University of Virginia Library

23. CHAPTER XXIII.
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.