Part 16

She seated herself and threw a quality of rigidity into her backbone calculated to impress if not actually to appeal. “I want your help,” she said.

“Fine, fat way you’ve got of opening up a request for a favor,” he retorted, recovering himself somewhat, and in a particularly discouraging voice. But the shrewd old judge of human nature before him marked the little pursing at the corners of the mouth. “I’ll bet I know what it is.”

“I’ll bet all the money I’ve got in the bank and my best gold tooth thrown in you don’t,” was the prompt retort.

“There’s a sporting proposition, all right,” cried the editor in great admiration. “I thought you was going to ask me to let up on the city administration now you’ve got one of the fat jobs in the family, with your Dr. Strong.”

“It’s a good thing you don’t have to make guesses for a living,” returned his caller scornfully. “Pitch into the administration as hard as you like. I don’t care. All I want is for you to print the news about this diphtheria epidemic.”

“Is that all?” There was a profound sardonicism in the final word.

“Come to think of it, it isn’t. I want you to print some editorials, too, telling people how to take care of themselves while the disease is spreading.”

“Anything more?”

“Well, you might do the same thing about the measles epidemic.”

“Harr-rr-rr!” It was a singular growl, not wholly compounded of wrath and disgust. “Doc Strong send you here?”

“No; he didn’t!”

“Don’t bite me. I believe you.”

“Will you publish some articles?”

“Look-a-here, Mrs. Sharpless; the ‘Star’ is a business proposition. Its business is to make money for me. That’s all it’s here for. People say some pretty tough things about me and the paper. Well, we’re pretty tough. We can stand ‘em. Let ‘em talk, so long as I get the circulation and the advertising and the cash. Now, you want me to print something for you. Come down to brass tacks; what is there in it for me?”

“A chance to be of some real use to your city for once in your life,” answered Grandma Sharpless mildly. “Isn’t that enough?”

Bart Snyder threw back his head and laughed immoderately. “Say, I like you,” he gurgled. “You’ve got nerve. Me a good Samaritan! It’s so rich, I’m half a mind to go you, if it wasn’t for losing the advertising. Wha’ d’ ye want me to say, anyway, just for curiosity and cussedness?”

“Just give the people plain talk,” explained the visitor. “Talk to ‘em in your editorials as if you had ‘em by the buttonhole. Say to them: ‘Do you want to get diphtheria? Well, you don’t need to. It’s just as easy to avoid it as to have it. Are you anxious to have measles in your house? It’s for you to decide. All you need is to take reasonable care against it. Infectious disease only kills foo—careless people.’”

“Let it go at ‘fools,’” interjected Mr. Snyder, smiting his thigh. “Go on.”

“Then I’d give them simple, straight advice; tell them how to recognize the early symptoms; how and where to get anti-toxin. And I’d scare ‘em, too. I’d tell ‘em there are five thousand cases of the two diseases in town, and there will be ten thousand in a week unless something is done.”

Up rose the editor-proprietor, kicked over his own chair, whirled Mrs. Sharpless’s chair with its human burden to the desk, thrust a pencil into her hand, and slapped down a pad before her.

“Write it,” he adjured her.

“Who? Me?” cried Mrs. Sharpless, her astonishment momentarily overwhelming her grammar. “Bless you, man! I’m no writer.”

“Talk it, then, and make your pencil take down the talk. I’ll be back in a minute.”

That minute stretched to a good half-hour, during which period Grandma Sharpless talked to her pencil. When Mr. Snyder returned, he had with him a mournful-looking man who, he explained occultly, “holds down our city desk.”

“This is our new Health Editor,” chuckled Snyder, indicating Mrs. Sharpless. “How many cases did you say there were in town, ma’am?”

“Five thousand or more.”

The city editor whistled whisperingly. “Where do you get that?” he asked.

“From Dr. Strong.”

“That’s news,” said the desk man. “I didn’t suppose it was half so bad. If only we dared print it!”

“No other paper in town dares,” suggested the visitor insinuatingly.

“Makes it all the more news,” remarked Snyder. “What if we played it up for a big feature, eh?”

“Advertisers,” said the city editor significantly.

“Let ‘em drop out. They’ll come back quick enough, when we’ve shown up one or two and told why they quit us. And think of the splash we can make! Only paper in the city that dares tell the truth. We’ll rub that into our highly respectable rivals. I’ll make you a proposition,” he added, turning to his caller.

“Make it.”

“You know I’ve hammered at Tom Clyde pretty hard. I don’t cotton to that saintly, holier-than-thou reform bunch at all. Well, let Clyde come into the ‘Star’ with a signed statement as President of the Public Health League, and we’ll make it the basis of a campaign that will rip this town wide open for a couple of weeks. I’d like to see him in my paper, after all the roasting we’ve handed him.” And the malicious face wrinkled into another grin.

“You’ve bought a bargain,” stated Mrs. Sharpless. “The statement will be ready to-night. And another from Dr. Strong for good measure.”

“Fine business!” ejaculated the “Star’s” owner. “Not open to a reasonable offer in the newspaper game, are you?” he added, laughing. “No? Well, I’m sorry.”

“Would there be any use in my seeing the editors of the other papers?” asked Mrs. Sharpless.

“Watch them fall in line,” was the grim response. “Before we’ve been out a day, they’ll be tumbling over each other to make the dear, deluded public believe that they’re the real pioneers in saving the city from the deadly germ.”

“Well, here are my notes, if you can make anything out of them.”

“Eh? Notes?” said the newspaper man, who had been glancing at the sheets over Mrs. Sharp-less’s shoulder. “Oh—ah. Yes, of course. All right. Glad to have metcher,” he added, politely ushering her to the door. “I’ll send a reporter up for the statements at eight o’clock.”

“Thank you very much, Bartholomew Snyder,” said Grandma Sharpless, shaking hands.

“Not a bit of it! Thanks the other way. You’ve given me a good tip in my own game. Watch me—us—wake ‘em up to-morrow.”

Only the combined insistence of Grandma Sharpless and diplomacy of the Health Master overrode Mr. Clyde’s angry objections to “going into that filthy sheet” when the matter was broached to him that evening. For the good of the cause he finally acceded. And next morning the “Star” was a sight! It blazed in red captions. It squirmed and wriggled with illustrations of alleged germs. It shrieked in stentorian headlines. If the city had been beset by all the dogs of war, it couldn’t have blared more martial defiance against the enemy. It held its competitors up to infinite scorn and derision as mean-spirited shirks and cowards, and slathered itself with fulsome praises as the only original prop of truth and righteousness. And, as the centerpoint and core of all this, flaunted-the statement and signature of the Honorable Thomas Clyde, President of the Worthington Public Health League—with photograph. The face of Mr. Clyde, as he confronted this outrage upon his sensibilities at the breakfast table, was gloom itself until he turned to the editorial page. Then he emitted a whoop of glee. For there, double-leaded and double-headed was a Health Column, by “Our Special Writer, Grandma Sharpless, the Wisest Woman in Worthington. She will contribute opinions and advice on the epidemic to the ‘Star’ exclusively.” (Mr. Snyder had taken a chance with this latter statement.)

“Let me see,” gasped the old lady, when her son-in-law made known the cause of his mirth. Then, “They’ve published that stuff of mine just as I wrote it. I didn’t dream it was for print.”

“That’s what makes it so bully,” said the Health Master. “You’ve got the editorial trick of confidential, convincing, man-to-man talk down fine. What’s more, you’ll have to keep it up, now. Your friend, Snyder, has fairly caught you. Well, we need an official organ in the household.”

Vowing that she couldn’t and wouldn’t do it, nevertheless the new “editor” began to think of so many things that she wanted to say that, each day, when a messenger arrived from the “Star” with a polite request for “copy,” there was a telling column ready of the Health Master’s wisdom, simplified and pointed by Grandma Sharpless’s own pungent, crisp, vigorous, and homely style. Thanks largely to this, the “Star” became the mouthpiece of an anti-epidemic campaign which speedily enlisted the whole city.

But the “yellow” was not to have the field to itself. Once the cat was out of the bag, the other papers not only recognized it as a cat with great uproar, but, so to speak, proceeded to tie a can to its tail and pelt it through the streets of the city. As a matter of fact, no newspaper wishes to be hampered in the publishing of legitimate news; and it was only by the sternest threats of withdrawal of patronage that the large advertisers had hitherto succeeded in coercing the press of Worthington. Further coercion was useless, now that the facts had found their way into type. With great unanimity and an enthusiasm none the less genuine for having been repressed, the papers rushed into the breach. The “Clarion” organized an Anti-Infection League of School Children, with officers and banners. The “Press” “attended to” the recreant Dr. Mullins so fiercely that, notwithstanding his pull, he resigned his position in the Health Department because of “breakdown due to overwork in the course of his duties,” and ceased to trouble, in official circles. Enterprising reporters of the “Observer” caused the arrest of thirty-five trolley-car conductors for moistening transfers with a licked thumb, and then got the street-car company to issue a new form of transfer inscribed across the back, “Keep me away from your Mouth.” It fell to the “Evening News” to drive the common drinking-cup out of existence, after which it instituted reforms in soda fountains, restaurants, and barber shops, while the “Telegram” garnered great glory by interspersing the inning-by-inning returns of the baseball championship with bits of counsel as to how to avoid contagion in the theater, in the street, in travel, in banks, at home, and in various other walks of life. But the “Star” held foremost place, and clinched it with a Sunday “cut-out” to be worn as a badge, inscribed “Hands Off, Please, Until It’s Over.” All of which, while it sometimes verged upon the absurd, served the fundamentally valuable purpose of keeping the public in mind of the peril of contact with infected persons or articles.

Slowly but decisively the public absorbed the lesson. “Arm’s length” became a catch-phrase; a motto; a slogan. People came slowly to comprehend the methods by which disease is spread and the principles of self-protection.

And as knowledge widened, the epidemic ebbed, though gradually. Serious epidemics are not conquered or even perceptibly checked in a day. They are like floods; dam them in one place and they break through your defenses in another. Inexplicable outbreaks occur just when the tide seems to have turned. And when victory does come, it may not be ascribable to any specific achievement of the hygienic forces. The most that can be said is that the persevering combination of effort has at last made itself felt.

The red placards began to disappear; many of them, alas! only after the sable symbol of death had appeared beneath them. Dr. Strong and his worn-out aides found time to draw breath and reckon up their accounts in human life. The early mortality had been terrific. Of the cases which had developed in the period of suppression, before antitoxin was readily obtainable, more than a third had died.

“Nobody will ever be indicted for those murders,” said Dr. Strong to Mr. Clyde grimly. “But we have the satisfaction of knowing what can really be done by prompt work. Look at the figures after the free anti-toxin was established.”

There was a drop in the death rate, first to twenty per cent, then to ten, and, in the ebb stage of the scourge, to well below five.

“How many infections we’ve prevented by giving anti-toxin to immunize exposed persons, there’s no telling,” continued Dr. Strong. “That principle of starting a back-fire in diphtheria,—it’s exactly like starting a back-fire in a prairie conflagration,—by getting anti-toxin into the system in time to head off the poison of the disease itself, is one of the two or three great achievements of medical science. There isn’t an infected household in the city today, I believe, where this hasn’t been done. The end is in sight.”

“Then you can go away and get a few days’ rest,” said Grandma Sharpless, who constituted herself the Health Master’s own health guardian and undiplomaed medical adviser, and to whom he habitually rendered meek obedience; for she had been watching with anxiety the haggard lines in his face.

“Not yet,” he returned. “Measles we still have with us.”

“Decreasing, though,” said Mrs. Clyde. “Our nurses report a heavy drop in new cases and a big crop of convalescents.”

“It is those convalescents that we must watch. I don’t want a generation of deaf citizens growing up from this onset.”

“But can you prevent it if the disease attacks the ears?” asked Clyde.

“Almost certainly. We’ve got to inspect every child who has or had measles in this epidemic, and, where the ear-drum is shiny and concave, we will puncture it, by a very simple operation, which saves serious trouble in ninety per cent of the cases, at least. But it means constant watchfulness, for often the infection progresses without pain.”

“At the same time your inspectors will watch for other after-effects, then,” suggested Mrs. Sharpless.

“Exactly. It’s my own opinion that nearly all the serious diseases of the eye, ear, liver, kidney, heart, and so on in early middle age are the late remote effects of what we carelessly call the lesser diseases of childhood. It is only a theory as yet; though some day I think it will be proved. At any rate, we know that a serious and pretty definite percentage of all deafness follows measles; and we are going to carry this thing through far enough to prevent that sequel and to turn over a reasonably cleaned-up situation to Dr. Merritt.”

“He’s out of danger, by the way,” said Mrs. Clyde, “and will be back at his desk in a fortnight.”

“Well; he’ll have an easier job henceforth,” prophesied Mr. Clyde. “He’s got an enlightened city to watch over. And he can thank you for that, Strong.”

“He can thank the Clyde family,” said Dr. Strong with feeling. “I could have done little without you back of me.”

“It’s been interesting to extend the principles of our Household Protective Association to the larger world,” smiled Clyde. “Beyond our own city, too, in one case. Manny has had a letter from the Professor of Hygiene at Hamilton College, where he enters next year, thanking him on behalf of the faculty for his warning about young Hyland who was exposed to diphtheria at the Ellery party. He went back to Hamilton a few days after and was starting in to play basketball, which would have been decidedly dangerous for his team mates; but the authorities, after getting Manny’s letter, kept him out of the gymnasium, and kept a watch on him. He developed the disease a week later; but there has been no infection from him.”

“There’s direct result,” approved Dr. Strong. “That’s what I call spreading the gospel.”

“Grandma’s our real revivalist, at that,” said Julia. “The children at Number Three pay more attention to her column than they do to what the teachers tell them. The principal told us that it was the greatest educational force for health that Worthington had ever known.”

“Only reflected wisdom from you, young man,” said Grandma Sharpless to the Health Master. “Thank goodness, I’m through with it. I’m so sick of it that I can’t look at writing materials without wanting to cut the ink bottle’s throat with my penholder. Bart Snyder has let me off. What’s more, he sent me a check for $250. Pretty handsome of him. But I’m going to send it back.”

“Why waste good money, grandma?” drawled Mr. Clyde.

“You wouldn’t have me keep it, would you, for doing that work?”

“Who said anything about keeping it? But don’t feed it back to Bart Snyder. Why not contribute it to the Public Health League? It’s always got a handsome deficit.”

“In graceful recognition of my having a son-inlaw as president of it, I suppose.”

“I’m not president any more. My term was up last night. They didn’t honor me with a reelection,” said Mr. Clyde, with a rather too obvious glumness, which, for once, escaped the sharp old lady.

“The slinkums!” she cried. “After all the time and work you’ve given to it!”

“Well,” said the ex-incumbent philosophically, “there’s one comfort. They’ve put a better man in my place.”

“No such a thing,” declared his mother-in-law, with vehement partisanship. “They couldn’t find one. Who was it?”

“Give you one guess.”

“Was it you, young man?” queried she, fixing the Health Master with a baleful eye.

“Oh, no; a better man than I,” he hastened to assure her.

“Well, in the name of sakes, who, then?”

“You,” said Mr. Clyde, grabbing the old lady by both shoulders and giving her a vigorous kiss. “Unanimously elected amidst an uproar of enthusiasm, as the ‘Star’ puts it. Here it is, on the first column of the front page.”

For the first time in the history of the Clyde household, the senior member thereof gave way to an unbridled license of speech, in the presence of the family.

“Well, I vum!” said Grandma Sharpless.

XII. PLAIN TALK

“What do you find so interesting in that paper, Strong?” asked Mr. Thomas Clyde, from his place in the corner of the big living-room.

Dinner was just finished in the Clyde household, and the elders were sitting about, enjoying the easy and intermittent talk which had become a feature of the day since the Health Master had joined the family. From outside, the play of lively voices, above the harmonized undertones of a strummed guitar, told how the children were employing the after-dinner hour. Dr. Strong let the evening paper drop on his knees.

“Something that has set me thinking,” he said.

“Don’t you ever give that restless mind of yours a vacation, young man?” inquired Grandma Sharpless, looking up from her game of solitaire.

“All that is good for it. Perhaps you’d like to share this problem, and thus relieve me of part of the responsibility.”

“Do go on, if you’ve found anything exciting,” besought Mrs. Clyde, glancing up with her swift, interrogating smile. “The paper seemed unusually dull to me.”

“Because you didn’t read quite deep enough into it, possibly.” He raised the journal, folded it neatly to a half-page, and holding it before his eyes, began smoothly:—

“Far, far away, as far as your conscience will let you believe, in the Land of Parables—”

“Wait a minute,” interrupted Mr. Clyde. “That ‘Land of Parables’ sounds as if we were going to have some Improving Information.” He regarded his friend and adviser with a twinkling eye. “Ought the children to miss this?”

“That is for you to decide later,” said the Health Master gravely. And he resumed:—

“Far, far away, as far as conscience will let you believe, in the Land of Parables, there once stood a prosperous and self-contented city. Men lived therein by rule and rote. Only what their fathers before them had believed and received did they believe and receive. ‘As it hath been, so it is now and ever must and shall be,’ was the principle whereby their lives were governed. Therefore they endured, without hope as without complaint, the depredations of a hideous Monster who preyed upon them unceasingly.

“So loathsome was this Monster that the very thought of him was held to taint the soul. His name was sealed away from the common speech. Only the boldest men spoke of him, and then in paraphrases and by circumlocutions. Fouled, indeed, was the fame of the woman who dared so much as confess to a knowledge of his existence.

“From time to time the wise and strong men of the city banded together and sallied forth to drive back other creatures of prey as they pressed too hard upon the people. Not so with the Monster. Because of the ban of silence no plan could be mooted, no campaign formulated to check his inroads. So he grew great and ever greater, and his blood hunger fierce and ever more fierce, and his scarlet trail wound in and out among the homes of the people, manifest even to those eyes which most sedulously sought to blind themselves against it.

“Seldom did the Monster slay outright. But where his claws clutched or his fangs pierced, a slow venom crept through the veins, and life was corroded at its very wellsprings. Nor was this the worst. Once the blight fell upon one member of a household, it might corrupt, by hidden and subtle ways, the others and innocent, who knew not of the curse overhanging them.

“Upon the foolish, the reckless, and the erring the Monster most readily fastened himself. But man nor woman nor child was exempt. Necessity drove young girls, struggling and shuddering, into the Monster’s very jaws. The purity of a child or of a Galahad could not always save from the serpent-stroke which sped from out the darkness.”

“One moment, Strong,” broke in Mr. Clyde. “You’ve read this before?”

“I know what is in it, if that is what you mean. Why?”

“Nothing,” hesitated the other, glancing toward his wife and her mother. “Only, I suspect it isn’t going to be pleasant.”

“It isn’t pleasant. It’s true.”

Grandma Sharpless laid down her cards. “Let him go on, Tom,” she said decisively. “We have no ban of silence in this house.”

At a nod from Clyde, the Health Master continued:—

“Always the taboo of silence hedged the Monster about and protected him; and men secretly revolted against it, yet were restrained from speech by the fear of public dishonor. So, in time, he came to have a Scarlet Court of Shame, with his retinue of slaves, whose duty it was to procure victims for his insatiate appetite. But this service availed his servitors nothing in forbearance, for, sooner or later, his breath of fiery venom blasted and withered them, one and all.

“One refuge only did the people seek against the Monster. At every doorpost of the city stood a veiled statue of the supposed Goddess and Protectress of the Household, worshiped under the name of _Modesty_, and to her the people appealed for succor and protection. Also they invoked her vengeance against such as spoke the name of the Monster, and bitter were the penalties wrought upon these in her name. Nevertheless there arose martyrs whose tongues could not be silenced by any fear.

“One was a brave priest who stood in his pulpit unashamed and spoke the terrible truth of the Monster, bidding his hearers arise and band themselves together and strike a blow for their homes and their dear ones. But the people hurried forth in dread, and sought refuge before the Veiled Idol; and the priest’s words rang hollow in the empty tabernacle; and his church was deserted and crumbled away in neglect, so that the fearful said:—

“‘Behold the righteous wrath which follows the breaking of the prescribed silence.’

“Again, a learned and pious physician and healer gathered the young men about him in the marketplace to give them solemn warning against the Monster and his scarlet slaves. But his words returned upon himself, and he was branded with shame as one who worshiped not the Veiled Goddess, and was presently driven forth from his own place into the wilderness.