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had shut her eyes Carley opened them to face her friends.
"Let me get it over-quickly," she burst out, with hot blood surging to 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 over physically and did something to
my soul God knows what... . And it has saved Glenn. Oh! he is wonderful! You
would never know him... . For long I had not the courage to tell him I came to
bring him back East. I kept putting it off. And I rode, I climbed, I camped, I
lived outdoors. At first it nearly killed me. Then it grew bearable, and
easier, until I forgot. I wouldn't be honest if I didn't admit now that
somehow I had a wonderful time, in spite of all... . Glenn's business is
raising hogs. He has a hog ranch. Doesn't it sound sordid? But things are not
always what they sound or seem. Glenn is absorbed in his work. I hated it I
expected to ridicule it. But I ended by infinitely respecting him. I learned
through his hog-raising the real nobility of work... . Well, at last I found
courage to ask him when he was coming back to New York. He said 'never!' ... I
realized then my blindness, my selfishness. I could not be his wife and live
there. I could not. I was too small, too miserable, too comfort-loving too
spoiled. And all the time he knew this 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 and never to mention it to me so I can forget."
The tender unspoken sympathy of women who loved her proved comforting in
that trying hour. With the confession ruthlessly made the hard compression in
Carley's breast subsided, and her eyes cleared of a hateful dimness. When they
reached the taxi stand outside the station Carley felt a rush of hot
devitalized air from the street. She seemed not 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 you
Easterners know the real significance of words."
Then they entered a taxi, to be whisked away apparently through a
labyrinthine maze of cars and streets, where pedestrians had to run and jump
for their lives. A congestion of traffic at Fifth Avenue and Forty-second
Street halted their taxi for a few moments, and here in the thick of it Carley
had full assurance that she was back in the metropolis. Her sore heart eased
somewhat at sight of the streams of people passing to and fro. How they
rushed! Where were they going? What was their story? And all the while her
aunt held her hand, and Beatrice and Eleanor talked as fast as their tongues
could wag. Then the taxi clattered on up the Avenue, to turn down a side
street and presently stop at Carley's home. It was a modest three-story
brown-stone house. Carley had been so benumbed by sensations that she did not
imagine she could experience a new one. But peering out of the taxi, she gazed
dubiously at the brownish-red stone steps and front of her home.
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"I'm going to have it painted," she muttered, as if to herself.
Her aunt and her friends laughed, glad and relieved to hear such a practical
remark from Carley. How were they to divine that this brownish-red stone was
the color of desert rocks and canyon walls?
In a few more moments Carley was inside the house, feeling a sense of
protection in the familiar rooms that had been her home for seventeen years.
Once in the sanctity of her room, which was exactly as she had left it, her
first action was to look n the mirror at her weary, dusty, heated face.
Neither the brownness of it nor the shadow appeared to harmonize with the
image of her that haunted the mirror.
"Now!" she whispered low. "It's done. I'm home. The old life or a new life?
How to meet either. Now!"
Thus she challenged her spirit. And her intelligence rang at her the
imperative necessity for action, for excitement, for effort that left no time
for rest or memory or wakefulness. She accepted the issue. She was glad of the
stern fight ahead of her. She set her will and steeled her heart with all the
pride and vanity and fury of a woman who had been defeated but Who scorned
defeat. She was what birth and breeding and circumstance had made her. She
would seek what the old life held.
What with unpacking and chatting and telephoning and lunching, the day soon
passed. Carley went to dinner with friends and later to a roof garden. The
color and light, the gayety and music, the news of acquaintances, the humor of
the actors all, in fact, except the unaccustomed heat and noise, were most
welcome and diverting. That night she slept the sleep of weariness.
Awakening early, she inaugurated a habit of getting up at once, instead of
lolling in bed, and breakfasting there, and reading her mail, as had been her
wont before going West. Then she went over business matters with her aunt,
called on her lawyer and banker, took lunch with Rose Maynard, and spent the
afternoon shopping. Strong as she was, the unaccustomed heat and the hard
pavements and the jostle of shoppers and the continual rush of sensations wore
her out so completely that she did not 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 into
Westchester County, finding some relief from the seemed to look at the dusty
trees and the worn greens without really seeing them. In the afternoon she
called on friends, and had dinner at home with her aunt, and then went to a
theatre. The musical comedy was good, but the almost unbearable heat and the
vitiated air spoiled her enjoyment. That night upon arriving home at midnight
she stepped out of the taxi, and involuntarily, without thought, looked up to
see the stars. But there were no stars. A murky yellow-tinged blackness hung
low over the city. Carley recollected that stars, and sunrises and sunsets,
and untainted air, and silence were not for city dwellers. She checked any
continuation of the thought.
A few days sufficed to swing her into the old life. Many of Carley's friends
had neither the leisure nor the means to go away from the city during the
summer. Some there were who might have afforded that if they had seen fit to
live in less showy apartments, or to dispense with cars. Other of her best
friends were on their summer outings in the Adirondacks. Carley decided to go
with her aunt to Lake Placid about the first of August. Meanwhile she would
keep going and doing.
She had been a week in town before Morrison telephoned her and added his
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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 had adopted. So she made an [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ] - zanotowane.pl
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