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!”