"Well, I"ll be darned. It _is_ serious, Holt.... Does Margie love you?"
"Sure she does. We"ve always cared. Don"t you remember how Margie and I and Dal and you used to go to school together? And come home together? And play on Sat.u.r.days?... Ever since then!... But lately Margie and I are--we got--pretty badly mixed up."
"Yes, I remember those days," replied Lane, dreamily, and suddenly he recalled Dal"s dark eyes, somehow haunting. He had to make an effort to get back to the issue at hand.
"If Margie loves you--why it"s all right. Go back to work and marry her."
"Lane, it can"t be all right. Mrs. Maynard has handed me the mitt,"
replied Holt, bitterly. "And Margie hasn"t the courage to run off with me.... Her mother is throwing Margie at Swann--because he"s rich."
"Oh Lord, no--Holt--you can"t mean _it_!" exclaimed Lane, aghast.
"I"ll say I do mean it. I _know_ it," returned Holt, moodily. "So I let go--fell into the dumps--didn"t care a d---- what became of me."
Lane was genuinely shocked. What a tangle he had fallen upon! Once again there seemed to confront him a colossal Juggernaut, a moving, crushing, intangible thing, beyond his power to cope with.
"Now, what can I do?" queried Holt, in sudden hope his friend might see a way out.
Despairingly, Lane racked his brain for some word of advice or a.s.surance, if not of solution. But he found none. Then his spirit mounted, and with it pa.s.sion.
"Holt, don"t be a miserable coward," he began, in fierce scorn.
"You"re a soldier, man, and you"ve got your life to _live_!... The sun will rise--the days will be long and pleasant--you can work--_do_ something. You can fish the streams in summer and climb the hills in autumn. You can enjoy. Bah! don"t tell me one shallow girl means the world. If Margie hasn"t courage enough to run off and marry you--_let her go!_ But you can never tell. Maybe Margie will stick to you. I"ll help you. Margie and I have always been friends and I"ll try to influence her. Then think of your mother and sister. Work for _them_.
Forget yourself--your little, miserable, selfish desires.... My G.o.d, boy, but it"s a strange life the war"s left us to face. I _hate_ it.
So do you hate it. Swann and Mackay giving nothing and getting all!...
So it looks.... But it"s false--false. G.o.d did not intend men to live solely for their bodies. A balance _must_ be struck. They have _got_ to pay. Their time will come.... As for you, the harder this job is the fiercer you should be. I"ve got to die, Holt. But if I could live I"d show these slackers, these fickle wild girls, what they"re doing.... You can do it, Holt. It"s the greatest part any man could be called upon to play. It will prove the difference between you and them...."
Holt Dalrymple crushed Lane"s hand in both his own. On his face was a glow--his dark eyes flashed: "Lane--that"ll be about all," he burst out with a kind of breathlessness. Then his head high, he stalked out.
The next day was bad. Lane suffered from both over-exertion and intensity of emotion. He remained at home all day, in bed most of the time. At supper time he went downstairs to find Lorna pirouetting in a new dress, more abbreviated at top and bottom than any costume he had seen her wear. The effect struck him at an inopportune time. He told her flatly that she looked like a French grisette of the music halls, and ought to be ashamed to be seen in such attire.
"Daren, I don"t think you"re a good judge of clothes these days," she observed, complacently. "The boys will say I look spiffy in this."
So many times Lorna"s trenchant remarks silenced Lane. She hit the nail on the head. Practical, logical, inevitable were some of her speeches. She knew what men wanted. That was the pith of her meaning.
What else mattered?
"But Lorna, suppose you don"t look nice?" he questioned.
"I _do_ look nice," she retorted.
"You don"t look anything of the kind."
"What"s nice? It"s only a word. It doesn"t mean much in my young life."
"Where are you going to-night?" he asked, sitting down to the table.
"To the armory--basketball game--and dance afterward."
"With whom?"
"With Harry. I suppose that pleases you, big brother?"
"Yes, it does. I like him. I wish he"d take you out oftener."
"_Take_ me! Hot dog! He"d kill himself to take me all the time. But Harry"s slow. He bores me. Then he hasn"t got a car."
"Lorna, you may as well know now that I"m going to stop your car rides," said Lane, losing his patience.
"You are _not_," she retorted, and in the glint of the eyes meeting his, Lane saw his defeat. His patience was exhausted, his fear almost verified. He did not mince words. With his mother standing open-mouthed and shocked, Lane gave his sister to understand what he thought of automobile rides, and that as far as she was concerned they had to be stopped. If she would not stop them out of respect to her mother and to him, then he would resort to other measures. Lorna bounced up in a fury, and in the sharp quarrel that followed, Lane realized he was dealing with flint full of fire. Lorna left without finishing her supper.
"Daren, that"s not the way," said his mother, shaking her head.
"What is the way, mother?" he asked, throwing up his hands.
"I don"t know, unless it"s to see her way," responded the mother.
"Sometimes I feel so--so old-fashioned and ignorant before Lorna.
Maybe she is right. How can we tell? What makes all the young girls like that?"
What indeed, wondered Lane! The question had been hammering at his mind for over a month. He went back to bed, weary and dejected, suffering spasms of pain, like blades, through his lungs, and grateful for the darkness. Almost he wished it was all over--this ordeal. How puny his efforts! Relentlessly life marched on. At midnight he was still fighting his pangs, still unconquered. In the night his dark room was not empty. There were faces, shadows, moving images and pictures, scenes of the war limned against the blackness. At last he rested, grew as free from pain as he ever grew, and slept. In the morning it was another day, and the past was as if it were not.
May the first dawned ideally springlike, warm, fresh, fragrant, with birds singing, sky a clear blue, and trees budding green and white.
Lane yielded to an impulse that had grown stronger of late. His steps drew him to the little drab house where Mel Iden lived with her aunt.
On the way, which led past a hedge, Lane gathered a bunch of violets.
""In the spring a young man"s fancy lightly turns to thoughts of love,"" he mused. "It"s good, even for _me_, to be alive this morning.... These violets, the birds, the fresh smells, the bursting green! Oh, well, regrets are idle. But just to think--I had to go through all I"ve known--right down to this moment--to realize how stingingly sweet life is...."
Mel answered his knock, and sight of her face seemed to lift his heart with an unwonted throb. Had he unconsciously needed that? The thought made his greeting, and the tender of the violets, awkward for him.
"Violets! Oh, and spring! Daren, it was good of you to gather them for me. I remember.... But I told you not to come again."
"Yes, I know you did," he replied. "But I"ve disobeyed you. I wanted to see you, Mel.... I didn"t know how badly until I got here."
"You should not want to see me at all. People will talk."
"So you care what people say of you?" he questioned, feigning surprise.
"Of me? No. I was thinking of you."
"You fear the poison tongues for me? Well, they cannot harm me. I"m beyond tongues or minds like those."
She regarded him earnestly, with serious gravity and slowly dawning apprehension; then, turning to arrange the violets in a tiny vase, she shook her head.
"Daren, you"re beyond me, too. I feel a--a change in you. Have you had another sick spell?"
"Only for a day off and on. I"m really pretty well to-day. But I have changed. I feel that, yet I don"t know how."
Lane could talk to her. She stirred him, drew him out of himself. He felt a strange desire for her sympathy, and a keen curiosity concerning her opinions.
"I thought maybe you"d been ill again or perhaps upset by the consequences of your--your action at Fanchon Smith"s party."