IV.
No year, probably, of James McMurtagh's life had he been so happy. It delighted him to let St. Clair away early from the bank; and to sit alone over the ledgers, imagining St. Clair's hurrying home, and the greeting kiss, and the walk they got along the shells of the beach before supper, with the setting sun slanting to them over the wide bay from the Brookline hills. When they took the meal alone, it delighted Jamie to sit at Mercy's right and have her David help him; or, when they had "company," it pleased the old man almost as much to stay away and think proudly of them. Such times he would sit alone on the Common and smoke his pipe, and come home late and let himself in with his latch-key, and steal up quickly to his own bedroom at the top of the house.
Now that he was so happy, and had left his old friends the Bowdoins, a wave of unconscious affection for them spread over his soul. Under pretext of keeping their accounts straight—which now hardly needed balancing even once a month—old Jamie would edge down to the counting-room upon the wharf, after hours, or even for a few minutes at noontime (perhaps sacrificing his lunch therefor), to catch old Mr. Bowdoin at his desk and chat with him (under plea of some omitted entry needing explanation), and tell him how well David was doing, and Mercedes so happy, and what company they had had to tea the night before. So that one day Mr. Bowdoin even ventured to give him a golden bracelet young Harleston Bowdoin had sent, soon after the wedding, from France; and Jamie took it without a murmur. "Ah, 'tis a pity, sir, ye din't keep the old house up, for the sake of the young gentlemen, if nothing more," said he; and "Ah, Jamie," was Mr. Bowdoin's reply, "it's all dirty coal-barges now; the old house would not know its way about in steamers. We'll have to take to banking, like yourself and Sinclair there."
Jamie laughed with pleasure, and father and son went each to a window to watch him as he sidled up the street.
"Caroline never would have stood it," said the old man.
"Neither would Abby," said the younger one. "Yet you made me marry her;" and they both chuckled. It was the habit of the Bowdoin males to marry them to women without a sense of humor, and then to take a mutual delight in the consequences.
"You only married her to get a house," said the old man. (This was the inexhaustible joke they shared against Mrs. Abby that in nearly twenty years had never failed to rouse her serious indignation.) "I saw her coming out of that abolitionist meeting yesterday."
"That's cousin Wendell Phillips got her into that," said Mr. James. "Old Jamie was there, too."
"Old Jamie has got so much love to spare that it spills around," said Mr. Bowdoin, "even on comfortable niggers just decently clothed. That's not your wife's trouble." To which the son had no other repartee than "James!" drawled in the solemn bass of amazed indignation that his mother's voice assumed when goaded into speech by his father's sallies. It was his boast that "Abby" never yet had ventured to address him thus. And so this precious pair separated; the father going home to his grandchildren, and the son to the club for his afternoon rubber of whist. They still took life easy in the forties.
Why was it that old Jamie, who should by rights have had his heart broken, was happier than fortunate David? Both loved the same woman; and no tenor hero ever loved so deeply as old Jamie, and he had lost her. But he came of the humble millions that build the structure of human happiness silently, by countless, uncounted little acts. David was of the ephemera, the pleasure-loving insects. Now these will settle for a time; but race will tell, and they are not the race of quiet labor.
One almost wonders, in these futureless times, that so many of the former still remain. For the profession of pleasure is so easy, so remunerative; even of money it often has no lack. St. Clair came of a family that, from horse-racing, bar-keeping, betting, had found money easier to get than ever had Jamie's people, and (when they had chosen to invest it) had invested it in less reputable but more productive ways. One fears the spelling-books mislead in their promise of instant, adequate reward and punishment. The gods do not keep a dame-school for us here on earth, and their ways are less obvious than that. One hazards the suggestion, it is fortunate if our multitudes (in these socialistic, traditionless times) do not yet discover how comfortable, for hedonistic ends, their sons and daughters still may be without respectability and reputability.
St. Clair lived before them, and his mind was never analytic. The word "bore" had not yet been imported, nor the word "ennui" naturalized in a civilization whence two hundred years of Puritans had sought to banish it. But although Adam set the example of falling to the primal woman, it may be doubted whether Eve, at least, had not a foretaste of the modern evil. And more souls go now to the devil (if they could hope there were one!) for the being bored than any other cause.
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 transmuting 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 assurance 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 butterfly cares but for sunshine. 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.