Chapter One Hundred And Three
Letting Go Of The Past
Raised voices, especially when they belonged to the earl and countess of Grantham, were not something which either Mr. Carson, or indeed any other member of the household staff, were accustomed to hear emanating from the Library of Downton Abbey.
"Not as long as you, with your ridiculous idea of noblesse oblige, do hold to some quaint notion that we all live in Camelot! Robert, whether you like it or not, for better or for worse, because of the war, the world we both knew is fast disappearing. Outside these walls everything is changing. Mary, Edith, Matthew… they can all see what is happening, even if you can't. Or is it that you won't?"
"Matthew? Don't you dare mention Matthew to me! It may surprise you, Cora, but I had expected rather better of him in this blasted, ruddy business of Sybil and that damned Fenian! After all, as my future son-in-law, and therefore now my heir apparent, I would have thought I could count on his support in all things. Apparently not! It seems my confidence in him was sorely misplaced! Do you know what this is?" demanded Robert.
"It looks remarkably like a letter to me" observed Cora quietly, standing her ground. "But then again it might be something else entirely. After all, I'm only a woman, and may of course be mistaken" she added, trying to keep a straight face. Fortunately, at least for the moment, her gentle sarcasm went unobserved.
"Yes, it is a letter. And it's from Matthew. Last night, after you all had adjourned to the Drawing Room do you know what Matthew and I were discussing, here in this very room?"
"No Robert, I don't. After all, how could I? As you said so yourself, none of us were here". The tone Cora chose to adopt was that of an exceedingly patient adult speaking to a fractious child.
"Well then, to return to last night. After dinner, while we were sitting chatting here in this very room, over brandy and cigars, I informed Matthew of the finer details of the more than generous settlement I intend to bestow upon Mary when they are married. In the circumstances, I would have thought he would have been rather more grateful, but I have to say his expression of thanks rendered to me last night, while courteous, was brief in the extreme, and left me feeling distinctly underwhelmed".
"You poor dear" sympathised Cora, with an expression of sincere, albeit feigned, regret.
"Yes, well, where was I?" asked Robert seemingly thrown temporarily off-balance by Cora's expression of sympathy. He paused. Perhaps, thought Robert, he had been somewhat unfair on Cora, over this blasted business of Sybil. He would try and make amends. His brows furrowed as he thought how that might best be achieved. He would suggest a trip up to town. They could stay at Grantham House, he could visit his club, they could all see Rosamund, and Cora and the girls could then pay a visit to Selfridges with its roof terrace on Oxford Street. Either that, or else all three of them could take a run into Ripon, or perhaps York. That, of course, would be cheaper. Much cheaper. Yes, he would suggest that, but not now, later. There was still the matter of Matthew's letter to consider. Robert therefore returned to the matter in hand.
"As I was saying, last night, just as he was leaving, Matthew said he wanted to sound me out about something, said he had put pen to paper, it was easier for him, expressing his thoughts that way. I suppose it must be the lawyer in him. Foolishly, I assumed it was something to do with the estate. But no! It turns out that what Matthew wanted to sound me out about, was changing my mind, "reconsidering my position" as he so quaintly puts it, about Sybil and that bloody bastard Branson!"
Angrily, Robert waved the letter which, that very morning, he had received in the post from Matthew at Cora, and then tossed it dismissively aside onto his desk.
"I can see that I shall have to speak to Matthew again and put an end to this high minded lunacy once and for all!"
"Robert, it's not lunacy".
"Eh? What's that you say?"
"Well look at it from Matthew's point of view".
Cora saw Robert's eyes narrow.
"I don't understand. What do you mean, "Look at it from Matthew's point of view"?"
"Robert, it can't have escaped your attention that one day Matthew will become the next earl of Grantham. All he is trying to do is to act as a peacemaker, so that in years to come, he doesn't inherit a festering family feud".
"Well, maybe there's something in what you say" conceded Robert reluctantly.
Cora nodded her assent.
"But ever since the girls returned here to Downton, either one or both of them have been on at me to see things from Sybil's point-of-view. Mary was well nigh impossible at Christmas, although I suppose that may have had something to do with Carlisle. But that's now all been dealt with, and seemingly to everyone's satisfaction, except of course that of Carlisle himself".
"You don't need to remind me about what happened just after Christmas! But you know how very fond Mary is of Sybil, as indeed is Edith. They may all snipe and peck at each other from time to time, but that's the way of things. Did you really think all of that would suddenly change? Did you honestly believe that Mary and Edith would side with you against Sybil? Especially after what Tom did for them all over there in Ireland. Maybe…"
"Maybe what?"
"It doesn't matter". Cora fell silent.
"It most certainly does matter! Maybe what, Cora?"
"If you… if you had taken rather more notice of Sybil, when she was a child".
"Whatever do you mean by that? I took a great deal of interest in her as a child; in all three of them in fact. Naturally I would have preferred if…" Robert paused, stopped what he was saying, seeing the look on Cora's face.
"Yes" she said at length. "You would have much preferred it if she had been born a boy".
"I didn't say that".
"No you didn't have to, but that's what you were going to say, weren't you? Do you really think I don't know what you did the day Sybil was born? You were so disappointed when she wasn't a boy that you went out for a long walk in the park, before you could even bring yourself to come and see both her and me. Can you imagine how I felt? To reject your own child…"
"I didn't reject her". Robert winced. Cora's suggestion had stung.
"Your reaction to her, when she was born, amounted to the same thing".
"So, what you are saying is that all of this is my fault then?"
"It's not anyone's fault, Robert. Don't you see?"
"See what?"
"That no-one is to blame, and certainly not Sybil's husband. You remember what Sybil said about Tom in the letters she wrote to us after they left for Ireland?"
"Tom?"
"Yes, Robert. Tom. Your son-in-law. He's a very fine young man".
"And you believe all that nonsense do you?"
"It's not nonsense, and yes Robert, as it happens, I do; especially after what happened to them all at the Shelbourne Hotel, given what Tom then did for both Mary and Edith ..."
"Who, may I remind you, had it not been for bloody Branson, would never have been over there in Ireland in the first place! Either of them!" snapped back the earl of Grantham.
Cora stood her ground, ignored her husband's tirade.
"You know as well as I do, Robert, that since Mary and Edith returned from Ireland, they've both said how happy Sybil and Tom are together; how right they are for one another. The same thing comes across in all of Sybil's letters. The more so, now that she's expecting his child. If Mary can see it, then why can't you? After all she's always been far more your daughter than mine".
Robert shook his head in disbelief.
"I don't seem to understand her any more, or Edith for that matter; both of them wanting to be out at parties, the pair of them, from dusk until dawn".
"That's hardly surprising, given the fact that so many of their own generation had no tomorrow. Mary, for all her much vaunted notions of propriety, even she can see what is seemingly beyond you to realise. As, indeed, does Edith".
"And what is that precisely?"
"That our darling Sybil and Tom Branson, whether or not he was once the chauffeur here, are made for each other. You know both Mary and Edith write to them regularly?"
Her husband nodded curtly.
"Well you might as well hear it directly from me, rather than from them. So do I too" said Cora evenly.
"After I expressly forbade you ..." Robert swallowed hard. He turned away from his wife, gazed steadfastly through the window.
Outside it had begun to snow, and heavily too; a sudden whirling dance of falling, swirling snowflakes which blotted out the trees in the park, and beyond them the distant moors. Blotting them out so completely, that they might never ever even have existed, much as the war had forever blotted out the old certainties, only with one singular and significant difference; eventually, the snow would cease. And then, with the thaw, both the trees and the distant moors would still be there, would re-emerge unblemished from their chill pale white shrouds; unlike the dead, who would never return.
And neither, would the old certainties, however much he wished it otherwise, those also had passed beyond the point of recall. With the onset of the war, little by little, piece by piece, Robert's whole world seemed to have fallen apart, collapsed about him. And what, in the end, had it all been for? No, he would not think about that. Nor would he allow his emotions to get the better of him. And nor did they. For, as Mary had found some months earlier in the elegant dining room of the Shelbourne Hotel, the cultured discipline of a lifetime now stood her father in equally good stead.
Sensing her husband's bewilderment and distress at the recent turn of events, Cora closed the short distance that still separated them and stood facing him.
"Robert, I lost one child when I miscarried" she said softly. "I can't ... I won't lose another!"
Her husband looked directly at her. He had, she saw, gone very pale; his eyes seemed fathomless, as if they were sheathed in ice. She gasped, seeing the depth of his unspoken pain. Although Robert had never spoken of it to her, Cora knew that every day, whilst here at Downton, he found time walked down to the church in the village to stand in quiet contemplation before the stone tablet erected there in the family chapel, to the memory of their infant son, who had he lived, would, one day, have inherited the earldom of the Granthams.
"He was my son too" he said quietly.
"As Sybil is also your daughter!"
"You don't need to remind me, Cora. I'm very well aware of that".
"Well then ..."
"I don't blame you. Of course I don't. That would be grossly unfair of me. After all, this whole situation is partly of our own making ... our own fault. As the youngest in the family, despite what you said, how I reacted when she was born… we always ... indulged her. I won't say spoiled, but, in the end, it amounts to much the same thing. And look where it has led us!"
"And where has it led us, Robert?" Answer me that".
"I would have thought that was rather obvious. Marrying someone like Branson! How could she do such a thing? Doesn't Sybil realise what she's done? To her family. To us. To her sisters. Even to herself". The earl of Grantham shook his head in complete disbelief".
"All she has done, Robert, is to marry the man she loves, as did I". Cora calmly placed both her hands gently on her husband's shoulders.
"And you're prepared to accept him? A rabid Irish socialist republican? As your son-in-law? Of course you do realise, Cora that it's his kind who burnt down Curraghmore? Why, just last week, Dunfield Hall was set alight. Do you remember it? We stayed there, with the Leightons, shortly before the war. And, make no mistake given half the chance, Branson would happily do the same to Downton!"
"Tom Branson may well be a Socialist, yes, but as for being a rabid arsonist? Cora tried desperately to stifle a giggle and failed miserably in the process. "Oh Robert, don't be so ridiculous! Why, this house is as much Sybil's home, as it is ours. I doubt very much that she'd let him burn it to the ground, even if he wanted to. And rest assured he doesn't".
"And you still want to have them to stay here? Both of them?"
"I do. Sybil is our daughter. Tom Branson is her husband. And the father of the child she is carrying. Our first grandchild, Robert. In case you had forgotten".
"No, I hadn't forgotten that. How could I?" Robert paused. "Do you know what I want, Cora?"
Cora shook her head.
"No, what do you want?" she asked quietly.
"What no-one, not even you can give me. I want everything back the way it was. Before the war changed everything".
"Do you think I don't want that as well? Those were wonderful years, seeing the children growing up. But, dwelling constantly on the past will do neither of us any good, none whatsoever".
"So are you saying that we should forget that we should just simply ... what was the phrase Matthew used last night at dinner? Move on?"
"No, of course not, Robert, that's not what I'm saying at all. And that's not what darling Matthew meant either. You yourself said it. Those days are gone, forever. Nothing ever stays the same. I'm not talking about forgetting, simply about letting go. There is a time for grieving for what is gone. And after that has passed, then all we can do is to look back with fondness and remember, and try our very best to accept what has happened".
"So, you are asking me to accept the fact that our youngest daughter has chosen to marry an Irishman of absolutely no social standing, someone with no prospects whatsoever, who opposes everything I hold dear, everything I stand for and value, and who, given half the chance, would happily burn this house down round about our ears?"
"All I'm asking, Robert, is that with good grace, you accept the decision of our youngest daughter to have married the man she loves, to receive that same young man here, and to make him welcome, as indeed you would do any other guest. As to whether you approve of his politics, or indeed he of yours, is immaterial. I doubt very much that Tom Branson is a secret arsonist, but even if he is, he is also now our son-in-law".
"Very well then, Cora, if that really is what you wish me to do, then so be it. As I said before, you may ask them both to stay".
Robert, who was starting to get a headache, clearly had nothing more to say upon the matter, for suddenly he snapped his fingers, and Isis who, throughout this entire exchange, had been lying quietly by the side of the earl's desk, sat up.
Watched by his wife, Robert, earl of Grantham, followed in turn by his beloved dog, stalked out of his study, leaving Cora to stand in silence with nothing else to do other than watch their retreating forms. Several minutes passed, and, save for the crackling of the logs in the hearth, silence descended once more upon the room, broken but a moment or two later by the spoken words of the countess of Grantham herself.
"Sybil, my darling, it would seem that you've got what you wanted. Now it's up to both you and dearest Tom. Don't let me down, either of you".
A moment or too later, and Cora herself left the room. So, a short while later, when Mr. Carson knocked discretely on the door of the Library in answer, or so he thought, to a summons by His Lordship, he received no reply. Cautiously, he opened the door, was surprised to find the room both silent and empty.
Later that very same day, Mr. Carson established that his fruitless summons to the Library had in fact been caused by a short circuit in the electrical wiring of the servants' bell board and when news of the matter leaked out, it had caused much ribaldry in the servants' hall. For his part, Mr. Carson, left distinctly un-amused by the whole affair, duly reached for the telephone on his desk, and summoned forthwith, a representative of the electrical company from nearby Ripon.