Read Ebook: Rose Mather: A tale by Holmes Mary Jane

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Ebook has 1199 lines and 120179 words, and 24 pages

Again Rose shook her head, feeling quite ashamed that she should lack this accomplishment.

"Well," the widow went on, "'taint much use to learn now. 'Twould take a year to git one stocking done, but if when winter comes, that brother of yours wants socks and mittens, or the like of that, tell him I'll knit 'em for him."

"Oh, you are so kind!" cried Rose, thinking to herself how she'd send Widow Simms some pineapple preserves, such as she had with dessert that day.

They grew to liking each other very fast after this, and Rose staid until the little round table was arranged for tea and rolled to Annie's bedside. There was no plate for Rose, the widow having deemed it preposterous that she should stay, but the table looked so cosy, with its tiny black teapot, and its nicely buttered toast, that Rose invited herself, with such a pretty, patronizing way, that the widow failed to see the condescension it implied. It did not, however, escape Annie's observation, but she could not feel angry with the little lady, touching her bone-handled knife as if she were afraid of it, and looking round in quest of the napkin she failed to find, for Widow Simms had banished napkins from the table as superfluous articles, which answered no earthly purpose, save the putting an extra four cents into the pocket of the washerwoman, Harry Baker's mother.

Will made no direct reply. His thoughts were evidently elsewhere, and after a few minutes he said, hesitatingly:

"Would it break my darling's heart if I should join Tom at Washington?"

There was a cry of horror, and Rose hid her face in her husband's bosom.

"Oh, Will, Will, you shan't, you can't, you mustn't and won't! I didn't know you ever thought of such a cruel thing. Don't you love me any more? I'll try to do better, I certainly will!" and Rose nestled closer to him, holding his hands just as Annie Graham had once held her husband's.

"Besides that, there was a mutual understanding between Tom and myself, that if one went the other would, and he has gone,--nobly laying aside all the party prejudice which for a time influenced his conduct. Our country needs more men."

"Yes, yes," gasped Rose; "but more have gone. There's scarcely a boy left in town, and it's just so every where."

Mr. Mather smiled as he replied:

"I know the boys have gone,--boys whose fair, beardless faces should put to shame a strong, full-grown man like me. And another class, too, have gone, our laboring young men, leaving behind them poverty and little helpless children, whereas I have nothing of that kind for an excuse."

"Oh, I wish I had a dozen children, if that would keep you!" cried Rose, the insane idea flashing upon her that she would at once adopt a score or more of those she had seen playing in the muddy Hollow that afternoon.

Mr. Mather smiled, and continued:

"Suppose you try and accustom yourself to the idea of living a while without me. I shall not die until my appointed time, and shall undoubtedly come back again. Don't you see?"

No, Rose didn't. Her heart was too full of pain to see how going to war was just as sure a method of prolonging one's life as staying at home, and she sobbed passionately, one moment accusing her husband of not loving her as he used to, and the next begging of him to abandon his wild project.

It was scarcely light next morning when Rose, determining to prevail, redoubled her entreaties for her husband to abandon the decision be now candidly acknowledged, but she could not. He was going to the war, and going as a private. Rose almost fainted when he told her this, and for a time refused to be comforted. She might learn to bear it, she said, if he were an officer, but to go as a common soldier, like those she worked for at the Hall, was more than she could bear.

It was a most beautiful summer day, when at last he left her, and Rose's heart was well nigh bursting with its load of pain. It was all in vain that she said her usual form of prayer, never more meaningless than now when her thoughts were so wholly absorbed with something else. She did not pray in faith, but because it was a habit of her childhood, a something she rarely omitted, unless in too great a hurry. No wonder then that she rose up from her devotion quite as grief-stricken as when she first knelt down. God does not often answer what is mere lip service, and Rose was yet a stranger to the prayer which stirs the heart and carries power with it. The parting was terrible, and Mr. Mather more than half repented when he saw how tightly she clung to his neck, begging him to take her with him, or at least to send for her very soon.

"What shall I do when you are gone? What can I do?" she sobbed, and her husband answered:

"You can work for me, darling,--work for all the soldiers. It will help divert your mind."

"I can't I can't," was Rose's answer. "I don't know how to work. Oh, Willie, Willie! I wish there wasn't any war.

Willie wished so too, but there was no time now for regrets, for a rumbling in the distance and a rising wreath of smoke on the western plain warned him not to tarry longer if he would go that day. One more burning kiss,--one more fond pressure of the wife he loved so much,--a few more whispered words of hope, and then another Rockland volunteer had gone. Gone without daring to look backward to the little form lying just the same as he had put it from him, and yet not just the same. He had felt it quivering with anguish when he took his arms away, but the trembling, quivering motion was over now, and the form he had caressed lay motionless and still, all unconscious of the dreary pain throbbing in the heart, and all unmindful of the loud hurrah which greeted William Mather, as he stepped upon the platform of the car and waved his hat to those assembled there to see him off. Rose, who had meant at the very last to be so heroic, so brave, so worthy the wife of a soldier, had fainted.

There were loving words being breathed into Rose's ear, when she came back to consciousness, and there was something familiar in the touch of the hand bathing her brow, and smoothing her tangled hair, but Rose was too weak and sick to notice who it was caring for her so tenderly, until she heard the voice saying to her

"Is my daughter better?"

And then she threw herself with a wild scream of joy into the arms which had cradled her babyhood, sobbing piteously:

"Oh, mother, mother, Willie has gone to the war! Willie has gone to the war!"

It was very strange, Rose thought, that her mother's tears should flow so fast, and her face wear so sad an expression just because of Will, who was nothing but her son-in-law. Then it occurred to her that Tom might be the occasion of her sadness, but when she spoke of him, asking why her mother had not prevailed on him to stay at home, Mrs. Carleton answered, promptly:

It was a piteous cry which came from the depths of that mother's aching heart,--a cry so full of anguish that Rose was startled, and asked in much alarm what it was about Jimmie. Had she heard from him, and was he really dead?

"No, Rose," and in the mother's voice there was a hard, bitter tone. "No, not dead, but better so, than what he is. Oh, I would so much rather he had died when a little, innocent child, than live to bear the name he bears!"

"What name, mother? What has Jimmie done? Do tell me, you frighten me, you look so white!" and Rose clung closer to her mother, who, with quivering lip and faltering voice, told her how recreant runaway Jimmie had joined the Confederate army under Beauregard, and was probably then marching on to Washington to meet her other son, in deadly conflict, it might be; his hand, the very one, perhaps, to speed the fratricidal bullet which should shed a brother's life-blood!

"How did you hear from him?" she asked, when her first burst of grief was over, and her mother replied by taking out a letter, on which Rose recognized her brother's handwriting.

"He sent me this," Mrs. Carleton said, and tearing open the letter, she read it aloud to Rose.

"DEAR MOTHER: Pray don't think you've seen a ghost when you recognize my writing. You thought me dead, I suppose, but there's no such good news as that. I'm bullet-proof, I reckon, or I should have died in New Orleans last summer when the yellow fever and I had such a squabble. I was dreadfully sick then, and half wished I had not run away, for I knew you would feel badly when you heard how I died with nobody to care for me, and was tumbled into the ground, head sticking out as likely as any way. I used to talk about you, old Martha said, and about Rose, too. Dear little Rose. I actually laid down my pen just now, and laughed aloud as I thought how she looked when I treated her to those worms; telling her I had a necklace for her! Didn't she dance and didn't Tom thrash me, too, till I saw stars! Well, he never struck me a blow amiss, though I used to think he did. I was a sorry scamp, mother,--the biggest rascal in Boston. But I've reformed. I have, upon my word, and you ought to see how the people here smile upon and flatter me, telling me what a nice chap I am, and all that sort of thing.

"Dear little Rose,--perhaps she would not let a Rebel kiss her, and I don't know but I'd turn Federal for half an hour or so for the sake of tasting her sweet lips once more. I do love Rose, and I feel a mysterious lump in my throat every time I look at her picture, taken just before I left home. I never show it, for somehow it would seem like profanation to have the soldiers staring at it. So I wear it next my heart, and when I go into battle I shall keep it there. Perhaps it will save my life, who knows?

"I am getting tired, and must close ere long. Now, mother, please don't waste too many tears over me. The time will come when you'll see we are right; and if it will be any consolation, I will say in conclusion, that I have written a heap worse than I really believe. I am not a fool. I understand exactly how the matter stands, but I like the Southern side the best. I think they are just as near right as the North, and I'm going to stick to them through thick and thin. We shall have a battle before long, and this may be the last time I'll ever write to you. I've been a bad boy, mother, and troubled you so much, but if I'm shot you will forget all that, and only remember how, with all my faults, I loved you still,--you and Tom and little Rose,--more than you ever guessed.

"Your affectionate Rebel, "JAMES M. CARLETON."

"P. S.--I shall send this to Washington by a chap who is going to desert, you know, and join the Federals with a pitiful story about having been pressed into the Rebel service, telling them, too, how poor and weak and demoralized we are,--how a handful of troops can lick us, and so draw them into our web, as a spider tempts a fly, don't you see? They offered me that honor, knowing that a son of GEORGE CARLETON, twice M. C. from Massachusetts, and now defunct, would be above suspicion, and would thus gather a heap of items. But hang me, if I could turn spy on any terms. So I respectfully declined. You see I am quite a somebody, owing to my having had sense enough to wait until I was twenty-one, ere I ran away, and so bringing a part of my property with me. Money makes the mare go here as elsewhere, but I'm about running out. I wish you could send me a few thousand, can't you?"

And this was Jimmie's letter, over which the mother had wept far bitterer tears than any she shed when her eldest born bade her his last farewell, giving to her, just as Jimmie had done, a lock of his brown hair. She had it with her now, and she laid them both on Rose's hand,--the dark brown lock, and the short black silken curl, which twined itself around Rose's finger, as if it loved the snowy resting-place. Rose's first impulse was to shake it off as if it had been a guilty thing; but the sight of it recalled so vividly the handsome, saucy face, and laughing, mischievous black eyes it once had helped to shade, that she pressed it to her lips, and whispered sadly, "Dear Jimmie, I cannot hate him if I try, nor see how he is greatly at fault," while in her heart was the unframed prayer that God would care for the Rebel-boy, and bring him back to them.

"They tried to keep me out," she said, "that brawny cook of yours and that filigree waiting-maid, but I would come up, and here I am."

Then sitting down by Rose she told her Annie had sent her there. "She's sorry for you," the widow said, "and she sent this to tell you so," and the widow handed Rose a tiny note, written by Annie Graham. Once Rose would have resented the act as implying too much familiarity, but her heart was greatly softened, while, had she tried her best, she could not have regarded Annie Graham in the light of an inferior. Tearing open the envelope she read:

"Dear Mrs. Mather, try to be comforted; try to see the brighter side; try to pray, and be sure the darkness now enveloping you so like a pall will pass away, and the sunshine be the brighter for the cloud. Come and see me when you feel like it, and remember, you have at least two friends who pray for you, one at the Father's right hand in Heaven, and one in her cottage in the Hollow.

"ANNIE GRAHAM."

Rose had not wept more passionately than she did now, as she kissed the note, and wished she were one half as good as Annie Graham.

"But I am not," she said, "and never shall be. Tell her to keep praying until Will comes home again."

"I will tell her," returned the widow, "but wouldn't it be well enough to try what you can do at it yourself, and not leave it all for her?"

"Try what I can do at praying?" Rose exclaimed. "I can't do anything, only the few words I always say at night, and they have nothing in them about Will."

"Brought up like a heathen!" muttered the widow, feeling within herself that to the names of her own sons and Captain Carleton, William Mather's must now be added, when, as was her daily custom, she took her troubles to One who has said, "Cast your burdens upon the Lord, for He careth for you."

"We'll both remember your husband, Miss Graham and I, so don't fret yourself to death," she said, soothingly, as Rose broke into a fresh burst of tears.

"It isn't him so much," Rose sobbed, "though that is terrible and will kill me, I most know, but there's something else that ails me a great deal worse than that; at least, mother has made me think it is, though I can't quite see how having one's brother join the Rebel army is so very bad."

Rose forgot her promise of secrecy, just as her mother might have known she would. The story of the Carleton disgrace was told, and perfectly aghast, the horrified widow listened to it.

"Your brother a rebel?" she almost shrieked, "a good-for-nothing, ill-begotten rebel! I thought you said he was a captain of a company;" and mentally the widow struck from her list of names that of poor, scandalized Tom, that very moment perspiring at every pore as he went through with his evening drill within the Federal camp.

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