Wild Youth | Page 7

I have a kind of hobby for keeping people from digging
and crawling into their own graves. That's my business, and the habit of
saving human life, because you're paid for it, becomes in time a habit
of saving human life for its very own sake. I warn you--and perhaps it's
a matter of some concern to you--Mrs. Mazarine is in a bad way."
Resentful and incredulous, the old man was about to speak, but the
Young Doctor made an arresting gesture, and added:
"She has very little strength to go on with. She ought to be plump; her
pulses ought to beat hard; her cheeks ought to be rosy; she should walk
with a spring and be strong and steady as a soldier on the march; but
she is none of these things, can do none of these things. You've got a
thousand things to do, and you do them because you want to do them.
There is something making new life in you all the time, but Mrs.
Mazarine makes no new life as she goes on. Every day is taking
something out of her, and there's nothing being renewed. Sometimes
neither good food nor ozone is enough; and you've got to take care, or
you'll lose Mrs. Mazarine." He could not induce himself to speak of her
as "wife."
For a moment the unwholesome mouth seemed to be chewing
unpleasant herbs, and the beady eyes blinked viciously.
"I'm not swallowin' your meaning," Mazarine said at last. "I never
studied Greek. If a woman has a disease, there it is, and you can deal
with it or not; but if she hasn't no disease, then it's chicanyery--

chicanyery. Doctors talk a lot of gibberish these here days. What I want
to know is, has my wife got a disease? I haven't seen any signs. Is it
Bright's, or cancer, or the lungs, or the liver, or the kidneys, or the heart,
or what's its name?"
The Young Doctor had an impulse to flay the heathen, but for the girl-
wife's sake he forbore.
"I don't think it is any of those troubles," he replied smoothly. "She
needs a thorough examination. But one thing is clear: she is wasting;
she is losing ground instead of going ahead. There's a malignant
influence working. She's standing still, and to stand still in youth is
fatal. I can imagine you don't want to lose her, eh?"
The Young Doctor's gray-blue eyes endeavoured to hold the blinking
beads under the shaggy eyebrows long enough to get control of a mind
which had the cunning and cruelty of an animal. He succeeded.
The old man would a thousand times rather his wife lived than died. In
the first place, to lose her was to sacrifice that which he had paid for
dearly--a mortgage of ten thousand dollars torn up. Louise Mazarine
represented that to him first-ten thousand dollars. Secondly, she was
worth it in every way. He had what hosts of others would be glad to
have--men younger and better looking than himself. She represented
the triumph of age. He had lived his life; he had buried two wives; he
had had children; he had made money; and yet here, when other men of
his years were thinking of making wills, and eating porridge, and
waiting for the Dark Policeman to come and arrest them for loitering,
he was left a magnificent piece of property like Tralee; and he had all
the sources of pleasure open to a young man walking the primrose path.
He was living right up to the last. Both his wives were gray-headed
when they died--it turned them gray to live with him; both had died
before they were fifty; and here he was the sole owner of a wonderful
young head, with hair that reached to the waist, with lips like cool fruit
from an orchard-tree, and the indescribable charm of youth and
loveliness which the young themselves never really understood. That
was what he used to say to himself; it was only age could appreciate
youth and beauty; youth did not understand.

Thus the Young Doctor's question roused in him something at once
savage and apprehensive. Of course he wanted Louise to live. Why
should she not live?
"Doesn't any husband want his wife to live!" he answered sullenly.
"But I want to know what ails her. What medicine you going to give
her?"
"I don't know," the Young Doctor replied meditatively. "When she is
quite rid of this attack, I'll examine her again and let you know."
Suddenly there shot into the greenish old eyes a reddish look of rage;
jealousy, horrible, gruesome jealousy, took possession of Joel Mazarine.
This young man to come in and go out of his wife's bedroom, to--Why
weren't there women doctors? He would