New Name (2 page)

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

I
n 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?