New Name (15 page)

Murray as a rule did little thinking, and he would have been surprised and thought it clever if someone had put this idea into words for him. But the impression was there in his mind as they talked. And then he fell to wondering how she would look in beautiful garments, rich silks and velvets and furs. She was simply and suitably dressed, and might be said to adorn her garments, but she would be superb in cloth of silver and jewels. How he wouldenjoy putting her in her right setting! Here was a girl who would adorn any garment, and whose face and figure warranted the very greatest designers in fashion’s world.

An idea came to Murray.

They often came that way by impulse, and sometimes they had their origin in the very best impulses. He leaned toward her with a quick, confidential air. They were on their way back now, for the girl had suggested that she had taken enough of his time.

“I wonder if you won’t do something for me?” he said in his boyish, pleasant tone that reminded her of other days together.

“Why, surely, if I can,” she complied pleasantly.

“You certainly can,” he answered cheerfully. “No one could do it better. I want you to come with me to a shop I know and help me to select something for a gift for a friend of mine. You are her figure to an inch, and you have her coloring, too. I want to see how it will look on you before I buy it.”

There was perhaps just the least shade of reserve in her voice as she graciously assented. Naturally she could not help wondering who the gift was for. Not his mother, or he would have said so. He had no sister, she knew. A cousin, perhaps? No, he would have called her cousin. Well, it was of no consequence, of course. It gave her just the least little bit of an embarrassed feeling. How could she select something for one in his station of life? But she could at least tell what she thought was pretty. It was on the whole quite exciting, come to think of it, to help in the selection of something where money did not have to be considered—just for once to let her taste rule. It would be wonderful!

Then they turned from the avenue onto the quieter street and drew up suddenly before Grevet’s. She drew her breath with pleasure. Ah! Grevet’s! She had often wondered what a shop like this was like inside, and now she was to know! It was like playing a game, to have a legitimate reason for inspecting some of the costly wares that were here exclusively displayed. She stepped from the car with quiet composure, however, and no one would have dreamed that this was her first entrance into these distinguished precincts.

Chapter 14

I
n a little cottage on the outskirts of a straggling town about half a mile from the scene of the railroad wreck, a sick man lay tossing on a hard little bed in a small room that could not easily be spared from the needs of a large family. A white-capped nurse, brought in by the railroad, stooped over him to straighten the coarse sheet and quilt spread over him, and tried to quiet his restless murmurings.

“Teller!” he murmured deliriously. “Teller!”

“Tell who?” asked the cool, clear voice of the nurse.

“M’ry!” he mumbled thickly. “Teller!”

“You want me to tell Mary?” asked the nurse crisply.

The heavy eyes of the man on the bed opened uncomprehendingly and tried to focus on her face.

“Yeh! Teller! M’ry. Bank!”

“Mary Banks?” asked the nurse capably. “You want me to send word to Mary Banks?”

The patient breathed what seemed like assent.

“Where?” asked the nurse clearly, taking up the pencil that lay by her report and writing in clear little script, “Miss Mary Banks.”

“Bank!” said the patient drowsily. “Bank! Teller!”

“Yes, I will tell her,” responded the nurse. “Where—does—she—live?” enunciating slowly and distinctly.

The man’s head paused in its restless turning, and the eyes tried to focus on her face again, as if he were called back by her words from some far wandering.

“Marlborough!” He spoke the word clearly and drowsed off again as if he were relieved.

That night by the light of a sickly gas lamp whose forked flame she had shaded with a newspaper from the patient’s eyes, she wrote a note to Mary Banks in Marlborough, telling her that a young man with curly red hair and a tweed suit was calling for her and asking that she be told that he had been injured in a wreck. She stated that the patient’s condition was serious and that if he had any friends, they had better come at once. It was impossible to find any clue to his name, as he wore no coat when he was picked up, having evidently pulled it off to assist others worse injured than himself and having fainted before he got back to it. The pockets of his trousers had nothing in them but a little money, a railroad ticket, a knife, a few keys, and a watch marked with the initials A.M.

The letter was given to the doctor to mail the next morning when he came on his rounds, and in due time it reached the Marlborough post office. After reposing some days in the general delivery box, it was finally put up in a glass frame in the outer post office among uncalled-for letters. But the patient lay in a deep deathlike stupor, and knew nothing of all this. After his efforts to speak that one word, Marlborough, he had seemed satisfied, and the doctor and nurse tried in vain to rouse him again to consciousness of the world about him. It was thought that he had been injured around his head and that an operation might be necessary, but the doctor hesitated to take that step without first consulting with some of the sick man’s friends or relatives. The doctor even went so far as to write a note to a fellow physician in the town of Marlborough, asking him to look up this “Mary Banks” and endeavor to get a line on the man and his friends, if possible.

But no Mary Banks could be found in all the town of Marlborough. Strange as it may seem, however, a young woman of romantic tendencies, by the name of Banks, who admitted that her middle name was Marie—Rose Marie Banks—was at last discovered, and induced to take the journey of some thirty miles to the bedside of the unconscious man, that she might identify him. It was a handsome young doctor who entreated her, anxiously, to please a former head and great colleague in the profession. He had just bought a new shiny blue car, and the day was fine. Rose Marie consented to go “just for the ride” and alighted happily before the cottage, stood an awed moment beside the sickbed, and gazed half frightened on the solemnity of the living deathbefore her. Then she shrank back with a “No, I ain’t never seen him before,” and hurried out to the waiting car, glad to be back in the sunshine of life once more. The sick man lay burning with fever and moaning incoherent words to the distracted nurse, who had done her best, and the days went on and on monotonously.

Chapter 15

I
t was strange how many circumstances could combine to hedge in Murray Van Rensselaer’s pathway so that there was no way of escape.

They led him into the mahogany-lined cage with its bronze bars at the little window and inducted him into the mysteries of the duty of a bank teller, and he was fascinated. It was like a new game. He always was dead to the world for a time when he met with a new form of amusement. They never could get him to pay attention to anything else until he had followed out its intricacies and become master of its technique. And this playing with crisp new bills of fascinating denominations and coins in a tray of little compartments was the best he had ever tried. Poker chips and mah-jongg tiles weren’t nearly as interesting. These were real. They suddenly seemed the implements with which the world’s big battles were fought. He had a vague perception of why his fatherstayed in the game of business when he had enough money to buy himself out many times. It was for the fascination of it.

Also, as he cashed checks and counted money, he had a realization that he was doing something for the first time in his life that was really worthwhile to the world. Just why it was valuable to the world for him to stand there and hand out money in return for checks he did not figure out. He only knew he liked it immensely. He felt as if he were doing these people a personal favor to give them money when they asked for it. He was so smiling and affable, and took so much trouble to give the fussy old lady exactly the right number of five- and ten-cent pieces that she asked for in change, and was so pleasant to the children who came with their Christmas savings accounts and had to have different things explained to them, that the other officials, watching him furtively as they went about their own business, raised approving eyebrows at one another. They nodded as they passed with a tilt of the head toward the new member of their corps, as much as to say: “He’ll do all right; he’s going to be a success.”

It is true he often did not know how to explain the things they asked of him and had to make them up or manage to get out of answering entirely. He asked very few questions, however, of his fellow workers, for he did not wish them to suspect he did not know it all. Only now and then he would say: “Oh, I say, Warren,” to the man who had been assigned to coach him, “just what is your custom here about this?” making it quite plain that where he came from they had a method of their own, and he did not wish to vary from the usual habit here.

It was remarkable how often he could skate like that on thin ice and not fall through. Of course his college practice had made his mind nimble in subterfuges, but on the other hand, the situation was quite different from any he had ever met with before. He found it the more interesting because of these various hazards, and he came to feel a new elation over each person whom he succeeded in serving satisfactorily without help. It was quite a miracle that he made no more mistakes than he did.

The morning passed swiftly, and when he was told that it was the noon hour, he came to himself with a sudden realization that now was his chance to escape. He had almost forgotten that he had wanted to escape—
needed
to. He was enjoying himself hugely and liked the idea of going on and becoming a banker. He saw himself winning out and becoming a champion in the game of banking—just as he had won out and become a champion in tennis and golf and polo.

But with the relief from his little cage window and the piles of fascinating coins came the remembrance of his terrible situation, came as if it were new all over again, and settled down upon his soul in crushing contrast to the happiness of the morning. Why, men had liked him, been pleased with what he did, showed him that he was going to be a success. The long lines of men and women, even boys and girls, outside his window, looking at him as if he were someone who held their fate in his hand, had eyed him with pleasant cordiality. Everywhere men had acknowledgedhis smile, as if it were worth something to know him. He had been used to all that, of course, at home, only there had been a new tang to this friendliness—a kind of respect that had never been granted to him before. Was it because he was doing real work? Or was it partly because of what they thought he was—that religious business that almost everyone managed to get in a hint about? He did not quite understand it, but it somehow gave him a new angle on life, a new respect for righteousness and right living. How odd that he had never thought before that there were compensations in being what men called “good.”

But to have experienced this new deference and then to be let down to reality again was a tremendous blow. Of course he had known it was not his; he was only sort of playing at being a man and a bank employee, but it had been great! And now he had to go out and sneak away like a thief and disappear! He looked down at the piles of money he was leaving with a wistful regret. Suppose he was a thief! Suppose he should sweep all that with one good motion into his pocket and disappear. He could do it. It would be a good game, interesting to see if he could get away with it, but how loathsome to think about afterward! He almost shivered at the thought of himself doing a thing like that. That money had come to have a sort of personality and value of its own apart from what it might be worth to him personally. He had never looked at money before in any but the light of his own needs. There had always been plenty of it so far as he was concerned, and he had always seemed to feel he had a right to as much as he pleased. Butnow he suddenly saw that money was a necessity to the daily life of the community. He had seen it pay a gas bill and a telephone bill today, and he had seen small checks brought forth from worn wallets in trembling hands, and the cash carried away with a look that showed it was to be used for stern necessity. One could tell by the shabbiness of some of the owners that with them a little money had to go a long way.

Now all this swept through his mind in a kind of hurried surge as he turned to follow the man Warren out to lunch. He knew none of the words to express these thoughts to himself, but the thoughts themselves left their impression on his soul as they surged through him.

And now, the murderer, who had played at being a bank teller for a brief time, must go out supposedly to lunch, must shake this man Warren somehow and get away, never to return, and he did not want to go. He did not want to go back to being a runaway murderer. He felt like a small boy who wanted somebody to show him the way home and comfort him. He decided the quickest way to shake Warren was to say that he must run back to Mrs. Summers’ for lunch, as she would be expecting him, and he needed to get something he had left in his other coat, some papers he must show to Mr. Harper at once.

But he found no opportunity for such stratagem. The man Warren was in complete command of the situation. He was sent by Mr. Harper to bring Murray to the top floor, where lunch was to be served to the directors today, and where the president wasawaiting him and wanted him to sit beside him. They were joined almost at once by one or two others who had been more or less in his vicinity all the morning, so there was no chance whatever of escape unless he wished to try the astonishing method of making a dash. This matter of making a bold dash had become almost an obsession in his mind. He saw it was a thing that was impossible. They would think he was crazy. They would immediately cry out. He would be caught at once and have to explain. It might work in the darkness, perhaps, but not in broad daylight in a bank. So he followed meekly and was shot up in the elevator to the top floor and given a fine lunch and more of the pleasant deference that had soothed his overwrought nerves all the morning, until he was even able to rally and make several bright sallies in response to the conversation of the men about him. He could see again that they liked him and were pleased with his ready speech.