The skin stretched across his shoulder blades was hot and tight, an echo of the pain that brought memories of suffocating mud, the revolting stench of his own skin burning, and screams that still woke him in the night.
Matthew flinched at the memory, feeling the familiar pull of the black abyss that had haunted him since Flanders. Involuntarily, he traced the long, thin scar along his temple, a talisman of his own survival.
His hand dropped when he saw the expression on his mother's face, a crack in the joy that had shown like a bright summer's day from the moment of his return.
He sighed. He had hoped, desperately hoped that when he returned to his mother's house, that he would find himself once again in the comfortable and peaceful home of the past.
But everything had changed.
There were few young men on the streets of Downton. It was a town of women and the very old and the very young. On the outskirts of town, fields that had stretched out lush and green were now plowed under, the land itself employed in the business of war.
Nothing had been left untouched by the horrors of the past four years.
Shaking off these shadows, Matthew smiled reassuringly at his mother, as she poured his tea. It had hurt him to see how much she had aged while he had been gone. The hands handling the delicate china were red and raw from working, he knew, night and day at the hospital.
The hospital. It was no longer the small country hospital that had given some substance to his mother's new life in Downton years ago. War too had changed this. The great house itself had been transformed into a massive hospital, the grand family regulated to a wing of their ancestral home.
It was inevitable. It was a phenomenon that he had struggled with since leaving England…he could not think of the family at Downton Abbey, read a letter from Lord Grantham, without thinking of her. Of the searing pain that he had felt as he walked away from it all…the last memory of home before the great wave of destruction that rose to swallow high and low alike.
His mother's voice brought him back to the present and to Crawley House.
"I…I will have to go to the hospital before too long, I'm afraid, Matthew. Poor Dr. Finchley is quite desperately understaffed," she said apologetically, regretting that the long awaited reunion with her son would be cut short.
"It's quite all right, Mother. It will be a nice change to be master of my own schedule, with the power to be as idle as I desire. "
She smiled. "Well that might do for today…but we shall see tomorrow."
"One day at a time, Mother, one day at a time." He leaned back against the soft cushion of the sofa, and savored the sweet smell of the tea before taking a tentative sip.
"Of course, you could come up to the house with me…if you had a mind to." She casually proposed.
Over the edge of delicate teacup, Matthew raised his crystalline blue eyes to meet her steady gaze, and the edge of his mouth rose in an appreciative smirk.
"I see you have decided to waste no time."
"Matthew, they are your family and this ridiculous rift must be addressed."
"Mother, " he lowered the cup to the table impatiently, "as you well know, I have no quarrel with Lord Grantham and his family. I just wish to live my life on my own terms. Not theirs."
"Of course you do. But to hide yourself here at Crawley House is not living life on your own terms. It's to live life in denial of the truth. You will be an Earl, and Downton Abbey will be your home. You cannot entirely avoid the family that lives there now or forget that their future may very well be in your hands one day."
Matthew held her gaze, the military man that he had become admiring the nurse within her that gave her the willingness to state, without flinching, these cold, hard truths. He pressed his lips together, not acknowledging the hit, but he saw her face relax. She knew she had won the argument.
"Ah, Mrs. Crawley. I'm so glad to see you." An aged country doctor of no less than seventy approached them across the marble foyer, a weary smile on his face.
Matthew quickly took in the beds that stretched across the atrium, the moans that came from the adjacent library. War had invaded Downton Abbey, altering forever in his mind the peacefulness of the establishment.
"Thank you, Dr. Finchley. May I introduce my son, Major Matthew Crawley."
"Major Crawley, it's a pleasure to finally meet you in person, I've heard so much about you."
Matthew smiled, as his mother turned her head away, presumably in embarrassment.
"I can only imagined the unbiased reports that may have come your way; mothers are not known for looking at their children with jaundiced eyes."
"Well it's good then that I had a corroborating authority," the good-humored doctor replied with a chuckle.
Matthew turned with a raised eyebrow to his normally unreserved mother, to find she would not meet his eye.
"Ah. So my mother recruited an ally to her cause. Well, I had best admit defeat when in battle with such formidable foes."
The doctor's chuckle became a guffaw, and when he had recovered, he beckoned them forward into the atrium.
While the doctor kindly began to outline to his visitor the number of beds in the hospital and other particulars of their situation, Matthew was distracted, his eye naturally drawn up into the soaring space of light and airiness that served in such a contrast to the bedlam below. He had seen enough of Army hospitals; he had no desire to see more.
His mother must have noted his lack of attention because she politely turned the conversation away from discussions of dysentery and the threat of influenza at the first opportunity.
"Doctor, as always, I admire how well you manage this very large establishment. In my experience, even much smaller hospitals could benefit from some of the methods and practices that you have put into place here."
The doctor fairly glowed under the praise of Matthew's mother, a sign of how much respect she had earned in the town and its environs over the years. A match for the Dowager Countess, indeed.
Before the good doctor could continue with a conversation that had clearly made her son uncomfortable, Isobel inquired after the family of the house.
"Ah, yes. I would imagine that with young Major Crawley's return, you would want to be meeting with the family." The doctor smiled, while Matthew looked away with conflicted feelings.
"As you know, Lord Grantham is serving in the War Office in London. But Lady Grantham and Lady Mary are in, if you would like to me have the butler sent for."
"Thank you, Dr. Finchley."
The doctor left them in the foyer, in search of a servant to fetch old Mr. Carson.
Matthew stood, stiff in his uniform, awash in conflicting emotions. Lady Grantham and Lady Mary…Mary. He had thought he had prepared himself for this day, but now, he found the tightness in his chest belied the cold detachment that had frozen on his face.
His mother turned to him, concern on her face. Perhaps she questioned now the prudence of her own schemes.
"As you know, your Cousin Sybil has been working at a field hospital in France these past two years."
Matthew nodded, his thoughts still in a riot.
"But…I have been loath to touch on one subject…I did not mention Mary's activities since you departed."
Matthew snorted. No, neither she nor Lord Grantham had mentioned Mary more than five times in their many letters over the years. It had given him license to imagine many fates for the beautiful woman with whom he had once hoped to build his own future.
His mother continued in a hushed voice. "Mary would not leave her mother alone, once Edith had married Sir Anthony Strallen and Sybil had gone to France. But she has not been idle. Not long after you left, she asked me to train her as a nurse. We have been working side by side here since the hospital was moved to Downton Abbey."
Isobel was unable to continue, as the familiar figure of the house's butler approached them, leaving Matthew in a storm of emotions.
The butler seemed little changed to Matthew, one of the few emblems of a past age that appeared untouched. The cautious delight that lit the servant's eyes was evident as he welcomed the future Earl back to Downton Abbey.
"Thank you, Mr. Carson. It is a pleasure to be back." Matthew automatically responded, immediately questioning his own words. Was it a pleasure? What were the emotions that warred in his heart?
The butler led them slowly up the stairs, leading them to the makeshift drawing room that the family now used for their rare visitors.
As Matthew watched the figure of the butler, memories that he preferred to forget came flooding back.
He had glanced back once, on that impossibly beautiful summer day, and had been startled to see the proud Lady Mary bent in grief within the warm embrace of the older man.
The sight of the servant acting as father, in the stead of the man who held that honor, had shaken his resolute faith in his own decision.
Lord Grantham was a good man, a very good man by any standard. But for the first time, Matthew had seen the want, the sin of omission. At that moment, he had understood her, known her as he never had before.
It hadn't been enough to make him turn back. But the doubt that had blossomed in his chest that day had plagued him during the dark intervening years.
And now he knew. She had not married. Had not left Downton. Had not lived up to his darkest thoughts on her eventual fate. And that old doubt flared up renewed.
His mother reached out and touched his hand, a brief gesture that brought him back to the moment. It was then he heard himself announced.
"Milady, Mrs. Crawley."
Four years. Four years of doubt, resolution, love, and sometimes hatred. All came flooding back as he stepped back into the remains of the life that he had left behind.