CHAPTER XX
WhenRoBards had cried out all the blasphemy in his heart he fell to praying for some divine miracle to undo the past, to erase the truth and turn it into a nightmare. But soon he was put into God’s place and proved himself as adamant to prayer.
He had walked until he fell upon the old sofa. He rose from that, remembering that Harry Chalender had lain there when he was wounded. He went to a big chair and sank into it, a mere heap of weary bones and flaccid muscles.
Then his eyes paced the room, walking along the shelves, reading the names of books: lawbooks, philosophies, fiction, poetry—all of them records of the vanity of human efforts to conquer the storms that swept spirit and flesh. Every title was a monument of defeat.
To escape these reminders, his eyes went longingly to the window where they could release their vision like the raven set free upon the flooded world.
He rose and leaned upon the casement and stared into the sky, and saw nothing but blue emptiness, the infinite idle azure, soulless, sorrowless, loveless, hateless, deaf, dumb, indifferent, without shame or mercy, morals or duties; the inverted ocean of the heavens, the topless pit where souls went hurtling when the earth flung them into its depths to drown in eternity, to emerge upon some inconceivable shore and crawl forward to the feet of judgment for everlasting doom or everlasting bliss.
It was said that Eyes looked down from there and saw the sparrow fall, saw the least quirk of a finger, saw through the brain and watched the darkest thoughts that stole like thieves through the night of a mind.
Yet the sparrow fell, or went soaring away in the clawsof the hawk; the little children died or lived to be trodden and gored and seared and crazed with fright. And the child’s cry for help was as unheard or unheeded as the sparrow’s.
Rebellious thoughts stirred RoBards to mutiny. He was ready to defy heaven and denounce its indifferent tyranny, as Lucifer had done and the other angels. Better to be thrust over the jasper walls and to fall for seven days into hell than not to protest.
And then he was himself put to the test of an appeal for his mercy. He heard a voice below him and glanced forth from his window as from a little heaven to a petitioner on earth.
“Please, sir, could I have a word with you, if you please, sir.”
As he looked down and with a kind of divinity understood beforehand just who was praying and what the prayer would be and that it would not be granted, he felt that God must find it hard at times to look into some of the wrinkled old faces that are upturned in desperate appeal, like shriveled flowers praying for rain.
“I’m Mrs. Lasher, sir, of down the road a bit. You’re always passin’ our house. It’s not much to see and I’ve not had luck with my children, for all they’re so many; but to-day I—would you—could you spare me a minute of your precious time, sir—could you?”
He was afraid to ask her in or to encourage her at all; for he dreaded his own weakness. He sat on the window sill and, abstaining from any temptation to courtesy, said:
“Go on.”
She took complete discouragement from his manner, and went into a panic, pursing her lips and doddering and mixing her fingers together in a silly restlessness as she spoke:
“It’s about my son, Jud, sir. He says he’s goin’ to sea for a sailor.”
“Why?”
“His only reason is because you gave him the advice to go.”
“Well, why not?”
“Oh, if it comes to that! He’s not much brains and he knows nothing of the ships. He is none too good here in this lonely place and what wouldn’t he be were he to mingle with sailors and the like? They must be terrible people from all I hear—and the danger, sir. They say they fall off masts and they go mad and jump in the sea and the sharks follow them and in the ports they get drunk and get killed and for the least thing they tie them to masts or whatever they are and whip their poor bare backs till the blood streams and they hit them with iron weights and—oh, from all they tell me it’s a hell’s own life, if you’ll excuse the saying. And at best my boy would be gone for maybe five years or more and we never hearing a word of how he is, or if he’s alive even. Oh, I couldn’t abear it, Mr. RoBards. I need Jud at home. He’s strong and helps me sometimes and when the strange tempers are not on him he’s as good a boy to his mother as ever boy was; and when the strange tempers are on him, he needs his mother more than I can tell you.
“To-day now, he came home all bloody and battered like, and I misdoubt he was trespassin’ on your property, often as I’ve told him never to bother you. He said he fell out of a tree into your pond up there whilst he was robbin’ birds’ nests. I don’t believe him and it’s likely you had to thrash him. I see your knuckles is all scarred and I’m sorry for any trouble he gave you, and welcome you are to whip him whenever he annoys you, and the punishment is what he needs, but don’t send him away, Mister RoBards.
“To-day I could wash his wounds and tie them up and put him to bed where his father won’t find him and whip him again. But oh, if he was at sea and was hurt or punished, who would wash his wounds for him and tie them up and give him a little petting when he needs it?
“He’s a lonely boy, sir. He’s like a haunted house sometimes, full of ghosts and queer notions and—but I’m taking too much of your valuable time. I came over only to ask you, would you take back your advice and tell him not to go to sea, sir!—if you please, sir!”
“I’m sorry, Mrs. Lasher, very sorry, but I can’t.”
“Oh, but to send him away whalin’! Five years gone into the storms and the wickedness, with nobody to pray for him or give him a kind word. The wickedness of the sailors——”
“There’s wickedness everywhere, Mrs. Lasher.”
“But not up here where everything’s so clean and sweet and beautiful. There’s wickedness of course here in plenty, but it’s nothing to what the ships has on them. It’s as good as sending my boy to hell to send him to sea.”
“I can’t help you. I’m sorry—very sorry.”
Her wildly beseeching eyes fell before the sad sternness of his. She nodded meekly:
“All right, sir. Thank you, sir. You know best, I suppose.”
And with this Thy-will-be-done she accepted her fate. She was used to being denied her prayers. She turned and moved across the grass toward the gate. She paused once or twice to look back, as if hoping that he would relent. RoBards gazed at her with profound pity, but he could not grant her plea. Finding that he would not beckon her to return, Mrs. Lasher nodded, slipped through the gate, and moved on to what must be almost the funeral of her boy.
She left RoBards in as much confusion as his benumbed spirit could feel. The reptile Jud had evidently told his mother only a part of the story. He had remembered enough to lie about the cause of his punishment. But how long could he be trusted to keep the rest concealed?
Who could keep a secret? Immy’s pitiful future was already at the mercy of her own babbling, of her little brother’s wondering, of the farmer’s wife who loved gossip, and of twist-wit Jud.
RoBards was afraid even of his own power to keep it inviolate. Suppose he himself talked in his sleep and Patty heard him? Suppose that in one of his wild tempers, when wrath like a drunkenness made him eager to fling off all decencies and rave in insults, he should hurl this truth at Patty or someone else?
In many of the rocks on the farm the roots of trees had made little rifts and squeezed and squirmed and grown until they split granite asunder. What heart could withstand the relentless pressure, from the irresistible gimleting of a secret?
Once the truth was uttered, it could no more be recalled than the dead itself. It was cruelly easy in this world to do, to say, to think; and hideously impossible to undo, unsay, unthink. One could only add repentance and remorse to guilt or carelessness.
Repentance and remorse were dangerous, too, to the soul, for one could repent a good deed, a mercy, an abstention as easily as evil. He found now in his conscience nothing but regret that he had let that filthy serpent crawl away. The copperhead had struck and he had merely bruised it and left it alive with all its venom, and the forked tongue and hissing of gossip.
In this room he had sorely repented two deeds of pity: sparing Chalender’s life and Jud Lasher’s. What a poltroon thing pity was, after all!
The next day he rode over to White Plains and found a letter from Patty among his mail. He read it on the way home, letting the reins lie in the mane of the horse while he conned the pages. They were dashed off in a mood of girlish hilarity. New York was a fountain of renewing youth to her. It had grown enormously, she said, since she left it a few months ago. The railroad journey was a sensational adventure. Like most of the other passengers, she had been fairly choked with smoke and riddled with cinders and one of them had stuck in her eye a long while. But New York with even half an eye was heaven.
She hoped that he would come soon. She would have the house ready for him in a few days. St. John’s Park that had been way uptown when they moved in was already slipping downtown. It was mighty pretty, though, and the water when it came would make it a paradise of convenience. She reminded him to keep the children off the highway and away from those miserable Lashers.
Her solemn edicts were as girlishly innocent as her gayeties. It made bitter reading, that warning—thatex post factowarning—against the Lashers. Whatever happened she must never know this blighting truth.
In a few days Immy was playing in the yard again. She seemed to have forgotten her experience as she forgot the nightmares that sometimes woke her screaming from sleep. But now and then she would cast upon her father a look of amazement. In her games with Keith she shrieked more easily in a wilder alarm. Her shrieks stabbed RoBards and made him dread that the experience had worked some permanent injury in the fabric of the child’s soul.
All the ignorance that had been wrapped about her youth for her protection was gone now. The blindfold had been snatched from her eyes. The questions that she had been rebuked for asking, were brutally answered and yet left unanswered. The beauty, the mystery, the holiness of innocence had been torn like the rent veil in the temple, and only the uglier knowledge vouchsafed.
And a stain had been cast upon her indelibly. She would be regarded with pity and yet with horror forever. She was branded with all the curses of abominable sin, though she had had no choice, no share, no understanding of it.
And such things could happen in a world where the fall of a sparrow was marked—marked but not prevented!
Immy must at all costs be sheltered from any further hazards. It seemed unwise to take her to the city, where dangers thronged everywhere, and pollution increased hourly. But when he hinted that it might be better not to go to town for the procession, Immy almost went into a convulsion of protest. She pleaded that she had a special right to see the parade because she had been so badly hurt.
RoBards granted the prayer to silence the argument. He wondered if Jud Lasher had left yet, but dared not ask. When he rode past the hut, he put spurs to his horse lest the mother accost him again, but his sidelong glances never caught a glimpse of Jud.
He did not know that the wretch had lain abed for dayswhile his bruises mended and that when he was up again and saw RoBards in the road, he ran and hid, stealing out again to shake his fist at the vanishing figure and gibber new threats.
At length the parade day drew near. Mr. and Mrs. Albeson decided to go in the farm wagon drawn by their own team. Mrs. Albeson would not risk her bones in the steam railroad and she quenched her husband’s enthusiasm for an experimental ride on the devil-wagons. She cooked a dinner and a supper for RoBards and the children and set the table for them and drove off.
RoBards had promised the children a ride on the steam-cars and planned to leave the house the next morning. After the Albesons had clattered away, he went to his library to select such books as he might want in town during the winter. He walked now and then to the window to watch the children playing on the lawn.
As he stood there once he caught sight of a lone pedestrian, a hulking youth who carried his belongings in a bag hung on a stick slung across his shoulder. He recognized Jud Lasher—evidently on his way to sea.
Without telling them why, RoBards called the children indoors. They scampered about his feet for a while, then their game led them gradually into the hall. There they played hide and seek, with long silences broken by loud outcries and a racket of running and laughter.
After a vague period he woke from a reverie like a deep sleep and realized that he had not heard their voices for a long time. He called; there was no answer. He cried their names up the stairway. A sense of some uncanny horror set his heart athrob. He went back to the library window puzzled, calling.
Then he caught sight of Keith standing chubbily against a huge tulip tree with his hands over his eyes. He was counting loudly. RoBards smiled at the solemnity of the everlasting game of hide-and-seek—grown-ups and infants hiding their eyes and hiding themselves and making a sport of what should be a serious business.
He looked about for Immy, expecting to see her crouching behind a crimson rambler’s trellis or some other concealment. He heard a faint cry, so faint and far away that it might have been a distant bird. His gaze darted here and there. A moving figure caught his eye on a hillside. He saw that it was Jud Lasher, and that he was running toward a thicket on a ledge of rocks. In his arms he held something that struggled. RoBards knitted his brows and shaded his eyes to peer into the glare of the afternoon sun. He heard again that delicate call. It sounded like Immy’s voice; it frightened him.
He pushed through the window and dropped to the lawn. He saw his horse grazing near; saddled, the reins trailing along the ground. RoBards ran to him, caught him as he whirled to bolt, threw the reins back over his neck, set foot in stirrup and rose to the saddle.
As the horse reared, RoBards struck him between the ears with his fist to bring him down, then sent him flying to the gate. He turned him into the main road and the horse, catching terror and rage from his rider, beat the dust into a rolling cloud.
At the point where he had seen Jud running, RoBards jerked the bridle and, setting the horse to the low stone wall, lifted him over before he had time to refuse. Up the hill RoBards kept him on the run. He caught sight of Jud Lasher as Jud Lasher caught sight of him. Only a little way the fugitive went before he flung Immy down like a bundle, and darted into a chaos of rocks and thistles and of tall sycamores holding out naked branches livid with leprous white patches.
RoBards did not pause by Immy’s side but rode on, his heels beating a tattoo on the horse’s ribs.
Jud Lasher was mad with fright, but terror made him as agile as a weasel. He slipped easily through mazes that the horse must blunder over or around.
RoBards was so intent upon him that he did not see a heavy sycamore bough thrust right across his path until it swept him from the saddle. But he kept clutch on the reins,dragged the horse’s head round and brought him to earth.
RoBards was up and in the saddle before the horse could rise. He charged on up the hill and overtaking Jud Lasher in a clearing, rode him down. The youth fell begging for mercy, but when the horse swerved to avoid him RoBards lifted his head so sharply that he went up beating the air with his forehoofs. Then he came down with them upon the prostrate body like a great two-tined pitchfork.
Keith who had stood watching his father’s pursuit from a long distance hid his head in his arm. Immy watching from where she lay, covered her eyes with her hands. They saw their father slip from the saddle and disappear behind a shelving boulder. There was a brief hubbub, then silence.
After a long time of awful emptiness, their father came down the hillside leading the horse.
He went to Immy and lifted her in his arms, and kissing her, mumbling:
“Did he scare you?”
She nodded, almost more afraid of her father than of Jud.
“He won’t scare you again. He’s gone now.”
“Far?”
“Far.”
“I’m glad! I was hiding behind the big rose bush and he grabbed me like a big bear would; and he runned off with me. I’m glad he’s gone.”
She laughed, but her father set his palm across her mouth quickly and hugged her to his heart so hard that she cried out.
He made her promise that she would say nothing also of this and when she asked him why Jud wouldn’t let her alone, he said:
“He will now. But if you tell anybody he will come back for you.”
He scanned the landscape, but nobody was to be seen except little Keith waiting in a daze.
He took the two children into the house and once moresolemnly pledged them never to mention the name of Jud Lasher, or the efforts he had made to steal Immy.
When supper time came RoBards waited on the two children, but did not eat.
He put them early to bed, and heard their prayers, and waited till he was assured they were sound asleep. They felt his kisses upon their brows as they sank away into oblivion.