On the Firing Line

CHAPTER SEVEN

"Oh, truce! Truce!" Alice Mellen protested. "Don't talk shop, Cooee."

"It's not shop; it is topics of the day," Ethel responded tranquilly. "Besides, I want to hear about Mr. Carew. Is he dangerous?"

Weldon laughed.

"No, for his wound; yes, for his temper. One was only a scratch; the other way, he was horribly cut up."

"Did he swear?" Alice queried, while she distributed lumps of sugar among the cups.

"Alice!"

"Don't pretend to be shocked, Cooee. Even if you haven't been out but one season, you ought to know what happens when a man turns testy. Frankly, I think it is a healthy sign, if a man stops to swear when he is hit. It shows there are no morbid secretions."

"You prefer superficial outbreaks, Miss Mellen?" Frazer inquired, as he handed Ethel her cup.

"Yes. They are far less likely to produce mortification later on," she answered, laughing up into his steady eyes. "What do you do, when you are hit, Captain Frazer?"

"They call me Lucky Frazer, you know," he replied. "I've been in no end of scrimmages, and I was never hit but once."

Bending over, Ethel turned back the cloth and thumped on the under side of the table.

"Unberufen and Absit omen," she said hastily. "Don't tempt Providence too far, Captain Frazer. At my coming-out reception, I met a man who boasted that he always broke everything within range, from hearts to china. Ten minutes later, he tripped over a rug and fell down on top of the plate of salad he was bringing me. And he didn't break a thing—"

"Except his own record," Weldon supplemented unexpectedly. "I suspect he also broke the third commandment. The keeping of that and the falling down in public are totally incompatible."

"And that reminds me, you were going to tell what Mr. Carew did when he was hit," Ethel reminded him.

"I never tell tales, Miss Dent."

"But, really, how does it feel to be under fire?" she persisted.

"Ask Captain Frazer. He has had more experience than I."

She barely turned her eyes towards Frazer's face.

"He is talking to my cousin and won't hear. Were you frightened?"

"No."

"Truly? But you wouldn't confess, if you were."

He blushed at the mockery in her tone.

"Yes. Why not? I expected to be desperately afraid; but I was only desperately angry."

"At what?"

"Nothing. That's the point. There was nothing in sight to be angry at. Bullets came from nowhere in a pelting shower. Most of them didn't hit anything; there was no cloud from which the shower could come. One resented it, without knowing exactly why. It was being the big fellow who can't hit back when the little one torments him."

"Cooee!"

The remonstrance was long-drawn and forceful. This time, Ethel heeded.

"What is it, Alice?"

"Do you remember that, this noon, we agreed not to mention the war? These men fight almost without ceasing. When they aren't fighting, they do sentry and stables and things. This is an afternoon off for them. We really must talk accordingly."

"What are you and Captain Frazer talking about?"

"Cricket and seven-year locusts."

Ethel held out her empty cup.

"Very well. Then Mr. Weldon and I will discuss mosquitoes and seven-day Baptists. No sugar, please, and I'd like another of those snappy things."

"Does that mean a Mauser?" Weldon asked, as he brought back her cup.

"No. I mean biscuits, not cats. But you sinned then. However, my cousin has her eye upon us, so we must be distinctly frivolous. Is there any especially peaceful subject you would like to discuss?"

"Yes. Please explain your name."

She looked up at him with sudden literalness.

"It is for my grandmother. For four hundred years there has been an Ethel Dent in every generation."

"I meant the other."

"Oh, Cooee?" She laughed. "It dates from our first coming out here, when we were children. My old Kaffir nurse—I was only five, that first trip—used to call me so, and every one took it up. We went back to England, after a few weeks, and the name was dropped; but my uncle stayed out here, and he and my cousin always kept the old word."

Weldon stirred his tea thoughtfully.

"I rather like it, do you know?" he said.

"Surely, you don't think it fits me?"

His eyes moved from her shining hair to the hem of her elaborate white gown. Then he smiled and shook his head.

"Not to-day, perhaps. But the Miss Dent of the Dunottar Castle—"

She interrupted him a little abruptly.

"Does that mean I am two-sided?"

"No; only complex."

She smiled in gracious response.

"You did that very well, Mr. Weldon," she said, with a slight accent of superiority which galled him. Then, before he could reply, she changed the subject, speaking with a lowered voice. "And what of the Captain?"

It suited his mood not to understand her.

"In what way?"

"Every way. What do you think of him?"

Then she drew back, abashed by the fervor of the answer, as he said slowly,—

"That the Creator made him, and then broke the pattern."

The little pause which followed caught the alert attention of the hostess, and convinced her that it was time to shift the groups to another combination. A swift gesture summoned Weldon to the table, while Frazer dropped into his vacant chair. Ethel met the Captain with only a half-concealed eagerness. This was not the first time that a consciously trivial word of hers had been crushed out of life by Weldon's serious dignity. She was never quite able to understand his mood upon such occasions. The man was no prig. At times, he was as merry as a boy. At other times, he showed an inflexible seriousness which left her with the vague feeling of being somehow or other in the wrong. The result was a mood of pique, rather than of antagonism. Up to that time, Ethel Dent had known only unreserved approval. Weldon's occasional gravity, to her mind, suggested certain reservations. By way of overcoming these reservations, she focussed her whole attention upon Captain Leo Frazer. Across the table, Weldon, in the intervals of his talk with his hostess, could hear the low murmur of their absorbed conversation.

It had been at Ethel's suggestion that the tea-table had been set, that hot afternoon, under the trees in the heart of the garden. Just at the crossing of two broad walks, a vine-roofed kiosk gave shelter from the late sunshine, while its bamboo screens were half raised to show the long perspective of garden walk and distant lawn. Save for the orange grove at the left and the ash-colored leaves of the silver wattle above them, Weldon could almost have fancied himself in England. The lawn with its conventional tennis court was essentially English; English, too, the tray with its fixtures. There, however, the resemblance stopped. The ebony handmaiden who brought out the tray was never found in private life outside the limits of South Africa. When she sought foreign countries, it was merely as a denizen of a midway plaisance.

"Yes, and their names are their most distinctive feature," Alice assented to Weldon's comment.

"More than their mouths?" he asked, with a flippant recollection of Kruger Roberts engrossed in his jam tin.

"At least as much so," she responded, laughing. "You notice that I called our maid Syb. She told me, when she came, that her old master named her Sybarite. I understood it, the next day, when I found her snoring on the drawing-room sofa."

During the time of her answer, Weldon took his opportunity to look steadily at his young hostess. Up to the moment of the shifting of the groups, he had been too fully absorbed in the pleasure of once more meeting Ethel to pay much heed to any one else. Now he turned his gray eyes upon Alice Mellen, partly from real interest in her personality; partly to counterbalance the rapt attention which Ethel was bestowing upon the Captain. She had been the selfsame Ethel, a bundle of contradictions that attracted him at one moment and antagonized him at the next. He liked her absolutely; his very liking for her increased the sense of antagonism when, for the instant, she departed from his ideals of what she ought to be. And yet, Weldon was candid enough to admit to himself that she departed from them, rather than fell below them. Often as she had antagonized him, she had never really disappointed him.

As for Alice Mellen, he confessed himself surprised. Gathering together all that Ethel had ever told him of her cousin, of her living her entire life out there in the southern end of South Africa, of her desire to be a nurse, he had pieced together an effigy of the combined traits of a Hottentot and a vivandiere. This girl answered to neither description. Her clothes and her manners and her accent all had come, albeit with slow indirectness, from London. Not only would she and her gowns pass muster in a crowd; but furthermore she would end by being the focal point of a good share of that crowd. Nevertheless, Weldon found it impossible to discover her most distinctive point. Even while he sought it, he wondered to himself whether this might not be another cousin of whom he had never heard. The women doctors and nurses at home wore stout shoes and had pockets let in at the seams of their frocks, useful, doubtless, but with an unlovely tendency to yawn and show their contents. This girl was a mere fluff of pale yellow organdie which brought out the purplish lights in her ink-black hair.

"Did you have the heart to disturb her?" he asked, reverting to the subject of Syb's nap.

"I was forced to. She was on all the cushions, and I needed one for myself. She took it in good part, though. She told me she had been disturbed, the night before, by the snoring of the parrot, two rooms away. As a result, she left me feeling that the apology really ought to come from me."

"Is that the way of the race?" Weldon queried, as he set down his empty cup. "If so, you make me tremble."

"Why?"

"Because, without in the least intending it, I have accumulated a boy."

She looked up suddenly.

"How do you mean?"

"I don't know how. It apparently did itself. It was the day before we went out to be fired at, and he said his name was Kruger Roberts, and I fed him some empty jam tins."

"A huge black boy with bristly hair?" she interpolated.

"Yes, and a mouth so large that one wonders how his face can hold it all."

She sat up alertly, resting her folded arms on the edge of the table.

"This becomes interesting. Kruger Roberts is Syb's avowed and lawful lover."

Weldon laughed.

"Mine also, as it appears. As I say, I fed him jam tins. There were four of them, and they were very jammy. Then we became interested in the Boers, and I forgot Kruger Roberts. When I came back, yesterday morning, dead tired and my horse all in a mess, I found Kruger Roberts calmly sitting on my extra blankets, cleaning my shoes with Paddy's best dishcloth. Paddy was in a wild state of mutiny, and told me that that chattering baboon had vowed he was Trooper Weldon's boy. Since then, I have tried in vain to dislodge him; but it is no use. The Nig is like a piece of satin, and it is all I can do to keep my compressed-paper buttons from winking defiance at the Boers on the northern edge of Sahara."

Alice Mellen laughed with the air of one who understood the situation.

"You builded better than you knew, Mr. Weldon, and your jam tins will be no house of cards. The Kaffirs are an unaccountable race of beings, lazy and good-natured. Once let them love or hate, though, and all their strength goes into the working out of the feeling. Kruger Roberts obviously has a sweet tooth; the day may come when your enemies may find it changed to a poisoned fang. Do you want the advice of one who knows the country?"

"I do," he assented heartily.

"Then keep your Kruger Roberts," she said decisively.

"But what shall I do with him?"

"Let him do for you."

"As a valet? I've never been used to such luxury," he protested, laughing.

She shook her head.

"Not only valet. He will be groom, cook, guide, interpreter and, whether you wish it or not, your chum. Moreover, he will do it all with the face of a clown and the manner of a tricksy monkey. As a panacea for the blues, you will find him invaluable."

There was a little pause. Then she added, with a complete change of tone, "My cousin has spoken of you so often, Mr. Weldon."

"And of you," he returned.

The directness of her answer pleased him.

"Then we ought to start as friends, and not waste time over mere acquaintance."

"I thought there were no acquaintances out here," he answered lightly. "In camp, our first question is: Friend, or foe?"

"In the towns, we have every grade between. Often the same person slides through all the grades in a single day. But you haven't answered me."

His eyes met her eyes frankly.

"About the friendship? I thought that wasn't necessary."

"Customary, however," she suggested, with a smile.

"But, as I say, there are no customs here," he retorted. "At least, I should have said so, this morning. Now I am not so sure." Then he laughed. "I've bungled that horribly, Miss Mellen. What I meant was that you have given me a very good time, this afternoon."

"Prove it by coming again," she advised him.

"If I may. I don't wish to wear out my welcome; but one hasn't so many friends in South Africa."

"What about Kruger Roberts?" she reminded him.

"That gives me two."

"And Captain Frazer?"

Weldon's eyes lighted.

"Some day, perhaps. I would be willing to wait for that."

Gravely her glance roved from the alert young Canadian at her side to the older, more steadfast face across the table. Then she shook her head.

"You will not have to wait long, Mr. Weldon?" she said quietly. "Captain Frazer spoke of you, a week ago. I have known him for months; I know what, with him, stands for enthusiasm."

"I wish you might be a true prophet. I would honor you, even here in your own garden. For the sake of Captain Frazer's regard, I would give up most things," he replied, too low to be overheard by the couple who were now chaffing each other above their cooling cups.

Later on, he wondered a little how far the apparent inconsequence of her next question was the result of chance.

"What about Cooee?" she asked, in a voice as low as his own had been.

He hesitated. Then he looked up at her steadily.

"Miss Mellen, I am sure I don't know," he answered gravely.