Rose Mather: A tale

by Mary Jane Holmes

Prompt to the moment when it was due, the train swept round the Rockland curve and stopped at the depot where a large concourse of people was gathered. They had not expected the Widow Simms, and when her green veil and straw bonnet appeared on the platform, the foremost of the group looked a little disappointed, while the widow’s face darkened as she saw the waiting multitude, and guessed why they were there.

Annie had appeared by this time, and at sight of her the tongues were loosened, and deafening shouts of welcome greeted her on every side. The flag bearing her name was held aloft, the cannon in the adjoining field sent forth its bellowing roar, and the band struck up the sweet refrain of “Annie Laurie;” while the voices of the Andersonville prisoners, who had been Annie’s charge, sang the last line:

“And for bonnie Annie Graham I would lay me down and die.”

Surely this was a coming home which Annie had never looked for, and with her face flushed with excitement, and her eyes shining with tears, she stood in the midst of the shouting throng, gazing wonderingly from one to the other, and realizing nothing clearly, except the firm clasp upon her arm.

It was Jimmie’s hand, and Jimmie himself leaned upon her, as the crowd coupled his name with hers, and hurrahed for “James Carleton and Annie Graham.”

“And the Widder Simms,—I swan if it’s fair to leave her out. She did some tall nussin’ down to Annapolis,” Bill Baker said; and then the widow was cheered, and she acknowledged the compliment with a grim smile, and wondered when “folks would quit making fools of themselves, and if Susan wasn’t up there, somewhere, in the jam. Of course she was; ’twas like them Ruggleses to go where the doins was.”

And while she shook the hand of her neighbors, she kept her eyes on the watch for Susan, and felt a little chagrined that she did not find her.

Susan was at home in the neat little house which John had bought with his captain’s wages, so carefully saved. The same house it was at which Annie Graham had looked with longing eyes, in the commencement of the war; and in the pleasant chamber which overlooked the town there was a little boy who had been in Rockland only a week, and whose existence was as yet unknown to the widow. They had purposely kept it from her, so she had no suspicion that he was expected; and the first genuine feeling of happiness she had known since Isaac died, she experienced when she was ushered into Susan’s room, and the little red-faced thing was laid in her lap. She had looked askance at the new house, and neat furniture, and the pretty curtains, as so many proofs of “them Ruggleses” extravagance; but she was not proof against the white face which, from the pillows, smiled so kindly upon her, and called her mother. And she was guilty of kissing her daughter-in-law, even before she saw the baby, her first grandchild, whom Susan called Isaac, although she hated the name, and had tacked on to it Adolphus, with the hope that the future would adjust the name into Adolph, or something more fanciful than the good, plain Bible Isaac. And while the widow kissed and wept over her grandson, and felt herself growing young, and soft, and gentle again, the crowd around the depot had dispersed, a part going to their own homes, and a part following the soldiers and band which escorted Annie Graham and Jimmie Carleton to the Mather mansion, where everything had been made so beautiful for them.

It was a pleasant coming home, and a most ample compensation for all the weariness and privation which Annie, as hospital nurse, had endured, and she felt that far more was awarded to her than she deserved.

“Mr. Carleton was the one to be honored,” she said, and her soft, blue eyes rested upon the pale, tired man, who, exhausted with his journey and the excitement, lay down at once upon the sofa, while his mother and Rose knelt beside him and kissed, and pitied, and cried over his poor white face, and long, bony hands, which were almost transparent in their whiteness.