Wild Youth

Chapter 12

MAN UNNATURAL

Mazarine discovered the flight of Louise soon after she had gone. He had

not been five hundred yards from the house since she returned with

Orlando after the night spent upon the prairie, save when he had been

obliged to go in to Askatoon and had taken her with him, dumb and

passive. She had been a prisoner, tied to the stirrups of her captor; and

he had berated her, had preached at her. As Louise had said, once on the

way to Askatoon, he had even tried to make her kneel down in the dust of

the trail and plead with Heaven to convict her of sin.

On the evening of Louise's flight, however, he had been forced to go to a

neighbouring ranch, and had commanded Li Choo to keep a strict watch at

the windows of her room to see that she did not attempt escape. She could

not escape by the door of the room because he had the key in his pocket.

Li Choo was not a stern jailer, however. Mazarine had not been gone three

minutes before the c******n had touch with Louise. He did more; he threw

up into the open window of her room a screw-driver, with which she took

the old-fashioned door off its hinges, after half an hour's work. Then,

leaving a note on the table of the dining-room, to say that she could not

bear it any longer, that she would never come back, and that she meant to

be free, she summoned Patsy Kernaghan and fled to the Young Doctor.

When Mazarine returned and found her note, he plunged up the stairs to

her bedroom, his pious wrath gurgling in his throat, only to find the

door locked; for Li Choo had promptly restored it to its hinges after

Louise had gone, afterwards dropping from the high window like a cat,

without hurt.

Li Choo, blinking, opaque, immobile, save for his piercing and mysterious

eyes, had no explanation to give. All he said was, "Me no see all sides

house same time"; so suggesting that, as the room had windows on all

three sides, Louise must have escaped while he made his supposed

sentry-go, slip-slopping round the house. Mazarine showed what he thought

by spitting in Li Choo's face, and then rushing into the house to get the

raw-hide whip with which he had punished the c******n before, and with

which he had threatened his wife.

When he returned a moment afterwards, Li Choo was nowhere to be seen; but

in his place were two other c******n who had, as it were, fallen from the

skies, standing where Li Choo had stood, immobile, blinking and passive

like Li Choo, their hands lost in the long sleeves of their coats, their

pigtails so tightly braided as, in seeming, to draw their slanting

eyelids still to greater incline, and to give a look of petrified

intentness to their faces.

Something in their attitude gave Mazarine apprehension. It was as though

Li Choo had been transformed by some hellish magic into two other

Chinamen. The rage of his being seemed to stupefy him; he could not

resist the sensation of the unnatural.

"What do you want? How did you come here?" he asked of the two in a husky

voice.

"We want speak Li Choo. We come see Li Choo," answered one of the

Chinamen impassively.

"He was here a minute ago," answered Mazarine gruffly.

Then he turned away, going swiftly toward the kitchen, and calling to Li

Choo. As he went, he was conscious of low, cackling laughter, but when he

turned to look, the two c******n stood where he had left them, blinking

and immobile.

The uncanny feeling possessing him increased; the thing was unnatural. He

lurched on, however, looking for Li Choo. The c******n was not to be

found in the kitchen, in the woodshed, in the cellar, in the loft, or in

his own attic room; and the half-breed, Rada, declared she had not seen

him. He could not be at the stables, for they were too far away to be

reached in the time; and there were no signs of him between the house and

the stables. When Mazarine returned to the front of the house, the two

Chinamen also had vanished; there were no signs of them anywhere. Search

did not discover them.

Mingled anger and fear now possessed Mazarine. He would search no longer.

No doubt the other two c******n had joined Li Choo in his hiding-place,

wherever it was. Why had the c******n come? What were they after? It did

not matter for the moment. What he wanted was Louise, his bad child-wife,

who had broken from her cage and flown from him. Where would she go?

Where, but to Slow Down Ranch? Where, but to her lover, the circus-rider,

the boy with the head of brown curls, with the ring on his finger and the

Cupid mouth! Where would she go but to the man with whom she had spent

the night on the prairie!

Now he believed altogether that she was guilty, that everybody had

conspired to deceive him, that he was in a net of dark deception. Even

the two c******n, mysteriously coming and going, had laughed at him like

two heathen gods, and had vanished suddenly like heathen gods.

A weakness came over him, and the skin of his face became creased and

clammy like that of a drowned man; his limbs trembled, so desperate was

his passion. He stumbled into the house and into the dining-room, where

he kept a little black-bound Bible once belonging to his

great-grandfather. He had thumbed it well in past years, searching it for

passages of violence and denunciation. Now holy superstition seized him

in the midst of the work of the devil, surrounding him with an almost

medieval instinct. He seized the ancient book, as it were to deliver its

incantations against everyone destroying his peace, stealing from him

that which he prized beyond all earthly things.

Take this woman away from him, this child-wife from his sixty-five years,

and what was left for him? She was the garden of spring in which his old

age roamed at ease luxuriously. She was the fruit of the tree of

pleasure. She was that which made him young again, renewed in him youth

and the joys of youth. Take her away, the flower that smelled so sweet

and luscious, the thing that he had held so often to his lips and to his

breast? Take away what was his, by every holy right, because it was all

according to the law of the land and of the Holy Gospel, and what was

left? Only old age, the empty house bereft of a fair young mistress,

something to smile at and to curse, if need be, since it was his own by

the laws of God and man.

Take her away, and the two wives that he had buried long years ago, with

their gray heads and lank, sour faces, from which the light of youth had

fled with the first child come to them--their ghosts would seek him out.

They would sit at his table, and taunt him with his vanished Louise,

asking him if he thought she was anything more than one of the trolls

that tempted men aforetime; one of the devil's wenches that lured him

into the secret garden, only at last to leave him scorned and alone.

Where had she gone, his troll, with the face of an angel? Where had she

gone? Where would she go, except to her devil's lover at Slow Down Ranch?

He had just started for Slow Down Ranch armed with his greasy,

well-thumbed Bible like a weapon in his pocket, when he heard a voice

call him. It was full of the devil's laughter. It was the voice of

Burlingame, the lawyer, on his horse. Burlingame had had a weary day and

was refreshing himself by a canter on the prairie.

"Where are you going?" asked Burlingame, as he cantered up to Mazarine's

wagon.

"To Slow Down Ranch?"

He saw the look of the drowned man in the face of Mazarine, over whom the

flood of disaster had passed, and he guessed at once the cause of it; for

Burlingame had the philosophy of a Satanic mind, and he knew the things

that happen to human nature.

"So, she's gone again, has she?" he added deliberately, with intent to

put a knife into the old man's feelings and to turn it in the thick of

them. He wanted to hurt, because Mazarine had only a short time before

dispensed with his services as a lawyer, and had blocked the way to that

intimacy which he had hoped to establish with Tralee and its mistress.

Besides, his pride as a professional man had been hurt, and he had been

deprived of income which now went to his most hated professional rival.

Mazarine's jealous soul had cut him off, on coming to know Burlingame's

dark reputation. He had not liked the look Burlingame had given Louise

when they met.

"Gone again, has she?" Burlingame repeated sarcastically. "Well, you

needn't go to Slow Down Ranch to find her. She isn't there, and you won't

find him there either, for I saw him come by the Lark River Trail into

Askatoon as I left, and a lady was with him. He booked this morning for

the sleeper of the express going East to-night; so, if I were you, I'd

turn my horse's nose to Askatoon, Mr. Mazarine. I don't know why I tell

you this, as you're not my client now, but I go about the world doing

good, Mr. Mazarine--only doing good."

There was a look in Burlingame's face which Heaven would not have

accepted as goodness, and there was that in his voice which did not

belong to the Courts of the Lord. Malice, though veiled, showed in face

and sounded in voice. Even as he spoke, Joel Mazarine turned his horse's

head towards Askatoon.

"You're sure a woman was with him? You're sure she was with him?" he

asked in chaos of passion.

"I couldn't see her face; it was too far away," answered Burlingame

suggestively, "but you can form your own conclusions--and the express is

due in thirty minutes!"

He looked at his watch complacently. "What's the good, Mazarine? Why

don't you say, 'Go and sin no more?' Or why don't you divorce her with

the evidence about that night on the prairie? I could have got you a

verdict and damages. Yes, I could have got you plenty of damages. He's

rich. You took her back and condoned; you condoned, Mazarine, and now

you'll neither have damages nor wife--and the express goes in thirty

minutes!"

"The express won't take Mrs. Mazarine away tonight," the old man said, a

look of jungle fierceness filling his face.

Burlingame laughed unpleasantly. "Yes, you'll foul your own nest,

Mazarine, and then bring her back to live in it. I know you. It isn't the

love of God in your heart, because you'll never forgive her; but you'll

bring her back to the nest you fouled, just because you want her--'You

damned and luxurious mountain goat,' as Shakespeare called your kind."

With another laugh, which somewhat resembled that of the two strange

vanished c******n, Burlingame flicked his horse and cantered away. A

little time afterwards, however, he turned and looked toward Askatoon,

and he saw the old man whipping his horse into a gallop to reach Askatoon

railway station before the express went East.

"It's true, Mazarine," he said aloud. "Orlando booked for the sleeper

going East in thirty minutes; but the sleeper was for one only, and that

one was his mother, you old hippopotamus. . . . But I wonder where she

is--where the divine Louise is? She hasn't levanted with her Orlando.

. . . Now, I wonder!" he added.

Then, with a sudden impulse, he dug heels into his horse's sides, and

galloped back towards Askatoon. He wanted to see what would happen before

the express went East.