Rose Mather: A tale

by Mary Jane Holmes

She should not wear mourning, she said. She had other uses for her money; and so the leghorn of many years’ date, with the old faded green veil, followed Isaac Simms to the grave, and the widow’s face was still and stony as if cut from solid marble.

They made him a great funeral, too, though not so great as George Graham’s had been; for Isaac was not the second, nor the third, nor the fourth soldier buried in Rockland’s churchyard. But he was Isaac Simms,—“Little Ike,”—“Stub,”—whom everybody liked; and so the firemen came out to do him honor, and the Rockland Guards, and the company of young lads who were beginning to drill, and the boys from the Academy, and Rose Mather was chief directress, and her carriage carried the widow, and Susan, and Annie, and herself up to the newly-made grave, where they left the boy who once had sawed wood for the little lady now paying him such honor.

The war was a great leveler of rank, bringing together in one common cause the high and the low, the rich and the poor, and in no one was this more strikingly seen than in the case of Rose Mather, who, utterly forgetful of the days when, as Rose Carleton, of Boston, she would scarcely have deigned to notice such as the Widow Simms, now sought in so many ways to comfort the stricken woman, going every day to her humble home, and once coaxing her to spend a day at the Mather mansion, together with Susan, whom Rose secretly thought a little insipid and dull. Susan’s husband was alive, and in the full flush of prosperity; so Susan did not need sympathy, but the widow did, and Rose got her up to the “Great House,” as the widow called it, and ordered a most elaborate dinner, with soups and fish, and roasts and salads, prepared with oil, which turned the widow’s stomach, and ices and chocolate, and Charlotte-russe, and nuts and fruit, and coffee served in cups the size of an acorn, the widow thought, as very red in the face and perspiring at every pore, she went through the dreadful dinner which lasted nearly three hours, and left her at its conclusion, “weak as water, and sweatin’ like rain,” as she whispered to Annie, who took the tired woman for a few moments into her own room, and listened patiently to her comments upon the grand dinner which had so nearly been the death of her.

Susan, on the contrary, enjoyed it. It was her first glimpse of life among the very wealthy, and while her mother-in-law was wondering “how Annie could stand such doins every day, and especially that ’bominable soup, and still wus salut,” Susan was thinking how she should like to live in just such style, and wondering if, when John came home with his wages all saved, she could not set up housekeeping somewhat on the Mather order. At least she would have those little coffees after dinner; though she doubted John’s willingness to sit quietly until the coffee was reached.

It was a long day to the widow, and the happiest part of it was the going home by the cemetery, where she stopped at Isaac’s grave, and bending over the turf, murmured her tender words of love and sorrow for the boy who slept beneath. There was a plan forming in the widow’s mind, and it came out at last to Annie, who was visiting her one day.

The hospitals were full to overflowing, and the cry all along the lines was for more help to care for the sick and dying, and the widow was going as nurse, either in the hospital or in the field. She should prefer the latter, she said, “for only folks with pluck could stand it there.”

And Annie encouraged her to go, and even talked of going too, but the first suggestion of the plan brought such a storm of opposition from Rose, that for a little time longer Annie yielded, resolving, however, that ere long she would break away and take her place where she felt that she could do more good than she was doing in Rockland.

CHAPTER XXII
THE WOUNDED SOLDIER.

Widow Simms was going to the army, and Jimmie Carleton, who was coming home for a few weeks, was to be her escort to Washington. During the summer Jimmie had seen a good deal of hard service. He had been in no general battle, but had taken part in several skirmishes and raids, in one of which he received a severe flesh wound in his arm, which, together with a sprained ankle, confined him for a time to the hospital, and finally procured for him a furlough of three or four weeks. Rose was delighted, and this time the Federal Fag was actually floating from the cupola of the Mather mansion in honor of Jimmie’s return but there was no crowd at the depot to welcome him. That custom was worn out, and only the Mather carriage was waiting for Jimmie, whose right arm was in a sling, and whose face looked pale and thin from his recent confinement in hospital. Altogether he was very interesting in his character as a wounded soldier, Rose thought, as she made an impetuous rush at him, nearly strangling him with her vehement joy at having him home again. And Jimmie was very glad to see her,—glad, too, to meet his mother,—but his eyes kept constantly watching the door, and wandering down the hall, as if in quest of some one who did not come. During the weary days he had passed in the Georgetown Hospital, Annie Graham’s face had been constantly with him, and as he watched the tall, wiry figure of the nurse, who always wore a sun-bonnet and had a pin between her teeth, he kept wishing that it was Annie, and even worked himself into a passion against his sister Rose, who, in one of her letters, had spoken of Annie’s proposal to offer herself as nurse, and her violent opposition to the plan.