I sold the farm--"
"Oh, no!" exclaimed Lane, with a rush of boyhood memories.
"I had to," she went on. "I made that money help out for a long time.
Then I--I mortgaged this place.... Things cost so terribly. And Lorna had to have so much more.... But she"s just left school and gone to work. That helps."
"Lorna left school!" e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed Lane, incredulously. "Why, mother, she was only a child. Thirteen years old when I left! She"ll miss her education. I"ll send her back."
"Well, son, I doubt if you can make Lorna do anything she doesn"t want to do," returned his mother. "She wanted to quit school--to earn money. Whatever she was when you left home she"s grown up now. You"ll not know her."
"Know Lorna! Why, mother dear, I carried Lorna"s picture all through the war."
"You won"t know her," returned Mrs. Lane, positively. "My boy, these years so short to you have been ages here at home. You will find your sister--different from the little girl you left. You"ll find all the girls you knew changed--changed. I have given up trying to understand what"s come over the world."
"How--about Helen?" inquired Lane, with strange reluctance and shyness.
"Helen who?" asked his mother.
"Helen Wrapp, of course," replied Lane, quickly in his surprise. "The girl I was engaged to when I left."
"Oh!--I had forgotten," she sighed.
"Hasn"t Helen been here to see you?"
"Let me see--well, now you tax me--I think she did come once--right after you left."
"Do you--ever see her?" he asked, with slow heave of breast.
"Yes, now and then, as she rides by in an automobile. But she never sees me.... Daren, I don"t know what your--your--that engagement means to you, but I must tell you--Helen Wrapp doesn"t conduct herself as if she were engaged. Still, I don"t know what"s in the heads of girls to-day. I can only compare the present with the past."
Lane did not inquire further and his mother did not offer more comment. At the moment he heard a motor car out in front of the house, a girl"s shrill voice in laughter, the slamming of a car-door--then light, quick footsteps on the porch. Lane could look from where he sat to the front door--only a few yards down the short hall. The door opened. A girl entered.
"That"s Lorna," said Lane"s mother. He grew aware that she bent a curious gaze upon his face.
Lane rose to his feet with his heart pounding, and a strange sense of expectancy. His little sister! Never during the endless months of drudgery, strife and conflict, and agony, had he forgotten Lorna. Not duty, nor patriotism, had forced him to enlist in the army before the draft. It had been an ideal which he imagined he shared with the millions of American boys who entered the service. Too deep ever to be spoken of! The barbarous and simian Hun, with his black record against Belgian, and French women, should never set foot on American soil.
In the lamplight Lane saw this sister throw coat and hat on the banister, come down the hall and enter the kitchen. She seemed tall, but her short skirt counteracted that effect. Her bobbed hair, curly and rebellious, of a rich brown-red color, framed a pretty face Lane surely remembered. But yet not the same! He had carried away memory of a child"s face and this was a woman"s. It was bright, piquant, with darkly glancing eyes, and vivid cheeks, and carmine lips.
"Oh, _hot dog_! if it isn"t Dare!" she squealed, and with radiant look she ran into his arms.
The moment, or moments, of that meeting between brother and sister pa.s.sed, leaving Lane conscious of hearty welcome and a sense of unreality. He could not at once adjust his mental faculties to an incomprehensible difference affecting everything.
They sat down to supper, and Lane, sick, dazed, weak, found eating his first meal at home as different as everything else from what he had expected. There had been no lack of warmth or love in Lorna"s welcome, but he suffered disappointment. Again for the hundredth time he put it aside and blamed his morbid condition. Nothing must inhibit his gladness.
Lorna gave Lane no chance to question her. She was eager, voluble, curious, and most disconcertingly oblivious of a possible sensitiveness in Lane.
"Dare, you look like a dead one," she said. "Did you get shot, bayoneted, ga.s.sed, sh.e.l.l-shocked and all the rest? Did you go over the top? Did you kill any Germans? Gee! did you get to ride in a war-plane? Come across, now, and tell me."
"I guess about--everything happened to me--except going west,"
returned Lane. "But I don"t want to talk about that. I"m too glad to be home."
"What"s that on your breast?" she queried, suddenly, pointing at the _Croix de Guerre_ he wore.
"That? Lorna, that"s my medal."
"Gee! Let me see." She got up and came round to peer down closely, to finger the decoration. "French! I never saw one before.... Daren, haven"t you an American medal too?"
"No."
"Why not?"
"My dear sister, that"s hard to say. Because I didn"t deserve it, most likely."
She leaned back to gaze more thoughtfully at him.
"What did you get this for?"
"It"s a long story. Some day I"ll tell you."
"Are you proud of it?"
For answer he only smiled at her.
"It"s so long since the war I"ve forgotten so many things," she said, wonderingly. Then she smiled sweetly. "Dare, I"m proud of you."
That was a moment in which his former emotion seemed to stir for her.
Evidently she had lost track of something once memorable. She was groping back for childish impressions. It was the only indication of softness he had felt in her. How impossible to believe Lorna was only fifteen! He could form no permanent conception of her. But in that moment he sensed something akin to a sister"s sympathy, some vague and indefinable thought in her, too big for her to grasp. He never felt it again. The serious sweet mood vanished.
"Hot dog! I"ve a brother with the _Croix de Guerre_. I"ll swell up over that. I"ll crow over some of these Janes."
Thus she talked on while eating her supper. And Lane tried to eat while he watched her. Presently he moved his chair near to the stove.
Lorna did not wait upon her mother. It was the mother who did the waiting, as silently she moved from table to stove.
Lorna"s waist was cut so low that it showed the swell of her breast.
The red color of her cheeks, high up near her temples, was not altogether the rosy line of health and youth. Her eyebrows were only faint, thin, curved lines, oriental in effect. She appeared to be unusually well-developed in body for so young a girl. And the air of sophistication, of experience that seemed a part of her manner completely mystified Lane. If it had not been for the slangy speech, and the false color in her face, he would have been amused at what he might have termed his little sister"s posing as a woman of the world.
But in the light of these he grew doubtful of his impression. Lastly, he saw that she wore her stockings rolled below her knees and that the edge of her short skirt permitted several inches of her bare legs to be seen. And at that he did not know what to think. He was stunned.
"Daren, you served a while under Captain Thesel in the war," she said.
"Yes, I guess I did," replied Lane, with sombre memory resurging.
"Do you know he lives here?"
"I knew him here in Middleville several years before the war."
"He"s danced with me at the Armory. Some swell dancer! He and d.i.c.k Swann and Hardy MacLean sometimes drop in at the Armory on Sat.u.r.day nights. Captain Thesel is chasing Mrs. Clemhorn now. They"re always together.... Daren, did he ever have it in for you?"
"He never liked me. We never got along here in Middleville. And naturally in the service when he was a captain and I only a private--we didn"t get along any better."