IV
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 bringing up almost anywhere before dinner-time, 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 escape 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 persecuting him, things he did not want dad to know about. Of course there were those things he had bought for Bessie and had sent up. 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 even from 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 up. 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 gleanedfrom the stories she used to read to him and Bessie. But then if Bessie knew about the gifts she would also know his heart—Stay! 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 for ever, 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 bone and sore in every fibre. 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 served him sharply with the facts. He was a murderer, an outcast from hisfather’s house upon the face of the earth, and it was needful that he should fast 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 got 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 neglected 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 ambush. It was a truck going down the 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 timethe newspapers had got hold 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 sat 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 travel. 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!
He passed his hand over his usually clean-shaven face and found it rough and bristly. He tried to smooth his hair, and pull his hat down over his eyes, but even this movement was an effort. How was he to go on? Yet he must. He was haunted by a prison cell and the electric chair, preceded by a long-drawn-out trial, in which his entire life would be spread to public gaze. His beautiful mother and haughty sarcastic father would be dragged in thedust with their proud name and fame; and Mother Chapparelle in her black garments would sit and watch him with sad forgiving eyes. Strange that he knew even now in his shame that her eyes would be forgiving through their sorrow.
Yet paramount to all this was the piercing, insistent fact that he was hungry. He had never quite known hunger before. He felt in his pockets in vain hope of finding a stray cigarette, but only old letters and programs, souvenirs of his gay life, came to his hand. Then it came to him that he must destroy these, here where he was in shelter and the ground was wet. He could make a hasty fire and destroy everything that would identify him if he should be caught.
He felt for his little gold match-box, and stooping painfully, lighted a small pile of letters and papers and bits of trinkets. He burned his tie and a couple of handkerchiefs with his initials. There were his watch and cuff-links, and the gold cigarette-case, all bearing initials. He could throw those in the bushes if there was danger. Perhaps he had better get rid of them at once, however, while there was a chance. What if he should bury them? He looked about for an implement with which to dig. Digging had never been a pastime with him. He awkwardly turned up a few chunks of mud with his hands, then took out his knife, a gold one attached to his watch-chain, and burrowed a little farther, not getting much below the surface. He put the trinkets into his glove and laid them into the earth with a strange feeling that he was attending the obsequies of something precious. Thenafter he had walked a few steps he deliberately returned and unearthed the things, restoring them to his pocket. He had had a sudden realizing sense that he was parting with what he might need sorely. There was not money enough in his pocket to carry him far nor keep him long, and these trinkets would help out. They were no more an identification than all the rest of him. Why throw them away? He looked regretfully at the ashes of his two fine handkerchiefs, the last he would ever have with that initial. And he would need them. He turned and looked back over the road he had come in the night and seemed to see all the things he was leaving, his home, his friends, his club, his comfortable living! What a fool he had been. If he had not angered his father and annoyed his mother, and got “in bad” with all his relations everywhere, they would have stood by him now and helped him out of this scrape somehow, just as they had always done before.
Then in the mist of the distance where the panorama of his life had been passing there arose a face, smiling and sweet, with a rose flush on the cheeks, a light in the eyes, sunshine in the hair, and he remembered! As he looked the face grew white and the lids fell over the blue eyes and she was gone!
Sick with the memory, he turned and fled; on feet that were sore, with limbs that were aching, with eyes that were blinded with unaccustomed tears, he stumbled on across rough fields, through woods and meadows and more woods, always woods when he could strike them.
And coming out toward evening with a gnawingfaintness at the pit of his stomach, where he could see across a valley, he noted a little trolley-car like a toy in the distance sliding along the road, and a small village of neat little houses about a mile away. Eagerly he watched the car as it slid on across the land, almost as small as a fly it seemed, and soon it was a mere speck on the way to the village. Where there was one trolley there were more. Could he dare try for the next one and go to that village for something to eat? He could not go on much longer without food. Or else he would fall by the wayside, and the publicity which his mother so hated—that kind of publicity which was not pretty—would be sure to find him out. He must not drag down his mother’s and his father’s name. He must hold out to save them so much at least.
His mind had grown clearer through the day, as he had tramped painfully hour after hour and thought it out. He knew that the only thing to do was to get far away, to some place where law could not find him out and fetch him back for punishment. To do that successfully he must disguise himself somehow. He must get rid of his clothes little by little and get other clothes. He must grow a beard and change his hair-cut and act a part. He had been good at acting a part for fun in the old days. He was always in demand for theatricals. Could he do it now when Fear was his master?
He stumbled across the meadows one by one, painfully over the fences, and at last stood in the ditch by the side of the shining rails with the long low sunset rays gilding them into bright gold. Hewaited with trembling knees, and watched eagerly for the coming of the car, and when at last a faint hum and a distant whistle announced that it was not far off he began to fairly shake in his anxiety. Would there be many people on board? Would he dare take the risk? Still, he must take it sometime, for he could not hold out much longer.
There were only three women on board, and they did not notice the haggard young fellow who stumbled into the back seat and pulled his hat down over his eyes. They were talking in clear intimate voices that carried a sense of their feeling at home in the car. They told about Mary’s engagement, and how her future mother-in-law was giving a dinner for her, and how proud John was of her, and was getting her a little Ford coupé to run around in. They talked of the weather and little pleasant everyday things that belonged to a world in which the man in the back seat had no part nor lot. They whispered in lower tones of how it was rumored that Bob Sleighton was making money in bootlegging, and he got a view for the first time in his life of how the quiet, respectable, non-drinking world think of the people who break the law in that way. And then they told in detail how they scalloped oysters and made angel cake, and just the degree of brownness that a chicken should be when it was roasted right, until Murray Van Rensselaer, sitting so empty in his back seat, could fairly smell them all as they came out of the oven, and felt as if he must cry like a child.