A new name

by Grace Livingston Hill

So now in the quiet of his own room he longed fiercely for a smoke. But he had not a cent in his pocket. There had not been a chance for an instant all day when he could have purchased cigarettes unobserved, and if he had them in his hand he would not dare to smoke there in Mrs. Summers’ house. She hated it. She would smell it. She would think him a hypocrite. Somehow he did not want Mrs. Summers to think ill of him. Of course he was a hypocrite, but somehow he did not want her to know it. She had been kind to him and he liked her. She was what seemed to him a real mother, and he reverenced her. If he stayed and enjoyed her home and the position which he was supposed to fill, he would also have to live up to the character of the man he was supposed to be, and that would include not smoking, even when he got a chance and money wherewith to purchase the smokes. Could he stand it? Was it worth the candle?

And yet when he came to think about it, was not that perhaps the very best disguise he could have, not to smoke? He had been an inveterate smoker. Everybody who knew him knew that. If he was made over into a new man, the old man in him unrecognizable, he must seek to obliterate all signs of the old man. Well, could he do it?

He had settled down into the big chair to think, to decide what to do, and suddenly a great drowsiness overtook him. With a quick impulse of old habit he got up and began to undress without more ado. He would have another good night’s rest before he did anything about it anyway. He could not run far with sleep like this in possession of his faculties. And in three minutes he snapped out the light and was in bed. At least he was probably safe till morning. The man Murray could not very well turn up at that time of night.

XVI

Murray wondered again the next morning when Warren stepped in with a note from Mr. Harper while he was eating his breakfast, and insisted on waiting and walking down to the bank with him. It did seem uncanny. Were all these people in collusion somehow to prevent his being left alone an instant?

It would have been a startling thought to him had some one suggested that each one was working out the divine will for his good, and that though he might flee to the uttermost part of the earth, even there an all-seeing care would be about him, reaching to draw him to a God he had never known.

Murray liked Warren. He seemed quite companionable. He wondered if he played golf or had a car. But it annoyed him to be under such continual espionage. Although he had about decided to remain in Marlborough for the present, at least until he got his first week’s pay envelope, if that were possible, still he did not like the feeling that he was being forced to do this. He cast about in his mind for an excuse which would leave him free, but Warren was so altogether genial that there seemed nothing else to do but make the best of it. Surely they would not have lunch parties on the roof of the bank building every day in the week. There would certainly come a let-up some time.

So they walked down-town together, and Murray discovered that Warren was married, and lived in a little cottage two blocks above Mrs. Summers. Warren said they wanted him to come to dinner some night just as soon as Elizabeth got back. Elizabeth was away in Vermont, visiting her mother.

Elizabeth! Would he never get away from thoughts of Bessie Chapparelle?

He confided in Murray that he was saving for a car, just a little coupé, he couldn’t afford anything else yet, but it would be nice for Elizabeth to take the baby out in. There was a nice eager domestic air about him that was different from anything Murray had experienced among his young men friends, even the married ones. He did not remember that any of them had babies, or if they had they did not speak about them. They were tucked away somewhere with their nurses out of sight till they should be old enough to burst upon the world full-fledged in athletics or society. There was something pleasant about the thought of a girl taking her baby out to ride in a little coupé, even if it was a cheap one. And a cottage! He had never been to dinner at a cottage. It came to him that Bessie would have been the kind of mother who would have taken her baby out to ride. Bessie! Oh, Bessie! Why had he not thought of Bessie before, and kept in touch with her? But when he did find her he had killed her! He had thought this terrible depression at remembrance of her would pass away in a few days, but it did not. It only grew worse! Some day it might drive him mad! This was no way to begin a day!