“You have probably heard about the hunting incident. I was shot, bled profusely, was put into surgery for six hours, and barely survived,” he said. “But you are right. That in itself had no more life-changing effect on me than a hangover or a bad case of indigestion.”
A week after Langford was out of danger, Francis Elliot, the man who'd shot him, came to see him. Elliot had been a classmate at Eton, the one whose house in the next county Langford had frequently visited when he was home on holiday. Over the years, their once-close friendship had gradually cooled, and they saw relatively little of each other, Langford living fast and footloose, Elliot settling down to be the staid, responsible, unimaginative landowner in the mold of his forefathers.
That particular morning, Langford, highly peevish from both pain and ennui, had lambasted Elliot on his shoddy marksmanship and slandered his manhood in general. Elliot held his tongue until Langford ran out of pejoratives—no easy feat, as Langford, trained to be a man of letters, possessed a near-infinite supply of belittling words.
Then, for the first time in his life, Langford heard Elliot shout.
“It turned out that the man who shot me did so deliberately, though he hadn't meant to almost kill me. That was the result of nerves and bad aim—because I'd seduced his wife.”
Mrs. Rowland had lifted a cucumber sandwich. She went still. He'd shocked her without even getting to the worst part of it.
“I had no idea what he was talking about. I'd never met his wife as far as I was concerned, until I remembered, very vaguely, an encounter at a masked ball given by another friend of mine six months previously. There'd been a woman, a young matron with a forlorn air about her.
“What had been an evening's diversion for me, nothing more, had precipitated a domestic crisis for my friend. He loved his wife. They were going through a difficult phase, but he loved her. Loved her deeply, passionately, if also awkwardly and inarticulately.”
At first, Elliot's tale invoked in Langford nothing but contempt. He would never let a woman, any woman, matter half so much to him. Any man who did so had only himself to blame for such an idiotic attachment.
Then, after his initial outburst, Elliot did something startling: He apologized. Through gritted teeth, he apologized for everything—for his lack of character, his lapse of judgment, for taking his despair out on Langford when it was his own fault that his wife was unhappy in the first place.
Langford, still irked, accepted his apologies with no pretension of graciousness. But after Elliot's departure, he couldn't get the man out of his head, couldn't stop seeing the expression on Elliot's face as he apologized, an expression that held only self-reproach and a determination to do the right thing despite the avalanche of scorn he was sure to trigger.
With this unconditional apology, Elliot had proved himself, despite his earlier action, to be a man of fortitude, conscience, and decency—everything Langford scorned and despised as too plebeian for his exalted self.
“I didn't want to change or be changed,” said Langford. “The way I'd lived was a highly pleasurable, highly addictive way to live. I was loath to give it up. But the damage was done. I was shaken. In the subsequent days of my convalescence, I began to question everything I'd taken for granted about my choices in life. How many others had I hurt in my mindless quest for amusement? What worthy use, if any, had I made of my talents and my vast good fortune? And what would my poor mother have thought of it all?”
Mrs. Rowland listened with grave concentration, her eyes never leaving his. “What happened to your friend and his wife?”
It was a question that still plagued him in the dark of the night. From what he'd learned, they seemed to be fine, with no reports of shameful squabbles or unseemly fondness for the bottle. “I understand they have produced three children together. The eldest came along about a year after he shot me.”
“I'm glad to hear that,” she said.
“But that doesn't really tell us anything in and of itself, does it?” A man and his wife could very well procreate in mutual abhorrence. He wanted to picture for himself a family in harmony, but his mind would only paint images of silent, frightened children walking on eggshells around parents locked into a hideous bitterness. A bitterness for which Langford was responsible.
“Marriages are curious things,” said Mrs. Rowland. “Many are exceedingly fragile. But others are exceptionally resilient, able to recover from the most grievous injuries.”
He would like to believe her. But the marriages he'd known had been by and large indifferent. “You speak from personal experience, I hope.”
“I do,” she said firmly.
“Tell me more,” he said. “I demand something at least halfway sensational in return for the divulging of my own unspeakable past.”