A new name

by Grace Livingston Hill

It meant nothing whatever to him when they told him, because he did not know what Christian Endeavor even stood for at that time, but he smiled and turned it down flat, with the excuse that he could not give any more time to outside things. He owed his whole energy to the bank. Mr. Harper would not like it if he accepted offices here and there.

Then behold it developed that Mr. Harper would like it very much. It was just what Mr. Harper wanted of his bank teller, to be prominent in social and religious matters. A committee had waited upon Mr. Harper, and he came himself to plead with the young man, stressing it that he would like him to accept as a personal favor to himself. He felt it would give their bank a good standing to have their employees identified with such organizations.

The young committee pleaded eagerly, and promised to do all the work for him. They would prepare all the programs, and suggest competent helpers on each committee who understood their work thoroughly. There really would be little left for him to do but preside at the State Conventions and attend a County Convention now and then. Wouldn’t he stretch a point and take the office? They needed him terribly just now, having lost a wonderful president through serious illness.

It sounded easy. He did not imagine it meant much but calling a meeting to order now and then, and as there was a Vice-president he could always get out of it on the score of pressing business when he did not want to go. So Murray “stretched a point” and said yes. He was beginning to enjoy the prestige given by these various activities which they had pressed upon him. He had almost forgotten that he was an outlaw. For the time being he seemed to himself to have become Allan Murray. He was quite pleased with himself that he was fitting down into the groove so well. Even the religious part was not so irksome as he had felt at first. He might in time come to enjoy it a little. He had not slipped away that next Saturday night. He had lived very tolerably through three more Sundays. He was even becoming somewhat fond of those seven little devils in his Sunday-school class. His popularity in the capacity of a Sunday-school teacher was evidenced by the fact that seven other little devils, seven times worse than the first seven, had joined themselves to the knot that closed around him for a brief half-hour every Sunday afternoon. There was even talk of giving him a room by himself next to the Primary room.

Fearing that he never would be able to teach a lesson, he had conceived the idea of offering a prize of a story to the class after they had told him the lesson for the day. This relieved him of any responsibility in the matter of the teaching, and kept excellent order in the class. All he had to do was to have a hair-breadth experience ready to relate during the last ten minutes of the session.

But Mrs. Summers, wise in her day and generation, perhaps wiser than Murray ever suspected, brought to bear her gentle heaven-guided influence upon the young teacher. If she suspected his need she never told anybody but her Heavenly Father, but she quietly hunted out little bits here and there about the lesson, illustrations, an unusual page from the “Sunday School Times,” a magazine article with a tale that covered a point in the lesson, now and then an open Bible Dictionary with a marked paragraph, and laid them on his reading-table under the lighted lamp.

“I found such a wonderful story today when I was studying for my Sunday-school class,” she would say while she passed him the puffy little biscuits and honey at the supper-table. “I thought you might like to use it for your boys. I took the liberty of laying it up on your table, with the verses marked in the Bible where it fits. You have so little time it is only right the rest of us should help you in the wonderful work you are doing in that Sunday-school class.”

He thanked her, and then because he did not like to seem ungrateful, and he was afraid he might be asked what he thought of it, he read what she had left there, and was surprised to find himself getting interested. Strange how a dull thing grew fascinating if you just once gave your mind to it. He wondered if that were true of all dull things. He actually grew interested in getting ready for his Sunday-school class. There were times when he even preferred it to going out socially, although that was where he naturally shone, it being more his native element.

Yet he often felt a constraint when he went out to dinner or to a social gathering. There were very few invitations to the kind of thing to which he had been accustomed. The whole community seemed to be pretty well affected by the sentiments of that Presbyterian Church. They did not seem to know how to play cards, not the ones who were active, and they did not seem to think of dancing when they got together. Not that he missed those things. He was rather more interested in the novelty of their talk and their games, and their music, which was some of it really good. It appeared that the girl Anita was quite a fine musician. She had been away for a number of years studying. Yet he was always a little bit afraid of Anita. Was it because she reminded him of Bessie, or because she seemed to not quite trust him? He could not tell. When he was in the same company with her he found himself always trying to put the best foot foremost. It annoyed him. She seemed to be always looking through him and saying: “You are not what you are trying to seem at all. You are an impostor! You have stolen a dead man’s name and character, and you killed a girl once! Some day you will kill the good man’s good name, too, and everybody will find out that you are a murderer!” When these thoughts came through his mind he would turn away from her clear eyes, and a sharp thought of Bessie like a keen pain would go through his soul. At such times he was ready to give it all up and run away. Yet he stayed on.

He was flooded with invitations to dinners and teas and evening gatherings, little musicals and concerts, and always at these gatherings there was the tang of excitement lest he should be found out. He was growing more and more skilful in evading direct questions and in parrying bantering gaiety intended to draw him out. He came to be known as a young man of great reserves. He never talked about himself. They began to remark that. All they knew about him they had heard from others before he came. They liked him all the better for this, and perhaps the mystery that this method gradually put about him made him but the more fascinating to the girls. All save Anita.