It was very still in the small gloomy room of the little country
hospital where the sick man had been taken when it had been determined
to operate on him. The woman down the hall who had been having
hysterics every two or three days had been moved to the next floor,
and her penetrating voice was not so constantly an annoyance. The baby
across the hall was too desperately ill to cry, and the other patients
had dropped off to sleep. The hall was almost as quiet as night.
The patient lay with his eyes closed and a discouraged droop to his
nicely chiselled mouth. His red curls had been clipped close under
the bandages, but one could see they were red. He had long, capable
fingers, but they lay pallid and transparent on the cheap coverlet,
as if they never would work again. His whole attitude betokened utter
rout and discouragement. As he lay there, still as death and almost as
rigid, a tear stole slowly out from under the long dark lashes. A weak
warm tear. He brushed it away impatiently with his long thin hand, and
turned over with a quick-drawn sigh. Even the effort of turning over
was a difficult and slow performance. He felt so unacquainted with the
muscles of his heavy inert body. He wondered if he ever again would
walk around and do things like other people.
As if she had heard him far out in the hall, the nurse opened the door
and came in. It annoyed him that he could not even sigh without being
watched.
“Did you call, Mr. Murray?”
“No, nurse.”
“Did you want anything, Mr. Murray?”
“Yes, I want a great many things!” he snapped unexpectedly, “I want to
get up and walk around and go to my work.” He had almost said, “I want
to go home,” only he remembered in time that he had no home to go to.
No one to care where he went.
“I want my mail!” he added suddenly. “I think it’s time this monkey
business stopped! I suppose the doctor has told you I mustn’t have
my mail yet. He’s afraid there’ll be something disturbing in it. But
that isn’t possible. I haven’t any near relatives left. They’re all
dead. I suppose I’ve lost my job long ago, so it can’t be anything
disturbing about business, and I haven’t any girl anywhere that cares a
picayune about me or I about her, so you see there’s really no danger
in letting me have it. In fact I _will_ have it! I wish you would go
and get it right away. Tell the doctor I demand it. There would surely
be something to interest me for a few minutes and make me forget this
monotonous room and the squeak of your rubber heels on the hall floor!”
He had red hair, but he had not been savage like this before. He had
just reached the limit of his nerves, and he was angry at that tear. It
had probably left a wide track on his cheek, and that abominable nurse,
who knew everything and thought of everything and presumed to manage
him, would know he had been crying like a baby. Yes, she was looking
hard at him now, as if she saw it. He felt it wet and cold on his cheek
where he had not wiped it off thoroughly.
The nurse came a step nearer.
“I’m real sorry about the mail,” she said sympathetically, “but your
suspicions are all wrong. The doctor asked me this morning if I
couldn’t find out some one to write to about your mail. There truly
hasn’t been a bit of mail since you came here. And the head nurse wrote
to that address you gave her, I’m sure, for I saw her addressing the
letter. Isn’t it likely they have made some mistake about the address?
I wouldn’t fret about it if I were you. You’ll forget it all when you
get well. Wouldn’t you like me to read to you a while? There’s a real
good story in the Sunday paper. I’ll get it if you want me to.”
“No, thanks!” he said curtly, “I don’t read stories in Sunday papers,
and besides you can’t sugar-coat things with a story. And you’re
mistaken when you say I’ll forget it. I’ll never forget it, and I’ll
never get well, either! I can see that plain enough!”
With that he turned his face to the wall and shut his nice brown eyes
again.
The nurse waited a few minutes fussing around the immaculate room,
giving him his medicine, taking his temperature and writing something
on the chart. Then she went away again, and he sighed. All by himself
he sighed! And sighed! He tried to pray, but it only turned out in a
sigh. But perhaps it reached to Heaven, for God heard the sighs and the
tears of his poor foolish children of Israel, and would He not hear a
sigh today, even if it really ought to have been a prayer?
“I’m all alone!” he said, quite like a sobbing child. “I’m all alone!
And _what’s the use_?”
Then the nurse opened the door softly and looked in. It was growing
dusky in the room, and the shadows were thick over where he lay. But
there was something electric in the way she turned the knob, like well
suppressed excitement.
“There is some one to see you,” she said, in what she meant to make
quite a colorless voice. The doctor had said it would not do to excite
the patient.
“Some one to see _me_?” glowered the man on the bed. “There _couldn’t_
be! There _isn’t_ anybody. Who _is_ it?”
“One of them is a minister. He looks very nice.”
“Oh!” groaned the patient disappointedly, “is that all? Who told him to
come?”
“Nobody,” said the nurse cheerfully. “He’s not from the village. They
came in a car. There’s a young man with him. You’d better let them come
up. They look real jolly.”
“Did they know my name?” he glared, opening his eyes at this.
“Oh yes, and they said there had been a letter from you or about you or
something. They came from a place called Marlborough.”
“Well, that’s different!” said the patient with a jerk. “Can’t you
straighten this place up a bit? It looks like an awful hole. Is my face
clean? It feels all prickly.”
“I’ll wash it,” said the nurse gaily. She was quite gleeful over these
interesting looking visitors.
“You can show the minister up,” said the patient “I don’t know the
other one.”
“But he’s the one that asked after you. He seems real pleasant. He was
quite anxious to see you. The minister called him Murray. Perhaps he’s
some relative.”
“I haven’t any!” growled the man, “but you can bring him too, if he’s
so anxious to come.”
He glared out from under his bandages at his visitors with anything but
a welcoming smile. It was too late for smiling. They should have come
weeks ago.
They stood beside his bed and introduced themselves, the nurse hovering
in the offing till she should be sure that all was well with her
patient.
“My name is Harrison. I’m the preacher from Marlborough you wrote to
several months ago. I’ve just found out today where you were, and I’m
mighty sorry I couldn’t have been around to help you sooner. I’ll just
let this young brother explain, and then we’ll all talk about it some
more.”
The minister put a big kind brotherly hand on the weak white hand of
Allan Murray, and then dropped back to the other end of the little
room, and sat down on the stiff white chair. Murray stepped closer to
the bed.
“And I’m a man that stole something from you, and I’m come to bring it
back again, and to ask your forgiveness.”
“Well, I’m sure I didn’t know it, and you’re welcome to it, whatever
it was. It wouldn’t have been much good to me, you see. Keep it if
you like, and say no more about it.” There was not much welcome nor
forgiveness in his glance.
“But you see I’m to blame for the whole thing,” explained Murray
gently, “and I want to tell you about it. Are you strong enough to
listen today, or ought I to wait?”
“Go on!” growled the patient impatiently.
The nurse was still hovering, open-mouthed. This was too unusual a
morsel of news to miss. She could not tear herself away.
“You see, I was a renegade anyway,” began Murray--
“What did you steal?” the patient interrupted, raising his voice
nervously.
“I stole your name, and I stole your job, and I’ve been living at your
boarding place, and using your things!”
“Well, you certainly did a smashing business! As I say, it didn’t
matter much to me, you see, if you could get away with it.”
“But I didn’t get away with it, that’s it. I was held up.”
“Who held you up?”
“God.”
The patient eyed his visitor a moment, and a queer softened expression
began to melt into his face.
“Sit down,” he said. “Now, begin and tell.”
“Well, you see my name’s Murray too, my first name. Murray Van
Rensselaer. Son of Charles Van Rensselaer. You’ve probably heard of
him. Well, I broke a law, and then I didn’t like the idea of facing the
consequences, so I ran away. I don’t know why I ran away. I hadn’t been
used to running away from things. I always faced them out. But anyhow
that doesn’t matter to you. I ran away, and after I got away I couldn’t
quite see coming back, _ever_. I had some money, and for a few days I
kept out of sight and got as far as I could away from home. The day of
your wreck I’d been travelling on the trucks of a freight car because
I hadn’t money, and we landed in Marlborough just at dark. Ever try
travelling that way? Well, don’t. It isn’t what it’s cracked up to be.
When the train stopped at a crossing I rolled off more dead than alive.
I was all in. I hadn’t had anything to eat all day, and I kept sighting
cops everywhere I turned. So I hid till the train went on, and then I
crawled off in the dark up a hill.
“By and by I sighted a light, and came to it through the dark, because
I was so sick of going on I couldn’t go a step further.
“There was an open window, and down just below me on a table in a
basement I saw a row of cakes and bread. There didn’t seem to be
anybody about, so I put my hand in and took some and began to eat. I
didn’t call it stealing. I was starved.”
The patient’s eyes were watching Murray intently, and in the back of
the room the minister was watching the patient.
“It turned out to be a church, and they were getting up a big dinner to
welcome _you_!”
A light shot into the eyes of the man on the pillow, that seemed to
suddenly illume his whole face. A surprised glad light.
“A girl rushed out and called me Mr. Murray, and I tried to beat it,
but it was all dark behind me, and my eyes were blinded looking at
the lighted room, so I only got deeper in behind the bushes, and ran
against more church wall; and the girl followed me laughing, and said
she would show me the way, and that they were waiting for me. She said
they had been so afraid I was caught in the wreck. She tried to pull
me into the church, but I held back and said I was too dirty to go in,
that my clothes were all torn and soiled. I said I had lost my baggage
in the wreck. It seemed to me providential, that wreck, and I used it
for all it was worth, for you see at first I thought I must have met
that girl at a dance somewhere, and she recognized me and hadn’t heard
yet that I was in disgrace. So I wanted to get away before she found
out.
“But she said my trunk had come, and somebody named Summers was
expecting me, and I could go right over to my room and get dressed,
but I must hurry, because it was late. I tried to get directions, but
she would walk over there with me. I couldn’t shake her. She seemed to
think she had some special connection with me because her mother, she
said, had known my mother.
“When we got to Mrs. Summers’ house she opened the door herself and
pulled me right in before I could slide away in the darkness. Of course
I could have broken away, but that would have roused suspicion, and
anything I _didn’t_ want was an outcry and the police on me; so I
went in, and she took me up to the room she had got ready for you, and
she actually smashed the lock on your trunk, and went the length of
pressing a pair of _your trousers_ for me to put on, while I was taking
a bath!”
By this time Allan Murray’s eyes were dancing, and there was actually a
little pucker of a smile in one corner of his mouth.
Murray hurried on with his story.
“There was nothing for it but to get into some clothes and pretend
to please the lady, for she was so insistent. You better believe I
was glad of that hot bath too, and I was still hungry as a bear. I
hadn’t eaten much for two days, and there didn’t seem any way to
get rid of her, so I helped her carry the scalloped oysters to the
church, thinking I could slide out easily there. Boy! Those oysters
had some delicious odor! I couldn’t resist them. I almost took the pan
and bolted before I got in, only there were too many people around
watching.”
The minister was smiling broadly now in the background, and Allan
Murray was all attention. He had lost his sinister glare.
“Well, I got in there and I couldn’t get out. They introduced me right
and left as Allan Murray, and I didn’t dare deny it. I never realized
before what a coward I was till I got into that fix, and then the
Doctor here asked me to ‘ask a blessing,’ and I didn’t know what he
meant. I never hailed with a gang like that before, and I hadn’t been
used to blessings.”
The patient suddenly threw his head back and laughed.
“I found out I was a great Christian worker, and that I was the new
teller in the Marlborough Bank, and that everybody was grateful that
I hadn’t been killed in the wreck,” went on Murray with a flitting
smile, “but I was mighty uncomfortable. There didn’t come any good
opportunity of getting out of there, however, and so I stuck it out, to
my surprise, and got away with it! Even when Mr. Harper, the President
of the bank, came to me and began to say how glad he was, I _got away
with it_! Am I tiring you?”
“Go on!” shouted Allan Murray eagerly.
“Well, they herded me over to Mrs. Summers’ again and sent me up to
bed. There wasn’t a second’s chance to get away all that time without
arousing the town, so I decided to wait till my hostess was asleep. But
I made the mistake of lying down on the softest bed I ever touched, and
boy! I was tired! And the next thing I knew they were calling me down
to breakfast, and Mr. Harper was down there in his car waiting to take
me to the bank.
“All day long they kept it up--for days. Never left me alone a second.
I expected you to turn up every half hour, and I was worn to a thread
with trying to keep up my part. At first I thought I’d stay till I got
my first week’s pay, but afterwards I decided that as I had no name of
my own I dared use, and as yours didn’t seem to be needed by any one,
here was a perfectly good name and job, and I couldn’t hide anywhere
better than by taking another person’s identity. So I settled down
to be almost content in a condition like that! I was used to taking
chances in anything that came along, and I suppose I just fell into it
naturally.
“Then, one day they did a dreadful thing. They made me president of
the State Society, Christian Endeavor, you know. They say you know all
about that.”
Allan Murray’s eyes lighted with keen appreciation of the situation in
which his double was placed.
“I didn’t know what it was like from a Polo Club, so when they made
a great ado about it, I said all right. But when I got to that state
convention and saw what I was up against I decided to beat it while
they were singing the first hymn. And brother, I got the door sighted
and my foot stretched out to take the first step toward it when God met
me! Somehow He got it across to me that it was _He_, and I was a poor
wretch of a sinner! And He wouldn’t let me get out of that building!
They were singing a hymn about hiding, and I was trying to hide; and
right there, just as God stopped me, they asked me to make the opening
prayer! Perhaps you wouldn’t realize what that was like, being asked to
pray before hundreds of people when you hadn’t ever opened your mouth
or your soul in prayer in your life! But I had to get up. And there
I was facing God! I forgot all about the audience and just talked to
God. I told him what a wretch I was. I knew it then. I’d never known it
before, but I knew then. And when I sat down God talked with me: All
that blessed convention He was talking with me! Sometimes it was in a
prayer He spoke, sometimes in a Bible reading, or somebody’s speech,
but it came right home to me, and I found out I was a lost sinner, and
only Jesus Christ could save me. I’d seen something about being born
again, before I knew what it meant, and I’d wished I could begin life
over with a new name and all, but I didn’t know how, see? But somehow
I’ve found out, and everything is different. I made a clean breast of
everything this morning in church, and then I found your letter to Mrs.
Summers. It got put up in my room by mistake while I was away, you see.
So as soon as we could we came to hunt you up. Now, Mr. Murray, can you
see your way clear to forgive the rotten deal I gave you? I’ve done my
best to square things up, and if there’s anything else you’d like me
to do I’m ready. I belong to a new family now, and I hope I’m going to
honor it more than I did the first one. I’ve heard ever since I’ve been
in Marlborough what a great Christian you are, and I’m going to try all
my life to be like you, to make up for the rotten way I masqueraded as
you before I knew the Lord. _Can_ you forgive me?”
Allan Murray reached out a long thin hand and grasped the warm firm one
of Murray.
“I’ll forgive you all right, brother, and from all I can see, you put
over a pretty good effort at being me. Now you better try one better.
Follow Christ, not me! I’ve found out the last few weeks that I hadn’t
as much religion as I thought I had. When everybody seemed to desert me
and the good prospect I had was lost, and I seemed to be lying on the
very verge of the grave, I lost hope, and began to doubt the Lord. It
was pretty tough lying here not knowing what was going on anywhere, and
thinking nobody cared. But I guess you’ve begun to make me see what it
was all for. I must have been through testing, and I didn’t stand it so
very well either. I can see now. But if it’s helped to bring a fellow
like you to the light it’s worth all the suffering!”
Murray grasped both the other man’s hands, and held them.
“You’re the right stuff, all right,” he said. “Some fellows I know
would have been too sore to speak to me for what I had done. But say,
you’re all wrong about nobody thinking about you. There’s one. There’s
a girl. She wanted to know how you were. Her name is Anita. I don’t
know the rest of it. She went to school with your sister, and she was
interested enough to ask me to find out about you and let her know.
She’ll be down to see you some day, or I’ll miss my guess. And say,
she’s a good sport! She knew I wasn’t you all the time. She remembered
you had red hair. And she never told.”
“She _is_ a good sport,” smiled the sick man. “You tell her I remember
who she was. She played tennis with the champions and wouldn’t take
a handicap. And she gave up her place in a crowded hall once that a
little lame girl might see! I wish she would come and see me. It would
remind me of my little sister, Betty, who used to love her dearly.”
“Yes,” said the minister, rising and coming to the front, “Anita is a
good sport. She’s the best little girl in the town of Marlborough. I
could tell you a whole lot more things about her, but I haven’t time
now. I’ve got to get back to my evening service. The question is, how
soon can we hope to be able to move you over home, where we can look
after you personally? There’s a whole church waiting to welcome you. I
know, for look at the way they welcomed the man who came in your place!
We love him and we’re going to love you just as much,” and he put his
arm lovingly around Murray’s shoulder.
“It looks to me as though I shall have a hard time keeping up with the
pace you’ve set,” said the sick man, trying to smile.
“No, you won’t. Oh, no! Don’t you think it for a minute. You were
born to it, but I’ve just been a great big bluff. Well, good-by. You
don’t know how much easier you’ve made the rest for me, now that I
know you don’t hold this up against me. I’ll think of you in my room,
and teaching my class. I’m glad you’re the kind of fellow you are. I
sha’n’t be jealous of you. I shall like to think about it.”
“Nonsense! Man! Don’t talk that way. You’re coming to see me soon
again, and we’ll work things out together. I’ve a fancy you and I are
going to be awfully good friends.”
“I wish I could,” said Murray wistfully, “but I’ve got an entirely
different proposition to face. I’m going back home and give myself up
for getting a little girl killed in an automobile accident, and I don’t
expect to see freedom again this side of Heaven. But sometimes you
think of me and work a little harder just for my sake, because I can’t.”
“Look here, Brother,” said Allan Murray, raising himself on one elbow
and looking earnestly at Murray, “don’t you talk like that! The Lord
never saved you just to see you imprisoned for life. I’m going to get
well in a few days now, and I’m going to spend time seeing you through.
I’ll begin right now by praying, and don’t you give up!”
But Murray looked up with a bright smile.
“It’s all right, you know, Buddie, I belong to the Lord Christ now,
and _what He wants is to go, from now on_, with me. I’m ready to face
it all if that’s what He wants for the honor of His name. That kind of
living makes even dying worth while.”
When they were gone and the nurse came in to turn on the lights and
give him his medicine Allan Murray was lying with wide open eyes and an
eager expression on his face.
“Nurse, how soon can I get up? I’ve a great deal to do, and it ought to
be done soon.”
The nurse looked up with a knowing smile.
“I don’t know,” she said gaily, “but I’ll ask the doctor in the
morning. I knew the best tonic in the world for you was to get in touch
with the world again.”
“It isn’t the world,” said Allan Murray contradictorily, “it’s
something better this time. _I’m needed._”