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 ships 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 glass 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
multitude. 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 pass. 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 nigger 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 sunshine, stood, on
either side, a close rank of Massachusetts 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 Massachusetts 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 stitched 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.