“Oh, but to send him away whalin’! Five years gone into the storms and the wickedness, with nobody to pray for him or give him a kind word. The wickedness of the sailors——”
“There’s wickedness everywhere, Mrs. Lasher.”
“But not up here where everything’s so clean and sweet and beautiful. There’s wickedness of course here in plenty, but it’s nothing to what the ships has on them. It’s as good as sending my boy to hell to send him to sea.”
“I can’t help you. I’m sorry—very sorry.”
Her wildly beseeching eyes fell before the sad sternness of his. She nodded meekly:
“All right, sir. Thank you, sir. You know best, I suppose.”
And with this Thy-will-be-done she accepted her fate. She was used to being denied her prayers. She turned and moved across the grass toward the gate. She paused once or twice to look back, as if hoping that he would relent. RoBards gazed at her with profound pity, but he could not grant her plea. Finding that he would not beckon her to return, Mrs. Lasher nodded, slipped through the gate, and moved on to what must be almost the funeral of her boy.
She left RoBards in as much confusion as his benumbed spirit could feel. The reptile Jud had evidently told his mother only a part of the story. He had remembered enough to lie about the cause of his punishment. But how long could he be trusted to keep the rest concealed?
Who could keep a secret? Immy’s pitiful future was already at the mercy of her own babbling, of her little brother’s wondering, of the farmer’s wife who loved gossip, and of twist-wit Jud.
RoBards was afraid even of his own power to keep it inviolate. Suppose he himself talked in his sleep and Patty heard him? Suppose that in one of his wild tempers, when wrath like a drunkenness made him eager to fling off all decencies and rave in insults, he should hurl this truth at Patty or someone else?