arrival. I wondered if he would turn up again at the end of another
twenty years, and I wondered how he had paid his travelling expenses to
the land of the magnolia and the persimmon. That mystery was solved a
few days subsequently when a draft (for so reasonable a sum as not to
be worth mentioning to Clara) was presented to me for payment at my
office.
Washington Flagg was gone, but his shadow was to linger for a while
longer on our household. It was difficult to realize that the weight
which had oppressed us had been removed. We were scarcely conscious of
how heavy it had been until it was lifted. I was now and then forced to
make an effort not to expect the colonel to dinner.
A month or two after his disappearance an incident occurred which
brought him back very vividly and in a somewhat sinister shape to our
imaginations. Quite late one night there was a sharp ring at the door.
Mary having gone to bed, I answered the bell. On the doorstep stood a
tall, pale girl, rather shabbily dressed, but with a kind of beauty
about her; it seemed to flash from her eyelashes, which I noticed were
very heavy. The hall light fell full upon this slight figure, standing
there wrapped in an insufficient shawl, against a dense background of
whirling snowflakes. She asked if I could give her Colonel Flagg's
address. On receiving my reply, the girl swiftly descended the steps,
and vanished into the darkness. There was a tantalizing point of
romance and mystery to all this. As I slowly closed the front door I
felt that perhaps I was closing it on a tragedy--one of those piteous,
unwritten tragedies of the great city. I have wondered a thousand times
who that girl was and what became of her.
Before the end of the year another incident--this time with a touch of
comedy--lighted up the past of my kinsman. Among the travelling agents
for the Savonarola Fire Insurance Company was a young man by the name
of Brett, Charles Brett, a new employee. His family had been ruined by
the war, and he had wandered North, as the son of many a Southern
gentleman had been obliged to do, to earn his living. We became
friends, and frequently lunched together when his business brought him
to the city. Brett had been in the Confederate army, and it occurred to
me one day to ask him if he had ever known my cousin the colonel. Brett
was acquainted with a George W. Flagg; had known him somewhat
intimately, in fact; but it was probably not the same man. We compared
notes, and my Flagg was his Flagg.
"But he wasn't a colonel," said Brett. "Why, Flagg wasn't in the war at
all. I don't fancy he heard a gun fired, unless it went off by accident
in some training-camp for recruits. He got himself exempt from service
in the field by working in the government saltworks. A heap of the boys
escaped conscription that way."
In the saltworks! That connected my cousin with the navy rather than
with the army!
I would have liked not to believe Brett's statement, but it was so
circumstantial and precise as not to be doubted. Brett was far from
suspecting how deeply his information had cut me. In spite of my
loyalty, the discovery that my kinsman had not been a full-blown rebel
was vastly humiliating. How that once curiously regarded flower of
chivalry had withered! What about those reckless moonlight raids? What
had become of Prince Rupert, at the head of his plumed cavaliers,
sweeping through the valley of the Shenandoah, and dealing merited
destruction to the boys in blue? In view of Brett's startling
revelation, my kinsman's personal anecdotes of Stonewall Jackson took
on an amusing quality which they had not possessed for us in the
original telling.
I was disappointed that Clara's astonishment was much more moderate
than mine.
"He was TOO brave, Tom, dear. He always seemed to be overdoing it just
a grain, don't you think?"
I didn't think so at the time; I was afraid he was telling the truth.
And now, by one of those contradictions inseparable from weak humanity,
I regretted that he was not. A hero had tumbled from the family
pedestal--a misguided hero, to be sure, but still a hero. My vanity,
which in this case was of a complex kind, had received a shock.
I did not recover from it for nearly three months, when I received a
second shock of a more serious nature. It came in the shape of a
letter, dated at Pensacola, Florida, and written by one Sylvester K.
Matthews, advising me that George Flagg had died of the yellow fever in
that city the previous month. I gathered from the letter that the
writer had been with my cousin through his illness, and was probably an
intimate friend; at all events the details of the funeral had fallen to
the charge of Mr. Matthews, who enclosed the receipted bills with the
remark that he had paid them, but supposed that I would prefer to do
so, leaving it, in a way, at my option.
The news of my cousin's death grieved me more than I should have
imagined beforehand. He had not appreciated my kindness; he had not
added to my happiness while I was endeavoring to secure his; he had
been flagrantly ungrateful, and in one or two minor matters had
deceived me. Yet, after all said and done, he was my cousin, my only
cousin--and he was dead. Let us criticise the living, but spare the
dead.
I put the memoranda back into the envelope; they consisted of a bill
for medical attendance, a board bill, the nurse's account, and an
undertaker's bill, with its pathetic and, to me, happily, unfamiliar
items. For the rest of the day I was unable to fix my attention on my
work, or to compose myself sufficiently to write to Mr. Matthews. I
quitted the office that evening an hour earlier than was my habit.
Whether Clara was deeply affected by what had happened, or whether she
disapproved of my taking upon myself expenses which, under the peculiar
circumstances, might properly be borne by Flagg's intimate friend and
comrade, was something I could not determine. She made no comments. If
she considered that I had already done all that my duty demanded of me
to do for my cousin, she was wise enough not to say so; for she must
have seen that I took a different and unalterable view of it. Clara has
her own way fifty-nine minutes out of the hour, but the sixtieth minute
is mine.
She was plainly not disposed to talk on the subject; but I wanted to
talk with some one on the subject; so, when dinner was through, I put
the Matthews papers into my pocket and went up to my friend Bleeker's,
in Seventeenth Street. Though a little cynical at times, he was a man
whose judgment I thought well of.
After reading the letter and glancing over the memoranda, Bleeker
turned to me and said, "You want to know how it strikes me--is that it?"
"Well--yes."
"The man is dead?"
"Yes."
"And buried?"
"Assuredly."
"And the bills are paid?"
"You see yourself they are receipted."
"Well, then," said Bleeker, "considering all things, I should let well
enough alone."
"You mean you would do nothing in the matter?"
"I should 'let the dead past bury its dead,' as Longfellow says."
Bleeker was always quoting Longfellow.
"But it isn't the dead past, it's the living present that has attended
to the business; and he has sent in his account with all the items. I
can't have this Matthews going about the country telling everybody that
I allowed him to pay my cousin's funeral expenses."
"Then pay them. You have come to me for advice after making up your
mind to follow your own course. That's just the way people do when they
really want to be advised. I've done it myself, Wesley--I've done it
myself."
The result was, I sent Mr. Matthews a check, after which I impulsively
threw those dreadful bills into the office grate. I had no right to do
it, for the vouchers really belonged to Mr. Matthews, and might be
wanted some day; but they had haunted me like so many ghosts until I
destroyed them. I fell asleep that night trying to recollect whether
the items included a head-stone for my cousin's grave. I couldn't for
the life of me remember, and it troubled me not a little. There were
enough nameless graves in the South, without his being added to the
number.
One day, a fortnight later, as Clara and I were finishing dinner, young
Brett called at the house. I had supposed him to be in Omaha. He had,
in effect, just come from there and elsewhere on one of his long
business tours, and had arrived in the city too late in the afternoon
to report himself at the office. He now dropped in merely for a moment,
but we persuaded him to remain and share the dessert with us. I
purposed to keep him until Clara left us to our cigars. I wished to
tell him of my cousin's death, which I did not care to do, while she
was at the table. We were talking of this and that, when Brett looked
up, and said rather abruptly--
"By the way, I saw Flagg on the street the other day in Mobile. He was
looking well."
The bit of melon I had in my mouth refused to be swallowed. I fancy
that my face was a study. A dead silence followed; and then my wife
reached across the table, and pressing my hand, said very gently--
"Wesley, you were not brilliant, but you were good."
All this was longer ago than I care to remember. I heard no more from
Mr. Matthews. Last week, oddly enough, while glancing over a file of
recent Southern newspapers, I came upon the announcement of the death
of George W. Flagg. It was yellow fever this time also. If later on I
receive any bills in connection with that event, I shall let my friend
Bleeker audit them.
"FOR BRAVERY ON THE FIELD OF BATTLE"
I
The recruiting-office at Rivermouth was in a small, unpainted,
weather-stained building on Anchor Street, not far from the
custom-house. The tumble-down shell had long remained tenantless, and
now, with its mouse-colored exterior, easily lent itself to its present
requirements as a little military mouse-trap. In former years it had
been occupied as a thread-and-needle and candy shop by one Dame
Trippew. All such petty shops in the town were always kept by old
women, and these old women were always styled dames. It is to be
lamented that they and their innocent traffic have vanished into the
unknown.
The interior of the building, consisting of one room and an attic
covered by a lean-to roof, had undergone no change beyond the removal
of Dame Trippew's pathetic stock at the time of her bankruptcy. The
narrow counter, 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, and behind the counter rose a series of small wooden drawers,
which now held nothing but a fleeting and inaccurate memory of the
lavender, and pennyroyal, 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 the advent of a customer, still hung from a bit of
curved iron on the inner side of the street-door, and continued to give
out a petulant, spasmodic jingle whenever that door was opened, however
cautiously. If the good soul could have returned to the scene of her
terrestrial commerce, she might have resumed business at the old stand
without making any alterations whatever. Everything remained precisely
as she had left it at the instant of her exit. But a wide gulf
separated Dame Trippew from the present occupant of the premises. Dame
Trippew's slight figure, with its crisp, snowy cap and apron, and
steel-bowed spectacles, had been replaced by the stalwart personage of
a sergeant of artillery in the regular army, between whose overhanging
red mustache and the faint white down that had of late years come to
Dame Trippew's upper lip, it would have been impossible to establish a
parallel. The only things these two might have claimed in common were a
slackness of trade and a liking for the aromatic Virginia leaf, though
Dame Trippew had taken hers in a dainty idealistic powder, and the
sergeant took his in realistic plug through the medium of an aggressive
clay pipe.
In spite of the starry shield, supported by two crossed cannon cut out
of tin and surmounted by the national bird in the same material, which
hung proudly over the transom outside; in spite of the drummer-boy from
the fort, who broke the silence into slivers at intervals throughout
the day; in brief, in spite of his own martial bearing and smart
uniform, the sergeant found trade very slack. At Rivermouth the war
with Mexico was not a popular undertaking. If there were any heroic
blood left in the old town by the sea, it appeared to be in no hurry to
come forward and get itself shed. There were hours in which Sergeant
O'Neil despaired of his country. But by degrees the situation
brightened, recruits began to come in, and finally the town and the
outlying districts--chiefly the outlying 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 the slightest 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 the
few townsfolk who had any intimate acquaintance with the young man.
Intimate acquaintance is perhaps too strong a term; for though Button
was born in the town and had always lived there, he was more or less a
stranger to those who knew him best. Comrades he had, of course, in a
manner: the boys with whom he had formerly gone to the public school,
and two or three maturer persons whose acquaintance he had contracted
later in the way of trade. But with these he could scarcely be said to
be intimate. James Dutton's rather isolated condition was not in
consequence of any morbid or uncouth streak in his mental make-up. He
was of a shy and gentle nature, and his sedentary occupation had simply
let the habit of solitude and unsociability form a shell about him.
Dutton was a shoemaker and cobbler, like his father before him, plying
his craft in the shabby cottage where he was born and had lived ever
since, 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 an ancient fisherman occasionally came to boil lobsters.
In the open lots facing the unhinged gate was an old relinquished
tannery that still flavored the air with decayed hemlock and fir bark,
which lay here and there in dull-red patches, killing the grass. The
undulations of a colonial graveyard broke tamely against the western
base of the house. Head-stones and monuments--if there had ever been
any monuments--had melted away. Only tradition and those slowly
subsiding wave-like ridges of graves revealed the character of the
spot. Within the memory of man nobody had been dropped into that Dead
Sea. The Duttons, father and son, had dwelt here nearly twenty-four
years. They owned the shanty. The old man was now dead, having laid
down his awl and lapstone just a year before the rise of those
international complications which resulted in the appearance of
Sergeant O'Neil in Rivermouth, where he immediately tacked up the
blazoned aegis of the United States over the doorway of Dame Trippew's
little shop.
As has been indicated, the war with Mexico was not looked upon with
favor by the inhabitants of Rivermouth, who clearly perceived its
underlying motive--the extension of slave territory. The abolition
element 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 were
wholly 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 the
other in the questions involved was inconceivable, and the morning he
presented himself at the recruiting-office a strong ripple of surprise
ran over the group of idlers that hung day after day around the door of
the crazy tenement, drawn thither by the drum-taps and a morbid sense
of gunpowder in the air. These idlers were too sharp or too unpatriotic
to enlist 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 by
Marcellus 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 freely
and respectably, as I've wanted to live; but I mean to die like a
gentleman, 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 life
for 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's
men."
What really sent James Dutton to the war? Had he some unformulated and
hitherto unsuspected dream of military glory, or did he have an eye to
supposable gold ingots piled up in the sub-basement of the halls of the
Montezumas? Was it a case of despised love, or was he simply tired of
re-heeling and re-soling the boots of Rivermouth folk; tired to death
of the river that twice a day crept up to lap the strip of sandy beach
at the foot of Nutter's Lane; tired to death of being alone, and poor,
and aimless? His motive is not positively to be known, only to be
guessed at. 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. It was a tidy, comfortable little war, not without picturesque
aspects. Out of its flame and smoke leaped two or three fine names that
dazzled men's eyes awhile; and among the fortunate was a silent young
lieutenant of infantry--a taciturn, but not unamiable young
lieutenant--who was afterward destined to give the name of a great
general into the keeping of history forever. Wrapped up somewhere in
this Mexican war is the material for a brief American epic; but it is
not to be unrolled and recited here.
II
With the departure of Our Country's Gallant Defenders, as they were
loosely denominated by some--the Idiots, as they were compactly
described by others--monotony again settled down upon Rivermouth.
Sergeant O'Neil's heraldic emblems disappeared from Anchor Street, and
the quick rattle of the tenor drum at five o'clock in the morning no
longer disturbed the repose of peace-loving citizens. The tide of
battle rolled afar, and its echoes were not of a quality to startle the
drowsy old seaport. Indeed, it had little at stake. Only four men had
gone from the town proper. One, Captain Kittery, died before reaching
the seat of war; one deserted on the way; one, Lieutenant Bangs, was
sent home invalided; and only James Dutton was left to represent the
land force of his native town. He might as well have died or deserted,
for he was promptly forgotten.
From time to time accounts of battles and bombardments were given in
the columns of the Rivermouth Barnacle, on which occasions the Stars
and Stripes, held in the claws of a spread eagle, decorated the
editorial page--a cut which until then had been used only to celebrate
the bloodless victories of the ballot. The lists of dead, wounded, and
missing were always read with interest or anxiety, as might happen, for
one had friends and country acquaintances, if not fellow-townsmen, with
the army on the Rio Grande. Meanwhile nobody took the trouble to bestow
a thought on James Dutton. He was as remote and shadowy in men's
memories as if he had been killed at Thermopylae or Bunker's Hill. But
one day the name of James Dutton blazed forth in a despatch that
electrified the community. At the storming of Chapultepec, Private
James Dutton, Company K, Rivermouth, had done a very valorous deed. He
had crawled back to a plateau on the heights, from which the American
troops had been driven, and had brought off his captain, who had been
momentarily stunned by the wind of a round-shot. Not content with that,
Private Dutton had returned to the dangerous plateau, and, under a
heavy fire, had secured a small field-piece which was about to fall
into the hands of the enemy. Later in the day this little howitzer did
eminent service. After touching on one or two other minor matters, the
despatch remarked, incidentally, that Private James Dutton had had his
left leg blown off.
The name of James Dutton was instantly on every lip in town. Citizens
who had previously ignored his existence, or really had not been aware
of it, were proud of him. The Hon. Jedd Deane said that he had. long
regarded James Dutton as a young man of great promise, a--er--most
remarkable young person, in short; one of the kind with
much--er--latent ability. Postmaster Mugridge observed, with the strong
approval of those who heard him, that young Dutton was nobody's fool,
though what especial wisdom Dutton had evinced in having his leg blown
off was not clear. Captain Tewksberry, commanding the local militia
company, the Rivermouth Tigers, was convinced that no one who had not
carefully studied Scott's Tactics could have brought away that gun
under the circumstances. "Here, you will observe, was the exposed flank
of the heights; there, behind the chevaux-de-frise, lay the enemy,"
etc., etc. Dutton's former school-fellows began to remember that there
had always been something tough and gritty in Jim Dutton. The event was
one not to be passed over by Parson Wibird Hawkins, who made a most
direct reference to it in his Sunday's sermon--Job xxxix. 25: "He saith
among the trumpets, Ha, ha; and he smelleth the battle afar off, the
thunder of the captains, and the shouting."
After the first burst of local pride and enthusiasm had exhausted
itself over young Dutton's brilliant action, the grim fact connected
with young Dutton's left leg began to occupy the public mind. The
despatch had vaguely hinted at amputation, and had stopped there. If
his leg had been shot away, was it necessary that the rest of him
should be amputated? In the opinion of Schoolmaster Grimshaw, such
treatment seemed almost tautological. However, all was presumably over
by this time. Had poor Dutton died under the operation? Solicitude on
that point was widespread and genuine. Later official intelligence
relieved the stress of anxiety. Private Dutton had undergone the
operation successfully and with great fortitude; he was doing well, and
as soon as it was possible for him to bear transportation he was to be
sent home. He had been complimented in the commanding officer's report
of the action to headquarters, and General Winfield Scott had sent
Private Dutton a silver medal "for bravery on the field of battle." If
the Government had wanted one or two hundred volunteers from
Rivermouth, that week was the week to get them.
Then intervened a long silence touching James Dutton. This meant
feverish nights and weary days in hospital, and finally blissful
convalescence, when the scent of the orange and magnolia blossoms blown
in at the open window seemed to James Dutton a richer recompense than
he deserved for his martyrdom. At last he was in condition to be put on
board a transport for New Orleans. Thence a man-of-war was to convey
him to Rivermouth, where the ship was to be overhauled and have its own
wounds doctored.
When it was announced from the fort that the vessel bearing James
Dutton had been sighted off the coast and would soon be in the Narrows,
the town was thrown into such a glow of excitement as it had not
experienced since the day a breathless and bedraggled man on horseback
had dashed into Rivermouth with the news that the Sons of Liberty in
Boston had pitched the British tea overboard. The hero of
Chapultepec--the only hero Rivermouth had had since the colonial
period--was coming up the Narrows! It is odd that three fourths of
anything should be more estimable than the whole, supposing the whole
to be estimable. When James Dutton had all his limbs he was lightly
esteemed, and here was Rivermouth about to celebrate a fragment of him.