The next thing they asked him to do was to let them elect him State
President of the Christian Endeavor Society.
It meant nothing whatever to him when they told him, because he did not
know what Christian Endeavor even stood for at that time, but he smiled
and turned it down flat, with the excuse that he could not give any
more time to outside things. He owed his whole energy to the bank. Mr.
Harper would not like it if he accepted offices here and there.
Then behold it developed that Mr. Harper _would_ like it very much. It
was just what Mr. Harper wanted of his bank teller, to be prominent
in social and religious matters. A committee had waited upon Mr.
Harper, and he came himself to plead with the young man, stressing it
that he would like him to accept as a personal favor to himself. He
felt it would give their bank a good standing to have their employees
identified with such organizations.
The young committee pleaded eagerly, and promised to do all the work
for him. They would prepare all the programs, and suggest competent
helpers on each committee who understood their work thoroughly. There
really would be little left for him to do but preside at the State
Conventions and attend a County Convention now and then. Wouldn’t he
stretch a point and take the office? They needed him terribly just now,
having lost a wonderful president through serious illness.
It sounded easy. He did not imagine it meant much but calling a
meeting to order now and then, and as there was a Vice-president he
could always get out of it on the score of pressing business when he
did not want to go. So Murray “stretched a point” and said yes. He
was beginning to enjoy the prestige given by these various activities
which they had pressed upon him. He had almost forgotten that he was an
outlaw. For the time being he seemed to himself to have become Allan
Murray. He was quite pleased with himself that he was fitting down into
the groove so well. Even the religious part was not so irksome as he
had felt at first. He might in time come to enjoy it a little. He had
not slipped away that next Saturday night. He had lived very tolerably
through three more Sundays. He was even becoming somewhat fond of those
seven little devils in his Sunday-school class. His popularity in the
capacity of a Sunday-school teacher was evidenced by the fact that
seven other little devils, seven times worse than the first seven,
had joined themselves to the knot that closed around him for a brief
half-hour every Sunday afternoon. There was even talk of giving him a
room by himself next to the Primary room.
Fearing that he never would be able to teach a lesson, he had
conceived the idea of offering a prize of a story to the class after
they had told him the lesson for the day. This relieved him of any
responsibility in the matter of the teaching, and kept excellent order
in the class. All he had to do was to have a hair-breadth experience
ready to relate during the last ten minutes of the session.
But Mrs. Summers, wise in her day and generation, perhaps wiser than
Murray ever suspected, brought to bear her gentle heaven-guided
influence upon the young teacher. If she suspected his need she never
told anybody but her Heavenly Father, but she quietly hunted out little
bits here and there about the lesson, illustrations, an unusual page
from the “Sunday School Times,” a magazine article with a tale that
covered a point in the lesson, now and then an open Bible Dictionary
with a marked paragraph, and laid them on his reading-table under the
lighted lamp.
“I found such a wonderful story today when I was studying for my
Sunday-school class,” she would say while she passed him the puffy
little biscuits and honey at the supper-table. “I thought you might
like to use it for your boys. I took the liberty of laying it up on
your table, with the verses marked in the Bible where it fits. You have
so little time it is only right the rest of us should help you in the
wonderful work you are doing in that Sunday-school class.”
He thanked her, and then because he did not like to seem ungrateful,
and he was afraid he might be asked what he thought of it, he read
what she had left there, and was surprised to find himself getting
interested. Strange how a dull thing grew fascinating if you just once
gave your mind to it. He wondered if that were true of all dull things.
He actually grew interested in getting ready for his Sunday-school
class. There were times when he even preferred it to going out
socially, although that was where he naturally shone, it being more
his native element.
Yet he often felt a constraint when he went out to dinner or to a
social gathering. There were very few invitations to the kind of
thing to which he had been accustomed. The whole community seemed
to be pretty well affected by the sentiments of that Presbyterian
Church. They did not seem to know how to play cards, not the ones
who were active, and they did not seem to think of dancing when they
got together. Not that he missed those things. He was rather more
interested in the novelty of their talk and their games, and their
music, which was some of it really good. It appeared that the girl
Anita was quite a fine musician. She had been away for a number of
years studying. Yet he was always a little bit afraid of Anita. Was it
because she reminded him of Bessie, or because she seemed to not quite
trust him? He could not tell. When he was in the same company with
her he found himself always trying to put the best foot foremost. It
annoyed him. She seemed to be always looking through him and saying:
“You are not what you are trying to seem at all. You are an impostor!
You have stolen a dead man’s name and character, and you killed a
girl once! Some day you will kill the good man’s good name, too, and
everybody will find out that you are a murderer!” When these thoughts
came through his mind he would turn away from her clear eyes, and a
sharp thought of Bessie like a keen pain would go through his soul. At
such times he was ready to give it all up and run away. Yet he stayed
on.
He was flooded with invitations to dinners and teas and evening
gatherings, little musicals and concerts, and always at these
gatherings there was the tang of excitement lest he should be found
out. He was growing more and more skilful in evading direct questions
and in parrying bantering gaiety intended to draw him out. He came
to be known as a young man of great reserves. He never talked about
himself. They began to remark that. All they knew about him they had
heard from others before he came. They liked him all the better for
this, and perhaps the mystery that this method gradually put about him
made him but the more fascinating to the girls. All save Anita.
Anita kept her own counsel. She was polite and pleasant, consulting
with him when it was necessary, that is, when she could not get some
one else to do it for her, but never taking him into the gracious
circle of her close acquaintances. Jane often asked her why she had to
be so stiff. Jane was more effusive than ever about the young hero of
the town. But Anita closed her lips and went about her business, as
charming as ever and just as distant. It intrigued Murray. He never
had had a girl act like that to him. If it had not been for the fact
that she reminded him unpleasantly of Bessie and made him uncomfortable
every time he came in her vicinity, he would have set to work in
earnest to do something about it, but he really was very busy and
almost happy at the bank, and was quite content to let her go her way.
His work at the bank was growing more and more fascinating to him. He
was like a child who is permitted to work over machinery and feel that
he is doing real work with it. He fairly beamed when his accounts came
out just right, and he loved being a wheel that worked the machinery of
this big clean bank. While he was there he forgot all that was past in
his life, forgot that any minute a stranger might walk in and announce
himself as the real Allan Murray, and he would have to flee. In the
sweet wholesomeness of the monotony of work it seemed impossible that
such things as courts of justice could reach a long arm after him and
place him in jail, and try him for his life.
He liked most of the men with whom he was associated, also he liked
Mrs. Summers. The little talks they had at night before he went up
to his room gave him something like comfort. It was a new thing, and
he enjoyed it. He even let her talk about religious questions, and
sometimes asked her a shy question now and then, though most of all he
was afraid to venture questions lest he reveal his utter ignorance and
lay himself open to suspicion. More and more as the days went by he
began to cling to the new life he was carving out for himself, and to
dread to lose it. The respect of men, which he had never minded about
in his other days, was sweet to him now. To have lost his first estate
gave him a great regard for the one into which he had dropped unawares.
It was not his, but he had none now, and he must not let them take this
one away from him. He flattered himself now and then that he had been
born again, as the legend in that trolley-car had advised. He was like
a little child learning a new world, but he was learning it and he
liked it.
Into the midst of this growing happiness and assurance entered the
State Christian Endeavor Convention.
It was to be held in a near-by city. He had not understood that he
would have to go away to a strange place when he took the office, but
it was too late to refuse now. He must risk it. Still, it worried him
some. Here in Marlborough he was known, now, and would not easily be
taken for some one else. Practically everybody in town knew him, or
knew who he was. He would not likely be mistaken or arrested for any
one else, even if his picture were put up in the bank right opposite
his own window. He had by this time ventured to look the picture of the
advertised man on the wall fully in the face, and discovered it did
not look in the least like himself, so he had grown much easier about
such things. If all this time had passed and nothing had come out about
him, surely his father had found a way to hush things up. Poor dad! He
wished he dared send him word that he was all right, and on the way to
be a man. But he must not. It might only precipitate a catastrophe. He
was dead, and had been born again. He must be dead to all his old life
if he hoped to escape its punishment.
He journeyed to the Convention in company with a large party from the
Marlborough churches, who hovered around him and made him feel almost
like a peacock with all their adulation. They pinned badges on him,
chattered to him of their committee work, asked his advice about things
he had never heard of before, and it amused him wonderfully to see
what answers he could give them that would satisfy them, and at the
same time would in no wise give himself away.
But when they arrived at the strange city and went in a body to the
convention hall, and Murray saw for the first time the great audience
room, with its bunting and streamers and banners and mottoes, his heart
began to fail him. A kind of sick feeling came over him. It appalled
him that he was to be made conspicuous in a great public assembly
like this. He never imagined that it was to be a thing of this sort.
He began to realize what a fool he had been to get into a fix like
this--what an unutterable fool that he did not clear out entirely.
He did not belong among people like this. He could never learn their
ways, and inevitably sometime, probably soon, he would be found out.
Every day, every hour, he remained would only make the outcome more
unspeakable. This business of being born again was an impossible
proposition from the start. One could not work it. He ought to go. He
would go at once! This was as good a time as any. Much better than in
Marlborough, for no one around would recognize him, and he could get
far away before his absence was discovered.
He cast a quick glance around him, and saw that his delegation were all
being seated up near the front of the audience-room. With swift steps
he marched down the aisle and out the door, and came face to face with
the man who was to lead the devotional meeting, to whom he had just
been introduced.
“I was looking for you, Murray,” he said. “You’re wanted at once up
on the platform. They want to consult you about the appointment of the
committees before the meeting opens. Better hurry! It’s time to begin.”
Baffled again, Murray turned back up the aisle, resolving to find
some excuse to slip out the side door which he could see opening from
the platform. There was to be a devotional meeting. He had heard talk
about selecting hymns. He would slip out while they were singing. At
any rate, there was no escape here just now, for the leader of the
devotional meeting was just behind him.
So he went to the platform, bowed and smiled and tried to conduct
himself in an altogether happy and care-free manner, assenting to all
the suggestions about committees, listening to reasons for certain
appointments as if he knew all about it and was interested, with that
flattering deference that was second nature to him. But his eyes kept
turning constantly to the door at the left of the platform; and when
they were finally through with him and motioned him to a seat in the
centre of the platform, he sank into the big chair of honor with
relief. Now, at last, his release was at hand! When they arose to sing
the first hymn he would look up as if some one beckoned. No matter
where that door led to, he would get out of sight somewhere and stay
hidden until this infernal convention was over, and he could safely
vanish into the world again.
Some one handed him a hymn-book open to the hymn. He was not acquainted
with any hymns, but it struck him as strange that this one should be
about hiding. He accepted the book, as he did all things when he
was conscious of his predicament, merely as a mask to keep him from
suspicion, and he pretended to sing, although he had never heard the
tune before.
“Oh, safe to the Rock that is higher than I,
My soul in its sorrow and anguish would fly;
So sinful, so weary, Thine, Thine would I be;
Thou blest ‘Rock of Ages,’ I’m hiding in Thee!”
Murray Van Rensselaer had never heard of the Rock of Ages except in
connection with an insurance company. He did not understand even
vaguely the reference, but as his lips formed the words which his eyes
conveyed to his brain from the book, his heart seemed to grasp for
them, and be saying them in earnest. Hiding! Oh, if there were only
some hiding for him! Sinful? Yes, he must be sinful! He had never
thought he was very bad in the days that were past, but somehow since
he had been in this region where everybody talked about Right and Wrong
as if they were personified, and where all the standards of living were
so different, it had begun to dawn upon him that if these standards
were true, then he personally was a sinner. It was not just his having
been responsible for Bessie’s death. It was not even his running away
when he found he had killed her. Nor yet, was it his allowing these
good people to think he was Allan Murray--a Christian with a long
record of good deeds and right living behind him. It was something back
of all that--something that had to do with the Power they called God,
and with that vague Person they called Jesus, who was God’s Son. It was
dawning upon him that he had to do with God! He had never expected
that he would ever have anything to do or decide in the remotest way
connected with God, and now suddenly it seemed as if God was there all
the time, behind everything, and had not been pleased with his relation
to life. It seemed that God had been there dealing with him even before
he was born into the family of Van Rensselaer. Back of being Van
Rensselaer’s child, he was God’s child! His father had bitterly berated
him for the way he had misused and been disloyal to the fine old name
of Van Rensselaer; how would God speak to him sometime about the way he
had treated Him?
“Hiding in Thee! Hiding in Thee!” sang the gathering throng earnestly
and joyously, and he shuddered as his lips joined with theirs. Hiding
in God! How could he hide in God? It would be like taking refuge in a
court of justice and expecting them to protect him from his own sin!
He recalled the first lesson his Sunday-school class had taught him
about Saul who was Paul, when a light shined round about him and he
met the Lord on the way to Damascus. He had heard more of him since,
in sermons, and in the Bible readings, and in his talks with Mrs.
Summers. One could not hear a story like that referred to again and
again without getting the real meaning into his soul, but never before
had it come home to him as a thing that really happened, and that might
happen again, as it did while he sat there singing. It seemed to him
that he was suddenly seeing the Lord--that for the first time he had
been halted in his giddy life and made to see that he was fighting
against the Lord God; that his whole life had been a rebellion against
the Power that had created him, just as his whole former life at home
had been a life apart from the life of the home and the parents who had
given him life and maintained him. It was not the square thing at all.
He had never thought of it so before. He would not have done it if he
had ever thought of it that way. Of course his father had told him in
a way--a bitter way, cursed at him, but given him the money to pay for
his follies. And he had not been square with his father! He had not
been square with the law of the land either! He had broken it again and
again, and counted it something for which to be proud when he got away
without having to pay a fine. All his life he had run away from fines
and punishments. So far as law was concerned he had been many times
guilty. And then when one went further and thought about the laws of
God, why he did not even know what they were. He had never inquired
before until a Sunday-school session had forced the ten commandments to
his attention. Of course, he had always heard of the ten commandments,
but they had seemed as archaic as the tomb of some Egyptian Pharaoh. He
had no notion whatever that anybody connected them with any duties of
life today, until Mrs. Summers had discussed the subject briefly one
night in that mild impersonal way of hers.
But now as he sat on that platform, singing those words about a
hiding-place for a soul that was sinful and weary, he knew that he
ought to have known those commandments. He ought to have found out
God’s will for him. He knew that the right name for the state he was
in was sin, and he felt an overwhelming burden from the knowledge. He
was hearing God’s voice speak to him, “It is hard for thee to kick
against the pricks,” and he did not understand it any better than Saul
had done as he lay blinded on the way to Damascus.
The singing had ceased, and he realized that he had not yet slipped
away. This was to be a devotional meeting. Perhaps during a prayer he
might find a better opportunity.
Startling into his troubled thoughts came the words of the leader:
“I am going to ask our new president, Mr. Allan Murray, to lead us in
the opening prayer--”