That night, the Dents dined alone.Over the roast, Mr.Dent looked up suddenly.
"Whom do you think I saw, to-day, Ethel?""Who now?" she asked, smiling."You can't expect me to guess, when you are constantly running up against the most impossible people.""Not this time.It was quite possible; but it gave me a shock.It was Mr.Weldon."The smile died from her lips.Nevertheless, she asked, with a forced lightness,--"What shocked you?"
"His looks.He was ghastly, thin to a shadow and burning up with fever.I was in the bank, and I heard some one speak his name; but Ihad to look at him for a second time, before I could recognize him.
The man is a wreck.He looked sixty years old, as he went crawling off, on the arm of his Kaffir boy.I'm sorry.I always liked Weldon."A bit of bread lay by Ethel's plate.For an instant, her finger tips vanished inside its yielding surface.Then she looked up.
"Too bad! He was a good fellow," she said quietly.Then she lifted her hand to her throat."Dear me! Have I lost my diamond pin?" she added hastily."I was sure I put it on.Please excuse me, while Isee if I left it in my room." And she ran swiftly out of the room.
Mrs.Dent broke the pause.
"Where was Mr.Weldon going?"
"To his hotel.I came out, just as they drove away, and I heard the boy give the order to the driver.""Which hotel was it?"
"I--Really, I don't remember.He used to go to the Grand.""He seemed ill?"
"He seemed--" For an instant, Mr.Dent held the word in suspension.
Then he let it drop with a slow quietness which added tenfold to its weight--"dead."His wife's gentle eyes clouded.
"I am sorry.I liked the boy.He was good to me.""I had thought Ethel liked him, too," her husband added a little inconsequently.
"So she did in a way.But there have been so many others." The mother sighed slightly.In her young days, there had been but one.
Now, remembering that one and watching him in the present, she found it hard to comprehend Ethel's free-handed distribution of social favors among so great a throng of admirers.There had always been many; now, since her recent return from Johannesburg, the many had become a multitude, and each of the multitude could show proof of her liking.But Mrs.Dent recurred to the fact of Weldon's illness.
"Poor boy! Fancy being really ill, so far from home and in a hotel!"she added slowly.
"It is one of the risks of a soldier," her husband reminded her.
"Yes, and the soldiers fought for us.Where would your mines have been without them?" she suggested in return."I really wish you would telephone to the hotel and find out something more definite about him."Her husband looked covetously at the entree, just appearing in sight.
"Now?" he asked.
She ignored the mockery of his tone.
"Yes, please," she assented quietly."It will only take you a minute."It took him ten.When he came back into the room, his hat was in his hand.
"I think I will go over to the Grand for a minute," he explained."Idon't quite like what I hear."
"What did you hear?"
In the dim upper hallway, a girlish figure leaned far over the railing and strained her ears for the reply.Then, noiselessly, the door of her room shut again behind her.
"They tell me," Mr.Dent was saying; "that Weldon is there, unconscious in his room.The boy brought him into the house in his arms, and they have sent for Dr.Wright.It is a bad case of enteric, mixed with some trouble with the brain.He appears to be suffering from nervous shock, they say, increased by a long strain of anxiety."Half an hour later, he was called from Weldon's room to speak to his wife at the telephone.
"Yes," he answered her."It is as bad as I heard, as bad as it can be.You think so? Are you strong enough? Sure? Hold the wire, then, till I ask the doctor." The interval was short; and he went on again, "The doctor says he can be moved now, but not later.It may be a matter of weeks.How soon can you be ready? Very well.Will you be sure to save yourself all you can? In an hour, then.And the doctor will have a nurse waiting there? And can you put the boy into some corner? He would be frantic, if we tried to leave him behind.
Very well.Yes." And the telephone rang off.
It was midnight before the Dent household was fully reconstructed.
Upstairs in the great eastern front room, a white-capped nurse was bending above the unconscious man in the bed; downstairs in the kitchen, the tears of Kruger Bobs were mingling with the cold roast beef on the table before him.The doctor had just gone away, and in the room underneath the sickroom, Mr.Dent and his wife were quietly laying plans to meet the needs of the changed routine which had fallen upon their home.He looked up, as Ethel came slowly into the room.
"By the way, Ethel, I forgot to ask you before; but did you find your pin?"She looked at him wonderingly.Her face was pale and drawn; but her eyes were shining like the gems she had professed to miss.
"What pin do you mean?" she asked blankly.
