A new name

by Grace Livingston Hill

Murray’s heart stood still, and he felt a trembling sensation creeping over him, as if the enemy after a brief respite had him in sight again. Whatever a blessing was, he didn’t know. If the man had asked him to “say grace,” he might have understood. But a “blessing”! Well, whatever it was, he had best keep out of it, so, gripping his self-control together again, he endeavored to look as if nothing extraordinary had been asked of him, and leaned engagingly toward the minister.

“Doctor, I hope you’ll excuse me from doing anything tonight. I’m simply all in. That wreck—!”

“Oh, certainly,” the minister hastened to assure him. “I shouldn’t have asked, and of course everybody will understand. But you are so well known as an active Christian worker, you know, that it was but natural to feel it appropriate. Still, of course I understand. I’ll just tell the young president of this affair how it is, and she’ll excuse you. I guess you must have a good appetite by this time if you’ve just arrived from the wreck?” he finished kindly.

“I’ll say!” said Murray, glad that there was one question he could answer truthfully.

Then suddenly a silence spread over the entire chattering company, and Murray looked up to see the girl in blue, the one that had looked through him with scorn, whom they called Anita, standing at the middle table on the opposite side of the room, about to speak.

“Mr. Harrison, will you ask God’s blessing?”

Her voice rang clear, and her eyes seemed to sweep the speaker’s table where he sat, and touch him with a slight look of disapproval. Somehow he felt that that girl was suspecting him. It was almost like having a police officer standing over there looking at him. It gave him a feeling that if he should dare get up and try to slide away unnoticed, she would immediately call the whole company to order and have him seized.

These things had for the moment engrossed his mind so that he had not taken in what the girl had been saying. But all at once he noticed that everybody in the room but himself was sitting with bent head in an attitude of prayer. At least, everybody except one girl. It was perhaps the ardent furtive glance in Jane’s eyes raised from a bent head to watch him that finally called him to himself, and made him involuntarily close his eyes and bend his head. He felt as if he had been caught thinking by Jane, and that there was no knowing but she would interpret his thoughts. She seemed so almost uncanny in her ability to creep into intimacy without encouragement.

But his eyes once closed, the words of Anita came back to him like an echo, especially that word “blessing.” It was the same unusual word the minister had used, and he had used it in much the same phrase, “Ask a blessing.” So this was what they meant, make a prayer! Gosh! Was that what they had wanted him to do? What he was supposed to be able to do? He had indeed assumed a difficult character, and one he would never have voluntarily chosen. What should he do about it? Would it happen again? And could he invent another excuse, or would that lay him open too much to suspicion? What did they say when they made a prayer over a table like that? Could he fake a prayer? He had tried faking almost everything. He was known at home as a great mimic. But to mimic something about which he knew nothing would be a more difficult task than any he had ever before undertaken in that line. He set his mind to listen to the words that were being spoken.

The first thing he noticed about this “blessing” business was that the minister was talking in a conversational tone of voice, as if addressing some other mortal; though with a deferential tone as to One in Authority, yet on a familiar, friendly basis. The tone was so intimate, so assured, as if addressed to one the speaker knew would delight to honor his request, that Murray actually opened the fringes of one eye a trifle to make sure the man by his side was not addressing a visible presence.