Rose Mather: A tale

by Mary Jane Holmes

It was with great difficulty that Annie could decipher the badly-written scrawl; but she made it out at last, and then took Jimmie’s letter next, shuddering as she saw in it marks of the horrors which Bill had described but faintly, and which were fully corroborated by Jimmie himself.

“My dear Annie,” he wrote, “I do not know that this letter will ever reach you. I have but little hope that it will. Still it is worth trying for, and so here in this terrible place, whose horrors no pen or tongue can adequately describe, I am writing to you, who I know think sometimes of the poor wretch starving and dying by inches in Andersonville. Oh, Annie, you can never know what I have suffered from hunger and thirst, and exposure and filth, which makes my very blood curdle and creep, and from that weary homesickness which more than aught else kills the poor boys around me. When I first came here I thought I could not endure it, and though I knew I was not prepared, I used to wish that I might die; but a little drummer boy from Michigan, who took to me from the first, said his prayers one night beside me, and the listening to him carried me back to you, who, I felt sure, prayed for me each day. And so hope came back again, with a desire to live and see your dear face once more. My little drummer boy, Johnny, was all the world to me, and when he grew too sick to sit or stand, I held his poor head in my lap, and gave up my rations to him, for he was almost famished, and ate eagerly whatever was brought to us. We used to say the Lord’s Prayer together every night, when a certain star appeared, which he playfully called his ‘mother,’ saying it was her eye watching over him. It was a childish fancy, but we grow childish here, and I, too, have given that star a name. I call it ‘Annie,’ and I watch its coming as eagerly as did the little boy, who died just as the star reached the zenith and was shining down upon him. His head was in my lap, and all there was left of my coat I made into a pillow for him, and held him till he died. His mother’s address is ——, Michigan. Write to her, Annie, and tell her how Johnny died in the firm hope of meeting her again in heaven. Tell her he did not suffer much pain,—only a weakness, which wasted his life away. Tell her the keepers were kind to him, and brought him ice-water several times. Tell her, too, of the star at which he gazed so long as he had strength.

“It was all the companion I had after he was gone until Bill Baker came. I shall never forget that day. I had crawled up to my sand bank, and drawn my rags around me, and was beginning to wish again that I could die, when a broad hand was laid upon my shoulder, and a voice which was music to me then, if it never had been before, said to me cheerily, ‘Hallo, old Corp’ral! Such are the chances of war! Give us your fist!’ But when he saw what a sorry jaded wretch I was, his chin began to quiver, and we cried together like two great babies as we were.

“Oh, Annie, was it a lie Bill Baker told me, or did you really send me your love, and say that you meant it? He told me such a story, and I grew better in a moment. Have you relented, and if I could ask you again the question I asked a year ago, when we sat together beneath the moonlight, would you tell me yes? Darling Annie, Andersonville is not so terrible since I am kept up by that hope. I do not mind now if my shoes and stockings are all gone, and my trowsers nearly so, and I watch for that star so eagerly, and make believe that it is you, and when the dark clouds obscure it, and the rain is falling upon my unsheltered head, I say that it is Annie’s tears, and do not mind that either. I pray, too, Annie,—pray with my heart, I hope, though my prayers have more to do with you than myself.

“Bill Baker said he should write and tell you about his taking the oath, which I believe he did almost solely for my sake, and greatly have I been benefited by it. Rough as he is, and disgusting at times, he seems to have gained friends outside, and he does us many a kindness, confining his attentions mostly to me, who am his especial care. It is a strange Providence that he who took me a prisoner at Bull Run and annoyed me so terribly, should now be caring for me here at Andersonville, and literally keeping the life within me, for I should die without him.

“I have not written half I want to say, but my paper is nearly used up, and not one word have I said to mother or Rose. Tell them they would not know me now, and tell them, too, that in my dreams, when I am not with you, I am with them, and mother’s face is like an angel’s, while Rose’s sparkling beauty makes my heart beat just as it used to beat when I first began to realize what a darling sister I had. Dear Annie, you did send that message by Bill Baker, I will believe, and thus believing, shall gain strength maybe to bear up until the day of release.

“Good-bye, my darling. From my crowded, filthy, terrible prison I send you a loving good-bye.”

Notwithstanding the sickening details of this letter the day succeeding its receipt was a brighter one at the Mather house than the inmates had known for a long time. Jimmie was still alive, and with Bill Baker’s care he might survive the horrors of Andersonville and come back to them again. Annie showed both letters to Mrs. Carleton, who, when she read them, wound her arms around Annie’s neck and whispered, “Is it wrong for me to be glad that Bill Baker told that lie, when by the means our prisoner boy is so greatly benefited.”

Annie could not tell. She was not sorry that Jimmie should think of her as he did, and that night when the stars came out in the sky she looked tearfully up at them wondering which was the one watched for by the childish young man, and the little boy who died. Mrs. Carleton had taken it for granted that if Jimmie came back Annie would be her daughter, and she clung to her with a love and tenderness second only to what she felt for Rose. Poor Rose! She had listened with some degree of interest to such portions of Jimmie’s letter as Annie chose to read to her, but it had no power to rouse her from the state of apathy into which she had fallen. She never smiled now, and rarely spoke except to answer a question, but sat all day by the window in her own room, and looked away to the southward, where all her thoughts were centered. It was very strange that nothing could be heard of her husband except that he was shot down dead. A dozen corroborated that fact, but his body had not been found on the field, nor was any mention ever made of him in any official accounts. Once Rose had been startled from her stupor by a soldier, who pretended to have seen her husband in one of the Southern prisons, but a closer examination proved that the man was intoxicated, and had told what he did in the hope that money might be given him for the intelligence, and then Rose sank back into her former condition, the same hopeless look in her eyes which had been there from the moment she heard her husband’s name among the killed, and the same look of anguish upon her face which never relaxed a muscle, as she watched indifferently the preparations made by her mother and Annie for an event which under other circumstances would have stirred every pulsation of her heart. But when on Christmas morning, the bell from St. Luke’s was sending forth its joyous peal for the child born in Bethlehem more than eighteen hundred years ago, there came a softer, more natural look to Rose’s eyes, and her lip quivered a little as she said to Annie, who was bending over her, “What is that sound in the next room like the crying of a baby?”

“It is your baby, Rose; born last night. Don’t you remember it,—a beautiful little boy, with his father’s look in his eyes, and Jimmie’s dimple in his chin?”