by Grey, Zane
With a violent action he shoved the little man out into the hall. Then turning to Lane he pointed with shaking hand to the door.
"Lane, you couldn't be a guest of mine."
"Swann, I certainly wouldn't be," retorted Lane, in tones that rang. "Pepper didn't tell me you were the proprietor of this—this joint."
"Get out of here or I'll throw you out!" yelled Swann, now beside himself with rage. And he made a threatening move toward Lane.
"Don't lay a hand on me," replied Lane. "I don't want my uniform soiled."
With that Lane turned to Dalrymple, and said quietly: "Holt, I came here to find you, not to play cards. That was a stall. Come away with me. You were not cut out for a card sharp or a booze fighter. What's got into you that you can gamble and drink' with slackers?"
Dalrymple jammed his hat on and stepped toward the door. "Dare, you said a lot. I'll beat it with you—and I'll never come back."
"You bet your sweet life you won't," shouted Swann.
"Hold on there, Dalrymple," interposed Mackay, stepping out. "Come across with that eighty-six bucks you owe me."
"I—I haven't got it, Mackay," rejoined the boy, flushing deeply.
Lane ripped open his coat and jerked out his pocket-book and tore bills out of it. "There, Hardy Mackay," he said, with deliberate scorn, throwing the money on the table. "There are your eighty-six dollars—earned in France.... I should think it'd burn your fingers."
He drew Holt out into the hall, where Pepper waited. Some one slammed the door and began to curse.
"That ends that," said Colonel Pepper, as the three moved down the dim hall.
"It ends us, Pepper, but you couldn't stop those guys with a crowbar," retorted Dalrymple.
Lane linked arms with the boy and changed the conversation while they walked back to the inn. Here Colonel Pepper left them, and Lane talked to Holt for an hour. The more he questioned Holt the better he liked him, and yet the more surprised was he at the sordid fact of the boy's inclination toward loose living. There was something perhaps that Holt would not confess. His health had been impaired in the service, but not seriously. He was getting stronger all the time. His old job was waiting for him. His mother and sister had enough to live on, but if he had been working he could have helped them in a way to afford him great satisfaction.
"Holt, listen," finally said Lane, with more earnestness. "We're friends—all boys of the service are friends. We might even become great pards, if we had time."
"What's time got to do with it?" queried the younger man. "I'm sure I'd like it—and know it'd help me."
"I'm shot to pieces, Holt.... I won't last long...."
"Aw, Lane, don't say that!"
"It's true. And if I'm to help you at all it must be now.... You haven't told me everything, boy—now have you?"
Holt dropped his head.
"I'll say—I haven't," he replied, haltingly. "Lane—the trouble is—I'm clean gone on Margie Maynard. But her mother hates the sight of me. She won't stand for me."
"Oho! So that's it?" ejaculated Lane, a light breaking in upon him. "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 Saturdays?... 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 assurance, if not of solution. But he found none. Then his spirit mounted, and with it passion.
"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 God, 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. God 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 fir
e. 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."
"Who told you of that?" he asked in surprise.
"Dal. She was here yesterday. She will come in spite of me."
"So will I," interposed Lane.
She shook her head. "No, it's different for a man.... I've missed the girls. No one but Dal ever comes. I thought Margie would be true to me—no matter what had befallen.... Dal comes, and oh, Daren, she is good. She helps me so.... She told me what you did at Fanchon's party."
"She did! Well, what's your verdict?" he queried, grimly. "That break queered me in Middleville."
"I agree with what Doctor Wallace said to his congregation," returned Mel.
As Lane met the blue fire of her eyes he experienced another singularly deep and profound thrill, as if the very depths of him had been stirred. He seemed to have suddenly discovered Mel Iden.
"Doctor Wallace did back me up," said Lane, with a smile. "But no one else did."
"Don't be so sure of that. Harsh conditions require harsh measures. Dal said you killed the camel-walk dance in Middleville."
"It surely was a disgusting sight," returned Lane, with a grimace. "Mel, I just saw red that night."
"Daren," she asked wistfully, following her own train of thought, "do you know that most of the girls consider me an outcast? Fanchon rides past me with her head up in the air. Helen Wrapp cuts me. Margie looks to see if her mother is watching when she bows to me. Isn't it strange, Daren, how things turn out? Maybe my old friends are right. But I don't feel that I am what they think I am.... I would do what I did—over and over."
Her eyes darkened under his gaze, and a slow crimson tide stained her white face.
"I understand you, Mel," he said, swiftly. "You must forgive me that I didn't understand at once.... And I think you are infinitely better, finer, purer than these selfsame girls who scorn you."
"Daren! You—understand?" she faltered.
And just as swiftly he told her the revelation that thinking had brought to him.
When he had finished she looked at him for a long while. "Yes, Daren," she finally said, "you understand, and you have made me understand. I always felt"—and her hand went to her heart—"but my mind did not grasp.... Oh, Daren, how I thank you!" and she held her hands out to him.
Lane grasped the outstretched hands, and loosed the leaping thought her words and action created.
"Mel, let me give your boy a father—a name."
No blow could have made her shrink so palpably. It passed—that shame. Her lips parted, and other emotions claimed her.
"Daren—you would—marry me?" she gasped.
"I am asking you to be my wife for your child's sake," he replied.
Her head bowed. She sank against him, trembling. Her hands clung tightly to his. Lane divined something of her agitation from the feel of her slender form. And then again that deep and profound thrill ran over him. It was followed by an instinct to wrap her in his arms, to hold her, to share her trouble and to protect her.
Strong reserve force suddenly came to Mel. She drew away from Lane, still quivering, but composed.
"Daren, all my life I'll thank you and bless you for that offer," she said, very low. "But, of course it is impossible."
She disengaged her hands, and, turning away, looked out of the window. Lane rather weakly sat down. What had come over him? His blood seemed bursting in his veins. Then he gazed round the dingy little parlor and at this girl of twenty, whose beauty did not harmonize with her surroundings. Fair-haired, white-faced, violet-eyed, she emanated tragedy. He watched her profile, clear cut as a cameo, fine brow, straight nose, sensitive lips, strong chin. She was biting those tremulous lips. And when she turned again to him they were red. The short-bowed upper lip, full and sweet, the lower, with its sensitive droop at the corner, eloquent of sorrow—all at once Lane realized he wanted to kiss that mouth more than he had ever wanted anything. The moment was sudden and terrible, for it meant love—love such as he had never known.
"Daren," she said, turning, "tell me how you got the Croix de Guerre."
By the look of her and the hand that moved toward his breast, Lane felt his power over her. He began his story and it was as if he heard some one else talking. When he had finished, she asked, "The French Army honored you, why not the American?"
"It was never reported."
"How strange! Who was your officer?"
"You'll laugh when you hear," he replied, without hint of laugh himself. "Heavens, how things come about! My officer was from Middleville."
"Daren! Who?" she asked, quickly, her eyes darkening with thought.
"Captain Vane Thesel."
How singular to Lane the fact she did not laugh! She only stared. Then it seemed part of her warmth and glow, her subtle response to his emotion, slowly receded. He felt what he could not see.
"Oh! He. Vane Thesel," she said, without wonder or surprise or displeasure, or any express
ion Lane anticipated.
Her strange detachment stirred a hideous thought—could Thesel have been.... But Lane killed the culmination of that thought. Not, however, before dark, fiery jealousy touched him with fangs new to his endurance.
To drive it away, Lane launched into more narrative of the war. And as he talked he gradually forgot himself. It might be hateful to rake up the burning threads of memory for the curious and the soulless, but to tell Mel Iden it was a keen, strange delight. He watched the changes of her expression. He learned to bring out the horror, sadness, glory that abided in her heart. And at last he cut himself off abruptly: "But I must save something for another day."
That broke the spell.
"No, you must never come back."
He picked up his hat and his stick.
"Mel, would you shut the door in my face?"
"No, Daren—but I'll not open it," she replied resolutely.
"Why?"
"You must not come."
"For my sake—or yours?"
"Both our sakes."
He backed out on the little porch, and looked at her as she stood there. Beyond him, indeed, were his emotions then. Sad as she seemed, he wanted to make her suffer more—an inexplicable and shameful desire.
"Mel, you and I are alike," he said.
"Oh, no, Daren; you are noble and I am...."
"Mel, in my dreams I see myself standing—plodding along the dark shores of a river—that river of tears which runs down the vast naked stretch of our inner lives.... I see you now, on the opposite shore. Let us reach our hands across—for the baby's sake."
"Daren, it is a beautiful thought, but it—it can't be," she whispered.
"Then let me come to see you when I need—when I'm down," he begged.
"No."
"Mel, what harm can it do—just to let me come?"
"No—don't ask me. Daren, I am no stone."
"You'll be sorry when I'm out there in—Woodlawn.... That won't be long."
That broke her courage and her restraint.
"Come, then," she whispered, in tears.
* * *
