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There was nothing to say. He felt furious, helpless, stupidly close to weeping himself, and drenched with the same irredeemable sense of loneliness. He tightened his grasp a little closer around her hands. For several moments they remained in silence.
At last she looked up and straightened her back, fishing for a handkerchief. Monk gave her his, and she accepted it without speaking.
“I have never been able to think of getting with child myself. I could not bear it. It frightens me so much I should rather simply die with a gunshot than go through the agony that Mama did. I know it is wrong, probably wicked. All women are supposed to yield to their husbands and bear children. It is our duty. But I am so terrifi
ed I cannot. This is a judgment on me. Now Marianne has been raped because of me.”
“No! That’s nonsense,” he said furiously. “Whatever is between you and your husband, that is no excuse for what he did to Marianne. If he could not maintain continence, there are women whose trade it is to cater to appetites and he could perfectly easily have paid one of them.” He wanted to shake her to force her to understand. “You must not blame yourself,” he insisted. “It is wrong and foolish, and will be of no service to you or to Marianne. Do you hear me?” His voice was rougher than he had intended, but it was what he meant and it could not be withdrawn.
She looked up at him slowly, her eyes still swimming in tears.
“To blame yourself would be self-indulgent and debilitating,” he said again. “You have to be strong. You have a fearful situation to deal with. Don’t look back—look forward, only forward. If you cannot bring yourself to consummate your marriage, then your husband must look elsewhere, not to Marianne. Never to Marianne.”
“I know,” she whispered. “But I am still guilty. He has a right to expect it of me—and I have not given it him. I am deceitful, I cannot escape that.”
“Yes—that is true.” He would not evade it either. It would not serve either of them. “But your deceit does not excuse his offense. You must think what you are going to do next, not what you should have done before.”
“What can I do?” Her eyes searched his desperately.
“This is a decision no one else can make for you,” he answered. “But you must protect Marianne from it ever happening again. If she were to bear a child it would ruin her.” He did not need to explain what he meant. They both knew no respectable man would marry a woman with an illegitimate child. Indeed, no man at all would regard her as anything but a whore, no matter how untrue that was.
“I will,” she promised, and for the first time there was steel in her voice again. “There is no other answer for it. I will have to swallow my fear.” Again for a moment her eyes overflowed and there was a choking in her voice. Then with a superlative effort she mastered herself. “Thank you, Mr. Monk. You have discharged your duty honorably. I thank you for it. You may present your account, and I shall see that it is met. If you will be so kind as to show yourself out. I do not wish to appear before the servants looking in a state of distress.”
“Of course.” He stood up. “I am truly sorry. I wish there had been any other answer I could have given you.” He did not wait for a reply which could only be meaningless. “Good-bye, Mrs. Penrose.”
He went out into the hazy sun of Hastings Street feeling physically numb, and so crowded with emotion he was barely aware of the passersby, the clatter, the heat, or the people who stared at him as he strode on.
3
CALLANDRA DAVIOT had been deeply moved by the story that Monk had brought her regarding Julia Penrose and her sister, but she was helpless to do anything about it, and she was not a woman to spend time and emotion uselessly. There was too much else to do, and at the forefront of her mind was her work in the hospital of which she had spoken when Monk had called only a few short weeks before.
She was a member of the Board of Governors, which generally meant a fairly passive role of giving advice which doctors and treasurers would listen to more or less civilly, and then ignore, and of lecturing nurses on general morality and sobriety, a task she loathed and considered pointless.
There were so many better things to do, beginning with the reforms proposed by Florence Nightingale, which Hester had so fiercely advocated. Light and air in hospital wards were considered quite unnecessary here at home in England, if not downright harmful. The medical establishment was desperately conservative, jealous of its knowledge and privilege, loathing change. There was no place for women except as drudges, or on rare occasions administrators, such as hospital matron, or charitable workers such as herself and other ladies of society who played at the edges, watching other people’s morality and using their connections to obtain donations of money.
She set out from home instructing her coachman to take her to the Gray’s Inn Road with a sense of urgency which had only partly to do with her plans for reform. She would not have told Monk the truth of it—she did not even admit to herself how profoundly she looked forward to seeing Dr. Kristian Beck again, but whenever she thought of the hospital it was his face that came to her mind, his voice in her ears.
She brought her attention back sharply to the mundane matters in hand. Today she would see the matron, Mrs. Flaherty, a small tense woman who took offense extremely easily and forgave and forgot nothing. She managed her wards efficiently, terrorized the nurses into a remarkable degree of diligence and sobriety, and had a patience with the sick which seemed almost limitless. But she was rigid in her beliefs, her devotion to the surgeons and physicians who ruled the hospital, and her absolute refusal to listen to newfangled ideas and all those who advocated them. Even the name of Florence Nightingale held no magic for her.
Callandra alighted and instructed the coachman when to return for her, then climbed the steps and went in through the wide front doors to the stone-flagged foyer. A middle-aged woman trudged across with a pail of dirty water in one hand and a mop in the other. Her face was pale and her wispy hair screwed into a knot at the back of her head. She banged the pail with her knee and slopped the water over onto the floor without stopping. She ignored Callandra as if she were invisible.
A student surgeon appeared, scarlet arterial blood spatters on his collarless shirt and old trousers, mute evidence of his attendance in the operating theater. He nodded at Callandra and passed by.
There was a smell of coal dust, the heat of bodies in fevers and sickness, stale dressings, and of drains and undisposed sewage. She should go and see the matron about nurses’ moral discipline. It was her turn to lecture them again. Then she should see the treasurer about funds and the disposition of certain monies to hand, the review of charity cases. She would do these things first, then she would be free to go and see Kristian Beck.
She found the matron in one of the wards filled with surgical patients, both those awaiting operations and those recovering. Several had developed fevers during the night or become worse, their infections already well advanced. One man was comatose and close to death. Although the recent discovery of anesthesia had made all sorts of procedures possible, many who survived operations died afterwards of infection. Those who survived were a minority. There was no way known to prevent septicemia or gangrene, and little that would treat even the symptoms, let alone provide a cure.
Mrs. Flaherty came out of the small room where the medicines and clean bandages were kept; her thin face was pale, her white hair screwed back so tightly it pulled the skin around her eyes. There were two spots of angry color on her cheeks.
“Good morning, your ladyship,” she said brusquely. “There is nothing you can do here today, and I do not want to hear anything more about Miss Nightingale and fresh air. We’ve got poor souls dying of fevers, and outside air will kill the rest if we listen to you.” She consulted the watch hanging from a pin on her thin shoulder, then she looked back at Callandra. “I’d be obliged, ma’am, if next time you talk to the nurses about morals and behavior, you would particularly mention honesty. We’ve had more thefts from patients. Just small things, of course, they haven’t got much or they’d not be here. Although I don’t know what good you think it will do, I’m sure.”
She came out into the ward, a long room with a high ceiling, lined on both sides with narrow beds, each blanketed in gray and with someone either sitting or lying in it. Some were pale-faced, others feverish, some restless, tossing from side to side, some lying motionless, breathing shallowly, gasping for air. The room was hot and smelled stale and close.
A young woman in a soiled overall walked down the length of the floor between the beds carrying an uncovered pail of slops. The odor of it, strong and sour, assailed Callandra’s nostrils as she passed.
“I’m sorry,” Callandra
replied, snatching her attention back to the matron’s request. “Lecturing them isn’t the answer. We need to get a different kind of woman into the trade, and then treat them accordingly.”
