“It is a mortal sin to take your own life,” her father pleaded. “You couldn’t face your God with such a crime on your hands.”
“When it comes to a choice between facing God and you people—I’d take my chances with God any day. If I have committed the unpardonable sin, I don’t see how marrying Hal Marksley would make it any better.”
She sat bolt upright and her eyes blazed.
“What is right? What is sin? You would hound a woman to death because she has a child without being tied body and soul to a man she despises. Hal’s mother and father hate each other ... and look at their children. There isn’t one of them that’s fit to live. Look at us. We are another family of misfits. And why? Mamma hates papa, lets him follow her around like a hungry dog begging for a bone.”
“You insolent girl!” Lavinia gasped.
“You don’t know anything about love—and what it means to come into the world all warped and out of tune. Do you imagine that I am going to tie myself to a cad—let him be responsible for other children of mine? There isn’t any fidelity in a man who is born of hate. If you knew what a contemptible pup he is, you’d see why the river looks better to me.”
“You might have thought of that, before—” David offered gently.
“I didn’t know him till it was too late.” She relaxed ever so little. “We had talked it all over, and he had the most advanced ideas. But when it came to facing the music.... Bah! I despise a man who whimpers. He was afraid of his mother. I could have stood even that. But when he wanted to take me to Sutton, to a doctor he said was in the habit of helping those factory girls out of their scrapes ... I slapped him; I beat him with my two fists; I spit in his face. I told him that if he was not a man, I would take the consequences alone.”
She paused to gather breath, her cheeks burning, her gaze detached. She was living over again that monstrous cataclysm. “He tried to defend himself by saying I had no right to disgrace his family. Imagine! Disgrace Henry Marksley and Adelaide Nims! I told him I wasn’t going through life with murder on my soul.”
“I’m glad you told him that, daughter,” David said, his eyes warming.