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Page 59
Whither had faded the vulgarity and ignominy she had attached to Glenn's
raising of hogs? Gone--like other miasmas of her narrow mind! Partly she
understood him now. She shirked consideration of his sacrifice to his
country. That must wait. But she thought of his work, and the more she
thought the less she wondered.
First he had labored with his hands. What infinite meaning lay unfolding to
her vision! Somewhere out of it all came the conception that man was
intended to earn his bread by the sweat of his brow. But there was more to
it than that. By that toil and sweat, by the friction of horny palms, by
the expansion and contraction of muscle, by the acceleration of blood,
something great and enduring, something physical and spiritual, came to a
man. She understood then why she would have wanted to surrender herself to
a man made manly by toil; she understood how a woman instinctively leaned
toward the protection of a man who had used his hands--who had strength and
red blood and virility who could fight like the progenitors of the race.
Any toil was splendid that served this end for any man. It all went back to
the survival of the fittest. And suddenly Carley thought of Morrison. He
could dance and dangle attendance upon her, and amuse her--but how would he
have acquitted himself in a moment of peril? She had her doubts. Most
assuredly he could not have beaten down for her a ruffian like Haze Ruff.
What then should be the significance of a man for a woman?
Carley's querying and answering mind reverted to Glenn. He had found a
secret in this seeking for something through the labor of hands. All
development of body must come through exercise of muscles. The virility of
cell in tissue and bone depended upon that. Thus he had found in toil the
pleasure and reward athletes had in their desultory training. But when a
man learned this secret the need of work must become permanent. Did this
explain the law of the Persians that every man was required to sweat every
day?
Carley tried to picture to herself Glenn's attitude of mind when he had
first gone to work here in the West. Resolutely she now denied her
shrinking, cowardly sensitiveness. She would go to the root of this matter,
if she had intelligence enough. Crippled, ruined in health, wrecked and
broken by an inexplicable war, soul-blighted by the heartless, callous
neglect of government and public, on the verge of madness at the
insupportable facts, he had yet been wonderful enough, true enough to himself
and God, to fight for life with the instinct of a man, to fight for his
mind with a noble and unquenchable faith. Alone indeed he had been alone!
And by some miracle beyond the power of understanding he had found day by
day in his painful efforts some hope and strength to go on. He could not
have had any illusions. For Glenn Kilbourne the health and happiness and
success most men held so dear must have seemed impossible. His slow, daily,
tragic, and terrible task must have been something he owed himself. Not for
Carley Burch! She like all the others had failed him. How Carley shuddered
in confession of that! Not for the country which had used him and cast him
off! Carley divined now, as if by a flash of lightning, the meaning of
Glenn's strange, cold, scornful, and aloof manner when he had encountered
young men of his station, as capable and as strong as he, who had escaped
the service of the army. For him these men did not exist. They were less
than nothing. They had waxed fat on lucrative jobs; they had basked in the
presence of girls whose brothers and lovers were in the trenches or on the
turbulent sea, exposed to the ceaseless dread and almost ceaseless toil of
war. If Glenn's spirit had lifted him to endurance of war for the sake of
others, how then could it fail him in a precious duty of fidelity to
himself? Carley could see him day by day toiling in his lonely canyon--
plodding to his lonely cabin. He had been playing the game--fighting it out
alone as surely he knew his brothers of like misfortune were fighting.
So Glenn Kilbourne loomed heroically in Carley's transfigured sight. He was
one of Carley's battle-scarred warriors. Out of his travail he had climbed
on stepping-stones of his dead self. Resurgam! That had been his
unquenchable cry. Who had heard it? Only the solitude of his lonely canyon,
only the waiting, dreaming, watching walls, only the silent midnight
shadows, only the white, blinking, passionless stars, only the wild
creatures of his haunts, only the moaning wind in the pines--only these had
been with him in his agony. How near were these things to God?
Carley's heart seemed full to bursting. Not another single moment could her
mounting love abide in a heart that held a double purpose. How bitter the
assurance that she had not come West to help him! It was self, self, all
self that had actuated her. Unworthy indeed was she of the love of this
man. Only a lifetime of devotion to him could acquit her in the eyes of her
better self. Sweetly and madly raced the thrill and tumult of her blood.
There must be only one outcome to her romance. Yet the next instant there
came a dull throbbing--an oppression which was pain--an impondering vague
thought of catastrophe. Only the fearfulness of love perhaps!
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