A new name

by Grace Livingston Hill

There were only three women on board, and they did not notice the haggard young fellow who stumbled into the back seat and pulled his hat down over his eyes. They were talking in clear intimate voices that carried a sense of their feeling at home in the car. They told about Mary’s engagement, and how her future mother-in-law was giving a dinner for her, and how proud John was of her, and was getting her a little Ford coupé to run around in. They talked of the weather and little pleasant everyday things that belonged to a world in which the man in the back seat had no part nor lot. They whispered in lower tones of how it was rumored that Bob Sleighton was making money in bootlegging, and he got a view for the first time in his life of how the quiet, respectable, non-drinking world think of the people who break the law in that way. And then they told in detail how they scalloped oysters and made angel cake, and just the degree of brownness that a chicken should be when it was roasted right, until Murray Van Rensselaer, sitting so empty in his back seat, could fairly smell them all as they came out of the oven, and felt as if he must cry like a child.

V

It was dusk when he slid stealthily off the car, having waited with his head turned toward the darkening window till each of the three women had got off at her particular corner. He had sighted a bakery window, and thither he took his way, ordering everything they had on their meagre menu. But then, when he had got it he could only eat a few bites, for somehow Bessie’s white face as he carried her into the hospital kept coming between him and the food and sickened him. Somehow he could not get interested in eating any more, and he paid his bill and left a tip that the girl behind the counter did not in the least understand. She ran out to find him and give it back, but he had gone into a little haberdashery shop, and so she missed him.

He bought a cheap cap of plain tweed and a black necktie. Somehow it did not seem decent going around without any necktie. He walked three blocks and threw his old hat far into a vacant lot, then boarded the next trolley, and so on, where he did not know. He had not known the name of the little town where he had eaten. He began to wonder where he was. He seemed a long way from home; but when a few minutes later the motorman called a name, he recognized a town only about thirty miles from his home city. Was it possible he had walked all that time and only got thirty miles away? He must have been going in a circle! And the newspapers would have full descriptions of him by this time posted everywhere! He was not safe anywhere! What should he do? Where go? Why go anywhere?

He lifted his eyes in despair to the advertising cards, for it seemed to him that every man in the car was looking at him suspiciously. He tried to appear unconcerned. He felt of his chin to see if his beard had grown any, but his face was indecently smooth. He tried to make himself read the advertisements, Chiclets and Chewing-gum, and Baked Beans. Tooth-paste, and Wall-paper, and Cigarettes.

Then suddenly his attention was riveted on the card just across from where he sat. The letters stood out so clearly in red and black on the white card as if they were fairly beckoning to get his attention, as if somebody had just written them to attract his eye; as if it were a burning message for his need:

“YE MUST BE BORN AGAIN!”

A strange thing to be in a trolley-car. He never stopped to wonder how it came there, or what it meant to the general public. He took it just for himself. It suggested a solution of his problem. He must be born again. Sure! That was it, exactly what he needed! He could not live in the circle where he had been first born. He had ostracized himself. He had been disloyal to the code and cast a slur on the honorable name with which he had been born, and it was no more use for him to try to live as Murray Van Rensselaer any longer. He would just have to be born all over again into some one else. Born again! How did one do it? Well, he would have to be somebody else; make himself over; get new clothes first, of course, so he would look like a new man, and the clothes that he could find for what money he had would largely determine the kind of man he was to be made into. This cap was the start. It was a plain cheap working man’s cap. It was not the kind of cap that played much golf or polo, or was entitled to enter the best clubs, or drove an expensive car. It was a working man’s cap, and a working man he must evidently be in the new life. It was a part of being born that you didn’t choose where you should see the light of day, or who should be your parents. A strange pang shot through him at the thought of the parents whom he might not own any more. The name he had borne he would no longer dare to mention. It was the name of a murderer now. He had dishonored it. He would have to have a new name before it would be safe for him to go among men.

A policeman boarded the car in a few minutes and eyed him sharply as he passed to the other end of the car. Murray found his whole body in a tremble. He slid to the back platform and dropped off the next time the car slowed down, and walked a painful distance till a kindly voice from a dilapidated old Ford offered him a ride. Because he felt ready to drop and saw no shelter at hand where he might sleep a while, he accepted. It was too dark for the man to see his face clearly anyway. He seemed to be an old man and not particularly canny. A worldly-wise man would scarcely have asked a stranger to ride at that time of night. So he climbed in beside him and sank into the seat too weary almost to sigh.

But the old farmer was of a social nature, and began to quiz him. How did he come to be walking? Was he going far?