The Call of the Canyon Read online

  CHAPTER VIII

  At Flagstaff, where Carley arrived a few minutes before train time, shewas too busily engaged with tickets and baggage to think of herselfor of the significance of leaving Arizona. But as she walked into thePullman she overheard a passenger remark, "Regular old Arizona sunset,"and that shook her heart. Suddenly she realized she had come to love thecolorful sunsets, to watch and wait for them. And bitterly she thoughthow 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 depressingshock. She had burned her last bridge behind her. Had she unconsciouslyhoped for some incredible reversion of Glenn's mind or of her own? Asense of irreparable loss flooded over her--the first check to shame andhumiliation.

  From her window she looked out to the southwest. Somewhere across thecedar and pine-greened uplands lay Oak Creek Canyon, going to sleep inits purple and gold shadows of sunset. Banks of broken clouds hung tothe horizon, like continents and islands and reefs set in a turquoisesea. Shafts of sunlight streaked down through creamy-edged andpurple-centered clouds. Vast flare of gold dominated the sunsetbackground.

  When the train rounded a curve Carley's strained vision became filledwith the upheaved bulk of the San Francisco Mountains. Ragged graygrass slopes and green forests on end, and black fringed sky lines, allpointed 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 sculpturedsublimity. Every day for two months and more Carley had watched thesepeaks, at all hours, in every mood; and they had unconsciously become apart of her thought. The train was relentlessly whirling her eastward.Soon they must become a memory. Tears blurred her sight. Poignant regretseemed added to the anguish she was suffering. Why had she not learnedsooner to see the glory of the mountains, to appreciate the beauty andsolitude? Why had she not understood herself?

  The next day through New Mexico she followed magnificent ranges andvalleys--so different from the country she had seen coming West--sosupremely beautiful that she wondered if she had only acquired theharvest of a seeing eye.

  But it was at sunset of the following day, when the train was speedingdown the continental slope of prairie land beyond the Rockies, that theWest took its ruthless revenge.

  Masses of strange cloud and singular light upon the green prairie, and aluminosity in the sky, drew Carley to the platform of her car, which wasthe last of the train. There she stood, gripping the iron gate, feelingthe 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 someunknown source. For the sun was hidden. The clouds just aboveCarley hung low, and they were like thick, heavy smoke, mushrooming,coalescing, forming and massing, of strange yellow cast of nature. Itshaded westward into heliotrope and this into a purple so royal, somatchless and rare that Carley understood why the purple of the heavenscould never be reproduced in paint. Here the cloud mass thinned andpaled, and a tint of rose began to flush the billowy, flowery, creamywhite. Then came the surpassing splendor of this cloud pageant--a vastcanopy of shell pink, a sun-fired surface like an opal sea, rippledand webbed, with the exquisite texture of an Oriental fabric, pure,delicate, lovely--as no work of human hands could be. It mirrored allthe warm, pearly tints of the inside whorl of the tropic nautilus. Andit ended abruptly, a rounded depth of bank, on a broad stream of clearsky, intensely blue, transparently blue, as if through the lambentdepths shone the infinite firmament. The lower edge of this streamtook the golden lightning of the sunset and was notched for all itshorizon-long length by the wondrous white glistening-peaked range of theRockies. Far to the north, standing aloof from the range, loomed up thegrand black bulk and noble white dome of Pikes Peak.

  Carley watched the sunset transfiguration of cloud and sky and mountainuntil all were cold and gray. And then she returned to her seat,thoughtful and sad, feeling that the West had mockingly flung at her oneof its transient moments of loveliness.

  Nor had the West wholly finished with her. Next day the mellow gold ofthe Kansas wheat fields, endless and boundless as a sunny sea, rich,waving in the wind, stretched away before her aching eyes for hoursand hours. Here was the promise fulfilled, the bountiful harvest of theland, the strength of the West. The great middle state had a heart ofgold.

  East of Chicago Carley began to feel that the long days and nights ofriding, the ceaseless turning of the wheels, the constant and wearingstress of emotion, had removed her an immeasurable distance of miles andtime and feeling from the scene of her catastrophe. Many days seemed tohave passed. Many had been the hours of her bitter regret and anguish.

  Indiana and Ohio, with their green pastoral farms, and numberlessvillages, and thriving cities, denoted a country far removed anddifferent from the West, and an approach to the populous East. Carleyfelt like a wanderer coming home. She was restlessly and impatientlyglad. But her weariness of body and mind, and the close atmosphere ofthe car, rendered her extreme discomfort. Summer had laid its hot handon the low country east of the Mississippi.

  Carley had wired her aunt and two of her intimate friends to meet her atthe Grand Central Station. This reunion soon to come affected Carleyin recurrent emotions of relief, gladness, and shame. She did not sleepwell, and arose early, and when the train reached Albany she felt thatshe could hardly endure the tedious hours. The majestic Hudson and thepalatial mansions on the wooded bluffs proclaimed to Carley that she wasback in the East. How long a time seemed to have passed! Either she wasnot the same or the aspect of everything had changed. But she believedthat as soon as she got over the ordeal of meeting her friends, and washome again, she would soon see things rationally.

  At last the train sheered away from the broad Hudson and enteredthe environs of New York. Carley sat perfectly still, to all outwardappearances a calm, superbly-poised New York woman returning home,but inwardly raging with contending tides. In her own sight she was adisgraceful failure, a prodigal sneaking back to the ease and protectionof loyal friends who did not know her truly. Every familiar landmarkin the approach to the city gave her a thrill, yet a vague unsatisfiedsomething lingered after each sensation.

  Then the train with rush and roar crossed the Harlem River to enter NewYork City. As one waking from a dream Carley saw the blocks and squaresof gray apartment houses and red buildings, the miles of roofs andchimneys, the long hot glaring streets full of playing children andcars. Then above the roar of the train sounded the high notes of ahurdy-gurdy. Indeed she was home. Next to startle her was the darktunnel, and then the slowing of the train to a stop. As she walkedbehind a porter up the long incline toward the station gate her legsseemed 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, andbeside her the sweet thin one of Beatrice Lovell. As they saw her howquick the change from expectancy to joy! It seemed they all rushed uponher, and embraced her, and exclaimed over her together. Carley neverrecalled what she said. But her heart was full.

  "Oh, how perfectly stunning you look!" cried Eleanor, backing away fromCarley 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 Carleyquailed.

  "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 gethome--to see you all... But--my--my heart is broken!"

  A little shocked silence ensued, then Carley found herself being ledacross the lower level and up the wide stairway. As she mounted to thevast-domed cathedral-like chamber of the station a strange sensationpierced her with a pang. Not the old thrill
of leaving New York orreturning! Nor was it the welcome sight of the hurrying, well-dressedthrong of travelers and commuters, nor the stately beauty of thestation. Carley shut her eyes, and then she knew. The dim light of vastspace above, the looming gray walls, shadowy with tracery of figures,the lofty dome like the blue sky, brought back to her the walls of OakCreek Canyon and the great caverns under the ramparts. As suddenly asshe had shut her eyes Carley opened them to face her friends.

  "Let me get it over--quickly," she burst out, with hot blood surgingto 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 overphysically--and did something to my soul--God knows what.... And it hassaved Glenn. Oh! he is wonderful! You would never know him.... For longI had not the courage to tell him I came to bring him back East. I keptputting it off. And I rode, I climbed, I camped, I lived outdoors. Atfirst it nearly killed me. Then it grew bearable, and easier, until Iforgot. I wouldn't be honest if I didn't admit now that somehow I had awonderful time, in spite of all.... Glenn's business is raising hogs. Hehas a hog ranch. Doesn't it sound sordid? But things are not alwayswhat they sound--or seem. Glenn is absorbed in his work. I hated it--Iexpected to ridicule it. But I ended by infinitely respecting him. Ilearned through his hog-raising the real nobility of work.... Well, atlast I found courage to ask him when he was coming back to New York. Hesaid 'never!'... I realized then my blindness, my selfishness. I couldnot be his wife and live there. I could not. I was too small, toomiserable, too comfort-loving--too spoiled. And all the time he knewthis--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--andnever to mention it to me--so I can forget."

  The tender unspoken sympathy of women who loved her proved comfortingin that trying hour. With the confession ruthlessly made the hardcompression in Carley's breast subsided, and her eyes cleared of ahateful dimness. When they reached the taxi stand outside the stationCarley felt a rush of hot devitalized air from the street. She seemednot 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 youEasterners know the real significance of words."

  Then they entered a taxi, to be whisked away apparently through alabyrinthine maze of cars and streets, where pedestrians had to runand jump for their lives. A congestion of traffic at Fifth Avenue andForty-second Street halted their taxi for a few moments, and here inthe thick of it Carley had full assurance that she was back in themetropolis. Her sore heart eased somewhat at sight of the streams ofpeople passing to and fro. How they rushed! Where were they going? Whatwas their story? And all the while her aunt held her hand, and Beatriceand Eleanor talked as fast as their tongues could wag. Then the taxiclattered on up the Avenue, to turn down a side street and presentlystop at Carley's home. It was a modest three-story brown-stone house.Carley had been so benumbed by sensations that she did not imagineshe could experience a new one. But peering out of the taxi, she gazeddubiously 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 sucha practical remark from Carley. How were they to divine that thisbrownish-red stone was the color of desert rocks and canyon walls?

  In a few more moments Carley was inside the house, feeling a sense ofprotection in the familiar rooms that had been her home for seventeenyears. Once in the sanctity of her room, which was exactly as she hadleft 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 toharmonize with the image of her that haunted the mirror.

  "Now!" she whispered low. "It's done. I'm home. The old life--or a newlife? How to meet either. Now!"

  Thus she challenged her spirit. And her intelligence rang at her theimperative necessity for action, for excitement, for effort that left notime for rest or memory or wakefulness. She accepted the issue. She wasglad of the stern fight ahead of her. She set her will and steeled herheart with all the pride and vanity and fury of a woman who had beendefeated but who scorned defeat. She was what birth and breeding andcircumstance had made her. She would seek what the old life held.

  What with unpacking and chatting and telephoning and lunching, the daysoon passed. Carley went to dinner with friends and later to aroof garden. The color and light, the gayety and music, the newsof acquaintances, the humor of the actors--all, in fact, except theunaccustomed heat and noise, were most welcome and diverting. That nightshe slept the sleep of weariness.

  Awakening early, she inaugurated a habit of getting up at once, insteadof lolling in bed, and breakfasting there, and reading her mail, as hadbeen her wont before going West. Then she went over business matterswith her aunt, called on her lawyer and banker, took lunch with RoseMaynard, and spent the afternoon shopping. Strong as she was, theunaccustomed heat and the hard pavements and the jostle of shoppers andthe continual rush of sensations wore her out so completely that she didnot 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 intoWestchester County, finding some relief from the stiffing heat. But sheseemed to look at the dusty trees and the worn greens without reallyseeing them. In the afternoon she called on friends, and had dinner athome with her aunt, and then went to a theatre. The musical comedy wasgood, but the almost unbearable heat and the vitiated air spoiled herenjoyment. That night upon arriving home at midnight she stepped out ofthe taxi, and involuntarily, without thought, looked up to see thestars. But there were no stars. A murky yellow-tinged blackness hung lowover the city. Carley recollected that stars, and sunrises and sunsets,and untainted air, and silence were not for city dwellers. She checkedany continuation of the thought.

  A few days sufficed to swing her into the old life. Many of Carley'sfriends had neither the leisure nor the means to go away from the cityduring the summer. Some there were who might have afforded that if theyhad seen fit to live in less showy apartments, or to dispense withcars. Other of her best friends were on their summer outings in theAdirondacks. Carley decided to go with her aunt to Lake Placid about thefirst of August. Meanwhile she would keep going and doing.

  She had been a week in town before Morrison telephoned her and addedhis 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 hadadopted. 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 occurredto her that she resented the idea of going to the Plaza. She did notdwell on the reason why.

  When Carley went into the reception room of the Plaza that nightMorrison was waiting for her--the same slim, fastidious, elegant,sallow-faced Morrison whose image she had in mind, yet somehowdifferent. He had what Carley called the New York masculine face, blaseand lined, with eyes that gleamed, yet had no fire. But at sight of herhis face lighted up.

  "By Jove! but you've come back a peach!" he exclaimed, clasping herextended hand. "Eleanor told me you looked great. It's worth missing youto see you like this."

  "Thanks, Larry," she replied. "I must look pretty well to win thatcompliment from you. And how are you feeling? You don't seem robust fora 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 upin the mountains next month. Let's go down to dinner."

  They descended the spiral stairway to the grillroom, where an orchestrawas playing jazz, and dancers gyrated on a polished floor, and diners inevening 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 toCarley, gave her closer scrutiny. Carley knew then that he had becomeacquainted with the fact of her broken engagement. It was a relief notto need to tell him.

  "How's that big stiff, Kilbourne?" asked Morrison, suddenly. "Is it truehe got well?"

  "Oh--yes! He's fine," replied Carley with eyes cast down. A hot knotseemed to form deep within her and threatened to break and steal alongher 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 hadnot, however, been prepared for the beat of her pulse, the quiver of hernerves, the uprising of hot resentment at the mere mention of Kilbourne.It was only natural that Glenn's former rivals should speak of him, andperhaps disparagingly. But from this man Carley could not bear even acasual reference. Morrison had escaped the army service. He had beengiven a high-salaried post at the ship-yards--the duties of which, ifthere had been any, he performed wherever he happened to be. Morrison'sfather had made a fortune in leather during the war. And Carleyremembered Glenn telling her he had seen two whole blocks in Parispiled twenty feet deep with leather army goods that were never used andprobably had never been intended to be used. Morrison represented thenot inconsiderable number of young men in New York who had gained atthe expense of the valiant legion who had lost. But what had Morrisongained? Carley raised her eyes to gaze steadily at him. He lookedwell-fed, indolent, rich, effete, and supremely self-satisfied. Shecould not see that he had gained anything. She would rather have been acrippled ruined soldier.

  "Larry, I fear gain and loss are mere words," she said. "The thing thatcounts with me is what you are."

  He stared in well-bred surprise, and presently talked of a new dancewhich had lately come into vogue. And from that he passed on to gossipof the theatres. Once between courses of the dinner he asked Carley todance, and she complied. The music would have stimulated an Egyptianmummy, Carley thought, and the subdued rose lights, the murmur of gayvoices, the glide and grace and distortion of the dancers, wereexciting and pleasurable. Morrison had the suppleness and skill of adancing-master. But he held Carley too tightly, and so she told him, andadded, "I imbibed some fresh pure air while I was out West--somethingyou 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 tanand appetite, and something of her splendid resistance to the draggingheat and late hours. Seldom was she without some of her friends. Sheaccepted almost any kind of an invitation, and went even to ConeyIsland, to baseball games, to the motion pictures, which were threeforms of amusement not customary with her. At Coney Island, which shevisited with two of her younger girl friends, she had the best timesince her arrival home. What had put her in accord with ordinary people?The baseball games, likewise pleased her. The running of the players andthe screaming of the spectators amused and excited her. But she hatedthe motion pictures with their salacious and absurd misrepresentationsof life, in some cases capably acted by skillful actors, and in others asilly series of scenes featuring some doll-faced girl.

  But she refused to go horseback riding in Central Park. She refusedto go to the Plaza. And these refusals she made deliberately, withoutasking herself why.

  On August 1st she accompanied her aunt and several friends to LakePlacid, where they established themselves at a hotel. How welcome toCarley's strained eyes were the green of mountains, the soft gleam ofamber water! How sweet and refreshing a breath of cool pure air! Thechange from New York's glare and heat and dirt, and iron-red insulatingwalls, and thronging millions of people, and ceaseless roar and rush,was tremendously relieving to Carley. She had burned the candle at bothends. 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. Andwhen she rested she could not always converse, or read, or write.

  For the most part her days held variety and pleasure. The place wasbeautiful, the weather pleasant, the people congenial. She motored overthe forest roads, she canoed along the margin of the lake, she playedgolf and tennis. She wore exquisite gowns to dinner and danced duringthe evenings. But she seldom walked anywhere on the trails and, neveralone, and she never climbed the mountains and never rode a horse.

  Morrison arrived and added his attentions to those of other men. Carleyneither accepted nor repelled them. She favored the association withmarried couples and older people, and rather shunned the pairing offpeculiar to vacationists at summer hotels. She had always loved to playand romp with children, but here she found herself growing to avoidthem, somehow hurt by sound of pattering feet and joyous laughter. Shefilled the days as best she could, and usually earned quick slumberat night. She staked all on present occupation and the truth of flyingtime.