DA's series 2: The Ghost of 1914 - OR - Does Matthew have a mean streak? (part 7 - epi 2.05 cont'd)
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And if they should just want to be with you? On any terms? - Another reverse proposal
The next day, Mary returns to the hospital to make amends. To tell Matthew that she doesn't care if he can't walk. To say the right things. But alas, it's too late. His whole demeanor has changed. His voice is bitter and he barely makes eye contact. He won't have that conversation with her which he was forced to go through with Lavinia. Matthew's hypothetical offer to Mary has expired, like it did four years earlier. He tells her that marriage is out of the question before she's getting her hopes up. Even if she hadn't picked Carlisle (as she did), he wouldn't have taken her anyway. It's interesting that Matthew should be asking Mary for confirmation that she knows what extent of spinal damage they are talking about («Do you know why I sent her away?»). Lavinia's ignorance may have made him unsure about what to make of Mary's behaviour back then, so he is giving her a chance to redeem herself, as it were. By plainly stating «I think so», Mary is indeed only adding fuel to Matthew's assumption that she knew all along and that there was no room for misinterpretation in their earlier conversation. Having asserted that, Matthew makes it clear that he wouldn't want her now anyway, even if she should change her mind: «Then you'll know I couldn't marry her. Not now. I couldn't marry any woman.» Matthew is looking straight at Mary when he says the last bit about «any woman». That's her, and he wants her to realise it. He has retracted his marriage offer before bringing it properly on the table. His «couldn't» sounds familiar. Howevermuch he might want to.
What happens next is such an ironic and heart-breaking repeat of their 1914 farewell that it makes Matthew throw up. Back in August 1914, Mary attempted a reverse proposal, when it no longer mattered, when Matthew had already turned her down: «Would you have stayed, if I'd accepted you?» Would you have loved me enough to spend your life with me? And Matthew accepted - «Of course!» - before leaving her. «So I have ruined everything!» Four years later, in August 1918, they are on the edge of this again. Mary accepts also her second rejection gracefully, and she tells Matthew implicitly that she wants and needs him as a part of her life, like in 1914, even if he wouldn't want her as his wife. Again, her words are conditional («if»), signalling that she isn't any closer to a resolution of her feelings than she was in 1914: «And if they should just want to be with you? On any terms?» («Would you have stayed, if I'd accepted you?») - «No one sane would want to be with me as I am now. Including me. Oh, God. I think I'm going to be sick.» («Of course!»). The reason Matthew throws up is that he has to say «I understand why you wouldn't want to be with me» when he wants to say «Of course». But he never did get that offer which Mary so eloquently formulated. He never got the opportunity to say or feel «Of course». The uncertainty which marked Mary's hesitation in 1914 («You can’t be sure I was going to refuse you, even if it had been a boy, because I’m not») is gone. This time she was sure, despite her words of reassurance that nothing had settled yet. She was sure that she didn't want him, because she left his bedside, told him to make his plans with Lavinia, and got on the next train to London to get engaged to walking multi-millionaire Carlisle.
And while Matthew would love to allow himself to indulge in his old black-and-white world view, where such an offer of «on any terms» could have been expected of Mary, if she really loved him, and gladly accepted by him («Of course»), he can't do that now - because that would mean he had to admit that Mary has just turned him down in this black-and-white matter. Because she did get engaged to someone else instead of making him that very offer. To conceal his defeat from Mary, Matthew casts himself as a person with her alleged complex, rational world view - a man who wouldn't even accept such an offer «on any terms» if he got one, because he too cares more about a woman's right to indulge herself in life than any future spouse's right to expect her to make sacrifices in the name of love. So Matthew throws up because he has to lie to himself, because he has to convince himself that he couldn't demand any such sacrifice of the woman he loves. And because he can't convince himself that he has no right to be disappointed. He feels the disappointment though he thinks he shouldn't. He tries to play aloof when he doesn't feel aloof. And that attempt at self-deceit makes him physically sick.
But the contrast between what Matthew does say at this moment, the rationalizing, defeatist and self-loathing «No one sane would want to be with me. Including me», and the «Of course» he would have been willing to say if Mary had - in fact - accepted him in this condition only one day earlier, really underscores what difference Mary's loving support would have made to Matthew's entire self image if she had said the right words at the right time. Nobody else could have validated him as a person in the way Mary could have, by choosing to be with him just when he hit rock bottom and tell him that. Lavinia certainly couldn't have done it, she told him right away that it was a matter of duty for her. Now however, by trying to accept that Mary's decision to throw him over was justified, by trying to rationalize it, Matthew is simultaneously undermining his own worth as a person. He doesn't allow himself to expect anything better, and he becomes that cripple nobody would want to be with. He starts to believe it himself, in this very scene («Including me»). And that sets off a downward spiral into depression, as we will see in the following episodes.
Amid all this self-deprecation, Matthew's comment «No one sane would want to be with me» is also his first attempt at understanding why Mary has just turned him down and chosen someone else instead. He will keep on guessing until the middle of the Christmas Special. But he is starting to ask questions already now. If she was sincere the other day, if she really believed that there was no reason why he «should not have a perfectly full and normal life», apart from the fact that it wasn't a very mobile one, then why did she break with him? What was it about his condition that was so horrible that she had to get on the next train to London to commit herself to someone else? Didn't she love him enough? When it was possible for a woman like Lavinia to volunteer to stay with him. When it was obviously conceivable for a woman to forsake physical love and the prospect of children. He has to! Should he kill himself because he can't have a mobile life? He has to live with it. Why couldn't Mary do that? With him. It wouldn't be easy for either of them but at least they could bear it together... Didn't he and Mary have an infinitely stronger bond than any other two people? Wouldn't she have spent her life with a soulmate if she had married him? Didn't she get enough out of being with him to compensate for the fact that they couldn't make love and couldn't have children? Was that physical side so important to her? To continue the line? To keep the estate in the family? Did she fear that he would steal her inheritance by tying her down to a life of a childless nun? Was it enough for her that Carlisle could give her all that? A fortune of her own? The possibility to keep it in the family, regardless of the sex of her children? Was that so important to her? What was it that made her turn him down?
There's more to Matthew's words than meets the eye. Because - although «no one sane» would want to be with him - that doesn't mean mad people wouldn't. Like the Skeltons. Because the Skeltons are not a hunting family, as Matthew has learned during his first dinner at Downton in September 1912. That famous dinner argument (episode 1.02) escalates with the Andromeda myth, but it starts with mad people who don't hunt - fortunes, obviously... Mary accuses Matthew of being a fortune hunter («Do you hunt?»), something he vehemently denies («No, I don't hunt»), inducing Violet to quip that there might not be much to hunt for in Manchester anyway. Matthew turns the tables and asks: «Are you a hunting family?», a veiled accusation that the Granthams might be fortune hunters themselves, attempting to push one of their daughters at him or anyone else with money. Mary counters with a sweeping statement that a preoccupation with status is nothing to be ashamed of for a member of the aristocracy («Families like ours are always hunting families»), only for Robert to distance himself from such a generalising notion: «Not always. Billy Skelton won't have them on his land.» Billy Skelton doesn't hunt, and he won't condone hunting on his property. «But all the Skeltons are mad», is Mary's answer.
Now something interesting happens: Although Mary has just claimed that only mad aristocrats aren't fortune-hunters and that families like hers are always interested in status, Matthew still doesn't know where she fits in: «Do you hunt?» And Mary's answer is even more interesting: «Occasionally. I suppose you're more interested in books than country sport.» - «I probably am. You'll tell me that's rather unhealthy.» - «Not unhealthy. Just unusual...among our kind of people.» Not only does Mary turn a question about her preferences into a discussion about Matthew's intellectual qualities, signalling an interest in him, but she also sees these qualities as redeeming features! Note Matthew's fear of appearing unhealthy because he prefers intellectual to physical activity, and Mary's reassurance that - while that may be unusual - it it's absolutely compatible with being a member of the aristocracy.
By alluding to mad people who would want to be with him in 2.04, Matthew revives the entire hunting argument from 1.02. The Skeltons are mad, so they don't hunt. No one sane would refuse to hunt. No one sane would want to be with him as he is now. Only mad people, who refuse to hunt fortunes, would want to be with him as he is now. Mary has just gotten engaged to Carlisle - who has a fortune she'll be able to keep in the family. Maybe this is her reason for insisting on a mobile life. If it is, there's nothing to be done about it. He cannot sire sons to continue the line. He cannot secure her inheritance for future generations. He is how he is. His interest in books has not made him an interesting enough hunting target, obviously. It's not enough if he can't walk. And he gets sick and throws up. Mary holds his sick bowl and pats his back: «It's perfectly alright».
After throwing up, Matthew is visibly more relaxed and even manages to laugh off the episode. In fact, he can admit to both himself and Mary that he does feel rejected: «I was just thinking it seems such a short time ago since I turned you down, and now look at me. Impotent, cripple, stinking of sick. What a reversal. You have to admit, it's quite funny.» He ties the current situation neatly to 1914 where he turned her down because he didn't want to marry a fortune hunter, because he didn't allow fortune-hunting on his property, like Billy Skelton. Who is mad. And now he's punished for his snobbery by becoming an impotent cripple, stinking of sick, and she is vindicated as a fortune hunter, as the winner, who has just gotten engaged to a millionaire. Still, Matthew says «now look at me» - as if to lead the conversation from hunting over to him like last time. To make her reconsider her priorities. To remind her of what she thought of him once. That his «unhealthy» focus on intellectual activities (which is his only option now) and his inability to play country sports were a no-issue for her in 1913. Possibly also to remind himself. Is there nothing about himself worth hunting for?
Matthew calls the present situation a reversal of 1914. «You have to admit, it's quite funny.» He feels rejected and he wants Mary to see him as the one who is actually rejected. He may even accuse her of doing it on purpose - because he turned her down once and now she can get back at him with a light heart. However, Mary has heard that «quite funny» statement before. In fact, those were Edith's words at the Flower Show in episode 1.05, witnessing how Matthew brushed her off (as she came to explain away the Strallan incident the night before): «I suppose you didn't want him when he wanted you, and now it's the other way around ... You have to admit it's quite funny.» Mary is hearing that comment a second time, again one day after giving Matthew the impression that she wasn't interested. Because what's happening now is exactly what Edith witnessed at the Flower Show. Once again, Mary has to endure Matthew's wrath after making a mistake the day before. He supposed that Mary didn't want him when she told him about his paralysis, and now it's the other way around. It is still Matthew who has the upper hand, this time refusing to consider the question of marrying her. «Impotent, cripple, stinking of sick» - Matthew is still making the calls. What a reversal indeed. Ingeniously, Mary addresses both the overt meaning and the entire subtext of his remark in one and the same statement: «All I'll admit is that you're here and you've survived the war. That's enough for now.» She is unwilling to admit that she has rejected Matthew, unwilling to consider him a laughing stock, but also unwilling to see herself as being rejected and him as the one making the calls. By being here and being alive, she suggests, Matthew has practically given her everything she asks for anyway.
The fact that Isobel enters at that precise moment, overhearing Mary's last statement, adds an extra dimension to the whole situation - by linking it to a comment made by Robert when he first heard about Matthew's and Lavinia's engagement: «You can't blame them for wanting to live in the present». Back then, Robert meant this as a comforting reply to Isobel's concern that the whole arrangement felt «rather hurried», and seemed to suggest that it was no indication of long-term commitment. Now, with the war over for Matthew's part, Mary's non-committed statement isn't quite so comforting, neither for him nor for Isobel (and probably not for herself either). By saying what she says, Mary frames her current arrangement with Matthew explicitly as an attempt to live in the present - for better or for worse. She is the one holding his sick bowl, patting his back, and comforting him («It's perfectly alright»). And while she is contented with the fact that he is alive, he is not given any indication of her long-term commitment. And yet, Mary expects her present commitment to be enough for him too, all the while her impending marriage to Carlisle is looming in the background. She certainly won't spend her life with him. Eventually, Mary's «And if they should just want to be with you? On any terms?» is just what it is. A mere fancy which cannot be realised. She wants to be with Matthew «on any terms», but she won't allow him to set those terms. She has already restricted his options by getting engaged to Carlisle. In order to count as a realistic offer coming from her, Mary's «proposal» should have come twenty-four hours earlier. Judging from Matthew's reaction, this is how he must feel.
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