Rhoda of the Underground

by Florence Finch Kelly

As she straightened the piano cover and set the chairs against the wall Rhoda’s lips curved in a proud little smile at the thought that his love for her was strong enough, her attraction for him potent enough, to hold his heart thus steadily against her constant refusal of his wish. For herself, she knew that she would never marry any one else. But it was different, she told herself, with a man. Naturally, she reflected, no one could expect him to remain true very long to a girl who told him “no” over and over again, and it would be no more than any man would be likely to do if he consoled himself with some other girl’s love. It would be much harder to bear, she confessed to herself, if that girl should be her own sister than if she were some far-away being who would take Jeff entirely out of her life and leave him and their unfortunate love a mere memory.

The thought of such an ending of their romance, wherein she would be compelled to see her sister in the place which by right of love ought to be her own, made more insistent the ache in her heart and presently drove her upstairs to lock her door and take from her bureau the box tied with white ribbon. A number of letters lay in it now, beneath the faded rose. She took them out, caressingly, turning each one over in her hands, noting its date, glancing with soft eyes at its closely written pages. Then she began to read them as carefully as if she had not already pored over them a dozen times. For the most part they were arguments in defense of the institution of slavery and the interests of his section. But these were interspersed with items of personal interest, little accounts of what he and his sister were doing, comments upon the duties and the pleasures of their life, and now and then an audacious mention, which would make Rhoda at first frown and then smile tenderly, of some holiday they would make or something they would do when she should be installed as mistress at Fairmount. But evidently her lover was hoping to win her by appeals to her intelligence, by trying to convince her that the ideals which he and his section cherished were righteous and desirable.

“I do not yet understand,” she read in the latest letter, still unanswered, “how any one possessing a nature as noble and upright as I know yours to be can yet engage in that work in which you told me you glory so much. (I refer to the assisting of runaway slaves). I do not see how you can reconcile the deliberate breaking of the laws of your country and the taking of other people’s property with the dictates of a scrupulous conscience. But I am well assured that you would not engage in this course if you did not believe it to be thoroughly honorable and right. And therefore I merely accept the fact and marvel at it.”

“The negro is on a moral and intellectual plane so much lower than the white man,” met her eyes in another letter, “that it is evident he was designed by an all-wise God to be the white man’s servitor, just as are the other domestic animals. The Almighty meant the white man to use him for his own benefit in order that he might the more easily mount to higher spheres of cultivation and achievement. Between the races there is a natural relation, ordained by God himself when he created the black so much inferior to the white, and we are but carrying out His decrees when we embody that natural, heaven-declared superiority and inferiority into the legal relation of master and slave.”

Presently her attention was attracted by farther development of the same theme in a more recent missive: “The idea that it is possible for the negro to profit by civilization, to advance or develop, is a monstrous delusion, held only by a few people at the North who know nothing about his real character. To attempt to force him into channels of life and into efforts for which he is by nature unfitted, as they are bent on doing, would be to turn the natural order of things topsy-turvy and bring destruction upon the whole nation. For a free Negrodom in the midst of our republic would swamp it in savagery.”

Over the concluding page of the last letter she pored thoughtfully, stopping now and then to consider again the ideas it contained. For she could not deny to herself the seductive appeal of the aims it set forth, whatever she thought of the arguments upon which they were based. Interested though she was in these lines, she yet remembered to keep her hand over the bottom of the page. She knew what was there, but she knew too that if she hid it from eyes that would be drawn in that direction it would leap at her, when suddenly disclosed, with a fresh thrill of happiness.

“In this beautiful Southland,” she read, “we are working out what will prove to be the crowning glory of civilization. Here man, free to reach his highest possible development, enjoying political liberty, delivered by the divine institution of slavery from the hampering, benumbing effects of labor, surrounded by comfort, beauty, affluence, can produce the finest fruits of human effort. Here a refined and beautiful social order is being established, learning encouraged, chivalrous feeling and living made possible, womanhood reverenced, all intellectual achievement honored and sought after, and here letters and art will flourish as they have not flourished anywhere on the face of the earth since the Christian era began. Here will it be possible, and here only in all the world, for a modern Greece to grow into the fulness of beautiful flower. Here poets and artists and orators and statesmen and men of science and women, whose beauty and grace and talent will make them social queens as powerful as were the ladies of the French salons, will be appreciated and honored and find it possible to reach their finest, fairest development. Here in the new world, in our own native land, will be made possible a reincarnation of all that ‘glory that was Greece, and grandeur that was Rome,’ as our own lamented southern poet has so beautifully sung.”

Thus far she read, and then, lifting her eyes from the page, looked steadily away for a moment. A soft and tender light shone in their gray depths as, smiling gently, she dropped them again upon the page and removed her concealing hand.

“Is it not a glorious prospect, and is it not worth while, my own dear heart, to have some share in bringing about so grand a consummation? What better can I do in the world than to help my beloved South to maintain and extend her social order in which the negro, a mere animal, does the work for which he is fitted and to which he was appointed by the Creator, and the white man, created by God in His own image, is left unhampered to develop his own God-given talents and so produce such splendid results? But I am lonely, my dear one, and I long always for the presence and the companionship of the mate God made for me. Rhoda, darling, do not be cruel any longer! Tell me I can come and claim her! Always, your friend and lover, Jefferson Delavan.”

For a little while Rhoda sat gazing at those closing lines, and then, with a sigh, she prepared to write her answer. She made several beginnings that did not suit her and tossed the pages to one side. “Dear Friend Jeff,” she finally wrote. “Concerning what you say about my doing things that are contrary to law, I must tell you that when men make laws that outrage every sense of right and justice in my own heart then I think that to disobey them is the only right and honorable course. The law of God is higher than the law of man. The law of God commands us to help the needy, to succor the oppressed, to aid the wayfarer, to deal justly by all men. That is what I have been doing and what I shall continue to do, although I break a whole houseful of man’s unjust and wicked laws.”