over me, as the shadows deepened in the room and a mysterious horror
clutched at my heart. I am not a dreamer by temperament; I am, in fact,
rather practical and commonplace in my mental tendencies, but there was
something awful in the revelation made to me which seemed to change my
whole attitude toward the universe and filled me, for the moment, with a
novel dread of my surroundings. I was recalled sharply to a less
fantastic mood by Jack's querulous voice:
"Will you stop shaking, Clarissa?" he cried, petulantly. "You make me
feel like a milk-bottle with delirium tremens. Call the nurse, will
you? She hasn't got palsy in her knees. I want to go to sleep."
At that instant the nurse bustled into the room, apologizing for her
long absence.
"I'm going to make a slight change in his diet, Mrs. Minturn," she
explained, taking Jack from my arms and gazing down with professional
satisfaction at his cherubic face. "He's in fine condition--aren't you,
you tunnin' 'ittle baby boy? But he's old enough to have a bit of
variety now and then. There are several preparations that I've found
very satisfactory in other cases, and I've ordered one of them
for--there, there, 'ittle Horatio! Don't 'oo cry! Kiss 'oo mamma, and
then 'oo'll go seepy-bye."
As I bent down to press my lips against the baby's fat cheeks, I caught
a gleam in his eyes that the nurse could not see, and, unless my ears
deceived me, Jack whispered "Damn!" under his breath.
*CHAPTER II.*
*A FOND FATHER.*
As in the world of dream whose mystic shades
Are cast by still more mystic substances,
We ofttimes have an unreflecting sense,
A silent consciousness of some things past.
--_Richard Monckton Milnes_.
I remember that Tom impressed me as an extremely handsome man, as he
faced me across the dinner-table and smilingly congratulated me on my
appearance.
"You must have had an interesting day, Clare. You look very animated. I
am so glad that you are beginning to get around a bit. There's a golden
mean, you know. A woman should become a slave to neither society nor
the nursery."
I realized that there was an abnormal vivacity in my manner as I added:
"Nor to her husband, Tom. Do you accept the amendment?"
"Do you imply that I am inclined to be tyrannical, my dear?" he asked,
laughingly. "It's not that, Clare. But I can't help being jealous of
you. How's the baby?"
My wine-glass trembled in my hand, and I replaced it on the table, not
daring to raise it to my lips. "He grows more interesting every day,
Tom," I answered, truthfully. "You don't appreciate him." I wanted to
laugh hysterically, but managed to control myself.
"Don't I, though?" cried Tom, protestingly. "He's the finest boy that
ever happened, Clare, and I'm the proudest father. But I don't believe
in a man's making an ass of himself all over the place because there's a
baby in the house. After all, it's hereditary, so to speak, and quite
common."
I glanced at the butler, but his wooden face showed no comprehension of
the bad taste of Tom's remarks. I was glad of that, for Tom has earned
a reputation among all classes for always saying and doing the right
thing at the right time. I could not help wondering how he would act if
I should tell him over our coffee that my first husband was in the
nursery, doomed to another round of earthly experience in the outward
seeming of Horatio Minturn.
"Forgive me, Clare," implored Tom, misinterpreting the expression of my
face. "I didn't intend to hurt your feelings, my dear. And you mustn't
do me an injustice. You have hinted several times of late that I am not
as fond of the baby as I should be. Now, I know exactly what you mean,
and I--"
"Suppose, Tom, that we defer further discussion of the subject until
later on," I suggested, realizing that I was losing rapidly my grip on
my nerves. "Tell me about your day. Where have you been? What have
you done? Whom have you seen?"
It was not until we were seated in the smoking-room and Tom had lighted
a long black cigar that he returned to a topic I had learned to dread.
Heretofore, Tom's interest in the baby had seemed to me to be
intermittent and never very intense. To-night is struck me as
persistent and painfully strong.
"What I was going to say, Clare, when you interrupted me at the table,"
he recommenced, gazing at me thoughtfully through a nimbus of tobacco
smoke, "was this: Theoretically, I am a fond and enthusiastic father;
practically, I haven't seen the baby more than a dozen times--and he has
always yelled at sight of me."
I laughed aloud, nervously, and Tom's glance had in it much astonishment
and a little annoyance.
"It's hardly a subject for merriment, is it?" he queried, coldly. "You
accuse me of not appreciating Horatio. May I ask you, my dear, when I
have had an opportunity of observing his--ah--good points, so to speak?
To be frank with you, Clare, and to paraphrase a popular song, 'all
babies look alike to me.'"
"But there are great differences among them, Tom," I cried, impulsively;
and again a touch of hysteria got into my voice.
"And ours, of course, is the finest in the world," he remarked,
good-naturedly. "But what I was getting at, Clara, is this: I want to
become better acquainted with the boy. He's old enough now, isn't he,
to begin to--what is it they call it?--take notice?"
"Oh, yes." I managed to answer, without breaking down. If Tom would
only change the subject! But how could I lead his mind to other things?
Surely, I couldn't tell him flatly that hereafter the baby must be a
tabooed topic between us, that there really was not any Horatio, that
the law of psychic evolution through repeated reincarnations was making
in our nursery a demonstration unprecedented in our knowledge of the
race. All that I could do was to sit silent, pressing my cold hands
together, and endeavor to prevent Tom from observing my increasing
agitation.
"He sits up and takes notice," repeated Tom, as if proud of his old
nurse's phrase. "Well, it's about time that Horatio ceased to treat me
with that antagonistic uproariousness that has characterized his
demeanor hitherto in my presence. I have decided to cultivate his
acquaintance, Clare, and I need your help."
"He's--he's very young, Tom," I remarked, catching at a straw as I sank.
"I actually believe that you're jealous of the boy, my dear," cried Tom,
laughingly. "Frankly, I'm greatly disappointed at your reception of my
suggestion. You're so illogical, Clare! In one breath you charge me
with lack of appreciation of the baby, and in the next you intimate that
he's too young to endure my society. You place me in a very awkward
position. I had honestly thought to please you, but I seem to have made
a mess of it."
I was sorry for Tom, and realized that the accusation he had made
against me was just. For a moment the mad project flashed through my
mind of telling him the whole truth, the weird, absurd, unprecedented
fact that lay at the bottom of my apparent inconsistency. But the
instant that the thought took shape in unspoken words I rejected it as
wildly impracticable. Furthermore, there had come to me, under the
matter-of-fact influences surrounding me, a possibility that appealed to
me as founded on common sense. Was it not reasonable to suppose that I
had been the victim before dinner of overwrought nerves, of an
hallucination that could be readily explained by purely scientific
methods? I had gone to the nursery worn out by social exertions to
which I had not been recently accustomed. Alone with the baby in the
twilight, would it have been strange if I had fallen asleep for a moment
and had dreamed that the child was talking to me? As I looked back upon
the episode at this moment, it appeared to me more like the vagary of a
transient doze than an actual occurrence. Even the "Damn!" that had
seemed to issue from Horatio's tiny mouth as I had kissed his cheek
might have been merely the tag-end of an interrupted nightmare, the
reflex action of my disordered nervous system.
"You haven't made a mess of it, Tom," I said, presently, "and you have
pleased me. The baby's old enough to--to--"
"To find my companionship bracing and enlightening?" suggested Tom,
merrily.
"Yes, he's old enough for that," I answered, lightly, glad to feel the
fog of my uncanny impressions disappearing before the sunlight of a
rising conviction. With every minute that passed thus gaily in Tom's
companionship, the certainty grew on me that in the nursery I had been
the prey of nervous exhaustion, not the helpless protagonist of a
startling psychic drama.
"I'll tell you what we'll do, Clare," remarked Tom, toward the close of
an evening that had grown constantly more enjoyable to me as time
passed, for, as I playfully misquoted to myself, Horatio was himself
again, "I'll tell you what we'll do. I'll come home to luncheon
to-morrow and we'll have the baby down from the nursery. I suppose
we're all out of high chairs; but you can telephone for one in the
morning, my dear."
"But, Tom, Horatio is--is only eight months old," I protested. "He--he
doesn't know how to act at the table."
"Well, I'll teach him, then," cried Tom, paternally. "He needs a few
lessons in manners, Clare. He has always treated me with the most
astounding rudeness. It's really time for him to come under my
influence, don't you think? Of course, I may be wrong. I don't know
much about these matters, but I can learn a thing or two by
experimenting with Horatio."
"He doesn't like his--" I began, impulsively, and then laughed, rather
foolishly. The influence of my dream, it appeared, was still upon me.
"Doesn't like what?" asked Tom, eying me searchingly, evidently
surprised at my untimely hilarity.
"Game and salads and other luncheon things," I explained, adroitly,
suddenly glad that the evening was at an end and that I could soon quiet
my throbbing nerves by sleep.
"We'll have some bread and milk for him," suggested Tom, hospitably.
"Maybe he won't yell at me if we give him something to eat--something in
his line, you know."
Again I succumbed to temptation and laughed aloud. "How little you know
about babies, Tom," I remarked, in my most superior way; but even as I
spoke the horrible suspicion crept over me again that I, also, might
have much to learn about my own little boy.
*CHAPTER III.*
*MY FIRST AND SECOND.*
Sometimes a breath floats by me,
An odor from Dreamland sent,
Which makes the ghost seem nigh me
Of a something that came and went.
--_James Russell Lowell_.
I lunched with Tom and Jack the next day. It was an appalling function,
driving me to the very verge of hysteria and destroying forever my
belief in my dream theory. My first husband sat in his new high chair,
pounding the table with a spoon, as if calling the meeting to order,
while my second husband sat gazing at the baby with a fatuous smile on
his handsome face that testified to his inability to rise to the
situation. Behind the baby's chair stood his nurse, evidently prepared
to defend her prerogatives as the protector of the child's health.
Lurking in the background was the phlegmatic butler, no better pleased
than the nurse at this experiment of Tom's.
"That's it! Go it, Horatio!" cried Tom, nervously. "Hit the table
again, my boy. That's what it's for."
"I thought that your idea, Tom, was to teach Horatio how to behave in
public," I suggested, playfully, still calm in the belief that I had
been deceived in the nursery by a dream.
"But as you said, Clare," argued Tom, "he's very young. It's really not
bad form, you know, for a baby to pound a table with a spoon. Is it,
nurse?"
"I think not, sir," answered the nurse, pushing the high chair back to
its place. The baby had kicked it away from the table while Tom was
speaking.
"Isn't he--isn't he rather--ah--nervous, my dear?" asked Tom, glancing
at me with paternal solicitude. "It's quite normal, this--ah--tendency
to bang things--and kick?"
"Perhaps he's hungry, Tom," I suggested, lightly. My spirits were
rising. In the presence of the baby, whose appearance and manner were
those of a healthy child something under a year in age, the absurdity of
my recent incipient nightmare was so evident that I blushed at the
recollection of my nonsensical panic. Reincarnation? Bah! what silly
rubbish we do get from the far East!
"Of course he's hungry," assented Tom, glancing down at a bird the
butler had put before him. "With your permission, nurse, I'll give the
youngster a square meal. How would a bit of the breast from this
partridge do? It's very tender and digestible--"
"How absurd, Tom!" I cried. "He'd choke!"
"He's choking as it is!" exclaimed Tom, half rising from his chair.
"Pat him on the back, nurse!"
"He's all right, sir," said the nurse, calmly as Horatio's cheeks lost
their sudden flush and he opened his pretty little eyes again. "You
needn't worry, Mr. Minturn. He's in perfect health, sir."
"Aren't they queer?" exclaimed Tom, glancing at me, laughingly.
"Sir?" cried the nurse in pained amazement.
"I meant babies, nurse," explained Tom, soothingly, motioning to the
disaffected butler to refill his wine-glass. "But look here, Clare; you
and I are eating and drinking heartily, but poor little Horatio is still
the hungry victim of a dietary debate. What is he to have?--milk?"
The baby leaned forward in his chair, seized his empty silver bowl with
a chubby hand, and hurled it to the floor.
"Horatio!" Tom's voice was stern as he scowled at the mischievous
youngster. I could not refrain from laughing aloud.
"Is that bad form, Tom, for a little baby?" I asked, mischievously.
"No," answered Tom, repentantly. "I don't blame you at all, Horatio.
Your prejudice, my boy, against an empty bowl when you are both hungry
and thirsty is not unnatural. Give him some bread and milk, nurse, or
he'll overturn the table. What a wonderful study it is, Clare, to watch
a baby develop! Do you know, Horatio is actually able to grasp a
syllogism!"
"Or a milk-bowl," I added.
"Don't interrupt my scientific train of thought," protested Tom, gazing
musingly at the child. "I saw his mind at work just now. 'I'm hungry,'
thought Horatio. 'There's my silver bowl. The bowl is empty. There
are bread and milk in the house. If I throw the empty bowl to the
floor, my nurse will return it to me filled with food. So here goes!
Q.E.D.' Clever baby, isn't he?"
It was at that moment I met the baby's eyes, and a sharp chill ran down
my back and found its way to my finger-tips. There was an expression in
the child's troubled gaze so eloquent that its meaning flashed upon me
at once. If the baby had cried aloud, "What an amazing fool that man
is!" I could not have been more sure than I was of the thought that had
passed through his infantile mind.
"What's the matter, Clare?" I heard Tom asking me, apprehensively. "Do
you feel faint?"
"Not at all," I hastened to say, turning my eyes from my first to my
second husband. The former was eating bread and milk--reluctantly, it
seemed to me--from a spoon manipulated by his nurse. That it was really
Jack who was sitting there in a high chair, doomed to swallow baby food
while he craved partridge and Burgundy was a conviction that had come to
me for a fleeting moment, to be followed by a return to conventional
common sense and a renewed satisfaction in my environment. Tom sat
opposite me, smiling contentedly, while between us, at a side of the
table, the baby perfunctorily absorbed a simple but nutritious diet,
deftly presented to his tiny mouth by his attentive nurse. It was a
charming scene of domestic bliss at that moment, and I realized clearly
how much I had to lose by giving way, even intermittently, to the
wretched hallucinations that my overwrought nerves begot.
"Just look at him, Clare!" exclaimed Tom, presently. "I tell you it's
an interesting study. It's elevating and enlightening, my dear. To an
evolutionist there's a world of meaning in that baby's enthusiasm for
bread and milk. Here he sits at the table covered with gastronomic
luxuries and actually rejoices in the simplest kind of food. You see,
Clare, how well the difference between Horatio and myself in regard to
diet illustrates Spencer's definition of evolution as a continuous
change from indefinite, incoherent homogeneity to definite, coherent
heterogeneity through successive differentiations and integrations.
Great Scott, nurse! What's the matter with him? He's choking again!"
"It's nothing, sir," remarked the nurse, quietly, as the baby recovered
from a fit of coughing and resumed his meal. "But, if you'll pardon the
remark, sir, I think that he's much better off in the nursery."
It was not a tactful suggestion, and I knew that Tom felt hurt; but he
maintained his self-control and made no further comment, merely glancing
at me with a smile in his eyes. I realized, with a vague uneasiness,
that open and active hostilities between baby's nurse and Tom were among
the possibilities of the near future, and it was not a pleasing thought.
"What does he top off with?" asked Tom, presently, grinning at Horatio,
who had emptied his bowl and had stuck a fist into his rosebud mouth, as
if still hungry. "Have you got an ice for him, James?"
The butler stood motionless, gazing fixedly at the nurse.
"What queer ideas you have, Tom!" I cried, to break the strain of an
uncomfortable situation. "An ice would give him an awful pain."
"Perhaps he'd like a Welsh rabbit, then?" growled Tom, crossly.
The baby seized a spoon and rapped gleefully on the table.
"Isn't he cunning!" I cried, delightedly. "He's happy now, isn't he? I
am inclined to think, Tom, that he'd rather have a nap than a rabbit."
"Not on your life!" came a deep, gruff voice from nowhere in particular.
I looked at Tom in amazement, thinking that he had playfully disguised
his tones and was poking fun at me and the baby. But Tom's expression
of wonderment was as genuine as my own, while the nurse was gazing over
her shoulder at the butler, who was eying us all in a bewildered way.
Tom glanced at the nurse.
"Leave the room, James," he said hotly. "I'll see you later in the
smoking-room." Then, to the nurse: "Remove the baby, will you, please?
Thank you for letting us have him for an hour."
As soon as we were alone in the dining-room, Tom leaned toward me and
said: "Shall I discharge James, my dear? He was most infernally
impudent, to put it mildly."
But the frightful certainty had come to me that the butler was innocent
of any wrong-doing. Absurd as the bald statement of fact seemed to be,
my first husband was the guilty man, and, struggle as I might against
the conviction, I knew it.
"Give him another chance, Tom." I managed to say, my voice unsteady and
my tongue parched. "James was not quite himself, I imagine. I'm not
well, Tom. Give me a swallow of cognac, will you, please?"
Tom, alarmed at my voice and face, hastily handed me a stimulant, and
presently I felt my courage and my color coming back to me.
*CHAPTER IV.*
*NURSERY CONFESSIONS.*
The priceless sight
Springs to its curious organ, and the ear
Learns strangely to detect the articulate air
In its unseen divisions, and the tongue
Gets its miraculous lesson with the rest.
--_N. P. Willis_.
I longed, yet dreaded, to have an hour alone with the baby. I could no
longer doubt that, through some psychical mischance, Jack's soul had
found a lodgment in a family hospitable by habit and inclination, but
not accustomed to disquieting intrusions. It was thus that I put the
matter to myself, as I sat alone in my boudoir after luncheon, having
dismissed Marie, my maid, with a message to Horatio's nurse; and the
conventional make-up of my thought revealed to me, in a flash of
insight, the materialistic tendencies of my mental methods.
Metempsychosis had never assumed to my mind the dignity of even a
philosophical working hypothesis. Much less had the idea ever come to
me that reincarnation actually furnished a process through which the
physical laws of evolution and the conservation of energy might find a
psychical demonstration.
My natural inclination to take the world as I found it, and to leave the
inner mysteries of life to profounder minds than mine, had been
intensified by my association with Tom, a disciple of Haeckel, Buechner
and other extremists of the materialistic school. I had come to admire
Tom's intellectuality and to find satisfaction in the fact that his
fondness for scientific studies would strengthen him to resist the
temptations that surrounded him to become a mere man of leisure and
luxury. Possessed of great wealth and without a profession, it was
fortunate for Tom that he had found in scientific research an outlet for
his superabundant energies. He had begun to make a reputation for
himself as a clear-headed, well-balanced evolutionist, both conservative
in method and progressive in spirit, and at our table could be found at
times the leading scientific minds of New York. And now, into our
little stronghold of enlightened materialism had been dropped a
miraculous mystery, or mysterious miracle, that had overthrown all my
preconceived ideas of the universe and opened before me a limitless
field of groping conjecture. I realized, with due gratitude to fate,
that if I had been born with an imaginative, poetical temperament my
present predicament would have driven me insane at the outset.
Fortunately for everybody concerned, I am a woman who rebounds quickly
from the severest nervous shock, and I have taken a great deal of pride
in retaining my mental poise in crises of my life that would have made
hysteria excusable.
Nevertheless, it was a severe test of my nervous strength to hold
Horatio in my arms at four o'clock that afternoon and watch his nurse
donning her coat and hat preparatory to a short ride with Marie. I had
carefully planned this opportunity for an uninterrupted hour with the
baby, but now that it lay just before me I longed to run away from it.
The nursery had become to me a temple of mysteries within which I felt
chilled and awe-stricken, a victim of supernatural forces against which
I was both rebellious and powerless.
After the nurse had left the room I seated myself in a rocking-chair,
cuddling Horatio in my arms and softly humming a lullaby, attempting to
deceive myself by the thought that I really wished him to sleep for an
hour. In my innermost consciousness lay the conviction that I had
actually come to the nursery for a heart-to-heart talk with Jack. My
deepest desire was to be quickly gratified. A gruff whisper came to me
presently from his pretty lips.
"Stop that 'bye-bye, baby,' will you, Clarissa?" he said, petulantly.
"Haven't I had enough annoyance for one day?"
"Hush! hush!" I murmured, rocking frantically in the effort to put the
child to sleep, despite my realization of the utter inconsistency of my
action.
"Don't! don't!" growled the baby. "Do you want me to have _mal-de-mer_,
Clarissa? I can't be responsible for what may happen. Where did
everybody get the notion that a baby must be shaken after taking? It's
getting to be an unbearable nuisance, Clarissa."
"Is that better, Jack?" I whispered, holding him upright on my knees and
peering down into his disturbed face, puckered into a little knot, as if
he were about to cry aloud.
"Thank you," he muttered, gratefully. "Under the circumstances, my
dear, perhaps it's well that I didn't get that Welsh rabbit. But,
frankly, I was bitterly disappointed at the moment."
"What can you expect, Jack?" I asked, argumentatively, again astonished
at the matter-of-fact way in which I was handling this astounding
crisis. "You seem to have a man's appetite but only a baby's digestive
apparatus."
"That's my punishment, Clarissa," he explained, in awe-struck tones.
"In the former cycle I ate too many rabbits. That was scored against
me, under the general head of 'Gluttony,' and the sub-title 'Midnight
Unnecessaries.' I'm up against it, Clarissa. I wouldn't complain if it
were merely a question of not getting what I want. But it's getting
what I don't want that jars me. You understand, of course, my dear,
that, generally speaking, I refer to milk. Isn't there something in its
place that you could persuade the nurse to give me? Don't babies
get--er--malt extract, for instance?"
"I'll do what I can for you, Jack." I said, suddenly struck by a
brilliant idea. "But I must make a condition, and you must make me a
promise."
"I'd promise you anything for a change of diet," muttered Jack, kicking
vigorously with his tiny legs and waving his fat fists in the air.
"If you'll swear to me, Jack, never to speak aloud again unless you and
I are alone together, I'll agree to make every effort in my power to add
to your physical comforts."
"Comforts be--blowed!" exclaimed the baby, crossly. "What I want are a
few luxuries. And, furthermore, my dear, I'm getting very weary of that
machine-made nurse. She's narrow, Clarissa. I don't wish to speak
harshly about a woman whose heart seems to be in the right place, but
you must get rid of her, if you care a continental rap about your little
baby. You'll have to fill her place, Clarissa, with somebody more
broad-minded and up-to-date. She bores me to death."
"You don't mean that you've been talking to her, Jack?" I cried,
horrified.
"That's not necessary," growled the child. "What with her ''ittle baby
go to seepy,' and 'now, Horatio, 'oo dear 'ittle pet lambie,' she
freezes the words upon my tongue. Another thing, Clarissa, that you
can't fully understand--I'm not permitted, through psychological
conditions that you cannot grasp, to talk to anybody but you. It will
relieve your mind to know that I'm as dumb as a--as a real baby when
you're not within hearing."
"I'm so glad of that, Jack," I exclaimed, impulsively. "From things
you've said before, I had obtained a different impression."
"I was only trying to scare you, Clarissa," remarked Jack,
mischievously. "But I've told you the truth at last. By the way, what
a stupendous idiot Tom Minturn is! How in the world did you happen to
marry him?"
"Jack," I cried, angrily, "I am amazed at your lack of good taste. You
are hardly in a position to do Tom justice. Unless you refrain from
making such brutal remarks in the future, I shall leave you entirely to
the care of the nurse."
"And be accused of neglecting your only child," suggested the baby,
slyly.
I had not grasped the full scope of this clever remark, before I was
startled by a quick step in the hallway, the throwing open of the door,
and the sound of Tom's voice, crying:
"Oh, here you are! I've found you at last, have I? What a pretty
picture you make, Clare, there in the half-lights with the baby on your
knees. How is the dear little chap? Poor fellow, he must have thought
that his dismissal from the luncheon-table was rather abrupt."
"What an ass he is!" whispered Jack, under his breath. Then he began to
cry lustily, as had been his custom whenever Tom had deigned to enter
the nursery.
*CHAPTER V.*
*A SPOILED CHILD.*
Yes, 'tis my dire misfortune now
To hang between two ties,
To hold within my furrowed brow
The earth's clay, and the skies.
--_Victor Hugo_.
Tom had come to the nursery in high spirits and with the best possible
intention. Freed from the depressing presence of the nurse and butler
he had argued, I felt sure, that now was the time for a frolic with the
baby that should put their relations upon a smoother footing. He had
said to me, more than once, that little Horatio's apparent prejudice
against him was due to the fact that hirelings were always coming
between children and parents in these latter days.
The baby's voice, however, was still for war. I did not dare to trot him
upon my knees, knowing his prejudice against a shaking, so I sat there
gazing up at Tom's smiling face in perplexity and holding my first
husband, now howling lustily, firmly upright on my lap.
"Let me take him, my dear," suggested Tom, with what struck me as rather
artificial enthusiasm. "I'll walk with him awhile. It may quiet him."
To my astonishment, the baby stopped crying at once, as Tom bent down
and clasped him, rather awkwardly, in his arms. Hope began to dance
merrily in my heart, and I laughed aloud. It was a sight to bring smiles
to the saddest face. Tom paced up and down the nursery, sedately,
furtively watching Jack, as he nestled against his shoulder, making no
sound and apparently contented for the moment with the situation. But a
sudden fear fell upon me. The thought that this might be the calm
before the storm flashed through my mind, and the lightning of
premonition was almost instantly followed by the thunder of fulfilment.
"What the dickens!" cried Tom, in anger and amazement. Jack, having
deftly hurled Tom's eyeglasses to the floor, had begun to pummel his
nose with one hand while he pulled his hair with the other, making
strange, guttural sounds the while that were unlike anything that had
ever issued from his baby throat before.
"Take him away, will you, Clare?" implored Tom, wildly. "He's the worst
that ever happened. What's the matter with him?"
"Perhaps he's sleepy, Tom," I suggested, uncertain whether I should
laugh or weep, as I removed the baby from my second husband's arms.
"What a bad little boy you have been, Horatio!" I managed to say,
chidingly, wondering if nature had not designed me for an actress.
"He ought to be spanked," growled Tom, bending to the floor to grope for
his eye-glasses in the twilight.
"Spanked, eh?" whispered the baby, close to my ear. "We'll see about
that. I've got it in for him, all right. Just wait!"
"Hush! hush!" I implored him, hurrying back to the rocking-chair, to get
as far away from Tom as possible.
"What an infernal temper the boy has," remarked the latter, standing
erect again and replacing his eye-glasses upon his nose. "I'm afraid my
visit to the nursery has not been a success, Clare," he added, as he
stalked to the doorway, evidently sorely hurt at heart.
When we were alone together again, I planted the baby firmly on my knees
and bent down till I could look straight into his tear-stained eyes.
"You are very unkind, Jack," I said to him, earnestly. "Have you ever
paused to consider what are you here for? Of course, I'm a convert to
the theory of reincarnation. You're sufficient proof of its truth. As
I understand it, it is incumbent upon you to lead a better life this
time than you led before. Frankly, Jack, you aren't beginning well."
"I realize that, Clarissa," said the baby, repentantly. "If I don't
brace up, I'll make a terrible mess of it, and my next birth'll be sure
to jar me. Maybe I'll be doomed to show up in Brooklyn--or even
Hoboken. If you care anything about my--ah--psychical future, my dear,
you'll keep Tom Minturn away from me. He's so confoundedly patronizing!
He's actually insufferable, my dear. Did you hear him quoting Herbert
Spencer at the table, gazing at me all the while as if I were some kind
of a germ that might develop in time? And the funny part of it is,
Clarissa, that I am a sage, and he's nothing but a misguided ignoramus."
"But Tom has the reputation of being quite learned, Jack," I protested.
"He's an active member of the Darwin Society, and has just been elected
to the Association for the Promulgation of the Doctrine of Evolution."
"'And the dead, steered by the dumb, moved upward with the flood,'"
quoted the baby, somewhat irrelevantly, I thought. "They are blind
leaders of the blind, Clarissa. I could tell Tom in a minute more than
he'll ever know if he always clings to the idea that the universe is a
machine that was made by chance and is run by luck. But I sha'n't take
the trouble to give him the tip. He'll know a thing or two some day.
Meanwhile, my dear, you'd better keep him away from me. If worse comes
to the worst you might send me to some institution. I realize, bitterly
enough, that I'll be an awful nuisance to you if you keep me here."
I felt the tears coming into my eyes, and impulsively I drew the baby
closer to me. I was in the most deplorable predicament that my
imagination could conceive, torn by conflicting emotions and horrified
by the awful possibilities presented to me by the immediate future. If
Tom, through Jack's hot temper, should discover the truth, and be forced
suddenly to abandon materialism by coming face to face with a convincing
psychical demonstration, what would happen? I shuddered, there in the
gloaming, as my mind dwelt reluctantly upon the unprecedented perils
menacing my happiness. It was no comfort to my distraught soul to
realize that, in all probability, no woman, since the world began, had
been afflicted in just this way. Neither was there any relief in the
conviction that I had been in no way to blame for this incongruous
psychical visitation.
"No, I couldn't send you away, Jack," I said, musingly; "that is
practically impossible. We'll have to make the best of it, and our
successful manipulation of the situation depends almost wholly upon your
self-control. You must adapt yourself to your environment, my boy;
become a baby in fact as well as in theory. You'll be happier that
way."
"Don't talk nonsense, Clarissa," grumbled Jack, kicking viciously at his
long clothes. "I'm the victim of what might be called a temporary
maladjustment of the machinery of psychical evolution. Ordinarily, a
baby is not cognizant of a former existence. You advise me to forget
the past and remember only that I am your cunning little
eight-months-old Horatio. If I only could! It's the only thing that
could give me permanent relief, my dear. But it's not possible. Here I
am doomed to a kind of dual punishment, ashamed of myself as Horatio and
afraid of myself as Jack. And all because I clogged my psychical
progress in my late life by a carnal craving for Welsh rabbits! It
sounds absurd, doesn't it, when one puts it into words? But, my dear,
the sublime and the ridiculous are as close together in one realm of
existence as in another. Truth has many faces, and there's always a
grin on one of them."
"I think that I hear your nurse coming, Jack," I whispered. "Is there
anything that I can do for you?"
"Yes," he answered, excitedly, lowering his voice, however. "Do you
think, Clarissa, that you could secrete a flask of bottled cocktails in
the room somewhere? I've learned a thing or two of late that might
prove useful to me if I needed a stimulant and knew where to find it. I
can raise my body by my arms and hold up my whole weight for ten minutes
at a time. I've been experimenting at night, when the nurse was asleep.
Tom's an evolutionist; ask him about it. He'll explain to you how it
happens. You'll bring the cocktails, my dear?"
I hesitated, bewildered by his request; daring neither to grant nor deny
it. The nurse was half-way down the hall, and nearing the door rapidly.
"Take your choice, Clarissa," whispered the baby, coolly. "Unless you
promise me at once, I shall tell the nurse who I am, the moment she
enters the room."
My heart sprang chokingly into my throat, and I whispered, hoarsely:
"Very well, Jack. I'll do as you wish. But do be careful, won't you?
Don't take more than a sip at a time, will you?"
Before the baby could reply, the nurse had entered the room, smiling
gaily.
*CHAPTER VI.*
*PROTOPLASM AND FROTH.*
We have forgot what we have been,
And what we are we little know.
--_Thomas W. Parsons_.
There was not the least doubt that our dinner in honor of the German
biologist, Plaetner, had been a tremendous success. Long before we had
reached the game course I had caught the gleam of triumph in Tom's eyes,
and across the long board my gaze had met his in joyous congratulation.
It was not merely personal glory that we had won by this well-conceived
and smoothly executed social function. In a way, we had vindicated our
caste, had proved to a censorious world that the inner circle of
metropolitan society is not wholly frivolous, utterly indifferent to the
achievements of genius and the marvelous feats of modern science.
When Tom had first suggested to me the possibility of our entertaining
Plaetner, whose efforts had won the enthusiasm of materialists in all
parts of the world, I had fought shy of the project. Tom's idea was to
gather at our table the most noted scientists of the city, with the
German biologist as the magnet, and to select our women from among the
cleverest of our set, once vulgarly known as the "Four Hundred." Upon
his first presentation of the scheme I had argued that it was
impracticable, that the scientists would find our women frivolous, and
that our women would be horribly bored by the sages. Even up to the
moment of our entrance to the dining-room I had been annoyed by the fear
that my pessimistic attitude toward the function was to be vindicated,
that Tom's effort to make oil and water mix was doomed to failure.
And the funniest thing about the whole affair is that we were saved from
disaster and raised to glory through the quaint personality of the Herr
Doctor, our guest of honor. A typical German savant in appearance, with
spectacles, beard and agitated hair, he displayed from the outset a
perfect self-control beneath which, one quickly realized, glowed the
fires of a fine enthusiasm. Speaking French or English with a fluency
that was enviable, he aired his hobby in a genial, entertaining way,
which saved him from being the bore that a man with a fixed idea is so
apt to prove. Protoplasm may seem to be a most unpromising topic upon
which to base the conversation at a fashionable dinner-party, but I
found myself intensely interested, before the oyster-plates had been
removed, in the scientific discussion that the learned Herr Doctor had
set in motion and Tom had deftly kept alive.
"I had been impressed, years ago," Plaetner had begun, in answer to a
polite question from Mrs. "Ned" Farrington, who is a very tactful woman;
"I had been impressed by the similarity of protoplasm to a fine froth."
Here the German scientist held an oyster poised on a fork and gazed at
it musingly, the while he continued, in almost flawless English: "The
most available froth, soap lather, is made up of air bubbles entangled
in soap solution. After years of experimenting, my friends, I succeeded
in making an oil foam from soapy water and olive oil. Under the
microscope my solution closely resembles protoplasm."
"Does it really?" cried Mrs. "Ned," rapturously.
"Wonderful!" commented Professor Shanks, America's most noted
zooelogist.
"It's curious," remarked Elinor Scarsdale, rather cleverly, I thought,
"that from protoplasm to the highest civilization there should have been
a struggle from soap to soap."
The Herr Doctor glanced approvingly at the brightest debutante of the
season.
"In those words, young lady," he said, with flattering emphasis, "you
have summed up the whole history of physical evolution. But to
continue: My drops of oil foam act as if they were alive, their
movements bearing a most marvelous resemblance to the activities of
Pelomyxa, a jelly-like marine creature, protoplasmic in its simplicity."
The Herr Doctor was again addressing his remarks to his oyster fork.
"Do I understand you, Dr. Plaetner," asked Tom, from the foot of the
table, "that, under the microscope, rhozopod protoplasm, for example,
would resemble your--ah--oil foam?"
"So closely, sir," answered Herr Plaetner, instantly, "that I have often
deceived the most expert microscopists in Germany. Furthermore, Mr.
Minturn, my artificial protoplasm retains its activity for long periods
of time. I made one drop, sir, that was alive, so to speak, for six
days."
"And then it died?" asked Mrs. "Ned," mournfully.
"To speak unscientifically, yes," answered the German, carefully. "Now,
what are we to gather from all this, my friends?" The butler had
removed the oysters, and the Herr Doctor was forced to glance at his
audience.
"New reverence for soap and olive oil," suggested one of the younger
scientists, a professor at a neighboring university.
Plaetner eyed the speaker suspiciously, and then said:
"That, of course, sir; but much more than that. I have proved
conclusively, my friends, that the primary movements of life are due to
structure, and that there is absolutely no necessity for believing in
any peculiar vital essence or force. The living cell, I confidently
assert, may be built up out of inert matter. The old-fashioned idea of
a vital spark being absolutely essential is as obsolete as the belief in
special creation. Let me live a hundred years, my friends, and I'll make
for you a Goethe or a Shakespeare out of soap lather and olive oil."
"Just imagine it!" exclaimed Mrs. Farringdon, gazing with exaggerated
admiration at the German genius.
"It's really not so shocking to our pride of ancestry as it seems at
first sight;" Tom ventured to suggest. "Our generation has become
reconciled, perforce, to its humble origin. It is hard for us to
realize how severely Darwinism shocked our fathers and mothers."
"As I understand you, Dr. Plaetner," broke in Mrs. "Bob" Vincent,
turning the blaze of her great, dark eyes full upon the German's face,
"your discovery is a triumph for the extreme materialists? It destroys
absolutely all the bases upon which the belief in psychic forces rests?
We are machines, wound up to run for a while, and then to stop forever?"
"You have practically stated my creed, madame," answered the Herr
Doctor, gravely. "Constant motion, constant change--these are the alpha
and the omega of the universe. Why should we superimpose the concept of
a psychical existence upon a structure that is already perfect? As I
said in other words, my friends, I could, if sufficient time were
granted to me, rebuild the earth and its creatures in my laboratory."
"Provided that it was situated near a barber shop and a delicatessen
store," whispered Dr. Hopkins, who had been listening in silence on my
left to our guest of honor. I was glad to hear this subdued note of
protest from so eminent a source, but he shook his gray head as I
glanced at him approvingly. Professor Hopkins, Ph. D., loves science
but hates controversy. Had he crossed swords at that moment with the
German he would have found, I imagine, that the sympathies of my guests
were with the materialist. When a scientist frankly tells you that he
can manufacture protoplasm, and goes on to describe to you his method of
procedure, it's well to pause before plunging into an argument with him.
But I, who had good reason to know that Herr Plaetner was ludicrously at
fault in his conception of the universe, could not but regret that so
brilliant a champion as Dr. Hopkins had not rushed to the defense of the
truth. For a moment I was almost tempted to defy the rules of
hospitality and voice the new faith that had come to me in the existence
of psychic mysteries. This inclination was intensified by Herr
Plaetner's answer to a question put to him by one of the men.
"It's all the veriest rubbish," I heard the German saying, with great
emphasis. "All those Oriental philosophies and religions are merely
picturesque presentments of the truths that are clearly stated by modern
materialism, so-called. What is Nirvana but simply cessation of motion?
Admitting reincarnation, for example, as a working hypothesis, it would
mean simply the coming and going of atomic vibrations with successive
losses of identity. They are dreamers, those Orientals, seeing half
truths clearly enough, but never following them out to their logical
conclusions."
"And yet the East is the mother of lather and olive oil," murmured Dr.
Hopkins, under his breath.
At that instant my heart leaped into my throat, and I sprang to my feet
in affright. With Horatio in her arms, his nurse had rushed frantically
into the dining-room, despite the interference of the butler, and, with
blanched face and staring eyes, was bearing down on me, with the
purpose, evidently, of thrusting the baby into my grasp.
[Illustration: "_He's bewitched, ... He's been talking like a man._"]
"Take him! take him!" she cried, hysterically, and before I could resist
her insistence, Horatio was squirming in my bare arms. "He's
bewitched," continued his nurse, frantically. "He's been talking like a
man. I'm through with him. He ain't a baby! You just wait a moment,
Mrs. Minturn. He'll speak again in a moment. He's got a voice like a
steam calliope. And what he says! Oh, my!"
"Take her away at once," Tom was crying to the butler. "She has gone
crazy," he went on, rushing past our astounded guests to my assistance.
"Don't be frightened, my dear! I always thought that she was
unbalanced, and now I know it. Poor little Horatio! He looks scared to
death!"
*CHAPTER VII.*
*A BIOLOGIST AND A BABY.*
We know these things are so, we ask not why,
But act and follow as the dream goes on.
--_Lord Houghton_.
"Isn't he a lovely baby!"
"Don't send him away, Mrs. Minturn."
"Get his high chair for him, James."
"See him smile! I don't wonder at his relief. Just imagine being in the
care of a crazy nurse!"
"What wild eyes she had! You say she was always eccentric, Mr.
Minturn?"
"The baby's only eight months old? Really, Mrs. Minturn, he looks
older."
"He has such pretty eyes! And look at the dimples in his little hands.
Doesn't he ever cry? How good he is, dear little fellow!"
"Horatio! What a fine, dignified name! Horatio held a bridge, didn't
he? or was it a full house?"
"What a question for a famous scientist to ask!"
The baby, erect and smiling in his high chair, had wonderfully enlivened
our dinner-party. Even Tom, startled as he had been by the advent of the
distraught nurse, was now wholly at his ease and beamed genially from
the foot of the table upon the youngster, who seemed to be delighted at
the attention that he was receiving from beautiful women and famous men.
As he sat there, merrily waving a spoon in the air and crowing lustily,
I watched him with mingled pride and consternation. Although a most
distressing episode had been brought to a picturesque conclusion, there
seemed to me to be startling possibilities in the present situation. I
did not like the flush upon the baby's cheeks, the unnatural gleam in
his laughing eyes. Impulsively I bent down and kissed him upon his
pretty mouth. My worst fears were instantly realized, and I felt my
spinal marrow turn to ice. I had detected the odor of a cocktail upon
Horatio's--or, rather, Jack's--breath.
"I am forced to acknowledge, madame," I heard Herr Plaetner saying, in
answer to one of Mrs. Farringdon's leading questions, "I am forced to
acknowledge that my theories destroy much of the poetry of life. It is
a most prosaic attitude that I am forced to hold toward yonder most
beautiful baby, for example. Romance would point to him as an immortal
soul in embryo. Realism asserts that he is a machine, like the rest of
us, with a longer lease of activity before him than you or I have, who
have been ticking, so to speak, for several years."
"Be good, Horatio!" I whispered. "Don't cry. You can have an ice
pretty soon."
The baby brought his spoon down upon the table with a thump, and
actually glared at the German professor, while my guests laughed gaily
at the child's precocious demonstration.
"Isn't he cunning!" exclaimed Elinor Scarsdale, delightedly.
"He seems to have a prejudice against me, _nicht wahr_?" remarked the
Herr Doctor, laughing aloud.
"You aren't to blame for that, little boy," murmured Dr. Hopkins, so
that I alone could hear him. "He says that you are sprung from oil and
lather and are rushing toward annihilation."
"Bah!" yelled the baby. "Bah! bah! bah!"
"'Ba-ba, ba-ba, black sheep, have 'oo any wool?' quoted Professor
Rogers, the noted comparative philologist, who has identified the germ
of epic poetry in the earliest known cradle songs.
"Isn't he fascinating!" cried Elinor Scarsdale, referring to the baby,
not to the philologist.
"If you'll excuse me for a time," I said to my guests, seeing that Tom
was growing weary of Horatio's prominence at the table, "I'll take the
baby to the nursery."
"You'll do it at your peril," I heard a deep voice grumble, and Dr.
Hopkins jumped nervously and glanced at me in amazement.
"Don't run off with him, Mrs. Minturn," cried Mrs. Farringdon; and her
protest was sustained by a chorus of "don't" and "do let him stay."
"It may be only temporary," I heard Dr. Plaetner saying, as he gazed at
Professor Shanks, who had asked him, evidently, a question about the
baby's nurse. "It's not an uncommon form of insanity, and may be only
temporary. I recall an instance of a very learned and perfectly
harmless professor at Goettingen who believed for years that his pet cat
talked Sanskrit to him. There was at my own university a young man
wholly sane, apparently, who made a record of conversations that he had
held with the skeleton of a gorilla. Both of these men were eventually
restored to mental health, and have never had a return of their
delusions. It is fortunate, however, that the poor woman, whose
insanity we have so recently witnessed, exhibited her mania at this
time. What might have happened otherwise to that charming little baby I
shudder to think."
Horatio was pounding the table with a spoon, as if applauding the Herr
Doctor's remarks. Suddenly he dropped the spoon and made a grab for Dr.
Hopkins's wine-glass.
"What vivacity he has!" remarked Professor Shanks, as if addressing a
roomful of students interested in a zooelogical specimen.
"He seems to know a rare vintage when he sees it," suggested Dr.
Hopkins, intending, of course, to compliment his hostess.
"I think my dear--" began Tom, nervously.
"Don't go any further, Mr. Minturn," cried Elinor Scarsdale, playfully.
"The baby is so much more interesting than----"
"Protoplasm," added Dr. Hopkins, under his breath.
Dr. Plaetner was gazing at the baby searchingly. He had been impressed
evidently by certain eccentricities in Horatio's bearing.
"How old did you say the boy was, madame?" asked the German savant,
presently.
"Eight months," I answered, a catch in my voice that I could not
control.
"He's--ah--very intelligent for a child of that age," commented
Plaetner, laboring under the mistake that he was saying something
complimentary. "He has a most expressive face."
As the baby was scowling savagely at the German at that moment, and
frantically shaking his little fists at him, there were both pith and
point to the latter's remark.
"Rot!" muttered Jack, wickedly. I sprang to my feet and lifted him from
his chair. He kicked protestingly for a moment, and gave vent to a yell
that bore witness to his possession of a marvelous pair of lungs.
"Be quiet, Horatio," I whispered, imploringly, hurrying toward the door,
without further apology to my guests. "If you'll be silent now, I'll
have a bottle of champagne brought to the nursery."
At these words the baby nestled affectionately in my arms, and I felt
that the fight was won. Just as we reached the doorway, however, Jack
clambered to my shoulder and waved his little fist defiantly at my
guests.
"Damn that frowsy old German donkey!" he muttered, close to my ear.
"I'd give half a bottle of cocktails to prove to him what an amazing
ignoramus he is! Just wait a minute, will you, Clarissa?"
I rushed out of the dining-room without more ado. In another instant
Jack would have said the word that trembled on his tiny mouth, the word
that would have brought the whole temple of modern materialism toppling
down upon Herr Plaetner's devoted head.
*CHAPTER VIII.*
*HUSH-A-BY, NUMBER ONE!*
Methinks that e'en through my laughter
Oft trembles a strain of dread;
A shivery ghost of laughter
That is loath to rise from the dead.
--_Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen_.
The nursery was in a condition of much disorder as I entered it with the
baby's arms around my neck. Much to my surprise and delight Jack had
fallen asleep as we mounted the stairs. How to get him into his crib
without rousing him was a problem that I longed to solve, although I had
determined not to return to the dining-room. I would send a maid
presently to tell the butler to inform Tom that I could not leave the
baby at this crisis. Surely our guests would consider a crazy nurse
sufficient excuse for the retirement of their hostess.
But Jack opened his little eyes and crowed, rather hilariously, as I
laid him on his pillows.
"Don't go, my dear Clarissa," he said, his baby tones strangely out of
harmony with his words. "I have much to say to you at once. I owe you
an explanation and apology. Sit down, won't you?"
"Keep quiet, Jack," I whispered, "I'll be back in a moment."
After I had despatched a servant to the dining-room with my message to
Tom, and had assured myself that the baby's hysterical nurse had left
the house--poor woman, I was sincerely sorry for her!--I returned to the
nursery and shut myself in, with a feeling of great relief. So intense,
indeed, was my nervous reaction after hours of varied emotions that I
sank at once into a chair to check a sensation of dizziness that had
come over me as I crossed the room.
"Isn't this cosy!" exclaimed the baby, kneeling at the side of his crib
and striving to touch me with his fat, uncertain little hands. "I
wanted to say to you, Clarissa, that I did not deliberately plan to
frighten that tyrannical nurse of mine. To tell you the truth, my dear,
I had taken just one swallow too much of those cocktails and was
astonished to discover that, while thus slightly elevated, so to speak,
I could communicate in the language of maturity with
this--ah--comparative stranger. Naturally, it was a great shock to the
nurse. As I remarked to you before, my dear, she's narrow. A more
broad-minded woman would not have rushed before the public, making a
kind of Balaam's ass of a helpless baby. But she's been discharged, of
course?"
"She has gone away, if that's what you mean," I answered, laughing
rather hysterically. "How do you account for your sudden loquacity in
her presence, Jack?"
"That's a mystery," said the baby, screwing up his tiny mouth into a
funny little knot. "Spirits had something to do with it, I suppose."
"Spirits!" I repeated, nervously.
"Yes," responded Jack, clapping his palms together with a ludicrously
infantile gesture. "You see, my dear, there were spirits in the
cocktail. To tell you the truth, Clarissa, I'm a bit scared. I'm going
to swear off. By the way, did you order that champagne?"
"No," I answered, curtly.
"Well, perhaps it's better, on the whole, that you didn't," sighed the
baby, tumbling back on his pillows and waving his chubby legs in the
air. "I've about made up my mind, my dear, to lead a better life.
It'll be easier for me to be good than it has been, now that the nurse
is gone. She was so narrow, Clarissa! It was always on my mind, and it
finally drove me to drink."
"I'll have to replace her at once, Jack," I remarked, drawing my chair
closer to the crib. "What--ah--that is--have you some idea as to just
what kind of a nurse you'd like?"
The baby was on his knees again at the side of the crib, waving his
expressive fists in the air.
"Understand me, Clarissa," he said, sternly, "I refuse to risk my life
again by placing myself in the power of a hireling nurse. You can't
expect people of that kind to be open to new ideas. To a man of my
temperament, my dear, you must realize that repeated doses of baby-talk
are actually cloying. If you could engage some broad-minded, elderly
woman who had been deaf and dumb from birth, I might put up with her for
a while. But, of course, it would be hard to find such a prize. You'll
have to look after your little baby yourself, my dear, until I'm a few
years older. It'll be hard for you, I realize that, Clarissa. But,
frankly, is there any other alternative? If I'm to lead a better life,
my dear, I must have some encouragement."
I leaned back in my chair, and closed my eyes wearily. The burden that
had been thrust upon me was growing greater than I could bear.
"We'll postpone this discussion until to-morrow, Jack," I said,
presently. "I must think it all out carefully before I can come to a
decision. Meanwhile, you'd better go to sleep. It's getting late, you
know."
"You aren't going to leave me here alone, Clarissa?" cried the baby,
nervously. "You'd better not. There'll be trouble if you do."
The fact was that I was in a quandary as to what was the proper thing to
do, under the circumstances. I had only just begun to realize how many
problems had been solved by the presence of the nurse. At this time of
night it was impossible, of course, to get anybody to take her place.
At such a crisis as this the natural solution of the problem lay in my
temporary occupancy of her position. But I shrank from the obligation
that fate had so unkindly thrust upon me. Lifting the very willing baby
from the crib, I carried him to a rocking-chair, hoping that I might get
him to sleep while I came thoughtfully to a determination regarding my
course of action for the immediate future.
"Gently!" murmured Jack, cuddling gratefully in my arms. "A long, slow,
dreamy kind of rocking is not so bad, Clarissa. It's the tempestuous,
jerky style that I object to. That confounded nurse had a secret
sorrow. It used to bother her whenever she got me into this chair.
She'd groan and weep and swing me up and down, as if she were trying to
pulverize her grief, with me as the hammer. Then I'd begin to yell, and
she'd rock all the harder. You can't imagine, Clarissa, what your
little Horatio has suffered of late."
I laughed aloud nervously, knowing that my merriment had a cruel sound,
but unable to control it.
"Did you think that I was joking!" growled Jack, clutching at my chin,
angrily.
"Forgive me, Jack!" I exclaimed, repentantly. "I know that you've had an
awfully hard time, poor boy. And I promise you that I shall try my best
to make life easier for you, from now on. And now, Jack, do try to get
to sleep! I'll see to it that you are perfectly comfortable to-night,
and to-morrow we'll talk about the future. Would you like to have me
sing to you, Jack, as I rock you?"
The baby fairly shook with suppressed laughter at the suggestion.
"Doesn't it seem absurd, Clarissa?" he gasped, between chuckles. "Just
imagine what it really means. You're about to hum hush-a-bye-baby to
Number One, while Number Two is down-stairs talking scientific rubbish
to a lot of old fogies! If you should ever write your memoirs, my
dear----"
"Hush, Jack!" I cried, petulantly, setting the chair in motion. "I
shall never write anything for publication."
"Nonsense," commented the baby, drowsily. "Everybody does. You'll be
sure to try it on some day. What a story you could tell, couldn't you,
my dear? You might call it, with my permission, 'Clarissa's Troublesome
Baby.'"
*CHAPTER IX.*
*A BOSTON GIRL.*
It would be curious if we should find science and philosophy taking up
again the old theory of metempsychosis. But stranger things have
happened in the history of human opinion.--_James Freeman Clarke_.
It was only through the exercise of the nicest care that I escaped a
complete nervous collapse during the weeks immediately following our now
famous dinner to Herr Plaetner. I was tempted at times to run off to
Europe and leave my fevered household to fend for itself. I seemed to
spend the larger part of my time in keeping Jack quiet and Tom cool.
Which was the more difficult task I am unable to say. Jack remained
stubbornly unreasonable regarding the kind of nurse he was willing to
submit to, while Tom grumbled continually because I spent so much time
with the baby.
"What is the trouble in the nursery, Clarissa?" the latter asked me one
morning at breakfast. "You have tried ten different experiments there
since that crazy woman left us, and now you tell me that her place is
again vacant. We pay the highest wages, Horatio is not a sickly, fretful
child, but still these alleged nurses come and go, offering, so far as I
can learn, only the flimsiest excuses for throwing up a seemingly
desirable situation. There must be something radically wrong up there.
Have you any idea, my dear, what it is?"
How could I tell Tom the truth about the matter? Had I informed him
that the baby still insisted upon my engaging an elderly woman deaf and
dumb from birth, and refused to adapt himself to any one of the many
compromises that I had offered to him, Tom would have been justified in
suspecting the existence of insanity germs in our nursery. He had seen
one woman issue therefrom in an apparently crazy condition, and he had
noted the eccentric fickleness of her successors. If I should now lay
the actual facts before him, he would have good reason to believe that I
also had lost my mental balance. At that moment there came to me a
vague dread of my second husband's scientific habit of mind. It was
evident that he was bent upon collecting data about the baby and his
nurses, in order that he might reach some reasonable conclusion in
explanation of the existing disturbed conditions in our formerly
unruffled household. And the unfortunate part of it was that Tom had
the leisure and, I feared, the inclination to wrestle with this problem
until he had solved it in some way satisfactory to his exacting mind.
"The root of the trouble, Tom," I answered, presently, after carefully
weighing my words before uttering them, "the root of the trouble is not
in the baby or the nursery or the wages--or in me. It is to be found in
the great change that is going on in the conditions of domestic service.
A child's nurse to-day--I mean one of the kind that we should be willing
to employ--is a highly-trained specialist who has grown haughty and
despotic in the mere exercise of her profession. She realizes that the
demand for experts in her line is greater than the supply, and----"
"I see," interrupted Tom, rather rudely, I thought. "But it does seem
to me that if other people in our position, Clare, can find satisfactory
nurses, we should not be the one family in the city that is forced to
take care of its own baby. I am willing to pay any amount of money to
insure Horatio's comfort. I'll admit that he is difficult at times. He
seems to be a very sensitive, highly-strung child, but there's nothing
abnormal about him. He's pugnacious and hot-tempered, but most healthy
boy babies are inclined to be spunky, aren't they? What I object to is
that he is gradually absorbing all your time, day and night, Clare. I'm
not jealous of Horatio, my dear, but I don't believe in the
old-fashioned idea that parents should sacrifice their comfort upon the
altar of the nursery. You understand my position, do you not?"
"Gwendolen will be here to-day, Tom," I said, smiling at his disturbed
face from across the table. "I hope that she'll take a fancy to the
baby. At all events, she'll relieve the situation. When your wife's in
the nursery, Tom, you'll have your cousin to talk to."
"Bah!" grumbled Tom, rising and placing a hand on the back of his chair,
"Gwendolen's pretty and chic and up to date, but she's not in your class
intellectually, my dear."
I smiled gratefully at Tom's compliment, but my mind was not at ease.
Wasn't the presence of Gwendolen Van Voorhees in the house more likely
to prove disastrous than satisfactory? When, however, Tom had insisted
that his cousin's long-deferred visit to us be made at once, I could
find no reasonable argument to oppose to his washes. From various
points of view, Gwendolen's advent to the household appeared to be
desirable. She was a charming girl, well read, widely traveled and a
thoroughbred little _mondaine_. But I dreaded her arrival, despite the
fact that I could not have put the vague fears that haunted me into
specific words. I was beginning to realize what it means in this
prosaic, unimaginative world to hide in one's bosom an uncanny secret.
There had come to me, of late, moments when the inclination to tell Tom
the whole truth about Horatio--or, rather, Jack--was almost
irresistible. Perhaps my real reason for objecting to Gwendolen's
presence was my fear, unacknowledged to myself, that I should be tempted
eventually to tell her the amazing tale of Jack's ridiculous
reincarnation. There were times, and they had constantly become more
frequent, when the burden of my secret seemed greater than I could bear,
when the longing to confess to somebody that the baby was a psychical
freak of the most astounding kind burned hot within me. As I lingered
over my coffee in the breakfast-room that morning, after Tom's
departure, the immediate future looked black enough, and I could not see
that the coming of Gwendolen gave it a lighter shade.
Nevertheless, I was really glad to welcome her later in the morning as I
met her at the door of the drawing-room, and kissed her pretty, piquante
mouth affectionately.
"I was awfully glad to come to you, Clare," she cried, vivaciously, as
we mounted the stairs that I might show her to her rooms. "You know the
song with the chorus, 'There's one New York, only one New York?' It's
been running through my mind for two days."
"But I thought that you were wedded to Boston, Gwen," I remarked, my
mind wandering for a moment as we passed the closed door of the nursery.
Presently we were seated cozily before an open fire in the guest
chamber, while Gwendolen, dark, petite, smiling, appeared to me to be a
most ornamental and fascinating addition to our little circle.
"Boston is amusing," she was saying, in her pleasantly emphatic way,
"but it's so erratic, don't you know. My nerves always begin to ache
after I've been there a few weeks. They are so fond of fads, Clare,
those clever Bostonians! They take up everything, you know, and always
go to extremes."
"It's American history now, is it not?" I asked.
"Yes," answered Gwen, gazing at the fire musingly. "That's coming in
again. But they're perfectly crazy about theosophy just at present.
You'd be amazed, Clare, to discover how much I know about Nirvana and
adepts and metempsychosis, and all that kind of thing. Several of my
most intimate friends have become vegetarians and live mostly on baked
beans. It's awfully funny--they take it all so seriously."
"And what do you really think of it, Gwen?" I asked, nervously.
"Think of what, of which, my dear? Of living on beans, do you mean?"
"No. Beans are only a side issue, or, to speak with Tom's scientific
accuracy, a side dish. What do you think, for instance, of
reincarnation?"
"I don't know what to think about it, Clare," she answered,
reflectively, pushing her dainty little feet toward the fire and gazing
into my face with earnest eyes. "Do you know, there are times when I
really imagine that there's something in it! Of course, it's absurd in
a way, but it does solve a great many problems, does it not? It
conforms beautifully to the laws of evolution and the conservation of
energy, and there are so many things that can't be explained by any
other theory! But it always makes me shudder to think of it. Imagine,
Clare, being born again in Turkey, for example. Wouldn't it be
shocking?"