Rhoda of the Underground

by Florence Finch Kelly

Rhoda listened with a little tremor in her nerves and her heart beating faster. Vividly the vision came before her—the pretty, gay young woman with her wilful coquetries and the masterful young man urging their horses faster and faster—and they were her father and mother! How strange it seemed to think of them under the stress of such a wild, compelling love. That, then, was what love was like—for its sake her mother had dared the anger of her people, and had given up them and their love and her home and all her early associations which had meant to her such great happiness. The moon was swimming upward through a sea-like expanse of dim blue sky and casting its spell of beauty over the flower-decked yard, the solemn tree shapes guarding the street and the glimpses of river beyond. Fireflies were weaving patterns of light down among the shrubbery and behind it the white palings of the fence gleamed, unreal as the walls of a dream palace. Up from the rose-laden bushes, on the softly stirring air, came waves of fragrance.

Mrs. Ware was going on with a story about Delavan’s mother and herself and Rhoda heard her mention her “old mammy”! Instantly the girl’s thought flashed to what her father had told her a little while before, and the tears came to her eyes at the realizing sense of how his love had shielded for his wife her memories and her pleasure in them. This, then, was what love was like—but suddenly imagination drove thought away and again she saw the vision of those two young lovers galloping faster and faster, while love plied whip and spur. Then without warning her mind played a trick upon her and there flashed across it a memory of her own—of children playing pirates, herself and the other girls princesses in short dresses and pantalettes, and the man now sitting beside her, a long-legged boy, bearing down upon their palace, singling her out and bearing her away to his treasure cave.

They strolled down into the yard, but Mrs. Ware did not like the dew on the grass and went back to the veranda. Rhoda and Delavan idled on through the moonlight.

“Do you know what I’ve just been thinking of?” he questioned.

“No. How could I? But—” she plucked a red rose and held it toward him, her upper lip lifting in a smile that sent a brightness over her face, “a flower for your thoughts!”

He took it, pressed it to his lips and fastened it in his buttonhole. They were passing a great bed of white petunias, gleaming like ghost flowers in the moonlight and sending forth sweet odors that filled the air all round about.

“I was thinking,” he began, and to Rhoda the sweetness of their fragrance seemed suddenly to be translated into his tones and to be coursing through her own veins. Never again was she to be able to sense the odor of petunias without darting memory of how he pressed her rose to his lips and said, “I was thinking of that evening when we played pirates. Do you remember?”

They had come to the entrance of the grape arbor, at the western side of the yard. It was dark with the heavy foliage of the vines, and Rhoda hesitated an instant as she glanced at the shadows within, checkered here and there with gleams of light, and gave a faint exclamation at his words. A dim prescience, barely realized, crossed her consciousness, as of something, some destiny, waiting for her within those shadows. A broad band of moonlight, shining through the entrance, lay across the seat.

“You startled me, a little,” she said, sitting down in the white glow, “because—it’s very curious—I thought of that evening myself, just now!”

“You did? What a coincidence! Then you must remember how hard I had to work to beat Lloyd Corey, the other pirate, to your palace, and how I chose you out of all the princesses and carried you off? Do you remember? Lloyd and I had a duel about you, with cornstalks, that evening, after you girls went in, and I won, and after that he had to let me pick you out every time—do you remember—Rhoda—that I did always choose you? The very first day that you came, Harry Morehead and Lloyd and I talked over you and all the other girls that were there, comparing you and saying which we thought we would like best, and I told them that I liked Rhoda Ware the best of them all and that I was going to marry her some day. That was just boy’s talk, of course, but—Rhoda—Rhoda Ware—we are man and woman now, and I love you, and I—still mean to marry you, if you will have me—will you?”