Rhoda of the Underground

by Florence Finch Kelly

Again she blushed and turned her eyes away, feeling acutely that she did not deserve this praise and miserably wondering if they would despise her were she to tell them that she had been willing, only an hour before, to become a slaveholder’s wife.

“It seem to me,” Horace went on, “that we’ve got to go right on with the popular propaganda against slavery. Why, this very decision of Chief Justice Taney—it’s so atrocious and inhuman, it will be the best campaign document we’ve ever had. We ought to circulate it by the thousand! I’m not sure, friends, but it will be a good thing for us, in the long run!”

Dr. Ware smiled slightly. He was accustomed to the enthusiasm with which Hardaker, in a dozen sentences, could convince himself of the truth of a proposition which, five minutes before, he would have flouted. Nevertheless, this idea appealed to him.

“There’s a good deal in that, Horace,” he acquiesced, “and I think we’d better take it up in the Rocky Mountain Club. But while we’re appealing to the northern voters we mustn’t forget the South. We must extend and increase our Underground work, because it is making slave property most precarious all along the border states. The more slaves we can run off the more uncertain the whole institution becomes, and the more angry we make the South—and there’s nothing irritates them so much as this—the sooner the crisis will come. War is the only possible solution of this problem, friends. So I say, let’s bring on the crisis as soon as possible, and fight it out!”

At that moment there was a knock at the office door and a request for Dr. Ware’s services in another part of the town. The two visitors went down the hill again and Rhoda, invited by the bright sunshine, strolled down the veranda and across the yard to the grape arbor. She wanted to be alone and think matters over, find where she stood and allay the turmoil between her heart and her conscience.

As she walked down the path she saw that Jim was already making preparations for the spring. This great bed was to be filled again with white petunias—they had liked it so much last year. Again she seemed to sense their odor, as on that June night, and to hear a voice vibrant with tones of love. No, she could not think here,—her heart would not let her. She turned away and hurried to her room. But there too every inch of space was like a seductive voice calling to her with the memories of the last few days. With a sudden grip upon herself—a quick indrawing of breath and a pressure of teeth upon her lip, the outward signs of inner process of taking herself in hand—she went deliberately downstairs and out into the woodshed.

There she sat down upon a chunk of wood and faced the little room, with its door heedlessly exposed and open, just as the marshal had left it. The sight stung her, as she had known it would, with an accusation of apostasy. But her spirit rose up quickly in self-defense.

“No, I didn’t desert our cause, even in thought,” she declared to herself. “I’m not so bad as that, I hope. I only thought I could marry Jeff and still help it along. But I’m afraid I couldn’t. Yes, I know what mother said, and for a little while it did seem possible—just because I wanted it so much, I suppose. But mother and I are so different. I couldn’t be in the midst of things that I thought were wrong without trying to make them right. Jeff would free his slaves if I asked him to—I’m sure he would.”

She lingered over the thought a moment and a fond smile curved her lips. “Yes, I’m sure he would, and I wouldn’t have to be a mistress of slaves. But that isn’t the whole of it. He told me once, and it’s been in all his letters, how wrapped up he is in the interests of the South. And that means slavery. It’s his own section and what they think are their rights, against all the rest of us and against freedom, and eternal right, and the upward progress of the world. We’d still be just as much divided and opposed to each other as ever.”

The memory returned to her of her father sitting at his desk, his face drawn with sadness and sadness in his voice, as she had seen him on that evening in the previous autumn when she had asked if her mother could not be told what they were doing. She shivered a little.