Murray wondered again the next morning when Warren stepped in with a
note from Mr. Harper while he was eating his breakfast, and insisted
on waiting and walking down to the bank with him. It did seem uncanny.
Were all these people in collusion somehow to prevent his being left
alone an instant?
It would have been a startling thought to him had some one suggested
that each one was working out the divine will for his good, and that
though he might flee to the uttermost part of the earth, even there an
all-seeing care would be about him, reaching to draw him to a God he
had never known.
Murray liked Warren. He seemed quite companionable. He wondered if he
played golf or had a car. But it annoyed him to be under such continual
espionage. Although he had about decided to remain in Marlborough for
the present, at least until he got his first week’s pay envelope, if
that were possible, still he did not like the feeling that he was being
forced to do this. He cast about in his mind for an excuse which would
leave him free, but Warren was so altogether genial that there seemed
nothing else to do but make the best of it. Surely they would not have
lunch parties on the roof of the bank building every day in the week.
There would certainly come a let-up some time.
So they walked down-town together, and Murray discovered that Warren
was married, and lived in a little cottage two blocks above Mrs.
Summers. Warren said they wanted him to come to dinner some night just
as soon as Elizabeth got back. Elizabeth was away in Vermont, visiting
her mother.
Elizabeth! Would he never get away from thoughts of Bessie Chapparelle?
He confided in Murray that he was saving for a car, just a little
coupé, he couldn’t afford anything else yet, but it would be nice for
Elizabeth to take the baby out in. There was a nice eager domestic
air about him that was different from anything Murray had experienced
among his young men friends, even the married ones. He did not remember
that any of them had babies, or if they had they did not speak about
them. They were tucked away somewhere with their nurses out of sight
till they should be old enough to burst upon the world full-fledged in
athletics or society. There was something pleasant about the thought of
a girl taking her baby out to ride in a little coupé, even if it was a
cheap one. And a cottage! He had never been to dinner at a cottage. It
came to him that Bessie would have been the kind of mother who would
have taken her baby out to ride. Bessie! Oh, Bessie! Why had he not
thought of Bessie before, and kept in touch with her? But when he did
find her he had killed her! He had thought this terrible depression at
remembrance of her would pass away in a few days, but it did not. It
only grew worse! Some day it might drive him mad! This was no way to
begin a day!
But he entered the bank pledged to take a hike with Warren that
afternoon after closing time, and Warren was to come home to dinner
that night with him. Mrs. Summers had asked him at the breakfast-table.
So the pleasant ties that were binding him to Marlborough multiplied,
and weakened his purpose of leaving; and from day to day he held on,
each day thinking to go the next. If he had had money, even a little,
or any sense of where he might go, it would have been different,
perhaps, for ever over him hung the fear of the return of the real
Murray, though each day, nay each hour, that passed in security
weakened his realization of it, and at times almost obliterated the
thought of it as a possibility.
Then there began to happen the strangest things that he had to do,
things utterly alien to all of his former life.
There was the first Sunday. It came like a shock to him.
Saturday afternoon he and Warren took a hike, and on the way back he
asked when Murray would like to go again.
“Why not tomorrow?” answered Murray, remembering that there would be no
bank open on Sunday.
“Why, that’s Sunday, old man,” said Warren, laughing.
There was such a look of amusement on Warren’s face that it warned
Murray. Sunday! What the dickens difference did that make, he wondered?
But he caught himself quickly. It must make some difference or Warren
would not look like that, so he responded with a laugh.
“Oh, that’s so. Got my dates mixed, didn’t I? Well, let’s see. What do
we do in Marlborough? How is the day laid out on Sunday? Much doing?”
“Well, not much time for idling, of course. We have our Ushers’
Association meeting in the morning before church. They’ll be sure to
elect you to that. They were speaking about it.”
“Ushers’ Association?” said Murray, puzzled.
“Yes, I s’pose you belonged at home. In fact they said you did. Well,
we meet at quarter to ten. Then the regular morning service is quarter
to eleven, and Sunday-school is in the afternoon. Have they asked you
to take a class yet? Well, they will. Then the Christian Endeavor meets
at seven. They’re planning to make you president at the next election.
Perhaps I oughtn’t to tell you that, but it’s a foregone conclusion, of
course. And the evening service is eight o’clock. Of course it’s short
and snappy and gets out by nine fifteen, but it’s a full day. Not much
time left for your family if you go to everything.”
“No, I suppose not,” murmured Murray, trying to keep the amazement
out of his voice. It was his policy to agree with everybody, as far
as possible, until he had further light, but was it possible that
grown men and women went to Sunday-school? Some nurse of his childhood
had taken him for a few months once when he was quite young, but he
had always supposed it was a matter merely for children. Yet Warren
spoke as if he went to Sunday-school, as if the whole town went to
Sunday-school. What was he letting himself in for if he stayed in this
strange place? Could he possibly go through with it? And what were
these “services” that he spoke of? Just _church_? Well, he could get
out of that probably. Say he had a headache.
But when Sunday morning came and he sat down at the little round
breakfast-table opposite Mrs. Summers and ate the delicate omelet,
fresh brown bread, sweet baked apples with cream, and drank the amber
coffee that composed the Sunday breakfast, and heard her talk, it was
not so easy to get out of it.
“There’s an article in this week’s ‘Presbyterian’ I’d like you to
read. It speaks of that very subject we were talking about last night.
You’ll have plenty of time to read it before we go to church. I left
it over on the Morris chair for you,” she said. It was very plain she
was counting on his going to church. Indeed, he had been given to
understand on every hand all the week from many different people, that
church was where he was expected to be whenever here was service there,
and he sighed, and wondered how long he would be able to keep up this
religious bluff. If he only had thought to profess to be going to spend
the week-end with some old friend a few miles away it would have given
him freedom for a few hours at least, and a start of almost two days on
his pursuers, in case he decided not to return.
But then, there was the old question again, where could he go, how get
another name, and why try to find a better place of hiding when this
one seemed fairly crying out for him? Then, too, where would justice be
less likely to search for him than in a church?
So he settled into the Morris chair with a sigh, and took up the paper
to read an article, the like of which he had never read nor heard
before, and the meaning of which touched him no more than if it were
written in a foreign tongue.
The article was about Church Unity. He gathered there was a discussion
of some sort abroad, some theological crisis imminent. The article
was couched in terms he had never even heard before, so far as he
remembered--The Atonement, Calvary, The Authenticity of the Scriptures,
The Virgin Birth, The New Birth, The Miracles. What was it all about,
anyway? There seemed no sense to it. He read it over again, trying to
get a few phrases in case some one began to talk this queer jargon, and
he was evidently expected to be a connoisseur in such things. He must
master enough to put him beyond suspicion.
Take, for instance, that phrase, “the new birth,” how strangely like
the sentence he had seen in the trolley-car, “Ye must be born again!”
It had come from the Bible. He had discovered that the first night he
spent in this house. There must be some slogan like that in all this
discussion. He was rather interested to know what it all meant. It
fitted so precisely in with his own needs. He was trying so hard to be
born again, and he felt so uncertain whether he was going to succeed
or not. Perhaps if he read this paper he would discover something more
about it. At any rate it would make the good lady with whom he lived
feel that he was interested in what she had been saying, and he had
taken good care that she did the talking when she got on such topics,
too. So he asked if he might take the paper up to his room for further
perusal. Mrs. Summers said yes, of course, but it was time to start to
church, and he must get his hat and come right down. And in spite of
his desire to remain at home, he found himself yielding to her firm but
pleasantly expressed wishes.
The sermon that morning was short and direct. The text was, “We must
all appear before the judgment seat of Christ to give account of the
deeds done in the body,” and from the time those firm, mobile lips of
the pastor began to repeat the words, and the clear, almost piercing,
eyes to look straight down at him from the pulpit, he never took his
eyes from the preacher’s face.
It was, perhaps, the first real sermon he had ever listened to in his
life. Oh, he had been to church now and then through the years, of
course--mostly to weddings, now and then to a funeral, occasionally a
vesper service where something unusual was going on, and his mother
wished him to escort her, once or twice to a baccalaureate sermon. That
was all. Never to hear a direct appeal of the gospel. It was all new to
him.
The minister was an unusual man. He knew Scripture by heart, chapter
after chapter. When he read the lesson he scarcely looked at the page,
but repeated the words as if it were something he had seen happen,
or had heard spoken, and about which he was merely telling in clear,
convincing tones. His sermon was rich in quotations. The quotations
clinched every statement which he made. Murray heard for the first
time about the great white throne, and the books to be opened, and the
_other_ book that was to be opened, wherein were written names, the
Lamb’s Book of Life. And whoever’s name was not found written there was
to go away into everlasting punishment.
Everlasting punishment! That was what he was under now. Life as
himself, the Murray Van Rensselaer that he had started out to be, was
done with so far as this life was concerned. His punishment could
only end with death, and now this that the preacher was saying made
it pretty sure that it would not end even then. He had somehow felt
all along ever since the accident, that if he could only die, all this
trouble would be over, and he would have a square deal, as he called
it, again, but it seemed not. It seemed things of this life were
carried over into the next. If what this preacher said were true, all
this about the books and the dead, small and great, being judged out
of what was written against them, why then there was no chance for
him. The preacher further stated that those whose names were written
in that other book, who were not to be punished, were the “born again
ones.” That was what that “born again” meant that he had been hearing
about so much. Or what was it, after all? Nobody had said. The “born
again ones.” He had been trying to be born again, and had taken a new
name, but what were the chances that Allan Murray any more than Murray
Van Rensselaer would be a born again one? Well, pretty good, if all
they said about him were true, only if he was dead he would be over
there himself, and would preëmpt his own name, and besides, Murray had
a sudden realization that there would be no chance of deception over
there in the other world.
The preacher’s words were very clear, very simple, very convincing. The
words he repeated from the Bible were still more awesome. Murray walked
silently back to the house beside Mrs. Summers with a deep depression
upon him. He felt that he had borne out from that church the heavy
burden of an unforgiven sin--that there was no place of repentance,
though he might carefully seek it with tears, and that he must bear the
consequences of his sin through all eternity.
He could not understand his feeling. It was not at all like himself,
and he could not shake it off. He sat in his room for a few minutes
looking into the red glow of the coals on his hearth and thinking about
it, while Mrs. Summers put the dinner on the table. It somehow did
not seem fair. When you came to consider it, he had not meant to be a
murderer. There was not any one he would have protected sooner than
Bessie. He was just having a good time. It was not quite fair for him
to bear unforgivable punishment the rest of his life for a thing he had
not meant to do. Of course the law of the land was that way. It had to
be to protect everybody. But the law had no right to you after you were
dead. You had satisfied it. But if, after having escaped punishment in
this life, he had yet to meet the judgment seat of an angry God, what
hope had he?
He dwelt for a moment upon those whose names were written in the other
book, the “born again” ones. Mrs. Summers was likely one of those,
if there was any such thing. Yes, and Mrs. Chapparelle. She read the
Bible and believed it. He remembered the stories she read them Sunday
afternoons. And was Bessie? Yes, she must have been. It must have been
that which gave her that look of set-apartness, that sort of peace in
her eyes--well, these were queer things he was thinking about. Strange
they never came his way before. He had never really taken it in before
what it would be to die--to be done with this earth forever! Bessie
was gone! And he would be judged for it! Even if he escaped a court of
justice, he would be judged. What was the use? Why not go home and take
his chances? But no, that would drag his mother and his father through
all that muck--Bah! He would stay where he was--a while.
The little tinkling bell broke in upon his thoughts, and he found
he was tremendously hungry, in spite of his serious thoughts. Fried
chicken and mashed potatoes, and gravy over delicately browned slices
of toast! A quivering mould of currant jelly! Little white onions in a
cream dressing; a custard pie for dessert. It all had a wonderful taste
that seemed better than anything he knew, and he really enjoyed sitting
there with her eating it. It seemed so cosey and pleasant. Even the
blessing at the beginning was rather a pleasant novelty. She had asked
him again to take the head and ask the blessing, but he had looked at
her with a most engaging smile, and said: “Oh, you say it, won’t you? I
like to hear you.” And she had smiled and complied, so now he was not
any more worried about that. If ever he were asked, he had learned what
words were used. He could get away with it, though somehow he did not
like to be faking a thing like that. It was queer, but he did not. He
never felt so before about anything. He wondered why.
He helped Mrs. Summers carry the dishes out to the kitchen, and while
he was doing it the door-bell rang, and Jane presented herself. She
announced that she had come as a representative of her class to ask Mr.
Murray to be their teacher. She flattered him with her beseeching eyes
while she pleaded with him not to say no.
“Class? What class?” he asked blankly, wondering what doggone thing he
was going to run into now.
“Why, our Sunday-school class. There are twelve of us girls. You know,
our teacher was Miss Phelps, and she’s gone away for the winter to
California. Perhaps she won’t ever come back. Her sister lives out
there. She resigned the class before she went away, and we haven’t
elected any one else to fill her place. We were sort of waiting to see
if you wouldn’t take it. I hope nobody else has got ahead of us. I
tried to see you this morning, but there were so many people speaking
to you. Now, you _will_ be our teacher, _won’t_ you?”