The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 104, June, 1866 | Page 9

I knew now that I was to hear poor Percy's story over again, with the Colonel's emendations and illustrations. I was in the carriage, and there was no getting out of it. Mrs. Lunt was used to him, and, I do believe, would like nothing better than to hear his old stories over and over, from January to December. But I wasn't of a patient make.
Colonel Lunt was a gentleman of the old school, which means, according to my experience, a person who likes to spend a long time getting at a joke or telling a story. He was a long time telling this, with the aid of Mrs. Lunt, who put in her corrections now and then, in a gentle, wifely way all her own, and which helped, instead of hindering him.
"And now, may I ask, my dear Colonel," said I, when he had finished, "why don't you, or rather why didn't you tell Percy the whole story?"
The Colonel pulled the check-string. "Thomas! drive slowly home now, and go round by the Devil's Dishful."
This is one of the loveliest drives about Barton. I knew that the Colonel's mind was easy.
"What need is there, or was there, to cloud Percy's life with such knowledge? Why, my dear Miss Elliott, if we all knew what other people know about us, we should be wretched! No! the mysteries of life are as merciful as the revelations; let us be thankful for all that we do not know."
"And I am sure we couldn't love Percy any more than we do, let her birth or circumstances be what they would," said Mrs. Lunt.
"I don't believe in natural affection, myself," said the Colonel; "but if I did, it would be enough to hear Percy congratulating herself on being of 'our very own blood,--a real Lunt!' Poor child! why should we trouble her? And I have often heard her say, she thought any blot on one's lineage the greatest of misfortunes."
"The reason the Colonel wanted to tell you about Percy was this. Now that her husband may be dead, who knew all about her, it is just possible that circumstances may arise that would need the interference of friends. If we were to die, the secret might die with us. We are sure it will be safe with you, Aunt Marian, and we think that, as you know about her husband, you had better know the whole."
Now this whole I propose to tell, myself, in one tenth part of the time it took the Colonel to tell me, prefacing it with a few facts about himself, which I guess he does not think that I know, and which relate to his early beginnings. Of course, all Barton is fully acquainted with the fact that he was born in the north of Vermont, at "the jumping-off place." He came to Boston, mostly on foot, and began his career in a small shop in Cornhill, where he sold bandannas, and the like. This imports nothing,--only he came by and by to associate with lords and dukes. And that shows what comes of being an American. He fell among Perkinses and Sturgises, and after working hard for them in China, and getting a great deal to do in the "carrying-trade," whatever that may be, retired on his half-million to Maryland, where he lived awhile, until he went to Europe. After he returned he bought the Schuyler place, which had been for sale years and years. But in Barton we like new things, and we saw no beauty in the old house, with its long walk of nearly a quarter of a mile to the front door, bordered with box. The Colonel, whose taste has been differently cultivated, has made a beautiful place of it, applying some of the old French notions of gardening, where the trees would admit of being cut into grotesque shapes, and leaving the shade-trees, stately and handsome, as they always were. Now to his story in my own words.
CHAPTER IV.
I can't think of a more desolate place than they had in Maryland, by their own account;--a great, dismal house, without chick or child in it for years and years;--full of rooms and furniture and black people, and nowhere the shout and cry of a baby. There was nobody to be anxious about,--nobody gone away or coming home, or to be wept for, or to be joyful for;--only their two stupid selves. Madam pottering about the great house, dusting with a feather duster all the knick-knacks that she had brought home from Europe, and that she might have just as well bought in New York after she got home; and he putting up books and taking them down, riding out on his white horse, and having somebody to dine once in a while,--could any life be