Book: Our Nervous Friends

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




Harold Weston's college life held true to his training. Quietly
friendly, he mixed poorly; mentally well-equipped, he was an excellent
student--brilliant in some classes, good in all. Athletics and
fraternities, feeds and "femmies" dissipated none of his energies, nor
added aught to the fulness of his living. He continued his college
work until he had received both Bachelor's and Master's degrees. The
spring he was twenty-three, he returned home for the summer, an
attractive young man. A classmate had interested him in tennis, for
which he showed some natural aptitude. The year's work had taxed him
lightly. The skein of yarn gave promise of a perfect fabric.

Mother and son had a happy summer. She saw to it that the home was
alive with young folks, and one week-end party followed another.
Harold had decided to study law, and nothing indicated that he would
meet any obstacles during his course at Law School. All believed he
was sufficiently strong to take this at Yale. There were brilliant
minds in his classes--he was accustomed to lead. He dropped his
tennis, he studied hard. In his second year he began losing weight
after the holidays, and found difficulty in getting to sleep; his
appetite became irregular, and his smoking, which had been moderate
for some years, became a dependence. His nervous system was pretty
well "shot up"--it had never been case-hardened. A weight of
apprehension had become constantly present, and he let its burden
depress him miserably. One of his professors, noting his appearance,
talked with him earnestly, and with lay acumen decided his digestion
was "out of fix" and told him of a "fine New York doctor." The stomach
specialist worthily stood high in his profession. The examination was
painstaking and exhaustive; the diagnosis seemed ominous to the morbid
patient; the whole process was a revelation to him of organs and
functions and laws of eating and drinking unheard in his years of
study. "Chronic intestinal indigestion with food decomposition and
auto-intoxication, augmented by nicotine," the doctor said. There had
been a distinct lessening of efficiency in his law-school work. Study
for the first time in his life required wearying effort. He did not
feel himself, he was facing his first test, he was meeting his first
strain. For the first time the skein was being mussed.

Harold Weston began reading, indiscriminately, literature on food and
digestion and diets. The doctor had given him a strict regimen. He
began to note minutely the foods he ordered and to question the
wholesomeness of their quality and preparation. Caution and over
emphasis on details of food and habits of eating rapidly developed.
Later not only the food in the dish, but most unhappily the foods he
had swallowed were scrutinized by every alertness of sensation and
imagination, and most damagingly did he become a victim of the
unwholesome symptom-studying habit. Within two months his discerning
physician recognized that the self-interest which had started in the
physical damage of rapid eating of rich foods was developing into an
obsession more detrimental than the original physical disorder, and
thought it wise for him to discontinue study and return home to rest
for the summer. The thread was tangled.

The home-coming was not happy. From the first meal, the specialist's
warnings were in conflict with the home diet, and resentments were not
withheld from the good old dishes which had for a generation bedecked
the home table. The delicacy instinctive to the family and to his
earlier life was cast aside, and the subjects of food and its
digestion, of food-poisoning and its consequences, made unpleasant
every meal. Innocently and seriously the mother pointed to her good
health and to rugged ancestors who had lived long and hale,
unconsciously superior to food and drink. He brooked none of her
suggestions, and finally when she honestly could not see it all his
way, in the heat of his intensity he accused her of being to blame for
all his trouble: she had fed him wrong from the first; she had fed his
father wrong; the New York doctor had told him that certain mental
diseases could be caused by food-poisoning, and his father would not
have been a mental wreck, nor his own career cut short, had she only
known what wives and mothers of this generation should know, and set a
table which was not a laboratory of poison. These ideas, once
accepted, never left him. They formed a theme which, after finding
expression, recurred with ominously increasing frequency. A year
before, Harold Weston was a kindly fellow, almost retiring, but with a
peculiar lighting of his face in response which endeared him to
feminine hearts. On a variety of subjects he was well-informed, his
professors bespoke for him a high and honorable standing in the
judiciary, but, from the mass of this fine mind's possibilities, a
second wretched choice was now made. "Father's typhoid affected his
mind, his brain must have been defective; my heredity is imperfect; my
first illness damages my class work. I can never go on in my
profession, there is no future for me but suffering." From this
wrecking thought it was an easy step to condemnation of his father for
his fatherhood, which, with his near-enmity toward his mother for her
"criminal ignorance" in rearing him, introduced a sordidly
demoralizing element into his mind which forever viciously tinctured
memories and relations which should have been his sacred helpers. The
normal mind can select well its world--miserably his mind lived with
these dregs of his own choice. The power of normal selection will, in
the best mind, be gradually lost through habitual surrender to the
morbid.

For the next year he lived unhappily in a home which he made unhappy.
Naturally thoughtful, he daily took long walks, brooding over his
wrongs--walks which brought him little benefit physically, as he
considered himself unable to put into them sufficient effort to wring
perspiration from his brow or toxins from his muscles. False
interpretation of his own symptoms increased with the abnormal
closeness of his scrutiny of them. His superficial knowledge he
accepted as final. Ignorant of the limitations of heredity, will and
judgment became subservient to pessimism, and the days marked a
gradual, deepening depression. The skein was asnarl.

A relative physician responded to the mother's call of distress and
spent a week in the home, then took Harold under his personal care to
a series of specialists--but not stomach specialists. Serious
treatment was carried out at home with a young physician as companion.
Two institutions offered the best help of their elaborate equipments
and perfected methods. Three years of badly discounted usefulness
passed. Long since had any call of responsibility ceased to elicit
response. Toward the end of this time he seemed better, and was
spending the summer at a health-resort, living a relatively normal
life. Fate then seemed to smile--dainty fingers appeared from the
nowhere, which promised gently, patiently, surely to loosen each
tangled snarl.

Eva Worth was another only child of affluence. She, too, was
recuperating, spending the summer at the same resort as Harold.
"Overwork at college," it was said. Petite of person, pleasing in
manner, sweetly spoiled, with sympathies quickly born but usually
displaced by fresher interests, she was bright and responsive in mind,
and her attraction to Harold Weston gave promise of being the touch
needed to complete his restoration. Providence only knows the
possibilities latent in a union of these poor children of wealth. For
him there was an unquestioned awakening. The somber clouds of his
moods seemed destined to be transformed into delicate pastels by the
promises of love. It was more than an infatuation for them both, and
an understanding which was virtually an engagement left them happy
even in their parting. But happiness was not a word for Harold
Weston's conjuring. Throughout the weeks of his association with this
fair girl, the first woman for whom he had ever cared, the thought had
repeatedly come that he owed her a full and explicit explanation of
his illness and of his "defective heredity." At home where the
brooding habit had grown strong and fixed, this idea became so
insistent, within two weeks, that he relieved the tension of its
demands by a long letter of details, which even to the sympathetic ear
of love were more than disquieting. The letter ended with a question
of her willingness to indicate a final decision in her response. The
appeal of his fine eyes was not there to help--other eyes were nearer.
Eva Worth was but twenty-two. Home training, the reading of much fine
literature, a college education, her own poor little heart, all failed
to bespeak for her wisdom in this crisis. An impulsive, almost
resentful refusal was sent. Second thoughts held more wisdom, for
woman's pity was now wisdom, so another day saw another letter, one
with a few saving words of hope. The first reply was handed to Harold
after luncheon. Quietly he left the house, apparently for one of his
afternoon walks. By morning he had not returned and a general alarm
went out. Some days later two boys, fishing in the river from an old
log, saw a cap in an eddy. No more has been seen or heard of Harold
Weston. A hasty hand, a hasty touch had broken the thread.

Two women were left to suffer. The elder, haunted by the re-echoings
of an only son's condemnation, lives out her years in a loneliness
which will not break, harrowed by questions of the wisdom of her
mother-love, the best she had to give. Some mother's son she may yet
help save, for she knows the vital error which shielded and guarded
her boy till he reached his majority, never having met trial,
hopelessly untrained in coping with adversity. The younger, sobered by
the voice of self-accusation, ever feels the weight of the
consciousness of a grave duty slighted; she was made more wise in a
day of deep reality than by twenty years of conventional training.
Tested again she would give as she has never known giving, give that
she might protect.




CHAPTER XII

THE TROUBLED SEA


A young woman, of rather striking appearance attired in her street
clothing, is standing beside her dresser. She has just returned from
town. She is of medium height, trim of figure, weighing about one
hundred and forty, with skin of a soft ivory tint and cheeks showing a
faint flush of health--or of excitement. Her dark hair waves
gracefully and the scattering strands of gray quite belie her youth.
The eyes are well placed, nearly black, and can sparkle on occasion.
Her rather poorly formed hands of many restless habits, are the only
apparent defect in this, externally attractive, young woman. She has
just broken the seal of a heavy vellum envelope addressed in a strange
feminine hand. It is an engraved announcement which reads:

"Mrs. Pinkney Rogers announces the marriage of her daughter, Pearl
May, to Mr. Lee Burnham"--

She never read the rest. She never saw the--"on Tuesday, May thirtieth
nineteen hundred and one. At Home, Rome, Georgia, after July fifth."
Her sister, Addie, coming up the stairs, thought she heard a moan and
hurried in to find Stella lying in a crumpled heap. Addie's quick eye
noticed the announcement. She read it all, and destroyed it, and
through the years it was never mentioned by either of them. She,
alone, knew its relation to her sister's collapse, but with proverbial
southern pride never voiced her opinion of the tragic cause of her
older sister's years of nervous ill-health.

Mr. Beckman, Stella's father, was at this time about fifty-five. He
was the brunette parent from whom many of her more attractive physical
qualities had been inherited. He was proprietor of the best men's
furnishing store of the county's metropolis. His business was
moderately successful, built up, he felt, entirely through years of
his personal thought and attention, and it was practically his only
interest. Even his interesting family was a matter of course--though
the amount of the day's sales never became so. Mr. Beckman had a
single diversion. The store closed at ten o'clock Saturday nights;
between twelve and one its proprietor would reach home in an exalted
state, and for two hours poor Mrs. Beckman would hear his plans for
developing the biggest gent's clothing-business in the state, for
becoming a merchant-prince, emphasized with many a hearty slap on her
back. This weekly relaxation was always followed by a miserable Sunday
morning, invariably referred to by every member of the family as
"another of Papa's sick headaches." Mrs. Beckman never lisped the
details of those unhappy Saturday nights, and the loyal deception was
so well carried out, with such devoted attention and nursing, that by
early afternoon, Sunday, the invalid was quite restored and any
possible self-reproach had been melted away. Headaches of the real
kind did come later, and, as his habits changed not, the Brights which
first appeared at fifty-eight progressed without interruption to his
death at sixty.

Mrs. Beckman was a blonde, but for many years had been a badly faded
one. She was as singleminded in regard to her household as her husband
to his store. Neither had developed more than family and local
interests. She was the same age as her husband and had, without
question, worked faithfully, long hours, through the long years, in
homage to her sense of housekeeping duties. The coming of the
children, only, from time to time, kept her away from kitchen and
parlor for a few weeks. She had been to Atlanta but once during the
last ten years, not that Mr. Beckman willed it so--she could have had
vacations and attractive dresses, though for some reason, possibly the
"fading" which has been mentioned, he never urged her to go with him--
and she needed urging, for she honestly believed there was "too much
to do" at home. The habit of industry can become as inveterate as
habits of pleasure.

The two Beckman boys had the virtues of both father and mother. They
finished at the city high school, and at once went to work in the
store with such earnestness of purpose that they were quite prepared
to conduct the business, even better than the father had done, when he
became incapacitated.

We met the sister, Addie, in Stella's room and realized from her
discretion, manifested under stress, that she possessed elements of
character. She was a clear-skinned, high-strung blonde--thin-skinned
too, probably, for from childhood her hands rebelled at household
duties. The family thrift was hers, however, and from the limited
opportunities of the home town, she prepared herself for, and filled
well, for years, a position with a successful law firm. She later
married the senior member--a widower. His children and her high-strung
thin-skinnedness and lack of domestic propensities have not made her
as successful a home-builder as she was a stenographer.

Stella Beckman's early life was deeply influenced by many of the
surroundings which we have glimpsed. Hers was not a home of fine
ideals. Much that was common was always present. The table-talk was
almost competitive in nature, as, with the possible exception of the
mother, each one used "I" almost insistently, as a text for converse,
the three times a day they sat together. Even mutual interests were
largely obscured, much of the time, by personal ones, barring only the
subject of sickness. All forms of illness were themes commanding
instant and absorbing attention. Inordinate anxiety was felt by all
for the ills of the one; and for days the "I" would be forgotten if
any member of the home-circle was "sick." And the concerns of the
patient, whether suffering from a cold, sore eyes, a sprained ankle,
or "had her tonsils out," were discussed with minuteness of detail
worthy an International Conference. How the patient slept, what the
doctor said, the effect of the new medicine, how the heart was
standing the strain, what the visiting neighbors thought of the case,
in fact the whole subject of sickness held a morbid interest for each
member of the family. Sickness, no matter how slight, was with the
Beckmans ever an excuse for changing any or all plans. We might speak
of the discussion of illness as the Beckman family avocation.

Stella was a bright child, who, wisely directed and influenced, would
have taken a good education. She could have developed into a
particularly pleasing, capable, useful, possibly forceful woman. But
the emotional Stella was over-developed, until it obstructed the
growth of the reasoning Stella. Still we should call her a normal
small-town child, certainly until her last year in grammar-school. She
had some difficulty with her studies that spring because of her eyes.
Her lenses, fitted in Atlanta, seemed to make them worse. It was only
after she went to a noted specialist in Charleston that she was
relieved. It is significant that later these expensively obtained
glasses were discarded as "too much trouble."

The summer Stella was thirteen, Grandmother Beckman came to spend her
last days in her son's home. The granddaughter had been named for her,
and Grandmother was frail and old and needed attention. Grandmother
also had some means. For over a year the young girl gave much of her
time to the old lady, and for over a year she was able to lead the
Beckman table-talk with her wealth of details about Grandma's
sickness. Stella's care of her charge was excellent, entirely lacking
in any selfish element. Death hesitated, when he finally called, and
for nearly a week the dying woman lay unconscious. These "days of
strain" and the death and funeral were, always after, mentioned by
Stella and her people as her "first shock." For a time she was so
nervous and restless and her sleep so disturbed that the doctor gave
her hypnotics and advised her being sent away. She went to Atlanta for
two months, boarding in the home of a Methodist minister, who some
years before had been stationed in Rome. It was Stella's first
experience in a religious home. She had never been accustomed to
hearing the "blessing" said, and food referred to as "God-given"
seemed, at first, quite too sacred to swallow. And the effect of
morning worship--the seriously read Bible chapter, the earnest prayer,
with the entire family kneeling--affected her profoundly, and gave to
this godly home a sanctity which, at susceptible not-yet-fifteen,
awakened emotions so powerful that for days she walked as one in a
dream, one attracted by some wonderful vision which was drawing her,
unresisting, into its very self. Each day was a step closer, and at
prayer-meeting the Wednesday night before she returned home, she
announced her conversion, with an intensity of earnestness which could
but impress every hearer.

Stella Beckman went back to Rome filled with a zeal for the new
religious life which commanded the respect of even her religiously
careless father. Nor was it a flash in the pan. She joined the church.
She made her sister join the church, and to the church she gave four
years of remarkable devotion. Church interests were first, and one
Sunday the pastor publicly announced that for the twelve months past
Stella Beckman had not missed a single service in any branch of the
church's activities. She taught a Sunday-school class. She sang in the
choir. She was president of the Epworth League, and not only attended,
but always "testified" at mid-week prayer-meeting. Her church
interests took all her time. The foreign-missionary cause later laid a
gripping hold upon her, and arrangements were made, four years after
she went into the church, for her to go to a Missionary Training-
School.

Somehow things went wrong here. She had expected an almost sanctified
atmosphere. She was accustomed to being regarded as essentially
devout, but there was a sense of order in the school which she felt
was mechanical, class-room work seemed to be counted as important as
religious services, and her fervidly expressed religious experiences
appeared to reflect chill rather than the accustomed warmth of the
home prayer-meetings. Moreover, real lessons were assigned which no
amount of religious feeling or no intensity of personal praying made
easy. She hadn't studied for years; in fact, she had never learned to
do intellectual work studiously. And even these good religious
teachers did not hesitate to demand accurate recitations. She had been
accustomed for years to have preference shown, and here she was
treated only as one of many, and, humiliatingly, as one who was
failing to maintain the standards of the many. She fell behind in the
two most important studies, nor was her classwork in general good.
Whether she would have later proven capable of getting down to rock
bottom and meeting the demands of reason on a rational basis, we
cannot say, for the family hobby abruptly terminated her missionary
career. "Mother dangerously sick with inflammatory rheumatism. Come at
once," the telegram said--and she hastily returned home to be met
with, what her history records as, "my second shock." Her mother
WAS sick, and truly and genuinely suffering. The house was in
disorder. Weeks followed in which Stella's best strength was needed.
Her mother slowly mended, but never regained her old activity. The
doctor said a heart-valve was damaged, and the family thereafter were
never quite certain when the sudden end would come--an uncertainty
which was proven legitimate ten years later, when she died, almost
suddenly. Stella had met shock number two very well. The home-love and
welcome and the warmth of feeling she experienced in the home-church
were a never-admitted relief from the rigid exactions of the training-
school life, and did much to neutralize, for the time, her anxiety
about her mother and the "strain of her care." It was a family which
ever advertised home-devotion, and so this call of home illness
completely obscured all other plans for three years. But home
responsibilities quite wrecked her church-going record. In fact, it
was unkindly whispered that Stella was "backsliding." And these same
whispers found audible expression the summer she was twenty-two, when
attractive Lee Burnham, the judge's son, spent his summer vacation at
home, and "took her buggy-riding every Sunday evening for over two
months."

Lee was only twenty-one, but his was a very romantic twenty-one, and
he filled Stella's ears with so many sweet nothings that she no longer
heeded the call of duty. And why shouldn't she be in love and have a
lover? Had she not already given the best years of her youth to
others? Had she not waited without a thought of rebellion for the
coming of the right one? And Love, and Love's mysterious touch,
wrought fantastic changes in Stella Beckman's affairs. She and Lee
read poetry. She had never known how beautiful poetry was nor how much
of it there was to read. He knew the good novels and sent her all that
he himself read, and these were plenty! Then, when he was away, he
wrote and she wrote, and now and then he wrote some verses to her.
There was no real engagement. They never spoke much of the future; the
present was too full. Home duties and church interests flagged badly
during these two years, and the summer she was twenty-four, it became
town talk that this young couple would marry. The Beckmans were very
willing. But one day the judge called Lee into his office and wanted
to know what these "doings" all meant, asking him if he was "going to
marry his mother," and making some rather uncomplimentary Beckman-
Burnham comparisons. Lee rather sheepishly told his father there was
nothing to worry about. He had much respect, possibly awe, for the old
gentleman. The next week Lee left for his final year in law-school.
His letters to Stella continued, though he plead his studies as an
excuse for their diminished frequency. He did not come home that
spring, at Easter. "Work," he wrote Stella. Nor was he ever square to
this poor girl, for he never mentioned his relations with Miss Pearl
May Rogers. And "shock number three" came, as unhappy Stella read the
announcement of his marriage, addressed in the hand of his June city-
bride. A lastingly damaging shock it proved to be.

Stella was put to bed; for days she lay in deep apathy. Feeding became
a problem of nurses and doctors. She cared for nothing--nothing
"agreed" with her, and she lost weight rapidly. Chills and flushes,
sweatings and shakings came in regular disorder, and for hours she
would be apparently speechless. Somebody--not the doctors--reported
that Stella Beckman had typho-malaria. Abnormal sensitiveness to
surroundings, to sounds, sights and smells, especially a dread of
unpleasant news, were to complicate her living for years to come. For
the remainder of her life she was to confound sensations normal to
emotional reactions with sensations accompanying physical diseases;
and sensations came and went in her now tense emotional nature like
trooping clouds on a stormy day. Stella's illness was so prostrating
that her weakened mother and busy sister could not care for her
adequately, and an aunt came to help. Recovery was slow and imperfect;
she remained a semi-invalid for two and a half years. Physical
discomforts were so constant that a surgeon was finally consulted who
did an exploratory operation and removed some unnecessary anatomy.
This man's personality was strong, his desire to help, genuine, and he
had considerable insight into the emotional illness of his patient.
The influence of the operation, with the surgeon's encouragement and
the atmosphere of confidence pervading the excellent, small surgical
hospital, combined to make Stella very much better for the time. But
within less than three years, her father died. She calls this "the
fourth shock," and it resulted in another period of nervous illness.
She cried much at the time. Work was impossible--as was all exercise
--because of her rapid fatigue. One day she slipped on the front steps
and, apparently, but bruised her knee. Her doctor nor the X-ray could
discover more serious damage. Still, walking was practically
discontinued, as she could not step without pain. At last, almost in
desperation, her brother took her to a hospital noted for its success
in reconstructing nervous invalids. At this time she weighed but one
hundred and four, and the list of her symptoms seemed unending. A
desire to be helped, however, was discerned and with rest-treatment
she gained rapidly in weight, appetite returned, digestive
disturbances disappeared, and massage, or a new idea, fully restored
her walking powers. She became eager for the more important half of
her treatment--the out-of-door work-cure. During these weeks she had
certainly been given much physical and mental help. Expert and
specialized counsel and nursing had been hers.

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