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?” 7 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!” 8 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
