University of Virginia Library

22. CHAPTER XXII.
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 loked 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.