On the Firing Line Part 17

Late that afternoon, an ambulance train had come in, loaded with men from the over-crowded field hospital at Krugersdorp, and for hours Alice had been in ceaseless attendance upon the surgeon in charge.

Little by little, the girl had found her nerves steadying down to the task in hand; nevertheless, the past ten weeks, in return for the increase of her poise, had taken something from her vitality.

Quickness of eye, firmness of hand, evenness of temper: all these may be gifts of the G.o.ds. Their use is a purely human function, and proportionately exhausting. The girl's one salvation lay in the fact that her quick sympathy with her patients was for the most part impersonal. Up to this time, Weldon had been her only patient whom she had known outside the routine duties of her hospital life. In a sense, it had been a relief to meet some one whom she knew to be of her own world; in a sense, the case had worn upon her acutely. She could watch with a greater degree of stolidity the sufferings of other men.

Among her new charges, that day, only one had made any distinct impression upon her overworked brain. That was a jovial young fellow, handsome as Phoebus Apollo, in spite of a slas.h.i.+ng scar across one cheek. He had answered to her questions regarding his wounded foot with an accent so like that of Weldon that involuntarily she lingered beside him to add a word of cheery consolation. His was her final case, that night. As she wearily turned towards her own room, she made no effort to a.n.a.lyze her exhaustion.

She found Ethel, still in her hat and jacket, sitting on the edge of her own narrow cot.

"Cooee Dent!"

"Yes, dear." The girl's tone was nonchalant, even while the telltale color came into her cheeks.

"What are you doing here?"

"Visiting you, of course."

"Visiting me! But, Cooee, I really don't know where I can put you."

With perfect composure, Ethel pa.s.sed her hand over the surface of the cot.

"Oh, I think this nutmeg-grater will carry two. Still, Alice, I must say that your hospitality isn't exactly exuberant."

Alice dropped into a chair and wearily pushed her hair still farther back from her forehead.

"But, Cooee--"

"Aren't you glad to see me?" Ethel demanded.

"Certainly. You are always a dear; but--I wish I had known you were coming."

Ethel raised her brows, and a slight edge came into her voice.

"If you don't want me, Alice, I can go home in the morning."

Dimly aware that her cousin was fencing with an invisible adversary, nevertheless Alice Mellen was too tired, that night, to range herself upon the side of that adversary. As far as she was concerned, Ethel had dropped upon her like a bolt from the blue. She was too busy, too absorbed in her patients to give more than a pa.s.sing thought to even her most intimate cousin. And besides, Weldon--She pulled herself together sharply.

"Of course I want you, Cooee dear. It is only a bit sudden, and I am trying to think what to do with you."

Now and then Ethel turned wayward. This was one of the times.

"If you didn't know what to do with me, Alice, then why did you ask me to come?"

"But I didn't," Alice responded, too astonished to modify her denial into a polite form of fibbing.

Ethers tone was gently superior.

"Oh, yes; you did."

"When?"

"When you were leaving home. You said then that I must be sure to come up to spend a week with you, early in the winter." Then her accent changed. "You poor tired child!" she said, as she rose and crossed to her cousin's side. "This work is too hard for you; you look as if you had been fighting the Boers themselves, instead of merely enteric and bullet holes. I think it is just as well that I am here to look out for you, for a few days."

Alice lifted her hand to the hand that lay against her cheek.

"I am glad to see you, Cooee dear. I am only so surprised that it makes me slow to tell you so. If you can sleep here, to-night, I can find a better place for you in the morning."

"This will do," Ethel answered, while she slowly drew the pins from her hat. "It is neat, even if it isn't s.p.a.cious. Really, Alice, I should have let you know; but it was only just as I was starting that I found I could come at all. Father is at home, and mother is unusually well, and I thought I would best make the most of the opportunity."

Crossing the room to the table, she stood with her back to her cousin, while she smoothed the feathers in her hat. Then, without turning, she asked abruptly,--

"How is Mr. Weldon?"

"Better."

"Out of all danger?"

"Yes. Not that he has been in much danger, anyway."

"Oh, I thought--"

Then silence fell.

Alice, meanwhile, was busy with a swift calculation. Five days, in these troubled times, for a letter to go from Johannesburg to Cape Town; five days since Ethel could have left Cape Town. And her one letter to Ethel since Weldon's arrival had been posted just three days before.

"How did you know Mr. Weldon was here?" she asked sharply.

Ethel's back was still turned towards her. Nevertheless, she could see the scarlet tide mounting to the ears and to the roots of the vivid gold hair.

"Why, your letter, Alice," Ethel answered composedly.

Alice's laugh was sharp and edged with malice.

"Yes, dear. My letter, telling you of his being here, will be delivered at your house to-morrow morning."

"Oh, then I must have mixed things up," Ethel replied, as she turned to face her cousin. "Probably Captain Frazer told me."

"Captain Frazer?"

"Yes, he came down to Cape Town, just before I left there. I remember now, he was the one who told me. He was near Mr. Weldon at Vlaakfontein; he knew all about his awful ride into Krugersdorp, and I believe he did say he was to be brought here."

For a moment more, the two pairs of eyes, the blue and the black, met in steady warfare, neither one yielding in the least, neither one quite aware how much she was betraying to the other.

"Well, what of it?" Ethel demanded tempestuously then.

"Nothing, only--are you sure you were wise to come?"

The blue eyes blazed.

"And what do you mean by that, Alice? You asked me to visit you here, to see your work among your patients. I have come. If I came at all, it had to be now. I can't always leave home for a week at a time. And I can't help it, can I, if Mr. Weldon happens to be one of your patients?"