Rose Mather: A tale

by Mary Jane Holmes

“If I knew he would not die, it would not be so hard to give him up,” she murmured, as sickening visions of fields strewn with the dead, and hospitals filled with the dying, came over her, and for an instant her brain reeled with the thought of George dying thus, and leaving her no hope of meeting him again, for George’s faith was not like hers.

Anon, however, something whispered to her that the God she loved was on the field of carnage, and in the camp and in the hospital, and everywhere as much as there in Rockland, that prayers innumerable would follow the brave volunteers, and that the evil she so much feared might be the means of working the great good she so desired. And thus it was that Annie came to a decision. Stealing back to her husband’s side, she bent above him as he lay sleeping, and with a heart which throbbed to its very core, though the lip uttered no sound, she gave him to his country asking, if it could be, that he might come back again, but if it were ordered otherwise—“God’s will be done.” There was no shrinking after that sacrifice was made, though when the morning came, the death-white face and the dark circle beneath the eyes, told of a weary vigil, such as many and many a woman kept both North and South, during the dark hours of the Rebellion. But save the death-white face, and heavy eyes, there was no token of the inner struggle, as with a desperate effort at self-command, Annie wound her arms around her husband’s neck, and whispered to him, “You may go,—I give my free consent,” and George, who cared far more to go than he had dared express, kissed the lips which tried so hard to smile, little dreaming what it cost his brave young wife to tell him what she had. To one of his temperament, there was no danger to be feared for himself. The bullet which might strike down a brother at his side would be turned away from him. Others would, of course, be killed, but he should escape unharmed. In the language of one speaker, whose eloquent appeal had done much to fire his youthful enthusiasm, “He was not going to be shot, but to shoot somebody!”

This was his idea, and ere the clinging arms had unclasped themselves from his neck, his imagination had leaped forward to the future, and in fancy George Graham wore, if not a Colonel’s, at least a Captain’s uniform, and the cottage on the hill, which Annie so much admired, and for the purchase of which a few hundreds were already saved, was his,—bought with the money he would earn. The deed should be drawn in her name, too, he said, and he pictured her to himself coming down the walk to meet him, with the rose-blush on her cheek, just as she looked the first time he ever saw her. Something of this he told her,—and Annie tried to smile, and think it all might be. But her heart that morning was far too heavy to be lightened by a picture of what seemed so improbable. Still, George’s hopeful confidence did much to reassure her, and when, a few days after, she started for the Hall, she purposely took a longer walk for the sake of passing the cottage on the hill, thinking, as she leaned over the low iron fence, how she would arrange the flower-beds more tastefully than they were now arranged, and teach the drooping vines to twine more gracefully around the slender columns supporting the piazza in front. She would have seats, too,—willow-twisted chairs beneath the trees, where she and George could sit at twilight, and watch the shadows creeping across the hollow where the old cottage was, and up the opposite hill, where the cupola of Rose Mather’s home was plainly visible, blazing in the April sunshine. It was a very pleasant castle which Annie built, and for a time the load of pain which, since George volunteered, had lain so heavy at her heart, was gone; but it returned again when, as she passed a turn in the road, her eye wandered down to the hollow, and that other cottage standing there so brown and small, and looking already so desolate, because she knew that ere many days were over, she should wait in vain for the loved footsteps coming down the road,—should miss the pleasant, cheery laugh, the teasing joke and words of love which made the world all sunshine. The cottage on the hill became a worthless thing as poor Annie forced back her tears, and with quickened steps hurried on to join the group of ladies busy at the Hall.

Taking her seat by the window, she commenced the light work imposed on her, that of tearing and winding bandages for those who might be wounded.

“Maybe there’ll never be no fight, but it’s well enough to be prepared,” was the soothing remark of the kind-hearted woman who gave the work to Annie, noting, as she did so, how the lip quivered and the cheek paled at the very idea.

“What if George should need them?” kept suggesting itself to her as she worked industriously on, hoping that if he did, some one of the rolls she was winding might come to him, or better yet, if he could only have the bit of soft linen she had brought herself,—a piece of her own clothing, and bearing on it her maiden name, Annie Howard. He would be sure to know it, she said, it was written so plainly with indelible ink, and it would make him feel so glad. But there might be other Annie Howards, it was not an uncommon name, was suggested next to her, as she tore the linen in strips, and quick as thought, her hand sought the pocket of her dress for the pencil which she knew was there. Glancing around to see that no one observed her, she touched the pencil to her lips and wrote after the name, “It’s your Annie, George. Try to believe I’m there. Rockland, April, 1861.”

There were big tear-drops on that bit of linen, but Annie brushed them away, and went on with her rolling, just as Widow Simms called her attention to Rose Mather, as mentioned several pages back.

Annie could not account for it to herself, but ever since Rose’s arrival at Rockland, she had felt a strange inexplicable interest in the fashionable belle; an interest prompted by something more than mere curiosity, and now that there was an opportunity of seeing her without being herself seen, she straightened up and smoothing the soft braids of her pale brown hair, waited for the entrance of the little lady, who, with her pink hat set jauntily on her chestnut curls, and her rich fur collar buttoned gracefully over her handsome cloth cloak, tripped into the room, doing much by her sunny smile and pleasant manner to disarm the ladies of their recent prejudice against her. She was nothing but a child, they reflected; a spoiled, petted child; she would improve as she grow older, and came more in contact with the sharp corners of the world, so those who had the honor of her acquaintance, received her with the familiar deference, if we may be allowed the expression, which had always marked their manner toward William Mather’s bride. Rose was too much accustomed to society to be at all disconcerted by the hundred pair of eyes turned scrutinizingly toward her. Indeed, she rather enjoyed being looked at, and she tossed the coarse garments about with a pretty playfulness, saying that “since the ladies had called upon her she had thought better of it, and made up her mind to martyr herself one afternoon at least, and benefit the soldiers. To be sure there wasn’t much she could do. She might hold yarn for somebody to wind, she supposed, but she couldn’t knit, and she didn’t want to sew on such ugly, scratchy stuff as those flannel shirts, but if somebody would thread her needle, and fix it all right, she’d try what she could do on a pair of drawers.”

For a time no one seemed inclined to volunteer her services, and Widow Simms’s shears clicked spitefully loud as they cut through the cotton flannel. At last, however, Mrs. Baker, who had more than once officiated as washerwoman at the Mather mansion, came forward and arranged some work for Rose, who, untying the strings of her pink hat, and adjusting her tiny gold thimble, labored on until she had succeeded in sewing up and joining together a long leg with one some inches shorter, which had happened to be lying near. Loud was the shout which a discovery of this mistake called forth, nor was it at all abated when Rose demurely asked if it would not answer for some soldier who should chance to have a limb shot off just below the knee.

“The little simpleton!” muttered the widow, while Mrs. Baker pointed out to the discomfited lady that one division of the drawers was right side out and the other wrong!