Pirate Gold/Part 1/Chapter 11
XI.
There were friends about Miss Mercy none too sorry to witness the discomfiture of this lofty aspirant. Poor Jamie, I fear, got some cross looks for his share in the matter; and tears, which were harder still to bear. John Hughson, who was a prosperous young teamster, began to come in again, and take his pipe of an evening with Jamie. He no longer sat in his shirt-sleeves, and was in other ways much improved. Mercedes was gracious to him evenings; indeed, it was her nature to be gracious to all men. She had a way of looking straight at them with kind eyes, her lips slightly parted, her smile just showing the edges of both upper and under teeth; so that you knew not whether it was sweeter to look at her eyes or her lips, and were lost in the effort to decide. So one day Hughson felt emboldened to ask if he might bear her company to church on Sunday. And Miss Sadie,—as now they called her, for she objected to the name of Mercy, and nothing but Sadie could her friends make out of Mercedes,—Sadie, to please McMurtagh, consented.
But when the Sunday came, poor Hughson, who looked well enough in week-day clothes, became, to her quick eye, impossible in black.
"You see, Sadie, I am bright and early, to be your beau."
There is a fine directness about courtship in Hughson's class,—it puts the dots upon the i's; but Sadie must have preferred them dotless, for she said, "My name is not Sadie."
"Mercy."
"Nor Mercy."
"Mer—Mercedes, then."
"Nor Mercedes alone."
"Well, Miss McMurtagh, though I've known you from a child."
A shrug of Mercedes' pretty shoulders implied that this might be the last passport to her acquaintance as a woman. "Mr. McMurtagh is not my father. My name is Silva."
"Oho! all the Italian fruit-dealers are named Silva!"
"If you're rude, I'll not go to church with you," said Miss Silva demurely.
Hughson was clumsily repentant. But the young lady would not go to the King's Chapel (where she had lately affected an interest; it was the Bowdoins' church), but led him to still older Christ Church, at the northern end of the town. Here, in those ante-Episcopalian days, were scarce a dozen worshipers; and you might have a square, dock-like pew all to yourself, turn your back upon the minister, and gaze upon the painted angels blowing gilded trumpets in the gallery.
It must be confessed that Hughson had little conversation; and as they walked back, through Hanover Street, among crowds of young women, none so neatly dressed as she, and men less respectable than honest Hughson, Mercedes was conscious of a void within her life. In the afternoon she shut herself in her room and had a crying spell; at least so Jamie feared, as he tiptoed by her door, in apprehension of her sobs. Her piano had grown silent of late. What use was a piano among such as Hughson? So Jamie and the rising teamster sat in the kitchen and discussed the situation over pipes.
"The poor child ought to have some company," said Jamie.
Hughson felt this a reflection upon him, and answered but with harder puffs. "What she wants," said he at last, "is society. A good nice dancing-party, now?"
Jamie shook his head. "We've no acquaintance among gay people."
"Gay people?" Hughson elevated his brow. The phrase, with him, was synonymous with impropriety. "No; but there's my training-company ball, now; it's given in Union Street hall; gentlemen a dollar, ladies fifty cents. Each gentleman can bring two ladies. Why not let me take her there?"
"I'm sure it's very kind of you, John," said Jamie. He felt a pang that he, too, could not take Mercedes to balls.
"It's not like one o' them Tremont Street balls, you know," said Hughson proudly. Secretly he thought it a very fine affair. The governor was to be there, and his aides-de-camp, in gold lace.
Mercedes went to the ball when the night came, but only stayed an hour. She knew very few of the other girls. Her dress was a yellow muslin, modestly open at the throat, and she could see them eying it. None of the other women wore low-necked gowns, but they wore more pretentious dresses, with more of ornament, and Mercedes felt they did not even know in how much better taste was she. But John Hughson was in a most impossible blue swallow-tail with brass buttons,—the sort of thing, indeed, that Webster had worn a few years before, only Hughson was not fitted for it. She suspected he had hired it for the evening, in the hope of pleasing her, for she saw that he had to bear some chaff about it from his friends. One of the colonels of the staff, with plumed hat and a sword, came and was introduced to her. In a sense she made a conquest of him, for he tried clumsily to pay his court to her, but not seriously. Nothing that yet had happened in her little life had enraged Miss Mercedes as did this. She inly vowed that some day she would remember the man, to cut him. And so she had Hughson take her home.
Poor Hughson felt that his evening had been a failure, and rashly ventured on some chances of rebuff from her as the two walked home,—chances of which Miss Mercedes was cruel enough to avail herself to the full. The honest fellow was puzzled by it, for even he knew that Mercedes' only desire in going to the ball was to be admired, and admiration she had had. John was too simple to make fine discriminations in male deference, but he judged more rightly the feminine opinion of her looks and manners than did Miss Mercedes herself. They had thought her too fine for them—as she had wished.
After all her democratic education, social consideration was the one ambition that had formed in pretty Mercedes' mind. Her desire for this was as real in the form it took with men as in the form it took with other women; as clear the outcome of the books and reading given her as of the training given any upper servant in a London suburb, patterned on a lady mistress. Mercedes had no affections; she was as careless of religion as a Yankee boy; this desire alone she had of self-esteem above her fellow-creatures, especially those of her own sex and age. Her education had not gone to the point of giving her higher enjoyment,—poetry, art, happiness of thought. Even her piano-playing was but an adornment. She never played for her own pleasure; and what was the use of practicing now?
This New World life has got reduced to about three motives, like the three primary colors; one is rather surprised that so few can blend in so many shades of people. Money-getting, love of self, love,—is not that quite all? Yet poor Jamie and Mercedes, who was nearest to him, did not happen in the same division. Hughson, perhaps, made even the third. Yet a woman who holds herself too fine for her world will get recognition, commonly, from it. To honest Hughson, lying unwontedly awake and thinking of the evening's chances and mischances, now in a hot fit, now in a cold fit, of something like to love, such a creature as Mercedes, as she lightly hung upon his arm that evening, had never yet appeared. She was an angel, a being apart, a fairy,—any crude simile that occurs to honest plodding men of such young girls. John took the distrait look for dreamy thought; her irresponsiveness for ethereal purity; her moodiness for superiority of soul. She imposed herself on him now, as she had done before on Jamie, as deserving a higher life than he could give her. This is what a man terms being in love, and then would wish, quand même, to drag his own life into hers!
One day, some weeks after this, Mr. James Bowdoin, on coming down to the little office on the wharf rather later than usual, went up the stairs, more than ever choky with that spicy dust that was the mummy-like odor of departed trade, and divined that the cause thereof was in the counting-room itself, whence issued sounds of much bumping and falling, as if a dozen children were playing leap-frog on the floor. Jamie McMurtagh was seated on the stool in the outer den that was called the bookkeeper's, biting his pen, with even a sourer face than usual.
"Good-morning, Jamie," said he cheerily.
"Good-morning, Mr. James." Jamie always greeted glumly, but there was a touch of tragedy in him this morning that was more than manner. James Bowdoin looked at him sharply.
"Can I—has anything"— He was interrupted by a series of tremendous poundings that issued from the counting-room within. The entrance door was closed. Young Mr. Bowdoin cocked his thumb at it. "How many children has the governor got in there to-day?"
"One, sir," grunted Jamie.
"One child? Great heavens! who makes all that noise?"
"Mr. Bowdoin do the most of it, sir," said Jamie solemnly. "I have been waiting, sir, to see him mysel' since"—Jamie looked gravely at his watch—"since the half after twal'. But he does not suffer being interrupted."
James Bowdoin threw himself on a chair and laughed. "Who is it?"
"It'll be your Miss Abby, I'm thinkin'."
"The imp! I stopped her week's money for losing her hat this morning, and she's got ahead of me and come down to get it of the governor."
There was a sudden and mysterious silence in the inner room. James Bowdoin looked at Jamie, and noted again his expression. "What's the matter, Jamie? Have you anything to tell me?"
"It's for Mr. Bowdoin's private ear, Mr. James," said Jamie testily.
"Oh, ah! in that case I'll go in and see." James threw the door open. Old Mr. Bowdoin was standing, still puffing, in front of the fire, evidently quite breathless. In the corner by the window, too rapt to notice her father's entrance, sat Miss Abby, intently gazing into a round glass crystal that, with a carved ebony frame, formed one of the Oriental ornaments of the counting-room.
"I trust we are not disturbing important business, sir?" said Mr. James the younger dryly.
"Sh, sh! Abby, my dear, don't take your eyes out of it for twenty minutes, and you'll see the soldiers." And the old gentleman winked at James and Jamie, and became still purpler with laughter that was struggling to be heard.
"As for that child of mine"—
"Psst! h'sh!" and Mr. Bowdoin snapped his fingers in desperation at his uncomprehending son. "Never mind them, dear!" he cried to the child. "Only look steady; don't take your eyes out of it for twenty minutes, and you're sure to see the armies fighting! The most marvelous idea, and all my own," he said, as he slammed the door behind him. "Crystal-gazing, for keeping children quiet,—nothing beats it!"
"I thought, sir, you were both in need of it. But Jamie here has something to say to you."
"What is it—Jamie? No more trouble about that ship Maine Lady? D—n the British collier tramps! and she as fine a clipper as ever left Bath Bay. Well, send her back in ballast; chessmen and India shawls, I suppose, as usual"—
"It's about Mercedes, sir."
"Oh, ah!" Mr. Bowdoin's brow grew grave.
"She will not marry John Hughson, sir."
"Now, Jamie, how the devil am I to make her?"