All things considered, it was not strange that Clement Rhodes should
have looked back upon his one year of marriage as a mere episode in his
experience. His had been a life of more or less excited and turbulent
episodes, all through, and perhaps that one--his marriage with an
ignorant and pretty school-girl--was now among the vaguest of all the
emotional impressions which were stamped upon his brain.
He had been nearer to fifty than forty, and a conventional type of old
beau, when he had chanced to be thrown familiarly into the society of
this young girl. Young girls were somewhat rare in his experience,
for the reason that all such who had any one to look out for them,
were protected from the dangers of anything more than a very casual
acquaintance with him. He was permitted to take them in to dinner, to
dance with them, or to pay them any passing attention when they were
fully chaperoned, but there the line was drawn.
It was an unusual experience for him, therefore, when, during a
visit to some friends in the country, he found himself frequently
_tête-à-tête_ with a girl of eighteen, who had as little idea of
protecting herself from a man like him, as her hostess had of
protecting her. The fact was that this hostess had frankly declared to
him her wish that he should marry this girl, saying that she was both
too poor and too pretty to look out for herself.
The idea, when first presented to Rhodes, seemed absurd in the extreme,
for he was poor also, and lived in a hand-to-mouth fashion, which
he had known better than to ask any woman to share. He had never
entertained the possibility of marrying any but a rich woman, and
now, as he had grown older, and his shiftless habits were more fixed
upon him, he had begun to realize that his chance of doing this was
very small. The idea of marrying a penniless girl, however, was more
preposterous still, and it was therefore a great surprise to him when
he found himself committed to this marriage.
It had come about simply enough. He was a thoroughly initiated old
flirt, and when he had tried some of his wiles upon this _ingénue_, and
she had responded by an innocent revelation of her love for him, there
proved to be one note in him sufficiently finely attuned to compel
him to act honorably by this young girl who had trusted him. Without
stopping to consider how it would hamper him for the future, he married
her, and took her to as comfortable a little set of rooms as he could
manage to secure.
He was in love with her, of course. Falling in love was one of the
most facile of feats to Rhodes, and falling out was about as easy.
Heretofore, dancers and comic-opera singers had been the most frequent
objects of his worn-out affections, and the present contrast to all
this had undoubtedly something piquant in it.
After a few months, however, the prosaic demands of the monotonous home
life in the little suburban roost, where his friends never came, grew
very wearing, particularly as his wife was delicate, and indisposed
to join him in his trips to the theatres and concert-halls, which had
become a confirmed habit of his life. She did not wish to confine him
at home, however, and she insisted that he should go without her, so
that gradually he found himself slipping back into his bachelor ways.
It was very welcome to Rhodes about this time to have any means of
drowning care, for he was badgered about debts and expenses, finding it
more than he could do to keep going even that poor establishment. He
had a desultory occupation as an insurance agent, by which he picked
up a little money now and then; but younger and more industrious men
were fast pushing him aside, and his income diminished as his expenses
increased.
It was, therefore, even to his consciousness, just as well that his
young wife died. It would perhaps have been better if the baby had died
with her, and he could so have buried out of sight all reminder of that
strange and incongruous episode in his life.
But the baby, a tiny girl, did not die. She struggled through teething,
and whooping cough, and measles, and many other such attacks, in the
midst of neglect, cold, heat, hunger, and pain, and lived on, growing
into an almost preternaturally serious, wise, and thoughtful child.
There is a theory of which this father and child might be taken as
striking examples. It is to the effect that every created soul has
the same period of human life to compass, and that it exists, in
successive human incarnations, until that period is accomplished.
Sometimes, but an hour or a minute may be needed to make up the exact
sum, but the re-incarnation must necessarily be, even if for no longer
a time than that. This theory, we are told, accounts for the phenomena
of youth in age, and age in youth, which we so often see; in other
words, it explains why a very aged person is often silly and childish,
and a young child wise and matured in mind. When this occurs (so the
theory goes) the old person is in his or her first incarnation--is,
in fact, a young soul--while the child may be in his or her last
incarnation, an old soul almost ready to be liberated from humanity and
admitted to the higher life.
Whether there be truth in this theory, or not, certain it is that Clem
Rhodes had the attributes of a young soul, ignorant in mind and shallow
in feeling, while his little daughter (whom her fond mother had named
Clementina) had the mental force and depth of feeling which might well
seem to belong to an old soul.
The strangest part of it was the way in which they both seemed to
realize the truth about themselves. Although Clementina was now but
six years old, and her father was well over fifty, there could be
no question as to which of them was the guiding, ruling, dominating
spirit. Her mind was as marked for its orderliness as her father’s was
for the absence of that trait. Quite from within, she had evolved a
sentiment of horror for debt and loose dealing of every kind, and she
would sit in judgment on her father for such practices in a way, which,
however strange, he never thought of resenting. In some way never fully
accounted for, she had formed the habit of calling him “Clem,” or
“Boy,” instead of “Papa.”
Clementina was by no means beautiful--a small, thin, pale child, with
enormous dark eyes, which were so thoughtful and steady in their
expression that most people who looked at her, ever so casually, found
their attention caught and fixed, and an impression of wonder conveyed
to them.
The child’s life was almost absolutely lonely, in spite of the fact
that she had found out and entered herself as a pupil at a small free
school in the neighborhood; for she kept apart from everyone; and
although she made extraordinary progress in her lessons, she made
no friends. It was her father’s habit to be absent all day, so she
prepared her little mid-day meal, and partook of it alone.
By this time Rhodes’s flagging energies and accumulating years had
reduced him to such poverty, that his former rather comfortable set of
rooms was now diminished to one, and in this he and the child slept,
cooked, ate their meals, and lived. They had two folding-beds, which
were closed up in the daytime, and a folding-table, which was then
opened. At night, the beds were lowered into the central space of the
room, and the table folded back against the wall.
Rhodes always took his breakfast and late dinner with the child, these
meals being cooked and served by her with very little help from him.
She also did the marketing, and kept the accounts, setting down all her
figures neatly and accurately, but getting his help in adding up the
columns.
The father, of course, had a life of his own, which was as apart from
that of the child, as her long, lonely hours were apart from his. He
had dropped out of society, almost entirely, and he frequented the
theatres more than ever. Occasionally, he took the child with him; but
although she never so far relaxed her dignity as to fall asleep, she
seemed to get but little pleasure out of it, and her solemn air and
deeply thoughtful expression so grated on him, that he was glad that
she did not oftener express a wish to go.
Clementina was a strangely wakeful child, and he had never yet been
able to steal into the room, no matter at what hour of the night, or
with what degree of stealth, that she had not heard him.
“That you, Boy?” she would say, her voice sounding strangely conscious
in the stillness and darkness. Then, invariably, she would sit up in
her little bed, and strike a match and light the candle placed beside
her. Then, when at her command he would come to kiss her good-night,
she would give him that swift, searching look, which he always knew was
coming, and then, if satisfied, she would lie down and go quietly to
sleep.
As a general thing, it happened that she was satisfied, but there had
been times when it was otherwise, and those occasions Rhodes remembered
with such distinct unpleasantness, that they served him as valuable
warnings. She had never uttered any rebuke in words, but the deep,
penetrating condemnation of her concentrated gaze had made him feel,
that for that moment his life was turned inside out to her, and that
she saw him as he was.
This was all the more painful to him, because of the fact that the
child seemed to be possessed of an inherent respect for him. She
advised, and even censured him at times, it is true, but always Rhodes
had a sense of being deferred to, and it was a grateful feeling to the
heart of such a poor devil as he.
Clementina never complained of solitude, and, as a rule, she seemed to
prefer these lonely evenings, spent in studying her lessons, tidying
things up, sewing on buttons, cleaning spots from her father’s clothes,
and doing odd jobs of mending, to the alternative of going to the
theatre. Occasionally, however, she would announce that she was going
with him, and at such times he never objected.
Rhodes had now been a widower for more than six years, and these years
had been a tolerably fair copy of his bachelor days, except that he now
made his life among people of a somewhat lower grade than formerly;
for they were almost exclusively third-rate actresses, dancers,
concert-singers, etc. It was a life through which he would quickly have
sunk very low, but for one thing--the influence of Clementina. She
never preached goodness to him, nor talked religion (poor child, she
had been taught little enough of either!), and yet she continually held
him up to his better self, and dragged him back to it when he fell away.
About this time there appeared a celebrated dancer, whose services were
engaged for the entire season at the Summer-Garden concerts, and poor
old Clem, for the fortieth time, imagined that the _grande passion_ of
his life had come upon him.
Mademoiselle Tarara was not so far removed from first youth as he,
but still she was by no means young. Her matured charms, however,
were positively deadly to the troops of boys who attended these
concerts, and she soon found herself not only a financial, but a
popular success. She was fond of boys, and her intercourse with them
was far less harmful to them than it might have been. She had a great
deal of rollicking fun in her, and she could always sing better and
kick higher, when she was spurred on by the enthusiastic clapping and
shouting of her young admirers. With the single exception of Rhodes,
they were all many years her junior.
And if she was fond of the boys, she was also fond of Rhodes, for the
very reason that he was a foil for them. Life was behind him, as it was
behind her, and she often found his point of view congenial, after too
much of the boyish element.
So Rhodes was admitted to the privilege of visiting her at her own
rooms, which the boys were not, and his battered old heart was in the
seventh heaven of delight.
The people whom he met at the Tarara’s rooms were of a sort with
herself, and all of them were so easy-going and inconsequent, that it
was a pleasant reaction from the rather constraining ideal held up to
him by his child.
Poor old Clem! He had been a dreamer all his life--of the earth,
earthy, though his dreams had been--and shifting and unstable as they
were in character. The favor which the Tarara showed him now had led
him into dreams of a marriage with her, which would establish him for
life in the green-room and lime-light atmosphere which he loved, and
would give him, not only the Tarara herself, with whom he believed he
was madly in love, but also all the other things which he desired in
life. In the pursuance of these hopes, he had resolutely concealed from
her the knowledge of the fact that he had a child, believing that it
would be quite fatal to his cause.
In the evenings, when work was over, and the tiny room in perfect
order, Clementina would sit alone and think. Of what did she think
there in her little chair, so neat and self-collected, with her eyes
fixed on space, or else occasionally turned upward to the stars, of
which she could see a small bright patch out of her little window? Her
experience in this human existence had been so meagre, the avenues of
knowledge so limited, that it would almost seem reasonable to suppose
that she drew upon former experiences in some other incarnation, for
the material of that deep thinking and wise doing, which continually
occupied her.
One evening, it happened that Clem became conscious of an unusually
penetrating and scrutinizing look fixed upon him by this austere child
of his, and he imagined that it was in some occult way the result of
that investigation, which caused her to announce, suddenly,
“I’m going with you this evening, Clem.”
“Where?” he said, surprised.
“Wherever you are going.”
“I’m going to the concert,” he said; and then added, dissuadingly,
“You wouldn’t like it.”
“But I’m going,” she answered, putting away her dusting-cloth, after
having made the room as neat as usual.
He felt a certain protest and anxiety, but he never resisted her, and
so a little later they were taking their places in front of the lowered
curtain. The prices at these concerts were very small, and there was
always a good attendance, but the child and her father being early, had
secured good seats.
In spite of himself, Clem was feeling rather uncomfortable this
evening. He was not so free to indulge his admiration for the
inimitable Tarara with this discordant element beside him--and what
if his secret should be discovered? He had, moreover, the strongest
feeling that Clementina’s eyes invariably saw through the surface of
things into their souls. He was afraid for her to see the Tarara, and
still more afraid for the Tarara to see her, though, of course, if
this should happen, he need not own the relationship between them.
Clem now felt a shrinking from the thought of Clementina’s comments
on the Tarara, and he didn’t like the idea of the dancer appearing
before the child in her tinsel and tights. She always came out arrayed
thus for at least one dance, though she generally changed her costume
several times during the evening.
As Rhodes took a furtive look at the figure beside him, his sense of
discomfiture increased.
She was startlingly pale, and so slim and delicate, that he was not
surprised that the people about them looked at her with a certain pity,
of which, it was evident, she took no account. Her odd garments and
queer hat also marked her out for special notice; and when, taken in
connection with all the rest, one noted the strange penetrating gaze
of her immense dark eyes, it was not surprising, perhaps, that Rhodes
felt uncomfortable and half irritated at the position in which he found
himself.
That fixed, absorbed look on the child’s face did not change when the
performance began. It was a merry chorus which made the audience laugh
and beat time, but Clementina was unmoved. Then two men came out and
danced a clog-dance, during which her look remained the same--as if,
somehow, she saw through and beyond it all.
It was with a feeling of distinct apprehension that Rhodes now saw
Mademoiselle Tarara make her appearance. She was dressed in an Italian
peasant costume, but the skirts were shorter and the bodice lower than
necessity required. He looked at the child to see if her countenance
expressed any disapproval. To his great surprise, he saw that the
little pale face had softened into a look of pleasure, as if she
recognized something that she liked.
The Tarara, meanwhile, was posed, with her hands on her hips, waiting
for her cue from the orchestra.
As she stood thus, she looked around the house with an expression of
friendly good-will on her face--the true index of a quality in her
which accounted largely for her popularity. Then she began to sing.
It was a ballad of the “homely pathetic” order, such as never fails to
go to the hearts of an audience, with its allusions to mother, wife,
child, home, etc., and the Tarara sang it with great feeling.
Rhodes, watching that strange child of his, whom he always felt to be
a mystery beyond his ken, saw now a look of deep content and pleasure
settle on her face, and some very rare tear-drops rise to her eyes.
When the song had ended, she turned to him and said, abruptly:
“I love that lady.”
A strange sense of joy throbbed through the man’s heart at these words.
They were something more than a surprise.
“She is good and kind,” said Clementina, with the same tone of
conviction. “I wish she would come back.”
Rhodes, for his part, rather dreaded that return, for fear the sweet
impression might be destroyed. But when she afterward appeared as a
smart hussar, and sang a barrack song, and then as a _vivandière_ and
gurgled her song from over a tin canteen, the impression which she had
made upon the child was evidently not disturbed.
It was noticeable, however, that the Tarara was the only one of the
performers who had found favor with Clementina. The others either bored
her, or roused a feeling of disapproval, which that strong little face
well knew how to express.
The last appearance of the Tarara was in a ballet costume, and as she
floated out on the stage and pirouetted up to the footlights, Rhodes
glanced with real timidity at the child. He dreaded the effect of the
bare limbs and painted face upon this austere judge. But Clementina’s
eyes were fixed with a look of unmixed pleasure upon the dancer, who,
as Clem now saw to his amazement, caught and returned her gaze.
It was for a second only, but there could be no doubt of it, and the
child saw it, also, for she flushed with happiness and said, under her
breath:
“Oh, the sweet lady!”
With the same look of confidence and content, she followed every
movement until the dance was ended.
The Tarara, after that one glance, did not again look at the child,
but as she skimmed and bounded about the stage, going through all the
peculiarly imbecile motions of the modern ballet dance, as she toyed
with her tarletan skirts and sidled diagonally on her poor blunted
toes, threw her body backward and waved her arms, then smirked and
grimaced at the applause that burst from the house, the child’s gaze
grew more and more delighted, until it deepened into a look of burning
love.
This gaze, also, the dancer caught as she was leaving the stage, and
she not only caught, but returned it. Rhodes began to feel deeply
alarmed for his secret, but the reflection, that she could not possibly
know that the child was his, partly reassured him.
The Tarara vanished in a storm of applause. She had outdone herself
to-night, and the audience sent up a vociferous encore.
“Oh, is she coming back? Is she coming back?” asked Clementina,
breathlessly.
Her father, greatly wondering, assured her that the dancer would return.
But as the applause rose, subsided, then swelled again, and no Tarara
appeared, he found that he had spoken too quickly. It became evident
that the favorite refused to respond to the encore, and now, as four
couples in the costumes of Bowery toughs swaggered out on the stage,
the house grew quiet and turned its attention to the new performance.
But Clementina would not look at them. Instead, she turned to her
father and said, in a voice of emphatic command:
“Take me to see that lady.”
Rhodes was accustomed to obey the mandates of this imperious child, but
for once he resisted her.
“I cannot,” he said. “She is in her room. She is tired. People are not
allowed to go to her private room.”
“But I am going,” said Clementina, in a tone in which, in all
his experience, he had never known her to utter a fiat that was
unfulfilled. As she spoke she rose from her place and took her father’s
hand, urging him insistently to go. Seeing that they were being
observed by those about them, Rhodes yielded unwillingly, and when they
were without in the vestibule of the theatre, she spoke again, in the
same tone:
“I am going to see that lady,” she said. “If you do not take me, I will
go without you.”
He was so accustomed to seeing her perform resolutely whatever she
undertook--this strange, determined child of his--that he felt that he
could not thwart her will, and so he began, in a helpless, entreating
fashion, to try to alter it.
“Oh, Clementina, please don’t go!” he said. “Come home with me--please
do! I’ll do anything you want if you’ll only come home with me now.”
“Not until I have seen that lady,” said the child, an expression of
indomitable purpose making her little face look strangely old.
Poor Clem was almost in tears. He felt that he had not the power to
resist her, and he felt, at the same time, that if she carried her
point his case was lost with the Tarara. He had hoped to win her
consent to marry him, and he had meant to conceal the child’s existence
until the marriage should be over, and then to confess it, throwing
himself upon her mercy, and offering to put the child in some school
or asylum where she should be kindly treated and yet be out of the way.
But if Clementina persisted, now, all would be lost. He resolved upon
a subterfuge and a lie. The child’s purpose must be frustrated at all
costs.
“If you will come with me now,” he said, “I will take you to see her
to-morrow. Come, Clementina, please.”
“To-morrow will not do,” the child began, in that same tone of
resolution, but at this instant a boy came up to them, and delivered a
message to Clem. This message was a summons to him to come at once to
the Tarara’s room, and to bring the child.
With a last effort at resistance he was beginning to frame an excuse,
when, in the very midst of his speech, Clementina said, decisively,
speaking to the boy:
“I am coming. Show me the way,” and the poor old father was scarcely
surprised when he found the messenger ignoring him entirely, and
obeying the words of the child.
She had already started after him, and Clem could only follow them, in
feeble wretchedness and disappointment.
The boy led the way through various dusty and dimly-lighted passages,
and presently paused before a door at which he rapped sharply, and then
walked away.
A voice said: “Come in!”
Clementina turned the knob, and entered, her father following, and
taking care to close the door behind him.
Instead of finding the popular dancer flung in picturesque abandonment
on the lounge, drinking iced champagne or smoking a cigarette
(which was what Rhodes expected) he saw her seated before her
dressing-table, on which were scattered a disorderly collection of
wigs, masks, powder-puffs, curling-irons, rouge-pots, and various
other paraphernalia of her profession. Her elbows were crushing some
artificial flowers, as she sat with her chin in her hands and her gaze
fixed solemnly upon her own reflection in the mirror.
As she turned toward them, the child ran forward and flung her arms
around the dancer’s bare neck, lifting her face to be kissed.
The Tarara gave a little cry, and sprang to her feet, and then, the
next instant, crouched down again, and made a motion as if she would
cover, with her short tarletan skirts, the exposure of plump legs cased
in thin flesh-colored tights. What had come over her? Those shapely
limbs were usually her pride. When had she felt any sense of modesty
about them before?
But the child was not looking at them. Neither did she look at the
false hair, the rouge, the powder, the painted eyebrows, and _bistré_
lids. She had clasped her arms around the dancer’s neck again, and was
looking straight into her eyes.
The feeling which came to the Tarara as she met that look was that one
creature saw her soul, at last.
“I love you. You are kind, and sweet, and good,” the child said,
softly, still regarding her with that deep, penetrating gaze, and with
intense conviction in her tone.
The Tarara’s painted face began to quiver, and great tear-drops brimmed
her eyes, as she caught the little creature to her, crushing to
irremediable flatness her diaphanous tarletan skirts. She strained the
small creature to her breast a moment, and then seated her on her lap.
She had caught up a rich plush cape from a chair, and had thrown it
over the tights and dancing-shoes.
Rhodes, meanwhile, stood looking on, in a state of stupefaction. They
had both forgotten him, as they clung to each other, with close kisses
and embraces.
A deep emotion was evident in both of them, but its character was
different. The woman was stirred to a passionate excitement; her
breaths came in deep, catching sobs; her face worked with a nervous
strain; and her cheeks flushed hotly under their rouge. The child,
on the other hand, was deeply calm and grave. She lay with utter
contentment in that bedizened creature’s arms, and looked up at her
as trustingly and unquestioningly as though she had been a Madonna.
This long, deep, concentrated look was undisturbed, as she said with a
wondering seriousness:
“Are you my mother?”
“No, darling, no,” the dancer said, bending above her with a mother’s
tenderness, while the tears ran down her cheeks, making a pitiable daub
of black and white and red there.
“My mother died,” the child went on, looking only at the gentle eyes of
the woman, and speaking in a grave and placid tone.
“And my little baby died,” the dancer said. “She would have been as old
as you. She died before she ever knew her mother’s face, and my heart
has been empty, ever since.”
“I love you,” said the child.
The strong, spasmodic movement with which the dancer crushed her to her
heart, as she said these words, must have been physically painful, but
if it was, the child gave no sign, except a radiant smile of joy. There
was a look of almost holy calm upon the little pallid face. She put up
one small hand, and patted lovingly the smeared face that bent above
her.
“You are good,” she said.
“Am I, darling? Oh, I should like to be! If my little baby had lived
perhaps I should have been, though everybody has been bad to me. No one
has ever loved me, as you do, before.”
“Your little child loves you,” was the quiet answer, still with that
look and tone of knowledge.
“Oh, do you think she does, and that I will some time have her again?”
“Yes,” said the child, with a certainty that seemed to make doubt
unreasonable. Then looking around, as if in sudden recollection, she
said, “Clem--Boy--come here.”
At these words a lingering hope sprang up in Rhodes’s heart. This
strange mode of addressing him might enable him to keep his secret
still. If he could only get the child away now, and to-morrow contrive
some way of accounting for her! With this end in view he came forward,
the child turning on him, as he did so, the fond, penetrating look he
knew so well.
The dancer glanced quickly from one to the other, but it was the child
she questioned, and not the man.
“Is he your father?” she said.
“Yes,” said Clementina. “My mother died when I was very little. He has
been so good to me.”
But what was the matter with Clementina’s voice, and why was her breath
suddenly so short and difficult? Rhodes was conscious of this, even in
that moment when he realized that his secret was revealed, and his
hopes of the Tarara blasted. She was conscious of it, too, and her face
took on a sudden look of terror.
Rhodes dropped upon his knees beside the two, who still clung to one
another in that close embrace. Over the child’s drooped head the man
and the woman exchanged a quick, scared look. Then both looked at the
child.
The gaze that answered their excited ones was so calm, so strong, so
full of knowledge and assured content, that outwardly, at least, they
were quieted. One thin, little arm lay still around the dancer’s neck,
and with evident effort she lifted the other and laid it around the
neck of her frightened, childish old father.
Almost instantly it fell back heavily. There was a little twitch of the
thin body, a stifled breath, one more sweet glance of love, and the
child lay dead between them.
In a moment all was excitement and confusion. The alarm was given.
People thronged the room. Doctors were summoned, but one look assured
them that all was over with the child.
The Tarara, with trembling limbs and chattering teeth, threw on some
clothes and drove home in the carriage with Rhodes, holding the dead
child all the way close pressed against her heart.
Only once did the woman speak to him. It was when, between them, they
had got the little body up to the tiny room, which had been its home
in life, and had laid it upon one of the folding-beds, which had been
so neatly made a few hours back. Then the Tarara, glancing around the
poor place, so purely clean and orderly, taking in the details here and
there--the child’s slate and lesson books, and her little work-basket,
with its half-used spools of thread and small brass thimble--and
contrasting it with her own sumptuous rooms and luxurious living,
turned her gaze upon the man who stood helpless and miserable in the
midst of this poverty-stricken home, and said:
“I would have married you for this child. You should have let me know.”