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!