Produced by David Widger
WILD YOUTH
By Gilbert Parker
Volume 1.
I. THE MAZARINES TAKE POSSESSION
II. “MY NAME IS LOUISE”
III. “I HAVE FOUGHT WITH BEASTS AT EPHESUS”
IV. TWO SIDES TO A BARGAIN
V. ORLANDO HAS AN ADVENTURE
VI. “THINGS MUST HAPPEN”
VII. “THE ZOOLYOGICAL GARDEN”
VIII. THE ORIENTAL WAY OF IT
IX. THE STARS IN THEIR COURSES
Volume 2.
X. THE MOON WAS NOT ALONE
XI. LOUISE
XII. MAN UNNATURAL
XIII. ORLANDO GIVES A WARNING
XIV. FILION AND FIONA--ALSO PATSY KERNAGHAN
XV. OUTWARD BOUND
XVI. AT THE CROSS TRAILS
XVII. THE SUPERIOR MAN
XVIII. YOUTH HAS ITS WAY
WILD YOUTH
CHAPTER I. THE MAZARINES TAKE POSSESSION
From the beginning, Askatoon had had more character and idiosyncrasy
than any other town in the West. Perhaps that was because many of its
citizens had marked personality, while some were distinctly original--a
few so original as to be almost bizarre. The general intelligence was
high, and this made the place alert for the new observer. It slept with
one eye open; it waked with both eyes wide--as wide as the windows of
the world. The virtue of being bright and clever was a doctrine which
had never been taught in Askatoon; it was as natural as eating and
drinking. Nothing ever really shook the place out of a wholesome control
and composure. Now and then, however, the flag of distress was hoisted,
and everybody in the place--from Patsy Kernaghan, the casual, at one
end of the scale, and the Young Doctor, so called because he was
young-looking when he first came to the place, who represented Askatoon
in the meridian of its intellect, at the other--had sudden paralysis.
That was the outstanding feature of Askatoon. Some places made a noise
and flung things about in times of distress; but Askatoon always stood
still and fumbled with its collar-buttons, as though to get more air.
When it was poignantly moved, it leaned against the wall of its common
sense, abashed, but vigilant and careful.
That is what it did when Mr. and Mrs. Joel Mazarine arrived at Askatoon
to take possession of Tralee, the ranch which Michael Turley, abandoning
because he had an unavoidable engagement in another world, left to his
next of kin, with a legacy to another kinsman a little farther off.
The next of kin had proved to be Joel Mazarine, from one of those
stern English counties on the borders of Quebec, where ancient tribal
prejudices and religious hatreds give a necessary relief to hard-driven
human nature.
Michael Turley had lived much to himself on his ranch, but that
was because in his latter days he had developed a secret taste for
spirituous liquors which he had no wish to share with others. With the
assistance of a bad cook and a constant spleen caused by resentment
against the intervention of his priest, good Father Roche, he finished
his career with great haste and without either becoming a nuisance
to his neighbours or ruining his property. The property was clear of
mortgage or debt when he set out on his endless journey.
When the prophet-bearded, huge, swarthy-faced Joel Mazarine, with a
beautiful young girl behind him, stepped from the West-bound train
and was greeted by the Mayor, who was one of the executors of Michael
Turley’s will, a shiver passed through Askatoon, and for one instant
animation was suspended; for the jungle-looking newcomer, motioning
forward the young girl, said to the Mayor:
“Mayor, this is Mrs. Mazarine. Shake hands with the Mayor, Mrs.
Mazarine.”
Mazarine did not speak very loud, but as an animal senses the truth of
a danger far off with an unshakable certainty, the crowd at the station
seemed to know by instinct what he said.
“Hell--that old whale and her!” growled Jonas Billings, the keeper of
the livery-stable.
At Mazarine’s words the Young Doctor, a man of rare gifts, individuality
and authority in the place, who had come to the station to see a patient
off to the mountains by this train, drew in his breath sharply, as
though a spirit of repugnance was in his heart. This happened during the
first years of the Young Doctor’s career at Askatoon, when he was still
alive with human prejudices, although he had a nature well balanced
and singularly just. The strife between his prejudices and his sense of
justice was what made him always interesting in all the great prairie
and foothill country of which Askatoon was the centre.
He had got his shock, indeed, before Mazarine had introduced his wife to
the Mayor. Not for nothing had he studied the human mind in its relation
to the human body, and the expression of that mind speaking through the
body. The instant Joel Mazarine and his wife stepped out of the
train, he knew they were what they were to each other. That was a real
achievement in knowledge, because Mazarine was certainly sixty-five if
he was a day, and his wife was a slim, willowy slip of a girl, not more
than nineteen years of age, with the most wonderful Irish blue eyes and
long dark lashes. There was nothing of the wife or woman about her, save
something in the eyes, which seemed to belong to ages past and gone,
something so solemnly wise, yet so painfully confused, that there
flashed into the Young Doctor’s mind at first glance of her the vision
of a young bird caught from its thoughtless, sunbright journeyings, its
reckless freedom of winged life, into the captivity of a cage.
She smiled, this child, as she shook hands with the Mayor, and it had
the appeal of one who had learned the value of smiling--as though it
answered many a question and took the place of words and the trials of
the tongue. It was pitifully mechanical. As the Young Doctor saw, it was
the smile of a captive in a strange uncomprehended world, more a dream
than a reality.
“Mrs. Mazarine, welcome,” said the Mayor after an abashed pause. “We’re
proud of this town, but we’ll be prouder still, now you’ve come.”
The girl-wife smiled again. At the same time it was as though she
glanced apprehensively out of the corner of her eye at the old man by
her side, as she said:
“Thank you. There seems to be plenty of room for us out here, so we
needn’t get in each other’s way.... I’ve never been on the prairie
before,” she added.
The Young Doctor realized that her reply had meanings which would escape
the understanding of the Mayor, and her apprehensive glance had told him
of the gruesome jealousy of this old man at her side. The Mayor’s polite
words had caused the long, clean-shaven upper lip of the old man with
the look of a debauched prophet, to lengthen surlily; and he noticed
that a wide, flat foot in a big knee-boot, inside trousers too short,
tapped the ground impatiently.
“We must be getting on to Tralee,” said a voice that seemed to force its
way through bronchial obstructions. “Come, Mrs. Mazarine.”
He laid a big, flat, tropical hand, which gave the impression of being
splayed, on the girl’s shoulder. The gallant words of the Mayor--a
chivalrous mountain man--had set dark elements working. As the new
master of Tralee stepped forward, the Young Doctor could not help
noticing how large and hairy were the ears that stood far out from the
devilish head. It was a huge, steel-twisted, primitive man, who
somehow gave the impression of a gorilla. The face was repulsive in
its combination of surly smugness, as shown by the long upper lip, by a
repellent darkness round the small, furtive eyes, by a hardness in the
huge, bearded jaw, and by a mouth of primary animalism.
The Mayor caught sight of the Young Doctor, and he stopped the
incongruous pair as they moved to the station doorway, the girl in
front, as though driven.
“Mr. Mazarine, you’ve got to know the man who counts for more in
Askatoon than anybody else; Doctor, you’ve got to know Mr. Mazarine,”
said the generous Mayor.
Repugnance was in full possession of the Young Doctor, but he was
scientific and he was philosophic, if nothing else. He shook hands with
Mazarine deliberately. If he could prevent it, there should be, where
he was concerned, no jealousy, such as Mazarine had shown towards the
Mayor, in connection with this helpless, exquisite creature in the
grip of hard fate. Shaking hands with the girl with only a friendly
politeness in his glance, he felt a sudden eager, clinging clasp of her
fingers. It was like lightning, and gone like lightning, as was the
look that flashed between them. Somehow the girl instinctively felt the
nature of the man, and in spirit flew to him for protection. No one
saw the swift look, and in it there was nothing which spoke of youth or
heart, of the feeling of man for woman or woman for man; but only the
longing for help on the girl’s part, undefined as it was. On the man’s
part there was a soul whose gift and duty were healing. As the two
passed on, the Young Doctor looked around him at the exclaiming crowd,
for few had left the station when the train rolled out. Curiosity was an
obsession with the people of Askatoon.
“Well, I never!” said round-faced Mrs. Skinner, with huge hips and gray
curls. “Did you ever see the like?”
“I call it a shame,” declared an indignant young woman, gripping
tighter the hand of her little child, the daughter of a young butcher of
twenty-three years of age.
“Poor lamb!” another motherly voice said.
“She ought to be ashamed of herself--money, I suppose,” sneered Ellen
Banner, a sour-faced shopkeeper’s daughter, who had taught in Sunday
school for twenty years and was still single.
“Beauty and the beast,” remarked the Young Doctor to himself, as he saw
the two drive away, Patsy Kernaghan running beside the wagon, evidently
trying to make friends with the mastodon of Tralee.