Rose Mather: A tale

The sick boy whispered the words a great many times to himself, as with his face to the wall, where neither his mother nor Susan could see it, he thought of what Rose had read, and wondered if it were true. He was not afraid to die. He had been very near death once before, and had not shrunk from meeting it as death. It was only the dying from home he had dreaded so much, asking to live till he could see his mother again, and the grass growing by the cottage door, and the violets by the well. And God had taken him at his word. He had lived to see his mother, to feel the touch of her rough hands upon his hair; to hear her voice, always kind to him, calling him her “Iky boy;” to see the green grass by the door, and the violets by the well. But this, alas! did not suffice. 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!” that was all; but the very name of father brought a deep peace into Isaac’s heart.

God was his father, and he had nothing to fear; living or dying, it would be well with the boy who would not tell a lie even for promotion. And so, while the mother whose heart ached and throbbed with this new fear, and still found time to feel a thrill of pride in Lieutenant Eli, moved softly around the room, preparing the dainty supper for her child, Isaac slept peacefully, nor woke until the delicate repast was ready, and waiting for him on the little table by the bed. There was spiced chocolate to-night, and nice cream toast, with grape jelly, and a bit of cold baked chicken, and the highly-seasoned cucumber pickles Isaac had craved so much since his return, and which the physician said were good for him. And the best china cup was brought out, and the silver spoons marked with the widow’s maiden name, and a white napkin was on the tray; and Isaac, who enjoyed such things, knew why it was all done that particular night, just as the widow knew why, at bed-time, he asked Susan to read from Revelation, vii. 16, “They shall hunger no more, neither thirst any more; neither shall the sun light on them, nor any heat. For the Lamb which is in the midst of the throne shall feed them, and shall lead them unto living fountains of waters, and God shall wipe away all tears from their eyes.”

He was thinking of his heavenly home, while the mother was thinking of the time when he, who Jimmie Carleton had said “was not long for earth,” would be gone, and she could no longer do for him the little offices which gave her so much comfort. Since the dreadful days when she knew her boy was in prison, the widow had not felt so keen a pang as that which stirred her heart-strings now, when alone in her room she dropped in her quick, defiant way into the high-backed chair, and sitting stiff and straight, tried to face the future. It could not be that Isaac had only come home to die,—God would not deal thus harshly with her. He had spared Eli and John, He had promoted them both and He would not take Isaac from her. The boy was getting better, he was mending every day, or, at least, she had thought so, until Rose Mather came with her message of evil. Why could not Rose have stayed at home? Why need she come there and leave such a sting behind? The widow was growing very hard and wicked toward poor little thoughtless Rose, and her heart lay like a stone in her bosom, as for an hour or more she sat in her high-backed chair, thinking of the boy whose low breathings she could hear from the next room. He was sleeping, she thought, and she would steal softly to his side and see if it was written on his face that his days were numbered. But Isaac was not asleep, and he knew the moment his mother bent over him, and turning toward her, he whispered,

“I know why you are up so late, mother; and what you are here for. You are thinking of what Mrs. Carleton said, and wondering if it is true. I guess ’tis, mother, for I don’t get any stronger, and my cough hurts me so. But I’m not a bit afraid to die now, with you beside me up to the very last minute. In Richmond it was different: and I prayed so hard that God would let me come back, if only to drink from the well and then die on the grass beside it. He did let me come, and now we mustn’t say anything if He does not let me stay but a little bit of a while. I’ve been thinking it over since Mrs. Mather went away, and at first it seemed hard that Eli and John should both have such good luck, and only ‘Stub,’ be the one to suffer.”

He said this last playfully, using his old nickname of “Stub,” because he saw by the dim light burning on the table the bitter look of anguish upon his mother’s face, and he would fain remove it. At the mention of the name which her more stalwart sons had given to her baby, the widow’s chin quivered, and her rough hand smoothed the thin light hair, but she did not speak, and Isaac went on:

“Then, too, I want to live till the war is over. I want to hear the joyful shouts, and see the bonfires they will kindle in the streets. There’s a big box in the barn. I hid it there the morning I went away, and I said when the peace comes we can burn that box, and mother will look out from the window, and the church bells will ring, and there’ll be such rejoicings. Now I ’most know I shan’t be here to see it. But, mother, you’ll burn the box,—you and Susan, with Eli and John,—and you’ll think of me, who did what I could to bring the peace.”

There was a choking sound like the swallowing of a great sob, and that was all the answer the widow made; only her hands moved faster through the threads of light brown hair, and her rigid form sat up straighter, more rigid than ever. She was suffering the fiercest pangs she would ever know, for she was giving Isaac up. She was coming to the knowledge that he was really going from her,—that Jimmie Carleton was right, and Isaac was not long for this world. When at last her mind reached that point, the tension of nerve gave way for a little, and her hot tears poured over the white face she kissed so tenderly.

The moon was looking in at the low west window ere the widow went back to her own bed, and Isaac, nestling down among his pillows, fell away to sleep, dreaming of the bonfire in the street, when the hidden box was burned, and dreaming, too, of that other world which lies so near this that he could almost see the loving hands stretched out to welcome him.

After that night the widow’s mouth shut together more firmly than ever, and the frown between her eyes was more marked and decided, while her manner to all save Isaac and Annie Graham was sharper, and crisper than before. When Eli’s letter came telling of his promotion and lauding Jimmie Carleton, whose generous act was a by-word in the company, her face relaxed a little, and she said to Annie Graham: “The Lord is good to my two oldest boys, but if he’d give me Isaac I wouldn’t care for all the titles in Christendom.”

As the warm weather came on, Isaac did not get up any more to sit by the open door, but lay all day on his bed, sometimes sleeping, sometimes thinking, and sometimes listening while Annie read to him from the Bible. Isaac was very fond of Annie. She had been George Graham’s wife, and he evinced so much desire to have her constantly with him that at last she stayed altogether with Mrs. Simms, only going occasionally to the Mather Mansion, where they missed her so much. Rose was nothing without her, and had at first opposed her going to the Widow Simms.

“If help was needed,” she said, “she would hire some one, for Annie must not tire herself out just as she was beginning to grow plump and beautiful again.”

But when Isaac said to her: “Please let Mrs. Graham come; it will not be long she’ll have to stay, and she is so full of hope and faith that it makes me more willing to die and to go away alone across the Jordan,” she withdrew her opposition, and Annie was free to go and come as she liked. It suited Annie to get away from the Mather Mansion just then, for she could not help feeling that there was a purpose in Mrs. Carleton’s questioning her of her early history, and she hailed any excuse which removed her from the scrutiny with which since that conversation touching her early home and maiden name Mrs. Carleton had evidently regarded her. Jimmie had written to her once, inclosing the unsealed note in a letter to Rose, and Annie’s cheeks had been all ablaze as she read it, for she knew the mother’s eyes were fastened upon her. It was nothing but a simple acknowledgment of some article Annie had made and sent to him in a box filled for all three of the soldiers, Will Mather, Tom and Jimmie. There was also mention made of Annie’s kindly message, to the intent that she did think he was right in giving the office to Eli, and a wish expressed that she would write to him.

“You don’t know how much good letters from home do such scamps as we privates are, or how we need something from the civilized world to keep us from turning heathens.”

Tom, too, had sent thanks to Annie Graham for the needle-book made for him, but he did not write to her, though every letter had in it more or less of “Mrs. Graham,” and Mrs. Carleton, while saying to herself: “Both my boys have fallen under the spell,” felt her pride gradually giving way and her heart growing warmer toward the woman whom she missed so much during the weeks spent at Isaac’s bedside.

They were not many, for when the dry days of August came on, and the grass withered by the door, and the flowers drooped for want of rain, and the sun rose each morning redder, hotter, than on the previous day, the sick boy began to fail rapidly, and one night, just as the wind was beginning to blow from the west, where a bank of dark clouds was lying, he whispered to Annie:

“Call mother and Susan, for I know I am going now.”

The widow was in the back yard, putting out the barrels and tubs to catch the rain if it came, for the well and the cistern were nearly dry, just as her dim eyes were, when a few minutes after she bent over her boy, and saw the change coming so rapidly. She could not weep, and Susan’s sobs annoyed her. “’Twas like them Ruggleses to go into hysterics and make a fuss,” she thought, with a kind of bitter scorn for her daughter-in-law, who loved Isaac as a brother, and wept that he was leaving them. Perhaps the dying boy detected the feeling, for he said, feebly:

“Go out, Susan and Mrs. Graham both. I want to be alone with mother a minute.” Then when they were alone, he said: “I am dying, mother, and I know you won’t be angry at what I say. I want you to be kind to Susan, and pet her some and love her for John’s sake. She is a good girl, and Mr. Carleton’s good too, the one they call Jimmie, I mean. Don’t say harsh things of him because he was once a rebel. Don’t speak against him to Mrs. Graham. Maybe she will like him sometime, and if so, help her, mother, instead of hindering it.”

Jimmie Carleton, on his lone picket-watch that night on the banks of the Potomac, and thinking, alas! more of a black-robed figure, with braids of pale brown hair, than of a lurking foe, little dreamed of the good word spoken for him by the dying boy, whose eyes turned lovingly to Annie when she came back to him, and held his clammy hand.

“It is not dark; it is not hard; I am not afraid, for the Saviour is with me,” he kept repeating, and then he sent messages to his absent brothers,—to Captain Tom Carleton, who had been so kind to him in prison, and to Jimmie, too, and all the boys who had been with him in battle; and then, just as the wind began to roar down the chimney, and the refreshing rain to beat against the windows, Isaac’s spirit went out into the great unknown expanse beyond this life, and only the pale, emaciated body was left in the humble room, where the lone women stood looking upon the boyish face, which seemed so young in death.

The widow uttered no sound when she knew he was dead, and it was her hand which drew the covering decently about him, and then picked up from the floor a loose feather, which had dropped from the worn pillow.

Susan must speak to their next-door neighbors, she said, and ask them to care for the body. Then, when the men came in, she remembered an open window in the back chamber where the rain must be driving in, and stole up there on the pretence of shutting it; but she did not return till the men were gone, and Isaac was lying on the calico-covered lounge with a look of perfect peace upon his face, and the damp night air blowing softly across his light hair.

Kneeling at his side, and laying her hard cheek against the icy face of her last-born, the mother gave vent to her grief in her own peculiar way. There were no tears, or sobs; but loving, tender, cooing words whispered over the boy, as if he had been a living baby, instead of a soldier dead. And yet the fact that it was a soldier, lying there before her, was never lost sight of, and the bitter part of the woman’s nature was stirred to its very depths as she remembered what had brought her boy to this. It was the war. And fierce were the mental denunciations against those who had stirred up the strife, while with the bitterness came pitying thoughts of the poor boys who died in the lonely hospitals, or on the battle-fields; and with her cheek still resting against the pale, clammy one, and her fingers threading the light hair, the widow vowed that all she was, and all she had, should henceforth be given to the war. She would work for the soldiers, give to the soldiers, deny herself food and raiment for the soldiers; aye, even die for them, if need be; and whispering the vow into her dead boy’s ear, she left him there alone, just as the early summer dawn was breaking. And when, next morning, her friends came in to see her, they found her sitting by the body, and working upon the shirt she had a few days before taken from the Aid Society to make for some poor wretch.

She should not wear mourning, she said. She had other uses for her money; and so the leghorn of many years’ date, with the old faded green veil, followed Isaac Simms to the grave, and the widow’s face was still and stony as if cut from solid marble.

They made him a great funeral, too, though not so great as George Graham’s had been; for Isaac was not the second, nor the third, nor the fourth soldier buried in Rockland’s churchyard. But he was Isaac Simms,—“Little Ike,”—“Stub,”—whom everybody liked; and so the firemen came out to do him honor, and the Rockland Guards, and the company of young lads who were beginning to drill, and the boys from the Academy, and Rose Mather was chief directress, and her carriage carried the widow, and Susan, and Annie, and herself up to the newly-made grave, where they left the boy who once had sawed wood for the little lady now paying him such honor.

The war was a great leveler of rank, bringing together in one common cause the high and the low, the rich and the poor, and in no one was this more strikingly seen than in the case of Rose Mather, who, utterly forgetful of the days when, as Rose Carleton, of Boston, she would scarcely have deigned to notice such as the Widow Simms, now sought in so many ways to comfort the stricken woman, going every day to her humble home, and once coaxing her to spend a day at the Mather mansion, together with Susan, whom Rose secretly thought a little insipid and dull. Susan’s husband was alive, and in the full flush of prosperity; so Susan did not need sympathy, but the widow did, and Rose got her up to the “Great House,” as the widow called it, and ordered a most elaborate dinner, with soups and fish, and roasts and salads, prepared with oil, which turned the widow’s stomach, and ices and chocolate, and Charlotte-russe, and nuts and fruit, and coffee served in cups the size of an acorn, the widow thought, as very red in the face and perspiring at every pore, she went through the dreadful dinner which lasted nearly three hours, and left her at its conclusion, “weak as water, and sweatin’ like rain,” as she whispered to Annie, who took the tired woman for a few moments into her own room, and listened patiently to her comments upon the grand dinner which had so nearly been the death of her.

Susan, on the contrary, enjoyed it. It was her first glimpse of life among the very wealthy, and while her mother-in-law was wondering “how Annie could stand such doins every day, and especially that ’bominable soup, and still wus salut,” Susan was thinking how she should like to live in just such style, and wondering if, when John came home with his wages all saved, she could not set up housekeeping somewhat on the Mather order. At least she would have those little coffees after dinner; though she doubted John’s willingness to sit quietly until the coffee was reached.

It was a long day to the widow, and the happiest part of it was the going home by the cemetery, where she stopped at Isaac’s grave, and bending over the turf, murmured her tender words of love and sorrow for the boy who slept beneath. There was a plan forming in the widow’s mind, and it came out at last to Annie, who was visiting her one day.

The hospitals were full to overflowing, and the cry all along the lines was for more help to care for the sick and dying, and the widow was going as nurse, either in the hospital or in the field. She should prefer the latter, she said, “for only folks with pluck could stand it there.”

And Annie encouraged her to go, and even talked of going too, but the first suggestion of the plan brought such a storm of opposition from Rose, that for a little time longer Annie yielded, resolving, however, that ere long she would break away and take her place where she felt that she could do more good than she was doing in Rockland.