Cupid in Africa Part 35

Steering his little convoy to the tent over which the Red Cross flew, Ali handed over his master and the cleft stick holding Major Mallery's letter, to Captain Merstyn, R.A.M.C., and then stood by for orders.

It appeared that the _Barjordan_ was off M'paga, that a consignment of sick and wounded was just going on board, and that Second-Lieutenant Greene could go with them. . . .

That night Bertram was conveyed out to sea in a dhow (towed by a petrol-launch from the _Barjordan_), taken on board that ship, and put comfortably to bed. The next night he was in hospital at Mombasa and had met Mrs. Stayne-Brooker.

As, thanks to excellent nursing, he very slowly returned to health and strength, Bertram began to take an increasing interest in the very charming and very beautiful woman whom he had once seen and admired at the Club, who daily took his temperature, brought his meals, administered his medicine, kept his official chart, shook up his pillows, put cooling hands upon his forehead, found him books to read, talked to him at times, attended the doctor on his daily visits, and superintended the brief labours of the Swahili youth who was ward-boy and house-maid on that floor of the hospital.

Before long, the events of the day were this lady's visits, and, on waking, he would calculate the number of hours until she would enter his room and brighten it with her presence. He had never seen so sweet, kind, and gentle a face. It was beautiful too, even apart from its sweetness, kindness and gentleness. He was very thankful when he found himself no longer too weak to turn his head and follow her with his eyes, as she moved about the room. It was indescribably delightful to have a woman, and such a woman, about one's sick bed-after negro servants, Indian orderlies, _shenzi_ stretcher-bearers, and Bengali doctors. How his heart swelled with grat.i.tude as she laid her cool hand on his forehead, or raised his head and gave him a cooling drink. . . . But how sad she looked! . . . He hated to see her putting up the mosquito-curtains that covered the big frame-work, like the skeleton of a room, in which his bed stood, and which, at night, formed a mosquito-proof room-within-a-room, and provided s.p.a.ce for his bedside chair, table and electric-lamp, as well as for the doctor and nurse, if necessary.

One morning he sat up and said:

"_Please_ let me do that, Sister-I hate to see you working for me-though I love to see _you_ . . ." and then had been gently pushed back on to his pillow as, with a laugh, Mrs. Stayne-Brooker said:

"That's what I'm here for-to work I mean," and patted his wasted hand.

(He _was_ such a dear boy, and so appreciative of what one could do for him. It made one's heart ache to see him such a wasted skeleton.)

The time came when he could sit in a long chair with leg-rest arms, and read a book; but he found that most of his time was spent in thinking of the Sister and in the joys of retrospection and antic.i.p.ation. He had to put aside, quite resolutely, all thought of the day when he would be declared fit for duty and be "returned to store." Think of a _banda_ at Butindi and of this white room with its beautiful outlook across the strait to the palm-feathered sh.o.r.e; think of Ali as one's cup-bearer and of this sweet angelic Englishwoman. . . . Better not think of it at all.

It was quite a little shock to him, one day, to notice that she wore a wedding-ring. . . . He had never thought of that. . . . He felt something quite like a little twinge of jealousy. . . . He was sure the man must be a splendid fellow though, or she would never have married him. . . . How old would she be? It was no business of his, and it was not quite gentlemanly to speculate on such a subject-but somehow he had not thought of her as "an old married woman." Not that married women are necessarily older than unmarried women. . . . A silly expression-"old"

married women. He had imagined her to be about his own generation so to speak. Possibly a _little_ older than himself-in years-but years don't make age really. . . . Fancy her being married! Well, well, well! . . .

But what did that matter-she was just as much the charming and beautiful woman for whom he would have laid down his life in sheer grat.i.tude. . . .

A man gets like this after fever. He is off his balance, weak, neurasthenic, and devoid of the sense of proportion. He waxes sentimental, and is to be forgiven.

But there is not even this excuse for Mrs. Stayne-Brooker.

She began by rather boring her daughter, Eva, about her new patient-his extreme grat.i.tude, his charming ways and thoughts, his true gentleness of nature, his delightful views, the _niceness_ of his mind, the likeableness of him. . . . She wondered aloud as to whether he had a mother-she must be a very nice woman. She wondered in silence as to whether he had a wife-she must be a very happy woman. . . . How old was he? . . . It was so hard to tell with these poor fellows, brought in so wasted with fever and dysentery; and rank wasn't much guide to age nowadays. He _might_ be. . . . Well-he'd be up and gone before long, and she'd never see him again, so what was the good of wondering. . . .

And she continued to wonder. . . . And then, from rather boring Miss Stayne-Brooker with talk about Lieutenant Greene she went to the extreme, and never mentioned him at all.

For, one day, with an actual gasp of horrified amazement, she found that she had suddenly realised that possibly the poets and novelists were not so wrong as she had believed, and that there _might_ be such a thing as the Love-they hymned and described-and that Peace and Happiness might be its inseparable companions. . . . She would read her Browning, Herrick, Swinburne, Rosetti again, her Dante, her Mistral, and some of those plays and poems of Love that the world called wonderful, beautiful, true, for she had an idea that she might see glimmerings of wonder, beauty and truth in them-_now_. . . .

But then-how absurd!-at _her_ age. Of course she would not read them again! At _her_ age! . . .

And proceeded to do so at _her_ Dangerous Age. . . .

Strange that _his_ name should be Green or Greene-he was the fifth person of that name whom she had met since she left Major Walsingham Greene, eighteen years ago. . . .

CHAPTER II _Love_

All too soon for two people concerned, Doctor Mowbray, the excellent Civil Surgeon of Mombasa, in whose hospital Bertram was, decided that that young gentleman might forthwith be let loose on ticket-of-leave between the hours of ten and ten for a week or two, preparatory to his discharge from hospital for a short spell of convalescence-leave before rejoining his regiment. . . .

"I'll call for you and take you for a drive after lunch," said Mrs.

Stayne-Brooker, "and then you shall have tea with me, and we'll go over to the Club and sit on the verandah. You mustn't walk much, your first day out."

"I'm going to run miles," said Bertram, smiling up into her face and taking her hand as she stood beside his chair-a thing no other patient had dared to do or would have been permitted to do. ("He was such a dear boy-one would never dream of snubbing him or s.n.a.t.c.hing away a hand he gratefully stroked-it would be like hitting a baby or a nice friendly dog. . . .")

"Then you'll be ill again at once," rejoined Mrs. Stayne-Brooker, giving the hand that had crept into hers a little chiding shake.

"Exactly . . . and prolong my stay here. . ." said Bertram, and his eyes were very full of kindness and grat.i.tude as they met eyes that were also very full.

("What a sweet, kind, good woman she was! And what a cruel wrench it would be to go away and perhaps never see her again. . . .")

He went for his drive with Mrs. Stayne-Brooker in a car put at her disposal, for the purpose, by the Civil Surgeon; and found he was still very weak and that it was nevertheless good to be alive.

At tea he met Miss Stayne-Brooker, and, for a moment, his breath was taken away by her beauty and her extraordinary likeness to her mother.

He thought of an opened rose and an opening rose-bud (exactly alike save for the "open" and "opening" difference), on the same stalk. . . . It was wonderful how alike they were, and how young Mrs. Stayne-Brooker looked-away from her daughter. . . . The drive-and-tea programme was repeated almost daily, with variations, such as a stroll round the golf-course, as the patient grew stronger. . . . And daily Bertram saw the very beautiful and fascinating Miss Stayne-Brooker and daily grew more and more grateful to Mrs. Stayne-Brooker. He was grateful to her for so many things-for her nursing, her hospitality, her generous giving of her time; her kindness in the matter of lending him books (the books she liked best, prose works _and_ others); her kind interest in him and his career, ambitions, tastes, views, hopes and fears; for her being the woman she was and for brightening his life as she had, not to mention saving it; and, above all, he was grateful to her for having such a daughter. . . . He told her that he admired Miss Stayne-Brooker exceedingly, and she did not tell him that Miss Stayne-Brooker did not admire him to the same extent. . . . She was a little sorry that her daughter did not seem as enthusiastic about him as she herself was, for we love those whom we admire to be admired. But she realised that a chit of a girl, fresh from a Cheltenham school, was not to be expected to appreciate a man like this one, a scholar, an artist to his finger-tips, a poet, a musician, a man who had read everything and could talk interestingly of anything-a man whose mind was a sweet and pleasant storehouse-a _kind_ man, a gentleman, a man who, thank G.o.d, _needed_ one, and yet to whom one's ideas were of as much interest as one's face and form. Of course, the average "Cheerioh" subaltern, whose talk was of dances and racing and sport, would, very naturally, be of more interest to a callow girl than this man whose mind (to Mrs. Stayne-Brooker) a kingdom was, and who had devoted to the study of music, art, literature, science, and the drama, the time that the other man had given to the pursuit of various hard and soft b.a.l.l.s, inoffensive quadrupeds, and less inoffensive bipeds.

Thus Mrs. Stayne-Brooker, addressing, in imagination, a foolishly unappreciative Eva Stayne-Brooker.

As she and her daughter sat at dinner on the verandah which looked down on to Vasco da Gama Street, one evening, a month later, her Swahili house-boy brought Mrs. Stayne-Brooker a message. . . . A _shenzi_ was without, and he had a _chit_ which he would give into no hands save those of Mrs. Stayne-Brooker herself.

It was the escaped Murad ibn Mustapha, in disguise.

On hearing his news, she did what she had believed people only did in books. She fell down in a faint and lay as one dead.

Miss Stayne-Brooker tried to feel as strongly as her mother evidently did, but signally failed, her father having been an almost complete stranger to her. She was a little surprised that the blow should have been so great as to strike her mother senseless, for there had certainly been nothing demonstrative about her att.i.tude to her husband-to say the least of it. She supposed that married folk got like that . . . loved each other all right but never showed it at all. . . Nor had what she had seen of her father honestly impressed her with the feeling that he was a _very_ lovable person. Neither before dinner nor after it-when he was quite a different man. . . .

Still-here was her mother, knocked flat by the news of his death, and now lying on her bed in a condition which seemed to vary between coma and hysteria. . . .

Knocked flat-(and yet, from time to time, she murmured, "Thank G.o.d! Oh, thank G.o.d!"). Queer!

When Mr. Greene called next day, Miss Eva received him in the morning-sitting-drawing-room and told him the sad news. Her father had died. . . . He was genuinely shocked.

"Oh, your poor, _poor_ mother!" said he. "I am grieved for her"-and sat silent, his face looking quite sad. Obviously there was no need for sympathy with Miss Eva as she frankly confessed that she scarcely knew her father and felt for him only as one does for a most distant relation, whom one has scarcely ever seen.

With a request that she would convey his most heart-felt condolence and deepest sympathy to her mother, he withdrew and returned to the Mombasa Hotel, where he was now staying, an ex-convalescent awaiting orders. . .

He had hoped for an evening with Eva. That evening the _Elymas_ steamed into Kilindini harbour and Bertram, strolling down to the pier, met Captain Murray, late Adjutant of the One Hundred and Ninety-Ninth, and Lieutenant Reginald Macteith, both of whom had just come ash.o.r.e from her.

He wrung Murray's hand, delighted to see him, and congratulated him on his escape from regimental duty, and shook hands with Macteith.