CHAPTER XXXVI
Thetenderest moods of devotion and shared sorrows alternated with wrangles so bitter that murder seemed to hang in the air. Money was the root of most of the quarreling.
When RoBards was about ready to give up and sink like a broken-backed camel under the incessant rain of last straws, there came a wind out of heaven and lifted the bills like petals swept from a peach tree.
Old Mrs. Roswell was found dead in her bed one morning. RoBards grieved for the poor old skinflint, and wondered how he would get along without her fees.
Then her last will was turned up and in it she bequeathed to him ten thousand dollars in gold and a parcel of land which she had bought in when it was sold for taxes. It lay out beyond the Reservoir on Murray’s Hill, an abandoned farm.
But he had hopes that it would one day prove of value, for there was talk of grading Fifth Avenue from Thirty-fourth Street out to Forty-fifth. And the World’s Fair which had been opened on July 4, 1852, in the magnificent Crystal Palace built next the Reservoir, taught the public that Forty-second Street was not quite the North Pole. And though it was a failure it had revealed the charm of this region. There was, indeed, a movement on foot to create a great park out there to be called Central Park. That would involve the purchase of the land by the city. The “Forty Thieves,” as the aldermen were called, would pay enough for it to leave themselves a tidy sum.
But RoBards was to learn that windfalls from heaven bring no permanent rescue. Patty was incensed at the thought of devoting any of that unforeseen ten thousanddollars to the payment of bills for worn-out dresses and extravagances of the past.
She had given a ball for Immy on her nineteenth birthday in the desperate hope that the girl would capture a husband before she began to fade, but though there were lovers enough, none of them seemed to account her a sufficiently attractive match.
And this was emphasized as a further proof of RoBards’ failure as a father. All the summer of 1853 Patty complained of the smallness of the house at Tuliptree. The children required separate rooms. They had guests and there was no place to put them. When Immy had two visitors, and one of his college friends came out to spend a week with Keith, the two boys had to clear a room in the hayloft. They made a lark of it, but it humiliated Patty, and she swore she would never go back to the place until RoBards added a wing to it.
To add a wing would mean the opening of the foundation and the demolition of the chimney, and the thought terrified RoBards. He had grown so used to the presence of Jud Lasher there that only some unexpected proposal of this sort wakened him to the eternal danger of a revelation all the more horrible for its delay.
Patty found so many places for the spending of his ten thousand that she could decide on none.
But the politicians smelled his money and he was visited by an affable ward-heeler with a suggestion that he accept a nomination for a judgeship in the Superior Court.
Though RoBards was revolted at the thought of receiving the ermine from hands soiled with such dirty money, his heart longed for the dignity of a judgeship, and he knew that he could never attain the bench without the consent of the politicians. Once aloft he could purify the means by the purity of his decisions.
So he gave his consent and promised to contribute the necessary funds for the campaign. And that fall he won the election. On January first he was to mount the throne.
Patty made all manner of fun of her politician, but shetook pride in his victory and thenceforth began to call him “Judge.” It was a change from the ancient “Mister RoBards,” a little less distant, a little more respectful.
But RoBards noted that Immy seemed indifferent to his success or his failure. She pretended enthusiasm over his election, but her smile died almost before it was born. She was distraught, petulant, swift to anger and prompt to tears. She wept at nothing.
She took no delight even in gayety. She refused to go to dances. She denied herself to callers.
Even when snow came and brought what foreigners called “the American pastime known as sleighing,” and the bells thrilled the muffled streets with fairy jubilation, she kept the house.
But the mere hint of calling in a doctor threw her into spasms of protest.
One evening when the winter night overlapped the afternoon there came a tempest of sleet and snow and RoBards had to call a hack to take him home from the office. He was lashed as with a cat-o’-nine tails when he ran from the curb to his door.
And when he entered the hall in a flurry of sleet, Patty said to him:
“We’ve got to go up to Tuliptree at once—to-morrow.”
“Why? what for? for how long?”
“I don’t know for how long, but we must lose no time in getting Immy out of town.”