In the drawing-room after dinner the girl found an occasion to approach
Spencer Coyle. She stood before him a moment, smiling while she opened
and shut her fan, and then she said abruptly, raising her strange eyes:
"I know what you've come for, but it isn't any use."
"I've come to look after _you_ a little. Isn't _that_ any use?"
"It's very kind. But I'm not the question of the hour. You won't do
anything with Owen."
Spencer Coyle hesitated a moment. "What will _you_ do with his young
friend?"
She stared, looked round her.
"Mr. Lechmere? Oh, poor little lad! We've been talking about Owen. He
admires him so."
"So do I. I should tell you that."
"So do we all. That's why we're in such despair."
"Personally then you'd _like_ him to be a soldier?" Spencer Coyle
inquired.
"I've quite set my heart on it. I adore the army and I'm awfully fond of
my old playmate," said Miss Julian.
Her interlocutor remembered the young man's own different version of her
attitude; but he judged it loyal not to challenge the girl.
"It's not conceivable that your old playmate shouldn't be fond of you.
He must therefore wish to please you; and I don't see why--between
you--you don't set the matter right."
"Wish to please me!" Miss Julian exclaimed. "I'm sorry to say he shows
no such desire. He thinks me an impudent wretch. I've told him what I
think of _him_, and he simply hates me."
"But you think so highly! You just told me you admire him."
"His talents, his possibilities, yes; even his appearance, if I may
allude to such a matter. But I don't admire his present behaviour."
"Have you had the question out with him?" Spencer Coyle asked.
"Oh, yes, I've ventured to be frank--the occasion seemed to excuse it.
He couldn't like what I said."
"What did you say?"
Miss Julian, thinking a moment, opened and shut her fan again.
"Why, that such conduct isn't that of a gentleman!"
After she had spoken her eyes met Spencer Coyle's, who looked into their
charming depths.
"Do you want then so much to send him off to be killed?"
"How odd for _you_ to ask that--in such a way!" she replied with a
laugh. "I don't understand your position: I thought your line was to
_make_ soldiers!"
"You should take my little joke. But, as regards Owen Wingrave, there's
no 'making' needed," Mr. Coyle added. "To my sense"--the little crammer
paused a moment, as if with a consciousness of responsibility for his
paradox--"to my sense he _is_, in a high sense of the term, a fighting
man."
"Ah, let him prove it!" the girl exclaimed, turning away.
Spencer Coyle let her go; there was something in her tone that annoyed
and even a little shocked him. There had evidently been a violent
passage between these young people, and the reflection that such a
matter was after all none of his business only made him more sore. It
was indeed a military house, and she was at any rate a person who placed
her ideal of manhood (young persons doubtless always had their ideals of
manhood) in the type of the belted warrior. It was a taste like another;
but, even a quarter of an hour later, finding himself near young
Lechmere, in whom this type was embodied, Spencer Coyle was still so
ruffled that he addressed the innocent lad with a certain magisterial
dryness. "You're not to sit up late, you know. That's not what I brought
you down for." The dinner-guests were taking leave and the bedroom
candles twinkled in a monitory row. Young Lechmere however was too
agreeably agitated to be accessible to a snub: he had a happy
preoccupation which almost engendered a grin.
"I'm only too eager for bedtime. Do you know there's an awfully jolly
room?"
"Surely they haven't put you there?"
"No indeed: no one has passed a night in it for ages. But that's exactly
what I want to do--it would be tremendous fun."
"And have you been trying to get Miss Julian's permission?"
"Oh, _she_ can't give leave, she says. But she believes in it, and she
maintains that no man dare."
"No man _shall_! A man in your critical position in particular must have
a quiet night," said Spencer Coyle.
Young Lechmere gave a disappointed but reasonable sigh.
"Oh, all right. But mayn't I sit up for a little go at Wingrave? I
haven't had any yet."
Mr. Coyle looked at his watch.
"You may smoke _one_ cigarette."
He felt a hand on his shoulder, and he turned round to see his wife
tilting candle-grease upon his coat. The ladies were going to bed and it
was Sir Philip's inveterate hour; but Mrs. Coyle confided to her husband
that after the dreadful things he had told her she positively declined
to be left alone, for no matter how short an interval, in any part of
the house. He promised to follow her within three minutes, and after the
orthodox handshakes the ladies rustled away. The forms were kept up at
Paramore as bravely as if the old house had no present heartache. The
only one of which Spencer Coyle noticed the omission was some salutation
to himself from Kate Julian. She gave him neither a word nor a glance,
but he saw her look hard at Owen Wingrave. Her mother, timid and
pitying, was apparently the only person from whom this young man caught
an inclination of the head. Miss Wingrave marshalled the three
ladies--her little procession of twinkling tapers--up the wide oaken
stairs and past the watching portrait of her ill-fated ancestor. Sir
Philip's servant appeared and offered his arm to the old man, who turned
a perpendicular back on poor Owen when the boy made a vague movement to
anticipate this office. Spencer Coyle learned afterwards that before
Owen had forfeited favour it had always, when he was at home, been his
privilege at bedtime to conduct his grandfather ceremoniously to rest.
Sir Philip's habits were contemptuously different now. His apartments
were on the lower floor and he shuffled stiffly off to them with his
valet's help, after fixing for a moment significantly on the most
responsible of his visitors the thick red ray, like the glow of stirred
embers, that always made his eyes conflict oddly with his mild manners.
They seemed to say to Spencer Coyle "We'll let the young scoundrel have
it to-morrow!" One might have gathered from them that the young
scoundrel, who had now strolled to the other end of the hall, had at
least forged a cheque. Mr. Coyle watched him an instant, saw him drop
nervously into a chair and then with a restless movement get up. The
same movement brought him back to where his late instructor stood
addressing a last injunction to young Lechmere.
"I'm going to bed and I should like you particularly to conform to what
I said to you a short time ago. Smoke a single cigarette with your
friend here and then go to your room. You'll have me down on you if I
hear of your having, during the night, tried any preposterous games."
Young Lechmere, looking down with his hands in his pockets, said
nothing--he only poked at the corner of a rug with his toe; so that
Spencer Coyle, dissatisfied with so tacit a pledge, presently went on,
to Owen: "I must request you, Wingrave, not to keep this sensitive
subject sitting up--and indeed to put him to bed and turn his key in the
door." As Owen stared an instant, apparently not understanding the
motive of so much solicitude, he added: "Lechmere has a morbid curiosity
about one of your legends--of your historic rooms. Nip it in the bud."
"Oh, the legend's rather good, but I'm afraid the room's an awful sell!"
Owen laughed.
"You know you don't _believe_ that, my boy!" young Lechmere exclaimed.
"I don't think he does," said Mr. Coyle, noticing Owen's mottled flush.
"He wouldn't try a night there himself!" young Lechmere pursued.
"I know who told you that," rejoined Owen, lighting a cigarette in an
embarrassed way at the candle, without offering one to either of his
companions.
"Well, what if she did?" asked the younger of these gentleman, rather
red. "Do you want them _all_ yourself?" he continued facetiously,
fumbling in the cigarette-box.
Owen Wingrave only smoked quietly; then he exclaimed:
"Yes--what if she did? But she doesn't know," he added.
"She doesn't know what?"
"She doesn't know anything!--I'll tuck him in!" Owen went on gaily to
Mr. Coyle, who saw that his presence, now that a certain note had been
struck, made the young men uncomfortable. He was curious, but there was
a kind of discretion, with his pupils, that he had always pretended to
practise; a discretion that however didn't prevent him as he took his
way upstairs from recommending them not to be donkeys.
At the top of the staircase, to his surprise, he met Miss Julian, who
was apparently going down again. She had not begun to undress, nor was
she perceptibly disconcerted at seeing him. She nevertheless, in a
manner slightly at variance with the rigour with which she had
overlooked him ten minutes before, dropped the words: "I'm going down to
look for something. I've lost a jewel."
"A jewel?"
"A rather good turquoise, out of my locket. As it's the only ornament I
have the honour to possess----!" And she passed down.
"Shall I go with you and help you?" asked Spencer Coyle.
The girl paused a few steps below him, looking back with her Oriental
eyes.
"Don't I hear voices in the hall?"
"Those remarkable young men are there."
"_They'll_ help me." And Kate Julian descended.
Spencer Coyle was tempted to follow her, but remembering his standard of
tact he rejoined his wife in their apartment. He delayed however to go
to bed, and though he went into his dressing-room he couldn't bring
himself even to take off his coat. He pretended for half an hour to read
a novel; after which, quietly, or perhaps I should say agitatedly, he
passed from the dressing-room into the corridor. He followed this
passage to the door of the room which he knew to have been assigned to
young Lechmere and was comforted to see that it was closed. Half an hour
earlier he had seen it standing open; therefore he could take for
granted that the bewildered boy had come to bed. It was of this he had
wished to assure himself, and having done so he was on the point of
retreating. But at the same instant he heard a sound in the room--the
occupant was doing, at the window, something which showed him that he
might knock without the reproach of waking his pupil up. Young Lechmere
came in fact to the door in his shirt and trousers. He admitted his
visitor in some surprise, and when the door was closed again Spencer
Coyle said:
"I don't want to make your life a burden to you, but I had it on my
conscience to see for myself that you're not exposed to undue
excitement."
"Oh, there's plenty of that!" said the ingenuous youth. "Miss Julian
came down again."
"To look for a turquoise?"
"So she said."
"Did she find it?"
"I don't know. I came up. I left her with poor Wingrave."
"Quite the right thing," said Spencer Coyle.
"I don't know," young Lechmere repeated uneasily. "I left them
quarrelling."
"What about?"
"I don't understand. They're a quaint pair!"
Spencer Coyle hesitated. He had, fundamentally, principles and scruples,
but what he had in particular just now was a curiosity, or rather, to
recognise it for what it was, a sympathy, which brushed them away.
"Does it strike you that _she's_ down on him?" he permitted himself to
inquire.
"Rather!--when she tells him he lies!"
"What do you mean?"
"Why, before _me_. It made me leave them; it was getting too hot. I
stupidly brought up the question of the haunted room again, and said how
sorry I was that I had had to promise you not to try my luck with it."
"You can't pry about in that gross way in other people's houses--you
can't take such liberties, you know!" Mr. Coyle interjected.
"I'm all right--see how good I am. I don't want to go _near_ the place!"
said young Lechmere, confidingly. "Miss Julian said to me 'Oh, I daresay
_you'd_ risk it, but'--and she turned and laughed at poor Owen--'that's
more than we can expect of a gentleman who has taken _his_ extraordinary
line.' I could see that something had already passed between them on the
subject--some teasing or challenging of hers. It may have been only
chaff, but his chucking the profession had evidently brought up the
question of his pluck."
"And what did Owen say?"
"Nothing at first; but presently he brought out very quietly: 'I spent
all last night in the confounded place.' We both stared and cried out at
this and I asked him what he had seen there. He said he had seen
nothing, and Miss Julian replied that he ought to tell his story better
than that--he ought to make something good of it. 'It's not a
story--it's a simple fact,' said he; on which she jeered at him and
wanted to know why, if he had done it, he hadn't told her in the
morning, since he knew what she thought of him. 'I know, but I don't
care,' said Wingrave. This made her angry, and she asked him quite
seriously whether he would care if he should know she believed him to be
trying to deceive us."
"Ah, what a brute!" cried Spencer Coyle.
"She's a most extraordinary girl--I don't know what she's up to."
"Extraordinary indeed--to be romping and bandying words at that hour of
the night with fast young men!"
Young Lechmere reflected a moment. "I mean because I think she likes
him."
Spencer Coyle was so struck with this unwonted symptom of subtlety that
he flashed out: "And do you think he likes _her_?"
But his interlocutor only replied with a puzzled sigh and a plaintive "I
don't know--I give it up!--I'm sure he _did_ see something or hear
something," young Lechmere added.
"In that ridiculous place? What makes you sure?"
"I don't know--he looks as if he had. He behaves as if he had."
"Why then shouldn't he mention it?"