On the Firing Line Part 26

"How does Syb--Is that what you call her?--how does she know? Oh, I remember now. It is the girl who served at Miss Mellen's home,"

Weldon said, as light began to dawn.

"Ya, Boss; dat Syb."

"And she is here with Miss Mellen?"

Kruger Bobs nodded.

"What are they doing?"

"Dey is nurses sick mens." "How long have they been here?"

"One, tree, five day."

"Five days," Weldon translated to himself. "It was an odd chance, your running on her so soon. Did she know we were here?"

"She tink ya," Kruger Bobs replied. "Syb no tell." "But why not?"

The matter-of-course question appeared to fill Kruger Bobs with amazement.

"Boss make night march," he answered. "She may not care to have me.

Still, we'll ride out there with you in the morning."

"Boss?"

"Mr. Carew and myself."

Kruger Bobs looked hurt. In hot excitement, the black fingers closed on a fold of the brown sleeve.

"Kruger Bobs go, too?"

"What makes you want to go?"

"Syb dere, Boss."

"I don't see what difference that makes," Weldon said reflectively.

Once more Kruger Bobs turned coy.

"Boss go see his vrouw; me go see Syb," he explained briefly.

Weldon's laugh astonished him; still more Weldon's answer.

"Oh, Kruger Bobs, you love-struck calf! Because you're in love with Syb, do you think it follows that I am in love with Miss Mellen?"

Kruger Bobs plotted geometrical problems with his left toe.

"Syb say," he replied at length. Then he raised his eyes from his problem. "Boss vrouw good," he ventured persuasively.

Weldon laughed again.

"So we all think. Mr. Carew knows her much better than I do, though, and Miss Mellen would be hurt, if he didn't go out to see her."

But Kruger Bobs stood his ground. "Boss Weldon go see his vrouw; Kruger Bobs go see his vrouw; Boss Carew no vrouw."

However, in spite of the advice of Kruger Bobs, Carew was at Weldon's side, as they rode through Winburg, the next morning.

Already the country was taking on the look of summer, and the dusty stretches of veldt were tinged here and there with thin patches of growing green. Over the hills nearest the town were scattered the lines of ruined trenches, still littered here and there with rusty tools dropped there by the Boers when, long months before, they had caught sight of the advancing armies of French and Hutton. As they drew nearer, Weldon could make out the familiar details of a field hospital: the low white tents in their circle of whitewashed stones, the Red-Cross nurses hurrying to and fro and the blue-coated convalescents strolling leisurely about the enclosure. Carew, meanwhile, had pushed forward. Above the P. M. O.'s tent fluttered the Red Cross, and he had caught sight of a white ap.r.o.n and a scarlet cape in the open door.

"Miss Mellen! Alice!"

In the still air of a summer noon, Carew's voice carried distinctly back to Weldon. He glanced towards the tent. Then, beckoning to Kruger Bobs, he turned and rode away to inspect the distant landscape.

An hour later, Kruger Bobs was squatting on the ground, a heaped plate on his knees and a smile of rapture surrounding his smacking lips. Near him, the three horses munched contentedly, stamping lightly now and then and whisking their tails to drive off the buzzing flies. Outside the door of the tent, Alice Mellen sat on a bench, with Carew at her side and Weldon sprawling lazily on the ground at her feet.

"Twenty-seven inside," she told them. "It is mostly enteric and S.

C., men who have been sent here from Bloemfontein. Their hospitals are overcrowded. We have both sorts here, you know."

"Nursing Boers?" Carew asked, disapprovingly.

"Why not? They are men, plucky men, too, some of them. I rather like the race. Anyway, it makes an interesting mixture. We have had to put them all together, and they get on capitally, exchanging stories and gossip and sympathy like men of the same company. One of them, a Boer,--" she hesitated for the right word; then she adopted the vernacular of the service--"went out, the other day; and, among his mourners, the sincerest ones were the two London Tommies in the two next beds. War isn't all hatred, by any means. Turn nurse for a month and you'll find it out."

"Or else turn patient," Carew interpolated quietly.

Her color came; but she only turned more directly to Weldon.

"I was glad to come here for a change," she added. "Shall you stay here long?"

"It is impossible to tell. The other nurses here are younger at it than I, and there are some hard cases. If it were not for Syb, I should be at my wits' end sometimes."

"Then ought you to stay here?" Carew urged, with a sudden a.s.sumption of proprietorship which sat well upon him.

She faced him with a smile.

"Oh, but this is nothing in comparison with Johannesburg. There the work is agonizing. Between wounds and enteric, the place is crammed, and we can't get the nurses we absolutely need. My mother thought I was growing too tired, and she sent Syb up here to take care of me.

Instead, I have pressed her into the service and trained her until she is one of the best nurses I have ever had under me. The men adore her, she is so strong and so full of her queer, jolly fun."

With his head pillowed on his arms, Weldon lay watching her thoughtfully. Under her piles of inky hair, her face looked thin, and the shadows lay heavy around her eyes. Nevertheless, the eyes were shining and the curves of the lips were all upward. Plainly the day had brought her a tonic; yet the past six months had told upon the girl pitilessly.

"But, for G.o.d's sake, when is it all to end?" he burst out suddenly.

"Tired of the service, Mr. Weldon?" she asked gravely, but with no accent of reproach.

"Not tired of my own. But the worst of it all comes back on you women, and that is maddening."

She smiled down at him, and the light in her eyes deepened and grew yet more womanly.

"It is all we can do to help, Mr. Weldon. Let us take what share we can. The work is hard, hard and discouraging; but--" involuntarily she glanced at Carew's happy, handsome face; "but now and then it brings its own reward."