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 Chinaman 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 Nigger, 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 Chinaman 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 Chinaman; 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 Chinaman’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.