One afternoon, late in the fall, she motored out to a Long Island club where the last of the season"s golf was being enjoyed by some of her most intimate friends. Carley did not play. Aimlessly she walked around the grounds, finding the autumn colors subdued and drab, like her mind.
The air held a promise of early winter. She thought that she would go South before the cold came. Always trying to escape anything rigorous, hard, painful, or disagreeable! Later she returned to the clubhouse to find her party a.s.sembled on an inclosed porch, chatting and partaking of refreshment. Morrison was there. He had not taken kindly to her late habit of denying herself to him.
During a lull in the idle conversation Morrison addressed Carley pointedly. "Well, Carley, how"s your Arizona hog-raiser?" he queried, with a little gleam in his usually l.u.s.terless eyes.
"I have not heard lately," she replied, coldly.
The a.s.sembled company suddenly quieted with a portent inimical to their leisurely content of the moment. Carley felt them all looking at her, and underneath the exterior she preserved with extreme difficulty, there burned so fierce an anger that she seemed to have swelling veins of fire.
"Queer how Kilbourne went into raising hogs," observed Morrison. "Such a low-down sort of work, you know."
"He had no choice," replied Carley. "Glenn didn"t have a father who made tainted millions out of the war. He had to work. And I must differ with you about its being low-down. No honest work is that. It is idleness that is low down."
"But so foolish of Glenn when he might have married money," rejoined Morrison, sarcastcally.
"The honor of soldiers is beyond your ken, Mr. Morrison."
He flushed darkly and bit his lip.
"You women make a man sick with this rot about soldiers," he said, the gleam in his eye growing ugly. "A uniform goes to a woman"s head no matter what"s inside it. I don"t see where your vaunted honor of soldiers comes in considering how they accepted the let-down of women during and after the war."
"How could you see when you stayed comfortably at home?" retorted Carley.
"All I could see was women falling into soldiers" arms," he said, sullenly.
"Certainly. Could an American girl desire any greater happiness--or opportunity to prove her grat.i.tude?" flashed Carley, with proud uplift of head.
"It didn"t look like grat.i.tude to me," returned Morrison.
"Well, it was grat.i.tude," declared Carley, ringingly. "If women of America did throw themselves at soldiers it was not owing to the moral lapse of the day. It was woman"s instinct to save the race! Always, in every war, women have sacrificed themselves to the future. Not vile, but n.o.ble!... You insult both soldiers and women, Mr. Morrison. I wonder--did any American girls throw themselves at you?"
Morrison turned a dead white, and his mouth twisted to a distorted checking of speech, disagreeable to see.
"No, you were a slacker," went on Carley, with scathing scorn. "You let the other men go fight for American girls. Do you imagine one of them will ever marry you?... All your life, Mr. Morrison, you will be a marked man--outside the pale of friendship with real American men and the respect of real American girls."
Morrison leaped up, almost knocking the table over, and he glared at Carley as he gathered up his hat and cane. She turned her back upon him.
From that moment he ceased to exist for Carley. She never spoke to him again.
Next day Carley called upon her dearest friend, whom she had not seen for some time.
"Carley dear, you don"t look so very well," said Eleanor, after greetings had been exchanged.
"Oh, what does it matter how I look?" queried Carley, impatiently.
"You were so wonderful when you got home from Arizona."
"If I was wonderful and am now commonplace you can thank your old New York for it."
"Carley, don"t you care for New York any more?" asked Eleanor.
"Oh, New York is all right, I suppose. It"s I who am wrong."
"My dear, you puzzle me these days. You"ve changed. I"m sorry. I"m afraid you"re unhappy."
"Me? Oh, impossible! I"m in a seventh heaven," replied Carley, with a hard little laugh. "What "re you doing this afternoon? Let"s go out--riding--or somewhere."
"I"m expecting the dressmaker."
"Where are you going to-night?"
"Dinner and theater. It"s a party, or I"d ask you."
"What did you do yesterday and the day before, and the days before that?"
Eleanor laughed indulgently, and acquainted Carley with a record of her social wanderings during the last few days.
"The same old things--over and over again! Eleanor don"t you get sick of it?" queried Carley.
"Oh yes, to tell the truth," returned Eleanor, thoughtfully. "But there"s nothing else to do."
"Eleanor, I"m no better than you," said Carley, with disdain. "I"m as useless and idle. But I"m beginning to see myself--and you--and all this rotten crowd of ours. We"re no good. But you"re married, Eleanor. You"re settled in life. You ought to do something. I"m single and at loose ends. Oh, I"m in revolt!... Think, Eleanor, just think. Your husband works hard to keep you in this expensive apartment. You have a car.
He dresses you in silks and satins. You wear diamonds. You eat your breakfast in bed. You loll around in a pink dressing gown all morning.
You dress for lunch or tea. You ride or golf or worse than waste your time on some lounge lizard, dancing till time to come home to dress for dinner. You let other men make love to you. Oh, don"t get sore. You do.... And so goes the round of your life. What good on earth are you, anyhow? You"re just a--a gratification to the senses of your husband.
And at that you don"t see much of him."
"Carley, how you rave!" exclaimed her friend. "What has gotten into you lately? Why, everybody tells me you"re--you"re queer! The way you insulted Morrison--how unlike you, Carley!"
"I"m glad I found the nerve to do it. What do you think, Eleanor?"
"Oh, I despise him. But you can"t say the things you feel."
"You"d be bigger and truer if you did. Some day I"ll break out and flay you and your friends alive."
"But, Carley, you"re my friend and you"re just exactly like we are. Or you were, quite recently."
"Of course, I"m your friend. I"ve always loved you, Eleanor," went on Carley, earnestly. "I"m as deep in this--this d.a.m.ned stagnant muck as you, or anyone. But I"m no longer blind. There"s something terribly wrong with us women, and it"s not what Morrison hinted."
"Carley, the only thing wrong with you is that you jilted poor Glenn--and are breaking your heart over him still."
"Don"t--don"t!" cried Carley, shrinking. "G.o.d knows that is true. But there"s more wrong with me than a blighted love affair."
"Yes, you mean the modern feminine unrest?"
"Eleanor, I positively hate that phrase "modern feminine unrest!" It smacks of ultra--ultra--Oh! I don"t know what. That phrase ought to be translated by a Western acquaintance of mine--one Haze Ruff. I"d not like to hurt your sensitive feelings with what he"d say. But this unrest means speed-mad, excitement-mad, fad-mad, dress-mad, or I should say undress-mad, culture-mad, and Heaven only knows what else. The women of our set are idle, luxurious, selfish, pleasure-craving, lazy, useless, work-and-children shirking, absolutely no good."
"Well, if we are, who"s to blame?" rejoined Eleanor, spiritedly. "Now, Carley Burch, you listen to me. I think the twentieth-century girl in America is the most wonderful female creation of all the ages of the universe. I admit it. That is why we are a prey to the evils attending greatness. Listen. Here is a crying sin--an infernal paradox. Take this twentieth-century girl, this American girl who is the finest creation of the ages. A young and healthy girl, the most perfect type of culture possible to the freest and greatest city on earth--New York! She holds absolutely an unreal, untrue position in the scheme of existence.
Surrounded by parents, relatives, friends, suitors, and instructive schools of every kind, colleges, inst.i.tutions, is she really happy, is she really living?"