CHAPTER XXII
RoBardswas afraid to leave the house. How could he trust it to keep the secret? There would be nobody to guard the cellar from intrusion. Yet no intruder would be interested in studying the stone walls. Anyone who entered the house would seek jewelry or silver or clothes.
He dared not ask the children to deny themselves the visit to the city. They were already nagging him to make haste lest they be too late for the parade.
So he locked the house up and drove away. When he cast his last glance back he sent a prayer in his eyes to the house to be good to him and to protect him and its other children.
The tulip tree stood at attention, solemn and reliable.
He approached the Lasher hovel with dread and tried to make the horses gallop past, but Mrs. Lasher stood in the middle of the road and held up her arms.
He had to face her, and he checked his horses while his heart plunged and galloped. But all she said was:
“I just wanted to tell you that Jud left home yesterday to go to sea. It broke my heart, but I hope you’re satisfied.”
RoBards took reassurance from the irony of this taunt, sorry as he felt for the poor, life-beaten woman before him. He nodded and touched his hat, and she stepped aside to let him pass.
He could only hope that she would not visit the house in his absence. He caught a quick look from Keith’s eyes—a look of proud complicity. During the long drive the boy’s hand kept stealing round his arm and patting it encouragingly.
They reached the railroad station just in time. The cars were so crowded that it was hard to squeeze aboard. Itseemed that the whole countryside was drained of its populace.
Everybody was bound for New York. Everybody had on his best or hers. The day was glorious and the world in a holiday mood. Many of the people carried baskets of food. The silliest joke brought guffaws of success and idiotic repartee.
RoBards was hailed by clients and other acquaintances: “Here’s lawyer RoBards!” “How air ye, Jedge?” “Well, we put up a good fight, but I guess it was a good thing we got licked.” “That’s right; you never know your luck.” “Bigger N’ York grows, the better it’ll be for all of us.” “They’ll want plenty o’ butter ’n’ eggs down to the setty. We got water enough to dieloot the melk and then spare some for the pore town rats.”
The engine whistled. Everybody jumped. The bell rang. Everybody cheered. The locomotive puffed and strained and jerked and the carriages began to move.
Keith leaned far out of the window while his father held his heels. He saw the engine rolling round a curve with a brave choo-choo. Immy was content to wonder at the people, their funny hats and gay clothes. But Keith wanted to know how the engine ran without horses. His father had such a hard time explaining the modern miracle, that Keith offered to bet they had a couple of horses hidden in the old engine somewhere.
It was appalling how fast they went. The landscape was a blur. “The horses are running away!” Keith yelled and then came in yowling, bringing an eyeful of coal dust. It was hard to get him to open his eyes till the grime was washed out. RoBards found an allegory in that: how human it was to clench the eyes and the heart tight upon what hurt them most; how hard it was to persuade people to let go what they could not endure.
The carriages rocked and threatened to capsize. Women squealed and baskets came tumbling down from the racks. An umbrella almost transfixed the hat of one fluttering farm-wife.
Everybody agreed that the steam locomotive was the devil’s own invention—something unchristian about it; folks would soon go back to horses like God meant them to. No wonder some God-fearing souls had risen to forbid the use of the schoolhouse for meetings in the interest of this contraption of Beelzebub.
But in an incredibly short time the train was running among streets. They were in New York already and the city was decorated “like as if they was a weddin’ in every last house.”
Loops of bunting and marvelous clevernesses of flag arrangement bedecked all the homes, and throngs were hastening south to the heart of the city and the grandest parade of modern times.
One pitiful, forlorn little old woman was seemingly the only human being left behind to guard Westchester County till its populace returned from the excursion to New York City. Westchester had presented the metropolis with one of its rivers, and it went down to make the bestowal formal.
Mrs. Lasher had not the money nor the time for such a journey. Water to her was the odious stuff she lugged from the well to the washtub or the stove. New York meant scarce more to her than Bombay or Hong-Kong. She hardly lifted her eyes from her toil to note who passed her hovel or in which direction. Yet she had watched for RoBards and had run out to taunt him with his cruelty to her.
And now she was multiplied in his eyes into an endless procession of visions more terrible to him than an army with banners, more numerous than the parading hosts that poured along the streets of New York.
While the bands thumped and brayed and the horses’ hoofs crackled on the cobblestones, and the soldiers and firemen and temperance folk strutted, he seemed to see only that little despondent hag wringing her work-tanned fingers over the loss of her good-for-nothing son. She was bitter against RoBards for sending the lout away to be a sailor. What would she have said if she had known—what would she say when she learned as learn she surely must—thatRoBards had saved her boy from the perils of the seven seas by immuring him in the foundation walls of his home?
The Russians had been wont to build a living virgin into the walls they wished to sanctify. He had sacrificed a lad and he was doomed to stand guard over the altar. He was as much a prisoner as the dead Jud—chained to a corpse.
It terrified him to think that the half-crazed old mother had the franchise of Tuliptree Farm for this day, since there was never a soul left on the place to prevent her wandering about. What if she chose the opportunity to visit the home where she had never been invited to call? Just to see how her betters lived, she might climb in at a window and wander about the rooms. He saw her in his fancy gasping at the simple things that would be splendor to her pauper’s eye.
What if the blood of her son should cry aloud to her like Abel’s from the ground, and draw her to the cellar? What if she should see through the clumsy disguise of spiderwebs and begin tearing at the foundation stones with those old hen’s-claw fingers of hers?
It was a ridiculous image to be afraid of, but RoBards could not banish it.