Part 5

“Don’t try,” he said quickly. “Suffering is part of your life, just as this disappointment in you is an adjunct of mine, a necessary part of our existence to be treated philosophically. It amounts to nothing. When the pain is assuaged you cannot remember its effects. You speak of love, our love. What of our love? My opinion of this matter of love, is this. Love is a proper condition and should be in every house, but in the main it amounts to nothing. It has no intrinsic value. Nature does not recognize love. It only sees propinquity which it reduces to the necessity of reproduction. Do you suppose love exists in the lower forms of life? It does not. I love, but I don’t allow love to obscure my larger view. I submerge it and put it to its proper uses. What does love mean? Nothing but a moment’s forgetfulness—passion—children—probably better if never born. It is useful in its place, but in the grand scheme it has no place. Of course you suffer—why not? But you should realize that never can a woman arrive at the proper point of view. They are too animal-like and too physically disarranged. They are by far too bound down by their natural destiny. It is unnecessary for me to mention what that destiny is.”

“Do you believe what you are saying? Don’t you think you’re just talking, Peter?” Clarinda broke in as he paused for an instant.

“I believe I am not just talking for talk’s sake. I’ve no time to waste in idle words. There is one more thing. No doubt you probably think what I have said is cruel. I admit it sounds cruel. It is cruel, because all life is cruel. The coming of your child was cruel. The coming of age upon you is cruel, nature is the epitome of cruelty, it crushes without stint or consideration. It builds only to destroy.”

“What a curious philosophy,” Clarinda’s voice quavered. “Then I have failed. How queer. And the baby—”

“The baby,” he went on with even as great care as he had used, “the baby is a thing apart, an accident in life, which was desired by neither of us. Why should we have babies? I’ve asked myself this many times and arrived at no solution. Why produce these things? An uncontrolled animal instinct forces us to bring them into the world, and for what? When I see babies I generally weep. I see before me the future, the futility of youth, the sadness of the middle period, the arrival at puberty, then the going forth to seek a mate, the development of the sex instinct, and then the shriveling and shrinking into the grave. I would not say, Clarinda, that you had failed, I would not go that far. It is hard to explain. I shall try to think it out further.”

Clarinda arose from the sofa, and went to one of the long windows that gave a view out upon the garden. She gazed unseeingly over its expanse, and spoke in a tone so low that he from his distance could barely hear her.

“I do not believe as you believe, Peter, I am glad to say. I can’t tear things apart as you do, and I am glad I cannot. It is terrible to think as you think. It makes everything so black, so discouraging. Even with this view of yours there are things even more vital; if possible, more vital than money and success. You’ve said frightful things to me; you think you are analytical, logical, but you are not; you only destroy. It is horrible to me to think that it is only a little over three years since we were married and already the good in you has died, and for what? Money, and a false philosophy built upon—nothing! Oh! how I hate money, success, riches and places like this. How I wish we were poor!”

“Then, probably, Clarinda, instead of lashing you with indisputable logic, I would be beating you with a whip. Everything is comparative. You speak in broken tones, as if a tragedy had come upon you. Life is a tragedy. But it is foolish to think of it so. Why not face facts?”

“Facts! Facts! Nothing but facts!” Clarinda almost screamed. “It is a tragedy. You remember, Peter, at one time Father said our lives were too prosaic. How mistaken he was. He could not see tragedy even if it stalked directly in front of him. Poor soul. He said, if you remember, that it would be a good thing for us if we had a _murder_, _a great theft_, or that you or I should lead a _double life_. That this sort of thing would lend interest. Poor Father. He didn’t know that tragedy was upon me. That murder was in your heart and that you were preparing to commit murder, only in a worse way than the actual stabbing or shooting me to death. It would have been better if you had done it that way, than to have done it, as you say, with indisputable logic. It might have been better for me had I been the wife of a drunkard. He might have beaten me with whips. But at least he would have left hope in my heart. Now I have nothing. Yes, yes, Peter, you have won. You should be proud of your victory.”

Peter arose from the divan and walked quickly and impatiently up and down the hall. He did not think Clarinda would take the change he was forced to bring about so much to heart. He had convinced himself she would see it as he did.

“You are dramatic, Clarinda, and unnecessarily so. I don’t believe you think.”

“I’ve been taught that to think was wrong. I know now women should not think. It might be better if they did. For without thought they only invite disaster. We will see, Peter, but don’t be disappointed if this philosophy doesn’t come to your end. You’ve said I have failed you. I promise not to fail in the future.”

Clarinda turned from the window and went quickly out of the room, and she closed the door gently behind her. Peter made a motion as if to stop her, but he did not. He felt it were better that she should work the new situation out in her mind. He was convinced she would see the justice of his position.

Presently he went out of the house and entered the automobile that waited for him at the door. As he settled himself back in the cushions of the car, he reverted to the first refusal Clarinda had made when she left the big house upon her first induction into it. He had never forgiven her for this. He had tried to make excuses for her, but could find none even when he ascribed it to her condition at the time; but her consistent attitude in her refusal divorced this excuse from his mind. It had hurt him immeasurably when he considered the time and the effort he had expended to accumulate the place. Her stubborness and wilful conduct destroyed his ambition.

He knew he would never get over the blow from the instant she had given it to him. His mental attitude towards her underwent a change, a change so vital that he would never be able to overcome it. Clarinda fell from the pinnacle upon which he had placed her and had descended into the mere wife. She had become a necessary evil in his life, but not a component part thereof.

As he allowed her to go out of the door, he reflected he had caused a change and he would abide by it. If it evolved a bad situation, he would accommodate himself to the new condition. He was too busy to give it more thought, it might take his mind off his real effort. Peter tossed his head in the air and as the car went swiftly along his tongue evolved the few words:

“What a hell of a bore!”

Clarinda watched him go from the window in her apartment. She heard the automobile that waited outside. She heard the engine start and she heard Peter give his order to the driver. A great black pall came over her. She went from the window and sank hopelessly upon the divan. Clarinda buried her lovely head in a cushion and thought.

With clearness she saw her position. She knew from now on that instead of being an integral part of Peter’s life she was but his legalized mistress, clothed with respectability. All her hopes died, and all her anticipations for herself and her baby died and were swept by the angry winds of adversity into space. Clarinda wept.

After a long time by superhuman effort she collected herself, and forced a new spirit into her life. She was no more the Clarinda who had existed. Her love for Peter died. She stood untrammelled—free.

She rang the bell that was near at hand.

“I will go out,” she said to the maid as she entered the room. “Order my car.”

The maid whispered almost to herself. “Something has happened.”

Clarinda put on her wraps, and it was only a few moments when the car was at the door. She entered it and gave an order to the driver.

Then, “Horrors!” she muttered.

II

The car sped over the road. Occasionally the driver turned for directions. Clarinda’s only reply was to drive faster. It seemed to her the only thing she desired was motion, such motion as might keep pace with her thoughts.

A feeling of despair overcame her, for her body suffered with her mind. Futility was even more dominant than ever. She had become imbued with the spirit of Peter, that nothing in the world was of any avail, that to fight against a surrounding condition was of no use, that all things were controlled by an invisible force, a force that laughed at any effort to set it aside from its driven path. There was nothing left. It was all reduced to her as a difficulty without a sign of relief.

All that she believed in was destroyed. Even the struggle she had made to make for herself and Peter a life as near an approach to the ideal as possible had fallen to pieces. There was left of her endeavor—nothing.

In the midst of her madness the face of her child came before her. She hated it even as she hated all things. Her hate for Peter was paramount and a greater hate existed in her heart for her father. Her bitterness seemed to concentrate against her father, for it was he who had tutored her into the thing she was. The education he gave her had blighted her life, by leaving her unprepared to meet its vicissitudes, its necessities, and demands.

She sought in her mind for an excuse for them, but could find none. At last as if some great force had taken Peter and her father and stripped them of their flesh, laying bare their innermost souls, she looked into their breasts and saw of what they were made.

Heretofore her face had never betrayed a sign of hardness. It became hard, and her eyes changed color, her cheeks took upon them a different bloom. Her whole body changed under the blow she had received. A determination came into her and broke down all the barriers to her better self. All these barriers she had erected through years of endeavor were gone, and cast into the dust heap.

As a snake sheds its skin, so Clarinda shed all that had been the old Clarinda.

The impasse brought a new factor, one actuated by a woman of new motives. It brought a woman’s mind dark and seething and bitter, and Clarinda felt the change and shivered with fear at the prospect. She could not decipher to what end it would lead her.

Clarinda balanced her account with life and found it all written in red. Never had she received from it anything but the most terrible futility. Evil was not of her, but she determined it should come. All the good she scattered at her feet, breaking it as a frail piece of glass. From now on she would follow in the steps of those whom she had looked up to. Henceforth, she would gather the bitter, no matter what the poison might be.

Where she would land or to what end it should bring her, she cared not. With indefatigable sincerity she had tried to do what she thought was right. This had landed her in a morass of disappointment, and made her only the mistress of the man to whom she had been married. It was not her fault. It was the fault of Peter and her father and she was determined that they should pay. The price they should pay would be the price of death. For the years she had been married she had patted Peter upon the back and helped him with unswerving faith. Now, she should destroy with the same determination what she had endeavored to build. He should pay and pay in the coin he knew nothing of. Her father likewise should pay, for it was he who had spurred Peter on. Endlessly he told him in long conversations, during many nights, of his ability, until Peter believed he was impregnable. He caused Peter to lose all sense of proportion.

Clarinda was not angry at her own position; it was deeper than that. She would seek her own emancipation, for her life was destroyed. Why not bring down the temple with her in her fall, grind it, grind it out into powder that would leave no trace of its original intent?

“Vengeance is mine saith the Lord, I will repay.” Clarinda knew this line, but it had no significance.

She put her hand upon the arm of the driver and told him to turn back and she directed him to the house of her father. In a short time she arrived. After the car stopped at the marble steps that led to his glory, she sprang from its interior and ran into the hall, the same hall she had come from with hope in her heart and visions of perfect joy in her soul. Then all the world had looked to her as if it desired to cover her with a mantle of good. Now it was gone, obliterated, wiped out and nothing remained. It was futile. In the place of promises it had given nothing and the struggle she had made was a vain endeavor.

Rapidly she walked across the hall and went up the stairs. She pushed open the door and entered the room in which her father sat.

In three years a change had come upon him. His limbs almost refused to carry his body. His hands shook pitifully. His eyes lacked in lustre, they had died, before he had died. Around his shoulders, limp and lost in form, hung a blanket of rich design to protect him from any draft that might steal insidiously across the floors. His head shook, even as his hands. All about him was disintegration. A sickness that portended death enveloped him.

He had been sitting there for months, and ever before his old, dim eyes came images of those who had gone before. He saw them when he was left alone and in the night they were even more present. They seemed to beckon to him across the dark passage he was confronting and he thought they smiled and their smiles seemed to him to be smiles of derision. Always they pointed at him with bony fingers and their fleshless jaws clashed with a painful noise. He feared and trembled with dread. There was no hope and he knew it, death was at hand. It was only tomorrow.

Often he saw the opened grave that would receive his worn-out body, and all would be ended. There was no hope of immortality. He believed in nothing. He saw but death, dirt and disintegration. When he had ceased to breathe, he would become carrion to be devoured by countless maggots.

The old man wept with regret and begged in his innermost self that he might be given a few more moments. Sometimes, the tears ran down his old, withered face. They fell mockingly upon his clothes and stained them as if with blood. He would slink back into the folds of his chair as if from its depths he could find protection from the thing he dreaded.

Clarinda as she entered the room saw him drawn back into his chair. She watched his hands shake and tremble as if with the palsy and pity went out of her heart, she wanted him to die. Clarinda linked her revenge with him. She wanted the death of this worn-out old man in front of her. He was dying, she knew it, and she rejoiced that it was so. The condition in which she found herself was his burden. Pity had died and nothing was left, there was no surcease. The thing was before her that had produced her and of this thing she would have revenge. She suffered and her suffering was greater than his. His was ended while hers stretched out for years. There was no such end for hers, as his. There was a stone in her breast where her heart should have been. She would carry this stone for endless years.

Clarinda threw off her coat. She did not go to her father, nor place the cover about him with her hands.

Her father looked at her and pride filled his heart. He envied her her youth and would have sacrificed her for a few more years of life. He was human and acknowledged it. Clarinda hated him as she hated Peter and she could not say which one she hated the more. Even her child she hated.

Her father stretched out his hand to her and placed his face to hers that she might kiss him. Clarinda did not move but stood directly in front of him. Her eyes were narrowed. A bitter smile flitted across her face. Clarinda saw him shake. She looked, as his hand fell inert at his side.

“It is over,” she said slowly.

“What is over?” her father asked mumbling his words.

Clarinda sat down in a chair and pulled it over in front of him. Her manner did not change. She kept her eyes fixed upon his face.

“It is over,” she repeated. “Life is queer. Don’t you think so, Father?”

“Yes, yes!” he answered. “What do you mean?”

“You are dying and it is fortunate it is so,” she replied with conviction in her voice.

The old man shrank back further in his chair. He turned his eyes towards her and looked eagerly into her face. He trembled in an agony of fear—he could not understand. He asked himself if in one day there had come such a change. Were the hands of the dead stretched out any more insistently today than yesterday?

“Do I look worse?” he asked pitifully.

“Yes, you are worse. Your hands are worse. Your face is more drawn. I can see a great change,” she replied, following with her eyes the effect of her words. It pleased her that he felt so deeply. Then she added:

“I believe you are dying. I believe that today when the sun goes down you will be dead. You’ve not fought, as you should have fought. You are as weak as I thought you would be.”

“Clarinda! Clarinda!” he screamed.

“Why do you fear? What’s the use? The thing is upon you. It is here. You must die. And now!” Clarinda smiled, her satisfaction was intense. Had he not murdered her? Had he not destroyed her? Was not her destruction greater than the destruction she passed on to him?

The old man gasped and his heart beat with fury in his breast. He could barely see her as she sat before him. He could not understand this curious change that had come to her, his Clarinda, the thing he had loved and worshiped.

“Why this, Clarinda, when you know my condition?” he stuttered.

“I will tell you,” she said intensely. “Through all my life you aimed to destroy me, even from my youth.”

As she was about to continue the door opened and Peter rushed into the room. Clarinda sprang quickly from her chair, as she heard him enter. He cast a look toward the huddled heap in the chair, and in a moment he saw that it was dead.

“What has happened? I suspected that you were up to something,” he said.

“You are the matter,” Clarinda replied turning from him and walking to the other side of the room.

“What have I done?” he asked, his face turning pale.

“You ask!” Clarinda exclaimed.

“I ask,” he said with wonder in his voice.

“What you have done is finished. There is the result.”

The figure in the chair slipped down a little further. The helpless hands dropped limp beside the chair, and a curious look of repose spread itself over the gray ashen face. A bit of saliva trickled from the open mouth.

Peter cried aloud and the house went into a turmoil. He tried to pull the old dead man back into the chair. It was useless, for gradually the body slipped to the floor and lay bent in curious contortions. Clarinda went out of the door, down through the hall and entered the car, and ordered the driver to take her home.

A fury that was intense drove her, but there was no pity in her heart. She wanted revenge and she would persist in bringing it about.

Peter followed her shortly and found her sitting upon the divan. There was no disturbance in her attitude. Clarinda sat quietly. On the floor in front of her was her child. It played unmindful of the tragedy about it. It cooed and looked occasionally at its mother. Clarinda bent her eyes towards it and wished in her heart it was as dead as her father. Should it be raised to sorrow such as she had? Would it put its trust in some great thing and have that trust destroyed? She could kill it with her own hands. It would take but a moment. Its life was held by a slender thread and her hands were strong.

Peter saw the look on her face as he entered. Quickly he took the child from the floor as if to protect it from her. Clarinda did not move.

“Your father is dead,” Peter said.

“I know it,” she replied shortly.

“You’ve killed him.”

“I know it,” she answered in a deadened voice.

“Why?” Peter asked.

“He is dead,” she answered. “It is better so. I am not sorry. You should have seen his fear. It was pathetic.”

“Why did you do it?” Peter asked, with awe in his voice.

“I am someone else. Probably such a wife as you want. I am different. My other self has died even as my father has died.”

“God forbid! I didn’t know!” Peter gasped.

“Go!” she demanded.

“You would have killed the child. I had a premonition. That is why I followed you. You would have killed the child?”

“Yes, I would have killed it. Why not? It is only the emblem of my degradation. It would not have mattered. Death may have saved it much.”

“Clarinda!” Peter trembled from head to foot. His mind was in a whirl. He could not understand.

“It is useless. Go!” Clarinda turned her face from him and walked over to one of the windows that gave a view of the garden.

Peter went out of the room, carrying the child with him and left her alone.

III

For the next day, and the next day, and the next day, Clarinda sat in a stupor. She revolved the death of her father about in her mind with such rapidity, that she sensed nothing of it. A new and curious development grasped her, and she could not understand what the development portended, or in what direction it was leading.

The preparations for the funeral, the long discussions with her mother as to the proper thing to do did not move her. It was a thing apart. Everything was mechanical. All passed over her head without stirring an emotion.

When a lucid moment came to her and she examined herself, she could not decide if she had been cruel or kind in hastening the end of the parent she had adored. She tried to talk to Peter about it, but Peter would not listen to her. Yet out of it, she could not, even though she tried, force one iota of pity for the old man. It appeared to her to be a peculiar cataclysm.

She asked herself over and over again, why had she thought of killing the child? It was in no way responsible for anything. Yet she could have done it and felt no more sorrow than she felt at the death of her father. To her the child did not represent youth, it represented a term of years. It was old enough to die. It had life, and her great desire was to crush something that had life. She had not done it at the moment because it came to her in a flash, that the child was too young to appreciate the condition under which she suffered. It would not have sensed the words she would have said to it, before she would have crushed its life out. It struck her from this point of view that it would have been a useless sacrifice. It would have been just as useless to kill Peter, for then he would have been dead and removed from any further suffering. This would not have been wise, for it was her purpose that he should feel, where she could see, the degradation to which he had reduced her, so she let him live.

Peter left her in her solitude. It was only broken by the coming and going of her mother from time to time. She never asked for the child. In a vague way she knew it was being taken care of by its numerous nurses and its attendant physician, but in her heart she hated it, for it represented to her something terrible.