Book: Our Nervous Friends

R >> Robert S. Carroll >> Our Nervous Friends




Lawrence went to the most painstakingly selected, private preparatory-
schools, and later, as good Abbotts had done for generations, entered
Cornell. He had no taste for business. For years he had been
associated with gifted and agreeable doctors; he liked the dignity of
the title; so, after two years of academic work, he entered the
medical department and graduated with his class. These were good
years. His was not a nature of active evil. Many of his impulses were
quite wholesome, and college fraternity camaraderie brought out much
that was worthy. In the face of maternal anxiety and protest, he went
out for track, made good, stuck to his training and in his senior year
represented the scarlet and white, getting a second in the
intercollegiate low hurdles. Another trolley crash now, and he might
have been saved!

All through his college days a morbid fear had shortened his mother's
sleep hours with its wretchedness. Her boy was everything that would
attract attractive women. Away from her influence he might marry
beneath him, so all the refinements of intrigue and diplomacy were
utilized that a certain daughter of blood and wealth might become her
daughter-in-law. The two women were clever, and woe it was that his
commencement-day was soon followed by his wedding-day. No more
sumptuous wedding-trip could have been arranged-to California, to the
Islands of the Pacific, to India, to Egypt, then a comfortable
meandering through Europe. A year of joy-living they planned that they
might learn to know each other, with all the ministers of happiness in
attendance. But the disagreements of two petted children made murky
many a day of their prolonged festal journey, and beclouded for them
both many days of the elaborate home-making after the home-coming. And
the murkiness and cloudiness were not dissipated when parenthood was
theirs. Neither had learned the first page in Life's text-book of
happiness, and as both, could not have their way at the same time,
rifts grew into chasms which widened and deepened. Then the wife
sought attentions she did not get at home in social circles and the
husband sought comforts his wife and his home did not give, in drink
and fast living, later with cocain and morphin. The ugliness of it all
could not be lessened by the divorce, which became inevitable. By
mutual agreement, the rearing of the child was intrusted to the
father's mother, who to-day shapes its destiny with the same
unwholesome solicitude which denied to her own son the heritage of
wholesome living.

We met father and grandmother as she arrived in New York to arrange
for the treatment, which even his beclouded brain recognized as
urgent; and we leave him with a darkening future, unless Fate snatches
away a great family's millions, or works the miracle of self-
revelation, or the greater miracle of late-life reformation in the son
of this nervously damaged mother.




CHAPTER VI

THE MESS OF POTTAGE


"I know Clara puts too much butter in her fudge. It always gives me a
splitting headache, but gee, isn't it good! I couldn't help eating it
if I knew it was going to kill me the next day." The Pale Girl looks
the truth of her exclamations, as she strolls down the campus-walk
arm-in-arm with the Brown Girl, between lectures the morning after.

Clara Denny had given the "Solemn Circle" another of her swell fudge-
feasts in her room the night before, and, as usual, had wrecked sleep,
breakfast, and morning recitations for the elect half-dozen, with the
very richness of her hand-brewed lusciousness. They called Clara the
Buxom Lass, and they called her well. She was, physically, a mature
young woman at sixteen, healthy, vigorous, rose-cheeked, plump, and
not uncomely, frolicsome and care-free, with ten dollars a week, "just
for fun." She was a worthy leader of the Solemn Circle of sophomores
which she had organized, each member of which was sacredly sworn to
meet every Friday night for one superb hour of savory sumptuousness--
in the vernacular, "swell feeds."

Clara was a Floridian. Her father had shrewdly monopolized the
transfer business in the state's metropolis, and from an humble one-
horse start now operated two-score moving-vans and motor-trucks, and
added substantially, each year, to his real-estate holdings. Mr. Denny
let fall an Irish syllable from time to time, regularly took his
little "nip o' spirits," and ate proverbially long and often. Year
after year passed, with the hardy man a literal cheer-leader in the
Denny household, till his gradually hardening arteries began to leak.
Then came the change which brought Clara home from college--home,
first to companion, then to nurse, and finally through ugly years, to
slave for this disintegrating remnant of humanity. Slowly,
reluctantly, this genial, old soul descended the scale of human life.
He was dear and pathetic in the early, unaccustomed awkwardness of his
painless weakness. "Only a few days, darlin', and we'll have a spin in
the car and your father'll show thim upstarts how to rustle up the
business." The rustling days did not come, but short periods of
irritability did. He wanted his "Clara-girl" near and became impatient
in her absence. He objected to her mother's nursing, and later became
suspicious that she was conspiring to keep Clara from him, and often
greeted both mother and daughter with unreasonable words. His
interests narrowed pitiably, until they did not extend beyond the
range of his senses, and the senses themselves dulled, even as did his
feelings of fineness. He grew careless in his habits, and required
increasing attention to his beard and clothing. Coarseness first
peeped in, then became a permanent guest--a coarseness which the
wife's presence seemed to inflame, and which could be stilled finally
only by the actual caress of his daughter's lips. And with the slow
melting of brain-tissue went every vestige of decency; vile thoughts
which had never crossed the threshold of John Denny's normal mind
seemed bred without restraint in the caldron of his diseased brain.
His was a vital sturdiness which, for ten years, refused death, but
during the last of these he was physically and morally repellent.
Sentiment, that too-often fear of unkind gossip, or ignorant
falsifying of consequences, stood between this family and the proper
institutional and professional care, which could have given him more
than any family's love, and protected those who had their lives to
live from memories which are mercilessly cruel.

Clara's older brother had much of his father's good cheer and less of
his father's good sense. He, too, had money to use "just for fun," and
Jacksonville was very wide open. So, after his father's misfortune had
eliminated paternal restraint, the boy's "nips o' spirits" multiplied
into full half-pints. For twelve years he drank badly, was cursed by
his father, prayed for by his mother, and wept over by Clara. The
wonderful power of a Christian revival saved him. He "got religion"
and got it right, and lives a sane, sober life.

The older sister had married while Clara was at school, and lived with
her little family in Charleston. Her "duty" was in her home, but this
duty became strikingly emphasized when things "went wrong" in
Jacksonville, and she frankly admitted that she was entirely "too
nervous to be of any use around sickness"; nor did she ever come to
help, even when Clara's cup of trouble seemed running over. And this
cup was filled with bitterness when, suddenly, the mother had a
"stroke," and the care of two invalids and the presence of her
periodically drunk brother made ruthless demands on her twenty years.
The mother had been a sensible woman, for her advantages, and most
efficient, and under her teaching Clara had become exceptionally
capable. The two invalids now lay in adjoining rooms. "Either one may
go at any time," the doctor said, and when alone in the house with
them the daughter was haunted with a morbid dread which frequently
caused her to hesitate before opening the door, with the fear that she
might find a parent gone. As it happened, she was away, taking
treatment, unable to return home, when grippe and pneumonia took the
mother, and the candle of the father's life finally flickered out.

Clara had handled the home situation with intermittent efficiency.
When she entered her father's sick-room, called suddenly from the
thoughtless hilarities of the Solemn Circle and fudge-feasts, and saw
him so altered, and, for him, so dangerously frail, in his invalid
chair, something went wrong with her breathing; the air could not get
into her lungs; there was a smothering in her throat and she toppled
over on the bed. It seemed to take smelling-salts and brandy to bring
her back. She said afterwards that she was not unconscious, that she
knew all that was happening, but felt a stifling sense of suffocation.
Later after one of her father's first unnatural outbreaks, she
suffered a series of chills and her mother thought, of course, it was
malaria; but many big doses of quinin did not break it up, and no
matter when the doctor came, his little thermometer revealed no fever.
She spent three months at Old Point Comfort and the chills were never
so bad again. Other distressing internal symptoms appeared closely
following the shock of her mother's sudden paralysis. An operation and
a month in a northern hospital were followed by comparative relief.
But her nervous symptoms finally became acute and she was spending the
spring and early summer on rest-cure in a sanitarium when her parents
died. The Jacksonville home was then closed.

Soon after, Clara was profoundly impressed at the same revival in
which her brother was converted. While she could not leave her church
to join this less formal denomination, she entered into Home
Missionary activities with much zest. At this time a friendship was
formed with a woman-physician who, as months of association passed,
attained a reasonably clear insight into her life and encouraged her
to enter a well-equipped, church training-school for deaconesses. The
spell of the religious influences of the past year's revival was still
strong; this, and the stimulation of new resolves, carried her along
well for six months. In her studies and practical work she showed
ability, efficiency and flashes of common sense. Then she became
enamored of a younger woman, a class-mate--her heart was empty and
hungry for the love which means so much to woman's life. Unhappily,
she overheard her unfaithful loved one comment to a confidante: "It
makes me sick to be kissed by Clara Denny." Another damaging shock,
followed by another series of bad attacks--the old spells, chills and
internal revolutions had returned. She rapidly became useless and a
burden. The school-doctor sent her a thousand miles to another
specialist.

We first met Clara Denny effervescent, winning, almost charming--a
sixteen-year-old minx. Let us scrutinize her at thirty-six. What a
deformation! She weighs one hundred and seventy-three--she is only
five-feet-four; her face is heavy, soggy, vapid; her eyes, abnormally
small; her complexion is sallow, almost muddy; her chin, trembling and
double; strongly penciled, black eye-brows are the only remnant
apparent of the "Buxom Lass" of twenty years ago. Her hands are pudgy;
her figure soft, mushy, sloppy; her presence is unwholesome. The
specialist found her internally as she appeared externally. While not
organically diseased, the vital organs were functionally inert. Every
physical and chemical evidence pointed to the accumulation in a
naturally robust body of the twin toxins--food poison and under
oxidation. She was haunted by a fear of paralysis. She confused
feelings with ideas and was certain her mind was going. The spells
which had first started beside her invalid father were now of daily
occurrence. She, nor any one else knew when she would topple over. She
found another reason for her belief that her brain was affected in her
increasingly frequent headaches. For years she had been unable to read
or study without her glasses, because of the pain at the base of her
brain. When these wonderful glasses were tested, they were found to
represent one of the mildest corrections made by opticians; in fact,
her eyes were above the average. Her precious glasses were practically
window-glass.

Much of each day had been spent in bed, and hot coffee and hot-water
bottles were required to keep off the nerve-racking chills which
otherwise followed each fainting spell. Her appetite never flagged.
She had been a heavy meat eater from childhood. There never was a
Denny meal without at least two kinds of meat, and one cup of coffee
always, more frequently two--no namby-pamby Postum effects, but the
genuine "black-drip." In the face of much dental work, her sweet tooth
had never been filled. She loved food, and her appetite demanded
quantity as well as quality. Of peculiar significance was the fact
that throughout the years she had never had a spell when physically
and mentally comfortable, but, as the years passed, the amount of
discomfort which could provoke a nervous disturbance became less and
less. She was a well-informed woman, quite interesting on many
subjects, outside of herself, and had done much excellent reading.
Unafflicted, she would mentally have been more than usually
interesting. When her specialist began the investigation of her moral
self, he found her impressed with the belief that she was a "saved
woman," ready and only waiting health that she might take up the
Lord's work. But as he sought her soul's deeper recesses, he uncovered
a quagmire. Resentment rankled against the sister who had left her
alone to meet the exhausting burdens of their parents' illness and
brother's drinking--a sister who had taken care of herself and her own
family, regardless. Worse than resentment smoldered against the
father, a dull, deadening enmity, born in the hateful hours of his
odious, but helpless, dementia. Burning deep was an unappeased protest
that, instead of the normal life and pleasures and opportunities of
other girls, she had been chained to his objectionable presence.

Treatment was undertaken, based upon a clear conception of her moral,
mental and physical needs. Seven months of intensive right-living were
enjoined. The greatest difficulty was found in compelling restraint
from food excesses. The love for good things to eat was theoretically
shelved, but, practically, the forces of desire and habit seemed
insurmountable. Her craving for "good eats" now and then discouraged
her resolutions and she periodically broke over the rigid hospital
regimen. But she was helped in every phase of her living. The skin
cleared; a hint of the roses returned; twenty-five pounds of more than
useless weight melted away and weeks passed with no threat of spell or
chill. She was renewing her youth. A righteous understanding of the
lessons which her years of sacrifice held, appealed to her judgment,
if not to her feelings, and, as a new being, she returned to the
church training-school.

Most fully had Miss Denny been instructed in principle and in practice
concerning the, for her, vital lessons of nutritional right-living.
Each step of the way had been made clear, and it had proven the right
way by the test of practical demonstration. The outlined schedule of
habits, including some denials and some gratuitous activity, kept her
in prime condition--in fact, in improving condition, for six highly
satisfactory months. Never had she accomplished so much; never did
life promise more, as the result of her own efforts. She had earned
comforts which had apparently deposed forever her old nervous enemies.
Victorious living seemed at her finger-tips. Then she sold her birth-
right.

She was feeling so well; why could she not be like other people?
Certainly once in a while she could have the things she "loved." It
was only a small mess of pottage--some chops, a cup of real coffee,
some after-dinner mints. The doctor had proscribed them all, but "Once
won't hurt." Her conscience did prick, but days passed; there was no
spell, no chill, no headache. "It didn't hurt me" was her triumphant
conclusion; and again she ventured and nothing happened--and again,
and again. Then the coffee every day and soon sweets and meats,
regardless; then coffee to keep her going. The message of the
returning fainting spells was unheeded, unless answered by
recklessness, for fear thoughts had come and old enmities and new ones
haunted in. Routine and regimen had gone weeks before, and now a
vacation had to be. She did not return to her work, but deluded
herself with a series of pretenses. Before the year was gone, the imps
of morbid toxins came into their own and she resorted to wines, later
to alcohol in stronger forms--and alcohol usually makes short work of
the fineness God gives woman.

We leave Clara Denny at forty, leave her on the road of license which
leads to ever-lowering levels.




CHAPTER VII

THE CRIME OF INACTIVITY


A half-century ago the Stoneleighs moved West and located in Hot
Springs. The wife had recently fallen heir to a few thousand dollars,
which, with unusual foresight, were invested in suburban property. Mr.
Stoneleigh was a large man, one generation removed from England,
active, and noticeably of a nervous type. He was industrious,
practically economical, single-minded; these qualities stood him in
the stead of shrewdness. From their small start he became rapidly
wealthy as a dealer in real estate. Mr. Stoneleigh was a generous
eater; his foods were truly simple in variety but luxurious in their
quality and richness. Prime roast-beef, fried potatoes, waffles and
griddle-cakes supplied him with heat, energy and avoirdupois. He
suddenly quit eating at fifty-eight--there was a cerebral hemorrhage
one night. His remains weighed one hundred and ninety-five.

The wife was a comfortable mixture of Irish and English. Her people
were so thrifty that she had but a common-school education. She was
the only child, her industrious mother let her go the way of least
resistance, and were we tracing responsibility of the criminality
behind our tragedy, Mrs. Stoneleigh's mother would probably be cited
as the guilty one. The way of least resistance is usually pretty easy-
going, and keeps within the valley of indulgence. Therefore, Mrs.
Stoneleigh worked none, was a true helpmate to her husband, at the
table, and like him, grew fat, and from mid-life waddled on, with her
hundred and eighty pounds. She was superstitiously very religious,
with the kind of religion that shudders at the thought of missing
Sunday morning service or failing to be a passive attendant at the
regular meetings of the Church Aid Society. Practically, the heathen
were taught American civilization, and she herself was assured
sumptuous reservations in Glory by generous donations to the various
missionary societies.

The only real ordeal which this woman ever faced was the birth of
Henry, her first child; she was very ill and suffered severely. The
mother instinct centered upon this boy the fulness of her devotion--a
devotion which never swerved nor faltered, a devotion which never
questioned, a devotion which became a self-forgetting servility. John
arrived almost unnoticed three years later, foreordained to be this
older brother's henchman as long as he remained at home. John
developed. Education was not featured in the Stoneleighs' program, so
John stopped after his first year at high school, but he was
energetic, and through serving Henry had learned to work. At twenty he
married, left the family roof, and starting life for himself in a
nearby metropolis became a successful coal-merchant.

Little Henry Stoneleigh would have thrilled any mother's heart with
pride. He had every quality a perfect baby should have, and grew into
a large handsome boy, healthy and strong; his disposition was the envy
of neighboring mothers; nor was it the sweet goodness of inertia, for
he was mentally and emotionally quick and responsive above the
average. Indulged by his mother from the beginning and always
preferred to his brother, he never recognized duty as duty. This young
life was innocent of anything which suggested routine; order for him
was a happen-so or an of-course result of his mother's or John's
efforts; the details necessary for neatness were never allowed to
ruffle his ease nor to interfere with his impulses. The Stoneleighs'
home was a generous pile, locally magnificent, but our young scion's
fine, front room was perennially a clutter. From his birth up, Henry
was never taught the rudiments of responsibility. His boyhood,
however, was not unattractive. He had inherited a large measure of
vitality and was protected from disappointments or irritations by the
many comforts which a mother's devotion and wealth can arrange and
provide. His memory was superior. The boy inherited not only an
exceptional physique, but mental ability which made his early studies
too easy to suggest any objection on his part. In fact, he was
actively interested in much of his school work and did well without
the conscious expenditure of energy. Little discrimination was shown
in the arrangements for his higher education; still he arrived at a
popular Western Boy's Academy, rather dubious in his own mind as to
just how large a place he would hold in the sun, with mother and John
back home. Rather rudely assailed were some of his easy-going habits,
and considerable ridicule from certain sources rapidly decided his
choice of companions. It was young Stoneleigh's misfortune that at
this epoch in his development he was situated where money could buy
immunities and attract apparent friendships. He was of fine
appearance, and should by all rights have made center on the Academy
football team, being the largest, heaviest, strongest boy in school.
But one day in football togs is the sum of his football history.
Academy days went in good feeds, the popularity purchased by his
freedom of purse and easy-going good fellowship, and much reading,
which he always enjoyed and which, with his good memory, made him
unusually well-informed. Finals even at this Academy demanded special
effort, which, with Henry, was not forthcoming, so he returned home
without his diploma. This incident decided him not to attempt college,
so for a year he again basked in the indulgences of home-life. His
father's business interests had no appeal for him, but the personal
influence of a young doctor, with his vivid tales of medical-college
experiences, and the struggling within of a never recognized ambition,
with some haphazard suggestions from his mother, determined him to
study medicine.

At this time a medical degree could still be obtained in a few schools
at the end of two years' attendance. Henry chose a Tennessee college
which has, for reasons, long since ceased to exist, an institution
which practically guaranteed diplomas. Here after three very
comfortable years, he was transformed into "Doc" Stoneleigh. At
twenty-five, "Doc" weighed two hundred and forty, and returned home
for another period of rest. He did not open an office, nor did he ever
begin the practice of his profession. During the next five years he
lived at home, sleeping and reading until two in the afternoon, his
mother carrying breakfast and lunch to his room. The late afternoons
and evenings he spent in hotel-lobbies and pool-rooms, where he was
always welcomed by a bunch of sports. Popular through his small
prodigalities, he, at thirty, possessed a more than local reputation
for the completeness of his assortment of salacious stories--his
memory and native social instinct were herein successfully utilized.
"Doc" now weighed two hundred and eighty-five, ate much, exercised
none, and was the silent proprietor of a pool-room, obnoxious even in
this wide-open town.

At twelve he had begun smoking cigarettes; at twenty he smoked them
day and night. The entire family drank beer, but, oddly, the desire
for alcohol never developed with him. Yet at thirty he began acting
queerly, and it was generally thought that he was drinking. Often now
he did not go home at night and was frequently found dead asleep on
one of his pool-tables. He had fixed up a den of a room where they
would move him to "sleep it off." A fad for small rifles developed
till he finally had over twenty of different makes in his den and
spent many nights wandering around the alleys, shooting rats and stray
cats. Eats became an obsession. They invaded his room and he would
frequently awaken suddenly and empty the first gun he reached at their
imaginary forms, much to the disquiet of the neighbors. One night he
burst out of his place, began shooting wildly up and down the street
and rushing about in a frenzy. No single guardian of the peace
presumed to interfere with his hilarity, and two of the six who came
in the patrol-wagon had dismissed action for deep contemplation before
he was safely locked up as "drunk." The matter was kept quiet, as
befitted the prominence of the Stoneleighs.

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