"Simply like an empty, dull, old-fashioned bedroom, rather big, with the
things of the 'period' in it. It's panelled from floor to ceiling, and
the panels evidently, years and years ago, were painted white. But the
paint has darkened with time and there are three or four quaint little
ancient 'samplers,' framed and glazed, hung on the walls."
Mrs. Coyle looked round with a shudder. "I'm glad there are no samplers
here! I never heard anything so jumpy! Come down to dinner."
On the staircase as they went down her husband showed her the portrait
of Colonel Wingrave--rather a vigorous representation, for the place and
period, of a gentleman with a hard, handsome face, in a red coat and a
peruke. Mrs. Coyle declared that his descendant Sir Philip was
wonderfully like him; and her husband could fancy, though he kept it to
himself, that if one should have the courage to walk about the old
corridors of Paramore at night one might meet a figure that resembled
him roaming, with the restlessness of a ghost, hand in hand with the
figure of a tall boy. As he proceeded to the drawing-room with his wife
he found himself suddenly wishing that he had made more of a point of
his pupil's going to Eastbourne. The evening however seemed to have
taken upon itself to dissipate any such whimsical forebodings, for the
grimness of the family circle, as Spencer Coyle had preconceived its
composition, was mitigated by an infusion of the "neighbourhood." The
company at dinner was recruited by two cheerful couples--one of them the
vicar and his wife, and by a silent young man who had come down to fish.
This was a relief to Mr. Coyle, who had begun to wonder what was after
all expected of him and why he had been such a fool as to come, and who
now felt that for the first hours at least the situation would not have
directly to be dealt with. Indeed he found, as he had found before,
sufficient occupation for his ingenuity in reading the various symptoms
of which the picture before him was an expression. He should probably
have an irritating day on the morrow: he foresaw the difficulty of the
long decorous Sunday and how dry Jane Wingrave's ideas, elicited in a
strenuous conference, would taste. She and her father would make him
feel that they depended upon him for the impossible, and if they should
try to associate him with a merely stupid policy he might end by telling
them what he thought of it--an accident not required to make his visit a
sensible mistake. The old man's actual design was evidently to let their
friends see in it a positive mark of their being all right. The presence
of the great London coach was tantamount to a profession of faith in the
results of the impending examination. It had clearly been obtained from
Owen, rather to Spencer Coyle's surprise, that he would do nothing to
interfere with the apparent harmony. He let the allusions to his hard
work pass and, holding his tongue about his affairs, talked to the
ladies as amicably as if he had not been "cut off." When Spencer Coyle
looked at him once or twice across the table, catching his eye, which
showed an indefinable passion, he saw a puzzling pathos in his laughing
face: one couldn't resist a pang for a young lamb so visibly marked for
sacrifice. "Hang him--what a pity he's such a fighter!" he privately
sighed, with a want of logic that was only superficial.
This idea however would have absorbed him more if so much of his
attention had not been given to Kate Julian, who now that he had her
well before him struck him as a remarkable and even as a possibly
fascinating young woman. The fascination resided not in any
extraordinary prettiness, for if she was handsome, with her long Eastern
eyes, her magnificent hair and her general unabashed originality, he had
seen complexions rosier and features that pleased him more: it resided
in a strange impression that she gave of being exactly the sort of
person whom, in her position, common considerations, those of prudence
and perhaps even a little those of decorum, would have enjoined on her
not to be. She was what was vulgarly termed a dependant--penniless,
patronized, tolerated; but something in her aspect and manner signified
that if her situation was inferior, her spirit, to make up for it, was
above precautions or submissions. It was not in the least that she was
aggressive, she was too indifferent for that; it was only as if, having
nothing either to gain or to lose, she could afford to do as she liked.
It occurred to Spencer Coyle that she might really have had more at
stake than her imagination appeared to take account of; whatever it was
at any rate he had never seen a young woman at less pains to be on the
safe side. He wondered inevitably how the peace was kept between Jane
Wingrave and such an inmate as this; but those questions of course were
unfathomable deeps. Perhaps Kate Julian lorded it even over her
protectress. The other time he was at Paramore he had received an
impression that, with Sir Philip beside her, the girl could fight with
her back to the wall. She amused Sir Philip, she charmed him, and he
liked people who weren't afraid; between him and his daughter moreover
there was no doubt which was the higher in command. Miss Wingrave took
many things for granted, and most of all the rigour of discipline and
the fate of the vanquished and the captive.
But between their clever boy and so original a companion of his
childhood what odd relation would have grown up? It couldn't be
indifference, and yet on the part of happy, handsome, youthful creatures
it was still less likely to be aversion. They weren't Paul and Virginia,
but they must have had their common summer and their idyll: no nice girl
could have disliked such a nice fellow for anything but not liking
_her_, and no nice fellow could have resisted such propinquity. Mr.
Coyle remembered indeed that Mrs. Julian had spoken to him as if the
propinquity had been by no means constant, owing to her daughter's
absences at school, to say nothing of Owen's; her visits to a few
friends who were so kind as to "take her" from time to time; her
sojourns in London--so difficult to manage, but still managed by God's
help--for "advantages," for drawing and singing, especially drawing or
rather painting, in oils, in which she had had immense success. But the
good lady had also mentioned that the young people were quite brother
and sister, which _was_ a little, after all, like Paul and Virginia.
Mrs. Coyle had been right, and it was apparent that Virginia was doing
her best to make the time pass agreeably for young Lechmere. There was
no such whirl of conversation as to render it an effort for Mr. Coyle to
reflect on these things, for the tone of the occasion, thanks
principally to the other guests, was not disposed to stray--it tended to
the repetition of anecdote and the discussion of rents, topics that
huddled together like uneasy animals. He could judge how intensely his
hosts wished the evening to pass off as if nothing had happened; and
this gave him the measure of their private resentment. Before dinner was
over he found himself fidgetty about his second pupil. Young Lechmere,
since he began to cram, had done all that might have been expected of
him; but this couldn't blind his instructor to a present perception of
his being in moments of relaxation as innocent as a babe. Mr. Coyle had
considered that the amusements of Paramore would probably give him a
fillip, and the poor fellow's manner testified to the soundness of the
forecast. The fillip had been unmistakably administered; it had come in
the form of a revelation. The light on young Lechmere's brow announced
with a candour that was almost an appeal for compassion, or at least a
deprecation of ridicule, that he had never seen anything like Miss
Julian.