Читать книгу The Green Goddess - Louise Jordan Miln - Страница 12

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“Very—rotten,” Traherne replied, “and sad.”

“Got anything more to say for Major Crespin?”

“Yes. This. When I was a boy at Harrow, one of the small boys, about the youngest there, Antony Crespin was my fag-master. He was jolly decent to me. He wasn’t much at schools, but every one liked him, masters as well as boys. He was prime at sports; and at everything he had the pluck of a dozen, and he was absolutely straight, and scrupulously fair always. But he always had a hunted look in his eyes. I saw it then, shaver though I was, without understanding it in the least. I understand it now. And I knew—I don’t know how I knew, but I did—that Crespin was unhappy.”

Colonel Agnew hitched impatiently in his chair. All this did not interest him in the remotest. But he did not interrupt. Traherne had listened to his story, he’d listen to Traherne’s. Colonel Agnew too was scrupulously fair always. But he scowled, and his white eyebrows met in their ominous beetling.

“And I knew one other thing about him. He almost never spoke of his people. But I knew, don’t know how again, that he worshiped his mother, and very much less than worshiped his father. He had a photo of Mrs. Crespin—his mother—over his bed. I believe he said his prayers to that picture, and, if he didn’t, he said them about it. It was the photograph of a very beautiful woman, “Mother”—only that—written across one corner. He used to write to her all the time—oftener than any other boy wrote to any one. I used to post his letters often—mostly they were not thin ones—not those to his mother, and I didn’t often have any others to post for him. She came to see him two or three times while he and I were both there—he left long before I did. He was older than I, and going into the Army, of course—they never stay at public school long, as you know. I used to think he half lived for those visits. His joy when he knew that she was coming, and his pride and devotion when she did come—I remember it! She was as beautiful as her picture, sir—and she seemed as fond and proud of him as he was of her. He took me home with him for a week-end once. His people’s place was not very far. They gave me a ripping time—the Saturday. We got there early Saturday morning. I didn’t take to Mr. Crespin—couldn’t have said why not: he was decent to me. But I thought there was an undertone of boorishness in the way he spoke to his wife, a mean look in his eyes—nothing much, couldn’t put my finger on it—I was pretty much of a kid—but I seemed to get it. And I felt sure that Tony and his mother were happier together when Mr. Crespin was not there. And the half-impression I’d got at Harrow that Tony had no special love for his father was considerably deepened, and I gathered too—couldn’t have said how, and couldn’t now—that the boy did not respect the man. Sunday was all right—till dinner. Mrs. Crespin looked queer when she came into the drawing-room, her hair was beautifully done, I remember, kid as I was, wondering how long it had taken her maid to do it, and her gown was A-1, and she smelled of some delicious scent as she moved—almost too much of it, and I thought she had too much powder on, and oughtn’t to have used any, her skin was so beautiful—just like milk, I’d noticed, out in the sunshine when we’d played tennis. By the time we’d finished fish her face was red, and Tony’s was the color of chalk. He talked, how he talked, poor devil!—and I can see the love in his eyes now when he looked at his mother. Mr. Crespin scarcely spoke, but made a capital meal, and watched his wife with a bad smile on his face all the time. Before the poultry was served, I understood—couldn’t help it. Her voice was thick, her hand unsteady, and her face flamed. She didn’t eat much, but she drank—I know now that she couldn’t help it—and her husband twice reminded the butler to fill her glass! When she pushed back her chair, and rose to leave us, she lurched. Tony drew his mother’s arm through his, and led her from the room as if she had been a queen! He didn’t come back till very late. When he did, he didn’t stay long. And he didn’t sleep that night, as he had the night before, in the room I did. We left at an unearthly hour on Monday—had to, of course—and I didn’t see Mrs. Crespin to say good-by.”

Colonel Agnew cleared his throat. “Do you mean?” he began. “Do you believe——”

“I believe, sir, that Antony Crespin’s mother was a nice woman who needed help she didn’t get, or a chance and peace to help herself in, as I believe that Major Crespin needs help that I can perhaps give him and help him to help himself—which is the only help that amounts to anything in such cases——”

“I tell you——” Agnew broke in hotly.

But the physician in his own turn too interrupted. “That you and Crossland have given him every possible chance, done your best, and done it generously? I am sure of that, sir. But the thing is very difficult. No ailment, except insanity, is less understood, or more persistently bungled—by doctors, the best of them,” he added quickly.

The Colonel smiled grimly. “But you wouldn’t bungle it?”

“God knows,” Dr. Traherne said humbly. “I’d try not.”

“Isn’t it hopeless always?”

“Not always. Even insanity is healed, fairly often, in spite of criminally wrong treatment.”

“You think he inherited it?”

“I think he inherited a tendency, perhaps, or—more probably a possibility. I do not believe that it is congenital. I do not for one moment believe that that poor lady drank until something drove her to it—after her marriage, and probably after her boy’s birth. And I think it very likely that Tony Crespin took his first drink too much when he heard of his mother’s death.”

“And the women? Inherited from the other side, I suppose?”

“I can’t say, sir. Alcohol itself fathers that lapse very often. And the thing itself is rather too common to lay it overconfidently at any one father’s door.”

“Yes,” Agnew agreed sadly. “Did he say anything?”

“Tony? To me, about what had happened at his home, sir? Not one word—on the way back to Harrow, or after. But—I saw him suffer—then and after. Once a lot of fellows were talking—were talking about the thousand and one things that boys at school do—and got on to what ought to be forgiven, and what, if anything, ought not—no matter how repented and all that. Crespin did not join in and, of course, I didn’t. I was fagging, making their toast and so on. But after they’d gone, he said to me that there was one thing he’d kill for. And when I said, ‘What?’ he said he’d kill any one, no matter who it was, that ever said or thought a rough word of his mother. And there was murder in his eyes, sir. I thought he meant it as a warning to me. I think it was. He needn’t have done it. I took an oath to myself that Monday morning on the train, going back to school, that no word of it’d ever pass me, and that I’d do my best to forget it. No word ever has before, and I’ve told it now for him.”

“Ever see her again?” Agnew asked, as he again marched off stiffly to the open window.

“Twice,” Traherne told him. “She came to Harrow twice after that before Tony went to Sandhurst. If Tony had treated her like a queen on her other visits, I can’t describe how he treated her those two times. I couldn’t help feeling that he was trying to apologize to her—to make up to her for it. Colonel Agnew, Antony Crespin loved his mother with a love very few women ever get—a love that ought to make up to a woman for almost anything.”

Colonel Agnew, with his back to Traherne, drew out his handkerchief, and—sneezed.