Pirate Gold/Part 3/Chapter 11
XI.
So Mr. Bowdoin hurried up the street to the bank, half chuckling, half angry, still. Then (having found that there was a special and very important directors' meeting called at once) he scurried out again upon the street, his papers in his hat, and did the business of the day on 'change. And then he went back to the bank, and asked if Mr. Harleston Bowdoin had got there yet.
Mr. Stanchion told him no. By that time it was after eleven. But Mr. Bowdoin made a rapid calculation of the distance (it never would have occurred to him to take a hack; carriages, in his view, were meant for women, funerals, and disreputable merrymakers), and hastened down to Salem Street.
Old Mrs. Hughson met him at the door, grateful and tearful. Yes, young Mr. Harley (she remembered him well in the old days, and had been jealous of him as a rival of her son) was upstairs. She feared poor McMurtagh was very ill. He had been out of his head for days and days. To Mr. Bowdoin's peppery query why the devil she had not sent for him, Mrs. Hughson had nothing to say. It had never occurred to her, perhaps, that the well-being of such a quaint, dried-up old chap as Jamie could be a matter of moment to his wealthy employers whom she had never known.
"Can I see him?" asked Mr. Bowdoin. But as he spoke, Harley came down the stairs.
"It's heart-breaking," he said. "He thinks he's in the South with her. He was going to meet her, it seems; and the poor old fellow does not know he has not gone."
"Let me see him," said the elder. "Have they no nurse?"
"I nurse him off and on, nigh about all he needs," answered Mrs. Hughson. "And then there's John."
But Mr. Bowdoin had hurried up the stairs. Jamie was lying with his eyes wide open, moving restlessly. It seemed a low fever; for his face was pale; only the old ruddiness showed unnaturally, like the mark of his old-country lineage, left from bygone years of youth and sunlight on his paling life. And Jamie's eyes met Mr. Bowdoin's; he had been murmuring rapidly, and there was a smile in them; but this now he lost, though the eyes had in them no look of recognition. He became silent as his look touched Mr. Bowdoin's face and glanced from it quickly, as do the looks of delirious persons and young children. And then, as the old gentleman bent over him and touched his hand, "A thousand dollars yet! a thousand dollars yet!" many times repeating this in a low cry; and all his raving now was of money and rows of money, rows and rows of gold.
Mr. Bowdoin stood by him. Harley came to the door, and motioned to him to step outside. Jamie went on: "A year more! another year more!" Then, as Mr. Bowdoin again touched his hand, he stared, and Mr. Bowdoin started at the mention of his own name.
"See, Mr. Bowdoin! but one row more to fill! But one year more, but one year more!"
Mr. Bowdoin dropped his hand, and went hastily to the door, which he closed behind him.
"Harley, my boy, we mustn't listen to the old man's ravings—and I must go back to the bank."
"He has never talked that way to me, sir: it's all about Mercedes, and his going to her," and Harley opened the door, and both went in.
And sure enough, the old man's raving changed. "I must go to her. I must go to her. I must go to her. I cannot help it, I must go to her."
"Sometimes he thinks he has gone," whispered Harley. "Then he is quieter."
"What are these?" said Mr. Bowdoin, kicking over a pile of newspapers on the floor. "Why does he have New Orleans newspapers?"
The two men looked, and found one paper folded more carefully, on the table; in this they read the item telling of St. Clair's death. They looked at one another.
"That is it, then," said Harley. "I wonder if he left her poor?"
"So she is not in Havana, after all," said Mr. Bowdoin.
And old Jamie, who had been speaking meaningless sentences, suddenly broke into his old refrain: "A thousand dollars more!"
"I must get to the bank," said the old gentleman, "and stop that meeting."
"And I must go to her!" cried Harleston Bowdoin.
The other grasped his hand. But Jamie's spirit was far away, and thought that all these things were done.