by Zane Grey
Awakening early, she inaugurated a habit of getting up at once, instead of lolling in bed, and breakfasting there, and reading her mail, as had been her wont before going West. Then she went over business matters with her aunt, called on her lawyer and banker, took lunch with Rose Maynard, and spent the afternoon shopping. Strong as she was, the unaccustomed heat and the hard pavements and the jostle of shoppers and the continual rush of sensations wore her out so completely that she did not want any dinner. She talked to her aunt a while, then went to bed.
Next day Carley motored through Central Park, and out of town into Westchester County, finding some relief from the seemed to look at the dusty trees and the worn greens without really seeing them. In the afternoon she called on friends, and had dinner at home with her aunt, and then went to a theatre. The musical comedy was good, but the almost unbearable heat and the vitiated air spoiled her enjoyment. That night upon arriving home at midnight she stepped out of the taxi, and involuntarily, without thought, looked up to see the stars. But there were no stars. A murky yellow-tinged blackness hung low over the city. Carley recollected that stars, and sunrises and sunsets, and untainted air, and silence were not for city dwellers. She checked any continuation of the thought.
A few days sufficed to swing her into the old life. Many of Carley’s friends had neither the leisure nor the means to go away from the city during the summer. Some there were who might have afforded that if they had seen fit to live in less showy apartments, or to dispense with cars. Other of her best friends were on their summer outings in the Adirondacks. Carley decided to go with her aunt to Lake Placid about the first of August. Meanwhile she would keep going and doing.
She had been a week in town before Morrison telephoned her and added his welcome. Despite the gay gladness of his voice, it irritated her. Really, she scarcely wanted to see him. But a meeting was inevitable, and besides, going out with him was in accordance with the plan she had adopted. So she made an engagement to meet him at the Plaza for dinner. When with slow and pondering action she hung up the receiver it occurred to her that she resented the idea of going to the Plaza. She did not dwell on the reason why.
When Carley went into the reception room of the Plaza that night Morrison was waiting for her — the same slim, fastidious, elegant, sallow-faced Morrison whose image she had in mind, yet somehow different. He had what Carley called the New York masculine face, blase and lined, with eyes that gleamed, yet had no fire. But at sight of her his face lighted up.
“By Jove I but you’ve come back a peach!” he exclaimed, clasping her extended hand. “Eleanor told me you looked great. It’s worth missing you to see you like this.”
“Thanks, Larry,” she replied. “I must look pretty well to win that compliment from you. And how are you feeling? You don’t seem robust for a golfer and horseman. But then I’m used to husky Westerners.”
“Oh, I’m fagged with the daily grind,” he said. “I’ll be glad to get up in the mountains next month. Let’s go down to dinner.”
They descended the spiral stairway to the grillroom, where an orchestra was playing jazz, and dancers gyrated on a polished floor, and diners in evening dress looked on over their cigarettes.
“Well, Carley, are you still finicky about the eats?” he queried, consulting the menu.
“No. But I prefer plain food,” she replied.
“Have a cigarette,” he said, holding out his silver monogrammed case.
“Thanks, Larry. I — I guess I’ll not take up smoking again. You see, while I was West I got out of the habit.”
“Yes, they told me you had changed,” he returned. “How about drinking?”
“Why, I thought New York had gone dry!” she said, forcing a laugh.
“Only on the surface. Underneath it’s wetter than ever.”
“Well, I’ll obey the law.”
He ordered a rather elaborate dinner, and then turning his attention to Carley, gave her closer scrutiny. Carley knew then that he had become acquainted with the fact of her broken engagement. It was a relief not to need to tell him.
“How’s that big stiff, Kilbourne?” asked Morrison, suddenly. “Is it true he got well?”
“Oh — yes! He’s fine,” replied Carley with eyes cast down. A hot knot seemed to form deep within her and threatened to break and steal along her veins. “But if you please — I do not care to talk of him.”
“Naturally. But I must tell you that one man’s loss is another’s gain.”
Carley had rather expected renewed courtship from Morrison. She had not, however, been prepared for the beat of her pulse, the quiver of her nerves, the uprising of hot resentment at the mere mention of Kilbourne. It was only natural that Glenn’s former rivals should speak of him, and perhaps disparagingly. But from this man Carley could not bear even a casual reference. Morrison had escaped the army service. He had been given a high-salaried post at the ship-yards — the duties of which, if there had been any, he performed wherever he happened to be. Morrison’s father had made a fortune in leather during the war. And Carley remembered Glenn telling her he had seen two whole blocks in Paris piled twenty feet deep with leather army goods that were never used and probably had never been intended to be used. Morrison represented the not inconsiderable number of young men in New York who had gained at the expense of the valiant legion who had lost. But what had Morrison gained? Carley raised her eyes to gaze steadily at him. He looked well-fed, indolent, rich, effete, and supremely self-satisfied. She could not we that he had gained anything. She would rather have been a crippled ruined soldier.
“Larry, I fear gain and loss are mere words, she said. “The thing that counts with me is what you are.”
He stared in well-bred surprise, and presently talked of a new dance which had lately come into vogue. And from that he passed on to gossip of the theatres. Once between courses of the dinner he asked Carley to dance, and she complied. The music would have stimulated an Egyptian mummy, Carley thought, and the subdued rose lights, the murmur of gay voices, the glide and grace and distortion of the dancers, were exciting and pleasurable. Morrison had the suppleness and skill of a dancing-master. But he held Carley too tightly, and so she told him, and added, “I imbibed some fresh pure air while I was out West — something you haven’t here — and I don’t want it all squeezed out of me.”
The latter days of July Carley made busy — so busy that she lost her tan and appetite, and something of her splendid resistance to the dragging heat and late hours. Seldom was she without some of her friends. She accepted almost any kind of an invitation, and went even to Coney Island, to baseball games, to the motion pictures, which were three forms of amusement not customary with her. At Coney Island, which she visited with two of her younger girl friends, she had the best time since her arrival home. What had put her in accord with ordinary people? The baseball games, likewise pleased her. The running of the players and the screaming of the spectators amused and excited her. But she hated the motion pictures with their salacious and absurd misrepresentations of life, in some cases capably acted by skillful actors, and in others a silly series of scenes featuring some doll-faced girl.
But she refused to go horseback riding in Central Park. She refused to go to the Plaza. And these refusals she made deliberately, without asking herself why.
On August 1st she accompanied her aunt and several friends to Lake Placid, where they established themselves at a hotel. How welcome to Carley’s strained eyes were the green of mountains, the soft gleam of amber water! How sweet and refreshing a breath of cool pure air! The change from New York’s glare and heat and dirt, and iron-red insulating walls, and thronging millions of people, and ceaseless roar and rush, was tremendously relieving to Carley. She had burned the candle at both ends. But the beauty of the hills and vales, the quiet of the forest, the sight of the stars, made it harder to forget. She had to rest. And when she rested she could not always converse, or read, or write.
For the most part her days held va
riety and pleasure. The place was beautiful, the weather pleasant, the people congenial. She motored over the forest roads, she canoed along the margin of the lake, she played golf and tennis. She wore exquisite gowns to dinner and danced during the evenings. But she seldom walked anywhere on the trails and, never alone, and she never climbed the mountains and never rode a horse.
Morrison arrived and added his attentions to those of other men. Carley neither accepted nor repelled them. She favored the association with married couples and older people, and rather shunned the pairing off peculiar to vacationists at summer hotels. She had always loved to play and romp with children, but here she found herself growing to avoid them, somehow hurt by sound of pattering feet and joyous laughter. She filled the days as best she could, and usually earned quick slumber at night. She staked all on present occupation and the truth of flying time.
CHAPTER IX
THE LATTER PART of September Carley returned to New York.
Soon after her arrival she received by letter a formal proposal of marriage from Elbert Harrington, who had been quietly attentive to her during her sojourn at Lake Placid. He was a lawyer of distinction, somewhat older than most of her friends, and a man of means and fine family. Carley was quite surprised. Harrington was really one of the few of her acquaintances whom she regarded as somewhat behind the times, and liked him the better for that. But she could not marry him, and replied to his letter in as kindly a manner as possible. Then he called personally.
“Carley, I’ve come to ask you to reconsider,” he said, with a smile in his gray eyes. He was not a tall or handsome man, but he had what women called a nice strong face.
“Elbert, you embarrass me,” she replied, trying to laugh it out. “Indeed I feel honored, and I thank you. But I can’t marry you.”
“Why not? he asked, quietly.
“Because I don’t love you,” she replied.
“I did not expect you to,” he said. “I hoped in time you might come to care. I’ve known you a good many years, Carley. Forgive me if I tell you I see you are breaking — wearing yourself down. Maybe it is not a husband you need so much now, but you do need a home and children. You are wasting your life.”
“All you say may be true, my friend,” replied Carley, with a helpless little upflinging of hands. “Yet it does not alter my feelings.”
“But you will marry sooner or later?” he queried, persistently.
This straightforward question struck Carley as singularly as if it was one she might never have encountered. It forced her to think of things she had buried.
“I don’t believe I ever will,” she answered, thoughtfully.
“That is nonsense, Carley,” he went on. “You’ll have to marry. What else can you do? With all due respect to your feelings — that affair with Kilbourne is ended — and you’re not the wishy-washy heartbreak kind of a girl.”
“You can never tell what a woman will do,” she said, somewhat coldly.
“Certainly not. That’s why I refuse to take no. Carley, be reasonable. You like me — respect me, do you not?”
“Why, of course I do!”
“I’m only thirty-five, and I could give you all any sensible woman wants,” he said. “Let’s make a real American home. Have you thought at all about that, Carley? Something is wrong today. Men are not marrying. Wives are not having children. Of all the friends I have, not one has a real American home. Why, it is a terrible fact! But, Carley, you are not a sentimentalist, or a melancholiac. Nor are you a waster. You have fine qualities. You need something to do some one to care for.”
“Pray do not think me ungrateful, Elbert,” she replied, “nor insensible to the truth of what you say. But my answer is no!”
When Harrington had gone Carley went to her room, and precisely as upon her return from Arizona she faced her m rror skeptically and relentlessly. “I am such a liar that I’ll do well to look at myself,” she meditated. “Here I am again. Now! The world expects me to marry. But what do I expect?”
There was a raw unheated wound in Carley’s heart. Seldom had she permitted herself to think about it, let alone to probe it with hard materialistic queries. But custom to her was as inexorable as life. If she chose to live in the world she must conform to its customs. For a woman marriage was the aim and the end and the all of existence. Nevertheless, for Carley it could not be without love. Before she had gone West she might have had many of the conventional modern ideas about women and marriage. But because out there in the wilds her love and perception had broadened, now her arraignment of herself and her sex was bigger, sterner, more exacting. The months she had been home seemed fuller than all the months of her life. She had tried to forget and enjoy; she had not succeeded; but she had looked with far-seeing eyes at her world. Glenn Kilbourne’s tragic fate had opened her eyes.
Either the world was all wrong or the people in it were. But if that were an extravagant and erroneous supposition, there certainly was proof positive that her own small individual world was wrong. The women did not do any real work; they did not bear children; they lived on excitement and luxury. They had no ideals. How greatly were men to blame? Carley doubted her judgment here. But as men could not live without the smiles and comradeship and love of women, it was only natural that they should give the women what they wanted. Indeed, they had no choice. It was give or go without. How much of real love entered into the marriages among her acquaintances? Before marriage Carley wanted a girl to be sweet, proud, aloof, with a heart of golden fire. Not attainable except through love! It would be better that no children be born at all unless born of such beautiful love. Perhaps that was why so few children were born. Nature’s balance and revenge! In Arizona Carley had learned something of the ruthlessness and inevitableness of nature. She was finding out she had learned this with many other staggering facts.
“I love Glenn still,” she whispered, passionately, with trembling lips, as she faced the tragic-eyed image of herself in the mirror. “I love him more- -more. Oh, my God! If I were honest I’d cry out the truth! It is terrible. . . I will always love him. How then could I marry any other man? I would be a lie, a cheat. If I could only forget him — only kill that love. Then I might love another man — and if I did love him — no matter what I had felt or done before, I would be worthy. I could feel worthy. I could give him just as much. But without such love I’d give only a husk — a body without soul.”
Love, then, was the sacred and holy flame of life that sanctioned the begetting of children. Marriage might be a necessity of modern time, but it was not the vital issue. Carley’s anguish revealed strange and hidden truths. In some inexplicable way Nature struck a terrible balance — revenged herself upon a people who had no children, or who brought into the world children not created by the divinity of love, unyearned for, and therefore somehow doomed to carry on the blunders and burdens of life.
Carley realized how right and true it might be for her to throw herself away upon an inferior man, even a fool or a knave, if she loved him with that great and natural love of woman; likewise it dawned upon her how false and wrong and sinful it would be to marry the greatest or the richest or the noblest man unless she had that supreme love to give him, and knew it was reciprocated.
“What am I going to do with my life?” she asked, bitterly and aghast. “I have been — I am a waster. I’ve lived for nothing but pleasurable sensation. I’m utterly useless. I do absolutely no good on earth.”
Thus she saw how Harrington’s words rang true — how they had precipitated a crisis for which her unconscious brooding had long made preparation.
“Why not give up ideals and be like the rest of my kind?” she soliloquized.
That was one of the things which seemed wrong with modern life. She thrust the thought from her with passionate scorn. If poor, broken, ruined Glenn Kilbourne could cling to an ideal and fight for it, could not she, who had all the world esteemed worth while, be woman enough to do the same? The direction of her thought seemed to have
changed. She had been ready for rebellion. Three months of the old life had shown her that for her it was empty, vain, farcical, without one redeeming feature. The naked truth was brutal, but it cut clean to wholesome consciousness. Such so-called social life as she had plunged into deliberately to forget her unhappiness had failed her utterly. If she had been shallow and frivolous it might have done otherwise. Stripped of all guise, her actions must have been construed by a penetrating and impartial judge as a mere parading of her decorated person before a number of males with the purpose of ultimate selection.
“I’ve got to find some work,” she muttered, soberly.
At the moment she heard the postman’s whistle outside; and a little later the servant brought up her mail. The first letter, large, soiled, thick, bore the postmark Flagstaff, and her address in Glenn Kilbourne’s writing.
Carley stared at it. Her heart gave a great leap. Her hand shook. She sat down suddenly as if the strength of her legs was inadequate to uphold her.
“Glenn has — written me!” she whispered, in slow, halting realization. “For what? Oh, why?”
The other letters fell off her lap, to lie unnoticed. This big thick envelope fascinated her. It was one of the stamped envelopes she had seen in his cabin. It contained a letter that had been written on his rude table, before the open fire, in the light of the doorway, in that little log-cabin under the spreading pines of West Ford Canyon. Dared she read it? The shock to her heart passed; and with mounting swell, seemingly too full for her breast, it began to beat and throb a wild gladness through all her being. She tore the envelope apart and read:
DEAR CARLEY:
I’m surely glad for a good excuse to write you.
Once in a blue moon I get a letter, and today Hutter brought me one from a soldier pard of mine who was with me in the Argonne. His name is Virgil Rust — queer name, don’t you think? — and he’s from Wisconsin. Just a rough- diamond sort of chap, but fairly well educated. He and I were in some pretty hot places, and it was he who pulled me out of a shell crater. I’d “gone west” sure then if it hadn’t been for Rust.