"Has he told _you_?" echoed the old gentleman. Harley told. Then Mr.
Bowdoin turned and bolted up the street after Jamie.
"Old fellow, why don"t you have a vacation,--just a few days? The bank can spare you, and you need rest." His hand was on the old clerk"s shoulder.
"Master Harley wull ha" told ye? But I"m na one to neglect me affairs," said Jamie.
"Nonsense, nonsense. When is she coming?"
Jamie told him.
"Why don"t you take the one-forty and meet her at Worcester? She may have to go back to-morrow."
Jamie started. It was clear he had not thought of this. As they entered the bank, Mr. Bowdoin cried out to Stanchion, the cashier, "I want to borrow McMurtagh for the day, on business of my own."
"Certainly, sir," said Mr. Stanchion.
Jamie went.
There is no happiness so great as happiness to come, for then it has not begun to go. If the streets of the celestial city are as bright to Jamie as those of Boston were that day, he should have hope of heaven.
It was yet two hours before his train went, but he had no thought of food. He pa.s.sed a florist"s; then turned and went in, blushing, to buy a bunch of roses. He was not anxious for the time to come, such pleasure lay in waiting. When at last the train started, the distance to Worcester never seemed so short. He was to come back over it with her!
In the car he got some water for his roses, but dared not smell of them lest their fragrance should be diminished. After reaching Worcester, he had half an hour to wait; then the New York train came trundling in. As the cars rolled by he strained his old eyes to each window; the day was hot, and at an opened one Jamie saw the face of his Mercedes.
X.
The next morning, old Mr. James Bowdoin got up even earlier than usual, with an undefined sense of pleasure. As was his wont, he walked across the street to sit half an hour before breakfast in the Common.
The old crossing-sweeper was already there, to receive his penny; and the orange-woman, expectant, sold her apex orange to him for a silver thripenny bit as his before-breakfast while awaiting the more dignified cunctation of his auguster spouse.
The old gentleman"s mind was running on McMurtagh; and a robuster grin than usual encouraged even others than his chartered pensioners to come up to him for largess. Mr. Bowdoin"s eyes wandered from the orange-woman to the telescope-man, and thence to an old elm with one gaunt dead limb that stretched out over the dawn. It was very pleasant that summer morning, and he felt no hurry to go in to breakfast.
Love was the best thing in the world; then why did it make the misery of it? How irradiated old Jamie"s face had been the day before! Yet Jamie would never have gone to meet her at Worcester, had he not given him the hint. Dear, dear, what could be done for St. Clair, as he called himself? Mr. Bowdoin half suspected there had been trouble at the bank. Mercedes such a pretty creature, too! Only, Abby really never would do for her what she might have done. Why were women so impatient of each other? Old Mr. Bowdoin felt vaguely that it was they who were responsible for the social platform; and he looked at his watch.
Heavens! five minutes past eight! Mr. Bowdoin got up hurriedly, and, nodding to the orange-woman, shuffled into his house. But it was too late; Mrs. Bowdoin sat rigid behind the coffee-urn. Harley looked up with a twinkle in his eye.
"James, I should think, at your time of life, you"d stop rambling over the Common before breakfast,--in carpet slippers, too,--when you know I"ve been up so late the night before at a meeting in behalf of"--
A sudden twinkle flashed over the old gentleman"s rosy face; then he became solemn, preternaturally solemn. Harley caught the expression and listened intently. Mrs. Bowdoin, pouring out cream as if it were coals of fire on his head, was not looking at him.
"There!" gasped old Mr. Bowdoin, dropping heavily into a chair.
"Always said it would happen. I feel faint!"
"James?" said Mrs. Bowdoin.
"Always said it would happen--and there"s your cousin, Wendell Phillips, out on the Common, hanging stark on the limb of an elm-tree."
"_James!_"
"Always said it would come to this. Perhaps you"d go out in carpet slippers if you saw your wife"s cousin hanged before your eyes"--
"JAMES!" cried Mrs. Bowdoin. But the old lady was equal to the occasion; she rose (--"and no one there to cut him down!" interpolated the old gentleman feebly) and went to the door.
The two men got up and ran to the window. There was something of a crowd around the old elm-tree; and, pressing their noses against the pane, they could see the old lady crossing the street.
"I think, sir," said Mr. Harley to his grandfather, "it"s about time to get down town." And they took their straw hats and sallied forth.
But as they walked down the shady side of the street, old Mr.
Bowdoin"s progress became subject to impediments of laughter, which were less successfully suppressed as they got farther away, and in which the young man finally joined. "Though it"s really too bad," he added, by way of protest, now laughing harder than his grandfather.
"I"m going to get her that carriage to-day," said the elder deprecatingly. Then, as if to change the subject, "Did you see old Jamie after he left, yesterday?"
"I think I caught him in a florist"s, buying flowers," answered Harley.
"Buying flowers!" The old gentleman burst into such a roar that the pa.s.sers in the crowded street stopped there to look at him, and went down town the merrier for it. "At a florist"s! But what were you doing?" he closed, with sudden gravity.
"All right, governor, quite all right. I was buying them for grandma"s birthday. _That_"s all over. Though I"m sorry for her, just the same.
How does the man live, now?"
"Jamie says he"s doing well," answered the other hurriedly. "By the way, stop at the bank and tell them to give old Jamie a holiday to-day. He"d never take it of himself."
"Aren"t you coming down?" Harley spoke as he turned in by Court Square,--a poor neighborhood then, and surrounded by the police lodging-houses and doubtful hotels.
"Not that way," said Mr. Bowdoin. "I hate to see the faces one meets about there, poor things. Hope the flowers will get up to your grandmother, Harley; she"ll need "em!" And the old man went off with a final chuckle. "Hanging on a tree! Well, "twould be a good thing for the country if he were." Of such mental inconsistencies were benevolent old gentlemen then capable.
But when Harley reached the bank, though it was late, Jamie had not yet arrived. Harley thought he knew the reason of this; but when old Mr. Bowdoin came, at noon, the clerk was still away; and the old gentleman, who had been merry all day, looked suddenly grave and waited. At one Jamie came in, hurrying.
"I hoped you would have taken a holiday to-day," said Mr. Bowdoin.
"I have come down to close the books," replied Jamie, not sharply. Mr.
Bowdoin looked at him.
"Mr. Stanchion could have done that. Stanchion!"
"The books are nearly done, sir," said that gentleman, hurrying to the window.
"I prefer to stay, sir, and close the books myself, if Mr. Stanchion will forgive me." He spoke calmly; he gave both men a sudden sense of sorrow. Mr. Bowdoin accompanied him behind the rail.
"Come, Jamie, you need the rest, and Mercedes"--
"She has gone back, sir--and I--have business in New York. I must ask for three days off, beginning to-morrow."
"You shall have it, Jamie, you shall have it. But why did you not go back with Mercedes?"
Jamie made no reply but to bury his face in the ledger, and the old gentleman went away. The bank closed at two o"clock; by that time Jamie had not half finished his figuring. The cashier went, and the teller, each with a "good-night," to which Jamie hardly responded. The messenger went, first asking, "Can I help you with the safe?" to which Jamie gave a gruff "I am not ready." The day-watchman went, and the night-watchman came, each with his greeting. Jamie nodded. "You are late to-day." "I had to be." Last of all, Harley Bowdoin came in (one suspects, at his grandfather"s request), on his way home from the old counting-room on the wharves.