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. “I _need_ something, 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 knew _that_ to 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 twisted
_and maddened_ by 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 the _mahlis_ knew. Colonel Agnew said all his pay
went to pay the _mahlis_. 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 bronze
_mahlis_, 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?”