Cupid in Africa

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 wasÊnotÊluckyÑand in love he . . . wellÑhis 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-BrŸcker), 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 badlyÑa poet, an artist, a musician, a wretched student and Òintellectual,Ó a fellow who won prizes and scholarships and suchlike by the hatful, and never carried off, or even tried for, a Òpot,Ó in his life. Took after his mother, poor boy, and was the first of the family, since God-knows-when, to grow up a damÕ 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, DrakeÑscores of them: and this chap,ÊhisÊson,Êtheirdescendant, a wretched creature of whom you could no more make a soldier than you could make a service saddle of a sowÕs 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 heÊwould sooner have seen him win one cup for boxing, than a hundred prizes for his confounded literature, art, music, classics, and study generally. To hide from the boy that the p¾ans of praise in his school reports were simply revoltingÑfit only for a feller who was going to be a wretched curate or wretcheder schoolmaster; to hide his distaste for the pale, slim beauty, which was that of a delicate girl rather than of the son of Major Hugh Walsingham Greene. . . . Too like his poor mother by halfÑand without one quarter the pluck, nerve, and ÒgoÓ of young Miranda Walsingham, his kinswoman and playmate. . . . Too damÕ virtuous altogether.