CHAPTER XXII
In the depths of humiliation Rhoda mourned over the fiasco of her attempt to guide Mary Ellen to freedom. But she soon found that the fiasco itself was bearing a rich crop of results. She was indicted for aiding and abetting the escape of a runaway slave and a dozen men of the rescuing party for obstructing the United States marshal in the performance of his duties and preventing him from rendering back the fugitive. The anti-slavery side retorted by arresting Gordon, the slave trader’s agent, and the slave catcher accompanying him, under the state’s personal liberty law, for kidnaping, and several members of the marshal’s posse, who had used fire-arms, for assault with intent to kill.
As the news spread, meeting after meeting was held all through the central and eastern part of the state and up into the Western Reserve, denouncing the law, expressing sympathy with its victims and declaring the righteousness of setting at naught its provisions. Through the southern portion of the state and wherever there was sufficient pro-slavery feeling to crystallize into such action, counter-meetings were held, which reprobated the unfairness to the South, characterizedin contemptuous terms the actions and principles of believers in the “higher law,” declared them to be traitors and called upon the Federal Government to use stern measures in upholding the Fugitive Slave Act.
On the advice of Horace Hardaker, who was to conduct her case, and that of the counsel for her fellow prisoners, both Rhoda and they refused to enter recognizance that they would appear in court when wanted, and therefore were compelled to remain in jail.
“It’s an unrighteous law in every respect,” said Hardaker, “and our contention will be that it is unconstitutional and void. To consent to return for trial under it would make tacit recognition of its validity. And that we won’t do. Besides, staying in jail will make martyrdom out of it, and the effect will be all the more potent.”
But Rhoda, although she saw that her failure, in the outcome, would be of more consequence than success would have been, felt the pangs of humbled pride. She talked the matter over with Rachel, Daniel Benedict’s wife. For between her and the Quakeress a warm affection had quickly developed. Rachel Benedict visited her as often as the prison officials would allow, and Rhoda soon found that the little, dove-gray figure, with the sweet, strong face and the silver hair, was sure to bring assuaging of her heartaches and renewal of her spiritual strength. Without makingany mention of her personal affairs, Rhoda yet found it possible to talk with her new friend with more intimacy and with greater surety of understanding and response than she had ever been able to do with her mother.
“I was so proud, so self-complacent,” she said, “that I thought I could make amends to Mary Ellen for the wrongs that had been done to her. And I showed myself unworthy even to try. I let her be taken, just by being wrapped up for a few minutes in my own affairs, in something that troubled me. Oh, it has been a bitter lesson!”
“Thee seems to me to be too much troubled by thy repentance. If thee lets it engross thee it too will become a sin. And perhaps the sin for which thee is repenting does not deserve so much repentance, after all. If thee did this thing believing in thy inmost soul that it was right and wishing in thy inmost soul to do good to others by means of it, then don’t disturb thy heart, Rhoda Ware, with how it seems to have come out. It hasn’t ended yet. And thee can be sure there is plenty of time yet for more good to come out of it than thee ever dreamed of.”
“Yes, it didn’t make any difference to Mary Ellen,” Rhoda answered thoughtfully, “for she reached Canada just as safely as if I’d taken her all the way myself. But such an awful wrong had been done to her,—it seemed more horrible than any other case I had known about, and Iwanted to suffer for it myself. I wanted to make atonement for another person’s sin. And it has all ended in failure!”
“Well, isn’t thee suffering for it? Isn’t thee suffering a great deal more than if thee had been successful? But don’t delude thyself, Rhoda Ware, by thinking thee can do any good by suffering for another person’s sins. We have got to sweat and suffer stripes ourselves for the evil that is in us if we are to be purged of our sins!”
At her window that night, Rhoda pondered long upon these words. “I suppose Mrs. Benedict is right,” she said to herself finally. “It was only my pride—and my love, that made me think I could atone for even this one bit of his wrongdoing. He will have to suffer for it, for all of it, himself, before he can see that it is wrong. And we shall all have to suffer, North and South alike, for this awful sin of slavery, for the North is to blame almost as much as the South.
“‘Sweat and suffer stripes’! Bloody sweat, father thinks it will be,—he is so sure that it will end in war. Will it come in our time? Oh, surely, things cannot go on like this much longer! So much anger on both sides, so much indignation in the North, so many threats in the South—and all getting worse and worse every year—Oh, if war is to be the end, we must be getting nearly there! War!”
She shivered and pressed her hands against herface. As the grisly specter of blood and smoke passed vaguely before her mind’s eye her anxious thoughts hovered with instant anxiety over the dear image of him who she knew would be among the first to challenge the issue. Then with a little cry she sprang to her feet.
“Shall I never remember I must not think of him like that!” she asked herself with bitterness. “My sister’s husband! O, God, help me to forget!” She paced about the room with frowning brows and lips pressed hard together, telling herself, as she had already done a hundred times, that she must learn to forget, as it had been so easy for him to do. And there she touched upon her deepest wound, that his love had not been as fine and as true as she had thought it.
“How could he love another—so different—and wish to marry her, after all that has passed between us? I could not—how could he?” was the question that would come back, again and again. She tried to subdue it by telling herself that since he could, since his love and faith were not equal to hers, he was not worthy of her love and deserved only forgetfulness complete, eternal. But her heart cried out fiercely against this edict of her brain and clung to its need of believing in him.
“He is fine and noble in many, many ways,” at last she said to herself, “in nearly all ways the finest and the noblest man I’ve ever known, and ifhis love fell short of all I thought it was, I must try to forgive him that, as I forgive him his blindness about the wickedness of slavery, which kept us apart, and, I suppose—deep down in my heart—I suppose—I’ll always love him. But I’ll try, oh, I’ll try from this minute, always to think of him as Charlotte’s husband. He mustn’t be Jeff to me any more—just Charlotte’s husband! Charlotte’s husband!”
During her days in jail she spent much time embroidering dainty things for Charlotte’s trousseau, and into these she found herself able to stitch, along with the tears that would fall now and then, prayers and hopes for Charlotte’s happiness and earnest desires, since the marriage must be, that she would make her husband happy. But on this latter question she found herself haunted by a doubt that would yield to no arguments based on the sequence of love and happiness.
Charlotte and Mrs. Ware returned home immediately after Rhoda’s arrest and it was some time, after her sister’s first brief announcement of her engagement, before she heard again from either of them. And afterward their letters were filled mainly with accounts of their plans and preparations for Charlotte’s trousseau and wedding. In her replies she could not bring herself to write Jeff’s name and so referred to him only as “Charlotte’s lover,” or “Charlotte’s intended.” She noticed too that her mother spoke of him onlyin the same way while her sister wrote of him as “he,” in capital letters.
“They are afraid of hurting my feelings by mentioning his name,” I suppose, Rhoda said to herself. “I must get used to it, but—I’m glad they don’t.”
Charlotte’s letters were brief and infrequent and each one contained, in addition to talk about her bridal plans, advice in plenty on the propriety of Rhoda’s giving up her “nigger thieving” and her black abolition acquaintance, now that the family was identified with southern interests.
“Dear little sister!” Rhoda would say to herself with an indulgent smile as she read these admonitions. “She’s such a child, and she’s so positive she knows all about it! I wonder if she’ll ever really grow up!”
But her mother’s letters gave her much concern. Her arrest and imprisonment had caused Mrs. Ware severe shock and deep grief and her heart was wrung that the necessity was upon her to cause so much suffering.
“I must do whatever I can,” she moaned. “It’s on my conscience and I must, and I can’t be sorry I did this, dear, dear mother, even for your sake. I couldn’t live if I didn’t do my best to fight this awful evil!”
Evidently, too, Mrs. Ware was not well. The physical ailments that had interfered with her enjoyment of her visit to Fairmount had grownworse since her return. Notwithstanding all this the mother heart of her yearned over and wished to be with her first-born. But to this desire Rhoda gave constant denial, lest her burden of grief and pain be made harder to bear.
Dr. Ware came to see his daughter as often as his practice would allow, but his visits were necessarily brief and infrequent. He spoke occasionally of Charlotte’s engagement and Rhoda thought he seemed pleased with it.
“It’s a very good thing, I guess,” he said one day, with a cheerfulness that gave Rhoda a little twinge of unhappiness.
“But he always has loved Charlotte so much,” she thought, “and wanted her to have everything she wanted that he’d be glad to have her happy no matter if—”
“She’ll be in harmony with her surroundings and he seems to be very much in love with her,” Dr. Ware went on. Rhoda turned quickly away lest he see the little spasm of pain that she felt sure was showing itself upon her countenance.
“Your mother, of course, is deeply pleased,” he continued. “I don’t know but it is giving her almost as much pleasure as your marriage would have done. It will be a good thing for Charlotte to be married happily and settled down. She’ll come out all right. I never have had any doubts about her, in the long run, because she’s so much like what her mother was at her age.”
Horace Hardaker came often to consult with Rhoda in the preparation of her case. He hoped to make a telling presentment and was enthusiastic over the excitement that already had been aroused.
“Of course,” he said to her one day in the early winter, when the date set for her trial was almost at hand, “the law and the facts are all against us. The only thing we can do is to appeal to the sentiment against the law. Whether we lose or win, the affair is making a big breeze that’s going to be bigger yet!”
“You know, Horace,” she replied, “that I don’t care in the least what they do with me,—except on mother’s account. What I want most is to help all I can in the fight against slavery and if it will do more good for me to stay in jail than to go home and work with the Underground again, why then—” she looked straight at him and a smile flashed from her lips up into her eyes—“in jail let me stay!”
He smiled back at her and his blue eyes lighted with admiration as he laid one hand for a moment over hers. “Rhoda, I’ve told you this before, but I must say it again, and I shall always say it—you’re the grandest girl there is anywhere!”
After he was gone she sat with a tender smile on her lips. “Dear Horace!” she was thinking. “Such a good friend as he is! Sound and true to the bottom of his heart! Why didn’t I happen to fall in love with him?... Well, it seems tobe getting nearly time—for me to refuse him again!”
It was within a day or two of the opening of her trial, which was to be the first of the series, when Rhoda finally brought herself to the point of writing to Jefferson Delavan. Many times she had told herself that, since he was to marry her sister, she ought to let him know that in her heart were only wishes for his happiness. But it had been a hard thing to do and she had postponed it from week to week. At last, her sense of duty would be put off no longer and she resolutely faced the heartache that she knew the task would make all the more poignant.
“Dear Friend,” she wrote. “Charlotte has told me of the happiness that came to her and to you during her visit to Fairmount. I am sure you will believe me when I say it is my most earnest wish that that happiness will never be any less than it is now and that it will grow greater during the many long years of wedded life that I hope are before you. In your and her feelings and convictions there is nothing to divide you, nothing to prevent the complete union of hearts and souls which is the only thing that can make marriage worth while. I am sure, since you love her, that you will always be very tender to Charlotte. To me she has always been just ‘little sister’ and it is difficult for me to realize that she is really a woman and about to become a wife.At home we have always spoiled her and that has made her, sometimes, in a merry way, rather ruthless of other people’s feelings. But I have no doubt your love will make you understand that this is only on the surface and that her heart is true and loving. For you both, dear friend, soon to be brother, my heart is full of every good wish. Always your friend, Rhoda”—she paused here, on the point of signing her name in the old way, but “Adeline” seemed sacred to those other days and to the love that had been between them then, and she could not write it here. So she added only “Ware” and quickly folded and sealed the letter.
As she looked at the envelope it seemed as if it were the coffin of her love, ready for burial, as if she had said a last good-by to all the pleasure it had brought into her heart. Now only the pain was left. She bowed her head upon her hands and some scalding drops trickled through her fingers. Her jailer’s knock sounded at the door and she sprang to her feet and dried her eyes. Hardly had she time to control her sobs when it opened and Jefferson Delavan crossed the threshold.
His look was deeply earnest and intent upon her as he moved forward, holding out both hands and saying, “Rhoda! I could stay away no longer!”
“Jeff!” she faltered, stepping back. “I—I—had just written to you!”
“Written to me! Rhoda! Did you ask me to come?”
There was no mistaking the look of glad surprise and love that suddenly broke over his countenance. Rhoda gazed at him in perplexity and instinctively pressed one hand against her heart, as if to keep down the responsive love that was trying to leap upward, as she said to herself, “Charlotte’s husband! Charlotte’s husband!”
Still moving backward, away from him, as he followed her across the room exclaiming again, “Sweetheart, did you ask me to come?” her bewildered, apprehensive thought sprang to the conclusion that she must make him be true to Charlotte, that she must not let him betray the “little sister.”
“Charlotte—” she ejaculated—“your engagement—I wrote to wish you happiness!”
He stopped short and stared at her with puzzled eyes. “What under heaven do you mean?”
“Why, your engagement to my sister! Aren’t you going to marry Charlotte?”
“Assuredly, I’m not!” was his quick and emphatic answer.
“Have you—have you—broken it off, then—so soon?” She was moving her trembling hands over each other, unable to keep them still, and holding her face half averted, afraid to look at him save in brief glances, lest her eyes might betray the love that was swelling in her heart.
“You are talking in puzzles, Rhoda! I’ve never had the faintest desire to marry Charlotte, or anybody but you.”
Her face dropped lower and her bosom heaved. What could it all mean? Had they been deceiving her? And why? “She said—that is—I understood—” she stumbled. Then he broke in upon her embarrassed bewilderment.
“She didn’t say she was going to marry me, did she? Lloyd Corey is the happy man. It was love at first sight, of the most violent sort, with him, and he would take nothing but an outright ‘yes’ for his answer, and that inside of two weeks. It was a pretty little love comedy, and I wished a hundred times that you were there to watch it with me.”
She moved unsteadily to a chair and sank down, her face in her hands. It had been such tragedy to her! And now it was taking all her self-control to hold herself firmly in hand under the reaction. At once he was beside her, dropping upon one knee and trying to take her hands from her face. “What is it, Rhoda? What is the matter? Look at me, dearest!”
“Yes, Jeff—let me realize—wait—one moment!” He watched her anxiously, her hands in his, as with a deep, long breath, a tension of the muscles and a pressing together of her lips she regained control of herself. She withdrew herhands and slowly lifted her face as he rose to his feet.
“It’s nothing, Jeff—no, I don’t mean that—it is so much. But—I thought—Charlotte led me to think that—she was going to marry you—and now—to find that you’re not—that you still—” She stopped and half turned away her face, trying to hide the confession she knew was there of all it meant to find that his love was still her own. But already he had seen enough to set his heart on fire and he sprang toward her, as if to take her in his arms.
“And you cared so much? Rhoda, deny me no longer!”
She drew away from him and said humbly: “Can you forgive me, Jeff? Indeed, I would not have thought it possible, but it seemed to have happened. It was just one of Charlotte’s tricks.”
“Forgive you, dear heart? I do not think you could do anything that I would not forgive!”
Her glance swept the room. Then she looked up at him with a smile and said significantly, “Even this?”
“Even this, Rhoda, else I would not be here. I held out against the pleading of my heart as long as I could. But I longed so much to see you and wanted so much to help you, that I couldn’t stay away any longer. I’ve come, dear, to beg you once more to be my wife. Let me give you, at once, the protection of my name—”
She drew back and lifted her head proudly. “I have already the protection of my father’s name and the approval of my conscience. I should feel myself a coward, and a traitor to myself, if I tried to crawl under any other now.”
“I understand what you mean—and I beg your pardon. But we both know now, more surely than we knew before, how necessary we are to each other, how deep and true and everlasting our love is. Don’t you realize that neither of us can ever be happy until we have joined our lives together? What are the days and the weeks for us now but just a constant yearning for each other’s presence. Look forward, Rhoda, to months and years of that, think of how much more life will mean for us both, if only you will give up and listen to what your heart tells you.”
She had risen and was standing beside her chair, one hand on its back. He came close to her and rested his hand near hers. She was conscious too that his other arm was outstretched behind her, hovering close, ready to sweep her into his embrace. The struggle in her heart, longing to heed the call of his, quick with desire to make amends for the injustice she had done him, tumultuous with rejoicing that his love had been all she had thought it, was almost more than she could bear. He was so near—she had only to lean toward him a little, and his arm would be around her and her head upon his breast. Ah,the blessed peace there would be in that haven of repose! Already she could feel its stilling waters wrapping round her, numbing the power of resistance.
He leaned a little nearer and his voice was low and compellingly sweet, “Rhoda! Come to my arms, where you belong! Do not deny our love any longer!”
She saw his hand on the back of the chair moving instinctively toward her own,—a sinewy, brown, masterful hand, which held her eyes as it drew nearer, little by little, as if drawn by some irresistible attraction. She knew that his eyes in that same way were fixed upon her own, long, slender, nervous, the sort of hand that works out the behests of a strenuous soul. And she knew, also, as she waited, silent, trying to force herself to voice once more the dictates of her conscience, she knew that, if his hand touched hers before she could bring herself to speak, she could resist no longer. Still she stood, speechless, her fascinated eyes upon his masterful hand, her body thrilling with the surety that if she did not speak now, at once, in another moment she would be in his arms, and the struggle over.
“Oh, my poor Nellie Gray,They have taken her away,And I’ll never see my darling any more!”
“Oh, my poor Nellie Gray,They have taken her away,And I’ll never see my darling any more!”
“Oh, my poor Nellie Gray,
They have taken her away,
And I’ll never see my darling any more!”
The words of the negro song, in a negrowoman’s voice, came floating into the room, mingled with the sounds of broom and scrubbing brush. They brought to Rhoda instant memory of Mary Ellen’s melodious tones, singing in happy unconsciousness of peril, and of her own strained and fearful attention as she listened to the footsteps steps of the marshal’s posse. And then like a flash passed before her mind’s eye the ashen face and shaking figure of Mary Ellen, as her father and Jim lifted her from the box that had almost been her deathbed.
The numbing waters fell away, she raised her hand and pressed it against her heart with the impulsive, unconscious gesture he knew so well, and moved apart.
“Jeff, it’s no use talking any more about this,” she said in tremulous accents. “The last time we said all that is to be said.”
“Don’t say that! It makes everything so bare and hopeless! It makes me fear that you have killed your love. Rhoda, you do love me, yet?”
She turned slowly toward him and lifted her downcast face, alight with all the glow that was in her heart. “Jeff,” and the word as it came from her tenderly smiling lips was a caress, “Jeff, I love you so much that my heart has made me forgive you even that you allowed Mary Ellen—Lear White—to be sold.”
“My sweet! And I love you so much that myheart has made me forgive even your stealing her away!”
For a moment it seemed to them that gray eyes and brown melted into each other. And then the comedy of their cross-conscienced hearts struck her sense of humor, the corners of her mouth trembled and deepened and a smile flashed over her face and sparkled in her eyes. At that they both laughed, softly, in the tenderness of perfect understanding. Then she saw the old baffled, determined look overspread his face as turning sharply he strode across the room and back.
“My God, Rhoda! Why have our hearts snared us into this misery? Why don’t you loathe me as you do all that I believe in and stand for? Why can’t I condemn and scorn you as I do all the rest of your tribe? Why must I, when I detest and am injured by what is dearest to you, still see in you my ideal of all that is lovable and womanly? My love, my love, why can’t I hate you instead of loving you so that you are the only woman in all the world I want for my wife? Must our love be forever a curse instead of a blessing?”
He flung himself into a chair beside the table, every muscle of his body expressive of anger and rebellion at the mysterious forces of human life that had played this scurvy trick upon them, pitted against each other loving heart and steadfast conscience and left them, like two cocks in a pit, to fight it out in a struggle to the death.
Did they laugh at him and at her, those Caliban spirits of the universe, that with grim and cruel humor are forever setting human purpose awry and sending it, lop-sided and ludicrous, far aside its mark? Did they laugh and cheer and find pleasure in that struggle, the sure result of the innate upward-strivingness of the human soul, like human beings around a cock-pit betting upon which instinct, which spirit, which physique, shall prove the stronger? Or, perhaps, was Caliban pushed aside by some Angel of the Sword, infinitely just and infinitely merciful, that with stern lips whispered to pitying eyes, “No, let them struggle, for only by struggling, even to the uttermost, can their souls grow!”
Softly Rhoda came near, hesitatingly put forth one hand and let it rest for an instant upon his arm. At her touch he straightened up and unconsciously one hand sought the place upon his arm where hers had lain. “I don’t believe, dear, it will be forever. I don’t believe it will be very much longer.”
“What do you mean, Rhoda?” he cried, springing up. “Do you really think there is hope for us?”
“Yes, Jeff, I do. But I don’t suppose you’ll see it as I do. It’s only that I think,” she was speaking timidly, and yet with a grave eagerness of voice and manner, “and so do a good many of us, that slavery can’t last much longer. We feelsure that its end is bound to come, in one way or another, and that before long. And when slavery is swept away, Jeff, and the whole country is clean of it, then there will be no gulf between us!”
Her serious eyes were luminous as they met his unbelieving ones and in her face was the subdued glow of one who looks afar off upon a land of promise and knows that toward it his feet are set. Love and disbelief were mingled in the somber countenance he bent upon her.
“No, Rhoda, I do not agree with you. And much as I love you, sweet, I would not, if I could, purchase our happiness at such a cost. I would not, if I could, be such a traitor to the South. But I shall always love you, dear heart, and I shall always hope that you will yet be mine.” He held her hand tenderly for a moment in both of his, pressed it to his lips, bowed gravely, and left the room.