Wild Youth, Volume 2.

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WILD YOUTH

By Gilbert Parker

Volume 2.

X. THE MOON WAS NOT ALONE
XI. LOUISE
XII. MAN UNNATURAL
XIII. ORLANDO GIVES A WARNING
XIV. FILION AND FIONA--ALSO PATSY KERNAGHAN
XV. OUTWARD BOUND
XVI. AT THE CROSS TRAILS
XVII. THE SUPERIOR MAN
XVIII. YOUTH HAS ITS WAY

CHAPTER X

THE MOON WAS NOT ALONE

Out on the prairie under the light of the stars a man had fought the
first great battle of his life, and had emerged victorious. There are no
drawn battles in the struggles of the soul. As Orlando fought, he was
tortured by the thought that none would believe the truth to-morrow when
it was told; and that there would be penalty though there was no crime.

As for Louise, she could have returned, almost blindly defiant, to her
world, hand in hand with Orlando; and yet, when morning came, and her
eyes opened on the prairie at day-break, with life stirring everywhere,
she was glad of the victory--though the shadow of a great trouble to come
was showing in her eyes.

She knew what she had to face at Tralee, and that she had no proof of
her perfect innocence. It was of little use for them to call upon Heaven
to witness what the night had been; and Joel Mazarine, who distrusted
every man and woman, would distrust her with a sternness which guilt
only could effectively defy!

Orlando's enforced gaiety as he invited her to a breakfast of a couple of
biscuits, left from yesterday's broncho-busting, heartened her; yet both
were conscious of the make-believe. They realized they were helpless in
the grip of harsh circumstance. It was almost enough to make them take
advantage of calumny and the traps set for them by Fate, and join hands
for ever.

As they looked into each other's eyes, the same hopeless yet reckless
thought flickered--flickered, and vanished. Yet as they looked out over
the prairie towards Tralee, to which Louise must presently return, a
rebellious sort of joy possessed them.

.........................

The discord of their thoughts was like music beside what had passed at
Tralee. There nothing relieved the black, sullen rage of Joel Mazarine.
He had returned to the house where his voice had always been able to
summon his slaves, and to know that they would come--Chinaman, half-
breed, wife. Now he called, and the wife did not come. On the new
chestnut she had ridden away on the prairie, so the halfbreed woman had
said, as hard as he could go. He had scanned the prairie till night
came, without seeing a sign of her.

His black imagination instantly conceived the worst that Louise might do.
It was not in him ever to have the decent alternative. He questioned the
half-breed woman closely; he savagely interrogated the Chinaman; and then
he declared that they lied to him, that they knew more than they said;
and when he was unable to bear it any longer, he mounted his horse and
galloped over to Slow Down Ranch. As he went, he kept swearing to
himself that Louise had flown thither; and anger made his brain
malignant. He could scarcely frame his words intelligibly when he
arrived at Slow Down Ranch.

There he was presently convinced that his worst suspicions were true, for
Orlando also had not returned. He saw it all. They had agreed to meet;
they had met; they had eloped and were gone! His beady eyes were those
of serpents watching for the instant to strike, and his words burst over
the head of Orlando's mother like shrapnel.

For once, however, the futile, fantastic mother rose higher than herself,
and declared that her son had never run away from, or with, anything in
his life; that he--Joel Mazarine--had never had anything worth her son's
running away with; and that her son, when he came back, would make him
ask forgiveness as he had never asked it of his God.

Indeed, the gaudy little lady stood in her doorway and chattered her
maledictions after him, as he rode back again towards Tralee muttering
curses which no class leader in the Methodist Church ought even to quote
for pious purposes.

Joel Mazarine had flattered himself that he had everything life could
give--money, property and a garden of youth in which his old age could
loiter and be glad; and that he should be defied suddenly and his garden
made desolate, that the lines of his good fortune should be crossed,
caused him to rage like any heathen. His monstrous egotism made him like
some infuriated bull in the arena, with the banderillos sticking in his
hot hide.

The two people whom he cursed were in Elysium compared to the place where
he tortured himself. There are desert birds that silently surround a
rattlesnake, as he sleeps, with little bundles of cactus-heads and their
million needles, so that, when the reptile wakes, it cannot escape
through the palisade of bristling weapons by which it is surrounded; and
in ghoulish anger it strikes its fangs into its own body until it dies.
Just such a helpless rage held Joel Mazarine, and his religion did not
suggest seeking comfort at that Throne of Grace to which he had so
publicly prayed on occasions.

Night held him prowling in his own coverts; morning found him yellow and
mottled, malicious, but now silent. He somehow felt that he would know
the truth and the whole truth soon. He ate his pork and beans for
breakfast with the appetite of a ravenous animal. He put pieces of the
pork chop in his mouth with his fingers; he gulped his coffee; but all
the time he kept his eyes on the open door, as though he expected some
messenger to announce that Providence had stricken his rebellious wife
by sudden death. It seemed to him that Nature and Jehovah must unite to
avenge him.

After three hours of further waiting he determined to go into Askatoon.
He would have bills printed advertising for Louise as he had done for
stray cattle; he would have notices put in the newspapers proclaiming
that his wife was strayed or stolen and must be put in pound when
discovered. At the moment he decided thus, he caught sight of a wagon
approaching from the north. It was near enough for him to see that there
was a woman in it; and the eyes of the half-breed hired woman, possessing
the Indian far-sight, saw that it was Louise, and told her master so.

Ten minutes later Louise stood in front of the Master of Tralee, and the
Master of Tralee filled the doorway. "What you want here?" he asked of
her with blurred rage in his voice.

"I want to go to my room," Louise answered quietly but firmly. "Please
stand aside."

Now that Louise was face to face with her foe, a new spirit had suddenly
possessed her; and standing beside his broncho, a hand on its neck,
Orlando almost smiled, for this was Louise with a new nature. There was
defiance and courage in her face, not the apprehension which had almost
overwhelmed her as they started back to Tralee, having been rescued by
the search-party from Slow Down Ranch. The night had done something to
Louise which was making itself felt.

"You think you can come back here after what you've done--after where
you've been--the likes of you!" Mazarine snarled unmoving. "You think
you can!"

Louise turned swiftly to look at Orlando and the three men, one riding
and two in the wagon, as though to call them in evidence of her
innocence; but there came to her eyes a sudden fire of courage, and she
turned again to Mazarine and said:

"I'm your wife by the law--just as much your wife to-day as yesterday.
You treat me before strangers as if I were a criminal. I'm not going to
be treated that way. I've got my rights. Stand back and let me in--
stand back, Joel Mazarine," she said, and she took a step forward, child
though she was, as if she would strike him. Something had transformed
her.

To Orlando she seemed scarcely real. The shrinking, colourless child of
a few weeks had suddenly become a woman--and such a woman!

"I'll tell you in my own time where I've been and what I've done," she
continued. "I want to go upstairs. Stand out of the doorway."

There was a movement behind her. A man in the wagon and the one on his
horse seemed to grow angry and threatening. The ranchman dropped from
his horse. Only Orlando stood cool, quiet and ominously watchful.
Mazarine did not fail to notice the movement of the two men.

Presently Orlando's voice said slowly and calmly: "Stand back, Mazarine.
Let her go to her room. This is a free country, and she's free in her
own house. It's her house until you've proved she's got no right there."
Then he added with sharp insistence and menace: "Stand back--damn you,
Mazarine!"

Orlando did not move as he spoke, but there was a look in his face which
an enemy would not care to see. Mazarine, in spite of his rage, quailed
before the sharp, menacing voice so little in tune with its reputation
for giggling, and stepping back, he let Louise pass. Then he plunged
forward out of the doorway.

"That's right. Come outside," said Orlando scornfully. "Come out into
the open." His voice became lower. There was something deadly in it,
boy as he was. "Come out, you hypocrite, and listen to what I've got to
say. Listen to the truth I've got to tell you. If you don't listen,
I'll horsewhip you, that'd horsewhip a woman, till you can't stand--you
loathsome old dog. . . . Yes, he took his horsewhip to her
yesterday," he added to the spectators, who muttered angrily, for the
West is chivalrous towards women.

Something near to madness possessed Orlando. No one had ever seen him
as he was at that moment. Down through generations had come to him some
iron thing that suddenly revealed itself in him, as something had just
suddenly revealed itself in Louise.

The other three men--two in the wagon and one beside his horse-stared at
him as though they had seen him for the first time. They were unready
for the passion that possessed him. Not a muscle of his body appeared to
move; he was as motionless as the trunk of a tree. But in his eyes and
his voice there was, as one of the ranchers said afterwards, "Hell--and
then some more."

"Listen to me," he said again, and his voice was low and husky now.
"Yesterday I was broncho-busting--"

Thereupon he told the whole story of what had happened since he had seen
Louise thrown from her chestnut on the prairie. He told how Louise was
too shaken and ill to attempt the journey back to Tralee, and how they
had camped where they were, near the dead horse.

As Orlando talked, the old man was seized by terrible hatred and
jealousy. "You needn't tell me the rest," he broke in, his hands
savagely opening and shutting. "I guess I understand everything."

The words had scarcely left his mouth when from the wagon a man said:
"Wait--wait, Mister. I got something to say."

He sprang to the ground, and ran between Mazarine and Orlando.

"This is where I come in," he said, as Louise's face appeared at an upper
window, and she listened. "You don't know me. Well, I know you.
Everybody knows you, and nobody likes you. I know what happened last
night. I'm a brother of your fellow Christian Rigby, the druggist, over
there in Askatoon. He's a Methodist. I'm not. I'm only good. I been a
lot o' things, and nothing in the end. Well, you hearken to my tale.

"I was tramping with my bundle on my back acrost the prairie to Askatoon
from Waterway. I'm a sundowner, as they say in Australia. When the sun
goes down, I down to my bed wherever I be on the prairie. I was asleep-
I'd been half drunk--when the chestnut threw your wife and broke its leg;
but I was awake when he rode up." He pointed to Orlando. "I was awake,
and so I watched. I knew who she was; I knew who he was." He pointed to
Orlando again. "I guessed I'd see something. I did.

"I watched them two people all night. There was a moon. I could see.
I wasn't fifteen feet from her all night, and I jined the others when
they come to rescue. I guess I got the truth, and I guess if you want
any evidence about me you can get it. Lots of people know me out here.
I ain't got any house or any home, and I get drunk sometimes, and I ain't
got money to buy meals with, lots of times, but nobody ever knowed me
lie. That's what ruined me--I been too truthful. Well, I'm not lying
now, Mister. I'm telling you the God-help-me truth. He's a gentleman."
He pointed again to Orlando. "He's a gentleman from away back in God's
country, wherever that is, and she's the best of the best of the very
best.

"You can bet your greasy old boots and ugly face that you've got a bigger
fortune in that wife of yours than you've any right to. Say, she's a
queen, Mister, and don't you forget it, and"--he drawled out his words--
"you go inside your house and get down on your knees, same as you do in
the Meeting House, and thank the Lord you love so well for all his
blessings. As my friend here said a little while back"--he pointed to
Orlando again--"'Damn you, Mazarine!' Go and hide yourself."

The old man stood for a moment dumbfounded; then, without a word, he
turned and hunched inside the house.

"He raised his horsewhip ag'in' a woman, did he?" said one of Orlando's
ranchmen. "Ain't that a matter we got to take notice of?"

"Boys," said Orlando as he motioned them to be off, "Mrs. Mazarine can
take care of herself. You'll forget what's happened, if you want to play
up to her. If she needs you, she'll be sure to let you know."

A moment afterwards they were all on their way on the road leading to
Slow Down Ranch.

"He didn't giggle much that time," said one of the ranchmen of Orlando,
as they moved on.

CHAPTER XI

LOUISE

The Young Doctor had had a trying day. Certain of his cases had given
him anxiety; his drives had been long and fatiguing; he had had little
sleep for several nights; and he was what Patsy Kernaghan had called
"brittle"; for when Patsy was in a vexed condition, he used to say, "I'm
so brittle I'll break if you look at me." As the Young Doctor drew his
chair up to the supper-table and looked at his food with a critical air,
he was very brittle.

For one born in Enniskillen he had an even nature, but its evenness was
more the result of mental control than temperament. He sighed as he
looked at the marrow bones which, as a rule, gave him joy when their turn
came in the weekly menu; he eyed askance the baked potatoes; and the
salad waiting for his skilled hand only gave him an extra feeling of
fatigue.

Most men in a like state say, "I don't know what's the matter with me,"
and yet many a one has been stimulated out of it, away from it, by the
soft voice and friendly hand of a woman.

There was, however, no woman to distract the overworked Young Doctor by
her freshness, drawn from the reservoir of her vitality; and that was a
pity, because, as Patsy Kernaghan many a time said: "Aw, Doctor dear,
what's the good of a tongue to a wagon if there's only wan horse to draw
it! Shure, you'll think a lot more of yourself whin you're able to stand
at the head of your own table and say grace for two at least, and
thanksgiving for manny, if it's the will of God."

The Young Doctor did not know why he was so brittle, but the truth is he
was feeding on himself, and that is a poor business. Every dog knows it
is good to feed on the knuckle of a goat if he hasn't got a beefbone, and
every real man knows--though to know anything at all he must have been
married--that any marriage is better than no marriage at all; because
whether it's happy or unhappy, it makes you concerned for some one
besides yourself, if you have any soul or sense at all.

The Young Doctor was under the delusion that he loved his lonely table
and the making of a simple salad for a simple man, but then he came from
Ireland and had imagination; and that is always a curse when it isn't a
blessing, for there is nothing between the two. At the end of his
troubled day he almost cursed the salad as it crinkled in the dish just
slightly rubbed with garlic. He was turning away in apathy from it--from
the bones with the marrow oozing out of the ends, from the bursting baked
potatoes, from the beautiful crusts of brown bread, when he heard the
door-bell ring. At the sound his face set as though it were mortar. He
wanted no patients this night; but from the peremptory sound of the bell
he was sure some one had come who needed medicine or the knife, and he
could refuse neither; for was he not at everybody's beck and call, the
Medicine Man whose door was everybody's door!

"Damnation!" he said aloud, and turned towards the door expectantly.

Then he bitted himself to wait; and he did not wait long. Presently he
heard a voice say, "I must see him," and the door opened wide, and Louise
Mazarine stepped into the room. Her face was pale and distraught; her
blue eyes, with their long, melancholy lashes, stared at him in appealing
apprehension. Her lips were almost white; her hands trembled out towards
him.

"I've come--I've come!" she said. It had the finality of the last
chapter of a book.

The Young Doctor closed the door, ignoring for the instant the hands held
out to him. After all, he was a very sane Young Doctor, and he had the
faculty of keeping his head, and his heart, and his own counsel. Also he
knew there was an inquisitive old servant in the hallway.

When the door was closed, he turned round on Louise slowly, and then he
held out his hands to her, for she was shrinking away, as though he had
repulsed her. He pressed her trembling hands in the way that only
faithful friendship shows, and said:

"Yes, I know you've come, but tell me what you've come for."

"I couldn't bear it any longer," she said brokenly. "I'm not made of
steel or stone. It's been terrible. He doesn't speak to me except to
order me to do this or that. I haven't done anything wrong, and I won't
be treated so. I won't! When he made me kneel down by him in the trail
and tried to make me pray to be forgiven of my sins, I couldn't stand it.
I don't know what my sins are, and I won't be converted if I don't want
to. I'm not a slave. I'm of age. I'm twenty."

There was no sign of fatigue now in the Young Doctor's face. Something
had called him out of himself, and this human need had done what a wife's
hand might have done, or the welcome of a child.

"No, you're not twenty," he declared, with a friendly smile. "You aren't
ten. You are only one. In fact, I think you're only just born!"

He did not speak as lightly as the words read. In his voice there was
that compassionate irony with which men shield those for whom they care.
It means protection and defence. Somehow she seemed to him like a small
bird on its first flight from the nest, or, as Patsy Kernaghan would have
said, "a tame lamb loose in a zoolyogical gardin."

"So because you won't pray and can't bear it any longer, you run away
from him, and come to me!" the other remarked with a sorry smile, pouring
out a glass of wine from a decanter that stood on the table.

"Drink this," he said presently, pushing her down gently into a chair
with one hand and holding the glass to her lips. "Drink it every drop.
As I said, you've only run away from one master to fall into another
master's hands. You're a wicked girl. Drink it--every drop. . . .
That's right."

He took the empty glass from her, put it on the table, and then stood and
looked at her meditatively, fastening her eyes with his own. More than
her eyes were fastened, however. Her mind was also under control: but
that was because she believed in him so.

"Yes, you're a wicked girl," he said decisively.

She shuddered and shrank back. In her eyes was a helpless look, very
different from that which she had given not so many days before when,
with Orlando Guise behind her, she had defied her aged husband in his
doorway, and her defiance had moved him from her path. Then she had been
inspired by the fact that the man she loved was near her, that she had
been wrongfully accused and was ready to fight. Afterwards, however,
when she was alone, the sterile presence of Joel Mazarine, his merciless
eyes, his hopeless religious tyranny, had worn upon her as his past
violence had never done.

"Wicked!" Did this man, then, believe her guilty? Did he, of all men,
think that the night upon the prairie alone with Orlando had been her
undoing? Had not the brother of Rigby the chemist borne witness with his
own eyes to her complete innocence? If the Young Doctor disbelieved,
then indeed she was undone.

"You don't think that of me--of me!" she gasped, her lips all white
again. She got to her feet excitedly. "You shall not believe it of me."

"No, I did not say I believed that," the other remarked almost casually.
"But if I did believe it, I don't know that it would make much difference
to me. Fate, or God Almighty, or whatever it was, had stacked the cards
against you. When I said it was wicked, I meant you did wrong in rushing
away from your husband and coming to me. I suppose you have definitely
left your husband--eh? You've 'left' him, as they say?"

He had an incorrigible sense of humour, as well as an infinite common
sense. He wanted to break this spell of tense emotion which possessed
her. So he pursued a new course.

"Don't you think it's rather hard on me?" he continued. "I'm a lone man
in this house, with only one old woman to protect me, and I'm unmarried.
I've a reputation to lose, and there are lots of mothers and daughters
hereabouts. Besides, a medical practice is hard to get and not easy to
keep. What do you mean by making a refuge of me, when there's nothing
for me in it, not even the satisfaction of going into the Divorce Court
with you? You wicked Mrs. Mazarine!"

"Oh, don't speak like that!" Louise interjected. "Please don't. Don't
scold me. I had to come. I was going mad."

The Young Doctor had the case well in hand. He had eased the terrible
tension; he was slowly reducing her to the normal. It was the only thing
to do.

"What did Mazarine do or say to you that made you run away? Come now,
didn't you first make up your mind to go to Slow Down Ranch--to Orlando?"

She flushed. "Yes, but only for a minute. Then I thought of you,
because I knew you could help me as no one else could. Everybody
believes in you. But then Li Choo--"

"Oh, Li Choo! So Li Choo comes into this, eh? So he said fly to
Orlando, eh? Well, that's what he would do. But why Li Choo--
a Chinaman? Tell me, what does Li Choo know?"

Quickly she told him the story of the day when Joel Mazarine had almost
surprised her in Orlando's room; how Li Choo had saved the situation by
falling down the staircase with the priceless porcelain, and how Mazarine
had kicked him--"manhandled" him, as they say in the West.

"Chinamen don't like being kicked, especially Chinamen of Li Choo's
station," remarked the Young Doctor meditatively. "You don't know, of
course, that Li Choo was a prince or a big bug of some sort in his own
country. Why he left China I don't know, but I do chance to know that
if another Chinky meets Li Choo carrying a basket on his shoulders, or a
package in his hand, he kow-tows, and takes it away from him, and carries
it himself. . . . No, I don't know why Li Choo is here in Askatoon,
or why he's such a slave to Mrs. Mazarine; but I do know that he's a
different-looking man when a Chinky runs up against him than when he's
choring at Tralee. A sick Chinaman told me only a week ago that Li Choo
was 'once big high boss Chinaman in Pekin.' . . . And so the mandarin
advised you to fly to Orlando, did he? I wonder if it's a way they have
in China."

"But I wouldn't go. I've come to you--Patsy Kernaghan brought me,"
Louise urged.

"Yes, I see you've come to me," remarked the Young Doctor dryly, "and
you've stayed about long enough for me to feel your pulse and diagnose
your case. And now you're going back with Patsy Kernaghan to your own
home."

She trembled; then she seemed to strengthen herself in defiance. What a
change it was from the child of a few weeks ago--indeed, of a few moments
ago! The same passionate determination which seized her when she faced
Mazarine with Orlando, possessed her again. With her whole being
palpitating, she said: "I will not go back. I will not go back. I will
kill myself first."

"That would be a useless sacrifice of yourself and others," the Young
Doctor answered quietly. Seeing that the new thing in her was not to be
conquered in a moment, he quickly made up his mind what to do.

"See," he continued, "you needn't go back to Tralee to-night, but you're
not going to stay here, dear child. I'll take you over to Nolan Doyle's
ranch, to Mrs. Doyle. You'll spend the night there, and we'll think
about to-morrow when to-morrow comes. You certainly can't stay here.
I'm not going to have it.

"Bless you, you're neither so young nor so old as all that!"

Suddenly he grasped both her arms and looked her in the face. "My dear
young lady," he said gently, "I'm not your only friend, but I'm a stout
friend--so stout that there isn't a mount can carry us both together.
When you ride, I walk; when I ride, you walk--you understand? We don't
walk or ride together. I'm taking care of you. Your life is too good to
be ruined by rashness. You're in a 'state,' as my old housekeeper would
say, but you'll be all right presently. As soon as I've made a salad,
and had a marrowbone, you and I and Patsy Kernaghan are going to Nolan
Doyle's ranch. . . . My dear, you must do what I say, and if you do,
you'll be happy yet. I don't see how, quite, but it is so; and
meanwhile, you mustn't make any mistakes. You must play the game.
And now come and have some supper."

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