CHAPTER XXVICOURSE OF EVENTS.
With a howl of despair, Mrs. Baker came rushing into the kitchen of the Mather mansion, one morning in November, startling Annie with her vehemence as she thrust into her hand a dirty, half-worn envelope, which she said was from Bill, who had been missing since August, and who, it now appeared, was at Andersonville.
“Might better be dead,” his mother said, and then she explained that the letter she brought Annie had come in one to herself received that morning from Bill.
How he ever got it through the lines was a mystery which he did not explain; nor did Annie care, inasmuch as it brought news direct from Jimmie. He had written to her with the pencil and on the sheet of paper Bill had brought him, for Bill Baker was employed outside the prison walls, and allowed many privileges which were denied to the poor wretches who crowded that swampy pen. In short, Bill had taken the Confederate oath,—“had done some tall swearin’,” as he wrote to Annie, giving as an excuse for the treasonable act, “that he couldn’tstan’the racket” in that horrible place, where twenty thousand human beings were crowded together in a space of twenty-five acres, and part of that a marshy swamp, teeming with filth and scum, and hideous living things. Another reason, too, Bill gave, and that was pity for the “Corp’ral,” to whom he could occasionally take little extras, and whom he would have scarcely recognized, he said, so worn and changed had he become from his long imprisonment.
“I mistrusted he was there,” Bill wrote; “and so when me and some other fellow-travellers was safely landed in purgatory, I went on an explorin’ tower to find him. But you bet it want so easy gettin’ through that crowd. Why, the camp-meetin’ they had in the Fair Grounds in Rockland, when Marm Freeman bust her biler hollerin’, was nothin’ to the piles of ragged, dirty, hungry-lookin’ dogs; some standin’ up, some lyin’ down, and all lookin’ as if they was on their last legs. Right on a little sand bank, and so near the dead line that I wonder he didn’t get shot, I found the Corp’ral, with his trouses tore to tatters, and lookin’ like the old gal’s rag-bag that hangs in the suller-way. Didn’t he cry, though, when I hit him a kelp on the back, and want there some tall cryin’ done by both of us as we sat there flat on the sand, with the hot sun pourin’ down on us, and the sweat and the tears runnin’ down his face, as he told me all he’d suffered. It made my blood bile. I’ve had a little taste of Libby, and Bell Isle, too; but they can’t hold a candle to this place. Miss Graam, you are the good sort, kinder pius like; but I’ll be hanged if I don’t bleeve you’ll justify me in the thumpin lies I told the Corp’ral that day, to keep his spirits up. Says he, ‘Have you ever ben to Rockland since Fredericksburg?’ and then I tho’t in a minute of that nite in the woods when he prayed about Anny; and ses I to myself, ‘The piusest lie you ever told will be that you have been home, and seen Miss Graam, with any other triflin’ additions you may think best;’ so I told him I had ben hum on a furbelow, as the old gal (meanin’ my mother) calls it. And I seen her, too, says I, Miss Graam, and she talked an awful sight about you, I said, when you orto have seen him shiver all over as he got up closer to me, and asked, ‘What did she say?’ Then I went on romancin’, and told him how you spent a whole evenin’ at the ole hut, talkin’ about him, and how sorry you was for him, and couldn’t git your natural sleep for thinkin’ of him, and how, when I came away, you said to me on the sly, ‘William, if you ever happen to meet Mr. Carleton, give him Anny Graam’s love, and tell him she means it.’ Great Peter! I could almost see the flesh come back to his bones, and his eyes had the old look in ’em, as he liked to of hugged me to death. I’d done him a world of good, he said, and for some days he seemed as chipper as you please; but nobody can stan’ a diet of raw meal and the nastiest watter that ever run; and ses I to myself, Corp’ral will die as sure as thunder if somethin’ don’tturn up; and so, when I got the hang of things a little, and seen how the macheen was worked, sez I, ‘I’ll turn Secesh, though I hate ’em as I do pizen.’ They was glad enuff to have me, bein’ I’m a kind of carpenter and jiner, and they let me out, and I went to work for the Corp’ral. I’ll bet I told a hundred lies, fust and last, if I did one. I said he was at heart Secesh; that he was in the rebel army, and I took him prisoner at Manassas, which, you know was true. Then I said his sweetheart, meanin’ you, begging your pardon, got up a row, and made him jine the Federals, and promise never to go agin the flag, and that’s how he come to be nabbed up at Fredericksburg. I said ‘twan’t no use to try to make him swear, for he thought more of his gal’s good opinion than he did of liberty, and I set you up till I swan if I bleeve you’d a knowed yourself, and every one of them fellers was ready to stan’ by you, and two of ’em drinked your helth with the wust whisky I ever tasted. One of ’em asked me if I was a fair specimen of the Northern Army, and I’ll be darned if I didn’t tell himno, for I was ashamed to have ’em think the Federals was all like me. I guess, though, they liked me some; anyway, they let me carry something to the Corp’ral every now and then, and I bleeve he’d die if I didn’t. I’ve smuggled him in some paper and a pencil, and he is going to wright to you, and I shall send it, no matter how. The rebs won’t see it, and I guess it’s pretty sure to go safe. I must stop now, and wright to the old woman.
“Yours to command,“William Baker, Esquare.”
“Yours to command,“William Baker, Esquare.”
“Yours to command,“William Baker, Esquare.”
“Yours to command,
“William Baker, Esquare.”
It was with great difficulty that Annie could decipher the badly-written scrawl; but she made it out at last, and then took Jimmie’s letter next, shuddering as she saw in it marks of the horrors which Bill had described but faintly, and which were fully corroborated by Jimmie himself.
“My dear Annie,” he wrote, “I do not know that this letter will ever reach you. I have but little hope that it will. Still it is worth trying for, and so here in this terrible place, whose horrors no pen or tongue can adequately describe, I am writing to you, who I know think sometimes of the poor wretch starving and dying by inches in Andersonville. Oh, Annie, you can never know what I have sufferedfrom hunger and thirst, and exposure and filth, which makes my very blood curdle and creep, and from that weary homesickness which more than aught else kills the poor boys around me. When I first came here I thought I could not endure it, and though I knew I was not prepared, I used to wish that I might die; but a little drummer boy from Michigan, who took to me from the first, said his prayers one night beside me, and the listening to him carried me back to you, who, I felt sure, prayed for me each day. And so hope came back again, with a desire to live and see your dear face once more. My little drummer boy, Johnny, was all the world to me, and when he grew too sick to sit or stand, I held his poor head in my lap, and gave up my rations to him, for he was almost famished, and ate eagerly whatever was brought to us. We used to say the Lord’s Prayer together every night, when a certain star appeared, which he playfully called his ‘mother,’ saying it was her eye watching over him. It was a childish fancy, but we grow childish here, and I, too, have given that star a name. I call it ‘Annie,’ and I watch its coming as eagerly as did the little boy, who died just as the star reached the zenith and was shining down upon him. His head was in my lap, and all there was left of my coat I made into a pillow for him, and held him till he died. His mother’s address is ——, Michigan. Write to her, Annie, and tell her how Johnny died in the firm hope of meeting her again in heaven. Tell her he did not suffer much pain,—only a weakness, which wasted his life away. Tell her the keepers were kind to him, and brought him ice-water several times. Tell her, too, of the star at which he gazed so long as he had strength.
“It was all the companion I had after he was gone until Bill Baker came. I shall never forget that day. I had crawled up to my sand bank, and drawn my rags around me, and was beginning to wish again that I could die, when a broad hand was laid upon my shoulder, and a voice which was music to me then, if it never had been before, said to me cheerily, ‘Hallo, old Corp’ral! Such are the chances of war! Give us your fist!’ But when he saw what a sorry jaded wretch I was, his chin began to quiver, and we cried together like two great babies as we were.
“Oh, Annie, was it a lie Bill Baker told me, or did you really send me yourlove, and say that you meant it? He told me such a story, and I grew better in a moment. Have you relented, and if I could ask you again the question I asked a year ago, when we sat togetherbeneath the moonlight, would you tell meyes? Darling Annie, Andersonville is not so terrible since I am kept up by that hope. I do not mind now if my shoes and stockings are all gone, and my trowsers nearly so, and I watch for that star so eagerly, and make believe that it is you, and when the dark clouds obscure it, and the rain is falling upon my unsheltered head, I say that it is Annie’s tears, and do not mind that either. I pray, too, Annie,—pray with my heart, I hope, though my prayers have more to do with you than myself.
“Bill Baker said he should write and tell you about his taking the oath, which I believe he did almost solely for my sake, and greatly have I been benefited by it. Rough as he is, and disgusting at times, he seems to have gained friends outside, and he does us many a kindness, confining his attentions mostly to me, who am his especial care. It is a strange Providence that he who took me a prisoner at Bull Run and annoyed me so terribly, should now be caring for me here at Andersonville, and literally keeping the life within me, for I should die without him.
“I have not written half I want to say, but my paper is nearly used up, and not one word have I said to mother or Rose. Tell them they would not know me now, and tell them, too, that in my dreams, when I am not with you, I am with them, and mother’s face is like an angel’s, while Rose’s sparkling beauty makes my heart beat just as it used to beat when I first began to realize what a darling sister I had. Dear Annie, youdidsend that message by Bill Baker, Iwillbelieve, and thus believing, shall gain strength maybe to bear up until the day of release.
“Good-bye, my darling. From my crowded, filthy, terrible prison I send you a loving good-bye.”
Notwithstanding the sickening details of this letter the day succeeding its receipt was a brighter one at the Mather house than the inmates had known for a long time. Jimmie was still alive, and with Bill Baker’s care he might survive the horrors of Andersonville and come back to them again. Annie showed both letters to Mrs. Carleton, who, when she read them, wound her arms around Annie’s neck and whispered, “Is it wrong for me to beglad that Bill Baker told that lie, when by the means our prisoner boy is so greatly benefited.”
Annie could not tell. She was not sorry that Jimmie should think of her as he did, and that night when the stars came out in the sky she looked tearfully up at them wondering which was the one watched for by the childish young man, and the little boy who died. Mrs. Carleton had taken it for granted that if Jimmie came back Annie would be her daughter, and she clung to her with a love and tenderness second only to what she felt for Rose. Poor Rose! She had listened with some degree of interest to such portions of Jimmie’s letter as Annie chose to read to her, but it had no power to rouse her from the state of apathy into which she had fallen. She never smiled now, and rarely spoke except to answer a question, but sat all day by the window in her own room, and looked away to the southward, where all her thoughts were centered. It was very strange that nothing could be heard of her husband except that he was shot down dead. A dozen corroborated that fact, but his body had not been found on the field, nor was any mention ever made of him in any official accounts. Once Rose had been startled from her stupor by a soldier, who pretended to have seen her husband in one of the Southern prisons, but a closer examination proved that the man was intoxicated, and had told what he did in the hope that money might be given him for the intelligence, and then Rose sank back into her former condition, the same hopeless look in her eyes which had been there from the moment she heard her husband’s name among the killed, and the same look of anguish upon her face which never relaxed a muscle, as she watched indifferently the preparations made by her mother and Annie for an event which underother circumstances would have stirred every pulsation of her heart. But when on Christmas morning, the bell from St. Luke’s was sending forth its joyous peal for the child born in Bethlehem more than eighteen hundred years ago, there came a softer, more natural look to Rose’s eyes, and her lip quivered a little as she said to Annie, who was bending over her, “What is that sound in the next room like the crying of a baby?”
“It is your baby, Rose; born last night. Don’t you remember it,—a beautiful little boy, with his father’s look in his eyes, and Jimmie’s dimple in his chin?”
Annie hoped, by mentioning both the father and Jimmie, to awaken some interest in the little mother, whose eyes grew larger, and rounder, and brighter, as she whispered:
“My baby, I can’t understand. It is all so strange and mysterious. How came I with a baby, Annie? Bring it to me, please.”
They brought it to her, and laid it in her arms, and then stood watching her as the first tokens of the mother’s love came over her face and crept into her eyes, which gradually began to fill with tears, until, at last, a storm of sobs and moans burst forth, as Rose rocked to and fro, whispering to her child:
“Poor darling! to be born without a father, when he would have been so proud of his boy. Poor, murdered Will! Poor, fatherless baby! I am glad God gave you to me. I did not deserve it. I’ve been so thoughtless and wicked, but I will be better now. Dear little baby, we will grow good together, so as to go some day where papa has gone.”
She would not let them take the child from her. It was hers, she said. God had sent it to make her better,and she would have it. There was something in the touch of its soft, warm hands, which kept her heart from breaking. And so they left it with her, and from the day that little life came to be one in the household, Rose began to amend, and, in her love for her child, forgot in part the terrible pain in her heart. Once her mother said to her:
“Will you call your baby, William?” And she replied.
“No; there is but one Willie for me, and he is in Heaven. Baby will be called for brother Jimmie.”
And so one bright Sunday morning in March, when St. Luke’s was decked with flowers from the Mather hot-house, and the children of the Sunday School sang their Easter carols, Rose Mather, in her widow’s weeds, went up the aisle, with her mother, Annie, and brother Tom, the latter of whom gave her bright-eyed, beautiful boy to the rector, who baptized him “James Carleton.” And all through the congregation there ran a thrill of pity for the widowed mother, whose face, though it had lost some of its brilliant color, was more beautiful than ever, for there was shining all over it the light of a new joy, the peace which comes from sins forgiven, and, after the baptism was over and the morning service read, Rose knelt with her mother, brother, and Annie, to receive, for the first time, the precious symbols of a Saviour’s dying love.
Rose had ceased to oppose Annie in her wish to join Mrs. Simms, who was then at Annapolis; and when Tom, a few days after the baptism, went back again, Annie would go with him as a regular hospital nurse.
It might be that Jimmie would be among the number of skeletons sent up to “God’s land,” as the poor fellows called it; and Annie’s heart throbbed with the pleasure it would be to minister to him, to call the life back to hisheart, to awaken an interest in him for olden times, and then, perhaps, whisper to him that the decision made that moonlight night, more than a year and a half ago, had been revoked and where she had said no, her answer now was yes. Between herself and Mrs. Carleton there had been a long talk, of which Jimmie and the little Pequot girl were the subjects, and the proud lady had asked forgiveness for the wrong done to that girl, if wrong there were.
“Something tells me you will find my boy,” she said; “and if you do, tell him how freely I give him this little Lulu, and God bless you both!”
A few weeks later, and news came to the Mather House that when the battle of the Wilderness was over, Captain Tom Carleton was not with his handful of men who came from the field. “A prisoner of war,” was the next report, and then, as if her last hope had been taken from her, Mrs. Carleton broke down entirely, and, secluding herself from the world without, sat down in her desolation, mourning and praying for her two boys,—one a prisoner in Andersonville, and one in Columbia.