The Call of the Canyon

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"Indeed that's true," replied Carley. "It's a hard time for everybody, and
particularly you boys who have lost so--so much."

"I lost all, except my life--and I wish to God I'd lost that," he replied,
gloomily.

"Oh, don't talk so!" implored Carley in distress. "Forgive me, Rust, if I
hurt you. But I must tell you--that--that Glenn wrote me--you'd lost your
girl. Oh, I'm sorry! It is dreadful for you now. But if you got well--and
went to work--and took up life where you left it--why soon your pain would
grow easier. And you'd find some happiness yet."

"Never for me in this world."

"But why, Rust, why? You're no--no--Oh! I mean you have intelligence and
courage. Why isn't there anything left for you?"

"Because something here's been killed," he replied, and put his hand to his
heart.

"Your faith? Your love of--of everything? Did the war kill it?"

"I'd gotten over that, maybe," he said, drearily, with his somber eyes on
space that seemed lettered for him. "But she half murdered it--and they did
the rest."

"They? Whom do you mean, Rust?"

"Why, Carley, I mean the people I lost my leg for!" he replied, with
terrible softness.

"The British? The French?" she queried, in bewilderment.

"No!" he cried, and turned his face to the wall.

Carley dared not ask him more. She was shocked. How helplessly impotent all
her earnest sympathy! No longer could she feel an impersonal, however
kindly, interest in this man. His last ringing word had linked her also to
his misfortune and his suffering. Suddenly he turned away from the wall.
She saw him swallow laboriously. How tragic that thin, shadowed face of
agony! Carley saw it differently. But for the beautiful softness of light
in his eyes, she would have been unable to endure gazing longer.

"Carley, I'm bitter," he said, "but I'm not rancorous and callous, like some
of the boys. I know if you'd been my girl you'd have stuck to me."

"Yes," Carley whispered.

"That makes a difference," he went on, with a sad smile. "You see, we
soldiers all had feelings. And in one thing we all felt alike. That was we
were going to fight for our homes and our women. I should say women first.
No matter what we read or heard about standing by our allies, fighting for
liberty or civilization, the truth was we all felt the same, even if we
never breathed it. . . . Glenn fought for you. I fought for Nell. . . . We
were not going to let the Huns treat you as they treated French and Belgian
girls. . . . And think! Nell was engaged to me--she loved me--and, by God!
She married a slacker when I lay half dead on the battlefield!"

"She was not worth loving or fighting for," said Carley, with agitation.

"Ah! now you've said something," he declared. "If I can only hold to that
truth! What does one girl amount to? I do not count. It is the sum that
counts. We love America--our homes--our women! . . . Carley, I've had
comfort and strength come to me through you. Glenn will have his reward in
your love. Somehow I seem to share it, a little. Poor Glenn! He got his,
too. Why, Carley, that guy wouldn't let you do what he could do for you. He
was cut to pieces--"

"Please--Rust--don't say any more. I am unstrung," she pleaded.

"Why not? It's due you to know how splendid Glenn was. . . . I tell you,
Carley, all the boys here love you for the way you've stuck to Glenn. Some
of them knew him, and I've told the rest. We thought he'd never pull
through. But he has, and we know how you helped. Going West to see him! He
didn't write it to me, but I know. . . . I'm wise. I'm happy for him--the
lucky dog. Next time you go West--"

"Hush!" cried Carley. She could endure no more. She could no longer be a
lie.

"You're white--you're shaking," exclaimed Rust, in concern. "Oh, I--what
did I say? Forgive me--"

"Rust, I am no more worth loving and fighting for than your Nell."

"What!" he ejaculated.

"I have not told you the truth," she said, swiftly. "I have let you believe
a lie. . . . I shall never marry Glenn. I broke my engagement to him."

Slowly Rust sank back upon the pillow, his large luminous eyes piercingly
fixed upon her, as if he would read her soul.

"I went West--yes--" continued Carley. "But it was selfishly. I wanted
Glenn to come back here. . . . He had suffered as you have. He nearly died.
But he fought--he fought--Oh! he went through hell! And after a long, slow,
horrible struggle he began to mend. He worked. He went to raising hogs. He
lived alone. He worked harder and harder. . . . The West and his work saved
him, body and soul . . . . He had learned to love both the West and his
work. I did not blame him. But I could not live out there. He needed me.
But I was too little--too selfish. I could not marry him. I gave him up.
. . . I left--him--alone!"

Carley shrank under the scorn in Rust's eyes.

"And there's another man," he said, "a clean, straight, unscarred fellow
who wouldn't fight!"

"Oh, no-I--I swear there's not," whispered Carley.

"You, too," he replied, thickly. Then slowly he turned that worn dark face
to the wall. His frail breast heaved. And his lean hand made her a slight
gesture of dismissal, significant and imperious.

Carley fled. She could scarcely see to find the car. All her internal being
seemed convulsed, and a deadly faintness made her sick and cold.

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."

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