XXV
It was very still in the small gloomy room of the little country hospital where the sick man had been taken when it had been determined to operate on him. The woman down the hall who had been having hysterics every two or three days had been moved to the next floor, and her penetrating voice was not so constantly an annoyance. The baby across the hall was too desperately ill to cry, and the other patients had dropped off to sleep. The hall was almost as quiet as night.
The patient lay with his eyes closed and a discouraged droop to his nicely chiselled mouth. His red curls had been clipped close under the bandages, but one could see they were red. He had long, capable fingers, but they lay pallid and transparent on the cheap coverlet, as if they never would work again. His whole attitude betokened utter rout and discouragement. As he lay there, still as death and almost as rigid, a tear stole slowly out from under the long dark lashes. A weak warm tear. He brushed it away impatiently with his long thin hand, and turned over with a quick-drawn sigh. Even the effort of turning over was a difficult and slow performance. He felt so unacquainted with the muscles of his heavy inert body. He wondered if he ever again would walk around and do things like other people.
As if she had heard him far out in the hall, thenurse opened the door and came in. It annoyed him that he could not even sigh without being watched.
“Did you call,Mr.Murray?”
“No, nurse.”
“Did you want anything,Mr.Murray?”
“Yes, I want a great many things!” he snapped unexpectedly, “I want to get up and walk around and go to my work.” He had almost said, “I want to go home,” only he remembered in time that he had no home to go to. No one to care where he went.
“I want my mail!” he added suddenly. “I think it’s time this monkey business stopped! I suppose the doctor has told you I mustn’t have my mail yet. He’s afraid there’ll be something disturbing in it. But that isn’t possible. I haven’t any near relatives left. They’re all dead. I suppose I’ve lost my job long ago, so it can’t be anything disturbing about business, and I haven’t any girl anywhere that cares a picayune about me or I about her, so you see there’s really no danger in letting me have it. In fact Iwillhave it! I wish you would go and get it right away. Tell the doctor I demand it. There would surely be something to interest me for a few minutes and make me forget this monotonous room and the squeak of your rubber heels on the hall floor!”
He had red hair, but he had not been savage like this before. He had just reached the limit of his nerves, and he was angry at that tear. It had probably left a wide track on his cheek, and that abominable nurse, who knew everything and thought of everything and presumed to manage him, would know he had been crying like a baby. Yes, she waslooking hard at him now, as if she saw it. He felt it wet and cold on his cheek where he had not wiped it off thoroughly.
The nurse came a step nearer.
“I’m real sorry about the mail,” she said sympathetically, “but your suspicions are all wrong. The doctor asked me this morning if I couldn’t find out some one to write to about your mail. There truly hasn’t been a bit of mail since you came here. And the head nurse wrote to that address you gave her, I’m sure, for I saw her addressing the letter. Isn’t it likely they have made some mistake about the address? I wouldn’t fret about it if I were you. You’ll forget it all when you get well. Wouldn’t you like me to read to you a while? There’s a real good story in the Sunday paper. I’ll get it if you want me to.”
“No, thanks!” he said curtly, “I don’t read stories in Sunday papers, and besides you can’t sugar-coat things with a story. And you’re mistaken when you say I’ll forget it. I’ll never forget it, and I’ll never get well, either! I can see that plain enough!”
With that he turned his face to the wall and shut his nice brown eyes again.
The nurse waited a few minutes fussing around the immaculate room, giving him his medicine, taking his temperature and writing something on the chart. Then she went away again, and he sighed. All by himself he sighed! And sighed! He tried to pray, but it only turned out in a sigh. But perhaps it reached to Heaven, for God heard the sighs and the tears of his poor foolish children of Israel, and wouldHe not hear a sigh today, even if it really ought to have been a prayer?
“I’m all alone!” he said, quite like a sobbing child. “I’m all alone! Andwhat’s the use?”
Then the nurse opened the door softly and looked in. It was growing dusky in the room, and the shadows were thick over where he lay. But there was something electric in the way she turned the knob, like well suppressed excitement.
“There is some one to see you,” she said, in what she meant to make quite a colorless voice. The doctor had said it would not do to excite the patient.
“Some one to seeme?” glowered the man on the bed. “Therecouldn’tbe! Thereisn’tanybody. Whoisit?”
“One of them is a minister. He looks very nice.”
“Oh!” groaned the patient disappointedly, “is that all? Who told him to come?”
“Nobody,” said the nurse cheerfully. “He’s not from the village. They came in a car. There’s a young man with him. You’d better let them come up. They look real jolly.”
“Did they know my name?” he glared, opening his eyes at this.
“Oh yes, and they said there had been a letter from you or about you or something. They came from a place called Marlborough.”
“Well, that’s different!” said the patient with a jerk. “Can’t you straighten this place up a bit? It looks like an awful hole. Is my face clean? It feels all prickly.”
“I’ll wash it,” said the nurse gaily. She was quite gleeful over these interesting looking visitors.
“You can show the minister up,” said the patient “I don’t know the other one.”
“But he’s the one that asked after you. He seems real pleasant. He was quite anxious to see you. The minister called him Murray. Perhaps he’s some relative.”
“I haven’t any!” growled the man, “but you can bring him too, if he’s so anxious to come.”
He glared out from under his bandages at his visitors with anything but a welcoming smile. It was too late for smiling. They should have come weeks ago.
They stood beside his bed and introduced themselves, the nurse hovering in the offing till she should be sure that all was well with her patient.
“My name is Harrison. I’m the preacher from Marlborough you wrote to several months ago. I’ve just found out today where you were, and I’m mighty sorry I couldn’t have been around to help you sooner. I’ll just let this young brother explain, and then we’ll all talk about it some more.”
The minister put a big kind brotherly hand on the weak white hand of Allan Murray, and then dropped back to the other end of the little room, and sat down on the stiff white chair. Murray stepped closer to the bed.
“And I’m a man that stole something from you, and I’m come to bring it back again, and to ask your forgiveness.”
“Well, I’m sure I didn’t know it, and you’re welcome to it, whatever it was. It wouldn’t have been much good to me, you see. Keep it if you like, and say no more about it.” There was not much welcome nor forgiveness in his glance.
“But you see I’m to blame for the whole thing,” explained Murray gently, “and I want to tell you about it. Are you strong enough to listen today, or ought I to wait?”
“Go on!” growled the patient impatiently.
The nurse was still hovering, open-mouthed. This was too unusual a morsel of news to miss. She could not tear herself away.
“You see, I was a renegade anyway,” began Murray—
“What did you steal?” the patient interrupted, raising his voice nervously.
“I stole your name, and I stole your job, and I’ve been living at your boarding place, and using your things!”
“Well, you certainly did a smashing business! As I say, it didn’t matter much to me, you see, if you could get away with it.”
“But I didn’t get away with it, that’s it. I was held up.”
“Who held you up?”
“God.”
The patient eyed his visitor a moment, and a queer softened expression began to melt into his face.
“Sit down,” he said. “Now, begin and tell.”
“Well, you see my name’s Murray too, my first name. Murray Van Rensselaer. Son of Charles VanRensselaer. You’ve probably heard of him. Well, I broke a law, and then I didn’t like the idea of facing the consequences, so I ran away. I don’t know why I ran away. I hadn’t been used to running away from things. I always faced them out. But anyhow that doesn’t matter to you. I ran away, and after I got away I couldn’t quite see coming back,ever. I had some money, and for a few days I kept out of sight and got as far as I could away from home. The day of your wreck I’d been travelling on the trucks of a freight car because I hadn’t money, and we landed in Marlborough just at dark. Ever try travelling that way? Well, don’t. It isn’t what it’s cracked up to be. When the train stopped at a crossing I rolled off more dead than alive. I was all in. I hadn’t had anything to eat all day, and I kept sighting cops everywhere I turned. So I hid till the train went on, and then I crawled off in the dark up a hill.
“By and by I sighted a light, and came to it through the dark, because I was so sick of going on I couldn’t go a step further.
“There was an open window, and down just below me on a table in a basement I saw a row of cakes and bread. There didn’t seem to be anybody about, so I put my hand in and took some and began to eat. I didn’t call it stealing. I was starved.”
The patient’s eyes were watching Murray intently, and in the back of the room the minister was watching the patient.
“It turned out to be a church, and they were getting up a big dinner to welcomeyou!”
A light shot into the eyes of the man on the pillow,that seemed to suddenly illume his whole face. A surprised glad light.
“A girl rushed out and called meMr.Murray, and I tried to beat it, but it was all dark behind me, and my eyes were blinded looking at the lighted room, so I only got deeper in behind the bushes, and ran against more church wall; and the girl followed me laughing, and said she would show me the way, and that they were waiting for me. She said they had been so afraid I was caught in the wreck. She tried to pull me into the church, but I held back and said I was too dirty to go in, that my clothes were all torn and soiled. I said I had lost my baggage in the wreck. It seemed to me providential, that wreck, and I used it for all it was worth, for you see at first I thought I must have met that girl at a dance somewhere, and she recognized me and hadn’t heard yet that I was in disgrace. So I wanted to get away before she found out.
“But she said my trunk had come, and somebody named Summers was expecting me, and I could go right over to my room and get dressed, but I must hurry, because it was late. I tried to get directions, but she would walk over there with me. I couldn’t shake her. She seemed to think she had some special connection with me because her mother, she said, had known my mother.
“When we got to Mrs. Summers’ house she opened the door herself and pulled me right in before I could slide away in the darkness. Of course I could have broken away, but that would have roused suspicion, and anything Ididn’twant was an outcryand the police on me; so I went in, and she took me up to the room she had got ready for you, and she actually smashed the lock on your trunk, and went the length of pressing a pair ofyour trousersfor me to put on, while I was taking a bath!”
By this time Allan Murray’s eyes were dancing, and there was actually a little pucker of a smile in one corner of his mouth.
Murray hurried on with his story.
“There was nothing for it but to get into some clothes and pretend to please the lady, for she was so insistent. You better believe I was glad of that hot bath too, and I was still hungry as a bear. I hadn’t eaten much for two days, and there didn’t seem any way to get rid of her, so I helped her carry the scalloped oysters to the church, thinking I could slide out easily there. Boy! Those oysters had some delicious odor! I couldn’t resist them. I almost took the pan and bolted before I got in, only there were too many people around watching.”
The minister was smiling broadly now in the background, and Allan Murray was all attention. He had lost his sinister glare.
“Well, I got in there and I couldn’t get out. They introduced me right and left as Allan Murray, and I didn’t dare deny it. I never realized before what a coward I was till I got into that fix, and then the Doctor here asked me to ‘ask a blessing,’ and I didn’t know what he meant. I never hailed with a gang like that before, and I hadn’t been used to blessings.”
The patient suddenly threw his head back and laughed.
“I found out I was a great Christian worker, and that I was the new teller in the Marlborough Bank, and that everybody was grateful that I hadn’t been killed in the wreck,” went on Murray with a flitting smile, “but I was mighty uncomfortable. There didn’t come any good opportunity of getting out of there, however, and so I stuck it out, to my surprise, and got away with it! Even whenMr.Harper, the President of the bank, came to me and began to say how glad he was, Igot away with it! Am I tiring you?”
“Go on!” shouted Allan Murray eagerly.
“Well, they herded me over to Mrs. Summers’ again and sent me up to bed. There wasn’t a second’s chance to get away all that time without arousing the town, so I decided to wait till my hostess was asleep. But I made the mistake of lying down on the softest bed I ever touched, and boy! I was tired! And the next thing I knew they were calling me down to breakfast, andMr.Harper was down there in his car waiting to take me to the bank.
“All day long they kept it up—for days. Never left me alone a second. I expected you to turn up every half hour, and I was worn to a thread with trying to keep up my part. At first I thought I’d stay till I got my first week’s pay, but afterwards I decided that as I had no name of my own I dared use, and as yours didn’t seem to be needed by any one, here was a perfectly good name and job, and I couldn’t hide anywhere better than by taking another person’s identity.So I settled down to be almost content in a condition like that! I was used to taking chances in anything that came along, and I suppose I just fell into it naturally.
“Then, one day they did a dreadful thing. They made me president of the State Society, Christian Endeavor, you know. They say you know all about that.”
Allan Murray’s eyes lighted with keen appreciation of the situation in which his double was placed.
“I didn’t know what it was like from a Polo Club, so when they made a great ado about it, I said all right. But when I got to that state convention and saw what I was up against I decided to beat it while they were singing the first hymn. And brother, I got the door sighted and my foot stretched out to take the first step toward it when God met me! Somehow He got it across to me that it wasHe, and I was a poor wretch of a sinner! And He wouldn’t let me get out of that building! They were singing a hymn about hiding, and I was trying to hide; and right there, just as God stopped me, they asked me to make the opening prayer! Perhaps you wouldn’t realize what that was like, being asked to pray before hundreds of people when you hadn’t ever opened your mouth or your soul in prayer in your life! But I had to get up. And there I was facing God! I forgot all about the audience and just talked to God. I told him what a wretch I was. I knew it then. I’d never known it before, but I knew then. And when I sat down God talked with me: All that blessed convention He was talking with me! Sometimes it wasin a prayer He spoke, sometimes in a Bible reading, or somebody’s speech, but it came right home to me, and I found out I was a lost sinner, and only Jesus Christ could save me. I’d seen something about being born again, before I knew what it meant, and I’d wished I could begin life over with a new name and all, but I didn’t know how, see? But somehow I’ve found out, and everything is different. I made a clean breast of everything this morning in church, and then I found your letter to Mrs. Summers. It got put up in my room by mistake while I was away, you see. So as soon as we could we came to hunt you up. Now,Mr.Murray, can you see your way clear to forgive the rotten deal I gave you? I’ve done my best to square things up, and if there’s anything else you’d like me to do I’m ready. I belong to a new family now, and I hope I’m going to honor it more than I did the first one. I’ve heard ever since I’ve been in Marlborough what a great Christian you are, and I’m going to try all my life to be like you, to make up for the rotten way I masqueraded as you before I knew the Lord.Canyou forgive me?”
Allan Murray reached out a long thin hand and grasped the warm firm one of Murray.
“I’ll forgive you all right, brother, and from all I can see, you put over a pretty good effort at being me. Now you better try one better. Follow Christ, not me! I’ve found out the last few weeks that I hadn’t as much religion as I thought I had. When everybody seemed to desert me and the good prospect I had was lost, and I seemed to be lying on the very verge of the grave, I lost hope, and began to doubtthe Lord. It was pretty tough lying here not knowing what was going on anywhere, and thinking nobody cared. But I guess you’ve begun to make me see what it was all for. I must have been through testing, and I didn’t stand it so very well either. I can see now. But if it’s helped to bring a fellow like you to the light it’s worth all the suffering!”
Murray grasped both the other man’s hands, and held them.
“You’re the right stuff, all right,” he said. “Some fellows I know would have been too sore to speak to me for what I had done. But say, you’re all wrong about nobody thinking about you. There’s one. There’s a girl. She wanted to know how you were. Her name is Anita. I don’t know the rest of it. She went to school with your sister, and she was interested enough to ask me to find out about you and let her know. She’ll be down to see you some day, or I’ll miss my guess. And say, she’s a good sport! She knew I wasn’t you all the time. She remembered you had red hair. And she never told.”
“Sheisa good sport,” smiled the sick man. “You tell her I remember who she was. She played tennis with the champions and wouldn’t take a handicap. And she gave up her place in a crowded hall once that a little lame girl might see! I wish she would come and see me. It would remind me of my little sister, Betty, who used to love her dearly.”
“Yes,” said the minister, rising and coming to the front, “Anita is a good sport. She’s the best little girl in the town of Marlborough. I could tell you a whole lot more things about her, but I haven’t timenow. I’ve got to get back to my evening service. The question is, how soon can we hope to be able to move you over home, where we can look after you personally? There’s a whole church waiting to welcome you. I know, for look at the way they welcomed the man who came in your place! We love him and we’re going to love you just as much,” and he put his arm lovingly around Murray’s shoulder.
“It looks to me as though I shall have a hard time keeping up with the pace you’ve set,” said the sick man, trying to smile.
“No, you won’t. Oh, no! Don’t you think it for a minute. You were born to it, but I’ve just been a great big bluff. Well, good-by. You don’t know how much easier you’ve made the rest for me, now that I know you don’t hold this up against me. I’ll think of you in my room, and teaching my class. I’m glad you’re the kind of fellow you are. I sha’n’t be jealous of you. I shall like to think about it.”
“Nonsense! Man! Don’t talk that way. You’re coming to see me soon again, and we’ll work things out together. I’ve a fancy you and I are going to be awfully good friends.”
“I wish I could,” said Murray wistfully, “but I’ve got an entirely different proposition to face. I’m going back home and give myself up for getting a little girl killed in an automobile accident, and I don’t expect to see freedom again this side of Heaven. But sometimes you think of me and work a little harder just for my sake, because I can’t.”
“Look here, Brother,” said Allan Murray, raising himself on one elbow and looking earnestly atMurray, “don’t you talk like that! The Lord never saved you just to see you imprisoned for life. I’m going to get well in a few days now, and I’m going to spend time seeing you through. I’ll begin right now by praying, and don’t you give up!”
But Murray looked up with a bright smile.
“It’s all right, you know, Buddie, I belong to the Lord Christ now, andwhat He wants is to go, from now on, with me. I’m ready to face it all if that’s what He wants for the honor of His name. That kind of living makes even dying worth while.”
When they were gone and the nurse came in to turn on the lights and give him his medicine Allan Murray was lying with wide open eyes and an eager expression on his face.
“Nurse, how soon can I get up? I’ve a great deal to do, and it ought to be done soon.”
The nurse looked up with a knowing smile.
“I don’t know,” she said gaily, “but I’ll ask the doctor in the morning. I knew the best tonic in the world for you was to get in touch with the world again.”
“It isn’t the world,” said Allan Murray contradictorily, “it’s something better this time.I’m needed.”