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Page 73
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.
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