Rhoda of the Underground

by Florence Finch Kelly

With much inward regret Dr. Ware gave up his plan of taking Rhoda to the meeting with him. She and her mother sat on the veranda with their guest and Mrs. Ware told them anecdotes about her own and his mother’s girlhood and of the intimacy which had caused the young women to be known among all their acquaintance as “the two alter egos.” “And after awhile,” said Mrs. Ware, in happy reminiscence, “they always called one of us ‘alter’ and the other ‘ego,’ without making any distinction as to which was which.”

In the days of that friendship they had had their miniatures painted, each for the other, and Delavan had brought, from his dead mother’s possessions, that of Mrs. Ware.

“I thought you might like to have it again, Mrs. Ware, madam,” he said, in his slightly ceremonious manner, “either for yourself, as a memento of your girlhood, or to give to Miss Rhoda.”

Rhoda bent over it with eager, tender interest. “Oh, mother!” she exclaimed, “does this really look as you did then? How you have changed!” And, indeed, in her matronly figure, short and plump, there was little suggestion of the trim and graceful outlines of the young girl in the picture. The brown hair had grown quite gray, the bright color had faded from the face, and the dainty contour of cheek, chin and throat had been despoiled by the quarter-century which had since passed over her head. But although the years had stolen her beauty they had left in its place a worthy gift. For motherliness informed her features, her look was tender, and the grace of gentleness controlled her manner.

Delavan was at Rhoda’s elbow, looking at the miniature with her, and now and then stealing a glance from the portrait to the girl’s face. “You needn’t do that, Jeff,” Mrs. Ware smiled at him, “for you can’t find the least resemblance to me in Rhoda’s features. She’s like her father in looks and disposition and everything,” and her eyes rested fondly upon her first-born.

“But how much it is like Charlotte!” Rhoda insisted, and pointed out the likeness in mouth and chin, nose and brow, in expression and in coloring.

Moved to tender retrospection by the memories that came crowding upon her, she told them about her courtship and marriage. “It was at White Sulphur Springs that I first met your father, Rhoda,” she said, “and from the very start he never seemed to have eyes for anybody but me. He was from the North, you know, from Providence, and he was taking a horseback trip through the South for his health. He had letters to the Colbys, good friends of ours who were there too, and so I soon met him. Ah, what happy times we used to have at White Sulphur!” and she went on to tell of rides and dances and flirtations in which they heard the names of gay young gallants, known to them now as men of prominence in Washington or capital cities in the South.

“But father—what became of him?” reminded Rhoda.

“Oh, he was always wherever I was, as long as he stayed at the Springs, that summer. Afterwards he was with the Colbys, who owned the next plantation to ours, tutoring their boys. That was such a gay winter—something going on all the time—dear me!” She broke off into a happy little laugh and the spirit of that long dead time flared up again in the instinctive coquetry with which she tossed her head, moved in her chair and flourished her fan. Delavan looked at her and smiled, thinking of the Amos M. Ware of those days and wondering what would be his account of that winter. Rhoda’s eyes noted the movement and the expression and she thought, “That’s just like Charlotte!”

“My people did not want me to marry him,” Mrs. Ware went on, “because he was a northerner. But one day he came to take me to ride—two such splendid black horses they were, and how they could travel! Well, we went, for I always had my own way, and such a wild ride we had! We galloped and galloped, and I was very gay, as I always was, but your father, Rhoda, looked so serious and strange that I was a little frightened inside of me, though I wouldn’t have let him know it for the world. I suppose that made me—a little—worse than usual, and he didn’t say anything, but just made the horses go faster and faster, and after a while he rode close beside me and seized my arm and said— O, never mind what he said!”—her voice trembled and almost broke and it was a moment before she went on. “Well, the end of it was that we ran away and were married. Of course my people were very angry about it, but they forgave me, as I knew they would, though they never did quite forgive him. He took me away at once to New York, where he wanted to study medicine, and I never lived in the South again.”