The Branding Iron - Page 100/142

Joan waited for Prosper on the appointed afternoon. There was a fire

on her hearth and a March snow-squall tapped against the window panes.

The crackle of the logs inside and that eerie, light sound outside

were so associated with Prosper that, even before he came, Joan,

sitting on one side of the hearth, closed her eyes and felt that he

must be opposite to her in his red-lacquered chair, his long legs

stuck out in front, his amused and greedy eyes veiled by a cloud of

cigarette smoke.

Since she had seen him at the theater, she had been suffering from

sleeplessness. At night she would go over and over the details of

their intercourse, seeing them, feeling them, living them in the light

of later knowledge, till the torment was hardly to be borne. Three

days and nights of this inner activity had brought back that sharp

line between her brows and the bitter tightening of her lips.

This afternoon she was white with suspense. Her dread of the impending

interview was like a physical illness. She sat in a high-backed chair,

hands along the arms, head resting back, eyes half-closed, in that

perfect stillness of which the animal and the savage are alone

entirely capable. There were many gifts that Joan had brought from the

seventeen years on Lone River. This grave immobility was one. She was

very carefully dressed in a gown that accentuated her height and

dignity. And she wore a few jewels. She wanted, pitifully enough, to

mark every difference between this Joan and the Joan whom Prosper had

drawn on his sled up the cañon trail. If he expected to force her

back into the position of enchanted leopardess, to see her "lie at his

feet and eat out of his hand," as Morena had once described the plight

of Zona, he would see at a glance that she was no longer so easily

mastered. In fact, sitting there, she looked as proud and perilous as

a young Medea, black-haired with long throat and cold, malevolent

lips. It was only in the eyes--those gray, unhappy, haunted eyes--that

Joan gave away her eternal simplicity of heart. They were unalterably

tender and lonely and hurt. It was the look in them that had prompted

Shorty's description, "She's plumb movin' to me--looks about halfway

between 'You go to hell' and 'You take me in your arms to rest.'"

Prosper was announced, and Joan, keeping her stillness, merely turned

her head toward him as he came into the room.

She saw his rapid observation of the room, of her, even before she

noticed the very apparent change in him. For he, too, was haggard and

utterly serious as she did not remember him. He stood before her fire

and asked her jerkily if she would let him smoke. She said "Yes," and

those were the only words spoken for five unbearable minutes the

seconds of which her heart beat out like a shaky hammer in some worn

machine.