Kitobni o'qish: «The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 104, June, 1866»

QUICKSANDS

CHAPTER I

"This is the seventy-fifth pair! Pretty well for us in so short a time!" said the Colonel's wife.

"Yes, but we must give Aunt Marian the credit of a very large proportion; at least ten pairs have come from her."

"I have nothing to do but to knit; none to knit for at home but my cat," I replied, rather shortly, to the soft voice that had given me credit for such extraordinary industry. Afterwards I looked up at Percy Lunt, and tried to think of some pleasant thing to say to her; but in vain,—the words wouldn't come. I did not like her, and that is the truth.

Thirty of us were assembled as usual, at our weekly "Soldiers' Aid Circle." We always met at the house of her father, Colonel Lunt, because its parlors were the largest in Barton, and because Mrs. Lunt invited us to come every week at three o'clock in the afternoon, and stay till nine, meanwhile giving us all tea. The two parlors, which opened into each other as no others in Barton did, were handsomely furnished with articles brought from France; though, for that matter, they did not look very different from Barton furniture generally, except, perhaps, in being plainer. Just now the chairs, lounges, and card-table were covered with blue yarn, blue woollen cloth, unbleached cotton, and other things requisite for the soldiers. They, the soldiers, had worn out the miserable socks provided by government in two days' marching, and sent up the cry, to the mothers and sisters in New England, "Give us such stockings as you are used to knitting for us!"

That home-cry found its answer in every heart. Not a hand but responded. Every spare moment was given to the needs of the soldiers. For these were not the materials of a common army. These were all our own brothers, lovers, husbands, fathers. And shame to the wife, daughter, or sister who would know them to be sufferers while a finger remained on their hands to be moved! So, day by day, at soldiers' meetings, but much more at home, the army of waiters and watchers wrought cheerfully and hopefully for the loved ones who were "marching along." In Barton we knitted while we talked, and at the Lyceum lectures. Nay, we threatened even to take our knitting to meeting,—for it seemed, as we said, a great waste of time to be sitting so long idle.

This had gone on for more than months. We had begun to count the war by years. Did we bate one jot of heart or hope for that? No more than at the beginning. We continued to place the end of the struggle at sixty or ninety days, as the news came more or less favorable to the loyal cause. But despair of the Republic? Never. Not the smallest child in Barton. Not a woman, of course. And through these life-currents flowing between each soldier and his home, the good heart and courage of the army was kept up through all those dismal reverses and bloody struggles that marked the early part of the years of sixty-two and three.

We kept writing to our Barton boys, and took care of them, both in tent and field. And in every box sent on to the Potomac went letters from all the soldiers' families, and photographs to show how fast the children were growing, and how proud the sisters were of the brave brothers who were upholding the flag at the price of their lives.

We were very busy to-day at Mrs. Lunt's. She and I cut out shirts for the rest,—and I took an opportunity to carry one to Percy Lunt, with some directions, in as kind a voice as I could command, about the sleeves. She smiled and looked up wistfully in my face, but I turned away in a hurry to my work. Somehow, I could not forgive her for troubling my poor Robert. I couldn't before he went, much less now.

I must describe Percy if I can. She was of middling height, and very delicately formed, with a face as destitute of color as if it had been carved out of marble. Her dark hair was cut short in her neck, and parted over her forehead and her even brows. Her eyes were dark and soft, but almost constantly bent on the floor. She dressed in black, and wore over her small head a little tarlatan cap as close as a Shaker's. You might call her interesting-looking, but for a certain listlessness and want of sympathy with others. She had been married, was not more than twenty years old at the time I am describing her, and had been in Barton only about a year, since her husband's death.

As I had neither chick nor child to offer to my country, I was glad to hear my nephew, Robert Elliott, say that the Barton boys had chosen him for Captain, and that they were all to start for Boston the next morning, and go on at once to Fortress Monroe.

This boy's black eyes were very near to my heart,—almost as near as they were to his own mother's. And when he came in to bid me good by, I could not look on his pale, resolute face without a sinking, trembling feeling, do what I would to keep up a brave outside? This was in the very beginning of the war, when word first came that blood had been shed in Baltimore; and our Barton boys were in Boston reporting to Governor Andrew in less than a week after. Now we didn't, one of us, believe in the bravery of the South. We believed them braggarts and bullies, and that was all. We believed that, once let them see that the North was not going to give way to them, they would go back where they came from.

"You will be back in a month, Robert, all of you. Mind, I don't say you will send these hounds back to their kennels,—rather, send these gentry back to their ladies' chambers. But I won't say either. Only let them see that you are ready for a fair stand-up fight, and I'll be bound they'll be too much astonished to stop running for a week."

So we all said and thought at the North,—all but a few who had been at the South, and who knew too well how much in earnest it was in its treason, and how slight was the struggle it anticipated. These few shuddered at the possibility that stood red and gloomy in the path of the future,—these few, who knew both sides. Meanwhile both sides most heartily underrated each other, and had the sincerest reciprocal disrespect.

"I don't quite think like you, Auntie, but that is, perhaps, because I was at Charleston. A year at the South, and you understand them a little differently. But no matter,—they must go back all the same. This is my pincushion, is it?"

"Yes, and here are thread and needles. But, Rob, nonsense! I say you will be back in a month. They will begin talking and arguing, and once they begin that, there will be no fighting. It is like the Chinese, each side trying to frighten the other."

"Perhaps so," said Robert, in an abstracted way. "Let us hope so, at all events. I am sure I don't want to shoot anybody. But now I am going to Colonel Lunt's a little while; shall I find you up when I come back?"

"Come in, any way, and tell me if you have good news."

I knew what he was going to Colonel Lunt's for. He had talked to me about Percy, and I knew he loved her. If he had not been going away, perhaps he would have waited longer; for Mr. Lunt (he was Percy's cousin) had not been dead quite two years. But he said he could not go away without telling her; and when I remembered all the readings together, and the walkings and talkings between the two, I thought it most likely she had already consoled herself. As I said before, I had no very great love for her.

Not an hour, not fifteen minutes, when Robert returned. He looked paler than before, and spoke no word, only stared into the fire. At length, with a pitiful attempt at a smile, he said, "I'm a fool to be vexed about it,—let her please herself!"

"It is bad news, Robert!" said I softly, laying my hand on his arm. His hands were clenched hard together.

"Yes, there's no mistake about it. But, Auntie, tell me, am I a fool and a jackass? didn't you think she liked me?"

"To be sure I did!" I answered decidedly.

"Well, she says she never thought of me,—never!—and she never thought of marrying again."

The wound wouldn't bear touching,—it was too sore. So I sat silently with him, holding his hand in mine, and looking into the fire, and in almost as great a rage as he was. He knew I felt with him, and by and by he turned to kiss my cheek, but still without a word.

How I wished he could have gone to the conflict with the thought of his true love warm at his heart? Who deserved it so much? who was so brave, so heroic, so handsome?—one in ten thousand! And here was this dead-and-alive Percy Lunt, saying she never thought! "Pah!—just as if girls don't always think! If there's anything I do detest, it's a coquette!" The last sentence I unconsciously uttered aloud.

"Don't call her that, Auntie! I really think she didn't know. I wasn't just to her. I was too angry. When I spoke to her she looked really distressed and astonished. I am sure that I ought–"

"Nonsense, Robert! she must have seen your feelings. And haven't you been sending her flowers and books and pictures, and reading to her, and talking to her the whole time, this three months! Where were her eyes? I have no patience with her, I say!"

The boy had recovered his sense of justice so much sooner than I! He smiled sadly, and took both my little old hands in his. "Best of aunties! what a good hater you are! Now, if you love me, you will be kind to her, and try to love and comfort her. Somehow she looks very unhappy."

I could not answer.

"She looked—O so sorry! Auntie, when I spoke, and as if she was too much astonished to answer me. I do think it was the very last thing in the world she expected. And after she told me, which she did at once, that I was mistaken, and she was mistaken, and that we never could be any more than friends to each other, and I had got up to go away,—for I was very angry as well as agitated,—she stood looking so pale and so earnestly at me, as if she must make me believe her. Then she held out her hands to me, and I thought she was going to speak; but she shook her head, and seemed so thoroughly distressed, that I tried to smile, and shake hands cordially, though, I confess, I didn't feel much like it. But I do now, Auntie,—and you must forgive her for not thinking quite so much of your Rob as you do."

He took a photograph from his breast-pocket, and kissed it.

"She gave me this; and she wrote on the back the date of to-day, April 16th, 1861. She said she did not want me to remember her as she is now, but as she was in her happy days. And that they could never come again."

It was a very lovely vignette, taken when she was joyous and round-faced, and with the curls falling about her cheeks and neck, instead of the prim little widow's cap she wore now. And instead of the still, self-contained, suffering look, there was great sweetness and serenity.

"I don't see why she gave it to you, Rob," said I peevishly; "the best thing you can do is to forget her, and the kindest thing she could do to you would be to cut off all hope."

"She did that," he replied; "but she said she could not bear to have me go where I was going without feeling that I had left a most affectionate friend, who would watch eagerly for my success, and sympathize with all my trials. Auntie! who knows?"

I saw by the lighting up of his dark eyes what hope lay at the very bottom of his soul. And, to be sure, who knew what might be in the future? At all events, it made him more comfortable now to have this little, unexpressed, crouching hope, where he could silently caress it when he was far away from us all. He had all our photographs,—mother, sister, and aunt.

"And now I must go to Mr. Ford's to-night, and bid them good by. Don't let any enterprising young lawyer come here and get away all my business before the month is out. I came within an ace of making a writ only last week!"

So with smiles he parted from me, and strength was given me to smile too, the next morning, when he marched by my window, and bowed to me, at the head of his hundred men. I saw his steady, heroic face, no longer pale, but full of stern purpose and strength. And so they all looked,—strong, able, determined. The call took all our young men from Barton. Not one would remain behind.

And that is why I could not love Percy Lunt. How hard she worked at our soldiers' club! how gentle and respectful she always was to me! If I had not been always preoccupied and prejudiced, I might have pitied the poor, overcharged heart, that showed itself so plainly in the deathly pallor of the young cheek, and the eyes so weighed down with weeping. Colonel Lunt and his wife watched her with loving eyes, but they could do little to soothe her. Every heart must taste its own bitterness. And, besides, she wasn't their own child.

CHAPTER II

Every village has its great man and woman, and Colonel Lunt and his wife were Barton's. Theirs was the only family whose table appointments were of sufficient elegance to board the preceptor of the academy. All the Lyceum lecturers stopped at Colonel Lunt's; and Mrs. Lunt was the person who answered the requirements of Lady Manager for the Mount Vernon Association, namely, "social position, executive ability, tact, and persistency."

They were the only family in Barton who had been abroad. The rest of us stayed at home and admired them. They had not always lived in Barton; perhaps, if they had, we should not have succumbed so entirely as we all did, ten years ago, when Colonel Lunt came and bought the Schuyler place, (so called because General Schuyler stopped there over night on his way to fight Burgoyne,) and brought his orphan niece and adopted daughter with him, and also a French governess for the child. These things were not in Barton style at all; all our children being educated at the town school, and finished, as means allowed, by three months' polish at some seminary or other. Of course, in a country town like Barton, which numbers nearly fifteen hundred inhabitants, there is enough to interest and occupy every one. What would be gossip and scandal in a different social condition is pure, kindly interest in Barton. We know everybody, and his father and mother. Of course each person has his standing as inevitable and decided as an English nobleman's. Our social organization is perfect. Our circles are within and within each other, until we come to the crème de la crème of the Lunts and six other families. The outer circle is quite extensive, embracing all the personable young men "who are not embarrassed with antecedents," as one of our number said. The inner one takes in some graduates of college,—persons who read all the new books, and give a tone to Barton. Among the best people are the Elliotts and Robertses. The lawyers and shopkeepers come in of course, but not quite of course—anywhere but in Barton—is included the barber. But Mr. Roberts was an extreme case. He had been destined to literary pursuits, became consumptive, and was obliged, by unforeseen contingencies, to take up some light employment, which proved in the end to be shaving. If it had been holding notes instead of noses, the employment would have been vastly genteel, I dare say. As it was, we thought about the French émigrés and marquises who made cakes and dressed hair for a living, and concluded to admit Mr. Roberts, especially as he married a far-away Elliott, and was really a sensible and cultivated man. But as we must stop somewhere, we drew a strict line before the tinman, blacksmith, and Democrats of all sorts. We are pure-blooded Federalists in Barton, and were brought up on the Hartford Convention. I think we all fully believed that a Democrat was unfit to associate with decent people.

As in most New England towns, the young fly from the parent nest as soon as they are fledged. Out of Barton have gone, in my time, Boston millionnaires, state secretaries, statesmen, and missionaries,—of the last, not a few. Once the town was full of odd people, whose peculiarities and idiosyncrasies ran to seed, and made strange, eventful histories.

But we have ceased to take such microscopic views of each other since the railway came within ten miles of us, and are now able to converse on much more general topics than formerly. Not that there isn't still opportunity to lament over the flighty nature of kitchen incumbents, and to look after the domestic interests of all Barton; but I think going to Boston several times a year tends to enlarge the mind, and gives us more subjects of conversation. We are quite up in the sculpture at Mount Auburn, and have our preferences for Bierstadt and Weber. Nobody in Barton, so far, is known to see anything but horrors in pre-Raphaelitism. Some wandering Lyceum-man tried to imbue us with the new doctrine, and showed us engravings of Raphael's first manner, and Perugino. But we all voted Perugino was detestable, and would none of him. Besides, none of the Lunts liked him.

In patriotism, Barton would have "knocked under to no man," if the question had been put to it ten years ago on the Fourth of July. When a proof of it was required from the pocket, on the occasion before alluded to, of the Mount Vernon Association, I regret to say the response did no credit to Barton.

Mrs. Lunt made a great many Lady Assistant Managers in the town, and sent us forth to gather in the harvest, which we could not doubt would be plentiful. She herself worded a most touching "appeal to the women of Barton," and described "the majestic desolation of the spot where the remains of Washington lie in cold neglect," and asked each one for a heart-offering to purchase, beautify, and perpetuate a fitting home where pilgrims from all parts of the Union should come to fill their urns with the tears of grateful remembrance.

It really seemed unnecessary to urge such a claim on a community like ours. Yet we found ourselves obliged to exhaust all the persistency and tact we had. For every conceivable reason Barton refused to respond to our appeals. The minister, Mr. Ford, declared to me that the sentiment of loyalty did not exist in America. Sometimes, he said, he wished he lived under a monarchy. He envied the heartfelt cheers with which Victoria's name was met, everywhere on British ground. "But you can't get people to give to Mount Vernon. They are afraid of slavery there. They are afraid of this, that, and the other; but give they will not." He handed me a dollar, in a hopeless way, which was a four-hundredth of his income. The blacksmith's wife would not admit me at all, saying, "There has been one beggar here already this morning!" The butcher's wife gave five cents; but I had my doubts about accepting it, for while I was indignantly relating the desolate condition of the home and tomb of the Father of his Country, and something about its being a spot only fit for a wild pelican to live in, the butcher himself passed through the house, nodding his head at me, and saying loudly, "Not a cent, wife!" The plasterer, Mr. Rice, a respectable Vermonter, asked me who Washington was; and Mrs. Goodwin, the cabinet-maker's wife, said cordially to me, "There 's ten cents towards a tomb. I don't never expect to go down South myself, but maybe my son'll like to be buried there." Her son was buried down South, with many more of our brave Barton boys, little as we thought of it then!

Now, the butcher and baker, the plasterer, and all, have gone to the war. They have learned what it is to have a country to live for. They have learned to hold up the old flag through thunderings and blood, and to die for it joyfully. What a baptism and regeneration it has been! what a new creation! Behold, old things have passed away, and all has become new!

Soon after the battle of Cedar Mountain, and Banks's retreat, we had long, full letters from Robert. He wrote a separate note to me, in which he said, "Be kind to Percy." It was the very thing I had not been,—had not felt it possible to be. But, conscience-stricken, I went up to call at Colonel Lunt's, and read our letters to them. Percy walked home with me, and we talked over the prospects and reverses of the war. Of course we would not allow there were any real reverses.

We went on to my little cottage, and I asked her to come in and rest. I remember it was a very still evening, except for a sad south-wind. The breeze sighed through the pines in front of the house, like the sound of distant water. The long lingering of the sun slanted over Percy's brow, as she sat leaning her head on her hand, and looking away off, as if over thousands of miles. Her pretty pale fingers were purple with working on hospital shirts and drawers, and bloody with pricking through the slipper soles for the wounded men. She was the most untiring and energetic of all the young people; but they all worked well.

We sat there some time without speaking. I was full of thought and anxiety, and I supposed she too might feel deeply about Robert.

"Aunt Marian,—may I call you so?" said she softly, at length looking up.

"Why not, Percy? you always do."

"Only, lately, it has seemed to me you were different."

She crossed the room and sat down on a tabouret so low that she was at my feet, and took my hand with a humble sweetness that would have touched any heart less hard than mine.

"I used to love to hear him call you so!" she went on, caressing my hand, which I did not withdraw, though I should have liked well to do so, for I did not at all like this attitude we had assumed of penitent and confessor. "I can't expect you to be just to me, dear Auntie, because you don't know. But oh! do believe! I never guessed Robert's feelings for me. How could I think of it,—and I a married woman!"

"Married! Percy!" said I, astonished at her agitation and the tears that flowed down her pale face like rain.

"Yes," she answered in a voice so low that I could scarcely hear it.

"Not a widow, Percy Lunt! What do you mean?"

"I think—I believe—my husband is living. He was so a few months ago. But I cannot tell you any more without papa's permission. O, I have suffered so much! You would pity me if you knew all. But I felt as if I must tell you this: and then—you would understand how I might have been, as I was, so wholly preoccupied with my own feelings and interests as never to guess that Robert's was anything but the regard of a friend. And, indeed," she added with a sorrowful smile, "I feel so much older than Robert.—I have gone through so much, that I feel ten years older than he is. You will believe me, Aunt Marian, and forgive me?"

"It is easy to forgive, poor child!" I said, mingling my tears with hers. "I have been cruel and hard-hearted to you. But I felt only for poor Robert, and how could I guess?"

"You couldn't,—and that is why I felt that I must tell you."

"I cannot ask you anything further,—it is very strange."

While Percy kept strong rein on her feelings, her impassive manner had deceived me. Now that my sympathy with her made me more keenly alive to her distress, I saw the deep pain in her pale face, and the unnatural look of grief in one so young. She tied on her hat in her old, hopeless way, and the ivory smoothness of her face spoke of self-centred and silent suffering.

"If papa is willing, I shall come to-morrow, and tell you part, at least, of my sad story; and even if he is not willing, I think I must tell you a part of it. I owe it to you, Aunt Marian!"

"I shall be at home all day, my dear," I said, kissing the poor, pale lips with such tender pity as I had never thought to feel for Percy Lunt.