He looked at the mother’s face, a little thinner, a trifle grayer than when he knew her so well, and she had tied up his cut finger. The crinkles in her hair where it waved over her small fine ears were sprinkled with many silver threads. He remembered thinking she had prettier ears than his mother, and wondering about it because he knew that his mother was considered very beautiful. She wore an apron with a bib. The kitten used to run after her and play with the apron-strings sometimes, and pull them till they were untied and hung behind. There was an old cat curled sedately on a chair by the sink. Could that be the same kitten? How long did cats live? Life! Death! Bessie was dead and there was her mother going about making hot cakes for supper, expecting Bessie to come in pretty soon and sit at that white table and eat them! But Bessie would never come in and eat at that table again. Bessie was dead and he had killed her! He, her murderer, was daring to stand there and look in at that little piece of heaven on earth that he had ruined.
He groaned aloud and rested his forehead on the window-sill.
“Oh God! I never meant to do it!” The words were forced from his lips, perhaps the first prayer those lips had ever made. He did not know it was a prayer.
The cat stirred and pricked up its ears, opening its eyes toward the window, and Mrs. Chapparelle paused and glanced that way, but the white face visible but a moment before was resting on the window-sill out of sight.
The busy hum of the city murmured on outside the court where he stood, and he heeded it not. He stood overwhelmed with a sense of shame. It was something he had never experienced before. Always anything he had done before, any scrape he found himself in, it had been sufficient to him to fall back on his family. The old honored name that he bore had seen him through every difficulty so far, and might even this time if it were exerted to its utmost. Had Bessie been a stranger it would probably have been his refuge still. But Bessie was not a stranger, and there was grace enough in his heart to know that never to his own self could he excuse, or pass over, what he had done to her and to her kind sweet mother, who had so often mothered him in the years that were past.
A little tinkling bell broke the spell that was upon him—the old-fashioned door-bell in the Chapparelle kitchen just above the door that led to the front of the house. He started and lifted his head. He could see the vibration of the old bell on its rusty spring just as he had watched it in wonder the first time he had seen it when a child. Mrs. Chapparelle was hastening with her quick step to open the door. He caught the flutter of her apron as she passed into the hall. And what would she meet at the door? Were they bringing Bessie’s body home, so soon—! Or was it merely some one sent to break the news? Oh, he ought to have prepared her for it. He ought to be in there now lying at her feet and begging her forgiveness, helping her to bear the awful sorrow that he had brought upon her. She had been kind to him and he ought to be brave enough to face things and do anything there was to do—but instead he was flying down the court on feet that trembled so they could scarcely bear his weight, feet that were leaden and would not respond to the desperate need that was upon him, feet that seemed to clatter on the smooth cement as if they were made of steel. Some one would hear him. They would be after him. No one else would fly that way from a house of sorrow save a murderer! Coward! He was a coward! A sneak and a coward!
And he had loved Bessie! Yes, he knew now that was why he was so glad when he saw her standing on the corner after all those years—glad she finally yielded to his request and rode with him, because she had suddenly seemed to him the desire of his heart, the consummation of all the scattered loves and longings of his young life. How pretty she had been! And now she was dead!
His heart cried out to be with her, to cry into her little dead ear that he was sorry; to make her know before she was utterly gone, before her visible form was gone out of this earth, how he wished he was back in the childhood days with her to play with always. He drew a breath like a sob as he hurried along, and a passer-by turned and looked after him. With a kind of sixth sense he understood that he had laid himself open to suspicion, and cut sharply down another turning into a labyrinth of streets, making hair-breadth escapes, dashing between taxis, scuttling down dark alleys, and across vacant lots; once diving through a garage in mad haste with the hope of finding a car he could hire, and then afraid to ask any one about it. And all the time something in his soul was lashing him with scorn. Coward! Coward! it called him. Bearing a lofty name, wearing the insignia of wealth and culture, yet too low to go back and face his mistakes and follies, too low to face the woman he had robbed of her child and tell her how sore his own heart was, and confess his sin.
Murray Van Rensselaer had been wont to boast that he was not afraid of anything. But he was afraid now! He was fleeing from the retribution that he was sure was close upon his footsteps. Something in his heart wanted to go back and do the manly thing, but could not! His very feet were afraid and would not obey. He had no power in him to do anything but flee!