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Call Of The Canyon, The
Chapter 10
Zane Grey
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       _ CHAPTER X
       Carley's edifice of hopes, dreams, aspirations, and struggles fell in
       ruins about her. It had been built upon false sands. It had no ideal for
       foundation. It had to fall.
       Something inevitable had forced her confession to Rust. Dissimulation
       had been a habit of her mind; it was more a habit of her class than
       sincerity. But she had reached a point in her mental strife where
       she could not stand before Rust and let him believe she was noble and
       faithful when she knew she was neither. Would not the next step in
       this painful metamorphosis of her character be a fierce and passionate
       repudiation of herself and all she represented?
       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 race! 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 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 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 f 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, that'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."
       "Ah! So few women realize how they actually do look. Haze Ruff could
       tell 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 dressed
       to knock the daylights out of men."
       "Well, Carley Burch, if that isn't rich!" exclaimed Eleanor, with a peal
       of 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 rabbis
       make me sick. They rave about jazz. Jazz--the discordant note of our
       decadence! Jazz--the harmonious expression of our musicless, mindless,
       soulless materialism!--The idiots! If they could be women for a while
       they would realize the error of their ways. But they will never, never
       abolish jazz--never, for it is the grandest, the most wonderful, the
       most absolutely necessary thing for women in this terrible age of
       smotheration."
       "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, to
       materialism, not to their own conscious efforts. I want to leave it to
       free 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'll
       not deny yourself now, and think and work, and suffer a little, in the
       interest of future humanity?"
       "How you put things, Carley!" exclaimed Eleanor, wearily. "Of course I
       care--when you make me think of such things. But what have I to do with
       the lives of people in the years to come?"
       "Everything. America for Americans! While you dawdle, the life blood is
       being sucked out of our great nation. It is a man's job to fight; it is
       a woman's to save.... I think you've made your choice, though you don't
       realize it. I'm praying to God that I'll rise to mine."
       Carley had a visitor one morning earlier than the usual or conventional
       time 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 be
       Virgil Rust? She hoped so, but she doubted.
       As she entered the parlor a tall young man in worn khaki rose to meet
       her. At first glance she could not name him, though she recognized the
       pale face and light-blue eyes, direct and steady.
       "Good morning, Miss Burch," he said. "I hope you'll excuse so early a
       call. You remember me, don't you? I'm George Burton, who had the bunk
       next to Rust's."
       "Surely I remember you, Mr. Burton, and I'm glad to see you," replied
       Carley, shaking hands with him. "Please sit down. Your being here must
       mean 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 shaky
       and weak," he replied. "But I'm glad to go. I've pulled through pretty
       good, 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 expect
       to do?"
       "Yes, that's what I came to tell you," he replied, frankly. "I want you
       to help me a little. I'm from Illinois and my people aren't so badly
       off. 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 to
       a 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've
       always 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, and
       there I'll get a job. Not too hard a job at first--that's why I'll need
       a little money. I know what to do. I want to lose myself in the
       wheat 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 you
       to 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 the
       opportunity to help you. How much will you need for immediate use? Five
       hundred dollars?"
       "Oh no, not so much as that," he replied. "Just railroad fare home, and
       then to Kansas, and to pay board while I get well, you know, and look
       around."
       "We'll make it five hundred, anyway," she replied, and, rising, she
       went 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 me
       to be permitted to help you. Before I forget, I must ask you, can you
       cash that check here in New York?"
       "Not unless you identify me," he said, ruefully, "I don't know anyone I
       could ask."
       "Well, when you leave here go at once to my bank--it's on Thirty-fourth
       Street--and I'll telephone the cashier. So you'll not have any
       difficulty. Will you leave New York at once?"
       "I surely will. It's an awful place. Two years ago when I came here with
       my company I thought it was grand. But I guess I lost something over
       there. ... I want to be where it's quiet. Where I won't see many
       people."
       "I think I understand," returned Carley. "Then I suppose you're in a
       hurry 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 I
       didn't have to leave a sweetheart behind, when I went to France. But it
       wouldn't be so bad to have one to go back to now."
       "Don't you worry!" exclaimed Carley. "You can take your choice
       presently. You have the open sesame to every real American girl's
       heart."
       "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 get
       any medals or bonuses, I'd like to draw a nice girl."
       "You will," replied Carley, and made haste to change the subject. "By
       the way, did you meet Glenn Kilbourne in France?"
       "Not that I remember," rejoined Burton, as he got up, rising rather
       stiffly by aid of his cane. "I must go, Miss Burch. Really I can't thank
       you enough. And I'll never forget it."
       "Will you write me how you are getting along?" asked Carley, offering
       her hand.
       "Yes."
       Carley moved with him out into the hall and to the door. There was
       a question she wanted to ask, but found it strangely difficult of
       utterance. 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 talking
       one day, and he--well, he thought you were true blue. He said he knew
       you'd trust me and lend me money. I couldn't have asked you but for
       him."
       "True blue! He believed that. I'm glad.... Has he spoken of me to you
       since I was last at the hospital?"
       "Hardly," replied Burton, with the straight, strange glance on her
       again.
       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 about
       him. But the light of his eyes! Carley had seen it in Glenn's, in
       Rust's--a strange, questioning, far-off light, infinitely aloof and
       unutterably sad. Then there came a lift of her heart that released
       a pang. She whispered with dread, with a tremor, with an instinct of
       calamity.
       "How about--Rust?"
       "He's dead."
       The winter came, with its bleak sea winds and cold rains and blizzards
       of snow. Carley did not go South. She read and brooded, and gradually
       avoided all save those true friends who tolerated her.
       She went to the theater a good deal, showing preference for the drama
       of strife, and she did not go anywhere for amusement. Distraction
       and amusement seemed to be dead issues for her. But she could become
       absorbed in any argument on the good or evil of the present day.
       Socialism reached into her mind, to be rejected. She had never
       understood it clearly, but it seemed to her a state of mind where
       dissatisfied men and women wanted to share what harder working or
       more gifted people possessed. There were a few who had too much of
       the world's goods and many who had too little. A readjustment of such
       inequality and injustice must come, but Carley did not see the remedy in
       Socialism.
       She devoured books on the war with a morbid curiosity and hope that she
       would find some illuminating truth as to the uselessness of sacrificing
       young men in the glory and prime of their lives. To her war appeared a
       matter of human nature rather than politics. Hate really was an effect
       of war. In her judgment future wars could be avoided only in two
       ways--by men becoming honest and just or by women refusing to have
       children to be sacrificed. As there seemed no indication whatever of
       the former, she wondered how soon all women of all races would meet on
       a common height, with the mounting spirit that consumed her own heart.
       Such time must come. She granted every argument for war and flung
       against it one ringing passionate truth--agony of mangled soldiers and
       agony of women and children. There was no justification for offensive
       war. It was monstrous and hideous. If nature and evolution proved the
       absolute need of strife, war, blood, and death in the progress of animal
       and man toward perfection, then it would be better to abandon this
       Christless code and let the race of man die out.
       All through these weeks she longed for a letter from Glenn. But it did
       not come. Had he finally roused to the sweetness and worth and love
       of the western girl, Flo Hutter? Carley knew absolutely, through both
       intelligence and intuition, that Glenn Kilbourne would never love
       Flo. Yet such was her intensity and stress at times, especially in the
       darkness of waking hours, that jealousy overcame her and insidiously
       worked its havoc. Peace and a strange kind of joy came to her in dreams
       of her walks and rides and climbs in Arizona, of the lonely canyon where
       it always seemed afternoon, of the tremendous colored vastness of that
       Painted Desert. But she resisted these dreams now because when she awoke
       from them she suffered such a yearning that it became unbearable. Then
       she knew the feeling of the loneliness and solitude of the hills. Then
       she knew the sweetness of the murmur of falling water, the wind in the
       pines, the song of birds, the white radiance of the stars, the break
       of day and its gold-flushed close. But she had not yet divined their
       meaning. It was not all love for Glenn Kilbourne. Had city life palled
       upon her solely because of the absence of her lover? So Carley plodded
       on, like one groping in the night, fighting shadows.
       One day she received a card from an old schoolmate, a girl who had
       married out of Carley's set, and had been ostracized. She was living
       down on Long Island, at a little country place named Wading River. Her
       husband was an electrician--something of an inventor. He worked hard. A
       baby boy had just come to them. Would not Carley run down on the train
       to see the youngster?
       That was a strong and trenchant call. Carley went. She found indeed a
       country village, and on the outskirts of it a little cottage that must
       have been pretty in summer, when the green was on vines and trees.
       Her old schoolmate was rosy, plump, bright-eyed, and happy. She saw
       in Carley no change--a fact that somehow rebounded sweetly on Carley's
       consciousness. Elsie prattled of herself and her husband and how they
       had worked to earn this little home, and then the baby.
       When Carley saw the adorable dark-eyed, pink-toed, curly-fisted baby she
       understood Elsie's happiness and reveled in it. When she felt the soft,
       warm, living little body in her arms, against her breast, then she
       absorbed some incalculable and mysterious strength. What were the
       trivial, sordid, and selfish feelings that kept her in tumult compared
       to this welling emotion? Had she the secret in her arms? Babies and
       Carley had never become closely acquainted in those infrequent meetings
       that were usually the result of chance. But Elsie's baby nestled to
       her breast and cooed to her and clung to her finger. When at length the
       youngster was laid in his crib it seemed to Carley that the fragrance
       and 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 his
       dad."
       "I'd like to meet him," said Carley, thoughtfully. "Elsie, was he in the
       service?"
       "Yes. He was on one of the navy transports that took munitions to
       France. Think of me, carrying this baby, with my husband on a boat full
       of explosives and with German submarines roaming the ocean! Oh, it was
       horrible!"
       "But he came back, and now all's well with you," said Carley, with a
       smile of earnestness. "I'm very glad, Elsie."
       "Yes--but I shudder when I think of a possible war in the future. I'm
       going to raise boys, and girls, too, I hope--and the thought of war is
       torturing."
       Carley found her return train somewhat late, and she took advantage of
       the 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-gray
       sky. Patches of snow lingered in sheltered brushy places. This bit of
       woodland had a floor of soft sand that dragged at Carley's feet. There
       were sere and brown leaves still fluttering on the scrub-oaks. At length
       Carley came out on the edge of the bluff with the gray expanse of sea
       beneath her, and a long wandering shore line, ragged with wreckage or
       driftwood. The surge of water rolled in--a long, low, white, creeping
       line that softly roared on the beach and dragged the pebbles gratingly
       back. There was neither boat nor living creature in sight.
       Carley felt the scene ease a clutching hand within her breast. Here was
       loneliness 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, were voices that called to
       her. How many more miles of lonely land than peopled cities! Then the
       sea--how vast! And over that the illimitable and infinite sky, and
       beyond, the endless realms of space. It helped her somehow to see and
       hear and feel the eternal presence of nature. In communion with nature
       the significance of life might be realized. She remembered Glenn
       quoting: "The world is too much with us. ... Getting and spending, we
       lay waste our powers." What were our powers? What did God intend men to
       do with hands and bodies and gifts and souls? She gazed back over the
       bleak land and then out across the broad sea. Only a millionth part of
       the surface of the unsubmerged earth knew the populous abodes of man.
       And the lonely sea, inhospitable to stable homes of men, was thrice the
       area of the land. Were men intended, then, to congregate in few
       places, to squabble and to bicker and breed the discontents that led to
       injustice, hatred, and war? What a mystery it all was! But Nature was
       neither 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 of
       apathy, she was wearing to defeat.
       That spring day, one year from the day she had left New York for
       Arizona, 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 current
       which caused the mild madness of spring fever. In the Park the greening
       of the grass, the opening of buds, the singing of birds, the gladness of
       children, the light on the water, the warm sun--all seemed to reproach
       her. Carley fled from the Park to the home of Beatrice Lovell; and
       there, unhappily, she encountered those of her acquaintance with whom
       she 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. When
       Carley entered with Beatrice there was a sudden hush and then a murmur.
       "Hello, Carley! Now say it to our faces," called out Geralda Conners, a
       fair, handsome young woman of thirty, exquisitely gowned in the latest
       mode, and whose brilliantly tinted complexion was not the natural one of
       health.
       "Say what, Geralda?" asked Carley. "I certainly would not say anything
       behind 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 Ferguson
       tied 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 is
       dippy about you."
       "Girls, do you know that you actually have not one sensible idea in your
       heads?" retorted Carley.
       "Sensible? I should hope not. Who wants to be sensible?"
       Geralda battered her teacup on a saucer. "Listen," she called. "I wasn't
       kidding Carley. I am good and sore. She goes around knocking everybody
       and saying New York backs Sodom off the boards. I want her to come out
       with it right here."
       "I dare say I've talked too much," returned Carley. "It's been a rather
       hard winter on me. Perhaps, indeed, I've tried the patience of my
       friends."
       "See here, Carley," said Geralda, deliberately, "just because you've had
       life turn to bitter ashes in your mouth you've no right to poison it for
       us. We all find it pretty sweet. You're an unsatisfied woman and if you
       don'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. "No
       wonder Morrison roasts you to everybody. He says Glenn Kilbourne threw
       you down for some Western girl. If that's true it's pretty small of you
       to vent your spleen on us."
       Carley felt the gathering of a mighty resistless force, But Geralda
       Conners was nothing to her except the target for a thunderbolt.
       "I have no spleen," she replied, with a dignity of passion. "I have only
       pity. I was as blind as you. If heartbreak tore the scales from my
       eyes, perhaps that is well for me. For I see something terribly wrong in
       myself, in you, in all of us, in the life of today."
       "You keep your pity to yourself. You need it," answered Geralda, with
       heat. "There's nothing wrong with me or my friends or life in good old
       New York."
       "Nothing wrong!" cried Carley. "Listen. Nothing wrong in you or life
       today--nothing for you women to make right? You are blind as bats--as
       dead to living truth as if you were buried. Nothing wrong when thousands
       of crippled soldiers have no homes--no money--no friends--no work--in
       many cases no food or bed?... Splendid young men who went away in their
       prime to fight for you and came back ruined, suffering! Nothing wrong
       when sane women with the vote might rid politics of partisanship, greed,
       crookedness? Nothing wrong when prohibition is mocked by women--when the
       greatest boon ever granted this country is derided and beaten down and
       cheated? Nothing wrong when there are half a million defective children
       in this city? Nothing wrong when there are not enough schools and
       teachers to educate our boys and girls, when those teachers are
       shamefully underpaid? Nothing wrong when the mothers of this great
       country let their youngsters go to the dark motion picture halls and
       night after night in thousands of towns over all this broad land see
       pictures that the juvenile court and the educators and keepers of
       reform schools say make burglars, crooks, and murderers of our boys and
       vampires of our girls? Nothing wrong when these young adolescent girls
       ape you and wear stockings rolled under their knees below their skirts
       and use a lip stick and paint their faces and darken their eyes and
       pluck their eyebrows and absolutely do not know what shame is? Nothing
       wrong when you may find in any city women standing at street corners
       distributing booklets on birth control? Nothing wrong when great
       magazines print no page or picture without its sex appeal? Nothing wrong
       when the automobile, so convenient for the innocent little run out
       of 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 husbands
       spend more of their time with other women than with you? Nothing wrong
       with jazz--where the lights go out in the dance hall and the dancers
       jiggle and toddle and wiggle in a frenzy? Nothing wrong in a country
       where the greatest college cannot report birth of one child to each
       graduate in ten years? Nothing wrong with race suicide and the incoming
       horde of foreigners?... Nothing wrong with you women who cannot or will
       not stand childbirth? Nothing wrong with most of you, when if you did
       have a child, you could not nurse it?... Oh, my God, there's nothing
       wrong with America except that she staggers under a Titanic burden that
       only mothers of sons can remove!... You doll women, you parasites, you
       toys of men, you silken-wrapped geisha girls, you painted, idle, purring
       cats, you parody of the females of your species--find brains enough if
       you can to see the doom hanging over you and revolt before it is too
       late!" _