The Cameron pride; or, purified by suffering

by Mary Jane Holmes

“Well, Bell,” he replied, “I am afraid there is no such honor in store for my wife, for if I ever get back my strength and the flesh upon my bones, she must take me with legs and arms included. Not even a scratch or wound of any kind with which to awaken sympathy.”

He appeared very bright and cheerful; but when after a moment Bell asked for Mark Ray, there came a shadow over his face, and with quivering lips he told a tale which blanched Bell’s cheeks, and made her shiver with pain and dread as she thought of Helen—for Mark was dead—shot down as he attempted to escape from the train which took them from one prison to another. He was always devising means of escape, succeeding several times, but was immediately captured and brought back, or sent to some closer quarter, Robert said; but his courage never deserted him, or his spirits either. He was the life of them all, and by his presence kept many a poor fellow from dying of homesickness and despair. But he was dead; there could be no mistake, for Robert saw him when he jumped, heard the ball which went whizzing after him, saw him as he fell on the open field, saw a man from a rude dwelling near by go hurriedly towards him, firing his own revolver, as if to make the death deed doubly sure. Then as the train slacked its speed, with a view, perhaps, to take the body on board, he heard the man who had reached Mark, and was bending over him, call out, “Go on, I’ll tend to him, the bullet went right through here;” and he turned the dead man’s face towards the train, so all could see the blood pouring from the temple which the finger of the ruffian touched.

“Oh, Helen! poor Helen! how can I tell her, when she loved him so much!” Bell sobbed.

“You will do it better than any one else,” Bob said. “You will be very tender with her; and, Bell, tell her, as some consolation, that he did not break with the treatment, as most of us wretches did; he kept up wonderfully—said he was perfectly well—and, indeed, he looked so. Tom Tubbs, who was his shadow, clinging to him with wonderful fidelity, will corroborate what I have said. He was with us; he saw him, and only animal force prevented him from leaping from the car and going to him where he fell. I shall never forget his shriek of agony at the sight of that blood-stained face, turned an instant towards us.”

“Don’t, don’t!” Bell cried again; “I can’t endure it!” and as Mrs. Reynolds came in she left her lover and started for Mrs. Banker’s, meeting on the steps Tom Tubbs himself, who had come on an errand similar to her own.

“Sit here in the hall a moment,” she said to him, as the servant admitted them both. “I must see Mrs. Ray first.”

Helen was reading to her mother-in-law; but she laid down her book and came to welcome Bell, detecting at once the agitation in her manner, and asking if she had bad news from Robert.

“No, Robert is at home; I have just come from there, and he told me—oh! Helen, can you bear it?—Mark is dead—shot twice as he jumped from the train taking him to another prison. Robert saw it and knew that he was dead.”

Bell could get no further, for Helen, who had never fainted in her life, did so now, lying senseless so long that the physician began to think it would be a mercy if she never came back to life, for her reason, he fancied, had fled. But Helen did come back to life, with reason unimpaired, and insisted upon hearing every detail of the dreadful story, both from Bell and Tom. The latter confirmed all Lieutenant Reynolds had said, besides adding many items of his own. Mark was dead, there could be no doubt of it; but with the tenacity of a strong, hopeful nature, the mother clung to the illusion that possibly the ball stunned, instead of killing—that he would yet come back; and many a time as the days went by, that mother started at the step upon the walk, or ring of the bell, which she fancied might be his, hearing him sometimes calling in the night storm for her to let him in, and hurrying down to the door only to be disappointed and go back to her lonely room to weep the dark night through.

With Helen there were no such illusions. After talking calmly and rationally with both Robert and Tom, she knew her husband was dead, and never watched and waited for him as his mother did. She had heard from Mark’s companions in suffering all they had to tell, of his captivity and his love for her which manifested itself in so many different ways. Passionately she had wept over the tress of faded hair which Tom Tubbs brought to her, saying, “he cut it from his head just before we left the prison, and told me if he never got home and I did, to give the lock to you, and say that all was well between him and God—that your prayers had saved him. He wanted you to know that, because, he said, it would comfort you most of all.”