“Hmm! That’s just about what the minister said when he told us he wanted us to make him feel at home. I don’t really approve of it myself, this taking a stranger and carrying him around on a little throne before you’ve tried him out, but when Mr. Harrison asked us to arrange this Christian Endeavor banquet on the night of his arrival to give him a kind of welcome to our town, why of course it had to be done. And of course Mr. Harrison knows what he’s talking about, or he wouldn’t suggest it. But it makes it just a little embarrassing for us girls to seem to be so very eager to welcomeanother young man into our midst that we fall all over ourselves to let him know it right off the first night.”
“Now, Anita! You’re always so fussy and prudish! As if he would think anything about it at all. Besides, his having been an active Christian Endeavorer in his home church and his father having been a member of our church years ago when he was a boy makes it kind of different—don’t you think?”
“Oh, I suppose so,” said Anita thoughtfully. “Only I do hope he won’t be stuck on himself. The young men are all so sure of their welcome anyhow these days, it doesn’t seem as if it was hardly necessary. And it’s enough to turn a young man’s head anyway to have the whole town bowing down to him this way. Teller in the town bank, taken in to board at one of the best houses in town just because Mrs. Summers knew his mother when she was a girl, and given a church supper on the night of his arrival. I’m sure I hope he will be worth it all, and that we won’t spoil him right at the start.”
“Oh, Anita! You’re so funny! What do you care if he is spoiled, anyway, if we have a good time out of it? I’m sure I don’t. And it’ll be nice to have another fellow around; so many of our boys have gone off to college or to work in the city. And those that are left don’t care a cent for the church affairs. I have to fairly hire Bob and Ben to come to anything we have here, and this Murray man, they say, is crazy about church work. If it proves true, I think the society will grow by leaps and bounds.”
“Well, what kind of a growth is that? Just following after a newman! That’s not healthy growth. When he goes, they’ll go with him if that’s what they come for. Who is that outside? Perhaps it’s the man with the ice cream. It ought to be here by this time. Go out and look. It may be some of those tormenting boys that live across the street. And the cakes and rolls are all under that window. I declare, I should think church members would teach their children better than to steal! Go quick, Jane. I don’t want to leave this butter now till I get it all cut in squares. But for pity’s sake, forget that new man, or you’ll be bowing down to him just like everybody else!”
“Oh, Anita! You’re perfectly hopeless,” giggled Jane as she fled up the basement stairs to the outside door to reconnoiter.
A moment more and Anita heard her friend’s voice ring out clearly in an eagerly hospitable voice among the syringa bushes outside the chapel window:
“Isn’t this Mr. Murray? Mr. Allan Murray? Won’t you come right in? We’re all expecting you.”
Anita, cutting butter into squares in the pantry window in the basement, turned away with a curl of her pretty lip and slammed down the window. If Jane wanted to make a fool of herself with this stranger, she, Anita, was not going to be a party to it. And she carried the cakes to be cut to the far table in the kitchen quite away from the dining room and went to work with set lips and a haughty chin. The new man should not think she was after him, anyway.
Chapter 8
Outside the church Murray Van Rensselaer, somewhat fortified within by the stolen bun and the two frosted cakes, whose crumbs were yet upon his lips, started in astonishment.
Of the unexpectedly warm greeting he caught only one word, “Murray,” his own name, and as he took it in, thinking at first that he had been recognized, it came to him what it would mean. The whole careful fabric of his intricate escape was undone. Unless he disappeared at once into the darkness, he would be brought speedily out into the light and have to explain. Some dratted girl he had probably met at a dance somewhere and didn’t remember. But everybody knew him. That was the trouble with belonging to a family like his and being prominent in society and clubs and sports. His picture had been in the paper a thousand times—when he took the blue ribbon at the horse show, when he played golf with a visiting prince at Palm Beach, on his favorite pony playingpolo, smashing the ball across the net to a world champion tennis player; the notable times were too numerous to mention. She didn’t know. She hadn’t seen the city papers yet or hadn’t noticed. Probably didn’t think it was the same name. It wouldn’t take long for the news to travel, even four hundred miles. That was nothing. He must get out of here!
He made a wild dash in the other direction but came sharply in contact with a stiff branch of syringa, which jabbed him in the eye smartly, and for an instant the pain was so great that he could do nothing but stand still.
The girl in the doorway was tall and slim, and she stood where the light from the chapel shone full behind her and silhouetted a very pleasant outline. Also she knew that the light caught and scintillated from her crystal necklace, which hung to her very long indefinable waist, and that she presented thus a trim appearance. But she might as well have been short and fat for all he saw of her as he stood and held his eye and groped about with his other hand on what seemed an interminable stone wall behind him. Was there no way to get out of this?
Jane was not a girl to give up the vantage she had gained of being the first to welcome this new hero to town. He had backed off into the shrubbery, shy perhaps, and had not answered, but she was reasonably sure of her man. Of course it must be he. He was likely reconnoitering to be sure he was in the right place, and it wouldn’t do to let him slip away. He might be one of those who were shy of an open welcome and needed to be caught or he would escape. So Jane proceeded to catch him.
With nimble feet she descended the three stone steps and was upon him before he knew it, with a slim white hand outheld.
“Your name is Murray, isn’t it? I was sure it must be”—as he did not dissent. “Mine is Jane Freeman, and we’re awfully glad you’ve come to town. We’re expecting you to supper, you know, and you might as well come right in. Everybody else will be here pretty soon, and we’ll just have that much more time to get acquainted. Won’t the girls be humming though when they find out I met you first! But I had a sort of right, because my mother and your mother were schoolmates together, you know! Were you trying to find the right door? It is confusing here. Doctor Harrison’s study is that door, and that one goes into the choir room, and this enters the kitchen and dining rooms. We go over to this other door and enter through the chapel. Everyone gets lost here at first.”
“Yes, I guess I did lose my way,” murmured Murray Van Rensselaer, feeling it imperative to say something, under the circumstances, and casting furtive glances behind him to see how he could get away.
“Come right around this way,” went on Jane volubly. “Here’s the path. Have you been over to Mrs. Summers’ yet? Isn’t she coming over? I thought she would have shown you the way.”
“No, I haven’t been to Mrs. Summers’ yet,” he said, catching eagerly at the idea. “But I really can’t go in this way. I’ve—you see, there was a wreck on the road—”
“Oh, were you really in the wreck after all? How wonderful! And you got through? How ever did you do it? Why, the relief train hasn’t come back yet—at least it hadn’t when I came over.”
“Oh, I walked part of the way and got on the freight—”
“Oh really! How thrilling! Then you can tell us all about the wreck. We haven’t heard much. Come right in and meet Anita. I want you to tell her about the wreck.” But the young man halted firmly on the walk.
“Indeed,” said he decidedly, “it’s quite impossible. I’m a wreck myself. I’ve got to dress before I could possibly meet anybody, except in the dark, and I think you’ll have to excuse me tonight. My trunk hasn’t come yet, you know, and I’m really not fit to be seen. You don’t know wha
t a wreck is, I guess.”
“Oh, were you really in it like that!” exclaimed Jane adoringly. “How wonderful that you escaped! But you’re mistaken about your trunk. It came yesterday. Mrs. Summers told me this morning it had arrived, and it’s over in your room. If you really must dress first, I’ll show you the way to Mrs. Summers’, but it wouldn’t be necessary, you know. You would be all the more a hero. You could come right in the church dressing room and wash and comb your hair. It would be terribly interesting and dramatic for you to appear just as you came from the wreck, you know.”
“Thank you,” said the young man dryly. “Much too interesting for me. I’ll just get over to my trunk, if you don’t mind,” he suggested soothingly. “Which way is the house? I won’t have any trouble finding it. It’s not far away, you say?”
“Oh no, it’s right here,” she said excitedly with a vague wave ofher hand. “Come right across the lawn. It’s shorter. I don’t mind running over in the least. In fact, I’ve got to go and see if I can’t borrow another vase for some roses that just arrived. You must be very tired after such an exciting afternoon. Was it very terrible at first? The shock, I mean?”
“Oh! Terrible? Yes, the wreck. Why, rather unpleasant at first, you know. The confusion and—and—”
“I suppose the women all screamed. They usually do when they are frightened. I never can see why. Now, I never scream. When I’m frightened I’m just as cool. My father says he can always trust me in a crisis because I keep still and do something. You look as if you were that way, too. But then men are, of course.”
She was steering him swiftly toward a neat Queen Anne house of somewhat ancient date, perhaps, but very pretty and attractive, in spite of the fact that the maples with which it was surrounded were bare of leaves. There were little ruffled curtains at the window, and plants, and old-fashioned lamps with bright shades, and a gray-haired woman moving about in a bay window watering a fern. It was a picture of a sweet, quiet home, and something of its peace stole out into the November night with its soft lights like a welcome. Murray looked with hungry eyes. There would be beds in that house, and warmth, and a table with good things to eat. The bite he had stolen had only whetted his appetite. How good if he had a right to enter this home as the boy who was expected would do soon, welcomed, a festive supper prepared, perhaps a place where he might earn enough to live, and friends to makelife worth the living. It was the first time in his life he had ever felt an urge to work. His father’s business had seemed a bore to him. He had pitied him now and then when he happened to think of it at all, that he was old and had to go downtown every day to “work”—not that he had to. Murray knew his father could retire a good many times over and not feel it. But he had pitied him that he was old and therefore had nothing to interest him in life but dull business. Now business suddenly seemed a haven to be desired.
But all this was merely an undercurrent of thought while he was really casting about in his mind how he might rid himself of his pest of a girl, and was furtively observing the street and the lay of the bushes that he might suddenly dodge away and leave her in the darkness. He hesitated to do it lest she might even pursue him, and he felt that in case of fleeing his strength would probably leave him altogether, and he would drop beside some dreary bush and be overtaken.
He could not quite understand his attitude toward this girl. He had been somewhat of a lady-killer, and no girl had held terrors for him in the old life. He knew they always fell for him, and he could go any way he liked and they would follow. Now here was a girl, just a common little country girl, filling him with terror. She seemed to possess almost supernatural power over him, as if she had eyes that could see through to his soul and would expose him to the scorn of the world if he for one moment angered her and let her get a chance to look into his poor shaken mind. Murray Van Rensselaer! Why, Murray, what’s the matter with you? he said to himself. And then, But I’m not Murray Van Rensselaer anymore. I’m a murderer fleeing from justice! I must get away!
Then right before him, what he thought was a long french window turned into a glass door and opened in front of his unwilling feet, and there stood in the broad burst of light the woman with the gray hair whom he had seen through the window going about the room.
She stood there with a questioning look upon her face, and she had kind eyes—eyes like Mrs. Chapparelle’s—mother eyes. They looked into the darkness of the yard as if they were waiting for him, searching, expecting him, and he found his feet would go no further. They would not take the dash into the darkness of the shrubbery that his situation required. They just stopped and waited. It had been growing in his consciousness for some time that this thing would happen pretty soon, that he would stop and get caught, and he wondered almost apathetically what he would do then. Just wait, and let them do with him what they pleased?
But Jane’s voice rang out triumphantly: “He’s come, Mrs. Summers. He didn’t get hurt after all. He came through all right. Isn’t that great? But he’s all messed up, and he wants to clean up. I told him I was sure his trunk had come. It has, hasn’t it?”
“Oh, is that you, Jane? Yes, his trunk has come,” said the lady with a smile. Then she turned toward the shivering youth and put out both hands eagerly, taking his cold ones in hers that felt to him like warm little veined rose leaves. She drew him without his own volition across the brick terrace into the light.
“So this is Allan Murray!” she said, and her voice was like a mother’s caress. “My dear boy! I’m so glad to have you with me! You don’t know how precious your dear mother was to me! And I shall be so glad if you will let me take her place while you are here, as much as anyone could take the place of a woman like your mother!”
Now was the time for him to bolt, of course, if he was ever going to get away, just jerk his hands from her frail touch and bolt! But his feet didn’t seem to understand. They just stood! And his eyes lingered hungrily on her loving ones. He longed, oh, how he wished that this woman really was a friend of his mother—that he had had a mother who could have been a friend of a woman like this one, that he might now be befriended by her. And his hands warmed to the soft vital touch of those little frail rose-leaf hands. They seemed to be warming his very soul, clear to the frightened center where he knew he was a murderer and an outlaw. But he hadn’t vitality enough left to vanish. He would have been glad if some magic could have made him invisible, or if he could have suddenly died. But nothing like that happened to men who were in trouble.
Then, his hands and his feet having failed him in this predicament, he tried his lips, and to his surprise words came, fluently from long habit, with quite a nice sound to his voice, modest and grateful and polite and apologetic.
“So kind of you!” he murmured safely, the old vernacularreturning from habit to his lips. “But I’m not fit to be touched. It’s been awful, you know—smoke and soot and cinders and broken things. I’m torn and dirty—I’m not fit to be seen!”
“Why, of course!” said the dear lady with understanding. “You don’t want me to look you over and see how much you resemble your mother till you’ve had a bath and a shave. I know. I’ve had a boy of my own, you know. He died in the war”—with the breath of a sigh—“but come right up to your room. Everything is all ready, and there’s plenty of hot water. The bathroom is right next to your room, and your room is at the top of the stairs on the right. There are towels and soap and everything you need. If I’d only had your trunk key, I would have presumed to take out your clothes and hang them in the closet for you. It would have been such a pleasure to get ready for a boy again. And it would have taken out the wrinkles. But I’ve my electric iron all ready, and I can press anything that needs it while you are taking your bath. Suppose I go up with you and you unlock the trunk and hand me out your suit, and I’ll just give it a mite of a pressing while you’re in the bathroom. It won’t take a minute, and I’d love to.”
She led him as she spoke to the foot of the stairs, where a soft light
above invited to the quiet restfulness of upstairs, and a gleam of a white bathroom lured unspeakably his tired body. But his brain was functioning again. He saw a way of escape from this delightful but fearful situation.
“That’s the trouble,” he said. “I have lost my keys! They were in my bag, and the bag rolled down the embankment into the burning cars.”
“Oh!”
“Ah!” from the two women as he hurried on.
“I am sorry to disappoint you, but I guess I’ll have to forgo the supper. It will take too long to get that trunk open and get ready. You two just better go over to the church, and I’ll stick around here and get shaped up for tomorrow. You know I’ve been through a pretty rough time and—”
“I know you have,” broke in the gentle voice firmly, “but I’m afraid you’ll really have to go to that supper. It’s all been prepared as a welcome for you on account of your father and mother, you know, and it’s pretty much for a church and a town to remember and love people like that through thirty years of absence. Besides, Mr. Harper, the president of the bank, will be there, and I don’t suppose it would be a very good thing for your future as the new teller if you were to stay away. You see, really, they are honoring you and will be terribly disappointed—”
Murray Van Rensselaer began to feel as if he really were the person who was being waited for over at that church supper, and his natural savoir-faire came to his assistance.
“Oh, in that case of course,” he said gallantly, “it wouldn’t do to disappoint them, but how can I possibly manage it? You don’t happen to have a suit of your son’s that you’d be willing to loan me?”
He said it with just the right shade of depreciation and humility. It was a great favor, of course, to ask for the suit of her dead son. But she flashed a pleasant, tender look at him.
“No, dear, I haven’t. I gave them all away where they would be useful. But I am sure we can get that trunk of yours open.”
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