The Day of the Beast

“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. Itis 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 meanit !” exclaimed Lane, aghast.

“I'll say I do mean it. Iknow 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 tolive !... The sun will rise—the days will be long and pleasant—you can work— dosomething. 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. Ihate 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?