Читать книгу The Green Goddess - Louise Jordan Miln - Страница 10

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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 more in it.”

“I’ll stick to both,” Traherne replied.

“But why in thunder do you want to do it? That’s what I want to know. No—no—I don’t,” the old man had suddenly flushed like a girl, “—didn’t mean that. None of my business.”

Traherne smiled again. “It isn’t for Mrs. Crespin that I want to do it, Colonel,” he said simply; “not half so much for her as for him.”

To cover his confusion, Agnew looked at his watch. When he had he swore.

“You’ve made me miss the mail,” he said hotly, “you’ve tricked me into it! I’ll wire. Do as well.”

“I did not try to make you miss the mail,” Dr. Traherne said, looking full in the other’s angry eyes.

“I beg your pardon,” Colonel Agnew said.