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Title: The Three Stages of Clarinda Thorbald

Author: William T. Hamilton

Release date: May 9, 2020 [eBook #62062]

Language: English

Credits: Produced by Roger Frank and the Online Distributed
        Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This file was
        produced from images generously made available by The
        Internet Archive)


*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE THREE STAGES OF CLARINDA THORBALD ***




Produced by Roger Frank and the Online Distributed
Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This file was
produced from images generously made available by The
Internet Archive)









                          The Three Stages of
                           Clarinda Thorbald

                                   BY
                        WILLIAM T. HAMILTON, Jr.

                 Publishers    DORRANCE    Philadelphia




                             Copyright 1924
                         Dorrance & Company Inc

              Manufactured in the United States of America




                              To my family




                                CONTENTS

                               Stage One
                               Stage Two
                               Stage Three




                 The Three Stages of Clarinda Thorbald

                               STAGE ONE

                                   I


In the soft light of an afternoon sun, Clarinda sat in an old chair and
read a thesis upon love, and she found set forth in this thesis that
without love the world would not go around. Further, without love life
would be but dross and hideous calamity. She also found therein that men
have died from love, and women have languished in torments when it was
unrequited.

Even though she was filled with apprehension as she read, she did not
wish to eschew love, but was glad she was suffering from its effects.

She imagined that her own particular love was different from the love
anybody had ever been consumed with, and she was glad in her heart she
was suffering from its effects. She perceived it affected the glint of
her hair, and she even thought it affected the beauty of her smile. She
knew it affected her eyes, and gave an added color to her cheeks.

At times when she sat by herself, she was filled with fear that the
object of her love might fail her—that what she felt might be a dream
and not a real condition.

At times this trepidation was so overwhelming she became frightened. It
might occur that she would awake from her blissful state and find it was
all a mistake. She even thought that it might not have happened—that the
man she loved upon a certain night, at a certain place had whispered in
her ear that without her love life would be a void.

Clarinda was young and believed in love, and she had not found out that
love dies even as the body, and often becomes stale, that more than
often it passed from the soul as the miasma from the fetid lake.

Nevertheless, from the time love awoke in her heart, and the man had
whispered in her ear and held her close to his breast, day followed day.

Day followed day and the hour of her wedding came, and never once did
time stand still. And when it was at hand she awoke with the sun and
sprang from her bed as light as the lark, with her hair hanging in
golden strands over her shoulders.

Lightly she ran to the window and pushing it open the air rushed in. A
luxurious breeze swayed the tree-tops, and the flowers in the fields
still covered with dew gave forth untold perfume.

She threw aside the curtains that kept from within the glory of the day,
and a flood of light burst into the room. A great gladness came to her
heart for there was no cloud in the sky. As if to add a better omen,
across the garden in a sycamore tree a bird trilled its morning song.

A smile soft and sweet crossed her lips and gradually expanded into a
laugh that vied with the song of the bird in the tree.

Clarinda was thrilled, and her heart went out to meet the lover who
would come.

When she turned from the sun and the day without and the perfume of the
flowers, a tear fell down her cheeks cutting its way through the pink
and white to the floor.

A fear gripped her. She felt she might be giving up more than she was
gaining. It came to her that she was leaving all that had made her. In
these surroundings she had grown, and now she was arriving at one end of
her life. Further, she knew she was about to take a step into new
fields; she would be thrown into a new perspective; a new condition of
which she knew nothing and all these things she loved would fade from
her and be lost.

It convulsed her as she felt her youth was dead.

She turned from the things about her and looked again across the fields,
and thought she could see her youth being carried to its last resting
place upon this beautiful day. To her the grave seemed dug, the mourners
assembled. She could even hear the toll of the bells for its interment.
Terribly oppressed by the idea she withdrew her hand from the curtain
and fell upon her knees by the side of her bed and prayed.

Clarinda prayed for a long time, then she arose from her knees, shook
the tears from her eyes and throwing a raiment of filmy stuff about her
made her toilet.

Her golden hair she piled in many waves about her head. A smile broke
across her lips as she looked at herself in a glass. The fear had passed
from her heart and left it in a tumult of joy.

Clarinda fitted one pink foot after another pink foot into two pink
slippers, then she went from the room out upon the landing to the head
of the stairs.

Below her were banked flowers. Men, bearing other masses ran hither and
thither, placing them as they were brought in by other men.

Her mother was already there, a tall woman with a huge chest. She went
from point to point giving orders, which were carried out carefully. Her
step was slow and labored. The silence seemed to Clarinda to presage
disaster.

A lean, lank, old man stepped uncertainly from one of the inner rooms,
and he gazed helplessly about. His face was drawn, and his appearance
betokened sorrow.

The men who worked moved from place to place with noiseless feet. The
woman, torn by her emotions, continued her labors. The hall grew into a
bower, while the odor from the flowers crept like a blanket over
everything.

Clarinda saw the silver things collected upon the tables. Gifts of gold
were interspersed. She thought them votive offerings. They sparkled and
glistened in the sun which came through the many windows.

Slowly she came down the stairs and stopped in the middle of the hall,
and her young, lithe body swayed with emotion.

After she had regained herself she went over to her mother and put her
arms around her neck, pressing a kiss upon her cheek. They said nothing.
Then she walked over to her father and helped him to a chair, and knelt
down beside him.

Her father smoothed her hair with his hand as if to give her courage.

She whispered to him in a shaking voice: “This is joy!”

“It is joy,” he answered simply.

“I am dying!” she exclaimed still whispering. “I am already dead! Look!
Look! Father!” She raised her hand and pointed toward the men who moved
about. “The men,” she continued, “are decorating the rooms for the
corpse. I—I—am the corpse!” and close she shrank to the side of the
chair. “My youth is dead!” Clarinda’s eyes filled with tears and her
body shook from her emotion.

Her father raised her head and tilting her face looked into her eyes.

“No, Clarinda, you are not dead. You are not a corpse. The rooms are not
decorated for your death. It is done for your rebirth. Only your youth
is dead, and from it has sprung a new and wonderful thing.”

Clarinda rose from her knees and put her arms frantically around his
neck.

“Save me! Save me! Father!” she pleaded. “Save me! You are wonderful!”

“Listen, Clarinda, you mustn’t weep. Rather you must be filled with joy,
for this is a festival. You have come into something new. A great
responsibility grasps you in its hand. You are re-born. Nature calls you
and you go—it is inexorable—you cannot help. You must not weep; rather
you must sing and dance. You must array yourself in gold and in silk and
go forth to meet the bridegroom.”

“Is there no way?” she asked with pleading in her voice.

With terrible finality, he answered “No!”

Slightly she raised her body, a look of determination spread over her
face, then a trace of a smile crept back. The tears were gone.

“Ah! how I fear,” she said. “And yet, Father, I love. I wouldn’t have it
changed.” Clarinda paused for an instant. “It is true, Father, I weep,
but my heart is filled with joy. I am ready to go forth into the
darkness. I await the coming of the bridegroom.” Clarinda stretched her
hands out in front of her. “I think, Father,” she said with conviction,
“that he will protect me. I am not sure.”

She sank back close to the chair and held her father’s hand close to her
face.

Gently he smoothed her hair, while the love of his age went out to her
in her extremity. He was torn as she was torn.




                                   II


After quite a while Clarinda arose from beside her father, and went back
up the stairs. Her mother continued to stride about the rooms, giving
orders and placing things as she would have them. Clarinda went to
prepare herself for the sacrifice, which she hoped in her heart would
not be as terrible as she thought it would be. When she was dressed she
placed a wreath of orange blossoms in her hair. Mohammedan-like her face
was covered with a long diaphanous veil formed as a yashmac, except it
was fastened by gold pins. Clarinda dreamed of freedom. Presently she
came from her room dressed as a bride. The house became astir. Her
wonderful body swayed, lithe and strong, with perfect undulations. Her
youth was paramount.

Beneath her veil, her face was contorted, a deadly pallor overspread it.
Her lips trembled and her hands shook slightly. She was cold.

Behind her in unison with her step came immaculate maids who bore her
long train. As she advanced to come down the stairs, bridesmaids ran
hither and thither, picking up wraps and huge bunches of flowers.

The front doors of the house were thrown open as she came the length of
the hall, lined by lackeys in uniform. Wide stood the doors, and the sun
of the day in June swept into the spaces. It was sweet with the odor of
new-mown hay and it merged with the perfume of the banked-up flowers.
The light as it broke in cut arabesques on the rugs.

Clarinda felt the odor of the new-mown hay and the warmth of the sun
crept into her soul, burning spaces in her fear.

Beyond the open doors at the beginning of the garden, at this side of
the fountain that threw its pellucid waters high into the air, stood an
automobile furnished with gleaming glass sides.

Clarinda felt the quiet.

It was broken now and then by an occasional laugh, hysterical in its
intensity, a giggling girl, the sob of an old servant, but these
interstices seemed only to accentuate the quiet.

With effort she moved the length of the hall and passed through the open
doors. She entered the automobile which was to carry her to the church
and a new life. Clarinda peered through the glass sides and watched the
things she knew so well swept by her.

As the car started off, she heard the thundering tones of the bells of
the church.

The car finished its journey and stopped suddenly at the church. Some
one opened the door and helped her alight. Clustered about on the
pavement stood evil, curious people. They gaped with envious eyes upon
the girl. Some in their envy spat upon the stones as if to give vent to
their wrath. Maliciously they grinned or cursed, cruel, bitter jealousy
filled their souls. They whispered and commented upon her beauty and the
beauty of her gown.

Clarinda did not know they asked why. Nor that their hands were
stretched out in an agony to destroy. She did not know they hated her
and the things she represented. Nor did she know they thought it unfair
that they should be without and she should have all. These people
shivered in the heat of the day. None of them smiled. Clarinda went by
them without looking. She did not see their faces, nor did she feel
their comments upon her and her gown.

The church swallowed her up. It was all dark. Heavy perfume hung in the
air and the gloom was smitten and torn by lights from tall candles upon
the high altar. Here and there the sun sent a ray through the
stained-glass windows as if to try to dispel the dark. At a distance
that seemed miles to Clarinda was the high altar, covered with flowers
and decorated with the insignia of the church.

As she looked down the aisle, she saw standing at the end of the
chancel, a priest in garments of white and of gold. He was looking
steadily towards her as she approached, and at times read from his
rubric. A choir of voices in the stalls sang and the music reverberated
through the church.

At the steps to the chancel, she saw another man, who was very tall;
behind him stood another clothed in black as the first, like bearers at
a funeral. As she stopped the bridesmaids collected in certain fixed
lines about her, making bright spots in the gloom. They seemed happy,
and as envious as the poor who stood at the door and cursed her in the
sunlight. The priest raised his hand and prayed that an infinite God
might bless this pair. He read with deep intonations.

He was old and grey, his body was bent with the weight of his years.
Many had come to him in their youth. Over thousands he had intoned the
same prayers and raised his hand in blessing. He had seen these
thousands turn and walk away to dangers they knew nothing of, with hope
in their hearts and love in their souls.

Even so, Clarinda walked to dangers she knew nothing of, as thousands
had before her, with hope in her heart and infinite love in her soul. As
she turned from the priest, she pushed the veil back from her face and
gently placed her hand upon the arm of the man—a smile was on her lips.
Calmly she walked towards the door of the church, through the searching
eyes of the host.

The car bore them swiftly away from the mob and their curses. Clarinda
crept close to the man at her side, and even though she smiled a tear
fell down her face. Clarinda trembled and shook as she tucked herself
closer and closer to his side. The man put his arm around her, drawing
her lovely body to him, and wiping away the tears as they fell.

“It is wonderful,” she said tremulously. The man laughed. “I am yours,”
she added.

“Mine!” he replied.

“Everything that I was before is done. I am someone else. There is no
more the old Clarinda. Don’t you think it is wonderful? Think of it, a
few words, a motion of the hand, a prayer intoned by an old man and
everything that one has been is dead.”

“Yes, it is wonderful, Clarinda. You are mine,” the man replied, and
added as an afterthought, “until death do us part, for richer or for
poorer; in sickness and in health.”

Clarinda withdrew herself from his arms and sat straight up in the car.
She looked him steadily in the face.

“Let no man put asunder what God hath joined together,” she said with
deep feeling.

“Those are the words,” he answered.

Through the streets, over the stones, around the corners, through the
unheeding many who were swept by their own necessities, the car rushed
as if it wished to deliver itself as quickly as possible of the freight
it carried.

The keeper of the lodge, at the beginning of the garden stood waiting at
the gate. As they passed he bowed low to the ground. His face was
covered with a sinister smile. His hat touched the immaculate driveway,
as it had done when they went out.

They came to the house. The bridesmaids arrived in various cars and
collected about her. Her old father took her kindly in his arms. Her
mother pressed a kiss upon her face. The music from the organ at the end
of the hall played loudly and a childish voice sang alone, “O Perfect
Love.”

Clarinda took her stand in the middle of a long line of people. Other
people came in hordes, some shook her by the hand and all mumbled
platitudes. Others kissed her and made remarks even as platitudinous. To
each she gave a smile and tried in her heart to believe this was a day
of joy. The beginning of a new life of unlimited possibilities. The
future she hoped was golden in its promise.

The man to whom she had been married stood close by her side; at times,
he sought her hand and pressed it violently. Visions of a great
happiness floated harmoniously through his mind. He was strong, virile,
oppressive in his strength. His face was covered with smiles. He made
answer to all the thoughtless congratulations. He stood beside his
new-made mother-in-law. Her chest was more prominent than ever. It rose
and fell as the heaving of the sea. He bent and kissed her.

The father, the old man, twisted with age and the struggle he had made
with the world, who by his fight had made all these things possible,
took those who came by the hand and answered as best he could. Down in
his heart he was oppressed with anxiety. The thing filled him with fear.

After a long time the line broke and the bridesmaids scattered. They
chattered and laughed, each one in her heart hoping that out of this
day, might come her chance to follow in the footsteps of Clarinda.

When all the company had assembled and they had seethed about and made
their compliments, the doors were thrown open that led to the dining
rooms, and the line in which Clarinda had stood for so long a time
broke. The laden tables revealed themselves, burdened with mounds of
food, in the center of one of them a huge cake, and beside it a long,
glistening knife.

The men turned with a sigh of relief from the lights of the day, the
girl and the music, their minds going to their stomachs. Everything was
forgotten in the mad rush for the food. Old women growled and the young
like predatory beasts crowded and secured the best for themselves.

Wines flowed with a lavish hand. Men drank as if it were the last drink
of their lives. The smoke from innumerable cigarettes wreathed fantastic
festoons over the people. In a short while the men and the women moved
with uncertain steps over the polished floors, surfeited with the wines.

Clarinda’s mind was in a whirl. She saw all these things, and sensed
none of them. After a great while she slipped from the crowd and
wandered with faltering steps from one great room of the house to
another. Her father followed her stealthily as if he feared she might
like some ethereal thing float into space.

She made her way from room to room, and as she went she stretched out
her hand and stroked each object as if she loved it.

Room after room she visited, up all the staircases she went, slowly and
surely, until she came to the top of the house. Stopping at an oriel
window she laid her hand on the frame, and bending her head leaned it
against her arm. Below and beyond she saw the garden stretched like a
great panorama. The places she loved were there below her, where she had
played as a child. She followed with her eyes the well-beloved paths;
every flower, every bush she could identify; they seemed to carry a
special significance to her at the moment. Across the lake ambient in
its blue she saw the jutting ledges and barren rocks where she had sat
so many days and planned her life—what it should be; and she found now
it was not to be.

She knew her chimera was shattered. Everything she had planned was gone
from her. All was changed. Clarinda felt the wrench from her old life
and the cast into the new. An anguish greater than she had ever felt
before came over her, and with a saddened spirit she turned from the
window, from the garden, the paths and her childhood. As she turned she
met the eyes of her father, who stood just below her in the doorway to
the room.

The old man trembled and was uncertain, his mind was torn with
conflicting emotions. He felt with the going of Clarinda it was the end,
the disrupting of the one thing upon which he had built all his later
life. Yet, he knew in his heart, it was but a natural sequence. He had
built his temple around this slip of a girl. All the dreams of his life
had been centered upon this one thing. He had so wished she would always
be with him, and that she should gather his many years together, place
them in his old dead hands and fold the curtain, when he should at last
be placed where moth and rust do not corrupt nor thieves break through
and steal.

No one knew with more certainty than he, that all things were futile and
ephemeral, but a passing foment. As he stood below at the door and
looked up at her with her luxuriant life, he knew he would soon go,—and
in a short while she too would pass. Out of nature would come
obliteration, and with this obliteration all things he had built
crumbled into dust. Even the tiny traces he had made upon the shifting
sands of time would be blotted out. His fortunes, his house built of
iron and granite, in a few short strokes of the clock would return to
their primordial condition; this, even, before the grass should grow
green above him.

Clarinda moved quickly over to him and clutched his hand, as if she felt
the thoughts that were going through his mind. The old man shook with
fear. He feared death, for it was an obsession with him. The thought of
his last hours filled him with an ineffable sorrow, and drove the sweat
out upon his forehead. And he knew death was there, he felt it in his
quaking limbs and in his unsteady gait. He felt at times as if he dwelt
with the dead.

At night when he laid himself down to rest, after the multitudinous
labors of his day, as he closed his eyes, he would see floating before
him all those whom he had known and with whom he had lived and worked
and who had died. He counted them as they passed before him. A cold
perspiration as he counted them enveloped him while they beckoned to him
to follow, with their denuded fingers, and laughed at his futility.

He shivered now and clasped Clarinda’s hand so firmly that she winced
with pain. With an effort he gathered himself together. Clarinda
stretched her arms out to him and put them gently around his neck, as if
to protect him from his fears.

“Father!” she exclaimed.

“Yes, my child,” he said tremulously.

They turned and went slowly hand in hand down through the halls, from
place to place, from room to room, on down to the place of the food.

Together they stood for a few moments at the bottom of the staircase and
looked at the milling crowd. They, even, marked the steps of those who
had fed and drunk too eagerly, as they weaved and staggered from one
part of the hall to the other.

They listened to the laughter emphasized by the wines. The crowd milled
about. The young danced to the music. The old sat immovable in the
chairs, breathing heavily like constrictors. They smiled, these overfed,
and whispered among themselves; they criticised, and in their meager
hearts their filled stomachs gave charity.

Gradually the hands of the clock, at the head of the stairs, moved
towards the hour of departure. Unheeding time went on its inexorable
way—irrepressible, grinding, persistent. It ground these minions with
malicious certitude. It grinned at the futility of the people, the
futility of the father, of the groom, the bridesmaids, the flowers, and
the players of the music behind the palms.

It knew, this inexorable time, that the flowers massed upon the tables
and hung in festoons from every point of vantage, the tables, the
chairs, even the lights, it would smother in its unending advance. The
people who laughed, who drank the wines and smoothed each other with
unmeaning unction, it would in its own good process take back and bury
in itself.

Clarinda knew nothing of time, and smiled at its progress. She smiled
because she had never thought. Life to her was but opening up, and all
of it was to be.

The man to whom she had been married came to her, and together they
walked to the table that held the huge cake. Her heart turned from the
things about her and went to him who cut the cake as if it were the
Gordian knot. He cut this thing with the same strength he would cut his
way to fame. Pride expanded her heart as she looked at him. Her father
faded from her sight, and in his place came a new thing, a bigger thing,
that resolved itself into youth, hope and ambition. She saw her mother
float from place to place, and she too faded into the things that had
been, and she had no place in the new condition.

Out of the complacency of her youth she looked at her mother’s tired
face. Incompletely she saw her move from place to place. For some reason
her spirit revolted against her as if she had done her an irreparable
wrong, in bringing her into the world.

Clarinda left the crowd and went up the stairs by herself to dress for
her departure. The man, the groom, youth to her youth, waited at the
foot of the stairs, and talked rapidly with another man who twitted him.
They laughed occasionally, and he smoked, this bridegroom, viciously,
drawing the smoke from his cigarette deep down into his lungs, but the
tobacco quieted him, and lent him assurance.

As he waited, he thought that from now on in the distant future all
things should be his, the world, and success lay in the hollow of his
hand. He would command. Life was no mystery, no uncertainty. It was
plain and the hard road would be marched with ease.

For months before this wedding, in the still watches of the night, he
had dreamed of the house he would build, and the things he would
accumulate. He built this house, brick upon brick, just as he had
dreamed, and he placed within its walls each piece of furniture as he
would have it. In the aurora of it he placed Clarinda, for there was no
futility rearing its head in front of him.

For a long time he stood with the other man at the foot of the
staircase, waiting patiently, and presently from above came a sound,
then he turned his eyes and above him stood Clarinda in all her lovely
fragrance. Clarinda was ready, ready to go forth to give herself to him,
and to take up life as it would come. A fearlessness, complete,
enveloped her.

A smile covered her face as she saw him below. Then she placed one tiny
foot in front of another tiny foot, and her movement was slow as if in
accordance with the music that played in the hall. The man’s heart beat
in unison with her step, and a smile of pride covered his face. The
crowd stood back, then, as she stopped for a moment, a faint murmur
arose, the voices gradually becoming louder, until the air was rent with
a roar of approval.

Out into the sunlight they went—the man and the maid, and at the
beginning of the garden they entered the car. The bridesmaids threw
after them, as they left, old shoes and broken slippers as if they hoped
to give a happy augury to their future.

Then the two, lost in the car, looked out of the windows, and they saw
the garden fade out of sight. The keeper of the lodge like some old
gnome bowed low to the driveway, this time as if an evil spirit
possessed him. He seemed to laugh at their youth and their hopes.

The old keeper knew what futility was, for, in his youth he had taken
hope in his heart and love in his soul. He, as they, had started down
the roseate path, and it had looked to him as it did to them now, as to
all the others who had driven through these gates and had come after him
with hopes in their hearts and love in their souls. They, as he, had
swept up the ashes of their lives upon the hearths of their homes. And
the winds of adversity had come and driven them whirling into space. Out
of it all they had gathered nothing, nothing remained, except
bitterness, age and the certainty of death.

Clarinda saw nothing of this. In her ears the car sang. The power under
the hood sang, and the man who drove sang, even the birds flying in the
soft sunlight sang madrigals, and the great beams of the sun, as they
cut the branches of the trees, seemed to be doing so out of pure love
for her and her joy. The man beside her told her of his love—of the
thought in him that at last he had arrived at the peak of his life. He
told her that she was the one thing that went to complete his happiness.
Clarinda trembled with joy and nestled closer and closer to him. Nothing
marred the pleasure she felt. She dwelt upon his words he uttered and
gloried in the softness of his voice. Clarinda held fast to the things
he said and let them sink into her heart.

Mile after mile went by. They talked but little, but he told her again
and again of his love, and from time to time he took her gently in his
arms and kissed her.

Clarinda forgot everything, except the moment.

Late in the night they came to the front of a huge house, lit from
cellar to garret. In front, collected upon the porch, there moved about
many servants. The heavy doors were open and the lights from within cut
the night as with a two-edged sword. The car stopped. Clarinda got out
slowly. They walked hand in hand into the place. Clarinda gave no
thought to anything.

They were served and ate a light repast. The clock in the hall struck
twelve, the butler yawned and the other servants stood about and let
their faces fall into a curious repose. The man arose from his seat.
Clarinda passed out of the room. In her dressing-room there was a book,
and it was open and as she read the open page a flush came over her
face.




                                  III


In a short while the urge came, and they wished to leave the great house
with its lights, its vast rooms, its servants and its gorgeously
costumed lackeys. No volition of their own forced them out, but they
were compelled to go forth and select the soil in which they should
place the foundations, and upon these foundations, build their own
lives. As the spirit moved they went from time to time arm in arm, and
roamed from one street to another, and it gave them happiness. Together
they discussed each department into which they went, its advantages and
disadvantages, and with unconcealed joy, they haggled with persons who
dealt in these things.

When it became bruited abroad that they were in search of an apartment,
agents appeared upon the scene and told them in specious exaggeration,
how each place that each offered was superior to that offered by any
other agent. The superlative rested in their offerings.

Clarinda and her husband marched from one tiny place to another tiny
place, that had tiny rooms with even smaller additions called
kitchenettes.

Weeks were spent in this occupation, until eventually, after many times
referring back to the judgment of her father and long consultations with
her mother, they found a place upon a quiet street. It seemed to them
suitable soil in which they could sink their tentacles. They knew that
within these four walls they would find happiness, for both of them
thought that happiness was a matter of location.

The man as he went with Clarinda listened to her discussions, her
objections or her periods of admiration with enthusiasm, and agreed that
however small the place might be it made no difference as its very
smallness precluded the possibility of their being far from each other.
For many nights, before they fled from the big house of their honeymoon,
they sat late and discussed the pleasure it would give them, when he
should come home after the grind of the day’s work and he and she would
make plans for their betterment.

As he and Clarinda talked over these matters, he would rise from his
seat beside her and pace the floor in great agitation. Up and down the
big room, from one end to the other he paced, and he would draw for her
pictures of what they should have, of each piece of furniture and
described of what sort it should be, and it gave him pleasure to suggest
to her how each piece should be placed and to each suggestion, Clarinda
agreed eagerly.

“We shall sit upon the divan in the evenings,” he said, “and you will
sit close to me—ever so close. Naturally, we shall have a divan. We
could not do without a thing of that sort—a big cushy one. I want it to
eat up the room. We’ll place it directly in front of the fireplace.
Don’t you think it will be fine in the winter evenings with the fire
going lazily up the chimney? Just you and I there together with the big
world shut out.”

“And behind the divan, we shall have a tall lamp,” she broke in. “What
do you think of a pink shade?”

“Just finishes the picture as I have it in mind. By all means a pink
shade,” he replied enthusiastically.

“I do so like clocks. Shall we have a clock? You see I could watch the
clock, and then I should know when you were coming and maybe it would
not be so hard to wait,” said Clarinda with a plaintive tone in her
voice, as if she already felt the sorrow of his absence.

“Of course we shall have to have a clock—a chime clock. One of the kind
that strikes different tones for each quarter of an hour. You know the
kind I mean,” he assented quickly.

And so they built their castle and fitted it with the things they
thought they would love, and they did not know it was all foolish and
futile.

They moved into the spot they had selected, and adapted and placed the
furniture they had chosen. The divan, for it was upon the divan all
their future lives were to be planned, was in the room, and it took up a
lot of space just as they thought it would. Behind the divan they placed
a tall lamp with a pink shade that sent an even glow over them and threw
no shadows, and Clarinda liked the dim light. When the man had gone in
the mornings to his place of business, she would cuddle herself on the
divan and her mind gloated upon the things about her, and her happiness
was complete.

Then her friends came—the bridesmaids, and the others, those who had
stood about and been fed, and who drank the wine to excess and had gone
unsteadily over the polished floors; they sat upon the divan, and
Clarinda thought they desecrated it; they rushed from one tiny room to
the other and peered with malicious eyes into the kitchenette; and they
smiled among themselves at the tininess of the place, and gave their
unerring judgment on its possibilities. Clarinda’s mother soon came, and
she turned the things about and bemoaned with her husband the meagerness
of the setting and of the furnishings.

Clarinda watched her mother move about the place as she put things as
she would have them, and when she was gone Clarinda moved them back
again to their original positions. The man laughed and spoke jestingly
of her mother’s taste. In her heart her mother pitied her. But the old
man was proud of Clarinda and presaged for her all the things he so
desired she should have. He did not forget the doleful street, the
poorness of the surroundings, and the flimsiness of his first home. His
start he remembered was so much poorer than Clarinda’s. Yet he could not
forget the pride and the pleasure he had derived from it, and his heart
beat with infinite joy then, as Clarinda’s beat now.

Now the round of life was upon them. The man and the maid fell into the
swing. The nest was finished, its sides were put together with infinite
care. Each twig was intertwined with every other twig, in order that it
might be strong and withstand the assaults of wind and weather. The man
looked on with pride, and Clarinda was filled with unbounded faith.

Never before had she experienced such pleasure, even in the luxury of
her father’s house, as when she sat in the mornings at her own table
with her husband, and he at the lower end while the trim little maid
brought their breakfast.

Clarinda loved the silver as it stood in front of her, and derived a
sensation of sweetness from her surroundings, as she asked whether he
would have sugar in his coffee. She knew perfectly what he liked, but
there was something wonderful to her to ask each morning with the same
anxiety. It pleased her to pour each morning, each cup of coffee, but
she did so with perturbation. Always she asked whether it was just
right, and always he answered it could not be more perfect. Her heart
was filled with apprehension, for it was possible she might make a
mistake—it might not be just right.

Each morning at a precise time, the man left the house, and each morning
he kissed her goodbye and held her close to his heart. Each morning she
went to the door and watched him go down the stairs, then she rushed to
the window to watch him wave his hand to her before he disappeared
around the corner, and she smiled and was happy.

Then one day in June, just as her wedding had taken place upon a day in
June, the day broke as usual, and the sun came up. The early morning
breezes fluttered the trees. The usual breakfast had been partaken of.
Clarinda had asked the same questions and had received the same replies.
The trim little maid had done her duty. Life seemed as happy and as
justifiable as ever.

The man arose from his seat and rushed from the room. Clarinda stood
upon this memorable morning in the doorway as he went away. She looked
after him as he went rapidly down the stairs, and slowly she closed the
door behind her.

Clarinda felt the negation of the man’s service. She craved the kiss he
had given her each morning. She did not sing when she closed the door,
nor did she rush to the window and wait for him to pass the corner. From
that moment a wound had been made in her heart and the blood dripped
from the gash.

The man did not fail to kiss his wife through malice. Kisses had simply
grown stale in his mouth, and now seemed to him a useless observance.

He thought of these things as he went along, and the more he turned them
over in his mind, the more convinced he became he had made a mistake.
The thought of these things remained with him all the morning, and for
some unexplained reason he did not work as well. He lacked interest and
the work dragged more than ordinarily. Still he argued within himself as
if to justify his position, that kissing was a foolish observance and it
ought to be laid aside.

The day dragged for him, and the clocks in the various steeples struck
the hours with the same indifference as they did every day. The crowds
on the pavements went by as on every other day, with the same intent
upon their own difficulties.

Clarinda, left alone in the tiny flat, knew something was wrong. Her day
was different. Her heart was wrong, and tears collected on her face many
times during the hours that went by. And she knew—why.

The trim little maid came and touched her upon the shoulder as she sat
cuddled in a corner of the divan. She was a Frenchwoman, with a white
frill about her head. A smile of pity was on her lips, as she kindly
touched Clarinda, and her hand was as light as the breeze without, as
Clarinda moved and looked up into her face.

“It is the little things in life, Madame, that count,” she said.
Clarinda shook her head in assent.

“I am miserable,” Clarinda replied.

Clarinda pushed back her golden hair from her forehead, wiped the tears
from her face, and arose from the divan. The maid left as she arose, and
went about her duties. She dusted with care and with careful hand
replaced the flowers in the vases with fresh ones.

Clarinda stood for a second in the middle of the room and then walked
slowly over to the window and looked pensively down upon the street. She
wondered if, in all her existence the maid had only dusted and swept, if
in all her existence she had ever worked for anyone who was as unhappy
as she was.

All during the day Clarinda did not smile, but wandered aimlessly from
one part of the apartment to the other, and she took no interest in the
maid nor in the fixing of things for the home-coming of the man. But
this day went like all the others—it glided by with a total indifference
to her or her unfortunate position.

Six o’clock came. The day’s work for many was over. As the clock on the
mantel chimed out the hour, the lower entrance door to the house opened
and then shut with a bang, and the man came bounding up the stairs with
the same haste he had always come. He threw the apartment door open and
launched his body into the room. His face was covered with smiles. He
was just as wonderful, just as strong as when he had gone from her in
the morning. Clarinda wondered that this could be so.

Clarinda looked at him and sighed. Her heart beat painfully, and her
breath came in deep short gasps. No, he did not kiss her. As he stopped
in the middle of the room and looked about him she went over to him and
laid her hand upon his shoulder. He still smiled.

“You forgot something this morning,” she said slowly as she looked up
into his face.

A quizzical expression went over him. He did not appreciate her sorrow.

“What?” he asked after quite a while.

“You don’t know?” she asked with astonishment.

“No,” he replied, shaking his head. “Was it my overshoes or my coat?”
The man jested with her, which added to the pain she had suffered during
the day.

“The maid knows—Peter.”

“The maid knows a great deal,” he answered.

“You don’t know? Oh, Peter! Peter!” she exclaimed, her voice full of
tragedy. “You have forgotten something even now.”

Peter pressed his hand against his forehead as if in deep thought, and
he let a light come into his eyes. He still jested with her. Of course
he knew. He took her slim fingers in his hand and led her over to the
divan.

“I know, I know,” he said, as if a great light had broken in upon him.
“What a foolish child you are.”

He took her gently in his arms and pressed his lips to hers. Clarinda
smiled and tucked herself close in his arms.

“You won’t forget again, Peter?” she asked.

“No,” he replied with a shake of his head.




                                   IV


Notwithstanding Peter took her in his arms and soothed her perturbation
and made life bloom once more with almost the same brightness it had,
the air was permeated with a spirit of uncertainty. The effect was
impalpable, for there existed in Clarinda’s mind a subconscious fear
that something had crept into her love which was foreign—and ate
interstices in the whole.

This permeation of her love by some foreign thing was evident to her
father one evening when he dropped in and found Peter absent. Peter
explained to Clarinda with care the necessity of his going, and tried to
convince her that it was vital for him to keep an engagement. It was so
vital, he contended, that it would brook no interference, not even the
interference of the thing which was the sole ambition of his life—her
happiness. This engagement was of such importance that it would not
allow him to sink down upon the divan and take her in his arms and tell
her of the things he had accomplished during the day. Peter kissed her
as he went out, but Clarinda was upset.

As the old man came through the door, the light was dim, and only the
single burner in the tall lamp shed its uncertain rays about the place.
He took off his top-coat and placed his cane in a corner. Clarinda
kissed him and helpfully settled him in the spot which was Peter’s.

Her father watched her during these preparations, and he felt from some
reason that the atmosphere was filled with uncertainty. Feeling this he
gathered himself together and pondered upon the various ways of approach
by which he might help Clarinda without her suspecting. He knew. It was
indicated to him by her movements.

The care with which she fixed things for his comfort were an indication
and he decided to abide his time.

Presently Clarinda sat herself down beside him and leaned her head
against his shoulder. He put his arm around her and drew her close to
him. Clarinda sighed with satisfaction. They talked. Her father answered
her various questions. It was a desultory conversation, as if both were
sparring for an opening. Presently they sank into silence.

Many days had passed since Peter, on that memorable morning, had gone
out of the house and had not kissed her, nor held her in his arms, nor
turned at the corner and waved his hand to her. Since then he had
forgotten repeatedly, and each time he went from her it left a bitter
feeling in her heart. Clarinda lived on love, so when it was denied her
she felt as if something vital had been taken out of her life.

Since they had been married, one winter had come and gone, and another
was upon them. The snow had fallen, and the leaves had gone from the
trees. The people without had gone by unmindful, cold, impersonal—and
did not feel the tragedy Clarinda was carrying in her heart. They rushed
by muffled to their chins. The days were shorter, and the nights settled
down upon her earlier. They gave Clarinda a longer time to think of her
sorrow, and to find out how far she had advanced.

On this winter night, in front of Clarinda and her father on the tiny
hearth, there burnt a tiny fire, that gave a tiny blaze; and it curled
itself up the chimney and lost itself in the orifice. Clarinda settled
herself by her father’s side, and gazed intently into the fire. She
pressed his hand tightly in hers, and buried her head securely on his
shoulder. As she looked into the fire, her eyes widened and her cheeks
became flushed with the heat.

“All things are futile, aren’t they, father?” she asked slowly. Then she
lapsed into silence as if to think of a proper word or as if a certain
delicacy restrained her.

Her father believed that she was about to make a confession, and did not
answer.

After a while, she added: “Do people live forever? Do you love mother
now as when you first loved her?”

“Why do you ask?”

“I have a wonderful reason—tell me?” she demanded.

A curious expression came over his face, half serious, half amused.
Carefully taking his hand from hers and lifting her golden head from his
shoulder, he arose from the divan.

The pillow she had placed behind his head slipped noiselessly to the
floor, and walking a few steps, he turned his back to the fireplace and
took his stand in the middle of the rug.

Judicially he placed his hands behind his back and looked down upon her.

“You will learn,” he answered cryptically.

“What do you mean?” she asked in a puzzled tone.

“There is wisdom, Clarinda, that comes to the old. This wisdom is
sometimes uncanny in its analytical possibilities.”

“You don’t reply to my questions,” she said as she turned the full light
of her eyes upon him. “Do you still love mother as when you began?”

“You asked me that before, and I told you,” he answered slowly. Then as
an afterthought added, “What is the trouble?”

“I have no trouble,” she rejoined hastily. Then she went on as if she
had decided to bare her soul to him.

“I will tell you, try to follow me.”

“All right, go ahead with your tragedy,” he replied banteringly.

“Do not laugh—be serious! You don’t know how vital this thing is to me.”

Clarinda moved her feet in a shuffling manner. “I believe,” she went on
seriously, “that the flat is too small. It doesn’t give sufficient
leverage. We live too much upon each other. It is true I love—I love
everything in it. From the maid to the kitchenette. I have been so happy
in it. Of course, for me it is not too small. I like it for that very
reason. You can’t imagine how delightful it has been for me to sit here
with no one but Peter, with not a sound from the outside—just Peter and
I alone. Don’t you think love is queer? I mean queer in its effects on
different kinds of people?”

As she spoke her father did not interrupt her, but his eyes followed
every expression of her face.

“Peter and I,” she went on, “have lived here more than a year.” A
combative tone came into her voice. “Peter is doing well. But then that
is Peter. Of course, Peter is doing well. How could he do otherwise? You
don’t know Peter, Father, as I know him. Peter is wonderful.”

“Then you are pleased with Peter?” her father said with a smile.

Clarinda did not answer his question. It struck her mind as frivolous.
She continued as if no interruption had taken place. “Do you know,
Father, Peter is cruel? I’ve been very happy here. A great change has
come about I find, and many many times I’ve sat here in this corner and
tried to analyze the reason for the change. I wonder whether it is my
fault or whether it is just the ordinary course of human feeling. I ask
myself whether I have failed, or has he failed? Is love only a
satisfaction of a certain kind of natural law or is it a thing that can
be sustained, I mean carried on forever? I wonder to myself whether
there is really such a thing as love, and if not, what is it that
produces such wonderful sensations? If after all it is only a myth. Why
should people be sorry, or glad, or pleased at the approach of any one
person? Why should I not be as happy, if love does not exist, with John
Jones or John Smith or any other person? Anyway there is a great change.
Peter has changed, I have changed. Everything is different. I can’t
understand.”

Her father still smiled. He did not grasp how deeply she felt, nor could
he understand precisely the conclusion she was drawing. He thought her a
trifle incoherent. He was still satisfied, however, if she were given
time he would find out. He remained silent and kept his eyes fastened
upon her.

“Listen, Father! Follow me with care. It is very difficult for me to
explain exactly.” Clarinda wept and bent over in her grief, then
murmured with intensity. “Can’t you understand? Can’t you understand?”

Her father saw her body shaken with emotion and the tears steal between
her fingers. He was terribly oppressed.

He advanced a few steps and laid his hand gently upon her head, his
touch was sympathetic. She looked up at him with her tear-stained face,
and hope entered her heart.

“Poor little Clarinda,” he began with tenderness in his voice. “I know
your difficulty. Let’s talk it over.” He sat down in the corner of the
divan by her side.

Clarinda fixed the stool again under his feet and replaced the pillow
under his head, then she tucked herself into the bend of his arm and
Clarinda’s golden head lay in comfort on his shoulder, a feeling of
bliss and security in her heart. She waited for him to speak.

“Now let’s see if I can analyze this terrible condition. You would be
surprised how observant I am,” he began. “You think Peter doesn’t love
you as he did. You, in your silly mind have let your imagination get the
better of you. This is probably what happened: Peter in the press of his
duties has neglected you, or you think he has, which is about the same
thing in the end. This neglect was not in itself a great matter nor of
much importance, but was probably in some little attention he gave you.”

Clarinda listened intently.

“Let’s say for example, that he broke some custom that he had built up—a
custom that had come to be part of your life, and that you looked
forward to as much as you do, for instance, to your fruit in the
morning. You have deduced from this infraction that he doesn’t love you
as in the beginning.”

Clarinda opened her eyes in astonishment. He was placing before her
clearly, exactly what she had wanted to tell, but could not. With a few
words he arrived at the bottom of her trouble. Clarinda shook her head
and tucked herself closer to his side.

“How wonderful you are, Father,” she whispered. “How exactly you tell me
what I wanted to explain.”

“Clarinda,” he went on, “you probably don’t know that as a rule men love
intensely. Their love is a curious stable condition of mind. It consumes
them. It becomes part of their fibre. You’ll find out later in life,
when you’ve had greater experience, that men are monogamous, with
polygamous inclinations. That statement is a bit involved. More than
likely you don’t get what I mean quite clearly. Of course, Clarinda, I
am speaking about ordinary men, the right-thinking and the right-doing
sort.” He stopped for an instant as if deliberating, and finally went
on:

“Still, Clarinda, even with the sort I have in mind, they are curious,
because they are human. They build the foundations of their lives with
no uncertainty. After it is done, they arrive at the idea that what they
have built is stable. They forget. Men, my dear child, are essentially
constructionists. It doesn’t follow because they are complacent that
they love any the less. It might be advanced really that they love with
fiercer intensity. The reason for this is that men are removed only a
slight degree from the animal. It is true they are covered with a slight
veneer which is called civilization. Just like animals, anything that
comes into their lives becomes part of them. As I have indicated, love
gets into their blood, bone and sinew. Peter loves you just the same.
Disabuse your mind of this idea that he doesn’t love you. It is all
foolishness. All your fears are founded on sand. This condition is not
your fault. It is the natural course that love always follows and nearly
all men arrive at the same end.”

Clarinda sat very still and listened intently. In her heart as she had
always done she felt her father was the greatest being in the world.
Even at times greater than Peter. This admission cost her much, but for
years he had been her bulwark. Upon his judgment her life had been
founded. During her young days she had looked upon him as an oracle. And
now in this crisis, after he had spoken she was sure he was just as she
thought.

“Your situation is clear to me,” he continued. “Suppose I draw you a
picture of your position.” He paused for a moment. “I have in mind what
occurred. Let us suppose for example, that every morning when Peter left
you before he went out of the door he kissed you. You lived on that kiss
until he came back in the evening. It might be before he went away he
held you for an instant in his arms and patted your lovely head. And
then after he had gone and had gotten out on the street, you ran to the
window and waved your hand to him as he went around the corner. You
treasured that final wave. Peter is only a man. Peter is not a bad sort.
Now, how is that for the first part of my picture?”

“Father! Father!” she exclaimed. “How wonderful you are.”

“Let’s go further with our picture,” he began again. “Now what did you
do? Being inexpressibly foolish, on that very first day this terrible
thing happened here is what I see. In this picture you are a stricken
thing. Slowly you go back into the room, with the weight of the world
upon you. The house is all drab. You don’t rush to the window. Oh, no,
not you, instead you weep and the tears roll down your face. You feel
right then as if all the world has fallen apart, and there is only a
great void.

“In your misery you felt, for this was real to you, sick at heart. You
threw yourself down upon the divan and sank into a terrible condition.
This lasted throughout the day, until Peter came home. When he saw you,
so sad and dreary and your face be-streaked with tears, he took you in
his arms—and right then—the sun came back. Your heart beat with joy.
How’s that, Clarinda?”

“But why should it happen?” Clarinda burst forth. “Why should Peter
change? I am just the same. I am just as young. Just as beautiful. Peter
always says I am beautiful. My physical self is just the same. I don’t
believe I am any the less attractive or less appealing to his man’s
side. Peter forgets. He forgets often. Why should he feel that he can go
out and leave me as he does? Why should he not kiss me every morning? I
don’t forget.”

“All that is true, Clarinda,” her father went on. “The reason for its
happening, I have explained. But there is something else. It is a
curious psychological fact. Women are different from men, for the reason
that nature has so provided. I can’t answer this question. It would take
too long, and even if I did, you might not understand the fine
distinction I would wish to draw. There are so many shades, so many
complexes, so many difficulties in the way of an understandable
explanation. The question is too deep for me to discuss. You don’t have
a proper grasp of the human factor as it is applied to me. The shadows,
Clarinda, upon your life are all imaginary. They don’t exist really.”

The conversation died, and Clarinda sat with her father in complete
silence. She endeavored to make him say more, but he would not. He
looked into the fire and watched the flame go up the chimney. The clock
on the mantel struck the hours musically, and the wind without blew with
an angry insistence. But Clarinda was at peace. Her head was clear and
she saw distinctly into the future. The seconds of time went into
minutes and the minutes grew into hours. The persistent ticking of the
clock was at last broken by the sound of rapidly approaching footsteps,
as if they bore someone in great haste. Then the door opened and Peter
bounded into the room and filled it completely.

“It is late,” said Peter breathlessly. “But I’ve a good excuse. I’ve
done well tonight and it is all for you, Clarinda.”

Clarinda arose quickly from the divan, and Peter took her gently in his
arms. Her father winked at her knowingly and smiled.

“What have you done, Peter?” she asked, as she struggled to release
herself from him.

“Wait until I get my breath,” he replied as he pushed her gently back
upon the divan. He sat down between them.

Carefully he arranged himself, stretching his long legs comfortably out
in front of him; then he folded his arms complacently over his chest.

“Tell us, Peter?” Clarinda asked again, as she drew herself close to
him. “Isn’t it nice?” she added. “Just we three together. Father, you,
and I?”

Her father laughed and Peter put his arm around her.

“You’re a nice little person, Clarinda,” he said.

“But think, Peter, why shouldn’t I be happy? What more could I want?”

“That brings me to exactly what I wanted to tell you. What more could
you want? I can think of lots of things. For example—a larger place. It
might be the house on the Park Way. A car you could drive. A larger
divan, with a bigger lamp behind it. Probably new clothes—a fur coat.
Maybe a husband who would really accomplish something.” Peter stopped
and contracted his brows. “Then further you might have a new father who
would think more of you, one who might be more proud of you. I admit
that is drawing a long bow; but he might be found.”

“Peter, you are foolish,” she answered with wonderful pleasure in her
voice. She loved to hear Peter talk, even if she thought what he said
was foolish. “I want nothing. I was just telling father how pleased I
was.”

“You were also telling me how unhappy you were,” her father interjected.

Clarinda sprang from the divan and stood directly in front of her
father. “You know that isn’t true. I never said I was anything but
happy. Father, I don’t see how you can imagine such things. Tell Peter
it isn’t so.”

“All right, all right!” her father answered. “Oh, woman! Oh, woman! Now
listen, you two. Since I have made such a grievous mistake, let’s
speculate. Listen to the oracle: you, Peter, and you, Clarinda. I have a
plan, which I think would do you both good. Ahem!” he cleared his
throat, “I find after due consideration of your situation, that your
lives are too prosaic. Too much the same thing. Suppose you had a plot,
some deep and sinister thing. I admit that the average persons don’t
have plots in their lives, but that does not matter, some few do, and
why not you? You two should have some deep compelling motive, and there
should be some other factor that would probably lead to some horrible
situation, a murder, or a great theft, or a dual existence, something
that would lead to a tragedy, mixed with blood and gore.”

“Horrible!” exclaimed Clarinda, and Peter shook his head in
disagreement.

“But think of the interest you would have!” he added. “Peter could shoot
you, or you could shoot Peter. You would have your picture in the
papers, with splashing headlines. Instead of leading normal lives you
would then undergo a great change, and when you died, people would
remember you long enough to go to your funerals.”

“The subject is changed. If you can’t be more cheerful you may go home,”
broke in Clarinda.

“I agree with Clarinda,” put in Peter.

“Now, father, you are properly squelched. Let Peter tell us what he did
today. That’s more interesting than plots, murders and thefts. I don’t
care how prosaic my life is so long as I have you two to take care of
me. What did you do, Peter?”

“First of all, I bought the house on the Park Way,” he began. “I had the
deed made out in the name of Mrs. Clarinda Thorbald. Second, I had put
in the garage a nice little car. The license is made out in the name of
Mrs. Clarinda Thorbald. Third, I had hung in one of the closets the coat
Mrs. Clarinda Thorbald admired so much the other day. Fourth, I have had
placed in the house—let’s see?” Peter told off on his fingers. “A
housekeeper of the pickled kind, who has never smiled; this quality has
been guaranteed by her last employers. A butler of austere mien, a door
man, a first-floor maid, a chef, a chauffeur, a hall boy, two
cooks—these are in addition to the chef. Then there is a gardener, a
furnace man—Lord! I think it is an army. And that’s not all—” Peter
stopped for a moment. “Upstairs off the main hall I have had furnished a
room precisely like this one. In it is a very tall lamp, with a pink
shade. A divan like this one that we are sitting on. But the greatest of
all and the thing that was the most difficult to get—I found for her a
father—just the kind I suggested.”

“Peter!—Peter!” Clarinda exclaimed.

“Oh, there is something else. Another thing that I found. You might
imagine I had difficulty in finding a new father for you, but that was
not a circumstance to this thing I accomplished. I spent days in the
search. I wandered from one end of the town to the other. I hunted with
infinite care. At times I became completely discouraged and almost gave
up in despair; but persistency is not a jewel, it is a diadem.”

Clarinda’s father was amused and Clarinda was consumed with impatience.

“As I have said,” he went on, “this last effort caused me great trouble,
but I found it. And now, Clarinda, what do you think it was?”

“I don’t know,” she answered. “Tell us? It must have been important if
you went to all that trouble.”

“Listen carefully, both of you. It is a matter vital to your happiness,
Clarinda. I—found—for Mrs. Clarinda Thorbald—a husband—who would think
more of her and love her more and would fill her life with greater
content—and—”

Clarinda sprang from the divan. Her face was flushed, and she turned
upon Peter. She put her hand over his mouth, and Peter struggled for an
instant and then laughed loudly.

“Peter—Peter!” she exclaimed. “You are perfectly horrid. I don’t believe
anything is sacred to you. Every bit of pleasure I might have had is
destroyed. I hate your old house.”

Clarinda went out of the room and closed the door with a crash behind
her.

The two men looked at each other; after a few moments the old man said
laconically:

“You ought to know, Peter, that the spirit of jest is not a component
part of the female make-up.”

He arose from the divan, put on his coat and hat and went painfully out
of the door.

Peter left alone shrugged his shoulders and lit a cigarette, and with a
sigh he fell back into the corner of the divan and looked pensively into
the fire.




                                   V


Several days went by before Clarinda recovered from the shock she had
sustained during the conversation with her father and with Peter.

Clarinda made it a point never to disagree with Peter. She wanted to
submerge herself in his moods and thoughts, to absorb his point of view.
It was true that she often found Peter bombastic and egotistical and
even foolish, but that did not alter her determination. Her observation
of combative women, and to what end they came, was sure, and it meant
always mental separation, so she determined to avoid this condition at
whatever cost it might be to her own individuality. As he should go, so
would she go.

When she had thought the matter over, she saw that she had been small,
and decided that when they went to inspect the house she would assent to
anything he would suggest.

Clarinda knew the house, and had often envied the people who had lived
in it. It stood upon one of the most fashionable streets of the city.
Surrounded by large gardens it stood alone on the top of a hill, with a
wall running around its borders that kept away the gaze of the public.

It had been built but a few years, by a man who had made progress in his
undertakings. He built it after plans he had long thought of, and in it
he had placed his hopes. Within its four walls he wanted to pass a
wonderful life and a long existence.

The forces that control, however, took no interest in his plans, and he
and his family moved in, and in only a short time he was smitten with an
illness and all that he had hoped for was buried in a few feet of earth.

This man who built the house was filled with ambition. He imagined as he
walked through the halls and its decorated rooms, with his wife, that
they would live long and he would have the opportunity of showing those
whom he knew what the proper condition of life should be. These two sat
in the marvelous rooms and wandered in its gardens and made their futile
plans.

Success had twisted their perspective; and the woman’s perspective was
even more badly twisted than the man’s.

Fate stood back of them in the shadows and laughed at them and their
vain imaginings.

The servants whom they hired to do their bidding, grinned at their
stupidity. They worked with secret grudgings in their hearts and stole
from them with perfect equanimity. The man knew these things, but felt
it was part of the price he had to pay.

In the world he was bowed down to and people he knew pointed their
fingers at him and envied him his wealth and his big house. But fate
came and crushed him. When he was gone fate went out of the doors to
look for others to come into the house, and the place he had made for
himself, and swept into its walls and gardens Clarinda and Peter.

Peter and Clarinda went in the front doors of the house of sorrow. The
servants bowed and grinned. The clocks struck the hours with
indifference, but Peter gloated. The automobile he had bought stood on
the paved way. As they entered he handed Clarinda a deed for the place,
and Clarinda smiled and kissed him. All the anger she had felt went from
her heart. The newness of the place, its size compared with the flat,
gave her pride just as it had Peter.

Peter took her through the rooms, and they passed from the hall into the
parlors, then up the stairs into Clarinda’s apartments. In the middle of
the room stood Clarinda’s little maid who gave assurance that all had
not been swept away, that there was something to hold to. Peter’s joy
was great. He babbled on without hindrance, and with pleasure took her
into a tiny room just off the one they were in. There he had placed a
divan, with a tall lamp behind it. In front of which was a fireplace,
and on the irons lay wood ready to be lit.

Clarinda was pleased and she turned to Peter.

“It is very nice. Only, Peter, I am afraid it is too large. I don’t
think I am going to like it as much as I did the flat.”

“Then you are not pleased that I bought it? Or is it because I joked
with you?”

“I don’t know,” she replied. “I hate jokes, and I hate people who try
them on me.”

“I am sorry, but try to be happy if you can. Forgive me this time, for I
only wanted it to be a surprise.”

“I hate surprises,” she said slowly.

“All right, never again,” he said finally.

The little maid rushed about the place, for she liked the grandeur of
the fittings, and the extent of the spaces.

Clarinda examined the arrangements with care. She went into the rooms
Peter had fixed for himself, and found that they were quite far from her
own. She could not decide whether she liked this or not. Peter had
always occupied the same room she had and it had worked very nicely.

She feared that a hiatus had come, and it would grow into a tolerance.
Something new was creeping into her life, but she did not know whether
it appealed to her or not in view of the dangers it concealed.

It was true in her father’s house that her father and mother occupied
separate rooms, and when she thought it over she remembered that it had
worked well. They had managed to be very comfortable, physically and
mentally. It might after all be much nicer. Probably with this
arrangement she could collect about her things she liked and Peter could
do likewise. Then it was conceded to be more civilized, and it would
redound to her comfort in the mornings as she could have the maid help
her to dress.

Peter kept her moving from one part of the house to the other, then he
led her into the kitchen. It was as big as the rest of the place. There
were all kinds of contrivances just as her mother had them. As she
entered she was greeted by a big person in a white apron and a cap on
his square ill-looking head, who announced he was the chef.

Clarinda smiled as he bowed low before her, but it chilled her, for she
knew her one delight was gone. No more would she be allowed to supervise
what Peter ate. Never would she be allowed to dictate to the vegetable
man, or the meat man, or the man who brought the eggs and the butter.
Then a large person loomed out of the distance. A queer hard-faced
person, who carried command in her manner, just such a person as Peter
had described, who announced that she was the housekeeper.

Clarinda shrank back from all these, and a queer feeling went down her
back. All these elaborate things that hung in festoons from the walls
and hooks and this crowd of powerful servants scared her. She felt she
had receded into the position of a marionette.

Quickly she drew Peter from the kitchen and went back by a hidden
staircase to the little room with the tall lamp and the divan; for here
Clarinda felt more at home.

Peter sat down in the corner of the divan and stretched his legs out in
front of him. He was filled with a great complacency, as he pulled
Clarinda down beside him. The tall lamp glowed behind them. The maid had
lit the fire and the flames went up the chimney, just as they did in the
flat.

“Well,” he asked, “how do you like the new nest I have got for you?”

Clarinda sat for a long time and made no answer. Her face was drawn into
a knot. She was thinking seriously. However, she tucked herself into her
place beside him and took his hand in hers and her eyes were half closed
as she gazed steadily into the fire.

“Father is coming presently,” she said at last, without answering his
question. “I want him to look the place over, for he knows so much more
than we do.”

“You’ve great faith in the judgment of your father—and apparently little
in your husband,” Peter replied with a peeved tone in his voice.

“No—not—exactly—that,” she hesitated. “Ring the bell for the maid,
Peter.”

Peter rang the bell, and the maid came in and stood inquiringly at the
door.

“I want to do something, Peter,” she said.

“All right,” he answered.

Clarinda turned to the maid. “Bring some coffee for Mr. Peter and me.
Don’t make it, but bring hot water and just the coffee and some toast.”

The maid curtsied and went out.

“Why that?” he asked.

“I don’t know. I am worried, Peter. I am all upset. I am trying to find
out if I shall like this place. I feel as if something had given me a
turn.”

Clarinda arose from the divan, and pulled a small table from the center
of the room. When the maid came in she told her to go down and get some
cups and saucers, then to fix the table as she used to have it.

The maid soon had the things as Clarinda wanted them, and Peter looked
on in astonishment.

“Now, Peter, you sit down there at the end, and I shall sit here. Let’s
pretend it is morning and you are having your breakfast and you are in a
dreadful hurry.”

Peter sat down as he was told and waited for her to finish her
preparations.

Clarinda was trying to drag herself back, but for some reason she could
not. A new light had broken. Probably this was the rebirth her father
had told her of.

As they sat opposite each other and she was making the coffee, the door
to the room opened and her father came in smiling, seemingly happy over
the new nest Peter had provided for his daughter.

Clarinda went over and kissed him. She helped him take off his coat and
placed his cane in the corner, then she made a place for him at the
table.

After he had sat down a desultory conversation began. They talked about
the house and its arrangements, concerning the extent of the garden, the
placing of the lake which Peter contemplated, the number of servants,
and the effect the house made from the outside. Clarinda listened while
she busied herself making the coffee, and the maid brought in the toast.

The men continued to speak of various stocks, the rise and fall in
foreign exchange, the effect of the rise in the prices of steel, but
Clarinda took no interest in these things.

Without warning she broke in upon their conversation.

“I—I—don’t believe in this place. It seems to me to be too large. I feel
as if my happiness had gone out of the window.”

The men looked at her as if not hearing what she said. They waited for
her to pass the coffee, and it was evident her father was pleased.

“I wish I were back,” she broke in again.

“Oh, Clarinda!” exclaimed Peter. “That’s the first mean remark I ever
heard you make.”

“I mean it!” she replied slowly.

“After all this struggle?” said her father.

“I’ve been thinking,” answered Clarinda.

“What! Women should not think, for it is bad for them,” her father put
in smilingly.

“I’ve been thinking of many things lately,” she replied.

“Name one of these things, Clarinda,” Peter said banteringly.

“Everything is all wrong,” said Clarinda, as she left the table. She
walked about with a nervous step. “Do you remember, Father, when I was
married, you said that I was not dying, but that it was a rebirth?”

“Yes, I remember, Clarinda,” answered her father. “What is the trouble?
You know my method, I always believe that there is nothing so good as an
out-and-out discussion, if anyone feels in a wrong situation. It
clarifies things and leaves no room for misunderstanding,” he said
looking into Clarinda’s eyes. “People who are married drift into
situations just on this account, because they refuse to speak of them.
Now, tell us what it is you are thinking.”

“You are talking at random, trying to conjure up something that doesn’t
exist. I know of no difficulty. Everything seems to me to be as calm as
a summer’s day,” broke in Peter.

“There is a rift,” answered her father. “Let’s find it.”

“You are a pessimist. Where can there be a rift when two people are
satisfied and understand each other perfectly?”

“How do you know these people are satisfied?” asked Clarinda. “Because
one of them is wrapped in his own complacency, it does not follow that
the other person is in the same frame of mind.” Clarinda had a queer
look in her eyes.

“There you are,” her father said quickly. He placed upon the table the
cup he had in his hand. “Let Clarinda say what she means.”

“I will,” she replied firmly. “You both shall be arraigned. I’ve decided
to drag you both before yourselves and will appeal to you both—place you
both in the light I think you ought to occupy.”

“Listen—listen—another Portia!” Peter carried deep mockery in his voice.

“Be quiet, Peter,” commanded her father.

Clarinda flushed and looked kindly at the old man.

“I have thought—” she began.

“The lady thinks,” laughed Peter.

“Yes, as queer as it may seem—the lady thinks,” Clarinda put in. Peter
noticed the look upon her face and it did not please him.

“Hush, Peter,” said her father, laying his hand upon Peter’s arm.

“As queer as it may seem to you,” went on Clarinda. “The lady thinks,
but she has thought for sometime past. The lady has come to know you
two. She knows also that both of you think no woman should think.
Nevertheless, they do think but at all times their thoughts are not
pleasant.”

“What have you thought?” her father asked as if to encourage her.

“I’ve thought of my life and how extremely foolish it is. I’ve made a
review of it, just while I was looking into the fire, and while I
looked, it spread itself out before me, and made me ashamed. It is
curious how rapidly one can think, and how a life that has covered years
is gone over in a moment. I don’t like this big house. It comes to me
just what my position will be.”

“The house is yours. You have the deed for it. I gave it to you,” said
Peter.

“That’s true. I’ve a piece of paper that recites that fact, but it is of
no value to me. The thing I want has gone out of the window.”

“I don’t follow you, Clarinda,” broke in her father.

“You will understand, Father.”

“Will I understand?” asked Peter.

“I don’t know,” she replied.

“Why won’t we understand?” asked Peter.

“I don’t know.”

“Go on, Clarinda,” said her father.

“I’ve something to say. It will no doubt fill you both with
astonishment. It has been on my mind for a long time. The other things
have come to me only tonight. Listen, and get it carefully in your
minds. Don’t think I am indelicate or that I regret. I know it is the
allotted thing for women. It is the natural condition. As you have both
said so often, the one and only reason for women being in the world. I
am going to be a mother.”

“Clarinda!” exclaimed Peter. A curious wave went over him.

“I am not pleased,” said her father, slowly as if turning the thing over
in his mind. “It is dangerous.”

“Irrespective of your ideas, it is true. I’ve said nothing about it
before for many reasons,” she went on. “You must not think for a moment
that I am afraid. Nature doesn’t allow me to be afraid. Many times since
this thing has come upon me I have analyzed my sensations. I find my
heart is filled with a curious kind of joy. I find my whole nature has
undergone a change and that my outlook has expanded. It seems to me as
if I’ve gone through a revolution. But there is something else,
something that is closer to my heart than even that. It is supposed to
be the closest thing that can come to a woman.”

“For the Lord’s sake! What else?” asked Peter with astonishment.

“There is much else. I have discovered that I am all wrong,” Clarinda
went on quietly and slowly and her voice carried a peculiar tone of
sadness. “My life is all wrong. My perspective is all wrong. I discover
I’ve been submerged by you two. Still, I don’t believe it is exactly all
your fault. A great deal of it arises from my own point of view. But,
now, I’ve come to a point. I have revolted. This revolt may arise from
my condition. This condition may create this revolt. It seems to me as
if it were a physical awakening. I don’t know where to place the blame.
It may be your fault, Peter. But it is more the fault of my mother and
father. They laid down the lines, and Peter simply follows out these
limits as they had placed them.”

Her father did not reply. To him it was wonderful to hear her speak. It
interested him vitally, for as far as he was concerned it placed
Clarinda in a new light. He had never thought it was in her to have an
idea except such as was conveyed to her by either Peter or himself. It
was a new concept. He could not judge if she were making a mistake or
not. He waited for her to say more.

“All my life,” she began again, “I’ve been trained by people who tried
to avoid for me any phase of life that might be difficult. As I see it,
my existence has been made a bed of roses. Temptation has been kept from
me. Existence as it is has been pushed aside. Luxury has been spread at
my feet. Everything has been done to lead me to believe that in the
world there was nothing but ease and comfort. I was allowed to look only
upon the bright side. The lights were always lit, and yet I lived in a
haze. Somehow I felt during all the years I lived that it was wrong. But
I did not try to reason the thing out. I could not. What is the result?
I am the result.” Clarinda stopped and then with a new tone in her voice
went on:

“The result is that you’ve created a woman without force, a puny thing
that can be argued into any position. Think of it! By two men who are as
narrow in their point of view of women as the creases in their shirt
fronts, by two men who have looked upon me as a toy, or a piece of
Dresden china. Something that should give them pleasure, a puppet,
walking about on two legs. Now, listen, I don’t blame either of you as I
should. I blame much more the environment in which I was born. Here is
the remarkable thing about it. Since this new condition has come upon
me, as I told you—I have undergone a change. It is psychological as well
as physical. It startles me and I feel as if something had been torn
from me. I have revolted. Out of this revolution is created a new
personality and the birth of this personality is causing me as much pain
as I shall suffer with the birth of my child.”

“But, Clarinda,” interposed her father, “your premises are wrong. Your
argument is poor. Why should you not have been protected and advised by
older minds? Why should you not have the easiest way? I could afford it.
I certainly thought it for the best. My love for you did this thing.
Peter has lived with but one thought in his mind, which is you.”

“I, too, object to your statements, just as your father does, for I feel
it a pleasure to give you all that you want. There is nothing else in
life for me but that. I can’t see why you would deny me this one thing,”
Peter broke in as her father finished speaking.

“You are both wrong,” Clarinda said quickly. “Look at the result of your
misapplied consideration. What is the result? As I said, a puppet, a
thing without color, or a mere toy. It is terrible to think of. It is so
unjust, so unfair. If anybody knew me as I am they would laugh or weep.
I don’t know which. But thank heavens that is done before it is too late
and I am about to enter upon a second stage, a new development. I have
shed this thing as a cloak, I have awakened to a change that has come—a
vital change, so big that you in your little minds, I doubt if you can
appreciate what it is. In the place of the toy and the puppet here
stands a woman. I hope a force, an intellectual entity.”

“And—,” began Peter. But before he could formulate a sentence, Clarinda
had raised her hand.

“Stop! As I told you, I am about to become a mother. It is curious how
this condition has affected me. I should like to tell you, to describe
the mental adjustment that has taken place, but I doubt whether I can.”

“Go on!” commanded her father. “What has happened? What has taken place?
What do you feel?”

“I don’t know if I can,” Clarinda replied. “It is too great a
revolution. You might not believe what I have thought. You might think
my words were just words. You might think I was versed in psychosis. I
will try, however. You ask me what has happened? A wonderful thing has
happened. As I look at it. This is what has happened. Hitherto, I have
lived as if behind an impenetrable veil. Of a sudden this thing has been
torn apart and a dazzling light, almost more than I can face, has broken
in upon me, and is leaving me dazed. The new situation is almost
impossible for me to face, and this is what has happened. Then you ask
me what has taken place? This—I am another person. In me has been raised
a peculiar animal instinct. I have reverted to the field. There is no
feeling of fear. It is more—one of preservation, not so much of myself,
but rather of the life that is quickening in me. This is what has taken
place. I want to fight, I don’t know what I want to fight. Then—you ask
me, what do I feel? I feel joy. I have lost my lethargy. I am excited.
Every movement in me is one of distinct anticipation. And I don’t know
what I anticipate.”

“Good Lord!” exclaimed Peter.

“I am done,” she said finally. “There is only one request I have to
make, and there is only one thing that I want. I am willing to go
through this period. That is, I want to go back to the flat. For once I
should be allowed to do as I please. Honestly, Peter,” and her voice was
full of pleading. “I don’t like this place. It is too big. It is too
much. I can ever occupy in it but a secondary position. I dislike the
housekeeper, the chef, the maids, and the spaces. I’ve only a short time
to pass through, and for that short time I want things as I wish to have
them.”

“Yes, I would go back, Peter,” put in her father.

“No, for it is only a whim, probably aroused by her condition. I
understand women often take these turns when they are as she is. It is
foolish,” Peter answered with anger.

“We are going back,” replied Clarinda, with a fixity of purpose. “Why
not? I may die. I may be ill for a long time. Why should I not have what
I want? But remember I am not afraid of this thing.”

“When do you want to go back?” asked Peter.

“Now,” she answered shortly.

“It can’t be done.”

“I think Clarinda is reasonable,” her father said.

“But what of all these people?” asked Peter.

“They are certainly no more important than I am. Are they?” Clarinda
asked.

Peter arose from the divan and shrugging his shoulders stepped over to
the wall and touched a button. Presently the woman with the big jaw and
the impenetrable face came in. Peter turned to her as she entered.

“Mrs. Caws, Mrs. Thorbald doesn’t like this place,” said Peter stupefied
with anger. Clarinda stopped him.

“I shall tell Mrs. Caws, Peter,” she said quickly. “Please, Mrs. Caws,
will you be kind enough to dismiss the servants. Mr. Thorbald and I have
decided to go away for sometime. You will see to the closing of the
house. That is all, Mrs. Caws.”

Mrs. Caws went out.

“It is done, Peter.”

“Do you think that settles it, Clarinda?”

“Yes, that settles it, Peter,” and Clarinda smiled wearily as she rose
and left the room.




                               STAGE TWO

                                   I


A great deal of water had run under the bridge since Clarinda had left
the big house and gone back to the flat. A great deal more water had run
under the bridge before Clarinda had consented to come back to the big
house and had settled permanently in its rooms and halls.

Her child had been born, it had thrived and grown, her father had aged.
Rarely he came to the house unless he was assisted by his man, and then
only when the sun was bright and the sky unclouded. Peter had grown more
successful and had acquired the Midian touch. Gold came to him as penury
comes to most. His arrogance and bombast had grown greater. Her mother
remained in the background. Removed from all contact with Clarinda and
her life, she came to the house very seldom and then only to complain.
She appeared to think her duty toward Clarinda finished and reasoned as
she had given Clarinda birth, raised her to womanhood and married her
off, she had done for her all that a mother could do.

Having finished her duty, she gave herself up to a life of pleasure, and
she caromed from one gaiety to another like the balls upon a billiard
table, propelled by a professional.

The going from the flat to the house had been considered by Clarinda for
many, many months before she reached a decision. She thought it out
carefully. She argued the thing from all sides, and came to the
conclusion that probably she might be in error, as many women err who
are in love. Without consideration of her own happiness she gave in
before the arguments of her father and of Peter.

Peter won the first great point in their lives. On the day they came
back Mrs. Caws again stood in front of them with a curious smile upon
her hard old features; he gloated upon his victory, and gave orders with
unction. It pleased him immensely, and it swelled him with his own
importance. He felt it was by his own strength of will that he compelled
Clarinda to accept the exact position he deemed proper a woman should
occupy in relation to her husband. His joy on the whole was complete,
for woman to him was a woman properly placed.

Clarinda looked at him narrowly. Her mind was in a state of chaos. She
felt in her soul that she had lost something she could never recover.
Yes, she knew his outlook, and although she knew it she hated it
fiercely.

If it had not been that by persistent effort through a term of years,
Clarinda had taught herself to control her tears, she would have wept.
But she had learned in these years how to control her tears. Tears had
no effect upon Peter, for when she wept, Peter only scorned her. So she
found that she aroused no pity in his heart.

Steadily Clarinda had fought the move from the old to the new, but Peter
had fought even as consistently. His strength resulted in her defeat and
so it came about. After they had entered the house Peter helped her off
with her wraps. At a signal to Mrs. Caws, who had been standing close
by, she left the hall. As she closed the door behind her, Clarinda
turned to Peter and said slowly as if repeating a line she had heard,

“My happiness has gone out of the window.”

Peter tossed his head. A wicked smile crossed his lips. He spoke with
bitter sarcasm.

“I can’t understand your attitude, Clarinda. It seems to me if anyone
had given me such a place as this, I would rather have said my happiness
had come in by the window.”

Clarinda paid no attention to his reply. She continued to speak in the
same painful voice:

“You’ve won, Peter,” and her lips trembled as she stopped for an
instant. “It is the little things in life that count. It is the tiny
pebble that changes the course of the stream. Yes, Peter, you’ve won—and
at what a price.”

“It represents thousands and thousands, Clarinda,” he replied, without
getting her point of view.

“Money—money—money! That is your fetish. You are carried away with gold!
It will bury eventually all that is good in you.”

“Oh, I don’t know,” he replied. “Money may be rotten and all that; but
from my observation it is a most comfortable sort of possession.”

“Where is your soul?”

“Rot!” he exclaimed. “Why be trite? Souls in this world? A curious
superstition handed down from no one knows where. A relic of fear. A
thing to dangle before the eyes of the sick to help them die with a
smile. A sop to the sick. A thing to dangle before the ignorant. Of what
avail are they? Sometimes, I wonder whether you will ever graduate into
the sort of woman I want. Must you always have a child’s point of view?”

“What sort of woman do you want, Peter?” she asked looking at him
closely. “Since you’ve won this point, if you will tell me I will be
that sort.”

Peter walked away from her a few steps then after a short while he
turned and replied.

“I’ve thought a lot about the sort of woman I want. It is difficult to
come to an exact conclusion. When I am idle I picture to myself the sort
I think I should have. It is a very hard proposition.”

“Express it, Peter! You’ve never had difficulty on that score.”

“Sometime I will. I can’t do it now for it would take too long. I am
very busy. I’ll tell you some other time.”

“I want you to do it now. Explain!” Clarinda broke forth. “I don’t
believe you ever can explain! I see!—I know!—I may be stupid and only a
child—but I know! Another illusion has been torn from me, and the bare
bone is left.”

Clarinda turned to go out of the door that led to the upper reaches of
the house. Peter went after her quickly. He took her hand in his and led
her unwillingly toward the sofa that stood to one side.

“Sit down here,” he commanded, “for just a moment. I am going to try to
tell you what I mean.” Clarinda sat down and bent her head forward
looking intently at the floor in front of her. A deep serious gaze was
in her eyes. “I am going to tell you what I mean,” he continued
repeating himself. “It is true, Clarinda, that I’ve not much time, but
we might as well thrash the thing out. I am going to put before you the
position I occupy. You’ve always been square and able to see how just I
am. Now listen.”

In the more than three years they had been married, Clarinda had lost
none of her sweetness of look. Peter was forced to concede that much.
Since the baby had come, it appeared to him that an added lustre had
been given to her. She had developed wonderfully. Her figure and the
lines of her young face had been metamorphosed. The baby represented to
him another incident in life—a component part of the progress.

He sat down beside her and looked at her bent body. But he would not let
himself be swayed, for he felt this would not be just to himself. The
time had come when Clarinda must be brought to face the exalted position
he had constructed for her and for himself.

They sat close together and Peter chose his words with infinite care.
With as much certainty and deliberation as if he were placing a matter
of great moment before one of the numerous boards of directors to which
he belonged.

“This,” he began slowly, “is my position and I think you ought to
realize it perfectly. I am, what is normally termed, a successful man,
having arrived at this position by my own efforts. It is vital to me
that you fill this position with me. You know, if you have ever
considered the matter, that a wife assumes more or less the position of
either an employee or a partner in a marriage contract. A thing like
this is not all of one side. Butterflies are all well enough in a
garden, but only in a garden. In the grand scheme they amount to
nothing. If either of the contracting parties does not arise to his or
her part, the one not arising assumes a minor position in the operation.
In other words, she or he loses his standing as a partner. He or she
stands apart in the fight. You will concede that life is a fight, a
survival of the fittest. This you must acknowledge is correct. It stands
without discussion. It is a syllogism.”

Clarinda listened to his words and her mind followed each sentence as he
spoke. In her arose a wrath complete. He destroyed every foundation upon
which she had hoped to build her existence. However, she said nothing.

Peter continued: “I admit I love you. It would distress me beyond words
if I thought for an instant that love didn’t exist in me and if the same
thing didn’t animate your spirit. You must understand that my love isn’t
an effervescing thing, but a solid unfrothed condition. Stable and
certain. Pushed aside, it is true, by necessities, but existent. Now,
with that love, as I say a certainty, it is required of you to fulfill
your part of the contract to expand, to develop, to spread, even as I
have spread.”

“Do you think you love?” asked Clarinda. “Have you ever thought in your
dissection of this matter of how I have suffered for you? I suffered
terribly when the baby came. I suffered for months with a painful
illness. But that is of no importance. The baby is only part of me, a
thing—how should I say?”

“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.

Peter, however, sought it out and looked after its material comforts.
Peter was afraid to leave it alone. He was frightened at the outcome of
his trial of strength with Clarinda. He could see the look on her face
as he had entered the room after the sudden death of her father and the
expression with which she looked at the child as it cooed up at her from
the floor. He could not make out why he had followed her, or what force
had compelled him to leave her father’s house in the midst of the
turmoil of the death. For some unknown reason he had slipped away to his
own home with fear grasping his heart, for he presaged a new disaster.
Why, he could not tell.

Day followed day with him even as it followed with Clarinda, and the
time of the funeral was upon them. Mechanically they went to the house,
and they sat about for some hours before the company came to pay the
last rites to the owner.

Clarinda’s mother sat in proper gloomy silence. Her great body heaved at
intervals with emotion. A tear at times stole down her face. She blew
her nose, making a noise that appeared painful to Clarinda, and over her
face was hung a heavy black veil that hid her entirely from the gaze of
the people, who gradually filed in and took seats in prescribed limits.
Clarinda thought her mother looked like a lump. She sat quite near the
flower-covered casket that held the body of the old man, and it was
black, with silver handles.

Candles gave a fitful light and the tiny blaze they bore swung here and
there like imprisoned souls, that longed to be free. Tiny trails of
smoke went from them into the air, and the smoke melted away in the mass
of flowers which decorated the mantels and the casket.

Clarinda like her mother was covered with a veil. She looked through it,
and it came back to her vividly the last time a crowd of people had been
gathered in this same place. It had been decorated as now, except an
altar stood where the casket was now. It was swept as then with a soft
breeze when the doors to the hall were opened. Almost the same people
were here now as were here then. A musician presided at the organ before
and the soft tones filled the hall then as now. The only difference was
that the song was changed. Instead of “O Perfect Love,” it played now,
“Nearer, My God, to Thee.” As then, now a small voice sang in the offing
and the sweet, gentle tones filled the hall even as before.

Then, there were smiles and tones of laughter and now only suppressed
polite moanings. Sorrow instead of joy, tears instead of laughter. None
of the guests weaved his way across the polished floors. They sat stiff,
immovable. Instead of a bridegroom, an undertaker slipped noiselessly
about the place, like some gnome, or bird of ill omen. The priest was
still. He stood beside the coffin and in a few moments read in subdued
tones from his rubric and his face was drawn and somber. There was none
of the lightsomeness of the other occasion when he had married the man
to Clarinda, who sat stiff and stolid beside her.

Peter looked about furtively. He saw the mother of Clarinda and wondered
why she should be so grief-stricken. He had known her as a person who
delighted in the Church and believed perfectly in its history and its
manifold benefits. He knew she prayed each night that she might be taken
up into heaven and stand upon the right hand of the Throne of Power. He
could not understand how with her belief she could not have rejoiced at
the death of this person. To him it was a wonderful release. The fight
was done. The struggle to hold on to the meagre possessions that this
one had accumulated was over. He had succeeded.

To him the atmosphere was bad. The paid pall-bearers were bad, they
seemed an incongruous note in the place, he disliked them. He hoped in
his heart that when he should become as the one in the box, that some of
his friends would carry him out of his house and place him in the
hearse. Peter did not fear death. He liked to dwell upon it. He liked to
try to reason exactly what it meant to him, for he looked upon it as a
release. He believed nothing and feared nothing. Peter scoffed at
religion and it amused him to discover that the symbols of the church
were the same as those to which the Egyptians bowed thousands of years
ago.

They left the house, and they came back again. The dirt had fallen with
a hollow sound over the bones of the old man. They ate. The flowers had
disappeared from the hall. The servants resumed their same tones of
servility and nature reasserted itself and life went on as before.

Clarinda and he went back to their own house. Peter lit a cigarette, and
stretched himself. Clarinda sat upon the divan, and didn’t think of
anything. Time went by her without notice.

Peter blew the smoke from his cigarette into the air, and it curled in
fantastic waves about his head and sank away into nothingness. His mind
was almost as much a blank as Clarinda’s. He could not think, things had
happened so rapidly that his head was in a whirl and he saw the future
darkly.

The maid came into the room and asked quietly whether they desired
anything, but received no response from either of them. She went out as
quietly as she had come, and she shook her head as she closed the door
behind her. Under her breath she said as if to herself:

“I’ve seen many just like these. It is the end. They will separate. It
is bad, and she so beautiful.”

The sun gradually went down and the dark came into the room. The things
about them grew indistinct and the shadows died. The wind came up
outside and sighed around the building. They did not move. Clarinda felt
the strain. Peter grew nervous and moved his feet about on the rug as if
to relieve the tension. Clarinda did not move from the position which
she took when she first sank upon the divan. Her hands hung listlessly
by her side and her head was sunk back upon one of the big cushions.
Hour after hour they sat. Peter suddenly sprang from the divan and
screamed, but Clarinda did not move. She seemed not to hear him. Peter
arose from his seat and paced up and down the room. His step was
nervous, excited and the perspiration gathered upon his forehead. He
wiped it away with his hand. His face became pale and haggard and he
stumbled over the rugs. It was only with an intense effort that he saved
himself from falling. In an agonized voice he spoke. He was incoherent.
He spoke rapidly and his words tumbled over each other and he wiped his
forehead again as he stopped in front of her.

“For God’s sake speak!” he exclaimed. “I am going mad. I can’t stand the
strain. Say something! It is horrible!”

“I’ve nothing to say,” Clarinda answered quietly.

“You’re a murderess!” he said with a trembling voice. He lost control of
his speech. He kept on talking but he did not know what he said. Again
he wiped his forehead with his open hand. It was wet.

“Stop!” exclaimed Clarinda. “You don’t know what you say. Someone might
hear you. There are servants in the house.”

“I don’t care. I shall scream it from the housetops. I want everyone to
know I’ve married a murderess.” Peter sank hopelessly back upon the
divan.

Clarinda put out her hand and placed it upon his arm. Her touch made him
shiver. He drew away from her.

“You’re a philosopher, but you’re a liar. You teach, but you fear your
own teaching. You fight and when you lose, you weep. You destroy and you
give nothing in return.” Clarinda stopped and took her hand from his arm
and let it hang as it had hung since she had first sat down upon coming
into the house. Peter trembled under her touch and trembled more when he
lost the feel of her hand upon his arm.

“Put your hand back!” he demanded. Clarinda put her hand back and her
face broke into a weary smile. She even allowed herself to pity him in
his fear.

“What do you fear, Peter?” she asked. “Where is your philosophy?” Her
voice was full of sarcasm. “You needn’t fear me. I am not going to do
you any harm. You needn’t fear for the child. I’m not going to do it any
harm. That would be useless. If I should do you harm, you would be
finished. You told me that when you should die you would be finished. I
don’t want you to die, I want you to live. I want you to see your other
woman, the kind you wanted to marry. The sort you dreamed of in your
idle moments, in your office, where you built air castles and forgot the
human factor.”

“I shall divorce you!” he broke in.

“Oh, no, you won’t. I won’t let you. You’ve no grounds. I believe one
has to have grounds for that sort of thing. But you shall have relief. I
am going away for a long time. Months and months, perhaps years. But you
will not forget me, Peter.”

“Where are you going?” he asked with a tone of relief in his voice.
“When?” he added.

“Are you anxious for me to go?” she asked. Peter nodded his head in
assent. Again he wiped his forehead with his hand, but in his eyes there
came a look of relief. He even looked at her. She seemed different. She
seemed to him to have expanded, her figure was different, her face was
more beautiful and her eyes had a strange look in them.

“Where are you going?” he asked again.

“In a few days I am going. Where I don’t know. Europe I suppose. All
broken, unhappy women go to Europe. They say they forget there. It must
be the lights, the chairs on the boulevards. I may go to California. I
may not. It makes no difference. You will tell lies about me and you
will say the strain I have been under has been too great, that you are
sorry that I’ve gone, and that you intend to join me in the fall or
spring. But you do not. You will shake your head and look for sympathy
and probably you will get it. You will lie manfully, Peter.” Clarinda
laughed. Peter wiped his forehead with his hand. It was wet.

“I shall be divorced!” he repeated.

“Because my health is broken with the strain. No, you won’t, Peter. You
won’t be divorced. If you do I shall kill you. If you besmirch my good
name—” Clarinda’s voice rose in anger. “I shall come back. It is easy to
kill. It amounts to nothing. You should know, for you killed the thing
that loved you. You killed a trust. It is worse to kill that than
anything else. I didn’t die, I couldn’t die. More is the pity.”

“Clarinda!” Peter exclaimed.

“Listen, I have it all arranged. Tomorrow, or the day after. We shall go
back to Father’s house. The lawyer will be there, he will read the will.
Father’s things will be given to those whom he wished. You will sit
there with a crease in your forehead and will look wise. You will
acquiesce and wonder why he did not leave you more. Inside your heart
will be hurt. You will not say anything, you will smile, and pretend to
be very much surprised that he has left you anything at all. You will
draw upon your philosophy, and maybe you will be comforted. I doubt that
very much. It will end in a farce. Mother will groan, and feel hurt. I—I
shall not care. After this is done I shall go away to Europe or
California or some other place and you, Peter, will meet me next fall or
spring. You will lie.”

“Clarinda!” Peter could not understand. He could not believe the person
who talked was Clarinda. He looked at her as if to reassure his mind
that it was really she. He could not think. His mind was in a turmoil.
“The baby?” he asked.

“That is yours, you will raise it, you will lie to it, you will tell it
of its mother, her beauty, her cleanness of spirit. You will lie to it
as you have lied all your life. You will tell it that you are going to
take it to its mother, and when it gets old enough you will lie to it
again. You will blame me. But you will not tell the child the truth.
You’ve not the fearlessness to do that. You will not tell it that this
thing was your fault, you will not tell it that the greatest failure in
your life was of your own making, you have not the temerity.”

“I shall tell the child,” he answered.

“Oh no you won’t. I know you, Peter. Even better than you know yourself.
You are a coward, Peter, a wonderful coward. This part is finished, this
chapter is done. You may as well go. It is of no avail to talk more. I
will go with you to my mother’s tomorrow and we will listen to the will.
Another farce. Goodbye, Peter. Would you like to kiss me goodbye? You
might think of it afterwards, Peter. It might do you good.”

Peter arose from the divan. He looked at her squarely in the face. A
shiver went down his back. He said nothing but walked to the door and
opening it quietly as one does on the dead, he walked from the room and
closed it even as gently behind him.

Clarinda listened to his footfall and it gradually grew more and more
indistinct and then died out. A silence fell in the place. The dark
became impenetrable, there was no sound. Clarinda gave a great sigh and
leaned back among the cushions and closed her eyes.




                                   IV


In the morning at nine, Clarinda’s maid came into her room. Quietly she
threw open the blinds and drew down the windows. She went from one place
to another and picked up the various articles of clothing Clarinda had
dropped upon the floor, a stocking, a pair of shoes, a skirt. When she
had finished she turned towards the bed and saw Clarinda sitting up
among the covers. Her hair streamed down about her shoulders and her
eyes blazed like two great stars. Dark circles were under each of them,
as if painted. The maid was startled. She came over to the side of the
bed.

“Madame has not slept. Will Madame have a bath?” she asked with
hesitation.

“No,” answered Clarinda shortly.

“Shall the nurse bring the child?”

“No,” she answered.

It had been the custom to bring the baby into the room in the morning.
Clarinda always took it in her arms and would place it so it might play
among the covers. It amused her. She always looked upon it as a
phenomenon. She could not conceive this vital thing that scrabbled
about, crawling from here to there was part of her flesh and blood, that
she had brought it into the world. When she looked at it, she could not
imagine it would grow into a man’s estate and be a power for good or
evil, as the fates might carve out for it, that it should be a force. It
was called Peter.

“Will Madame dress?” asked the maid.

“What time is it?”

“Nine o’clock, Madame.” The maid watched Clarinda carefully, as if she
feared something. “Will you have your coffee now?”

“No,” answered Clarinda.

She rose from the bed and the maid threw a garment of light filmy stuff
about her. Clarinda advanced to the middle of the floor. The maid
thought she wavered as she stood, as if she were uncertain of herself.
She walked quickly towards her but Clarinda felt her approach and sank
into a chair.

“I must talk,” Clarinda said quickly. “Say something! Do something!
Don’t walk about the place so aimlessly. It doesn’t matter what you
say—say something!”

“You suffer, Madame,” the maid said quickly. “You have not slept. Have
you some terrible trouble?” said the maid stopping as if at a loss.
Clarinda turned her burning eyes upon her. “I don’t know what to say. I
know nothing, but I pity you, Madame, your eyes are so bright they scare
me.” The maid trembled. “You suffer.”

“Yes, I suffer. I suffer horribly.” Clarinda wrung her hands in despair.
They dropped listlessly over the edge of the chair.

“From what, Madame? Why should you suffer? You have everything.”

“I must talk. I’ve no one to talk to.” Clarinda wept as she spoke and
the great tears fell down her cheeks.

“Ah! Madame, I pity you, tell me. I will be discreet. I promise! I
swear! It might do you good. It might spare you something. I might be
able to help.”

Clarinda arose and walked about the room. She went hastily from one end
to the other. Her arms beat the air. Occasionally she brushed the tears
from her cheeks. Her eyes were bright as they had been, like two burning
stars.

“Listen, Tizzia!” she commanded.

“I am listening, Madame.”

Clarinda increased her pace. She almost ran from one end of the place to
the other. The filmy garment she wore trailed behind her in the wind she
made. Her feet were bare and she spoke so rapidly she was almost
incoherent.

“Can you imagine, to what a condition I have fallen? I, Clarinda! It
can’t be true. It must be a horrible dream. He said I killed my father,
the person I adored. It is not true. It is impossible. I loved him and I
don’t believe he is dead. I didn’t go to his funeral. Peter says I
killed him. Tizzia, I hate Peter!” and she turned and looked into the
frightened face of the maid.

“Madame!” she exclaimed.

“Hush! I am talking. At last I can speak. Yes, I hate him. No one has
ever hated as I hate. I even hate the child. He, Peter, said I would
have killed it. I would have. I knew this house meant disaster. The
others who lived in it met disaster. The man died and his wife and his
children are in the world—starving. I knew it meant disaster. I begged
Peter not to bring me here.”

“You will be divorced, Madame?”

Clarinda straightened herself up. Her figure seemed to add height. She
laughed aloud. The tones of her voice rattled in her throat, and with a
struggle she regained herself.

“No,” she said slowly, each word gathering strength, “I will not be
divorced.”

“Probably Madame will go away,” Tizzia answered timidly.

“Did you ever hate, Tizzia? Did you ever hate? Hate so that murder
entered your heart, so that it became an obsession?”

“God forbid!” exclaimed Tizzia with fright in her voice.

“That is not so bad. Murder is not so bad. For the thing you kill, dies.
It stops. Think of me, my position. It is more terrible than if I had
been murdered. I cannot die. I must live. Instead of being dead. I must
go to my father’s house. I must sit and listen to his will. I must
appear broken and distraught. I must do these things, and in my heart I
shall fear none of them. I am glad he is dead. I am glad I saw him die.
Did you ever see anyone die? It is wonderful. You should have seen his
frightened old face. You should have seen his hands, the blood going
from them, drying up. The veins stood out, and they seemed to pulsate.
His face was first white, but when I spoke to him, it grew gray. His
eyes lost their luster. His old body wrapped in a great cover shrank
from me. It cried out for pity. I did not pity. I was amused. He was so
pathetic, so frightened, then he gave a great convulsion and he dropped
limp, and he was still. His body gradually slipped down and down until
it lay a huddled mass of nothing on the floor. I laughed.” Clarinda’s
voice stuck in her throat. A convulsion passed over her face, and she
was fast becoming hysterical. She stopped.

“You must calm yourself, Madame. It is necessary. Mr. Thorbald will
come. It would be bad for him to see you like this.”

“He will not come. He does not dare. He is afraid. He is a coward,
Tizzia. Mr. Thorbald lies.” Clarinda clenched her hands. They pained
her.

“Madame must collect herself. Madame doesn’t know what she says. It is
terrible to hear, Madame!” Tizzia exclaimed quickly. Her face had become
ashen with fear.

“I know what I say, Tizzia. I know only too well. I suffer so. I can’t
understand why this should have come to me. I’ve tried so hard to do the
things I thought were right. I’ve failed. He told me I had failed. He
was right. I have failed miserably.”

A gong rang downstairs and the sound reverberated throughout the house.
It struck Clarinda’s ear as if it would break the drums. Clarinda
shivered.

“I must go,” she said. “I must enter the car with Peter. I must get out
of the house and sit beside him. I must show sympathetic interest. They
will force me to listen and be impressed with the things they say. I
will do it. I will finish the story. I shall not weep.”

Hastily with the aid of the maid, Clarinda dressed herself, and did it
with meticulous care. She charged the maid with lack of attention, and
time after time, she took her hair down and had it re-arranged as often.
It never suited her. After she had finished and had looked into the
glass that hung from the ceiling to the floor, she went from the room
out upon the landing, and on down the stairs to the hall, where Peter
was waiting for her. He turned his eyes towards her as he heard her
come. He was filled with apprehension, and a slight tremor shook his
body, his heart stood still. Clarinda bowed to him as she passed, but
said nothing. He likewise did not speak but with a slight bow he opened
the door for her to pass out. The footman at the car, that stood at the
bottom of the steps, held the door open and they entered.

At a sign from Peter the car moved slowly out of the garden, and then
went more rapidly down the street. In a few moments it drew up in front
of the house of her late father. Again the footman opened the door and
offered his arm to aid her but she paid no attention to him, and quickly
went into the house.

In the library to the right of the main entrance she found her mother
sitting in gloomy silence. Clarinda spoke to her and found herself a
seat some distance from her where she sat in a deep shadow. There was no
sound. Peter sought to sit close to her, but Clarinda turned her eyes
upon him and he went away and sat quite near her mother. Clarinda was
alone in her portion of the room. She seemed to be set apart, as if she
had nothing to do with the affair.

At a large table especially arranged sat a man, clothed in black like an
undertaker. His head was large, his forehead protruded, and upon his
nose rested a pair of glasses over which he looked. His air was pompous,
and he seemed oppressed with his knowledge. To Clarinda he looked
foolish. Before him upon the table lay a mass of papers, documents of
parchment, and upon the floor propped up by the legs of his chair, stood
portentous bags of leather with silver clasps. Impressive bits of red
string lay among the documents. Clarinda looked at him, for he amused
her. He looked so false, so pretentious, so unnecessary. She watched him
move. He was being paid for his pantomime, and his pay would be in
proportion to the bulge of his forehead.

After he had bowed to all those present, and spoken to each by his
proper name, he cleared his throat. Then he wiped his forehead with a
huge white handkerchief, which he placed on the table beside him. It
looked like a mountain with peaks and turrets of intense white. To
Clarinda it seemed part of his pretensions.

Accordingly, having duly impressed his hearers, he picked up a thick
document, which was folded many times. Carefully he pressed out each
crease. With slow precision he arose from the chair he occupied, and
looked at the company over his glasses and read.

For a long time his voice went on monotonously. There was no inflection;
he might have been reading to a court. He only stopped now and then to
glance at Clarinda’s mother, at Peter, or at Clarinda. It seemed to
Clarinda he would never finish, as if he would go on forever. Eventually
the final sheet of the document was turned and he stopped as if he were
an actor and waited for applause. When it did not come, he appeared
disappointed.

Clarinda gathered nothing from the reading of the will. Peter smiled at
the amount he received, and he was pleased. Peter loved money.
Clarinda’s mother knew equally as much as Clarinda. She was entirely in
the dark. They both knew they had been left something, but neither knew
just how much or what.

“A wonderful will,” said the lawyer. “Fair, comprehensive, unbreakable.”

Clarinda arose from her chair. She walked over to the table and picked
up the will from among the other papers.

“What do I have under this will?” she asked.

“Your father has treated you magnificently,” the lawyer replied.

“I didn’t ask that,” she said tersely.

The man picked up the will, quickly turned over a few of the pages. “You
will find,” he said, reading carefully with the same lack of
intonations, “under paragraph one, section A, page five and upon the
subsequent page. ‘I hereby leave and bequeath to my beloved daughter the
sum of three hundred thousand dollars, free of all tax.’ In section B,
page six, paragraph five, you will find that this sum of money has been
left in trust. You are to be free of any control of this money, and at
your death, should you leave any children, they shall come into your
share when they shall have attained the age of thirty-five. A fine
proviso,” he added. “Per capita and not per stirpes. This refers to your
mother’s portion.”

“Why that?” asked Clarinda.

He did not answer Clarinda’s question. “You will find that this money is
free from any supervision by your husband and the increment thereof
shall be paid to you by your said trustees.” He added again, “A fine
proviso.”

“Who are the trustees?” asked Clarinda.

“I have the honor of being one of them, and the Safety and Guarantee
Trust Company is the other.”

“Is Peter’s left in trust?” she asked.

“Oh no,” he replied, with a look of astonishment. “Men as a rule do not
need trustees. They have more experience.”

“I just wanted to know.” Clarinda’s voice carried a peculiar tone. The
lawyer looked at her searchingly. Peter turned his eyes towards her. Her
mother sat in the same gloom and the same lack of understanding of what
was taking place. Her mind only grasped the idea that in some way she
was provided for, that this will had made her independent. Through her
mind fled visions of what she would do, she even thought she would like
to travel.

“That is all?” asked Clarinda, as she moved away from the table after
laying the will upon it.

“I believe so,” answered the lawyer. Apparently not quite certain of
himself. Clarinda’s manner broke in upon his usual method of carrying
forward proceedings of the kind. He was upset, he could not exactly
define why.

Clarinda bowed to him and nodded her head to her mother. She went out of
the room and left them still sitting. Her mother was nonplussed. Peter
did not go after her.

Clarinda entered the car, and ordered the driver to take her back home.




                                   V


As the car left the front of the house, after the reading of the will,
it went down the roadway to the street. At the lodge gates stood the old
keeper who had been there many years. He it was who smiled and swept the
clean gravel with his cap the day she had been married. He bowed again
in the same way and his hat touched the clean gravel again as she went
by. He smiled again, but now his smile seemed to be more sinister; it
carried, as Clarinda looked at him, more terrible futility with it than
it had at the former time.

Clarinda trembled as she huddled back in her seat of the car. She tried
to blot him out from her mind, but his old face clung. He gave her more
occasion for thought, but soon he was gone. The car went rapidly on its
way, and it was only a few moments until it stopped in front of the
place Peter called home.

Clarinda got out of the car and went hurriedly into the house, straight
through the hall. She saw nothing, not even the servants who stood
clustered about. They winked at one another and nodded their heads
knowingly. In some manner they sensed with that peculiar intuition which
hangs about servants that they were on the brink of a tragedy, the
household, like many they had seen before, was disrupted—gone. Already
they were turning over in their minds the finding of service elsewhere.
Truthfully they hated the thought of the new applications they would
have to file. It bothered them. The door boy, the man in buttons who
handed the silver tray for the cards of the visitors, the housekeeper,
all of them even to the scullery maid, were disgruntled. They liked the
place. The stealings were easy and there was very little work to do.

Mrs. Caws stood close to the entrance like a bird of prey. She watched
with eager eyes everything that happened. She, too, thought of the next
place where she could get employment, and a smile crossed her lips. It
was bitter, hard, and seemed full of anticipation. She loved disaster to
come to such as Clarinda and Peter. It pleased her that people of the
kind that Clarinda and Peter represented should go down from their great
estate. She, in her narrow soul hated the rich, although it was from the
rich that she was able to live.

Clarinda did not see her any more than she had seen the rest of them.
She hastened to her room and after she had entered she closed the door
tightly behind her. Then quickly she rang the bell that stood upon a
table near the divan. The maid entered, her face was drawn, there were
evidences of tears upon it, her cheeks were flushed and her eyes were
red.

“Madame, did you ring?” she asked.

Clarinda nodded her head. Presently she sat down upon the divan.
Carefully she placed herself in its corner and tucked her body into the
cushions and after removing her hat, she laid her head wearily back. A
sigh left her lips, and it was so deep that it seemed to come from the
depths of her heart. Her face was set, there was no sign of weakening. A
bitter look had come into her eyes. The usual beautiful blue of them had
died. They had become gray. A deep—dark gray.

After a long period of silence she said shortly as if speaking to
herself, “That is over.”

“What is over, Madame?”

“Tizzia,” she continued, “after I am gone—after all this horrible life
that I’ve had to lead is over, I want you to think of me, not as you see
me now, but as you knew me when you first came into this place. When you
do think of me, you must not forget that I feared the place. I don’t
know why, but I did fear it.”

“Yes, Madame,” answered Tizzia. “I shall be happy to do so. You are
going away?” she ventured timidly.

Clarinda looked at her as if appraising her, as if trying to decide
whether she asked questions from interest in her, or only from the
spirit of inquisitiveness. The maid stood in front of her. Her whole
being to Clarinda seemed to betoken sorrow at her condition, and it gave
Clarinda confidence.

“You know,” Clarinda went on. She spoke slowly thinking deeply of every
word she uttered. “I don’t trust you. I don’t know if your apparent
interest is from curiosity or just from the liking you have for other
people’s sorrows.”

“Ah, Madame! I am sorry you said that!” she broke in quickly. “I don’t
want your confidence—unless Madame feels I am not just curious. I
sympathize with you, Madame, deeply. I’ve seen something of life, too,
Madame, I, too, am a woman. I—”

Clarinda arose from the divan, and she strode about the room. She took
great steps, as if in their length she could find relief.

Presently, she spoke quickly, not stopping her march. “I don’t care. I
don’t care if you listen to me from curiosity or from real sympathy. I
must talk to someone. It might as well be you. I’ve no one in the world
to turn to. You don’t know the desperateness of such a situation. The
meanest people in the world usually have someone. Sit down there!” she
commanded.

“I would rather stand, please, Madame.”

“Sit down!”

Tizzia sat down. She placed her body upon the extreme edge of the chair.
Clarinda still walked. She spoke loudly, without intermittence, and her
words fell over one another, yet she appeared to think of each word as
she uttered it. The maid listened and followed as best she could. At
times the maid wept. At other times she trembled with fear, then again
she thought Clarinda would drop from exhaustion. It seemed to her that
she ran instead of walked from one end of the room to the other.

“I’ve thought it all out, Tizzia! I’ve thought it all out! Last night I
didn’t sleep. I walked this room and my bedroom all night. I heard you
come along the hall. I waited for you to come. It seemed to me as if it
were years—years and years! You would be surprised how long it is from
daylight to daylight, when you are waiting for some one. The hours are
so long. The time goes so slowly. I don’t know how I lived through those
hours. It was terrible, but it is over, it is gone! I’ve done my duty
today. I’ve heard the will read, I am rich. I am under the domination of
a little man and a great Trust Company.” Clarinda laughed. “I’ve three
hundred thousand dollars, and when my mother dies, I shall have hundreds
of thousands more. After I am dead, it goes to the child. He will be
rich. Isn’t that splendid for him?” Clarinda’s voice rang with bitter
sarcasm. For a moment she stopped in her march and stood in front of
Tizzia. “Are you listening, Tizzia?” she asked. Tizzia nodded her head
in assent.

“I am going away. Yes, Tizzia, I am going away. I am going to know an
entirely different life. I am going to have lovers. I shall sell myself
to the highest bidder—to some man who will buy my body with his filthy
dollars. I shall find out whether this creature, man, places more value
upon a woman whom he actually buys at so much per pound, than upon the
woman who comes to him with love in her heart. Yes, I shall know the
world! I shall know. I shall go away.” Clarinda’s eyes narrowed. She
went on slowly. Tizzia did not move from the edge of her chair.

“Peter, the lovely, gracious, Peter—the successful Peter, the Peter whom
my father patted upon the back and told how wonderful he was—wonderful,
because he could filch a few more dollars than another man. He shall
know how I am doing. He shall be told, by me, of every step I take. He
shall feel the degradation to which I shall fall—he, this lovely Peter,
thinks because I am a woman—I shall weaken. He thinks no woman can stand
up against the force projected by man. This wonderful person thinks that
I being a woman should sue for pity, that in the end, I will come back
to him, grovel at his feet and ask him to give me respectability. Men
think this sort of thing because a woman has borne him a child. Poor,
foolish creature! I am going to destroy myself not with a knife, nor a
pistol, nor with poison. But I am going to destroy myself—kill all those
finer things which are of me. I am going to the dregs. I shall suffer.
O! I shall suffer miserably. I hate the touch of men, Tizzia! But I am
going to teach myself to bear it.”

Clarinda stopped as if for breath. She still walked up and down the room
at a furious pace.

“O! Madame, you can’t! You don’t know what you say,” Tizzia broke in,
and there were tears in her voice.

“O, yes, I do. I know exactly what I say. More’s the pity,” Clarinda
answered quickly. “Can you imagine me in a brothel? It is laughable. But
I am going. I am going to have a lover. I want a lover. I’ve always
wanted a lover. When I married I thought that was what I was getting. I
did not. But now I shall have one. It will be wonderful to give oneself
to a lover—a man! Probably I shall get one who has committed a great
crime. We shall always live in fear of the police. Probably he may have
killed some one for a lot of money. When I meet him he will have great
piles of bills, and we will sneak out at night and spend it—always in
fear. He will beat me. He will get drunk and be brutal. But he will be a
man! And after all it may happen I shall learn to love him.” Clarinda
laughed. Her laugh scared Tizzia, even more than her words. Tizzia did
not believe she meant what she said. But when she laughed she thought it
might be true. That she would do as she said.

Clarinda continued: “And this man—this criminal with whom I shall live,
to whom I shall give my body, he will probably desert me when I am
getting the least bit old. I will feel this age coming upon me, then I
shall paint my face. I will fight age. I shall learn how it is done.
Every year that comes upon me will make me suffer more—for I know men
only love youth. They hate age. They want only the young. But that will
be a long way off. I am only twenty-three! It might happen that this
lover of mine, kills me in one of his drunken fits. What a glorious
heritage to leave Peter’s boy. His mother killed in a brothel by a
criminal, a murderer. What a headline for the newspapers. _Mrs. Clarinda
Thorbald, the wife of Mr. Peter Thorbald the successful banker, murdered
in a brothel._ I hope it happens. It would be a glorious end to a great
career. O, it is wonderful!”

Clarinda walked over to the window, and said nothing further. She
appeared to have talked herself out. A great calm descended upon her.
Tizzia arose from her chair. She did not know what to do. She stood
uncertainly in the middle of the room. Clarinda heard her as she moved.
She turned.

“You will pack my things, Tizzia. Put all my jewelry in the bags. It is
foolish to go without anything. That is quixotic. I must take my money,
too. It is easier to get a lover with money than without.”

“You will change your mind about the rest, Madame. You are too good to
do the horrible things you say. Madame is excited. When you have thought
the matter over you will think again.”

Clarinda looked at Tizzia. “How little you know me,” she said. Her voice
was weary. Tizzia could barely hear what she said. “How little everybody
knows me. How different it might have been if Peter had known me. I
regret Peter, for once I loved him. He was the one great thing in my
life, but he has died.”

“The child, Madame?”

“It belongs to Peter. I only brought it into the world. It is only my
flesh and blood. It amounts to nothing. I wish it joy. I hate it! I
could have loved it madly. But that, too, is dead.”

Tizzia went into the other room. She left Clarinda and began to put the
things she wanted into the various bags. Lovingly she took down from the
closets the many dresses Clarinda had loved. With delicate touch she
folded each garment and placed it in the great trunks. She rang a bell
and ordered more trunks brought into the room. The man who brought them
ventured to ask what they were for. Was Madame going away? Tizzia did
not answer. She wept incessantly. The tears fell from her cheeks and
spotted the delicate fabrics.

Clarinda left alone threw herself down upon the divan. Time went by. The
clock ticked as if nothing was taking place—as if the old life was just
the same, as if happiness had not left the house.

Finally speaking to herself, she said: “It must come. Why not now?”

She arose from the divan, went out of the door leading to the rooms in
which Peter lived. Quietly she opened the door. Over at a table she saw
Peter. He was writing. His head was bent and he was absorbed in his
task. His pen flew with rapidity. He did not hear her come in, nor did
he hear the door close behind her. She spoke and Peter jumped from his
seat. His face was pale, drawn, distorted. His brow she saw was covered
with perspiration. As he moved, he wiped his forehead with his hand. He
stood and stared at her.

Clarinda stood upon the opposite side of the table. She looked down upon
him. As he jumped from his seat, he stood as if paralyzed. He did not
seem able to move.

“Goodbye, Peter.” There was extreme sorrow in her voice. It quavered and
trembled as she spoke.

“You are going?” he asked timidly.

“Yes, it is done. I have failed you. I am sorry. It was so full of
promise, Peter. Our life could have been happy. But I have failed.”

“You cannot! You cannot!” His hands shook. The tears fell down his
cheeks unresisted by him. His knees weakened under him. He fell back
into his chair and buried his head in his hands upon the table. His
great body shook with intense grief, and Clarinda pitied him, but her
mind did not change.

“I am going, Peter. I am going away now, today. The maid is packing for
me. Goodbye Peter.”

Peter moaned. “No—no—no! I can’t bear it! You can’t go! I won’t let you!
It is impossible!”

“It is done, Peter.”

Clarinda turned and went slowly towards the door. Her hand fell gently
upon the knob. Quietly she opened it. As Peter saw her go, he sprang
from his chair. He held his arms outstretched towards her. The door came
open slowly. Quietly Clarinda passed from the room, and the door closed
softly behind her.

Peter screamed in his anguish. His soul was torn and he fell inert upon
the floor. The dark took him, and his eyes closed.




                               STAGE THREE

Dear Peter:

I knew it would come. But I wished to put it off until the chance for a
change was impossible. I’ve waited years for the time. I had planned in
my mind how I should do this thing I am about to do, with infinite care.
Each step was watched and taken even as the blind walk, even when I left
the house I intended to do this thing.

I wonder if you have ever read, “The Woman in White”? And if in the
reading you remember Count Fosco? You know he is the only fat villain in
any book. One thing he did I want to draw to your mind. It is the most
trivial thing in the whole book. You know, if you have read the book,
that after he was discovered and the things he had done were set before
him in all their hideousness, he sat down and wrote his confessions.
They covered innumerable sheets. The description by Collins of how he
gradually became buried in the pages is wonderfully drawn. You could see
him, Fosco, with the perspiration pouring down his fat face, and his
hand holding the pen flying over the sheets. I shall be Fosco buried in
sheets. That will, however, be my only likeness to him, for I do not
consider myself a villain. I am merely a woman.

Let’s see. This is a very difficult task. I do not know where to begin.
Shall I start at this end? Or shall I take it up from the time I left
the house? Our house. I was horribly alone. You will never understand
how poignantly alone I was; but that is neither here nor there.

I’ve decided, even in the writing of these first lines where I shall
begin. I am going to start with the now and go back. That is I mean to,
but I do not promise to keep it up. It is a long story—a miserable
history. I’ve sought for breaks in it, but I’ve discovered none.
Remember, Peter, I am not sorry. I feel precisely as I did about the
whole matter, as I did the day I walked from the house. I’ve not
relented, even at this late date. I am not sorry; I do not regret. I
repeat this statement in order that it may be impressed clearly upon
your mind. I don’t want you to think I am pleading for pity. I am not. I
neither crave your sympathy nor your change of feeling. I hope you get
this point exactly.

How time flies. You are sixty-two. I am forty-eight. We are both going
down the hill, and we are going down alone. It might have been
otherwise. The boy is twenty-three. I saw him when he was fifteen. I saw
him again when he was twenty, and again when he was twenty-one. I went
where he was out of idle curiosity. I wanted to see what this thing of
my flesh and blood had grown into. I was pleased and I was not. I
thought he ought to have looked better. I wondered what he would have
been under my influence, and had had the advantage of a mother’s love.
My friends tell me that a boy needs this sort of thing to lift him over
the hard places. Curiously enough I didn’t want to speak to him. I
didn’t long to hold him in my arms, nor did I feel any desire to have
him know me. I wonder whether that is normal. Most mothers, I suppose,
would have gone to him and taken him in their arms, and begged him in a
melodramatic way for his love. I desired no such thing. It may be that
my life has been confused. I don’t know. However, that is neither here
nor there. When I left you he was buried. I always looked upon him as a
disgrace. He was not in my mind purely born. He was my stigma. So, he is
of me and not of me. I will speak of him no more.

I look back upon my life as a series of developments. First, my
youth—full of hope, gay, protected, luxurious, a timid child with no
conception of life, a thing raised untutored, pushed into a willing
marriage. I wanted to marry you. It was a consuming desire upon my part.
I hoped so and I loved so. I thought you were wonderful. It gave me a
thrill when you came home. I looked upon you as a
super-man—unconquerable. Then gradually the veil was rent asunder. You
did the tearing and you did it thoroughly. You destroyed me. I, however,
felt it come and I tried hard to fight it out. My aim was to conquer the
thing so that you and I, Peter, should lead an ideal existence—that we
should have children, that love should radiate about us, like a glorious
sun, on a glorious summer day. You killed this. You wanted money,
success—futile, necessary money.

Remember, Peter, I don’t blame you for all the misfortune, as I may have
been equally at fault. I couldn’t advance as rapidly as you did. I
suppose it arose from the fact that I wanted you and not the world. I
wanted children, and I wanted a home. I wanted to be separated from the
frivolities of life. I wanted the burden of your happiness.

It may have been my fault in that I wanted to have you believe that in
me and in me alone was the lodestar of all your hopes. In the
development of that part of me, with no end of thought, I failed. I’ve
always failed. I can’t understand why, but the fact remains.

I remember—it was a long time ago, many, many years. With what
perturbation I was filled that first time you went away without kissing
me goodbye. That was a tiny omission, but it was an interstice. Then I
knew it came out of the blue. I knew I was slipping, that outside things
were grasping you, and I sensed this thing clearly. Then I fought—I
fought to recover, but although I fought I lost. I lost more and more.
Each losing infinitely small. I mean each slip towards the
disintegration; but to me these slips were monumental. I developed. I
passed in a few short moments into another stage.

My second stage. I wonder as I write this whether you will read it and
whether if you do you will be able to understand what I want to convey
to you. Sometimes as I read what I write I think I may have missed the
point.

In my second stage, I awoke from a poor bedraggled, dispirited woman. I
became mad. I lost all sense of proportion. I magnified things you had
done to me into things without proper ratios. I even had the temerity to
gloat while my Father died. This was a curious experience. I looked back
upon it with wonder. I can’t understand exactly how it could have
happened. I can’t exactly define my frame of mind. It must have arisen
because I blamed him, even as much as I did you, for the condition in
which I found myself.

Of course, my Mother was a negligible quantity in my life. And from the
things I have learned concerning her since her death, her sorrow over
the tragedies that surrounded her life were but passing affairs which
did not seem in any way to approach her. She seemed to sense nothing
except her material side. Everything was cast from her as a snake sheds
its skin. From her I received life and from her I got nothing except
life.

It was different in the case of my Father. He loved me, and I know now
as I look back that he adored me. His one ambition in life was to make
existence for me as free from all source of worry as the human can. But
he failed, and he failed because his perspective was bad. He didn’t
understand the longings of a real woman. He knew the world from a man’s
point of view. There he stopped. He knew nothing of it from a love’s
point of view. He loved, but he loved materially. I asked him once
whether he loved Mother as much as when he married her. He could not
answer. He knew his love had left her and centered about his own
success, which meant money and position—the flattery of men.

I am hastening these two developments because I want to tell you of the
third stage of my life—the third development, and what it has cost me,
how I arrived at this stage at which I find myself and what if anything
I have gained by my conduct towards you.

There is a curious thing comes to my mind. It may not strike you exactly
as it does me. But I am going to mention it for the reason that it
interests me. You, Peter, even today, are the only thing in life as far
as I am concerned, and it took the greatest amount of determination to
withstand the temptation which assailed me.

Many times in the past twenty-odd years I have gotten out of my bed with
the firm determination to come back to you. To say that probably after
all I was wrong, that I laid too much stress upon the condition in which
I found myself. You know, or probably you have not thought it out—that
once a woman gives herself to a man, once she has borne him children,
her whole heart, her whole life is wrapped up in the one experience.
Women are not like men. They are monogamous. There is barely a woman in
the world who has given herself to one man, and afterwards goes through
a divorce court or leaves him, that at times she does not feel within
herself an urge that is nearly unconquerable to go back to that man.
Women re-marry and they live in what is supposed to be contentment, but
in their hearts there is no contentment.

You will never know the tugs I have had or the strength I have used to
carry out this thing to its bitter end, but I was certain to do this.

Eight years after I had gone from the house, I stood for hours outside
the wall. I looked through the bars of the gate. I looked upon the
garden. There was a light in the room in which you had placed the
divan—the dear old divan, with the soft light burning behind it. I stood
for hours on a clear night. The moon shone through the trees, and I
could see the flowers. I could even make out the fountain around which
we had walked and you had told me of what you had done during the day.
This only happened once—a walk such as this. What joy that walk gave me.
I feel it even now. The great door was open. The light beckoned to me.
It invited me to come. It seemed to say, “Enter, and you will be
forgiven. Love waits for you.” I shook with fear. For I was afraid that
I might weaken.

I walked furiously up and down the pavement. My eyes were pinned upon
that light, and except for the light that fled through the front doors
everything else was dark. Nowhere was there a single light except in
that one room. I thought I could see you in it. I wondered whether you
were happy. I didn’t believe you were. Somehow I saw you much changed.
You were gray. Your shoulders were not full. You seemed to me to be
stooped. I wondered if I went in how you would greet me. I was afraid.

It was late when I left. Midnight. The light still burned. It struck me
as curious. I wondered why this was so. After I went away, I knew I had
made a mistake. I should have gone in to you. I should have walked up to
that little room and sat myself down upon the divan, and if you were not
there I should have waited. I believe now and I believed then that you
would have taken me in your arms and comforted me. You would not have
berated me. You didn’t know how lonely I had been. But, Peter, I failed
you. You told me so.

I left as I say, at midnight. I walked past my father’s house. Some one
was laughing in there. New people. People who had children. Life. The
lights were all lit. It looked so gay. I believe I wept. A man came out
upon the porch. I could see him from the lodge gates. He put out his
hand as if to see if it rained. He did not see the moon. I thought that
so funny. He went back again, closed the door and after sometime the
lights began to go down one by one, and finally the house became dark.
It was so peaceful. And I was so unhappy. So lacking in peace.

I thought of all that I had done in that old house. I saw my early life
again. I felt its happiness creep over me. I felt my father at my side.
I saw him stand by me. I could almost feel the grasp of his hand. His
breath fanned my cheek. And it seemed to me he whispered in my ear. He
said with such depth in his voice, “I forgive you Clarinda. I pity you.
Go back.” The thing became so vivid to me, that I turned and ran. I
don’t know how far I ran; but I ran until a man stopped me. He said,
“Why do you run? Are you scared? Has anything happened to you?”

I fled from him. I ran further until I was nearly dropping with
exhaustion, then I stopped. I was far from your house. Far down in the
city. It was terrible to me. Then I walked rapidly. It was getting late.
A bell in a tower near by struck two.

I have never been back since. That happened years ago. But even although
it happened years ago, it is as fresh in my mind as if it took place
yesterday. I conquered myself. I didn’t go back to you. My second
development had taken place. My second stage had been gone through with.
I was different. I was no more the Clarinda you married. My old self had
died. You would not have loved me any more. It would have been
impossible.

It is night, Peter. Good-night.

                                                                  C.

                   *       *       *       *       *

Dear Peter:

I am continuing the letter I wrote you sometime ago. Of course, I am
sending you these as a compilation. They are not in series; for if I
should do that you would lose the trend. Probably you would become bored
and when these letters came from time to time, you might throw them in
the waste basket. It is impossible for me to judge your frame of mind
from this distance after all these years. I cannot judge into what you
have developed.

However, the first part is finished and the second part is also done
with. This is the third part. The drawing of the thing to a conclusion—a
finishing of it all. And after this is done, I shall sit down by my
window and look out upon the passing world and wonder how long I shall
live. How soon I shall have peace—a thing I have never had, or ever
known.

I remember the day I left. It was cruel. You recollect the sky. The sun
did not shine. The flowers in the garden as I went seemed to tuck their
heads down under their leaves as if seeking protection from the cold. It
was not cold. It was raining. It was warm.

I entered the car. I closed the door by myself. It appeared to me as if
some one was closing me in some place, just as if I were being penned in
a great prison, from which I should never come out. I shivered, Peter.

The last face I saw was that of Tizzia who stood at one of the windows.
The tears were running down her face. Frantically she waved her hand to
me, and then she was gone. It was all gone—the house, you and my
happiness.

I wonder if Tizzia told you of my last conversation with her—the threats
I made of the things I should do. I often think of that conversation and
the stress I was under at the time. Funny as it may appear to you I did
those things. I went forth from you—from all the things I thought were
right and good.

You should have seen the man. I met him a short time after I left. His
name was Bill—Slippery Bill, he was called. A vicious man. A drunkard of
the most horrible kind. His mind was a morass of immorality. His sense
of humor was beating a woman. He had killed one person, and when he was
drunk he bragged to me and described how his victim had moaned and
begged. He loved to tell me of the thing he killed. Of course, it was a
woman. He was just a man—a coward.

Bill was a thief—a second-story man. One who lies in wait until a house
is empty and then goes in safely. When he would steal he would come to
me in the hovel we lived in and throw the things he had got on the
table, and gloat on them, and brag about the ease with which he did this
sort of thing. After that he would get drunk. For days and weeks he was
in this condition. He amused me. He was so futile. His operations so
foolish. With half the effort he could have made a good living.

Bill hated work. He wanted to live in what he called ease. Poor foolish
Bill! He feared everything. The crack of a twig, the sound of the wind,
a strange footstep. It was always the law coming for him. The police! He
even feared me and sometimes in his frenzy of fear he would beat me. He
thought I might betray him. It amused me. His fear was queer. I laughed
at it when he was gone on one of his missions.

I met this creature not long after I had gone from you. I went down into
the depths of shame and poverty. I lived in one tiny room. Around me was
a host of queer furtive people who lived from day to day—seeking always
something that might keep them until the morrow. It was sad, but it was
interesting. I went to their haunts. I soon became known to them. I even
acquired their furtive habits. I appeared to be seeking like they, the
things that would keep me until the next day. Sometimes even in their
extreme poverty they laughed. I would pretend that I had a good night.
That I had seen some man who gave me part of what he had and I would
give to them. A dollar now and then. Once I gave a poor old man, who had
lived in his horrors for years, a five-dollar bill. You should have seen
him. He became my shadow. There was no thankfulness in his manner. He
thought he could get more. I found him in my room, going through my
things. He found nothing. I took care of that. I cursed him for his
temerity. He shrank out of the place, but he came back, for he hoped.

I came across Bill only four weeks after I left you. It was a short time
after I took the miserable room in this quarter of this city. What city
doesn’t make any difference. But it was not so far from you that I
couldn’t watch you and what you did.

You should have seen the dive—dirt, ill-smelling, horrible. A ragged
crew came and went. I entered, and I was poorly dressed—that is I had on
the kind of finery of the people of the class I tried to identify myself
with. I looked the part. I sat at one of the broken-down tables—filthy
with stale beer and smeared with old pieces of cheese. Oh, how it smelt!

Bill was standing at the bar. He was partially drunk. He turned, as I sat
down, and he saw me. A curious light went over his face, and I knew here
was the man! The man who should teach me whether men loved women from
their pound value or from love.

Drunkenly he walked over to the table and leaned his great bony knuckles
upon it. He didn’t take off his hat. He looked at me. Even though I was
dressed so badly, I was beautiful.

He spoke to me, I nodded my head. He ordered a glass of beer for me. He
drank a concoction which he called whiskey. He was terribly dirty. Then
he sat down. I looked at him. Rarely have I seen such a repulsive
creature as he was. A great head covered with long shaggy hair, that
curled in a mass. His eyes were blue—a deep blue. In them one could see
the depths of depravity he had sunk to. His mouth was weak and sloppy,
but his chin, covered with a few days’ beard, was strong. He looked
brutal. And, Peter, he was brutal.

“Where are you from?” he asked.

“Nowhere,” I replied. I drank a little of the beer. He swallowed the
drink he had before him at a gulp. He appeared to throw it down his
throat. I noticed that none of the muscles either contracted or expanded
with the effort.

“Who are you?” he asked.

“No one,” I replied.

“Where do you live?” he persisted.

I turned from him and arose from the table and left him staring after
me. I knew he would follow. He did. We went out of the place together.

“My wife is dead,” he said.

“Well?” I answered.

“I want another.”

We stood outside of the door upon the pavement. In the light that came
through the dirty windows. I moved away from him.

That was the beginning of the life I led with him. It was a curious sort
of thing. He began to love me. He sought me out everywhere I went. There
were many others. But Bill interested me more than any other man I met.

You should have heard him the night we walked together down one of the
poorest streets in the city. He turned every few moments and looked
back. He always walked near the walls of the buildings, for he told me
that he was afraid. He knew he was suspected for all kinds of crimes.

He called me Magdalen. Bill had a slice of poetry in his make-up, and he
reasoned well. He told me he loved me. He would even go straight for me.
He would never drink again. He got drunk that night. I wouldn’t go with
him. Bill was a liar like most men.

A long time went by. We met every night—in all kinds of places. All of
them as dirty as the first. It ended by my going with him.

It happened one night we walked to the park. It was late. All the grog
shops had closed. It was long after one o’clock. We sat upon a bench
together. Bill was sober. He had washed. It was dreadfully dark. It was
curious the feeling of disgust I had for the man; yet for some
unaccountable reason I was attracted to him. I listened to him as he
spoke. I compared his protestations with yours. His were stronger. Bill
was only the offspring of the gutter. After a while as he went on he
thrilled me. When he unbended his crooked figure and shook the mass of
hair on his head, I wondered at the man. Women, Peter, are curious—even
more curious than men. Underneath they love the cave man. They like
strength and brutality. In this part of my life when I see with what
insane cruelty this class of people beat and bruise their women, I
wonder at them. But they do not leave—they weep, but they stay.

You should have heard him as he stood before me and looked at me the
best he could in the dark. I could see his eyes flash.

I remember each word he spoke, as if it were yesterday. Yet Bill has
been dead years and years, and he died in jail.

“You are different, Magdalen. I don’t understand you. I don’t care about
that. I only know you came into my life. You are here. The first night I
saw you, although I was drunk, I knew you were my woman. I don’t care
where you came from, nor who you are. I love you, Magdalen. I would do
anything for you. How long it has been since you came into this part of
the world, makes no difference to me. I don’t know if you have ever
loved before. I suppose you have. All women love at sometime. You don’t
know what real love means. I love you—I want you. I am going to have
you. It is funny, I never spoke to any women as I do to you. You seem to
make me different. I’ve lost my strength; it has died in me. If you were
like the rest I should take you. I would not ask. I would make you do as
I want. But I cannot. That is the thing I don’t understand. I am afraid
of you. Why?”

I whispered, “Yes, Bill.”

Women are curious. It seems as if they are forced to listen to men when
they begin to lay before them what they term their hearts. Mostly it is
the animal in them. They wish to propagate.

He went on as if I had not interrupted him. “Magdalen, I wonder if you
know that the love of a man such as I am, is different from other kinds.
We never select from personal advantage. It is more the man. The spirit
of a beast. We want. We want physically. I have thought of you a great
deal. And I can’t understand what it is in you that makes me look at you
differently from the women I have been thrown with, but the difference
is there. I don’t believe that you belong to the people you pretend you
do. There is something behind. You eat differently. Your fingers are
different. Your skin is different. You are beautiful. The people with
whom I have always gone are only beautiful in their youth. They have the
bloom and that is all. It soon dies. It may be the conditions
surrounding them that causes this sort of thing. Tell me where you came
from? Why are you here?”

“I won’t tell you that. I am here. That is enough. Misfortune has placed
me here. I like it. I am going to stay.”

“Then you love me. Is that the reason you stay?” He shook with emotion
and walked up and down in the dark in front of me.

I was terribly attracted. He was a brute, but he was a man after all. He
had been unfortunate. And yet I don’t think that exactly covers what I
mean. I never asked him from where he had come, or by what fatality he
had sunk so low. Bill was the dregs.

“May I kiss you?” he asked.

Peter, I could not—I could not! And yet I knew in the end it would
happen. I knew as I looked at this creature that to him I would be in
name a wife. I trembled with fear. I hated it dreadfully. Every fiber in
my body recoiled from any sort of personal contact with him. I wondered
whether I would bear him children. I wondered whether he would beat me
tomorrow or the day after. I knew he would. He did. Not then, but soon.
It was queer, Peter, that after it happened—I mean after I took up life
with him. Although he beat me, he did not kill the thing in me that you
did. He always wept, when he got sober, and his contrition was
wonderful. Unfortunately this did not deter him from beating me later. I
think underneath that even though I thought about it all the time I
loved him. How do you suppose that came about? I don’t know. Some people
say a woman loves but once. Yet, here I was loving two distinct persons.
And those persons so diametrically opposed.

It did happen. He kissed me. It was in the park in exactly the same
place he had asked me before. He did not ask me. He took me in his arms.
I struggled. I fought. I knew it was the end. I anticipated it was
coming. I didn’t go with him into the park for weeks and weeks; yet he
asked me to go innumerable times. At last I consented. I saw the end. It
was written with fiery fingers on the wall. You know just like the words
in the Bible. Mene Mene Tekel Upharsin! I don’t suppose my words I saw
meant the same thing. I don’t know what the Bible words mean; but I knew
the words I saw. They were burnt into my brain.

Bill kissed me. He kissed me again and again. The animal came up in him.
It was fearful and yet it was to me a wonderful experience. Eventually,
I, being a woman, lay quietly in his arms. I could smell his dirty
body—the sweat of years was upon it. His clothes were unkempt. His shirt
was open at the neck and he looked precisely what he was—a thug.

I was close to my revenge. And yet, I was not getting precisely what I
started out to get. I had failed again, Peter. I failed. I loved this
thing—this thug. Why do you suppose that happened? I awoke to him. It
must have been that unconquerable force—Nature. You know I hate dirt. I
have always hated dirt. I mean immorality. And yet here I was an honest
woman, a woman of instinct, doing this thing.

Bill kissed me as I say. Then he breathed a sigh. It came from his soul.
If he had a soul, which I doubt. “Come, get up. It is late. We will go
home.”

I got up from the seat. He controlled me. I could not refuse. I wanted
to. I wanted to run. I thought death was better than this thing I was
going into with my eyes open. I knew Bill. He took my hand in his. We
walked silently through the park. I went easily. There was no drawback
on my part.

Down into the streets, from one evil-smelling way to another, through an
alley, fetid with decayed dirt that lay in masses, then into another
long row of old houses. This was called a street. It was silent. There
was no sign of life anywhere. A rat ran across the gutter in front of us
occasionally. I held to him with fear. Bill plodded on. He knew where he
was. I was in a mist. My mind wouldn’t work. If it had, I should have
screamed.

How far I went I don’t know. We stopped. Bill dragged me into a place.
It was dark. I stumbled up one stairway, then up another. It must have
been the top of the house, before Bill kicked a door open. He lit a
light. I don’t know what kind of light it was; but it struggled to
dispel the gloom.

I can’t tell you of this room. I’ve lived in it a long time. I’ve
suffered in it. But I have been loved for myself. I did not fail there.
I have known real love. It has paid me from that standpoint. When I die
I will have known something most women miss. I had no children. In this
I was fortunate.

My story is nearly finished, Peter. Bill, as I said, went to the
penitentiary. I think it was my fault. I wished for something. He
couldn’t get it. We had nothing. He went to get it for me and got
caught. Bill never failed me.

I left the country after Bill died. I am living in Paris. I am getting
old. I am tired. But I don’t regret. I have had my revenge.

I sit all day in the sun. I am always in my garden. I never go out. I
have no reason to go. The outside does not attract me.

Goodbye, Peter. It is finished. And I would not have had it otherwise.

                                                                  C.

                   *       *       *       *       *

Dear Peter:

I had decided not to write you anymore concerning myself or of what has
happened to me in these intervening years. But woman-like I felt that
there was more you should know, and I did not precisely feel as if I had
had the last word. You must forbear with me and be patient.

As I told you in my last letter, Bill went to the penitentiary. I went
with him on the train. The sheriff thought I was his wife. He
commiserated with me and allowed me to sit next to Bill all the way.
Bill was pitiful. I felt for him, for it was so unnecessary for him to
be in the position he was in. I would have given Bill a living but I was
afraid. He would not have believed me. He would have thought that I had
some other man. Bill would have killed me and then you would have been
free. I never intended that. I would not have had that happen.

You should have sat back of us and heard Bill swear what he would do
after he got out. Twenty years! Can you imagine anybody laying plans for
something to happen in twenty years? Bill did not get out. Poor animal,
he died in the place. I buried him. And curiously enough I wept for him
when he was placed in the ground. I buried with him my one great love.
But I had learned what love meant. I don’t mean love surrounded with
riches, but love that animates the breast of just a man. It is
different.

When he was buried and a small stone placed at his head, I left the
country. I came to Paris and I have lived here ever since. I should like
to have you see the place. It is beautiful. I have a great house. And in
it I have one room with a divan and a light back of it. I have in front
of the divan a fireplace. It is kept lit all the time, even in the
warmest weather. I look into it a great deal. I build even now hopes and
castles that will never be realities.

I see in its blue flame, when the light is out and a quiet has settled
upon the streets and only an occasional wayfarer goes by, a castle, and
in its walls I place you, Peter—and the boy. I see my life as it might
have been. I should not have known Bill. I should have had a different
kind of love, not of the same value, but still I imagine it might have
sufficed; it might have held me to my own. It would have done for I
would not have known Bill—Bill the cave man.

Have you, I wonder, ever thought of this? Have you ever considered how
dreadfully wasted your life has been and how lonely?

I have a garden back of this house. French windows open out upon it.
Down in its depths, where I love to go, I have had placed trees like
those I loved at home, greenswards of grass lead to paths and their
borders are lined with flowers, almost the same kinds of flowers I had
at home. A fountain plays and casts its waters into the air. I have a
lodge keeper who bows when I enter the gates. He has a sinister smile.
He, too, seems unhappy, but wise beyond comprehension, Peter.

Underneath, Peter, I want something I haven’t got. I don’t know what
that is. I try to argue the thing out. I go carefully over every
incident that has comprised my life. I try to blame myself. Sometimes I
can and then at other times I cannot. It is curious the condition I am
in.

I am not old, yet I feel old. I am only forty-odd years of age, and
nowadays that is not age. I have no friends. I know no one. I must be
lonely. I don’t know.

I think a great deal of you. I think of your wasted life. I don’t mean
from the money standpoint. Which is the least thing in the world. For I
experienced greater happiness living in a hovel, in dirt and in squalor,
than I did with a butler and the other servants. But your life, Peter,
is over. You are sixty and more. Time is ready to take you back into
itself and close its account with you. Soon you will be dead. And out of
it all you have got nothing. I’ve followed your career with interest and
amusement. I knew its futility. I knew what in your heart you wanted.
You wanted me. And your cupidity and your philosophy had lost for you
the greatest thing in your life—love.

Do you know, Peter, that after all these years of separation I feel that
you ought to come to me? That in all this world you have no one to take
care of you. I told you in one of my letters to you that no matter what
comes into a woman’s life, in her heart she lives alone with the man she
gave herself to first. I am no different. I am only a woman, with all
the frailties of a woman.

I don’t believe that there is any quality in a woman which is stronger
than the quality of pity. I pity you. You are such a sad waste—such a
pitiable thing. At times, Peter, I loved you with all the fervor of a
young mind. That is something. Bill was only a sporadic incident in my
life. As a fact he only seared it—burnt it with horrors that it would
have been better that I should not have known. Had I not had the
frailties of a woman I would not have gone with Bill; nature and its
demands are too strong. Nature made me go with Bill. It was not of any
volition of my own. If it had been I would not have gone.

Tizzia is with me. I’ve had her for the past few years. I hunted her up
after I buried Bill. She is here beside me. She is looking over my
shoulder as I write to you. She and I have become more than maid and
mistress. I hold to her with eager hand. It is by her that I link myself
with the past, with you and with the boy. I am weak. I wobble. I am not
as I used to be. My strength is gone. The fight in me is over. I have
suffered, Peter—suffered terribly.

I often wonder at the weakness of the human. We start with such
assurance and we end so pitiably. I had strength. I had determination. I
did the thing that now I know I should not have done and out of it I
have gotten that thing revenge. It is only too true the words in the
Bible—“Vengeance is mine saith the Lord.” I have lost. I wonder what the
proper course in life is, for what we do is always wrong. I tried and I
failed.

Tizzia and I talked over this thing this morning and I write it hastily
for fear I may again change and the old feeling might arouse itself in
me and I would not put down here truly what I feel. There is only one
thing left in me that is like my old self and that is my absolute
strength for the truth. That I think is my one saving grace.

Tizzia said slowly and with what I thought was wonderful clearness.
“Now, Madame, I would write this. I would give Mr. Thorbald the chance.
You would have done your duty. It is better. Why carry out a bad
situation when it can be bettered?”

“But,” I answered, “he will think me foolish, and weak. After all my
bragging as to what I was going to do.”

“We are all weak, Madame,” she replied. “We are only human.”

“What would you say, Tizzia?” I asked.

“This,” she replied shortly.

“The door is open. I wait for you to come. I will be to you as I was
before. We can forget the past. It is over. All that we did is done. I
am sorry. That covers with me a multitude. We have both lost. We should
try in these few years left us to regain what we have lost.”

“Is that all?” I asked.

“I think so. It is direct,” she answered me.

“I can’t do that, Tizzia—I can’t. I would feel that I had put all my
entity into the balance and found it wanting.”

“That has been your failure. Madame, you’ve weighed and you have lost in
the weighing too much already. You have lost your life.”

“Suppose he should refuse?” I asked.

“It can’t be helped. Then you must continue to suffer. It may be that he
will. It depends on what his viewpoint may be. He may be too comfortable
as he is. He may have put you out of his life. You may not occur to him
at all.”

“Shall I try?” I asked doubtfully.

“Yes, Madame. And you will,” she replied.

And, Peter, I am sending you this. I will wait until you reply. The
door, as Tizzia says, is open. I am not hard to find. I shall wait. And
while I wait, I shall be abased; for I can not know what you will
answer. But I shall hope.

I wonder, shall I fail in this as in everything else?

Good-night, Peter. Remember, I hope.

                                                                  C.

                   *       *       *       *       *

Weeks went into months. A winter came and then spring. The birds went
and then came back. Clarinda and Tizzia lived and waited. But no word
came from Peter. They could not tell whether the letters Clarinda had
written had reached him or not. Tizzia gave up. She thought that the
separation had been too long. That Clarinda had gone out of Peter’s
mind—that if he remembered her at all it was only as one remembers a
dream, indistinctly, without placement. She had died and been buried.
Clarinda still hoped. She could not define why this condition remained
with her. Hope kept her alive. Tizzia did not tell her that in her own
belief the thing was done. Peter would not answer.

In June, on the same date that Clarinda had been married so many years
before, on almost the same sort of day, the sun was bright. The warmth
of the weather filled all the passersby with pleasure. The boulevards
were lined with people. The little iron chairs that sat close to the
iron tables were crowded. Gaiety and life permeated everything. In the
distance here and there bands blared forth music. Clarinda sat in her
garden under the shade of a pink umbrella. There was not much change in
her beauty. It was still there. Her eyes were as bright and shone with
the same lustre. Behind them could be seen a queer knowledge. It shone
forth in bitterness. The attitude of her body was different. Her figure
was almost as slim.

Her eyes were gradually closed to the light. A soft haze came between
her and the day. She was soothed by the sound of the fountain that
played beyond her. A bird sang in a tree. Tizzia sat close to her upon a
stool at her feet. Peace, ineffable in its entirety closed about them.
Clarinda slept. Tizzia watched her, not a sound disturbed the quiet. A
gate clashed on its hinges. A window opened from the porch of the house.
It swung to again and made almost as much clatter as the gate, then
slowly and evenly two men walked down from the porch and came on through
the garden. They came as if they knew every step of the way. There was
no hesitancy in their advance. Tizzia did not hear them. She did not
move. Clarinda sighed in her sleep. A smile crept over her face. She
made a slight movement of her body as if settling herself in some deep
remembrance. The smile on her face widened, and her lips spread apart
showing her teeth. A great beauty settled down upon her. Tizzia looked
up at her, and shook her head slowly. A new hope came into her heart.
She thought that he might come. How wonderful. A probability of joy that
would come filled Tizzia with anxiety. She feared it would not happen,
it had been so long.

Tizzia sat and looked at her. Then suddenly she heard the steps of the
men, and she sprang from the stool and raised herself. She looked up the
path. Her face became pale. She shook with emotion.

“At last!” she exclaimed. Tizzia advanced towards them.

“Yes, we are here. It has been long. But we are here,” said the older
man.

“She is asleep. Shall I go to her?”

“No!” answered the older of the two men. “I will go to her.”

The younger man stopped. He looked towards Clarinda. His face was drawn.
A great anxiety seemed to bear down upon him. He seemed uncertain as he
stood beside Tizzia.

The older man, bent by the weight of his years, strode painfully over to
Clarinda. He stood in front of her. Steadily he looked down upon her.
Her lips were still parted in a smile. A faint color was spread over her
cheeks. To Peter they looked still smooth. He could only see an
indefinite change that all the years had planted upon her; he saw her as
she was the day she left him. He still remembered the cruelty of her
words. They had burnt themselves into his soul, and they came back to
him with even as great poignancy as if he had just listened to them.

Clarinda moved. Her hand stretched out in front of her as if she were
reaching for something. It fell to her side. The smile went from her
face. Peter did not move. Slowly with effort she opened her eyes. The
light dazzled her as she looked at the man standing in front of her. At
first she did not comprehend, then gradually it broke in upon her. She
saw Peter. Her breath came from her in gasps. She could not speak.

Peter said slowly, “I am here. I have brought the boy. I have come for
you, Clarinda.”

Clarinda gasped. She could not move. She lay inert in her chair, and
heard his words. But she could not comprehend them. To her they were
only words. It seemed to her as if some ghost had stepped out of the
garden and confronted her. Gradually as if she had been steeped in a
tepid bath the drops of perspiration gathered on her face.

Peter did not move, or say anything, but seemed to be waiting. Slowly
Clarinda found her voice, which was weak and uncertain. It came from her
in a whisper as she stammered.

“At last it is you! How—wonderful! And the boy.” Clarinda fell back into
her chair. A great pallor spread over her cheeks, and with an effort she
shook the tide from her. She arose from her chair, and staggered
slightly. Peter stretched out his hand as if to stay her. As his hand
came toward her, she moved slightly back.

“No!—No!—Peter,” she said. “It is not for you to forgive. My greatest
sin has not been against you but against the boy. It lies with him, so
let him think.”

Peter turned from her, and motioned to the younger man who was talking
in a low tone to Tizzia. He beckoned to him and the young man advanced.
He came until he stood quite close to his father.

Peter said quietly, “This is your mother.”

“You never told me, Father, where we were coming. I am unprepared. I
don’t understand, I am so shocked. How beautiful she is. This is the
first time in all my life I have ever heard you speak of her.”

“Yes,” answered Clarinda, “I am your mother.” She turned to Peter.
“Peter,” she said, “you are bigger than I am, and after all you are a
man. I have failed again.”

“What is done, is done,” he replied. “There are only a few years in
front of me. I am well over sixty. You and I and the boy will go back.
We will try.”

The boy knelt at his mother’s feet, and touched the hem of her dress,
then he turned his eyes up to her.

“I’ve wanted a mother so much. I’ve dreamed of a mother, and at last
I’ve found you.”

Clarinda wept. The tears went down her face, and she did not try to stem
the torrent.

“We shall be happy,” the boy went on. “Never again shall we be
separated. I am so happy! You are so beautiful—so wonderful!”

Clarinda stretched down her hand to him. He arose from the ground, and
she took him in her arms. He kissed her. It was her boy. The fruit of
her body.

Peter smiled.

                                The End







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