“There’s a lucky young person,” I thought, “evidently fond of sport and with the ability, wealth and leisure to gratify his taste.” I saw him register and give a stack of extra baggage checks to the clerk, and then on his way to the elevator he passed close to me. He was moderately tall with a graceful, well-built frame, but his step lagged and his shoulders drooped, and in his drawn face I caught a lost, helpless, despairing expression that I recognized unmistakably. Near where I often go in the autumn is a boys’ school and I have seen little new boys on the first evening of their arrival look just so—livid and lost, poor little chaps—but you know that in a day or two they will be running about as happy as grigs in the excitement of school events and the exhilaration of football. But the look in my “fortunate” youth’s face went deeper and an illuminating word flashed to my mind: life termer! Homesick? He looked as though he would die of it.
A moment before the big splendidly kept hotel with its broad white hallways, wide verandas and sunny terrace under the very shoulder of Pike’s Peak, rising in snow-crowned glory above all the lesser glorious mountains, had seemed so beautiful. Suddenly, though, I saw it not merely with the eyes of one broken-hearted, homesick youth, but with some realization of the thousands of tear-filled eyes that have looked about its commonplace stations. What must it be like to be weak and ill, when the strongest clings like a little child to the ones he loves best, and then to be sent far away to live always, or to die, perhaps, among strangers?
In the Garden of the Gods
After this I became more observing of the lives about us, and people told me many things—quite simply, as though it were all in the day’s work. The greatest number who are sent out here are young, and strapping athletes are the most usual type. Sometimes they get well soon, and go back happily to their families; sometimes their families move out too, and in that way bring “home” with them, but the majority come and stay alone, and never leave again except for short annual furloughs. One of these latter lives here at the hotel. A friend of his told me that “Harry could never go home, poor chap,” but the adverb “poor” scarcely seemed to qualify that young man from what I saw of him. He is always laughing, always shoving his shoulders through the atmosphere; inquisitive as Ricki-ticki and quite as full of life and vim; he seems ready to seize every opportunity of hazard or engagement that the moment offers. He plays all games recklessly; the more dangerous as to stakes or excitement, the better. He drives a powerful motor-car and he is flirting outrageously with one of the prettiest women imaginable, whose invalid husband seems to care very little how much attention she accepts from her frivolous though ardent admirer.
But a little while ago I was in my window and he was on the terrace just below, close enough for me to see him without his seeing me. His face was turned toward the glory of the snow-capped mountains but his unseeing eyes too, had the exact look of the little homesick boys at school. I saw then why his friend had called him “poor chap” and I also a little better understood the exaggeration of his recklessness, the over-swagger of his shoulders, the laugh and flippancy with which, like Jim, he speaks of “t.b.” I wonder if anywhere in the world the moon looks down upon more tear-stained pillows than here!
And this is enough of the black side of the picture—the blackest side there is. For by no means all of the people are homesick, unhappy or in any way ill. Families who have come out originally for the sake of a sick member have stayed because they loved the place and made it their home. And of the others, many who have been lonely and homesick at first have found the place an Eden because they have also found the “one in all the world.”
In fact, meeting the “one” is the almost inevitable thing they do. Supposing the newcomers live in little bungalows in Broadmoor; opportunity need go no further. He, for instance, sits on his little porch in the sunshine, and she sits on her little porch across the way. Hours and hours and days and days, they sit on their little porches in the sunshine. Then by and by they sit together on the same little porch. It is quite simple.
Often the story ends as it should. They get well and marry and live happy ever afterward. Sometimes, of course, it ends sadly. But nearly always love brings its compensation of joy, and nearly all who have ever lived out here keep afterward in their hearts an unfading flower of romance.
Colorado Springs is a place unique in the world. Filled with people unhappy to come, deserted by people unwilling to go. And nearly always their coming and going is through no wish or will of their own. Sometimes their going is as sudden and tragic as their coming.