“Of course,” he said to her one day in the early winter, when the date set for her trial was almost at hand, “the law and the facts are all against us. The only thing we can do is to appeal to the sentiment against the law. Whether we lose or win, the affair is making a big breeze that’s going to be bigger yet!”
“You know, Horace,” she replied, “that I don’t care in the least what they do with me,—except on mother’s account. What I want most is to help all I can in the fight against slavery and if it will do more good for me to stay in jail than to go home and work with the Underground again, why then—” she looked straight at him and a smile flashed from her lips up into her eyes—“in jail let me stay!”
He smiled back at her and his blue eyes lighted with admiration as he laid one hand for a moment over hers. “Rhoda, I’ve told you this before, but I must say it again, and I shall always say it—you’re the grandest girl there is anywhere!”
After he was gone she sat with a tender smile on her lips. “Dear Horace!” she was thinking. “Such a good friend as he is! Sound and true to the bottom of his heart! Why didn’t I happen to fall in love with him?... Well, it seems to be getting nearly time—for me to refuse him again!”
It was within a day or two of the opening of her trial, which was to be the first of the series, when Rhoda finally brought herself to the point of writing to Jefferson Delavan. Many times she had told herself that, since he was to marry her sister, she ought to let him know that in her heart were only wishes for his happiness. But it had been a hard thing to do and she had postponed it from week to week. At last, her sense of duty would be put off no longer and she resolutely faced the heartache that she knew the task would make all the more poignant.
“Dear Friend,” she wrote. “Charlotte has told me of the happiness that came to her and to you during her visit to Fairmount. I am sure you will believe me when I say it is my most earnest wish that that happiness will never be any less than it is now and that it will grow greater during the many long years of wedded life that I hope are before you. In your and her feelings and convictions there is nothing to divide you, nothing to prevent the complete union of hearts and souls which is the only thing that can make marriage worth while. I am sure, since you love her, that you will always be very tender to Charlotte. To me she has always been just ‘little sister’ and it is difficult for me to realize that she is really a woman and about to become a wife. At home we have always spoiled her and that has made her, sometimes, in a merry way, rather ruthless of other people’s feelings. But I have no doubt your love will make you understand that this is only on the surface and that her heart is true and loving. For you both, dear friend, soon to be brother, my heart is full of every good wish. Always your friend, Rhoda”—she paused here, on the point of signing her name in the old way, but “Adeline” seemed sacred to those other days and to the love that had been between them then, and she could not write it here. So she added only “Ware” and quickly folded and sealed the letter.
As she looked at the envelope it seemed as if it were the coffin of her love, ready for burial, as if she had said a last good-by to all the pleasure it had brought into her heart. Now only the pain was left. She bowed her head upon her hands and some scalding drops trickled through her fingers. Her jailer’s knock sounded at the door and she sprang to her feet and dried her eyes. Hardly had she time to control her sobs when it opened and Jefferson Delavan crossed the threshold.
His look was deeply earnest and intent upon her as he moved forward, holding out both hands and saying, “Rhoda! I could stay away no longer!”
“Jeff!” she faltered, stepping back. “I—I—had just written to you!”
“Written to me! Rhoda! Did you ask me to come?”