THE DESERTER.
Another had taken George’s place in Company R, and both the Widow Simms
and Susan Simms shed tears of natural pride when they read that _John_
was the favored one, and bore the title of Lieutenant. It more than half
atoned for his long absence to the young wife, who, greatly to her
mother-in-law’s disgust, was made the happy possessor of a set of furs
bought with a part of the new lieutenant’s increased wages.
“Better lay by for a wet day; but easy come, easy go. They will never be
worth a cent. Tain’t like them Ruggleses to save, and to think of the
silly critter’s comin’ round in the storm just to show ’em, late on
Saturday night; I’m glad I wan’t to hum,” was the widow’s muttered
comment, as on the Sunday following the receipt of the furs she pinned
around her high, square shoulders, the ten years’ old blanket shawl, and
tying round her neck the faded tippet of even greater age, started for
church, determining not to notice or speak to the extravagant Susan, if
she appeared, as she was sure to do, in her new finery.
This was hardly the right kind of spirit for the widow to take to
church, but hers was a peculiar nature, and the grace which would have
sufficed to make Annie Graham an angel, would hardly have kept her from
boiling over at the most trivial matter. This the widow felt, and it
made her more distrustful of herself, more careful to keep down the
first approaches of her besetting sin. But the furs had seriously
disturbed her, particularly as they were said to have cost $35—“more
than she had spent on her mortal body in half-a-dozen years,” she
thought, as, with her well-worn Prayer Book in hand, and a pair of Eli’s
darned, blue socks upon her feet to keep them from the snow which had
fallen the night before, she walked rapidly on in the direction of St.
Luke’s.
There was an unusual stir about the doors, a crowd of eagerly talking
people, and conspicuous among them was Susan, looking so pretty in her
neatly fitting collar, and holding her little muff so gracefully that
the widow began to relent at once, and to feel a kind of pride that
“John’s wife was as genteel lookin’ as the next one, if she did come of
them shiftless Ruggleses,” but inasmuch as it was Sunday, she shouldn’t
flatter Susan by speaking of the furs; but the first chance she got on a
week day she’d tell her “she was glad she got ’em, if they didn’t make
her vain; though I know they will,” she added; “it’s Ruggles natur’ and
she’s standin’ out there now, just to show ’em to the folks in the
street goin’ to the Methodis’ meetin’.”
But the widow was mistaken, for Susan had scarcely a thought of her
furs, so absorbed was she in throwing what little light she could upon a
mystery which was troubling the people and keeping them outside the
door, while they talked the matter over. It seemed that the sexton,
when, at about ten o’clock on the previous night, he came to see that
the fire kindled in the furnace at sunset was safe, had stumbled over a
human form lying upon the pile of evergreens gathered for the Christmas
decorations, and placed for safe keeping in the cellar of the church.
There was a cry between surprise and terror, and a muttered oath, and
then the ragged, frightened intruder sprang to his feet, and bounding up
the narrow stairway, fled through the open vestry door ere the sexton
had time to collect his scattered senses.
This was his story, corroborated by Susan Simms, who said that when, at
about seven o’clock the previous night, she was passing the church, she
saw a dark-looking object, which she at first mistook for a woman, but
as she came nearer she saw it was the figure of a man who, at the sound
of her steps, dropped behind a pile of rubbish, and thus disappeared
from view,—that feeling timid she did not return home that way, but took
the more circuitous route past her mother-in-law’s, where she stopped
for a moment and repeated the circumstance to the neighbor she found
staying there.
“Then she didn’t come half a mile out of the way just to tell of her
finery,” thought the widow, coming nearer to Susan, and even smoothing
the soft fur, which, half an hour before, had so provoked her ire.
Various were the surmises as to who the man could be, and why he had
entered the lonesome cellar; and the morning services had commenced ere
the knot of talkers and listeners at the door disbanded and took their
accustomed places in the church. Rose Mather was there as usual, but she
knelt in her handsome pew alone, for Will had been gone from her two
whole weeks, and Annie was still too much of an invalid to venture out.
With others at the door she heard of the intruder, and after asking a
few questions she had passed into the aisle, with a certain wise air
about her, as if she knew something which she should not tell! As one
after another came in, it might have been observed that she turned often
and curiously toward the door, glancing occasionally at the spot where
Mrs. Baker, now a regular attendant, was in the habit of sitting. She
was not there to-day, a fact which no one observed save Rose and the
Widow Simms, the latter of whom only noticed it because Annie, she knew,
was deeply interested in the repentant woman. “She’s sick, most likely,”
the widow thought, while Rose, too, had her own opinion as to what kept
Harry’s mother from church that Sunday morning.
Meantime the object of their solicitude sat crouching over the fire of
wet green wood she had succeeded in coaxing into a blaze, now looking
nervously toward the half closed door of the small room her boys used to
occupy, and again congratulating herself that it was Sunday, and
consequently no one would be coming there to pry into the secret she was
guarding as carefully as ever tigress guarded its threatened young. The
half frozen, famished wretch, fleeing from the shadow of the church out
into the wintry storm which had come up since nightfall, had gone next
to the tumble-down shanty of a house which Mrs. Baker called her home.
It was late for a light to be there, for Mrs. Baker kept early hours;
but through the driving snow the wanderer, as he turned the corner,
caught a friendly gleam shining out from the dingy windows, and waking
in his breast one great wild throb of joy, such as some lost mariner
feels when he spies in the distance the friendly bark and knows there’s
help at hand.
It was a desolate, dreary home, but to the wanderer hastening toward it,
and glancing so timidly around as if behind each rift of snow there were
bristling bayonets sent to stop his course, it seemed a splendid palace.
Could he gain that shelter he was safe. His mother would shield him from
the dreaded officers he fancied were on his track, and so, the sick,
fainting man kept on until the old board fence was reached, where,
leaning against the gate, he stood a moment, and with his feverish hand
scooped up the grateful snow to cool his burning forehead. The tallow
candle was burning yet within the cottage, but the fire was raked
together on the hearth and the stranger could see the glow of the red
embers and the broken shovel lain across the andiron.
“I wonder what she’s doing up so late,” he whispered, and moving
cautiously up the walk to the uncurtained window, he started suddenly at
the novel sight which met his view.
Years before, when he lived in New England, he remembered that one day
when playing in the garret he had found in a chest of rubbish, a large,
square book, which Hal had said was their grandmother’s Bible. Afterward
he had seen it standing against a broken light of glass, to keep out the
snow which sometimes beat in upon himself and Hal, and that was the last
he could remember concerning that Bible or any other belonging to his
mother. How then was he astonished to see it lying on the old round
stand, the dim tallow candle casting a flickering light upon the yellow
leaves and upon the figure of his mother bending over them, and loudly
whispering the words she was reading. It was not an entirely new
business to Mrs. Baker, the reading of the Bible, for after the news of
Harry’s death she had hunted up the long neglected volume which had
given her aged mother so much comfort. It might bring consolation to
her, she thought, and so with tearful eyes and aching heart she had
tried to read and understand the sacred pages, pencil-marked, some of
them, by a sainted mother’s hand, and fraught with so many memories of
the olden time when she was not the hard, wrinkled, desolate creature
people knew as Mrs. Baker. The way of life was still dark and dim to
that half heathenish woman, but she was determinedly groping on,
following the little light she had, and each night found her bending
over the Bible ere she sought the humble bed standing there in the dark
corner, just where it stood that morning when her two boys went away.
It was far more comfortable-looking now than then, for there was a nice,
warm blanket on it, while the outer covering was clean and new. Rose
Mather had kept her promise given in the hour of the poor mother’s
bereavement, and scattered about the room were numerous articles which
once did duty in the servants’ apartments at the Mather mansion. But the
intruder did not notice these; he was too much absorbed with the
stooping figure, whispering a part of the 14th chapter of John, and
occasionally wiping away a tear as she came to some passage more
beautiful than the others. There were tears, too, in the eyes of the
rough man outside, but he forced them back, and pressing closer to the
window, watched the lone woman inside, as, sinking down upon her knees,
with the flickering candle shining on her wrinkled face, she prayed
first for herself and then for him, _the boy_ standing without the door,
and listening, while his heart beat so loudly that he almost feared she
would hear and know that he was there. But she paid no heed, and the
tremulous voice went on, asking that God would follow and bless, and
care for the Billy boy far away, and bring him back to the mother who
had never been to him what she ought. The name Billy boy touched a
tender chord, and stretching out his hands toward her, the man who bore
that name sobbed out,
“Oh, mother, mother, I’m here, I’m here!”
There was a sudden pause, and turning her head the startled woman
listened.
Was it the wind moaning round her lonesome dwelling, or was it poor dead
Harry calling to her, as in her superstitious imagination she sometimes
believed he did when she was praying for Billy, reproaching her that no
prayer had ever been said for him, the lost one? Again the sobbing cry,
and a rustling movement by the door. It could not be the wind, for that
only shook the loosened timbers or screamed through some gaping crevice,
while this, whatever it might be, called:
“Mother, mother, come.”
Was it a warning from the other world,—a summons to follow her
first-born? Annie Graham had said there were no such messages sent to
us, and Annie was always right; so the frightened woman listened again
until the rattling of the latch, and a feeble, timid knock told her
there was more than the winter wind or spirits of the dead about her
house that night. There was a human being seeking to gain entrance, and
tottering to the door she asked who it was, and what they wanted there.
“Mother, mother, let me in. I’m your Billy boy, come from the war.”
The words were hardly uttered ere the door was opened wide, the frantic
woman dragging rather than leading in the worn-out man, who, staggering
forward, fell into her arms, sobbing piteously,
“I’m so sick and tired. I’ve been weeks on the road, hiding everywhere;
for, mother,—shut the door tight, so nobody can hear,—I’ve run away;
I’ve had enough of war, and so I left one night. You know what they do
to deserters. They hang them, neck and heels. Oh, mother, mother, don’t
let them find me, will you? I’ve done my best in one dreadful battle.
They musn’t get me now. Will they, think?” and Billy cast a searching
glance around the room to see that no officer was there with power to
take him back.
Would they get him from her? She’d like to see them do it, she said, as
she led the childish deserter to the hearth, he leaning heavily upon
her, and falling, rather than sitting upon the chair she brought. Weary
of a soldier’s life, and satisfied with one taste of battle, he had
stolen away one night when the rain and the darkness sheltered him from
observation. Greatly magnifying the value put upon himself, as well as
the chances for detection, he had not dared to take the cars, lest at
every station there should be one of the police waiting to secure him.
So he had made the entire journey from Washington on foot, travelling by
night and resting by day, sometimes in barns, but oftener in the woods,
where some friendly stump or leafless tree was his only shelter. He had
reached his home at last, but his haggard face, his blood-shot eyes, his
blistered feet and tattered garments bore witness to his long, painful
journey.
With streaming eyes the mother listened to the story, then opening the
bed of coals, she warmed and chafed his half-frozen limbs, handling
tenderly the poor, blistered feet, from which the soles of the shoes had
dropped, leaving them exposed. But all in vain did she prepare the cup
of fragrant tea, sent her that afternoon by Mrs. Mather. Billy could do
little more than taste it. He was too tired, he said; he should be
better in the morning, after he had slept. So with eager, trembling
hands his mother fixed the bed in the little room which had not been
used since he went away, bringing her own pillows, and the nice rose
blanket given by Mrs. Mather, together with a strip of carpet which she
spread upon the floor so as to make it soft for Billy’s wounded,
bleeding feet. How sick he was, and how he moaned in his fitful sleep,
now talking of _Hal_, now of being shot, and again of the Bible on the
stand, and the prayer he heard his mother make.
Mrs. Baker was not accustomed to sickness, but she knew this was no
ordinary case, and she suggested sending for the doctor; but Billy
started up in such dismay, telling her no one must know that he was
there unless she wanted him killed, that he succeeded in communicating a
part of his terror to her, and she spent the entire Sunday by her
child’s bedside, doing what she could to allay the raging fever
increasing so fast, and keeping watch to see that no one came near to
drag her boy away.
The next morning it became absolutely necessary for her to leave him for
a time, as she must procure the few necessaries he needed, and taking
advantage of the heavy sleep into which he had fallen, she stole
noiselessly out, hoping to return ere he should wake. Scarcely, however,
had she left the lane and turned into Main Street, when Rose came
tripping to the gate, drawn thither by a curiosity to see if her
suspicions were correct. She had learned from her husband of Bill’s exit
from Washington, and for some days had been expecting to hear of his
arrival in town. That he had come she was certain, and telling Annie
where she was going, she had started rather early for Mrs. Baker’s. As
her knock met with no response she entered without further ceremony, and
passing on through the low dark kitchen came to the door of the little
room where Bill lay breathing heavily, and muttering about camps, and
guard-houses, and deserters. The sight of suffering always awoke a chord
of sympathy in Rose Mather’s bosom, and without a thought of danger she
bent close to the sick man, and involuntarily laid her soft, cool hand
upon his burning forehead. The touch awoke him, but in the wild eyes
turned upon her there was no glance of recognition, or look of fear. He
evidently fancied himself back in Washington, and asked the name of her
regiment.
“Oh, I know,” he continued, still keeping his eyes fixed upon her,
“you’re the chap I took, but you’ve fell away mightily since then.
Yankee fare don’t set well on your Rebel stomach, I guess,” and a wild,
coarse laugh rang through the room, making Rose shudder and draw back,
for she felt intuitively that Billy was mad.
She was not, however, afraid of him, and standing at a little distance,
she tried to reason with him, telling him she was not a Rebel,—she was
Mrs. Mather, come to do him good.
Bill only laughed derisively. “Couldn’t cheat him. Guess he knew them
eyes and them hands, white as cotton wool. I’ll bet I’ve got a ring
that’ll fit ’em,” he continued, and reaching for his pantaloons, which
he had insisted should lie behind him on the bed, he took from the
pocket the costly diamond once worn by his Rebel captive, and
_confisticated_ by him as _con-tra-band_. “Try it on,” he said to Rose,
who mechanically obeyed, wondering why it should look so familiar to
her.
It was too large for her slender fingers, and dropping off, rolled upon
the floor. Rose at once set herself to finding the missing ring, and had
just returned it to its owner when Mrs. Baker came in, terribly alarmed
at finding Mrs. Mather there. Rose, however, quieted her fears at once
by telling her she had known for some days past of Bill’s desertion, and
had kept it from every one but Annie, because her husband thought it
best. She did not believe he would be followed, she said, for Will wrote
that he had become so reckless and discontented that his absence was no
loss to the army, but for a while it might be well that his presence
should not be known in Rockland, as the people might be indignant at a
deserter, and perhaps in their excitement do him some injury.
“He ought to have medical advice, though,” she added, “for I think he’s
very sick.”
Mrs. Baker knew he was, and fear lest he should die overcame every other
feeling, making her consent that Rose should call their family
physician. It was nearly noon ere he arrived, and in the meantime Rose
had reported the case to Annie, and then returning to Mrs. Baker’s, took
her place by Billy, who called her “his little Rebel,” and ordered her
about as if he had been a commanding officer, and she his subordinate.
The novelty of the thing was rather pleasing to Rose, and
notwithstanding that the physician pronounced the disease typhus fever
in its most violent form, she persisted in staying, saying some one must
help Mrs. Baker, and she was not afraid.
So day after day found her in that comfortless dwelling, while the
frequent callers at the Mather mansion wondered where she could be. It
came out at last that she was nursing William Baker, lying dangerously
sick of typhus fever in his mother’s dilapidated home, and then, as
villagers will, the Rockland people wondered and gossiped, and wondered
again how the aristocratic Rose Mather could sit hour after hour, in
that poverty-stricken cottage, ministering to the wants of despised Bill
Baker. Rose hardly knew, herself, and when questioned upon the subject
could only reply—
“I guess it’s because he’s a soldier, and I must do something for the
war. Will knows it. He says I’m doing right, and Annie Graham, too.”
And so, with her heart kept brave by thinking that Will and Annie
approved her course, Rose went every day to Mrs. Baker’s, doing more by
her cheerful presence and the needful comforts she supplied to arrest
the progress of the disease and effect a favorable change, than all the
physicians in the county could have done. Bill owed his life to her, and
it was touching to witness his childish gratitude when reason resumed
her throne, and he learned who it was he had sometimes called his
“little Rebel,” and again had fancied was some beautiful angel sent to
cure and comfort him. He had often seen Mrs. Mather in the streets
before he went away; but never as closely as now, and for hours after
his convalescence he would lie looking into her face, which seemed to
puzzle him greatly. Occasionally, too, he would take from his pocket a
picture, which he evidently compared with something about her person,
then, with a sly wink, which began to be very annoying, he would return
it to its hiding-place, and ask her sundry questions, which, under
ordinary circumstances, she would have resented as being too familiar.
At last, one afternoon, as she was sitting by him, while his mother did
some errands in the village, he suddenly surprised her by dropping upon
her lap an elegant gold watch, which Rose knew at a glance must have
belonged to some person of taste and wealth.
“What is it? Whose is it?” she asked, and Bill replied:
“’Twas his’n, the chap’s I took, you know. He’s down to the old Capitol
now, shet up. Didn’t you never hear of him?”
“You mean the young man you captured,” Rose replied. “Tell me about him,
please. Who was he, and where was his home?”
“You tell,” Bill answered, with one of his peculiar winks. “He gave it
as _John Brown_; but a chap who knowd him said ’twas somethin’ else. He
wan’t a Rebel neither—that is, it wan’t his nater, for he came from
Yankee land.”
“A _traitor_, then,” Rose suggested, and Bill replied:
“You needn’t guess agin; and you and I or’to be glad that no such
_truck_ belongs to us.”
Rose colored scarlet, but made no response, for recreant Jimmie flashed
across her mind, and she shrank from having even the vulgar Bill know
how intimately she was connected with a traitor. Bill watched her
narrowly, and thinking to himself,
“I’m on the right track, I’ll bet,” he continued, “I hain’t no relations
in the Confederate army, I know, and I don’t an atom b’lieve you have.”
No answer from Rose, except a heightened bloom upon her cheek, and her
inquisitor went on:
“Have you any friends there?”
Rose could not tell a lie, and after a moment’s silence, she stammered
out:
“Please don’t ask me. Oh, Jimmie, Jimmie, I wish I knew where he was!”
and the great tears trickled through the snowy fingers clasped over her
flushed face.
“I’ll be darned if I aint cryin’ too,” Bill said, wiping his eyes with
his shirt sleeve, “but bein’ I’m in for it I may as well see it
through.”
“What might be your name before it was Miss Marthers?”
“Carleton!” and Rose looked up quickly at Bill, who continued:
“You came from Boston, I b’lieve?”
“Yes, from Boston,” and Rose leaned eagerly forward while Bill, with his
favorite “Nuff said,” plunged his hand into his pocket, and taking out
the _picture_, passed it to Rose.
Quick as thought the bright color faded from her cheek, and with ashen,
quivering lips, she whispered;
“_It’s I!_ It’s mine, taken for Jimmie, just before he went away! How
came you by it? Oh tell me!” and in the voice there was a tone of
increasing anguish. “Tell me, was it,—was it,—_Jimmie_, my brother, whom
you took prisoner and carried to Washington?”
“If James Carleton is your brother, I s’pose it was,” Bill said; “and
that’s the very picter he stuck to like a chestnut burr, begging for it
like a dog, and offerin’ everything he had if I’d give it up.”
“Why didn’t you, then?” and Rose’s eye blazed with anger, making Bill
shrink before their indignant gaze.
“’Twas rotten mean in me, I know,” he said timidly, “but they _was
con-tra-band_ according to law, and I felt so savage at the pesky Rebels
then. I didn’t know ’twas you he teased so for, actually cryin’ when I
wouldn’t give it up. I’m sorry, I be, I swan, and I’ll give you every
confounded contraband. You’ve got the watch, and there’s the ring, the
spetacles, the tobarker box, and the thingumbob for cigars, the sum
total of his traps, except a chaw or so of the weed that I couldn’t very
well bring back,” and Bill’s face wore a very satisfied expression as he
laid in Rose’s lap every article belongin’ to her brother.
She knew now who the prisoner was in whom she had felt so strange an
interest. It was _Jimmie_, and the mystery concerning his fate was
solved. He was a captive at Washington, and her heart ached to its very
core as she thought of both her brothers languishing so many weary
months in prison. Very minutely she questioned Bill, eliciting from him
little or nothing concerning Jimmie’s present condition. He only knew
that he was a captive still, that he was represented as maintaining the
utmost reserve, seldom speaking except to answer direct questions, and
that he seemed very unhappy.
“Poor boy, he wants to come home, I know,” and Rose sobbed aloud, as she
thought how desolate and homesick he must be. “I can’t stay any longer
to-day,” she said, as she heard Mrs. Baker at the door, and bidding Bill
good-bye, she hurried home, where, after a long passionate flood of
tears, wept in Annie’s lap, she wrote to her mother and husband both,
telling them where Jimmie was, and begging of the former to come at once
and go with her to Washington.