Wild Youth Part 14

"That's a wonderful story, Patsy," said the Young Doctor to him; and he added quizzically: "You tell it so well because you've told it so often before, I suppose?"

"Aw, well, that's it, I expect," answered the Irishman coolly.

"I thought so," responded the Young Doctor. "Now, how many times do you think you've told that story before, Patsy?"

"About a hundred, I should think; or no--I should think about two hundred times," answered Patsy shamelessly.

"I thought so," said the Young Doctor, but before turning to go into the house, he leaned and whispered in his ear: "Patsy, you're the most beautiful liar that ever come out of Ireland."

"Aw, Doctor dear!" said Patsy softly.

They all moved towards the house, save Louise. "Please, I want to stay behind a minute or two," she said, as she held out a hand to the Young Doctor. "Don't wait for me. I want to be alone a little while." Once more the Young Doctor felt the trembling appeal of her palm as on the first day they met, and he gripped her hand warmly.

"It will all come right. Good-night, my dear," he said cheerfully. "Have a good sleep on it."

Louise remained in the garden alone, the moon s.h.i.+ning on her face lifted to the sky. For a moment she stood so, wrapped in the peace of the night, but her body was almost panting from the thrill of the legend which Patsy Kernaghan had told. As he had meant it to do, it gave her hope; although before her eyes was the picture that Patsy had drawn of Black Brian with his great sword beside him lying on the sands, waiting for the hungry sea to claim him.

Presently there stole through the warm air of the night the sound of her own name. She did not start. It seemed to her part of the dream in which she was. Her hand went to her heart, however.

Again in Orlando's voice came the word "Louise," a little louder now.

She turned towards the tree, and there beside it stood Orlando.

For an instant there was a sense of unreality, of ghostliness, and then she gave a little cry of pain and joy. As she ran towards him, with sudden impulse, his arms spread out and he caught her to his breast.

His lips swept her hair. "Louise! Louise!" he whispered pa.s.sionately.

For an instant they stood so, and then he gently pressed her away from him.

"I had to come," he said. "I want you to know that whatever happens, you may depend on me. When you call, I will come. I must go now. For your sake I must not stay. I had to see you, I had to tell you what I had never told you."

"You've always told me," she murmured.

He stretched out his hand to clasp hers. He did not dare to open his arms again. The lips which he had never kissed were very near, and ah, so sweet! She must not come to him now.

One swift clasp of the hand, and then he vaulted over the fence and was gone. A few moments afterwards she heard the rumble of his wagon on the prairie--he had tied up his horses some distance from the house.

As the Young Doctor drove homeward with Patsy Kernaghan, he also heard the rumble of the wagon not far in front of him. Then he began to wonder why Louise had waited behind in the garden. He put the thought away from him, however. There was no deceit in Louise; he was sure of that.

CHAPTER XV. OUTWARD BOUND

Joel Mazarine did not take the trail to Tralee immediately after he found his wagon and horses in the shed of the Methodist Meeting House. As he drove through the main street of Askatoon again, his lawyer--Burlingame's rival--waved a hand towards him in greeting. An idea suddenly possessed the old man, and he stopped the horses and beckoned.

"Get in and come to your office with me," he said to the lawyer.

"There's some business to do right off."

The unpopularity of a client in no way affects a lawyer. Indeed, the most notorious criminal is the greatest legal advertis.e.m.e.nt, and the fortunate part of the business is that no lawyer is ever identified with the morals, crimes or virtues of his client, yet has particular advantage from his crimes. So it was that Mazarine's lawyer enjoyed the public attention given to his drive through the town with Mazarine. He could hear this man say, "h.e.l.lo, what's up!" or another remark that the Law and the Gospel were out for war.

Just as they were about to enter the office, however, Jonas Billings, who had a faculty for being everywhere at the interesting moment, said, so as to be heard by Mazarine and his lawyer, and all others standing near.

"Goin' to leave his property away from his wife! Makin' a new will--eh?

That's it, stamp on a girl when she's down! When you can't win the woman, keep the cash. Woe is me, w.i.l.l.y, but the wild one rageth!"

Jonas' drawling, nasal, high-pitched sarcasm reached Mazarine's ears and stung him. He lurched round, and with beady eyes blinking with malice, said roughly: "The fool is known by his folly."

"You don't need to label yourself, Mr. Mazarine," retorted Jonas with a grin.

The crowd laughed in approval. The loose lower lip of the Master of Tralee quivered. The leviathan was being tortured by the little sharks.

Presently the door of the lawyer's office slammed on the street, and Mazarine proceeded to make a new will, which should leave everything away from Louise. After he had slowly dictated the terms of the will, with a glutinous solemnity he said:

"There; that's what comes of breaking the laws of G.o.d and man. That's what a woman loses who doesn't do her duty by the man that can give her everything, and that's give her everything, while she plays the Jezebel."

"I'll complete this for you, and you can sign it now," remarked the lawyer evasively, not without shrinking; "but it won't stand as it is, or as you want it to stand, because Mrs. Mazarine has her legal claims in spite of it! She's got a wife's dower-rights according to the law.

That's one-third of your property. It's the law of the land, and you can't sign it away from her, Mr. Mazarine."

The old man's face darkened still more; his crooked fingers twisted in his beard.

"I see you forgot that," added the lawyer. "There's only one way to dispossess her, and that's to put her through Divorce--if you think you can. Of course this doc.u.ment'll stand as far as it goes, and it's perfectly legal, but it isn't what you intend, and she'd get her one-third in spite of it."

"I'll come back to-morrow," said the old man, rising to his feet. "You make it out, and I'll come back and sign it to-morrow. I'll make a sure thing of so much, anyway. The divorce'll settle the rest. You have it ready at noon to-morrow, and you can start divorce proceedings to-morrow too. There's plenty of evidence. She run away from me to go to him. She stayed with him a whole night on the prairie. I want the divorce, and I can get the evidence. Everybody knows. This is the Lord's business, and I mean to see it through. Shame has come to the house of a servant of the Lord, and there must be purging. In the days of David she would have been stoned to death, and not so far back as that, either."

A moment afterwards he was gone, slamming the door behind him. His blood was up-a turgid, angry flood almost bursting his veins. He now made his way to the house of the Methodist minister. There he announced that if he was disciplined at Quarterly Meeting, as was talked about in the streets, he would go to law against every cla.s.s-leader for defamation of character.

By the time this was done the evening was well advanced. He did not leave Askatoon until the moment which coincided with that in which Orlando left Nolan Doyle's garden and took the trail to Slow Down Ranch.

Orlando would strike the trail from Askatoon to Tralee at a point where another trail also joined.

Mazarine drove fast through the town, as though eager to put it behind him, but when he reached the trail on the prairie he slackened his pace, and drove steadily homewards, lost in the darkest reflections he had ever known; and that was saying much. The reins lay loose in his fingers, and he became so absorbed that he was conscious of nothing save movement.

The heart of Black Brian, the King, of whom Patsy Kernaghan told his mythical story in Nolan Doyle's garden, had never housed more repulsive thoughts than were in Mazarine's heart in this unfortunate hour of his own making. No single feeling of kindness was in his spirit. He heard nothing, was conscious of nothing, save his own grim, fantastic imaginings.

A jealousy and hatred as terrible as ever possessed a man were on him.

An egregious self-will, a dreadful spirit of unholy old age in him, was turned hatefully upon the youth long since gone from himself--the youth which, in its wild, innocent ardours, had brought two young people together, one of them his own captive for years.

The peace of the prairie, the s.h.i.+ning, infant moon, the kindly darkness, were all at variance with the soul of the man, whose only possession was what money could buy; and what money had bought in the way of human flesh and blood, beauty and sweet youth he had not been able to hold. To his mind, what was the good of having riches and power, if you could not also have love, licence and the loot of the conqueror!

He had wrestled with the Lord in prayer; he had been a cla.s.s-leader and a lay-preacher; he had exhorted and denounced; he had pleaded and proscribed; yet never in all his days of professed religion had a heart for others really moved Joel Mazarine.

He had given now and then of gold and silver, because of the glow of mind which the upraised hands of admiration brought him, mistaking it for the real thing; but his life had been barren because it had not emptied itself for others, at any time, or anywhere.

He had been a professed Christian, not because of Olivet, but because of Sinai. It was the stormy authority of the sword of the Lord of Gideon of the Old Testament which had drawn him into the fold of religion. It was some strain of heredity, his upbringing, the life into which he was born, pious, pedantic and preposterously prayerful, which had made him a professional Christian, as he was a professional farmer, rancher and money-maker. For such a man there never could be peace.

In his own world of wanton inhumanity, oblivious of all except his torturing thoughts, he did not know that, as he neared the Cross Trails on his way homewards, something shadowy, stooping, sprang up from the roadside and slip-slopped after his wagon--slip-slopped--slip-slopped--catching the thud of the horses'

hoofs, and making its footsteps coincide.

All at once the shadowy figure swung itself up softly and remained for an instant, half-kneeling, in the body of the wagon. Then suddenly, noiselessly, it rose up, leaned over the absorbed Joel Mazarine, and with long, hooked, steely fingers caught the throat of the Master of Tralee under the grayish beard. They clenched there with a power like that of three men; for this was the kind of grip which, far away in the country of the Yang-tse-kiang, Li Choo had learned in the days when he had made youth a thing to be remembered.