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.