The Branding Iron

by Katharine Newlin Burt

  CHAPTER XVII

  CONCERNING MARRIAGE

  And it was spring-time; these prisoners of frost were beautifullysensitive. They, too, with the lake and the aspens and the earth, theseeds and the beasts, had suffered the season of interment. In suchfashion Nature makes possible the fresh undertakings of last summer'sreckless prodigals; she drives them into her mock tomb and freezestheir hearts--it is a little rest of death--so that they wake liketurbulent bacchantes drunk with sleep and with forgetfulness. Love,spring says, is an eternal fact, welcome its new manifestations.Remating bluebirds built their nests near Joan's window; they were nottroubled by sad recollections of last year's nests nor the young birdsthat flew away. It was another life, a resurrection. If they rememberedat all, they remembered only the impulses of pleasure; they hadsomewhere before learned how to love, how to build; the past summershad given practice to their singing little throats and to their rapidwings. No ghosts forbade happiness and no God--man-voiced--saying,because he knew the ugly human aftermaths, hard sayings of "Be yeperfect."

  What counsel was theirs for Joan and what had her human mentor taughther? He had taught her in one form or another the beauty of passion andits eternal sinlessness, for that was his sincere belief. By music hehad taught her, by musical speech, by the preaching of heathen sage andthe wit of modern arguers. He had given her all the moral schooling shehad ever had and its golden rule was, "Be ye beautiful and generous."Joan was both beautiful and made for giving, "free-hearted" as shemight herself have said, Friday's child as the old rhyme has it,--andto cry out to her with love, saying, "I want you, Joan," was just,sooner or later, to see her turn and bend her head and hold out herarms. Prosper had the reward of patience; his wild leopardess was tamedto his hand and her sweetness made him tender and very merciful.

  Their gay, little house stood open all day while they explored themountains and plunged into the lake, choosing the hot hour of noon.Joan made herself mistress of the house and did her woman's work atlast of tidying and beautifying and decking corners with gorgeousbranches of blossoms while Prosper worked at his desk. He was happy;the reality of Joan's presence had laid his ghost just as the realityof his had laid hers. His work went on magically and added the glow ofsuccessful creation to the glow of satisfied desire. And his sin ofdeceit troubled him very little, for he had worked out that problemand had decided that Pierre, dead or alive, was unworthy of this mate.

  But sometimes in her sleep Joan would start and moan feeling the touchof the white-hot iron on her shoulder. Her hatred of Pierre's cruelty,her resolution to be done with him forever, must have vividly reneweditself in those dreams, for she would cling to Prosper like afrightened child, and wake, trembling, happy to find herself safe inhis arms.

  So they lived their spring. Wen Ho, the silent and inscrutable, wentout of the valley for provisions, and during his absence Joan queenedit in the kitchen. She was learning to laugh, to see the absurd,delightful twists of daily living, to mock Prosper's oddities as hemocked hers. She was learning to be a comrade and she was learningbetter speech and more exquisite ways. It was inevitable that sheshould learn. Prosper, in these days, spent his whole soul upon her,fed her with music and delight, and he trained her to sing her sagas sothat every day her voice gained in power and flexible sweetness. Shewould sing, since he told her to, her voice beating its wings againstthe walls of the house or ringing down the canyon in untrammeledflight. Prosper was lost in wonder of her, in a passionate admirationfor his own handiwork. He was making, here in this God-forsakensolitude, a thing of marvel; what he was making surely justified themeans. Joan's laughable simplicity and directness were the same; theywere part of her essence; no civilizing could confuse or disturb them;but she changed, her brain grew, it absorbed material, it attemptedadventures. Nowadays Joan sometimes argued, and this filled Prosperwith delight, so quaint and logical she was and so skillful.

  They were reading out under the firs by the green lip of the lake,when Wen Ho led his pack-horse up the trail. He had been gone a month,for Prosper had sent him out of the valley to a distant town for hissupplies. He didn't want the little frontier place to prick up itsears. Wen Ho had ridden by a secret trail back over the range; he hadnot passed even the ranger station on his way. He called out, and, inthe midst of a sentence Joan was reading, Prosper started up.

  Joan looked at him smiling. "You're as easily turned away fromlearning as a boy," she began, and faltered when she saw his face. Itwas turned eagerly toward the climbing horses, toward the pack, and itwas sharp and keen with detached interest, an excitement that hadnothing, nothing in the world to do with her.

  It was the great bundle of Prosper's mail that first brought home toJoan the awareness of an outside world. She knew that Prosper was atraveled and widely experienced man, but she had not fancied him heldto this world by human attachments. Concerning the "tall child" shehad not put a question and she still believed her to have beenProsper's wife. But when, leaving her place under the tree, she cameinto the house and found Prosper feverishly slitting open envelopeafter envelope, with a pile of papers and magazines, ankle-high,beside him on the floor, she stood aghast.

  "What a lot of people must have been writing to you, Prosper!"

  He did not hear her. He was greedy of eye and fingertips, searchingwritten sheet after sheet. He was flushed along the cheek-bones and alittle pale about the lips. Joan stood there, her hands hanging, herhead bent, staring up and out at him from under her brows. She looked,in this attitude, rather dangerous.

  Prosper sped through his mail, made an odd gesture of desperation, satstill a moment staring, his brilliant, green-gray eyes gone dull andblank, then he gave himself a shuddery shake, pulled a small parcelfrom under the papers, and held it out to Joan. He smiled.

  "Something for you, leopardess," he said--he had told her his firstimpression of her.

  She took the box haughtily and walked with it over to her chair. Buthe came and kissed her.

  "Jealous of my mail? You foolish child. What a girl-thing you are! Itdoesn't matter, does it, how we train you or leave you untrained,you're all alike, you women, under your skins. Open your box and thankme prettily, and leave matters you don't understand alone. That's theway to talk, isn't it?"

  She flushed and smiled rather doubtfully, but, at sight of his gift,she forgot everything else for a moment. It was a collar of topaz andemerald set in heavy silver. She was awe-struck by its beauty, andwent, after he had fastened it for her, to stand a long while beforethe glass looking at it. She wore her yellow dress cut into a V at theneck and the jewels rested beautifully at the base of her long, roundthroat, faintly brown like her face up to the brow. The yellow and thegreen brought out all the value of her grave, scarlet lips, the soft,even tints of her skin, the dark lights and shadows of her hair andeyes.

  "It's beautiful," she said. "It's wonderful. I love it."

  All the time very grave and still, she took it off, put it on its box,and laid it on the mantel. Then she went out of doors.

  Prosper hurried to the window and saw her walk out to the garden theyhad made and begin her work. He was puzzled by her manner, butpresently shrugged the problem of her mood away and went back to hismail. That night he finished his novel and got it ready for thepublisher.

  Again Wen Ho, calm and uncomplaining, was sent out over the hill, andagain the idyll was renewed, and Joan wore the collar and was almostas happy as before. Only one night she startled Prosper.

  "I asked Pierre," she said slowly, after a silence, in her low-pitchedvoice, "when he was taking me away home, I asked, 'Where are yougoing?' and he said to me, 'Don't you savvy the answer to thatquestion, Joan?' And, Prosper, I didn't savvy, so he told me and helooked at me sort of hard and stern, 'We're a-goin' to be married,Joan.'"

  Prosper and Joan were sitting before the fire, Joan on the bearskin athis feet, he lounging back, long-legged, smoke-veiled, in one of thelacquered chairs. She had been fingering her collar and she kept onfingering it as she spoke and staring str
aight into the flames, but,at the last, quoting Pierre's words and tone, her voice and facequivered and she looked at him with eyes of mysterious pain, in them asort of uncomprehended anguish.

  "Why was that, Prosper?" she asked; "I mean, why did he say it thatway? And what--what does it stand for, marrying or not--?"

  Prosper jerked a little in his chair, then said he blasphemously,"Marriage is the sin against the Holy Ghost. Don't be the conventionalwoman, Joan. Isn't this beautiful, this life of ours?"

  "Yes." But her eyes of uncomprehended pain were still upon him. So heput his hand over them and drew her head against his knee. "Yes, butthat other life was--was--before Pierre changed, it was beautiful--"

  "Of course. Love is always beautiful. Not even marriage can alwaysspoil it, though it very often does. Well, Joan," he went onflippantly, though the tickle of her lashes against his palm somehowdisturbed his flippancy, "I'll go into the subject with you one ofthese days, when the weather isn't so beautiful. It's really a matterof law, property rights, and so forth; a practice variously conductedin various lands; it's man's most studied insult to woman; it'srecommended as the lesser of two evils by a man who despised woman asonly an Oriental can despise her, Saint Paul by name; it's a thingcivilized women cry for till they get it and then quite bitterly learnto understand; it's a horrible invention which needn't touch yourbeautiful clean soul, dear. Come out and look at the moon."

  "Listen!" They stood side by side at the door. "Some silly bird thinksthat is the dawn. Look at me, Joan!"

  She lifted obedient eyes.

  "There! That's better. Don't get that other look. I can't bear it. Ilove you."

  A moment later they went out into the sweet, silver silence down tothe silver lake.

  * * * * *

  Four months later the name of Prosper Gael began to be on every one'slips, and before every one's eyes; the world, his world, began toclamor for him. Even Wen Ho grumbled at this going out on tremendousjourneys after the mail for which Prosper grew more and more greedy andimpatient. His novel, "The Canyon," had been accepted, was enormouslyadvertised, had made an extraordinary success. All this he explained toJoan, who tried to rejoice because she saw that it was exquisitedelight to Prosper. He was by way of thinking now that his exile, hisWyoming adventure, was to thank for his success, but when a woman, evensuch a woman as Joan, begins to feel that she has been a usefulemotional experience, there begins pain. For Joan pain began and dailyit increased. It was suffering for her to watch Prosper reading hisletters, forwarded to him from the Western town where his friends andhis secretary believed him to be recovering from some nervous illness;to watch him smoking and thinking of himself, his fame, his talents,his future; to watch him scribbling notes, planning another work, tohear his excited talk, now so impersonal, so unrelated to her; to seehow his eagerness over her education slackened, faltered, died; tonotice that he no longer watched the changeful humors of her beauty norcared if she wore bronze or blue or yellow; and worst of all, to findhim staring at her sometimes with a worried, impatient look whichscuttled out of sight like some ugly, many-legged creature when it mether own eyes--painful, of course, yet such an old story. Joan, who hadnever heard of such experience, did not foresee the inevitable end,and, in so much, she was spared. The extra pain of forfeiting herdignity and self-respect did not touch her, for she made none of thosemost pitiful, unavailing efforts to hold him, to cling; did not evenpretend indifference. She only drew gradually into herself, shrinkingfrom her pain and from him as the cause of it; she only lost her glowof love-happiness, her face seemed dwindled, seemed to contract, andthat secret look of a wild animal returned to her gray eyes. Shequietly gave up the old regulations of their life; she did not remindhim of the study-hours, the music-hours, the hours of wild outdoorplay. She read under the firs, alone; she studied faithfully, alone;she climbed and swam, alone--or with his absent-minded, fitful company;she worked in her garden, alone. At night, when he was asleep, she laywith her hand pressed against her heart, staring at the darkness,listening to the night, waiting. Curiously enough, his inevitablereturns of passion and interest, the always decreasing flood-mark, eachtime a line lower, did not deceive her, did not distract her. She neverexpressed her trouble, even to herself. She did not give it any words.She took her pain without wincing, without complaint, and when heseemed to need her in any little way, in any big way, she gave becauseshe could not help it, because she had promised him largesse, becauseit was her nature to give. Besides, although she was instinctivelywaiting, she did not foresee the end.

  It was in late October when, somewhere in the pile of Prosper's mail,there lay a small gray envelope. Joan drew his attention to it,calling it a "queer little letter," and he took it up slowly as thoughhis deft and nervous fingers had gone numb. Before he opened it helooked at Joan and, in one sense, it was the last time he ever didlook at her; for at that moment his stark spirit looked straight intohers, acknowledged its guilt, and bade her a mute and remorsefulfarewell.

  He read and Joan watched. His face grew pale and bright as though someelectric current had been turned into his veins; his eyes, looking upfrom the writing, but not returning to her, had the look given by somedrug which is meant to stupefy, but which taken in an overdoseintoxicates. He turned and made for the door, holding the little grayfolded paper in his hand. On the threshold he half-faced her withoutlifting his eyes.

  "I have had extraordinary news, Joan. I shall have to go off alone andthink things out. I don't know when I shall get back." He went out andshut the door gently.

  Joan stood listening. She heard him go along the passage and throughthe second door. She heard his feet on the mountain trail. Afterwardsshe went out and stood between the two sentinel firs that had markedthe entrance to that snow-tunnel long since disappeared. Now it was alate October day, bright as a bared sword. The flowers of the Indianpaint-brush burned like red candle flames everywhere under the firs,the fire-weed blazed, the aspen leaves were laid like little goldentiles against the metallic blue of the sky. The high peak pointed updizzily and down, down dizzily into the clear emptiness of the lake.This great peak stood there in the glittering stillness of the day. Agrouse boomed, but Joan was not startled by the sudden rush of itswings. She felt the sharp weight of that silent mountain in her heart;she might have been buried under it. So she felt it all day while sheworked, a desperate, bright day,--hideous in her memory,--and at nightshe lay waiting. After hours longer than any other hours, the door ofher bedroom opened and an oblong of moonlight, as white as paper, fellacross the matted floor. Prosper stepped in noiselessly and walkedover to her bed. He stood a moment and she heard him swallow.

  "You're awake, Joan?"

  Her eyes were staring up at him, but she lay still.

  "Listen, Joan." He spoke in short sentences, waiting between each forsome comment of hers which did not come. "I shall have to go awayto-morrow. I shall have to go away for some time. I don't want you tobe unhappy. I want you to stay here for a while if you will, for aslong as you want to stay. I am leaving you plenty of money. I willwrite and explain it all very clearly to you. I know that you willunderstand. Listen." Here he knelt and took her hands, which he foundlying cold and stiff under the cover, pressed against her heart. "Ihave made you happy here in this little house, haven't I, Joan?"

  She would not answer even this except by the merest flicker of hereyelids.

  "You have trusted me; now, trust me a little longer. My life is verycomplicated. This beautiful year with you, the year you have given tome, is just a temporary respite from--from all sorts of things. I'vetaught you a great deal, Joan. I've healed the wound that brute madeon your shoulder and in your heart. I've taught you to be beautiful.I've filled your mind with beauty. You are a wonderful woman. You'lllive to be grateful to me. Some day you'll tell me so."

  Her quiet, curved lips moved. "Are you tellin' me good-bye, Prosper?"

  It was impossible to lie to her. He bent his head.

&n
bsp; "Yes, Joan."

  "Then tell it quick and go out and leave me here to-night."

  It was impossible to touch her. She might have been wrapped in whitefire. He found that though she had not stirred a finger, his hand hadshrunk away from hers. He got to his feet, all the cleverness which allday long he had been weaving like a silk net to catch, to bewilder, todraw away her brain from the anguish of full comprehension, wasshriveled. He stood and stared helplessly at her, dumb as a youth. And,obedient, he went out and shut the door, taking the white patch ofmoonlight with him.

  So Joan, having waited, behind an obstinately locked door, for hisdeparture, came out at noon and found herself in the small, gay housealone.

  She sat in one of the lacquered chairs and saw after a long while thatthe Chinaman was looking at her.

  Wen Ho, it seemed, had been given instructions. He was to stay andtake care of the house and the lady for as long as she wanted it, orhim. Afterwards he was to lock up the house and go. He handed her alarge and bulky envelope which Joan took and let lie in her lap.

  "You can go to-morrow, Wen Ho," she said.

  "You no wait for Mr. Gael come back? He say he come back."

  "No. I'm not going to wait. I guess"--here Joan twisted her mouth intoa smile--"I'm not one of the waiting kind. I'm a-going back to my ownranch now. It won't seem so awful lonesome, perhaps, as I was thinkinglast spring that it would."

  She touched the envelope without looking at it.

  "Is this money, Wen Ho?"

  "I tink so, lady."

  She held it, unopened, out to him.

  "I will give it to you, then. I have no need of it."

  She stood up.

  "I am going out now to climb up this mountain back of the house so's Ican see just where I am. I'll come down to-night for dinner andto-morrow after breakfast I'll be going away. You understand?"

  "Lady, you mean give me all this money?" babbled the Chinaman.

  "Yes," said Joan gravely; "I have no need of it."

  She went past him with her swinging step.

  She was coming down the mountain-side that evening, very tired, butwith the curious, peaceful stillness of heart that comes with anentire acceptance of fate, when she heard the sound of horses' hoofsin the hollow of the canyon. Her heart began to beat to suffocation.She ran to where, standing near a big fir tree, she could lookstraight down on the trail leading up to Prosper's cabin. Presentlythe horsemen came in sight--the one that rode first was tall and broadand fair, she could see under his hat-brim his straight nose andfirmly modeled chin.

  "The sin-buster!" said Joan; then, looking at the other, who rodebehind him, she caught at the tree with crooked hands and began tosink slowly to her knees. He was tall and slight, he rode withinimitable grace. As she stared, he took off his sombrero, rested hishand on the saddle-horn, and looked haggardly, eagerly, up the trailtoward the house. His face was whiter, thinner, worn by protractedmental pain, but it was the beautiful, living face of Pierre.

  Joan shrank back into the shadows of the pines, crouched for a fewminutes like a mortally wounded beast, then ran up the mountain-sideas though the fire that had once touched her shoulder had eaten itsway at last into her heart.

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  Book TwoTHE ESTRAY

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