LITMIR.BIZ

      CHAPTER V

       Table of Contents

      It was dusk when he slid stealthily out of the car, having waited with his head turned toward the darkening window till each of the three women had gotten off at her particular corner. He had spotted a bakery window, and there he made his way, ordering everything they had on their meager menu. But then when he had gotten it, he could only eat a few bites, for somehow Bessie’s white face as he carried her into the hospital kept coming between him and the food and sickened him. Somehow he could not get interested in eating any more, and he paid his bill and left a tip that the girl behind the counter did not in the least understand. She ran out to find him and give it back, but he had gone into a little haberdashery shop, and so she missed him.

      He bought a cheap cap of plain tweed and a black necktie. Somehow it did not seem decent going around without any necktie. He walked three blocks and threw his old hat far into avacant lot, then boarded the next trolley, and so went on, where he did not know. He had not known the name of the little town where he had eaten. He began to wonder where he was. He seemed a long way from home, but when a few minutes later the motor-man called a name, he recognized a town only about thirty miles from his home city. Was it possible he had walked all that time and only gotten thirty miles away? He must have been going in a circle! And the newspapers would have full descriptions of him by this time posted everywhere! He was not safe anywhere! What should he do? Where go? Why go anywhere?

      He lifted his eyes in despair to the advertisements overhead, for it seemed to him that every man in the car was looking at him suspiciously. He tried to appear unconcerned. He felt his chin to see if his beard had grown any, but his face was unsuitably smooth. He tried to make himself read the advertisements, Chiclets and chewing gum, and baked beans. Toothpaste, and wallpaper, and cigarettes.

      Then suddenly his attention was riveted on the sign just across from where he sat. The letters stood out so clearly in red and black on the white background as if they were fairly beckoning to get his attention, as if somebody had just written them to attract his eye; as if it were a burning message for his need: Ye must be born again!

      A strange thing to be in a trolley car. He never stopped to wonder how it came there, or what it meant to the general public. He took it just for himself. It suggested a solution to his problem. He must be born again. Sure! That was it, exactly what he needed! He could not live in the circle where he had been first born. He had ostracized himself. He had been disloyal to the code and cast a slur on the honorable name with which he had been born, and it was no more use for him to try to live as Murray Van Rensselaer any longer. He would just have to be born all over again into someone else. Born again! How did one do it? Well, he would have to be somebody else, make himself over, get new clothes first, of course, so he would look like a new man, and the clothes that he could find for what money he had would largely determine the kind of man he was to be made into. This cap was the start. It was a plain, cheap working man’s cap. It was not the kind of cap that played much golf or polo, or was entitled to enter the best clubs, or drove an expensive car. It was a working man’s cap, and a working man he must evidently be in the new life. It was a part of being born that you didn’t choose where you should see the light of day, or who should be your parents. A strange pang shot through him at the thought of the parents whom he might not call his own anymore. The name he had borne he would no longer dare to mention. It was the name of a murderer now. He had dishonored it. He would have to have a new name before it would be safe for him to go among men.

      A policeman boarded the car in a few minutes and eyed him sharply as he passed to the other end of the car. Murray found his whole body in a tremble. He slid to the back platform and dropped off the next time the car slowed down, and walked a painful distance till a kindly voice from a dilapidated old Ford offered him a ride. Because he felt ready to drop and saw no shelter nearby where he might sleep awhile, he accepted. It was too dark for the man to see his face clearly anyway. He seemed to be an old man and not particularly canny. A worldly wise man would scarcely have asked a stranger to ride at that time of night. So Murray climbed in beside him and sank into the seat, too weary almost to sigh.

      But the old farmer was of a social nature and began to quiz him. How did he come to be walking? Was he going far? The young man easily settled that.

      “Car broke down!” That was true enough. His car would never run again.

      But the old man wanted to know where.

      Not being acquainted with the roads around there, Murray could not lie intelligently, and he answered vaguely that he had been taking a cross-cut through a terrible road that did not seem to be much traveled.

      “‘Bout a mile back?” asked the stranger.

      “About.”

      “Hmm! Copple’s Lane, I reckon. In bad shape. Well, say, we might go back and hitch her on and tow her in. I ain’t in any special hurry.” And the man began to apply the thought to his brakes for a turn around.

      The young man roused in alarm.

      “Oh, no,” he said energetically. “I’ve got an appointment. I’llhave to hurry on. How far is it to a trolley or train? I’ll be glad if you’ll let me out at your home and direct me to the nearest trolley to the city. I’ll send my man back for the car. It’ll be all right,” he added, reverting in his anxiety to the vernacular of his former life.

      His worldly tone made its immediate impression. The stranger looked him over with increasing respect. This was a person from another world. He talked of his man as of a slave. The fur collar on the fine overcoat came under inspection. He didn’t often have fur-lined passengers in his tin Lizzie.

      “That’s a fine warm coat you’ve got on,” he admired frankly. “Guess you paid a pretty penny for that?”

      The young man became instantly alarmed. Now, when this man got home and read his evening paper with a description of that very overcoat, he would go to his telephone and call up the police station. He must get rid of that coat at all costs. If the man had it in his possession perhaps he would not be so ready to make known the location of the owner.

      “Don’t remember what I paid,” he answered nonchalantly. “But it doesn’t matter. I have to get a new one. This one got all cut up in the wreck,” and he brought to view the long rip where the coat had caught on some barbed wire when he tried to climb a fence.

      The stranger looked at the jagged tear sharply.

      “My wife could mend that,” he said speculatively. “Ef you wantta stop at the house and leave it, she’ll darn it up so you won’t scarcely know it’s been tore. Then when you get your car fixed up,you can come along back and get your coat. I’ll loan you mine while you’re gone. That’s a mighty fine coat. I’d like to own one like it myself. Sorry you can’t remember the price. Now I paid twenty-seven fifty at a bargain sale fer this here one, and it’s a real good piece of cloth.”

      Young Van Rensselaer stared in the dark. He did not know there were coats for twenty-seven fifty.

      “Nice coat,” he said nonchalantly. “How’d you like to exchange? I’m going away tonight on a little trip, and I’m afraid I couldn’t take the time to come back, and I wouldn’t have time to wait to have it mended. I do hate to go with a torn coat, too.”

      “H’m!” said the man with a catch in his breath as if he could not believe his ears, but he did not mean to let anybody know it. “But that wouldn’t be altogether fair. Your coat is lined with fur. It must have cost ‘most fifty dollars.”

      “Oh, well, I’ve had it some time, you know, and your coat is new; that squares it all up. I’m satisfied if you are.”

      “It’s a bargain!” said the man, stopping his car with alacrity, beginning to unbutton his overcoat.

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