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 upshe 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-slaveryas 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 mouthand 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 andsmiled, 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 nervesand 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 awayand 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 dartingmemory 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 himone 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 theirgirlhood 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 foundCharlotte 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.