Rose Mather: A tale

by Mary Jane Holmes

Tom Carleton was able to start on his journey westward. Twice he had left his room and joined the family below, making himself so agreeable, and adapting himself so nicely to all the Judge’s crotchets that the old man confessed to a genuine liking for the Yankee rascal, and expressed himself as unwilling to part with him. He had inquired into his family history, and, to his infinite delight, found that the elder Carleton, Tom’s father, was the very lawyer whose speech years ago, had been instrumental in sending back to bondage the Judge’s runaway negro, Hetty’s husband, whose grave was out by the garden wall, and whose wife and sons had rendered so different a service to the lawyer’s son.

Tom’s face was scarlet when he thought of the difference, and remembered how his father had worked to prove that the master was entitled to his property wherever it was found. The Judge suspected the nature of his thoughts, and with a forced laugh, said, goodhumoredly:

“You are more of an abolitionist than your father was, I see. Well, well, young man, times change, and we change with them. Old man Carleton did me a good turn, for Seth was worth two thousand dollars. I never abused him, nor gave him a blow when I got him back. I only asked him how he liked freedom as far as he had gone, and he didn’t answer. He seemed broke down like, and in less than a year he died. He was the best hand I ever had, more’n half white. I cried when he died. I’ll be hanged if I didn’t. I told him to live and I’d set him free, and when I see how his eyes lighted up I made out his papers on the spot, and brought ’em to him, and he died with ’em in his hand, held so tight we could scarcely get ’em out, and I had ’em buried with him in his coffin.

“‘Thank you, mars’r, God bless you for letting me die free, but it’s come too late. I would worked for you, mars’r, all the same, if you’d done this before. I wanted to be a man, and not a thing, a brute. You have been kind to me mars’r; thank you, thank you for liberty.’

“These are Seth’s very words. I got ’em by heart, and I said them so much that I began to wonder if freedom wasn’t better than slavery. But, bless you, my niggers was about all I had. I couldn’t give ’em up, though I used to go out to Seth’s grave and think how he hugged the papers to the last, and wonder if the clause ‘all men are born free and equal,’ didn’t mean the blacks. But the pesky war broke out, and drove all this from my head. I hate the Yankees,—I hate Lincoln. I hate the whole Union army, though I’ll be blamed if I can hate you. Got a wife, hey?”

He turned abruptly to his guest, who had listened with so breathless interest to the story of poor Seth, that he did not see Maude De Vere, her eyes shining, and her cheeks flushed, as if she were under some strong excitement.

Between herself and Arthur there had been a long conversation concerning Captain Tom Carleton, and other matters of greater interest to Maude. The “John Camp” ruse had succeeded well, and Maude had a fancy for making it do still more, by taking her patient in safety as far as her Uncle Haverill’s. She had received several letters from her uncle, urging her to come home, and in a week at most she was going. As one who had been expressly sent as her escort, Mr. Carleton would of course go with her, and in order to make the journey with perfect safety she would have Arthur go too, and it was of this that she had spoken to him that morning when she found him in a little summer-house at the rear of the long garden. There was a dark shadow on Arthur’s face, as he listened to Maude’s proposition, and when she had finished speaking, he replied:

“I intend to go with you, provided I am not ordered back to the army, but, Maude, I will not have that Yankee soldier hanging on to us. We have done that for him which imperils our lives, and now that he is able to go on, let him take his chance alone. If he is one half as keen as Yankees think themselves to be, he will get through unharmed. No, I won’t have him in our way.”

“But think of the dangers to be encountered, the hordes of guerrillas which infest the mountains,” Maude pleaded, and in her earnestness she laid both her hands on Arthur’s shoulder, and stood leaning over him.