A new name

by Grace Livingston Hill

It was only a moment she had for such reflection, and then the girls came trooping in, and she had barely time to secrete the little white card in the folds of her dress before they all demanded to know who sent them. They had not expected her to have such flowers. They were almost jealous of her. She was a brilliant scholar, was not that enough?

She had been popular enough, though too busy to form the friendships that make for many flowers at such a time. They had conceded her right to the place of honor because of her scholarship, but they felt it their right to shine before the public in other ways.

But Bessie was radiantly happy, and gave them each a rose, such wonderful roses! They all openly declared there had never been such roses at a high-school commencement before in all their knowledge. And she went her way without ever having told them the name of the sender, just vaguely saying: “Oh, from a friend away out West!” and they looked at one another wonderingly as she passed out of the dressing-room and into the cool dusk of the night, where her mother waited in the shadow of the hedge for her. Then she had friends out West! Strange she never mentioned any one before! Yet when they stopped to think they realized Bessie never talked about herself. She was always quietly interested in the others, when she was not too busy studying to give attention to their chatter. And perhaps they had not given her much opportunity to talk, either. They never realized it before.

Then she passed from their knowledge, except for an occasional greeting on the street. They were fluttering off to the seashore and the mountains, and later on to college. But Bessie went to work.

Her first job was as a substitute in an office where a valued stenographer had to be away for several months with an invalid mother.

She did not know short-hand, and had only as much skill on the typewriter as one can acquire in high school, and with no machine of one’s own, but she worked so diligently at night school and applied herself so carefully to the typewriter in the office that long before the absent secretary returned she had become a valued asset to that office.

As fast as a helper in an office can climb she had climbed, working evenings on a business course, and getting in a little culture also by the way. But she had not had time nor money for parties and the good times other young people had. One cannot study hard in the evening and take courses at a night school, then get up early and work conscientiously all day, and yet go out to dances and theatres.

Moreover, her life interest was not in such things. She had been brought up in an old-fashioned way, in the way that is condescendingly referred to today as “Victorian.” She still believed in the Bible and honored her mother. She still believed in keeping the laws of the land, and the law of purity and self-respect. She had not bobbed her hair nor painted her face, nor gone to any extreme in dress.

And yet, when Murray Van Rensselaer saw her standing on that corner that morning of her twenty-first birthday, waiting for her car, she was sufficiently attractive to make him look twice and slow down his speed, even before he recognized her for the playmate of his childhood’s days.

There had been no more roses, no letters even passing between them, and Bessie had come to look back upon her memory of him as a thing of the past, over forever. She still kept the crumpled rose-leaves folded away in tissue paper in her handkerchief box, and smiled at them now and then as she took her best handkerchiefs out for some state occasion, drawing a breath of their old fragrance, like dried spices, whose strength was so nearly gone that it was scarcely recognizable. Just sweet and old, and dear, like all the pleasant things of her little girlhood. Life had been too real and serious for her to regret the absence of her former friend, or even to feel hurt at his forgetfulness of her. He had passed into college life and travels abroad. Now and then his name was in the paper in connection with college sports, and later, as a guest of some young prince or lord abroad. She and her mother read these items with interest and a pleasant smile, but there was no bitterness nor jealousy in their thought of the boy who used to find a refuge in their kitchen on many a stormy evening when his family had left him alone with servants, and he had stolen away for a little real pleasure in their cosey home. It was what was to have been expected when he grew up. Was he not Murray Van Rensselaer? He would have no time now, of course, for cosey pancake suppers and simple stories read aloud. His world expected other things of him. He was theirs no longer. But they had loved the little boy who had loved them, and for his sake they were interested in the young man he had become, and now and then talked of him as they turned out their own lights and looked across the intervening alley to the blazing lights in the big house where his mother entertained the great ones of the city.