Lessons From the Heart

"Lady Mary needs you."

Mr. Branson made this cryptic remark almost as though he were passing on a state secret. He uttered the words beneath his breath, slowing but not stopping by Carson's side as he hastened from the breakfast table, and then hurrying from the room as if there were Bolshevik agents on his tail. Or, in Mr. Branson's case, officers of the Black and Tan.

In any case, Carson thought the man insufferably presumptuous to have dropped such an incendiary in the butler's lap and then run for it. Was it too much to ask for a little more clarification? No doubt Mr. Branson thought the situation spoke for itself and, once he'd overcome his reflexive impulse of irritation with almost everything Tom Branson did, Carson thought that this might be the case.

Last night's dinner and this morning's breakfast - attended by His Lordship, Her Ladyship, Lady Mary, and Mr. Branson - had been frosty affairs indeed. In his many years of service at Downton Abbey, Carson had known few occasions to rival in frigidity the icy atmosphere of these two meals. He would have had to reach back to his days as a footman and to the table of the Fifth Earl and Lady Violet, now the Dowager Lady Grantham, for a comparable experience, and then only in the wake of that ill-advised journey to wild Russia.

Though he did not know the circumstances that precipitated the current deep freeze in family relations, it took no brains at all to put together the pieces. Yesterday morning, after a breakfast attended by the younger members of the family, Lord Hexham had made an abrupt departure from the estate, a development shocking in its precipitousness and its ominous implications for his burgeoning romance with Lady Edith. In mid-afternoon, a visibly distressed Lady Edith had packed her bags and de-camped for London. After that, a glacial silence, masking anger clearly harboured but masterfully suppressed, had settled over the remaining family members. The Irish firebrand - as Carson sometimes still thought of him - had outwardly conformed to this behaviour, but it obviously did not sit well with him, hence the appeal this morning to the butler, but only after Lady Mary had left the room.

Having only a fragmentary appreciation of the situation left Carson in a quandary. The family's affairs were none of his business. But Lady Mary was his weakness. The circumstances suggested that she was at the heart of this rupture of the family fabric. The atmosphere of hostility that had permeated the dining room had hovered about her like a thundercloud. Noting this, Carson had given himself over to a surreptitious study of Lady Mary as she had eaten her breakfast. He saw in her crystalline countenance that morning not a cold heart, but a vulnerable one. Despite his irritation with Mr. Branson, then, he felt obliged to act on the message the man had conveyed. Later in the morning, when he could get away, he went to the estate agent's office in search of her. He did not know her schedule, but if she was not there he might find Mr. Branson and so get a more complete picture of the situation.

He'd never been to the estate office. In the almost forty years that Mr. Jarvis had held the position the two men had not exchanged more than a few dozen words, though the agent was essentially the estate counterpart of the butler in the house, responsible for the management of all affairs within that specific jurisdiction. Mr. Jarvis had been of a taciturn disposition and had not courted an association with the house staff. They had not missed his company. The passing of that post to Mr. Branson and subsequently to Lady Mary had all but eliminated any reason that might hitherto have existed for the house staff to go to the estate office.

The office door, he saw as he approached it, stood ajar. The bolt had not sprung back properly so that it could not close tightly without direct intervention. But such an adjustment required the attention of the person passing through and when Carson looked through the gap and saw Lady Mary seated at the desk within, he realized her mind was occupied with more weighty matters than the state of the door.

She sat with an eery stillness and though there were business papers and a couple of ledgers open before her, she was staring into the emptiness beside her seeing nothing at all. The expression on her face, in that unguarded moment, exposed an internal torment that stabbed at his heart. He tapped lightly on the door and then gently pushed it open.

This movement drew her attention and she looked up sharply, as though she hoped - or feared - to see someone else. With practised ease her features smoothed over into a neutral mask, but it fell imperfectly and he could still see her discomfiture behind it.

"Carson," she said, not exactly brightly but at least calmly. "I've not seen you here before."

He moved slowly into the room, closing the door over and ignoring the broken clasp. He was not quite sure how to approach her so he took the route that came most easily to him - honesty.

"Mr. Branson suggested I look in," he said.

A shadow passed over her face. "Did he. I'm surprised he didn't send you with matches and instructions to burn me at the stake." Neither of them smiled at this.

"It can't be that bad, my lady," Carson said softly, coming to a halt before the desk.

There was no point in being disingenuous with him. "You saw it for yourself, Carson," she said bluntly, "last night at dinner and this morning, too. Mr. Branson is furious with me. They all are." There was no bitterness in her voice. She was merely imparting the facts of the situation.

"Can I help?"

A wan smile crossed her face, silent appreciation of his offer. "I doubt it." She straightened in her chair that she might look up at him directly. "I told you once that one day I would do something even you would condemn me for, Carson, and I've finally done it."

He made a sceptical noise, dismissing the possibility.

She gave him a look and then carried on. "I mean it. Family, loyalty, kindness - all the things you cherish - I've betrayed them all."

He understood that she meant what she said, but he had more confidence in the resilience of his love for her. "If I may ask, my lady, does this have something to do with Lady Edith?" He believed he already knew the answer, but they had to start somewhere.

"Of course it does," she said flatly. She sighed and stood up, moving around the desk to stand beside him. Her hands came together, her fingers tangling and untangling in a gesture that spoke to him of her aggravation.

"I've wrecked her life, Carson. I've destroyed, utterly destroyed her chance for real happiness. And I did it deliberately." Her eyes came suddenly up to his on this last word.

"Do you perhaps take too much on yourself in this, my lady?" he asked quietly.

"Oh, no. I won't go into details - although discretion at this point is a little like closing the barn door after the cows are gone - but it was all my doing." Her voice was firm.

He tilted his head a bit and she, encouraged, went on.

"I told Lord Hexham...something...about Lady Edith - something she ought to have told him herself -," she wasn't prepared to let that go, "- knowing that it would kill their relationship." She stared at him fiercely. "I knew what I was about, Carson. I've done it before."

Her sins were falling freely from her lips and her tone had turned almost defiant, as if daring him to rebuke her.

"With Sir Anthony Strallan," she continued, "before the war. But that time it was a lie and could be mended. This time it's the truth and all the more devastating for it. He might even have accepted the fact of it - Lord Hexham, I mean - but the betrayal of trust, well, that was too much for him. That sent him packing. I know how to pick my moments." Her words were tinged with bitter pride.

He could not have anticipated the specific content of her admission, but had he not expected something of this sort? The antagonism between the sisters was an issue of long-standing, an irreconcilable conflict characterized by periodic tense lulls and punctuated with fierce clashes that had only intensified with the passing of time and held out little hope of permanent amelioration. He was shocked. And yet what she said mattered less to him than the raw wound her words exposed, for he saw beyond her antipathy to Lady Edith to her own vulnerable soul.

"What's brought this on, my lady?" he asked gently, his craggy countenance softening as she wrapped her arms tightly about herself, a visible manifestation of her anxiety about falling apart.

"It's only that I can't stand Edith!" she declared almost as if making a joke of it, but her voice caught.

He shook his head, unsatisfied with this. "What's troubling you?" he asked again.

Her eyes filled suddenly with tears that then cascaded over her cheeks and she rapidly unwound herself that she might fall into his arms. She pressed her face into the gap between his jacket collar and his neck, and he felt her warm tears on his skin. There was nothing for it then but to wrap his arms around her and offer her the simple comfort of his presence. Lady Mary had never known a safer haven.

They stood together for a long moment, she sobbing against him, he just holding her, the fingers of his right hand flexing over her shoulder in a calming motion. It occurred to him that this was the first time since his marriage that he had hugged Lady Mary. How different it was to hold a wife than it was to hold a child. Feeling the press of Lady Mary's cheek against his neck, he knew only that he wanted to comfort and protect her and to make the hurt go away.

He had held her this way many times, more often in years long past when he had soothed her little girl woes of scraped knees and wounded feelings and childhood fears. She had sought out his solace less often as she grew, but the rarer occasions had at the same time deepened in emotional intensity. She had come to him when an adolescent Patrick Crawley had threatened to bar her from Downton when he inherited it, forcing her to confront the cold reality and manifest injustice of being born a girl in a nation wedded to male primogeniture. The stoicism she was imbibing with her social etiquette lessons was already in play when she watched her favourite horse put down after breaking its leg in an accident in which she was miraculously spared injury. But he had comforted her in her grief over the animal and helped her to cope with the dawning awareness of her own mortality that the incident had ignited. And on that fateful day in August, 1914, when, as Sir Edward Grey had put it, "the lamps were going out all over Europe," and Matthew Crawley had walked away from her, taking, as she thought, all her hopes for happiness, it was from his embrace that she had drawn the courage to carry on. She had come to him, too, when she teetered on the edge of the black abyss that the death of her beloved husband, Mr. Matthew, had taken her to, and with his support had found the courage to choose life once more.

His heart had broken with her agony, in these and other moments, as it did now. He did not deny, to himself at least even if he did sometimes to others, that she often played a role in her own misfortunes. But for him that never diminished either her need for consolation or his determination to provide it. Still, he had to give her more than a shoulder to cry on and he always rose to that challenge.

When the tears abated and he felt the tautness of her body begin to lessen, he leaned back a little and tugged a handkerchief from his pocket, tucking it into her hand. She took a small step back as well and dried her tears. She looked up at him, then, and each managed a shadow of a smile, an acknowledgment of their affections, rather than a statement of resolution. They had hardly scratched the surface yet.

"Now, what's brought all this on?" His voice was as matter-of-fact as if he'd asked her what book she was reading.

"I have to make some decisions," she admitted. "Some very big decisions. And I'm afraid of making mistakes." Well, that was it, wasn't it?

She did not tell him what those decisions were, but he could guess one or two. Mr. Henry Talbot leaped to mind.

"It's only natural to feel uncertain in such circumstances, my lady."

"Perhaps. But I'm beyond uncertain, Carson. So much depends on my choices. I used to be more confident. I used to know my own heart...mind," she amended hastily. But he had noticed.

Someone else might have wondered how such concerns had brought Lady Mary to lash out at her sister when there seemed no direct connection between Lady Mary's tribulations and Lady Edith's happiness, but Carson did not need an explanation. He saw a clear case of cause and effect. For the moment, however, he turned his - and her - attention to the matter of decision-making.

"And where do you go from there?" He might have been testing a footman on how to lay a table so dispassionate was his tone.

Though his manner was quite different now from the gentleness he had shown her earlier, Lady Mary responded to him. She took a deep breath. "List the decisions that need to be made in order of importance. Examine them one at a time, drawing up in opposing columns the arguments for either side. Assess the results and choose the more advantageous option." She recited this in a clear voice and then looked up at him with a now dry-eyed gaze.

"Do you see it?" he asked.

She nodded, but frowned a little, reluctant to accept it. "But..., Carson, you can't reduce everything in life to an exercise in an accounting ledger."

"No," he said. "You can't. In those cases, my lady," and here his voice softened again, "you must listen to your heart."

Her shoulders sank again in dismay. "I wouldn't trust my heart. Would you?"

It was a rhetorical question, but when she, drawn by his silence, looked at him again, he said gravely, "With my life, my lady."

She stared at him, her eyes round and her mouth open just a little, and then a warm smile spread across her face.

He appeared to take no notice. "And Lady Edith?" he prompted.

"I was sorry almost right away," she said quickly. "And I did apologize to her yesterday afternoon, before she left. I always apologize when I'm in the wrong," she added, letting a note of pride slip into her voice. "You taught me that."

His eyes flickered in acknowledgment, but he moved on. "And?"

"Well, she would have none of it. She was almost spitting in my face. An impressive display, really. For Edith. She held her own, possibly for the first time." This seemed to surprise her. "And then she packed her bags and ran off to London." She presented this account to him as a fait accompli, as if she had done all she could.

"Wasn't it just a little premature to expect a reconciliation?" he asked delicately. "Hadn't you just - in your own words - wrecked her chances for happiness? And a few hours later, when you've cooled off, you expect her to be ready to make up? Were you even...," he had heard little real contrition in her voice, "...in a right state yourself?"

Lady Mary did not look away from him, but her nonchalance faded a little. She had never pretended with him. "I was sorry. I am sorry. Perhaps I didn't put it quite so clearly to her," she admitted grudgingly. "I'm not sure things can ever be right between us," she added. "Lady Edith and I don't have much of a record for reconciliation. But what else can I do?" Her eyes were flashing again.

He was unmoved. "You know the answer to that, too. An apology, even a sincere apology isn't always enough. Oh, it works for the little hurts in life. But when you've tried to destroy someone's life, effectively or not..."

She sighed. "You must make amends," she finished. "But how?"

"Only you can determine that." He paused. "Think about it."

She smiled wryly. He never gave her the easy way out. "And in the meantime? The whole family reviles me."

"That," he said firmly, and without much sympathy, "is the burden you must bear. And they'll get over it. Eventually."

"Everyone is on Lady Edith's side," she grumbled, but more for effect now.

"Not everyone, my lady."

She was almost herself again and her eyes moved over him meditatively. "Why are you so steadfast, Carson? Despite my many transgressions, you never waver."

"Feelings are not altered by a slip now and again, my lady. If they were, we would all be unloved."

Another moment of silence fell on them. The atmosphere, he noted, had lightened considerably from when he had entered the office. He did not think her problems had gone away, but he felt more confident about her ability to face them and resolve them for herself.

She felt the difference, too. "Thank you, Carson." The formality in her own voice attested to his success.

He nodded in satisfaction. "My lady." He closed the door firmly behind him as he left.