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—_will_ you 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 the _Times_ is 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, a _matranee_ who 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.