Our Nervous Friends | Page 9

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 could change her "no" to "yes."
The elder sister was a more normal girl. She studied stenography and soon married a promising young man. They had two children. He made a trip down the coast and died of yellow fever. The wife was much depressed and spent a bad year and most of the insurance money, getting adjusted. Then the Galveston storm with its harvest of death and miraculous escapes--the mother was taken, the two children left. Meanwhile Lena had finished high school, had taken a year in the Normal and secured a community school to teach, near Houston. She was now eighteen, her face was interesting, some of the features were fine. Her bluish-gray eyes could be particularly appealing; there was much mobility of expression; a wealth of slightly curling, light-