A NEW NAME

BY
GRACE LIVINGSTON HILL
AUTHOR OF
MARCIA SCHUYLER,
NOT UNDER THE LAW,
ARIEL CUSTER, Etc.

GROSSET & DUNLAP
PUBLISHERS NEW YORK

PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

A NEW NAME

I

Murray Van Rensselaer had been waiting for an hour and a quarter in the reception-room of the Blakeley Hospital.

He was not good at waiting. Things usually came at his call, or sometimes even anticipated his desires. It was incredible that he should suddenly find himself in such a maddening set of circumstances!

He still wore the great fur-lined overcoat in which he had arrived after the accident, but he seemed to be unaware of it as he paced excitedly up and down the stark leather-upholstered room.

Across the marble corridor he could just see the tip of white starched linen that was the cap of the uniformed person with double-lensed spectacles who sat at the roll-top desk and presided over this fiendish place.

Three times he had pranced pompously across the tessellated floor and demanded to know what had become of the patient he had brought in. She had only looked him over coldly, impersonally, and reiterated that word would be sent to him as soon as the examination was completed. Even his name, which he had condescendingly mentioned, had failed to make the slightest impression upon her. She had merely filed his immaculate calling card and remanded him to the reception-room.

The tall clock in the corner, the only live thing in the room, seemed to tick in eons, not seconds. He regarded it belligerently. Why should a clock seem to have eyes that searched to your soul? What was a clock doing there anyway, in a place where they regarded not time, and were absorbed in their own terrible affairs? The clock seemed to be the only connecting-link with the outside world.

He strode nearer and read the silver plate of the donor, inscribed in memory of “Elizabeth,” and turned sharply back to the door again with a haunting vision of the white-faced girl he had brought in a while before. Bessie! Little Bessie Chapparelle! She was “Elizabeth” too.

What a cute kid she was when he first knew her! Strange that on this day of all days he should have come upon her standing at that corner after all these years, suddenly grown up and stunningly handsome!

And now she lay crumpled, somewhere up in those distant marble halls!

He shuddered in his heavy coat and mopped the cold perspiration from his brows. If anything should happen to Bessie! And his fault! Everybody would of course say it was his fault! He knew he was a reckless driver. He knew he took chances, but he had always got by before! If she hadn’t been so darned pretty, so surprisingly sweet and unusual, and like the child she used to be—and that truck coming around the corner at thirty-five miles an hour!

The air was full of antiseptics. It seemed to him that he had been breathing it in until his head was swimming, that cold, pungent, penetrating smell that dwelt within those white marble walls like a living spirit of the dead!

Gad! What a place! Why did he stay? He could go home and telephone later. Nobody was compelling him to stay. Bessie was a poor girl with nobody to take her part. Nobody but her mother!

He halted in his excited walk. Her mother! If anything happened to Bessie somebody would have to tell her mother!

A door opened far in the upper marble regions, and the echo of a delirious cry shivered down through the corridors. Rubber wheels somewhere rolled a heavy object down a space and out of sound; voices rose in a subdued murmur as if they passed a certain point and drifted away from the main speech, drifted down the stairs, vague, detached words. Then all was still again.

Something dragged at his heart. He had thought they were coming, and now suddenly he was afraid to have them come. What a relief! Just a little longer respite till he could get hold of himself. He wasn’t at all fit, or things wouldn’t get hold of him this way. He had been going the pace pretty hard since he left college. Too many highballs! Too late at night!—Too many cigarettes! The old man was right! If he hadn’t been so infernally offensive in the way he put it! But one couldn’t of course go that pace forever and not feel it.

What was it he had been thinking about when those voices passed that point above the stairs? Oh! Yes! Her mother! Some one would have to tell her mother! She was a woman with a kind twinkle in her eyes. One would find it terrible to quench that twinkle in her eyes! He remembered how she had tied up his cut finger one day and given him a cooky. Those were happy days!—Ah! There! There was that sound of an opening door again!—Voices!—Footsteps! Hark! They were coming! Yes,—they were coming! Rubber heels on marble treads! And now he was in a frenzy of fear.

Bessie, little blue-eyed Bessie with the gold hair all about her white face!—

The steps came on down the hall, and he held his breath in the shelter of a heavy tan-colored velvet portière. He must get himself in hand before he faced any one. If he only hadn’t left his flask in the car! Oh, but of course! The car was smashed up! What was he thinking about? But there would be other flasks! If only he could get out of this!

The nurse came on down the hall. He could see her reflection in the plate glass of the front door that was within his vision as he stood with his back toward the desk. She was going straight to the desk with a message!

The front door-knob rattled.

He glared impatiently at the blurred interruption to his vision of the nurse. A sallow man with a bandaged head was fumbling with the door-knob, and the white uniform of the nurse was no longer plain. He held his breath and listened:

“Well, is there any change?” asked the voice behind the roll-top desk, impassively.

“Yes, she’s dead!” answered the nurse.

“Well, you better go down to that man in the reception-room. He’s been pestering the life out of me. He thinks he’s the only one!—”

“I can’t!” said the nurse sharply. “I’ve got to call up the police station first. The doctor said—” She lowered her voice inaudibly. The man with the bandaged head had managed the door-knob at last.

The door swung wide, noiselessly, on its well-oiled hinges, letting in the bandaged man; and as he limped heavily in, a shadow slipped from the folds of the heavy curtain and passed behind him into the night.

II

In the big white marble house on the avenue that Murray Van Rensselaer called home the servants were lighting costly lamps and drawing silken shades. A little Pekingese pet came tipping out with the man to see what was the matter with the light over the front entrance, stood for a brief second glancing up and down haughtily, barked sharply at a passer-by, and retreated plumily into the dark of the entrance-hall with an air of ownership, clicking off to find his mistress. Sweet perfumes drifted out from shadowy rooms where masses of hothouse flowers glowed in costly jardinières, and a wood fire flickered softly over deep-toned rugs and fine old polished woods, reflected from illuminated covers of many rare books behind leaded panes of glass. It flickered and lighted the dreary face of the haughty master of the house as he sat in a deep chair and watched the flames, and seemed to be watching the burning out of his own life in bitter disappointment.

The great dining-room glittered with crystal and silver, and abounded in exquisite napery, hand-wrought, beautiful and fine as a spider’s web or a tracery of frost. The table was set for a large dinner, and a profusion of roses graced its centre.

Ancestral portraits looked down from the walls.

At one end of the room, in a screened balcony behind great fronds of mammoth ferns, musicians were preparing to play, arranging music, speaking in low tones.

The footfalls of the servants were inaudible as they came and went over the deep pile of ancient rugs.

A deep-throated chime from a tall old clock in the hall called out the hour, and a bell somewhere in the distance rang sharply, imperatively.

A maid came noiselessly down the stairs and paused beside the library door, tapping gently.

“Mr. Van Rensselaer, Mrs. Van Rensselaer would like to see you at once if you’re not busy.”

The wistful look in the master’s eyes changed at the summons into his habitual belligerence, and he rose with a sigh of impatience. He mounted the stairs like one going to a familiar stake.

Mrs. Van Rensselaer sat at her dressing-table fresh from the hands of her maid, a perfectly groomed woman in the prime of her life. Not a wrinkle marred the loveliness of her complexion, not a line of tenderness, or suffering, or self-abnegation gave character to her exquisite features. She had been considered the most beautiful woman of the day when Charles Van Rensselaer married her, and she still retained her beauty. No one, not even her bitterest enemy, could say that she had aged or faded. Her face and her figure were her first concern. She never let anything come between her and her ambition to remain young and lovely.

If her meaningless beauty had long since palled upon the man who had worked hard in his younger days to win her hand, he nevertheless yielded her the court which she demanded; and if there was sometimes a note of mock ceremony in his voice it was well guarded.

He stood in the violet shadow of her silken-shrouded lamp and watched her with a bitter sadness in his eyes. It was a moment when they might have met on common ground and drawn nearer to one another if she had but sensed it. But she was busy trying the effect of different earrings against her pearly tinted neck. Should it be the new rock crystals or the jade, or should she wear the Van Rensselaer emeralds after all?

She turned at last, as if just aware that he had come in, and spoke in an annoyed tone:

“Charles, you really will have to speak to Murray again.”

She turned to get the effect of the jewel and tilted her chin haughtily.

“He is simply unspeakable!”

She held up her hand-glass and turned her head the other way to get a vision of the other ear.

Her husband drew a deep fortifying breath, wet his lips nervously with the tip of his tongue the way a dog does when he is expecting a whipping, and braced himself for action.

“What’s Murray been doing now?” he asked crisply, belligerently. There was fight in his eye and a set to his jaw, although the lean cheek-bones just below the eyes seemed to wince as at a blow.

“Why, he’s making himself conspicuous again with that low-down De Flora woman. Marian Stewart has been telling me that he took her to the Assembly last night and danced every dance with her. And it’s got to stop! I’m not going to have our name dragged in the dust by my own son.”

“But I don’t understand,” said her husband dryly. “You didn’t object when he did the same thing with the Countess Lenowski, and she was twice divorced. I spoke of it then, for it seemed to me morals were more in your line than mine, but you thought it was all right. I’m sure I don’t see what you can expect of him now when you sanctioned that two years ago.”

“Now, Charles! Don’t be tiresome! The Countess Lenowski was a very different person. Rich as Crœsus, and titled, and beautiful and young. You can’t blame the poor child for being divorced from men who were seeking her merely for her money!”

“The Countess Lenowski is neither so young nor so innocent as she would have everybody believe, and I told you at the time that her beauty wasn’t even skin-deep. I don’t get your fine distinctions. What’s the matter with this De Flora woman? Isn’t she rich? Doesn’t your son think she’s beautiful? And she’s young enough. They say she’s never been married at all, let alone divorced. I made it a point to look into that.”

“Now, Charles, you’re being difficult! That’s all there is to it. You’re just trying to be difficult! And there’s no use talking to you when you get difficult. You know as well as I do what that De Flora is. Some little insignificant movie actress, not even a star! With all Murray’s money and family of course every little upstart is simply flinging herself at him, and you must speak to him! You really must. Let him know his allowance will stop and he can’t have any more cars unless he behaves himself!”

“And why must I be the one to speak? I left all questions of social and moral obligations to you when he was young. I am sure it is late in the day for me to meddle now.”

“Now, Charles, you are difficult again. You are quibbling. I called you up to let you know that Murray needs advice, and you’re to give it! That’s all! It’s time you were dressing. We have a dinner, you remember. The Arlingtons and the Schuylers. Do be ready. It’s so tiresome to have to wait for you.”

Thus dismissed, the head of the house looked at his wife’s slim young back and well-cut coiffure with an expression of mingled scorn and despair, which she might have seen in her mirror if she had not been too much absorbed with her own image; but it is doubtful if she would have understood if she had seen it. It was because he had long ago recognized her obtuseness in these fine points that Charles Van Rensselaer had been able to maintain his habitual air of studied mock politeness. Her name was Violet, and she knew she could count always on courtesy from him, no matter how his eyes mocked. With that she was content.

He watched her a full minute, noting the grace of movement as she turned her head from side to side perfecting the details of her contour, marked the lustre of her amber hair, the sweep of lovely white shoulder against the low severe line of her dinner gown, looked almost wistfully, like a child, for something more, something tender, something gentler than her last words, less cold and formal; yet knew he would not get it. He had always been watching for something more from her than he knew he could ever get; something more than he knew she possessed. Just because she was outwardly lovely it seemed as if there must be something beautiful hidden within her somewhere that some miracle would sometime bring forth. The love of his early youth had believed that, would always cling to it, thinking that sometime it would be revealed—yet knowing it was an impossibility for which he hoped.

With a sigh almost inaudible he turned and went down the heavily carpeted hall, followed by the trail of her impatient cold words:

“Oh, are you there yet? Why won’t you hurry? I know you’ll be late!”

He shut the great mahogany door behind him with a dull thud. He would have liked to have slammed it, but the doors in that house could not slam. They were too heavy and too well hung on their oiled hinges. It shut him in like a vault to a costly room where everything had been done for his comfort, yet comfort was not. He did not hasten even yet. He went and stood at the window looking out, looking down to the area below; to the paved alleyway that ran between the blocks and gave access to the back door and the garage. A row of brick houses on the side street ended at that alleyway, and a light twinkled in a kitchen window where a woman’s figure moved to and fro between a table and the stove—a pleasant cheery scene reminding one of homecoming and sweet domesticity, a thing he had always yearned for, yet never found since he was a little child in his father’s home at the farm, with a gentle mother living and a house full of boisterous, loving brothers and sisters. He watched the woman wistfully. What if Violet had been a woman like that, who would set the table for supper and go about the stove preparing little dishes. He laughed aloud bitterly at the thought. Violet in her slim dinner gown, her dangling earrings and her French bob, risking her lily and rose complexion over a fire!

He turned sharply back to his room, snapped on the electric light and went and stood before the two great silver frames that adorned his dressing-table. One held the picture of the lovely delicate woman, almost a girl in appearance, smart, artistic, perfect as the world counts perfection. It was a part of her pride that placed her picture in his room for others to see his devotion, and had it changed each time a new picture that pleased her was taken. His pleasure in her picture had long ago vanished, but he studied her face now with that yearning look in his own, as if again he searched for the thing that was not there; as if his eyes would force from the printed card a quality that the soul must be hiding.

Then with a long sigh he turned to the other frame—the young careless handsome face of his son, Murray Montgomery Van Rensselaer. That honored name! How proud he had been when they gave it to his child! What dreams he had had that his son would add still more honor to that name!

He studied the handsome face intently, searching there for the thing he could not find in the mother’s face. How like they were, those two, who belonged to him, yet were to him almost as strangers—one might almost say as enemies sometimes, when they combined to break his will or his request.

Yet of the two the boy was nearest to him. There had been times when Murray was very young that they had come almost close—fishing excursions, and a hike or two, a camping trip; rare times, broken up always by Violet, who demanded their attention, and resented rough things for her son.

The boy’s face was too slender, too girlish, almost effeminate, yet behind it there was a daredevil in his eyes that suggested something more rugged, more manly, perhaps, when he would settle down. The father kept wishing, hoping, that the thing he had not found to satisfy his longing in his wife would some day develop in his son, and then they might be all in all to one another.

With another deep sigh he turned away and began mechanically to dress for the evening, his mind not on what he was doing. But then why should it be when everything was laid out for him? It required no thought. He was thinking about Murray. How they had spoiled him between them! Violet indulging him and repressing all his natural bent toward simple, natural things, moulding him into a young fop; insisting on alternately coddling and scolding him; never loving to him even in her indulgence; always cold and unsympathetic toward all that did not go the way she chose.

For himself, he had been so bitterly disappointed in the lad that the years had brought about an attitude of habitual disapproval, as high and as wide and as separating as any stone wall that was ever built. Yet the father’s heart yearned over his son, and the years were growing crabbed with his denial. Why did the boy choose only folly? Scrapes in school and worse in college. Clubs and sports and drinking affairs. Speeding and women and idleness! What a life! What would the grandsire who had founded the ancient and honorable house and had given them the honored name think of such a scion? Yet what could one expect with a mother such as he had given his son?

He gave a last comprehensive survey to his well-groomed self and turned out the light. With deliberate intent he walked across to the window again and looked out to that bright little kitchen window across the alley.

Darkness had dropped down upon the city since he had lighted his room, evening complete, and the little bright window with its aproned figure moving steadily back and forth with brisk step between stove and table stood out clearly in the crisp night. He could see the knife in her hand as she stirred something in a pan on the stove. He could see the foaming pitcher of milk she put in the centre of the white-draped table. He could see a griddle over the flame, with the blue smoke rising from it. Pancakes. They were going to have pancakes for supper! His mother used to have pancakes for supper when he was a little lad out at the old farm, pancakes with maple syrup! How he wished he could go over there to the little two-story red brick house and sit down at that white table and eat some. There would be syrup like amber perhaps in a glass pitcher, and how good they would taste! What would they say if he were to go over and ask if he might eat supper with them? What would Violet say if he should go? Leave her abominable interminable dinner party and go over to that quiet kitchen to eat pancakes! Violet would think he was crazy—would perhaps take steps to put him in the insane asylum, would at least consult a physician. What a fraud life was! A man was never his own master in this world!

A servant tapped at the door.

“Mrs. Van Rensselaer says will you please come down at once. The guests have arrived.”

There was a smack of insolence in the maid’s voice. She knew who was mistress in that house.

As he turned away from the simple vision a figure stole down the alley, furtively looking this way and that, and slipped like a shadow close to the bright kitchen window, peering in, a white anxious face, with a cap drawn low over the eyes, and a reckless set to the expensive coat worn desperately hunched above crouching shoulders.

If Charles Van Rensselaer had lingered just a second longer at the window he might have seen that stealing figure, might have—!

But he turned sharply at the servant’s call and went down to play the polished host, to entertain his unwelcome guests with witty sarcasm and sharp repartee, to give the lie to his heart sorrow, and one more proof to the world that he belonged to a great and old family and bore a name that meant riches and fame and honor wherever he went.

III

When Murray Van Rensselaer slid out from the hospital door into the night he had no fixed idea of where he was going or what he was going to do. His main thought was to get away.

It had been years since he had had to walk anywhere, much less run. There had always been the car. But the car was in atoms and he dared not take a taxi. His feet, so long unused for real work, were nimble enough in dancing, and in all sorts of sports; but now when necessity was upon him, somehow they seemed to fail him. They lagged when he would hasten forward. It seemed to him he crawled.

The blocks ahead of him looked miles away. When he accomplished another corner and rounded it into the next street he felt a great achievement, yet shrank from the new street lest he meet some acquaintance. It was borne in upon him with letters of fire writ with a pen of iron in his soul that he was a murderer, and he must escape from justice. Therefore his unwilling feet were carrying him through the night whither he wist not, whither he would not. It came to him suddenly that he despised himself for fleeing this way, but that he knew his own soul, and that it was not in him to stand and face a murder trial. He could not bear the scorn in his beautiful mother’s face, the bitterness in his father’s eyes. He shrank from the jeers or pity of his companions, from the gentle, sad eyes of Bessie’s mother, from the memory of Bessie’s white face. He could not face a court and a jury, nor fight to save his life. He could not bear the horror of the punishment that would be meted out to him. Even though money might make the penalty light, yet never again could he face the world and be proud of his old family name and carry life with others with a high hand because he was Murray Van Rensselaer; because he had a right to be deferred to, and to rule others, because he had been born into a good and honorable and revered family. He had severed connection with that family! He had smirched the name he bore! He had ruined himself for life! He was a murderer!

These thoughts pursued him through the night as he hurried onward, not knowing whither he went.

Cars shot by him in the street. Twice he ducked away because a familiar face looked out at him from some passing vehicle. Like a dart the thought went through him that he could go their way no longer, be in their world no more. He must always shy away from the face of man. He would never be free again! He had lost everything! The brand of Cain was upon him! Who was Cain? Where had he heard that phrase, “the brand of Cain”?

And then he came within the shadow of his own home.

He had been busy with his terrible thoughts. He had not been thinking where he was going, not realizing whither his frantic feet were carrying him. Now as he turned the corner sharply, almost knocking over another pedestrian in his flight, he saw the great marble pile ahead of him; its curtained lights, its dim familiar beauty, its aloofness, its pride, impressed him for the first time. What had he done? Brought down the pride of this great house! Blighted his own life! He did not want to come here! He must not come here! The marble of the walls was as unfriendly and aloof as the marble halls from which he had fled. The cold clarity of the ether still clung to his garments like the aroma of the grave. Why had his feet carried him here where there was no hiding for him, no city of refuge in that costly marble pile? His father and his mother were bitter against him anyway for past offences. Little follies they seemed to him now beside the thing that he had so unwittingly done. Had some devil led him here to show him first what he had lost before it flung him far away from all he had held dear in life?

Yet he could not turn another way. It seemed he must go on. And now as he passed the house across the way a shining car drew up and people in evening coats got out and went in, and he remembered. There was to have been a dinner—His mother had begged him to come—Gwendolen Arlington—she was the girl in coral with the silver slippers—A pretty girl—How she would shrink from him now! She must not see him—! He shied around the corner as if some evil power propelled him in vain attempt to get away into some dark cranny of the earth—Gwendolen—She would be sitting at his mother’s table, in his place perhaps, and his chair vacant beside her—Oh, no, his mother would supply some one else—and he perhaps—Where would he be? While the newsboys on the street cried out his name in shame—and his mother smiled her painted smile, and his father said the glittering sarcasms he was famous for, and he—was out in the cold and dark—forever!

Not that he had ever cared particularly for home, until now, when it was taken from him! There had always been a heart hunger for something different. But now that he was suddenly alienated from all he knew it became strangely precious.

Ah! Now he knew whence the devil was carrying him. The old alley! Bessie’s house! He knew back in his heart he could not have got away without coming here. He would have to see it all to carry it with him forever, and always be seeing what he had destroyed. Yes, there was the kitchen window, the shutters open. Mrs. Chapparelle never closed those shutters while Bessie was out. It was a sort of signal that all was well in the house, and every chick safely in when those shutters were closed. He could remember as a little boy when he watched from his fourth-story back nursery window, always with a feeling of disappointment when those shutters were closed that shut out the cheeriness of the Chapparelle home for the night.

Yes, there was the flat stone where he and Bessie used to play jackstones, under the gutter pipe, just as of old. He hadn’t been out in the alley since he came back from college, and that was before he went to Europe. It must be six or seven years! How had he let these dear friends get away from him this way? His mother of course had managed at first. She never liked him to go to the side street for company—but later, he had chosen his own companions, and he might have gone back. Why hadn’t he?

Somehow, as he made his stealthy way down the paved walled alley, thoughts came flocking, and questions demanded an answer as if they had had a personality, and he was led whither he would not.

Surely he did not want to come now of all times. Come and see this home from which he had taken the sunshine, the home that he had wrecked and brought to sorrow! Yet he must.

Like a thief he stole close and laid his white face against the window-pane, his eyes straining to see every detail, as if most precious things had been wasted from his sight and must be caught at, and all fragments possible rescued, as if he would in this swift vision make amends for all his years of neglect.

Yes, there she was, going about getting supper just as he remembered her, stirring at a great bowl of batter. There would be batter cakes. He could smell the appetizing crispness of the one she was baking to test, to see if the batter was just right. How he and Bessie used to hover and beg for these test cakes, and roll them about a bit of butter and eat them from their hands, delicious bits of brown hot crispness, like no other food he had ever tasted since. Buckwheats. That was the name they called them. They never had buckwheats at his home. Sometimes he had tried to get them at restaurants and hotels, but they brought him sections of pasty hot blankets instead that had no more resemblance to the real things than a paper rose to a real one. Yes, there was the pitcher of milk, foaming and rich, the glass syrup jug with the little silver squirrel on the lid to hold it up—how familiar and homely and dear it all was! And Bessie—Bessie—lying still and white in the hospital, and the police hunting the city over for her murderer!

Somebody must tell her mother!

He looked at the mother’s face, a little thinner, a trifle grayer than when he knew her so well, and she had tied up his cut finger. The crinkles in her hair where it waved over her small fine ears were sprinkled with many silver threads. He remembered thinking she had prettier ears than his mother, and wondering about it because he knew that his mother was considered very beautiful. She wore an apron with a bib. The kitten used to run after her and play with the apron-strings sometimes, and pull them till they were untied and hung behind. There was an old cat curled sedately on a chair by the sink. Could that be the same kitten? How long did cats live? Life! Death! Bessie was dead and there was her mother going about making hot cakes for supper, expecting Bessie to come in pretty soon and sit at that white table and eat them! But Bessie would never come in and eat at that table again. Bessie was dead and he had killed her! He, her murderer, was daring to stand there and look in at that little piece of heaven on earth that he had ruined.

He groaned aloud and rested his forehead on the window-sill.

“Oh God! I never meant to do it!” The words were forced from his lips, perhaps the first prayer those lips had ever made. He did not know it was a prayer.

The cat stirred and pricked up its ears, opening its eyes toward the window, and Mrs. Chapparelle paused and glanced that way, but the white face visible but a moment before was resting on the window-sill out of sight.

The busy hum of the city murmured on outside the court where he stood, and he heeded it not. He stood overwhelmed with a sense of shame. It was something he had never experienced before. Always anything he had done before, any scrape he found himself in, it had been sufficient to him to fall back on his family. The old honored name that he bore had seen him through every difficulty so far, and might even this time if it were exerted to its utmost. Had Bessie been a stranger it would probably have been his refuge still. But Bessie was not a stranger, and there was grace enough in his heart to know that never to his own self could he excuse, or pass over, what he had done to her and to her kind sweet mother, who had so often mothered him in the years that were past.

A little tinkling bell broke the spell that was upon him—the old-fashioned door-bell in the Chapparelle kitchen just above the door that led to the front of the house. He started and lifted his head. He could see the vibration of the old bell on its rusty spring just as he had watched it in wonder the first time he had seen it when a child. Mrs. Chapparelle was hastening with her quick step to open the door. He caught the flutter of her apron as she passed into the hall. And what would she meet at the door? Were they bringing Bessie’s body home, so soon—! Or was it merely some one sent to break the news? Oh, he ought to have prepared her for it. He ought to be in there now lying at her feet and begging her forgiveness, helping her to bear the awful sorrow that he had brought upon her. She had been kind to him and he ought to be brave enough to face things and do anything there was to do—but instead he was flying down the court on feet that trembled so they could scarcely bear his weight, feet that were leaden and would not respond to the desperate need that was upon him, feet that seemed to clatter on the smooth cement as if they were made of steel. Some one would hear him. They would be after him. No one else would fly that way from a house of sorrow save a murderer! Coward! He was a coward! A sneak and a coward!

And he had loved Bessie! Yes, he knew now that was why he was so glad when he saw her standing on the corner after all those years—glad she finally yielded to his request and rode with him, because she had suddenly seemed to him the desire of his heart, the consummation of all the scattered loves and longings of his young life. How pretty she had been! And now she was dead!

His heart cried out to be with her, to cry into her little dead ear that he was sorry; to make her know before she was utterly gone, before her visible form was gone out of this earth, how he wished he was back in the childhood days with her to play with always. He drew a breath like a sob as he hurried along, and a passer-by turned and looked after him. With a kind of sixth sense he understood that he had laid himself open to suspicion, and cut sharply down another turning into a labyrinth of streets, making hair-breadth escapes, dashing between taxis, scuttling down dark alleys, and across vacant lots; once diving through a garage in mad haste with the hope of finding a car he could hire, and then afraid to ask any one about it. And all the time something in his soul was lashing him with scorn. Coward! Coward! it called him. Bearing a lofty name, wearing the insignia of wealth and culture, yet too low to go back and face his mistakes and follies, too low to face the woman he had robbed of her child and tell her how sore his own heart was, and confess his sin.

Murray Van Rensselaer had been wont to boast that he was not afraid of anything. But he was afraid now! He was fleeing from the retribution that he was sure was close upon his footsteps. Something in his heart wanted to go back and do the manly thing, but could not! His very feet were afraid and would not obey. He had no power in him to do anything but flee!

IV

Sometime in the night he found himself walking along a country road. How he got there or what hour it was he did not know. He was wearier than he had ever been in his life before. The expensive shoes he was wearing were not built for the kind of jaunt he had been taking. He had been dressed for an afternoon of frivolity when he started out from home. There had been the possibility of bringing up almost anywhere before dinner-time, and he had not intended a hike when he dressed. His shoes pierced him with stabs of pain every step he took. They were soaked with water from a stream he had forded somewhere. It was very hazy in his mind whether the stream had been in the gutter of the city where the escape from a fire-engine had been flooding down the street or whether he had sometime crossed a brook since he left the outskirts of town. Either of these things seemed possible. The part of him that did the thinking seemed to have been asleep and was just coming awake painfully.

He was wet to the skin with perspiration, and was exhausted in every nerve and sinew. He wanted nothing in life so much as a hot shower and a bed for twenty-four hours. He was hungry and thirsty. Oh! Thirsty! He would give his life for a drink! Yet he dared not try to find one. And now he knew it had been a brook he had waded, for he remembered stooping down and lapping water from his hand. But it had not satisfied. He wanted something stronger. His nerves under the terrible strain of the last few hours were crying out for stimulant. He had not even a cigarette left—and he dared not go near enough to human habitation to purchase any. Oh, yes, he had money, a whole roll of it. He felt in his pocket to make sure. He had taken it out of his bank that morning, cashed the whole of his allowance check, to pay several bills that had been persecuting him, things he did not want dad to know about. Of course there were those things he had bought for Bessie and had sent up. He was glad he had done that much for her before he killed her. Yet what good would it ever do her now? She was dead. And her mother would never know where they came from. Indeed Bessie would not know either. He had told her they were for a friend and he wanted her help in selecting them. Perhaps Bessie would not have liked his gift after all. He had not thought of that before. Girls of her class—but she was not any class—no type that he knew—just one of her kind, so how could he judge? But somehow it dawned upon him that Bessie would not have taken expensive gifts even from him, an old friend. That entered his consciousness with a dull thud of disappointment. But then Bessie would never know now that he had sent them up. Or did they know after death? Was there a hereafter? He knew Mrs. Chapparelle believed in one. She used to talk about Heaven as if it were another room, a best room, where she would one day go and dress up all the time in white. At least that was what his childish imagination had gleaned from the stories she used to read to him and Bessie. But then if Bessie knew about the gifts she would also know his heart—Stay! Would he want her to know his heart—all his life!

He groaned aloud and then held his breath lest the night had heard him. Oh, he was crazy! He must find a spot to lie down, or else he might as well go and give himself up to justice. He was not fit to protect himself. He was foolish with sleep.

He crept into a wood at last, on a hillside above the road, and threw himself down exhausted among some bushes quite hidden from the road in the darkness.

He was not conscious of anything as he drifted away into exhausted sleep. It was as if he with all his overwhelming burden of disgrace and horror and fear was being dragged down through the ooze of the earth out of sight for ever, being obliterated, and glad that it was so.

He woke in the late morning with a sense of bewilderment and sickness upon him. The light was shining broad across his face and seemed focused upon his heavy smarting eyes. He lay for an instant trying to think what it was all about; chilled to the bone and sore in every fibre. A ringing sound was in his ears, and when he tried to rise the earth swam about him. His whole pampered being was crying out for food. Never in his life before had he missed a meal and gone so far and felt so much. What was it all about?

And then his memory served him sharply with the facts. He was a murderer, an outcast from his father’s house upon the face of the earth, and it was needful that he should fast and go far, but where, and to what end? There would be no place that he could go but that he would have to move farther. Why not end it all here and be done with it? Perhaps that would be a good way to make amends to Bessie. He had killed her, he would kill himself, and if there was a place hereafter he would find her and tell her it was the only decent thing he could do, having sent her, to come himself and see that she was cared for. Yet when he toyed with the thought somewhat sentimentally in his misery he knew he had not the courage to do it even for gallantry. And it seemed a useless kind of thing to do. Nothing was of any use anyway! Why had he ever got into such a mess? Only yesterday morning at this time he was starting off for the country club and an afternoon’s golf. He took out his watch and looked at it. It had stopped! The hands were pointing to ten minutes after one. Probably he had neglected to wind it. It must be later than that.

A sudden roar came down the road below him, growing in volume as it approached. He struggled to a sitting posture and looked out from his ambush. It was a truck going down the road, and behind it came two other cars at a little distance apart. One carried a man in uniform. He could see the glitter of brass buttons, and a touch of brightness on his cap. He drew back suddenly and crouched, his fear upon him once more. Perhaps that was an officer out to hunt for him. If it was late in the day by this time the newspapers had got hold of it! He could see the headlines:

“Son of Charles Van Rensselaer a murderer! Drives girl to her death. Takes body to hospital and escapes.”

He shuddered and a ghastly pallor sat upon him. Incredible that such a fate could have overtaken him in a few short hours, and he should have been reduced to hiding in the bushes for safety! He must get out of here, and at once! Now while there were no more cars in sight. The road appeared to be comparatively free from travel. Perhaps he could keep under cover and get to some small town where he might venture to purchase some food. He certainly could not keep on walking without eating.

He struggled to his feet in a panic, and found every joint and muscle stiff and sore, and his feet stinging with pain as soon as he stood upon them.

He glanced down and saw that his handsome overcoat was torn in a jagged line from shoulder to hem, and a bit of fur was sticking out through the opening. That must have been done when he climbed that barbed wire fence in the dark!

He passed his hand over his usually clean-shaven face and found it rough and bristly. He tried to smooth his hair, and pull his hat down over his eyes, but even this movement was an effort. How was he to go on? Yet he must. He was haunted by a prison cell and the electric chair, preceded by a long-drawn-out trial, in which his entire life would be spread to public gaze. His beautiful mother and haughty sarcastic father would be dragged in the dust with their proud name and fame; and Mother Chapparelle in her black garments would sit and watch him with sad forgiving eyes. Strange that he knew even now in his shame that her eyes would be forgiving through their sorrow.

Yet paramount to all this was the piercing, insistent fact that he was hungry. He had never quite known hunger before. He felt in his pockets in vain hope of finding a stray cigarette, but only old letters and programs, souvenirs of his gay life, came to his hand. Then it came to him that he must destroy these, here where he was in shelter and the ground was wet. He could make a hasty fire and destroy everything that would identify him if he should be caught.

He felt for his little gold match-box, and stooping painfully, lighted a small pile of letters and papers and bits of trinkets. He burned his tie and a couple of handkerchiefs with his initials. There were his watch and cuff-links, and the gold cigarette-case, all bearing initials. He could throw those in the bushes if there was danger. Perhaps he had better get rid of them at once, however, while there was a chance. What if he should bury them? He looked about for an implement with which to dig. Digging had never been a pastime with him. He awkwardly turned up a few chunks of mud with his hands, then took out his knife, a gold one attached to his watch-chain, and burrowed a little farther, not getting much below the surface. He put the trinkets into his glove and laid them into the earth with a strange feeling that he was attending the obsequies of something precious. Then after he had walked a few steps he deliberately returned and unearthed the things, restoring them to his pocket. He had had a sudden realizing sense that he was parting with what he might need sorely. There was not money enough in his pocket to carry him far nor keep him long, and these trinkets would help out. They were no more an identification than all the rest of him. Why throw them away? He looked regretfully at the ashes of his two fine handkerchiefs, the last he would ever have with that initial. And he would need them. He turned and looked back over the road he had come in the night and seemed to see all the things he was leaving, his home, his friends, his club, his comfortable living! What a fool he had been. If he had not angered his father and annoyed his mother, and got “in bad” with all his relations everywhere, they would have stood by him now and helped him out of this scrape somehow, just as they had always done before.

Then in the mist of the distance where the panorama of his life had been passing there arose a face, smiling and sweet, with a rose flush on the cheeks, a light in the eyes, sunshine in the hair, and he remembered! As he looked the face grew white and the lids fell over the blue eyes and she was gone!

Sick with the memory, he turned and fled; on feet that were sore, with limbs that were aching, with eyes that were blinded with unaccustomed tears, he stumbled on across rough fields, through woods and meadows and more woods, always woods when he could strike them.

And coming out toward evening with a gnawing faintness at the pit of his stomach, where he could see across a valley, he noted a little trolley-car like a toy in the distance sliding along the road, and a small village of neat little houses about a mile away. Eagerly he watched the car as it slid on across the land, almost as small as a fly it seemed, and soon it was a mere speck on the way to the village. Where there was one trolley there were more. Could he dare try for the next one and go to that village for something to eat? He could not go on much longer without food. Or else he would fall by the wayside, and the publicity which his mother so hated—that kind of publicity which was not pretty—would be sure to find him out. He must not drag down his mother’s and his father’s name. He must hold out to save them so much at least.

His mind had grown clearer through the day, as he had tramped painfully hour after hour and thought it out. He knew that the only thing to do was to get far away, to some place where law could not find him out and fetch him back for punishment. To do that successfully he must disguise himself somehow. He must get rid of his clothes little by little and get other clothes. He must grow a beard and change his hair-cut and act a part. He had been good at acting a part for fun in the old days. He was always in demand for theatricals. Could he do it now when Fear was his master?

He stumbled across the meadows one by one, painfully over the fences, and at last stood in the ditch by the side of the shining rails with the long low sunset rays gilding them into bright gold. He waited with trembling knees, and watched eagerly for the coming of the car, and when at last a faint hum and a distant whistle announced that it was not far off he began to fairly shake in his anxiety. Would there be many people on board? Would he dare take the risk? Still, he must take it sometime, for he could not hold out much longer.

There were only three women on board, and they did not notice the haggard young fellow who stumbled into the back seat and pulled his hat down over his eyes. They were talking in clear intimate voices that carried a sense of their feeling at home in the car. They told about Mary’s engagement, and how her future mother-in-law was giving a dinner for her, and how proud John was of her, and was getting her a little Ford coupé to run around in. They talked of the weather and little pleasant everyday things that belonged to a world in which the man in the back seat had no part nor lot. They whispered in lower tones of how it was rumored that Bob Sleighton was making money in bootlegging, and he got a view for the first time in his life of how the quiet, respectable, non-drinking world think of the people who break the law in that way. And then they told in detail how they scalloped oysters and made angel cake, and just the degree of brownness that a chicken should be when it was roasted right, until Murray Van Rensselaer, sitting so empty in his back seat, could fairly smell them all as they came out of the oven, and felt as if he must cry like a child.

V

It was dusk when he slid stealthily off the car, having waited with his head turned toward the darkening window till each of the three women had got off at her particular corner. He had sighted a bakery window, and thither he took his way, ordering everything they had on their meagre menu. But then, when he had got it he could only eat a few bites, for somehow Bessie’s white face as he carried her into the hospital kept coming between him and the food and sickened him. Somehow he could not get interested in eating any more, and he paid his bill and left a tip that the girl behind the counter did not in the least understand. She ran out to find him and give it back, but he had gone into a little haberdashery shop, and so she missed him.

He bought a cheap cap of plain tweed and a black necktie. Somehow it did not seem decent going around without any necktie. He walked three blocks and threw his old hat far into a vacant lot, then boarded the next trolley, and so on, where he did not know. He had not known the name of the little town where he had eaten. He began to wonder where he was. He seemed a long way from home; but when a few minutes later the motorman called a name, he recognized a town only about thirty miles from his home city. Was it possible he had walked all that time and only got thirty miles away? He must have been going in a circle! And the newspapers would have full descriptions of him by this time posted everywhere! He was not safe anywhere! What should he do? Where go? Why go anywhere?

He lifted his eyes in despair to the advertising cards, for it seemed to him that every man in the car was looking at him suspiciously. He tried to appear unconcerned. He felt of his chin to see if his beard had grown any, but his face was indecently smooth. He tried to make himself read the advertisements, Chiclets and Chewing-gum, and Baked Beans. Tooth-paste, and Wall-paper, and Cigarettes.

Then suddenly his attention was riveted on the card just across from where he sat. The letters stood out so clearly in red and black on the white card as if they were fairly beckoning to get his attention, as if somebody had just written them to attract his eye; as if it were a burning message for his need:

“YE MUST BE BORN AGAIN!”

A strange thing to be in a trolley-car. He never stopped to wonder how it came there, or what it meant to the general public. He took it just for himself. It suggested a solution of his problem. He must be born again. Sure! That was it, exactly what he needed! He could not live in the circle where he had been first born. He had ostracized himself. He had been disloyal to the code and cast a slur on the honorable name with which he had been born, and it was no more use for him to try to live as Murray Van Rensselaer any longer. He would just have to be born all over again into some one else. Born again! How did one do it? Well, he would have to be somebody else; make himself over; get new clothes first, of course, so he would look like a new man, and the clothes that he could find for what money he had would largely determine the kind of man he was to be made into. This cap was the start. It was a plain cheap working man’s cap. It was not the kind of cap that played much golf or polo, or was entitled to enter the best clubs, or drove an expensive car. It was a working man’s cap, and a working man he must evidently be in the new life. It was a part of being born that you didn’t choose where you should see the light of day, or who should be your parents. A strange pang shot through him at the thought of the parents whom he might not own any more. The name he had borne he would no longer dare to mention. It was the name of a murderer now. He had dishonored it. He would have to have a new name before it would be safe for him to go among men.

A policeman boarded the car in a few minutes and eyed him sharply as he passed to the other end of the car. Murray found his whole body in a tremble. He slid to the back platform and dropped off the next time the car slowed down, and walked a painful distance till a kindly voice from a dilapidated old Ford offered him a ride. Because he felt ready to drop and saw no shelter at hand where he might sleep a while, he accepted. It was too dark for the man to see his face clearly anyway. He seemed to be an old man and not particularly canny. A worldly-wise man would scarcely have asked a stranger to ride at that time of night. So he climbed in beside him and sank into the seat too weary almost to sigh.

But the old farmer was of a social nature, and began to quiz him. How did he come to be walking? Was he going far?

The young man easily settled that.

“Car broke down!” That was true enough. His car would never run again.

But the old man wanted to know where.

Not being acquainted with the roads thereabout, Van Rensselaer could not lie intelligently, and he answered vaguely that he had been taking a cross-cut through a terrible road that did not seem to be much travelled.

“’Bout a mile back?” asked the stranger.

“About.”

“H’m! Copple’s Lane, I reckon. In bad shape. Well, say, we might go back and hitch her on and tow her in. I ain’t in any special hurry.” And the man began to apply the thought to his brakes for a turn around.

The young man roused in alarm.

“Oh, no,” he said energetically. “I’ve got an appointment. I’ll have to hurry on. How far is it to a trolley or train? I’ll be glad if you’ll set me down at your home and direct me to the nearest trolley to the city. I’ll send my man back for the car. It’ll be all right,” he added, reverting in his anxiety to the vernacular of his former life.

His tone of the world made its immediate impression. The stranger looked him over with increasing respect. This was a person from another world. He talked of his man as of a chattel. The fur collar on the fine overcoat came in for inspection. He didn’t often have fur-lined passengers in his tin Lizzie.

“That’s a fine warm coat you’ve got on,” he admired frankly. “Guess you paid a penny for that?”

The young man took instant alarm. Now, when this man got home and read his evening paper with a description of that very overcoat he would go to his telephone and call up the police station. He must get rid of that coat at all hazards. If the man had it in his possession perhaps he would not be so ready to make known the whereabouts of the owner.

“Don’t remember what I paid,” he answered nonchalantly. “But it doesn’t matter. I have to get a new one. This one got all cut up in the smash-up,” and he brought to view the long rip where the coat had caught on some barbed wire when he tried to climb a fence.

The stranger looked at the jagged tear sharply.

“My wife could mend that,” he said speculatively. “Ef you wantta stop at the house and leave it she’ll darn it up so you won’t scarcely know it’s been tore. Then when you get your car fixed up you can come along back and get your coat. I’ll loan you mine while you’re gone. That’s a mighty fine coat. I’d like to own one like it myself. Sorry you can’t remember the price. Now I paid twenty-seven fifty at a bargain sale fer this here one, and it’s a real good piece of cloth.”

Young Van Rensselaer stared in the dark. He did not know there were coats for twenty-seven fifty.

“Nice coat,” he said nonchalantly. “How’d you like to exchange? I’m going away tonight on a little trip and I’m afraid I couldn’t take the time to come back, and I wouldn’t have time to wait to have it mended. I do hate to go with a torn coat, too.”

“H’m!” said the man with a catch in his breath as if he could not believe his ears, but he did not mean to let anybody know it. “But that wouldn’t be altogether fair. Your coat is lined with fur. It must have cost most fifty dollars.”

“Oh, well, I’ve had it some time, you know, and your coat is new; that squares it all up. I’m satisfied if you are.”

“It’s a bargain!” said the man, stopping his car with alacrity, beginning to unbutton his overcoat. A bargain like that had better be taken up before the young gentleman repented of his offer.

Murray Van Rensselaer divested himself of his expensive coat and crawled into the harsh gray coat of the stranger, and said to himself eagerly, “Now I’m becoming a new man,” but he shivered as the car shot forward and the chill air struck through him. Fur lining did make a difference. It never occurred to him before that there were men who could not have fur coats when they needed them for comfort. And now he was one of those men! How astonishing!

The new owner of the fur coat decided that it would be wise not to take the strange young man to his house. He would drop him at the first garage, which was a mile and a half nearer than his home. Then if he repented of his exchange he could not possibly hunt him up and demand his coat back again. So the young man was set down in the night before a little garage on the outskirts of town and the Ford disappeared into the darkness, its tail light winking cunningly, and whisking out of sight at the first corner. No chance for that fur coat to ever meet up with its former owner again. And Murray Van Rensselaer stood shivering in the road, waiting till his companion was out of sight that he too might vanish in another direction. He had no use for a garage, and he groaned in his spirit over the thought of walking further with those infernally tight shoes. He almost had a wild notion of taking them off and going barefoot for a while.

Then suddenly a brilliant headlight mounted the hill at the top of the road and a motorcycle roared into view, heading straight toward him. He could see the brass buttons on the man’s uniform, and he dodged blindly out of the path of the light and ducked behind the garage in frantic haste, forgetful of his aching feet, and made great strides through the stubble of an old cornfield that seemed acres across, his heart beating wildly at the thought that perhaps the man with his overcoat had already stopped somewhere to telephone information about him. He was enveloped in panic once more and stumbled and fell and rose again regardless of the bruises and scratches, as if he were struggling for the victory in a football game. Only in this game his life was the stake.

Somewhere in his past a phrase that he had heard came to his mind and haunted him. Like a chant it beat a rhythm in his brain as he dragged his weary body over miles of darkness.

“The mark of Cain!” it said. Over and over again: “The mark of Cain!”

VI

Grevet’s was a fine old marble mansion just off the avenue with the name in gold script and heavy silken draperies at the plate-glass windows. It had the air of having caught and imprisoned the atmosphere of the old aristocracy that used to inhabit that section of the city. The quiet distinction of the house seemed to give added dignity to the fine old street where memories of other days still lingered to remind old residents of a time when only the four hundred trod the sacred precincts of those noble mansions.

Inside the wrought-iron grill-work of its outer entrance, the quiet distinction became more intense. No footfall sounded from the deep pile of imported carpets that covered the floors. Gray floors, lofty walls done in pearl and gray and cream. Upholstery of velvet toning with the walls and floor. And light, wonderful perfect light softly diffused from the walls themselves, seemingly, making it clear as the morning, yet soft with the radiance of moonlight. A pot of daffodils in one window, just where the silken curtain was slightly drawn to the street. A crystal bowl of Parma violets on a tiny table of teak-wood. An exquisite cushion of needle point blindingly intricate in its delicate design and minute stitches. One rare painting of an old Greek temple against a southern sky and sea. That was Grevet’s.

And when you entered there was no one present at first. It was very still, like entering some secret hall of silence. You almost felt an intruder unless you were of the favored ones who came often to have their wants supplied.

A period of awesome waiting, of hesitation lest you might have made a mistake after all, and then Madame, in a costume of stunning simplicity, would glance out from some inner sanctum, murmur a command, and forth would come a slim attendant in black satin frock and hair cut, seemingly, off the same piece of goods, and demand your need; and later would come forth the mannikins and models wearing creations of distinction that would put the lily’s garb to shame.

It was in the mysterious side lines somewhere from which they issued forth unexpectedly upon the purchaser of garments, that a group of these attendants stood conversing, just behind Madame’s inner sanctum, in low tones because Madame might return at any moment, and Madame did not permit comments on the customers.

“She was a beautiful girl,” said one whose high color under tired eyes, and boyish hair-cut on a head mature, were somehow oddly at variance. “She was different!”

“Yes, different!” spoke another crisply with an accent, “quite different, and attractive, yes. But she had no style. She wore her hair like one who didn’t care for style. Becoming, yes, but not at all the thing. Quite out. She didn’t seem to belong to him at all. She was not like any of the girls he has brought here before.”

“And yet she had distinction.”

“Yes,” hesitating, “distinction of a kind. But more the distinction of another universe.”

“Oh, come down to earth, Miss Lancey,” cried a round little model with face a shade too plump. “You’re always up in the clouds. She had no style and you know it. That coat she wore was one of those nineteen ninety-eight coats in Simon’s window. I see them every night when I go home. I knew it by those tricky little pockets. Quite cute they are with good lines, but cheap and common of course. She was nothing but a poor girl. Why try to make out she was something else. She has a good figure of course, and pretty features if one likes that angelic type, but no style in the world.”

“She was stunning in the black velvet,” broke in the first speaker stubbornly. “I can’t help it, I think she had style. There was something—well, kind of gracious about her, as if she were a lady in disguise.”

“Oh Florence, you’re so hopelessly romantic! That’s away behind the times. You don’t find Cinderellas nowadays. Things are more practical. If a lady has a disguise she takes it off. That’s more up to date.”

“Well, you know yourself she was different. You can’t say she wasn’t perfectly at home with those clothes. She wore them like a princess.”

“She had a beautiful form,” put in an older salesperson. “That’s a whole lot.”

“It takes something more than form,” said the girl persistently. “You know that Charlotte Bakerman had a form. They said she was perfect in every measurement, but she walked like a cow, and she carried herself like a gorilla in a tree when she sat down.”

“Oh, this girl was graceful, if that’s what you mean,” conceded the fat one ungraciously.

“It wasn’t just grace, either,” persisted the champion of the unknown customer. “She didn’t seem to be conscious she had on anything unusual at all. She walked the same way when she came in. She walked the same way when she went out in her nineteen ninety-eight. She sort of glorified it. And when she had on the Lanvin Green ensemble it was just as if she had always worn such things. It sort of seemed to belong to her, as if she was born with it, like a bird’s feathers.”

“I know what you mean,” said the woman with tired eyes and artificial color. “She wasn’t thinking about her clothes. They weren’t important to her. She would only care if they were suitable. And she would know at a glance without discussing it whether they were suitable. You saw how she looked at that flashy little sports frock, the one with the three shades of red stripes and a low red leather belt. She just turned away and said in a low tone: ‘Oh, not that one, Murray!’ as if it hurt her.”

“Did she call him Murray?” asked the fat one greedily.

“Yes. They seemed to know each other real well. She was almost as if she might have been a sister, only we know he hasn’t got any sisters. She might have been a country cousin.”

“Perhaps he’s going to marry her!” suggested the fat one.

“Nonsense!” said the first girl sharply. “She’s not his kind. Imagine the magnificent Mrs. Van Rensselaer mothering anything that wore a nineteen ninety-eight coat from Simon’s! Can you? Besides, they say he’s going to marry the Countess Lenowski when she gets her second divorce.”

“I don’t think that girl would marry a man like Murray Van Rensselaer,” spoke the thoughtful one. “She has too much character. She had a remarkable face.”

“Oh, you can’t tell by a face,” shrugged a slim one with a sharp black lock of hair pasted out on her cheek, and a sinuous body. “She can’t be much or she wouldn’t let him buy her clothes!”

“She didn’t!” said the first speaker sharply. “I heard her say, ‘I wouldn’t think she would like that, Murray, it’s too noticeable. I’m sure a nice girl wouldn’t like that as well as the blue chiffon.’”

“H’m!” said the slim one. “Looks as if she must be a relative or something. Did anybody get her name?”

“The address on the box was Elizabeth Chapparelle,” contributed a pale little errand girl who had stood by listening.

“Elizabeth!” said the thoughtful one. “She looked like an Elizabeth.”

“But if they weren’t for her that wouldn’t have been her name,” persisted the fat one.

“I thought I heard him call her Bessie once,” said the little errand girl—

“Then he was buying for some one of his old girls that is going to be married,” suggested the slim one contemptuously. “Probably this girl is a friend of them both.”

“Hush! Madame is coming! Which one did he take? The Lanvin green?”

“Both. He told Madame to send them both! Yes, Madame, I’m coming!”

A boy in a mulberry uniform with silver buttons entered.

“Say, Lena, take that to Madame and tell her there’s a mistake. The folks say they don’t know anything about it.”

Lena, the pale little errand girl, took the heavy box and walked slowly off to find Madame, studying the address on the box as she went.

“Why!” She paused by the thoughtful-eyed woman. “It’s her. It’s that girl!”

Madame appeared suddenly with a frown.

“What’s this, Lena? How many times have I told you not to stop to talk? Where are you carrying that box?”

“Thomas says there’s a mistake in the address. The folks don’t know anything about it.”

“Where is Thomas? Send him to me. Here, Thomas. What’s the matter? Couldn’t you find the house? The address is perfectly plain.”

“Sure, I found the house, Madame, but they wouldn’t take it in. They said they didn’t know anything about it. It wasn’t theirs.”

“Did they say Miss Chapparelle didn’t live there? Who came to the door?”

“An old woman with white hair. Yes, she said Miss Chapparelle lived there. She said she was her daughter, but that the package didn’t belong to her. She said she never bought anything at this place.”

“Well, you can take it right back,” said Madame sharply. “Tell the woman the young lady knows all about it. Tell her it will explain itself when the young lady opens it. There’s a card inside. And Thomas,” hurrying after him as he slid away to the door, and speaking in a lower voice, “Thomas, you leave it there no matter what she says. It’s all paid for and I’m not going to be bothered this way. You’re to leave it no matter what she says, you understand?”

“Sure, Madame, I understand. I’ll leave it.”

The neat little delivery car with its one word “Grevet” in silver script on a mulberry background slid away on its well-oiled mechanism, and the service persons in their black satin straight frocks turned their black satin bobbed heads and looked meaningfully at one another with glances that said eagerly:

“I told you so. That girl was different!” and Madame looked thoughtfully out of her side window into the blank brick wall of the next building and wondered how this was going to turn out. She did not want to have those expensive costumes returned, and she could not afford to anger young Van Rensselaer; he was too good a customer. He had expected her to carry out his instructions. It might be that she would have to go herself to explain the matter. Any one could see that girl was too unsophisticated to understand. Her mother would probably be worse. She would have notions. Madame had had a mother once herself, so long ago she had forgotten many of her precepts, but she could understand. Madame was clever. This was going to be a case requiring clever action. But Madame was counting much upon Thomas. Thomas too could be clever on occasion. That was why he wore the silver buttons on the mulberry uniform and earned a good salary. Thomas knew that his silver buttons depended on his getting things across when Madame spoke to him as she had just done, and Madame believed Thomas would get this across.

In the early dusk of the evening when it came closing time at Grevet’s the service women in chic wraps and small close hats flocked stylishly forth into the city and took their various ways home. The thoughtful one and the outspoken one wended their way together out toward the avenue and up toward obscure streets tucked in between finer ones, walking to save carfare, for even for those who served at Grevet’s there were circumstances in which it was wise in good weather to save carfare.

Their way led past the houses of wealth, a trifle longer perhaps, but pleasanter, with a touch of something in the air which their limited lives had missed, but which they liked to be near and enjoy if only in the passing. Their days at Grevet’s had fostered this love of the beautiful and real, perhaps, that made a glimpse into the windows of the great a pleasant thing; the drifting of a rare lace curtain, the sight of masses of flowers within, the glow of a handsome lamp, and the mellow shadows of a costly room, the sound of fine machinery as the limousines passed almost noiselessly, the quiet perfect service of the butler at the door, the well-groomed women who got out of the cars and went in, delicately shod, to eat dinners that others had prepared, with no thought or worry about expense. These were more congenial surroundings to walk amid, even if it took one a block or two further out of the way, than a crowded street full of common rushing people, jostling and worried like themselves, and the air full of the sordid things of life.

They were talking about the events of the day, as people will, the happenings of their little world, the only points of contact they had in common out of their separate lives.

“How much have you sold today, Mrs. Hanley?” questioned the girl eagerly. “I had the biggest sale this month yet.” The sad-eyed one smiled pleasantly.

“Oh, I had a pretty good day, Florence. This is always a good time of year you know.”

“Yes, I know. Everybody getting new things.” She sighed, with a fierce longing that she too might have plenty of money to get new things. A sigh like that was easily translatable by her companion. For some reason Mrs. Hanley shrank tonight from the usual wail that the girl would presently bring forth about the unfairness of the division of wealth in the world, perhaps because she, too, was wondering how to make both ends meet and get the new things that were necessary. She roused herself to change the subject. They were passing the Van Rensselaer mansion now, well known to both of them. She snatched at the first subject that presented itself.

“Why do you suppose Madame is so anxious to please that young man when everybody says he doesn’t pay his bills?”

“Oh,” said Florence almost bitterly, “she knows his dad’ll pay ’em. It’s everything to have a name like that. He could get away with almost anything if he just told people who he was.”

“I suppose so,” said Mrs. Hanley almost sadly. “But I hope that girl doesn’t keep those clothes. She’s too fine for such as he is.”

“Yes, isn’t she?” said Florence eagerly. “I suppose most folks would think we were crazy talking like that. He’s considered a great catch. But somehow I couldn’t see a girl like that getting soiled with being tied up to a man that’s got talked about as much as he has. She’s different. There aren’t many like that living. That is the way she looks to be. Why, she’s like some angel just walking the earth because she has to, at least that’s the impression her face gave to me. Just as if she didn’t mind things us other folks think so much about, she had higher, wonderful things to think about. I don’t often see any one that stirs me up this way and makes me think about my mother. I guess I ain’t much myself, never expected to be, but when you see some one that is you can’t help but think!”

After which incoherent sentence Florence, with a gay good-night, turned off at her corner, and Mrs. Hanley went home to a little pent-up room high up in a fourth-rate rooming-house, to wash off her paint and get a tiny supper on a small gas stove, and be a mother for a few brief hours to her little crippled son who lay on a tiny couch by the one window all day long and waited for her coming.

VII

More than four hundred miles away a freight train bumped and jerked itself into the town of Marlborough, and lumberingly came to a halt. With its final lurch of stopping a hasty figure rolled from under one of the empty cars and hurried stiffly away into the shadows as if pursued by a fear that the train upon which he had been riding without a right might come after him and compel him to ride further.

The train was over an hour late. It was due at five. It had been held up by a wreck ahead.

It was the first time that Murray Van Rensselaer had ever taken a journey under a freight car, and he felt sure it would be the last. Even though he might be hard pressed he would never resort to that mode of travel again. That the breath of life was still in him was a miracle, and he crawled into the shadow of a hedge to take his bearings.

There were others who had stolen rides in that manner, for thousands of miles, and seemed to live through it. He had read about it in his childhood and always wanted to try it, and when the opportunity presented itself just in the time of his greatest need, with a cordon of policemen in the next block and his last dollar from the ample roll he started with spent, he had lost no time in availing himself of it. But he felt sure now that if he had been obliged to stay on that truck under that fearful rumbling car, and bump over that uneven roadbed for another ten minutes, he would have died of horror, or else rolled off beneath those grinding, crunching wheels. His head was aching as if those wheels were going around inside his brain. His back ached with an ache unspeakable, and his cramped legs ached as if they were being torn from his aching body. He had never known before how many places there were in a human body to ache.

He had eaten no breakfast nor dinner. There was no buffet in the private berth he had chosen, and he had no money in his pocket to purchase with if there had been. It was his first realization of what money meant, of what it was to be utterly without it. For the moment the fear that was driving him in his flight was obliterated by the simple pangs of hunger and weariness. He had started for the far West, where he hoped to strike some remote cattle ranch where men herded whose pasts were shady, and where no questions were asked. He felt that his experience in polo would stand him in good stead among horses, and there he could live and be a new man. He had been planning all the way, taking his furtive path across the country, half on foot and half by suburban trolleys, until his money gave out and he was forced to try the present mode of transportation. He had entertained great hopes of a speedy arrival among other criminals, where he would be safe, when he crawled on that dirty truck and settled himself for his journey. But now, with his head whirling and that desperate faintness at the pit of his stomach, he loathed the thought of going further. If there had been a police court close at hand he would have walked in gratefully and handed himself over to justice. This business of fleeing from justice was no good, no good in the world.

He stood in the shelter of a great privet hedge that towered darkly above him, and shivered in the raw November air, until the train had jolted itself back and forth several times and finally grumbled on its clattery way again. He had a strange fancy that the train was human and had discovered his absence, was trying to find him perhaps, and might still compel him to go on. He almost held his breath as car after car passed his hiding-place. Each jolt and rumble of the train sent shivers down his spine, and a wave of sickness over him, almost as if he had been back underneath that dreadful car above those grinding wheels. It was with relief unspeakable that he watched the ruby gleam of the tail light disappear at last down the track around a curve. He drew a long breath and tried to steady himself.

Down the road across the tracks some men were coming. He drew within his shelter until they were passed, and then slid round the corner into a street that apparently led up over the brow of a hill.

He had no aim, and he wondered why he went anywhere. There was nowhere to go. No object in going. No money to buy bed or bread with, nothing on him worth pawning. He had long ago pawned the little trinkets left in his pockets when he started. Eventually this going must cease. One had to eat to live. One couldn’t walk forever on sore feet and next to no shoes. Flesh and bones would not keep going indefinitely at command of the brain. Why should the brain bother them longer? Why not go up there on the hill somewhere and crawl out of sight and sleep? That would be an easy way to die, die while one slept. He must sleep. He was overpowered with it like a drug. If he only had a cigarette it would hearten him up. It was three days since he had smoked—he who used to be always smoking, who smoked more cigarettes than any other fellow in his set. It was deadly doing without! And to think that the son of his father was reduced to this! Why even the servants at home had plenty to eat and drink and smoke—!

He plodded on up the street, not knowing whither he was going, nor caring, scarcely knew that he was going. Just going because he had to. Some power beyond himself seemed driving him.

Suddenly a bright light shone out across the walk from a big stone building set back from the street. A church, he saw, as he drew nearer, yet it had a curious attachment of other buildings huddled around it, a part of the church, yet not so churchly. He wondered vaguely if it might not be a parochial school of some sort.

There were lights in low windows near the ground and tall shrubs making shelter about, and from the open doorway there issued a most delectable odor, the smell of roasting meat.

Straight to the brightness and appetizing odor his lagging feet led him without his own conscious volition. It was something that he had to do, to go to that smell and that comfort, even though it led him into terrible danger. A moment more and he stood within the shelter of a great syringa bush looking down into the open window of a long light basement room, steadying himself with his trembling hand against the rough stone wall of the building, and just below his eager hand was a table with plates and plates full of the most delectable looking rolls, and rows of wonderful chocolate cakes, and gleaming frosted nut cake.

He could hear voices in the distance, but no one was in sight, and he reached down suddenly and swiftly and with both hands and gathered two little round white frosted cakes and a great big buttered roll, and sliding behind the syringa bush, began to eat them voraciously, snatching a bite from one hand and then the other.

He had never stolen anything before, and he was not conscious of stealing now. He ate because he was famished and must eat to live.

Down in the basement a church supper was in preparation.

Great roasts were in the parish oven, potatoes were boiling for the masher. The water was on for lima beans, and a table stood filled with rows of salad plates, on which one of the church mothers was carefully placing crisp lettuce and red-ripe tomatoes stuffed with celery and bits of nuts. Another church mother was ladling out mayonnaise from a great yellow bowl in which she had just made it. A kettle of delicious soup was keeping hot over the simmerer.

They never did things by halves in the Marlborough Presbyterian Church, and this was a very special occasion. It was the annual dinner of the Christian Endeavor Society, and they had always made a great deal of it. In addition to this a new man was coming to town, a young man, well heralded, notable among young church workers in the city where he had spent his life, already known for his activity in Christian Endeavor work and all forms of social and uplift labor. They felt honored that he was coming to their midst. As teller in the bank he would have a good financial and social standing as well, and moreover his name was well remembered, as his father and mother used to live in Marlborough years before. There had been a letter commendatory and introductory from the city pastor to Rev. Mr. Harrison, the pastor of the Marlborough church, and the annual church affair had been postponed a week that it might be had on the night of his arrival, that he might be the guest of honor and be welcomed into their midst properly. Not a few of the girls in the Christian Endeavor had new dresses for the occasion, and the contributions for the dinner had been many and unusually generous. It seemed that all the girls were willing to make cakes galore, and each vied with the other to have the best confection of the culinary art that could be produced. Some of the mothers had offered of their best linen and silver to make the table gorgeous, and there had been much preparation for the program, music, speeches, and even a monologue. The Vice-president, who was poetically inclined, had written a poem which was intended as a sort of address of welcome to the stranger, and an introduction to their members, and many a clever hit and pun upon names embellished its verses. No one who had come to town in years had had the welcome that was being prepared for Allan Murray, the new teller in the Marlborough National Bank, and State Secretary of the Christian Endeavor Society in his home State.

The big basement dining-room of the church was all in array with tables set in a hollow square. Two girls were putting the finishing touches.

“Anita, oh, Anita! Has Hester May’s sponge cake come yet?” called the taller of the two, a girl rather given to much beads.

“Yes, it’s here, Jane, real gummy chocolate frosting on top. Ummm! Ummm! I could hardly keep from cutting it. It looks luscious. Is your mother going to get here in time to make the coffee?”

“Oh yes, she’ll be here in half an hour. You ought to put an apron on, Anita. You’ll get something on that lovely blue crêpe. My, but you look scrumptious with that great white collar over the blue. Did you make that collar yourself? It’s wonderful! Say, how did you embroider that? Right through the lace border and all? Oh, I see! My, I wish I was clever like you, Anita!”

“Oh, cut it, Jane! We haven’t time for flattery! I’ve got to finish setting this table. Are the forks over there? Where’s Joseph? Go ask him if we haven’t any more forks. He washed them after the Ladies’ Aid luncheon. Perhaps he put them away.”

“They’re in the lower drawer. I saw them when I got out the napkins to fold. Here they are. Wouldn’t it be dreadful if the guest of honor didn’t get here after all, when everything is coming out so fine? Did you know Mrs. Price was sending roses out of her conservatory? A great armful. I brought down mother’s cut-glass bowl to put them in, and we’ll put them at the speaker’s table, right in front of Mr. Harrison and the guest. Oh, dear, I hope he gets here all right!”

“Why, why shouldn’t he, Jane? What an idea? Didn’t he write and say he expected to arrive this afternoon? Mrs. Summers said she had his room all ready, and his trunk came last night, so of course he’ll be here.”

“But there’s been an awful wreck on the road. Didn’t you hear about it, Anita? Yes, it’s terrible, they say. Doctor Jarvis telephoned he couldn’t come to lunch. He went on a special relief train. It’s somewhere down around Smith’s Crossing. The rails spread, or something, and the express telescoped the way train, or else it was the other way round, and a lot of people got hurt, and some killed, or at least there was a rumor they did.”

“Mercy!” said Anita, stopping in her work. “Why that’s awful! Allan Murray might have been on the train you know.”

“No, I guess not,” said Jane. “He telegraphed last night he was arriving here late in the afternoon. That would mean he would take the train at Alton at noon. This wreck was the morning train. But then he might have been delayed by it. You know it takes a long time to clear the tracks. Oh, well, he’s likely at Mrs. Summers’ now unpacking, or we would have heard. We ought to stop talking and get to work. The celery has to be put in the glasses and the nuts in the dishes. One of those nut dishes is broken, too. Isn’t there another dish up on that high shelf that will do?”

“I brought over some silver nut dishes. They will do for the middle table. Did they say any Marlborough people were on that train?”

“Yes, Dick Foster and some college friend coming home for the week-end, but they phoned they were all right. They were in the last car and only a little shaken up. Mr. Foster took the car and ran down to Smith’s Crossing after them. Then there was that lame shoemaker from under the drug-store, that little shop, you know, and Mrs. Bly, the seamstress. Nobody knows anything about them. At least I didn’t hear.”

“Oh, Mrs. Bly,” said Anita sympathetically. “I hope no harm came to her, poor thing. She’s sewed for us ever since I was a child. Say, Jane, does your brother know this Mr. Murray? He went to the same college, didn’t he?”

“Yes, but it was after Allan Murray left. He saw him once though. He was just adored in college. He was a great athlete, though very slender and wiry, Bob says; and he was awfully clever. Made Phi Beta Kappa and all that, and was president of the Y. M., and head of the Student Gov., and stunningly handsome. Bob didn’t say that though. Bob is ashamed of a man being good-looking. It was Marietta’s cousin said that. Her brother was in Allan Murray’s class, and brought him home once, and she thought him just a perfect Greek god, to hear her talk; but when I asked Bob about it he said, oh yes, he was a looker he guessed. He never took particular notice. And I simply couldn’t get a description, though I tried hard enough. He couldn’t even remember the color of his eyes, said they were just eyes, and what difference did it make. But Marietta said he was dark, and had very large dark eyes, slender—no, lean, that was the word she used, and awfully tanned and fit. She said he had a smile, too, that you never could forget, and fine white teeth, and was careful about his appearance, but not much of a dresser. She said he had worked his way through college. His father had lost money and he was going in for thrift, and didn’t give much time to social things, but was awfully good company.”

“H’m! That’s just about what the minister said when he told us he wanted us to make him feel at home. I don’t really approve of it myself, this taking a stranger and carrying him around on a little throne before you’ve tried him out, but when Mr. Harrison asked us to arrange this Christian Endeavor banquet on the night of his arrival to give him a kind of welcome to our town, why of course it had to be done. And of course Mr. Harrison knows what he’s talking about, or he wouldn’t suggest it. But it makes it just a little embarrassing for us girls to seem to be so very eager to welcome another young man into our midst that we fall all over ourselves to let him know it right off the first night.”

“Now, Anita! You’re always so fussy and prudish! As if he would think anything about it at all. Besides, his having been an active Christian Endeavorer in his home church, and his father having been a member of our church years ago when he was a boy, makes it kind of different, don’t you think?”

“Oh, I suppose so,” said Anita thoughtfully, “only I do hope he won’t be stuck on himself. The young men are all so sure of their welcome anyhow these days, it doesn’t seem as if it was hardly necessary. And it’s enough to turn a young man’s head anyway to have the whole town bowing down to him this way. Teller in the town bank, taken in to board at one of the best houses in town just because Mrs. Summers knew his mother when she was a girl, and given a church supper on the night of his arrival. I’m sure I hope he will be worth it all, and that we sha’n’t spoil him right at the start.”

“Oh, Anita! You’re so funny! What do you care if he is spoiled anyway if we have a good time out of it? I’m sure I don’t. And it’ll be nice to have another fellow around, so many of our boys have gone off to college or to work in the city. And those that are left don’t care a picayune for the church affairs. I have to fairly hire Bob and Ben to come to anything we have here, and this Murray man, they say, is crazy about church work. If it proves true, I think the society will grow by leaps and bounds.”

“Well, what kind of a growth is that? Just following after a new man! That’s not healthy growth. When he goes they’ll go with him if that’s what they come for. Who is that outside? Perhaps it’s the man with the ice-cream. It ought to be here by this time. Go out and look. It may be some of those tormenting boys that live across the street. And the cakes and rolls are all under that window. I declare, I should think church members would teach their children better than to steal! Go quick, Jane. I don’t want to leave this butter now till I get it all cut in squares. But for pity’s sake, forget that new man, or you’ll be bowing down to him just like everybody else!”

“Oh, Anita! You’re perfectly hopeless,” giggled Jane as she fled up the basement stairs to the outside door to reconnoitre.

A moment more and Anita heard her friend’s voice ring out clearly in an eagerly hospitable voice among the syringa bushes outside the chapel window:

“Isn’t this Mr. Murray? Mr. Allan Murray? Won’t you come right in, we’re all expecting you—?”

Anita, cutting butter into squares in the pantry window in the basement, turned away with a curl of her pretty lip and slammed down the window. If Jane wanted to make a fool of herself with this stranger, she, Anita, was not going to be a party to it. And she carried the cakes to be cut to the far table in the kitchen quite away from the dining-room and went to work with set lips and haughty chin. The new man should not think she was after him, anyway.

VIII

Outside the church Murray Van Rensselaer, somewhat fortified within by the stolen bun and the two frosted cakes, whose crumbs were yet upon his lips, started in astonishment.

Of the unexpectedly warm greeting he caught but one word, “Murray,” his own name, and as he took it in, thinking at first that he had been recognized, it came to him what it would mean. The whole careful fabric of his intricate escape was undone. Unless he disappeared at once into vacancy he would be brought speedily forth into the light and have to explain. Some dratted girl he had probably met at a dance somewhere and didn’t remember. But everybody knew him. That was the trouble with belonging to a family like his and being prominent in society and clubs and sports. His picture had been in the paper a thousand times—when he took the blue-ribbon at the horse-show, when he played golf with a visiting Prince at Palm Beach, on his favorite pony playing polo, smashing the ball across the net to a world champion tennis player; the notable times were too numerous to mention. She didn’t know. She hadn’t seen the city papers yet or hadn’t noticed. Probably didn’t think it was the same name—It wouldn’t take long for the news to travel, even four hundred miles. That was nothing. He must get out of here!

He made a wild dash in the other direction, but came sharply in contact with a stiff branch of syringa which jabbed him in the eye right smartly, and for an instant the pain was so great that he could do nothing but stand still.

The girl in the doorway was tall and slim, and she stood where the light from the chapel shone full behind her and silhouetted a very pleasant outline. Also she knew that the light caught and scintillated from her crystal necklace, which hung to her very long indefinable waist, and that she presented thus a trim appearance. But she might as well have been short and fat for all he saw of her as he stood and held his eye, and groped about with his other hand on what seemed an interminable stone wall behind him. Was there no way to get out of this?

Jane was not a girl to give up the vantage she had gained of being the first to welcome this new hero to town. He had backed off into the shrubbery, shy perhaps, and had not answered, but she was reasonably sure of her man. Of course it must be he. He was likely reconnoitring to be sure he was in the right place, and it wouldn’t do to let him slip away. He might be one of those who were shy of an open welcome, and needed to be caught or he would escape. So Jane proceeded to catch him.

With nimble feet she descended the three stone steps and was upon him before he knew it, with a slim white hand outheld.

“Your name is Murray, isn’t it? I was sure it must be”—as he did not dissent. “Mine is Jane Freeman, and we’re awfully glad you’ve come to town. We’re expecting you to supper you know, and you might as well come right in. Everybody else will be here pretty soon, and we’ll just have that much more time to get acquainted. Won’t the girls be humming though when they find out I met you first! But I had a sort of a right, because my mother and your mother were schoolmates together, you know! Were you trying to find the right door. It is confusing here. Doctor Harrison’s study is that door, and that one goes into the choir-room, and this enters the kitchen and dining-rooms. We go over to this other door, and enter through the chapel. Every one gets lost here at first.”

“Yes, I guess I did lose my way,” murmured Murray Van Rensselaer, feeling it imperative to say something, under the circumstances, and casting furtive glances behind him to see how he could get away.

“Come right around this way,” went on Jane volubly. “Here’s the path. Have you been over to Mrs. Summers’ yet? Isn’t she coming over? I thought she would have shown you the way.”

“No, I haven’t been to Mrs. Summers’ yet,” he said, catching eagerly at the idea. “But I really can’t go in this way, I’ve—You see there was a wreck on the road—”

“Oh, were you really in the wreck after all? How wonderful! And you got through? How ever did you do it? Why, the relief train hasn’t come back yet—at least it hadn’t when I came over.”

“Oh, I walked part of the way and got on the freight—”

“Oh, really! How thrilling! Then you can tell us all about the wreck. We haven’t heard much. Come right in and meet Anita. I want you to tell her about the wreck.”

But the young man halted firmly on the walk.

“Indeed,” said he decidedly, “it’s quite impossible. I’m a wreck myself. I’ve got to dress before I could possibly meet anybody, except in the dark, and I think you’ll have to excuse me tonight. My trunk hasn’t come yet, you know, and I’m really not fit to be seen. You don’t know what a wreck is, I guess.”

“Oh, were you really in it like that!” exclaimed Jane adoringly. “How wonderful that you escaped! But you’re mistaken about your trunk. It came yesterday. Mrs. Summers told me this morning it had arrived, and it’s over in your room. If you really must dress first I’ll show you the way to Mrs. Summers’, but it wouldn’t be necessary, you know. You would be all the more a hero. You could come right in the church dressing-room and wash and comb your hair. It would be terribly interesting and dramatic for you to appear just as you came from the wreck, you know.”

“Thank you,” said the young man dryly. “Much too interesting for me. I’ll just get over to my trunk if you don’t mind,” he insinuated soothingly. “Which way is the house? I won’t have any trouble in finding it. It’s not far away, you say?”

“Oh no, it’s right here,” she said excitedly, with a vague wave of her hand. “Come right across the lawn. It’s shorter. I don’t mind running over in the least. In fact I’ve got to go and see if I can’t borrow another vase for some roses that just arrived. You must be very tired after such an exciting afternoon. Was it very terrible at first? The shock, I mean?”

“Oh! Terrible? Yes, the wreck. Why, rather unpleasant at first, you know. The confusion and—and—”

“I suppose the women all screamed. They usually do when they are frightened. I never can see why. Now, I never scream. When I’m frightened I’m just as cool. My father says he can always trust me in a crisis because I keep still and do something. You look as if you were that way, too. But then men are, of course.”

She was steering him swiftly toward a neat Queen Anne house of somewhat ancient date, perhaps, but very pretty and attractive, in spite of the fact that the maples with which it was surrounded were bare of leaves, and most of the vines had dropped their leaves. There were little ruffled curtains at the windows, and plants, and old-fashioned lamps with bright shades, and a gray-haired woman moving about in a bay-window watering a fern. It was a picture of a sweet, quiet home, and something of its peace stole out into the November night with its soft lights like a welcome. Murray looked with hungry eyes. There would be beds in that house, and warmth, and a table with good things to eat. The bite he had stolen had but whetted his appetite. How good if he had a right to enter this home as the boy who was expected would do presently; welcomed, a festive supper prepared, perhaps a place where he might earn enough to live, and friends to make life worth the living. It was the first time in his life he had ever felt an urge to work. His father’s business had seemed a bore to him. He had pitied him now and then when he happened to think of it at all, that he was old and had to go down town every day to “work”—not that he had to. Murray knew his father could retire a good many times over and not feel it. But he had pitied him that he was old and therefore had nothing to interest him in life but dull business. Now business suddenly seemed a haven to be desired.

But all this was merely an undercurrent of thought while he was really casting about in his mind how he might rid himself of this pest of a girl, and was furtively observing the street and the lay of the bushes that he might suddenly dodge away and leave her in the darkness. He hesitated to do it lest she might even pursue him, and he felt that in case of fleeing his strength would probably leave him altogether, and he would drop beside some dreary bush and be overtaken.

He could not quite understand his attitude toward this girl. He had been somewhat of a lady-killer, and no girl had held terrors for him in the old life. He knew they always fell for him, and he could take any line he liked and they would follow. Now here was a girl, just a common little country girl, filling him with terror. She seemed to possess almost supernatural power over him, as if she had eyes that could see through to his soul, and would expose him to the scorn of the world if he for one moment angered her and let her get a chance to look into his poor shaken mind. “Murray Van Rensselaer! Why, Murray, what’s the matter with you?” he said to himself. And then, “But I’m not Murray Van Rensselaer any more. I’m a murderer fleeing from justice! I must get away!”

Then right before him, what he thought was a long French window turned into a glass door and opened in front of his unwilling feet, and there stood in the broad burst of light the woman with the gray hair whom he had seen through the window going about the room.

She stood there with a questioning look upon her face, and she had kind eyes—eyes like Mrs. Chapparelle’s—mother-eyes. They looked into the darkness of the yard as if they were waiting for him, searching, expecting him, and he found his feet would go no further. They would not take the dash into the darkness of the shrubbery that his situation required. They just stopped and waited. It had been growing upon his consciousness for some time that this thing would happen pretty soon; that he would stop and get caught, and he wondered almost apathetically what he would do then. Just wait, and let them do with him what they pleased?

But Jane’s voice rang out triumphantly:

“He’s come, Mrs. Summers. He didn’t get hurt after all. He came through all right. Isn’t that great? But he’s all messed up and he wants to clean up. I told him I was sure his trunk had come. It has, hasn’t it?”

“Oh, is that you, Jane? Yes, his trunk has come,” said the lady with a smile. Then she turned toward the shivering youth and put out both hands eagerly, taking his cold ones in hers, that felt to him like warm little veined rose-leaves. She drew him without his own volition across the brick terrace into the light.

“So this is Allan Murray!” she said, and her voice was like a mother’s caress. “My dear boy! I’m so glad to have you with me! You don’t know how precious your dear mother was to me! And I shall be so glad if you will let me take her place while you are here, as much as any one could take the place of a woman like your mother!”

Now was the time for him to bolt, of course, if he was ever going to get away, just jerk his hands from her frail touch and bolt! But his feet didn’t seem to understand. They just stood! And his eyes lingered hungrily on her loving ones. He longed, oh, how he wished that this woman really was a friend of his mother—that he had had a mother who could have been a friend of a woman like this one, that he might now be befriended by her. And his hands warmed to the soft vital touch of those little frail rose-leaf hands. They seemed to be warming his very soul, clear to the frightened centre where he knew he was a murderer and an outlaw. But he hadn’t vitality enough left to vanish. He would have been glad if some magic could have made him invisible, or if he could have suddenly been extinguished. But nothing like that happened to men who were in trouble.

Then, his hands and his feet having failed him in this predicament, he tried his lips, and to his surprise words came; fluently from long habit, with quite a nice sound to his voice; modest and grateful and polite and apologetic.

“So kind of you!” he murmured safely, the old vernacular returning from habit to his lips. “But I’m not fit to be touched. It’s been awful, you know—smoke and soot and cinders and broken things. I’m torn and dirty—I’m not fit to be seen!”

“Why, of course!” said the dear lady comprehendingly. “You don’t want me to look you over and see how much you resemble your mother till you’ve had a bath and a shave. I know. I’ve had a boy of my own, you know. He died in the war”—with the breath of a sigh—“But come right up to your room. Everything is all ready, and there’s plenty of hot water. The bath-room is right next to your room, and your room is at the top of the stairs on the right. There are towels and soap and everything you need. If I’d only had your trunk-key I would have presumed to take out your clothes and hang them in the closet for you. It would have been such a pleasure to get ready for a boy again. And it would have taken out the wrinkles. But I’ve my electric iron, all ready, and I can press anything that needs it while you are taking your bath. Suppose I go up with you, and you unlock the trunk and hand me out your suit and I’ll just give it a mite of a pressing while you’re in the bath-room. It won’t take a minute, and I’d love to.”

A new name

A NEW NAME

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