CHAPTER II

_And is Ordered to East Africa_

That afternoon the Adjutant very good-naturedly devoted to assisting Bertram to remedy his utter nakedness and ashamedness in the matter of necessary campaigning kit. Taking him in his dog-cart to the great Madrutta Emporium, he showed him what to buy, and, still better, what not to buy, that he might be fully equipped, armed and well prepared, as a self-supporting and self-dependent unit, provided with all he needed and nothing he did not need, that he might go with equal mind wheresoever Fate—or the Military Secretary—might suddenly send him.

After all, it was not very much—a very collapsible camp-bed of green canvas, hardwood and steel; a collapsible canvas washstand to match; a collapsible canvas bath (which was destined to endanger the blamelessness of Blameless Bertram’s language by providing more collapses than baths); a canteen of cooking utensils; a green canvas valise which contained bedding, and professed to be in itself a warm and happy home from home, even upon the cold hard ground; and a sack of similar material, provided with a padlock, and suitable as a receptacle for such odds and ends of clothing and kit as you might choose to throw in it.

“Got to remember that, if you go on active service, your stuff may have to be carried by coolies,” said the Adjutant. “About forty pounds to a man. No good trying to make one big package of your kit. Say, one sack of spare clothing and things; one bundle of your bed, bath, and washing kit; and the strapped-up valise and bedding. If you had to abandon one of the three, you’d let the camp-bed, bath and wash-stand go, and hang on to the sleeping-valise and sack of underclothes, socks, boots, spare uniform and sundries,” and much other good advice.

To festoon about Cupid’s person, in addition to his sword, revolver, water-bottle and haversack, he selected a suitable compass, map-case, field-glasses, ammunition-pouch, whistle and lanyards, since his earnest and anxious protégé desired to be fitted out fully and properly for manœuvres, and as though for actual active service.

Assurance being received that his purchases would be forthwith dispatched to the Adjutant’s bungalow, Bertram drove back to the Mess with that kindly officer, and gratefully accepted his invitation to dine with him, that night, at the famous Madrutta Club.

“What about kit, though?” enquired Bertram. “I’ve only got what I stand up in. I left all my—”

“That’s all right,” was the reply. “Everybody’s in khaki, now we’re mobilised—except the miserable civilians,” he added with a grin, whereat Bertram, the belted man of blood, blushed and smiled.

At dinner Bertram sat respectfully silent, collecting the pearls of wisdom that fell from the lips of his seniors, fellow-guests of the Adjutant. And his demeanour was of a gravity weighty and serious even beyond his wont, for was he not now a soldier among soldiers, a uniformed, commissioned, employed officer of His Majesty the King Emperor, and attached to a famous fighting regiment? Yes—a King’s Officer, and one who might conceivably be called upon to fight, and perhaps to die, for his country and for those simple Principles for which his country stood.

He was a little sorry when some of his bemedalled fellow-guests joked on solemn and sacred subjects, and spoke a little slightingly of persons and principles venerable to him; but he comforted and consoled himself with the recollection and reflection that this type of man so loathed any display, or even mention, of sentiment and feeling, that it went to the opposite extreme, and spoke lightly of things weighty, talked ribaldly of dignitaries, and gave a quite wrong impression as to its burning earnestness and enthusiasm.

After dinner, when the party broke up for bridge, billiards or the bar, he sat on, listening with all his ears to the conversation of the Adjutant and an officer, who seemed exceedingly well informed on the subject of the battle of Tanga, in German East Africa, concerning which the general public knew nothing at all.

Murray noticed his intelligent and attentive silence, and counted it for righteousness unto the boy, that he could “keep his head shut,” at any rate. . . .

And next day The Blow fell!

For poor Captain and Adjutant Murray, of the Hundred and Ninety-Ninth Infantry, it dawned like any ordinary day, and devoid of baleful omens.

There was nothing ominous about the coming of the tea, toast, and oranges that “Abdul the Damned,” his bearer, brought into the big, bare and comfortless room (furnished with two camp-beds, one long chair, one _almirah_ {30} and a litter on the floor) in which he and Bertram slept.

Early morning parade passed off without unusual or untoward event.

Breakfast was quite without portent, omen, or foreshadow of disaster. The Colonel’s silence was no more eloquent than usual, the Major’s remarks were no ruder, the Junior Subaltern’s no sillier, and those of the other fellows were no more uninteresting than upon other days; and all unconscious of his fate the hapless victim strayed into his office, followed by his faithful and devoted admirer, Second-Lieutenant Bertram Greene, who desired nothing better than to sit at his feet and learn. . . .

And then it came!

It came in the shape of a telegram from the Military Secretary, and, on the third reading of the fair-writ type, Murray had to realise that the words undoubtedly and unmistakably were:

_To O.C. 199th Infantry_, _A.A.A._

_Second-Lieutenant Greene_, _I.A.R._, _to proceed to Mombasa forthwith in charge of your draft of one hundred P.M.’s and one Native Officer_, _by s.s. Elymas to-morrow and report to O.C._, _One Hundred and Ninety-Eighth immediately_. _A.A.A._ _Military Secretary_, _Delhi_.

He read it through once again and then laid it on his table, leant his head on his hand and felt physically faint and sick for a moment. He had not felt quite as he did then more than three or four times in the whole of his life. It was like the feeling he had when he received the news of his mother’s death; when his proposal of marriage to the one-and-only girl had been rejected; when he had been bowled first ball in the Presidency Match, and when he had taken a toss from his horse at the Birthday Parade, as the beast, scared at the _feu-de-joie_, had suddenly bucked and bounced like an india-rubber ball. . . . He handed the telegram to Bertram without comment.

That young gentleman read it through, and again. He swallowed hard and read it once more. His hand shook. He looked at the Adjutant, who noticed that he had turned quite pale.

“Got it?” enquired Murray. “Here, sit down.” He thought the boy was going to faint.

“Ye-e-s. I—er—think so,” was the reply. “_I_ am to take the draft from the Hundred and Ninety-Ninth to the Hundred and Ninety-Eighth in East Africa! . . . Oh, Murray, I _am_ sorry—for you. . . . And I am so utterly inadequate and incompetent. . . . It is cruel hard luck for you. . . .”

The Adjutant, a really keen, good soldier, said nothing. There was nothing to say. He felt that his life lay about him in ruins. At the end of the war—which might come anywhen now that Russia had “got going”—he would be one of the few professional soldiers without active service experience, without a medal or decoration of any sort whatever. . . . Children who had gone straight from Sandhurst to the Front would join this very battalion, after the war, with their honours thick upon them—and when he, the Adjutant, tried to teach them things, they’d smile and say: “We—ah!—didn’t do it like that at the Marne and Ypres. . . .” He could go straight away and shoot himself then and there. . . . And this pink civilian baby! This “Cupid”! No, there was nothing to say—apart from the fact that he could not trust himself to speak.

For minutes there was complete silence in the little office. Bertram was as one in a dream—a dream which was partly sweet and partly a nightmare. _He_ to go to the Front to-morrow? To go on Active Service? He whom fellows always ragged, laughed at, and called Cupid and Blameless Bertram and Innocent Ernest? To go off from here in sole charge of a hundred of these magnificent fighting-men, and then to be an officer in a regiment that had been fighting for weeks and had already lost a third of its men and a half of its officers, in battle? He, who had never fired a gun in his life; never killed so much as a pheasant, a partridge, a grouse or a rabbit; never suffered so much as a tooth-extraction—to shoot at his fellow-men, to risk being horribly mangled and torn! . . . Yes—but what was that last compared with the infinitely greater horror, the unspeakable ghastliness of being _inadequate_, of being too incapable and inexperienced to do his duty to the splendid fellows who would look to him, the White Man, their Officer, for proper leadership and handling?

To fail them in their hour of need. . . . He tried to moisten dry lips with a dry tongue.

Oh, if only he had the knowledge and experience of the Adjutant—he would then change places with no man in the world. Why had the England that had educated him so expensively, allowed him to grow up so hopelessly ignorant of the real elemental essentials of life in the World-As-It-Is? He had been brought up as though the World were one vast Examination Hall, and nothing else. Yes—he had been prepared for examinations all his life, not prepared for the World at all. Oh, had he but Murray’s knowledge and experience, or one-tenth part of it—he would find the ability, courage, enthusiasm and willingness all right.

But, as it was, who was _he_, Bertram Greene, the soft-handed sedentary, the denizen of libraries and lecture-rooms, the pale student, to dare to offer to command, control and guide trained and hardy men of war? What had he (brought up by a maiden “aunt”!) to do with arms and blood, with stratagems and ambuscades, with gory struggles in unknown holes and corners of the Dark Continent? Why, he had never shouted an order in his life; never done a long march; never administered a harsh reprimand; never fired a revolver nor made a pass with a sword. (If only he _had_ had more to do with such “passes” and less with his confounded examination passes—he might feel less of an utter fraud now.) At school and at Oxford he had been too delicate for games, and in India, too busy, and too interested in more intellectual matters, for shikar, sport and hunting. He had just been “good old Blameless Bertram” and “our valued and respected Innocent Ernest,” and “our pretty pink Cupid”—more at home with antiquarians, ethnologists, Orientalists and scientists than with sportsmen and soldiers. . . .

The fact was that Civilisation led to far too much specialisation and division of labour. Why shouldn’t fellows be definitely trained and taught, physically as well as mentally? Why shouldn’t every man be a bit of an artisan, an agriculturalist, a doctor, and a soldier, as well as a mere wretched book-student? Life is not a thing of books. . . .

Anyhow, in the light of this telegram, it was pretty clear that his uncle, General Sir Hugh Walsingham, K.C.S.I., had described him more optimistically than accurately when forwarding his application for admission to the Indian Army Reserve of Officers, to the Military Secretary. . . . Another awful thought—suppose he let Uncle Hugh down badly. . . . And what of his father? . . .

Well—there was one thing, he would do his absolute utmost, his really ultimate best; and no one could do more. But, oh, the fathomless profundity of his ignorance and inexperience! Quite apart from any question of leading men in battle, how could he hope to avoid incurring their contempt on the parade-ground? They’d see he was an Ass, and a very ignorant one to boot, before he had been in front of them for five minutes. . . . One thing—he’d know that drill-book absolutely by heart before long. His wretched examination training would stand him in good stead there, at any rate. . . .

“Must tell the Colonel,” said Murray suddenly, and he arose and left the office.

A few minutes later the Quartermaster, Lieutenant Macteith, entered. Instead of going to his desk and settling down to work, he took a powerful pair of field-glasses from their case on Murray’s table and carefully examined Bertram through them.

Bertram coloured, and felt quite certain that he did not like Macteith at all.

Reversing the glasses, that gentleman then examined him through the larger end.

“Oh, my God!” he ejaculated at last, and then feigned unconquerable nausea.

He had heard the news, and felt personally injured and insulted that this miserable half-baked rabbit should be going on Active Service while Lieutenant and Quartermaster Macteith was not.

An orderly entered, saluted, and spoke to him in Hindustani.

“Colonel wants you,” he said, turning to Bertram, as the orderly again saluted, wheeled about, and departed. “He wants to strain you to his breast, to clasp your red right hand, to give you his photograph and beg for yours—or else to wring your neck!” And as Bertram rose to go, he added: “Here—take this pen with you.”

“What for?” asked Bertram.

“To write something in his autograph-album and birthday-book—he’s sure to ask you to,” was the reply.

Bertram turned and departed, depressed in spirit. He hated anyone to hate him, and he had done Macteith no harm. But in spite of his depression, he was aware of a wild little devil of elation who capered madly at the back of his brain. This exuberant little devil appeared to be screaming joyous war-whoops and yelling: “_Active Service_! . . . _You are going to see service and to fight_! . . . _You will have a war-medal and clasps_! . . . _You are going to be a real war-hardened and experienced soldier_! . . . _You are going to be a devil of a fellow_! . . . _Whoop and dance_, _you Ass_! . . . _Wave your arms about_, _and caper_! . . . _Let out a loud yell_, _and do a fandango_! . . .” But in the Presence of the Colonel, Bertram declined to entertain the little devil’s suggestions, and he neither whooped nor capered. He wondered, nevertheless, what this cold monument of imperturbability would do if he suddenly did commence to whoop, to caper and to dance before him. Probably say “H’m!”—since that was generally reported to be the only thing he ever said. . . .

Marching into the room in which the Colonel sat at his desk, Bertram halted abruptly, stood at attention stiffly, and saluted smartly. Then he blushed from head to foot as he realised that he had committed the ghastly _faux pas_, the horrible military crime, of saluting bare-headed. He could have wept with vexation. To enter so smartly, hearing himself like a trained soldier—and then to make such a Scarlet Ass of himself! . . . The Colonel gazed at him as at some very repulsive and indescribable, but very novel insect.

“. . . And I’ll make a list of the cooking-pots and other kit that they’ll have to take for use on board, sir, and give it to Greene with a letter to Colonel Rock asking him to have them returned here,” the Adjutant was saying, as he laid papers before the Colonel for signature.

“H’m!” said the Colonel.

“I have ordered the draft to parade at seven to-morrow, sir,” he continued, “and told the Bandmaster they will be played down to the Docks. . . . Greene can take them over from me at seven and march them off. I have arranged for the kits to go down in bullock-carts beforehand. . . .”

“H’m!” said the Colonel.

“I’ll put Greene in the way of things as much as possible to-day,” went on the Adjutant. “I’ll go with him and get hold of the cooking-pots he’ll take for the draft to use on board—and then I’d better run down and see the Staff Embarkation Officer with him, about his cabin and the men’s quarters on the _Elymas_, and. . .”

“H’m!” said the Colonel, and taking up his cane and helmet, departed thence without further remark.

“. . . And—I hope you’ll profit by every word you’ve heard from the Colonel, my lad,” the Adjutant concluded, turning ferociously upon Bertram. “Don’t stand there giggling, flippant and indifferent—a perfect picture of the Idle Apprentice, I say,” and he burst into a peal of laughter at the solemn, anxious, tragic mask which was Bertram’s face.

“No,” he added, as they left the room. “Let the Colonel’s wise and pregnant observations sink into your mind and bring forth fruit. . . . Such blossoming, blooming flowers of rhetoric _oughter_ bring forth fruit in due season, anyhow. . . . Come along o’ me.”

Leaving the big Mess bungalow, the two crossed the _maidan_, wherein numerous small squads of white-clad recruits were receiving musketry-instruction beneath the shady spread of gigantic banyans. The quickly signalled approach of the dread Adjutant-Sahib galvanised the Havildar and Naik instructors to a fearful activity and zeal, which waned not until he had passed from sight. In one large patch of shade the Bandmaster—an ancient Pathan, whose huge iron-rimmed spectacles accorded but incongruously with his fierce hawk face, ferocious curling white moustache and beard, and bemedalled uniform—was conducting the band’s tentative rendering of “My Bonnie is over the Ocean,” to Bertram’s wide-eyed surprise and interest. Through the Lines the two officers made a kind of Triumphal Progress, men on all sides stiffening to “attention” and saluting as they passed, to where, behind a cook-house, lay nine large smoke-blackened cooking-pots under a strong guard.

“There they are, my lad,” quoth the hitherto silent Adjutant. “Regard them closely, and consider them well. Familiarise yourself with them, and ponder.”

“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 seashore, 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 damn 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 hell 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 prone.

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 assisting him, to send for Jemadar Hassan 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: “_Béshak_! _Béshak_!” {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 Hassan 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.