The Branding Iron Part 20

"And you still love her very much?"

"That's the worst of it, Joan," groaned Prosper. His groan changed into a desperate laugh. "I love you. Now truly I do love you. If I could marry you--if I could have you for my wife--" He waited, breathing fast, then came and stood close before her. "I have never wanted a woman to be my wife till now. I want you. I want you to be the 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 hoa.r.s.e and dry. "I am Pierre's wife and I have already been the mother of your child."

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

"I knew it before you left. I couldn't tell you because you were so changed. I worked all winter. It--it was born on an awful cold March night. I think the woman let it--made it--die. She wanted me to work for her during the summer and she thought I would be glad if the child didn't live. She used to say I was 'in trouble' and she'd be glad if she 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 of birth and death, Prosper went through a strange experience. It seemed to him that in his soul something was born and died. Always afterwards there 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?"

CHAPTER VIII

AGAINST THE BARS

Jasper Morena had stood for an hour in a drafty pa.s.sage of that dirty labyrinth known vaguely to the public as "behind the scenes,"

listening to the wearisome complaints of a long-nosed young actor. It was the sixth of such conversations that he had held that day: to begin with, there had been a difficulty between a director and the leading man. Morena's tact was still complete; he was very gentle to the long-nosed youth; but the latter, had he been capable of seeing anything but himself, must have noticed that his listener's face was pale and faintly lined.

"Yes, my boy, of course, that's reasonable enough. I'll do what I can."

"I don't make extravagant demands, you see," the young man spread down and out his hands, quivering with exaggerated feeling; "I ask only for decent treatment, what my own self-respect ab-so-lute-ly demands."

Morena put a hand on his shoulder and walked beside him.

"Did you ever stop to think," he said with his charming smile, "that the other fellow is thinking and saying just the same thing? Now, this chap that has, as you put it, got your goat, why, he came to me himself this morning, and, word for word, he said of you just precisely what you have just said of him to me. Odd, isn't it?"

Again the young actor stopped for one of his gestures, hands up this time. "But, my G.o.d, sir! Is there such a thing as honesty? He couldn't accuse me of--"

"Well, he thought he could. However, I do get your point of view and I think we can fix it up for you so that you'll get off with your self-respect entirely intact. I'll talk to George to-morrow. You're worth the bother. Good-afternoon."

The young man bowed, his air of tragic injury softened to one of tragic self-appreciation. Worth the bother, indeed!

Morena left him at the top of the dingy stairs down which the manager fled to an alley at one side of the theater, where his car was waiting for him. He stood for a while with his foot on the step and his hand on the door, looking rather blankly at the gray, cold wall and the scurrying whirlwinds of dust and paper.

"Drop yourself at the garage, Ned," he said, "and I'll take the car."

He climbed in beside the wheel. He was very tired, but he had remembered that Jane West, when he had last seen her, had worn a look of profound discouragement. She never complained, but when he saw that particular expression he was frightened and the responsibility for her came heavily upon him. This wild thing he had brought to New York must not be allowed to beat its head dumbly against the bars.

When he had got rid of his driver, he turned the car northward, and a few minutes later Mathilde, the French maid chosen by Betty, opened Jane's door to him.

While he took off his coat he looked along the hall and saw its owner sitting, her chin propped on a latticework of fingers. She was gazing out of the window. It was a beautiful, desperate silhouette; something fateful in the long, still pose and the fixed look. She was still dressed in street clothes as when she had left the theater, a blouse and skirt of dark gray, very plain. Her figure, now that it was trained to slight corseting, was less vigorous and more fine-drawn.

She was very thin, but she had lost her worn and haggard look; the premature hard lines had almost disappeared; a softer climate, proper care, rest, food, luxury had given back her young, clear skin and the brightness of eyes and lips. Her hair, arranged very simply to frame her face in a broken setting of black, was glossy, and here and there, deeply waved. It was the arrangement chosen for her by Betty and copied from a Du Maurier drawing of the d.u.c.h.ess of Towers. It was hard to believe that this graceful woman was the virago Jane, harder for any one that had seen a heavy, handsome girl stride into Mrs. Upper's hotel and ask for work, to believe that she was here.

Morena clapped his hands in the Eastern fashion of summons, and Jane looked toward him.

"Oh," she said, "I'm glad you came."

He strolled in and stood beside her shaking his head.

"I didn't like the look of you this afternoon, my dear."

"Well, sir," said Jane, "I don't like the look of you either." She smiled her slow, unself-conscious smile. "You sit down and I'll make tea for you."

He knew that thought for some one else was the best tonic for her mood, so he dropped, with his usual limp grace, into the nearest chair, put back his head and half-closed his eyes.

"I'm used up," he said; "I haven't a word--not one to throw at a dog."

"Please don't throw one at me, then. I surely wouldn't take it as a compliment." She made the tea gravely, as absorbed in the work as a little girl who makes tea for her dolls. She brought him his cup and went back to her place and again her face settled into that look. She had evidently forgotten him and her eyes held a vision as of distances.

He put a hand up to break her fixed gaze. "What is it, Jane? What do you see?"

To his astonishment she hid her face in her hands. "It's awful to live like this," she moaned; and it frightened him to see her move her head from side to side like an imprisoned beast, shifting before bars.

He looked about the pretty room and repeated, "Like this?"

half-reproachfully.

"I hate it!" She spoke through her teeth. "I hate it! And, oh, the sounds, the noises, grinding into your ears."

Here the hands came to her ears and framed a white, desperate face in which the lids had fallen over sick eyes.

Jasper sat listening to the hum and roar and clatter of the street. To him it was a pleasant sound, and here it was subdued and remote enough. Her face was like that of some one maddened by noise.

"You don't smell anything fresh"--her chest lifted--"you don't get air. I can't breathe. Everything presses in." She opened her eyes, bright and desperate. "What am I doing here, Mr. Morena?"

He had put down his cup quietly, for he was really half-afraid of her.

"Why did you come, Jane?"

"Because I was afraid of some one. I was running away, Mr. Morena.

There's some one that mustn't ever find me now, and to run away from him--that was the business of my life. And it kept my heart full of him and the dread of his coming. You see, that was my happiness. I hoped he was taking after me so's I could run away." She laughed apologetically. "Does that sound crazy to you?"

"No. I think I understand. And here?"

"He'll never come here. He'll never find me. It's been four years. And I'm so changed. This"--she gave herself a downward look--"this isn't the 'gel' he wants.... Probably by now he's given me up. Maybe he's found another. Everything that's bad and hateful can find me out here.

Bad things can find you out and try to clutch after you anywheres. But when something wild and clean comes hunting for you, something out of the big lonely places--why, it would be scared to follow into this city."

"You're lonely, Jane. I've told you a hundred times that you ought to make friends for yourself."

"Oh, I don't care for that. I don't want friends, not many friends.