He was tempted to resign his judgeship, feeling that he was unworthy of the high bench, since he had committed crimes, and had been ready to commit others, and had on his soul crimes that he regretted not committing.
But he lacked the courage or the folly to publish his true reasons for resigning and he could think of no pretexts. He solaced himself with the partially submerged scandals of other jurists, and wondered where a perfect soul could be found to act as judge if perfection were to be demanded. Even Christ had put to flight all of the accusers of the taken woman and had let her go free with a word of good advice.
At times the memory of his own black revolt against the laws softened RoBards’ heart when he had before him men or women accused of sins, and he punished them with nothing more than a warning. At other times his own guilt made him merciless to the prisoners of discovery, and he struck out with the frenzy of a man in torment, or with the spirit of the college boys who hazed their juniors cruelly because they had themselves been hazed by their seniors.
Deep perplexities wrung his heart when poor souls stood beneath his eyes charged with the smuggling of unlicensed children into the world, children without a passport, outlaw children stamped with the strange label “illegitimate.”
They and their importers wore a new cloak in RoBards’ eyes. They had been hitherto ridiculous, or contemptible, or odious. Now he understood what malice there was in the joke that passion had played on them. They were the scorched victims of a fire against which they had taken out no insurance. Like Immy they must have suffered bitter ecstasies of terrified rapture, long vigils of bewilderment, heartbreaks of racking pain, with ludicrous disgrace for their recompense.
The Albesons returned from Georgia with such a report as a Northern farmer might have made on Southern soil without the trouble of the journey. RoBards pretended to be satisfied. They found that Immy was not so much improved as they expected—“Kind of peaked and poorly,” Abby complained.
Immy came back to town and though she never quite lost that prayer in the eyes known as the “hunted look,” she began to find escape and finally delight in her old gayeties.
Then Captain Harry Chalender returned from California on one of the Yankee clippers that were astounding the world by their greyhound speed. It took him barely seventy-six days to sail from San Francisco around the Horn to Sandy Hook, the whole trip needing only seven months. It was indeed the age of restless velocity. Chalender came in as usual with the prestige of broken records.
He was rich and full of traveler’s tales of wild justice, Vigilante executions, deluges of gold, fantastic splendors amid grueling hardships.
His anecdotes bored RoBards, who listened to them with the poor appetite of a stay-at-home for a wanderer’s brag. But Patty listened hungrily, and Immy was as entranced as Desdemona hearkening to the Moor. Chalender brought Patty a handsome gift and dared to bring a handsomer to Immy.