Wild Youth

Chapter 18

YOUTH HAS ITS WAY

"Aw, Doctor dear, there's manny that's less use in the wurruld than

Chinamen, and I'd like to see more o' them here-away," remarked Patsy

Kernaghan to the Young Doctor in the springtime of another year.

"Stren'th of mind is all right, but stren'th of fingers is better still."

"You're a bloodthirsty pagan, Patsy," returned the Young Doctor.

"Hell to me sowl, then, didn't Li Choo pull things straight? I'm not much

of a murd'ring man meself--I haven't the stren'th with me fingers, but

there's manny a time I'd like to do what Li Choo done. . . . Shure, I

don't want to be sp'akin' ill of the dead, but look at it now. There was

ould Mazarine, breakin' the poor child's heart, as fine a fella as iver

trod the wurruld achin' for her, and his life bein' spoilt by the goin's

on at Tralee. Then in steps the Chinky and with stren'th of mind and

stren'th of fingers puts things right."

"No, no, Patsy, you've got bad logic and worse morals in your head. As

you say, things were put right, but trouble enough came of it."

"Divils me darlin', Doctor, it was bound to come all right some time.

Shure, wasn't it natural the child should be all crumpled up like and

lose her head for a while? Wasn't it natural she should fight out agin'

takin' the property the leviathin left her, whin she knew there was

another will he'd spoke on a paper to the lawyer the night he died,

though he hadn't signed it? And isn't it so that yourself it was talked

her round!"

The Young Doctor waved a hand reprovingly, but Patsy continued:

"Now, lookin' back on it, don't ye think it was clever enough what you

said till her? 'Do justice to yourself and to others, little lady,' sez

you. 'Be just--divide the place up; give two-thirds of it away to the

children of Joel's first two wives and keep one-third, which is yours by

law in anny case. For why should it be that you should give iverythin'

and get nothin'? He had the best of you-of your girlhood and your youth,'

sez you. 'Shure y'are entitled to bread and meat, and a roof over you, as

a wife, and as one that got nothin' from your married life of what ought

to be got by honest girls like you, or by anny woman, if it comes to

that,' sez you. Aw, shure then, I know you said it, because, didn't she

tell it all to Norah Doyle, and didn't Norah tell Nolan, and me sittin'

by and glad enough that the cleverest man betune here and the other side

of the wurruld talked her round! Aw, how you talk, y'r anner! Shure,

isn't it the wonder that you don't talk the dead back to the wurruld out

of which you help them? I might ha' been a great man meself"--he

grinned--"if I'd had your eddication, but here I am, a 'low man' as Li

Choo said, takin' me place simple as a babe."

"Patsy, you save my life," remarked the Young Doctor. "You save my life

daily. That's why I'm glad you're getting a good home at last."

"At Slow Down Ranch, with her that's to be its queen! Well, isn't that

like her to be thinkin' of others? As a rule the rich is so busy lookin'

afther what they've got that they're not worryin' about the poor; but she

thought of me, didn't she?"

The Young Doctor nodded, and Patsy pursued his tale. "Haven't I see her

day in, day out, at Nolan Doyle's ranch, and don't I understan' why it is

she's not set foot in Tralee since the ould one left it feet foremost,

for his new seven-foot home, housed in a bit of wood-him that had had the

run of the wurruld? She'll set no foot in Tralee at all anny time, if she

can help it--that's the breed of her.

"Well, it is as it is, and what's goin' to be will plaze every mother's

son in Askatoon. Giggles they called him! A bit of a girl they thought

him! What's he turned out to be, though he's giggling still? Why, a man

that's got the double cinch on Askatoon. Even that fella Burlingame had

nothin' to say ag'in' him; and when Burlingame hasn't anny mud to throw,

then you must stop and look hard. Shure, the blessed Virgin, or the

Almighty himself, couldn't escape the tongue of Augustus Burlingame--not

even you."

The Young Doctor burst out laughing. "'The Blessed Mary, or the Almighty

himself--not even you!' Well, Patsy, you're a wonder," he said.

"Aw, you're not goin' to get off by scoffin' at me," remarked Patsy.

"Shure, what did Augustus Burlingame say of you?--well now, what did he

say?"

"Yes, Patsy, what was it?" urged the other. "Shure, he criticized you. He

called you 'Squills,' and said you'd helped more people intil the wurruld

than out of it."

"You call that criticism. Patsy?"

"Whichever way you look at it, hasn't it an ugly face? Is it a kindness

to man to bring him into the wurruld? That's wan way of lookin' at it.

But suppose he meant the other thing, that not being married, you--"

"Patsy Kernaghan," interjected the Young Doctor sternly, "you're not fit

company. Take care, or there'll be no Slow Down Ranch for you. An evil

mind----"

Now it was Patsy's turn to interrupt: "Watch me now, I think that wan of

the most beautiful things I iver saw was them two young people comin'

together. Five long months it was, afther Mazarine was put away before

she spoke with him. It was in the gardin at Nolan's ranch, and even then

it wasn't aisy till her. Not that she didn't want to see him all the

time; not, I'll be bound, that she didn't say, when you and Nolan first

told her the mastodon was dead, 'Thank God, I'm free!' But, there he was,

flung out of the wurruld without a minute's notice, and with the black

thing in his heart. Shure you'll be understandin' it a thousand times

better than meself, y'r anner."

He took a pinch of snuff from a little box, offered it to the Young

Doctor and continued his story.

"Well, as I said, whin five months had gone by they met. By chanct I saw

the meetin'. Watch me now, I'll tell you how it was. She was sittin' on a

bench in the gardin, lookin' in front of her and seein' nothin' but what

was in her mind's eye, and who can tell what she would be seein'! There

she sat sweet as a saint, very straight up, the palms of her hands laid

on the bench on either side, as though they was supporfin' her--like a

statue she looked. I watched her manny a minute, but she niver moved.

Well, there she was, lookin'--lookin' in front o' her, whin round the big

tree in the middle of the gardin he come and stood forninst her. They

just looked and looked at each other without a word. Like months it

seemed. They looked, and looked, as though they was tryin' to read some

story in each other's eyes, and then she give a kind of joyful moan, and

intil his arms she went like a nestlin' bird.

"He raised up her head, and-well, now, y'r anner, I niver saw anything I

liked better. There niver had been a girl in his life, and there niver

was a man in hers--not one that mattered, till they two took up with each

other, and it's a thing--well, y'r anner, I'd be a proud man if I could

write it down. It's a story that'd take its place beside the ancient

ones."

The Young Doctor looked at Patsy meditatively. "Patsy," said he, "the

difference between the north and the south of Ireland is that in the

south they are all poets--" He paused.

"Well, you haven't finished, y 'r anner," said Kernaghan.

"And in the north they think they are," continued the Young Doctor. "I'd

like to see those two as your eyes in front of your mind saw them,

Patsy."

"Aw, well then, you couldn't do it, Doctor dear, for you've niver been in

love. Shure, there's no heart till ye!" answered the Irishman, and took

another pinch of snuff with a flourish.

Once or twice, as she seemed to threaten him with what the poet called

"The slow, unmoving finger of scorn," he giggled. It was evident that he

was at once amused and troubled. This voice had cherished and chided him

all his life, and he could measure accurately what was behind it. It was

a wilful voice. It had the insistance which power gives, and to a woman

--or to most women--power is either money or beauty, since, in the world

as it is, office and authority are denied them. Beauty was gone from the

face of the ancient dame, but she still had much money, and, on rare

occasions, it gave her a little arrogance. It did so now as she

admonished her beloved son, who at any time would have renounced fortune,

or hope of fortune, for some wilful idea of his own. A less sordid modern

did not exist.

He was not very effective in the contest of tongue between his mother and

himself. As the talk went on he foresaw that he was to be beaten; yet he

persisted, for he loved a joy-wrangle, as he called it, with his mother.

He had argued with her many a time, just to see her in a harmless

passion, and note how the youth of her came back, giving high colour to

the wrinkled face, and how the eyes shone with a brightness which had

been constant in them long ago. They were now quarrelling over that

ever-fruitful cause of antagonism--the second woman in the life of a man.

Yet, strange to say, the flamingo-like Eugenie Guise, was fighting for

the second woman, not against her.

"I'll say it all again and again and again till you have sense, Orlando,"

she declared. "Your old mother hasn't lived all these years for nothing.

I'm not thinking of you; I'm thinking of her." She pointed towards the

door of another room, from which came sounds of laughter--happy laughter

--in which a man's and a woman's voices sounded. "On the day she comes

into this house--and that's the day after to-morrow--I shall go. I'll

stand at the door and welcome you, and see you have a good

wedding-breakfast and that it all goes off grand, then I shall vanish."

Orlando made a helpless gesture of the hand. "Well, mother, as I said, it

will make us both unhappy--Louise as much as me. You and I have never

been parted except for a few weeks at a time, and I'm sure I don't know

how I could stand it."

"Rather late to think about it," the other returned. "You can't have two

women spoiling you in one house and being jealous of each other--oh, you

needn't toss your fingers! Even two women that love each other can't bear

the competition. Just because I love her and want her to be happy, off I

go to your Aunt Amelia to live with her. She's poor, and I'll still have

someone to boss as I've bossed you. I never knew how much I loved Amelia

till she got sick last year when everything terrible was happening here.

I'm going, Orlando--

"It isn't poetry, mother," was the reply, and there was an ironical look

in Orlando's eyes. "Poetry's the truth of life," he hastened to add

carefully, "and it's not poetry to say that you could be a kill-joy."

The little lady tossed her head. "Well, you'll never have a chance to

prove it, for I'm taking the express east on the night of your wedding.

That's settled. Amelia needs me, and I'm going to her. . . . Your wedding

present will be the ranch and a hundred thousand dollars," she added.

"You're the sun-dried fruit of Paradise, Mother," Orlando said, taking

her by the arms.

"I heard the Young Doctor call me a bird of Paradise once," she returned.

"People don't know how sharp my ears are. . . . But I never stored it up

against him. Taste is born in you, and if people haven't got it in the

cradle, they never have it. I suppose his mother went around in a black

alpaca and wore her hair like a wardress in a jail. I'm sorry for

him--that's all."

"Suppose I should get homesick for you and run away from her!" remarked

Orlando slyly.

"Run away with her to me," chirruped Eugenie, with a vain little laugh.

Suddenly her manner changed, and she looked at her son with dreamy

intensity. "You are so wonderfully young, my dear," she said, "and I am

very old. I had much happiness with your father while he lived. He was

such a wise man. Always he gave in to me in the little things, and I gave

in to him in all the big things. He almost made me a sensible woman."

There was a strange wistfulness in her face. Through all the years, down

beneath everything, there had been the helpless knowledge in her own

small, garish mind that she had little sense; now she realized that she

was given a chance to atone for all her pettiness by doing one great

sensible thing.

Orlando was about to embrace her, but she briskly, turned away. She could

not endure that. If he did it, the pent-up motherhood would break forth,

and her courage would take flight. She was something more than the

"parokeet of Pernambukoko," as Patsy Kernaghan had called her.

She went to the door of the other room. "I want to talk to the Young

Doctor about Amelia," she said. "He's clever, and perhaps he could give

her a good prescription. I'll send Louise to you. It's nicer courting in

this room where you can see the garden and the grand hills. You're going

to give Louise the little gray mare you lassooed last year, aren't you? I

always think of Louise when I look at that gray mare. You had to break

the pony's heart before she could be what she is--the nicest little thing

that ever was broken by a man's hand; and Louise, she had to have her

heart broken too. Your father and I were almost of an age--he was two

years older, and we had our youth together. And you and Louise are so

wonderfully young, too. Be good to her, son. She's never been married.

She was only in prison with that old lizard. What a horrible mouth he

had! It's shut now," she added remorselessly. Opening the door of the

other room, she disappeared.

A moment later, Louise entered upon Orlando.

The vanished months had worked wonders in her. She was like the young

summer beyond the open windows, alive to her finger-tips, shyly radiant,

with shining eyes, yet in their depths an alluring pensiveness never to

leave them altogether. Knowledge had come to her; an apprehending soul

was speaking in her face. The sweetness of her smile, as she looked at

the man before her, was such as could only be distilled from the bitter

herbs of the desert.

"Oh, Orlando!" she said joyously, as she came forward.

THE END.