Major Fordinghame beheld a very good-looking boy, who appeared to be taking his new sword and revolver for a walk in the nice sunshine and giving the public a treat. He’d hardly be calling on the Mess dressed up in lethal weapons. Probably wanted the Adjutant or somebody. He was quite welcome to ’em. . . . These “planter” cheroots were extraordinarily good at the price. . . . Lieutenant and Quartermaster Macteith wondered who the devil this was. Why did he stick there like a stuck pig and a dying cod-fish? Still—if he wanted to stick, let him stick, by all means. Free country. . . . Captain Brylle only vaguely realised that he was staring hard at some bloke or other—he was bringing all the great resources of his brain to bear upon a joke in the pink paper he affected. It was so deep, dark and subtle a joke that he had not yet “got” it. Bloke on the door-mat. What of it? . . . Captain Tavner had received a good fat cheque that morning; he was going on ten days’ leave to-morrow; he had done for to-day; and he had had a bottle of beer for breakfast. He didn’t mind if there were a rhinoceros on the doorstep. Doubtless someone would take it into the Mess and give it a drink. . . . Cove had got his sword on—or was it two swords? Didn’t matter to him, anyway. . . .
Captain Melhuish idly speculated as to whether the chap would be “calling” at so early an hour of the morning. It was the Mess President’s business, anyhow. . . . Why the sword and revolver? And mentally murmuring: “Enter—one in armour,” Captain Melhuish, the doyen of the famous Madrutta Amateur Dramatic Society, returned to his perusal of The Era. . . Lieutenant Bludyer didn’t give a damn, anyhow. . . . And so none of these gentlemen, any one of whom would have arisen, had he been sitting there alone, and welcomed Bertram hospitably, felt it incumbent upon him to move, and the situation resumed what Bertram privately termed its formerness.
Just as he had decided to go to the nearest reader and flatly request him to arise and direct him to the Colonel, another officer came rushing from the room whose open doorway faced the porch. In his mouth was a quill pen, and in his hands were papers.
“Lazy perishers!” he remarked as he saw the others, and added: “Come along, young Macteith,” and was turning to hurry down the verandah when Bertram stepped forward.
“Excuse me,” he said, “d’you think I could see the Colonel? I have been ordered to report to this regiment.”
“You could see the Colonel,” replied this officer, “but I shouldn’t, if I were you. I’d see the Adjutant. Much pleasanter sight. I’m the Adjutant. Come along to my office,” and he led the way down the verandah, across a big whitewashed room, simply furnished with a table, a chair, and a punkah, to a smaller room, furnished with two of each of the above-mentioned articles.
Dropping the pen and papers upon the table, the Adjutant wheeled round upon Bertram, and, transfixing him with a cold grey eye, said, in hollow voice and tragic tones:
“Do not trifle with me, Unhappy Boy! Say those blessed words again—or at once declare them false. . . . Did I hear you state that you have been ordered to join this corps—or did I not?”
“You did, sir,” smiled Bertram.
“Shake,” replied the Adjutant. “God bless you, gentle child. For two damns, I’d fall on your neck. I love you. Tell me your honoured name and I’ll send for my will. . . .”
“I’m glad I’m welcome,” said the puzzled and astonished Bertram; “but I’m afraid I shan’t be very useful. I am absolutely ignorant—you see, I’ve not been a soldier for twenty-four hours yet. . . . Here’s the telegram I got yesterday,” and he produced that document.
“Good youth,” replied Captain Murray. “I don’t give a tinker’s curse if you’re deaf, dumb, blind and silly. You are my deliverer. I love you more and more. I’ve been awaiting you with beating heart—lying awake for you, listening for your footprints. Now you come—I go.”
“What—to the Front?” said Bertram.
“You’ve guessed it in once, fair youth. East Africa for little Jock Murray. We are sending a draft of a hundred men to our link battalion there—awfully knocked about they’ve been—and I have it, straight from the stable, that I’m the lad that takes them. . . . They go in a day or two. . . . I was getting a bit anxious, I can tell you—but my pal in the Brigade Office said they were certain to send a Reserve man here and relieve me. . . . Colonel will be pleased—he never says anything but ‘H’m!’ but he’ll bite your ear if you don’t dodge.”
“I suppose he’ll simply hate losing an experienced officer and getting me,” said Bertram, apprehensively.
“He’ll make himself perfectly miserable,” was the reply, “but nothing to what he’ll make you. I’m the Adjutant, you see, and there’ll be a bit of a muddle until my successor has picked up all the threads, and a bit of extra bother for the Colonel. . . . Young Macteith’ll have to take it on, I expect. . . . He’ll bite your other ear for that. . .” and Murray executed a few simple steps of the can-can, in the joy of his heart that the chance of his life had come. No one but himself knew the agonies of mind that he had suffered, as he lay awake at night realising that the war might he a short one, time was rushing on, and hundreds of thousands of men had gone to fight—while he still sat in an office and played C.O.’s lightning conductor. A usually undemonstrative Scot, he was slightly excited and uplifted by this splendid turn of Fortune’s wheel. Falling into a chair, he read the telegram:
To Second-Lieutenant Bertram Greene, A.A.A.
You have been appointed to Indian Army Reserve of Officers with rank of Second-Lieutenant, and are ordered to report forthwith to O.C. One Hundred and Ninety-Ninth Regiment, Madrutta. A.A.A. Military Secretary.
“Any relation to Major Walsingham Greene?” enquired Murray.
“Son,” replied Bertram, “and nephew of General Walsingham.”
“Not your fault, of course,” observed Murray. “Best to make a clean breast of these things, though. . . . Had any sort of military training?” he added.
“Absolutely none whatever. Soon after war broke out I felt I was a disgrace to my family—they are all soldiers—and I thought of going home and enlisting. . . . Then I thought it was a pity if nearly twenty years of expensive education had fitted me for nothing more useful than what any labourer or stable-boy can do—and I realised that I’m hardly strong enough to be of much good in the trenches during a Belgian winter—I’ve been there—so I wrote to my father and my uncle and told them I’d like to get into the Indian Army Reserve of Officers. I thought I might soon learn enough to be able to set free a better man, and, in time, I might possibly be of some good—and perhaps go to the Frontier or something. . . .”
“Goo’ boy,” said the merry Murray. “I could strain you to my bosom.”
“Then I received some papers from the Military Secretary, filled them up, and returned them with a medical certificate. I bought some kit and ordered a uniform, and studied the drill-book night and day. . . . I got that wire yesterday—and here I am.”
“I love you, Bertram,” repeated the Adjutant.
“I feel a dreadful fraud, though,” continued the boy, “and I am afraid my uncle, General Walsingham, thinks I am ‘one of the Greenes’ in every way, whereas I’m a most degenerate and unworthy member of the clan. Commonly called ‘Cupid’ and ‘Blameless Bertram,’ laughed at . . . . Really