UNTANGLING THE SNARL
You have probably passed the mansion. It stands, prominent, on the
avenue leading from Buffalo to Niagara Falls. Three generations have
added to its beauty and appointments. A generation ago it stood,
imposing, and if fault could be found, it was its self-consciousness
of architectural excellence. Every continent had contributed to its
furnishings, and some of its servants, too, were trained importations.
In the middle eighties, this noble pile was the home of an invalid, a
twelve-year-old boy, a housekeeping aunt, and nurses, valets, maids,
butlers, cooks, and coachmen. The invalid master of the house was
forty-eight. As he leaned on the mantel looking out across the lawn,
you felt the presence of a massive, powerful physique, but as he
slowly turned to greet you, you fairly caught your breath from the
intensity of the shock. The cheeks were hollow; the lips were ever
parted to make more easy the simple act of breathing, the pallor of
the face was more than that of mere weakness--there was a yellowish
hue of both skin and eye-whites. The shrunken claw-like hands that
offered greeting, the shrunken thighs, the increased girth of body
which had so deceived your first glance, all bespoke mortal illness to
even the untrained eye--advanced cirrhosis of the liver, to the
professional scrutiny. And he was to be the fourth, in a line of
financially successful Kents, to die untimely from mere eating and
drinking. You would not have stayed long with this sick man. Only a
large love or a large salary could have made the atmosphere of his
presence endurable, for he was the essence of impatience, the
quintessence of wilfulness. The sumptuousness of his surroundings, the
punctilious devotion of his servants, the deferential respect shown
him in high financial circles, books, people, memories, all failed
ever to soften that drawn, hard face, for he was a miserably wretched,
unhappy sufferer. Now and then his eyes would light up when Francis,
his son and heir, was brought in. But Francis had a governess and an
aunt who were respectively paid and commanded to keep him entertained
and contented, and to see that he did not long disturb the invalid.
That last year was one of most disorderly invalidism--not disorder of
a boisterous, riotous kind, but an unmitigated rebellion to doctors'
orders and advice, to the suggestions of friends, to the urgings and
pleadings of nurses and "Aunt Emma." There were no voluble explosions;
the impatience was not of the noisy kind--he had too much character
for that, but the stream of thought was turgid and sulphurous. Jan,
the valet, never argued, urged, suggested--by no little foreign shrug
of his shoulders did he even hint that the master's way was not
entirely right--and politic, faithful Jan stood next to Francis in his
good graces; in fact, he was more acceptable as a companion. The only
reason the sick man gave for his indifference to professional advice
was that he was the third generation to go this way--and this way he
went. A giant he was in the forest of men, felled in his prime.
Francis did not know his mother. She had been beautiful, a gentle,
lovable daughter of generations of social refinement. Her father and
grandfather had lived "pretty high." In truth, had the doctors dared,
"alcoholic," as an adjective, would have appeared in both their death
certificates; and the worm must have been in the bud, for she died
suddenly at twenty-five, following a short, apparently inadequate
illness. Thus, three-year-old Francis was left to a busy father's
care, a maiden aunt's theoretical incompetence, and to the
ministrations of a series of governesses who remained so long as they
pleased their youthful lord. The undisciplined father's idea of good
times, for both himself and his son, was based upon having what you
want right now, and why not?--with unlimited gold, with its seemingly
unlimited buying power. Dear Auntie, poor thing! knew no force higher
than "Now, Francis, I wouldn't," or "Please don't," or on very extreme
occasions, "I shall certainly tell your father"--as utterly
ineffective in introducing one slightest gleam of the desirability and
potency of unselfishness into this boy's mind, as was the gracious
servility of the servants.
Francis was large for his age, unusually active and remarkably direct
mentally, therefore little adjustment was needed as he entered that
usually leveling community--boy-school-life. He was generous and good-
hearted to a lovable degree and with such qualities and advantages he
early became, and remained, leader in his crowd. After his father died,
the boy, not unnaturally, placed him--the only one whose will he had
ever had to respect--high in his reverence. The father had been a
powerful young man, a boxer to be feared, oar one in the Varsity Crew;
a man who, through the force and brilliancy of his business life, had
won more than state-wide prominence, and had left many influential
friends who spoke of him in highest respect. It was to be expected that
the father's strong character would have deeply influenced his only son,
and like father like son, only more so, he grew. But the "more so" is
our tale.
"Rare, juicy tenderloin steaks go to muscle. You don't need much
else, and we didn't get much else at the training-table," the father
used to say, and they unquestionably formed the bulk of the boy's
naturally fine physique, for he developed in spite of much physical
misuse into a two-hundred-pound six-footer. Francis began smoking at
twelve. On his tenth birthday a small wine glass had been filled for
him and thereafter he always had wine at dinner, and he liked it--not
only the effects but the taste. The desire was in his blood--Before
he was eighteen he was brought home intoxicated and unconscious. No
law had ever entered into his training which suggested any form of
self-control. The principles of self-mastery were unthought; they had
been untaught. "Eat, drink and be merry" might express the sum of his
ideals. And so, physically or mentally, no thought of restraint
entered his youthful philosophy. There was nothing vicious, no strain
of meanness, much generosity; naturally kindly and practically devoid
of any spirit of contention, and peculiarly free from any touch of
the disagreeable, he was blessed with a spirit of good fellowship. He
never questioned the rights of his friends to do as they pleased, and
they quite wisely avoided questioning his right to do likewise; so,
desire was untrammeled and grew apace. It was in Francis Kent's
failure to bridle this power that the threads were first snarled.
The boy's fine body was trained in a haphazard way. Had his father
lived, it might have been different. Mentally, he was naturally
industrious and next to the joys of the flesh came his studies. It
was as toastmaster at his "prep-school" commencement-banquet that he
first drank to intoxication. The next fall he entered Yale, and there
is no question but those days this revered university had a "fast
set" that was emphatically rapid. But Francis Kent could go the
paces; in fact, none of the football huskies could put in a night out
and bring as snappy an exterior and as clear a wit to first class
next morning as young Kent. His heredity, his beefsteaks, the gods,
or something, certainly made it possible for him to be a "bang-up
rounder" and at the same time an acceptable student through four
college years.
He was almost gifted in a capacity for the romance literatures, and,
anomalous though it may seem, he majored and excelled in philosophy.
He was truly a popular fellow when he took his degree at twenty-two.
High living had given him high color; his eye was active and his face,
though somewhat heavy, was mobile with the sympathy of intelligence;
his physique was good; he dressed with a negligee art which was
picturesque. Big of heart, he had a wealth of scholarly ideas, and not
a few ideals; many thought he faced life a certain winner.
Practically every door was open to him, and he chose--Europe. Those
were two hectic years. Every gait was traveled; for weeks he would go
at top-speed, go until nerve and blood could brook no more. No
conception of the duty of self-restraint ever reached him till, at
last, the nervous system, often slow to anger, began to express its
objection to the abuse it was suffering. He was not rebounding as in
the past from his excesses. For a day or so following a prolonged
drinking bout he would be apprehensive and depressed, unable to find
an interest to take him away from the indefinite dread which haunted
him. Not till he could again stand a few, stiff glasses of brandy
could he find his nerve. A friend found him thus "shot up" one day and
suggested that he was "going the pace that kills," and hinted that
another path might be trod with wisdom. "What's the use?" Kent flung
back, "I'm fated to go with an alcoholic liver; it's in the family
strong--both sides. I saw my father go out with it. I know Mendel's
theory by heart, two black pigeons never parent a white one." And on
he went. His creed now might well have been: "For to-morrow I die."
It may have been the impulsion of an unrecognized fear--he said it was
philosophic interest--which had attracted him to study the various
theories of heredity. He had been particularly impressed by Mendel's
"Principles of Inheritance," and its graphic elucidation of the
mathematical recurrence of the dominant characteristics had grasped
him as a fetish. With such forebears as his, there was no hope. The
die had been cast before he was born. Why struggle against the laws of
determinism? He was what he was because forces beyond his control had
made him so. Scientific certainty now seemed to add its weight of
evidence to his accepted fatalism, when, at twenty-eight, instead of
the accustomed days of depression, a period of particularly heavy
drinking was followed by a serious attack of delirium tremens. For
several days he was cared for as one dangerously insane. After reason
had been restored, the doctor, in his earnest desire to help, warned
him that he must live differently and, knowing the father's ending,
thought to frighten him into a change of habits by stating that his
drinking would kill him in a few years if he kept it up. "You are
already in the first stages of cirrhosis," he told him. As it turned
out, no warning could have been less wise; it simply assured Kent the
certainty of the fate which pursued, and soon he was at it again.
Before thirty he had suffered two attacks of alcoholic delirium, had
been a periodic drinker for fifteen years, a regular drinker for five
years, often averaging for weeks two quarts of whiskey a day, and
always smoking from forty to fifty cigarettes. Life had become more
and more unlivable when he was not narcotized by alcohol or nicotine,
and he was fast becoming a pitiful slave to his intoxicated and
damaged nervous system.
He was living at home now, nominally secretary of a strong
corporation--practically eating, smoking, drinking, theater-going,
lounging at the Varsity Club, and playing with his speedy motorboat.
He enjoyed music and, when in condition, occasionally attended
concerts. Barely he went to the Episcopal service, then only when
special music was given. The faithful will discern the hand of
Providence in his first seeing Martha Fullington in one of these rare
hours at church. She was truly a fine, wholesome woman. The daughter
of a small town Congregational minister of the best New England stock,
she had always been healthy in body and mind. She possessed an unusual
contralto voice, and came to Buffalo at twenty-two for special
training. Helpful letters of introduction, with her pleasing self and
good voice, rapidly secured her friends and a position in a
fashionable church-choir. Here Kent heard her in a short but
effectively rendered solo. Unsusceptible as he had been in the past,
the sacredness of her religiously inspired face appealed to him
strangely. Within a fortnight a new and profound element was to
complicate his life, for he met Miss Fullington and took her out to
dinner at the home of a classmate, whose mother was befriending the
young singer. The spell of her charm wakened the power of his desire.
Whether it was from the stimulation of her inherent difference to
other women he had known, or whether deep within, and as yet
untouched, there was a fineness which instinctively recognized and
responded to fineness, we may not say with certainty. He was remote
from her every standard, she thought, and her seeming indifference was
a conscious self-defense. But she inspired him with a sincerity of
purpose he had not known before. He was frank; he was potently
insistent and "hopeless," he told her, "unless you save me." Thus
unwittingly he appealed to the mother sympathy, the strongest a good
woman can feel.
They were engaged and the wedding was all that any bride could have
desired. Then ten weeks abroad, beautiful, revealing weeks, for
Francis Kent, sober and in love, was much of a man. Still it was only
ten weeks before the formal social function, with its inevitable array
of wines, turned this kindly, genial lover, in an hour, into a coarse,
inconsiderate drunkard. Confined for a week in their state-room on the
steamer home with her husband, now a beast in drink, this poor, pure,
uninitiated wife realized purgatory. Dark days were those next three
years for them both. When sober, he was self-abased by the knowledge
of the suffering of this woman he so truly loved, or was restlessly
striving against desires which only alcohol could sate; while she was
alternately fearing the debauch or fighting to keep her respect and
love intact through the debauchery. For him, the battle waged on
between love and desire, his love for her--his one inspiration, while
desire was constantly reenforced by the taunts of his godless fatalism
and the dead weight of his hopelessness.
Then came the day which is hallowed in the lives of even the ignorant
and coarse, the day in which the young wife gladly suffers through the
lengthening hours and goes down to the verge of the Dark River, that
in her nearness to death she may find that other life, the everlasting
seal of her marriage. In all the beauty of eagerly desired motherhood,
Martha Kent bore her baby-boy. The father was not there. She did not
then know all. They shielded her. He had been taken the night before
to a private asylum, entering his third attack of delirium tremens,
and while his wife in pain and prayer made life more sacred, he,
struggling and uncontrolled, beast-like, was making life more
repulsive. The pain of her motherhood never approached the agony of
her wifehood, when she knew, while the pride of fatherhood was utterly
submerged in the poignancy of his self-abasement, when he realized.
Another physician had treated him during this attack. He, too, wished
to help. He talked with the humiliated man most earnestly, insisting
that he had never truly tried, that in the past he had depended on his
weak will and the inspiration of his devotion. He had not had
scientific help. He assured him that he did not have incurable
hardening of the liver and expressed, as his earnest belief, that
there were places where the help he needed could be given--that there
was hope. Plans were made and Francis Kent gave his pledge, expressed
in a voluntary commitment, to carry out a six months' system of
treatment. "Not," as he assured the physician-in-charge, "that I can
be saved from the effects of what has gone before. I know my heredity
is too strong for that. But by every obligation of manhood I owe my
wife and boy five years of decent living. If you can make that
possible, I shall be satisfied." The professional help Kent received,
physically, was deep-reaching. It accurately adjusted food to energy
expended. Forty self-indulgent cigarettes were transformed into three
manly cigars, and he was put to work with his hands--those patrician
hands which had not made a brow to sweat, for serious purpose, in
three generations. His physical response in six weeks completely
altered his appearance. The snap of healthy living reappeared; the
pessimism of his fatalism was displaced by much of quiet cheer. Life
was again becoming a good thing. But the professional help he received
mentally was what untangled the snarl. His advisor was fortunately
able to go the whole way with him as he discussed his hereditary
"inevitables"--the whole way and then, savingly, some steps beyond--
and for the first time Kent's understanding, now reaching for higher
truths than would satisfy the fatalist, was wisely, personally
conducted through a wholesome interpretation of the distinction
between the heritage of germinal and of somatic attributes, that vital
distinction: that it takes but two ancestors to determine the species
of the offspring, but that the individual's personal heritage is the
result of, and may be influenced by, a thousand forerunners; that
dominant characteristics, compelling though they seem, may be
neutralized by obscure, recessive characteristics. More than this, his
new counselor was able to convince him that the real damage he had to
overcome was not a foreordained physical fate, for that was in a
peculiar way largely in his own hands, now that he was properly
started, but was the mental tangle of his unholy fatalism which
absolutely did not represent truth; that he and all rational, normal
men have been given wills and are as free as gods to choose, within
certain large limitations. Francis Kent's mind had been well trained.
Selfish desire had made of him a fatalist. A more beautiful desire led
him into a constructive optimism. He thought deeply for a week,
perchance he prayed, for he knew that she was praying from the depths
of her soul. He outlined for himself a new, thoroughly wholesome mode
of life, and in half an hour's heart-to-heart conference convinced his
doctor-friend that more had been accomplished in two months than could
have been promised at the end of the six months planned. So the new
Francis Kent was told to go back and make a new home for his wife and
the new baby. Years have passed--blessed years in the old mansion.
There is no hint of cirrhosis of the liver. There has never been a
drop of anything alcoholic served in that house since his return.
There are two healthy chaps of boys; there is a wonderfully happy
woman; there is a fine, manly man, the respected and efficient
president of an influential bank. Patient, wise hands carefully
untangled the knotted snarl. The thread was unbroken.