Lucilla Crespin did not like Sumnee. She liked her life there fairly well. She loved her home there. She loved Antony. She liked some of his friends. She loved her happiness, and nourished and cherished it. She liked the English Club measurably; she liked the tennis court palely—it was better than none, but it was a poor imitation of tennis courts in Surrey. She did make a garden, verbenas in flower-pots mostly, and she tried to like it; and when they came she worshiped her babies. But she did not like Sumnee. She did not even like India.
But she was happy in Sumnee. Not every one can be happy in a place they dislike; but there are some so equipped for happiness that they can find, or, not finding, make it, almost anywhere, and it requires far less personal balance and natural joyousness than Lucilla had, to be happy in London (or even in Berlin) when one would far rather live in New York, if one is young, radiantly well, comfortably pursed (onecanbuy a deal of happiness) and loves and is loved. Mrs. Crespin was happy in Sumnee—at first. And the years passed. But her years taught her much that “her days never knew”—for a while.
It is said that all English women like India, and very much like living there. Most of them do—but there are exceptions.
Two classes of European women like and enjoy India very much: the first and greatly preponderant class are the have-a-good-time ones, by no means bad sorts, as a rule, but brave, gay things who like to wear frilly white gowns, and give much time and care to dressing their hair, tree their boots and slippers and shoes, read “The Queen” and “La Monde” (if they can, and if they can’t, study its plates), and are particularly proud of their afternoon tea-table pretties of silver and lace. They like the punkahs, the abundance of servants—servants who rarely “give notice,” and never sulk—mango-ices and picnics by moonlight. They even enjoy making both ends meet—no one too much minds being poor in the East; at least, if one has some sort of entrée to Government House, and one’s man’s in the Army. Viceroys are not poor, as a rule—they would find it inconvenient, for big as their “screw” is, it isn’t enough; but Commanders-in-Chief have been poor enough before now, and, if one has to skimp, one has the satisfaction of doing it in the best of company, and in the best good-fellowship in the world. But there are women—the have-a-good-time-and-take-care-of-your-man ones—who like India but never know or sense it. Young Mrs. Crespin was not one of these, but she had several of their insular traits, and lived no little of their life. The other class (it is very small) are caught by the lure of the real India. Its story appeals to them, its peoples and its myriad wonders and beauties. They feel her marvel. And they catch the throb of her heart beneath the impenetrable mask, and respond and are grateful. Mrs. Crespin was not one of these.
There is a third class—a very powerful and beautiful class, which includes some of the other two: women who follow the drum, sometimes to Simla and other pleasant, cool hill places, sometimes to desolate, sun-baked spots where the ice often gives out, and nothing ever happens, and who take it all, and the make-shifts of outlandish frontier stations with quiet good humor; women whose courage and unselfishness are very fine, and very womanly. They are a great racial asset, the strength and the solace of their men folk; and, if they spared of the devotion they lavish on those same British soldier-men one tithe to the brown human peoples that live about them, and minister to them so loyally, they would be a greater asset of permanent and successful Empire than any in Whitehall.
One of these Lucilla might have been—she shaped towards it at first—but circumstances (fate, if you like) balked it.
India, great gold and rose India, marbled, carved, mosaicked, caravaned, with its bazaars and temples and its lonely peasant huts, its seas of quivering bamboo and its music of glass and silver bangles and anklets, its beautiful naked, plumpbutchas, its sacredpurdahs, its mingled perfumes of lotus and wild yellow hyacinths, of pink jasmine and red, red roses, its dark-eyed, wrinkled, patient cattle with ropes of marigold slung between their snow-white and cream-colored humps, its storied rivers—and the Himalayas, might have appealed to her as the Vicar had thought it would, could she have seen it with him, or in other guidance as cordial and fit. But she saw it through the dry choking dust of a hot, arid, flat Punjabi station, sensed it through the chatter of an English Club—and, so, neither saw nor sensed it at all. She never touched its people. Her syce was merely a servant, so impersonal that she never knew or asked his name, her house servants were nothing to her but “boys,” and even the ayah who tended upon her deftly and faithfully, and saved her baby’s life when croup and convulsions nearly killed it, was only an ayah. Mrs. Crespin, as sweet at heart as the roses in the Surrey vicarage garden, never knew her ayah’s name, never thought of her as having one, never knew where she lived, what she ate, or thought, or believed; never wondered what were her joys and sorrows, never wondered if she ever had ache or pain; never knew, or cared to know, whether the native woman was married or not, or widowed, or whether she had a child of her own.
But she was happy at Sumnee—at first. She had Antony, and Antony was enough.
Her homesickness never quite ceased to ache, and she missed riding and games. She had both at Sumnee, but both were poor substitutes for those she had at “home.” Always athletic, she was not fully satisfied at playing at sports, and gymkanas bored her almost as much as church bazaars had, and the Vicar of Oxlea always had rather discouraged church bazaars. Womanly, yet she was not a woman’s woman—and life in an out-of-the-way one-regiment station in the plains is apt to be hard on a woman who does not greatly care for feminine society, but has no coquetry in her. But she had Antony, and she was happy, and when the promise of motherhood pulsed she was more than happy. And, if many of her hours were alone ones, she had many books, and she read hour after hour almost every day.
Twice the Yule-log burned on her bungalow hearth—great chunks of fragrant deodar that Lucilla garlanded with ribbons; the heat they made in December in the plains was appalling, but Lucilla Crespin would not keep Christmas without them. And they ate their plum-pudding hot and flaming; and there’s no dearth of holly in India, if you know where to send for it. Twice her Yule-log burned on her bungalow hearth. And then the crash came.
Armistice Day and its solemn celebrations had passed—but not its deep thanksgiving—when the regiment was ordered to Dehra Dun, a more interesting, less narrowed station in itself and less service-bound. There was civilian life in Dehra Dun, and Mrs. Crespin was not sorry to know a few civilians again. She made several interesting such acquaintances there, and the most interesting of them all turned out to be an old schoolmate of Major Crespin’s.
The Great War had irked Crespin—because in it he had been debarred from the active service he craved to be sent on in Europe, or even in Egypt or Mesopotamia, and had been kept relentlessly in India—and hurt him as only a soldierly soldier can be hurt, and by that one thing: having to “stand-by” and do the “damned cushy” jobs, when other chaps—“lucky devils”—were losing legs and eyes and lives in Flanders and Gallipoli—but also it incidentally made him a Major, and a really fine wireless expert.
He did his “bit,” of course, and he did it well. But who did not do their bit from the August of 1914 till Armistice Day, and a little longer! He did his bit, but he chafed and swore, and came near breaking his heart.
Basil Traherne—the celebrated Dr. Traherne now—and Antony Crespin had been at Harrow together, fag and fag-master. But they had not met since, and Crespin seemed less glad to reencounter his onetime fag than might have been natural; for Traherne had been a good and a devoted fag, and the boys had been really good friends.
But—there—that was over twenty years ago—Crespin was thirty-eight now, and Traherne was thirty-three—and a good deal changes in most of us, as well as around us, in twenty years. And friendships that never are fed by so much as a letter must be the exceptional friendships of very exceptional people, if they lose nothing in twenty years. How many ever have?
Mrs. Crespin liked Traherne immediately, and he returned her liking cordially—and was grateful for it. And Major Crespin was more glad to have the physician “amuse the wife” than he was to see much of him himself, or with anything of an old intimacy that time had shrunk and withered.
Traherne interested Lucilla Crespin at once—they seemed to like and to dislike (a surer test of sympathy) the same people, things and books. And when she heard that he not only was the perhaps greatest living authority on malaria, and certainly the coming doctor-man as far as Oriental disease was concerned, but also was “mad on flying,” was no mean pilot, and had a “bus” of his own, she actually clapped her hands, and said, “Oh, Dr. Traherne—I never have been—willyou take me up?”
And several men, Colonel Agnew among them, who saw and heard, who always had known that she was decidedly good-looking, discovered for the first time that she was positively lovely. And the Colonel was vastly pleased that “Crespin’s wife had found something to wake her up again, something to interest her, don’t you know, and make a fad of. Every woman needs a fad—such a safety-valve and pick-me-up to ’em, God bless ’em, as polo, or whist or theTimesis to us, by Jove.”
Colonel Agnew—Crespin’s C. O.—had a cold blue eye, a terrible temper, as curry-hot as any in Anglo-India (you can’t say more than that), and a heart of soft warm gold. He admired Mrs. Crespin more than any woman he knew, and loved her almost as much as he did Kathleen, his own motherless girl. He wouldn’t have liked her so well if his wife, who had not died until two years after Lucilla joined the regiment, had not liked her very much indeed, and approved her warmly, and if Kathleen did not—and he was no worse a man and no worse a soldier for that. But he was not cut very strictly to pattern in it, or in several other respects. He held Mrs. Crespin very high. And he was fatherly-fond of her. And he was grateful to her. At first he had warmed to her because he felt that she, and her good-looks and poise, did the regiment credit. Then he had liked her for her more intimate self, and because Mary and Kathleen did. To do the regiment the smallest good-turn, to enhance it in any way directly or indirectly, was for Colonel Agnew instantly to write himself down very much in your debt: if you were a small drummer boy who drummed well and loyally, amatraneewho swept the sergeant’s mess out as a sergeant’s mess should be swept, or a visiting general who gave the men and officers their due. Too, Agnew was grateful to Mrs. Crespin for a service not exactly regimental; for it was she who under God had coaxed Kathleen back into her senses when that blithering young ass Bob Grant had made such a silly goat of himself—before Colonel Agnew had contrived a way to get the fool transferred. The old soldier felt that he owed Mrs. Crespin more than he could hope ever to pay. And he had been sore at heart over her this many a day now. And when he saw her eyes sparkle, and her old rose color come at Traherne’s “flying” talk, he vowed hotly then and there (but not aloud) that she should “go up,” if she liked, and as often as she liked, and he was damned if Crespin should prevent it.
But Major Crespin had no wish to do that. He was only too glad to have any pleasure fall to his wife. And so Mrs. Crespin went up with Traherne, and very much more than once. Crespin went with them once or twice, but he did not care for it greatly, and he didn’t mind saying so. Usually Traherne and Mrs. Crespin flew alone—with or without a mechanic. They did not fly very far, and they did not fly over-often, and Traherne took no risks when his friend’s wife was with him. But Lucilla Crespin liked it keenly; she talked about it, and thought about it a great deal, far less silent now than she had been since before the war, and a happier light crept into her eyes, and a soft glow on her face. And Crespin was as gratified as the Colonel himself was. Antony Crespin was as glad to have Lucilla go as she was to go, and as Dr. Traherne was to take her.
Once or twice Captain Bruce went up with them, and they made several attempts to take the Colonel.
But the Colonel swore at the very suggestion. He had the V. C. and he had earned it. He was cheerfully (and profanely) ready to shoot promptly any one who called him a coward, but there was just one thing he wouldn’t do either for King or Country—he wouldn’t go monkeying about in the air like a loon; and Kathleen shouldn’t do it either.
There are no tête-à-têtes in the air—none at least in which the pilot shares. But they shared an exhilaration, a splendid new experience, and a pastime that they almost equally liked. And they mutually knew that they liked to share it all, and enjoyed and treasured it more because they shared it. And the very silences it enforced fed the intimacy that grew between them.
When they came back, and landed, it was natural that more often than not Dr. Traherne took Mrs. Crespin to her bungalow, and that when they had reached it he followed her in for tiffin or tea. They found a great deal to say to each other, about books and people and things in England. He knew he was welcome; she knew that he liked to be there. And Traherne’s visits at the Crespins’ bungalow gradually grew more frequent and longer. And Major Crespin stayed at home more and more, strolled off to mess or club less and less when Traherne was in the drawing-room or on the veranda. And something of the old, cordial relation between them at Harrow came back to the two men at Dehra Dun. Lucilla and Traherne did the most of the talking when they three were together. And often Antony Crespin scarcely knew what they were talking about; but he liked to listen—and sometimes to guy as he lounged near and played with Iris and Ronald—and they liked to have him there with them, listening and guying.
Traherne played with the youngsters often too. They were attractive children—not ayah-spoiled yet, and the bachelor physician was very fond of children. And little Iris and Ronald Crespin soon came to claim him as very much a possession of their own.
If his regiment was at once Colonel Agnew’s weakness and strength, equally her babies were Lucilla Crespin’s—her weakness and her strength. Iris was four now, Ronald was two. And Antony Crespin loved them both almost as much as he loved his wife.
All the regiment knew, and as good as all of the station, that there was an ugly, desperate rift in the Crespins’ lute.
Major Crespin drank.
And he had not been faithful.
Every one blamed him fiercely. And no one in the least blamed Mrs. Crespin for anything that had come or might come—no one but Basil Traherne.
He blamed them both, and pitied them both. He believed that Mrs. Crespin could have handled the tragedy more wisely and more usefully than she did. He believed that she, unconsciously, withheld help and rescue which she, but no one else, might have given, and Antony seized. No one else saw or thought anything of the sort—Lucilla Crespin least of all. But it’s a habit and gift able physicians have: to see into things. Each finger a scalpel, each pore a magnifying glass; exquisite manhood, a vigilant brain, a great sympathetic heart, an absolute balance and sense of justice, and an intelligence that cannot be tricked—and that is what good doctors are made of! Basil Traherne was a very great physician.
He saw the rift as clearly as any—deplored it more than most, and knew, what no one else but Antony himself did, that because of it and of what had made it, Major Crespin suffered and regretted even more intensely than the woman did.
Dr. Traherne believed that some, not much, but some, of the fault was Lucilla Crespin’s. And that he did, proves him as fine in manhood as he was in physicianship; for, before he had known her a month Traherne knew that he loved Antony Crespin’s wife. He had never loved a woman before—or even thought that he had. He believed he never could care for another. And Dr. Traherne was thirty-six.
Colonel Agnew was furious, splutteringly, dementedly furious, and at the same time coldly, and determinedly furious. No one ever had seen him so angry before. Kathleen, who ruled and teased and mocked him openly, poured out his coffee, and passed him the ginger-jam silently and abjectly. And a few moments after breakfast she fled from his presence—her own Daddy darling’s—determined to avoid it for the rest of that day.
When Satan, his four-footed pal, sat up and begged for his after-breakfast lump the master had refused it, and thundered, “Go to hell!” No one ever had known Agnew to lose his temper with Satan, and the terrier flounced down on all paws, and slunk sugarless out of the room.
“Prayers, Daddy?” Kathleen said, as naturally as she could, when they’d pushed back their chairs. The Colonel was a staunch churchman, but no cut-and-dried one; usually he read a chapter to his girl after breakfast, and they said “Our Father” together, and then, if it wasn’t too late, he’d bid her sing some hymn her mother had loved and sung—usually, but not always, and it was Kathleen Agnew’s daily duty—almost her only enforced one—to ask if it was a “prayers” day, and to follow him into his den, and find the place in the Bible, if it was.
“Prayers, Daddy?” she asked gently.
“Prayers be damned!” was the terrible reply she got, and all she got—not even a glance—as the Colonel stalked prayerless out of the room.
It was then she’d beaten her retreat “Poor Daddy!” she thought. “How terribly he’s feeling it!” She shook her pretty, yellow head sadly after his grim, gaunt gray one, and then smiled rather brokenly. For she thought there had been a lump in his throat—of course Daddy couldn’t read prayers with a lump in his throat, poor dear. And Kathleen knew what it all was about. It was early morning yet, but all the regiment knew, and by tiffin all the station would know. And Whitehall would know by the very next mail home.
It was all up with Major Crespin now. He’d have to send in his papers this time. Every man in the regiment knew it, every native regimental servant. Every servant in the Colonel-sahib’s bungalow knew it. Native women filling their jars at the wells were talking it over. Iris and Ronald’s ayah and bearer had known it hours ago. The Parsi money changer who lived near the native bazaar, in the old house off of whose thick walls most of the magenta paint had cracked and gone, and Ali Lal, the melon-seller who drove his best trade in the despised Eurasian quarter, knew it too. Such news is no laggard in India; it flies faster than kites.
It was this:
At mess the night before Major Crespin had befouled and disgraced the regiment. And it had been guest night. A bishop from Bangalore, a general (almost a commander-in-chief) from the Madras Presidency, and—a thousand times worse, more bitter—an American officer of high rank, and Dr. Traherne had been the guests.
Crespin had had a fagging day, the Adjutant had looked at him suspiciously once or twice, and when the dinner hour came Major Crespin had had almost enough. When sweetbreads followed the fish he had had enough. And he grew offensive before the game. He came dangerously near contradicting the General twice. He mentioned a woman’s name—one of the regimental ladies—and, in what he said, quite unobjectionably, but a woman’s name is not mentioned in the officers’ mess. You may think of her there—subalterns have owned to having done it—but you may not voice her name. It isn’t done. He had spilled claret, and he had offered the Bishop a warm letter of personal introduction to the première danseuse of a French Company crowding a Calcutta theater just then—an artiste notoriously as frail of virtue as she was shameless in posture and skilful of feet. He had made—to the American—an unpardonable remark about Lee and Grant. It was all covered up, or attempted to be. The affronted guests all were not only gentlemen but jolly good fellows, and two of them had met Mrs. Crespin. It was smothered, talked under and shunted; and Traherne, the American officer, and the Bishop more than half hoped that Agnew, at the other end of the table from Crespin, had not noticed or realized. He had given no sign, and Crespin had purred his impertinences a little thickly, not shouted them, or pronounced them too clearly.
But at “Gentlemen, the King,” as Agnew lifted his glass, Major Crespin, swaying a little on his feet, clutched at the back of the chair, hiccuped painfully, looked about him with a bleary smile, and collapsed half onto his chair, half onto the table.
There was nothing to be hoped then. There was nothing that could be done.
No more need be said.
It was final.
And now it was the next morning, that terrible, pitiless next morning that always comes, and always must, unless God grants the mercy of Death before the dawn.
It was the next morning and Antony Crespin, twitching and sick, lay wide awake on Traherne’s bed.
He was suffering exquisite bodily torture. Traherne had done what he could. But that debt has to be paid. And it’s an I.O.U. that no friend’s purse can take up. The debtor himself has to pay.
But his mental torment was more than his quivering of fevered flesh and frightened trembling of sick, circling stomach. And his sorrow and shame of spirit were more than his wife’s were, lying tearless, face down on her own bed. And Doctor Traherne—glass in hand—sensed that it was so, and pitied Crespin even more than he pitied Lucilla, even more than he pitied unconscious, happy Iris and Ronald.
But an ounce of help is worth more than a pound of pity any day—and most especially is this true “the next morning.” Traherne slid his strong arm carefully under Crespin’s head, and held the glass deftly to his mouth. The champagne was vintage and extra sec.
In spite of himself, in spite of his despair—it was almost absolute despair this time—the wine tasted good. Champagne usually does taste good to those who relish it. Perhaps it stands as firmest friend and kindest nurse to the very desperately seasick, but its second-best play of its magic trick probably is made “the next morning.”
Crespin drained the glass, and even put up a trembling hand to tilt it farther and longer that he should miss no last drop. And he looked around to see where the bottle was.
There was no bottle in sight.
“You’ve had it all, old chap,” Traherne told him, “a pint of it. Now try to rest a bit.”
“Rest!” Crespin moaned.
“Lie perfectly still. That will help. I won’t be long.”
“You’re not going to leave me!”
“Must,” Traherne told him, pulling thechicka little closer. “Sorry, but must. I’ve something to see to that won’t keep. I’ll be back as soon as I can. And I’ll tell Abdul what to do for you, and to see that you’re not disturbed.”
“Traherne, you must not leave me.” There’s never a time so miserable that the sound and sight of a friend—the right friend—cannot ease it.
“Look here,” Traherne said with his hand on the other’s arm, “I must. I wouldn’t, if any one else could do what I’ve got to, but no one can. I must attend to it myself, and I must attend to it now. Keep quiet—that will help you most. And I’ll get back as soon as I can.”
Crespin called weakly after him as he was leaving the room.
“I suppose—my wife—knows.”
Traherne evaded, as doctors sometimes must.
“She knows you slept here last night. I sent her a chit when we came in.”
“Came in, I supporting your staggering steps, I suppose,” Crespin said, with the sick attempt at humor that often comes with the stale after-fumes.
“We came in together,” Traherne said affectionately.
“O Lord,” Crespin told him, “you’re the real stuff, Traherne!”
“Of course I am—to you. Now Iamoff. So long!”
But he was not off just yet.
“I say,” Crespin pleaded anxiously, “can I have another drink?”
“Not yet,” Traherne told him. “You shall, when I get back, with something to eat——”
“Don’t!” the sick man groaned. “Give me a smoke then, before you go, and for God’s sake don’t be long.”
Traherne found him the cigarettes, and took him the matches.
“Smoke if you like,” he said, “but I wouldn’t smoke yet, if I were you.”
Crespin put his hand out for a cigarette, but even his hand was sick, and fell back from the effort.
Doctor Traherne put a cigarette in his hand, and struck a match and held it. But Major Crespin couldn’t smoke.
Traherne left him then, closing the door of the darkened room with careful quiet.
And Antony Crespin was alone with his creditor.
Doctor Traherne waspersona grataat Colonel Agnew’s bungalow, if any one was; and several were. Their people at home in England were neighbors and friends, and for that Agnew would have welcomed him, if there had been nothing else. But there was a great deal else. It was not often that Agnew liked a civilian, or saw anything in one to like. He didn’t see what use they were anyway. The world was made for warfare, scientific, deliberated warfare, he had no doubt whatever of that. Most especially was it made for the British Army, and above all forhisregiment. He was a staunch old Tory, of course—therearesome still, and more than a few of them are in India—but he never troubled to read the speeches in the House, not even those of the Lords, unless they directly bore on His Majesty’s Forces. He had no respect for any calling but his own—and almost as little intelligent knowledge as respect. He had gone in for fisticuffs in his cradle, and though his schoolmasters had not, among themselves, pronounced him startlingly brainy, none of them denied him considerable place as a tactician. He was an emphatic churchman—far more emphatic than devout—but he respected the church rather than its officers: he had no respect for any profession but his own. And this fact he rarely concealed. He reverenced his King—but most, it may be suspected, because His Majesty was the Head of the Army. Even the somewhat civilian adjuncts of the Service, doctors and padres and such, he held rather coldly. He liked most women, and reverenced them all. But he had no doubt that God had made them to bear soldiers, and to be loved by the soldier-fathers of soldiers, and he pitied acutely any woman who had to make do with the caresses of less than a soldier-man or who brought forth any men children who failed to crawl through Sandhurst or Woolwich exams, and bolt enthusiastically into the fighting forces. He thought more of a private than he did of a Viceroy—and said so. And he’d gladly have given Kathleen to that blithering young jackass Bob Grant rather than to the Archbishop of Canterbury, or to a royal bridegroom who was not in the Service. No German warlord ever thought more of himself than Colonel Agnew thought of the British Army.
But there were soldierly qualities of mind and person in Basil Traherne to which the fine old specialist had had to respond. And if Doctor Traherne had not served with the Colors (Agnew simply refused to consider Volunteers) he had servedtheregiment well. He had disinfected and healed a diseased drain under the floor of the canteen when Crossland hadn’t even suspected it, he had fought enteric through more than one epidemic, and had turned a cholera camp into a refreshed place of rest and frolic as innocuous as a kindergarten suffering placidly a slight visitation of mild German measles. And now Doctor Traherne had declared war upon malaria, and it looked as if that enemy of the British Army in the East was going to be defeated at last—defeated by the batteries of the English doctor’s knowledge, patience and skill. It wasn’t in Agnew to steel his heart or shut his respect and camaraderie against the man who was doing that, even if he didn’t wear the uniform.
And at the Colonel’s bungalow Doctor Traherne came and went as he would; always welcomed, always regretfully sped. But that bungalow door was practically shut in his face this morning.
The Colonel Commander Sahib was writing his English chits; no one could see him. And when the khansamah had said it he deliberately, though obsequiously, barred the way. Traherne could not get past Ali Halim without knocking him down, that was clear, and Traherne would not do that except in the last resort, for Halim was old, and they were most excellent friends. And at the far end of the hall—unlike most of its ilk, the Colonel’s bungalow had a hall—the physician saw an orderly waiting outside Agnew’s den. No doubt the orderly was armed; and Traherne was not.
But he was going to see the Colonel, and have considerable speech of him too, before the English mail went.
How?
He looked about him and thought: not a bad brace of trumps to play when in such doubt of means as his.
“Right-o, then,” he said cheerfully, “but I’ll wait here a bit, and cool, before I go. I’ve been walking fast”—which was true—“and I’m confoundedly hot and tired”—which was not true.
Ali Halim salaamed, and Doctor Traherne sat himself down in a very beautiful and big chair, which Kathleen Agnew had coveted and the Colonel paid for, in Lahore, standing now beside a very ugly hall table which the Colonel had admired in a catalogue, and had had sent out all the way from the Tottenham Court Road.
How?
A gong, a disk of hammered brass, slung in a frame of carved and inlaid camphor-wood, which Kathleen also had coveted somewhere and with the usual result, stood beside a bowl of magnolia buds on the Tottenham Court table. It never was used. Not even Kathleen Agnew dared use it. For the master of the bungalow detested noise, except bugle-calls, regimental bands and drill and parade orders, and the mighty music of battle, almost as much as he despised civilians. Even the clocks in his bungalow had to tick softly, and were not allowed to strike above a whisper. No bell rang for meals here, and certainly no gong was struck. “A damned impertinent way of telling a gentleman his food was ready—of course it was ready, when it was the precise moment at which it should be ready.” Meals were not even announced under Colonel Agnew’s rule. You went in to a second on time—and the mealwasready, readythen, neither before nor after. More than one English woman, visiting India, and the Agnews’ guest for a day or a meal, wondered how her host would have adjusted himself to the post-war servants of London. Kathleen could have told them that he would not have done so, but that in all human probability they would have adjusted their post-war selves to him—or, if they didn’t, he’d “cook the stuff himself.”
The gong was not for use. It stood on the table in the hall because Kathleen liked to see it there. And the Colonel and father didn’t care a brass farthing who saw it, or where they saw it, so long as no one ever hit it. And no one ever had from the day he paid for it till now.
Doctor Traherne used it now.
He picked up the mallet, and whacked that gong as if he’d suddenly gone gong-beating mad.
Ali Halim clutched at him. The khansamah almost knelt at his feet, and tears of sheer fright brimmed in the old native’s eyes. Private Grainger stood soldierly stock-still on guard, waiting outside his Colonel’s door. But the irreproachable buttons on his tunic shook, his neck rippled and turned purple with mirth. But the private did not stir. He had been told to see that no one came in to the Commandant’s room; he had not been told to do anything else, and if a Bengal Tiger and the Taj Mahal had come into the hall, and begun waltzing together, Private Grainger would not have stirred—but not a white ant could have passed by him in to the Colonel.
But the Colonel passed by him—violently.
“What the hell!” he raged as he wrenched the door open, and nearly wrenched it off.
“I beg your pardon, sir,” Traherne said nicely, laying down the mallet. “But Imustsee you. And Halim would neither let me go in, or tell you I was here.”
“Quite right,” was the gruff reply. “Come back to-morrow.”
“I must see you now,” Traherne insisted.
The Colonel’s neck grew as purple as the private’s.
“‘Must’ be damned!” the Colonel spluttered. “Go away. And don’t come back here—to-morrow or ever!”
Doctor Traherne went the length of the hall, and laid his hand on the older man’s arm. “It is positively necessary, sir,” he urged quietly. “I must speak to you now—and alone.”
Colonel Agnew made a sound, a pronounced sound, but it was quite inarticulate.
A tear rolled down to the old khansamah’s white beard, and Private Grainger was praying—praying that he wasn’t going to explode. In the first place, he did not wish to explode, and, in the second place, he intensely wished to live to get back to the canteen, and tell the story. It ought to be worth several pints of Poona best. He had seen “the old man hot in the collar before,” but never as mad as this.
“What’s it about?” the irate Colonel demanded. “You’ll have to wait, I tell you!”
“That’s just what I can’t do, sir,” Doctor Traherne assured him, “and we can’t discuss it here.”
“Discuss! Discuss be blowed!” the Colonel snorted.
“And I can’t tell you here.”
Agnew gave the physician’s face a shrewd, searching glance.
“Cholera worse at Meean Mir?” he said a trifle more quietly. “You’re not going off there, are you? We want to finish those hospital plans, you know.”
“No—not cholera anywhere. Let us go into your own room, sir——”
“You go sit down somewhere else, and have a drink. I’ll see you after I’ve finished a dispatch—to catch the home mail—if it’s as important as that,” Agnew told him.
“I’m sorry, Colonel Agnew,” Traherne said respectfully, “but I must speak to youbeforeyou send anything to the out post.”
The old soldier’s thick white eyebrows gathered themselves into storm clouds, and he cleared his throat with an oath. But he was weakening.
“You seem to think yourself in command,” he blustered.
“No,” Traherne denied, “or I’d not need to disturb you, sir.”
“You’ll have to be damned quick,” Agnew said surlily as he turned back to his room.
“As damned quick as you like,” the doctor assented, following him.
Colonel Agnew threw an order at the old khansamah over Traherne’s shoulder. “Throw that bally thing out to the crows!” he commanded. Halim took the gong up in one trembling hand, the mallet in his other. But he gathered his courage to say, “The Miss-Sahib think very great deal of it, sir.”
“You heard my order!” Colonel Agnew thundered. “Hide the damned things, or give them to one of your wives, or your grandmother.”
“It isn’t likely to happen again, sir,” Traherne said gently. “I was desperate. And Miss Agnew will be angry won’t she? Scold you, perhaps.”
The grizzled mustache twitched. “It won’t happentwiceagain,” Colonel Agnew promised grimly. “Here, you, put the damned thing down where it was—and get about your business!”
Ali Halim held his hands up to Allah in gratitude as the Colonel’s door closed again, and Private Grainger permitted himself a broad grin and a wide chuckle.
It must not be implied that Colonel Agnew swore more than most men. As a rule he did not, but he saw red to-day, had seen so red all night that he had not slept at all. Both man and soldier he was hideously upset—and when that was so nothing so nearly relieved him as a good splutter of oaths. When well-nigh hysterical with anger he used “damns” as hysterical women use smelling-salts.
“I can’t give you so much as five minutes,” he said, as he seated himself at his writing-table, and Dr. Traherne sat down on the other side of it. “No,” looking at his watch. “I’ll give you exactly two. Go ahead.”
“It’s about Crespin,” Traherne said at once.
Agnew’s lips stiffened ominously. “There is nothing to be said about Major Crespin,” he interposed sharply. “You might have spared your legs, and my time.”
“I’ve come to ask you to give him one more chance, sir,” Traherne persisted.
“No!” the Colonel blurted.
“I speak as his physician,” the other man said.
“Speak as his grandmother, for all I care—but speak somewhere else. I have definitely decided what to do about Major Crespin, and I wish to catch the post. I intend to catch it,” and the Colonel took up his pen significantly, and pulled towards him an unfinished letter that the gong in the hall had interrupted.
“You promised me two minutes,” Traherne reminded him.
“Then I’ll give them to you,” the soldier snapped, “but I will not hear one word about Crespin.”
“He can’t help it, sir, it is disease.”
“All the more reason to boot him out of the service. A soldier can help doing any damned thing that is unsoldierly. If he can’t—he’s no soldier.”
“He can’t help it—alone. I want you to let me help him to help it. I want you to give him a chance, and to give me a chance. I may fail: let me try though. There is a great deal that is fine in Tony Crespin.”
“Don’t you suppose I know that?” the other growled. “I’m his colonel!”
“And because you are, sir, you will help me to help him.”
“I wish to God I could,” Agnew groaned. “But he’s made that impossible this time. Don’t say any more, Traherne. I know what you want. You want me—heaven knows what’s it to you—to let him send in his papers. It can’t be done. I have my duty to do. I respect my commission, and the uniform I’ve the honor to wear, if that poor devil doesn’t. And Major Crespin is going to be dismissed from the service. He must.”
“Let him send in his papers?” Traherne ignored the worse that had followed. “I want more than that, sir!”
“Oh—you do, do you?” Agnew growled.
“Very much more, sir. I want you to let it pass.”
The Colonel threw down his pen, and sank back in his chair, speechless.
Traherne pressed on. “If he has to leave the Army, his case will be hopeless.”
Agnew found his voice. “The Service will be hopeless, if we officer it with drunkards.”
“It is not quite hopeless, I think—and I’ll be on the job for all I’m worth, if you’ll let me have it my way, sir. Let him stay on with you. Give him leave—not too long, and I’ll take him off after game or butterflies, or any old thing. I’ll make him come. Or, if he won’t for me, he will for you!” Agnew looked down, his eyelids blinked. “And bring him back with the stuff out of his blood. And when I have, I’ll stick to him like a leech, and a brother and a doctor. I want tocurehim. I believe that I may be able to do it—with your help, sir.”
“I’m no doctor!”
“I’m not so sure, sir,” Traherne replied with a quiet smile. “I’ve seen you in cholera camp, remember. And I’ve a theory that every great soldier is a pretty fine sort of physician as well.”
“Cut the blarney,” Agnew snapped—but he was pleased. “Why are you so set on it, man? It wouldn’t be a pleasant job. Stick to malaria, there’s more in it.”
“I’ll stick to both,” Traherne replied.
“But why in thunder do you want to do it? That’s what I want to know. No—no—I don’t,” the old man had suddenly flushed like a girl, “—didn’t mean that. None of my business.”
Traherne smiled again. “It isn’t for Mrs. Crespin that I want to do it, Colonel,” he said simply; “not half so much for her as for him.”
To cover his confusion, Agnew looked at his watch. When he had he swore.
“You’ve made me miss the mail,” he said hotly, “you’ve tricked me into it! I’ll wire. Do as well.”
“I did not try to make you miss the mail,” Dr. Traherne said, looking full in the other’s angry eyes.
“I beg your pardon,” Colonel Agnew said.
Colonel Agnew got out of his chair heavily, and spoke to the man outside the door. “You needn’t wait,” he said.
“Traherne,” he said, as he sat down again, “don’t you think that I haven’t tried to help Crespin. I have again and again. I’ve tried all I knew. We all have. It breaks my heart to have one of my boys go wrong. My men are my sons—I’ve only Kathleen, you know—the regiment’s my sons. When Tony Crespin came out to us, he was only a boy. I fathered him, and, by God, I mothered him too. I never had a likelier subaltern—until——” Colonel Agnew broke off abruptly and sat drumming wretchedly on the table.
“He did well in the War, I’ve heard,” Traherne remarked, both to give the other time and to make a point for Crespin.
“He did damned well in the War,” Agnew said sharply. “And the War pretty well broke his heart. It did mine! We stuck here, sucking sugar-cane and ghee, with the greatest war in history going on over there—and pretty nearly going to blazes, and every fool regiment in the British army in the beautiful thick of it—some of ’em not fit to rub up our buttons or learn the goose-step! Damn it—but I don’t want to talk about it.”
“Some one had to stay here, I suppose,” Traherne said conciliatingly.
“Who the hell said they didn’t? But it needn’t have been the best regiment in the British Army, need it?” Agnew blazed. “Yes, yes,—poor Crespin did his mothers’-meeting, curate-to-tea bit, and he did it well. Wireless! Wireless—do-re-me-fa-sol! for a full-blooded man who aches and itches, and curses his guts out to be in at the fun——Oh, well——” he pushed the cigars towards Traherne, and took one himself. “May as well,” he said sadly as he struck a match. “Ineedsomething, and it’s too early for pegs, and now I’ve let the mail slip, half an hour won’t matter.” Dr. Traherne wondered ruefully how much it was mattering to Tony Crespin!—but he lit his cigar. He was up against the most difficult thing he’d ever tackled, and he knew it. He must not push Agnew too hard, he must bide Agnew’s time, and wear his determination out gently—if he could wear it out. “Yes, he did well in the War. What he don’t know about wireless no one does. But, Lord, how he felt it—not going over there. He cried about it, talking to me about it one day—when he was half sprung, poor lad—the only time I saw him much the worse for it while the War was on. Traherne,” the old soldier leaned over the table, and whispered, “I cried! with the rage and shame and homesickness for it all—I stuck here nursing sweepers to keep ’em ‘loyal’,I cried,—and I wasn’t drunk.”
The physician understood—and honored. But he couldn’t think what to say.
“You did get to the front!” the old soldier said enviously.
“Pretty well,” Traherne admitted. “There was plenty for doctors to do there.”
“Doctors and surgeons,” Colonel Agnew amended.
“And surgeons,” Traherne said gravely.
They smoked in silence for a moment or two.
Agnew spoke first “I did all I could for Crespin, as long as I could. Did it because he was one of ours, because there was a good officer in him once, if ever I saw one, because of his people—mine know some of them at home—and because of his wife. Lord, Traherne, I could forgive him all the rest—all but last night—but not how he’s treated his wife!”
“He is very fond of her,” Traherne interposed.
“Tell that to the marines!” the Colonel growled.
“He is, sir,” the other insisted.
“Taken a rotten way of showing it,” Agnew grunted.
“Very rotten,” Dr. Traherne agreed sadly.
“A sweeter woman never breathed. As nice a woman, and as good a woman too, as God ever made!”
“She is all that,” Basil Traherne said softly.
“I wish you’d seen her when she first came to us.”
“I can imagine her.”
“We lost our heads and our hearts to her. There wasn’t a man in the regiment that didn’t love her, and rejoice in her—and, by Jove! there wasn’t a woman that disliked her. Not one! I’ve been here some time, an’ I never knewthatto happen before. I never expect to see it happen again. She was a perfectly happy, fearless, confident girl. Well—she’s fearless now! But where are her happiness and her confidence? Whiskey-poisoned, and wanton-killed. I’ve seen men die in battle—pretty badly mangled some of them—but a man can ask for nothing better than to die in battle! I’ve seen men hanged, I’ve seen men shaken and twistedand maddenedby plague, and cholera. I’ve seen a white man eaten off by leprosy, a joint at a time, till there wasn’t much left of him but his middle. But the damnedest thing I’ve ever seen was the hardening of Lucilla Crespin—to watch her eyes stiffen, an’ that low, sweet voice of hers, to feel her grow cold. It was bad enough when a look of terror began to creep into her eyes—it was a thousand times worse when it changed, and settled to a frozen, still despair. And her smile! She never smiled much in the old days, but it was worth seeing when she did. She laughed oftener than she smiled. Her laugh, was a thing to hear, but it was her smile that fetched you—a dimple, and then a light! By Jove! You’ve seen Kathleen smile?” Traherne nodded. “Much the same thing. Sweet and glad, every bit of it! Now, that woman’s smile is the bitterest, saddest thing I know.”
“Not when she smiles at her children!”
“Gad, no!” the Colonel admitted. “The young motherhood of her has not been spoiled the least, thank God!”
“You can’t spoil such motherhood,” the doctor asserted.
“Yes, you can,” Agnew retorted. “I’ve seen it done—in India. Well, she never gave a sign, not once, that I ever saw or heard of, through it all. She just froze—died, as it were, and lived on dead. I wonder how much of it all you know, Traherne, or have heard?” he broke off.
“I’ve heard very little. I’ve avoided hearing, as much as I could. But I can read between the lines a bit—it is one of the tricks of my trade, you know.”
“Well, you’re going to hear it now, man, what I know of it—and I know enough to turn an Eskimo sick. And when you’ve heard, I don’t think you’ll ask me to be easy on Major Crespin.”
Dr. Traherne smoked on in silence.
“It seems Crespin took too much once or twice when he was a subaltern, but only once or twice, and not so very much, and it never got to me. Always liked the stuff, I suppose. Crossland had suspicions of that from the first—so I learned later. Soon after he got his company Crespin went home on long leave, and when he came back he brought his wife with him. I’m always a bit anxious when one of my youngsters does that. Tony Crespin must have been thirty-one or -two then. I’m always anxious till I see how it works. Marriage is a damned queer thing—the queerest I know. Sometimes it sinks; sometimes it smashes; sometimes it jogs on in a dull dog-trot; sometimes it glides on oil. That was what their marriage did at first. Couldn’t ask for a better husband, and no woman in her senses would ask for a more devoted. No nonsense about it—slops are loathsome, of course—but just downright happiness and the very best sort of good-understanding. Then”—the old soldier’s mouth hardened—“I’m damned if he didn’t begin to tilt it up—and then went right off the deep end in B. and S., and fizz and Johnnie Walker. She was the last to know it, of course. Crossland got the wind up first it seems—and did his best. I saw it, when no old fool could help seeing it—and I did my damnedest. What I haven’t said to Tony Crespin on the subject wouldn’t be of much use in a temperance campaign. Try! Oh, we tried. Stand by him? We stood by him. He pulled up, then he slid back. Not once, not twice—again and again. We were with her, my wife and I, when the cable came saying her father had died. It ought to be against the law for such news to be sent by cable. I’d make it a criminal offense, if I could. She didn’t say a word—it isn’t her way—just read the blamed thing over two or three times, then laid it down on the tea-tray, and pushed the cups and saucers about a bit. But her face! I shall not forget her face. Mary, at the look of that girl’s face, just took up that blasted cable and read it, and then she handed it to me, and I read it. Mary didn’t ask any permission, or make any apology, and no more did I; for I knew whatever Mrs. Agnew had done was the thing to do—and I don’t think she’d have heard us, no matter what we’d said, or how loud. We didn’t know what to do. It wasn’t often my wife didn’t know what to do—but she owned, on the way home, that she was properly stumped that time. We didn’t know what to do. We knew she didn’t want us to stay, didn’t want any one near her, and we couldn’t bear to leave her. She was delicate then. Mary said something to her—don’t remember what. I was tongue-tied, I can tell you. She didn’t seem to hear my wife. But presently she said, ‘Where is Tony? Please find him for me. I want Tony.’ And just as she’d said it, Crespin lurched in—lurched. Not half-seas over, but drunk! So drunk—he reeked—and when he saw me he giggled. And that was how she learned it.”
Colonel Agnew pushed his chair back angrily, and went to the window.
Kathleen Agnew’s garden was the show place of Dehra Dun. Even for India it was almost surprisingly beautiful. How she’d contrived it in her few years only she and themahlisknew. Colonel Agnew said all his pay went to pay themahlis. Except a clump of neam chameli, keeping their stately beauty apart in a corner, and drenching the place for many yards with the scent of their lovely cream tube-shaped blossoms, none of the giant trees of India were there. But sweeter far, though desperately heavy, was the odor of the love-sacred champa. A grove of mock-oranges (we miscall them syringa) always reminded Lucilla Crespin of her father’s garden in Surrey—but the emerald, ruby-billed, blue-tailed, pink-throated parrots who kept house in them did not. There was a long avenue of roses—all the colors, all the sweetnesses of roses. There was a wilderness of roses, jungles of roses. There was green sward velvet—more English-seeming than Indian. Stephanotis bloomed pink beneath the delicate bamboos, begonias edged the once sacred tank where the lotus still floated. Maidenhair ferns grew everywhere, plants of it, thickets and walls of it. Yellow honeysuckles and yellower jasmine looked lemon-pale beside the venusta’s flaming orange. Peacocks strutted and fanned between pink camellias and velvet iris, and wise-faced monkeys flung and chattered among the oleanders. And the lithe bronzemahlis, naked but for brown loin-cloths, crooned as they worked and pottered.
But Colonel Agnew, gazing at it all, saw none of it. Presently he said, without turning even his head, “And her baby—the girl—was born that night.”
Basil Traherne neither moved nor spoke.
Agnew pitched his cigar out on the jasmine, came back to his chair, and lit another. “She forgave him, of course, or I suppose she did. I tell you, all along she never has said a word nor given a sign. I’ve often wondered if she ever has even to him. He kept straight for a bit after that. And, if ever a man was proud of a child, Crespin was proud of that baby. The boys used to chaff him, and ask if he wouldn’t like to bring it on to parade. And he’d say, he would.”
Traherne nodded.
“He kept straight, but he didn’t keep on keeping straight. Every once and again, he’d break out—and, whenever he did, Crossland did his prettiest, and I did my damnedest.”
Dr. Traherne smiled slightly, but Colonel Agnew did not see it—perhaps that was as well.
“I don’t say he went the whole hog often. He didn’t. But he sipped and sipped—a damned sight more than was good for him—or the rest of us—or for her. I’ve told you how that poor child learned she’d married a downright hard boozer. The way she found out about women wasn’t much pleasanter.”
“I’d rather——” Traherne began.
The Colonel ignored it. “It was in Pindi. He had a month’s leave, and for some reason—I forget, if I knew—they spent it, of all places in the world, at Pindi—had a bungalow there. There was a show there just then, as if Pindi was not hot and uncomfortable enough without theater-going. Some of the troupe put up at the Dak Bungalow—among them a Jezebel they called ‘the leading lady.’ You’ve heard of Terése Carter?”
“No.”
“Thought every one had. Hadn’t much reputation as an actress, but more than enough as a—woman. But I ought not to say that—probably not her fault—sorry I did. One morning, early, Mrs. Crespin had been making her own bazaar, and she went into the Dak to ask about a dhursi’s character. She got Crespin’s instead. The rooms open off of the dining-room; Terése Carter, in a thin sort of thing, with all her red hair loose about her, and her door pretty well open, the cotton curtain drawn back—I suppose for the cool, not that there ever is any at Pindi—was sprawled on her bed, and Crespin was sitting—half-sitting on it—on the bed, with a lot of the woman’s red hair held up to his face, and a sick-sheep look in his damned eyes. Mrs. Crespin stood stock-still, Mrs. Lawson said—Dick Lawson’s wife was with her, and saw it all, they’d been making bazaar together—and watched them, then just moved on, and did her errand. She never said a word to Mrs. Lawson, or let her say one word to her—and nobody knew what she said to Crespin afterwards—if she did. I know what pattern most men are cut, Traherne; wouldn’t be much of a C.O. if I didn’t, and you do too, or you’re not much of a doctor. But, damn it all, I’d like to have the hanging of every man that plays that low-down trick on a good wife. And when a scoundrel that does, lets her find him out, in my opinion, that second villainy is worse than the other, by God.”
“And in mine,” the physician said.
“At Sumnee there never had been any hint of that sort of thing in Crespin. Couldn’t be. Not a white woman in Sumnee, you know, except those in his own regiment—till the Dorsets came. Well, Miss Terése Carter wasn’t the last. There have been others since—more or less flagrant. One, at least, a Service woman. The Crespins came back from Rawal Pindi a few days after that—on what terms I never knew. But we could see the breach widen—and could only stand by, and watch it widen, and the misery grow and grow stonier in her face. Now, Dr. Traherne, what have you got to say for Major Crespin?” The Colonel brought his clenched fist down on the table with a blow that sounded like an enraged demand for arnica. “Rather a black, rotten story, eh?”