CHAPTER XXIV
The lilac bushes were again in bud and Rhoda Ware was looking at them, pulling down here and there a tall one to see if it was not farther advanced than the rest, and reckoning how soon they would burst into flower, when she saw a tall, erect old man enter the gate. He came up the walk with a peculiar directness of manner, as of one accustomed to go forward with eyes and will upon a single aim. As he approached and asked for Dr. Ware, Rhoda saw in his face something of that same quality of underlying sternness, a sternness expressive rather of uncompromising moral sense than of severity of feeling or of judgment, that marked her father’s countenance. His silver-white beard, long and full, lent to this austereness a patriarchal dignity.
She took him to her father’s door, but Dr. Ware was engaged with a patient. The stranger asked if it were not she who had been concerned, the previous autumn, in the escape of the slave girl, Lear White, and they talked of that affair and of the consequences to which it led. She felt a magnetic quality in his grave and mellow tones, and in the steady gaze of his deep-set eyes, alert, luminous, penetrating, she was conscious of thatcompelling force that lies in the look of all men able to impress themselves upon others. Presently he told her who he was and she thrilled as she heard him speak the words, “Captain John Brown, of Kansas.”
“My father and I have spoken of you often, Captain Brown,” she said, her eyes and face lighting with the admiration which abolitionists felt for the man whom already they regarded as a hero.
“Yes. We have known each other for many years, and we have been agreed about slavery since a time when there were so few of us that we all felt as brothers.”
She had many questions to ask of matters in Kansas, where, she found, he knew the husband of her friend, Julia Hammerton. As they talked she saw presently that his eyes were fixed upon Bully Brooks, who, in full grown feline dignity, was sunning himself on the veranda. The cat’s air of complacent ease disappeared and, after some worried movements, it suddenly sprang up with arched back and swelling tail, spat its displeasure and ran away. Charlotte, coming in at the east gate, saw her pet’s performance and shot a questioning glance at Rhoda and the stranger as she passed them.
A little later, when her father had taken Captain Brown into his office, Rhoda found Charlotte with Bully Brooks in her lap, alternately soothinghis ruffled dignity and stirring him to angry protest.
“Rhoda, who is that horrid old man?” she demanded.
“Why do you call him horrid? He is the finest, noblest-looking old man I’ve ever seen, and his character is as noble as his appearance.”
“Oh, la! I asked you who he is.”
Rhoda hesitated, considering whether or not it would be prudent to let Charlotte know the identity of her father’s visitor. For there was much pro-southern sentiment in Hillside and, although John Brown was not yet an outlaw with a price on his head, he was detested and considered an active enemy by all friends of the South. Charlotte noted her pause and bent upon her a keen gaze. Apparently Rhoda did not want to tell her who he was and therefore it became at once an urgent necessity for her to find out. Rhoda felt those intent brown eyes studying her face and decided it would be better not to give her sister reason for suspecting any mystery.
“I suppose he’s some old nigger-stealer,” Charlotte was saying, still watching Rhoda’s expression, “and that’s why you think he’s such a noble character. Lloyd thinks, and so do I, that nigger-stealing ought to be punished by hanging.”
Rhoda smiled at her. “Would my little sister like to see me hanging from a limb of that maple tree yonder?”
“But you’d quit if you knew you were going to be hung for it.”
“No, I wouldn’t.”
Charlotte regarded her with wide eyes. In her secret heart she was beginning to feel not a little awe of this quiet elder sister upon whose countenance she sometimes surprised a look of exaltation. And therefore, to save her own sense of dignity, immensely increased by the prospect of her marriage, she had taken refuge in a patronizing manner.
“Of course you would,” she said, with a superior air and a toss of her pretty head. “You say that just to brave it out. Has old Mr. White-Beard come to help you make plans to get arrested again?”
“No. He wanted to see father.”
“Oh, well! Who is he? John Brown, or Horace Greeley, or Governor Chase? One of them is as bad as another and they’re all tarred with the same brush.”
“Which do you think?” asked Rhoda calmly.
Charlotte leaned forward, all eagerness, her intuitions, as they so often did, flashing straight to the truth. “Not John Brown?” she ejaculated. Rhoda nodded, and Charlotte drew back with a little gasp and then seized the cat in her lap with extravagant exclamations of pride and affection.
“My precious Bully Brooks! You knew who he was, didn’t you, and you told him what youthought of him! He’s a regular old ogre, Rhoda, and Bully Brooks felt it, didn’t you, you darling cat! And you shall go with Charlotte, when she’s married, to Corey’s Hall, so you shall, where there won’t be any nigger-stealers to make you angry.”
Rhoda looked on with amusement. Not even yet, although Charlotte’s wedding day was fast approaching, could she think of her sister as other than a merry sprite, a spoiled child, of whom it would be too much to expect the sense of ordinary responsibilities. But now a feeling of uneasiness grew upon her, and when presently both rose to go into the house she said:
“By the way, sister, please remember that it is not necessary for you to tell any one about Captain Brown’s being here, either now or after he has gone.”
Charlotte tilted her chin saucily and laughed. “Don’t you know, Rhoda, that I never make promises—except for the fun of breaking them? Besides, I’m a southerner now.”
Rhoda laid her hand gently upon the other’s shoulder. “Stop, sister. This is a serious matter. I can’t forget that once you played the traitor—pardon me, there is no other word for it, although I don’t think you meant it that way—but it was the traitor to father and to me. You know how much father loves you and how he’ll miss you after you’re married. Do you want tomake him feel so much safer then that he can’t help being glad you’re gone?”
It was a new experience for even Rhoda to take her reckless audacities with so much seriousness, and she looked up wonderingly, at first with pouting and then with trembling lips. “I don’t see why you want to make me so unhappy at home, when I’m soon going to leave it,” she sobbed. “Do you want to make me hate my home and be glad to go away?”
Rhoda longed to take the dainty, drooping little figure into her arms and speak words of soothing. But she held to her purpose. “Do you want to make father, who loves you so much, glad to have you go away?”
Charlotte stamped her foot. “Of course I don’t!” she exclaimed, her fists in her eyes. “And you’re perfectly horrid to say such things!”
At once Rhoda gave way to compassion, for she felt that she had gained her point. She drew her sister within her arm, patting her shoulder and kissing her forehead. “There, there, dear! Never mind. I only wanted to make sure we could trust you.”
In the afternoon when Dr. Ware was ready to make his round of visits, he asked Rhoda to go with him upon a trip he had to make into the country. As they drove through the glistening young spring he told her of his conversation with his morning’s visitor.
“Captain Brown gave me permission to talk it over with you,” he said. “I assured him you could be trusted.” Rhoda’s heart swelled with pleasure at her father’s words and at the matter-of-fact way in which he spoke them, for both words and manner made her know how habitual with him their companionship had become.
“I’ve known him for a good many years,” Dr. Ware went on, “and I’ve always believed that some day he’d strike a big blow, square on slavery’s head, do some big thing that would help immensely to get rid of it. For a man of Brown’s intelligence, character and personality can’t live half his lifetime absorbed by one idea without making something happen. He and I agree on one point, that slavery can be wiped out only by violence. We both see that its roots have gone so deep that to pull them up will make a terrible upheaval. He hasn’t the faith that I have, hasn’t any, in fact, in political measures and the Republican party. He doesn’t believe, as I do, that all this is helping to keep the roots from spreading and getting stronger, and that it will make our victory quicker and easier, when the time for violence does come.
“He thinks that time is nearly here and that he is going to bring it about. He proposes to establish himself, before long, somewhere along the free-state border, with a band of picked followers, drilled in arms, and gather into his fortifiedcamp all the negroes from the near-by plantations. Such of these as wish to go to Canada will be passed on by the Underground, while those who prefer will stay with him and help gather in more slaves from greater distances. As the success of his forays becomes known he thinks that other men will join him from all over the North, until his army, increased also by daring spirits from among the fugitive slaves, will be so large and formidable and slave property be made so insecure that slavery will collapse like the shell of a ruined house.”
Rhoda’s cheeks were flushed and her eyes shining. “What a daring scheme, father! Do you think it will succeed?”
Dr. Ware smiled doubtfully and shook his head. “I don’t think he can carry it through to the end he feels sure of, and I told him so this morning. But his heart is set on it. He has been slowly maturing the plan for twenty-five years, and has even made a tour of the great battlefields and important fortifications of Europe, studying them in the light of this purpose. It seems to me impossible that he can succeed. But he’ll scare the South out of its wits and make it angrier and more determined than ever, and that will be a good thing. With the rising tide of public opinion in the North, it will bring the clash that’s bound to come a big notch nearer.”
“Did he want you to join him, father?”
“Yes. I knew about his plan—we’ve talked of it before. I have so much faith in the power of the one-ideaed man to achieve things that I’ve always told him he could call on me for any help it was in my power to give. I’ve contributed what I could to his Kansas campaign, and I gave him this morning for this scheme all I could spare. I told him, too,” Dr. Ware hesitated a little over his words now, “that I might join him in person somewhat later, if his first attempts prove successful, and that perhaps you would come too. For with your knowledge of nursing you would be useful. Do you think you would care to throw yourself into such a scheme as his, full of danger and sure to fail, but likely to deliver an effective blow?”
His eyes were upon her, clear and calm as usual, but brilliant now with the fires of zeal. As they searched her face her own looked back at him, as glowing with zeal as his. “You know I would, father—you did right to tell him so. I’m always ready to go anywhere or do anything that will help our cause. But—mother—what about mother?”
He shook his head sadly and turned away. “Your mother, Rhoda, is incurably ill. She cannot be with us much longer. I had her consult two physicians in Cincinnati on her way home from Fairmount, and they both told her it is only a question of time.”
“Oh, father! Can’t we do anything for her? Why didn’t you tell me before?”
“There is nothing we can do but make her as comfortable and care free as possible while she is with us. I didn’t tell you before because she didn’t want you to know about it until after Charlotte’s wedding, and she doesn’t want Charlotte to know it at all. She wants everything to be as cheerful and happy as possible while Charlotte is here. Please don’t let her guess that you know.”
Charlotte was to be married in May, and during the remaining weeks of that time Rhoda watched her mother with anxious and loving care, taking upon herself, as Mrs. Ware seemed willing to relinquish it, every household responsibility, and noted with aching heart the wasting of her face and figure.
“I believe she is just keeping up by her will power,” Rhoda said to Dr. Ware, “so that there shall be nothing to make Charlotte unhappy during her last weeks at home.”
“Yes,” assented her father, “she wants Charlotte to remember the months of her engagement as the happiest time in her life. We must be prepared for a reaction after it is all over.”
After Rhoda’s trial and imprisonment no mention of that matter was ever made between her and her mother. When she returned home Mrs. Ware received her with the utmost love and tenderness,but without the least reference to the reasons for her absence. In neither words nor manner did she recognize that that absence had been anything other than an ordinary social visit and if it had to be spoken of she referred to it merely as the time “when you were away.”
So, now, she made no sign to either her husband or her daughter that she had any knowledge of the Underground activities in which they were engaged or of the fugitive slaves who were sheltered in the house. Rhoda was never able to guess whether she knew much or little of what went on under her roof nor whether or not she resented it or was grieved by it. But the girl’s heart ached constantly with sympathy for what she felt must be her mother’s pain.
Her compassion and sorrow, however, did not lead her to consider for a moment the idea of giving up the work. Rather, they inspired her to greater zeal, in both thought and action, and to more intense desire to aid in the destruction of slavery. For, in her mind, whatever grief her mother felt, whatever alienation there was between them, were among the evil results of the slave system, just as was the division between her and Jefferson Delavan, and the only way of rightfully fully meeting them was to attack their cause.
At the wedding Rhoda was bridesmaid and Delavan was groomsman. As she saw her mother’s eyes fixed wistfully upon them she feltfresh twinges of self-reproach. She knew the deep pleasure that Charlotte’s marriage to a southerner had brought to the ailing woman, and she knew that this would be as nothing beside her satisfaction and delight could she see her other daughter united in marriage to the son of her old friend. Could it be, after all, Rhoda began to ask herself, that here was where her highest duty lay? Ought she, at whatever cost to herself, make happy her mother’s last days?
It seemed to Rhoda that everything conspired, throughout the wedding festivities, to bring her and Delavan alone together, although she knew that they were both trying to avoid such meetings. But he forebore to speak of love, and afterward the merry friendliness of these brief occasions, just touched as they were with the fragrance of intimacy, were among her dearest memories.
When he bade her good-by she felt the lover in his manner and his voice as he said: “It has been two years, Rhoda, but I shall wait two years more, and ten times that, before I give up hope of our wedding!”
Rhoda looked at him with her flashing smile, that lifting of her short upper lip and trembling at its corners and lighting of her eyes, which always sent through his veins a fresh thrill of love, and answered: “Oh, Jeff! What a long time to prepare for a wedding in!”
After it was all over Mrs. Ware failed rapidly.Rhoda watched her wasting cheeks and growing feebleness with an agony of compassion and constant tumultuous questioning of herself. Her mother had not spoken to her for a long time about Delavan’s suit, but she knew that the wish was gathering strength in her breast as she came nearer and nearer to death’s door. Rhoda felt it in the wistful look with which the brown eyes, grown so large and childlike in the peaked face, followed her about the room. It spoke to her in the plaintive appeal of the soft southern voice and it pulled mightily at her heartstrings in the clinging to hers of the thin hands, a little while ago so plump and fair.
With her own heart playing traitor, as it always did with every weakening of her resolution, with love and compassion for the invalid pleading incessantly, with a remorse-wrung conscience recalling every hurt she had ever given to her mother and urging that she ought to salve those many wounds with this final atonement, the torment of it became almost greater than she could bear.
One day she found her father alone in his office and, impelled by her distraught heart, she forgot her usual restraints, flung herself on her knees beside his chair and laid her face against his knee.
“Oh, father,” she begged, “help me to see what I ought to do! I know mother wants me to marry Jeff—she doesn’t say a word about it, but I feel all the time that it is making her last days full ofsorrow. It seems to me sometimes that I can’t stand it another minute, that I must give up, because it will make her happy. Would it help her, father, if I did?”
Dr. Ware laid his hand upon her shoulder. Even in her wretchedness the action gave her a little thrill of pleasure, for it was nearer a caress than she could remember he had ever given her.
“Nothing can help your mother now, child. With her, it is a matter of a few months, or weeks, or, perhaps, even days. It would make her happy for that little time—I know it as well as you do. You could feel that you had enabled her to end her days in peace. But whether or not you ought to sacrifice your sense of right to your sense of duty to her is something that only you can decide.”
“I know it, father,” she answered in low tones as she rose to her feet and wiped the tears from her eyes.
She went out into the yard, gay with the luxuriant blooms of early summer. The white petunias sent up their fragrance and the memories it brought pierced her very heart with poignant sweetness. She went on into the grape arbor and sat down in its cool shadows, asking herself why it was that she could keep her own soul clean only at the expense of another’s happiness.
“My happiness, Jeff’s happiness,” she thought, “they are of our own making and we can chooseour own conditions. But mother, poor, dear, little mother, so sick, with such a little while to live, and her happiness so bound up in this! And if I do it I shall feel all my life that it was wrong, that my soul isn’t clean. Oh, mother, how can I become a part of this abomination of slavery, this vile, accursed thing! I’d be glad to die, a hundred times over, for you—but to live and be a part of such wickedness— Oh, mother, how can I? How can I?”
The end came sooner than they expected. On a hot afternoon in midsummer, when the late, red rays of the sun, shining through the half-closed shutters, lay in bands across the floor, Mrs. Ware called Rhoda. “Come close, honey, down beside me,” she said, and Rhoda knelt at the bedside. Her mother slipped a feeble arm around her neck.
“You’ve been a dear, loving daughter to me,” she said, “even if we’ve thought so differently about some things. You are like your father, Rhoda, and that has always been a pleasure to me. You’ve wanted to make me happy, just as he always has, and in almost everything you have. No mother ever had a better, dearer daughter than you, honey.”
“Oh, mother,” Rhoda exclaimed, the tears welling into her eyes, for in the pale, pitiful face she saw the shadow of the death angel’s wing and felt his near approach in the chill that struck into her own breast. “Dear mother, I’ve never done halfenough for you, never been half as good and loving to you as you deserved!”
“Always you have, dear, except in one thing. You know how much for two years I’ve wanted you to marry Adeline’s son, dear Jeff. And you would not. I haven’t much longer to live, and if you want to make my deathbed happy promise me that you will. Oh, Rhoda, send for Jeff and marry him here beside my bed and have your dying mother’s blessing!”
Rhoda was sobbing with her face upon her mother’s shoulder. “Dearest mother,” she pleaded, “don’t ask that of me.”
“It’s the only thing in all the world that I want, honey. You love Jeff, and he adores you, and I know that you’ll be happy together, if you’ll only give up that nonsensical idea that has taken possession of you. It’s your happiness that I want, Rhoda, yours and Jeff’s. And I know, oh, so much better than you do, what makes a woman happy. I can’t die feeling that I have done my duty to my little girl and made sure of her happiness, unless she will promise me this. Will you do it, Rhoda?”
“Let me be the judge of my happiness, mother, as you were the judge of yours!”
“Your mother knows best, child! Take her word for it, and let her bless you with her last breath, as you’ll always bless her if you do. It’s the last thing she’ll ever ask of you.”
The invalid’s tones were growing weaker and something querulous sounded in them as she repeated, “Promise me, Rhoda, promise!”
The linked hands upon Rhoda’s neck loosened their hold and the tired arms slipped down. She bowed her head upon her mother’s breast as she sobbed, “Let me think for a minute, mother, dear! It breaks my heart not to do what you want!”
“It breaks mine, Rhoda, that you don’t. Oh, honey, let me die in peace and happiness! Promise me that you’ll marry Jeff!”
Rhoda saw that her father had entered the room and was standing at her side. She sprang to her feet, threw her arms about his neck and with her head upon his shoulder burst into a passion of tears.
“Father, tell me what to do!” she wailed.
His arms were about her, his face upon her hair, and his tears were mingling with hers. In that supreme moment of grief, compassion and struggle the icy barriers that had kept their hearts apart melted away and they clung together in their common despair, groping through their sobs for the right thing to say and do.
Suddenly they were startled by a gay little laugh from the bed. “You’ve come at last, have you, Adeline, dearest! How late you are!” the dying woman exclaimed, holding out her hands in welcome. From her face the shadow had passed and in its place shone a girlish happiness. She wasback again among the friends of her youth, chatting and laughing with “dearest Adeline,” and calling upon “mammy” to do this and that. And so, babbling of her girlhood’s pleasures, she passed into the dark beyond.