Chapter 1

1920s,
Eastern United States

Murray Van Rensselaer had been waiting for an hour and a quarter in the reception room of the Blakeley Hospital.

He was not good at waiting. Things usually came at his call, or sometimes even anticipated his desires. It was incredible that he should suddenly find himself in such a maddening set of circumstances!

He still wore the great fur-lined overcoat in which he had arrived after the accident, but he seemed to be unaware of it as he paced excitedly up and down the stark leather-upholstered room.

Across the marble corridor he could just see the tip of white, starched linen that was the cap of the uniformed person with bifocals who sat at the rolltop desk and presided over this fiendish place.

Three times he had pranced pompously across the tessellated floor and demanded to know what had become of the patient he had brought in. She had only looked him over coldly, impersonally, and reiterated that word would be sent to him as soon as the examination was completed. Even his name, which he had condescendingly mentioned, had failed to make the slightest impression upon her. She had merely filed his immaculate calling card and ordered him back to the reception room.

The tall clock in the corner, the only live thing in the room, seemed to tick in eons, not seconds. He regarded it belligerently. Why should a clock seem to have eyes that searched to your soul? What was a clock doing there anyway, in a place where they regarded not time, and were absorbed in their own terrible affairs? The clock seemed to be the only connecting link with the outside world.

He strode nearer and read the silver plate of the donor, inscribed in memory of “Elizabeth,” and turned sharply back to the door again with a haunting vision of the white-faced girl he had brought in awhile before. Bessie! Little Bessie Chapparelle! She was “Elizabeth” too.

What a cute kid she had been when he first knew her! Strange that on this day of all days he should have come upon her standing at that corner after all these years, suddenly grown up and stunningly beautiful!

And now she lay crumpled, somewhere up in those distant marble halls!

He shuddered in his heavy coat and mopped the cold perspiration from his brows. If anything should happen to Bessie! And his fault! Everybody would of course say it was his fault! He knew he was a reckless driver. He knew he took chances, but he had always gotten by before! If she hadn’t been so darned pretty, so surprisingly sweet and unusual, and like the child she used to be—and that truck coming around the corner at thirty-five miles an hour!

The air was full of antiseptics. It seemed to him that he had been breathing it in until his head was swimming, that cold, pungent, penetrating smell that dwelt within those white marble walls like a living spirit of the dead!

Gosh! What a place! Why did he stay? He could go home and telephone later. Nobody was compelling him to stay. Bessie was a poor girl with nobody to take her side. Nobody but her mother!

He halted in his excited walk. Her mother! If anything happened to Bessie, somebody would have to tell her mother!

A door opened far away in the upper marble regions, and the echo of a delirious cry shivered down through the corridors. Rubber wheels somewhere rolled a heavy object down a space and out of hearing; voices rose in a subdued murmur as if they passed a certain point and drifted away from the main speech, drifted down the stairs, vague, detached words. Then all was still again.

Something dragged at his heart. He had thought they werecoming, and now suddenly he was afraid to have them come. What a relief! Just a little longer respite till he could get ahold of himself. He wasn’t at all fit, or things wouldn’t get ahold of him this way. He had been going pretty hard since he left college. Too many highballs! Too late at night!—Too many cigarettes! The old man was right! If he hadn’t been so infernally offensive in the way he put it! But one couldn’t of course go that pace forever and not feel it.

What was it he had been thinking about when those voices passed that point above the stairs? Oh! Yes! Her mother! Someone would have to tell her mother! She was a woman with a kind twinkle in her eyes. One would find it terrible to quench that twinkle in her eyes! He remembered how she had bandaged his cut finger one day and given him a cookie. Those were happy days!—Ah! There! There was that sound of an opening door again!—Voices!—Footsteps! Listen! They were coming! Yes—they were coming! Rubber heels on marble treads! And now he was in a frenzy of fear.

Bessie, little blue-eyed Bessie with the gold hair all about her white face!—

The steps came on down the hall, and he held his breath in the shelter of a heavy tan-colored velvet curtain. He must get himself in hand before he faced anyone. If he only hadn’t left his flask in the car! Oh, but of course! The car was wrecked! What was he thinking about? But there would be other flasks! If only he could get out of this!

The nurse came on down the hall. He could see her reflection in the plate glass of the front door that was within his vision as he stood with his back toward the desk. She was going straight to the desk with a message!

The front doorknob rattled.

He glared impatiently at the blurred interruption to his vision of the nurse. A sallow man with a bandaged head was fumbling with the doorknob, and the white uniform of the nurse was no longer plain. He held his breath and listened:

“Well, is there any change?” asked the voice behind the rolltop desk, impassively.

“Yes, she’s dead!” answered the nurse.

“Well, you’d better go down to that man in the reception room. He’s been pestering the life out of me. He thinks he’s the only one—

“I can’t!” said the nurse sharply. “I’ve got to call up the police station first. The doctor said—” She lowered her voice inaudibly. The man with the bandaged head had managed the doorknob at last.

The door swung wide, noiselessly, on its well-oiled hinges, letting in the bandaged man; and as he limped heavily in, a shadow slipped from the folds of the heavy curtain and passed behind him into the night.

Chapter 2

In the big white marble house on the avenue that Murray Van Rensselaer called home, the servants were lighting costly lamps and drawing silken shades. A little Pekingese pet came tiptoeing out with one man to see what was the matter with the light over the front entrance, stood for a brief second glancing up and down haughtily, barked sharply at a passerby, and retreated plumily into the dark of the entrance hall with an air of ownership, clicking off to find his mistress. Sweet perfumes drifted out from shadowy rooms where masses of hothouse flowers glowed in costly jardinières, and a wood fire flickered softly over deep-toned rugs and fine old polished woods, reflected from illuminated covers of many rare books behind leaded panes of glass. It flickered and lighted the dreary face of the haughty master of the house as he sat in a deep chair and watched the flames, and seemed to be watching the burning out of his own life in bitter disappointment.

The great dining room glittered with crystal and silver, and abounded in exquisite table linen, hand-wrought, beautiful and fine as a spider’s web or a tracery of frost. The table was set for a large dinner, and a profusion of roses graced its center.

Ancestral portraits looked down from the walls.

At one end of the room, in a screened balcony behind great fronds of mammoth ferns, musicians were preparing to play, arranging music, speaking in low tones.

The footsteps of the servants were inaudible as they came and went over the deep pile of ancient rugs.

A deep-throated chime from a tall old clock in the hall called out the hour, and a bell somewhere in the distance rang sharply, imperatively.

A maid came noiselessly down the stairs and paused beside the library door, tapping gently.

“Mr. Van Rensselaer, Mrs. Van Rensselaer would like to see you at once if you’re not busy.”

The wistful look in the master’s eyes changed at the summons into his habitual belligerence, and he rose with a sigh of impatience. He mounted the stairs like one going to a familiar stake.

Mrs. Van Rensselaer sat at her dressing table fresh from the hands of her maid, a perfectly groomed woman in the prime of her life. Not a wrinkle marred the loveliness of her complexion, not a line of tenderness, or suffering, or self-abnegation gave character to her exquisite features. She had been considered the most beautiful woman of the day when Charles Van Rensselaermarried her, and she still retained her beauty. No one, not even her bitterest enemy, could say that she had aged or faded. Her face and her figure were her first concern. She never let anything come between her and her ambition to remain young and lovely.

If her meaningless beauty had long since palled upon the man who had worked hard in his younger days to win her hand, he nevertheless yielded her the pomp which she demanded; and if there was sometimes a note of mock ceremony in his voice, it was well guarded.

He stood in the violet shadow of her silken-shrouded lamp and watched her with a bitter sadness in his eyes. It was a moment when they might have met on common ground and drawn nearer to one another if she had but sensed it. But she was busy trying the effect of different earrings against her pearly tinted neck. Should it be the new rock crystals or the jade, or should she wear the Van Rensselaer emeralds after all?

She turned at last, as if just aware that he had come in, and spoke in an annoyed tone: “Charles, you really will have to speak to Murray again.”

She turned to get the effect of the jewel and tilted her chin haughtily.

“He is simply unspeakable!”

She held up her hand mirror and turned her head the other way to get a look at the other ear.

Her husband drew a deep, fortifying breath, wet his lips nervously with the tip of his tongue the way a dog does when he is expecting a whipping, and braced himself for action.

“What’s Murray been doing now?” he asked crisply, belligerently. There was fight in his eye and a set to his jaw, although the lean cheekbones just below the eyes seemed to wince as at a blow.

“Why, he’s making himself conspicuous again with that low-down De Flora woman. Marian Stewart has been telling me that he took her to the Assembly last night and danced every dance with her. And it’s got to stop! I’m not going to have our name dragged in the dust by my own son.”

“But I don’t understand,” said her husband dryly. “You didn’t object when he did the same thing with the Countess Lenowski, and she was twice divorced. I spoke of it then, for it seemed to me morals were more in your line than mine, but you thought it was all right. I’m sure I don’t see what you can expect of him now when you sanctioned that two years ago.”

“Now, Charles! Don’t be tiresome! The Countess Lenowski was a very different person. Rich as Croesus, and titled, and beautiful and young. You can’t blame the poor child for being divorced from men who were seeking her merely for her money!”

“The Countess Lenowski is neither so young nor so innocent as she would have everybody believe, and I told you at the time that her beauty wasn’t even skin deep. I don’t get your fine distinctions. What’s the matter with this De Flora woman? Isn’t she rich? Doesn’t your son think she’s beautiful? And she’s young enough. They say she’s never been married at all, let alone divorced. I made a point to look into that.”

“Now, Charles, you’re being difficult! That’s all there is to it. You’re just trying to be difficult! And there’s no use talking to you when you get difficult. You know as well as I do what that De Flora woman is. Some little insignificant movie actress, not even a star! With all Murray’s money and family, of course, every little upstart is simply flinging herself at him, and you must speak to him! You really must. Let him know his allowance will stop and he can’t have any more cars unless he behaves himself!”

“And why must I be the one to speak? I left all questions of social and moral obligations to you when he was young. I am sure it is late in the day for me to meddle now.”

“Now, Charles, you are being difficult again. You are quibbling. I called you up to let you know that Murray needs advice, and you’re to give it! That’s all! It’s time you were dressing. We have a dinner, you remember. The Arlingtons and the Schuylers. Do be ready. It’s so tiresome to have to wait for you.”

Thus dismissed, the head of the house looked at his wife’s slim young back and well-cut coiffure with an expression of mingled scorn and despair, which she might have seen in her mirror if she had not been too much absorbed with her own image, but it is doubtful she would have understood if she had seen it. It was because he had long ago recognized her obtuseness in these fine points that Charles Van Rensselaer had been able to maintain his habitual air of studied mock politeness. Her name was Violet, and she knew she could count always on courtesy from him, no matter how his eyes mocked. With that she was content.

He watched her a full minute, noting the grace of movement as she turned her head from side to side perfecting the details of her contour, marked the luster of her amber hair, the sweep of lovely white shoulder against the low severe line of her dinner gown, looked almost wistfully, like a child, for something more, something tender, something gentler than her last words, less cold and formal; yet he knew he would not get it. He had always been watching for something more from her than he knew he could ever get; something more than he knew she possessed. Just because she was outwardly lovely, it seemed as if there must be something beautiful hidden within her somewhere that some miracle would sometime bring forth. The love of his early youth believed that, would always cling to it, thinking that sometime it would be revealed—yet knowing it was an impossibility for which he hoped.

With a sigh almost inaudible he turned and went down the heavily carpeted hall, followed by the trail of her impatient cold words: “Oh, are you there yet? Why won’t you hurry? I know you’ll be late!”

He shut the great mahogany door behind him with a dull thud. He would have liked to have slammed it, but the doors in that house could not slam. They were too heavy and too well hung on their oiled hinges. It shut him in like a vault to a costly room where everything had been done for his comfort, yet comfort was not. He did not hasten even yet. He went and stood at the window looking out, looking down to the area below, to the paved alleyway that ran between the blocks and gave access to the backdoor and the garage. A row of brick houses on the side street ended at that alleyway, and a light twinkled in a kitchen window where a woman’s figure moved to and fro between a table and the stove—a pleasant, cheery scene reminding one of homecoming and sweet domesticity, a thing he had always yearned for yet never found since he was a little child in his father’s home at the farm, with a gentle mother living and a house full of boisterous, loving brothers and sisters. He watched the woman wistfully. What if Violet had been a woman like that, who would set the table for supper and go about the stove preparing little dishes? He laughed aloud bitterly at the thought. Violet in her slim dinner gown, her dangling earrings, and her french bob, risking her lily-and-rose complexion over a fire!

He turned sharply back to his room, snapped on the electric light, and went and stood before the two great silver frames that adorned his dressing table. One held the picture of the lovely delicate woman, almost a girl in appearance, smart, artistic, perfect as the world counts perfection. It was a part of her pride that placed her picture in his room for others to see his devotion, and had it changed each time a new picture that pleased her was taken. His pleasure in her picture had long ago vanished, but he studied her face now with that yearning look in his own, as if again he searched for the thing that was not there, as if his eyes would force from the photograph a quality that the soul must be hiding.

Then with a long sigh he turned to the other frame—the young, careless, handsome face of his son, Murray Montgomery Van Rensselaer. That honored name! How proud he had been when they gave it to his child! What dreams he had had that his son would add still more honor to that name!

He studied the handsome face intently, searching there for the thing he could not find in the mother’s face. How alike they were, those two, who belonged to him, yet were to him almost as strangers—one might almost say as enemies sometimes, when they combined to break his will or his request.

Yet of the two the boy was nearest to him. There had been times when Murray was very young that they had grown almost close—fishing excursions, and a hike or two, a camping trip—rare times, broken up always by Violet, who demanded their attention and resented rough things for her son.

The boy’s face was too slender, too girlish, almost effeminate, yet behind it there was a daredevil in his eyes that suggested something more rugged, more manly, perhaps, when he would settle down. The father kept wishing, hoping, that the thing he had not found to satisfy his longing in his wife would someday develop in his son, and then they might be all in all to one another.

With another deep sigh he turned away and began mechanically to dress for the evening, his mind not on what he was doing. But then why should it be when everything was laid out for him? It required no thought. He was thinking about Murray. How they had spoiled him between them! Violet indulging him and repressing all his natural bent toward simple, natural things, molding him into a young fop, insisting on alternately coddling and scoldinghim, never loving to him even in her indulgence, always cold and unsympathetic toward all that did not go the way she chose.

For himself, he had been so bitterly disappointed in the lad that the years had brought about an attitude of habitual disapproval, as high and as wide and as separating as any stone wall that was ever built. Yet the father’s heart ached for his son, and the years were growing bleak with his denial. Why did the boy choose only folly? Scrapes in school and worse in college. Clubs and sports and drinking affairs. Speeding and women and idleness! What a life! What would the grandsire who had founded the ancient and honorable house and had given them the honored name think of such an heir? Yet what could one expect with a mother such as he had given his son?

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

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 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.

Murray Van Rensselaer had been used to boasting that he was not afraid of anything. But he was afraid now! He was fleeing from the retribution that he was sure was close upon his footsteps. Something in his heart wanted to go back and do the manly thing but could not! His very feet were afraid and would not obey. He had no power in him to do anything but flee!

Chapter 4

Sometime in the night he found himself walking along a country road. How he got there or what hour it was he did not know. He was wearier than he had ever been in his life before. The expensive shoes he was wearing were not built for the kind of jaunt he had been taking. He had been dressed for an afternoon of frivolity when he started out from home. There had been the possibility of stopping almost anywhere before dinnertime, and he had not intended a hike when he dressed. His shoes pierced him with stabs of pain every step he took. They were soaked with water from a stream he had forded somewhere. It was very hazy in his mind whether the stream had been in the gutter of the city where the outflow from a fire engine had been flooding down the street or whether he had sometime crossed a brook since he left the outskirts of town. Either of these things seemed possible. The part of him that did the thinking seemed to have been asleep and was just coming awake painfully.

He was wet to the skin with perspiration and was exhausted in every nerve and sinew. He wanted nothing in life so much as a hot shower and a bed for twenty-four hours. He was hungry and thirsty. Oh! Thirsty! He would give his life for a drink! Yet he dared not try to find one. And now he knew it had been a brook he had waded, for he remembered stooping down and lapping water from his hand. But it had not satisfied. He wanted something stronger. His nerves under the terrible strain of the last few hours were crying out for stimulant. He had not even a cigarette left—and he dared not go near enough to human habitation to purchase any. Oh yes, he had money, a whole roll of it. He felt in his pocket to make sure. He had taken it out of his bank that morning, cashed the whole of his allowance check, to pay several bills that had been hounding him, things he did not want Dad to know about. Of course there were those things he had bought for Bessie and had sent to her. He was glad he had done that much for her before he killed her. Yet what good would it ever do her now? She was dead. And her mother would never know where they came from. Indeed Bessie would not know either. He had told her they were for a friend and he wanted her help in selecting them. Perhaps Bessie would not have liked his gift after all. He had not thought of that before. Girls of her class—but she was not any class—no type that he knew—just one of her kind, so how could he judge? But somehow it dawned upon him that Bessie would not have taken expensive gifts evenfrom him, an old friend. That entered his consciousness with a dull thud of disappointment. But then, Bessie would never know now that he had sent them. Or did they know after death? Was there a hereafter? He knew Mrs. Chapparelle believed in one. She used to talk about heaven as if it were another room, a best room, where she would one day go and dress up all the time in white. At least that was what his childish imagination had gleaned from the stories she used to read to him and Bessie. But then, if Bessie knew about the gifts, she would also know his heart—Wait! Would he want her to know his heart—all his life?

He groaned aloud and then held his breath lest the night had heard him. Oh, he was crazy! He must find a spot to lie down, or else he might as well go and give himself up to justice. He was not fit to protect himself. He was foolish with sleep.

He crept into a wood at last, on a hillside above the road, and threw himself down exhausted among some bushes quite hidden from the road in the darkness.

He was not conscious of anything as he drifted away into exhausted sleep. It was as if he with all his overwhelming burden of disgrace and horror and fear was being dragged down through the ooze of the earth out of sight forever, being obliterated, and glad that it was so.

He woke in the late morning with a sense of bewilderment and sickness upon him. The light was shining broad across his face and seemed focused upon his heavy, smarting eyes. He lay for an instant trying to think what it was all about, chilled to the boneand sore in every fiber. A ringing sound was in his ears, and when he tried to rise, the earth swam about him. His whole pampered being was crying out for food. Never in his life before had he missed a meal and gone so far and felt so much. What was it all about?

And then his memory reminded him sharply of the facts. He was a murderer, an outcast from his father’s house upon the face of the earth, and it was necessary that he should go without food and go far, but where, and to what end? There would be no place that he could go but that he would have to move farther. Why not end it all here and be done with it? Perhaps that would be a good way to make amends to Bessie. He had killed her; he would kill himself, and if there was a place hereafter he would find her and tell her it was the only decent thing he could do, having sent her, to come himself and see that she was cared for. Yet when he toyed with the thought somewhat sentimentally in his misery, he knew he had not the courage to do it even for gallantry. And it seemed a useless kind of thing to do. Nothing was of any use anyway! Why had he ever gotten into such a mess? Only yesterday morning at this time he was starting off for the country club and an afternoon’s golf. He took out his watch and looked at it. It had stopped! The hands were pointing to ten minutes after one. Probably he had forgotten to wind it. It must be later than that.

A sudden roar came down the road below him, growing in volume as it approached. He struggled to a sitting posture and looked out from his hiding place. It was a truck going downthe road, and behind it came two other cars at a little distance apart. One carried a man in uniform. He could see the glitter of brass buttons and a touch of brightness on his cap. He drew back suddenly and crouched, his fear upon him once more. Perhaps that was an officer out to hunt for him. If it was late in the day, by this time the newspapers had gotten word of it! He could see the headlines: SON OF CHARLES Van RENSSELAER A MURDERER! DRIVES GIRL TO HER DEATH. TAKES BODY TO HOSPITAL AND ESCAPES.

He shuddered, and a ghastly pallor settled upon him. Incredible that such a fate could have overtaken him in a few short hours, and he should have been reduced to hiding in the bushes for safety! He must get out of here, and at once! Now while there were no more cars in sight. The road appeared to be comparatively free from travelers. Perhaps he could keep under cover and get to some small town where he might venture to purchase some food. He certainly could not keep on walking without eating. He struggled to his feet in a panic and found every joint and muscle stiff and sore and his feet stinging with pain as soon as he stood upon them. He glanced down and saw that his handsome overcoat was torn in a jagged line from shoulder to hem, and a bit of fur was sticking out through the opening. That must have been done when he climbed that barbed-wire fence in the dark!

Table of Contents

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4