GETTING MARRIED
Chapter 10 The Way Things Are
It was getting to be a rare evening when they were all at home for dinner, what with Edith's frequent trips to London to deal with her magazine or, more accurately, her editor. Tonight, in addition to the immediate family, the Dowager was there and Isobel had come along, too. Robert chose to join the women as they withdrew to the drawing room, not anxious to spend an hour alone just for the sake of doing so, although a roomful of women could be a little trying. He enjoyed his wife, daughters, mother, and in-law, but he knew he would be grateful enough when either of the girls married and brought another man into the circle. He'd been missing Tom quite a bit lately.
Carson and Molesley saw them settled with their drinks and then retired to the servants' hall for dinner. As the door closed upon them, Robert turned to his wife.
"You remember, darling, that I won't be here on Thursday night. I'm going to take Carson out for dinner in York."
This surprised Edith. "Is this your idea of a stag party, Papa?" she asked with a smile.
"I am the best man," he said smoothly. "It's my job, isn't it?" He took a seat beside Cora on the sofa. "We're going to have a nice dinner in a quiet place. A distraction for him. He can get a little tense when it comes to grand events and he's at the centre of this one."
"And how does Carson feel about this?" Cora asked mischievously, already having an inkling of the answer.
Robert shrugged. "Of course, he's resisting. I've had to twist his arm."
"Well, you can have him for the evening," Mary said, "but he's mine for the afternoon."
"What's this about?" the Dowager asked, wading into the conversation.
"I should have stood up with him," Mary said, more to stir the pot than anything else. "Papa stole the role of best man out from under me."
"He asked me," Robert said insistently, although he smiled. He knew what Mary was up to.
"I'm sure there was coercion." Mary turned to her grandmother. "I want to have my own pre-wedding moment with Carson," she explained. "I don't think I'll have such easy access to him once he's married."
Robert and Cora exchanged amused glances at Mary's almost wistful remark.
"I'm sure he'll always have time for you," Edith said, without rancor. She'd made her peace with Carson, if not Mary, on this. "Are you going to give him the benefit of your experience?" she asked idly, giving Mary a meaningful look.
Mary stared at her sister for a moment. "As much as I think he can manage," she said in a deadpan voice.
"You have a lovely relationship with Carson," Isobel remarked, either missing or deliberately ignoring this ribald exchange. "Matthew said you spent quite a bit of time with him when you were a child."
"I did." The pressures of the agent's job wore on Mary and she was even more inclined than usual these days to impatience and irritation. But this topic evoked a warm smile from her. "I went down to the butler's pantry at every opportunity. Carson was my refuge from nanny. And then from our governesses." Mary shuddered, largely for effect, at the memory of the series of formidable women who had served in the latter capacity. Even as a child, few people had cowed Mary, but she maintained a particular horror of governesses.
This insight into the lives of the upper echelon elicited a raised eyebrow from Isobel, who would never understand this proclivity for distancing oneself from one's children. Matthew had been her son. She had raised him. It was far too important a business to be left to strangers, in her view.
"Did you know how much time Mary spent downstairs with Carson?" Edith asked this of her parents. They had never spoken of the subject before.
"Of course," Cora said easily.
Edith frowned. "Well,...where was I? I never went downstairs!"
"You were upstairs playing with your dolls," Mary said acidly. "Or doing whatever you were told." Mary's tone managed to imply that there was something wrong with both of these things.
"I'm sure that if you'd ventured downstairs, Carson would have enjoyed your company, too," Isobel said soothingly, trying to mend one of Edith's lifelong wounds with a few words.
They all turned to stare at her as if she'd uttered a particularly heinous blasphemy and Isobel wondered what she could have said to have united the Crawleys so effectively.
Violet broke the awkward moment with a peal of laughter. "Oh, no. I think not."
Perhaps a little peeved by the truth of this, which she herself acknowledged, Edith re-directed the conversation.
"Papa is taking Carson out on the town and Mary is spending the afternoon with him. Why all this fuss over Carson and nothing for Mrs. Hughes?"
There was another slightly awkward silence, although Robert and Mary seemed impervious to it.
"I'm the best man," Robert said, extricating himself from any liability.
Mary was more direct. "That's the way things are," she said coolly. "Carson is ours. Mrs. Hughes is theirs. She isn't our responsibility." And that was an accurate summation of the matter as she saw it. It was a perspective consistent with Mary's actions. She did not see her contribution to the wedding dress as a gesture to Mrs. Hughes, but rather as part of her overall affection for Carson.
"Well, that's not fair." Edith had no great vested interest in this question. She did not have, as she had already indicated, any special considerations downstairs. But she persisted at least in part because doing so might irritate Mary.
But Mary was not so easily drawn. She shook her head and picked up one of the papers still lying on the coffee table. Quite deliberately she avoided last month's copy of The Sketch that Cora had brought down.
The burden of Edith's question fell on Cora. "I understand that the female staff are having a bit of a party for her that evening," Cora said. "That's why we're all going out."
Edith had not, to this point, given the impending wedding any thought beyond marking the date in her calendar, but now that her curiosity was aroused, she pursued it with the tenacity of a terrier, oblivious to the discomfort it might cause. "And that's it? Don't you think that we ought to be part of that celebration for the bride?"
"It will only make them all uncomfortable," Cora said, but shifted uneasily all the same. The lack of a personal contribution to Mrs. Hughes's day had been on her mind.
Edith sighed. "Ah! The excuse we always use to avoid doing what is right."
"You're welcome to join them," Mary countered, with a touch of asperity. "Just don't expect to see me there."
Her sister only rolled her eyes and forbore to point out that while Papa's planned excursion with Carson was actually focused on Carson and addressing his potential nervousness, Mary's desire to spend time with the butler on the eve of his wedding was little more than self-indulgence.
"This is hardly a scene I could ever have imagined when I first came to Downton," Isobel remarked to Violet.
"What do you mean?"
"The excitement you all have and the interest you're taking in a wedding between two servants."
Violet smiled humourlessly. "I see. You equate service to the aristocracy with slavery, and do not allow for the existence of natural affection among individuals who spend so much time together."
Isobel thought about it. "Well, I wouldn't have said 'slavery' but yes, I am surprised at the depth of affection on display here."
Violet sighed. She thought of her efforts to spare Molesley and William Mason military service during the war, her interposition with Mr. Travis so that William and Daisy might marry, her advice to a guilt-stricken Daisy on the nature of the kitchen maid's love for William, her attempt to "sell" Molesley to Lady Shackleton as a butler, her financial contribution to Molesley's welfare when he was at his lowest point, her intervention to see Ethel Parks properly placed, not to mention her endless prayers for the Bateses in their many trials and tribulations, and, of course, her endless confidences with Carson over matters large and small over several decades' association. All of this made her wonder at the class blindness of an indignant middle-class reformer. It was all very reminiscent of Lloyd George.
"Because you think us heartless," she concluded, "not the servants, of course."
"I'm only glad to have been proven wrong," Isobel declared, with one of her disarming smiles. "What do you really think of Carson and Mrs. Hughes marrying?"
The Dowager glared at her friend. "Why do you keep asking me that question? You seem to think I change my mind as often as I change my clothes."
Isobel only stared expectantly at her, widening her eyes as a prompt.
"I am happy for them both and wish them well," Violet said, enunciating each word crisply so that the other woman could be in no doubt of her meaning.
"And you're not dismayed at this flouting of tradition?"
"Oh, that's a long lost battle," Violet said abruptly, gesturing impatiently. "No, indeed, that's the least of my worries now. Only..." She looked with some curiosity and no little concern at Isobel, "what is it that you're really on about?"
Isobel stared right back at her, as if to call her bluff, but in the end dropped her eyes first. "Carson and Mrs. Hughes," she said quietly. "A sunset romance. It might have been one of us."
Violet was taken aback a second time. "Sunset? Carson is a good many years younger than me, my dear, and Mrs. Hughes younger still. Theirs is more of a tea-time romance, if you ask me."
"Late in life," Isobel amended, with a trace of exasperation. "All I'm saying is that it might have been one of us."
A wan smile creased the Dowager's face. "You, perhaps. Prince Kuragin was never in the cards for me, not then, not now, and I am not unhappy with the way my life has turned out." She felt it necessary to reiterate this point, and then moved on to the heart of Isobel's concerns as she saw them.
"You haven't reconciled yourself to a life without Lord Merton, then."
Predictably Isobel flared with indignation at this. "I have. It's only that...I wish I hadn't. That is, I wish things had worked out differently. But they haven't." She sighed. "And that is what makes me wistful when thinking about Carson and Mrs. Hughes."