University of Virginia Library

10. CHAPTER X.
NEWS OF THE BATTLE AT ROCKLAND.

GREAT Battle at Manassas!

Total Rout of the Federal Army!

3,000 killed and as many more taken prisoners!

Fire Zouaves all cut to pieces!

Only three or four escape alive!

N. Y. 13th completely riddled!!!

Sherman's Battery, and hosts of guns in the hands of
the Rebels!

Frightful Panic at Washington!

The Capitol in imminent danger!

Gen. Scott in convulsions, the President crazy, and
Seward threatened with softening of the brain!

Women and children fleeing for their lives!

Beauregard marching on with 500,000 men!

The Baltimoreans in ecstasies, and the Philadelphians
in despair!

Such were some of the exaggerated reports which ran
like lightning through the streets of Rockland on the
first arrival of the news, throwing the people into a
greater panic than was said to exist in Washington.
Hints of some terrible disaster, the exact nature of which
could not be known until the arrival of the evening papers,
had early in the afternoon found their way from
the telegraphic station into the village, creating the most
intense excitement. Men left their places of business to
talk the matter over, while groups of women assembled
at the street corners, discussing the probabilities of the
case, and each hoping that her child, her husband, her
brother had been spared.

Prominent among these was Widow Simms, holding
fast to Susan's hand, and occasionally whispering a word
of comfort to the poor child, whose eyes were red with
weeping over the possible fate of John. Rose Mather's
carriage drove up and down, and from its window Rose
herself looked anxiously out, her face indicative of the
anxiety she felt to hear the worst, if worst there were.
She knew her husband could not have been in battle, for
he was still in Washington, but she was conscious of a feeling

as if some dire calamity were impending over her,
and among the crowd collected in the street there was
none who waited more impatiently for the coming of the
evening train than she. She had taken Annie Graham
to ride with her, and the two presented a most striking
contrast, for where Rose was nervous, impatient and excited,
Annie, though feeling none the less concerned, was
quiet, submissive and resigned, exhibiting no outward
emotion until the shrill whistle was heard across the
plain, when a crimson flush stole into her cheek, deepening
into a purple as the carriage drew up in front of the
office, where the throng was growing denser,—men pushing
past each other, and elbowing their way to a stand-point
near the door, where they could catch the first item
of news, and scatter it among the eager crowd. The
papers came at last, and the damp sheets were almost
torn asunder by the excited multitude.

“Me one,—me, please,” and Rose Mather's hand was
thrust from the window in time to catch a paper destined
for some one farther in the rear, but ere she had found
the column sought, she heard from those around her
that the worst was realized.

There had been a battle. Our troops were utterly defeated,
and worse than all, disgraced.

“But the 13th?” Annie whispered faintly. “Does it
speak of the 13th?”

Rose did not know. Her interest just then was centered
in the “Massachusetts —,” and in her eagerness to
hear from Tom, she forgot for a moment that such a
regiment as the N. Y. 13th existed. But there were
others who did not forget, and just as the question left
Annie's lips, the answer came in the despairing cry which
rent the air as some reckless person shouted aloud,

“The 13th a total wreck! Not a man left of Company
R.”

“Oh, George,” poor Annie cried, and the next moment
Rose held the fainting form upon her lap.

“Drive home,—to Mrs. Graham's I mean,” she said to
Jake, who with some difficulty made his way through
the crowd, but not until the story so cruelly set afloat
was contradicted by those who had more coolly read the
sad intelligence.

The news was bad enough, but the Rockland company
was not mentioned, and its friends had no alternative
but to wait until the telegraph wires should bring
some tidings of the saved. Rose was the first to be remembered.
Will did his duty faithfully.

“A terrible battle,” his message ran. “Soldiers are
arriving every hour, but Tom has not come yet.”

A telegram for the Widow Simms came next, the
mother's quick eye taking in at a glance that only Eli's
name and John's were appended to it. Isaac's was not
there. Where was he then, oh where? She asked this
question frantically, refusing to read the note lest it
should confirm her fears.

“I'll read it, mother. Let me see,” Susan said, wresting
the paper from her hands, and reading with trembling
tones,

Oh what a piteous wail went up to Heaven then, for
Widow Simms, when she received the news, was sitting
in Annie's door, and Annie was kneeling at her side.
George was wounded, of course, and if wounded, dead,
else why had he not thought of her ere this? Locked

in each other's arms the two stricken women wept bitterly,
the mother sobbing amid her tears, “My boy, my
boy,” while Annie moaned sadly, “My George, my husband.”

Well was it for both that ere that dark hour came they
had learned to follow on, even when their Father's footsteps
were in the sea, knowing the hand which guided
would never lead them wrong. Annie was the first to
rally.

“It might not after all be so bad,” she said. “George
and Isaac were prisoners, perhaps, but even that was
preferable to death. It would surely save them from
danger in future battles. The Southerners would not
maltreat helpless captives. There were kind people
South as well as North.”

Thus Annie reasoned, and the widow felt herself grow
stronger as hope whispered of a brighter day to-morrow.

To Annie it was brighter, for it brought her news of
George, wounded in his right arm, an inmate of the hospital,
and at present too weak to write. This was all,
but it comforted the young wife. He was not dead. He
might come home again, and Annie's heart overflowed
with grateful thanksgiving that while so many were bereaved
of their loved ones she had been mercifully spared.
The next mail brought her a second letter from Mr. Mather,
more minute in its particulars than any which had
preceded it. He had obtained permission to stay with
George, had removed him to a private boarding-house,
far more comfortable than the crowded hospital; and, at
his request he wrote to Annie that her husband, though
badly wounded and suffering much from the terrible excitement
of the battle, was not thought dangerous, and
had strong hopes of ere long receiving his discharge,

and returning home where she could nurse him back to
life.

This was Annie's message, read by her eagerly, while
the Widow Simms, forgetting all formality in her anxiety
to hear if there was aught concerning her boy, looked
over her shoulder, her eye darting from line to line until
she caught his name. There was something of him, and
grasping Annie's arm, she whispered,

“Read what it says of Isaac.”

And Annie read how brave Tom Carleton had generously
given place to the poor wounded George, and staid
behind him with Isaac, hoping to make his way to Washington
in safety. They had not been heard from since,
and the widow's heart was sick as heart could be with the
dread uncertainty. Anything was preferable to this suspense,
and in a state of mind bordering upon distraction
she walked the floor, now wringing her hands and again
declaring her intention to start at once for somewhere,
she knew not whither, or cared, provided she found her
child.

In the midst of her excitement the gate swung open,
and Mrs. Baker rushed up the walk, her sleeves above
her elbows, and her hair pushed back from her bonnetless
head, just as she had left her washing at a neighbor's
when she received Bill's letter, which told of Hal's sad
fate, and unravelled the mystery of Tom Carleton's
silence.

“He's took! The Rebels have got your Ike!” she
shrieked, brandishing aloft the soiled missive, and howling
dismally. Then, putting her hand into her bosom,
she drew forth the lock of hair, and thrusting it almost into
the widow's face, cried out, “Look, 'tis Harry's hair,
all there is left of Harry. That's what I git for havin' a
boy two inches taller than Ike, who stood in front, and

would of been shot instead of Harry, only he was shorter.
Read it, Miss Graham,” and tossing the letter into Annie's
lap, the wretched woman sank upon the door-step,
and covering her face with her wet apron, rocked back
and forth, while Annie read aloud as follows:

“Oh, I wish he had, I wish he had!” poor Mrs.
Baker moaned, still waving back and forth and kissing
the lock of hair, while the widow involuntarily thanked
her Heavenly Father that the two inches she once so
earnestly coveted for her boy had wisely been withheld.

Then followed Bill's account of cutting away the hair
he inclosed, of his flight into the woods, his sleep by the
brook, and his waking just in time to see Capt. Carleton
and Isaac Simms disappear beneath the trees, in charge
of rebel soldiers.

Now that she knew the worst the widow sat like one
stunned by a heavy blow, uttering no sound, as Annie
read Bill's account of capturing his prisoner. Ere she
reached this point, however, she had another auditor,
Rose Mather, who had come with a second letter from
her husband, and who, passing the weeping woman in the

door, came and stood by Annie, and listened with strange
interest to the story of that captive parting so willingly
with everything save the picture.

“Poor young man!” she sighed, when Annie finished
reading. “I don't suppose it's right, but I do feel sorry
for him. What if it had been Jimmie? Perhaps he has
a sister somewhere weeping for him just as I cried for
Tom. Dear Tom, Will writes he is a prisoner with Isaac
Simms. I'm glad they are together. Tom will take care
of Isaac. He had a quantity of gold tied around his
waist,” and Rose's soft hand smoothed caressingly the
widow's thin, light hair.

The widow had not wept before, but at the touch of
those little fingers the flood gates opened wide, and her
tears fell in torrents. They were bound together now by
a common bond of sympathy, those four women, each so
unlike to the other, and for a time they wept in silence,
one for her wounded husband, one for a child deceased,
one for a captured brother, the other for a son.

Now, as ever, Annie was the first to speak of hope, and
her words were fraught with comfort to all save Harry's
mother. She could not comfort her, for from reckless,
misguided Harry's grave, there came no ray of consolation,
but to the others she spoke of One who would not
desert the weary captives. Neither bolt nor bar could
shut Him out. God was in Richmond as well as there at
home, and none could tell what good might spring from
this seeming great evil. For a long time they talked together,
and the afternoon was half spent when at last they
separated, Rose going back to her luxurious home where
she wrote to her mother the sad news concerning Tom,
blurring with great tears the line in which she spoke of
Jimmie, wondering what his fate had been.

Slowly, disconsolately poor Mrs. Baker returned to her

day's work so long neglected, but the suds she left so hot
two hours before had grown cold, the fire burned out,
and with that weary, discouraged feeling which poverty
alone can prompt, she was setting herself to the task of
bringing matters up again, when her employer, touched
with the sight of the white, anguished face, kindly bade
her leave the work until another day, and seek the quiet
she so much needed. Poor old woman! How desolate
it was going back to the squalid house where everything,
even to the bootjack he had once hurled at her head, reminded
her of the Harry who would come back no more!
She did not think of his unkindness now. That was all
forgotten, and motherlike, she remembered only the times
when he was good and treated her like something half
way human. He was her boy,—her first born, and as she
lay with her tear-stained face buried in the scanty pillows
of her humble bed, she recalled to mind the time
when first he lisped the sweet word mother, and twined
his baby arms about her neck.

He was a bright, pretty child, easily influenced for good
or evil, and the rude mother shuddered as she felt creeping
over her the conviction that she had helped to make him
what he grew to be, laughing at his fierce temper and at
times provoking him on purpose, just to see him bump
his little round, hard head against the oaken floor.
Then, as he grew older, it was fun to hear him imitate the
oaths his father used, and she had laughed at that until
the habit became so firmly fixed that neither threats nor
punishment could break it. And when the Sabbath bells
were pealing forth their summons to the house of prayer,
she had suffered him to stay away, offering but slight remonstrance
when the robin's nest just without the door
was pilfered of its unfledged occupants, the mother-bird
moaning over its murdered young, just as she was moaning

now over her ruined boy. Poor Harry! There was
some excuse for him, some apology found in the nature
of his early training, but for her who reared him,—none.
She might have taught him better. She might have sent
him to the Sunday school across the way, where Sunday
after Sunday she had heard the hymns the children sang
swelling on the Sabbath air, Harry sometimes joining in as
he sat in the cottage door, adjusting the bait with which to
tempt the unsuspecting fish playing in the brook near by.
A mother's fearful responsibility had been hers. She had
not fulfilled it, and it rolled back upon her now, stinging
as only remorse can sting, and making her wish amid her
pain that the boy, once so earnestly desired, had never
been given her, or else had died in its cradle bed, and so
gone where she knew the hardened in sin never could find
entrance.

So absorbed was she in her grief as not to hear the
sound of wheels stopping near her gate, nor the tripping
footstep upon the floor. Rose Mather, restless at home
and wishing for something to do, had remembered the
miserable woman, and knowing how desolate her comfortless
house must seem that summer night, she had
conquered her aversion to the place and come to speak,
if possible, a word of cheer. Mrs. Baker's howls always
had the effect of making her laugh, they seemed so
forced, so unnatural; but there was something so new, so
real in the stillness of that figure crouching upon the bed,
that Rose for a moment was uncertain how to act. It
was no feigned sorrow of which she was a witness now,
and advancing at last towards the untidy bed, she laid
her hand upon the disordered, uncombed hair, and whispered
soothingly, “I am so sorry for you, Mrs. Baker,
and I'll do all I can to help you. I'll give you money to
make your cottage pleasanter, and by and by you won't
feel so badly, maybe.”

This was Rose's idea of comfort. Money, in her estimation,
was to the poor a panacea for nearly every evil,
but all her wealth could not avail to quiet the feeling of
remorse from which Mrs. Baker was suffering. With a sob
she thanked the kind-hearted Rose, and then continued,
“'Tain't the poverty so much, nor the knowin' that
he's dead, though that is bad enough. It's the something
that tells me I or'to have brung him up better. I never
sent him to meetin', never went myself, never had him
baptized, though I did try once to learn him `Now I lay
me—' but he, that's my man, laughed me out of it. He
said there wasn't any God, that we all come by chance,
but I knew better. I had a prayin' mother, and though
I forgot what she learnt me, it 'pears to come back to me
now. Oh, Harry, I wish I'd done different, I do, I do,”
and the repentant woman buried her face again in the
scanty pillows, while Rose looked pityingly on.

Here was a case she could not reach. Money would
not cure that aching heart, or quiet that guilty conscience.
“Mrs. Graham would know exactly what to
say,” Rose thought, wishing more and more that she, too,
possessed the wisdom which would have told her what it
was poor Mrs. Baker needed. Sitting down beside her,
Rose talked to her of Bill, who, her husband said, was
highly complimented for having captured a rebel. Will
had not seen the prisoner, she said, or heard his name; he
only knew the fact, and that Bill was greatly praised. This
was some consolation to Mrs. Baker, but it did not take
the pain away, and as she was not inclined to converse,
Rose soon bade her good bye and left her there alone in
her deep sorrow.

The following Sunday, just as the notes of the organ
were dying away in the opening service, a bent, shrinking
figure stole noiselessly in at the open door, and Rose

Mather recognized beneath the thin black veil, the haggard
face of Widow Baker, who, except on funeral occasions,
had never before been seen within the walls of the
church. Annie saw her, too, and while Rose, touched
with the humble attempt she had made to put on something
like mourning for her child, thought how she
would give her an entire new suit of black, Annie thought
how she would daily pray that the blow which had fallen
so crushingly might result in everlasting good to the now
stricken mother.

Scarcely less keen, but of a far different nature, was the
grief of Widow Simms. There was no black upon her
leghorn bonnet. She would not have worn it if Isaac had
been dead, but every expression of her stern face told
how constantly her heart was going out after her darling
boy, her captured Isaac languishing in his sultry
prison, sick perhaps, and pining for his mother. How
savage she felt toward Beauregard and all his clan, resolving
at times to start herself for Richmond, and beard
the lion in his den.

“She'd tell them what was what,” she said. “She'd
let them know what an injured mother could do. She'd
turn a second Charlotte Corduroy, if necessary, and free
the land from such vile monsters,” and she actually
sharpened up her shears as a weapon of offence in case
the pilgrimage were made!

This was the Widow Simms excited, but the Widow
Simms when calm was a very different woman, praying
then for her boy, and even asking forgiveness for the
stirrers up of the rebellion. At Annie's request she had
at last come to live altogether at the cottage in the Hollow,
and it was well for both that they should be together,
for the widow's stronger will upheld the weaker Annie,

who, in her turn, imparted much of her own trusting,
childish faith to the less trusting widow.

Greatly Annie mourned as the days went on, because
no line came to her from George himself, nothing in his
own handwriting, when he knew how she desired it, if it
were but just his name. What made him always deputize
Mr. Mather to write his letters for him? Annie put
this question once to Rose, but the twilight was gathering
over them, and so she failed to see the heightened color
on Rose's cheek and the moisture in her eye. Rose did
not now, as formerly, bring her William's letters, and
read to her every word he said of George. She only
told her how cheerfully George bore his illness, and how
Will read to him every day from Annie's Bible, choosing
always the passages she had marked, but the rest was all
withheld and Annie never dreamed the reason, or of the
effort it cost the talkative little Rose to keep back what
William said she must until the worst were known.

Thus the August days glided by, one by one, until the
summer light faded from the Rockland hills, and September
threw over them her rich autumnal bloom, and then
one day there came a note for Annie, written as of old by
William Mather, but signed by George himself. Poor Annie,
how she cried over and kissed that signature, to which
George had added, “God bless you, darling Annie.” Every
letter was unnaturally distorted, and few could have deciphered
the words; but to the eye of love they were plain
as noonday, and Annie's kisses dropped upon them until
they were still more blurred than when they came to
her.

It was very hard for Rose to keep from telling the
dreadful story of what had followed the penning of those
brief words, “God bless you, darling Annie.” But Will
had said she must not, so she made no sign, only her arms

clung closer around Annie's neck, and her lips lingered
longer upon the snowy forehead as she said good night,
and went away with the secret which Annie must not
know then.