The Iron Rule: Tyranny in the Household

Andrew Howland belonged to that class of rigid moralists who can tolerate in others no wanderings from the right way.  His children were forced into the straight jacket of external consistency from their earliest infancy; and if they deviated from the right line in which they were required to walk, punishment was sure to follow.

A child loves his parent naturally.  The latter may be harsh, and unreasonable; still the child will look up to him in weak dependence, while love mingles, like golden threads in a dark fabric, amid the fear and respect with which he regards him.  Thus it was with the children of Andrew Howland.  Their mother was a gentle, retiring woman, with a heart full of the best affections.  When the sunshine fell upon her golden locks in the early days of innocence, it was in a home where the ringing laugh, the merry shout, and the wild exuberance of feeling ever bursting from the heart of childhood were rarely checked; or, if repressed, with a hand that wounded not in its firm contraction.  She had grown up to womanhood amid all that was gentle, kind and loving.  Transplanted, then, like a tender flower from a sunny border, to the cold and formal home of her husband, she drooped in the uncongenial soil, down into which her heart-fibres penetrated in search of nutrition.  And yet, while drooping thus, she tenderly loved her husband, and earnestly sought to overcome in herself many true impulses of nature to which he gave the false name of weaknesses.  It was less painful thus to repress them herself, than to have them crushed in the iron hand with which he was ever ready to grasp them.

Let it not be thought that Andrew Howland was an evil minded man.  In the beginning we have intimated that this was not so.  He purposed wrong to no one.  Honest he was in all his dealings with the world; honest even to the division of a penny.  The radical fault of his character was coldness and intolerance.  Toward wrong-doing and wrong-doers, he had no forbearance whatever; and to him that strayed from the right path, whether child or man, he meted out, if in his power, the full measure of consequences.  Unfortunately for those who came within the circle of his authority, his ideas of right and wrong were based on warped and narrow views, the result of a defective religious education.  He, therefore, often called things wrong, from prejudice, that were not wrong in themselves; and sternly reacted upon others, and drove them away from him, when he might have led and guided them into the paths of virtue.

The first year of Andrew Howland’s married life was one of deep trial to the loving young creature he had taken from her sunny home to cherish in his bosom—­a bosom too cold to warm into vigorous life new shoots of affection.  And yet he loved his wife; loved her wisely, as he thought, not weakly, nor blindly.  He saw her faults, and, true to his character, laid his hands upon them.  Alas! how much of good was crushed in the rigid pressure!

To Mr. Howland life was indeed a stern reality.  Duties and responsibilities were ever in his thoughts.  Pleasure was but another name for sin, and a weakness of character an evil not to be tolerated.

Enough, for our present purpose, can be seen of the character of Andrew Howland in this brief outline.  As our story advances, it will appear in minuter shades, and more varied aspects.  Seven years from the day of his marriage we will introduce him to the reader.

“What shall I do with this boy?” said Mr. Howland.  He spoke sternly, yet in a perplexed voice, while he walked the floor of the room with a quickness of tread unusual.  “If something is not done to break him into obedience he will be ruined.”

“He needs all our forbearance,” Mrs. Howland ventured to remark, “as well as our care and solicitude.”

“Forbearance!  I have no forbearance toward wrong, Esther.  You have forborne until the child is beyond your control.”

“Not entirely,” was meekly answered, as the mother’s eyes drooped to the floor.

At this moment a servant, who had been sent for the child, came in with him.  A few doors away lived another child, about the same age, of whom little Andrew was very fond, and whose companionship he sought on every occasion.  Against the father of this child Mr. Howland had imbibed a strong prejudice, which was permitted to extend itself to his family.  Rigid and uncompromising in everything, he had observed that Andrew was frequently in company with the child of this neighbor, and felt impelled to lay a prohibition on their intercourse.  But Andrew, a light-hearted, high-spirited boy, who inherited from his father a strong will, was by no means inclined to yield a ready obedience in this particular.  He loved his little companion, and never was happier than when in her society.  Naturally, therefore, be sought it on every occasion, and when the positive interdiction of their intercourse came, the child felt that a duty was imposed upon him that was impossible of fulfillment.  Young as he was, he could endure punishment, but not give up his little friend.  Advantage was therefore taken of every opportunity to be with her that offered.  Punishments of various kinds were inflicted, but they acted only as temporary restraints.

As to this little girl herself, let it be understood, Mr. Howland had no personal objection.  He had never seen anything that was wrong in her, and had never heard a word of evil spoken against her.  The simple, yet all-embracing defect that appertained to her was his dislike of her father; and this dislike had its chief foundation in a wrong estimate of his character, the result of his own narrow prejudices.  Somewhat hastily, we will admit, did Mr. Howland utter the word that was to separate the little friends, and the word was half-repented of as soon as spoken.  But once uttered, it was a law to which he required the most implicit obedience.  He thought not of the wrong the separation might do his child; he thought only of enforcing obedience—­of breaking a stubborn will.  Obedience in children was, in his eyes, everything—­and he visited, with the sternest displeasure, every deviation therefrom.  The consequence was, that his little ones, in their nest at home, rarely saw in the face of their father a smile of affection; rarely heard his voice in words of tenderness.  Something, in their conduct was ever displeasing to him, and he attempted its correction by coldness, repulsion, harsh words, or cruel punishment.  He never sought to lead, but to force them into the right way.

The word of interdiction was uttered, but Andrew could not give up his sweet little friend; and the word was therefore disregarded.  Stealthily, to avoid punishment, he went to her but watchful eyes were upon him, and he was soon brought back.  Gently and earnestly his mother would chide his disobedience; harshly his father would punish it—­but all was of no avail.

“Where is Andrew?” asked Mr. Howland, on returning home one evening from his store, and not seeing the bright little fellow in the room with his mother.  This was on the occasion of his introduction to the reader.

“I don’t know.  He was here just now,” replied Mrs. Howland.

“I saw him a little while ago playing on the steps with Emily Winters,” said the nurse, who had come recently into the family, and was not aware of the prohibition that existed in regard to the child she had mentioned.

“Is it possible!” exclaimed Mr. Howland, angrily.  Then he added in an excited voice, “go and bring him home immediately!”

The nurse left the room and soon returned with the child.  In his face was a look of blended fear, anger and resolution.

“Where have you been, sir?” sternly asked Mr. Howland.

The child made no answer.

“Do you hear me, sir?”

A slight motion of shrinking and alarm might have been seen in the little fellow as the angry voice of his father fell upon his ears.  But he did not look up or make a reply.

“Will you answer me?  Stubborn boy!” exclaimed Mr. Howland, now catching hold tightly of Andrew’s arm.

“Why don’t you answer your father, my child?” said the mother, in a voice that was tender and appealing.  The tone reached the boy’s heart, and he lifted his large blue eyes from the floor and fixed them on his father’s threatening countenance.

“Say!  Where have you been?” repeated Mr. Howland.

“To see Emily,” returned Andrew.

“Haven’t I forbidden you to go there?”

The child’s eyes sunk again to the floor.

“Say!  Haven’t I forbidden you to go there?”

But there was no answer.

“Do you hear me?”

“Andrew!  Andrew! why don’t you answer your father?” came in distressed and tremulous tones from his mother’s lips.

Mr. Howland was about turning to chide sharply his wife for this interference, when Andrew again raised his eyes and said—­

“Yes, sir.”

“Then why have you disobeyed me?”

The boy’s eyes fell again, and he remained silent.

“I’ll break you of this if I break your heart!” said Mr. Howland severely, and, as he spoke, he almost lifted the child from the floor with his strong arm as he led him from the room.  A groan issued from the mother’s heart and she covered her face and wept.

By the time Mr. Howland reached the chamber above, to which he repaired with Andrew, the excitement of his anger had subsided; but not his stern purpose in regard to his child, who had again disobeyed him.  The absolute necessity of obedience in children he recognized in all its length and breadth.  He saw no hope for them in the future unless obedience were constrained at every cost.  Happy both for them and himself would it have been if he had been wiser in his modes of securing obedience, and more cautious about exacting from his children things almost impossible for them to perform.  Without a law there is no sin.  Careful, then, should every parent be how he enacts a law, the very existence of which insures its violation.

Mr. Howland had sought, by various modes of punishment, other than chastisement, to enforce obedience in this particular case.  Now he was resolved to try the severer remedy.  Andrew had expected nothing farther than to be shut up, alone, in the room, and to go, perhaps, supperless to bed, and he was nerved to bear this without a murmur.  But when the rod became suddenly visible, and was lifted above him in the air, his little heart was filled with terror.

“Oh, father!” he exclaimed, in a voice of fear, while his upturned, appealing face became ashy pale.

“You have disobeyed me again, my son,” said Mr. Howland, coldly and sternly, “and I must whip you for it.  Disobedient children have to be punished.”

“Oh, father!  Don’t whip me!  Don’t!” came huskily from the lips of the terrified child.  But even while he thus pleaded, the smarting strokes began to fall.

“Now, sir!” at length said Mr. Howland, pausing with the rod uplifted, “will you go into Mr. Winters’ again?”

The child hesitated, and down came a blow upon his tender limbs, followed by the words—­

“Say!  Will you go in there any more?”

Still there was a reluctance to make this promise, and another and harder stroke was given.  The father was resolved to conquer, and he did conquer.  A promise was extorted from the child’s lips, while, his heart yielded nothing.

“Very well, sir!  See that you keep your word,” said Mr. Howland, as he released the writhing sufferer from his firm grasp.  “If you disobey me again in this thing, I will give five times as much.”

And he turned from the chamber leaving the wronged and suffering child alone.

“I’ve begun now, and I’ll go through with it,” muttered Mr. Howland, as he reentered the room where his wife was sitting.  “I never saw so perverse and self-willed a child in my life.  If he is not subdued now, and forced to obey, his ultimate destruction is inevitable.”

“His fault was not a very great one,” Mrs. Howland ventured to suggest.

“Do you call disobedience a little fault?” asked Mr. Howland, his brow contracting as he spoke.

“I did not mean that,” quickly answered Mrs. Howland.  “I meant his going in to see Emily Winters.  The children are very fond of each other.”

“But I have told him not to go in there, haven’t I?”

“Yes.”

“Very well.  That settles the matter.  If he goes, he disobeys me; and if he disobeys me, he must be punished.”

“But, Andrew—­”

“It is useless to argue about this with me, Esther.  Entirely useless.  In your weakness you would indulge and ruin the boy.  But I know my duty better.”

Mrs. Howland sighed deeply and remained silent.  Some ten minutes afterwards, seeing her husband engaged with a book, she arose and left the room.  As soon as she closed the door, every movement was suddenly quickened, and she sprung up the stairway to the chamber from which had come down to her the screams of her boy, as he shrunk under the cruel strokes inflicted by the hand of his father.  Entering, she saw Andrew sitting on the floor, with his arms resting on a low chair, and his face buried in them.  He raised his head slowly, and turned to see who had come in.  The instant he saw that it was his mother, a flush came into his pale face, and tears dimmed the light of his beautiful, tender, loving eyes.  In another moment he was sobbing on her bosom.

“Dear Andrew must not be disobedient again,” said the mother, so soon as her child had grown calm, bending close to his cheek as she spoke, and letting her breath fall warmly over it.

“Emily is a good little girl, and I love her.  She ain’t bad, mother.  She is better than I am,” quickly returned the child, raising himself up, and lifting his eyes earnestly to his mother’s face.

“But your father has forbidden you to go to her house, Andrew.”

“Won’t he let Emily come to see me?” urged the child.

“No, dear.  He wants you to play with some one else.”

“But I don’t want to play with any one else.  Emily is a good girl, and I like her so much.  Indeed she ain’t bad, mother.  She’s good.”

“I know, dear,” answered the perplexed mother.  “I know that Emily is a good girl.  But—­”

“Then why won’t father let me play with her?” was Andrew’s quick interrogation.

“He doesn’t wish you to do so, my child, and you must be an obedient, good little boy, and then your father will love you.”

“He don’t love me!” said Andrew in a tone and with an emphasis that startled his mother.

“Oh yes, he does!  He loves you very much.  Isn’t he your father?” replied Mrs. Howland in an earnest voice.

“He wouldn’t have whipped me so hard if he had loved me!  I’m sure he wouldn’t, mother.”

And tears gushed from the eyes of the child at the remembrance of his father’s stern face, and the pain he had suffered.

“Andrew musn’t speak so of his father,” said Mrs. Howland in a chiding voice.  “Andrew was disobedient; that was the reason why his father punished him.  Andrew must be a good boy.”

“I ain’t bad, mother,” sobbed the child.  “I’m sure it ain’t bad to play with Emily.  She never does anything naughty.”

“It is bad if your father forbids your doing so,” replied Mrs. Howland.

“No—­it can’t be bad to play with Emily,” said the little fellow, speaking half to himself.  “She’s so good, and I love her.”

All in vain proved the mother’s effort to make her boy see that it was wrong to play with Emily.  He wanted a reason beyond the (sic) commannd of his father, and that she was not able to give.  The more she talked with him, the more plainly did she see that rebellion was in his young heart, and that he would act it out in the face of all consequences.  Deeply saddened was she at this conviction, for she well knew that obedience to parents is the good ground into which the seeds of civil and religious obedience in manhood must be sown.

As for herself, Mrs. Howland had no objection to little Emily Winters as the companion of Andrew.  She was, as the boy said, a good girl, and her influence over him was for good.  But the stern prejudice of Mr. Howland had come in to break up the friendship formed between the children, and his inflexible will would brook no opposition.  All must bend to him, even at the risk of breaking.

Nearly half an hour did Mrs. Howland pass alone with her boy, striving to awaken the better impulses of his heart, and as they became active, seeking to implant in his mind a willingness to deny himself, in order to obey his father.  But the father asked too much.  There was no charge of evil against Emily as a reason for this interdiction.  All the mother could say, was—­

“It is your father’s wish and command, my child, and you must obey him.”

But this could not satisfy the boy’s mind in a case where his feelings were so deeply interested.  At length, Mrs. Howland turned to leave the room.  Andrew followed her to the door, and looking up with a sad light in his large eyes, murmured—­

“I do love you, mother!”

A tear fell upon his face as his mother stooped to kiss him.  A little while after, and he was alone.

“I’m afraid,” said Mrs. Howland, joining her husband soon after, “that we have done wrong in prohibiting all intercourse between Andrew and little Emily Winters.”

“Why so?” was quickly asked, and in no very pleasant tone of voice.

“The children are very much attached to each other.”

“That is no reason.”

“It would be no reason if there was anything bad about Emily.  But there is not.  She is a very good little girl.”

“I’m not so sure of that,” said Mr. Howland.

“I never saw anything out of the way in her.”

“It’s more than I can say of her father, then,” was replied.  “There lies my chief objection.  I want no intercourse between the families, and do not mean to have any.  In this I am entirely in earnest.  Andrew must seek another playfellow.”

“I’m afraid we will have a great deal of trouble,” sighed Mrs. Howland.

“I am not, then.  Let me know whenever he disobeys in this matter, and I’ll apply the remedy in a way to cure him.  His will has to be broken, and the present occasion is as good as any other for effecting so all-important an object.  The stronger he is tempted to disobey, the more effectual will be the subjugation of his will, when the conquest is made.”

It was useless for Mrs. Howland to argue with her husband.  He never yielded the smallest assent to any reasons she might bring, nor to any position she might assume.  So, with a pressure on her heart, and a clear perception in her mind that he was wrong, she heard these last words in silence.

“Shall I call Andrew down?” asked the mother, as the tea-bell rung, soon after.

“No,” replied Mr. Howland, firmly; “I wish him to understand that I am in earnest.”

“Don’t you think he has been punished sufficiently?” said Mrs. Howland, timidly.

“Of course I do not, or I would remit the penalty of transgression,” coldly returned her husband.  “He’s a stubborn, self-willed boy, and must be made to feel that he has a master.”

“Kindness and persuasion often does—­”

“I will hear no more of that!” quickly returned Mr. Howland; “and I wish you, once for all, to understand, Esther, that I will not consent to an interference on your part with what I believe to be my duty.  Thousands of children have been ruined by this weak kindness and persuasion, but this shall never be the case with mine.”

Mr. Howland did not observe that his wife caught her breath, as he uttered the first few words of his harsh report.  She made no further answer, but passed on with her husband to the tea-room.  But she ate nothing.  Dreamily rested her eyes on vacancy, as she sat at the table.  Her mind took no note of images pictured on the retina, for her thoughts were in another place, and with her inner vision she saw the sad form of her wronged and suffering child shrinking in the lone chamber where he had been banished.

“Shall I take Andrew some supper?” she asked, as she arose, at length, from the table.

“He can have some bread and water,” was coldly and briefly answered.

Will any one blame the mother, that she went beyond this?  A few minutes afterward she entered the room in which Andrew had been punished, bearing in her hands a small tray, on which was a cup of milk and water, some toast, and a piece of cake.  The twilight had already fallen, and dusky shadows had gathered so thickly that the eyes of Mrs. Howland failed to see her child on first entering the room.

“Andrew!” she called, in a low, tender voice.

But there was no reply.

“Andrew!”

Still all remained silent.

More accustomed to the feeble light that pervaded the chamber, Mrs. Howland now perceived her boy in a corner, sitting upon the floor, with his head reclining upon a low ottoman.  He was asleep.  Placing the tray she had brought upon a table, Mrs. Howland lifted the child in her arms, and as she did so, he murmured in a sad voice—­

“Don’t, papa! oh, don’t strike so hard!”

Unable to repress her feelings, the mother’s tears gushed over her cheeks, and her bosom heaved with emotions that spent themselves in sobs and moans.

For many minutes she sat thus.  But the child slept on.  Once or twice she tried to awake him, that he might get the supper she had brought; but he slept on soundly, and she refrained, unwilling to call him back to the grief of mind she felt that consciousness would restore.  Undressing him, at length, she laid him in his bed, and bending over his precious form in the deeper darkness that had now fallen, lifted her heart, and prayed that God would keep him from evil.  For a long time did she bend thus over her boy, and longer still would she have remained near him, for her heart was affected with an unusual tenderness, had not the cries of her younger child summoned her from the room.