Rose Mather: A tale

CHAPTER II. ROSE AND ANNIE.-1

CHAPTER II.

ROSE AND ANNIE.

Rose Mather’s home was a beautiful place, containing everything which love could devise, or money purchase, and Rose was very happy there, dancing like a sunbeam through the handsome rooms of which she was the mistress, and singing as gaily as her pet canary in its gilded cage by the door. No shadow of sorrow or care had ever crossed her pathway, and the eighteen summers of her short life had come and gone like so many pleasant memories, bringing with them one successive round of joys, leaving no blight behind, and bearing with them, alas, no thanks for the good bestowed, for Rose was far too thoughtless to think that the Providence which shielded her so tenderly, might have dealt more harshly with her. But the shadow was creeping on apace, and Rose was conscious that the war meeting had awakened within her a new and uncomfortable train of thought. Like many others, she had a habit of believing that nothing very bad could happen to her, and so, let what might occur, she was sure her husband would be spared. Still, in spite of her gaiety, an undefined something haunted her all the way from the church, and even when alone with her husband in her tasteful sitting-room, with the bright gas-light falling cheerily around her, and adding a fresh lustre to the elegant furniture, she could not shake it off, nor guess what it was that ailed her. At last, however, it came to her, suggested by the sight of her husband’s evening paper, and laying her curly head upon his knee, she gave vent to her restlessness in the expression:

“I wish there wouldn’t be any war. What is it all for? Tell me, please.”

It was the first interest she had evinced in the matter. And glad to talk with any one upon the subject which was beginning to occupy so much of his own thoughts, Mr. Mather drew her into his lap, and endeavored, as far as possible, to explain to her what it all was for. Much of what he said, however, was Greek to Rose, who only gained a vague idea that the North was contending for a bit of cloth, such as she had often seen floating over the dome of the old State House in Boston, and with the remark, that men’s lives were far more valuable than all the Stars and Stripes in the world, she fell away to sleep leaving her husband in the midst of an argument not quite clear to himself, for, like his wife, he could not then see exactly what the war was for. Still, inasmuch as there was war, he would not play the coward’s part, nor shrink from the post of duty if his country should need his services. But this Rose did not know, and secure in the belief that whatever might happen, Will would never go, she soon resumed her wonted cheerfulness, and if she said anything of the war, was sure to startle her hearers with some remark quite unworthy of a New England daughter. She did wish they would stop having so many meetings, she said, or if they must have them, she wished they’d get Brother Tom to come and set them right. He had lived in Charleston. He could tell them how kind the people were to Mary, his sick wife, and were it not that ’twas beneath him to lecture, she’d surely write for him to come. Rose Mather was growing unpopular by her foolish speeches, and when at last she was asked to join with other ladies of the town in making articles of clothing for the volunteers, she added the last drop to the brimming bucket, by tossing back her chestnut tresses, and “guessing she shouldn’t blister her hands over that coarse stuff. She couldn’t sew much any way, and as for making bandages and lint, the very idea was sickening. She’d give them fifty cents if they wanted, but she positively couldn’t do more than that, for she must have a new pair of lavender kids. She had worn the old ones three or four times, and Will preached economy every day.”

With a frown of impatience, the matron who had been deputed to ask help from Rose, took the fifty cents, and with feelings anything but complimentary to the silly little lady, went back to the hall where scores of women were busily employed in behalf of the company, some of whom would never return to tell how much good even the homely housewife, with its pins and needles, and thread, had done them when far away where no mother or sister hand could reach them, nor yet how the thought that perhaps a dear one’s fingers had torn the soft linen band, or scraped the tender lint applied to some gaping wound, had helped to ease the pain, and cheer the homesick heart. It was surely a work of mercy in which our noble women were then engaged, and if from the group collected in Rockland Hall, there was much loud murmuring at Rose Mather’s want of sense or heart, it arose not so much from ill-nature, as from astonishment that she could be so callous and indifferent to an object of so much importance.

“Wait till her husband goes, and she won’t mince along so daintily, taking all that pains to show her Balmoral, when it isn’t one bit muddy,” muttered the Widow Simms, pointing out, to those near the window, the lady in question, tripping down the street in quest of lavender kids, perhaps, or more likely, bound for her husband’s office, where, now that everybody worked all day long at the Hall, she spent much of her time, it was so lonely at home, with nobody to call. “I hope he’ll be drafted and have to go, upon my word!” continued the widow, whose heart was very sore with thinking of the three seats at her fireside, so soon to be vacated by her darling boys, Eli, John, and Isaac. “Yes, I do hope he’ll be drafted, don’t you, Mrs. Graham?” and she turned toward Annie, who was rolling up bandages of linen, and weaving in with every coil a prayer that the poor soldier, whose lot it should be to need that band, might return again to the loved ones at home, or else be fitted for that better home, where war is unknown.

Annie shook her head, but made no answer. There was no bitterness now in her heart against Rose Mather. She had prayed that all away, and only hoped the anguish which had come to her, making her brain giddy, and her heart faint, might never be borne by another, if that could be. George had volunteered—was to be second lieutenant, and Annie, oh, who shall tell of the gloom which had fallen so darkly around the cottage she had called hers for one brief year. It was a neat, cozy dwelling, and to Annie it never seemed so cheerful as on that memorable night of the war meeting, when she had lighted the lamp, and sat down with George upon the chintz-covered lounge he had helped her make when first she was a bride. It is true the carpet was not of velvet, like that Rose Mather trod upon; neither was there in all the house one inch of rosewood or of marble, but there was domestic love, pure and deep as any Rose ever experienced, and there was something better far than that, a patient, trusting faith in One who can shed light upon the dreariest home, and make the heaviest trial seem like nought. It was this trusting faith which made Annie Graham the sweet, gentle being she was, shedding its influence over her whole life, and softening down a disposition which otherwise might have been haughty and resentful. Annie was naturally high-spirited and proud, and Rose’s remarks concerning volunteers in general, and George in particular, had stung her to the quick, but with the indignant mood there came another impulse, and ere the cottage had been reached, the bitter feeling had gone, leaving nothing but sorrow that it had ever been there. Like Rose, she wished there would be no war, but wishing was of no avail, and long after George Graham was asleep and dreaming, it may be, of glories won on battle-fields, Annie lay awake, questioning within herself, whether she ought, by word or deed, to prevent her husband’s going, if he felt as he seemed to feel, that it was as much his duty as that of others to join in his country’s defence. Annie was no great reasoner, logically; all her decisions were made to turn upon the simple question of right and wrong, and on this occasion she found it hard to tell, so evenly the balance seemed adjusted. More than once she stole from her pillow, and going out into the fresh night air, knelt in the moonlight, and asked for guidance to choose the right, even though that right should take her husband from her.

“If I knew he would not die, it would not be so hard to give him up,” she murmured, as sickening visions of fields strewn with the dead, and hospitals filled with the dying, came over her, and for an instant her brain reeled with the thought of George dying thus, and leaving her no hope of meeting him again, for George’s faith was not like hers.

Anon, however, something whispered to her that the God she loved was on the field of c*****e, and in the camp and in the hospital, and everywhere as much as there in Rockland, that prayers innumerable would follow the brave volunteers, and that the evil she so much feared might be the means of working the great good she so desired. And thus it was that Annie came to a decision. Stealing back to her husband’s side, she bent above him as he lay sleeping, and with a heart which throbbed to its very core, though the lip uttered no sound, she gave him to his country asking, if it could be, that he might come back again, but if it were ordered otherwise—“God’s will be done.” There was no shrinking after that sacrifice was made, though when the morning came, the death-white face and the dark circle beneath the eyes, told of a weary vigil, such as many and many a woman kept both North and South, during the dark hours of the Rebellion. 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. Others would, of course, be killed, but he should escape unharmed. In the language of one speaker, whose eloquent appeal had done much to fire his youthful enthusiasm, “He was not going to be shot, but to shoot somebody!”

This was his idea, and ere the clinging arms had unclasped themselves from his neck, his imagination had leaped forward to the future, and in fancy George Graham wore, if not a Colonel’s, at least a Captain’s uniform, and the cottage on the hill, which Annie so much admired, and for the purchase of which a few hundreds were already saved, was his,—bought with the money he would earn. The deed should be drawn in her name, too, he said, and he pictured her to himself coming down the walk to meet him, with the rose-blush on her cheek, just as she looked the first time he ever saw her. Something of this he told her,—and Annie tried to smile, and think it all might be. But her heart that morning was far too heavy to be lightened by a picture of what seemed so improbable. Still, George’s hopeful confidence did much to reassure her, and when, a few days after, she started for the Hall, she purposely took a longer walk for the sake of passing the cottage on the hill, thinking, as she leaned over the low iron fence, how she would arrange the flower-beds more tastefully than they were now arranged, and teach the drooping vines to twine more gracefully around the slender columns supporting the piazza in front. She would have seats, too,—willow-twisted chairs beneath the trees, where she and George could sit at twilight, and watch the shadows creeping across the hollow where the old cottage was, and up the opposite hill, where the cupola of Rose Mather’s home was plainly visible, blazing in the April sunshine. It was a very pleasant castle which Annie built, and for a time the load of pain which, since George volunteered, had lain so heavy at her heart, was gone; but it returned again when, as she passed a turn in the road, her eye wandered down to the hollow, and that other cottage standing there so brown and small, and looking already so desolate, because she knew that ere many days were over, she should wait in vain for the loved footsteps coming down the road,—should miss the pleasant, cheery laugh, the teasing joke and words of love which made the world all sunshine. The cottage on the hill became a worthless thing as poor Annie forced back her tears, and with quickened steps hurried on to join the group of ladies busy at the Hall.