New Name (3 page)

He gave a last comprehensive survey of his well-groomed self and turned out the light. With deliberate intent he walked across to the window again and looked out to that bright little kitchen window across the alley.

Darkness had dropped down upon the city since he had lighted his room, evening complete, and the little bright window with its aproned figure moving steadily back and forth with brisk step between stove and table stood out clearly in the crisp night. He could see the knife in her hand as she stirred something in a pan on the stove. He could see the foaming pitcher of milk she put in the center of the white-draped table. He could see a griddle over the flame, with blue smoke rising from it. Pancakes. They were going to have pancakes for supper! His mother used to havepancakes for supper when he was a little lad out at the old farm, pancakes with maple syrup! How he wished he could go over there to the little two-story redbrick house and sit down at that white table and eat some. There would be syrup like amber perhaps in a glass pitcher, and how good they would taste! What would they say if he were to go over and ask if he might eat supper with them? What would Violet say if he should go? Leave her abominable, interminable dinner party and go over to that quiet kitchen to eat pancakes! Violet would think he was crazy—would perhaps take steps to put him in the insane asylum, would at least consult a physician. What a fraud life was! A man was never his own master in this world!

A servant tapped at the door.

“Mrs. Van Rensselaer says will you please come down at once. The guests have arrived.”

There was a smack of insolence in the maid’s voice. She knew who was mistress in that house.

As he turned away from the simple vision, a figure stole down the alley, furtively looking this way and that, and slipped like a shadow close to the bright kitchen window, peering in, a white anxious face, with a cap drawn low over the eyes, and a reckless set to the expensive coat worn desperately hunched above crouching shoulders.

If Charles Van Rensselaer had lingered just a second longer at the window, he might have seen that creeping figure, might have—!

But he turned sharply at the servant’s call and went down to play the polished host, to entertain his unwelcome guests with witty sarcasm and sharp repartee, to give the lie to his heart sorrow, and one more proof to the world that he belonged to a great and old family and bore a name that meant riches and fame and honor wherever he went.

Chapter 3

W
hen 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 pieces, 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 came to 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 impressed on him with letters of fire, written 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 to a place he knew not, to a place 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 measured out to him. Even though money might make the penalty light, never again could he face the world and be proud of his old family name and carry out 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 where 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 where 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 structure ahead of him; its shaded 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 edifice? His father and his mother were bitter against him anyway for past offenses. 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 shoes—a pretty girl—how she wouldshrink from him now! She must not see him—! He shied around the corner as if some evil power propelled him in a 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 someone else, and he perhaps—where would he be? While the news boys 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 hunger in his heart for something different. But now that he was suddenly alienated from all he knew, it became strangely precious.

Ah! Now he knew where the devil was carrying him. The old alley! Bessie’s house! He knew deep in his heart he could not have gotten 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 child 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 that shut out the cheeriness of the Chapparelle home were closed for the night.

Yes, and there was the flat stone where he and Bessie used toplay jacks 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 now! 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 a personality, and he was led where he would not.

Surely he did not want to come here 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 precious things had been lost 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, stirring at a great bowl of batter. There would be pancakes. 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 around 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 hadbuckwheats 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 hotcakes 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 windowsill.

“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 windowsill out of sight.

The busy hum of the city murmured on outside the alley where he stood, but 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 doorbell 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 as a child. Mrs. Chapparelle was hastening with her quick step toopen 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 someone 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 alley on feet that trembled so much 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. Someone would hear him. They would be after him. No one else would dash that way from a house of sorrow save a murderer! Coward! He was a
coward
! A sneak and a coward!

And he 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 conclusion 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 apasserby 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 turn into a labyrinth of streets, making hairbreadth 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 anyone 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 troubled his own heart was and confess his sin.