The Branding Iron - Page 103/142

"I followed you; I didn't look at Pierre; I left him lying there,"

gasped Joan.

Prosper went on monotonously. "When I came back a week later, I

thought he would be dead. It was dusk, the wind was blowing, the snow

was driving in a scud. I came down to the cabin and dropped below the

drift by that northern window, and, the second I looked in, I dropped

out of sight. There was a light and a fire. Your husband was lying

before the fire on a cot. There was another man there, your Mr.

Holliwell; they were talking, Holliwell was dressing Pierre's wound. I

went away like a ghost, and while I was going back, I thought it all

out; and I decided to keep you for myself. I suppose," said Prosper

dully, "that that was a horrible sin. I didn't see it that way then.

I'm not sure I see it that way now. Pierre had tied you up and pressed

a white-hot iron into your bare shoulder. If you went back to him, if

he took you back, how was I to know that he might not repeat his

drunken deviltry, or do worse, if anything could be worse! It was the

act of a fiend. It put him out of court with me. Whatever I gave you,

education and beauty, and ease, must be better and happier for you

than life with such a brute as Pierre--"

"Stop!" said Joan between her teeth; "you know nothing of Pierre and

me; you only know that one dreadful night. You don't know--the rest."

"I don't want to know the rest," he said sharply; "that is enough to

justify my action. I thought so then and I think so now. You won't be

able to make me change that opinion."

"I shall not try," said Joan.

He accepted this and went on. "When I found you in your bed waiting

for news of Pierre, I thought you the most beautiful, pitiful thing I

had ever seen. I loved you then, Joan, then. Tell me, did I ever in

those days hurt you or give you a moment's anxiety or fear?"

"No," Joan admitted, "you did not. In those days you were wonderful,

kind and patient with me. I thought you were more like God than a

human then."

Prosper laughed with bitterness. "You thought very wrong, but,

according to my own lights, I was very careful of you. I meant to give

you all I could and I meant to win you with patience and forbearance.

I had respect for you and for your grief and for the horrible thing

you had suffered. Joan, by now you know better what the world is. Can

you reproach me so very bitterly for our--happiness, even if it was

short?"