RoBards could almost believe that Jud Lasher down there in the walls was also quickened with suspense. His term in hell might depend on this far-off consequence of his deed.
CHAPTER XXXII
A strange thing, a word: and stranger, the terror of it. Stranger still, the things everybody knows that must never be named. Strangest of all, that the mind sees most vividly what is not mentioned, what cannot be told.
Immy, for all her rebellious modernness and impatience of old-fashioned pruderies, was a slave of the word.
And now she must make clear to a young man of even greater nicety than she, an adventure it would have sobered a physician to describe to another. She gasped and groped and filled her story with the pervividness of eloquent silences:
“It was when I was a little girl—a very little girl. There was a big terrible boy—a young man, rather—who lived down the road—ugly and horrible as a hyena. And one day—when Papa was gone—and I was playing—he came along and he spoke to me with a grin and a—a funny look in his eyes. And he took hold of me—it was like a snake! and I tried to break loose—and my little brother fought him. But he knocked and kicked Keith down—and took me up and carried me away. I fought and screamed but he put his hand over my mouth and almost smothered me—and kept on running—then—then——”
Then there was a hush so deep that RoBards felt he could hear his tears where they struck the carpet under his feet. His eyelids were locked in woe, but he seemed to see what she thought of; he seemed to see the frightened eyes of Ernest Chirnside trying not to understand.
Immy went on:
“Then Jud Lasher heard Papa coming and he ran. Papa caught him and beat him almost to death—but it was too late to save me. I didn’t understand much, then. But now—! Papa made me promise never to speak of it; but you have a higher right than anybody, Ernest—that is, if you still—unless you—oh, tell me!—speak!—say something!”
The boy spoke with an unimaginable wolfishness in his throat: