"Still working, Jamie?"
"I must work until I finish, Mr. Harley."
"It"s late for me," said Harley, "but a ship came in."
"A ship!"
"Oh, only the Maine Lady. Well, good-night, Jamie."
"Good-night, Mr. Harley." Jamie had never used the "Mr." to Harley before, of all the Bowdoins; and now it seemed emphasized, even. The young man stopped.
"Tell me, Jamie, can I help you in anything?"
"No!" cried old Jamie; and Harley fled.
Left alone, Jamie laid down his pen. It seemed his figuring was done.
But he continued to sit, motionless, upon his high stool. For Mercedes had told him, between Worcester and Boston, that her David would be in prison, perhaps for life, unless he could get him seventeen thousand dollars within forty-eight hours.
She had pleaded with him all the way to Boston, all the way in the carriage down to the little house. His roses had been forgotten in the car. In vain he told her that he had no money.
She could not see that St. Clair had done anything wrong; it was a persecution of his partners, she said; the stock of a customer had been pledged for his own debt. Jamie understood the offense well enough. And then, in the evening, he had known that she was soon to have a child. But with this money all would be forgiven; and David would go back to New Orleans, where his friends urged him to return, "in his old profession." Could not Jamie borrow it, even? said Mercedes.
It was not then, but at the dawn, after a sleepless night, that Jamie had come to his decision. After all, what was his life, or his future, yes, or his honor, worth to any one? His memory, when he died, what mattered it to any one but Mercedes herself? And she would not remember him long. Was it not a species of selfishness--like his presumption in loving her--to care so for his own good name? So he had told Mercedes that he "would arrange it." After her burst of tears and grat.i.tude, she became anxious about David; she feared he might destroy himself. So Jamie had put her on the morning train, and promised to follow that night.
The clock struck six, and the watchman pa.s.sed by on his rounds. "Still there?"
"I"m nearly done," said Jamie.
The cash drawer lay beside him; at a glance he saw the bills were there, sufficient for his purpose. He took up four rolls, each one having the amount of its contents marked on the paper band. Then he laid them on the desk again. He opened the day-book to make the necessary false entry. Which account was least likely to be drawn upon? Jamie turned the leaves rapidly.
"James Bowdoin"s Sons." Not that. "The Maine Lady." He took up the pen, started to make the entry; then dashed it to the floor, burying his face in his hands.
He _could_ not do it. The old bookkeeper"s whole life cried out against a sin like that. To falsify the books! Closing the ledger, he took up the cash drawer and started for the safe. The watchman came in again.
"Done?" said he.
"Done," said Jamie.
The watchman went out, and Jamie entered the roomy old safe. He put the ledgers and the cash drawer in their places; but the sudden darkness blinded his eyes. In it he saw the face of his Mercedes, still sad but comforted, as he had left her at the train that morning.
He wiped the tears away and tried to think. He looked around the old vault, where so much money, idle money, money of dead people, lay mouldering away; and not one dollar of it to save his little girl.
Then his eye fell on the old box on the upper shelf. A hanged pirate"s money! He drew the box down; the key still was on his bunch; he opened the chest. There the gold pieces lay in their canvas bag; no one had thought of them for almost twenty years. Now, as a thought struck him, he took down some old ledgers, ledgers of the old firm of James Bowdoin"s Sons, that had been placed there for safe-keeping. He opened one after another hurriedly; then, getting the right one, he came out into the light, and, finding the index, turned to the page containing this entry:--
_Dr. Pirates._
June 24, 1829: To account of whom it may concern (eagles, pistoles & doubloons) $16,897.00
He dipped his pen in ink, and with a firm hand wrote opposite:--
_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.
PART THREE: RECOVERY.
I.
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 no more 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 own dishonor. 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 st.u.r.dy 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 so heavy 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 rest.i.tution. 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 invested the 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 pa.s.sed 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.
II.