The Three Stages of Clarinda Thorbald

by William T. Hamilton

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.