DOWNTON ABBEY 1926

EPISODE 5. Friday September 10, 1926

Chapter 4.

*NOTE: It's been so long. See the RECAP below if you've forgotten everything.

The Granthams, the Ambassador, and the Unexpected Guest

"You are in your element," Cora said to her husband. They were standing before the great front doors of the Abbey awaiting the arrival of their distinguished guest. Even as she spoke, they could see the black Rolls Royce through the trees on the main road.

"I am indeed," Robert declared proudly. "We are entertaining the Ambassador of the United States and we're doing it in Downton style. With three footmen," he added, his eyes twinkling. They both glanced to the left where Barrow, impeccably attired in the crispest of liveries, stood at the head of a line of flawlessly suited footmen. Molesley was in the position of first footman, Andrew beside him, and the Lewis, the new man, next to him.

Mary and Henry were also in attendance. This pleased Robert, too. Mary took her position as co-owner of Downton seriously and though she was hardly interested in politics and would have little to do with entertaining Mr. Houghton directly, greeting a guest to the house fell within her responsibilities as she saw them.

Robert had dispatched Stark with the Rolls Royce to the station. It was a bit of a gesture to the man who had assumed the position of chauffeur when Tom had left it six years ago. This wasn't quite the life-in-service devotion to the family that several of the senior house servants - Carson, Mrs. Carson, Barrow, Anna, or Bates - could claim, but he had been a steady fellow. And age and arthritis were taking him away, not greener grass elsewhere, so Robert felt he deserved this honour as a last hurrah of sorts before retiring at the end of the month. They had yet to work out how they were going to divide the services of their remaining chauffeur.

Now the great car was rolling up the drive. As it came to a halt before them, the welcome party drew themselves up appropriately - the butler and footmen, ramrod straight in formal perfection, and the family with warm smiles. Andrew and Molesley rushed forward just as the car came to halt and reached for the doors.

The distinction of the man who emerged belonged in the first place to his office and then to the substance of his intellectual, entrepreneurial, and diplomatic talents. Physically Alanson Houghton was much less prepossessing, being of average height and unremarkable looks, his eyes framed by round glasses that gave him an owlish, almost professorial look. But his smile was genuine as his gaze found the Granthams and he shook Robert's hand firmly. And he was all graciousness as Robert introduced Cora. Mary and Henry waited politely to the side.

In the moment that Mr. Houghton exchanged words with Cora - he immediately made reference to their homeland across the Atlantic - Robert and Mary both glanced toward the car and to the second figure who had gotten out of it. They had known Houghton's wife was away in the States and they had expected that someone from the embassy would accompany the ambassador, but no one could have predicted this.

"What is it?" Henry murmured, noting the frozen look on Mary's face. "Do you know him?"

"We do." With only those two words Mary managed to convey a grim displeasure. And then she was smiling and greeting Mr. Houghton as Cora introduced her daughter and son-in-law, and Henry, too, was distracted.

Cora took the moment to glance at her husband. Mary's suddenly frosty demeanor was mirrored in Robert's countenance and following his gaze, Cora understood why. The poised and crisply attired figure who drew their muted opprobrium was Tim Grey.

"What's he doing here?" Robert had almost perfected the ventriloquist's trick of speaking without moving his lips. But even as he said the words, he was moving forward to acknowledge the unexpected guest.

"Lord Grantham." Tim Grey extended a hand.

Robert came over impassive and accepted the gesture. "Mr. Grey. We had not been informed."

"I'm serving as a liaison with the American Embassy and when I heard Mr. Houghton was visiting you, I seized the opportunity to return to Yorkshire as his personal advisor this weekend."

Why the ambassador required a Foreign Office operative on a quiet, relaxing weekend in the country escaped both Robert and Cora who exchanged looks that might have seemed neutral to an onlooker, but which conveyed between them their consternation at this turn of events.

"Isobel and Dickie are coming for dinner tonight," Cora murmured, as adept as Robert in communicating almost imperceptibly.

He nodded his awareness of this. Neither of them were pleased. Lord Merton's sons had disrupted more than one dinner at Downton Abbey and offended the Crawleys with their arrogant and insulting treatment of their father and, especially, his wife. Robert and Cora would not knowingly have exposed Isobel to further associations with her step-son.

The Crawleys fell into step with Mr. Houghton, assuming their roles as host and hostess and engaging in polite conversation as they passed through the great door, held for them by Barrow, who managed to be both an ornament to the occasion and also almost invisible, in the manner of every great butler.

Tim Grey, with a nod to Mary and an indifferent acknowledgment of Henry, followed them.

"What's up?" Henry asked quietly, as he and Mary brought up the rear.

"Fireworks," she said succinctly.

The Evening Upstairs

It was cocktails in the sitting room first and this initial gathering of the dinner party required some careful negotiation.

A less sanguine person might have held his breath in introducing the Ambassador of the United States to the Dowager Lady Grantham, but Robert had tremendous faith in his mother and she did not disappoint. She smiled regally as the ambassador, in a gesture he had clearly picked up on the Continent, bent over her hand, murmuring, "My dear Lady Grantham." Violet was not, as a rule, impressed with either Americans or Continental manners, but she acknowledged the effort.

The Ambassador followed this with a soliloquy on the beauties of Yorkshire.

Here Violet was more critical. "Erring with excess, in the manner of all his countrymen," she murmured to Mary, even as she looked askance at the odd drink her granddaughter had handed her. "No outsider thinks Yorkshire is that beautiful."*

But Robert and Mary, who took almost as much pride in the county as they did in Downton itself, exchanged approving glances.

"It's a shame you're not here long enough for a tour of the moors," Henry put in. "That's the part of Yorkshire that's won my heart."

"Agreed!" Dickie Merton said vigorously.

His wife raised her eyebrows at his enthusiasm. Driving on the lonely moors with nothing to see but sheep had never appealed to Isobel.

"Perhaps I'll come back," Houghton said with a smile.

Dickie Merton's genial bearing dissipated somewhat as his son moved to his side. "Tim." The men shook hands. "It's a surprise to see you here."

Tim Grey nodded formally in Isobel's direction but when he spoke, his eyes remained on his father. "I'm sorry not to have given you notice of my trip to Yorkshire, Papa. It was quite a last minute assignment. This ... arrangement ... was somewhat ad hoc." His gaze strayed disapprovingly to Robert.

"It appears that one half of the Foreign Office isn't speaking to the other half," Isobel breathed into Dickie's ear, as Tim moved off to join the other young men. Tom, not present for the greeting at the door, had arrived in time for cocktails.

"Yes," Dickie drawled, "and it explains, too, that invitation from Larry for dinner on Sunday night. Not so out of the blue, after all."

"I can hardly wait," Isobel said drily. They exchanged grim glances. Neither was enthusiastic about an outing to Cavenham.

It was a tricky table setting with ten in attendance. Barrow had given it some thought. The most honoured guests must be arrayed by the side of hostess and host, with Ambassador Houghton to Lady Grantham's right and Lord Merton to her left. The Dowager had the favoured position on her son's right and Lady Merton would sit on his other side. The real question was how to seat the younger men.

During cocktails, Mary managed to get Barrow aside. "I don't want Mr. Grey at my end of the table, Barrow and I don't care what the rules or Carson might say. And you'd best put Mr. Branson at that end as well. He won't like it, but I think Mr. Talbot should have an ally."

"It is already arranged, my lady," Barrow intoned and won a rare look of approval from her. He smiled smugly. The politics of Downton Abbey had always been one of Barrow's specialties.

As they sat down to dinner, Isobel cast a resigned look at her husband. Tim sat directly across from her and though she would enjoy the men who sat either side of her - Tom was to her left - she was altogether too close for comfort to her disagreeable stepson. Dickie favoured her with a sympathetic smile.

Isobel embraced the advantages she had. "I've not seen you in a fortnight, Tom. How is Sybbie getting on at school?" Isobel had a knack for raising sensitive subjects with a disingenuousness that was almost always convincing. Only her son Matthew had been able to discern accurately between an innocent question and a deliberate attempt to stir the waters.

"Very well!" Tom declared, with a covert glance at Cora, who gave him an encouraging smile. "She's making friends with some of the village children and learning how to do a few things for herself." Out of the corner of his eye, Tom could see Robert holding himself perfectly still, as if waiting for this moment to pass. "She misses George, though."

"Tom and our granddaughter have recently moved into their own home," Cora told the ambassador. "And Sybil ..." She paused almost imperceptibly "...Sybbie, as we call her, is now attending the village school."

Ambassador Houghton appeared impressed. "That's awfully democratic of you," he said guilelessly, with an approving nod to Robert.

"Yes," Violet murmured, not quite beneath her breath. "We must do something about that."

"Granny." Mary's lips did not move and the warning was almost inaudible, but her grandmother heard it and ignored it.

"Is that an Irish accent?" Houghton inquired of Tom.

"It is. I'm from Galway originally, though I spent some years in Dublin."

"Not Anglo-Irish, then," the ambassador said carefully.

"No."

Tim Grey made a small dismissive sound.

But Houghton's attention had shifted to his host. "I had the impression, perhaps from immigrant opinion in America, that the English and Irish didn't mix well." The ambassador's words belied his thorough education in European affairs. He had much more than gossip on the home front to inform his understanding on what was arguably the greatest British problem of the last half century.

It was not a subject Robert cared to discuss ever, and certainly not at his dinner table, although it wasn't the first time it had been raised there. But his credentials as a host were beyond impeccable and that meant responding politely to any conversational direction in which his guest cared to travel. "On a political level relations have been troubled and remain ... delicate." He chose his words carefully. "But...," and his eyes flickered briefly Tom's way, "...the political has become personal at Downton. When our daughter Sybil, now deceased, married Tom, we had to make a decision about how we would go forward. We chose the higher ground." Robert would have been the first to admit the turmoil involved in that decision, but he was proud to have made it as he did.

Beside him, Violet smiled. She had, with her son, opposed the match. But she had yielded to the reality of it even before he did. She was proud of Robert.

Robert's formal demeanor gave way to a more pleasant expression. "I think I may say that all our lives have been enriched as a result."

Mary and Cora murmured their agreement.

"This is very heartening indeed!" Houghton declared with a passionate note in his voice. "I firmly believe that personal connections are critical in transcending sometimes bitter conflict with roots in history."

"You're speaking of Europe now," Robert surmised.

"I am. And not just Europe. America, too, And Japan, China, the lot."

"Oh, dear."

Isobel gave a little laugh at this muted note of alarm from Violet.

"Where there are true bonds, relations may bend under pressure and irritations, but they do not break so easily." This was clearly a theme on which Alanson Houghton had expanded before.

"The royal families gave us that in Europe," Robert said, with a sigh over the past tense.

"Not very effectively," Tom interjected. "After all, Kaiser Willy went to war enthusiastically against Cousins George and Nicky."

"Oh, that's quite different," Violet said energetically. "Ambassador Houghton is speaking of true friendship, I believe. Whereas the royals were family." She laughed. "Everyone has family members they despise." Violet herself had not been at all partial to her son's heir, his first cousin James Crawley, and though she had never wished James ill, his death on the Titanic had rid Downton of an unpleasant presence. Nor did she confine her disdain to members of her husband's family. She loved her niece, Susan, the now-divorced Lady Flintshire, but she did not like the woman at all.

Violet's remark reverberated subtly around the table where everyone but Ambassador Houghton and, to a lesser extent, Henry, knew how well it applied to the Mertons where relations between the generations were brittle.

"And you've no desire to return to Ireland?" Houghton might have thought this was a neutral question.

"Desire, yes," Tom admitted. "But I've a past there."

"The Anglo-Irish Treaty offered no amnesties," Tim Grey put in, affecting helpfulness in clarifying the matter for the ambassador even as he deftly exposed Tom's revolutionary past.

The two young men exchanged cold smiles across the table. Tom had fallen out seriously with Lord Merton's older son, Larry, coming dangerously close to blows at this very table, but his interactions with Tim Grey were only marginally more civil.

Robert moved smoothly into the awkward pause. "Tom is a republican. He even moved to America for a while, but his sojourn there was short-lived. He missed our ways."

There was polite laughter at this, with Tom and Robert exchanging good-natured grins. Tim Grey rolled his eyes and sipped his wine.

The general conversation broke down into several smaller exchanges. Dickie Merton, who was Mary's godfather, asked earnestly after her children. Robert and Violet had their heads together and Robert's light laughter suggested he was enjoying his mother's infamous wit. Tom shared the details of the life he and Sybbie were building outside of the Abbey with Isobel. And Henry chatted politely with Tim Grey on the British export market for automobiles.

"I understand you spent several years at the helm of your family's company in Corning, New York, before turning to politics," Cora said to the ambassador. "The Corning Glass Works, I believe?"

"My grandfather founded it," Ambassador Houghton responded. "I had the privilege of serving as Vice President and then President for several years before winning a seat in Congress. It was a very satisfying period of my life, but I thought I might better serve my country as a public official in the wake of the war. The late President Harding very generously appointed me Ambassador to Germany."

"That was quite a coup!" Among diplomatic postings, the capitals of Europe were always prime appointments. The same could not be said for Washington, D.C., where the humidity and heat had won it the informal designation as a hardship post in some European diplomatic corps.

"I had studied there," Houghton explained, "and I have long had an affinity for the people and the culture. I still do, especially with the emergence of Weimar. And then to have been appointed to the Court of St. James - well, I have been blessed. Britain is near to my heart as well."

"I feel the same way," Cora said with an indulgent smile. Her love affair with Britain was long-standing. "Although this is a nation of idiosyncracies," she added. The ambassador laughed and for several minutes they exchanged tales of British oddities.

"Your husband tells me we hail from the same region," Houghton said at length.

"I'm from Ohio," Cora explained. "Cincinnati."

"Ah. And your family...?"

Cora paused. "The Levinsons. My father, Isidore Levinson, was a banker in Cincinnati. He founded the Western Reserve Bank and Trust Company. He did a lot of business in western New York state. He was also on the board of any number of charitable organizations and public welfare institutions across the region. We could hardly go anywhere without tripping over the fruits of his labours on behalf of the community." Cora was not in the habit of advertising her family's affiliations and activities. They so rarely meant anything to her British guests. But this man was different. She had expectations here and there was something else besides - a scar long obscured by her residence in England.

Houghton stared at her impassively. "He may have been a little before my time. But in any case, we likely moved in different circles." He spoke without inflection.

Cora showed no reaction to these words. "Oh, I'm sure you did," she murmured.

"Molesley!" As he bent to offer her a plate of crepes, Violet's eyes fell on the former butler/valet/footman. "How kind of you to join the staff this evening." She glanced around her corner of the table. "I do appreciate loyalty."

"Thank you, my lady," Molesley murmured. He ought to have been addressed by his given name, as were all footmen, but the family had never reconciled themselves to this and persisted in according him a designation he did not deserve.

"How are things at the school? Is your work satisfactory?"

It was not the convention to make conversation with the servants, especially at a formal dinner, but one of the benefits of being the oldest and socially senior member of the party meant that some breaking of the rules was acceptable. And Violet had never been one to adhere strictly to rules in any case. Mary smiled indulgently. Dickie Merton found all the Crawley women charming and would not have looked askance even if he had found the behaviour peculiar.

"Very well, my lady." Molesley was more constrained by those very requirements and so kept his responses to a minimum and, with a nod, moved on to serve His Lordship.

"I like to see a man do well for himself," Violet said to her son. She was also very glad that the ambassador's attention was taken up with Cora, lest she be required to give an account of Molesley's ascent on the social ladder and have to accept more plaudits on the democratic inclinations of the Crawley family.

Isobel found it impossible not to acknowledge Molesley as he offered the dish to her, and did so with a brief greeting, but she could not help but stare at him in consternation. He had declined her request to serve as butler at her party and yet here he was a footman at the Abbey. She did not understand. But she was distracted by Cora who spoke across the table to her.

"Isobel, I've been meaning to ask you. What do you know about the workhouse in Ripon?"

The conversations on either side of them dimmed a little, every ear captured by the dread term. Though no one in this group, save perhaps Tom, would ever have known it as a real threat, such was the general horror of the institution that it could not but draw attention. Barrow and Molesley, who might have come closer to it in their lifetimes, exchanged glances. Andy shifted uneasily. Lewis seemed unaffected. Does nothing jar him? Barrow wondered.

"I've no direct knowledge of it," Isobel said, "though I've long known of its existence. You may recall that I once sponsored a man who had been consigned there and helped him get back on his feet. Charles Grigg."

This information sparked a range of responses. The Crawleys, who knew Isobel well, smiled kindly at this. She had early on won for herself a reputation as a do-gooder in the Downton community and many benefited from her interventions, though Violet at least had occasionally shaken her head at the radical causes Cousin Isobel had embraced. A look so blatantly adoring came over Dickie so as almost to embarrass Mary who was the only one privy to it. Tim Grey merely stared at her in incomprehension, her action one so wholly foreign to him that he had not the words to express his revulsion. Unnoticed by anyone, Molesley's otherwise flawlessly professional demeanor faltered momentarily.

"I know that name," Robert said distractedly, and then remembered. He said nothing more. Grigg was an old acquaintance of Carson's. The two men had worked together briefly on the halls in days long past and Carson had taken great pains to bury that part of his life. Robert would not disinter it for the sake of dinner conversation.

Isobel nodded in Robert's direction and, like him, chose not to elaborate on Grigg's connections to Downton. "In the short time I gave him shelter at Grantham House ...," she ignored a hiss of disgust from Tim, "...he had much to say about the place. Apparently they're still every bit as inhospitable as they were at the height of the Poor Laws in the middle of the last century." Isobel made this announcement to the table at large. It was, she was certain, something of which every British citizen ought to be aware.

"For good reason," Tim said bluntly. "Make them at all tolerable and they will be overflowing with the undeserving poor who would rather live on the state than get off their backsides and do some honest work." And then, apparently unable to contain his exasperation any more, he added, "Why on earth would you have done such a thing?"

"It was a charitable act," Tom said, intervening boldly. He had always been Isobel's champion and she his. "But you need to have a heart in order to understand that."

"A bleeding heart, perhaps," Tim responded coldly, knowingly deploying that loaded term. He and Tom glared at each other.

"I didn't know you still had workhouses," Houghton said mildly, with a slightly disapproving glance toward his Foreign Office attendant.

"We do," Cora said, trying not to frown at Tim Grey herself. "Mr. Chamberlain is proposing to overhaul the system and to close the remaining ones. But I've been reading the Royal Commission report and..."

"Have you really!" Dickie's words reflected admiration for his hostess's initiative.

"I have," Cora said, and smiled appreciatively at him, "and I think there is much value in Mr. Chamberlain's recommendations. But I've been wanting to take a closer look before I make up my mind. I didn't even know there was a workhouse in Ripon until ... recently." Cora decided not to mention her source for this information. "And I think there's nothing like direct evidence and so I want to visit it. Would you like to come?" She was now back to where she had started, speaking directly to Isobel.

"What?" It was not only Tim Grey who found this shocking. Robert, Mary, and Violet all stared at Cora as well.

"Of course, I would," Isobel responded spiritedly, ignoring the others. This was a venture completely in keeping with her own interests, although she had not indulged them in a while. She smiled at the prospect.

"Can I come, too?"

"Papa!" The announcement of the murder of the Tsar of Russia had elicited a less shocked reaction from most Britons than Dickie Merton's question did from his son. "You cannot be serious!"

"The only way to deal with serious matters, however uncomfortable they may be, is directly," Dickie responded calmly, addressing his son and leaning forward to see around Cora and the ambassador to do so. "And as Lady Grantham has said, before one can do anything, one must have the facts!"

At least perhaps a little pleased to have startled her own family, Cora smiled triumphantly and flashed grateful looks at Isobel and Dickie "I'll set it up."

Before Tim Grey could speak again, Robert smoothly took command of the conversation. "Ambassador Houghton, we've arranged a bit of a surprise for you. My father was a member of the household of Prince Alfred...yes," Robert smiled as he saw a glint of recognition light up Houghton's eyes, "...the great collector of glass and ceramics. When Lady Grantham and I married, Prince Alfred and Princess Maria Alexandrovna attended and gave us, as a wedding gift, a pair of goblets which I think you may find interesting."

Robert might have preferred a more auspicious moment for this announcement, but circumstances dictated otherwise. Cora had gotten what she'd wanted from Isobel, but the ambiance of the table could only deteriorate if Tim Grey were not contained. It was Robert's responsibility as host to derail such unpleasantness and thus he played his best card.

Alanson Houghton responded with gratifying enthusiasm and the Foreign Office man subsided into a glum silence, settling for glaring pointedly at his father's wife whom he held responsible for all the objectionable ideas and behaviours his father now exhibited.

Violet waded into the conversation then, having some personal acquaintance with Prince Alfred's renowned collection. "The Germans have it now," she concluded with a sigh.

"I visited it when I was studying there," Houghton said. "Magnificent."

Robert picked up the crystal goblet before him. "Though this set is not quite of the same calibre as the Prince Alfred pieces," he went on, "there's a story behind it as well."

"Papa." This time it was Mary giving her father a warning look.

He only smiled mischievously at her. "We try to use them on those odd occasions when we have eleven or, as tonight, ten at dinner. They came as a dozen, but," he inclined his head toward Mary, "thanks to my daughter, we've an incomplete set."

"I broke one once when I was playing in the butler's pantry," Mary said flatly, trying to derail his story, though she was neither irritated with nor unamused by her father.

"I'm surprised Carson ever let you into his pantry again," Isobel said with wide eyes. The seriousness with which the former butler had taken his responsibility for handling the family's possessions was well known.

Mary tossed her head and smiled more broadly. "Carson would forgive me anything."

With good humour restored across the table, with the exception of the glowering Tim Grey, small conversations took hold once more.

"You have a cenotaph in the village," Houghton said. "I saw it on route from the station."

"Yes. They've sprung up all over England," Robert responded. "On local initiative. Carson, our old butler, chaired the committee. I knew every young man whose name is engraved there." Robert spoke in a solemn tone. He knew from his own experiences in South Africa the price of war and knew both pride and pain every time he passed the monument.

"Would it be possible to visit it sometime this weekend?" the Ambassador asked. "I believe in paying respects to those men. Their stories ought never to be forgotten."

This pleased Robert immensely. "Of course. We'll go after the church service on Sunday."

Less interested in this conversational turn, Henry addressed himself to Tim Grey. "You're a Cambridge man, I understand."

Tom gave him a look. He worked so closely with Henry and they got on so well together that the differences in their social origins hardly ever surfaced. "You say that like it means something," he said.

Henry grinned at him. "It means a great deal, Tom. I went to Oxford."

Tom knew that Henry was speaking tongue in cheek and this was somehow at dig at Tim Grey, but the Foreign Office man's presence had dulled his sense of humour. "What's the difference, really."

"If you have to ask..." Grey shook his head.

Henry persisted. They were only partway through the fourth course. They couldn't sit here glaring at each other all evening. "Did you finish up before the war?"

"Class of 1914," Grey said airily.

"In good time to enlist." It was a fairly safe assumption.

But Tim Grey shook his head. "There was no war for me. Not at the front anyway." He said this with some satisfaction. "Declined on medical grounds, I'm afraid. And you?"

"Four years on the Western Front," Henry said soberly.

Grey shrugged indifferently. "You seem to have come out of it in one piece."

"You look rather healthy for someone who was rejected on medical grounds," Tom said abrasively. It was a mark of his distaste for Tim Grey that he was pursuing this. Tom did not ordinarily judge a man on whether he'd served or not. He admired Henry Talbot, and Matthew Crawley before him, for their personal courage in serving and for their love of country, though he found the particular cause of the Great War a weak one. He also admired men who had refused to join up on grounds of conscience. But he had no use for those who evaded service, especially those who exploited their connections in high places to do so.

"Not all conditions are visible," Grey said lightly.

Tom knew this well enough. His own plans to claim conscientious objector status had been thwarted by a heart murmur. He doubted Tim Grey had as legitimate a reason.

"Did you join up?"

Tom would have liked to wiped the smirk off the man's face with something more forceful than words. "I'm Irish," he said coolly. "I was prepared to go to prison rather than fight for England." Irked that he had let this obnoxious fop get under his skin, he made a deliberate effort to rein in his irritation, and so nodded to his brother-in-law. "Henry's the only hero here."

They were back to the subject of European problems at the centre of the table.

"The animosities among the European nations are very real," Ambassador Houghton admitted, "but they are neither inevitable nor insurmountable. England and France warred for centuries, but they are allies now."

"Perhaps the players have changed sides, Ambassador Houghton, but is not conflict inevitable when great interests are at stakes?" Mary demanded.

"Necessity makes for strange bedfellows," Violet mused, "but one wonders where we would be if Lord Grey had not been quite so forthcoming with France in 1906."**

"We'd be hailing the Kaiser as our king," Mary said, almost crossly.

"'Splendid isolation,'" Violet sighed. "Throwing that over put us on this troubled road - alliance with the French, enmity with Germany."

"It's not often I encounter such firm and informed views all around the dinner table," Houghton said, with an admiring glance at the two women.

"Oh, we're not short on firm opinions here," Robert muttered, thinking that there was only so much a man could do to keep the conversation pleasant.

But Houghton was eager to engage with the women on this issue. He turned to Mary. "But Europe has a very rich tradition of diplomacy," he said, "of talking their way to meaningful settlements. One has only to look at the Congress of Vienna and the Congress of Berlin. With some patience - and understanding - the antagonisms of Versailles may yet evaporate and a lasting and equitable peace established."

"With the United States as honest broker," Robert put in. "The Dawes Plan has calmed the waters considerably." He glanced around the table. "The ambassador played a critical role in the formulation of that remedy."

This was a subject that had ignited heated debate at the Downton table before, but good manners prevailed in this moment and Mary, making an effort to contain her impatience with the "German question," smiled and turned to their guest. "My father is our family diplomat, Ambassador Houghton. He keeps our dinner talk civil."

"He's the village diplomat," Cora added forcefully, and with a note of pride. "Village life. You know how it is," she said, as an aside to Houghton. "We couldn't get through the summer fĂȘte without him."

The ambassador nodded agreeably. "Is there anything as intense as local politics?"

Henry had had enough of European politics at the table the last time they'd had foreign guests and so turned to Tom. "Are you determined not to join us tomorrow at Doncaster?"

"I'm surprised you're so keen," Tom said, knowing that Henry's heart lay with cars, not horses.

But Henry only glanced meaningfully to the other end of the table and then returned his gaze to Tom. "Oh, I'm keen. And horses have very little to do with it. But it'll be fun. What's keeping you away? And don't say business. I know that's not true."

With the ambassador engaged in conversation and his own reluctance to converse with Isobel, Tim Grey was looking for an opening to engage the other men. "I understand that you've taken to selling used cars," he intervened, leaving them with no doubt as to what he thought about that.

Henry shrugged. "It is the growing occupation of working aristocrats and younger sons. We can't all be men of the church or clerks in the Foreign Office."

"Diplomats," Tim Grey responded icily.

"I thought you had to be diplomatic to be a diplomat," Tom said with a laugh. Leaving Grey to seethe over that, Tom turned to Henry once more. "To answer your question, I've nothing against horse-racing. In fact, I quite like it, though I prefer cars. And it would be exciting to see Coronach victorious. But when I moved out of the Abbey, I did so with the idea that I'd spend more time with Sybbie. I'll be at the shop tomorrow morning, but in the afternoon we're going to take a picnic to the White Horse at Kilburn, and George is going to come with us."***

For a moment Henry looked a little chagrined. "That does sound like fun."

Tom just grinned.

"What about that...other thing?" Henry's voice dropped to a murmur and his levity dissipated.

Tom stared blankly at him for a moment and then grasped the point. "Oh. That. No, there's been nothing." He still hadn't mentioned the rock incident to Henry. Well, it had been weeks ago. "I think it was just kids," Tom went on, affecting a casualness he did not feel. "Now they're back to school, I'm sure that'll be the end of it."

Henry was not convinced. "I've never known school to dim a boy's enthusiasm for pranks," he said. But he could see that Tom didn't want to discuss it, so he let the conversation lapse and his gaze drifted once more to the other end of the table and rested more agreeably on the beautiful lively woman there who was engaged so spiritedly in conversation with her grandmother.

Tom exhaled quietly in relief. Then he realized that Tim Grey was staring at him and wondered what the man had made of this exchange.

RECAP OF SEASON SO FAR

Robert is entertaining the American Ambassador Alanson Houghton, at the request of Shrimpy. Cora is interested in the reform of English workhouses, a policy initiative of Neville Chamberlain, Minister of Health. The Dowager's health is declining and the end is in sight, but she's not going to die until she's met an obligation made to her late husband regarding an illegitimate child. Mary, on Carson's advice, is trying to learn how to fall in love with her husband. Tom, now living in the old estate agent's cottage, has been subject to a series of small-scale harassment episodes and is uneasy. Edith and Bertie haven't figured much yet but they will in Episode 6. Carson is working on his history of the Crawley family at the Dowager's behest. Carson is worried about the Dowager's health, but is also quite taken with Daniel Ryder, the young man he has hired to help him with the history project. Elsie is adapting to reduced-hours employment, suspicious of Daniel Ryder's motives, and is a bit annoyed with her husband over his inexplicable infatuation with the newcomer. Thomas is getting on well as the butler, but still looking for love and thinks he may have found a possibility in the German valet to one of Henry's friends, but can Thomas get away to Berlin? Daisy is chafing as an assistant cook, especially having since discovered via a hidden letter from Mrs. Drewe, the whole sordid tale that surrounded Marigold. Mrs. Patmore has pretty much decided Mr. Mason is not for her. Bates and Anna are expecting a second child and taking more of an interest in their future away from Downton. Bates is also actively employed in seeking out the illegitimate child of the older Crawley generation as a special favour to the Dowager. Isobel and Dickie are struggling with the idea of entertaining the county when they don't entertain on that kind of a scale, and are very irritated by Larry Grey's criticism on this score. Molesley is feeling guilty about his non-participation in the First World War. Dr. Clarkson has fallen out a bit with Isobel who is urging him to retire, and went on a drinking binge that was witnessed by Thomas. There's an odd correspondence in The Sketch that might or might not be connected to Spratt and Denker. I think that covers everything. As this chapter opens, the American Ambassador is about to arrive.

I was going to wait and only start posting again when I had all the episodes complete, but ... I've changed my mind. There are a few chapters ready. You might as well be reading them.

*A/N: I would disagree with Violet here. In the opinion of this outsider, there are no superlatives great enough to encompass the beauty of Yorkshire.

** A/N2: Coming to office in the midst of the First Moroccan Crisis, 1905-06, Lord Edward Grey as Foreign Secretary was inclined to support France. As part of this, "in January 1906 he authorized military conversations which resulted in plans being drawn up to send an expeditionary force to France in the event of war." The entente with France was already in place, Grey was only acting in its spirit. But his secret negotiations, first with France and then with Russia, helped establish the circumstances that made the First World War possible and he is recognized as having some responsibility for it. Britain's decisions to come to settle their differences with France and Russia and to "side" with them in disputes with Germany was a departure from the policy of "splendid isolation" in practice until the turn of the century and epitomized by the government of Lord Salisbury. ( .uk/government/history/past-foreign-secretaries/edward-grey)

***A/N3. The White Horse of Kilburn is that interesting work of art - an etching of a horse cut into a stone hillside in the North York Moors and then treated with lime to whiten it. It's not far from Thirsk and thus a likely day's outing for a family from Downton. It hails from the Victorian era, the work was initiated in 1857, and it remains a compelling draw today.