned to the woman at the door. "Elsie, this is Miss Mary Crawley, the eldest daughter of the Viscount and Viscountess Grantham." He stopped there, not about to explain the child's presence in his pantry to her or anyone else.
"How do you do," Miss Mary said in a stately manner, and then glanced immediately to Mr. Carson for his approval. He gave her a warm smile.
"A pleasure to make your acquaintance," Elsie murmured, watching this silent transaction with curiosity. And with a nod to Mr. Carson, she withdrew.
He finished the letter and, coincidentally, the kitchen maid arrived almost at the moment with the tea. They anticipated him in the kitchen now, knowing that when Miss Mary visited Mr. Carson liked to lay on for her. It was a bit of a bother for them, but Mrs. Yardley was prepared to indulge him and the girl.
Miss Mary closed her copybook and put her pencil back in its box, arranging both neatly on his desk before joining him at the side table. He was a man of order and in his presence she emulated him, whatever she did elsewhere.
After he'd got her settled in her chair at the small table where they took their tea, she elevated by yet another pillow, he poured the tea - hers more milk than anything else - and offered her a slice of raisin cake. Her manners, he noted in passing, were exemplary. He marveled at them every time. And then he gave her the present.
It was an atlas. He had visited every bookshop in Thirsk and Ripon, and most of them in York before finding what he was after. This atlas, emphasizing the world from a British perspective - really, was there any other valid approach? - encompassed regional Britain, the nation and Europe, the Empire, and the world, this last comprised of those parts of the globe that remained outside of direct British control. He realized that Miss Mary was very young, too young perhaps at five years of age really to appreciate such a tome, but books were lasting things and they had many years ahead of them yet.
He had been a curious child, wanting to know more about the world. His mother had cultivated this, reading to him often of faraway places and from accounts of explorers. He had liked tracing routes on maps, had enjoyed doing this with his mother. He hoped Miss Mary would find pleasure in doing the same with him.
He doubted such things would happen upstairs.
If the Viscount and Viscountess had a son, the boy would be packed off at the tender age of six to a boarding school where, whatever else might happen, he would be fitted for a life in the world. Daughters, however, were educated at home by governesses, usually German women, something Carson did not understand. Perhaps it was a reflection of Her Majesty's Germanophilia, which had not yet faded though Prince Albert was thirty-six years in his grave, God rest his soul. But governesses were, to Carson's mind, of limited utility. They taught French, manners, piano, and art. The child - this bright, precocious child who was alive with curiosity - would also be taught to read, of course, but like the educational program set for her, breadth would not be encouraged.
And yet she was a daughter of the aristocracy in a nation that commanded an empire that straddled the world. And if Lord Salisbury had his way, it looked fair to take control of all those parts of it that it did not already hold in thrall. It was important, to Carson at least, that Miss Mary should know where that world was.
As a girl she would exercise no direct responsibility in it and that was how it should be, given the vile state of much of the planet. But when he reflected on Miss Mary's future, he thought of Her Ladyship, Lady Violet. She was an intelligent woman who did not disguise her considerable intellectual prowess very well. She knew things and brought a wider context to the narrow world in which she existed. She was a source of sound advice and solid support to her husband, His Lordship, in consequence. There was, Carson thought, flirting with revolution, more to women than a capacity for running a household or bearing children.
He pulled himself back from that brink. Education was not, could not, be for everyone, not that he objected to the principle of rudimentary universal education. But what would a house or kitchen maid do with more than the basics?
And yet...
His mind drifted back to the new head housemaid and to the conversation at the breakfast table only yesterday morning.
Elsie Hughes was dark-haired and slim, and had sparkling blue eyes. Mr. Carson noticed none of this. But he was drawn by what she said, even if he wasn't quite sure what he thought of it.
She had announced at breakfast, in the middle of mundane conversations about the potential of a record crop in root vegetables on the home farm, and Mr. Bevin's weekly lament about his job insecurity, that the subway in Glasgow was almost complete and that she would like to take a turn on it.
"The underground, you mean," Simon corrected her. "Like in London."
"No," she responded lightly. "In Glasgow, they're calling it the subway. And unlike London's, it's all underground."
Mrs. Dakin looked aghast. "If there's anything worse than trains above ground, it's trains below," she intoned.
Mr. Carson was distracted. He wondered how Mrs. Dakin was going to cope with the imminent twentieth century, when it was plain that she had not yet accommodated herself to the nineteenth.
Elsie judiciously ignored the housekeeper's grumble. "I'd like to experience it," she said, her eyes glowing. "Imagine travelling underground." Her voice had none of that dreamy silliness of some young women. She spoke boldly, firm in her convictions.
"It's not for the likes of us, imagining things," Mrs. Dakin said flatly. "Best keep our minds on our work."
Mr. Carson saw Elsie's mouth twitch just a little, an indication of impatience, but she said nothing, which was only appropriate. He did not know what he thought of the underground - or subway, as apparently they had it in Glasgow - but one word of her statement had caught his attention: imagine.
He had an imagination and he used to exercised it a lot more. There was some scope for it in his work at Downton, as in all performances, but the precision of service was a far cry from the wide-open world of the theatre. For a moment he felt a twinge, almost as though he missed it. But he shook that off. Instead he focused on imagining barrelling along at speed beneath the crust of the earth.
"Are you not put off by the idea of tunnelling underground?" he asked, speaking to her directly for the first time about something other than work or Downton Abbey.
She cocked her head to one side. "Well, it's different than mining, which is quite dangerous work, what with the cave-ins and black lung and eye troubles..."
She seemed well informed. Indeed, she sounded almost socialist, dwelling on miners' issues like that. He would have to keep an eye out.
"...but the work's all done on the subway. When it's finished, it's just a new form of transportation.'
Which brought a whole new level of challenges, he thought.
"But where are they all going?" he asked. He could see Mrs. Dakin giving him a disapproving look. She probably wanted to get back to talking about potatoes and turnips.
"Work, mostly." Elsie Hughes was no more put off by Mrs. Dakin's discouraging body language than he was. "It's a more efficient way of getting around. It's faster than walking and cleaner than horses, and may be less hazardous than traversing the streets, what with the introduction of motor cars. And it means you can seek work farther afield from your home and maybe get a better job." She had given it some thought. "And it may help liberate the working classes."
There was that dangerous socialism rearing its head again and yet he did not want the conversation to end.
"Is that a good thing?" he asked.
He was conflicted over it. Stability was grounded in planting roots and staying put, not always lifting your eyes to the horizon and to allegedly greener pastures. He knew about that from both sides, and it seemed to him that this faster, more efficient transportation would only encourage transiency.
He was also conflicted about Elsie Hughes. She sounded a bit of a revolutionary, and they didn't need any of that here. But she was clearly capable of thinking beyond the estate, beyond her immediate surroundings, and that was more refreshing than he could say. And she spoke about such things intelligently. He was glad of that. And though she did not appear cowed by either Mrs. Dakin or himself, she was not disrespectful. There was also the fact that Mrs. Dakin thought her a good worker and worth an extra few pence a week. He would reserve judgment.
Then the bells had started to ring and they'd risen from the table to begin their day.
His attention returned to Miss Mary, sitting at the table with him, enjoying her tea and revelling at the world now open to her in the pages of the atlas. She was pleased by it. Her eyes roved over the pages as he turned them - the book was too big for her to hold.
He turned to the page that featured northern England and pointed to a blank spot on the map between Thirsk and Ripon. "Downton Abbey is right there," he said. Then he showed her all of England and where it sat in relation to Europe. He flipped the pages back to the beginning where there was a map of the whole world.
"That's India," he said. "And there's China."
"Where tea comes from!" she declared, a great smile forming on her lips.
He was so proud of her for remembering!
"But how does it get from there to England, Mr. Carson?"
What a brilliant question! "For many years it came on great sailing ships that took months," he said, and found an illustration of one on a page that depicted the Pacific Ocean. "But now there are steamers that get from India to England in a matter of weeks."
She didn't understand everything. He wasn't sure she grasped the concept of Downton as a place that could be represented on a map. But that didn't matter in the moment. She was only five years old, after all. But she did like the way he spoke to her, he could see that. He turned another page and showed her a map that had all the parts of the British Empire coloured in pink.
Outside the pantry, Mrs. Dakin and Elsie Hughes met for a word on the linen rotation, and the new housemaid's attention strayed to the conversation within that they could not help overhearing.
"This great territory is Australia and the smaller island New Zealand. Australia is a continent..."
"Mr. Carson enjoys tea with Miss Mary," Mrs. Dakin said, by way of explanation, answering the question that was clearly apparent in the younger woman's face.
"Does she spend much time down here?" That was a more circumspect way to approach the subject.
Mrs. Dakin shrugged. "As much as she can."
"An indulgence of an indulged child," Elsie mused, without thinking much about it, and then caught herself. "I beg pardon, Mrs. Dakin. I'm only surprised that the butler of such a great house has time for that."
The housekeeper's eyes strayed to the door of the pantry. "It's a lonely job, being the butler. It does him good to teach the child."