The old Jessamines stared at him, but summed up their curiosity and
their resentment in a “Well! So you’re back?”
“Yes,” he said, the answer sufficient to the question.
He was embarrassed to find that a cousin of his wife’s was visiting the
farm and the spare room was filled. He had to go back with Patty. But
they were like two enemies in the same cell.
Sometimes he would wake suddenly in the night from a hell of
self-contempt. He would both sweat and shiver with remorse for the
shame of having let Chalender live.
In his half-insanity it seemed a belated duty to go out and
assassinate the villain. To shoot him down openly would be too noble a
punishment—like shooting a spy. To garrote him, string him up squirming
from a tree limb would be best. Major André had wept pleading to be
shot, but they had hanged him—not far from Tuliptree Farm. And only
recently people had dug up his grave and found the tiny roots of a tree
all grown about his curly hair.
Chalender had sneaked into RoBards’ home and Patty had played the
Benedict Arnold to surrender the citadel to the enemy. He deserved
to be put out of the way like a poisoned dog, a sheep-killer, a
lamb-worrier.
Sitting up in his bed with night all about him RoBards would enact
some grisly murder, often while Patty slept at his side unheeding the
furies that lashed her husband and mocked him for his forgiveness like
Christ’s of the woman brought before him.
In the restored innocence of sleep, Patty’s face was like a little
girl’s with its embroidery of her curls, one shoulder curved up, a
round white arm flung back above her head, her bosom slowly lifting and
falling with her soft breath.
Sometimes as he gazed at her, his heart welled with pity for her; at
other times he was frantic to commit murder because of her.
But the big tree at the window would try to quiet him like an old
nurse; it would go “Hush, hush!” The house would seem to sigh, to creak
as if its bones complained. And it, too, would counsel him, “No! no!”
The ferocity of such debates would wear him out more than a prolonged
contest in court, and he would sink back and draw sleep over him as a
black blanket of respite from thought.
At other times when Patty was gracious and full of laughter, when she
was in a mood to be a child with her children and play with them, there
would be a heavenliness in life that made RoBards cry aloud within
himself, “Thank God I kept the secret.”
By and by there was a child again at Patty’s little breast—the fifth in
number, the third alive. She had resigned herself to motherhood now.
She nursed the babe and took all the care of it without complaint. She
met RoBards at night when he came up from town, with stories of the
wonderful things the new son had achieved or the older babes had said.
It pleased him quaintly to find his wild, restless Patty becoming
a subdued and comfortable matron, telling unimportant anecdotes
importantly. She kept her grace and her beauty and she could never grow
slattern; but she was maternal now to her marrow.
Regarding the deep peace of his country family, RoBards was profoundly
glad that he had forgone the swift passionate delights of revenge. If
he had slain Chalender or published the scandal in the courts, Patty
would not have been his now. That child whom she had named after
himself, David Junior, would have been doomed to an unhonored name.
This house would have been pointed to as a monument of scandal. It
would be neglected, empty, haunted.
The neighbors never dreamed of the hidden shame. They said: “Nothin’
ever happens up your way. You’re one lucky man.”
Nearly every other dwelling had some scandal hung upon it like a
signboard from a tavern. Not many miles up the road was a house of a
strange memory. A widow lived there—she called herself a widow, but
the neighbors called her “a queer un.” They told how a negro preacher
freed by his master had settled up in New Hampshire fifty years before
and been so much respected that he had married a white woman and had
many children; and these children had had children. And one of them
had married this woman when she was young and high-stepping. The first
she knew of her husband’s grand-parentage was when a gossip twitted
her with it. She said nothing, but made an excuse for a trip to the
Bermudas with her husband. As soon as she got him there, she sold him
at a good price into slavery, and came home calling herself a widow.
For that matter, one of the presidents of the United States had been
sued in the open courts by a negress for the support of their child; it
was said that he sold many of his mulatto children, and that his only
indulgence was that when any of his own escaped he would not hunt them
with hounds, but laughed and let the rascals escape if they could.
The present president of the United States had been in the divorce
court and had turned Washington inside out with domestic bickerings.
Nearly all the founders of the republic had been plastered with
scandal. Many of them were infidels and Dr. Chirnside was always
bewailing the decay of religion under the republic.
So RoBards reasoned that if there were scandal in his home, it was
only what every other home had. The good thing was that his shame
was hidden. His house was looked upon as a place of honor. It was
unsullied. It must be kept of good repute. There was a certain kind
of hypocrisy that was wholesome and decent and necessary to good
citizenship.