WHERE HEALTH BEGINS

In a little white cottage tent, at the end of a long row of minutely similar, little white cottage tents, sat David and Carol in the early evening of a day in May, looking wistfully out at the wide sweep of gray mesa land, reaching miles away to the mountains, blue and solemn in the distance.

"Do--do you feel better yet, David?" Carol asked at last, desperately determined to break the menacing silence.

David drew his breath. "I can't seem to notice any difference yet," he replied honestly. "It doesn't look much like Missouri, does it?"

"It is pretty,--very pretty," she said resolutely.

"Carol, be a good Presbyterian and tell the truth. Do you wish you had gone home, to green and gra.s.sy Iowa?"

"David Duke, I am at home, and here is where I want to be and no place else in the world. It is big and bleak and bare, but-- You are going to get well, aren't you, David?"

"Of course I am, but give me time. Even Miracle Land can't transform weakness to health in two hours."

"I must go over to the office. Mrs. Hartley said she wanted to give me some instructions."

Carol rose quickly and stepped outside the cottage.

Crossing the mesa she met three men who stopped her with a gesture.

They were of sadly similar appearance, tall, thin, shoulders stooped, hair dull and l.u.s.terless, eyes dry and bright. Carol thought at first they were brothers, and so they were,--brothers in the grip of the great white plague.

"Are you a lunger?" e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed one of them in astonishment, noting the light in her eyes and the flush in her cheeks.

"A--lunger?"

"Yes,--have you got the bugs?"

"The bugs!"

"Say, are you chasing the cure?"

"Of course not," interrupted the oldest of the three impatiently.

"There's nothing the matter with her, except that she's a lunger's wife. Your husband is the minister from St. Louis, isn't he?"

"Yes,--I am Mrs. Duke."

"I am Thompson. I used to be a medical missionary in the Ozarks. How is your husband?"

"Oh, he is doing nicely," she said brightly,--the brightness a.s.sumed to hide the fear in her heart that some day David might look like that.

Thompson laughed disagreeably. "Sure, they always do nicely at first.

But when the bugs get 'em, they're gone. They think they're better, they say they are getting well,--G.o.d!"

Carol looked at him with questioning reproach in the shadowed eyes.

"It does not hurt us to hope, at least," she said gently. "It does no harm, and it makes us happier."

"Oh, yes," came the bitter answer. "Sure it does. But wait a few years. Bugs eat hope and happiness as well as lungs."

Carol quivered. "You make me afraid," she said.

"Thompson is an old croak," interrupted one of the younger men, smiling encouragement. "Don't waste your time on him,--talk to me. He is such a grouch that he gives the bugs a regular bed to sleep in. He'd have been well years ago if he hadn't been such a chronic kicker. Cheer up, Mrs. Duke. Of course your husband will get along. Got it right at the start, didn't you?"

"Oh, yes, right at the very start."

"That's good. Most people fool around too long and then it's too late, and all their own fault. Sure, your husband is all right. It's too bad Thompson can't die, isn't it? He's got too mean a disposition to keep on living with white folks."

"Oh, I shouldn't say that," disclaimed Carol quickly. "He--he is just not quite like the people I have known. I didn't know how to take him.

He was only joking of course." She smiled forgivingly at him, and Thompson had the grace to flush a little.

"I am Jimmy Jones," said the second man. "I was a bartender in little old Chi. Far cry from a missionary to a bartender, but I'll take my chances on Paradise with Thompson any day."

"A--a bartender." Carol rubbed her slender fingers in bewilderment.

"I am Arnold Barrows, formerly a Latin professor. _Amo, mas, mat,_"

said the third man suddenly. "I am looking for my Paradise right here on earth, and I am sorry you are married. My idea of Paradise is a girl like you and a man like me, and everything else go hang."

Carol drew herself up as though poised for flight, a startled bird taking wing.

Thompson and Jones laughed at her horrified face, but the professor maintained his solemn gravity.

"He is just a fool," said the bartender encouragingly. "Don't bother about him. It is not you in particular, he is nuts on all the girls.

Cheer up. We're not so bad as we sound. I have a cottage near you.

Tell the parson I'll be in to-morrow to give him the latest light on the bonfires in perdition. I know all about them. Tell him we'll organize a combination prayer-meeting; he can lead the prayer and I'll give advanced lessons in bunny-hugs and fancy-fizzes."

"Good night,--good night,--good night," gasped Carol.

Forgetting her errand to the office, she rushed back to David, to safety, to the sheltering folds of the little white cottage tent.

He questioned her curiously about her experience, and although she tried to evade the harsher points, he drew every word from her reluctant lips.

"Lunger,--and bugs,--and chasers,--it doesn't sound nice, David."

"But maybe it is the best thing after all. We are not used to it yet, but I suppose it is better for them to take it lightly and laugh and be funny about it. They have to spend a lifetime with the specter, you know,--maybe the joking takes away some of the grimness."

Carol shivered a little.

"Aren't you going to the office?"

"No, I am not. If Mrs. Hartley wants to see me, she can come here. I am scared, honestly. Let's do something. Let's go to bed, David."

It was a two-roomed cottage, a thin canvas wall separating the rooms.

There were window-flaps on every side, and conscientiously Carol left them every one upraised, although she had goose-flesh every time she glanced into the black wall of darkness outside the circle of their lights, a wall only punctuated by the yellow rays of light here and there, where the more riotous guests of the inst.i.tution were dissipating up to the wicked hour of nine o'clock.

"Good night, David,--you will call me if you want anything, won't you?"

And Carol leaped into bed, desperately afraid a lizard, or a scorpion or a centipede might lie beneath in wait for unwary pink toes once the guarding lights were out.

This was the land where health began,--the land of pure light air, of clear and penetrating sunshine, the land of ruddy cheeks and bounding blood. This was the land which would bring color back to the pale face of David, would restore the vigor to his step, the ring to his voice.

It was the land where health began.