Wild Youth | Page 6

sixteen.
It's three years ago. He said to my mother he'd tear up the mortgage if I
married him. That's why I'm here with him--Mrs. Mazarine. But my
name's Louise."
"Yes, yes, I know," the Young Doctor answered soothingly. "But you
must not talk of it now. I understand perfectly. Tell me all about it
another time."
"You don't think I should have--" She paused.

"Of course. I tell you I understand. Now you must be quiet. Drink this."
He got up and poured some liquid into a glass.
At that moment there was a noise below in the hall. "That's my
husband," the girl-wife said, and the old wan captive-look came into
her face.
"That's all right," replied the Young Doctor. "He'll find you better."
At that moment the half-breed woman entered the room. "He's here,"
she said, and came towards the bed.
"That old woman has sense," the Young Doctor murmured to himself.
"She knows her man."
A minute later Joel Mazarine was in the room, and he saw the
half-breed woman lift his wife's head, while the Young Doctor held a
glass to her lips.
"What's all this?" Mazarine said roughly. "What?" He stopped suddenly,
for the Young Doctor faced him sharply.
"She must be left alone," he said firmly and quietly, his eyes fastening
the old man's eyes; and there was that in them which would not be
gainsaid. "I have just given her medicine. She has been in great pain.
"We are not needed here now." He motioned towards the door. "She
must be left alone."
For an instant it seemed that the old man was going to resist the
dictation; but presently, after a scrutinizing look at the still, shrinking
figure in the bed, he swung round, left the room and descended the
stairs, the Young Doctor following.

CHAPTER III
"I HAVE FOUGHT WITH BEASTS AT EPHESUS"

The old man led the way outside the house, as though to be rid of his
visitor as soon as possible. This was so obvious that, for an instant, the
Young Doctor was disposed to try conclusions with the old slaver, and
summon him back to the dining-room. The Mazarine sort of man
always roused fighting, masterful forces in him. He was never averse to
a contest of wills, and he had had much of it; it was inseparable from
his methods of healing. He knew that nine people out of ten never gave
a true history of their physical troubles, never told their whole story:
first because they had no gift for reporting, no observation; and also
because the physical ailments of many of them were aggravated or
induced by mental anxieties. Then it was that he imposed himself; as it
were, fought the deceiver and his deceit, or the ignorant one and his
ignorance; and numbers of people, under his sympathetic, wordless
inquiry, poured their troubles into his ears, as the girl-wife upstairs had
tried to do.
When the old man turned to face him in the sunlight, his boots soiled
with dust and manure, his long upper lip feeling about over the lower
lip and its shaggy growth of beard like some sea-monster feeling for its
prey, the Young Doctor had a sensation of rancour. His mind flashed to
that upstairs room, where a comely captive creature was lying not an
arm's length from the coats and trousers and shabby waistcoats of this
barbarian. Somehow that row of tenantless clothes, and the top-boots,
greased with tallow, standing against the wall, were more characteristic
of the situation than the old land-leviathan himself, blinking his beady,
greenish eyes at the Young Doctor. That blinking was a repulsive
characteristic; it was like serpents gulping live things.
"What's the matter with her?" the old man asked, jerking his head
towards the upper window.
The Young Doctor explained quickly the immediate trouble, and then
added:
"But it would not have taken hold of her so if she was not run down.
She is not in a condition to resist. When her system exhausts, it does
not refill, as it were."

"What sort of dictionary talk is that? Run down--here?" The old man
sniffed the air like an ancient sow. "Run down--in this life, with the
best of food, warm weather, and more ozone than a sailor gets at sea!
It's an insult to Jehovah, such nonsense."
"Mr. Mazarine," rejoined the Young Doctor with ominous
determination in his eye, "you know a good deal, I should think, about
spring wheat and fall ploughing, about making sows fat, or burning
fallow land--that's your trade, and I shouldn't want to challenge you on
it all; or you know when to give a horse bran-mash, or a heifer
salt-petre, but--well, I know my job in the same way. They will tell you,
about here, that