The Branding Iron Part 8

He had been biding his time. He had absorbed himself in writing, content to leave in suspense the training of his enchanted leopardess.

Half-absent glimpses of her desolate beauty as she moved about his winter-bound house, contemplation of her unself-consciousness as she companioned his meals, the pleasure he felt in her rapt listening to his music in the still, frost-held evenings by the fire--these he had made enough. They quieted his restlessness, soothed the ache of his heart, filled him with a warm and patient desire, different from any feeling he had yet experienced. He was amused by her lack of interest in him. He was not accustomed to such through-gazing from beautiful eyes, such incurious absence of questioning. She evidently accepted him as a superior being, a Providence; he was not a man at all, not of the same clay as Pierre and herself. Prosper had waited understandingly enough for her first move. When the personal question came, it made a sort of crash in the expectant silence of his heart.

Before answering, except by that smile, he lit himself a cigarette; then, strolling to the fire, he sat on the rug below her, drawing his knees up into his hands.

"I'd like to tell you about my writing, Joan. After all, it's the great interest of my life, and I've been fairly seething with it; only I didn't want to bother you, worry your poor, distracted head."

"I never thought," said Joan slowly, "I never thought you'd be carin'

to tell me things. I know so awful little."

"It wasn't your modesty, Joan. It was simply because you haven't given me a thought since I dragged you in here on my sled. I've been nothing"--under the careless, half-bitter manner, he was weighing his words and their probable effect--"nothing, for all these weeks, but--a provider."

"A provider?" Joan groped for the meaning of the word. It came, and she flushed deeply. "You mean I've just taken things, taken your kind doin's toward me an' not been givin' you a thought." Her eyes filled and shone mortification down upon him so that he put his hand quickly over hers, tightened together on her knee.

"Poor girl! I'm not reproaching you."

"But, Mr. Gael, I wanted to work for you. You wouldn't let me." She brushed away her tears. "What can I do? Where can I go?"

"You can stay here and make me happy as you have been doing ever since you came. I was very unhappy before. And you can give me just as much or as little attention as you please. I don't ask you for a bit more.

Suppose you stop grieving, Joan, and try to be just a little happier yourself. Take an interest in life. Why, you poor, young, ignorant child, I could open whole worlds of excitement, pleasure, to you, if you'd let me. There's more in life than you've dreamed of experiencing.

There's music, for one thing, and there are books and beauty of a thousand kinds, and big, wonderful thoughts, and there's companionship and talk. What larks we could have, you and I, if you would care--I mean, if you would wake up and let me show you how. You do want to learn a woman's work, don't you, Joan?"

She shook her head slowly, smiling wistfully, the tears gone from her eyes, which were puzzled, but diverted from pain. "I didn't savvy what you meant when you talked about what a woman's work rightly was. An'

I'm so awful ignorant, you know so awful much. It scares me, plumb scares me, to think how much you know, more than Mr. Holliwell! Such books an' books an' books! An' writin' too. You see I'd be no help nor company fer you. I'd like to listen to you. I'd listen all day long, but I'd not be understandin'. No more than I understand about that there woman's work idea."

He laughed at her, keeping rea.s.suring eyes on hers. "I can explain anything. I can make you understand anything. I'll grant you, my idea of a woman's work is difficult for you to get hold of. That's a big question, after all, one of the biggest. But--just to begin with and we'll drop it later for easier things--I believe, the world believes, that a woman ought to be beautiful. You can understand that?"

Joan shook her head. "It's a awful hard sayin', Mr. Gael. It's awful hard to say you had ought to be somethin' a person can't manage for themselves. I mean--" poor Joan, the inarticulate, floundered, but he left her, rather cruelly, to flounder out. "I mean, that's an awful hard sayin' fer a homely woman, Mr. Gael."

He laughed. "Oh," said he with a gesture, "there is no such thing as a homely woman. A homely woman simply does not count." He got up, looked for a book, found it, opened it, and brought it to her. "Look at that picture, Joan. What do you think of it?"

It was of a woman, a long-drawn, emaciated creature, extraordinarily artificial in her grace and in the pose and expression of her ugly, charming form and features. She had been aided by hair-dresser and costumer and by her own wit, aided into something that made of her an arresting and compelling picture. "What do you think of her, Joan?"

smiled Prosper Gael.

Joan screwed up her eyes distastefully. "Ain't she queer, Mr. Gael?

Poor thing, she's homely!"

He clapped to the book. "A matter of educated taste," he said. "You don't know beauty when you see it. If you walked into a drawing-room by the side of that marvelous being, do you think you'd win a look, my dear girl? Why, your great brows and your great, wild eyes and your face and form of an Olympian and your free grace of a forest beast--why, they wouldn't be noticed. Because, Joan, that queer, poor thing knew woman's work from A to Z. She's beautiful, Joan, beautiful as G.o.d most certainly never intended her to be. Why, it's a triumph--it's something to blow a trumpet over. It's art!"

He returned the volume and came back to stand by the mantel, half-turned from her, looking down into the fire. For the moment, he had created in himself a reaction against his present extraordinary experiment, his wilderness adventure. He was keenly conscious of a desire for civilized woman, for her practiced tongue, her poise, her matchless companionship....

Joan spoke, "You mean I'm awful homely, Mr. Gael?"

The question set him to laughing outrageously. Joan's pride was stung.

"You've no right to laugh at me," she said. "I'd not be carin' what you think." And she left him, moving like an angry stag, head high, light-stepping.

He went back to his work, not at all in regret at her pique and still amused by the utter femininity of her simple question.

Before dinner he rapped at her door. "Joan, will you do me a favor?"

A pause, then, in her sweet, vibrant voice, she answered, "I'd be doin' anything fer you, Mr. Gael."

"Then, put on these things for dinner instead of your own clothes, will you?"

She opened the door and he piled into her arms a ma.s.s of shining silk, on top of it a pair of gorgeous Chinese slippers.

"Do it to please me, even if you think it makes you look queer, will you, Joan?"

"Of course," she smiled, looking up from the gleaming, sliding stuff into his face. "I'd like to, anyway. Dressing-up--that's fun."

And she shut the door.

She spread the silk out on the bed and found it a loose robe of dull blue, embroidered in silver dragons and lined with brilliant rose.

There was a skirt of this same rose-colored stuff. In one weighted pocket she found a belt of silver coins and a little vest of creamy lace. There were rose silk stockings stuffed into the shoes. Joan eagerly arrayed herself. She had trouble with the vest, it was so filmy, so vaguely made, it seemed to her, and to wear it at all she had to divest herself altogether of the upper part of her coa.r.s.e underwear. Then it seemed to her startlingly inadequate even as an undergarment. However, the robe did go over it, and she drew that close and belted it in. It was provided with long sleeves and fell to her ankles. She thrilled at the delightful clinging softness of silk stockings and for the first time admired her long, round ankles and shapely feet. The Chinese slippers amused her, but they too were beautiful, all embroidered with flowers and dragons.

She felt she must look very queer, indeed, and went to the mirror.

What she saw there surprised her because it was so strange, so different. Pierre had not dealt in compliments. His woman was his woman and he loved her body. To praise this body, surrendered in love to him, would have been impossible to the reverence and reserve of his pa.s.sion.

Now, Joan brushed and coiled her hair, arranging it instinctively, but perhaps a little in imitation of that queer picture that had looked to her so hideous. Then, starting toward the door at Wen Ho's announcement of "Dinner, lady," she was quite suddenly overwhelmed by shyness. From head to foot for the first time in all her life she was acutely conscious of herself.

CHAPTER XIII

THE TRAINING OF A LEOPARDESS

On that evening Prosper began to talk. The unnatural self-repression he had practiced gave way before the flood of his sociability. It was Joan's amazing beauty as she stumbled wretchedly into the circle of his firelight, her neck drawn up to its full length, her head crowned high with soft, black ma.s.ses, her lids dropped under the weight of shyness, vivid fright in her distended pupils, scarlet in her cheeks,--Joan's beauty of long, strong lines draped to advantage for the first time in soft and clinging fabrics,--that touched the spring of Prosper's delighted egotism. There it was again, the ideal audience, the necessary atmosphere, the beautiful, gracious, intelligent listener. He forgot her ignorance, her utter simplicity, the unplumbed emptiness of her experience, and he spread out his colorful thoughts before her in colorful words, the mental plumage of civilized courtship.

After dinner, now sipping from the small coffee cup in his hand, now setting it down to move excitedly about the room, he talked of his life, his book, his plans. He told anecdotes, strange adventures; he drew his own inverted morals; he sketched his fantastic opinions; he was in truth fascinating, a speaking face, a lithe, brilliant presence, a voice of edged persuasion. He turned witty phrases. Poor Joan! One sentence in ten she understood and answered with her slow smile and her quaint, murmured, "Well!" His eloquence did her at least the service of making her forget herself. She was rather crestfallen because he had not complimented her; his veiled look of appreciation, this coming to of his real self was too subtle a flattery for her perception.

Nevertheless, his talk pleased her. She did not want to disappoint him, so she drew herself up straight in the big red-lacquered chair, sipped her coffee, in dainty imitation of him, gave him the full, deep tribute of her gaze, asked for no explanations and let the astounding statements he made, the amazing pictures he drew, cut their way indelibly into her most sensitive and preserving memory.

Afterwards, at night, for the first time she did not weep for Pierre, the old lost Pierre who had so changed into a torturer, but, wakeful, her brain on fire, she pondered over and over the things she had just heard, feeling after their meaning, laying aside for future enlightenment what was utterly incomprehensible, arguing with herself as to the truth of half-comprehended speeches--an ignorant child wrestling with a modern philosophy, tricked out in motley by a ready wit.

There were more personal memories that gave her a flush of pleasure, for after midnight, as she was leaving him, he came near to her, took her hand with a grateful "Joan, you've done so much for me to-night, you've made me happy," and the request, "You won't put your hair back to the old way, will you? You will wear pretty things, if I give them to you, won't you?" in a beseeching spoiled-boy's voice, very amusing and endearing to her.

He gave her the "pretty things," whole quant.i.ties of them, fine linen to be made up into underwear, soft white and colored silks and crepes, which Joan, remembering the few lessons in dressmaking she had had from Maud Upper and with some advice from Prosper, made up not too awkwardly, accepting the mystery of them as one of Prosper's magic-makings. And, in the meantime, her education went on. Prosper read aloud to her, gave her books to read to herself, questioned her, tutored her, scolded her so fiercely sometimes that Joan would mount scarlet cheeks and open angry eyes. One day she fairly flung her book from her and ran out of the room, stamping her feet and shedding tears. But back she came presently for more, thirsting for knowledge, eager to meet her trainer on more equal grounds, to be able to answer him to some purpose, to contradict him, to stagger ever so slightly the self-a.s.surance of his superiority.

And Prosper enjoyed the training of his captive leopardess, though he sometimes all but melted over the pathos of her and had much ado to keep his hands from her unconscious young beauty.

"You're so changed, Joan," he said one day abruptly. "You've grown as thin as a reed, child; I can see every bone, and your eyes--don't you ever shut them any more?"

Joan, p.r.o.ne on the skin before the fire, elbows on the fur, hands to her temples, face bent over a book, looked up impatiently.

"I'd not be talkin' now if I was you, Mr. Gael. You had ought to be writin' an' I'm readin'. I can't talk an' read; seems when I do a thing I just hed to _do_ it!"

Prosper laughed and returned chidden to his task, but he couldn't help watching her, lying there in her blue frock across his floor, like a tall, thin Magdalene, all her rich hair fallen wildly about her face.