Cupid in Africa Part 4

"Why?" asked Bertram.

"For in that it is likely that they, or their astral forms, will haunt your thoughts by day, your dreams by night. Your every path through life will lead to them," answered the Adjutant.

"What have I got to do with them?" enquired Bertram, with uncomfortable visions of adding the nine big black cauldrons to his kit.

"Write about them," was the succinct reply.

"To whom?" was the next query.

"Child," said the Adjutant solemnly, "you are young and ignorant, though earnest. To you, in your simplicity and innocence-

'A black cooking-pot by a cook-house door A black cooking-pot is, and nothing more,'

as dear William Wordsworth so truly says in his _Ode on the Imitations of Immorality_, is it-or is it in '_Hark how the Shylock at Heaven's gate sings_'? I forget. . . . But these are _much_ more. Oh, very much."

"How?" asked the puzzled but earnest one.

"_How_? . . . Why they are the subject-matter, from this moment, of a Correspondence which will be still going on when your children's grandchildren are doddering grey-beards, and you and I are long since swept into the gulf of well-deserved oblivion. _Babus_ yet unborn will batten on that Correspondence and provide posts for their relatives unnumbered as the sands of the seash.o.r.e, that it may be carried on unfailing and unflagging. As the pen drops from their senile palsied hands they will see the Correspondence take new lease of life, and they will turn their faces to the wall, smile, and die happy."

"I am afraid I don't really understand," admitted Bertram.

"_Do_ you think Colonel Rock will return these pots? Believe me, he will not. He will say, '_A pot in the hand is worth two in the bush-country_,' or else '_What I have I hold_,' or '_Ils suis_, _ils reste_'-being a bit of a scholar like-or perhaps he'll just swear he bought 'em off a man he went to see about a dog, just round the corner, at the pub. I don't know about _that_-but return them he will not. . . ."

"But if I say they belong to Colonel Frost and that he wants them back-and that I promised to make it clear to him that Colonel Frost desires their immediate return," protested Bertram, who visualised himself between the anvil of Colonel Rock and the hammer of Colonel Frost.

"Why then he'll probably say they now 'belong to Colonel Rock and that he _doesn't_ want them to go back, and that you must promise to make it clear to Colonel Frost that he desires _his_ immediate return'-to the devil," replied the Adjutant.

"Yes-every time," he continued. "He will pretend that fighting Germans is a more urgent and important matter than returning pots. He will lay aside no plans of battle and schemes of strategy to attend to the pots.

He will detail no force of trusty soldiers to convoy them to the coast. . . .

He will refuse to keep them prominently before his vision. . . . In short, he will hang on to the d.a.m.n things. . . . And when the war is o'er and he returns, he'll swear he never had a single cooking-pot in Africa, and in any case they are his own private property, and always were. . . ."

"I shall have to keep on reminding him about them," observed Bertram, endeavouring to separate the grain of truth from the literal "chaff" of the Adjutant-who seemed to be talking rapidly and with bitter humour, to keep himself from thinking of his cruel and crushing disappointment, or to hide his real feelings.

"If you go nightly to his tent, and, throwing yourself prostrate at his feet, clasp him around the knees, and say: '_Oh_, _sir_, _think of poor pot-less Colonel Frost_,' he will reply: '_To h.e.l.l with Colonel Frost_!

. . .' Yes-every time. . . . Until, getting impatient of your reproachful presence, he will say: '_You mention pots again and I'll fill you with despondency and alarm_. . .' He'll do it, too-he's quite good at it."

"Rather an awkward position for me," ventured Bertram.

"Oh, quite, quite," agreed Murray. "Colonel Frost will wire that unless you return his pots, he'll break you-and Colonel Rock will state that if you so much as hint at pots, _he'll_ break you. . . . But that's neither here nor there-the Correspondence is the thing. It will begin when you are broke by one of the two-and it will be but waxing in volume to its grand climacteric when the war is forgotten, and the pots are but the dust of rust. . . . A great thought. . . Yes. . ."

Bertram stared at the Adjutant. Had he gone mad? Fever? A touch of the sun? It was none of these things, but a rather terrible blow, a blighting and a shattering of his almost-realised hopes-and he must either talk or throw things about, if he were not to sit down and blaspheme while he drank himself into oblivion. . . .

For a time they regarded the pots in awed contemplative silence and felt themselves but ephemeral in their presence, as they thought of the Great Correspondence, but yet with just a tinge of that comforting and sustaining _quorum pais magna fui_ feeling, to which Man, the Mighty Atom, the little devil of restless interference with the Great Forces, is ever p.r.o.ne.

In chastened silence they returned to the Adjutant's office, and Bertram sat by his desk and watched and wondered, while that official got through the rest of his morning's work and dealt faithfully with many-chiefly sinners.

He then asked the Native Adjutant, who had been a.s.sisting him, to send for Jemadar Ha.s.san Ali, who was to accompany Bertram and the draft on the morrow, and on that officer's arrival he presented him to the young gentleman.

As he bowed and shook hands with the tall, handsome Native Officer, Bertram repressed a tendency to enquire after Mrs. Ali and all the little Allies, remembering in time that to allude directly to a native gentleman's wife is the grossest discourtesy and gravest immorality. All he could find to say was: "_Salaam_, _Jemadar Sahib_! _Sub achcha hai_?"

{38a} which at any rate appeared to serve, as the Native Officer gave every demonstration of cordiality and pleasure. What he said in reply, Bertram did not in the least understand, so he endeavoured to put on a look combining pleasure, comprehension, friendliness and agreement-which he found a slight strain-and remarked: "_Beshak_! _Beshak_!" {38b} as he nodded his head. . . .

The Jemadar later reported to his colleagues that the new Sahib, albeit thrust in over the heads of tried and experienced Native Officers, appeared to _be_ a Sahib, a gentleman of birth, breeding, and good manners; and evidently possessed of far more than such slight perception and understanding as was necessary for proper appreciation of the worth and virtues of Jemadar Ha.s.san Ali. Also that he was but a hairless-faced babe-but doubtless the Sircar knew what it was about, and was quite right in considering that a young boy of the Indian Army Reserve was fitter to be a Second-Lieutenant in the _pultan_, than was a Jemadar of fifteen years' approved service and three medals. One of his hearers laughed sarcastically, and another grunted approval, but the Subedar-Major remarked that certain opinions, however tenable, were, perhaps, better left unvoiced by those who had accepted service under the Sircar on perfectly clear and definite terms and conditions.

When the Jemadar had saluted and left the office, Murray turned upon Bertram suddenly, and, with a concentrated glare of cold ferocity, delivered himself.

"Young Greene," quoth he, "yesterday I said you were a Good Egg and a desirable. I called you Brother, and fell upon your neck, and I welcomed you to my hearth. I overlooked your being the son of a beknighted General. I looked upon you and found you fair and good-as a 'relief.'

You were a stranger, and I took you in. . . . Now you have taken _me_ in-and I say you are a cuckoo in the nest, a viper in the back-parlour, a worm in the bud, a microbe in the milk, and an elephant in the ointment.

. . . You are a-a-".

"I'm _awfully_ sorry, Murray," interrupted the unhappy Bertram. "I'd do _anything_-"

"Yes-and any _body_," continued the Adjutant. "I say you are a pillar of the pot-houses of Gomorrah, a fly-blown turnip and a great mistake.

Though of apparently most harmless exterior and of engaging manners, you are an orange filled with ink, an addled egg of old, and an Utter Improbability. I took you up and you have done me down. I took you out and you have done me in. I took you in and you have done me out-of my chance in life. . . . Your name is now as a revolting noise in my ears, and your face a repulsive sight, a thing to break plates on . . . and they 'call you _Cupid_'!"

"I can't tell you how distressed I am about it, Murray," broke in the suffering youth. "If only there were anything I could do so that you could go, and not I-"

"You can do nothing," was the cold reply. "You can not even, in mere decency, die this night like a gentleman. . . . And if you did, they'd only send some other pale Pimple to take the bread out of a fellow's mouth. . . . This is a civilians' war, mark you; they don't want professional soldiers for a little job like this. . . ."

"It wasn't _my_ fault, Murray," protested Bertram, reduced almost to tears by his sense of wicked unworthiness and the injustice to his kind mentor of yesterday.

"Perhaps not," was the answer, "but why were you ever _born_, Cupid Greene, that's what I ask? You say it isn't your fault-but if you'd never been born . . . Still, though I can never forget, I forgive you, and would share my last pot of rat-poison with you cheerfully. . . .

Here-get out your note-book," and he proceeded to give the boy every "tip" and piece of useful advice and information that he could think of as likely to be beneficial to him, to the men, to the regiment, and to the Cause.

CHAPTER III _Preparations_

That night Bertram could not sleep. The excitement of that wonderful day had been too much for his nerves, and he lay alternating between the depths of utter black despair, fear, self-distrust and anxiety on the one hand, and the heights of exultation, hope, pride, and joy on the other.

At one moment he saw himself the b.u.t.t of his colleagues, the contempt of his men, the _bete noir_ of his Colonel, the shame of his Service, and the disgrace of his family.

At another, he saw himself winning the approval of his brother officers by his modesty and sporting spirit, the affection and admiration of his men by his kindness and firmness, the good-will of his Colonel by his obvious desire to learn and his keen enthusiasm in his duty, the respect of his Service for winning a decoration, and the loving regard of the whole clan of Greene for his general success as a soldier.

But these latter moments were, alas, far less realistic and convincing than the others. In them he merely hoped and imagined-while in the black ones he felt and _knew_. He could not do otherwise than realise that he was utterly inexperienced, ignorant, untried and incompetent, for it was the simple fact. If _he_ could be of much use, then what is the good of training men for years in colleges, in regiments, and in the field, to prepare them to take their part in war?

He knew nothing of either the art or the science of that great and terrible business. He had neither the officer's trained brain nor the private soldier's trained body; neither the theory of the one nor the practice of the other. Even if, instead of going to the Front to-morrow as an officer, he had been going in a British regiment as a private, he would have been equally useless. He had never been drilled, and he had never used a weapon of any kind. All he had got was a burning desire to be of use, a fair amount of intelligence, and, he hoped, the average endowment of courage. Even as to this last, he could not be really certain, as he had never yet been tried-but he was very strongly of opinion that the dread of showing himself a coward would always be far stronger than the dread of anything that the enemy could do to his vile body. His real fear was that he should prove incompetent, be unequal to emergency, and fail those who relied upon him or trusted in him. When he thought of that, he knew Fear, the cold terror that causes a fluttering of the heart, a dryness of the mouth, a weakness of the knees, and a sinking of the stomach.

That was the real dread, that and the fear of illness which would further decrease capacity and usefulness. What were mere bullets and bayonets, wounds and death, beside revealed incompetence and failure in duty?

Oh, that he might have luck in his job, and also keep in sufficient health to be capable of his best-such as it was.

When Hope was in the ascendant, he a.s.sured himself that the greatest work and highest duty of a British officer in a Native regiment was to encourage and enhearten his men; to set them a splendid example of courage and coolness; to hearten them up when getting depressed; to win their confidence, affection and respect, so that they would cheerfully follow him anywhere and "stick it" as long as he did, no matter what the hardship, danger, or misery. These things were obviously a thousand times more important than parade-ground knowledge and such details as correct alignment, keeping step, polishing b.u.t.tons, and so forth-important as these might be in their proper place and season. And one did not learn those greater things from books, nor on parade, nor at colleges. A man as ignorant as even he of drill, internal economy, tactics and strategy, might yet be worth his rations in the trenches, on the march, yes, or in the wild, fierce bayonet-charge itself, if he had the attributes that enable him to encourage, uplift, enhearten and give confidence.

And then his soaring spirit would swiftly stoop again, as he asked himself: "And have _I_ those qualities and attributes?" and sadly replied: "Probably not-but what is, at any rate, certain, is the fact that I have no knowledge, no experience, no understanding of the very alphabet of military lore, no slightest grasp of the routine details of regimental life, discipline, drill, regulations, internal economy, customs, and so forth-the things that are the elementary essentials of success to a body of armed men proceeding to fight." . . . And in black misery and blank despair he would groan aloud: "_I cannot go_. _I cannot do it_." . . . He was very young, very much a product of modern civilisation, and a highly specialised victim of a system and a generation that had taken too little account of naked fact and elemental basic tendency-a system and a generation that pretended to believe that human nature had changed with human conditions. As he realised, he had, like a few million others, been educated not for Life and the World-As-It-Is, but for examinations and the world as it is not, and never will be. . . .

He tossed and turned through the long hot night on the little hard camp-bed, listening to Murray's regular breathing and the scampering of the rats as they disported themselves on the other side of the canvas ceiling cloth and went about their unlawful occasions. . . .

He reviewed the events of that epoch-making day from the arrival of the telegram to his getting into bed. . . . A memorable morning, a busy afternoon and evening, a rotten night-with a beastly climax-or anti-climax. . . . Would he never get to sleep on this hard, narrow bed?