On The Firing Line [3]
tradition is so strong that I was sent back to school and for a year of social life. My little brother goes to Harrow in two years. Even in Cape Town, a few people still hold true to the tradition of the public school."
Weldon nodded assent.
"We meet it in Canada, now and then; not too often, though. So in reality you are almost as much a stranger to Cape Town as I am."
"Quite. My father says it is all changed now. It used to be a lazy little place; now it is pandemonium, soldiers and supplies going out, time-expired men and invalids coming in. Mr. Weldon--"
His questioning smile answered the pause in her sentence.
"Well?" he asked, after a prolonged interval.
Her teeth shut on her lower lip, she stared at the wide blue sea with wide blue eyes. Something in its restless tossing, in the changing lights that darted back to her from the crests of the waves, seemed to be holding her in an hypnotic trance. Out of the midst of the trance she spoke again, and it was plain to Weldon, as he listened to her low, intent voice, that her thoughts were not upon the sea nor yet upon him.
"It ought to terrify me," she said. "I mean the war, of course. I ought to dread the going out into the atmosphere of it. I don't. Sometimes I think I must have fighting blood in my veins. Instead of being frightened at what my father writes me, I feel stirred by it all, as if I were ready for anything. I went out to Aldershot, one day last year; but that was only so many dainty frills, so much playing soldier. That's not what I mean at all." Turning suddenly, she looked up directly into Weldon's dark gray eyes. "One of my cousins wants to be a nurse. She lives at Piquetberg Road, but she has been visiting friends who live in Natal on the edge of the fighting, where she has seen things as they happen. In her last letter, she told me that she was only waiting for my uncle's permission to go out as a nurse."
"Is that what you would do?"
Her head lifted itself proudly.
"No. She can take care of the wounded men, if she chooses. For my part, I'd rather cheer on the men who are starting for the front. If I could know that one man, one single man, fought the better for having known me, I should feel as if I had done my share."
She spoke with fiery vigor; then her eyes dropped again to the dancing waves. When at length she spoke again, she was once more the level-voiced English girl who sat next him at the table.
"You are going out to Cape Town to stay, Mr. Weldon?" she asked, with an accent so utterly conventional that Weldon almost doubted his own ears.
"To stay until the war ends," he replied, in an accent as conventional as her own.
"In Cape Town?" Then she felt her eyes drawn to meet his eyes, as he answered quietly,--
"I shall do my best to make myself a place in the firing line."
Again her conventionality vanished, and she gave him her hand, as if to seal a compact.
"I hope you will win it and hold it," she responded slowly. "I can wish you nothing better."
CHAPTER TWO
A berugged, bedraggled bundle of apologies, Miss Ophelia Arthur lay prone in her steamer chair, her cheeks pale, her eyes closed. Her conscience, directed towards the interests of her charge, demanded her presence on deck. Once on deck and apparently on guard, Miss Arthur limply subsided into a species of coma. Her charge, meanwhile, rosy and alert, sat in the lee of a friendly ventilating shaft. Beside her, also in the lee of the ventilating shaft, sat Mr. Harvard Weldon.
The past week had been full of the petty events which make up life on shipboard. The trail of smoke from a passing steamer, the first shoal of flying fish, the inevitable dance, the equally inevitable concert and, most inevitable of all, the Sabbatic contest between the captain and the fresh-water clergyman who insists upon reading service: all these are old details, yet ever new. Throughout them all, Weldon had sturdily maintained his place at Ethel's side. By tacit consent, the girl had been transferred to the motherly care of Mrs. Scott who, after a
Weldon nodded assent.
"We meet it in Canada, now and then; not too often, though. So in reality you are almost as much a stranger to Cape Town as I am."
"Quite. My father says it is all changed now. It used to be a lazy little place; now it is pandemonium, soldiers and supplies going out, time-expired men and invalids coming in. Mr. Weldon--"
His questioning smile answered the pause in her sentence.
"Well?" he asked, after a prolonged interval.
Her teeth shut on her lower lip, she stared at the wide blue sea with wide blue eyes. Something in its restless tossing, in the changing lights that darted back to her from the crests of the waves, seemed to be holding her in an hypnotic trance. Out of the midst of the trance she spoke again, and it was plain to Weldon, as he listened to her low, intent voice, that her thoughts were not upon the sea nor yet upon him.
"It ought to terrify me," she said. "I mean the war, of course. I ought to dread the going out into the atmosphere of it. I don't. Sometimes I think I must have fighting blood in my veins. Instead of being frightened at what my father writes me, I feel stirred by it all, as if I were ready for anything. I went out to Aldershot, one day last year; but that was only so many dainty frills, so much playing soldier. That's not what I mean at all." Turning suddenly, she looked up directly into Weldon's dark gray eyes. "One of my cousins wants to be a nurse. She lives at Piquetberg Road, but she has been visiting friends who live in Natal on the edge of the fighting, where she has seen things as they happen. In her last letter, she told me that she was only waiting for my uncle's permission to go out as a nurse."
"Is that what you would do?"
Her head lifted itself proudly.
"No. She can take care of the wounded men, if she chooses. For my part, I'd rather cheer on the men who are starting for the front. If I could know that one man, one single man, fought the better for having known me, I should feel as if I had done my share."
She spoke with fiery vigor; then her eyes dropped again to the dancing waves. When at length she spoke again, she was once more the level-voiced English girl who sat next him at the table.
"You are going out to Cape Town to stay, Mr. Weldon?" she asked, with an accent so utterly conventional that Weldon almost doubted his own ears.
"To stay until the war ends," he replied, in an accent as conventional as her own.
"In Cape Town?" Then she felt her eyes drawn to meet his eyes, as he answered quietly,--
"I shall do my best to make myself a place in the firing line."
Again her conventionality vanished, and she gave him her hand, as if to seal a compact.
"I hope you will win it and hold it," she responded slowly. "I can wish you nothing better."
CHAPTER TWO
A berugged, bedraggled bundle of apologies, Miss Ophelia Arthur lay prone in her steamer chair, her cheeks pale, her eyes closed. Her conscience, directed towards the interests of her charge, demanded her presence on deck. Once on deck and apparently on guard, Miss Arthur limply subsided into a species of coma. Her charge, meanwhile, rosy and alert, sat in the lee of a friendly ventilating shaft. Beside her, also in the lee of the ventilating shaft, sat Mr. Harvard Weldon.
The past week had been full of the petty events which make up life on shipboard. The trail of smoke from a passing steamer, the first shoal of flying fish, the inevitable dance, the equally inevitable concert and, most inevitable of all, the Sabbatic contest between the captain and the fresh-water clergyman who insists upon reading service: all these are old details, yet ever new. Throughout them all, Weldon had sturdily maintained his place at Ethel's side. By tacit consent, the girl had been transferred to the motherly care of Mrs. Scott who, after a