Chapter Sixty Two
The White Knight
Robert! I would remind you that there is no need for language! Are you really telling me Branson forced our darling Sybil to walk all the way to church?" exclaimed the Dowager Countess.
"I'm sorry, Mama, I was overwrought" said Robert rather lamely. He was now starting to develop a headache. That, he thought savagely, was bloody Branson's fault too.
So far this evening, Matthew had kept a very low profile; had been happy to observe rather than contribute to what was now developing into a highly entertaining spectacle. However, at the Dowager Countess's rebuke to her son, while Mary and Matthew did their very best to contain their merriment and keep straight faces, they exchanged amused glances. To see the normally dignified and self-assured earl of Grantham so thoroughly disconcerted, then reprimanded by his own mother, and forced to make an abject public apology, really was very funny indeed.
"No, granny. Sybil wasn't forced to walk to the church or to anywhere else for that matter. After all, it was only a stone's throw from his mother's house and it was Sybil's choice, not Tom's".
Mary heard her father emphatically clearing his throat.
"Cousin Violet, from what Mary told me earlier, during dinner, it was just like walking from Crawley House to the parish church down in the village" explained Matthew, now deciding it was time he made his own contribution to the debate.
"And you think that makes it acceptable? Obviously, it is in Dublin. Perhaps it would be in Manchester. But certainly not here!" fumed Violet.
"I'm sure young Mr. Branson did no such thing. Anyway, for a bride on her wedding morn to be taking a short walk to church in the warmth of the summer sunshine sounds very pleasant to me," said Isobel.
Matthew nodded; smiled approvingly at his mother.
"Well, of course you would think so" said Violet acidly.
"Yes, I would, wouldn't I" replied Isobel, completely unabashed.
Matthew did his best not to grin, failing miserably in the process.
"Several passers-by stopped to wish her all the very best" added Edith.
"You mean complete strangers? Stopped poor Sybil in the street?" The Dowager Countess sounded horrified, as though she had just received news of the execution of the Tsar and his family by the Bolsheviks.
"So Sybil told us afterwards" nodded Mary.
"How utterly mortifying for her. Forced to make a public spectacle of herself like that. Poor girl, she must have been terrible embarrassed" observed the Dowager Countess.
"Not at all, granny" said Mary. "I think Sybil rather enjoyed all the attention she was receiving. And, as I told you earlier, it was Sybil's own choice".
"So you keep saying," said the Dowager Countess, her tone indicating that she was not at all convinced by her eldest granddaughter's explanation.
"I'm sure Branson had a hand in this" said Robert irritably. His headache was slowly becoming worse.
"Robert, have you heard a word anybody has been saying?" asked Cora. Her rising anger was palpable.
"Is what I've heard, any of it, supposed to make me feel better?"
"Given what we've both told you, Papa, about what happened to us at the Shelbourne, where Tom helped save all our lives, and then what he did out at his brother's farm, it damned well should!"
"Mary! Language!" raged Robert.
Mary took no notice of her father's rebuke. She would have once, but no longer.
"You should have seen him, Papa. Tom, standing there in the barn taking on the British army all but single handed".
"Well, I'm sure Branson behaved impeccably. From all that both of you have been saying, why, he sounds just like Sir Galahad" chuckled Violet. She smiled.
"Un chevalier sans peur et sans reproche!"
At that, even Mary smiled, imagining how Tom would laugh at being compared to a Knight of the Round Table. Robert's left eye twitched again.
Edith smiled too. Catching her eye, her grandmother reached forward and unexpectedly patted her grand- daughter's knee.
"However" continued Violet in the loftiest of tones, "I always found the so-called amenities of the Shelbourne to be grossly overrated. If you'd both taken my advice and stayed at the Royal Hibernian, then none of the ... unpleasantness would have happened".
"Unpleasantness?" queried Mary. "Is that what you call it granny? Being nearly blown to pieces? I think I'd call it something stronger".
Matthew tried to lighten the conversation
"I rather liked hearing about your trip on the tram. It sounded quite a jolly thing to have done". Matthew's attempt at levity earned him a reproving look from Robert, which Matthew promptly ignored. "As for Sybil walking to church, good for her!"
Violet bristled, shook her head.
"It is not the way things are done; at least not by people of our class" she said looking pointedly at Matthew.
"Such a shame that. It all sounds so ... refreshingly normal," retorted Isobel. Matthew grinned at his mother.
"I thought it was a perfectly lovely idea; for her to walk to the church," said Edith.
"Edith, dear, only you would," countered her grandmother tartly.
Edith looked utterly crestfallen.
"Granny, please".
"Well, it all sounds most irregular," said Violet shaking her head in disbelief at what she had been hearing.
Matthew winked broadly at Edith, causing her face to lighten immediately. She grinned back.
Despite his worsening headache, Robert returned to the fray.
"I have no doubt whatsoever that Branson was responsible; seeking to make some kind of political statement by making Sybil walk to the church - after having driven all of us about Yorkshire for the past few years, Sybil included" observed Robert caustically. "Why, since the Bolshevik Revolution in Russia, I hear things like this have been happening over there all the time, members of the aristocracy stripped of their estates and possessions, being forced to sweep the streets".
"I've already told you, Papa. It was Sybil's decision to walk to the church. It was nothing at all to do with Tom". Mary sighed unwilling any longer to mask the unmistakable exasperation, which she felt with her father's continuing overt hostility towards Tom.
"It was nothing like you're suggesting, Papa" said Edith.
"I'm sure it wasn't," said Matthew. He smiled gently at Edith who matched her cousin's warm smile with one of her own.
"So you keep saying," said Robert, icily dismissive.
"We do," countered Mary and Edith together. "Honestly Papa, do you really think darling Tom is anything remotely like Comrade Lenin?" Mary glanced at Matthew, and like Edith was rewarded by the warmth of his smile. "Well said," mouthed Matthew silently.
"Darling Tom?" thundered the earl of Grantham.
"Robert, calm down!" hissed Cora.
"But that's the kind of society Branson wants to create here in England and over there in Ireland too, Cora".
"No, Papa, it isn't; and he doesn't!" snapped Edith. "Mama, Tom's a socialist, not a revolutionary. All he wants is a society that is fairer for everybody. That's what he told me and I believe him".
"You've discussed such matters, and with Branson of all people?" Her father sounded appalled, utterly incredulous.
"Yes! And much more besides" said Edith emphatically. "You might as well know it, Papa, that during afternoon tea at the Shelbourne Hotel Sybil, Tom, and I had a lively discussion about social justice".
"In public?" Violet raised an expressive eyebrow. "What about you, Mary dear? Were you also helping plan Red Revolution in Dublin over the Darjeeling at the Shelbourne?"
"I ... Well, no. I ..."Mary paused, momentarily flustered.
"Yes?" Violet eyed her eldest granddaughter over the rim of her bone china cup.
"I'd gone for a walk in the park" finished Mary rather lamely.
"I'm not surprised; a very wise decision; taking the cool of the afternoon air. After all, tea rooms are can be often so very hot and stuffy places," said Violet. "And Edith my dear ..."
"Yes granny?"
"May I suggest that in future you choose your dining companions more carefully and that whoever they may be, that you stick to polite chit chat most especially while taking afternoon tea".
"And I've no doubt, with you and Sybil being young, impressionable women, it was with consummate ease that Branson managed to convince both of you of the righteousness of his revolutionary cause" observed Robert sarcastically.
"As a matter of fact he didn't" said Edith.
"Well, thank goodness for that!" exclaimed Robert. "That's the first sensible thing I've heard either of you say since you came back from Ireland".
"That's not what I meant," replied Edith. "What I mean Papa, is that Tom didn't have to do anything of the sort".
"I beg your pardon?"
"What Tom said made perfect sense, Papa. At least to me it did and I think to Sybil. It was such a shame we never managed to finish our discussion. It was most interesting. But then you see ..." Edith paused, her voice wavered, fell silent, seeing in her mind's eye what then happened: the explosion at the hotel, and the dreadful, sickening aftermath.
Robert eyed Edith cautiously.
"See what?" he asked. "I don't see anything at all".
"Robert! I do. I understand Edith perfectly," said Violet patting her granddaughter's knee.
"You do granny?" asked Edith clearly surprised by her grandmother's apparent sudden grasp of the situation.
"Why yes dear, of course I do. I may be aged, but I am not completely senile. After all, I've had to do just the same myself; many times in fact".
"Whatever do you mean granny?" asked Mary now as equally surprised as Edith.
"Why, cease an inappropriate conversation in front of a member of a hotel's domestic staff. What else? I suppose it was the waiter who interrupted you, bringing more hot water. That sort of thing can be most off-putting". Without waiting for Edith to confirm her suspicions, Violet ran on. "Of course, I was never very impressed with the standard of service in the dining room at the Shelbourne. And Ireland being Ireland, I doubt that has changed one iota!"