Rose Mather: A tale

by Mary Jane Holmes

It was done at last; and after few directions the operators hurried off to do for others, what they had done for George. Poor George, how long and weary were the days and nights immediately succeeding the amputation, and how horrible the sensation which prompted him to fancy the severed limb was there; to feel the hot blood tingling through his finger tips, throbbing through his wrists, streaming into his elbow joints, and then to know ’twas all a mere delusion, for the right arm once so full of vigor, was nought now, save a putrifying mass buried away beneath the sod. He would not have Annie know it yet, he said. He would rather spare her as long as possible, and so the news was withheld from her, while day after day George waited and watched for the favorable change which should make it safe for him to undertake the tedious journey. Three times was the travelling-bag packed, with the hope of going to-morrow, and as often did the doctor’s stern mandate bid him wait a little longer.

At last the terribly nervous sensation passed away, taking with it all the pain, and leaving no feeling save one of intense uneasiness and languor, which the once strong man strove in vain to shake off, trying day after day to sit up, if only for a moment, and as often falling back upon his pillows from sheer exhaustion. He was only tired; he had never been rested since the battle, he said, and if he could once go home to Annie, and lie upon the lounge, where he last saw her kneeling, he should get well so fast. Often in his troubled sleep he talked of her, begging her not to spurn her poor, crippled husband, but to love him just the same.

“I never can work for you as I used to do,” he would say, “never can buy that cottage on the hill, but God won’t let us starve, and I shall love you so much, so much, when I find you do not shrink away from poor, mutilated George.”

It was a sad, but not unprofitable lesson, which William Mather was learning by that bedside. At home in Rockland, where their positions were so different, he had always respected George Graham, but he had learned to love him now with a brother’s love, and gladly would he have saved him for the sweet wife in whom his own darling Rose was so deeply interested, and whose letters were silently working good in him as well as George. Greatly his personal friends marvelled that he should stay so closely immured within that sick-room, when he might, had he chosen, have mingled much in the world without, and many were the attempts they made to drag him away. But he withstood them all, and clung the closer to his friend, who leaned upon him with all the trustful confidence of a little child. Hour after hour he sat by his patient, reading to him from Annie’s well-worn Bible, and when at last the heavy cloud was lifted, and the pathway through the valley of death was divested of its gloom, he was the first to whom the sick man imparted the joyful news, that whether he lived or died, all was well,—all was peace within.

In silence and in tears Mr. Mather listened to the story of what was so strange to him, and in the next letter sent to Rose, he told her of the new resolves awakened within him, tracing them back to that humble cottage in the Hollow, where Annie Graham, unknown save to a few, was wielding a mighty power for good. Everything which he could do for George he did, and Annie herself could scarcely have been more gentle or kind; and George,—oh how grateful he was to his noble friend, blessing him so often for the kindly deeds.

“God will surely let you go home unharmed,” he said one day when Mr. Mather had been more than usually attentive. “I pray to Heaven every hour, that you may never know the dreary heart-pang it costs one to die away from home, and all that we hold dear, for I am dying. I have given up the delusion that to-morrow will find me better. I shall never be better until I wake in Heaven,—shall never go back to Annie,—never see my old home again. It is a humble home, Mr. Mather, but you can’t begin to guess how dear it is to me, because it is the spot where I brought Annie after she was mine. How well I remember that first night of housekeeping; how proud I felt, knowing it was my home, my table, my wife sitting opposite—that her own darling hands had made the tea, and cut the bread she passed me, and that I had earned it, too. The poor have many joys to which the rich are strangers, and I’ve sometimes thought we love each other more because there is little else to divide our love. True it is that mortal man never loved a creature better than I have loved my Annie. She was of gentler blood than I,—was far more delicately reared, and I know it was an unequal match. She was far above me in social position. Highly educated and accomplished, too; she was a belle and favorite everywhere, while I was only George Graham,—a mechanic and engineer. She kept nothing from me, and she told me of a childish fancy when she was a mere girl of fourteen, but if she ever sent a regret after the handsome, black-eyed boy,—the object of that fancy,—it was not perceptible to me. Still, I think that may have had its influence,—that, and the fact that her life was very wretched with her proud, hard aunt, on whom she was dependent, and who wanted her to marry a white-haired millionaire. But Annie chose me, and I have worshipped her with an idolatry which I know was sinful in the sight of Heaven, who will have the first place in our hearts. I have told you all this because your wife has been a friend to Annie, and I want her to know that Annie is her equal, if she did marry a poor mechanic. I am not blaming any one. I know the distinctions there are in social life. I should feel just so, too, perhaps, if I was rich and had been educated as you were. Even as it is I always was proud to think my wife was a lady-born, and I hoped one day to raise her to the position she ought to fill. But that dream is over now. It matters little what becomes of the body after the soul has left it, though I should rather lie in Rockland graveyard, where Annie can sometimes come to see me, and I do so want to hear her voice once more before I go,—to tell her with my own lips that if in Heaven I find a place, she has led me there.”

“Suppose we send for her,” Mr. Mather said, the glad thought flashing upon his mind of the joy it would be to see his own darling once more, for if Annie came, Rose, he knew, was sure to come also. “I’ll send for both Annie and Rose at once. They can come on together.”

Mr. Graham made no objection, and Mr. Mather set himself to the task of writing the letter, which he hoped was to bring not only Annie, but his own precious Rose.

“Don’t say a word about my arm. I’d rather tell her myself. She won’t mind it so much when she sees how sick and weak I am,” George suggested; and so Mr. Mather bade Rose keep the amputation to herself as heretofore.

“You will defray Mrs. Graham’s expenses,” he wrote, “and come as soon as possible, for her husband is nearer death than you imagine.”