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Title: Rhoda of the Underground

Author: Florence Finch Kelly

Illustrator: Margaret West Kinney
        Troy Kinney

Release date: November 28, 2022 [eBook #69435]
                Most recently updated: January 9, 2023

Language: English

Original publication: United States: Sturgis & Walton Company

Credits: D A Alexander, David E. Brown, and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (The New York Public Library's Digital Collections)


*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK RHODA OF THE UNDERGROUND ***





RHODA OF THE UNDERGROUND


[Illustration: “He listened with her hand clasped in his.”]




  RHODA OF THE
  UNDERGROUND

  By
  FLORENCE FINCH KELLY

  Author of “With Hoops of Steel,” “The Delafield
  Affair,” etc., etc.

  WITH ILLUSTRATIONS BY
  THE KINNEYS

  New York
  STURGIS & WALTON
  COMPANY
  1909




  Copyright 1909
  By STURGIS & WALTON COMPANY

  Set up and electrotyped. Published November, 1909

  THE MASON-HENRY PRESS
  SYRACUSE AND NEW YORK




ILLUSTRATIONS


  “He listened, with her hand clasped in his.”              Frontispiece

                                                             FACING PAGE

  “‘You won’t shoot him?’ she demanded, turning sharply around”       68

  “Inside were a withered rose and a letter”                         100

  “‘Don’t Jeff, please don’t!’ she pleaded”                          250




RHODA OF THE UNDERGROUND




CHAPTER I


The benediction of God was in the sunshine that lay still and bright
upon green fields and blooming gardens. The town, marshaled along the
river side, nestled quietly under the caressing warmth. Down by the
steamboat landing it stirred into sudden noisy activity as the up-river
boat drew in and made ready to discharge cargo and passengers. But
farther back, where the streets, lined with maple and butternut trees
and white-blossomed locusts, climbed the long sloping hill, the May
sunshine seemed to have kissed the earth into radiant peace. Here and
there, from some white-painted cottage set in a grassy, tree-shaded
yard, came the sound of a woman’s voice in speech or song, or the
shrilly sweet accents of children at play floated out from porch or
shady nook.

The lilac bushes in a yard at the top of the hill, hedging the walk
from front door to gate, lazily stirred their lavender foam and sent
forth waves of fragrance. The house, uncompromisingly white and square
and solid-looking, with green shutters at the windows, had a wide,
columned veranda across the southward front and down the eastern side.
Upon the balmy stillness in which it too was enveloped there came a
sound of dancing steps and girlish laughter, and a young woman ran
out of the front door, teasing with a leafy switch a gray kitten that
scampered at her side. Her spreading skirts, crinolined and beruffled,
tilted back and forth, and with a sudden twist she caught the kitten
within their cage. As it peeked out, with a half-frightened face, ready
to spring away, she caught it by the back of the neck and lifted it to
the bend of her arm.

“No, you didn’t, Prince of Walesy!” she laughed. “You’re not smart
enough yet to get away from me like that!” Leaning against the
veranda rail she gazed watchfully down the street while she pinched
the kitten’s ears until it squeaked and then stroked it into purring
content. The sunlight brought out reddish and golden gleams in her dark
brown hair.

“Walesy, why don’t they come!” she exclaimed with an impatient frown,
pulling the cat’s tail while it protested with growl and claw. “I
heard the steamboat a long time ago.” Her eyes sought the glimpses of
sparkling river between the trees and she descried a thin banner of
smoke moving up-stream. “Yes, there it goes! They’ll surely be here
soon! Now don’t make such a fuss about having your tail pulled. You’ll
just have to get used to it!”

She began to whistle softly, stopped, cast a backward glance at the
open door, made a little grimace and struck again into her tune,
louder than before. Up the street, under the drooping white masses of
locust bloom, came a two-seated carriage. “Mother! They’re coming!
They’re right here!” she called. Then with the kitten still in her arm
she scurried down the path between the walls of fragrant lilac, her
crinolined skirt giving glimpses of trimly slippered feet as it tilted
from side to side. Unlatching the gate she stepped upon its lower
cross-piece and swung back upon it as far as it would go. “Father!
Rhoda!” she called out joyously, and was herself welcomed with “Well,
Charlotte!” and a kiss by her father and a laughing embrace by her
sister. One of the tall, square gate-posts bore the sign, “Dr. Amos M.
Ware.”

“Now let’s take in the things!” cried Charlotte. “I’m just dying to
see what you’ve brought! Here, Jim,” to the negro who was holding the
horses, “come and carry in these bundles.”

Within the house there was eager cross-fire of question and answer,
punctuated by frequent exclamations of delight, as the two sisters and
their mother unwrapped the parcels and examined their contents.

“This is for mother,” said Rhoda, shaking out a light wool wrap.
“They’re wearing these little shawls so much this spring. Charlotte,
doesn’t she look nice in it!” Throwing her arms around her mother’s
shoulders Rhoda kissed her twice and then rushed back to the table
piled with packages. “And I’ve got the sweetest bonnet for you,
Charlotte!” she went on, opening a bandbox. “There! isn’t that lovely,
mother?” She tied the strings under Charlotte’s chin and all three
clustered about the mirror as the girl critically surveyed herself
therein.

The bonnet covered her head, in the fashion of the days “before the
war,” and the wreath of flowers inside its front made a dainty frame
that seemed to be trying to compel into demureness the saucy face with
its tip-tilted nose and mischievous brown eyes.

The two sisters, reflected side by side in the mirror, looked oddly
unlike. Charlotte’s deep tones of hair and eyes and rich coloring paled
in her elder sister into light brown and gray, and faint rose-bloom
upon her cheek. But Rhoda’s straight, thin-nostriled nose gave to her
countenance a certain dignity which the other’s lacked, while her
mouth, with its curved upper lip, just short enough to part easily
from its full red fellow, had a piquant sweetness more attractive than
her sister’s more regular features. Her eyes, large and gray, and
indeed all the upper part of her face, had a serious expression. At
the corners of her mouth there was just the suggestion of an upward
turn, like that in the Mona Lisa. It gave to the lower part of her face
an expression curiously contradictory of the grave upper part, as if
sense of the joyousness of life were always hovering there and ready at
any moment to break forth in laughter. When she did smile there was a
sudden irradiation of her whole countenance. The short upper lip lifted
above white teeth, the faint upward curve at the corners of her mouth
deepened and her eyes twinkled gaily. But no one ever accounted Rhoda
so handsome as her younger sister. Even those who admired her most
thought her forehead too high and her cheek bones too prominent for
beauty.

“And this muslin is for a dress for you, Charlotte,” Rhoda went on,
holding it up for their inspection. “Isn’t this vine a lovely pattern,
mother? We must make it with three wide flounces, from the foot to the
waist, and the skirt even wider than these we’re wearing now. And this
white silk is to make a drawn bonnet for you, mother. I saw several of
them in Cincinnati--they’re quite the latest thing. I have the pattern
and directions and I’m sure I can do it.”

There were only three of them, but as they moved about in their big,
balloon-like skirts, examining, comparing, discussing the purchases,
they seemed to pervade the whole large room with the essence of
femininity and to fill it with their bodily presence.

“What’s this?” said Charlotte, taking up a small package. “It feels
like a book.” And she began to undo its wrappings.

Rhoda looked, then half turned away. “It is a book--one father bought
for me. You won’t care about it.”

Charlotte glanced at her curiously and with increased interest went
on with the unwrapping. “Oh! ‘Uncle Tom’s Cabin!’” she exclaimed
disdainfully as she tossed the book away. “What do you want to read
that for? Walesy, stop it!” And with a backward jump and a downward
swoop she extricated the kitten from beneath her hoopskirt, boxed its
ears and then cuddled it in her arm, whence in a moment more issued
sounds of distress and anger.

Her mother spoke reprovingly, in soft tones that betrayed southern
birth: “Charlotte, don’t hurt the little thing! Do try to remember that
you’re grown up!”

The girl rubbed the kitten against her face and cooed: “Well, it was
its own Charlotte’s precious Prince of Walesy kitty-cat and if it wants
to say that ‘Uncle Tom’s Cabin’ is just a nasty old Black Republican
mess of lies it shall, so it shall! Shan’t you, Walesy?”

The kitten’s vehement response, slyly inspired, went unheeded as she
turned again to her sister, demanding, “What do you want to read it
for, Rhoda, when you know it’s just a lot of stuff with no truth in it?”

“I don’t know that, Charlotte. I’ve wanted to read it for a long time,
because it’s talked about so much. And while we were in Cincinnati
we went to Levi Coffin’s, and they told us so much about Mrs. Stowe,
and how she got some of the incidents for the story and talked such a
lot about--the darkies who--try to go to Canada that it made me very
anxious to read the book.”

“Who’s Levi Coffin?” asked Charlotte, regarding her sister closely and
noting a brief hesitation as Rhoda carefully folded the white silk
before she replied: “Oh, just a friend of father’s. They’re Quakers and
they wouldn’t interest you.”

Charlotte reached for the book and turned its leaves over carelessly.
“Humph! If they’re friends of Mrs. Stowe they’re probably just some
more nigger-stealers! You’ll soon be a black abolitionist yourself,
Rhoda, if you keep on. And then we won’t associate with her, will we,
Walesy! Didn’t you meet any nice people?”

Rhoda paid no heed to her sister’s aggressive tone. “Oh, yes! Mrs.
Benjamin Harrison--Carrie Scott, you know--she and I were such good
friends while I was at Dr. Scott’s Institute--happened to be visiting
in Cincinnati and she and I had a long talk. And I saw several other
girls whom I knew at Dr. Scott’s. And--oh, mother! You’ll be so
pleased!” Her color warmed and her face brightened as she went on. “It
was most romantic! We met Mr. Jefferson Delavan!”

“Oh, did you! Where? How did it happen? Tell me all about it!” Mrs.
Ware’s eager questions and delighted face showed how nearly the
information touched her heart. But Charlotte merely demanded, with
puzzled interest, “Who is he?”

“Don’t you remember, Charlotte?” Rhoda went on. “His mother was
Adeline Fairfax, mother’s dear friend when they were girls together in
Virginia. My middle name is after her, you know, and it’s her miniature
that mother has on her dressing table.”

“Oh, yes!” exclaimed Charlotte. “It was at her home that we visited,
wasn’t it, a long time ago, in Kentucky?”

“Yes--Fairmount, they call it. Such a beautiful place, just beyond
Lexington. Mother and you and I visited there for a month, twelve years
ago, wasn’t it, mother, when we first came here to Hillside. You were
only six years old then, so I suppose you don’t remember much about it.
But I remember it all very well and what a good time we had.”

“Poor, dear Adeline!” Mrs. Ware was wiping her eyes. “She and I did
enjoy that visit so much! And we never saw each other again, for she
died the next year. If she had lived you and her children would have
seen a great deal of each other. But do tell me about Jeff, Rhoda!
Where did you see him? And how did he know who you were? He was such a
fine boy--about twelve years old, wasn’t he?--when we were there. Just
two years older than you, Rhoda. Did you meet him in Cincinnati?”

“No. He was on the steamboat when we went down and the captain--it was
Captain Laidlaw, father’s friend, you know--introduced him to us, and
then he remembered who we were and we had great fun talking over the
good times we had at Fairmount.”

“Was his sister Emily with him? She was named for me, you know. Is
either of them married yet?”

“No, she wasn’t with him, and neither one of them is married. He told
me his father’s sister has lived with them ever since his mother died.
His father died too last year and now he manages the plantation.”

“Is he handsome?” queried Charlotte.

“N--no, not exactly handsome. But very fine-looking, and so courteous!”

“Then you saw more of him after you left the steamboat?”

“Yes. He called on us in Cincinnati, and we went out together several
times and then it happened that he finished his business there in time
to take the same steamboat back that we did.”

Charlotte regarded her sister with dancing eyes. “Is he coming up here
to visit--us?” she demanded. Rhoda reddened under her scrutiny. She did
not always find it easy to keep her composure under Charlotte’s habit
of making audacious deductions and voicing reckless intuitions. But she
had learned long before that to betray embarrassment was to invite more
questioning. She answered with apparent unconcern:

“Father asked him to come and told him how pleased mother would be to
see him, and he said that he expected to be up near the river before
long and he would cross over and call on us.”

“Dear boy! Indeed, I shall be glad to see him! Adeline’s son--how time
does fly!”

“Does he own slaves?” said Charlotte, her eyes still on her sister’s
face.

“Of course!” replied Mrs. Ware. “You evidently don’t remember the
place, Charlotte. It is a large tobacco plantation, and when we were
there Mr. Delavan had a great many slaves.”

Charlotte sprang to her feet and poised the kitten on her shoulder.
“Then you won’t like him, Rhoda--and I shall!” Whistling merrily, she
took some dancing steps toward the door.

“Charlotte!” called her mother reprovingly, “Do try to remember that
you’re not a child any more! I’ve told you so often it’s not ladylike
to whistle!”

Rhoda smiled at her fondly. “Don’t you know, sister, what happens to
whistling women and crowing hens?”

“Oh fudge! That’s all nonsense. I heard a better one the other day--

  ‘Girls that whistle and hens that crow
  Catch the pleasures as they go.’

There’s some truth in that! I’m going to show father my new bonnet, and
he doesn’t care if I do whistle!”

Mrs. Ware gazed after her as she floated down the veranda and
disappeared around the corner of the house, tilting her skirts and
whistling.

“I did hope Charlotte wouldn’t be so trying after she became a young
lady!” she said in soft, plaintive tones.

“Never mind, mother. She doesn’t really mean to be trying. She does it
just the same as she pinches the kitten’s tail, to make it meaow. If
you don’t pay any attention to her she’ll quit much sooner.”

Mrs. Ware crossed the room to her daughter, pressed an arm around her
waist and kissed her cheek. “I’m so glad you happened to meet Jeff
Delavan,” she murmured. “If he comes to see us, and I’m sure he will--”
she glanced at the warmer color that flushed Rhoda’s face, smiled, and
went on, “What did you buy for yourself, dear?”




CHAPTER II


“Father! Can these things be true? Oh, how terrible it is! Do such
things really happen now, in this country?”

Rhoda Ware rushed into her father’s office, her cheeks wet with recent
tears, her voice vibrating on the verge of sobs. Dr. Ware looked up
from the medical work he was reading in some surprise. For it was
unusual for her to give way, at least in his presence, to so much
agitation. His professional eye took quick note of her excited nerves.
In the same glance he saw that she held a book tightly grasped in her
trembling hands and read its title. But he did not betray in either
words or manner the fact that he had noticed it or the satisfaction
that it gave him.

“Sit down, Rhoda, and calm yourself,” he said quietly. “What is it you
want to know about? Something you’ve been reading?”

“Yes. It’s ‘Uncle Tom’s Cabin.’ Father, isn’t it exaggerated? Can it be
true?”

Appeal sounded in her tones, the longing of a sensitive nature to be
assured that what it has suffered in imagination no human being has
been called upon to suffer in the thousandfold of reality. He noted her
hurried breathing, with the catch of a half-sob in it now and then,
and as he looked into her appealing eyes the man and the father in him
drew back from saying what he wished to say lest he add to her hurt
and the physician counseled not to increase her excitement. But the
believer in a cause urged him to strike while the iron was hot. And it
was the believer that won, after a mere moment of hesitation.

“You heard what they said at Levi Coffin’s, about many of the incidents
of the book being based on fact. But what you have read there is only a
drop in the bucket!”

As he leaned toward her across his desk and she, seated at the other
side, bent her face toward him, even a casual observer might have seen
their relationship. For her countenance was a copy of his, a young,
soft, feminine copy, but yet formed clearly upon the same plan, even
in the details of feature and coloring. His eyes, large and gray like
hers, were calm and cool and judicial in expression, even when, as
now, they were alight with earnestness. His shaven upper lip, also,
was short, but it pressed upon the lower in a firm line, while all
his countenance expressed a sort of austerity that seemed to bespeak
a mind informed with intense moral conviction rather than hardness or
coldness of nature. But looking at the two faces thus, one could see
in hers the kindling fires of an emotionalism which would be forever
foreign to him, an incipient power of emotional exaltation which would
never be within his possibilities. But if there was less of warmth
in his eyes and of spirituality in his brow, poise and cool judgment
were written there, and far-sightedness, their inevitable offspring.
Of the intellectual, judicial type Dr. Ware’s countenance showed him
to be, and however much or little of such qualities his daughter had
inherited from him, along with her remarkable physical resemblance,
from elsewhere had come the emotional forces which now were trembling
in the sensitive curves of her mouth and glowing in her tear-wet eyes.

“There’s nothing in that book that couldn’t be duplicated right now in
the South, every day in the week,” Dr. Ware was saying in low, even
tones that nevertheless held such intensity of conviction that she
felt her nerves thrilling with it. “And even then, Rhoda, it’s only a
beginning! There are such horrors perpetrated under slavery as a young
girl like you can’t begin to realize!”

She shuddered, and he watched her silently as she pressed her lips
together and deliberately held her breath for a moment in the effort to
master her emotion.

“I don’t think I’ve ever quite realized anything about it before,” she
said in calmer voice, “although I’ve always believed, ever since I’ve
known anything about it, that it is wrong. But I’ve never felt, all
through me”--and she shivered again--“just how wrong it is, until this
book has made it seem all real and alive.”

She hesitated, leaning her arms upon the desk, and a puzzled expression
crossed her face. “But, father,” she presently went on, “why doesn’t
mother feel as you do about it? Her father owned slaves, and until she
married you she had always lived on the plantation with slaves all
around her. And she still thinks that slavery is right and that the
negroes are happier and better off in it than they would be if they
were free. She’s so kind and gentle, how can she feel as she does if
this book is true?”

“Your mother and I, Rhoda, have never discussed the question. Her
father was a kindly man and treated his slaves well, and so the only
conditions that she knew anything about were of slavery at its best.
She had such a happy girlhood on her father’s plantation, where the
slaves were all eager to do anything for her, that her memories of
it are very pleasant. I’ve never wanted to disturb them, because it
wouldn’t do any good and it might spoil the pleasure she takes in
thinking about those days; and so I’ve never talked about it with her,
although she knows, of course, what I think.”

Rhoda threw him an admiring glance, which he, with his eyes averted in
semi-embarrassment at having revealed a glimpse of his inner self to
his offspring, did not see.

“Mother has told us, Charlotte and me,” Rhoda went on thoughtfully, “so
many things about her girlhood and her father’s plantation, and she has
always been so pleased in recalling those days, that I couldn’t help
wondering sometimes if anything could be wrong that made everybody as
happy as they seemed to have been in her home. And Charlotte, you know,
is quite convinced that slavery is all right.”

“Oh, Charlotte!” Dr. Ware exclaimed in an amused tone. “She’s just a
little fire-eater! But she doesn’t mean half she says.”

“Sometimes she doesn’t, but she seems to be getting quite in earnest
about it lately.”

“Like all the rest of us, on both sides,” her father appended.

“Mother says her father never sold a negro,” Rhoda went on, “and that
his slaves were always contented and happy and that the same things
were true on the other plantations where she visited.”

Dr. Ware’s face darkened. “He didn’t, while he lived. But he left his
affairs in such a tangle when he died that most of his slaves were sold
to satisfy his debts. Your mother was ill then--it was about the time
you were born--and I did not tell her, and as we were living in the
North nobody else did, anything about that part of it. To this day she
doesn’t know”--he was clipping off his words in a tone of impersonal
resentment--“that her old mammy, of whom she was so fond, was sold to
a trader who was buying for a cotton plantation in the South. When I
found out about it I tried to have her traced, so as to buy her myself,
bring her North and free her. But I finally found that she was dead and
that her fate, though different, had been no better than Uncle Tom’s.”

The girl drew back with an exclamation of horror, and her eyes filled.
“Oh, father! That good, kind creature, who loved mother so much!”

“Don’t ever tell your mother,” he cautioned. “It would do no good and
it would make her unhappy. You see, Rhoda, how impossible it is for one
man, no matter how good his intentions may be, to keep back the evil
that is inherent in slavery. He can’t make his own affairs better than
the system very long.”

Rhoda was looking out through the open door, her brow puckered in a
thoughtful frown, the pain in her heart evidenced by the droop and the
quiver of her sensitive lips. Dr. Ware’s office was on the eastern side
of the house and faced a gate, opening from the cross street, through
which a young man was now striding hastily.

“There’s Horace Hardaker!” she exclaimed. “How excited he looks! Oh, do
you suppose he’s had bad news from Julia?”

They sprang to their feet and rushed out upon the veranda. “Very
likely,” her father answered. “The border ruffians are overrunning
eastern Kansas. What is it, Horace? What has happened?” he went on,
grasping the young man’s hand as he mounted the steps. They pressed
close to him, expectant, their faces anxious.

“Julia--have you had bad news?” Rhoda threw in breathlessly.

Hardaker’s face was working with suppressed excitement and it was a
moment before he could speak.

“You haven’t heard?” he broke out. “Oh, it’s frightful! Senator Sumner
was attacked yesterday in the senate chamber and beaten almost to
death!”

“My God, Horace! Who did it?” cried Dr. Ware, gripping the other’s
hand, his face paling.

“Preston Brooks--”

“Of South Carolina--yes, go on!”

“Senator Butler’s nephew--that speech of Sumner’s the other day--”

“Yes, yes! The crimes of the South! Brooks has killed him?”

“No, but he may not live. Brooks came upon him from behind, as he sat
at his desk, and while he was penned there pounded him over the head
with a heavy cane.”

“Will the North stand this insult?” Dr. Ware exclaimed, dropping the
other’s hand, which unconsciously he had been gripping and shaking
during their colloquy. With quick steps and short turns he marched
this way and that as they went on talking, running his fingers through
his hair until it stood upright. Rhoda shared in their excitement,
her nerves still tingling from her recent emotion, mind and heart
alike ready to be deeply impressed by the news. With brief, sharp
sentences they broke across one another’s speech, turning pale faces
and glittering eyes from one to another.

“Brooks’s companions held back those who tried to go to Sumner’s help!”

“Oh, what a brutal and cowardly--”

“If the North is not utterly craven--”

“It’s the most atrocious thing they’ve dared yet!”

“Beecher’s bibles are the thing to answer it with!”

“The sooner the better!”

“If there’s any manhood at all in the North!”

After a little they grew calmer and went into the office, where
Hardaker related the details of the event which was about to set both
sections of the country in an uproar. Presently Rhoda asked what news
he had had from his sister Julia, lately married--Rhoda had been her
bridesmaid--and gone with her husband to Kansas. North and South were
in the midst of their bitter struggle for the embryonic state, and
from each settlers were pouring into it, there to translate their
convictions into guerrilla warfare, while their friends at home waited
fearfully each day as news came of battle, murder, the burning of
houses, the sacking of towns.

“We’ve heard nothing worse, so far, than you’ve seen in the papers
already. But it won’t be long. They’re cooking up some dastardly
outrage and any day we may hear that Lawrence has been burned and all
the people killed. Mother never opens the ‘Tribune’ herself now. She
waits for me to look in it first and then tell her what the Kansas
letters say.”

Hardaker was asked to stay to dinner, and Rhoda went to tell her mother
of the guest. Then the two men drew their chairs close together and
spoke in low tones.

“I saw Conners this morning,” said Horace, “and he told me that they’re
watching his place so close now that it isn’t safe to have them come
there any more. And he’s made up his mind to go out to Kansas anyway,
and expects to leave in a month or two. So we’ve got to have a new
station.”

“Yes,” mused Dr. Ware, “there must be some place not too far from the
river where they can hide as soon as possible after they cross. I
wonder if I could manage it here. If I could, this would be just the
place. The house sets up so high that they could steer their course for
it from the other side, and, once across, they could easily make their
way up here after dark.”

“But could you take care of them safely?” the other asked with evident
surprise.

“I couldn’t heretofore, but it may be different now!” and he leaned
forward with a smile of satisfaction. “You saw how moved Rhoda was just
now. She’s been reading ‘Uncle Tom’s Cabin’ and it’s had a profound
effect upon her, just as I hoped it would. She went down to Cincinnati
with me last week and I took her to Levi Coffin’s. She was very much
interested in the talk there--you know about what it was. After she’s
had time to think about it--Rhoda doesn’t do things on impulse, you
know--I believe, Horace, my girl will be ready to help me out!”

“But what about--” Hardaker began, then stopped, embarrassed.

“I know what you mean. I wouldn’t, of course, ask Mrs. Ware to
concern herself actively in the matter, or to know any more about
it than she wanted to. But we could depend on her to keep her own
counsel. Charlotte need not know anything about it--although she’d be
pretty sure to find out all about it before long. Then she’d tell me
frequently and forcibly, just what kind of a pickpocket she considers
me--” He stopped a moment, smiling indulgently, but went on, conviction
in his tone: “But she wouldn’t tell. She’d be loyal to me. And as for
my colored man Jim and his wife Lizzie, in the kitchen, they’ll do
anything under the sun to help the thing along. They bought their
freedom, only a few years ago. I think, Horace, it will be all right!”

Rhoda found her mother and sister in the big, cool sitting-room, Mrs.
Ware darning stockings and Charlotte at the piano, playing “The Battle
of Prague.” She wheeled round at Rhoda’s announcement of the guest for
dinner.

“That Black Abolitionist!” she exclaimed scornfully, her eyes flashing.
“I shall not sit at the table with him!”

“Charlotte!” her mother chided. “Your father’s guest! Be ashamed!”

“Why don’t you decline to sit at the table with father?” Rhoda asked
quietly, but with an unaccustomed tone in her voice that made the other
look at her sharply. Her face and manner still betrayed signs of her
recent agitation. Charlotte saw them and wondered if anything had been
happening between her and Horace Hardaker. She did not know that he had
more than once plead his suit with Rhoda and had been denied.

“Where is he now?” she asked.

“In the office, with father.”

Had he then been making love to Rhoda and was he now getting the
matter settled with their father? Then it would be impossible not to
be present at the dinner table. But for the present she would stick to
her guns. She rose and moved toward the door, giving her hoopskirts an
angry swish.

“No!” she paused to say, with emphasis, “you cannot expect me, thinking
as I do about Horace Hardaker, to sit at the same table with him. I
shall ask Lizzie to save my dinner for me and eat it after he goes
away.”

But when they met in the dining-room Charlotte was already there,
arranging flowers on the table, a rose in her hair and another at her
throat and Hardaker’s place set beside her own. At first his manner
toward her was courteous, though formal, but as the meal progressed and
she smiled upon him, rallied him, and talked to him and at him with
audacious little speeches, his reserve melted and his attention was
gradually centered upon her. Every now and then she stole a glance at
Rhoda, secretly wondering and discomfited that her sister did not seem
more disturbed or make some effort to prevent her from monopolizing
Hardaker’s attention. She reassured herself with thinking, “But she
never does show things out much.”

After dinner Dr. and Mrs. Ware left the three young people together
upon the veranda. Horace asked Rhoda about her visit to Levi Coffin’s
in Cincinnati, but Charlotte cut in with some saucy remarks that
set them to laughing and when presently she strolled off across the
lawn to a grape arbor at the other side of the yard, he was in close
attendance. Rhoda brought her sewing from the house and began hemming
the flounces for Charlotte’s gown.

There was a suggestion of triumph in Charlotte’s expression and manner
when they came back and all three stood under the butternut tree beside
the east gate, where Dr. Ware’s carriage was waiting for him to dismiss
a patient. Had she not taken young Hardaker away from her sister at
once and herself appropriated all his attention? But when she could
not help seeing that the ordinary friendliness between the two was
neither disturbed nor accentuated, she began to think that perhaps her
previous surmise had been mistaken. And when Horace bade them a casual
good-by, in which her keen eyes could discover no trace of any unusual
sentiment, and drove away with their father, she decided that after all
it had not been worth while. “But anyway it was more fun than eating
dinner alone,” she thought. “And when Mr. Jefferson Delavan comes--”




CHAPTER III


We blundering humans are much given to looking back over our lives and
saying, “There we made a mistake. If it were to do over again we would
do thus and so, and then things would turn out much better and happier.”

But if we could go back and live our lives over again, at how many of
the turning points would we have the courage, or the desire, to take
the other direction? How often would we care to risk any different
combination of events than that which we had formerly dared? For
experience has taught us, at least, how endless and how momentous is
the line of events, not only for ourselves but also for a growing
multitude of others, that we set in motion with each choice of the
forking road. Moved by our own desires and the compelling force of
outward circumstances we travel over the course the first time,
choosing our route with little thought for the intricate coils of
consequence that hang upon our steps. But if we were to journey over
it again would not our feet drag at the turnings and waver back to the
path we already knew, rather than venture blindly upon some new chain
of events, leading none could tell whither and ending only with the end
of time?

Thus did it happen that Dr. Amos M. Ware in after years sometimes
debated with himself as to whether he made a mistake in not speaking
sooner to his daughter Rhoda about the work, of deep concern to him,
in which he hoped to enlist her sympathy and help. Often did he ask
himself if perhaps it would not have been better for her had he laid
his plan before her at once, on the very day of Hardaker’s visit, when
her mind and heart were so deeply impressed that there would have been
little doubt of her acquiescence. But he wanted to talk with her more,
to give her more things to read, and so to lead her deeper into the
heart of the fires with which North and South were burning. And in the
meantime came Jefferson Delavan.

Afterwards he was wont to say to himself that if he had spoken, and
everything had been arranged and the work started before that event
happened, the young man’s coming would have made little difference to
Rhoda, that then he would simply have gone away again and that would
have been the end of it. But he was wont also to reassure himself with
the thought that perhaps Delavan would have come again anyway, and
that, even if he had not returned, perhaps it would have been no better
for Rhoda. But the “ifs” and “perhapses” so tangled up his reflections
that he always ended by thinking he would not quite like to risk
acting differently if it were to do over again.

Of course, there would have been a story anyway, no matter what
Dr. Ware might have done at that particular juncture, nor what the
consequences of his action might have been. It would not have been the
story I am about to relate, and perhaps Jefferson Delavan would not
have been in it. But given Rhoda Ware and given her environment, it
would have been bound to be a story somewhat out of the ordinary. As
to that, however, in every human life there is a story that needs only
adequate telling to make it seem more interesting than life does to the
most of us.

Rhoda Ware’s father did not know what she thought, nor, indeed, whether
or not she had any conviction, upon the right or wrong of the system
of helping and hasting fugitive slaves through the northern states to
Canada and freedom which in that day was known, and has passed into
history, as the Underground Railroad. He did feel sure, and his pride
in her increased with the thought, that if she were not convinced of
its righteousness, although it was in defiance of the law, she would
not engage in it. But he also felt sure that if she saw the matter as
did he and his co-workers, as a question of the right of the individual
conscience above the general law, she would come to his assistance with
courage and enthusiasm. And therefore before broaching the subject he
wished to make sure of her convictions upon all the points that led up
to this practical climax.

Like thousands upon thousands of others, her first keen feeling upon
the subject of slavery was aroused by the reading of Mrs. Stowe’s
fateful book. She was only one of the unnumbered host for whom its
emotional appeal was the first incentive to active opposition. The
influence of “Uncle Tom’s Cabin” upon the course of events preceding
the Civil War is proof of how much more ready we Americans are to be
moved by our emotions than by argument, of how much more willing we are
to think with our hearts than with our heads.

Dr. Ware put into her hands Senator Sumner’s speech on “The Crime
against Kansas,” the cause of the assault upon him, which was being
read all through the north by the hundred thousand copies, and he
brought her reports of the huge meetings of indignation held in Boston,
New York, and other cities, and presided over and addressed by men of
national fame. From Kansas the news of the sacking of Lawrence added
fuel to the flame of anger that was sweeping over the North, and to
the feeling of horror and reprobation in which Rhoda joined there was
added in her mind the note of personal resentment. For a letter from
her friend Julia Hammerton, Horace Hardaker’s sister, gave an intimate
account of the attack and told of the indignities and loss herself and
her husband had suffered at the hands of the border ruffians.

Rhoda was deeply moved by these events and day by day became more
keenly interested, while her father, watching her closely, decided
that soon he would speak to her upon the project he had so much at
heart. He purposed to lay before her the whole question, tell her of
the part which it was his desire to take in the work of the Underground
Railroad, and ask for her coöperation.

Underneath the apparent peace in which the Ohio river town of Hillside
basked in the sweet May sunshine of that day when Rhoda and her father
drove up the hill on their return from Cincinnati, feeling on the
slavery question ran deep and bitter. And the events which had happened
since that day had intensified the heat and the bitterness until,
just as all over the country, men felt that they were dwelling over a
volcano which might break out at any moment, none could tell with what
violence and destruction. The pro-slavery element of the town, quick to
seize every opportunity of expressing its friendliness for the South,
held a meeting at which resolutions were passed lauding Representative
Brooks for his chivalry in coming to the defense of his kinsman and
his state, and declaring that he deserved the admiration of all who
believed in honor and manliness for the justly deserved punishment he
had meted out to a notorious abolitionist. And then money was donated
with enthusiasm for the purchase of a cane to be presented to him which
should bear the inscription, “Use knock-down arguments” and the device
of a broken human head.

The anti-slavery element planned to hold a meeting two nights later at
which they proposed to express their feelings in denunciation of Brooks
and in praise of Sumner and his speech, to voice their indignation
over the course of events in Kansas, and to ask for money for the
relief of the free-state settlers and for the sending of more colonists
with whom to swell their numbers. It was Dr. Ware’s intention to take
Rhoda to this meeting, at which he was to make the principal speech,
and immediately afterward to have with her the conversation which he
believed would secure her help.

But in the afternoon of that day Jefferson Delavan appeared at the door
of his office and hoped he might present his respects to Mrs. Ware and
Miss Rhoda.




CHAPTER IV


“‘A felon’s blow,’ indeed! O, la, you horrid thing!”

Charlotte Ware, alone in the living-room, rocked violently back and
forth a few times, apparently as an outlet for her indignation, then
turned her flushed cheeks and snapping eyes again upon the New York
“Tribune” in her hands. She stayed her rocking for a moment, absorbed
in the article which had aroused her anger, but presently broke out
again:

“‘The symbol of the South is the bludgeon!’ Oh, you wretch!”

She struck the page with her fist, but went on reading again until she
came to some sentiment which gave a still deeper prod to her anger.
Then springing to her feet, she crushed the journal into a ball,
whipped off her slipper and began to spank vigorously the offending
news. The paper flew from her hands and the kitten, which had tumbled
from her lap, whisked after it. She pursued and sent it across the room
with another blow, ran after it and beat it again, exclaiming, “There!
That’s what you deserve!”

“Charlotte, what are you doing?” It was her father’s voice at the
door, and without looking up she answered, between her whacks at the
tattered paper:

“It’s that old meeting in New York about Sumner and I’m giving that
horrid Beecher person’s speech what it deserves, and I wish it was him!”

“Bravo, Miss Charlotte!” came quick response in a strange masculine
voice, followed by a hearty laugh and two or three little handclaps.

She wheeled, her slipper in her hand, and saw a young man beside her
father in the doorway, a good-looking young man, broad-shouldered and
erect of stature. It flashed upon her that this must be Mr. Jefferson
Delavan. Under cover of picking up the kitten she adroitly slipped on
her shoe. As she came forward, blushing and confused, trying to cover
her embarrassment with an extra tilting of her hoopskirt and a pouting,
defiant little smile, she seemed to Delavan to be little more than a
spoiled, amusing child, so sweet and dainty to look at that to indulge
her would be a pleasure.

Mrs. Ware was delighted by Delavan’s coming, and would listen to no
other arrangement than that he should stay with them, at least over
night. When she heard this Charlotte considered whether or not she
should deny herself the excitement of attending the meeting that night.
She had already accepted the escort of a young admirer whose sentiments
were as vehemently pro-slavery as her own, and he had confided to
her that something interesting was likely to happen. Perhaps it would
be just as interesting to stay at home and prevent Mr. Delavan from
showing Rhoda too much attention. But there would be opportunity for
that afterward, and the meeting would be only that evening. So she
decided not to send word to her escort that she had changed her mind.
When she came downstairs ready to go, her father, meeting her in the
hall, said, with more gravity than he was accustomed to use toward her:

“I hope, Charlotte, you won’t let that young Saunders forget who you
are.”

“Don’t you worry, father,” she responded assuringly. “I won’t let him
hiss you, anyway.”

With much inward regret Dr. Ware gave up his plan of taking Rhoda to
the meeting with him. She and her mother sat on the veranda with their
guest and Mrs. Ware told them anecdotes about her own and his mother’s
girlhood and of the intimacy which had caused the young women to be
known among all their acquaintance as “the two alter egos.” “And after
awhile,” said Mrs. Ware, in happy reminiscence, “they always called one
of us ‘alter’ and the other ‘ego,’ without making any distinction as to
which was which.”

In the days of that friendship they had had their miniatures painted,
each for the other, and Delavan had brought, from his dead mother’s
possessions, that of Mrs. Ware.

“I thought you might like to have it again, Mrs. Ware, madam,” he said,
in his slightly ceremonious manner, “either for yourself, as a memento
of your girlhood, or to give to Miss Rhoda.”

Rhoda bent over it with eager, tender interest. “Oh, mother!” she
exclaimed, “does this really look as you did then? How you have
changed!” And, indeed, in her matronly figure, short and plump, there
was little suggestion of the trim and graceful outlines of the young
girl in the picture. The brown hair had grown quite gray, the bright
color had faded from the face, and the dainty contour of cheek, chin
and throat had been despoiled by the quarter-century which had since
passed over her head. But although the years had stolen her beauty they
had left in its place a worthy gift. For motherliness informed her
features, her look was tender, and the grace of gentleness controlled
her manner.

Delavan was at Rhoda’s elbow, looking at the miniature with her, and
now and then stealing a glance from the portrait to the girl’s face.
“You needn’t do that, Jeff,” Mrs. Ware smiled at him, “for you can’t
find the least resemblance to me in Rhoda’s features. She’s like her
father in looks and disposition and everything,” and her eyes rested
fondly upon her first-born.

“But how much it is like Charlotte!” Rhoda insisted, and pointed out
the likeness in mouth and chin, nose and brow, in expression and in
coloring.

Moved to tender retrospection by the memories that came crowding upon
her, she told them about her courtship and marriage. “It was at White
Sulphur Springs that I first met your father, Rhoda,” she said, “and
from the very start he never seemed to have eyes for anybody but me.
He was from the North, you know, from Providence, and he was taking a
horseback trip through the South for his health. He had letters to the
Colbys, good friends of ours who were there too, and so I soon met him.
Ah, what happy times we used to have at White Sulphur!” and she went
on to tell of rides and dances and flirtations in which they heard the
names of gay young gallants, known to them now as men of prominence in
Washington or capital cities in the South.

“But father--what became of him?” reminded Rhoda.

“Oh, he was always wherever I was, as long as he stayed at the
Springs, that summer. Afterwards he was with the Colbys, who owned
the next plantation to ours, tutoring their boys. That was such a gay
winter--something going on all the time--dear me!” She broke off into
a happy little laugh and the spirit of that long dead time flared up
again in the instinctive coquetry with which she tossed her head, moved
in her chair and flourished her fan. Delavan looked at her and smiled,
thinking of the Amos M. Ware of those days and wondering what would be
his account of that winter. Rhoda’s eyes noted the movement and the
expression and she thought, “That’s just like Charlotte!”

“My people did not want me to marry him,” Mrs. Ware went on, “because
he was a northerner. But one day he came to take me to ride--two such
splendid black horses they were, and how they could travel! Well,
we went, for I always had my own way, and such a wild ride we had!
We galloped and galloped, and I was very gay, as I always was, but
your father, Rhoda, looked so serious and strange that I was a little
frightened inside of me, though I wouldn’t have let him know it for
the world. I suppose that made me--a little--worse than usual, and he
didn’t say anything, but just made the horses go faster and faster, and
after a while he rode close beside me and seized my arm and said-- O,
never mind what he said!”--her voice trembled and almost broke and it
was a moment before she went on. “Well, the end of it was that we ran
away and were married. Of course my people were very angry about it,
but they forgave me, as I knew they would, though they never did quite
forgive him. He took me away at once to New York, where he wanted to
study medicine, and I never lived in the South again.”

Rhoda listened with a little tremor in her nerves and her heart
beating faster. Vividly the vision came before her--the pretty, gay
young woman with her wilful coquetries and the masterful young man
urging their horses faster and faster--and they were her father and
mother! How strange it seemed to think of them under the stress of such
a wild, compelling love. That, then, was what love was like--for its
sake her mother had dared the anger of her people, and had given up
them and their love and her home and all her early associations which
had meant to her such great happiness. The moon was swimming upward
through a sea-like expanse of dim blue sky and casting its spell of
beauty over the flower-decked yard, the solemn tree shapes guarding
the street and the glimpses of river beyond. Fireflies were weaving
patterns of light down among the shrubbery and behind it the white
palings of the fence gleamed, unreal as the walls of a dream palace. Up
from the rose-laden bushes, on the softly stirring air, came waves of
fragrance.

Mrs. Ware was going on with a story about Delavan’s mother and herself
and Rhoda heard her mention her “old mammy”! Instantly the girl’s
thought flashed to what her father had told her a little while before,
and the tears came to her eyes at the realizing sense of how his love
had shielded for his wife her memories and her pleasure in them. This,
then, was what love was like--but suddenly imagination drove thought
away and again she saw the vision of those two young lovers galloping
faster and faster, while love plied whip and spur. Then without warning
her mind played a trick upon her and there flashed across it a memory
of her own--of children playing pirates, herself and the other girls
princesses in short dresses and pantalettes, and the man now sitting
beside her, a long-legged boy, bearing down upon their palace, singling
her out and bearing her away to his treasure cave.

They strolled down into the yard, but Mrs. Ware did not like the dew
on the grass and went back to the veranda. Rhoda and Delavan idled on
through the moonlight.

“Do you know what I’ve just been thinking of?” he questioned.

“No. How could I? But--” she plucked a red rose and held it toward him,
her upper lip lifting in a smile that sent a brightness over her face,
“a flower for your thoughts!”

He took it, pressed it to his lips and fastened it in his buttonhole.
They were passing a great bed of white petunias, gleaming like ghost
flowers in the moonlight and sending forth sweet odors that filled the
air all round about.

“I was thinking,” he began, and to Rhoda the sweetness of their
fragrance seemed suddenly to be translated into his tones and to be
coursing through her own veins. Never again was she to be able to sense
the odor of petunias without darting memory of how he pressed her rose
to his lips and said, “I was thinking of that evening when we played
pirates. Do you remember?”

They had come to the entrance of the grape arbor, at the western side
of the yard. It was dark with the heavy foliage of the vines, and Rhoda
hesitated an instant as she glanced at the shadows within, checkered
here and there with gleams of light, and gave a faint exclamation
at his words. A dim prescience, barely realized, crossed her
consciousness, as of something, some destiny, waiting for her within
those shadows. A broad band of moonlight, shining through the entrance,
lay across the seat.

“You startled me, a little,” she said, sitting down in the white glow,
“because--it’s very curious--I thought of that evening myself, just
now!”

“You did? What a coincidence! Then you must remember how hard I had
to work to beat Lloyd Corey, the other pirate, to your palace, and
how I chose you out of all the princesses and carried you off? Do you
remember? Lloyd and I had a duel about you, with cornstalks, that
evening, after you girls went in, and I won, and after that he had to
let me pick you out every time--do you remember--Rhoda--that I did
always choose you? The very first day that you came, Harry Morehead and
Lloyd and I talked over you and all the other girls that were there,
comparing you and saying which we thought we would like best, and
I told them that I liked Rhoda Ware the best of them all and that I
was going to marry her some day. That was just boy’s talk, of course,
but--Rhoda--Rhoda Ware--we are man and woman now, and I love you, and
I--still mean to marry you, if you will have me--will you?”

He had been standing before her, bending low, speaking in quick,
soft tones, in which she felt a passionate masterfulness that set
her own pulses throbbing. Somewhere in the back of her mind she
had a dim memory of her father seizing her mother by the arm and
galloping--galloping-- Unconsciously she moved to one side and
nervously swept her wide skirts from the bench. He sat down beside her,
and as the moonlight fell full upon her figure he saw that her bosom
was heaving and her hands trembling.

“Have you--not been--too hasty?” she asked, in a troubled voice. “We
know so little of each other!”

“I know I love you and want you for my wife. I knew that when we were
together on the boat, and in Cincinnati, and I know it now more surely
even than I did then. But if you are not so sure of yourself, if you
want to know more about me, I will wait for your answer. But you won’t
deny me at once--you won’t send me away for good, now, will you, Rhoda?”

He bent toward her, his masterfulness all gone, face and voice full
of pleading. She gave him one swift, smiling glance, bright in the
moonlight, and whispered, “No, not now--let us wait a little.”

He seized her hand. It was cold and trembling. She let him hold it
for a moment in both of his. “Rhoda, Rhoda, you love me a little!” he
exclaimed, as he felt it fluttering within his palms.

“Perhaps, a little--I don’t know,” she hesitated. From down the hill
came the sound of voices. “They are coming home,” she went on in
steadier tones. “Let us go back to the house.”

The fact had not yet presented itself to Rhoda Ware’s remembrance
that Jefferson Delavan was a slaveholder. She knew that he owned a
plantation which he worked with slave labor, but her thoughts had been
filled by his personality alone, without reference to his surroundings
or conditions. And during the evening his presence and her mother’s
reminiscences had swept all her thoughts and emotions away from the
immediate present and the outer world. For the time being it was
quite outside her consciousness that he had any connection with the
institution of slavery.

As for Delavan, he did not know anything about Dr. Ware’s sentiments
on that burning question. The subject had not been mentioned during
their conversations on the boat and since his arrival in the afternoon
he had seen but little of his host. Mrs. Ware, with her delight at his
coming and her talk about his mother and their girlhood days, and
Rhoda’s presence, had engrossed his attention. Moreover, Charlotte’s
performance, upon which he and Dr. Ware had unexpectedly come, had been
misleading to whatever thought he had given to the matter. And that
young lady was about to make deeper the impression.

Seated on the veranda steps she lamented her mistake in going to the
meeting. “There was no fun at all,” she declared. “It was as orderly
and quiet as a funeral. I wish it had been old Sumner’s funeral! And
how they did talk about ‘Bully Brooks’!” She caught up the kitten,
which at the sound of her voice had come purring against her skirts,
and exclaimed:

“Prince of Walesy, you’ve got to have your name changed! You’re going
to be ‘Bully Brooks’ after this! Because he’s the best man out!”

“Good for you, Miss Charlotte! You’re a girl after my own heart!”
Delavan heartily approved. They were alone on the veranda, Dr. Ware
having hurried to his office, where a patient was waiting. At that
moment Mrs. Ware and Rhoda returned, with cool drinks, and the talk
turned to other subjects. But Delavan had gained a distinct impression
that Dr. Ware’s family was pro-slavery in sentiment.

Later in the evening, when Rhoda went into her sister’s bedroom to say
good-night, she found Charlotte sitting before a mirror with their
mother’s miniature, carefully comparing it with her own reflection.
“Come here, Rhoda,” she said, “and see how much this looks like me!”

Rhoda bent over her shoulder. The girl had arranged her hair like that
in the picture, and the resemblance was striking. “I know,” said Rhoda.
“I noticed it at once, but your hair this way makes it plainer. You
must look very much like mother did when she was your age--when they
were married.”

Charlotte cast a glance back into the other’s face. “Yes,” she said, “I
must be the image of her. That’s why father loves me so much more than
he does you.”

Rhoda turned sharply away. “Sister! He doesn’t! We are both his
daughters, and he loves us both.”

“Of course he does,” Charlotte replied calmly. “But he loves me a great
deal more than he does you.”

And in her secret heart Rhoda knew that her sister spoke the truth.




CHAPTER V


Never had Dr. Ware been more surprised than he was when Jefferson
Delavan came to him the next morning and said, without preliminary:

“I wish to tell you, Dr. Ware, sir, that I love your daughter, Miss
Rhoda, and desire to make her my wife.”

For a moment he gazed in speechless astonishment. “It seems to me, Mr.
Delavan,” he presently found tongue to say, “that you are being rather
precipitate. Have you spoken to Rhoda?”

“I have, sir. She asks for time to make sure of herself. But she does
not leave me without hope. You must remember, sir, that we knew each
other when we were children.”

“Oh, yes, for a few weeks, I believe! And you’ve been in each other’s
company a few hours since! Do you think that is long enough for you
to acquire such knowledge of each other as you ought to have before
venturing upon this important step?”

“It has been long enough, sir, for me to discover that she has a sweet
and noble nature and to know that I love her. And I do not ask from
her at present any definite promise. I ask only for your permission to
endeavor to win her love and her promise as soon as possible. You know
who I am and I am sure you will acquit me of presumption, sir, if I
remind you that my name is an honored one in my state and neighborhood.
I trust you will have any inquiries made that you like concerning my
personal character, and I shall be happy to give you at any time an
account of my financial affairs, in order that you may satisfy yourself
I can give your daughter a home and a position such as she deserves.”

“Your attitude is that of an honorable man, Mr. Delavan, and if the
matter goes on I shall take advantage of your offer.”

Dr. Ware arose and began moving back and forth across the room. “But
you are a slaveholder, I believe. Do you think it wise for two people
to marry who hold such opposing opinions about a question that both
think of importance?”

It was the young man’s turn to be surprised. He rose and looked at the
other in astonishment. “What do you mean, Dr. Ware? I thought--Miss
Charlotte--?”

“Yes, I understand. Charlotte likes to talk and she says a great deal
more than she means. But Rhoda and I are in sympathy on the question of
slavery, and I am what you southern people call a fanatic and a black
abolitionist. If I had supposed that our meeting on the boat would lead
to anything more than mere passing acquaintance I would have spoken of
my sentiments then.”

“It seems to me, sir, that if husband and wife love each other truly,
matters of opinion are of little consequence between them.”

Dr. Ware shook his head gravely. “A matter of opinion? My young friend,
it is much more than that, for both of you. But this is something for
you and Rhoda to settle between yourselves. As for me, it would grieve
me deeply to see Rhoda marry you, just because you are a slaveholder,
and I must tell you right now that whatever influence I have with my
daughter shall be used against your suit. Nevertheless,”--he held
out his hand, the young man gripped it, and they shook hands warmly,
although each saw kindling in the other’s eyes the fires of opposition.
“Nevertheless,” Dr. Ware went on, “you have my consent to win her if
you can. Frankly, though, I don’t believe you can do it after she
realizes that to be your wife she must be the mistress of slaves.”

While Delavan was having his interview with her father, Rhoda, clasped
in her mother’s arms, was hearing exclamations of delight and forecasts
of happiness: “Rhoda, dear! how happy this makes me! Yes, I know, you
haven’t given him a final answer--and that’s quite right--keep him
off for a while--don’t let him think you’re easily won--but of course
you’ll have him finally! Oh, Rhoda, my little girl--to think that
you’re going to marry Adeline’s boy! If she knows--up in heaven--she’s
just as pleased over it as I am! If she could only have lived to see
it! And he’s such a dear fellow! Rhoda, dear, you’ll be so happy, I
know you will--and it is such a beautiful life down there!”

She heard her younger daughter whistling in the hall. “There’s
Charlotte,” she exclaimed. “I think I’d better send her downtown on
some errand.” And wiping tears of joy from her eyes she hurried out
to complete her plan of eliminating Charlotte from the life of the
household for the rest of the morning.

Rhoda went down to the veranda, taking with her the white silk out of
which she was making a bonnet for her mother, with her heart full of
tenderest emotion. Mrs. Ware’s delight and enthusiasm had made still
warmer and deeper her own thrilling happiness. As her fingers flew
over her work she listened to the faint tones of her lover’s voice,
and a soft glow stole into her eyes. Delavan surprised it there when
presently he came from her father’s office.

“Rhoda!” he exclaimed. She saw the love-light flame across his face and
the color mounted to her brow. He sought to take her hand, but she drew
it away, saying shyly, “Not yet.”

He went into the house to bid Mrs. Ware good-by, for he was going at
once, in order to catch the forenoon trip of the ferry boat across the
river. When he came out Rhoda put down her work and walked with him
down the broad path between the hedges of lilac to the front gate.

“When can I have my answer?” he pleaded. “The next time I come?”

On the instant there sprang up in her heart a something she had
never felt before. It was not the first time she had listened to the
pleadings of a would-be lover, but never before had there been one
who had not got his answer, frank and straightforward, at once; never
one toward whom she had felt this instinctive impulse to enjoy his
suspense. Serious-minded offspring of her father though she was, yet
it was not for nothing that she was her mother’s daughter. Already she
knew what her answer was to be and knew that she could give it to him
at any moment. Her short upper lip lifted in a flashing little smile
that illumined her whole face. Delavan drew toward her, his eyes upon
the soft curves of her mouth.

“How can I tell?” she said. “There is so much to think over--I must
have time.”

“Your mother would be very pleased!”

“Yes, dear mother, I know,” she murmured fondly. “She loved your mother
so dearly. And father? You talked with him, just now?”

“He says that I may win you if I can.” It did not occur to him to say
anything about the doubt Dr. Ware had expressed of his success, or the
attitude her father had warningly declared he would take. All that
had been swept out of his mind--he had not even thought it of much
consequence at the time. And now, looking down upon Rhoda’s blushing
face, he forgot everything but the hope that if he could induce her to
lift her downcast eyes he might surprise surrender therein. But he was
to be disappointed in that, for when presently he did look into their
gray depths they were merely gentle and serious.

“When may I come again?”

“We shall all be glad to see you whenever you come--Mr. Delavan--”

“At least you might call me Jeff,” he interrupted, “as you did when we
were children!”

“Well then, Jeff,” and her manner took on with the word a shade more
of intimacy, which sent his eyes flying once more to hers. “I’m
sure--Jeff--” this time she said it mockingly--“mother will be pleased
if you come again soon. And we’ll all be glad to see you.”

“And you?”

“Of course! There’s so much we haven’t talked over yet about those
happy days we had so long ago-- And we might play pirates again--if
you’ll bring Lloyd Corey with you! He was such a nice boy! I’d really
like to see him again.”

“Confound Lloyd Corey! Shall I have to carry you off, as I did that
time, or shall you have something to tell me then?”

“Oh, I can’t promise--” she hesitated and her voice took on an
intonation as she spoke his name that sent a thrill to his
heart,--“Jeff--anything about it--what I shall say, or whether I can
have anything to say then, more than now. But I would like to see Lloyd
Corey again!”

Leaning upon the gate, Rhoda watched her lover’s figure as he swung
down the long, tree-bowered street. When she turned she saw her father
coming down the path and waited there, blushing and casting up at him
now and again a shy glance.

“Young Delavan surprised me very much just now,” he began. “I told him,
as I suppose he reported to you, that he had my consent to win you
if he could. I don’t suppose, though, that he also told you I didn’t
believe he could and that it would grieve me deeply to see you marry
him.”

Rhoda bent upon him surprised eyes. “Why, father, what do you mean?
Don’t you like him?”

“Yes, Rhoda, I like him well enough, personally, but you know how
I feel about slavery and all who are responsible for it. Have you
forgotten that Jefferson Delavan is a slaveholder?”

The color faded from her face, and into her wide, gray eyes, fastened
upon his, there came a look, as of some wild thing suddenly stricken,
that smote his heart. She flinched a little and he turned away, that he
might not see her pain.

“I guess, daughter, you hadn’t thought about that,” he went on, kindly.

“No,” she repeated after him, “I--I hadn’t thought about that.”

“But you knew that he has slaves, that he works his plantation with
slave labor?”

“Yes, father, I knew it, somewhere back in my mind, but I didn’t think
anything about it. I didn’t think of anything but--just him!”

“But you’ll have to think about it now,” he said in a gently suggestive
tone.

“Yes,” she assented dully, “I’ll have to think about it now”--she
stopped, then went on with a flash of pain in her tone, “when I can
think!”

“You must try to realize,” her father went on, “before it is too late,
how you would like to be the mistress of slaves, supported by slave
labor, your welfare and all your interests so bound up with the system
of slavery that you will be forced to become one of its defenders.”

Her head drooped and she turned away with a little gesture of one hand
as though begging him to stop. He waited a moment and she faced him
again and said slowly, with little breaks and catchings of her breath:
“Father! I don’t believe I could do it! I--love him--I want to be his
wife--but--slaves! I couldn’t! I know I couldn’t!”

She broke down then and began to sob softly under her breath. He put
his hand through her arm and led her up the path to the house.

Mrs. Ware came out to meet them, anxiety in her face. “What is it?
What’s the matter?” she questioned.

Rhoda straightened up and rested one hand upon her mother’s shoulder.
Mrs. Ware was short and plump of stature and Rhoda, tall and of slender
build like her father, looked down into her face with tear-filled eyes.

“Mother,” she began, her tone already self-controlled, “I’m afraid
you’ll feel badly about it, but--I don’t think I can marry Jeff
Delavan, after all.”

“Rhoda! Child! What is the trouble? What have you been saying to her,
Amos?”

“There, mother! You mustn’t blame father. He only reminded me that
Jeff is a slaveholder. Of course, I knew it before, but I--just hadn’t
thought about it. Mother, you’ll think me foolish, I know, but I
don’t--I don’t think I can marry him.”

“Is that all? Dear child, you’re making a mountain out of nothing at
all! Come with me, dear. Your father has been putting foolish notions
into your head. Come, we’ll talk it over, and you’ll soon see there’s
nothing in that to keep you apart!”

Rhoda bent her head for a moment upon her mother’s shoulder and, half
reluctantly drawing herself from her father’s arm, which seemed even
more unwilling to let her go, started into the house.

In their absorption they had not heard Charlotte coming up the walk.
“What’s the matter?” she exclaimed, seizing her father’s hand. “Is
Rhoda sick?”

“You may tell her, father,” Rhoda turned to say, as she and Mrs. Ware
disappeared through the door.

“Well, what is it?” Charlotte demanded briskly, as her father hesitated.

“Jeff Delavan wants to marry her.”

“Humph! Is that anything to cry about?” she commented, sitting down on
the veranda step. “Where is he? Is he crying too?”

“He’s gone home--he went a little while ago.”

She looked up surprised. “Oh, has he? I thought he’d still be here. But
what’s Rhoda crying about? Because he’s gone away so soon? Then why
didn’t she keep him? She didn’t refuse him, did she?”

“No, she didn’t give him a definite answer. And since he went away she
has remembered that he is a slaveholder. You know how she and I feel
about slavery.”

Charlotte sprang to her feet excitedly. “You don’t mean to say she’s
going to take that into account! I didn’t think she could be such a
goose!” She looked up at him with twinkling eyes. “Father, why didn’t
you take me down to Cincinnati with you, so he could have seen me
first? Oh, well, I suppose he’ll come back again, won’t he?” And with
a toss of her head she ran into the house, stopping at the door to
throw back at him an audacious laugh.

He gazed after her, an indulgent smile on his face. Did the look of
her and the ring of her saucy laugh awaken some memory of the long ago
wherein flitted another dainty, girlish figure so much like her that
she sometimes startled him? At any rate, a still warmth took possession
of his heart and drove out the slight resentment that just now crept
in when his wife took Rhoda away to try to induce her to a course of
action so directly opposed to his own convictions.




CHAPTER VI


“That’s just right, Rhoda.” Charlotte nodded at herself in the mirror
and smiled with satisfaction as she turned this way and that, surveying
her reflection at different angles. “I hope you won’t marry Jeff
Delavan, for then I’d have to learn how to do this myself.”

“You ought to learn how to make your own clothes, anyway,” her mother
commented reprovingly. The three of them were in an upstairs chamber
used as a sewing-room, Rhoda fitting upon her sister the bodice
of a white gown and Mrs. Ware, between stitches as she darned a
three-cornered tear in the muslin window curtain which the kitten had
just made, looking on and making suggestions.

Charlotte tossed her head and tilted her hoopskirts as she did some
dancing steps in front of the mirror. “Oh, what’s the use, as long as
Rhoda likes to sew and I don’t! You couldn’t, mother, when you were
my age. I hope she won’t marry anybody as long as I’m at home. You’re
an awful goose, Rhoda. Suppose Jeff Delavan is a slaveholder--what do
you care about a pack of dirty niggers? They’re better off as slaves,
anyway. Billy Saunders has lived in South Carolina and he says you
couldn’t find anybody anywhere more contented and happy than the nigger
slaves down South and that they’re no more fit to be free and take care
of themselves than so many babies.”

“Yes,” assented Mrs. Ware, “it has always seemed to me that they
need white masters to provide for their welfare. They really are not
competent to take care of themselves.”

Rhoda listened to their talk as she adjusted a ruffled fichu about
her sister’s shoulders, but made no comment. Nobody but she knew how
wistfully, during these days, she was hearkening to arguments in favor
of slavery.

Charlotte surveyed herself critically in the glass once more and patted
the fichu with approval. “It’s lovely, Rhoda, and I’m so glad you’re
a Black Abolitionist! No good-looking young slaveholder would need to
ask me more than once--that is, he wouldn’t need to if he knew it, but
it’s more interesting to make them ask several times--didn’t you use to
think so, mother? The more slaves he had the better I’d like him--and
the more times I’d let him propose. Oh, la! How lovely it would be
to have a dozen or so slaves ready to come the minute you call, and
every time you look out of a window to see droves of them, all working
for you! That would just suit us, wouldn’t it, Bully Brooks?” And she
caught up the kitten from the floor in time to save the curtain,
swaying in the breeze, from another attack.

“It’s perfectly silly of you, Rhoda,” she went on, as she tilted out
of the room, the kitten on her shoulder, “to care any more about Jeff
Delavan’s having a lot of slaves than you would if they were so many
horses. Isn’t it, Bully Brooks?”

The kitten gave quick and loud response and Mrs. Ware, with a frown in
her voice, called after her, “Charlotte!” But she heard in reply from
down the hall only a merry laugh and the whistled strains of “Comin’
through the Rye.”

“Charlotte is not sympathetic,” said her mother fondly, putting an arm
around Rhoda and pressing her cheek to her daughter’s, “but her ideas
are certainly correct. And any one will tell you so, dear, who has
lived in the South and knows what slavery really is. You’ve no right,
Rhoda, as I’ve already told you, to set yourself up in judgment on a
subject you know nothing about, and against those who know all about
it. Why can’t you trust your mother, honey?”

She put her hands upon her daughter’s shoulders and looked up
beseechingly into Rhoda’s troubled face. “I know all about slavery,
dearie,” she went on, “for I lived in the heart of it until I was
married, and I give you my word the niggers are far happier and better
off under it than they would be if they were free. They don’t want
freedom. And they are so grateful to their masters and mistresses and
so fond of them! Why, dear, my old mammy loved me almost as much, I do
believe, as my mother did!”

Rhoda recalled what her father had told her of that “old mammy’s” fate
and pressed her lips together in sudden fear lest, in spite of his
injunction, she might tell what she knew.

“I know, mother,” she said falteringly, “at your home it seems to have
been as near right as it could be; but, mother, dear, they’re human
beings, and I can’t make it seem right, no matter how much I think
about it and try to see it as you do, that they should be bought and
sold!”

“That’s only because you don’t know much about niggers, dear child!
They’re not really human beings, in the sense that we are. If you had
grown up among them as I did you would understand that. Charlotte is
quite right in saying they are no more to be considered than horses.”

They sat down on the black horsehair sofa and Mrs. Ware went on, her
soft, southern tones full of pleading, one hand fluttering over the
girl in little caressing touches: “If you knew them as I do, Rhoda, and
knew how contented they are, you wouldn’t feel a moment’s hesitation.
And everybody lives so happily down there! Such hospitality, such
friendships, such enjoyment of life--everything so gracious and
charming! There’s nothing like it in the North! How homesick it makes
me, even yet, to think of it! Oh, honey! If I could only see you
settled in the midst of it, you don’t know how happy it would make
me! And Jeff--I don’t believe you realize, Rhoda, how much he loves
you! You ought to have heard him talk to me about you! Jeff would do
anything to make you happy!”

Rhoda’s head dropped to her mother’s shoulder. “Oh, mother!” she cried,
“I wish--I wish you could convince me!”

When she carried her sewing down to the veranda a little later Mrs.
Ware’s eyes followed her with a gaze of mingled longing and misgiving.
“Now she will go and talk with her father,” was the mother’s thought,
“and he will undo all that I’ve gained.”

Rhoda saw that her father’s carriage was at the east gate, waiting
for him, and she had scarcely seated herself with her sewing when he
came out from his door. “Oh, Rhoda,” he called, “will you come here a
minute, please?

“I’d like you to do something for me this morning,” he went on as they
stepped back into the office. “You know where the Mallard place is? The
first one beyond Gilbertson’s. They have sent in for some more medicine
for their sick child, but if there have been certain results I want
to make a change in the treatment. The man who brought me the message
didn’t know anything about it and I’ve got a hurry call that’s likely
to keep me all day. I’ll give you two kinds of medicine,” and he began
putting them up as he continued talking, “and if the child is sleeping
well and has no fever you can leave this package--the directions are
written here. But if not I want it to have this, until I go out there
to-morrow. Don’t say anything about having the two kinds, but make your
inquiries, and leave the package that the symptoms call for, and tell
them I’ll call to-morrow.”

“All right, father. I can ride Dolly, I suppose? I’ll enjoy having a
gallop this morning.”

“If she’d only been a boy,” he thought, as he hurried into the carriage
and drove away, “I’d have made a doctor of her. It’s a pity she
wasn’t--she’d make a first-class one, if she wasn’t a woman.” He held
the thought regretfully for a moment. But, radical though he was upon
many subjects, it did not occur to him that Rhoda could be a woman and
a physician at the same time.

As he drove down the main street, past the law office of Horace
Hardaker, that young man rushed out and signaled him to stop. “If
you’ve got anything to tell me, Horace,” he said, reining up at the
sidewalk, “jump in and come along for a few blocks. I’m in a hurry and
can’t stop.”

“A piece of U. G. baggage came over the river last night,” Hardaker
began as they drove on, his voice just above a whisper, “and went to
Conners’ house, as he had been directed. You know they’ve been keeping
a close watch on Conners lately, and this morning Marshal Hanscomb
swooped down while the baggage was still there. But Mrs. Conners got
him into a bonnet and veil and dress of hers, while Conners kept the
slave catchers at the front door a few minutes. She did a lot of
talking and laughing in the kitchen, as if she was saying good-by to
some neighbor woman, and hustled him out of the back door, just as
Conners had to let them in at the front. He got away all right, with
directions for going on to Gilbertson’s. If he gets there they’ll hide
him in their hollow haystack until the immediate danger blows over. But
the marshal and his catchers are after him to-day, and it’s a chance if
he makes it.”

Dr. Ware’s face was serious. “No, Conners’ house won’t do any
longer--it isn’t safe,” he commented, in low tones. “We’ve got to
find some other place. My house is the best, if things turn out all
right. But I don’t know yet how it’s going to be. You met that young
man from Kentucky there last week, the evening of the meeting. He’s a
slaveholder, but he wants to marry Rhoda.”

Hardaker made a sudden, nervous movement and the doctor, casting a
sidewise glance, saw a flush overspread his face. “I know, Horace--that
is, I guessed,” he said kindly, “and I wish, from the bottom of my
heart, that she might have felt differently about it.”

“So do I, doctor,” the other answered grimly, “but--she didn’t. Is
she--does she--” he went on awkwardly and Dr. Ware took the burden of
the question from him.

“She doesn’t know yet what she’ll do. If she decides to marry him that
will put an end to my scheme. I’d have to have somebody in the house
in sympathy with the work. Rhoda is so capable, she could take the
thing right into her own hands and carry it on so quietly that nobody
would know what she was about. I wish I’d got it started before Delavan
appeared on the scene.”

“Delavan?” Hardaker repeated with sudden interest. “Is his name
Jefferson Delavan?”

“Yes. He has a tobacco plantation down below Lexington.”

Horace slapped his knee. “The same one!” he exclaimed softly, and went
on in reply to Dr. Ware’s look of inquiry: “He’s the owner of that
slave they so nearly caught at Conners’ house this morning, and he’s
out with Marshal Hanscomb following the fellow now!”

Dr. Ware pursed his lips in a subdued whistle. “Then he’s likely to
come to my house again before he goes back. I’m sorry--he’s a taking
sort of chap, and Rhoda likes him.”

       *       *       *       *       *

The sun was hot and Rhoda, on her homeward way, slowed her horse to a
walk and sought the shady side of the road. Her thoughts were busy with
her mother’s recent pleadings and arguments. A little frown wrinkled
the wide space between her level brows. “No,” she said to herself,
“no, father’s right about slavery--and mother’s wrong--she doesn’t
really know as much about it as he does, although she did live there so
long.”

Her thoughts lingered over the stories her mother had told her of life
on the southern plantations, its gaiety and refinement and gracious
hospitality, and into her mind came the picture of the Delavan home as
she had seen it on a spring afternoon of her childhood--the long, noble
driveway, tree-arched, up which the carriage swept, the massive brick
house with its wide verandas, half hidden among trees, the carriage
circling the great lawn and drawing up at last at the steps, and Mrs.
Delavan coming eagerly forward to receive them, her husband by her side
and close behind her the two children, Jeff and Emily. And then, of a
sudden, it was herself she saw in the mental picture, with Jeff Delavan
at her side, standing on the wide veranda and welcoming their guests.
A smile flashed across her face and a tender light shone in her eyes.
“Oh, Jeff, Jeff!” she whispered. “I do want to be your wife!”

She looked about her, a sweet longing in her heart. Her horse was
moving at a walk down a long, sloping hill. Her eyes followed the road
up the opposite rise and she saw a man’s figure come across the top
and start downward at a run. She wondered idly why any one should be
running like that on so hot a day. As they neared each other at the
foot of the hill she saw that he was a mulatto, very light in color,
but with negro blood nevertheless plainly manifest in skin and eyes.
The thought flashed through her mind that perhaps he was a runaway
slave and at once her heart warmed with compassion.

He was near enough to see the expression of pity that swept across her
face and he came toward her with a half-wary, half-questioning look.

“What is it? Can I help you?” she asked impulsively.

“Can you tell me, Miss,--am I on the right road to Gilbertson’s--is it
much farther?” he panted.

“About three miles, right on, along this road.”

“Three miles!” His face fell and despair leaped into his eyes. He
glanced at the trees which thinly clothed the hillside. “Is there any
place in there where I can hide? Are there any houses--safe ones?”

She bent toward him, looking straight into his eyes. “Are you just
running away from slavery? Have you done anything wrong?”

He held her gaze unflinchingly as he answered: “I’ve done nothing
wrong--nothing but try to get my freedom--but that’s the worst of
crimes, south of the Ohio River.”

“Then I’ll help you. I know where you can hide.” He assisted her to
dismount and she gathered up her long riding skirt and began to climb
the rail fence. “There’s a cave over here a little ways,” she went on.
“I haven’t been there for years, but I think I can find it. Yes, here’s
the path.”

“We must hurry,” he cautioned. “They’re coming after me, and they’re
not far behind. If they turn off on that other road back there--I’ll be
safe--this time.”

She led the way and they walked on rapidly through the straggling
bushes and timber. The hill was steeper here and the path sidled and
zigzagged toward its summit, for some distance in view of the road.
Halfway up the hillside it made a sharp turn around a huge boulder and
plunged into a thicker growth of shrubs and young trees. As the man,
several paces in the rear, reached this point he cast a quick glance at
the road and saw a horseman come into view across the top of the rise.

He sprang forward, exclaiming in a shrill whisper, “Hurry! My master is
coming! I saw him cross the hill!”

She drew her skirts higher and broke into a run. “Did he see you?” she
threw back at him, and her swift glance caught sight of a pistol in his
hand.

“I don’t know. Show me the cave, and then you must get out of the way!”

“You won’t shoot him?” she demanded, turning sharply round.

“I will if I have to. I’m not going back into slavery!” was his answer
in a dogged voice.

[Illustration: “‘You won’t shoot him?’ she demanded, turning sharply
around.”]

They heard the neigh of a horse, over in the road, and an answering
call from Rhoda’s mare, which she had left tied to the fence. “Are we
nearly there?” asked the mulatto.

The path sloped downward again and she sped onward, her thoughts
flashing, lightning like, across her mind. If the slaves really did not
want freedom, if they were happy and contented in slavery, why was this
man taking such desperate chances? Perhaps he was fleeing from a master
as cruel as Uncle Tom’s. She would ask him--at last she could find out
the truth from one of those who alone knew what was the truth.

Rhoda stopped beside a thick tangle of hazel bushes that grew against
the face of a sharp rise of the hill.

“Here it is,” she said. “Go around to the other side of this thicket
and between the bushes and the hill just a little ways in, you’ll see
the opening into the cave. It’s perfectly safe--only children ever go
there.”

“Thank you, miss, thank you!” he breathed as he hurried past her. Then
he paused an instant and half turned toward her again. “You’d better
get out of harm’s way, quick! If Jeff Delavan did see me just now he
won’t stop till he finds me, if he has to burn the woods down to do it!
And I won’t be taken!”

He rushed on around the thicket and did not see how she suddenly
stiffened and the color faded from her face, leaving it white to the
lips.

“Jeff Delavan!” she repeated. “Is he your master?”

The runaway was peering into the mouth of the cave, making sure
that the way was clear, but at the amazed tone of her question he
straightened up, threw back his head and his voice was tense with
bitterness:

“Yes, miss, he is my owner--and also my brother!”

“What!” Her horrified exclamation made him look at her again more
sharply and he saw a scarlet flush mounting to her brow.

“You needn’t be surprised!” he went on hotly. “It’s common enough in
slavery. We had the same father. Good-by, miss! God bless you!”

Still gripping his revolver he dropped behind the bushes. Rhoda,
intently listening, heard him scrambling through the mouth of the cave.
“Is it all right?” she asked softly.

“Yes,” came the muffled reply.

“You can put up your pistol,” she went on, and even the desperate
fugitive huddled in the darkness of the cave, the blood pounding in his
ears, was conscious of a sharp hardness in her repressed tones that had
not been there before. “I promise he shall not find you!”

Rhoda sped back up the hill, at first conscious of little but a
whirling in her head and a weight like stone in her breast. As she
neared the highest point in the path she heard footsteps coming toward
her. Instantly her nerves seemed to steady themselves and her mind
grew clear. Holding her riding skirt with one hand she began breaking
branches from the flowering viburnum that grew thickly beneath the
trees. So Jefferson Delavan saw her as he hastily rounded the bend in
the trail beside the boulder.

“Rhoda!” he exclaimed in joyful surprise, “you here!” In his sudden
lover’s gladness he did not notice that there was no answering surprise
in her face. He sprang toward her, but she moved back a step or two and
shifted her handful of flowering branches from the curve of her arm,
holding it between them.

“Yes, I’m here--I--I wanted some flowers.”

His glance darted anxiously beyond, but came back and rested upon her
tenderly.

“Are you alone, dear? Is it safe? I thought I heard voices just now.”

“You did,” she replied calmly. Her brain was working clearly and
rapidly now as her thoughts flashed over what she must accomplish.

“Rhoda, you ought not to be here alone,” he went on insistently. “You
don’t know who may be wandering through these woods.” Again his glance
left her face and swept the hillside. “I am looking for a runaway now,”
he pursued. “I was sure I saw him on this path, just as he disappeared
among these bushes. Did you see him? It was only a few minutes ago.”

“Yes, I saw him.” He stared at her, wondering what might mean the
little thrill in her tones.

“You did? Where did he go?”

“I shall not tell you.”

“What do you mean, Rhoda?”

“I mean--I know where he is--I showed him where to hide--and--I shall
not let you find him!” She had dropped her riding skirt and its
long black folds fell closely around her slender figure. He stood a
little below her on the hillside and as he looked up and saw the calm
determination on her face, amazement overspread his own.

“Rhoda, you don’t realize what you are saying,” he expostulated. “The
fellow belongs to me--he is my slave!”

Her face was white and stern and her eyes shining. Even so had stood
one of her foremothers, generations agone, in Salem town, facing the
charge that her daughter was a witch. She drew herself up and her lip,
that short upper lip that he could not see part from its fellow without
a thrill in his heart, curled scornfully. “He told me that he is your
brother,” came her swift reply.

He looked at her a moment, his face flushing, before he answered, a
touch of indulgent wonder in his tone: “And you believed him? You
don’t understand how these niggers boast over--things they know
nothing about.”

She made a little gesture, as if passing by an inconsequent matter.
“It’s of no difference. You shall not have him.”

Intensely annoyed though he was his heart leaped toward her warmly,
as she stood there among the white viburnums, so tall and pale and
determined. That high and fearless spirit was akin to his own and
challenged his admiration. But--this would never do--she must be made
to understand. He drew a little toward her again and as she looked
down into his face and read his heart in it she felt her own stir in
response.

“But, Rhoda,” his voice was tender and lingered over her name, “you
don’t realize what you are doing.” Unconsciously her figure relaxed
into less rigid lines and within her breast she began to feel a soft,
insidious longing. “In hiding a runaway slave you are disobeying the
law--you are guilty of a criminal act. The marshal and his men were
just behind me--they went down the other road, but are coming back.
They’ll be here soon!”

“I shall not give him up--no matter what they do--I shall not let you
find him.” At that moment she was seeing in her mind’s eye the pistol
in the fugitive’s hands and hearing his desperate words, “I won’t be
taken!” Her eyes fell anxiously upon her lover.

They heard the clatter of galloping horses on the road. “That’s the
marshal!” he exclaimed. “Rhoda, you must not let them find you here,
hiding a runaway nigger. I could not hinder your arrest. They will take
you to prison!”

She bent toward him, smiling gently. “Jeff”--she began and an undertone
of sweetness ran through her voice that made his pulses leap--“are you
going to let them--find me here?”

For an instant he seemed about to leap forward and take her in his
arms. Then his body sagged, he drew back and the protest of a strong
man whose determination has been bewitched away from him was in his
voice:

“Rhoda, you are taking advantage of my love!”

The smile that for him was always adorable broke like a sudden
illumination over her face, shining even in her serious eyes and
melting her mouth, just now stern and scornful, into tender, alluring
curves. “Of course I am!” she agreed, and added, as she glanced down
demurely and up again into his face, “And aren’t you going to let me?”

A shout came through the woods from the road: “Delavan! Are you there?
Have you found him?”

Jefferson Delavan searched for an instant in his breast pocket as he
called back: “No,--I’m coming--wait for me--I’ll be there in a minute!”

He took out an old envelope and hurriedly wrote a few lines on the
back. “There,” he said as he handed it to Rhoda, “is proof of my love.
I’ll send you the legal papers to-night.”

He lifted his hat, bowed, and sprang down the path. A moment later she
heard him saying, rather loudly, to the men at the fence, “No, we’ve
missed him somewhere. A lady is in there gathering flowers and if he
had gone this way she would have seen him. Come, let’s hurry back.”

She listened to the sound of their horses’ hoofs clattering up the hill
and as it died away in the distance she swayed against the tree beside
her and dropped her head into her hands.




CHAPTER VII


Through all the afternoon Rhoda stayed in her room, thinking over her
adventure of the morning and considering whether it would be to her
mother or her father that she would tell the whole story. Of one thing
she felt sure--that she could not marry Jefferson Delavan, that she
could not be the wife of a man who believed in slavery and held slaves.
To that decision had she come swiftly, after her doubts and longings
and vacillations of the last week, while she listened to the departing
hoofbeats of the marshal’s party, going away without the fugitive. To
both, of course, she would make known this determination, and to her
father she would tell the incident about the negro. But she wanted
to pour forth the whole affair to some one who would understand and
sympathize and be tender with her because of the ache in her heart.

Her mother would be sorely disappointed by her final decision and
shocked and grieved, if told of it, by what she had done that morning
and would be able to see in the whole affair and in the conclusion
to which she had come nothing but wrong-headedness and fanaticism.
Rhoda knew that she could depend upon her loving heart and motherly
tenderness and longed for her caressing arms and her soothing voice.
But she knew also that Mrs. Ware could never understand why, if she
loved Jefferson Delavan, she would not marry him, and she winced at
the thought of what a blow to her mother her refusal would be. Her
father would know just how she felt about it; he would understand and
appreciate the convictions that had impelled her and he would be deeply
pleased. She knew just the light of satisfaction that would flash into
his eye. But he would not sympathize or be tender with her unhappiness.
A touch of bitterness tinged her feeling as she thought how different
it would be were Charlotte to go to him with a breaking heart.

Ever since her childhood had Rhoda stood thus wistfully between her
parents. Between her father and herself there was always intellectual
understanding. Their minds worked alike and they saw things in the same
way, just as in facial and bodily appearance there was much resemblance
between them. But it seemed to Rhoda that this very physical and
mental likeness had caused him to hold her at a distance. Even as a
little girl he had never welcomed her affectionate advances as he had
Charlotte’s. She, on the other hand, had always been drawn to him more
than to her mother, and she could still remember many a time when, a
little thing in pantalettes and short dresses, she had slipped away
with a trembling lip and hidden herself to fight back the tears which
would come because he had taken Charlotte up in his arms and kissed her
and had ignored Charlotte’s elder sister. As she grew older they had
become good friends and she knew that he liked to make a companion of
her and that he talked with her much more freely than with Charlotte.
But between them there was never any expression of sentiment.

And now her aching heart was longing for understanding, sympathy,
tenderness, love, all from one source, without having to make
revelation of itself. What she really wanted, although she was not
well enough versed in self-analysis to know it, was something that
would take the place of the love she was casting aside,--or, more
accurately, that love itself. She came near enough to such knowledge to
say to herself, in the midst of her unhappiness, “Jeff would understand
and--and be sorry, if I could only tell him all about it!” And then
she smiled, seeing the absurdity of the idea. But notwithstanding
her little flash of amusement at herself she felt vaguely, in the
background of her woe-filled consciousness, that only the supreme love
between man and woman can carry that full measure of comprehension,
sympathy, tolerance and affection for which human nature forever yearns.

Finally it was to her father she went, when he returned in the late
afternoon.

“I know you’re tired, father,” she hesitated at the door of his office
as she saw him stretched, coatless, upon the lounge, “but I’d like to
see you a little while--and it’s important.”

“Come in, Rhoda. What is it? The Mallard child? Not getting worse, is
it?”

“No. It’s--it’s about me. I’ve made up my mind to-day, father, that I
won’t marry Mr. Delavan.”

He sat up and across his face and into his eyes leaped the expression
of pleased satisfaction that she had known would shine there at her
news. But all he said was:

“You’ve decided wisely, I think.” Nevertheless, his professional eye
had already noted the signs still lingering in her countenance of her
afternoon’s vigil alone with her heart, and if she could have known
what compassion and tenderness stirred in his breast she would have
been surprised and comforted.

“But that’s not all, father--such a queer thing happened as I was
coming home,” she hurried on, trying hard to speak in a matter-of-fact
tone. Long ago, in her early girlhood, when she had first discovered in
her father an inclination to make a companion of her, in her pride and
eagerness to be felt worthy of such honor she had unconsciously begun
to imitate toward him his own unemotional manner toward her. And the
habit had grown upon her of thinking that in his presence she must
repress any show of feeling.

She told him in detail how she met the runaway slave, how she secreted
him in the cave and then encountered Jefferson Delavan. But she glossed
over this part of the incident, saying only:

“And I told him at once I had hidden the man and that I would not give
him up, no matter what the marshal might do, and when the men came and
called to him from the road he answered that the slave wasn’t there and
wrote quickly on an old envelope an agreement to give the nigger his
freedom. He said he’d send the legal papers to me to-night and then he
took the others away, so that they didn’t see me at all.”

She ceased speaking abruptly and silence fell upon them. Dr. Ware was
gazing fixedly at her as he searched the meager words of her recital,
trying to find in them some revelation of what really had passed
between the two lovers. He felt that there must have been some brief
but determined conflict of wills for the possession of the slave, and
he guessed that Rhoda had won by feminine wile of love. The episode
drove in upon him the unwelcome conviction that the feeling between
them, notwithstanding the shortness of their acquaintance, must be deep
and genuine. But he remembered how suddenly and irrevocably he himself
had fallen in love in the days of his young manhood and, recalling
certain indications of character in Jeff Delavan’s countenance, he
thought uneasily, “I wonder if he’ll take ‘no’ for an answer, after
all.” He came back to her story.

“Did you give the agreement to the nigger?”

“Yes. After they were gone quite out of hearing I went back to the cave
and gave it to him and told him to go on to Gilbertson’s and wait there
for the legal papers.”

“Good! That was the best arrangement to make! If Delavan sends them as
he promised I’ll take them out to-morrow, when I go to Mallard’s.”

“And then he’ll be quite free, and out of all danger?”

“Theoretically, yes, as long as he doesn’t lose his emancipation
papers. But if he is wise he will get out of this free country of
ours”--a cynical bitterness sounded in his voice--“and go on to Canada,
where there’ll be no danger of his being kidnaped and taken back into
slavery.”

Rhoda mused for a moment “Father!” she exclaimed suddenly, and in both
voice and manner he was aware of some new feeling and access of energy
that seemed full of significance. “What do you think? Is this awful
thing always going to divide the North from the South? Are we always
going to hate each other like this? Is there any help for it?”

“I don’t know, Rhoda. Sometimes, when I see how the North is forever
knuckling under to the South, giving up political supremacy and
getting more and more craven every year, I pretty nearly lose all hope.
I’m convinced that there’s only one way out of it--we’ve got to fight.
And when we do fight the North will win, because we’ve got more men and
more money. The sooner it comes the better, and I’m glad to see every
new insult the South piles on us, for if we’ve got any spirit at all up
here we’ve got to resent it some day.”

Rhoda looked at him with intent eyes. His tall, angular figure was
full of energy, his eyes sparkled and in his face shone the liveliest
conviction.

“War, father! That would be so horrible!”

“Yes, of course it would. But it would end the business. And slavery is
one long, unending horror.”

“Yes, that is just what it is,” she assented earnestly. “It is too
horrible to think of!”

Again he gazed at her sharply, wondering through what upheaval of
emotion she had gone that morning that had landed her so suddenly just
where he wished her to stand, when he had begun to fear that her face
would be turned the other way. “That nigger this morning,” she went on
hurriedly, “he was a mulatto, said that he--he--was Jeff’s brother!
Only think of it, father! What sort of an effect can slavery have upon
a man to make him willing to hold his brother as a slave, a beast to
be bought and sold! It’s too horrible!”

Dr. Ware began to understand. Her lover had fallen from her ideal
of him and she was casting the blame not upon him but back upon the
institution for which he stood. It was significant of the complexity
of his nature that, as he looked upon her pale face, shining eyes and
curling lip, something akin to compassion for the absent lover stirred
within him, notwithstanding the bitterness of his own feeling against
slavery and all it meant.

“Such things happen down south. I’ve known some instances that were
certainly true. But it’s possible that sometimes the niggers boast when
they have no right to. As long as you have only the runaway’s word for
it, Delavan ought to have the benefit of the doubt. The Lord knows he,
or any slaveholder, has enough to answer for, anyway.”

Rhoda scarcely seemed to hear him. She sat silent for a moment and the
animation faded from her face. “The man had a pistol,” she presently
went on “and if Jeff--if Mr. Delavan--had found him I’m sure he would
have shot--to kill, rather than be taken. He said he would.”

Her father bent upon her a puzzled look. Here was still another factor
in the motives, or the impulses, which had moved her to action. How
much had she been impelled by desire to save her lover from harm and
how much by the determination to help the slave to liberty? He wished
he knew, so that he might judge just how deeply and how permanently
her renewed abhorrence of slavery had taken root. He knew that if she
went into the Underground work he could depend upon her to be loyal,
capable and discreet, but he drew back from asking her to take part in
it unless she could do so whole-heartedly with conviction as intense as
his own.

“Perhaps, then, you saved his life,” he said quietly, and then went on
with a deeper significance in his tone, “as well as got for the slave
his freedom, which is more than life to him.”

“Father, I want to do something!” she broke out suddenly. “Is there
anything a girl can do? I know now that I can’t marry Mr. Delavan--I--I
love him--and if he wasn’t a slaveholder I’d be glad to be his
wife--and I know I’d be happy. But I couldn’t--I just couldn’t feel
myself responsible the least bit for those poor creatures being slaves.
It’s wrong, father, it’s all wrong, and horrible, and I won’t have
anything to do with it. I tried to think I could, for a while, because
I love Jeff so much and I wanted so to be his wife. But this awful
slavery would be between us all the time--and I hate it, father, I hate
it as much as you do, and I want to do something to help put it down!”

He looked at her with surprise, triumphant rejoicing in his heart.
This was a different Rhoda from any he had known. She sat still and
spoke quietly, but he saw that her hands were clenched and in her low
voice vibrated passionate earnestness.

The black face of the housemaid appeared at the door. “What is it,
Lizzie?” he questioned.

“A letter, sah, a big, fat letter, fo’ Miss Rhoda. A boy brought it,
jess now.”

Rhoda tore open the envelope, curiosity getting the better, for a
moment, of the feeling that had just burst through all her usual
barriers of restraint. “It’s the papers freeing that slave!” she cried.
“It was good of Jeff to do this, wasn’t it, father?”

Together they glanced through the document. “I’m so glad I held out,”
she exclaimed. “How happy that poor man will be when he sees this!”

“You see, Rhoda, you’ve done something already!”

“Yes, and I want to do more. Father, you do something--I don’t know
what--but I know you work as well as talk. Can’t I help?”

She had never seen him look at her with such pride and gratification.
Her heart leaped in response and she flushed with gladness.

“Yes, Rhoda, you can--I need your help. For years I’ve given to the
anti-slavery cause all I could afford in money--mainly for the work
of the Underground Railroad. But I couldn’t do much in any other way
because your mother’s sympathies are with the South. Now the time has
come when they need my help as an actual worker. You know Jim Conners’
house, not far from the steamboat landing. For a long time that has
been the first station on the Underground Road, for all the slaves who
get across the river in this vicinity. But Conners is going to Kansas
soon and, besides, he is under such suspicion and the slave hunters are
watching his place so closely that it’s no longer safe. Why, this man,”
and he tapped the document, “was nearly caught there this morning.
He got away by the skin of his teeth, in a dress and bonnet of Mrs.
Conners’, and the marshal and his men had been close at his heels all
the morning, when you came to his rescue!”

“Then you knew about him already!”

“Yes. That is, I knew of his narrow escape this morning, and knew he
belonged to Delavan. Well, you see, there’s got to be a new refuge
provided for them here in town, not too far from the river. For many
reasons our house is the best place possible. If you help me I think
I can manage it, with the aid of Jim and Lizzie, and your mother and
Charlotte need know nothing about it.”

“I’ll be glad to help you, father, glad to do anything I can, and it
will be fine to know that we’re getting even a few poor creatures out
of slavery. But, father, will it ever really amount to anything?” She
looked up at him anxiously. “Will it ever help to tear out the whole
wicked system?”

He glanced at her with approval. “I’m glad you take that view of
it, Rhoda. I’ll answer your question in a minute. By means of the
Underground Road many thousands of slaves have been enabled to throw
away their chains. Levi Coffin, in Cincinnati--you remember we were
at their house--has been engaged in this work for years and himself
has sent nearly three thousand runaways on to Canada and freedom. The
southerners hate him bitterly and because of his activity they call
him ‘President of the Underground Road.’ There is no president, no
organization of any sort, nothing but coöperation between those who
live near together. I speak of it to show you how the work angers the
slaveholders. They got the Fugitive Slave Law passed six years ago to
try to stop it, and they are furious because it has since flourished
more than ever.

“Now, I’m coming to the point. As I told you just now, I believe that
nothing but war can solve this problem. It doesn’t matter which side
begins it, just so the fight comes. If the North won’t do it because of
the South’s insults, then we must make the South strike the first blow.
She must be irritated to the limit of endurance, and this Underground
work seems to me the most efficient way of doing it. That’s chiefly why
I’m in it, Rhoda. It’s something, of course, to help individual slaves
on to liberty, but I’m looking for the big result. And I’ll be very
glad to have your help, so that I can begin to do something a little
more worth while. I’ve been waiting anxiously for you to make up your
mind about young Delavan, for the situation here is important.”

She looked at him with wide eyes, her breath coming fast. “And you
never said a word to me about it!”

He got up and took a turn or two across the room. “Of course not. It
was necessary for you to fight the question out for yourself.”

They heard Mrs. Ware’s voice on the veranda, softly calling Rhoda. The
girl rose and started toward the door, but stopped beside him.

“I’ll help you, father.” Her head was held high, her figure was erect
and her young countenance was almost solemn in its earnestness. Half
consciously she put out her hand. Instantly her father gripped it and
they stood like two men pledging faith. It was the nearest they had
ever come to mutual expression of sentiment. Again they heard Mrs.
Ware’s voice, nearing the door, and Rhoda, calling out, “I’m coming,
mother,” dropped her father’s hand and rushed from the room before
self-consciousness had time to mar their moment of high resolve and
close communion.

Dr. Ware gazed after her thoughtfully as he sank into his desk chair.
“Heredity was bound to tell, sooner or later,” he said to himself,
“and she’s got her full share of the New England conscience. How that
Puritan conscience does flourish in the blood of us New Englanders,
wherever we go! In its original form I reckon it was too strong a dose
for the best results--a saturated solution, it was then. But now it’s
diluted enough to be a first-rate general preservative of morals.”

Mrs. Ware drew Rhoda to her side with an arm about her waist. “Jeff is
here,” she whispered. “He’s waiting for you on the front veranda. Go
up to your room by the back stairs, honey, and put on your pink dress.
It’s very becoming.”

When presently Rhoda came slowly downstairs again and through the hall
to the front door she heard her mother saying to Jefferson Delavan, on
the veranda:

“Rhoda has some absurd, fanatical ideas about slavery that she has got
from her father, Jeff, but I think you can hope for the answer you
want. And you know, my dear boy, how much I want you to have it! I
talked with her this morning--oh, here she is now. Come, Rhoda, dear!
Jeff is waiting for you.”

She passed into the house as Rhoda stepped out, grave and hesitant and
gave him her hand. He held it in his while his eyes studied her face
with anxious inquiry.

“Come,” he said, and led her down the steps and into the path to the
grape arbor. She looked pale and a little weary, but her serious gray
eyes were very bright and in her face still lingered a touch of the
exalted mood in which she had left her father. She tried to withdraw
her hand from his but he would not let it go, and after a moment she
submitted to the firm clasp in which it was held. Once she lifted her
eyes to his, but at once turned shyly away, as if she could not endure
the look of love and yearning she saw in them.

“Rhoda, you are like a wild rose, in that gown, the sweetest of all
roses.” He plucked a red rose, the last one, from a bush they were
passing, touched it to his lips and handed it to her. “Last week,” he
said, “you gave me a rose for my thoughts. Will you take this one for
yours?”

“Yes,” she answered gravely, “yes, I will tell you--I must be very
frank with you.”

They went into the arbor, where she sat down on the bench and he stood
before her, just as they had done in the moonlight on that evening
that seemed now so long ago. The sun, drooping low, sent level shafts
of yellow light through the foliage, which glowed darkly against the
western brilliance. They fell upon her fair hair and made round her
head a sort of aureole. Out of this background her pale face and
shining eyes, still illumined by the high thoughts which had lately
filled her mind, looked up to meet the adoration which beamed in his
countenance. Unconsciously the love-light leaped into her own eyes in
quick response, and for an instant they gazed deep into each other’s
hearts. Then he bent toward her with outstretched arms.

“Rhoda!” he whispered. “You love me!”

As if suddenly roused from a dream she drew back, and with one hand
warded him away. “I can’t marry you, Jeff, I can’t marry you!” she
exclaimed in hurried tones.

“But you love me, Rhoda,--I saw it in your eyes! Don’t say you don’t!”

She straightened up and, watching her eagerly, he saw the effort with
which she regained her self-control. “Listen, Jeff. Sit down here on
the bench beside me, and I’ll try to tell you how it is. I--I do love
you--no, don’t take my hand--don’t touch me--I’ve loved you all the
time. When you went away, last week, I knew I was going to tell you
‘yes,’ sometime, but I just wanted to make you wait a while--” She
flashed her sudden, irradiating smile upon him and he started forward
and seized her hand. She drew it away and went on hastily:

“But I hadn’t thought then--I knew it of course, but I hadn’t thought
of it--I hadn’t thought of anything but just you--about your owning
slaves and believing in slavery. And ever since I remembered it I’ve
been trying and trying to convince myself that I wouldn’t mind, that I
could make it seem right--but it’s no use, Jeff. I can’t do it.”

He looked at her, puzzled, vainly trying to understand her point of
view. “But, Rhoda, I can’t see what difference that makes. If you love
me and I love you--and heaven knows I do, dear heart--I can’t see why a
matter of opinion should keep us apart. Look at your father and mother.
He is violently opposed to slavery and she still believes in it, and
yet they loved and were married and have lived happily together. Why
can’t we do the same?”

“But this is different. Mother just gave up things she liked and the
kind of life she enjoyed. I could do that--oh, I’d love to do that,
for you--for any one I loved. But she didn’t have to become part of
something that she thought was wrong. I can’t marry you, Jeff, because
I know that slavery is wrong, wicked, horrible, and I simply couldn’t
endure being part of it and having to uphold it.”

He rose and walked back and forth in front of her. “This is your
father’s influence,” he said resentfully. “He told me that he would use
it against me.”

“No, you must not blame father,” she responded quickly. “He has said
very little to me about it, and he told me that it was something I
must settle with my own conscience. And mother has said everything she
could think of to persuade me. I’ve worked it out myself, and I know
that I can’t marry you--but, oh, Jeff! I want to be your wife more than
anything in the world!”

It was almost a glare with which he surveyed her as she uttered her
last words. His hands, hanging at his sides, were clinched. “Rhoda,
this is fanaticism gone mad!” he exclaimed.

She rose and stood before him. “You will have to call it whatever it
seems to you. To me it is the command of my conscience, and I’ve got to
obey it.”

“Did that--incident--this morning have anything to do with your
decision?” he demanded.

“Something, perhaps--no, I am sure I should have seen things as I do
now, anyway, after a little. That only made me see the truth more
quickly and more clearly.”

“The truth?” he queried. “You mean--”

“I mean, it made me see that I could never regard slavery as anything
but wrong and monstrous and criminal and that I could never, never make
myself a party to it.”

“But, Rhoda, this is absurd. You’ve never lived in the South and you
don’t know anything about it. You don’t know how necessary it is for us
down there and how well it works out!”

“I don’t have to live there to know that it is a wicked thing to buy
and sell human beings as though they were horses or pigs. But it’s no
use to argue about it, Jeff. You believe in it and I don’t--I hate it,
I hate it! And I wish I could tear it down, myself, and destroy it
forever!”

Her head was high, her eyes glowing and her voice, low almost as a
whisper, thrilled with passionate conviction. His eyes yearned over
her for a moment and then, “Rhoda! Rhoda Ware!” he exclaimed. “You must
be mine! I shall not give you up because of this foolish notion of
yours!”

She drew back and as she spoke she made evident but unavailing effort
to keep all feeling out of her voice. “It’s no use for us to talk any
more about it, Jeff. My mind is made up, and I’ve told you I can’t
marry you. It only makes us the more unhappy to keep on talking about
it. I think we’d better consider that it’s ended now, for good.”

“No!” he exclaimed. “It isn’t ended! As long as you love me I’ll not
give you up! I’ll go now, but some day I’m coming back, and I’ll win
you yet, Rhoda Ware!” He seized her hand in both of his and held it
against his heart. Taken aback by his sudden outburst she did not try
to withdraw it, but let him press his lips twice and thrice upon it.
Then, without another word, he strode out of the arbor, down the path,
and was gone.




CHAPTER VIII


Dr. Ware noiselessly closed the door of his wife’s bedroom and walked
softly downstairs. “Can we have supper at once, Rhoda?” he inquired of
his daughter at the door of the dining-room. “Good! I’m called over to
the other side of town and I want to get away as quickly as possible.
It’s likely I’ll have to stay most of the night--maybe until morning.
Are you intending to go to the party to-night?”

“I was, father, but if you’re going to be away I’d better stay with
mother. How is she to-night?”

“It’s the worst attack of sick headache she’s had in a long time. But I
hope she will soon be able to go to sleep, and if she sleeps well all
night she will be much better to-morrow. She doesn’t want anything now,
but you might look in very quietly after a little and see if she is
asleep. Do you mind missing the party?”

“No, not at all, father. But Charlotte--” she looked uncertainly across
the table at her sister. “Do you think Charlotte better go without me?”

“Of course you do, don’t you, father?” Charlotte promptly interrupted,
with a coquettish look at Dr. Ware, to which he responded with a fond
smile. “Isn’t Horace Hardaker a good enough chaperon for anybody?” she
went on.

“Horace Hardaker!” her father exclaimed in surprise. “What’s become of
Billy Saunders? Have you quarreled?”

“No--he hasn’t. He was impertinent this afternoon--wanted to kiss me,
and I told him he shouldn’t speak to me for a month. So I asked Rhoda
if I couldn’t go with her and Horace.”

Dr. Ware laughed indulgently. “Horace will take good care of her,
Rhoda. It’s all right for her to go with him. But I’m surprised,
Charlotte,” he went on, frowning at her with mock seriousness, “that a
young lady of your convictions should be willing to go to a party with
a Black Abolitionist!”

“Aren’t you afraid to let him go with me, father?” she mocked in reply,
her eyes dancing. “Suppose I should convert him to slavery before we
get back, and make him promise to vote for Buchanan!”

“You minx!” he said fondly, as he stopped to give her hair a rumpling
caress. Then with altered manner he turned to Rhoda with some
directions for her mother’s comfort and messages for certain patients
if they should call during the evening.

The making of Charlotte’s toilette, at which Rhoda assisted, was
enlivened by much gaiety of spirit on the part of the younger sister.
Charlotte had put aside the teasing humor in which she so often
indulged and was more affectionate than usual. Rhoda warmed to her
in response and was delightedly absorbed in helping to deck her for
the evening’s merrymaking. They laughed softly together at her little
flashes of fun, which were so frequent that finally Rhoda exclaimed,
smiling down upon her fondly: “You’re hatching up some mischief,
sister, aren’t you?”

Charlotte giggled. “Oh, I’m just thinking how I’ll punish Billy
Saunders!”

“And make him want to kiss you more than ever!” warned Rhoda gaily.

“He shan’t, all the same!” Charlotte laughed over her shoulder as she
tilted out of the room.

From the veranda steps Rhoda bade Charlotte and Horace Hardaker
good-night, and as they passed down the broad front walk between the
lilac hedges called out gay nothings after them and laughed at her
sister’s saucy rejoinders. When they disappeared down the street
she went back into the house, softly humming to herself, for the
merriment still stirred in her heart. She peeped into her mother’s
bedroom and smiled with gratification as she saw that the invalid was
at last sleeping soundly. Then she made a trip to the kitchen to give
Lizzie directions concerning breakfast and afterward sat down in the
living-room for a quiet hour or two of reading.

It was in the early days of October, and the presidential campaign
of 1856 was at its height. Mighty waves of political enthusiasm
were sweeping the country and stirring it to its depths, as it had
never before been stirred. The youthful Republican party was already
showing a marvelous growth. From the South were coming open threats of
secession in case Frémont should be elected.

Rhoda was intensely interested and under the guidance of her father was
eagerly following the progress of the campaign. She sat down now with a
little pile of its literature on the table beside her and took up first
a pamphlet containing George William Curtis’s oration on “The Duty of
the American Scholar to Politics and the Times.” The quiet, intense
conviction which glowed through its polished phrases set her pulses to
throbbing. She read it through rapidly once, then went back and studied
carefully the arguments, breathing high aspirations and noble ideals,
by which he advanced to the conclusion that the prime duty of the
scholar in that crisis was to work to his utmost for the election of
Frémont.

She knew that the oration was being read by scores upon scores of
thousands, for her father had told her of its enormous circulation
and of its effect upon thinking people throughout the North. Her hand
trembled as she laid it down and went out upon the veranda. She tried
to form in her mind some idea of all those masses of people moved as
she was feeling herself moved at that moment by the orator’s inspiring
sentences and stirred as she was stirred by the desire to go forth as
to a crusade and with mind and heart and hand work for the success of
the party that would put an end to the extension of slavery.

“Oh, he will surely be elected--he must be elected!” she whispered,
nervously clasping her hands. Then she wondered, if Frémont should be
successful, would there follow secession and war--the war which her
father believed to be the only means for the cutting of the Gordian
knot into which North and South had tangled themselves. And then came
quickly apprehensive thought of that ardent and determined lover, on
the other side of the fateful river. She shivered a little and told
herself that the nights were already growing much cooler. Presently she
would go upstairs, she thought, and, perhaps, she would read again the
letter that had come two days before from Jefferson Delavan.

She went back to her reading and looked through some recent newspapers.
In the New York “Times” she read an account of a great meeting in Wall
Street, where, from the steps of the Merchants’ Exchange, Speaker
Banks, of the House of Representatives, had addressed a mighty
assemblage of twenty thousand earnest men. In Pittsburg had been held a
monster mass-meeting of a hundred thousand. Everywhere there had been
meetings, speeches, torchlight processions, bands, cheers, enthusiasm.

Rhoda had herself joined in that staccato cry of the campaign, “Free
speech, free soil and Frémont!” only a few nights before when she
and Marcia Kimball and Mrs. Hardaker and others of her friends had
leaned from the windows of Horace Hardaker’s office and with waving
handkerchiefs and responding cheers had added to the enthusiasm of the
Republican procession sweeping down the street. Her father, heading
one division and Horace leading another, had saluted them with waving
torches and louder cheers. Her mother and sister had stayed at home
that night and neither of them, by word or look, had shown afterwards
that they knew a torchlight procession had taken place. But when the
Democrats had had their meeting and procession a week earlier Mrs. Ware
and Charlotte had gone under the escort of Billy Saunders.

With close attention she read too of the great meetings that were being
held all over the North, and the money that was being donated by rich
and poor alike in aid of the free-soil settlers in Kansas. Recently she
had had a long letter from Julia Hammerton, Horace’s sister, giving
intimate account of the perilous times through which they were passing
and of the riot and pillage and bloodshed which ravished the border.
Her anxiety for her friend doubled the interest with which she perused
the reports from Lawrence and Topeka. She exclaimed with horror every
now and then, and at last with head bowed upon her clasped hands she
whispered: “Oh, God in heaven, grant the election of Frémont, and stop
all this, I pray, I pray!”

[Illustration: “Inside were a withered rose and a letter.”]

She sat musing for a while upon what she had read, but her thoughts
would wander to the grapevine arbor, and again and again across the
ardent longings for the success of the Republican cause which filled
her mind would come the image of Jefferson Delavan as he held her hand
to his heart and declared, “I shall win you yet, Rhoda Ware!”

A deep flush dyed her cheeks and muttering, “Dear God, forgive me, that
I cannot help thinking of him even at such a time!” she rose and folded
the papers. Then she carefully put them away in her father’s office;
for Charlotte did not hesitate, if she came across such publications in
any other part of the house and happened to be in an audacious mood, to
put them with laughing defiance into the fire.

In her room she moved about restlessly, going now and again toward her
bureau, then turning away. At last she opened one of the drawers and
from one corner hidden away under ribbons and handkerchiefs, took a
small box tied with a white ribbon. For some moments she clasped it
tenderly in both hands, her eyes fixed on the floor. Then, as she sank
into a chair, the barriers of her will gave way and with trembling
fingers she took off the cover.

Inside were a withered rose and a letter. She kissed the rose and
caressed it in her palm and held it against her cheek--had not he
held it to his lips that day in the arbor when she told him she would
not marry him? Then she unfolded the letter and read again its brief
sentences. Already she knew them, every word, for in the two days since
she received it her traitor heart had sent her, against her will, to
read it many times. It was dated in Cincinnati, where, he said, he
was likely to remain several days more, but before returning home he
intended to go on up the river to Hillside, where he hoped to have the
pleasure of calling again upon Mrs. Ware and herself. It was written in
courteous, formal phrase, and Rhoda’s eyes studied the lines as though
searching for some hidden expression of the love that she knew was
behind them.

“Ought I to write and tell him he’d better not come?” she asked
herself, as she had done a dozen times already, but still unable to
decide that she would request him not to make the visit. Her heart was
longing to see him again, but what she said to herself was, “It would
be a disappointment to mother if he should not come.”

Oh, traitor heart, that with its insidious desires undermines the
defenses of the will and levels to the dust the walls of human
determination! If wishfulness stand within the gate when temptation
knocks outside it is only the sternest “no,” to both of them, over
and over again, resolute and unchanging and giving way not so much
as a hair’s breadth, that can save the day. If man’s desires always
squared with his knowledge of the right perhaps the world would be a
cleaner and a sweeter place to live in. But it would lack the inspiring
savor of that grim struggle between them, as old as the race, by which
humankind has mounted a few of the steps toward heaven. Man’s inability
to say “no” to himself, stoutly and often, is responsible for more
of his ills than is all “man’s inhumanity to man.” And to dally with
desire, to argue with the traitor within the gates, to listen for a
moment to his specious pleading, is to make it ever harder and harder
to utter the one blunt word that alone brings peace.

Doubtless Rhoda did not know, for she was not much given to
introspection, that if she did not come to quick and sharp conclusions
with the insurgent within her own breast she was but lengthening the
conflict and making it the more difficult to stand to the line she had
set. She was quite sure of her determination that she would not marry
Jefferson Delavan and she would have been amazed and incredulous had
any one told her that even by this yielding to her love in the privacy
of her own room and debating with herself as to whether or not she
should see him again she was throwing doubt upon the issue.

So she sat there fondling the withered rose, which his lips had
touched, and the letter, which his hand had written, and thinking
that it would do no harm if he should come again, for they would meet
hereafter merely as friends. Surely they were both strong enough to
be just good friends, and to keep hidden whatever might be in their
hearts. They were so congenial, they enjoyed each other’s society so
much, why shouldn’t they have the pleasure of meeting now and then?
And her mother was so fond of him, it really would not be fair to
her to tell him that he must not visit them. Yes, it would surely be
for the best, and to-morrow she would ask her mother to write and
say they would be glad to see him whenever he should come. Her heart
gave a little bound at this victory and her lips unconsciously formed
themselves into the tenderest of smiling curves as she pressed them
upon the withered rose. Then she put the box carefully away, blew out
her candle and knelt beside the open window.

Her room was in the southeast corner of the house, and the moon,
dwindling past its half, bounded up from behind the wooded hills and
saw upon her face the same tender look of smiling happiness. Presently,
upon the still night air came the faint sound of cautious footsteps.
She turned her eyes, that had been brooding upon the star-filled sky
while her spirit wandered in dream-filled Elysian fields, downward to
the earth. She could dimly make out a woman’s figure coming up the
middle of the street.

A lantern hung on one of the posts of the east gate, beside her
father’s sign. But it had now a double purpose. Rhoda watched as the
figure came slowly on, stopped at the gate, glanced warily about, and
seemed to read the sign, “Dr. Amos M. Ware.” By the dim light she
could see that the woman’s face was dark and that she held a child by
the hand. Instantly the girl’s spirit was upon the earth again. With
noiseless feet she rushed downstairs, through her father’s office, and
out upon the veranda. The wanderer was climbing the steps and looking
doubtfully about, as if uncertain what she ought to do next.

“You’re in the right place,” said Rhoda assuringly, speaking barely
above a whisper. “I am your friend--come in.”

She hurried the woman into the office, pulled down the shades and
lighted a candle. Then she saw that the fugitive, besides the child,
perhaps four or five years old, which she led by the hand, carried a
baby underneath her shawl. The girl drew a swift breath that was almost
a sob.

“Oh!” she exclaimed, running to the woman and putting her two hands
gently upon her shoulders, “Oh, you poor thing! You poor thing!”

The room occupied by Jim and Lizzie, the two colored servants, was
next to the office, at the northeast corner of the house. Darting out
on the veranda again, Rhoda ran to their window and rapped gently four
times. In a few moments Jim opened the door.

“Tell Lizzie to get up,” she whispered. “A poor woman with two children
is here. I’ve got them in the office now, but you’d better let me bring
them into your room as quickly as possible. They must have some supper
and a little rest, and then we’ll decide what’s best to do.”

Lizzie’s face appeared above Jim’s shoulder. “All right, Miss Rhoda,”
she was saying in subdued but hearty accents, “you all kin come right
in--in two minutes.”

The runaways were soon eating a supper of cold meat and bread and milk,
which Lizzie hurried into the room. Rhoda nodded and smiled at her and
her husband.

“Now,” she said coaxingly, “you and Jim will let them have your bed a
little while, won’t you? Jim can go in the office and lie down on the
lounge. They must have some rest, for they ought to go on to-night.
It wouldn’t be safe to try to keep them here to-morrow, for Charlotte
would be sure to discover the children. Father is not likely to get
back before morning--so I’ll drive them on to Gilbertson’s. No, it’s
all right”--as Jim made a movement of protest. “Dolly is in the
stable--you can hitch her to the two-seated carriage. I’m not the
least bit afraid, and it will be much safer for me than you. Charlotte
will be home soon. We’d better not do anything more until after she
gets in and goes to sleep. But we ought to start in about three hours.
Have the carriage ready, Jim, and I’ll be down. Now, you poor thing,
you and these babies must lie down and get some sleep.”

When they were ready to start, Rhoda put the child, still asleep, into
a nest of rugs on the carriage floor. The woman, with the baby hugged
to her breast, she took on the front seat. “If we should happen to
meet any one,” she said, “they’d take less notice if we were sitting
together sociably like this. If you see father when he comes home, Jim,
tell him where I’ve gone. And, Lizzie, you’ll be sure to look out for
mother as soon as she wakens in the morning, won’t you? If she asks for
me tell her I’ve gone on an errand for father.”

The street, going on northward, passed a few more houses and then
became a country road. The Ware house stood on the top of a long,
gentle rise from the river. From the summit the road dipped down into a
shallow valley, then mounted another longer and steeper ascent, whence
it passed into a region partly wooded and partly filled with farms.

They drove on without speaking until they had passed the last of
the houses. Rhoda’s thoughts were busy with the woman beside her,
wondering what awful pressure of desperation had sent her, with these
little ones clinging to her hands, upon the perilous road toward
freedom. The fugitive was a good-looking young mulatto, not much older
than herself. In her speech and manner Rhoda had already noted the
lack of a certain suppressed fire which she had seen in some of the
refugees, and especially in the slave whose emancipation papers she had
won from Jefferson Delavan. In this one there was instead a patient,
pleading resignation which seemed to her eloquent of the wrongs of the
helpless race. It appealed to her from the big, mournful eyes of the
child when, mutely trustful, he let her take him from his mother’s arm
and lay him upon the bed. It was tugging mightily at her heartstrings
as they drove down the dim road, her eyes on the faint track that
gradually opened out of the darkness. Her heart was all one sweet
compassion and brooding tenderness. But she did not speak until they
were well past the last house of the town and beyond chance of any
wakeful ear.

“Have you come very far? Has it been hard?” she asked in subdued tones.

“Yes, miss, it’s seemed a long way.” The woman used good English, and
her gentle manner showed that she must have been well trained. “But I
reckon it wasn’t really so far. It’s just a week ago to-night that I
took out. We’ve had to hide in the daytime and walk at night, mostly.
Once a man met us and hid us in a wagon under some hay and took us
right far. Sometimes I had to carry both the children and then I
couldn’t come so fast. Andy was right good for such a little fellow.
He’d run most all the time. I told him we were going to see his pappy
and he’s been expecting to find him every time we stop.”

“Your husband has got away, then? Is he in Canada?”

“Yes, miss. He took out last June.”

“Did they follow you? Were you afraid of being caught and taken back?”

“Eleven of us left at the same time, from three plantations. We kept
together the first night, and then we divided. I wanted to come the
same way my husband had. The man who came down there and told us how to
go and what to do said it would be safer for us to divide, and he said
that if I thought I could make the trip alone it would be better for
me, because they wouldn’t think I’d leave the others. He told me not to
be afraid, so I wasn’t.”

The quick tears sprang to Rhoda’s eyes at thought of this childlike
trust and simple steadfastness. “Do you know who the man was?” she
asked.

“No, miss, I don’t know his name. He was a young man and so kind
looking you knew right away that you could trust him. He came out from
Lexington about two weeks ago and we all thought he was just after
birds. He wanted to get bird skins and he paid some of the children who
could catch birds in snares, so the skins would be whole. But after a
day or two word was whispered round that he wanted to see the slaves
who would like to be free.”

Rhoda nodded. “Yes, I know him! He was here only a month ago, getting
names of people who would help the runaway slaves and what they would
do for them. He was at our house and went right on down into Kentucky
to let the slaves know how they can escape from slavery. His name is
Alexander Wilson.”

“Yes, miss. I didn’t hear his name. I’d been powerful anxious to get
away ever since my husband took out, so I went to the meeting, in our
preacher’s house. The man had seen Andrew, my husband, in Canada, and
he had sent me some money and word to follow him as soon as I could.
Oh, miss, he’s free now, and he’s earning money, his own money, and
making a home for us!”

For the first time in the woman’s simple narrative the note of deep
feeling broke through her tone and manner of settled, mournful
resignation. The childlike wonder in her voice as she uttered her last
sentence touched her listener deeply.

“There are no slaves in Canada,” Rhoda said gently. “You’ll be free too
and perfectly safe when you get there. What made you and your husband
dissatisfied in the first place?” she continued. “Did you have a hard
master?”

“No, miss, he’s a right kind man to his slaves, better than his sister.
She’ll be married some day, and we all thought the slaves might be
divided then and maybe some of us sold down south.” She was silent for
a moment, a suspended accent in her voice, and Rhoda waited. “Master
was always right good to Andrew. There was a reason--” She checked
herself, as if some innate delicacy prevented her from saying more, and
went on: “But Miss Emily would have sold him if she could. She didn’t
like him.”

“Miss Emily!” Rhoda exclaimed, a catch in her breath.

“Yes, miss, master’s sister, who has a share in the slaves and
everything. But Andrew’s free now! He can’t be sold now!” Her voice was
full of happy satisfaction.

“But you’ll soon be in Canada, and then you’ll be free too, just as
free as he is,” Rhoda told her assuringly, thinking that the slave
woman had not yet realized the freedom to which she was fleeing. The
girl spoke calmly and compassionately, but at her heart there was a
quick throbbing.

“I mean he’s surely free, miss! He’s got his free papers! Master
followed him and most caught him, the man told me, and a young lady hid
him in a cave. Master Jeff came and she persuaded him to give Andrew
his free papers. Oh, miss! I wish I could see that young lady!” At
last the refugee’s feeling had broken through her manner of subdued and
patient resignation. Her voice was trembling with eagerness and in the
moonlight Rhoda could see the tears rolling down her cheeks. “I’d do
anything for her, anything!”

A lump swelled in Rhoda’s throat. She leaned forward to tap her horse
to a faster pace along a level stretch of road, then lifted her eyes to
the sky and whispered, “O God, I thank thee!”

“What is your name?” she queried as she leaned back again.

“My name is Lina, miss,--Carolina, but I’m always called just Lina. My
husband’s name is Andrew Delavan. We took master’s name.”

“Andrew is doing well in Canada, I think you said?”

“Yes, miss. He’s got some land and he’s building a log house for us. It
will be our own!”

“Well, Lina, I want you--can you write?--after you get there I want
you to write a letter to me--I’ll write down my name and address for
you--and tell me about your home and whether or not you and Andrew like
being free. I think perhaps I know that young lady you spoke of and
I’ll show her your letter. It will give her more pleasure than anything
else you could do.”




CHAPTER IX


It was still early the next day when Horace Hardaker appeared at Dr.
Ware’s east gate and looked anxiously around for signs of life. After a
little he saw Jim at work in the stable and hurried thither.

“Good morning, Jim! Is the doctor at home?”

“Yes, sah, I s’pose he is, though I hain’t seen him. I reckon he’s
heah, sah, for heah’s Prince and the buggy he used last night. Do you
want to see him, sah?”

“Yes--no, that is--I reckon he didn’t get in until pretty late?”

“I reckon you all are right, sah! I reckon it must a’ been pow’r’ful
late!”

“Then don’t disturb him now. I’ll see him later in the day.” Hardaker
turned and walked a few steps, as if going away, his head bent and his
eyebrows wrinkled, then hesitated and came slowly back. “Miss Rhoda--is
she around anywhere?”

Jim came close and in low tones told briefly the happening of the night
before. “Miss Rhoda, she hain’t got back yet and I’se begun to feel
anxious about her.”

“She probably waited at Gilbertson’s until morning, and then stopped
for breakfast. I dare say she’s all right, but if you’ll saddle up
Prince for me I’ll ride out that way and make sure.”

Trotting along on the road toward Gilbertson’s Horace Hardaker seemed
to be uneasy of mind. His brows were wrinkled, his lips pressed
together, and every now and then he made an impatient exclamation. He
was a young man, still under thirty, but he had already acquired a good
law practice and was becoming noted throughout his own and adjoining
countries for his success in jury trials. His sandy complexion, bright
blue eyes and the round, boyish contour of his cheeks made him look
even younger than he was. Countenance and expression both indicated the
emotional temperament that was at the bottom of his success in jury
pleading. It rarely needed more than three sentences of an address
to the twelve peers in the box to sweep him into the full tide of
ardent conviction of the merits of his case. Whatever may have been
his secret thought about his client before, Hardaker always believed
in him enthusiastically by the time he had been talking five minutes.
Moreover, he was able, with remarkable frequency, to make the jurymen
believe in him too.

Just now he was asking himself, “Shall I tell her about it?” and
the perturbation which the problem caused him was evident in his
countenance. An uneasy shifting in his saddle and a shake of his head
showed that the telling, whatever it might be, would be an ordeal from
which he shrank.

“But I’d as soon tell her as the doctor,” his thoughts went doubtfully
on, “and I don’t know but it would do more good. Hang me if I don’t
need advice from somewhere inside the family!” Another irritated
exclamation broke from his lips. But the impatience and anxiety of his
manner abated somewhat as he went on considering whether or not he
should confide his trouble to the absent Rhoda.

“She’s got so much good sense,” he told himself, “and she understands
about things better than most girls do, and there’s no nonsense about
her. She knows how to be a good friend too--I reckon she and the doctor
are the best friends I’ve got, even if she won’t marry me--and that
makes it all the worse!” he exclaimed, looking as if there were a bad
taste in his mouth.

As he crossed the top of one hill he saw Rhoda driving down the long
slope of the next. With a flourish of her carriage whip she responded
to his hat-waving salute.

“Let me hitch Prince on behind and get in and drive you back,” he said,
as they met at the bottom of the hill. “So you had some U. G. baggage
to deliver last night?” he continued, as he jumped in and took the
lines from her hands.

She flashed a smile at him. “Yes, a trunk and two handbags. And oh,
Horace, they were the wife and children of the man to whom Mr. Delavan
gave his freedom last June! I do hope they’ll get to him safely!”

He remained silent, as he usually did if she spoke in his presence of
Delavan. So she turned at once to another subject.

“How did the party go off last night? I didn’t see Charlotte when she
came home, so I don’t know anything about it yet. Did you have a good
time?”

“The party? Oh, yes, it was pleasant. Everybody seemed to enjoy
themselves.”

She cast a side glance at him. He was looking fixedly ahead and his
expression seemed to indicate lack of interest in the social function
to which he had escorted Charlotte. She tried another tack:

“I spent the evening reading speeches. You’ve read George William
Curtis’s oration, haven’t you?” He warmed up at this, with a look of
relief, and they plunged at once into a discussion of the speech,
comparing ideas upon it, and telling each other bits of news they had
heard about its influence and about the progress of the campaign.

“When the state elections are held next week, in Ohio, Indiana and
Pennsylvania,” said Hardaker, “we’ll have a good indication of how
things will go in November. The side that gets Pennsylvania will be
pretty sure to win. I hope we’ll carry it, but between you and me,
Rhoda, I don’t like the look of things over there. They’re stealing our
thunder. They’re yelling ‘Buck and Breck and Free Kansas’ all over the
state. And Kansas has about as much chance of becoming free if Buchanan
is elected as--Prince has of flying.”

“Has Julia said anything in her letters to you about John Brown and
what the free-state people in Kansas think about him? You know the
others accuse him of most awful murders.”

“War is always murder, and it doesn’t pretend to be anything else,” he
responded with energy. “The Buchaneers have been doing some atrocious
lying about him and about everything else out there. According to them
it’s war when the border ruffians drive the free-state settlers out of
their homes and murder when Brown or anybody else helps to defend the
settlers from their attacks. No, Julia hasn’t said anything particular
about him, but my opinion is that at the greatest risk to his own life
he’s helping to save Kansas from the grip of the slave power.”

“Father believes in him,” said Rhoda thoughtfully. “He knew John Brown
here in Ohio, before he went to Kansas and he says there is nobody more
devoted to the anti-slavery cause, or more enthusiastic and unselfish.
Charlotte was trying to argue with me yesterday and telling me a lot
of stuff she had got from Billy Saunders about him. But I never take
Charlotte seriously.”

“Charlotte is very different from you,” said Hardaker, gloomily.

“She’s different from all of us, except that I think she must be like
what mother was at her age, only more--more of a mischief. The truth
is, Charlotte is dreadfully spoiled. We all spoil her, and no matter
what she does we laugh and say, ‘O, it’s just Charlotte!’--except
mother, and mother takes her too seriously, and that just makes her try
to be more provoking. She had it in for Billy last night. Did she make
him wish he’d never been born?”

“She didn’t stop with Billy!” Hardaker exclaimed, shutting his jaws
with a snap.

His companion laughed. “Did she visit her displeasure on you too? She
made a sort of half threat at supper about making you promise to vote
for Buchanan. I wonder if she did!” Rhoda teased, her face rippling
with smiles.

Horace looked full into her laughing face, then turned his eyes
suddenly to the front. “Hang it all, Rhoda,” he broke out, “I must tell
you about it, though I’m afraid you’ll despise me afterward. The truth
is,--I suppose--I’m engaged to Charlotte!”

“What! You!” she ejaculated, her eyes wide with amazement.

“Yes--I suppose so--something of the sort. Anyway, I made love to
her”--his face was a deep rose color and his eyes downcast--“pretty
violent love, I guess--at least I felt that way--and--well, the upshot
was that I suppose Charlotte considers that we’re engaged. Oh, I know
what you’ll think of me, but I can’t help it now. I’ll just stand up
and take my medicine.”

As Rhoda listened, varying expressions flitted across her face. Once,
when Hardaker stole a sidewise glance at her he saw there the stern
look her father wore when deeply displeased, and his heart sank. But
he went on stoutly. As he finished her lips were twitching, then the
corners of her mouth went up, and she laughed aloud. At the sound of
her merriment he looked relieved, and laughed a little too, though in a
shamefaced way.

“Forgive me, Horace!” Rhoda gasped. “Don’t think me unsympathetic--but
it was so like Charlotte!” And she broke into another peal of laughter.

“I don’t quite know what made me do it!” he pursued. “Charlotte is a
pretty girl, and good company, and I like her well enough, but--you’ll
excuse me, Rhoda--I don’t exactly approve of her, and heaven knows I
don’t want to marry her. That is, I don’t this morning, in cold blood.
Last night--well, last night, I felt different.”

“Exactly!” agreed Rhoda. “I understand. Charlotte usually can make a
man ‘feel different’ when she tries. And I guess she must have tried
real hard last night!”

“But that’s no excuse for me acting the fool,” Hardaker responded
gloomily. “And that’s just what I did, Rhoda--egregious fool,
consummate fool, and every other kind of a fool you can think of. Do
you think she’ll want to hold me to it?”

Rhoda smiled and shook her head. “No, Horace, I don’t. At least, not
for very long. She was probably flirting with you just to add to
Billy’s punishment. All she’ll want will be to get her own little fun
out of it.”

Hardaker brightened up. “She--she wouldn’t let me kiss her! So I reckon
she wasn’t in earnest.”

Rhoda laughed again. “Don’t feel worried about it any more, Horace! It
will all blow over in a week.”

He looked at her gratefully. As she met his eyes she saw more in them
than gratitude. “Rhoda, you’re the best girl out! I wish--”

She checked him with a warning hand. “Never mind about that, Horace.
Just start Prince up a little faster, for I must get home.”

At that moment they came out upon the top of the hill. Below them lay
the town, its bowering foliage dashed here and there, like an artist’s
palette, with splotches of brilliant color. Winding between hills and
fields, the noble river flashed back the morning sun. Involuntarily
Hardaker checked the horse, exclaiming, as two river packets came
sweeping around a bend below the town. One of them was three or four
lengths ahead of the other.

“They’re racing, Rhoda! Just look at their speed!”

“Oh, Horace! See the flames coming out of their smoke stacks!”

“I reckon the firemen are just shoveling in the resin, along with the
coal, this time!”

“The one ahead is the ‘Ohio Beauty,’ isn’t she?”

“Yes, and the other’s the ‘Northern Belle.’ Those two race every chance
they get. The ‘Belle’ is trying to get ahead and beat the ‘Beauty’ to
the landing, so as to capture all this morning’s business. Look, Rhoda!
You can see them turning on the hose around the smoke stacks, to keep
the decks from taking fire!”

Both the steamboats were tooting their whistles and ringing their
bells, the shrill sounds of the one eased a little by the sweet notes
of the other. Across the clamor broke faintly the music of the bands
stationed on their decks. Horace and Rhoda could see the people on each
boat waving hats and handkerchiefs at the other.

“See the ‘Belle’ spurt ahead! She’ll get there first yet if the
‘Beauty’ can’t get up a little more steam!”

“And she is! Oh, Horace, see how the flames are pouring from her
chimneys!”

Then, suddenly, the “Beauty” seemed to leap from the water, there was a
low, booming roar, and out of a burst of flames and smoke her fragments
were scattered upon the bosom of the river.

For one instant the two watchers upon the hilltop sat stunned and
breathless. Then, “My God!” muttered Hardaker as he leaned to urge the
horse forward.

“Hurry, Horace!” cried Rhoda. “We must get father,--he’ll want to go at
once!”

They dashed down the hill at a gallop, and up the other side, and drew
in at the Ware gate to find the doctor, his razor in one hand and his
face covered with lather, trying to see from the veranda what had
happened.

They called to him, “A steamboat explosion!” and he rushed back into
his office, to reappear in a moment with his surgical case and medicine
bag, wiping the lather from his face with his handkerchief.

A swarm of rowboats was already picking up survivors from the water,
and the “Northern Belle,” sure now of all the traffic there would be
that morning, slowed down and stood by until her decks were crowded
with the wounded, burnt, or half-drowned sufferers.

Dr. Ware found a rowboat to take him out to the Belle, still waiting in
mid-stream. “Come with me, Rhoda,” he said. “You can help.”

When the girl cast her eyes over the deck, as she stepped on board,
she shrank back, appalled and sickened by the ghastly sight. But with
a tightening of the lips she drew herself together and went to work.
Presently, as she was trying to quiet an hysterical woman, her father
came close and drew her aside.

“Rhoda,” he said in a low voice, “Jeff Delavan has just been brought on
board.” She turned pale and swayed toward him and he grasped her arm.
“Steady, girl,” he encouraged. “He’s alive, but unconscious. As far as
I can see now I don’t think he is seriously injured. Your mother would
probably want him taken to our house.”

She straightened, with a quick grip upon herself. “Yes, father, of
course she would--and I, too. Oh, he shall go nowhere else!”




CHAPTER X


So it happened that when Jefferson Delavan came back to consciousness
Mrs. Ware was bending over him, extreme anxiety in her look. Dr. Ware
had found that his manifest injuries consisted in a broken rib and
some burns upon his arms. But an accidental blow while clinging to
a plank in the water had rendered him unconscious and he had been
rescued barely in time to prevent him from slipping off and sinking to
his death. Over the possible results of this blow the physician was
anxious. Everything would depend, he had told his wife and Rhoda, upon
how the young man came out of the oblivion. He had warned them that it
might be with wandering wits, and in that case only time could tell
how severe, possibly even how permanent, would be the results of the
accident.

Delavan stirred and moaned slightly and Mrs. Ware, bending over him
with her fingers upon his pulse, saw that his eyelids fluttered.
“Rhoda!” she called, her voice a-tremble and sinking to a whisper,
“he’s coming to!” Rhoda, leaning across the foot of the bed upon her
clenched hands, was watching his face with intent eyes.

“Come and stand beside me!” her mother went on with quivering lips.
“If he shouldn’t know me I--I can’t stand it!” Rhoda took his wrist
from her shaking hand, pressed firm fingers upon his pulse and threw
her other arm with a little soothing caress around the elder woman’s
shoulders. Suddenly the patient’s eyes flew open and with a bewildered
stare looked up into Mrs. Ware’s pale and anxious face.

“Jeff, dear boy, don’t you know me?” she begged. His blank,
unrecognizing gaze rested upon her for a silent minute, then wandered
on and fell upon her companion.

“Speak to him, dear,” Mrs. Ware whispered brokenly. But there was no
need. Slowly a puzzled expression crept into the vacuity, and that
presently gave way to one of recognition, and then the hearts of
the two women were stirred to their depths by the glad wonder that
illumined his countenance. Never would Rhoda be able to forget that
look, like the sudden happiness over-spreading the face of a child at
unexpected sight of a loved one, which her presence had inspired--her
presence, which had brought back his sense, trembling upon the verge of
that unknown black gulf, into the world of light and reason.

“Rhoda!” he said feebly, and then, smiling, closed his eyes again.

“Stay here beside him,” Mrs. Ware whispered, “while I go and see if
your father has returned. Oh, honey! I think it’s going to be all
right!”

When she came back with Dr. Ware, half an hour later, she slipped
quietly into the room a few steps ahead of her husband and found Rhoda
telling her patient what had happened, while he listened, with her
hand clasped in his. Her motherly heart gave a quick throb. “It has
brought Rhoda to her senses too, at last!” was her quick inference. But
a moment later doubts disturbed her certainty as she saw the unconcern
with which the girl withdrew her hand and made way for her father.

Dr. Ware was well pleased with the young man’s condition. “You’ll have
to stay in bed a few days, perhaps a week,” was his decision, “while
your broken rib is knitting itself together again. You’ve got a pretty
good case of nervous shock also, as the result of that blow on your
head--and you can thank God, Mr. Delavan, that it’s nothing worse than
shock. But a few days of quiet will make that all right too.”

There was no perturbation in the physician’s mind, at first, over the
presence of Jefferson Delavan in his house, invested though the young
man was with the romantic interest of his narrow escape from death. He
felt sure of his daughter now and did not believe there was any danger
of her marrying the southerner. She had thrown herself unreservedly
into sympathy with the anti-slavery cause and she was working with him
enthusiastically and efficiently in making of their house a “station”
on the Underground Railroad.

“No,” he assured himself, “she won’t go back on her convictions now.
She’s decided what’s right for her to do, and she’ll stick to it like
a soldier.” He smiled with pride, but a moment later his thought
supplemented, with softened feeling, “It will be hard on her, though!”

On the whole, feeling thus sure about Rhoda, he was rather glad to have
the young man there, because of the pleasure it would give his wife
to mother him and to recall the memories of her youth. In Dr. Ware’s
feeling toward his wife there was a strong element of compassion. In
serious middle age, considering the past with judicial mind, he doubted
not a little if, in that wildly impelling time of youthful passion,
it had been quite the fair thing for him to marry her and take her
away from all her girlish associations. He knew well enough that she
had loved him then and that she still loved him and that their life
together had been as calmly happy as imperfect mortals have any right
to expect the wedded state to be.

But he also felt quite sure that if he had not paid impetuous court to
her in those vivid youthful days she would have loved and married some
man of her own region and lived her life surrounded by the conditions
and the people with whom she was most in sympathy. His conviction that
she would have been happier in such estate inspired him with a very
great tenderness toward her, and with a half-realized wish to make
atonement, in such little ways as became possible, for what she had
missed.

She had been loyal to him through all these years, and from the start
had refused to go back to her old home for even a short visit, because
the invitations from her family had never included him. That one stay
at Fairmount, with Jeff Delavan’s mother, had been the only return to
the old life which she had ever allowed herself. So now he was pleased
when he foresaw how much comfort she would find in having “Adeline’s
boy” under her roof and needing her ministrations.

But Mrs. Ware had still another reason to be pleased that Jeff Delavan
was to be a member of their household for several days and under
such conditions. She warmly hoped and therefore almost believed that
Rhoda’s determination would go down under the persuasive influence of
daily association with her lover. The girl was a good nurse. She had
considerable knowledge, acquired from her father, of what ought to
be done in a sick-room and she was one of those people with a native
knack for making an invalid comfortable. Therefore, Mrs. Ware argued,
it would be her duty to take main charge of their bedridden guest, and
Rhoda would do it if she could be made to see that it was her duty.

There was nothing so sure to soften a girl’s heart, she told herself,
as seeing a strong man dependent upon her care. And this combined with
Jeff’s masterful love-making and the pleadings of her own heart--could
there be a better combination? Truly, it was almost providential,
Jeff’s being upon that boat.

She began at once to plan the household matters so that Rhoda would
be free to devote the greater part of each day to the sick-room. She
decided also that it was most necessary for the patient to be kept
quiet, to be undisturbed by much going in and out of his room, and that
therefore Charlotte, at least for several days, should not be admitted.

Charlotte keenly resented this order. She felt it to be most unfair
that she, who would undoubtedly be to any young man the most
entertaining member of the family, should be barred from a room so
full of romantic interest as this, in which lay a good-looking young
gentleman, who had barely been rescued from a tragic death but who
doubtless would still be capable of good judgment in the matter of
feminine attractions. When Rhoda found her at the piano practising “The
Last Rose of Summer” in the late afternoon of that first day she was
looking very glum.

“What’s the matter, sister?” Rhoda queried.

“Nothing,” Charlotte answered shortly.

“Really? I’d never think it!” Rhoda smiled at her, sitting down
with a lapful of stockings to be sorted into goats-to-be-mended and
sheep-not-to-be-mended. “If I were going to guess, I’d say you were
sleepy and needed to go to bed early. I heard you come in last night,
and it was pretty late. You haven’t told me a word yet about the party.
Did you have a good time?”

Charlotte laughed and tinkled some notes upon the piano keys. “Yes,
indeed! I haven’t had such a perfectly lovely time in I don’t know
when!”

“That’s good!” Rhoda smiled discreetly, her eyes upon her work. “And
Billy--did he have a good time too?”

“Oh, Billy! Rhoda, you ought to have seen him! He was just furious! He
looked as if he wouldn’t want to speak to me for a month. But he will!”

“You haven’t said anything about Horace. Did he enjoy the evening?”

Charlotte, with her eyes on Rhoda’s face, opened her lips to make a
merry answer, hesitated, then darted at her sister a searching glance.

“Rhoda,” she exclaimed, “Horace has been telling you about it!”

“About what?” Rhoda looked up, the suspicion of a smile at the corners
of her mouth.

“O, la! About _it_, I said, didn’t I? Oh, Rhoda, it was such fun!”
Charlotte’s voice was suffused with laughter. “But it’s nothing to make
Horace propose. Why, Rhoda, you could do it!”

Rhoda laid her stockinged hand, in whose covering she was searching for
possible holes, in her lap and turned serious eyes upon Charlotte’s
face, alight with merriment. “Do you really think so, sister? But,
then, I don’t think I should want him to.”

Charlotte looked at her in surprise. “You wouldn’t, Rhoda? That’s
queer! But you are queer, anyway! The first thing we know you’ll
be wearing short hair and bloomers and going to woman’s rights
conventions! But please don’t, until after I’m married, anyway, so I
won’t belong to the family any more!”

“If you’re going to marry Horace right away I shan’t have to wait very
long, shall I?”

“Who said I was going to marry Horace? Did he?”

“No. He said he--hoped you wouldn’t!”

They both laughed and Charlotte went on, with a saucy toss of her head:
“Oh, he did, did he! He ought to be punished for that! Rhoda, I’m going
to tell him he’s either got to keep his promises or vote for Buchanan!
You know, I’m awfully fond of Horace”--her mouth drooped and her voice
was plaintive--“but I’d be willing to give him up for the sake of a
vote for Buck!”

“Poor Horace! You ought to be ashamed to tease him so!”

“Well, then, if you don’t want him teased, I’ll tell you what I’ll do.”
She stooped to pluck Bully Brooks, now verging fast upon the dignity
of cathood, from the comfort of a nap upon a chair. “If you’ll persuade
mother to let me go in to see Jeff Delavan whenever I want to I’ll let
Horace off. But if you don’t he’ll have to either marry me or vote for
my side. Won’t he, Bully Brooks?”

The response of the kitten was of such emphatic sort that she boxed its
ears and threw it to the floor. “The kitten’s getting too big to be
teased,” Rhoda commented quietly.

“Well, Horace isn’t!” she responded saucily and went whistling from the
room.




CHAPTER XI


“No, mother, I don’t think I ought to do it.”

“Why, Rhoda, what a curious idea! It seems to me to be plainly your
duty. Jeff is so much quieter and more contented when you are in the
room.”

“But it doesn’t seem quite right to me to stay there so much when I’m
not going to marry him. I know he--still loves me and if I spend so
much time with him he’ll think I’m just leading him on to make him ask
me again.”

Mrs. Ware smiled at her daughter and fondly patted her arm. “My little
Puritan girl! No, honey, Jeff is a gentleman and he won’t think
anything of the sort. It’s very wrong of you to let such silly scruples
hinder his recovery. Just think how fortunate it was that you were
there when he came to himself yesterday! Why, Rhoda, I told your father
it was just as if the sight of you fairly pulled him into his right
senses. And now he’s nervous and fretful if you stay out of the room
very long, as you did this afternoon. That’s bad for him, Rhoda, you
know it is. He needs to be kept contented and happy.”

Rhoda turned to the window and looked thoughtfully out. They were in
her mother’s bedchamber, on the western side of the house. The sun was
sinking into a royal couch of red and gray and gold, amber and pink
and purple. Its level red rays fell upon the arbor and touched the
withering leaves with delicate, evanescent tints. Her thoughts went
back to that June night and she seemed to sense again the fragrance of
the white petunias and to feel that prescience of fate awaiting her in
its heavy shadows. And then with a rush that set her heart to beating
faster came the thrilling memory of love words and the knowledge that
had been born in her breast. Mrs. Ware noted the direction of her eyes
and saw the quickening of the faint rose-bloom in her cheeks. She
guessed what was in her daughter’s mind, smiled, and kept silent.

That there was truth in what her mother said about her influence in the
sick-room Rhoda was well aware. She had herself noted their patient’s
increased nervousness if she stayed long away from his presence, and
she treasured the thought of it in her heart as she did his open words
of love. And she longed, far more than even her mother could guess, to
be there with him, to minister to his comfort, to hear his voice, to
catch now and then the look of love in his eye. So much did she yearn
for all the blessedness of it that she was afraid to trust herself,
afraid for her resolution.

She turned her eyes away from the grape arbor and deliberately fixed
her thoughts upon the slave woman and her two little children whom
she had succored two nights before, forced herself to think of the
dozen others whom she had helped to conceal in the house and to further
secretly on their way, of the desperate, fleeing bondman whose freedom
she had won from Jefferson Delavan in the woods on that June afternoon.

With a sudden indrawing of her breath she set her teeth upon her lip
and said within herself, “No, no, I will not fail you!”

But the dear thought of her lover and his need of her still drew her
heart. Well, she would tell him there must be no more of love between
them and that only upon that understanding would she stay beside him in
his sick-chamber. Then he could have no false hopes and the way before
them would be fair and clear. At this capitulation she was conscious of
a thrill of happiness and she could not resist dwelling for an instant
upon a sweet premonition of their hours together. Just then she saw
Charlotte down in the yard and her sister’s proposal of the day before
recurred to her, as it had already done several times. She knew there
was no telling how far Charlotte might choose to carry her teasing of
Horace Hardaker.

“Poor Horace! It’s a shame!” was her thought, but a smile went with
it. “Such a good friend as he is, and he does take things so much in
earnest!” Why shouldn’t Charlotte go in and out of the room as freely
as she did? The idea brought a sharp pang with it--Charlotte had such
a way with her, and if she chose--well, what right had she herself to
Jeff’s love when she would not marry him? What a mean thing it would
be to stand in her sister’s way if Jeff should choose to transfer his
affections. Something seemed clutching at her heart, but she turned
quickly round to her mother, who had been waiting with a pleased
smile on her face, scarcely doubting what would be the result of her
daughter’s few minutes of thought.

But Mrs. Ware had not yet learned, although Rhoda had been giving her
constant proof of it for more than twenty years, how different were
their viewpoints, their modes of thought, the results toward which
their temperaments bade them aim. Rhoda was always surprising and
disappointing her, and yet she had such faith in Rhoda’s good sense
that she could never believe, beforehand, that the girl would fail to
see things just as they appeared to her. And one such surprise was even
now awaiting her.

“Maybe you’re right, mother, and I’ll do as you like about it, only it
seems to me that Charlotte ought to go into the room as much as I do.”

Mrs. Ware looked at her daughter in blank surprise. “Charlotte!
Why, Rhoda, that would be the greatest mistake! You know how trying
Charlotte is, and Jeff needs rest and quiet!”

“His nervousness won’t last long, and it will be good for him to have
some one there as lively and entertaining as Charlotte is. It doesn’t
look, right, mother, it isn’t quite nice, when there are two of us, to
allow only one to go inside his room. I’ll be chief nurse if you want
me to,” and she flashed her sudden smile upon her mother, “but I want
Charlotte for my assistant.”

And finally, with many misgivings and much inward wondering why Rhoda
did not know better than to give Charlotte such an advantage, Mrs. Ware
gave up her determination. And Charlotte, her eyes sparkling over the
triumph she had gained and her cheeks glowing with pleased excitement,
helped Rhoda to take in the invalid’s supper.

The next day they were both in Jeff’s room, Rhoda with some sewing
at which she worked while all three talked and jested together. But
Charlotte was making much pretense of putting things to rights. She was
of small stature, like her mother, and had a dainty figure, supple and
well rounded. It showed to best advantage when she flitted about, as
she was doing then, with quick, graceful movements, her body seeming
to take unconsciously just the right poses and her arms and neck and
head to move as if with some pleasing rhythm. Rhoda, who was tall and
inclined to thinness and had long arms, knew with inward bitterness
that when she moved about a room it was with no such pleasing effect.
As she glanced now and then at Charlotte she could not keep a touch of
envy out of the admiration with which she regarded her sister.

Charlotte noted her side glances, made instant inference as to their
cause, and at once became busier than ever. She had a way of tilting
her hoopskirts as she walked, of which her mother had voiced frequent
disapproval, so that with every step they showed her feet and ankles,
and seemed to emphasize the grace and daintiness of her figure, with
whose movements they swayed in harmony. The accomplishment had cost
her a deal of practice before her mirror, and she usually reserved its
exercise for occasions when she wished to be especially provoking.
But she began it now, although her mother was not present, and tilted
back and forth across the big room, tossing every now and then to Jeff
Delavan a smile, a saucy look, a laugh, or a gay rejoinder. His eyes
followed her and he joined in her gaiety with evident entertainment. A
dull, pained foreboding began to creep into Rhoda’s heart, but she said
firmly to herself, “It’s all right, whatever happens, for if I won’t
marry him I’ve no right to try to keep his love,” and held it down and
laughed and talked with them.

After a little Mrs. Ware came in for her morning call upon her “dear
boy” and when she left the room she summoned Charlotte to go down the
hill upon an errand for her. As the door closed upon them Delavan
turned to Rhoda with a smile.

“What a spoiled child that little sister of yours is!” he said. “I
rather think she needs a lesson, and some of these days she’s bound to
get it. It’s to be hoped,” and his voice became gentler, “that it won’t
be too hard on her.”

“Well, I’ve an idea,” Rhoda replied, “that Charlotte would be pretty
well able to take care of herself and would be likely to give back a
better lesson than she got!”

He gazed at her a moment in silence, and she, seeing the look that was
coming into his eyes, turned her attention to her sewing and tried
not to feel the trembling in her bosom and the warming of her cheeks.
“How loyal you are, Rhoda,” he said presently, “except to your own
heart--and to me!”

“Don’t, Jeff! Please don’t say those things to me any more! I mustn’t
listen to them, no matter how much I’d like to, for I’m not going to
marry you--you know that. Give it all up, Jeff, and let’s see if we
can’t be just good friends!”

“No,” he broke in, “I shall not give it up, as long as I can see and
hear in your eyes and your voice that you love me! You’ve no right,
Rhoda, to deny your heart and mine like this!”

“Oh, Jeff, I’ve gone over that, and over and over it, so many times
with myself, and there’s only one right way, the way my conscience
points out to me! I can’t marry you, Jeff, I can’t, and that’s all
there is about it! It’s only painful to us both to talk about it, so
please don’t do it again! We enjoy each other’s society so much, both
of us, so let’s just have what comfort we can out of being together
while you’re here, and not spoil it by talking about what can’t be!”

“It’s because we love each other, dear heart, that we like being
together! Oh, Rhoda, if you’d only admit--”

She bent toward him with her sudden, flashing smile, that he had come
to know as the signal of some equally sudden and unexpected face-about
in her thought, and he stopped, expectant.

“I do admit it, Jeff!” came to him demurely in the wake of the smile.

“Rhoda!” he cried, and his whole being tried to leap toward her. But
he had no more than lifted his head from the pillow than she sprang up
with a cry of alarm, her hand thrust out to hold him back.

“Jeff, you mustn’t!” she exclaimed, her face suddenly serious again and
her voice all anxiety. “You’ll break that rib over again if you don’t
lie still, and father says it’s knitting together so nicely!”

In her alarm she had put one hand against his chest to push him back
upon his pillow. Quickly his hand imprisoned it and held it against his
heart. For a moment neither spoke and as she bent above him feeling
his heart throb beneath her hand, looking down into his eyes and seeing
love and longing there, response crept into her own and a warmer color
into her cheeks. Unconsciously she bent nearer, swayed toward him, and
he threw up both arms, sure that they would enclose her in the embrace
for which they were longing. But realization flashed upon her and she
sprang back. He held his empty arms toward her for a moment, then let
them fall upon the bed. She could not bear the look upon his face and
sank down into her chair, her own hidden in her hands.

Presently she began gathering up her sewing, scattered upon the floor.
“Rhoda,” he said humbly, “I beg your pardon!”

She would not meet his eyes, but kept her own steadily upon her sewing,
as she neatly folded it together. “It wasn’t your fault any more than
mine,” she answered in subdued accents, “but it mustn’t happen again,
or I shall have to stay out of here entirely. I must go now. Father is
usually home by this time, and I always go to his office when he comes
to see if he needs me for anything.”

“But you’ll come back, dear, as soon as you can? And you’ll forgive
me?” he begged.

“Yes, I’ll come back, when I can, but I’ll be busy now, for a while.
And I’ll forgive you--if you’ll forgive me!” She smiled at him, not
the radiant flash which he loved, but just a tender curving of the
lips which sent no merry light up into her serious eyes.

“Rhoda! What a dear girl you are! Forgive you! You’ll come back soon?”

“As soon as I can.” She turned at the door, still smiling gently, and
held up at him a warning finger. “But you must promise not to talk
about love!”

“All right, Rhoda. If you won’t stay away long, I’ll promise--for next
time!”

Outside the door a trembling seized her and she leaned against the
wall. “I didn’t give up,” she told herself, “I didn’t, that time. But
could I--again?”

She went into her own room and knelt beside the window, whence, a few
nights before she had seen the mulatto refugee and her babies come
trudging up the street. Vividly the picture came before her mind and
with it once more the thought of all that such a flight must mean to
a woman, alone and in the dark, with two helpless children, herself
almost as helpless as they. She bowed her head upon the window sill and
whispered: “O God! Dear God in heaven, give me strength to keep myself
away from that accursed thing! Save me from my own heart, which tempts
me so, and keep me, O God, keep me from giving up!”

When she rose from her knees, she did not go at once downstairs, but
moved about the room, doing little things that did not need to be
done, straightening a pillow on the bed, moving a chair, raising the
window shade, then lowering it again, rearranging the things on her
bureau. And at last, irresolutely, she opened a drawer and took out the
little box tied with white ribbon. She held the withered rose in her
palm, kissed it, and said softly, “Good-by, dear love, good-by.”

Perhaps she believed at that moment that she would never again allow
herself to caress and to brood over this little symbol of her love,
that she would never again give up to her heart even in a privacy where
none but herself could know that she had yielded. But she carefully put
the box away again in the same hiding place, which she knew so well
that her hand could go straight thither with her eyes shut. For her
years numbered but two and twenty and they had fallen from her along an
easy path, marked as yet by struggles too few to have taught her that
God helps only him who helps himself to the uttermost, and that perhaps
far more of God is in his own strivings than in the distant heaven to
which he prays.

On the stairway she met her father. “I’ve been looking for you, Rhoda,”
he said. “Come into the office.” There he carefully shut the doors,
after a hurried glance round about. “I’ve just had a letter,” he went
on in a lowered voice, “from Alexander Wilson. You remember him, don’t
you?”

“Yes, father. The young Canadian who was here a month or so ago, to
study the Underground Road, and went on south to stir up the slaves.
Did I tell you that the woman I took to Gilbertson’s the other night
had been started by him?”

“No! Was she? He’s doing a good work down there, at tremendous risks,
too! If they find out what he’s up to it will mean tarring and
feathering, and lynching afterward, and all of it on the spot. He’s a
brave fellow, Rhoda! Where did he send this woman from?”

Rhoda colored. In the excitement and the unusual press of duties that
followed the steamboat explosion there had been little time for private
talk with her father and beyond the bare information that the three
refugees had been there and that she had taken them on she had told
him nothing of the incidents of that night. It had come about that
she shrank from saying anything about Delavan’s being a slaveholder,
especially to her father. It seemed to her a moral obliquity which her
love instinctively yearned to hide from others. But there was only a
moment’s hesitation before her earnest eyes met his frankly.

“She came from Jeff’s plantation, and she is the wife of the man,
Andrew, to whom Jeff gave his freedom last summer--you remember? Mr.
Wilson saw him in Canada and he sent word and some money to his wife
for her to follow him. She said Mr. Wilson got eleven slaves together,
from different plantations, and started them all off on the same night.
The rest went by other routes,--mostly, I think, through Philadelphia.
She wanted to come the same way her husband had taken. Wasn’t it brave
of her, father, to start off alone with those two little children,
without knowing a thing about how or where to go, except just as she
is told, from one station to the next! She seemed so passive and so
trustful! I haven’t felt so sorry for any of the others that we’ve
helped as I did for her!”

In Dr. Ware’s heart some uneasiness had begun to make itself manifest
lest the presence of the young man in that room upstairs might
yet influence his daughter more than he wished. Perhaps he craved
reassurance that she did not regret her decision. Perhaps also unspoken
sympathy with the struggle between her conscience and her heart moved
him as he asked:

“You do not regret, do you, Rhoda, that you went into this work?”

She looked at him in some surprise and met his gray, calm eyes bent
upon her with something more like wistfulness in their expression than
she had ever seen in them before.

“No, father, I do not. I am very glad.” There was no mistaking the
truth of her quiet tones. But the next instant her lip began to
tremble. By sheer force of will she held it firm, closely pressed
against the other, and fought down the lump that was rising in her
throat. That look in her father’s eyes had made her long to throw
herself upon his breast, and sobbing her heart out there tell him how
hard the struggle had become. Surely he would sympathize and give her
comfort and strength. For an instant the vision came back of him and
her mother, in their passionate youth, galloping, galloping, on that
wild ride to their heart’s rest--oh, surely he would understand both
sides of her trouble! But the habit of years was strong upon them both,
and they sat in silence for a moment longer, while Rhoda battled down
her emotion and her father looked through a bunch of letters he had
taken from his breast pocket. It was she who spoke first.

“You said you had a letter from Mr. Wilson, father. Was it about that
you wanted to see me?”

“Yes. Here it is. He writes from Vicksburg:

“‘DEAR FRIEND WARE: On this same date I am forwarding to you six copies
of “The Burning Question,” three bound in black and three in tan. If
there have been any changes as to handlers and forwarders since I was
in your neighborhood can you send some one to the south side of the
river to watch out for them and see that they do not fall into too
appreciative hands? They are billed to go in the usual way and ought to
be on hand within a week after this letter reaches you.’”

He put the letter away and looked at her anxiously. “Can we take care
of them, Rhoda?”

“Oh, we must, father! We must manage to do it in some way!” She
bent forward, looking at him intently, and into her face crept the
expression he was beginning to see there whenever they talked or
planned or worked together upon this matter, a strained, eager look,
with something in it of exaltation.

“Walter Kimball and his brother Lewis would probably be able to go
across and keep watch for them,” he began.

“Yes,” she broke in, “and one of them could hurry back and let Horace
know, as soon as they get there, and then go over again and help the
other row them across, and Horace could rush up here and tell us, so
that we could be ready for them. It will be difficult to hide so many,”
she ended doubtfully.

“The boys must arrange to get them here in the night and then we can
manage it. I’ll get word to Chaddle Wallace to be in the neighborhood
with his peddler’s wagon and he can take four of them in that. Perhaps
one of the Kimball boys can drive two in our carriage.”

“Or I can, if you want me to. I’ll see that Lizzie has plenty of things
cooked ready for their supper. Oh, it will go off all right, father,
and we won’t need to keep them here more than an hour!”

“We’ll have to make some different arrangement now that winter will
soon be here,” he said thoughtfully. “We’ll have to contrive some sort
of hiding place in the house or the barn, so that we can keep them over
night if necessary.”

“I’ve been wondering, father, if a sort of little room couldn’t be
hidden in the woodshed, with the wood piled around it close.”

“Yes, that could be done,” he nodded slowly, “and it would be a pretty
safe place. The slave chasers would hardly think of investigating an
innocent-looking woodpile. That’s a good suggestion, Rhoda, and I’ll
have it done, and the winter’s wood stacked all around it. Marshal
Hanscomb has got a pretty keen nose and I think he’s suspicious about
me anyway, just because of my sentiments. But I reckon that would be
too much for Hanscomb!”

He smiled at his daughter with quiet exultation in his manner and she
smiled back at him proudly and said it surely would.

“Your mother wants to make a trip down to Cincinnati soon and
Charlotte, of course, would be glad to go with her.” A trace of
embarrassment suddenly appeared in his manner and, as if to conceal or
to distract himself from some disconcerting thought, he began looking
over and sorting the letters and papers on his desk. “I’ll have this
done while she’s gone,” he added abruptly.

Rhoda rose, feeling dismissal in the sudden change in her father’s
manner and went slowly toward the door. She felt what was in his
mind. It had brought discomfort into her own thought, and more than
once she had wondered if she might not speak to him about it. But
unwillingness even to seem to question his attitude in a matter so
peculiarly intimate between him and her mother had held her back. Now
she knew that it was in his mind as well as in hers and she felt that
it would grow and become an embarrassment between them. For herself it
was already a stumbling block whose importance seemed graver with every
episode of her work in the Underground. Why not meet it at once and get
the question settled?

She stopped with her hand on the door knob and looked back. To her
surprise his eyes were following her, those calm, clear, cool eyes that
in her mind were a sort of embodiment of her father. They seemed to sum
up and express his whole character and temperament. She could never
think of him without seeing his gray eyes looking at her, kind, but
dispassionate and judicial.

“What is it, Rhoda?” he asked.

She came slowly back, looking down, and conscious that there must be
something almost like shamefacedness in her manner.

“I was wondering, father--is it necessary--do you think--must we
keep it from mother always? Charlotte--it’s just as well--and that’s
no matter--but mother--” She stopped, confused, and fingered the
chair-back beside which she stood. Her eyes were upon it or she might
have seen a slight flush color his usually pale skin. There was a
moment’s silence before he spoke.

“Don’t misunderstand me about that, daughter,” he said gently. He did
not often address her except by her name and when he did sometimes call
her “daughter” or “child” it stirred in her a shy warmth toward him and
awoke a half-realized impulse to cling to his hand or stroke his hair.
The impulse always died away in self-consciousness, but the warmth
remained in her heart and made her glad.

“If I don’t take your mother into my confidence about this it is
because I want to spare her any worry or embarrassment or divided
feeling that it might cause her. Don’t think for a minute,” and his
tones were earnest, “that I don’t think she would be loyal. I know well
enough how true to my interests she would be. But, do you understand,
it might grieve her, or give her some uneasiness, or even pain, if she
knew what we are doing. Her sympathies are all on the other side. But
I must do this work. It isn’t much, but it will help, and it seems to
me the best that is possible for me. But I want to do it, if I can,
without adding--without giving her any discomfort. I’m glad you spoke
about it, Rhoda, for I wanted you to understand.”

“Thank you, father. I understand how you feel, but--” she had reached
the door again, “but, I wish it didn’t have to be so. I wish we could
tell her.”

“So do I, daughter.” She looked back, surprised at the unusual sadness
in his voice, and saw him sitting at his desk, his head on one hand
and his eyes on the floor. The sight of him thus smote her heart. She
hesitated an instant, then went out softly and left him alone.




CHAPTER XII


Mid-October came, and the day of local elections in three of the
northern states. The whole country was waiting on the tiptoe of
expectancy for the result. Pennsylvania was the keystone of the
situation. The party that would win the presidential contest would
have to have her twenty-seven electoral votes, and this state poll was
looked upon as a sure indication of how the commonwealth would go three
weeks later. It was everywhere admitted that the issue would be close.
Sectional and party feeling and consequent excitement ran so high and
hot that there were dark forebodings of what might happen. All men knew
that they walked upon a thin crust over volcanic fires that might burst
through at any moment, upon any pretext.

The Republican party was surprising itself and the entire country by
its showing of remarkable strength and its brilliant prospects of
success. From the South were coming threats of disunion louder and
more frequent and more positive. In many of the slave states there
was already the stir of endeavor to agree upon concerted action in
case Frémont should be elected. Through the north the Democratic and
the Whig parties made much of these portents as showing the danger
Republican success would mean to the united country. But the Republican
leaders, jubilant over the proofs of their strength which the campaign
had developed, and secretly recognizing the weight of this argument,
made light of both it and the southern threats.

And so the whole country waited in breathless anxiety on that cold
and drizzling October day, with its attention centered on tumultuous
Philadelphia, both sides fearing defeat, both sides hoping for victory,
and all dreading the spark with which some chance word or untoward
accident might kindle the smoldering passions in that city into flames
that would quickly involve the whole nation.

Rhoda moved restlessly about the house, showing little interest in
her usual duties and disregarding her mother’s hints that she was
neglecting their invalid guest. Delavan had almost recovered from his
injuries and in a few days would return home. Mrs. Ware was sorely
disappointed that his presence in the house had not affected her
daughter’s determination. She began to feel sure that it must be her
husband’s influence over Rhoda that balked all her own efforts and
nullified the effect of the constant association from which she had
hoped so much.

Jeff asked her advice that morning and they talked the matter over
intimately. She promised him once more the full measure of her
influence with Rhoda. “I’m afraid it isn’t much,” she said, a little
tremulously. “But I’ll do my best, Jeff.”

“I thank you, Mrs. Ware, madam, and I assure you I shall not go away
without trying again to win her consent.”

“You and little Emmy used to call me ‘Aunt Emily,’ when I was at
Fairmount,” she said with a suggestion of reproof, half motherly,
half coquettish, if the chastened ghost of a manner that sometimes
remembered its alluring youth might still be called coquettish.

“It is the dearest wish of my heart to call you ‘mother,’ some day,” he
answered, kissing her hand.

“And of mine to hear you call me so,” she added, bending over and
touching her lips to his forehead. Then they fell to talking of his
mother and she was deeply interested in the many little things Jeff
remembered of her life at Fairmount. He recalled that she had always
shown concern for the welfare of the slaves and had given training in
their duties and deportment to the housemaids and had allowed them and
also the men who served about the house and gardens to acquire a little
education if they wanted it.

“You must tell Rhoda about that,” Mrs. Ware exclaimed. “Let her see
that there is some virtue in slaveholders. It’s just her notion about
slavery being wrong that keeps you apart, Jeff. If you could only
convince her that there is as much right in it as there is in anything
in this world, where nothing is all right, I believe she’d give up.
I’ve tried to, but she seems to think I don’t know enough about it, in
general, for what I say to have any influence. Talk to her about it,
Jeff, and make her see plainly how we of the South feel about it. You
know how necessary slave labor is to the South, and all that side of
it. She has heard only the things the abolitionists say, here in the
North, and she’s all taken up with that. But you can give her the other
side, as a southern man with one of the best and kindest of hearts, who
has studied the question thoroughly. If you can only convince her that
slavery is right, dear boy, or even best for the niggers, as we know it
is, you’ll win the day--and make me almost as happy as you will Rhoda,
or yourself!”

“It is good advice, madam, and I shall follow it. I have begun to
understand that I must win Rhoda’s head before she will give up her
heart. But I shall win them both, and call you ‘mother’ yet!”

“Heaven grant it, dear boy, for you were made for each other, you and
my dear girl!”

She rose to take her leave, but Charlotte came with fresh medicines for
the invalid and bustled about the room preparing his draughts. Mrs.
Ware, with an eye upon her daughter’s graceful movements, sat down
again and talked of ordinary affairs until she thought Charlotte had
spent as much time there as was needful. Then she summoned that young
lady to go with her and assist at certain rites in the kitchen.

But Rhoda would not visit the sick-chamber through all the forenoon.
Why she was staying away she scarcely knew, except that she said to
herself several times during the long hours of the morning, “He won’t
miss me if Charlotte’s there.” Jeff had obeyed her injunction that he
must not speak of love, and during the last two days had kept careful
curb upon his tongue and close watch upon the language of his eyes. And
she missed more than she would admit to herself the outbreaks of those
heretofore unruly members. She shared her father’s suspense over the
election that was going on and during the forenoon, whenever he was
alone in his office, she went in to ask him if he had heard any news
and to talk over the situation.

More than ever, this fall, he was making a companion of her and
discussing with her as freely as he did with Horace Hardaker and his
other anti-slavery friends, the plans and movements of the anti-slavery
people, and the prospects of the Republican party. She was a good
listener, rarely making comments unless she had something worth while
to say, and usually he found what she did say clear-thoughted and
sensible.

On this morning it was not only her interest in what was going on in
Pennsylvania that sent her every now and again to seek her father’s
society. Of equal force was her desire to escape from the tormenting
questions that filled her mind as to what Jeff was doing, whether
Charlotte was with him, and whether or not he was wishing she were
there. And so, between her political zeal and her love, she passed a
restless, fruitless morning.

Her mother noted her frequent visits to her father’s office and,
coupling with these the fact that she had all the morning ignored
Delavan’s presence in the house, made instant inference. “It’s Amos’s
influence over her,” she told herself, resentment rising bitter in her
heart. “He’s urging her against it and spoiling my dear girl’s life,
just for the sake of his own whims! It’s most selfish of him--and
wicked. But I’ll see what I can do!”

Knocking at Rhoda’s bedroom door after dinner she found her daughter
sitting at the eastern window, hands idly folded in her lap, and eyes
upon the wooded hills, whose autumn colors glowed softly through the
gray, dripping mist. It was so unusual to see her doing absolutely
nothing that Mrs. Ware stared at her in blank surprise.

“Why, Rhoda, you look lonely sitting here all by yourself,” she said
briskly. “Why don’t you go in and stay with Jeff for a while?”

“I don’t know--I guess I don’t feel like it,” Rhoda responded, a
forlorn note in her voice.

“Jeff has been asking for you, dear. In fact, he’s fretting himself
into a fever because you haven’t even looked into the room all this
morning. And you were there only a little while yesterday--”

“Twice, yesterday, mother.”

“But such a little while each time. It isn’t kind to leave the poor boy
alone all day, on such a dreary day as this.”

“But Charlotte--”

“No, I want Charlotte to help me to-day. It’s time she was learning to
do more things about the house. Put on your pink frock, honey, you look
so pretty in that, and go in and cheer Jeff up for a while.”

Rhoda did not answer, but looked out at the wet earth and the drizzling
rain. Through her soul there surged such a forceful longing to follow
her mother’s advice that for a moment it seemed to arrest her powers of
both action and speech.

“Don’t sit here and mope any longer,” her mother went on with tender
cheerfulness, “and don’t be so unkind to poor, sick Jeff. Come on,
honey, I’ll help you dress.” And opening the wardrobe she took out the
pink gown. Its wide skirt was covered with tiny flounces and when it
was adjusted over a ruffled petticoat and her largest hoopskirt, her
slender waist and her head and shoulders rose out of its spreading
folds as if they were emerging from a huge, many-petaled rose.

Jeff Delavan’s face brightened as she floated into the room. He was
dressed, for the first time since his accident, and sitting by the
window.

“Rhoda! How good of you to come--and to wear that dress! You’re like a
ray of sunshine on this dark day! I’ve listened and hoped for you all
day, and at last you’re here! You’re such a busy person, Rhoda, that I
ought to feel fortunate to get even a little of your time. What have
you been doing all the morning? All manner of things?”

“Yes,--no--that is--yes, I’ve been busy,--I always am, you know,”
she stammered, confused, remembering how idle her morning had been.
“I’ve been with father part of the time,” she went on, recovering her
self-possession, “talking about the elections to-day.”

“What do you care about the elections?” he demanded, in bantering
gaiety.

She turned to him with proud gravity. “More than I do about anything
else in the world.”

Quickly his expression changed to one as serious as her own, and he
began to speak of the situation in Pennsylvania and of his own belief
in the success of the Democratic state ticket. She listened for a few
sentences and then her heart began to clamor for signs of love in his
face and voice and words. She ignored the fact that she had forbidden
all such manifestation and knew only that she wanted it and it was not
there. All unknown to her, in his gladness at her coming her lover
was having his own battle with himself to do her bidding, and was so
fearful lest he should overstep the line she had drawn and lose her
dear presence that he was plunging into this political discourse as the
safest thing he could do.

She seemed to be paying close attention, but she heard only a word or a
part of a sentence here and there. Instead, vague fears, half-realized
doubts, uncertain questions filled her brain. Would she ever again see
that look in his face? Did he ever look at Charlotte like that? Was
his love for her all gone so soon? And then the spirit of the eternal
feminine began to assert itself in her breast. She was, after all, her
mother’s daughter, and although the spirit of coquetry lay deep within
her breast, so deep that only the call of truest love could bring it to
the surface, yet it was there and it came now to do her heart’s bidding.

It was all done instinctively, without conscious intention. But if her
mother or sister could have looked through the wall they would have
been surprised by the sight of a different Rhoda from the one they
knew. This tender creature of coquettish graces and alluring smiles and
eyelids quickly lowered over ardent glances--was she the practical,
efficient daughter of the house, upon whom they were both so dependent?

Delavan gazed at her, began to stumble over his sentences, confused
the names of the people of whom he spoke, broke off for an instant,
went back and started anew, then stopped abruptly in the middle of a
sentence. “Rhoda Ware,” he exclaimed in a low voice that shook with
feeling.

At the sound of it Rhoda’s little, half-conscious coquetries dropped
from her instantly. It was a serious face that his gaze encountered
as he surveyed her with dark eyes glowing and about his mouth the
baffled but determined look that had become for her a sign of his
strength--measure alike of his self-control and of his determination.
She had seen it in every one of their struggles and it had seemed
always to be saying to her, “You’ve conquered this time, but I shall
win you yet!” She watched for it and loved it because it told her alike
of her power over him and of his forceful masculine will, and perhaps
also because deep down in her heart she half believed and almost hoped
it would yet be stronger than her own resolution.

“Why do you insist upon keeping us apart?” he demanded, an imperious
note in his voice. “You are doing a wicked thing. You’ve no right to
starve both our hearts of the love that belongs to us, because of a
mere whim!”

“Listen to me, Jeff, while I tell you the truth, and then you won’t
want to marry me!” She was sitting straight and stiff, her face pale,
and in it something of the same exaltation he had seen there on that
June day in the arbor--the outward glow of the sacrificial fires she
had lighted for the consuming of her love.

“You don’t know what I am, Jeff! I am a nigger-thief and I am proud
of it! I am stealing your slaves, anybody’s slaves that want their
freedom, and helping them to find their way to Canada, where they will
be safe! Jefferson Delavan, of Fairmount, Kentucky, doesn’t want to
marry a woman who does that sort of thing and means to keep it up as
long as there are slaves and she has power to help them!”

He looked at her a moment in silent amazement. “Rhoda, you don’t
realize the full significance of what you are saying, and doing!”

“If I could I would run off every slave from your plantations and send
them all to Canada, where you could never touch one of them again. That
is how much I realize it!”

A slow smile crept over his face while he regarded her with a look that
was half surprise, half overleaping love, and was not without a touch
of tender amusement. “But if you were to take away all my slaves, dear
heart, you wouldn’t do me nearly the harm that you are doing now by
stealing yourself from me!”

Her serious eyes looked straight into his for a moment in silence, and
then her flashing smile broke over her face. “I won’t ask you to put
your words to the proof,” she said in a quizzical tone.

He flushed a little. “I know what you mean,” he answered tenderly, “and
if there were no more in this matter than the mere question of having
or not having slaves I would willingly free all that I own--ask Emily
to divide the property and give their freedom to all the niggers that
might fall to my share--for your sake, Rhoda, dear, for the sake of
making you my wife. But the South needs slave labor--has got to have it
in order to be prosperous--and I would be as untrue to my duty to my
state and to my section if I were to do that as you think you would be
to your conscience if you were to accept slavery.”

She followed quickly upon his last word: “There can be no need of
property or prosperity, as you call it, equal to the need, the right,
of every human being to his freedom. When you make your comfort and
wealth,--I mean all of you in the South,--of more importance than that
first human right you are outraging one of God’s laws, and God’s curse
will yet fall heavily upon you because of it.”

“You speak in that way, Rhoda, because--pardon me--you really know
nothing about economic conditions in the South. You are merely
repeating the words of these abolition fanatics at the North, where
the industrial conditions are such that slave labor would not be
profitable. If it were, there’d be a different tune sung north of Mason
and Dixon’s line!”

She shook her head at him. “You say that because you don’t understand
the feeling that is at the bottom of the anti-slavery movement. It
places human rights above business profits.”

“As to that, we of the South have our human rights and civil rights,
too. We are trying to keep faith and you of the North are struggling
to break it. You abolitionists forget the big share, the equal share,
the southern states had in the making of this country, and you forget
that they bore more than their share of the burden and loss of making
it into a nation. There was more blood shed in South Carolina during
the Revolution, Rhoda, than in Massachusetts, yes, more than in all New
England. And now Massachusetts has the presumption, the insolence, to
try to dictate to us how we shall order our affairs! We let her alone
to work out her own destiny, and we demand the same right!”

“But we northerners see farther and see clearer into the way things are
going than you can, because your eyes are blinded by what you believe
to be your present interests. We want you to recognize the truth, that
this nation was created to be a free country, that those who made it
meant it to be the hope of the whole world, and it can never, never,
be that as long as you of the South insist upon making it half slave.”

“You are quite mistaken, Rhoda, as to what they meant, or, rather, as
to the way in which they meant it. When this nation was created North
and South joined in sworn faith to a written contract. That contract
recognized the rights of the south in its peculiar, its necessary,
institution, and provided for their safeguarding. And now the North is
trying to break that sworn faith, to force us out of our constitutional
rights. It is not only our property but our honor that is at stake,
and we should be craven indeed if we did not resent this combination
of despotism and insult! Preston Brooks was right when he said the
other day that if Frémont is elected the people of the South ought to
march to Washington and seize the archives and the treasury of the
government!”

She was leaning eagerly forward, her eyes shining, her lips parted,
her face, paled by her excitement, vivid with the feeling that had
swept her up into the regions where soul and body breathe the elixir of
supreme conviction. But when she spoke, breaking in quickly upon his
first pause, it was not only the fulness of her belief that thrilled in
her low, tense tones. Their lower notes were sweet with the love that
burned in her heart.

“Oh, Jeff, can’t you see-- Oh, I wish I could make you see that there
can be no rights that are founded on wrong.” She paused a moment, her
voice on a suspended accent, as she gathered her thoughts together.
Delavan’s eyes devoured the fair picture that she made and his heart
leaped in response to those sweet notes in her voice. His mind was full
of the ideas he had just uttered, tense with the conviction of their
truth, and his nerves were thrilling with the emotions they had bred.
And this dear girl, leaning toward him with spirit-lit face, as tense
with her convictions as he with his, was the embodiment of all that
northern feeling and activity which he so much resented, against which
he protested with all his force as a base invasion of Southern rights.

But, even as his body throbbed with love and admiration for her
fairness and sweetness, his spirit yearned toward the loftiness of
hers. Ah, they were akin, they were mates, their spirits, even though
they were opposed! He recognized in her that same fervency of faith,
that same power of devotion to the mind’s ideal, that were bone and
sinew of his own temperament. And they were on opposing sides of this
vital question--so intensely vital, he felt, to him, to his section, to
the nation, to the whole of civilization! If only they were joined in
their ideals!

“You see, Jeff, when they signed the Constitution, they hadn’t come to
realize yet how wrong slavery is. Men grow in knowledge of right and
wrong, and we in the North have grown faster on this question than you
have, because we haven’t had the comfort and the luxury and the wealth
produced by that awful wrong to blind and hinder us. Our eyes have been
opened--God has opened them for us, and we see slavery for what it
is--a hideous, cruel, horrible thing that keeps human beings down and
makes beasts of them, brutalizes the souls God made in his image!”

She clasped her hands and began to extend her arms beseechingly toward
her listener. Her pink sleeves fell back a little and his heart swelled
with longing to see the warm roundness of those arms reaching out
to him in love and surrender. “Oh, Jeff, it is so wicked, so evil,”
she began. “I wish I could make you see--” her voice broke, she drew
back her arms and dropped her face into her hands, then sprang to her
feet. “And--and--oh, Jeff--” her voice was thrilling with love, but
it trembled upon sobs and she rushed to the door. “It is keeping us
apart!” she cried, and the door closed behind her.




CHAPTER XIII


Charlotte ran upstairs from the veranda and dashed into her sister’s
room. “Do look out, Rhoda,” she called. “It’s that crazy peddler,
Chad Wallace. He’s asking father if he can keep his wagon in our barn
to-night. Now there’ll be some fun this evening--he’s so comical, with
his songs and dances!”

Rhoda moved to the window and saw a little, wiry-looking man talking
with Dr. Ware beside the east gate. A short, sparse growth of graying
whiskers covered his face to the middle of his cheeks, and pale-colored
hair curled around his neck below his shabby, bell-crowned hat. His
wagon, with side curtains rolled up displaying boxes piled inside, was
at the hitching post.

“He looks just the same as ever, doesn’t he,” she said calmly, as they
stood beside the window with their arms about each other’s waists. But
her heart was beating faster, for she knew what his coming meant. She
knew that in his dingy old wagon he was accustomed to make long trips
on the Kentucky side of the river, ostensibly selling his wares in
villages and at farms, but picking up, whenever opportunity offered,
some fugitive slave and concealing him in a vacant space in the
center, around which the boxes and packages were carefully arranged.
Then he would cross the river at the nearest ferry and put the runaway
into the charge of an Underground “station.” Or, sometimes, he would
remain for months at a time in the neighborhood of one or another of
the Underground routes through Ohio, apparently selling his stock of
notions, but really conveying the fleeing slaves from one station to
another.

Rhoda knew from her father that the people engaged in the Underground
work considered him one of the safest of the “conductors.” The
commonplace character of his occupation and his eccentricities, which
Dr. Ware told her were mainly assumed in order that he might appear all
the more innocent, had proved so efficient a disguise as to prevent,
even in pro-slavery communities, the least suspicion of his real
business.

Word had come that afternoon that the expected half-dozen fugitives
had safely reached the Kentucky shore and would cross the river in a
rowboat after dark. Chad Wallace ate supper with the Ware household and
entertained them with stories of his travels told with so many touches
of eccentric humor that he kept the table in a breeze of laughter. Jeff
Delavan, who was to leave for his home the next day, enjoyed them so
much that he invited the peddler if he ever journeyed as far south as
Lexington to drive on to Fairmount, where he would be glad to see him
and listen to more of his amusing stories.

On the veranda after supper Charlotte begged Wallace for some of
his funny dances, and he did negro shuffles and antics and sang
negro melodies down the front walk to the gate. There he kept up the
entertainment, interspersing the negro songs with doggerel of his own
composition, until a delighted audience of children, young people and a
few of their elders had gathered. Finally, waving his old hat at them,
he walked away, breaking into a song that was much heard in those days
at anti-slavery meetings:

  “Then lift that manly right hand, bold plowman of the wave,
  Its branded palm shall prophesy ‘Salvation to the Slave!’”

Jeff Delavan, listening on the veranda, started angrily, the amused
smile died from his face and his brows knit in a frown. The tenor
voice, still surprisingly good, though somewhat cracked by age, rang
back from down the street as the slender, wiry figure disappeared in
the dusk:

  “Hold up its fire-wrought language that whoso reads may feel
  His heart swell strong within him, his sinews change to steel.”

“Is he that sort of a crank?” Jeff exclaimed in a low voice to Mrs.
Ware, who sat beside him. “If he is, I don’t care about his coming to
Fairmount.”

“There’s no harm in Chaddle Wallace,” she responded assuringly. “He
isn’t much more than half-witted, and nobody ever takes seriously
anything he says or does. But he has this quaint vein of humor, so that
people are always glad to see him and hear him talk. He loves music,
too, but I don’t suppose he cares at all about the meaning of the
words. As for that abolition thing, why, he’s just as likely to break
into ‘Dixie’ and sing it with just as much gusto. Oh, no, Jeff, Chad
Wallace is a harmless creature!”

It was some hours later and the house was dark, save for a light in Dr.
Ware’s office, when Rhoda, watching at her bedroom window, discerned
some shapes in the darkness hurrying up the hill. As they emerged into
the dim circle of light from the lantern at their east gate, she saw
that it was Chad Wallace and his little band of runaway slaves. Softly
she ran downstairs to admit them into the office. Her father was there,
but asleep on the lounge. With the utmost caution, walking on tiptoe
and speaking only in whispers, she and Lizzie brought into the office
their supper of bread and meat and hot coffee and in half an hour they
were ready to start again upon their way. As they stole silently out
of the house Dr. Ware bundled three of them into his carriage, which
Jim had ready at the gate, and the other three were quickly concealed
in the peddler’s wagon. With even less of noise than was usually
occasioned by the physician’s response to a night call, the party set
forth on its journey to the next station.

Hurriedly extinguishing the lights and locking the doors, Rhoda stole
back to her room and leaning from her window listened to the distant
sound of wheels for assurance that, so far, all was well. Her heart
beat high, as it always did after they had passed successfully through
one of these night episodes. For she knew the never-ceasing danger
that the fugitive might have been followed and trailed to their house.
All along the southern border of the state there were numbers of men,
from both sides of the river, who spent most of their time hunting
runaway slaves, for the sake of the rewards for their capture. She and
her father were well aware that their succoring of fugitives might
be interrupted at any moment by the entrance of the United States
marshal and his band of armed men, with consequent arrest, trial, and
imprisonment.

The words that the peddler had sung were running insistently through
her brain and as she lighted her candle she softly hummed:

  “Hold up its fire-wrought language that whoso reads may feel
  His heart swell strong within him, his sinews change to steel.”

“Yes, that’s just it,” she nodded to her reflection in the mirror, as
she placed her hand against her heart. “That’s just how it makes me
feel whenever I think of any of the horrible things that slavery means.”

She knew the history of the incident that had given to the Quaker poet
inspiration for the lines--the branding by a southern court with the
letters “S. S.”--“slave stealer”--of the captain of a little coastwise
vessel for attempting to carry some slaves from Florida to the Bahamas
and freedom under English law. Holding up her own long, slender hand
with knitted brows and lips compressed she gazed at the palm, as if
trying to imagine how it would seem to feel the red-hot iron searing
her own flesh. Then with a disdainful gesture she threw out her arm,
her head high and eyes shining. “They may brand me on my palms and my
cheeks and my forehead too if they like--what would that be beside this
work!”

Counting on her fingers she murmured, “This makes twenty-five we’ve
sent on to liberty--and in such a little time! Oh, we’re helping the
slaves, and oh, please God”--she dropped on her knees beside her bed
with her face in her hands, “please God, we’re doing something to help
kill slavery!”

At the breakfast-table the next morning Delavan asked concerning the
entertaining peddler and was told that he must have made an early
start, as Jim on his first errand to the stables had reported his wagon
already gone.

“Does he travel at night?” the young man asked. “Sometime in the night,
when I wakened after my first sleep, I thought I heard his wagon
leaving the barn.”

Rhoda hastened to say that perhaps it was her father’s carriage he
had heard, as he had had to make a night trip. Charlotte, chancing to
look at her sister as Delavan asked his question, thought that Rhoda
started and changed color ever so little. Immediately her alert mind
began to wonder why, and she fixed her eyes sharply upon her sister’s
face. Rhoda felt her gaze and endeavored to change the subject quickly
in order to ward off the insistent questions which it would be like
Charlotte to begin to ask. But at that moment Bully Brooks came
unexpectedly to her assistance. Passing under her chair he emerged from
beneath her skirt and playfully leaped at a bit of string on the floor.
Charlotte saw him and, remembering certain kittenish tricks which he
had not yet grown too old to play beneath her own hoopskirts, she
smiled knowingly at her sister and dropped the subject from her thought.

Later in the day Jefferson Delavan took his departure, and under his
escort Mrs. Ware and Charlotte went down the river to Cincinnati. Since
their argument on election day Rhoda had given him no opportunity to
renew his love siege. Nevertheless, her heart was like lead in her
breast, now that he was really going, and she was afraid to trust
herself alone with him lest she would find herself saying, “Stay, oh,
stay a little longer!” And yet she felt relief at the thought that the
dear torment would now be lessened, glad that she might rest from the
keener strife within herself that his presence provoked.

When he bade her good-by he held her hand closely and said, “We’ve
not spoken the last word yet, Rhoda Ware! I’m coming again some
day,--though I hope I won’t be exploded into your house the next time!”

Her eyes were serious upon his face, but she felt her cheeks growing
warmer with the pressure of his hand. She told herself that she ought
to withdraw her own, but afterwards she knew that she had not even
tried to take it out of his clasp. “You’d better not come,” she said
gravely. “What is the use?”

“But at least I may come--to see your mother!” he exclaimed, smiling,
and an answering ripple of mirth drove the gravity from her countenance.

It was nearly a week after the state elections before it was known
certainly that the Democratic ticket in Pennsylvania had won, by a
narrow margin, over the candidates upon whom the three other parties
had united. Rhoda listened as her father, Hardaker, and the two
Kimballs discussed the result. They were gathered around a cheerful
blaze in the sitting-room fireplace, for the evenings had grown chill.
Her mother and Charlotte had not yet returned.

“Oh, we’ve lost,” said Dr. Ware calmly, “and among ourselves we may as
well admit it, though of course we’ll keep up a hopeful appearance in
public.”

But Hardaker was more buoyant. “There’s hope yet,” he insisted.
“Pennsylvania has always reversed her state victory at a following
presidential election. And there’s no reason to suppose that she’ll do
otherwise this time. I still believe we’re going to win.”

Rhoda saw her father suddenly compress his lips and throw a quick
glance around their little circle. “To tell the truth,” he said slowly
in a low tone, “just here among ourselves, though I wouldn’t admit it
outside, I hope we are defeated this time.”

The rest started with surprise and Walter Kimball exclaimed, “For God’s
sake, Dr. Ware! What do you mean?”

“Frémont is not the man we need. He hasn’t the capacity, he hasn’t
the strength of character to meet the crisis the country would have
to face if he should be elected. He’s served a good purpose in this
campaign--he’s created enthusiasm and stimulated the growth of
Republican sentiment. But that’s all he’s good for.”

“Well, we’ve made a marvelous showing, anyway,” said Hardaker in a
triumphant tone, “and we’ve got the South scared and their northern
allies shaking in their boots over the safety of their pet institution.
In another four years,” he straightened up, his eyes glowing, and went
on in a voice of jubilant prophecy, “we’ll sweep the country and show
the South that there’s got to be an end of slavery!”

“Yes, we’ll do it next time, if we haven’t this!” exclaimed Lewis
Kimball with enthusiasm. “But, as Dr. Ware says, we’ll have to have the
best man possible to lead the procession. Who’ll it be? Frémont again?
Seward? Governor Chase? What do you think, doctor?”

Rhoda watched her father anxiously as he gazed into the fire. “No,
not Frémont--heaven forbid!” he began slowly. “He has revealed his
weakness. Governor Chase is with us, heart and soul, but I’m afraid
he isn’t quite big enough. Seward?--Perhaps, if he hasn’t proved too
conservative by that time. Well, we’ll have to work with all our might
during the next four years and trust to God to raise up some man as a
leader who’ll have the wisdom of Solomon and the backbone of a granite
mountain!”




CHAPTER XIV


Almost as much heartened by the result of the presidential election
as if it had been a victory, Dr. Ware and his friends and political
co-workers in Hillside lost no time in renewing and extending the work
of the campaign.

“If we have polled such a tremendous vote as this,” they said, “when
the party in many northern states was no more than a year old, what can
we not do in the next four years?”

The Rocky Mountain Club, through which they had carried on the Frémont
propaganda, was reorganized and every member went zealously to work
again to win converts to their faith and add to their membership.
Joshua Giddings, ardent apostle of the anti-slavery cause, journeyed
down from his home in the Western Reserve during a recess of Congress
and made for them a stirring speech. To another meeting came Governor
Chase with words of hope and encouragement and practical advice. And
on one memorable night Henry Ward Beecher roused an overflowing hall
to a pitch of enthusiastic resolution hardly equaled even during the
campaign.

Rhoda attended the meetings with her father and shared his zeal in the
work the club was doing. She and Mrs. Hardaker, Horace’s mother, and
Marcia Kimball organized an “Anti-Slavery Sewing Circle” which met at
the houses of the members and made clothing for such of the refugees as
reached the Hillside station ragged and shivering.

Mrs. Ware knew only in a general way of her daughter’s interest and
work in connection with this society, and of Rhoda’s connection with
the Underground she knew nothing at all. Deeply grieved, but not yet
despairing, over the girl’s refusal to marry the son of her old friend,
she set herself to combat, in gentle, unobtrusive ways, what she
believed to be the harmful influence exerted by her husband over their
first-born.

She talked much with Rhoda about the delightfulness of plantation
life and she dwelt long and lovingly upon Jeff Delavan’s passionate
devotion and upon his ambition and capacities which, she was sure,
would result in a career of national renown. Rhoda hearkened with
interest, saying but little in opposition, for her heart had begun to
ache for her mother almost as much as it did for herself and she shrank
from bringing the hurt look into those gentle eyes any oftener than she
found necessary. But sometimes, when evasion was no longer possible,
she would say, with caresses, and humble manner:

“Dear mother, you don’t know how much all you tell me makes me long for
that kind of life and surroundings. I think the wish for them must
have been born in me. But, mother, dear mother, I couldn’t endure them
if they meant being a part of slavery. Perhaps I should feel different
about it if I had been born there, as you were, and had grown up in it.”

Dr. Ware knew of the efforts his wife was making to win Rhoda’s consent
and, perceiving that her arguments and presentations made a strong
appeal to their daughter’s temperament, set himself to counteract any
effect they might have by appeals to her conscience. But he openly
urged no argument against the marriage, and in all his talk with her he
took it for granted that the question was settled for good.

Once he told her the story of Fanny Kemble, then at the zenith of her
fame,--of how, for love’s sake, she had married a slaveholder, although
herself convinced of the wrongfulness of slavery, and of how life on
the plantation, in close contact with the system, had filled her with
such loathing that she had not long been able to endure it.

“I am very glad, Rhoda,” he added, “that you were able to appreciate,
before it was too late, just what it would mean to marry into the
South’s ‘peculiar institution.’ You have saved yourself a great deal of
unhappiness.”

But especially did Dr. Ware have confidence in anti-slavery work as a
preventive of possible weakening in his daughter’s determination. To
that end he encouraged her in her sewing-circle activities, enlisted
her help in the sending out of pamphlets, newspapers and other
literature which was a part of the work of the Rocky Mountain Club, and
entrusted largely to her care the refugee slaves who sought the shelter
of their house.

Husband and wife said not a word to each other of their opposing
desires. Silence upon the question of Rhoda and Delavan was a part
of their lifelong habit of ignoring the question of slavery in their
mutual relations. But each felt so much at stake in their silent
struggle that gradually it forced them apart, and as the winter months
wore on there grew up between them the first alienation of their
married life.

Rhoda was soon sensible of the growing coldness between her father and
mother and guessed its cause. Her heart ached over the unhappiness
she had so unintentionally brought about and she spent much thought
and many secret tears upon the endeavor to find some way out of the
intolerable situation. Sometimes, in her misery over having brought
such disaster into her home, she felt that, if it would only heal the
breach, she could even sacrifice her scruples against becoming a part
of the system of slavery.

“But it wouldn’t do any good,” was the conclusion to which she had
always to come. “For if I were to marry Jeff it would make father
bitterly unhappy and he would blame mother for having influenced me to
give way. And as long as I don’t marry him mother will keep on feeling
that it is father’s fault and being angry with him because of it.”

The hiding place for runaway slaves was completed during the stay of
Mrs. Ware and Charlotte in Cincinnati, in October. It was a little,
narrow room, or cell, long enough for a man to stretch himself at
length on the floor and high enough for him to sit upright on a bench.
On three sides and across the top, cords of wood for the winter fires
were stacked in orderly array. But on the third side, containing the
entrance, where there was only a little space between the room and the
back wall of the shed, the wood was piled irregularly. From any but a
very searching eye these apparently haphazard sticks would conceal the
tiny, boarded structure, while in a moment they could be thrown aside
and passage in or out made easy. Within, a pile of straw and some old
quilts and carriage rugs made a bed comfortable enough, save on the
worst of winter nights, for those who had seldom known a better.

If a wayfarer gave the four signal knocks on a night too bitterly cold
for him to be housed in the woodpile shelter Rhoda, into whose charge
her father had given most of the work of conducting their “station,”
risked discovery by making some arrangement for him within the house.
Once, when the traveler was a man alone, she bedded him for the rest
of the night on the lounge in the office, until early morning, when Jim
hurried him to the woodshed. Another time, when the suppliants were a
husband and wife and little child, a bed was improvised for them in Jim
and Lizzie’s room.

But, zealously absorbed though she was in this work and convinced that
it was righteous and would have a good result, Rhoda was never free
from twinges of conscience because it was being carried on without her
mother’s knowledge. “It is her home and it isn’t fair for her not to
know about it,” she thought, time after time, as the winter went by.
“Of course, she wouldn’t like it and it would make her most unhappy to
know about it, and it is very dear in father to want to save her the
pain of knowing. I know it’s right for us to do it--we must-- Oh, dear!
It’s just another of these dreadful knots of right and wrong all mixed
up that the North and South have tangled themselves into! And slavery
is at the bottom of it all,--and slavery is the thing we must get rid
of--tear it all out--no matter--no matter who is hurt!”

The winter months, with their likelihood of cold and storms, greatly
lessened the Underground traffic. But even so, rarely a week went by
without the coming of at least one dark-faced runaway from the South,
trusting to find, at “the white house on the top of the hill with a
lantern at the gate,” shelter, food, and help for the next stage of his
journey.

For Rhoda it was a busy winter and its weeks sped by rapidly until the
warming sun brought promise that the spring was already on her way.
Then there came a night of cold and blustering wind with dashes of
rain. It was near daylight when Rhoda was roused from sound sleep by
Lizzie, who was bending over her bed and softly calling her name. A
fugitive was downstairs, tired out and wet to the skin.

The runaway was a young mulatto, scarcely more than a lad, who had
absconded from his owner, a horse dealer in a Kentucky town, because he
had learned that he was about to be sold to a trader who was collecting
a party of negroes for the owner of a Louisiana cotton plantation.
He was already planning to earn enough money in Canada to buy “free
papers” for his mother, who was owned by a merchant in the same town.
But he was oppressed by the fear that she might be sold “down south”
before he would be able to rescue her. From her box of clothing, kept
on hand for such emergencies, Rhoda gave him new, dry garments, he was
fed and warmed, and then taken to the woodshed shelter where, since he
was so wearied, he was left to rest and sleep through all the next day.

Notwithstanding her many activities and her zeal for the anti-slavery
cause, Jeff Delavan was never absent long from Rhoda’s mind, nor did
she even try to banish him from her thoughts. Every now and then came
a long letter from him which she read and re-read and pondered over,
and finally answered at equal length. These letters she frankly read,
with now and then a reservation, to her mother, who, as the months went
by, began to hope that finally she and Jeff together would overcome the
girl’s resolution. Rhoda entered into the social gaieties of the town
much less that winter than had formerly been her custom. Her days were
so fully occupied and the nights were so likely to bring responsibility
that she was reluctant to leave her post. Moreover, since she had
become so much absorbed in anti-slavery work, social pleasures had for
her less attraction. Charlotte gibed at her frequently on this account.

“You’re no better than an old maid already, Rhoda,” she complained that
same morning when the mulatto boy was sleeping in the woodshed. They
were working together, dusting and tidying the big, bright living-room.
Charlotte had been to a party the night before with Billy Saunders and
his sister Susie, who was her particular friend. But it had taken much
coaxing of her mother, with a final appeal to her father’s indulgence,
to win a reluctant consent for her to go without the watchful care of
her elder sister.

“Really, I think it’s unkind of you to stay at home so much when you
know mother doesn’t like me to go without you.”

“But she let you go last night.”

“Yes, because father asked her to. But she didn’t want to do it.”
Charlotte paused in her work and regarded her sister with brown eyes
sparkling. “Say, Rhoda,” she giggled, “do you suppose father would have
sided with me if he’d known about--Horace, last fall?”

Rhoda laughed, then drew her face into admonishing seriousness. “Aren’t
you ever going to be ashamed of yourself about that, Charlotte? You
ought to be!”

“Indeed I’m not! And I’ll do it again some day, if you don’t quit being
such an old maid and sticking at home so much!”

“I guess Horace would know better another time.”

“Well, he’s not the only one!” Charlotte tossed her head and her saucy
countenance twinkled with mischief. Rhoda noted her expression and
wondered what it might portend, but said nothing. “If you’re not going
to marry Jeff Delavan,” she went on, “it’s time somebody else did! The
idea of letting such a fine young man, with a beautiful old estate like
Fairmount, pine away in single misery!”

“Jeff is free to marry any one he likes, who’ll have him.”

“Who’ll have him! The idea! Rhoda, I never heard of such a simpleton
as you are! Well, if you’re determined to be an old maid, after such
a chance as that, you don’t deserve a bit of sympathy, no matter what
happens.”

Charlotte pursed her lips to the tune of “Comin’ thro’ the Rye” and
started toward the door. “Jeff was exceedingly nice to me on the boat
going down to Cincinnati,” she threw back with a bright glance over her
shoulder.

“Jeff is a gentleman and is always very courteous and attentive to
ladies.”

“Oh, is he?” was Charlotte’s response with a significant intonation.
“Well, I’m awfully tired of all the young men in Hillside and--Horace
isn’t the only one, Rhoda!” she ended in her most teasing accents as
she danced away, waving her duster.

In spite of all her efforts to drive it away, a dull ache settled in
Rhoda’s breast as she thought over Charlotte’s words. She felt sure
that behind them lay some intention of more moment than were that young
lady’s ordinary vagaries. As she had so often done before, she told
herself sharply that she had no right to stand in Charlotte’s way, that
if she did not intend to marry Jefferson Delavan she ought not to try
to hold his love. And her heart answered back triumphantly that Jeff
knew very well he could not hope to make her his wife and that if he
nevertheless chose to remain faithful to her she could not be blamed.

As she straightened the piano cover and set the chairs against the wall
Rhoda’s lips curved in a proud little smile at the thought that his
love for her was strong enough, her attraction for him potent enough,
to hold his heart thus steadily against her constant refusal of his
wish. For herself, she knew that she would never marry any one else.
But it was different, she told herself, with a man. Naturally, she
reflected, no one could expect him to remain true very long to a girl
who told him “no” over and over again, and it would be no more than any
man would be likely to do if he consoled himself with some other girl’s
love. It would be much harder to bear, she confessed to herself, if
that girl should be her own sister than if she were some far-away being
who would take Jeff entirely out of her life and leave him and their
unfortunate love a mere memory.

The thought of such an ending of their romance, wherein she would
be compelled to see her sister in the place which by right of love
ought to be her own, made more insistent the ache in her heart and
presently drove her upstairs to lock her door and take from her bureau
the box tied with white ribbon. A number of letters lay in it now,
beneath the faded rose. She took them out, caressingly, turning each
one over in her hands, noting its date, glancing with soft eyes at
its closely written pages. Then she began to read them as carefully
as if she had not already pored over them a dozen times. For the most
part they were arguments in defense of the institution of slavery and
the interests of his section. But these were interspersed with items
of personal interest, little accounts of what he and his sister were
doing, comments upon the duties and the pleasures of their life, and
now and then an audacious mention, which would make Rhoda at first
frown and then smile tenderly, of some holiday they would make or
something they would do when she should be installed as mistress at
Fairmount. But evidently her lover was hoping to win her by appeals to
her intelligence, by trying to convince her that the ideals which he
and his section cherished were righteous and desirable.

“I do not yet understand,” she read in the latest letter, still
unanswered, “how any one possessing a nature as noble and upright as I
know yours to be can yet engage in that work in which you told me you
glory so much. (I refer to the assisting of runaway slaves). I do not
see how you can reconcile the deliberate breaking of the laws of your
country and the taking of other people’s property with the dictates
of a scrupulous conscience. But I am well assured that you would not
engage in this course if you did not believe it to be thoroughly
honorable and right. And therefore I merely accept the fact and marvel
at it.”

“The negro is on a moral and intellectual plane so much lower than the
white man,” met her eyes in another letter, “that it is evident he was
designed by an all-wise God to be the white man’s servitor, just as are
the other domestic animals. The Almighty meant the white man to use
him for his own benefit in order that he might the more easily mount to
higher spheres of cultivation and achievement. Between the races there
is a natural relation, ordained by God himself when he created the
black so much inferior to the white, and we are but carrying out His
decrees when we embody that natural, heaven-declared superiority and
inferiority into the legal relation of master and slave.”

Presently her attention was attracted by farther development of the
same theme in a more recent missive: “The idea that it is possible
for the negro to profit by civilization, to advance or develop, is
a monstrous delusion, held only by a few people at the North who
know nothing about his real character. To attempt to force him into
channels of life and into efforts for which he is by nature unfitted,
as they are bent on doing, would be to turn the natural order of things
topsy-turvy and bring destruction upon the whole nation. For a free
Negrodom in the midst of our republic would swamp it in savagery.”

Over the concluding page of the last letter she pored thoughtfully,
stopping now and then to consider again the ideas it contained. For
she could not deny to herself the seductive appeal of the aims it set
forth, whatever she thought of the arguments upon which they were
based. Interested though she was in these lines, she yet remembered to
keep her hand over the bottom of the page. She knew what was there,
but she knew too that if she hid it from eyes that would be drawn in
that direction it would leap at her, when suddenly disclosed, with a
fresh thrill of happiness.

“In this beautiful Southland,” she read, “we are working out what will
prove to be the crowning glory of civilization. Here man, free to reach
his highest possible development, enjoying political liberty, delivered
by the divine institution of slavery from the hampering, benumbing
effects of labor, surrounded by comfort, beauty, affluence, can produce
the finest fruits of human effort. Here a refined and beautiful social
order is being established, learning encouraged, chivalrous feeling
and living made possible, womanhood reverenced, all intellectual
achievement honored and sought after, and here letters and art will
flourish as they have not flourished anywhere on the face of the earth
since the Christian era began. Here will it be possible, and here only
in all the world, for a modern Greece to grow into the fulness of
beautiful flower. Here poets and artists and orators and statesmen and
men of science and women, whose beauty and grace and talent will make
them social queens as powerful as were the ladies of the French salons,
will be appreciated and honored and find it possible to reach their
finest, fairest development. Here in the new world, in our own native
land, will be made possible a reincarnation of all that ‘glory that
was Greece, and grandeur that was Rome,’ as our own lamented southern
poet has so beautifully sung.”

Thus far she read, and then, lifting her eyes from the page, looked
steadily away for a moment. A soft and tender light shone in their gray
depths as, smiling gently, she dropped them again upon the page and
removed her concealing hand.

“Is it not a glorious prospect, and is it not worth while, my own dear
heart, to have some share in bringing about so grand a consummation?
What better can I do in the world than to help my beloved South to
maintain and extend her social order in which the negro, a mere animal,
does the work for which he is fitted and to which he was appointed by
the Creator, and the white man, created by God in His own image, is
left unhampered to develop his own God-given talents and so produce
such splendid results? But I am lonely, my dear one, and I long always
for the presence and the companionship of the mate God made for me.
Rhoda, darling, do not be cruel any longer! Tell me I can come and
claim her! Always, your friend and lover, Jefferson Delavan.”

For a little while Rhoda sat gazing at those closing lines, and then,
with a sigh, she prepared to write her answer. She made several
beginnings that did not suit her and tossed the pages to one side.
“Dear Friend Jeff,” she finally wrote. “Concerning what you say about
my doing things that are contrary to law, I must tell you that when
men make laws that outrage every sense of right and justice in my own
heart then I think that to disobey them is the only right and honorable
course. The law of God is higher than the law of man. The law of God
commands us to help the needy, to succor the oppressed, to aid the
wayfarer, to deal justly by all men. That is what I have been doing and
what I shall continue to do, although I break a whole houseful of man’s
unjust and wicked laws.”

She worked on through his letter, seriously answering an argument here,
gaily deriding a point there, now displaying a hint of tenderness in
some inquiry concerning his welfare, and again replying with vivacious
but evasive sallies to personal remarks in which the lover seemed to
overbalance the friend, until at last she came to the closing page.
Then she laid down her pen and read it over again, realizing fully the
enthusiasm, ambition and youthful energy which stirred and fed his
devotion to this ideal of his section, and feeling also to the depths
of her soul how completely it parted them. Her lips were trembling and
her eyes dim with tears as she took up her pen again.

“I will not deny,” she wrote, “that the picture you draw of a South
in which men and women would make the highest and finest kind of
civilization, is very attractive to me. Or, rather, it would be if
your beautiful social order were not rooted in the hideous slime of
slavery. I cannot believe that it would endure, or that it would be
anything but a curse to the world as long as beneath it were the
groans, the chains, the unpaid toil and misery of so many thousands of
other men and women unfortunate enough to have been born with black
skins. It will never be possible for you to claim me as long as you are
a part of such a system. But I hope you will always remember me as your
truest friend, Rhoda Adeline Ware.”

She always signed her name thus in her letters to him, although she
never used her middle name elsewhere, because it was a token of their
mothers’ friendship and so it seemed to her to belong specially
to their intercourse and to give to it a shy little fragrance of
exclusion, of separateness from everything else.

But when she had finished she pushed it all aside and dropped her face
on her arm and her whole body trembled with a long, deep sob. Her heart
was answering the call of his, which she had heard and refused to
heed, through every line of his letters. They were so far apart, their
faces were set toward such hostile ideals! And yet across that deep
gulf their spirits clamored and their bodies yearned for presence, for
companionship, each for its mate. Through a blur of tears she took up
her pen and groped for a fresh sheet of paper.

“Oh, Jeff, Jeff,” her pen was flying across the page, “how will it
be possible to endure this separation longer? Surely it is wrong for
people who love as we do to tear themselves apart like this. I cannot
endure it, and yet I cannot consent. Come then, and carry me away in
spite of myself.” Ah, it was a relief to give way to her feelings, to
write the things she longed to say, even though she did not intend
that he should ever read them. The pain in her face, the drawn look of
mental suffering, began to fade out of it. “Tie my feet and my arms,
if you must, so that I cannot run from you. Stop my lips with kisses,
so that I cannot say I will not go. Take me in your arms and carry me
away, anywhere, but do not let me deny our love any longer.”

It was the cry of the primitive woman, whose sane instinct for the
strong mate lives on through all the thousand and one denials and
perversions of civilization. From the days when courtship was seizure,
and first choice belonged to the strongest, has the wish to be won in
spite of herself lived on in the heart of woman. It has been buried
deep and ever deeper beneath the accruing refinements of humanity, and
forced to find dwarfed expression in the subterfuges with which the
civilized woman evades and refuses her wooer, that finally she may make
pretense of her unwilling capture. But now, from beneath the depths of
a million years, it rose suddenly to the surface of a strong woman’s
heart and overpowered all her strength.

Her hand was shaking and her bosom heaving as she put the sheet to one
side. There was a knock at the door and Charlotte’s voice called out:
“Rhoda! Please let me have some of your paper. I’ve used mine all up.”

Opening her door a mere crack she handed out paper and envelopes,
for she had no wish to give her sister’s inquiring mind a chance to
speculate upon the reason for her agitated countenance. But it was only
a moment more, with a little resolute drawing in of her breath and a
pressure of her lips, and a minute or two before the mirror, until her
composure was restored. Then she heard her mother in the hall: “Come,
Rhoda! Come, Charlotte! Dinner’s ready!”

“Yes, mother, in just a minute,” she called back. Jeff’s letters were
quickly laid away in their box. Then she gathered up the sheets of
her own letter and hurriedly folded them into the envelope, which she
addressed and sealed. For after dinner she was going to a meeting
of the anti-slavery sewing circle. The discarded sheets she twisted
together and tossed into the fire.




CHAPTER XV


At the dinner table Mrs. Ware’s eyes rested with loving anxiety
upon her first-born. “She is surely growing thinner and paler,” was
her motherly thought. “Poor child! If she would only give up to her
love how much happier she would be! It’s just eating out her heart,
I know it is! If Jeff would take hold of her as Amos did of me--”
and she glanced across the table at her husband, who in the grave
responsibility of his middle age seemed far enough removed from the
impetuous and masterful lover of her girlhood.

Quickly trailing upon the thought came recollection of that ride of
which she had told Rhoda and Jeff, and then a wave of memories of
his ardent courtship swept over and softened her heart. The coldness
and resentment of the last few months were buried, for the moment,
underneath their warmth and color, and her eyes sought his face again
with more of fondness in their expression than he had seen there in
many a day. Then her mind went back to her daughter.

“But I reckon that wouldn’t answer with Rhoda, after all,” she told
herself. “She’s so different. But I really believe she’s beginning to
feel more like giving up. The way she looked when she read his last
letter to me and when we talked about him yesterday--yes, she’s surely
finding out how much she really cares. If Jeff were to come up again
now, perhaps--I’ll write to him and tell him to come!”

The persuasion that perhaps the matter would come out all right added
to the good feeling toward her husband already induced by her memories,
and when they rose from the table she moved to his side and looked up
into his face with a little glow of tenderness and affection in her
own. With quick response he rested a hand upon her shoulder.

“Which way are you going this afternoon, Amos?” she asked.

“First to the Winslows, after I keep my office hour. Harriet is sick.”

“Oh, poor little thing! I’ll go over with you. I must write a letter
now, but if you’ll call me when you’re ready to go I’ll come down at
once and we can drive past the post-office.”

It was the first time in many weeks that she had wished to drive with
him and he stooped and kissed her, saying, “I’ll be glad to have you,
Emily.”

With her letter in her pocket Rhoda hurried away, past the post-office,
to the meeting of the sewing circle, at Mrs. Hardaker’s home. The
members had planned to put in a particularly busy afternoon, for
the coming of spring would be sure to bring with it an increase in
the number of refugees and they must have ready plenty of clothing
suitable for warm weather.

Charlotte went back to her room and was soon absorbed in a composition
that seemed to perplex her much. She wrote a few lines or words upon
sheet after sheet, then frowned and shook her head and tore up and
threw aside one after another until her table was littered with them.
But at last, after much knitting of her brows and tapping with her gold
pencil, she appeared satisfied with what she had done and copied it, in
a few lines across the middle of the page, upon a sheet of the paper
borrowed from Rhoda.

As she read it again, her eyes twinkled and her chin tilted to its most
rebellious angle. “I reckon mother would put her foot down hard if
she knew about it,” she said to herself, and then pursed her lips and
whistled a few notes. “And Rhoda would think it a very shocking thing
for me to do. But I don’t care, I’m going to. I reckon father wouldn’t
mind--indeed, I’m sure he’d be pleased. Yes, father would be glad
enough if Jeff should-- So it’s all right.” She giggled softly and the
look of amusement deepened on her face as she addressed the envelope.

“There!” she exclaimed as she sealed the letter, “now there’ll be
some fun!” Springing to her feet she danced about the room, stopping
in front of the mirror after a few steps to practise tilting her
hoopskirts, without seeming to do so, at a higher angle than she had
ever dared before.

Mrs. Ware, starting downstairs, in bonnet and shawl, with her letter in
her pocket, heard a shriek from Charlotte’s room. “What’s the matter,
dearie?” she called in quick alarm, and opened the door.

Charlotte was standing on a chair in front of her closet door, her
skirts drawn up to her knees, her two plump calves and slender ankles
and trim little feet trembling with the agitation which shrilled in her
voice: “Oh, mother, there’s a mouse in my closet!”

“Oh, is that all, honey! My heart was in my throat, for I thought you
must have half-killed yourself. Get Bully Brooks and shut him up in
your room. He’s getting to be a fine mouser. Dress yourself, honey, and
look for him. I’d bring him up for you, but your father’s waiting for
me and I must hurry. Good-by, dear. I’ll be back in two or three hours.”

With anxious haste and many apprehensive glances at the harboring
closet, now closed and locked, Charlotte dressed herself and hurried
down stairs. “Do you know where Bully Brooks is?” she asked of Lizzie
in the kitchen.

“Dat good-fo’-nuthin’ cat?” teased Lizzie, with a broad grin at
Charlotte’s pantomimic threats of displeasure and retaliation. “I done
see him jess now streakin’ out to’d de bahn wif his tail in de air,
like he was totin’ a flag at de head of a percession.”

Charlotte sped down the walk to the barn and looked all about and
called softly, “Bully Brooks! Bully Brooks!” The door leading from the
barn into the woodshed was open and she thought, “Maybe he’s gone in
there.”

“My! What a lot of wood we’ve used this winter!” she said to herself.
“The last time I was in here, last fall, the shed was nearly full. And
now there’s only that pile in the middle.” She moved toward the back of
the inclosure, her gaze searching the corners, then falling upon the
irregularly piled sticks at the back of the neat cords.

“There he is!” she exclaimed softly, as she saw a gray tail sticking
out from between the logs. Speedily she bore down upon him. “Here, ‘yo’
good-fo’-nuthin’ cat,’” she muttered, “come out here.” She made a grab
for his tail, but he whisked it suddenly aside, and went on, threading
his way between the chunks of wood, his head stretched out and nostrils
working.

“Oh, you think you smell something, do you? Well, just come right along
with me and see what you can smell in my room.” But she could not quite
reach him, and she began tossing to one side the smaller sticks. In a
moment her eyes fell upon the boarding of the hidden room. “What can
that be?” she wondered, pausing in her work. With Charlotte, to have
her curiosity aroused was only to fire her determination to have it
assuaged. So now she eagerly threw out of the way the remaining pieces
and saw plainly the tiny house. “There’s a door in it!” she whispered,
and straight-way stepped up and peeped in.

There she saw the negro runaway asleep upon the straw pallet. On the
bench were the remains of his dinner, with pans and plates and cups
which she recognized as having come from their own cupboard.

For a moment she stared, bewildered. Then, as the boy stirred in his
sleep, she picked up Bully Brooks, shut the door softly and hurried
back to her room. Her thoughts darted at once to the heart of the
mystery.

“They’re stealing niggers, that’s what they’re doing, father and Rhoda!
My! It’s worse than stealing horses, or money!” Her face was hot with
indignation and her eyes blazing. “They ought to be arrested, even if
they are my father and sister. Why, it might be one of Jeff’s niggers
they’re stealing. Just think of it! Nigger thieves! They ought to be
punished--they deserve to go to prison--and they would, too, if it was
known!”

She stopped in the midst of her fuming as an idea flashed across her
mind. It took her breath away for a moment. Then she drew back from it
with a little feeling of repugnance. But in a moment more her busy,
resentful thought was hovering around it, experimenting with it,
considering it with more and more of favor.

“There’s no telling how many slaves they’ve hidden in there and sent on
to Canada. Thousands of dollars worth, it’s likely. And their owners
just raking the country and spending money trying to find them. Oh,
it’s a shame the way these black abolitionists act! Father and Rhoda
are just as bad as any of them. Nigger thieves! O, my! And that nigger
out in the woodshed, he belongs to somebody just exactly the same as
if he was a horse or a cow. He ought to be taken back. He’s somebody’s
property, and it’s wrong and against the law to steal him, or to help
anybody else to steal him. If I don’t tell somebody that he’s here, so
he can be taken back to his owner, I’ll be a nigger-thief, just the
same as they are.”

She tied her bonnet under her chin, adjusted her cape around her
shoulders, took a last look in the glass, and turned toward the door.
Her eyes chanced to fall upon the letter, lying on the table.

“O, my goodness, I’m about to forget that!” she exclaimed, seizing the
missive. She giggled and tilted her chin and said aloud, “Yes, I shall,
I shall do it!” Then she touched her lips to the superscription and
airily waved the envelope toward the south. With another gay little
laugh she tucked it into her pocket. And so it happened that when the
mail-bag left the Hillside post-office that afternoon it carried three
letters for Jefferson Delavan.

As she came out of the post-office Charlotte found herself face to face
with her admirer, Billy Saunders. “Is Susie at home?” she asked.

“Yes, and expecting you. Are you going there?” He turned and walked up
the street at her side. Her cheeks still showed a heightened color and
the fires of her indignation glowed in her eyes. “You’re looking mighty
pretty this afternoon, Charlotte. What’s happened?”

“What’s happened, indeed!” Charlotte tossed her head. “Does there have
to be a wedding, or a funeral, or a steamboat accident before I deserve
a compliment?”

“No, indeed! You always deserve more compliments than I have sense
enough to think of. But you look excited, as if something unusual had
happened.”

Charlotte turned toward him, her heart swelling with excitement over
the momentous secret she had discovered. At this final moment it was
chiefly the childish need of sharing her knowledge that urged her to
speech. “Say, Billy, can you keep a secret?”

“As well as you can, I reckon.”

“I’ve just got to tell somebody, or I’ll fly into a thousand pieces!”

“Don’t do that!” he begged in mock alarm. “Out with it, and save the
pieces!”

“Well, then, there’s a nigger in our woodpile!”

A flash crossed his face. “What do you mean?” he ejaculated, stopping
short.

“Just what I say. He’s hid among the wood in our woodshed. There’s a
little house there.”

“Well--” he hesitated over his answer as they walked on. “I reckon it’s
all right,” he hazarded. But he was thinking rapidly. Here, in all
likelihood, was the proof for which the pro-slavery sympathizers had
long been watching. Dr. Ware’s outspoken sentiments and his activity in
the anti-slavery movement had caused them to suspect he was connected
with Underground operations.

“Are you sure you weren’t dreaming?” he asked jocularly. “When did you
see him and what was he doing?”

“Do I usually dream around in the daytime, Billy Saunders? I saw him
about an hour ago and he was sound asleep. And if you think I don’t
know a nigger when I see one you can go and look for yourself!”

They had reached the Saunders gate and he lifted his hat in farewell.
“Remember you’re to keep that secret,” she called after him, in
appeasement of a sudden compunction.

“Oh, I can keep a secret as well as you can,” he laughed back. Secretly
a little troubled by his answer, but saying to herself defiantly,
“Well, they deserve whatever happens, anyway!” she went into the
house. He quickened his steps to the office of the United States
marshal.

At the home of Mrs. Hardaker the members of the anti-slavery sewing
circle were busy over their needles when Rhoda, from her seat near
a front window, saw Horace dash up the street in a buggy. Springing
out, he came up the front walk almost on a run. He saw her face at the
window and beckoned. She went out and met him at the front door.

“Is there any U. G. baggage at your house, Rhoda?” he asked at once in
low, anxious tones.

“Yes. A young man came late last night and has been sleeping all day.”

“Then that’s it! I just now discovered that Marshal Hanscomb was on the
track of something, and I was afraid it might be there! I’ve got a case
in court that will be called in ten minutes, but I borrowed this buggy
from my client and rushed over here. Is your father at home?”

“No. I’ve got to go and get him away.” She was hurrying into her bonnet
and wrap.

“You’d better let me--”

“No, no. You can’t leave your case. That would be too suspicious. I’ll
manage it.”

“Don’t walk home--take this buggy.” They were already rushing to the
gate and he went on as he assisted her to the seat: “There’s not a
minute to lose. Hanscomb’s getting ready now to start out with his
men.”

She was soon in the cross street upon which backed their row of
outbuildings. Here a wide door gave entrance to the woodshed. It was
kept padlocked and she had to waste a few minutes finding Jim to unlock
the door. The young negro, dazed by this sudden awakening to danger,
was hustled into the buggy, a small, uncovered, box-seated vehicle.
Rhoda made him double up in the little space at her feet and covered
him with a carriage rug. Then over her own lap and down over him she
spread an ample robe, which Jim hastily tucked in at the sides.

“I’ll try to reach Gilbertson’s with him,” she said to the faithful
black man as the horse sprang forward at her whip’s touch. She made
a détour around several blocks and struck into the street leading to
the country in the first valley beyond the house. This lost several
minutes at the start, but she reflected that if the marshal should
arrive in time to see her driving straight away from the house he might
be suspicious enough to make chase at once. As it was, one of his men,
on guard at their gate, saw her buggy as it turned from a cross street
into the country road, but, at the moment, thought nothing of it.
Looking back, she saw the men ride up to their gate and knew that they
would search the house.

“They’ll have their trouble for their pains,” she thought. “But wasn’t
it a narrow chance! You poor boy, I’m going to save you, anyway!”

She wondered what hint had come to the marshal’s ears, and decided it
must have been suspicion rather than actual knowledge that had brought
him to search their house at this particular time. Most likely the
fugitive had been seen on his way to their house by some of the many
eyes ever on the alert for such as he, and her father’s reputation as a
strong anti-slavery man and abolitionist had given Marshal Hanscomb a
pretext.

“But he’ll never think of looking in the woodpile,” she told herself
with a smile of satisfaction. “That secret is perfectly safe, for
nobody knows it but us and Horace. Our little hiding place will be as
safe as ever, even if they do search the house!”

She looked back anxiously from the top of the high hill, whence the
road entered a sparsely wooded belt of country, and saw that the horses
were still hitched at their side gate. “I’m getting a good start,
even if they do follow me,” she reflected, “and I guess I can make
Gilbertson’s.”

But the horse was a slow traveler and, although she urged him
constantly with voice and whip, to Rhoda’s anxious eyes they seemed to
cover the ground at but a snail’s pace. She thought they must have been
on the road nearly an hour when, from the top of a long, sloping hill,
she glanced backward and saw a party of four mounted men crossing the
rise she had just left behind. She recognized it at once as Marshal
Hanscomb and his aids. They were riding at a much faster pace than her
horse could equal and she knew that in a few minutes they would surely
overtake her and, in all probability, stop her and search the buggy.

For one brief flash the thought crossed her mind what that would
mean--arrest, trial, and afterward imprisonment. But that fleeting
picture was instantly gone and in its place came the vision of the lad
at her feet being carried back to scourging and slavery. As she urged
the horse down the hill at a reckless pace she remembered that he was
about to be sold “down south”--that land of fears and terrors which to
the negroes of the border states was a doom almost as awful as was the
fiery gulf which threatened the impenitent sinner. It occurred to her
that the hill was the same one where she had met the slave, Andrew, on
that momentous day of the previous summer.

“If I can make the bottom, and get him safe on that path to the cave
before they see him-- O, God, help me!” She thought of the boy’s old
slave mother, waiting and trusting for his promised help to rescue her
from bondage, and lashed her horse again. With a firm hand she held the
lines, her eyes on the road ahead and her touch guiding the horse along
the safest track. With a jerk they stopped short at the bottom of the
hill and she pulled away the coverings.

“Get up, quick!” she warned. “They’ve followed us, and you must hide.
Climb that fence--do you see that path over there? Run down that--it
will bring you to a thicket of hazel bushes. Behind them, in the hill,
there is a cave. You’ll be safe there, until I or some one comes for
you. But don’t stir out of it until you hear the word, ‘Canada,’ three
times. They’re right behind us--run fast!”

He needed no more warning, but was over the fence and speeding like a
deer along the faint pathway. There was no foliage now to screen his
figure and he would have to get beyond the bend in the hill, where the
path dropped downward again, before he would be safe from sight. Rhoda
gave one quick backward glance--they had not yet come into view. The
fleeing mulatto reached the big rock, turned it, and disappeared. With
a little catch in her breath she gathered up her lines, straightened
the carriage robes and urged her horse forward again. There was no need
of haste now, and the sooner the interview with the marshal was over
the sooner he would go back and leave her free to bring the boy from
his hiding place and go on her way. So she let the horse slowly climb
the rise, while she heard the pursuing party clattering down the other
slope. Presently they were beside her.

“Miss Ware, by authority of the law, I shall have to search your
buggy,” said the marshal’s voice, at the wheel. One of his men rode to
the horse’s head and seized the bridle.

“What for?” she asked, with well-simulated surprise.

“You are under suspicion of concealing in it a fugitive slave. I know
that he was hidden in your woodshed”--Rhoda’s heart sank and she felt
her eyelids quiver--“as late as this afternoon. But you got him out
before we reached there, and came out on this road by a roundabout way.
We’ve had our eyes on your father for a long time. And now I reckon
we’ve caught him, and you too!”

Rhoda looked at him and was able to command a smile. “Excuse me,” she
said politely, “but how many did you say you thought I had concealed in
this buggy?”

“Only one,” the marshal answered curtly. “You can get out if you want
to while we examine it.”

She jumped to the ground and stood by, smiling, while they took out the
rugs and looked under the seat.

Disappointed glances passed from one to another. Evidently, they had
felt sure they would find the missing slave in her buggy. Rhoda took
off her wrap and shook it ostentatiously. “You see, I haven’t got him
concealed about my clothing. You can search my pocket too, if you
like,” she added innocently.

“You’ve beat us this time, young lady,” he responded angrily, “but we
know what your father is up to, and you with him, and we’ll get you
yet.”

She turned upon him with dignity. “May I ask, Mr. Hanscomb, that
you will finish your examination of this little buggy where there is
scarcely room for one, as soon as possible, so that I can go on. I am
on an errand for my father, and I would like to finish it and get home
before dark. Perhaps you would like to look under the horse’s collar
and split open the whip-stock.”

The marshal flushed with annoyance. “All right. You can go on now. But
you’d better be careful about taking in any more niggers.”

She drove slowly on up the hill and they brought their horses’ heads
together for a conference. She was trembling with anxiety lest it might
occur to them to search the woodland on the west of the road, and she
wanted to know what they were going to do before she would have to pass
out of sight down the other side of the hill. To gain time she dropped
her whip, and jumped out to get it. Then she adjusted a buckle in the
harness and examined a thill strap. A stolen glance let her see that
they were starting back toward the town.

But now a new anxiety filled her. Did they know of the cave? Would they
think of it as a possible hiding place? The cave was such a little
one,--it was of no interest to any one but children--perhaps they had
never heard of it, or had forgotten it if they had. She longed to look
around and see if they stopped, but she feared to show interest in
their movements, lest she might renew their suspicions. Had the boy
left footprints as he ran from the buggy to the fence? She tried to
remember whether the ground there was hard or muddy, but could recall
nothing. In an agony of apprehension she reached the top of the hill
and started down the descent.

“I must know, whatever happens,” she presently said to herself.
Stopping the horse she sprang out and ran back a little way, to
where her eyes could command the opposite hill. The horsemen were
disappearing over its crest. Her knees were shaking as she hurried back
to the buggy, but she pulled herself together and considered what would
be the best plan to get the fugitive out of the cave and on to the next
station. For she feared to go back openly now, lest some member of the
marshal’s party might return. A little farther on, she remembered,
was a cross way and striking off from this, a short distance to the
westward, an old wood road which ended near the cave. “It used to be
there,” she thought anxiously, “but I haven’t been down it since--oh, I
don’t know when! I’ll have to take chances on its being there yet.”

But on the cross road she met farmer Gilbertson, in a big, deep-bedded
wagon filled with a load of loose hay. She told him of her narrow
escape.

“You better drive in and get him in your little buggy,” he advised,
“and I’ll wait out here and take him home with me, under the hay. It’ll
be safe enough--this road ain’t traveled much.”

It was not long until Rhoda was driving homeward again, deep joy in her
heart that the fugitive had escaped such imminent danger, but wondering
much how the marshal had discovered the secret of their woodshed.




CHAPTER XVI


When Mrs. Ware reached home that afternoon she found Marshal Hanscomb
and his men, baffled and angry, completing their search of the house.

“Mr. Hanscomb, what does this mean?” she demanded.

“It means that runaway niggers have been making a hiding place of your
house and that we’ve been barely too late to catch one.”

“I assure you, Mr. Hanscomb, that nothing of the sort has been going
on in my house. Dr. Ware’s sympathies, it is true, are with the
anti-slavery cause, but he is not a nigger-stealer.”

“If you think so, madam,”--there was the hint of a sneer in his
tone--“you’d better go out to the woodshed and look at that room built
into the middle of your woodpile and see how lately it’s been occupied.”

She turned upon him a face of offended dignity. Her small, plump
figure, in its balloon-like skirt, stiffened with a haughtiness
which impressed even the angry marshal. “I trust, sir, that you have
satisfied yourself there is no one concealed in the house or on the
premises.”

“We have, madam, for the present. We happened to be a few minutes too
late.”

“Then I will bid you good-evenin’.” With a stately nod she left him,
going at once to her own room, behind whose closed door she remained
until her husband’s return.

Rhoda and her father, coming from opposite directions, drove up to
their east gate at the same moment, in the red glow of a March sunset.
She told him hurriedly of the happenings of the afternoon and of the
narrow chance by which she had finally saved the mulatto lad from
recapture. At the veranda steps Jim met them, with an excited account
of the marshal’s visit and his search of the house. He evidently knew
of the woodshed hiding place, the man said, for he went to it at once.

“Was any one at home?”

“No, sah, nobody but Lizzie and me. But Mrs. Ware, she done come before
they leave.”

“Then she knows now,” Rhoda told herself. “Oh, to think she had to find
it out that way!”

They walked silently down the veranda, avoiding each other’s eyes,
and entered at the front door. Mrs. Ware was coming down the stairs.
Rhoda stopped short, but her father walked swiftly past her and held
out his hand to his wife. She could not see his face, but the look
on her mother’s countenance stabbed her to the heart. In it the girl
read resentful inquiry, wounded faith, reproachful love. They seemed
oblivious of her, as Mrs. Ware stood looking into her husband’s face
with that hurt look upon her own. She did not take the hand he held
out. Then Rhoda saw him sweep her close to his side and heard him say
in a choking voice, “Come, Emily!” He led her into the living-room and
closed the door.

What passed between them there Rhoda never knew--what confessions
of outraged rights, what heart-barings of living tenderness, what
recognitions of inner imperatives, what renewals of the bonds of love
and trust. She crouched where she had dropped on the stair step,
miserably conscious that this was the climax of the estrangement
over her between her father and mother, feeling keenly that it had
been her mother’s right to know the use that was being made of her
home, appreciating her father’s motive in wishing to keep it hidden,
remorseful for the wound her share in it would deal her mother’s heart,
but unable to give up one jot of her conviction that what she and her
father had been doing had been demanded of them by the highest laws of
God and the most sacred rights of man.

In a jumble of thought and feeling, swept by waves of passionate
sympathy and compassion for both of the two within that closed door,
Rhoda sat huddled on the stairs until her mother came out. “Mother!”
she called, springing up and holding out her hands.

Mrs. Ware came up and took them, saying simply, “How cold they are,
honey!” and pressed them to her breast. In the dim light the girl could
see that her face was very pale but that her eyes were shining with
calm happiness.

“Oh, mother! We both felt that you ought to know about it--”

“It’s all right, dear child. I would rather your father had confided in
me from the first--”

“It wasn’t that he doubted you, mother! Oh, don’t think that! He knew
you would be loyal to him--but he thought it might give you pain to
know--”

“Yes, honey, I understand--I appreciate all that. But don’t you see,
dear, I would have liked to be trusted by my husband, even if it had
hurt--a little?”

“It was your right to know, mother.”

“Perhaps I don’t think so much about that as you would, Rhoda, but--a
woman who loves needs to feel that she is trusted as well as loved.
But it’s all right now. I know how you and your father feel about it,
that you are doing only what seems to you right, although to me, dear
child, it seems very wrong. I don’t want to know any more about it than
I must, and you mustn’t expect me to help you in the least, but not for
the world, dearie, would I hinder you and your father from doing what
you think is right.”

Rhoda bowed her head upon her mother’s shoulder whispering, “Dear
mother!”

“Your father and I understand each other better now,” Mrs. Ware went
on in tender tones. “There has been some misunderstanding between us
about you and Jeff, but this has cleared it all up, and so I am glad
it happened. He has promised me that he will not try to influence you
in any way against marrying Jeff. So you see now, dearie, that it is
possible, after all, for husband and wife to live together in love and
trust and happiness, even though they do hold opposite opinions about
slavery!”

There was a sound of quick, light footsteps across the veranda and
Charlotte came in breezily, cheeks glowing and eyes sparkling. “What’s
the matter?” she exclaimed. “What’s happened?” Then sudden recollection
came to her of what probably had happened and of her own share in it,
and a look of confusion crossed her face. Rhoda saw it and instant
suspicion was born in her mind that here was the medium through which
information had reached the marshal.

“Sister, was it you?” she asked on the impulse, her tone gentle but
reproachful.

“Was what me?” Charlotte flared back.

“I think you know what I mean.”

Dr. Ware had come out of the living-room and was standing in the
doorway. Charlotte threw at him a coaxing, appealing glance.

“You’d better tell the truth about it, Charlotte,” he responded. The
girl shrank back a little at his tone and something of surprise crossed
her face. Never before had he spoken to her with so near an approach
to sternness. His large, calm eyes were upon her, dispassionate but
disapproving. She could not withstand their compulsion.

“Well, then, I did,” she exclaimed defiantly, tossing her head as she
took a step forward. “And I think I did no more than was right and I’m
glad I did it. When people are disobeying the laws and are criminals,
even if they are your own people--”

“There, child, that will do,” her father interrupted, lifting an
admonishing hand. “Remember, please, that you are only eighteen, and
that your father is in no need of moral instruction at your hands. I
understand how you feel about this question and I am perfectly willing
for you to believe as seems to you right. I expect you to grant the
same privilege to me and to every other member of my family. And as
long as you live under your father’s roof, my daughter, he has the
right also to expect from you loyalty to his interests. Do you think I
shall have it hereafter?”

Charlotte burst into tears. In all her saucy little life no one had
ever spoken to her with such severity. “I only told Billy Saunders,”
she sobbed, “and I told him not to tell!”

Instantly her father was beside her, patting her shoulder, an arm
about her waist. “There, there!” he soothed. “I didn’t suppose you
realized what you were doing. As it happened, no great harm came of it.
Just remember, after this, that it is not your duty to sit in judgment
on my actions. Then we shall all move along as happily as ever.”

When Rhoda went to her room and her eyes fell upon her writing table,
sudden misgiving caught her breath. She had not stopped to make it
tidy, after her letter-writing in the morning, because of her hurried
departure for the sewing circle, and its unaccustomed disorder brought
sharply to her mind the letter she had written. And that other
sheet--had she destroyed it, as she meant to do? She looked the table
over hastily, shuffling the clean sheets of paper in her hand. “How
silly!” she thought. “Of course I destroyed it! I remember, I picked up
several sheets together that I didn’t want, and burned them, and that
was among them!”

Still, for a moment, the uneasy fear persisted that perhaps she had put
it into her letter. She burned with shame at the thought that her lover
might read those words. Then with a sudden vault her mind faced about
and she felt herself almost exulting that at last he might know how
much she cared, that at last, in spite of herself she had surrendered.

“If I did send it,” she thought as she sat at her window, in the dark,
“he will come and I shall have to give up.”

Her mother’s words recurred to her: “You see that it is possible for
husband and wife to live together in love and trust and happiness, even
though they do hold opposite opinions about slavery.” They would be
happy--ah, no doubt about that! And perhaps, if they were married and
constantly together, she could make Jeff see the wrongs of slavery.
She could point out to him specific instances of injustice and rouse
that side of his conscience which now seemed to be dead. He had such
a fine, noble nature in all other things--it was only because he had
been brought up in this belief and had always been accustomed to taking
slavery for granted. With his great love for her she would surely be
able to exert some influence over him, and she would use it all to one
end.

She knew of other men who had been slaveholders but, becoming convinced
that it was wrong, had freed their slaves and joined the anti-slavery
ranks. Some, even, worked with the Underground Railroad. What a
splendid thing it would be if she could win him over to the side of
liberty! For such a result, she told herself, she would be willing to
crucify her conscience for a little while and be a part of the thing
she abhorred.

She slept that night with a smile on her face and when she wakened in
the morning her first consciousness was of an unusual lightness and
happiness in her heart. Then she remembered, and flushed to her brows.

“But it was all true,” she whispered. “I didn’t mean to send it, and
I’m sure I didn’t. But I--almost--wish I had.”




CHAPTER XVII


When Jefferson Delavan received the mail containing the three letters
from Hillside his lover’s eye saw at once the envelope bearing the
handwriting of Rhoda Ware. Everything else was pushed aside and this
was hastily torn open. He turned the sheets over and swept them with
a hungry look, as though he would devour all their contents at one
glance. And so it happened that before he had read another line his
eyes fell upon the page on which she had poured out her heart, which
she thought she had burned--but almost wished she had not.

He had to read it twice before he could believe that his eyes were
not playing him some trick. Then he sprang up joyously, with a great
light in his face, and ordered his horse. The rest of his mail, even
to Rhoda’s letter, was thrust into his pocket, while he made ready for
immediate journey. Slaves went scurrying hither and thither, urged to
unaccustomed speed by their master’s impetuous commands, and in less
than half an hour he was in his saddle.

He struck across the country on the turnpike road straight for the
Kentucky shore of the Ohio river opposite Hillside. Quicker time
might have been possible by the more roundabout route by railroad to
Cincinnati, but his only thought was that thus he was headed directly
toward the white house on the hill.

He galloped his horse for an hour or two before he remembered that
it would be the part of wisdom not to take too much out of it at the
start, laughed aloud as he slowed down, slapped its neck in sheer joy,
and sang lustily the tale of “Lord Lovell.” Then he remembered, that
he had not read the whole of Rhoda’s letter. He drew it forth, and was
reminded in so doing that he had other letters in his pocket. But they
could wait. He plunged into hers and read it eagerly through, dropping
the bridle and allowing his horse to take a slower pace. Now and then
he smiled or gave a little, tender laugh, as he came upon a mirthful
sally, or again he frowned thoughtfully and shook his head at her
argument. And presently he was staring in bewilderment at the closing
paragraph with its denial of his suit. His heart sank as he hastily
searched out the other sheet for reassurance. Yes, there it was, and
there could be no mistaking the longing call of her heart that spoke so
piteously through its brief lines.

“This other, she wrote with her head,” he told himself, “and then
her heart gave up and made her write this. Ah, the dear, dear girl!
It’s like her to surrender like this, so completely, and even against
herself when she lets her heart get the upper hand. Oh, my arms will
be all the tying she’ll need, and there’ll be kisses enough to stop her
mouth as long as we live!”

With a caressing touch he put the missive away in an inner pocket
and urged his horse on again, smiling and humming softly. At last he
recalled the other letters. Mrs. Ware’s he read first and found in it
confirmation of the view he had already taken of Rhoda’s surprising
message. The girl was evidently longing for sight of him once more, her
mother said, and if he were to come soon perhaps he could storm her
stubborn heart. He laughed again and exclaimed aloud, “Yes, indeed, I’m
coming, and if there’s any more storming necessary--” and the sentence
broke off into another exultant laugh.

Then he bethought him of the other letter. It was without date line or
signature and with puzzled eyes he read its few lines, in the middle of
the page: “When true hearts pine and gallants stay away, then what can
ladies do? Alas the day, they can but pine when cruel gallants come no
more!”

He looked the sheet all over and examined the envelope inside and out
to find some clue to its authorship. But there was not the least sign,
and the postmark was indistinct. It was written upon the same kind of
paper and inclosed in the same kind of envelope as Rhoda always used,
but the handwriting was not Rhoda’s, and it seemed so unlike her to
send such an indirect, silly little message that he said at once, “No,
it’s not from Rhoda.” But who could there be among his friends or
acquaintance likely to take such interest in his courtship, of which so
few of them knew, and send him this sort of romantic hint? Of course,
it might be from some friend of Rhoda’s in whom she had confided.

“It must be that little rogue of a Charlotte!” he presently exclaimed.
“She has sharp eyes in her head, that’s plain enough, always, and she
has seen how it is with her sister and thought she might help things
along by giving me a hint. Bless her heart! She’s a dear little thing,
if she does like to flirt, and after Rhoda and I are married we’ll
bring her down to Fairmount and give her the best time she’s had in all
her life and perhaps marry her to Lloyd Corey or Frank Morehead.”

While this was not the outcome of her anonymous message which Charlotte
hoped to bring about when she penned it, she would perhaps have been
as willing to accept it, had her thoughts ranged so far ahead, as the
one she planned to compass. Nor would she have been taken aback had
she known, while she fluttered about on the tiptoe of expectancy for
whatever might happen, with what ardor Jefferson Delavan’s thoughts
were turning toward Rhoda on his northward ride.

If her missive induced him to come again to their house what did it
matter whether he thought its words referred to Rhoda or to some one
else? Since Rhoda was determined she would not marry him, he would
soon find out his mistake and would be quite willing to look for
consolation elsewhere. Had he not shown her every attention on the trip
to Cincinnati? And when had she failed to set a man’s heart aflame, if
she had really wanted to witness the conflagration? Let her once more
have the opportunity--and she smiled at the brown eyes reflected back
from her mirror, confident that they had lost none of their power.

He would be able to reach the Ohio river by the morrow’s night, Delavan
thought, and the next morning he would cross over and hasten up the
hill to claim the sweet promise that beckoned to him from that glimpse
of Rhoda’s secret heart. As he mused over her words, and the wonder of
it that she should at last have called him, it occurred to him that
perhaps she had not meant to put that sheet into her letter. Perhaps
she had merely written down that revelation of her feelings as ease to
her own aching heart. But he laughed joyously.

“She’s let me know how it is with her, whether she meant to send it or
not, and I’ll do just as she begs me to, this time!”

And so he urged his horse onward, his glowing heart beating high in
his breast, sure of the happiness waiting for him at the end of his
journey, and counting off the lessening hours that lay between him and
the banks of the river. But that night there came a violent rainstorm
that carried away bridges and left swollen streams rushing through
overflowed valleys. It delayed him two days, so that it was not until
the sixth day after Rhoda penned her letter that he reached Hillside.

And in the meantime the Supreme Court had announced its decision in
the Dred Scott case, delighting the South, staggering the North, and
fanning to still higher and hotter flame the fires of contention over
the ever-burning question of slavery. Jefferson Delavan heard the news
as he fumed over his delay, storm-bound in the hotel of a country
town. He and half a dozen other slave owners from the town and near-by
plantations, who dropped into the hotel during the evening, rejoiced
over the victory as they sat around a bowl of punch.

“This will put an end to the whole controversy and give the country
peace at last,” said Delavan.

“It knocks the feet from under the Republican party,” declared another.
“They’ll be capable of no more mischief now!”

“Yes, gentlemen,” exclaimed a third, “it surely ties the hands of the
northern fanatics. They can no longer stop our growth!”

“Under the protection of this decision,” Delavan followed on, “we can
take our slaves wherever we like, and, with the northern Democracy
becoming more and more favorable to us, we shall soon win back the
ground we have lost!”

“Nor will our growth be all in that direction!” said another, slowly
and significantly.

“No, indeed!” was Delavan’s quick response. “Mexico and Central America
will be ours for the taking as soon as we realize our strength.
Gentlemen!” He sprang to his feet, his face glowing with enthusiasm,
his glass held high. “Gentlemen, I give you a toast: To the Republic of
the South, our own fair Land of Dixie, firm footed on the foundation of
slavery, and spreading wide wings North, South, East and West; her day
shall come soon and endure forever!”

With shouts of approval the others were on their feet at once, drinking
the toast, cheering the sentiment, and waving hats, pipes, glasses,
whatever their hands could seize. And no ghost of a misgiving visited
Jefferson Delavan, in the midst of their exultant rejoicing, as to how
that decision might affect his personal fate.

To Rhoda Ware, as she looked back upon them, the days following that of
her adventure with the negro lad were like a beautiful dream. After her
one moment of apprehension she did not believe that she had put into
her letter the telltale sheet whereon she had poured out her heart.
She was sure she had burned it. But that instant of anxious fear that
her lover would read her confession had given to her traitor heart its
opportunity. In the brief respite of secret rejoicing she had allowed
it to take, it had leaped to the saddle and it would not give up again
to her mind and conscience the right of command. So she submitted to
the sway of her love and battled with it no more.

“He will know--he will feel it, even though I didn’t send what I
wrote,” she whispered to herself. “And if he doesn’t come soon, I will
write to him--and tell him--yes, I’ll tell him to come!”

She spent much time alone in her room, seated at a southern window that
commanded a view of the street leading up from the steamboat landing,
the little bundle of letters and the faded rose held caressingly in her
hands. It happened that no fugitives came to their door during this
time, or she might have suffered sudden awakening from her dream.

As it was, she thought of nothing but the coming of her lover and her
surrender to his suit. Now and then her reverie strayed on into the
future and she pictured their life together in Jeff’s beautiful home at
Fairmount, with the slaves all freed and giving faithful service for
wages. Staying so much apart and living in her own rose-colored dreams,
the strenuous enthusiasms of the recent months, even her immediate
surroundings, seemed to lose their reality. The same emotional force
in her character which enabled her to enter with such zeal into the
anti-slavery work and to be so absorbed by it that she could sacrifice
her love upon its altar made it possible now,--indeed, made it
inevitable,--when she had once given up to the opposing influence, that
she should be swept by its forceful current to the other extreme.

A new expression came into her face. Her dreams drew a soft and tender
veil across the usually intent and serious look of her eyes, and all
her countenance glowed with her inner happiness. Her mother saw the
change in expression and demeanor with inward delight. For when it
came to the affections Mrs. Ware was able to interpret her daughter’s
feelings and actions with more surety than in matters of the mind and
conscience.

Charlotte, in whose heart rankled resentment against her father and
sister for their anti-slavery views, their Underground work, and
the reproach that had been administered to her, noted the new look
on Rhoda’s face and said bitterly to herself: “Yes, I suppose she’s
getting hold of a whole pack of niggers to steal and send on to
Canada!” She told herself petulantly that she was no longer of any
consequence in their home and began to feel an angry sense of injury
at the bonds tacitly imposed upon her conduct by the ideas and actions
of her father and sister. She longed for some happening that would
take her away and put her into surroundings where she could feel her
accustomed sense of freedom and personal importance.

And so, the wish being father to the conviction, Charlotte felt every
day more and more sure that Jefferson Delavan would soon reappear,
that Rhoda would refuse him again, and that then she could capture
his repulsed heart and speedily win from him a proposal of marriage.
She would hold him off a little while, and make him all the more
eager--that would be easy enough--and when at last she did consent, he
would of course want an early marriage, and to that, too, she would
reluctantly consent--“Oh, the sooner the better,” her thoughts broke
into sudden storm, “so that I can get away from this black abolition
hole!”

Dr. Ware observed with surprise the look upon his daughter’s face and
the change in her manner. He felt the lessening of her ardor in their
mutual interests and was not slow to attribute her silence, her drawing
away from the life of the household and her self-absorbed, dreamlike
demeanor to its true cause.

“Something has happened,” he said to himself, “that, for the time
being, has made her give up the struggle against her heart, and,
like a river that has burst through its dam, her love is overflowing
everything else in her nature. Well, I’m glad Delavan isn’t here now,
and I hope her conscience will get its head above water again before
she sees him. The good Lord grant that something happens to bring her
back to herself before it’s too late!”

But he said nothing to his daughter, faithfully observing the pledge
he had made to his wife at their recent reconciliation. Nor did he and
Mrs. Ware speak to each other about it, although it was uppermost in
both their thoughts. The renewed tenderness between them was too sacred
for either to dare the risk of marring its bloom by even so much as an
allusion to a subject upon which they were so widely divided.

On the fourth day of her surrender Rhoda sat at her window reading
a letter from her friend, Julia Hammerton. Her active spirit was
beginning to bestir itself again and as she finished the epistle she
stretched her arms above her head and with a little frown remembered
that she had that morning neglected one of her usual duties. Then,
“Dear me,” she exclaimed, “I’ve forgotten all about that for-- Oh, it
must be several days! I suppose mother has attended to it,” she rebuked
herself, and then smiled tenderly at the sunshine which filled all her
inner consciousness.

“I’ve been very happy, these days,” she thought, “but I’m afraid I’ve
been awfully lazy and selfish too. I must go down now and get to work.”

She looked out of the window and saw Horace Hardaker and the elder
Kimball, father of Walter and Lewis, coming up the hill. Her thought
reverted to the missive from Horace’s sister.

“I’ll take Julia’s letter down and read it to them. There’s such a lot
of news from Kansas in it that will interest them. Dear Julia! Horace
ought to be proud of her--and he is, I know. She’s been so brave and so
true!”

The hint of a shadow crossed her face as she looked absently at the
letter in her hand. From somewhere far back in her mind seemed to come
a faint question, Had she also been true? But she lifted her head
proudly with the quick answering thought:

“Of course I am true. I shall not change my convictions the least
little bit, even if I do marry Jeff. And perhaps I can do more good as
his wife than I could in any other way.”

“As the mistress of slaves!” came back the accusing whisper.

In the office she found her father and the two others deeply engrossed
in conversation, their looks anxious and gloomy, but their manner
showing excitement.

“Come in, Rhoda,” said Dr. Ware, as she hesitated at the door, “and
hear the bad news.”

“Bad news! Oh, father, what is it?”

“The Supreme Court has decided the Dred Scott case and the result is
even worse than we have feared. Chief Justice Taney has dragged his
official robes through slavery filth and given to the pro-slaveryites
everything they want!”

“Oh, father--Horace! What does he say?”

“The decision is,” answered Hardaker, “that a slave cannot be a
citizen--practically, that a nigger has no rights a white man is
bound to respect--that Congress has no right to prohibit slavery
in the territories, and that therefore the Missouri Compromise is
unconstitutional and void.”

“It knocks the very breath out of the Republican party,” added Dr.
Ware. “Its existence is based on the effort to get Congress to forbid
slavery in the territories. So, now--where is it? Where are we?”

“We are done for, all of us,” said Kimball, in hopeless tones. “It
has knocked the footing from under the whole anti-slavery fight. It
binds us hand and foot, and it looks now as if we might as well stop
fighting.”

“Oh, no, Mr. Kimball!” Rhoda exclaimed. “Don’t say that! We must keep
on fighting as long as there’s one of us left!”

“She’s right, Kimball!” said Dr. Ware, his glance resting for a moment
upon his daughter’s face. She looked up in some confusion at having
broken in so abruptly, and met his eyes. Cool and clear, they seemed to
be looking into her very heart and down in their gray depths as they
turned away she felt rather than saw a gleam of gratification. The
hot blood flushed her face, and conscience, that had just now barely
stirred under its rose-leaf coverlet, roused and began to tell her that
she too must keep on fighting. Had her father guessed how near she had
been to deserting their cause, she wondered.

“Yet, she’s right,” Dr. Ware was repeating, with a thump of his fist on
the table. “We’ve got to find standing ground somewhere, and somehow
keep up the fight!”

“Their next step will be to reopen the slave trade--they’re demanding
that already,” Kimball went on. “And then we shall have once more all
the horrors of the slave ships sheltered under the law and people
taught to regard the traffic as right because it is legal.”

“Yes,” broke in Hardaker, “that’s the worst of these legalized
wrongs--the way they debauch the consciences of people. Look at the way
the northern Democrats are defending the right of property in slaves! A
few years ago they admitted slavery was wrong, but said it was here and
so we must make the best of it. Now they say it is all right and must
be protected and are tumbling over one another in their eagerness to
give the South everything she wants!”

“Well, this decision gives her everything she wants now, and opens the
door for her to take anything else she may want later.”

Kimball’s thin old hands were clenched together and his gray-bearded
face was sad with the hopelessness of age. For thirty years he had
been fighting with all his strength in the cause of the slave and he
had seen the anti-slavery sentiment grow from the conviction of a mere
handful of people to the determination of a mighty multitude. And now,
when at last it seemed as if they had almost reached the point where
at least the thing could be penned up in small space and its political
power taken from it, now had come this deadly blow, to nullify every
effort they could make.

Rhoda knew what long years of endeavor and sacrifice he had spent
in the anti-slavery cause and how ardent had been his hope that he
might live to see slavery ended and the whole country made free. She
watched him now, her cheeks flushing and her heart responding with full
sympathy to the grief and despair that filled his breast.

“If Congress,” he went on bitterly, “must recognize and defend the
master’s right to his slave wherever he takes him, then there can be no
hindrance to slavery in any part of this country, and Toombs and Davis
and all the rest of them can yet call the roll of their slaves in the
shadow of Bunker Hill monument, or any place else they wish. That, my
friends, is what this decision means!”

His voice trembled and Rhoda saw in his eyes the tears of an old
man whose dearest hope had come to naught. She was conscious of a
remorseful shame, as though she herself had been in some measure
responsible for his grief and despair. For had she not, was her swift,
self-accusing thought, been ready to compromise with this monster?

“No, no, Mr. Kimball, you mustn’t give up like that,” Hardaker was
exclaiming, “not while there’s one of us left to die fighting. And the
election last fall showed that there are more than a million of us, who
at least are ready to help. Rhoda’s got the right idea,” and he looked
at her with smiling approval.

Again she blushed and turned her eyes away, feeling acutely that she
did not deserve this praise and miserably wondering if they would
despise her were she to tell them that she had been willing, only an
hour before, to become a slaveholder’s wife.

“It seem to me,” Horace went on, “that we’ve got to go right on with
the popular propaganda against slavery. Why, this very decision of
Chief Justice Taney--it’s so atrocious and inhuman, it will be the
best campaign document we’ve ever had. We ought to circulate it by the
thousand! I’m not sure, friends, but it will be a good thing for us, in
the long run!”

Dr. Ware smiled slightly. He was accustomed to the enthusiasm with
which Hardaker, in a dozen sentences, could convince himself of the
truth of a proposition which, five minutes before, he would have
flouted. Nevertheless, this idea appealed to him.

“There’s a good deal in that, Horace,” he acquiesced, “and I think we’d
better take it up in the Rocky Mountain Club. But while we’re appealing
to the northern voters we mustn’t forget the South. We must extend and
increase our Underground work, because it is making slave property most
precarious all along the border states. The more slaves we can run off
the more uncertain the whole institution becomes, and the more angry we
make the South--and there’s nothing irritates them so much as this--the
sooner the crisis will come. War is the only possible solution of
this problem, friends. So I say, let’s bring on the crisis as soon as
possible, and fight it out!”

At that moment there was a knock at the office door and a request for
Dr. Ware’s services in another part of the town. The two visitors went
down the hill again and Rhoda, invited by the bright sunshine, strolled
down the veranda and across the yard to the grape arbor. She wanted to
be alone and think matters over, find where she stood and allay the
turmoil between her heart and her conscience.

As she walked down the path she saw that Jim was already making
preparations for the spring. This great bed was to be filled again with
white petunias--they had liked it so much last year. Again she seemed
to sense their odor, as on that June night, and to hear a voice vibrant
with tones of love. No, she could not think here,--her heart would
not let her. She turned away and hurried to her room. But there too
every inch of space was like a seductive voice calling to her with the
memories of the last few days. With a sudden grip upon herself--a quick
indrawing of breath and a pressure of teeth upon her lip, the outward
signs of inner process of taking herself in hand--she went deliberately
downstairs and out into the woodshed.

There she sat down upon a chunk of wood and faced the little room, with
its door heedlessly exposed and open, just as the marshal had left it.
The sight stung her, as she had known it would, with an accusation of
apostasy. But her spirit rose up quickly in self-defense.

“No, I didn’t desert our cause, even in thought,” she declared to
herself. “I’m not so bad as that, I hope. I only thought I could marry
Jeff and still help it along. But I’m afraid I couldn’t. Yes, I know
what mother said, and for a little while it did seem possible--just
because I wanted it so much, I suppose. But mother and I are so
different. I couldn’t be in the midst of things that I thought were
wrong without trying to make them right. Jeff would free his slaves if
I asked him to--I’m sure he would.”

She lingered over the thought a moment and a fond smile curved her
lips. “Yes, I’m sure he would, and I wouldn’t have to be a mistress
of slaves. But that isn’t the whole of it. He told me once, and it’s
been in all his letters, how wrapped up he is in the interests of the
South. And that means slavery. It’s his own section and what they think
are their rights, against all the rest of us and against freedom, and
eternal right, and the upward progress of the world. We’d still be
just as much divided and opposed to each other as ever.”

The memory returned to her of her father sitting at his desk, his face
drawn with sadness and sadness in his voice, as she had seen him on
that evening in the previous autumn when she had asked if her mother
could not be told what they were doing. She shivered a little.

“No, I shouldn’t like to think of my husband feeling like that, knowing
that he couldn’t tell me of his dearest hopes and plans and ambitions,
and feel sure of my sympathy. No, that wouldn’t be being married,
really married.”

A little longer she sat with her chin in her hand and stared at
the open door of the tiny room. Her face gradually took on a stern
expression that made it, notwithstanding its youthful smoothness,
curiously like her father’s.

“No,” she said aloud as she rose, “it can’t be. It’s just as impossible
still as it has been all the time--even if I did think for a little
while--”

Her face suddenly melted into tenderness and her voice sank to a
whisper. “It was a lovely dream while it lasted, and I’m glad--it
didn’t do anybody, not even me, any harm, and I’m glad--yes, I’m
glad--I had it!” The little lines at the corners of her mouth deepened,
her upper lip lifted, and her flashing smile lit up her countenance
and shone in her eyes. “It’s almost like looking back on having been
married for a little while!” she thought.




CHAPTER XVIII


“Rhoda,” called Mrs. Ware from the veranda steps, “will you come here,
please?”

Rhoda was standing between the rows of lilac that hedged the walk to
the front gate, inspecting the swelling buds and saying to herself
with pleasure that they looked as if they would bloom early that year.
The lilac was her best-loved flower and these two lines of bushes had
been planted because of her pleading, ten years before. Every season
she watched anxiously for the buds to show sign of returning life, and
Charlotte declared that after they began to swell she measured them
with a tape line every day to mark their growth. When they bloomed she
kept bowls of the flowers all over the house and was rarely without a
spray in her hair or her dress.

Mrs. Ware noted that her daughter’s step was not as brisk as usual and
saw that the glow was gone from her face, while into her eyes had come
a look of wistfulness. Believing she knew the cause, she longed to take
the girl in her arms and say, “Don’t worry, dear. He’ll be here soon,
I’m sure, for I wrote to him to come.” But she thought it best to keep
her own secrets and so what she said was:

“Mrs. Winston has just sent word that little Harriet is worse and she
wants your father to come at once. He’s not likely to be back here
before noon. So I want you to drive me over to their house and then
take the message to your father--I know where he is--so he can stop
there before he comes home. Get ready at once, honey. I’ve told Jim to
harness up, and I’ve only to put on my bonnet.”

Charlotte watched them as they drove down the hill, thinking
discontentedly, “Mother doesn’t care half as much about me as she does
about Rhoda. She’d just give her eyes to have Rhoda marry Jeff, and she
never shows the least interest that way in me. I don’t believe she’d
care if I was to be an old maid. An old maid! Oh, la! Well, I’m not
going to, and I’ll not marry anybody in Hillside, either.”

Looking rather pleased with herself at this ultimatum she sauntered
into the house and the notes of the “Battle of Prague” were soon
resounding through the silent rooms. But the clanging of the knocker at
the front door presently crashed them into discord. A moment later she
crossed the hall into the parlor, whither Lizzie had shown Jefferson
Delavan, thinking:

“What good luck there’s nobody at home but me! I wish Rhoda had refused
him again first. Well, I’ll tell him she’s going to.”

A twinkle of amusement came now and then into Delavan’s eyes as he
watched the airs and graces, the sidelong glances, and all the dainty
feminine tricks of movement and gesture and poise with which Charlotte
accompanied her conversation. It was not her physical habit ever to
remain quietly seated, or even in the same position for more than a
few minutes. Her restless spirits, her active body and her native
vivacity of manner combined to keep her in motion almost as incessant
and quite as unconscious as that of a bird flitting about in a tree.
Although she did not know it this habit was one of her most charming
characteristics. She had a certain dignity of carriage, like her
mother’s, which made itself manifest, notwithstanding her absurdly
large hoopskirt, and this, with her grace of action and of posture,
made her movements always pleasing to look at, while her bird-like
flights gave an elusiveness to her manner that enhanced her charm.

She saw the admiration in Delavan’s face as his eyes followed her, and
tilted her skirts in a way that would have scandalized her mother,
although she observed that her companion seemed not at all dismayed by
the glimpses of slender foot and ankle that she made possible. That
occasional twinkle of amusement she took as a tribute to her gaiety and
laughed and chattered all the more.

“Has your true heart been pining, Miss Charlotte?” he presently asked
in a quizzical tone, as he leaned upon the back of her chair, looking
down smilingly into her pretty, upturned face.

She flushed a little, but made wide eyes at him and said, “What do you
mean?”

“Oh, I was given to understand that some hearts in Hillside are in a
rather bad way. Is yours true and does it pine?”

She made a graceful little gesture and turned upon him with a merry
face and a look distinctly provocative: “Suppose it was, either or
both, what would it matter to you?”

She looked up at him, smiling, with saucy lips and inviting eyes, and
before she knew what he was doing he had slipped an arm around her
waist and lifted her to her feet. She struggled to free herself, but
he held her against his breast, pushed back her head and kissed her
squarely upon the lips, once, twice, and thrice. With her hands against
his chest she tried to push him away and struggled to turn her face
from his. But she was helpless in his grasp until he released her.

“You brute!” she exclaimed, dashing the angry tears from her eyes. “How
dare you!”

He leaned against the back of the chair, hand in pocket, and laughed
indulgently. “Didn’t you want me to? It looked that way.”

“Of course I didn’t,” she stormed. “You’re a horrid thing, and I hate
you!”

“Well, I’m glad to know you didn’t. It’s much better that you were only
pretending.”

“How do you think Rhoda will take it, when I tell her? And I shall!”

“Oh, tell her if you like. But how do _you_ think she will take your
trying to persuade a kiss from her lover?”

Her eyes blazed angrily and she stamped her foot, but said nothing.

“Never mind, little sister,” he went on, patting her shoulder. “I was
only giving you a lesson, and it’s much better to keep such things in
the family. Remember after this that if you ask a man so plainly to
kiss you he’s very likely to do it.”

“Don’t call me ‘sister,’ you horrid thing! I’m not!” she exclaimed,
turning away.

“I hope you will be some day.”

“I won’t! Rhoda isn’t going to marry you!”

“So she’s told me a number of times!” and he laughed again, an easy,
happy, self-satisfied laugh.

She faced about, curiosity in her heart. Had something happened without
her knowledge? Would he seem so sure, would he wear openly that look
of confident love if Rhoda had not accepted him? The imp of mischief
stirred once more in her breast. She moved a step nearer.

“Say, do you know, Jeff, that’s the first time a man ever kissed me!”

“You’ve had better luck than you deserve, little sister.”

“If you’re so much in love with Rhoda what did you want to do it for?”

“Why did you look as if you wanted me to if you didn’t?”

“I didn’t look that way!”

“Oh, didn’t you? Then my previous observations have been at fault.
Perhaps I thought I’d like to find out why you sent me that anonymous
letter. At first I thought you meant it as a hint for Rhoda’s sake. But
after you’d been five minutes in this room it seemed to me that you
were taking very queer means for advancing her interests. If you had
unfortunately fallen in love with me yourself it wouldn’t have been
quite so bad. But you haven’t, little sister, you haven’t. You’d have
wanted me to kiss you again if you had.”

“You’re a horrid brute, that’s what you are, and I hate you!”

“I’m sorry to hear it, for I’ve always liked you, and you’re Rhoda’s
sister. But I hope you’ll remember that treachery isn’t a nice thing,
in either love or war.”

She moved uncertainly toward the door and, glancing through the
window, saw her sister drive past the front gate. “There’s Rhoda!” she
exclaimed, casting back at him a fiery glance. “I shall tell her just
the sort of man you are!” But she did not forget to give her hoopskirt
an extra tilt as she dashed out. Delavan, noting it, smiled as he
followed her to the door and cast a glance after her figure, hurriedly
retreating up the stairs.

Rhoda did not know that Jeff was there until she came into the
hall through the office and saw him standing in the parlor door.
“Sweetheart!” he called in low tones, and moved toward her, with
outstretched hand. A glad light came into her face at sight of him, but
she stood still and did not speak, until he was at her side.

“Don’t, Jeff! When I have told you so many times it can’t be!” she
pleaded, and drew away from him as he would take her in his arms.

“I know, dearest! But it’s different now, when I know what you really
want!”

She turned so that he could not see her face and asked with a sort of
gasp, “What do you mean?”

If he could have seen her countenance as she stood with face averted,
finger on lip, listening breathlessly for his reply, nothing would have
prevented him from seizing her in his arms and doing as she had begged
in the letter she had not meant him to see. For it glowed with love and
trembled upon surrender and shone with gladness that he knew her inmost
heart.

“Ah, Rhoda Ware, I know your secret now!” He was bending near her, his
hands hovering over her, but still he would not touch her while she
seemed unwilling. “I know, now, how much you love me, and how ready at
last you are to give up to your heart. Come then, dear one, or I shall
surely do as you bade me in your letter!”

A sudden stiffening and shrinking in her attitude made him fall back
a step and look at her anxiously. Slowly, very slowly, she turned,
lifting her head, until she faced him. And slowly the love-light and
the trembling nearness to surrender faded out of her countenance and
left it drawn with the effort by which she had forced herself once more
to the point of denial, with lips compressed and gray eyes steely with
resolution.

“Jeff,” she began, and her voice was unsteady, “it’s not fair to either
of us that you saw what I wrote. I didn’t mean to put that into my
letter--I wrote it out only because my heart ached so and it seemed
some relief. But I thought I’d burned it. I’m sorry it got mixed in
with the other sheets. But it was a mistake, and you’ll forgive me,
won’t you, dear Jeff, and you won’t feel that it was a promise?”

Her voice fell away into pleading tones and she stood hesitating,
poised, as if wishing him to stand aside and let her pass. With
instinctive deference he stepped aside and she moved quickly to the
foot of the stairs. But he sprang after her and seized her hand,
exclaiming, as he drew her into the parlor, “No, Rhoda! I shall not let
you ruin both our lives and break both our hearts, after that glimpse
you gave me of yours!”

She steadied herself for the struggle she knew must come, and suddenly
felt her nerves grow firm and her brain clear, as they always did when
she faced great need. She was calmer than he and more mistress of
herself as she said:

“I can’t say anything different to what I’ve always said, and said in
that letter, that I feel to the bottom of my heart that slavery is such
a wrong, such a curse, such a horrible thing that I can’t marry you
because you believe in it and are a part of it.”

[Illustration: “‘Don’t, Jeff, please don’t!’ she pleaded.”]

He gazed at her silently a moment, and the love in his face, that had
but just now been more of the body than of the soul, was transfused
with admiration of her spirit. “And you can still say that to me,” he
marveled in hushed accents, “after your heart has ached as it must have
when you wrote those lines?”

She dropped her eyes lest he see the sudden start of tears. It was a
subtle undermining of her defenses, had he known it, thus to cease
demanding and reveal such understanding and sympathy. Of such sort was
her ideal love, and it hurt more than ever to put it from her. One hand
was pressed against her heart, as if she could thus lessen the physical
pain, and she said piteously, “It’s aching now, Jeff!”

He looked at her irresolutely. Her drooping figure, her averted face,
her trembling voice--they were all such a plea of weakness to strength,
of feminine trust to masculine power to help, that even if he had not
loved her the impulse to take her in his arms and comfort her would
have been well-nigh overpowering. But he knew not what unexpected
visage her spirit might next reveal and he had already learned that,
although the primitive woman in her might call loudly one moment, in
the next the civilized woman would thrust her into her cave and in
dignity and strength stand guard at the door. For a moment he wavered,
then with clenched hands turned on his heel and walked across the room,
exclaiming:

“And you won’t let me stop it, you won’t let me comfort you!” Then he
faced about and as his eyes fell again upon her, he cried, “By heaven,
I will!” And he sprang toward her.

But already she had gathered up her resolution once more and it was the
civilized woman, not to be won save with her own consent, who moved
aside and eluded the embrace with which he would have swept her to his
breast. He dropped on his knees at her feet and buried his face in her
dress. A moment she stood with both hands clenched against her heart.
Then she bent over him and laid them as softly upon his head as a
compassionate mother might have done.

“Don’t Jeff, please don’t!” she pleaded. “It’s so hard already--don’t
make it harder, for both of us. We’ll have to just recognize what is,
and accept it.”

He rose again, seizing one of her hands as it fell from his head. “But
what is, Rhoda, except that we love each other with such strength that
God who made us must have meant us to be husband and wife? What else is
there that matters, beside that?”

“I’ve told you so often, dear, what it is that matters!”

“What do you want me to do, dear heart? I’ll free my slaves, if you
wish, and pay them wages.”

Her face lighted and she smiled wistfully at him, but shook her head.
“It’s deeper than that, Jeff, deeper than just the ownership of a few
slaves. I knew you would do that, for my sake. I told myself so--” she
broke off, smiled fondly upon him, then laid her free hand upon the two
already clasped.

“Listen, Jeff, let me tell you--I didn’t intend to, but perhaps it’s
best. After I sent you that last letter, I had a sudden fear that I had
put in the sheet I didn’t mean you to see. It was only a second, and
then I felt sure I had burned it. But for a little while I--I almost
wished I had, and in my heart I said I would give up and that I would
write you to come. It seemed as if you would know anyway, and as if you
were coming, without my telling you. And for three or four days I sat
at my window and watched for you and dreamed about our love, and about
our life together at beautiful Fairmount--” she hesitated an instant
and blushed faintly, but the true woman in her sent her on--“with
our children growing up around us, and we so happy and growing old
together-- Oh, Jeff, it was such a beautiful dream!”

“Not half so beautiful or happy as the reality would be, sweetheart!
Oh, Rhoda, won’t you make it true!”

“We’d be happy for a while, dear, but we’d wake up, sooner or later,
just as I did, and then we’d find out that there was no true marriage
between us, and our happiness would end.”

Denial was in his face and voice as he quickly answered: “Never, Rhoda!
I can’t believe it! Why should we waken? Why did you?”

“It was the Dred Scott decision.”

He smiled incredulously. “I suppose I would have anyway, after a
little,” she went on, “if you hadn’t got here first--” and she smiled
up at him ingenuously.

“O, how I wish I had! If it hadn’t been for that storm--”

“It’s better to wake up too soon than too late,” she broke in. “As
soon as I knew about that decision and all that the chief justice
had said, and understood how delighted the South is over it, and how
it has saddened and discouraged all of us up here at the North who
hate slavery, then I saw once more that I couldn’t compromise with my
conscience, not the least little bit.”

“But, Rhoda, you won’t have to, if I free my slaves. And I will!”

“I’ve thought that all out, and it wouldn’t help us any--though I’d be
glad for the slaves. Don’t you see, Jeff, that if you should free them,
still believing in slavery as you do, and still being devoted to the
South and wanting with all your soul to further her interests, which
you think are bound up in slavery--don’t you see that after a while you
would begin to feel that for my sake you had done something wrong, had
been false to your own ideals? And I would know it and it would make me
unhappy. I don’t think, Jeff, that I’d want you to free your negroes,
except as you might be convinced that it’s wrong to keep them enslaved.”

She stopped and looked up at him with her flashing smile. “I’ll run
every one of them off to freedom that I can get a chance to, but--”

He smiled back at her indulgently, and then they both laughed a little,
glad of the relief from the high tension which had held them.

“Rhoda, you are such a dear girl!” he murmured fondly. Her hands were
imprisoned, one in each of his, but he did not attempt to lessen the
distance between them. The earthly side of their love was fading out of
their mutual consciousness, for the moment, as their thoughts mounted
to the things of the spirit.

“It’s such a wide gulf between us, although we are so near,” she went
on. “Your letters have shown me that. To the bottom of your heart you
believe that all that the South is struggling for is right and good and
is her just right and will be for the good of the world.”

He threw back his head and his eyes shone. “I do, Rhoda,” he exclaimed
with emphasis. “I love the South, and her ideals are mine and her
ambitions are mine! They are just and right and the more widely they
are spread the better it will be for civilization and the whole world!”

She nodded. “Yes, I understand how you feel, though I didn’t at first.
And I believe to the bottom of my heart that the enslavement of man by
man”--her face was glowing now with the inner fires of conviction and
her low voice thrilled with the intensity of her feeling--“is wrong and
degrades both of them and is the cause of no end of horrible things.
And I don’t believe that anything good can ever come out of it.”

“But you don’t know, Rhoda--you never have seen--” he began earnestly.

“Ah, but I have seen, Jeff,” she broke in sadly. “I’ve seen the poor
negroes that my father and I have helped on their way to Canada taking
such desperate risks and enduring such awful sufferings in the hope
of winning their freedom that I don’t need to see anything else.
Divided like that, dear, on a matter that goes so deep with both of
us, there could be no real understanding and sympathy between us, no
true marriage. I think your convictions and your ideals are wrong--they
are hateful to me--but I honor you for being true to them. I honor
you more and love you more than I would if you gave them up, while you
still believed in them, for love of me.”

“You are right, dear heart,” he said, the pain of baffled and hopeless
love sounding in his voice. “I could not be false to my convictions and
my principles, even for you, my sweet, any more than you could be false
to yours. You make me understand, as I haven’t before, what this means
to you.”

“No, Jeff, I can’t see that there’s any hope for us, for our happiness,
on this earth, as long as this thing lasts that lies between us.
Perhaps, in heaven--”

Their eyes met, and her voice trembled and ceased. They stood with
hands clasped, looking through open windows into each other’s souls,
gazing deep into the warm and lovely depths of love, which they were
putting behind them, and turning their vision upward along the heights
where material aims crumbled away and hope and aspiration became only
the essence of the soul’s ideals. And as they gazed it seemed to them
that somewhere up in that dim region of eternal truth their spirits met
and were joined.

A faint sigh fluttered from Rhoda’s lips. With a start Delavan dropped
her hands and sank upon the sofa beside them. His head bowed on his
breast and a deep, shuddering breath, that was almost a sob, shook his
body.

“I think I’ll go now,” said Rhoda tremulously.

“No, don’t go. I want you beside me a little while. Sit down here. No,
don’t be afraid--give me your hand.”

For a little space they sat in silence, like two children venturing
into some unknown region and gaining courage by clasp of hands. At last
he rose.

“I will leave you now, dear heart. But it’s not good-by, even yet. I
still believe that sometime I shall call you wife. I’m proud to have
won your love, Rhoda, prouder than of anything else I shall ever do.”

He pressed her hand to his lips, bowed ceremoniously, and a moment
later she was listening to the sound of his footsteps as he walked down
the path to the gate.




CHAPTER XIX


After the discovery of the hiding place in the woodshed, Dr. Ware
and his Underground co-workers thought it best for a little while to
receive no runaways in his house. For it was closely watched, not only
by the officers whose duty it was to enforce the Fugitive Slave law,
but also by the slave hunters who made it a business to trail and
capture northward-bound chattels for the sake of the rewards offered by
their owners. In order to divert suspicion Walter and Lewis Kimball and
several other young men who were in the habit of keeping a lookout for
the fugitives contrived to secrete them elsewhere until surveillance
upon the white house on the hilltop was relaxed.

In the meantime Dr. Ware made ready a new place of concealment. An end
of the cellar extending beneath the room occupied by the two black
servants was separated from the rest by a solid wall. A trap door was
cut in the floor and a flight of stairs set in. Carpet concealed the
door and over it was usually set a table, chairs, or other furniture.
The cellar room was dark and had little ventilation, but Dr. Ware and
Rhoda congratulated themselves that it would be perfectly safe.

“Why, father, it’s like a dungeon in a castle,” the girl exclaimed with
a laughing face as she came up after making it ready with pallets and
cots and a generous supply of old quilts and blankets. “While they are
shut up in there they can rest and sleep, and so can we, without the
least fear that they’ll be discovered!”

Dr. Ware cast an observant look at her alert and smiling countenance.
Not since the adventure with the marshal had she seemed so like her
usual self. Following those self-absorbed days, when she had seemed
to be going about in a happy dream, had come a period of depression.
His professional eye had noted that she did not eat as a healthy young
creature should and his fatherly solicitude had made him quickly
conscious of her lessened vivacity of spirit. The changes in her
demeanor cost him a good deal of anxious thought--much more, indeed,
than she supposed he ever bestowed upon her. He knew that Jefferson
Delavan had been there again, but Rhoda told him nothing of what
had passed between them. So he merely guessed that his daughter had
struggled once more with her heart and had paid dearly for the victory.

He watched her anxiously, but shrank from speaking to her about her
physical state because he felt sure of its emotional cause and could
foresee the trend the conversation would take. For the leading-strings
of habit were strong upon them both, and even stronger was the
constraint of self-consciousness in a middle-aged man who all his life
had cultivated the intellectual side of his nature at the expense of
the emotional. Only toward the wife who had woven so strong a mesh
about his heart in the days when the blood of young manhood was hot and
winey and, in different scope and color, toward the child who so much
resembled her, had he ever been able to express in words and actions
the inner warmth and tenderness of his heart.

Of Rhoda he made a companion much more than he did of either his wife
or Charlotte. When she settled down at home after the three years she
had spent, in her latter teens, at Dr. Scott’s Female Institute, he had
been much pleased to find that he could talk with her seriously upon
most subjects that interested him. And since then they had grown into a
deep and wide intellectual understanding and sympathy. But between them
there was no emotional expression of their mutual feeling.

During this last year he had watched with pride her rapid development
in character and intellect. Her Underground work had stimulated her
sympathies and trained her in self-reliance and her increased interest
in political affairs had broadened and developed her intellectually
until, from an attractive girl of rather more than average endowment
she had become a woman whose companionship her father enjoyed upon an
equal footing. Blind babies, if the windows of sense perception are not
opened into their minds, become imbecile. Perhaps--but everybody knows
that argument by analogy is the most deceptive of all the paths by
which human beings endeavor to find truth.

So, to go back to Rhoda and the new place of concealment in the cellar.
Dr. Ware was much gratified to see her more lively demeanor that
morning and began to hope that, with the renewal of their Underground
operations and the constant call they would make upon both heart and
head, she would soon forget the pain that had been benumbing her
energies. She told him she was going to a meeting of the sewing circle
that afternoon at which they were to consider the question of enlarging
its sphere and turning it into an anti-slavery society. He thought it a
good idea and encouraged her to do all she could toward that end.

She went early to Mrs. Hardaker’s house, where the meeting was to be
held, and proved to be the first arrival. Horace was there, not having
yet returned to his office after dinner, and as she entered he greeted
her with--

“Rhoda, here’s a grand thing! Just listen!”

She saw that he had the New York “Tribune” in his hands, and as he
began to read her attention was at once absorbed by the bitter and
mournful eloquence of Horace Greeley’s lament over the Dred Scott
decision--a bit of literature that ought to be among the classics of
American journalism and studied by every aspirant for its honors. But
it is buried too deep among the yellowing sheets of forgotten newspaper
files to be known, in these busy days of a later generation, to any
but an occasional investigator. It had its own brief day of vigorous
life, when it stirred profoundly the minds and hearts of tens upon
tens of thousands of earnest men and women. And then like a dead leaf
it fluttered down to earth, to become a part of that debris of the
centuries that makes a richer soil for the growth of human souls.

With quickening pulse Rhoda listened to the stately march of the
sentences, as Hardaker’s fluent, oratorical voice gave to each its full
significance. As he came to the closing lines his listener’s breath was
catching now and then and her eyes and cheeks were aflame:

“The star of freedom and the stripes of bondage are henceforth one.
American republicanism and American slavery are in the future to be
synonymous. This, then, is the final fruit. In this all the labors of
our statesmen, the blood of our heroes, the lifelong cares and toils of
our forefathers, the aspirations of our scholars, the prayers of good
men, have finally ended. America the slave breeder and slaveholder!”

As Hardaker looked up and saw her countenance aglow with the fires of
her soul it occurred to him that, after all, Rhoda Ware was beautiful.
Like the tuned strings of a musical instrument her emotional nature had
responded to the touch upon her convictions, and behind this mingled
glow of indignation and aspiring soul he felt all the forces of her
woman’s heart, her powers of loving, her wealth of compassion and
tenderness. As he left the house he muttered to himself:

“A girl like that--she ought to be a Joan of Arc!” For the first time
in his rather long and somewhat spasmodic suit for her heart hope of
final success almost fell away from him. If such a rare, fine creature
mated at all, he felt rather than put into definite thought, it surely
ought to be with some being of finer clay than the average man. And
then he jammed his hat down hard and said to himself, definitely and
savagely: “The idea of her marrying a damned slaveholder!” Horace
Hardaker was a church member in good standing, and it was only in the
intimacy of his soul and upon most infrequent occasions that he allowed
himself such lapses of speech. When he did it was a sure sign that his
indignation had a strong personal tang.

The band of women in Mrs. Hardaker’s parlor talked while they sewed,
discussing the proposition of turning themselves into a more ambitious
society. Some were averse, saying they already did as much as they
could and that, moreover, to venture outside the sphere of their homes
and attempt to do things that men could do better would not be a proper
and becoming course. Rhoda, stitching busily, now and then put in an
argument or answered an objection. Her ardor, pleasant demeanor, and
practical capacity had made her a favorite with all the members of the
society, old and young. Her unfortunate love affair, of which all of
them knew something, invested her with a romantic interest and set her
a little apart, because of her opportunity and her sacrifice.

Of a sudden Rhoda felt her heart swell with the desire for utterance.
She began speaking, at first with her needle still busy. But, after
the first two or three sentences, her work dropped from her hands
and she leaned forward, her face glowing, as she dwelt upon the
discouragement which had fallen upon all who hoped for either the
ending or the staying of the progress of slavery, and of the greater
need than ever before that every one who believed slavery to be an evil
should work against it with zeal. She spoke quietly and simply, with
the intense and moving earnestness of a strong personality in the grip
of a passionate conviction. One after another the women dropped their
needles and listened with rapt attention. For a few minutes she talked
and then she caught up the paper and read the article in the “Tribune.”
At its close the utter silence of the room was broken only by a
half-suppressed sob here and there. After a moment she said modestly:

“Well, friends, what are we going to do about this matter?”

A woman in the back of the room began clapping her hands softly, and
presently Rhoda was shrinking back, blushing and abashed, before the
storm of applause. Immediately and enthusiastically, and perhaps not in
strict accord with parliamentary rules, it was decided to change their
circle into a “Female Anti-Slavery Society,” to continue their present
work and to add to it whatever their hands might find to do, and to
make Rhoda Ware its president. Surprised and embarrassed, she tried to
decline the honor. But the women, crowding around her with praise and
caresses, would not let her refuse.

At home she said nothing of the affair to her mother or sister, to
neither of whom did she ever make mention of any of her anti-slavery
activities. All that portion of her life, which, indeed, had come to be
the major part, had as little community with them as if there had been
between them no bond of love and use and relationship. To her father
she related the bare facts of the occasion. But he soon heard from
Horace Hardaker, whose mother had told him all about it, a full and
enthusiastic account of what had taken place.

Rhoda grieved much over the growing alienation between herself and her
mother and sister. Charlotte held herself plainly aloof, and Rhoda was
puzzled by an evident resentment in her attitude. She did not know that
Charlotte held her responsible for her own failure to capture the fancy
of Jefferson Delavan.

“She’s no right to keep him dangling after her if she doesn’t intend to
marry him,” was the vexed young woman’s summing up of the situation,
having quite decided that if her sister would only move out of the way
she herself would soon be mistress of Fairmount.

As the spring and summer went by Mrs. Ware’s hope for a marriage
between Jeff and Rhoda dwindled into profound disappointment. A sadness
came into her face and voice that smote her daughter to the heart.
The sick-headaches, to which she had long been subject, became more
frequent, and other ailments began to manifest themselves. Fearing
remorsefully that her anti-slavery work and her refusal to marry
Delavan were at the bottom of her mother’s failing health, the girl
strove in all tender, care-taking ways of which she could think to make
amends for the double hurt and disappointment. In the conduct of the
house Mrs. Ware leaned upon her more than ever. But as the months wore
on Rhoda felt keenly that the old tenderness and intimacy between them
were disappearing.

The warm weather brought much increase of Underground traffic. At
that time and during the years immediately following the work of the
Road was at its height. For its operations there were friends, money,
workers in plenty, and slaves were gathered up even before they reached
the free-state border, and hurried on from hand to hand in such secrecy
and safety that they had hardly a care or a responsibility until they
found themselves secure on British soil.

To Rhoda her father gave over most of the care of the fugitives
upon their arrival and while they were secreted in the cellar. Not
infrequently also she drove them on to the next station, sometimes in
the night, sometimes by day, in a spring wagon with a false bottom
which he had bought for this purpose. Occasionally Chad Wallace
appeared in the neighborhood with his peddler’s wagon at their service,
if it did not already contain its complement of hidden chattels.
Now and then farmer Gilbertson, on a trip to town, hauled back some
“baggage” well concealed in his wagon bed, to be stowed away in his
hollow haystack until it could be sent on to the next station. A man
who had a market garden out on the same road and drove back and forth
a good deal with vegetables for the Hillside market and for steamboat
supplies, and another who traveled about ostensibly selling reeds often
carried black passengers.

With hands and head and heart all so full Rhoda found little time
to spend in thinking of her own unhappiness. Nevertheless, the day
never went by that had not a little space saved out from other things
and held apart for thought of her lover. Now and then a letter passed
between them. But from these missives was dropped all mention of both
slavery and love, although on both sides the correspondence breathed a
sense of mutual tenderness and understanding that amounted to a sort
of spiritual intimacy. To Rhoda these letters were the treasure of her
heart. They were read over and over again, held caressingly in her
hands during the brief minutes of each day when she gave herself up to
thought of him, and kept under her pillow or upon her breast while she
slept. Every night, when she knelt at her bedside, her petitions to the
Heavenly Father begged for His blessing upon her efforts in behalf of
the slaves, pleaded that He would soon put forth His hand and make an
end of slavery, and implored the safety and the happiness of her lover.

In the late summer there came a message from Fairmount. Emily Delavan,
Mrs. Ware’s namesake, was to be married in October and the Ware family
was bidden to the festivities. The news set Charlotte upon the borders
of ecstatic delight. The visit, which was to be prolonged through
several weeks, would not only be filled with no end of alluring
pleasures and amusements, but it should open, she decided at once,
the door of escape from her home into more congenial surroundings.
It would be just the sort of environment,--a gay crowd of people
with nothing to do but enjoy themselves--in which she knew she always
appeared to best advantage. Two or three uninterrupted weeks of it,
with Jefferson Delavan always there to feel the effects of her charms,
and she could be quite sure of the result. But--there was Rhoda.

“If she’s there,” Charlotte grumbled to herself, “she’ll just keep
on making Jeff think she’s going to marry him some day, and have him
dangling after her all the time.”

Why should Rhoda want to go at all, if she really meant to play fair
with Jeff? The girl soon came to the conclusion, with which she
promptly acquainted her sister, that the other ought not to attend the
wedding.

“It will be very unkind to me if you insist on going, Rhoda,” she
complained. “It will spoil all my pleasure.”

“Sister! Why do you say that?”

“Because you’ll keep Jeff hanging around you all the time, just as he
does when he’s here. Somehow you manage to make him think that you’re
going to marry him sometime when you know you don’t intend to at all.
It isn’t fair to me, Rhoda, you know it isn’t.”

Rhoda had already begun to plan ways and means by which her duties and
responsibilities could be cared for during her absence, for she wished
much to make the visit. Her youthful spirit, so much neglected and
denied of late, was asserting itself once more and eagerly anticipating
the new experience and the promised social gaieties. But above all she
wished to go in order that she might be with her lover in his own home,
and afterward be able to picture his daily life more vividly in her
thought.

“You’re not being fair to me now, Charlotte,” she replied. “I’ve told
Jeff over and over that I can’t marry him. And I’m sure I don’t want to
hinder him from marrying any one else, if he wants to.”

“Then be as good as your word, Rhoda, and stay away from where he is.
He’s attentive enough to me when you’re not around, and if you’ll just
give me a fair chance--you’ll see--I’ll come back engaged!”

Rhoda threw up her head and answered, with a calm intensity in her tone
that made Charlotte look at her curiously: “Very well. I’ll stay at
home. I’ve no claim on Jeff, and you can do whatever you like.”

Charlotte flew across the room, threw her arms around Rhoda’s neck,
kissed her and declared she was a “dear old thing.” And Rhoda, warming
in response and comforted a little for her own hurt, smiled with
pleasure at this outburst of affection, returned her caresses and
called her “silly little sister.”

“You can be an old maid if you want to and spend your life working for
niggers,” Charlotte exclaimed, dancing about the room, “but I mean
to have a good time and make the niggers work for me!” She stopped
suddenly and with head on one side regarded Rhoda anxiously. “Will you
promise,” she broke out, “that you won’t tell mother why you don’t go?”

“Of course I won’t tell her!”

“Nor anybody else?”

“No!”

“Good sister! Then I’ll love you more than ever!”

When Rhoda declared, and her mother could not induce her to change her
decision, that it would be impossible for her to go, the disappointment
was so keen that it sent Mrs. Ware to bed with one of her severest
headaches. Rhoda cared for her with all tenderness, and, in secret
bitterness and tears that her mother must now think more hardly of her
than she deserved, wished that Charlotte would offer to give back her
promise. But she would not ask it of her sister, and to that young
woman, in the height of girlish spirits, busy with the dressmaker and
her own plans, there never occurred the faintest idea of making the
offer.

Mrs. Ware knew, even before she tried, that she could not induce her
husband to accept the hospitality of a slave owner, and so, finally,
it was only herself and her younger daughter who made the journey. As
they were saying good-by Charlotte whispered to her sister:

“This time next year, Rhoda, I’ll be inviting you to Fairmount!”




CHAPTER XX


Letters from Mrs. Ware and Charlotte told of much gaiety and of days
that were an unceasing round of enjoyment. Charlotte wrote that it was
“heaven upon earth” and that never before had she “even imagined how
happy a girl could be.” But in her mother’s letters Rhoda detected a
note of melancholy. Although at one with the life around her in memory,
training, sympathy and belief, she yet seemed to feel herself an alien
while in the midst of it and to be saddened by her own lack of complete
accord.

“Poor mother!” thought Rhoda. “She loves father and me so much that she
can’t help feeling loyal to us with a part of her heart. Dear, dear
mother!”

Moreover, Mrs. Ware was not well, and declared she would be glad to
return home. She related briefly that Jeff and Emily had divided the
estate, two thirds of which, according to their father’s will, belonged
to the brother. Emily had chosen some land and a number of slaves
and, as her husband already has as many negroes as he needed, it was
their intention to realize upon these at once and put the money into
improvements upon his estate.

“They’ll be sold ‘down south,’ I suppose,” said Rhoda, as she read the
letter aloud to her father.

“Very likely. Those big cotton, cane and rice plantations are an
insatiable market for slaves. They can’t get enough labor. That is why
the South is so anxious to reopen the African slave trade. It’s an
open secret, which the North winks at, as it does at everything the
South chooses to do, that the traffic is already going on. Since the
Dred Scott decision there is nothing they stop at. It’s a pity Chad
Wallace or Alexander Wilson isn’t in the neighborhood of Fairmount just
now. If they were, Emily’s husband wouldn’t be able to make so many
improvements!”

A few days later Dr. Ware called Rhoda into his office, anxiety in his
demeanor. “I’ve just received this letter from Wilson,” he exclaimed,
“written in Louisville. See what he says:

“‘DEAR FRIEND WARE: Am sending you to-day by express one blackbird, a
fine specimen, securely boxed. I was fortunate enough to secure a live
one, as I knew you would find the specimen more interesting alive than
dead.’”

“Father!” cried Rhoda, her eyes wide and horrified. “He’s sent some
one in a box! All the way from Louisville! Oh, we must see about it at
once!”

“The letter was evidently written in great haste,” Dr. Ware continued,
“on a dirty scrap of paper and,--yes, it was mailed on the boat.”

“Then the box came on the steamboat with the letter!”

“Yes, and will be at the express office now. Jim must take the spring
wagon and go after it.”

Rhoda waited in extreme anxiety for Jim’s return, fearful lest the poor
creature should be dead in the box. Even Dr. Ware showed a lessening
of his usual calm. They said little to each other during the man’s
absence, but together made ready everything that might be necessary
if the “blackbird” should be unconscious. They knew of more than one
daring escape from slavery by similar methods. And they knew too of
the recent release from a southern penitentiary, after an eight years’
term, of a man who had been convicted of attempting to rescue a slave
by this same means.

The box, short and narrow and looking hardly large enough to contain a
human being, was hurried into Jim’s room and the cover quickly removed.
Within was the huddled figure of a woman, her knees drawn up to her
chin, and all her body held in the close confines as tightly as in a
vise. She did not move and when they spoke to her there was no answer.

“No, she’s not dead,” said Dr. Ware, his finger on her pulse. They
lifted her out and restorative measures soon brought her back to
consciousness. But she was ghastly pale and trembling from head to foot.

“You poor thing! You’re safe now,” Rhoda soothed, patting her arm, as
she began to sob hysterically. “We are your friends and we’ll take care
of you.”

She was young and comely, perhaps one-fourth colored, with neither
complexion nor features showing more than a faint trace of her negro
heritage. Presently they were able to give her food and water, and a
little later she told them her story. As she talked Rhoda sat beside
her, clasping her hand and now and then patting her arm in sympathy and
encouragement. Her speech was simple, but good, showing intelligence
and some training.

“How did Mr. Wilson happen to send you in a box?” asked Dr. Ware.

“It was the only way. They had to get rid of me quick. I’d been sold to
a trader from New Orleans and he’d brought me and a lot of others to
Louisville to take us on the steamboat. I knew he’d paid a big price
for me, and from that and the way he talked me over I knew what he’d
bought me for. I made up my mind I’d rather die, or do anything. A
chance happened to come, on the street in Louisville, as he was taking
us to the boat, and in a crowd I give him the slip.

“I didn’t know what I’d do or where I’d go, but I just hurried along
down another street, and then I saw the man who’d been at master’s
plantation last year and told us about going to Canada if we wanted to
try it.”

“Yes--Mr. Wilson,” Dr. Ware interrupted.

“I knew him right away, though he looked different, and I spoke to him
and told him what I wanted. He said to follow him and we walked fast
and turned up and down streets, and came to a free woman’s house. But
they’d followed us, and in two or three minutes they were at the door.
The woman took me into the back room and told me to jump into that
box. Then she put the cover down quick and went back and I heard the
men go all round the house looking for me and they swore at the woman
and told her they’d seen me come in and they’d watch the house and
keep on searching it till they got me. Then the man--Mr. Wilson, you
said?--spoke up right loud and said he couldn’t wait any longer and
would she have his clothes ready if he’d send for the box right away,
’cause he wanted to catch the boat for Cincinnati. I ’spected he meant
me, and he did. She put a pillow in the box and some biscuits and a
bottle of water, and cut a little hole in the side, so I could breathe.

“I thought I was gwine die in the box,” the woman went on, again
showing signs of hysteria, as memory of her experience returned. “It
was such a little box I had to be all crunched up and I got awful
pains, and sometimes it seemed as if I’d just have to scream right out.
And then I’d think what would happen if I did, and I’d be caught and
they’d flog me and send me--where they’d bought me for, and then I’d
bite hard on the pillow and keep still. And once the box was turned up
so I was on my head till I knew I was gwine die in another minute, but
they turned it down again and I didn’t.”

She stopped speaking, as long, nervous sobs shook her frame. The tears
were streaming down Rhoda’s face and her bosom was heaving as with
trembling hands she administered the draught her father had prepared.
Dr. Ware noted her agitation and admonished her gently to calm herself.
The old fear of displeasing him by showing too much emotion quickly
steadied her nerves. To distract her thoughts from the fugitive’s
harrowing experience he began to question the woman, as she grew quiet
once more, about her life in slavery.

“You must have had a hard master to be willing to take such chances to
gain your freedom.”

“It was the trader I run away from, ’cause I knew what he’d bought me
for. Master was a kind man.”

“But he sold you.”

“It wasn’t master that sold us. He never does. It was Miss Emily,
’cause she married.”

A chill struck to Rhoda’s heart. Was her fate to be forever linked
in this way with that of the slaves from Fairmount? She was glad her
father did not even look at her as he passed, with apparent unconcern,
to the logical next question:

“Who was your master?”

“Jefferson Delavan, of Fairmount, just beyond Lexington. He was a kind
man and never sold any of the slaves. His mother, old mistress, was
kind too, when she was alive, and she took pains with some of us. She
was teaching me to be her maid. But Miss Emily’s different. She’s sold
nearly all of us that fell to her share.”

Dr. Ware stole an anxious glance at Rhoda. She was sitting at the
bedside, with the woman’s hand clasped in hers, her eyes straight in
front, her lips pressed together and her face stern.

“It’s hardly fair to make the blame personal,” he ventured. She flashed
up at him indignant eyes and her voice was bitter with scorn as she
replied:

“But he allowed her to be sold, father, and for such a purpose!”

He hesitated, considering a temptation. In his daughter’s present mood
it would be easy to deepen this impulse of condemnation and so perhaps
undermine her love for Delavan. But the next instant he told himself
that it would not be fair. “The man has enough to answer for--let him
at least have justice,” was his thought.

Rhoda felt his calm eyes upon her, but she would not meet them. “You
must remember,” he was saying judicially, “that no man can be better
than the system of which he is a part. It is quite possible that
Delavan knew nothing of all this, except that his sister chose certain
slaves as her share. I don’t know very much about him, but I think he’s
decent enough to have protested if he had known of this woman’s fate.
I also think it’s most unlikely it would have done any good if he had.
And there it is, Rhoda! No matter how well-intentioned an individual
slaveholder may be, he is likely to be swept along any minute by his
system into its worst abominations. Our indictment must always be
against the system, not against individuals.”

When Rhoda knelt at her bedside that night the look of scorn had faded
from her countenance and in its place were tears. “Dear Father in
Heaven,” she prayed, “do not let Thy punishment fall upon him. He knows
not what he does. His eyes are so blinded that he cannot see how evil
these things are. Do not punish him, do not let Thy vengeance fall upon
him, until his eyes are opened and he sees that they are evil. And
grant, O God, I beg of Thee, grant me this, that I may make amends to
this poor creature for his wrong. If Thy vengeance is ripe and can be
stayed no longer, let it fall upon my head. Let me bear his punishment.
But grant me first that I may save her.”

The fugitive, whose name, Lear White, it was decided should be changed
to Mary Ellen Dunstable, had been so unnerved by her sufferings that
for several days she sorely needed Rhoda’s care and Dr. Ware’s medical
attention. Rhoda would not permit her to go into the cellar hiding
place, but made a bed for her in her own room and watched over her
with every solicitude. A dust of powder over her light-colored face
was enough to give her the appearance of a white girl of brunette
complexion. Only a close observer would be likely to note that the
whites of her eyes and the form of her nose gave a hint of negro origin.

“Father,” said Rhoda, when the girl had been two days in the house, “I
can’t bear to think of sending Mary Ellen on in the usual way. She took
such awful chances to escape from a horrible fate, and she came so near
to death in that box, that it seems to me almost as if God had put her
into my charge, and meant for me to make up to her for all that she has
suffered. I feel as if I ought not to let her out of my hands until she
is safe in Canada.”

“Well, what have you thought of doing? Have you a plan?”

“Yes. Mary Ellen looks so much like a white woman that I’m sure she
and I could travel together, as two girl friends, and go to Cleveland
by the canal. There I can put her on one of our friendly boats and
the captain will take charge of her till she is safe on the ferry at
Detroit.”

They talked the matter over at length, Rhoda dwelling upon the girl’s
nervous condition, which had so lessened her self-reliance and her
courage as to make doubtful the wisdom of sending her on alone by
the ordinary methods. But another reason of equal strength in her own
mind, although she did not mention it to her father, was her conviction
that here was an opportunity to make atonement for what she felt to be
her lover’s sin. Moreover, the girl clung to her with such implicit
confidence in her power to shield and save that Rhoda’s heart rose high
with a passion of resoluteness, like a mother’s for her threatened
offspring.

It was finally decided that her plan should be carried out. The Female
Anti-Slavery Society offered its little store of cash--pitifully small
since the money panic of two months previous--to help defray Mary
Ellen’s expenses. Several of the members donated material they had
bought for their own winter wardrobes and helped Rhoda make it up into
gowns for the fugitive.

On her way downtown one day Rhoda saw a new handbill on the trunk of
a tree at the crossing of the two main streets. It was of a sort that
had been familiar to her since her childhood. At one side was a crude
woodcut of a negro on the run, a bundle on the end of a stick across
his shoulder. She stopped to read it, wondering if it concerned any of
the blacks who had been sheltered under their roof. It offered three
hundred dollars reward, told of the running away of “my negro girl,
Lear White,” gave a detailed and accurate description of her, saying
she was “light-colored and good-looking,” and was signed, “William
H. Burns,” with his address in Louisville. Rhoda walked on, smiling,
thinking in what a little while that poster would be of no consequence
whatever to Lear White, for they were to start the next morning.

In the afternoon Marcia Kimball came, to help Rhoda with the final
preparations. They tried upon Mary Ellen the gown, in which they had
just set the last stitches, that she was to wear on the journey. Much
pleased with its effect, Marcia whitened her face with a fresh dusting
of powder, and she stood before them a handsome brunette with a pale
complexion, big, soft, black eyes and coal-black, waving hair. Marcia
clapped her hands, exclaiming:

“Splendid, Rhoda! Nobody would ever guess! Oh, you’ll get through all
right!”

Rhoda, standing beside the window, glanced out and her face grew grave.
“Come here a minute, Marcia,” she said. Some men were entering at the
side gate. Miss Kimball paled. “Marshal Hanscomb!” she whispered.

“Yes, but I don’t believe they suspect that she’s here. There are
three men in the cellar, that Mr. Gilbertson is going to stop for this
evening. We must put on a bold front. Don’t let Mary Ellen know--she’d
be scared to death, and they might guess. Come,” she exclaimed in a
louder voice, turning gaily from the window, “let’s go downstairs and
have some music. Marcia, you ought to hear Mary Ellen sing ‘Nellie
Gray’! Come down and you and she sing it together, and I’ll play!”

Laughing and talking, with every appearance of gaiety, though the
hearts of two of them were beating fast, the three went down to the
living-room and took their places at the piano. With ears strained to
catch the sounds from the other parts of the house, Rhoda struck the
opening notes and the two voices sang:

  “There’s a low green valley on the old Kentucky shore,
  Where I’ve whiled many happy hours away,
  A-sitting and a-singing by the little cottage door
  Where lived my darling Nellie Gray.”

Rhoda stopped for a moment and heard the tramp of the men as they came
up the stairs from the cellar. Then she laughed merrily.

“Why, Marcia, you’re singing all out of tune! I never heard you do that
before. Come, now, let’s all sing the chorus together!”

Mary Ellen’s voice rose, rich and melodious, above the other two as the
music made its mournful plaint through the simple lines:

  “Oh, my poor Nellie Gray,
  They have taken her away,
  And I’ll never see my darling any more!”

The men were going through the rooms upstairs and one of them said to
another, as he stopped to listen, “That girl can sing, can’t she?”

Rhoda heard them coming downstairs and knew that Marcia was looking at
her with eyes wide and face a little pale. Would they come in? Suddenly
she was aware that her nerves were steady and strong as steel and that
her heart was beating as calmly as ever. “Now for the next verse,
Marcia!” and her fingers moved across the keys. Then she heard the men
at the door.

“There’s some one in the hall. I must see what they want,” she said,
rising and casting an encouraging smile at Miss Kimball. Marcia gazed
at her wonderingly as she moved calmly across the room and then,
feeling the contagion of her courage, turned quickly to Mary Ellen, and
to draw her attention away from the door so that she would not face it,
began asking her what other songs she knew.

“Excuse me, Miss Ware, for disturbing you and your friends,” Marshal
Hanscomb was saying, “but my duties under the law make it necessary for
me to search your house.”

“Certainly, Mr. Hanscomb. Come in if you wish to. Miss Kimball is
here--I think you know her--and the other lady is my friend, Miss
Dunstable, from Cincinnati, who has been visiting me for the last week.”

The marshal stepped inside, his assistants close behind him. Rhoda
cast a single glance toward the piano and saw thankfully that Marcia
was still holding Mary Ellen’s attention. “If only she won’t look
around,” was her anxious thought. Then turning to the marshal she said
seriously, with a gentle smile:

“You see, there’s no one else visible in here, Mr. Hanscomb, but if you
want to look under the piano and up the chimney--” she stopped on a
rising inflection and looked at him gravely. His eyes flashed, but he
merely sent an inquiring glance around the room, saw that there were
no closets or recesses, and then moved toward the door, saying, “Thank
you, Miss Ware.”

Rhoda closed the door behind him and leaned against it while she drew
a long breath and pressed her lips together tightly for a moment. Then
she went back to the piano saying, “Now, Marcia, suppose we let Mary
Ellen sing that next verse all alone. I want you to hear her.”

The men on the veranda steps, taking their departure, paused and
listened to the closing lines as Mary Ellen, in a voice of mournful
sweetness, sang on alone:

  “They have taken her to Georgia,
  For to wear her life away,
  As she toils in the cotton and the cane.”

“That girl makes a right good imitation of the way a darkey’s voice
sounds,” said the one who had spoken before. “I reckon she’s practised
it.”




CHAPTER XXI


Rhoda’s heart was high with expectation of success when she and Mary
Ellen started upon the journey to Cleveland. The runaway, in her new
gown and a bonnet and veil, played her part perfectly, and Rhoda told
her father that he might expect her back in a few days with the news
that all had gone well. “And I,” she added to herself, “shall then be
able to feel that I have paid off Jeff’s debt of wrongdoing to this
poor girl.”

As they were going on board the steamboat Jim came hurrying down to the
landing from the post-office with the morning mail, which contained
a letter for Rhoda. She saw that it was from Charlotte, and put it
unopened into her pocket to read later. For, notwithstanding her inward
assurance that her adventure could not fail, she felt anxious about the
short time they would have to remain on the river boat. Slave traders
and their agents and slave catchers were constantly journeying up and
down the river, and if one of these who had appraised Mary Ellen in her
days of bondage should happen to see her he might recognize her as Lear
White. She kept her charge engaged in conversation, the better to carry
out the pretense that they were two ladies traveling together, and
warned her not to raise her veil.

The transfer to the canal boat safely made, Rhoda felt much less
anxious and relaxed a little of her care. They sat upon the deck,
and Mary Ellen lifted her veil now and then, the better to see the
succession of charming views through which they passed. The wooded
hills were ablaze with autumn foliage and these alternated with open
lands where fields of brown stubble, acres of ripened corn, pasturing
cattle and busy farm yards told of autumn’s rewards for the year’s
labor. Mary Ellen was much interested in all this and had many
questions to ask as to how the work was done and whether or not it
would be the same in Canada. Several hours passed in this way before
Rhoda bethought her again of the letter from Charlotte. Smiling at
thought of the enthusiastic account it would contain of the round of
pleasures since her last missive, she took it from her pocket and
drew a little apart, while Mary Ellen became engrossed in looking at
a town which they were approaching. A number of people were at the
landing and she gazed at them, the tree-shaded streets, the buildings
and the church spires with the self-forgetfulness of a child amid new
surroundings.

Instead of the long letter she expected Rhoda found in the envelope a
single sheet and dashed across the middle of it the one sentence, “I
told you I’d soon be engaged, and I am! Charlotte.”

The words danced and blurred before her eyes as she stared at them,
all her attention indrawn to the pain in her breast. This, then, was
all love meant to a man--the whim of a moment or a month, ready to be
captured by the first pretty girl who made the effort. Had it not been
the same with Horace Hardaker? Why should she have expected Jeff’s love
to be of any more substantial fiber? And, moreover, what right had she
to expect or wish him to be faithful to her? But her quivering heart
cried out that if he had loved as she did he would have been faithful,
even unto death. And down in the bottom of her soul she knew that her
pain was not all for his lost love, that some of it, much of it, was
for her ideal of his love and faith and chivalrous heart, stabbed to
death by this immediate surrender to Charlotte’s allurements.

“Miss Rhoda! Miss Rhoda! Miss Rhoda!”

The frightened cry, repeated over and over, seeming at first to come
out of some far-off space, pierced her indrawn consciousness. She
looked up in a dazed way, her thoughts stumbling back slowly to her
surroundings. Then she saw that Mary Ellen, between two men, was being
hustled off the boat.

She sprang after them and seized the arm of one of the men. “What are
you doing?” she demanded.

“You’ll soon find out what you’ve been doing!” the man replied.

“This is an outrage!” Rhoda exclaimed. “Let this woman go, or I
shall have you arrested! She is Miss Dunstable of Cincinnati, and is
traveling with me. Let her go, I say!”

The man laughed and pushed on. “No, she ain’t. She’s Lear White and
she’s a slave and belongs to William H. Burns. I’m his agent and I was
with him when he bought her and helped to take her and the rest of his
gang to Louisville, where she give him the slip. I come up through this
black abolition country to watch for her, and I knew her the minute I
set eyes on her, though you have got her fixed up so fine.”

With one sweep of his handkerchief across her cheek, he exposed a broad
stripe of browner skin. He laughed contemptuously, and a number of
others who had gathered round them on the landing laughed also. Rhoda
heard the epithet, “nigger-thief,” in derisive tones passed from one
to another. She knew well that if the crowd’s sympathies were with him
there was no telling what it might do. Gripping his arm with both hands
and bracing herself against his effort to move on, she faced about,
head high and eyes flashing, and cried:

“Is there no one here who will help me to save this poor girl?”

Then she was aware that from the back of the concourse some men were
pushing their way toward her. She struggled against the efforts of
Mary Ellen’s captors to go on and would not release her hold of the
one next her, thinking that here might be deliverance, or, at least,
help. As they came nearer she saw that one was in Quaker garb, and her
hopes rose. In the matter of a runaway slave there was no doubting on
which side would be the active sympathy and assistance of a Friend. In
response to his inquiry she told him her own and her father’s name.

“Yes, yes,” he said heartily, “I’ve heard of Dr. Ware.” He glanced at
Mary Ellen, dumb and patient between her captors, then back at Rhoda,
and understanding flashed between their eyes.

“Don’t be afraid,” he said. “Thee’ll soon find friends here, who’ll do
their best to bring things out all right for thee and for her too.”

They moved on, the mob around them rapidly increasing. By the looks
of the men and the remarks which reached her ears she knew that it
was, for the most part, pro-slavery in feeling. The Quaker was walking
beside her, but his companions had disappeared. Presently he whispered:

“The marshal will be here soon. Perhaps thee could slip away and hide.
There’ll be help if thee wants to try it.”

Rhoda shook her head and whispered back: “No, no. I mustn’t leave her.”

In a whisper so low it barely reached her ears she heard him say:
“Never mind her. She’ll be looked after.”

But before Rhoda could reply three men, pushing their way
authoritatively, were beside them, and a moment later she found
herself under arrest and being marched along between the marshal’s two
assistants.

Soon she saw that a change was taking place in the character of the
crowd. Its numbers were being rapidly augmented, but most of those
who were joining it now were silent, and Rhoda guessed by their looks
and by the glint of an eye here and there that they were moved by a
determined purpose. The marshal surveyed them anxiously, spoke to his
aids, and they, with Rhoda between them, held back, then edged their
way into a cross street and let the throng surge on past them. Then
they rushed her along until they came to a two-story brick building,
where they gave her into the charge of another official, who locked her
into an upstairs room.

Through the barred windows she could see the mob, now at a standstill
half a block down the street, eddying round the center where stood
Mary Ellen between her two captors, a drooping figure of despair and
resignation. On the outskirts and apparently merely looking on was
the Quaker, who had told her his name was Daniel Benedict. And still
farther away her eye caught sight of a familiar form, old and shabby,
topped by a bell-crowned hat, standing beside a dingy peddler’s wagon
and watching the proceedings with an interest which broke out now and
then in shrill calls and shuffling capers.

Rhoda leaned against the bars, her hands wrung together, and waited
breathlessly for what might happen next. The men were surging and
pushing this way and that, and she soon made out a resolute movement
on the part of those who were on the outside to force their way to the
center. Many of those who made up the nucleus had been moved apparently
by idle curiosity, and they were now falling back, out of the way of
the onward efforts of the others.

“There’s the marshal,” Rhoda exclaimed to herself, pressing her face
against the bars, “right in front of Mary Ellen! Oh, poor, poor girl!
Surely, God won’t let them take her back! Those men are pushing up
closer! What’s the marshal saying? Oh, he’s calling for a posse! There,
they’re fighting! Oh, see, they’ve got hold of him!”

In her excitement she was breaking into speech. “Oh, oh! They’ve
knocked down the trader!--and the other man--Mary Ellen--they’ve got
her! They’ve got her! And they’re shooting! Oh, again! Again!”

Hands clasped hard against her heart, she stood breathless, silent,
watching the struggle, while the sound of shots, the cries of the
mob, and the shouts of the officers broke the stillness of the room.
“There, they are getting her out! Oh, don’t hurt her! Now--oh, run,
Mary Ellen, run, run! Oh, they’re helping her--two men--and another
running ahead-- Oh, God, help her, help her to safety!”

She leaned against the side of the window, sight swimming and lips
trembling, as Mary Ellen and her body-guard of rescuers, dashing down
another street, passed from her view. Then she turned her attention
back to the throng of men who seemed now to be intricately struggling
with one another. But presently the mass began to resolve itself. A
number, which seemed to contain both parties, for some were evidently
trying to stop or hinder the others, rushed after the slave girl and
her protectors. Many others fell back and stood near to be on hand for
the next development. They had not long to wait, for the marshal and
his assistants, regaining their feet, speedily began arresting their
assailants. Rhoda presently saw them marching up to the jail door with
a dozen men under guard, of whom several were wounded.

A few minutes later she heard a tenor voice, surprisingly good though
somewhat cracked with age, singing loudly in the street, “In Dixie land
I’ll take my stand.” She smiled, for she knew the voice at once, and
hurried back to the window. Chad Wallace in his dingy peddler’s wagon
was passing the jail. His eyes were roving carelessly over the front
of the building and she felt sure he saw her, although he made no sign.
But he flourished his whip in a wide circle round his head and held it
poised for a moment above his shoulder, pointing back into the middle
of his wagon.

Later in the day Daniel Benedict came to see her and gave her
explanation of what had happened. His wrinkled, benignant face and
silver gray hair seemed to her distraught heart to carry assurance of
fatherly protection.

“Thy friend is safe now,” he told her, “and not much the worse for her
experience.”

“I saw from that window,” she exclaimed, “the way they got her out of
the crowd. It was wonderful--just pushing a way for her and handing her
on from one to another and protecting her with their bodies!”

“Yes,” assented the Quaker, calmly, “it was good work, and quickly
done--else, they would not have succeeded. I could take no part in it,
for, as thee doubtless knows, it is against my principles to offer
violent resistance to the law. But,” he hesitated a moment and Rhoda
saw a twinkle flicker across his kindly eyes, “I do not feel that it
is necessary to hinder those who think differently. There is a pretty
strong anti-slavery sentiment here, although there is plenty for the
other side too, and we determined some time ago that not another seeker
after freedom should ever be sent back to his chains from this place.
Those who had no scruples against violent resistance were to be free
to do whatever they might think best and, for the rest of us,”--and his
eyes twinkled again,--“there would not be lacking work for us, either.”

“But Mary Ellen? How did the trader get hold of her? Do you know how it
happened? I had been so watchful, and had let her raise her veil only
now and then, when it seemed safe. I had not left her side since we
started, until just before the awful thing happened. Then I heard her
call and they were dragging her off the boat. I was hardly three feet
away and had had my hand off her arm, oh, it seemed hardly a minute!
Have you talked with her? Has she told you?”

He nodded gravely and the suggestion of a smile appeared about his
lips. Rhoda guessed that Mary Ellen was hidden in his house. “Yes,
I have talked with the fugitive. She was leaning on the rail, so
interested in looking at the town and at the landing as the boat came
up that she forgot about her veil. Then, among the people on shore she
recognized the trader and was so frightened that she seemed to lose the
power of motion. He saw her the same instant, rushed upon the boat and
seized her.”

“Oh, the fault is all mine!” moaned Rhoda. “I should not have left
her, I should not have taken my eyes off her, for one single minute! I
was too proud, Mr. Benedict, and this is my punishment. For I thought
nobody but me could get her safely to Cleveland and I had been so
successful with others--and with her too--that I thought I couldn’t
fail!”

“Well, she is safe again. But thee is likely to suffer sadly for thy
one moment of forgetfulness.”

She told him Mary Ellen’s story, dwelling especially upon her
sufferings during her long hours in the box. When she ended he brought
his fist down on his knee and exclaimed solemnly:

“She has earned her freedom twenty times over and she shall have
it--fugitive slave law, constitution, marshals, or presidents
notwithstanding, even if--if--Daniel Benedict has to forget his
principles for once!”

The next day he came again to see her, bringing with him his wife, a
little woman in Quaker bonnet and gown, with a strong face and a sweet
smile. Mary Ellen, they told her, had been safely started on her way
again at midnight. Chaddle Wallace had taken her in his peddler’s
wagon. Their news well-nigh dissipated Rhoda’s anxiety. For, of all
the many fugitives he had hauled part or all the way to the northern
boundary she knew that not one had failed to reach Canada in safety.




CHAPTER XXII


In the depths of humiliation Rhoda mourned over the fiasco of her
attempt to guide Mary Ellen to freedom. But she soon found that the
fiasco itself was bearing a rich crop of results. She was indicted
for aiding and abetting the escape of a runaway slave and a dozen men
of the rescuing party for obstructing the United States marshal in
the performance of his duties and preventing him from rendering back
the fugitive. The anti-slavery side retorted by arresting Gordon, the
slave trader’s agent, and the slave catcher accompanying him, under the
state’s personal liberty law, for kidnaping, and several members of the
marshal’s posse, who had used fire-arms, for assault with intent to
kill.

As the news spread, meeting after meeting was held all through the
central and eastern part of the state and up into the Western Reserve,
denouncing the law, expressing sympathy with its victims and declaring
the righteousness of setting at naught its provisions. Through the
southern portion of the state and wherever there was sufficient
pro-slavery feeling to crystallize into such action, counter-meetings
were held, which reprobated the unfairness to the South, characterized
in contemptuous terms the actions and principles of believers in the
“higher law,” declared them to be traitors and called upon the Federal
Government to use stern measures in upholding the Fugitive Slave Act.

On the advice of Horace Hardaker, who was to conduct her case, and that
of the counsel for her fellow prisoners, both Rhoda and they refused
to enter recognizance that they would appear in court when wanted, and
therefore were compelled to remain in jail.

“It’s an unrighteous law in every respect,” said Hardaker, “and our
contention will be that it is unconstitutional and void. To consent to
return for trial under it would make tacit recognition of its validity.
And that we won’t do. Besides, staying in jail will make martyrdom out
of it, and the effect will be all the more potent.”

But Rhoda, although she saw that her failure, in the outcome, would
be of more consequence than success would have been, felt the pangs
of humbled pride. She talked the matter over with Rachel, Daniel
Benedict’s wife. For between her and the Quakeress a warm affection
had quickly developed. Rachel Benedict visited her as often as the
prison officials would allow, and Rhoda soon found that the little,
dove-gray figure, with the sweet, strong face and the silver hair, was
sure to bring assuaging of her heartaches and renewal of her spiritual
strength. Without making any mention of her personal affairs, Rhoda
yet found it possible to talk with her new friend with more intimacy
and with greater surety of understanding and response than she had ever
been able to do with her mother.

“I was so proud, so self-complacent,” she said, “that I thought I could
make amends to Mary Ellen for the wrongs that had been done to her.
And I showed myself unworthy even to try. I let her be taken, just by
being wrapped up for a few minutes in my own affairs, in something that
troubled me. Oh, it has been a bitter lesson!”

“Thee seems to me to be too much troubled by thy repentance. If thee
lets it engross thee it too will become a sin. And perhaps the sin for
which thee is repenting does not deserve so much repentance, after all.
If thee did this thing believing in thy inmost soul that it was right
and wishing in thy inmost soul to do good to others by means of it,
then don’t disturb thy heart, Rhoda Ware, with how it seems to have
come out. It hasn’t ended yet. And thee can be sure there is plenty of
time yet for more good to come out of it than thee ever dreamed of.”

“Yes, it didn’t make any difference to Mary Ellen,” Rhoda answered
thoughtfully, “for she reached Canada just as safely as if I’d taken
her all the way myself. But such an awful wrong had been done to
her,--it seemed more horrible than any other case I had known about,
and I wanted to suffer for it myself. I wanted to make atonement for
another person’s sin. And it has all ended in failure!”

“Well, isn’t thee suffering for it? Isn’t thee suffering a great deal
more than if thee had been successful? But don’t delude thyself,
Rhoda Ware, by thinking thee can do any good by suffering for another
person’s sins. We have got to sweat and suffer stripes ourselves for
the evil that is in us if we are to be purged of our sins!”

At her window that night, Rhoda pondered long upon these words. “I
suppose Mrs. Benedict is right,” she said to herself finally. “It was
only my pride--and my love, that made me think I could atone for even
this one bit of his wrongdoing. He will have to suffer for it, for all
of it, himself, before he can see that it is wrong. And we shall all
have to suffer, North and South alike, for this awful sin of slavery,
for the North is to blame almost as much as the South.

“‘Sweat and suffer stripes’! Bloody sweat, father thinks it will
be,--he is so sure that it will end in war. Will it come in our time?
Oh, surely, things cannot go on like this much longer! So much anger on
both sides, so much indignation in the North, so many threats in the
South--and all getting worse and worse every year--Oh, if war is to be
the end, we must be getting nearly there! War!”

She shivered and pressed her hands against her face. As the grisly
specter of blood and smoke passed vaguely before her mind’s eye her
anxious thoughts hovered with instant anxiety over the dear image of
him who she knew would be among the first to challenge the issue. Then
with a little cry she sprang to her feet.

“Shall I never remember I must not think of him like that!” she asked
herself with bitterness. “My sister’s husband! O, God, help me to
forget!” She paced about the room with frowning brows and lips pressed
hard together, telling herself, as she had already done a hundred
times, that she must learn to forget, as it had been so easy for him to
do. And there she touched upon her deepest wound, that his love had not
been as fine and as true as she had thought it.

“How could he love another--so different--and wish to marry her, after
all that has passed between us? I could not--how could he?” was the
question that would come back, again and again. She tried to subdue
it by telling herself that since he could, since his love and faith
were not equal to hers, he was not worthy of her love and deserved
only forgetfulness complete, eternal. But her heart cried out fiercely
against this edict of her brain and clung to its need of believing in
him.

“He is fine and noble in many, many ways,” at last she said to herself,
“in nearly all ways the finest and the noblest man I’ve ever known, and
if his love fell short of all I thought it was, I must try to forgive
him that, as I forgive him his blindness about the wickedness of
slavery, which kept us apart, and, I suppose--deep down in my heart--I
suppose--I’ll always love him. But I’ll try, oh, I’ll try from this
minute, always to think of him as Charlotte’s husband. He mustn’t be
Jeff to me any more--just Charlotte’s husband! Charlotte’s husband!”

During her days in jail she spent much time embroidering dainty things
for Charlotte’s trousseau, and into these she found herself able to
stitch, along with the tears that would fall now and then, prayers and
hopes for Charlotte’s happiness and earnest desires, since the marriage
must be, that she would make her husband happy. But on this latter
question she found herself haunted by a doubt that would yield to no
arguments based on the sequence of love and happiness.

Charlotte and Mrs. Ware returned home immediately after Rhoda’s arrest
and it was some time, after her sister’s first brief announcement
of her engagement, before she heard again from either of them. And
afterward their letters were filled mainly with accounts of their plans
and preparations for Charlotte’s trousseau and wedding. In her replies
she could not bring herself to write Jeff’s name and so referred to him
only as “Charlotte’s lover,” or “Charlotte’s intended.” She noticed too
that her mother spoke of him only in the same way while her sister
wrote of him as “he,” in capital letters.

“They are afraid of hurting my feelings by mentioning his name,” I
suppose, Rhoda said to herself. “I must get used to it, but--I’m glad
they don’t.”

Charlotte’s letters were brief and infrequent and each one contained,
in addition to talk about her bridal plans, advice in plenty on the
propriety of Rhoda’s giving up her “nigger thieving” and her black
abolition acquaintance, now that the family was identified with
southern interests.

“Dear little sister!” Rhoda would say to herself with an indulgent
smile as she read these admonitions. “She’s such a child, and she’s so
positive she knows all about it! I wonder if she’ll ever really grow
up!”

But her mother’s letters gave her much concern. Her arrest and
imprisonment had caused Mrs. Ware severe shock and deep grief and
her heart was wrung that the necessity was upon her to cause so much
suffering.

“I must do whatever I can,” she moaned. “It’s on my conscience and I
must, and I can’t be sorry I did this, dear, dear mother, even for your
sake. I couldn’t live if I didn’t do my best to fight this awful evil!”

Evidently, too, Mrs. Ware was not well. The physical ailments that had
interfered with her enjoyment of her visit to Fairmount had grown
worse since her return. Notwithstanding all this the mother heart of
her yearned over and wished to be with her first-born. But to this
desire Rhoda gave constant denial, lest her burden of grief and pain be
made harder to bear.

Dr. Ware came to see his daughter as often as his practice would
allow, but his visits were necessarily brief and infrequent. He spoke
occasionally of Charlotte’s engagement and Rhoda thought he seemed
pleased with it.

“It’s a very good thing, I guess,” he said one day, with a cheerfulness
that gave Rhoda a little twinge of unhappiness.

“But he always has loved Charlotte so much,” she thought, “and wanted
her to have everything she wanted that he’d be glad to have her happy
no matter if--”

“She’ll be in harmony with her surroundings and he seems to be very
much in love with her,” Dr. Ware went on. Rhoda turned quickly away
lest he see the little spasm of pain that she felt sure was showing
itself upon her countenance.

“Your mother, of course, is deeply pleased,” he continued. “I don’t
know but it is giving her almost as much pleasure as your marriage
would have done. It will be a good thing for Charlotte to be married
happily and settled down. She’ll come out all right. I never have had
any doubts about her, in the long run, because she’s so much like what
her mother was at her age.”

Horace Hardaker came often to consult with Rhoda in the preparation of
her case. He hoped to make a telling presentment and was enthusiastic
over the excitement that already had been aroused.

“Of course,” he said to her one day in the early winter, when the date
set for her trial was almost at hand, “the law and the facts are all
against us. The only thing we can do is to appeal to the sentiment
against the law. Whether we lose or win, the affair is making a big
breeze that’s going to be bigger yet!”

“You know, Horace,” she replied, “that I don’t care in the least what
they do with me,--except on mother’s account. What I want most is to
help all I can in the fight against slavery and if it will do more good
for me to stay in jail than to go home and work with the Underground
again, why then--” she looked straight at him and a smile flashed from
her lips up into her eyes--“in jail let me stay!”

He smiled back at her and his blue eyes lighted with admiration as
he laid one hand for a moment over hers. “Rhoda, I’ve told you this
before, but I must say it again, and I shall always say it--you’re the
grandest girl there is anywhere!”

After he was gone she sat with a tender smile on her lips. “Dear
Horace!” she was thinking. “Such a good friend as he is! Sound and true
to the bottom of his heart! Why didn’t I happen to fall in love with
him?... Well, it seems to be getting nearly time--for me to refuse him
again!”

It was within a day or two of the opening of her trial, which was to
be the first of the series, when Rhoda finally brought herself to the
point of writing to Jefferson Delavan. Many times she had told herself
that, since he was to marry her sister, she ought to let him know that
in her heart were only wishes for his happiness. But it had been a hard
thing to do and she had postponed it from week to week. At last, her
sense of duty would be put off no longer and she resolutely faced the
heartache that she knew the task would make all the more poignant.

“Dear Friend,” she wrote. “Charlotte has told me of the happiness
that came to her and to you during her visit to Fairmount. I am sure
you will believe me when I say it is my most earnest wish that that
happiness will never be any less than it is now and that it will grow
greater during the many long years of wedded life that I hope are
before you. In your and her feelings and convictions there is nothing
to divide you, nothing to prevent the complete union of hearts and
souls which is the only thing that can make marriage worth while. I
am sure, since you love her, that you will always be very tender to
Charlotte. To me she has always been just ‘little sister’ and it is
difficult for me to realize that she is really a woman and about to
become a wife. At home we have always spoiled her and that has made
her, sometimes, in a merry way, rather ruthless of other people’s
feelings. But I have no doubt your love will make you understand that
this is only on the surface and that her heart is true and loving. For
you both, dear friend, soon to be brother, my heart is full of every
good wish. Always your friend, Rhoda”--she paused here, on the point of
signing her name in the old way, but “Adeline” seemed sacred to those
other days and to the love that had been between them then, and she
could not write it here. So she added only “Ware” and quickly folded
and sealed the letter.

As she looked at the envelope it seemed as if it were the coffin of her
love, ready for burial, as if she had said a last good-by to all the
pleasure it had brought into her heart. Now only the pain was left. She
bowed her head upon her hands and some scalding drops trickled through
her fingers. Her jailer’s knock sounded at the door and she sprang to
her feet and dried her eyes. Hardly had she time to control her sobs
when it opened and Jefferson Delavan crossed the threshold.

His look was deeply earnest and intent upon her as he moved forward,
holding out both hands and saying, “Rhoda! I could stay away no longer!”

“Jeff!” she faltered, stepping back. “I--I--had just written to you!”

“Written to me! Rhoda! Did you ask me to come?”

There was no mistaking the look of glad surprise and love that suddenly
broke over his countenance. Rhoda gazed at him in perplexity and
instinctively pressed one hand against her heart, as if to keep down
the responsive love that was trying to leap upward, as she said to
herself, “Charlotte’s husband! Charlotte’s husband!”

Still moving backward, away from him, as he followed her across the
room exclaiming again, “Sweetheart, did you ask me to come?” her
bewildered, apprehensive thought sprang to the conclusion that she must
make him be true to Charlotte, that she must not let him betray the
“little sister.”

“Charlotte--” she ejaculated--“your engagement--I wrote to wish you
happiness!”

He stopped short and stared at her with puzzled eyes. “What under
heaven do you mean?”

“Why, your engagement to my sister! Aren’t you going to marry
Charlotte?”

“Assuredly, I’m not!” was his quick and emphatic answer.

“Have you--have you--broken it off, then--so soon?” She was moving her
trembling hands over each other, unable to keep them still, and holding
her face half averted, afraid to look at him save in brief glances,
lest her eyes might betray the love that was swelling in her heart.

“You are talking in puzzles, Rhoda! I’ve never had the faintest desire
to marry Charlotte, or anybody but you.”

Her face dropped lower and her bosom heaved. What could it all
mean? Had they been deceiving her? And why? “She said--that is--I
understood--” she stumbled. Then he broke in upon her embarrassed
bewilderment.

“She didn’t say she was going to marry me, did she? Lloyd Corey is the
happy man. It was love at first sight, of the most violent sort, with
him, and he would take nothing but an outright ‘yes’ for his answer,
and that inside of two weeks. It was a pretty little love comedy, and I
wished a hundred times that you were there to watch it with me.”

She moved unsteadily to a chair and sank down, her face in her hands.
It had been such tragedy to her! And now it was taking all her
self-control to hold herself firmly in hand under the reaction. At once
he was beside her, dropping upon one knee and trying to take her hands
from her face. “What is it, Rhoda? What is the matter? Look at me,
dearest!”

“Yes, Jeff--let me realize--wait--one moment!” He watched her
anxiously, her hands in his, as with a deep, long breath, a tension of
the muscles and a pressing together of her lips she regained control of
herself. She withdrew her hands and slowly lifted her face as he rose
to his feet.

“It’s nothing, Jeff--no, I don’t mean that--it is so much. But--I
thought--Charlotte led me to think that--she was going to marry
you--and now--to find that you’re not--that you still--” She stopped
and half turned away her face, trying to hide the confession she knew
was there of all it meant to find that his love was still her own.
But already he had seen enough to set his heart on fire and he sprang
toward her, as if to take her in his arms.

“And you cared so much? Rhoda, deny me no longer!”

She drew away from him and said humbly: “Can you forgive me, Jeff?
Indeed, I would not have thought it possible, but it seemed to have
happened. It was just one of Charlotte’s tricks.”

“Forgive you, dear heart? I do not think you could do anything that I
would not forgive!”

Her glance swept the room. Then she looked up at him with a smile and
said significantly, “Even this?”

“Even this, Rhoda, else I would not be here. I held out against the
pleading of my heart as long as I could. But I longed so much to see
you and wanted so much to help you, that I couldn’t stay away any
longer. I’ve come, dear, to beg you once more to be my wife. Let me
give you, at once, the protection of my name--”

She drew back and lifted her head proudly. “I have already the
protection of my father’s name and the approval of my conscience. I
should feel myself a coward, and a traitor to myself, if I tried to
crawl under any other now.”

“I understand what you mean--and I beg your pardon. But we both know
now, more surely than we knew before, how necessary we are to each
other, how deep and true and everlasting our love is. Don’t you
realize that neither of us can ever be happy until we have joined our
lives together? What are the days and the weeks for us now but just a
constant yearning for each other’s presence. Look forward, Rhoda, to
months and years of that, think of how much more life will mean for us
both, if only you will give up and listen to what your heart tells you.”

She had risen and was standing beside her chair, one hand on its back.
He came close to her and rested his hand near hers. She was conscious
too that his other arm was outstretched behind her, hovering close,
ready to sweep her into his embrace. The struggle in her heart, longing
to heed the call of his, quick with desire to make amends for the
injustice she had done him, tumultuous with rejoicing that his love
had been all she had thought it, was almost more than she could bear.
He was so near--she had only to lean toward him a little, and his arm
would be around her and her head upon his breast. Ah, the blessed
peace there would be in that haven of repose! Already she could feel
its stilling waters wrapping round her, numbing the power of resistance.

He leaned a little nearer and his voice was low and compellingly sweet,
“Rhoda! Come to my arms, where you belong! Do not deny our love any
longer!”

She saw his hand on the back of the chair moving instinctively toward
her own,--a sinewy, brown, masterful hand, which held her eyes as
it drew nearer, little by little, as if drawn by some irresistible
attraction. She knew that his eyes in that same way were fixed upon
her own, long, slender, nervous, the sort of hand that works out
the behests of a strenuous soul. And she knew, also, as she waited,
silent, trying to force herself to voice once more the dictates of her
conscience, she knew that, if his hand touched hers before she could
bring herself to speak, she could resist no longer. Still she stood,
speechless, her fascinated eyes upon his masterful hand, her body
thrilling with the surety that if she did not speak now, at once, in
another moment she would be in his arms, and the struggle over.

  “Oh, my poor Nellie Gray,
  They have taken her away,
  And I’ll never see my darling any more!”

The words of the negro song, in a negro woman’s voice, came floating
into the room, mingled with the sounds of broom and scrubbing brush.
They brought to Rhoda instant memory of Mary Ellen’s melodious tones,
singing in happy unconsciousness of peril, and of her own strained
and fearful attention as she listened to the footsteps steps of the
marshal’s posse. And then like a flash passed before her mind’s eye
the ashen face and shaking figure of Mary Ellen, as her father and Jim
lifted her from the box that had almost been her deathbed.

The numbing waters fell away, she raised her hand and pressed it
against her heart with the impulsive, unconscious gesture he knew so
well, and moved apart.

“Jeff, it’s no use talking any more about this,” she said in tremulous
accents. “The last time we said all that is to be said.”

“Don’t say that! It makes everything so bare and hopeless! It makes me
fear that you have killed your love. Rhoda, you do love me, yet?”

She turned slowly toward him and lifted her downcast face, alight with
all the glow that was in her heart. “Jeff,” and the word as it came
from her tenderly smiling lips was a caress, “Jeff, I love you so
much that my heart has made me forgive you even that you allowed Mary
Ellen--Lear White--to be sold.”

“My sweet! And I love you so much that my heart has made me forgive
even your stealing her away!”

For a moment it seemed to them that gray eyes and brown melted into
each other. And then the comedy of their cross-conscienced hearts
struck her sense of humor, the corners of her mouth trembled and
deepened and a smile flashed over her face and sparkled in her eyes.
At that they both laughed, softly, in the tenderness of perfect
understanding. Then she saw the old baffled, determined look overspread
his face as turning sharply he strode across the room and back.

“My God, Rhoda! Why have our hearts snared us into this misery? Why
don’t you loathe me as you do all that I believe in and stand for?
Why can’t I condemn and scorn you as I do all the rest of your tribe?
Why must I, when I detest and am injured by what is dearest to you,
still see in you my ideal of all that is lovable and womanly? My love,
my love, why can’t I hate you instead of loving you so that you are
the only woman in all the world I want for my wife? Must our love be
forever a curse instead of a blessing?”

He flung himself into a chair beside the table, every muscle of his
body expressive of anger and rebellion at the mysterious forces of
human life that had played this scurvy trick upon them, pitted against
each other loving heart and steadfast conscience and left them, like
two cocks in a pit, to fight it out in a struggle to the death.

Did they laugh at him and at her, those Caliban spirits of the
universe, that with grim and cruel humor are forever setting human
purpose awry and sending it, lop-sided and ludicrous, far aside its
mark? Did they laugh and cheer and find pleasure in that struggle,
the sure result of the innate upward-strivingness of the human soul,
like human beings around a cock-pit betting upon which instinct, which
spirit, which physique, shall prove the stronger? Or, perhaps, was
Caliban pushed aside by some Angel of the Sword, infinitely just and
infinitely merciful, that with stern lips whispered to pitying eyes,
“No, let them struggle, for only by struggling, even to the uttermost,
can their souls grow!”

Softly Rhoda came near, hesitatingly put forth one hand and let it
rest for an instant upon his arm. At her touch he straightened up and
unconsciously one hand sought the place upon his arm where hers had
lain. “I don’t believe, dear, it will be forever. I don’t believe it
will be very much longer.”

“What do you mean, Rhoda?” he cried, springing up. “Do you really think
there is hope for us?”

“Yes, Jeff, I do. But I don’t suppose you’ll see it as I do. It’s only
that I think,” she was speaking timidly, and yet with a grave eagerness
of voice and manner, “and so do a good many of us, that slavery can’t
last much longer. We feel sure that its end is bound to come, in one
way or another, and that before long. And when slavery is swept away,
Jeff, and the whole country is clean of it, then there will be no gulf
between us!”

Her serious eyes were luminous as they met his unbelieving ones and in
her face was the subdued glow of one who looks afar off upon a land of
promise and knows that toward it his feet are set. Love and disbelief
were mingled in the somber countenance he bent upon her.

“No, Rhoda, I do not agree with you. And much as I love you, sweet, I
would not, if I could, purchase our happiness at such a cost. I would
not, if I could, be such a traitor to the South. But I shall always
love you, dear heart, and I shall always hope that you will yet be
mine.” He held her hand tenderly for a moment in both of his, pressed
it to his lips, bowed gravely, and left the room.




CHAPTER XXIII


“It’s going to be a good speech, Horace, and it will surely attract
attention,” said Rhoda Ware to her counsel on the day before the
opening of her trial.

Hardaker had just gone over with her an outline of the address he would
make in summing up her case. It was intended for the people outside
the court room, near and far, who would talk about it and read it in
the newspapers, quite as much as for the ears of the jurors. So high
and strong had risen the feeling on the slavery question that in some
parts of Ohio, as well as elsewhere, the lawyer who devoted energy and
ability to the defense of captured fugitives and their helpers could
be sure of early and ample political reward. Hardaker was ambitious.
He meant, as soon as he could reach an opening door, to enter upon a
public career and he had mapped out for himself election to Congress,
and after that a steady ascent to high places in national affairs--such
a career as, half a century ago, engaged the talents and aspirations
of ten times as many eager and capable young men as now think it worth
consideration. The fact is an ugly one and not creditable to the
quality of our national growth.

But for Horace Hardaker in this present case the spurrings of ambition
were only an added incentive. His conviction was profound that slavery
was an evil and the Fugitive Slave Act a monstrous law and his desire
to oppose either or both or anything that tended to strengthen the
institution of slavery amounted to a passion. And, in addition to these
motives, his intimate friendship with Dr. Ware and his love for Rhoda
incited him to exert himself to the utmost in her defense.

“I hope it will, Rhoda,” he replied, “but I’m doubtful if it will do
you any good. Your violation of the law was open and flagrant and we
don’t want to deny it or attempt to mitigate it in the least.”

“Indeed we don’t.”

“The decision in the case, then, will depend entirely on the political
sympathies of the jury, and the other side is not likely to allow any
man on it who has anti-slavery convictions. It would be a victory worth
while, Rhoda, if I could get you off! Not only for you, which would
gratify me enough, but for the anti-slavery cause! To have conviction
refused in a case as bare-faced as this would be a big blow toward
making the Fugitive Slave law a dead letter!”

“If I could think,” said Rhoda earnestly, “that any act of mine would
help to bring that about, I’d be willing to undergo this all over
again.”

He looked at her admiringly and drew his chair nearer, as he said:
“Well, you can rest assured that your attempt to help Mary Ellen is
having important results. And the waves are spreading out and getting
bigger, Rhoda!” Another hitch brought his chair still closer.

“I’m glad of that, and I want you to remember, Horace, when you are
making your speech, that you are not to consider me or my sentence
at all. Say the thing that will help toward what we all want. Don’t
think about me--just think about Mary Ellen and what she was willing
to undergo, and all the rest of those poor black creatures that are
longing so for their freedom.”

His chair was beside hers now and he was seizing her hand. “Rhoda! Not
think about you! How can I help it? Don’t you know I’m always thinking
about you and always hoping that some day you’ll think better about
what I’ve been hoping for so long? Isn’t there any chance, any prospect
of a chance, for me yet?”

She laid her free hand upon his two that were clasping hers. “I’m
sorry, Horace! You know how much I like you, how much I prize your
friendship--but you are like a dear brother to me, Horace, and I can’t
think of you any other way!”

“But isn’t it possible that sometime--don’t you think, Rhoda, that
after a while you’ll learn to like me the other way too? You know what
I am, you know how much I love you--won’t my heart’s love draw yours,
after a while?”

She shook her head and drew her hands away. “No, Horace, there isn’t
any hope, not the least in the world. And I wish, dear Horace, I wish
you would put it quite out of your mind. Don’t waste any more time
thinking about me. There is many a nice girl who would make you a good
wife, and I do wish, Horace, for your own sake, you would fall in love
with one and marry her.”

He looked at her searchingly. “When a girl talks that way she really
means it.”

“You know I mean it, Horace.”

“I mean, Rhoda, that she knows her own heart, clear through, and feels
sure about it.”

“That’s the way I know mine,” she answered softly.

He seized her hand again as he exclaimed, “Does that mean, Rhoda, that
there is some one else and that your heart is full already?”

“Yes, Horace. It means that I love some one else so deeply that I can
never have a love thought for any other man. I love him with all my
heart, although I don’t suppose I shall ever marry him. But I shall
never marry any one else, and I could no more think of you or any one
else with the kind of love you want than I could if I were his wife.”

There was something like reverence in the gesture with which he put
down her hand. “Then that is the end of it for me, Rhoda. Would
you mind telling me, is it that”--he paused an instant, supplying
mentally the adjective with which he usually thought of Rhoda’s
lover--“slaveholder, Delavan, from Kentucky?”

“Yes, Horace.”

He rose and took up his hat. “If that’s the way it is with you,” he
began, then stopped, looking fixedly. “Poor girl!” he went on, resting
his hand lightly for an instant upon her head. “You ought to have had a
happier fate!”

“It’s as good as I deserve, Horace,” she replied cheerfully. Then her
face lighted with the glow that had been in her heart since Delavan’s
visit, and she went on: “And it might have been so much worse!”

That same glow, as of profound inward happiness, was upon her
countenance the next day as she sat in the court room. On one side of
her was her father and on the other sat Rachel Benedict, with wrinkled
hands primly folded in the lap of her plain gray gown, her kindly,
bright old eyes and sweet smile bent now and then upon her young
friend as she whispered some encouraging word. Behind her were Mrs.
Hardaker and Marcia Kimball and other friends from the Hillside Female
Anti-Slavery Society.

In the back of the room, throughout the trial, sat Jefferson Delavan.
He was always in his place in the same seat, when she entered, and
their eyes would meet once and a faint smile play around her lips for
an instant. Then she would not look again in his direction, but her
face kept always its glow of inward happiness.

Horace Hardaker sat with his gaze moodily fixed upon Delavan’s dark
head. Jeff’s eyes were upon Rhoda’s face and Hardaker felt resentfully
that within their depths must lie some hint of the lover’s yearning. It
was almost time for him to begin his address. But his thoughts were not
upon what he was about to say nor upon how he could most move the jury.
Instead they were busy, with indignant wonder, upon how “that damned
slaveholder” had contrived to win the rich and undying love of such a
girl as Rhoda Ware.

For the way of a man with a maid is always a sealed book to other men.
A woman can guess, or she knows instinctively, how and why another
woman has won a man’s love. But the side of a man’s nature with which
he does his wooing is so different from any manifestation of himself
that he makes among his fellows that to them it is an unknown land.
Therefore they are inclined to be skeptical as to its attractiveness.

But Hardaker was much more than skeptical. He was irritated, and even
angry, that “such a man as that” should have dared to think himself
worthy of Rhoda’s love. And when he presently rose to address the jury
the rankling in his heart lent sharper vigor to every thrust he made
against the slave power and put into his tones a savage indignation
as, with eyes fixed upon Delavan’s face, he thundered his indictments.

An audience of character and intelligence crowded the court room to the
doors, while outside, in the hall and around the windows people stood
on benches, listening intently, for hours at a time. From all over the
county, from surrounding counties, and from as far away as Cleveland,
men of substance and of prominence had left their homes and business
and journeyed hither to listen to the proceedings and to testify by
their presence their sympathy with the defense.

But the pro-slavery side also had its representatives, although in
the minority, who were of equal consequence and standing. It was such
an audience as would gratify any attorney, wishing to influence the
community as well as the jury.

As he rose for his address Hardaker presented a manly, attractive
figure and a vigorous, almost a magnetic, personality. Sweeping the
court room with his eyes, he waited for a moment and then began with a
couplet from a popular anti-slavery song, a song that had roused the
echoes in thousands of enthusiastic gatherings, all over the North. No
one within the reach of his voice needed any explanation of its meaning:

  “’Tis the law of God in the human soul,
  ’Tis the law in the Word Divine.”

He quoted the injunction of the Mosaic law against the returning of an
escaped servant and the commands of the New Testament for the succor
of the oppressed, and in vivid language set them forth as the law of
the Divine Word, the command of God, and therefore infinitely more
binding upon men and women who believed in God and accepted the Bible
as his Word than any law made by man in defiance of the Almighty’s
command. In a voice that gave full value to its pathetic appeal he told
the story of Mary Ellen’s heroic endeavor to escape from bondage and
a fate “like unto the fires of hell.” Then he called upon the fathers
and mothers of all young girls to tell him if the command of Christ,
“Do unto others as you would that others do unto you,” had lost all
its meaning, if humanity, Christianity, fatherhood--even ordinary
manhood--no longer felt its force. Following the precedent set by a
number of lawyers of wide reputation he analyzed the relation of the
Fugitive Slave Act to the Constitution and concluded that it violated
the rights guaranteed by the basic law of the country, and therefore,
since it was unconstitutional, to disregard its provisions was not
unlawful and his client had committed no crime.

“This law was passed at the behest of the slave power,” he declared.
“It was conceived in iniquity, the iniquity of the South’s
determination to put upon slavery the seal of national approval; it was
begotten in corruption, the corruption of compromise and bargain; and
it was born in the dastardly willingness of misrepresentatives of the
people to truckle to Southern arrogance and betray the convictions and
the conscience of the North.

“Shall we then, free men and women of Ohio, betrayed as we have been
and misrepresented as we are by this so-called law, be expected to
cast aside the commands of Christianity and the obligations of common
brotherhood, transform ourselves into bloodhounds to chase the panting
fugitive and send him back to his chains and, as in this case, to
such a hell of lust and vice as all decent manhood and womanhood must
shudder at? In the name of all that humanity holds sacred, I answer,
no! A thousand times, no!

“The learned counsel for the prosecution has seen fit to sneer at our
belief in the higher law,” Hardaker went on, with body erect and hand
upraised, his full, melodious, resonant voice filling the court room
and the corridors and carrying his words even into the street. “I
answer that that law has my entire allegiance and that I stand here to
defend and uphold it and to demand the rights of those who feel bound,
as I do, by its commands. I feel assured, and you well know, gentlemen
of the jury, that I voice the sentiments of thousands upon thousands
of Christ-loving and God-fearing men and women when I say that if any
fleeing bondman comes to me in need of help, protection, and means of
flight, so help me the living God in my hour of greatest need, he
shall have them all, even to the last drop of my life’s blood!”

Like the sudden upburst of a volcano, the court room broke into
resounding applause. Men sprang to their feet, swung their hats and
cheered. Women stood upon benches, waved handkerchiefs and clapped
their hands. The rapping of the judge’s gavel and the cries of the
officers for “order in the court” were drowned in the uproar and hardly
reached even their own ears. Then the sharp insistence of hisses began
to be heard. Jefferson Delavan, who had been listening with hands
clenched, frowning brows and angry eyes, added his voice to the sounds
of disapproval. For a few minutes the tumult continued, and then, at
the judge’s order, the court officers began forcing the people out.

They poured into the street and organized a mass-meeting in the square
in front of the court house. Numbers of men came running from all
directions and while the meeting was in progress word filtered out that
the jury had found the prisoner guilty and the judge’s sentence had
imposed a fine of one thousand dollars and costs and imprisonment for
thirty days.

Resolutions were at once passed denouncing the judge and deciding,
“since the courts no longer dispensed justice,” to proceed to the jail,
liberate the other prisoners and protect them from the operations of
“an outrageously unjust and tyrannous enactment.”

Delavan, looking on at the outskirts of the gathering, heard the
resolutions. He knew that Rhoda would soon be conducted back to her
quarters in the jail and he ran thither, hoping to arrive before the
crowd of rescuers. In custody of the marshal she had just reached the
jail entrance.

“Rhoda!” he exclaimed. “You are in danger here! A mob is coming to
break in the doors. Marshal, bring her with me, so we can find a place
of safety for her.”

She drew herself up and looked at him with the same pale face and
brilliant eyes with which in the woods, so long ago, she had opposed
his quest for his fugitive slave. Scarcely she seemed the same being
who, only a few days before, had almost trembled into his embrace.

“No,” she said slowly, “these are my people and with them is where I
belong. This is where your law has sent me and while I am in its power
I want no place of safety. Marshal, take me in!”

The marshal was doubtful, asked Delavan what he meant and what he
purposed to do, and while he hesitated the mob came rushing up the
street and his only course was to hurry inside with her and bar the
door.

The mass of men surged against the jail entrance and with pieces of
timber and bars of iron soon forced their way in. Then they trooped
through the building, sweeping along all the prisoners who were
awaiting trial under the Fugitive Slave law. They urged Rhoda to walk
out into freedom and defiance of her sentence. But she smilingly shook
her head and told them:

“No, thank you. It’s better to serve out my sentence, and then I’ll be
free to defy the law again in my own way.”

Exultantly the throng poured out into the street again with the
prisoners, and faced two companies of militia, ready to fire. Even the
hottest heads among them paused at this and after some parleying they
agreed to disperse and allow the men to be taken back to confinement.

Among those awaiting trial for aiding in Mary Ellen’s rescue and escape
were the pastor of the leading Presbyterian church in the town, the
superintendent of a Methodist Sunday School, a professor from Oberlin
College who had happened to be in the place on that day, a merchant,
two lawyers and a physician, together with some clerks, laboring men,
a farmer and several free negroes. The day following the conclusion of
Rhoda’s trial was Sunday, and the Presbyterian minister preached from
the jail yard to a large concourse of people who stood for two hours
in a biting wind, for it was now well on in the winter, listening with
the closest attention. The sermon, which was mainly an anti-slavery
address, added fuel to the already flaming excitement.

Meetings were held and bands of men began to organize and arm
themselves. Militia guarded the jail night and day. The pro-slavery
sympathizers, though in the minority in this region, yet made up a
considerable share of the populace, and, angered and uneasy, they also
began to prepare for whatever might happen. To hints that the Fugitive
Slave law prisoners might yet be delivered from jail they retaliated
with threats that those of their own party who were under durance for
infraction of state laws should no longer suffer imprisonment.

So acute did the situation become that Governor Chase hurried to
Washington to consult with President Buchanan, assuring him that while
he intended to support the federal government, as long as its authority
was exercised legitimately, nevertheless he felt it his duty to protect
the state officials and the state courts and that this should be done,
though it took every man in the state to do it.

Finally, a compromise was arranged by which the federal government
dropped the remaining prosecutions for the escape of Mary Ellen and
released the prisoners, while the state authorities dismissed the suits
against the slave trader’s agent and his companion and the members of
the marshal’s posse.

The episode was amicably settled, but the flames of contention had been
so fed by it that they mounted higher and higher. Meetings continued
to be held all over those portions of the state where anti-slavery
sentiment was strong. They culminated, soon after Rhoda’s release,
in an immense mass-convention at Cleveland attended by many thousand
people and addressed by public men of distinction, where, amid the
greatest enthusiasm, resolutions were passed denouncing the Dred Scott
decision and declaring the Fugitive Slave Act unconstitutional and
therefore void.

In the pocket of the dress she had worn on the day of her arrest
Rhoda chanced to find, soon after this convention, Charlotte’s note
telling of her engagement. She smiled soberly as she thought of all the
consequences that had resulted from this manifestation of her sister’s
puckish spirit.

“If she hadn’t misled me this way,” Rhoda’s thoughts ran, “I wouldn’t
have forgotten about everything else the way I did for a few minutes,
and I would have kept watch of Mary Ellen and made her keep her veil
down, and then that man wouldn’t have recognized her, and we’d have
gone right on and nothing would have happened!”

Rhoda’s trial aroused the keenest interest all over the North. But
it was an interest that cared only for principles. The personalities
of those engaged in the matter were of the slightest consequence.
Everywhere, in newspapers and in conversation, there was discussion
of the affair, and of the consequences to which it might lead. But the
people concerned in it were only so many cogs in a mighty Wheel of
Fate, turning resistlessly, and ever about to bring into the present,
out of the unknown future, no man could tell what.

To the South and its northern sympathizers the whole affair was
irritating and alarming in high degree. Democratic newspapers and their
readers declared the attitude of “Chase and his abolition crew” to
be equivalent to a declaration of war against the United States and
welcomed the prospect, while the compromise by which the difficulty was
finally settled they described with bitterness as “another triumph”
for the creed of the “traitorous higher law with its open sanction of
treason and rebellion.”

But there was one element in the North to whom Rhoda Ware’s share
in these events was not a matter of indifference. In the eyes of
the abolitionists she was a martyr to the cause to which they were
zealously devoted and during the month in which she served out her
sentence letters poured in upon her containing money for the payment
of her fine and warm words of praise. The Female Anti-Slavery Society
of Hillside sent her the whole of their small store, saying, “we shall
be proud to share even so little in the martyrdom of our beloved
president.” Rhoda wept over it, knowing well at what cost of personal
sacrifice the little hoard had been gathered. But she knew, too,
that to beg them to take back their offering would be to stab their
very hearts. Other anti-slavery societies in Ohio and elsewhere sent
contributions. There were checks from rich men in New York, New England
and Pennsylvania, whose purses were always open for the anti-slavery
cause and whose custom it was to give brotherly encouragement to
Underground operators who fell into the toils of the Fugitive Slave
Act by helping to pay their fines. The amount in which Rhoda had been
mulcted was entirely paid, as was the assessment in many another case,
by these enthusiastic co-workers.

Most precious to her, however, were the letters which came from
abolitionists all over the country with their words of praise,
sympathy, encouragement and hope. Many of them were from men and women
whose names will be found in the pages of American history as long as
the conflict over slavery holds a place therein. Long afterward, when
many years of peace had enabled all the people of the land to look back
with calm philosophy upon those heated years of contention, and the
impartial muse of history had given to the Underground Railroad a high
place among the causes which brought on the Civil War and abolished
servitude, Rhoda Ware held these letters among her most prized mementos
of those stirring days of which she was a part.




CHAPTER XXIV


The lilac bushes were again in bud and Rhoda Ware was looking at them,
pulling down here and there a tall one to see if it was not farther
advanced than the rest, and reckoning how soon they would burst into
flower, when she saw a tall, erect old man enter the gate. He came up
the walk with a peculiar directness of manner, as of one accustomed
to go forward with eyes and will upon a single aim. As he approached
and asked for Dr. Ware, Rhoda saw in his face something of that same
quality of underlying sternness, a sternness expressive rather of
uncompromising moral sense than of severity of feeling or of judgment,
that marked her father’s countenance. His silver-white beard, long and
full, lent to this austereness a patriarchal dignity.

She took him to her father’s door, but Dr. Ware was engaged with a
patient. The stranger asked if it were not she who had been concerned,
the previous autumn, in the escape of the slave girl, Lear White, and
they talked of that affair and of the consequences to which it led.
She felt a magnetic quality in his grave and mellow tones, and in the
steady gaze of his deep-set eyes, alert, luminous, penetrating, she was
conscious of that compelling force that lies in the look of all men
able to impress themselves upon others. Presently he told her who he
was and she thrilled as she heard him speak the words, “Captain John
Brown, of Kansas.”

“My father and I have spoken of you often, Captain Brown,” she said,
her eyes and face lighting with the admiration which abolitionists felt
for the man whom already they regarded as a hero.

“Yes. We have known each other for many years, and we have been agreed
about slavery since a time when there were so few of us that we all
felt as brothers.”

She had many questions to ask of matters in Kansas, where, she found,
he knew the husband of her friend, Julia Hammerton. As they talked she
saw presently that his eyes were fixed upon Bully Brooks, who, in full
grown feline dignity, was sunning himself on the veranda. The cat’s
air of complacent ease disappeared and, after some worried movements,
it suddenly sprang up with arched back and swelling tail, spat its
displeasure and ran away. Charlotte, coming in at the east gate, saw
her pet’s performance and shot a questioning glance at Rhoda and the
stranger as she passed them.

A little later, when her father had taken Captain Brown into his
office, Rhoda found Charlotte with Bully Brooks in her lap, alternately
soothing his ruffled dignity and stirring him to angry protest.

“Rhoda, who is that horrid old man?” she demanded.

“Why do you call him horrid? He is the finest, noblest-looking old man
I’ve ever seen, and his character is as noble as his appearance.”

“Oh, la! I asked you who he is.”

Rhoda hesitated, considering whether or not it would be prudent to let
Charlotte know the identity of her father’s visitor. For there was much
pro-southern sentiment in Hillside and, although John Brown was not yet
an outlaw with a price on his head, he was detested and considered an
active enemy by all friends of the South. Charlotte noted her pause and
bent upon her a keen gaze. Apparently Rhoda did not want to tell her
who he was and therefore it became at once an urgent necessity for her
to find out. Rhoda felt those intent brown eyes studying her face and
decided it would be better not to give her sister reason for suspecting
any mystery.

“I suppose he’s some old nigger-stealer,” Charlotte was saying, still
watching Rhoda’s expression, “and that’s why you think he’s such a
noble character. Lloyd thinks, and so do I, that nigger-stealing ought
to be punished by hanging.”

Rhoda smiled at her. “Would my little sister like to see me hanging
from a limb of that maple tree yonder?”

“But you’d quit if you knew you were going to be hung for it.”

“No, I wouldn’t.”

Charlotte regarded her with wide eyes. In her secret heart she was
beginning to feel not a little awe of this quiet elder sister upon
whose countenance she sometimes surprised a look of exaltation. And
therefore, to save her own sense of dignity, immensely increased by the
prospect of her marriage, she had taken refuge in a patronizing manner.

“Of course you would,” she said, with a superior air and a toss of
her pretty head. “You say that just to brave it out. Has old Mr.
White-Beard come to help you make plans to get arrested again?”

“No. He wanted to see father.”

“Oh, well! Who is he? John Brown, or Horace Greeley, or Governor Chase?
One of them is as bad as another and they’re all tarred with the same
brush.”

“Which do you think?” asked Rhoda calmly.

Charlotte leaned forward, all eagerness, her intuitions, as they so
often did, flashing straight to the truth. “Not John Brown?” she
ejaculated. Rhoda nodded, and Charlotte drew back with a little gasp
and then seized the cat in her lap with extravagant exclamations of
pride and affection.

“My precious Bully Brooks! You knew who he was, didn’t you, and you
told him what you thought of him! He’s a regular old ogre, Rhoda,
and Bully Brooks felt it, didn’t you, you darling cat! And you shall
go with Charlotte, when she’s married, to Corey’s Hall, so you shall,
where there won’t be any nigger-stealers to make you angry.”

Rhoda looked on with amusement. Not even yet, although Charlotte’s
wedding day was fast approaching, could she think of her sister as
other than a merry sprite, a spoiled child, of whom it would be too
much to expect the sense of ordinary responsibilities. But now a
feeling of uneasiness grew upon her, and when presently both rose to go
into the house she said:

“By the way, sister, please remember that it is not necessary for you
to tell any one about Captain Brown’s being here, either now or after
he has gone.”

Charlotte tilted her chin saucily and laughed. “Don’t you know, Rhoda,
that I never make promises--except for the fun of breaking them?
Besides, I’m a southerner now.”

Rhoda laid her hand gently upon the other’s shoulder. “Stop, sister.
This is a serious matter. I can’t forget that once you played the
traitor--pardon me, there is no other word for it, although I don’t
think you meant it that way--but it was the traitor to father and to
me. You know how much father loves you and how he’ll miss you after
you’re married. Do you want to make him feel so much safer then that
he can’t help being glad you’re gone?”

It was a new experience for even Rhoda to take her reckless audacities
with so much seriousness, and she looked up wonderingly, at first with
pouting and then with trembling lips. “I don’t see why you want to make
me so unhappy at home, when I’m soon going to leave it,” she sobbed.
“Do you want to make me hate my home and be glad to go away?”

Rhoda longed to take the dainty, drooping little figure into her arms
and speak words of soothing. But she held to her purpose. “Do you want
to make father, who loves you so much, glad to have you go away?”

Charlotte stamped her foot. “Of course I don’t!” she exclaimed, her
fists in her eyes. “And you’re perfectly horrid to say such things!”

At once Rhoda gave way to compassion, for she felt that she had gained
her point. She drew her sister within her arm, patting her shoulder and
kissing her forehead. “There, there, dear! Never mind. I only wanted to
make sure we could trust you.”

In the afternoon when Dr. Ware was ready to make his round of visits,
he asked Rhoda to go with him upon a trip he had to make into the
country. As they drove through the glistening young spring he told her
of his conversation with his morning’s visitor.

“Captain Brown gave me permission to talk it over with you,” he said.
“I assured him you could be trusted.” Rhoda’s heart swelled with
pleasure at her father’s words and at the matter-of-fact way in which
he spoke them, for both words and manner made her know how habitual
with him their companionship had become.

“I’ve known him for a good many years,” Dr. Ware went on, “and I’ve
always believed that some day he’d strike a big blow, square on
slavery’s head, do some big thing that would help immensely to get rid
of it. For a man of Brown’s intelligence, character and personality
can’t live half his lifetime absorbed by one idea without making
something happen. He and I agree on one point, that slavery can be
wiped out only by violence. We both see that its roots have gone so
deep that to pull them up will make a terrible upheaval. He hasn’t the
faith that I have, hasn’t any, in fact, in political measures and the
Republican party. He doesn’t believe, as I do, that all this is helping
to keep the roots from spreading and getting stronger, and that it will
make our victory quicker and easier, when the time for violence does
come.

“He thinks that time is nearly here and that he is going to bring it
about. He proposes to establish himself, before long, somewhere along
the free-state border, with a band of picked followers, drilled in
arms, and gather into his fortified camp all the negroes from the
near-by plantations. Such of these as wish to go to Canada will be
passed on by the Underground, while those who prefer will stay with him
and help gather in more slaves from greater distances. As the success
of his forays becomes known he thinks that other men will join him from
all over the North, until his army, increased also by daring spirits
from among the fugitive slaves, will be so large and formidable and
slave property be made so insecure that slavery will collapse like the
shell of a ruined house.”

Rhoda’s cheeks were flushed and her eyes shining. “What a daring
scheme, father! Do you think it will succeed?”

Dr. Ware smiled doubtfully and shook his head. “I don’t think he can
carry it through to the end he feels sure of, and I told him so this
morning. But his heart is set on it. He has been slowly maturing the
plan for twenty-five years, and has even made a tour of the great
battlefields and important fortifications of Europe, studying them
in the light of this purpose. It seems to me impossible that he can
succeed. But he’ll scare the South out of its wits and make it angrier
and more determined than ever, and that will be a good thing. With the
rising tide of public opinion in the North, it will bring the clash
that’s bound to come a big notch nearer.”

“Did he want you to join him, father?”

“Yes. I knew about his plan--we’ve talked of it before. I have so much
faith in the power of the one-ideaed man to achieve things that I’ve
always told him he could call on me for any help it was in my power to
give. I’ve contributed what I could to his Kansas campaign, and I gave
him this morning for this scheme all I could spare. I told him, too,”
Dr. Ware hesitated a little over his words now, “that I might join him
in person somewhat later, if his first attempts prove successful, and
that perhaps you would come too. For with your knowledge of nursing you
would be useful. Do you think you would care to throw yourself into
such a scheme as his, full of danger and sure to fail, but likely to
deliver an effective blow?”

His eyes were upon her, clear and calm as usual, but brilliant now with
the fires of zeal. As they searched her face her own looked back at
him, as glowing with zeal as his. “You know I would, father--you did
right to tell him so. I’m always ready to go anywhere or do anything
that will help our cause. But--mother--what about mother?”

He shook his head sadly and turned away. “Your mother, Rhoda, is
incurably ill. She cannot be with us much longer. I had her consult two
physicians in Cincinnati on her way home from Fairmount, and they both
told her it is only a question of time.”

“Oh, father! Can’t we do anything for her? Why didn’t you tell me
before?”

“There is nothing we can do but make her as comfortable and care free
as possible while she is with us. I didn’t tell you before because she
didn’t want you to know about it until after Charlotte’s wedding, and
she doesn’t want Charlotte to know it at all. She wants everything to
be as cheerful and happy as possible while Charlotte is here. Please
don’t let her guess that you know.”

Charlotte was to be married in May, and during the remaining weeks of
that time Rhoda watched her mother with anxious and loving care, taking
upon herself, as Mrs. Ware seemed willing to relinquish it, every
household responsibility, and noted with aching heart the wasting of
her face and figure.

“I believe she is just keeping up by her will power,” Rhoda said to Dr.
Ware, “so that there shall be nothing to make Charlotte unhappy during
her last weeks at home.”

“Yes,” assented her father, “she wants Charlotte to remember the months
of her engagement as the happiest time in her life. We must be prepared
for a reaction after it is all over.”

After Rhoda’s trial and imprisonment no mention of that matter was
ever made between her and her mother. When she returned home Mrs. Ware
received her with the utmost love and tenderness, but without the
least reference to the reasons for her absence. In neither words nor
manner did she recognize that that absence had been anything other than
an ordinary social visit and if it had to be spoken of she referred to
it merely as the time “when you were away.”

So, now, she made no sign to either her husband or her daughter that
she had any knowledge of the Underground activities in which they were
engaged or of the fugitive slaves who were sheltered in the house.
Rhoda was never able to guess whether she knew much or little of what
went on under her roof nor whether or not she resented it or was
grieved by it. But the girl’s heart ached constantly with sympathy for
what she felt must be her mother’s pain.

Her compassion and sorrow, however, did not lead her to consider for
a moment the idea of giving up the work. Rather, they inspired her to
greater zeal, in both thought and action, and to more intense desire
to aid in the destruction of slavery. For, in her mind, whatever grief
her mother felt, whatever alienation there was between them, were among
the evil results of the slave system, just as was the division between
her and Jefferson Delavan, and the only way of rightfully fully meeting
them was to attack their cause.

At the wedding Rhoda was bridesmaid and Delavan was groomsman. As she
saw her mother’s eyes fixed wistfully upon them she felt fresh twinges
of self-reproach. She knew the deep pleasure that Charlotte’s marriage
to a southerner had brought to the ailing woman, and she knew that this
would be as nothing beside her satisfaction and delight could she see
her other daughter united in marriage to the son of her old friend.
Could it be, after all, Rhoda began to ask herself, that here was where
her highest duty lay? Ought she, at whatever cost to herself, make
happy her mother’s last days?

It seemed to Rhoda that everything conspired, throughout the wedding
festivities, to bring her and Delavan alone together, although she knew
that they were both trying to avoid such meetings. But he forebore to
speak of love, and afterward the merry friendliness of these brief
occasions, just touched as they were with the fragrance of intimacy,
were among her dearest memories.

When he bade her good-by she felt the lover in his manner and his voice
as he said: “It has been two years, Rhoda, but I shall wait two years
more, and ten times that, before I give up hope of our wedding!”

Rhoda looked at him with her flashing smile, that lifting of her short
upper lip and trembling at its corners and lighting of her eyes, which
always sent through his veins a fresh thrill of love, and answered:
“Oh, Jeff! What a long time to prepare for a wedding in!”

After it was all over Mrs. Ware failed rapidly. Rhoda watched her
wasting cheeks and growing feebleness with an agony of compassion and
constant tumultuous questioning of herself. Her mother had not spoken
to her for a long time about Delavan’s suit, but she knew that the wish
was gathering strength in her breast as she came nearer and nearer to
death’s door. Rhoda felt it in the wistful look with which the brown
eyes, grown so large and childlike in the peaked face, followed her
about the room. It spoke to her in the plaintive appeal of the soft
southern voice and it pulled mightily at her heartstrings in the
clinging to hers of the thin hands, a little while ago so plump and
fair.

With her own heart playing traitor, as it always did with every
weakening of her resolution, with love and compassion for the invalid
pleading incessantly, with a remorse-wrung conscience recalling every
hurt she had ever given to her mother and urging that she ought to
salve those many wounds with this final atonement, the torment of it
became almost greater than she could bear.

One day she found her father alone in his office and, impelled by her
distraught heart, she forgot her usual restraints, flung herself on her
knees beside his chair and laid her face against his knee.

“Oh, father,” she begged, “help me to see what I ought to do! I know
mother wants me to marry Jeff--she doesn’t say a word about it, but I
feel all the time that it is making her last days full of sorrow. It
seems to me sometimes that I can’t stand it another minute, that I must
give up, because it will make her happy. Would it help her, father, if
I did?”

Dr. Ware laid his hand upon her shoulder. Even in her wretchedness the
action gave her a little thrill of pleasure, for it was nearer a caress
than she could remember he had ever given her.

“Nothing can help your mother now, child. With her, it is a matter of a
few months, or weeks, or, perhaps, even days. It would make her happy
for that little time--I know it as well as you do. You could feel that
you had enabled her to end her days in peace. But whether or not you
ought to sacrifice your sense of right to your sense of duty to her is
something that only you can decide.”

“I know it, father,” she answered in low tones as she rose to her feet
and wiped the tears from her eyes.

She went out into the yard, gay with the luxuriant blooms of early
summer. The white petunias sent up their fragrance and the memories it
brought pierced her very heart with poignant sweetness. She went on
into the grape arbor and sat down in its cool shadows, asking herself
why it was that she could keep her own soul clean only at the expense
of another’s happiness.

“My happiness, Jeff’s happiness,” she thought, “they are of our own
making and we can choose our own conditions. But mother, poor, dear,
little mother, so sick, with such a little while to live, and her
happiness so bound up in this! And if I do it I shall feel all my
life that it was wrong, that my soul isn’t clean. Oh, mother, how can
I become a part of this abomination of slavery, this vile, accursed
thing! I’d be glad to die, a hundred times over, for you--but to live
and be a part of such wickedness-- Oh, mother, how can I? How can I?”

The end came sooner than they expected. On a hot afternoon in
midsummer, when the late, red rays of the sun, shining through the
half-closed shutters, lay in bands across the floor, Mrs. Ware called
Rhoda. “Come close, honey, down beside me,” she said, and Rhoda knelt
at the bedside. Her mother slipped a feeble arm around her neck.

“You’ve been a dear, loving daughter to me,” she said, “even if we’ve
thought so differently about some things. You are like your father,
Rhoda, and that has always been a pleasure to me. You’ve wanted to make
me happy, just as he always has, and in almost everything you have. No
mother ever had a better, dearer daughter than you, honey.”

“Oh, mother,” Rhoda exclaimed, the tears welling into her eyes, for in
the pale, pitiful face she saw the shadow of the death angel’s wing and
felt his near approach in the chill that struck into her own breast.
“Dear mother, I’ve never done half enough for you, never been half as
good and loving to you as you deserved!”

“Always you have, dear, except in one thing. You know how much for two
years I’ve wanted you to marry Adeline’s son, dear Jeff. And you would
not. I haven’t much longer to live, and if you want to make my deathbed
happy promise me that you will. Oh, Rhoda, send for Jeff and marry him
here beside my bed and have your dying mother’s blessing!”

Rhoda was sobbing with her face upon her mother’s shoulder. “Dearest
mother,” she pleaded, “don’t ask that of me.”

“It’s the only thing in all the world that I want, honey. You love
Jeff, and he adores you, and I know that you’ll be happy together, if
you’ll only give up that nonsensical idea that has taken possession of
you. It’s your happiness that I want, Rhoda, yours and Jeff’s. And I
know, oh, so much better than you do, what makes a woman happy. I can’t
die feeling that I have done my duty to my little girl and made sure of
her happiness, unless she will promise me this. Will you do it, Rhoda?”

“Let me be the judge of my happiness, mother, as you were the judge of
yours!”

“Your mother knows best, child! Take her word for it, and let her bless
you with her last breath, as you’ll always bless her if you do. It’s
the last thing she’ll ever ask of you.”

The invalid’s tones were growing weaker and something querulous sounded
in them as she repeated, “Promise me, Rhoda, promise!”

The linked hands upon Rhoda’s neck loosened their hold and the tired
arms slipped down. She bowed her head upon her mother’s breast as she
sobbed, “Let me think for a minute, mother, dear! It breaks my heart
not to do what you want!”

“It breaks mine, Rhoda, that you don’t. Oh, honey, let me die in peace
and happiness! Promise me that you’ll marry Jeff!”

Rhoda saw that her father had entered the room and was standing at her
side. She sprang to her feet, threw her arms about his neck and with
her head upon his shoulder burst into a passion of tears.

“Father, tell me what to do!” she wailed.

His arms were about her, his face upon her hair, and his tears were
mingling with hers. In that supreme moment of grief, compassion and
struggle the icy barriers that had kept their hearts apart melted away
and they clung together in their common despair, groping through their
sobs for the right thing to say and do.

Suddenly they were startled by a gay little laugh from the bed. “You’ve
come at last, have you, Adeline, dearest! How late you are!” the dying
woman exclaimed, holding out her hands in welcome. From her face the
shadow had passed and in its place shone a girlish happiness. She was
back again among the friends of her youth, chatting and laughing with
“dearest Adeline,” and calling upon “mammy” to do this and that. And
so, babbling of her girlhood’s pleasures, she passed into the dark
beyond.




CHAPTER XXV


During the late summer and autumn of that year Rhoda and her father
and their friends watched with the keenest interest, as did people
all over the country, the struggle in Illinois between Lincoln and
Douglas. In the Cincinnati and New York papers they read the speeches,
printed at length, of both the aspirants for senatorial honors, and on
many an evening, gathered on the veranda of the Ware home or, after
the evenings grew cool, around the fireplace in the living-room, they
discussed all the features of that famous intellectual wrestling match.

Horace Hardaker had been nominated for Congress by the Republican party
and was conducting a vigorous campaign. Nevertheless, he found time
to come frequently up the hill to Dr. Ware’s house for these talks.
Marcia Kimball came also, at first with her brothers, but after a
little Rhoda observed that it was oftener with Hardaker that she made
her appearance and always upon his arm that she leaned when they went
away. With an inward smile Rhoda noticed too that Horace, with apparent
unconsciousness, began to address his conversation mainly toward Marcia.

“I don’t expect to be elected,” he said one evening, “that is, not
this time. But I’m giving the ground a good, deep plowing, and there’ll
be a different crop to reap two years from now.”

His opponent, a Douglas Democrat, won the day, but by so narrow
a margin that Hardaker was almost as exultant as if he had been
successful. “Two years more of the way things are going now,” he
declared, “and we’ll sweep the country!”

“Suppose you do, what good will it do?” said old Mr. Kimball. “Your
Republican party expressly says it won’t interfere with slavery in the
South.”

“It will bring on a crisis,” interjected Dr. Ware, “and a crisis
is exactly the thing we want. The South won’t stand a Republican
president. And when she tries to leave the Union the upheaval will
come.”

Not long after the election Hardaker sought Rhoda in more buoyant mood
than ever, to tell her that he and Marcia were to be married. She
assured him that she was heartily glad, and really felt all that she
said, and even more. But her sincere rejoicing did not prevent her from
looking sadly out of her window that night and feeling that something
very dear and pleasant had gone out of her life beyond all recovery.
She would not, if she could, have held Hardaker’s love in fruitless
thrall, but it had been so comforting, so gratifying, to know how
surely it was hers and she had so grown to expect one of his recurrent
proposals every year or so that it cost her a little wrench now to give
it all up.

“He’ll make Marcia a good, loving husband,” she thought, “and with his
talent and ambition he’ll succeed. Oh, they’ll be happy, and I’m glad.”

Her eyes grew sad and the lines of her face drooped as she sat beside
her window. And after a while she took out the little box with its
treasure of letters and withered flower. She did not read the letters,
of which there was now nearly a box full, but turned them over
caressingly in her hands and now and then pressed one to her lips.

Rhoda was bridesmaid when Horace and Marcia were married in the early
spring. “It’s your third time, isn’t it, dear,” said Marcia as her
friend draped about her shoulders the folds of her bridal veil. “I do
hope it will be you yourself, next time!”

“So do I, Marcia!” said Rhoda frankly, looking up with a smile.
“There isn’t a girl anywhere who’d more willingly be a bride than I,
if--if--if!”

“Rhoda, you’re the dearest, bravest girl!” cried Marcia, squeezing her
hand. “If I was in your place I’d be crying my eyes out instead of
laughing like that!”

“Then I wouldn’t have you for my bridesmaid if you couldn’t give your
eyes a rest that long,” rejoined Rhoda gaily.

Spring and summer came and went, and for Rhoda Ware the weeks passed
with uneventful flow. Through their house there trickled a thin stream
of slaves fleeing northward, sometimes half a dozen or more within a
week and sometimes not more than one or two. The trouble and cost of
recovering their runaway negroes, even when they were infrequently able
to get possession of them again, had caused the southern slaveholders
to give over their efforts. In these last years of the decade it was
unusual for a fugitive to be pursued and therefore the traffic of the
Underground was carried on with little risk.

Rhoda busied herself with these duties, the ordering of her father’s
household, her anti-slavery work and her reading. Gradually the thought
grew up in her breast that she would like to study medicine. She talked
the matter over with her father and he offered, if she wished, to send
her to one of the medical colleges that within a few years had been
opened for women. But she would not leave him alone and so, under his
guidance, she spent her leisure time reading in his medical library,
discussing his cases with him, and often going with him upon his visits.

Dr. Ware received an occasional brief letter from John Brown in which
his scheme was referred to with cautious phrasing as a speculation in
sheep. Toward midsummer he wrote that he was getting his shepherds
together and expected to collect a band of sheep in the Virginia
mountains, where he thought there would be good pasturage, about the
middle of October.

“He is bound to come into collision with the federal government very
soon,” said Dr. Ware to his daughter as they talked this letter over
together. “Of course he knows that will be the end of his enterprise
and of him too.”

“He won’t care,” answered Rhoda, “what becomes of him if he can make
just one thrust at slavery.”

“That’s true. And the more I think of it the more I believe that even
if he fails in his first attempt, as he is very likely to do, it will
be a good strong thrust that will make the South fairly stagger. I told
him I’d wait to see whether or not he made a beginning before I decided
about joining him. But I doubt very much, Rhoda, whether you and I will
have a chance to work under John Brown.”

“I’ll be ready to go whenever you say the word, father,” she said with
grave earnestness.

Now and then a letter passed between Rhoda and Jefferson Delavan, a
letter of intimate friendliness, telling of personal matters and mutual
interests. Once only did he touch upon the slavery question, which
formerly they had argued with such earnestness, and then he filled a
long letter with an endeavor to prove to her that the negro race had
been benefited by slavery, that in taking it from its barbarous state
and bringing it in contact with civilization the slaveholders had
lifted it to a higher plane of moral and intellectual life.

When she replied she said merely, “No more of that, please, if you
still love me! Each of us knows that the other’s convictions are honest
and deeply rooted. We can’t agree, so let’s not argue, but just enjoy
our friendship.”

Nor was there in their correspondence any mention of love, or of
possible or impossible marriage. But toward the end of summer, when a
little band of men was warily gathering in a Maryland farmhouse, one of
Jeff’s letters set Rhoda’s heart to fluttering. There was in it, save
for some terms of endearment which seemed to have flowed unconsciously
from his pen, no putting into words of a lover’s hopes. But she felt
through every line the burning of the lover’s heart. And a few weeks
later there came a brief note saying, “I shall be in Hillside soon and
shall count on seeing you.”

For a day Rhoda’s heart sang with joy, “He is coming, he is coming!
I shall see him, have him here beside me!” and would listen to no
warnings of her mind.

Then she wrote, “Don’t come! I beg of you, Jeff, don’t come! What is
the use!” And lest her courage might fail her, she quickly sealed and
posted her missive.

But when the October woods were bright with flaming color, and the
little band of men in the Maryland farmhouse were waiting for the order
to march, and Rhoda and her father were saying to each other every
morning, “There may be news to-day,” Jefferson Delavan appeared at her
door.

“I told you not to come!” she said, and gave him her hand, while face
and eyes belied the meaning of her words. His heart gladdened at
their sweet shining as he held her hand in both of his and answered,
“And I disobeyed--because I couldn’t help it.” Then, for a moment,
their starving, delighted gaze fed upon each other’s eyes, until
Rhoda suddenly felt that he was about to break into lover’s speech.
Impulsively she laid a finger across his lips. He seized and held it
there while she exclaimed:

“Don’t speak, Jeff, don’t say anything. It’s such a lovely day--the
hills are so beautiful--let’s have a ride together!”

He agreed, glad of anything that would insure her presence near him,
and they were soon galloping over country roads and across the wooded
hills, brilliant in the gala robes with which Nature celebrates her
thanksgiving for another year of sun and life and growth.

As they rode, the motion and the wine-like air and the joy in her heart
lifted Rhoda into exultant mood, deepened the wild rose-bloom in her
cheeks and kindled her serious eyes into sparkling gaiety. “Let me have
this little time!” her heart pleaded. “It may be the last. After _that_
has happened he may never come again!”

And so, with thrilling nerves and singing heart, the Cavalier in her
breast dominated the Puritan and sent to the four winds warnings
of conscience and thought of to-morrow. Forgotten was the safety
of the three fugitive slaves, at that moment hiding in her cellar,
forgotten the fateful Thing for whose birth in the Virginia mountains
she had been waiting, cast away from her mind was all thought of the
anti-slavery contest, nor was there room in her heart for zeal in its
cause. She was mere woman, loving and beloved, and glorying inwardly
in her power over her lover. Her Cavalier inheritance took possession
of her and bade her snatch the pleasure of the hour. Her father’s
offspring dwindled away into the smallest recesses of her nature and it
was her mother’s daughter who sat in the saddle, slender and graceful,
and with starry eye and alluring smile kindled fresh fires in her
lover’s breast.

With pride and pleasure she saw them burning in his face and eyes as
he drew beside her and murmured, “Rhoda, you are so beautiful!” Her
mirror had told her many times, and she had agreed in its verdict, that
she was not beautiful. And so all the more precious to her was this
tribute of love, and more than once did she win it, as they rode and
rode, during the long afternoon.

A sudden memory came of the tale of courtship her mother had told to
her and Jeff, on that June night so long ago, and across her mind’s eye
there flitted the vision she had often called up, of the pretty, wilful
girl and the resolute young man with his hand on her bridle, galloping,
galloping-- “And that was love--and this is love, and it is mine!”
her heart sang. Quickly her brain flashed back the question, “Would I
yield, as mother did, if--if--if--” And the Cavalier in her heart sang
back, exulting, “I would! I would!”

On their way home they came to an old wood road and turned into it from
the cross-country way upon which they had been galloping. Checking
their horses they rode slowly down the brilliant avenue of gold and
russet and crimson, talking, now earnestly, now gaily, upon one or
another of the multitude of things, personal and impersonal, which to
lovers can bourgeon instantly into matters of moment and interest by
the mere fact of mention in the loved one’s voice. Gradually the road
dwindled away and they came upon steeper hills and a rocky surface.
But Rhoda knew where they were and said that by turning sharply to the
eastward they could gain the high road. Dismounting they led their
horses across the hills, the fallen autumnal glories billowing beneath
their feet.

Already Rhoda’s mood had begun to sober. The Puritan was claiming his
own again. Down that wood road she had driven her buggy, on a winter
day, to bring out the fugitive negro lad whom she had sent flying to
the cave for safety from the pursuing marshal. They passed the cave
itself, where, more than three years previous, she had hidden the
mulatto, running for the freedom dearer than life from this very man
who was bending near her now with ardent looks of love. She shivered a
little as she remembered the slave’s sullen resolution, the pistol in
his hand, and the tone in which he had said, “I won’t go back.” As Jeff
bent with loving solicitude to draw her wrap closer about her shoulders
she was thinking, “And he said they were brothers.”

They struck a path which climbed a steep hill, and when they came to a
jutting rock Delavan looked around him with sudden recollection. “Why,
I’ve been here before!” he exclaimed. “It was here I met you, dear,
that day--don’t you remember? What a long time you have made me wait,
sweetheart, for your promise!” His lover’s longing, made a hundredfold
more imperious by the allurement there had been all the afternoon in
her laugh, her voice, her smile, her lips, her eyes, her manner, would
be put aside no longer, and he turned upon her with an impetuosity that
would brook no protest.

“Do you, remember, dearest, the proof of my love I gave you that
day? I’m ready to give you, here on this same spot, another proof, a
thousand times greater! It will sweep away everything that keeps us
apart, Rhoda! Everything!”

She looked at him silently, sweet wonder parting her lips and shining
starlike in her big gray eyes. Her cheeks were paler now, with the
ebbing of the exultant tide that had kept her all the afternoon on its
crest. But to him this soft, subdued mood bespoke the sweetheart ready
to tremble into his embrace and made her all the more adorable. He
seized her hand and she let it lie in his close, warm grasp as he went
on:

“I have made up my mind to give up everything to our love. I will free
all my niggers--for the sake of your dear conscience not one shall be
sold--and see that they find places where they can earn their livings.
Then I will sell my property and we will put this country and its
accursed contentions behind us. We will go to England, dear heart,
or France, and live where there will come hardly an echo of all this
strife to disturb our blessed content and happiness!”

She dropped her eyes from his and for a long moment stood motionless
while it seemed to her that her very heart stood still. With swift
inner vision, like that of a drowning man, she saw those years of
wedded life, long years of comradeship and love and deepest joy, with
dear children growing up beside them, and her heart yearned toward its
peace and happiness with such urgency that she dared not try to speak.

“Think, Rhoda, dear,” he was pleading, “think of the quiet, blissful
years that are waiting for us! Our two hearts together, and nothing,
nothing at all to come between them!”

Her very lips were pale with desire of it as she whispered: “I am
thinking, and, oh, Jeff, the thought of it, the joy of it, almost
makes my heart stop beating. But have you thought, dear, dear Jeff,
what a sacrifice this will be for you? I know how much you love the
South. Would you never regret it, never wish to come back and throw
yourself into her service? If that should happen, it would be the end
of happiness for us both, for I should know it--our hearts would be
so close together--even if you didn’t say a word. Have you thought of
that, dear Jeff?”

He smiled at her with loving confidence. “I’ve thought that all out,
dear heart. For weeks I’ve been thinking of it, and threshing it all
out in my mind, until I feel quite sure of myself. I do love my dear
Southland and as you know so well my ambition has always been to spend
my life in her service. But there are plenty of other men who can do
her work as well as I can, and not at the cost of their heart’s love
and life’s happiness. I am willing to let them do it while I take my
love and my happiness. My sweet! I knew your dear, generous heart would
ask me that!” He bowed over her hand, which he still held in his, and
pressed it to his lips.

Her heart was pleading: “He is right. There are plenty of others who
can do his work, and there are surely many, many who can do what little
is possible for me better than I. Why not put it all aside and take the
love and happiness that belong to us?” And then, like an icy grip upon
her softening, yielding heart came remembrance of the Thing that was
about to happen in the Virginia mountains.

She drew her hand from his and in sudden dismay walked apart a few
paces, saying, “Let me think for a minute, Jeff!” She dropped her
riding skirt, whose fulness she had been carrying over one arm, and its
long black folds swept around her slender figure as she leaned against
a tree with her face in her hands. So tall and straight and slim she
looked, drooping against the tree trunk, that the fancy crossed his
mind she was like some forsaken, grieving wood nymph, and all his body
ached with the longing to enfold her in his arms and comfort whatever
pain was in her heart. But his love as well as his courtesy forbade him
to intrude upon her while she stood apart, and he waited for her to
turn to him again.

Rhoda was thinking of what she knew was about to happen and of what it
would mean to him. Her father had said that it would be like the sudden
ringing of an alarm bell and that, however this initial attempt turned
out, it might cause the whole South to take up arms at once and declare
war. She knew how her lover’s spirit would leap at such an emergency.
Did she wish to put his love and his promise to such a test at the very
beginning? Slowly she walked back and stood in front of him.

“Jeff, this is truly a wonderful proof of your love that you have
given me!” Her voice was tremulous with desire of all she felt she
was putting away, but she went bravely on: “I don’t believe any other
woman ever had such proof! Indeed,” and she smiled tenderly at him, “I
don’t believe any other woman was ever loved quite so much. It makes me
feel your love in my heart, oh, so much more precious than even it was
before! But I want you to be quite sure, dear Jeff!”

“I am sure, sweetheart!” he broke in.

“But won’t you wait a little while, two weeks, no, three weeks, before
I--we decide? I ask you to go home, at once, and not to see me or write
to me for three weeks more. And then you can let me know whether or
not you still wish to put your ideals and ambitions aside for the sake
of love. But I want you to consider the question then just exactly as
if we had never talked of it before. You are not to feel yourself in
the least bound by what you have told me to-day. If anything should
happen between now and then that makes you feel that the South still
has a claim upon you, anything that would make you in the very least
unwilling to--to carry out this plan, then I want you to tell me so
frankly--with perfect frankness, dear Jeff, as perfect as our love.”

“And is that all the hope you will give me, dearest?” he pleaded. “No
promise to take back with me?”

She was standing beside the path, on the rising ground a little above
him, and she leaned toward him, resting her hands lightly upon his
shoulders as she said, her face all tenderness:

“Dear Jeff, it is for your sake I am asking it!”

He seemed scarcely to hear what she said, and touched her cheek with a
caressing palm as he exclaimed, “Rhoda, my sweet, your face is like a
guardian angel’s!”

Before Jefferson Delavan reached Fairmount again the Thing had happened
that made the North gasp with wonder and set the South beside itself
with fear and rage. The amazing audacity of John Brown’s attack upon
Harper’s Ferry and the rankling distrust between the two sections make
reasonable, to impartial eyes of a later day, the alarming significance
which the southern people, especially those in the border states, saw
in Brown’s foredoomed enterprise. The slaveholders of Kentucky were
aroused to almost as extreme a pitch of angry apprehension and defiance
as were the people of Virginia.

Rhoda Ware had not to wait even three weeks for the expected letter
from Jefferson Delavan.

“You were right,” he wrote. “You saw the obstacles that lie between us
more clearly than I did--or, perhaps, you had more information than I
of the treacherous lengths to which the North would dare to go in the
desire to overthrow the ordinary rights of a state and to undermine the
power of the government under which both sections have solemnly sworn
to live. This attempt to incite the slaves to insurrection and the
butchery of their masters proves to all of us that neither property nor
life is safe in the South. At any moment another plot may break forth,
no man can tell where, and be more successful than this one was. The
South needs now, more than she ever did before, every one of her sons
whom she can trust. I cannot desert her in her hour of peril. From the
bottom of my heart I thank you, Rhoda, that you made it possible for me
to remain, without dishonor, in the position where every instinct of
duty and honor and loyalty demands that I stay. It was like you to know
that, much as I love you, love would have to yield to honor if it came
to a test between the two, and it has made me love you all the more,
if that were possible, to know that your love is so rich and noble and
generous.

“God knows what the future may hold for us two. For the first time
since our love began I can see no hope for us. The feeling between
the North and the South grows intolerable and the bonds between them
cannot last much longer. As long as the South and her interests are in
danger, my conscience, my sense of duty, my loyalty, all my ideals and
aspirations, bid me stay here. And here I know you will not come.

“But whatever happens, dear, I shall always thank God that I have had
the privilege of knowing and loving you, while the knowledge that you,
such a peerless woman as you, have loved me will be as long as I live
the most precious treasure of my heart. I have many dear memories
of our love, but the dearest of them all is of that last day we had
together, that splendid ride, when you were so adorable, and of all the
sweet pictures of you that I cherish the sweetest of all is of your
face as you leaned toward me in the wood and said, ‘It is for your
sake, dear Jeff.’

“Only God knows whether or not we shall ever see each other again. But
I shall always love you, and as long as we both live I shall treasure
in my heart the belief that you still love me. Good-by, dear heart.”

“At last, it is all over,” Rhoda said to herself when she had read
the letter. “He sees, at last, as I did so long ago, that there is no
hope for us. No--he sees none, now, but I can a little. John Brown has
brought the war ten years nearer, father says, and any time it may
come. And the war will end slavery. But it’s best not to hope too
much.”

She took out the box of his letters and read them all over again,
touching them tenderly and kissing the withered rose. “I’d better burn
them all now,” she told herself, “and try not to think so much about it
after this.”

With such pain in her heart as might have been in Abraham’s when he led
Isaac to the altar, she carried her little love treasure to the fire.
But even as she held it poised over the flames her resolution failed
her. It was too much a part of herself and she could not do it. The
little box was put away again in its hiding place and in the months
that followed, whenever the ache in her breast would not be hushed in
any other way, she solaced her love and longing by reading the letters
over and over again, until she almost knew them, word for word.




CHAPTER XXVI


A year and a half and more went by before Rhoda again saw Delavan. The
campaign of 1860, with its grim earnestness and sober exaltation, had
passed. She had been stirred by it to her heart’s core, as had all men
and women of the North, and had shared her father’s satisfaction over
the result. Hers was indeed an even deeper and gladder satisfaction
than his, for to passionate abhorrence of slavery and the belief that
now was the beginning of its end was added her secret small hope that
afterward might come the fulfilment of her long denied love.

“We mustn’t forget, Rhoda,” her father said as they talked over the
results of the election, “that probably only a rather small percentage
of those who voted for Lincoln want to have slavery abolished in
the states where it already exists. They really think the national
government has no right to interfere. But if there is war, and
undoubtedly there will be, a man of Lincoln’s shrewd common-sense will
know that by freeing the slaves he will cut off the South’s right hand.
With such a man as he is in the president’s chair I feel confident,
though a good many abolitionists don’t, that we can look forward to the
end of slavery.”

The southern states were leaving the Union and the Confederacy had
been organized. Rhoda knew that Kentucky was rent almost to her every
hearthstone with discussion of whether North or South should have
her loyalty. Charlotte had lately written: “Everybody is all torn
into strips over the question whether or not Kentucky shall join the
Confederacy. Nobody talks or thinks or dreams of anything else. But
Lloyd and I are going to secede, whether Kentucky does or not.”

Now and then, at long intervals, had come a brief letter from Jefferson
Delavan. But he said nothing in any of these missives of love and but
little of the mighty questions that were absorbing the minds and hearts
and souls of men, women and children, North and South, and her replies
were of the same sort. It was as if two loving but far divided souls,
journeying through space, sought now and then by a faint call to bridge
the distance between them.

The tense, dark days of Lincoln’s inauguration were over, the guns of
Sumter had cleared away the last clouds of uncertainty, and war was at
hand.

The lilacs were in bloom again and Rhoda, moving slowly down the path,
broke off here and there a branch and presently stood at the front
gate, her fragrant burden gathered loosely into one arm against her
white dress. In her delight in their delicate beauty and savor she bent
her face to the flowers, forgetting for the moment the things of the
outside world. When she lifted it again Jefferson Delavan stood before
her.

“I have come to say good-by, Rhoda,” was his greeting, as he entered
the gate.

“Good-by?-- You are--going--” she stammered.

“I am going to join the fortunes of the South,” he replied, as they
walked up the path. “Kentucky has been false to her sister states and
deserted them when they need her most. By a single vote she has decided
upon neutrality. You, Rhoda, can understand what a bitter dose that is
for me.”

“You can’t endure it?” she hesitated as they turned into the walk to
the grape arbor.

“No, I can’t, and there are many other Kentuckians who feel as I do. I
am going at once to join the southern army, and Corey and Morehead and
a dozen others that I know are going too.”

“Father has joined the Union army as a surgeon and I am going as a
nurse.”

They had reached the arbor and stood facing each other, she with her
armful of lilacs still held against her white dress, both too much
absorbed to be quite conscious of their actions. A sober smile curved
by ever so little the grim line of his lips.

“Then you will be fighting for your side as well as I for mine, though
in a different way. But across the battlefields, Rhoda, I shall hear
your heart calling mine, and I shall know too that it is telling me to
fight right on.”

“Yes,” she broke out earnestly, “I know that you are fighting for your
convictions and your ideals and you will not be worthy of my love if
you don’t fight until you either win or are conquered. I don’t want you
to compromise, or to yield, until you have fought to the last drop of
your strength.”

“It’s going to be a bitter struggle and a long one, whatever the most
of them, on both sides, think now. In the South there isn’t much belief
that the North will fight, or can fight. But I know better, Rhoda. You
have taught me better, you and your father. You have made me understand
what determination there is at the bottom of all this.”

“It’s a war between two ideals,” she said, “whatever else they may say
it is. But it’s really that, between two ideals of civilization.”

“And men,” he added quickly, “always fight for their ideals as they do
for nothing else. It will be to the last gasp.”

She looked away and shuddered. “Oh, it is all so horrible, even to
think of! But it is a long and horrible iniquity that has caused it
and must now be paid for. Rachel Benedict told me once that we must
ourselves pay with sweat and stripes for the evil that we do. I believe
it’s true, and the North and the South must pay together for all this
long evil of slavery, for they are both responsible. But this war will
end it.”

He smiled upon her indulgently. “Can you think so, Rhoda, you, who
understand how we feel and how determined we are?”

She stepped back and proudly lifted her head. Into her face came the
look of exaltation he had seen there, in this same arbor, long before.
It seemed to remove her far from him, and therefore set his heart to
throbbing all the more with longing for her.

“Yes,” she said, “this war will end it, because God is on our
side. And afterward--oh, Jeff!”--her face melted to tenderness
again--“beyond--after the end, after God has spoken and slavery has
been ended, then there will be peace, and for us--” her voice dropped
low--“happiness!”

“God be the judge between us, Rhoda Ware,” he exclaimed, “as to which
is right! Will you accept His judgment, as He speaks it in battle, and
promise to be my wife when the war is over, whatever He has said?”

Again her face was lifted, glowing with exaltation. “God will never
allow such an atonement for evil-doing as this war will be,” she said
solemnly, “to be crowned by that very evil itself. With faith in Him--I
promise!”

Scarcely had the words left her tongue when she found herself swept to
his breast and his lips upon her brow, her eyes, her mouth.

“Rhoda, my love, my love,” he whispered, “it is a long good-by that
lies before us, perhaps even as long as it has been since I first
begged for your love, here among these vines.”

“And there are battles and dangers, oh, so many,” she whispered back,
“between now and--the end.”

“But I have a talisman that will carry me safe through it all, to the
end--and you. See, my sweet, how long I have kept it!” From an inner
pocket he took a little package and showed her a withered rose, the
mate of the one she herself so treasured. “I have kept it there, next
to my heart, ever since the night you gave it me, for my thoughts, five
years ago!”

She looked at it with wondering love, pressed it to her lips and
listened with a sweet smile upon them as he said, putting it back
again: “It shall lie there always, dear heart, until all my thoughts
are yours and yours are mine. And it will always tell me, as plainly as
if with your own dear lips, to fight to the uttermost!”

Again she lifted her head proudly. “Yes, to the uttermost, Jeff! For
that way only can your eyes be opened!”

       *       *       *       *       *

He was gone, and she sat alone in the arbor, with her lilacs pressed
to her bosom, and listened as the strains of martial music came to her
ears. It was a band playing, downtown, where volunteers were being
drilled. She could hear the tramp of feet, the rattle of musketry, and
the words of command.

Louder and louder the sound seemed to grow in her ears until it became
the booming of unnumbered cannon and the tramp, tramp, tramp of a
million men. The smoke of battle dimmed her eyes and all around her
she seemed to hear the cries and groans of mangled and dying men. With
white lips she whispered to herself, “With bloody sweat and stripes we
must pay--it is God’s law!”

Slowly her features relaxed, and presently, with a tender smile curving
her lips, she buried her face in the lilac blooms. For the awful sights
and sounds had faded away and she had seen a vision of the afterward.


THE END




TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES:


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