CHAPTER XII
Mid-October came, and the day of local elections in three of the northern states. The whole country was waiting on the tiptoe of expectancy for the result. Pennsylvania was the keystone of the situation. The party that would win the presidential contest would have to have her twenty-seven electoral votes, and this state poll was looked upon as a sure indication of how the commonwealth would go three weeks later. It was everywhere admitted that the issue would be close. Sectional and party feeling and consequent excitement ran so high and hot that there were dark forebodings of what might happen. All men knew that they walked upon a thin crust over volcanic fires that might burst through at any moment, upon any pretext.
The Republican party was surprising itself and the entire country by its showing of remarkable strength and its brilliant prospects of success. From the South were coming threats of disunion louder and more frequent and more positive. In many of the slave states there was already the stir of endeavor to agree upon concerted action in case Frémont should be elected. Through the north the Democratic and the Whig parties mademuch of these portents as showing the danger Republican success would mean to the united country. But the Republican leaders, jubilant over the proofs of their strength which the campaign had developed, and secretly recognizing the weight of this argument, made light of both it and the southern threats.
And so the whole country waited in breathless anxiety on that cold and drizzling October day, with its attention centered on tumultuous Philadelphia, both sides fearing defeat, both sides hoping for victory, and all dreading the spark with which some chance word or untoward accident might kindle the smoldering passions in that city into flames that would quickly involve the whole nation.
Rhoda moved restlessly about the house, showing little interest in her usual duties and disregarding her mother’s hints that she was neglecting their invalid guest. Delavan had almost recovered from his injuries and in a few days would return home. Mrs. Ware was sorely disappointed that his presence in the house had not affected her daughter’s determination. She began to feel sure that it must be her husband’s influence over Rhoda that balked all her own efforts and nullified the effect of the constant association from which she had hoped so much.
Jeff asked her advice that morning and they talked the matter over intimately. She promisedhim once more the full measure of her influence with Rhoda. “I’m afraid it isn’t much,” she said, a little tremulously. “But I’ll do my best, Jeff.”
“I thank you, Mrs. Ware, madam, and I assure you I shall not go away without trying again to win her consent.”
“You and little Emmy used to call me ‘Aunt Emily,’ when I was at Fairmount,” she said with a suggestion of reproof, half motherly, half coquettish, if the chastened ghost of a manner that sometimes remembered its alluring youth might still be called coquettish.
“It is the dearest wish of my heart to call you ‘mother,’ some day,” he answered, kissing her hand.
“And of mine to hear you call me so,” she added, bending over and touching her lips to his forehead. Then they fell to talking of his mother and she was deeply interested in the many little things Jeff remembered of her life at Fairmount. He recalled that she had always shown concern for the welfare of the slaves and had given training in their duties and deportment to the housemaids and had allowed them and also the men who served about the house and gardens to acquire a little education if they wanted it.
“You must tell Rhoda about that,” Mrs. Ware exclaimed. “Let her see that there is some virtue in slaveholders. It’s just her notion about slavery beingwrong that keeps you apart, Jeff. If you could only convince her that there is as much right in it as there is in anything in this world, where nothing is all right, I believe she’d give up. I’ve tried to, but she seems to think I don’t know enough about it, in general, for what I say to have any influence. Talk to her about it, Jeff, and make her see plainly how we of the South feel about it. You know how necessary slave labor is to the South, and all that side of it. She has heard only the things the abolitionists say, here in the North, and she’s all taken up with that. But you can give her the other side, as a southern man with one of the best and kindest of hearts, who has studied the question thoroughly. If you can only convince her that slavery is right, dear boy, or even best for the niggers, as we know it is, you’ll win the day—and make me almost as happy as you will Rhoda, or yourself!”
“It is good advice, madam, and I shall follow it. I have begun to understand that I must win Rhoda’s head before she will give up her heart. But I shall win them both, and call you ‘mother’ yet!”
“Heaven grant it, dear boy, for you were made for each other, you and my dear girl!”
She rose to take her leave, but Charlotte came with fresh medicines for the invalid and bustled about the room preparing his draughts. Mrs. Ware, with an eye upon her daughter’s gracefulmovements, sat down again and talked of ordinary affairs until she thought Charlotte had spent as much time there as was needful. Then she summoned that young lady to go with her and assist at certain rites in the kitchen.
But Rhoda would not visit the sick-chamber through all the forenoon. Why she was staying away she scarcely knew, except that she said to herself several times during the long hours of the morning, “He won’t miss me if Charlotte’s there.” Jeff had obeyed her injunction that he must not speak of love, and during the last two days had kept careful curb upon his tongue and close watch upon the language of his eyes. And she missed more than she would admit to herself the outbreaks of those heretofore unruly members. She shared her father’s suspense over the election that was going on and during the forenoon, whenever he was alone in his office, she went in to ask him if he had heard any news and to talk over the situation.
More than ever, this fall, he was making a companion of her and discussing with her as freely as he did with Horace Hardaker and his other anti-slavery friends, the plans and movements of the anti-slavery people, and the prospects of the Republican party. She was a good listener, rarely making comments unless she had something worth while to say, and usually he found what she did say clear-thoughted and sensible.
On this morning it was not only her interest in what was going on in Pennsylvania that sent her every now and again to seek her father’s society. Of equal force was her desire to escape from the tormenting questions that filled her mind as to what Jeff was doing, whether Charlotte was with him, and whether or not he was wishing she were there. And so, between her political zeal and her love, she passed a restless, fruitless morning.
Her mother noted her frequent visits to her father’s office and, coupling with these the fact that she had all the morning ignored Delavan’s presence in the house, made instant inference. “It’s Amos’s influence over her,” she told herself, resentment rising bitter in her heart. “He’s urging her against it and spoiling my dear girl’s life, just for the sake of his own whims! It’s most selfish of him—and wicked. But I’ll see what I can do!”
Knocking at Rhoda’s bedroom door after dinner she found her daughter sitting at the eastern window, hands idly folded in her lap, and eyes upon the wooded hills, whose autumn colors glowed softly through the gray, dripping mist. It was so unusual to see her doing absolutely nothing that Mrs. Ware stared at her in blank surprise.
“Why, Rhoda, you look lonely sitting here all by yourself,” she said briskly. “Why don’t you go in and stay with Jeff for a while?”
“I don’t know—I guess I don’t feel like it,” Rhoda responded, a forlorn note in her voice.
“Jeff has been asking for you, dear. In fact, he’s fretting himself into a fever because you haven’t even looked into the room all this morning. And you were there only a little while yesterday—”
“Twice, yesterday, mother.”
“But such a little while each time. It isn’t kind to leave the poor boy alone all day, on such a dreary day as this.”
“But Charlotte—”
“No, I want Charlotte to help me to-day. It’s time she was learning to do more things about the house. Put on your pink frock, honey, you look so pretty in that, and go in and cheer Jeff up for a while.”
Rhoda did not answer, but looked out at the wet earth and the drizzling rain. Through her soul there surged such a forceful longing to follow her mother’s advice that for a moment it seemed to arrest her powers of both action and speech.
“Don’t sit here and mope any longer,” her mother went on with tender cheerfulness, “and don’t be so unkind to poor, sick Jeff. Come on, honey, I’ll help you dress.” And opening the wardrobe she took out the pink gown. Its wide skirt was covered with tiny flounces and when it was adjusted over a ruffled petticoat and herlargest hoopskirt, her slender waist and her head and shoulders rose out of its spreading folds as if they were emerging from a huge, many-petaled rose.
Jeff Delavan’s face brightened as she floated into the room. He was dressed, for the first time since his accident, and sitting by the window.
“Rhoda! How good of you to come—and to wear that dress! You’re like a ray of sunshine on this dark day! I’ve listened and hoped for you all day, and at last you’re here! You’re such a busy person, Rhoda, that I ought to feel fortunate to get even a little of your time. What have you been doing all the morning? All manner of things?”
“Yes,—no—that is—yes, I’ve been busy,—I always am, you know,” she stammered, confused, remembering how idle her morning had been. “I’ve been with father part of the time,” she went on, recovering her self-possession, “talking about the elections to-day.”
“What do you care about the elections?” he demanded, in bantering gaiety.
She turned to him with proud gravity. “More than I do about anything else in the world.”
Quickly his expression changed to one as serious as her own, and he began to speak of the situation in Pennsylvania and of his own belief in the success of the Democratic state ticket. She listened for a few sentences and then her heart beganto clamor for signs of love in his face and voice and words. She ignored the fact that she had forbidden all such manifestation and knew only that she wanted it and it was not there. All unknown to her, in his gladness at her coming her lover was having his own battle with himself to do her bidding, and was so fearful lest he should overstep the line she had drawn and lose her dear presence that he was plunging into this political discourse as the safest thing he could do.
She seemed to be paying close attention, but she heard only a word or a part of a sentence here and there. Instead, vague fears, half-realized doubts, uncertain questions filled her brain. Would she ever again see that look in his face? Did he ever look at Charlotte like that? Was his love for her all gone so soon? And then the spirit of the eternal feminine began to assert itself in her breast. She was, after all, her mother’s daughter, and although the spirit of coquetry lay deep within her breast, so deep that only the call of truest love could bring it to the surface, yet it was there and it came now to do her heart’s bidding.
It was all done instinctively, without conscious intention. But if her mother or sister could have looked through the wall they would have been surprised by the sight of a different Rhoda from the one they knew. This tender creature of coquettish graces and alluring smiles and eyelidsquickly lowered over ardent glances—was she the practical, efficient daughter of the house, upon whom they were both so dependent?
Delavan gazed at her, began to stumble over his sentences, confused the names of the people of whom he spoke, broke off for an instant, went back and started anew, then stopped abruptly in the middle of a sentence. “Rhoda Ware,” he exclaimed in a low voice that shook with feeling.
At the sound of it Rhoda’s little, half-conscious coquetries dropped from her instantly. It was a serious face that his gaze encountered as he surveyed her with dark eyes glowing and about his mouth the baffled but determined look that had become for her a sign of his strength—measure alike of his self-control and of his determination. She had seen it in every one of their struggles and it had seemed always to be saying to her, “You’ve conquered this time, but I shall win you yet!” She watched for it and loved it because it told her alike of her power over him and of his forceful masculine will, and perhaps also because deep down in her heart she half believed and almost hoped it would yet be stronger than her own resolution.
“Why do you insist upon keeping us apart?” he demanded, an imperious note in his voice. “You are doing a wicked thing. You’ve no right to starve both our hearts of the love that belongs to us, because of a mere whim!”
“Listen to me, Jeff, while I tell you the truth,and then you won’t want to marry me!” She was sitting straight and stiff, her face pale, and in it something of the same exaltation he had seen there on that June day in the arbor—the outward glow of the sacrificial fires she had lighted for the consuming of her love.
“You don’t know what I am, Jeff! I am a nigger-thief and I am proud of it! I am stealing your slaves, anybody’s slaves that want their freedom, and helping them to find their way to Canada, where they will be safe! Jefferson Delavan, of Fairmount, Kentucky, doesn’t want to marry a woman who does that sort of thing and means to keep it up as long as there are slaves and she has power to help them!”
He looked at her a moment in silent amazement. “Rhoda, you don’t realize the full significance of what you are saying, and doing!”
“If I could I would run off every slave from your plantations and send them all to Canada, where you could never touch one of them again. That is how much I realize it!”
A slow smile crept over his face while he regarded her with a look that was half surprise, half overleaping love, and was not without a touch of tender amusement. “But if you were to take away all my slaves, dear heart, you wouldn’t do me nearly the harm that you are doing now by stealing yourself from me!”
Her serious eyes looked straight into his for amoment in silence, and then her flashing smile broke over her face. “I won’t ask you to put your words to the proof,” she said in a quizzical tone.
He flushed a little. “I know what you mean,” he answered tenderly, “and if there were no more in this matter than the mere question of having or not having slaves I would willingly free all that I own—ask Emily to divide the property and give their freedom to all the niggers that might fall to my share—for your sake, Rhoda, dear, for the sake of making you my wife. But the South needs slave labor—has got to have it in order to be prosperous—and I would be as untrue to my duty to my state and to my section if I were to do that as you think you would be to your conscience if you were to accept slavery.”
She followed quickly upon his last word: “There can be no need of property or prosperity, as you call it, equal to the need, the right, of every human being to his freedom. When you make your comfort and wealth,—I mean all of you in the South,—of more importance than that first human right you are outraging one of God’s laws, and God’s curse will yet fall heavily upon you because of it.”
“You speak in that way, Rhoda, because—pardon me—you really know nothing about economic conditions in the South. You are merely repeating the words of these abolition fanatics at the North, where the industrial conditions are such that slavelabor would not be profitable. If it were, there’d be a different tune sung north of Mason and Dixon’s line!”
She shook her head at him. “You say that because you don’t understand the feeling that is at the bottom of the anti-slavery movement. It places human rights above business profits.”
“As to that, we of the South have our human rights and civil rights, too. We are trying to keep faith and you of the North are struggling to break it. You abolitionists forget the big share, the equal share, the southern states had in the making of this country, and you forget that they bore more than their share of the burden and loss of making it into a nation. There was more blood shed in South Carolina during the Revolution, Rhoda, than in Massachusetts, yes, more than in all New England. And now Massachusetts has the presumption, the insolence, to try to dictate to us how we shall order our affairs! We let her alone to work out her own destiny, and we demand the same right!”
“But we northerners see farther and see clearer into the way things are going than you can, because your eyes are blinded by what you believe to be your present interests. We want you to recognize the truth, that this nation was created to be a free country, that those who made it meant it to be the hope of the whole world, and it cannever, never, be that as long as you of the South insist upon making it half slave.”
“You are quite mistaken, Rhoda, as to what they meant, or, rather, as to the way in which they meant it. When this nation was created North and South joined in sworn faith to a written contract. That contract recognized the rights of the south in its peculiar, its necessary, institution, and provided for their safeguarding. And now the North is trying to break that sworn faith, to force us out of our constitutional rights. It is not only our property but our honor that is at stake, and we should be craven indeed if we did not resent this combination of despotism and insult! Preston Brooks was right when he said the other day that if Frémont is elected the people of the South ought to march to Washington and seize the archives and the treasury of the government!”
She was leaning eagerly forward, her eyes shining, her lips parted, her face, paled by her excitement, vivid with the feeling that had swept her up into the regions where soul and body breathe the elixir of supreme conviction. But when she spoke, breaking in quickly upon his first pause, it was not only the fulness of her belief that thrilled in her low, tense tones. Their lower notes were sweet with the love that burned in her heart.
“Oh, Jeff, can’t you see— Oh, I wish I could make you see that there can be no rights that are founded on wrong.” She paused a moment, hervoice on a suspended accent, as she gathered her thoughts together. Delavan’s eyes devoured the fair picture that she made and his heart leaped in response to those sweet notes in her voice. His mind was full of the ideas he had just uttered, tense with the conviction of their truth, and his nerves were thrilling with the emotions they had bred. And this dear girl, leaning toward him with spirit-lit face, as tense with her convictions as he with his, was the embodiment of all that northern feeling and activity which he so much resented, against which he protested with all his force as a base invasion of Southern rights.
But, even as his body throbbed with love and admiration for her fairness and sweetness, his spirit yearned toward the loftiness of hers. Ah, they were akin, they were mates, their spirits, even though they were opposed! He recognized in her that same fervency of faith, that same power of devotion to the mind’s ideal, that were bone and sinew of his own temperament. And they were on opposing sides of this vital question—so intensely vital, he felt, to him, to his section, to the nation, to the whole of civilization! If only they were joined in their ideals!
“You see, Jeff, when they signed the Constitution, they hadn’t come to realize yet how wrong slavery is. Men grow in knowledge of right and wrong, and we in the North have grown faster on this question than you have, because we haven’t hadthe comfort and the luxury and the wealth produced by that awful wrong to blind and hinder us. Our eyes have been opened—God has opened them for us, and we see slavery for what it is—a hideous, cruel, horrible thing that keeps human beings down and makes beasts of them, brutalizes the souls God made in his image!”
She clasped her hands and began to extend her arms beseechingly toward her listener. Her pink sleeves fell back a little and his heart swelled with longing to see the warm roundness of those arms reaching out to him in love and surrender. “Oh, Jeff, it is so wicked, so evil,” she began. “I wish I could make you see—” her voice broke, she drew back her arms and dropped her face into her hands, then sprang to her feet. “And—and—oh, Jeff—” her voice was thrilling with love, but it trembled upon sobs and she rushed to the door. “It is keeping us apart!” she cried, and the door closed behind her.