Then, sobbing as though her heart would break, she fled from the room.
16
England, Home and Beauty
Roger was still sitting up in bed. Bowing his head, he covered his face with his hands. There were tears in his eyes. He felt shaken, sick and, for once, utterly at a loss. He had done a terrible thing committed an act which in his own mind amounted to a crime and, most shattering thought of all, there was no possible way in which he could give Mary back her virginity. Even the Saints would have proved incapable of performing that kind of miracle.
Had Gunston been in the room, his life would not have been worth a moment's purchase. With malice aforethought he had told a tissue of lies. His assertion that Mary had had several lovers and about having had her himself in a punt was a fabrication from beginning to end. But was it? Perhaps not quite. Possibly there had been an episode in a punt, in which Gunston had tried to seduce Mary and she had repulsed him. She had said frankly that she liked and admired him, so she might have let him kiss, cuddle and fondle her, but then told him that she was determined to keep her virginity for a husband.
It was a normal assumption that a girl of Mary's class and upbringing would be a virgin; but, if such an episode had taken place, that would have made Gunston certain of it. Knowing that both Mary and Roger had passionate natures, if Roger was told that she was easy game it was a foregone conclusion that he would attempt her and, as she was in love with him, there was a fair chance that she would give way. It must have been thus that, with diabolical cunning, Gunston had hoped to faring pain and grief both to the man he bated and the girl who had refused him. And he had succeeded,
The more Roger thought about it, the more convinced he became that Gunston had made love to Mary and that, after leading him on, she had refused to go the whole way. That gave rise to another thought. How much was Mary herself to blame for what had happened? Because a girl looked demure and, when in company, behaved with becoming modesty, it did not in the least follow that she was not subject to strong sexual urges and, given the chance, could not resist indulging them in secret. Undoubtedly Mary was like that, and did not realise that such conduct was unfair to the man or that, if she played with fire too often, one day she would get burned. Such women could not change their natures. The only satisfactory solution to such cases was marriage. But that Mary had largely brought her seduction on herself was no consolation to Roger.
Thinking of marriage stirred another chord in his mind. Mary's bitter resentment at his having taken advantage of her could be overcome. He could make reparation for his act by saying that he would marry her, and she would count her virginity well lost. But almost immediately he put the thought from him. Except when they were living together, he and Georgina had never been faithful to each other. In view of the fact that for nine-tenths of their adult lives he had been absent from England, to have denied themselves other loves would have been absurd; but those other loves had never loosened the bond between them. And her husband was an old man. He might die at any time, leaving her free to marry again. If so, Roger's dearest wish that he and Georgina should spend their middle years and old age as husband and wife might yet be realised. On no account must that prospect be jeopardized. Guilty as he felt himself to be, fond as he was of Mary and desperately sorry for her, that was too high a price to pay to restore her happiness.
His bedside candle was burning low. He got out of bed to light another. As he did so he saw that there was blood on his night shirt and blood in the bed. Although he might have expected such a possibility, the sight of the crimson stains came as a shock, and presented a very worrying problem. How, in hell's name, was he to explain them away?
An even more difficult question was the course he was going to take in the morning. Could he patch things up with Mary? He might have if he could have got her for an hour on his own, but that was impossible without her connivance and, even then, he greatly doubted if he could persuade her to forgive him. She had said that she wished never to set eyes on him again; and he felt certain she had meant that.
The probability was that she would pretend illness so as to remain up in her room the next day; then, when she came downstairs the following morning, expect him to be gone. If she found him still there, she would be desperately embarrassed when they came face to face, and that might lead to a very awkward scene. But upon what possible pretext could he leave the Legation at such short notice?
He had intended to stay on for another week or two, until his complete recovery would make it an abuse of hospitality to remain there longer. A few days before it seemed proper for him to leave he would have enquired about ships leaving for England, secured a passage in one and told his host that he had done so. He could not say next morning that he had already booked a passage, as he would at once be asked the name of the ship, in order that his luggage could be sent on board. He thought for a moment of saying that he had received an urgent message requiring him to rejoin Lord Wellington with the minimum of delay. But how and when could he have received such a message, without anyone in the Legation knowing anything about it? Besides, they all knew that he would not yet dare to ride a horse, as that would cause his thigh wound to reopen.
His thigh wound. That was the answer. By making use of it he could kill two birds with one stone. He would open the wound himself, and say that it was due to his having had a fall. That would not only account for the blood on the sheets, but also enable him to ask to be taken back to hospital to have the wound stitched up again.
When he looked at his turnip watch, he was surprised to see that it was only a quarter past one. So much seemed to have happened in the past three quarters of an hour that he would have expected it to be much later. To proceed with his plan at once would have meant rousing the house in the middle of the night, and putting a number of people to considerable inconvenience; so he decided to postpone it until the morning.
His long day of waiting in anticipation of a happy consummation of his affair with Mary, the awful catastrophe it had proved and his anxieties since had taken a lot out of him; so he slept much better than he had expected. He woke at his usual hour, soon after six, then spent some minutes miserably recalling the night's events and steeling himself to carry out his plan for getting away from the Legation that day.
From the marble washstand he collected his razor, then bared his thigh. The scar still showed red just below his hip, and he was most loath to inflict a fairly serious new wound on himself. Yet he knew that half measures would only defeat his object. A doctor would be sent for and would patch him up there in the Legation.
Gritting his teeth, he slashed with the razor hard across his thigh, blood gushed out and ran down his leg. Quickly he cleaned the razor by dipping it in the water jug, put it back in its usual place, grabbed a towel, got back into bed and pulled the silken bell-rope beside it.
A few minutes later the footman who valeted him came into the room. Holding the towel, now covered with blood, hard against the wound, Roger explained that on getting out of bed, he had tripped and his thigh had come into violent contact with the comer of a nearby table.
Having expressed his concern, the man ran off and soon afterwards Sir Charles and his wife arrived on the scene in their chamber robes. With exclamations of dismay, the good lady went for lint and a bandage and, on her return, succeeded in reducing the flow of blood, put a cold compress on the wound and bound it up.