Rose Mather: A tale

by Mary Jane Holmes

The little white dress, with its shoulder knots of blue; the flannels and the soft wool socks were all there in plain sight, and Will saw them, too, as his eye followed Rose’s.

“Rose, tell me, what is that? What does it mean?” he asked, and then, without a word, Rose led him into the adjoining room, where in his crib slumbered her beautiful boy,—their beautiful boy rather. He was hers alone no longer, for the father was there now, and the happiest moment he had ever known was that when he knelt by his baby’s cradle, and felt how much he had for which to thank his Maker. He could not wait till morning before he heard the sound of his first-born’s voice, and he took him at once in his arms, every pulse thrilling with pride and exquisite delight, as he felt the soft, baby hands in his own, and looked into the beautiful dark eyes which met his so wonderingly as baby awoke and gazed up into his face. It was not afraid of him, and Rose almost danced with joy as she saw it smile in its father’s face, and then turn slily away.

“It was so terrible till baby came last Christmas,” she said, beginning to explain how they believed him dead, and how much she had suffered. “Even baby did not make me as glad as it ought,” she continued, “for I could not forget how happy you would have been to come home and find him here, and now you’ve come. God is very, very good; I love him now, Will, better, I hope than I love you, or baby, or anything. I’ve given baby to Him and given myself, too, but he had to punish me so hard before I would do it.”

Then together the re-united couple knelt and thanked the Father who had remembered them so mercifully, and asked that henceforth their lives might be dedicated to his service, and all they had be subject to his will. There was no more sleep in the Mather mansion that night, for by the time Mrs. Carleton and the servants had recovered from their surprise and joy, the early morning was red in the east, and the sun was just beginning to show the returned soldier how pleasant and beautiful his home was looking.

The people of Rockland had not intended to have much of a celebration on that Fourth of July. The churchyard was too full of soldiers’ graves, and the war-clouds were still too dark over the land, while the battle of the Wilderness, where so many had perished, was too fresh in their minds to admit of much festivity; but when it was known that Will Mather had come home the town was all on fire with excitement. Every bell was rung, and the cannon of Bill Baker memory bellowed forth its welcome, while in the evening impromptu fireworks attested to the people’s delight. Then followed many days of delicious quiet in which Will told his wife and mother the story of his wanderings, but said very little of his life in Salisbury. That was something he could not mention without a shudder, and so he passed it over in silence, choosing rather to tell of his journey across the mountains, where so many friendly hands had been stretched out to help him. He had every name upon paper, and was only waiting for an opportunity to show his gratitude in some tangible form. Especially was he grateful to Paul Haverill, whose name became a household word, together with that of Charlie and Maude De Vere. Of her Rose thought so often, wishing she could see her, and resolving when the war was over either to write at once or go all the way to the Mountains of Tennessee to find her.

“Poor Tom!” she often sighed. “If he could only fall into so friendly hands.”

But everything pertaining to Tom was shrouded in gloom. The last they heard he was in Columbia, while Jimmie still pined in Andersonville, if indeed he had not died amid its horrors. Exchanged prisoners were constantly arriving at Annapolis, where both Mrs. Simms and Annie were, and every letter from the latter was eagerly torn open by Rose in hopes that it might contain some news of her brothers. But there was none, and the mourning garments which, with her husband’s return, were exchanged for lighter, airier ones, seemed only laid aside for a few weeks until word should come that one or both of her brothers were with the dead whose graves were far away beneath a Southern sky.

CHAPTER XXIX.
THE HEROINE OF THE MOUNTAIN.

Of the three captives, Will Mather, Jimmie, and Tom, the latter had suffered the least as a prisoner of war. A strong Freemason, he had found friends at Columbia, where chance threw in his way a near relation of his dead wife and a former classmate. Though firmly believing in the Southern cause, Joe Haskell from the first befriended Captain Carleton, whom he finally helped to escape, giving him money, and so far as he was able, directions where to go and whom to ask for aid. Tom’s imprisonment had been of short duration, and thus it was, with vigor unimpaired and spirits unbroken, that he found himself free on that very night when Will Mather lay sleeping in the cave among the mountains of Tennessee. But that “Refuge of Safety” was many, many miles away, and Tom’s route to the land of freedom was a longer and far more dangerous one than Will’s had been. Still Tom had in his favor health and strength, together with a knack of passing himself off as a Southerner whenever an opportunity was presented, and so for a week or more he proceeded with comparatively little trouble; but at the end of that time dangers and difficulties beset him at every step, while more than once death or recapture stared him in the face, either from the close proximity of his pursuers, or the pertinacity of the bloodhounds which were set upon his track. Escape at times seemed impossible, and Tom’s courage and strength were beginning to give way, when one night, toward the last of June, he found himself in a negro cabin, and an occupant of a bed whose covering, though impregnated with the peculiar odor of the sable-hued faces around him, seemed the very embodiment of sweetness and cleanliness to the tired and footsore man, who nearly all his life had slept in the finest linen, with lace or silken hangings about his bed. For linen now there was a ragged quilt, and the bed was festooned with cobwebs, while from the blackened rafters hung bundles of herbs and strings of peppers, alternated here and there with the grimy articles of clothing which old Hetty had washed that day for her own “boys,” and in consequence of the rain had hung in her cabin to dry. Coarse, heavy shirts they were, but Tom, as he watched them drying on the pole, fell to coveting the uncouth things, and thought how soft and nice they would feel on his rough flesh. Then he thought of home and Rose, and wondered what she would say could she look in upon him in that negro hut, with all those stalwart boys sitting by, while Hetty, their mother, cooked the corn-cake, and fried the slice of bacon for supper. Two sat just where Tom could see them, while the third was near the door, keeping a constant watch on the circuitous path leading from the cabin to a large dwelling on the knoll,—“Marsr’s house,”—where to-night a number of young people were assembled in honor of the return of the son and heir, Lieut. Arthur, who had been in so many battles, and had a taste of prison life at the North.