The Branding Iron Part 10

He lit his cigarette and watched her in his usual lazy, smoke-veiled manner, but she might have noticed the shaken fabric of his self-a.s.surance.

"Say, now," said Joan, "what's that the name for?"

"There's a book about it over there--third volume on the top shelf--look up your case."

With an air of profound alarm, she went over and took it out.

"There's books about everything, ain't there?--isn't there,--Mr. Gael?

Why, there's books about lovin' an' about sickness an' about cattle an' what-not, an' about women an' children--" She was shirking the knowledge of her "case," but at last she pressed her lips together and opened the book. She fell to reading, growing anxiety possessed her face, she sat down on the nearest chair, she turned page after page.

Suddenly she gave him a look of anger.

"I ain't none of this, Mr. Gael," she said, smote the page, rose with dignity, and returned the book.

He laughed so long and heartily that she was at last forced to join him. "You was--you were--jobbin' me, wasn't you?" she said, sighing relief. "Did you know what that volume said? It said like this--I'll read you about it--" She took the volume, found the place and read in a low tone of horror, he helping her with the hard words: "'One of the most frequent forms of phobia, common in cases of psychic neurasthenia, is agrophobia in which patients the moment they come into an open s.p.a.ce are oppressed by an exaggerated feeling of anxiety. They may break into a profuse perspiration and a.s.sert that they feel as if chained to the ground....' And here, listen to this, 'batophobia, the fear that high things will fall, atrophobia, fear of thunder and lightning, pantophobia, the fear of every thing and every one'.... Well, now, ain't that too awful? An' you mean folks really get that way?"

Their talk was for some time of nervous diseases, Joan's horror increasing.

"Well, sir," said she, "lead me out an' shoot me if I get anyways like that! I believe it's caused by all that queer dressin' an' what-not. I feel like somethin' _real_ to-day in this shirt an' all, an' when I get through some work I'll feel a whole lot better. Don't you say I'm one of those nervous breakdowns again, though, will you?" she pleaded.

"No, I won't, Joan. But don't make one of me, will you?"

"How's that?"

"By wearing those clothes all day and half the night. If you expect me to teach you, you'll have to do something for me, to make up for running away. You might put on pretty things for dinner, don't you think? Your nervous system could stand that?"

"My nervous system," drawled Joan, and added startlingly, for she did not often swear, "G.o.d!" It was an oath of scorn, and again Prosper laughed.

But he heard with a sort of terror the sound of her "man's work" to which she energetically applied herself. It meant the return of her strength, of her independence. It meant the shortening of her captivity. Before long spring would rush up the canon in a wave of melting snow, crested with dazzling green, and the valley would lie open to Joan. She would go unless--had he really failed so utterly to touch her heart? Was she without pa.s.sion, this woman with the deep, savage eyes, the lips, so sensuous and pure, the body so magnificently made for living? She was not defended by any training, she had no moral standards, no prejudices, none of the "ideals." She was completely open to approach, a savage. If he failed, it was a personal failure. Perhaps he had been too subtle, too restrained. She did not yet know, perhaps, what he desired of her. But he was afraid of rousing her hatred, which would be fully as simple and as savage as her love. That evening, after she had dressed to please him, and sat in her chair, tired, but with the beautiful, clean look of outdoor weariness on her face, and tried, battling with drowsiness, to give her mind to his reading and his talk, he was overmastered by his longing and came to her and knelt down, drawing down her hands to him, pressing his forehead on them.

For a moment she was stiff and still, then, "What is it, Mr. Gael?"

she asked in a frightened half-voice.

He felt, through her body, the slight recoil of spirit, and drew away, and arose to his feet.

"You're angry?"

He laughed.

"Oh, no. I'm not angry; why should I be? I'm a superman. I'm made--let's say--of alabaster. Women with great eyes and wonderful voices and the beauty of broad-browed nymphs walking gravely down under forest arches, such women give me only a great, great longing to read aloud very slowly and carefully a 'Child's History of the English Race'!" He took the book, tossed it across the room, then stood, ashamed and defiant, laughing a little, a boy in disgrace.

Joan looked at him in profound bewilderment and dawning distress.

"Now," she said, "you _are_ angry with me. You always are when you talk that queer way. Won't you please explain it to me, Mr. Gael?"

"No!" said he sharply. "I won't." And he added after a moment, "You'd better go to bed. You're sleepy and as stupid as an owl."

"Oh!"

"Yes. And you've destroyed what little superst.i.tious belief I had left concerning something they tell little ignorant boys about a woman's intuition. You haven't got a bit. You're stupid and I'm tired of you--No, Joan, I'm not. Don't mind me. I'm only in fun. Please! d.a.m.n!

I've hurt your feelings."

Her lips were quivering, her eyes full. "I try so awful hard," she said. It was a lovely, broken trail of music.

He bent over her and patted her shoulder. "Dear child! Joan, I won't be so disagreeable again. Only, don't you ever think of me?"

"Yes, yes; all the while I'm thinking of you. I wisht I could do more for you. Why do I make you so angry? I know I'm awful--awfully stupid and ignorant. I--I must drive you most crazy, but truly"--here she turned quickly in his arm and put her hands about his neck and laid her cheek against his shoulder--"truly, Mr. Gael, I'm awful fond of you." Then she drew quickly away, quivered back into the other corner of her great chair, put her face to her hands. "Only--I can't help seein'--Pierre."

Just her tone showed him that still and ghastly youth, and again he saw the brown hand that moved. He had stood between her and that sight. The man ought to have died. He did not deserve his life nor this love of hers. Even though he had failed to kill the man, he would not fail to kill her love for him, sooner or later, thought Prosper.

If only the hateful spring would give him time. He must move her from her memory. She had put her hands about his neck, she had laid her head against his shoulder, and, if it had been the action of a child, then she would not have started from him with that sharp memory of Pierre.

CHAPTER XVI

THE TALL CHILD

There were times, even now, when Prosper tried to argue himself back into sardonic self-possession. "Pooh!" said his brain, "you were beside yourself over a loss and then you were shut in for months of winter alone with this mountain girl, so naturally you are off your balance." He would school himself while Joan shoveled outdoors. He would try to see her with critical, clear eyes when she strode in. But one look at her and he was bemused again. For now she was at a great height of beauty, vivid with growing strength and purpose, her lips calm and scarlet, her eyes bright and hopeful. In fact, Joan had made her plans. She would wait till spring, partly to get back her full strength, partly to make further progress in her studies, but mostly in order not to hurt this hospitable Prosper Gael. The navete of her grat.i.tude, of her delicate consideration for his feelings, which continually triumphed over an instinctive fear, would have filled him with amus.e.m.e.nt, perhaps with compunction, had he been capable of understanding them. She was truly sorry that she had hurt him by running away. She told herself she would not do that again. In the spring she would make him a speech of thankfulness and of farewell, and then she would tramp back to Pierre's homestead and win and hold Pierre's land. As yet, you see, Prosper entered very little into her conscious life. Somewhere, far down in her, there was a disturbance, a growing doubt, a something vague and troubling.... Joan had not learnt to probe her own heart. A sensation was not, or it was. She was puzzled by the feeling Prosper was beginning to cause her, a feeling of miserable complexity; but she was not yet mentally equipped for the confronting of complexity. It was necessary for an emotion to rush at Joan and throw down, as it were, her heart before she recognized it; even then she might not give it a name. She would act, however, and with violence.

So now she planned and worked and grew beautiful with work and planning, while Prosper curbed his pa.s.sion and worked, too, and his instruments were delicate and deadly and his plans made no account of hers. Every word he read to her, every note he played for her, had its calculated effect. He worked on her subconsciousness, undermining her path, and at nights and in her sleep she grew aware of him.

But even now, in his cool and pa.s.sionate heart there were moments of reaction, one at last that came near to wrecking his purpose.

"Your clothes are about done for, Joan," Prosper laughed one morning, watching her belt in her tattered shirt; "you'll soon look like Cophetua's beggar maid."

"I'm not quite barefoot yet." She held up a cracked boot.

"Joan--" He hesitated an instant, then got up from his desk, walked to a window, and looked out at the bright morning. The lake was ruffled with wind, the firs tossed, there were patches of brown-needled earth under his window; his eyes were startled by a strip of green where tiny yellow flowers trod on the very edge of the melting drift. The window was open to soft, tingling air that smelt of snow and of sun, of pines, of growing gra.s.s, of sap, of little leaf-buds. The birds were in loud chorus. For several minutes Prosper stared and listened.

"What is it, Mr. Gael?" asked Joan patiently.

He started. "Oh," he said without looking at her again, "I was going to tell you that there are a skirt and a sort of coat in--in a closet in the hall. Do you want to use them?"

She went out to look. In five minutes--he had gone back to his work at the desk--he heard her laugh, and, still laughing, she opened the door again.

"Oh, Mr. Gael, were you really thinking that I could wear these?

Look."

He turned and looked at her. She had crowded her strong, lithe frame into a brown tweed suit, a world too narrow for her, and she was laughing heartily at herself and had come in to show him the misfit.

"These things, Mr. Gael," she said,--"they must have been made for a tall child."

Prosper had too far tempted his pain, and in her vivid phrase it came to life before him. She had painted a startling picture and he had seen that suit, so small and trim, before.

Joan saw his face grow white, his eyes stared through her. He drew a quick breath and winced away from her, hiding his face in his hands. A moment later he was weeping convulsively, with violence, his head down between his hands. Joan started toward him, but he made a wicked and repellent gesture. She fled into her room and sat, bewildered, on her bed.

All at once the question came to her: for whom had the delicate fabrics been bought, for whom had this suit been made? "It was his wife and she is dead," thought Joan, and very pitifully she took off the suit, laid it and the other things away, and sitting by her window rested her chin in her hands and stared out through the blue pines.