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Wild Youth, a novel by Gilbert Parker |
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Chapter 11. Louise |
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_ 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." She waved her hand in protest. "I can't eat," she said. "Indeed, I can't." "Well, you can drink," he answered. "You shall not leave this house alive unless you have a pint of milk with a little dash of what Patsy calls 'oh-be-joyful' in it." He left the room for a moment, while she sat watching the door as a prisoner might watch for the return of a friendly jailer. He had a curious influence over her. It was wholly different from that of Orlando. Presently he returned. "It's all right," he said. "Patsy and you and I will be at Nolan Doyle's ranch in another hour. I've sent word to Mrs. Doyle. I've ordered your milk-punch too, and now I think I'll make my salad. You never saw me make a salad," he added, smiling. "I've done some successful operations in my day; I've played about with bones and sinews, proud of my work sometimes, but the making of a perfect salad is the proud achievement of a master-mind." He laughed like a boy. "'Come hither, come hither, my little daughter, and do not tremble so,'" he said so cheerfully as to be almost jeering. His cheerfulness was not in vain, for a smile stole to her lips, though it only flickered for an instant and was gone. For all that, he knew he had saved the situation, and that another chapter of the life-history of Orlando and Louise had been ended. A fresh chapter would begin tomorrow; but sufficient unto the day was the evil thereof. _ |
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