CHAPTER XX.AT THE MATHER MANSION.
It was very lonely at the Mather mansion after the departure of the soldiers, and it required all Annie’s tact to keep Rose from sinking entirely under the sense of desolation which crept over her as she began more and more to realize what the war meant, and to tremble for the safety of her husband and her brothers. They were still in Washington, but they might be ordered to advance at any moment; and, in a tremor of distress, Rose waited and watched for every mail which could bring her tidings of them. Next to her husband’s letters, Jimmie’s did her the most good, for Jimmie had in his nature a world of hopefulness and humor; and his letters were full of fun, and quaint description of the life he was leading. And still of the three young men,—Will Mather, Tom Carleton, and Jimmie,—the latter suffered the most acutely, for in addition to his dislike of military life he was compelled to endure the jokes and jeers which the coarser and more unfeeling of his comrades heaped upon him when, from Bill Baker, they heard that his first experience in arms-bearing had been learned in the army of the enemy. To one of Bill’sinstincts it seemed a great thing that he had captured and brought to Washington so illustrious a prisoner as the “Corp’ral,” as he persisted in calling him, and the story was repeated with such wonderful additions, that Jimmie, when once by accident he was a listener to the tale failed utterly to recognize himself in the “chap who had run so many miles,from, and then fought so many hourswith, the redoubtable Bill,” who, while annoying his quondam captive so terribly, still, under all circumstances, evinced for him an attachment as singular as it was sincere. Everything which he could do for Jimmie he did, becoming literally his servant and drudge, and thus saving him from many a hardship which, as a private, he would otherwise have encountered. It was a fancy of Jimmie’s that by serving as a private in the army against which his hand had once been lifted, he should in some way expiate his sin, and, perhaps, be surer of winning favor from Annie Graham, whose blue eyes were constantly before him just as they had looked when, in her dress of black, she stood in the spring sunshine, bidding him good-bye. Soon after his arrival in Washington, he had been offered a second lieutenancy in Captain Carleton’s company, but he steadily declined the office, giving no explanation to any one except his brother and his sister Rose, to whom he wrote:
“Perhaps I was foolish to decline the offer, and for a moment I was horribly tempted to accept it, especially when, by doing so, I could to some degree escape my ‘thorn in the flesh,’ who, notwithstanding that he does me many a kindness, annoys me excessively. But I could not feel that I deserved that post. It ought to belong to some one who had never spurned the Old Flag, and so I stood firm, and suggested as a substitute that other Simms chap from Rockland,Hophni, orPhineas, orEli,—hanged if I know what his name is. Any way, he is that crabbed widow’s son, that used to pucker her mouth so when she saw ‘that young rebof a Carleton,’ and snatchaway her gown for fear it should hit me. I reckon he’ll get the office, with its twelve hundred a year, which he can use for his mother’s support. One of her sons, you know, is married, and as good as lost to her; while that boy Isaac is not long for this world. Prison life at Richmond did the business for him, or I’m mistaken, so let Eli be lieutenant, and James Carleton only a private. Do you think I did right, and will that paragon of yours, Mistress Graham, think so, too?”
This was what Jimmie wrote to Rose after he had been gone for three or four weeks, and what Rose, with her usual impetuous thoughtlessness, read to her mother and Annie, who were both in her room when the letter came. Annie had made an attempt to leave, but Rose had insisted that there could be no secret in Jimmie’s letter. If there was, she would skip it, she said, and she read on, stumbling dreadfully, and mispronouncing words, for Jimmie’s handwriting was never very plain: and this letter, written with a soft lead pencil, with a bit of slate-stone for a table, was his very worst. She made out, however, that he had declined the office of second lieutenant because he thought he did not deserve it; that he had named Eli Simms as a fitter person for it than himself, and that he had called the widow a “crab-apple,” or something like it. All this wasveryclear; and, after exclaiming against Jimmie’s morbid sense of justice in one breath, and pronouncing him “perfectly splendid” in another, she kept on till she reached the “paragon,” which she rendered “Pequot,” making the sentence read, “Will that Pequot of yours, Mistress Graham, think I did right?”
“What did he call me?” Annie exclaimed, her face turning very white, as she leaned toward Rose, who, startled at her vehemence, tried again to make out the word, which was strangely distorted, from the fact thatjust as Jimmie was writing it, his shadow, Bill, had struck him familiarly upon the shoulder, saying, with a laugh,
“Writin’ to your gal, I s’pose? Give her Bill Baker’s regrets.”
“It looks like Pequot, and some like Patagonian,” Rose said, deciding at last that it wasparagon, and adding by way of an explanation to herself of Annie’s evident surprise, “you did not like the idea of his calling you a Pequot, did you Annie? It wouldn’t have meant anything if he had, and it was natural that I should make the blunder, for that’s the name he gave the young girl at the Pequot House,—the one he liked, and to whom he passed himself off as Dick Lee. You remember I told you about her.”
“Yes, I remember,” and Annie’s voice was a little husky—“the little girl who was not happy with her aunt, and so listened the more willingly to the boy’s kind winning words.”
Annie did not know why she said that, unless it were wrung from her by some sudden and bitter memory of what had been a bright sun-spot in her cheerless childhood. When the Pequot girl was mentioned in her presence once before, she had gathered that it was mostly Mrs. Carleton’s pride which had taken the boy away from any more rambles on the beach or moonlight sails upon the bay, and perhaps it was a desire to defend and excuse the girl which prompted her to advance a reason why Dick Lee’s attentions had been so acceptable. She would have given much to recall her words, which made Mrs. Carleton dart a quick, curious glance at her, while Rose exclaimed: “How do you know she was not happy with her aunt? Did Jimmie ever tell you about her?”
“Never,” Annie replied, feeling glad that a servant appearedjust at that moment, telling Rose a little girl was in the kitchen asking to see her.
It was a daughter of one of the soldiers whose mother was sick and had sent to Mrs. Mather for some little delicacy. Such calls were frequent at the Mather house, for the soldiers did not receive their pay regularly, and there was much destitution among their families, who, but for Rose’s liberality, would have suffered far more than they did. As freely as water, her money was used to relieve their wants, and now, forgetting Jimmie and his Pequot, she entered at once into the little girl’s story, and when told that the sick woman had expressed a wish to see her she said, “I’ll go now; there’s Jake just come in. I’ll have him harness the horses and take you home. It must be a mile or more to your house.”
Rose usually acted upon her impulses, and was soon in her carriage, with a huge basket at her feet and the little girl opposite, enjoying her ride so much, and enjoying it the more for the unmistakable signs of envy and wonder which she detected in the faces of her companions as she neared her humble home in the hollow. Rose had asked both her mother and Annie to accompany her, but they had declined, and for a time after Rose’s departure they sat together in perfect silence, while a curious train of thought was passing through the minds of each. Annie’s agitation when Rose read “Pequot” for “paragon” had surprised Mrs. Carleton, while what she had said of the girl and her aunt had awakened a feeling of disquiet and suspicion. Mrs. Carleton was proud of her own and her husband’s family,—proud of her wealth, and proud of her position. Not offensively so, but in that quiet, assured kind of way so natural to the highly bred Bostonian. It was thispride which had prompted her to resort to so extreme measures with the boy Jimmie, when she found how much he was interested in the little Pequot, and when, during Jimmie’s brief stay in Rockland, she, with a mother’s quick intuition, detected in him signs of interest in Annie Graham, her pride again took fright, and she was half glad to have him go from the possible temptation. Something in the nobler part of the woman’s nature told her how wrong the feeling was, while each day some new development of Annie’s gentle Christian character, made the desolate young creature dearer to her. That she was superior to most people in her rank of life Mrs. Carleton knew, and she had more than once wondered how one like her had ever become the wife of a mechanic. She was not thinking of this, however, on the afternoon when she was alone with Annie, while Rose was away on her errand of mercy. She was thinking rather of the suspicion which had just found a lodgment in her mind, and was devising some means of testing its reality. To this end she at last made some casual remark about Rockland and its people, asking if Annie had always lived there.
“Only since I was married,” was the reply. And Mrs. Carleton continued,
“You seem more like Eastern people than like a New Yorker. Were you born in New England?”
“Yes,—in Connecticut,” Annie said. And then Mrs. Carleton made a great blunder by asking next,
“Were you born in or near New London? I have been there several times, and may know your family.”
At mention of New London Annie’s eyes flashed upon Mrs. Carleton with a startled look, as if she felt that there was a deeper meaning in the questioning to which she was being subjected than appeared on the surface, and her voice trembled a little as she replied,
“I was born in Hartford, and lived there till I was eight years old, when my parents both died of cholera in one day, and I went to live with my aunt in New Haven.”
“Yes,” Mrs. Carleton answered slowly.
Thus far there was quite as much to prove as there was to disprove the correctness of her surmise, and thinking to herself,
“I may as well go further now I have commenced with being rude,” she continued, “Pardon me, Mrs. Graham, if I seem inquisitive, but I cannot help feeling interested in one to whom Rose is so greatly attached, and I do not remember that I ever heard any of your history before your husband went to war. I do not even know your maiden name.”
Annie’s heart beat almost audibly, and her cheeks were very red, as she replied,
“My father was Dr. Howard, and I was Annie Louise Howard. Excuse me, Mrs. Carleton, if I cannot talk much of my girl-life after my parents died. It was not a happy one. I was wholly dependent upon my aunt, who, while giving me every advantage in the way of education, kept before me so constantly the fact that I was an object of charity that it embittered every moment of my life, and when George offered me his love I accepted it gladly, finding in him the only real friend I had known since the day I was an orphan.”
Annie was crying now, and excusing herself she left the parlor and repaired to her own room, where her excitement spent itself in tears and sobs as she recalled all the dreadful years when she was subject to the caprices of the most capricious of women, who had attempted to force her into a marriage with a millionnaire of sixty, and had driven her to accept the love which George Grahamhad offered her. George hadnotbeen her equal in an intellectual point of view, and none knew this fact better than Annie herself. But he was the kindest, tenderest of husbands, and she had loved him devotedly for the manly virtues which made him the noble, unselfish man he was. Capt. Carleton and Jimmie both could sympathize with her tastes and inclinations far better than George had done; but never once during her brief married life had she allowed herself to wonder what her lot might have been had it been cast with people like the Carletons. And since her husband’s death anything which looked away from that grave by the churchyard gate seemed so terrible to her that now, as she recalled Mrs. Carleton’s questionings, and guessed what had prompted them, every nerve quivered with pain, which could only be soothed by a visit to George’s grave. There, on the turf which covered him, she had wept out many a grief, and she started for it now, the villagers watching her as she passed their doors, and curiously speculating, as people will, upon the time to come when the long black dress and graceful, girlish form would not be so often seen among the Rockland dead.
Already the gossips of the town were coupling her name with the Carletons, the majority giving her to Tom, the elder, and more worthy of the two. A whisper of this gossip had been borne to Mrs. Carleton, who, while pretending to ignore it, had felt troubled as she recalled all the incidents of Jimmie’s visit at home. Then, when the suspicion came to her that the woman whom Rose had taken into her household was possibly identical with the girl of New London, whose name she could not remember, she felt for a moment greatly disturbed. There was a fierce struggle with her pride, a close reasoning with herself, and then her better nature triumphed, andher heart went out very kindly toward poor Annie, at that moment standing by her husband’s grave, and wondering why her thoughts would keep straying away to the wayward young man who had been a traitor to his country, but was trying to atone by voluntarily bearing the hardships of a private’s life when a better was offered him. He had asked if she would think he did right, and the question had shown that he cared for her good opinion. Yes, she did think he was right, and she resolved to send him a message to that effect when Rose wrote to him next. There was no wrong to the dead in the thought, and her tears dropped just as fast upon the marble as she stooped to kiss the name cut upon it and then left the silent graveyard.
Meantime Rose had visited her sick woman in the Hollow,—had fed the hungry children, and dropped upon the floor the six weeks baby which she tried to hold, then, gathering her shawl about her and holding up her skirts, just as she always did when in the homes of the poor, she re-entered her carriage and bade Jake drive her next to Widow Simms’.
Everything there was neat and clean as soap and sand and the widow’s two hands could make it, while Susan made a very pretty picture, in her dark stuff gown with the scarlet velvet ribbon in her black hair. There was a saucer of English violets on the round deal table, and their sweet perfume filled the room into which Rose came dancing, her eyes shining like stars, and her cheeks so brilliant a color that the widow began directly to wonder “if there wasn’t some paint there.”
The widow was not in her best mood, for she was very tired, having done a heavy washing in the morning before Rose Mather had thought of opening her brighteyes; then, after the coarser, larger pieces were dried and ironed, she had tried to spin, a work to which she clung as tenaciously as if on every stream in New England there were not a cotton or woolen factory capable of doing the work so much easier and better than herself. The widow was fond of spinning, and she had turned the wheel with a right good will, until Isaac had complained that the continuous humming hurt his head, and made him think of the wind as it howled so dismally around the dreary prison in Richmond. Libby, they called it now, and Isaac always shuddered when he heard the name and thought of what he suffered there.
Isaac was very weak and pale, and his face looked like that of some young girl as he lay among his pillows, in the pretty dressing-gown which Rose had bought and Annie had made for him. He was sleeping when Rose came in, and the widow’s “Hsh-sh,” came warningly as a greeting, but came too late, for Rose’s blithesome voice had roused him, and his glad, welcoming smile more than counterbalanced the frown which settled on the widow’s face when she saw her boy disturbed. Rose was accustomed to the widow’s ways, and throwing off her shawl and untying her hat, she sat down on the foot of Isaac’s bed, and drawing Jimmie’s letter from her pocket began:
“I’ve got such splendid news for you, Mrs. Simms,—at least, I think I have. Yes, I know it’s sure to come true. Eli is going to be a lieutenant, with twelve hundred dollars a year. Such a heap of money for him; and it’s all Jimmie’s doings, too. He would not have the office because he did not think he deserved it. Listen to what he says.”
Both the Widow and Susan were close to Rose now, the frown all gone from the widow’s brow, and the puckerfrom her mouth; but both came back in a trice, as blundering Rose read on about “Hophni,” and “Phineas,” and “Eli,” till she came to the “crabbed,” which she called “crab-apple,” and then stopped short, her face a perfect blaze, as she tried to apologize.
“’Tain’t wuth while to soap it over,” the widow said, fiercely. “Ibea crab-apple, I s’pose, and a gnarly one at that, but I am as I was made, and I’d like to know ifcrabswan’t as good asSecessioners.”
“Please, mother, never mind,” Isaac said, pleadingly, and his voice always quieted the fiery woman, who listened while Rose read of Eli’s good fortune, and made another terrible mistake by stumbling upon Jimmie’s opinion of Isaac’s sickness.
She only read, “He is not long for this world,” but that was enough to bring a flush to his brow, and blanch his mother’s cheek; while, with a gush of tears, Rose hid her face in Susan’s lap, and sobbed:
“I wish I had not come. I’m always doing wrong when I mean to do the best. Oh, I wish the war had never been, and I don’t believe Isaac is so sick. Jimmie has no right to judge. He don’t know.”
Rose’s distress was too genuine not to touch the widow, who tried to appear calm and unconcerned, and even said something kind of Jimmie, who had so generously preferred Eli to himself. But there was a restraint over everything, and, after a few awkward attempts at something like natural conversation, Rose bade a hasty good-bye, and went out from the house to which she had brought more sorrow than joy.