A first date

[adifferentlife]

Dating is something that Sybil finds a bit strange. It isn't that she's doing anything she wouldn't have were she home at Downtown - the theatre with a suitor wouldn't be something that raised a brow, though dinner somewhere public would be considered odd to say the least. What is the strangest is doing it herself, organising this all with someone who doesn't know her family. Organising it with someone so much like her and yet so different.

The play had been one they both should have known. After all it was Shakespeare, and Hamlet - whilst not romantic - was something that she has enjoyed in the past. Tonight's performance left her baffled, with more questions than anything. But other than a shared baffling, she keeps her thoughts to herself until they're seated at the restaurant. Only then does she look across the table with her eyes wide, shaking her head. "Were they all supposed to be derelicts?"

Comments

[adifferentlife]

"I believe that we wouldn't be talking of womens' underthings if we weren't in this place, either." Her words are light, almost teasing, only the slight hint of pink in her cheeks betraying her nervousness at what is still (for her) a salacious topic for mixed company. "It is true, and for the mot part I find things quite useful. Air conditioning I admit is a delight in the heat of summer."

[jaimemieux]

“It isn’t a usual topic of conversation for me, either,” Combeferre said with another small laugh, glad she wasn’t too horrified. Though used to treating women with reserved politeness - certainly none of the boldness that Courfeyrac or Bahorel might - he was keenly aware that Sybil was of a different caliber than the usual company he kept. “I am really quite enamored with electric lights myself. My eyes do, too, I suspect.” He absently fiddled with his spectacles.

[adifferentlife]

Sybil laughs, reaching out to touch his hand this time. Bold, but this is a different world, as they've been discussing, and she likes him. "I like them too. Though I probably spend too many nights up reading far too late."

[jaimemieux]

Combeferre grinned. "Oh, I had already cultivated that bad habit back home. I have wasted too many candles on late-night reading, I fear. Drove my mother mad as a boy."

[adifferentlife]

"I used to get a servant to sneak me more oil for the lamps. I likely shouldn't have, she could have gotten in trouble because of it, but I never cared at the time." Sybil admits the last bashfully, knowing that it was bad of her. "But when we had the electric lights put into the house it seemed like such a modern thing, like we were coming into the future."

[jaimemieux]

The mention of servants reminded Combeferre of the gulf that stood between them, or would have back in their own worlds. As a child, his family had been decidedly comfortable, and there had been boys who helped his father with the shop, and girls who lent his mother a hand around the house, but none of them would have been called servants, exactly. And once Combeferre had gotten to Paris, he had spent a significant portion of his time fighting those with enough wealth to hire people who lit lamps, and cooked food, and swept floors, and bowed and scraped. He did not hold Sybil’s title against her in the least, which actually surprised him a little, but the reminder unsettled him.

He was too polite - and enjoying Sybil’s company too much - to remark upon the matter. “It must have been strange to turn on the lights for the first time,” he said with a grin instead. “What was your home like, growing up?"

[adifferentlife]

It's not a life she has in common with anyone here, it would seem. Even Thomas came from the other side of things though he was from Downton. But it's not anything in her life she can, or would change. It was what she had grown up with, though she agreed in many ways that too many found themselves with so little when others had so much. Working as a nurse and having a real purpose had been the thing that had truly opened her eye to that.

"We'd seen them in London, of course. But to have them in the house was so odd. I think Grandmama very nearly had a heart attack when she was told we were installing them." It makes Sybil smile to remember even now. "She was convinced they would burn the house down."

"It wasn't what you might think. I mean, it isn't what most people think. Not all balls and parties and hunting. We worked, we had charities and causes though they all thought mine were dour and boring." She's defending herself and she's not sure why. Sybil shakes her head, wincing at herself. "I'm sorry. I know it wasn't a life most lived but it was what I knew. I loved my home, my family. We could have done more. So much more. I don't know why I'm defending myself, I'm sorry."

[jaimemieux]

“Sybil.” Combeferre stopped her apology with a soft word and a gentle shake of his head. He sighed. “I will not deny that it troubles me, knowing some families have such wealth while others starve. It troubles me equally that some men can receive expensive educations at La Sorbornne, and fill their pokey flats with strange medical textbooks, while other survive on three francs a day and must teach themselves to read by candlelight.” He winced a little; Feuilly would detest being held up as the example of the Parisian working poor in such a way. “But you do not need to defend your family, or your childhood, or the accident of your birth. I asked about your home because I wanted to know.” He smiled, and turned his hand over to take her, squeezing it gently.

[adifferentlife]

These things bother her too, and that is what she really wanted him to know, she realises. It's a hard thing to say, and harder to still to realise the many flaws in her way of life that should have been so obvious to her earlier. Sybil turns her hand in his, squeezing it back. "Thank you. I think it's harder some days, to not feel as if I should defend it. And I know many who had as much as we had or more and who weren't happy. But I have a loving family, which is more valuable than any of that."

[jaimemieux]

“And that is the luckiest thing of all, isn’t it?” Combeferre let his hand linger in hers for a moment before sitting back. “There are-“ he began, then hesitated. Would he insult her if he spoke his mind on the nature of wealth? Combeferre had not shied from the subject of politics with her, but neither had he been very explicit. “There are plenty of people as privileged as you who do not realized the advantages they have been given. I could say the same for most of the people I have known in my life as well. Poverty and suffering are terribly easy to ignore when one is ensconced in comfort and safety. But I have always believed that what mattered is what you do with those circumstances - how you use all that wealth and love to better others’ lives, and perhaps even ensure that such privilege is not always limited to a few."

[adifferentlife]

Sybil in fact appreciates his candor. It's something she's become more used to in this place, especially due to Kaine's friendship. But she's learned how honesty can be so much simpler than the vagaries and dances of conversation she grew up with.

"Perhaps, though here it is all rather moot, isn't it?" She shrugs a shoulder, glancing back at the menu in front of them. It's not an inexpensive restaurant, and the dishes all look appealing. And yet their conversation makes her feel at least like she should try and explain some more. "Life is too short to not enjoy what we have, but we have a duty, all of us, to improve the world that we live in. Even here. That doesn't mean not having a nice dinner and a bottle of wine, but it does mean working in other ways."

Which, she realises, is something she's been lacking here, devoting so much of her time to study and the hospital.

[jaimemieux]

Combeferre nodded eagerly. “Yes, that is it precisely. I fear you have articulated my thoughts better than I could, though perhaps I should not be surprised by your powers of intuition.” He grinned a bit. “It is strange, isn’t it? So many barriers that one might have thought to bring down in our own times are gone. Others still remain, obviously - no world is perfect - but it is difficult to know where to begin."

[adifferentlife]

"It is. I suppose now I am more wrapped up in my own life, with more to do than I had at Downton. Study and work take up a more time than I imagined, but I wouldn't change it." Sybil enjoys both, she enjoys the sense of helping people. "I suppose by even working at being a nurse I am helping others."

[jaimemieux]

“Most certainly it is,” Combeferre agreed quickly. “The noblest of professions.” The waiter returned before he could say more, and they paused in their conversation to give their orders.

The intermission also gave Combeferre a moment to consider his next words. “I was quite political in Paris,” he said when the server had left again. “As you might have guessed.” His smile has a sheepish tinge to it; talking overtly of his extralegal activities was still something he found strange. And with a young lady he was taking to dinner? That was all the more strange. But Sybil was different, utterly unlike any woman he had met. Perhaps she would understand. “There was so much to change, and I was willing to go to great lengths to do so. I still would, were I there. So it feels strange not to have something like that in my life. Does that make any sense at all?"

[adifferentlife]

The waiter gone, she turns her full attention back to Henri. "I imagined that you were. I admit, I went to a few political rallies, but it wasn't an activity my family approved of."

She smiles to encourage him, nodding in agreement. "It does. When there's something that you're passionate about it's hard to find yourself without that to fill your life. I suppose it's what we must try to find here. New things and a new balance. There must be political groups here?"

[jaimemieux]

“Of course. I mean to say - I am sure there are.” He ducked his head, the confession feeling foolish after what he had just admitted. Once he had fought for democracy, better access to medical care, free education. He could have been arrested just for talking about some things, for publishing, for meeting. Writing letters to the mayor about cleaning streets or better transportation seemed so small. Important in its own way, but small.

He shook his head a little. “I apologize. This must sound like a very strange thing to complain about. We all feel out of place in our own way, oui?"

[adifferentlife]

"I don't think it sounds strange at all," she insists. It doesn't, not really. So much is different here, to expect to just walk into a room and find the same things that one left behind... It's not possible. "You are right, it's something we all must come to terms with in our own way. And it's not foolish to want something like what you left behind, but it is for me to suggest you might find the same thing here."

[jaimemieux]

“And very wise of you to say,” Combeferre said, inclining his head. “You are right, of course. I should look into it.” Perhaps politics would never have the same sort of power here that it had at home, but he could still better the lives of others. And he could just imagine the way Enjolras would chide him, if he knew how idle Combeferre had been.

And yet, nothing would ever hold the power that his work in Paris had, or soothe his guilt at having been snatched away just as he was needed most, or fill the gap left by his friends.

That wasn’t what he wanted to think about tonight, though. Not in such lovely company, not in such a comforting presence. Sybil certainly made him feel as though he might, perhaps, find a path of some sort for himself here. “You have mentioned your family a number of times,” he said, switching topics entirely. “I would very much like to hear more about them."

[adifferentlife]

"I suppose they're much like any other family," Sybil say, knowing that they had always seemed rather like it to her. She's content to sip at her wine and talk of them rather than politics for a short while. "My Father is Earl of Downton, like his father before him. He married my mother, of course, Clara, and American. To be honest the estate was failing and my mother was an American Heiress. It wasn't love at first, but it turned into it."

[jaimemieux]

“Your mother is an American?” he said, a bit surprised by this detail. But then, nothing about Sybil was quite what one expected. It was one of the things he liked about her. “And do you have any siblings, or was it only you?"

[adifferentlife]

"She is, to my grandmama's continual horror," Sybil says, laughing as she remembers the Dowager Countess fondly. "Two sisters, Mary the eldest and Edith the middle one. I think Mary liked to pretend that Mama was English as well. But no son, sadly, so no heir."

[jaimemieux]

"And a daughter, I imagine, could not inherit a title," Combeferre said with a faint roll of his eyes. The absurdity of the aristocratic system knew no bounds. "But a full family, all the same. Your grandmother sounds like quite the character." He grinned softly.

[adifferentlife]

"No, she could not. Another silly and outmoded rule," she agrees with him on that. There was no good reason that she could see that Mary could not inherit such a thing. And the complications were such that she didn't want to go into them yet. "She was, very much. I sometimes would try not to sit too close to her at dinner lest I not be able to hide my smile."

[jaimemieux]

"It was always the same with my aunt," Combeferre said with a knowing grin. "She liked nothing better than to complain, and said whatever was on her mind, no matter how dreadful. As children, my eldest sister and I had a terrible time not laughing at the dinner table."

[adifferentlife]

"I'm afraid she didn't much like change, and ours was a time rife with it." Sybil turns her attention to Henri, thinking that turnabout is entirely fair play, especially in this situation. "And you then, was it just you and your sister or were there other siblings?"