The Branding Iron Part 28

Can you step out with me?"

Pierre kept beside him and stood by the motor, hat still in his hand, while the doctor talked irritably: "No. You certainly can't see her, for some time. I shall not allow any one to see her, except the nurse.

It will be a matter of weeks. She'll be lucky if she gets back her sanity at all. She was entirely out of her head there at the theater.

She's worn out, nerves frayed to a frazzle. Horribly unhealthy life and unnatural. To take a country girl, an ignorant, untrained, healthy animal, bring her to the city and force her under terrific pressure into a life so foreign to her--well! it was just a piece of d----d brutality." Then his acute eye suddenly fixed itself on the man standing on the curb listening.

"You're from the West yourself?"

"Yes, sir."

"Knew her in the old days--eh?"

"Yes, sir." Pierre's voice was faint and he put a hand against the motor.

"Well, why don't you take her back with you to that life? You're not feeling any too fit yourself, are you? Look here. Get in and I'll drop you where you belong."

Pierre obeyed rather blindly and leaned back with closed eyes. The doctor got out a flask and poured him a dose of brandy.

"What's the trouble? Too much New York?"

Pierre shook his head and smiled. "No, sir. I've been bothered and didn't get round to eating and sleeping lately."

"Then I'll take you to a restaurant and we'll have supper. I need something myself. And, look here, I'll make you a promise. Just as soon as I consider her fit for an interview with any one, I'll let you see Miss West. That helps you a whole lot, doesn't it?"

But there were other powers, besides this friendly one, watching over Joan, and they were bent upon keeping Pierre away. Day after sickening day Pierre came and stood beside the desk, and the girl, each time a little more careless of him, a little more insolent toward him--for the cowboy would not notice her blue blouse and her transformation and the invitation of her eyes--gave him negligent and discouraging information.

"Miss West was better, but very weak. No. She wouldn't see any one.

Yes, Mr. Morena could see her, but not Mr. Landis, certainly not Mr.

Pierre Landis, of Wyoming."

And the doctor, being questioned by the half-frantic Westerner, admitted that Mr. Morena had hinted at reasons why it might be dangerous for the patient to see her old friend from the West. Pierre stood to receive this sentence, and after it, his eyes fell. The doctor had seen the quick, desperate moisture in them.

"I tell you what, Landis," he said, putting a hand on Pierre's shoulder. "I'm willing to take a risk. I'm sure of one thing. Miss West hasn't even heard of your inquiries."

"You mean Morena's making it up--about her not being willing to see me?"

"I do mean that. And no doubt he's doing it with the best intentions.

But I'm willing to take a risk. See those stairs? You run up them to the fifth floor. The nurse is out. Gael is in attendance; that is, he's in the sitting-room. She doesn't know of his presence, hasn't been allowed to see him. Miss West's door--the outside one--is ajar.

Go up. Get past Gael if you can. Behave yourself quietly, and if you see the least sign of weakness on the part of Miss West, or if she shows the slightest disinclination for your company, come down--I'm trusting you--as quickly as you can and tell me. I'll wait. Have I your promise?"

"Yes, sir," gasped Pierre.

The doctor smiled at the swift, leaping grace of his Western friend's ascent. He was anxious concerning the result of his experiment, but there was a memory upon him of a haunted look in Joan's eyes that seemed the fellow to a look of Pierre's. He rather believed in intuitions, especially his own.

CHAPTER XIII

THE END OF THE TRAIL

At the top of the fourth flight of steps, Pierre found himself facing a door that stood ajar. Beyond that door was Joan and he knew not what experience of discovery, of explanation, of punishment. What he had suffered since the night of his cruelty would be nothing to what he might have to suffer now at the hands of the woman he had loved and hurt. That she was incredibly changed he knew, what had happened to change her he did not know. That she had suffered greatly was certain.

One could not look at the face of Jane West, even under its disguise of paint and pencil, without a sharp realization of profound and embittering experience. And, just as certainly, she had gone far ahead of her husband in learning, in a certain sort of mental and social development. Pierre was filled with doubt and with dread, with an almost unbearable self-depreciation. And at the same time he was filled with a nameless fear of what Joan might herself have become.

He stood with his hand on the k.n.o.b of that half-opened door, bent his head, and drew some deep, uneven breaths. He thought of Holliwell as though the man were standing beside him. He stepped in quietly, shut the door, and walked without hesitation down the pa.s.sageway into the little, sunny sitting-room. There, before the crackling, open fire, sat Prosper Gael.

Prosper, it seemed, was alone in the small, silent place. He was sitting on the middle of his spine, as usual, with his long, thin legs stretched out before him and a veil of cigarette smoke before his eyes. He turned his head idly, expecting, no doubt, to see the nurse.

Pierre, white and grim, stood looking down at him.

The older man recognized him at once, but he did not change his position by a muscle, merely lounged there, his head against the side of the cus.h.i.+oned chair, the brilliant, surprised gaze changing slowly to amused contempt. His cigarette hung between the long fingers of one hand, its blue spiral of smoke rising tranquilly into a bar of suns.h.i.+ne from the window.

"The doctor told me to come up," said Pierre gravely. He was aware of the insult of this stranger's att.i.tude, but he was too deeply stirred, too deeply suspenseful, to be irritated by it. He seemed to be moving in some rare, disconnected atmosphere. "I have his permission to see--to see Miss West, if she is willing to see me."

Prosper flicked off an ash with his little finger. "And you believe that she is willing to see you, Pierre Landis?" he asked slowly.

Pierre gave him a startled look. "You know my name?"

"Yes. I believe that four years ago, on an especially cold and snowy night, I interrupted you in a rather extraordinary occupation and gave myself the pleasure of shooting you." With that he got to his feet and stood before the mantel, negligently enough, but ready to his fingertips.

Pierre came nearer by a stride. He had been stripped at once of his air of high detachment. He was pale and quivering. He looked at Prosper with eyes of incredulous dread.

"Were you--that man?" A tide of shamed scarlet engulfed him and he dropped his eyes.

"I thought that would take the a.s.surance out of you," said Prosper.

"As a matter of fact, shooting was too good for you. On that night you forfeited every claim to the consideration of man or woman. I have the right of any decent citizen to turn you out of here. Do you still maintain your intention of asking for an interview with Miss Jane West?"

Pierre, half-blind with humiliation, turned without a word and made his way to the door. He meant to go away and kill himself. The purpose was like iron in his mind. That he should have to stand and, because of his own cowardly fault, to endure insult from this contemptuous stranger, made of life a garment too stained, too shameful to be worn.

He was in haste to be rid of it. Something, however, barred his exit.

He stumbled back to avoid it. There, holding aside the curtain in the doorway, stood Joan.

This time there was no possible doubt of her ident.i.ty. She was wrapped in a long, blue gown, her hair had fallen in braided loops on either side of her face and neck. The unchanged eyes of Joan under her broad brows looked up at him. She was thin and wan, unbelievably broken and tired and hurt, but she was Joan. Pierre could not but forget death at sight of her. He staggered forward, and she, putting up her arms, drew him hungrily and let fall her head upon his shoulder.

"My gel! My Joan!" Pierre sobbed.

Prosper's voice sawed into their tremulous silence.

"So, after all, the branding iron is the proper instrument," he said.

"A man can always recognize his estray, and when she is recognized she will come to heel."

Joan pushed Pierre from her violently and turned upon Prosper Gael.

Her voice broke over him in a tumult of soft scorn.

"You know nothing of loving, Prosper Gael, not the first letter of loving. n.o.body has learned that about you as well as I have. Now, listen and I will teach you something. This is something that _I_ have learned. There are worse wounds than I had from Pierre, and it is by the hands of such men as you are that they are given. The hurts you get from love, they heal. Pierre was mad, he was a beast, he branded me as though I had been a beast. For long years I couldn't think of him but with a sort of horror in my heart. If it hadn't been for you, I might never have thought of him no other way forever. But what you did to me, Prosper, you with your white-hot brain and your gray-cold heart, you with your music and your talk throbbing and talking and whining about my soul, what you did to me has made Pierre's iron a very gentle thing. I have not acted in the play you wrote, the play you made out of me and my unhappiness, without understanding just what it was that you did to me. Perhaps if it hadn't been for the play, I might even have believed that you were capable of something better than that pa.s.sion you had once for me--but not now. Never now can I believe it. What you make other people suffer is material for your own success and you delight in it. You make notes upon it. Pierre was mad through loving me, too ignorantly, too jealously, but what you did to me was through loving me too little. That was a brand upon my brain and soul. Sometimes since then that scar on my shoulder has seemed to me almost like the memory of a caress. I went away from Pierre, leaving him for dead, ready for death myself. When you left me, you left me alive and ready for what sort of living? It has been Pierre's love and his following after me that have kept me from low and beastly things. I've run from him knowing I wasn't fit to be found by him, but I've run clean and free." She began to tremble. "Will you say anything more to me and to my man?"

Prosper's face wore its old look of the winged demon. He was cold in his angry pain.

"Just one thing to your man, perhaps, if you will allow me, but perhaps you'll tell him that yourself. That his method is the right one, I admit. But in one respect not even a brand will altogether preserve property rights. Morena could say something on that score. So could I...."