"Twelve inches make one foot, six feet make one man, sixty men make one troop, four troops make one squadron," the monotonous voice ran on. Then it came to an unexpected finale. "And three squadrons make the Boer army run."
The man in the next bed giggled. His wound was in his shoulder, and it had left his sense of humor unimpaired. As a rule, the fighting records of the wounded never came inside that long, bed-bordered room; but there were few within it now who were ignorant of the plucky ride made by the lean, boyish-looking Canadian trooper. A part of the story had come by way of the doctor in charge of the ambulance train which had brought him from Krugersdorp to Johannesburg, a part of it had come from the trooper's own lips, and that was the most tragic part of it all.
Below, in the courtyard of the hospital, Kruger Bobs squatted on his heels in the sun and waited. Now and then, he vanished to look after the creature comforts of The Nig and the little gray broncho; now and then he shuffled forward to demand news from some passer-by whose sleeve was banded with the Red-Cross badge. Then he shuffled back to his former post and sat himself down on his heels once more. Kruger Bobs possessed the racial traits which make it an easy matter to sit and wait for news. He was also an optimist. Nevertheless, his face now was overcast and rarely did it vanish behind the spreading limits of his smile.
For four days, Weldon lay prostrate and babbled of all things, past, present and to come. Three names dotted his babblings. One was that of his mother, one of his captain, and the third that of Ethel Dent. With all three of them, he appeared to be upon the best of terms. Finally, on the fifth day, he suddenly waked to the fact that a woman was bending above him, to wipe his face with a damp sponge.
He was too weak to rise. Nevertheless, he straightened himself into a rigid line, and addressed her with dignity.
"I beg your pardon. Please don't wash my face for me," he said, in grave displeasure.
She smiled down at him, with the air of a mother smiling at a fretful child. The smile irritated him.
"Doesn't it refresh you?" she asked quietly.
"No," he answered, with flat, ungracious, mendacity.
"I am sorry. You have been sleeping heavily, and—"
He felt his mind slipping out of his own grasp, and he strove to hold it in his keeping.
"No matter now," he interrupted hastily. "Please get me—"
She waited in silence. Then she asked encouragingly,—
"What shall I get you?"
The mind was almost gone; but still he held fast to the edge of it, as he murmured,—
"Some bully beef."
The nurse turned away. Her lips were smiling; but her eyes clouded, as the babbling began once more.
Twenty-four hours later, she was greeted by a white-faced, clear-headed trooper.
"Good-morning, nurse," he said coolly. "You see I am better."
"Much better, Mr. Weldon," she assented cordially. He looked puzzled. "I thought we fellows in hospital had no names, nothing but numbers," he answered.
"It depends. When one meets an old friend, the number isn't quite the right name for him."
Turning slightly, he stared up at her with the impassive curiosity of a man just coming back from The Unknown. Then he shook his head.
"I am afraid—" he began slowly.
With a quick gesture, she took off her crisp white cap, uncovering a heavy pile of ink-black hair. "There!" she said, with a smile. "Does that make me look more natural, Mr. Weldon? I am Alice Mellen, Cooee Dent's cousin."
Instantly he put out his hand, sunburned still, but curiously thin. The smile on his lips was the boyish, frank smile which Alice had seen and liked, that afternoon in the garden at home.
"What good angel brings you here?" he asked eagerly.
"No angel; merely the lady who rules over the household of Mars. I am glad to find you again, even if the Johannesburg hospital isn't a good place for a man. But you mustn't talk now. Later, we can make up for lost time."
Impetuously his fingers shut on a fold of her apron. Then his native instincts and his years of training asserted themselves, and he let go once more. Nevertheless, his eyes were appealing.
"Don't go."
"But I must," she answered, her hands busy with her cap.
Her tone showed that, like himself, she too had learned the meaning of an order. He yielded to its quiet firmness.
"If you must. But, before you go, tell me this: have I been off my head?"
She nodded in assent.
He frowned.
"Sorry," he said briefly. "Please answer me honestly. Have I mumbled things and made a blasted fool of myself?"
It was still two days before he was allowed to talk to his own satisfaction. Then, one afternoon in her rest hour, Alice Mellen let him have his way and, seated by his cot, she answered tersely to a raking fire of terse questions.
"How long have I been here?"
"Just a week."
"How did I get here?"
"Hospital train from Krugersdorp."
"What for?"
"You had a touch of fever. We could treat you better here." Her replies were man-like in their brevity.
"Fever? I thought it was a Mauser bullet."
"It was. Your leg was not so bad; but the long ride and the exposure to the storm—"
He interrupted her.
"What do you know about my ride?" he asked.
Her answer showed that the woman was not lost in the nurse.
"Everybody knows of your ride. Even in these days of plucky deeds, we are proud of you."
He shook his head, though the color came into his cheeks, brown beneath their pallor.
"It was nothing. I did my duty."
"So Kruger Bobs has informed us."
"Kruger Bobs? Is he here?"
This time, she laughed outright.
"I should say he was. For a week, he has been sitting exactly in the path of the doctors, waiting for news. Twice he has been ordered off; but he merely hitches over to the other end of the steps and refuses to budge farther. We discovered him, the first night you were here, by having the bead surgeon fall headlong over him, as he went down the steps. Kruger Bobs doesn't show up well, on a dark night."
Weldon clasped his hands at the back of his head.
"If I thought you were using American slang, Miss Mellen, I should contradict you," he answered, with a touch of his old humor. "I can remember at least one dark night when Kruger Bobs made an excellent showing."
She nodded.
"We have bad a few Americans here before, Mr. Weldon. I think I understand."
"How long have you been here?" he asked, after a pause.
"Ten weeks."
"And you like it?"
"Why else should I be here?"
"From a sense of duty."
"Is that what brought you out?"
"No. My coming was inevitable. It seemed a part of me that I couldn't help."
"But you wished to come?" she queried.
"Of course. But that was only a Dart of it. I have wished to do things before, and have done them. This was quite different. It all seemed a part of Fate, and I walked through it, like a puppet with somebody else's hand pulling the strings." He paused and shook his head. "It is no use. I can't make you understand it. I acted freely and did just what I chose; but yet, all the time, I felt as if it had all been arranged for me, whole generations ago."
Thoughtfully she bent forward, straightened the coverings above his wounded leg; then sat up again. Then she shook her head a little regretfully.
"No," she said. "I am afraid I don't understand. Perhaps it is because I am selfish; but I usually feel as if I made my plans, regardless of Fate."
"What about our meeting here?" he asked quizzically.
She answered in the same tone.
"Wait until we see what comes out of it. Fate, if one believes in such a thing, only works in an endless chain."
"And the broken links?"
"According to your notion, there should be none," she retorted. "Fate ought to be a better workman than that."
"Than what?"
"Than spoiling her work as she goes along. If there's any chain at all, it should be endless and durable. But a man with a Mauser hole in his leg and a fever in his head has no business to be talking of Fate. Let's talk about Ethel, instead."
He settled himself back comfortably.
"Perhaps it amounts to the same thing, in the long run."
"Perhaps. I don't see how, though. Anyway, Ethel wouldn't be pleased with the notion. She is absolutely independent, and generally arranges things according to her own sweet will."
"Where is she now?"
"In Cape Town," Alice answered, quite unaware of her own lack of truth.
"And well?"
"Gloriously. In fact, as far as I can learn, Cooee always is well. Just now she is having a wonderfully gay time. Since Lord Roberts went back to England, Cape Town has been full of people, resting there before sailing for home."
"Resting?"
"Haven't they earned the right?" she questioned, in swift challenge to the quiet scorn in his tone.
"Even if the battles are over, the fighting isn't," he answered tersely. "The glory doesn't lie entirely in the pulverizing the Boer army; there's a little left for the men who are sweeping up the pieces."
Her trained eye saw the rising color in his face. Swiftly she changed the subject.
"Glory for all, enough and to spare," she replied. "But, as I say, Cape Town is crowded with officers, lying up for repairs, and Ethel is queen bee among them. It's not only for herself; it is what you would call Fate. She happens to be the only girl of her set who is just out from London; she had met a good many of them there, and now she is holding a veritable salon. She even has one sacred teacup, set up on a high shelf ever since the day that Baden-Powell used it."
Weldon smiled.
"Miss Dent is a hero-worshipper," he commented.
"So are we all, in certain directions. Moreover, most women like their heroes to have a little personality. One can't make one's admiration stick to a blank wall of impersonal perfection."
Weldon's mind moved swiftly backwards to two blue, black-fringed eyes glowing out from a dust-streaked face.
"No," he assented; "but neither can one ever really be chums with his hero. Or, even if he can, he doesn't care to try the experiment."
Alice glanced at her watch, rose, then lingered.
"I am not so sure of that," she replied thoughtfully. "I want the pedestal of my hero to be a low one; and Cooee declares that she wishes no pedestal at all. If her hero is worthy of the name, he must bear inspection even from above. The worst flaw of all might lurk in the very crown of his head."
Half an hour later, she came back again.
"Mr. Weldon, do you feel strong enough to see Kruger Bobs for exactly five minutes?" she asked.
The gray eyes lighted.
"For ten times five," he answered eagerly.
Kruger Bobs shuffled in upon the heels of an orderly. Under his bristly hair, his face was a study of mingled emotions which culminated in his mouth. A grin of pure happiness had drawn up the upper lip; at sight of his prostrate master, the lower one was rolling outward in a sudden wave of pure pity. Beside the cot, he halted and stood looking down at Weldon with eyes which, for the moment, transformed his lazy, jolly, simian face into a species of nobility. Lying back on his pillow, Weldon waited for him to speak, waited with an odd, restless beating of the heart for which he was wholly at a loss to account.
The pause between them lengthened. At last Kruger Bobs drew his mangy brown felt hat across his eyes.
"I's here, Boss," he said simply.
However, it was enough.
The next morning found Weldon sitting up. A clean-cut hole through the flesh of a man who has lived a clean-cut life is swift in healing. Now that his fever had left him, his superb vitality was asserting itself once more, and he rallied quickly. Meanwhile, it was good to be able to sit up and eat his breakfast like a civilized being. Weldon had all the detestation of the average healthy being for invalid ways. Moreover, he longed to be up and doing. With his growing strength, the orderly, noiseless routine of the hospital came upon his nerves. One of the nurses always walked on the points of her toes; and he was conscious of a wild longing to throw a pillow at her, as she went diddling to and fro past him, a dozen times a day. The doctor, a man of iron nerve and velvet hand, was a daily delight to him. And there was always Alice, frank, friendly and altogether enjoyable. During the past three days, their liking had grown apace. Absolutely feminine, yet with the healthy impersonality of a growing boy, Alice Mellen was a born comrade, and Weldon enjoyed her just as, in her place, he would have enjoyed Carew.
She came down the ward, that morning, and paused beside his chair.
"You look like your old self at last," she said, as she held out her hand in congratulation.
"I might echo your words," he answered, while he looked up into her eyes, shining with merriment and with something that yet seemed to him closely akin to annoyance. "Granted the apron, you might be pouring tea at home."
"Not tea; but malted milk, in these latter days," she said, laughing. "But I am about to retire from your case. May I introduce your new nurse, Mr. Weldon?"
His reluctant assent was changed to eager greeting. Light, swift steps came down the room; a tall figure stopped at his side in the full glare of a sunshiny window which all at once seemed focussing its light upon waving strands and heaped-up coils of vivid yellow hair.
"Cooee!" Then, too late, he bethought himself of his manners and tried to bite the word off short.
Linking her arm in that of her cousin, the girl stood looking down at him with merry, mocking blue eyes.
"Invalids are supposed to have privileges denied to well men," she answered demurely. "It might perhaps be Cooee here, to-day; but it will have to be Miss Dent, to-morrow, when you are back in the field again. After all, it is hardly worth while to make the change, Trooper Weldon."
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