The Branding Iron Part 16

The stranger dropped to his heels, squatted, and rolled a cigarette.

"I'll wait," he murmured. "You can let him know when the dudes make their get-away. He'll get round to me. My name? It won't mean anything to him--Pierre Landis."

He did not go round the house, and Yarnall, being very busy and perturbed for some time after the departure of his guests, did not get round to him till nearly noon. By that time he was sitting on the step, his back against the wall, still smoking and still wistfully observant of his surroundings.

He stood up when Yarnall came.

"Sorry," said the latter; "that fool boy didn't tell me you were here till ten minutes ago. Come in. You'll stop for dinner--if we get any to-day."

"Thank you," said Pierre.

He came in and talked and stayed for dinner. Yarnall was used to the Western fas.h.i.+on of doing business. He knew that it would be a long time before the young man would come to his point. But the Englishman was in no hurry, for he liked his visitor and found his talk diverting enough. Landis had been in Alaska--a lumber camp. He had risen to be foreman and now he was off for a vacation, but had to go back soon. He had been everywhere. It seemed to Yarnall that the stranger had visited every ranch in the Rocky Mountain belt.

After dinner, strolling beside his host toward his horse, Pierre spoke, and before Yarnall had heard a word he knew that the long delay had been caused by suppressed emotion. Pierre, when he did ask his question, was white to the lips.

"I've taken a lot of your time," he said slowly. "I came to ask you about someone. I heard that you had a woman on your ranch, a woman who came in and didn't give you any history. I want to see her if I may."

He was actually fighting an unevenness of breath, and Yarnall, unemotional as he was, was gripped with sympathetic suspense. "I want," stammered the young man, "to know her name."

Yarnall swore. "Her name, as she gave it," said he, "is Jane. But, my boy, you can't see her. She left this morning."

Pierre raised a white, tense face.

"Left?" He turned as if he would run after her.

"Yes, sir. These people I've had here took her away with them. That is, they've been urging her to go, but she'd refused. Then, suddenly, this morning, just as they were putting the trunks in, up came Jane, white as chalk, asking them to take her with them, said she must go.

Well, sir, they rigged her up with some traveling clothes and drove away with her. That was six hours ago. By now they're in the train, bound for New York."

Yarnall's guest looked at him without speaking, and Yarnall nervously went on, "She's been with us about six months, Landis, and I don't know anything about her. She was tall, gray eyes, black hair, slow speaking, and with the kind of voice you'd be apt to notice ... yes, I see she's the girl you've been looking for. I can give you the New York people's address, but first, for Jane's sake,--I'm a pretty good friend of hers, I think a lot of Jane,--I'll have to know what you want with her--what she is to you."

Pierre's pupils widened till they all but swallowed the smoke-colored iris.

"She is my wife," he said.

Again Yarnall swore. But he lit a cigarette and took his time about answering. "Well, sir," he said, "you must excuse me, but--it was because she saw you, I take it, that Jane cut off this morning. That's clear. Now, I don't know what would make a girl run off from her husband. She might have any number of reasons, bad and good, but it seems to me that it would be a pretty strong one that would make a girl run off, with a look such as she wore, from a man like you. Did you treat her well, Landis?"

It had the effect of a lash taken by a penitent. The man shrank a little, whitened, endured. "I can't tell you how I treated her," he said in a dangerous voice; "it don't bear tellin'. But--I want her back. I was--I was--that was three years ago; I am more like a man now. You'll give me the people's name, their address?..."

Pierre laid his hand on the older man's wrist and gave it a queer urgent and beseeching shake.

After a moment of searching scrutiny, Yarnall bent his head.

"Very well," said he shortly; "come in."

CHAPTER V

LUCK'S PLAY

A young man who had just landed in New York from one of the big, adventurous transatlantic liners hailed a taxicab and was quickly drawn away into the glitter and gayety of a bright winter morning. He sat forward eagerly, looking at everything with the air of a lad on a holiday. He was a young man, but he was not in his first youth, and under a heavy sunburn he was pale and a trifle worn, but there was about him a look of being hard and very much alive. Under a broad brow there were hawk eyes of greenish gray, a delicate beak, a mouth and chin of cleverness. It was an interesting face and looked as though it had seen interesting things. In fact, Prosper Gael had just returned from his three months of ambulance service in France, and it was the extraordinary success of his play, "The Leopardess," that had chiefly brought him back.

"Dear Luck," his manager had written, using the college t.i.tle which Prosper's name and unvarying good fortune suggested, "you'd better come back and gather up some of these laurels that are smothering us all. The time is very favorable for the disappearance of your anonymity. I, for one, find it more and more difficult to keep the secret. So far, not even your star knows it. She calls you 'Mr. Luck'

... to that extent I have been indiscreet...."

Prosper had another letter in his pocket, a letter that he had re-read many times, always with an uneasy conflict of emotions. He was in a sort of hot-cold humor over it, in a fever-fit that had a way of turning into la.s.situde. He postponed a.n.a.lysis indefinitely. Meanwhile his eyes searched the bright, cold city, its crowds, its traffics, its windows--most of all, its placards, and, not far to seek, there were the posters of "The Leopardess." He leaned out to study one of them; a tall, wild-eyed woman crouched to spring upon a man who stared at her in fear. Prosper dropped back with a gleaming smile of amused excitement. "They've made it look like cheap melodrama," he said to himself; "and yet it's a good thing, the best thing I've ever done.

Yet they will vulgarize the whole idea with their infernal notions of 'what the public wants.' Morena is as bad as the rest of them!" He expressed disgust, but underneath he was aglow with pride and interest. "There's a performance to-night. I'll dine with Jasper. I'll have to see Betty first...." His thoughts trailed off and he fell into that hot-cold confusion, that uncomfortable scorching fog of mood. The cab turned into Fifth Avenue and became a scale in the creeping serpent of vehicles that glided, paused, and glided again past the thronged pavements. Prosper contrasted everything with the grim courage and high-pitched tragedy of France. He could not but wonder at the detached frivolity of these money-spenders, these spinners in the sun. How soon would the shadow fall upon them too and with what change of countenance would they look up! To him the joyousness seemed almost childish and yet he bathed his f.a.gged spirit in it. How high the white clouds sailed, how blue was the midwinter sky! How the buildings towered, how quickly the people stepped! Here were the pretty painted faces, the absurd silk stockings, the tripping, exquisitely booted feet, the swinging walk, the tall, up-springing bodies of the women he remembered. He regarded them with impersonal delight, untinged by any of his usual cynicism.

It was late afternoon when Prosper, obedient to a telephone call from Betty, presented himself at the door of Morena's house, just east of the Park, off Fifth Avenue; a very beautiful house where the wealthy Jew had indulged his pa.s.sion for exquisite things. Prosper entered its rich dimness with a feeling of oppression--that una.n.a.lyzed mood of hot and cold feeling intensified to an almost unbearable degree. In the large carved and curtained drawing-room he waited for Betty. The tea-things were prepared; there would be no further need of service until Betty should ring. Everything was arranged for an uninterrupted tete-a-tete. Prosper stood near an ebony table, his shoulder brushed by tall, red roses, and felt his nerves tighten and his pulses hasten in their beat. "The tall child ... the tall child ..." he had called her by that name so often and never without a swift and stabbing memory of Joan, and of Joan's laughter which he had silenced.

He took out the letter he had lately received from Betty and re-read it and, as he read, a deep line cut between his eyes. "You say you will not come back unless I can give you more than I have ever given you in the past. You say you intend to cut yourself free, that I have failed you too often, that you are starved on hope. I'm not going to ask much more patience of you. I failed you that first time because I lost courage; the second time, fate failed us. How could I think that Jasper would get well when the doctors told me that I mustn't allow myself even a shadow of hope! Now, I think that Jasper, himself, is preparing my release. This all sounds like something in a book. That's because you've hurt me. I feel frozen up. I couldn't bear it if now, just when the door is opening, you failed me. Prosper, you are my lover for always, aren't you? I have to believe that to go on living.

You are the one thing in my wretched life that hasn't lost its value.

Now, read this carefully; I am going to be brutal. Jasper has been unfaithful to me. I know it. I have sufficient evidence to prove it in a law court and I shall not hesitate to get a divorce. Tear this up, please. Now, of all times, we must be extraordinarily careful. There has never been a whisper against us and there mustn't be. Jasper must not suspect. A counter-suit would ruin my life. I must talk it over with you. I'll see you once alone--just once--before I leave Jasper and begin the suit. We must have patience for just this last bit. It will seem very long...."

Prosper folded the letter. He was conscious of a faint feeling of sickness, of fear. Then he heard Betty's step across the marble pavement of the hall. She parted the heavy curtains, drew them together behind her, and stood, pale with joy, opening and shutting her big eyes. Then she came to meet him, held him back, listening for any sound that might predict interruption, and gave herself to his arms. She was no longer pale when he let her go. She went a few steps away and stood with her hands before her face, then she went to sit by the tea-table. They were both flushed. Betty's eyes were s.h.i.+ning under their fluttering lids. Prosper rejoiced in his own emotion. The mental fog had lifted and the feeling of faintness was gone.

"You've decided not to break away altogether, then?" she asked, giving him a quick glance.

He shook his head. "Not if what you have written me is true. I've had such letters from you before and I've grown very suspicious. Are you sure this time?" He laid stress upon his bitterness. It was his one weapon against her and he had been sharpening it with a vague purpose.

"Oh," said Betty, speaking low and furtively, "Jasper is fairly caught. I have a reliable witness in the girl's maid. There is no doubt of his guilt, Prosper, none. Everyone is talking of it. He has been perfectly open in his attentions."

Every minute Betty looked younger and prettier, more provoking. Her child-mouth with its clever smile was bright as though his kiss had painted it.

"Who is the girl?" asked Prosper. He was deeply flushed. Being capable of simultaneous points of view, he had been stung by that cool phrase of Betty's concerning "Jasper's guilt."

"I'll tell you in a moment. Did you destroy my letter?"

He shook his head.

"Oh, Prosper, please!"

He took it out, tore it up, and walking over to the open fire, burned the papers. He came back to his tea. "Well, Betty?"

"The girl," said Betty, "is the star in your play, 'The Leopardess,'

the girl that Jasper picked up two Septembers ago out West. He has written to you about her. She was a cook, if you please, a hideous creature, but Jasper saw at once what there was in her. She has made the play. You'll have to acknowledge that yourself when you see her.

She is wonderful. And, partly owing to the trouble I've taken with her, the girl is beautiful. One wouldn't have thought it possible. She is not charming to me, she's not in the least subtle. It's odd that she should have had such an effect upon Jasper, of all men...."

Prosper sipped his tea and listened. He looked at her and was bitterly conscious that the excitement which had pleased and surprised him was dying out. That faintness again a.s.sailed his spirit. He was feeling stifled, ashamed, bored. Yes, that was it, bored. That life of service and battle-danger in France had changed him more than he had realized till now. He was more simple, more serious, more moral, in a certain sense. He was like a man who, having denied the existence of Apollyon, has come upon him face to face and has been burnt by his breath. Such a man is inevitably moral. All this long, intricate intrigue with the wife of a man who called him friend, seemed to him horribly unworthy.

If Betty had been a great lover, if she had not lost courage at the eleventh hour and left him to face that terrible winter in Wyoming, then their pa.s.sion might have justified itself: but now there was a staleness in their relations.h.i.+p. He hated the thought of the long divorce proceedings, of the decent interval, of the wedding, of the married life. He had never really wanted that. And now, in the ebb of his pa.s.sion, how could he force himself to take her when he had learned to live more keenly, more completely without her! He would have to take her, to spend his days and nights with her, to travel with her. She would want to visit that gay, little forsaken house in a Wyoming canon. With vividness he saw a girl lying p.r.o.ne on a black rug before a dancing fire, her hair all fallen about her face, her secret eyes lifted impatiently from the book--"You had ought to be writin', Mr. Gael...."

"What are you smiling for, Prosper?" Betty asked sharply.

He looked up, startled and confused. "Sorry. I've got into beastly absent-minded habits. Is that Morena?"

Jasper opened the curtains and came in, greeting Prosper in his stately, charming fas.h.i.+on. "To-night," he said, "we'll show you a leopardess worth looking at, won't we, Betty? But first you must tell us about your own experience. You look wonderfully fit, doesn't he, Betty? And changed. They say the life out there stamps a man, and they're right. It's taken some of that winged-demon look out of your face, Prosper, put some soul into it."

He talked and Betty laughed, showing not the slightest evidence of effort, though the soul Jasper had seen in Prosper's face felt shriveled for her treachery. Prosper wondered if she could be right in her surmise about Jasper. The Jew was infinitely capable of dissimulation, but there was a clarity of look and smile that filled Prosper with doubts. And the eyes he turned upon his wife were quite as apparently as ever the eyes of a disappointed man.