By midwinter, the war had become a series of guerrilla raids, of sweeping drives and of occasional skirmishes.The epoch of the infantry had passed, and it was the day of the mounted man.The home-going of the great Field Marshal, six months before, had been followed by the return to England of transports loaded with foot soldiers.The hour, the country and the enemy all demanded the man on the horse.With Lord Kitchener in the field and the colonies aiding the mother country, the outcome was only a matter of time;but few could as yet say when the fulness of that time should be at hand.
"But it leaves me a good deal puzzled in my mind," Weldon said thoughtfully.
"How do you mean?" Ethel Dent threw the question at him a little defiantly.
"About going home."
"Surely, you aren't going now?"
He winced at the accent.
"I am not sure.I volunteered for six months.My time is up; I paid my official visit to the Citadel yesterday.""Are you needed at home?"
"No.At least, not in any real sense."
"But you are needed here."
"There are enough without me, and the need will not last long.""Don't be too sure.On the Dunottar Castle, there were plenty of people who laughed at you men for coming out to volunteer, after the war was over.You have proved that they laughed at nothing.Prove it again."Rising, he walked the length of the room and stood looking out from the long front window.The bamboo screens and the willow chairs were gone from their veranda corner; the flower-boxes were empty now, and Table Bay gleamed coldly back at him in the late afternoon sun of midwinter.Then he turned around to face the girl, seated where her golden hair seemed to him to catch and hold all the light centering about the gay little tea-table.
"Don't," he said with some impatience."Your arguments all echo my own wish.I am pulled in two ways at once.At home, the mother is growing restless.Since Vlaakfontein, she has lost her nerve, and her heart is set on my meeting her in London in October."Deliberately Ethel made a neat triangle out of three unused spoons.
"Well?" she said, without looking up.
"Piggie and I have had a smell of powder," he answered briefly."We want more.""Well?" she said again.
"The question is, are we likely to get it.""Not in England; not even in Cape Town," she answered, smiling at the spoons before her.
"Then where?"
"Wherever the Boers are thickest."
"Yes; but, after all, you are talking platitudes, Miss Dent," he said, with recurring impatience.
This time, she lifted her dark blue eyes to his face and allowed them to rest there for a full minute.
"But you forbade me to argue," she said demurely.
He dropped down into a chair and faced her resolutely.
"Now look here, Miss Dent, I can't talk shop in tea-table English.
In fact, shop has no place at a tea-table, anyway.Still, you were the one to start it.Let's have it out.I don't want to funk, at this late day.If there is any fighting to be done, I want a hand in it.I went into a game of a certain length; I hope I played up, and stuck to the professional rules.That game is played out.I am not Trooper Weldon of the Scottish Horse.I am plain Harvard Weldon again and, to be quite frank, I don't like the change from khaki to tweed.But about going in for another game: it all depends on what the game will be.If it plays itself out, well and good; if it just dribbles on and on, without accomplishing anything, even an end, then I can see no use in going in for it.Fighting is one thing;having a picnic all over the face of South Africa is quite another matter.And, for the life of me, I can't see which is bound to come."There was a minor cadence to the final phrase.Then he fell silent, and sat staring at the rug, while Ethel, leaning back in her chair, studied him at her ease.All in all, she was pleased with the result of her study.Always frank and likable, Weldon had developed wonderfully during those past months of hard work and slender comfort.Underneath his sunburn, his face had taken on new lines of resolution.His eyes were as clear as ever; but their boyishness was all in the past.It was a man who had come striding into the room, that afternoon, and paused beside her tea-table.And Ethel, looking up, had greeted him as she might have greeted Baden-Powell in his place.
To a great extent, Cape Town was resuming at least a semblance of its oldtime social life.Heroes were more plentiful than is altogether normal, however, and there was a dust-colored tint to most assemblages.During the past months, the Dents' house had come to be one of the focal points of society, and there were few men of note who had failed to mount the wide white steps and pass between the flanking pillars at the top, on their way to the drawing-room beyond.Once there, they usually came again, immediately, if they lingered in Cape Town; on their way back from the front, if no quicker opportunity offered itself.Many a bullet-interrupted conversation was resumed there; many a boy, just out from home, confided his mingled homesickness and aspirations to dainty, white-haired Mrs.Dent in her easy-chair; many a seasoned officer forgot his ambitions and his disappointments and even his still sensitive wounds in the gay talk of the golden-haired girl by the tray.As a rule, Ethel talked shop with no man.She merely looked sympathetic, and left him to do the talking, which he did unhesitatingly and without reservation.From the first hour of their meeting, Weldon had been the one exception.Even in the hospital at Johannesburg, she had gone over with him in detail his experiences in camp and field, and it had been Weldon by no means who had done all the talking.
