Of course they had the money, and in some months the people at the
bank began to hear fine accounts of St. Clair's doings in New York.
Not so much, perhaps, from Jamie as from one or two other clerks to
whom St. Clair had taken the trouble to write a letter or two. As for
Jamie, he went back to live in the little house on Salem Street.
All the same, he grew thin and older-looking. He did not pretend to
take the same interest in his work. Many and grave were the talks the
two Bowdoins, father and son, had about him. The first few weeks after
the departure of the St. Clairs, they feared actually for his life.
He seemed to waste away. Then, one week, he went on to New York
himself, and after that grew better. This was when he carried on to
St. Clair the money coming from the sale of the house. Up to that time
he had had no letter from Mercedes, though he wrote her every week.
He took care to place the money in Mercedes' name as special capital.
But the other two men seemed to be active, progressive fellows. They
reposed confidence in St. Clair, and they had always known him. After
all, the old man tried to think, the qualities required to keep moneys
separate were not those that went best to make it, and stock-broking
was suited to a gambler as a business. For Jamie shared intensely the
respectable prejudices against stock-broking of the elders of that
day.
After this, he occasionally got letters from his Mercedes. They came
addressed to the bank (as if she never liked to recognize that he was
back in Salem Street), and it grew to be quite a joke among the other
clerks to watch for them; for they had noticed their effect on Jamie,
and they soon learned to identify the handwriting which made him beam
so that half the wrinkles went, and the old healthy apple-color came
back to his cheeks.
Sometimes when the letter came they would place it under his blotter,
and if it was a Tuesday (and she generally wrote for Tuesday's
arrival) old Jamie's face would lengthen as he turned his mail over,
or fall if he saw his desk empty. Woe to the clerk who asked a favor
in those moments! Then the clerk next him would slyly turn the
blotting-paper over, and Jamie would grasp the letter and crowd it
into his pocket, and his face would gleam again. He never knew they
suspected it, but on such occasions the whole bank would combine to
invent a pretext for getting Jamie out of the room, that he might read
his letter undisturbed. Otherwise he let it go till lunch-time, and
then, they felt sure, took no lunch; for he would never read her
letters when any one was looking on. They all knew who she was. It was
the joke of years at the Old Colony Bank. They called Mercedes "old
Jamie's foreign mail."
She never wrote regularly, however; and if she missed, poor McMurtagh
would invent most elaborate schemes, extra presents (he always made
her an allowance), for extorting letters from her. The sight of her
handwriting at any time would make his heart beat. Harley Bowdoin had
by this time been taken into the counting-room. He was studying law as
a profession (there being little left of the business), and Jamie
appeared to be strangely fond of him. Often, by the ancient custom, he
would call Harleston "Mr. James," Mr. James Bowdoin having no sons.
Mr. James himself spoke of this intimacy once to his father. "Don't
you see it's because the boy fell in love with his Mercedes?" said the
old gentleman. Certain it is, the two were inseparable. One fancies
Harleston heard more of Mrs. St. Clair than either of Jamie's older
friends.
For Jamie, in her absence, grew to love all whom she had ever known,
all who had ever seen her; how much more, then, this young fellow who
had shown the grace to love her, too! Jamie was fond of walking to the
places she had known, and he even took to going to church himself, to
King's Chapel, where she had been so often. When his vacation came,
the next summer, he went on to New York, and stayed at a cheap hotel
on Fourth Avenue, and would go to see her; not too often, or when
other people were there, for he was still modest, and only dared hope
she might not hate him. It was all his fault, and perhaps he had been
hard with her husband. But she suffered him now, and Jamie returned
looking ten years younger. St. Clair seemed prosperous, and Jamie even
mentioned his son-in-law to the other clerks, which was like a boast
for Jamie.
Perhaps at no time had the two Bowdoins thought of him so much. He
lived now as if he were very poor, and they suspected him of sending
all his salary to Mercedes. "It makes no difference raising it;
'twould all go just the same," said Mr. Bowdoin. "Man alive, why
didn't you let him take the money, that day down the wharf, and take
the girl yourself? You used to be keen enough about girls before you
got so bald," added the old gentleman, with a chuckle. He was rather
proud of his own shock of soft white hair.
"That's why you were in such a haste to marry me, I suppose," growled
Mr. James. "You had no trouble of that kind yourself."
"Trouble? It's only your mother protects me. I was going down town in
a 'bus to-day, and there I saw your mother coming out of one of those
Abolition meetings of her cousin, Wendell Phillips,--I told her he'd
be hanged some day,--and there opposite sat an old gentleman, older
than I, sir, and he said to me, 'Married, sir? So am I, sir. Married
again only last week. Been married fifty years, but this one's a great
improvement on the first one, sir, I can assure you. _She brushes my
hair!_' That's more than you can get a wife to do for you, James!"
The father and son chirruped in unison.
"Did you tell my mother of your resolve to try again, sir?"
"I did, I did, and that my next choice was no incendiary Abolitionist,
either. I told her I'd asked her already, to keep her disengaged,--old
Miss Virginia Pyncheon, you know; and, egad! if your mother didn't cut
her to-day in the street! But what do you think of old Jamie?"
"I don't know what to think. He certainly seems very ill."
"Ah, James," said the old man, "why did you laugh that day? If only
the fairy stories about changing old clerks to fairy princes came
true! She could not have married any one to love her like old Jamie."