The Branding Iron

by Katharine Newlin Burt

  CHAPTER VII

  AFTERMATH

  Joan waited for Prosper on the appointed afternoon. There was a fireon her hearth and a March snow-squall tapped against the window panes.The crackle of the logs inside and that eerie, light sound outsidewere so associated with Prosper that, even before he came, Joan,sitting on one side of the hearth, closed her eyes and felt that hemust be opposite to her in his red-lacquered chair, his long legsstuck out in front, his amused and greedy eyes veiled by a cloud ofcigarette smoke.

  Since she had seen him at the theater, she had been suffering fromsleeplessness. At night she would go over and over the details oftheir intercourse, seeing them, feeling them, living them in the lightof later knowledge, till the torment was hardly to be borne. Threedays and nights of this inner activity had brought back that sharpline between her brows and the bitter tightening of her lips.

  This afternoon she was white with suspense. Her dread of the impendinginterview was like a physical illness. She sat in a high-backed chair,hands along the arms, head resting back, eyes half-closed, in thatperfect stillness of which the animal and the savage are aloneentirely capable. There were many gifts that Joan had brought from theseventeen years on Lone River. This grave immobility was one. She wasvery carefully dressed in a gown that accentuated her height anddignity. And she wore a few jewels. She wanted, pitifully enough, tomark every difference between this Joan and the Joan whom Prosper haddrawn on his sled up the canyon trail. If he expected to force herback into the position of enchanted leopardess, to see her "lie at hisfeet and eat out of his hand," as Morena had once described the plightof Zona, he would see at a glance that she was no longer so easilymastered. In fact, sitting there, she looked as proud and perilous asa young Medea, black-haired with long throat and cold, malevolentlips. It was only in the eyes--those gray, unhappy, haunted eyes--thatJoan gave away her eternal simplicity of heart. They were unalterablytender and lonely and hurt. It was the look in them that had promptedShorty's description, "She's plumb movin' to me--looks about halfwaybetween 'You go to hell' and 'You take me in your arms to rest.'"

  Prosper was announced, and Joan, keeping her stillness, merely turnedher head toward him as he came into the room.

  She saw his rapid observation of the room, of her, even before shenoticed the very apparent change in him. For he, too, was haggard andutterly serious as she did not remember him. He stood before her fireand asked her jerkily if she would let him smoke. She said "Yes," andthose were the only words spoken for five unbearable minutes theseconds of which her heart beat out like a shaky hammer in some wornmachine.

  Prosper smoked and stood there looking, now at her, now at the fire.At last, with difficulty, he smiled. "You are not going to make iteasy for me, are you, Joan?"

  For her part she was not looking at him. She kept her eyes on the fireand this averted look distressed and irritated his nerves.

  "I am not trying to make it hard," she said; "I want you to say whatyou came to say and go."

  "Did _you_ ever love me, Joan?"

  He had said it to force a look from her, but it had the effect only ofmaking her more still, if possible.

  "I don't know," she said slowly, answering with her old directness. "Ithought you needed me. I was alone. I was scared of the emptiness whenI went out and looked down the valley. I thought Pierre had gone outof the world and there was no living thing that wanted me. I came backand you met me and you put your arms round me and you said"--sheclosed her eyes and repeated his speech as though she had just heardit--"'Don't leave me, Joan.'"

  Her voice was more than ever before moving and expressive. Prosperfelt that half-forgotten thrill. The muscles of his throat contracted."Joan, I did want you. I spoke the truth," he pleaded.

  She went on with no impatience but very coldly. "You came to tell meyour side. Will you tell me, please?"

  For the first time she looked into his eyes and he drew in his breathat the misery of hers.

  "I built that cabin, Joan," he said, "for another woman."

  "Your wife?" asked Joan.

  "No."

  "For the one I said must have been like a tall child? She wasn't yourwife? She was dead?"

  Prosper shook his head. "No. Did you think that? She was a woman Iloved at that time very dearly and she was already married to anotherman."

  "You built that house for her? I don't understand."

  "She had promised to leave her husband and to come away with me. I hadeverything ready, those rooms, those clothes, those materials, andwhen I went out to get her, I had a message saying that her couragehad failed her, that she wouldn't come."

  "She was a better woman than me," said Joan bitterly.

  Prosper laughed. "By God, she was not! She sent me down to hell. Icouldn't go back to the East again. I had laid very careful andelaborate plans. I was trapped out there in that horrible wintercountry...."

  "It was not horrible," said Joan violently; "it was the mostwonderful, beautiful country in all the world." And tears ran suddenlydown her face.

  But she would not let him come near to comfort her. "Go on," she saidpresently.

  "Before you came, Joan," Prosper went on, "it was horrible. It waslike being starved. Every thing in the house reminded me of--her. Ihad planned it all very carefully and we were to have been--happy. Youcan fancy what it was to be there alone."

  Joan nodded. She _was_ just and she was honestly trying to put herselfin his place. "Yes," she said; "if I had gone back and Pierre had beendead, his homestead would have been like that to me."

  "It was because I was so miserable that I went out to hunt. I'd scourthe country all day and half the night to tire myself out, that Icould get some sleep. I was pretty far from home that moonlight nightwhen I heard you scream for help...."

  Joan's face grew whiter. "Don't tell about that," she pleaded.

  He paused, choosing another opening. "After I had bandaged you andtold you that Pierre was dead--and I honestly thought he was--I didn'tknow what to do with you. You couldn't be left, and there was noneighbor nearer than my own house; besides, I had shot a man, and,perhaps,--I don't know, maybe I was influenced by your beauty, by myown crazy loneliness.... You were very beautiful and very desolate. Iwas in a fury over the brute's treatment of you...."

  "Hush!" said Joan; "you are not to talk about Pierre."

  Prosper shrugged. "I decided to take you home with me. I wanted youdesperately, just, I believe, to take care of, just to be kindto--truly, Joan, I was lonely to the point of madness. Some one tocare for, some one to talk to, was absolutely necessary to save myreason. So when I was leading you out, I--I saw Pierre's hand move--"

  Joan stood up. After a moment she controlled herself with an effortand sat down again. "Go on. I can stand it," she said.

  "And I thought to myself, 'The devil is alive and he deserves to bedead. This woman can never live with him again. God wouldn't sanctionsuch an act as giving her back to his hands.' And I was half-madmyself, I'd been alone so long ... I stood so you couldn't see him,Joan, and I threw an elk-hide over him and led you out."

  "I followed you; I didn't look at Pierre; I left him lying there,"gasped Joan.

  Prosper went on monotonously. "When I came back a week later, Ithought he would be dead. It was dusk, the wind was blowing, the snowwas driving in a scud. I came down to the cabin and dropped below thedrift by that northern window, and, the second I looked in, I droppedout of sight. There was a light and a fire. Your husband was lyingbefore the fire on a cot. There was another man there, your Mr.Holliwell; they were talking, Holliwell was dressing Pierre's wound. Iwent away like a ghost, and while I was going back, I thought it allout; and I decided to keep you for myself. I suppose," said Prosperdully, "that that was a horrible sin. I didn't see it that way then.I'm not sure I see it that way now. Pierre had tied you up and presseda white-hot iron into your bare shoulder. If you went back to him, ifhe took you back, how was I to know that he might not repeat hisdrunken deviltry, or do worse, if anything could be w
orse! It was theact of a fiend. It put him out of court with me. Whatever I gave you,education and beauty, and ease, must be better and happier for youthan life with such a brute as Pierre--"

  "Stop!" said Joan between her teeth; "you know nothing of Pierre andme; you only know that one dreadful night. You don't know--the rest."

  "I don't want to know the rest," he said sharply; "that is enough tojustify my action. I thought so then and I think so now. You won't beable to make me change that opinion."

  "I shall not try," said Joan.

  He accepted this and went on. "When I found you in your bed waitingfor news of Pierre, I thought you the most beautiful, pitiful thing Ihad ever seen. I loved you then, Joan, then. Tell me, did I ever inthose days hurt you or give you a moment's anxiety or fear?"

  "No," Joan admitted, "you did not. In those days you were wonderful,kind and patient with me. I thought you were more like God than ahuman then."

  Prosper laughed with bitterness. "You thought very wrong, but,according to my own lights, I was very careful of you. I meant to giveyou all I could and I meant to win you with patience and forbearance.I had respect for you and for your grief and for the horrible thingyou had suffered. Joan, by now you know better what the world is. Canyou reproach me so very bitterly for our--happiness, even if it wasshort?"

  "You lied to me," said Joan. "It wasn't just. We didn't start even.And--and you knew what you wanted of me. I never guessed."

  "You didn't? You never guessed?"

  "No. Sometimes, toward the last, I was afraid. I felt that I ought togo away. That day I ran off--you remember--I was afraid of you. I feltyou were bad and that I was bad too. Then it seemed to me that I'dbeen dreadfully ungrateful and unkind. That was what began to make megive way to my feelings. I was sorrowful because I had hurt you andyou so kind! The day I came in with that suit and spoke of--her as a'tall child' and you cried, why, I felt so sorrowful that I'd made yousuffer. I wanted to comfort you, to put my hands on you in comfort,like a mother, I felt. And you went out like you were angry and stayedaway all night as though you couldn't bear to be seeing me again inyour house that you had built for her. So I wrote you my letter andwent away. And then--it was all so awful cold and empty. I didn't knowPierre was out there. I came back...."

  They were both silent for a long time and in the silence the idyll wasre-lived. Spring came again with its crest of green along the canyonand the lake lay like a turquoise drawing the glittering peak downinto its heart.

  "My book--its success," Prosper began at last, "made me restless.You'll understand that now that you are an artist yourself. And oneday there came a letter from that woman I had loved."

  "It was a little square gray envelope," said Joan breathlessly. "I cansee it now. You never rightly looked at me again."

  "Ah!" said Prosper. He turned and hid his face.

  "Tell me the rest," said Joan.

  He went on without turning back to her, his head bent. "The womanwrote that her husband was dying, that I must come back to her atonce."

  The snow tapped and the fire crackled.

  "And when you--went back?"

  "Her husband did not die," said Prosper blankly; "he is still alive."

  "And you still love her very much?"

  "That's the worst of it, Joan," groaned Prosper. His groan changedinto a desperate laugh. "I love you. Now truly I do love you. If Icould marry you--if I could have you for my wife--" He waited,breathing fast, then came and stood close before her. "I have neverwanted a woman to be my wife till now. I want you. I want you to bethe mother of my children."

  Then Joan did look at him with all her eyes.

  "I am Pierre's wife," she said. The liquid beauty had left her voice.It was hoarse and dry. "I am Pierre's wife and I have already been themother of your child."

  There was a long, rigid silence. "Joan--when?--where?" Prosper'sthroat clicked.

  "I knew it before you left. I couldn't tell you because you were sochanged. I worked all winter. It--it was born on an awful cold Marchnight. I think the woman let it--made it--die. She wanted me to workfor her during the summer and she thought I would be glad if the childdidn't live. She used to say I was 'in trouble' and she'd be glad ifshe could 'help me out.'... It was what I was planning to live for ...that child."

  During the heavy stillness following Joan's dreadful, brief account ofbirth and death, Prosper went through a strange experience. It seemedto him that in his soul something was born and died. Always afterwardsthere was a ghost in him--the father that might have been.

  "I can't talk any more," said Joan faintly. "Won't you please go?"