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 Plätner. 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?”
I laughed, rather hysterically.
“The whole subject is too silly for any use,” I managed to say, in a superior kind of way. “It does very well for Boston, of course, but it will never have much of a run here in New York.”
“What a narrow way of looking at it, Clare!” exclaimed Gwendolen, protestingly. “Of course, I’m not a theosophist, but I’m broad-minded enough to realize that what’s true in Benares or Boston must be true in New York. If reincarnation is really going on in this world, I can’t believe that any exception is made in favor of our Knickerbocker families.”
Again I laughed aloud, nervously. It was pleasing to me to discover that Gwendolen had a mind open to startling truths, but I regretted the fact that I must henceforth constantly fight against the temptation to tell her my great secret. The imminence of my peril in this regard was illustrated at once, for she turned to me suddenly and asked, with great vivacity of manner:
“Where is the baby, Clare? Won’t you let me see him at once? I came to visit him, you know; not you or Tom. He’s got such a lovely name! ‘Horatio’ is so fine and dignified! What do you call him for short, my dear?”
“I have not given him a nickname, Gwendolen,” I answered, coldly. “If you wish to, we’ll go to the nursery at once. As I told you in my letter, we’ve had difficulty in getting the baby a nurse. Just at present, I’m obliged to spend most of my time with him. But I gave you fair warning, you know.”
“I’m so glad that I can have the run of the nursery,” cried Gwendolen, gaily, springing to her feet. “I do so love really nice children, Clare! Is he a jolly baby? Will he take to me, do you think?”
I answered her question as we reached the door of the nursery: “I am sure I can’t say, Gwen. Horatio is very eccentric and pronounced in his likes and dislikes. But if he goes to you at once, follow my advice and don’t toss him up and down violently. He says—that is, he doesn’t like to be shaken after taken.”