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Page 80
She devoured books on the war with a morbid curiosity and hope that she
would find some illuminating truth as to the uselessness of sacrificing
young men in the glory and prime of their lives. To her war appeared a
matter of human nature rather than politics. Hate really was an effect of
war. In her judgment future wars could be avoided only in two ways--by men
becoming honest and just or by women refusing to have children to be
sacrificed. As there seemed no indication whatever of the former, she
wondered how soon all women of all races would meet on a common height,
with the mounting spirit that consumed her own heart. Such time must come.
She granted every argument for war and flung against it one ringing
passionate truth--agony of mangled soldiers and agony of women and children.
There was no justification for offensive war. It was monstrous and hideous.
If nature and evolution proved the absolute need of strife, war, blood, and
death in the progress of animal and man toward perfection, then it would be
better to abandon this Christless code and let the race of man die out.
All through these weeks she longed for a letter from Glenn. But it did not
come. Had he finally roused to the sweetness and worth and love of the
western girl, Flo Hutter? Carley knew absolutely, through both intelligence
and intuition, that Glenn Kilbourne would never love Flo. Yet such was her
intensity and stress at times, especially in the darkness of waking hours,
that jealousy overcame her and insidiously worked its havoc. Peace and a
strange kind of joy came to her in dreams of her walks and rides and climbs
in Arizona, of the lonely canyon where it always seemed afternoon, of the
tremendous colored vastness of that Painted Desert. But she resisted these
dreams now because when she awoke from them she suffered such a yearning
that it became unbearable. Then she knew the feeling of the loneliness and
solitude of the hills. Then she knew the sweetness of the murmur of falling
water, the wind in the pines, the song of birds, the white radiance of the
stars, the break of day and its gold-flushed close. But she had not yet
divined their meaning. It was not all love for Glenn Kilbourne. Had city
life palled upon her solely because of the absence of her lover? So Carley
plodded on, like one groping in the night, fighting shadows.
One day she received a card from an old schoolmate, a girl who had married
out of Carley's set, and had been ostracized. She was living down on Long
Island, at a little country place named Wading River. Her husband was an
electrician--something of an inventor. He worked hard. A baby boy had just
come to them. Would not Carley run down on the train to see the youngster?
That was a strong and trenchant call. Carley went. She found indeed a
country village, and on the outskirts of it a little cottage that must have
been pretty in summer, when the green was on vines and trees. Her old
schoolmate was rosy, plump, bright-eyed, and happy. She saw in Carley no
change--a fact that somehow rebounded sweetly on Carley's consciousness.
Elsie prattled of herself and her husband and how they had worked to earn
this little home, and then the baby.
When Carley saw the adorable dark-eyed, pink-toed, curly-fisted baby she
understood Elsie's happiness and reveled in it. When she felt the soft,
warm, living little body in her arms, against her breast, then she absorbed
some incalculable and mysterious strength. What were the trivial, sordid,
and selfish feelings that kept her in tumult compared to this welling
emotion? Had she the secret in her arms? Babies and Carley had never become
closely acquainted in those infrequent meetings that were usually the
result of chance. But Elsie's baby nestled to her breast and cooed to her
and clung to her finger. When at length the youngster was laid in his crib
it seemed to Carley that the fragrance and the soul of him remained with
her.
"A real American boy!" she murmured.
"You can just bet he is," replied Elsie. "Carley, you ought to see his dad."
"I'd like to meet him," said Carley, thoughtfully. "Elsie, was he in the
service?"
"Yes. He was on one of the navy transports that took munitions to France.
Think of me, carrying this baby, with my husband on a boat full of
explosives and with German submarines roaming the ocean! Oh, it was
horrible!"
"But he came back, and now all's well with you," said Carley, with a smile
of earnestness. "I'm very glad, Elsie."
"Yes--but I shudder when I think of a possible war in the future. I'm going
to raise boys, and girls, too, I hope--and the thought of war is
torturing."
Carley found her return train somewhat late, and she took advantage of the
delay to walk out to the wooded headlands above the Sound.
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