“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.