"Come, Daren," whispered Mrs. Wrapp, as if thrilled. Certainly her eyes gleamed. Then quickly she threw the door open wide and called out:
"Helen, here"s Daren Lane home from the war, wearing the _Croix de Guerre_."
Mrs. Wrapp pushed Lane forward, and stood there a moment in the sudden silence, then stepping back, she went out and closed the door.
Lane saw a large well-lighted room, with colorful bizarre decorations and a bare shiny floor. The first person his glance encountered was a young girl, strikingly beautiful, facing him with red lips parted. She had violet eyes that seemed to have a startled expression as they met Lane"s. Next Lane saw a slim young man standing close to this girl, in the act of withdrawing his arm from around her waist. Apparently with his free hand he had either been lowering a smoking cigarette from her lips or had been raising it there. This hand, too, dropped down. Lane did not recognize the fellow"s smooth, smug face, with its tiny curled mustache and its heated swollen lines.
"Look who"s here," shouted a gay, vibrant voice. "If it isn"t old Dare Lane!"
That voice drew Lane"s fixed gaze, and he saw a group in the far corner of the room. One man was standing, another was sitting beside a lounge, upon which lay a young woman amid a pile of pillows. She rose lazily, and as she slid off the lounge Lane saw her skirt come down and cover her bare knees. Her red hair, bobbed and curly, marked her for recognition. It was Helen. But Lane doubted if he would have at once recognized any other feature. The handsome insolence of her face was belied by a singularly eager and curious expression. Her eyes, almost green in line, swept Lane up and down, and came back to his face, while she extended her hands in greeting.
"Helen, how are you?" said Lane, with a cool intent mastery of himself, bowing over her hands. "Surprised to see me?"
"Well, I"ll say so! Daren, you"ve changed," she replied, and the latter part of her speech flashed swiftly.
"Rather," he said, laconically. "What would you expect? So have you changed."
There came a moment"s pause. Helen was not embarra.s.sed or agitated, but something about Lane or the situation apparently made her slow or stiff.
"Daren, you--of course you remember Hardy Mackay and d.i.c.k Swann," she said.
Lane turned to greet one-time schoolmates and rivals of his. Mackay was tall, homely, with a face that lacked force, light blue eyes and thick sandy hair, brushed high. Swann was slight, elegant, faultlessly groomed and he had a dark, sallow face, heavy lips, heavy eyelids, eyes rather prominent and of a wine-dark hue. To Lane he did not have a clean, virile look.
In their greetings Lane sensed some indefinable quality of surprise or suspense. Swann rather awkwardly put out his hand, but Lane ignored it. The blood stained Swann"s sallow face and he drew himself up.
"And Daren, here are other friends of mine," said Helen, and she turned him round. "Bessy, this is Daren Lane.... Miss Bessy Bell." As Lane acknowledged the introduction he felt that he was looking at the prettiest girl he had ever seen--the girl whose violet eyes had met his when he entered the room.
"Mr. Daren Lane, I"m very happy to meet some one from "over there,""
she said, with the ease and self-possession of a woman of the world.
But when she smiled a beautiful, wonderful light seemed to shine from eyes and face and lips--a smile of youth.
Helen introduced her companion as Roy Vancey. Then she led Lane to the far corner, to another couple, manifestly disturbed from their rather close and familiar position in a window seat. These also were strangers to Lane. They did not get up, and they were not interested.
In fact, Lane was quick to catch an impression from all, possibly excepting Miss Bell, that the courtesy of drawing rooms, such as he had been familiar with as a young man, was wanting in this atmosphere.
Lane wondered if it was antagonism toward him. Helen drew Lane back toward her other friends, to the lounge where she seated herself. If the situation had disturbed her equilibrium in the least, the moment had pa.s.sed. She did not care what Lane thought of her guests or what they thought of him. But she seemed curious about him. Bessy Bell came and sat beside her, watching Lane.
"Daren, do you dance?" queried Helen. "You used to be good. But dancing is not the same. It"s all fox-trot, toddle, shimmy nowadays."
"I"m afraid my dancing days are over," replied Lane.
"How so? I see you came back with two legs and arms."
"Yes. But I was shot twice through one leg--it"s about all I can do to walk now."
Following his easy laugh, a little silence ensued. Helen"s green eyes seemed to narrow and concentrate on Lane. d.i.c.k Swann inhaled a deep draught of his cigarette, then let the smoke curl up from his lips to enter his nostrils. Mackay rather uneasily shifted his feet. And Bessy Bell gazed with wonderful violet eyes at Lane.
"Oh! You were _shot_!" she whispered.
"Yes," replied Lane, and looked directly at her, prompted by her singular tone. A glance was enough to show Lane that this very young girl was an entirely new type to him. She seemed to vibrate with intensity. All the graceful lines of her body seemed strangely instinct with pulsing life. She was bottled lightning. In a flash Lane sensed what made her different from the fifteen-year-olds he remembered before the war. It was what made his sister Lorna different. He felt it in Helen"s scrutiny of him, in the speculation of her eyes. Then Bessy Bell leaned toward Lane, and softly, reverently touched the medal upon his breast.
"The _Croix de Guerre_," she said, in awe. "That"s the French badge of honor.... It means you must have done something great.... You must have--_killed_ Germans!"
Bessy sank back upon the lounge, clasping her hands, and her eyes appeared to darken, to turn purple with quickening thought and emotion. Her exclamation brought the third girl of the party over to the lounge. She was all eyes. Her apathy had vanished. She did not see the sulky young fellow who had followed her.
Lane could have laughed aloud. He read the shallow souls of these older girls. They could not help their instincts and he had learned that it was instinctive with women to become emotional over soldiers.
Bessy Bell was a child. Hero-worship shone from her speaking eyes.
Whatever other young men might be to her, no one of them could compare with a soldier.
The situation had its pathos, its tragedy, and its gratification for Lane. He saw clearly, and felt with the acuteness of a woman. Helen had jilted him for such young men as these. So in the feeling of the moment it cost him nothing to thrill and fascinate these girls with the story of how he had been shot through the leg. It pleased him to see Helen"s green eyes dilate, to see Bessy Bell shudder. Presently Lane turned to speak to the supercilious Swann.
"I didn"t have the luck to run across you in France!" he queried.
"No. I didn"t go," replied Swann.
"How was that? Didn"t the draft get you?"
"Yes. But my eyes were bad. And my father needed me at the works. We had a big army contract in steel."
"Oh, I see," returned Lane, with a subtle alteration of manner he could not, did not want to control. But it was unmistakable in its detachment. Next his gaze on Mackay did not require the accompaniment of a query.
"I was under weight. They wouldn"t accept me," he explained.
Bessy Bell looked at Mackay disdainfully. "Why didn"t you drink a bucketful of water--same as Billy Means did? He got in."
Helen laughed gayly. "What! Mac drink water? He"d be ill.... Come, let"s dance. d.i.c.k put on that new one. Daren, you can watch us dance."
Swann did as he was bidden, and as a loud, violent discordance blared out of the machine he threw away his cigarette, and turned to Helen.
She seemed to leap at him. She had a pantherish grace. Swann drew her closely to him, with his arm all the way round her, while her arm encircled his neck. They began a fast swaying walk, in which Swann appeared to be forcing the girl over backwards. They swayed, and turned, and glided; they made strange abrupt movements in accordance with the jerky tune; they halted at the end of a walk to make little steps forward and back; then they began to bounce and sway together in a motion that Lane instantly recognized as a toddle. Lane remembered the one-step, the fox-trot and other new dances of an earlier day, when the craze for new dancing had become general, but this sort of gyration was vastly something else. It disgusted Lane. He felt the blood surge to his face. He watched Helen Wrapp in the arms of Swann, and he realized, whatever had been the state of his heart on his return home, he did not love her now. Even if the war had not disrupted his mind in an unaccountable way, even if he had loved Helen Wrapp right up to that moment, such singular abandonment to a distorted strange music, to the close and unmistakably sensual embrace of a man--that spectacle would have killed his love.
Lane turned his gaze away. The young fellow Vancey was pulling at Bessy Bell, and she shook his hand off. "No, Roy, I don"t want to dance." Lane heard above the jarring, stringing notes. Mackay was smoking, and looked on as if bored. In a moment more the Victrola rasped out its last note.
Helen"s face was flushed and moist. Her bosom heaved. Her gown hung closely to her lissom and rather full form. A singular expression of excitement, of t.i.tillation, almost wild, a softer expression almost dreamy, died out of her face. Lane saw Swann lead Helen up to a small table beside the Victrola. Here stood a large pitcher of lemonade, and a number of gla.s.ses. Swann filled a gla.s.s half full, from the pitcher, and then, deliberately pulling a silver flask from his hip pocket he poured some of its dark red contents into the gla.s.s. Helen took it from him, and turned to Lane with a half-mocking glance.
"Daren, I remember you never drank," she said. "Maybe the war made a man of you!... Will you have a sip of lemonade with a shot in it?"
"No, thank you," replied Lane.
"Didn"t you drink over there?" she queried.
"Only when I had to," he rejoined, shortly.
All of the four dancers partook of a drink of lemonade, strengthened by something from Swann"s flask. Lane was quick to observe that when it was pressed upon Bessy Bell she refused to take it: "I hate booze,"
she said, with a grimace. His further impression of Bessy Bell, then, was that she had just fallen in with this older crowd, and sophisticated though she was, had not yet been corrupted. The divination of this heightened his interest.
"Well, Daren, you old prune, what"d you think of the toddle?" asked Helen, as she took a cigarette offered by Swann and tipped it between her red lips.
"Is that what you danced?"
"I"ll say so. And d.i.c.k and I are considered pretty spiffy."