Rhoda of the Underground

by Florence Finch Kelly

Had he then been making love to Rhoda and was he now getting the matter settled with their father? Then it would be impossible not to be present at the dinner table. But for the present she would stick to her guns. She rose and moved toward the door, giving her hoopskirts an angry swish.

“No!” she paused to say, with emphasis, “you cannot expect me, thinking as I do about Horace Hardaker, to sit at the same table with him. I shall ask Lizzie to save my dinner for me and eat it after he goes away.”

But when they met in the dining-room Charlotte was already there, arranging flowers on the table, a rose in her hair and another at her throat and Hardaker’s place set beside her own. At first his manner toward her was courteous, though formal, but as the meal progressed and she smiled upon him, rallied him, and talked to him and at him with audacious little speeches, his reserve melted and his attention was gradually centered upon her. Every now and then she stole a glance at Rhoda, secretly wondering and discomfited that her sister did not seem more disturbed or make some effort to prevent her from monopolizing Hardaker’s attention. She reassured herself with thinking, “But she never does show things out much.”

After dinner Dr. and Mrs. Ware left the three young people together upon the veranda. Horace asked Rhoda about her visit to Levi Coffin’s in Cincinnati, but Charlotte cut in with some saucy remarks that set them to laughing and when presently she strolled off across the lawn to a grape arbor at the other side of the yard, he was in close attendance. Rhoda brought her sewing from the house and began hemming the flounces for Charlotte’s gown.

There was a suggestion of triumph in Charlotte’s expression and manner when they came back and all three stood under the butternut tree beside the east gate, where Dr. Ware’s carriage was waiting for him to dismiss a patient. Had she not taken young Hardaker away from her sister at once and herself appropriated all his attention? But when she could not help seeing that the ordinary friendliness between the two was neither disturbed nor accentuated, she began to think that perhaps her previous surmise had been mistaken. And when Horace bade them a casual good-by, in which her keen eyes could discover no trace of any unusual sentiment, and drove away with their father, she decided that after all it had not been worth while. “But anyway it was more fun than eating dinner alone,” she thought. “And when Mr. Jefferson Delavan comes—”

CHAPTER III

We blundering humans are much given to looking back over our lives and saying, “There we made a mistake. If it were to do over again we would do thus and so, and then things would turn out much better and happier.”

But if we could go back and live our lives over again, at how many of the turning points would we have the courage, or the desire, to take the other direction? How often would we care to risk any different combination of events than that which we had formerly dared? For experience has taught us, at least, how endless and how momentous is the line of events, not only for ourselves but also for a growing multitude of others, that we set in motion with each choice of the forking road. Moved by our own desires and the compelling force of outward circumstances we travel over the course the first time, choosing our route with little thought for the intricate coils of consequence that hang upon our steps. But if we were to journey over it again would not our feet drag at the turnings and waver back to the path we already knew, rather than venture blindly upon some new chain of events, leading none could tell whither and ending only with the end of time?

Thus did it happen that Dr. Amos M. Ware in after years sometimes debated with himself as to whether he made a mistake in not speaking sooner to his daughter Rhoda about the work, of deep concern to him, in which he hoped to enlist her sympathy and help. Often did he ask himself if perhaps it would not have been better for her had he laid his plan before her at once, on the very day of Hardaker’s visit, when her mind and heart were so deeply impressed that there would have been little doubt of her acquiescence. But he wanted to talk with her more, to give her more things to read, and so to lead her deeper into the heart of the fires with which North and South were burning. And in the meantime came Jefferson Delavan.

Afterwards he was wont to say to himself that if he had spoken, and everything had been arranged and the work started before that event happened, the young man’s coming would have made little difference to Rhoda, that then he would simply have gone away again and that would have been the end of it. But he was wont also to reassure himself with the thought that perhaps Delavan would have come again anyway, and that, even if he had not returned, perhaps it would have been no better for Rhoda. But the “ifs” and “perhapses” so tangled up his reflections that he always ended by thinking he would not quite like to risk acting differently if it were to do over again.