The Branding Iron Part 26

She rose, came to him, and clutched his arm. "Pierre? Pierre?" She looked around her, wild as a captured bird. "Oh, I must go! I must go!"

"Jane, my child,"--he put his arm about her, held her two hands in his,--"you must do nothing of the kind. If you don't want this Pierre to find you, if you don't want him to come into your life, there's an easy, a very simple, way to put an end to his pursuit. Don't you know that?"

She stared up at him, quivering in his arm. "No. What is it? How can I? Oh, he mustn't see me! Never, never, never! I made that promise to myself."

"Jane, you say yourself that you are changed, that you are not the girl he wants to find."

She shook her head desolately enough. "Oh, no, I'm not."

"He isn't sure that Jane West is the woman he's looking for. He's following the faintest, the most doubtful, of trails. He heard of you from Yarnall; the description of you and your sudden flight made him fairly sure that it must be--you--" Jasper laughed. "I'm talking quite at random in a sense, because I haven't a notion, my dear, who you are nor what this Pierre has been in your life. If you could tell me--?"

She shook her head. "No," she said; "no."

"Very well. Then I'll have to go on talking at random. Jane at the Lazy-Y Ranch was a woman who had deliberately disguised herself. Jane West in New York is a different woman altogether; but, unless I'm very wrong, she is even more completely disguised from Pierre Landis. If you can convince Pierre that you _are_ Jane West, not any other woman, certainly not the woman he once knew, aren't you pretty safely rid of him for always?"

She stood still now. He felt that her fingers were cold. "Yes. For always. I suppose so. But how can I do that, Mr. Morena?"

"Nothing easier. You're an actress, aren't you? I advised Pierre Landis to stand near the stage exit to-night and watch you get into your motor."

Again she clutched at him. "Oh, no. Don't--don't let him do that!"

"Now, if you will make an effort, look him in the eyes, refuse to show a single quiver of recognition, speak to some one in the most artificial tone you can manage, pa.s.s him by, and drive away, why, wouldn't that convince him that you aren't his quarry--eh?"

She thought! then slowly drew herself away and stood, her head bent, her brows drawn sharply together. "Yes. I suppose so. I think I can do it. That is the best plan." She looked at him wildly again. "Then it will be over for always, won't it? He'll go away?"

"Yes, my poor child. He will go away. He told me so. Then, will you try to forget him, to live your life for its own beautiful sake? I'd like to see you happy, Jane."

"Would you?" She smiled like a pitying mother. "Why, I've given up even dreaming of that. That isn't what keeps me going."

"What is it, then, Jane?"

"Oh, a queer notion." She laughed sadly. "A kind of kid's notion, I guess, that if you live along, some way, some time, you'll be able to make up for things you've done, and that perhaps there'll be another meeting-place--a kind of a round-up--where you'll be fit to forgive those you love and to be forgiven by them."

Jasper walked about. He was touched and troubled. Some minutes later he said doubtfully, "Then you'll carry through your purpose of not letting Pierre know you?"

"Yes. I've made up my mind to that. That's what I've got to do. He mustn't find me. We can't meet here in this life. That's certain.

There are things that come between, things like bars." She made a strange gesture as of a prisoner running his fingers across the barred window of a cell. "Thank you for warning me. Thank you for telling me what to do." She smiled faintly. "I think he will know me, anyway,"

she said, "but I won't know him. Never! Never!"

That night the theater was late in emptying itself. Jane West had acted with especial brilliance and she was called out again and again. When she came to her dressing-room she was flushed and breathless. She did not change her costume, but drew her fur coat on over the green evening dress she had worn in the last scene. Then she stood before her mirror, looking herself over carefully, critically. Now that the paint was washed off, and the flush of excitement faded, she looked haggard and white. Her face was very thin, its beautiful bones--long sweep of jaw, wide brow, straight, short nose--sharply accentuated. The round throat rising against the fur collar looked unnaturally white and long. She sat down before her dressing-table and deliberately painted her cheeks and lips. She even altered the outlines of her mouth, giving it a pursed and doll-like expression, so that her eyes appeared enormous and her nose a little pinched. Then she drew a lock of waved hair down across the middle of her forehead, pressed another at each side close to the corners of her eyes. This took from the unusual breadth of brow and gave her a much more ordinary look. A coat of powder, heavily applied, more nearly produced the effect of a pink-and-white, gla.s.sy-eyed doll-baby for which she was trying. Afterwards she turned and smiled doubtfully at the astonished dresser.

"Good gracious, Miss West! You don't look like yourself at all!"

"Good!"

She said good-night and went rapidly down the draughty pa.s.sages and the concrete stairs. Jasper was standing inside the outer door and applauded her.

"Well done. If it weren't for your pose and walk, my dear, I should hardly have known you myself."

Joan stood beside him, holding her furs close, breathing fast through the parted, painted lips.

"Is he here, do you know?"

"Yes. He's been waiting. I told him you might be late. Now, keep your head. Everything depends upon that. Can you do it?"

"Oh, yes. Is the car there? I won't have to stop?"

"Not an instant. But give him a good looking-over so that he'll be sure, and don't change the expression of your eyes. Feel, make yourself feel _inside_, that he's a stranger. You know what I mean.

Good-night, my dear. Good luck. I'll call you up as soon as you get home--that is, after I've seen your pursuer safely back to his rooms."

But this last sentence was addressed to himself.

Joan opened the door and stepped out into the chill dampness of the April night. The white arc of electric light beat down upon her as she came forward and it fell as glaringly upon the figure of Pierre. He had pushed forward from the little crowd of nondescripts always waiting at a stage exit, and stood, bareheaded, just at the door of her motor drawn up by the curb. She saw him instantly and from the first their eyes met. It was a horrible moment for Joan. What it was for him, she could tell by the tense pallor of his keen, bronzed face.

The eyes she had not seen for such an agony of years, the strange, deep, iris-colored eyes, there they were now searching her. She stopped her heart in its beating, she stopped her breath, stopped her brain. She became for those few seconds just one thought--"I have never seen you. I have never seen you." She pa.s.sed so close to him that her fur touched his hand, and she looked into his face with a cool, half-disdainful glitter of a smile.

"Step aside, please," she said; "I must get in." Her voice was unnaturally high and quite unnaturally precise.

Pierre said one word, a hopeless word. "Joan." It was a prayer. It should have been, "Be Joan." Then he stepped back and she stumbled into shelter.

At the same instant another man--a man in evening dress--hastily prevented her man from closing the door.

"Miss West, may I see you home?"

Before she could speak, could do more than look, Prosper Gael had jumped in, the door slammed, the car began its whirr, and they were gliding through the crowded, brilliant streets.

Joan had bent forward and was rocking to and fro.

"He called me 'Joan,'" she gasped over and over. "He called me 'Joan.'"

"That was Pierre?" Prosper had been forewarned by Jasper and had planned his part.

She kept on rocking, holding her hands on either side of her face.

"I must go away. If I see him again I shall die. I could never do that another time. O G.o.d! His hand touched me. He called me 'Joan' ... I must go...."

Prosper did not touch her, but his voice, very friendly, very calm, had an instantaneous effect. "I will take you away."

She laughed shakily. "Again?" she asked, and shamed him into silence.

But after a while he began very reasonably, very patiently:

"I can take you away so that you need not be put through this unnecessary pain. I can arrange it with Morena. If Pierre sees you often enough, he will be sure to recognize you. Joan, I did not deserve that 'again' and you know it. I am a changed man. If you don't know that now I have the heart of--of devotion, of service, toward you, you are indeed a blind and stupid woman. But you do know it. You must."

She sat silent beside him, the long and slender hand between her face and him.

"I can take you away," he went on presently, "and keep you from Pierre until he has given up his search and has gone West again. And I can take you at once--in a day or two. Your understudy can fill the part.

This engagement is almost at an end. I can make it up to Morena. After all, if we go, we shall be doing Betty and him a service."

Joan flung out her hands recklessly. "Oh," she cried, "what does it matter? Of course I'll go. I'd run into the sea to escape Pierre--"