Wild Youth | Page 3

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.

CHAPTER II
"MY NAME IS LOUISE"
Askatoon never included the Mazarines in its social scheme. Certainly
Tralee was some distance from the town, but, apart from that, the new-
comers remained incongruous, alien and alone. The handsome,
inanimate girl-wife never appeared by herself in the streets of Askatoon,
but always in the company of her morose husband, whose only human
association seemed to be his membership in the Methodist body so
prominent in the town. Every Sunday morning he tied his pair of bay
horses with the covered buggy to the hitching-post in the church-shed
and marched his wife to the very front seat in the Meeting House,
having taken possession of it on his first visit, as though it had no other
claimants. Subsequently he held it in almost solitary control, because
other members of the congregation, feeling his repugnance to
companionship, gave him the isolation he wished. As a rule he and his
wife left the building before the last hymn was sung, so avoiding
conversation. Now and again he stayed to a prayer-meeting and, doing
so, invariably "led in prayer," to a very limited chorus of "Amens." For
in spite of the position which Tralee conferred on its owner, there was a
natural shrinking from "that wild boar," as outspoken Sister Skinner
called him in the presence of the puzzled and troubled Minister.
This was always a time of pained confusion for the girl-wife. She had
never "got religion," and there was something startling to her
undeveloped nature in the thunderous apostrophes, in terms of the
oldest part of the Old Testament, used by her tyrant when he wrestled
with the Lord in prayer.
These were perhaps the only times when her face was the mirror of her
confused, vague and troubled youth. Captive in a world bounded by a

man's will, she simply did not begin to understand this strange and
overpowering creature who had taken possession of her body, mind and
soul. She trembled and hesitated before every cave of mystery which
her daily life with him opened darkly to her abashed eyes. She felt
herself going round and round and round in a circle, not forlorn enough
to rebel or break away, but dazed and wondering and shrinking. She
was like one robbed of will, made mechanical by a stern conformity to
imposed rules of life and conduct. There were women in Askatoon who
were sorry for her and made efforts to get near her; but whether it was
the Methodist Minister or his wife, or the most voluble sister of the
prayer-meeting, none got beyond the threshold of Tralee, as it were.
The girl-wife abashed them. She was as one who automatically spoke
as she was told to speak, did what she was told to do. Yet she always
smiled at the visitors when they came, or when she saw them and
others at the Meeting House. It was, however, not a smile for an
individual, whoever that individual might chance to