Rose Mather: A tale

by Mary Jane Holmes

So absorbed was she in her grief as not to hear the sound of wheels stopping near her gate, nor the tripping footstep upon the floor. Rose Mather, restless at home and wishing for something to do, had remembered the miserable woman, and knowing how desolate her comfortless house must seem that summer night, she had conquered her aversion to the place and come to speak, if possible, a word of cheer. Mrs. Baker’s howls always had the effect of making her laugh, they seemed so forced, so unnatural; but there was something so new, so real in the stillness of that figure crouching upon the bed, that Rose for a moment was uncertain how to act. It was no feigned sorrow of which she was a witness now, and advancing at last towards the untidy bed, she laid her hand upon the disordered, uncombed hair, and whispered soothingly, “I am so sorry for you, Mrs. Baker, and I’ll do all I can to help you. I’ll give you money to make your cottage pleasanter, and by and by you won’t feel so badly, maybe.”

This was Rose’s idea of comfort. Money, in her estimation, was to the poor a panacea for nearly every evil, but all her wealth could not avail to quiet the feeling of remorse from which Mrs. Baker was suffering. With a sob she thanked the kind-hearted Rose, and then continued, “’Tain’t the poverty so much, nor the knowin’ that he’s dead, though that is bad enough. It’s the something that tells me I or’to have brung him up better. I never sent him to meetin’, never went myself, never had him baptized, though I did try once to learn him ‘Now I lay me—’ but he, that’s my man, laughed me out of it. He said there wasn’t any God, that we all come by chance, but I knew better. I had a prayin’ mother, and though I forgot what she learnt me, it ’pears to come back to me now. Oh, Harry, I wish I’d done different, I do, I do,” and the repentant woman buried her face again in the scanty pillows, while Rose looked pityingly on.

Here was a case she could not reach. Money would not cure that aching heart, or quiet that guilty conscience. “Mrs. Graham would know exactly what to say,” Rose thought, wishing more and more that she, too, possessed the wisdom which would have told her what it was poor Mrs. Baker needed. Sitting down beside her, Rose talked to her of Bill, who, her husband said, was highly complimented for having captured a rebel. Will had not seen the prisoner, she said, or heard his name; he only knew the fact, and that Bill was greatly praised. This was some consolation to Mrs. Baker, but it did not take the pain away, and as she was not inclined to converse, Rose soon bade her good-bye and left her there alone in her deep sorrow.

The following Sunday, just as the notes of the organ were dying away in the opening service, a bent, shrinking figure stole noiselessly in at the open door, and Rose Mather recognized beneath the thin black veil, the haggard face of Widow Baker, who, except on funeral occasions, had never before been seen within the walls of the church. Annie saw her, too, and while Rose, touched with the humble attempt she had made to put on something like mourning for her child, thought how she would give her an entire new suit of black, Annie thought how she would daily pray that the blow which had fallen so crushingly might result in everlasting good to the now stricken mother.

Scarcely less keen, but of a far different nature, was the grief of Widow Simms. There was no black upon her leghorn bonnet. She would not have worn it if Isaac had been dead, but every expression of her stern face told how constantly her heart was going out after her darling boy, her captured Isaac languishing in his sultry prison, sick perhaps, and pining for his mother. How savage she felt toward Beauregard and all his clan, resolving at times to start herself for Richmond, and beard the lion in his den.

“She’d tell them what was what,” she said. “She’d let them know what an injured mother could do. She’d turn a second Charlotte Corduroy, if necessary, and free the land from such vile monsters,” and she actually sharpened up her shears as a weapon of offence in case the pilgrimage were made!

This was the Widow Simms excited, but the Widow Simms when calm was a very different woman, praying then for her boy, and even asking forgiveness for the stirrers up of the rebellion. At Annie’s request she had at last come to live altogether at the cottage in the Hollow, and it was well for both that they should be together, for the widow’s stronger will upheld the weaker Annie who, in her turn, imparted much of her own trusting, childish faith to the less trusting widow.

Greatly Annie mourned as the days went on, because no line came to her from George himself, nothing in his own handwriting, when he knew how she desired it, if it were but just his name. What made him always deputize Mr. Mather to write his letters for him? Annie put this question once to Rose, but the twilight was gathering over them, and so she failed to see the heightened color on Rose’s cheek and the moisture in her eye. Rose did not now, as formerly, bring her William’s letters, and read to her every word he said of George. She only told her how cheerfully George bore his illness, and how Will read to him every day from Annie’s Bible, choosing always the passages she had marked, but the rest was all withheld and Annie never dreamed the reason, or of the effort it cost the talkative little Rose to keep back what William said she must until the worst were known.

Thus the August days glided by, one by one, until the summer light faded from the Rockland hills, and September threw over them her rich autumnal bloom, and then one day there came a note for Annie, written as of old by William Mather, but signed by George himself. Poor Annie, how she cried over and kissed that signature, to which George had added, “God bless you, darling Annie.” Every letter was unnaturally distorted, and few could have deciphered the words; but to the eye of love they were plain as noonday, and Annie’s kisses dropped upon them until they were still more blurred than when they came to her.

It was very hard for Rose to keep from telling the dreadful story of what had followed the penning of those brief words, “God bless you, darling Annie.” But Will had said she must not, so she made no sign, only her arms clung closer around Annie’s neck, and her lips lingered longer upon the snowy forehead as she said good-night, and went away with the secret which Annie must not know then.