Our Nervous Friends, Robert S. Carroll [thriller books to read .TXT] 📗

THE TROUBLED SEA

A young woman, of rather striking appearance attired in her street clothing, is standing beside her dresser. She has just returned from town. She is of medium height, trim of figure, weighing about one hundred and forty, with skin of a soft ivory tint and cheeks showing a faint flush of health—or of excitement. Her dark hair waves gracefully and the scattering strands of gray quite belie her youth.

The eyes are well placed, nearly black, and can sparkle on occasion.

Her rather poorly formed hands of many restless habits, are the only apparent defect in this, externally attractive, young woman. She has just broken the seal of a heavy vellum envelope addressed in a strange feminine hand. It is an engraved announcement which reads: “Mrs. Pinkney Rogers announces the marriage of her daughter, Pearl May, to Mr. Lee Burnham”—

She never read the rest. She never saw the—“on Tuesday, May thirtieth nineteen hundred and one. At Home, Rome, Georgia, after July fifth.”

Her sister, Addie, coming up the stairs, thought she heard a moan and hurried in to find Stella lying in a crumpled heap. Addie’s quick eye noticed the announcement. She read it all, and destroyed it, and through the years it was never mentioned by either of them. She, alone, knew its relation to her sister’s collapse, but with proverbial southern pride never voiced her opinion of the tragic cause of her older sister’s years of nervous ill-health.

Mr. Beckman, Stella’s father, was at this time about fifty-five. He was the brunette parent from whom many of her more attractive physical qualities had been inherited. He was proprietor of the best men’s furnishing store of the county’s metropolis. His business was moderately successful, built up, he felt, entirely through years of his personal thought and attention, and it was practically his only interest. Even his interesting family was a matter of course—though the amount of the day’s sales never became so. Mr. Beckman had a single diversion. The store closed at ten o’clock Saturday nights; between twelve and one its proprietor would reach home in an exalted state, and for two hours poor Mrs. Beckman would hear his plans for developing the biggest gent’s clothing-business in the state, for becoming a merchant-prince, emphasized with many a hearty slap on her back. This weekly relaxation was always followed by a miserable Sunday morning, invariably referred to by every member of the family as “another of Papa’s sick headaches.” Mrs. Beckman never lisped the details of those unhappy Saturday nights, and the loyal deception was so well carried out, with such devoted attention and nursing, that by early afternoon, Sunday, the invalid was quite restored and any possible self-reproach had been melted away. Headaches of the real kind did come later, and, as his habits changed not, the Brights which first appeared at fifty-eight progressed without interruption to his death at sixty.

Mrs. Beckman was a blonde, but for many years had been a badly faded one. She was as singleminded in regard to her household as her husband to his store. Neither had developed more than family and local interests. She was the same age as her husband and had, without question, worked faithfully, long hours, through the long years, in homage to her sense of housekeeping duties. The coming of the children, only, from time to time, kept her away from kitchen and parlor for a few weeks. She had been to Atlanta but once during the last ten years, not that Mr. Beckman willed it so—she could have had vacations and attractive dresses, though for some reason, possibly the “fading” which has been mentioned, he never urged her to go with him—

and she needed urging, for she honestly believed there was “too much to do” at home. The habit of industry can become as inveterate as habits of pleasure.

The two Beckman boys had the virtues of both father and mother. They finished at the city high school, and at once went to work in the store with such earnestness of purpose that they were quite prepared to conduct the business, even better than the father had done, when he became incapacitated.

We met the sister, Addie, in Stella’s room and realized from her discretion, manifested under stress, that she possessed elements of character. She was a clear-skinned, high-strung blonde—thin-skinned too, probably, for from childhood her hands rebelled at household duties. The family thrift was hers, however, and from the limited opportunities of the home town, she prepared herself for, and filled well, for years, a position with a successful law firm. She later married the senior member—a widower. His children and her high-strung thin-skinnedness and lack of domestic propensities have not made her as successful a home-builder as she was a stenographer.

Stella Beckman’s early life was deeply influenced by many of the surroundings which we have glimpsed. Hers was not a home of fine ideals. Much that was common was always present. The table-talk was almost competitive in nature, as, with the possible exception of the mother, each one used “I” almost insistently, as a text for converse, the three times a day they sat together. Even mutual interests were largely obscured, much of the time, by personal ones, barring only the subject of sickness. All forms of illness were themes commanding instant and absorbing attention. Inordinate anxiety was felt by all for the ills of the one; and for days the “I” would be forgotten if any member of the home-circle was “sick.” And the concerns of the patient, whether suffering from a cold, sore eyes, a sprained ankle, or “had her tonsils out,” were discussed with minuteness of detail worthy an International Conference. How the patient slept, what the doctor said, the effect of the new medicine, how the heart was standing the strain, what the visiting neighbors thought of the case, in fact the whole subject of sickness held a morbid interest for each member of the family. Sickness, no matter how slight, was with the Beckmans ever an excuse for changing any or all plans. We might speak of the discussion of illness as the Beckman family avocation.

Stella was a bright child, who, wisely directed and influenced, would have taken a good education. She could have developed into a particularly pleasing, capable, useful, possibly forceful woman. But the emotional Stella was over-developed, until it obstructed the growth of the reasoning Stella. Still we should call her a normal small-town child, certainly until her last year in grammar-school. She had some difficulty with her studies that spring because of her eyes.

Her lenses, fitted in Atlanta, seemed to make them worse. It was only after she went to a noted specialist in Charleston that she was relieved. It is significant that later these expensively obtained glasses were discarded as “too much trouble.”

The summer Stella was thirteen, Grandmother Beckman came to spend her last days in her son’s home. The granddaughter had been named for her, and Grandmother was frail and old and needed attention. Grandmother also had some means. For over a year the young girl gave much of her time to the old lady, and for over a year she was able to lead the Beckman table-talk with her wealth of details about Grandma’s sickness. Stella’s care of her charge was excellent, entirely lacking in any selfish element. Death hesitated, when he finally called, and for nearly a week the dying woman lay unconscious. These “days of strain” and the death and funeral were, always after, mentioned by Stella and her people as her “first shock.” For a time she was so nervous and restless and her sleep so disturbed that the doctor gave her hypnotics and advised her being sent away. She went to Atlanta for two months, boarding in the home of a Methodist minister, who some years before had been stationed in Rome. It was Stella’s first experience in a religious home. She had never been accustomed to hearing the “blessing” said, and food referred to as “God-given”

seemed, at first, quite too sacred to swallow. And the effect of morning worship—the seriously read Bible chapter, the earnest prayer, with the entire family kneeling—affected her profoundly, and gave to this godly home a sanctity which, at susceptible not-yet-fifteen, awakened emotions so powerful that for days she walked as one in a dream, one attracted by some wonderful vision which was drawing her, unresisting, into its very self. Each day was a step closer, and at prayer-meeting the Wednesday night before she returned home, she announced her conversion, with an intensity of earnestness which could but impress every hearer.

Stella Beckman went back to Rome filled with a zeal for the new religious life which commanded the respect of even her religiously careless father. Nor was it a flash in the pan. She joined the church.

She made her sister join the church, and to the church she gave four years of remarkable devotion. Church interests were first, and one Sunday the pastor publicly announced that for the twelve months past Stella Beckman had not missed a single service in any branch of the church’s activities. She taught a Sunday-school class. She sang in the choir. She was president of the Epworth League, and not only attended, but always “testified” at mid-week prayer-meeting. Her church interests took all her time. The foreign-missionary cause later laid a gripping hold upon her, and arrangements were made, four years after she went into the church, for her to go to a Missionary Training-School.

Somehow things went wrong here. She had expected an almost sanctified atmosphere. She was accustomed to being regarded as essentially devout, but there was a sense of order in the school which she felt was mechanical, class-room work seemed to be counted as important as religious services, and her fervidly expressed religious experiences appeared to reflect chill rather than the accustomed warmth of the home prayer-meetings. Moreover, real lessons were assigned which no amount of religious feeling or no intensity of personal praying made easy. She hadn’t studied for years; in fact, she had never learned to do intellectual work studiously. And even these good religious teachers did not hesitate to demand accurate recitations. She had been accustomed for years to have preference shown, and here she was treated only as one of many, and, humiliatingly, as one who was failing to maintain the standards of the many. She fell behind in the two most important studies, nor was her classwork in general good.

Whether she would have later proven capable of getting down to rock bottom and meeting the demands of reason on a rational basis, we cannot say, for the family hobby abruptly terminated her missionary career. “Mother dangerously sick with inflammatory rheumatism. Come at once,” the telegram said—and she hastily returned home to be met with, what her history records as, “my second shock.” Her mother WAS sick, and truly and genuinely suffering. The house was in disorder. Weeks followed in which Stella’s best strength was needed.

Her mother slowly mended, but never regained her old activity. The doctor said a heart-valve was damaged, and the family thereafter were never quite certain when the sudden end would come—an uncertainty which was proven legitimate ten years later, when she died, almost suddenly. Stella had met shock number two very well. The home-love and welcome and