When Mrs. Ware reached home that afternoon she found Marshal Hanscomb
and his men, baffled and angry, completing their search of the house.
“Mr. Hanscomb, what does this mean?” she demanded.
“It means that runaway niggers have been making a hiding place of your
house and that we’ve been barely too late to catch one.”
“I assure you, Mr. Hanscomb, that nothing of the sort has been going
on in my house. Dr. Ware’s sympathies, it is true, are with the
anti-slavery cause, but he is not a nigger-stealer.”
“If you think so, madam,”--there was the hint of a sneer in his
tone--“you’d better go out to the woodshed and look at that room built
into the middle of your woodpile and see how lately it’s been occupied.”
She turned upon him a face of offended dignity. Her small, plump
figure, in its balloon-like skirt, stiffened with a haughtiness
which impressed even the angry marshal. “I trust, sir, that you have
satisfied yourself there is no one concealed in the house or on the
premises.”
“We have, madam, for the present. We happened to be a few minutes too
late.”
“Then I will bid you good-evenin’.” With a stately nod she left him,
going at once to her own room, behind whose closed door she remained
until her husband’s return.
Rhoda and her father, coming from opposite directions, drove up to
their east gate at the same moment, in the red glow of a March sunset.
She told him hurriedly of the happenings of the afternoon and of the
narrow chance by which she had finally saved the mulatto lad from
recapture. At the veranda steps Jim met them, with an excited account
of the marshal’s visit and his search of the house. He evidently knew
of the woodshed hiding place, the man said, for he went to it at once.
“Was any one at home?”
“No, sah, nobody but Lizzie and me. But Mrs. Ware, she done come before
they leave.”
“Then she knows now,” Rhoda told herself. “Oh, to think she had to find
it out that way!”
They walked silently down the veranda, avoiding each other’s eyes,
and entered at the front door. Mrs. Ware was coming down the stairs.
Rhoda stopped short, but her father walked swiftly past her and held
out his hand to his wife. She could not see his face, but the look
on her mother’s countenance stabbed her to the heart. In it the girl
read resentful inquiry, wounded faith, reproachful love. They seemed
oblivious of her, as Mrs. Ware stood looking into her husband’s face
with that hurt look upon her own. She did not take the hand he held
out. Then Rhoda saw him sweep her close to his side and heard him say
in a choking voice, “Come, Emily!” He led her into the living-room and
closed the door.
What passed between them there Rhoda never knew--what confessions
of outraged rights, what heart-barings of living tenderness, what
recognitions of inner imperatives, what renewals of the bonds of love
and trust. She crouched where she had dropped on the stair step,
miserably conscious that this was the climax of the estrangement
over her between her father and mother, feeling keenly that it had
been her mother’s right to know the use that was being made of her
home, appreciating her father’s motive in wishing to keep it hidden,
remorseful for the wound her share in it would deal her mother’s heart,
but unable to give up one jot of her conviction that what she and her
father had been doing had been demanded of them by the highest laws of
God and the most sacred rights of man.
In a jumble of thought and feeling, swept by waves of passionate
sympathy and compassion for both of the two within that closed door,
Rhoda sat huddled on the stairs until her mother came out. “Mother!”
she called, springing up and holding out her hands.
Mrs. Ware came up and took them, saying simply, “How cold they are,
honey!” and pressed them to her breast. In the dim light the girl could
see that her face was very pale but that her eyes were shining with
calm happiness.
“Oh, mother! We both felt that you ought to know about it--”
“It’s all right, dear child. I would rather your father had confided in
me from the first--”
“It wasn’t that he doubted you, mother! Oh, don’t think that! He knew
you would be loyal to him--but he thought it might give you pain to
know--”
“Yes, honey, I understand--I appreciate all that. But don’t you see,
dear, I would have liked to be trusted by my husband, even if it had
hurt--a little?”
“It was your right to know, mother.”
“Perhaps I don’t think so much about that as you would, Rhoda, but--a
woman who loves needs to feel that she is trusted as well as loved.
But it’s all right now. I know how you and your father feel about it,
that you are doing only what seems to you right, although to me, dear
child, it seems very wrong. I don’t want to know any more about it than
I must, and you mustn’t expect me to help you in the least, but not for
the world, dearie, would I hinder you and your father from doing what
you think is right.”
Rhoda bowed her head upon her mother’s shoulder whispering, “Dear
mother!”
“Your father and I understand each other better now,” Mrs. Ware went
on in tender tones. “There has been some misunderstanding between us
about you and Jeff, but this has cleared it all up, and so I am glad
it happened. He has promised me that he will not try to influence you
in any way against marrying Jeff. So you see now, dearie, that it is
possible, after all, for husband and wife to live together in love and
trust and happiness, even though they do hold opposite opinions about
slavery!”
There was a sound of quick, light footsteps across the veranda and
Charlotte came in breezily, cheeks glowing and eyes sparkling. “What’s
the matter?” she exclaimed. “What’s happened?” Then sudden recollection
came to her of what probably had happened and of her own share in it,
and a look of confusion crossed her face. Rhoda saw it and instant
suspicion was born in her mind that here was the medium through which
information had reached the marshal.
“Sister, was it you?” she asked on the impulse, her tone gentle but
reproachful.
“Was what me?” Charlotte flared back.
“I think you know what I mean.”
Dr. Ware had come out of the living-room and was standing in the
doorway. Charlotte threw at him a coaxing, appealing glance.
“You’d better tell the truth about it, Charlotte,” he responded. The
girl shrank back a little at his tone and something of surprise crossed
her face. Never before had he spoken to her with so near an approach
to sternness. His large, calm eyes were upon her, dispassionate but
disapproving. She could not withstand their compulsion.
“Well, then, I did,” she exclaimed defiantly, tossing her head as she
took a step forward. “And I think I did no more than was right and I’m
glad I did it. When people are disobeying the laws and are criminals,
even if they are your own people--”
“There, child, that will do,” her father interrupted, lifting an
admonishing hand. “Remember, please, that you are only eighteen, and
that your father is in no need of moral instruction at your hands. I
understand how you feel about this question and I am perfectly willing
for you to believe as seems to you right. I expect you to grant the
same privilege to me and to every other member of my family. And as
long as you live under your father’s roof, my daughter, he has the
right also to expect from you loyalty to his interests. Do you think I
shall have it hereafter?”
Charlotte burst into tears. In all her saucy little life no one had
ever spoken to her with such severity. “I only told Billy Saunders,”
she sobbed, “and I told him not to tell!”
Instantly her father was beside her, patting her shoulder, an arm
about her waist. “There, there!” he soothed. “I didn’t suppose you
realized what you were doing. As it happened, no great harm came of it.
Just remember, after this, that it is not your duty to sit in judgment
on my actions. Then we shall all move along as happily as ever.”
When Rhoda went to her room and her eyes fell upon her writing table,
sudden misgiving caught her breath. She had not stopped to make it
tidy, after her letter-writing in the morning, because of her hurried
departure for the sewing circle, and its unaccustomed disorder brought
sharply to her mind the letter she had written. And that other
sheet--had she destroyed it, as she meant to do? She looked the table
over hastily, shuffling the clean sheets of paper in her hand. “How
silly!” she thought. “Of course I destroyed it! I remember, I picked up
several sheets together that I didn’t want, and burned them, and that
was among them!”
Still, for a moment, the uneasy fear persisted that perhaps she had put
it into her letter. She burned with shame at the thought that her lover
might read those words. Then with a sudden vault her mind faced about
and she felt herself almost exulting that at last he might know how
much she cared, that at last, in spite of herself she had surrendered.
“If I did send it,” she thought as she sat at her window, in the dark,
“he will come and I shall have to give up.”
Her mother’s words recurred to her: “You see that it is possible for
husband and wife to live together in love and trust and happiness, even
though they do hold opposite opinions about slavery.” They would be
happy--ah, no doubt about that! And perhaps, if they were married and
constantly together, she could make Jeff see the wrongs of slavery.
She could point out to him specific instances of injustice and rouse
that side of his conscience which now seemed to be dead. He had such
a fine, noble nature in all other things--it was only because he had
been brought up in this belief and had always been accustomed to taking
slavery for granted. With his great love for her she would surely be
able to exert some influence over him, and she would use it all to one
end.
She knew of other men who had been slaveholders but, becoming convinced
that it was wrong, had freed their slaves and joined the anti-slavery
ranks. Some, even, worked with the Underground Railroad. What a
splendid thing it would be if she could win him over to the side of
liberty! For such a result, she told herself, she would be willing to
crucify her conscience for a little while and be a part of the thing
she abhorred.
She slept that night with a smile on her face and when she wakened in
the morning her first consciousness was of an unusual lightness and
happiness in her heart. Then she remembered, and flushed to her brows.
“But it was all true,” she whispered. “I didn’t mean to send it, and
I’m sure I didn’t. But I--almost--wish I had.”