DOWNTON ABBEY 1926

Episode 7 Chapter 8

Monday October 4, 1926

AFTERMATH

The words were bold, the tone defiant. And in the instant after they were spoken both Robert and Carson tensed like coiled springs about to be loosed. The boy's eyes riveted to them. He seemed almost thrilled by their anger.

"No!" It was Tom's cry that brought them up abruptly. To this point he had let Robert take the lead as master of Downton Abbey. But now that they knew what it was about, he stepped forward. "No," he said again, in a more temperate voice and then seemed at loss of what to say next.

"Dunsany?" Mary said slowly, brows furrowed in thought. "Laura Dunsany's little brother?"*

The boy grimaced at the adjective, but nodded curtly in Mary's direction though his wary and as-yet-undaunted gaze remained on the men.

Mary groaned quietly and turned to catch her mother's eye. They exchanged a knowing look.

"What is it?" Violet demanded, looking from one to the other.

"The Drumgooles," Cora murmured. This revelation deflated her.

"The … Drumgooles?" Robert glanced uncertainly toward his wife.

Carson had regained his composure, either jarred by Tom's intervention or as a matter of habit, and his wits, too. He strode across the room to where Lewis stood. "Leave the clearing for later, Lewis. You may go now." He spoke calmly and without any indication of the tension ratcheting up behind him. It was unfortunate that the footman had been privy to so much and there was certainly no need for him to learn any more. Following the footman's retreat with his eyes, Carson thought that whatever Lewis would make of the situation, he was unlikely to tell the tale in the servants' hall. The butler's attention returned to the matter at hand. "My lord, shall I summon the constable?"

It was the appropriate thing to do in the moment and Robert considered it, his gaze bouncing back and forth between John Dunsany and Tom. Then he turned abruptly toward the women. "I think we must have the Drumgooles here."

Cora nodded, relieved.

Mary was puzzled. "But … where are they?"

"With the Northrops, at Ramsey Hall," Cora told her, glancing to the boy for confirmation.

He nodded, apparently not adverse to this course of action.

"I shall ring them at once," Robert said firmly. "And we will wait on the constable, Carson," he added as an aside to the butler, who flanked Robert in order to hold the door for him.

These words animated the boy. "Lord Grantham, I insist that you ring the constable." He said this with some force.

This arrested Robert only momentarily. He glanced over his shoulder, staring meditatively at the youth. "You are not in a position to insist on anything," he said politely. "I will summon the law. Just not yet." And then he passed out of the room.

The boy was vexed by this. He stalked to the windows and stood there, hands clasped behind him, his back to Tom and to the Crawley women. There was a scowl on his face, as though his plan had not unfolded quite as he had expected.

Carson moved discreetly across the room to take up a position near the intruder, something which did not escape the boy's notice.

"You needn't mark me," he said coolly, though not impolitely. "I have come here of my own volition, I'm hardly likely to flee now."

Carson ignored him and remained at his post.

Cora went to Tom and put a comforting hand on his arm. He gave her an appreciative nod, but the look of misery on his face did not disappear.

Violet was trying to make sense of this confusion. "Who is this boy?" she demanded of her granddaughter.

Reluctantly, Mary withdrew her gaze from the still form by the window and looked to her grandmother. "Laura Dunsany's brother," she repeated. "Laura and I came out together. She married Lord Drumgoole in 1912."

"Brother?" Violet focused on the first part of this information. She frowned in the boy's direction. "That's quite a gap in age."

"About eighteen years' difference, I should say. He was…an afterthought." Mary lowered her voice. "Like Mama and Papa the summer before the war." She shot an apprehensive glance at her mother. They never spoke of that time or of the little boy who would have succeeded Robert as Earl of Grantham had he not died in his mother's womb, the result of a domestic accident. "Only in their case, the child lived and the mother died. It's my understanding that Laura and her husband took the boy to live with them."

Violet was bewildered all the more. "But what about his father?" After all, to raise a child all one needed was a good nanny.

"He died during the war."

"In France?"

"No. In Regent's Park. He fell off his horse. Like Sir Robert Peel."**

"Oh, dear," Violet murmured. Her pale blue gaze fell again on the slight figure across the room. She was not wholly unsympathetic.

"Oh, dear, indeed," Mary echoed her.

JOHN DUNSANY'S STORY

It was a long hour of waiting.

Mary went up to the nursery to put off the daily visit of the children. Carson summon Andy to clear away the tea and paused downstairs only long enough to tell his wife that the servants' tea should proceed without him. John Dunsany did not move from his vigil by the window. And despite Violet's questions, Robert suggested that they not try to make sense of what had happened before the Drumgooles joined them.

"Best have it all out at once," he intoned.

Tom remained in the library but stood apart from the Crawleys, as distant and absorbed in his own thoughts as was the boy.

At length they heard a car on the gravel outside. Carson went to the door and escorted Lord and Lady Drumgoole to the library where he formally announced them. Without additional instructions from His Lordship, Carson then stepped discreetly into the shadows.

Lady Drumgoole was no older than Mary, but wore her years with the slightly harried look of someone who had borne a heavy burden for some time. Her almost frantic eyes sought out her brother and without a glance at the Crawleys, she rushed to his side. "John!"

He had abandoned his aloof stance when the car arrived, turning toward the library door at their step in the hall, and now he advanced a step or two into his sister's worried embrace.

Lord Drumgoole, a tall, well-made man who had weathered his family's misfortune more resiliently than his wife, followed her with his eyes until she reached the boy's side, and then focused his attention on their hosts. He nodded courteously and murmured greetings to each of the ladies, and then fixed on Robert, ignoring Tom entirely.

"What's it all about, Crawley? On the telephone you said that John was involved in something serious." He spoke crisply, but not rudely. He, too, was worried, but he contained his concern more effectively than did his wife.

Robert chose to respond with equal forthrightness. "Several days ago my son-in-law's home was destroyed by arson. Little more than an hour ago, this young man bluntly informed us that he was responsible for that act." Despite the fraught nature of the circumstances and his own aroused feelings, Robert spoke dispassionately out of habit.

No one had anticipated complicity on the part of the Drumgooles and the shocked expressions that descended on their faces testified to their ignorance of the affair. Lady Drumgoole cried out in horror and stared wide-eyed at the youth by her side. Drumgoole recovered more quickly but strode quickly to his wife's side to offer her support. John Dunsany drew himself up the more stiffly in response to his family's reactions.

"Please," said Robert, moved by Lady Drumgoole's distress, "let us sit. Carson?"

Carson smoothly arranged chairs and the Drumgooles, Lady Drumgoole between the two males, joined the Crawleys by the fireplace, sitting together on the settee Mary gave up to them. She and Robert took the chairs. Tom remained standing by the mantle to the left of Cora, who occupied the other sofa.

"May we offer you some tea?" Cora asked Lady Drumgoole solicitously. "I think we could all use something." Without waiting for a firm answer, she nodded to Carson who withdrew silently, closing the door behind him.

"I think I'd rather a whisky," Drumgoole said frankly.

"I'll join you." In the absence of the butler, Robert got up to pour the drinks. He glanced at Tom, who shook his head. In another moment, the men were settled.

"This is quite a piece of news, Crawley," Drumgoole declared, looking from his young brother-in-law to Robert and then back again.

"An understatement, in the circumstances," Violet mused.

"It's nothing to do with him," John Dunsany said abruptly. "I said it. And it's true. A week ago Friday I set fire to his cottage." He jerked his chin in Tom's direction. "It burned to the ground."

"John!" Though she was his sister, it was evident from Lady Drumgoole's demeanour that she took a maternal attitude toward the boy she and her husband had effectively adopted as a small child. She looked at him now with a mixture of concern and disbelief. Yet this was no child who had perpetrated a harmless prank and both of the Drumgooles came over very sober.

He was eager to explain. "I want to tell my story, Laura. I want him…" he gave another derisive nod in Tom's direction," …to hear it. I want them all to know. That's why I came here today. That's why I said what I said. And," he added firmly, with a glare at Robert, "I want the constable as well. I want all of England to know what happened."

These words frightened Lady Drumgoole and elicited from her a sharp gasp. Drumgoole turned abruptly in Robert's direction, a question in his eyes.

"We thought it best to have you here first," Robert said quietly.

Drumgoole nodded, a flicker of relief passing over his face.

"But I want the law here," the boy persisted. "I want everyone to know."

"John." Drumgoole said only the name, but with such an air of authority that the boy subsided, scowling but silent. With an effort, Lord Drumgoole looked to Robert once more. "Perhaps, Lord Grantham, we might hear the whole story?"

The story was John Dunsany's to tell. Or Tom's. But the conversation remained firmly in the hands of the two gentlemen who struggled to position themselves above the fray, dispassionate if not disinterested.

"There have been a series of incidents, escalating pranks … a cow pat in Tom's automobile, a …" Robert frowned. He did not remember the details.

"An inkwell spilled on my desk," Tom said, taking up the litany." My jacket flung in a mud puddle…."

Drumgoole shifted impatiently. How were these trivialities connected to the crime of arson? The boy saw this and intervened.

"A rock through his bedroom window, grit in the fuel line of his car, a dead grouse in his car."

Lady Drumgoole paled and she stared at her brother in disbelief. "John, what possessed you?"

"It's only what I've been trying to tell you all," the boy said heatedly. "I wanted him to know what it was like. To be hunted. To wonder when they would strike again. To worry that next time it might be worse." He glared at Tom and then his gaze traversed the room, embracing them all in his story. "To be afraid for himself and his family. He only knows what it's like from the other side, how to instill fear, not to feel it."

There was a long, shocked silence.

"Oh, John." It seemed that Lady Drumgoole's heart was breaking for him, right there before them all.

The fire and fury of the past and of his own actions only stimulated the boy. "Don't you remember what it was like that night, Laura? The mob outside our home, with torches and clubs." He glanced at Tom, his eyes narrowed. "Our own people driven off by intimidation or force. Our dogs poisoned that they might offer us no protection."

His words turned the atmosphere in the room cold. The Crawleys were all aware of Tom's role in the planning of the assault on Drumgoole Castle and that the family had been turned out of the house that was then burned. But they had never heard these details. Too disciplined to shift in discomfort, yet they could not wholly conceal their unease. Cora and Robert exchanged dismayed looks. Violet stared wide-eyed at the youth. Mary's expression hardened and her eyes fluttered involuntarily in Tom's direction.

"They didn't burn the roof over our heads, I'll give them that," John Dunsany went on savagely. "But dragging the children from their beds in the middle of the night…." He could hardly have been but a child himself at the time, but clearly felt a fraternal oversight of his sister's younger children. "They were sobbing in your arms, Laura, and Arthur, you were all that stood between us and them." His gaze raked the Crawleys again. "I wanted him to know what it was like to fear for the life of his child with flames all around."

The reminder that Sybbie had been at risk steeled Robert once more. "You might have killed them all," he said frigidly.

But John Dunsany shook his head violently. "No. Never. I only poured the petrol along the front of the cottage and I made sure they had an escape route. And I gave fair warning, calling out before dropped the match. And I would have gone in after any of them – the child, the housekeeper, even him – if they'd not gotten out. I'd not have let them die." He struck a noble air with this declaration. There would be no persuading John Dunsany at this point that he had done anything wrong.

"Petrol?" His sister spoke faintly and her face whitened in shock. Fortunately Carson appeared with the tea just then and the pause to prepare a cup for Lady Drumgoole gave them all a moment.

"But why now?" Mary demanded. "Why hunt Tom … Mr. Branson down, now, six years later?" Mary was not unmoved by the boy's story, but wallowing in the details of the crimes, past and present, would get them nowhere.

"I didn't hunt him down," the boy replied promptly, focusing on Mary. "Or seek him out deliberately. I only learned where he was from you." He said this to Lord Drumgoole. "After that dinner party at Cousin David's which the Granthams attended."

Cora closed her eyes for a moment. "At the Northrops'."

John Dunsany nodded. "You spoke of it the next day," he went on, addressing his brother-in-law. "About how aggravated you were that Cousin Helen had invited them and how Lord Grantham had made excuses for him when you spoke of how our home was destroyed. And how angry you were that he had escaped justice because Lord Grantham won a dispensation for him from the Home Secretary.'

Only the young could speak so frankly. The bitter reality which he described, the uncomfortable truths, stung them all. And gave them nowhere to hide.

Lord Drumgoole stepped into the breach. "I was angry," he admitted, and his gaze strayed briefly to the Crawleys as he said this. Almost imperceptibly, Robert gave him a nod of acknowledgment. Anger in such circumstances was understandable. "But John, I spoke in the heat of the moment. I did not intend to set you on a course of revenge." He looked away abruptly, meeting no one's gaze, meditating on the consequences of words he could not take back.

For the first time, Lady Drumgoole stirred from the shock that had gripped her since their arrival. She reached for her brother's hand, her touch gentle, comforting. "That part of our life has passed, John. This … nothing can bring it back."

Their eyes met and in this wordless communion the bonds of affection between them were apparent to all.

"You didn't deserve it," he said softly, echoing her gentleness, "you and Arthur. You listened."

His words settled a profound silence upon them all.

"This is all very well," Violet interceded suddenly, her tone sharp. "But where do we go from here?"

MARY AND TOM

He was alone on the gallery, looking at the crests of arms of past ladies of Grantham and not seeing any of them. To Mary, the last one up that evening, he appeared forlorn, a little lost. He gave her a half-smile as she approached, to let her know that she was not unwelcome.

"I am so sorry, Tom. About all of this."

"It's no less than I deserve," he said soberly. "From John Dunsany and from Robert." The boy's hostility was to be expected, but Tom had not been surprised either by the noticeably frosty disposition of his father-in-law ever since the departure of the Drumgooles.

Mary might have defended her father against her brother-in-law or brother-in-law against father but, seeing both sides, chose to avoid the issue altogether. "I don't agree. Why didn't you fight back, Tom? Why didn't you remind that boy, and the Drumgooles, too, that there was another side of the story?" Mary was fierce when aroused and never more so than in the defense of her own.

Tom gave her an incredulous look. "Would you listen to a rationalization from someone who had burned down Downton Abbey?" He shook his head. He's a boy, Mary."

"A boy who burned your house," she said doggedly, ignoring the truth of his first remark.

"But ... he was right, in what he said. Or not wrong, anyway. He brought it all back to me, from a different perspective - the mob, the terrorized family. The flames." The flames. Oh, yes, he had a different view on the flames now.

He had not melted Mary s heart. Her eyes went round with what she perceived to be Tom's obtuseness. "Did you not have reason for such extremes? The occupation of your homeland? The Coercion Acts? Bloody Balfour? The Black and Tans? What about the Drumgooles? Surely there was a specific motive there for you to have targeted them!"

He was distracted for a moment. "Mary, you're English."

She recovered herself a little. "And your sister-in-law." She paused. "I can't deny that I found his story shocking, Tom. And I don't believe you acted in the right. I don't hold with terrorism and I could see the effect of it in Laura's face and hear it in John Dunsany's voice. But I accept that you had your reasons and that you believed in them."

That sounded more like Mary.

"He had his reasons, too, Mary. More, even. More visceral. I was fighting for the greater good, for my country. John Dunsany acted for his family."

"Quite a bit after the fact." This was a sticking point for her.

Tom shrugged at this. A ten-year-old, as John Dunsany would have been at the time, could hardly have mounted such a campaign.

"Aren't you angry with him at all?"

"Of course I am! Or … I was. I know him too well to stay angry."

It was clear that Mary did not understand, so Tom explained.

"What did he do that I didn't, Mary? I also plotted pranks and antics. But for Carson, I would have poured a bucket of slop over General Strutt at the Downton dinner table." Mary's eyebrows shot up at this. He had never told her. Tom went on. "And I was prepared to go through the whole conscription process so that I could declare my Irish nationalist opposition to the war on a parade ground in order to make a fool of the British Army. My heart thwarted me there," he added ruefully. "And," he said, more intensely, "I planned the destruction of Drumgoole castle with a group of Irish nationalists. I didn't see the Drumgooles as individuals, or as a family, but as some kind of ...disembodied unit of British tyranny." His eyes bored into her. "That's how I used to look at you, at all of you. That's how John Dunsany looks at me, as a menace, not as a man. And that's wrong no matter who's seeing things that way."

It took Mary a moment to digest this. Tom had never made such an open admission of his attitude before. "You aren't that man any more. You've changed your views."

"Yes. And I think John Dunsany ought to be given the opportunity to grow out of his hatred, too."

"So you think we ought to let it drop?" Mary sounded sceptical. Her grandmother was prepared to embrace a "forgive, yes; forget, never" approach, but Mary was not resolved even to that."

"He's had his pound of flesh," Tom said shortly. "I think we should call it quits."

ROBERT AND CORA

"Robert, come to bed."

Cora had found the revelations of the afternoon unsettling and the conversations that followed them draining. But more taxing still, even more so than Tom's withdrawn silence, was Robert's simmering fury. And the sight of him pacing their bedroom, face flushed with the anger he had contained but barely all evening, put her over the edge. She wanted to sleep.

He swung about and his flashing eyes fixed on hers. "Don't tell me things will be better in the morning," he said sharply.

"I won't," she murmured agreeably. "You're beyond common sense right now."

He heard her, but shook off the slight rebuke. "A few hours, or days, or weeks isn't going to change a thing." And then he halted abruptly. It's invidious," he declared forcefully, as though he needed to persuade her. "Six and a half years ago I begged a Liberal Home Secretary to look the other way in the matter of my son-in-law's complicity in a terrorist act, in a cause with which I had no sympathy. And today I set the police on the son of a social peer who committed a comparable act for reasons I find wholly understandable."

"You don't approve of what he did. And you didn't set the police on him."

Robert made an inarticulate noise to convey his irritation. Cora had an aggravating habit of taking things literally and he rejected her reductionist thinking on this matter.

She did not wait for a response from him, but leaned forward, as though inviting him to a confidence. "Given a little time, I'm sure Lord Drumgoole will be able to talk the boy out of his determined martyrdom." She sighed wistfully. "I'm sure that's what Tom would prefer."

"Oh, damn Tom and what he wants! He is the author of this whole appalling episode!"

"Robert!"

He moved suddenly across the floor to her side of the bed and his tone, though still bitter, was also very earnest. "Cora, I have never felt so ... soiled ... as I did than when appealing to Mr. Shortt to spare my daughter's feelings and my family's reputation."

She stared evenly back at him. "It was the right thing to do." Cora's tone did not admit of doubt. She had spent years of her life managing matters so that the sins of her daughters did not impair their social standing and ability to make a good marriage. She could not surrender that agenda without conscious effort and a wholesale abandonment of the principles of the society she had embraced. "And you'd do it again," she added, with conviction.

"It was not the right thing to do," Robert countered her firmly, "using influence to subvert the rule of law. But, yes," he admitted, with an air of resignation, "I would do it again. And I will not challenge Drumgoole should he make the same choice." He was silent for a moment. "But it is not right."

His anger had abated a little with this opportunity for expression and he sat heavily on the bed beside Cora. She shifted her legs over to give him room.

"It may not be our choice to make, we lords of the realm," he said flatly. "Whether we like it or not, the police are already involved, both Sergeant Willis and the Scotland Yard investigator that I summoned. They must be informed, sooner or later."

Cora reached for his hand. They sat together in a meditative silence.

"Perhaps the Home Secretary can be persuaded in this instance as well," Cora said, at length.

Robert was ambivalent on this. "Boynston-Hicks is a Conservative, but he's unpredictable." He sighed again. "Well, at least arson isn't a capital offense any more." Cora's aghast look escaped him. "And he is just sixteen, although that may make it possible to try him as an adult."

"Do you really think it will come to that?"

He stared at her. "Scandal? Public humiliation for all of us? Sir Richard Carlisle plastering it all over his wretched papers? More likely than not, I should say." The straight line of his shoulders wilted a little. "Though I would wish it away, do we not deserve it? Especially the hypocrites among us?"

But Cora would have none of that. "You're too hard on yourself, Robert. We protect our own. It's a natural impulse."

He gave her hand a grateful squeeze. "I am not hard enough on myself, but I appreciate your support nonetheless." This won him an indulgent smile. "And I am sorry to rage at you, my darling. But I knew if I once opened my mouth to Tom I might say something I would regret."

"Your restraint was admirable."

Robert stood then and slipped off his dressing gown as he walked around to his side of the bed. "I was so distracted this evening that I forgot to tell Bates about the Kearnses and the Grantham Arms." He shook his head at the oversight.

"Tomorrow," Cora said, drawing back the bedclothes so as to admit him.

"Yes. Tomorrow."

ANNA AND JOHN

"I feel sorry for the boy," Anna said, folding back the bedclothes and preparing to get into bed. She had heard the saga of the Drumgooles from her husband when John came home from the Abbey. Against his advice she had waited up for him again, unsettled by other matters. But his dramatic story had come first. Despite the tale he had to tell and her own preoccupations, Anna could not help but track John as he discarded his clothes. The rippling muscles of his shoulders and abdomen fairly took her breath away. She forced herself to concentrate on what he had said. "All those...pranks. It must have eaten him up."

"It's a dangerous situation," John agreed, taking the time to hang his trousers properly. "Hate can take over your life." He knew that well enough from his own experience. He came to the bed and sat down on the edge, reaching out to her where she was now already ensconced beneath the covers. "His Lordship is angry. He feels that Mr. Branson has put him in an untenable position."

They exchanged knowing glances. Though the family had tried to keep awareness of Tom Branson s escape from Ireland concealed, downstairs knew more or less what had happened.

"This is what happens when influence trumps justice," Anna said sagely. "Ordinary people don't have the choice to become so conflicted."

"Well, we can't throw stones," John said cautiously. "We've benefited from the Granthams' influence ourselves on occasion."

"We were innocent, Mr. Bates! Remember? I don't think we can say the same for either John Dunsany or Mr. Branson." Anna liked the former chauffeur who had married into the family and would not wish him ill, but that did not mean that she approved of his actions in the cause of Irish independence.

With a knowing smile sparked by the flash of righteousness he saw in Anna s eyes, John nodded. "You're right."

"What happened to him, then, this John Dunsany? Did they call the constable?"

"No. Not yet. In the end he went home with the Drumgooles. Well, he's not likely to disappear to the continent or flee to America," he added quickly, in response to Anna's expression of disbelief.

"Isn't he?"

"No. Worse luck, in His Lordship's view. I think he'd like to sweep it all under the carpet." John spoke without inflection, reporting developments without betraying one way or the other what he himself thought.

"Will the Drumgooles make their own appeal to the Home Secretary?"

"Who knows?" He paused to give his next words the appropriate gravity. "The boy is insisting on a public forum to tell his story. And Lord Drumgoole, like His Lordship, is caught betwixt and between the poles of honour and scandal."

They could only shake their heads at the conundrums of the aristocracy.

"But never mind all that," John said suddenly, brushing aside the world of Downton Abbey. "You had something you wanted to talk about before I got lost in that muddle. What is it?" He gazed at her raptly.

Anna had been meditating on the news of the Grantham Arms since Andy had imparted it to her earlier in the day. She had torn it apart in her mind - the possibilities, the implications. But most of all she had wondered Did John know? Did he want to make a clean break from Downton and all the uncomfortable memories that co-existed with them here? And why would he have kept such news from her? Secrets. Were they not done with secrets? Anna might have raised the subject at the Abbey, but an issue of such magnitude deserved their full attention. The unease of it had followed her all day.

But then, as she was putting Robbie to bed, her mind had suddenly cleared, propelled by the confidence of her heart. Of course he didn't know. They had no secrets. Not anymore. Somehow they had gotten so wrapped up in their quest that they had become deaf to the immediate world of Downton. They had failed to cast down their buckets where they were. And in this renewed spirit of trust, she told him the news without preamble.

"The Kearnses are giving up their lease on the Grantham Arms."

His jaw dropped. "What?!"

END OF EPISODE 7

* A/N1. An author's admission: I meant the villain to be one of the Drumgooles' children. But I named him Dunsany, which was Lady Drumgoole's maiden name. Hence the convoluted backstory here. But then it gave me an opportunity to employ the bit of information explained in A/N2!

**A/N2. Sir Robert Peel, Conservative Prime Minister of England (1834-35, 1841-46), did indeed fall off his horse and die in London on July 2, 1850 of injuries sustained. I wanted to kill off the Dunsany patriarch here and sought a death other than one connected with the war. After all, people continued to die of many causes other than battle and war-cultivated disease during the war.

Overall: Yes, it's been a long time, for reasons. And because both WordPerfect (which I prefer) and Word (which I loathe) are failing me, there may be a delay in posting the next few chapters which are written. (And there may be odd typographical errors in this chapter.) You've probably forgotten the entire story by now, but I have faith that you will figure it out. I am writing intensively at the moment and hope ... "hope" ... to have Downton Abbey 1926 done before the new movie comes out and wrecks everything for my take on Downton's future. Things will start slowly here, but rest assured that there are plenty of scenes left featuring your favourites. - Edward Carson.