Produced by Joshua Hutchinson, Josephine Paolucci and the
Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net.
(This file was produced from images generously made
available by Cornell University Digital Collections).
THE ATLANTIC MONTHLY.
_A Magazine of Literature, Science, Art, and Politics._
VOL. XVII.--JUNE, 1866.--NO. CIV.
Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1866, by TICKNOR AND
FIELDS, in the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the District of
Massachusetts.
Transcriber's Note: Minor typos have been corrected and footnotes moved
to the end of the article. Contractions have been retained as they appear
in each story.
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.