TOM AND JIMMIE.
Jimmie’s journey was performed in safety, and he won golden opinions
from his traveling companion, for whom he had cared as kindly as if it
had been his mother instead of the “crabbed widow” in her eternal
leghorn, with the vail of faded green. He had left her at one of the
hospitals in Washington, where she was to begin her work as nurse, and
hastened on to join his regiment. Captain Carleton was glad to welcome
back the brother whom he had missed so much, but he saw that something
was wrong; and that night, as they sat around the tent fire, he asked
what it was, and why the face, usually so bright and cheerful, seemed so
sober and sad. Tom had made minute inquiries concerning his mother, and
Rose, and Susan Simms, and even poor old Mrs. Baker. But not a word of
Annie. He could not speak of her, with that unfinished letter lying in
his little travelling writing-case,—that letter commencing “My dear Mrs.
Graham,” and over the wording of which Tom had spent more time by far
than he did over the first epistle sent to Mary Williams. That had been
dashed off in all the heat of a young man’s first ardent passion, just
as Jimmie two weeks ago would have written to Annie. But Tom was eight
years older than Jimmie. 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. If her
answer was favorable, he should ere long ask her to be his wife, and
this is the way he took to win the woman whose name he would not mention
to his brother. He had been a little uneasy when Jimmie first went home,
for he knew how popular the wayward youth was with all the ladies; but
as Rose had never written a word to strengthen him in his fears, he had
thrown them aside and commenced the letter which to-night, after Jimmie
was gone, he was intending to finish for the morrow’s mail. He changed
his mind, however, as the night wore on, for in reply to his question as
to what was the matter, Jimmie had burst out impetuously with,
“It is all over with me and the widow. I went in strong for her, Tom. I
told her all my badness, confessed everything I could, and then she said
it could not be. I tell you, Tom, I did not know a man could be so sore
about a woman!” And with a great choking sob Jimmie Carleton laid his
head upon Tom’s lap, and moaned like some wounded animal.
Tom, who had been as a father to this younger brother, was touched to
his heart’s core, and felt as if by having that unfinished letter in his
possession he was in some way guilty, and as a pitying woman would have
done, he smoothed the dark curly hair, and tried to speak words of
comfort.
“What had Annie said? Perhaps she might relent. Would Jimmie tell him
about it?”
Then Jimmie lifted up his head, and looking straight in Tom’s eyes,
said,
“Forgive me, old Tom. I was inclined to be jealous of you. Rose said you
were more suitable, and I know you are; but, Tom, I did love Annie so
much, after I had swallowed the first husband, which cost me a great
effort, for a widow is not the beau ideal I used to cherish of my future
wife. Tom, you don’t care for Annie, do you?” he continued, in a
startled tone, as something in Tom’s face affrighted him.
Tom would not deceive him then, and he replied,
“I have,—that is,—yes, I do care for her, and I had commenced a letter,
but——”
“Don’t finish it, Tom. Do this for me,—don’t finish it!” Jimmie
exclaimed, eagerly, knowing now how the hope that Annie might relent had
buoyed him up, and kept him from utter despondency. “Don’t send it, Tom;
leave her to me, if I can win her yet. She may feel differently by and
by: her husband is only one year dead. Let me have Annie, Tom,” and
Jimmie grew more vehement as he saw plainly the struggle in Tom’s mind.
“You’ve had your day with Mary. Think of your years of married life,
when you were so happy, and leave Annie to me. At least don’t try to get
her from me,—not yet,—wait a year. Will you, Tom?”
Few could resist Jimmie Carleton’s pleadings when they were so earnest
as now; and generous Tom yielded to the boy, whom he had scolded, and
whipped, and disciplined, and loved, and grieved over, ever since the
day their father died and left him the head of the family.
“I will wait a year and see what that brings to us; and you, Jimmie,
must do the same, then Annie shall decide,” he said at last, and his
voice was so steady in its tone, and his manner so kind, that Jimmie
never guessed how much it cost the man who “had had his day,” to unlock
the little desk and take from it the letter intended for Annie Graham
and commit it to the flames.
They watched it together as it crisped and blackened on the coals,
neither saying a word or stirring until the last thin flake had
disappeared, when Tom bent to pick up something which had dropped from
the desk, when he took out the letter. It was _Mary’s_ picture, and in
her lap the baby which had died when six months old.
“Yes, I have had my day,” Tom thought, as he gazed upon the fair, sweet
face of her whose bright head had once lain where he had thought to have
Annie’s lie. “I have had my day, and though it closed before it was
noon, I will not interfere with Jimmie.”
And so the compact was sealed between them, and Jimmie slept sounder on
his soldier bed that night than he had slept before since Annie’s
refusal. Jimmie was not selfish, and as the days went by and he
reflected more and more upon Tom’s generosity, his conscience smote him
for having allowed his brother to sacrifice his happiness for a whim of
his. “She might have refused him, too, and then again she might not; at
all events he had a right to try his luck,” Jimmie reasoned, until at
last his sense of justice triumphed and he wrote to Annie an account of
the whole transaction.
“It was mean in me to let Tom burn the letter,” he said, “but I could
not bear the thought of his winning what I had lost, and so like a
coward I looked on and felt a thrill of satisfaction when I saw his
letter crisping on the coals. But as proof that I have repented of that
selfish act, I ask you plainly, ‘Would you have replied favorably to
that letter, had it been sent?’ If so, tell me truly, and without ever
betraying the fact that I have written to you on the subject, I will
manage to have Tom write again, and if the fates shall so decree I will
try to forget that gap in the stone wall where we sat that night when I
told you of my love.”
His letter found Annie sick in bed from the effects of a severe cold
which kept her so long in her room that it was not till just on the eve
of the battle of Fredericksburg that Jimmie received her answer, “I
should say No to your brother just as I did to you.”
This was what Jimmie read, and with a feeling of relief as far as Tom
was concerned, he crushed the few lines into his pocket and went on with
his preparations for the contest at Fredericksburg, which seemed
inevitable, with a kind of recklessness which characterized many of our
soldiers. Jimmie had heretofore felt no fears of a battle. The bullet
which might strike down another would not harm him, and he charged his
preservation mostly to Annie’s prayers for his safety; but in this, her
last brief note, she had not said so much as “God bless you,” and
Jimmie’s heart beat faster as he thought of the impending danger. Jimmie
seldom prayed, but if Annie had failed him he must try what he could do
for himself, and when the night came down upon that vast army camping in
the woods and on the hillside, it looked on one young face upturned to
the wintry sky, and the moaning winds carried up to heaven the few words
of prayer which Jimmie Carleton said.
Oppressed with a strange feeling of foreboding, he prayed earnestly that
God would blot out all his manifold transgressions, and if he
died,—grant him an entrance into heaven where Annie was sure to go.
Close beside him crouched Bill, who listened with wonder to the
“Corp’ral,” a feeling of terror beginning to creep into his own heart as
he detected the accents of fear in his companion.
“I say, Corp’ral,” he began, when Jimmie’s devotions were ended, “be you
’fraid of somethin’s happenin’ to you when they set us to crossin’ that
darned river, and if there does, shall I write to the folks and the gal
you mentioned and tell ’em you prayed like a parson the night before?”
Jimmie was terribly annoyed with Bill’s impertinence, and for a man who
had just been praying did not exercise as much Christian forbearance as
might have been expected. A harsh “Mind your business!” was his only
reply, which Bill received with a good humored, “Guess you’ll have to
try agin, Corp’ral, before you get into the right frame;” and then there
was silence between them, and the night crept on apace, and the early
morning began to break and the wintry sky was obscured by a thick, dull
haze, which hid for a time our soldiers from view, then a deadly fire of
musketry from the opposite bank of the Rappahannock was opened upon
them, till they fled to the shelter of the adjacent hills, where,
forming into line, they again went back to the laying of the pontoon
bridges, while the roar of the cannon shook the hills and told to the
listeners miles away that the battle of Fredericksburg was begun.