CHAPTER XXVIIITHE DEAD ALIVE.
It was the night of the third of July, the anniversary, as she supposed, of her husband’s death, and Rose was sitting up unusually late. She could not sleep for thinking of one year ago, and the white-faced man who lay upon the battle-field with the rain falling upon him.
It was a clear starlight night, and she leaned many times from her open window and looked up at the kindly eyes keeping watch above her. But she did not see the figure coming down the street and up the walk to their own door; the figure of a worn-out soldier, who from the prison at Salisbury had escaped to Tennessee, and had come from thence straight on until the midnight train dropped him at the Rockland station.
The light was behind her, and Will sawherdistinctly as he went up the avenue, and he stopped a moment to look at her. She was very pale, and much thinner than when he saw her last, but never, even on her bridal day, had she seemed so beautiful to him as then, when leaning from her window, and apparently listening for something.
It was the sound of his footsteps as he came up the walk which had attracted her attention, and when it ceased so suddenly as he stopped under the trees, she felt a momentary pang of fear, for burglars had been very common in the town that summer. Possibly this was one of the robbers, and Rose was thinking of alarming the house, when the figure emerged from under theshadow of the trees, and came directly up beneath the window, while a voice which made Rose’s blood curdle in her veins, called softly,
“Rose, darling, is it you?”
Had the dead come back to life? Was that her husband’s voice, and that his step in the lower hall? Rose had supposed the front door bolted. She had not heard it open, and now, when the steps sounded upon the stairs, her heart gave one throb of fear, as all the old superstitious stories of New England lore rushed to her mind. Perhaps on this anniversary of his death hehadcome back to see her. And perhaps——
Rose did not finish the sentence, for the opening of her own door disclosed the wasted figure of a man wearing the army blue, his face very pale, but lighted up with perfect joy as he stretched his arms toward the shrinking woman by the window, and said:
“Come to me, darling; I am no ghost.”
Then she went to him, but uttered no sound. Her heart was too full for that, and seemed bursting from her throat as she laid her head upon the bosom of her husband, and felt his arms around her waist and neck. Her stillness frightened him, it was so unlike her, and lifting her from the floor, he took her in his lap, and said to her:
“Speak to me, Rose. Let me hear your voice once more. You thought I was dead, and you’ve been so sorry.”
“Yes, killed at Gettysburgh,” came gaspingly at last; and then a storm of tears and kisses fell upon Will’s face, and Rose’s arms were thrown about his neck as she tried to tell him how great was her joy to have him back again.
“I have been so lonely,” she said, “for everybody isgone. Jimmie and Annie, and poor Tom, too, is a prisoner at last, so mother and I are all alone, except”——
Just then it occurred to her that her husband had no suspicion of the great joy in store for him.
“How shall I tell him?” she thought, and her eyes went from his face to the basket and chair where baby’s clothes were lying.
The little white dress, with its shoulder knots of blue; the flannels and the soft wool socks were all there in plain sight, and Will saw them, too, as his eye followed Rose’s.
“Rose, tell me, what is that? What does it mean?” he asked, and then, without a word, Rose led him into the adjoining room, where in his crib slumbered her beautiful boy,—theirbeautiful boy rather. He was hers alone no longer, for the father was there now, and the happiest moment he had ever known was that when he knelt by his baby’s cradle, and felt how much he had for which to thank his Maker. He could not wait till morning before he heard the sound of his first-born’s voice, and he took him at once in his arms, every pulse thrilling with pride and exquisite delight, as he felt the soft, baby hands in his own, and looked into the beautiful dark eyes which met his so wonderingly as baby awoke and gazed up into his face. It was not afraid of him, and Rose almost danced with joy as she saw it smile in its father’s face, and then turn slily away.
“It was so terrible till baby came last Christmas,” she said, beginning to explain how they believed him dead, and how much she had suffered. “Even baby did not make me as glad as it ought,” she continued, “for I could not forget how happy you would have been to come home and find him here, and now you’ve come. God is very, very good; I love him now, Will, better, I hope thanI love you, or baby, or anything. I’ve given baby to Him and given myself, too, but he had to punish me so hard before I would do it.”
Then together the re-united couple knelt and thanked the Father who had remembered them so mercifully, and asked that henceforth their lives might be dedicated to his service, and all they had be subject to his will. There was no more sleep in the Mather mansion that night, for by the time Mrs. Carleton and the servants had recovered from their surprise and joy, the early morning was red in the east, and the sun was just beginning to show the returned soldier how pleasant and beautiful his home was looking.
The people of Rockland had not intended to have much of a celebration on that Fourth of July. The churchyard was too full of soldiers’ graves, and the war-clouds were still too dark over the land, while the battle of the Wilderness, where so many had perished, was too fresh in their minds to admit of much festivity; but when it was known that Will Mather had come home the town was all on fire with excitement. Every bell was rung, and the cannon of Bill Baker memory bellowed forth its welcome, while in the evening impromptu fireworks attested to the people’s delight. Then followed many days of delicious quiet in which Will told his wife and mother the story of his wanderings, but said very little of his life in Salisbury. That was something he could not mention without a shudder, and so he passed it over in silence, choosing rather to tell of his journey across the mountains, where so many friendly hands had been stretched out to help him. He had every name upon paper, and was only waiting for an opportunity to show his gratitude in some tangible form. Especially was he grateful to Paul Haverill, whose name became ahousehold word, together with that of Charlie and Maude De Vere. Of her Rose thought so often, wishing she could see her, and resolving when the war was over either to write at once or go all the way to the Mountains of Tennessee to find her.
“Poor Tom!” she often sighed. “If he could only fall into so friendly hands.”
But everything pertaining to Tom was shrouded in gloom. The last they heard he was in Columbia, while Jimmie still pined in Andersonville, if indeed he had not died amid its horrors. Exchanged prisoners were constantly arriving at Annapolis, where both Mrs. Simms and Annie were, and every letter from the latter was eagerly torn open by Rose in hopes that it might contain some news of her brothers. But there was none, and the mourning garments which, with her husband’s return, were exchanged for lighter, airier ones, seemed only laid aside for a few weeks until word should come that one or both of her brothers were with the dead whose graves were far away beneath a Southern sky.