This eBook was 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.