JUST after two o’clock, on a July afternoon, Mr. Putchett mounted several steps of the Sub-Treasury in Wall Street, and gazed inquiringly up and down the street.
To the sentimental observer Mr. Putchett’s action, in taking the position we have indicated, may have seemed to signify that Mr. Putchett was of an aspiring disposition, and that in ascending the steps he exemplified his desire to get above the curbstone whose name was used as a qualifying adjective whenever Mr. Putchett was mentioned as a broker. Those persons, however, who enjoyed the honor of Mr. Putchett’s acquaintance immediately understood that the operator in question was in funds that day, and that he had taken the position from which he could most easily announce his moneyed condition to all who might desire assistance from him.
It was rather late in the day for business, and certain persons who had until that hour been unsuccessful in obtaining the accommodations desired were not at all particular whether their demands were satisfied in a handsome office, or under the only roof that can be enjoyed free of rent.
There came to Mr. Putchett oddly-clothed members of his own profession, and offered for sale securities whose numbers Mr. Putchett compared with those on a list of bonds stolen; men who deposited with him small articles of personal property—principally jewelry—as collaterals on small loans at short time and usurious rates; men who stood before him on the sidewalk, caught his eye, summoned him by a slight motion of the head, and disappeared around the corner, whither Mr. Putchett followed them only to promptly transact business and hurry back to his business-stand.
In fact, Mr. Putchett was very busy, and as in his case business invariably indicated profit, it was not wonderful that his rather unattractive face lightened and expressed its owner’s satisfaction at the amount of business he was doing. Suddenly, however, there attacked Mr. Putchett the fate which, in its peculiarity of visiting people in their happiest hours, has been bemoaned by poets of genuine and doubtful inspiration, from the days of the sweet singer of Israel unto those of that sweet singer of Erin, whose recital of experience with young gazelles illustrates the remorselessness of the fate alluded to.
Plainly speaking, Mr. Putchett went suddenly under a cloud, for during one of his dashes around the corner after a man who had signaled him, and at the same time commenced to remove a ring from his finger, a small, dirty boy handed Mr. Putchett a soiled card, on which was penciled:
“Bayle is after you, about that diamond.”
Despite the fact that Mr. Putchett had not been shaved for some days, and had apparently neglected the duty of facial ablution for quite as long a time, he turned pale and looked quickly behind him and across the street; then muttering “Just my luck!” and a few other words more desponding than polite in nature, he hurried to the Post-Office, where he penciled and dispatched a few postal-cards, signed in initials only, announcing an unexpected and temporary absence. Then, still looking carefully and often at the faces in sight, he entered a newspaper office and consulted a railway directory. He seemed in doubt, as he rapidly turned the leaves; and when he reached the timetable of a certain road running near and parallel to the seaside, the change in his countenance indicated that he had learned the whereabouts of a city of refuge.
An hour later Mr. Putchett, having to bid no family good-by, to care for no securities save those stowed away in his capacious pockets, and freed from the annoyance of baggage by reason of the fact that he had on his back the only outer garments that he owned, was rapidly leaving New York on a train, which he had carefully assured himself did not carry the dreaded Bayle.
Once fairly started, Mr. Putchett in some measure recovered his spirits. He introduced himself to a brakeman by means of a cigar, and questioned him until he satisfied himself that the place to which he had purchased a ticket was indeed unknown to the world, being far from the city, several miles from the railroad, and on a beach where boats could not safely land. He also learned that it was not a fashionable Summer resort, and that a few farmhouses (whose occupants took Summer boarders) and an unsuccessful hotel were the only buildings in the place.
Arrived at his destination, Mr. Putchett registered at the hotel and paid the week’s board which the landlord, after a critical survey of his new patron, demanded in advance.
Then the exiled operator tilted a chair in the barroom, lit an execrable cigar, and, instead of expressing sentiments of gratitude appropriate to the occasion, gave way to profane condemnations of the bad fortune which had compelled him to abandon his business.
He hungrily examined the faces of the few fishermen of the neighboring bay who came in to drink and smoke, but no one of them seemed likely to need money—certainly no one of them seemed to have acceptable collaterals about his person or clothing. On the contrary, these men, while each one threw Mr. Putchett a stare of greater or less magnitude, let the financier alone so completely that he was conscious of a severe wound in his self-esteem.
It was a strange experience, and at first it angered him so that he strode up to the bar, ordered a glass of best brandy, and defiantly drank alone; but neither the strength of the liquor nor the intensity of his anger prevented him from soon feeling decidedly lonely.
At the cheap hotel at which he lodged when in New York there was no one who loved him or even feared him, but there were a few men of his own kind who had, for purposes of mutual recreation, tabooed business transactions with each other, and among these he found a grim sort of enjoyment—of companionship, at least. Here, however, he was so utterly alone as to be almost frightened, and the murmuring and moaning of the surf on the beach near the hotel added to his loneliness a sense of terror.
Almost overcome by dismal forebodings, Mr. Putchett hurried out of the hotel and toward the beach. Once upon the sands, he felt better; the few people who were there were strangers, of course, but they were women and children; and if the expression of those who noticed him was wondering, it was inoffensive—at times even pitying, and Mr. Putchett was in a humor to gratefully accept even pity.
Soon the sun fell, and the people straggled toward their respective boarding-houses, and Mr. Putchett, to fight off loneliness as long as possible, rose from the bench on which he had been sitting and followed the party up the beach.
He had supposed himself the last person that left the beach, but in a moment or two he heard a childish voice shouting:
“Mister, mister! I guess you’ve lost something!”
Mr. Putchett turned quickly, and saw a little girl, six or seven years of age, running toward him. In one hand she held a small pail and wooden shovel, and in the other something bright, which was too large for her little hand to cover.
She reached the broker’s side, turned up a bright, healthy face, opened her hand and displayed a watch, and said:
“It was right there on the bench where you were sitting. I couldn’t think what it was, it shone so.”
MR. PUTCHETT’S NEW FRIEND.
Mr. Putchett at first looked suspiciously at the child, for he had at one period of his life labored industriously in the business of dropping bogus pocketbooks and watches, and obtaining rewards from persons claiming to be their owners.
Examining the watch which the child handed him, however, he recognized it as one upon which he had lent twenty dollars earlier in the day.
First prudently replacing the watch in the pocket of his pantaloons, so as to avoid any complication while settling with the finder, he handed the child a quarter.
“Oh, no, thank you,” said she, hastily; “mamma gives me money whenever I need it.”
The experienced operator immediately placed the fractional currency where it might not tempt the child to change her mind. Then he studied her face with considerable curiosity, and asked:
“Do you live here?”
“Oh, no,” she replied; “we’re only spending the Summer here. We live in New York.”
Mr. Putchett opened his eyes, whistled, and remarked:
“It’s very funny.”
“Why, I don’t think so,” said the child, very innocently. “Lots of people that board here come from New York. Don’t you want to see my well? I dug the deepest well of anybody to-day. Just come and see—it’s only a few steps from here.”
Mechanically, as one struggling with a problem above his comprehension, the financier followed the child, and gazed into a hole, perhaps a foot and a half deep, on the beach.
“That’s my well,” said she, “and that one next it is Frank’s. Nellie’s is way up there. I guess hers would have been the biggest, but a wave came up and spoiled it.”
Mr. Putchett looked from the well into the face of its little digger, and was suddenly conscious of an insane desire to drink some of the water. He took the child’s pail, dipped some water, and was carrying it to his lips, when the child spoiled what was probably the first sentimental feeling of Mr. Putchett’s life by hastily exclaiming:
“You mustn’t drink that—it’s salty!”
The sentimentalist sorrowfully put the bitter draught away, and the child rattled on:
“If you’re down here to-morrow, I’ll show you where we find scallop-shells; maybe you can find some with pink and yellow spots on them. I’ve got some. If you don’t find any, I’ll give you one.”
“Thank you,” said her companion.
Just then some one shouted “Alice!” and the child exclaiming, “Mamma’s calling me; good-by,” hurried away, while the broker walked slowly toward the hotel with an expression of countenance which would have hidden him from his oldest acquaintance.
Mr. Putchett spent the evening on the piazza instead of in the barroom, and he neither smoked nor drank. Before retiring he contracted with the colored cook to shave him in the morning, and to black his boots; and he visited the single store of the neighborhood and purchased a shirt, some collars, and a cravat.
When in the morning he was duly shaved, dressed and brushed, he critically surveyed himself in the glass, and seemed quite dissatisfied. He moved from the glass, spread a newspaper on the table, and put into it the contents of his capacious pockets. A second examination before the glass seemed more satisfactory in result, thus indicating that to the eye of Mr. Putchett his well-stuffed pockets had been unsightly in effect.
The paper and its contents he gave the landlord to deposit in the hotel safe; then he ate a hurried, scanty breakfast, and again sought the bench on the beach.
No one was in sight, for it was scarcely breakfast-time at the boarding-houses; so he looked for little Alice’s well, and mourned to find that the tide had not even left any sign of its location.
Then he seated himself on the bench again, contemplating his boots, looked up the road, stared out to sea, and then looked up the road again, tried to decipher some of the names carved on the bench, walked backward and forward, looking up the road at each turn he made, and in every way indicated the unpleasant effect of hope deferred.
Finally, however, after two hours of fruitless search, Mr. Putchett’s eyes were rewarded by the sight of little Alice approaching the beach with a bathing-party. He at first hurried forward to meet her, but he was restrained by a sentiment found alike in curbstone-brokers and in charming young ladies—a feeling that it is not well to give one’s self away without first being sufficiently solicited to do so.
He noticed, with a mingled pleasure and uneasiness, that little Alice did not at first recognize him, so greatly had his toilet altered his general appearance.
Even after he made himself known, he was compelled to submit to further delay, for the party had come to the beach to bathe, and little Alice must bathe, too.
She emerged from a bathing-house in a garb very odd to the eyes of Mr. Putchett, but one which did not at all change that gentleman’s opinion of the wearer. She ran into the water, was thrown down by the surf, she was swallowed by some big waves and dived through others, and all the while the veteran operator watched her with a solicitude, which, despite his anxiety for her safety, gave him a sensation as delightful as it was strange.
The bath ended, Alice rejoined Mr. Putchett and conducted him to the spot where the wonderful shells with pink and yellow spots were found. The new shell-seeker was disgusted when the child shouted “Come along!” to several other children, and was correspondingly delighted when they said, in substance, that shells were not so attractive as once they were.
Mr. Putchett’s researches in conchology were not particularly successful, for while he manfully moved about in the uncomfortable and ungraceful position peculiar to shell-seekers, he looked rather at the healthy, honest, eager little face near him than at the beach itself.
Suddenly, however, Mr. Putchett’s opinion of shells underwent a radical change, for the child, straightening herself and taking something from her pocket, exclaimed:
“Oh, dear, somebody’s picked up all the pretty ones. I thought, may be, there mightn’t be any here, so I brought you one; just see what pretty pink and yellow spots there are on it.”
Mr. Putchett looked, and there came into his face the first flush of color that had been there—except in anger—for years. He had occasionally received presents from business acquaintances, but he had correctly looked at them as having been forwarded as investments, so they awakened feelings of suspicion rather than of pleasure.
But at little Alice’s shell he looked long and earnestly, and when he put it into his pocket he looked for two or three moments far away, and yet at nothing in particular.
“Do you have a nice boarding-house?” asked Alice, as they sauntered along the beach, stopping occasionally to pick up pebbles and to dig wells.
“Not very,” said Mr. Putchett, the sanded barroom and his own rather dismal chamber coming to his mind.
“You ought to board where we do,” said Alice, enthusiastically. “We have heaps of fun. Have you got a barn?”
Mr. Putchett confessed that he did not know.
“Oh, we’ve got a splendid one!” exclaimed the child. “There’s stalls, and a granary, and a carriage-house and two lofts in it. We put out hay to the horses, and they eat it right out of our hands—aren’t afraid a bit. Then we get into the granary, and bury ourselves all up in the oats, so only our heads stick out. The lofts are just lovely: one’s full of hay and the other’s full of wheat, and we chew the wheat, and make gum of it. The hay-stalks are real nice and sweet to chew, too. They only cut the hay last week, and we all rode in on the wagon—one, two, three, four—seven of us. Then we’ve got two croquet sets, and the boys make us whistles and squalks.”
“Squalks?” interrogated the broker.
“Yes; they’re split quills, and you blow in them. They don’t make very pretty music, but it’s ever so funny. We’ve got two big swings and a hammock, too.”
“Is the house very full?” asked Mr. Putchett.
“Not so very,” replied the child. “If you come there to board, I’ll make Frank teach you how to make whistles.”
That afternoon Mr. Putchett took the train for New York, from which city he returned the next morning with quite a well-filled trunk. It was afterward stated by a person who had closely observed the capitalist’s movements during his trip, that he had gone into a first-class clothier’s and demanded suits of the best material and latest cut, regardless of cost, and that he had pursued the same singular coarse at a gent’s furnishing store, and a fashionable jeweler’s.
Certain it is that on the morning of Mr. Putchett’s return a gentleman very well dressed, though seemingly ill at ease in his clothing, called at Mrs. Brown’s boarding-house, and engaged a room, and that the younger ladies pronounced him very stylish and the older ones thought him very odd. But as he never intruded, spoke only when spoken to, and devoted himself earnestly and entirely to the task of amusing the children, the boarders all admitted that he was very good-hearted.
Among Alice’s numerous confidences, during her second stroll with Mr. Putchett, was information as to the date of her seventh birthday, now very near at hand. When the day arrived, her adorer arose unusually early, and spent an impatient hour or two awaiting Alice’s appearance. As she bade him good-morning, he threw about her neck a chain, to which was attached an exquisite little watch; then, while the delighted child was astonishing her parents and the other boarders, Mr. Putchett betook himself to the barn in a state of abject sheepishness. He did not appear again until summoned by the breakfast-bell, and even then he sat with a very red face, and with eyes directed at his plate only. The child’s mother remonstrated against so much money being squandered on a child, and attempted to return the watch, but he seemed so distressed at the idea that the lady dropped the subject.
For a fortnight, Mr. Putchett remained at the boarding-house, and grew daily in the estimation of every one. From being thought queer and strange, he gradually gained the reputation of being the best-hearted, most guileless, most considerate man alive. He was the faithful squire of all the ladies, both young and old, and was adored by all the children. His conversational powers—except on matters of business—were not great, but his very ignorance on all general topics, and the humility born of that ignorance, gave to his manners a deference which was more gratifying to most ladies than brilliant loquacity would have been. He even helped little Alice to study a Sunday-school lesson, and the experience was so entirely new to him, that he became more deeply interested than the little learner herself. He went to church on Sunday, and was probably the most attentive listener the rather prosy old pastor had.
Of course he bathed—everybody did. A stout rope was stretched from a post on the shore to a buoy in deep water where it was anchored, and back and forth on this rope capered every day twenty or thirty hideously dressed but very happy people, among whom might always be seen Mr. Putchett with a child on his shoulder.
One day the waves seemed to viciously break near the shore, and the bathers all followed the rope out to where there were swells instead of breakers. Mr. Putchett was there, of course, with little Alice. He seemed perfectly enamored of the water, and delighted in venturing as far to the sea as the rope would allow, and there ride on the swells, and go through all other ridiculously happy antics peculiar to ocean-lovers who cannot swim.
Suddenly Mr. Putchett’s hand seemed to receive a shock, and he felt himself sinking lower than usual, while above the noise of the surf and the confusion of voices he heard some one roar:
“The rope has broken—scramble ashore!”
HE THREW UP HIS HAND AS A SIGNAL THAT THE LINE SHOULD BE DRAWN IN.
The startled man pulled frantically at the piece of rope in his hand, but found to his horror that it offered no assistance; it was evident that the break was between him and the shore. He kicked and paddled rapidly, but seemed to make no headway, and while Alice, realizing the danger, commenced to cry piteously, Mr. Putchett plainly saw on the shore the child’s mother in an apparent frenzy of excitement and terror.
The few men present—mostly boarding-house keepers and also ex-sailors and fishermen—hastened with a piece of the broken rope to drag down a fishing-boat which lay on the sand beyond reach of the tide. Meanwhile a boy found a fishing-line, to the end of which a stone was fastened and thrown toward the imperiled couple.
Mr. Putchett snatched at the line and caught it, and in an instant half a dozen women pulled upon it, only to have it break almost inside Mr. Putchett’s hands. Again it was thrown, and again the frightened broker caught it. This time he wound it about Alice’s arm, put the end into her hand, kissed her forehead, said, “Good-by, little angel, God bless you,” and threw up his hand as a signal that the line should be drawn in. In less than a minute little Alice was in her mother’s arms, but when the line was ready to be thrown again, Mr. Putchett was not visible.
By this time the boat was at the water’s edge, and four men—two of whom were familiar with rowing—sat at the oars, while two of the old fishermen stood by to launch the boat at the proper instant. Suddenly they shot it into the water, but the clumsy dip of an oar turned it broadside to the wave, and in an instant it was thrown, waterlogged, upon the beach. Several precious moments were spent in righting the boat and bailing out the water, after which the boat was safely launched, the fishermen sprang to the oars, and in a moment or two were abreast the buoy.
Mr. Putchett was not to be seen—even had he reached the buoy it could not have supported him, for it was but a small stick of wood. One of the boarders—he who had swamped the boat—dived several times, and finally there came to the surface a confused mass of humanity which separated into the forms of the diver and the broker.
A few strokes of the oars beached the boat, and old “Captain” Redding, who had spent his Winters at a government life-saving station, picked up Mr. Putchett, carried him up to the dry sand, laid him face downward, raised his head a little, and shouted:
“Somebody stand between him and the sun so’s to shade his head! Slap his hands, one man to each hand. Scrape up some of that hot, dry sand, and pile it on his feet and legs. Everybody else stand off and give him air.”
The captain’s orders were promptly obeyed, and there the women and children, some of them weeping, and all of them pale and silent, stood in a group in front of the bathing-house and looked up.
“Somebody run to the hotel for brandy,” shouted the captain.
“Here’s brandy,” said a strange voice, “and I’ve got a hundred dollars for you if you bring him to life.”
Every one looked at the speaker, and seemed rather to dislike what they saw. He was a smart-looking man, but his face seemed very cold and forbidding; he stood apart, with arms folded, and seemed regardless of the looks fastened upon him. Finally Mrs. Blough, one of the most successful and irrepressible gossips in the neighborhood, approached him and asked him if he was a relative of Mr. Putchett’s.
“No, ma’am,” replied the man, with unmoved countenance. “I’m an officer with a warrant for his arrest, on suspicion of receiving stolen goods. I’ve searched his traps at the hotel and boarding-house this morning, but can’t find what I’m looking for. It’s been traced to him, though—has he shown any of you ladies a large diamond?”
“No,” said Mrs. Blough, quite tartly, “and none of us would have believed it of him, either.”
“I suppose not,” said the officer, his face softening a little. “I’ve seen plenty of such cases before, though. Besides, it isn’t my first call on Putchett—not by several.”
Mrs. Blough walked indignantly away, but, true to her nature, she quickly repeated her news to her neighbors.
“He’s coming to!” shouted the captain, turning Mr. Putchett on his back and attempting to provoke respiration. The officer was by his side in a moment. Mr. Putchett’s eyes had closed naturally, the captain said, and his lips had moved. Suddenly the stranger laid a hand on the collar of the insensible man, and disclosed a cord about his neck.
“Captain,” said the officer, in a voice very low, but hurried and trembling with excitement, “Putchett’s had a very narrow escape, and I hate to trouble him, but I must do my duty. There’s been a five thousand dollar diamond traced to him. He advanced money on it, knowing it was stolen. I’ve searched his property and can’t find it, but I’ll bet a thousand it’s on that string around his neck—that’s Putchett all over. Now, you let me take it, and I’ll let him alone; nobody else need know what’s happened. He seems to have behaved himself here, judging by the good opinion folks have of him, and he deserves to have a chance which he won’t get if I take him to jail.”
The women had comprehended, from the look of the stranger and the captain, that something unusual was going on, and they had crowded nearer and nearer, until they heard the officer’s last words.
“You’re a dreadful, hateful man!” exclaimed little Alice.
The officer winced.
“Hush, daughter,” said Alice’s mother; then she said: “Let him take it, captain; it’s too awful to think of a man’s going right to prison from the gates of death.”
The officer did not wait for further permission, but hastily opened the bathing-dress of the still insensible figure.
Suddenly the officer started back with an oath, and the people saw, fastened to a string and lying over Mr. Putchett’s heart, a small scallop-shell, variegated with pink and yellow spots.
“It’s one I gave him when I first came here, because he couldn’t find any,” sobbed little Alice.
The officer, seeming suddenly to imagine that the gem might be secreted in the hollow of the shell, snatched at it and turned it over. Mr. Putchett’s arm suddenly moved; his hand grasped the shell and carried it toward his lips; his eyes opened for a moment and fell upon the officer, at the sight of whom Mr. Putchett shivered and closed his eyes again.
“That chill’s a bad sign,” muttered the captain.
Mr. Putchett’s eyes opened once more, and sought little Alice; his face broke into a faint smile, and she stooped and kissed him. The smile on his face grew brighter for an instant, then he closed his eyes and quietly carried the case up to a Court of Final Appeals, before which the officer showed no desire to give evidence.
Mr. Putchett was buried the next day, and most of the people in the neighborhood were invited to the funeral. The story went rapidly about the neighborhood, and in consequence there were present at the funeral a number of uninvited persons: among these were the cook, barkeeper and hostler of the hotel, who stood uncomfortably a little way from the house until the procession started, when they followed at a respectful distance in the rear.
When the grave was reached, those who dug it—who were also of those who carried the bier—were surprised to find the bottom of the coffin-box strewn and hidden with wild flowers and scraps of evergreen.
The service of the Church of England was read, and as the words, “Ashes to ashes; dust to dust,” were repeated, a bouquet of wild flowers was tossed over the heads of the mourners and into the grave. Mrs. Blough, though deeply affected by the services, looked quickly back to see who was the giver, and saw the officer (who had not been seen before that day) with such an embarrassed countenance as to leave no room for doubt. He left before daylight next morning, to catch a very early train; but persons passing the old graveyard that day beheld on Putchett’s grave a handsome bush of white roses, which bush old Mrs. Gale, living near the hotel, declared was a darling pot-plant which had been purchased of her on the previous evening by an ill-favored man who declared he must have it, no matter how much he paid for it.
