Cupid in Africa

  CHAPTER XIX_Of a Pudding_

  There was a sound of revelry by night, at the Bristol Bar. A PlumPudding had arrived. Into that lonely outpost, where men languished andyearned for potatoes, cabbage, milk, cake, onions, beer, steaks,chocolate, eggs, cigarettes, bacon, fruit, coffee, bread, fish, jam,sausages, honey, sugar, ham, tobacco, pastry, toast, cheese, wine andother things of which they had almost forgotten the taste, a Plum Puddinghad drifted. When it had begun to seem that food began and ended withcoco-nut, maize, bully-beef and dog-biscuit—a Plum Pudding rose up torebuke error.

  At least, it was going to do so. At present it lay, encased in a stoutwooden box and a soldered sarcophagus of tin, at the feet of the habituésof the Bristol Bar, what time they looked upon the box and found it goodin their sight. . . .

  “You’ll dine with us and sample it, I hope, Wavell?” said the Major,eyeing the box ecstatically.

  “Thanks,” was the reply. “Delighted. . . . May I bring over some brandyto burn round it?”

  “Stout fella,” said the Major warmly.

  “Do we eat it as it is—or fry it, or something, or what?” he added. “Ifancy you bake ’em. . . .”

  “I believe puddings are boiled, sir,” remarked Bertram.

  “Yes—I b’lieve you’re right, Greene,” agreed Major Mallery. . . . “Iseem to know the expression, ‘boiled plum-pudding.’ . . . Yes—boiledplum-pudding. . . .”

  “Better tell the cook to boil the bird at once, hadn’t we?” suggestedCaptain Macke.

  “Yes,” agreed Vereker. “I fancy I’ve heard our housekeeper at home talkabout boiling ’em for _hours_. Hours and hours. . . . Sure of it.”

  “But s’pose the beastly thing’s _bin_ boiled already—what then?” askedAugustus. “Bally thing’d _dissolve_, I tell you. . . . Have to drinkit. . . .”

  “Very nice, too,” declared Halke.

  “I’d sooner eat pudding and drink brandy, than drink pudding and burnbrandy,” stated Augustus firmly. “What would we boil it in, anyhow?” headded. “It wouldn’t go in a kettle, an’ if you let it loose in a dam’great _dekchi_ or something, it’d all go to bits. . . .”

  “Tie it up in a shirt or something,” said Forbes. . . . “What’s youridea, Greene—as a man of intellect and education?”

  “I’d say boil it,” replied Bertram. “I don’t believe they _can_ beboiled too much. . . . I fancy it ought to be tied up, though, asClarence suggests, or it might disintegrate, I suppose.”

  “Who’s got a clean shirt or vest or pants or something?” asked the Major.“Or could we ram it into a helmet and tie it down?”

  It appeared that no one had a _very_ clean shirt, and it happened thatnobody spoke up with military promptitude and smart alacrity whenLieutenant Bupendranath Chatterji offered to lend his pillow-case.

  “I know,” said the Major, in a tone of decision and finality. “I’ll sendfor the cook, tell him there’s a plum-pudding, an’ he can dam’ well serveit hot for dinner as a plum-pudding _ought_ to be served—or God havemercy on him, for we will have none. . . .”

  And so it was. Although at first the cook protested that the hour beingseven and dinner due at seven-thirty, there was not time for the just andproper cooking of a big plum-pudding. But, “To hell with that for aTale,” said the Major, and waved pudding and cook away, with instructionsto serve the pudding steaming hot, in half an hour, with a blaze ofbrandy round it, a sprig of holly stuck in it, and a bunch of mistletoehung above it.

  “And write ‘_God Bless Our Home_’ on the _banda_ wall,” he added, as ahappy after-thought. The cook grinned. He was a Goanese, and a goodChristian cheat and liar.

  The Bristol Bar settled down again to talk of Home, hunting, theatres,clubs, bars, sport, hotels, and everything else—except religion, womenand war. . . .

  “Heard about the new lad, Major?” asked Forbes. “Real fuzzy-wuzzydervish Soudanese. Lord knows how he comes to be in these parts. Smeltwar like a camel smells water, I suppose. . . . Got confused ideas aboutmedals though. . . . Tell the tale, Wavell.”

  “Why—old Isa ibn Yakub, my Sergeant-Major—you know Isa, six-feet-six andnine medals, face like black satin”—began Wavell, “brought me a stoutlad—with grey hair—who looked like his twin brother. Wanted to join myArab Company. He’d come from Berbera to Mombasa in a dhow, and thenstrolled down here through the jungle. . . . Conversation ran somewhatthus:

  “‘You want to enlist in my Arab Company, do you? Why?’

  “‘I want to fight.’

  “‘Against the _Germanis_?’

  “‘Anybody.’

  “‘You know what the pay is?’

  “‘Yes. It is enough. But I also want my Omdurman medal—like that wornby Isa ibn Yakub.’

  “‘Oh—you have fought before? And at Omdurman.’

  “‘Yes. And I want my medal.’

  “‘You are sure you fought at Omdurman?’

  “‘Yes. Was I not wounded there and left for dead? Look at this holethrough my side, below my arm. I want my medal—like that of Isa ibnYakub.’

  “‘How is it that you have not got it, if you fought there as you say?’

  “‘They would not give it to me. I want you to get it for me.’

  “‘I do not believe you fought at Omdurman at all.’

  “‘I did. Was I not shot there?’

  “‘Were you in a Soudanese Regiment?’

  “‘No.’

  “‘What then?’

  “‘In the army of Our Lord the Mahdi. And I was shot in front of the lineof British soldiers who wear petticoats! . . .’”

  “Did you take him?” asked the Major, as the laugh subsided.

  “Rather!” was the reply. “A lad who fought against us and expects us togive him a medal for it, evidently thinks we are sportsmen, and probablyis one himself. I fancy he’s done a lot of mixed fighting at differenttimes. . . . Says he knew Gordon. . . .”

  The cook, Mess butler, and a deputation of servants approached, salaamedas one man, and held their peace.

  “What’s up?” asked the Major. “Anyone dead?”

  “The Pudding, sah,” said the cook, and all the congregation said, “ThePudding.”

  A painful brooding silence settled upon the Bristol Bar.

  “If you’ve let pi-dogs or _shenzis_ or kites eat that pudding, they shalleat you—alive,” promised the Major—and he had the air of one whose wordis his bond.

  “Nossir,” replied the cook. “Pudding all gone to damn. Sahib come andsee. I am knowing nothing. It is bad.”

  “_What_?” roared the Major, and rose to his feet.

  “Sah, I am a poor man. You are my father and my mother,” said the cookhumbly, and all the congregation said that they were poor men and thatthe Major was their father and their mother.

  The Major said that the congregation were liars.

  “_Bad_?” stammered Forbes. “Puddings can’t go _bad_. . . .”

  “Oh, Mother, Mother!” said Augustus, and cried, his head upon his knees.

  “Life in epitome,” murmured Vereker. “_Tout lasse_; _tout passe_; _toutcasse_.”

  “Strike me blind!” said Halke.

  “Feller’s a purple liar. . . . Must be,” opined Berners.

  “Beat the lot of them,” suggested Macke. “Puddings keep for ever if youhandle ’em properly.”

  “Yes—the brutes haven’t treated it kindly,” said Augustus, wiping hiseyes. “Here, Vereker, you’re Provost-Marshal. Serve them so that _they_go bad—and see how they like it.”

  “It may just have a superficial coating of mould or mildew that can betaken off,” said Bertram.

  “Let’s go an’ interview the dam’ thing,” suggested Augustus. “We canthen take measures—or rum.”

  The Bristol Bar was deserted in the twinkling of an eye as, headed by theMajor, the dozen or so of British officers sought out the Pudding, thatthey might hold an inquest upon it. . . .

 
Near the cooking-fire in the straw shed behind the Officers’ Mess_banda_, upon some boards beside a tin sarcophagus, lay a large greenball, suggestive of a moon made of green cheese.

  In silent sorrow the party gazed upon it, stricken and stunned. And thecongregation of servants stood afar off and watched.

  Suddenly the Major snatched up the gleaming _panga_ that had been usedfor prising open the case and for cutting open the tin box in which thegreen horror had arrived.

  Raising the weapon above his head, the Major smote with all his might.Right in the centre of the Pudding the heavy, sharp-edged blade struckand sank. . . . The Pudding fell in halves, revealing an interior evengreener and more horrible than the outside, as a cloud of greenish,smoke-like dust went up to the offended heavens. . . .

  “Bury the damned Thing,” said the Major, and in his wake the officers ofthe Butindi garrison filed out, their hearts too full, their stomachs tooempty for words.

  And the servants buried the Pudding, obeying the words of the Major.

  But in the night the Sweeper arose and exhumed the Pudding and ate of itright heartily. And through the night of sorrow he groaned. And at dawnhe died. This is the truth.

  * * * * *

  Dinner that night was a silent meal, if meal it could be called. No mandared speak to his neighbour for fear of what his neighbour might reply.The only reference to the Pudding was made by Augustus, who remarked, asa servant brought in a dish of roasted maize-cobs, where the Puddingshould have come—chicken-feed where should have been Food of the Gods—“Iam almost glad poor Murie and Lindsay are so ill that they couldn’tpossibly have eaten any Pudding in any case. . . . Seems some smallcompensation to ’em, don’t it, poor devils. . . .”

  “I do not think Murie will get better,” observed Lieutenant BupendranathChatterji. “Fever and dysentery, both violent, and I have not properthings. . . .”

  The silence seemed to deepen as everybody thought of the two sick men,lying in their dirty clothes, on dirty camp-beds, in leaky grass huts,with a choice of bully-beef, dog-biscuit, coco-nut and maize as adysentery diet.

  Whose turn next? And what sort of a fight could the force put up ifattacked by Africans when all the Indians and Europeans were ill withfever and dysentery? Heaven bless the Wise Man who had kept the AfricanArmy of British East Africa so small and had disbanded battalions of theKing’s African Rifles just before the war. What chance would Indians andwhite men, who had lived for months in the most pestilential swamp inAfrica, have against salted Africans led by Germans especially broughtdown from the upland health-resorts where they lived? . . .

  “Can you give me a little quinine, Chatterji?” asked Augustus. “Got anycalomel? I b’lieve my liver’s as big as my head to-day. I feel a cornerof it right up between my lungs. Stops my breathing sometimes. . . .”

  “Oah, yees. Ha! Ha!” said the medical gentleman. “I have a few tablets.I will presently send you some also. . . .”

  Next morning Augustus came in last to breakfast.

  “Thanks for the quinine tablets, Chatterji,” said he. “The hospitalorderly brought them in his bare palm. I swallowed all ten, however.What was it—twenty grains?”

  “Oah! That was calomel!” replied the worthy doctor, and Augustus aroseforthwith and retired, murmuring: “Poignant! _Searching_!”

  He had once taken a quarter of a grain of calomel, and it had tied him inknots.

  When Bertram visited Murie, Lindsay and Augustus in their respectivehuts, Augustus seemed the worst of the three. With white face, setteeth, and closed eyes, he lay bunched up, and, from time to time,groaned, “Oh, poignant! _Searching_! . . .”

  It being impossible for him to march, it fell to Bertram to take his dutythat day, and lead an officers’ patrol to reconnoitre a distant villageto which, according to information received by the IntelligenceDepartment, a German patrol had just paid a visit. For some reason theplace had been sacked and burnt.

  It was Bertram’s business to discover whether there were any signs of a_boma_ having been established by this patrol; to learn anything he couldabout its movements; whence it had come and whither it had gone; whetherthe massacre were a punishment for some offence, or just the result ofhigh animal (German) spirits; whether there were many _shambas_, of nofurther use to slaughtered people, in which the raiders had left anylimes, bananas, papai or other fruits, vegetables, or crops; whether anyodd chicken or goat had been overlooked, and was wanting a good home;and, in short, to find out anything that could be found out, see all thatwas to be seen, do anything that might be done. . . . As he marched outof the Fort at the head of a hundred Gurkhas, with a local guide andinterpreter, he felt proud and happy, quite reckless, and absolutelyindifferent to his fate. He would do his best in any emergency thatmight arise, and he could do no more. He’d leave it at that.

  He’d march straight ahead with a “point” in front of him, and if he wasambushed, he was ambushed.

  When they reached the village, he’d deploy into line and send scouts intothe place. If he was shot dead—a jolly good job. If he were wounded andleft lying for the German _askaris_ to find—or the wild beasts at night . . .he turned from the thought.

  Anyhow, he’d got good cheery, sturdy Gurkhas with him, and it was apleasure and an honour to serve with them.

  One jungle march is precisely like another—and in three or four hours thelittle column reached the village, deployed, and skirmished into it, tofind it a deserted, burnt-out ruin. _Kultur_ had passed that way,leaving its inevitable and unmistakable sign-manual. The houses wereonly blackened skeletons; the gardens, wildernesses; the byres,cinder-heaps; the fruit-trees, withering wreckage. What had been poolsof blood lay here and there, with clumps of feathers, burnt and brokenutensils, remains of slaughtered domestic animals and chickens.

  _Kultur_ had indeed passed that way. To Bertram it seemed, in a manner,sadder that this poor barbarous little African village should be sotreated than that a walled city of supermen should suffer. . . “Is therenot more cruelty and villainy in violently robbing a crying child of itstwopence than in snatching his gold watch from a portly stockbroker?”thought he, as he gazed around on the scene of ruin, desolation anddestruction.

  To think of Europeans finding time, energy, and occasion to effect _this_in such a spot, so incredibly remote from their marts and ways and busyhaunts! Christians! . . .

  Having posted sentries and chosen a spot for rally and defence, he sentout tiny patrols along the few jungle paths that led to the village, andproceeded to see what he could, as there was absolutely no living soulfrom whom he could learn anything. There was little that the ablestscoutmaster could deduce, save that the place had been visited by a largeparty of mischievously destructive and brutal ruffians, who wore boots.There was nothing of use or of value that had not been either destroyedor taken. Even papai trees that bore no fruit had been hacked down, andthe _panga_ had been laid to the root of tree and shrub and sugar-cane.Not a plantain, lime, mango, or papai was to be seen.

  Bertram entered one of the least burnt of the well-made huts of thatchand wattle. There was what had been blood on the earthen floor,blackened walls, charred stools, bed-frames and domestic utensils. Hefelt sick. . . . In a corner was a child’s bed of woven string plaitedover a carved frame. It would make a useful stool or a resting-place forthings which should not lie on the muddy floor of his _banda_. He pickedit up. Underneath it was a tiny black hand with pinkish finger-tips. Hedropped the bed and was violently sick. _Kultur_ had indeed passed thatway. . . .

  Hurrying out into the sunlight, as soon as he was able to do so, hecompleted his tour of inspection. There was little of interest andnothing of importance.

  Apparently the hamlet had boasted an artist, a sculptor, some villageRodin, before the Germans came to freeze the genial current of his soul.. . . As Bertram studied the handiwork of the absent one, his admirationdiminished, however, and he withdrew the “Rodin.” The m
an was an arrant,shameless plagiarist, a scoundrelly pick-brain imitator, a mere copyingape, for, seen from the proper end, as it lay on its back, the claystatue of a woman, without form and void, boneless, wiggly,semi-deliquescent, was an absolutely faithful and shameless reproductionof the justly world-famous Eppstein Venus.

  “The man ought to be prosecuted for infringement of copyright,” thoughtBertram, “if there is any copyright in statues. . . .”

  The patrols having returned with nothing to report, Bertram marched backto Butindi and reported it.