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
