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Page 5
So, Carley, try to understand me, or at least be kind. You know they came
very near writing, "Gone west!" after my name, and considering that, this
"Out West" signifies for me a very fortunate difference. A tremendous
difference! For the present I'll let well enough alone.
Adios. Write soon. Love from
GLEN
Carley's second reaction to the letter was a sudden upflashing desire to
see her lover--to go out West and find him. Impulses with her were rather
rare and inhibited, but this one made her tremble. If Glenn was well again
he must have vastly changed from the moody, stone-faced, and haunted-eyed
man who had so worried and distressed her. He had embarrassed her, too, for
sometimes, in her home, meeting young men there who had not gone into the
service, he had seemed to retreat into himself, singularly aloof, as if his
world was not theirs.
Again, with eager eyes and quivering lips, she read the letter. It
contained words that lifted her heart. Her starved love greedily absorbed
them. In them she had excuse for any resolve that might bring Glenn closer
to her. And she pondered over this longing to go to him.
Carley had the means to come and go and live as she liked. She did not
remember her father, who had died when she was a child. Her mother had left
her in the care of a sister, and before the war they had divided their time
between New York and Europe, the Adirondacks and Florida, Carley had gone
in for Red Cross and relief work with more of sincerity than most of her
set. But she was really not used to making any decision as definite and
important as that of going out West alone. She had never been farther west
than Jersey City; and her conception of the West was a hazy one of vast
plains and rough mountains, squalid towns, cattle herds, and uncouth
ill-clad men.
So she carried the letter to her aunt, a rather slight woman with a kindly
face and shrewd eyes, and who appeared somewhat given to old-fashioned
garments.
"Aunt Mary, here's a letter from Glenn," said Carley. "It's more of a
stumper than usual. Please read it."
"Dear me! You look upset," replied the aunt, mildly, and, adjusting her
spectacles, she took the letter.
Carley waited impatiently for the perusal, conscious of inward forces
coming more and more to the aid of her impulse to go West. Her aunt paused
once to murmur how glad she was that Glenn had gotten well. Then she read
on to the close.
"Carley, that's a fine letter," she said, fervently. "Do you see through
it?"
"No, I don't," replied Carley. "That's why I asked you to read it."
"Do you still love Glenn as you used to before--"
"Why, Aunt Mary!" exclaimed Carley, in surprise.
"Excuse me, Carley, if I'm blunt. But the fact is young women of modern
times are very different from my kind when I was a girl. You haven't acted
as though you pined for Glenn. You gad around almost the same as ever."
"What's a girl to do?" protested Carley.
"You are twenty-six years old, Carley," retorted Aunt Mary.
"Suppose I am. I'm as young--as I ever was."
"Well, let's not argue about modern girls and modern times. We never get
anywhere," returned her aunt, kindly. "But I can tell you something of what
Glenn Kilbourne means in that letter--if you want to hear it."
"I do--indeed."
"The war did something horrible to Glenn aside from wrecking his health.
Shell-shock, they said! I don't understand that. Out of his mind, they
said! But that never was true. Glenn was as sane as I am, and, my dear,
that's pretty sane, I'll have you remember. But he must have suffered some
terrible blight to his spirit--some blunting of his soul. For months after
he returned he walked as one in a trance. Then came a change. He grew
restless. Perhaps that change was for the better. At least it showed he'd
roused. Glenn saw you and your friends and the life you lead, and all the
present, with eyes from which the scales had dropped. He saw what was
wrong. He never said so to me, but I knew it. It wasn't only to get well
that he went West. It was to get away. . . . And, Carley Burch, if your
happiness depends on him you had better be up and doing--or you'll lose
him!"
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