Chapter VII: Hutton of the Isles

Thou art as tall, as sinewy, and as strong,
As earth’s first kings—the Argo’s gallant sailors—
Heroes in history, and gods in song.
_—Halleck._

The Huttons, proprietors by pre-emption right of St. Clara’s town, bay, and isle for more than two hundred years, had settled among the islets of the bay many years previous to the date of that patent by which James I. granted the province of Maryland to George Calvert.

At the commencement of the American Revolution a certain Captain Hugh Hutton, the then representative and head of the family, fired with an enthusiastic passion for liberty, or—fighting! sold a great portion of his patrimony, and purchased, fitted out, and manned a privateer, and sailed against the British flag.

He served gallantly and with various success during the whole period of the war.

At the glorious close of the revolutionary struggle, ruined in fortune and riddled with wounds, Captain Hugh Hutton, the sailor-patriot and martyr, retired to the last foothold of his once kingly estate, to the little island of St. Clara’s, otherwise called Hutton’s Island—there to die in obscurity.

A few days previous to his death he called his only son, Hugh, to his bedside, and enjoined him never to demand—never even to accept compensation from Congress for his services and his losses during the war.

“My fortune, my labor, my life-blood were not sold, but given to the cause of liberty and of my country,” he said, and these were the last words of the sailor-patriot.

Hugh Hutton, the son, and now the sole representative of the family, was at this time about eighteen years old. Having lost his mother at an early age he had been taken by his father as a companion in all his sea voyages.

He had sailed with him in his first privateering expedition against the British ships. At first as a childish and innocent spectator, afterward as a youthful and enthusiastic actor, he had figured in all the sea-fights in which his father’s ships had been engaged during the whole course of the war.

Thus all education, except that exclusively of the sailor and soldier, had been denied him. And thus Hugh Hutton, though tall, strong, handsome, and gallant, like all his race, was yet rude, unschooled, and unpolished.

He was faithful to the dying injunctions of his father. With many claims upon his country’s remembrance and gratitude he set forth none.

Loving the ocean with the passionate enthusiasm of all his father’s nature, he took to it as his natural element.

First he engaged in the humble capacity of mate on board the _Little Agnes_, a small schooner plying between Hutton Town and Baltimore or Alexandria, as the freight or market demanded.

After serving many years in this situation, an unexpected turn in the wheel of fortune gave him the means of purchasing a larger vessel of his own, and of extending the area of his trade and the length of his voyages. This was the death of the old ship-owner and captain with whom he had sailed for many years, and who, dying, left him all his moderate possessions on condition of his marrying his only daughter, then a mere child of fifteen years of age, and constituted him her guardian until the marriage. The heart of the brave young sailor had seldom or never turned on love or marriage—it was not the nature of his free, wild, adventurous race. But when he had buried his old captain in Baltimore, where he died, and taken the command of the little schooner to return home to Hutton Town to find his little ward and wife—then—ah! then all sorts of strange, sweet, solemn, and tender thoughts of beauty, and love, and home, and repose swarmed about his heart.

It was late in the afternoon of a glorious October day that the schooner, with her crew, put into the harbor of Hutton’s Inlet. In striking contrast to the warm-hued, deep-toned, refulgent natural scenery was the cold, white front of a mansion house standing upon a distant hill against the western horizon, and girt around with its old ancestral trees. This was Mount Calm, the seat of General Aaron Garnet.

The little schooner, with its white sail, glided swiftly and smoothly into the inlet, and cast anchor near the hamlet. Leaving the vessel in charge of the mate, Captain Hutton took a boat and went on shore. A crowd of villagers, as usual, thronged the beach, anxious to hear and to tell the news, and hearty greetings and noisy questions met him as he stepped upon the strand, such questions as:

“How is the old captain? How is old Seabright? Why don’t he come ashore?—though there is evil news enough to meet him when he does come! Where is the jolly old dog, then? I guess he’s wanting up at home there?” were some of the storm of words hailed upon him.

“Friends,” replied the young sailor, shaking hands right and left as he pushed on, “our old captain is outward bound to that distant seaport whence no voyager ever returns. Permit me now to go on and break the sad news to his child.”

“Stay! Poor old man, when did he die? What ailed him?” exclaimed two or three of the most persevering, detaining him.

“To-night, friends—to-night at the ‘Neptune and Pan,’ I will tell you all about it. Permit me now to pass on and take his last letter to his daughter,” said the skipper good-humoredly, elbowing and pushing his way through the crowd.

“Stop! What’s to become of the young girl—pretty Agnes Seabright? How did he leave his bit of property?”

“To-night, comrades—to-night, at the ‘Neptune and Pan,’ I will meet you. You shall have a supper, and drink to the memory of the outward-bound while I tell you all about it. I must go now!” impatiently exclaimed the captain, shaking off the pertinacious, and hastening away up the straggling street of the hamlet.

Hugh Hutton, like all his fathers, was far above the usual height of men—indeed, all his characteristics were not only marked, but extravagant; thus he was very tall, broad-shouldered and deep-chested, very muscular and thin, with a very dark complexion, with black hair and eyes, and very high, commanding features. Honest, brave, and frank even to rashness, generous even to extravagance, unselfish to the degree that the worldly-wise would call fatuity; yet he had never known a mother’s care, a sister’s companionship, and his indifference to home joys was as profound as his ignorance of love and of woman. Brought up on a ship’s deck by a rough sailor father, he learned to love the ocean and wild liberty with a profound and passionate enthusiasm.

But now he had a little girl left to him. He must make a home for her, take care of her, and make her happy if he could. This was a very novel duty indeed, and set him very keenly to thinking. The first natural, strange, sweet fancies that had been awakened by the idea of this lovely living legacy had fallen asleep again, and left him to his normal, free, glad, but hard, unloving nature. And now the thought of pretty Agnes Seabright fretted him like a fetter.

He pursued his walk up through the village, up over the hills rising one beyond the other, until he came to the arm of the forest stretching around the base of that tallest distant hill, upon which stood the white-fronted mansion house of Mount Calm. He pursued his walk on through this arm of the forest, ascending the hill until he came to a small cleared space, in which was a little cot inclosed within a narrow garden and nearly hidden with trees. He opened the small gate and passed up the narrow walk between rows of marigolds, crimson, white, and yellow chrysanthemums, scarlet verbena and other bright fall flowers, to the little door at which he rapped.