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’sbedchamber, 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 slavewoman 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 ideabrought 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 begood 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 sheglanced 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 closedupon 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 pointsout 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 shebent 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 theradiant 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 andsome 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 totremble. 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 beon 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, andwe 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’llhave 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, withoutadding—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.