Before his downfall Thomas McQuade drove the Van Smuythe bays
and was himself driven by Annie, the Van Smuythe lady's maid. But it is
one of the saddest things about romance that a tight shoe or an empty
commissary or an aching tooth will make a temporary heretic of any
Cupid-worshiper. And Thomas's physical troubles were not few. Therefore,
his soul was less vexed with thoughts of his lost lady's maid than it
was by the fancied presence of certain non-existent things that his
racked nerves almost convinced him were flying, dancing, crawling, and
wriggling on the asphalt and in the air above and around the dismal
campus of the Bed Line army. Nearly four weeks of straight whisky and
a diet limited to crackers, bologna, and pickles often guarantees a
psycho-zoological sequel. Thus desperate, freezing, angry, beset by
phantoms as he was, he felt the need of human sympathy and intercourse.
The Bed Liner standing at his right was a young man of about his own
age, shabby but neat.
"What's the diagnosis of your case, Freddy?" asked Thomas, with the
freemasonic familiarity of the damned--"Booze? That's mine. You don't
look like a panhandler. Neither am I. A month ago I was pushing the
lines over the backs of the finest team of Percheron buffaloes that ever
made their mile down Fifth Avenue in 2.
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