I
"Upon my honour you must be off your head!" cried Spencer Coyle, as the
young man, with a white face, stood there panting a little and repeating
"Really, I've quite decided," and "I assure you I've thought it all
out." They were both pale, but Owen Wingrave smiled in a manner
exasperating to his interlocutor, who however still discriminated
sufficiently to see that his grimace (it was like an irrelevant leer)
was the result of extreme and conceivable nervousness.
"It was certainly a mistake to have gone so far; but that is exactly why
I feel I mustn't go further," poor Owen said, waiting mechanically,
almost humbly (he wished not to swagger, and indeed he had nothing to
swagger about) and carrying through the window to the stupid opposite
houses the dry glitter of his eyes.
"I'm unspeakably disgusted. You've made me dreadfully ill," Mr. Coyle
went on, looking thoroughly upset.
"I'm very sorry. It was the fear of the effect on you that kept me from
speaking sooner."
"You should have spoken three months ago. Don't you know your mind from
one day to the other?"
The young man for a moment said nothing. Then he replied with a little
tremor: "You're very angry with me, and I expected it. I'm awfully
obliged to you for all you've done for me. I'll do anything else for you
in return, but I can't do that. Everyone else will let me have it, of
course. I'm prepared for it--I'm prepared for everything. That's what
has taken the time: to be sure I was prepared. I think it's your
displeasure I feel most and regret most. But little by little you'll get
over it."
"_You'll_ get over it rather faster, I suppose!" Spencer Coyle
satirically exclaimed. He was quite as agitated as his young friend, and
they were evidently in no condition to prolong an encounter in which
they each drew blood. Mr. Coyle was a professional "coach"; he prepared
young men for the army, taking only three or four at a time, to whom he
applied the irresistible stimulus of which the possession was both his
secret and his fortune. He had not a great establishment; he would have
said himself that it was not a wholesale business. Neither his system,
his health nor his temper could have accommodated itself to numbers; so
he weighed and measured his pupils and turned away more applicants than
he passed. He was an artist in his line, caring only for picked subjects
and capable of sacrifices almost passionate for the individual. He liked
ardent young men (there were kinds of capacity to which he was
indifferent) and he had taken a particular fancy to Owen Wingrave. This
young man's facility really fascinated him. His candidates usually did
wonders, and he might have sent up a multitude. He was a person of
exactly the stature of the great Napoleon, with a certain flicker of
genius in his light blue eye: it had been said of him that he looked
like a pianist. The tone of his favourite pupil now expressed, without
intention indeed, a superior wisdom which irritated him. He had not
especially suffered before from Wingrave's high opinion of himself,
which had seemed justified by remarkable parts; but to-day it struck him
as intolerable. He cut short the discussion, declining absolutely to
regard their relations as terminated, and remarked to his pupil that he
had better go off somewhere (down to Eastbourne, say; the sea would
bring him round) and take a few days to find his feet and come to his
senses. He could afford the time, he was so well up: when Spencer Coyle
remembered how well up he was he could have boxed his ears. The tall,
athletic young man was not physically a subject for simplified
reasoning; but there was a troubled gentleness in his handsome face, the
index of compunction mixed with pertinacity, which signified that if it
could have done any good he would have turned both cheeks. He evidently
didn't pretend that his wisdom was superior; he only presented it as his
own. It was his own career after all that was in question. He couldn't
refuse to go through the form of trying Eastbourne or at least of
holding his tongue, though there was that in his manner which implied
that if he should do so it would be really to give Mr. Coyle a chance to
recuperate. He didn't feel a bit overworked, but there was nothing more
natural than that with their tremendous pressure Mr. Coyle should be.
Mr. Coyle's own intellect would derive an advantage from his pupil's
holiday. Mr. Coyle saw what he meant, but he controlled himself; he only
demanded, as his right, a truce of three days. Owen Wingrave granted it,
though as fostering sad illusions this went visibly against his
conscience; but before they separated the famous crammer remarked:
"All the same I feel as if I ought to see someone. I think you mentioned
to me that your aunt had come to town?"
"Oh yes; she's in Baker Street. Do go and see her," the boy said
comfortingly.
Mr. Coyle looked at him an instant. "Have you broached this folly to
her?"
"Not yet--to no one. I thought it right to speak to you first."
"Oh, what you 'think right'!" cried Spencer Coyle, outraged by his young
friend's standards. He added that he would probably call on Miss
Wingrave; after which the recreant youth got out of the house.
Owen Wingrave didn't however start punctually for Eastbourne; he only
directed his steps to Kensington Gardens, from which Mr. Coyle's
desirable residence (he was terribly expensive and had a big house) was
not far removed. The famous coach "put up" his pupils, and Owen had
mentioned to the butler that he would be back to dinner. The spring day
was warm to his young blood, and he had a book in his pocket which, when
he had passed into the gardens and, after a short stroll, dropped into a
chair, he took out with the slow, soft sigh that finally ushers in a
pleasure postponed. He stretched his long legs and began to read it; it
was a volume of Goethe's poems. He had been for days in a state of the
highest tension, and now that the cord had snapped the relief was
proportionate; only it was characteristic of him that this deliverance
should take the form of an intellectual pleasure. If he had thrown up
the probability of a magnificent career it was not to dawdle along Bond
Street nor parade his indifference in the window of a club. At any rate
he had in a few moments forgotten everything--the tremendous pressure,
Mr. Coyle's disappointment, and even his formidable aunt in Baker
Street. If these watchers had overtaken him there would surely have been
some excuse for their exasperation. There was no doubt he was perverse,
for his very choice of a pastime only showed how he had got up his
German.
"What the devil's the matter with him, do _you_ know?" Spencer Coyle
asked that afternoon of young Lechmere, who had never before observed
the head of the establishment to set a fellow such an example of bad
language. Young Lechmere was not only Wingrave's fellow-pupil, he was
supposed to be his intimate, indeed quite his best friend, and had
unconsciously performed for Mr. Coyle the office of making the promise
of his great gifts more vivid by contrast. He was short and sturdy and
as a general thing uninspired, and Mr. Coyle, who found no amusement in
believing in him, had never thought him less exciting than as he stared
now out of a face from which you could never guess whether he had caught
an idea. Young Lechmere concealed such achievements as if they had been
youthful indiscretions. At any rate he could evidently conceive no
reason why it should be thought there was anything more than usual the
matter with the companion of his studies; so Mr. Coyle had to continue:
"He declines to go up. He chucks the whole thing!"
The first thing that struck young Lechmere in the case was the freshness
it had imparted to the governor's vocabulary.
"He doesn't want to go to Sandhurst?"
"He doesn't want to go anywhere. He gives up the army altogether. He
objects," said Mr. Coyle, in a tone that made young Lechmere almost hold
his breath, "to the military profession."
"Why, it has been the profession of all his family!"
"Their profession? It has been their religion! Do you know Miss
Wingrave?"
"Oh, yes. Isn't she awful?" young Lechmere candidly ejaculated.
His instructor demurred.
"She's formidable, if you mean that, and it's right she should be;
because somehow in her very person, good maiden lady as she is, she
represents the might, she represents the traditions and the exploits of
the British army. She represents the expansive property of the English
name. I think his family can be trusted to come down on him, but every
influence should be set in motion. I want to know what yours is. Can
_you_ do anything in the matter?"
"I can try a couple of rounds with him," said young Lechmere
reflectively. "But he knows a fearful lot. He has the most extraordinary
ideas."
"Then he has told you some of them--he has taken you into his
confidence?"
"I've heard him jaw by the yard," smiled the honest youth. "He has told
me he despises it."
"What _is_ it he despises? I can't make out."
The most consecutive of Mr. Coyle's nurslings considered a moment, as if
he were conscious of a responsibility.
"Why, I think, military glory. He says we take the wrong view of it."
"He oughtn't to talk to _you_ that way. It's corrupting the youth of
Athens. It's sowing sedition."
"Oh, I'm all right!" said young Lechmere. "And he never told me he meant
to chuck it. I always thought he meant to see it through, simply because
he had to. He'll argue on any side you like. It's a tremendous pity--I'm
sure he'd have a big career."
"Tell him so, then; plead with him; struggle with him--for God's sake."
"I'll do what I can--I'll tell him it's a regular shame."
"Yes, strike _that_ note--insist on the disgrace of it."
The young man gave Mr. Coyle a more perceptive glance. "I'm sure he
wouldn't do anything dishonourable."
"Well--it won't look right. He must be made to feel _that_--work it up.
Give him a comrade's point of view--that of a brother-in-arms."
"That's what I thought we were going to be!" young Lechmere mused
romantically, much uplifted by the nature of the mission imposed on him.
"He's an awfully good sort."
"No one will think so if he backs out!" said Spencer Coyle.
"They mustn't say it to _me_!" his pupil rejoined with a flush.
Mr. Coyle hesitated a moment, noting his tone and aware that in the
perversity of things, though this young man was a born soldier, no
excitement would ever attach to _his_ alternatives save perhaps on the
part of the nice girl to whom at an early day he was sure to be placidly
united. "Do you like him very much--do you believe in him?"
Young Lechmere's life in these days was spent in answering terrible
questions; but he had never been subjected to so queer an interrogation
as this. "Believe in him? Rather!"
"Then _save_ him!"
The poor boy was puzzled, as if it were forced upon him by this
intensity that there was more in such an appeal than could appear on the
surface; and he doubtless felt that he was only entering into a complex
situation when after another moment, with his hands in his pockets, he
replied hopefully but not pompously: "I daresay I can bring him round!"