During the late summer and autumn of that year Rhoda and her father
and their friends watched with the keenest interest, as did people
all over the country, the struggle in Illinois between Lincoln and
Douglas. In the Cincinnati and New York papers they read the speeches,
printed at length, of both the aspirants for senatorial honors, and on
many an evening, gathered on the veranda of the Ware home or, after
the evenings grew cool, around the fireplace in the living-room, they
discussed all the features of that famous intellectual wrestling match.
Horace Hardaker had been nominated for Congress by the Republican party
and was conducting a vigorous campaign. Nevertheless, he found time
to come frequently up the hill to Dr. Ware’s house for these talks.
Marcia Kimball came also, at first with her brothers, but after a
little Rhoda observed that it was oftener with Hardaker that she made
her appearance and always upon his arm that she leaned when they went
away. With an inward smile Rhoda noticed too that Horace, with apparent
unconsciousness, began to address his conversation mainly toward Marcia.
“I don’t expect to be elected,” he said one evening, “that is, not
this time. But I’m giving the ground a good, deep plowing, and there’ll
be a different crop to reap two years from now.”
His opponent, a Douglas Democrat, won the day, but by so narrow
a margin that Hardaker was almost as exultant as if he had been
successful. “Two years more of the way things are going now,” he
declared, “and we’ll sweep the country!”
“Suppose you do, what good will it do?” said old Mr. Kimball. “Your
Republican party expressly says it won’t interfere with slavery in the
South.”
“It will bring on a crisis,” interjected Dr. Ware, “and a crisis
is exactly the thing we want. The South won’t stand a Republican
president. And when she tries to leave the Union the upheaval will
come.”
Not long after the election Hardaker sought Rhoda in more buoyant mood
than ever, to tell her that he and Marcia were to be married. She
assured him that she was heartily glad, and really felt all that she
said, and even more. But her sincere rejoicing did not prevent her from
looking sadly out of her window that night and feeling that something
very dear and pleasant had gone out of her life beyond all recovery.
She would not, if she could, have held Hardaker’s love in fruitless
thrall, but it had been so comforting, so gratifying, to know how
surely it was hers and she had so grown to expect one of his recurrent
proposals every year or so that it cost her a little wrench now to give
it all up.
“He’ll make Marcia a good, loving husband,” she thought, “and with his
talent and ambition he’ll succeed. Oh, they’ll be happy, and I’m glad.”
Her eyes grew sad and the lines of her face drooped as she sat beside
her window. And after a while she took out the little box with its
treasure of letters and withered flower. She did not read the letters,
of which there was now nearly a box full, but turned them over
caressingly in her hands and now and then pressed one to her lips.
Rhoda was bridesmaid when Horace and Marcia were married in the early
spring. “It’s your third time, isn’t it, dear,” said Marcia as her
friend draped about her shoulders the folds of her bridal veil. “I do
hope it will be you yourself, next time!”
“So do I, Marcia!” said Rhoda frankly, looking up with a smile.
“There isn’t a girl anywhere who’d more willingly be a bride than I,
if--if--if!”
“Rhoda, you’re the dearest, bravest girl!” cried Marcia, squeezing her
hand. “If I was in your place I’d be crying my eyes out instead of
laughing like that!”
“Then I wouldn’t have you for my bridesmaid if you couldn’t give your
eyes a rest that long,” rejoined Rhoda gaily.
Spring and summer came and went, and for Rhoda Ware the weeks passed
with uneventful flow. Through their house there trickled a thin stream
of slaves fleeing northward, sometimes half a dozen or more within a
week and sometimes not more than one or two. The trouble and cost of
recovering their runaway negroes, even when they were infrequently able
to get possession of them again, had caused the southern slaveholders
to give over their efforts. In these last years of the decade it was
unusual for a fugitive to be pursued and therefore the traffic of the
Underground was carried on with little risk.
Rhoda busied herself with these duties, the ordering of her father’s
household, her anti-slavery work and her reading. Gradually the thought
grew up in her breast that she would like to study medicine. She talked
the matter over with her father and he offered, if she wished, to send
her to one of the medical colleges that within a few years had been
opened for women. But she would not leave him alone and so, under his
guidance, she spent her leisure time reading in his medical library,
discussing his cases with him, and often going with him upon his visits.
Dr. Ware received an occasional brief letter from John Brown in which
his scheme was referred to with cautious phrasing as a speculation in
sheep. Toward midsummer he wrote that he was getting his shepherds
together and expected to collect a band of sheep in the Virginia
mountains, where he thought there would be good pasturage, about the
middle of October.
“He is bound to come into collision with the federal government very
soon,” said Dr. Ware to his daughter as they talked this letter over
together. “Of course he knows that will be the end of his enterprise
and of him too.”
“He won’t care,” answered Rhoda, “what becomes of him if he can make
just one thrust at slavery.”
“That’s true. And the more I think of it the more I believe that even
if he fails in his first attempt, as he is very likely to do, it will
be a good strong thrust that will make the South fairly stagger. I told
him I’d wait to see whether or not he made a beginning before I decided
about joining him. But I doubt very much, Rhoda, whether you and I will
have a chance to work under John Brown.”
“I’ll be ready to go whenever you say the word, father,” she said with
grave earnestness.
Now and then a letter passed between Rhoda and Jefferson Delavan, a
letter of intimate friendliness, telling of personal matters and mutual
interests. Once only did he touch upon the slavery question, which
formerly they had argued with such earnestness, and then he filled a
long letter with an endeavor to prove to her that the negro race had
been benefited by slavery, that in taking it from its barbarous state
and bringing it in contact with civilization the slaveholders had
lifted it to a higher plane of moral and intellectual life.
When she replied she said merely, “No more of that, please, if you
still love me! Each of us knows that the other’s convictions are honest
and deeply rooted. We can’t agree, so let’s not argue, but just enjoy
our friendship.”
Nor was there in their correspondence any mention of love, or of
possible or impossible marriage. But toward the end of summer, when a
little band of men was warily gathering in a Maryland farmhouse, one of
Jeff’s letters set Rhoda’s heart to fluttering. There was in it, save
for some terms of endearment which seemed to have flowed unconsciously
from his pen, no putting into words of a lover’s hopes. But she felt
through every line the burning of the lover’s heart. And a few weeks
later there came a brief note saying, “I shall be in Hillside soon and
shall count on seeing you.”
For a day Rhoda’s heart sang with joy, “He is coming, he is coming!
I shall see him, have him here beside me!” and would listen to no
warnings of her mind.
Then she wrote, “Don’t come! I beg of you, Jeff, don’t come! What is
the use!” And lest her courage might fail her, she quickly sealed and
posted her missive.
But when the October woods were bright with flaming color, and the
little band of men in the Maryland farmhouse were waiting for the order
to march, and Rhoda and her father were saying to each other every
morning, “There may be news to-day,” Jefferson Delavan appeared at her
door.
“I told you not to come!” she said, and gave him her hand, while face
and eyes belied the meaning of her words. His heart gladdened at
their sweet shining as he held her hand in both of his and answered,
“And I disobeyed--because I couldn’t help it.” Then, for a moment,
their starving, delighted gaze fed upon each other’s eyes, until
Rhoda suddenly felt that he was about to break into lover’s speech.
Impulsively she laid a finger across his lips. He seized and held it
there while she exclaimed:
“Don’t speak, Jeff, don’t say anything. It’s such a lovely day--the
hills are so beautiful--let’s have a ride together!”
He agreed, glad of anything that would insure her presence near him,
and they were soon galloping over country roads and across the wooded
hills, brilliant in the gala robes with which Nature celebrates her
thanksgiving for another year of sun and life and growth.
As they rode, the motion and the wine-like air and the joy in her heart
lifted Rhoda into exultant mood, deepened the wild rose-bloom in her
cheeks and kindled her serious eyes into sparkling gaiety. “Let me have
this little time!” her heart pleaded. “It may be the last. After _that_
has happened he may never come again!”
And so, with thrilling nerves and singing heart, the Cavalier in her
breast dominated the Puritan and sent to the four winds warnings
of conscience and thought of to-morrow. Forgotten was the safety
of the three fugitive slaves, at that moment hiding in her cellar,
forgotten the fateful Thing for whose birth in the Virginia mountains
she had been waiting, cast away from her mind was all thought of the
anti-slavery contest, nor was there room in her heart for zeal in its
cause. She was mere woman, loving and beloved, and glorying inwardly
in her power over her lover. Her Cavalier inheritance took possession
of her and bade her snatch the pleasure of the hour. Her father’s
offspring dwindled away into the smallest recesses of her nature and it
was her mother’s daughter who sat in the saddle, slender and graceful,
and with starry eye and alluring smile kindled fresh fires in her
lover’s breast.
With pride and pleasure she saw them burning in his face and eyes as
he drew beside her and murmured, “Rhoda, you are so beautiful!” Her
mirror had told her many times, and she had agreed in its verdict, that
she was not beautiful. And so all the more precious to her was this
tribute of love, and more than once did she win it, as they rode and
rode, during the long afternoon.
A sudden memory came of the tale of courtship her mother had told to
her and Jeff, on that June night so long ago, and across her mind’s eye
there flitted the vision she had often called up, of the pretty, wilful
girl and the resolute young man with his hand on her bridle, galloping,
galloping-- “And that was love--and this is love, and it is mine!”
her heart sang. Quickly her brain flashed back the question, “Would I
yield, as mother did, if--if--if--” And the Cavalier in her heart sang
back, exulting, “I would! I would!”
On their way home they came to an old wood road and turned into it from
the cross-country way upon which they had been galloping. Checking
their horses they rode slowly down the brilliant avenue of gold and
russet and crimson, talking, now earnestly, now gaily, upon one or
another of the multitude of things, personal and impersonal, which to
lovers can bourgeon instantly into matters of moment and interest by
the mere fact of mention in the loved one’s voice. Gradually the road
dwindled away and they came upon steeper hills and a rocky surface.
But Rhoda knew where they were and said that by turning sharply to the
eastward they could gain the high road. Dismounting they led their
horses across the hills, the fallen autumnal glories billowing beneath
their feet.
Already Rhoda’s mood had begun to sober. The Puritan was claiming his
own again. Down that wood road she had driven her buggy, on a winter
day, to bring out the fugitive negro lad whom she had sent flying to
the cave for safety from the pursuing marshal. They passed the cave
itself, where, more than three years previous, she had hidden the
mulatto, running for the freedom dearer than life from this very man
who was bending near her now with ardent looks of love. She shivered a
little as she remembered the slave’s sullen resolution, the pistol in
his hand, and the tone in which he had said, “I won’t go back.” As Jeff
bent with loving solicitude to draw her wrap closer about her shoulders
she was thinking, “And he said they were brothers.”
They struck a path which climbed a steep hill, and when they came to a
jutting rock Delavan looked around him with sudden recollection. “Why,
I’ve been here before!” he exclaimed. “It was here I met you, dear,
that day--don’t you remember? What a long time you have made me wait,
sweetheart, for your promise!” His lover’s longing, made a hundredfold
more imperious by the allurement there had been all the afternoon in
her laugh, her voice, her smile, her lips, her eyes, her manner, would
be put aside no longer, and he turned upon her with an impetuosity that
would brook no protest.
“Do you, remember, dearest, the proof of my love I gave you that
day? I’m ready to give you, here on this same spot, another proof, a
thousand times greater! It will sweep away everything that keeps us
apart, Rhoda! Everything!”
She looked at him silently, sweet wonder parting her lips and shining
starlike in her big gray eyes. Her cheeks were paler now, with the
ebbing of the exultant tide that had kept her all the afternoon on its
crest. But to him this soft, subdued mood bespoke the sweetheart ready
to tremble into his embrace and made her all the more adorable. He
seized her hand and she let it lie in his close, warm grasp as he went
on:
“I have made up my mind to give up everything to our love. I will free
all my niggers--for the sake of your dear conscience not one shall be
sold--and see that they find places where they can earn their livings.
Then I will sell my property and we will put this country and its
accursed contentions behind us. We will go to England, dear heart,
or France, and live where there will come hardly an echo of all this
strife to disturb our blessed content and happiness!”
She dropped her eyes from his and for a long moment stood motionless
while it seemed to her that her very heart stood still. With swift
inner vision, like that of a drowning man, she saw those years of
wedded life, long years of comradeship and love and deepest joy, with
dear children growing up beside them, and her heart yearned toward its
peace and happiness with such urgency that she dared not try to speak.
“Think, Rhoda, dear,” he was pleading, “think of the quiet, blissful
years that are waiting for us! Our two hearts together, and nothing,
nothing at all to come between them!”
Her very lips were pale with desire of it as she whispered: “I am
thinking, and, oh, Jeff, the thought of it, the joy of it, almost
makes my heart stop beating. But have you thought, dear, dear Jeff,
what a sacrifice this will be for you? I know how much you love the
South. Would you never regret it, never wish to come back and throw
yourself into her service? If that should happen, it would be the end
of happiness for us both, for I should know it--our hearts would be
so close together--even if you didn’t say a word. Have you thought of
that, dear Jeff?”
He smiled at her with loving confidence. “I’ve thought that all out,
dear heart. For weeks I’ve been thinking of it, and threshing it all
out in my mind, until I feel quite sure of myself. I do love my dear
Southland and as you know so well my ambition has always been to spend
my life in her service. But there are plenty of other men who can do
her work as well as I can, and not at the cost of their heart’s love
and life’s happiness. I am willing to let them do it while I take my
love and my happiness. My sweet! I knew your dear, generous heart would
ask me that!” He bowed over her hand, which he still held in his, and
pressed it to his lips.
Her heart was pleading: “He is right. There are plenty of others who
can do his work, and there are surely many, many who can do what little
is possible for me better than I. Why not put it all aside and take the
love and happiness that belong to us?” And then, like an icy grip upon
her softening, yielding heart came remembrance of the Thing that was
about to happen in the Virginia mountains.
She drew her hand from his and in sudden dismay walked apart a few
paces, saying, “Let me think for a minute, Jeff!” She dropped her
riding skirt, whose fulness she had been carrying over one arm, and its
long black folds swept around her slender figure as she leaned against
a tree with her face in her hands. So tall and straight and slim she
looked, drooping against the tree trunk, that the fancy crossed his
mind she was like some forsaken, grieving wood nymph, and all his body
ached with the longing to enfold her in his arms and comfort whatever
pain was in her heart. But his love as well as his courtesy forbade him
to intrude upon her while she stood apart, and he waited for her to
turn to him again.
Rhoda was thinking of what she knew was about to happen and of what it
would mean to him. Her father had said that it would be like the sudden
ringing of an alarm bell and that, however this initial attempt turned
out, it might cause the whole South to take up arms at once and declare
war. She knew how her lover’s spirit would leap at such an emergency.
Did she wish to put his love and his promise to such a test at the very
beginning? Slowly she walked back and stood in front of him.
“Jeff, this is truly a wonderful proof of your love that you have
given me!” Her voice was tremulous with desire of all she felt she
was putting away, but she went bravely on: “I don’t believe any other
woman ever had such proof! Indeed,” and she smiled tenderly at him, “I
don’t believe any other woman was ever loved quite so much. It makes me
feel your love in my heart, oh, so much more precious than even it was
before! But I want you to be quite sure, dear Jeff!”
“I am sure, sweetheart!” he broke in.
“But won’t you wait a little while, two weeks, no, three weeks, before
I--we decide? I ask you to go home, at once, and not to see me or write
to me for three weeks more. And then you can let me know whether or
not you still wish to put your ideals and ambitions aside for the sake
of love. But I want you to consider the question then just exactly as
if we had never talked of it before. You are not to feel yourself in
the least bound by what you have told me to-day. If anything should
happen between now and then that makes you feel that the South still
has a claim upon you, anything that would make you in the very least
unwilling to--to carry out this plan, then I want you to tell me so
frankly--with perfect frankness, dear Jeff, as perfect as our love.”
“And is that all the hope you will give me, dearest?” he pleaded. “No
promise to take back with me?”
She was standing beside the path, on the rising ground a little above
him, and she leaned toward him, resting her hands lightly upon his
shoulders as she said, her face all tenderness:
“Dear Jeff, it is for your sake I am asking it!”
He seemed scarcely to hear what she said, and touched her cheek with a
caressing palm as he exclaimed, “Rhoda, my sweet, your face is like a
guardian angel’s!”
Before Jefferson Delavan reached Fairmount again the Thing had happened
that made the North gasp with wonder and set the South beside itself
with fear and rage. The amazing audacity of John Brown’s attack upon
Harper’s Ferry and the rankling distrust between the two sections make
reasonable, to impartial eyes of a later day, the alarming significance
which the southern people, especially those in the border states, saw
in Brown’s foredoomed enterprise. The slaveholders of Kentucky were
aroused to almost as extreme a pitch of angry apprehension and defiance
as were the people of Virginia.
Rhoda Ware had not to wait even three weeks for the expected letter
from Jefferson Delavan.
“You were right,” he wrote. “You saw the obstacles that lie between us
more clearly than I did--or, perhaps, you had more information than I
of the treacherous lengths to which the North would dare to go in the
desire to overthrow the ordinary rights of a state and to undermine the
power of the government under which both sections have solemnly sworn
to live. This attempt to incite the slaves to insurrection and the
butchery of their masters proves to all of us that neither property nor
life is safe in the South. At any moment another plot may break forth,
no man can tell where, and be more successful than this one was. The
South needs now, more than she ever did before, every one of her sons
whom she can trust. I cannot desert her in her hour of peril. From the
bottom of my heart I thank you, Rhoda, that you made it possible for me
to remain, without dishonor, in the position where every instinct of
duty and honor and loyalty demands that I stay. It was like you to know
that, much as I love you, love would have to yield to honor if it came
to a test between the two, and it has made me love you all the more,
if that were possible, to know that your love is so rich and noble and
generous.
“God knows what the future may hold for us two. For the first time
since our love began I can see no hope for us. The feeling between
the North and the South grows intolerable and the bonds between them
cannot last much longer. As long as the South and her interests are in
danger, my conscience, my sense of duty, my loyalty, all my ideals and
aspirations, bid me stay here. And here I know you will not come.
“But whatever happens, dear, I shall always thank God that I have had
the privilege of knowing and loving you, while the knowledge that you,
such a peerless woman as you, have loved me will be as long as I live
the most precious treasure of my heart. I have many dear memories
of our love, but the dearest of them all is of that last day we had
together, that splendid ride, when you were so adorable, and of all the
sweet pictures of you that I cherish the sweetest of all is of your
face as you leaned toward me in the wood and said, ‘It is for your
sake, dear Jeff.’
“Only God knows whether or not we shall ever see each other again. But
I shall always love you, and as long as we both live I shall treasure
in my heart the belief that you still love me. Good-by, dear heart.”
“At last, it is all over,” Rhoda said to herself when she had read
the letter. “He sees, at last, as I did so long ago, that there is no
hope for us. No--he sees none, now, but I can a little. John Brown has
brought the war ten years nearer, father says, and any time it may
come. And the war will end slavery. But it’s best not to hope too
much.”
She took out the box of his letters and read them all over again,
touching them tenderly and kissing the withered rose. “I’d better burn
them all now,” she told herself, “and try not to think so much about it
after this.”
With such pain in her heart as might have been in Abraham’s when he led
Isaac to the altar, she carried her little love treasure to the fire.
But even as she held it poised over the flames her resolution failed
her. It was too much a part of herself and she could not do it. The
little box was put away again in its hiding place and in the months
that followed, whenever the ache in her breast would not be hushed in
any other way, she solaced her love and longing by reading the letters
over and over again, until she almost knew them, word for word.