A strange thing to be in a trolley car. He never stopped to wonder how it came there, or what it meant to the general public. He took it just for himself. It suggested a solution to his problem. He must be born again. Sure! That was it, exactly what he needed! He could not live in the circle where he had been first born. He had ostracized himself. He had been disloyal to the code and cast a slur on the honorable name with which he had been born, and it was no more use for him to try to live as Murray Van Rensselaer any longer. He would just have to be born all over again into someone else. Born again! How did one do it? Well, he would have to be somebody else, make himself over, get new clothes first, of course, so he would look like a new man, and the clothes that he could find for what money he had would largely determine the kind of man he was to be made into. This cap was the start. It was a plain, cheap working man’s cap. It was not the kind of cap that played much golf or polo, or was entitled to enter the best clubs, or drove an expensive car. It was a working man’s cap, and a working man he must evidently be in the new life. It was a part of being born that you didn’t choose where you should see the light of day, or who should be your parents. A strange pang shot through him at the thought of the parents whom he might not call his own anymore. The name he had borne he would no longer dare to mention. It was the name of a murderer now. He had dishonored it. He would have to have a new name before it would be safe for him to go among men.
A policeman boarded the car in a few minutes and eyed him sharply as he passed to the other end of the car. Murray found his whole body in a tremble. He slid to the back platform and dropped off the next time the car slowed down, and walked apainful distance till a kindly voice from a dilapidated old Ford offered him a ride. Because he felt ready to drop and saw no shelter nearby where he might sleep awhile, he accepted. It was too dark for the man to see his face clearly anyway. He seemed to be an old man and not particularly canny. A worldly wise man would scarcely have asked a stranger to ride at that time of night. So Murray climbed in beside him and sank into the seat, too weary almost to sigh.
But the old farmer was of a social nature and began to quiz him. How did he come to be walking? Was he going far? The young man easily settled that.
“Car broke down!” That was true enough. His car would never run again.
But the old man wanted to know where.
Not being acquainted with the roads around there, Murray could not lie intelligently, and he answered vaguely that he had been taking a cross-cut through a terrible road that did not seem to be much traveled.
“‘Bout a mile back?” asked the stranger.
“About.”
“Hmm! Copple’s Lane, I reckon. In bad shape. Well, say, we might go back and hitch her on and tow her in. I ain’t in any special hurry.” And the man began to apply the thought to his brakes for a turn around.
The young man roused in alarm.
“Oh, no,” he said energetically. “I’ve got an appointment. I’llhave to hurry on. How far is it to a trolley or train? I’ll be glad if you’ll let me out at your home and direct me to the nearest trolley to the city. I’ll send my man back for the car. It’ll be all right,” he added, reverting in his anxiety to the vernacular of his former life.
His worldly tone made its immediate impression. The stranger looked him over with increasing respect. This was a person from another world. He talked of his man as of a slave. The fur collar on the fine overcoat came under inspection. He didn’t often have fur-lined passengers in his tin Lizzie.
“That’s a fine warm coat you’ve got on,” he admired frankly. “Guess you paid a pretty penny for that?”
The young man became instantly alarmed. Now, when this man got home and read his evening paper with a description of that very overcoat, he would go to his telephone and call up the police station. He must get rid of that coat at all costs. If the man had it in his possession perhaps he would not be so ready to make known the location of the owner.
“Don’t remember what I paid,” he answered nonchalantly. “But it doesn’t matter. I have to get a new one. This one got all cut up in the wreck,” and he brought to view the long rip where the coat had caught on some barbed wire when he tried to climb a fence.
The stranger looked at the jagged tear sharply.
“My wife could mend that,” he said speculatively. “Ef you wantta stop at the house and leave it, she’ll darn it up so you won’t scarcely know it’s been tore. Then when you get your car fixed up,you can come along back and get your coat. I’ll loan you mine while you’re gone. That’s a mighty fine coat. I’d like to own one like it myself. Sorry you can’t remember the price. Now I paid twenty-seven fifty at a bargain sale fer this here one, and it’s a real good piece of cloth.”
Young Van Rensselaer stared in the dark. He did not know there were coats for twenty-seven fifty.
“Nice coat,” he said nonchalantly. “How’d you like to exchange? I’m going away tonight on a little trip, and I’m afraid I couldn’t take the time to come back, and I wouldn’t have time to wait to have it mended. I do hate to go with a torn coat, too.”
“H’m!” said the man with a catch in his breath as if he could not believe his ears, but he did not mean to let anybody know it. “But that wouldn’t be altogether fair. Your coat is lined with fur. It must have cost ‘most fifty dollars.”
“Oh, well, I’ve had it some time, you know, and your coat is new; that squares it all up. I’m satisfied if you are.”
“It’s a bargain!” said the man, stopping his car with alacrity, beginning to unbutton his overcoat. A bargain like that had better be taken up before the young gentleman retracted his offer.
Murray Van Rensselaer divested himself of his expensive coat and crawled into the harsh gray coat of the stranger, and said to himself eagerly, “Now I’m becoming a new man,” but he shivered as the car shot forward and the chill air struck through him. Fur lining did make a difference. It never occurred to him before that there were men who could not have fur coats when they neededthem for comfort. And now he was one of those men! How astonishing!
The new owner of the fur coat decided that it would be wise not to take the strange young man to his house. He would drop him at the first garage, which was a mile and a half nearer than his home. Then if he thought better of his exchange, he could not possibly hunt him up and demand his coat back again. So the young man was let out in the night before a little garage on the outskirts of town, and the Ford disappeared into the darkness, its taillight winking cunningly and whisking out of sight at the first corner. No chance for that fur coat to ever meet up with its former owner again. And Murray Van Rensselaer stood shivering in the road, waiting till his companion was out of sight that he, too, might vanish in another direction. He had no use for a garage, and he groaned in his spirit over the thought of walking farther with those infernally tight shoes. He almost had a wild notion of taking them off and going barefoot for a while.
Then suddenly a brilliant headlight mounted the hill at the top of the road, and a motorcycle roared into view, heading straight toward him. He could see the brass buttons on the man’s uniform, and he dodged blindly out of the path of the light and ducked behind the garage in frantic haste, forgetful of his aching feet, and made great strides through the stubble of an old cornfield that seemed acres across, his heart beating wildly at the thought that perhaps the man with his overcoat had already stopped somewhere to telephone information about him. He was enveloped in paniconce more and stumbled and fell and rose again regardless of the bruises and scratches, as if he were struggling for the victory in a football game. Only in this game his life was the stake.
A phrase that he had heard somewhere in his past came to his mind and haunted him. Like a chant it beat a rhythm in his brain as he dragged his weary body over miles of darkness.
“The mark of Cain!” it said. Over and over again: “The mark of Cain!”
Chapter 6
Grevet’s was a fine old marble mansion just o
ff the avenue with its name in gold script and heavy silken draperies at the plate-glass windows. It had the air of having caught and imprisoned the atmosphere of the old aristocracy that used to inhabit that section of the city. The quiet distinction of the house seemed to give added dignity to the fine old street, where memories of other days still lingered to remind old residents of a time when only the four hundred trod the sacred precincts of those noble mansions.
Inside the wrought-iron grill-work of its outer entrance, the quiet distinction became more intense. No footstep sounded from the deep pile of imported carpets that covered the floors. Gray floors, lofty walls done in pearl and gray and cream. Upholstery of velvet toning with the walls and floor. And light—wonderful perfect light—softly diffused from the walls themselves, seemingly, making it clear as the morning, yet soft with the radiance ofmoonlight. A pot of daffodils in one window, just where the silken curtain was slightly drawn to the street. A crystal bowl of parma violets on a tiny table of teakwood. An exquisite cushion of needlepoint blindingly intricate in its delicate design and minute stitches. One rare painting of an old Greek temple against a southern sky and sea. That was Grevet’s.
And when you entered there was no one present at first. It was very still, like entering some secret hall of silence. You almost felt like an intruder unless you were of the favored ones who came often to have their wants supplied.
A period of overwhelming waiting, of hesitation lest you might have made a mistake after all, and then Madame, in a costume of stunning simplicity, would glance out from some inner sanctum, murmur a command, and out would come a slim attendant in black satin frock and hair, cut seemingly off the same piece of cloth, and demand your need, and later would come forth the mannequins and models wearing creations of distinction that would put the lily’s garb to shame.
It was in the mysterious sidelines somewhere, from which they issued forth unexpectedly upon the purchaser of garments, that a group of these attendants stood conversing, just behind Madame’s inner sanctum, in low tones because Madame might return at any moment, and Madame did not permit comments on the customers.
“She was a beautiful girl,” said one whose high color under tired eyes, and boyish haircut on a mature head, were somehow oddly at variance. “She was different”
“Yes, different!” spoke another crisply with an accent. “Quite different, and attractive, yes. But she had no style. She wore her hair like one who didn’t care for style. Pretty, yes, but not at all the thing. Quite out. She didn’t seem to belong to him at all. She was not like any of the girls he has brought here before.”
“And yet she had distinction.”
“Yes,” hesitating, “distinction of a kind. But more the distinction of another universe.”
“Oh, come down to earth, Miss Lancey,” cried a round little model with face a shade too plump. “You’re always up in the clouds. She had no style, and you know it. That coat she wore was one of those nineteen-ninety-eight coats in Simon’s window. I see them every night when I go home. I knew it by those tricky little pockets. Quite cute they are, with good lines, but cheap and common, of course. She was nothing but a poor girl. Why try to make out she was something else? She has a good figure, of course, and pretty features, if one likes that angelic type, but no style in the world.”
“She was stunning in the black velvet,” broke in the first speaker stubbornly. “I can’t help it—I think she had style. There was something—well, kind of gracious about her, as if she were a lady in disguise.”
“Oh, Florence, you’re so hopelessly romantic! That’s way behind the times. You don’t find Cinderellas nowadays. Things are more practical. If a lady has a disguise, she takes it off. That’s more up to date.”
“Well, you know yourself she was different. You can’t say she wasn’t perfectly at home with those clothes. She wore them like a princess.”
“She had a beautiful form,” put in an older salesperson. “That’s a whole lot.”
“It takes something more than form,” said the girl persistently. “You know that Charlotte Bakerman had a form. They said she was perfect in every measurement, but she walked like a cow, and she carried herself like a gorilla in a tree when she sat down.”
“Oh, this girl was graceful, if that’s what you mean,” conceded the fat one ungraciously.
“It wasn’t just grace, either,” persisted the champion of the unknown customer. “She didn’t seem to be conscious she had on anything unusual at all. She walked the same way when she came in. She walked the same way when she went out in her nineteen ninety-eight. She sort of glorified it. And when she had on the Lanvin green ensemble, it was just as if she had always worn such things. It sort of seemed to belong to her, as if she was born with it, like a bird’s feathers.”
“I know what you mean,” said the woman with tired eyes and artificial blush. “She wasn’t thinking about her clothes. They weren’t important to her. She would only care if they were suitable. And she would know at a glance without discussing it whether they were suitable. You saw how she looked at that flashy little sports frock, the one with the three shades of red stripes and a low red leather belt. She just turned away and said in a low tone: ‘Oh, not that one, Murray!’ as if it hurt her.”
“Did she call him Murray?” asked the fat one greedily.
“Yes. They seemed to know each other real well. She was almost as if she might have been a sister, only we know he hasn’t got any sisters. She might have been a country cousin.”
“Perhaps he’s going to marry her!” suggested the fat one.
“Nonsense!” said the first girl sharply. “She’s not his kind. Imagine the magnificent Mrs. Van Rensselaer mothering anything that wore a nineteen-ninety-eight coat from Simon’s! Can you? Besides, they say he’s going to marry the Countess Lenowski when she gets her second divorce.”
“I don’t think that girl would marry a man like Murray Van Rensselaer,” spoke the thoughtful one. “She has too much character. She had a remarkable face.”
“Oh, you can’t tell by a face,” shrugged a slim one with sinuous body and a sharp black lock of hair pasted out on her cheek. “She can’t be much, or she wouldn’t let him buy her clothes.”
“She didn’t!” said the first speaker sharply. “I heard her say, ‘I wouldn’t think she would like that, Murray. It’s too noticeable. I’m sure a nice girl wouldn’t like that as well as the blue chiffon.’”
“Hmm!” said the slim one. “Looks as if she must be a relative or something. Did anybody get her name?”
“The address on the box was Elizabeth Chapparelle,” contributed a pale little errand girl who had stood by listening.
“Elizabeth!” said the thoughtful one. “She looked like an Elizabeth.”
“But if they weren’t for her, that wouldn’t have been her name,” persisted the fat one.
“I thought I heard him call her Bessie once,” said the little errand girl.
“Then he was buying for one of his old girls who is going to be married,” suggested the slim one contemptuously. “Probably this girl is a friend of them both.”
“Hush! Madame is coming! Which one did he take? The Lanvin green?”
“Both. He told Madame to send them both! Yes, Madame, I’m coming!”
A boy in a mulberry uniform with silver buttons entered.
“Say, Lena, take that to Madame, and tell her there’s a mistake. The folks say they don’t know anything about it.”
Lena, the pale little errand girl, took the heavy box and walked slowly off to find Madame, studying the address on the box as she went.
“Why!” She paused by the thoughtful-eyed woman. “It’s her. It’s that girl!” Madame appeared suddenly with a frown.
“What’s this, Lena? How many times have I told you not to stop to talk? Where are you carrying that box?”
“Thomas says there’s a mistake in the address. The folks don’t know anything about it.”
“Where is Thomas? Sen
d him to me. Here, Thomas. What’s the matter? Couldn’t you find the house? The address is perfectly plain.”
“Sure, I found the house, Madame, but they wouldn’t take it in. They said they didn’t know anything about it. It wasn’t theirs.”
“Did they say Miss Chapparelle didn’t live there? Who came to the door?”
“An old woman with white hair. Yes, she said Miss Chapparelle lived there. She said she was her daughter, but that package didn’t belong to her. She said she never bought anything at this place.”
“Well, you can take it right back,” said Madame sharply. “Tell the woman the young lady knows all about it. Tell her it will explain itself when the young lady opens it. There’s a card inside. And Thomas,” she added, hurrying after him as he slid away to the door and speaking in a lower voice, “Thomas, you leave it there no matter what she says. It’s all paid for, and I’m not going to be bothered this way. You’re to leave it no matter what she says, you understand?”
“Sure, Madame, I understand. I’ll leave it.”
The neat little delivery car, with its one word, GREVET’S, in silver script on a mulberry background, slid away on its well-oiled wheels, and the service persons in their black satin straight frocks turned their black satin bobbed heads and looked meaningfully at one another with glances that said eagerly: “I told you so. That girl was different!” and Madame looked thoughtfully out of her side window into the blank brick wall of the next building and wondered how this was going to turn out. She did not want to have those expensive outfits returned, and she could not afford to anger young Van Rensselaer; he was too good a customer. Hehad expected her to carry out his instructions. It might be that she would have to go herself to explain the matter. Anyone could see that girl was too unsophisticated to understand. Her mother would probably be worse. She would have notions. Madame had had a mother once herself, so long ago she had forgotten many of her precepts, but she could understand. Madame was clever. This was going to be a case requiring clever action. But Madame was counting much upon Thomas. Thomas, too, could be clever on occasion. That was why he wore the silver buttons on the mulberry uniform and earned a good salary. Thomas knew that his silver buttons depended on his getting things across when Madame spoke to him as she had just done, and Madame believed Thomas would get this across.
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