Quite So | Page 3

So," Strong would say, "the mail-bag closes in half
an hour. Ain't you going to write?"
"I believe not to-day," Bladburn would reply, as if he had written
yesterday, or would write to-morrow: but he never wrote.
He had become a great favorite with us, and with all the officers of the

regiment. He talked less than any man I ever knew, but there was
nothing sinister or sullen in his reticence. It was sunshine,--warmth and
brightness, but no voice. Unassuming and modest to the verge of
shyness, he impressed every one as a man of singular pluck and nerve.
"Do you know," said Curtis to me one day, "that that fellow Quite So is
clear grit, and when we come to close quarters with our Palmetto
brethren over yonder, he'll do something devilish?"
"What makes you think so?"
"Well, nothing quite explainable; the exasperating coolness of the man,
as much as anything. This morning the boys were teasing Muffin Fan
[a small mulatto girl who used to bring muffins into camp three times a
week,--at the peril of her life!] and Jemmy Blunt of Company K--you
know him--was rather rough on the girl, when Quite So, who had been
reading under a tree, shut one finger in his book, walked over to where
the boys were skylarking, and with the smile of a juvenile angel on his
face lifted Jemmy out of that and set him down gently in front of his
own tent. There Blunt sat speechless, staring at Quite So, who was back
again under the tree, pegging away at his little Latin grammar."
That Latin grammar! He always had it about him, reading it or turning
over its dog's-eared pages at odd intervals and in out-of-the-way places.
Half a dozen times a day he would draw it out from the bosom of his
blouse, which had taken the shape of the book just over the left breast,
look at it as if to assure himself it was all right, and then put the thing
back. At night the volume lay beneath his pillow. The first thing in the
morning, before he was well awake, his hand would go groping
instinctively under his knapsack in search of it.
A devastating curiosity seized upon us boys concerning that Latin
grammar, for we had discovered the nature of the book. Strong wanted
to steal it one night, but concluded not to. "In the first place," reflected
Strong, "I haven't the heart to do it, and in the next place I have n't the
moral courage. Quite So would placidly break every bone in my body."
And I believe Strong was not far out of the way.

Sometimes I was vexed with myself for allowing this tall,
simple-hearted country fellow to puzzle me so much. And yet, was he a
simple-hearted country fellow? City bred he certainly was not; but his
manner, in spite of his awkwardness, had an indescribable air of
refinement. Now and then, too, he dropped a word or a phrase that
showed his familiarity with unexpected lines of reading. "The other
day," said Curtis, with the slightest elevation of eyebrow, "he had the
cheek to correct my Latin for me." In short, Quite So was a daily
problem to the members of Mess 6. Whenever he was absent, and
Blakely and Curtis and Strong and I got together in the tent, we
discussed him, evolving various theories to explain why he never wrote
to anybody and why nobody ever wrote to him. Had the man
committed some terrible crime, and fled to the army to hide his guilt?
Blakely suggested that he must have murdered "the old folks." What
did he mean by eternally conning that tattered Latin grammar? And was
his name Bladburn, anyhow? Even his imperturbable amiability
became suspicious. And then his frightful reticence! If he was the
victim of any deep grief or crushing calamity, why did n't he seem
unhappy? What business had he to be cheerful?
"It's my opinion," said Strong, "that he 's a rival Wandering Jew; the
original Jacobs, you know, was a dark fellow."
Blakely inferred from something Bladburn had said, or something he
had not said--which was more likely--that he had been a schoolmaster
at some period of his life.
"Schoolmaster be hanged!" was Strong's comment. "Can you fancy a
schoolmaster going about conjugating baby verbs out of a dratted little
spelling-book? No, Quite So has evidently been a--a--Blest if I can
imagine what he 's been!"
Whatever John Bladburn had been, he was a lonely man. Whenever I
want a type of perfect human isolation, I shall think of him, as he was
in those days, moving remote, self-contained, and alone in the midst of
two hundred thousand men.

II.
The Indian summer, with its infinite beauty and tenderness,