When he had finished, and excused himself to go repair a weak place in
the corral fence, Carley sat silent, wrapped in strange meditation.
Whither had faded the vulgarity and ignominy she had attached to Glenn's
raising of hogs? Gone--like other miasmas of her narrow mind! Partly she
understood him now. She shirked consideration of his sacrifice to his
country. That must wait. But she thought of his work, and the more she
thought the less she wondered.
First he had labored with his hands. What infinite meaning lay unfolding
to her vision! Somewhere out of it all came the conception that man was
intended to earn his bread by the sweat of his brow. But there was more
to it than that. By that toil and sweat, by the friction of horny palms,
by the expansion and contraction of muscle, by the acceleration of
blood, something great and enduring, something physical and spiritual,
came to a man. She understood then why she would have wanted to
surrender herself to a man made manly by toil; she understood how a
woman instinctively leaned toward the protection of a man who had used
his hands--who had strength and red blood and virility who could fight
like the progenitors of the race. Any toil was splendid that served this
end for any man. It all went back to the survival of the fittest.
And suddenly Carley thought of Morrison. He could dance and dangle
attendance upon her, and amuse her--but how would he have acquitted
himself in a moment of peril? She had her doubts. Most assuredly he
could not have beaten down for her a ruffian like Haze Ruff. What then
should be the significance of a man for a woman?
Carley's querying and answering mind reverted to Glenn. He had found
a secret in this seeking for something through the labor of hands. All
development of body must come through exercise of muscles. The virility
of cell in tissue and bone depended upon that. Thus he had found in toil
the pleasure and reward athletes had in their desultory training. But
when a man learned this secret the need of work must become permanent.
Did this explain the law of the Persians that every man was required to
sweat every day?
Carley tried to picture to herself Glenn's attitude of mind when he
had first gone to work here in the West. Resolutely she now denied her
shrinking, cowardly sensitiveness. She would go to the root of this
matter, if she had intelligence enough. Crippled, ruined in health,
wrecked and broken by an inexplicable war, soul-blighted by the
heartless, callous neglect of government and public, on the verge of
madness at the insupportable facts, he had yet been wonderful enough,
true enough to himself and God, to fight for life with the instinct of
a man, to fight for his mind with a noble and unquenchable faith.
Alone indeed he had been alone! And by some miracle beyond the power of
understanding he had found day by day in his painful efforts some hope
and strength to go on. He could not have had any illusions. For Glenn
Kilbourne the health and happiness and success most men held so dear
must have seemed impossible. His slow, daily, tragic, and terrible task
must have been something he owed himself. Not for Carley Burch! She like
all the others had failed him. How Carley shuddered in confession of
that! Not for the country which had used him and cast him off! Carley
divined now, as if by a flash of lightning, the meaning of Glenn's
strange, cold, scornful, and aloof manner when he had encountered young
men of his station, as capable and as strong as he, who had escaped the
service of the army. For him these men did not exist. They were less
than nothing. They had waxed fat on lucrative jobs; they had basked in
the presence of girls whose brothers and lovers were in the trenches
or on the turbulent sea, exposed to the ceaseless dread and almost
ceaseless toil of war. If Glenn's spirit had lifted him to endurance
of war for the sake of others, how then could it fail him in a precious
duty of fidelity to himself? Carley could see him day by day toiling in
his lonely canyon--plodding to his lonely cabin. He had been playing
the game--fighting it out alone as surely he knew his brothers of like
misfortune were fighting.