Things
9781465666581
213 pages
Library of Alexandria
Overview
THE great alienist sat down at his desk, and having emptied his mind of all other impressions, held it up like a dipper for his new patient to fill. Large, blond, and handsome, she was plainly accustomed to being listened to. Before she had fairly undone her furs and folded her hands within her muff, the doctor’s lateral vision had told him that, whatever her problems, it was not about her own nervous system that she had come to consult him. Not too quickly her story began to take shape. Her household, her husband, her four children—three small boys and an older daughter, a girl of seventeen.... “My only thought has been my children, Dr. Despard.” “Your only thought, Mrs. Royce?” She assented. The daughter was the problem—the daughter of seventeen. “She and I have been such friends; I have always been a friend to my children, I hope, as well as a parent. And Celia’s little arrangements, her clothes and her small parties, have been as much my interests as hers—more, perhaps. The bond between us has been peculiarly close until the last year or so. Lately a rebellious spirit has begun to develop. I have tried to make allowances, but naturally there are certain questions of manners and deportment—small but important—about which one cannot yield. I am almost ashamed to confess how unaffectionate are the terms that we have reached. The situation will strike you as a strange one between a mother and daughter——”He shook his head. “You are by no means the only mother and daughter whose relations are unsatisfactory.” “Ah, the young people of to-day!” she sighed. “What is the matter with them, with the age, Dr. Despard? They are so hard, so individualistic. I myself was one of a large family, and we lived in the house with my grandparents and aunts. My life was made up of little duties for older people—duties I never thought of questioning. They were a pleasure to me. But if I ask Celia to go on an errand for me—or even to attend to something for herself—I am met by the look of a martyr or a rebel. But that is not the worst. At times, Dr. Despard, her language to me is violent—is—actually profane. I cannot help looking on this as an abnormal manifestation. At last I saw her case was pathological. No nice girl swears at her mother, and”—Mrs. Royce smiled—“my daughter is a nice girl.”
