“Aw, Doctor dear, there’s manny that’s less use in the wurruld than
Chinamen, and I’d like to see more o’ them here-away,” remarked Patsy
Kernaghan to the Young Doctor in the springtime of another year.
“Stren’th of mind is all right, but stren’th of fingers is better
still.”
“You’re a bloodthirsty pagan, Patsy,” returned the Young Doctor.
“Hell to me sowl, then, didn’t Li Choo pull things straight? I’m not
much of a murd’ring man meself--I haven’t the stren’th with me fingers,
but there’s manny a time I’d like to do what Li Choo done.... Shure, I
don’t want to be sp’akin’ ill of the dead, but look at it now. There was
ould Mazarine, breakin’ the poor child’s heart, as fine a fella as iver
trod the wurruld achin’ for her, and his life bein’ spoilt by the goin’s
on at Tralee. Then in steps the Chinky and with stren’th of mind and
stren’th of fingers puts things right.”
“No, no, Patsy, you’ve got bad logic and worse morals in your head. As
you say, things were put right, but trouble enough came of it.”
“Divils me darlin’, Doctor, it was bound to come all right some time.
Shure, wasn’t it natural the child should be all crumpled up like and
lose her head for a while? Wasn’t it natural she should fight out agin’
takin’ the property the leviathin left her, whin she knew there was
another will he’d spoke on a paper to the lawyer the night he died,
though he hadn’t signed it? And isn’t it so that yourself it was talked
her round!”
The Young Doctor waved a hand reprovingly, but Patsy continued:
“Now, lookin’ back on it, don’t ye think it was clever enough what you
said till her? ‘Do justice to yourself and to others, little lady,’ sez
you. ‘Be just--divide the place up; give two-thirds of it away to the
children of Joel’s first two wives and keep one-third, which is yours by
law in anny case. For why should it be that you should give iverythin’
and get nothin’? He had the best of you-of your girlhood and your
youth,’ sez you. ‘Shure y’are entitled to bread and meat, and a roof
over you, as a wife, and as one that got nothin’ from your married life
of what ought to be got by honest girls like you, or by anny woman, if
it comes to that,’ sez you. Aw, shure then, I know you said it, because,
didn’t she tell it all to Norah Doyle, and didn’t Norah tell Nolan, and
me sittin’ by and glad enough that the cleverest man betune here and the
other side of the wurruld talked her round! Aw, how you talk, y’r anner!
Shure, isn’t it the wonder that you don’t talk the dead back to the
wurruld out of which you help them? I might ha’ been a great man
meself”--he grinned--“if I’d had your eddication, but here I am, a ‘low
man’ as Li Choo said, takin’ me place simple as a babe.”
“Patsy, you save my life,” remarked the Young Doctor. “You save my life
daily. That’s why I’m glad you’re getting a good home at last.”
“At Slow Down Ranch, with her that’s to be its queen! Well, isn’t that
like her to be thinkin’ of others? As a rule the rich is so busy lookin’
afther what they’ve got that they’re not worryin’ about the poor; but
she thought of me, didn’t she?”
The Young Doctor nodded, and Patsy pursued his tale. “Haven’t I see her
day in, day out, at Nolan Doyle’s ranch, and don’t I understan’ why
it is she’s not set foot in Tralee since the ould one left it feet
foremost, for his new seven-foot home, housed in a bit of wood-him that
had had the run of the wurruld? She’ll set no foot in Tralee at all anny
time, if she can help it--that’s the breed of her.
“Well, it is as it is, and what’s goin’ to be will plaze every mother’s
son in Askatoon. Giggles they called him! A bit of a girl they thought
him! What’s he turned out to be, though he’s giggling still? Why, a man
that’s got the double cinch on Askatoon. Even that fella Burlingame had
nothin’ to say ag’in’ him; and when Burlingame hasn’t anny mud to throw,
then you must stop and look hard. Shure, the blessed Virgin, or the
Almighty himself, couldn’t escape the tongue of Augustus Burlingame--not
even you.”
The Young Doctor burst out laughing. “‘The Blessed Mary, or the Almighty
himself--not even you!’ Well, Patsy, you’re a wonder,” he said.
“Aw, you’re not goin’ to get off by scoffin’ at me,” remarked Patsy.
“Shure, what did Augustus Burlingame say of you?--well now, what did he
say?”
“Yes, Patsy, what was it?” urged the other. “Shure, he criticized you.
He called you ‘Squills,’ and said you’d helped more people intil the
wurruld than out of it.”
“You call that criticism. Patsy?”
“Whichever way you look at it, hasn’t it an ugly face? Is it a kindness
to man to bring him into the wurruld? That’s wan way of lookin’ at it.
But suppose he meant the other thing, that not being married, you--”
“Patsy Kernaghan,” interjected the Young Doctor sternly, “you’re not fit
company. Take care, or there’ll be no Slow Down Ranch for you. An evil
mind----”
Now it was Patsy’s turn to interrupt: “Watch me now, I think that wan
of the most beautiful things I iver saw was them two young people comin’
together. Five long months it was, afther Mazarine was put away before
she spoke with him. It was in the gardin at Nolan’s ranch, and even then
it wasn’t aisy till her. Not that she didn’t want to see him all the
time; not, I’ll be bound, that she didn’t say, when you and Nolan first
told her the mastodon was dead, ‘Thank God, I’m free!’ But, there he
was, flung out of the wurruld without a minute’s notice, and with the
black thing in his heart. Shure you’ll be understandin’ it a thousand
times better than meself, y’r anner.”
He took a pinch of snuff from a little box, offered it to the Young
Doctor and continued his story.
“Well, as I said, whin five months had gone by they met. By chanct I saw
the meetin’. Watch me now, I’ll tell you how it was. She was sittin’ on
a bench in the gardin, lookin’ in front of her and seein’ nothin’ but
what was in her mind’s eye, and who can tell what she would be seein’!
There she sat sweet as a saint, very straight up, the palms of her
hands laid on the bench on either side, as though they was supporfin’
her--like a statue she looked. I watched her manny a minute, but she
niver moved. Well, there she was, lookin’--lookin’ in front o’ her,
whin round the big tree in the middle of the gardin he come and stood
forninst her. They just looked and looked at each other without a word.
Like months it seemed. They looked, and looked, as though they was
tryin’ to read some story in each other’s eyes, and then she give a kind
of joyful moan, and intil his arms she went like a nestlin’ bird.
“He raised up her head, and-well, now, y’r anner, I niver saw anything
I liked better. There niver had been a girl in his life, and there niver
was a man in hers--not one that mattered, till they two took up with
each other, and it’s a thing--well, y’r anner, I’d be a proud man if
I could write it down. It’s a story that’d take its place beside the
ancient ones.”
The Young Doctor looked at Patsy meditatively. “Patsy,” said he, “the
difference between the north and the south of Ireland is that in the
south they are all poets--” He paused.
“Well, you haven’t finished, y ‘r anner,” said Kernaghan.
“And in the north they think they are,” continued the Young Doctor.
“I’d like to see those two as your eyes in front of your mind saw them,
Patsy.”
“Aw, well then, you couldn’t do it, Doctor dear, for you’ve niver been
in love. Shure, there’s no heart till ye!” answered the Irishman, and
took another pinch of snuff with a flourish.
........................
Flamingo-like in her bright-coloured, figured gown, with a wild flower
in her hair and her gray curls dancing gently at her temples, a little
old lady trotted up and down the big sitting-room of Slow Down Ranch,
talking volubly and insistently. One ironically minded would have said
she chirruped, for her words came out in not unmusical, if staccato,
notes, and she shook her shrivelled, ringed fingers reprovingly at a
stalwart young man.
Once or twice, as she seemed to threaten him with what the poet called
“The slow, unmoving finger of scorn,” he giggled. It was evident that he
was at once amused and troubled. This voice had cherished and chided him
all his life, and he could measure accurately what was behind it. It
was a wilful voice. It had the insistance which power gives, and to a
woman--or to most women--power is either money or beauty, since, in the
world as it is, office and authority are denied them. Beauty was gone
from the face of the ancient dame, but she still had much money, and,
on rare occasions, it gave her a little arrogance. It did so now as
she admonished her beloved son, who at any time would have renounced
fortune, or hope of fortune, for some wilful idea of his own. A less
sordid modern did not exist.
He was not very effective in the contest of tongue between his mother
and himself. As the talk went on he foresaw that he was to be beaten;
yet he persisted, for he loved a joy-wrangle, as he called it, with
his mother. He had argued with her many a time, just to see her in a
harmless passion, and note how the youth of her came back, giving high
colour to the wrinkled face, and how the eyes shone with a brightness
which had been constant in them long ago. They were now quarrelling over
that ever-fruitful cause of antagonism--the second woman in the life
of a man. Yet, strange to say, the flamingo-like Eugenie Guise, was
fighting for the second woman, not against her.
“I’ll say it all again and again and again till you have sense,
Orlando,” she declared. “Your old mother hasn’t lived all these years
for nothing. I’m not thinking of you; I’m thinking of her.” She
pointed towards the door of another room, from which came sounds of
laughter--happy laughter--in which a man’s and a woman’s voices
sounded. “On the day she comes into this house--and that’s the day after
to-morrow--I shall go. I’ll stand at the door and welcome you, and see
you have a good wedding-breakfast and that it all goes off grand, then I
shall vanish.”
Orlando made a helpless gesture of the hand. “Well, mother, as I said,
it will make us both unhappy--Louise as much as me. You and I have never
been parted except for a few weeks at a time, and I’m sure I don’t know
how I could stand it.”
“Rather late to think about it,” the other returned. “You can’t have two
women spoiling you in one house and being jealous of each other--oh,
you needn’t toss your fingers! Even two women that love each other can’t
bear the competition. Just because I love her and want her to be happy,
off I go to your Aunt Amelia to live with her. She’s poor, and I’ll
still have someone to boss as I’ve bossed you. I never knew how much I
loved Amelia till she got sick last year when everything terrible was
happening here. I’m going, Orlando--
Two birds hopping on one branch
Would kill the joy of Slow Down Ranch--
“There, I made that up on the moment. It’s true, even if it is poetry.”
“It isn’t poetry, mother,” was the reply, and there was an ironical
look in Orlando’s eyes. “Poetry’s the truth of life,” he hastened to add
carefully, “and it’s not poetry to say that you could be a kill-joy.”
The little lady tossed her head. “Well, you’ll never have a chance to
prove it, for I’m taking the express east on the night of your wedding.
That’s settled. Amelia needs me, and I’m going to her.... Your wedding
present will be the ranch and a hundred thousand dollars,” she added.
“You’re the sun-dried fruit of Paradise, Mother,” Orlando said, taking
her by the arms.
“I heard the Young Doctor call me a bird of Paradise once,” she
returned. “People don’t know how sharp my ears are.... But I never
stored it up against him. Taste is born in you, and if people haven’t
got it in the cradle, they never have it. I suppose his mother went
around in a black alpaca and wore her hair like a wardress in a jail.
I’m sorry for him--that’s all.”
“Suppose I should get homesick for you and run away from her!” remarked
Orlando slyly.
“Run away with her to me,” chirruped Eugenie, with a vain little laugh.
Suddenly her manner changed, and she looked at her son with dreamy
intensity. “You are so wonderfully young, my dear,” she said, “and I am
very old. I had much happiness with your father while he lived. He was
such a wise man. Always he gave in to me in the little things, and
I gave in to him in all the big things. He almost made me a sensible
woman.”
There was a strange wistfulness in her face. Through all the years, down
beneath everything, there had been the helpless knowledge in her own
small, garish mind that she had little sense; now she realized that she
was given a chance to atone for all her pettiness by doing one great
sensible thing.
Orlando was about to embrace her, but she briskly, turned away. She
could not endure that. If he did it, the pent-up motherhood would break
forth, and her courage would take flight. She was something more than
the “parokeet of Pernambukoko,” as Patsy Kernaghan had called her.
She went to the door of the other room. “I want to talk to the Young
Doctor about Amelia,” she said. “He’s clever, and perhaps he could give
her a good prescription. I’ll send Louise to you. It’s nicer courting in
this room where you can see the garden and the grand hills. You’re going
to give Louise the little gray mare you lassooed last year, aren’t you?
I always think of Louise when I look at that gray mare. You had to break
the pony’s heart before she could be what she is--the nicest little
thing that ever was broken by a man’s hand; and Louise, she had to have
her heart broken too. Your father and I were almost of an age--he was
two years older, and we had our youth together. And you and Louise
are so wonderfully young, too. Be good to her, son. She’s never been
married. She was only in prison with that old lizard. What a horrible
mouth he had! It’s shut now,” she added remorselessly. Opening the door
of the other room, she disappeared.
A moment later, Louise entered upon Orlando.
The vanished months had worked wonders in her. She was like the young
summer beyond the open windows, alive to her finger-tips, shyly radiant,
with shining eyes, yet in their depths an alluring pensiveness never to
leave them altogether. Knowledge had come to her; an apprehending soul
was speaking in her face. The sweetness of her smile, as she looked at
the man before her, was such as could only be distilled from the bitter
herbs of the desert.
“Oh, Orlando!” she said joyously, as she came forward.
ETEXT EDITOR’S BOOKMARKS:
Highsterics, they call it
World was only the size of four walls to a sick person
End of Project Gutenberg’s Wild Youth, Volume Complete, by Gilbert Parker