Rose Mather: A tale

by Mary Jane Holmes

There was a sudden pause, and turning her head the startled woman listened.

Was it the wind moaning round her lonesome dwelling, or was it poor dead Harry calling to her, as in her superstitious imagination she sometimes believed he did when she was praying for Billy, reproaching her that no prayer had ever been said for him, the lost one? Again the sobbing cry, and a rustling movement by the door. It could not be the wind, for that only shook the loosened timbers or screamed through some gaping crevice, while this, whatever it might be, called:

“Mother, mother, come.”

Was it a warning from the other world,—a summons to follow her first-born? Annie Graham had said there were no such messages sent to us, and Annie was always right; so the frightened woman listened again until the rattling of the latch, and a feeble, timid knock told her there was more than the winter wind or spirits of the dead about her house that night. There was a human being seeking to gain entrance, and tottering to the door she asked who it was, and what they wanted there.

“Mother, mother, let me in. I’m your Billy boy, come from the war.”

The words were hardly uttered ere the door was opened wide, the frantic woman dragging rather than leading in the worn-out man, who, staggering forward, fell into her arms, sobbing piteously,

“I’m so sick and tired. I’ve been weeks on the road, hiding everywhere; for, mother,—shut the door tight, so nobody can hear,—I’ve run away; I’ve had enough of war, and so I left one night. You know what they do to deserters. They hang them, neck and heels. Oh, mother, mother, don’t let them find me, will you? I’ve done my best in one dreadful battle. They musn’t get me now. Will they, think?” and Billy cast a searching glance around the room to see that no officer was there with power to take him back.

Would they get him from her? She’d like to see them do it, she said, as she led the childish deserter to the hearth, he leaning heavily upon her, and falling, rather than sitting upon the chair she brought. Weary of a soldier’s life, and satisfied with one taste of battle, he had stolen away one night when the rain and the darkness sheltered him from observation. Greatly magnifying the value put upon himself, as well as the chances for detection, he had not dared to take the cars, lest at every station there should be one of the police waiting to secure him. So he had made the entire journey from Washington on foot, travelling by night and resting by day, sometimes in barns, but oftener in the woods, where some friendly stump or leafless tree was his only shelter. He had reached his home at last, but his haggard face, his blood-shot eyes, his blistered feet and tattered garments bore witness to his long, painful journey.

With streaming eyes the mother listened to the story, then opening the bed of coals, she warmed and chafed his half-frozen limbs, handling tenderly the poor, blistered feet, from which the soles of the shoes had dropped, leaving them exposed. But all in vain did she prepare the cup of fragrant tea, sent her that afternoon by Mrs. Mather. Billy could do little more than taste it. He was too tired, he said; he should be better in the morning, after he had slept. So with eager, trembling hands his mother fixed the bed in the little room which had not been used since he went away, bringing her own pillows, and the nice rose blanket given by Mrs. Mather, together with a strip of carpet which she spread upon the floor so as to make it soft for Billy’s wounded, bleeding feet. How sick he was, and how he moaned in his fitful sleep, now talking of Hal, now of being shot, and again of the Bible on the stand, and the prayer he heard his mother make.

Mrs. Baker was not accustomed to sickness, but she knew this was no ordinary case, and she suggested sending for the doctor; but Billy started up in such dismay, telling her no one must know that he was there unless she wanted him killed, that he succeeded in communicating a part of his terror to her, and she spent the entire Sunday by her child’s bedside, doing what she could to allay the raging fever increasing so fast, and keeping watch to see that no one came near to drag her boy away.