“Oh, he will?”
“Yes. He’ll be takin’ after me. He must ‘a’ ben scairt by somethin’ Pierre said in the town durin’ their quarrel an’ have come up after him to look out what Pierre would be doin’ to me.... I wisht he’d ‘a’ come in time.... What must he be thinkin’ of me now, to find Pierre a-lyin’ there dead, an’ me gone! He’ll be takin’ after me to bring me home.”
Prosper would almost have questioned her then, his sharp face was certainly at that moment the face of an inquisitor, a set of keen and delicate instruments ready for probing, but so weary and childlike did she look, so weary and childlike was her speech, that he forbore. What did it matter, after all, what there was in her past? She had done what she had done, been what she had been. If the fellow had branded her for sin, why, she had suffered overmuch. Prosper admitted, that, unbranded as to skin, he was scarcely fit to put his dirty civilized soul under her clean and savage foot. Was the big, rosy chap her lover? She had spoken of a quarrel between him and Pierre? But her manner of speaking of him was scarcely in keeping with the thought, rather it was the manner of a child-soul relying on the Shepherd who would be “takin’ after” some small, lost one. Well, he would have to be a superman to find her here with no trails to follow and no fingers to point. Pierre by now would have told his story—and Prosper knew instinctively that he would tell it straight; whatever madness the young savage might perpetrate under the influence of drink and jealousy, he would hardly, with that harrowed face, be apt at fabrications—they would be looking for Joan to come back, to go to the town, to some neighboring ranch. They would make a search, but winter would be against them with its teeth bared, a blizzard was on its way. By the time they found her, thought Prosper,—and he quoted one of Joan’s quaint phrases to himself, smiling with radiance as he did so,—“she won’t be carin’ to leave me.” In his gay, little, firelit room, he sat, stretched out, lank and long, in the low, deep, red-lacquered chair, dozing through the long day, sipping strong coffee, smoking, reading. He was singularly quiet and content. The devil of disappointment and of thwarted desire that had wived him in this carefully appointed hiding-place stood away a little from him and that wizard imagination of his began to weave. By dusk, he was writing furiously and there was a glow of rapture on his face.
CHAPTER XI
THE WHOLE DUTY OF WOMAN
Joan waited for Holliwell and, waiting, began inevitably to regain her strength. One evening as Wen Ho was spreading the table, Prosper looked up from his writing to see a tall, gaunt girl clinging to the door-jamb. She was dressed in the heavy clothes, which hung loose upon her long bones, her throat was drawn up to support the sharpened and hollowed face in which her eyes had grown very large and wistful. Her hair was braided and wrapped across her brow, her long, strong hands, smooth and only faintly brown, were thin, too, and curiously expressive as they clung to the logs. She was a moving figure, piteous, lovely, rather like some graceful mountain beast, its spirit half-broken by wounds and imprisonment and human tending, but ready to leap into a savagery of flight or of attack. They were wild, those great eyes, as well as wistful. Prosper, looking suddenly up at them, caught his breath. He put down his book as quietly as though she had indeed been a wild, easily startled thing, and, suppressing the impulse to rise, stayed where he was, leaning a trifle forward, his hands on the arms of his chair.
Joan’s eyes wandered curiously about the brilliant room and came to him at last. Prosper met them, relaxed, and smiled.
“Come in and dine with me, Joan,” he said. “Tell me how you like it.”