Amid a wild storm of sobs and tears she had read her husband’s dying message, growing sick and faint just as he knew she would when first she learned of his loss, and why it was he had never written to her himself. But this was naught compared to the horror which crept round her heart as she read what George had written of a coming time when the long grave by the gate would not be visited as often as at first, or he who slept there remembered as tearfully.
“Oh, George, George!” she cried, “it was cruel to tell me so,” and sinking to her knees, she essayed to breathe a vow that other love than that she had borne for George Graham should never find entrance to her bosom. But something sealed her lips,—the words she would have uttered were unspoken, and the rash vow was not made.
Still there was an added drop to her already brimming cup of sorrow, and a sadder, more loving note in the tone of her voice when she spoke of her husband, as if she would fortify herself against the possibility of his prediction coming true. It was a sorry day when she finally left her cottage home, and only God was witness to the parting; but the dim, swollen eyes and colorless cheeks attested to its bitterness, as, with one great upheaving sob, she crossed the threshold and entered the carriage where Rose sat waiting for her, while the motherly Widow Simms wrapped around her the pile of shawls which were to shield her from the cold, and bade her god speed to her new home.
Rapidly the carriage drove away, while the widow returned to the cottage to perform the last needful office of fastening down the windows and locking up the doors, then, with a sigh at the changes a few short months had wrought, she went back to her own long deserted home. And the busy tide of life rolled on in Rockland just the same as if in the churchyard there was no new-made grave, holding the buried love of Annie, who, in Rose Mather’s beautiful home, was surrounded with every possible comfort and luxury, and treated with as much consideration as if she were a born princess, instead of the humble woman, who, a few months before, was wholly unknown to the little lady of the Mather Mansion.
CHAPTER XV.
THE DESERTER.
Another had taken George’s place in Company R, and both the Widow Simms and Susan Simms shed tears of natural pride when they read that John was the favored one, and bore the title of Lieutenant. It more than half atoned for his long absence to the young wife, who, greatly to her mother-in-law’s disgust, was made the happy possessor of a set of furs bought with a part of the new lieutenant’s increased wages.
“Better lay by for a wet day; but easy come, easy go. They will never be worth a cent. Tain’t like them Ruggleses to save, and to think of the silly critter’s comin’ round in the storm just to show ’em, late on Saturday night; I’m glad I wan’t to hum,” was the widow’s muttered comment, as on the Sunday following the receipt of the furs she pinned around her high, square shoulders, the ten years’ old blanket shawl, and tying round her neck the faded tippet of even greater age, started for church, determining not to notice or speak to the extravagant Susan, if she appeared, as she was sure to do, in her new finery.
This was hardly the right kind of spirit for the widow to take to church, but hers was a peculiar nature, and the grace which would have sufficed to make Annie Graham an angel, would hardly have kept her from boiling over at the most trivial matter. This the widow felt, and it made her more distrustful of herself, more careful to keep down the first approaches of her besetting sin. But the furs had seriously disturbed her, particularly as they were said to have cost $35—“more than she had spent on her mortal body in half-a-dozen years,” she thought, as, with her well-worn Prayer Book in hand, and a pair of Eli’s darned, blue socks upon her feet to keep them from the snow which had fallen the night before, she walked rapidly on in the direction of St. Luke’s.
There was an unusual stir about the doors, a crowd of eagerly talking people, and conspicuous among them was Susan, looking so pretty in her neatly fitting collar, and holding her little muff so gracefully that the widow began to relent at once, and to feel a kind of pride that “John’s wife was as genteel lookin’ as the next one, if she did come of them shiftless Ruggleses,” but inasmuch as it was Sunday, she shouldn’t flatter Susan by speaking of the furs; but the first chance she got on a week day she’d tell her “she was glad she got ’em, if they didn’t make her vain; though I know they will,” she added; “it’s Ruggles natur’ and she’s standin’ out there now, just to show ’em to the folks in the street goin’ to the Methodis’ meetin’.”