CHAPTER VIII_The Green Goddess

Doctor Traherne was _persona grata_ at 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 for _his_

regiment. He was a staunch old Tory, of course—there _are_ some 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 served _the_ regiment 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 meal _was_ ready, ready _then_,

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 I _must_ see 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 you _before_ you 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 happen _twice_ again,” 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 to _cure_ him. 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