CHAPTER XVII
When Jefferson Delavan received the mail containing the three letters from Hillside his lover’s eye saw at once the envelope bearing the handwriting of Rhoda Ware. Everything else was pushed aside and this was hastily torn open. He turned the sheets over and swept them with a hungry look, as though he would devour all their contents at one glance. And so it happened that before he had read another line his eyes fell upon the page on which she had poured out her heart, which she thought she had burned—but almost wished she had not.
He had to read it twice before he could believe that his eyes were not playing him some trick. Then he sprang up joyously, with a great light in his face, and ordered his horse. The rest of his mail, even to Rhoda’s letter, was thrust into his pocket, while he made ready for immediate journey. Slaves went scurrying hither and thither, urged to unaccustomed speed by their master’s impetuous commands, and in less than half an hour he was in his saddle.
He struck across the country on the turnpike road straight for the Kentucky shore of the Ohio river opposite Hillside. Quicker time might havebeen possible by the more roundabout route by railroad to Cincinnati, but his only thought was that thus he was headed directly toward the white house on the hill.
He galloped his horse for an hour or two before he remembered that it would be the part of wisdom not to take too much out of it at the start, laughed aloud as he slowed down, slapped its neck in sheer joy, and sang lustily the tale of “Lord Lovell.” Then he remembered, that he had not read the whole of Rhoda’s letter. He drew it forth, and was reminded in so doing that he had other letters in his pocket. But they could wait. He plunged into hers and read it eagerly through, dropping the bridle and allowing his horse to take a slower pace. Now and then he smiled or gave a little, tender laugh, as he came upon a mirthful sally, or again he frowned thoughtfully and shook his head at her argument. And presently he was staring in bewilderment at the closing paragraph with its denial of his suit. His heart sank as he hastily searched out the other sheet for reassurance. Yes, there it was, and there could be no mistaking the longing call of her heart that spoke so piteously through its brief lines.
“This other, she wrote with her head,” he told himself, “and then her heart gave up and made her write this. Ah, the dear, dear girl! It’s like her to surrender like this, so completely, and even against herself when she lets her heart get theupper hand. Oh, my arms will be all the tying she’ll need, and there’ll be kisses enough to stop her mouth as long as we live!”
With a caressing touch he put the missive away in an inner pocket and urged his horse on again, smiling and humming softly. At last he recalled the other letters. Mrs. Ware’s he read first and found in it confirmation of the view he had already taken of Rhoda’s surprising message. The girl was evidently longing for sight of him once more, her mother said, and if he were to come soon perhaps he could storm her stubborn heart. He laughed again and exclaimed aloud, “Yes, indeed, I’m coming, and if there’s any more storming necessary—” and the sentence broke off into another exultant laugh.
Then he bethought him of the other letter. It was without date line or signature and with puzzled eyes he read its few lines, in the middle of the page: “When true hearts pine and gallants stay away, then what can ladies do? Alas the day, they can but pine when cruel gallants come no more!”
He looked the sheet all over and examined the envelope inside and out to find some clue to its authorship. But there was not the least sign, and the postmark was indistinct. It was written upon the same kind of paper and inclosed in the same kind of envelope as Rhoda always used, but the handwriting was not Rhoda’s, and it seemed sounlike her to send such an indirect, silly little message that he said at once, “No, it’s not from Rhoda.” But who could there be among his friends or acquaintance likely to take such interest in his courtship, of which so few of them knew, and send him this sort of romantic hint? Of course, it might be from some friend of Rhoda’s in whom she had confided.
“It must be that little rogue of a Charlotte!” he presently exclaimed. “She has sharp eyes in her head, that’s plain enough, always, and she has seen how it is with her sister and thought she might help things along by giving me a hint. Bless her heart! She’s a dear little thing, if she does like to flirt, and after Rhoda and I are married we’ll bring her down to Fairmount and give her the best time she’s had in all her life and perhaps marry her to Lloyd Corey or Frank Morehead.”
While this was not the outcome of her anonymous message which Charlotte hoped to bring about when she penned it, she would perhaps have been as willing to accept it, had her thoughts ranged so far ahead, as the one she planned to compass. Nor would she have been taken aback had she known, while she fluttered about on the tiptoe of expectancy for whatever might happen, with what ardor Jefferson Delavan’s thoughts were turning toward Rhoda on his northward ride.
If her missive induced him to come again to their house what did it matter whether he thoughtits words referred to Rhoda or to some one else? Since Rhoda was determined she would not marry him, he would soon find out his mistake and would be quite willing to look for consolation elsewhere. Had he not shown her every attention on the trip to Cincinnati? And when had she failed to set a man’s heart aflame, if she had really wanted to witness the conflagration? Let her once more have the opportunity—and she smiled at the brown eyes reflected back from her mirror, confident that they had lost none of their power.
He would be able to reach the Ohio river by the morrow’s night, Delavan thought, and the next morning he would cross over and hasten up the hill to claim the sweet promise that beckoned to him from that glimpse of Rhoda’s secret heart. As he mused over her words, and the wonder of it that she should at last have called him, it occurred to him that perhaps she had not meant to put that sheet into her letter. Perhaps she had merely written down that revelation of her feelings as ease to her own aching heart. But he laughed joyously.
“She’s let me know how it is with her, whether she meant to send it or not, and I’ll do just as she begs me to, this time!”
And so he urged his horse onward, his glowing heart beating high in his breast, sure of the happiness waiting for him at the end of his journey, and counting off the lessening hours that lay betweenhim and the banks of the river. But that night there came a violent rainstorm that carried away bridges and left swollen streams rushing through overflowed valleys. It delayed him two days, so that it was not until the sixth day after Rhoda penned her letter that he reached Hillside.
And in the meantime the Supreme Court had announced its decision in the Dred Scott case, delighting the South, staggering the North, and fanning to still higher and hotter flame the fires of contention over the ever-burning question of slavery. Jefferson Delavan heard the news as he fumed over his delay, storm-bound in the hotel of a country town. He and half a dozen other slave owners from the town and near-by plantations, who dropped into the hotel during the evening, rejoiced over the victory as they sat around a bowl of punch.
“This will put an end to the whole controversy and give the country peace at last,” said Delavan.
“It knocks the feet from under the Republican party,” declared another. “They’ll be capable of no more mischief now!”
“Yes, gentlemen,” exclaimed a third, “it surely ties the hands of the northern fanatics. They can no longer stop our growth!”
“Under the protection of this decision,” Delavan followed on, “we can take our slaves wherever we like, and, with the northern Democracy becomingmore and more favorable to us, we shall soon win back the ground we have lost!”
“Nor will our growth be all in that direction!” said another, slowly and significantly.
“No, indeed!” was Delavan’s quick response. “Mexico and Central America will be ours for the taking as soon as we realize our strength. Gentlemen!” He sprang to his feet, his face glowing with enthusiasm, his glass held high. “Gentlemen, I give you a toast: To the Republic of the South, our own fair Land of Dixie, firm footed on the foundation of slavery, and spreading wide wings North, South, East and West; her day shall come soon and endure forever!”
With shouts of approval the others were on their feet at once, drinking the toast, cheering the sentiment, and waving hats, pipes, glasses, whatever their hands could seize. And no ghost of a misgiving visited Jefferson Delavan, in the midst of their exultant rejoicing, as to how that decision might affect his personal fate.
To Rhoda Ware, as she looked back upon them, the days following that of her adventure with the negro lad were like a beautiful dream. After her one moment of apprehension she did not believe that she had put into her letter the telltale sheet whereon she had poured out her heart. She was sure she had burned it. But that instant of anxious fear that her lover would read her confession had given to her traitor heart its opportunity. In thebrief respite of secret rejoicing she had allowed it to take, it had leaped to the saddle and it would not give up again to her mind and conscience the right of command. So she submitted to the sway of her love and battled with it no more.
“He will know—he will feel it, even though I didn’t send what I wrote,” she whispered to herself. “And if he doesn’t come soon, I will write to him—and tell him—yes, I’ll tell him to come!”
She spent much time alone in her room, seated at a southern window that commanded a view of the street leading up from the steamboat landing, the little bundle of letters and the faded rose held caressingly in her hands. It happened that no fugitives came to their door during this time, or she might have suffered sudden awakening from her dream.
As it was, she thought of nothing but the coming of her lover and her surrender to his suit. Now and then her reverie strayed on into the future and she pictured their life together in Jeff’s beautiful home at Fairmount, with the slaves all freed and giving faithful service for wages. Staying so much apart and living in her own rose-colored dreams, the strenuous enthusiasms of the recent months, even her immediate surroundings, seemed to lose their reality. The same emotional force in her character which enabled her to enter with such zeal into the anti-slavery work and to be so absorbed by it that she could sacrifice her loveupon its altar made it possible now,—indeed, made it inevitable,—when she had once given up to the opposing influence, that she should be swept by its forceful current to the other extreme.
A new expression came into her face. Her dreams drew a soft and tender veil across the usually intent and serious look of her eyes, and all her countenance glowed with her inner happiness. Her mother saw the change in expression and demeanor with inward delight. For when it came to the affections Mrs. Ware was able to interpret her daughter’s feelings and actions with more surety than in matters of the mind and conscience.
Charlotte, in whose heart rankled resentment against her father and sister for their anti-slavery views, their Underground work, and the reproach that had been administered to her, noted the new look on Rhoda’s face and said bitterly to herself: “Yes, I suppose she’s getting hold of a whole pack of niggers to steal and send on to Canada!” She told herself petulantly that she was no longer of any consequence in their home and began to feel an angry sense of injury at the bonds tacitly imposed upon her conduct by the ideas and actions of her father and sister. She longed for some happening that would take her away and put her into surroundings where she could feel her accustomed sense of freedom and personal importance.
And so, the wish being father to the conviction, Charlotte felt every day more and more surethat Jefferson Delavan would soon reappear, that Rhoda would refuse him again, and that then she could capture his repulsed heart and speedily win from him a proposal of marriage. She would hold him off a little while, and make him all the more eager—that would be easy enough—and when at last she did consent, he would of course want an early marriage, and to that, too, she would reluctantly consent—“Oh, the sooner the better,” her thoughts broke into sudden storm, “so that I can get away from this black abolition hole!”
Dr. Ware observed with surprise the look upon his daughter’s face and the change in her manner. He felt the lessening of her ardor in their mutual interests and was not slow to attribute her silence, her drawing away from the life of the household and her self-absorbed, dreamlike demeanor to its true cause.
“Something has happened,” he said to himself, “that, for the time being, has made her give up the struggle against her heart, and, like a river that has burst through its dam, her love is overflowing everything else in her nature. Well, I’m glad Delavan isn’t here now, and I hope her conscience will get its head above water again before she sees him. The good Lord grant that something happens to bring her back to herself before it’s too late!”
But he said nothing to his daughter, faithfullyobserving the pledge he had made to his wife at their recent reconciliation. Nor did he and Mrs. Ware speak to each other about it, although it was uppermost in both their thoughts. The renewed tenderness between them was too sacred for either to dare the risk of marring its bloom by even so much as an allusion to a subject upon which they were so widely divided.
On the fourth day of her surrender Rhoda sat at her window reading a letter from her friend, Julia Hammerton. Her active spirit was beginning to bestir itself again and as she finished the epistle she stretched her arms above her head and with a little frown remembered that she had that morning neglected one of her usual duties. Then, “Dear me,” she exclaimed, “I’ve forgotten all about that for— Oh, it must be several days! I suppose mother has attended to it,” she rebuked herself, and then smiled tenderly at the sunshine which filled all her inner consciousness.
“I’ve been very happy, these days,” she thought, “but I’m afraid I’ve been awfully lazy and selfish too. I must go down now and get to work.”
She looked out of the window and saw Horace Hardaker and the elder Kimball, father of Walter and Lewis, coming up the hill. Her thought reverted to the missive from Horace’s sister.
“I’ll take Julia’s letter down and read it to them. There’s such a lot of news from Kansas in it that will interest them. Dear Julia! Horaceought to be proud of her—and he is, I know. She’s been so brave and so true!”
The hint of a shadow crossed her face as she looked absently at the letter in her hand. From somewhere far back in her mind seemed to come a faint question, Had she also been true? But she lifted her head proudly with the quick answering thought:
“Of course I am true. I shall not change my convictions the least little bit, even if I do marry Jeff. And perhaps I can do more good as his wife than I could in any other way.”
“As the mistress of slaves!” came back the accusing whisper.
In the office she found her father and the two others deeply engrossed in conversation, their looks anxious and gloomy, but their manner showing excitement.
“Come in, Rhoda,” said Dr. Ware, as she hesitated at the door, “and hear the bad news.”
“Bad news! Oh, father, what is it?”
“The Supreme Court has decided the Dred Scott case and the result is even worse than we have feared. Chief Justice Taney has dragged his official robes through slavery filth and given to the pro-slaveryites everything they want!”
“Oh, father—Horace! What does he say?”
“The decision is,” answered Hardaker, “that a slave cannot be a citizen—practically, that a nigger has no rights a white man is bound to respect—thatCongress has no right to prohibit slavery in the territories, and that therefore the Missouri Compromise is unconstitutional and void.”
“It knocks the very breath out of the Republican party,” added Dr. Ware. “Its existence is based on the effort to get Congress to forbid slavery in the territories. So, now—where is it? Where are we?”
“We are done for, all of us,” said Kimball, in hopeless tones. “It has knocked the footing from under the whole anti-slavery fight. It binds us hand and foot, and it looks now as if we might as well stop fighting.”
“Oh, no, Mr. Kimball!” Rhoda exclaimed. “Don’t say that! We must keep on fighting as long as there’s one of us left!”
“She’s right, Kimball!” said Dr. Ware, his glance resting for a moment upon his daughter’s face. She looked up in some confusion at having broken in so abruptly, and met his eyes. Cool and clear, they seemed to be looking into her very heart and down in their gray depths as they turned away she felt rather than saw a gleam of gratification. The hot blood flushed her face, and conscience, that had just now barely stirred under its rose-leaf coverlet, roused and began to tell her that she too must keep on fighting. Had her father guessed how near she had been to deserting their cause, she wondered.
“Yet, she’s right,” Dr. Ware was repeating, with a thump of his fist on the table. “We’ve got to find standing ground somewhere, and somehow keep up the fight!”
“Their next step will be to reopen the slave trade—they’re demanding that already,” Kimball went on. “And then we shall have once more all the horrors of the slave ships sheltered under the law and people taught to regard the traffic as right because it is legal.”
“Yes,” broke in Hardaker, “that’s the worst of these legalized wrongs—the way they debauch the consciences of people. Look at the way the northern Democrats are defending the right of property in slaves! A few years ago they admitted slavery was wrong, but said it was here and so we must make the best of it. Now they say it is all right and must be protected and are tumbling over one another in their eagerness to give the South everything she wants!”
“Well, this decision gives her everything she wants now, and opens the door for her to take anything else she may want later.”
Kimball’s thin old hands were clenched together and his gray-bearded face was sad with the hopelessness of age. For thirty years he had been fighting with all his strength in the cause of the slave and he had seen the anti-slavery sentiment grow from the conviction of a mere handful of people to the determination of a mighty multitude.And now, when at last it seemed as if they had almost reached the point where at least the thing could be penned up in small space and its political power taken from it, now had come this deadly blow, to nullify every effort they could make.
Rhoda knew what long years of endeavor and sacrifice he had spent in the anti-slavery cause and how ardent had been his hope that he might live to see slavery ended and the whole country made free. She watched him now, her cheeks flushing and her heart responding with full sympathy to the grief and despair that filled his breast.
“If Congress,” he went on bitterly, “must recognize and defend the master’s right to his slave wherever he takes him, then there can be no hindrance to slavery in any part of this country, and Toombs and Davis and all the rest of them can yet call the roll of their slaves in the shadow of Bunker Hill monument, or any place else they wish. That, my friends, is what this decision means!”
His voice trembled and Rhoda saw in his eyes the tears of an old man whose dearest hope had come to naught. She was conscious of a remorseful shame, as though she herself had been in some measure responsible for his grief and despair. For had she not, was her swift, self-accusing thought, been ready to compromise with this monster?
“No, no, Mr. Kimball, you mustn’t give up like that,” Hardaker was exclaiming, “not while there’s one of us left to die fighting. And theelection last fall showed that there are more than a million of us, who at least are ready to help. Rhoda’s got the right idea,” and he looked at her with smiling approval.
Again she blushed and turned her eyes away, feeling acutely that she did not deserve this praise and miserably wondering if they would despise her were she to tell them that she had been willing, only an hour before, to become a slaveholder’s wife.
“It seem to me,” Horace went on, “that we’ve got to go right on with the popular propaganda against slavery. Why, this very decision of Chief Justice Taney—it’s so atrocious and inhuman, it will be the best campaign document we’ve ever had. We ought to circulate it by the thousand! I’m not sure, friends, but it will be a good thing for us, in the long run!”
Dr. Ware smiled slightly. He was accustomed to the enthusiasm with which Hardaker, in a dozen sentences, could convince himself of the truth of a proposition which, five minutes before, he would have flouted. Nevertheless, this idea appealed to him.
“There’s a good deal in that, Horace,” he acquiesced, “and I think we’d better take it up in the Rocky Mountain Club. But while we’re appealing to the northern voters we mustn’t forget the South. We must extend and increase our Underground work, because it is making slave property most precariousall along the border states. The more slaves we can run off the more uncertain the whole institution becomes, and the more angry we make the South—and there’s nothing irritates them so much as this—the sooner the crisis will come. War is the only possible solution of this problem, friends. So I say, let’s bring on the crisis as soon as possible, and fight it out!”
At that moment there was a knock at the office door and a request for Dr. Ware’s services in another part of the town. The two visitors went down the hill again and Rhoda, invited by the bright sunshine, strolled down the veranda and across the yard to the grape arbor. She wanted to be alone and think matters over, find where she stood and allay the turmoil between her heart and her conscience.
As she walked down the path she saw that Jim was already making preparations for the spring. This great bed was to be filled again with white petunias—they had liked it so much last year. Again she seemed to sense their odor, as on that June night, and to hear a voice vibrant with tones of love. No, she could not think here,—her heart would not let her. She turned away and hurried to her room. But there too every inch of space was like a seductive voice calling to her with the memories of the last few days. With a sudden grip upon herself—a quick indrawing of breath and a pressure of teeth upon her lip, the outwardsigns of inner process of taking herself in hand—she went deliberately downstairs and out into the woodshed.
There she sat down upon a chunk of wood and faced the little room, with its door heedlessly exposed and open, just as the marshal had left it. The sight stung her, as she had known it would, with an accusation of apostasy. But her spirit rose up quickly in self-defense.
“No, I didn’t desert our cause, even in thought,” she declared to herself. “I’m not so bad as that, I hope. I only thought I could marry Jeff and still help it along. But I’m afraid I couldn’t. Yes, I know what mother said, and for a little while it did seem possible—just because I wanted it so much, I suppose. But mother and I are so different. I couldn’t be in the midst of things that I thought were wrong without trying to make them right. Jeff would free his slaves if I asked him to—I’m sure he would.”
She lingered over the thought a moment and a fond smile curved her lips. “Yes, I’m sure he would, and I wouldn’t have to be a mistress of slaves. But that isn’t the whole of it. He told me once, and it’s been in all his letters, how wrapped up he is in the interests of the South. And that means slavery. It’s his own section and what they think are their rights, against all the rest of us and against freedom, and eternal right, and the upward progress of the world. We’d still be justas much divided and opposed to each other as ever.”
The memory returned to her of her father sitting at his desk, his face drawn with sadness and sadness in his voice, as she had seen him on that evening in the previous autumn when she had asked if her mother could not be told what they were doing. She shivered a little.
“No, I shouldn’t like to think of my husband feeling like that, knowing that he couldn’t tell me of his dearest hopes and plans and ambitions, and feel sure of my sympathy. No, that wouldn’t be being married, really married.”
A little longer she sat with her chin in her hand and stared at the open door of the tiny room. Her face gradually took on a stern expression that made it, notwithstanding its youthful smoothness, curiously like her father’s.
“No,” she said aloud as she rose, “it can’t be. It’s just as impossible still as it has been all the time—even if I did think for a little while—”
Her face suddenly melted into tenderness and her voice sank to a whisper. “It was a lovely dream while it lasted, and I’m glad—it didn’t do anybody, not even me, any harm, and I’m glad—yes, I’m glad—I had it!” The little lines at the corners of her mouth deepened, her upper lip lifted, and her flashing smile lit up her countenance and shone in her eyes. “It’s almost like looking back on having been married for a little while!” she thought.