CHAPTER V.THE MARRIAGE CERTIFICATE.
Madame De Marke was evidently startled by the threat which Jane Kelly insinuated, rather than spoke; her eyes fell and were lifted again with a sidelong glance. Jane read the glance, and her own eyes filled with the low cunning always uppermost in her nature.
“I have two ways of nursing. That ‘masterly inactivity,’ which worked so well for the baby—regular attention to the doctor’s directions when he happens to be an experimentalizing student, or inattention to his orders when he is honest and knows what he is about. Any one of ’em ispretty sure to create a demand for two breadths of cotton muslin and a pine coffin.”
“And which of these will you take?” asked madame, anxiously.
“None of them, madame. You don’t choose to settle up, and I don’t choose to work for nothing. Can’t afford it; nurses’ pay is next to being a beggar; it’s only two months since they gave me so much as would keep me.”
“Why, I thought you had been in Bellevue for years?”
“Oh, yes! off and on I have. But then I was only a nurse with five dollars a month. Not much chance to make money, except once in a while, when somebody outside wants a thing hushed up, like this, for instance, or a patient happens to hide a few dollars under her pillow, which gives a few lean pickings and stealings to the nurses.”
Madame De Marke’s eyes brightened, and a crafty smile stole over her lips. “Perhaps she’ll have some money hid away. I shouldn’t wonder; enough to pay for your trouble all round; she always was hoarding up. Oh, I have no doubt you may trust to finding heaps of money between her beds, but she’ll take care of it while there is a breath of life in her, never fear that.”
The nurse laughed a low, sly laugh, that rather discomposed her hostess.
“I’ve searched,” she said; “the poor thing lay insensible two whole hours.”
“Then you found nothing?” inquired the Frenchwoman, with a look of keen anxiety.
“Nothing but a little silk bag, with some papers in it.”
“Papers! What were they? I have missed papers. What were they? Or perhaps you can’t read. Let me look at the papers.”
“Oh! yes,” answered the nurse, demurely, “I can read. There was a paper with some poetry on it.”
“Poetry!” cried Madame De Marke, in a tone of ineffablecontempt, but which gave forth a burst of relief also. “Poetry! is that all?”
“No,” replied Jane Kelly, with quiet deliberation. “There was some marriage lines between George De Marke and Catharine Lacy.”
Though her face was repulsive and dull from want of washing, Madame De Marke turned pale, and her eyes began to gleam with fierce desire when Jane told what the papers were of which she had become possessed. She stretched forth her hand, and commenced eagerly working the fingers, as a hungry parrot gropes for his food.
“Give me the lines. They belong to me.Myname was Catharine, and De Marke’s name was George. Give me the lines. She stole them.”
“Haven’t got them with me,” said Jane, folding the cloak more closely around her, with real fear that the witch-like woman would tear them from her bosom, if she knew that they were about her person.
“But you will bring them?—say to-morrow night.”
Jane Kelly laughed, and looking into the eyes of the eager woman, muttered,—
“Nothing for nothing.”
“I—I will give you the—that is, a hundred dollars for the paper,” urged the woman, still working her fingers eagerly.
“To-night?”
“Well, yes, if you give up the paper; but then for cash down there’ll be a discount,—say fifty dollars. Times are very hard.”
“Not a cent less than the full hundred,” answered the nurse resolutely.
Madame De Marke sat restlessly in her chair. The idea of parting with so much money was absolute torture. A hundred dollars! Why, she did not spend more than half that sum on herself during a whole year; and for that insolentwretch to ask so much for a single scrap of paper! the very thought enraged her.
“Say seventy-five now,” she pleaded, in a wheedling tone, weaving her fingers softly together.
“I don’t want to sell the paper. If the girl gets well, as I mean she shall, it’ll be worth more than a hundred dollars to her.”
“But she has no money.”
“Well, I can afford to do without money when a kind act is to be done. The city government always gives me a home and work when I want them.”
“Take seventy-five.”
“Well, say seventy-five for the paper, and a hundred for the baby.”
“The baby again!” snarled Madame De Marke, “it’s dead of its own accord. I won’t pay a sous for it—not a sous!”
Jane Kelly hesitated a moment, looked around the room as if afraid of being overheard, and then leaning forward, whispered a few words in Madame De Marke’s ear.
“I—I’ll give you the money. Seventy-five dollars down, one hundred when—when it’s all set right.”
“It’s all set right now.”
“Very well, very well, you are a noble girl, Jane. Jane, what is the name?”
“Kelly—Jane Kelly.”
“You’re a noble girl, Jane Kelly. I’d trust you with untold gold. No, not gold, there is something very tempting in gold, too tempting for human nature; but I’d trust you with silver untold, silver or bank-notes, if I only had them about me. But the times are so hard. Say fifty dollars down, all in solid silver; it’ll make your heart jump to hear the dollars fall upon each other. I tell you it’s enough to break one’s heart when such music goes the other way. Now you will take the fifty, that’s a dear good soul.”
Jane shook her head stubbornly.
“Now consider how much money is worth just now; fifty dollars is worth a hundred at any other time.”
Jane Kelly arose and prepared to go. Bad as she was, this woman’s clinging avarice disgusted her.
“Well, well, if you will be so hard-hearted, I must try and raise the money, though how it is to be done I can’t begin to tell. Wait a minute. Just step out into the passage, that’s a nice girl.”