THE NEUROTIC
For four heart-breaking years, the strife of a nation at war with
itself had spread desolation and sorrow broadcast. The fighting ceased
in April. One mid-June day following, the town folk and those from
countrysides far and near met on the ample grounds of a bride-to-be.
Had it not been for the sprinkling of blue uniforms, no thought of war
could have seemed possible that fair day. The bride's home had been
a-bustle with weeks of preparation for this hour, and nature was
rejoicing and the heavens smiling upon the occasion. Sam Clayton, the
bridegroom, was certainly a "lucky dog." A quiet, unobtrusive son of a
neighboring farmer, he and Elizabeth had been school-children
together. Probably the war had lessened her opportunity for choice but
the night before he left for the front, they were engaged--and her
family was the best and wealthiest of the county. "Lucky dog" and "war
romance," the men said. Nevertheless, six weeks ago he had returned
with his chevrons well-earned, and fifty years of square living later
proved his unquestioned worth. Elizabeth at twenty, on her bridal day,
was slender, lithe, fair-skinned; of Scotch-Irish descent, her gray
eyes bespoke her efficiency--to-day, they spoke her pride, though
neither to-day nor in years to come were they often softened by love.
But it was a great wedding, and the eating and dancing and merry-
making continued late into the night with ample hospitality through
the morrow for the many who had come far. "Perfectly suited," the
women said of the young couple.
Sam Clayton had nothing which could be discounted at the bank, but the
bride was given fifty fertile acres, and they both had industry and
thrift, ambition and pluck. The fifty acres blossomed--Sam was a good
farmer, but he proved himself a better trader, and before many years
was running a small store in town. They soon added other fifty acres--
one-hundred-and-fifty in fifteen years, and out of debt--then a
partner with money, and a thriving business. At forty-five it was: Mr.
Samuel Clayton, President of the Farmers' and Merchants' Bank, rated
at $150,000. Mrs. Clayton's ability had early been manifest. Before
her marriage she had taken prizes at the County Fair in crocheting and
plum-jell. In after years no one pretended to compete with her annual
exhibit of canned fruits, and the coveted prize to the County's best
butter-maker was awarded her many successive autumns.
Our real interest in the Claytons must begin twenty-five years after
the happy wedding. Their town, the county seat, had pushed its limits
to the skirts of the broad Clayton acres; theirs was now the leading
family in that section. Mr. Clayton, quiet, active, practical, was
capable of adjusting himself without disturbance to whatever
conditions he met. Three children had been born during the early
years--a girl and two younger boys. The daughter was of the father's
type--reserved, studious and truly worthy, for during the years that
were to come, with the man she loved waiting, she remained at home a
pillar of strength to which her mother clung. She turned from wifehood
in response to the selfish needs of this mother. She and the older
brother finished classical courses in the near-by "University," for
their mother, particularly, believed in education. The brother and
sister had much in common, were indeed much alike; he, however, soon
married and moved into the new West and deservingly prospered. Fred,
the youngest, was different. During his second summer he was very ill
with cholera infantum--the days came and went--doctors came and went--
and the wonder was how life clung to the emaciated form. The mother's
love flamed forth with intensity and the nights without sleep
multiplied until she, too, looked wan and ill. She did not know how to
pray. Her parents had been Universalists--she termed herself a
Moralist; for her, heaven held no God that can hear, no Great Heart
that cares, no Understanding that notes a mother's agony. The doctors
offered no hope. The child was starving; no food nor medicine had
agreed, and the end was near. A neighboring grandmother told how her
child had been sick the same way, and how she had given him baked
sweet potato which was the first thing he had digested for days. As
fate would have it, it was even so with Fred, and he recovered leaving
his mother devoid of faith in any one calling himself doctor, and
fanatically devoted to the child she had so nearly lost. From that
sickness she hovered over him, protecting him from the training she
gave her other children--the kind she herself had received. His wish
became her law; he was humored into weakness. He never became robust
physically, and early showed defects quite unknown in either branch of
the family. He failed in college, for which failure his mother found
adequate excuse. He entered the bank, but within a few months his
peculations would have been discovered had he not confessed to his
mother, who made the discrepancy good from her private funds. During
the next few years she found it necessary on repeated occasions to
draw cheeks on her personal account to save him from trouble--but
never a word of censure for him, always excuses. He was drinking,
those days, and gambling. In the near-by state capitol the cards went
his way one night. Hilarious with success and drink, he started for
his room. There was a mix-up with his companions. He was left in the
snow, unconscious--his winnings gone. The wealth of his father and the
devotion of his mother could not save him, and he went with pneumonia
a few days later. It was said that this caused her breakdown--let us
see.
As a girl, Elizabeth had lived in a home of plenty, in a home of local
aristocracy. She was perfectly trained in all household activities
and, for that period, had an excellent education, having spent one
year in a far-away "Female Seminary." Her mind was good, her pride in
appearance almost excessive. She said she "loved Sam Clayton," and
probably did, though with none of the devotion she gave her son, nor
with sufficient trust to share her patrimony which amounted to a small
fortune with him when it came. In fact, she ran her own business, nor
relied upon the safety of the "Farmers' and Merchants' Bank" in making
her deposits. She was a housewife of repute, devoted to every detail
of housewifery and economics. There was always plenty to eat and of
the best; perfect order and cleanliness of the immaculate type were
her pride. Excellent advice she frequently gave her husband about
finances and management, but otherwise she added no interest to his
life, and there was peace between husband and wife--because Sam was a
peaceable man. As a mother, she taught the two older children domestic
usefulness, with every care; they were always clad in good, clean
clothes, clad better than the neighbors' children, and education was
made to take first rank in their minds. Her sense of duty to them was
strong; she frequently said: "I live and save and slave for my
children." Fred, as we have seen, was her weakness. For him she broke
every rule and law of her life.
At forty-five she was thin, her face already deeply seamed with worry
lines, a veritable slave to her home, but an autocrat to servants,
agents and merchants. They said her will was strong; at least,
excepting Fred, she had never been known to give in to any one. We
have not spoken of Mary. Poor woman! She, too, was a slave--she was
the hired girl. Meek almost to automatism, a machine which never
varied from one year's end to another, faithful as the proverbial dog,
she noiselessly slipped through her unceasing round of duties for
twenty-three years--then catastrophe. "That fool hired man has
hoodwinked Mary." No wedding gift, no note of well-wishing, but a
rabid bundling out of her effects. Howbeit, Central Ohio could not
produce another Mary, and from then on a new interest was added to the
Claytons' table-talk as one servant followed another into the Mother's
bad graces. She was already worn to a feather-edge before Mary's
ingratitude. But the shock of Fred's death completed the
demoralization of wrongly lived years. For weeks she railed at a
society which did not protect its citizens, at a church which failed
to make men good, while she now recognized a God against whom she
could express resentment.
This woman endowed with an excellent physical and mental organization
had allowed her ability and capacity to become perverted. Orderliness,
at first a well planned daily routine, gradually degenerated into an
obsession for cleanliness. Each piece of furniture went through its
weekly polishing, rugs were swept and dusted, sponged and sunned--even
Mary could not do the table-linen to her taste--and Tuesday afternoon
through the years went to immaculate ironing. The obsession for
cleanliness bred a fear of uncleanliness, and for years each dish was
examined by reflected light, to be condemned by one least streak. The
milk and butter especially must receive care equaled only by surgical
asepsis. Then there were the doors. The front door was for company,
and then only for the elect--and Fred; the side door was for the
family, and woe to the neighbor's child or the green delivery boy who
tracked mud through this portal. No amount of foot-wiping could render
the hired man fit for the kitchen steps after milking time--he used a
step-ladder to bring up the milk to the back porch. Such intensity of
attention to detail could not long fail to make this degenerating
neurotic take note of her own body, which gradually became more and
more sensitive, till she was fairly distraught between her fear of
draughts and her mania for ventilation. It was windows up and windows
down, opening the dampers and closing the dampers, something for her
shoulders and more fresh air. Church, lecture-halls and theaters
gradually became impossible. Finally she was practically a prisoner in
the semiobscurity of her home--a prisoner to bodily sensation. Then
came the autos to curse. The Clayton home was within a hundred yards
of the county road, and when the wind was from the west really visible
dust from passing motors presumed to invade the sanctity of parlor and
spare rooms, and with kindling resentment windows were closed and
windows were opened, rooms were dusted and redusted until she hated
the sound of an auto-horn, until the smell of burning gasoline caused
her nausea--but each year the autos multiplied.
At last the family realized that her loss of control was becoming
serious, that she was really a sufferer; but her antagonism to
physicians was deep-set, so the osteopath was called. Had he been
given a fair chance, he might have helped, but her obsessions were
such that she resented the touch of his manipulations, fearing that
some unknown infection might exude from his palms to her undoing.
Reason finally became helpless in the grip of her phobias. Her stomach
lining was "destroyed," and into this "raw stomach" only the rarest of
foods and those of her own preparation could be taken. She had fainted
at Fred's funeral, and repeatedly became dazed, practically
unconscious, at the mention of his name. Self-interests had held her
attention from girlhood to her wreckage, and from this grew self-
study, which later degenerated into self-pity. Her converse was of
food and feelings and self. She bored all she met, for self alone was
expressed in actions and words.
Father and daughter finally, under the pretext of a trip for her
health, placed her in a Southern sanitarium. Much was done here for
her, in the face of her protest. Illustrative of the unreasoning
intensity with which fear had laid hold upon her was her mortal dread
of grape-seeds. As she was again being taught to eat rationally,
grapes were ordered for her morning meal. The nurse noticed that with
painful care she separated each seed from the pulp, and explained to
her the value of grape-seeds in her case. She wisely did not argue
with the nurse, but two mornings later she was discovered ejecting and
secreting the seeds. The physician then kindly and earnestly appealed
for her intelligent cooperation. She thereupon admitted that many
years ago a neighbor's boy had died of appendicitis, which the doctor
said was caused by a grape-seed. The fallacy of these early-day
opinions was shown her. Then was illustrated the weakness of her faith
and the strength of her fear. She produced a draft for one thousand
dollars, which she said she always carried for unforeseen emergencies,
and offered it to the doctor to use for charity or as he wished, if he
would change the order about the grapes. Suffice it to say she learned
to eat Concords, Catawbas, Tokays and Malagas. She returned home
better, but was never wholesomely well, and to-day dreads the death
for which her family wait with unconscious patience.
What is the secret of this miserable old woman's failure to adjust
herself to the richness which life offered her? A selfish self peers
out from every act. Even her generosity to Fred was the pleasing of
self. Given all that she had, what could she not have been!
Physically, with the advantages of plenty and her country life and the
promise of her fair girlhood, what attraction could not have been hers
had kindness and generosity softened her eyes, tinted her cheeks, and
love-wrinkles come instead of worry-wrinkles.
Her mind was naturally an unusual one. She lived within driving
distance of one of Ohio's largest colleges--only an hour by train to
the state capital. Fortune had truly smiled and selected her for
happiness, but from the first it was self or her family and no further
thought or plan or consideration.
Elizabeth Clayton was given a nervous system of superb quality, which
used for the good of those she touched would have hallowed her life;
misused, she drifts into unlovable old age, a selfish neurotic. She
could have been a leader in her community, a blessing in her
generation, a builder of faiths which do not die, but she failed to
choose the good part which neither loss of servant, death of child nor
advancing age can take away.