“Yes, that is just what it is,” she assented earnestly. “It is too horrible to think of!”
Again he gazed at her sharply, wondering through what upheaval of emotion she had gone that morning that had landed her so suddenly just where he wished her to stand, when he had begun to fear that her face would be turned the other way. “That nigger this morning,” she went on hurriedly, “he was a mulatto, said that he—he—was Jeff’s brother! Only think of it, father! What sort of an effect can slavery have upon a man to make him willing to hold his brother as a slave, a beast to be bought and sold! It’s too horrible!”
Dr. Ware began to understand. Her lover had fallen from her ideal of him and she was casting the blame not upon him but back upon the institution for which he stood. It was significant of the complexity of his nature that, as he looked upon her pale face, shining eyes and curling lip, something akin to compassion for the absent lover stirred within him, notwithstanding the bitterness of his own feeling against slavery and all it meant.
“Such things happen down south. I’ve known some instances that were certainly true. But it’s possible that sometimes the niggers boast when they have no right to. As long as you have only the runaway’s word for it, Delavan ought to have the benefit of the doubt. The Lord knows he, or any slaveholder, has enough to answer for, anyway.”
Rhoda scarcely seemed to hear him. She sat silent for a moment and the animation faded from her face. “The man had a pistol,” she presently went on “and if Jeff—if Mr. Delavan—had found him I’m sure he would have shot—to kill, rather than be taken. He said he would.”
Her father bent upon her a puzzled look. Here was still another factor in the motives, or the impulses, which had moved her to action. How much had she been impelled by desire to save her lover from harm and how much by the determination to help the slave to liberty? He wished he knew, so that he might judge just how deeply and how permanently her renewed abhorrence of slavery had taken root. He knew that if she went into the Underground work he could depend upon her to be loyal, capable and discreet, but he drew back from asking her to take part in it unless she could do so whole-heartedly with conviction as intense as his own.
“Perhaps, then, you saved his life,” he said quietly, and then went on with a deeper significance in his tone, “as well as got for the slave his freedom, which is more than life to him.”
“Father, I want to do something!” she broke out suddenly. “Is there anything a girl can do? I know now that I can’t marry Mr. Delavan—I—I love him—and if he wasn’t a slaveholder I’d be glad to be his wife—and I know I’d be happy. But I couldn’t—I just couldn’t feel myself responsible the least bit for those poor creatures being slaves. It’s wrong, father, it’s all wrong, and horrible, and I won’t have anything to do with it. I tried to think I could, for a while, because I love Jeff so much and I wanted so to be his wife. But this awful slavery would be between us all the time—and I hate it, father, I hate it as much as you do, and I want to do something to help put it down!”
He looked at her with surprise, triumphant rejoicing in his heart. This was a different Rhoda from any he had known. She sat still and spoke quietly, but he saw that her hands were clenched and in her low voice vibrated passionate earnestness.
The black face of the housemaid appeared at the door. “What is it, Lizzie?” he questioned.