CHAPTER XXXIX
Whenhe reached New York, RoBards had to take his frozen hands to a physician, who managed to save them for him, though there were times when the anguishes that clawed them made him almost regret their possession.
He was tempted to resign his judgeship, feeling that he was unworthy of the high bench, since he had committed crimes, and had been ready to commit others, and had on his soul crimes that he regretted not committing.
But he lacked the courage or the folly to publish his true reasons for resigning and he could think of no pretexts. He solaced himself with the partially submerged scandals of other jurists, and wondered where a perfect soul could be found to act as judge if perfection were to be demanded. Even Christ had put to flight all of the accusers of the taken woman and had let her go free with a word of good advice.
At times the memory of his own black revolt against the laws softened RoBards’ heart when he had before him men or women accused of sins, and he punished them with nothing more than a warning. At other times his own guilt made him merciless to the prisoners of discovery, and he struck out with the frenzy of a man in torment, or with the spirit of the college boys who hazed their juniors cruelly because they had themselves been hazed by their seniors.
Deep perplexities wrung his heart when poor souls stood beneath his eyes charged with the smuggling of unlicensed children into the world, children without a passport, outlaw children stamped with the strange label “illegitimate.”
They and their importers wore a new cloak in RoBards’ eyes. They had been hitherto ridiculous, or contemptible, or odious. Now he understood what malice there was in the joke that passion had played on them. They were thescorched victims of a fire against which they had taken out no insurance. Like Immy they must have suffered bitter ecstasies of terrified rapture, long vigils of bewilderment, heartbreaks of racking pain, with ludicrous disgrace for their recompense.
The Albesons returned from Georgia with such a report as a Northern farmer might have made on Southern soil without the trouble of the journey. RoBards pretended to be satisfied. They found that Immy was not so much improved as they expected—“Kind of peaked and poorly,” Abby complained.
Immy came back to town and though she never quite lost that prayer in the eyes known as the “hunted look,” she began to find escape and finally delight in her old gayeties.
Then Captain Harry Chalender returned from California on one of the Yankee clippers that were astounding the world by their greyhound speed. It took him barely seventy-six days to sail from San Francisco around the Horn to Sandy Hook, the whole trip needing only seven months. It was indeed the age of restless velocity. Chalender came in as usual with the prestige of broken records.
He was rich and full of traveler’s tales of wild justice, Vigilante executions, deluges of gold, fantastic splendors amid grueling hardships.
His anecdotes bored RoBards, who listened to them with the poor appetite of a stay-at-home for a wanderer’s brag. But Patty listened hungrily, and Immy was as entranced as Desdemona hearkening to the Moor. Chalender brought Patty a handsome gift and dared to bring a handsomer to Immy.
Even his cynical intuitions failed to suspect the education she had undergone, but he noted how much older she was, how wise yet reckless. And she found him perilously interesting beyond any of the young bucks whose farthest voyages were bus rides down Broadway from their boarding houses to their high desks in the counting houses.
There was nothing in Chalender’s manner toward Immy that Patty or David could resent when they had their eyesupon him, but he took Immy far from their eyes often. And RoBards was sure that Patty was harrowed not only with a mother’s anxiety for a daughter, but with an elder beauty’s resentment at a younger’s triumph.
On the next New Year’s Day Chalender came to the RoBards home late of a snow-clouded afternoon. He explained that he had begun up north and worked his way downtown; and St. John’s Park was the last word to the south. This led Patty to remind RoBards with a sharp look that she had been begging him to move up where the people were.
The year had begun with an exhausting day. The first guest had come before nine and it was getting toward six when Chalender rang at the closed door. The RoBards family was jaded with the procession of more or less befuddled visitors, for everybody still called on everybody and drank too much too often.
Harry Chalender had tried to see if he could not establish a record in calls. He reached the RoBards house in a pitiable condition. He was dressed like the fop he always was, his hair curled, oiled, and perfumed; his handkerchief scented; his waistcoat of a flowery pattern, his feet in patent leathers glossy as of yore. His breath was even more confusedly aromatic with cloves than usual. He apologized thickly:
“Patty, I think I’ve done something to give me immortalily at lash. I’ve called at shixy-sheven house between nine ’s morn’ and five ’s even’n. And I’ve had ’s much cherry bounce I’m full of elasticicy. I har’ly touch ground. And wines—oh, Patty! I’m a human cellar. And food—stewed oyssers, turkey, min’ spies! But I always come back to you, Patty, and to Immy. Seem’ you and your livin’ image, Immy, I can’t tell whish is whish; I half suspect I’m seem’ double. Am I or—am I?”
Giggling fatuously over his wit, he fell asleep. Patty regarded him with anger, and RoBards with disgust; but both were dazed to see that Immy smiled and placed a cushion under his rolling head.
Drunkenness was beginning to lose its charm. In 1846New York had voted against the licensing of liquor dealers by a large majority. Maine had followed with a law prohibiting the sale or manufacture of all strong drinks under penalty of fine or imprisonment.
Three years later New York passed a copy of the Maine law and the Temperance party’s candidate won the governorship. But nobody was punished; clubs were formed with no other bond than thirst. The edict was found to be a source of infinite political corruption, general contempt for law, and tolerance for lawbreakers. It collapsed at last and was repealed as a failure. All the old people agreed that the good old times were gone.
Much as RoBards had despised the immemorial tendency of old people to forget the truth of their own youth and prate of it as a time of romantic beauty, he found himself despairing of these new times. The new dances were appalling. The new drinks were poison. The new modes in love were unheard of.
Once more he was wondering if it were not his duty to horsewhip Chalender or to kill him. The horror of involving his wife in scandal restrained him before; now his daughter was concerned.
He pleaded with Immy, wasted commands upon her, and was frozen by her cynical smile. She laughed most at his solemnest moods just as her mother had done. She would mock him, hug and kiss him, and make him hold her cloak for her glistening bare shoulders, then skip downstairs to take Harry Chalender’s arm and go with him in his carriage to wherever he cared to go. One night it was to see the new playUncle Tom’s Cabin, based on a novel written by a clergyman’s wife, with pirated editions selling about the world by the hundred thousand—six different theatres were playing the play at the same time in London. Another night Chalender set Immy forth in a box at the Castle Garden where Mario and Grisi were singing against the gossip of the whisperers and starers at Chalender’s new beauty. On other nights Chalender danced with Immy at fashionable homes where she could not have gone without him. On othernights they did not explain where they went, and RoBards was held at bay by Immy’s derisive, “Don’t you wish you knew?” or worse yet her riant insolence, “You’re too young to know.”
Patty was frantic with defeat. She and Immy wrangled more like sisters or uncongenial neighbors than like mother and daughter. RoBards was constantly forced to intervene to keep the peace. By paternal instinct he defended Immy against her mother and expressed amazement at Patty’s suspicions, though they were swarming in his own heart. He tried to win Immy by his own trust in her:
“My darling,” he said once, “you are too young to realize how it looks to go about with a man of an earlier generation. Chalender is old enough to be your father. And think of his past!”
“Think of mine!” she said with a tone less of bravado than of abjection.
This stabbed RoBards deep. But he went on as if to a stubborn jury:
“If Chalender were honest, he would want to marry you.”
“He does!”
“Oh, God help us all!” Patty whispered with a look as if ashes had been flung into her face and as if she tasted them.
RoBards snarled:
“I’ll kill him if he ever crosses my doorstep again!”
To which Immy responded demurely:
“Then I’ll have to meet him outside.”
This defiance was smothering. She went on:
“Why shouldn’t I marry him? I don’t have to tell him anything. He doesn’t ask me any questions. Doesn’t dare start the question game, perhaps. He’s lots of fun. He keeps me laughing and interested, and—guessing.”
This was such a pasquinade on the usual romantic reasons, that her father could contrive no better rejoinder than:
“But my little sweetheart, such a marriage would be bound to fail.”
This soft answer drove Immy to a grosser procacity:
“Then I can divorce him easily enough. I can join the crowd and go to Michigan. After two years of residence, I could get a divorce on any one of seven grounds!”
“Immy!”
“Or Indiana is still better. I was reading that you can establish a residence there after a night’s lodging. Men and women leave home saying they’re going away for a little visit or on business and they never come back, or come back single. If Harry Chalender didn’t behave, I could surprise him. Besides, Harry would give me anything I want, even a divorce, if I asked him. But don’t you worry, I’ll get along somehow.”
And she was gone, leaving her parents marooned on a barren arctic island.