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 Pennsylvaniawill 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 ofstuff 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 packetscame 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, asshe 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!”