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 thecatch 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 emotionalexaltation 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 shiveredagain—“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 hishair 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 cameof 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 anythingunder 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 movedtoward 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 thehouse 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—”