Another exodus. But they were scapegoats now, fleeing into the
wilderness with a mystic burden of guilt, anonymous guilt; for Immy
would not speak.
Complete was the contrast between that first flight from the cholera
and this fleeing where no man pursued, but all men waited.
Then David and Patty RoBards were part of a stampede, striving to save
their romance from the plague. Then they were bride and groom; now they
carried with them a daughter, unforeseen then, but older to-day than
her mother was when she married RoBards. But Immy’s bridegroom was
where?—was who?
In that other journey to Tuliptree Farm the streets were smothered with
dust and the waterless city stifled under a rainless sky.
Now water was everywhere. The fountains were still, but the pipes
underground were thick as veins and arteries. Water in the form of snow
lay on the ground, on the roofs, on the shoulders of the men, on their
eyelashes, on the women’s veils and in their hair and the feathers of
their hats. It lay in long ridges on the backs of the horses plunging,
slipping, falling. It plastered the panes of the lamp-posts and the
telegraph-posts that had grown up in a new forest all over town; it lay
along the wires that strung spider webs from wall and chimney and tree.
The banners that hung from all the shops and stretched across the
street were illegible. The busses and the hacks were moving dunes of
white.
There was a fog of snow. Everybody walked mincingly, except the
children, who rejoiced to slide on their brass-toed boots or on the
sleds that ran like great, prong-horned beetles among the legs of the
anxious wayfarers.
The RoBards trio was glad of the snow, for it gave concealment. Immy
was silent, morose, and with reason enough. If ever a soul had the
right to cry out against the unfairness, the malice of heaven, it was
Immy. She could have used the bitter words of Job:
“He destroyeth the perfect and the wicked.... He will laugh at the
trial of the innocent.”
She did not feel innocent. She felt worse than wicked; she felt a fool.
But other people had been fools and vicious fools and no one learned
of it. She had been wicked and foolish before without punishment; with
reward rather, laughter, rapture, escape. Now for a flash of insane
weakness this sudden, awful, eternal penalty.
To her father and mother speech was impossible, thought almost
forbidden. If they had been taking Immy’s dead body up to a Westchester
burial, they could hardly have felt more benumbed. Only, if she had
been dead, the problem of her future would have been God’s. Now it was
theirs.
The gamble of it was that they could not foreknow the result of this
journey; whether it would mean one more life, or one death, or two.
In any case, RoBards must hasten back to his legal duties as soon as
he had placed Immy on the farm. Patty must stay and share the jail
sentence with her for—how long, who could tell?
At the railroad station they met friends, but satisfied them with a
word about the charm of the country in the winter. The train ploughed
bravely through snow that made a white tunnel of the whole distance.
The black smoke writhing in the vortex of writhing white seemed to
RoBards to express something of his own thoughts.
Travelers by rail usually expected death. Not long since, a train on
the Baltimore and Ohio had turned four somersaults in a hundred-foot
fall with frightful loss of life, and at Norwalk, Connecticut, a while
ago, forty-four people had been slaughtered and a hundred and thirty
mangled. But RoBards felt that such a solution of his own riddles would
be almost welcome.
Suddenly Patty leaned close to him and brought him down to realities.
She muttered:
“You must get the Albesons off the farm, somehow.”
“How?”
“I don’t know. You’re a lawyer. Think up something. They must not stay
there. They must not suspect. They know too much as it is.”
“All right,” he sighed. He realized the shrewdness of her wisdom, but
the problem she posed dazed him.
The rest of the way he beat his thought on an anvil, turning and
twisting it and hammering till his brain seemed to turn red in his
skull.
What simpler thing than to ask them to leave his farm? But they were
such simple souls that they would be as hard to manage as sheep. And
they must be sent away for a long time. He and Patty and Immy must
manage without a servant. But no sacrifice was too great.
The train ran all the way to Kensico now. Here they encountered trouble
in finding someone to drive them over the unbroken roads, but at length
they bribed a man to undertake the voyage.
The horses picked their way with insect-like motions, and went so
slowly that the bells snapped and clinked instead of jingling. The
runners of the sleigh mumbled and left long grooves in the white.
The rain of flakes upon the eyelids had the effect of a spell; it was
like this new thing everybody was talking about, “hypnotism,” a mere
disguise for the worn-out fraud of mesmerism.
Surging along in a state betwixt sleep and waking, RoBards’ mind fell
into a sing-song of babble.
Every man has in him at least one poem and RoBards, like most of his
profession, had a love of exalted words. He lacked the magniloquence of
Webster (whose recent death had swathed most of New York’s buildings in
black); but he could not resist even in a foreclosure proceeding or the
most sordid criminal case an occasional flight into the realm betwixt
prose and poesy.
And now he lulled himself with an inchoate apostrophe to the snow:
“O Snow! O down from what vast swan-breast torn? from what vast
swan-breast torn, to flutter, to flutter through the air and—and—What
swan, then, was it? is it? that died, that dies in silence, in grief
more like a song than—than silence: a song that has—that knows—that
finds no words, no tune, no melody, no tune; but only feeling, ecstatic
anguish, despair that faints, that droops, that swoons, and lies as
meek, as white, as white, as still as marble. O Snow, thou quell’st—O
Snow that quells the world, the countless sorrows of the world, the
plaints, the hungers, shames, to one calm mood, one White. O Peace! O
flawless Peace! This snow must be the drifting plumage from the torn
wide wings, the aching breast of heaven’s own dove, the Holy Ghost.”
He was as lost in his shredded rhythms as in the snow; as muffled in
himself as in the heavy robe and his greatcoat, and his thick cap. He
had not yet thought of a way to exile the Albesons. He had surrendered
himself as utterly to the weather as the hills themselves. The road
was gone, the walls rubbed out, the trees were but white mushrooms.
Everything was smoothed and rounded and numbed. Immy and her mother
were snowed under and never spoke. Even the driver made no sound except
an occasional chirrup or a lazy, “Git ap there!”
Then they were suddenly at Tuliptree. The snow had blurred the
landmarks, and the driver had to wade thigh-deep to reach the gate, and
excavate a space to swing it open.
The Albesons had neither seen nor heard them come, and the pounding on
the door and the stamping of feet gave them their first warning.
They were so glad of the end of their solitude, and put to such a
scurry to open bedrooms and provide fires and supper, that they had
little time for questions beyond, “Haow air ye all, anyway?” “Haow’ve
ye ben?” “Haow’s all the rest of the folks?” “Did ye ever see sich
snow?”
Mrs. Albeson embraced Immy with a reminiscent pity, and praised her for
putting on flesh and not looking like the picked chicken most the girls
looked like nowadays.
This gave RoBards his first idea and he spoke briskly:
“She’s not so well as she looks. Too much gayety in the city. Doctor
says she’s got to have complete rest and quiet. Mrs. RoBards and I are
pretty well worn out, too; so we decided just to cut and run. Besides,
I didn’t like to leave the farm alone all winter.”
“Alone all winter?” Albeson echoed. “Ain’t we here?”
“That’s what I came up to see you about. I have a client who lent a big
sum of money on a Georgia plantation, slaves and crops and all. He’s
afraid he’s been swindled—afraid the land’s no good—wants an honest
opinion from somebody that knows soil when he sees it. So I’m sending
you. And I’m sending your wife along to keep you out of mischief.”
“But Georgia! Gosh, that’s a million miles, ain’t it?”
“It’s nothing. You get the railroad part of the way. And it’s like
summer down there.”
The farmer and his wife and Patty and Immy all stared at RoBards, and
he felt as if he were staring at himself.
The odd thing about it was that the inspiration had come to him while
he was on his feet talking. He thought best on his feet talking. That
was his native gift and his legal practice had developed it.
While he had sat in the train and in the sleigh and cudgeled his wits,
nothing happened. Yet all the while there was indeed a client of his
anxious about a remote investment; he only remembered him when he began
to talk. The gigantic swindle known as the Pine Barren speculation had
sold to innocent dupes in the North thousands of acres of land that
was worthless, and hundreds of thousands of acres that did not even
exist. The result was pitiful hardship for hard-working, easy-believing
immigrants and a bad name for legitimate Georgian transactions.
The Albesons were more afraid of this expedition into the unknown than
if they had been asked to join the vain expedition Mr. Grinnell, the
merchant, had recently sponsored to search the Arctic Zone for Sir
John Franklin and his lost crew.
But RoBards forced his will upon theirs and after a day or two of
bullying carried the two old babes to New York and across the ferry and
put them on a New Jersey Railroad train. They would reach Washington
in less than sixteen hours—and by turning down the backs of two seats,
could stretch out and sleep while the train ran on. From Washington
they could go alternately by stage and rail all the way. This was
indeed the Age of Steam. There were thirteen thousand miles of railroad
in operation!
And now RoBards had exiled the two most dangerous witnesses—at
appalling financial cost. But if it saved Immy from bankruptcy, it was
an investment in destiny. RoBards had nothing more to do but wait, tell
lies to those who asked where he had hidden his wife and daughter, and
wonder what might be the outcome of all this conspiracy.
In the meanwhile he was installed as Judge, and Patty was not there
to see. Keith was in Columbia and much puzzled by the absence of his
mother and sister, and his father’s restlessness.
On one of RoBards’ visits to Tuliptree, Patty said with a dark look and
a hesitant manner:
“David, I’ve been thinking.”
That word “David” made him lift his head with eagerness. She went on:
“You remember how good Doctor Matson was when poor Papa died? How he
helped us conceal the terrible truth? I was wondering—don’t you suppose
if you asked him now—he always liked Immy, you know—and—if you appealed
to him——”
RoBards groaned aloud with horror.
“Hush! in God’s name! Would you ask a judge to compound a felony? to
connive at murder?”
“Oh,” Patty sighed, “I forgot. You used to be a father, and now you are
a judge.”
The little laugh that rattled in her throat was the most bloodcurdling
sound he had ever heard.
Its mockery of his ignoble majesty pursued him everywhere he went. He
heard it when he sat on the bench and glowered down at the wretches
who came before him with their pleading counselors. It made a vanity
of all dignity, of justice. And what was “justice” indeed, but a crime
against the helpless? First, their passions swept them into deeds they
did not want to commit; then other men seized them and added disgrace
to remorse.
Which was the higher duty—the father’s to fight the world for his
young? Or the judge’s to defend an imaginary ideal against the laws of
mercy?
His soul was in utter disarray and he found only shame whichever way he
turned. He went back to the country perplexed to a frenzy.
Patty greeted him with such a look as a sick she-wolf would give the
mate that slunk about the den where her young were whimpering. She
would not let him see his daughter.
He retreated to his library and was too dispirited to build a fire. He
stood in the bitter cold and stared through a frost-film at the forlorn
moon freezing in a steel-blue sky above an ice-encrusted world.
He was shaken from his torpor by a cry, a lancinating shriek, by cry
upon cry. He ran like a man shot full of arrows, but the door was
locked and Patty called to him to go away.
He leaned against the wall, useless, inane, while his child babbled and
screamed, then only moaned and was silent a while, then screamed anew,
and was silent again.
Agony rose and ebbed in her like a quick storm-tide, and he knew that
the old hag Nature, the ruthless midwife, was rending and twisting her
and rejoicing, laughing triumphantly at every throe. He wondered why he
had made no arrangements for Immy to be anæsthetized. It was too late
now.
This was that holy mystery, that divine crisis for which she was born.
He had endured the same torture when Immy was born. But then there was
pride and boasting as the recompense; now, the publication of shame,
the branding, the scarlet A, and the pillory.
Then the nurse had beamed upon him as she placed in his arms for a
moment the blessing of heaven.
Now, after a maddening delay, Patty would doubtless come to the door
and thrust upon him a squirming blanketful of noisy misery and of
lifelong disgrace.
He began to drift like a prisoner in a cell. Patty would not let him in
and he would have been afraid to enter. He went back to his library as
an old horse returns to its stall from habit. He paced the floor and
stood at the window, guiltily observing the road to see if anyone had
heard the clamor and were coming in to ask if murder were being done.
But no one moved. Even the shadows were still, frozen to the snow. Not
an owl hunted; not a field mouse scuttered. The moon seemed not to
budge. She was but a spot of glare ice on a sky tingling with stars.
The room was dead with old air. Yet his brow burned. He flung up
the window and gulped the fresh wind that flowed in. The jar of the
casement shook down snow and it sifted across the sill to the carpet.
On his sleeve a few flakes rested and did not melt. Their patterns
caught his attention. The wonder of snow engaged his idle mind.
The air had been clear. And then suddenly there was snow. Out
of nothing these little masterworks of crystal jewelry had been
created, infinitesimal architecture beyond the skill of the Venetian
glass-spinners or the Turkish weavers of silver.
And now the flakes were blinking out, back into nothingness.
The snow had come from nowhere in armies. Each flake was an entity,
unlike any other flake. And then the air had recalled it!
This baby that was arriving was but another snowflake. It would come
from nowhere—or from where? Whither would it go if it died? For die it
must, sooner or later. Invisible, visible, invisible!
What was the soul? what was the body? Who decreed these existences? How
could any imaginable god find the time, the patience, the interest to
build every snowflake, sketch every leaf, decide the race, the hue, the
figure of every animal, bird in egg, child in woman?
Was it to be a girl or a boy that Immy would produce? No one could know
in advance. Yet it meant everything to the soul crowded into the body.
If this human snowflake had been taken from a waiting multitude of
unborn angels, why had God sentenced this particular soul to life
imprisonment in this particular child of dishonor? What mischief had
it done in heaven to be sentenced to earth? Could it be true, as Dr.
Chirnside preached, that this soul had been elected from the beginning
of the world to unending damnation or unending rapture for the “glory”
of God? What a fearful idea of glory! The worst Hun in history, the
most merciless inquisitor, had never equaled that scheme of “glory.”
Who was the human father of this child-to-be? And what share had he
himself in it? The helpless grandfather of a helpless grandchild!
Why would Immy not tell the father’s name? Perhaps she did not know!
This thought was too loathsome to endure. Yet how could one unthink a
thought that has drifted into his mind like a snowflake from nowhere?
Why should the father of the child not even be aware of its birth,
when the howling mother must be squeezed as if she were run through a
clothes-wringer?
Two thousand children were born dead every year in New York—such a
strange long procession to the cemeteries! They were washed up on the
shores of life, like the poor little victims of the Children’s Crusade
who set out for Christ’s tomb and drowned in armies.
If Immy’s baby could only be born dead what a solution of all problems!
But it would splutter and kick, mewl and puke, and make itself a
nuisance to every sense.
And if the child died, where would it go? To hell if it were not
baptized first. That was sure, if anything were sure. Yet if it were
not of the elect it would go there anyway, in spite of any baptism, any
saintliness of its life.
If it lived, it would join the throng of illegitimate children. Of
these there were a thousand a year born in New York alone. What a
plague of vermin!
And what would its future be? It might become a thief, a murderer. It
might be sentenced to death for crime.
If RoBards continued his career as a judge, he would have many death
sentences to pass. His own grandchild might come before him some day.
What if he should sentence it to death now? In the good old times of
the _patria potestas_ a father could destroy an unworthy child without
punishment. Judge RoBards’ jurisdiction as a grandfather was doubly
authentic. By one curt act he could protect his daughter from endless
misery and frustration, and protect the world from this anonymous
intruder and protect this poor little waif from the monstrous cruelty
of the world.
This snowflake ought to go back to the invisible. Its existence was
God’s crime against his child. Yet he could be a god himself and by the
mere tightening of his fingers about that little wax-doll throat, fling
it back at God, rejected, broken—a toy that he refused to play with.
He owed this act to Immy. He had brought her into the world. He loved
her. He must save her from being enveloped in the curse of this world’s
hell. Let the next hell wait.
If God wanted to punish him for it forever—why, what of that? He had
committed one murder already and was already damned, no doubt. And even
God could not increase infinite torment or multiply eternity.
He laughed at the infernal mathematics of that conceit. He felt as
haughty as Lucifer challenging Jehovah. Yes, he would force his way
into that birth chamber and do his terrible duty.
The onset of this madness set him in motion. He had not realized how
long he had stood still before that open window and that bleak white
desert, where it was too cold to snow, too cold for a wind—a grim cold
like a lockjaw.
When he turned to pace the floor, his legs were mere crutches; his feet
stump-ends. It hurt to walk. He stood still and thought again.
Yes, yes! All he had to do was to close his hand upon that tiny
windpipe. It would be no more than laying hold of a pen and signing
a warrant of arrest, a warrant of death. The same muscles, the same
gesture. It would not be murder, simply an eviction—dispossess
proceedings against an undesirable tenant, a neighbor that would not
keep the peace.
He would cheat the newspapers of what they called their rights; but God
knew they had enough scandal to print without advertising his family
name. The gossips would lose one sweetmeat; but they never stopped
yapping. He would not let the men in the clubs call his grandchild a
bastard and his daughter a—the word was vomit to his throat.
With one delicate act of his good right hand he could rescue Immy
from a lifetime of skulking; save at the same time this poor little,
innocent, doomed petitioner from slinking crying down the years. He
could save Patty from a lifetime of obloquy and humiliation. He could
save his own name, his ancestors, his posterity, and the integrity of
this old house—all by one brief contraction of his fingers.
With a groan of joy in the magnificence of this supernal opportunity to
be a man, a father, a god, he rehearsed the gesture, put his hand to
the imaginary baby’s throat.
He drove his will into his fingers. But they could not bend. His hand
was frozen.