On the Firing Line Part 23

"Could you find any?" Weldon asked imperturbably. "A few. I told him you could sit tight and shoot straight," the Captain answered, laughing. Then he added gravely, "And I also told him you could ride the fiend incarnate, and that, as far as I knew, you didn't lose your head when you were under fire."

For the instant, Weldon forgot his hostess, as he looked up to meet the Captain's blue eyes squarely.

"Thank you. But it is more than I deserve."

"Then you must try to live up to it," Ethel advised him languidly.

"It merely increases your responsibilities, for now you have two reputations to support, your own for pluck and the Captain's for being a judge of his fellowmen. It is an awful weight that you are carrying on your shoulders, Mr. Weldon."

"If it grows too heavy, I will slide some of it off on your own," he returned, as he picked up his hat and rose to his feet. "Your responsibility is back of mine, Miss Dent. It was you who advised me to stay in South Africa."

"Not at all. I presented the case and kept my advice to myself," she rebelled promptly.

"Certain presentments are stronger than much advising."

"Perhaps. But in the end, you remember, I commended your soul to Captain Frazer's keeping."

He bowed with the odd, old-fashioned deference which it pleased him to a.s.sume at times. "Captain Frazer may have saved it; but it may have been you who made it worth his efforts at salvation."

She laughed again. Nevertheless, her eyes showed her pleasure.

"Then we, Captain Frazer and I, must divide the responsibility for your future," she replied. "In any case, may it be all good!"

The drapery fell backward over his departing figure, and, for an instant, Ethel stood staring at the swaying folds. Then, turning, she walked back to the fire.

"All good," she repeated. "I know you echo the wish, Captain Frazer.

But--isn't it hard to say good by?"

"In these days most of all," he a.s.sented slowly. "And one never can tell when his own turn may come."

"Nor what its end may be," she added. Then impetuously she rose again and moved up and down the room. "Look at that sunshine outside, Captain Frazer," she said restlessly. "It ought to forbid any such gloomy moods. I believe all this war and so many partings are spoiling my nerve. I really feel quite blue, to-day; and Mr.

Weldon made it worse."

"By saying good by?"

Glancing up, she was astonished at the wishful, hungry look in the blue eyes before her. "Yes, a little," she said lightly; "for I hate the very word. But, if it must be spoken, it should always be short and staccato. Instead, he sat here, and we talked about Fate and wounds and all sorts of direful things." She shook herself and shivered slightly. Then she sat down in the chair which Weldon had just left vacant. "It is bad manners to have nerves, Captain Frazer.

Forgive me first, and then tell me something altogether flippant, to make me forget things."

But her mood had caught the Captain in its grasp.

"Are you sure you want to forget?" he asked her gravely.

"Yes," she made vehement answer. "Always!"

But not even her decided answer brought back the eager light into his dark blue eyes.

Nevertheless, an hour later found him still sitting there. Ethel's depression had vanished, to be followed by a mood of wayward merriment for which the honest, straightforward soldier was totally at a loss to account. Sincere himself, he looked for sincerity in others. If Ethel's gravity had been unfeigned, how could it so soon give place to her present buoyancy? Not the strictest code of hospitality could demand that a hostess should straightway toss aside the thought of the parting guest who had gone away to battle and, perhaps, to sudden death. And, if the girl had been insincere in her parting from Weldon, why should she be sincere in her present absorption in his own interests? And, if her regrets for Weldon were as great as they had seemed to be, then what was the use of his remaining by her side any longer? The horns of the dilemma extended themselves to infinity and branched again and again as they extended. Meanwhile, his eyes were full of trouble, and his answers to her questions were vague and faltering. Until her sudden trip to Johannesburg, Captain Frazer had taken the girl as a matter of course. Since then, he had begun to doubt, and the doubts were thickening.

But, after all, there was no real reason for doubt. During her one short season in London, the Captain had met Ethel constantly, he had been quite obviously the favorite of the old aunt who had presided over the girl's introduction to society, and his later meetings with Ethel at sundry week-end gatherings had convinced him that he had no serious rival. Then had come the war; and Ethel's absence from town had made a farewell impossible. Captain Frazer had sailed away, leaving the past behind him; but the future was still his, to be lost or won, according to the use he made of his manhood's chances.

And then, on the dazzling summer morning which had ushered in the new century, he had caught a glimpse of Ethel riding towards home.

Three days later, as he had gone away down the broad white steps, he had felt convinced that the future already lay in his grasp. It had been the selfsame Ethel, unchanged and changeless to his loyal mind, who had met him with smiling, eager cordiality. The year of separation was cast aside; their friendship began again at the precise spot where it had been broken off.

Since then, he had seen her often, occasionally alone, sometimes with her mother, sometimes the central figure of a little crowd who were obviously striving to win her favor. Her father's fortune was in part the cause of this; but the greater, surer cause lay within the girl's own personality. Ethel Dent was no negative character.

However, Captain Frazer had never found her too absorbed in her other companions to be able to give him a share of her attention which differed from all other shares that she bestowed, in being a bit more personal in its cordiality. His black-fringed blue eyes were keen and far-sighted. They a.s.sured him that, whatever her regard for him, at least it was true that, in all her Cape Town life, there was no man for whom Ethel Dent had a sincerer liking.

And then, all at once, a doubt had a.s.sailed his mind, and the doubt had centered itself in this long, lean Canadian with the grave, steady face and the boyish manner. Worst of all, the doubt had scarcely arisen before he himself had become aware of his own growing liking for the young Canadian. Captain Leo Frazer was strictly just. He admitted to himself that Weldon was in every way worthy to be chosen by Ethel Dent. However, he was determined as well as just, and he had no mind at all to allow Ethel Dent to choose any man but one, and that one was himself, Leo Frazer.

And now he was sitting moodily by her fireside, listening to her light, easy flow of talk and asking himself certain questions, which he was powerless to answer.

As he rose at last, some sudden impulse made him speak from the very midst of his train of thought.

"Did you know he had refused a commission?" he asked, regardless of antecedents.

She made no pretence of misunderstanding him.

"No. Did he?"

"Yes. Mitch.e.l.l told me, this morning."

"I wonder why."

"He said he had pledged himself to stay with the rank and file, that it was easier to take orders than to give them."

"Strange!" she said thoughtfully.

"Strange that he should feel so?"

She shook her head.

"No. He told me about that, coming out. I am not surprised. But it is strange that he shouldn't have spoken of the matter now."

"It was like him. He doesn't tell all his best deeds," Captain Frazer said, with direct frankness "Still, I thought it was fairer that you should know."

Her color came, as she met his eyes; but she offered no question in regard to the meaning of his final phrase.

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

"Good reason they call them kopjes," Carew grumbled scornfully, as he swept his arm about the encircling landscape. "Every flat-top hill is an exact copy of every other flat-top hill, and they all are more or less hideous to behold. My one source of rejoicement lies in the fact that the pattern was worn out down here, instead of being sent up to make our mountains by. I hate a bobtail horse; but it's nothing so bad as these everlasting bobtail hills. And, by Jove, there comes another dust devil!"

Far away across the veldt, a tiny spurt of dust twirled up into the air and came spinning towards them like a huge, translucent top.

Gaining momentum as it spun along and picking up more dust as it advanced, it came whirling onward, rising high and higher until it swept down on them, a huge, khaki-colored, balloon-like ma.s.s. It caught them in its whirl, ground its stinging, sifting particles into their clothing, their skin and even into their shut eyes. Then it pa.s.sed them by, and went spinning away in its course. Carew swore softly, as he wiped the dust from his lashes.

"Beastly things! There really ought to be a society formed for the suppression of dust devils in their infancy. What do you suppose becomes of the things, Weldon? There's no stopping them, once they get under way; and, at their rate of growth, they could bury a township in their old age."

"Granted they could find one to bury," Weldon returned. "Meanwhile, observe your bath tub."