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CUPID IN AFRICA

CONTENTS
PART I
THE MAKING OF BERTRAM
CHAPTER PAGE
I _Major Hugh Walsingham Green_ 7
II _Mr. Charles Stayne-Brooker (or Herr Karl 10
Stein-Brücker)_
III _Mrs. Stayne-Brooker—and Her Ex-Stepson_ 13
PART II
THE BAKING OF BERTRAM BY WAR
I _Bertram Becomes a Man of War_ 16
II _And is Ordered to East Africa_ 28
III _Preparations_ 40
IV _Terra Marique Jactatus_ 45
V _Mrs. Stayne-Brooker_ 59
VI _Mombasa_ 61
VII _The Mombasa Club_ 70
VIII _Military and Naval Manœuvres_ 78
IX _Bertram Invades Africa_ 97
X _M’paga_ 105
XI _Food and Feeders_ 112
XII _Reflections_ 123
XIII _Baking_ 137
XIV _The Convoy_ 146
XV _Butindi_ 154
XVI _The Bristol Bar_ 161
XVII _More Baking_ 171
XVIII _Trial_ 180
XIX _Of a Pudding_ 187
XX _Stein-Brücker Meets Bertram Greene—and 195
Death_
PART III
THE BAKING OF BERTRAM BY LOVE
I _Mrs. Stayne-Brooker Again_ 204
II _Love_ 208
III _Love and War_ 217
IV _Baked_ 226
V _Finis_ 236

PART I
THE MAKING OF BERTRAM

CHAPTER I
_Major Hugh Walsingham Greene_

There never lived a more honourable, upright, scrupulous gentleman than
Major Hugh Walsingham Greene, and there seldom lived a duller, narrower,
more pompous or more irascible one.

Nor, when the Great War broke out, and gave him something fresh to do and
to think about, were there many sadder and unhappier men. His had been a
luckless and unfortunate life, what with his two wives and his one son;
his excellent intentions and deplorable achievements; his kindly heart
and harsh exterior; his narrow escapes of decoration, recognition and
promotion.

At cards he was _not_ lucky—and in love he . . . well—his first wife,
whom he adored, died after a year of him; and his second ran away after
three months of his society. She ran away with Mr. Charles
Stayne-Brooker (elsewhere the Herr Doktor Karl Stein-Brücker), the man of
all men, whom he particularly and peculiarly loathed. And his son, his
only son and heir! The boy was a bitter disappointment to him, turning
out badly—a poet, an artist, a musician, a wretched student and
“intellectual,” a fellow who won prizes and scholarships and suchlike by
the hatful, and never carried off, or even tried for, a “pot,” in his
life. Took after his mother, poor boy, and was the first of the family,
since God-knows-when, to grow up a dam’ civilian. Father fought and bled
in Egypt, South Africa, Burma, China, India; grandfather in the Crimea
and Mutiny, great-grandfather in the Peninsula and at Waterloo, ancestors
with Marlborough, the Stuarts, Drake—scores of them: and this chap, _his_
son, _their_ descendant, a wretched creature of whom you could no more
make a soldier than you could make a service saddle of a sow’s ear!

It was a comfort to the Major that he only saw the nincompoop on the rare
occasions of his visits to England, when he honestly did his best to hide
from the boy (who worshipped him) that he would sooner have seen him win
one cup for boxing, than a hundred prizes for his confounded literature,
art, music, classics, and study generally.

"1106552077"

CUPID IN AFRICA