possible. The part of him that did the thinking seemed to have been asleep and was just coming awake painfully.
He was wet to the skin with perspiration and was exhausted in every nerve and sinew. He wanted nothing in life so much as a hot shower and a bed for twenty-four hours. He was hungry and thirsty. Oh! Thirsty! He would give his life for a drink! Yet he dared not try to find one. And now he knew it had been a brook he had waded, for he remembered stooping down and lapping water from his hand. But it had not satisfied. He wanted something stronger. His nerves under the terrible strain of the last few hours were crying out for stimulant. He had not even a cigarette leftand he dared not go near enough to human habitation to purchase any. Oh yes, he had money, a whole roll of it. He felt in his pocket to make sure. He had taken it out of his bank that morning, cashed the whole of his allowance check, to pay several bills that had been hounding him, things he did not want Dad to know about. Of course there were those things he had bought for Bessie and had sent to her. He was glad he had done that much for her before he killed her. Yet what good would it ever do her now? She was dead. And her mother would never know where they came from. Indeed Bessie would not know either. He had told her they were for a friend and he wanted her help in selecting them. Perhaps Bessie would not have liked his gift after all. He had not thought of that before. Girls of her classbut she was not any classno type that he knewjust one of her kind, so how could he judge? But somehow it dawned upon him that Bessie would not have taken expensive gifts even from him, an old friend. That entered his consciousness with a dull thud of disappointment. But then, Bessie would never know now that he had sent them. Or did they know after death? Was there a hereafter? He knew Mrs. Chapparelle believed in one. She used to talk about heaven as if it were another room, a best room, where she would one day go and dress up all the time in white. At least that was what his childish imagination had gleaned from the stories she used to read to him and Bessie. But then, if Bessie knew about the gifts, she would also know his heartWait! Would he want her to know his heartall his life?
He groaned aloud and then held his breath lest the night had heard him. Oh, he was crazy! He must find a spot to lie down, or else he might as well go and give himself up to justice. He was not fit to protect himself. He was foolish with sleep.
He crept into a wood at last, on a hillside above the road, and threw himself down exhausted among some bushes quite hidden from the road in the darkness.
He was not conscious of anything as he drifted away into exhausted sleep. It was as if he with all his overwhelming burden of disgrace and horror and fear was being dragged down through the ooze of the earth out of sight forever, being obliterated, and glad that it was so.
He woke in the late morning with a sense of bewilderment and sickness upon him. The light was shining broad across his face and seemed focused upon his heavy, smarting eyes. He lay for an instant trying to think what it was all about, chilled to the boneand sore in every fiber. A ringing sound was in his ears, and when he tried to rise, the earth swam about him. His whole pampered being was crying out for food. Never in his life before had he missed a meal and gone so far and felt so much. What was it all about?
And then his memory reminded him sharply of the facts. He was a murderer, an outcast from his father’s house upon the face of the earth, and it was necessary that he should go without food and go far, but where, and to what end? There would be no place that he could go but that he would have to move farther. Why not end it all here and be done with it? Perhaps that would be a good way to make amends to Bessie. He had killed her; he would kill himself, and if there was a place hereafter he would find her and tell her it was the only decent thing he could do, having sent her, to come himself and see that she was cared for. Yet when he toyed with the thought somewhat sentimentally in his misery, he knew he had not the courage to do it even for gallantry. And it seemed a useless kind of thing to do. Nothing was of any use anyway! Why had he ever gotten into such a mess? Only yesterday morning at this time he was starting off for the country club and an afternoon’s golf. He took out his watch and looked at it. It had stopped! The hands were pointing to ten minutes after one. Probably he had forgotten to wind it. It must be later than that.
A sudden roar came down the road below him, growing in volume as it approached. He struggled to a sitting posture and looked out from his hiding place. It was a truck going down the road, and behind it came two other cars at a little distance apart. One carried a man in uniform. He could see the glitter of brass buttons and a touch of brightness on his cap. He drew back suddenly and crouched, his fear upon him once more. Perhaps that was an officer out to hunt for him. If it was late in the day, by this time the newspapers had gotten word of it! He could see the headlines: Son of Charles Van Rensselaer a murderer! Drives girl to her death. Takes body to hospital and escapes.
He shuddered, and a ghastly pallor settled upon him. Incredible that such a fate could have overtaken him in a few short hours, and he should have been reduced to hiding in the bushes for safety! He must get out of here, and at once! Now while there were no more cars in sight. The road appeared to be comparatively free from travelers. Perhaps he could keep under cover and get to some small town where he might venture to purchase some food. He certainly could not keep on walking without eating. He struggled to his feet in a panic and found every joint and muscle stiff and sore and his feet stinging with pain as soon as he stood upon them. He glanced down and saw that his handsome overcoat was torn in a jagged line from shoulder to hem, and a bit of fur was sticking out through the opening. That must have been done when he climbed that barbed-wire fence in the dark!
He passed his hand over his usually clean-shaven face and found it rough and bristly. He tried to smooth his hair and pull his hat down over his eyes, but even this movement was an effort. How was he to go on? Yet he must. He was haunted by a prison cell and the electric chair, preceded by a long, drawn-out trial, in which his entire life would be spread to public gaze. His beautiful mother and haughty, sarcastic father would be dragged in the dust with their proud name and fame, and Mother Chapparelle in her black garments would sit and watch him with sad, forgiving eyes. Strange that he knew even now in his shame that her eyes would be forgiving through their sorrow.
Yet paramount to all this was the piercing, insistent fact that he was hungry. He had never quite known hunger before. He felt in his pockets in vain hope of finding a stray cigarette, but only old letters and programs, souvenirs of his carefree life, came to his hand. Then it came to him that he must destroy these, here where he was in shelter and the ground was wet. He could make a hasty fire and destroy everything that would identify him if he should be caught.
He felt for his little gold matchbox and, stooping painfully, lighted a small pile of letters and papers and bits of trinkets. He burned his tie and a couple of handkerchiefs with his initials. There were his watch and cufflinks, and the gold cigarette case, all bearing initials. He could throw those in the bushes if there was danger. Perhaps he had better get rid of them at once, however, while there was a chance. What if he should bury them? He looked about for something with which to dig. Digging had never been a pastime with him. He awkwardly turned up a few chunks of mud with his hands then took out his knife, a gold one attached to his watch chain, and burrowed a little farther, not getting much below the surface. He put the trinkets into his glove and laid them into the earth with a strange feeling that he was attending the burial of something precious. Then after he had walked a few steps he deliberately returned and unearthed the things, restoring them to his pocket. He had had a sudden realization that he was parting with what he might need badly. There was not enough money in his pocket to carry him far, nor keep him long, and these trinkets would help out. They were no more an identification than all the rest of him. Why throw them away? He looked regretfully at the ashes of his two fine handkerchiefs, the last he would ever have with that initial. And he would need them. He turned and looked back over the road he had traveled in the night and seemed to see all the things he was leaving, his home, his friends, his club, his comfortable living! What a fool he had been. If he had not angered his father and annoyed his mother, and “got in bad” with all his relations everywhere, they would have stood by him now and helped him out of this scrape somehow, just as they had always done before.
Then
