Mrs. Ballinger had taken from her husband’s guilt, and then his murder cutting off all hope of a reprieve. Not that there had been any. He would have died with the hangman’s noose around his throat. Her entire world had collapsed hideously. She had no one but her children on whom to lean. The failure of Margaret’s marriage and her refusal to accept her father’s guilt must keep all the wounds open and bleeding.
Margaret was standing in the middle of the overcrowded parlor, waiting for him. She was very plainly dressed. Like her mother, she was still in black, although hers was relieved by jet jewelry and a brooch set with seed pearls, a tiny glimmer of white against the darkness. As always, she stood with grace, her head high, but she was thinner than the last time he had seen her, and very pale, almost colorless.
She did not speak.
To ask how she was would be absurdly formal, setting a tone that would be hard to break. Her health had always been excellent and it was hardly the issue between them; any distress she felt now was emotional.
He felt awkward and knew that in his immaculately tailored clothes he must look out of place in this room with its drab walls, and too many family pictures on every surface. What could he say that was honest? Why had he come?
“I wanted to talk to you …,” he began. “To see if we could understand each other a little better, perhaps move toward some kind of reconciliation …” He stopped. Her face gave nothing away, and he felt both foolish and vulnerable.
Her fair eyebrows rose. “Are you saying what you think you ought to, Oliver?” she asked quietly, no lift in her voice. “Paving the way to justify yourself because you want to set me aside with a clear conscience? After all, you need to be able to tell your colleagues that you tried. It would reflect poorly on you if you didn’t. Everyone would understand that an eminent lawyer like you would not wish to be married to the daughter of a criminal, but you should at least not make that offensively clear.”
“Is that how you think of yourself: the daughter of a criminal?” he said with far more edge to his voice than he had meant to.
“We were talking about you,” she responded. “You are here; I did not come to you.”
That also hurt, although he should not have expected her to come to him. Right or wrong, it was always the man who pursued-except perhaps with Hester. If she had quarreled with someone she cared for, whether she had been right or wrong, she would have sought them out. He knew that from the past. Was he unfairly comparing Margaret with her? Hester had faults as well, but big, brave ones, never a pettiness of mind. He was the one who had not been daring enough for her. He should not be petty now.
He took a deep breath. “I came hoping that if we spoke, we might heal at least some of the breach between us,” he said as gently as he could. “I have no idea what the future will bring, and I was certainly not trying to make excuses for it. I don’t need to explain myself to anyone else-”
“Which is as well, because you can’t!” She cut across him. “Not to me, or to my family.”
He kept his temper with difficulty. “I was not thinking of you as someone else.” They were both still standing, as if physical ease were impossible. He thought of asking if he could sit down, or even simply doing it, but he decided not to. She might take it as an implication that he thought he belonged here, and that he saw it as a right, not a privilege.
“How were you thinking of me, then?” she asked.
“As my wife, and-at one time at least-also as my friend,” he said.
Without warning the tears filled her eyes.
For an instant he thought that there was hope. He started to take a step toward her.
“You threw that away,” she said quickly, raising her head a fraction, as if to ward him off.
“I did what I had to do!” he protested. “Everything the law allowed me, to defend him. He was guilty, Margaret!”
“How often do you repeat that to yourself, Oliver?” she said bitterly. “Have you convinced yourself yet?”
“He admitted it to me,” he said wearily. They had been over all of this before. He had lived out the whole wretched tragedy for her-Ballinger’s desperate fight for life, then finally his admission of guilt. He had given her few details, to spare her distress, and her knowledge of details that were ugly and cruel, things she need never know.
“And that’s enough for you?” She flung the words at him like an accusation. “What about the reasons, Oliver? Or didn’t you want to know them? Can’t you for once be honest and stop hiding behind the law? Or is it all you know, all you understand? ‘The book says this! The book says that!’ ”
“That’s not fair, Margaret,” he protested. “I can’t work outside the law-”
“You mean you can’t think outside it,” she corrected him, her eyes burning with contempt. “You are a liar, perhaps first to yourself; you can consider actual morality when you want to. You can for Hester. You’ll bend all your own precious rules when she asks you to.”
“Is that what this is?” he said with painful understanding. “Jealousy of Hester, because you think I would have done differently for her? Can’t you understand that she would never have asked me to?”
Margaret gave a harsh, bitter laugh. The sound of it lacerated the last of his emotions. “You’re a coward, Oliver! Is that why you care for her so much? Because she’ll fight the battles for you, and never expect anything of you but to follow? What about Monk? Would you fight for him?”
He did not know how to answer her. Could any of what she said be true?
“Did you ask my father why he did all those things you accused him of?” she went on, perhaps sensing her victory. “Or did you not want to know? It might disturb your comfortable world of right and wrong where everything is decided for you by generations of lawyers from the past. No need to think! No need to make any difficult decisions, or stand alone. Certainly no need to take any dangerous action yourself, question any of your own comfortable certainties, or risk anything.”
At last he was angry enough to reply. “I’ll risk my own safety, Margaret, but not anyone else’s.”
Her eyes widened in amazement. “That man, Mickey Parfitt, he was filth!” she said with scorching contempt. “Worse than vermin. You know what he did.”
“And the girl?” he said quietly.
“What girl?” She looked blank.
“The girl he killed as well?”
“The prostitute!”
“Yes, the
“She would have had him hanged!” she exclaimed.
“So that justified him killing her? That’s your courage, your brave morality? Personally deciding who lives and who dies, rather than leaving it to the law?”
“He had reasons, terrible choices to make.” Now the tears ran freely down her cheeks. “He was my father! I loved him.” She said it as if that explained it all. He began to realize at last that for her, it did.
“So I should forgive him, no matter what he did?” he asked.
“Yes! Is that so difficult?” It was a challenge, demanded in fury and despair.
“Then what a pity you did not love me also.” He said the words so softly, they were little more than a whisper.
She gasped. Her eyes went wide. “That’s not fair!”
“It’s perfectly fair,” he replied. “And since I cannot place your family before what is right, then perhaps I did not love you, either. That seems to be your conclusion, and by your way of measuring love, you are right. I am sorry. I truly believed otherwise.” He stood still for a moment, but she did not say anything. He turned to leave. He had reached the door when finally she spoke.
“Oliver …”
He stopped, then looked back at her. “Yes?”
She made a helpless little gesture with her hands. “I thought I had something to say, but I don’t.” It was an admission of failure, a closing of the door.
The pain overwhelmed him, not for something lost so much as for the fading of a dream that had once seemed completely real. He walked out of the room.
The parlor maid was waiting in the hall, as if she had known he would not be staying. She handed him his coat, and then his hat. Mrs. Ballinger was not in sight, and it seemed faintly ridiculous to go looking for her to tell her he was leaving. It would only embarrass them both. There was nothing to say. Better simply to go.
