Edward S. Van Zile

“ I remarked, drawing my chair closer to the crib. “What—ah—that is—have you some idea as to just what kind of a nurse you'd like?”
The baby was on his knees again at the side of the crib, waving his expressive fists in the air.
“Understand me, Clarissa,” he said, sternly, “I refuse to risk my life again by placing myself in the power of a hireling nurse. You can't expect people of that kind to be open to new ideas. To a man of my temperament, my dear, you must realize that repeated doses of baby-talk are actually cloying. ”

“ Doesn't he ever cry? How good he is, dear little fellow!”
“Horatio! What a fine, dignified name! Horatio held a bridge, didn't he? or was it a full house?”
“What a question for a famous scientist to ask!”
The baby, erect and smiling in his high chair, had wonderfully enlivened our dinner-party. Even Tom, startled as he had been by the advent of the distraught nurse, was now wholly at his ease and beamed genially from the foot of the table upon the youngster, who seemed to be delighted at the attention that he was receiving from beautiful women and famous men. ”

“ It is a most prosaic attitude that I am forced to hold toward yonder most beautiful baby, for example. Romance would point to him as an immortal soul in embryo. Realism asserts that he is a machine, like the rest of us, with a longer lease of activity before him than you or I have, who have been ticking, so to speak, for several years.”
“Be good, Horatio!” I whispered. “Don't cry. You can have an ice pretty soon.”
The baby brought his spoon down upon the table with a thump, and actually glared at the German professor, while my guests laughed gaily at the child's precocious demonstration. ”

“ Lifting the very willing baby from the crib, I carried him to a rocking-chair, hoping that I might get him to sleep while I came thoughtfully to a determination regarding my course of action for the immediate future.
“Gently!"” murmured Jack, cuddling gratefully in my arms. “A long, slow, dreamy kind of rocking is not so bad, Clarissa. It's the tempestuous, jerky style that I object to. That confounded nurse had a secret sorrow. It used to bother her whenever she got me into this chair. ”

“ It was thus that I put the matter to myself, as I sat alone in my boudoir after luncheon, having dismissed Marie, my maid, with a message to Horatio's nurse; and the conventional make-up of my thought revealed to me, in a flash of insight, the materialistic tendencies of my mental methods. Metempsychosis had never assumed to my mind the dignity of even a philosophical working hypothesis. Much less had the idea ever come to me that reincarnation actually furnished a process through which the physical laws of evolution and the conservation of energy might find a psychical demonstration. ”

“ You must adapt yourself to your environment, my boy; become a baby in fact as well as in theory. You'll be happier that way.”
“Don't talk nonsense, Clarissa,” grumbled Jack, kicking viciously at his long clothes. “I'm the victim of what might be called a temporary maladjustment of the machinery of psychical evolution. Ordinarily, a baby is not cognizant of a former existence. You advise me to forget the past and remember only that I am your cunning little eight-months-old Horatio. If I only could! It's the only thing that could give me permanent relief, my dear. ”

“ There's a golden mean, you know. A woman should become a slave to neither society nor the nursery.”
I realized that there was an abnormal vivacity in my manner as I added: “Nor to her husband, Tom. Do you accept the amendment?”
“Do you imply that I am inclined to be tyrannical, my dear?” he asked, laughingly. “It's not that, Clare. But I can't help being jealous of you. How's the baby?”
My wine-glass trembled in my hand, and I replaced it on the table, not daring to raise it to my lips. “He grows more interesting every day, Tom,” I answered, truthfully. “You don't appreciate him.” ”

“ If you could engage some broad-minded, elderly woman who had been deaf and dumb from birth, I might put up with her for a while. But, of course, it would be hard to find such a prize. You'll have to look after your little baby yourself, my dear, until I'm a few years older. It'll be hard for you. I realize that, Clarissa. But, frankly, is there any other alternative? If I'm to lead a better life, my dear, I must have some encouragement.”
I leaned back in my chair, and closed my eyes wearily. ”

“ Do you think that a cigarette would hurt me?”
“You remember, Jack, that cocktails didn't agree with you,” I argued, soothingly. “I'm sure that tobacco would be very bad for you.”
“Of course you are,” grumbled the baby, resuming his impatient gestures with his legs. “You think that everything worth having is bad for me, Clarissa. I suppose that you intend to cut me off entirely from Cousin Gwen?”
“Don't be unreasonable, Jack,” I implored him. “Gwen can come here just as often as she cares to. But you must realize, Jack, that I have no confidence left in your veracity or discretion. ”

“ Of course, being a man, he is slow to admit that his nursery has vouchsafed to him more enlightenment than his library, but he has grown very gentle and sympathetic when I talk to him about the possibility that the dreams of the brooding East may be nearer the ultimate truth than the syllogisms of the practical West. You see, it was a condition, not a theory, which confronted Tom that morning in our empty nursery. ”

“ The nursery was in a condition of much disorder as I entered it with the baby's arms around my neck. Much to my surprise and delight, Jack had fallen asleep as we mounted the stairs. How to get him into his crib without rousing him was a problem that I longed to solve, although I had determined not to return to the dining-room. I would send a maid presently to tell the butler to inform Tom that I could not leave the baby at this crisis. Surely our guests would consider a crazy nurse sufficient excuse for the retirement of their hostess. ”

“ I can raise my body by my arms and hold up my whole weight for ten minutes at a time. I've been experimenting at night, when the nurse was asleep. Tom's an evolutionist; ask him about it. He'll explain to you how it happens. You'll bring the cocktails, my dear?”
I hesitated, bewildered by his request; daring neither to grant nor deny it. The nurse was half-way down the hall, and nearing the door rapidly.
“Take your choice, Clarissa,” whispered the baby, coolly. “Unless you promise me at once, I shall tell the nurse who I am the moment she enters the room.” ”

“ And, furthermore, my dear, I'm getting very weary of that machine-made nurse. She's narrow, Clarissa. I don't wish to speak harshly about a woman whose heart seems to be in the right place, but you must get rid of her, if you care a continental rap about your little baby. You'll have to fill her place, Clarissa, with somebody more broad-minded and up-to-date. She bores me to death.”
“You don't mean that you've been talking to her, Jack?' I cried, horrified. ”

“ And in that obligation I find that my tale resembles every human life. We come to earth with a cry, and we leave it with a question. So far as man is concerned, evolution has been merely a zigzag progress up from protoplasm to a problem.
And how has Tom withstood the unmaterialistic revelation that I have been forced to make to him and to the public? Has he been shaken in his faith in the teachings of Büchner, Haeckel and Herr Plätner? ”

“ Suddenly he dropped the spoon and made a grab for Dr. Hopkins's wine-glass.
“What vivacity he has!” remarked Professor Shanks, as if addressing a roomful of students interested in a zoölogical specimen.
“He seems to know a rare vintage when he sees it,” suggested Dr. Hopkins, intending, of course, to compliment his hostess.
“I think, my dear—” began Tom, nervously.
“Don't go any further, Mr. Minturn,” cried Elinor Scarsdale, playfully. “The baby is so much more interesting than——”
“Protoplasm,” added Dr. Hopkins, under his breath.
Dr. Plätner was gazing at the baby searchingly. ”

“ I had come to admire Tom's intellectuality and to find satisfaction in the fact that his fondness for scientific studies would strengthen him to resist the temptations that surrounded him to become a mere man of leisure and luxury. Possessed of great wealth and without a profession, it was fortunate for Tom that he had found in scientific research an outlet for his superabundant energies. ”

“ They are dreamers, those Orientals, seeing half truths clearly enough, but never following them out to their logical conclusions.”
“And yet the East is the mother of lather and olive oil,” murmured Dr. Hopkins, under his breath.
At that instant my heart leaped into my throat, and I sprang to my feet in affright. With Horatio in her arms, his nurse had rushed frantically into the dining-room, despite the interference of the butler, and, with blanched face and staring eyes, was bearing down on me, with the purpose, evidently, of thrusting the baby into my grasp. ”

“ It's elevating and enlightening, my dear. To an evolutionist there's a world of meaning in that baby's enthusiasm for bread and milk. Here he sits at a table covered with gastronomic luxuries and actually rejoices in the simplest kind of food. You see, Clare, how well the difference between Horatio and myself in regard to diet illustrates Spencer's definition of evolution as a continuous change from indefinite, incoherent homogeneity to definite, coherent heterogeneity through successive differentiations and integrations. Great Scott, nurse! ”

“ I protested. “He's an active member of the Darwin Society, and has just been elected to the Association for the Promulgation of the Doctrine of Evolution.”
“'And the dead, steered by the dumb, moved upward with the flood,'” quoted the baby, somewhat irrelevantly, I thought. “They are blind leaders of the blind, Clarissa. I could tell Tom in a minute more than he'll ever know if he always clings to the idea that the universe is a machine that was made by chance and is run by luck. ”

“ But, up to the present moment, we have learned nothing that can help us in any way in our weary quest. In desperation, and as a last resort, I have written and published this account of the events that led up to our great loss. When the editor of this magazine insisted that I should choose a title for my amazing presentment of our weird experience, a lump came into my throat and tears bedimmed my eyes. Had not Jack himself, with a most uncanny foresight, chosen the title of my unwilling deposition? “Clarissa's Troublesome Baby”! ”

“ A child's nurse to-day—I mean one of the kind that we would be willing to employ—is a highly-trained specialist who has grown haughty and despotic in the mere exercise of her profession. She realizes that the demand for experts in her line is greater than the supply, and——”
“I see,” interrupted Tom, rather rudely, I thought. “But it does seem to me that if other people in our position, Clare, can find satisfactory nurses, we should not be the one family in the city that is forced to take care of its own baby. I am willing to pay any amount of money to insure Horatio's comfort. ”

“ And all because I clogged my psychical progress in my late life by a carnal craving for Welsh rabbits! It sounds absurd, doesn't it, when one puts it into words? But, my dear, the sublime and the ridiculous are as close together in one realm of existence as in another. Truth has many faces, and there's always a grin on one of them.”
“I think that I hear your nurse coming, Jack,” I whispered. “Is there anything that I can do for you?”
“Yes,” he answered, excitedly, lowering his voice, however. “Do you think, Clarissa, that you could secrete a flask of bottled cocktails in the room somewhere? ”

“ There's a lot of reincarnation going on, you know, and a fellow has to take his chances.”
Softly I stole to a chair and seated myself, holding the baby on my trembling knees.
“Are you—are you—comfortable, Jack?” I managed to whisper, falteringly, the thought flashing through my mind that I had gone suddenly insane.
“Keep quiet, can't you?” he pleaded. “Don't shake so! I'm not a rattle-box. I wish you'd tell the nurse, Clarissa, to put a stick in my milk, will you? There's a horrible sameness to my present diet that is absolutely cloying. Will you stop shaking? I can't stand it.” ”

“ I managed to say, in a superior kind of way. “It does very well for Boston, of course, but it will never have much of a run here in New York.”
“What a narrow way of looking at it, Clare!” exclaimed Gwendolen, protestingly. “Of course, I'm not a theosophist, but I'm broad-minded enough to realize that what's true in Benares or Boston must be true in New York. If reincarnation is really going on in this world, I can't believe that any exception is made in favor of our Knickerbocker families.” ”

“ If you should ever write your memoirs, my dear——”
“Hush, Jack!” I cried, petulantly, setting the chair in motion. “I shall never write anything for publication.”
“Nonsense,” commented the baby, drowsily. “Everybody does. You'll be sure to try it on some day. What a story you could tell, couldn't you, my dear? You might call it, with my permission, 'Clarissa's Troublesome Baby.'”
IX
It would be curious if we should find science and philosophy taking up again the old theory of metempsychosis. ”