There the deposit of specie was duly made, the money put in the old chest and sealed, and he learned that the pirates had been committed to stand their trial. And he and his father talked it over, and decided that the child might as well stay with McMurtagh, for the present at any rate.
But that "present" was long in pa.s.sing; for the pirates were duly tried, and all but one of them found guilty, sentenced to be hanged, and duly executed on an island in the harbor. There were no sentimentalists about in those days; and their gibbets were erected in the sand of that harbor island, and their bodies swung for many days (as these same sentimentalists might now put it) near the sea they had loved so well; being a due encouragement to other pirates to leave Boston ships alone. Pity the town has not kept up those tactics with its railways!
All the common seamen were executed, that is, and Manuel Silva, the second in command, who had left the little girl with McMurtagh. The captain, it was proved, had been polite to his two lady captives: the men safely disposed of, he had placed the best cabin at their command, and had even gone so far out of his way as to head the ship toward Boston, on their behalf; promising to place them on board some fishing-smack, not too far out. Silva had not agreed to this, and it had led to something like a mutiny on the part of the crew. It was owing to this, doubtless, that they were captured. De Soto, it was known, was a married man; moreover, he was new in command, and not used to pirate ways.
However, this conduct was deemed courteous by the administration at Washington, and, feminine influence being always potent with Andrew Jackson, De Soto"s sentence was commuted to imprisonment for life; and shortly after, being taken to a quiet little country prison, he made interest with the jailer and escaped. It was reported that he shipped upon an African trader; and, going down the harbor past the figure of Manuel Silva elegantly outlined against the sky, he bowed sardonically to the swaying _schema_ of his ancient messmate. It excited some little comment on the African trader at the time; but the usual professional _esprit de corps_ keeps sailors from asking too many questions about the intimate professional conduct of their messmates in earlier voyages.
But that is why De Soto made no draft upon the credit side of his account at the Old Colony Bank; and James Bowdoin"s Sons continued to carry the deposit on their books "for the benefit of whom it may concern." And so McMurtagh, who had taken little Mercedes Silva home that day, continued to make a home for her there, his old mother and his father aiding and abetting him in the task; and he carried her young life, in addition to his other burdens, "for the benefit of whom it may concern."
"Whom it may concern" is too old a story, in such cases, ever to be thought of by the actors in them.
VI.
James McMurtagh was one of that vast majority of men who live, function, work, in their appointed way, and are never heard from, like a good digestion. This is the grand division which separates them from those who, be it for good or evil, or weakness even, will be protagonists. Countless mult.i.tudes of such men as Jamie must there be, to hold the fabric together and make possible the daring spins of you, my lords Lovelace, and you, Launcelots and Tristrams, and Miss Vivien here; who weave your paradoxical cross-purposes of tinsel evil in the sober woof of good.
No one knew, or if he knew remembered, what was Jamie"s age. When he was first taken in by the house, he described himself as a "lad;" but others had not so described him, or else had taken the word as the Scotch, not for English youth, but for male humanity,--wide enough to include a sober under-clerk of doubtful age. Jamie"s father had been a drayman, in the employ of the house, as we have said, until his middle was bisected by that three-inch tire weighted with six puncheons of Jamaica rum.
Jamie had been brought over from Scotland when veritably young,--some months or so; had then been finished in the new-fangled American free schools, and had come up in the counting-room, the day of the accident, equipped to feed his broken-backed father, with knowledge enough to be a bookkeeper, and little enough pride to be a messenger.
Only, he had no spirit of adventure to fit him for a supercargo,--even that brushed too close upon the protagonist for him; and so he stayed upon his office stool. While other clerks went away promoted, he ticked off his life in alternation from the counting-room to the bank; trustworthy on that well-taught street with any forms of other people"s fortunes, only not to make his own, and even trustworthy, as we have seen it go unquestioned, with this little Spanish girl.
Jamie took her home to his parents, and for his sake they fell down and worshiped; with them she lived. The father had had too much rum upon him to care much for the things remaining in this life; after such excessive external application, who could blame him for using it internally more than most? The mother"s marital affection, naturally, was moderated by long practice of mixing him hot tumblers with two lumps of sugar, and of seeing the thing administered more dear to her spouse than the ministering angel. But the mother worshiped Jamie, and Jamie worshiped the little girl; and the years went by.
It was pretty to see Jamie and his mother and the little girl walking to church of a Sunday, and funny to hear Jamie"s excuses for it afterward.
""Tis the women bodies need it," said he to Mr. James Bowdoin, who rallied him thereupon.
"But surely, Jamie," said Mr. James, "you, who have read Hume until you"ve half convinced us all to be free-thinkers,--you"d have your daughter as well educated as yourself?"
"Hersel"," said Jamie, meaning _himself_,--"hersel" may go to ta deevil if he wull; ta little la.s.sie sall be a lady." (Jamie"s Scotch always grew more Gaelic as he got excited.) It was evident that he regarded religion as a sort of ornament of superior breeding, that Mercedes must have, though he could do without it. And Mr. James Bowdoin looked in Jamie"s eye, and held his peace. In those days deference was rigidly exacted in the divers relations of life: a disrespectful word would have caused McMurtagh"s quick dismissal, and the Bowdoins, father and son, would have been made miserable thereby.
"The lad must have his way with the little girl," said Mr. Bowdoin (now promoted to that t.i.tle by his father"s recent death).
"It seems so," said Mr. James Bowdoin (our Mr. James), who by this time had his own little girls to look after.
"Bring the poor child down to Nahant next time you come to spend the day, and give her a chance to play with the children."
VII.
James McMurtagh, with "the old man" and "the mother," lived in a curious little house on Salem Street, at the North End. Probably they liked it because it might have been a little house in some provincial town at home. To its growing defects of neighborhood they were oblivious. It was a square two-story brick box: on the right of the entry, the parlor, never used before, but now set apart for Mercedes; behind, a larger square room, which was dining-room and kitchen combined, and where the McMurtaghs, father and son, were wont to sit in their shirt-sleeves after supper and smoke their pipes; above were four tiny bedrooms.
Within the parlor the little lady, as Jamie already called her, was given undisputed sway; and a strange transmogrification there she made. The pink sh.e.l.ls were collected from the mantel, and piled, with others she had got, to represent a grotto, in one corner of the room; the worked samplers were thought ugly, and banished upstairs. In another corner was a sort of bower, made of bright-colored pieces of stuff the child had begged from the neighbors, and called by her the "Witch"s Cave;" here little Mercedes loved to sit and tell the fortunes of her friends. These were mostly Jamie"s h.o.r.n.y-handed friends; the women neighbors took no part in all these doings, and gave it out loudly that the child was being spoiled. She went, with other boys and girls, to a small dame-school on the other side of Bowdoin Square; for Jamie would not hear of a public school. Here she learned quickly to read, write, and do a little embroidering, and gained much knowledge of human nature.
One thing that they would not allow the child was her outlandish name: Mercy she was called,--Mercy McMurtagh. Perhaps we may venture still to call her Mercedes. The child"s hair and eyes were getting darker, but it was easy to see she would be a _blonde d"Espagne_. Jamie secretly believed she had a strain of n.o.ble blood, though openly he would not have granted such a thing"s existence. We, with our wider racial knowledge, might have recognized points that came from Gothic Spain,--the deep eyes of starlight blue, so near to black, and hair that was a brown with dust of gold. But her feet and hands were all of Andalusia. Jamie had hardly spoken to a woman in his life,--he used to think of himself as deformed. And now this little girl was all his own!
So for a year or two the child was happy. Then came that day, never to be forgotten by her, of the visit to old Mr. Bowdoin at Nahant.
They went down in a steamboat together,--two little Bowdoin girls, younger than Mercedes, a boy, Harley, and a cousin, who was Dorothea Dowse. At first Mercedes did not think much of the Bowdoin children; they wore plain dresses, alike in color, while our heroine had on every ribbon that was hers. They went down under care of Jamie McMurtagh, dismissed at the wharf by Mr. James Bowdoin, who had a stick of candy for each. Business was doing even then; but old Mr.
Bowdoin was not too busy to spend a summer"s day at home with the children. His favorite son, James, had married to his mind; and money came so easy in those times!
Miss Dowse was fifteen, and she called her uncle"s clerk Jamie; so she elevated her look when she came to our Mercedes. She wore gloves, and satin slippers with ribbons crossed at the ankle, and silk stockings. Mercedes had no silk stockings and no gloves. Miss Dowse had rejected the proffered stick of candy, and Mercedes sought a chance to give hers away, one end unsucked. There was this boy in the party,--Harleston Bowdoin,--so she made a favor of it and gave it to him.
They were playing on the rail of the steamboat, and Jamie was sitting respectfully apart inside. The little Bowdoin girls were sucking at their candy contentedly; Mercedes was climbing with the Bowdoin boy upon the rail, and he called his cousin Dolly to join them.
"I can"t; the sun would make my hands so brown if I took off my gloves," said that young lady. "Besides, it"s so common, playing with the pa.s.sengers."
There was a double sting in this; for Mercedes was not just "a pa.s.senger," but of their party. She walked into the cabin with what dignity she could maintain, and then burst out weeping angrily in Jamie"s arms. That is, he sought to comfort her; but she pressed him aside rudely. "Oh, Jamie," she sobbed (she was suffered to call him Jamie), "why didn"t you give me gloves?"
Poor Jamie scratched his head. He had not thought of them; and that was all. He tried to caress the child, with a clumsy tenderness, but she stamped her little foot. Outside, they heard the voices of the other children. Miss Dowse was talking to Master Bowdoin of sights in the harbor; but--how early is a boy sensible to a child"s prettiness!--he was asking after Mercedes. It was now Miss Dolly"s turn to bite her lip. "She"s in the cabin, crying because she has no gloves."
Jamie felt Mercedes quiver; her sobs stopped, panting; in a moment she put her hand to her hair and went to the deck unconcernedly.
But no one ever made Mercedes cry again.
Poor Jamie went to a window where he could hear them talking. He took off his white straw hat, and rubbed his eyes with a red silk handkerchief; the tears were almost in them, too. He had wild thoughts of trying to buy gloves at Nahant. He listened to hear if his child was merry again. She was laughing loudly, and pointing out the white column of Boston Light. "That is the way to sea!" she cried. "I came in that way from sea."
The other children had crept about her, interested. Even Miss Dowse had come over, and was standing with them.
"Did your father take you to sea?"
"I was at sea in my father"s ship," said Mercedes proudly.
"Ah, I didn"t know Jamie McMurtagh owned a ship," said Miss Dolly.
Jamie leaned closer to the window.
"Jamie McMurtagh is not my father," said Mercedes. She said it almost scornfully, and McMurtagh slunk back into the cabin.
Perhaps it was the first time he had ever cried himself.... He felt so sorry that he had not thought of gloves!
VIII.
When they came to the wharf, several carriages were waiting. Some were handsome equipages with silver-mounted harnesses (for nabobs then were in Nahant); others were the familiar New England carryalls. Mercedes looked for Mr. Bowdoin, hoping he had come to meet her in one of the former, but was disappointed, for that gentleman was seen running down the hill as if too late, his blue dress-coat tails streaming in the wind, his Panama hat in one hand, and a large brown-paper bag, bursting with oranges, in the other. By accident or design, as he neared the wharf, the bag did burst, and all the oranges went rolling down the road.
"Pick "em up, children, pick "em up!" gasped Mr. Bowdoin. "Findings keepings, you know." And he broke into a chuckle as the two smaller girls precipitated themselves upon the rolling orange-spheres as if they were footb.a.l.l.s, and Master Harley, in his anxiety to stop one that was rolling over the wharf, tripped upon the hawser, and was grabbed by a friendly sailor just as he himself was rolling after it into the sea.
"You don"t seem to care for oranges, Miss Dolly," said Mr. Bowdoin, as Miss Dowse stood haughtily aloof; and he looked then at Mercedes, who was left quite alone, yet followed Miss Dowse"s example of dignity; Jamie standing behind, not beside her, hat in hand.
"Ah, Ja-- Mr. McMurtagh," said Mr. Bowdoin, doffing his own. "And so this is our Miss Mercy again? Why don"t you chase the oranges, my dear?"