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VIII.
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 his voice 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 so rapidly 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. To begin 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 empty space 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."
IX.
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 tickets beyond 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 lamp with 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 not know 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.
X.
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 on a 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 him very 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; he would 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 do you want, 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.
XI.
So Mr. Bowdoin hurried up the street to the bank, half chuckling, half angry, still. Then (having found that there was a special and very important directors' meeting called at once) he scurried out again upon the street, his papers in his hat, and did the business of the day on 'change. And then he went back to the bank, and asked if Mr. Harleston Bowdoin had got there yet.
Mr. Stanchion told him no. By that time it was after eleven. But Mr. Bowdoin made a rapid calculation of the distance (it never would have occurred to him to take a hack; carriages, in his view, were meant for women, funerals, and disreputable merrymakers), and hastened down to Salem Street.
Old Mrs. Hughson met him at the door, grateful and tearful. Yes, young Mr. Harley (she remembered him well in the old days, and had been jealous of him as a rival of her son) was upstairs. She feared poor McMurtagh was very ill. He had been out of his head for days and days. To Mr. Bowdoin's peppery query why the devil she had not sent for him, Mrs. Hughson had nothing to say. It had never occurred to her, perhaps, that the well-being of such a quaint, dried-up old chap as Jamie could be a matter of moment to his wealthy employers whom she had never known.
"Can I see him?" asked Mr. Bowdoin. But as he spoke, Harley came down the stairs.
"It's heart-breaking," he said. "He thinks he's in the South with her. He was going to meet her, it seems; and the poor old fellow does not know he has not gone."
"Let me see him," said the elder. "Have they no nurse?"
"I nurse him off and on, nigh about all he needs," answered Mrs. Hughson. "And then there's John."
But Mr. Bowdoin had hurried up the stairs. Jamie was lying with his eyes wide open, moving restlessly. It seemed a low fever; for his face was pale; only the old ruddiness showed unnaturally, like the mark of his old-country lineage, left from bygone years of youth and sunlight on his paling life. And Jamie's eyes met Mr. Bowdoin's; he had been murmuring rapidly, and there was a smile in them; but this now he lost, though the eyes had in them no look of recognition. He became silent as his look touched Mr. Bowdoin's face and glanced from it quickly, as do the looks of delirious persons and young children. And then, as the old gentleman bent over him and touched his hand, "A thousand dollars yet! a thousand dollars yet!" many times repeating this in a low cry; and all his raving now was of money and rows of money, rows and rows of gold.
Mr. Bowdoin stood by him. Harley came to the door, and motioned to him to step outside. Jamie went on: "A year more! another year more!" Then, as Mr. Bowdoin again touched his hand, he stared, and Mr. Bowdoin started at the mention of his own name.
"See, Mr. Bowdoin! but one row more to fill! But one year more, but one year more!"
Mr. Bowdoin dropped his hand, and went hastily to the door, which he closed behind him.
"Harley, my boy, we mustn't listen to the old man's ravings—and I must go back to the bank."
"He has never talked that way to me, sir: it's all about Mercedes, and his going to her," and Harley opened the door, and both went in.
And sure enough, the old man's raving changed. "I must go to her. I must go to her. I must go to her. I cannot help it, I must go to her."
"Sometimes he thinks he has gone," whispered Harley. "Then he is quieter."
"What are these?" said Mr. Bowdoin, kicking over a pile of newspapers on the floor. "Why does he have New Orleans newspapers?"
The two men looked, and found one paper folded more carefully, on the table; in this they read the item telling of St. Clair's death. They looked at one another.
"That is it, then," said Harley. "I wonder if he left her poor?"
"So she is not in Havana, after all," said Mr. Bowdoin.
And old Jamie, who had been speaking meaningless sentences, suddenly broke into his old refrain: "A thousand dollars more!"
"I must get to the bank," said the old gentleman, "and stop that meeting."
"And I must go to her!" cried Harleston Bowdoin.
The other grasped his hand. But Jamie's spirit was far away, and thought that all these things were done.
XII.
Old Mr. Bowdoin went back to his bank meeting, which he peremptorily postponed, bidding James his son to vote that way, and he would give him reasons afterward. Going home he linked his arm in his, and told him why he would not have that meeting, and the new bank formed, and all its assets and trusts counted, until James McMurtagh was well again, or not in this world to know. And that same night, Commander Harleston, still on sick leave, started by rail for New Orleans, with orders that would take him through the lines. They had doctors and a nurse now for poor old Jamie; but Mr. Bowdoin was convinced no drug could save his life and reason,—only Mercedes. He lay still in a fever, out of his mind; and the doctors dreaded that his heart might stop when his mind came to. That, at least, was the English of it; the doctors spoke in words of Greek and Latin.
James Bowdoin suggested to his father that they should open the chest, thereby exciting a most unwonted burst of ire. "I pry into poor Jamie's accounts while he's lost his mind of grief about that girl!" (For also to him Mercedes, now nigh to forty, was still a girl.) "I would not stoop to doubt him, sir." Yet, on the other hand, Mr. Bowdoin would probably have never condoned a theft, once discovered; and James Bowdoin wasted his time in hinting they might make it good.
"Confound it, sir," said the father, "it's the making it good to Jamie, not the making it good to us, that counts,—don't you see?"
"You do suspect him, then?"
"Not a bit,—not one whit, sir!" cried the father. "I know him better. And I hate a low, suspicious habit of mind, sir, with all my heart!"
"You once said, sir, years ago (do you remember?), that but one thing—love—could make a man like Jamie go wrong."
"I said a lot of d——d fool things, sir, when I was bringing you up, and the consequences are evident." And Mr. Bowdoin slammed out of the breakfast-room where this conversation took place.
But no word came from Harleston, and the old gentleman's temper grew more execrable every day. Again the bank directors met, and again at his request—this time avowedly on account of McMurtagh's illness—the reorganization and examination were postponed. And at last, the very day before the next meeting, there came a telegram from Harley in New York. It said this only:—
"Landed to-day. Arrive to-morrow morning. Found."
* * * * *
"Now why the deuce can't he say what he's found and who's with him?" complained old Mr. Bowdoin to his wife and son for the twentieth time, that next morning.
Breakfast was over, and they were waiting for Harley to arrive. Mrs. Bowdoin went on with her work in silence.
"And why the devil is the train so late? I must be at the bank at eleven. Do you suppose she's with him?"
"How is Jamie?" said Mrs. Bowdoin only in reply.
"Much the same. Do you think—do you think"—
"I am afraid so, James," said the old lady. "Harley would have said"—
"There he comes!" cried Mr. Bowdoin from the window. Father and son ran to the door, in the early spring morning, and saw a carriage stop, and Harley step out of it, and then—a little girl.
XIII.
The image of Mercedes she was; and the old gentleman caught her up and kissed her. He had a way with all children; and James thought this little maid was just as he remembered her mother, that day, now so long gone, on the old Long Wharf, when the sailing-vessel came in from the harbor,—the day he was engaged to marry his Abby. Old Mrs. Bowdoin stood beside, rubbing her spectacles; and then the old man set the child upon his lap, and told her soon she should see her grandfather. And the child began to prattle to him in a good English that had yet a color of something French or Spanish; and she wore a black dress.
"But perhaps you have never heard of your old grandfather?"
The child said that "mamma" had often talked about him, and had said that some day she should go to Boston to see him. "Grandfather Jamie," the child called him. "That was before mamma went away."
Mr. Bowdoin looked at the black dress, and then at Harleston; and Harleston nodded his head sadly.
"Well, Mercedes, we will go very soon. Isn't your name Mercedes?" said the old gentleman, seeing the little maid look surprised.
"My name is Sarah, but mamma called me Sadie," lisped the child.
Mr. Bowdoin and Harleston looked each at the other, and had the same thought. It was as if the mother, who had so darkened (or shall we, after all, say lightened?) Jamie's life, had given up her strange Spanish name in giving him back this child, and remembered but the homely "Sadie" he once had called her by. But by this time old lady Bowdoin had the little maid upon her lap, and James was dragging Harley away to tell his story. And old Mr. Bowdoin even broke his rule by taking an after-breakfast cigar, and puffed it furiously.
"I got to New Orleans by rail and river, as you know. There I inquired after St. Clair, and had no difficulty in finding out about him. He had been a sort of captain of marines in an armed blockade-runner, and he was well known in New Orleans as a gambler, a slave-dealer"—
Mr. Bowdoin grunted.
—"almost what they call a thug. But he had not been killed instantly; he died in a city hospital."
"There is no doubt about his being dead?" queried Mr. Bowdoin anxiously.
"Not the slightest. I saw his grave. But, unhappily, Mercedes is dead, too."
"All is for the best," said Mr. Bowdoin philosophically. "Perhaps you'd have married her."
"Perhaps I should," said Commander Harley simply. "Well, I found her at the hospital where he had died, and she died too. This little girl was all she had left. I brought her back. As you see, she is like her mother, only gentler, and her mother brought her up to reverence old Jamie above all things on earth."
"It was time," said Mr. Bowdoin dryly.
"She told me St. Clair had got into trouble in New York; and old Jamie had sent them some large sum,—over twenty thousand dollars."
Mr. Bowdoin started. "The child told you this?"
"No, the mother. I saw her before she died."
"Oh," said his grandfather. "You did not tell me that."
"I saw her before she died," said Harley firmly. "You must not think hardly of her; she was very changed." The tears were in Commander Harleston's eyes.
"I will not," said Mr. Bowdoin. "Over twenty thousand dollars,—dear me, dear me! And we have our directors' meeting to-day. Well, well. I am glad, at least, poor Jamie has his little girl again," and Mr. Bowdoin took his hat and prepared to go. "I only hope I'm too late. James, go on ahead. Harley, my boy, I'm afraid we know it all."
"Stop a minute," said Harley. "There was some one else at the hospital."
"Everybody seems to have been at the hospital," growled old Mr. Bowdoin petulantly. But he sat down wearily, wondering what he should do; for he felt almost sure now of what poor Jamie had done.
"The captain of the blockade-runner was there, too. He was mortally wounded; and it was from him that I learned most about St. Clair and how he ended. He seemed to be a Spaniard by birth, though he wore as a brooch a small miniature of Andrew Jackson."
"Hang Andrew Jackson!" cried the old gentleman. "What do I care about Andrew Jackson?"
"That's what I asked him. And do you know what he said? 'Why, he saved me from hanging.'"
Mr. Bowdoin started.
"Before he died he told me of his life. He had even been on a pirate, in old days. Once he was captured, and tried in Boston; and, for some kindness he had shown, old President Jackson reprieved him. Then he ran away, and never dared come back. But he left some money at a bank here, and a little girl, his daughter."
"What was his name? Hang it, what was his name?" shouted old Mr. Bowdoin, putting on his hat.
"Soto,—Romolo Soto."
Mr. Bowdoin sank back in his chair again. "Why, that was the captain. Mercedes was the mate's child."
"No. The money was Soto's, and the child too. He told me he had only lately sent a detective here to try and trace the child."
"The sheriff's officer, by Jove!" said Mr. Bowdoin. "But can you prove it? can you prove it?" he cried.
"Mercedes had yellow hair, so had Soto. And he knew your name. And before he died he gave me papers."
Mr. Bowdoin jumped up, took the papers, and bolted into the street.
XIV.
His son James was sitting in the chair, with the other directors around him, when old Mr. Bowdoin reached the bank. There was a silence when he entered, and a sense of past discussion in the air. James Bowdoin rose.
"Keep the chair, James, keep the chair. I have a little business with the board."
"They were discussing, sir," replied James, "the necessity of completing our work for the new organization. Is McMurtagh yet well enough to work?"
"No," said the father.
"What is your objection to proceeding without him?" asked Mr. Pinckney rather shortly.
"None whatever," coolly answered Mr. Bowdoin.
"None whatever? Why, you said you would not proceed while Mr. McMurtagh was ill."
"McMurtagh will never come back to the bank," said old Mr. Bowdoin gravely.
"Dear me, I hope he is not dead?"
"No, but he will retire; on a pension, of course. Then his granddaughter has quite a little fortune."
"His granddaughter—a fortune?"
"Certainly—Miss Sarah—McMurtagh," gasped Mr. Bowdoin. He could not say "St. Clair," and so her name was changed. "Something over twenty thousand dollars. I have come for it now."
The other directors looked at old Mr. Bowdoin for visual evidence of a failing mind.
"It's in the safe there, in a box. Mr. Stanchion, please get down the old tin box marked 'James Bowdoin's Sons;' there are the papers. The child's other grandfather, one Romolo Soto, gave it me himself, in 1829. I myself had it put in this bank the next day. Here is the receipt: 'James Bowdoin's Sons, one chest said to contain Spanish gold. Amount not specified.' I'll take it, if you please."
"The amount must be specified somewhere."
"The amount was duly entered on the books of James Bowdoin's Sons, Tom Pinckney; and their books are no business of yours, unless you doubt our credit. Would you like a written statement?" and Mr. Bowdoin puffed himself up and glared at his old friend.
"Here is the chest, sir," said Mr. Stanchion suavely. "Have you the key?"
"No, sir; Mr. McMurtagh has the key," and Mr. Bowdoin stalked from the office.
XV.
Then old Mr. Bowdoin, with the box under his arm, hurried down to Salem Street. Jamie still lay there, unconscious of earthly things. For many weeks, his spirit, like a tired bird, had hovered between this world and the next, uncertain where to alight.
For many weeks he had been, as we call it, out of his head. Harley had had time to go to New Orleans and return, Mercedes and Soto to die, and all these meetings about less important things to happen at the bank; and still old Jamie's body lay in the little house in Salem Street, his mind far wandering. But in all his sixty years of gray life, up to then, I doubt if his soul had been so happy. Dare we even say it was less real? Old Mr. Bowdoin laid the chest beside the door, and listened.
For Jamie was wandering with Mercedes under sunny skies; and now, for many days, his ravings had not been of money or of this world's duty, but only of her. It had been so from about the time she must have died; dare one suppose he knew it? So his mind was still with her.
The doctors, though, were very anxious for his mind, still wandering. If his body returned to life, they feared that his mind would not. But the Bowdoins and little Sarah sat and watched there.
It came that morning,—it was late in May; so calmly that for some moments they did not notice it,—old Mr. Bowdoin and the little girl.
Jamie opened his eyes to look out on this world again so naturally that they did not see that he had waked; only he lay there, looking out of the window, and puzzling at a blossom that was on a tree below; for he remembered, when he had gone to sleep the night before, it was March weather, and the snow lay on the ground. The snow lay thick upon the ground as he was walking to the station. How could spring have come in a night? Where was—What world was this?
For his eyes traveled down the room to where, sitting at the foot of his bed to be the first to be seen by him, Jamie saw his little girl as he remembered her.
Mr. Bowdoin started as the look of seeing came back to Jamie's eyes. But the little girl, as she had been told to do, ran forward and took the old clerk's hand.
It was very quiet in the room. Old Mr. Bowdoin dared not speak; he sat there rubbing his spectacles.
But old Jamie had looked up to her, and said only, "Mercedes!"
XVI.
Jamie did come back to the bank—once. It was on a day some weeks after this, when he was well. He had been well enough even for one more journey to New York; the Bowdoins did not thwart him. And Mercedes—Sadie—was at his home; so now he came to get possession of his ward's little fortune, to be duly invested in his name as trustee, in the stock of the Old Colony Bank. He came in one morning, and all the bookkeepers greeted him; and then he went into the safe, where he found the box as usual; for Mr. Bowdoin, knowing that he would come, had taken it back.
When he came out, the chest was under his arm; and he went to old Mr. Bowdoin, alone in his private room. "Here is the chest, sir, I must ask you to count it." And before Mr. Bowdoin could answer he had turned the lock, so the lid sprang open. There, almost filling the box, were rows of coin, shining rows of gold.
Old Mr. Bowdoin's eyes glistened. "Jamie, why should I count it?" he said gently. "It is yours now, and you alone can receipt for it, as Sarah's legal guardian."
"I would have ye ken, sir, that the firm o' James Bowdoin's Sons ha' duly performed their trust."
And old Mr. Bowdoin said no more, but counted the coins, one by one, to the full number the ledger showed.
He did not look at the other page. But Jamie was not one to tear a leaf from a ledger. No one ever looked at the old book again; but the honest entries stand there still upon the page. Only now there is another: "Restored in full, June 26, 1862."
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* * * * *
Transcriber's note:
There are three instances of oe ligatures in the advertising material; these have been rendered simply as oe.
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