On the Firing Line Part 4

"Wherefore?" Carew queried languidly from the midst of a haze of smoke.

"To take account of stock."

"What's the use?"

"To find out what we need, of course."

"But we don't need anything. We've tobacco for our pipes and quinine for our stomachs and fuller's earth for our feet. What more can a man need?" As he spoke, Carew hooked his toe around a second chair, drew it towards him and promptly converted it into a foot-rest.

"Besides," he added tranquilly; "to-morrow is Boxing Day, and the bank won't be open until the day after. You know you can't buy anything more than a pink-bordered handkerchief out of your present supplies."

Weldon laughed.

"Don't be too sure I can make out even that," he said, as he dived into the trunk and pulled out a Klond.y.k.e sleeping-bag.

Carew watched him from between half-closed lids.

"Going beddy?" he inquired.

"Confound it, no! I thought my calling kit was in there." A pair of dark gray blankets landed in the corner on top of the sleeping-bag.

"That looks jolly comfortable. You'd better bunk in there, and leave the bed to me," Carew advised him. "You're in the wrong trunk for your calling clothes, anyway. What under heaven do you want of them, Weldon?"

"I don't want them to lie all in a heap."

"They'll lie in heaps for a good long time, before you are out of this country," Carew predicted cheerfully. "Moreover, from the look of the place, you could make calls in either pajamas or khaki, and it would pa.s.s muster. I saw one fellow, this noon, in evening clothes and a collar b.u.t.ton. Besides, there isn't anybody for us to call on."

Weldon smiled contentedly, as he drew out a frock-coat and inspected its satin-faced lapels.

"Not for you, perhaps," he observed quietly.

"Oh, I see." Carew puffed vigorously. "So you have a bidding to call upon Miss Dent."

Weldon dislodged Carew's feet from the extra chair and utilized the chairback as a temporary coat-rack.

"No; quite the contrary," he replied. "I am invited to call upon Miss Ophelia Arthur. Now you will please to keep quiet, for I think I shall go to bed."

In silence, Carew watched him half through the process of undressing. Then, emptying his pipe and snapping open its case, he rose and faced his friend.

"Weldon," he said sententiously; "we don't care to hang around this place longer than we must; and we shall have all we can do to get ourselves enlisted and our horses into condition. We haven't time for much else. I hope you will remember that you came out here, not to fuss the girls, but for the fuss with the Boers."

From his seat on the edge of the bed, Weldon eyed him amicably.

"Don't preach, Carew," he answered coolly. "It doesn't do my soul any good, and it only renders you a bore. It has always been a clause of my creed that two good things are better than one."

Nevertheless, in spite of his haste to unpack his calling clothes, it was full three days later that Weldon turned his face eastward in search of the home of Ethel Dent. Moreover, in all those three days, he had given scarcely a thought to the companion of his voyage.

Notwithstanding his first impressions, Weldon had found much to interest him in Cape Town. The streets, albeit unlovely, were full of novel sights and the patter of novel tongues. Cape carts and Kaffirs, traction engines and troopers, khaki everywhere and yet more khaki, and, rising grimly behind it all, the naked face of Table Mountain covered with its cloth of clouds! It was all a tumult of busy change, bounded by the unchanging and the eternal. For one entire morning, Weldon loitered about the streets, viewing all things with his straightforward Canadian gaze, jostling and jostled by turns. War had ceased to be a myth, and, of a sudden, was become a grim reality; yet in the face of it all his courage never faltered. His sole misgivings concerned themselves with the contrast between the seasoned regulars marching to their station, and his boyish self, full of eager enthusiasm, but trained only in the hunting field, the polo ground and the gymnasium. Then, gripping his hope in both hands, he resolutely shouldered his way into the nearest recruiting office. He went into the office as Harvard Weldon, amateur athlete and society darling of his own home city. He came out as Trooper Weldon of the First Regiment of Scottish Horse.

He spent the next morning in sorting over his miscellaneous luggage.

In the light of Cape Town and the practical advice which had been his for the asking, his outfit appeared comically complete. Two thirds of it must be stored in Cape Town; of the other third, one full half must be left with the negro servants at the hotel. His toilet fixtures would have been adequate for a Paris season; his superfluous rugs would have warmed him during a winter on the apex of the North Pole. It was with something between a smile and a sigh that he stowed away the greater part of his waistcoats and neckties, in company with the silver-mounted medicine chest by which his mother had set such store. It was as Carew had said: quinine and tobacco were the main essentials.

Then, for the last time in many months, he arrayed himself in black cloth and fine linen, chose his stick and gloves with care, and, leaving Adderley Street behind him, turned eastward towards the home of the Dents.

He found Ethel on the broad veranda, bordered with flower-boxes and overlooking the garden and the blue waters of Table Bay. Dressed in a thin white gown which, to Weldon's mind, was curiously out of keeping with all his preconceived notions of January weather, she rose and came forward to greet him at the top of the steps.

"At last," she said cordially, while she gave him her hand. "I began to fear you had already gone to the front."

"Not without seeing you again," he answered, as he followed her back to the bamboo chairs at the shaded western end of the veranda. "In fact, I began to be rather afraid I should never see the front at all."

"What do you mean?" she asked quickly. "Has something happened since I saw you?"

"A great deal has happened. The thing I referred to was my first sight of British regulars."

Her face cleared.

"Oh, is that all?"

"It is a good deal," he a.s.sured her, as he sat down. "I came out here with all sorts of high notions regarding volunteers."

"Well?" she questioned smilingly.

"Well, they have been taken out of me. An untrained man isn't worth much in any line, least of all in the firing line. Still, it would be very ignominious to go back home again."

Her eyes swept over his alert, well-groomed figure.

"And when do you start for the front, Trooper Weldon?"

"How do you know I start at all?"

"How do I know you are sitting opposite me?" she asked lightly.

"Having eyes, I use them."

"And they tell you--?" he responded.

"That you are looking content with life."

The laughter died out of his eyes.

"I am," he said gravely; "perfectly content. I am enrolled in the Scottish Horse, and I go tomorrow."

"The Scottish Horse?" she asked quickly. "Which squadron?"

"Do you know anything of it?"

"A little," she answered; "but that little is good. Then it is to Maitland that you are going?"

"Are you omniscient, Miss Dent?"

"No; merely an inquisitive girl who remembers the answers to the questions that she asks. My father, you know, is in the thick of things, and it seems to me I have met half the British army, in the four days I have been at home."