Part 7

That might possibly be called the real moment when the town, at least those representatives of the town that were present, might be said to have opened their arms and taken him into their number. How he would meet Mr. Harper was the supreme test. With one accord they believed in Mr. Harper. He stood to them for integrity and success. They adored Mr. Harrison, their minister, and confided to him all their troubles; they had firm belief in his creed, and his undoubted faith and spirituality; they knew him as a man of God, and respected his wonderful mind and his consistent living; but they tremendously admired the keen mind, clear business ability, coupled with the staunch integrity, of their wealthy bank president, Elliot Harper. Therefore they awaited his leading before they entirely surrendered to the new young man who had come to live in their midst.

Murray Van Rensselaer felt it in the atmosphere as he sat down. He had not lived in an air of admiration all his life for nothing. This was his native breath, and it soothed his racked nerves and gave him that quiet satisfaction with himself that he had been wont to feel ever since he was old enough to know that his father was Charles Van Rensselaer, the successful financier and scion of an ancient family.

He had borne the test and the time was up. Now, any time, in a moment or two, he could get away, melt into the darkness, and forget Marlborough. They would wonder, and be indignant for a day or a week, but they would never find him nor know who he was. He would simply be gone. And then very likely in a day or two the other man that he had been representing for the evening would either turn up or have a funeral or something, and they would discover his fraud. But there would in all probability be an interval in which he could get safely to a distance and be no more. He had gained a dinner, and a pleasant evening, a little respite in the nightmare that had pursued him since the accident, and he had a kindly feeling toward these people. They had been nice to him. They had showed him a genuineness that he could not help but admire. He liked every one of them, even the offish Anita, who had a delicate profile like Bessie’s, and the ridiculous Jane, who could not take her eyes from him. Now that he was an outcast he must treasure even such friendliness, for there would be little of that sort of thing left for him in the world hereafter. He could not hope to hood-wink people this way the rest of his life.

He felt a sudden pang at the thought of throwing this all away. It had been wonderfully pleasant, so different from anything he had ever experienced among his own crowd--an atmosphere of loving kindness like what he used to find at Chapparelle’s, which made the thought of stolen evenings spent in the company of Bessie seem wonderfully fresh and sweet, and free from taint of any selfishness or sordidness. How different, for instance, these girls were from the girls at home. Even that Jane had a childlikeness about her that was refreshing. How he would enjoy lingering to play with these new people who treated him so charmingly, just as he had lingered sometimes in new summer resorts for a little while to study new types of girls and frolic a while. It would be pleasant, _how_ pleasant, to eat three good meals a day and have people speak kind words and try to forget that he was a murderer and an outlaw. If he were in a foreign land now he might even dare it. But four hundred miles was a short distance where newspapers and telegraph and radio put everything within the same room, so to speak. No, he must get out, and get out quickly. There would likely be a late train, and perhaps his other self would arrive on it. If possible he would have to get away without going back to Mrs. Summers’, but at least if he went back he must not linger there. He could make some excuse, run out for medicine to the drug-store, perhaps, or, if worst came to worst, pretend to go up to bed and then steal away after she was asleep. There would be a way!

His resilient nature allowed him to feel wonderfully cheerful as he arose from the table at last and prepared to make his adieus.

But it was not easy, after all, to get away. Mrs. Summers came to him and asked him if he would mind carrying a basket home for her, she wouldn’t be a minute, and then pressed him into service to gather up silver candlesticks and a few rare china dishes.

“You see they’re borrowed,” she explained, “and I don’t like to risk leaving them here lest some one will be careless with them in the morning before I could get over, or mix them up and take them to the wrong person. I wouldn’t like them to get broken or lost under my care.”

They walked together across the lawn under a belated moon that had struggled through the clouds and was casting silver slants over the jewelled brown of the withered grass.

“It’s been so lovely having you here,” said Mrs. Summers gently, “almost like having my boy back again. I kept looking at you and thinking, ‘He’s my boy. He’s coming home every night, and I can take care of him just as I did with my own.’”

Murray’s heart gave a strange lurch. Nobody had ever spoken to him like that. Love, except in a tawdry form, had never come his way, unless his father’s gruffness and continual fault-finding might be called love. It certainly had been well disguised so that he had never thought of it in that light. It had rather seemed to him, when he thought about it at all, that he stood to his father more in the light of an obligation than anything else. His mother’s love had been too self-centred and too peevish to interest him. There had been teachers occasionally who had been fond of him, but their interest had passed when he used them to slide out of school work. There had been a nurse in his babyhood that he barely remembered, who used to comfort him when he was hurt or sleepy, and sometimes when he was sick cuddle him in her arms as if she cared for him, but that was so very far away. He had sometimes watched the look between Bessie Chapparelle and her mother when he would be there playing games of an evening with the little girl, a look that had made him think of the word love; but that also was far away and very painful now to think about. Strange how one’s thoughts will snatch a bit from every part of one’s life and blend them together in an idea which takes but an instant to grasp, just as a painter will take a snatch of this and a dab of that color and blend them all into a tint, with no hint of the pink or the blue, or the black, or the yellow, or the white, that may have gone to form it, making just a plain gray cloud. Murray was doing more thinking these last few days than he had ever done in the whole of his life before. Life, as it were, was painting pictures on his mind, wonderful living truths that he had never seen before were flashing on the canvas of his brain, made up of the facts of his past life which at the time had passed over him unnoticed. He had gone from his cradle like one sliding down-hill and taking no note of the landscape. But he found now that he had suddenly reached the bottom of the hill, and had to climb up (if indeed he might ever attain to any heights again), that he knew every turning of the way he had come, and wondered how he could have been unheeding before. It occurred to him that this phenomenon might be called “growing up.” Trouble had come and he had grown up. Life had turned back on him and slapped him in the face, and he began to see things in life, now he had lost them, that he had not even recognized before.

As he slipped his arm through the big basket and stood waiting for Mrs. Summers to decide whose cake-pan the big square aluminum one was, he looked wistfully about him on the disarray of tables, a kind of hungering in his heart to come here again and feast and bask in the cheery comforting atmosphere. Good and sweet and wholesome it all was, a sort of haven for his weary soul that was condemned to plod on throughout his days without a place for his foot to remain, forevermore. He had a strange, tired feeling in his throat as if he would like to cry, like a child who has come to the end of the good time, and whose bubbles are broken and vanished. There would be no more bubbles for him any more. The bowl of soap-suds was broken.

And so as they walked toward the little cottage with its gleaming light awaiting them from the dining-room window he felt strangely sad and lonely, and he wished with all his heart that he might walk in and be this woman’s boy. If only he could be born again into her home and claim her as his mother, and take the place as her son and be a new man, with all his past forgotten! He thought--poor soul, he had not yet learned the subtlety of sin, the frailty of human nature--he thought if he could be in this environment, with such people about him, such a home to come to, and such a mother to love him, he could learn to fit it. If it hadn’t been for the possibility of the other man coming he would have dared to try it and keep up his masquerade.

XI

He helped her unpack the basket and put her things away, and he gave a wistful look about the pretty cosey room. He had never supposed there were homes like this anywhere. There was nothing formal about the place, and yet there were bits of fine old furniture, pictures, and bric-à-brac that spoke of travel and taste. It just seemed a place where one would like to linger, and where home had been impressed upon everything about like a lovely monogram worked into the very fabric of it.

“Now,” said Mrs. Summers as she whirled about from the cake-box, where she had been bestowing a dozen lovely frosted sponge cakes that had been left over and she had bought, “you must get to bed! I know you are all worn out, and you’ve got to be on hand early tomorrow morning. What time did Mr. Harper say he wanted you at the bank? Was it nine o’clock? I thought so. So I won’t keep you up but a minute more, I thought it would be nice if we just had a bit of a prayer together this first night, and a verse. I always like a verse for a pillow to sleep on, don’t you? Even if it is late. Will you read or shall I?” and she held out a little limp-covered book that looked, like everything else in the house, as if it had been used lovingly and often.

“Oh, _you_!” gasped Murray embarrassedly, looking at the book as if it had been a toad suddenly lifting its head in the way, and wondering what strange new ceremony now was being thrust at him. There seemed no end to the queer things they did in this pleasant, unusual place. Take that thing they called “blessing,” and was a prayer! It was like that book his nurse used to read him in his childhood, called “Alice in Wonderland.” You never knew what you would be called upon to do next before you could eat or sleep. Did they do these things all the time, every day, or just once in a while, when they were initiating some new member? It must be a great deal of trouble to them to keep it up every day, and must take up a good deal of time.

“Very well,” said Mrs. Summers. “You sit in that big chair, and I’ll just read a little bit where I left off last night.”

They did it every night, then! Like massaging one’s face and putting on night garments, as his mother always did, lovely gauzy things with floating scarfs like wings. This must be a sort of massaging for the soul.

He settled down in the comfortable chair and watched the white fingers of the lady flutter open the leaves of the book, familiarly and lovingly.

He liked the shape of her lips as she spoke, the sound of her voice. There was a fascination in watching her, so sweet and strong and pleasant.

“There was a man of the Pharisees, named Nicodemus, a ruler of the Jews: The same came to Jesus by night, and said unto him, Rabbi, we know that thou art a teacher come from God: for no man can do these miracles that thou doest, except God be with him.”

Murray heard the words, but they meant nothing to him. He was not listening. He was thinking what it would have been like if he had been born into this home. Then suddenly into his thoughts came those words, so startling. Where had he heard them before? “Jesus answered and said unto him, Verily, verily, I say unto thee, Except a man be born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God.”

Why! How very strange! Those were the words he had seen in the street-car. Almost the identical words, “Ye must be born again!” He would never forget them, because that had seemed the only way out of his difficulty. And now she was reading again, this time identical: “Marvel not that I said unto thee, Ye must be born again.”

Why! It was like some one answering his thoughts. What did it all mean? He listened and tried to get the sense. It appeared to be an argument between one named Nicodemus and one Jesus. There was talk of wind blowing and water and a Spirit. It was all Greek to him. A serpent lifted in the wilderness, of believing and perishing, and eternal life. He almost shuddered at that. Eternal life! Who would want to live forever when he was a murderer and an outcast? “For God sent not his Son into the world to _condemn_ the world;” went on the steady voice, “but that the world through him might be _saved_.”

Astonishing words! They got him! Condemnation was what he was under. Saved! He almost groaned. Oh, if there were but a way for him to be saved from this that had come upon him!

“He that believeth on him is not condemned.”

Queer words again, and of course it all meant nothing--nothing that could apply to his case. Depression came upon his soul again. The condemnation of the law overshadowed him. He looked restlessly toward the door. Oh, if he could get away now, and go--go swiftly before condemnation overtook him and got him in its iron grip forever!

The little book was closed and the astonishing little lady suddenly rose from her chair and knelt down beside it. He was embarrassed beyond measure. He wanted to do the proper thing and excite no suspicions, but how was one to know what to do in a situation like this? Kneeling down in a parlor beside a Morris chair! How could any one possibly know that that was the thing expected? Or was it expected?

Then he began slowly, noiselessly, to move his weary, stiffened muscles, endeavoring to transfer his body into a kneeling posture without the slightest sound, the least possible hint that he had not of course been kneeling from the start.

Strange happening for this one-time social star to be kneeling now in this humble cottage, hearing himself (or what was supposed to be himself) prayed for, earnestly, tenderly; with loving chains of prayer “binding his soul about the feet of God.” He grew red and embarrassed. He felt tears stinging into his eyes. How was it that a possibility of anything like this being done anywhere in the universe for him never entered his mind before? It was indeed as if he was born into a new universe, and yet he still had the consciousness of his old self, his old guilt, upon him. It was intolerable. He never had felt so mean in his life as while he knelt there, hearing himself brought to the presence of God, and knowing that he had cheated this wonderful woman who was praying for him, and that he was presently going to steal from her house in the night and never be seen by her any more. What would she think? And how would she meet her God the next time she prayed? Would she curse him, perhaps, and would worse punishment come upon him than had come already? And how would a God feel about it? He had never been much concerned about God, whether He was or was not, but now he suddenly knew as this woman talked with Him with that assurance, that face-to-face acquaintance, that intimacy of voice, that there _was_ a God. Whatever anybody might say, he knew now that there _was_! It was as if he had seen Him, he had felt Him, anyway, in a strange convincing power like the look from a great man’s eyes whom one has never met before, nor heard much of, yet recognizes at the first glimpse as being mighty! Well! There was a Power he hadn’t reckoned on! The Power of God! He knew the details of the Power of the Law. But what if he also was in danger from the Power of God? What if this deception, just for the sake of a bath and a supper, should anger God and turn the vengeance of heaven and hell upon his soul? He vaguely knew that there were yet unfathomable depths of misery that he had not sounded, and his burden seemed greater than he could bear. If he only might become some one else, be born again, as the book had said, so that no one would ever recognize him, not even God! But would that be possible? Could one be born at all without God about?

Floundering amid these perplexities, he suddenly became aware that the lady had risen, and, red with embarrassment, aware of tears upon his face which he could not somehow wipe away quickly enough, he struggled to his own feet.

She was not looking at him. She had moved across the room to a pitcher of ice-water she had prepared before she began to read, and now she poured a glass and handed it to him. He was struck with the look of peace upon her lips. It seemed a look that no one he had ever known before had worn. Stay, yes, Mrs. Chapparelle sometimes had looked that way, even when they had very little for supper. Once he had stayed with them when there were only potatoes and corn bread. No butter, only salt for the potatoes, and a little milk, two glasses, one for him and one for Bessie. She must have gone without herself, and yet she had that look of peace upon her lips! Had even smiled! What was it? Talking with God that made it?

He got himself up the little white staircase with the mahogany-painted rail and the softly-carpeted treads of gray carpet, and locked himself inside his room. He knew he had said good-night and agreed upon something about when he would come to breakfast in the morning. As he did not intend to be present at breakfast the next morning, he had paid little heed to what she had said. His soul was in a turmoil, and he was weary to the bone. He dropped into the big chair and gazed sadly about him on the pretty room.

He had it in mind to make a little stir of preparation for bed, and then wait quietly until the house was still and he could steal down the stairs or out the window, whichever seemed the easiest way, and be seen no more. But he felt a heaviness upon him that was overpowering. He looked at the white bed with the plump pillows and the smooth sheets that had been turned back for his use. His eyes dwelt upon the softness of blankets and the immaculate cleanness of everything, and he longed with inexpressible longing to get into it and go to sleep, but he knew he must not yield. He knew that it would not be safe for him to linger till the morning. The fame of him would have gone forth even by this time, and some one somewhere would say that he knew that the man he was supposed to be was dead, or hurt, or else was coming in the morning. No, he must get up and get into his coarse clothes at once and be ready to depart. It would not do to be quiet now and noisy later. She would think it queer of him to be long in getting to bed. He must hurry!

He took off the shoes that were a bit too large for him and crinkled his tired toes luxuriously. He took off the suit that was not his, and folded it for the trunk-tray. He took off the collar and necktie and put them back in the trunk. Then he looked at the pile of soiled underwear which he had brought back from the bath-room after his bath, and his soul rebelled. If the fellow he was supposed to be ever came back from the wreck and got his good job and his good home, he might thank his lucky stars and not bother if he was minus a suit of undergarments. He couldn’t go in those soiled, tattered things any longer. And besides, if he was a murderer, why not be a thief too, to that extent, anyway? He was sure if he was in the other fellow’s place he wouldn’t begrudge a poor lost soul a few of his clothes.

So he gathered the soiled clothes into a bundle, laid them on the coals that were still red in his fireplace, and watched them blaze up into flames with weary satisfaction. Then he turned out the light and tiptoed over to the window. He raised the shade and looked out to reconnoitre.

The window overlooked the street, and there was a great arc light hung in the trees, so that it shone full upon his windows. Moreover, there were people passing, and cars flying by, not a few. Marlborough had by no means gone to bed, even though the Presbyterian church social was over and the last member of the committee gone to her home. It was no use to try to escape yet. He must wait till after midnight.

So he tiptoed back, intending to turn on the light and begin to get together the rest of his things. But the flickering firelight from a charred stick, that had broken in two and fallen apart to blaze up again feebly, fell invitingly over the white bed, and played with the shadows over the pillow. An inexpressible longing came over him to just see how it felt to lie down in that soft clean whiteness and rest for five minutes. He would not stay for more than five minutes or he might fall asleep, and that would be disastrous, but he must rest a moment or two while he was waiting, or he would not be able to travel, he was so tired. He would open the window so that when he was ready to go he would not be making a noise again, and then he would rest.

So, just as he was, he lay cautiously down and drew the soft blankets about him, with the fragrant sheet against his face, and closed his weary eyes.

The night wind stole softly in and breathed restfully upon him, filling his lungs with clean, pure air, and fanning his hot forehead, and the little charred stick collapsed with a soft shudder and went out, leaving the room in darkness, and Murray Van Rensselaer slept.

XII

When he awoke eons might have passed. He didn’t know where he was, and a broad band of sun was streaming across his bed. The wind was blowing the muslin curtain gaily out like a streamer across the room, and Mrs. Summers was tapping at the door with crisp, decided knocks, and calling to him:

“Mr. Murray! Mr. Murray! I’m sorry to have to disturb you, but it’s getting very late. You ought to be eating your breakfast this minute. You don’t want to be late the first morning, you know!”

He opened blinded eyes and tried to locate himself. Who in thunder was Mr. Murray, and why didn’t he want to be late the first morning? Was that his man calling him? No, it was a woman’s voice. He blinked toward the window and saw the outlines of a church against the brightness of the sunny sky, and saw people going down a strange street. He turned his head on his pillow and closed his eyes. What the dickens did it matter, anyhow? He was tired and was going to sleep this heaviness off. He must have been out late the night before. Hitting the pace pretty hard again! Must be at some club, or one of the fellows took him home. What was the little old idea, anyhow, trying to wake him up? Couldn’t they let a fellow sleep till he was ready to wake up?

But the knocking continued, and he was about to tell the person at the door what he thought of him in most forcible language, when he opened his eyes again with his face the other way, and saw the old rough coat he had been wearing for the past three weeks lying across the nice comfortable chair by the side of the fireplace awaiting him. Then it all came back to him like a slap in the face.

He sprang to a sitting posture and gazed hurriedly about him, a growing alarm in his eyes.

“Mr. Murray! Mr. Murray! Are you awake? Breakfast is ready. It’s very late!” reiterated the pleasant but firm voice. “I’m afraid Mr. Harper will think--are you almost ready?”