A tour of sorts [[Combeferre]]

[adifferentlife]

Sybil was serious about her offer to show Henri about the city should he wish, and the hospital and college in particular. There's a cafe at the college she's suggested they meet at, a place where the tea is finally acceptable after a year of her patronage. It's a beautiful day, there's a crispness in the air that can only herald the onset of autumn. She loves this weather, it's her favourite time of year, and something she's very glad still happens here in Darrow.

She has a table outside, a pot of tea sitting half-empty in front of her. The sun is warm enough that she's slung her cardigan over the back of her chair in a manner she considers rather haphazard even still. Her notes for pharmacology lay in front of her, mostly untouched. It's too nice a day to study and she's rather looking forward to the company she's been promised.

Comments

[jaimemieux]

Combeferre winced. "Tragedy on top of tragedy," he murmured. "And yet, I find myself surprised by how pessimistic so many here seem to be, despite their advantages. I know well that nothing is perfect, but..." he trailed off with a frown. "For example, I recently spoke to a man, another outsider here, but one whose home better aligns with this place, who claimed to be suspicious of the many services Darrow offers free of charge. And while I grant such privileges are miraculous and even baffling, but does no one in the modern world dream of a better future, or look back on all that has been accomplished already? I never thought I would see the day that medical care was provided to all without cost, but even two hundred years ago, I knew that it would happen." He shrugged sheepishly. "Am I making any sense?"

[adifferentlife]

"Yes," she responds, perhaps far too eagerly. Sybil cannot help that his words excite her, there are too few here that are from a time as far behind them as her own, and it is a perspective that cannot be easily explained away for all that she has indeed tried. "The myriad of privileges that we all have in this place stuns me, and yet it seems all people want some of the time is more of it. I know the girls I go to school with-"

She stops herself, shaking her head at what she had been about to say. Instead she chooses different words, more careful ones, leaning back in her seat. "I would happily have given up all that we had at Downton should we be able to live like this, all of us."

[jaimemieux]

But her eagerness only brought a warm smile to Combeferre's lips. He tipped his head to the side. "What about the girls you go to school with?" Though he was teasing, he was also genuinely curious.

[adifferentlife]

She looks quickly to the side before leaning forward over the table. It isn't something to be shouted, mostly because it's not the most charitable of thoughts. "They worry so much about which boy talked to them at the clubs, or how intoxicated they became the night before. Some barely scrape by in the classes and they detest all of the work we must do out of class. But to have this opportunity for an education, and to be able to help others when we are done? Isn't that a gift of sorts?"

[jaimemieux]

Well then, Combeferre thought, having to suppress a smile, men and women have even more in common than I imagined. "It is a gift," he agreed. "Though I fear those privileged with such opportunities, once they had come to expect them, rarely appreciate them to the degree they should. 'tis the price of progress, I fear."

[adifferentlife]

"I suppose that it is. It isn't like I ever offered to eschew my old life, even if I did take up work." Then, only when war prompted her. "Perhaps we do take it all for granted, but I'd rather not believe that."

Sybil won't believe that at any rate. There's too much hope in her to allow herself to think that people can't all strive to be better, or that some few could make a difference. "I remember how exciting it was to see the votes read after an election. Even if I did end up with a rather large bump on my head."

[jaimemieux]

"Why, mademoiselle, next you will be telling me that you regularly attended political rallies," Combeferre grinned. Ever since arriving in Darrow, he had not been able to shake a tight knot of anxiety in his chest, but now, here, it loosened. "That must have been quite the thing to see. I imagine ladies like yourself were not the average spectator?" He had no judgment in his voice; if anything, there was admiration.

[adifferentlife]

"We weren't. I was in rather a bit of trouble that I went at all." Sybil can't contain the sense of happiness she feels at his response, exhibiting itself in a rather large and unprepossessing smile. Even Branson had been frustrated by her decision to attend that day, and her father and sisters had not understood at all. To have someone not react in that way (and also not to seem uncaring as if there were no significance to her actions at all) was a pleasant surprise she found herself unprepared for. "I had only been to one before that, but I tried to get to suffrage meetings in London. Sadly, no one would let me out of their sight by then."

It's a frustration she had lived with, just, instead dragging her sister to all the charity functions she could manage. It was, after all, her season. "The energy amazed me. To think if we applied it the things we could all change. Perhaps we might have a world like this one."

[jaimemieux]

In all honesty, Combeferre might have reacted differently, had they been in Paris, or even England, and a young woman like the one sitting across from him had wanted to take part in a political even that might have turned dangerous. But here there was enough distance to soften such instinctual concerns, and he was left merely admiring her courage and determination. Combeferre had long insisted that women, given the smallest opportunity and education, would surely leap at the chance to have their voices heard, and provide perspective that men never could. The women who populated Darrow wore trousers, and too any number of jobs, and even held political office, and that was a wonder. But Sybil, who had lived somewhere between his own time and current one, and who had been handed scraps of rights and insisted on using them to the fullest extent while fighting for more, she was something to see.

It was breathtaking. She was… rather breathtaking.

"I like to think that is what happened," Combeferre said thoughtfully. "My understanding is that Darrow resembles our future, more or less. I think it's fair to say that the energy you saw that day did not go to waste. The People demanded what should rightfully be theirs - health, and well-being, and freedom, and self-determination - and they got it. As we always do, eventually."

[adifferentlife]

His words make her pause, her head at a slight tilt as she listens and considers. Could it have happened any other way? Could women have gotten the right to vote, or could those working in the awful factories of a few decades earlier have made any difference were it not for those that organised and spoke up. "You are likely very right. I imagine it's that so much has already changed in my lifetime, I cannot help but want more, to see it all different. Even if this world isn't the one I imagined, entirely."

[jaimemieux]

“Nothing is ever quite as one pictures it, oui? I never thought everyone would be speaking English, for one thing.” This he said with a conspiratorial twinkle in his eye. “I have a few friends who would be utterly furious.”

Combeferre sipped his coffee and realized that in his enthusiasm for the conversation, his drink had turned lukewarm. “But in all seriousness, I do know what you mean. Even one who spends too much time thinking about the distant future cannot predict what is to come. Why, the technology alone...” He shook his head. Sometimes he wondered if he would ever entirely understand it all, a difficult thing for a scientific mind to admit.

[adifferentlife]

"Nor that I would be sitting in a cafe having a conversation with a young French gentleman unchaperoned." Sybil says it playfully, far more flirtatious than she would have ever been a year before this place.

"Speaking of the technology, I believe we should see the hospital?" It was a good segue, for all that she feels she could spend hours here talking with Henri, a feeling that is unfamiliar but very welcome.

[jaimemieux]

Combeferre grinned crookedly and ducked his head. “Touche. And in that case, I hope you report well on the experience.” That was very nearly bold, and grinned again, more sheepishly this time.

“Oh- yes, of course. That would be delightful.” Somewhere along the way, he had managed to forget that a tour of the hospital had been the ostensible reason for their meeting. You are absolutely ridiculous, Henri Combeferre, he informed himself, and rose, and gestured with a smile for her to lead. “It isn’t far from here, yes?”

[adifferentlife]

"I think that I just may have to," she says, her smile nearly shy for the briefest of moments. Sybil put her books away in her satchel and slung it over one shoulder with ease. Was she teasing him, flirting with him? She wasn't actually quite sure, it's been so long since she's tried either. Even during her season she'd never been good at it, not like Mary was. She wasn't clumsy and overbearing like Edith either, but rather genuine and wishing to engage with those who captured her interest. She liked to laugh, but more importantly she liked to talk to people who listened to her seriously, and that was a rarer thing.

Silliness, she thinks, trying to push the thoughts away and focus instead on the tour in front of them. "It's a short walk, about 15 minutes if we cut across the lawns. You don't mind?"

[jaimemieux]

"No, not in the least. I like to walk." Thus far, he had stuck to walking whenever he could. Taxis and buses - the whole army of belching automobiles that filled the streets - were a bit much, even for someone generally willing to embrace this brave new world. Not that he minded; his feet had carried him most places in his life, and he did not expect them to give out now.

For just a moment, he shifted his weight uncertainly from foot to foot, wondering if he should offer his arm, if that was even done. In the end, he clasped his hands behind his back - call it nerves, or carelessness, or merely missing the moment - and fell into step beside her. "Have you spent much time exploring the park here?" he asked. "It seems quite pleasant, from what I have seen."

[adifferentlife]

"I do too. It's a relief, and sometimes I can almost forget about all of the things that are different. There's still grass, and trees." It may be a silly sort of sentiment, but it's what she feels and she's not ashamed of that in any way.

"There's a little pond in Petros park, the ducks are there. I like to feed them, even if the signs say that we shouldn't. They're ducks, just like there were ducks in a pond at Downton, and just like there they're greedy and loud. They waddle and quack and are rather like some of the men that my father knows, if I'm honest." Sybil laughs at her own description, even though her cheeks turn pink. "Have you had a chance to see much of it yourself?"

[jaimemieux]

Combeferre ducked his head, but his shoulders still shook with his laughter. "They sound decidedly like some professors I knew at university," he told her with a twinkle in his eye. "Lectures might have been more enlightening at times, had they been led by waterfowl. My friends always insisted that the law professors were the worst - being lawyers, I suppose - but they never had to spend time with one while standing around a rotting corpse." He closed his eyes briefly, wanting to laugh with despair at himself. Jokes about the operating theater were generally not best shared with young women, not even those who had their own interest in medicine, he was almost certain.

He smiled sheepishly and cleared his throat. "I have sought solace in the park as well, yes. 'tis strange - when I first went to Paris to study, I found the city rather overwhelming as well. I do not know what I would have done without the parks, then. And I find the same true here. As you say, grass is grass, and tress are trees, miles or centuries apart."

[adifferentlife]

Sybil laughs at that, thinking of the elderly doctor who had taught them anatomy the semester before. He'd stormed on about things before finally dragging them to see a cadaver. It hadn't surprised her, the man had a peaceful death - in his sleep. She'd wished some of the men she'd dealt with had such a luxury. "It is true, though if I burst out laughing in any of my lectures, I'll lay the blame at your feet I hope you realise."

"It's peaceful. So much of this city moves so quickly, people are in constant contact with each other." She both loves and hates the little telephone that she's gotten here. It is convenient but also an annoyance. Mostly she leaves it in her room as she would a regular phone. "Being able to step away from that is valuable."

[jaimemieux]

"I am happy to take responsibility," Combeferre said with a twinkle in his eye. Especially if you always look so lovely when you laugh. He swallowed the words at the last moment. Perhaps he would say so later, if he was feeling bold enough.

He nodded in understanding. "I like the countryside, too, for much the same reason. Stay far enough from the roads, and you really can pretend you're anywhere. Or anywhen." He made a face at his poor joke.

[adifferentlife]

"I will keep that in mind." Her skirts swish, her arms brushing against the fullness of them as they walk. Her step is light and even with the squat, modern building looming in front of them she feels as if they could be on a walk anywhere. Or anywhen as he put forward.

Sybil shakes her head at the face that he pulls. "It's alright. Have you been out to the country here?" The hospital sits on the edge of town, and while there are a few buildings still it's almost able to see out toward the fields and burgeoning woods. "I haven't, as of yet. It may seem silly but I don't want to explore it alone."

[jaimemieux]

"I have. The woods are really quite wonderful. Scientifically uninteresting, I suppose, but beautiful, and a welcome escape from all this." Combeferre waved vaguely at the buildings surrounding them. Chancing a look at Sybil, he smiled shyly. "I would be happy to show you, if you ever found you wanted an escort."

[adifferentlife]

"Does it need to be scientifically interesting? Isn't there a place for simply appreciating the beauty of things?" She chides, but not unkindly in any way. She knows that she too has gotten too wrapped up in the details of things, too many times.

Her step pauses, her head tilting as she considers him for a moment. "I would enjoy that very much."

[jaimemieux]

"No, of course not." Combeferre grinned ruefully, accepting the criticism in the spirit that it was meant. "I fear I spend too much time reading scientific journals. Or did. Sometimes they invade my thoughts more than they likely should."

He brightened visibly at her reply, more delighted by her acquiescence than he had any right to be. Solitary walks were well and good, but the prospect of having someone to share them with - of having a specific someone to share them with, if he was honest with himself - was better still. Combeferre was about to say something to that effect when something up ahead caught his eye. He held out a hand and murmured, "Wait."

Just in front of them, a large butterfly had landed on a rhododendron bush.

[adifferentlife]

Any comments she might have made about nursing and medicine doing the same are silenced when she sees what holds his attention. Likely she would have walked by without noticing herself, her time in Darrow having changed her in more ways than she would necessarily care to admit. With their final goal so close, the time to notice such a thing? Now that she has, she's happy he stopped them, leaning close to whisper, "have you seen one like this before?"

[jaimemieux]

"Not from this close," Combeferre answered in a murmur. The whispers were needless; even the care with which he crept closer was probably unnecessary, since insects had little interest in the world of humanity. But investigations like these warranted a certain respect. "Papilio glaucus, if I am not mistaken. Sir Walter Raleigh's expedition called it Mamankanois when they discovered it. I've seen drawings."