Pirate Gold Part 17

V.

Meantime, Jamie, all unconscious of his patrons' anxiety, went on, from spring to fall and fall to spring, working without hope of her, to make his honor good to men. If there was one day in the year that could be said to bring him near enjoyment, it was that day when, his yearly salary saved, he went to New York to buy doubloons. One might almost say he enjoyed this. He enjoyed the night voyage upon the Sound; the waking in the noisy city by busy s.h.i.+ps that had come, perhaps, from New Orleans or Havana; the crowded streets, with crowds of which she had once been one, crowds so great that it seemed they must include her still. The broker of whom he bought his gold would always ask to see him, and offer him a gla.s.s of wine, which, taken by Jamie with a trembling hand, would bring an unwonted glow to his wrinkled cheeks as he hastened away grasping tight his canvas bag of coin. The miser!

Can you make a story of such a life? It had its interest for the recording angel. But it was two years more to the next event we men must notice.

May the twenty-seventh, eighteen fifty-four. Old Jamie (old he had been called for thirty years, and now was old indeed) had finished his work rather early and locked up the books. All day there had been noise and tramping of soldiers and murmurs of the people out on the street before the door, but Jamie had not noticed it. Old Mr. Bowdoin had rushed in and out, red in the face as a cherry, sputtering irascibility, but Jamie had not known it. And now he had come from counting his coin, a pleasure to him, so nearly the old chest lay as full as it had been that day a quarter century before. He had been gloating over it with a candle in the dark vault; but a few rows more, and his work was done, and he might go--to die, or find Mercedes.

As he came out into the street, blinking in the sudden sunlight, he found it crowded close with quiet people. So thick they stood, he could not press his way along the sidewalk. It was not a mob, for there was no shouting or disorder; yet, intermittently, there rose a great murmur, such as the waves make or the leaves, the muttering of a mult.i.tude. Jamie turned his face homeward, and edged along by the wall, where there was most room. And now the mutter rose and swelled, and above it he heard the noise of fife and drum and the tread of soldiers.

He came to the first cross-street, and found it cleared and patrolled by cavalry militia. The man on a horse in front called him by name, and waved his sword at him to pa.s.s. Jamie looked up, and saw it was John Hughson. He would not have known him in his scarlet coat.

"What is it, John?" said Jamie.

"What is it? The whole militia of the State is out, by G--! to see them catch and take one n.i.g.g.e.r South. Look there!"

And Jamie looked from the open side street up the main street. There, beneath the lion and the unicorn of the old State House, through that historic street, cleared now as for a triumph, marched a company of federal troops. Behind them, in a hollow square, followed a body of rough-appearing men, each with a short Roman sword and a revolver; and in the open centre, alone and handcuffed, one trembling negro. The fife had stopped, and they marched now in a hushed silence to the tap of a solitary drum; and behind came the naval marines with cannon.

The street was hung across with flags, union down or draped in black, but the crowd was still. And all along the street, as far down as the wharf, where the free sea shone blue in the May suns.h.i.+ne, stood, on either side, a close rank of Ma.s.sachusetts militia, with bayonets fixed, four thousand strong, restraining, behind, the fifty thousand men who muttered angrily, but stood still. Thus much it took to hold the old Bay State to the Union in 1854, and carry one slave from it to bondage. Down the old street it was South Carolina that walked that day beneath the national flag, and Ma.s.sachusetts that did homage, biding her time till her sister State should turn her arms upon the emblem. "Shame! shame!" the people were crying. But they kept the peace of the republic.

Old Jamie understood nothing of this. He only saw and wondered; saw the soldiery, saw old Mr. Bowdoin leaning from a window as a young man on the sidewalk tried to drag down a flag that hung from it, with a black coffin st.i.tched to the blue field.[1]

"Young man," cried the old gentleman, "leave that flag alone; it's my property!"

"I am an American," cried the youth, "and I'll not suffer the flag of my country to be so disgraced!"

"I too am an American, and damme, sir, 'tis the flag in the street there that's disgraced!"

The fellow slunk away, but Jamie had ceased to listen, for the negro was now in front of him, and there, among the rough band of slave-catchers, his desperate appearance hid by no uniform, a rough felt hat upon his dissolute face, a bowie-knife slung by his waist, there, doing this work in the world, old Jamie saw and recognized the husband of his little girl,--St. Clair.

FOOTNOTE:

[1] A fact, but the man who thus a.s.saulted the flag lived to command a company in the Union army.

VI.

McMurtagh ran out into the street toward him, but was stopped by an officer. He still pressed his way, and when the end of the procession went by they suffered him to go, and he fell in behind the trailing cannon. There he found some others, following out of sympathy for the slave. Some of them he knew, and they took Jamie for an Abolitionist, but Jamie hardly knew what it was all about.

"When Simms was taken," said one, a doctor, "I vowed that he should be the last slave sent back from Ma.s.sachusetts."

"Did you hear," said another, a young lawyer, "how they have treated him? His master had him whipped, when he got home, for defending his case before our courts."

Jamie tried to find his way through the artillery company, but failed.

It was only when they got down to the Long Wharf that the artillery divided, sending two guns to either side of the street, and Jamie and the others hurried to the end. Here was a United States revenue cutter, armed with marines, to take this poor bondsman back to his master. No crowned head ever left a country with more pomp of escort and retinue of flag and cannon. But Jamie's business was with the slave-catcher, not the slave. He found St. Clair standing by the gangway, and called him by name. The fellow started like a criminal; then recognizing the poor clerk, "Oh, it's you, is it?"

"How is Mercedes?" stammered Jamie.

"How the h----l should I know? And what is that to you?"

"But you will tell me where she is?" pleaded the poor old man. "She will not answer my letters. Does she get them? I know she does not get them," he added, as the thought struck him suddenly.

"She gets any that have got money in," retorted St. Clair grimly.

"However, I married her, and I suppose I've got to support her. Get out of the way, there!"

The men were already casting off the ropes. Poor Jamie felt in his pocket, but of course he had no money; he never carried money now.

The cordon of soldiers drew across the wharf and presented arms as their commanding officer came ash.o.r.e, and the stars and stripes rose at the stern of the vessel, and she forged out toward the blue rim of the sea that is visible, even from the wharves, in Boston harbor.

But not a gun was fired. Silently the armed s.h.i.+p left, with its freight of one negro, its company of marines and squad of marshals.

Among them St. Clair stood on the lower deck and looked at Jamie. The poor clerk hung his head as if he were the guilty one. And in the silence was heard the voice of a minister in prayer. The little group of citizens gathered around him with bared heads. He prayed for the poor slave and for the recreant republic, for peace, and that no slave-hunter should again tread quietly the soil of Ma.s.sachusetts. But Jamie heard him not. He was thinking over again the old trouble: how he could not take his salary--that was needed for rest.i.tution; how he could not ask the Bowdoins, or they would wonder where his salary had gone.

As he turned his steps backward to the city, he wondered if St. Clair was still living with her. But yes, he must be, or she would surely have come back to him. A hand was laid upon his shoulder; he looked up; it was the minister who had been upon the wharf.

"Be not cast down, old man. 'In his service is perfect freedom,'"

quoted the minister. He fancied he was one of the Abolitionist group that had followed Anthony Burns to the last. But Jamie only looked up blankly. He was thinking that in four years more he might go to bring back Mercedes.

VII.

Year followed year. This was the twelfth year since Jamie had begun to make up his theft from his own salary; but it had been slower work than he had hoped, for he now had to pay almost a collector's price to get the Spanish gold. He had hurried home one night eagerly, to count his money; for he made his annual purchase and payment in June.

Sixteen hundred dollars in bills he had (it was curious that he kept it now in money, and had no longer a deposit in the bank), and he congratulated himself that he had not had the money at the wharf that day: he might have given it to St. Clair, to learn Mercedes'

whereabouts; and it would not have reached her, and St. Clair would have lied to him; while the taking of a dollar more than was rightfully the bank's--for so Jamie regarded his salary--would really make him a defaulter.

For the old chest was getting so full now that the clerk could almost hold his head up among men. The next year, but three rows of gold coin remained to fill. The smaller coins had all been purchased long ago.

And Jamie (who had only thought to do this, and die, at the first) now began, timidly, to let his imagination go beyond the rest.i.tution; to think of Mercedes, of seeing her, of making her happy yet. For she was still a young girl, to him.

The thirteenth year came. Jamie had begun to take notice of the world.

He took regularly a New Orleans newspaper. The balance against him in the account was now so small! He looked wistfully at the page. However small the deficit, his labors were not complete till he could tear the whole page out. And he could not do that yet: the transaction must be shown upon the books; he might die.

Die! Suddenly his heart beat at the thought. Die! He had never thought of this, to fear it; but now if he should die before the gold was all returned, and all his sacrifice go for naught, even his sacrifice of Mercedes--

The other clerks had lost their interest in poor Jamie by this time; some of them were new, and to these he was merely an old miser, and they made fun of him, he grew so careful about his health. Life had not brought much to poor Jamie to make him so fond of it; but both the Bowdoins noticed it, and remarked to one another, it was curious, after all, how men clung to life as they grew older.

In 1859 a rumor had reached them all that St. Clair had gone on some filibustering expedition to Cuba. Old Mr. Bowdoin mentioned it to McMurtagh; but he said nothing of sending for the wife. In 1861 the war broke out, and the poor clerk saw the one sober crown of his life put off still a year. He was yet more than a thousand dollars short.

He was coming back on a Sound steamer, thinking of this, wondering how he could bear this last delay,--his scanty bag of high-priced gold crowded into a pocket,--reading his New Orleans paper carelessly (save only the births and deaths), when his eye caught a name. Jamie knew there was a war; and the article was all about some fighting of blockade-runners with a federal cruiser near Mobile. But his quick eye traveled to the centre of it, where he read, "Before the vessel was taken, a round shot killed several of the crew, ... among them ... and David St. Clair, well known in this city."