"You don't understand, Dare. You've been away so long. Wait till you've seen what girls--are nowadays. Then you'll not wonder that I'd like to see Lorna settled."

"Mother, you're right," he said, gravely. "I've been away so--long.

But I'm back home now. I'll soon get on to things. And I'll help you.

I'll take Lorna in hand. I'll relieve you of a whole lot."

"You were always a good boy, Daren, to me and Lorna," murmured Mrs.

Lane, almost in tears. "It's cheered me to get you home, yet.... Oh, if you were well and strong!"

"Never mind, mother. I'll get better," he replied, rising to take up his bag. "I guess now I'd better go to bed. I'm just about all in....

Wonder how Blair and Red are."

His mother followed him up the narrow stairway, talking, trying to pretend she did not see his dragging steps, his clutch on the banisters.

"Your room's just as you left it," she said, opening the door. Then on the threshold she kissed him. "My son, I thank G.o.d you have come home alive. You give me hope in--in spite of all.... If you need me, call.

Good night."

Lane was alone in the little room that had lived in waking and dreaming thought. Except to appear strangely smaller, it had not changed. His bed and desk--the old bureau--the few pictures--the bookcase he had built himself--these were identical with images in his memory.

A sweet and wonderful emotion of peace pervaded his soul--fulfilment at last of the soldier's endless longing for home, bed, quiet, rest.

"If I have to die--I can do it _now_ without hate of all around me,"

he whispered, in the pa.s.sion of his spirit.

But as he sat upon his bed, trying with shaking and clumsy hands to undress himself, that exalted mood flashed by. Some of the dearest memories of his life were a.s.sociated with this little room. Here he had dreamed; here he had read and studied; here he had fought out some of the poignant battles of youth. So much of life seemed behind him.

At last he got undressed, and extinguishing the light, he crawled into bed.

The darkness was welcome, and the quiet was exquisitely soothing. He lay there, staring into the blackness, feeling his body sink slowly as if weighted. How cool and soft the touch of sheets! Then, the river of throbbing fire that was his blood, seemed to move again. And the dull ache, deep in the bones, possessed his nerves. In his breast there began a vibrating, as if thousands of tiny bubbles were being p.r.i.c.ked to bursting in his lungs. And the itch to cough came back to his throat. And all his flesh seemed in contention with a slowly ebbing force. Sleep might come perhaps after pain had lulled. His heart beat unsteadily and weakly, sometimes with a strange little flutter. How many weary interminable hours had he endured! But to-night he was too far spent, too far gone for long wakefulness. He drifted away and sank as if into black oblivion where there sounded the dreadful roll of drums, and images moved under gray clouds, and men were running like phantoms. He awoke from nightmares, wet with cold sweat, and lay staring again at the blackness, once more alive to recurrent pain.

Pain that was an old, old story, yet ever acute and insistent and merciless.

The night wore on, hour by hour. The courthouse clock rang out one single deep mellow clang. One o'clock! Lane thrilled to the sound. It brought back the school days, the vacation days, the Indian summer days when the hills were golden and the purple haze hung over the land--the days that were to be no more for Daren Lane.

In the distance somewhere a motor-car hummed, and came closer, louder down the street, to slow its sound with sliding creak and jar outside in front of the house. Lane heard laughter and voices of a party of young people. Footsteps, heavy and light, came up the walk, and on to the porch. Lorna was returning rather late from the motion-picture, thought Lane, and he raised his head from the pillow, to lean toward the open window, listening.

"Come across, kiddo," said a boy's voice, husky and low.

Lane heard a kiss--then another.

"Cheese it, you b.o.o.b!"

"Gee, your gettin' snippy. Say, will you ride out to Flesher's to-morrow night?"

"Nothing doing, I've got a date. Good night."

The hall door below opened and shut. Footsteps thumped off the porch and out to the street. Lane heard the giggle of girls, the snap of a car-door, the creaking of wheels, and then a low hum, dying away.

Lorna came slowly up stairs to enter her room, moving quietly. And Lane lay on his bed, wide-eyed, staring into the blackness. "My little sister," he whispered to himself. And the words that had meant so much seemed a mockery.

CHAPTER III

Lane saw the cas.e.m.e.nt of his window grow gray with the glimmering light of dawn. After that he slept several hours. When he awoke it was nine o'clock. The long night with its morbid dreams and thoughts had pa.s.sed, and in the sunshine of day he saw things differently.

To move, to get up was not an easy task. It took stern will, and all the strength of muscle he had left, and when he finally achieved it there was a clammy dew of pain upon his face. With slow guarded movements he began to dress himself. Any sudden or violent action might burst the delicate ga.s.sed spots in his lungs or throw out of place one of the lower vertebrae of his spine. The former meant death, and the latter bent his body like a letter S and caused such excruciating agony that it was worse than death. These were his two ever-present perils. The other aches and pains he could endure.

He shaved and put on clean things, and his best coat, and surveyed himself in the little mirror. He saw a thin face, white as marble, but he was not ashamed of it. His story was there to read, if any one had kind enough eyes to see. What would Helen think of him--and Margaret Maynard--and Dal--and Mel Iden? Bitter curiosity seemed his strongest feeling concerning his fiancee. He would hold her as engaged to him until she informed him she was not. As for the others, thought of them quickened his interest, especially in Mel. What had happened to her.

It was going to be wonderful to meet them--and to meet everybody he had once known. Wonderful because he would see what the war had done to them and they would see what it had done to him. A peculiar significance lay between his sister and Helen--all these girls, and the fact of his having gone to war.

"They may not think of it, but _I know_," he muttered to himself. And he sat down upon his bed to plan how best to meet them, and others. He did not know what he was going to encounter, but he fortified himself against calamity. Strange portent of this had crossed the sea to haunt him. As soon as he was sure of what had happened in Middleville, of the att.i.tude people would have toward a crippled soldier, and of what he could do with the month or year that might be left him to live, then he would know his own mind. All he sensed now was that there had been some monstrous inexplicable alteration in hope, love, life. His ordeal of physical strife, loneliness, longing was now over, for he was back home. But he divined that his greater ordeal lay before him, here in this little house, and out there in Middleville. All the subtlety, intelligence, and bitter vision developed by the war sharpened here to confront him with terrible possibilities. Had his countrymen, his people, his friends, his sweetheart, all failed him?

Was there justice in Blair Maynard's scorn? Lane's faith cried out in revolt. He augmented all possible catastrophe, and then could not believe that he had sacrificed himself in vain. He knew himself. In him was embodied all the potentiality for hope of the future. And it was with the front and stride of a soldier, facing the mystery, the ingrat.i.tude, the ignorance and h.e.l.l of war, that he left his room and went down stairs to meet the evils in store.

His mother was not in the kitchen. The door stood open. He heard her outside talking to a neighbor woman, over the fence.

"--Daren looks dreadful," his mother was saying in low voice. "He could hardly walk.... It breaks my heart. I'm glad to have him along--but to see him waste away, day by day, like Mary Dean's boy--"

she broke off.

"Too bad! It's a pity," replied the neighbor. "Sad--now it comes home to us. My son Ted came in last night and said he'd talked with a boy who'd seen young Maynard and the strange soldier who was with him.

They must be worse off than Daren--Blair Maynard with only one leg and--"

"Mother, where are you? I'm hungry," called Lane, interrupting that conversation.

She came hurriedly in, at once fearful he might have heard, and solicitous for his welfare.

"Daren, you look better in daylight--not so white," she said. "You sit down now, and let me get your breakfast."

Lane managed to eat a little this morning, which fact delighted his mother.

"I'm going to see Dr. Bronson," said Lane, presently. "Then I'll go to Manton's, and round town a little. And if I don't tire out I'll call on Helen. Of course Lorna has gone to work?"

"Oh yes, she leaves at half after eight."

"Mother, I was awake last night when she got home," went on Lane, seriously. "It was one o'clock. She came in a car. I heard girls t.i.ttering. And some boy came up on the porch with Lorna and kissed her. Well, that might not mean much--but something about their talk, the way it was done--makes me pretty sick. Did you know this sort of thing was going on?"

"Yes. And I've talked with mothers who have girls Lorna's age. They've all run wild the last year or so. Dances and rides! Last summer I was worried half to death. But we mothers don't think the girls are really _bad_. They're just crazy for fun, excitement, boys. Times and pleasures have changed. The girls say the mothers don't understand.

Maybe we don't. I try to be patient. I trust Lorna. I can't see through it all."

"Don't worry, mother," said Lane, patting her hand. "I'll see through it for you. And if Lorna is--well, running too much--wild as you said--I'll stop her."

His mother shook her head.

"One thing we mothers all agree on. These girls, of this generation, say fourteen to sixteen, _can't_ be stopped."

"Then that is a serious matter. It must be a peculiarity of the day.

Maybe the war left this condition."