Cupid in Africa

by Percival Christopher Wren

  CHAPTER II_Love_

  All too soon for two people concerned, Doctor Mowbray, the excellentCivil Surgeon of Mombasa, in whose hospital Bertram was, decided thatthat young gentleman might forthwith be let loose on ticket-of-leavebetween the hours of ten and ten for a week or two, preparatory to hisdischarge from hospital for a short spell of convalescence-leave beforerejoining 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 overto the Club and sit on the verandah. You mustn’t walk much, your firstday out.”

  “I’m going to run miles,” said Bertram, smiling up into her face andtaking her hand as she stood beside his chair—a thing no other patienthad dared to do or would have been permitted to do. (“He was such a dearboy—one would never dream of snubbing him or snatching away a hand hegratefully stroked—it would be like hitting a baby or a nice friendlydog. . . .”)

  “Then you’ll be ill again at once,” rejoined Mrs. Stayne-Brooker, givingthe hand that had crept into hers a little chiding shake.

  “Exactly . . . and prolong my stay here. . .” said Bertram, and his eyeswere very full of kindness and gratitude as they met eyes that were alsovery full.

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

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

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

  He thought of an opened rose and an opening rose-bud (exactly alike savefor the “open” and “opening” difference), on the same stalk. . . . Itwas wonderful how alike they were, and how young Mrs. Stayne-Brookerlooked—away from her daughter. . . . The drive-and-tea programme wasrepeated almost daily, with variations, such as a stroll round thegolf-course, as the patient grew stronger. . . . And daily Bertram sawthe very beautiful and fascinating Miss Stayne-Brooker and daily grewmore and more grateful to Mrs. Stayne-Brooker. He was grateful to herfor so many things—for her nursing, her hospitality, her generous givingof her time; her kindness in the matter of lending him books (the booksshe liked best, prose works _and_ others); her kind interest in him andhis career, ambitions, tastes, views, hopes and fears; for her being thewoman she was and for brightening his life as she had, not to mentionsaving it; and, above all, he was grateful to her for having such adaughter. . . . He told her that he admired Miss Stayne-Brookerexceedingly, and she did not tell him that Miss Stayne-Brooker did notadmire him to the same extent. . . . She was a little sorry that herdaughter did not seem as enthusiastic about him as she herself was, forwe love those whom we admire to be admired. But she realised that a chitof a girl, fresh from a Cheltenham school, was not to be expected toappreciate 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 talkinterestingly of anything—a man whose mind was a sweet and pleasantstorehouse—a _kind_ man, a gentleman, a man who, thank God, _needed_ one,and yet to whom one’s ideas were of as much interest as one’s face andform. Of course, the average “Cheerioh” subaltern, whose talk was ofdances and racing and sport, would, very naturally, be of more interestto a callow girl than this man whose mind (to Mrs. Stayne-Brooker) akingdom 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 thepursuit of various hard and soft balls, inoffensive quadrupeds, and lessinoffensive bipeds.

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

  * * * * *

  As she and her daughter sat at dinner on the verandah which looked downon to Vasco da Gama Street, one evening, a month later, her Swahilihouse-boy brought Mrs. Stayne-Brooker a message. . . . A _shenzi_ waswithout, and he had a _chit_ which he would give into no hands save thoseof 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 inbooks. She fell down in a faint and lay as one dead.

  * * * * *

  Miss Stayne-Brooker tried to feel as strongly as her mother evidentlydid, but signally failed, her father having been an almost completestranger to her. She was a little surprised that the blow should havebeen so great as to strike her mother senseless, for there had certainlybeen nothing demonstrative about her attitude to her husband—to say theleast of it. She supposed that married folk got like that . . . lovedeach other all right but never showed it at all. . . Nor had what shehad seen of her father honestly impressed her with the feeling that hewas a _very_ lovable person. Neither before dinner nor after it—when hewas quite a different man. . . .

  Still—here was her mother, knocked flat by the news of his death, and nowlying on her bed in a condition which seemed to vary between coma andhysteria. . . .

  Knocked flat—(and yet, from time to time, she murmured, “Thank God! Oh,thank God!”). Queer!

  * * * * *

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

  “Oh, your poor, _poor_ mother!” said he. “I am grieved for her”—and satsilent, his face looking quite sad. Obviously there was no need forsympathy with Miss Eva as she frankly confessed that she scarcely knewher 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 anddeepest sympathy to her mother, he withdrew and returned to the MombasaHotel, where he was now staying, an ex-convalescent awaiting orders. . .He had hoped for an evening with Eva. That evening the _Elymas_ steamedinto Kilindini harbour and Bertram, strolling down to the pier, metCaptain Murray, late Adjutant of the One Hundred and Ninety-Ninth, andLieutenant Reginald Macteith, both of whom had just come ashore from her.

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

  “By Jove, Cupid, you look ten years older than when I saw you last,” saidMurray, laying his hand on Bertram’s shoulder and studying his face. “Ishould hardly have known you. . . .”

  “Quite a little man now,” remarked Macteith, and proceeded to enquire asto where was the nearest and best Home-from-Home in Mombasa, where onecould have A-Drink-and-a-Little-Music-what-what?

  “I am staying at the Mombasa Hotel,” said Bertram coldly, to whichMacteith replied that he hoped it appreciated its privilege.

  Bertram felt that he hated Macteith, but also had a curious sense thatthat young gentleman had either lost in stature or that he, Bertram, hadgained. . . . Anyhow he had seen War, and, so far, Macteith had not. Hehad no sort of fear of anything Macteith could say or do—and he’d welcomeany opportunity of demonstrating the fact. . . . Dirty little worm!Chatting gaily with Murray, he took them to the Mombasa Club and therefound a note from Mrs. Stayne-Brooker asking him to come to tea on themorrow.

  * * * * *

  “I won’t attempt to offer condolence nor express my absolute sympathy,Mrs. Stayne-Brooker,” said Bertram as he took her hand and led her to herfavourite settee.

  “Don’t,” said she.

  “My heart aches for you, though,” he added.

  “It need not,” replied Mrs. Stayne-Brooker, and, as Bertram looked hiswonder at her enigmatic reply and manner, she continued:

  “I will not pretend to _you_. I will be honest. Your heart need notache for me at all—because mine sings with relief and gratitude and joy.. . .”

  B
ertram’s jaw fell in amazement. He felt inexpressibly shocked.

  Or was it that grief had unhinged the poor lady’s mind?

  “I am going to say to you what I have never said to a living soul, andwill never say again. . . . I have never even said it to myself. . . ._I hated him most utterly and most bitterly_. . . .”

  Bertram was more shocked than he had ever been in his life. . . This wasterrible! . . . He wanted to say, “Oh, hush!” and get up and go away.

  “I could not _tell_ you how I hated him,” continued Mrs. Stayne-Brooker,“for he spoilt my whole life. . . . I am not going into details nor am Igoing to say one word against him beyond that. I repeat that he _made_me loathe him—from my very wedding-day . . . and I leave you to judge. .. .”

  Bertram judged.

  He was very young—much younger than his years—and he judged as the youngdo, ignorantly, harshly, cruelly. . . .

  What manner of woman, after all, was this, who spoke of her dead husband?Of her own husband—scarcely cold in his grave. Of her _husband_ of allpeople in the world! . . . He could have wept with the shame and miseryof it, the disillusionment, the shattering blow which she herself haddealt at the image and idol that he had set up in his heart andgratefully worshipped.

  He looked up miserably as he heard the sound of a sob in the heavysilence of the room. She was weeping bitterly, shaken from head to footwith the violence of her—her—what could it be? not grief for her husbandof course. Did she weep for the life that he had “spoilt” as sheexpressed it? Was it because of her wasted opportunities for happiness,the years that the locust had eaten, the never-to-return days of heryouth, when joy and gaiety should have been hers?

  What could he say to her?—save a banal “Don’t cry”? There was nothing tosay. He did not know when he had felt so miserable and uncomfortable. . . .

  “It is over,” she said suddenly, and dried her tears; but whether shealluded to the unhappiness of her life with her husband, or to her brieftempest of tears, he did not know.

  What could he say to her? . . . It was horrible to see a woman cry. Andshe had been _so_ good to him. She had revived his interest in life whenthrough the miasma of fever he had seen it as a thing horrible andmenacing, a thing to flee from. How could he comfort her? She had madeno secret of the fact that she liked him exceedingly, and that to talk tohim of the things that matter in Life, Art, Literature, Music, History,was a pleasure akin to that of a desert traveller who comes upon aninexhaustible well of pure water. Perhaps she liked him so well that hecould offer, acceptably, that Silent Sympathy that is said to be so muchfiner and more efficacious than words. . . . Could he? . . Could he? . . .

  Conquering his sense of repulsion at her attitude toward her newly deadhusband, and remembering all he owed to her sweet kindness, he crossed toher settee, knelt on one knee beside her, took her hand, and put it tohis lips without a word. She would understand—and he would go.

  With a little sobbing cry, Mrs. Stayne-Brooker snatched her hand fromhim, and, throwing her arms about his neck, pressed her lips to his—herface was transfigured as with a great light—the light of the knowledgethat the poets had told the great and wondrous truth when they sang ofLove as the Greatest Thing—and sung but half the truth. All that shelonged for, dreamed of, yearned over—and disbelieved—was true and hadcome to pass. . . .

  She looked no older than her own daughter—and forgot that she was a womanof thirty-seven years, and that the man who knelt in homage (the momentthat she was free to receive his homage!) _might_ be but little overthirty.

  She did not understand—but perhaps, in that moment, received fullcompensation for her years of misery, and her marred, thwarted, wastedwomanhood.

  Oh, thank God; thank God, that he loved her . . . she could not haveborne it if . . .

  * * * * *

  Glad that he had succeeded in comforting her, slightly puzzled andvaguely stirred, he arose and went out, still without a word.

  * * * * *

  Returning to his hotel, he found a telegram ordering him to proceed“forthwith” to a place called Soko Nassai _via_ Voi and Taveta, and as“forthwith” means the next train, and the next train to Voi on the UgandaRailway went in two hours, he yelled for Ali, collected his kit, paid hisClub bill and got him to the railway station without having time oropportunity to make any visits of farewell. That he had to go withoutseeing Miss Eva again troubled him sorely, much more so than he wouldhave thought possible.

  In fact he thought of her all night as he lay on the long bed-seat of hiscarriage in a fog of fine red dust, instead of sleeping or thinking ofwhat lay before him at Taveta, whence, if all or any of the Club gossipwere true, he would be embarking upon a very hard campaign, and one of“open” fighting, too. This would be infinitely more interesting than thesit-in-the-mud trench warfare, but it was not of this that he foundhimself thinking so much as of the length and silkiness of Miss Eva’seyelashes, the tendrils of hair at her neck, the perfection of her lips,and similar important matters. He was exceedingly glad that he was goingto be attached to a Kashmiri regiment, because it was composed of Dograsand Gurkhas, and he liked Gurkhas exceedingly, but he was ten thousandtimes more glad that there was a Miss Eva Stayne-Brooker in the world,that she was in Mombasa, that he could think of her there, and, best ofall, that he could return and see her there when the war was o’er—and hesang aloud:

  “When the war is o’er, We’ll part no more.”

  No—damn it all—one couldn’t sing “at Ehren on the Rhine,” after theGerman had shown his country to be the home of the most ruffianly,degraded, treacherous and despicable brute the world has yet produced;and, turning over with an impatient jerk, he tipped a little mound ofdrifted red dust and sand into his mouth and his song turned to dust andashes and angry spluttering. _Absit omen_.

  At Taveta, a name on a map and a locality beneath wooded hills, Bertramfound a detachment of his regiment, and was accepted by hisbrother-officers as a useful-looking and very welcome addition to theirsmall Mess. He was delighted to renew acquaintance with Augustus andwith the Gurkha Subedar—whom he had last seen at M’paga. Here he alsofound the 29th Punjabis, the 130th Baluchis, and the 2nd Rhodesians. Inthe intervals of thinking of Miss Eva, he thought what splendid troopsthey looked, and what a grand and fortunate man he was to be one of theirglorious Brigade.

  When he smelt the horrible fever smell of the pestilential Lumi swamp, hehoped Miss Eva would not get fever in Mombasa.

  When he feasted his delighted eyes on Kilimanjaro, on the rose-flushedsnows and glaciers of Kibo and Mawenzi, their amazing beauty was as thebeauty of her face, and he walked uplifted and entranced.

  When the daily growing Brigade was complete, and marched west throughalternating dense bush and open prairie of moving grass, across dry sandynullahs or roughly bridged torrents, he marched with light heart anduntiring body, neither knowing nor caring whether the march were long orshort.

  When Gussie Augustus Gus said it was dam’ hot and very thoughtlessconduct of Jan Smuts to make innocent and harmless folk walk on theirfeet at midday, Bertram perceived that it _was_ hot, though he hadn’tnoticed it. His spirit had been in Mombasa, and his body had been unableto draw its attention to such minor and sordid details as dust, heat,thirst, weariness and weakness.

  The ice-cold waters of the Himo River, which flows from the Kilimanjarosnows to the Pangani, reminded him of the coolness of her firm younghands.

  As the Brigade camped on the ridge of a green and flower-decked hilllooking across the Pangani Valley, to the Pare Hills, a scene of fertilebeauty, English in its wooded rolling richness, he thought of her withhim in England; and as the rancid smell of a frying _ghee_, mingled withthe acrid smell of wood smoke, was wafted from where Gurkha, Punjabi,Pathan and Baluchi cooked their _chapattis_ of _atta_, he thought of herin India with him. . . .

  Day after day the Brigade marched on, and whether it marc
hed betweenimpenetrable walls of living green that formed a tunnel in which the reddust floated always, thick, blinding and choking, or whether it marchedacross great deserts of dried black peat over which the black dust hungalways, thicker, more blinding and more choking—it was the same toSecond-Lieutenant Bertram Greene, as he marched beside the sturdy littlewarriors of his regiment. His spirit marched through the realms ofLove’s wonderland rather than through deserts and jungles, and the thingsof the spirit are more real, and greater than those of the flesh.

  For preference he marched alone, alone with his men that is, and not witha brother officer, that he might be spared the necessity of conversationand the annoyance of distraction of his thoughts. For miles he wouldtrudge beside the Subedar in companionly silence. He grew very fond ofthe staunch little man to whom duty was a god. . . .

  When the Brigade reached Soko Nassai it joined the Division which(co-operating with Van Deventer’s South African Division, thenthreatening Tabora and the Central Railway from Kondoa Irangi) in threemonths conquered German East Africa—an almost adequate force having beendispatched at last. It consisted of the 2nd Kashmir Rifles, 28thPunjabis, 130th Baluchis, the 2nd Rhodesians, a squadron of the 17thCavalry, the 5th and 6th Batteries of the S.A. Field Artillery, a sectionof the 27th Mountain Battery, and a company of the 61st Pioneers, formingthe First East African Brigade. There were also the 25th RoyalFusiliers, the M.I. and machine-guns of the Loyal North LancashireRegiment, the East African Mounted Rifles, a Howitzer Battery of CornwallTerritorials, “Z” Signalling Company, a “wireless” section, and a fleetof armoured cars. In reserve were the 5th and 6th South Africans.

  Few divisions have ever done more than this one did—under the greatesthardships in one of the worst districts in the world.

  Its immediate task was to clear the Germans from their strong positionsin the Pare and Usambara Mountains, and to seize the railway to Tanga onthe coast, a task of all but superhuman difficulty, as it could only beaccomplished by the help of a strong force making a flanking marchthrough unexplored roadless virgin jungle, down the Pangani valley, thevery home of fever, where everything would depend upon efficienttransport—and any transport appeared impossible. How could motortransport go through densest trackless bush, or horse and bullocktransport where horse-sickness and tsetse fly forbade?

  The First Brigade made the Pangani march and turning movement, performingthe impossible, and with it went Second-Lieutenant Bertram Greene, headin air and soul among the stars, his heart full of a mortal tendernessand caught up in a great divine uplifting,