The Three Stages of Clarinda Thorbald

by William T. Hamilton

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.”