Mary Jane Holmes

“ But save the death-white face, and heavy eyes, there was no token of the inner struggle, as with a desperate effort at self-command, Annie wound her arms around her husband’s neck, and whispered to him, “You may go,—I give my free consent,” and George, who cared far more to go than he had dared express, kissed the lips which tried so hard to smile, little dreaming what it cost his brave young wife to tell him what she had. To one of his temperament, there was no danger to be feared for himself. The bullet which might strike down a brother at his side would be turned away from him. ”

“ Dear Tom, my heart aches more for him than for myself, for the Richmond Prison Guards are not like those who keep watch over us. There are humane people there,—kind, tender hearts,—which feel for any one in distress, but the jailers, the common soldiers, and the rabble, are not, I fear, as considerate as they might be. Many of them have been made to believe the war entirely of the North’s provoking, that Hamlin is a mulatto, and Lincoln a foul-hearted knave, whose whole aim is to set the negroes free. But enough of Southern politics. ”

“ Annie, had I lived, I never could have toiled for you as I once did, for where the right arm, which has held your light form so often, used to be, there is nothing now but a scarred stump, and this is why I have not written. Does it make you sicken and shrink away from me? Don’t, Annie. Your crippled husband’s heart is as full of tenderness now as ever. I was too proud of my figure, Annie, and the thought that you might love me less when you knew how maimed I was, hurt more than the cold, sharp steel, cutting into my throbbing flesh. ”

“ It seemed so like a mockery, that dying soldier shouting for liberty, and trying in vain to wave aloft his poor, scarred stump. Anon, however, the patriotic mood was changed, and the voice was very sad which whispered:
“But hush! what sounds are these, mingling in the glad notes of victory? ’Tis the widow, the orphan, the mother, weeping over the slain! There’s mourning East and West; there’s weeping North and South, for the dead who will return no more! A crushed rebellion is hardly worth the fearful price. Oh, Annie, pray for the poor soldier,—everybody pray. ”

“ Old and young, rich and poor, father and mother, sister and brother, husband and wife, assembling together to keep the holy day, that best day of the seven, praying not so much for their own sins forgiven as for the loved ones gone to war,—the dear ones far away,—and little, little dreaming as they prayed, how the same sun stealing so softly up the church’s aisle, and shining on the church’s wall, was even then looking down on a far different scene,—a scene of carnage, blood and death. ”

“ There was something in the touch which brought to Bill’s heart a pang similar to the one he felt when he saw his brother fall, and rising to his feet, he said, mournfully:
“Good-bye, old Hal, I’m going now; I wish you might go, too. Good-bye,” and wiping away a tear which felt much out of place on his rough cheek, Bill walked away, saying to himself, “Poor Hal. I didn’t s’pose I had such a hankerin’ for him. Didn’t s’pose I cared for nobody; but such a day’s work as this finds the soft spot in a feller’s heart if he’s got any. Poor Hal! Mother’ll nigh about raise the ruff!” ”

“ His first love had met its full fruition, and Mary, the object, was dead. Tom had always been old for his years. He looked, and seemed, and felt, full forty now, save when he thought of Annie, who was only twenty-one. Then he went back to thirty-two, glad that he had numbered no more birth-days. He had made up his mind to write to her. A friendly letter the first should be, he said,—a letter merely asking if she would correspond with him, and hinting at the interest he had felt in her ever since he saw how much she was to Rose, and how constant were her labors for the suffering soldiers. ”

“ God bless you, Annie darling, and grant that as you have guided me, so you may guide others to that home above, where I am going so fast. You have made me very happy since you have been my wife, and I bless you for it. It makes my death pillow easier to know that not one bitter word has ever passed between us,—nothing but perfect confidence and love. I was not good enough for you, darling. None knows that better than myself. You should have married one of gentler blood and higher birth than I, a poor mechanic. ”

“ You are young and beautiful, and though you do not believe it now, the time will surely come when my grave will not be visited as often as at first, and the flowers you will plant above me when next spring’s sun is shining will wither for want of care, and the rank grass growing there will not be trodden down by your dear little feet, for they will be waiting by another fireside than ours in the Hollow, and my Annie will bear another name than mine. Do you discredit me, darling? It will surely be, and I am willing that it should, but you will never know the anguish it costs me to be willing. ”

“ What shall I do?” and Rose hid her face in the lap of her husband, who fondly caressed her chestnut hair as he replied,
“You’ll bear it like a brave New England woman. We need just such men as your brother Tom, and I never respected him one half so much as now that he has shown how truly noble he is. He was greatly opposed to Lincoln, you know, and worked hard to defeat him; but now that our country is in danger, he, like a true patriot, has thrown aside all political feeling and gone to the rescue. I honor him for it, and may success attend him.” ”

“ He wanted to live longer,—live to be a man, like Eli and John; live to do good; live to take care of his mother; live to hear the notes of victory borne on the northern breeze, as the Federal Flag floated again over land and sea. All this was worth living for, and Isaac was young to die,—only nineteen, and looking three years younger. It was very hard, and the dark eyelashes closed tightly to keep back the tears as the white lips tried to pray, “Thy will be done.” That was what they meant to utter, but there came instead the first words of the prayer the Saviour taught, “Our Father!” ”

“ Mather wrote as the dying man dictated:
My dear, dear, darling Annie:—It will be days, perhaps, before you see this letter, and ere it reaches you somebody will have told you that your poor George is dead! Are you crying, darling, as you read this? Do the tears fall upon the words, ‘poor George is dead?’ Don’t cry, my precious Annie. It makes my heart ache to think how you will sorrow and I not there to comfort you. It’s hard to die away from home, but not so hard as it would once have been, for I hope I am a different man from the one who bade you good-bye a few short months ago ”

“ A soldier’s dying was no novel thing in Washington, and so, aside from Company R, there were few who knew or cared that another soul had gone to the God who gave it,—that another victim was added to the list which shall one day come up with fearful blackness before the provokers of the war. The drums beat just the same,—the bands played just as merrily, and the busy tide went on as if the quiet chamber in —— street held no stiffened form, once as full of life and hope as the gay troops marching by. ”

“ Better die than lose a portion of the manly beauty of which he had been so proud. Would Annie love him just the same, even though the strong right arm, which had toiled 135for her so cheerfully, could never work for her again, never encircle her in its embrace? Would the scarred stump be as dear to her as the well-moulded limb had been? He did not know, and the tears, which all through the weary days of his sickness had been kept back, now fell like rain upon the pillow, as he fancied the meeting between his sweet young wife, and her poor, crippled husband. ”

“ I pray to Heaven every hour, that you may never know the dreary heart-pang it costs one to die away from home, and all that we hold dear, for I am dying. I have given up the delusion that to-morrow will find me better. I shall never be better until I wake in Heaven,—shall never go back to Annie,—never see my old home again. ”

“ He heard her, and almost before the words had left her lips her Jimmie boy was kneeling at her feet, with his face buried for an instant in her lap; then, with one burning kiss upon her forehead, the proud James Carleton, who in his early boyhood was scarcely ever known to acknowledge that he was wrong, asked to be forgiven and restored again to the confidence and love he had forfeited, and with her hand upon his bowed head, the mother forgave her boy, bidding him look up, that she might see again the face she had once thought so handsome. ”

“ I am well enough in my way, but I am not a suitable companion for a girl of culture like yourself, and I’ve often wondered that you should have chosen me. But you did, and again I bless you for it. Never, never, was year so happy as the one I spent with you, my darling, darling Annie, and I was looking forward to many such, but God has decreed it otherwise, and what he does we know is right. I shall never see you again! and though they will bring me back to you, I shall not feel your tears upon my face, or see you bending over my coffin-bed! ”

“ A perfect Amazon, she called herself; but Tom Carleton 346did not think so. He knew she was a large type of womanhood, but she was perfect in form and feature, and he would not have had her one whit smaller than she was, neither did he contrast her with any one he had ever known. She was so wholly unlike Mary and Rose and Annie, that comparison between them was impossible. She was Miss De Vere,—Maude he called her to himself, and the name was beginning to sound sweetly to him, as he daily grew more and more intimate with the queenly creature who bore it. ”

“ No wonder that her heart grew faint when she thought of her boy as a Rebel,—aye, a rebel of ten times deeper dye than if he had been born of Southern blood, and reared on Southern soil, for the roof-tree which sheltered his childhood was almost beneath the shadow of Bunker Hill’s monument, and many an hour had he sported at its base, playing directly above the graves of those brave men who fell that awful day when the fierce thunders of war shook the hills of Boston, and echoed across the smoky waters of the bay. ”

“ I can almost hear them now,—almost see the shining throngs sent out to meet me, just as I once vainly dreamed the Rockland people would come to welcome me home from war. In fancy I put my arms around your neck just as I used to do; in fancy hold you to my bosom; in fancy kiss your girlish lips, and smooth your pale brown hair.
“I don’t know how you’ll live without me; don’t know who will earn your bread, but the God of the widow and fatherless will surely care for my darling and keep her heart from breaking. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Every drum-beat was a note of war, and they who kept time to it were going forth to battle. Onward, onward still they came, George Graham’s splendid figure towering above the rest, and eliciting more than one flattering compliment from the lookers on.
There were John and Eli, side by side,—John eagerly scanning the female forms which lined the walk for a sight of last night’s bride, and Eli looking for his mother, if perchance she should be there. She was there, and what to John was better yet, she stood with her hand on Susan’s shoulder, showing that thus early she was trying to mother her. ”

“ George had thought himself resigned, but weak human nature, which clings so tenaciously to life, was making one last effort for the mastery, and the worn spirit fainted for a time in the fierce struggle which ensued. The mind began to wander, and was in fancy back again at the cottage in the Hollow, where the soldier clasped his Annie to his bosom, begging of her in piteous tones not to love him less because he was a cripple. ”

“ Simms would scarcely have recognized her son in the haggard, emaciated boy, who, on one October afternoon, sat crouching in his corner, grasping the little Testament given by the Rockland ladies, and repeating its precious truths to the poor, sick, worn-out youth, whose head lay on his lap, and whose eyes, blistered with homesick tears, were fastened with a kind of hungry wistfulness upon the girlish face above him, the face of Isaac Simms, pointing the dying soldier to the only source of life. ”

“ And this was a fair specimen of the nature of the intercourse existing between Jimmie and Annie. Secure now in the belief that she would never be recognized as the “Pequot of New London,” Annie regarded Jimmie as any ordinary stranger, in whom she had no particular interest, save that which her kind heart prompted her to feel for all mankind. She could not dislike him, and she always defended him from the aspersions of the widow, who could not quite conquer her repugnance to a Rebel, and who frequently gave vent to her ill will toward Jimmie, whom she thought so proud. ”