The Call of the Canyon
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Zane Grey >> The Call of the Canyon
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"Don't! don't! . . . they are hollow mockery for me," she cried,
passionately. "Glenn, it is the end. It must come--quickly. . . . You are
free."
"I do not ask to be free. Wait. Go home and look at it again with different
eyes. Think things over. Remember what came to me out of the West. I will
always love you--and I will be here--hoping--"
"I--I cannot listen," she returned, brokenly, and she clenched her hands
tightly to keep from wringing them. "I--I cannot face you. . . . Here
is--your ring. . . . You--are--free. . . . Don't stop me--don't come. . . .
Oh, Glenn, good-by!"
With breaking heart she whirled away from him and hurried down the slope
toward the trail. The shade of the forest enveloped her. Peering back
through the trees, she saw Glenn standing where she had left him, as if
already stricken by the loneliness that must be his lot. A sob broke from
Carley's throat. She hated herself. She was in a terrible state of
conflict. Decision had been wrenched from her, but she sensed unending
strife. She dared not look back again. Stumbling and breathless, she
hurried on. How changed the atmosphere and sunlight and shadow of the
canyon! The looming walls had pitiless eyes for her flight. When she
crossed the mouth of West Fork an almost irresistible force breathed to her
from under the stately pines.
An hour later she had bidden farewell to the weeping Mrs. Hutter, and to
the white-faced Flo, and Lolomi Lodge, and the murmuring waterfall, and the
haunting loneliness of Oak Creek Canyon.
CHAPTER VIII
At Flagstaff, where Carley arrived a few minutes before train time, she was
too busily engaged with tickets and baggage to think of herself or of the
significance of leaving Arizona. But as she walked into the Pullman she
overheard a passenger remark, "Regular old Arizona sunset," and that shook
her heart. Suddenly she realized she had come to love the colorful sunsets,
to watch and wait for them. And bitterly she thought how that was her way
to learn the value of something when it was gone.
The jerk and start of the train affected her with singular depressing
shock. She had burned her last bridge behind her. Had she unconsciously
hoped for some incredible reversion of Glenn's mind or of her own? A sense
of irreparable loss flooded over her--the first check to shame and humiliation.
From her window she looked out to the southwest. Somewhere across the cedar
and pine-greened uplands lay Oak Creek Canyon, going to sleep in its purple
and gold shadows of sunset. Banks of broken clouds hung to the horizon,
like continents and islands and reefs set in a turquoise sea. Shafts of
sunlight streaked down through creamy-edged and purple-centered clouds.
Vast flare of gold dominated the sunset background.
When the train rounded a curve Carley's strained vision became filled with
the upheaved bulk of the San Francisco Mountains. Ragged gray grass slopes
and green forests on end, and black fringed sky lines, all pointed to the
sharp clear peaks spearing the sky. And as she watched, the peaks slowly
flushed with sunset hues, and the sky flared golden, and the strength of
the eternal mountains stood out in sculptured sublimity. Every day for two
months and more Carley had watched these peaks, at all hours, in every
mood; and they had unconsciously become a part of her thought. The train
was relentlessly whirling her eastward. Soon they must become a memory.
Tears blurred her sight. Poignant regret seemed added to the anguish she
was suffering. Why had she not learned sooner to see the glory of the
mountains, to appreciate the beauty and solitude? Why had she not
understood herself?
The next day through New Mexico she followed magnificent ranges and
valleys--so different from the country she had seen coming West--so
supremely beautiful that she wondered if she had only acquired the harvest
of a seeing eye.
But it was at sunset of the following clay, when the train was speeding
down the continental slope of prairie land beyond the Rockies, that the
West took its ruthless revenge.
Masses of strange cloud and singular light upon the green prairie, and a
luminosity in the sky, drew Carley to the platform of her car, which was
the last of the train. There she stood, gripping the iron gate, feeling the
wind whip her hair and the iron-tracked ground speed from under her,
spellbound and stricken at the sheer wonder and glory of the firmament, and
the mountain range that it canopied so exquisitely.
A rich and mellow light, singularly clear, seemed to flood out of some
unknown source. For the sun was hidden. The clouds just above Carley hung
low, and they were like thick, heavy smoke, mushrooming, coalescing,
forming and massing, of strange yellow cast of mative. It shaded westward
into heliotrope and this into a purple so royal, so matchless and rare that
Carley understood why the purple of the heavens could never be reproduced
in paint. Here the cloud mass thinned and paled, and a tint of rose began
to flush the billowy, flowery, creamy white. Then came the surpassing
splendor of this cloud pageant--a vast canopy of shell pink, a sun-fired
surface like an opal sea, rippled and webbed, with the exquisite texture of
an Oriental fabric, pure, delicate, lovely--as no work of human hands could
be. It mirrored all the warm, pearly tints of the inside whorl of the
tropic nautilus. And it ended abruptly, a rounded depth of bank, on a broad
stream of clear sky, intensely blue, transparently blue, as if through the
lambent depths shone the infinite firmament. The lower edge of this stream
took the golden lightning of the sunset and was notched for all its
horizon-long length by the wondrous white glistening-peaked range of the
Rockies. Far to the north, standing aloof from the range, loomed up the
grand black bulk and noble white dome of Pikes Peak.
Carley watched the sunset transfiguration of cloud and sky and mountain
until all were cold and gray. And then she returned to her seat, thoughtful
and sad, feeling that the West had mockingly flung at her one of its
transient moments of loveliness.
Nor had the West wholly finished with her. Next day the mellow gold of the
Kansas wheat fields, endless and boundless as a sunny sea, rich, waving in
the wind, stretched away before her aching eyes for hours and hours. Here
was the promise fulfilled, the bountiful harvest of the land, the strength
of the West. The great middle state had a heart of gold.
East of Chicago Carley began to feel that the long days and nights of
riding, the ceaseless turning of the wheels, the constant and wearing
stress of emotion, had removed her an immeasurable distance of miles and
time and feeling from the scene of her catastrophe. Many days seemed to
have passed. Many had been the hours of her bitter regret and anguish.
Indiana and Ohio, with their green pastoral farms, and numberless villages,
and thriving cities, denoted a country far removed and different from the
West, and an approach to the populous East. Carley felt like a wanderer
coming home. She was restlessly and impatiently glad. But her weariness of
body and mind, and the close atmosphere of the car, rendered her extreme
discomfort. Summer had laid its hot hand on the low country east of the
Mississippi.
Carley had wired her aunt and two of her intimate friends to meet her at
the Grand Central Station. This reunion soon to come affected Carley in
recurrent emotions of relief, gladness, and shame. She did not sleep well,
and arose early, and when the train reached Albany she felt that she could
hardly endure the tedious hours. The majestic Hudson and the palatial
mansions on the wooded bluffs proclaimed to Carley that she was back in the
East. How long a time seemed to have passed! Either she was not the same or
the aspect of everything had changed. But she believed that as soon as she
got over the ordeal of meeting her friends, and was home again, she would
soon see things rationally.
At last the train sheered away from the broad Hudson and entered the
environs of New York. Carley sat perfectly still, to all outward appearances
a calm, superbly-poised New York woman returning home, but inwardly
raging with contending tides. In her own sight she was a disgraceful
failure, a prodigal sneaking back to the ease and protection of loyal
friends who did not know her truly. Every familiar landmark in the approach
to the city gave her a thrill, yet a vague unsatisfied something lingered
after each sensation.
Then the train with rush and roar crossed the Harlem River to enter New
York City. As one waking from a dream Carley saw the blocks and squares of
gray apartment houses and red buildings, the miles of roofs and chimneys,
the long hot glaring streets full of playing children and cars. Then above
the roar of the train sounded the high notes of a hurdy-gurdy. Indeed she
was home. Next to startle her was the dark tunnel, and then the slowing of
the train to a stop. As she walked behind a porter up the long incline
toward the station gate her legs seemed to be dead.
In the circle of expectant faces beyond the gate she saw her aunt's, eager
and agitated, then the handsome pale face of Eleanor Harmon, and beside her
the sweet thin one of Beatrice Lovell. As they saw her how quick the change
from expectancy to joy! It seemed they all rushed upon her, and embraced
her, and exclaimed over her together. Carley never recalled what she said.
But her heart was full.
"Oh, how perfectly stunning you look!" cried Eleanor, backing away from
Carley and gazing with glad, surprised eyes.
"Carley!" gasped Beatrice. "You wonderful golden-skinned goddess! . . .
You're young again, like you were in our school days."
It was before Aunt Mary's shrewd, penetrating, loving gaze that Carley
quailed.
"Yes, Carley, you look well--better than I ever saw you, but--but--"
"But I don't look happy," interrupted Carley. "I am happy to get home--to
see you all . . . But--my--my heart is broken!"
A little shocked silence ensued, then Carley found herself being led across
the lower level and up the wide stairway. As she mounted to the vast-domed
cathedral-like chamber of the station a strange sensation pierced her with
a pang. Not the old thrill of leaving New York or returning! Nor was it
the welcome sight of the hurrying, well-dressed throng of travelers and
commuters, nor the stately beauty of the station. Carley shut her eyes, and
then she knew. The dim light of vast space above, the looming gray walls,
shadowy with tracery of figures, the lofty dome like the blue sky, brought
back to her the walls of Oak Creek Canyon and the great caverns under the
ramparts. As suddenly as she had shut her eyes Carley opened them to face
her friends.
"Let me get it over--quickly," she burst out, with hot blood surging to her
face. "I--I hated the West. It was so raw--so violent--so big. I think I
hate it more--now. . . . But it changed me--made me over physically--and
did something to my soul--God knows what. . . . And it has saved Glenn. Oh!
he is wonderful! You would never know him. . . . For long I had not the
courage to tell him I came to bring him back East. I kept putting it off.
And I rode, I climbed, I camped, I lived outdoors. At first it nearly
killed me. Then it grew bearable, and easier, until I forgot. I wouldn't be
honest if I didn't admit now that somehow I had a wonderful time, in spite
of all. . . . Glenn's business is raising hogs. He has a hog ranch. Doesn't
it sound sordid? But things are not always what they sound--or seem. Glenn
is absorbed in his work. I hated it--I expected to ridicule it. But I ended
by infinitely respecting him. I learned through his hog-raising the real
nobility of work. . . . Well, at last I found courage to ask him when he
was coming back to New York. He said 'never!' . . . I realized then my
blindness, my selfishness. I could not be his wife and live there. I could
not. I was too small, too miserable, too comfort-loving--too spoiled. And
all the time he knew this--knew I'd never be big enough to marry him. . . .
That broke my heart. I left him free--and here I am. . . . I beg you--don't
ask me any more--and never to mention it to me--so I can forget."
The tender unspoken sympathy of women who loved her proved comforting in
that trying hour. With the confession ruthlessly made the hard compression
in Carley's breast subsided, and her eyes cleared of a hateful dimness.
When they reached the taxi stand outside the station Carley felt a rush of
hot devitalized air from the street. She seemed not to be able to get air
into her lungs.
"Isn't it dreadfully hot?" she asked.
"This is a cool spell to what we had last week," replied Eleanor.
"Cool!" exclaimed Carley, as she wiped her moist face. "I wonder if you
Easterners know the real significance of words."
Then they entered a taxi, to be whisked away apparently through a
labyrinthine maze of cars and streets, where pedestrians had to run and
jump for their lives. A congestion of traffic at Fifth Avenue and
Forty-second Street halted their taxi for a few moments, and here in the
thick of it Carley had full assurance that she was back in the metropolis.
Her sore heart eased somewhat at sight of the streams of people passing to
and fro. How they rushed! Where were they going? What was their story? And
all the while her aunt held her hand, and Beatrice and Eleanor talked as
fast as their tongues could wag. Then the taxi clattered on up the Avenue,
to turn down a side street and presently stop at Carley's home. It was a
modest three-story brown-stone house. Carley had been so benumbed by
sensations that she did not imagine she could experience a new one. But
peering out of the taxi, she gazed dubiously at the brownish-red stone
steps and front of her home.
"I'm going to have it painted," she muttered, as if to herself.
Her aunt and her friends laughed, glad and relieved to hear such a
practical remark from Carley. How were they to divine that this
brownish-red stone was the color of desert rocks and canyon walls?
In a few more moments Carley was inside the house, feeling a sense of
protection in the familiar rooms that had been her home for seventeen
years. Once in the sanctity of her room, which was exactly as she had left
it, her first action was to look in the mirror at her weary, dusty, heated
face. Neither the brownness of it nor the shadow appeared to harmonize with
the image of her that haunted the mirror.
"Now!" she whispered low. "It's done. I'm home. The old life--or a new life?
How to meet either. Now!"
Thus she challenged her spirit. And her intelligence rang at her the
imperative necessity for action, for excitement, for effort that left no
time for rest or memory or wakefulness. She accepted the issue. She was
glad of the stern fight ahead of her. She set her will and steeled her
heart with all the pride and vanity and fury of a woman who had been
defeated but who scorned defeat. She was what birth and breeding and
circumstance had made her. She would seek what the old life held.
What with unpacking and chatting and telephoning and lunching, the day soon
passed. Carley went to dinner with friends and later to a roof garden. The
color and light, the gayety and music, the news of acquaintances, the humor
of the actors--all, in fact, except the unaccustomed heat and noise, were
most welcome and diverting. That night she slept the sleep of weariness.
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! 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 see 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 variety 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.
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