LITMIR.BIZ

      CHAPTER III

       Table of Contents

      When 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 dinnerhis mother had begged him to comeGwendolen Arlingtonshe was the girl in coral with the silver shoesa pretty girlhow she would shrink 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 earthGwendolenshe would be sitting at his mother’s table, in his place perhaps, and his chair vacant beside heroh no, his mother would supply someone else, and he perhapswhere would he be? While the news boys on the street cried out his name in shameand his mother smiled her painted smile, and his father said the glittering sarcasms he was famous for, and hewas 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 to play 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 companybut 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 had buckwheats 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 uphow familiar and homely and dear it all was! And BessieBessielying 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

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