She went out into the yard, gay with the luxuriant blooms of early summer. The white petunias sent up their fragrance and the memories it brought pierced her very heart with poignant sweetness. She went on into the grape arbor and sat down in its cool shadows, asking herself why it was that she could keep her own soul clean only at the expense of another’s happiness.
“My happiness, Jeff’s happiness,” she thought, “they are of our own making and we can choose our own conditions. But mother, poor, dear, little mother, so sick, with such a little while to live, and her happiness so bound up in this! And if I do it I shall feel all my life that it was wrong, that my soul isn’t clean. Oh, mother, how can I become a part of this abomination of slavery, this vile, accursed thing! I’d be glad to die, a hundred times over, for you—but to live and be a part of such wickedness— Oh, mother, how can I? How can I?”
The end came sooner than they expected. On a hot afternoon in midsummer, when the late, red rays of the sun, shining through the half-closed shutters, lay in bands across the floor, Mrs. Ware called Rhoda. “Come close, honey, down beside me,” she said, and Rhoda knelt at the bedside. Her mother slipped a feeble arm around her neck.
“You’ve been a dear, loving daughter to me,” she said, “even if we’ve thought so differently about some things. You are like your father, Rhoda, and that has always been a pleasure to me. You’ve wanted to make me happy, just as he always has, and in almost everything you have. No mother ever had a better, dearer daughter than you, honey.”
“Oh, mother,” Rhoda exclaimed, the tears welling into her eyes, for in the pale, pitiful face she saw the shadow of the death angel’s wing and felt his near approach in the chill that struck into her own breast. “Dear mother, I’ve never done half enough for you, never been half as good and loving to you as you deserved!”
“Always you have, dear, except in one thing. You know how much for two years I’ve wanted you to marry Adeline’s son, dear Jeff. And you would not. I haven’t much longer to live, and if you want to make my deathbed happy promise me that you will. Oh, Rhoda, send for Jeff and marry him here beside my bed and have your dying mother’s blessing!”
Rhoda was sobbing with her face upon her mother’s shoulder. “Dearest mother,” she pleaded, “don’t ask that of me.”
“It’s the only thing in all the world that I want, honey. You love Jeff, and he adores you, and I know that you’ll be happy together, if you’ll only give up that nonsensical idea that has taken possession of you. It’s your happiness that I want, Rhoda, yours and Jeff’s. And I know, oh, so much better than you do, what makes a woman happy. I can’t die feeling that I have done my duty to my little girl and made sure of her happiness, unless she will promise me this. Will you do it, Rhoda?”
“Let me be the judge of my happiness, mother, as you were the judge of yours!”
“Your mother knows best, child! Take her word for it, and let her bless you with her last breath, as you’ll always bless her if you do. It’s the last thing she’ll ever ask of you.”