THE WOUNDED SOLDIER.
Widow Simms was going to the army, and Jimmie Carleton, who was coming
home for a few weeks, was to be her escort to Washington. During the
summer Jimmie had seen a good deal of hard service. He had been in no
general battle, but had taken part in several skirmishes and raids, in
one of which he received a severe flesh wound in his arm, which,
together with a sprained ankle, confined him for a time to the hospital,
and finally procured for him a furlough of three or four weeks. Rose was
delighted, and this time the Federal Fag was actually floating from the
cupola of the Mather mansion in honor of Jimmie’s return but there was
no crowd at the depot to welcome him. That custom was worn out, and only
the Mather carriage was waiting for Jimmie, whose right arm was in a
sling, and whose face looked pale and thin from his recent confinement
in hospital. Altogether he was very interesting in his character as a
wounded soldier, Rose thought, as she made an impetuous rush at him,
nearly strangling him with her vehement joy at having him home again.
And Jimmie was very glad to see her,—glad, too, to meet his mother,—but
his eyes kept constantly watching the door, and wandering down the hall,
as if in quest of some one who did not come. During the weary days he
had passed in the Georgetown Hospital, Annie Graham’s face had been
constantly with him, and as he watched the tall, wiry figure of the
nurse, who always wore a sun-bonnet and had a pin between her teeth, he
kept wishing that it was Annie, and even worked himself into a passion
against his sister Rose, who, in one of her letters, had spoken of
Annie’s proposal to offer herself as nurse, and her violent opposition
to the plan.
“If Rose had minded her business Annie might possibly have been in this
very ward, instead of that old maid from Massachusetts, who looks for
all the world like those awful good women in Boston, who don’t wear
hoops, and who distribute tracts on Sundays in the vicinity of Cornhill.
Why can’t a woman look decent, and distribute tracts, too? Annie, in her
black dress, with her hair done up somehow, would do more good to us
poor invalids than forty strong-minded females in paste-board bonnets,
with an everlasting pin between their teeth.”
Thus Jimmie fretted about Rose, and the Massachusetts woman, who, in
spite of her big pin and paste-board bonnet, brought him many a nice
dish of tea or bowl of soup, until the order came for him to go home,
when, with an alacrity which almost belied the languor and weakness he
had complained of so bitterly, he packed his valise and started again
for Rockland. This time he wore the “army blue;” but the suit which at
first had been so fresh and clean, was soiled, and worn, and hateful to
the fastidious young man, who only endured it because he fancied it
might in some way commend him to Annie Graham. Rose had written that she
worshiped the very name of a soldier, especially if he were a _poor
private_, her sympathies being specially enlisted for that class of
people. And Jimmie was a poor private, and a wounded one at that, with
his arm in a sling, and a cane in his hand, and his curly hair cut
short, and his coat all wrinkled and soiled, and his knapsack on his
back; and he was going home to Annie, who surely would welcome him now,
and hold his hand a moment, and possibly dress his wound. That _would_
be delightful; and Jimmie’s blood went tingling through his veins as he
felt in fancy the soft touch of Annie’s fingers upon his flesh, and saw
her head crowned with the pale brown hair bending over him. He felt a
little disappointment that she was not at the depot to meet him, while
his chagrin increased at the tardiness of her appearance after his
arrival home, but she was coming at last, and Jimmie’s quick ear caught
the rustle of her garments as she came down the stairs and into the
room, smiling and blushing, as she took his offered hand, and begged him
not to rise for her.
“You are lame yet, I see. I had hoped your ankle might be well,” she
said, glancing at his cane, which he carried more from habit, and
because it had been given him by an officer, than from any real
necessity.
His sprained ankle _was_ almost well, and only troubled him at times;
but after Annie’s look of commiseration at the cane, and her evident
intention to pity him for his ankle rather than his arm, he found it
vastly easy to be lame again, and even made some excuse to cross the
room in order to show off the _limp_ which had not been very perceptible
when he first came in. And Annie was very sorry for him, and inquired
with a great deal of interest into the particulars of his being wounded,
and kindly sat where he could look directly at her, and thought, alas!
how much he was changed from the fashionably-dressed, saucy-faced young
man who went from them only a few months before. Short hair was not
becoming to him,—neither was his thin, burnt face,—neither was that
soiled blue coat; and he looked as little as possible like a hero whom
maidens could worship. Some such thought passed through Annie’s mind,
while Rose, too, felt the change in her handsome brother, and, with a
puzzled expression on her face, said to him, as she stood by his side:
“How queer you do look, with your hair so short, and the hollows in your
cheeks! Does _war_ change all the boys so much? Are Tom and Will such
frights?”
“Rose!” Mrs. Carleton said, reprovingly, while Annie looked up in
surprise, pitying Jimmie, whose chin quivered even more than his voice,
as he said:
“Tom and Will have not been sick like me; and then,—there’s no denying
it,—officers have easier times, as a general thing, than privates. I do
not mean, by that, that I regret my position, for I do not. Somebody
must take a private’s place, and it would better be I than a great many
others; but, Rose, I shall regret it, perhaps, if by the means my looks
become obnoxious to my sister and friends.”
There was a marked emphasis on the word _friends_, and Jimmie’s eyes
went over appealingly to Annie, who remembered how proud the boy Dick
Lee used to be of his beauty, and guessed how Rose’s remarks must have
wounded him. Rose suspected it, too, and winding her arms around his
neck she tried to apologize.
“Forgive me, Jimmie,” she said; “I did not mean anything; only your hair
_is_ so short,—just like the convicts at Charlestown,—and your coat is
so tumbled and dirty; but Hannah can wash that, or I can buy you a new
one,” and Rose stumbled on, making matters ten times worse, until Mrs.
Carleton succeeded in turning the conversation upon something besides
her son’s personal appearance.
Annie was very sorry for him, and her sympathy expressed itself in the
soft light of her blue eyes which rested so kindly upon him, and in the
low, gentle cadence of her voice when she addressed him, and her eager
haste to bring him whatever she thought he wanted, and so save him the
pain of walking!
Mrs. Carleton saw through that _ruse_ at once. She had noticed no limp
when Jimmie first came in, and she readily suspected why it was put on.
But it was not for her to expose her son. From a lady who had spent a
few days at the Mather House, and who once lived near Hartford, Mrs.
Carleton had learned that the Dr. Howard, who had died of cholera in
‘49, was highly respected, both as a gentleman and a practising
physician, and this had helped to reconcile her in a great measure to
whatever might result from her son’s evident liking for Annie Graham,
_née_ Annie Howard, and as she more than half suspected, the heroine of
Jimmie’s boyish fancy.
How very beautiful Jimmie thought Annie was, after he had had time to
recover himself a little and look at her closely. She was in better
health, and certainly in better spirits than when he saw her last. Her
cheeks were rounder, her eyes were brighter, and her hair more
luxuriant, and worn more in accordance with the prevailing style. This
was Rose’s doings, as was also the increased length of Annie’s dress,
which swept the floor with so long a trail that the Widow Simms had made
it the subject of sundry invidious remarks.
“Needn’t tell her that a widder could wear such long switchin’ gowns,
and think just as much of the grave by the gate. She knew better, and
Miss Graham was beginnin’ to get frillicky. She could see through a
millstone.”
This was Mrs. Simms’ opinion of the long gored dress which Jimmie
noticed at once, admiring the graceful, symmetrical appearance it gave
to Annie’s figure, just as he admired the softening effect which the
plain white collar and cuffs had upon Annie’s dress. When he was home
before, everything about her was black of the deepest dye; but now the
sombreness of her attire was relieved somewhat, and Jimmie liked the
change. He could look at her without seeing constantly before him the
grave by the churchyard gate, where slept the man whose widow she was.
She did not seem like a widow, she was so young; only twenty-one, as
Jimmie knew from Rose, who, delighted with the friendly meeting between
her brother and friend, was again building castles of what might be.
Could Rose have had her choice in the matter, she would have selected
Tom for Annie. He was older, steadier, while his letters seemed very
much like Annie. Tom had found the Saviour of whom Isaac Simms once
talked so earnestly in the prison house at Richmond. He was better than
Jimmie, Rose reasoned, and more likely to suit Annie. Still, if it were
to be otherwise, she was satisfied, and in a quiet way she aided and
abetted Jimmie in all his plans to be frequently alone with Annie. It
was Annie who rode with him when Mrs. Carleton was indisposed, and Rose
did not care to go,—Annie who read to him the books which Rose
pronounced too stupid for anything,—Annie who brought his cane, and
Annie who finally attended to his wounded arm. The physician did not
come one day; Mrs. Carleton was sick; and Rose positively could not
touch it and so Annie timidly offered her services, and Jimmie knew from
actual experience just how her soft fingers felt upon his arm, his pulse
throbbing and the blood tingling in every vein as she dressed his wound
so carefully, asking anxiously if she hurt him very badly. He would have
suffered martyrdom sooner than lose the opportunity of feeling those
soft fingers upon his flesh, and so it came about that Annie was his
surgeon, and ministered daily to the wound which healed far too rapidly
to suit the young man, who began to shrink from a return to the life he
had found so irksome.
Tom had written twice for him to come as soon as possible, and now only
one day more remained of the month he was to spend at home. The Widow
Simms was ready to go with him; Susan had gone to her mother, and the
cottage was to be closed, subject to a continual oversight from Mrs.
Baker and an occasional inspection from both Rose and Annie. The _box_
which Isaac had hidden in the barn, waiting for the bonfire which should
celebrate our nation’s final victory, had been brought from its
hiding-place, and baptized with the first and only tears the widow had
shed since she went back to her humble home and left him in the
graveyard. Sacred to her was that box, and she put it with her best
table and chairs, bidding Annie Graham see that no harm befell it, and
saying to her, “In case I never come back, and peace is declared, burn
the box for Isaac’s sake, right there on the grass-plat, which he
dreamed about in Richmond.”
And Annie promised all, as she packed the widow’s trunk, putting in many
little dainties which Rose Mather had supplied, and which were destined
for the soldiers whom the widow was to nurse. She had been all day with
Mrs. Simms, and Rose had been back and forth with her packages,
curtailing her calls because of Jimmie, with whom she would spend as
much time as possible.
Jimmie was not in a very social mood that day; the house was very lonely
without Annie, and the young man did nothing but walk from one window to
another, looking always in the direction of Widow Simms’, and scarcely
heeding at all what either his mother or sister were saying to him. When
it began to grow dark, and he heard Rose speak of sending the carriage
for Annie as she had promised to do, he said:
“I ought to see Mrs. Simms myself to-night, and know if everything is in
readiness for to-morrow. I will go for Mrs. Graham, and Rose,—don’t
order the carriage,—there is a fine moon, and she,—that is,—I would
rather walk.”
Jimmie spoke hurriedly, and something in his manner betrayed to Rose the
reason why he preferred to walk.
“Oh, Jimmie!” she exclaimed, “I’m so glad; tell her so for me. I thought
at first you did not like each other, and everything was going wrong. I
am so glad; though I had picked her out for Tom. I ’most know he fancied
her, and then he is a widower. It would be more suitable.”
Rose meant nothing disparaging to Jimmie’s suit. She did think Tom, with
his thirty-two years, better suited to Annie, who had been a wife, than
saucy-faced teasing Jimmie of only twenty-four. But love never consults
the suitability of a thing, and Jimmie was desperately in love by this
time. It was not possible for one of his temperament to live a whole
month with Annie as he had lived, and not be in love with her. Her
graceful beauty, brightened by the auxiliaries of dress and improved
health, and the thousand little attentions she paid him just because he
was a soldier, had finished the work begun when he was home before, and
he could not go back without hearing from her own lips whether there was
any hope for him,—the scamp, the scapegrace, the rebel, as he had been
called by turns. What Rose said of Tom brought a shadow to his face, and
as he walked rapidly toward Widow Simms’, not limping now, or scarcely
touching his cane to the ground, he thought of Tom,—_old Tom_ he called
him,—wondering how much he had been interested in Annie Graham, and
asking himself if it were just the thing for him to take advantage of
Tom’s absence, and supplant him in the affections of one whom he might,
perhaps, have won had he an opportunity.
“But Tom has had his day,” Jimmie thought. “He can’t expect another wife
as nice as Mary was, and it is only fair for me to try my luck. _I_
never loved any one before.”
Jimmie stopped suddenly here; stopped in his soliloquy and his walk, and
looking up into the starry sky, thought of the boy at New London, and
the hills beyond, and the hotel on the beach, and the white-robed little
figure with the blue ribbons in the golden hair, and the soft light in
the violet eyes, which used to watch for his coming, and look so bright
and yet so modest withal when he came. _Louise_ her aunt had called her,
and he had designated her as _Lu_, or _Lulu_, just as the fancy took
him.
“I _did_ love _her_ some,” Jimmie thought. “Yes, I loved her as well as
a boy of seventeen is capable of loving, and I deceived her shabbily. I
wonder where she is? She must be twenty or more by this time, and a
woman much like Annie. If I could find her, who knows that I might not
like her best?” And for a moment Jimmie revolved the propriety of
leaving Annie to Tom, while he sought for his first love of the Pequot
House.
But Annie Graham had made too strong an impression upon him to be given
up for a former love, who might be dead for aught he knew, and so Tom
was cast overboard, and Jimmie resumed his walk in the direction of
Widow Simms’ cottage.
The widow’s trunks were all packed and ready: every thing was done in
the cottage which Annie could do, and with a tired flush on her cheek, a
tumbled look about her hair, and a rent in the black dress, made by a
nail on one of the boxes, Annie was waiting for the carriage, and half
wishing, as she looked out into the bright moonlight, that she was going
to walk home instead of riding. The fresh air would do her good, she
thought, just as Jimmie appeared at the door. He had come to see if
there was anything he could do for Mrs. Simms, he said, and to escort
Mrs. Graham home.
Annie’s cheeks were very red as she went for her shawl, and then bade
good-bye to Mrs. Simms, whom she did not expect to see on the morrow. As
soon as they were outside the gate, Jimmie drew her shawl close round
her neck, and taking her arm in his, said to her: “The night is very
fine and warm, too, for the first of November. You won’t mind taking the
longest route home, I am sure, as it is the last time I may ever walk
with you, and there is something I must tell you before I go back to
danger and possible death.”
He had turned into a long, grassy lane or newly opened street, where
there were but few houses yet, and Annie knew the route would at least
be a mile out of the way, but she could not resist the man who held her
so closely to his side. She must hear what he had to say, and with an
upward glance at the clear blue sky where she fancied George was looking
down upon her, she nerved herself to listen.
“Annie,” he began, “I’ve called you Mrs. Graham heretofore, but for
to-night you must be Annie, even if you give me no right to call you by
that name again. Annie, I have been a scamp, a wretch, a rebel, and
almost everything bad. I deceived a young girl in New London years ago
when I was a boy. Rose told you something about it once. Her name was
Louise,—_Lulu_ I called her,—and I made her think I loved her.”
“And didn’t you love her?” Annie asked suddenly, her voice ringing clear
in the still night and making Jimmie start, there was something so quiet
and determined in its tone.
Still he had no suspicion that the woman beside him was the girl he had
left on the beach at New London, and he continued: “Yes, Annie, I did,
as boys of seventeen love girls of fourteen. She was pretty and soft,
and pure and good, and I kissed her once on her forehead, and then I
went away and never saw her after, or knew what became of her. And I am
telling you this by way of confessing my misdeeds, for I’ve been a fast
and reckless young man. I’ve gambled, and sneered at the Bible, and
broken the Sabbath heaps of times, and flirted with more than forty
girls, some of them not very respectable either, and none as pure as
little Lulu. I ran away from home and nearly broke my mother’s heart. I
joined the rebel army and fought against my brother at the battle of
Bull Run. I was captured by Bill Baker and led with a halter to
Washington and there shut up in prison. A fine character I give myself,
and yet after all this I have dared to love you, Annie Graham, and I
have brought you this way to ask if you will be my wife. Not now, of
course: not before I go back; but if I come through the war alive will
you be mine then, Annie? Tell me, darling, and don’t tremble so, or turn
your face away.”
Annie was shaking in every joint, and the face which Jimmie tried in
vain to see was white as ashes. She had expected something like this
when he led her down that grassy lane, but nevertheless it came to her
with a shock, making her feel as if in some way she had injured her dead
husband by listening to another’s love. And still she could not at once
repulse the young man whose arm was around her, and who had drawn her to
a gap in a stone wall, where he made her sit down while she answered
him. Strange feelings had swept over her as she heard Jimmie Carleton’s
voice telling her how much she was beloved,—how from the first moment he
saw her he had been interested in her, and asking her again if she had
anything to give the “recreant Jim.”
He said the last playfully, but there was a great fear at his heart lest
her silence portended evil to him.
“No, Mr. Carleton. I have no heart to give you. I buried it with George;
I can never love another. Forgive me if in any way I have misled you. I
was only kind to you as I would be to any soldier.”
“Bill Baker, for instance,” came savagely from Jimmie’s lips.
He was cruelly disappointed, for he had not believed Annie would refuse
him as she had done. He thought a good deal of himself as a _Carleton_.
Nay, he believed himself superior to the man who was standing between
him and the woman he coveted, and to be so decidedly refused by one who
had been content with a person in George Graham’s position angered him
for a moment. Annie knew he was offended, and when he spoke of Bill
Baker, she said to him gently:
“You mistake me, Mr. Carleton. If necessary, I could do for William
Baker more than I have done for you; but it would only be from a sense
of duty,—there would be no pleasure in it; while caring for you was a
pleasure, because you are Mrs. Mather’s brother, and because,—because—”
She did not know how to finish the sentence, for she could not herself
tell why it had of late been so pleasant for her to do for Jimmie
Carleton those little acts of kindness which had devolved on her. She
was only interested in him as a soldier, she insisted, and she tried to
make him understand that her decision was final; that were George dead a
dozen years, she should give him the same answer as she did now. She
could not be his wife. And Jimmie understood it at last, and by the
terrible pangs of disappointment which crept over him, the Pequot girl
was fully avenged for the many times she had watched from her window of
the hotel, or walked sadly along the road by the bay to see if Dick Lee
were coming. But Annie had no wish for revenge. She was only sorry for
him, and she tried to comfort him with the assurance of her interest in
him, and by telling him that, if ever he was sick in hospital or camp,
and unable to come home, she would surely go to him as readily as if he
were her brother.
Jimmie did not particularly care for such comforting then, and his face,
when he reached home, wore so dark and sorry a look that Rose, knew at
once that something was wrong; but she refrained from asking any
questions then,—feeling intuitively that both Annie and her brother
would prefer to have her do so.
It was a very grave, silent party which met at the breakfast table next
morning, and only Annie was at all inclined to talk. She tried to be
cheerful and appear as usual to the silent young man who never looked at
her as she sat opposite him, with her smooth bands of hair so becomingly
arranged, and her eyes so full of pity for him. She could not revoke her
decision, but she was sorry to send him from her with that look upon his
face; and when, after breakfast, she met him for a few moments alone in
the library, she laid her hand timidly upon his arm, and said,
“_Jimmie_, don’t be angry with me. Try to think of me as your
sister,—your best friend, if you like. It grieves me that I have made
you so unhappy.”
She had never called him _Jimmie_ before, in his hearing, and as she did
it now, the dark, handsome face into which she was looking, flushed with
a sudden joy, as if he thought she were relenting. But she was not; she
could only be his friend,—his best friend, she repeated, and her face
was very pale, as she told him how she should remember him, and work for
him, and pray for him, when he was gone. And then she gave him her hand,
saying to him, “It is nearly time for you to go. I would rather say
good-bye here.”
And Jimmie took her hand, and, pressing it between his own, said to her:
“You have hurt me cruelly, Annie Graham, for I believed you cared for
me; but I cannot hate you for it, though I tried to do so all night
long. I love you just the same as ever, and always shall. Remember your
promise to come to me when I am sick, and let me kiss you once for the
sake of what I hoped might be.”
She did not refuse his request; and when at last he left her there was a
red spot on her cheek where Jimmie Carleton’s lips had been. From her
window she watched him going down the walk; and while with widow Simms
he waited at the depot for the coming of the train, she on her knees was
praying for him and his safety, just as, eighteen months before, she
prayed for George when he was going from her.