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
thought that 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.