_Of a Pudding_
There was a sound of revelry by night, at the Bristol Bar. A Plum
Pudding had arrived. Into that lonely outpost, where men languished and
yearned 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 and
other things of which they had almost forgotten the taste, a Plum Pudding
had drifted. When it had begun to seem that food began and ended with
coco-nut, maize, bully-beef and dog-biscuit—a Plum Pudding rose up to
rebuke error.
At least, it was going to do so. At present it lay, encased in a stout
wooden box and a soldered sarcophagus of tin, at the feet of the habitués
of the Bristol Bar, what time they looked upon the box and found it good
in 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 brandy
to 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. “I
fancy you bake ’em. . . .”
“I believe puddings are boiled, sir,” remarked Bertram.
“Yes—I b’lieve you’re right, Greene,” agreed Major Mallery. . . . “I
seem to know the expression, ‘boiled plum-pudding.’ . . . Yes—boiled
plum-pudding. . . .”
“Better tell the cook to boil the bird at once, hadn’t we?” suggested
Captain Macke.
“Yes,” agreed Vereker. “I fancy I’ve heard our housekeeper at home talk
about boiling ’em for _hours_. Hours and hours. . . . Sure of it.”
“But s’pose the beastly thing’s _bin_ boiled already—what then?” asked
Augustus. “Bally thing’d _dissolve_, I tell you. . . . Have to drink
it. . . .”
“Very nice, too,” declared Halke.
“I’d sooner eat pudding and drink brandy, than drink pudding and burn
brandy,” stated Augustus firmly. “What would we boil it in, anyhow?” he
added. “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 your
idea, Greene—as a man of intellect and education?”
“I’d say boil it,” replied Bertram. “I don’t believe they _can_ be
boiled too much. . . . I fancy it ought to be tied up, though, as
Clarence 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 that
nobody spoke up with military promptitude and smart alacrity when
Lieutenant Bupendranath Chatterji offered to lend his pillow-case.
“I know,” said the Major, in a tone of decision and finality. “I’ll send
for the cook, tell him there’s a plum-pudding, an’ he can dam’ well serve
it hot for dinner as a plum-pudding _ought_ to be served—or God have
mercy on him, for we will have none. . . .”
And so it was. Although at first the cook protested that the hour being
seven and dinner due at seven-thirty, there was not time for the just and
proper cooking of a big plum-pudding. But, “To hell with that for a
Tale,” said the Major, and waved pudding and cook away, with instructions
to serve the pudding steaming hot, in half an hour, with a blaze of
brandy round it, a sprig of holly stuck in it, and a bunch of mistletoe
hung above it.
“And write ‘_God Bless Our Home_’ on the _banda_ wall,” he added, as a
happy after-thought. The cook grinned. He was a Goanese, and a good
Christian cheat and liar.
The Bristol Bar settled down again to talk of Home, hunting, theatres,
clubs, bars, sport, hotels, and everything else—except religion, women
and war. . . .
“Heard about the new lad, Major?” asked Forbes. “Real fuzzy-wuzzy
dervish Soudanese. Lord knows how he comes to be in these parts. Smelt
war like a camel smells water, I suppose. . . . Got confused ideas about
medals though. . . . Tell the tale, Wavell.”
“Why—old Isa ibn Yakub, my Sergeant-Major—you know Isa, six-feet-six and
nine medals, face like black satin”—began Wavell, “brought me a stout
lad—with grey hair—who looked like his twin brother. Wanted to join my
Arab Company. He’d come from Berbera to Mombasa in a dhow, and then
strolled down here through the jungle. . . . Conversation ran somewhat
thus:
“‘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 worn
by 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 hole
through my side, below my arm. I want my medal—like that of Isa ibn
Yakub.’
“‘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 line
of 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 to
give him a medal for it, evidently thinks we are sportsmen, and probably
is one himself. I fancy he’s done a lot of mixed fighting at different
times. . . . Says he knew Gordon. . . .”
The cook, Mess butler, and a deputation of servants approached, salaamed
as 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, “The
Pudding.”
A painful brooding silence settled upon the Bristol Bar.
“If you’ve let pi-dogs or _shenzis_ or kites eat that pudding, they shall
eat you—alive,” promised the Major—and he had the air of one whose word
is his bond.
“Nossir,” replied the cook. “Pudding all gone to damn. Sahib come and
see. 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 cook
humbly, and all the congregation said that they were poor men and that
the 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_; _tout
casse_.”
“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 you
handle ’em properly.”
“Yes—the brutes haven’t treated it kindly,” said Augustus, wiping his
eyes. “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 be
taken off,” said Bertram.
“Let’s go an’ interview the dam’ thing,” suggested Augustus. “We can
then take measures—or rum.”
The Bristol Bar was deserted in the twinkling of an eye as, headed by the
Major, the dozen or so of British officers sought out the Pudding, that
they 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 green
ball, suggestive of a moon made of green cheese.
In silent sorrow the party gazed upon it, stricken and stunned. And the
congregation of servants stood afar off and watched.
Suddenly the Major snatched up the gleaming _panga_ that had been used
for prising open the case and for cutting open the tin box in which the
green 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 struck
and sank. . . . The Pudding fell in halves, revealing an interior even
greener 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 of
the Butindi garrison filed out, their hearts too full, their stomachs too
empty 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 it
right heartily. And through the night of sorrow he groaned. And at dawn
he died. This is the truth.
* * * * *
Dinner that night was a silent meal, if meal it could be called. No man
dared speak to his neighbour for fear of what his neighbour might reply.
The only reference to the Pudding was made by Augustus, who remarked, as
a servant brought in a dish of roasted maize-cobs, where the Pudding
should have come—chicken-feed where should have been Food of the Gods—“I
am almost glad poor Murie and Lindsay are so ill that they couldn’t
possibly have eaten any Pudding in any case. . . . Seems some small
compensation to ’em, don’t it, poor devils. . . .”
“I do not think Murie will get better,” observed Lieutenant Bupendranath
Chatterji. “Fever and dysentery, both violent, and I have not proper
things. . . .”
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 a
dysentery diet.
Whose turn next? And what sort of a fight could the force put up if
attacked by Africans when all the Indians and Europeans were ill with
fever and dysentery? Heaven bless the Wise Man who had kept the African
Army of British East Africa so small and had disbanded battalions of the
King’s African Rifles just before the war. What chance would Indians and
white men, who had lived for months in the most pestilential swamp in
Africa, have against salted Africans led by Germans especially brought
down from the upland health-resorts where they lived? . . .
“Can you give me a little quinine, Chatterji?” asked Augustus. “Got any
calomel? I b’lieve my liver’s as big as my head to-day. I feel a corner
of 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 hospital
orderly 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 arose
forthwith and retired, murmuring: “Poignant! _Searching_!”
He had once taken a quarter of a grain of calomel, and it had tied him in
knots.
When Bertram visited Murie, Lindsay and Augustus in their respective
huts, Augustus seemed the worst of the three. With white face, set
teeth, 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 duty
that day, and lead an officers’ patrol to reconnoitre a distant village
to which, according to information received by the Intelligence
Department, a German patrol had just paid a visit. For some reason the
place 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 could
about its movements; whence it had come and whither it had gone; whether
the massacre were a punishment for some offence, or just the result of
high animal (German) spirits; whether there were many _shambas_, of no
further use to slaughtered people, in which the raiders had left any
limes, bananas, papai or other fruits, vegetables, or crops; whether any
odd 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 that
was to be seen, do anything that might be done. . . . As he marched out
of the Fort at the head of a hundred Gurkhas, with a local guide and
interpreter, he felt proud and happy, quite reckless, and absolutely
indifferent to his fate. He would do his best in any emergency that
might 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 was
ambushed, he was ambushed.
When they reached the village, he’d deploy into line and send scouts into
the place. If he was shot dead—a jolly good job. If he were wounded and
left 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 a
pleasure and an honour to serve with them.
One jungle march is precisely like another—and in three or four hours the
little column reached the village, deployed, and skirmished into it, to
find it a deserted, burnt-out ruin. _Kultur_ had passed that way,
leaving its inevitable and unmistakable sign-manual. The houses were
only blackened skeletons; the gardens, wildernesses; the byres,
cinder-heaps; the fruit-trees, withering wreckage. What had been pools
of blood lay here and there, with clumps of feathers, burnt and broken
utensils, 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 so
treated than that a walled city of supermen should suffer. . . “Is there
not more cruelty and villainy in violently robbing a crying child of its
twopence than in snatching his gold watch from a portly stockbroker?”
thought he, as he gazed around on the scene of ruin, desolation and
destruction.
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 busy
haunts! Christians! . . .
Having posted sentries and chosen a spot for rally and defence, he sent
out tiny patrols along the few jungle paths that led to the village, and
proceeded to see what he could, as there was absolutely no living soul
from whom he could learn anything. There was little that the ablest
scoutmaster could deduce, save that the place had been visited by a large
party of mischievously destructive and brutal ruffians, who wore boots.
There was nothing of use or of value that had not been either destroyed
or taken. Even papai trees that bore no fruit had been hacked down, and
the _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 thatch
and wattle. There was what had been blood on the earthen floor,
blackened walls, charred stools, bed-frames and domestic utensils. He
felt sick. . . . In a corner was a child’s bed of woven string plaited
over a carved frame. It would make a useful stool or a resting-place for
things which should not lie on the muddy floor of his _banda_. He picked
it up. Underneath it was a tiny black hand with pinkish finger-tips. He
dropped the bed and was violently sick. _Kultur_ had indeed passed that
way. . . .
Hurrying out into the sunlight, as soon as he was able to do so, he
completed his tour of inspection. There was little of interest and
nothing of importance.
Apparently the hamlet had boasted an artist, a sculptor, some village
Rodin, before the Germans came to freeze the genial current of his soul.
. . . As Bertram studied the handiwork of the absent one, his admiration
diminished, however, and he withdrew the “Rodin.” The man was an arrant,
shameless plagiarist, a scoundrelly pick-brain imitator, a mere copying
ape, for, seen from the proper end, as it lay on its back, the clay
statue of a woman, without form and void, boneless, wiggly,
semi-deliquescent, was an absolutely faithful and shameless reproduction
of the justly world-famous Eppstein Venus.
“The man ought to be prosecuted for infringement of copyright,” thought
Bertram, “if there is any copyright in statues. . . .”
The patrols having returned with nothing to report, Bertram marched back
to Butindi and reported it.