by Zane Grey
CHAPTER X
Carley's edifice of hopes, dreams, aspirations, and struggles fell inruins about her. It had been built upon false sands. It had no ideal forfoundation. It had to fall.
Something inevitable had forced her confession to Rust. Dissimulationhad been a habit of her mind; it was more a habit of her class thansincerity. But she had reached a point in her mental strife whereshe could not stand before Rust and let him believe she was noble andfaithful when she knew she was neither. Would not the next step inthis painful metamorphosis of her character be a fierce and passionaterepudiation of herself and all she represented?
She went home and locked herself in her room, deaf to telephone andservants. There she gave up to her shame. Scorned--despised--dismissedby that poor crippled flame-spirited Virgil Rust! He had reverencedher, and the truth had earned his hate. Would she ever forget hislook--incredulous--shocked--bitter--and blazing with unutterablecontempt? Carley Burch was only another Nell--a jilt--a mocker of themanhood of soldiers! Would she ever cease to shudder at memory of Rust'sslight movement of hand? Go! Get out of my sight! Leave me to my agonyas you left Glenn Kilbourne alone to fight his! Men such as I am donot want the smile of your face, the touch of your hand! We gave forwomanhood! Pass on to lesser men who loved the fleshpots and who wouldbuy your charms! So Carley interpreted that slight gesture, and writhedin her abasement.
Rust threw a white, illuminating light upon her desertion of Glenn. Shehad betrayed him. She had left him alone. Dwarfed and stunted washer narrow soul! To a man who had given all for her she had returnednothing. Stone for bread! Betrayal for love! Cowardice for courage!
The hours of contending passions gave birth to vague, slow-formingrevolt.
She became haunted by memory pictures and sounds and smells of Oak CreekCanyon. As from afar she saw the great sculptured rent in the earth,green and red and brown, with its shining, flashing ribbons ofwaterfalls and streams. The mighty pines stood up magnificent andstately. The walls loomed high, shadowed under the shelves, gleaming inthe sunlight, and they seemed dreaming, waiting, watching. For what? Forher return to their serene fastnesses--to the little gray log cabin. Thethought stormed Carley's soul.
Vivid and intense shone the images before her shut eyes. She saw thewinding forest floor, green with grass and fern, colorful with flowerand rock. A thousand aisles, glades, nooks, and caverns called herto come. Nature was every woman's mother. The populated city was adelusion. Disease and death and corruption stalked in the shadows ofthe streets. But her canyon promised hard work, playful hours, dreamingidleness, beauty, health, fragrance, loneliness, peace, wisdom, love,children, and long life. In the hateful shut-in isolation of her roomCarley stretched forth her arms as if to embrace the vision. Pale closewalls, gleaming placid stretches of brook, churning amber and whiterapids, mossy banks and pine-matted ledges, the towers and turrets andramparts where the eagles wheeled--she saw them all as beloved imageslost to her save in anguished memory.
She heard the murmur of flowing water, soft, low, now loud, and againlulling, hollow and eager, tinkling over rocks, bellowing into the deeppools, washing with silky seep of wind-swept waves the hanging willows.Shrill and piercing and far-aloft pealed the scream of the eagle. Andshe seemed to listen to a mocking bird while he mocked her with hismelody of many birds. The bees hummed, the wind moaned, the leavesrustled, the waterfall murmured. Then came the sharp rare note of acanyon swift, most mysterious of birds, significant of the heights.
A breath of fragrance seemed to blow with her shifting senses. The dry,sweet, tangy canyon smells returned to her--of fresh-cut timber, of woodsmoke, of the cabin fire with its steaming pots, of flowers and earth,and of the wet stones, of the redolent pines and the pungent cedars.
And suddenly, clearly, amazingly, Carley beheld in her mind's sight thehard features, the bold eyes, the slight smile, the coarse face of HazeRuff. She had forgotten him. But he now returned. And with memory ofhim flashed a revelation as to his meaning in her life. He had appearedmerely a clout, a ruffian, an animal with man's shape and intelligence.But he was the embodiment of the raw, crude violence of the West. Hewas the eyes of the natural primitive man, believing what he saw. He hadseen in Carley Burch the paraded charm, the unashamed and serene front,the woman seeking man. Haze Ruff had been neither vile nor base norunnatural. It had been her subjection to the decadence of feminine dressthat had been unnatural. But Ruff had found her a lie. She invited whatshe did not want. And his scorn had been commensurate with the falsehoodof her. So might any man have been justified in his insult to her, inhis rejection of her. Haze Ruff had found her unfit for his idea ofdalliance. Virgil Rust had found her false to the ideals of womanhoodfor which he had sacrificed all but life itself. What then had GlennKilbourne found her? He possessed the greatness of noble love. He hadloved her before the dark and changeful tide of war had come betweenthem. How had he judged her? That last sight of him standing alone,leaning with head bowed, a solitary figure trenchant with suggestion oftragic resignation and strength, returned to flay Carley. He had loved,trusted, and hoped. She saw now what his hope had been--that she wouldhave instilled into her blood the subtle, red, and revivifying essenceof calling life in the open, the strength of the wives of earlieryears, an emanation from canyon, desert, mountain, forest, of health,of spirit, of forward-gazing natural love, of the mysterious savinginstinct he had gotten out of the West. And she had been too littletoo steeped in the indulgence of luxurious life too slight-naturedand pale-blooded! And suddenly there pierced into the black storm ofCarley's mind a blazing, white-streaked thought--she had left Glenn tothe Western girl, Flo Hutter. Humiliated, and abased in her own sight,Carley fell prey to a fury of jealousy.
She went back to the old life. But it was in a bitter, restless,critical spirit, conscious of the fact that she could derive neitherforgetfulness nor pleasure from it, nor see any release from the habitof years.
One afternoon, late in the fall, she motored out to a Long Island clubwhere the last of the season's golf was being enjoyed by some of hermost intimate friends. Carley did not play. Aimlessly she walked aroundthe grounds, finding the autumn colors subdued and drab, like her mind.The air held a promise of early winter. She thought that she would goSouth before the cold came. Always trying to escape anything rigorous,hard, painful, or disagreeable! Later she returned to the clubhouse tofind her party assembled on an inclosed porch, chatting and partakingof refreshment. Morrison was there. He had not taken kindly to her latehabit of denying herself to him.
During a lull in the idle conversation Morrison addressed Carleypointedly. "Well, Carley, how's your Arizona hog-raiser?" he queried,with a little gleam in his usually lusterless eyes.
"I have not heard lately," she replied, coldly.
The assembled company suddenly quieted with a portent inimical to theirleisurely content of the moment. Carley felt them all looking at her,and underneath the exterior she preserved with extreme difficulty, thereburned so fierce an anger that she seemed to have swelling veins offire.
"Queer how Kilbourne went into raising hogs," observed Morrison. "Such alow-down sort of work, you know."
"He had no choice," replied Carley. "Glenn didn't have a father who madetainted millions out of the war. He had to work. And I must differ withyou about its being low-down. No honest work is that. It is idlenessthat is low down."
"But so foolish of Glenn when he might have married money," rejoinedMorrison, sarcastcally.
"The honor of soldiers is beyond your ken, Mr. Morrison."
He flushed darkly and bit his lip.
"You women make a man sick with this rot about soldiers," he said, thegleam in his eye growing ugly. "A uniform goes to a woman's headno matter what's inside it. I don't see where your vaunted honor ofsoldiers comes in considering how they accepted the let-down of womenduring and after the war."
"How could you see when you stayed comfortably at home?" retortedCarley.
"All I could see was women falling into soldiers' arm
s," he said,sullenly.
"Certainly. Could an American girl desire any greater happiness--oropportunity to prove her gratitude?" flashed Carley, with proud upliftof head.
"It didn't look like gratitude to me," returned Morrison.
"Well, it was gratitude," declared Carley, ringingly. "If women ofAmerica did throw themselves at soldiers it was not owing to the morallapse of the day. It was woman's instinct to save the race! Always, inevery war, women have sacrificed themselves to the future. Not vile,but noble!... You insult both soldiers and women, Mr. Morrison. Iwonder--did any American girls throw themselves at you?"
Morrison turned a dead white, and his mouth twisted to a distortedchecking of speech, disagreeable to see.
"No, you were a slacker," went on Carley, with scathing scorn. "You letthe other men go fight for American girls. Do you imagine one of themwill ever marry you?... All your life, Mr. Morrison, you will be amarked man--outside the pale of friendship with real American men andthe respect of real American girls."
Morrison leaped up, almost knocking the table over, and he glared atCarley as he gathered up his hat and cane. She turned her back upon him.From that moment he ceased to exist for Carley. She never spoke to himagain.
Next day Carley called upon her dearest friend, whom she had not seenfor some time.
"Carley dear, you don't look so very well," said Eleanor, aftergreetings had been exchanged.
"Oh, what does it matter how I look?" queried Carley, impatiently.
"You were so wonderful when you got home from Arizona."
"If I was wonderful and am now commonplace you can thank your old NewYork for it."
"Carley, don't you care for New York any more?" asked Eleanor.
"Oh, New York is all right, I suppose. It's I who am wrong."
"My dear, you puzzle me these days. You've changed. I'm sorry. I'mafraid you're unhappy."
"Me? Oh, impossible! I'm in a seventh heaven," replied Carley, witha hard little laugh. "What 're you doing this afternoon? Let's goout--riding--or somewhere."
"I'm expecting the dressmaker."
"Where are you going to-night?"
"Dinner and theater. It's a party, or I'd ask you."
"What did you do yesterday and the day before, and the days beforethat?"
Eleanor laughed indulgently, and acquainted Carley with a record of hersocial wanderings during the last few days.
"The same old things--over and over again! Eleanor don't you get sick ofit?" queried Carley.
"Oh yes, to tell the truth," returned Eleanor, thoughtfully. "Butthere's nothing else to do."
"Eleanor, I'm no better than you," said Carley, with disdain. "I'm asuseless and idle. But I'm beginning to see myself--and you--and all thisrotten crowd of ours. We're no good. But you're married, Eleanor. You'resettled in life. You ought to do something. I'm single and at looseends. Oh, I'm in revolt!... Think, Eleanor, just think. Your husbandworks hard to keep you in this expensive apartment. You have a car.He dresses you in silks and satins. You wear diamonds. You eat yourbreakfast in bed. You loll around in a pink dressing gown all morning.You dress for lunch or tea. You ride or golf or worse than waste yourtime on some lounge lizard, dancing till time to come home to dressfor dinner. You let other men make love to you. Oh, don't get sore. Youdo.... And so goes the round of your life. What good on earth are you,anyhow? You're just a--a gratification to the senses of your husband.And at that you don't see much of him."
"Carley, how you rave!" exclaimed her friend. "What has gotten intoyou lately? Why, everybody tells me you're--you're queer! The way youinsulted Morrison--how unlike you, Carley!"
"I'm glad I found the nerve to do it. What do you think, Eleanor?"
"Oh, I despise him. But you can't say the things you feel."
"You'd be bigger and truer if you did. Some day I'll break out and flayyou and your friends alive."
"But, Carley, you're my friend and you're just exactly like we are. Oryou were, quite recently."
"Of course, I'm your friend. I've always loved you, Eleanor," went onCarley, earnestly. "I'm as deep in this--this damned stagnant muck asyou, or anyone. But I'm no longer blind. There's something terriblywrong with us women, and it's not what Morrison hinted."
"Carley, the only thing wrong with you is that you jilted poorGlenn--and are breaking your heart over him still."
"Don't--don't!" cried Carley, shrinking. "God knows that is true. Butthere's more wrong with me than a blighted love affair."
"Yes, you mean the modern feminine unrest?"
"Eleanor, I positively hate that phrase 'modern feminine unrest!' Itsmacks of ultra--ultra--Oh! I don't know what. That phrase ought to betranslated by a Western acquaintance of mine--one Haze Ruff. I'd notlike to hurt your sensitive feelings with what he'd say. But this unrestmeans speed-mad, excitement-mad, fad-mad, dress-mad, or I should sayundress-mad, culture-mad, and Heaven only knows what else. The women ofour set are idle, luxurious, selfish, pleasure-craving, lazy, useless,work-and-children shirking, absolutely no good."
"Well, if we are, who's to blame?" rejoined Eleanor, spiritedly. "Now,Carley Burch, you listen to me. I think the twentieth-century girl inAmerica is the most wonderful female creation of all the ages of theuniverse. I admit it. That is why we are a prey to the evils attendinggreatness. Listen. Here is a crying sin--an infernal paradox. Take thistwentieth-century girl, this American girl who is the finest creationof the ages. A young and healthy girl, the most perfect type of culturepossible to the freest and greatest city on earth--New York! She holdsabsolutely an unreal, untrue position in the scheme of existence.Surrounded by parents, relatives, friends, suitors, and instructiveschools of every kind, colleges, institutions, is she really happy, isshe really living?"
"Eleanor," interrupted Carley, earnestly, "she is not.... And I've beentrying to tell you why."
"My dear, let me get a word in, will you," complained Eleanor. "Youdon't know it all. There are as many different points of view as thereare people.... Well, if this girl happened to have a new frock, and anew beau to show it to, she'd say, 'I'm the happiest girl in theworld.' But she is nothing of the kind. Only she doesn't know that. Sheapproaches marriage, or, for that matter, a more matured life, havinghad too much, having been too well taken care of, knowing too much. Hermasculine satellites--father, brothers, uncles, friends, lovers--allutterly spoil her. Mind you, I mean, girls like us, of the middleclass--which is to say the largest and best class of Americans. We arespoiled.... This girl marries. And life goes on smoothly, as if its aimwas to exclude friction and effort. Her husband makes it too easy forher. She is an ornament, or a toy, to be kept in a luxurious cage. Tosoil her pretty hands would be disgraceful! Even if she can't afforda maid, the modern devices of science make the care of her four-roomapartment a farce. Electric dish-washer, clothes-washer, vacuum-cleaner,and the near-by delicatessen and the caterer simply rob a young wife ofher housewifely heritage. If she has a baby--which happens occasionally,Carley, in spite of your assertion--it very soon goes to thekindergarten. Then what does she find to do with hours and hours? If sheis not married, what on earth can she find to do?"
"She can work," replied Carley, bluntly.
"Oh yes, she can, but she doesn't," went on Eleanor. "You don't work. Inever did. We both hated the idea. You're calling spades spades, Carley,but you seem to be riding a morbid, impractical thesis. Well, our youngAmerican girl or bride goes in for being rushed or she goes in for fads,the ultra stuff you mentioned. New York City gets all the great artists,lecturers, and surely the great fakirs. The New York women support them.The men laugh, but they furnish the money. They take the women to thetheaters, but they cut out the reception to a Polish princess, a lectureby an Indian magician and mystic, or a benefit luncheon for a Home forFriendless Cats. The truth is most of our young girls or brides havea wonderful enthusiasm worthy of a better cause. What is to become oftheir surplus energy, the bottled-lightning spirit so characteristicof modern girls? Where is the outlet for intense feelings?
What use canthey make of education or of gifts? They just can't, that's all. I'mnot taking into consideration the new-woman species, the faddist or thereformer. I mean normal girls like you and me. Just think, Carley. Agirl's every wish, every need, is almost instantly satisfied without theslightest effort on her part to obtain it. No struggle, let alone work!If women crave to achieve something outside of the arts, you know,something universal and helpful which will make men acknowledge herworth, if not the equality, where is the opportunity?"
"Opportunities should be made," replied Carley.
"There are a million sides to this question of the modern youngwoman--the fin-de-siecle girl. I'm for her!"
"How about the extreme of style in dress for thisremarkably-to-be-pitied American girl you champion so eloquently?"queried Carley, sarcastically.
"Immoral!" exclaimed Eleanor with frank disgust.
"You admit it?"
"To my shame, I do."
"Why do women wear extreme clothes? Why do you and I wear open-work silkstockings, skirts to our knees, gowns without sleeves or bodices?"
"We're slaves to fashion," replied Eleanor, "That's the popular excuse."
"Bah!" exclaimed Carley.
Eleanor laughed in spite of being half nettled. "Are you going to stopwearing what all the other women wear--and be looked at askance? Are yougoing to be dowdy and frumpy and old-fashioned?"
"No. But I'll never wear anything again that can be called immoral.I want to be able to say why I wear a dress. You haven't answered myquestion yet. Why do you wear what you frankly admit is disgusting?"
"I don't know, Carley," replied Eleanor, helplessly. "How you harp onthings! We must dress to make other women jealous and to attract men. Tobe a sensation! Perhaps the word 'immoral' is not what I mean. A womanwill be shocking in her obsession to attract, but hardly more than that,if she knows it."
"Ah! So few women realize how they actually do look. Haze Ruff couldtell them."
"Haze Ruff. Who in the world is he or she?" asked Eleanor.
"Haze Ruff is a he, all right," replied Carley, grimly.
"Well, who is he?"
"A sheep-dipper in Arizona," answered Carley, dreamily.
"Humph! And what can Mr. Ruff tell us?"
"He told me I looked like one of the devil's angels--and that I dressedto knock the daylights out of men."
"Well, Carley Burch, if that isn't rich!" exclaimed Eleanor, with a pealof laughter. "I dare say you appreciate that as an original compliment."
"No.... I wonder what Ruff would say about jazz--I just wonder,"murmured Carley.
"Well, I wouldn't care what he said, and I don't care what you say,"returned Eleanor. "The preachers and reformers and bishops and rabbismake me sick. They rave about jazz. Jazz--the discordant note of ourdecadence! Jazz--the harmonious expression of our musicless, mindless,soulless materialism!--The idiots! If they could be women for a whilethey would realize the error of their ways. But they will never, neverabolish jazz--never, for it is the grandest, the most wonderful, themost absolutely necessary thing for women in this terrible age ofsmotheration."
"All right, Eleanor, we understand each other, even if we do not agree,"said Carley. "You leave the future of women to chance, to life, tomaterialism, not to their own conscious efforts. I want to leave it tofree will and idealism."
"Carley, you are getting a little beyond me," declared Eleanor,dubiously.
"What are you going to do? It all comes home to each individual woman.Her attitude toward life."
"I'll drift along with the current, Carley, and be a good sport,"replied Eleanor, smiling.
"You don't care about the women and children of the future? You'llnot deny yourself now, and think and work, and suffer a little, in theinterest of future humanity?"
"How you put things, Carley!" exclaimed Eleanor, wearily. "Of course Icare--when you make me think of such things. But what have I to do withthe lives of people in the years to come?"
"Everything. America for Americans! While you dawdle, the life blood isbeing sucked out of our great nation. It is a man's job to fight; it isa woman's to save.... I think you've made your choice, though you don'trealize it. I'm praying to God that I'll rise to mine."
Carley had a visitor one morning earlier than the usual or conventionaltime for calls.
"He wouldn't give no name," said the maid. "He wears soldier clothes,ma'am, and he's pale, and walks with a cane."
"Tell him I'll be right down," replied Carley.
Her hands trembled while she hurriedly dressed. Could this caller beVirgil Rust? She hoped so, but she doubted.
As she entered the parlor a tall young man in worn khaki rose to meether. At first glance she could not name him, though she recognized thepale face and light-blue eyes, direct and steady.
"Good morning, Miss Burch," he said. "I hope you'll excuse so early acall. You remember me, don't you? I'm George Burton, who had the bunknext to Rust's."
"Surely I remember you, Mr. Burton, and I'm glad to see you," repliedCarley, shaking hands with him. "Please sit down. Your being here mustmean you're discharged from the hospital."
"Yes, I was discharged, all right," he said.
"Which means you're well again. That is fine. I'm very glad."
"I was put out to make room for a fellow in bad shape. I'm still shakyand weak," he replied. "But I'm glad to go. I've pulled through prettygood, and it'll not be long until I'm strong again. It was the 'flu'that kept me down."
"You must be careful. May I ask where you're going and what you expectto do?"
"Yes, that's what I came to tell you," he replied, frankly. "I want youto help me a little. I'm from Illinois and my people aren't so badlyoff. But I don't want to go back to my home town down and out, you know.Besides, the winters are cold there. The doctor advises me to go toa little milder climate. You see, I was gassed, and got the 'flu'afterward. But I know I'll be all right if I'm careful.... Well, I'vealways had a leaning toward agriculture, and I want to go to Kansas.Southern Kansas. I want to travel around till I find a place I like, andthere I'll get a job. Not too hard a job at first--that's why I'll needa little money. I know what to do. I want to lose myself in thewheat country and forget the--the war. I'll not be afraid of work,presently.... Now, Miss Burch, you've been so kind--I'm going to ask youto lend me a little money. I'll pay it back. I can't promise just when.But some day. Will you?"
"Assuredly I will," she replied, heartily. "I'm happy to have theopportunity to help you. How much will you need for immediate use? Fivehundred dollars?"
"Oh no, not so much as that," he replied. "Just railroad fare home, andthen to Kansas, and to pay board while I get well, you know, and lookaround."
"We'll make it five hundred, anyway," she replied, and, rising, shewent toward the library. "Excuse me a moment." She wrote the check and,returning, gave it to him.
"You're very good," he said, rather low.
"Not at all," replied Carley. "You have no idea how much it means to meto be permitted to help you. Before I forget, I must ask you, can youcash that check here in New York?"
"Not unless you identify me," he said, ruefully, "I don't know anyone Icould ask."
"Well, when you leave here go at once to my bank--it's on Thirty-fourthStreet--and I'll telephone the cashier. So you'll not have anydifficulty. Will you leave New York at once?"
"I surely will. It's an awful place. Two years ago when I came here withmy company I thought it was grand. But I guess I lost something overthere. ... I want to be where it's quiet. Where I won't see manypeople."
"I think I understand," returned Carley. "Then I suppose you're in ahurry to get home? Of course you have a girl you're just dying to see?"
"No, I'm sorry to say I haven't," he replied, simply. "I was glad Ididn't have to leave a sweetheart behind, when I went to France. But itwouldn't be so bad to have one to go back to now."
"Don't you worry!" exclaimed Carley. "You can take your choicepresently. You have the open sesame to every real A
merican girl'sheart."
"And what is that?" he asked, with a blush.
"Your service to your country," she said, gravely.
"Well," he said, with a singular bluntness, "considering I didn't getany medals or bonuses, I'd like to draw a nice girl."
"You will," replied Carley, and made haste to change the subject. "Bythe way, did you meet Glenn Kilbourne in France?"
"Not that I remember," rejoined Burton, as he got up, rising ratherstiffly by aid of his cane. "I must go, Miss Burch. Really I can't thankyou enough. And I'll never forget it."
"Will you write me how you are getting along?" asked Carley, offeringher hand.
"Yes."
Carley moved with him out into the hall and to the door. There wasa question she wanted to ask, but found it strangely difficult ofutterance. At the door Burton fixed a rather penetrating gaze upon her.
"You didn't ask me about Rust," he said.
"No, I--I didn't think of him--until now, in fact," Carley lied.
"Of course then you couldn't have heard about him. I was wondering."
"I have heard nothing."
"It was Rust who told me to come to you," said Burton. "We were talkingone day, and he--well, he thought you were true blue. He said he knewyou'd trust me and lend me money. I couldn't have asked you but forhim."
"True blue! He believed that. I'm glad.... Has he spoken of me to yousince I was last at the hospital?"
"Hardly," replied Burton, with the straight, strange glance on heragain.
Carley met this glance and suddenly a coldness seemed to envelop her.It did not seem to come from within though her heart stopped beating.Burton had not changed--the warmth, the gratitude still lingered abouthim. But the light of his eyes! Carley had seen it in Glenn's, inRust's--a strange, questioning, far-off light, infinitely aloof andunutterably sad. Then there came a lift of her heart that releaseda pang. She whispered with dread, with a tremor, with an instinct ofcalamity.
"How about--Rust?"
"He's dead."
The winter came, with its bleak sea winds and cold rains and blizzardsof snow. Carley did not go South. She read and brooded, and graduallyavoided all save those true friends who tolerated her.
She went to the theater a good deal, showing preference for the dramaof strife, and she did not go anywhere for amusement. Distractionand amusement seemed to be dead issues for her. But she could becomeabsorbed in any argument on the good or evil of the present day.Socialism reached into her mind, to be rejected. She had neverunderstood it clearly, but it seemed to her a state of mind wheredissatisfied men and women wanted to share what harder working ormore gifted people possessed. There were a few who had too much ofthe world's goods and many who had too little. A readjustment of suchinequality and injustice must come, but Carley did not see the remedy inSocialism.
She devoured books on the war with a morbid curiosity and hope that shewould find some illuminating truth as to the uselessness of sacrificingyoung men in the glory and prime of their lives. To her war appeared amatter of human nature rather than politics. Hate really was an effectof war. In her judgment future wars could be avoided only in twoways--by men becoming honest and just or by women refusing to havechildren to be sacrificed. As there seemed no indication whatever ofthe former, she wondered how soon all women of all races would meet ona common height, with the mounting spirit that consumed her own heart.Such time must come. She granted every argument for war and flungagainst it one ringing passionate truth--agony of mangled soldiers andagony of women and children. There was no justification for offensivewar. It was monstrous and hideous. If nature and evolution proved theabsolute need of strife, war, blood, and death in the progress of animaland man toward perfection, then it would be better to abandon thisChristless code and let the race of man die out.
All through these weeks she longed for a letter from Glenn. But it didnot come. Had he finally roused to the sweetness and worth and loveof the western girl, Flo Hutter? Carley knew absolutely, through bothintelligence and intuition, that Glenn Kilbourne would never loveFlo. Yet such was her intensity and stress at times, especially in thedarkness of waking hours, that jealousy overcame her and insidiouslyworked its havoc. Peace and a strange kind of joy came to her in dreamsof her walks and rides and climbs in Arizona, of the lonely canyon whereit always seemed afternoon, of the tremendous colored vastness of thatPainted Desert. But she resisted these dreams now because when she awokefrom them she suffered such a yearning that it became unbearable. Thenshe knew the feeling of the loneliness and solitude of the hills. Thenshe knew the sweetness of the murmur of falling water, the wind in thepines, the song of birds, the white radiance of the stars, the breakof day and its gold-flushed close. But she had not yet divined theirmeaning. It was not all love for Glenn Kilbourne. Had city life palledupon her solely because of the absence of her lover? So Carley ploddedon, like one groping in the night, fighting shadows.
One day she received a card from an old schoolmate, a girl who hadmarried out of Carley's set, and had been ostracized. She was livingdown on Long Island, at a little country place named Wading River. Herhusband was an electrician--something of an inventor. He worked hard. Ababy boy had just come to them. Would not Carley run down on the trainto see the youngster?
That was a strong and trenchant call. Carley went. She found indeed acountry village, and on the outskirts of it a little cottage that musthave been pretty in summer, when the green was on vines and trees.Her old schoolmate was rosy, plump, bright-eyed, and happy. She sawin Carley no change--a fact that somehow rebounded sweetly on Carley'sconsciousness. Elsie prattled of herself and her husband and how theyhad worked to earn this little home, and then the baby.
When Carley saw the adorable dark-eyed, pink-toed, curly-fisted baby sheunderstood Elsie's happiness and reveled in it. When she felt the soft,warm, living little body in her arms, against her breast, then sheabsorbed some incalculable and mysterious strength. What were thetrivial, sordid, and selfish feelings that kept her in tumult comparedto this welling emotion? Had she the secret in her arms? Babies andCarley had never become closely acquainted in those infrequent meetingsthat were usually the result of chance. But Elsie's baby nestled toher breast and cooed to her and clung to her finger. When at length theyoungster was laid in his crib it seemed to Carley that the fragranceand the soul of him remained with her.
"A real American boy!" she murmured.
"You can just bet he is," replied Elsie. "Carley, you ought to see hisdad."
"I'd like to meet him," said Carley, thoughtfully. "Elsie, was he in theservice?"
"Yes. He was on one of the navy transports that took munitions toFrance. Think of me, carrying this baby, with my husband on a boat fullof explosives and with German submarines roaming the ocean! Oh, it washorrible!"
"But he came back, and now all's well with you," said Carley, with asmile of earnestness. "I'm very glad, Elsie."
"Yes--but I shudder when I think of a possible war in the future. I'mgoing to raise boys, and girls, too, I hope--and the thought of war istorturing."
Carley found her return train somewhat late, and she took advantage ofthe delay to walk out to the wooded headlands above the Sound.
It was a raw March day, with a steely sun going down in a pale-graysky. Patches of snow lingered in sheltered brushy places. This bit ofwoodland had a floor of soft sand that dragged at Carley's feet. Therewere sere and brown leaves still fluttering on the scrub-oaks. At lengthCarley came out on the edge of the bluff with the gray expanse of seabeneath her, and a long wandering shore line, ragged with wreckage ordriftwood. The surge of water rolled in--a long, low, white, creepingline that softly roared on the beach and dragged the pebbles gratinglyback. There was neither boat nor living creature in sight.
Carley felt the scene ease a clutching hand within her breast. Here wasloneliness and solitude vastly different from that of Oak Creek Canyon,yet it held the same intangible power to soothe. The swish of the surf,the moan of the wind in the evergreens, w
ere voices that called toher. How many more miles of lonely land than peopled cities! Then thesea--how vast! And over that the illimitable and infinite sky, andbeyond, the endless realms of space. It helped her somehow to see andhear and feel the eternal presence of nature. In communion with naturethe significance of life might be realized. She remembered Glennquoting: "The world is too much with us. ... Getting and spending, welay waste our powers." What were our powers? What did God intend men todo with hands and bodies and gifts and souls? She gazed back over thebleak land and then out across the broad sea. Only a millionth part ofthe surface of the unsubmerged earth knew the populous abodes of man.And the lonely sea, inhospitable to stable homes of men, was thrice thearea of the land. Were men intended, then, to congregate in fewplaces, to squabble and to bicker and breed the discontents that led toinjustice, hatred, and war? What a mystery it all was! But Nature wasneither false nor little, however cruel she might be.
Once again Carley fell under the fury of her ordeal. Wavering now,restless and sleepless, given to violent starts and slow spells ofapathy, she was wearing to defeat.
That spring day, one year from the day she had left New York forArizona, she wished to spend alone. But her thoughts grew unbearable.She summed up the endless year. Could she live another like it?Something must break within her.
She went out. The air was warm and balmy, carrying that subtle currentwhich caused the mild madness of spring fever. In the Park the greeningof the grass, the opening of buds, the singing of birds, the gladness ofchildren, the light on the water, the warm sun--all seemed to reproachher. Carley fled from the Park to the home of Beatrice Lovell; andthere, unhappily, she encountered those of her acquaintance with whomshe had least patience. They forced her to think too keenly of herself.They appeared carefree while she was miserable.
Over teacups there were waging gossip and argument and criticism. WhenCarley entered with Beatrice there was a sudden hush and then a murmur.
"Hello, Carley! Now say it to our faces," called out Geralda Conners, afair, handsome young woman of thirty, exquisitely gowned in the latestmode, and whose brilliantly tinted complexion was not the natural one ofhealth.
"Say what, Geralda?" asked Carley. "I certainly would not say anythingbehind your backs that I wouldn't repeat here."
"Eleanor has been telling us how you simply burned us up."
"We did have an argument. And I'm not sure I said all I wanted to."
"Say the rest here," drawled a lazy, mellow voice. "For Heaven's sake,stir us up. If I could get a kick out of anything I'd bless it."
"Carley, go on the stage," advised another. "You've got Elsie Fergusontied to the mast for looks. And lately you're surely tragic enough."
"I wish you'd go somewhere far off!" observed a third. "My husband isdippy about you."
"Girls, do you know that you actually have not one sensible idea in yourheads?" retorted Carley.
"Sensible? I should hope not. Who wants to be sensible?"
Geralda battered her teacup on a saucer. "Listen," she called. "I wasn'tkidding Carley. I am good and sore. She goes around knocking everybodyand saying New York backs Sodom off the boards. I want her to come outwith it right here."
"I dare say I've talked too much," returned Carley. "It's been a ratherhard winter on me. Perhaps, indeed, I've tried the patience of myfriends."
"See here, Carley," said Geralda, deliberately, "just because you've hadlife turn to bitter ashes in your mouth you've no right to poison it forus. We all find it pretty sweet. You're an unsatisfied woman and if youdon't marry somebody you'll end by being a reformer or fanatic."
"I'd rather end that way than rot in a shell," retorted Carley.
"I declare, you make me see red, Carley," flashed Geralda, angrily. "Nowonder Morrison roasts you to everybody. He says Glenn Kilbourne threwyou down for some Western girl. If that's true it's pretty small of youto vent your spleen on us."
Carley felt the gathering of a mighty resistless force, But GeraldaConners was nothing to her except the target for a thunderbolt.
"I have no spleen," she replied, with a dignity of passion. "I have onlypity. I was as blind as you. If heartbreak tore the scales from myeyes, perhaps that is well for me. For I see something terribly wrong inmyself, in you, in all of us, in the life of today."
"You keep your pity to yourself. You need it," answered Geralda, withheat. "There's nothing wrong with me or my friends or life in good oldNew York."
"Nothing wrong!" cried Carley. "Listen. Nothing wrong in you or lifetoday--nothing for you women to make right? You are blind as bats--asdead to living truth as if you were buried. Nothing wrong when thousandsof crippled soldiers have no homes--no money--no friends--no work--inmany cases no food or bed?... Splendid young men who went away in theirprime to fight for you and came back ruined, suffering! Nothing wrongwhen sane women with the vote might rid politics of partisanship, greed,crookedness? Nothing wrong when prohibition is mocked by women--when thegreatest boon ever granted this country is derided and beaten down andcheated? Nothing wrong when there are half a million defective childrenin this city? Nothing wrong when there are not enough schools andteachers to educate our boys and girls, when those teachers areshamefully underpaid? Nothing wrong when the mothers of this greatcountry let their youngsters go to the dark motion picture halls andnight after night in thousands of towns over all this broad land seepictures that the juvenile court and the educators and keepers ofreform schools say make burglars, crooks, and murderers of our boys andvampires of our girls? Nothing wrong when these young adolescent girlsape you and wear stockings rolled under their knees below their skirtsand use a lip stick and paint their faces and darken their eyes andpluck their eyebrows and absolutely do not know what shame is? Nothingwrong when you may find in any city women standing at street cornersdistributing booklets on birth control? Nothing wrong when greatmagazines print no page or picture without its sex appeal? Nothing wrongwhen the automobile, so convenient for the innocent little run outof town, presents the greatest evil that ever menaced American girls!Nothing wrong when money is god--when luxury, pleasure, excitement,speed are the striven for? Nothing wrong when some of your husbandsspend more of their time with other women than with you? Nothing wrongwith jazz--where the lights go out in the dance hall and the dancersjiggle and toddle and wiggle in a frenzy? Nothing wrong in a countrywhere the greatest college cannot report birth of one child to eachgraduate in ten years? Nothing wrong with race suicide and the incominghorde of foreigners?... Nothing wrong with you women who cannot or willnot stand childbirth? Nothing wrong with most of you, when if you didhave a child, you could not nurse it?... Oh, my God, there's nothingwrong with America except that she staggers under a Titanic burden thatonly mothers of sons can remove!... You doll women, you parasites, youtoys of men, you silken-wrapped geisha girls, you painted, idle, purringcats, you parody of the females of your species--find brains enough ifyou can to see the doom hanging over you and revolt before it is toolate!"
