II

Before seeing young Lechmere Mr. Coyle had determined to telegraph an

inquiry to Miss Wingrave. He had prepaid the answer, which, being

promptly put into his hand, brought the interview we have just related

to a close. He immediately drove off to Baker Street, where the lady had

said she awaited him, and five minutes after he got there, as he sat

with Owen Wingrave's remarkable aunt, he repeated over several times, in

his angry sadness and with the infallibility of his experience: "He's so

intelligent--he's so intelligent!" He had declared it had been a luxury

to put such a fellow through.

"Of course he's intelligent, what else could he be? We've never, that I

know of, had but _one_ idiot in the family!" said Jane Wingrave. This

was an allusion that Mr. Coyle could understand, and it brought home to

him another of the reasons for the disappointment, the humiliation as it

were, of the good people at Paramore, at the same that it gave an

example of the conscientious coarseness he had on former occasions

observed in his interlocutress. Poor Philip Wingrave, her late brother's

eldest son, was literally imbecile and banished from view; deformed,

unsocial, irretrievable, he had been relegated to a private asylum and

had become among the friends of the family only a little hushed

lugubrious legend. All the hopes of the house, picturesque Paramore, now

unintermittently old Sir Philip's rather melancholy home (his

infirmities would keep him there to the last) were therefore collected

on the second boy's head, which nature, as if in compunction for her

previous botch, had, in addition to making it strikingly handsome,

filled with marked originalities and talents. These two had been the

only children of the old man's only son, who, like so many of his

ancestors, had given up a gallant young life to the service of his

country. Owen Wingrave the elder had received his death-cut, in

close-quarters, from an Afghan sabre; the blow had come crashing across

his skull. His wife, at that time in India, was about to give birth to

her third child; and when the event took place, in darkness and anguish,

the baby came lifeless into the world and the mother sank under the

multiplication of her woes. The second of the little boys in England,

who was at Paramore with his grandfather, became the peculiar charge of

his aunt, the only unmarried one, and during the interesting Sunday

that, by urgent invitation, Spencer Coyle, busy as he was, had, after

consenting to put Owen through, spent under that roof, the celebrated

crammer received a vivid impression of the influence exerted at least in

intention by Miss Wingrave. Indeed the picture of this short visit

remained with the observant little man a curious one--the vision of an

impoverished Jacobean house, shabby and remarkably "creepy," but full of

character still and full of felicity as a setting for the distinguished

figure of the peaceful old soldier. Sir Philip Wingrave, a relic rather

than a celebrity, was a small brown, erect octogenarian, with

smouldering eyes and a studied courtesy. He liked to do the diminished

honours of his house, but even when with a shaky hand he lighted a

bedroom candle for a deprecating guest it was impossible not to feel

that beneath the surface he was a merciless old warrior. The eye of the

imagination could glance back into his crowded Eastern past--back at

episodes in which his scrupulous forms would only have made him more

terrible.

Mr. Coyle remembered also two other figures--a faded inoffensive Mrs.

Julian, domesticated there by a system of frequent visits as the widow

of an officer and a particular friend of Miss Wingrave, and a remarkably

clever little girl of eighteen, who was this lady's daughter and who

struck the speculative visitor as already formed for other relations.

She was very impertinent to Owen, and in the course of a long walk that

he had taken with the young man and the effect of which, in much talk,

had been to clinch his high opinion of him, he had learned (for Owen

chattered confidentially) that Mrs. Julian was the sister of a very

gallant gentleman, Captain Hume-Walker, of the Artillery, who had fallen

in the Indian Mutiny and between whom and Miss Wingrave (it had been

that lady's one known concession) a passage of some delicacy, taking a

tragic turn, was believed to have been enacted. They had been engaged to

be married, but she had given way to the jealousy of her nature--had

broken with him and sent him off to his fate, which had been horrible. A

passionate sense of having wronged him, a hard eternal remorse had

thereupon taken possession of her, and when his poor sister, linked also

to a soldier, had by a still heavier blow been left almost without

resources, she had devoted herself charitably to a long expiation. She

had sought comfort in taking Mrs. Julian to live much of the time at

Paramore, where she became an unremunerated though not uncriticised

housekeeper, and Spencer Coyle suspected that it was a part of this

comfort that she could at her leisure trample on her. The impression of

Jane Wingrave was not the faintest he had gathered on that intensifying

Sunday--an occasion singularly tinged for him with the sense of

bereavement and mourning and memory, of names never mentioned, of the

far-away plaint of widows and the echoes of battles and bad news. It was

all military indeed, and Mr. Coyle was made to shudder a little at the

profession of which he helped to open the door to harmless young men.

Miss Wingrave moreover might have made such a bad conscience worse--so

cold and clear a good one looked at him out of her hard, fine eyes and

trumpeted in her sonorous voice.

She was a high, distinguished person; angular but not awkward, with a

large forehead and abundant black hair, arranged like that of a woman

conceiving perhaps excusably of her head as "noble," and irregularly

streaked to-day with white. If however she represented for Spencer Coyle

the genius of a military race it was not that she had the step of a

grenadier or the vocabulary of a camp-follower; it was only that such

sympathies were vividly implied in the general fact to which her very

presence and each of her actions and glances and tones were a constant

and direct allusion--the paramount valour of her family. If she was

military it was because she sprang from a military house and because she

wouldn't for the world have been anything but what the Wingraves had

been. She was almost vulgar about her ancestors, and if one had been

tempted to quarrel with her one would have found a fair pretext in her

defective sense of proportion. This temptation however said nothing to

Spencer Coyle, for whom as a strong character revealing itself in colour

and sound she was a spectacle and who was glad to regard her as a force

exerted on his own side. He wished her nephew had more of her narrowness

instead of being almost cursed with the tendency to look at things in

their relations. He wondered why when she came up to town she always

resorted to Baker Street for lodgings. He had never known nor heard of

Baker Street as a residence--he associated it only with bazaars and

photographers. He divined in her a rigid indifference to everything that

was not the passion of her life. Nothing really mattered to her but

that, and she would have occupied apartments in Whitechapel if they had

been a feature in her tactics. She had received her visitor in a large

cold, faded room, furnished with slippery seats and decorated with

alabaster vases and wax-flowers. The only little personal comfort for

which she appeared to have looked out was a fat catalogue of the Army

and Navy Stores, which reposed on a vast, desolate table-cover of false

blue. Her clear forehead--it was like a porcelain slate, a receptacle

for addresses and sums--had flushed when her nephew's crammer told her

the extraordinary news; but he saw she was fortunately more angry than

frightened. She had essentially, she would always have, too little

imagination for fear, and the healthy habit moreover of facing

everything had taught her that the occasion usually found her a quantity

to reckon with. Mr. Coyle saw that her only fear at present could have

been that of not being able to prevent her nephew from being absurd and

that to such an apprehension as this she was in fact inaccessible.

Practically too she was not troubled by surprise; she recognised none of

the futile, none of the subtle sentiments. If Philip had for an hour

made a fool of himself she was angry; disconcerted as she would have

been on learning that he had confessed to debts or fallen in love with a

low girl. But there remained in any annoyance the saving fact that no

one could make a fool of _her_.

"I don't know when I've taken such an interest in a young man--I think I

never have, since I began to handle them," Mr. Coyle said. "I like him,

I believe in him--it's been a delight to see how he was going."

"Oh, I know how they go!" Miss Wingrave threw back her head with a

familiar briskness, as if a rapid procession of the generations had

flashed before her, rattling their scabbards and spurs. Spencer Coyle

recognised the intimation that she had nothing to learn from anybody

about the natural carriage of a Wingrave, and he even felt convicted by

her next words of being, in her eyes, with the troubled story of his

check, his weak complaint of his pupil, rather a poor creature. "If you

like him," she exclaimed, "for mercy's sake keep him quiet!"

Mr. Coyle began to explain to her that this was less easy than she

appeared to imagine; but he perceived that she understood very little of

what he said. The more he insisted that the boy had a kind of

intellectual independence, the more this struck her as a conclusive

proof that her nephew was a Wingrave and a soldier. It was not till he

mentioned to her that Owen had spoken of the profession of arms as of

something that would be "beneath" him, it was not till her attention was

arrested by this intenser light on the complexity of the problem that

Miss Wingrave broke out after a moment's stupefied reflection: "Send him

to see me immediately!"

"That's exactly what I wanted to ask your leave to do. But I've wanted

also to prepare you for the worst, to make you understand that he

strikes me as really obstinate and to suggest to you that the most

powerful arguments at your command--especially if you should be able to

put your hand on some intensely practical one--will be none too

effective."

"I think I've got a powerful argument." Miss Wingrave looked very hard

at her visitor. He didn't know in the least what it was, but he begged

her to put it forward without delay. He promised that their young man

should come to Baker Street that evening, mentioning however that he had

already urged him to spend without delay a couple of days at Eastbourne.

This led Jane Wingrave to inquire with surprise what virtue there might

be in _that_ expensive remedy, and to reply with decision when Mr. Coyle

had said "The virtue of a little rest, a little change, a little relief

to overwrought nerves," "Ah, don't coddle him--he's costing us a great

deal of money! I'll talk to him and I'll take him down to Paramore; then

I'll send him back to you straightened out."

Spencer Coyle hailed this pledge superficially with satisfaction, but

before he quitted Miss Wingrave he became conscious that he had really

taken on a new anxiety--a restlessness that made him say to himself,

groaning inwardly: "Oh, she is a grenadier at bottom, and she'll have no

tact. I don't know what her powerful argument is; I'm only afraid she'll

be stupid and make him worse. The old man's better--_he's_ capable of

tact, though he's not quite an extinct volcano. Owen will probably put

him in a rage. In short the difficulty is that the boy's the best of

them."

Spencer Coyle felt afresh that evening at dinner that the boy was the

best of them. Young Wingrave (who, he was pleased to observe, had not

yet proceeded to the seaside) appeared at the repast as usual, looking

inevitably a little self-conscious, but not too original for Bayswater.

He talked very naturally to Mrs. Coyle, who had thought him from the

first the most beautiful young man they had ever received; so that the

person most ill at ease was poor Lechmere, who took great trouble, as if

from the deepest delicacy, not to meet the eye of his misguided mate.

Spencer Coyle however paid the penalty of his own profundity in feeling

more and more worried; he could so easily see that there were all sorts

of things in his young friend that the people of Paramore wouldn't

understand. He began even already to react against the notion of his

being harassed--to reflect that after all he had a right to his

ideas--to remember that he was of a substance too fine to be in fairness

roughly used. It was in this way that the ardent little crammer, with

his whimsical perceptions and complicated sympathies, was generally

condemned not to settle down comfortably either into his displeasures or

into his enthusiasms. His love of the real truth never gave him a chance

to enjoy them. He mentioned to Wingrave after dinner the propriety of an

immediate visit to Baker Street, and the young man, looking "queer," as

he thought--that is smiling again with the exaggerated glory he had

shown in their recent interview--went off to face the ordeal. Spencer

Coyle noted that he was scared--he was afraid of his aunt; but somehow

this didn't strike him as a sign of pusillanimity. _He_ should have been

scared, he was well aware, in the poor boy's place, and the sight of his

pupil marching up to the battery in spite of his terrors was a positive

suggestion of the temperament of the soldier. Many a plucky youth would

have shirked this particular peril.

"He _has_ got ideas!" young Lechmere broke out to his instructor after

his comrade had quitted the house. He was evidently bewildered and

agitated--he had an emotion to work off. He had before dinner gone

straight at his friend, as Mr. Coyle had requested, and had elicited

from him that his scruples were founded on an overwhelming conviction of

the stupidity--the "crass barbarism" he called it--of war. His great

complaint was that people hadn't invented anything cleverer, and he was

determined to show, the only way he could, that _he_ wasn't such an ass.

"And he thinks all the great generals ought to have been shot, and that

Napoleon Bonaparte in particular, the greatest, was a criminal, a

monster for whom language has no adequate name!" Mr. Coyle rejoined,

completing young Lechmere's picture. "He favoured you, I see, with

exactly the same pearls of wisdom that he produced for me. But I want to

know what _you_ said."

"I said they were awful rot!" Young Lechmere spoke with emphasis, and he

was slightly surprised to hear Mr. Coyle laugh incongruously at this

just declaration and then after a moment continue:

"It's all very curious--I daresay there's something in it. But it's a

pity!"

"He told me when it was that the question began to strike him in that

light. Four or five years ago, when he did a lot of reading about all

the great swells and their campaigns--Hannibal and Julius Cæsar,

Marlborough and Frederick and Bonaparte. He _has_ done a lot of reading,

and he says it opened his eyes. He says that a wave of disgust rolled

over him. He talked about the 'immeasurable misery' of wars, and asked

me why nations don't tear to pieces the governments, the rulers that go

in for them. He hates poor old Bonaparte worst of all."

"Well, poor old Bonaparte was a brute. He was a frightful ruffian," Mr.

Coyle unexpectedly declared. "But I suppose you didn't admit that."

"Oh, I daresay he was objectionable, and I'm very glad we laid him on

his back. But the point I made to Wingrave was that his own behaviour

would excite no end of remark." Young Lechmere hesitated an instant,

then he added: "I told him he must be prepared for the worst."

"Of course he asked you what you meant by the 'worst,'" said Spencer

Coyle.

"Yes, he asked me that, and do you know what I said? I said people would

say that his conscientious scruples and his wave of disgust are only a

pretext. Then he asked 'A pretext for what?'"

"Ah, he rather had you there!" Mr. Coyle exclaimed with a little laugh

that was mystifying to his pupil.

"Not a bit--for I told him."

"What did you tell him?"

Once more, for a few seconds, with his conscious eyes in his

instructor's, the young man hung fire.

"Why, what we spoke of a few hours ago. The appearance he'd present of

not having----" The honest youth faltered a moment, then brought it out:

"The military temperament, don't you know? But do you know what he said

to that?" young Lechmere went on.

"Damn the military temperament!" the crammer promptly replied.

Young Lechmere stared. Mr. Coyle's tone left him uncertain if he were

attributing the phrase to Wingrave or uttering his own opinion, but he

exclaimed:

"Those were exactly his words!"

"He doesn't care," said Mr. Coyle.

"Perhaps not. But it isn't fair for him to abuse us fellows. I told him

it's the finest temperament in the world, and that there's nothing so

splendid as pluck and heroism."

"Ah! there you had _him_."

"I told him it was unworthy of him to abuse a gallant, a magnificent

profession. I told him there's no type so fine as that of the soldier

doing his duty."

"That's essentially _your_ type, my dear boy." Young Lechmere blushed;

he couldn't make out (and the danger was naturally unexpected to him)

whether at that moment he didn't exist mainly for the recreation of his

friend. But he was partly reassured by the genial way this friend

continued, laying a hand on his shoulder: "Keep _at_ him that way! we

may do something. I'm extremely obliged to you." Another doubt however

remained unassuaged--a doubt which led him to exclaim to Mr. Coyle

before they dropped the painful subject:

"He _doesn't_ care! But it's awfully odd he shouldn't!"

"So it is, but remember what you said this afternoon--I mean about your

not advising people to make insinuations to _you_."

"I believe I should knock a fellow down!" said young Lechmere. Mr. Coyle

had got up; the conversation had taken place while they sat together

after Mrs. Coyle's withdrawal from the dinner-table and the head of the

establishment administered to his disciple, on principles that were a

part of his thoroughness, a glass of excellent claret. The disciple,

also on his feet, lingered an instant, not for another "go," as he would

have called it, at the decanter, but to wipe his microscopic moustache

with prolonged and unusual care. His companion saw he had something to

bring out which required a final effort, and waited for him an instant

with a hand on the knob of the door. Then as young Lechmere approached

him Spencer Coyle grew conscious of an unwonted intensity in the round

and ingenuous face. The boy was nervous, but he tried to behave like a

man of the world. "Of course, it's between ourselves," he stammered,

"and I wouldn't breathe such a word to any one who wasn't interested in

poor Wingrave as you are. But do you think he funks it?"

Mr. Coyle looked at him so hard for an instant that he was visibly

frightened at what he had said.

"Funks it! Funks what?"

"Why, what we're talking about--the service." Young Lechmere gave a

little gulp and added with a _naïveté_ almost pathetic to Spencer

Coyle: "The dangers, you know!"

"Do you mean he's thinking of his skin?"

Young Lechmere's eyes expanded appealingly, and what his instructor saw

in his pink face--he even thought he saw a tear--was the dread of a

disappointment shocking in the degree in which the loyalty of admiration

had been great.

"Is he--is he _afraid_?" repeated the honest lad, with a quaver of

suspense.

"Dear no!" said Spencer Coyle, turning his back.

Young Lechmere felt a little snubbed and even a little ashamed; but he

felt still more relieved.