“Oh, this is too much, this is just a little too much! How much am I supposed to endure? Will somebody please tell me how much I am expected to stand? That’s all I ask. Just tell me where my rights begin, if ever. If ever! My baby! My little, little baby that has never seen me and never can see me! Why, they won’t even let me hold my own baby in my arms!”
RoBards stared at her in such pity that his heart seemed to beat up into his throat. Patty knelt and put out her hands to Immy in prayer for mercy, but Immy pushed them away, and threshed about like a broken jumping jack yanked by an invisible giant child.
She turned her head to him and pleaded: “Papa! you bring me my baby. You always get me what I want, papa. Get me my baby!”
Since life seemed determined to deny him his every plea, RoBards resolved that he at least would not deny anyone else anything—especially not Immy. He went to the big chair where the blanketed bundle was and gathering the child into his aching arms carried it to Immy and laid it in hers.
The way her hands and her gaze and her moans and her tears rushed out to welcome it persuaded him that he had done the right thing. If ever property had been restored to its owner, now was the time.
He could not bear to see the grief that bled about the child from Immy’s eyes. She held it close under her down-showering curls and her tears streamed over it like rain from the eaves on snow. They could not waken roses or violets, but they eased the sky.
She wept no longer the harsh brine of hate. Her grief was pure regret, the meek, the baffled yearning for things that cannot be in this helpless world.
This was that doll that as a little girl she had held to her merely hinted breasts and had rocked to sleep and made fairy plans for. Now and then as she wagged her head over it, and boasted of its beauty, she would laugh a little and look up with a smile all awry and tear-streaked.
And that was what broke RoBards: to see her battling so bravely to find something beautiful, some pretext for laughter in the poor rubbish of her life. He wondered that it did not break God’s heart to see such a face uplifted. Perhaps he could not see so far. Perhaps he turned away and rushed across the stars to hide from her, as RoBards fled from her.
He hobbled into his library, that wolf-den of his, and he glared at it with hatred of everything in it. He lighted the kindling laid crosswise in the fireplace, to hear flames crackle, and to fight the dank chill.