THE BATTLE WITH SELF
The room was bare of furnishings save a cot; no dresser, table, stand,
even chair, was there. The windows were of wire glass and guarded by
metal screens, the lights were in shielded recesses, the floor was
polished but without covering. No pictures, flowers, nor the dainty
things which normal women crave were to be seen. On the cot sat a
woman, Marie Wentworth, sullen and defiant, a worse than failure,
locked in this protected room of a special hospital. Isolated with her
caretaker, she was watched day and night-watched to save her from
successfully carrying out her determination of self-destruction, a
determination which had found expression in more than words, for only
the day before-the day of her admission--she had swallowed some
cleverly hidden, antiseptic tablets. The trained habits of observation
of the skilful nurse had saved her from death. Crafty, vindictive,
malicious, reckless, heartless! Her care demanded tireless watching--
hence this room, void of anything by which she could possibly injure
herself or others. Nor was she more attractive than her surroundings.
Her skin was sallow and unwholesome; yellow-gray rings added dulness
to her black eyes. Scrawny of figure, hard and repelling of features,
an atmosphere of malevolence seemed to emanate from her presence. She
took little note of what was happening, though occasional, furtive
glances gave intimation of her knowledge of the nurse's presence. When
stimulated to expression there were explosions of violent abuse,
directed chiefly against her older sister, explosions punctuated by
vicious flashes of profanity which left doubt in no mind of the hatred
which rankled-hatred of family, hatred of order and authority, hatred
of goodness however expressed, hatred of life and damnations of the
hereafter. An unholy picture she was of a demoralized soul in which
smoldered and from which flared forth a peace-destroying fire--the
rebellion of a depraved body and mind against the moral self. She had
been placed in this institution under legal restraint to be treated
for morphinism, and, according to her brother, "pure cussedness."
How did it happen? The Wentworths lived well, very well indeed, in a
bluegrass county-seat of fair Kentucky. The father was an attorney by
profession, a horse-fancier by choice, and for years before Marie's
birth relieved the monotony of office duties and race-track pleasures
by vivid, gentlemanly "sprees." Marie was only six when his last
artery essential to the business of living became properly hardened,
and Marie's mother was a widow.
Mrs. Wentworth was to the manor born. She took pride in her home and
thoroughly admired the brilliant qualities of her husband. Adorned
with old jewels and old lace, she regularly graced her table at the
periodic big dinners it was her pride to give. In fact, her pride
extended to the planning of three fine meals a day. An unsentimental
science suggests that her husband's arteries, as well as her fatal
cancer, might have been avoided had chronic proteid intoxication not
been the result of her menus. She also took pride in her family and
trained the two older children as well as she knew, instilling in them
both a loyalty to certain ideals which evolved into morality. But her
failing health left Marie much to the care of her sister, and more to
the tutelage of her own desires. Unhappily, there was little of beauty
in the mother's last months which made any appeal to her child's love,
or left much to inspire a twelve-year-old girl's devotion when but
memory was left.
When the insurance was collected and all settlements made, the
comfortable old home and the jewels sold, each of the three children
had five thousand dollars. The brother's success was limited. He
invested his all, together with many notes of promise payable to his
senior partner, in a dry-goods business, and while he carried most of
the details of the establishment, the everlasting interest on his
notes, and his wife's love of and demand for fine feathers, kept ends
from ever successfully meeting.
The sister, the eldest, was fine. The illness and death of her parents
laid grave responsibilities on her young life, and she met them
seriously, wholesomely, constructively. She early proved herself
capable of large sacrifices. She had finished her college course
before her mother's death, and after the home was sold she secured a
position in the local woman's college, where she continued to teach
and to merit a growing respect for many years. She was not perfect;
the Wentworth temper flashed out most inopportunely, and work and pray
and sacrifice and resolve as she would, her rule of Marie was
unfortunate-flint and steel strike fire. Probably she "school-manned"
rather than mothered the child.
But with all environment favorable, Marie would have proven a
"proposition." The sporting blood and Bourbon high-balls of the father
and the mother's love of the good things of life more than neutralized
the latter's Methodism. Marie was a healthy, well-built, lithe lassie,
with raven-black hair and eyes which snapped equally with pleasure or
with wrath. Impulsive, intense, wilful, tempestuous, bright and
possessing capacity, pleasure-loving and ever impatient of restraint,
we see in her the highly developed nervous temperament. She feared
nothing save the "horrible nightmares" which frequently followed the
big dinners-a child who could have been led to Parnassus, but who was
driven nearly to Hell! She went through the public schools without
conscious effort, but her buxom figure, the rich flush of health, her
vivacity, her bearing, were irresistible to the youth of the
community, and a series of escapades culminated in her dismissal from
college; her indiscretions cost her the respect of the one man she
loved. At twenty she had spent two thousand of the five thousand left
her, while she and the sister failed to find harmony together. She had
little sympathy with her sister's plodding life, but realized the need
of preparing herself to earn, so entered a Cincinnati hospital. She
had many qualities which made her a valuable student-nurse, with
propensities which kept her in hot water. She had completed her second
year of training when she was dismissed. The interns could not resist
her, nor she them, and only so many midnight lunches on duty can be
winked at, even in a hospital needing nurses. For nearly a year she
was spasmodically occupied as an experienced nurse. The end of this
year found her one thousand dollars poorer, while her heritage was
becoming more manifest. In the place of her father's periodic
alcoholism, it was periodic headaches. She was thoroughly impatient of
personal suffering, or of any hygienic restraint, and so took heavy
doses of headache-powders and, if these did not relieve, opiates. By
falsifying her record, she succeeded in entering another training-
school, a smaller one, in her own state. For a year she was careful-
she was anxious to graduate-and developed real cunning in the use of
drugs; but dependence upon these steadily undermined her reserve until
she was almost daily using something for the "tired feeling" which was
now so chronic. Nearly two years had passed before her drug-taking
habit was discovered. Prompt dismissal necessarily followed. Her
sister was informed, and insisted upon her going to an institution to
be cured. Five hundred dollars were spent, and three months of
treatment, directed to the withdrawal of her drug, gave no insight
into her need for seriously altering her habits of life and feeling,
brought no least conception of her defects of character without change
of which there could be, for her, no safe living.
During the next ten years her physical and mental deterioration
increased apace. Other courses of treatment were taken with no lasting
benefit. Her misfortunes seemed to culminate when she voluntarily
entered a "drug-cure" institute which was practically a resort for
drug-users. There are in every country unworthy places of this kind,
where no real effort to cure patients is made. Sufferers with means
are kept comfortable by being given drugs whenever they demand them,
thus satisfying their consciences that they are being "treated," while
vainly waiting till they are sufficiently strong to get entirely off
"dope." In such a house of quackery Marie stayed two years. Her
remaining fifteen hundred dollars and a thousand of her sister's went
for fake treatment. She learned to smoke cigarettes with the young
doctor; she played cards, gossiped, ate, slept and was never refused a
comforting dose whenever she couldn't "stand it a minute longer."
Worse than wasted years these, for even the remnants of her pride
faded, and she lived a sordid life of the flesh. The sister, when she
finally realized the gravity of the situation, lost all hope whatever
for any restoration and, acting under the advice of the old family
physician, had her committed to the State Hospital for the Insane as
an incurable narco-maniac. Here she was rudely but promptly deprived
of all narcotics, nor by any hook nor crook, cunning though she was,
could she secure a quieting, solacing grain. The wise superintendent,
believing that there was little chance for her true regeneration in
the surroundings of even his best wards, advised that she be sent to a
hospital where she would receive special care. The sister's funds
alone could make this possible, and her genuine worth is shown in her
willingness to spend a quarter of her entire savings that Marie might
have this chance. Here, thirty-three years old, we found her the day
after she had been transferred, the day after she had vainly tried to
carry out her vow to end things if she were ever "forced into another
treatment."
Throughout the years the primitive self had been pitted against her
own soul. She had always rebelled at her misfortunes, though they were
largely of her own making. She blamed others for her hardships, and
through the intensity of her resentment but made things harder. Not
the least expression of her depravity was her hatred for all who had
interfered with her wilful desires, particularly the sister, whose
sacrifice she ignored, but whom she took a malicious delight in
proclaiming to be the one who had forever ruined her chances in life
by committing her to an insane asylum. But her delight was malicious,
and all that she got out of her hate and maligning was deeper misery.
The bitter dregs of twenty years of soulless living were all the cup
of life now held for her--all the more bitter because of the finer
qualities of her nature. There were possibilities in this highly
organized girl which could have led her into an unusual wholeness of
living.
Six months passed, months of sullen, dogged resistance-resistance to
the returning health which was again rounding her form and glowing her
cheeks, resistance to proffered kindnesses of fellow-patients and
nurses, resistance to any appeal to pride, honor, ambition, right.
Sick of soul, she abjured the interest of the hospital workers, the
love of her sister whose weekly letters she left unopened, the
wholesome atmosphere of her surroundings, the personal appeal of those
whose hearts were heavy with desire to help.
Then the miracle!-for one came who cast out devils. She was not only a
nurse, she was one of those divinely human beings who, with a nurse's
knowledge and training, attain practical sainthood. She, too, had
frequently been repelled in her hours of contact with this unhappy
creature, but she believed that under all this unholiness there was a
soul. She was a busy, hard-worked nurse, but in time Marie became
aware that she was spending part of her limited off-duty hours to
minister to her, that she had requested a special assignment of duty
which would throw them together. Marie's four years of training made
her recognize the rareness of this giving. Curiosity at least was
aroused, and she began asking personal questions. An unconscious self-
pity impelled her to discuss the grievances of the life of nursing,
the unfairness common in training-schools, the injustices of long
hours and inadequate appreciation, with scores of other quarrels which
she had with life. Each of these was met squarely by her nurse-friend,
who, free from platitudes and cant, ever saw the ideal above it all,
who, loving her profession and loving humanity and promised to a life
of service, gently, beautifully, firmly stood by her principles. For
three months they were in daily contact--three thankless months for
the nurse, three months of cunning, evil-minded, suspicious testing by
the patient. Finally the very goodness of her friend seemed
intolerable, and a paroxysm of rage and resentment broke loose, in
which she cursed and abused her helper beyond sufferance. The nurse
suddenly grasped the unhappy woman's arms to shake some sense of
decency into her warped nature, one would have thought, but in truth
that eye might meet eye, and in this look the rare love, which can
persist through such provocation, awakened a soul. That look was at
once the revelation of the worth of the one and the worthlessness of
the other. A flood of tears drowned, it would seem forever, the evil
which was cursing. In a day, in an hour, the change was wrought, that
miraculous change which enters every life when the soul comes into its
own.
There were months in which the battle of self ebbed and flowed, but
never did defeat seem again imminent, and the final victory was found
in a high resolve which took her back home a quiet, subdued woman,
forgetful of self in her sense of debt to the sister whose goodness
she had never before admitted. For years they lived together, she
keeping the simple home and keeping it well, saving, industrious,
devoted, even loving. She has largely avoided publicity, though always
ready to nurse in emergencies. Nobly she is expiating the past, and
has long since worthily won the "well-done" of her moral self.