XVI
Murray wondered again the next morning when Warren stepped in with a note fromMr.Harper while he was eating his breakfast, and insisted on waiting and walking down to the bank with him. It did seem uncanny. Were all these people in collusion somehow to prevent his being left alone an instant?
It would have been a startling thought to him had some one suggested that each one was working out the divine will for his good, and that though he might flee to the uttermost part of the earth, even there an all-seeing care would be about him, reaching to draw him to a God he had never known.
Murray liked Warren. He seemed quite companionable. He wondered if he played golf or had a car. But it annoyed him to be under such continual espionage. Although he had about decided to remain in Marlborough for the present, at least until he got his first week’s pay envelope, if that were possible, still he did not like the feeling that he was being forced to do this. He cast about in his mind for an excuse which would leave him free, but Warren was so altogether genial that there seemed nothing else to do but make the best of it. Surely they would not have lunch parties on the roof of the bank building every day in the week. There would certainly come a let-up some time.
So they walked down-town together, and Murray discovered that Warren was married, and lived ina little cottage two blocks above Mrs. Summers. Warren said they wanted him to come to dinner some night just as soon as Elizabeth got back. Elizabeth was away in Vermont, visiting her mother.
Elizabeth! Would he never get away from thoughts of Bessie Chapparelle?
He confided in Murray that he was saving for a car, just a little coupé, he couldn’t afford anything else yet, but it would be nice for Elizabeth to take the baby out in. There was a nice eager domestic air about him that was different from anything Murray had experienced among his young men friends, even the married ones. He did not remember that any of them had babies, or if they had they did not speak about them. They were tucked away somewhere with their nurses out of sight till they should be old enough to burst upon the world full-fledged in athletics or society. There was something pleasant about the thought of a girl taking her baby out to ride in a little coupé, even if it was a cheap one. And a cottage! He had never been to dinner at a cottage. It came to him that Bessie would have been the kind of mother who would have taken her baby out to ride. Bessie! Oh, Bessie! Why had he not thought of Bessie before, and kept in touch with her? But when he did find her he had killed her! He had thought this terrible depression at remembrance of her would pass away in a few days, but it did not. It only grew worse! Some day it might drive him mad! This was no way to begin a day!
But he entered the bank pledged to take a hike with Warren that afternoon after closing time, andWarren was to come home to dinner that night with him. Mrs. Summers had asked him at the breakfast-table. So the pleasant ties that were binding him to Marlborough multiplied, and weakened his purpose of leaving; and from day to day he held on, each day thinking to go the next. If he had had money, even a little, or any sense of where he might go, it would have been different, perhaps, for ever over him hung the fear of the return of the real Murray, though each day, nay each hour, that passed in security weakened his realization of it, and at times almost obliterated the thought of it as a possibility.
Then there began to happen the strangest things that he had to do, things utterly alien to all of his former life.
There was the first Sunday. It came like a shock to him.
Saturday afternoon he and Warren took a hike, and on the way back he asked when Murray would like to go again.
“Why not tomorrow?” answered Murray, remembering that there would be no bank open on Sunday.
“Why, that’s Sunday, old man,” said Warren, laughing.
There was such a look of amusement on Warren’s face that it warned Murray. Sunday! What the dickens difference did that make, he wondered? But he caught himself quickly. It must make some difference or Warren would not look like that, so he responded with a laugh.
“Oh, that’s so. Got my dates mixed, didn’t I?Well, let’s see. What do we do in Marlborough? How is the day laid out on Sunday? Much doing?”
“Well, not much time for idling, of course. We have our Ushers’ Association meeting in the morning before church. They’ll be sure to elect you to that. They were speaking about it.”
“Ushers’ Association?” said Murray, puzzled.
“Yes, I s’pose you belonged at home. In fact they said you did. Well, we meet at quarter to ten. Then the regular morning service is quarter to eleven, and Sunday-school is in the afternoon. Have they asked you to take a class yet? Well, they will. Then the Christian Endeavor meets at seven. They’re planning to make you president at the next election. Perhaps I oughtn’t to tell you that, but it’s a foregone conclusion, of course. And the evening service is eight o’clock. Of course it’s short and snappy and gets out by nine fifteen, but it’s a full day. Not much time left for your family if you go to everything.”
“No, I suppose not,” murmured Murray, trying to keep the amazement out of his voice. It was his policy to agree with everybody, as far as possible, until he had further light, but was it possible that grown men and women went to Sunday-school? Some nurse of his childhood had taken him for a few months once when he was quite young, but he had always supposed it was a matter merely for children. Yet Warren spoke as if he went to Sunday-school, as if the whole town went to Sunday-school. What was he letting himself in for if he stayed in this strange place? Could he possibly go through withit? And what were these “services” that he spoke of? Justchurch? Well, he could get out of that probably. Say he had a headache.
But when Sunday morning came and he sat down at the little round breakfast-table opposite Mrs. Summers and ate the delicate omelet, fresh brown bread, sweet baked apples with cream, and drank the amber coffee that composed the Sunday breakfast, and heard her talk, it was not so easy to get out of it.
“There’s an article in this week’s ‘Presbyterian’ I’d like you to read. It speaks of that very subject we were talking about last night. You’ll have plenty of time to read it before we go to church. I left it over on the Morris chair for you,” she said. It was very plain she was counting on his going to church. Indeed, he had been given to understand on every hand all the week from many different people, that church was where he was expected to be whenever here was service there, and he sighed, and wondered how long he would be able to keep up this religious bluff. If he only had thought to profess to be going to spend the week-end with some old friend a few miles away it would have given him freedom for a few hours at least, and a start of almost two days on his pursuers, in case he decided not to return.
But then, there was the old question again, where could he go, how get another name, and why try to find a better place of hiding when this one seemed fairly crying out for him? Then, too, where would justice be less likely to search for him than in a church?
So he settled into the Morris chair with a sigh, and took up the paper to read an article, the like ofwhich he had never read nor heard before, and the meaning of which touched him no more than if it were written in a foreign tongue.
The article was about Church Unity. He gathered there was a discussion of some sort abroad, some theological crisis imminent. The article was couched in terms he had never even heard before, so far as he remembered—The Atonement, Calvary, The Authenticity of the Scriptures, The Virgin Birth, The New Birth, The Miracles. What was it all about, anyway? There seemed no sense to it. He read it over again, trying to get a few phrases in case some one began to talk this queer jargon, and he was evidently expected to be a connoisseur in such things. He must master enough to put him beyond suspicion.
Take, for instance, that phrase, “the new birth,” how strangely like the sentence he had seen in the trolley-car, “Ye must be born again!” It had come from the Bible. He had discovered that the first night he spent in this house. There must be some slogan like that in all this discussion. He was rather interested to know what it all meant. It fitted so precisely in with his own needs. He was trying so hard to be born again, and he felt so uncertain whether he was going to succeed or not. Perhaps if he read this paper he would discover something more about it. At any rate it would make the good lady with whom he lived feel that he was interested in what she had been saying, and he had taken good care that she did the talking when she got on such topics, too. So he asked if he might take the paper up to his room for further perusal. Mrs. Summers said yes, of course, but itwas time to start to church, and he must get his hat and come right down. And in spite of his desire to remain at home, he found himself yielding to her firm but pleasantly expressed wishes.
The sermon that morning was short and direct. The text was, “We must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ to give account of the deeds done in the body,” and from the time those firm, mobile lips of the pastor began to repeat the words, and the clear, almost piercing, eyes to look straight down at him from the pulpit, he never took his eyes from the preacher’s face.
It was, perhaps, the first real sermon he had ever listened to in his life. Oh, he had been to church now and then through the years, of course—mostly to weddings, now and then to a funeral, occasionally a vesper service where something unusual was going on, and his mother wished him to escort her, once or twice to a baccalaureate sermon. That was all. Never to hear a direct appeal of the gospel. It was all new to him.
The minister was an unusual man. He knew Scripture by heart, chapter after chapter. When he read the lesson he scarcely looked at the page, but repeated the words as if it were something he had seen happen, or had heard spoken, and about which he was merely telling in clear, convincing tones. His sermon was rich in quotations. The quotations clinched every statement which he made. Murray heard for the first time about the great white throne, and the books to be opened, and theotherbook that was to be opened, wherein were written names, theLamb’s Book of Life. And whoever’s name was not found written there was to go away into everlasting punishment.
Everlasting punishment! That was what he was under now. Life as himself, the Murray Van Rensselaer that he had started out to be, was done with so far as this life was concerned. His punishment could only end with death, and now this that the preacher was saying made it pretty sure that it would not end even then. He had somehow felt all along ever since the accident, that if he could only die, all this trouble would be over, and he would have a square deal, as he called it, again, but it seemed not. It seemed things of this life were carried over into the next. If what this preacher said were true, all this about the books and the dead, small and great, being judged out of what was written against them, why then there was no chance for him. The preacher further stated that those whose names were written in that other book, who were not to be punished, were the “born again ones.” That was what that “born again” meant that he had been hearing about so much. Or what was it, after all? Nobody had said. The “born again ones.” He had been trying to be born again, and had taken a new name, but what were the chances that Allan Murray any more than Murray Van Rensselaer would be a born again one? Well, pretty good, if all they said about him were true, only if he was dead he would be over there himself, and would preëmpt his own name, and besides, Murray had a sudden realization that there would be no chance of deception over there in the other world.
The preacher’s words were very clear, very simple, very convincing. The words he repeated from the Bible were still more awesome. Murray walked silently back to the house beside Mrs. Summers with a deep depression upon him. He felt that he had borne out from that church the heavy burden of an unforgiven sin—that there was no place of repentance, though he might carefully seek it with tears, and that he must bear the consequences of his sin through all eternity.
He could not understand his feeling. It was not at all like himself, and he could not shake it off. He sat in his room for a few minutes looking into the red glow of the coals on his hearth and thinking about it, while Mrs. Summers put the dinner on the table. It somehow did not seem fair. When you came to consider it, he had not meant to be a murderer. There was not any one he would have protected sooner than Bessie. He was just having a good time. It was not quite fair for him to bear unforgivable punishment the rest of his life for a thing he had not meant to do. Of course the law of the land was that way. It had to be to protect everybody. But the law had no right to you after you were dead. You had satisfied it. But if, after having escaped punishment in this life, he had yet to meet the judgment seat of an angry God, what hope had he?
He dwelt for a moment upon those whose names were written in the other book, the “born again” ones. Mrs. Summers was likely one of those, if there was any such thing. Yes, and Mrs. Chapparelle. She read the Bible and believed it. He remembered thestories she read them Sunday afternoons. And was Bessie? Yes, she must have been. It must have been that which gave her that look of set-apartness, that sort of peace in her eyes—well, these were queer things he was thinking about. Strange they never came his way before. He had never really taken it in before what it would be to die—to be done with this earth forever! Bessie was gone! And he would be judged for it! Even if he escaped a court of justice, he would be judged. What was the use? Why not go home and take his chances? But no, that would drag his mother and his father through all that muck—Bah! He would stay where he was—a while.
The little tinkling bell broke in upon his thoughts, and he found he was tremendously hungry, in spite of his serious thoughts. Fried chicken and mashed potatoes, and gravy over delicately browned slices of toast! A quivering mould of currant jelly! Little white onions in a cream dressing; a custard pie for dessert. It all had a wonderful taste that seemed better than anything he knew, and he really enjoyed sitting there with her eating it. It seemed so cosey and pleasant. Even the blessing at the beginning was rather a pleasant novelty. She had asked him again to take the head and ask the blessing, but he had looked at her with a most engaging smile, and said: “Oh, you say it, won’t you? I like to hear you.” And she had smiled and complied, so now he was not any more worried about that. If ever he were asked, he had learned what words were used. He could get away with it, though somehow he did not like to be faking a thing like that. It was queer, but hedid not. He never felt so before about anything. He wondered why.
He helped Mrs. Summers carry the dishes out to the kitchen, and while he was doing it the door-bell rang, and Jane presented herself. She announced that she had come as a representative of her class to askMr.Murray to be their teacher. She flattered him with her beseeching eyes while she pleaded with him not to say no.
“Class? What class?” he asked blankly, wondering what doggone thing he was going to run into now.
“Why, our Sunday-school class. There are twelve of us girls. You know, our teacher was Miss Phelps, and she’s gone away for the winter to California. Perhaps she won’t ever come back. Her sister lives out there. She resigned the class before she went away, and we haven’t elected any one else to fill her place. We were sort of waiting to see if you wouldn’t take it. I hope nobody else has got ahead of us. I tried to see you this morning, but there were so many people speaking to you. Now, youwillbe our teacher,won’tyou?”