Wild Youth

Chapter 8

THE ORIENTAL WAY OF IT

Orlando Guise's mother was lacking in the caution which mothers generally

have where their men-children are concerned. If she had had sense, she

would have insisted on removing Orlando to Slow Down Ranch at the

earliest possible moment, even at some risk to his physical well-being.

She ought to have seen that Joel Mazarine was possessed of a jealousy as

unreasoning as that of an animal; she ought to have discouraged Louise's

kindnesses. If the kindnesses had been only the ordinary acts of a

mistress of a house to a guest who had saved her husband's life--dishes

made by her own hand, strengthening drinks, flowers picked and arranged

by herself--there could have been no cause for nervousness. Each thing

done by Louise, however, came from a personally and emotionally

solicitous interest. It was to be seen in the glance of the eye, in the

voice a little unsteady, in girlish over-emphasis, in that shining

something in the face, which, in Ireland, they call the love-light.

So great was Mrs. Guise's vanity, so intense her content in her son, so

proud was she of other people's admiration of him, no matter who they

were, that she welcomed Louise's attentions. Kernaghan was wrong.

Mazarine had not forbidden Louise to enter Orlando's room. That was the

contradictory nature of the man. His innate savagery made him brood

wickedly over her natural housewifery attentions to the man who had

probably saved his own life, and certainly had saved him six thousand

dollars; yet it was as though he must see the worst that might happen,

must even encourage a danger which he dreaded. When the Methodist

minister from Askatoon came to offer prayer for Orlando, Joel joined in

it with all the unction of a class-leader, while every word of the prayer

trembled in an atmosphere of hatred. As Patsy Kernaghan said, he himself

watched, and he paid the c******n to watch, in the vain belief that money

would secure faithful service.

The Young Doctor had told him that his powerful medicine had brought back

the bloom to his young wife's cheeks and the light to her eyes, but how

much he believed, he could not himself have said. One thing he did know:

it was that Orlando seemed quite indifferent to everything except his

mother, the state of the crops and the reports on his own cattle. Also

Orlando had made a good impression when he resented with a funny little

oath and a funnier little giggle, but with some heat in his cheek, Joel's

ostentatious proposal to pay the Young Doctor's bill for attendance.

The offer had been made when Louise was standing in the doorway; but the

old man did not notice that Louise coloured in sympathy with the flush in

Orlando's face. It was as though a delicate nerve had been touched in

each of them; but it was a nerve that had never been sensitive until they

had met each other for the first time. Orlando's mother dealt with the

situation in her own way. She said in a somewhat awkward pause, following

the old man's proposal, that a doctor's bill was a personal thing, and

she would as soon allow some one else to pay it as to pay for her

washing. At this Orlando giggled again, and ventured the remark that no

doctor could dispense enough medicine in a year to pay her laundry bill

for a month--which pleased the old lady greatly and impelled her to swing

her skirt kittenishly.

It was at this point that Li Choo came knocking at the open door with a

message for Mazarine. It related to a horse-accident at what was known as

One Mile Spring; and Mazarine, having frowned his wife out of the

doorway, made his way downstairs and prepared for his short journey to

the Spring. Before he left, however, he called Li Choo aside, and what he

said caused Li Choo to answer: "Me get money, me do job. Me keep eyes

open. Me tell you."

From a window Louise had watched the colloquy, and she knew, as well as

though she stood beside them, what was being said. Li Choo had told the

truth: he had got the cash, and he would do the job. But not alone from

Joel Mazarine did he get money. Only two mornings before, Louise, for all

the extra work he had had to do during Orlando's illness and without

thought of bribery, had given him a beautiful gold ten-dollar-piece with

a hole in it. If the piece had been minus the hole, Li Choo would have

returned it to her, for he would have served her for nothing till the end

of his days, had it been possible. Because there was a hole in it,

however, and he could put a string through it and wear it round his neck

inside his waistcoat, he took it, blinking his beady eyes at her; and he

said:

"Me watch most petic'ler, mlissy. Me tell boss Mazaline ev'lytling me

see!" And he giggled almost as Orlando might have done.

After which Li Choo slip-slopped away to his work behind the kitchen.

When he saw Orlando's mother in the garden and the Young Doctor drive to

Askatoon, and Patsy Kernaghan mount an aged cayuse and ride off, he

clucked with his tongue and then went into the kitchen and prepared a

tray on which he placed several pieces of a fine old set of China, which

had belonged to Mazarine's grandmother and was greatly prized by the old

man. Then he clucked to the half-breed woman, and she made ready as

sumptuous a tea as ever entered the room of a convalescent.

Like a waiter at a seaside hotel, Li Choo carried the tray above his head

on three fingers to the staircase, and as he mounted to the landing,

called out, "Welly good tea me bling gen'l'man." This was his way of

warning Orlando Guise, and whoever might be with him, of his coming.

He need not have done so, for though Louise was in Orlando's room, she

was much nearer to the door than she was to Orlando. She hastened to

place a table near to Orlando, for the tray which Li Choo had brought,

and, as she did so, remarked with a shock at the cherished china upon the

tray.

"Li Choo! Li Choo!" she gasped, reprovingly, for it was as though the Ark

of the Covenant had been burgled. But Li Choo, clucking, slip-slopped out

of the room and down the stairs as happy as an Oriental soul could be.

What was in the far recesses of that soul, where these two young people

were concerned, must remain unrevealed; but Li Choo and the halfbreed

woman in their own language--which was almost without words--clucked and

grunted their understanding.

Left alone again, Louise found herself seated with only the table between

herself and Orlando, pouring him tea and offering him white frosted cake

like that dispensed at weddings; while Orlando chuckled his thanks and

thought what a wonderful thing it was that a bullet in a man's side could

bring the unexpected to pass and the heart's desire of a man within the

touch of his fingers.

Their conversation was like that of two children. She talked of her bird

Richard, which she had sent to him every morning that it might sing to

him; of her black cat n****r, which sat on his lap for many an hour of

the day; of the dog Jumbo, which said its prayers for him to get well,

for a piece of sugar-that was a trick Louise had taught it long ago.

Orlando talked of his horses and of his mother--who, he declared, was the

most unselfish person on the whole continent; how she only thought of

him, and spent her money for him, and gave to him, never thinking of

herself at all.

"She has the youngest heart of anyone in the world," said Orlando.

Louise did not even smile at that. No one with a heart that was not

infantile could dress and talk as Orlando's mother dressed and talked;

and so Louise said softly: "I am sure her heart is a thousand years

younger than mine--or younger than mine was." And then she blushed, and

Orlando blushed, for he understood what was in her mind--that until they

two had met, she was, as the Young Doctor said, a victim to senile decay.

That was the nearest they had come as yet to saying anything which, being

translated, as it were, through several languages, could mean

love-making. Their love-making had only been by an inflection of the

voice, by a soft abstraction, by a tuning of their spirits to each other.

They were indeed like two children; and yet Li Choo was right when, in

his dark soul, he conceived them to be lovers, and thought they would do

what lovers do--hold hands and kiss and whisper, with never an end to a

sentence, never a beginning.

It was not that these things were impossible to them. It was not that

their beating pulses, and the throbbing in them, was not the ancient

passion which has overturned an empire, or made a little spot of earth as

dear as Heaven above. It was that these were forbidden things, and Louise

and Orlando accepted that they were forbidden.

How long would this position last? What would the future bring? This was

only the fluttering approach of two natures, from everlasting distances.

The girl had been roused out of sleep; from her understanding the

curtains had been flung back so that she might see. How long would it

last, this simple, unsoiled story of two lives?

Orlando reached out his hand to put his cup back upon the tray. As her

own hand was extended to take it, her fingers touched his. Then her face

flushed, and a warm cloud seemed to bedim her eyes. There flashed into

her mind the deep, overwhelming fact that for three long years a rough,

heavy hand had held her captive by day, by night, in a pitiless

ownership. She got to her feet suddenly; her breath came quickly, and she

turned towards the door as though she meant to go.

At that instant Li Choo slid softly into the room, caught up the tray,

poised it on his three fingers over his head and said: "Old Mazaline, he

come. Be queeck!"

They heard the heavy footsteps of Joel Mazarine coming into the hall-way

just below.

The old man, as though moved by some uncanny instinct, had come back from

One Mile Spring by a roundabout trail. As the c******n came out upon the

landing at the top of the stairs, Joel appeared at the bottom, in the

doorway which gave upon the staircase. Two or three steps down shuffled

the c******n; then, as it were by accident, he stumbled and fell, the

tray with the beautiful china crashing down to the feet of Joel Mazarine,

followed by the tumbling, chirruping Li Choo.

Oriental duplicity had made no wrong reckoning. The old man fell back

into the hall-way from the crashing china and tumbling Oriental, who

plunged out into the hall-way muttering and begging pardon, cursing his

soul in good Chinese and bad English.

Looking down on the wreck, Mazarine saw his treasured porcelain

shattered. With a growl of rage he stooped and seized Li Choo by the

collar, flung him out of the door, and then with his heavy boot kicked

him once, twice, thrice, a dozen times, anywhere, everywhere!

Li Choo, however, had done his work well. Joel Mazarine never knew the

reason for the c******n's downfall on the stairway, for, in the turmoil,

Louise had slipped away in safety. His rage had vented itself; but, if he

had seen Li Choo's face an hour after, as he talked to the half-breed

woman in the kitchen, he might have had some qualms for his cruel

assault. Passion and hatred in the face of an Oriental are not lovely

things to see.