Chapter 12

THE LAND O' LUNGERS

"Is Mrs. Duke in?"

David looked up quickly as the door opened. He saw a fair petulant face, with pouting lips, with discontent in the dark eyes. He did not know that face. Yet this girl had not the studied cheerfulness of manner that marks church callers at sanatoriums. She did not look sick, only cross. Oh, it was the new girl, of course. Carol had said she was coming. And she was not really sick, just threatened.

"Mrs. Duke is over at the Main Building, but will be back very soon. Will you come in and wait?"

She came in without speaking, pulled a chair from the corner of the porch, and flounced down among the cushions. David could not restrain a smile. She looked so babyishly young, and so furiously cross. To David, youth and crossness were incongruous.

"I am Nancy Tucker," said the girl at last.

"And I am Mr. Duke, as you probably surmise from seeing me on Mrs. Duke's porch. She will be back directly. I hope you are not in a hurry."

"Hurry! What's the use of hurrying? I am twenty years old. I've got a whole lifetime to do nothing in, haven't I?"

"You've got a lifetime ahead of you all right, but whether you are going to do nothing or not depends largely on you."

"It doesn't depend on me at all. It depends on God, and He said, 'Nothing doing. Just get out and rust the rest of your life. We don't need you.'"

"That does not sound like God," said David quietly.

"Well, He gave me the bugs, didn't He?"

"Oh, the bugs,--you've got them, have you? You don't look like it. I didn't know it was your health. I thought maybe it was just your disposition."

David smiled winningly as he spoke, and the smile took the sting from the words.

"The bugs are worse on the disposition than they are on the lungs, aren't they?"

"Well, it depends. Carol says they haven't hit mine yet." He lifted his head with boyish pride. "She ought to know. So I don't argue with her. I am willing to take her word for it."

Nancy smiled a little, a transforming smile that swept the discontent from her face and made her nearly beautiful. But it only lasted a moment.

"Oh, go on and smile. It did me good. You can't imagine how much better I felt directly."

"There's nothing to make me smile," cried Nancy hotly.

"You may smile at me," cried Carol gaily, as she ran in. "How do you do? You are Miss Tucker, aren't you? They were telling me about you at the office."

"Yes, I am Miss Tucker. Are you Mrs. Duke? You look too young for a minister's wife."

"Yes, I am Mrs. Duke, and I am not a bit too young."

"I asked them if I should call a doctor, and they said that could wait a while. First of all, they said, I must come to Room Six and meet the Dukes."

Carol looked puzzled. "They didn't tell me that. What did they want us to do to you?"

"I don't know. I just said, 'Well, I guess I'd better get a doctor to come and kill me off,' and they said, 'You go over to Number Six and meet the Dukes.'"

"They said lovely things about you," Carol told her, smiling. "And they say you will be well in a few months,--that you haven't T. B.'s at all yet, just premonitions."

The good news brought no answering light to the girl's face.

"They are nurses. You can't believe a word they say. It is their business to build up false hopes."

"When any one tells me David is worse, I think, 'That is a wicked story'; but when any one says, 'He is better,' I am ready to fall on my knees and salute them as messengers from Heaven," said Carol.

One of the sudden dark clouds passed quickly overhead, obscuring the glare of the sunshine, darkening the yellow sand.

"I hate this country," said Nancy Tucker. "I hate that yellow hot sand, and the yellow hot sun, and the lights and shadows on the mountains. I hate the mountains most of all. They look so abominably cock-sure, so crowy, standing off there and glaring down on us as if they were laughing at our silly little fight for health."

Carol was speechless, but David spoke up quickly.

"That is strange; Carol and I think it is a beautiful country,--the broad stretch of the mesa, the blue cloud on the mountains, the shadow in the canyons, and most of all, the sunshine on the slopes. We think the fight against T. B.'s is like walking through the dark shade in the canyons, and then suddenly stepping out on to the sunny slopes."

"I know you are a preacher. I suppose it is your business to talk like that." Then when Carol and David only smiled excusingly, she said, "Excuse me, I didn't mean to be rude. But it is hideous, and--I love to be happy, and laugh,--"

"Go on and do it," urged David. "We've just been waiting to hear you laugh."

"You should have been at the office with me," said Carol. "We laughed until we were nearly helpless. It is that silly Mr. Gooding again, David. He isn't very sick, Miss Tucker,--he just has red rales. I don't know what red rales are, but when the nurses say that, it means you aren't very sick and will soon be well. But Gooding is what he calls 'hipped on himself.' He is always scared to death. He admits it. Well, last night they had lobster salad, a silly thing to have in a sanatorium. And Gooding ordered two extra helpings. The waiter didn't want to give it to him, but Gooding is allowed anything he wants so the waiter gave in. In the night he had a pain and got scared. He rang for the nurses, and was sure he was going to die. They had to sit up with him all night and rub him, and he groaned, and told them what to tell his mother and said he knew all along he could never pull through. But the nurse gave him some castor oil, and made him take it, and finally he went to sleep. And every one is having a grand time with him this morning."

Nancy joined, rather grudgingly, in their laughter.

"Oh, I suppose funny things happen. I know that. But what's the use of laughing when we are all half dead?"

"I'm not. Not within a mile of it. You brag about yourself if you like, but count me out."

"Hello, Preacher! How are you making it to-day?"

They all turned to the window, greeting warmly the man who stood outside, leaning heavily on two canes.

"Miss Tucker, won't you meet Mr. Nevius?"

In response to the repeated inquiry, David said, "Just fine this morning. How are you?"

"Oh, I am more of an acquisition than ever. I think I have a bug in my heart." He turned to Miss Tucker cheerfully. "I am really the pride of the institution. I've got 'em in the lungs and the throat and the digestive apparatus, and the bones, and the blood, and one doctor includes the brain. But I flatter myself that I've developed them in a brand-new place, and I'm trying to get the rest of the chasers to take up a collection and have me stuffed for a parlor ornament."

"How does a bug in the heart feel?"

"Oh, just about like love. I really can't tell any difference myself. It may be one, it may be the other. But whichever it is I think I deserve to be stuffed. Hey, Barrows!" he called suddenly, balancing himself on one cane and waving a summons with the other. "Come across! New lunger is here, young, good-looking. I saw her first! Hands off!"

Barrows rushed up as rapidly as circumstances permitted, and looked eagerly inside.

"It is my turn," he said reproachfully. "You are not playing fair. I say we submit this to arbitration. You had first shot at Miss Landbury, didn't you?"

"I am not a nigger baby at a county fair, three shots for ten cents," interrupted Nancy resentfully. But when the others laughed at her ready sally, she joined in good-naturedly.

"You don't look like a lunger," said Barrows, eying her critically.

"Mr. Duke thinks I came out for the benefit of my disposition."

"Good idea." Nevius jerked a note-book from his pocket and made a hurried notation.

"Taking notes for a sermon?" asked Carol.

"No, for a sickness. That's where I'll get 'em next. I hadn't thought of the disposition. Thank you, thank you very much. I'll have it to-morrow. Bugs in the disposition,--sounds medical, doesn't it?"

"Oh, don't, Mr. Nevius," entreated Carol. "Don't get anything the matter with your disposition. We don't care where else you collect them, as long as you keep on making us laugh. But, woodman, spare that disposition."

Nevius pulled out the note-book and crossed off the notation. "There it goes again," he muttered. "Women always were a blot on the escutcheon of scientific progress. Just to oblige you, I've got to forego the pleasure of making a medical curiosity of myself. Well, well. Women are all right for domestic purposes, but they sure are a check on science."

"They are a check on your bank-book, too, let me tell you," said Barrows quickly. "I never cared how much my wife checked me up on science, but when she checked me out of three bank-accounts I drew the line."

"Speaking of death," began Nevius suddenly.

"Nobody spoke of it, and nobody wants to," said Carol.

"Miss Tucker suggests it by the forlornity of her attitude. And since she has started the subject, I must needs continue. I want to tell you something funny. You weren't here when Reddy Waters croaked, were you, Duke? He had the cottage next to mine. I was in bed at the time with--well, I don't remember where I was breaking out at the time, but I was in bed. You may have noticed that I have what might be called a classic pallor, and a general resemblance to a corpse."

Nancy shivered a little and Carol frowned, but Nevius continued imperturbably. "The undertaker down-town is a lunger, and a nervous wreck to boot. But he is a good undertaker. He works hard. Maybe he is practising up so he can do a really artistic job on himself when the time comes. Anyhow, Reddy died. They always come after them when the rest of us are in at dinner. It interferes with the appetite to see the long basket going out. So when the rest were eating, old Bennett comes driving up after Reddy. It was just about dark, that dusky, spooky time when the shadows come down from the mountains and cover up the sunny slopes you preachers rave about. So up comes Bennett, and he got into the wrong cottage. First thing I knew, some one softly pushed open the door, and in walked Bennett at the front end of the long basket, the assistant trailing him in the rear. I felt kind of weak, so I just laid there until Bennett got beside me. Then I slowly rose up and put out one cold clammy hand and touched his. Bennett choked and the assistant yelled, and they dropped the basket and fled. I rang the bell and told the nurse to make that crazy undertaker come and get the right corpse that was patiently waiting for him, and she called him on the telephone. Nothing doing. A corpse that didn't have any better judgment than that could stay in bed until doomsday for all of him. So they had to get another undertaker. But Bennett told her to get the basket and he would send the assistant after it. But I held it for ransom, and Bennett had to pay me two dollars for it."

His auditors wiped their eyes, half ashamed of their laughter.

"It is funny," said Nancy Tucker, "but it seems awful to laugh at such things."

"Awful! Not a bit of it," declared Barrows. "It's religious. Doesn't it say in the Bible, 'Laugh and the world laughs with you, Die and the world laughs on'?"

"I laugh,--but I am ashamed of myself," confessed Carol.

"What do women want to spoil a good story for?" protested Nevius. "That's a funny story, and it is true. It is supposed to be laughed at. And Reddy is better off. He had so many bugs you couldn't tell which was bugs and which was Reddy. He was an ugly guy, too, and he was stuck on a girl and she turned him down. She said Reddy was all right, but no one could raise a eugenical family with a father as ugly as Reddy. He didn't care if he died. Every night he used to flip up a coin to see if he would live till morning. He said if he got off ahead of us he was coming back to haunt us. But I told him he'd better fly while the flying was good, for I sure would show him a lively race up to the rosy clouds if I ever caught up. I knew if he got there first he'd pick out the best harp and leave me a wheezy mouth organ. He always wanted the best of everything."

Just then the nurse opened the door.

"Barrows and Nevius," she said sternly. "This is the rest hour, and you are both under orders. Please go home at once and go to bed, or I shall report to Mrs. Hartley." When they had gone, she looked searchingly into the face of the brand-new chaser. "How are you feeling now?" she asked.

"Oh, pretty well." And then she added honestly, "It really isn't as bad as I had expected. I think I can stand it a while."

"Have you caught a glimpse of the sunny slopes yet?"

Instinctively they turned their eyes to the distant mountains, with the white crown of snow at the top, and beneath, long radiating lines of alternating light and shadow, stretching down to the mesa.

"The shadows look pretty dark," she said, "but the sunny slopes are there all right. But I was happy at home; I had hopes and plans--"

"Yes, we all did," interrupted David quickly. "We were all happy, and had hopes and plans, and-- But since we are here and have to stay, isn't it God's blessing that there is sunshine for us on the slopes?"