Rhoda’s heart was high with expectation of success when she and Mary Ellen started upon the journey to Cleveland. The runaway, in her new gown and a bonnet and veil, played her part perfectly, and Rhoda told her father that he might expect her back in a few days with the news that all had gone well. “And I,” she added to herself, “shall then be able to feel that I have paid off Jeff’s debt of wrongdoing to this poor girl.”
As they were going on board the steamboat Jim came hurrying down to the landing from the post-office with the morning mail, which contained a letter for Rhoda. She saw that it was from Charlotte, and put it unopened into her pocket to read later. For, notwithstanding her inward assurance that her adventure could not fail, she felt anxious about the short time they would have to remain on the river boat. Slave traders and their agents and slave catchers were constantly journeying up and down the river, and if one of these who had appraised Mary Ellen in her days of bondage should happen to see her he might recognize her as Lear White. She kept her charge engaged in conversation, the better to carry out the pretense that they were two ladies traveling together, and warned her not to raise her veil.
The transfer to the canal boat safely made, Rhoda felt much less anxious and relaxed a little of her care. They sat upon the deck, and Mary Ellen lifted her veil now and then, the better to see the succession of charming views through which they passed. The wooded hills were ablaze with autumn foliage and these alternated with open lands where fields of brown stubble, acres of ripened corn, pasturing cattle and busy farm yards told of autumn’s rewards for the year’s labor. Mary Ellen was much interested in all this and had many questions to ask as to how the work was done and whether or not it would be the same in Canada. Several hours passed in this way before Rhoda bethought her again of the letter from Charlotte. Smiling at thought of the enthusiastic account it would contain of the round of pleasures since her last missive, she took it from her pocket and drew a little apart, while Mary Ellen became engrossed in looking at a town which they were approaching. A number of people were at the landing and she gazed at them, the tree-shaded streets, the buildings and the church spires with the self-forgetfulness of a child amid new surroundings.
Instead of the long letter she expected Rhoda found in the envelope a single sheet and dashed across the middle of it the one sentence, “I told you I’d soon be engaged, and I am! Charlotte.”
The words danced and blurred before her eyes as she stared at them, all her attention indrawn to the pain in her breast. This, then, was all love meant to a man—the whim of a moment or a month, ready to be captured by the first pretty girl who made the effort. Had it not been the same with Horace Hardaker? Why should she have expected Jeff’s love to be of any more substantial fiber? And, moreover, what right had she to expect or wish him to be faithful to her? But her quivering heart cried out that if he had loved as she did he would have been faithful, even unto death. And down in the bottom of her soul she knew that her pain was not all for his lost love, that some of it, much of it, was for her ideal of his love and faith and chivalrous heart, stabbed to death by this immediate surrender to Charlotte’s allurements.
“Miss Rhoda! Miss Rhoda! Miss Rhoda!”
The frightened cry, repeated over and over, seeming at first to come out of some far-off space, pierced her indrawn consciousness. She looked up in a dazed way, her thoughts stumbling back slowly to her surroundings. Then she saw that Mary Ellen, between two men, was being hustled off the boat.
She sprang after them and seized the arm of one of the men. “What are you doing?” she demanded.
“You’ll soon find out what you’ve been doing!” the man replied.
“This is an outrage!” Rhoda exclaimed. “Let this woman go, or I shall have you arrested! She is Miss Dunstable of Cincinnati, and is traveling with me. Let her go, I say!”