Perkins, the Fakeer

CHAPTER X.

TOM'S RECOVERY

At length the man perceives it die awayAnd fade into the light of common day.WILLIAM WORDSWORTH.

After rereading the foregoing deposition I am forced to the conclusion that I was designed by nature neither for a novelist nor a historian. I can see that my narrative fails to be convincing, considered either as a work of fiction or as a statement of fact. But may I not comfort myself with the thought that I have given my testimony conscientiously, and that if the outcome of my literary efforts is unsatisfactory my failure is due rather to the inexplicable phenomena with which I have been obliged to deal than to my own defects as an annalist and witness? I have endeavored to inscribe simply and in chronological order the unadorned tale of my husband's sudden attack of genius and its consequences, and I realize now that my data will not be accepted by the scientific, nor will their arrangement appeal to the artistic. But I have told the truth, and if not the whole truth, at least nothing but the truth. As literature my story belongs to the realistic school and is of the present. As a contribution to science it will have no standing to-day, but I am firmly convinced that the psychologists of the future will read the details of Tom Remsen's case with enlightened interest.

I have felt too deeply the nervous strain of setting down in black and white the story of the greatest crisis in my life to go into details here and now regarding the ups and downs of the long illness that Tom underwent after his triumphant appearance before the Chopin Society.

For two days before he collapsed I saw that he was fighting in grim silence against weakness and fever. He was like a man struggling to overcome an unnatural appetite and growing constantly more weary of the contest. He would stroll with reluctant steps into the music-room, stand for a time gazing defiantly at the piano, with his hands clenched and beads of perspiration on his troubled brow; then he would turn away, meeting my gaze with a melancholy smile, and hurry off to his office or his club, to return to me after a time pale and listless, but always stubbornly silent as to the cause of his evident suffering. Only once before he was forced to take to his bed, where he tossed for a week in delirium, did he refer, even indirectly, to the cause of his disquietude.

"Has Signorina Molatti been here to-day?" he asked me, abruptly, one evening at dinner.

"No, Tom," I answered, a note in my voice that I'm sure he did not like. "Did you expect her?"

"I always expect her," he muttered, speaking more to himself than to me.

That evening the magnetism of the open piano in the music-room proved irresistible to him. To my mingled consternation and delight he played selections from Chopin until long after midnight, the while I sat behind him fascinated by his renditions but appalled by the persistent recurrence of his "seizures." "To-morrow," I said to myself, "I will consult Dr. Woodruff again. Perhaps he has made his diagnosis and can suggest some line of treatment."

But on the morrow Tom was in charge of our family doctor and two trained nurses. The morning had found him hot with fever, and by noon he was out of his head and inclined to be violent. Then followed days and nights of alternating hope and fear, during which there came to me a complete revelation of what the old Tom had been to me, the Tom who had bored me at times–ungrateful woman that I was!–by his practical, unimaginative, inartistic personality. How I treasured a word of encouragement from the doctor or a nurse! How bitterly I repented my former discontent, my disloyal longing for something in Tom's make-up that nature had not vouchsafed to him! It had come to him–this "something"–and it had well-nigh ruined our lives. Whatever it had been, demoniac possession, hypnotism or what-not, it had been a thing of evil, despite the uncanny beauty of its manifestation. In my heart of hearts I craved one of two alternatives–either Tom's death or his restoration to his former self, freed forever from the black shadow of Chopin's genius.

It was not until one afternoon well on in his convalescence that I knew my fondest hopes had been realized. We had betaken ourselves to the library, not to read but to enjoy in an indolent way our new freedom from trained nurses and the discipline of the sick-room. Tom, leaning back comfortably in a reclining-chair and puffing a cigarette, wore on his invalid's face an expression of supreme contentment. Not once, I was glad to note, did his eyes wander to the distant shelf on which stood our Chopin literature, books that I had doomed in my mind to an auto-da-féwhen a fitting opportunity for the sacrifice should arise.

"Isn't this cozy?" remarked Tom, presently, glancing at me affectionately. "But I suppose I must hasten my recovery, my dear. The Pepper and Salt Trust and other enterprises don't take much stock in sick men."

"Don't worry about business matters, Tom Remsen," I said, with playful sternness. "We can get on very well if you never do another stroke of work in your life."

A shadow passed over Tom's face, and he puffed his cigarette nervously. "I'm not fitted for a life of leisure, my dear," he remarked, grimly. "A man may get into so many kinds of mischief if he isn't busy."

I hastened to change the subject. "Remember, sir, that you are under orders. You are to do as you are told to do. You may not know it, Tom, but the fact is that you and I sail for Europe just as soon as you are strong enough to stand the voyage."

"Where are we going?" he asked, apprehensively. "Not to Paris?"

"No, not to Paris," I answered, understanding him. "We'll spend all our time in Scotland and Ireland. They're the only countries over there that we have not seen, Tom."

The next day I discharged our butler for an indiscretion that he committed at this moment.

"Signorina Molatti," he announced from the doorway of the library, and turning my head I saw the violiniste, with her Cremona under her arm, coming toward us. I glanced at Tom. The two red spots that had leaped into his white cheeks seemed to be an outward manifestation, not of joy but of hot anger. I rose and went toward our visitor, a question in my face.

"Will you not forgiva me, signora?" cried Molatti, in soft, pleading tones. "Eet ees what you calla vera bad form, but I hava been so vera unhappy. They tolda me that Signor Remsen was dying. Can you not forgiva me?"

"But he is on the road to recovery, signorina," I said, perfunctorily. It would not do to give way to my inclination to chide this insinuating girl for her presumption. A scene might cause Tom to have a relapse.

"I see," she cried. "And I am so glad! And I hava broughta my violin. That the signor would lika to hear the voice of the maestro--"

"Stop right there, will you–ah–signorina," exclaimed Tom, gruffly, endeavoring, as I saw, to control his annoyance and show no discourtesy to even an unwelcome guest. "I'm not it, young woman. He's gone away, whoever he was. If he comes back–which God forbid–I'll notify you. But you won't catch me drumming any more on a piano. My musical career is at an end. I'm under the care of a doctor, and he says that I'm on the road to recovery. Forgive me if I have spoken too plainly. You're a very charming young woman, and I admire your–ah–genius. But mine's gone, and I'll take good care that it doesn't come back. If you'd like that piano in the music-room, Signorina Molatti, I'm sure that my wife would be glad to send it over to your apartments. We're through with it–forever!"

I was sorry for the girl. The expression of amazement–even horror–that had come into her dark, expressive face touched my heart, and I laid my hand gently on her arm.

"It's a great mystery, signorina," I whispered to her, as I led her from the library. "I can't explain it to you very clearly, for I don't understand it myself. But Mr. Remsen told you the truth. He is no longer musical. In his normal condition he is the most unmusical man in the world. The Signor Remsen that you have known, with whom you have played duets, is dead–I can hardly believe that he ever existed. Will you, Signorina Molatti, grant me the great privilege of presenting to you yonder piano? Frankly, it would be a great relief to me to be rid of it."

There were tears in her splendid black eyes as she turned her face toward me. "I do not understand," she said, mournfully. "You do not know whata it all meant to me. I cannot taka your piano. There is nobody in the wide world to playa eet, now that he ees gone. And you are telling me the truth? I was dreaming? Eet did not really happen? But, signora, there were so many who hearda heem–hearda me–hearda us! Eet could not hava been a dream. Whata was eet?"

Her voice broke with a sob, and I bent down and kissed her tear-stained face.

"I cannot tell you, signorina. But do not let your heart break. You may find him again some day."

"Nevaire again," she sighed, seizing my hands impulsively. "Nevaire again. But I thanka you so much. Fareawell."

My heart was heavy as I returned to Tom, uncertain of the state in which I should find him. To my delight, I saw as I entered the library that he had suddenly made a great stride toward renewed health. He was sitting erect, and there was little of the invalid in his face or voice.

"That's over, my dear!" he cried, gaily, "and I'm going to celebrate Chopin's utter rout. Order me a brandy and soda, will you?–and push that box of cigars toward me. Then we'll read up a bit, little woman, about Scotland and Ireland. On the whole, I'm inclined to believe you and I will have a very jolly outing."

I leaned forward and kissed the dear fellow's smiling lips. "It's so good to have you back again, Tom," I murmured.

"And the signorina?" he asked, presently. "How did she take it? I'm afraid I was cruel to her, my dear. Did I speak too harshly to her?"

"You had no alternative, Tom," I assured him, soothingly; "you had been placed in a very awkward position."

"I had–in a very awkward position," he acknowledged. "And who the deuce put me there? I wonder–"

"Don't wonder, Tom," I cried, sharply. "The less wondering you do the better it will be for us both."

"You're right, Winifred, as you always are," he said, raising aloft the glass of bubbling brandy that the butler had brought to him, and nodding toward me. "Here's your good health, my dear, and bon voyage to us both!"

III.

Clarissa's Troublesome Baby

For while the wheel of birth and death turns round,Past things and thoughts, and buried lives come back,I now remember, myriad rains ago,What time I roamed Himâla's hanging woods,A tiger, with my striped and hungry kind.THE LIGHT OF ASIA.

CHAPTER I.

MY LATE HUSBAND

And while the wheel of birth and death turns roundThat which hath been must be between us two.--Sir Edwin Arnold.

I was alone in the nursery with the baby, a chubby boy whose eight months of life had amazingly increased his weight and vigor, when I heard the crack of doom issuing from his miniature mouth!

I wonder if your imagination is strong enough to put you, for a moment, in my place. Suppose that you had dismissed the nurse for a time that you might have a mother's frolic in the twilight with your only child, the blessing that had come to you as a reward for marrying again after five years of widowhood. Suppose that the baby, opening his little eyes to their widest extent, had said to you, as my baby said to me:

"You don't seem to recognize me, my dear, but I've come back to you."

Wedded to Tom, already jealous of your maternal fondness for the boy, what effect would Jack's voice, silenced five years ago by death, have had upon you, rising in gruff maturity from a baby's tiny throat? Was it strange that I came within a hair's breadth of dropping the uncanny child to the floor? Mechanically I glanced over my shoulder, in cold dread lest the nurse might return at any moment. Then I found courage to glance down into the baby's upturned face. There was something in the child's eyes so old and wise that I realized my ears had not deceived me–I had not been the victim of an hallucination resulting from the strain of an afternoon of calls and teas. The conviction came to me, like an icy douche, that I was standing there in a stunning afternoon costume, holding my first husband in my arms, and liable to let him fall if our weird tête-à-tête should be sharply interrupted.

"You aren't glad to see me," grumbled Jack, wiggling uneasily against my gloves and coat. "But it isn't my fault that I'm here, Clarissa. There's a lot of reincarnation going on, you know, and a fellow has to take his chances."

Softly, I stole to a chair and seated myself, holding the baby on my trembling knees.

"Are you–are you–comfortable, Jack?" I managed to whisper, falteringly, the thought flashing through my mind that I had gone suddenly insane.

"Keep quiet, can't you?" he pleaded. "Don't shake so! I'm not a rattle-box. I wish you'd tell the nurse, Clarissa, to put a stick in my milk, will you? There's a horrible sameness to my present diet that is absolutely cloying. Will you stop shaking? I can't stand it."

By a strong effort of will I controlled my nervous tremors, glancing apprehensively at the door through which the nurse must presently return.

"There, that's better," commented Jack, contentedly. "You don't know much about us, do you, Clarissa?"

"About–about–who?" I gasped, wondering if he meant spirits.

"About babies," he said, with a wiggle and a chuckle that both attracted and repelled me. "Where's your handkerchief? Wipe my nose–pardon me, Clarissa, that sounds vulgar, doesn't it? But what the deuce am I to do? I'm absolutely helpless, don't you know?"

I could feel the tears near my eyes, as I gently touched the puckered baby face with a bit of lace.

"There was only one chance in ten thousand millions that I should come here," went on Jack, apologetically. "It's tough on you, Clarissa. Do you think that you can stand it? I've heard the nurse say that I make a pretty good baby."

I sat speechless for a time, trying to adapt myself to new conditions so startling and fantastic that I expected to waken presently from a dream–a dream that promised to become a nightmare. But there was an infernal realism about the whole affair that had impressed me from the first. Jack's matter-of-fact way of accepting the situation was so strikingly characteristic of him that I had felt, at once, a strong temptation to laugh aloud.

"I want you to make me a promise, Clarissa," he said, presently, seizing one of my gloved fingers with his fat little dimpled hand and making queer mouths, as if he were trying to whistle. "You won't tell–ah–Tom, will you? He wouldn't understand it at all. I don't myself, and I've been through it, don't you see? In a way, of course, it's mighty bad form. I know that. I feel it deeply. But I was powerless, Clarissa. You know I never took any stock in those Oriental philosophies. I was always laughing at Buddhism, metempsychosis, and that kind of thing. But there's really something in it, don't you think? Keep quiet, will you? You're shaking me up again."

"There's more in it than I had ever imagined, Jack," I remarked, gloomily. "Of course, I'll say nothing to Tom about it. It'll have to be our secret. I understand that."

"You'll have to be very careful about what you call me before people, Clarissa," said the baby, presently. "My name's Horatio, isn't it? What the dickens did you call me that for? I always hated the name Horatio."

"It was Tom's choice," I murmured. "I'm sorry you don't like it–Jack."

"If you called me 'Jack' for short–no, that wouldn't do. Tom wouldn't like it, would he? Your handkerchief again, please. Thank you, my dear. By the way, Clarissa, I wish you'd tell the nurse that she gets my bath too hot in the morning. I'd like a cold shower, if she doesn't mind."

"You'll have to adapt yourself to circumstances, my child," I remarked, wearily, wondering if this horrible ordeal would never come to an end. I longed to get away by myself, to think it all over and quiet my nerves, if possible, before I should be forced to meet Tom at dinner.

"Adapt myself to circumstances!" exclaimed Jack, bitterly, kicking savagely with his tiny feet at his long white gown. "Don't get sarcastic, Clarissa, or I'll yell. If I told the nurse the truth, where'd you be?"

"Jack!" I cried, in consternation. There seemed to be a hideous threat in his words.

"You'd better call me Horatio, for practice," he said, calmly, but I could feel him chuckling against my arm. "I'll get used to it after a time. But it's a fool name, just the same. How about the cold shower?"

"Jack," I said, angrily, "I'll put you in your crib and leave you alone in the dark if you annoy me. You must be good! Your nurse knows what kind of a bath you should have."

"And she'll know who I am, if you leave me here alone, Clarissa," he exclaimed, doubling up his funny little fists and shaking them in the air. "I've got the whip-hand of you, my dear, even if I am only a baby. By the way, Clarissa, how old am I?"

"Eight months, Jack," I managed to answer, a chill sensation creeping over me, as the shadows deepened in the room and a mysterious horror clutched at my heart. I am not a dreamer by temperament; I am, in fact, rather practical and commonplace in my mental tendencies, but there was something awful in the revelation made to me which seemed to change my whole attitude toward the universe and filled me, for the moment, with a novel dread of my surroundings. I was recalled sharply to a less fantastic mood by Jack's querulous voice:

"Will you stop shaking, Clarissa?" he cried, petulantly. "You make me feel like a milk-bottle with delirium tremens. Call the nurse, will you? She hasn't got palsy in her knees. I want to go to sleep."

At that instant the nurse bustled into the room, apologizing for her long absence.

"I'm going to make a slight change in his diet, Mrs. Minturn," she explained, taking Jack from my arms and gazing down with professional satisfaction at his cherubic face. "He's in fine condition–aren't you, you tunnin' 'ittle baby boy? But he's old enough to have a bit of variety now and then. There are several preparations that I've found very satisfactory in other cases, and I've ordered one of them for–there, there, 'ittle Horatio! Don't 'oo cry! Kiss 'oo mamma, and then 'oo'll go seepy-bye."

As I bent down to press my lips against the baby's fat cheeks, I caught a gleam in his eyes that the nurse could not see, and, unless my ears deceived me, Jack whispered "Damn!" under his breath.

CHAPTER II.

A FOND FATHER

As in the world of dream whose mystic shadesAre 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.