The Captain was dead.Ethel had loved the Captain.She had told the Captain of her love.As consequence, she could not love himself, Harvard Weldon.But he loved her.He had loved her for thirteen months and twenty-one days.Carefully he reckoned up the time; then, to make sure, he counted it off upon his fingers.Yes, he had loved her ever since that first lunch on the steamer, when she had snubbed him so roundly.He did not know it then.Looking backward, he knew it now.And there had been Cape Town, and Johannesburg, and Cape Town again.He stumbled into the open mouth of an ant-bear's hole and came down with a crash, full upon his wounded shoulder.Strange that his step should be so uncertain! Strange that he should feel so little inclination to swear! As he picked himself up, he wondered vaguely whether his pipe would be refreshing; but his wonder stopped, impotent to lead his dangling hand in the direction of his pocket.Then his mind took up its interrupted story, its record of brief, categorical facts.
He had meant to go home, that winter.Instead, Ethel had fanned the flame of his desire to go back to the front.He had left her, one evening, to pass a sleepless night, and, the next morning, to take himself out to enlist for another six months of service.The six months were nearly ended.Only three weeks remained.And then?
Nothing.
The second night found him still far from Lindley.He had plodded on mechanically, stumbling often, but halting never, while his mind went whirling on and on, over and over the same old questions.His lips were feverish, and his eyes burned hotly, so it was almost with a sense of relief that he greeted the swift chill which followed the dropping of the sun.Over his head, the great arch of the sky shaded from east to west through every tint of purple and blue and turquoise and emerald-green, down to the golden band of the afterglow.Then the stars began to dot the purple, their tiny points of light serving only to emphasize its darkness, until the full moon swept up across the heavens, throwing its mystic silver light over all the land and adding tenfold to the empty loneliness of the veldt.Sleep was out of the question.He could only snuggle more closely into his blankets and wait for morning with what grace he could.The stopping of his physical action only increased the swiftness of his swirling thoughts which chased each other round and round in circling eddies about one fixed point.That point was Ethel.
Across the veldt at his left hand, he had watched the chain of blockhouses which lay along the country between Kroonstad and Lindley.Their squat outlines and the shining blue of their corrugated iron roofs had caught his wandering attention, held it, pinned it to other associations with those same blockhouses and, of a sudden, had brought him to a full realization that griefs did not come singly.He had left Johannesburg, to face a future apart from Ethel.He was coming back to Lindley, to face a future bereft of the Captain.
It was full noon, the next day, when the camp came into view.
Leaving the convoy to follow in his wake, he headed straight for the rise where he had so often sat with Carew and gossiped of all things under the light of the sun.Then, as the round tents lay under his eyes like rows of dots punched into relief above the surface of the plain, he sank down on the coarse, parched grass and hid his eyes in his shaking hands.Yet even then the pitiless circle of tragic thoughts refused to stop their ceaseless round.
He roused himself at a touch on his arm.Kruger Bobs, at a distance, was eying him with a look of chastened welcome; but Carew stood beside him, one thin, sun-tanned hand on Weldon's shoulder.
"It's all right, old man," he was saying."Don't try to tell me anything about it.Kruger Bobs saw you coming, and we rode out to meet you.Come in and rest.You look utterly done up."Half way back to the camp, Carew spoke again; but it was only once.
"I told the fellows you were coming, and that you would be tired.
They will keep out of your way, till you have had time to rest up a bit.Paddy is waiting to look out for you; but you needn't worry.He knows when to hold his tongue.If you need anything, or if you care to talk, send him out to look for me.Meanwhile, you need some rest."
