Chapter 12 Crisis
More Change
Mrs. Yardley rarely visited him in the butler's pantry. Although they both had legitimate claims to being very busy, he more often than not went to her when there was something to discuss. He might be the superior member of staff, but it was more difficult for her to get away from her work. And the occasions when the subjects of their conversations were too discrete for a resolution over the trestle table with her pounding bread dough or stuffing a chicken as they spoke were also few and far between. They had nothing personal and confidential between them. Until now, apparently.
When Mrs. Yardley came into the pantry and closed the door over, Mr. Carson stood up. He had accorded this courtesy to the senior staff women, both the cook and the housekeeper, as an acknowledgment of their longstanding service which pre-dated by decades his assumption of the butler's role, and he had extended the practice to Mrs. Hughes as a matter of habit. Mrs. Yardley's behaviour startled him for its novelty. He was even more taken aback when the cook asked if she might sit. And though he'd had no inkling of concerns regarding her, he thought he might make an educated guess as why she was here. With this in mind, he resumed his seat heavily.
"I've decided to retire, Mr. Carson." Mrs. Yardley was never a woman to hedge about things.
It was a blow. He couldn't conceal it and it flustered him. He said the first thing that came into his head. "But you're not old enough!"
She flashed him a grateful smile. "Thank you for that. But I am. I was sixty-five my last birthday." Perhaps moved by his shocked look she added, "That's the retirement age in Germany."
Predictably he scowled, as he frequently did at references to the way they did things on the Continent. "An invention of that Prussian pomposity Bismarck," he grumbled. "Probably devised to rid himself of some unwanted advisors." She would appreciate his allusion to the Iron Chancellor. Mrs. Yardley was buried in the kitchen, but she had always read the papers.
"Nevertheless," she said firmly. "It's Mrs. Dakin has put me to thinking this way."
That did not surprise him. The health catastrophe that had struck the long-time housekeeper had shaken them all. "But she had to retire after her stroke," he protested. He left unsaid that Mrs. Yardley looked as ever, which was to say that she had lost none of her usual robustness.
"Yes," she agreed. "She did. But I'd rather not wait for my health to go. I'd like to get what I can out of life while it's still possible. I've worked hard all my days, Mr. Carson," she added.
"I know it," he said warmly.
"And I'd like to think there's something more to it all than getting meals on the table eight times a day."
He was bewildered, but too polite to say what he was thinking.
Mrs. Yardley, perhaps reading his mind, laughed. "You're wondering how I'll find it now, at my age, if I've not got it already. It may shock you to learn that there's still quite a bit of life left in a body at sixty-five. A woman can still change her whole life. Maybe even a man can. You'll see for yourself, one day."
But he remained sceptical. Mrs. Yardley venturing out into the world at her age? "What will you do?"
The look she gave him contained a measure of pity and he recoiled from it. Was she feeling sorry for him?
"Well, I have my pension. And I'm going to live with my sister. Her husband died two years ago and she's wanting for company her own age. We always got on. And she's got a family - children and grandchildren." She paused for a moment, as if trying to find the words to make him see things as she saw them. "I want to enjoy my relations, Mr. Carson. I want to get to know them again. Because in the end, that's all you've got, isn't it?" She sat back in her chair and they stared at each other for a long moment, over the expanse of his desk and the somewhat greater chasm of understanding. "But I won't leave until the new year," she said, in a crisp tone that was more in keeping with the Mrs. Yardley he had always known. "And not until you've found a new cook. That'll give you four months at least. One big departure is quite enough for 1899."
And having had her say, she got up and left. As always, she had many things to do. Behind her, Carson sat for several minutes, pondering her declaration. And then he realized that it was time to ring the gong.
Unease
Mrs. Yardley's announcement had repercussions. Although her earliest departure date was months away, he had to begin the process of finding a replacement. No voice would be more valuable in this than her own. And he had to inform His Lordship and Her Ladyship. Maids and footmen might come and go without troubling them with the details, but critical personnel - the cook, the housekeeper, His Lordship's valet, Her Ladyship's lady's maid - required consultation, though the butler was, in the end, responsible for the actual hiring. They were both dismayed, though for different reasons.
"I grew up with her," His Lordship said, in a voice mingling regret and resignation. "It will be like a piece of Downton falling away to see her go."
Carson concurred. "It is difficult to imagine the place without her," he said, never having known it otherwise.
Her Ladyship had more pragmatic concerns. "Goodness! First Mrs. Dakin, and now Mrs. Yardley! Downton is being shaken to its foundations! How will you cope, Carson?" Her eyes were round with consternation at the prospect of such domestic turmoil.
"Not quite to the foundations, my lady," Carson said drily. "We'll manage." He was not greatly impressed with Her Ladyship's dramatics. He was there, after all. And there were cooks out there, as there had been housekeepers. He did not like the idea of change either, though he accepted that neither Mrs. Dakin nor Mrs. Yardley could be expected to go on forever.
To his surprise, Mrs. Yardley's declaration affected him on a more personal level. In his few quiet moments, it was her rationalization for going, not the decision itself, that preyed on his mind, especially her comments about family.
Because in the end, that's all you've got, isn't it?
If that were the case, then he had nothing, for he had no family. Not anymore. Mum and Dad were dead, and his only brother, too, all of them lying out in the Downton churchyard beneath a slab of stone that recorded their births and deaths, and nothing else about them. He had no one else. Oh, Mum had a brother who lived over the other side of Manchester, and there'd been children - they would be his cousins - but he'd never seen them. Mum had written to her brother over the years, but there'd rarely been any answers. And even that had lapsed with her death, all a long time ago.
And that wasn't really what Mrs. Yardley was talking about anyway. Or, at least, not how her words translated in his mind. She'd been talking about husband and wife, children, that sort of family. And he didn't have that either. He'd put away all ideas of a family when he'd returned to service. And he'd not thought about it again, until now.
He had had ideas, once, about a life other than service. He'd even pursued that dream, if only for a few years in his youth. And though he did not now think much of the avenue he had chosen, it was the principle of the thing - the idea of a life, a conventional life, though his had been anything but conventional - that was really important.
He'd loved before, too. He still didn't want to remember Alice, think about Alice, but love, that was something else. In the mornings, as he looked at himself in the mirror while shaving, he began to consider. If he were ever to make the break at all, surely now was the time. He could attract a woman, he was sure of that. He was thirty-nine years old, still in the prime of life. He was reasonably good-looking (if you could see beyond that nose), in good health, had savings, and was skilled and experienced enough to find good employment. And he thought himself a kind and generous man. And he wanted children. He would love children, even the children of some other man - he knew that well enough.
He would have to leave service. Marriage within service wasn't done. Oh, there was an oddity here and there who had broken the code and even made it work. But being the odd man out had never appealed to him. He believed in doing things properly and in the value of rules. Some might have pushed the boundaries of convention, but that was not his way.
Not that there was much in the way of possibilities anyway. He seldom had the opportunity to meet women in other houses and the prospects at Downton were limited. The female staff, most of them, were too young for him, and, if he were honest with himself, not his intellectual calibre at all. He could not imagine marrying a woman with whom he could not converse about the things that were important to him beyond the daily grind. The only woman downstairs at Downton who was near his age was the new housekeeper, Mrs. Hughes. She was still largely an unknown quantity, as he had had little to do with her when she was head housemaid and had not made much progress in getting to know her better in the few months since her promotion. More to the point, he found her abrasive and assertive, too forward for his liking. She was not his kind at all. Nothing like Alice, who was a gentle soul, with a quiet warmth and wit. And who had fallen for Charlie Grigg, heaven help us!
All that to say that he would need to leave Downton in order to establish a family of his own. That would be an inconvenience while he searched for employment and settled himself elsewhere, and an emotional wrench, for he did love the house, the work, and his surroundings. But were these not hardships worth weathering? And it wouldn't be that difficult to find congenial employment. His work as a butler, overseeing the operation of a great house and the work of a vast staff, had given him invaluable managerial experience. And His Lordship would give him a sterling reference, he didn't doubt that.
Finding a job would not be a problem, then. Finding a good wife - well, that was another thing altogether. But first things first. He would explore the prospects for employment before he started to look at women again.
So he began to read the job postings in the papers, retiring to his pantry every morning with his own copies of the local papers and those from more far-flung jurisdictions, especially those from London. With the latter he thumbed his way quickly past the storm clouds gathering on the front pages, past national news that no longer absorbed him in quite the same way. In June, he'd read with interest about the breakdown of negotiations with the Boers at Bloemfontein over the rights of the uitlanders in the Transvaal. But the demand for full voting rights for those British residents in the region, issued by Colonial Secretary Joseph Chamberlain in September, hard on the heels of Mrs. Yardley's declaration, failed to draw more than a passing glance from him as his eyes roamed the pages searching for promising opportunities. Was he better suited for a position in hotel or factory management? He thought he could try for either, although he would prefer to live in London rather than one of the manufacturing cities. Mr. Chamberlain's powerbase, incidentally, was Birmingham. What a dreadful prospect.
Even as he focused on positions that would allow him to exploit the skills he'd developed in service, he drifted back toward the only alternative he had ever known. On one of his half-days, he went to York to see a show. And then the next week, he went back again. When he'd abandoned the halls, he'd left it all behind him, wanting nothing to do with the world where his heart had been broken so resoundingly. But that was sixteen years ago. He willed himself to be over it and to look at this world from his present perspective, rather than through the prism of the fraught past.
He brought a more mature eye, a more critical approach to the performances now. Some things had changed - certainly the names and the faces, and the songs and the routines. The humour was sharper. The wit and style of the London stage, nowhere more deftly displayed than in the work of the now-socially-reviled Oscar Wilde, had permeated even these distant regions and, Carson had to admit, invested the whole with a veneer of smart professionalism wholly absent from his own broad-based showmanship of yesteryear. Perhaps he might find a place again in this world - the Cheerful Charlies reborn.
No. Foolish thought. Even if he knew where Charlie Grigg was these days which, mercifully, he did not. He hoped never again to set eyes on the man. Or on Alice. But he could see applying his managerial and organizational skills here. And then rejected the notion. He was looking for the stability necessary to woo a woman of ordinary expectations and to support children. One needed something more than a livelihood grounded in fluctuating public tastes for entertainment for that purpose.
It wasn't an immediate concern, not until he made his mind up to do it and had some serious prospects, but eventually he would have to tell His Lordship. That would be very difficult indeed. He owed the family, especially His Lordship's father, so much. And he felt the burden of expectation that had long rested on his shoulders, from the time he had discerned that Mr. Finch was grooming him, on His Lordship's father's instructions, for the post of butler at Downton Abbey. No one had ever challenged this plan for his future, not even Carson himself. But did that mean he could never abandon it? that he was bound to service, and here at Downton, all of his days because His Lordship's father had ordained it so? Carson did not think so. Nor would Lord Grantham think so, he of the so-congenial disposition. There were higher callings than service, and family was one of them. Robert Crawley would understand.
It would be harder to leave His Lordship than to leave the work. This was almost a startling revelation for Carson, as he thought about it. They were not friends, he and His Lordship, and never could be. But they worked well together. They got on. And there was an element of...if not friendship, then perhaps cameraderie-in-arms about their relationship. There was more than work between them. He would miss that.
If his new preoccupation pushed the goings-on of the wider world to the peripheries, it also distracted him from his usual concerns. Mrs. Hughes noticed. One afternoon when he failed to turn up for tea in the servants' hall - ever since she had come to Downton and enlivened the table talk, he had resumed the habit - she brought him in a tray.
"Are you quite all right, Mr. Carson?"
It was the prerogative of the housekeeper to inquire after everyone's health, even the butler's, and to make work-related decisions when health became an issue. But he reacted defensively, knowing that he had not been himself.
"Perfectly fine!" he snapped peremptorily. "I've no idea why you would ask."
His remark was not a question and he did not expect a response, but she gave one anyway, undeterred by his caustic tone. "Well, for one you've not berated me for bringing in your tea when it is the work of a kitchen maid. And for another, you didn't stand when I came in. Nor did you thank me, which is not like you at all."
His first impulse was to snap again, but habits of courtesy and consideration long ingrained compelled him to contrition. "I beg your pardon, Mrs. Hughes," he said, in a more temperate voice, getting to his feet as he spoke. He'd gotten the hang of her name, finally, having had a time of it switching from Elsie, as she had been known as a housemaid, to the more formal title accorded the housekeeper. "Thank you for bringing the tea. I hadn't noticed the time." That in itself was, perhaps, an admission that not all was well. The butler of Downton Abbey was renowned for his punctuality, as well as his punctiliousness. When she continued to stare at him, he realized she was waiting for a reasonable response to her original question. "I am well," he said firmly. "Only a bit distracted."
For a long moment she stared intently at him, as though to give him an opportunity to recant or expand, and then she silently withdrew. Women, he thought. Are you that sure you want a wife, Charlie?
Miss Mary also noticed his behaviour. "Is someone sick, Mr. Carson?" She asked this one afternoon over their tea.
He was puzzled. "No one's sick," he said, looking at her curiously. "Why do you ask?"
She sipped her drink, her wide, dark eyes fixed on him over the rim of her blue-and-white china cup. "You're acting like when Mrs. Dakin went away."
There was no fooling a child, not that he'd been trying. He just wasn't aware that she was so observant of his moods. He smiled. "No, nothing like that. I've...I've got a few things on my mind. That's all." As his eyes rested on her, it occurred to him that in leaving Downton, he would be leaving her, too. How had he not considered this? His heart felt a wrench.
"Papa is very worried all the time, too," she went on. "'Cares of the world,' he says. What are the 'cares of the world,' Mr. Carson?" She looked at him in expectation. He answered her questions.
"His Lordship has responsibilities that extend beyond your family, and even beyond Downton, Miss Mary," he said slowly.
"Such as?"
He thought for a moment. "Well, before he became the Earl of Grantham, His Lordship was a soldier. He was in the army. He follows what the army is doing across the Empire and sometimes that troubles him. And, as Lord Grantham, he sits in the House of Lords." He had already explained to her that the Lords was the appointed upper chamber of Parliament, populated by the noble families of the realm, among whom the Crawleys numbered. "There are some very serious questions before the government at the moment."
"Like what?" she persisted.
"Well, such as whether it is worth a war to ensure that British men may exercise their right to self-government the world over." That was, after all, the principle behind the troubles in the South African republics.
Miss Mary struggled with his words. "Do you think it is, Mr. Carson?" she asked at length, having at least made structural sense of his statement, if not achieving understanding of its substance.
That was the question. Was the principle worth the price? "I don't know," he said, not wholly focused on the great national matter. He did not expect this answer to satisfy her. Didn't children - didn't everyone - like things to be black and white? And yet she was smiling. "Why're you so pleased?" he asked, unable to keep from smiling himself. She had such a charming away about her.
"It's only that it's nice to know grown-ups don't know everything, Mr. Carson," she said, looking him straight in the eye, fully aware of her impertinence and supremely confident that he would not rebuke her for it.
He laughed aloud, startling passers-by in the passage who rarely knew Mr. Carson to unbend.
"That's the truth of it," he said agreeably, and was relieved to be able to admit uncertainty to someone. "Now, tell me what you've learned to say in French this week. I know a little French, myself."
Storm Clouds
If exploring options for a different future were so distracting as to have drawn the attention of Mrs. Hughes and Miss Mary, then surely His Lordship had noticed as well. This would have troubled Carson, for the essence of doing things properly was that no one need take any notice of them at all. But His Lordship had his own preoccupations and, as Carson had intimated to Miss Mary, they did indeed revolve around events in the Boer republics in South Africa in which he had an interest beyond that of a concerned subject of the King. Carson had let the events of those remote places drift to the back of his consciousness, but he could not forget them entirely, not when His Lordship was so agitated over them.
In September, while Carson had been reeling over Mrs. Yardley's announcement and beginning to ponder, perhaps, a different future for himself, His Lordship had gotten quite exercised over the situation of the uitlanders. As Her Ladyship was less interested in British imperial ventures and hardly ever appeared at the breakfast table anyway, Carson absorbed the currents of His Lordship's rising agitation.
"Chamberlain is off the rails in the matters of electoral reform," Robert Crawley had thundered, shaking The Times. "And his land reform program - three acres and a mule, for heaven's sake! - absolutely crackers!" he'd added. "But he'll make his mark as Colonial Secretary. And I support completely his demand for full political rights for the uitlanders. Englishmen must have a say in the way they are governed, no matter where they are. Republics!" he had fumed.
Carson agreed completely, though this particular issue did not exacerbate his blood pressure to quite the same extent it did His Lordship's.
There was a tension in the house in the first weeks of October, when the Boers issued an ultimatum demanding that Britain withdraw from critical border areas of the South African states, and then almost jubilation on His Lordship's part when Britain refused and the Boers declared war.
"We'll put paid to that nonsense soon enough," His Lordship had said in a tone of self-satisfaction. Carson concurred with that sentiment, too.
And then the news had flooded in of the Boer offensive on several fronts. And of its several successes. Black Week, which saw the British regular forces reeling in three massive losses between December 10-15, 1899, cast a pall over the weeks leading up to Christmas at Downton. Britain had never known such a coalescence of military catastrophe, and at the hands of the upstart Boers, those rough, Dutch colonial horsemen who were no match in an open contest with the forces of the mightiest empire in the world. Only...they were.
In the meantime, Carson had made some progress on a number of fronts closer to home. He had advertised extensively for the cook's position. While it occasionally happened that a promotion within was possible, as was the case with himself and Mrs. Hughes, he thought it wiser to cast the net broadly. You didn't want to be changing cooks with the weather. And it was not a matter of finding an adequate replacement for Mrs. Yardley, but rather the best available. The cook, like the butler and, to some extent the housekeeper, set a tone for the house. It was not on that visitors should leave Downton Abbey grumbling about the food. He and Mrs. Yardley interviewed a number of candidates and presented a list of the real contenders to Her Ladyship. Then, at Mrs. Yardley's insistence, each candidate composed a series of sample menus and then invited to Downton to prepare, under Mrs. Yardley's watchful eye, a meal for the family. It was a daunting process, but Carson had little sympathy with the pressures this placed on the applicants. He was not convinced by the choice favoured by Her Ladyship and Mrs. Yardley, but he yielded. As he was planning to leave Downton, it was perhaps more important that they be satisfied rather than he. And it was decided that the new cook, a Mrs. Sealyham, would begin in January.
Closer to his own concerns, he had come on two likely employment possibilities, both in London and both at major hotels. For months he'd found reasons to reject the positions he'd seen advertised, on the basis of location or the unappealing nature of the work or the hours demanded. He'd begun to wonder if he was wavering. But now his reluctance to take action was vindicated, for both of these prospects seemed eminently suitable.
He wrote out letters of application, but did not put them immediately into the post. Before he did so, he meant to speak to His Lordship. There was the matter of a reference, of course, but for Carson it was more about courtesy. Now that he had made up his mind, it was only right that he should make his intentions known to the man he had served so long. And it was not possible to delay. The letters must be sent on their way.
He intended to broach the necessity for a private conference with His Lordship at breakfast, but was preempted by His Lordship himself.
Looking up from the official communication that had arrived for him in the morning post, Robert Crawley addressed his butler. "Carson, if possible I should like to speak with you later this morning on a matter of some importance. May we say ten o'clock in my study?"
As a matter of course, when the two men met in the privacy of the study at the appointed hour, Carson held back on his own announcement, yielding to His Lordship's prerogative. Robert Crawley stood in the middle of the room so that they were eye to eye for this exchange. This struck Carson as a little odd, for His Lordship invariably sat at his desk when they were discussing the business of the house.
"I know you've been following the war in South Africa as closely as I have," His Lordship said, getting immediately to the point. "We're in a very bad way, Carson, and Mr. Salisbury has decided greatly to expand our efforts there. Two full regiments are being dispatched and a widespread call for volunteers has been issued. All of the colonies have been invited to participate, but of course England will raise its own contingent of volunteers as well."
"Black Week must be avenged," Carson intoned. He fully supported the Prime Minister's determination on this matter.
Robert Crawley paused for a moment and then took a step closer to his butler, a movement suggesting discretion and he lowered his voice when he spoke again. "I've not yet spoken with Her Ladyship about this, Carson. Indeed, I only received the official notice this morning. But I want to get things straight with you before I make an announcement to the family."
"My lord?" Carson did not understand.
"I've been offered a captaincy in the North Riding Volunteers, Carson. And I'm going to take it. Our regiment will undergo a month's intensive training here and then ship out to South Africa before Christmas. It's imperative that our forces on the ground in the Transvaal are in a position to begin the process of restoring British honour early in the new year."
This declaration left Carson gaping in astonishment. "A commission in the North Riding Volunteers!" he managed to gasp.
His Lordship frowned a little. "You know of my military training, Carson. It's hardly to be expected that I should pass on this call to service."
"But...Downton, my lord. And your family. You have a wife and children. Surely there is no need for you to serve." The shock of His Lordship's news had temporarily dispelled Carson's usual tact. These were not matters, rightly speaking, of his concern.
"I have a duty to Queen and Country, Carson," His Lordship said curtly.
"Of course, my lord. Only ...it is a war, my lord. And you are the Earl of Grantham." He spoke circumspectly, but his point was clear to his listener. The two men stared hard at each other.
"And that should excuse me from other kinds of responsibilities?" Robert Crawley spoke sharply, perhaps more sharply than he had intended, for the expression on his face softened and his voice, when he spoke again, was more moderate. "I know the risks, Carson," he said quietly. "But this is what the aristocracy does. This is one of our fundamental services to the nation. I have been trained as an officer and I must apply those skills when and where they are required. And is not our nation in serious difficulty? Good God, we've never faced military disaster on the scale we saw during Black Week!"
Carson could not argue with that, not with any of that. He supported the system as vigorously as did his employer, and he knew, too, that His Lordship was right about the aristocracy. One could only demand the allegiance of the masses when the elites played their part fully and without reservation.
At the butler's expression of resignation, His Lordship's demeanour softened further. "You understand," he said. It wasn't a question.
Carson nodded.
His Lordship was silent for a moment, letting Carson digest the news. "I can't tell you what a relief it is to me to know that you will be here, holding the fort so to speak," Robert said earnestly. "You'll be in charge of the house, of course, with authority to make whatever decisions you think necessary for its welfare, for the duration of the conflict. But..." He let the word hang in the air.
Carson saw emotion welling in His Lordship's eyes and felt the intensity of the charge that was being vested upon him.
"But I'm also counting on you to look after my family, Carson. I can't know...no one can...what may happen in South Africa. There's no one else I could trust with all that is important to me. I know that...well, that you'll take care of them, come what may."
His Lordship did not appear to require a response. He regained control of the feelings that had swirled to the surface as he issued this commission and the smooth impassive expression with which Robert Crawley usually met the world returned to his face. Carson could not make the same claim to equilibrium.
"Well." His Lordship cleared his throat. "I'm going now to speak with Her Ladyship, Carson. As you can imagine, that's going to be a difficult conversation. She's unlikely to receive this news with anything like your equanimity." He nodded and then withdrew, leaving Carson to come to terms with the great responsibility - and burden - that had just been placed on his shoulders.
Where Your Heart Is
After the servants' dinner he withdrew to his pantry. He was aware of the looks that passed between the cook and the housekeeper as he did so. He'd been too quiet at dinner and Mrs. Yardley and Mrs. Hughes had noticed. But he gave them no satisfaction, too concerned with his own troubles. Closing over the pantry door, he crossed the floor to his desk and slumped heavily into his chair. He'd been going round and round on it since his conversation with His Lordship hours earlier and come to no resolution.
Was it not a problem like any other? Was it not a matter of identifying and assessing the advantages and disadvantages and drawing the appropriate conclusion? But no. Somehow this quandary eluded such a clinical analysis.
His Lordship had not asked for his cooperation. He had just assumed. As well he might, Carson chided himself. You've given him no reason to think otherwise. You've told him nothing of your own hopes and dreams. He's only ever known you, seen you, as his stalwart lieutenant in the preservation of Downton Abbey and of the Crawley family. No one save His Lordship has ever been more dedicated to those tasks.
But to stay on... He had seized on the notion of seeking a different life and the opportunity to do so, in the form of promising alternative employment, was within his grasp. He would secure offers for both those positions if he sent the letters, he knew it. If. This was his chance, wasn't it? His Lordship would still give him a good reference, even in his disappointment. It was all still possible. He could go up now, intercept His Lordship before he retired for the night, and put it to him. Why must he put his own life on hold because His Lordship felt obliged to respond to the call of Queen and country?
And yet he could feel no resentment toward Robert Crawley either for the decision he had taken or for the assumptions he had made of his butler. That was the nature of their relationship and Carson had embraced it as readily, if not more so, than His Lordship himself. But was he prepared to surrender the dream he had been cultivating of late of a family, of loved ones gathered around his own hearth?
He heard the tap on his door as though from a great distance and turned his head only very slowly in that direction, expecting to see one or the other of the staff there, primed with some mundane question. But it was not one of the downstairs denizens and this realization jarred him from his own glum reveries.
"Miss Mary!"
It was almost eleven o'clock, long past the child's bedtime. She looked like a little wraith, standing there in the doorway in her flowing white nightgown and embroidered green robe, her wide eyes fixed on him.
"What are you doing here?" He heard the gruffness in his voice. "Come in." And he got up and went to her as she slipped into his office. He held out a hand and she eagerly took it and followed him to the chairs before the desk. She sat in one, he in the other, right beside her. In the dimness of the firelight emanating from the grate in the corner, he could see that she was distressed. Was that the glint of a tear in her eye?
"What is it?" he asked, his tone gentle now.
He was startled when tears began to spill over her cheeks. Miss Mary Crawley was not a crier.
"It's Papa, Mr. Carson! He's going away tomorrow and Nanny says he may be gone for a very long time!"
Of course. His Lordship had spoken with Her Ladyship that morning, after imparting his news to Carson, and spent the better part of the day persuading her to accept his decision - without much success, as far as Carson could tell. And then they had told the children during their hour together after tea. Carson had not been present, but he was certain that His Lordship would have mentioned only the immediate nature of his departure and the importance of his business, but not its exact nature, for fear of frightening them.
Carson had never been anything but honest with Miss Mary. "He is to go away tomorrow," he confirmed. "And it may well be some time before he returns. He does not know himself how long." His honesty did not require him to acknowledge that other possibility, that His Lordship might not return at all.
"But I don't want him to go, Mr. Carson!"
Her very real anguish touched him and he squeezed her hand comfortingly. "His Lordship has many responsibilities and he must attend to them. The Queen requires his services."
"But I'll miss him!"
"Of course you will."
"And... and..." Her tears were falling freely now. "I wanted to tell him that and to beg him not to forget me while he's gone. Me or Mama and my sisters. I went round to Mama's room to find him. But through the door I could hear Mama crying so hard and Papa speaking to her so gently. I couldn't go in."
His heart ached for her sorrow, but even through this he had to smile at her forbearance. He would not have expected it of her. "Just as well," he said soothingly. "Your Mama is very sad."
"He'll be gone in the morning before I'm up, Mr. Carson. And I won't see him again for ages. I must... I must tell him these things!" A renewed wave of anguish swept over her and her silent tears turned abruptly to sobs.
Carson responded instinctively, reaching out for her and drawing her into his arms. She clung to him, pressing her face against his shoulder and sobbing without restraint while he rubbed her back in a comforting way and tried to think how he might lighten her burden. He had never seen Miss Mary undone like this.
At length her tears dissipated and she righted herself, sitting on his knee and wiping her heated cheeks with the back of her forearm, in a manner that Nanny would no doubt have reviled.
"I have an idea," he said suddenly.
She looked up at him alertly. She knew him to be a mender of ills.
"You could write His Lordship a letter telling him how you feel," he suggested. "You may leave it with me and I will place it into his hands directly tomorrow morning so that he will have it with him in the coach. Then he will have something of you with him wherever he goes these next few months."
He set her up at his desk with a crisp sheet of his best writing paper and his fountain pen. Miss Mary understood the latter to be a sign of the momentous nature of her undertaking for she had on only rare occasions been allowed to use it. And then she paused uncertainly.
"What shall I say, Mr. Carson?"
"Write what is in your heart," he advised. It was a vague direction and perhaps too abstract for an ordinary child, but Miss Mary smiled and pressed the pen to paper.
"Dearest Papa." As she scratched out the words, she said them aloud. "You are going away tomorrow and I can hardly bear to think of it. I will miss you so much. I know that the Queen needs you and I am very proud that you are helping her. But Mama and Sybil and I need you, too." She paused before adding, "And Edith, as well. Please hurry back to us, dear Papa, and never forget us while you are gone. I won't forget you. Read my letter and remember your daughter, Mary, who loves you more than anything."
Her eyes were dry now as she looked up at Carson, though he could hardly see her clearly through the blur in his own.
"Is that all right, Mr. Carson?"
"It is perfection, Miss Mary," he said softly, his voice catching. He folded the letter for her and put it in an envelope that she addressed to "Dearest Papa."
Carson cleared his throat and by the time she had completed this flourish he had regained his poise and could smile at her once more. He took the envelope she held out to him and put it in his own breast pocket where it found company in the letters of application he had written the previous night.
"Well done, Miss Mary. His Lordship's service to the Queen shall be all the better for having your love behind him. And now, I think, you ought to go back to bed."
She nodded obligingly and stood up. "Will you take me up, please, Mr. Carson?"
Of course he would.
He took her hand again and they climbed the stairs to the gallery in silence. Miss Mary moved with assurance, her wounded heart soothed by having taken action, her spirits undaunted by the darkness around them and the ghostly light cast by the taper he held in his other hand. That had not always been the case. Carson was reminded of the time they had toured the Abbey at night in order to dispel Miss Mary's fearful nightmares. He cherished the memory of that occasion almost above all others.
They had almost reached the door of the nursery when she stopped. He halted as well and looked down to find her staring up at him with a pensive, almost anxious look.
"You won't go away, will you, Mr. Carson? My heart would break to lose you, too."
All day he had wrestled with the question of his own future - whether to go or stay - and in this moment, this unanticipated moment, his quandary resolved itself and he was able to respond to the child the he had loved for nine years as he had not been able to answer either His Lordship or himself.
"As would mine, Miss Mary," he said solemnly. "No," he added firmly, and he knew it to be true, "I'm not going anywhere."
She smiled at him then, that radiant smile that filled his heart with so much joy. And then she released his hand and slipped into the nursery, leaving him in the flickering light of his candle.
Back in the pantry several minutes later, he stirred the fire. And when the flames rose from the coals, he withdrew the three letters from his pocket and carefully separated Miss Mary's letter from the ones he had written. The former he returned to its place of safety, the latter he threw into the fire. He watched the paper blacken and the edges curl up and then the whole of them dissolve into charred fragments and disappear.
When he made a decision, he did so without regret and recrimination. He'd entertained a change and examined his options with care, and made his choice. Downton was his home. He had family here, perhaps not conventionally defined, but with the same calls of obligation and the very same enthralment of the heart. He would not walk away from them.
"That's it, then, Charlie boy. You've made your choice."
He was still staring into the flames, though the evidence of his aborted venture had entirely disappeared, when there was a knock at the door and he looked up to see Mrs. Hughes putting her head in.
"You're not going to stay up all night, I hope, Mr. Carson."
In other circumstances he might have been annoyed at her telling him what to do. But he was too preoccupied for that. "No," he said mildly. "Just thinking for a while. Brooding, really."
She let a few seconds tick by and then took a step into the room. "You look like you could use a friend."
He smiled humourlessly. "Butlers don't have friends, Mrs. Hughes. Not among the staff, at any rate."
This prompted her to frown. "That's not healthy," she said firmly, and then added, in a more kindly tone, "I can listen if you'd like to talk."
"No." He gave a dismissive little flick of his fingers. "Thank you."
Mrs. Hughes shrugged and made to withdraw.
"Perhaps a drink," he said abruptly. Where did that come from? "Would you care for a sherry?"
He had never invited any member of staff, let alone the housekeeper, to join him. Mrs. Dakin would have been shocked by such behaviour. Mrs. Yardley would probably reprimand him in the morning. He would probably be wondering at the inappropriateness of it for days. And yet his eyes were fixed on the housekeeper, his brows raised inquiringly.
For a moment she said nothing and he began to think she would reprimand him. She had a very sharp tongue. And then...
"I would. Thank you." And she stepped into the room and sat, at his direction, in a chair by the little table where he had his tea with Miss Mary.
Though he had asked her, he was nevertheless surprised at her response and at the pleasure her agreement gave him. And he went to the cupboard to the get the glasses.