Cr.June 22, 1848. By money stolen by James McMurtagh, to be accounted for$16,897.00
Then the old clerk drew a line across the account, returned the ledger to its place in the safe, and locked the heavy iron doors. The canvas bag was in his hands; the chest he had put back, empty.
The customer of St. Clair's firm was paid off, the partnership was dissolved without scandal, and the St. Clairs went to live in New Orleans. Jamie occupied one room in the attic of the old house in Salem Street. He wrote no more letters to Mercedes: he did not feel that he was worthy now to write to her. And a year or two after her arrival in New Orleans her letters ceased. She had thanked Jamie sorrowfully when he had paid over the money in New York, and kissed him with her pale lips (though his face was still paler), and upon the memory of this he had lived. But he had fancied her lips wore a new line; their curves had gone; and her eyes had certainly new depth.
When Mercedes ceased to write, Jamie did not complain. He knew well what the trouble was, and that her husband wished her to write to him for more money. But he could do nomore for her. And after this his hope was tired, and Jamie hardly had the wish to write. The only link between them now was his prayer at night. The dry old Scotchman had come to prayer at last, for her if not for himself.
And the office lost their interest in him. Only the Bowdoins were true. For the "foreign mail" no longer came; and Jamie was no longer seen writing private letters on his ledger page. His dress grew so shabby that old Mr. Bowdoin had to speak to him about it. He had no long absences at lunch-time, but took a sandwich on the street. In fact, Jamie had grown to be a miser.
Great things were happening in those days, but Jamie took no heed of them. Human liberty was in the air; love of man and love of law were at odds, and clashed with each other in the streets; Jamie took no heed of them. They jostled on the pavement, but Jamie walked to his task in the morning, and back at night, between them; seeing mankind but as trees, walking; bowed down with the love of one. And he who had never before thought of self could think now only of his owndishonor. As a punishment, he tried not to think of her, except only at night, when his prayers permitted it; but he thought of her always. His crime made him ashamed to write to her; his single-heartedness made him avoid all other men.
Only one man, in all those years, did Jamie seem willing to talk to, at the office, and that man was Harleston Bowdoin. Had he not loved her? Jamie never spoke of her; but Harleston had a happy impulse, and would talk to the old man about Mercedes. Away from business, Jamie would walk in all the places where her feet had trod. He would go to King's Chapel Sundays; and he looked up John Hughson again, and would sit with him, wondering. John had married a stout wife, and had sturdy children. Hughson petted the old man, and gave him pipes of tobacco; for McMurtagh was too poor to buy tobacco, those days. The children on Salem Street feared him, as a miser; which was hard, for Jamie was very fond of little children.
How does a man live whose heart rules his soul, and is broken; whose conscience rules his head, and is dishonored? For men soheavy laden, heaven was, and has been lost. But Jamie never thought his soul immortal until his love for Mercedes came into it; perhaps not consciously now. Such thoughts would have seemed to him childish. How, then, did Jamie live? For no man can live quite without hope, as we believe,—hope of some event, some end of suffering, at least of some worthier act.
With Jamie it was the hope of restitution. He wished to leave behind him, as the score of his life, that he had been true to his employer and had loved his little ward. And if the time could ever come when he could do more for her, it would not be until his theft was made good, and his hands were free, as his heart, to serve her again. For the one thing that Jamie stood for was integrity; that was all the little story of his life.
His salary was eighteen hundred dollars; at the end of the first year after his theft he had spent a hundred and fifty. Then he asked for two days' leave of absence, and went to New York, where he exchanged sixteen hundred and forty dollars for Spanish gold pieces. A less old-fashioned man would have investedthe money at six per cent, but Jamie could not forego the satisfaction of restoring the actual gold. Coming back, he opened the old chest, now empty, one day, after hours, and put the pieces in the box. The naked gold made a shining roll in its blackness, just reaching across the lower end; and poor Jamie felt the first thrill of—not happiness, but something that was not sorrow nor shame. And then he pulled down the old ledger, and made the first entry on the Dr. side: "Restored by James McMurtagh, June 9, 1849, $1640." The other ten dollars had gone for his journey to New York.
And that night, as he went home, he looked about him. He bowed (in his queer way) to one or two acquaintances who passed him, unconscious that he had been cutting them for a year. Before supper he went in to see John Hughson, carrying his pipe, and, without waiting to be offered it, asked to borrow a pinch of tobacco against the morrow, when he should buy some. The good Hughson was delighted, pressed a slab of "plug" upon him, and begged him to stay and have something liquid with his pipe. But Jamie would not; he was anxious to be alone.
His little bedroom gave upon the roof of the adjoining house in the rear; and here his neighbor kept a few red geraniums in boxes, and it was Jamie's privilege to smoke his pipe among them. So this evening, after a hasty meal, he hurried up there. Beyond the roofs of the higher houses was a radiant golden sky, and in it the point of a crescent moon, and even as Jamie was lighting his pipe one star came.
Old Jamie breathed hard and sighed, and the sigh meant rest. He took a pleasure in the tobacco, in the look of the sky again.
And with this throb of returning life, in one great pulsation, his love rushed back to his heart, and he thought of Mercedes.... He sat up nearly all the night, and with the first light of dawn he wrote to her.
But Jamie got no answer to his letter, and he wrote again. Again he got no answer; and he wrote a third time, this time by registered mail; so that he got back a card, with her name signed to the receipt.
Jamie's manner, unconsciously to himself, had changed since that first row of gold coins had gone into the black tin box; the tellers and the bookkeepers had observed it, and they began to watch his mail again. What was their glee to see among Jamie's papers, one morning, a letter in the familiar feminine hand! "Jamie's foreign mail has come!" the word went round. "I thought it must be on its way," said the second bookkeeper; "haven't you noticed his looks lately?" "The letter is postmarked New Orleans," said the messenger boy, turning it over. But it was felt this went beyond friendly sympathy.
"Mr. O'Neill," said Mr. Stanchion sternly, "if I see you again interfering with McMurtagh's mail, you may go. What business is that of ours?"
Poor O'Neill hung his head, abashed. But all eyes were on Jamie as he opened his desk. He put the letter in his pocket. The clerks looked at one another. The suspense became unendurable. When old Mr. Bowdoin came in, the cashier told him what had happened. "Jamie's foreign mail has come again. But he will never read it here, sir, and we can'tsend him out till lunch-time: the chief bookkeeper"—
The old gentleman's eyes twinkled. "McMurtagh!" he cried (Mr. Bowdoin had always called Jamie so since he came into the bank), "will you kindly step down to my counting-room? I will meet you there in a few minutes, and there are some accounts I want you to straighten out for me."
As Jamie hurried down to the Long Wharf, he pressed his coat tight against him. The letter lay in his pocket, and he felt it warm against his breast.
Neither Mr. James Bowdoin nor Harley was in the little room (it was just as Jamie remembered it when he first had entered it, no pretense of business was made there now), and he tore the letter open. Thus it ran:—
New Orleans,August 30, 1849.
My dear, dear Jamie,—If I have not written to you it was only because I did not want to bring more trouble on you. But things have gone from bad to worse with us. I feel that I should be almost too unhappy to live, only that David is with me now. [Jamiesobbed a little at this.] I wanted never to ask you for money again. But we are very, very poor. I will not give it to him. But if you could send me a little money, a hundred dollars would last me a long time.
Your lovingM. St. Clair.
Jamie laid his head upon the old desk, and his tears fell on the letter. What could he do? His conscience told him, nothing. All his earnings belonged to the employers he had robbed.
After a minute he took a sheet of paper and tried to write the answer, no. And Mr. Bowdoin came in, and caught him crying. The old gentleman knocked over a coal-scuttle, and turned to pick it up. By the time he had done so Jamie had rubbed the tears from his eyes, and stood there like a soldier at "Attention."
"Jamie," said Mr. Bowdoin, "I should like to make a little present to your ward, to Mercedes. Could you send it for me? I hope she is well?" And before Jamie could answer Mr. Bowdoin had written out a check for a hundred dollars. "Give her my love whenyou write. I must go to a directors meeting." And he scurried away hurriedly.
Jamie sat down again and wrote his letter, and told her that the money was from Mr. Bowdoin. "But, dear heart," it ended, "even if I cannot help you, always write." And, going home that night, Jamie began to fancy that some omniscient power had put it into the old gentleman's heart just then to do this thing.
Old Mr. Bowdoin, one morning, some time after this, stood at his window before breakfast, drumming on the pane. The gesture has commonly been understood to indicate discontent with one's surroundings. Mrs. Bowdoin had not yet come down to breakfast. Outside, her worthy spouse could see the very tree upon which cousin Wendell Phillips had not been hanged; and his mouth relaxed as he saw his grandson Harley coming across the Common, and heard the portentous creaking that attended Mrs. Bowdoin's progress down the stairs,—the butler supporting her arm, and her maid behind attending her with shawl andsmelling-salts. The old lady was in a rude state of health, but had not walked a step alone for several years. As she entered, Harley behind her, old Mr. Bowdoin gravely and ostentatiously pulled out a silver dollar and put it into the hand of the surprised young man.
"Pass it to the account," said he.
Harley took the coin, and, detecting a wink, checked his expression of surprise.
"It all goes into the fund, my dear, to be given to your favorite charity the first time you are down in time for breakfast. It amounts to several thousand dollars already."
Mrs. Bowdoin snorted, but, with a too visible effort, only asked Harley whether he would take coffee or tea.
"With accumulations, my dear,—with accumulations. But you should not address me from your carriage in that yellow shawl, when I am talking to a stranger on the Common. At least, I thought it was Tom Pinckney, of the Providence Bank, but it turned out to be a stranger. He took me for a bunco-steerer."
"James!"
"He did indeed, and you for my confederate,"chuckled the old gentleman. "'Mr. Pinckney, of Providence, I believe?' said I. 'No, you don't,' said he; and he put his finger on his nose, like that."
"James!" said Mrs. Bowdoin.
"Ididn't mind—don't know when I've been so flattered—must look like a pretty sharp old boy, after all, though I have been married to you for fifty years."
"James, it's hardly forty."
"Well, I thought it was fifty. The last time I did meet Tom Pinckney, he asked if I'd married again. I said you'd give me no chance. 'Better take it when you can,' said he. 'That will I, Tom,' says I. 'I've got one in my mind.'"
"Really, grandpa," remonstrated young Harley.
"Don't you talk, young man. Didn't I hear of you at another Abolition meeting yesterday? And women spoke, too,—short-haired women and long-haired men. Why can't you leave them both where a wise Providence placed them? Destroy the only free republic the world has ever known for a parcel of well-fed niggers that'll relapse into Voodoo barbarism the moment they're freed!"
"James, the country knows that the best sentiment of Boston is with us."
"The country doesn't know Boston, then. And as for that crack-brained demagogue cousin of yours, he calls the Constitution a compact with hell! I hope I'll live to see him hanged some day."
"Wendell Phillips is a martyr indeed."
"Martyr! Humbug! He couldn't get any clients, so he took up a cause. Why, they say at the club that he"—
"They said at the meeting last night, sir," interrupted Harley, "that they'd march up to the club and make you fellows fly the American flag."
"It's Phillips wants to pull it down," said the old gentleman.
Mrs. Bowdoin rattled the tea things.
"Don't mind your grandma, Harley, if she is out of temper. She's got a headache this morning. She went to bed with the hot-water bottle under her pillow and the brandy at her feet, and feels a little mixed."
"James! I never took a brandy bottle upstairs with me in my life. And Harleston knows"—
"Do you suppose he knows as well as I do, who have lived with you for fifty years?"
"And I'll not stay with you to hear my cousin insulted!" Majestic, she rose.
"It's too much of one girl," chuckled Mr. Bowdoin. "No wonder men keep a separate establishment."
"James!" Mrs. Bowdoin swept from the room.
"Don't run upstairs alone; consider the butler's feelings!" called her unfeeling spouse after her.
"You're too bad, sir," said Harley.
"I'm trying to develop her sense of humor; it's the one thing I always said I'd have in a wife. Remember it, when you get married. Why the devil don't you?"
"I have too much sense of humor, sir," said Harley gravely. "What is that?" For a noise of much shouting was heard from the Common. Both men rushed to the windows, and saw, surrounded by a maddened crowd, a small company of federal soldiers marching north.
"What are they saying?" cried Mr. Bowdoin.
Every minute the crowd increased: men and women, well dressed, sober-looking, crying, "Shame! shame!" and topping by a head the little squad of undersized soldiers (for the regular army was then recruited almost entirely from foreigners) who marched hurriedly forward, with eyes cast straight before and downward, and dressed in that shabby blue that ten years later was to pour southward in serried column, all American then, to free those slaves whom now they hunted down.
"To the Court House! To the Court House!" cried the mob.
"It's that fellow Simms," said Mr. Bowdoin, but was interrupted by sounds as of a portly person running downstairs; and they saw the front door fly open and Mrs. Bowdoin run across the street, her cap-strings streaming in the air.
"By Jove, if Abolitionism can make your grandma run, I'll forgive it a lot!" cried Mr. Bowdoin.
"Do you know the facts, sir?" suggested Harley.
"No, nor don't want to," said Mr. Bowdoin. "I know that we are jeopardizing the grandestexperiment in free government the world has ever seen for a few African darkies that we didn't bring here, and have already made Christians of, and a d—d sight more comfortable than they ever were at home. But come, let's go over, or I believe your grandma will be attacking the United States army all by herself!"
But the rescue was made unnecessary by the return of that lady, panting.
"Now, sir," gasped Mrs. Bowdoin, "I hope you're satisfied, that foreign Hessians control the laws of Massachusetts!"
"I am always glad to see the flag of my country sustained," said Mr. Bowdoin dryly; "though we don't fly it from our club."
"I think you misunderstand, sir," ventured Harley. "This Simms is arrested by the Boston sheriff for stabbing a man; and the Southerners have got the federal commissioner to refuse to give him up to justice."
"If he stabbed a man, it's cheaper to let them sell him as a slave than keep him five years in our state prison."
"The poor man seems to prefer it though," said Harley gently. "Have you seen him?"
"No; what should I see the fellow for?" cried Mr. Bowdoin irritably.
"I understand the State Court House is held like a fort by federal soldiers, and thugs who call themselves deputy marshals."
Mr. Bowdoin growled something that sounded like, "What if it is?"
The two started to walk down town. Tremont Street was crowded with running men, and School Street packed close; and as they came in sight of the Court House they saw that it was surrounded by a line of blue soldiers.
"Let's go to the Court House," said Harley.
The old gentleman's curiosity made feeble resistance.
"I had a case to see about this morning. Why, there's Judge Wells, the very man I want to see."
The judge had a body-guard of policemen, and our two friends joined him as they were slowly forcing a passage through the crowd. When they came before the old gray stone Court House, they saw two cannon posted at the corners, and all the windows full of armedtroops; and around the base of the building, barring every door, a heavy iron cable, and behind this a line of soldiers.
"What the devil is the cable for?" said Mr. Bowdoin.
The crowd, which had opened to let the well-known judge go by, were now crying, "Let the judge in! Let the judge in!" and then, "Give him up! Give Simms up! Give him to the sheriff!" and then, "Kidnapped! Kidnapped!" Just ahead of them our party saw another judge stopped rudely before the door by a soldier dropping a bayonet across his breast.
"Can't get in here,—can't get in here."
"I tell you I'm a judge of the Supreme Court of this Commonwealth," they heard him say.
"Go around, then, and get under the chain. But the court can't sit to-day." Mr. Bowdoin bubbled with indignation as he saw the old man take off his high hat, and, stooping low, bow his white hairs to get beneath the chain.
"If I do, I'm damned," said Mr. Bowdoin quietly.
"And if I do, I'm—Drop it down, sir, andlet me pass: Judge Wells, of the Supreme Court of Massachusetts."
"And I'm James Bowdoin, of James Bowdoin's Sons, and a good Democrat, and defendant in a confounded lawsuit before his honor."
"Courts can't sit to-day. Keep back."
"They can't?" cried Mr. Bowdoin. "Since when do the courts of Massachusetts ask permission of a pack of slave-hunters whether they shall sit or not?"
Harley was chuckling with suppressed delight. "If only grandma were here!" thought he.
"Let them in! Let Judge Wells in!" shouted the crowd.
The soldier called his corporal, and a hasty consultation followed; as a result of which the chain dropped at one end, and the three men walked over it in triumph.
"Three cheers for Judge Wells! Three cheers for Mr. Bowdoin!" cried the crowd, recognizing him.
When they got into the dark, cool corridor of the old stone fort, "That I should ever come to be cheered by a mob of Abolitionists!"gasped Mr. Bowdoin, mopping his face. "Upon my word, I think I lost my temper."
"Oh no, sir," said Harley Bowdoin gravely. "But where is the court-room?"
"Follow the line of soldiers," replied the judge, and hurried to his lobby.
Up the stone stairs went our friends, three flights in all; soldiers upon every landing, and, leaning over the banisters and carelessly spitting tobacco juice on the crowd below, a row of "deputy" United States marshals, with no uniform, but with drawn swords.
Mr. Bowdoin started. "Harley," said he, stopping by one of them, "I know that fellow. His name's Huxford, and he keeps a gambling-house; I had him turned out of one of my houses."
"Very likely," said Harley.
"Move on there, move on," said the man surlily, pretending not to recognize Mr. Bowdoin.
"What are you doing here, sir?" said that gentleman. "Don't you know I swore out a warrant against you?"
"Who the h—l are you?"
"James Bowdoin, confound you!" answeredthat peppery person, and swung his fist right and left with such vigor that Huxford went down on one side, and another deputy on the other. Then Harley hurried the old gentleman through the breach into the upper court-room, where they were under the protection of the county sheriff in his swallow-tailed blue coat, cocked hat, gold lace, and sword, and a friendly judge.
"Hang it, sir, they'll be arresting you, next," said Harley.
"By Heaven, I should like to see them do it!" cried our old friend in a loud whisper, if the term can be used. "Sheriff Clark, do you know those fellows are all miserable loafers?"
"They are federal officers, sir; I can do nothing," whispered back that gorgeous official.
"Humph!" returned Mr. Bowdoin. "How about state rights? Do we live in the sovereign State of Massachusetts, or do we not, I should like to know?"
"How about the Union, sir?" whispered Harley slyly.
"Hang the Union! Hang the Union, if itemploy a parcel of thugs to do its work!" said Mr. Bowdoin, so loud that there was a ripple of laughter in the court-room; and the judge looked up from the bench and smiled, for had not he dined with old Mr. Bowdoin in their college club once a month for forty years? But a low-browed fellow who was sitting behind the counsel at the table was heard to mutter "Treason." Beside him in the prisoner's dock sat the slave; not cowed nor abject, though in chains and handcuffs, but looking straight before him at the low-browed man who was his master, as a bird might look at a snake.
"Which of those two is the slave?" asked Mr. Bowdoin in an audible voice.
Again the room laughed. The clerk rapped order. The low-browed man looked up angrily, and spoke to a deputy marshal whose face had been turned away from Mr. Bowdoin before. He rose and started toward them.
"By Heaven," cried Mr. Bowdoin, "it is David St. Clair!"
But old Jamie knew naught of this, and the Bowdoins never told him. They consulted much what they should do; but they never told him. And Jamie went on, piling up his money. Three rolls were in the old chest now, and all of Spanish gold. Doubloons and pistoles were growing rarer, and the price was getting higher. But the old clerk was not content with replacing the present value to the credit of "Pirates" on the books; the actual pieces must be returned; so that if any earringed, whiskered buccaneer turned up to demand his money from James Bowdoin's Sons, he might have it back in specie, in the very pieces themselves, that the honor of the firm might be maintained. Until then, he felt sure, there was little chance the box would ever be looked into. Practically, he was safe; it was only his conscience, not his fears, that troubled him.
Since he had sent her that hundred dollars, he had heard nothing from Mercedes. The Bowdoins did not tell him how her husband had sunk to be a slave-catcher; for they knewhow miserly old Jamie had become, and supposed that his salary all went to her. While Jamie could take care of her, it mattered little what the worthless husband did, save the pain of Jamie's knowing it. And of course they did not know that Jamie could no longer take care of her, and why.
But one day, in the spring of 185-, a New York correspondent of the bank came on to Boston, and Mr. Bowdoin gave a dinner for him at the house. The dinner was at three o'clock; but old lady Bowdoin wore her best gown of tea-colored satin, and James Bowdoin and his wife were there. After dinner, the three gentlemen sat discussing old madeira, and old and new methods of banking, and the difference between Boston and New York, which was already beginning to assume a metropolitan preëminence.
"By the way, speaking of old-fashioned ways," said the New Yorker suddenly, "that's a queer old clerk of yours,—Mr. McMurtagh, I mean."
"Looks as if he might have stepped out of one of Dickens's novels, does he not?" said Mr. Bowdoin, always delighted to have Jamie's peculiarities appreciatively mentioned.
"But how did you come to know him?" asked Mr. James.
"Why, I see him once a year or so. Don't you send him occasionally to New York?"
"He used to go, some years ago," said Mr. Bowdoin.
"He buys his Spanish gold of us," added the New Yorker. "Queer fancy you have of buying up doubloons. Gold is gold, though, in these times."
"Spanish doubloons?" said Mr. James.
"We have a use for them at the bank," remarked the old gentleman sharply. "Shall we join the ladies?"
"You have to pay a pretty premium for them," added the money-dealer, as he stopped to wipe his lips. "Wonderful madeira, this."
Old Mr. Bowdoin took no squeaking toy to bed with him that night; but at breakfast his worthy spouse vowed he must take another room if he would be so wakeful. For once the old gentleman had no repartee, but hurried down to the bank. Early as he was, he found his son James there before him. And with all his soul he seized upon the chance to lose his temper.
"Well, sir, and what are you spying about for? You're not a director in the bank!"
Mr. James looked up, astonished.
"Got a headache, I suppose, from drinking with that New York tyke they sent us yesterday!"
"Well, sir, when it comes to old madeira"—
"I earned it, I bought it, and I can drink it, too. And as for your Wall Street whippersnappers that haven't pedigree enough to get a taste for wine, and drink champagne, and don't know an honest man when they see one—it's so seldom"—
"Seriously, what do you suppose he wanted with the gold?"
"I don't know, sir, and I don't care. But since you're spying round, come in!" and Mr. Bowdoin led his son into the vault. "There, sir, there's the confounded box," tapping with his cane the old chest that lay on the top shelf.
"I see, sir," said Mr. James, taking his cue.
"And as for its contents, the firm of James Bowdoin's Sons are responsible. Perhaps you'd like to poke your nose in there?"
"Oh no, sir," said Mr. James. And that chest was never opened by James Bowdoin or James Bowdoin's Sons.
"When the pirate wants it, he can have it,—in hell or elsewhere," ended Mr. Bowdoin profanely.
But coming out, and after Mr. James had gone away, the old gentleman went to Jamie McMurtagh's desk. Poor Jamie had seen them enter the vault, and his heart stood still. But all Mr. Bowdoin said was to ask him if his salary was sufficient. For once in his life the poor old man had failed to meet his benefactor's eye.
"It is quite enough, sir. I—I deserve no more."
But Mr. Bowdoin was not satisfied. "Jamie," he said, "if you should ever need more money,—a good deal of money, I mean,—you will come to me, won't you? You could secure it by a policy on your life, you know."
Jamie's voice broke. "I have no need of money, sir."
"And Mercedes? How is she?"
"It is some time since I heard, sir; the lastwas, she had gone with her husband to Havana."
"Havana!" shouted Mr. Bowdoin; and before Jamie could explain he had crushed his beaver on his head and rushed from the bank.
Jamie's head sank over the desk, and the tears came. If only this cup could pass from him! If Heaven would pardon this one deceit in all his darkened, upright life, and let him restore the one trust he had broken, before he died! And then he dried his eyes, and took to figuring,—figuring over again, as he had so often done before, the time needed, at the present rate, to make good his theft. Ten years more—a little less—would do it.
But old Mr. Bowdoin ran to the counting-room, where he found his son and Harley in that gloomy silence that ends an unsatisfactory communication.
"Say what you will, you'll never make me believe old Jamie is a thief," said Harley.
"Thief! you low-toned rascal!" cried Mr. Bowdoin. "Thief yourself! He's just told me Mercedes is in Havana. Of course he wants Spanish gold!"
"Of course he does!" cried Harley.
"Of course he does!" cried James.
Their faces brightened, and each one inwardly congratulated himself that the others had not thought how much easier it would have been for Jamie to send her bills of exchange.
Meantime, Jamie, all unconscious of his patrons' anxiety, went on, from spring to fall and fall to spring, working without hope of her, to make his honor good to men. If there was one day in the year that could be said to bring him near enjoyment, it was that day when, his yearly salary saved, he went to New York to buy doubloons. One might almost say he enjoyed this. He enjoyed the night voyage upon the Sound; the waking in the noisy city by busy ships that had come, perhaps, from New Orleans or Havana; the crowded streets, with crowds of which she had once been one, crowds so great that it seemed they must include her still. The broker of whom he bought his gold would always ask to see him, and offer him a glass of wine, which, taken by Jamie with a trembling hand, wouldbring an unwonted glow to his wrinkled cheeks as he hastened away grasping tight his canvas bag of coin. The miser!
Can you make a story of such a life? It had its interest for the recording angel. But it was two years more to the next event we men must notice.
May the twenty-seventh, eighteen fifty-four. Old Jamie (old he had been called for thirty years, and now was old indeed) had finished his work rather early and locked up the books. All day there had been noise and tramping of soldiers and murmurs of the people out on the street before the door, but Jamie had not noticed it. Old Mr. Bowdoin had rushed in and out, red in the face as a cherry, sputtering irascibility, but Jamie had not known it. And now he had come from counting his coin, a pleasure to him, so nearly the old chest lay as full as it had been that day a quarter century before. He had been gloating over it with a candle in the dark vault; but a few rows more, and his work was done, and he might go—to die, or find Mercedes.
As he came out into the street, blinking inthe sudden sunlight, he found it crowded close with quiet people. So thick they stood, he could not press his way along the sidewalk. It was not a mob, for there was no shouting or disorder; yet, intermittently, there rose a great murmur, such as the waves make or the leaves, the muttering of a multitude. Jamie turned his face homeward, and edged along by the wall, where there was most room. And now the mutter rose and swelled, and above it he heard the noise of fife and drum and the tread of soldiers.
He came to the first cross-street, and found it cleared and patrolled by cavalry militia. The man on a horse in front called him by name, and waved his sword at him to pass. Jamie looked up, and saw it was John Hughson. He would not have known him in his scarlet coat.
"What is it, John?" said Jamie.
"What is it? The whole militia of the State is out, by G—! to see them catch and take one nigger South. Look there!"
And Jamie looked from the open side street up the main street. There, beneath the lion and the unicorn of the old State House,through that historic street, cleared now as for a triumph, marched a company of federal troops. Behind them, in a hollow square, followed a body of rough-appearing men, each with a short Roman sword and a revolver; and in the open centre, alone and handcuffed, one trembling negro. The fife had stopped, and they marched now in a hushed silence to the tap of a solitary drum; and behind came the naval marines with cannon.
The street was hung across with flags, union down or draped in black, but the crowd was still. And all along the street, as far down as the wharf, where the free sea shone blue in the May sunshine, stood, on either side, a close rank of Massachusetts militia, with bayonets fixed, four thousand strong, restraining, behind, the fifty thousand men who muttered angrily, but stood still. Thus much it took to hold the old Bay State to the Union in 1854, and carry one slave from it to bondage. Down the old street it was South Carolina that walked that day beneath the national flag, and Massachusetts that did homage, biding her time till her sister State should turn her arms upon the emblem. "Shame! shame!" thepeople were crying. But they kept the peace of the republic.
Old Jamie understood nothing of this. He only saw and wondered; saw the soldiery, saw old Mr. Bowdoin leaning from a window as a young man on the sidewalk tried to drag down a flag that hung from it, with a black coffin stitched to the blue field.[1]
"Young man," cried the old gentleman, "leave that flag alone; it's my property!"
"I am an American," cried the youth, "and I'll not suffer the flag of my country to be so disgraced!"
"I too am an American, and damme, sir, 'tis the flag in the street there that's disgraced!"
The fellow slunk away, but Jamie had ceased to listen, for the negro was now in front of him, and there, among the rough band of slave-catchers, his desperate appearance hid by no uniform, a rough felt hat upon his dissolute face, a bowie-knife slung by his waist, there, doing this work in the world, old Jamie saw and recognized the husband of his little girl,—St. Clair.
FOOTNOTE:[1]A fact, but the man who thus assaulted the flag lived to command a company in the Union army.
[1]A fact, but the man who thus assaulted the flag lived to command a company in the Union army.
[1]A fact, but the man who thus assaulted the flag lived to command a company in the Union army.
McMurtagh ran out into the street toward him, but was stopped by an officer. He still pressed his way, and when the end of the procession went by they suffered him to go, and he fell in behind the trailing cannon. There he found some others, following out of sympathy for the slave. Some of them he knew, and they took Jamie for an Abolitionist, but Jamie hardly knew what it was all about.
"When Simms was taken," said one, a doctor, "I vowed that he should be the last slave sent back from Massachusetts."
"Did you hear," said another, a young lawyer, "how they have treated him? His master had him whipped, when he got home, for defending his case before our courts."
Jamie tried to find his way through the artillery company, but failed. It was only when they got down to the Long Wharf that the artillery divided, sending two guns to either side of the street, and Jamie and the others hurried to the end. Here was a United States revenue cutter, armed with marines, to take this poor bondsman back to his master.No crowned head ever left a country with more pomp of escort and retinue of flag and cannon. But Jamie's business was with the slave-catcher, not the slave. He found St. Clair standing by the gangway, and called him by name. The fellow started like a criminal; then recognizing the poor clerk, "Oh, it's you, is it?"
"How is Mercedes?" stammered Jamie.
"How the h—l should I know? And what is that to you?"
"But you will tell me where she is?" pleaded the poor old man. "She will not answer my letters. Does she get them? I know she does not get them," he added, as the thought struck him suddenly.
"She gets any that have got money in," retorted St. Clair grimly. "However, I married her, and I suppose I've got to support her. Get out of the way, there!"
The men were already casting off the ropes. Poor Jamie felt in his pocket, but of course he had no money; he never carried money now.
The cordon of soldiers drew across the wharf and presented arms as their commandingofficer came ashore, and the stars and stripes rose at the stern of the vessel, and she forged out toward the blue rim of the sea that is visible, even from the wharves, in Boston harbor.
But not a gun was fired. Silently the armed ship left, with its freight of one negro, its company of marines and squad of marshals. Among them St. Clair stood on the lower deck and looked at Jamie. The poor clerk hung his head as if he were the guilty one. And in the silence was heard the voice of a minister in prayer. The little group of citizens gathered around him with bared heads. He prayed for the poor slave and for the recreant republic, for peace, and that no slave-hunter should again tread quietly the soil of Massachusetts. But Jamie heard him not. He was thinking over again the old trouble: how he could not take his salary—that was needed for restitution; how he could not ask the Bowdoins, or they would wonder where his salary had gone.
As he turned his steps backward to the city, he wondered if St. Clair was still living with her. But yes, he must be, or she would surely have come back to him. A hand was laid uponhis shoulder; he looked up; it was the minister who had been upon the wharf.
"Be not cast down, old man. 'In his service is perfect freedom,'" quoted the minister. He fancied he was one of the Abolitionist group that had followed Anthony Burns to the last. But Jamie only looked up blankly. He was thinking that in four years more he might go to bring back Mercedes.
Year followed year. This was the twelfth year since Jamie had begun to make up his theft from his own salary; but it had been slower work than he had hoped, for he now had to pay almost a collector's price to get the Spanish gold. He had hurried home one night eagerly, to count his money; for he made his annual purchase and payment in June. Sixteen hundred dollars in bills he had (it was curious that he kept it now in money, and had no longer a deposit in the bank), and he congratulated himself that he had not had the money at the wharf that day: he might have given it to St. Clair, to learn Mercedes'whereabouts; and it would not have reached her, and St. Clair would have lied to him; while the taking of a dollar more than was rightfully the bank's—for so Jamie regarded his salary—would really make him a defaulter.
For the old chest was getting so full now that the clerk could almost hold his head up among men. The next year, but three rows of gold coin remained to fill. The smaller coins had all been purchased long ago. And Jamie (who had only thought to do this, and die, at the first) now began, timidly, to let his imagination go beyond the restitution; to think of Mercedes, of seeing her, of making her happy yet. For she was still a young girl, to him.
The thirteenth year came. Jamie had begun to take notice of the world. He took regularly a New Orleans newspaper. The balance against him in the account was now so small! He looked wistfully at the page. However small the deficit, his labors were not complete till he could tear the whole page out. And he could not do that yet: the transaction must be shown upon the books; he might die.
Die! Suddenly his heart beat at thethought. Die! He had never thought of this, to fear it; but now if he should die before the gold was all returned, and all his sacrifice go for naught, even his sacrifice of Mercedes—
The other clerks had lost their interest in poor Jamie by this time; some of them were new, and to these he was merely an old miser, and they made fun of him, he grew so careful about his health. Life had not brought much to poor Jamie to make him so fond of it; but both the Bowdoins noticed it, and remarked to one another, it was curious, after all, how men clung to life as they grew older.
In 1859 a rumor had reached them all that St. Clair had gone on some filibustering expedition to Cuba. Old Mr. Bowdoin mentioned it to McMurtagh; but he said nothing of sending for the wife. In 1861 the war broke out, and the poor clerk saw the one sober crown of his life put off still a year. He was yet more than a thousand dollars short. He was coming back on a Sound steamer, thinking of this, wondering how he could bear this last delay,—his scanty bag of high-priced gold crowded into a pocket,—reading his New Orleans paper carelessly (save only the births anddeaths), when his eye caught a name. Jamie knew there was a war; and the article was all about some fighting of blockade-runners with a federal cruiser near Mobile. But his quick eye traveled to the centre of it, where he read, "Before the vessel was taken, a round shot killed several of the crew, ... among them ... and David St. Clair, well known in this city."
Jamie could not go to bed that night, but sat on deck watching the stars. The next day he went through his avocations in the bank like one in a dream. And in the night ensuing that dream became a vision; and he saw Mercedes alone in a distant city, without money or friends, her soft eyes looking wistfully at him in wonder that he did not come.
The next morning Jamie went to old Mr. Bowdoin's office, at an hour when he knew he should find him alone. For the old gentleman called early at the little counting-room, as in the days when he might hope to find some ship of his own, fresh from the Orient, warping into the dock. Jamie's lips were dry, and hisvoice came huskily. He gave up the effort to speak of St. Clair's death, but asked briefly that Mr. Bowdoin would get him three months' leave.
"Three months!" cried the old man. "Why, Jamie, you've not taken a vacation for fifteen years!"
"That's why I make bold to ask it, sir," said Jamie humbly.
"Take six months, man, six months,—not a week less! And your salary shall be paid in advance"—Mr. Bowdoin noted a sudden kindling in Jamie's eye that gave him his cue. "Two quarters! you have well deserved it. And now that the bank is to change its charter, there'll be a lot of fuss and worry; it'll be a good time to go away."
"Change its charter?"
"Ay, Jamie; we've got to give up being a state bank, and go in under the new national law to issue shinplasters to pay for beating the rebels! But come with me to the bank,—the board are meeting now for discounts," and the old gentleman grabbed his hat, and dragged Jamie out of the counting-room.
I doubt if ever the old clerk was rushed sorapidly up the street. And coming into the bank, Mr. Bowdoin shoved him into an anteroom. "Wait you there!" said he, and plunged into the board-room.
There had been a light spring snow that night, and Jamie had not had time to wipe his boots. He cleaned them now, and then went back and sat upon a sofa near the sacred precincts of the directors' room. Suddenly he felt a closing of the heart; he wondered if he were going to be taken into custody—after so many years—and now, just now, when he must go to rescue Mercedes. Then he remembered that he had been brought there by Mr. Bowdoin, and Jamie knew better than to think this.
In a minute more the door opened, and that gentleman came out. Behind him peered the faces of the directors; in his hand was a crisp new bank-note.
"McMurtagh," said Mr. Bowdoin, "the directors have voted to give you a six months' vacation; and as some further slight recognition of your twenty years of service, this," and he thrust a thousand-dollar note into his hand.
Jamie's labors were light that day. Tobegin with, every clerk and teller and errand-boy had to shake him by the hand and hear all about it. And it was not for the money's sake. Old Mr. Bowdoin had been shrewd enough to guess what only thing could make the clerk want so much liberty; and the news had leaked down to the others,—"that Jamie was going for his foreign mail."
"I hear you are going away," said one. "To Europe?" said another. "Blockade-running!" suggested a third. "For cotton."
"I—I am going to the tropics," stammered Jamie. He had but a clouded notion how far south New Orleans might be.
"I told you so," laughed the teller.
"Bring us all a bale or two."
Jamie laughed; to the amazement of the bank, Jamie laughed.
When the cashier went to lunch, Jamie stole a chance to get into the vault alone. And there, out of every pocket, with trembling fingers, he pulled a little roll of Spanish gold. Then the delight of sorting and arranging them in the old chest! He had one side for pistoles, and this now was full; and even the doubloon side showed less than the emptyspace of one roll, across the little chest, needed to fill the count, after he had put the new coins in. The old clerk sat in a sort of ecstasy; reminding himself still that what he gazed at was not the greatest joy he had that day; when all these sordid things were over, he was to start, on the morrow, for Mercedes.
He heard the voice of the cashier returning, and went out.
"Well, McMurtagh," said he, "you're lucky to escape this miserable reorganization. July 1st we start as a national bank, you know."
"Yes," said Jamie absently.
"Every stick and stone in this old place has got to be counted over again, the first of the month, by the examiners of Uncle Sam, and every book verified. By the way," the cashier ended carelessly, as witless messengers of fate alone can say such things, "you'd better leave me the key of that old chest we carry in special account for the Bowdoins. They'll want to look at everything, you know. The examination may come next year, or it may come any time."
A few minutes more of Jamie's life were added to the forty years he had spent over his desk. He even went through a few columns of figures. Then he closed the desk, leaving his papers in it as usual, and went out into the street.
So it was all gone for naught,—all his labors, all his self-denial, all his denial of help to Mercedes. If he left to seek her, his theft would be discovered in his absence. He would be thought to have run away, to have absconded, knowing his detection was at hand. If he stayed, he could not make it good in time.
What did it matter? She was first. Jamie took his way up the familiar street, through the muddy snow; it had been a day of foul weather, and now through the murky low-lying clouds a lurid saffron glow foretold a clearing in the west. It was spring, after all; and the light reminded Jamie of the South. She was there, and alone.
He had tried to save his own good name, and it was all in vain. He might at least do what he could for her.
He did not go home, but wandered on, walking. Unconsciously his steps followed the southwest, toward the light (we always walk to the west in the afternoon), and he found himself by the long beach of the Back Bay, the railroad behind him. The tide was high, and the west wind blew the waves in froth at his feet. The clearing morrow sent its courier of cold wind; and the old clerk shivered, but did not know he shivered of cold.
He sat upon an old spar to think. The train bound southward rattled behind him; he was sitting on the very bank of the track, so close that the engineer blew his whistle; but Jamie did not hear. So this was the end. He might as well have saved her long before. He might have stolen more. To-morrow he would surely go.
The night came on. Then Jamie thought of getting his ticket. He remembered vaguely that the railroad behind him ran southward; and he rose, and walked along the track to the depot. There he asked if they sold tickets to New Orleans.
The clerk laughed. New Orleans was within the rebel lines. Besides, they sold no ticketsbeyond New York or Washington. The clerk did not seem sure the way to New Orleans was through Washington. A ticket to the latter city was twenty dollars.
Jamie pulled out his wallet. He had only a few dollars in it; but loose in his pocket he found that thousand-dollar bill. "I—I think I will put off buying the ticket until to-morrow," he said.
For a new notion flashed upon him. He had not thought of this money before. With what he could earn,—the bookkeeper had said the investigation might be put off a year,—this bill might be enough to cover the remaining deficit.
He hugged it in his hands. How could he have forgotten it? He turned out into the night again to walk home; he felt very faint and cold, and remembered he had had no supper. Well, old Mrs. Hughson would get him something. She had taken the little house on Salem Street, which had been Jamie's home for so many years. John and his growing family still lived in their house, near by.
But Mrs. Hughson was out. He stumbled up the high stairs in the dark, and lit a lampwith numbed fingers. He had not been often so late away; probably she had gone to search for him. He must go out after her. She was doubtless at John's.
But first McMurtagh went to his writing-desk and unlocked the drawer that he had not visited for years; and from its dust, beneath a pile of letters, he drew out his only picture of Mercedes. He had vowed never to look at it again until he could go to help her; and now—
And now he was not going to help her. He had left her alone all those years; and now he was still to leave her, widowed, in a hostile city, perhaps to starve. Old Jamie strained his eyes to the picture with hard tearless sorrow. It was a daguerreotype of the beautiful young girl that Mercedes had been in 1845.
Was there no way? The thousand dollars he would need if he went after her. Should he borrow of Mr. Bowdoin? But how could he do so, now that he had this present from him? Jamie sat down and pressed his fingers to his temples. Then he forgot himself a moment.
He was out in the street again in the cold.He had the idea that he would go to John Hughson's; and sure enough, he found the old lady there. She and John cried out as he came in, and would know where he had been. He could not tell. "Why, you are cold," said the old lady, feeling his hand. And they would have him eat something.
In the street again, returning: it was pleasanter in the dark; one could think. One could think of her; he dared not when people were looking, lest they should know. He would go to her.
Suppose he told old Mr. Bowdoin, frankly, the debt was nearly made up: he would gladly lend him. Nay, but it was a theft, not a debt. How could he tell—now—when so nearly saved?
In the room, Mrs. Hughson was bustling about getting a hot drink. So nearly! Why, even if David might have lived a year more! And he had been a slave-catcher. Perhaps he had left her money? Perhaps she might get on for a year—if he wrote? Ah, here was the hot drink. He would take it; yes, if only to get rid of Mrs. Hughson. She looked old and queer, and smiled at him. But he did notknow Mercedes' address; he could not write. Yes, he felt warmer now; he was well enough, thank you. Ah, by Heaven, he would go! He must sleep first. Would not Mrs. Hughson put out the light? He liked it better so. Good-night. Just this rest, and then the palm-trees, and such a sunny, idle sky, where Mercedes was walking with him. The account had been nearly made up; the balance might rest.
No letter came back from Jamie, and Mr. Bowdoin rather wondered at it. But openly he pooh-poohed the idea. His wife had lost twenty years of her age in presiding over Sanitary Commissions, and getting up classes where little girls picked lint for Union soldiers; and Mr. Bowdoin himself was full of the war news in the papers. For he was a war Democrat (that fine old name!), and had he had his way, every son and grandson would have been in the Union army. Most of them were, among them Harley, though the family blood had made him choose the naval branch. Commander Harleston Bowdoin was back ona furlough won him by a gunshot wound: and it was he who asked about old Jamie most anxiously.
"You feel sure that he was going to Havana?" said he over the family breakfast table.
Old lady Bowdoin had left them; long since she had established her claim to the donation fund by arriving always first at breakfast, and had devoted it, triumphantly, to a fund for free negroes,—"contrabands," as they were just then called. But Mrs. Bowdoin never had taken much interest in Mercedes.
"Sure, they were last heard of there. He was on some filibustering expedition in Cuba. Perhaps he was hanged. But no, I don't think so. Poor Jamie used to send them so much money!"
"He might have written before he sailed," said Harley, nursing his wounded arm.
"If he wrote, I guess he wrote to her," said Mr. Bowdoin dryly. "Why should he write to me?"
"I don't like it," said Harley.
Mr. Bowdoin did not like it; and not being willing to admit this to himself, it made himvery cross. So he rose, and, crowding his hat over his eyes, strode out into the April morning, and down the street to the wharf, and down the wharf to the office, where he silenced his trio of pensioners for the time being by telling them all to go to the devil;hewould not be bothered. And these, hardly surprised, and not at all offended, hobbled around to the southern side of the building, where they lent each other quarters against the morrow, when they knew the peppery old gentleman would relent.
Mr. Bowdoin stamped up the two flights of narrow stairs to the counting-room, where his first action was to take off a large piece of cannel coal just put on the fire by Mr. James Bowdoin, and damn his son and heir for his extravagance. As the coal put back in the hod was rapidly filling the room with its smoke, James the younger fled incontinently; and the elder contemplated the situation. It was true Jamie had not written; but he had not thought much about it. Harley entered.
"I was thinking, sir, of going down to Mr. McMurtagh's lodgings and asking if they had heard from him."
"Haven't you been there yet? I should think any fool would have gone there first!"
"That's why I didn't, sir," said Harley respectfully.
Old Mr. Bowdoin chuckled grimly, and his grandson took his leave.
"Come back and tell me at the bank!" cried Mr. Bowdoin.
But hardly had Harley got down the stairs before the old gentleman had another visitor. And this time it was a sheriff with brass buttons; and he held a large document in his hands.
Now Mr. Bowdoin was not over-fond of officers of the law; he detested lawsuits, and he had a horror of legal documents. Therefore he groaned at the sight, and, throwing open a window, fingered his watch-chain nervously, as one who is about to flee.
"What doyouwant, sir?" said he.
"Is this the office of James Bowdoin's Sons?"
"What if it were, sir?"
The officer brandished his document. "Is there a clerk here,—one James McMurtagh?"
"No, sir." Mr. Bowdoin spoke decidedly.
"Has he a son-in-law, David St. Clair?"
The old gentleman breathed a sigh of relief. "He has, sir."
"Where is McMurtagh?"
"I don't know, sir."
"Where is St. Clair?"
"Have you a citation for him?"
The officer winked. "Can you tell me where to find him?"
Mr. Bowdoin saw his chance. "Yes, sir; I can, sir. The last I heard of him, he had gone to Cuba on a filibustering expedition with one General Walker, who has since been hanged; and if you find him, you'll find him in Havana, Cuba, and can serve the citation on him there; though I'm bound to tell you," ended the old gentleman in a louder voice, "my opinion is, he won't care a d—n for you or your citation either!" And Mr. Bowdoin bolted down the stairs.