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 multitudes 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 lassie 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 title 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."