Chapter 1
The recruiting-office at Rivermouth was in a small, unpainted, weather-stained building on Anchor Street, not far from the custom-house. Thetumble-down shell had long remained tenantless, and now, with its mouse-colored exterior, easily lent itself to its present requirements as alittle military mouse-trap. In former years it had been occupied as athread-and-needle and candy shop by one Dame Trippew. All such pettyshops in the town were always kept by old women, and these old womenwere always styled dames. It is to be lamented that they and theirinnocent traffic have vanished into the unknown.
The interior of the building, consisting of one room and an atticcovered by a lean-to roof, had undergone no change beyond the removal ofDame Trippew's pathetic stock at the time of her bankruptcy. The narrowcounter, painted pea-green and divided in the centre by a swinging gate,still stretched from wall to wall at the farther end of the room, andbehind the counter rose a series of small wooden drawers, which now heldnothing but a fleeting and inaccurate memory of the lavender, andpennyroyal, and the other sweet herbs that used to be deposited in them.Even the tiny cow-bell, which once served to warn Dame Trippew of theadvent of a customer, still hung from a bit of curved iron on the innerside of the street-door, and continued to give out a petulant, spasmodicjingle whenever that door was opened, however cautiously. If the goodsoul could have returned to the scene of her terrestrial commerce, shemight have resumed business at the old stand without making anyalterations whatever. Everything remained precisely as she had left itat the instant of her exit. But a wide gulf separated Dame Trippew fromthe present occupant of the premises. Dame Trippew's slight figure, withits crisp, snowy cap and apron, and steel-bowed spectacles, had beenreplaced by the stalwart personage of a sergeant of artillery in theregular army, between whose overhanging red mustache and the faint whitedown that had of late years come to Dame Trippew's upper lip, it wouldhave been impossible to establish a parallel. The only things these twomight have claimed in common were a slackness of trade and a liking forthe aromatic Virginia leaf, though Dame Trippew had taken hers in adainty idealistic powder, and the sergeant took his in realistic plugthrough the medium of an aggressive clay pipe.
In spite of the starry shield, supported by two crossed cannon cut outof tin and surmounted by the national bird in the same material, whichhung proudly over the transom outside; in spite of the drummer-boy fromthe fort, who broke the silence into slivers at intervals throughout theday; in brief, in spite of his own martial bearing and smart uniform,the sergeant found trade very slack. At Rivermouth the war with Mexicowas not a popular undertaking. If there were any heroic blood left inthe old town by the sea, it appeared to be in no hurry to come forwardand get itself shed. There were hours in which Sergeant O'Neil despairedof his country. But by degrees the situation brightened, recruits beganto come in, and finally the town and the outlying districts--chiefly theoutlying districts--managed to furnish a company for the State regiment.One or two prominent citizens had been lured by commissions as officers;but neither of the two Rivermouthians who went in as privates was of theslightest civic importance. One of these men was named James Dutton.
Why on earth James Dutton wanted to go to the war was a puzzle to thefew townsfolk who had any intimate acquaintance with the young man.Intimate acquaintance is perhaps too strong a term; for though Buttonwas born in the town and had always lived there, he was more or less astranger to those who knew him best. Comrades he had, of course, in amanner: the boys with whom he had formerly gone to the public school,and two or three maturer persons whose acquaintance he had contractedlater in the way of trade. But with these he could scarcely be said tobe intimate. James Dutton's rather isolated condition was not inconsequence of any morbid or uncouth streak in his mental make-up. Hewas of a shy and gentle nature, and his sedentary occupation had simplylet the habit of solitude and unsociability form a shell about him.Dutton was a shoemaker and cobbler, like his father before him, plyinghis craft in the shabby cottage where he was born and had lived eversince, at the foot of a narrow lane leading down to the river--a lonely,doleful sort of place, enlivened with a bit of shelving sand where anancient fisherman occasionally came to boil lobsters.
In the open lots facing the unhinged gate was an old relinquishedtannery that still flavored the air with decayed hemlock and fir bark,which lay here and there in dull-red patches, killing the grass. Theundulations of a colonial graveyard broke tamely against the westernbase of the house. Head-stones and monuments--if there had ever been anymonuments--had melted away. Only tradition and those slowly subsidingwave-like ridges of graves revealed the character of the spot. Withinthe memory of man nobody had been dropped into that Dead Sea. TheDuttons, father and son, had dwelt here nearly twenty-four years. Theyowned the shanty. The old man was now dead, having laid down his awl andlapstone just a year before the rise of those internationalcomplications which resulted in the appearance of Sergeant O'Neil inRivermouth, where he immediately tacked up the blazoned aegis of theUnited States over the doorway of Dame Trippew's little shop.
As has been indicated, the war with Mexico was not looked upon withfavor by the inhabitants of Rivermouth, who clearly perceived itsunderlying motive--the extension of slave territory. The abolitionelement in the town had instantly been blown to a white heat. Moreover,war in itself, excepting as a defensive measure or on a point of honor,seemed rather poor business to the thrifty Rivermouthians. They werewholly of the opinion of Birdofredom Sawin, that
"Nimepunce a day fer killin' folks comes kind o' low fer murder."
That old Nehemiah Dutton's son should have any interest one way or theother in the questions involved was inconceivable, and the morning hepresented himself at the recruiting-office a strong ripple of surpriseran over the group of idlers that hung day after day around the door ofthe crazy tenement, drawn thither by the drum-taps and a morbid sense ofgunpowder in the air. These idlers were too sharp or too unpatriotic toenlist themselves, but they had unbounded enthusiasm for those who did.After a moment's hesitation, they cheered Jemmy Dutton handsomely.
On the afternoon of his enlistment, he was met near the post-office byMarcellus Palfrey, the sexton of the Old Brick Church.
"What are you up to, anyhow, Jemmy?" asked Palfrey. "What's your idee?"
"My idea is," replied Dutton, "that I've never been able to live freelyand respectably, as I've wanted to live; but I mean to die like agentleman, when it comes to that."
"What do you call a gentleman, Jemmy?"
"Well, a man who serves faithfully, and stands by to lay down his lifefor his duty--he's a gentleman."
"That's so," said Palfrey. "He needn't have no silver-plated handles,nor much outside finish, if he's got a satin linin'. He's one of God'smen."
What really sent James Dutton to the war? Had he some unformulated andhitherto unsuspected dream of military glory, or did he have an eye tosupposable gold ingots piled up in the sub-basement of the halls of theMontezumas? Was it a case of despised love, or was he simply tired ofre-heeling and re-soling the boots of Rivermouth folk; tired to death ofthe river that twice a day crept up to lap the strip of sandy beach atthe foot of Nutter's Lane; tired to death of being alone, and poor, andaimless? His motive is not positively to be known, only to be guessedat. We shall not trouble ourselves about it. Neither shall the war,which for a moment casts a lurid light on his figure, delay us long. Itwas a tidy, comfortable little war, not without picturesque aspects. Outof its flame and smoke leaped two or three fine names that dazzled men'seyes awhile; and among the fortunate was a silent young lieutenant ofinfantry--a taciturn, but not unamiable young lieutenant--who wasafterward destined to give the name of a great general into the keepingof history forever. Wrapped up somewhere in this Mexican war is thematerial for a brief American epic; but it is not to be unrolled andrecited here.
Chapter 2
With the departure of Our Country's Gallant Defenders, as they wereloosely denominated by some--the Idiots, as they were compactlydescribed by others--monotony again settled down upon Rivermouth.Sergeant O'Neil's heraldic emblems disappeared from Anchor Street, andthe quick rattle of the tenor drum at five o'clock in the morning nolonger disturbed the repose of peace-loving citizens. The tide of battlerolled afar, and its echoes were not of a quality to startle the drowsyold seaport. Indeed, it had little at stake. Only four men had gone fromthe town proper. One, Captain Kittery, died before reaching the seat ofwar; one deserted on the way; one, Lieutenant Bangs, was sent homeinvalided; and only James Dutton was left to represent the land force ofhis native town. He might as well have died or deserted, for he waspromptly forgotten.
From time to time accounts of battles and bombardments were given in thecolumns of the Rivermouth Barnacle, on which occasions the Stars andStripes, held in the claws of a spread eagle, decorated the editorialpage--a cut which until then had been used only to celebrate thebloodless victories of the ballot. The lists of dead, wounded, andmissing were always read with interest or anxiety, as might happen, forone had friends and country acquaintances, if not fellow-townsmen, withthe army on the Rio Grande. Meanwhile nobody took the trouble to bestowa thought on James Dutton. He was as remote and shadowy in men'smemories as if he had been killed at Thermopylae or Bunker's Hill. Butone day the name of James Dutton blazed forth in a despatch thatelectrified the community. At the storming of Chapultepec, Private JamesDutton, Company K, Rivermouth, had done a very valorous deed. He hadcrawled back to a plateau on the heights, from which the American troopshad been driven, and had brought off his captain, who had beenmomentarily stunned by the wind of a round-shot. Not content with that,Private Dutton had returned to the dangerous plateau, and, under a heavyfire, had secured a small field-piece which was about to fall into thehands of the enemy. Later in the day this little howitzer did eminentservice. After touching on one or two other minor matters, the despatchremarked, incidentally, that Private James Dutton had had his left legblown off.
The name of James Dutton was instantly on every lip in town. Citizenswho had previously ignored his existence, or really had not been awareof it, were proud of him. The Hon. Jedd Deane said that he had. longregarded James Dutton as a young man of great promise, a--er--mostremarkable young person, in short; one of the kind with much--er--latentability. Postmaster Mugridge observed, with the strong approval of thosewho heard him, that young Dutton was nobody's fool, though what especialwisdom Dutton had evinced in having his leg blown off was not clear.Captain Tewksberry, commanding the local militia company, the RivermouthTigers, was convinced that no one who had not carefully studied Scott'sTactics could have brought away that gun under the circumstances. "Here,you will observe, was the exposed flank of the heights; there, behindthe chevaux-de-frise, lay the enemy," etc., etc. Dutton's former school-fellows began to remember that there had always been something tough andgritty in Jim Dutton. The event was one not to be passed over by ParsonWibird Hawkins, who made a most direct reference to it in his Sunday'ssermon--Job xxxix. 25: "He saith among the trumpets, Ha, ha; and hesmelleth the battle afar off, the thunder of the captains, and theshouting."
After the first burst of local pride and enthusiasm had exhausted itselfover young Dutton's brilliant action, the grim fact connected with youngDutton's left leg began to occupy the public mind. The despatch hadvaguely hinted at amputation, and had stopped there. If his leg had beenshot away, was it necessary that the rest of him should be amputated? Inthe opinion of Schoolmaster Grimshaw, such treatment seemed almosttautological. However, all was presumably over by this time. Had poorDutton died under the operation? Solicitude on that point was widespreadand genuine. Later official intelligence relieved the stress of anxiety.Private Dutton had undergone the operation successfully and with greatfortitude; he was doing well, and as soon as it was possible for him tobear transportation he was to be sent home. He had been complimented inthe commanding officer's report of the action to headquarters, andGeneral Winfield Scott had sent Private Dutton a silver medal "forbravery on the field of battle." If the Government had wanted one or twohundred volunteers from Rivermouth, that week was the week to get them.
Then intervened a long silence touching James Dutton. This meantfeverish nights and weary days in hospital, and finally blissfulconvalescence, when the scent of the orange and magnolia blossoms blownin at the open window seemed to James Dutton a richer recompense than hedeserved for his martyrdom. At last he was in condition to be put onboard a transport for New Orleans. Thence a man-of-war was to convey himto Rivermouth, where the ship was to be overhauled and have its ownwounds doctored.
When it was announced from the fort that the vessel bearing James Duttonhad been sighted off the coast and would soon be in the Narrows, thetown was thrown into such a glow of excitement as it had not experiencedsince the day a breathless and bedraggled man on horseback had dashedinto Rivermouth with the news that the Sons of Liberty in Boston hadpitched the British tea overboard. The hero of Chapultepec--the onlyhero Rivermouth had had since the colonial period--was coming up theNarrows! It is odd that three fourths of anything should be moreestimable than the whole, supposing the whole to be estimable. WhenJames Dutton had all his limbs he was lightly esteemed, and here wasRivermouth about to celebrate a fragment of him.
The normally quiet and unfrequented street leading down to the boat-landing was presently thronged by Rivermouthians--men, women, andchildren. The arrival of a United States vessel always stirred anemotion in the town. Naval officers were prime favorites in aristocraticcircles, and there were few ships in the service that did not countamong their blue-jackets one or more men belonging to the port. Thus allsea-worn mariners in Uncle Sam's employ were sure of both patrician anddemocratic welcome at Rivermouth. But the present ship contained anespecially valuable cargo.
It was a patient and characteristically undemonstrative crowd thatassembled on the wharf, a crowd content to wait an hour or more withouta murmur after the ship had dropped anchor in midstream for thecaptain's gig to be lowered from the davits. The shrill falsetto of theboatswain's whistle suddenly informed those on shore of what was takingplace on the starboard side, and in a few minutes the gig came sweepingacross the blue water, with James Dutton seated in the stern-sheets andlooking very pale. He sat there, from time to time pulling his blondmustache, evidently embarrassed. A cheer or two rose from the wharf whenthe eight gleaming blades simultaneously stood upright in air, as if themovement had been performed by some mechanism. The disembarkmentfollowed in dead silence, for the interest was too novel and too intenseto express itself noisily. Those nearest to James Dutton pressed forwardto shake hands with him, but this ceremony had to be dispensed with ashe hobbled on his crutches through the crowd, piloted by PostmasterMugridge to the hack which stood in waiting at the head of the wharf.
Dutton was driven directly to his own little cottage in Nutter's Lane,which had been put in order for his occupancy. The small grocery closethad been filled with supplies, the fire had been lighted in thediminutive kitchen stove, and the tea-kettle was twittering on top, likea bird on a bough. The Twombly girls, Priscilla and Mehitabel, had setsome pansies and lilacs here and there in blue china mugs, and decoratedwith greenery the faded daguerreotype of old Nehemiah Dutton, which hunglike a slowly dissolving ghost over his ancient shoemaker's bench. AsJames Dutton hobbled into the contracted room where he had spent thetedious years of his youth and manhood, he had to lift a hand from oneof the crutches to brush away the tears that blinded him. It was so goodto be at home again!
That afternoon, Dutton held an informal reception. There was a constantcoming and going of persons not in the habit of paying visits in sounfashionable a neighborhood as Nutter's Lane. Now and then a townsman,conscious that his unimportance did not warrant his unintroducedpresence inside, lounged carelessly by the door; and through the rest ofthe day several small boys turned somersaults and skylarked under thewindow, or sat in rows on the rail fence opposite the gate. Among otherscame the Hon. Jedd Deane, with his most pronounced Websterian air--hewas always oscillating between the manner of Webster and that of RufusChoate--to pay his respects to James Dutton, which was considered agreat compliment indeed. A few days later, this statesman invited Duttonto dine with him at the ancestral mansion in Mulberry Avenue, in companywith Parson Wibird Hawkins, Postmaster Mugridge, and Silas Trefethen,the Collector of the Port. It was intimated that young Dutton hadhandled himself under this ordeal with as much self-possession anddignity as if he had always dined off colonial china, and had alwaysstirred his after-dinner coffee with a spoon manufactured by PaulRevere.
A motion to give James Dutton a limited public banquet, at which thepoliticians could have a chance to unfold their eloquence, was discussedand approved by the Board of Selectmen, but subsequently laid on thetable, it being reported that Mr. Dutton had declared that he wouldrather have his other leg blown off than make a speech. This necessarilykilled the project, for a reply from him to the chairman's openingaddress was a sine qua non.
Life now opened up all sunshine to James Dutton. His personalsurroundings were of the humblest, but it was home, sweet, sweet home.One may roam amid palaces--even amid the halls of the Montezumas--yet,after all, one's own imperfect drain is the best. The very leather-parings and bits of thread that had drifted from the work-bench into thefront yard, and seemed to have taken root there like some strange exoticweed, were a delight to him. Dutton's inability to move about as informer years sometimes irked him, but everything else was pleasant. Heresolved to make the best of this one misfortune, since without it hewould never have been treated with such kindness and consideration. Theconstant employment he found at his trade helped him to forget that hehad not two legs. A man who is obliged to occupy a cobbler's bench dayafter day has no special need of legs at all. Everybody brought jobs tohis door, and Dutton had as much work as he could do. At times, indeed,he was forced to decline a commission. He could hardly credit his senseswhen this occurred.
So life ran very smoothly with him. For the first time in his existencehe found himself humming or whistling an accompaniment to the rat-tat-tat of his hammer on the sole-leather. No hour of the twenty-four hungheavily on him. In the rear of the cottage was a bit of ground, perhapsforty feet square, with an old elm in the centre, under which Duttonliked to take his nooning. It was here he used to play years ago, aquiet, dreamy lad, with no companions except the squirrels. A family ofthem still inhabited the ancient boughs, and it amused him to rememberhow he once believed that the nimble brown creatures belonged to a tribeof dwarf Indians who might attempt to scalp him with their little knivesif they caught him out after dusk. Though his childhood had not beenhappy, he had reached a bend in the road where to pause and look backwas to find the retrospect full of fairy lights and coloring.
Almost every evening one or two old acquaintances, with whom he had notbeen acquainted, dropped in to chat with him, mainly about the war. Hehad shared in all the skirmishes and battles from Cerro Gordo and Molinodel Rey up to the capture of Chapultepec; and it was something to hearof these matters from one who had been a part of what he saw. It wasconsidered a favor to be allowed to examine at short range that medal"for bravery on the field of battle." It was a kind of honor "just toheft it," as somebody said one night. There were visitors upon whom theimpression was strong that General Scott had made the medal with his ownhands.
James Dutton was ever modest in speaking of his single personal exploit.He guessed he didn't know what he was doing at the moment when hetumbled the howitzer into the ravine, from which the boys afterwardfished it out. "You see, things were anyway up on that plateau. Thecopper bullets were flying like hailstones, so it didn't much matterwhere a fellow went--he was sure to get peppered. Of course the captaincouldn't be left up there--we wanted him for morning parades. Then Ihappened to see the little field-piece stranded among the chaparral. Itwas a cursed nice little cannon. It would have been a blighting shame tohave lost it."
"I suppose you didn't leave your heart down there along with thesenoriteers, did you, Jemmy?" inquired a town Lovelace.
"No," said Dutton, always perfectly matter of fact; "I left my leg."
Ah, yes; life was very pleasant to him in those days!
Not only kindnesses, but honors were showered upon him. Parson WibirdHawkins, in the course of an address before the Rivermouth Historicaland Genealogical Society, that winter, paid an eloquent tribute to "theglorious military career of our young townsman"--which was no more thanjustice; for if a man who has had a limb shot off in battle has not hada touch of glory, then war is an imposition. Whenever a distinguishedstranger visited the town, he was not let off without the question, "Areyou aware, sir, that we have among us one of the heroes of the lateMexican war?" And then a stroll about town to the various points ofhistoric interest invariably ended at the unpretending doorstep ofDutton's cottage.
At the celebration of the first Fourth of July following his return fromMexico, James Dutton was pretty nearly, if not quite, the chief featureof the procession, riding in an open barouche immediately behind that ofthe Governor. The boys would have marched him all by himself if it hadbeen possible to form him into a hollow square. From this day JamesDutton, in his faded coat and battered artillery cap, was held anindispensable adjunct to all turnouts of a warlike complexion. Nor washis fame wholly local. Now and then, as time went on, some old comradeof the Army of the Rio Grande, a member perhaps of old Company K, wouldturn up in Rivermouth for no other apparent purpose than to smoke a pipeor so with Button at his headquarters in Nutter's Lane. If he sometimeschanced to furnish the caller with a dollar or two of "the sinews ofwar," it was nobody's business. The days on which these visits fell werered-letter days to James Dutton.
It was a proud moment when he found himself one afternoon sitting, atSchoolmaster Grimshaw's invitation, on the platform in the recitation-room of the Temple Grammar School--sitting on the very platform with thegreen baize-covered table to which he had many a time marched upsideways to take a feruling. Something of the old awe and apprehensionwhich Master Grimshaw used to inspire crept over him. There wereinstants when Dutton would have abjectly held out his hand if he hadbeen told to do it. He had been invited to witness the evolutions of thegraduating class in history and oratory, and the moisture gathered inhis honest blue eyes when a panic-stricken urchin faltered forth--
"We were not many, we who stood Before the iron sleet that day."
Dutton listened to it all with unruffled gravity. There was never a moregentle hero, or one with a slighter sense of humor, than the hero ofChapultepec.
Dutton's lot was now so prosperous as to exclude any disturbing thoughtsconcerning the future. The idea of applying for a pension never enteredhis head until the subject was suggested to him by Postmaster Mugridge,a more worldly man, an office-holder himself, with a carefully peeledeye on Government patronage. Dutton then reflected that perhaps apension would be handy in his old age, when he could not expect to worksteadily at his trade, even if he were able to work at all. He lookedabout him for somebody to manage the affair for him. Lawyer Penhallowundertook the business with alacrity; but the alacrity was all on hisside, for there were thousands of yards of red tape to be unrolled atWashington before anything in that sort could be done. At thatconservative stage of our national progress, it was not possible for aman to obtain a pension simply because he happened to know the brotherof a man who knew another man that had intended to go to the war, anddidn't. Dutton's claims, too, were seriously complicated by the factthat he had lost his discharge papers; so the matter dragged, and wasstill dragging when it ceased to be of any importance to anybody.
Whenever James Dutton glanced into the future, it was with a tranquilmind. He pictured himself, should he not fall out of the ranks, a white-haired, possibly a bald-headed old boy, sitting of summer evenings onthe doorstep of his shop, and telling stories to the children--thechildren and grandchildren of his present associates and friends. Hewould naturally have laid up something by that time; besides, there washis pension. Meanwhile, though he moved in a humble sphere, was not hislot an enviable one? There were long years of pleasant existence to bepassed through before he reached the period of old age. Of course thatwould have its ailments and discomforts, but its compensations, also. Itseemed scarcely predictable that the years to come held for him eithergreat sorrows or great felicities: he would never marry, and though hemight have to grieve over a fallen comrade here and there, his heart wasnot to be wrung by the possible death of wife or child. With the tintsof the present he painted his simple future, and was content.
Sometimes the experiences of the last few years took on the semblance ofa haunting dream; those long marches through a land rich with strangefoliage and fruits, the enchanted Southern nights, the life in camp, theroar of battle, and that one bewildering day on the heights ofChapultepec--it all seemed phantasmagoric. But there was his mutilationto assure him of the reality, and there on Anchor Street, growing grayerand more wrinkled every season, stood the little building where he hadenlisted. To be sure, the shield was gone from the transom, and thespiders had stretched their reticulated barricades across the entrance;but whenever Dutton hobbled by the place, he could almost see SergeantO'Neil leaning in an insidious attitude against the door-sill, andsmoking his short clay pipe as of old. Yet as time elapsed, this figurealso grew indistinct and elusive, like the rest. Possibly--but this isthe merest conjecture, and has bearing only on a later period--possiblyit may have sometimes occurred to James Dutton, in a vague way, thatafter all there had been something ironical and sinister in his goodfortune. The very circumstance that had lifted him from his obscurityhad shut him out from further usefulness in life; his one success haddefeated him; he was stranded, and could do no more. If such areflection ever came to him, no expression of it found a way to hislips.
The weeks turned themselves into months, and the months into years.Perhaps four years had passed by when clouds of a perceptible densitybegan to gather on James Dutton's bright horizon.
The wisest of poets has told us that custom dulls the edge of appetite.One gets used to everything, even to heroes. James Dutton was beginningto lose the bloom of his novelty. Indeed, he had already lost it. Theprocess had been so gradual, so subtile, in its working, that the finalresult came upon him like something that had happened suddenly. But thiswas not the fact. He might have seen it coming, if he had watched. Oneby one his customers had drifted away from him; his shop was out of thebeaten track, and a fashionable boot and shoe establishment, newlysprung up in the business part of the town, had quietly absorbed hispatrons. There was no conscious unkindness in this desertion.Thoughtless neglect, all the more bitter by contrast, had followedthoughtless admiration. Admiration and neglect are apt to hunt incouples. Nearly all the customers left on Dutton's hands had resolvedthemselves into two collateral classes, those who delayed and those whoforgot to pay. That unreached pension, which flitted like an ignisfatuus the instant one got anywhere near it, would have been very handyto have just then. The want of it had come long before old age. Duttonwas only twenty-nine. Yet he somehow seemed old. The indoor confinementexplained his pallor, but not the deepening lines that recently began tospread themselves fan-like at the corners of his eyes.
Callers at Nutter's Lane had now become rare birds. The dwindling of hisvisitors had at first scarcely attracted his notice; it had been sogradual, like the rest. But at last Dutton found himself alone. The oldsolitude of his youth had re-knitted its shell around him. Now that hewas unsustained by the likelihood of some one looking in on him, theevenings, especially the winter evenings, were long to Dutton. Owing toweak eyes, he was unable to read much, and then he was not naturally areader. He was too proud or too shy to seek the companionship which hemight have found at Meeks's drug-store. Moreover, the society there wasnot of a kind that pleased him; it had not pleased him in the old days,and now he saw how narrow and poor it was, having had a glimpse of thebroad world. The moonlight nights, when he could sit at the window, andlook out on the gleaming river and the objects on the farther shore,were bearable. Something seemed always to be going on in the old disusedburying-ground; he was positive that on certain nights uncanny figuresflitted from dark to dark through a broad intervening belt of silverymoonshine. A busy spot after all these years! But when it was pitch-black outside, he had no resources. His work-bench with its polishedconcave leather seat, the scanty furniture, and his father's picture onthe wall, grew hateful to him. At an hour when the social life of thetown was at its beginning, he would extinguish his melancholy tallow-dipand go to bed, lying awake until long after all the rest of the worldslumbered. This lying awake soon became a habit. The slightest soundbroke his sleep--the gnawing of a mouse behind the mopboard, or a changein the wind; and then insomnia seized upon him. He lay there listeningto the summer breeze among the elms, or to the autumn winds that,sweeping up from the sea, teased his ear with muffled accents of wreckedand drowning men.
The pay for the few jobs which came to him at this juncture wasinsufficient to supply many of his simple wants. It was sometimes achoice with him between food and fuel. When he was younger, he used toget all the chips and kindling he wanted from Sherburn's shipyard, threequarters of a mile away. But handicapped as he now was, it wasimpossible for him to compass that distance over the slippery sidewalkor through the drifted road-bed. During the particular winter here inquestion, James Dutton was often cold, and oftener hungry--and nobodysuspected it.
A word in the ear of Parson Wibird Hawkins, or the Hon. Jedd Deane, orany of the scores of kind-hearted townsfolk, would have changed thesituation. But to make known his distress, to appeal for charity, tohold out his hand and be a pauper--that was not in him. From his pointof view, if he could have done that, he would not have been the man torescue his captain on the fiery plateau, and then go back through thathell of musketry to get the mountain howitzer. He was secretly andjustly proud of saving his captain's life and of bringing off that"cursed nice little cannon." He gloried over it many a time to himself,and often of late took the medal of honor from its imitation-moroccocase, and read the inscription by the light of his flickering candle.The embossed silver words seemed to spread a lambent glow over all thesqualid little cabin--seemed almost to set it on fire! More than oncesome irrepressible small boy, prowling at night in the neighborhood anddrawn like a moth by the flame of Dutton's candle, had set his eye to acrack in the door-panel and seen the shoemaker sitting on the edge ofhis bed with the medal in his hand.
Until within a year or eighteen months, Dutton had regularly attendedthe Sunday morning service at the Old Brick Church. One service was allhe could manage, for it was difficult for him to mount the steepstaircase leading to his seat in the gallery. That his attendanceslackened and finally ceased altogether, he tried, in his own mind, toattribute to this difficulty, and not to the fact that his best suit hadbecome so threadbare as to make him ashamed; though the congregation nowseldom glanced up, as it used to do, at the organ-loft where he satseparated from the choir by a low green curtain. Thus he had on hishands the whole unemployed day, with no break in its monotony; and itoften seemed interminable. The Puritan Sabbath as it then existed wasnot a thing to be trifled with. All temporal affairs were sternly setaside; earth came to a standstill. Dutton, however, conceived the planof writing down in a little blank-book the events of his life. The taskwould occupy and divert him, and be no flagrant sin. But there had beenno events in his life until the one great event; so his autobiographyresolved itself into a single line on the first page--
Sept. 13, 1847. Had my leg shot off.
What else was there to record, except a transient gleam of sunshineimmediately after his return home, and his present helplessness andisolation?
It was one morning at the close of a particularly bitter December. Theriver-shore was sheathed in thicker ice than had been known for twentyyears. The cold snap, with its freaks among water-pipes and window-glassand straw-bedded roots in front gardens, was a thing that was to beremembered and commented on for twenty years to come. All naturalphenomena have a curious attraction for persons who live in small townsand villages. The weathercock on the spire and the barometer on the backpiazza are studied as they are not studied by dwellers in cities. Ahabit of keen observation of trivial matters becomes second nature inrural places. The provincial eye grows as sharp as the woodsman's. Thusit happened that somebody passing casually through Nutter's Lane thatmorning noticed--noticed it as a thing of course, since it was so--thatno smoke was coming out of Dutton's chimney. The observer presentlymentioned the fact at the Brick Market up town, and some of thebystanders began wondering if Dutton had overslept himself, or if hewere under the weather. Nobody recollected seeing him lately, and nobodyrecollected not seeing him; a person so seldom in the street as Duttonis not soon missed. Dr. Meeks concluded that he would look in atNutter's Lane on the way home with his marketing. The man who hadremarked the absence of smoke had now a blurred impression that theshutters of Dutton's shop-window had not been taken down. It looked asif things were not quite right with him. Two or three persons were goingin Dr. Meeks's direction, so they accompanied him, and turned intoNutter's Lane with the doctor.
The shop-shutters were still up, and no feather of smoke was curlingfrom the one chimney of Dutton's little house. Dr. Meeks rapped smartlyon the door without bringing a response. After waiting a moment heknocked again, somewhat more heavily, but with like ill success. Then hetried the latch. The door was bolted.
"I think the lad must be sick," said Dr. Meeks, glancing hurriedly overhis shoulder at his companions. "What shall we do?"
"I guess we'd better see if he is," said a man named Philbrick. "Let mecome there," and without further words Philbrick pressed his full weightagainst the pine-wood panels. The rusty fastening gave way, and the doorflew open. Cold as it was without, a colder breath seemed to issue fromthe interior. The door opened directly into the main apartment, whichwas Dutton's shop and sleeping-place in one. It was a lovely morning,and the sunshine, as if it had caught a glitter from the floating pointsof ice on the river, poured in through a rear window and flooded theroom with gold. James Dutton was lying on his pallet in the farthercorner. He was dead. He must have been dead several hours, perhaps twoor three days. The medal lay on his breast, from which his right handhad evidently slipped. The down-like frost on the medal was so thick asto make it impossible to distinguish the words--
"FOR BRAVERY ON THE FIELD OF BATTLE."
THE END.
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