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.