The tenderest 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 thousand dollars 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 she took 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.”