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 andmotherly 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 tremblinglip 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 grownupon 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 indicationsof 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 tothe 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 aslave, 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 herlover 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, triumphantrejoicing 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 domuch 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 helpindividual 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, “andshe’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 eyeswere 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 quickresponse, 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 understandher 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 surveyedher 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 passionateconviction. 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.