RoBards and Chalender looked straight at one another for the first time perhaps; and each wondered at the other’s sorrow.
By and by Chalender sighed and murmured:
“Thank you, David. I think I shall sleep now. Good night, old man; and God help us all.”
CHAPTER LII
Fleeing from the oppressiveness of the farm, RoBards returned to St. John’s Park to find it alive with memories of Patty. He loved to recall their quarrels, her vanities, her extravagances, her fierce unreasonable tempers, the impudent advantages she took of his love, her hostility to all laws and orders, the flitting graces she revealed. He loved her for them, more than for her earnest moods, her noble whims, her instants of grandeur. A swallow for its wildness, a humming bird for its teasing, a kitten for its scampers—a woman for her unlikeness to a man’s ideals—we love them for what they will not give us!
Only a little while could RoBards revel in his lavendered memories, for St. John’s Park was taken over by a railroad company as the site for a big freight station. All of the inhabitants were evicted like paupers from a tenement. The quondam retreat of gentility in search of peace was now a bedlam of noisy commerce, of thudding cars and squeaking brakes.
RoBards wanted to seal the house like a sacred casket of remembrances, but it was torn down in spite of him and the place of it knew it no more.
The city seemed to pursue RoBards. The people swarmed after him and never retreated. Keith took a house in town, and asked his father to live with him, but RoBards, thinking of what a burden old Jessamine had been in his own home, would not risk a repetition of that offense.
Again he lived at a hotel and at his office. Having nothing else to fill his heart, he gave all his soul to the law and became a mighty pleader in the courts. As the city grew, great businesses developed and ponderous litigations increased, involving enormous sums. His fees were in proportion and, finding that his value seemed to be measured by the size of his charges, he flattered his clients by his exorbitance.
For his own satisfaction he took up now and then the defense of a criminal, a murderer, a murderess, anybody who had passionately smashed the laws of God and man. And it fascinated him to rescue the culprit from penalty of any sort; to play upon the public and its twelve senators in the jury box until they all forgave the offense and made a martyr of the offender, applauded the verdict of “Not Guilty.”