A new name

by Grace Livingston Hill

“Excuse me,” he said to the lingering girl, “I must go back. We’re very busy this morning. I can’t stop!”

He turned and dashed back again, coming suddenly face to face with Elliot Harper, who surveyed him in a mild surprise.

“Oh, is that you, Murray? I was just going back for you! I must have missed you somehow.”

“Yes,” said nimble Murray, “I just stepped to the door to get my bearings! I always like to know how the land lies, that is, the building I’m in, you know.”

“Well, we’ll go right in now. McCutcheon is ready to show you your duties. We go through this side door.”

Murray followed him because there was nothing else he dared do, and the steel gateway swung to with a click behind him as he entered the inner precincts of the bank proper. And once more he heard dimly the echo of bolts and bars and approaching prison walls about him. He walked to the little grated window that was to be his, so cell-like with its heavy grill, and saw an open drawer with piles of clean money lying ready for his unskilled hand. He felt almost frightened as he stood and listened, but he kept his calm exterior. It was part of his noble heritage that he could be calm under trying circumstances. He was even jaunty with a feeble joke upon his mobile lips and a pleasant grin toward the man who was endeavoring to teach him what he had to do. The trouble was the man seemed to take it for granted that he already knew a great deal about the matter, and he had to assent and act as if he did. Here he was, a new man, new name, new station, new portion in life. Yet the odds were so against him, the chances so great that he would soon be caught and put under lock and key for an impostor, that he would have given anything just then even to be back riding on the trucks of the freight train, and dodging policemen at every turn of his way.

XIII

The day that Bessie Chapparelle had met her old playmate, Murray Van Rensselaer, for the first time in seven years had been her birthday. She was twenty-one years old, and feeling very staid indeed. It is odd how very old twenty-one can make itself seem when one reaches that mile-post in the walk of life. A girl never feels half so grown-up at twenty-five as when she reaches twenty-one. And Bessie was counting back over the years in the way a girl will, thinking of the bright and sad epochs, and looking ahead eagerly to what she still hoped to attain. She was wondering how long it would be before she could give her beloved mother some of the luxuries she longed for her to have, and as she stood on the street corner waiting for a trolley, she watched the shining wheels of a new car come flashing down the street, and wished she were well enough off to begin to buy a car. Just a little Ford roadster, of course, or maybe a coupé. A second-hand one, too, but there were plenty of nice cheap second-hand ones. It would be so nice to take mother for a ride in the Park evenings, when she got home from her work. They could put up a lunch and eat it on the way in the long summer twilights. What wonderful times they could have together! Mother needed to get out more. She was just stuck in the house sewing, sewing, sewing all the time. Pretty soon she would be able to earn enough so that mother would not have to sew so much, perhaps not at all. Mother was getting to the age when she ought to rest more and have leisure for reading. The housework was really all she ought to be doing. If only she could get a raise within a year and manage to buy some kind of a car so they could take rides!

Bessie Chapparelle had been tremendously busy during those seven years since she and Murray Van Rensselaer used to play games together in the evenings and listen to the books her mother read aloud to them, when they grew tired of chess and “Authors” and crokinole. Murray had gone off to Prep. School, and Bessie had studied hard in High School. She had not even seen him at vacations. He had been away at a camp somewhere in the West, or visiting with some schoolmate. He had remembered her graduating day, for they had talked about it before he left, and he had sent back a great sheaf of roses, which were brought up to her on the platform after she read her essay. Everybody wondered and exclaimed over the beauty and quantity of those roses, telegraphed across the continent, with a characteristic greeting tied on the card, “Hello, Pal, I knew you’d win out! Murray.”

The roses had brought other roses to her cheeks and a starry look to her eyes as she came forward with wonder in her face and received the two tributes of flowers, one of tiny sweetheart rosebuds and forget-me-nots, small and exquisite, and this other great armful of seashell-pink roses with hearts of gold. She was almost smothered behind their lavish glory, and her little white dress, simple and lovely, made by her mother, looked like a princess’ robe as she stood with simple grace and bowed with gravely pleased smile toward the audience. She took the roses over her arm and looked out from above them, a fitting setting for her happy face, but the little nosegay of sweethearts and forget-me-nots she held close to her lips with a motion of caressing, for she knew they came from her mother. They were like the flowers her mother had received from her father long ago when he was courting her, and they meant much to the girl, who had listened, fascinated by the tales of her mother’s girlhood, and treasured every story and incident as if it had been a part of her very own life-story. Oh, she knew who sent the forget-me-nots and sweetheart rosebuds! No one but her dear, toiling mother could have done that, and it filled her heart with tender joy to get them, for she knew they meant much sacrifice, and many hours’ overwork, far into the night, perhaps, to get the price for those costly little blossoms. She knew how much they cost, too, for she had often wanted to buy some for her mother, and had not dared. But she did not know nor guess who had sent the larger mass of roses, not till she got by herself in the dressing-room for a second and read the brief inscription on the card, and Murray’s name. Then something glowed in her face that had not been there before, a dreamy, lovely wonder, the foreshadowing of something she could not name and did not understand—a great gladness that Murray, her playmate, had not forgotten her after all this time, a revelling in the lavishness of his gift, and the wonder of the rare flowers, which she knew were more costly than anything else she had ever had in her life before. Not that she estimated gifts by costliness, or prized them more for that, but her life had been full of anxious planning to make a penny go as far as possible for the dear mother who toiled so hard to give her education and all that she needed, and money to her meant toil and self-sacrifice and love. She would not have been a girl if it had not given her a thrill to know that her flowers were more wonderful than any flowers that had been sent up to that platform that day. Not that she was proud or jealous, but it was so nice to have them all see that somebody cared.