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valleys so different from the country she had seen coming West so supremely
beautiful that she wondered if she had only acquired the harvest of a seeing
eye.
But it was at sunset of the following clay, when the train was speeding down
the continental slope of prairie land beyond the Rockies, that the West took
its ruthless revenge.
Masses of strange cloud and singular light upon the green prairie, and a
luminosity in the sky, drew Carley to the platform of her car, which was the
last of the train. There she stood, gripping the iron gate, feeling the wind
whip her hair and the iron-tracked ground speed from under her, spellbound and
stricken at the sheer wonder and glory of the firmament, and the mountain
range that it canopied so exquisitely.
A rich and mellow light, singularly clear, seemed to flood out of some
unknown source. For the sun was hidden. The clouds just above Carley hung low,
and they were like thick, heavy smoke, mushrooming, coalescing, forming and
massing, of strange yellow cast of mative. It shaded westward into heliotrope
and this into a purple so royal, so matchless and rare that Carley understood
why the purple of the heavens could never be reproduced in paint. Here the
cloud mass thinned and paled, and a tint of rose began to flush the billowy,
flowery, creamy white. Then came the surpassing splendor of this cloud
pageant-a vast canopy of shell pink, a sun-fired surface like an opal sea,
rippled and webbed, with the exquisite texture of an Oriental fabric, pure,
delicate, lovely as no work of human hands could be. It mirrored all the warm,
pearly tints of the inside whorl of the tropic nautilus. And it ended
abruptly, a rounded depth of bank, on a broad stream of clear sky, intensely
blue, transparently blue, as if through the lambent depths shone the infinite
firmament. The lower edge of this stream took the golden lightning of the
sunset and was notched for all its horizon-long length by the wondrous white
glistening-peaked range of the Rockies. Far to the north, standing aloof from
the range, loomed up the grand black bulk and noble white dome of Pikes Peak.
Carley watched the sunset transfiguration of cloud and sky and mountain
until all were cold and gray. And then she returned to her seat, thoughtful
and sad, feeling that the West had mockingly flung at her one of its transient
moments of loveliness.
Nor had the West wholly finished with her. Next day the mellow gold of the
Kansas wheat fields, endless and boundless as a sunny sea, rich, waving in the
wind, stretched away before her aching eyes for hours and hours. Here was the
promise fulfilled, the bountiful harvest of the land, the strength of the
West. The great middle state had a heart of gold.
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East of Chicago Carley began to feel that the long days and nights of
riding, the ceaseless turning of the wheels, the constant and wearing stress
of emotion, had removed her an immeasurable distance of miles and time and
feeling from the scene of her catastrophe. Many days seemed to have passed.
Many had been the hours of her bitter regret and anguish.
Indiana and Ohio, with their green pastoral farms, and numberless villages,
and thriving cities, denoted a country far removed and different from the
West, and an approach to the populous East. Carley felt like a wanderer coming
home. She was restlessly and impatiently glad. But her weariness of body and
mind, and the close atmosphere of the car, rendered her extreme discomfort.
Summer had laid its hot hand on the low country east of the Mississippi.
Carley had wired her aunt and two of her intimate friends to meet her at the
Grand Central Station. This reunion soon to come affected Carley in recurrent
emotions of relief, gladness, and shame. She did not sleep well, and arose
early, and when the train reached Albany she felt that she could hardly endure
the tedious hours. The majestic Hudson and the palatial mansions on the wooded
bluffs proclaimed to Carley that she was back in the East. How long a time
seemed to have passed! Either she was not the same or the aspect of everything
had changed. But she believed that as soon as she got over the ordeal of
meeting her friends, and was home again, she would soon see things rationally.
At last the train sheered away from the broad Hudson and entered the
environs of New York. Carley sat perfectly still, to all outward appearances a
calm, superbly-poised New York woman returning home, but inwardly raging with
contending tides. In her own sight she was a disgraceful failure, a prodigal
sneaking back to the ease and protection of loyal friends who did not know her
truly. Every familiar landmark in the approach to the city gave her a thrill,
yet a vague unsatisfied something lingered after each sensation.
Then the train with rush and roar crossed the Harlem River to enter New York
City. As one waking from a dream Carley saw the blocks and squares of gray
apartment houses and red buildings, the miles of roofs and chimneys, the long
hot glaring streets full of playing children and cars. Then above the roar of
the train sounded the high notes of a hurdy-gurdy. Indeed she was home. Next
to startle her was the dark tunnel, and then the slowing of the train to a
stop. As she walked behind a porter up the long incline toward the station
gate her legs seemed to be dead.
In the circle of expectant faces beyond the gate she saw her aunt's, eager
and agitated, then the handsome pale face of Eleanor Harmon, and beside her
the sweet thin one of Beatrice Lovell. As they saw her how quick the change
from expectancy to joy! It seemed they all rushed upon her, and embraced her,
and exclaimed over her together. Carley never recalled what she said. But her
heart was full.
"Oh, how perfectly stunning you look!" cried Eleanor, backing away from
Carley and gazing with glad, surprised eyes.
"Carley!" gasped Beatrice. "You wonderful golden-skinned goddess! ... You're
young again, like you were in our school days."
It was before Aunt Mary's shrewd, penetrating, loving gaze that Carley
quailed.
"Yes, Carley, you look well-better than I ever saw you, but but "
"But I don't look happy," interrupted Carley. "I am happy to get home to see
you all ... But my my heart is broken!"
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A little shocked silence ensued, then Carley found herself being led across
the lower level and up the wide stairway. As she mounted to the vast-domed
cathedral-like chamber of the station a strange sensation pierced her with a
pang. Not the old thrill of leaving New York or returning! Nor was it welcome
sight of the hurrying, well-dressed throng of travelers and commuters, nor the
stately beauty of the station. Carley shut her eyes, and then she knew. The
dim light of vast space above, the looming gray walls, shadowy with tracery of
figures, the lofty dome like the blue sky, brought back to her the walls of
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