XIV
In a little cottage on the outskirts of a straggling town about half a mile from the scene of the railroad wreck a sick man lay tossing on a hard little bed in a small room that could ill be spared from the needs of a numerous family. A white-capped nurse, imported by the railroad, stooped over him to straighten the coarse sheet and quilt spread over him, and tried to quiet his restless murmurings.
“Teller!” he murmured deliriously. “Teller!”
“Tell who?” asked the cool, clear voice of the nurse.
“M’ry!” he mumbled thickly. “Teller!”
“You want me to tell Mary?” asked the nurse crisply.
The heavy eyes of the man on the bed opened uncomprehendingly, and tried to focus on her face.
“Yeh! Teller! M’ry. Bank!”
“Mary Banks?” asked the nurse capably. “You want me to send word to Mary Banks?”
The patient breathed what seemed like assent.
“Where?” asked the nurse clearly, taking up the pencil that lay by her report card, and writing in clear little script, “Miss Mary Banks.”
“Bank!” said the patient, drowsily. “Bank! Teller!”
“Yes, I will tell her,” responded the nurse. “Where—does—she—live?” enunciating slowly and distinctly.
The man’s head paused in its restless turning, and the eyes tried to focus on her face again, as if he were called back by her words from some far wandering.
“Marlborough!” he spoke the word clearly, and drowsed off again as if he were relieved.
That night by the light of a sickly gas jet whose forked flame she had shaded with a newspaper from the patient’s eyes, she wrote a note to Mary Banks, in Marlborough, telling her that a young man with curly brown hair and a tweed suit was calling for her and asking that she be told that he had been injured in a wreck. She stated that the patient’s condition was serious, and that if he had any friends, they had better come at once. It was impossible to find any clue to his name, as he wore no coat when he was picked up, having evidently pulled it off to assist others worse injured than himself, and having succumbed to a faint before he got back to it. The pockets of his trousers had nothing in them but a little money, a railroad ticket, a knife, a few keys, and a watch marked with the initials A. M.
The letter was given to the doctor to mail the next morning when he came on his rounds, and in due time it reached the Marlborough Post Office. After reposing some days in the general delivery box it was finally put up in a glass frame in the outer post office among uncalled-for letters. But the patient lay in a deep death-like stupor, and knew nothing of all this. After his efforts to speak that one word, Marlborough, he had seemed satisfied, and the doctor and nurse tried in vain to rouse him again to consciousness of the world about him. It was thoughtthat he had been injured about his head, and that an operation might be necessary; but the doctor hesitated to take that step without first consulting with some of the sick man’s friends or relatives. The doctor even went so far as to write a note to a fellow physician in the town of Marlborough, asking him to look up this “Mary Banks,” and endeavor to get a line on the man and his friends, if possible.
But no Mary Banks could be found in all the town of Marlborough. Strange as it may seem, however, a young woman of romantic tendencies, by the name of Banks, who admitted that her middle name was Marie—Rose Marie Banks—was at last discovered, and induced to take the journey of some thirty miles to the bedside of the unconscious man, that she might identify him. It was a handsome young doctor who entreated her, anxiously, to please a former head and great colleague in the profession. He had just bought a new shiny blue car, and the day was fine. Rose Marie consented to go “just for the ride,” and alighted gaily before the cottage, stood an awed moment beside the sick-bed, and gazed half frightened on the solemnity of the living death before her. Then she shrank back with a “No, I ain’t never seen him before,” and hurried out to the waiting car, glad to be back in the sunshine of life once more. The sick man lay burning with fever and moaning incoherent words to the distracted nurse, who had done her best, and the days went on and on monotonously.