“Why, yes,” returned the lady, smiling at the strange question. “Have you never been there?”
“Once, when a child,” said Marian, and the lady continued, “You seem a mere child now. Have you friends in the city?”
“Yes, all I have in the world, and that is only one,” sobbed Marian, her tears falling fast at words of sympathy.
The lady was greatly interested in the child, as she thought her, and had she been going to New York would have still befriended her, but she left at Newburgh, and Marian was again alone. She had heard much of New York, but she had no conception of it—and when at last she was there, and followed a group through the depot up to Broadway, her head grew dizzy and her brain whirled with the deafening roar. Cincinnati, Louisville, Buffalo and Albany combined were nothing to this, and in her confusion she would have fallen upon the pavement had not the crowd forced her along. Once, as a richly dressed young lady brushed past her, she raised her eyes meekly and asked where “Mrs. Daniel Burt lived?”
The question was too preposterous to be heeded, even if it were heard, and the lady moved on, leaving Marian as ignorant as ever of Mrs. Burt’s whereabouts. To two or three other ladies the same question was put, but Mrs. Daniel Burt was evidently not generally known in New York, for no one paid the slightest attention—except indeed to hold tighter their purse-strings, as if there were danger to be apprehended from the slender little figure which extended its ungloved hand so imploringly. After a time, a woman from the country, who had not yet been through the hardening process, listened to the question—and finding that Mrs. Daniel Burt was no way connected with the Burts of Yates county, nor the Blodgetts of Monroe, replied that she was a stranger in the city, and knew no such person—but pretty likely Marian would find it in the Directory—and as a regiment of soldiers just then attracted her attention, she turned aside, while Marian, discouraged and sick at heart, kept on her weary way, knowing nothing where she was going, and, if possible, caring less. When she came opposite to Trinity Church, she sank down upon the step, and drawing her vail over her face, half wished that she might die and be buried there in the enclosure where she saw the November sunshine falling on the graves. And then she wondered if the roar of the great city didn’t even penetrate to the ears of the sleeping dead, and, shudderingly, she said, “Oh, I would so much rather be buried by the river at home in dear old Kentucky. It’s all so still and quiet there.”
Gradually, as her weariness began to abate, she grew interested in watching the passers-by, wondering what every body was going down that street for, and why they came back so quick! Then she tried to count the omnibuses, thinking to herself, “Somebody’s dead up town, and this is the procession.” The deceased must have been a person of distinction, she fancied, for the funeral train seemed likely never to end. And, what was stranger than all, another was moving up while this was coming down! Poor Marian! she knew but little of the great Babylon to which she had so recently come, and she thought it made up of carts, hacks, omnibuses and people—all hurrying in every direction as fast as they could go. It made her feel dizzy and cross-eyed to look at them, and leaning back against the iron railing, she fell into a kind of conscious sleep, in which she never forgot for an instant the roar which troubled her so much, or lost the gnawing pain at her heart. In this way she sat for a long time, while hundreds and hundreds of people went by, some glancing sideways at her, and thinking she did not look like an ordinary beggar, while others did not notice her at all.
At last, as the confusion increased, she roused up, staring about her with a wild, startled gaze. People were going home, and she watched them as they struggled fiercely and ineffectually to stop some loaded omnibus, and then rushed higher up to a more favorable locality.
“The funeral was over,” she said. The omnibuses were most all returning, and though she had no idea of the lapse of time, she fancied that it might be coming night, and the dreadful thought stole over her—“What shall I do then? Maybe I’ll go in the church, though,” she added. “Nobody, I am sure, will hurt me there,” and she glanced confidingly at the massive walls which were to shield her from danger and darkness.
And while she sat there thus, the night shadows began to fall—the people walked faster and faster—the omnibus drivers swore louder and longer—the crowd became greater and greater—and over Marian there stole a horrid dread of the hour when the uproar would cease—when Wall street would be empty, the folks all gone, and she be there alone with the blear-eyed old woman who had seated herself near by, and seemed to be watching her.
“I will ask once more,” she thought. “Maybe some of these people know where she lives.” And, throwing back her vail, she half rose to her feet, when a tall, disagreeable looking fellow bent over her and said—“What can I do for you, my pretty lass?”