I LOVED HER FIRST
Chapter 10 Confidence and Comfort
A Flight of Fancy and a Fright
He was setting up for tea. There were cups aplenty in the kitchen, but he'd taken the notion that Miss Mary ought to have her own special cup for tea in the butler's pantry. He mentioned it Mrs. Yardley so that she would know only to send in one cup on the tray they usually prepared in the kitchen when they saw Miss Mary in the passage and she stared at him so long that he got flustered and explained more, and then realized he'd dug himself into a hole and all he could do was break it off and pretend it never happened. He couldn't see her face when she turned back to her work, but he didn't need to in order to know that she was rolling her eyes in amused exasperation.
It didn't really matter what Mrs. Yardley thought. What mattered was what Miss Mary thought, and she was delighted by the blue and white china cup and saucer, and listened attentively when he told her how the Chinese had begun to make these kinds of dishes when they'd opened trade routes to the Middle East and gained access to the cobalt in Persia that made blue porcelain possible.
"Does everything come from China, Mr. Carson?" she had asked him, remembering the tea.
"Not everything. This cup, for instance, is made right here, from porcelains developed by an Englishman. The inspiring designs may have come from China, but that is a good British tea cup from which you're drinking, Miss Mary."
He'd gone a step further by keeping her cup in the locked cupboard in his pantry that contained the more valuable pieces of silver and crystal, the oversight of which was one of his particular responsibilities as butler. Miss Mary understood the significance of this and was all the more elated that he made this gesture for her.
He retrieved the cup and locked the cupboard door, and then turned to find Miss Mary putting a pillow on the chair where she sat to take her tea. This was unusual. She had told him early on that she did not want any props to make her more comfortable at the table, that she would be grown up soon enough. Remembering this, he approached her just a little puzzled, although his bewilderment did not prevent his amusement at her efforts to scramble up onto this now slightly more precarious perch.
"What's this, Miss Mary?" he asked as he set her cup down beside her.
"I'm not Miss Mary Crawley today, Mr. Carson," she informed him, returning his gaze with a serious expression.
He raised his eyebrows a little. "May I ask with whom I have the pleasure to take tea, then?" He spoke in the same solemn tones he would use to address her parents, and she almost smiled at his formality. She loved it when they played like this.
"I am the King of England," she declared firmly.
"The King." He pondered this. "Do you not mean the Queen?"
"No," she said emphatically. "I want to be the King." She saw his perplexed look. "Kings are the highest anyone can be, Mr. Carson. A queen may rule a country, but if she marries her husband is only a prince." She stated this as fact, but paused for his nod of affirmation.
"But if a king rules a country, his wife is a queen. A king is higher than a queen, but there is no one higher than a king."
It was irrefutable logic. "That is so."
"And," she continued, "the King of England is the most powerful person in the world. That's what I want to be, Mr. Carson."
"Well." He was impressed with her reasoning and her ambition. He drew himself up to his full height and then bowed low before her. "Your Majesty."
She laughed, enchanted by his observance.
"And who am I?" he asked, taking his seat and preparing the tea.
"You can be the King of Siam."
"Indeed." He thought about this. "Do you know where Siam is?"
It was a familiar cue. Mary slipped from the cushion and ran to the bookshelf where he kept their atlas. With the large book in hand it was more difficult for her to resume her seat, but she managed it, and then sat with the volume open across her lap, flipping through pages.
"It's south of China," Carson said helpfully. They had looked at the pages for China on other afternoons when they'd talked about tea and Marco Polo.
But Mary was distracted. Her fingers were feathering over a completely different continent. "I've changed my mind, Mr. Carson. You can be the King of the...United...States."
She wasn't looking at him else she would have seen the look of disdain that descended on his craggy features at this. "They don't have a king," he said coolly. "They have a President." He paused. "I would rather be a minor oriental potentate than the president of a republic."
Now she did look at him, hearing the disapproval in his voice. "What's a republic?"
"It is a nation where the mob rules," he said with scorn than was not entirely affected. "Utter chaos." The fact that Miss Mary's mother, Her Ladyship, was an American had done nothing to ameliorate Carson's dim view of America.
A map of the Americas proved more absorbing than his political instruction. She drew her finger down the page around the tip of South America. "If you wanted to travel from England to China, you would have to go all the way around the Americas," she observed.
"Yes, north or south it's very treacherous." At her puzzled look, he explained. "The Strait of Magellan is dangerous." He pointed to the southern route. And when her eyes moved immediately to the top of the page, he added, "They can't go north because it's all ice up there. Sir John Franklin tried it decades ago and they're still looking for him."
This fact astonished Miss Mary and for a moment she only stared at the archipelago that dotted the Arctic Ocean at the top of the page. Then she studied the continents together. "Why don't they make a canal across the...the..." She pointed to the thin strip of central America.
"Isthmus."
"...isthmus..." It was a difficult word for a child to get her tongue around. "The isthmus here, like the one between the Mediterranean Sea and the Red Sea?"
Almost nothing pleased Mr. Carson more than teaching a bright student. He took pride in the footmen who rose through the ranks under his instruction and was privately even a little smug at the glowing reports that filtered back to him of those few who had gone elsewhere. But Miss Mary Crawley was his favourite pupil and she never disappointed him. She remembered what he told her and, as in this instance, was able to apply those facts to other circumstances.
"That is a very good question," he said approvingly. "And Mr. Lesseps has been trying to do just that for nigh on twenty years."
They ate their cake and drank their tea and chatted about travelling the world. Carson knew that he would only ever make such journeys in his imagination here in this pantry with Miss Mary at his side. But she might well go to many of these places, with her mother's family across the water, and as part of the generation who would grow to maturity in a British Empire that encircled the globe.
Soon enough they had had their meal and it was time for Miss Mary to return to the nursery.
"Well, you'd better get on," he said, glancing at the clock on his desk. Nanny indulged them both when she allowed Miss Mary to come downstairs, but he didn't want to press his luck.
"Thank you for the tea, Mr. Carson," she said, lingering in the doorway, her hand on the frame. She gave him one of those smiles that never failed to warm his heart and then dashed away.
Just as Miss Mary disappeared, Mrs. Dakin came in. This meant that he did not have time to wipe from his face the indulgent look prompted by the child's parting words, and the housekeeper caught it. She did not roll her eyes, but he sobered immediately and cleared his throat in an effort to regain his dignity.
"You're spoiling that child, Mr. Carson." She had said this before, though this time it sounded rather half-hearted.
"I don't think so," he responded evenly.
She shrugged sceptically. "It will give her a big head, and that's all any of them need."
He ignored the implied disrespect of the family. This was Mrs. Dakin, after all. In a quarter century of service to the family she had earned the right to speak her mind, discreetly, of course, and only to him and Mrs. Yardley.
"We must disagree on that," he said circumspectly. He did not clash readily with Mrs. Dakin. He'd long ago overcome the historical advantage she had over him at Downton - she had been appointed housekeeper the first year he worked in the house - but he was always respectful of her.
They were finished with that exchange. "Her Ladyship has just informed me that they've an unexpected guest coming for dinner tonight. A note arrived in the second post."
He nodded. "Thank you, Mrs. Dakin. I'll make adjustments." He paused. "Are you quite well?" He did wonder. She'd been looking pale for the past few days, but he hesitated to inquire. Health was always a delicate matter and it was usually she who did the asking.
"I am, thank you."
He was hardly surprised by this crisp response. He imagined that she would say the same thing if she'd just had her right arm cut off. Mrs. Dakin had a tough core. Almost as though she needed to prove that, she picked up the tea tray to take it to the kitchen.
"Don't do that," he said. It was quite beneath her and she had nothing to prove to him.
"It's nothing."
He turned away to put the blue and white porcelain cup on his desk. He would wash it later. Behind him Mrs. Dakin said something. At least, he thought she said something, but he didn't quite hear it. He glanced over his shoulder at her. In a split second he registered several things. It was not that he had not heard what Mrs. Dakin said, but that he did not understand the words. Her voice was slurred. In that blink of an eye, he saw the left side of her face give way, almost as though the bones had melted, and with this her whole left side as well. The tray slipped from her hands, crashing to the floor in almost a slow-motion arc. He saw it happening but could do nothing to arrest it. But when Mrs. Dakin herself collapsed, only an instant later, he moved reflexively, lunging forward and catching her as she fell, falling with her, his knees slamming into the floor even as he caught the deadweight of her body in his arms. At least he had prevented her head cracking against the floor. For a moment he thought he might have shattered both of his kneecaps, but knew he had not. When he opened his mouth it was not to express his own pain, but to cry for help for her.
One of the young kitchen maids - Irene - appeared almost instantly. She had probably already been on her way to fetch the tray, whose contents now lay broken and scattered across the floor. Her mouth fell open in horror at the sight of the housekeeper's body and the cry that escaped her was one of fright. She wasn't going to be much help.
"Fetch...," he began, and then faltered. In all the moments of downstairs crisis he had experienced in his years at Downton, it was Mrs. Dakin who would have been summoned. Before he resolved this dilemma, another figure appeared at the pantry door. Elsie.
"Oh, my!" She was shocked, too, but only for a second. Their eyes met for a split second over the prone body of the housekeeper who looked more and more like a fragile older woman than the steady senior staff member they had always known her to be. Then...
"Geoffrey!" Elsie had turned her head and barked the name down the passage.
There was a clattering of footsteps in response. It would occur to Mr. Carson sometime later that the footmen responded promptly to Elsie's commands, no matter that she was a housemaid and had no authority over them. She had a presence.
"Fetch Dr. Clarkson, right away. Tell him it's Mrs. Dakin and that it's an emergency." She brushed by the kitchen maid. "You'd best return to the kitchen, Irene," she said, firmly but almost gently. The maid ran. Then she was on her knees beside the butler and the housekeeper, reaching out to cradle Mrs. Dakin's lolling head in her hands.
Carson had regained his equilibrium. "She just collapsed," he said. "One moment we were talking and then she just...melted."
"A stroke, I think," Elsie said calmly, brushing Mrs. Dakin's forehead soothingly. "We'd better get her to bed. I'll help you."
Mrs. Dakin was a deadweight. She wasn't a heavy woman, but she was tall and had a sturdy frame. He winced as he shifted her and looked up into Elsie's inquiring gaze. She had seen his pained look.
"I caught her as she fell," he explained. "Banged my knees a bit." He said this dismissively. His discomfort was as nothing compared to Mrs. Dakin's. He look askance as Elsie slid an arm beneath the housekeeper's shoulder. The head housemaid had never shown a moment's flagging in her work since she had arrived at Downton, but she had a slim build and he didn't expect much in the way of physical strength. He was wrong.
"I'll call one of the footmen," she said, as he got to his feet. With Elsie's help he was able to lift Mrs. Dakin into his arms.
"I'll manage." He was strong. And two men trying to carry an unconscious woman up a few flights of stairs would be more trouble than it was worth. "If you'll get the doors for me, please."
She nodded.
It was slow going and before they reached the servants' quarters on the top floor they were overtaken by Miss Gillard, Her Ladyship's lady's maid. She said nothing until Carson had laid Mrs. Dakin out on her bed.
"Is there anything I can do?" she asked, her eyes flitting between the other two.
"You can help me," Elsie said briskly, already reaching to loosen Mrs. Dakin's clothing. "If you'll wait outside, Mr. Carson."
Again their eyes met. It was a suggestion, not an order. There were things that needed attending to and a man had no place in them. He nodded and stepped out.
He had never been on the women's side of the door that separated the servants' quarters. The novelty of it escaped him now. There were things he could do. One of them was to inform Her Ladyship. The other was to wait at the front door to let the doctor in.
A Comforting Hand
He was sitting on the stairs of the servants' staircase, on the men's side, just at the point where they divided. He had never sat on stairs before, even in his days as a footman. Mr. Finch would not have allowed it. And it was certainly inappropriate for the butler of Downton Abbey now. Undignified. Not fitting to his elevated station. He sat anyway, feeling...hollow.
The doctor - Clarkson, with whom Carson had as yet no more than a passing acquaintance - had been and gone and all the news was bad. It was indeed a stroke, a massive one that had paralyzed Mrs. Dakin's whole left side. The doctor held out little hope for meaningful recovery. In the meantime, Mrs. Dakin could not stay at Downton. They did not have the facilities to care for her properly, not at this stage. There was a nurse in attendance on her now, until arrangements were made to move her to the hospital. She wouldn't be there very long either. Dr. Clarkson was even now gone to look into longer term care.
In some houses, Mrs. Dakin might have found herself thrown on the charity of the state, but not at Downton. Her Ladyship had come upstairs as soon as she heard of Mrs. Dakin's misfortune and was quick to allay any concerns on this score. If Mrs. Dakin could not be attended in familiar surroundings, she would at least have the benefit of quality care. Her Ladyship's swift assurances had impressed Carson. This was, in his mind, only as it should be, and he was glad that Her Ladyship had risen to the mark.
He was not bothered about the impact of Mrs. Dakin's malady on Downton. It was, in the moment, irrelevant to him in the face of his concerns for the woman herself. But she had also taken care, and now he saw this more clearly, to prepare for such an eventuality. She had hired and been training a successor in the head housemaid Elsie, in much the same way as Mr. Finch had groomed a young Carson to become the butler of Downton Abbey. The difference was, Carson suspected, that Mr. Finch had expected to preside over the Abbey for many more years than he'd been given, while Mrs. Dakin appeared to have had a greater appreciation for her own mortality. And her confidence in the housemaid had not been misplaced. The younger woman had already stepped into the breach.
Carson was impressed with her, too. When they'd made Mrs. Dakin comfortable and Miss Gillard went away again, he'd slipped back into the room and stood there beside Elsie, watching the unconscious woman.
"You knew." It was a question more than a statement.
"I guessed," she said. "But I couldn't be sure. She told me nothing."
Carson was not surprised. Mrs. Dakin was a proud woman who had worked hard to get where she was. She might have recognized the limits of her own strength, but she was not about to admit them to others.
"You've been doing some of her work," he observed quietly, looking at Elsie out of the corner of his eye.
Her gaze remained on Mrs. Dakin. "I didn't think you'd noticed."
"I did."
He intended to recommend to Her Ladyship, at the first opportunity, that the woman be permanently appointed as housekeeper. He was not inclined to challenge Mrs. Dakin's judgment in her own jurisdiction, but the evidence of his eyes had erased any possibility of doubt. She was a little outspoken, of course, and tended to address him more collegially than deferentially, but those were matters that might be resolved. They would mourn Mrs. Dakin's loss, of course, and miss her - he certainly would - but life at Downton would go on with remarkably little disruption for all that the housekeeper had kept it all together for a quarter of a century and more.
Carson was bothered over Mrs. Dakin herself. The vision of her giving way like that, in his pantry - and she always a pillar of strength - would stay with him for a long time. And he mourned with her for her now circumscribed future. They wouldn't know for a while the extent of the paralysis, but Carson knew from observation of members of his own family the deleterious effects of a physical ailment on the physical and emotional well-being of a vigorously independent soul. The palsy that had affected his father and grandfather (and that, please God, might pass him by) was nothing like the stroke that had brought Mrs. Dakin low, although the strain had weighed heavily on the two men and broken his father's heart. The housekeeper had quite a struggle ahead of her.
It was the vulnerability such episodes revealed that shook him. It was a self-evident truth, but that fact did not detract from the shock of it, that one just never knew. The suddenness of it all was both frightening and humbling.
He heard a step on the stair and knew he ought to get to his feet no matter who it was. But his heart was too heavy. He raised his eyes that his gaze might fall on the interloper and he was startled to see a child on the stair below.
"Miss Mary!"
She hesitated at his declaration, not certain whether he was welcoming her or not, but then he gave her a half-hearted smile and she continued her ascent.
"What are you doing up here?" he asked. He was a little discomfited to see her. Although his heart always leapt at the sight of her, this was not a good time.
"Nanny said I could come," she said hurriedly, as though anticipating an adverse reaction from him. "She said Mrs. Dakin was taken ill." She spoke in a subdued voice, befitting the circumstances. He appreciated the effort.
Carson nodded. "She has."
Miss Mary had reached him and without waiting for direction from him she sat by his side. She did not seem to think it strange to find the formal Mr. Carson in such an undignified position. For a long moment neither of them spoke. Carson wondered fleetingly what he had done to gain Nanny's favour to such an extent that she would indulge Miss Mary in this fashion. And then, unthinking, he sighed, as his mind slipped back to a consideration of Mrs. Dakin.
"Will she be all right?" Miss Mary asked, still speaking in a hushed tone.
He hesitated only for a second or two. The episode with her nightmares had alerted him to the possibility that a disturbing incident like this might frighten her. But then he remembered that she had experienced her grandfather's death - peripherally, at least. And it was his own conviction that reality, though sometimes harsh, was less frightening than ignorance. If pressed, he would add to that that he thought Miss Mary tougher than she looked. So he told her the truth.
"No," he said gravely. "She won't."
Silence enveloped them once more as she digested this. And then she reached out and put her hand over his, resting on his knee. She said nothing, did not even look at him, but only tightened and then relaxed her hand on his in what he recognized as an effort to comfort him.
And he was comforted. The grief of the afternoon's event did not dissipate. Nothing concrete changed. But his heart filled with gratitude and love, and not a little pride in Miss Mary for wanting to be with him in this moment. And then he felt a little pang of bittersweet satisfaction. His little girl was growing up.