The Branding Iron Part 27

She leaned back against the cushioned seat, rolled her head a little from side to side like a person in pain. "Take me away," she repeated.

"I believe that if I stay I shall go mad. I'll go anywhere--with any one. Only take me away."

CHAPTER XII

THE LEOPARDESS

Pierre stood before the cheap bureau of his ugly hotel bedroom turning a red slip of cardboard about in his fingers. The gas-jet sputtering above his head threw heavy shadows down on his face. It was the face of hopeless, heartsick youth, the muscles sagging, the eyes dull, the lips tight and pale. Since last night when the contemptuous glitter of Joan's smile had fallen upon him, he had neither slept nor eaten.

Jasper had joined him at the theater exit, had walked home with him, and, while he was with the manager, Pierre's pride and reserve had held him up. Afterwards he had ranged the city like a prairie wolf, ranged it as though it had been an unpeopled desert, free to his stride. He had fixed his eyes above and beyond and walked alone in pain.

Dawn found him again in his room. What hope had sustained him, what memory of Joan, what purpose of tenderness toward her--these hopes and memories and purposes now choked and twisted him. He might have found her, his "gel," his Joan, with her dumb, loving gaze; he might have told her the story of his sorrow in such a way that she, who forgave so easily, would have forgiven even him, and he might have comforted her, holding her so and so, showing her utterly the true, unchanged, greatly changed love of his chastened heart. This girl, this love of his, whom, in his drunken, jealous madness, he had branded and driven away, he would have brought her back and tended her and made it up to her in a thousand, in ten thousand, ways. Pierre knelt by his bed, his black head buried in the cover, his arms bent above it, his hands clenched. Out there he had never lost hope of finding her, but here, in this peopled loneliness, with a memory of that woman's heartless smile, he did at last despair. In a strange, torturing way she had been like Joan. His heart had jumped to his mouth at first sight of her. And just there, to his shoulder where her head reached, had Joan's dear black head reached too. Pierre groaned aloud. The picture of her was so vivid. Not in months had the reality of his "gel" come so close to his imagination. He could feel her--feel her! O G.o.d!

That was the sort of night he had spent and the next day he pa.s.sed in a lethargy. He had no heart to face the future now that the great purpose of his life had failed. Holliwell's G.o.d of comfort and forgiveness forsook him. What did he want with a G.o.d when that one comrade of his lonely, young, human life was out there lost by his own cruelty! Perhaps she was dead. Perhaps the wound had killed her. For all these years she might have been lying dead somewhere in the snow, under the sky. Sharp periods of pain followed dull periods of stupor.

Now it was night again and a recollection of Jasper's theater ticket had dragged him to a vague purpose. He wanted to see again that woman who had so vivified his memory of Joan. It would be hateful to see her again, but he wanted the pain. He dressed and groomed himself carefully. Then, feeling a little faint, he went out into the clattering, glaring night.

Pierre's experience of theater-going was exceedingly small. He had never been in so large a play-house as this one of Morena's; he had never seen so large and well-dressed an audience; never heard a full and well-trained orchestra. In spite of himself, he began to be distracted, excited, stirred. When the curtain rose on the beautiful tropical scene, the lush island, the turquoise sea, the realistic strip of golden sand, Pierre gave an audible oath of admiration and surprise. The people about him began to be amused by the excitement of this handsome, haggard young man, so graceful and intense, so different with his hardness and leanness, the brilliance of his eyes, the brownness of his skin. His clothes were good enough, but they fitted him with an odd air of disguise. An experienced eye would inevitably have seen the appropriateness of flannel shirt, gay silk neck-handkerchief, boots, spurs, and _chaparreras_. Pierre was entirely unaware of being interesting or different. At that moment, caught up in the action of the play, he was as outside of himself as a child.

The palms of stage-land stirred, the ferns swayed; between then: tall, vivid greenness came Joan with her tread and grace and watchful eyes of a leopardess, her loose, wild hair decked with flowers: these and her make-up and her thinness disguised her completely from Pierre, but again his heart came to his throat and, when she put her hands up to her mouth and called, his pulses gave a leap. He shut his eyes. He remembered a voice calling him in to supper. "Pi-erre! Pi-erre!" He could sniff the smoke of his cabin fire. He opened his eyes. Of course, she wasn't Joan, this strange, gaunt creature. Besides, his wife could never have done what this woman was doing. Why, Joan couldn't talk like this, she couldn't act to save her soul! She was as simple as a child, and shy, with the unself-conscious shyness of wild things. To be sure, this "actress-lady" was making-believe she was a wild thing, and she was doing it almighty well, but Joan had been the reality, and grave and still, part of his own big, grave, mountain country, not a fierce, man-devouring animal of the tropics. Pierre lived in the play with all but one fragment of his brain, and that remembered Joan. It hurt like a hot coal, but he deliberately ignored the pain of it. He followed the action breathlessly, applauded with contagious fervor, surrept.i.tiously rid himself of tears, and when, in the last scene, the angry, jealous woman sprang upon her tamer, he muttered, "Serve you right, you coyote!" with an oath of the cow-camp that made one of his neighbors jump and throttle a startled laugh.

The curtain fell, and while the applause rose and died down and rose again, and the people called for "Jane West! Jane West!" the stage-director, a plump little Jew, came out behind the footlights and held up his hand. There was a gradual silence.

"I want to make an interesting announcement," he said; "the author of 'The Leopardess' has. .h.i.therto maintained his anonymity, but to-night I have permission to give you his name. He is in the theater to-night.

The name is already familiar to you as that of the author of a popular novel, 'The Canon': Prosper Gael."

There was a stir of interest, a general searching of the house, clapping, cries of "Author! Author!" and in a few moments Prosper Gael left his box and appeared beside the director in answer to the calls.

He was entirely self-possessed, looked even a little bored, but he was very white. He stood there bowing, a graceful and attractive figure, and he was about to begin a speech when he was interrupted by a renewed calling for "Jane West!" The audience wanted to see the star and the author side by side. Pierre joined in the clamor.

After a little pause Jane West came out from the opposite wing, walking slowly, dressed in her green gown, jewels on her neck and in her hair. She did not look toward the audience at all, nor bow, nor smile, and for some reason the applause began to falter as though the sensitive mind of the crowd was already aware that here something must be wrong. She came very slowly, her arms hanging, her head bent, her eyes looking up from under her brows, and she stood beside Prosper Gael, whose forced smile had stiffened on his lips. He looked at her in obvious fear, as a man might look at a dangerous madwoman. There must have been madness in her eyes. She stood there for a strange, terrible moment, moving her head slightly from side to side. Then she said something in a very low tone. Because of the extraordinary carrying quality of her voice--the question was heard by every one there present:

"_You_ wrote the play? _You_ wrote the play?"

She said it twice. She seemed to quiver, to gather herself together, her hands bent, her arms lifted. She flew at Prosper with all the sudden strength of her insanity.

There was an outcry, a confusion. People rushed to Gael's a.s.sistance.

Men caught hold of Joan, now struggling frantically. It was a dreadful sight, mercifully a brief one. She collapsed utterly, fell forward, the strap of her gown breaking in the grasp of one of the men who held her. For an instant every one in the audience saw a strange double scar that ran across her shoulder to the edge of the shoulder-blade.

It was like two bars.

Pierre got to his feet, dropped back, and hid his face. Then he was up, and struggling past excited people down the row, out into the aisle, along it, hurrying blindly down unknown pa.s.sages till somehow he got himself into that confused labyrinth behind the scenes. Here a pale, distracted scene-shifter informed him that Miss West had already been taken home.

Pierre got the address, found his way out to the street, hailed a taxicab, and threw himself into it. He sat forward, every muscle tight; he felt that he could take the taxicab up and hurl it forward, so terrible was his impatience.

An apartment house was a greater novelty to him even than a theater, but, after a dazed moment of discovering that he did not have to ring or knock, but just push open the great iron-scrolled door and step into the brightly lighted, steam-heated marble hall, he decided that the woman at the desk was a person in authority, and to her he addressed himself, soft hat gripped in his hand, his face set to hide excitement.

The girl was pale and red-eyed. They had brought Miss West in a few minutes ago, she told him, and carried her up. She was still unconscious; poor thing! "I don't think you could see her, sir. Mr.

Morena is up there, and Mr. Gael, and a doctor. A trained nurse has been sent for. Everything in the world will be done. She's such an elegant actress, ain't she? I've often seen her myself. And so kind and pleasant always. Yes, sir. I'll ask, if you like, but I'm sure they won't allow you up."

She put the receiver to her ear, pushed in the black plug, and Pierre listened to her questions.

"Can Miss West see any one? Can an old friend"--for so Pierre had named himself--"be allowed to see her? No. I thought not." This, with a sympathetic glance at Pierre. "She is not conscious yet. Dangerously ill."

"Could I speak to the doctor?" Pierre asked hoa.r.s.ely.

"The gentleman wants to know if he can speak to the doctor. Certainly not at present. If he will wait, the doctor will speak to him on the way out."

Pierre sat on the bench and waited. He leaned forward, elbows on knees, head crushed in both hands, and the woman stared at him pitilessly--not that he was aware of her scrutiny. His eyes looked through his surroundings to Joan. He saw her in every pose and in every look in which he had ever seen her, and, with a very sick and frightened heart, he saw her, at the last, pa.s.s by him in her fur coat, throwing him that half-contemptuous look and smile. She didn't know him. Was he changed so greatly? Or was the change in her so enormous that it had disa.s.sociated her completely from her old life, from him? He kept repeating to himself Holliwell's stern, admonishing speech: "However changed for the worse she may be when you do find her, Pierre, you must remember that it is your fault, your sin. You must not judge her, must not dare to judge her. Judge yourself.

Condemn yourself. It is for her to forgive if she can bring herself to do it."

So now Pierre fought down his suspicions and his fears. He had not recognized Prosper. The man who had come in out of the white night, four years ago, had worn his cap low over his eyes, his collar turned up about his face, and, even at that, Pierre, in his drunken stupor, had not been able to see him very clearly. This Prosper Gael who had stood behind the footlights, this Prosper Gael at whom Joan, from some unknown cause, had sprung like a woman maddened by injury, was a person entirely strange to Pierre. But Pierre hated him. The man had done Joan some insufferable mischief, which at the last had driven her beside herself. Pierre put up a hand, pressing it against his eyes. He wanted to shut out the picture of that struggling girl with her torn dress and the double scar across her shoulder. If it hadn't been for the scar he would never have known her--his Joan, his gentle, silent Joan! What had they been doing to her to change her so? No, not they.

He. He had changed her. He had branded her and driven her out. It was his fault. He must try to find her again, to find the old Joan--if she should live. The doctor had said that she was desperately ill. O G.o.d!

What was keeping him so long? Why didn't he come?

The arrival of the trained nurse distracted Pierre for a few moments.

She went past him in her gray cloak, very quiet and earnest, and the elevator lifted her out of sight.

"Were you in the theater to-night?" asked the girl at the desk, seeing that he was temporarily aware of her again.

"Yes, ma'am."

She was puzzled by his appearance and the fashion of his speech. He must be a gentleman, she thought, for his bearing was gentle and a.s.sured and unself-conscious, but he wore his clothes differently and spoke differently from other gentlemen. That "Yes, ma'am," especially disturbed her. Then she remembered a novel she had read and her mind jumped to a conclusion. She leaned forward.

"Say, aren't you from the West?"

"Yes, ma'am."

"You weren't ever a cowboy, were you?"

Pierre smiled. "Yes, ma'am. I was raised in a cow-camp. I was a cowboy till about seven years ago when I took to ranchin'."

"Where was that?"

"Out in Wyoming."

"And you've come straight from there to New York?" She p.r.o.nounced it "Noo Yoik."

"No, ma'am. I've been in Alasky for two years now. I've been in a lumber-camp."

"Gee! That's real interesting. And you knew Miss West before she came East, then?"

"Yes, ma'am." But there was a subtle change in Pierre's patient voice and clear, unhappy eyes, so that the girl fell to humming and bottled up her curiosity. But just as soon as he began to brood again she gave up her whole mind to staring at him. Gee! He was brown and strong and thin!

And a good-looker! She wished that she had worn her transformation that evening and her blue blouse. He might have taken more interest in her.

A stout, bald-headed man, bag in hand, stepped out of the elevator, and Pierre rippled to his feet.

"Are you the doctor?"

"Yes. Oh, you're the gentleman who wanted to see Miss West. She's come to, but she is out of her head completely ... doesn't know any one.