Our Nervous Friends | Page 9

know what the
consequences would be if she did not get quiet. The Pullman conductor
was strong for quiet, and he and the sweet-faced college girl and the
dear old lady formed a committee who waited on the young bride and
groom. It was hard, mighty hard, even in the bliss of their happiness, to
give up the drawing-room for a lower. Had not that drawing-room
stood out as one of their precious dreams during the last year, as, step

by step, they had planned in anticipation of that short bridal week! But
the sacrifice was made, the transfers effected, and out of the quiet
which followed, emerged order and the cheer normal to holiday
travelers. A number were gratified by the sense of their well- doing,
they had gone their limit to help; others were equally comfortable in
their satisfied sense of shrewdness, they agreed with the porter--they
had sized her up and not been "taken in."
Mrs. Platt had been Lena Dalton. She was born in Galveston forty-five
years before. Her father was a cattle-buyer, rough, dissipated, always
indulgent to himself and, when mellow with drink, lavishly indulgent to
the family. He never crossed Lena; even when sober and irritable to the
rest, she had her way with him. The high point in his moral life was
reached when she was seven. For three weeks she was desperately ill.
A noted revivalist was filling a large tent twice a day; the father
attended. He promised himself to join the church if Lena did not
die--she got well, so there was no need. She remained his favorite.
"Drunk man's luck" forgot him several years later when his pony fell
and rolled on him, breaking more ribs than could be mended. He left
some insurance, two daughters, and a very efficient widow. Mrs.
Dalton had held her own with her husband, even when he was at his
worst. She was strong of body and mind, practical, probably somewhat
hard, certainly with no sympathy for folderols. Her common-school
education, in the country, had not opened many vistas in theories and
ideals, but she lived her narrow life well, doing as she would be done
by--which was not asking much, nor giving much--caring for herself
without fear or favor till she died, as she wished, at night alone, when
she was eighty. She possessed qualities which with the help of a normal
husband would have been a wholesome heritage to the children; but it
was a home of double standards, certainly so in the training of Lena,
who had never failed, when her father was home, to get the things her
mother had denied her in his absence. She was thirteen when he died; at
fifteen then followed her two most normal years. The accident occurred
which, was to prove fateful for her life, and through hers, for others.
Lena was a good roller-skater, but was upset one night, at the rink, by
an awkward novice and fell sharply on the back of her head. She was

taken home unconscious and was afterward delirious, not being herself
until noon the next day, when she found beside her an anxious mother
who for several days continued ministering to her daughter's every wish.
Three months later she set her heart on a certain dress in a near-by shop
window; her mother said it was too old for her, and cost too much. Day
after day passed and the dress remained there, more to be desired each
time she saw it. The Sunday-school picnic was only a week off. She
made another appeal at the supper table; her sister unwisely interjected
a sympathetic "too bad." The emphasis of the mother's "No" sounded
like a "settler," but just then things went dark for Lena. She grasped her
head and apparently was about to fall--her face twitched and her body
jerked convulsively. The mother lost her nerve, and feeling that her
harshness had brought back the "brain symptoms" which followed the
skating accident, spent the night in ministrations--and hanging at the
foot of Lena's bed, when she was herself next morning, was the coveted
dress. To those who know, the mental processes were simple; strong
desire, an implacable mother, save when touched by maternal fear, the
association in the girl's mind of a relationship between her accident and
her mother's compliance, a remoter association of her illness at seven
with her father's years of free giving. What was to restrain her jerkings
and twitchings and meanings? Many of these reactions were taking
place in the semi- mysterious laboratory of her subconscious self; but it
was the beginning of a life of periodic outbreaks through which she had
practically never failed to secure what she desired. To the end of her
good mother's life, Lena remained the only one who