The Zane Grey Megapack

by Zane Grey

  She went home and locked herself in her room, deaf to telephone and servants. There she gave up to her shame. Scorned—despised—dismissed by that poor crippled flame-spirited Virgil Rust! He had reverenced her, and the truth had earned his hate. Would she ever forget his look—incredulous—shocked—bitter—and blazing with unutterable contempt? Carley Burch was only another Nell—a jilt—a mocker of the manhood of soldiers! Would she ever cease to shudder at memory of Rust’s slight movement of hand? Go! Get out of my sight! Leave me to my agony as you left Glenn Kilbourne alone to fight his! Men such as I am do not want the smile of your face, the touch of your hand! We gave for womanhood! Pass on to lesser men who loved the fleshpots and who would buy your charms! So Carley interpreted that slight gesture, and writhed in her abasement.

  Rust threw a white, illuminating light upon her desertion of Glenn. She had betrayed him. She had left him alone. Dwarfed and stunted was her narrow soul! To a man who had given all for her she had returned nothing. Stone for bread! Betrayal for love! Cowardice for courage!

  The hours of contending passions gave birth to vague, slow-forming revolt.

  She became haunted by memory pictures and sounds and smells of Oak Creek Canyon. As from afar she saw the great sculptured rent in the earth, green and red and brown, with its shining, flashing ribbons of waterfalls and streams. The mighty pines stood up magnificent and stately. The walls loomed high, shadowed under the shelves, gleaming in the sunlight, and they seemed dreaming, waiting, watching. For what? For her return to their serene fastnesses—to the little gray log cabin. The thought stormed Carley’s soul.

  Vivid and intense shone the images before her shut eyes. She saw the winding forest floor, green with grass and fern, colorful with flower and rock. A thousand aisles, glades, nooks, and caverns called her to come. Nature was every woman’s mother. The populated city was a delusion. Disease and death and corruption stalked in the shadows of the streets. But her canyon promised hard work, playful hours, dreaming idleness, beauty, health, fragrance, loneliness, peace, wisdom, love, children, and long life. In the hateful shut-in isolation of her room Carley stretched forth her arms as if to embrace the vision. Pale close walls, gleaming placid stretches of brook, churning amber and white rapids, mossy banks and pine-matted ledges, the towers and turrets and ramparts where the eagles wheeled—she saw them all as beloved images lost to her save in anguished memory.

  She heard the murmur of flowing water, soft, low, now loud, and again lulling, hollow and eager, tinkling over rocks, bellowing into the deep pools, washing with silky seep of wind-swept waves the hanging willows. Shrill and piercing and far-aloft pealed the scream of the eagle. And she seemed to listen to a mocking bird while he mocked her with his melody of many birds. The bees hummed, the wind moaned, the leaves rustled, the waterfall murmured. Then came the sharp rare note of a canyon 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 wood smoke, 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 the hard features, the bold eyes, the slight smile, the coarse face of Haze Ruff. She had forgotten him. But he now returned. And with memory of him flashed a revelation as to his meaning in her life. He had appeared merely 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. He was the eyes of the natural primitive man, believing what he saw. He had seen in Carley Burch the paraded charm, the unashamed and serene front, the woman seeking man. Haze Ruff had been neither vile nor base nor unnatural. It had been her subjection to the decadence of feminine dress that had been unnatural. But Ruff had found her a lie. She invited what she did not want. And his scorn had been commensurate with the falsehood of her. So might any man have been justified in his insult to her, in his rejection of her. Haze Ruff had found her unfit for his idea of dalliance. Virgil Rust had found her false to the ideals of womanhood for which he had sacrificed all but life itself. What then had Glenn Kilbourne found her? He possessed the greatness of noble love. He had loved her before the dark and changeful tide of war had come between them. How had he judged her? That last sight of him standing alone, leaning with head bowed, a solitary figure trenchant with suggestion of tragic resignation and strength, returned to flay Carley. He had loved, trusted, and hoped. She saw now what his hope had been—that she would have instilled into her blood the subtle, red, and revivifying essence of calling life in the open, the strength of the wives of earlier years, an emanation from canyon, desert, mountain, forest, of health, of spirit, of forward-gazing natural love, of the mysterious saving instinct he had gotten out of the West. And she had been too little too steeped in the indulgence of luxurious life too slight-natured and pale-blooded! And suddenly there pierced into the black storm of Carley’s mind a blazing, white-streaked thought—she had left Glenn to the 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 neither forgetfulness nor pleasure from it, nor see any release from the habit of years.

  One afternoon, late in the fall, she motored out to a Long Island club where the last of the season’s golf was being enjoyed by some of her most intimate friends. Carley did not play. Aimlessly she walked around the grounds, finding the autumn colors subdued and drab, like her mind. The air held a promise of early winter. She thought that she would go South before the cold came. Always trying to escape anything rigorous, hard, painful, or disagreeable! Later she returned to the clubhouse to find her party assembled on an inclosed porch, chatting and partaking of refreshment. Morrison was there. He had not taken kindly to her late habit of denying herself to him.

  During a lull in the idle conversation Morrison addressed Carley pointedly. “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 their leisurely content of the moment. Carley felt them all looking at her, and underneath the exterior she preserved with extreme difficulty, there burned so fierce an anger that she seemed to have swelling veins of fire.

  “Queer how Kilbourne went into raising hogs,” observed Morrison. “Such a low-down sort of work, you know.”

  “He had no choice,” replied Carley. “Glenn didn’t have a father who made tainted millions out of the war. He had to work. And I must differ with you about its being low-down. No honest work is that. It is idleness that is low down.”

  “But so foolish of Glenn when he might have married money,” rejoined Morrison, 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, the gleam in his eye growing ugly. “A uniform goes to a woman’s head no matter what’s inside it. I don’t see where your vaunted honor of soldiers comes in considering how they accepted the let-down of women during and after the war.”

  “How could you see when you stayed comfortably at home?” retorted Carley.

  “All I could see was women falling into soldiers’ arms,” he said, sullenly.

  “Certainly. Could an American girl desire any greater happiness—or opportunity to prove her gratitude?” flashed Carley, with proud uplift of head.

  “It didn’t look like gratitude to me,” returned Morrison.

  “Well, it was gratitude,” declared Carley, ringingly. “If women of America did throw themselves at soldiers it was not owing to the moral lapse of the day. It was woman’s instinct to save the ra
ce! Always, in every war, women have sacrificed themselves to the future. Not vile, but noble!… You insult both soldiers and women, Mr. Morrison. I wonder—did any American girls throw themselves at you?”

  Morrison turned a dead white, and his mouth twisted to a distorted checking of speech, disagreeable to see.

  “No, you were a slacker,” went on Carley, with scathing scorn. “You let the other men go fight for American girls. Do you imagine one of them will ever marry you?… All your life, Mr. Morrison, you will be a marked man—outside the pale of friendship with real American men and the respect of real American girls.”

  Morrison leaped up, almost knocking the table over, and he glared at Carley 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 him again.

  Next day Carley called upon her dearest friend, whom she had not seen for some time.

  “Carley dear, you don’t look so very well,” said Eleanor, after greetings 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 New York 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’m afraid you’re unhappy.”

  “Me? Oh, impossible! I’m in a seventh heaven,” replied Carley, with a hard little laugh. “What’re you doing this afternoon? Let’s go out—riding—or somewhere.”

  “I’m expecting the dressmaker.”

  “Where are you going tonight?”

  “Dinner and theater. It’s a party, or I’d ask you.”

  “What did you do yesterday and the day before, and the days before that?”

  Eleanor laughed indulgently, and acquainted Carley with a record of her social wanderings during the last few days.

  “The same old things—over and over again! Eleanor don’t you get sick of it?” queried Carley.

  “Oh yes, to tell the truth,” returned Eleanor, thoughtfully. “But there’s nothing else to do.”

  “Eleanor, I’m no better than you,” said Carley, with disdain. “I’m as useless and idle. But I’m beginning to see myself—and you—and all this rotten crowd of ours. We’re no good. But you’re married, Eleanor. You’re settled in life. You ought to do something. I’m single and at loose ends. Oh, I’m in revolt!… Think, Eleanor, just think. Your husband works hard to keep you in this expensive apartment. You have a car. He dresses you in silks and satins. You wear diamonds. You eat your breakfast 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 your time on some lounge lizard, dancing till time to come home to dress for dinner. You let other men make love to you. Oh, don’t get sore. You do.… 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 into you lately? Why, everybody tells me you’re—you’re queer! The way you insulted 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 flay you and your friends alive.”

  “But, Carley, you’re my friend and you’re just exactly like we are. Or you were, quite recently.”

  “Of course, I’m your friend. I’ve always loved you, Eleanor,” went on Carley, earnestly. “I’m as deep in this—this damned stagnant muck as you, or anyone. But I’m no longer blind. There’s something terribly wrong with us women, and it’s not what Morrison hinted.”

  “Carley, the only thing wrong with you is that you jilted poor Glenn—and are breaking your heart over him still.”

  “Don’t—don’t!” cried Carley, shrinking. “God knows that is true. But there’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!’ It smacks of ultra—ultra—Oh! I don’t know what. That phrase ought to be translated by a Western acquaintance of mine—one Haze Ruff. I’d not like to hurt your sensitive feelings with what he’d say. But this unrest means speed-mad, excitement-mad, fad-mad, dress-mad, or I should say undress-mad, culture-mad, and Heaven only knows what else. The women of our 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 in America is the most wonderful female creation of all the ages of the universe. I admit it. That is why we are a prey to the evils attending greatness. Listen. Here is a crying sin—an infernal paradox. Take this twentieth-century girl, this American girl who is the finest creation of the ages. A young and healthy girl, the most perfect type of culture possible to the freest and greatest city on earth—New York! She holds absolutely an unreal, untrue position in the scheme of existence. Surrounded by parents, relatives, friends, suitors, and instructive schools of every kind, colleges, institutions, is she really happy, is she really living?”

  “Eleanor,” interrupted Carley, earnestly, “she is not.… And I’ve been trying to tell you why.”

  “My dear, let me get a word in, will you,” complained Eleanor. “You don’t know it all. There are as many different points of view as there are people.… Well, if this girl happened to have a new frock, and a new beau to show it to, she’d say, ‘I’m the happiest girl in the world.’ But she is nothing of the kind. Only she doesn’t know that. She approaches marriage, or, for that matter, a more matured life, having had too much, having been too well taken care of, knowing too much. Her masculine satellites—father, brothers, uncles, friends, lovers—all utterly spoil her. Mind you, I mean, girls like us, of the middle class—which is to say the largest and best class of Americans. We are spoiled.… This girl marries. And life goes on smoothly, as if its aim was to exclude friction and effort. Her husband makes it too easy for her. She is an ornament, or a toy, to be kept in a luxurious cage. To soil her pretty hands would be disgraceful! Even if she can’t afford a maid, the modern devices of science make the care of her four-room apartment a farce. Electric dish-washer, clothes-washer, vacuum-cleaner, and the near-by delicatessen and the caterer simply rob a young wife of her housewifely heritage. If she has a baby—which happens occasionally, Carley, in spite of your assertion—it very soon goes to the kindergarten. Then what does she find to do with hours and hours? If she is 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. I never did. We both hated the idea. You’re calling spades spades, Carley, but you seem to be riding a morbid, impractical thesis. Well, our young American 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 the theaters, but they cut out the reception to a Polish princess, a lecture by an Indian magician and mystic, or a benefit luncheon for a Home for Friendless Cats. The truth is most of our young girls or brides have a wonderful enthusiasm worthy of a better cause. What is to become of their surplus energy, the bottled-lightning spirit so characteristic of modern girls? Where is the outlet for intense feelings? What use can they make of education or of gifts? They just can’t, tha
t’s all. I’m not taking into consideration the new-woman species, the faddist or the reformer. I mean normal girls like you and me. Just think, Carley. A girl’s every wish, every need, is almost instantly satisfied without the slightest 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 her worth, 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 young woman—the fin-de-siecle girl. I’m for her!”

  “How about the extreme of style in dress for this remarkably-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 silk stockings, 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 stop wearing what all the other women wear—and be looked at askance? Are you going 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 my question yet. Why do you wear what you frankly admit is disgusting?”

  “I don’t know, Carley,” replied Eleanor, helplessly. “How you harp on things! We must dress to make other women jealous and to attract men. To be a sensation! Perhaps the word ‘immoral’ is not what I mean. A woman will be shocking in her obsession to attract, but hardly more than that, if she knows it.”