Zane Grey - The Day of the Beast

She appeared frank and nonchalant, evidently a little proud of her important position. She posed before Lane and pirouetted with fancy little steps.

“Say, Dare, won't you teach me a new dance—right from Paris?” she interposed. “Something that will put the shimmy and toddle out of biz?”

“Lorna, I don't know what the shimmy and toddle are. I've only heard of them.”

“Buried alive, I'll say,” she retorted.

Lane bit his tongue to keep back a hot reprimand. He looked at his mother, who was clearing off the supper table. She looked sad. The light had left her worn face. Lane did not feel sure of his ground here. So he controlled his feelings and directed his interest toward more news.

“Of course Dick Swann was in the service?” he asked.

“No. He didn't go,” replied Lorna.

The information struck Lane singularly. Dick Swann had always been a prominent figure in the Middleville battery, in those seemingly long past years since before the war.

“Why didn't Dick go into the service? Why didn't the draft get him?”

“He had poor eyesight, and his father needed him at the iron works.”

“Poor eyesight!” ejaculated Lane. “He was the best shot in the battery—the best hunter among the boys. Well, that's funny.”

“Daren, there are people who called Dick Swann a slacker,” returned Lorna, as if forced to give this information. “But I never saw that it hurt him. He's rich now. His uncle left him a million, and his father will leave him another. And I'll say it's the money people want these days.”

The materialism so pregnant in Lorna's half bitter reply checked Lane's further questioning. He edged closer to the stove, feeling a little cold. A shadow drifted across the warmth and glow of his mind. At home now he was to be confronted with a monstrous and insupportable truth—the craven cowardice of the man who had been eligible to service in army or navy, and who had evaded it. In camp and trench and dug-out he had heard of the army of slackers. And of all the vile and stark profanity which the war gave birth to on the lips of miserable and maimed soldiers, that flung on the slackers was the worst.

“I've got a date to go to the movies,” said Lorna, and she bounced out of the kitchen into the hall singing:

“Oh by heck

You never saw a wreck

Like the wreck she made of me.”

She went upstairs, while Lane sat there trying to adapt himself to a new and unintelligible environment. His mother began washing the dishes. Lane felt her gaze upon his face, and he struggled against all the weaknesses that beset him.

“Mother, doesn't Lorna help you with the house work?” he asked.

“She used to. But not any more.”

“Do you let her go out at night to the movies—dances, and all that?”

Mrs. Lane made a gesture of helplessness. “Lorna goes out all the time. She's never here. She stays out until midnight—one o'clock—later. She's popular with the boys. I couldn't stop her even if I wanted to. Girls can't be stopped these days. I do all I can for her—make her dresses—slave for her—hoping she'll find a good husband. But the young men are not marrying.”

“Good Heavens, are you already looking for a husband for Lorna?” broke out Lane.

“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 God 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 passion 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 associated 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 pricked 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 boob!”

“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.