New Name (29 page)

“No thanks!” he said curtly. “I don’t read stories in Sunday papers, and besides, you can’t sugarcoat 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 tears of his poor foolish children of Israel, and would He not hear a sigh today, even it if really ought to have been a prayer?

“I’m all alone!” he said, quite like a sobbing child. “I’m all alone! And
what’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 someone 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.

“Someone to see me?” glowered the man on the bed. “There
couldn’t
be! There
isn’t
anybody. Who
is
it?”

“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 brightly. 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 nearby 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, openmouthed. 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 strange 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 Van Rensselaer. 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 outright. 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 traveling under a freight car because I hadn’t any money, and we landed in Marlborough just at dark. Ever try traveling 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 seeing 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 spotted 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 around, 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 ready a big dinner to welcome
you
!”

A light shot into the eyes of the man on the pillow that seemed to suddenly illuminate his whole face. A surprised, glad light.

“A girl rushed out and called me Mr. 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 be 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 what trouble I was in. 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 insisted on walking 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 doorherself 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 I
didn’t
want was an outcry and the police on me; so I went in, and she took me up to the room she had gotten ready for you, and she actually smashed the lock on the trunk and went so far as pressing a pair of
your trousers
for 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 no alternative 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 when Mr. Harper, the president of the bank, came to me and began to say how glad he was, I
got 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, and Mr. 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 afterward I decided that as I had no name of my own I dared use, and as yours didn’t seem to be needed by anyone, 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 likethat! 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 fuss 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 in my sight, 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 was
He
, 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 it then. And when I sat down God talked with me! Sometimes it was in 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 Christcould 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 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.
Can
you 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 doubt the 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. It must have been a test, 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.