If Mrs. Crespin was proud of her good-looking, soldierly husband, Captain Crespin was openly vain of his tall, handsome, girlish wife. And because he was vain of her he genially encouraged the acquaintance that soon buzzed about her.
The women admired her frocks, and the men admired her eyes and the way she walked, and both women and men liked her for her fresh girlishness. And, if some of the women envied her it, not one of them did it cattishly; and several, already sallowed from long Indian years, pitied her too, knowing that what India had done to their skins it probably would do to hers. And it takes a very sour woman, and a woman a little bad at core, to feel unkindness towards a bride.
Lucilla Crespin looked younger than her twenty years, and, tall as she was, securely as she carried herself, girlishness was her most instantly and insistently obvious point. Many a country priest’s motherless daughter—especially an only daughter—looks and seems very much older than her years. But in no sense had Mrs. Crespin ever been “her father’s curate,” or the villagers’ “mother.” Parochial administration and fad-philanthropy had never attracted her, and she had firmly left them alone. They had not sat too heavily on Philip Reynolds himself, and had shadowed the Vicar but little, and had shadowed the vicarage life and Lucilla not at all. He was always readier with half-crowns than with soup or jellies, and he prayed for his flock more than he fussed it.
He, not Lucilla, had been the housekeeper. He had a flair for housekeeping, and she had not. He engaged the servants, arranged the menus as a rule, paid the bills and planned hospitalities. Lucilla had had an ample allowance—Reynolds liked things well done, and he perfectly knew that that required money—but she never exceeded, rarely spent, all of it, and more often than not consulted her father about the color and material of a new frock. The result had justified her—if it had not altogether fitted her for the selection of her own wardrobe which lay before her now. It was thanks chiefly to the Reverend Philip Reynolds that the women on the big P. and O. so admired young Mrs. Crespin’s gowns. He had taken far more interest in Lucilla’s trousseau than she had—and it had cost him a great deal of money. Little as she knew of money, the bills for that trousseau would have appalled Lucilla, if she ever had seen them; but they had warmed the Vicar’s heart like good wine, and he wrote the checks with a glowing face, and with a complacent flourish at the end of his scholarly signature. There would not be a great deal to leave his girl at his death, but he had no wish that they should have a very great deal; and Antony had enough. And Helen’s modest inheritance was secure for Lucilla.
All this had kept Lucilla Reynolds very young. She had had few tasks, and no burdens. She never had gone to school. She had had expensive and highly efficient governesses—the best that large salaries, great care, and the Vicar’s good sense and fine taste could procure: estimable women who also were charming. But none of them had lived at the vicarage. Lured from London and Paris, one of the conditions of their engagement always had been that they should find for themselves or allow Mr. Reynolds to find for them apartments at a reasonable distance from the vicarage, but by no means close to its gates. Their holidays had been long, and their teaching hours rather short. They had had no sinecure—the Vicar knew the value of money, and always insisted upon getting the value of his—but none of Lucilla Reynolds’ governesses had been overworked. And none of them had been encouraged to “mother” the girl, and certainly none of them had had any reason to regard as the most remote possibility a translation from governess to step-mother. They had been handsomely paid to teach, and so wisely had they been chosen that they had done it handsomely. They had loved the girl too; and she had liked them all, but she had loved none of them. Lucilla Crespin had felt love but twice: love for her father, and love for the soldier who was taking her with him to India now. And she scarcely had had a girl friend. If this last had narrowed her, it too had preserved her. It had made her a poor hand at some sorts of “small talk,” but it had kept her mind fresh and undiscolored.
Philip Reynolds had “formed” his girl himself, he and the books he had shared with her and the environment he had given her. And her actual “education” he had officered even more than any of her paid teachers had. Had their wills ever clashed or their tastes jarred, such constant companionship might have rasped the girl. But their wills had been one, and their tastes had too. Best of all, for her welfare, she never had been able to feel for her father less than absolute respect. And she had always had to be proud of him. She had never found her home life dull, for the father had been a perfect playmate. It was small wonder that she, whose girlhood had been so guarded, but never stagnant, and had been so companioned—so rarely companioned—was younger than her years—and seemed even younger than she was. It was no wonder at all that she missed her father. She missed him terribly.
There were a number of men and several women on board whom Captain Crespin had known in India, had met in the hills, at Calcutta and in leaves in Kashmir; but none of his regiment, or of his own station in the Punjab. But at Malta two brother officers, returning from a shorter leave than his, joined the ship. As a matter of course they “chummed up” with the Crespins and Crespin with them.
They had heard of his marriage, and were not a little anxious to know just what manner of girl was coming “on to their strength.” There were only four women in the regiment—that is, actually in the station—just now, and in the small station there was no other regiment, and no social life whatever beyond what the regiment made for itself. Where the women were so few it was distinctly important what manner of women they were: how much to be liked, how far congenial and helpful. Two of the ladies already with the regimental colors were dearly loved by every man in it; two were not. The new Mrs. Crespin would make the preponderance for social comfort or discomfort. Which? Bruce and Crossland wondered. They didn’t say so to each other, of course. India’s a gossipy place—Anglo-India—and in the Punjabi dearth even the soldier-men “talk” over their tobacco. But only the “bounders” ever discuss the women folk of brother officers, and there are very few bounders commissioned into the British army, and the few that are are rather apt to drift out: they are apt to find that there is not comfortable room for them in their regiment.
Crossland and Bruce had never so much as hinted to each other their hope and their fear as to how far Crespin’s wife might sweeten or bitter their next few years. But both knew that (and what) both were hoping and fearing somewhat acutely.