Cupid in Africa — Themes and Context

a not uncommon comment was “Poor little girl!” in spite of the fact that the Major was admitted by all to be a most honourable and scrupulous gentleman. Another remark which was frequently made was “Hm! Opposites attract. What?”

For Prudence Pym was deeply religious, like her uncle, the Commissioner of the Sitagur Division; she was something of a blue-stocking as became her famous father’s daughter; she was a musician of parts, an artist of more than local note, and was known to be writing a Book. So that if “oppositeness” be desirable, there was plenty of it—since the Major considered attendance at church to be part and parcel of drill-and-parade; religion to be a thing concerning which no gentleman speaks and few gentlemen think; music to be a noise to be endured in the drawing-room after dinner for a little while; art to be the harmless product of long-haired fellers with shockin’ clothes and dirty finger-nails; and books something to read when you were absolutely reduced to doing it—as when travelling. . . .

When Prudence Walsingham Greene knew that she was to have a child, she strove to steep her soul in Beauty, Sweetness and Light, and to feed it on the pure ichor of the finest and best in scenery, music, art and literature. . . .

Entered to her one day—pompous, pleased, and stolid; heavy, dull, and foolish—the worthy Major as she sat revelling in the (to her) marvellous beauties of Rosetti’s _Ecce Ancilla Domini_. As she looked up with the sad mechanical smile of the disappointed and courageous wife, he screwed his monocle into his eye and started the old weary laceration of her feelings, the old weary tramplings and defilements of tastes and thoughts, as he examined the picture wherewith she was nourishing (she hoped and believed) the æsthetic side of her unborn child’s mind.

“Picture of a Girl with Grouse, what?” grunted the Major.

“With a . . . ? There is no bird? I don’t . . . ?” stammered Prudence who, like most women of her kind, was devoid of any sense of humour.

“Looks as though she’s got a frightful grouse about somethin’, _I_ should say. The young party on the bed, I mean,” continued her spouse. “‘Girl with the Hump’ might be a better title p’r’aps—if you say she hasn’t a grouse,” he added.

“Yes. Got the hump more frightfully about something or other—p’r’aps because the other sportsman’s shirt’s caught alight. . . . Been smokin’, and dropped his cigar. . . .”

“It is an angel shod with fire,” moaned Prudence as she put the picture into its portfolio, and felt for her handkerchief. . . .

A little incident, a straw upon the waters, but a straw showing their steady flow toward distaste, disillusionment, dislike, and hopeless regret. The awful and familiar tragedy of “incompatibility of temperament,” of which law and priests in their wisdom take no count or cognizance, though counting trifles (by comparison) of infidelity and violence as all important.

And when her boy was born, and named Bertram after her father, Dr. Bertram Pym, F.R.S., she was happy and thankful, and happily and thankfully died.

In due course the Major recovered from his grief and sent his son home to his place, Leighcombe Abbey, where dwelt his elderly spinster relative, Miss Walsingham, and her niece, Miranda Walsingham, daughter of General Walsingham, his second cousin. Here the influence of prim, gentle, and learned Miss Walsingham was all that his mother would have desired, and in the direction of all that his father loathed—the boy growing up bookish, thoughtful, and more like a nice girl than a human boy. Him Miranda mothered, petted, and occasionally excoriated, being an Amazonian young female of his own age, happier on the bare back of a horse than in the seats of the learned.

CHAPTER II _Mr. Charles Stayne-Brooker (or Herr Karl Stein-Brücker)_

When it was known in the cantonment of Hazarigurh that Major Hugh Walsingham Greene was engaged to Dolly Dennison, folk were astonished, and a not uncommon comment was “Poor old Walsingham Greene,” in spite of the fact that the young lady was very beautiful, accomplished and fascinating.

Here also another remark, that was frequently heard, was that opposites attract, for Dolly was known to be seventeen, and the Major, though not very much more than twice her age, looked as old as her father, the Sessions Judge, and _he_ looked more like the girl’s grandfather than her father.