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 thatJohnwas 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 widowto 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’.”
But the widow was mistaken, for Susan had scarcely a thought of her furs, so absorbed was she in throwing what little light she could upon a mystery which was troubling the people and keeping them outside the door, while they talked the matter over. It seemed that the sexton, when, at about ten o’clock on the previous night,he came to see that the fire kindled in the furnace at sunset was safe, had stumbled over a human form lying upon the pile of evergreens gathered for the Christmas decorations, and placed for safe keeping in the cellar of the church. There was a cry between surprise and terror, and a muttered oath, and then the ragged, frightened intruder sprang to his feet, and bounding up the narrow stairway, fled through the open vestry door ere the sexton had time to collect his scattered senses.
This was his story, corroborated by Susan Simms, who said that when, at about seven o’clock the previous night, she was passing the church, she saw a dark-looking object, which she at first mistook for a woman, but as she came nearer she saw it was the figure of a man who, at the sound of her steps, dropped behind a pile of rubbish, and thus disappeared from view,—that feeling timid she did not return home that way, but took the more circuitous route past her mother-in-law’s, where she stopped for a moment and repeated the circumstance to the neighbor she found staying there.
“Then she didn’t come half a mile out of the way just to tell of her finery,” thought the widow, coming nearer to Susan, and even smoothing the soft fur, which, half an hour before, had so provoked her ire.
Various were the surmises as to who the man could be, and why he had entered the lonesome cellar; and the morning services had commenced ere the knot of talkers and listeners at the door disbanded and took their accustomed places in the church. Rose Mather was there as usual, but she knelt in her handsome pew alone, for Will had been gone from her two whole weeks, and Annie was still too much of an invalid to venture out. With others at the door she heard of the intruder, and after asking a few questions she had passed into theaisle, with a certain wise air about her, as if she knew something which she should not tell! As one after another came in, it might have been observed that she turned often and curiously toward the door, glancing occasionally at the spot where Mrs. Baker, now a regular attendant, was in the habit of sitting. She was not there to-day, a fact which no one observed save Rose and the Widow Simms, the latter of whom only noticed it because Annie, she knew, was deeply interested in the repentant woman. “She’s sick, most likely,” the widow thought, while Rose, too, had her own opinion as to what kept Harry’s mother from church that Sunday morning.
Meantime the object of their solicitude sat crouching over the fire of wet green wood she had succeeded in coaxing into a blaze, now looking nervously toward the half closed door of the small room her boys used to occupy, and again congratulating herself that it was Sunday, and consequently no one would be coming there to pry into the secret she was guarding as carefully as ever tigress guarded its threatened young. The half frozen, famished wretch, fleeing from the shadow of the church out into the wintry storm which had come up since nightfall, had gone next to the tumble-down shanty of a house which Mrs. Baker called her home. It was late for a light to be there, for Mrs. Baker kept early hours; but through the driving snow the wanderer, as he turned the corner, caught a friendly gleam shining out from the dingy windows, and waking in his breast one great wild throb of joy, such as some lost mariner feels when he spies in the distance the friendly bark and knows there’s help at hand.
It was a desolate, dreary home, but to the wanderer hastening toward it, and glancing so timidly around asif behind each rift of snow there were bristling bayonets sent to stop his course, it seemed a splendid palace. Could he gain that shelter he was safe. His mother would shield him from the dreaded officers he fancied were on his track, and so, the sick, fainting man kept on until the old board fence was reached, where, leaning against the gate, he stood a moment, and with his feverish hand scooped up the grateful snow to cool his burning forehead. The tallow candle was burning yet within the cottage, but the fire was raked together on the hearth and the stranger could see the glow of the red embers and the broken shovel lain across the andiron.
“I wonder what she’s doing up so late,” he whispered, and moving cautiously up the walk to the uncurtained window, he started suddenly at the novel sight which met his view.
Years before, when he lived in New England, he remembered that one day when playing in the garret he had found in a chest of rubbish, a large, square book, which Hal had said was their grandmother’s Bible. Afterward he had seen it standing against a broken light of glass, to keep out the snow which sometimes beat in upon himself and Hal, and that was the last he could remember concerning that Bible or any other belonging to his mother. How then was he astonished to see it lying on the old round stand, the dim tallow candle casting a flickering light upon the yellow leaves and upon the figure of his mother bending over them, and loudly whispering the words she was reading. It was not an entirely new business to Mrs. Baker, the reading of the Bible, for after the news of Harry’s death she had hunted up the long neglected volume which had given her aged mother so much comfort. It might bring consolation to her, she thought, and so with tearful eyes and achingheart she had tried to read and understand the sacred pages, pencil-marked, some of them, by a sainted mother’s hand, and fraught with so many memories of the olden time when she was not the hard, wrinkled, desolate creature people knew as Mrs. Baker. The way of life was still dark and dim to that half heathenish woman, but she was determinedly groping on, following the little light she had, and each night found her bending over the Bible ere she sought the humble bed standing there in the dark corner, just where it stood that morning when her two boys went away.
It was far more comfortable-looking now than then, for there was a nice, warm blanket on it, while the outer covering was clean and new. Rose Mather had kept her promise given in the hour of the poor mother’s bereavement, and scattered about the room were numerous articles which once did duty in the servants’ apartments at the Mather mansion. But the intruder did not notice these; he was too much absorbed with the stooping figure, whispering a part of the 14th chapter of John, and occasionally wiping away a tear as she came to some passage more beautiful than the others. There were tears, too, in the eyes of the rough man outside, but he forced them back, and pressing closer to the window, watched the lone woman inside, as, sinking down upon her knees, with the flickering candle shining on her wrinkled face, she prayed first for herself and then for him,the boystanding without the door, and listening, while his heart beat so loudly that he almost feared she would hear and know that he was there. But she paid no heed, and the tremulous voice went on, asking that God would follow and bless, and care for the Billy boy far away, and bring him back to the mother who had never been to him what she ought. The name Billy boytouched a tender chord, and stretching out his hands toward her, the man who bore that name sobbed out,
“Oh, mother, mother, I’m here, I’m here!”
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 doto 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 ownpillows, 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 ofHal, 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.
The next morning it became absolutely necessary for her to leave him for a time, as she must procure the few necessaries he needed, and taking advantage of the heavy sleep into which he had fallen, she stole noiselessly out, hoping to return ere he should wake. Scarcely, however, had she left the lane and turned into Main Street, when Rose came tripping to the gate, drawn thither by a curiosity to see if her suspicions were correct. She had learned from her husband of Bill’s exit from Washington, and for some days had been expecting to hear of his arrival in town. That he had come she was certain, and telling Annie where she was going, she had started rather early for Mrs. Baker’s. As her knock met with no response she entered without further ceremony, and passing on through the low dark kitchen came to the door of the little room where Bill lay breathing heavily, and muttering about camps, and guard-houses, anddeserters. The sight of suffering always awoke a chord of sympathy in Rose Mather’s bosom, and without a thought of danger she bent close to the sick man, and involuntarily laid her soft, cool hand upon his burning forehead. The touch awoke him, but in the wild eyes turned upon her there was no glance of recognition, or look of fear. He evidently fancied himself back in Washington, and asked the name of her regiment.
“Oh, I know,” he continued, still keeping his eyes fixed upon her, “you’re the chap I took, but you’ve fell away mightily since then. Yankee fare don’t set well on your Rebel stomach, I guess,” and a wild, coarse laugh rang through the room, making Rose shudder and draw back, for she felt intuitively that Billy was mad.
She was not, however, afraid of him, and standing at a little distance, she tried to reason with him, telling him she was not a Rebel,—she was Mrs. Mather, come to do him good.
Bill only laughed derisively. “Couldn’t cheat him. Guess he knew them eyes and them hands, white as cotton wool. I’ll bet I’ve got a ring that’ll fit ’em,” he continued, and reaching for his pantaloons, which he had insisted should lie behind him on the bed, he took from the pocket the costly diamond once worn by his Rebel captive, andconfisticatedby him ascon-tra-band. “Try it on,” he said to Rose, who mechanically obeyed, wondering why it should look so familiar to her.
It was too large for her slender fingers, and dropping off, rolled upon the floor. Rose at once set herself to finding the missing ring, and had just returned it to its owner when Mrs. Baker came in, terribly alarmed at finding Mrs. Mather there. Rose, however, quieted her fears at once by telling her she had known for some days past of Bill’s desertion, and had kept it from everyone but Annie, because her husband thought it best. She did not believe he would be followed, she said, for Will wrote that he had become so reckless and discontented that his absence was no loss to the army, but for a while it might be well that his presence should not be known in Rockland, as the people might be indignant at a deserter, and perhaps in their excitement do him some injury.
“He ought to have medical advice, though,” she added, “for I think he’s very sick.”
Mrs. Baker knew he was, and fear lest he should die overcame every other feeling, making her consent that Rose should call their family physician. It was nearly noon ere he arrived, and in the meantime Rose had reported the case to Annie, and then returning to Mrs. Baker’s, took her place by Billy, who called her “his little Rebel,” and ordered her about as if he had been a commanding officer, and she his subordinate. The novelty of the thing was rather pleasing to Rose, and notwithstanding that the physician pronounced the disease typhus fever in its most violent form, she persisted in staying, saying some one must help Mrs. Baker, and she was not afraid.
So day after day found her in that comfortless dwelling, while the frequent callers at the Mather mansion wondered where she could be. It came out at last that she was nursing William Baker, lying dangerously sick of typhus fever in his mother’s dilapidated home, and then, as villagers will, the Rockland people wondered and gossiped, and wondered again how the aristocratic Rose Mather could sit hour after hour, in that poverty-stricken cottage, ministering to the wants of despised Bill Baker. Rose hardly knew, herself, and when questioned upon the subject could only reply—
“I guess it’s because he’s a soldier, and I must do something for the war. Will knows it. He says I’m doing right, and Annie Graham, too.”
And so, with her heart kept brave by thinking that Will and Annie approved her course, Rose went every day to Mrs. Baker’s, doing more by her cheerful presence and the needful comforts she supplied to arrest the progress of the disease and effect a favorable change, than all the physicians in the county could have done. Bill owed his life to her, and it was touching to witness his childish gratitude when reason resumed her throne, and he learned who it was he had sometimes called his “little Rebel,” and again had fancied was some beautiful angel sent to cure and comfort him. He had often seen Mrs. Mather in the streets before he went away; but never as closely as now, and for hours after his convalescence he would lie looking into her face, which seemed to puzzle him greatly. Occasionally, too, he would take from his pocket a picture, which he evidently compared with something about her person, then, with a sly wink, which began to be very annoying, he would return it to its hiding-place, and ask her sundry questions, which, under ordinary circumstances, she would have resented as being too familiar.
At last, one afternoon, as she was sitting by him, while his mother did some errands in the village, he suddenly surprised her by dropping upon her lap an elegant gold watch, which Rose knew at a glance must have belonged to some person of taste and wealth.
“What is it? Whose is it?” she asked, and Bill replied:
“’Twas his’n, the chap’s I took, you know. He’s down to the old Capitol now, shet up. Didn’t you never hear of him?”
“You mean the young man you captured,” Rose replied. “Tell me about him, please. Who was he, and where was his home?”
“You tell,” Bill answered, with one of his peculiar winks. “He gave it asJohn Brown; but a chap who knowd him said ’twas somethin’ else. He wan’t a Rebel neither—that is, it wan’t his nater, for he came from Yankee land.”
“Atraitor, then,” Rose suggested, and Bill replied:
“You needn’t guess agin; and you and I or’to be glad that no suchtruckbelongs to us.”
Rose colored scarlet, but made no response, for recreant Jimmie flashed across her mind, and she shrank from having even the vulgar Bill know how intimately she was connected with a traitor. Bill watched her narrowly, and thinking to himself,
“I’m on the right track, I’ll bet,” he continued, “I hain’t no relations in the Confederate army, I know, and I don’t an atom b’lieve you have.”
No answer from Rose, except a heightened bloom upon her cheek, and her inquisitor went on:
“Have you any friends there?”
Rose could not tell a lie, and after a moment’s silence, she stammered out:
“Please don’t ask me. Oh, Jimmie, Jimmie, I wish I knew where he was!” and the great tears trickled through the snowy fingers clasped over her flushed face.
“I’ll be darned if I aint cryin’ too,” Bill said, wiping his eyes with his shirt sleeve, “but bein’ I’m in for it I may as well see it through.”
“What might be your name before it was Miss Marthers?”
“Carleton!” and Rose looked up quickly at Bill, who continued:
“You came from Boston, I b’lieve?”
“Yes, from Boston,” and Rose leaned eagerly forward while Bill, with his favorite “Nuff said,” plunged his hand into his pocket, and taking out thepicture, passed it to Rose.
Quick as thought the bright color faded from her cheek, and with ashen, quivering lips, she whispered;
“It’s I!It’s mine, taken for Jimmie, just before he went away! How came you by it? Oh tell me!” and in the voice there was a tone of increasing anguish. “Tell me, was it,—was it,—Jimmie, my brother, whom you took prisoner and carried to Washington?”
“If James Carleton is your brother, I s’pose it was,” Bill said; “and that’s the very picter he stuck to like a chestnut burr, begging for it like a dog, and offerin’ everything he had if I’d give it up.”
“Why didn’t you, then?” and Rose’s eye blazed with anger, making Bill shrink before their indignant gaze.
“’Twas rotten mean in me, I know,” he said timidly, “but theywas con-tra-bandaccording to law, and I felt so savage at the pesky Rebels then. I didn’t know ’twas you he teased so for, actually cryin’ when I wouldn’t give it up. I’m sorry, I be, I swan, and I’ll give you every confounded contraband. You’ve got the watch, and there’s the ring, the spetacles, the tobarker box, and the thingumbob for cigars, the sum total of his traps, except a chaw or so of the weed that I couldn’t very well bring back,” and Bill’s face wore a very satisfied expression as he laid in Rose’s lap every article belongin’ to her brother.
She knew now who the prisoner was in whom she had felt so strange an interest. It wasJimmie, and the mystery concerning his fate was solved. He was a captive at Washington, and her heart ached to its very core as shethought of both her brothers languishing so many weary months in prison. Very minutely she questioned Bill, eliciting from him little or nothing concerning Jimmie’s present condition. He only knew that he was a captive still, that he was represented as maintaining the utmost reserve, seldom speaking except to answer direct questions, and that he seemed very unhappy.
“Poor boy, he wants to come home, I know,” and Rose sobbed aloud, as she thought how desolate and homesick he must be. “I can’t stay any longer to-day,” she said, as she heard Mrs. Baker at the door, and bidding Bill good-bye, she hurried home, where, after a long passionate flood of tears, wept in Annie’s lap, she wrote to her mother and husband both, telling them where Jimmie was, and begging of the former to come at once and go with her to Washington.