Cupid in Africa: The Baking of Bertram in Love and War - P. C. Wren

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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.

      Chapter III.

       Preparations

       Table of Contents

      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 butt of his colleagues, the contempt of his men, the bête 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 assured 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 buttons, 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

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