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.