Wild Youth Part 17

"I have to tell you," said Li Choo--the other's voice repeated the words after him--"that I am the son of greatness, of a ruler in my own land.

It was by the Yang-tze-kiang, and there were riches and pleasant things in the days of my youth. In the hunt, at the tavern, I was first amongst them all. I had great strength. I once killed a bear with my bare hands.

My hands had fame.

"I had office in the city where my cousin ruled. He was a bad man, and was soon forgotten, though his children mourn for him as is the custom.

I killed him. He gave counsel concerning the city when there was war, but his counsel was that of a traitor, and the city was lost. Now behold, it is written that he who has given counsel about the country or its capital should perish with it when it comes into peril. He would not die--so I killed him; but not before he had heaped upon me baseness and shame. So I killed him.

"Yet it is written that when a minister kills his ruler, all who are in office with him shall without mercy kill him who did the deed. That is the law. It was the word of the Son of Heaven that this should be.

But those who were in office with me would not kill me, because they approved of what I did. Yet they must kill me, since it was the law.

What was there to do but in the night to flee, so that they who should kill me might not obey the law? Had I remained, and they had not obeyed the law, they also would have been slain."

He paused for a moment and then went on. "So I fled, and it is many years since by the Yang-tze-kiang I killed my ruler and saved my friends. Yet I had not been faithful to the ancient law, and so through the long years I have done low work among a low people. This was for atonement, for long ago by the Yang-tzekiang I should have died, and behold, I have lived until now. To save my friends from the pain of killing me I fled and lived; but at last here at this place I said to myself that I must die. So, secretly, I made this cellar into a temple.

"That was a year ago, and I sent to my brother the Duke Ki to speak to him what was in my mind, so that he might send my kinsmen to me, that when I came to die, it should be after the manner ordained by the Son of Heaven; that my body should be clothed according to the ancient rites by my own people, my mouth filled with rice, and the meats, and grains and fruits of sacrifice be placed on a mat at the east of my body when I died; that the curtain should be hung before my corpse; that I should be laid upon a mat of fine bamboo, and dressed, and prepared for my grave, and put into a n.o.ble coffin as becomes a superior man. Did not the Son of Heaven say that we speak of the end of a superior man, but we speak of the death of a small man? I was a superior man, but I have lived as a small man these many days; and now, behold, I am drawing near to my end as a superior man.

"I wished that nothing should be forgotten; that all should be done when I, of the house of the Duke Ki, came to my superior end. So, these my kinsmen came, these of my family, to be with me at my going, to call my spirit back from the roof-top with face turned to the north, to leap before my death-mat, to wail and bare the shoulders and bind the sackcloth about the head.

"I have served among the low people doing low things, and now I would die, but in the correct way. Once to the listeners Confucius said: 'The great mountain must crumble; the strong beam must break; the wise man must wither away like a plant.' So it is. It is my duty to go to my end, for the time is far spent, and I should do what my friends must have done had I stayed in my ancestral city."

Again he paused, and now he rocked his body backwards and forwards for a moment; then presently he continued: "Yet I would not go without doing good. There should be some act among the low people by which I should be remembered. So, once again, I killed a man. He could not withstand the strength of my fingers--they were like steel upon his throat. As a young man my fingers were like those of three men.

"Shall a man treat his wife as she, Louise, was treated? Shall a man raise his hand against his wife, and live? also, was he to live--the low man--that struck a high man like me with his hands, with the whip, with his feet, stamping upon me on the ground? Was that to be, and he live?

Were the young that should have but one nest to be parted, to have only sorrow, if Joel lived? So I killed him with my hands" (he slightly raised his clasped hands, as though to emphasize what he said, but the gesture was grave and quiet)"--so I killed him, and so I must die.

"It was the duty of my friends to kill me by the Yang-tze-kiang. It is your duty, you of the low people, to kill me who has killed a low man; but my friends by the Yang-tze-kiang were glad that the ruler died, and you of the low people are glad that Joel is dead. Yet it is your duty to kill me.... But it shall not be."

He quickly reached out his hands and drew the burning brazier close to his feet; then, suddenly, from a sleeve of his robe he took a little box of the sacred tortoise-sh.e.l.l, pressed his lips to it, opened it, poured its contents upon the flame, leaned over with his face close to the brazier and inhaled the little puff of smoke that came from it.

So for a few seconds--and then he raised himself and sat still with eyes closed and hands clasped in his long sleeves. Presently his head fell forward on his breast.

A pungent smell pa.s.sed through the chamber. It produced for the moment dizziness in all present. Then the sensation cleared away. The Chinaman at the right of Li Choo looked steadfastly at him; then, all at once, he bared his shoulders and quickly bound a piece of sackcloth round his head. This done, he raised his voice and cried out with a monotonous ululation, and at once a second voice cried out in a long wailing call.

Outside Li Choo's kinsman, with his face turned to the north, was calling his spirit back, though he knew it would not come.

At the first sound of the voice crying outside, the Chinaman beside Li Choo leaped thrice in front of the brazier, the mat and the moveless body.

At that moment the Young Doctor came forward. He who had leaped stood between him and the body of Li Choo.

"You must not come. Li Choo, the superior man, is dead," he protested.

"I am a doctor," was the reply. "If he is dead, the law will not touch him, and you shall be alone with him, but the law must know that he is dead. That is the way that prevails among the 'low people,'" he added ironically.

The Chinaman stood aside, and the Young Doctor stooped, felt the pulse, touched the heart and lifted up the head and looked into Li Choo's sightless eyes.

"He is dead," he said, and he came back again to the Coroner and the others. "Let's get out of this," he added. "He is beyond our reach now.

No need for an inquest here. He has killed himself." Then he caught Orlando's hand in a warm grip.

As they left the chamber, the kinsman of Li Choo was gently laying the body down upon the bamboo mat. At the doorway the other son of the Duke Ki was still monotonously calling back the departed spirit.

The inquest on Joel Mazarine was ended presently, and Nolan Doyle and the Young Doctor set out to tell Louise that a "low man," once her husband, had paid a high price for all that he had bought of the fruits of life out of due season.

CHAPTER XVIII. YOUTH HAS ITS WAY

"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.

"h.e.l.l 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 c.h.i.n.ky 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 ent.i.tled 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'