The Call of the Canyon by Zane Grey (readnow .txt) 📖

coals. “You must be careful not to catch cold out here. The altitude makes a cold dangerous. And that gown is no protection.”

“Glenn, one chair used to be enough for us,” she said, archly, standing beside him.

But he did not respond to her hint, and, a little affronted, she accepted the proffered chair. Then he began to ask questions rapidly. He was eager for news from home—from his people—from old friends. However he did not inquire of Carley about her friends. She talked unremittingly for an hour, before she satisfied his hunger. But when her turn came to ask questions she found him reticent.

He had fallen upon rather hard days at first out here in the West; then his health had begun to improve; and as soon as he was able to work his condition rapidly changed for the better; and now he was getting along pretty well. Carley felt hurt at his apparent disinclination to confide in her. The strong cast of his face, as if it had been chiseled in bronze; the stern set of his lips and the jaw that protruded lean and square cut; the quiet masked light of his eyes; the coarse roughness of his brown hands, mute evidence of strenuous labors—these all gave a different impression from his brief remarks about himself. Lastly there was a little gray in the light-brown hair over his temples. Glenn was only twenty-seven, yet he looked ten years older. Studying him so, with the memory of earlier years in her mind, she was forced to admit that she liked him infinitely more as he was now. He seemed proven. Something had made him a man. Had it been his love for her, or the army service, or the war in France, or the struggle for life and health afterwards? Or had it been this rugged, uncouth West? Carley felt insidious jealousy of this last possibility. She feared this West. She was going to hate it. She had womanly intuition enough to see in Flo Hutter a girl somehow to be reckoned with. Still, Carley would not acknowledge to herself that his simple, unsophisticated Western girl could possibly be a rival. Carley did not need to consider the fact that she had been spoiled by the attention of men. It was not her vanity that precluded Flo Hutter as a rival.

Gradually the conversation drew to a lapse, and it suited Carley to let it be so. She watched Glenn as he gazed thoughtfully into the amber depths of the fire. What was going on in his mind? Carley's old perplexity suddenly had rebirth. And with it came an unfamiliar fear which she could not smother. Every moment that she sat there beside Glenn she was realizing more and more a yearning, passionate love for him. The unmistakable manifestation of his joy at sight of her, the strong, almost rude expression of his love, had called to some responsive, but hitherto unplumbed deeps of her. If it had not been for these undeniable facts Carley would have been panic-stricken. They reassured her, yet only made her state of mind more dissatisfied.

“Carley, do you still go in for dancing?” Glenn asked, presently, with his thoughtful eyes turning to her.

“Of course. I like dancing, and it's about all the exercise I get,” she replied.

“Have the dances changed—again?”

“It's the music, perhaps, that changes the dancing. Jazz is becoming popular. And about all the crowd dances now is an infinite variation of fox-trot.”

“No waltzing?”

“I don't believe I waltzed once this winter.”

“Jazz? That's a sort of tinpanning, jiggly stuff, isn't it?”

“Glenn, it's the fever of the public pulse,” replied Carley. “The graceful waltz, like the stately minuet, flourished back in the days when people rested rather than raced.”

“More's the pity,” said Glenn. Then after a moment, in which his gaze returned to the fire, he inquired rather too casually, “Does Morrison still chase after you?”

“Glenn, I'm neither old—nor married,” she replied, laughing.

“No, that's true. But if you were married it wouldn't make any difference to Morrison.”

Carley could not detect bitterness or jealousy in his voice. She would not have been averse to hearing either. She gathered from his remark, however, that he was going to be harder than ever to understand. What had she said or done to make him retreat within himself, aloof, impersonal, unfamiliar? He did not impress her as loverlike. What irony of fate was this that held her there yearning for his kisses and caresses as never before, while he watched the fire, and talked as to a mere acquaintance, and seemed sad and far away? Or did she merely imagine that? Only one thing could she be sure of at that moment, and it was that pride would never be her ally.

“Glenn, look here,” she said, sliding her chair close to his and holding out her left hand, slim and white, with its glittering diamond on the third finger.

He took her hand in his and pressed it, and smiled at her. “Yes, Carley, it's a beautiful, soft little hand. But I think I'd like it better if it were strong and brown, and coarse on the inside—from useful work.”

“Like Flo Hutter's?” queried Carley.

“Yes.”

Carley looked proudly into his eyes. “People are born in different stations. I respect your little Western friend, Glenn, but could I wash and sweep, milk cows and chop wood, and all that sort of thing?”

“I suppose you couldn't,” he admitted, with a blunt little laugh.

“Would you want me to?” she asked.

“Well, that's hard to say,” he replied, knitting his brows. “I hardly know. I think it depends on you.... But if you did do such work wouldn't you be happier?”

“Happier! Why Glenn, I'd be miserable!... But listen. It wasn't my beautiful and useless hand I wanted you to see. It was my engagement ring.”

“Oh!—Well?” he went on, slowly.

“I've never had it off since you left New York,” she said, softly. “You gave it to me four years ago. Do you remember? It was on my twenty-second birthday. You said it would take two months' salary to pay the bill.”

“It sure did,” he retorted, with a hint of humor.

“Glenn, during the war it was not so—so very hard to wear this ring as an engagement ring should be worn,” said Carley, growing more earnest. “But after the war—especially after your departure West it was terribly hard to be true to the significance of this betrothal ring. There was a let-down in all women. Oh, no one need tell me! There was. And men were affected by that and the chaotic condition of the times. New York was wild during the year of your absence. Prohibition was a joke.—Well, I gadded, danced, dressed, drank, smoked, motored, just the same as the other women in our crowd. Something drove me to. I never rested. Excitement seemed to be happiness—Glenn, I am not making any plea to excuse all that. But I want you to know—how under trying circumstances—I was absolutely true to you. Understand me. I mean true as regards love. Through it all I loved you just the