Perkins, the Fakeer

CHAPTER III.

MY FIRST AND SECOND

I lunched with Tom and Jack the next day. It was an appalling function, driving me to the very verge of hysteria and destroying forever my belief in my dream theory. My first husband sat in his new high chair, pounding the table with a spoon, as if calling the meeting to order, while my second husband sat gazing at the baby with a fatuous smile on his handsome face that testified to his inability to rise to the situation. Behind the baby's chair stood his nurse, evidently prepared to defend her prerogatives as the protector of the child's health. Lurking in the background was the phlegmatic butler, no better pleased than the nurse at this experiment of Tom's.

"That's it! Go it, Horatio!" cried Tom, nervously. "Hit the table again, my boy. That's what it's for."

"I thought that your idea, Tom, was to teach Horatio how to behave in public," I suggested, playfully, still calm in the belief that I had been deceived in the nursery by a dream.

"But as you said, Clare," argued Tom, "he's very young. It's really not bad form, you know, for a baby to pound a table with a spoon. Is it, nurse?"

"I think not, sir," answered the nurse, pushing the high chair back to its place. The baby had kicked it away from the table while Tom was speaking.

"Isn't he–isn't he rather–ah–nervous, my dear?" asked Tom, glancing at me with paternal solicitude. "It's quite normal, this–ah–tendency to bang things–and kick?"

"Perhaps he's hungry, Tom," I suggested, lightly. My spirits were rising. In the presence of the baby, whose appearance and manner were those of a healthy child something under a year in age, the absurdity of my recent incipient nightmare was so evident that I blushed at the recollection of my nonsensical panic. Reincarnation? Bah! what silly rubbish we do get from the far East!

"Of course he's hungry," assented Tom, glancing down at a bird the butler had put before him. "With your permission, nurse, I'll give the youngster a square meal. How would a bit of the breast from this partridge do? It's very tender and digestible–"

"How absurd, Tom!" I cried. "He'd choke!"

"He's choking as it is!" exclaimed Tom, half rising from his chair. "Pat him on the back, nurse!"

"He's all right, sir," said the nurse, calmly as Horatio's cheeks lost their sudden flush and he opened his pretty little eyes again. "You needn't worry, Mr. Minturn. He's in perfect health, sir."

"Aren't they queer?" exclaimed Tom, glancing at me, laughingly.

"Sir?" cried the nurse in pained amazement.

"I meant babies, nurse," explained Tom, soothingly, motioning to the disaffected butler to refill his wine-glass. "But look here, Clare; you and I are eating and drinking heartily, but poor little Horatio is still the hungry victim of a dietary debate. What is he to have?–milk?"

The baby leaned forward in his chair, seized his empty silver bowl with a chubby hand, and hurled it to the floor.

"Horatio!" Tom's voice was stern as he scowled at the mischievous youngster. I could not refrain from laughing aloud.

"Is that bad form, Tom, for a little baby?" I asked, mischievously.

"No," answered Tom, repentantly. "I don't blame you at all, Horatio. Your prejudice, my boy, against an empty bowl when you are both hungry and thirsty is not unnatural. Give him some bread and milk, nurse, or he'll overturn the table. What a wonderful study it is, Clare, to watch a baby develop! Do you know, Horatio is actually able to grasp a syllogism!"

"Or a milk-bowl," I added.

"Don't interrupt my scientific train of thought," protested Tom, gazing musingly at the child. "I saw his mind at work just now. 'I'm hungry,' thought Horatio. 'There's my silver bowl. The bowl is empty. There are bread and milk in the house. If I throw the empty bowl to the floor, my nurse will return it to me filled with food. So here goes! Q.E.D.' Clever baby, isn't he?"

It was at that moment I met the baby's eyes, and a sharp chill ran down my back and found its way to my finger-tips. There was an expression in the child's troubled gaze so eloquent that its meaning flashed upon me at once. If the baby had cried aloud, "What an amazing fool that man is!" I could not have been more sure than I was of the thought that had passed through his infantile mind.

"What's the matter, Clare?" I heard Tom asking me, apprehensively. "Do you feel faint?"

"Not at all," I hastened to say, turning my eyes from my first to my second husband. The former was eating bread and milk–reluctantly, it seemed to me–from a spoon manipulated by his nurse. That it was really Jack who was sitting there in a high chair, doomed to swallow baby food while he craved partridge and Burgundy was a conviction that had come to me for a fleeting moment, to be followed by a return to conventional common sense and a renewed satisfaction in my environment. Tom sat opposite me, smiling contentedly, while between us, at a side of the table, the baby perfunctorily absorbed a simple but nutritious diet, deftly presented to his tiny mouth by his attentive nurse. It was a charming scene of domestic bliss at that moment, and I realized clearly how much I had to lose by giving way, even intermittently, to the wretched hallucinations that my overwrought nerves begot.

"Just look at him, Clare!" exclaimed Tom, presently. "I tell you it's an interesting study. It's elevating and enlightening, my dear. To an evolutionist there's a world of meaning in that baby's enthusiasm for bread and milk. Here he sits at the table covered with gastronomic luxuries and actually rejoices in the simplest kind of food. You see, Clare, how well the difference between Horatio and myself in regard to diet illustrates Spencer's definition of evolution as a continuous change from indefinite, incoherent homogeneity to definite, coherent heterogeneity through successive differentiations and integrations. Great Scott, nurse! What's the matter with him? He's choking again!"

"It's nothing, sir," remarked the nurse, quietly, as the baby recovered from a fit of coughing and resumed his meal. "But, if you'll pardon the remark, sir, I think that he's much better off in the nursery."

It was not a tactful suggestion, and I knew that Tom felt hurt; but he maintained his self-control and made no further comment, merely glancing at me with a smile in his eyes. I realized, with a vague uneasiness, that open and active hostilities between baby's nurse and Tom were among the possibilities of the near future, and it was not a pleasing thought.

"What does he top off with?" asked Tom, presently, grinning at Horatio, who had emptied his bowl and had stuck a fist into his rosebud mouth, as if still hungry. "Have you got an ice for him, James?"

The butler stood motionless, gazing fixedly at the nurse.

"What queer ideas you have, Tom!" I cried, to break the strain of an uncomfortable situation. "An ice would give him an awful pain."

"Perhaps he'd like a Welsh rabbit, then?" growled Tom, crossly.

The baby seized a spoon and rapped gleefully on the table.

"Isn't he cunning!" I cried, delightedly. "He's happy now, isn't he? I am inclined to think, Tom, that he'd rather have a nap than a rabbit."

"Not on your life!" came a deep, gruff voice from nowhere in particular. I looked at Tom in amazement, thinking that he had playfully disguised his tones and was poking fun at me and the baby. But Tom's expression of wonderment was as genuine as my own, while the nurse was gazing over her shoulder at the butler, who was eying us all in a bewildered way. Tom glanced at the nurse.

"Leave the room, James," he said hotly. "I'll see you later in the smoking-room." Then, to the nurse: "Remove the baby, will you, please? Thank you for letting us have him for an hour."

As soon as we were alone in the dining-room, Tom leaned toward me and said: "Shall I discharge James, my dear? He was most infernally impudent, to put it mildly."

But the frightful certainty had come to me that the butler was innocent of any wrong-doing. Absurd as the bald statement of fact seemed to be, my first husband was the guilty man, and, struggle as I might against the conviction, I knew it.

"Give him another chance, Tom." I managed to say, my voice unsteady and my tongue parched. "James was not quite himself, I imagine. I'm not well, Tom. Give me a swallow of cognac, will you, please?"

Tom, alarmed at my voice and face, hastily handed me a stimulant, and presently I felt my courage and my color coming back to me.

CHAPTER IV.

NURSERY CONFESSIONS

I longed, yet dreaded, to have an hour alone with the baby. I could no longer doubt that, through some psychical mischance, Jack's soul had found a lodgment in a family hospitable by habit and inclination, but not accustomed to disquieting intrusions. It was thus that I put the matter to myself, as I sat alone in my boudoir after luncheon, having dismissed Marie, my maid, with a message to Horatio's nurse; and the conventional make-up of my thought revealed to me, in a flash of insight, the materialistic tendencies of my mental methods. Metempsychosis had never assumed to my mind the dignity of even a philosophical working hypothesis. Much less had the idea ever come to me that reincarnation actually furnished a process through which the physical laws of evolution and the conservation of energy might find a psychical demonstration.

My natural inclination to take the world as I found it, and to leave the inner mysteries of life to profounder minds than mine, had been intensified by my association with Tom, a disciple of Haeckel, Büchner and other extremists of the materialistic school. I had come to admire Tom's intellectuality and to find satisfaction in the fact that his fondness for scientific studies would strengthen him to resist the temptations that surrounded him to become a mere man of leisure and luxury. Possessed of great wealth and without a profession, it was fortunate for Tom that he had found in scientific research an outlet for his superabundant energies. He had begun to make a reputation for himself as a clear-headed, well-balanced evolutionist, both conservative in method and progressive in spirit, and at our table could be found at times the leading scientific minds of New York. And now, into our little stronghold of enlightened materialism had been dropped a miraculous mystery, or mysterious miracle, that had overthrown all my preconceived ideas of the universe and opened before me a limitless field of groping conjecture. I realized, with due gratitude to fate, that if I had been born with an imaginative, poetical temperament my present predicament would have driven me insane at the outset. Fortunately for everybody concerned, I am a woman who rebounds quickly from the severest nervous shock, and I have taken a great deal of pride in retaining my mental poise in crises of my life that would have made hysteria excusable.

Nevertheless, it was a severe test of my nervous strength to hold Horatio in my arms at four o'clock that afternoon and watch his nurse donning her coat and hat preparatory to a short ride with Marie. I had carefully planned this opportunity for an uninterrupted hour with the baby, but now that it lay just before me I longed to run away from it. The nursery had become to me a temple of mysteries within which I felt chilled and awe-stricken, a victim of supernatural forces against which I was both rebellious and powerless.

After the nurse had left the room I seated myself in a rocking-chair, cuddling Horatio in my arms and softly humming a lullaby, attempting to deceive myself by the thought that I really wished him to sleep for an hour. In my innermost consciousness lay the conviction that I had actually come to the nursery for a heart-to-heart talk with Jack. My deepest desire was to be quickly gratified. A gruff whisper came to me presently from his pretty lips.

"Stop that 'bye-bye, baby,' will you, Clarissa?" he said, petulantly. "Haven't I had enough annoyance for one day?"

"Hush! hush!" I murmured, rocking frantically in the effort to put the child to sleep, despite my realization of the utter inconsistency of my action.

"Don't! don't!" growled the baby. "Do you want me to have mal-de-mer, Clarissa? I can't be responsible for what may happen. Where did everybody get the notion that a baby must be shaken after taking? It's getting to be an unbearable nuisance, Clarissa."

"Is that better, Jack?" I whispered, holding him upright on my knees and peering down into his disturbed face, puckered into a little knot, as if he were about to cry aloud.

"Thank you," he muttered, gratefully. "Under the circumstances, my dear, perhaps it's well that I didn't get that Welsh rabbit. But, frankly, I was bitterly disappointed at the moment."

"What can you expect, Jack?" I asked, argumentatively, again astonished at the matter-of-fact way in which I was handling this astounding crisis. "You seem to have a man's appetite but only a baby's digestive apparatus."

"That's my punishment, Clarissa," he explained, in awe-struck tones. "In the former cycle I ate too many rabbits. That was scored against me, under the general head of 'Gluttony,' and the sub-title 'Midnight Unnecessaries.' I'm up against it, Clarissa. I wouldn't complain if it were merely a question of not getting what I want. But it's getting what I don't want that jars me. You understand, of course, my dear, that, generally speaking, I refer to milk. Isn't there something in its place that you could persuade the nurse to give me? Don't babies get–er–malt extract, for instance?"

"I'll do what I can for you, Jack." I said, suddenly struck by a brilliant idea. "But I must make a condition, and you must make me a promise."

"I'd promise you anything for a change of diet," muttered Jack, kicking vigorously with his tiny legs and waving his fat fists in the air.

"If you'll swear to me, Jack, never to speak aloud again unless you and I are alone together, I'll agree to make every effort in my power to add to your physical comforts."

"Comforts be–blowed!" exclaimed the baby, crossly. "What I want are a few luxuries. And, furthermore, my dear, I'm getting very weary of that machine-made nurse. She's narrow, Clarissa. I don't wish to speak harshly about a woman whose heart seems to be in the right place, but you must get rid of her, if you care a continental rap about your little baby. You'll have to fill her place, Clarissa, with somebody more broad-minded and up-to-date. She bores me to death."

"You don't mean that you've been talking to her, Jack?" I cried, horrified.

"That's not necessary," growled the child. "What with her ''ittle baby go to seepy,' and 'now, Horatio, 'oo dear 'ittle pet lambie,' she freezes the words upon my tongue. Another thing, Clarissa, that you can't fully understand–I'm not permitted, through psychological conditions that you cannot grasp, to talk to anybody but you. It will relieve your mind to know that I'm as dumb as a–as a real baby when you're not within hearing."

"I'm so glad of that, Jack," I exclaimed, impulsively. "From things you've said before, I had obtained a different impression."

"I was only trying to scare you, Clarissa," remarked Jack, mischievously. "But I've told you the truth at last. By the way, what a stupendous idiot Tom Minturn is! How in the world did you happen to marry him?"

"Jack," I cried, angrily, "I am amazed at your lack of good taste. You are hardly in a position to do Tom justice. Unless you refrain from making such brutal remarks in the future, I shall leave you entirely to the care of the nurse."

"And be accused of neglecting your only child," suggested the baby, slyly.

I had not grasped the full scope of this clever remark, before I was startled by a quick step in the hallway, the throwing open of the door, and the sound of Tom's voice, crying:

"Oh, here you are! I've found you at last, have I? What a pretty picture you make, Clare, there in the half-lights with the baby on your knees. How is the dear little chap? Poor fellow, he must have thought that his dismissal from the luncheon-table was rather abrupt."

"What an ass he is!" whispered Jack, under his breath. Then he began to cry lustily, as had been his custom whenever Tom had deigned to enter the nursery.

CHAPTER V.

A SPOILED CHILD

Tom had come to the nursery in high spirits and with the best possible intention. Freed from the depressing presence of the nurse and butler he had argued, I felt sure, that now was the time for a frolic with the baby that should put their relations upon a smoother footing. He had said to me, more than once, that little Horatio's apparent prejudice against him was due to the fact that hirelings were always coming between children and parents in these latter days.

The baby's voice, however, was still for war. I did not dare to trot him upon my knees, knowing his prejudice against a shaking, so I sat there gazing up at Tom's smiling face in perplexity and holding my first husband, now howling lustily, firmly upright on my lap.

"Let me take him, my dear," suggested Tom, with what struck me as rather artificial enthusiasm. "I'll walk with him awhile. It may quiet him."

To my astonishment, the baby stopped crying at once, as Tom bent down and clasped him, rather awkwardly, in his arms. Hope began to dance merrily in my heart, and I laughed aloud. It was a sight to bring smiles to the saddest face. Tom paced up and down the nursery, sedately, furtively watching Jack, as he nestled against his shoulder, making no sound and apparently contented for the moment with the situation. But a sudden fear fell upon me. The thought that this might be the calm before the storm flashed through my mind, and the lightning of premonition was almost instantly followed by the thunder of fulfilment.

"What the dickens!" cried Tom, in anger and amazement. Jack, having deftly hurled Tom's eyeglasses to the floor, had begun to pummel his nose with one hand while he pulled his hair with the other, making strange, guttural sounds the while that were unlike anything that had ever issued from his baby throat before.

"Take him away, will you, Clare?" implored Tom, wildly. "He's the worst that ever happened. What's the matter with him?"

"Perhaps he's sleepy, Tom," I suggested, uncertain whether I should laugh or weep, as I removed the baby from my second husband's arms. "What a bad little boy you have been, Horatio!" I managed to say, chidingly, wondering if nature had not designed me for an actress.

"He ought to be spanked," growled Tom, bending to the floor to grope for his eye-glasses in the twilight.

"Spanked, eh?" whispered the baby, close to my ear. "We'll see about that. I've got it in for him, all right. Just wait!"

"Hush! hush!" I implored him, hurrying back to the rocking-chair, to get as far away from Tom as possible.

"What an infernal temper the boy has," remarked the latter, standing erect again and replacing his eye-glasses upon his nose. "I'm afraid my visit to the nursery has not been a success, Clare," he added, as he stalked to the doorway, evidently sorely hurt at heart.

When we were alone together again, I planted the baby firmly on my knees and bent down till I could look straight into his tear-stained eyes.

"You are very unkind, Jack," I said to him, earnestly. "Have you ever paused to consider what are you here for? Of course, I'm a convert to the theory of reincarnation. You're sufficient proof of its truth. As I understand it, it is incumbent upon you to lead a better life this time than you led before. Frankly, Jack, you aren't beginning well."

"I realize that, Clarissa," said the baby, repentantly. "If I don't brace up, I'll make a terrible mess of it, and my next birth'll be sure to jar me. Maybe I'll be doomed to show up in Brooklyn–or even Hoboken. If you care anything about my–ah–psychical future, my dear, you'll keep Tom Minturn away from me. He's so confoundedly patronizing! He's actually insufferable, my dear. Did you hear him quoting Herbert Spencer at the table, gazing at me all the while as if I were some kind of a germ that might develop in time? And the funny part of it is, Clarissa, that I am a sage, and he's nothing but a misguided ignoramus."

"But Tom has the reputation of being quite learned, Jack," I protested. "He's an active member of the Darwin Society, and has just been elected to the Association for the Promulgation of the Doctrine of Evolution."