Part 9

“After a cocktail—or two—or three,” he looked at her closely, but she would not meet his eyes, “you eat pretty well?”

“Yes, I suppose so.”

“And then go to bed with a headache because you’ve stimulated your appetite to more food than your run-down mechanism can rightly handle.”

“I do have a good many headaches.”

“Do anything for them?”

“Yes. I take some harmless powders, sometimes.”

“Harmless, eh? A harmless headache powder is like a mild cocktail. It doesn’t exist. So you’re adding drug habit to drink habit. Fortunately, it isn’t hard to stop. It has begun to show on you already, in that puffy grayness under the eyes. All the coal-tar powders vitiate the blood as well as affect the heart. Sleep badly?”

“Very often.”

“Take anything for that?”

“You mean opiates? I’m not a fool, Doctor.”

“You mean you haven’t gone quite that far,” said the other grimly. “You’ve started in on two habits; but not the worst. Well, that’s all. Come back when you need to.”

Miss Ennis’s big, dull eyes opened wide. “Aren’t you going to give me anything? Any medicine?”

“You don’t need it.”

“Or any advice?”

Dr. Strong permitted himself a little smile at the success of his strategy. “Give it to yourself,” he suggested. “You showed, in flashes, during the dinner talk last night, that you have both wit and sense, when you choose to use them. Do it now.”

The girl squirmed uncomfortably. “I suppose you want me to give up cocktails,” she murmured in a die-away voice.

“Absolutely.”

“And try to get along with no stimulants at all?”

“By no means. Fresh air and exercise ad lib.”

“And to stop the headache powders?”

“Right; go on.”

“And to stop thinking about my symptoms?”

“Good! I didn’t reckon on your inherent sense in vain.”

“And to walk where I have been riding?”

“Rain or shine.”

“What about diet?”

“All the plain food you want, at any time you really want it, provided you eat slowly and chew thoroughly.”

“A la Fletcher?”

“Horace Fletcher is one of those fine fanatics whose extravagances correct the average man’s stolid stupidities. I’ve seen his fad made ridiculous, but never harmful. Try it out.”

“And you won’t tell me when to come back?”

“When you need to, I said. The moment the temptation to break over the rules becomes too strong, come. And—eh—by the way—eh—don’t worry about your mirror for a while.” Temporarily content with this, the new patient went away with new hope. Wiping his brow, the doctor strolled into the sitting-room where he found the family awaiting him with obvious but repressed curiosity.

“It isn’t ethical, I suppose,” said Mr. Clyde, “to discuss a patient’s case with outsiders?”

“You’re not outsiders. And she’s not my patient, in the ordinary sense, since I’m giving my services free. Moreover, I need all the help I can get.”

“What can _I_ do?” asked Mrs. Clyde promptly. “Drop in at her house from time to time, and cheer her up. I don’t want her to depend upon me exclusively. She has depended altogether too much on doctors in the past.”

Mr. Clyde chuckled. “Did she tell you that the European medical faculty had chased her around to every spa on the Continent? Neurasthenic dyspepsia, they called it.”

“Pretty name! Seventy per cent of all dyspeptics have the seat of the imagination in the stomach. The difficulty is to divert it.”

“What’s your plan?”

“Oh, I’ve several, when the time comes. For the present I’ve got to get her around into condition.”

“Spoiled mind, spoiled body,” remarked Mrs. Sharpless.

“Exactly. And I’m going to begin on the body, because that is the easiest to set right. Look out for an ill-tempered cousin during the next fortnight.”

His prophecy was amply confirmed by Mrs. Clyde, who made it her business, amid multifarious activities, to drop in upon Miss Ennis with patient frequency. On the tenth day of the “cure,” Mrs. Clyde reported to the household physician:—

“If I go there again I shall probably _slap_ her. She’s become simply unbearable.”

“Good!” said Dr. Strong. “Fine! She has had the nerve to stick to the rules. We needn’t overstrain her, though. I’ll have her come here tomorrow.”

Accordingly, at six o’clock in the evening of the eleventh day, the patient stamped into the office, wet, bedraggled, and angry.

“Now look!” she cried. “You made me store my motor-car. All the street-cars were crowded. My umbrella turned inside out. I’m a perfect drench. And I know I’ll catch my death of cold.” Whereupon she laid a pathetic hand on her chest and coughed hollowly.

“Stick out your foot,” ordered Dr. Strong. And, as she obeyed: “That’s well. Good, sensible storm shoes. I’ll risk your taking cold. How do you feel? Better?”

“No. Worse!” she snapped.

“I suppose so,” he retorted with a chuckle.

“What is more,” she declared savagely, “I look worse!”

“So your mirror has been failing in its mission of flattery. Too bad. Now take off your coat, sit right there by the fire, and in an hour you’ll be dry as toast.”

“An hour? I can’t stay an hour!”

“Why not?”

“It’s six o’clock. I must go home. Besides,” she added unguardedly, “I’m half starved.”

“_Indeed!_ Had a cocktail to-day?”

“No. Certainly not.”

“Yet you have an appetite. A bad sign. Oh, a very bad sign—for the cocktail market.”

“I’m so tired all the time. And I wake up in the morning with hardly any strength to get out of bed—”

“Or the inclination? Which?” broke in the doctor.

“And my heart gives the queerest jumps and—”

“Thought we’d thrown that symptom-book into the fire. Stand up, please.”

She stood. Dr. Strong noted with satisfaction how, already, the lithe and well-set figure had begun to revert to its natural pose, showing that the muscles were beginning to do their work. He also noted that the hands, hitherto a mere _mélange_ of nervously writhing fingers, hung easily slack.

“Your troubles,” he said pleasantly, “have only just begun. I think you’re strong enough now to begin work.”

“I’m not,” she protested, half weeping. “I feel faint this minute.”

“Good, healthy hunger. Of course, if a glance in your mirror convinces you that you’ve had enough of the treatment—”

Miss Ennis said something under her breath which sounded very much like “Brute!”

“Have you ever had a good sweat?” he asked abruptly.

Her lips curled superciliously. “I’m not given to perspiration, I’m thankful to—”

“Did I say ‘perspire’?” inquired he. “I understood myself to say ‘sweat.’ Have you ever—”

“No.”

“High time you began. Buy yourself the heaviest sweater you can find—you may call it a ‘perspirationer’ if you think the salesman will appreciate your delicacy—and I’ll be around to-morrow and set up a punching-bag for you.”

“What is that?”

“A device which you strike at. The blow forces it against a board and it returns and, unless you dodge nimbly, impinges upon your countenance. In other words, whacks you on the nose. Prizefighters use it.”

“I suppose you want me to be like a prizefighter.”

“The most beautiful pink-and-white skin and the clearest eye I’ve ever seen belonged to a middleweight champion. Yes, I’d like to see you exactly like him in that respect. One hour every day—”

“I simply can’t. I shan’t have time. With the walking I do now I’m busy all the morning and dead tired all the afternoon; and in the evening there is my bridge club—”

“Ah, you play bridge. For money?”

“Naturally we don’t play for counters.”

“Well, I’d give it up.”

“You are not employed as a censor of my morals, Dr. Strong.”

“No; but I’ve undertaken to censor your nerves. And gambling, for a woman in your condition, is altogether too much of a strain.”

The corners of Miss Ennis’s mouth quivered babyishly. “I’m sure, then, that working like a prizefighter will be too much strain. You’re wearing me out.”

“I’m a cruel tyrant,” mocked Dr. Strong; “and worse is to come. We’ll clear out a room in your house and put in not only the punching-bag, but also pulleys and a rowing-machine. And I’ll send up an athletic instructor to see that you use them.”

“I won’t have him. I’ll send him away!”

“By advice of your mirror?”

Miss Ennis frankly and angrily wept.

“Now I’ll tell you a secret about yourself.” Miss Ennis stopped weeping.

“Ninety-nine cases out of a hundred I couldn’t handle as I am handling your case. They would need a month’s rest and building up before they’d be fit for real work. But you are naturally a powerful, muscular woman with great physical endurance and resiliency. What I am trying to do is to take advantage of your splendid equipment to pull you out.”

“What would you do with the ordinary case?” asked the girl, interested.

“Oh, put her to bed, perhaps. Perhaps send her away to the woods. Maybe set a nurse over her to see that she didn’t take to writing her symptoms down in a book. Keep her on a rigid diet, and build her up by slow and dull processes. You may thank your stars that—”

“I don’t thank my stars at all!” broke in the patient, as her besetting vice of self-pity asserted itself. “I’d much rather do that than be driven like a galley-slave. I’m too tired to get any pleasure out of anything—”

“Even bridge?” interposed the tormentor softly.

“—and when night comes I fall into bed like a helpless log.”

“That’s the best news I’ve heard yet. You’re progressing. Now take that new appetite of yours home to dinner. And don’t spoil it by eating too fast. Good-night.”

Fully a fortnight later Grandma Sharpless met Dr. Strong in the hallway as he came in from a walk.

“What have you been doing to Louise Ennis?” she demanded.

“Lots of things. What’s wrong now? Another fit of the sulks?”

“Worse,” said the old lady in a stage whisper. “She’s got _paint_ on her face.”

Dr. Strong laughed. “Really? It might be worse. In fact, as a symptom, it couldn’t be better.”

“Young man, do you mean to tell me that face-paint is a good thing for a young woman?”

“Oh, no. It’s vulgar and tawdry, as a practice. But I’m glad to know that Miss Ennis has turned to it, because it shows that she recognizes her own improvement and is trying to add to it.”

“But the stuff will ruin her skin,” cried the scandalized old lady. “See what dreadful faces women have who use it. Look at the actresses—”

“Well, look at them!” broke in the physician. “There is no class of women in the world with such beautiful skin as the women of the stage. And that in spite of hard work, doubtful habits of eating, and irregular hours. Do you know why?”

“I suppose you’ll tell me that paint does it,” said Mrs. Sharpless with a sniff.

“Not the paint itself. But the fact that in putting it on and taking it off, they maintain a profound cleanliness of skin which the average woman doesn’t even understand. The real value of the successful skin-lotions and creams so widely exploited lies in the massage which their use compels.”

“Aside from the stuff on her face,” remarked Mrs. Sharpless, “Louise looks like another woman, and acts like one. She came breezing in here like a young cyclone.”

“Which means trouble,” sighed Dr. Strong. “Now that her vitality is returning, it will demand something to feed on. Well, we shall see.”

He found his patient standing—not sitting, this time—before the fireplace, with a face of gloom. Before he could greet her, she burst out:—

“How long am I to be kept on the grind? I see nobody. I have nothing to amuse me. I’ve had a row with father.” Dr. Strong smiled. “The servants are impertinent.” The smile broadened. “The whole world is hateful!” The doctor’s face was now expanded into a positive grin. “I despise everything and everybody! I’m bored.”

“Passing that over for the moment for something less important,” said Dr. Strong smoothly, “where do you buy your paint?”

“I don’t paint!” retorted the girl hotly.

“Well, your rouge. Your skin-rejuvenator. Your essence of bloom of youth or whatever poetic name you call it by. Let me see the box.” Mutiny shone from the scowling face, but her hand went to her reticule and emerged with a small box. It passed to the physician’s hand and thence to the fire. “I’ll use paint if I want to,” declared the girl. “Undoubtedly. But you’ll use good paint if you use any. Get a theatrical paper, read the ads, and send for the highest grade of grease-paint. I won’t say anything about the vulgarity of the practice because I’m not censoring your manners. I’ll only state that three months from now you won’t want or need paint. Did you get this stuff,” he nodded toward the fireplace whence issued a highly perfumed smoke, “from that address in your deceased symptom-book?”

“Yes.”

“That was the firm which advertised to remove pimples, wasn’t it?”

Miss Ennis shrank. “Pimple is an inexcusable word,” she protested.

“Word? We’re dealing in realities now. And pimples were an inexcusable reality in your case, because they were the blossoms of gluttony, torpor, and self-indulgence.”

He leaned forward and looked closely at her chin. The surface, once blotched and roughened, was now of a smooth and soft translucency. “You once objected to the word ‘sweat,’” he continued. “Well, it has eliminated the more objectionable word ‘pimple’ from your reckoning. And it has done the job better than your blemish-remover—-which leaves scars.”

Her hand went to her temple, where there was a little group of silvery-white patches on the skin. “Can’t you fix that?” she asked anxiously.

“No. Your ‘remover’ was corrosive sublimate. It certainly removed the blemish. It would also have removed your entire face if you had used enough of it. Nothing can restore what the liquid fire has burned away. That’s the penalty you pay for foolish credulousness. Fortunately, it is where it won’t show much.”

Gloom surged back into her face. “It doesn’t make any difference,” she fretted. “I’m still a mess in looks even if I don’t feel so much like one.”

“One half of looks is expression,” stated the doctor didactically. “I don’t like yours. What’s your religion?”

His patient stared. “Why, I’m a Presbyterian, I suppose.”

“Humph! You suppose! It doesn’t seem to have struck in very hard. Any objection to going to a Christian Science church?”

“Christian Science! I thought the regular doctors considered it the worst kind of quackery.”

“The regular doctors,” returned Dr. Strong quickly, “once considered anaesthesia, vaccination, and the germ theory as quackery. We live and learn, like others. There’s plenty of quackery in Christian Science, and also quite a little good. And nowadays we’re learning to accept the good in new dogmas, and discard the bad.”

“And you really wish me to go to the Christian Science church?”

“Why not? You’ll encounter there a few wild fanatics. I’ll trust your hard common sense to guard you against their proselytizing. You’ll also meet a much larger number of sweet, gentle, and cheerful people, with a sweet, helpful, and cheerful philosophy of life. That’ll help to cure you.”

“And what will they cure me of, since you say I have no disease?”

“They’ll cure you of turning your mouth down at the corners instead of up.”

At this, the mouth referred to did, indeed, turn up at the corners, but in no very pleasant wise.

“You think they’ll amuse me?” she inquired contemptuously.

“Oh, as for amusement, I’ve arranged for that. You’re bored. Very well, I expected it. It’s a symptom, and a good one, in its place. I’ll get you a job.”

“Indeed! And if I don’t want a job?”

“No matter what you want. You need it.”

“Settlement work, I suppose.”

“Nothing so mild. Garbage inspection.”

“What!” Louise Ennis closed her eyes in expectation of a qualm of disgust. The qualm didn’t materialize. “What’s the matter with me?” she asked in naïve and suppressed chagrin. “I ought to feel—well, nauseated.”

“Nonsense! Your nerves and stomach have found their poise. That’s all.”

“But what do I know about garbage?”

“You know it when you see it, don’t you? Now, listen. There has been a strike of the city teamsters. Dr. Merritt, the Health Officer, wants volunteers to inspect the city and report on where conditions are bad from day to day. You’ve got intelligence. You can outwalk nine men out of ten. And you can be of real service to the city. Besides, it’s doctor’s orders.”

The story of Louise Ennis’s part in the great garbage strike, and of her subsequent door-to-door canvass of housing conditions, has no place in this account. After the start, Dr. Strong saw little of her; but he heard much from Mrs. Clyde, who continued her frequent visits to the Ennis household; not so much, as she frankly admitted, for the purpose of furnishing bulletins to Dr. Strong, as because of her own growing interest in and affection for the girl. And, as time went on, Strong noticed that, on the occasions when he chanced to meet his patient on the street, she was usually accompanied by one or another of the presentable young men of the community, a fact which the physician observed with professional approval rather than personal gratification.

“It isn’t her health alone,” said Mrs. Clyde, when they were discussing her, one warm day in the ensuing summer. “These six months seem to have made a new person of her. Trust the children to find out character. Bettykins wants to spend half her time with Cousin Lou.”

“You’ve surely worked a transformation, Strong,” said Clyde. “But, of course, the raw material was there. You couldn’t do much for the average homely woman.”

“The average woman isn’t homely,” said Mrs. Clyde. “She’s got good looks either spoiled or undeveloped.”

“Perfectly true,” confirmed Dr. Strong. “Any young woman whose face isn’t actually malformed can find her place in the eternal scheme of beauty if she tries. Nature works toward beauty in all matters of sex. Where beauty doesn’t exist it is merely an error in Nature’s game.”

“Then the world is pretty full of errors,” said Mrs. Sharpless.

“Most of them aren’t Nature’s errors. They are the mistakes of the foolish human. Take almost any woman, not past the age of development, build up her figure to be supple and self-sustaining; give her a clear eye, quick-moving blood, fresh skin, and some interest in the game of life that shall keep mind and body alert—why, the radiant force of her abounding health would make itself felt in a blind asylum. And all this she can do for herself, with a little knowledge and a good deal of will.”

“But that isn’t exactly beauty, is it?” asked Clyde, puzzled.

“Isn’t it? In the soundest sense, I think it is. Anyway, put it this way: No woman who is wholly healthy, inside and out, can fail to be attractive.”

“I wish that painter-man could see Louise now, as an example,” said Grandma Sharpless.

“Oren Taylor?” said Mr. Clyde. “Why, he can. He goes East next week, and I’ll wire him to stop over.”

Oren Taylor arrived late on a warm afternoon. As he crossed the lawn, Louise Ennis was playing “catch” with Manny Clyde. Her figure swung and straightened with the lithe muscularity of a young animal. Her cheek was clear pink, deepening to the warmer color of the curved lips. The blue veins stood out a little against the warm, moist temples from which she brushed a vagrant lock of hair. Her eyes were wide and lustrous with the eager effort of the play, for the boy was throwing wide in purposeful delight over her swift gracefulness.

“Great Heavens!” exclaimed the artist, staring at her. “Who did that?”

“Strong did that,” explained Clyde; “as per specifications.”

“A triumph!” declared Taylor. “A work of art.”

“Oh, no,” said Dr. Strong; “a renewal of Nature.”

“In any case, a lady remade and better than new. My profound felicitations, Dr. Strong.” He walked over to the flushed and lovely athlete. “Miss Ennis,” he said abruptly, “I want your permission to stay over to-morrow and sketch you. I need you in my ‘Poet’s Cycle of the Months.’”

“How do you do, Mr. Taylor?” she returned demurely. “Of course you can sketch me, if it doesn’t interfere with my working hours.” A quick smile rippled across her face like sunlight across water. “The same subject?” she asked with mischievous nonchalance.

“No. Not even the same season,” he replied emphatically, coloring, as he bethought him of his “November, the withered mourner of glories dead and gone.”

“What part am I to play now?”

“Let Dr. Strong name it,” said Taylor with quick tact. “He has prepared the model.”

The girl turned to the physician, a little deeper tinge of color in her face.

“Referred to Swinburne,” said Strong lightly, and quoted:—

“When the hounds of Spring are on Winter’s traces, The mother of months in valley and plain Fills the shadows and windy places With lisp of leaves and ripple of rain.”

“Atalanta,” said Oren Taylor, bowing low to her; “the maiden spirit of the spring.”

VII. THE RED PLACARD

“Well?” questioned Mrs. Clyde, facing the Health Master haggardly, as he entered the library.

“Oh, come!” he protested with his reassuring smile. “Don’t take it so tragically. You’ve got a pretty sick-looking boy there. But any thoroughgoing fever makes a boy of nine pretty sick.”

“What fever?” demanded the mother. “What is it?”

“Let’s start with what it isn’t—and thank Heaven. It isn’t typhoid. And it isn’t diphtheria.”

“Then it’s—it’s—;”

“It’s scarlet fever,” broke in her mother, Mrs. Sharpless, who had followed the doctor into the room. “That’s what it is.”

Mrs. Clyde shuddered at the name. “Has he got the rash?”

“No. But he will have to-morrow,” stated the old lady positively.

“Do you think so, too, Dr. Strong?” Mrs. Clyde appealed.

“I’ll accept Grandma Sharpless’s judgment,” answered the physician. “She has seen more scarlet fever in her time than I, or most physicians. And experience is the true teacher of diagnosis.”

“But you can’t be sure!” persisted Mrs. Clyde. “How can you tell without the rash?”

“Not in any way that I could put into words,” said her mother. “But there’s something in the look of the throat and something about the eyes and skin—Well, I can’t describe it, but I know it as I know my own name.”

“There speaks the born diagnostician,” observed the Health Master. “I’m afraid the verdict must stand.”

“Then—then,” faltered Mrs. Clyde, “we must act at once. I’ll call up my husband at the factory.”

“What for?” inquired Dr. Strong innocently. “Why, to let him know, of course.”

“Don’t. When I undertook to act as Chinese-plan physician to the Clyde household, I was not only to guard the family against illness as well as I could, but also to save them worry. This is Saturday. Mr. Clyde has had a hard, trying week in the factory. Why break up his day?”

Mrs. Clyde drew a long breath and her face lightened. “Then it isn’t a serious case?”

“Scarlet fever is always serious. Any disease which thoroughly poisons the system is. But there’s no immediate danger; and there shouldn’t be much danger at any time to a sturdy youngster like Charley, if he’s well looked after.”

“But the other children!” Mrs. Clyde turned to Mrs. Sharpless. “Where can we send them, mother?”

“Nowhere.” It was the doctor who answered.

“Surely we can’t keep them in the house!” cried Mrs. Clyde. “They would be certain to catch it from Charley.”

“By no means certain. Even if they did, that would not be the worst thing that could happen.”

“No? What would, then?” challenged Grandma Sharpless.

“That they should go out of this house, possibly carrying the poison with them into some other and defenseless community.” Dr. Strong spoke a little sternly.

Neither woman replied for a moment. When Mrs. Clyde spoke, it was with a changed voice. “Yes. You are right. I didn’t think. At least I thought only of my own children. It’s hard to learn to think like a mother of all children.”