No letter came back from Jamie, and Mr. Bowdoin rather wondered at it.
But openly he pooh-poohed the idea. His wife had lost twenty years of
her age in presiding over Sanitary Commissions, and getting up classes
where little girls picked lint for Union soldiers; and Mr. Bowdoin
himself was full of the war news in the papers. For he was a war
Democrat (that fine old name!), and had he had his way, every son and
grandson would have been in the Union army. Most of them were, among
them Harley, though the family blood had made him choose the naval
branch. Commander Harleston Bowdoin was back on a furlough won him by
a gunshot wound: and it was he who asked about old Jamie most
anxiously.
"You feel sure that he was going to Havana?" said he over the family
breakfast table.
Old lady Bowdoin had left them; long since she had established her
claim to the donation fund by arriving always first at breakfast, and
had devoted it, triumphantly, to a fund for free negroes,--"contrabands,"
as they were just then called. But Mrs. Bowdoin never had taken much
interest in Mercedes.
"Sure, they were last heard of there. He was on some filibustering
expedition in Cuba. Perhaps he was hanged. But no, I don't think so.
Poor Jamie used to send them so much money!"
"He might have written before he sailed," said Harley, nursing his
wounded arm.
"If he wrote, I guess he wrote to her," said Mr. Bowdoin dryly. "Why
should he write to me?"
"I don't like it," said Harley.
Mr. Bowdoin did not like it; and not being willing to admit this to
himself, it made him very cross. So he rose, and, crowding his hat
over his eyes, strode out into the April morning, and down the street
to the wharf, and down the wharf to the office, where he silenced his
trio of pensioners for the time being by telling them all to go to the
devil; _he_ would not be bothered. And these, hardly surprised, and
not at all offended, hobbled around to the southern side of the
building, where they lent each other quarters against the morrow, when
they knew the peppery old gentleman would relent.
Mr. Bowdoin stamped up the two flights of narrow stairs to the
counting-room, where his first action was to take off a large piece of
cannel coal just put on the fire by Mr. James Bowdoin, and damn his
son and heir for his extravagance. As the coal put back in the hod was
rapidly filling the room with its smoke, James the younger fled
incontinently; and the elder contemplated the situation. It was true
Jamie had not written; but he had not thought much about it. Harley
entered.
"I was thinking, sir, of going down to Mr. McMurtagh's lodgings and
asking if they had heard from him."
"Haven't you been there yet? I should think any fool would have gone
there first!"
"That's why I didn't, sir," said Harley respectfully.
Old Mr. Bowdoin chuckled grimly, and his grandson took his leave.
"Come back and tell me at the bank!" cried Mr. Bowdoin.
But hardly had Harley got down the stairs before the old gentleman had
another visitor. And this time it was a sheriff with brass buttons;
and he held a large document in his hands.
Now Mr. Bowdoin was not over-fond of officers of the law; he detested
lawsuits, and he had a horror of legal documents. Therefore he groaned
at the sight, and, throwing open a window, fingered his watch-chain
nervously, as one who is about to flee.
"What do _you_ want, sir?" said he.
"Is this the office of James Bowdoin's Sons?"
"What if it were, sir?"
The officer brandished his document. "Is there a clerk here,--one
James McMurtagh?"
"No, sir." Mr. Bowdoin spoke decidedly.
"Has he a son-in-law, David St. Clair?"