Cupid in Africa

by Percival Christopher Wren

* * * * *

Miss Stayne-Brooker tried to feel as strongly as her mother evidently did, but signally failed, her father having been an almost complete stranger to her. She was a little surprised that the blow should have been so great as to strike her mother senseless, for there had certainly been nothing demonstrative about her attitude to her husband—to say the least of it. She supposed that married folk got like that . . . loved each other all right but never showed it at all. . . Nor had what she had seen of her father honestly impressed her with the feeling that he was a very lovable person. Neither before dinner nor after it—when he was quite a different man. . . .

Still—here was her mother, knocked flat by the news of his death, and now lying on her bed in a condition which seemed to vary between coma and hysteria. . . .

Knocked flat—(and yet, from time to time, she murmured, “Thank God! Oh, thank God!”). Queer!

* * * * *

When Mr. Greene called next day, Miss Eva received him in the morning-sitting-drawing-room and told him the sad news. Her father had died. . . . He was genuinely shocked.

“Oh, your poor, poor mother!” said he. “I am grieved for her”—and sat silent, his face looking quite sad. Obviously there was no need for sympathy with Miss Eva as she frankly confessed that she scarcely knew her father and felt for him only as one does for a most distant relation, whom one has scarcely ever seen.

With a request that she would convey his most heart-felt condolence and deepest sympathy to her mother, he withdrew and returned to the Mombasa Hotel, where he was now staying, an ex-convalescent awaiting orders. . . He had hoped for an evening with Eva. That evening the Elymas steamed into Kilindini harbour and Bertram, strolling down to the pier, met Captain Murray, late Adjutant of the One Hundred and Ninety-Ninth, and Lieutenant Reginald Macteith, both of whom had just come ashore from her.

He wrung Murray’s hand, delighted to see him, and congratulated him on his escape from regimental duty, and shook hands with Macteith.

“By Jove, Cupid, you look ten years older than when I saw you last,” said Murray, laying his hand on Bertram’s shoulder and studying his face. “I should hardly have known you. . . .”