“What do you think of my turning nurse awhile and taking care of him? I am used to such folks, and I presume the gentleman is plenty able to pay.”
She had dragged this last in rather bunglingly, but it answered every purpose, for Martha, who knew her thrifty habits, understood at once that money was the inducement, and she replied, “Of course he is. His watch is worth two hundred dollars, to say nothing of a diamond pin. I for one shall be glad to have you come, for I am going away some time to-day, and there’ll be nobody in particular to take care of him. I’ll speak about it right away.”
The result of this speaking was that Mrs. Burt’s offered services were readily accepted, for Martha was known to be an honest, faithful girl, and any one whom she recommended must, of course, be respectable and trusty. By some chance, however, there was a misunderstanding about the name, which was first construed into Burton and then into Merton, and as Martha, who alone could rectify the error, left that afternoon, the few who knew of the sick man and his nurse, spoke of the latter as a “Mrs. Merton, from the country, probably.” So when at night Mrs. Burt appeared and announce herself as ready to assume her duties, she was surprised at hearing herself addressed by her new name, and she was about to correct it when she thought, “It doesn’t matter what I’m called, and perhaps on the whole, I’d rather not be known by my real name. I don’t believe much in goin’ out nussin’ any way, and I guess I’ll let ’em call me what they want to.”
She accordingly made no explanation, but followed the servant girl up three long flights of stairs, and turning down a narrow hall, stood ere long at the door of the sick room.
CHAPTER XVI.
THE FEVER.
Night and day Frederic Raymond had traveled, never allowing himself a minute’s rest, nor even stopping at Yonkers, so intent was he upon reaching New York and finding, if possible, some clue to Marian. It was a hopeless task, for he had no starting point—nothing which could guide him in the least, save the name of Sarah Green, and even that was not in the Directory, while to inquire for her former place of residence, was as preposterous as Marian’s inquiry for Mrs. Daniel Burt! Still, whatever he could do he did, traversing street after street, threading alley after alley, asking again and again of the squalid heads thrust from the dingy windows, if Sarah Green had ever lived in that locality, and receiving always the same impudent stare and short answer, “No.”
Once, in another and worse part of the city, he fancied he had found her, and that she had not sailed for Scotland as she had written, for they had told him that “Sal Green lived, up in the fourth story,” and climbing the crazy stairs, he knocked at the low, dark door, shuddering involuntarily and experiencing a feeling of mortified pride as he thought it possible that Marian—his wife—had toiled up that weary way to die. The door was opened by a blear-eyed, hard-faced woman, who started at sight of the elegant stranger, and to his civil questions replied rather gruffly, “Yes, I’m Sal Green, I s’pose, or Sarah, jest which you choose to call me, but the likes of Marian Lindsey never came near me,” and glancing around the dirty, wretched room, Frederic was glad that it was so. He would rather not find her, or hear tidings of her, than to know that she had lived and died in such a place as this, and with a sickening sensation he was turning away, when the woman, who was blessed with a remarkable memory and never forgot anything to which her attention was particularly directed, said to him, “You say it’s a year last Fall sence she left home.”
“Yes, yes,” he replied eagerly, and she continued, “You say she dressed in black, and wore a great long vail?”
“The same, the same,” he cried, advancing into the room and thrusting a bill into the long hand, “oh, my good woman, have you seen her, and where is she now?”
“The Lord knows, mebby, but I don’t,” answered the woman, who was identical with the one who had so frightened Marian by watching her on that day when she sat in front of Trinity and wished that she could die, “I don’t know as I ever seen her at all,” she continued, “but a year ago last November such a girl as you described, with long curls that looked red in the sunshine, sat on the steps way down by Trinity and cried so hard that I noticed her, and knew she warn’t a beggar by her dress. It was gettin’ dark, and I was goin’ to speak to her when Joe Black came up and asked her what ailed her, or somethin’. He ain’t none of the likeliest,” and a grim smile flitted over the visage of the wrinkled hag.