Pirate Gold Part 9

David did not know what ailed him. He loved his wife (not too exclusively: that was not in his shallow nature); he had a fine house and the handling of money. To his friends he was a banker. They were at first envious of his reputability, and that pleased him while it lasted. But it annoyed him that it had not dawned on their untutored minds that handling money was not synonymous with possession. A banker! At least he had the control of money; could lend it; might lend it to his friends.

There was, in those days, an outpost of Satan--overrated perhaps in importance by the college authorities, with proportionate overawing effect upon the students--on the riverside, over against Cambridge.

Here "trials of speed," trotting speed, were held; bar-rooms existed; it was rumored pools were sold. Hither the four hundred, the liberal four hundred, of Boston's then existent vice, were wont to repair and witness contests for "purses." It was worth, in those days, a bank clerk's position or an undergraduate's degree ever to be seen there.

It may be imagined with what terror--a terror even trans.m.u.ting itself to pity dictating a refusal on Mercedes' part--old Jamie heard of a proposition, one holiday, that David should take his wife there.

Mercedes would not go; and St. Clair laughed at her, in private, and went alone. She was forced to be the accomplice of his going.

The fact is, St. Clair, from the tip of his mustache to his patent-leather shoes, was bored with regular hours, respectability, and the a.s.surance of an income adequate to his ordinary spending.

Something must be done for joy of life. He gave a champagne supper to his old cronies, at a tavern by the wayside, and bore their chaff.

Then he bet. Then he stayed away from home a day or two.

A b.u.t.terfly cares but for suns.h.i.+ne. His love for Mercedes was quite animal; he cared nothing for her mind; all poor Jamie's expensive schooling was wasted, more unappreciated by him than it would have been by John Hughson. So, one day, St. Clair came home to find her crying; and his love for her then ended.

V.

Mercedes, remember, lived in the earlier half of this strange century, now so soon to go to judgment. In these last years, when women seek men's rights in exchange for woman's reason, reactionary males have criticised them as children swapping old lamps for new, fine instruments for coa.r.s.er toys. As a poet has put it, why does

"a woman Dowered by G.o.d with power of life or death Now cry for coa.r.s.er tools,"

and seek to exchange the ballot for Prospero's wand? Like other savages, she would exchange fine gold for guns and hatchets. (Beads, trinkets, the men might pardon them!)

A woman of power once said she had rather reign than govern. But reigns, with male St. Clairs, so soon are over! Mercedes' dynasty had ended. She knew it before St. Clair was conscious of it, and poor Jamie knew it when she did.

It was his custom to stay late at the bank, after hours. It closed at two o'clock; and in those days all merchants then went home to their dinner. Jamie, unknown to the cas.h.i.+er, would a.s.sume what he could of St. Clair's work, to get him home the sooner to Mercedes. It is to be hoped he always went there.

As one looks back on the days of great events, one wonders that the morning of them was not consciously brightened or shadowed by the happening to come. For, after many years, that morning,--of the meeting, or the news, or whatever it was,--dull and gray as in fact it was, seems now all glorified in memory, illumined with the radiance it bore among its hours. Jamie never could remember what he did that morning or that day. It was close to half past four by the clock; the cas.h.i.+er, the other clerks, had gone; the charwoman was sweeping. He was mechanically counting over the cash in the cash drawer (it had been counted over before by the teller, so Jamie's count was but excess of caution); he was separating the gold and silver and Ma.s.sachusetts bills from the bills that came from banks of other States. (These never were credited until collected, and so not counted yet as cash, but credited to the collection account; in Jamie's eyes, bank-bills of other States were not so honest as Ma.s.sachusetts issues, any more than their merchants were like James Bowdoin's Sons). He was thinking, with a sadness not admitted to himself, of Mercedes; trying to believe his judgment a fancy; trying to see, in his mind's eye, David's arrival home (he had sent him off the half an hour before), hoping even for kisses by him for Mercedes (for he grudged him not her love, but wished his the greater). And now, with half his mind, he was adding up the long five columns of figures, as he could do almost unconsciously, thinking of other things. He had carried down the third figure, when suddenly there came that warm stirring at the roots of the hair that presages, to the slower brain, the heart's grasp of a coming disaster.

The figure was a 4 he carried down. His count of the cash had made it a 2.

Nonsense. He pa.s.sed his hand to his quickened heart and made an effort to slow his breath. It was his mistake; he had been thinking of other things, of Mercedes. He leaned back against the high desk and rested.

Besides, what foolish fear to jump at fault for error, at fault of David St. Clair! He had not been near the cash drawer.

It was the teller's mistake. And this time poor Jamie added up like a schoolboy, totting each figure. No thought of his Mercedes now.

Fourteen thousand _four_ hundred and twelve, sixty-four cents. The teller's addition was right.

Jamie looked at the cash again. There were two piles of bank-bills, one of gold and silver. Among the former was one packet of hundred-dollar bills in a belt, marked "$5000." This wrapper he had not (as he now remembered) verified when he had made his count. His heart stood still; prompting the head to remember that it was a package collected by the bank's messenger on a discount, by David St.

Clair.

Poor Jamie tore off the band. He sat down, and counted the bills again with a shaking hand.

There were only forty-eight of them.

VI.

The packet was two hundred dollars short. And David had brought it in.

Two hundred dollars! Only two hundred dollars! In G.o.d's name, why did he not borrow it, ask me for it? thought poor Jamie. He must have known it would be at once discovered. And mixed curiously with Jamie's dismay was a business man's contempt for the childishness of the theft. And yet they called such men sharpers!

For never from that moment, from that time on, did poor Jamie doubt the sort of man Mercedes had married. Never for one moment did the idea occur to him that the robbery might be overlooked, the man reformed. Jamie's heart was as a little child's, but his head was hard enough. He had seen too much of human nature, of business methods and ways, to doubt what this thing meant or what it led to. He had been trying to look through Mercedes' eyes. He had known him for a gambler all along; and now it appeared that he was a man not to be trusted even with money. And he had given him Mercedes!

There had been Harley Bowdoin. She had liked him first; and but for them, his employers--But no; old Jamie could not blame his benefactor, even through his wife. It was not that. No one was at fault but he himself. If he had even loved her less, it had been better for her: 'twas his fault, again his fault.

Sobbing, he went through the easy form of making good the theft; this with no thought of condoning the offense, but for his little girl's name. It was simple enough: it was but the drawing a check of his own to cover the loss. Oh, the fool the scoundrel had been!

Jamie drew the check, and canceled it, and added it to the teller's slip. Then he closed the heavy books, put the cash drawer back in the safe, closed the heavy iron doors, gave a turn of his wrist and a pull to the handle, said a word to the night-watchman, and went out into the street. It was the soft, broad sunlight of a May afternoon; by the clock at the head of the street he saw that it was not yet six o'clock. But for once Jamie went straight home.

Mr. St. Clair had not come in, said the servant. (They now kept one servant.) Mrs. St. Clair was lying down. Jamie went into the parlor, contrary to his wont, and sat down awkwardly. It was furnished quite with elegance: Mercedes had been so proud of it! His little girl! And now he had married her to a thief! People might come to scorn her, his Mercedes.

They had tea alone together; and Jamie was very tender to her, so that she became frightened at his manner, and asked if anything was wrong with David.

"No," said Jamie. "Has he not been home? Do you not know where he is?"

"No," sighed the wife. "He has always told me before this."

Jamie touched her hand shyly. "Do you still love him, dear?"

But she flung away from him angrily, and went upstairs. And old Jamie waited. He dared not smoke his pipe in the parlor, nor even on the doorstep (which was a pleasant place; there was a little park, with trees, in front), for Mercedes thought it ungenteel. The present incongruity of this regard for appearances never struck Jamie, and he waited there. After eleven o'clock he fancied he might venture; the neighbors were not likely to be up to notice it. So he lit his pipe and listened. There was still a light in her window; but David St.

Clair did not come. Her window stood open, and Jamie listened hard to hear if she were crying. Shortly after midnight the birds in the square began to twitter, as if it were nearly dawn. Then they went to sleep again, but Jamie went on smoking.

It was daylight when St. Clair appeared, in a carriage. He had the look of one who has been up all night, and started nervously as he saw Jamie on the doorstep. Then he pulled himself together, b.u.t.toning his coat, and, giving the driver a bill, he turned to face the old clerk.

"Taking an early pipe, Mr. McMurtagh?"

"I know what ye ha' done," said Jamie simply. "I ha' made it guid; but ye must go."

St. Clair's bravado collapsed before Jamie's directness.

"Made what good?" he bl.u.s.tered.

"The two hundred dollars ye took," said Jamie.

"Two hundred dollars? I took? Old man, you're crazy."

"I tell ye I ha' made it guid," said Jamie.

"Made it good? I could do that myself, if--if"--

"Perhaps ye'll be having the money about ye now?" said Jamie. "Can ye give it me?"