Clever Mercedes was not clever enough to see he knew she blamed him for it. St. Clair only laughed. "These people are n.o.body," said he; and he talked of fashionable and equipaged friends he had known in other places. Where? Jamie suspected, race-courses; his stories of them bore usually an equine flavor. But he was not a horse-dealer; his hands were too white for that.
Poor old Mr. Bowdoin had had a hangdog feeling with old Jamie ever since that day his son had laughed. He had dared criticise nothing he noticed at the office, and Jamie grew more crusty and eccentric every day. James Bowdoin was less indulgent, and soon saw that something new was in the wind. But the last thing that both expected was a demand on Jamie"s part for an increased salary. Jamie made it respectfully, with his hat off, twirling in his hand, and the Bowdoins eyed him.
"It isna that I"m discontented with the place or the salary in the past," said Jamie, "but our expenses are increasing. I have rented a house in Worcester Square."
"In Worcester Square? And the one in Salem Street?"
""Tis too small for me family needs," said Jamie. "I have sold it."
"Too small?"
"Me daughter is about to be married," said Jamie reluctantly.
"Dear me!" exclaimed the Bowdoins in a breath. "May we congratulate her?"
"Ye may do as ye like," said Jamie. ""Tis one Mr. David St. Clair,--a gentleman, as he tells me."
"Is he to live with you, then?"
"Yes, sir. He wants work--that is"--Jamie hesitated.
"He has no occupation?"
Jamie was visibly irritated. "If I bring the gentleman down, ye may ask him your ain sel"."
"No, no," said Mr. James. "That is, we should, of course, be glad to meet the gentleman at any time. What is his name?"
"David St. Clair."
"David Sinclair," repeated the old gentleman.
"Mercedes Silva," said Mr. James musingly.
"McMurtagh, if you please," said Jamie.
"Jamie," said old Mr. Bowdoin, "our business is going away. The steamers will ruin it. For a long time there has not been enough to occupy a man of your talents. And the old bookkeeper at the bank--the Old Colony Bank--has got to resign. I"ve already asked the place for you. The salary is--more than we here can afford to pay you. In fact, we may close the counting-room."
Jamie rubbed his nose and shifted his feet. "Ta business is a goot business, and t" firm is a fine old firm." It was evident he was in the throes of unexpressed affection. In all his life he had never learned to express it. "Ye"ll na be closing the old counting-room?"
"I may come down here every day or so, just to keep my trusts up. I"ll use it for a writing-room; it"s near the bank"--
"An" I"ll come down an" keep the books for you, sir," said Jamie; and the "sir" from his lips was like a caress from another man.
III.
Jamie took his place on the high stool behind the great ledgers of the Old Colony Bank, and the house on Worcester Square was even bought, with his savings and the price of the house on Salem Street. Only one thing Jamie flatly refused, and that was to permit Mercedes" marriage until St. Clair had some visible means of support. She pouted at this and was cruel; but for once the old clerk was inflexible, even to her.
Mercedes would perhaps have married against his will, but Mr. St.
Clair had his reason for submitting.
And that gentleman was particular in his choice of occupation, and Mercedes yet more particular for him. The cla.s.s of which St. Clair came is a peculiar one, hardly known to the respectable world, less known then than now; and yet it has often money, kindliness, reputability even, among its members: they marry and have children among their own cla.s.s; they are not church-going, but yet they are not criminal. As actor families maintain themselves for many generations (not the stars, but the ordinary histrionic families; you will find most of the names on the playbills to-day that were there in the last century, neither above nor below their old position), so there are sporting families who live in a queer, not unprosperous world of their own, marry and bring up children, and leave money and friends behind them when they die. And Sinclair came of people such as these. "St.
Clair" was his own invention. Of course Jamie did not know it, nor did Mercedes; and in fact he was honestly in love with her, to the point of changing his way of life to one of routine and drudgery.
But no place could be found (save, indeed, a retail grocer"s clerkship), and Mercedes began to grow worried, and occasionally to cry. St. Clair spent his evenings at the house; and at such times Jamie would wander helplessly about the streets. St. Clair"s one idea was to be employed about the bank, to become a banker. Had he been competent to keep the books, I doubt not Jamie would have given them up to him.
Great is the power of persuasion backed by love, even in a bent old Scotchman. Will it be believed, Jamie teased and schemed and promoted until he made a vacancy of the place of messenger, and got it for his son-in-law. Perhaps old Mr. Bowdoin had ever had a slight feeling of remorse since he had seen nipped in the bud that affair with young Harleston. He did not approve of the present match. Yet he fancied the bridegroom might be a safer spouse with a regular occupation and a coat more threadbare than he habitually wore.
Nothing now stood in the way of the marriage; and it took place with some _eclat_,--in King"s Chapel, indeed, with all the Bowdoins, even to Mrs. Abby. Jamie gave the bride away. Hughson (to Mercedes"
relief) took it a bit rusty and would not come. Then the pair went on a wedding journey to Niagara and Trenton Falls; and old Jamie, the day after the ceremony, came down looking happier than he had seemed for years. There was a light in his lonely old face; it comes rarely to us on earth, but, by one who sees it, it is not forgotten. Old Mr.
Bowdoin saw it; and, remembering that interview scarce two years gone by, his nose tingled. It is rare that natures with such happy lives as his are so "dowered with the love of love." But when old Jamie looked at him, he but asked some business question; and Jamie marveled that the old gentleman blew his nose so hard and d.a.m.ned the weather so vigorously.
When the St. Clairs came back, Jamie moved to an upper back room, and gave them the rest of the new house. Mercedes was devotedly in love with her husband. She would have liked to meet people, if but to show him to them. But she knew no one worthy save the Bowdoins, and they did not get on with him. His own social acquaintance, of which he had boasted somewhat, appeared to be in other cities. And _ennui_ (which causes more harm in the world than many a more evil pa.s.sion) began imperceptibly to take possession of him.
However, they continued to live on together. St. Clair was fairly regular at his work; and all went well for more than a year.
IV.
No year, probably, of James McMurtagh"s life had he been so happy. It delighted him to let St. Clair away early from the bank; and to sit alone over the ledgers, imagining St. Clair"s hurrying home, and the greeting kiss, and the walk they got along the sh.e.l.ls of the beach before supper, with the setting sun slanting to them over the wide bay from the Brookline hills. When they took the meal alone, it delighted Jamie to sit at Mercy"s right and have her David help him; or, when they had "company," it pleased the old man almost as much to stay away and think proudly of them. Such times he would sit alone on the Common and smoke his pipe, and come home late and let himself in with his latch-key, and steal up quickly to his own bedroom at the top of the house.
Now that he was so happy, and had left his old friends the Bowdoins, a wave of unconscious affection for them spread over his soul. Under pretext of keeping their accounts straight--which now hardly needed balancing even once a month--old Jamie would edge down to the counting-room upon the wharf, after hours, or even for a few minutes at noontime (perhaps sacrificing his lunch therefor), to catch old Mr.
Bowdoin at his desk and chat with him (under plea of some omitted entry needing explanation), and tell him how well David was doing, and Mercedes so happy, and what company they had had to tea the night before. So that one day Mr. Bowdoin even ventured to give him a golden bracelet young Harleston Bowdoin had sent, soon after the wedding, from France; and Jamie took it without a murmur. "Ah, "tis a pity, sir, ye din"t keep the old house up, for the sake of the young gentlemen, if nothing more," said he; and "Ah, Jamie," was Mr.
Bowdoin"s reply, "it"s all dirty coal-barges now; the old house would not know its way about in steamers. We"ll have to take to banking, like yourself and Sinclair there."
Jamie laughed with pleasure, and father and son went each to a window to watch him as he sidled up the street.
"Caroline never would have stood it," said the old man.
"Neither would Abby," said the younger one. "Yet you made me marry her;" and they both chuckled. It was the habit of the Bowdoin males to marry them to women without a sense of humor, and then to take a mutual delight in the consequences.
"You only married her to get a house," said the old man. (This was the inexhaustible joke they shared against Mrs. Abby that in nearly twenty years had never failed to rouse her serious indignation.) "I saw her coming out of that abolitionist meeting yesterday."
"That"s cousin Wendell Phillips got her into that," said Mr. James.
"Old Jamie was there, too."
"Old Jamie has got so much love to spare that it spills around," said Mr. Bowdoin, "even on comfortable n.i.g.g.e.rs just decently clothed.
That"s not your wife"s trouble." To which the son had no other repartee than "James!" drawled in the solemn ba.s.s of amazed indignation that his mother"s voice a.s.sumed when goaded into speech by his father"s sallies. It was his boast that "Abby" never yet had ventured to address him thus. And so this precious pair separated; the father going home to his grandchildren, and the son to the club for his afternoon rubber of whist. They still took life easy in the forties.
Why was it that old Jamie, who should by rights have had his heart broken, was happier than fortunate David? Both loved the same woman; and no tenor hero ever loved so deeply as old Jamie, and he had lost her. But he came of the humble millions that build the structure of human happiness silently, by countless, uncounted little acts. David was of the ephemera, the pleasure-loving insects. Now these will settle for a time; but race will tell, and they are not the race of quiet labor.
One almost wonders, in these futureless times, that so many of the former still remain. For the profession of pleasure is so easy, so remunerative; even of money it often has no lack. St. Clair came of a family that, from horse-racing, bar-keeping, betting, had found money easier to get than ever had Jamie"s people, and (when they had chosen to invest it) had invested it in less reputable but more productive ways. One fears the spelling-books mislead in their promise of instant, adequate reward and punishment. The G.o.ds do not keep a dame-school for us here on earth, and their ways are less obvious than that. One hazards the suggestion, it is fortunate if our mult.i.tudes (in these socialistic, traditionless times) do not yet discover how comfortable, for hedonistic ends, their sons and daughters still may be without respectability and reputability.
St. Clair lived before them, and his mind was never a.n.a.lytic. The word "bore" had not yet been imported, nor the word "ennui" naturalized in a civilization whence two hundred years of Puritans had sought to banish it. But although Adam set the example of falling to the primal woman, it may be doubted whether Eve, at least, had not a foretaste of the modern evil. And more souls go now to the devil (if they could hope there were one!) for the being bored than any other cause.