On the Firing Line Part 35

Four o'clock had brought the stampede and the storm. Seven o'clock brought Weldon and Kruger Bobs, drenched to the skin, back into a demoralized camp. Nine o'clock found Weldon still in the saddle, his teeth chattering, his brown cheeks ablaze and his eyes hot with fever, while he waited for the pitching of his tattered tent. Then, even before its soggy, torn folds were stretched and pegged into position, he turned and rode off in search of a doctor.

"Sorry," he said briefly; "but I think I've a touch of fever. Can you put me to bed somewhere?"

The next morning, he greeted Kruger Bobs by the name of a girl cousin who had died, ten years before.

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

For two weeks, the fever held Weldon in its grip. For two weeks, he was prostrate, first with the halting column, then at the base hospital at Kroonstad. The fever was never very high, nor was it intermittent. It merely hung about him and ate away his strength.

For the time being, he was content to lie quiet and stare up at the electric lights scattered through the tent and wonder about Ethel.

Now and then some sight in the hospital set him to thinking about the Captain, wondering if he were happy in his new life of rest and peace, he who had so often been in the thick of the fiercest fight.

Or he thought of Paddy, brave, merry little Irishman who, fighting like an angry wolf, had died with a joke still hanging on his lips.

Then his mind went back again to Ethel.

In vain they urged him to sleep; in vain they gave him bromides. The body was at rest; but the wheels of the brain whirred as busily as ever, and as logically. No hint of delirium mingled with his thought processes. It might have saved something if there had.

Then, one day, Weldon sat up for an hour. The next day, he was put into his clothes and, three days later, supported on the strong arm of Kruger Bobs, he crawled into a hospital train bound for Cape Town. It was an order, and he obeyed. Nevertheless, he shrank from the very mention of Cape Town. It had been the core of his universe; but now the core had gone bad. But his time of service had expired.

Red tape demanded that he receive the papers for his discharge from the Cape Town citadel. That done, he would take the first outgoing steamer for London. Afterwards, he would leave his life in the hands of Fate. He took no note of the fact that Fate might step into the game earlier than he then foresaw.

For full seven hundred miles, the train lumbered on to the southward. It was tedious, exhausting; yet Weldon found a certain interest in the jar of the rolling wheels to which he fitted the measure of his whirring thoughts. As long as the rhythm of the wheels lasted, his thoughts slowed down to meet their time. When the train halted, his thoughts dashed off again; but they resumed their slower course as soon as the wheels began once more. He took no note of the country about him, as they pa.s.sed from veldt to karroo, from karroo to the coast plateau, and from the coast plateau down across the Cape Flats, spa.r.s.ely covered with pipe gra.s.s and acacias. Then, as Table Mountain and the Devil's Peak lifted themselves on his right hand, he knew that Cape Town was near, and he braced himself to go through what was before him.

Kruger Bobs eyed him anxiously.

"Boss sick," he announced for the dozenth time, as the train drew in at the Adderley Street station. "Boss berry sick mans. Boss go hotel soon."

But Weldon shook his head. Even now, rest had scant s.p.a.ce in his plans, least of all, rest in Cape Town.

"I can do it," he a.s.serted resolutely. "Steady me till I get started, Kruger Bobs. Then I shall astonish you by my agility."

"Boss go hotel," Kruger Bobs muttered in low-voiced mutiny. "Boss too sick to trek."

"No fear. Did you ever know me to give out, when there was something still to be done, Kruger Bobs?"

"What Boss do?"

"My discharge. My banker. My pa.s.sage home."

The arm of Kruger Bobs tightened about the bony figure of his master, but the pressure of his strong arm was only gentle and rea.s.suring, and the great, white-ringed eyes glittered wet. This was not the boy master to whom Kruger Bobs had sworn allegiance. This was an older man, and weak withal. But the weaker grew the master, the stronger grew the loyal, loving allegiance of the man.

After the wide, deserted stretches of open veldt, the roar of Adderley Street seemed to Weldon like the maddening tumult of Piccadilly. The noise stunned him; the hurrying crowd filled him with terror. Even inside the cab, he still clung to the arm of the faithful Kruger Bobs. Still clinging to that faithful arm, he came out from the citadel, no longer Trooper Weldon, but Mr. Harvard Weldon once more, honorably discharged from the South African Light Horse. Kruger Bobs was invisible behind the spreading limits of his smile; but Weldon had scarcely heeded the words which had been addressed to him. All at once, like a watch about to run down, the wheels of his brain were moving slowly and ever more slowly. His whole resolution now centered in keeping them in motion long enough to go to his banker and to the office of the steamship company. Once on the steamer and sliding out across Table Bay, he could leave the rest to the ship's doctor and to Fate.

Even in the mult.i.tude of strangers who had pa.s.sed through Cape Town, in those latter months, he was remembered at the bank and greeted with a word of congratulation on his record in the field. At the word, a man beside him, hearing, turned to look, looked again, and then held out his hand. It was the father of Ethel Dent.

That night, the Dents dined alone. Over the roast, Mr. Dent looked up suddenly.

"Whom do you think I saw, to-day, Ethel?"

"Who now?" she asked, smiling. "You can't expect me to guess, when you are constantly running up against the most impossible people."

"Not this time. It was quite possible; but it gave me a shock. It was Mr. Weldon."

The smile died from her lips. Nevertheless, she asked, with a forced lightness,--

"What shocked you?"

"His looks. He was ghastly, thin to a shadow and burning up with fever. I was in the bank, and I heard some one speak his name; but I had to look at him for a second time, before I could recognize him.

The man is a wreck. He looked sixty years old, as he went crawling off, on the arm of his Kaffir boy. I'm sorry. I always liked Weldon."

A bit of bread lay by Ethel's plate. For an instant, her finger tips vanished inside its yielding surface. Then she looked up.

"Too bad! He was a good fellow," she said quietly. Then she lifted her hand to her throat. "Dear me! Have I lost my diamond pin?" she added hastily. "I was sure I put it on. Please excuse me, while I see if I left it in my room." And she ran swiftly out of the room.

Mrs. Dent broke the pause.

"Where was Mr. Weldon going?"

"To his hotel. I came out, just as they drove away, and I heard the boy give the order to the driver."

"Which hotel was it?"

"I--Really, I don't remember. He used to go to the Grand."

"He seemed ill?"

"He seemed--" For an instant, Mr. Dent held the word in suspension.

Then he let it drop with a slow quietness which added tenfold to its weight--"dead."

His wife's gentle eyes clouded.

"I am sorry. I liked the boy. He was good to me."

"I had thought Ethel liked him, too," her husband added a little inconsequently.

"So she did in a way. But there have been so many others." The mother sighed slightly. In her young days, there had been but one.

Now, remembering that one and watching him in the present, she found it hard to comprehend Ethel's free-handed distribution of social favors among so great a throng of admirers. There had always been many; now, since her recent return from Johannesburg, the many had become a mult.i.tude, and each of the mult.i.tude could show proof of her liking. But Mrs. Dent recurred to the fact of Weldon's illness.

"Poor boy! Fancy being really ill, so far from home and in a hotel!"

she added slowly.

"It is one of the risks of a soldier," her husband reminded her.

"Yes, and the soldiers fought for us. Where would your mines have been without them?" she suggested in return. "I really wish you would telephone to the hotel and find out something more definite about him."

Her husband looked covetously at the entree, just appearing in sight.

"Now?" he asked.