As he leaned toward her across his desk and she, seated at the other side, bent her face toward him, even a casual observer might have seen their relationship. For her countenance was a copy of his, a young, soft, feminine copy, but yet formed clearly upon the same plan, even in the details of feature and coloring. His eyes, large and gray like hers, were calm and cool and judicial in expression, even when, as now, they were alight with earnestness. His shaven upper lip, also, was short, but it pressed upon the lower in a firm line, while all his countenance expressed a sort of austerity that seemed to bespeak a mind informed with intense moral conviction rather than hardness or coldness of nature. But looking at the two faces thus, one could see in hers the kindling fires of an emotionalism which would be forever foreign to him, an incipient power of emotional exaltation which would never be within his possibilities. But if there was less of warmth in his eyes and of spirituality in his brow, poise and cool judgment were written there, and far-sightedness, their inevitable offspring. Of the intellectual, judicial type Dr. Ware’s countenance showed him to be, and however much or little of such qualities his daughter had inherited from him, along with her remarkable physical resemblance, from elsewhere had come the emotional forces which now were trembling in the sensitive curves of her mouth and glowing in her tear-wet eyes.
“There’s nothing in that book that couldn’t be duplicated right now in the South, every day in the week,” Dr. Ware was saying in low, even tones that nevertheless held such intensity of conviction that she felt her nerves thrilling with it. “And even then, Rhoda, it’s only a beginning! There are such horrors perpetrated under slavery as a young girl like you can’t begin to realize!”
She shuddered, and he watched her silently as she pressed her lips together and deliberately held her breath for a moment in the effort to master her emotion.
“I don’t think I’ve ever quite realized anything about it before,” she said in calmer voice, “although I’ve always believed, ever since I’ve known anything about it, that it is wrong. But I’ve never felt, all through me”—and she shivered again—“just how wrong it is, until this book has made it seem all real and alive.”
She hesitated, leaning her arms upon the desk, and a puzzled expression crossed her face. “But, father,” she presently went on, “why doesn’t mother feel as you do about it? Her father owned slaves, and until she married you she had always lived on the plantation with slaves all around her. And she still thinks that slavery is right and that the negroes are happier and better off in it than they would be if they were free. She’s so kind and gentle, how can she feel as she does if this book is true?”
“Your mother and I, Rhoda, have never discussed the question. Her father was a kindly man and treated his slaves well, and so the only conditions that she knew anything about were of slavery at its best. She had such a happy girlhood on her father’s plantation, where the slaves were all eager to do anything for her, that her memories of it are very pleasant. I’ve never wanted to disturb them, because it wouldn’t do any good and it might spoil the pleasure she takes in thinking about those days; and so I’ve never talked about it with her, although she knows, of course, what I think.”
Rhoda threw him an admiring glance, which he, with his eyes averted in semi-embarrassment at having revealed a glimpse of his inner self to his offspring, did not see.
“Mother has told us, Charlotte and me,” Rhoda went on thoughtfully, “so many things about her girlhood and her father’s plantation, and she has always been so pleased in recalling those days, that I couldn’t help wondering sometimes if anything could be wrong that made everybody as happy as they seemed to have been in her home. And Charlotte, you know, is quite convinced that slavery is all right.”
“Oh, Charlotte!” Dr. Ware exclaimed in an amused tone. “She’s just a little fire-eater! But she doesn’t mean half she says.”
“Sometimes she doesn’t, but she seems to be getting quite in earnest about it lately.”