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 is pretty
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 ineffable contempt, 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. _My_ name 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 insolent wretch 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.”