Aftermath: The Drawing Room
Warning: spoilers 2 x08 and previous episodes
Sybil and Branson storm out of the drawing room after delivering their shocking news, leaving everyone there wrestling with their thoughts
"I can promise you one thing – tomorrow morning nothing will have changed. Tom!" says Sybil, turning on her heel and stalking out of the drawing room.
Branson pauses for a moment, as if he's about to speak, then as Lord Grantham starts towards him he too turns and leaves the room. The silence is as thick as treacle; everyone in the room too stunned by what they've just witnessed to speak.
LORD GRANTHAM
He is shaking with anger. He cannot believe this is happening. How could Sybil possibly think he would condone this? Is she mad? The daughters of earls do not marry chauffeurs, especially not Irish ones with revolutionary tendencies. Especially not his daughter.
He will not have it. He will NOT. He finally understands the saying, "to make one's blood boil", because right at this moment, he feels as if the blood in his veins is going to bubble over with fury.
Nobody has ever spoken to him the way Branson just has. That young man's tone has shocked him to his core – there was no respect, no deference at all. Branson addressed him as if he were a fellow member of the working classes. He is horrified by this complete lack of manners. And this is the man his daughter is considering marrying? How could she?
Sybil does not seem to understand that she is throwing her life away. She can never be accepted in court if she goes ahead with this preposterous scheme. She will be shunned by society. She will end up living in some Dublin slum, downtrodden, poor, saddled to a life of drudgery. This is not the life to which she was born.
And her show of defiance just now… good Lord! She's always been a touch feisty, stroppy even, but this display of utter insolence, and the manner in which she addressed him… it was appalling, just appalling.
It is all Branson's fault. He says he hasn't seduced Sybil but he must have done something to turn her like this. All those times he has driven her to Ripon and further afield for those blasted charities she works for. Did she really attend committee meetings or did he take her somewhere else? The thought of what that man must have done to make his daughter behave in this way makes his stomach heave.
He should have got rid of him a long time ago. He knew he was trouble, after that business at the count in Ripon. Oh yes, Sybil leapt to Branson's defence that night – dear Lord, had this thing between them been going on since then? – and taken the blame, but clearly Branson had been at fault. Sybil had had no interest in politics, none of this revolutionary zeal and these ridiculous ideas, until Branson arrived at Downton.
He has led vulnerable Sybil astray and now he is planning on corrupting her completely by marrying her. Well if that's what Branson thinks then he has another think coming. He's not just going to stand back and see his daughter ruined like this.
He is not a man of violence but at the moment he is fighting the urge to follow Branson into the hall and plant his fist squarely in the middle of the man's face. But even as he is imagining the satisfaction of hurting the chauffeur for what he has done to Sybil, to this family, there is a little voice in his ear hissing, "Hypocrite".
After all, he himself has breached the great divide between servant and master by kissing Jane. And he recalls that as his lips met hers, he did not think of her as a servant but only as a woman. Is that what has happened to Sybil? Does she not see the uniform but the man in it?
He shakes his head in an attempt to dislodge this thought. What is happening between his daughter and the chauffeur is a world away from those stolen moments with Jane. He knows what he did with the maid was wrong – especially because, God forgive him, he is married – but it is vastly different to his daughter's situation. Those kisses were just a couple of seconds of silliness, a momentary lapse in judgement by a man wallowing in self-doubt and confusion, a man who has had the rug pulled out from under him by that terrible war. Those kisses will go no further than snatched encounters in hidden corners of this house.
But Sybil… Sybil is talking about willingly destroying the rest of her life, of giving up everything she knows, leaving Downton and actually marrying this man, for God's sake.
How can she go against everything he has brought her up to believe in? What kind of man is he if he cannot command respect from his own daughter? He is not a good husband; he can't have been a good soldier or he would have been asked to serve his country; and now he is obviously an ineffectual father. His daughter is planning on running off to marry a servant and has rudely told him there is nothing he can do about it.
Well, he will not stand for it. He will not. He will do whatever takes to force Sybil to see sense and make the Branson problem go away.
He is the Earl of Grantham, after all. This is his kingdom, so to speak, his realm. He is in charge. He will make everything right. He has to. For everyone's sake.
Next: Lady Grantham
How could she not have known that her youngest child was in love? And with someone so utterly unsuitable?