Part 13

"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.

"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.