CHAPTER XXVI
A year and a half and more went by before Rhoda again saw Delavan. The campaign of 1860, with its grim earnestness and sober exaltation, had passed. She had been stirred by it to her heart’s core, as had all men and women of the North, and had shared her father’s satisfaction over the result. Hers was indeed an even deeper and gladder satisfaction than his, for to passionate abhorrence of slavery and the belief that now was the beginning of its end was added her secret small hope that afterward might come the fulfilment of her long denied love.
“We mustn’t forget, Rhoda,” her father said as they talked over the results of the election, “that probably only a rather small percentage of those who voted for Lincoln want to have slavery abolished in the states where it already exists. They really think the national government has no right to interfere. But if there is war, and undoubtedly there will be, a man of Lincoln’s shrewd common-sense will know that by freeing the slaves he will cut off the South’s right hand. With such a man as he is in the president’s chair I feel confident, though a good many abolitionists don’t, that we can look forward to the end of slavery.”
The southern states were leaving the Union and the Confederacy had been organized. Rhoda knew that Kentucky was rent almost to her every hearthstone with discussion of whether North or South should have her loyalty. Charlotte had lately written: “Everybody is all torn into strips over the question whether or not Kentucky shall join the Confederacy. Nobody talks or thinks or dreams of anything else. But Lloyd and I are going to secede, whether Kentucky does or not.”
Now and then, at long intervals, had come a brief letter from Jefferson Delavan. But he said nothing in any of these missives of love and but little of the mighty questions that were absorbing the minds and hearts and souls of men, women and children, North and South, and her replies were of the same sort. It was as if two loving but far divided souls, journeying through space, sought now and then by a faint call to bridge the distance between them.
The tense, dark days of Lincoln’s inauguration were over, the guns of Sumter had cleared away the last clouds of uncertainty, and war was at hand.
The lilacs were in bloom again and Rhoda, moving slowly down the path, broke off here and there a branch and presently stood at the front gate, her fragrant burden gathered loosely into one arm against her white dress. In her delight in their delicate beauty and savor she bent her face to the flowers, forgetting for the moment thethings of the outside world. When she lifted it again Jefferson Delavan stood before her.
“I have come to say good-by, Rhoda,” was his greeting, as he entered the gate.
“Good-by?— You are—going—” she stammered.
“I am going to join the fortunes of the South,” he replied, as they walked up the path. “Kentucky has been false to her sister states and deserted them when they need her most. By a single vote she has decided upon neutrality. You, Rhoda, can understand what a bitter dose that is for me.”
“You can’t endure it?” she hesitated as they turned into the walk to the grape arbor.
“No, I can’t, and there are many other Kentuckians who feel as I do. I am going at once to join the southern army, and Corey and Morehead and a dozen others that I know are going too.”
“Father has joined the Union army as a surgeon and I am going as a nurse.”
They had reached the arbor and stood facing each other, she with her armful of lilacs still held against her white dress, both too much absorbed to be quite conscious of their actions. A sober smile curved by ever so little the grim line of his lips.
“Then you will be fighting for your side as well as I for mine, though in a different way. But across the battlefields, Rhoda, I shall hear yourheart calling mine, and I shall know too that it is telling me to fight right on.”
“Yes,” she broke out earnestly, “I know that you are fighting for your convictions and your ideals and you will not be worthy of my love if you don’t fight until you either win or are conquered. I don’t want you to compromise, or to yield, until you have fought to the last drop of your strength.”
“It’s going to be a bitter struggle and a long one, whatever the most of them, on both sides, think now. In the South there isn’t much belief that the North will fight, or can fight. But I know better, Rhoda. You have taught me better, you and your father. You have made me understand what determination there is at the bottom of all this.”
“It’s a war between two ideals,” she said, “whatever else they may say it is. But it’s really that, between two ideals of civilization.”
“And men,” he added quickly, “always fight for their ideals as they do for nothing else. It will be to the last gasp.”
She looked away and shuddered. “Oh, it is all so horrible, even to think of! But it is a long and horrible iniquity that has caused it and must now be paid for. Rachel Benedict told me once that we must ourselves pay with sweat and stripes for the evil that we do. I believe it’s true, and the North and the South must pay together forall this long evil of slavery, for they are both responsible. But this war will end it.”
He smiled upon her indulgently. “Can you think so, Rhoda, you, who understand how we feel and how determined we are?”
She stepped back and proudly lifted her head. Into her face came the look of exaltation he had seen there, in this same arbor, long before. It seemed to remove her far from him, and therefore set his heart to throbbing all the more with longing for her.
“Yes,” she said, “this war will end it, because God is on our side. And afterward—oh, Jeff!”—her face melted to tenderness again—“beyond—after the end, after God has spoken and slavery has been ended, then there will be peace, and for us—” her voice dropped low—“happiness!”
“God be the judge between us, Rhoda Ware,” he exclaimed, “as to which is right! Will you accept His judgment, as He speaks it in battle, and promise to be my wife when the war is over, whatever He has said?”
Again her face was lifted, glowing with exaltation. “God will never allow such an atonement for evil-doing as this war will be,” she said solemnly, “to be crowned by that very evil itself. With faith in Him—I promise!”
Scarcely had the words left her tongue when she found herself swept to his breast and his lips upon her brow, her eyes, her mouth.
“Rhoda, my love, my love,” he whispered, “it is a long good-by that lies before us, perhaps even as long as it has been since I first begged for your love, here among these vines.”
“And there are battles and dangers, oh, so many,” she whispered back, “between now and—the end.”
“But I have a talisman that will carry me safe through it all, to the end—and you. See, my sweet, how long I have kept it!” From an inner pocket he took a little package and showed her a withered rose, the mate of the one she herself so treasured. “I have kept it there, next to my heart, ever since the night you gave it me, for my thoughts, five years ago!”
She looked at it with wondering love, pressed it to her lips and listened with a sweet smile upon them as he said, putting it back again: “It shall lie there always, dear heart, until all my thoughts are yours and yours are mine. And it will always tell me, as plainly as if with your own dear lips, to fight to the uttermost!”
Again she lifted her head proudly. “Yes, to the uttermost, Jeff! For that way only can your eyes be opened!”
He was gone, and she sat alone in the arbor, with her lilacs pressed to her bosom, and listened as the strains of martial music came to her ears. It was a band playing, downtown, where volunteerswere being drilled. She could hear the tramp of feet, the rattle of musketry, and the words of command.
Louder and louder the sound seemed to grow in her ears until it became the booming of unnumbered cannon and the tramp, tramp, tramp of a million men. The smoke of battle dimmed her eyes and all around her she seemed to hear the cries and groans of mangled and dying men. With white lips she whispered to herself, “With bloody sweat and stripes we must pay—it is God’s law!”
Slowly her features relaxed, and presently, with a tender smile curving her lips, she buried her face in the lilac blooms. For the awful sights and sounds had faded away and she had seen a vision of the afterward.
THE END