WILLING ILLNESS
Mr. Harrison Orr lived till he was twenty-five in Indianapolis, the
town of his birth, excepting the years spent in Chicago pursuing his
literary and law courses. He inherited a small fortune and, after two
years spent in "seeing the world," located in Memphis, Tennessee.
Here, as an attorney and later as an investor, he was professionally,
financially and socially successful. His father had been liberal in
the use of wines and cordials, and young Orr himself always remained a
"good fellow," just the kind of a man to attract a vivacious, socially
proud daughter of the South. He was thirty-five when he married--
accounted an age of discretion. His experience with womankind was so
ample that he should have made no mistake in his final, irrevocable
choice, and, be it said to his honor, no one, not even the wife
herself, ever knew by word or act of his, to the contrary. He and his
Mississippi bride spent thirty years in apparent domestic
tranquillity, until he died at sixty-five from a heart which refused
longer to have its claims for purposeful living eternally answered by
gin rickeys and nips of "straight Scotch."
Mrs. Harrison Orr is unconsciously the unhappy "villain" of our tale.
Her girlhood home was on a large sugar-plantation where she, as an
only child, was reared to dominate her surroundings, while her parents
made particular effort that she might shine socially. Parts of many
years she lived in Washington in the home of a political relative, and
attended a select girls' school. After her debut she spent the social
winters at the Capitol where social niceties were developed with much
attention to detail, and at home and while in Washington she was
gratifyingly popular. "A brilliant conversationalist," she had heard
herself called when fifteen, and the art of conversation, hitherto far
from neglected, became by choice and practice her forte. Brilliancy in
speech ever remained her only seriously attempted accomplishment.
Clever of speech, from childhood, she had early learned to utilize
this ability to attain any desired end. And talk she could, and talk
she did, and as she grew older, by sheer talking she domineered every
situation. It was her opinion when she married that at any time, with
any listener, she could talk cleverly on any subject. As the years
passed, during which she added little to her asset of knowledge, this
art of fine speech gradually, but relentlessly, degenerated, and step
by step she slipped down the paths of delicacy and fineness, through
the selfishness of her insistent talkativeness. Harrison Orr never
intimated that his evenings at home were hours of boredom, but in
later years spent much time in the comparative quiet of his club. Few
intellects can be so amply stored as to continue brilliant through
decades of much speaking, and the sparkle of Mrs. Orr's conversation
was gradually shrouded in the weariness of what a blunt neighbor
termed her "inveterate gabble." As it must be, this woman of
exceptional opportunities early lost true sensitiveness, and, both as
guest and hostess, ignored the offense of inconsiderate and self-
seeking interruptions. She broke into the speech of others with crude
abandon. The itch to lead and preempt the conversation became
uncontrollable. Finer natures thrown with her could but tolerate her
"naive" discourtesy, while dependents had to dumbly endure. Mrs. Orr
but stands as a type illustrating far too many mortally wearisome,
social pretenders, prominent only through the tireless tiresomeness of
their much speaking.
The wreckage which may follow a single unthought crudity, in a home
otherwise exceptional, is signally illustrated in the life of Mrs.
Orr's only child, Hortense, born two years after their marriage. From
the first she was sensitive and high-strung, nervously damaged
probably in her early years by her mother's restless, unwise overcare.
When Hortense was five she was sharply ill for several weeks with
scarlatina. During these days she was isolated with Mrs. Place, her
nurse, in a wing of the home. As fortune would have it, Mrs. Place was
the daughter of a rural English clergyman. After the death of her
husband, who left her limited in means, she came to America, where she
trained. Her wholesome influence over Hortense, her general demeanor
in the home, and her many excellent qualifications as nurse and woman
attracted Mr. Orr's discerning attention, and he induced her to remain
as governess to his daughter. Mrs. Place proved a most excellent
addition to the Orr household. Always deferential, she was never
servile; always reserved, she ever faced duties large and small,
promptly, quietly and efficiently. Never, through her nearly ten years
as daily companion of Hortense, did her speech or conduct betoken
aught but refinement. More and more Hortense retreated to her
wholesome companionship in face of the assaults of her mother's trying
volubility. In many ways this most unusual nurse protected her charge
from the greater damage of poor mothering than actually occurred. The
differences between these two women were reflected in the sensitive
child's life. Unconsciously at first, later in certain details,
ultimately without reserve, she approved the standards of the one and
repudiated those of the other. In contrast to her mother she grew into
an abnormal reserve.
Hortense never attended the public schools but was regularly taught by
Mrs. Place until she was fifteen, when she went East and entered her
mother's old school, in Washington. The years of her careful tutoring
had failed to accustom her to competition of any kind, and this first
year of school work was taxing and but indifferently successful.
During the spring term she had measles which left her with a hacking
cough, and she did not regain her lost weight. The school-doctor sent
her home, "for the southern climate," where she remained for a year,
rather frail and the object of much detailed, maternal solicitude. It
was probably this same solicitude which finally became so wearying
that she returned to school for relief. Hortense was now a year
behind, but resented the rather superior airs of some of her old
classmates so effectively that she got down to business, made up her
back work, and graduated reasonably well up in her entrance class. Of
light build, and always frail in appearance, she did commendable work
in school athletics. She took private instruction in hockey, for she
was determined "to make the team," and her success in accomplishing
this is significant of her ability to do, when she willed. At one of
the later inter-scholastic games she met a handsome, manly, George
Washington University student. She was nineteen, he twenty-three, and
on his commencement day he honored her by offering his hand. Her
southern love was aglow. Her lover was practically making his own way,
but his prospects were excellent, his character superior, and they
both cared very much.
Unhappily, Mrs. Place had returned to England, or Hortense would have
confided in her and some futures might have been different. But the
warmth of the new love seemed at the time to dissipate the chilliness
toward her mother, which, unexpressed to herself, had through the
years been increasing in the daughter's heart. So she wrote a long
letter full of the beautiful story of the growing happiness, with
pages of fervid descriptions of a certain fine young fellow, and
importuned her mother to come East at once and to bring her blessing.
No such filial warmth had Mrs. Orr ever before known. No such
opportunity for a beneficent expression of the high privilege of
motherhood had ever been entrusted to her. She responded without
hesitation. She did not even wait to read their daughter's letter to
her husband. When she reached Washington she summoned the young suitor
to her hotel, and succeeded in one masterful quarter of an hour in
arousing his violent dislike and lasting contempt. Through diplomacy
she got Hortense on the Memphis-bound train. She was determined that
her "darling child" should never marry beneath her station, and she
talked and talked, drowning her daughter's protests, appeals and
objections, in her merciless flow of words. Night after night she
would stay with her till after twelve, leaving the poor girl tense,
distracted and sleepless. And the habit of sleeplessness developed and
with it a painfully abnormal sensitiveness to noises. The cruelly
disappointed girl rapidly went to pieces. She craved a woman's
sympathy, she longed for a mother's comprehending love, but she soon
came to dread even her mother's presence, and formed the habit of
burying her ears in the pillows to shut out the sound of that voice
which could have meant the sweetest music of all, yet which to her
distraught nerves had become an irritating, repelling, hated noise.
Then special nurses came; the hot months were spent in the Rockies;
several sea-trips were made; twice patient and nurse went East to
forget it all in weeks of concerts and theaters in New York. But her
inability to sleep was but temporarily relieved, while her antagonism
to noises increased. She was then in Philadelphia for six months under
the care of a noted neurologist, where she slowly gained considerably,
physically, and was sufficiently well to spend a short, social "coming
out season" with her parents. Yet the "at homes" and tea-parties and
functions in which her mother reveled, never more than superficially
interested her.
Rather strangely, father and daughter had not been as close as their
similar natures and needs would suggest. While Mrs. Orr may not have
been jealous, she preempted her husband's home hours mercilessly; but
in her father's death Hortense came to know that one of the few props
of her stability had been removed. Moreover, her mother's incessant
reiteration of her loneliness and sorrow, and the endless discussion
of the details of her depressing widow's weeds, and of her taxing,
exhausting widow's responsibilities, brought on a return of the old
symptoms, with the antipathy to noises even intensified. We may think
of Hortense Orr as inherently weak. This is not so. Save as influenced
in her girlhood by Mrs. Place, and while stimulated during her last
three years at school by personal ambition, she had known no duties
nor responsibilities. There had never been any necessity for specific
effort or sacrifice. After her great disappointment she had
surrendered to depression of spirit, and she reacted in the same way
after her father's death. And this surrender was early followed by
weakness of her disused body. She also surrendered to the weakness of
self-pity, that craven mocker of self-respect. She was not a will-less
girl, but life had brought her small chance to develop that will which
masters, while wilfulness, that will which demands selfishly for self,
grew out of the soil so largely of her mother's preparing. This
wilfulness, first asserted in small things, grew and grew.
The family doctor saw more than tongue and liver and thin blood and
bodily weakness. He realized the helplessness of Hortense in finding
her stronger self in the home atmosphere, and advised a year in
Europe--to get away from her sorrow, he said, to get away from her
mother's wearying discussion of details, he knew. For nearly a year
she was treated in Germany at different cures without benefit. It was
always the "noise" that kept her from sleeping. It was the "noise"
which she had learned to hate and to revile. To get away from noise
became her fixed determination. And to this end a small mountain-
cottage was secured, secluded from the haunts and industries of man,
in the remoteness of the Tyrolean Alps. Here with her nurse and a
servant she remained three years. For the first months she seemed
happier, and took some interest in the inspiring views and rich flora
of her surroundings. But the night did not bring the silence she
willed. She sensed the heavy breathing of her nurse, the movements of
the servant as she turned in her bed, and sometimes even snored, she
knew it! She would spend hours of strained, sleepless attention, alert
to detect another instance of the heartless repetition of this
incriminating sound. She must be alone. She feared nothing so much as
the hated sounds of human activity. So a one-room shack was built a
hundred yards away from her companions, in the deeper solitude of the
forest. Here she slept alone, month after month. But the winters, even
in the Tyrolean foot-hills, are severe at times, and the deadly
monotony of this useless life, and the improvement which she "knew"
would come with the perfection of her sleeping arrangements, combined
to decide her to return home, though still an enemy to the unbearable
sounds of the night. Twenty-eight years she had lived with no true
interest in life; neither home, attractions in New York or in Europe,
nor treatment offered by competent and kind specialists had influenced
her one thought away from her willingness to be ill. The nurse, who
had buried herself so long with this poor girl in Europe, was quite
appalled at Mrs. Orr's inconsideration of her daughter's "sensitive,
nervous state." Nurse and mother soon had words; nurse and daughter
left promptly for the East, where two hours from New York they spent
another year in semi-isolation together.
A New York broker owned the place adjoining the invalid's cottage.
Walter Douglas, then but twenty-six, was his private secretary. Walter
and Hortense met in the quiet, woodland paths. It is difficult to know
just what the mutual attractions were. She had received many
advantages which had not been his, still life was certainly a lonely
thing for her. He was her first real interest since she had left
Washington, and love reawakened and blew into life the embers she
thought were gray-cold. It was never to be the flaming love-fire of
ten years before, but it was bright enough to decide her to marry,
which she did without writing any letter of confidence to her
unsuspecting mother.
Mr. Orr had left the property in his wife's control, and she had been
unquestionably most generous in supplying her daughter with funds.
When she received the brief note telling of the little wedding and
inviting her to meet them in Washington, on their simple wedding-trip,
she found herself for the first time in her life--speechless! There
were no words to express this "outrage." The disability was short-
lived, but her letter to the bridal couple was shorter. They had taken
things into their own hands; they had ignored her who had every right
to be at least advised, and they could take care of themselves. Hardly
had this letter been mailed when she consulted her attorney as to ways
and means to annul this "crazy marriage."
The young couple had more pride than dollars, and bravely started
house-keeping in a small flat. Few had been more inadequately trained
for household duties than this self-pampered woman who pluckily at
first, then grimly, went to the limit of her poorly developed strength
in an effort to make homelike their few, plain rooms, and to prepare
their unattractive meals. Still it all might have worked out had the
noises of the street not attained an ascendancy. In less than four
months the youthful husband, through a sense of duty, wrote the mother
details of his bride's "precarious condition." Mrs. Orr promptly sent
money, and the mother in her soon brought her to them in person.
Within a few days she recognized the helpless husband's honesty and
patience, and took them both to Memphis, providing a furnished flat
and a good servant. The incompetent wife's short experience in
household responsibilities, for which she was so utterly unprepared,
made sickness a most welcome haven of refuge, and for months she did
nothing but war with the noises of the quiet suburb. Then their baby
came, but with it slight evidence of young mother love. She seemed
almost indifferent to her little one. At rare times, only, would she
respond to her first-born and to her husband. The doctor said there
was no reason why she did not regain strength, that she could if she
would, that it was not a question of physical frailty but it was
decidedly a case of willing to have the easiest way. "Something has to
be done," he said at last, and he strongly advised that she be sent to
a hospital where she would be the object of benevolent despotism. She
constantly complained of her oversensitive hearing, and had certainly
developed all the arts of the invalid. She made no objection to the
proposed plan. She did not know what was in store for her, outside of
the mentioned "rest-cure." Full authority was given the institution
officials to use any possible helpful means to stimulate her recovery.
In all this the family physician counseled wisely and with
discernment. At the hospital Hortense Douglas was told that she was to
remain until she was well, that it was not a question of duration of
treatment, but of her condition, which would determine the date of her
return to her home, husband, and little one. The relationship between
her years of illness and her unhappy disappointment, between her
antagonism to night sounds and her intolerant impatience with her
mother, was carefully explained. The ideal of making friends with
these same noises which were but the voices of human progress,
happiness, industry and personal rights, was held before her.
Following the first clash of her will with the hospital authorities,
she claimed that she was losing her mind, and was told that she would
be carefully watched and would be treated at once as irresponsible
when she proved to be so. Step by step she was forced to health, she
was compelled to live rationally. Scientific feeding produced rapid
improvement in her nutrition, she gained strength by the use of foods
which she had never liked, had never taken and could "not take." In
every way she improved in spite of herself. She often said she could
not stand the treatment. But cooperation relentlessly proved more
pleasant than rebellion. At the end of five months she was sleeping
night after night the deep sleep honestly earned by thorough physical
weariness, a sleep which nervous tire and worrying apprehension can
never know. She could get no satisfaction as to when she would be
allowed to return home.
She had no money in her possession, but she slipped away one morning,
pawned her watch for railway-fare, and arrived home announcing that
she was well.
Wealth, medical experts, years in Europe, society, the pleasures of
seasons in New York, a husband's love, motherhood had failed to find
health for this wilful woman. Not until her illness was made more
uncomfortable than the legitimate duties of health, not until she
recognized it was normal living at home or life in that "awful
hospital," did she will to be well--and well she was.