The Branding Iron Part 17

So absorbed was he in such observations that he found it intolerably difficult to fix his attention on the talk. Jasper's fluency seemed to ripple senselessly about his brain.

"You must consent to one thing, Luck: you must allow me to choose my own time for announcing the authors.h.i.+p." This found its way partially to his intelligence and he gave careless a.s.sent.

"Oh, whenever you like, as soon as I've had my fun."

"Of course--" Morena was thoughtful for an instant. "How would it do for me to leave it with Melton, the business manager? Eh? Suppose I phone him and talk it over a little. He'll want to wait till toward the end of the run. He's keen; has just the commercial sense of the born advertiser. Let him choose the moment. Then we can feel sure of getting the right one. Will you, Luck?"

"If you advise it. You ought to know."

"You see, I'm so confoundedly busy, so many irons in the fire, I might just miss the psychic moment. I think Melton's the man--I'll call him up to-night before we leave. Then I won't forget it and I'll be sure to catch him too."

Again Prosper vaguely agreed and promptly forgot that he had given his permission. Later, there came an agonizing moment when he would have given the world to recall his absent, careless words.

With an effort Prosper kept his poise, with an effort, always increasing, he talked to Jasper while Betty dressed, and kept up his end at dinner. The muscles round his mouth felt tight and drawn, his throat was dry. He was glad when they got into the limousine and started theaterwards. It had been a long time since he had been put through this particular ordeal and he was out of practice.

They reached the house just as the lights went out. Prosper was amused at his own intense excitement. "I didn't know I was still such a kid,"

he said, flas.h.i.+ng a smile, the first spontaneous one he had given her, upon Betty who sat beside him in the proscenium box.

The success of his novel had had no such effect upon him as this. It was entrancing to think that in a few moments the words he had written would come to him clothed in various voices, the people his brain had pictured would move before him in flesh and blood, doing what he had ordained that they should do. When the curtain rose, he had forgotten his personal problem, had forgotten Betty. He leaned forward, his elbows on his knees, his chin in his hand.

The scene was of a tropical island, palms, a strip of turquoise sea. A girl pushed aside the great fronds of ferns and stepped down to the beach. At her appearance the audience broke into applause. She was a tall girl, her stained legs and arms bare below her ragged dress, her black hair hung wild and free about her face and neck. As the daughter of a native mother and an English father, her beauty had been made to seem both Saxon and savage. Stained and painted, darkened below the great gray eyes, Joan with her brows and her cla.s.sic chin and throat, Joan with her secret, dangerous eyes and lithe, long body, made an arresting picture enough against the setting of vivid green and blue.

She moved slowly, deliberately, naturally, and stood, hands on hips, to watch a s.h.i.+p sail into the turquoise harbor. It was not like acting, she seemed really to look. She threw back her head and gave a call. It was the name of her stage brother, but it came from her deep chest and through her long column of a throat like music. Prosper brought down his hands on the railing before him, half pushed himself up, turned a blind look upon Betty, who laid a restraining hand upon his arm.

He whispered a name, which Betty could not make out, then he sat down, moistened his lips with his tongue, and sat through the entire first act and neither moved nor spoke. As the curtain went down he stood up.

"I must go out," he said, and hesitated in the back of the box till Jasper came over to him with an anxious question. Then he began to stammer nervously. "Don't tell her, Jasper, don't tell her."

"Tell her what, man? Tell whom?" Jasper gave him a shake. "Don't you like Jane? Isn't she wonderful?"

"Yes, yes, extraordinary!"

"Made for the part?"

"No." Prosper's face twisted into a smile. "No. The part came second, she was there first. Morena, promise me you won't tell her who wrote the play."

"Look here, Prosper, suppose you tell me what's wrong. Have you seen a ghost?"

Prosper laughed; then, seeing Betty, her face a rigid question, he struggled to lay hands upon his self-control.

"Something very astonis.h.i.+ng has happened, Morena,--one of those 'things not dreamt of in a man's philosophy.' I can't tell you. Have you arranged for me to meet Jane West?"

"After the show, yes, at supper."

"But not as the author?"

"No. I was waiting for you to tell her that."

"She mustn't know. And--and I can't meet her that way, at supper."

Again he made visible efforts at self-control. "Don't tell Betty what a fool I am. I'll go out a minute. I'll be all right."

Betty was coming toward them. He gave a painful smile and fled.

CHAPTER VI

JOAN AND PROSPER

The situation was no doubt an extraordinary, an unimaginable one, but it had to be met. When he returned to the box, Prosper had himself in hand, and, sitting a little farther back than before, he watched the second act with a sufficiency of outward calm.

This part was the most severe test of his composure, for he had fas.h.i.+oned it almost in detail upon that idyll in a canon. There were even speeches of Joan's that he had used. To sit here and watch Joan herself go through it, while he looked on, was an exciting form of torment. The setting was different, tropical instead of Northern, and the half-native heroine was more pa.s.sionate, more emotional, more animal than Joan. Nevertheless, the drama was a repet.i.tion. As Prosper had laid his trap for Joan, silently, subtly undermining her whole mental structure, using her loneliness, playing upon the artist soul of her, so did this Englishman lay his trap for Zona. He was more cruel than Prosper, rougher, necessarily more dramatic, but there was all the essence of the original drama, the ensnarement of a simple, direct mind by a complex and skillful one. Joan's surrender, Prosper's victory, were there. He wondered how Joan could act it, play the part in cold blood. Now he was condemned to live in his own imagination through Joan's tragedy. There was that first pitifulness of a tamed and broken spirit; then later, in London, the agony of loneliness, of separation, of gradual awakening to the change in her master's heart.

Prosper had written the words, but it was Joan who, with her voice, the music of memory-shaken heart-strings, made the words alive and meaningful. Others in the audience might wonder over the girl's ability to interpret this unusual experience, to make it natural, human, inevitable. But Prosper did not wonder. He knew that simply she forced herself to re-live this most painful part of her own life and to re-live it articulately. What, in G.o.d's name, had induced her to do it? Necessity? Poverty? Morena? All at once he remembered Betty's belief, that Joan was the manager's mistress--his wild, beautiful Joan, Joan the creation of his own wizardry. This thought gave him such pain that he whitened.

"Prosper," murmured Betty, "you must tell me what is wrong. Evidently your nerves are in bad shape. Is the excitement too much for you?"

"I believe it is," he said, avoiding her eyes and moving stiff, white lips; "I've never seen such acting. I--I--Morena says he'll let me see her in her dressing-room afterwards. You see, Betty, I'm badly shaken up."

"Ye-es," drawled Betty, and looked at him through narrowed lids, and she sat with this look on her face and with her fingers locked, when Prosper, not giving her further notice, followed Morena out.

"Jasper,"--Prosper held his friend back in the middle of a pa.s.sage that led to the dressing-rooms,--"I want very particularly to see Miss West alone. I am very much moved by her performance and I want to tell her so. Also, I want her to express herself naturally with no idea of my being the author of the play and without the presence of her manager. Will you just ask if she will see a friend of yours--alone?"

Jasper smiled his subtle smile. "Of course, Prosper. It's all as clear as daylight."

Prosper did not notice the Jew's intelligent expression. He was too much absorbed in his own excitement. In a moment he would be with Joan--Joan, his love of winter nights!

Morena tapped upon a door. A maid half-opened it.

"Ask Miss West, please, if she will see a friend of Mr. Morena's. Tell her I particularly wish her to give him a private interview." He scribbled a line on a card and the maid took it in.

In five minutes, during which the two men waited silently, she came back.

"Miss West will see your friend, sir."

"Ah! Then I'll take myself off. Prosper, will you join Betty and me at supper?"

"No, thanks. I'll have my brief interview with Miss West and then go home, if you'll forgive me. I'm about all in. New York's too much for a man just home from the front."

Jasper laid his hand for a moment on Prosper's shoulder, smiled, shrugged, and turned away. Prosper waited till his friend was out of sight and hearing, then knocked and was admitted to the dressing-room of Miss Jane West.

She had not changed from the evening dress she had worn in the last scene nor had she yet got rid of her make-up. She was sitting in a narrow-backed chair that had been turned away from the dressing-table.

The maid was putting away some costumes.

Prosper walked half across the room and stopped.

"Miss West," he said quietly.