CHAPTER XXXIX.CHARLIE.
He did not improve as his sister and uncle hoped he might; and as the cold weather increased, they began to talk of taking him to a warmer climate, but Charlie said:
“I am as well here as I could be anywhere. I don’t want to be moved about. Let me stay here in quiet.”
So they made him as comfortable as possible at thehotel, and Rose and Annie came every day to see him and he learned to watch and listen for their coming, especially that of Annie, to whom he took the kindliest. She knew just how to nurse him, and as she once cared for the poor prisoners, so she now cared for the Southern boy, who, while acknowledging the kindness of the Northern people, was still as thorough a Secessionist as he had ever been. Anxiously he waited for daily news of the progress of Grant’s army, refusing to believe that Lee was so closely shut up in Richmond that escape was impossible. Blindly, like many of his older brethren, he clung to the hope, that underlying the whole was some hidden motive which would in time appear and work good to his cause. Maude never opposed or disputed with him now, but read him every little item of good for the South. But when, in the spring, the fighting at Petersburg commenced, there were no such items to read, and Charlie asked no longer for news. Then there came a never-to-be-forgotten day, when through the length and breadth of the land, the glad tidings ran that Richmond had fallen; that Lee with his army was flying from the city, with Grant in hot pursuit. The war was virtually over; and from Maine to Oregon the air was filled with the jubilant notes of victory. For three long hours the bells of Rockland rang out their merry peals, and at night they kindled bonfires in the streets; and on the grass-plat by the well in Widow Simms’ yard, they burned the box, which, four years before, poor Isaac had put away for just such an occasion as this.
All the morning of that memorable Monday, while the bells were ringing, and the crowds were shouting in the streets, Charlie De Vere had lain with his white face to the wall, and his lips quivering with the grief and mortification he felt, that it should have ended thus. Occasionally,as the shouts grew louder, he stopped his ears, so as to shut out what seemed to him like exultations over the death of so many hopes; but when Annie came in, and told Maude of the bonfire they were to have that night in Mrs. Simms’ yard, and asked her to come for the sake of the boy whose box was to be burned, Charlie began to listen. And as he listened, he grew interested in Isaac Simms and the grass-plat by the well, and the box hidden in the barn, and he expressed a wish to be present when it was burned. Maude, too, had heard of Isaac Simms before. She knew that he had been captured by Arthur Tunbridge, but she did not know the particulars of his prison life, or how generously Tom had sacrificed his chance of liberty for the sake of the poor, sick boy, until Annie told the story, to which she listened with swimming eyes and a heart throbbing with love and respect for her lover, who had been so noble and unselfish. She would go to the bonfire on the grass-plat, she said; and Charlie should go too.Hehad wept passionately at the recital of Isaac’s sufferings in Libby, but still found some excuse for the South generally.
“It was not the better class of people,” he said, “who did these things; it was the lower, ignorant ones, whose instincts were naturally brutal.”
And neither Maude nor Annie contradicted him, though the eyes of the former flashed indignantly, and her nostrils quivered as they always did when the sufferings of our prisoners were mentioned in her presence.
That night, when the stars came out over Rockland, a party of twelve or more was congregated at the house of the widow Simms, where, but for the sad memory of Isaac, whose soldier-coat hung on the wall, with the knapsack carried into battle, all would have been, joy and hilarityat the prospect of certain peace. But death had been in that household, just as it had crept across many and many another threshold; and mingled with the rejoicings were tears and sad regrets for the dead of our land, whose graves were everywhere, from the shadowy forests of Maine, and the vast prairies of the West, to the sunny plains of the South, where they fought and died. There were twenty-five buried in the Rockland graveyard; and others than the party assembled at Mrs. Simms, thought of the vacant chairs at home, and the sleeping dead whose ears were deaf to the notes of peace floating so musically over the land. Charlie’s face was very white, and there were tears in his eyes as he laid his thin, white hands reverently upon the box, examining its make, and bending close to the name, and date, and words cut upon it.—“Isaac Simms, Rockland, April 25th, 1861. This box to be burned——” There was a blank which the boy, who had cut the words with his jack-knife, could not supply. He did not knowwhenthe box would be burned. Then it was April, 1861; now it was April, 1865. Four years of strife and bloodshed, thousands and thousands of desolate hearth-stones, and broken hearts, and lifeless forms both North and South, and the end had come at last. But the boy Isaac was not there to see it. It was not forhimto fill up that blank; but for the Southern boy, Charlie De Vere, who took his pencil from his pocket, and wrote, “April 3d, 1865, to celebrate the fall of Richmond, and the end of the Confederacy. Charles De Vere.”
“Who shall light the pile?” Tom asked, when all was ready. And Charlie answered, “Let me, please. Surely I may light the fire!”
And he did light it, and then, with the rest, looked on while the smoke and the flames curled up toward thestarry heavens where the boy Isaac had gone, and where Charlie in his dreams that night saw him so distinctly, and grasped his friendly hand.
After that night, Charlie failed rapidly, and often in his sleep, he talked to some one who seemed to be Arthur, and said it was “a mistake, a dreadful mistake.” At last, as Maude sat by him one day, the fifth after the bonfire on the grass-plat, he said to her suddenly:
“Maude, if a man kills another and didn’t mean to, is itmurder?”
“No, it is manslaughter. Why do you ask?” Maude said; and Charlie continued:
“Don’t hate me, Maude, nor tell any body, forIkilled Arthur, myself. I shot him right through the head, and—Maude, he thought it wasyou!”
“Oh! Charlie! Charlie!” and Maude shrieked aloud as she bent over her brother, who continued:
“Not when he died, but at first, when he lay there on the grass, moaning and looking at you so sorry and grieved like, don’t you remember?”
“Yes!” Maude gasped; and Charlie went on:
“You know that one of the ruffians fired at Captain Carleton and hit you, and then I could not help paying him back. He was taller than Arthur, who stood behind him, and knocked him down in time to take the ball himself. He knew you had a revolver, and he thought it was you, though an accident, of course, and it made him so sorry that you should be the one to kill him. But I told him different; when I whispered to him, you know. I said it was I, and his eyes put on such a happy look. I know he forgave me, for he said so; but my heart has ached ever since with thinking about it. I could not forget it; and I’ve asked God to forgive me so many times. I think he has; and that when I die, I shall go whereIsaac Simms has gone. I like him, Maude, if he was a Yankee, and fought against us; and I like Mrs. Graham so much; and Mr. James Carleton, and the Mathers, and Mrs. Simms, some; but I can’t like that dreadful Bill Baker, with his slang words and vulgar ways; he makes me so sick, and I feel so ashamed that we should be beaten by such as he.”
“You were not beaten by such as he! You are mistaken, Charlie! The Northern army was composed of many of the noblest men in the world. There are Bill Bakers everywhere, as many South as North. It is foolish to think otherwise.”
Maude was growing hot and eloquent in her defense of the Northern army, but Charlie’s gentle, low-spoken reply, stopped her:
“Perhaps it is. I got terribly perplexed thinking it all over, and how it has turned out. I think—yes, I know I am glad the negroes are free.Wenever abused them. Uncle Paul never abused them. But there were those who did; and if slavery is a Divine institution, as we are taught to believe, it was a broken down and badly conducted institution, and not at all as God meant it to be managed.”
Charlie paused a moment, and when he spoke again, it was ofTom, who had been so kind to him.
“He is like a brother to me, Maude, and I am glad you are to be his wife. And Maude, don’t wait after I am dead, but marry Captain Carleton at once. You will be happier then.”
With tears and kisses Maude bent over her brother, who after that confession seemed so much brighter and more cheerful, that hope sometimes whispered to Maude that he would live. Annie was almost constantly with him now. He felt better and stronger with her, hesaid, and death was not so terrible. So, just as she had soothed, and comforted, and nursed many a poor fellow from Andersonville, Annie comforted and nursed Charlie De Vere, until that dreadful Saturday when the telegraphic wires brought up from the South the appalling news that our President was dead,—murdered by the assassin’s hand.
“No, no, not that. We did not do that,” Charlie cried, with a look of horror in his blue eyes when he heard the dreadful story, and that the Southern leaders were suspected of complicity in the murder.
“It would make me a Unionist, if I believed my people capable of that; but they are not,—it cannot be,” Charlie kept repeating to himself, while the great drops of sweat stood upon his white forehead, and his pulse and heart beat so rapidly, that Maude summoned the attending physician, who shook his head doubtfully at the great change for the worse in his patient.
“I had hoped at least to keep him till the warm weather, but, I am afraid those bells will be the death of him,” he said, as he saw how Charlie shivered and moaned with each sound of the tolling bells.
“Perhaps they would stop if you were to ask them, and tell them why,” Annie suggested to Maude; but Charlie, who heard it, exclaimed,
“No, let them toll on. It is proper they should mourn for him. The South would do the same if it was our President who had been murdered.”
So the bells tolled on, and the public buildings were draped in mourning, and the windows of Charlie’s room were festooned with black, and he watched the sombre drapery as it swayed in the April wind, and talked of the terrible deed, and the war which was ended, and the world to which so many thousands had gone during the long four years of strife and bloodshed.
“I shall be there to-morrow,” he said, “and then perhaps I shall know why all this has been done, and if we were so wrong.”
Maude and Annie, Paul Haverill and Tom Carleton watched with him through the night, and just as the beautiful Easter morning broke, and the sunlight fell upon the Rockland hills, the boy who to the last had remained true to the Southern cause, lay dead among the people who had been his foes.
At Maude’s request they buried him by the side of Isaac Simms, and Capt. Carleton ordered a handsome monument, on which the names of both the boys were cut, Isaac Simms, who had died for the North, and Charlie De Vere, who, if need be, would have given his life for the South, each holding entirely different political sentiments, but both holding the same living faith which made for them an entrance to the world where all is perfect peace, and where we who now see through a glass darkly shall then see face to face, and know why these things are so.
Six months had passed since Charlie De Vere died. Paul Haverill, Will Mather, and Captain Carleton had been together on a pilgrimage to Paul’s old neighborhood, where the people, wiser grown, welcomed back their old friend and neighbor, and strove in various ways to atone for all which had been cruel and harsh in their former dealing toward him. The war had left them destitute, so far as negroes and money were concerned; but such as they had they freely offered Paul, entreating him to stay in their midst and rebuild the homestead, whose blackened ruins bore testimony to what men’s passions will lead them to do when roused and uncontrolled.But Paul said no; he could never again live where there was so much to remind him of the past. A little way out of Nashville was a beautiful dwelling-house, which, with a few acres of highly cultivated land, was offered for sale.
Maude had spoken of the place when she was in the city, and had said:
“I should like to live there.”
And Tom had remembered it; and when he found it for sale, he suggested to Mr. Haverill that they buy it as a winter residence for Maude. And so what little property Paul Haverill had left was invested inFair Oaks, as the place was called; and Tom gave orders that the house should be refurnished and ready for himself and bride as early as the first of November.
As far as was possible, Will and Tom found and generously rewarded those who had so kindly befriended them in their perilous journey across the mountains.
But some were missing, and only their graves remained to tell the story of their wrongs.
This trip was made in June, and early in August, the whole Carleton family went to New London, where Jimmie improved so fast that few would have recognized the pale, thin invalid, of Andersonville notoriety, in the active, red-cheeked, saucy-eyed young man, who became the life of the Pequot House, and for whom the gay belles practiced their most bewitching coquetries.
But these were all lost on Jimmie, who was seldom many minutes away from the fair, blue-eyed woman who, the girls had learned, was a widow, and of whom they at first had no fears. But they changed their minds when day after day saw the “handsome Carleton” at her side, and night after night found him walking with her along the road, or sitting on the rocks and watchingthe tide come in, just as he had done years ago, when both were younger than they were now. They lived those days over again, and, in their perfect happiness, almost forgot the sorrow and pain which had come to them both since they first looked out upon the waters of New London bay.
Tom and Maude were there, too, together with Rose Mather and Will, and Susan Simms and John.
A well-timed investment inoil stock,—a lucky turn of the wheel,—and Captain John Simms awoke, one morning, with one hundred thousands dollars! He did not believe it at first, and Susan did not believe it either. But when John, who, with all his good sense, was a little given to show, or, as his mother expressed it, “to making a fool of himself,” brought her a set of diamonds, handsomer than Rose Mather’s, and bought her a new carriage, and took her to Saratoga, with an English nurse for little Ike, she began to realize that something had happened to her which brought Rose Mather’s envied style of living within her means.
She soon grew tired of Saratoga. She was too much alone in that great crowd, and when she heard that the Carletons were at New London she went there with her diamonds and horses, and, patronized by Rose, who took her at once under her protection, she made a few pleasant acquaintances, and ever after talked confidently of her “summer at the sea-side.” She did not care to go again, however. “She and John were not exactly like people born to high life,” she said, and so she settled quietly down in her pretty home, and made, as the Widow Simms said, “quite a decent woman, considerin’ that she was one of them Ruggleses.”
Bill Baker was astir very early one bright, October morning, his face indicating that some important eventwas pending in which he was to act a part. It was a double wedding at St. Luke’s, and Maude and Annie were the brides. There was a great crowd to witness the ceremony, and Annie’s “boys” whom she had nursed at Annapolis, were the first to offer their congratulations to Mrs. James Carleton, who looked so fair and pure and lovely, while Maude, whose beauty was of a more brilliant order, seemed to sparkle and flash as she bent her stately head in response to the greetings given to her.
Upon Bill, who had turned hack-driver, devolved the honor of taking the bridal party to and from the church, and his horses were covered with the Federal flag, while conspicuous in his button-hole was a small one made of white silk and presented to him by a girl whom he called “Em,” and who blushed every time she heard Bill’s voice ordering the crowd to stand back and his horses to “show their oats,” as he drove from the church with the newly-married people.
Their destination was Nashville, where, in Maude’s beautiful home, Jimmie and Annie passed a few delightful weeks, and then returned to Boston to the old Carleton house on Beacon Street, which had been fitted up for their reception.
Mrs. Carleton, senior, divides her time between her three children, Tom, Jimmie and Rose, but her home proper is with Annie, in Boston, where there is now a little “Lulu Graham,” six months old, and where Rose and Will often go, while each summer Tom Carleton comes up from Fair Oaks with his beautiful Maude, the heroine of the Cumberland Mountains.
THE END.
THE END.
THE END.
TRANSCRIBER’S NOTESSilently corrected obvious typographical errors and variations in spelling.Retained archaic, non-standard, and uncertain spellings as printed.
TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES
TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES
TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES
TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES