BOOKS BY SIR ARTHUR T. QUILLER-COUCH PUBLISHED BY CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS Brother Copas net, $1.20 Lady Good-for-Nothing . . . net, $1.20 True Tilda $1.50 Major Vigoureux $1.50 Poison Island $1.50 Sir John Constantino . . . . $1.50 The Mayor of Troy $1.50 Shining Ferry $1.50 Fort Amity $1.50 Two Sides of the Face $1.50 The Laird's Luck, and Other Fireside Tales $1.50 Old Fires and Profitable Ghosts . . $1.50 Historical Tales from Shakespeare. . $1.50 The Ship of Stars. With Frontispiece . $1.50 The Splendid Spur $1.25 I Saw Three Ships, and Other Winter Tales $1.25 Dead Man's Rock $1.25 The Delectable Duchy . . . . $1.25 Noughts and Crosses $1.25 Wandering Heath $1.25 The Astonishing History of Troy Town $1.25 la. [Ivory Series] .75 BROTHER COPAS BROTHER COPAS BY ARTHUR QUILLER-COUCH C'Q") 'And a little Child shall lead them." ISAIAH xi. 6. CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS NEW YORK ::::::::: 1911 COPYRIGHT, 1911, BT CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS Published April, 1911 TO THE GENTLE READER IN a former book of mine, Sir John Constantino, I expressed (perhaps extravagantly) my faith in my fellows and in their capacity to treat life as a noble sport. In Brother Copas I try to express something of that correlative scorn which must come sooner or later to every man who puts his faith into practice. I hold the faith still; but that "He who would love his fellow men Must not expect too much of them" is good counsel if bad rhyme. I can only hope that both the faith and the scorn are sound at the core. For the rest, I wish to state that St. Hospital is a society which never existed. I have borrowed for it certain external features from the Hospital of St. Cross, near Winchester. I have invented a few external and all the internal ones. My " College of Noble Poverty " harbours abuses from which, I dare to say, that noble institution is entirely free. St. Hospital has no exist- ence at all outside of my imagining. ARTHUR QUILLER-COUCH THE HAVEN TOWER Feb. 16th, 1911 2019724 CONTENTS CHAPTER PAGE I. THE MASTER OF ST. HOSPITAL .... 1 II. THE COLLEGE OF NOBLE POVERTY . . 12 III. BROTHER COPAS HOOKS A FISH ... 29 IV. CORONA COMES 42 V. BROTHER COPAS ON RELIGIOUS DIFFER- ENCE 56 VI. GAUDY DAY 71 VII. Low AND HIGH TABLES 82 VIII. A PEACE-OFFERING 97 IX. BY MERE RIVER 105 X. THE ANONYMOUS LETTER 117 XI. BROTHER COPAS ON THE ANGLO-SAXON . 130 XII. MR. ISIDORE TAKES CHARGE .... 140 XIII. GARDEN AND LAUNDRY 150 XIV. BROTHER COPAS ON THE HOUSE OF LORDS 166 XV. CANARIES AND GREYCOATS 175 XVI. THE SECOND LETTER 184 vii viii CONTENTS PAGE XVII. PUPPETS 193 XVIII. THE PERVIGILIUM 208 XIX. MERCHESTER PREPARES 216 XX. NAUGHTINESS, AND A SEQUEL .... 234 XXI. RECONCILIATION 249 XXII. MR. SIMEON MAKES A CLEAN BREAST . 261 XXIII. CORONA'S BIRTHDAY 273 XXIV. FINIS CORONAT OPUS 285 CONCLUSION , 299 BROTHER COPAS BROTHER COPAS CHAPTER I THE MASTER OF ST. HOSPITAL "As poor, yet making many rich; as having nothing, and yet possessing all things . . ." The Honourable and Reverend Eustace John Wriothesley Blanchminster, D.D., Master of St. Hos- pital-by-Merton, sat in the oriel of his library revis- ing his Trinity Gaudy Sermon. He took pains with these annual sermons, having a quick and fastidi- ous sense of literary style. " It is," he would observe, "one of the few pleasurable capacities spared by old age." He had, moreover, a scholarly habit of verify- ing his references and quotations; and if the original, however familiar, happened to be in a dead or foreign language, would have his secretary indite it in the margin. His secretary, Mr. Simeon, after taking the Sermon down from dictation, had made out a fair copy, and stood now at a little distance from the cor- ner of the writing-table, in a deferential attitude. 1 BROTHER COPAS The Master leaned forward over the manuscript; and a ray of afternoon sunshine, stealing in between a mullion of the oriel and the edge of a drawn blind, touched his bowed and silvery head as if with a bene- diction. He was in his seventy-third year; lineal and sole-surviving descendant of that Alberic de Blanch- minster (Albericus de Albo Monasterio) who had founded this Hospital of Christ's Poor in 1137, and the dearest, most distinguished-looking old clergyman imaginable. An American lady had once summed him up as a Doctor of Divinity in Dresden china; and there was much to be allowed to the simile when you noted his hands, so shapely and fragile, or his com- plexion, transparent as old ivory and still more if you had leisure to observe his saintliness, so delicately attuned to this world. "As having nothing, and yet possessing all things." The Master laid his forefinger upon the page and looked up reproachfully. " &>? prjSev e^oi/re? my good Simeon, is it possible? A word so common as a*?! and after all these years you make it peris pomenon!" Mr. Simeon stammered contrition. In the matter of Greek accents he knew himself to be untrust- worthy beyond hope. " I can't tell how it is, sir, but that w9 always seems to me to want a circumflex, being an adverb of sorts." On top of this, and to make things worse, he pleaded that he had left out the ac- cent in o> "A Well Wisher." "The handwriting," said Brother Copas, "is a woman's, though disguised." The Master, erect again, having collected his papers, eyed Brother Copas as if surprised by his calm tone. "You make nothing of it, then?" "Fst!" "I I was hoping so." The Master's voice was tremulous, apologetic. "It came by this evening's post, not half an hour ago. ... I am not used to receive such things: yet I know what ought to be done with them toss them into the fire at once and dismiss them from your mind. I make no doubt I should have burnt it within another ten minutes: as for cleansing one's mind of it so quickly, that must be a counsel of perfection. But you were shown in, and I I made certain that you could contradict this dis- graceful report and set my mind at rest. Forgive me." "Ah, Master" Brother Copas glanced up with a quick smile "it almost looks as if you were right after all, and one is never too old to confess!" He 126 THE ANONYMOUS LETTER bent and held the edge of the paper close to the blaze. "May I burn it?" "By all means." "Nay, then, I won't. But since you have freely parted with it, may I keep it? ... I have had some little experience with manuscripts, and it is just possible I may trace this to the writer who is as- suredly a woman," added Brother Copas, studying the letter again. "You have my leave to do so." " And you ask no further question ? " The Master hesitated. At length he said firmly "None. I have no right. How can so foul a thing confer any right?" Brother Copas was silent for a space. "Nay, that is true, Master; it cannot. . . . Nev- ertheless, I will answer what was in your mind to ask. When I came into the room you were pondering this letter. The thought of it pah! mixed itself up with a thought of the appointment you had set for me with the Petition; and the two harked back together upon a question you put to me just now. 'Why was not Brother Bonaday among the signa- tories?' Between them they turned that question into a suspicion. Guilty men are seldom bold: as the Scots say, 'Riven breeks sit still.' . . . Was not this, or something like it, in your mind, sir?" " I confess that it was." 127 BROTHER COPAS " Why then, Master, I too will confess I that came to you to denounce the practice. Of what this letter hints Bonaday is innocent as as you are. He approved of the Petition and was on the point of signing it; but he desired your good leave to make a home for his child. Between parent and Protestant my friend was torn, and moreover between conscience and loyalty. He could not sue for this favour from you, his soul weighted with an intention to go straight- way and do what must offend you." Master Blanchminster faced Brother Copas square- ly, standing of a sudden erect. It seemed to add inches to his stature. "Had he so poor a trust in me, after these years?" "No, Master." Brother Copas bent his head. "That is where I come in. All this is but prepar- atory. ... I am a fraud as little Protestant as Catholic. I found my friend in straits, and made a bargain with those who were pressing him "Do I understand, Brother Copas, that this Peti- tion of which all the strength lies in its scholarship and wording is yours, and that on these terms only you have given me so much pain?" "You may put it so, Master, and I can say no more than 'yes' though I might yet plead that some- thing is wrong with St. Hospital, and "Something is very wrong with St. Hospital," interrupted the Master gravely. "This letter if it 128 THE ANONYMOUS LETTER come from within our walls But I after all, as its Master, am ultimately to blame." He paused for a moment and looked up. with a sudden winning smile. "We have both confessed some sins. Shall we say a prayer together, Brother?" The two old men knelt by the hearth there. To- gether in silence they bowed their heads. 129 CHAPTER XI BROTHER COPAS ON THE ANGLO-SAXON "You ought to write a play," said Mrs. Simeon. Mr. Simeon looked up from his dinner and stared at his wife as though she had suddenly taken leave of her senses. She sat holding a fork erect and close to her mouth, with a morsel of potato ready to be popped in as soon as she should finish devouring a paragraph of The People newspaper, folded beside her plate. In a general way Mrs. Simeon was not a reader; but on Mondays (washing-days) she regu- larly had the loan of a creased copy of The People from a neighbour who, having but a couple of chil- dren, could afford to buy and peruse it on the day of issue. There is much charity among the working poor. "I I beg your pardon, my dear?" Mr. Simeon murmured, after gently admonishing his second son (Eustace, aged 11, named after the Master) for flip- ping bread pills across the table. " I am afraid I did not catch " " I see there 's a man has made forty thousand pounds by writing one. And he did it in three weeks, 130 ON THE ANGLO-SAXON after beginning as a clerk in the stationery. . . . Forty thousand pounds, only think! That 's what I call turning cleverness to account." "But, my love, I don't happen to be clever/' pro- tested Mr. Simeon. His wife swallowed her morsel of potato. She was a worn-looking blonde, peevish, not without traces of good looks. She wore the sleeves of her bodice rolled up to the elbows, and her wrists and forearms were bleached by her morning's work at the wash-tub. "Then I'm sure I don't know what else you are!" said she, looking at him straight. Mr. Simeon sighed. Ever on Mondays he returned at midday to a house filled with steam and the dank odour of soap-suds, and to the worst of the week's meagre meals. A hundred times he had reproached himself that he did ungratefully to let this affect him, for his wife (poor soul) had been living in it all day, whereas his morning had been spent amid books, rare prints, statuettes, soft carpets, all the delicate luxuries of Master Blanchminster's library. Yet he could not help feeling the contrast; and the children were always at their most fractious on Mondays, chafed by a morning in school after two days of free- dom. "Where are you going this afternoon?" his wife asked. "To blow the organ for Windeatt." 131 BROTHER COPAS Dr. Windeatt (Mus. Doc. Oxon.) was the Cathedral organist. "Has he offered to pay you?" " Well it isn't pay exactly. There was an under- standing that if I blew for him this afternoon old Brewer being laid up with the shingles he would take me through that tenor part in the new Vcnite Exultenus. It 's tricky, and yesterday morning I slurred it horribly." "Tc'ht! A man of your education blowing an or- gan, and for nothing! If there was any money in it one wouldn't mind so much. . . . But you let yourself be put upon by anybody." Mr. Simeon was silent. He knew that to defend himself would be to court a wrangle, reproaches, tears perhaps, all unseemly before the children; and, more- over, what his wife said was more than half deserved. "Daddy, why don't you write a play?" demanded the five-year-old Agatha. "And then mammy would have a carriage, and I 'd go to a real boarding-school with canaries in the window like they have at Miss Dickinson's." The meal over, Mr. Simeon stole away to the Cathedral. He was unhappy; and as he passed through Friars' Gateway into the Close, the sight of the minster, majestical above its green garth, for once gave no lift to his spirit. The great central tower 132 ON THE ANGLO-SAXON rose against a sky of clearest blue, strong and four- square as on the day when its Norman builders took down their scaffolding. White pigeons hovered or perched on niche and corbel. But fortitude and as- piration alike had deserted Mr. Simeon for the while. Life hard life and poverty had subdued him to be one of the petty, nameless crowd this Cathedral had seen creep to their end in its shadow. . . . "What should such creatures as I do, crawling be- tween earth and heaven?" A thousand thousand such as Mr. Simeon had listened or lifted their voice to its anthems had aspired for the wings of a dove, to fly away and be at rest. Where now were all their emotions? He entered by a side-door of the western porch. The immense, solemn nave, if it did not catch his thoughts aloft, at least hushed them in awe. To Mr. Simeon Merchester Cathedral was a passion, nearer, if not dearer, than wife or children. He had arrived ten minutes ahead of the appointed time. As he walked towards the great organ he heard a child's voice, high-pitched and clear, talking behind the traceries of the choir screen. He sup- posed it the voice of some irreverent chorister, and stepping aside to rebuke it, discovered Corona and Brother Copas together gazing up at the coffins above the canopy. " And is King Alfred really up there ? the one that burnt the cakes? and if so, which?" Corona was asking, too eager to think of grammar. 133 BROTHER COPAS Brother Copas shrugged his shoulders. "What 's left of him is up there somewhere. "'Here are sands, ignoble things Dropped from the ruined sides of kings.' But the Parliament troopers broke open the coffins and mixed the dust sadly. The Latin says so. 'In this and the neighbouring chests' (or caskets, as you say in America), ' confounded in a time of Civil Fury, reposes what dust is left of ' Ah, good afternoon, Mr. Simeon! This young lady has laid forcible hands on me to give her an object-lesson in English history. Do you, who know ten times more of the Cathedral than I, come to my aid." "If you are looking for King Alfred," answered Mr. Simeon, beaming on Corona through his glasses, " there 's a tradition that his dust lies in the second chest to the right ... a tradition only. No one really knows." Corona shifted her position some six paces to the right, and tilted her gaze up at the coffer as though she would crick her neck. "Aye, missy" Mr. Simeon still beamed "they 're up there, the royal ones Dane and Norman and Angevin ; and not one to match the great Anglo-Saxon that was father of us all." Brother Copas grunted impatiently. "My good Simeon, you ought to be ashamed of yourself! God forbid that one should decry such a 134 ON THE ANGLO-SAXON man as Alfred was. But the pedantry of Freeman and his sect, who tried to make 'English* a con- terminous name and substitute for 'Anglo-Saxon/ was only by one degree less offensive than the igno- rance of your modern journalist who degrades Eng- lishmen by writing them down (or up, the poor fool imagines) as Anglo-Saxons. In truth, King Alfred was a noble fellow. No one in history has struggled more pluckily to rekindle fire in an effete race or to put spirit into an effete literature by pretending that both were of the prime." "Come, come," murmured Mr. Simeon, smiling. " I see you are off upon one of your hobbies. . . . But you will not tell me that the fine rugged epic of Beowulf, to which the historians trace back all that is noblest in our poetry, had lost its generative impulse even so early as Alfred's time. That were too ex- travagant!" " Brekekekex, ten brink, ten brink ! " snapped Brother Copas. " All the frogs in chorus around Charon's boat! Fine rugged fiddlestick have you ever read Beowulf? " " In translation only." "You need not be ashamed of labour saved. I once spent a month or two in mastering Anglo-Saxon, having a suspicion of Germans when they talk about English literature, and a deeper suspicion of English critics who ape them. Then I tackled Beoumlf, and found it to be what I guessed no rugged national epic at all, but a blown-out bag of bookishness. Im- 135 BROTHER COPAS pulse? Generative impulse? the thing is wind, I tell you, without sap or sinew, the production of some conscientious Anglo-Saxon whose blue eyes, no doubt, watered with the effort of inflating it. I '11 swear it never drew a human tear otherwise. . . . That 's what the whole Anglo-Saxon race had become when Alfred arose to galvanise 'em for a while a herd of tall, flabby, pale-eyed men, who could neither fight, build, sing, nor enforce laws. And so our England wise as Austria in mating turned to other nuptials and married William the Norman. Behold then a new breed; the country covered with sturdy, bullet- headed, energetic fellows who are no sooner born than they fly to work hammers going, scaffolds climbing, cities, cathedrals springing up by magic, and all to a new song that came with some imported workmen from the Provence "'Quan la douss' aura venta Deves vostre pays ' and so pop! down the wind goes your pricked bladder of a Beowulf: down the wind that blows from the Mediterranean, whence the arts and the best re- ligions come." Mr. Simeon rubbed the side of his jaw thoughtfully. "Ah," said he, "I remember Master Blanchmin- ster saying something of the sort the other day. He was talking of wine." "Yes the best religions and the best wine: they 136 ON THE ANGLO-SAXON go together. Could ever an Anglo-Saxon have built that, think you?" demanded Brother Copas with a backward jerk of the head and glance up at the vaulted roof. " But to my moral. All this talk of Anglo-Saxons, Celts, and the rest is rubbish. We are English by chemical action of a score of inter- fused bloods. That man is a fool who speaks as though, at this point of time, they could be separated: had he the power to put his nonsense into practice he would be a wicked fool. And so I say, Mr. Simeon, that the Roundheads no pure Anglo-Saxon, by the way, ever had a round head who mixed up the dead dust in the caskets aloft there, were really leav- ing us a sound historical lesson " But here Mr. Simeon turned at the sound of a brisk footstep. Dr. Windeatt had just entered by the western door. " You '11 excuse me ? I promised the Doctor to blow the organ for him." "Do people blow upon organs?" asked Corona, suddenly interested. "I thought they played upon them the same as pianos, only with little things that pulled out at the sides." " Come and see," Mr. Simeon invited her, smiling. The three went around to the back of the organ loft. By and by when Mr. Simeon began to pump, and after a minute, a quiet adagio, rising upon a throb of air, stole along the aisles as though an angel spoke in it, or the very spirit of the building, tears 137 BROTHER COPAS sprang into the child's eyes and overflowed. She supposed that Mr. Simeon alone was working this miracle. . . . Blinking more tears away, she stared at him, meeting his mild, half-quizzical gaze as he stooped and rose and stooped again over the bellows. Brother Copas, touching her elbow, signed to her to come away. She obeyed, very reluctantly. By a small doorway in the southern aisle she followed him out into the sunshine of the Cathedral Close. "But how does he do it?" she demanded. "He doesn't look a bit as if he could do anything like that not in repose." Brother Copas eyed her and took snuff. " He and the like of him don't touch the stops, my dear. He and the like of him do better; they supply the afflatus." ye holy and humble Men of heart, bless ye the Lord : praise Him, and magnify Him for ever ! Mr. Simeon worked mechanically, heaving and pressing upon the bellows of the great organ. His mind ran upon Master Copas's disparagement of Beowulf and the Anglo-Saxons. It was ever the trouble that he remembered an answer for Brother Copas after Brother Copas had gone. . . . Why had he not bethought him to cite Csedmon, at any rate, against that sweeping disparagement? How went the story ? 138 ON THE ANGLO-SAXON Coedmon was a lay brother, a tender of cattle at the Abbey of Whitby under the Abbess Hilda who founded it. Until somewhat spent in years he had never learnt any poems. Therefore at a feast, when all sang in turn, so soon as he saw the harp coming near him, he would rise and leave the table and go home. Once when he had gone thus from the feast to the stables, where he had night-charge of the beasts, as he yielded himself to sleep One stood over him and said, greeting him by name, " Coedmon, sing some song to me." " I cannot sing," he said, "and for this cause left I the feast." "But you shall sing to me," said the Vision. "Lord, what shall I sing?" "Sing the Creation," said the Vision. Casdmon sang, and in the morning remembered what he had sung . . . "If this indeed happened to Csedmon, and late in life" (mused Mr. Simeon, heaving on the bellows of the great organ), " might not even some such miracle befall me?" Lord, I have loved the habitation of Thy house, and the place where Thine honour dwelleth. " I might even write a play," thought Mr. Simeon. 139 CHAPTER XII MR. ISIDORE TAKES CHARGE " UNCLE COPAS," said Corona, as the two passed out through the small doorway in the southern aisle and stood blinking in the sunshine, "I want you next to show me what 's left of the old Castle where the kings lived: that is, if you 're not tired." "Tired, child? 'Tis our business 'tis the Breth- ren's business to act as guides around the relics of Merchester. By fetching a very small circuit we can take the Castle on our way, and afterwards walk home along the water-meads, my favourite path." Corona slipped her hand into his confidentially. Together they left the Close, and passing under the King's Gate, turned down College Street, which led them by the brewhouse and outer porch of the great School. A little beyond it, where by a conduit one of the Mere's hurrying tributaries gushed beneath the road, they came to a regiment of noble elms guarding a gateway, into which Brother Copas turned aside. A second and quite unpretentious gateway admitted them to a green meadow, in shape a rough semicircle, enclosed by ruinated walls. "You may come here most days of the month," 140 MR. ISIDORE TAKES CHARGE said Brother Copas, holding the gate wide, "and never meet a soul. 'Tis the tranquillest, most for- saken spot in the city's ambit." But here, as Corona caught her breath, he turned and stared. The enclosure was occupied by a squad of soldiers at drill. They wore uniforms of khaki, and, dressed up with their backs to the gateway, were performing the sim- ple movements of foot drill in face of a choleric ser- geant-major, who shouted the words of command, and of a mounted officer who fronted the squad, silent, erect in saddle, upon a strapping bay. Some few paces behind this extremely military pair stood a couple of civilian spectators side by side, in attire frock-coats, top-hats, white waistcoats which at a little distance gave them an absurd resemblance to a brace of penguins. "Heavens!" murmured Brother Copas. "Is it possible that Bamberger has become twins? One never knows of what these Jews are capable. . . ." His gaze travelled from the two penguins to the horseman in khaki. He put up a shaking hand to shade it. "Colt? Colt in regimentals? Oh, this must be vertigo!" At a word from the sergeant-major the squad fell out and stood in loose order, plainly awaiting instruc- 141 BROTHER COPAS tions. Mr. Colt yes, indeed it was the Chaplain turned his charger's head half-about as the two frock-coated civilians stepped forward. "Now, Mr. Bamberger, my men are at your dis- posal." " I t'ank you, Reverent Mr. Major if zat is ze form to address you " began Mr. Bamberger's double. " 'Major,' tout court, if you please," Mr. Colt cor- rected him. "One drops the 'reverend' while actu- ally on military duty." "So? Ach, pardon! I should haf known. . . Now ze first is, we get ze angle of view, where to place our Grandt Standt so ze backgrount mek ze most pleasing pigture. At ze same time ze Standt must not tresbass must not imbinge, hein? upon our stage, our what-you-call-it area. Two t'ousand ber- formers we haf not too mooch room. I will ask you, Mr. Major, first of all to let your men zey haf tent-pegs, hein ? to let your men peg out ze area as I direct. Afterwards, with your leaf, you shall place z'em here z'ere in groups, zat I may see in some sort how ze groups combose, as we say. Himmel! what a backgroundt! Ze Cathedral, how it lifts over ze trees Bar-feet! Now, if you will follow me a few paces to ze right, here . . . Ach! see yonder, by ze gate! Zat old man in ze red purple poncho haf ze berformers already begon to aszemble zem- selves? . . ." 142 MR. ISIDORE TAKES CHARGE Mr. Colt slewed his body about in the saddle. " Eh ? . . . Oh, that 's Brother Copas, one of our Beauchamp Brethren. Mediaeval he looks, doesn't he? I assure you, sir, we keep the genuine article in Merchester." "You haf old men dressed like zatf . . . My dear Julius, I see zis Bageant retty-made!" "It was at St. Hospital the almshouse for these old fellows that the notion first came into my head." "Sblendid! . . . We will haf a Brocession of them; or, it may be, a whole Ebisode. . . . Will you bid him come closer, Mr. Major, zat I may study ze costume in its detail?" " Certainly." Mr. Colt beckoned to Brother Copas, who came forward still holding Corona by the hand. "Brother Copas, Mr. Isidore Bamberger here brother of Our Member desires to make your ac- quaintance." "I am honoured," said Brother Copas po- litely. "Ach, sol" burst in Mr. Isidore. "I was telling the Major how moch I admire zat old costume of yours." "It is not for sale, however." Brother Copas faced the two Hebrews with his ironical smile. "I am sorry to disappoint you, sirs, but I have no old clothes to dispose of, at present." 143 BROTHER COPAS "No offence, no offence, I hope?" put in Mr. Julius. "My brother, sir, is an artist "Be easy, sir: I am sure that he intended none. For the rest," pursued Brother Copas with a glance at Mr. Colt and a twinkle, "if we had time, all four of us here, to tell how by choice or necessity we come to be dressed as we are, I dare say our stories might prove amusing as the Calenders' in The Arabian Nights." "You remind me," said Mr. Isidore, "zat I at any rate must not keep zese good Territorials standting idle. Another time at your service He waved a hand and hurried off to give an instruction to the sergeant-major. His brother fol- lowed and overtook him. "Damn it all, Isidore! You might remember that Merchester is my constituency, and my majority less than half a hundred." "Hein? For what else am I here but to helb you to increase it?'* "Then why the devil start by offending that old chap as you did?" "Eh? I offended him somehow. Zat is certain: zough why on earth he should object to having his dress admired Mr. Isidore checked his speech upon a sudden surmise. "My goot Julius, you are not telling me he has a Vote!" "You silly fool, of course he hasl" 144 MR. ISIDORE TAKES CHARGE "Gott in himmel! I am sorry, Julius. ... I sobbosed, in England, that paupers "State-paupers," * corrected his brother. "Private paupers, like the Brethren of St. Hospital, rank as tenants of their living-rooms." "I shall never gombrehend the instidutions of zis country," groaned Mr. Isidore. "Never mind: make a Pageant of 'em," said his brother grimly. " I '11 forgive you this time, if you '11 promise me to be more careful." " I '11 do more, Julius. I '11 get aroundt ze old boy somehow: mek him bivot-man in a brocession, or something of the sort. I got any amount of tagt, once I know where to use it." " Smart man, Our Member ! " commented Mr. Colt, gazing after the pair. "And Mr. Isidore doesn't let the grass grow under his feet, hey?" "Has an eye for detail, too," answered Brother Copas, taking snuff. " See him there, upbraiding his brother for want of tact towards a free and indepen- dent elector. . . . But excuse me for what purpose are these two parcelling out the Castle Meadow?" "You 've not heard? There 's a suggestion and I may claim some share in the credit of it, if credit there be to hold a Pageant here next summer, a * " Blessed are the poor, but there 's no reason why they should have it both ways. Since theirs is the kingdom of heaven the real Second Chamber we see fair by disfranchising them on earth." Sayings of Brother Copas. 145 BROTHER COPAS Merchester Pageant. Mr. Bamberger 's full of it. What 's your idea?" "A capital notion," said Brother Copas slowly. " Since jam pridem Syrus in Tamesin dcfluxit Orontcs, I commend any attempt to educate Mr. Bamberger and his tribe in the history of this England they in- vade. But, as you say, this proposed Pageant is news to me. I never seem to hear any gossip. It had not even reached me, Mr. Chaplain, that you were deserting St. Hospital to embrace a military career." "Nor am I. ... At Cambridge I ever was an ardent volunteer. Here in Merchester (though this, too, may be news to you) I have for years identified myself with all movements in support of national defence. The Church Lads' Brigade, I may say, owed its inception to me; likewise the Young Com- municants' Miniature Rifle Association; and for three successive years our Merchester Boy Scouts have elected me President and Scoutmaster. It has been a dream of my life, Brother Copas, to link up the youth of Britain in preparation to defend the Motherland, pending that system of compulsory na- tional service which (we all know) must eventually come. And so when Sir John Shaftesbury, as Chair- man of our County Territorial Force Association, spoke to the Lord-Lieutenant, who invited me to accept a majority in the Mershire Light Infantry, Second Battalion, Territorial 146 MR. ISIDORE TAKES CHARGE "I can well understand, sir," said Brother Copas, as Mr. Colt drew breath; "and I thank you for tell- ing me so much. No wonder Sir John enlisted such energy as yours! Yet to be equally frank with you I am sorry." "You disapprove of National Service?" "I approve of it with all my heart. Every young man should prepare himself to fight, at call, for his country. But the devotion should be voluntary." "Ah, but suppose our young men will not? Sup- pose they prefer to attend football matches " " That, sir if I may respectfully suggest it is your business to prevent. And I might go on to suggest that the clergy, by preaching compulsory military service, lay themselves open, as avowed supporters of 'law and order/ to a very natural suspicion. We will suppose that you get your way, and every young Briton is bound, on summons, to mobilise. We will further suppose a Conservative Government in power, and confronted with a devastating strike shall we say a railwaymen's strike ? What more easy than to call out one half of the strikers on service and oblige them, under pain of treason, to coerce the other half?* Do you suppose that this nation will ever forget Houn- slow Heath?" "Let us, then," said Mr. Colt, "leave arguing this * In justice to Brother Copas it should be recorded that he made this suggestion some time before M. Briand put it into practice to suppress the French railway strike of 1910. 147 BROTHER COPAS question of compulsory national service until another occasion, when I shall hope to convince you. For the moment you '11 allow it to be every man's duty, as a citizen, to carry arms for his country?" "Every man's, certainly if by that you exclude priests." "Why exclude priests?" "Because a priest, playing at warfare, must needs be mixing up things that differ. As I see it, Mr. Colt, your Gospel forbids warfare; and if you consent to follow an army, your business is to hold a cross above human strife and point the eyes of the dying upward, to rest on it, thus rebuking men's passions with a vision of life's ultimate peace." " Yet a Bishop of Beauvais (as I read) once thought it not unmeet to charge with a mace at the head of a troop; and our own dear Archbishop Maclagan of York, as everyone knows, was once lieutenant in a cavalry regiment!" "Oh, la, la!" chuckled Brother Copas. "Be off, then, to your Territorials, Mr. Chaplain! I see Mr. Isidore, yonder, losing his temper with the squad as only an artist can. . . . But believe an old man, dear sir you on your horse are not only misreading the Sermon but mistaking the Mount!" Mr. Colt rode off to his squad, and none too soon; for the men, startled by Mr. Isidore's sudden on- slaught of authority and the explosive language in 148 MR. ISIDORE TAKES CHARGE which he ordered them hither and thither, cursing one for his slowness with the measuring-tape, taking another by the shoulders and pushing him into posi- tion, began to show signs of mutiny. Mr. Julius Bamberger mopped a perspiring brow as he ran about vainly trying to interpose. "Isidore, this is damned nonsense, I tell you!" "You leave 'em to me," panted Mr. Isidore. "Tell me I don't understand managing a crowd like this! It's part of ze method, my goot Julius. Put ze fear of ze Lord into 'em, to start wiz. Zey grom- ble at first; zen zey findt zey like it: in the endt zey lof you. Hein? It is not for nozzing zey call me ze Bageant King! . . ." The old man and the child, left to themselves, watched these operations for a while across the green- sward, over which the elms now began to lengthen their afternoon shadows. "The Chaplain was right," said Brother Copas. "Mr. Isidore certainly does not let the grass grow under his feet." "If I were the grass, I shouldn't want to," said Corona. 149 CHAPTER XIII GARDEN AND LAUNDRY "THE nasty pigs!" Nurse Branscome's face, usually composed and business-like (as a nurse's should be), was aflush between honest shame and equally honest scorn. "To be sure," said Brother Copas soothingly. He had met her by chance in the ambulatory on her way from Brother Bonaday's rooms. On a sudden resolve he had told her of the anonymous letter, not showing it, but conveying (delicately as he might) its substance. "To be sure," he repeated. "But I am thinking " "As if I don't know your thoughts!" she inter- rupted vigorously. "You are thinking that, to save scandal, I had better cease my attendance on Brother Bonaday, and hand over the case to Nurse Turner. That I could do, of course; and if he knows of it, I certainly shall. Have you told him?" Brother Copas shook his head. "No. What is more, I have not the smallest in- tention of telling him." 150 GARDEN AND LAUNDRY "Thank you. . . . Oh, but it is vile vile!" "So vile that, believe me, I had great difficulty in telling you." "I am sure you had. ... I can hand over the case to Nurse Turner, of course; in fact, it came on her rota, but she asked me as a favour to take it, having her hands full just then with Brother Royle and Brother Dasent's rheumatics. It will be hard, though, to give up the child." Nurse Branscome flushed again. " Oh, yes you are a gentleman, Brother Copas, and will not misunderstand! I have taken a great liking for the child, and she will ask questions if I suddenly desert her. You see the fix? . . . Besides, Nurse Turner I hope I am not be- coming like one of these people, but I must say it Nurse Turner has not a nice mind." "There we get at it," said Brother Copas. "As a fact, you were far from reading my thoughts just now. They did not (forgive me) concern themselves with you or your wisest line of conduct. You are a grown woman, and know well enough that honesty will take care of its own in the end. I was thinking rather of Corona. As you say, she has laid some hold upon the pair of us. She has a pathetic belief in all the inmates of St. Hospital and God pity us if our corruption infects this child! . . . You take me?" Nurse Branscome looked at him squarely. "If I could save her from that!" 151 BROTHER COPAS "You would risk appearances?" "Gladly. . . . Will you show me the letter?" Brother Copas shook his head. "You must take it on faith from me for a while ... at any rate until I find out who in St. Hospital begins her 'wV with a curl like a ram's horn. Did you leave the child with her father?" "No; she had run out to the kitchen garden. Since she has discovered it she goes there regularly twice a day, morning and evening. I can't think why, and she won't tell. She is the queerest child." The walled kitchen garden of St. Hospital lies to the south, between the back of the "Nunnery" and the River Mere. It can be reached from the ambula- tory by a dark, narrow tunnel under the nurses' lodgings. The Brethren never went near it. For years old Battershall, the gardener, had dug there in solitude day in, day out and had grown his veg- etables, hedged in from all human intercourse, nor grumbling at his lot. Corona, exploring the precincts, had discovered this kitchen garden, found it to her mind, and thereafter made free of it with the cheerfullest insouciance. The dark tunnel, to begin with, put her in mind of some adventure in a fairy tale she could not recall; but it opened of a sudden and enchantingly upon sunshine and beds of onions, parsley, cabbages, with 152 GARDEN AND LAUNDRY pale yellow butterflies hovering. Old Battershall, too, though taciturn, was obviously not displeased by her visits. He saw that while prying here and there especially among the parsley beds, for what reason he could not guess the child stole no fruit, did no harm. She trampled nothing. She lifted no leaf to harm it. When she stopped to speak with him her talk was "just nonsense, you know." Unconsciously, by the end of the third day he had looked up twice or thrice from his delving, asking himself why she was late. And what (do you suppose) did Corona seek in the kitchen garden? She too, unknowing, was lonely. Unknowing, this child felt a need for children, com- panions. Uncle Copas's doll well meant and priced at Is. 3d. had somehow missed to engage her affec- tions. She could not tell him so, but she hated it. Like every woman-child of her age she was curious about babies. She had heard, over in America, that babies came either at early morning or at shut of eve, and were to be found in parsley beds. Now old Mr. Battershall grew parsley to make you proud. At the Merchester Rural Gardening Show he regularly took first prize; his potting-shed, in the north-east angle of the wall, was papered with winning tickets from bench to roof. At first when he saw Corona moving about the bed, lifting the parsley leaves, he had a mind to chide her away; for, as he put it, 153 BROTHER COPAS " Children and chicken be always a-pickin' the mis- chief 's in their natur'." Finding, however, that she did no damage, yet harked back to the parsley again and again, he set her down for an unusually intelligent child, who somehow knew good gardening when she saw it. "Glad to see you admirin' it, missie," he said one morning, coming up behind her unperceived. Corona, in the act of upturning a leaf, started and drew back her hand. Babies she could not tell why made their appearance in this world by stealth, and must be searched for furtively. "A mort o' prizes I 've took with that there parsley one time and another," pursued Mr. Battershall, not perceiving the flush of guilt on her face (for his eye- sight was, in his own words, not so young as it used to be). " Goodbody's Curly Mammoth is the strain, and I don't care who knows it, for the secret 's not in the strain, but in the way o' raisin' it. I grows for a succession, too. Summer or winter these six-an'- twenty years St. Hospital 's ne'er been without a fine bed o' parsley, I thank the Lord!" Six-and-twenty years. ... It was comforting in a way to know that parsley grew here all the seasons round. But six-and-twenty years, and not one child in the place save herself, who had come over from America! Yet Mr. Battershall was right ; it seemed excellent parsley. 154 GARDEN AND LAUNDRY "You don't find that anything comes and and takes away " she hazarded, but came to a full stop. " There 's slugs," answered Mr. Battershall stolidly, " and there 's snails. Terrible full o' snails the old wall was till I got the Master to repoint it." "Would snails " " Eh ? " he asked as she hesitated. "They might take away the the flowers, for in- stance." Old Battershall guffawed. " You wasn' sarchin' for flowers, was you ? Dang me, but that 's a good un! . . . I don't raise my own seed, missie, if that's your meanin'; an' that bein* so, he 'd have to get up early as would find a flower in my parsley." Ah, this might explain it! As she eyed him, her childish mind searching the mystery, yet keeping its own secret, Corona resolved to steal down to the garden one of these fine mornings very early indeed. " Now I '11 tell you something about parsley," said Mr. Battershall; "something very curious, and yet it must be true, for I heard the Master tell it in one of his sermons. The ancients, by which I mean the Greeks, set amazin' store by the yerb. There was a kind of Athletic Sports sort of Crystal Palace meetin' the great event, as you might say, and attractin' to sportsmen all over Greece " 155 BROTHER COPAS "Mover what?" "Greece. Which is a country, missy, or, at any rate, was so. The meeting was held every four years; and what d'ye suppose was the top prize, an- swerin', as you may say, to the Championship Cup? Why, a wreath o' parsley! 'Garn!' says you. And 'Parsley!' says you. Which a whole wreath of it might cost fivepence at the outside. . . ." Now Corona, whose mind was ever picking up and hoarding such trifles, had heard Uncle Copas two days before drop a remark that the Greeks knew everything worth knowing. Plainly, then, the parsley held some wonderful secret after all. She must con- trive to outwit old Battershall, and get to the garden ahead of him, which would not be easy, by the way. To begin with, on these summer mornings old Battershall rose with the lark, and boasted of it; and, furthermore, the door of her father's bedroom stood open all night. To steal abroad she must pass it, and he was the lightest of sleepers. She did not in- tend to be beaten, though; and meanwhile she punctually visited the parsley morning and evening. Heaven knows how the day-dream came to take possession of her. She was not consciously lonely. She worshipped this marvellous new home. Some- times in her rambles she had to pinch herself to make sure this was all really happening. But always in her rambles she saw St. Hospital peopled with chil- 15G GARDEN AND LAUNDRY dren boys, girls, and little toddlers chasing one another across the lawns, laughing at hide-and-seek in the archways, bruising no flower-bed, filling old souls with glee. They were her playmates, these innocents of her fancy, the long day through. At evening in her prayers she called them home, and they came reluctant "No, no, let us play, for it is yet day And we cannot go to sleep; Besides, in the sky the little birds fly And the hills are all covered with sheep." The tunnel was populous with them as she passed through it from the garden to the ambulatory, and at the end of the tunnel she came plump upon Branny and Uncle Copas in converse. They started guiltily. " I 've been looking for you this half-hour," said Brother Copas, recovering himself. "Didn't a cer- tain small missy make an appointment with me to be shown the laundry and its wonders? And isn't this Tuesday ironing day?" "You promised to show it to me some time," an- swered Corona, who was punctilious in small matters; " but you never fixed any time in p'tic'lar." " Oh, then I must have made the appointment with myself! Never mind; come along now, if you can spare the time." 157 BROTHER COPAS Nurse Branscome nodded and left them, turning in at the stairway which led to her quarters in the Nunnery. At the foot of it she paused to call after them "Mind, Corona is not to be late for her tea! I 've invited myself this evening, and there is to be a plum cake in honour of the occasion." Brother Copas and Corona passed down the ambu- latory and by the porter's lodge to the outer court. Of a sudden, within a few paces of the laundry, Brother Copas halted to listen. " You had better stop here for a moment," he said, and walked forward to the laundry door, the hasp of which he lifted after knocking sharply with his staff. He threw the door open and looked in, surveying the scene with an angry disgust. "Hallo! More abominations ?" exclaimed Brother Copas. The quarrel had started in the forenoon over a dirty trick played by Brother Clerihew, the ex-butler. (Brother Clerihew had a name for underhand practice; indeed, his inability to miss a chance of it had cost him situation after situation, and finally landed him in St. Hospital.) This time he had played it upon poor old doddering Brother Ibbetson. Finding Ib- betson in the porter's gateway, with charge of a lu- crative-looking tourist and in search of the key of the 158 GARDEN AND LAUNDRY Relique Room, he noted that the key, usually handed out by Porter Manby, hung on a hook just within the doorway; but old Ibbetson, being purblind, could not see it, or at all events could not recognise it, and Manby happened to be away at the brewhouse on some errand connected with the Wayfarers' Dole. Brother Clerihew, who had left him there, sent Ibbet- son off on a chase in the wrong direction, loitered around for a couple of minutes chatting about the weather, and then, with a remark that it was shame- ful to keep gentlefolks waiting so, looked casually in at the doorway. "Why the key is here all the time!" he exclaimed. " If you are in any hurry, sir, permit me to take Brother Ibbetson's place, and show you round. Oh," he added falsely, seeing the visitor hesitate, "it won't hurt him at all! I don't like to mention it, but any small gratuities bestowed on the Brethren are carried to a common fund." Ibbetson, harking back from a vain search to find his bird had flown, encountered Porter Manby re- turning with Brother Warboise from the brewhouse, and tremulously opened up his distress. " Eh ? " snapped Warboise, after exchanging glances with the Porter. " Clerihew said Manby was in the kitchen, did he? But he 'd left us at the brewhouse not a minute before." "And the key! gone from the hook!" chimed in 159 BROTHER COPAS Porter Manby, " where I '11 swear I left it. This is one of Clerihew's monkeyings, you bet." "I'll monkey him," growled Brother Warboise. The three kept sentry, knowing that Clerihew must sooner or later return with his convoy, there being no other exit. When at length he hove in sight with his convoy his face wore an uneasy, impudent smile. He was the richer by half-a-crown. They stood aside and let him brazen it past them; but Manby and Ibbetson were still waiting for him as he came back alone. Ibbetson was content with a look of re- proach. Manby told him fair and straight that he was a swindling cur. But meanwhile Warboise had stumped off and told Ibbetson's wife. This done, he hurried off, and catching Clerihew by the steps of the Hundred Men's Hall, threatened the rogue with his staff. Manby caught them in altercation, the one aiming impotent blows, the other evading them still with his shameless grin, and separated them. Brother Ibbetson looked on, feebly wringing his hands. But Mrs. Ibbetson was worth three of her husband, and a notorious scold. In the laundry, later on, she announced within earshot of Mrs. Clerihew that, as was well beknown, Clerihew had lost his last three places for bottle-stealing; and Mrs. Royle, acknowl- edged virago of St. Hospital, took up the accusation and blared it obscenely. For a good five minutes the pair mauled Mrs. Clerihew, who, with an air of ICO GARDEN AND LAUNDRY high gentility, went on ironing shirts. She had been a lady's maid when Clerihew married her, and could command, as a rule, a high-bred, withering sneer. Unhappily, the united attack of Mrs. Ibbetson and Mrs. Royle goaded her so far beyond the bounds of breeding that of a sudden she upped and called the latter a bitch; whereupon, feeling herself committed, this ordinarily demure woman straightened her spine and followed up the word with a torrent of filthy in- vective that took the whole laundry aback. Her success was but momentary. Mrs. Royle had a character to maintain. Fetching a gasp, she let fly the dirtiest word one woman can launch at another, and on the instant made a grab at Mrs. Clerihew's brow. ... It was a matter of notoriety in St. Hospi- tal that Mrs. Clerihew wore a false "front." The thing came away in Mrs. Royle's clutch, and amid shrieks of laughter Mrs. Royle tossed it to Mrs. Ibbetson, who promptly clapped down a hot flat-iron upon it. The spectators rocked with helpless mirth as the poor woman strove to cover her bald brows, while the thing hissed and shrivelled to nothing, emit- ting an acrid odour beneath the relentless flat-iron. "Ladies! ladies!" commanded Brother Copas. "A visitor, if you please!" The word as always in St. Hospital instantly commanded a hush. The women fled back to their tables, and started ironing, goffering, crimping for 161 BROTHER COPAS dear life, with irons hot and cold. Brother Copas, with a chuckle, leant back and beckoned Corona in from the yard. At sight of her on the threshold Mrs. Royle broke into a coarse laugh. It found no echo, and died away half-heartedly. For one thing, there might yet be a real visitor behind the child; for another, these women stood in some little awe of Brother Copas, who paid well for his laundry-work, never mixed himself up with gossip, and moreover had a formidable trick of lifting his hat whenever he passed one of these vira- goes, and after a glance at her face, fixing an amused stare at her feet.* "Pardon me, ladies," said he; "but my small laundry-work has hitherto gone, as you know, to old Mrs. Vigurs in St. Faith's Road. Last week she sent me word that she could not longer undertake it, the fact being that she has just earned her Old Age Pension and is retiring upon it. I come to ask if one of you will condescend to take her place and oblige me." He paused, tasting the fun of it. As he well knew, they all feared and hated him for his trick of irony; but at least half a dozen of them desired his custom, for in St. Hospital (where nothing escaped notice) * " On meeting an objectionable woman, stare at her feet and smile. This never misses to disconcert her." Axioms of Brother Copas. 162 GARDEN AND LAUNDRY Brother Copas's fastidious extravagance in body- linen and his punctuality in discharging small debts were matters of common knowledge. Moreover, in their present mood each of these women saw a chance of spiting another by depriving her of the job. Brother Copas eyed them with an amiable smile. "Come," he said, "don't all speak at once! . . . I '11 not ask you to bid for my little contract just now when I see you are* all so busy. But seriously, I invite tenders, and will ask any one of you who cares for my custom to send me (say by to-morrow evening) a list of her prices in a sealed envelope, each envelope to bear the words ' Washing List' in an upper corner, that I may put all the tenders aside and open them together. Eh? What do you say, ladies?" "I shall be happy for one," said Mrs. Clerihew, laying stress on the aspirate. She always was careful of this, having lived with gentlefolks. She burned to know if Brother Copas had heard her call Mrs. Royle a bitch. Mrs. Royle (to do her justice) when enraged recked neither what she said nor who over- heard. But Mrs. Clerihew, between her lapses, clung passionately to gentility and the world's esteem. She was conscious, moreover, that without her false "front" she must be looking a fright. ... In short,- the wretched woman rushed into speech because for the moment anything was more tolerable than silence. "I thank yo - ma'am." 163 BROTHER COPAS Neither voice nor look betrayed that Brother Copas had overheard or perceived anything amiss. Mrs. Clerihew, baffled, began desperately to curry favour. " And you 've brought Brother Bonaday's pretty child, I see. . . . Step over here, my dear, and watch me when I 've heated this iron. ' Crimping,' they call it, and I 've done it for titled folks in my time. One of these days, I -hope, you '11 be going into good service yourself. There 's nothing like it for picking up manners." She talked for talking's sake, in a carneying tone, while her bosom still heaved from the storm of battle. Mrs. Royle attempted a ribald laugh, but it met with no success, and her voice died down under a dis- approving hush. Mrs. Clerihew talked on, gaining confidence. She crimped beautifully, and this was the more remark- able because (as Corona noted) her hand shook all the while. In short, the child had, as she put it, quite a good time. When it was time to be going she thanked Mrs. Clerihew very prettily, and walked back with Brother Copas to her father's room. They found Nurse Branscome there and the table already laid for tea; there was a plum cake, too. After tea Branny told them all very gravely that 164 GARDEN AND LAUNDRY this must be her last visit. She was giving over the care of Corona's father to Nurse Turner, whose "case" it had really been from the first. She ex- plained that the nurses, unless work were extra heavy, had to take their patients in a certain order, by what she called a rota. " But he 's bettering every day now, so I don't mind." She nodded cheerfully towards Brother Bon- aday, and then, seeing that Corona's face was woe- begone, she added: "But you will often be running across to the Nunnery to see me. Besides, I 've brought a small parting gift to console you." She unwrapped a paper parcel, and held out a black boy-doll, a real Golliwog, with white shirt but- tons for eyes and hair of black Berlin wool. "Oh, Branny!" Corona, after holding the Golliwog a moment in outstretched hands, strained it to her breast. "Oh, Branny! And till this moment I didn't know how much I 've wanted him!" 165 CHAPTER XIV BROTHER COPAS ON THE HOUSE OF LORDS ALL love being a mystery, I see no reason to speculate how or why it came to pass that Corona, who already possessed two pink and waxen girl-dolls, and treated them with the merest contempt, took this black mani- kin of a Golliwog straight to her heart to share its innermost confidences. It happened so, and there's no more to be said. Next morning Corona paid an early call at the Nur- sery. "I 'm afraid," she said in her best society manner, "this is a perfeckly ridiklous hour. But you are re- sponsible for Timothy in a way, aren't you?" "Timothy?" echoed Nurse Branscome. "Oh, I forgot!" Corona patted the red-trousered legs of the Golliwog, which she held, not as little girls usually hold dolls, but tucked away under her armpit. "Timothy 's his name, though I mean to call him Timmy for short. But the point is, he 's becoming rather a question." "In what way?" "Well, you see, I have to take him to bed with me. 160 ON THE HOUSE OF LORDS He insists on it, which is all very well," continued Corona, nodding sagely, " but one can't allow it in the same clothes day and night. It 's like what Uncle Copas says of Brother Plant's linen; it positively isn't sanitary." "I see," said Branny, laughing. "You want me to make a change of garments for him?" " I 've examined him," answered Corona. " There's a stitch here and there, but on the whole he '11 un- button quite easily; only I didn't like to do it until I'd consulted you. . . . And I don't want you to bother about the clothes, if you '11 only show me how to cut out. I can sew quite nicely. Mamma taught me. I was making a sampler all through her illness Cor- ona Bonaday, Aged Six Years and Three Months; then the big and little ABC, and the numbers up to ten; after that the Lord's Prayer down to Forgive us our trespasses. When we got to that she died. ... I want to begin with a suit of pajamas no, I forgot; they 're pajamas over here. Whatever happens, I do want him to be a gentleman," concluded Corona earnestly. The end was that Nurse Branscome hunted up a piece of coloured flannel, and Master Timothy that same evening was stripped to indue a pyjama suit. Corona carried him thus attired off to her bed in triumph but not to sleep. Brother Bonaday, lying awake, heard her voice running on and on in a rapid 167 BROTHER COPAS monotone. Ten o'clock struck, and he could endure the sound no longer. It seemed to him that she must be rambling in delirium, and slipping on his dressing- gown, he stole to her chamber door. "Cannot you get to sleep, little maid?" "Is that you daddy?" answered Corona. "I am so sorry, but Timmy and I have been arguing. He 's such a queer child; he has a lingering belief in the House of Lords!" "Now I wonder how she gets at that?" mused Brother Bonaday when he reported the saying to Copas. "Very simply we shall find; but you must give me a minute or so to think it out." " To be sure, with her American up-bringing there might naturally grow an instinctive disrespect for the hereditary principle." " I have not observed that disrespect in Americans," answered Brother Copas dryly. " But we '11 credit it to them if you will; and there at once you have a capital reason why our little Miss Bull should worship the House of Lords as a fetish whereas, it appears, she doesn't." "It 's the queerer because, when it comes to the King, she worships the 'accident of birth, 1 as you might call it. To her King Edward is nothing less than the Lord's Anointed." 168 ON THE HOUSE OF LORDS "Quite so. ... But please, my dear fellow, don't clap into my mouth that silliest of phrases. 'Accident of birth!' I once heard parturition pleaded as an ac- cident by a servant girl in trouble. Funny sort of accident, hey ? Does ever anyone did she, your own daughter, for example come into this world fortu- itously?" Brother Copas, taking snuff, did not perceive the twitch of his friend's face. His question seemed to pluck Brother Bonaday up short, as though with the jerk of an actual rope. " May be," he harked back vaguely, " it 's just caprice the inconsequence of a child's mind the mystery of it, some would say." " Fiddlestick-end ! There 's as much mystery in Corona as in the light of day about us at this moment; just so much and no more. If anything, she 's deadly logical; when her mind puzzles us it's never by hocus-pocus, but simply by swiftness in operation. ... I 've learnt that much of the one female child it has ever been my lot to observe; and the Lord may allow me to enjoy the success towards the close of a life largely spent in misunderstanding boys. Stay a moment " Brother Copas stood with corru- gated brow. "I have it! I remember now that she asked me, two days ago, if I didn't think it disgusting that so many of our English Peers went and married American heiresses merely for their money. Prob- 169 BROTHER COPAS ably she supposes that on these means our ancient nobility mainly finances itself. She amused me, too, by her obvious reluctance to blame the men. 'Of course/ she said, ' the real fault is the women's, or would be if they knew what 's decent. But you can't expect anything of them; they 've had no nurture.' That was her word. So being a just child, she has to wonder how Englishmen 'with nurture' can so de- mean themselves to get money. In short, my friend, your daughter for love of us both maybe is taking our picturesqueness too honestly. She inclines to find a merit of its own in poverty. It is high time we sent her to school." It was high time, as Brother Bonaday knew; if only because every child in England nowadays is legally obliged to be educated, and the local attend- ance officer (easily excused though he might be for some delay in detecting the presence of a child of alien birth in so unlikely a spot as St. Hospital) would surely be on Corona's track before long. But Brother Bonaday hated the prospect of sending her to the parish school, while he possessed no money to send her to a better. Moreover, he obeyed a lifelong in- stinct in shying away from the call to decide. " But we were talking about the House of Lords," he suggested feebly. " The hereditary principle Brother Copas inhaled his snuff, sideways eyeing this friend whose weakness he understood to a hair's 170 ON THE HOUSE OF LORDS breadth. But he, too, had his weakness that of yielding to be led away by dialectic on the first temp- tation. "Aye, to be sure. The hereditary principle, did you say ? My dear fellow, the House of Lords never had such a principle. The hereditary right to legis- late slipped in by the merest slant of a side wind, and in its origin was just a handy expedient of the sort so dear to our Constitution, logically absurd, but in practice saving no end of friction and dispute." "You will grant at any rate that, having once adopted it, the Lords exalted it to rank as a principle." " Yes, and for a time with amazing success. That was their capital error. . . . Have you never ob- served, my good Bonaday, how fatally miracles come home to roost? Jonah spends three days and three nights in the whale's belly why? Simply to get his tale believed. Credo quia impossibile seldom misses to work well for a while. He doesn't foresee, poor fellow, that what makes his fortune with one generation of men will wreck his credit with another. ... So with the House of Lords though here a miracle trium- phantly pointed out as happening under men's eyes was never really happening at all. That in the loins of every titled legislator should lie the germ of another is a miracle (I grant you) of the first order, and may vie with Jonah's sojourn in the whale's belly; nay, it deserved an even longer run for its money, since it 171 BROTHER COPAS persuaded people that they saw the miraculous suc- cession. But nature was taking care all the time that it never happened. Actually our peerages have per- ished, and new ones have been born at an astonishing rate; about half of them at this moment are younger than the great Reform Bill. A shrewd American re- marked the other day, that while it is true enough a son may not inherit his father's ability, yet if the son of a Rothschild can keep the money his father made he must in these days of liquid securities be a pretty able fellow. Weaklings (added my American) don't last long, at any rate in our times. ' God and Nature turn out the incompetents almost as quickly as would the electorate.' . . . But my point is that the House of Lords, having in the past exploited this supposed miracle for all it was worth, are now (if the Liberals have any sense) to be faced with the overdraft which every miracle leaves to be paid sooner or later. The longer-headed among the Peers perceived this some years ago; they all see it now, and are tumbling over each other in their haste to dodge the 'hereditary principle' somehow. It is for the Liberals to hold them firmly to the dear old miracle and rub their noses in it. So, and so only, will this electorate of ours rid itself, under a misapprehension, of a real peril, to which, if able to see the thing in its true form and dimensions, it would in all likelihood yield itself grovelling." 172 ON THE HOUSE OF LORDS "Eh? I don't follow " " I tell you, Bonaday, the House of Lords is in fact no hereditary curse at all. What the devil has it to do with the claims of old descent? Does it contain a man whose ancestor ever saw Agincourt? Bankers, brewers, clothiers, mine-owners, company-promoters, journalists our Upper House to-day is a compact, fairly well-selected body of men who have pushed to success over their fellows. Given such a body of supermen, well agreed among themselves, and know- ing what they want, supplied with every temptation to feed on the necessities of the weak, armed with ex- travagant legal powers, even fortified with a philosophy in the sham Darwin doctrine that, with nations as with men, the poverty of one is the wealth of another there, my dear sir, you have a menace against which, could they realise it, all moderate citizens would be fighting for their lives. . . . But it is close upon din- ner-time, and I refuse to extend these valuable but parenthetical remarks on the House of Lords one whit further to please your irresolution. ... It 's high time Corona went to school." " I have not been well lately, as you know, Brother. I meant all along, as soon as I picked up my strength again, to " "Tilly vally, tilly vally!" snapped Brother Copas. "Since we are making excuses shall we add that, without admitting ourselves to be snobs, we have re- 173 BROTHER COPAS marked a certain refinement a delicacy of mind in Corona, and doubt if the bloom of it will survive the rough contact of a public elementary school? . . . Come, I 've thought of that, as a godfather should. You 're aware that, a couple of years ago, a small legacy dropped in upon me a trifling windfall of ten guineas a year. Well, I 've been wasting it on luxu- ries a few books I don't read, a more expensive brand of tobacco, which really is no better than the old shag, some extra changes of body linen. Now since the Education Act of 1902 the fees in the public secondary day schools have been cut down to a figure quite ridiculously low, and the private day schools have been forced to follow suit. I dare say that seven pounds a year will send Corona, say, to Miss Dickin- son's genteel seminary nay, I '11 undertake to beat the lady down to that sum and I shall still be left with three pounds and ten shillings to squander on shirts. Now if you start thanking me Ah, there goes the dinner-bell! Hurry, man you 're first on the roster!" 174 CHAPTER XV CANARIES AND GREYCOATS So Corona was sent to school, but not, as it befell, to Miss Dickinson's. Brother Copas, indeed, paid a visit to Miss Dick- inson, and, warned by some wise instinct, took the child with him. Miss Dickinson herself opened the front door, and explained with an accent of high refinement that her house-parlour maid was indisposed that morning, and her cook busy for the moment. "You have some message for me?" she asked graciously; for the Brethren of St. Hospital pick up a little business as letter-carriers or commissionaires. On learning her visitor's errand, of a sudden she stiffened in demeanour. Corona, watching her face intently, noted the change. "Dear me, what a very unusual application!" said Miss Dickinson, but nevertheless invited them to step inside. "We can discuss matters more freely without the child," she suggested. 175 BROTHER COPAS "As you please, ma'am," said Copas, "provided you don't ask her to wait in the street." Corona was ushered into an apartment at the back the boudoir, its mistress called it and was left there amid a din of singing canaries, while Miss Dick- inson carried off Brother Copas to the drawing-room. The boudoir contained some scholastic furniture and a vast number of worthless knick-knacks in poker- work, fret-work, leathern applique-work, gummed shell-work, wool-work, tambour- work, with crysto- leum paintings and drawings in chalk and water- colour. On a table in front of the window stood a cage with five canaries singing in it. Corona herself felt a sense of imprisonment, but no desire to sing. The window looked upon a walled yard, in which fifteen girls of various ages were walking through some kind of drill under an instructress whose ap- pearance puzzled her until she remembered that Miss Dickinson's cook was " busy for the moment." Corona watched their movements with an interest begotten of pity. The girls whispered and prinked, and exchanged confidences with self-conscious airs. They paid but a perfunctory attention to the drill. It was clear they despised their instructress. Yet they seemed happy enough, in a way. " I wonder why ?" thought Corona. "I don't like Miss Dickinson; first, because she has the nose of a witch, and next because she is afraid of us. I think 176 CANARIES AND GREYCOATS she is afraid of us because we 're poor. Well, I 'm not afraid of her not really; but I 'd feel mighty uncomfortable if she had dear old daddy in there alone instead of Uncle Copas." Meanwhile in the drawing-room likewise resonant with canaries Miss Dickinson was carefully help- ing Brother Copas to understand that as a rule she excluded all but children of the upper classes. " It is not if you will do me so much credit that I look down upon the others; but I find that the children themselves are not so happy when called upon to mix with those of a different station. The world, after all, is the world, and we must face facts as they are." "You mean, ma'am, that your young ladies or some of them might twit Corona for having a father who wears the Beauchamp robe." "I would not say that. ... In fact I have some influence over them, it is to be hoped, and should im- press upon them beforehand that the er subject is not to be alluded to." "That would be extremely tactful," said Brother Copas. He rose. "Pray be seated. ... As I dare say you know, Mr. " "Copas." " As I dare say you know, Mr. Copas, higher 177 BROTHER COPAS education in England just now is passing through a er phase; it is .(to use a forcible, if possibly vulgar, expression) in a state of flux. I do not conceal from myself that this must be largely attributed to the Ed- ucation Act of 1902." "Ah!" Brother Copas dived finger and thumb into his waistcoat pocket in search of his snuff-box, but, recollecting himself, withdrew them hastily. "Mr. Balfour, whether he meant it or no, hit the private-venture schools beyond a doubt." "One may trust that it is but a temporary blow. I have, let me say, the utmost confidence in Mr. Balfour's statesmanship. I believe far-sighted man that he is, and with his marvellous apprehension of the English character " 'Tis a Scotchman's first aptitude," murmured Brother Copas, nodding assent. " I believe Mr. Balfour looked beyond the im- mediate effect of the Act and saw that, after the municipalities' and county councils' first success in setting up secondary schools of their own, each with its quota of poor, non-paying children, our sturdy British independence would rise against the er contact. The self-respecting parent is bound to say in time, 'No, I will not have my son, still less my daughter, sitting with Tom, Dick and Harry.' In- deed, I see signs of this already most encouraging 178 CANARIES AND GREYCOATS signs. I have two more pupils this term than last, both children of respectable station." "I congratulate you, ma'am, and I feel sure that Mr. Balfour would congratulate himself, could he hear. But meantime the private-venture schools have been hit, especially those not fortunate enough to be 'recognised' by the Board of Education." " I seek no such recognition, sir," said Miss Dick- inson stiffly. Brother Copas bowed. "Forgive, ma'am, the intrusive ghost of a profes- sional interest. I myself once kept a private school for boys. A precarious venture always, and it re- quired no Education Act to wreck mine." " Indeed ? " Miss Dickinson raised her eyebrows in faint surprise, and anon contracted them. "Had I known that you belonged to the scholastic profes- sion " she began, but leaving the sentence un- finished, appeared to relapse into thought. "Believe me, ma'am," put in Brother Copas, "I mentioned it casually, not as hinting at any remission of your fees." "No, no. But I was thinking that it might con- siderably soften the er objection. You are not the child's parent, you say? Nor grandparent?" "Her godparent only, and that by adoption. In so much as I make myself responsible for her school fees, you may consider me her guardian. Her father, 179 BROTHER COPAS Brother Bonaday, is a decayed gentleman, sometime of independent means, who married late in life, and, on top of this, was indiscreet enough to confide his affairs to a trusted family solicitor." "Dear, dear! Why did you not tell me all this to begin with?" demanded Miss Dickinson, rising. "Shall we consider it agreed, then? the child to come to me as soon as you wish." " I think we must first discover if she 's willing," answered Brother Copas, rubbing his chin. "We will go to her." They found Corona at the window of the boudoir. As the door opened she turned, ran to Brother Copas, and clung to him. "Take me home! Oh, please take me home!" "Hey?" Brother Copas soothed her, patting the back of her head. "W T hy, what is the matter, little maid? Who has been frightening you?" "She turns them all into canaries I know she does!" the child asserted, still shaking pitiably, but facing Miss Dickinson with accusation in her eyes. "You can tell it by her nose and chin. I I thought you had gone away and left me with her." "You did not tell me she was hysterical," said Miss Dickinson. " It 's news to me, ma'am. I 'd best get her out into the fresh air at once." Without waiting for permission, he swept Corona 180 CANARIES AND GREYCOATS out into the passage, and forth into the street. It is a question which felt the happier when they gained it, and stood drawing long breaths; but, of course, Brother Copas had to put on a severe face. "All very well, little maid!" " Oh, I know you 're disappointed with me," gasped Corona. *' I 'm disappointed with myself. But it was all just like Jorinda and Jorindcl, and if she 's not a witch, and doesn't turn them into canaries, why does she keep all those cages?" She halted sud- denly. " I hate to be a coward," she said. " If you '11 come with me, Uncle Copas, I '11 start back right here, and we '11 go in and rescue them. It was the waiting I couldn't stand." "Canaries?" Brother Copas stood and looked down on her. Some apprehension of the absurd fancy broke on him, and he chuckled. "Now you come to mention it, I dare say she does turn 'em into canaries." "Then we ought to go straight back and set them free," insisted Corona. "If only we had the magic flower!" "I think I know who has it. ... Yes, you may take it from me, little one, that there 's someone charged to put an end to Miss Dickinson's enchant- ments, and we may safely leave it to him." "Who is he?" "The deliverer's name is County Council. . . . 181 BROTHER COPAS But look here, child if you make a fuss like this whenever I try to find a school for you " "I won't make a fuss. And I do want to go to school," interrupted Corona. "I want to go to the Greycoats." "The Greycoats?" This was an ancient founda- tion in the city, in origin a charity-school, but now distinguished from the ordinary Elementary Schools in that its pupils paid twopence a week, and wore a grey uniform provided per contra from the funds of the charity. " The Greycoats ? " repeated Brother Copas. "But I had a mind for you to fly higher, if you understand Corona nodded. " And so I shall ; that is, Uncle, if you '11 teach me Latin, as you promised." She was easy in mind, since Miss Dickinson's cana- ries would be delivered. The name " County Coun- cil" meant nothing to her, but it had affinity with other names and titles of romance Captain Judg- ment, for instance, in The Holy War, and County Guy in the poetry book "Ah: County Guy, the hour is nigh" Since Uncle Copas had said it, Miss Dickinson's hour was assuredly nigh. "This is not the way, though," Corona protested. "We are walking right away from the Greycoats!" 182 CANARIES AND GREYCOATS Brother Copas halted. "I supposed that I was taking you back to St. Hospital." " But you came out to put me to school, and I want to go to the Greycoats." He pondered a moment. "Ah, well, have it your own way!" They turned back toward the city. The Greycoats inhabited a long, single-storied building on the eastern boundary of the Cathedral Close, the boys and girls in separate schools under the same high-pitched roof. As our two friends came in sight of it, Corona who had been running ahead in her impatience hesitated of a sudden and turned about. "Uncle Copas, before we go in I want to tell you something. ... I was really frightened yes, really in that wicked house. But I wanted to be a Grey- coat all the time. I want to wear a cloak that means I belong to Merchester, same as you and Daddy." "Lord forgive me, she's proud of us!" murmured Brother Copas. "And I set out this morning to get her taught to despise us!" 183 CHAPTER XVI THE SECOND LETTER MEANWHILE certain small events not unconnected with this history were happening at St. Hospital. At ten o'clock punctually Mr. Colt waited on the Master. This was a part of the daily routine, but ninety-nine times in a hundred the Chaplain's report resolved itself into a chat on the weather, the Master's roses, some recent article in the Church Times or the Guardian. The talk was never very strenuous, for whereas Mr. Colt could never learn to distinguish one rose from another, on Church affairs or on politics the Master was hopelessly tolerant, antiquated, in- curious even. What could one do with a dear old gentleman who, when informed of the latest, most dangerous promotion to a bishopric, but responded with " Eh ? ' So-and-so,' did you say ? . . . Yes, yes. I knew his father ... an excellent fellow!" This morning, however, the Chaplain wore a grave face. After a few words he came to business. " It concerns a letter I received this morning. The writer, who signs himself ' Well Wisher/ makes a dis- 184 THE SECOND LETTER gusting allegation against old Bonaday an incredi- bly disgusting allegation. You will prefer to read it for yourself." Mr. Colt produced the letter from his pocket-book, and held it out. "Eh?" exclaimed Master Blanchminster, receding. "Another?" " I beg your pardon ? " The Master adjusted his glasses, and bent forward, still without offering to touch the thing or receive it from Mr. Colt's hand. "Yes, yes. I recognize the handwriting. ... To tell the truth, my dear Colt, I received just such a letter one day last week. For the moment it caused me great distress of mind." Mr. Colt was vexed, a little hurt, that the Master had not consulted him about it. "You mean to say it contained " " the same sort of thing, no doubt: charges against Brother Bonaday and against one of the nurses: incredibly disgusting, as you say." "May I be allowed to compare the two letters? ... I do not," said Mr. Colt stiffly, "seek more of your confidence than you care to bestow." "My dear fellow " protested the Master. "I merely suggest that, since it concerns the disci- pline of St. Hospital for which in the past you have honoured me with some responsibility : 185 BROTHER COPAS "My dear fellow, you should see it and welcome; but the fact is " Here the Master broke off. "I ought, no doubt, to have put it straight into the fire." "Why?" asked Mr. Colt. "But the fact is, I gave it away." "Gave it away! . . . To whom, may I ask?" "To Brother Copas, of all people," confessed the Master with a rueful little chuckle. "Yes, I don't wonder that you stare: yet it happened very simply. You remember the day I asked you to send him to me for a talk about the Petition? Well, he found me in distress over this letter, which I had just received, and on an impulse I showed it to him. I really wanted his assurance that the charge was as baseless as it was foul, and that assurance he gave me. So you may with an easy mind put your letter in the fire." "It would at any rate be a safer course than to give it away," said the Chaplain, frowning. "A hit a palpable hit! . . . I ought to have added that Brother Copas has a notion he can discover the writer, whom he positively asserts to be a woman. So I allowed him to take the thing away with him. I may as well confess," the old man added, " that I live in some dread of his making the discovery. Of course it is horrible to think that St. Hospital harbours anyone capable of such a letter; but to deal ade- 186 THE SECOND LETTER quately with the culprit especially if she be a woman will be for the moment yet more horrible." "Excuse me, Master, if I don't quite follow you," said the Chaplain unsympathetically. "You appear to be exercised rather over the writer than over Brother Bonaday, against whom the charge lies." "You have hit on the precise word," answered Master Blanchminster, smiling. " Brother Copas as- sures me ' " But is Brother Copas an entirely credible witness ? " The master lifted his eyebrows in astonishment. "Why, who should know better? He is Brother Bonaday's closest friend. Surely, my dear fellow, I had thought you were aware of that!" In the face of this simplicity the Chaplain could only grind his teeth upon a helpless inward wrath. It took him some seconds to recover speech. "On my way here," he said at length, "I made some small inquiries, and find that some days ago Nurse Branscome ceased her attendance on Bonaday, handing over the case to our excellent Nurse Turner. This, of course, may mean little." "It may mean that Brother Copas has taken occa- sion to warn her." "It means, anyhow, that whether prudently or by accident she has given pause to the scandal. In this pause I can, perhaps, make occasion to get at the truth; always with your leave, of course." 187 BROTHER COPAS "There can be no question of my giving leave or withholding it. You have received a private letter, which you perceive I have no desire to read. You must act upon it as directed by your own er taste. And now shall we talk of something else?" He said it with a mild dignity which effectively closed the discussion and left Mr. Colt raging. In and about St. Hospital nine observers out of ten would have told you that the Chaplain held this dear, do-nothing old Master in the hollow of his hand, and on nine occasions out of ten the Chaplain felt sure of it. On the tenth he found himself mocked, as a schoolboy believes he has grasped a butterfly and opens his fingers cautiously, to find no prisoner within them. He could never precisely understand how it happened, and it never failed to annoy him heavily. After bidding the Master good-morning he went straight to Brother Bonaday's lodging. Brother Bon- aday, now fairly convalescent, was up and dressed and seated in his arm-chair, whiling away the morn- ing with a newspaper. In days of health he had been a diligent reader of dull books; had indeed (according to his friend Copas but the story may be apocryphal) been known to sit up past midnight with an antiquated Annual Report of the Registrar-General, borrowed from the shelf of Brother Inchbald, whose past avo- cations had included the registering of Births, Deaths and Marriages somewhere in Wiltshire. But of late, 188 THE SECOND LETTER as sometimes happens in old age, books had lost their savour for him, and he preferred to let his eyes rest idly on life's passing show as reflected in the camera obscura of a halfpenny paper. He rose respectfully as the Chaplain entered. "Be seated, please," said Mr. Colt. Declining a chair for himself, he planted his feet astraddle on the worn hearthrug. Standing so, with his back to the grate, his broad shoulders blocking out the lower half of a picture of the Infant Samuel above the mantelshelf, he towered over the frail invalid, concerning whose health he asked a few perfunctory questions before plunging into business. " You 're wondering what brings me here. Fact is," he announced, " I 've come to ask you a plain question a question it 's my duty to ask; and I think you 're strong enough to answer it without any beating about the bush on either side. For six months now I haven't seen you at Holy Communion. Why?" Brother Bonaday's face twitched sharply. For a moment or two he seemed to be searching for an answer. His lips parted, but still no answer came. " I know, you know," said the Chaplain, nodding down at him. " I keep a record of these things names and dates." Brother Bonaday might have answered 189 BROTHER COPAS "Quite so and that is why." Some churchmen of the type for which Mr. Colt adequately catered revel in professing their faith, and will parade for its holiest sacrament with an unabashed and hail-fellow sociability; and doubtless for these "brass-band communicants" (as Brother Copas called them) a great deal may be said. But Brother Bonaday was one of those others who, walk- ing among mysteries, must hush the voice and bow the head; to whom the Elements are awful, and in whom awe begets a sweet and tender shame. To be docketed as having, on such and such a day, at such and such an hour, partaken of them was to him an intolerable thought. To quote Brother Copas again, "These Neo-Catholics may well omit to fence the tables, confident in the protection of their own vul- garity." Yet Brother Bonaday had another reason, on which the Chaplain hit though brutally and by accident in his next question. "Haven't anything on your conscience, hey?" Brother Bonaday had something on his conscience. His face twitched with the pain of it; but still he made no answer. "If so," Mr. Colt pursued, "take my advice and have it out." He spoke as one recommending the extraction of a tooth. " You 're a Protestant, I know, though you didn't sign that Petition; and I 'm 190 THE SECOND LETTER not here to argue about first principles. I 'm come as a friend. All I suggest is, as between practical men, that you just give the thing a trial. It may be pretty bad," suggested Mr. Colt, dropping his air of authority and picking up his most insinuating voice. "I hear some pretty bad things; but I'll guarantee your feeling all the better for a clean breast. Come, let me make a guess. ... It has something to do with this child of yours!" Mr. Colt, looking down from his great height, saw the invalid's face contracted by a sharp spasm, noted that his thin hands gripped upon the arms of the chair so tightly that the finger-nails whitened, and smiled to himself. Here was plain sailing. "I know more than you guessed, eh? Well, now, why not tell me the whole truth?" Brother Bonaday gazed up as if appealing for mercy, but shook his head. "I cannot, sir." "Come, come as to a friend, if you won't as to a priest? . . . Hang it all, my good man, you might give me credit for that, considering the chance I 'm holding out. You don't surely suppose that St. Hospital will continue to suffer this scandal in its midst?" Still as Brother Bonaday shook his head, the Chaplain with a sigh of impatience enlarged his hint. " Copas knows: I have it on the best authority. Was it he that dropped the hint to Nurse Branscome ? 191 BROTHER COPAS or did she herself scent the discovery and give over attending on you?" "You won't send her away!" pleaded Brother Bonaday, thinking only of Corona. His voice came in a whisper, between gasps for breath. Mr. Colt stared. "Well, of all the calm requests !" he began. But here the sound of a light running footstep cut him short. The door was pushed open, and on the threshold stood Corona, flushed, excited. "Daddy, guess! Oh, but you'll never! I 'm a real live Greycoat, and if I don't tell Timmy before you ask a single question I shall burst!" She came to a halt, her eyes on Mr. Colt. ' 'Tis the truth," announced Brother Copas, over- taking her as she paused in the doorway. " We shot at a canary, and Good God!" he exclaimed, catching sight of Brother Bonaday's face. "Slip away and fetch the nurse, child!" Corona ran. While she ran Brother Copas stepped past Mr. Colt, and slid an arm under his friend's head as it dropped sideways, blue with anguish. He turned on the tall Chaplain fiercely. "What devil's game have you been playing here?" 192 CHAPTER XVII PUPPETS THROUGHOUT the night Brother Bonaday hovered between life and death, nor until four days later did the doctor pronounce him out of danger that is to say, for the time, since the trouble in his heart was really incurable, and at best the frail little man's re- maining days could not be many. Nurse Turner waited on him assiduously, always with her com- fortable smile. No trouble came amiss to her, and certainly Nurse Branscome herself could not have done better. In a sense, too, Corona's first experiences of school- going befell her most opportunely. They would dis- tract her mind, Brother Copas reflected, and tore up the letter he had written delaying her noviciate on the ground of her father's illness. They did; and, moreover, the head mistress of the Greycoats, old Miss Champernowne, aware that the child's father was ill, possibly dying, took especial pains to be kind to her. Corona was dreadfully afraid her father would die. But, in the main most mercifully, youth lives for it- 193 BROTHER COPAS self, not for the old. At home she could have given little help or none. The Brethren's quarters were narrow even Brother Bonaday's with its spare chamber and until the crisis was over she could only be in the way. She gave up her room, therefore, to Nurse Turner for the night watching, and went across to the Nunnery to lodge with Nurse Branscome. This again was no hardship, but rather, under all her cloud of anxiety, a delightful adventure; for Branny had at once engaged with her in a conspiracy. The subject for a while the victim of this con- spiracy was her black doll Timothy. As yet Timo- thy knew nothing, and was supposed to suspect noth- ing, of her goings to school. She had carefully kept the secret from him, intending to take him aback with it when she brought home the Greycoat uniform frock and cloak and hood of duffle grey for which Miss Champernowne had measured her. Mean- while it was undoubtedly hard on him to lie neglected in a drawer, and be visited but twice in the twenty- four hours, to have his garments changed. Corona, putting him into pyjamas, would (with an aching heart) whisper to him to be patient for a little while yet, and all would come right. " It is hard, Branny," she sighed, " that I can't even take him to bed with me. . . . But it 's not to be thought of. I 'd be sure to talk in my sleep." " He seems to be a very unselfish person," observed 194 PUPPETS Branny. "At any rate, you treat him as such, mak- ing him wait all this while for the delight of seeing you happy." Corona knit her brow. " Now you 're talking upsi-downly, like Uncle Copas," she said. "You don't mean that Timmy's unselfish, but that I 'm selfish. Of course, you don't realize how good he is; nobody does but me, and it 's not to be es-pected. But all the same, I s'pose I 've been thinking too much about myself." Corona's was a curiously just mind, as has already been said. Nurse Branscome had a happy inspiration. "Couldn't we make new clothes for Timmy, and surprise him with them at the same time?" Corona clapped her hands. "Oh, Branny, how beautiful! Yes a Beauchamp gown, just like Daddy's! Why-ever didn't we think of it before?" "A what?" "A Beauchamp gown. ... Do you know," said Corona gravely, " it 's a most 'stonishing thing I never thought of it, because I '11 tell you why. When I first came to St. Hospital often and often I couldn't get to sleep for thinking how happy I was. Daddy got worried about it, and told me it was a good cure to lie still and fancy I saw a flock of sheep jumping one after another through a hedge. . . . 195 BROTHER COPAS Well, that didn't answer at least, not ezactly; for you see I wanted to be coaxed off, and I never took any particular truck in sheep. But one night you know that big stone by the gate of the home-park? the one Uncle Copas calls the Hepping-stone, and says the great Cardinal used to climb on to his horse from it when he went hunting?" (Nurse Branscome nodded.) "Well, one night I closed my eyes, and there I saw all the old folks here turned into children, and all out and around the Hepping-stone, playing leap-frog. . . . The way they went over each other's backs! It beat the band. . . . Some were in Beau- champ gowns and others in Blanchminster but all children, you understand? Each child finished up by leap-frogging over the stone; and when he 'd done that he 'd run away and be lost among the trees. I wanted to follow, but somehow I had to stand there counting. . . . And that 's all there is to it," con- cluded Corona, " 'cept that I 'd found the way to go to sleep." Nurse Branscome laughed, and suggested that no time should be lost in going off to call on Mr. Colling, the tailor, and begging or borrowing a scrap of the claret-coloured Beauchamp cloth. Within ten min- utes for she understood the impatience of children they had started on this small expedition. They found in Mr. Colling a most human tailor. He not only gave them a square yard of cloth, unsoiled and 196 PUPPETS indeed brand-new, but advised Nurse Branscome learnedly on the cutting-out. There were certain peculiarities of cut in a Beauchamp gown: it was (he could tell them) a unique garment in its way, and he the sole repository of its technical secret. On their way back Corona summarised him as " a truly Chris- tian tradesman." So the miniature gown was cut out, shaped, and sewn, after the unsuspecting Timothy had, been measured for it on a pretence of Corona's that she wanted to discover how much he had grown during his rest-cure. (For I regret to say that, as one sub- terfuge leads to another, she had by this time de- scended to feigning a nervous breakdown for him, due to his outgrowing his strength.) Best of all, and when the gown was finished, Nurse Branscome pro- duced from her workbox a lucky threepenny-bit, and sewed it upon the breast to simulate a Beauchamp When Corona's own garments arrived when they were indued and she stood up in them, a Greycoat at length from head to heel to hide her own feelings she had to invent another breakdown (emotional this time) for Timothy as she dangled the gown in front of him. "Be a man, Timmy!" she exhorted him. Having clothed him and clasped him to her breast, she turned to Nurse Branscome, who had been per- 197 BROTHER COPAS mitted, as indeed she deserved, to witness the coup de thedtre. " If you don't mind, Branny, I think we '11 go off somewhere by ourselves." She carried the doll off to the one unkempt corner of Mr. Battershall's garden, where in the shadow of a stone dovecot, ruinated and long disused, a rustic bench stood deep in nettles. On this she perched herself, and sat with legs dangling while she dis- coursed with Timothy of their new promotion. "Of course," she said, "you have the best of it. Men always have." Nevertheless, she would have him know that to be a Greycoat was good enough for most people. She described the schoolroom. "It 's something like a chapel," she said, "and some- thing like a long whitewashed bird-cage, with great beams for perches. You could eat your dinner off the floor most days; and Miss Champernowne has the dearest little mole on the left side of her upper lip, with three white hairs in it. When she looks at you over her glasses it 's like a bird getting ready to drink; and when she plays 'Another day is done' on the harmonium and pitches the note, it 's just the way a bird lifts his throat to let the water trickle down inside. She has the loveliest way of putting things, too. Only yesterday, speaking of China, she told us that words would fail her to describe one-half the wonders of that enchanted land. . . . After that 198 PUPPETS there 's going to be no rest for me until I 've seen China for myself. Such a nice lot of children as they are, if it weren't for Marty Jewell. She sits next to me and copies my sums, and when I remind her of it she puts out her tongue; but she has a sister in the infant class at the end of the room with the same trick, so I s'pose it runs in the family. ... I 'm forgetting, though," she ran on. " You 're Brother Timothy now, a Beauchamp Brother, and the Lord knows how I 'm to make you sensible of it! I heard Brother Clerihew taking a party around yesterday, and played around close to hear what he had to tell about the place. All he said was that if these old walls could speak what a tale might they not unfold ? And then a lady turned round and supposed that the child (meaning me) was following them on the chance of a copper. So I came away. ... I 've my belief," announced Corona, "Brother Clerihew was speaking through his hat. There 's nobody but Uncle Copas knows anything about this place him and the Lord Almighty; and as the chief engineer told me aboard the Carnatic, when I kept asking him how soon we should get to England, He won't split under a quart. The trouble is, Uncle Copas won't lay up for visitors. Manby, at the lodge, says he 's too proud. . . . But maybe he '11 take me round some day if I ask him nicely, and then you can come on my arm and pretend you 're not listening. . . . No," 199 BROTHER COPAS announced Corona, after musing awhile, " that would be deception. I '11 have to go to him and make a clean breast of it." It occurred to her that Brother Manby was a friend of hers. He didn't know much, to be sure; but he was capable of entering into a joke and introducing Timothy to the Wayfarers' Dole. She tucked the doll under her arm and wended towards the porter's lodge, where, as it happened, she met Brother Copas coming through the gateway in talk with the Chap- lain. The Chaplain in fact had sought out Brother Copas, had found him in his customary haunt, fishing gloom- ily and alone beside the Mere, and had opened his purpose for once pretty straightly, yet keeping an- other in reserve. "The Master has told me he gave you an anony- mous letter that reached him concerning Brother Bonaday. I have made up my mind to ask you a question or two quite frankly about it." "Now what in the world can he want?" thought Copas, continuing to whip the stream. Aloud he said: "You '11 excuse me, but I see no frankness in your asking questions before telling me how much you know." " I intended that. I have received a similar letter." "I guessed as much. ... So you called on him 200 PUPPETS with it and bullied him into another attack of angina pectorisf That too I guessed. Well?" The Chaplain made no answer for a moment. Then he said with some dignity "I might point out to you might I not? that both your speech and the manner of it are grossly insubordinate." " I know it. ... I am sorry, sir; but in some way or another by showing him your letter, I suppose you have come near to killing my only friend." " I did not show him the letter." " Then I beg your pardon." Brother Copas turned and began to wind in his line. "If you wish to talk about it, I recognise that you have the right, sir; but let me beg you to be brief." " The more willingly because I wish to consult you afterwards on a pleasanter subject. . . . Now in this matter, I put it to you that the Master choosing to stand aside you and I have some responsibility. Try, first, to understand mine. So long as I have to account for the discipline of St. Hospital I can scarcely ignore such a scandal, hey?" "No," agreed Brother Copas, after a long look at him. "I admit that you would find it difficult." He mused a while. "No," he repeated; "to be quite fair, there 's no reason why you who don't know Bonaday should assume him to be any better than the rest of us." 201 BROTHER COPAS - While you, on your part, will naturally be eager to clear your friend." "If I thought the accusation serious." " Do you mean to say that you have simply ignored it?" Now this happened to be an awkward question; and Brother Copas, seeking to evade it, jumped (as they say) from the frying pan into the fire. "Tut, sir! The invention of some poisonous woman!" "You are sure the letter was written by a woman?" Brother Copas was sure, but had to admit that he lacked evidence. He did not confess to having laid a small plot which had failed him. He had received no less than eleven tenders for his weekly laundry, but not one of the applicants had written the "W" in "Washing List" with that characteristic initial curl of which he was in search. "Then you have made some investigations? . . . Nay, I don't wish more of your confidence than you choose to give me. So long as I know that you are not treating the business as negligible "I don't promise to inquire one inch farther." "But you will, nevertheless," concluded Mr. Colt with the patronising laugh of one who knows his man. "Damn the fellow!" thought Copas. "Why can- not he be always the fool he looks?" 202 PUPPETS " And now," pursued Mr. Colt blithely, " I want to engage your interest in another matter I mean the Pageant." "Oh!" said Brother Copas. "Is that still going forward ? " "Settled, my dear sir! When Mr. Bamberger once puts his hand to the plough. ... A General Committee has been formed, with the Lord-Lieuten- ant himself for President. The guarantee fund al- ready runs to 1,500, and we shall get twice that amount promised before we 've done. In short, the thing 's to come off some time next June, and I am Chairman of the Performance Committee, which (under Mr. Isidore Bamberger) arranges the actual Pageant, plans out the 'book/ recruits authors, per- formers, ei cetera. There are other committees, of course: Finance Committee, Ground and Grand Stand Committee, Costume Committee, and so on; but ours is the really interesting part of the work, and, sir, I want you to join us." "You flatter me, sir; or you fish with a narrow mesh indeed." " Why, I dare swear you would know more of the past history of Merchester than any man you met at the committee-table." Brother Copas eyed him shrewdly. "H'm! . . . To be sure, I have been specialising of late on the Reformation period." 203 BROTHER COPAS "I er don't think we shall include any episode dealing specially with that period." "Too serious, perhaps?" "Our er object is to sweep broadly down the stream of time, embodying the great part our city played for hundreds of years in the history of our nation I may say of the Anglo-Saxon race." "I shouldn't, if I were you," said Brother Copas, "not even to please Mr. Bamberger. ... As a mat- ter of fact, I had guessed your object to be something of the sort," he added dryly. "As you may suppose and as, indeed, is but proper in Merchester special stress will be laid throughout on the ecclesiastical side of the story: the influence of Mother Church, permeating and at every turn informing our national life." " But you said a moment ago that you were leaving out the Reformation." "We seek rather to illustrate the continuity of her influence." Brother Copas took snuff. "You must not think, however," pursued the Chaplain, " that we are giving the thing a sectarian trend. On the contrary, we are taking great care to avoid it. Our appeal is to one and all: to the unify- ing civic sense and, through that, to the patriotic. Several prominent Nonconformists have already joined the Committee; indeed, Alderman Chope 204 PUPPETS who, as you know, is a Baptist, but has a remarkably fine presence has more than half consented to im- personate Alfred the Great. If further proof be needed, I may tell you that, in view of the coming Pan-Anglican Conference, the Committee has pro- visionally resolved to divide the proceeds (if any) be- tween the British and Foreign Bible Society and the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel." "Ah!" murmured Brother Copas, maliciously quot- ing Falstaff . " ' It was alway yet the trick of our English nation, if they have a good thing, to make it too common.' " The Chaplain did not hear. "I earnestly hope," said he, "you will let me pro- pose you for my Committee." "I would not miss it for worlds," said Brother Copas gravely. He had disjointed and packed up his rod by this time, and the two were walking back towards St. Hospital. "You relieve me more than I can say. Your help will be invaluable." Brother Copas was apparently deaf to this compli- ment. ' " You '11 excuse me," he said after a moment, "but I gather that the whole scheme must be well under weigh, since you have arrived at allocating the proceeds. Experience tells me that all amateurs 205 BROTHER COPAS start with wanting to act something; when they see that desire near to realisation, and not before, they cast about for the charity which is to deserve their efforts. . . . May I ask what part you have chosen ?" " I had thoughts of Alberic de Blanchminster, in an Episode of the ' Founding of St. Hospital.' " "Alberic de Blanchminster?" They had reached the outer court of the hospital, and Brother Copas, halting to take snuff, eyed the Chaplain as if taking his measure. "But the Committee, in compliment to my inches, are pressing me to take William the Conqueror," said Mr. Colt almost bashfully. "I too should advise it, if we are to adhere to his- tory; though, to be sure, from the sole mention of him in the chronicle, our founder, Alberic, appears to have been a sportsman. 'Nam, quodam die, quia perdiderat accipitum suum cum erat sub divo, detrexit sibi bracas et posteriora nuda ostendit caelo in signum opprobrii et convitii atque derisionis.' You remem- ber the passage." He paused mischievously, knowing well enough that the Chaplain would laugh, pretending to have followed the Latin. Sure enough, Mr. Colt laughed heartily. "About William the Conqueror, though But at this moment Corona came skipping through the archway. 206 PUPPETS "Uncle Copas!" she hailed, the vault echoing to her childish treble. "You look as though you had mistaken Mr. Colt for a visitor, and were telling him all about the history of the place. Oh! I know that you never go the round with visitors; but seeing it 's only me and Timmy look at him, please! He 's been made a Beauchamp Brother, not half an hour ago. If only you 'd be guide to us for once, and make him feel his privileges. ... I dare say Mr. Colt won't mind coming too," she wound up tactfully. "Shall we?" suggested the Chaplain, after asking and receiving permission to inspect the doll. "Confound it!" muttered Brother Copas to him- self. " I cannot even begin to enjoy a fool nowadays but that blessed child happens along to rebuke me." Aloud he said "If you command, little one. . . . But where do we begin ? " "At the beginning." Corona took charge of him, with a nod at the Chaplain. "We're pilgrims, all four of us, home from the Holy Land; and we start by knocking up Brother Manby and just perishing for a drink." 207 CHAPTER XVIII THE PERVIGILIUM "'NOW learn ye to love who loved never now ye who have loved, love anew! It is Spring, it is chorussing Spring: 'tis the birthday of earth and for you ! It is Spring; and the Loves and the birds wing together, and woo to accord Where the bough to the rain has unbraided her locks as a bride to her lord. For she walks She our Lady, our Mistress of Wedlock, the woodlands atween, And the bride-bed she weaves them, with myrtle enlacing, with curtains of green. Look, list ye the law of Dione, aloft and enthroned in the blue: Now learn ye to love who loved never now ye who have loved, love anew ! ' H'm, h'm tolerable only ! 'Aloft and established in blue' is that better?" "Uncle Copas, whatever are you doing?" Corona looked up from her page of irregular verbs, and across to her preceptor as he sat muttering and scribbling. 208 THE PERVIGILIUM "The idlest thing in the world, child. Trans- lating." " But you told me that next week, if I learned these verbs, you would let me begin to translate." "To be sure I did. You must go on translating and translating until, like me, you ought to know better. Then you throw it all away." "I suppose I shall understand, one of these fine days," sighed Corona. " But, uncle, you won't mind my asking a question? I really do want to find out about these things. . . . And I really do want to learn Latin, ever since you said it was the only way to find out all that St. Hospital means." "Did I say that? I ought, of course, to have said that Latin was worth learning for its own sake." "I guess," said Corona sagely, "you thought you 'd take the likeliest way with me." "O woman! woman! . . . But what was your question?" "Sometimes I wake early and lie in bed thinking. I was thinking, only yesterday morning, if people are able to put into English all that was ever written in Latin, why don't they do it and save other people the trouble?" "Now I suppose," said Brother Copas, "that in the United States of America land of labour-saving appliances that is just how it would strike every- one?" 209 BROTHER COPAS He knew that this would nettle her. But, looking up hotly, she caught his smile and laughed. "Well, but why?" she demanded. " Because the more it was the same thing the more it would be different. There 's only one way with Latin and Greek. You must let 'em penetrate: soak 'em into yourself, get 'em into your nature slowly, through the pores of the skin." "It sounds like sitting in a bath." "That's just it. It's a baptism first and a bath afterwards; but the more it 's a bath, the more you remember it 's a baptism." "I guess you have that right, though I don't follow," Corona admitted. " There 's something in Latin makes you proud. Only yesterday I was gas- sing to three girls about knowing amo, amas, amat; and, next thing, you '11 say, ' I 'd like you to know Ovid,' and I '11 say, ' Mr. Ovid, I 'm pleased to have met you' like what happens in the States when you shake hands with a professor. All the same, I don't see what there is in amo, amas, amat to make the gas." "Wait till you come to eras amet qui nunquam amavit." "Is that what you were translating?" "Yes." "Then translate it for me, please." "You shall construe for yourself. Cras means 'to- morrow.' Amct 210 THE PERVIGILIUM " That 's the present subjunctive. Let me see ' he may love.'" "Try again." "Or 'let him love.'" "Right. 'To-morrow let him love.' Quif" "'Who.'" " Nunquam?" "'Never '-I know that too." " Amavit f" "Perfect, active, third person singular 'he has loved.' " " Qui being the subject " ' ' Who never has loved.' " "Right as ninepence again. 'To-morrow let him love who has never loved.' " "But," objected Corona, "it seems so easy! and here you have been for quite half an hour muttering and shaking your head over it, and taking you can't think what a lot of nasty snuff." "Have I?" Brother Copas sought for his watch. "Heavens, child! The hour has struck these ten minutes ago. Why didn't you remind me?" "Because I thought 'twouldn't be manners. But, of course, if I 'd known you were wasting your time, and over anything so easy " "Not quite so easy as you suppose, miss. To be- gin with, the original is in verse; a late Latin poem in a queer metre, and by whom written nobody knows. 211 BROTHER COPAS But you are quite right about my wasting my time. . . . What troubles me is that I have been wasting yours, when you ought to have been out at play in the sun." "Please don't mention that," said Corona politely. "It has been fun enough watching you frowning and tapping your fingers, and writing something down and scratching it out the next moment. What is it all about, Uncle Copas?" " It er is called the Pervigilium Vcneris ; that 's to say The Vigil of Venus. But I suppose that con- veys nothing to you?" He thrust his spectacles high on his forehead and smiled at her vaguely across the table. "Of course it doesn't. I don't know what a Vigil means; or Venus whether it 's a person or a place; or why the Latin is late, as you call it. Late for what?" Brother Copas laughed dryly. " Late for me, let 's say. Didn't I tell you I was wasting my time? And Venus is the goddess of Love: some day alas the day! you '11 be proud to make her acquaintance. . . . Cras amet qui nun- quam amavit." "Perhaps if you read it to me " He shook his head. "No, child: the thing is late in half a dozen differ- ent ways. The young, whom it understands, cannot 212 THE PERVIGILIUM understand it: the old, who arrive at understand- ing, look after it, a thing lost. Go, dear: don't let me waste your time as well as an old man's." But when she had gone he sat on and wasted an- other hour in translating " Time was that a rain-cloud begat her, impregning the heave of the deep. Twixt hooves of sea-horses a-scatter, stampeding the dol- phins as sheep, Lo! born of that bridal Dione, rainbowed and bespent of its dew: Now learn ye to love who loved never now ye who have loved, love anew! "She, she, with her gem-dripping finger enamels the wreath of the year; She, she, when the maid-bud is nubile and swelling, winds- whispers ancar, Disguising her voice in the Zephyr's 'So secret the bed! and thou shy f She, she, when the midsummer night is a-hush draws the dew from on high; Dew bright with the tears of its origin, dew with its weight on the bough, Misdoubting and clinging and trembling 'Now, now must I fall f Is it now f" Brother Copas pushed the paper from him. "What folly is this," he mused, "that I, who have always scoffed at translations, sit here trying to trans- 213 BROTHER COPAS late this most untranslatable thing? Pah! Matthew Arnold was a great man, and he stood up to lecture the University of Oxford on translating Homer. He proved excellently well that Homer was rapid; that Homer was plain and direct; that Homer was noble. He took translation after translation, and proved proved beyond doubting that each translator had failed in this or in that; this or that being alike essen- tial. Then, having worked out his sum, he sat down and translated a bit or two of Homer to encourage us, and the result was mere bosh. "The truth being, he is guilty of a tomfoolery among principles at the start. If by any chance we could, in English, find the right way to translate Homer, why should we waste it on translating him? We had a hundred times better be writing Epics of our own. "It cannot be done. If it could, it ought not. . . . The only way of getting at Homer is to soak oneself in him. The average Athenian was soaked in him as the average Englishman is in the Authorised Version of the Psalms. . . . "Yet I sit here, belying all my principles, attempt- ing to translate a thing more difficult than Homer. "It was she, this child, set me going upon it!" Brother Copas pulled the paper towards him again. By the end of another hour he had painfully achieved this: 214 THE PERVIGILIUM "'Go, maidens,' Our Lady commands, 'while the myrtle is green in the grove, Take the Boy to your escort.' But 'Ah!' cry the maidens, 'What trust is in Love Keeping holiday too, while he weareth his archery, tools of his trade f ' 'Go: he lays tJiem aside, an apprentice released you may wend unafraid: See, I bid him disarm, he disarms. Mother-naked I bid him to go, And he goes mother-naked. What flame can he shoot without arrow or bowf Yet beware ye of Cupid, ye maidens! Beware most of all when he charms As a child: for the more he runs naked, the more he's a strong man-at-arms' " 215 CHAPTER XIX MERCHESTER PREPARES I MUST not overload these slight pages by chronicling at length how Merchester caught and developed the Pageant fever. But to Mr. Colt must be given his share of the final credit. He worked like a horse, no doubt of it; spurred constantly on his tender side his vanity by the hard riding of Mr. Julius Bamberger, M.P. He pioneered the movement. He (pardon this riot of simile and metaphor) cut a way through the brushwood, piled the first faggots, ap- plied the torch, set the heather afire. He canvassed the Bishop, the Dean and Chapter, the Sunday Schools, the Church Lads' Brigade, the Girls' Friendly So- ciety, the Boy Scouts. He canvassed the tradespeo- ple, the professional classes, the widowed and maiden ladies resident around the Close. In all these quarters he met with success varying, indeed, but on the whole gratifying. But the problem was, how to fan the flame to reach and take hold of more seasoned timber? opulent citizens, county mag- nates; men who, once committed, would not retract; ponderable subscribers to the Guarantee Fund; neither tinder nor brushwood, but logs to receive the 216 MERCHESTER PREPARES fire and retain it in a solid core. For weeks, for a couple of months, the flame took no hold of these: it reached them only to die down and disappoint. Nor was Mr. Isidore, during this time, the least part of our Chaplain's trial. Mr. Julius might flat- ter, proclaiming him a born organiser: but this was small consolation when Mr. Isidore (an artist by temperament) stamped and swore over every small hitch. " Sobscribtions ? Zat is your affaire, whad the devil!" Or again: "Am I a dog to be bozzered by your General Committees or your Influenzial Batrons? . . . You wandt a Bageant, heinf Var'y well, I brovide it: I will mek a sogcess. Go to h 11 for your influenzial patrons: or go to Julius. He can lick ze boot, not I!" On the other hand, Mr. Julius, while willing enough to spend money for which he foresaw a satisfactory return, had no mind to risk it until assured of the support of local "Society." He could afford some thousands of pounds better than a public fiasco. "We must have the County behind us," he kept chanting. Afterwards, looking back on the famous Merchester Pageant, Mr. Colt accurately dated its success from the hour when he called on Lady Shaftesbury and enlisted her to open the annual Sale of Work of the 217 BROTHER COPAS Girls' Friendly Society. Sir John Shaftesbury, some- what late in life, had married a wife many years his junior; a dazzling beauty, a dashing horse-woman, and moreover a lady who, having spent the years of her eligible maidenhood largely among politicians and racehorses, had acquired the knack and habit of liv- ing in the public eye. She adored her husband, as did everyone who knew him: but life at Shaftesbury Court had its longueurs even in the hunting season. Sir John would (he steadily declared) as lief any day go to prison as enter Parliament a reluctance to which Mr. Bamberger owed his seat for Merchester. Finding herself thus headed off one opportunity of making tactful little public speeches, in raiments to which the Press would give equal prominence, Lady Shaftesbury had turned her thoughts to good work, even before Mr. Colt called with his petition. She assented to it with a very pretty grace. Her speech at the Sale of Work was charming, and she talked to her audience about the Empire; reminded them that they were all members of one body; called them her "dear Girl Friendlies": and hoped, though a new-comer, in future to see a great deal more of them. They applauded this passage de bon cccur, and indeed pronounced the whole speech "So womanly!" At its close Mr. Colt, proposing a vote of thanks, in- sinuated something "anent a more ambitious under- taking, in which (if we can only engage Lady Shaftes- 218 MERCHESTER PREPARES bury's active sympathy) we may realise a cherished dream. I fear," proceeded Mr. Colt, "that I am a sturdy beggar. I can only plead that the cause is no mere local one, but in the truest sense national nay imperial. For where but in the story of Merchester can be found the earliest inspiration of those countless deeds which won the Empire?" Later, when Lady Shaftesbury asked to what he alluded, he discoursed on the project of the Pageant with dexterity and no little tact. "What a ripping idea! . . . Now I come to re- member, my husband did say casually, the other day, that Mr. Bamberger had been sounding him about something of the sort. But Jack's English, you know, and a Whig at that. The mere notion of dressing-up or play-acting makes him want to run away and hide. . . . Oh, my dear sir, I know all about pageants! I saw one at Warwick Castle was it last year or the year before? . . . There was a woman on horseback I forget what historical character she represented; it wasn't Queen Elizabeth, I know, and it couldn't have been Lady Godiva be- cause well, because to begin with, she knew how to dress. She wore a black velvet habit, with seed- pearls, which sounds like Queen Henrietta Maria. Anyway, everyone agreed she had a perfect seat in the saddle. Is that the sort of thing 'Fair Rosamund goes a-hawking with King, er, Whoever-he-was'?" 219 BROTHER COPAS Mr. Colt regretted that Fair Rosamund had no historical connection with Merchester. . . . No, and equally out of the question was Mary, Queen of Scots laying her neck on the block. "Besides, she couldn't very well do that on horse- back. And Mazeppa was a man, wasn't he?" " If," said Mr. Colt diplomatically, " we can only prevail upon one or two really influential la-dies to see the thing in that light, details could be arranged later. We have not yet decided on the Episodes. . . . But notoriously where there 's a will there 's a way." Lady Shaftesbury pondered this conversation while the motor whirled her homewards. She had begun to wish that Jack (as she called her lord) would strike out a bolder line in county affairs, if his ambition con- fined him to these. He was already (through no search of his own) Chairman of the County Council, and Chairman of Quarter Sessions, and was picked to serve as High Sheriff next year. He ought to do something to make his shrievalty memorable . . . and, moreover, the Lord-Lieutenant was an old man. In the library that evening after dinner she opened fire. The small function at the Girls' Friendly had been a success; but she wished to do something more for Merchester " where we ought to be a real influ- ence for good living as we do so close to it." 220 MERCHESTER PREPARES She added, "I hear that Mr. Bamberger's seat is by no means safe, and another General Election may be on us at any moment. ... I know how little you like Mr. Bamberger personally: but after all, and until you will consent to take his place Mr. Bamber- ger stands between us and the rising tide of Socialism. I was discussing this with Mr. Colt to-day." "Who is Mr. Colt?" asked Sir John. "You must have met him. He is Chaplain of St. Hospital, and quite a personality in Merchester . . . though I don't know," pursued Lady Shaftesbury, musing, "that one would altogether describe him as a gentleman. But ought we to be too particular when the cause is at stake, and heaven knows how soon the Germans will be invading us?" The end was that Sir John, who loved his young wife, gave her a free hand, of which she made the most. Almost before he was aware of it, he found himself Chairman of a General Committee, summon- ing a Sub-Committee of Ways and Means. At the first meeting he announced that his lady had con- sented to set aside, throughout the winter months, one day a week from hunting, and offered Shaftesbury Hall as head-quarters of the Costume Committee. Thereupon it was really astonishing with what alac- rity not only the "best houses" around Merchester, but the upper-middle-class (its damsels especially) caught the contagion. Within a week "Are you 221 BROTHER COPAS Pageantising ? " or, in more condensed slang, "Do you Padge?" became the stock question at all social gatherings in the neighbourhood of the Close. To this a stock answer would be "Oh, I don't know! I suppose so." Here the respondent would simulate a slight boredom. " One will have to mix with the most impossible people, of course" Lady Shaftesbury had won great popularity by insisting that, in a business so truly national, no class distinctions were to be drawn "but anyhow it will fill up the off-days this winter." Lady Shaftesbury herself, after some pretty de- liberation, decided to enact the part of the Empress Maud, and escape on horseback from King Stephen of Blois. Mr. Colt and Mr. Isidore Bamberger to- gether waited on Brother Copas with a request that he would write the libretto for this Episode. "But it was only last week you turned me on to Episode VI King Hal and the Emperor Charles the Fifth," Copas protested. "We are hoping you will write this for us too," urged Mr. Colt. " It oughtn't to take you long, you know. To begin with, no one knows very much about that particular period." "The less known the better, if we may trust the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle. A few realistic pictures of the diversions of the upper classes "Hawking was one, I believe?" opined Mr. Colt. 222 MERCHESTER PREPARES " Yes, and another was hanging the poor by their heels over a smoky fire, and yet another was shutting them up in a close cell into which had been inserted a few toads and adders." "Her ladyship suggests a hawking scene, in the midst of which she is surprised by King Stephen and his, er, myrmidons if that be the correct term "It is at least as old as Achilles." "She escapes from him on horseback. ... At this point she wants to know if we can introduce a water-jump." "Nothing could be easier, in a blank verse com- position," assented Brother Copas gravely. "You see, there is very little writing required. Just enough dialogue to keep the thing going. . . . Her ladyship is providing her own riding-habit and those of her attendant ladies, for whom she has chosen six of the most beautiful maidens in the neigh- bourhood, quite irrespective of class. The dresses are to be gorgeous." "They will form a pleasing contrast, then, to King Stephen, whose riding-breeches, as we know, 'cost him but a crown/ . . . Very well, I will 'cut the cackle and come to the bosses.' And you, Mr. Isi- dore ? Do I read in your eye that you desire a similar literary restraint in your Episode of King Hal?" " Ach, yes," grinned Mr. Isidore. " Cut ze caggle cabital! I soggest in zat Ebisode we haf a Ballet." 223 BROTHER COPAS "A Ballet?" "A Ballet of Imberial Exbansion ze first English discofferies ofer sea ze natives brought back in brocession to mek sobmission "Devilish pretty substitute for Thomas Cromwell and the Reformation!" "It was zere lay ze future of Englandt, hein?" "I see," said Brother Copas thoughtfully; "pro- vided you make the Ballets of our nation, you don't care if your brother makes its laws." These preparations (he noted) had a small by- product pleasantly affecting St. Hospital. Mr. Colt, in his anxiety to enlist the whole-hearted services of the Brethren (who according to design were to serve as a sort of subsidiary chorus to the Pageant, appearing and reappearing, still in their antique garb, in a succession of scenes supposed to extend over many centuries), had suddenly taken the line of being "all things to all men," and sensibly relaxed the zeal of his proselytising as well as the rigour of certain regulations offensive to the more Protestant of his flock. "You may growl," said Brother Copas to Brother Warboise, " but this silly Pageant is bringing us more peace than half a dozen Petitions." Brother Warboise was, in fact, growling because for three months and more nothing had been heard of the Petition. 224 MERCHESTER PREPARES "You may depend," said Copas soothingly, "the Bishop put the thing away in his skirt pocket and forgot all about it. I happen to know that he must be averse to turning out his skirt pockets, for I once saw him surreptitiously smuggle away a mayonnaise sandwich there. It was at a Deanery garden party; and I, having been invited to hand the ices and look picturesque, went on looking picturesque and pre- tended not to see. ... I ought to have told you, when you asked me to write it, that such was the in- variable fate of my compositions." Meanwhile, it certainly seemed that a truce had been called to the internal dissensions of St. Hospital. On the pageant-ground one afternoon, in the midst of a very scratchy rehearsal, Brother Copas found himself by chance at the Chaplain's side. The two had been watching in silence for a full five minutes, when he heard Mr. Colt addressing him in a tone of unusual friendliness. "Wonderful how it seems to link us up, eh?" "I beg your pardon, sir?" "I was thinking, just then, of the St. Hospital uniform, which you have the honour to wear. It seems or Mr. Isidore has the knack of making it seem the, er, foil of the whole Pageant. It outlasts all the more brilliant fashions." "Poverty, sir, is perduring. It is in everything just because it is out of everything. We inherit time, if not the earth." 225 BROTHER COPAS "But particularly," said Mr. Colt, "I was thinking of the corporate unity it seems to give us, and to pass on, through us, to the whole story of Merchester." "Aye, we are always with you." Afterwards Brother Copas repented that he had not answered more graciously: for afterwards, look- ing back, he perceived that, in some way, the Pageant had actually helped to bring back a sense of " corporate unity" to St. Hospital. Even then, and for months later, he missed to recognise Corona's share in it. What was she but a child? "Is it true what I hear?" asked Mrs. Royle, in- tercepting him one day as he carried his plate of fast- cooling meat from the kitchen. "Probably not," said Brother Copas. " They tell me Bonaday's daughter has been singled out among all the school children Greycoats and others to be Queen of the May, or something of the kind, in this here Pageant." "Yes, that is a fact." "Oh! . . . I suppose it's part of your sneering way to make little of it. 7 call it an honour to St. Hospital." "The deuce you do?" " And what 's more," added Mrs. Royle, " she mustn't let us down by appearing in rags." "I hope we can provide against that." 226 MERCHESTER PREPARES "What I meant to say," the woman persisted, "was that you men don't probably understand. If there 's to be a dance, or any such caper, she '11 be lifting her skirts. Well, for the credit of St. Hos- pital, I 'd like to overhaul the child's undercloth- ing, and see that she goes shipshape and Bristol fashion." Brother Copas thanked her. He began to perceive that Mrs. Royle, that detestable woman, had her good points or, at any rate, her soft spot. It became embarrassing, though, when Mrs. Cleri- hew accosted him next day with a precisely similar request. "And I might mention," added Mrs. Clerihew, "that I have a lace stomacher-frill which was gove to me by no less than the Aonourable Hedith, fifth daughter of the second Baron Glantyre. She died unmarried, previous to which she used frequently to honour me with her confidence. This being a historical occasion, I 'd spare it." Yes; it was true. Corona was to be a queen, among many, in the Merchester Pageant. It all happened through Mr. Simeon. Mr. Simeon's children had, one and all, gone for their education to the Greycoats' School, which lies just beyond the west end of the Cathedral. He loved to think of them as growing up within its shadow. 227 BROTHER COPAS . . . One Tuesday at dinner the five-year-old Agatha popped out a question "Daddy, if the Cafederal fell down while we were in school, would it fall on top of us?" "God forbid, child. But why ask such a ques- tion?" "Because when we went to school this morning some workpeople had dug a hole, close by that end quite a big pit it was. So I went near the edge to look down, and one of the men said, 'Take care, missy, or you '11 tumble in and be drowned.' I told him that I knew better, because people couldn't build cafederals on water. He told me that was the way they had built ours, and he held my hand for me to have a look. He was right, too. The pit was half-full of water. He said that unless we looked sharp the whole Cafederal would come down on our heads. . . . I* don't think it's safe for me to go to school any more, do you?" insinuated small Agatha. Now it chanced that Mr. Simeon had to visit the Greycoats that very afternoon. He had written a little play for the children boys and girls to act at Christmas. It was not a play of the sort desider- ated by Mrs. Simeon the sort to earn forty thousand pounds in royalties; nor, to speak accurately, had he written it. He had in fact patched together a few artless scenes from an old Miracle Play The Life 228 MERCHESTER PREPARES of Saint Meriadoc discovered by him in the Ven- ables Library; and had tinkered out some rhymes (the book being a prose translation from the Breton original). "A poor thing," then, and very little of it his own but Miss Champernowne opined that it would be a novelty, while the children enjoyed the rehearsals, and looked forward to the fun of "dress- ing-up." Rehearsals were held twice a week, on Tuesdays and Thursdays, in the last hour of the afternoon session. This afternoon, on his way to the school, Mr. Simeon found that Agatha had indeed spoken truth. Five or six men were busy, digging, probing, sounding, around a large hole close under the northeast corner of the Lady Chapel. The foreman wore a grave face, and in answer to Mr. Simeon's inquiries allowed that the mischief was serious; so serious that the Dean and Chapter had sent for a diver to explore the foundations and report. The foreman further pointed out certain ominous cracks in the masonry overhead. Just then the great clock chimed, warning Mr. Simeon away. . . . But the peril of his beloved Ca- thedral so haunted him that he arrived at the school- door as one distraught. Rehearsal always took place in the girls' school- room, the boys coming in from their part of the building to clear the desks away and arrange them 229 BROTHER COPAS close along the walls. They were busy at it when he entered. He saw them: but "He heeded not his eyes Were with his heart," and that was in the Close outside ai>0i, $i\r) iv TrarpiBi yaig. From the start he allowed the rehearsal to get hopelessly out of hand. The children took charge; they grew more and more fractious, unruly. Miss Champernowne chid them in vain. The schoolroom, in fact, was a small pandemonium, when of a sudden the door opened and two visitors entered Mr. Colt and Mr. Isidore Bamberger. "A ach so!" intoned Mr. Isidore, and at the sound of his appalling guttural Babel hushed itself, unable to compete. He inquired what was going forward; was told; and within five minutes had the children moving through their parts in perfect dis- cipline, while with a fire of cross-questions he shook Mr. Simeon back to his senses and rapidly gathered the outline of the play. He terrified all. "Bardon my interference, ma'am!" he barked, addressing Miss Champernowne. " I haf a burbose." The scene engaging the children was that of the youthful St. Meriadoc's first school-going; where his parents (Duke and Duchess of Brittany) call with him upon a pedagogue, who introduces him to the 230 MERCHESTER PREPARES boys and girls, his fellow scholars. For a sample of Mr. Simeon's version PEDAGOGUE "Children look on your books. If there be any whispering It will be great hindering, And there will be knocks." FIRST SCHOLAR (chants) "God bless A, B and C! The rest of the song is D: That is all my lore. I came late yesterday, I played truant by my fay! I am a foul sinner. Good master, after dinner I will learn more." SECOND SCHOLAR "E, s, t, that is est, I know not what comes next " Whilst the scholars recited thus, St. Meriadoc's father and mother each with a train of attendants walked up and down between the ranks "high and disposedly," as became a Duke and Duchess of Brittany. Mr. Isidore of a sudden threw all into confusion again. He shot out a forefinger and screamed yes, positively screamed 231 BROTHER COPAS "Ach! zat is ze child ze fourt' from ze end! I will haf her and no ozzer you onderstandt?" Here he swung about upon the Chaplain. "Ob-serf how she walk! how she carry her chin! If I haf not her for ze May Queen I will haf non. . . . Step vor- wards, liddle one. Whad is your name?" "Corona." Seeing that Mr. Isidore's finger pointed at her, she stepped forward, with a touch of defiance in her astonishment, but fearlessly. The touch of defiance helped to tilt her chin at the angle he so much ad- mired. "Cohrona zat must mean ze chrowned one. Cabital! . . . You are not afraid of me, heinf" "No," answered Corona simply, still wondering what he might mean, but keeping a steady eye on him. Why should she be afraid of this comic little man. "So? ... I engage you. You are to be ze May Queen in ze great Merchester Bageant. . . . But you must be goot and attend how I drill you. Ozzer- wise I dismees you." It appeared that Mr. Isidore had spent the after- noon with Mr. Colt, hunting the schools of Merchester in search of a child to suit his fastidious require- ments. He had two of the gifts of genius unweary- ing patience in the search, unerring swiftness in the choice. 232 MERCHESTER PREPARES Mr. Simeon, the rehearsal over, walked home heavily. On his way he paused to study the pit, and look up from it to the threatened mass of ma- sonry. "Not in my time, Lord!" And yet "From low to high doth dissolution climb, And sink from high to low along a scale Of awful notes, whose concord shall not fail . . . Truth fails not; but her outward forms that bear The longest date . . . drop like the tower sublime Of yesterday, which royally did wear His crown of weeds, but could not even sustain Some casual shout that broke the silent air Or the unimaginable touch of Time." But Corona, breaking away from her playfellows and gaining the road to St. Hospital, skipped as she ran homeward, treading clouds of glory. 233 CHAPTER XX NAUGHTINESS, AND A SEQUEL "SHE has behaved very naughtily," said Brother Copas. " I don't understand it at all," sighed Brother Bonaday. "Nor I." " It 's not like her, you see." " It was a most extraordinary outburst. . . . Either the child has picked up some bad example at school, to copy it (and you will remember I always doubted that her sex gets any good of schooling) " But," objected Brother Bonaday, " it was you who insisted on sending her." "So I did in self-defence. If we had not done our best the State would have done its worst, and put her into an institution where one underpaid female grapples with sixty children in a class, and talks all the time. Now we didn't want Corona to acquire the habit of talking all the time." Here Brother Copas dropped a widower's sigh. "In fact, it has hitherto been no small part of her charm that she seldom or never spoke out of her turn." "It has been a comfort to have her company," 234 NAUGHTINESS, AND A SEQUEL put in Brother Bonaday, eager to say a good word for the culprit. " She spoke out of her turn just now," said Brother Copas sternly. "Her behaviour to Nurse Turner was quite atrocious. . . . Now either she has picked this up at school, or the thought occurs to me she has been loafing around the laundry, gossiping with the like of Mrs. Royle and Mrs. Clerihew, and letting their evil communications corrupt her good manners. This seems to me the better guess, because the women in the laundry are always at feud with the nurses; it 's endemic there: and 'a nasty two-faced spy' smacks, though faintly, of the wash-tub. In my hearing Mrs. Clerihew has accused Nurse Branscome of 'carrying tales.' 'A nasty two-faced spy' the child was using those very worlds when we surprised her, and the Lord knows what worse before we happened on the scene." "Nurse Turner would not tell, and so we have no right to speculate." " That 's true. ... I '11 confine myself to what we overheard. Now when a chit of a child stands up and hurls abuse of that kind at a woman well old enough to be her mother, two things have to be done. . . . We must get at the root of this deterioration in Corona, but first of all she must be punished. The question is, Which of us will undertake it? You have the natural right, of course " 235 BROTHER COPAS Brother Bonaday winced. "No, no " he protested. " I should have said, the natural obligation. But you are frail just now, and I doubt if you are equal to it." "Copas! . . . You 're not proposing to whip her?" Brother Copas chuckled grimly. But that the child was in the next room, possibly listening, he might have laughed aloud. "Do they whip girls?" he asked. "I used to find the whipping of boys disgusting enough. . . . I had an assistant master once, a treasure, who re- mained with me six years, and then left for no reason but that I could not continue to pay him. I liked him so much that one day, after flogging a boy in hot blood, and while (as usual) feeling sick with the re- vulsion of it, I then and there resolved that, however much this trade might degrade me, this Mr. Simcox should be spared the degradation whilst in my em- ploy. I went to his class-room and asked to have a look at his punishment-book. He answered that he kept none. ' But,' said I, * when you first came to me didn't I give you a book, and expressly command you, whenever you punished a boy, to write an entry, giving the boy's name, the nature of his offence, and the number of strokes with which you punished him?' 'You did, sir,' said Simcox, 'and I have lost it.' 'Lost it!' said I. 'You but confirm me in my de- 236 NAUGHTINESS, AND A SEQUEL cision that henceforth, when any boy in this school needs caning, I will do it with my own hands.' ' Sir/ he replied, 'you have done that for these five years. Forgive me, but I was pleased to find that you never asked to see the book; for I really couldn't bring myself to flog a boy merely for the sake of writing up an entry/ In short, that man was a born school- master, and almost dispensed with punishments, even the slightest." "He ruled the boys by kindness, I suppose?" " He wasn't quite such a fool." "Then what was his secret?" "Bad temper. They held him in a holy terror; and it 's all the queerer because he wasn't even just." Brother Bonaday shook his head. "I don't understand," he said; "but if you be- lieve so little in punishment, why are we proposing to punish Corona?" " Obviously, my dear fellow, because we can find no better way. The child must not be suffered to grow up into a termagant you will admit that, I hope? . . . Very well, then: feeble guardians that we are, me must do our best." He knocked at the bedroom door and, after a moment, entered. Corona sat on the edge of her bed, dry-eyed, hugging Timothy to her breast. "Corona " 237 BROTHER COPAS "Yes, Uncle Copas?" "You have been extremely naughty, and probably know that you have to be punished." " I dare say it 's the best you can do," said Corona, after weighing this address or seeming to do so. The answer so exactly tallied with the words he had spoken a moment ago that Brother Copas could not help exclaiming "Ah! You overheard us, just now?" "I may have my faults," said Corona coldly, can- didly, "but I am not a listener." "I I beg your pardon," stammered Brother Copas, somewhat abashed. "But the fact remains that your behaviour to Nurse Turner has been most disrespectful, and your language altogether unbe- coming. You have given your father and me a great shock: and I am sure you did not wish to do that." " I 'm miserable enough, if that 's what you mean," the child confessed, still hugging her golliwog and staring with haggard eyes at the window. "But if you want me to say that I 'm sorry "That is just what I want you to say." " Well, then, I can't. . . . Nurse Turner 's a beast a beast a BEAST!" Corona's face whitened, and her voice shrilled higher at each repetition. " She hates Branny like poison, and I hate her . . . . There! And now you must take and pun- 238 NAUGHTINESS, AND A SEQUEL ish me as much as you please. What's it going to be?" She rocked her small body as she looked up with straight eyes, awaiting sentence. "You are to go to bed at once, and without any supper," said Brother Copas, keeping his voice steady on the words he loathed to utter. Again Corona seemed to weigh them. "That seems fair enough," she decided. "Are you going to lock me in?" "That had not occurred to me." "You 'd better," she advised. "And take the key away in your pocket. . . . Is that all, Uncle Copas?" "That is all, Corona. But as for taking the key, you know that I would far sooner trust to your hon- our." "You can trust to that, right enough," said she, getting off the edge of the bed. "I was thinking of Daddy. . . . Good night, Uncle Copas ! if you don't mind, I am going to undress." Brother Copas withdrew. He shut and locked the door firmly, and made a pretence, by rattling the key, of withdrawing it from the lock. But his nerve failed him, and he could not actually withdraw it. "Suppose the child should be taken ill in the night: or suppose that her nerve breaks down, and she cries for her father. ... It might kill him if he could not open the door instantly. Or, again, supposing 239 BROTHER COPAS that she holds out until he has undressed and gone to bed ? He will start up at the first sound and rush across the open quadrangle Lord knows if he would wait to put on his dressing-gown to get the key from me. In his state of health, and with these autumn nights falling chilly, he would take his death." So Brother Copas contented himself with turning the key in the wards and pointing to it. " She is going to bed," he whispered. " Supperless, you understand. . . . We must show ourselves stern: it will be the better for her in the end, and some day she will thank us." Brother Bonaday eyed the door sadly. "To be sure, we must be stern," he echoed. As for being thanked for this severity, it crossed his mind that the thanks must come quickly, or he would probably miss them. But he muttered again, "To be sure to be sure!" as Brother Copas tiptoed away and left him. On his way back to his lonely rooms, Brother Copas met and exchanged "Good evenings" with Nurse Branscome. "You are looking grave," she said. "You might better say I am looking like a humbug and a fool. I have just been punishing that child sending her to bed supperless. Now call me the ass that I am." 240 NAUGHTINESS, AND A SEQUEL "Why, what has Corona been doing?" "Does it matter?" he snarled, turning away. "She has been naughty; and the only way with naughty children is to be brutal." " I expect you have made a mess of it," said Nurse Branscome. "I am sure I have," said Brother Copas. Corona undressed herself very deliberately; and, seating herself again on the edge of the bed, as de- liberately undressed Timothy and clothed him for the night in his pajamas. "I am sorry, dear, that you should suffer. . . . But I can't tell what isn't true, not even for your sake; and I can't take back what I said. Nurse Turner is a beast, if we starve for saying it which," added Corona reflectively, "I don't suppose we shall. I couldn't answer back properly on Uncle Copas, because when you say a thing to grown-ups they look wise and ask you to prove it, and if you can't you look silly. But Nurse Turner is a beast. . . . Tinny! let's lie down and try to get to sleep. But Oh, it is miserable to have all the world against us." She remembered that she was omitting to say her prayers, and knelt down; but after a moment or two rose again. " It 's no use, God," she said. " I 'm very sorry, 241 BROTHER COPAS and I wouldn't tell it to anyone but You and per- haps Uncle Copas, if he was different: but I can't say 'forgive us our trespasses' when I can't abide the woman." She had already pulled down the blind. Before creeping to bed she drew the curtains to exclude the lingering daylight. As she did so, she made sure that her window was hasped wide. Her bedroom (on the ground floor) looked out upon a small cabbage-plot in which Brother Bonaday, until warned by the doctor, had employed his leisure. It was a wilder- ness now. As a rule Corona slept with her lattice wide to the fullest extent: and at any time (upon an alarm of fire, for example) she could have slipped her small body out through the opening with ease. To-night she drew the frame of the window closer than usual, and pinned it on the perforated bar; so close that her small body could not squeeze through it even if she should walk in her sleep. She was a conscientious child. She only forbore to close it tight because it was wicked to go without fresh air. She stole into bed and curled herself up comfort- ably. For some reason or other the touch of the cold pillow drew a tear or two. But after a very little while she slept, still hugging her doll. There was no sound to disturb her; no sound but the soft dripping, now and again, of a cinder in the 242 NAUGHTINESS, AND A SEQUEL grate before which Brother Bonaday sat, with misery in his heart. "Corona!" The voice was low and tremulous. It followed on the sound of a loud sneeze. Either the voice or the sneeze (or both) aroused her, and she sat up in bed with a start. Like Chaucer's Canace, of sleep "She was full mesurable, as women be." "Corona!" "Is that you, Daddy?" she asked, jumping out of bed and tip-toeing to the door. What the hour was she could not tell: but she knew it must be late, for a shaft of moonlight fell through a gap in the window-curtains and shone along the floor. "Are you ill? ... Shall I run and call them up at the Nunnery?" "I was listening. ... I have been listening here for some time, and I could not hear you breathing." " Dear Daddy ... is that all ? Go back to your bed it 's wicked of you to be out of it, with the nights turning chilly as they are. I '11 go back to mine and try to snore, if that 's any comfort." "I haven't been to bed at all. I couldn't. . . . Corona!" "You are not to turn the key!" she commanded 243 BROTHER COPAS in a whisper, for he was fumbling with it. " Uncle Copas pretended he was taking it away with him: or that was what I understood, and if he breaks an understanding it 's his affair." "I I thought, dear you might be hungry." "Well, and suppose I am?" Corona, now she came to think of it, was ravenous. "I've a slice of bread here, and a cold sausage. If you '11 wrap yourself up and come out, we can toast them both: the fire is still clear." "As if I should think of it! . . . And it 's lucky for you, Daddy, the key 's on your side of the door. You ought to be ashamed of yourself, out of bed at what is the time?" "Past ten o'clock." "You are not telling me a fib, I hope, about keep- ing up a clear fire?" said Corona sternly. "If you like, I will open the door just a little: then you can see for yourself." " Cer tainly not. But if you 've been looking after yourself properly, why did you sneeze just now?" " 'Sneeze?' I never sneezed." Silence for a moment. "Somebody sneezed ... I 'stinctly heard it," Corona insisted. "Now I come to think, it sound- ed " There was another pause while, with a question in her eye, she turned and stared at the casement. Then, 244 NAUGHTINESS, AND A SEQUEL as surmise grew to certainty, a little laugh bubbled within her. She stepped to the window. "Good night, Uncle Copas!" she called out mis- chievously. No one answered from the moonlit cabbage-plot. In fact, Brother Copas, beating his retreat, at that moment struck his staff against a disused watering- can, and missed to hear her. He objurgated his clumsiness and went on, picking his way more cautiously. " The question is," he murmured, " how I 'm to extort confession from Bonaday to-morrow without letting him suspect. ..." While he pondered this, Brother Copas stumbled straight upon another shock. The small gate of the cabbage-plot creaked on its hinge . . . and behold, in the pathway ahead stood a woman! In the moon- light he recognised her. "Nurse Branscome!" "Brother Copas! . . . Why, what in the world are you doing at this hour and here, of all places." "Upon my word," retorted Copas, "I might ask you the same question. . . . But on second thoughts I prefer to lie boldly and confess that I have been steal- ing cabbages." "Is that a cabbage you are hiding under your gown ? " 245 BROTHER COPAS "It might be, if this place hadn't been destitute of cabbages these twelve months and more. . . . Par- don my curiosity: but is that also a cabbage you are hiding under your cloak?" "It might be But here laughter quiet laughter got the better of them both. "I might have known it," said Brother Copas, re- covering himself. "Her father is outside her door abjectly beseeching her to be as naughty as she pleases, if only she won't be unhappy. And she woman- like is using her advantage to nag him. "'But if ne'er so fast you wall her ' Danae, immured, yet charged a lover for admission. Corona, imprisoned, takes it out of her father for speaking through the keyhole." "You would not tell me what the child did, that you two have punished her." "Would I not? Well, she was abominably rude to Nurse Turner this afternoon went to the extent of calling her 'a nasty two-faced spy.'" "Was that all?" asked Nurse Branscome. "It was enough, surely? ... As a matter 'of fact she went further, even dragging your name into the fray. She excused herself by saying that she had a right to hate Nurse Turner because Nurse Turner hated you." 246 NAUGHTINESS, AND A SEQUEL " Well, that at any rate was true enough." "Hey?" " I mean, it is true enough that Nurse Turner hates me, and would like to get me out of St. Hospital," said Nurse Branscome quietly. "You never told me of this." "Why should I have troubled to tell? I only tell it now because the child has guessed it." Brother Copas leaned on his staff pondering a sud- den suspicion. "Look here," he said; "those anonymous let- "I have not," said Nurse Branscome, "a doubt that Nurse Turner wrote them." "You have never so much as hinted at this." "I had no right. I have no right, even now; hav- ing no evidence. You would not show me the letter, remember." " It was too vile." "As if I a nurse cannot look at a thing because it is vile! ... I supposed that you had laid the mat- ter aside and forgotten it." "On the contrary, I have been at some pains hitherto idle to discover the writer. . . . Does Nurse Turner, by the way, happen to start her W's with a small curly flourish?" " That you can discover for yourself. The Nurses' Diary lies in the Nunnery, in the outer office. We 247 BROTHER COPAS both enter up our 'cases' in it, and it is open for any- one to inspect." " I will inspect it to-morrow," promised Brother Co- pas. " Now this Hospital being full of evil tongues I cannot well ask you to eat an al fresco supper with me, though " he twinkled " I suspect we both carry the constituents of a frugal one under our cloaks." They passed through an archway into the great quadrangle, and there, having wished one another good night, went their ways; she mirthfully, he mirth- fully and thoughtfully too. Next morning Brother Copas visited the outer office of the Nunnery and carefully inspected the Nurses' Diary. Since every week contains a Wednesday, there were capital Ws in plenty. He took tracings of half a dozen and, armed with these, sought Nurse Turner in her private room. " I think," said he, holding out the anonymous letter, "you may have some light to throw on this. I have the Master's authority to bid you attend on him and explain it." He fixed the hour 2 p.m. But shortly after mid- day Nurse Turner had taken a cab (ordered by tele- phone) and was on her way to the railway station with her boxes. 248 CHAPTER XXI RECONCILIATION "I AM not," said the Bishop, "putting this before you as an argument. I have lived and mixed with men long enough to know that they are usually per- suaded by other things than argument, sometimes by better. ... I am merely suggesting a modus Vivendi shall we call it a truce of God? until we have all done our best against a common peril: for, as your Petition proves you to be earnest Churchmen, so I may conclude that to all of us in this room our Cathe- dral stands for a cherished monument of the Church, however differently we may interpret its history." He leaned forward in his chair, his gaze travelling from one to another with a winning smile. All the petitioners were gathered before him in the Master's library. They stood respectfully, each with his hat and staff. At first sight you might have thought he was dismissing them on a pilgrimage. Master Blanchminster sat on the Bishop's right, with Mr. Colt close behind him; Mr. Simeon at the end of the table, taking down a verbatim report in his best shorthand. 249 BROTHER COPAS " I tell you frankly," pursued the Bishop, " I come rather to appeal for concord than to discuss principles of observance. If you compel me to pronounce on the points raised, I will take evidence and endeavour to deal justly upon it: but I suggest to you that the happiness of such a Society as this is better furthered by a spirit of sweet reasonableness than by any man's insistence on his just rights/ " Fiat coelum ruat justitia," muttered Brother Copas. "But the man is right nevertheless." "Principles," said the Bishop, "are hard to dis- cuss, justice often impossible to deal. . . . 'Yes,' you may answer, ' but we are met to do this, or endeavour to do it, and not to indulge in irrelevancy.' Yet is my plea so irrelevant? . . . You are at loggerheads over certain articles of faith and discipline, when a sound arrests you in the midst of your controversy. You look up and perceive that your Cathedral totters; that it was her voice you heard appealing to you. 'Leave your antagonisms and help one another to shore me up me the witness of past generations to the Faith. Generations to come will settle some of the questions that vex you; others, maybe, the mere process of time will silently resolve. But time, which helps Them, is fast destroying us. You are not young, and my necessity is urgent. Surely, my children, you will be helping the Faith if you save its ancient walls.' I bethink me," the Bishop went on, " that we may ap- 250 RECONCILIATION ply to Merchester that fine passage of Matthew Arnold's on Oxford and her towers: 'Apparitions of a day, what is our puny warfare against the Philistines compared with the warfare which this queen of romance has been waging against them for centuries, and will wage after we are gone?'" He paused, and on an afterthought succumbed to the professional trick of improving the occasion. "It may even be that the plight of our Cathedral contains a special lesson for us of St. Hospital: '// house be divided against itself, that house cannot stand'" "Tilly vally!" muttered Brother Copas, and was feeling for his snuff-box, but recollected himself in time. "You may say that you are old men, poor men; that it is little you could help. Do not be so sure of this. I am informed, for instance, that the proceeds of our forthcoming Pageant are to be devoted to the Restoration Fund, and not (as was originally intended) to missionary purposes." Here Mr. Simeon, bending over his shorthand notes, blushed to the ears. It was he, good man, who had first thought of this, and suggested it to Mr. Colt; as it was Mr. Colt who had suggested it to the Com- mittee in the presence of reporters, and who, on its acceptance, had received the Committee's thanks. "I am further told" here the Bishop glanced around and caught the eye of the Chaplain, who in- 251 BROTHER COPAS clined his head respectfully " that a er representa- tion of the Foundation Ceremony of St. Hospital may be included among the er ' "Episodes," murmured Mr. Colt, prompting. " Eh ? yes, precisely among the Episodes. I feel sure it would make a tableau at once impressive and er entertaining in the best sense of the word. . . . So, you see, there are possibilities; but they presup- pose your willingness to sink some differences and join heartily in a common cause. . . . Or again, you may urge that to re-edify our Cathedral is none of your business as officially indeed it is none of mine, but concerns the Dean and Chapter. I put it to you that it concerns us all." Here the Bishop leaned back in his chair, on the arms of which he rested his elbows; and pressing his finger-tips together, gazed over them at his audience. "That, at any rate, is my plea; and I shall be glad, if you have a spokesman, to hear how the suggestion of a 'truce of God' presents itself to your minds." In the pause that followed Brother Copas felt himself nudged from behind. He cleared his throat and inclined himself with a grave bow. "My lord," he said, "my fellow-petitioners here have asked me to speak first to any points that may be raised. I have stipulated, however, that they hold themselves free to disavow me here in your lordship's presence, if on any point I misrepresent them." 252 RECONCILIATION The Bishop nodded encouragingly. "Well then, my lord, it is peculiarly hard to speak for them when at the outset of the inquiry you meet us with a wholly unexpected appeal ... an appeal (shall I say?) to sentiment rather than to strict reason." " I admit that." "As I admit the appeal to be a strong one. . . . But before I try to answer it, may I deal with a sen- tence or two which (pardon me) seemed less relevant than the rest ? ... If a home be divided against itself, that house cannot stand. True enough, my lord: but neither can it aspire." The Bishop lifted his eyebrows. But before he could interpose a word Brother Copas had mounted a hobby and was riding it, whip and spur. "My lord, when a Hellene built a temple he took two pillars, set them upright in the ground, and laid a third block of stone a-top of them. He might re- peat this operation a few times or a many, according to the size at which he wished to build. He might carve his pillars, and flourish them off with acanthus capitals, and run friezes along his architraves: but always in these three stones, the two uprights and the beam, the trick of it resided. And his building lasted. The pillars stood firm in solid ground, into which the weight of the cross-beam pressed them yet more firmly. The whole structure was there to endure, if not for ever, at least until some ass of a fellow came along and kicked 253 BROTHER COPAS it down to spite an old religion, because he had found a new one. . . . But this Gothic this Cathedral, for example, which it seems we must help to preserve is fashioned only to kick itself down." "It aspires." "Precisely, my lord; that is the mischief. When the Greek temple was content to repose upon natural law when the Greek builder said, 'I will build for my gods greatly yet lowlily, measuring my effort to those powers of man which at their fullest I know to be moderate, making my work harmonious with what little it is permitted to me to know' in jumps the rash Christian, saying with the men of Babel, Go to, let us build us a city and a tower whose top may reach unto heaven; or, in other words, 'Let us soar above the law of earth and take the Kingdom of Heaven by storm.' . . . With what result ? "'Sed quid Typhoeus et validus Mimas Contra sonantem Palladia aegida . . .?' The Gothic builders, like the Titans, might strain to pile Pelion on Olympus. Vis consili expers, my lord. From the moment they take down their scaffording nay, while it is yet standing the dissolution begins. All their complicated structure of weights, counter- weights, thrusts, balances, has started an internecine conflict, stone warring against stone, the whole disin- tegrating " 254 RECONCILIATION "Excuse me, Brother " Copas, my lord." " Excuse me, Brother Copas," said the Bishop with a smile, "if I do not quite see to what practical con- clusion we are tending." "There is a moral ahead, my lord. *. . . Thanks to Mr. Colt's zeal, we have all begun to aspire along our different lines, with the result that St. Hospital has become a house divided against itself. Now, if I may say it modestly, I think your lordship's sug- gestion an excellent one. We are old poor men what business have we, any longer, with aspiration ? It is time for us to cease from pushing and thrusting at each other's souls; time for us to imitate the Greek beam, and practice lying flat. ... I vote for the truce, my lord; and when the time comes, shall vote for ex- tending it." "You have so odd a way of putting it, Brother er Copas," his lordship mildly expostulated, "that I hardly recognise as mine the suggestion you are good enough to commend." Brother Copas's eye twinkled. "Ah, my lord! It has been the misfortune of my life to follow Socrates humbly as a midwife of men's ideas, and be accused of handing them back as changelings." "You consent to the truce, at any rate?" "No, no!" muttered old Warboise. 255 BROTHER COPAS Copas turned a deaf ear. "I vote for the truce," he said firmly, "provided the one condition be understood. It is the status quo ante so far as concerns us Protestants, and covers the whole field. For example, at the Sacrament we receive the elements in the form which life-long use has con- secrated for us, allowing the wafter to be given to those Brethren who prefer it. Will the Master consent to this?" Master Blanchminster was about to answer, but first (it was somewhat pitiful to see) turned to Mr. Colt. Mr. Colt bent his head in assent. " That is granted," said the Master. " Nor would we deny the use of Confession to those who find solace in it "Yes, we would," growled Brother Warboise. " provided always," pursued Copas, " that its use be not thrust upon us, nor our avoidance of it in- juriously reckoned against us." " I think," said the Master, " Brother Copas knows that on this point he may count upon an honourable understanding." " I do, Master. . . . Then there is this new business of compulsory vespers at six o'clock. We wish that compulsion removed." "Why? "snapped Mr. Colt. " You would force me to say, sir, ' Because it inter- feres with my fishing.' Well, even so, I might con- 256 RECONCILIATION fess without shame, and answer with Walton, that when I would beget content and increase confidence in the power and wisdom and providence of Almighty God I will walk the meadows by Mere, ' and there con- template the lilies that take no care, and those very many other various little living creatures that are not only created but fed (man knows not how) by the good- ness of the God of nature, and therefore trust in him/ . . . But I am speaking here rather on behalf of Brother Warboise if he will leave off nudging me in the small of the back. It happens that for a number of years Brother Warboise has daily, at this hour, paid a visit to a sick and paralysed friend " " He is not a friend," rasped out Brother Warboise. "On the contrary " "Shall we," interposed the Master, "agree to retain the service on the understanding that I am willing to hear any reasonable plea for non-attendance ? I need hardly say, my lord, that visiting the sick would rank with me before any formal observance; and," he added, with the hint of a smile which Brother Copas caught, "even to less Christian excuses I might con- ceivably be willing to listen." So, piece by piece, the truce was built up. . . . When the petitioners had thanked his lordship and withdrawn, and Mr. Simeon, having gathered up his notes, presently followed them out, the Bishop, the 257 BROTHER COPAS Master, and the Chaplain sat for half an hour talking together. The time came for Mr. Colt to take his leave, being due at a Pageant rehearsal. When he was gone the Bishop suggested a quiet stroll in the home-park, and the two old divines fared forth to take the benediction of evening, still keeping good grave converse as they paced side by side. "My dear Eustace," said the Bishop (they were friends of long standing, and in private used Christian names in place of titles), " confess, now that this busi- ness is over, it was not so bad as you feared." The Master respired the cool air with a quiet sigh. "No, Walter, it was not so bad as I feared. But hav- ing ruled all these years without question, you under- stand " "You have certainly not ruled all these years for nothing. They were honest fellows, and made it pretty plain that they loved you. It does not rankle, I hope?" "No." Master Blanchminster drew another deep breath and emitted it as if expelling the last cloudy thought of resentment. "No," he repeated; "I be- lieve I may say that it rankles no longer. They are honest fellows I am glad you perceived that." "One could read it in all of them, saving perhaps that odd fellow who acted as spokesman. Brother er Copas? . . . He lectured me straightly enough, 258 RECONCILIATION but there is always a disposition to suspect an ec- centric." " He was probably the honestest man in the room," answered Master Blanchminster with some positive- ness. " I am the more glad to hear it," said the Bishop, "because meeting a man of such patent capacity brought so low " "I assure you, he doesn't even drink or not to excess," the Master assured him. They were passing under the archway of the Porter's Lodge. "But hallo!" said the Bishop, as they emerged upon the great quadrangle, "what in the world is going on yonder?" Again, as the Master had viewed it many hundreds of times, the sunset shed its gold across the well-kept turf between long shadows cast by the chimneys of the Brethren's lodgings. As usual, in the deep shadow of the western front were gathered groups of inmates for the evening chat. But the groups had drawn to- gether into one, and were watching a child who, soli- tary upon the grass-plot, paced through a measure before them "high and disposedly." "Brayvo!" shrilled the voice of Mrs. Royle, cham- pion among viragoes. "Now, at the turn you come forward and catch your skirts back before you curt- chey!" 259 BROTHER COPAS "But what on earth does it all mean?" asked the Bishop, staring across from the archway. " It's it's Bonaday's child he's one of our Breth- ren: as I suppose, rehearsing her part for the Pageant." Corona's audience had no eyes but for the perform- ance. As she advanced to the edge of the grass-plot and dropped a final curtsey to them, their hands beat together. The clapping travelled across the dusk of the quadrangle to the two watchers, and reached them faintly, thinly, as though they listened in wonder at ghosts applauding on the far edge of Elysian fields. 260 CHAPTER XXII MR. SIMEON MAKES A CLEAN BREAST "I WON'T say you sold the pass," snarled Brother Warboise, " though I might. The fact is, there 's no trusting your cleverness. You see a chance of showing-off before the Bishop, and that's enough: off you start with a lecture on architecture (which he didn't in the least want to hear), and then, when he finds a chance to pull you up, you take the disinter- ested line and put us all in the cart." "You hit it precisely," answered Brother Copas, "as only a Protestant can. His eye is always upon his neighbour's defects, and I never cease to marvel at its adeptness. . . . Well, I do seem to owe you an apology. But I cannot agree that the Bishop was bored. To me he appeared to listen very attentively." "He affected to, while he could: for he saw that you were playing his game. His whole object being to head off our Petition while pretending to grant it, the more nonsense you talked, within limits, the bet- ter he was pleased." Brother Copas pondered a moment. "Upon my word," he chuckled, "it was some- thing of a feat to take a religious cock-pit and turn 261 BROTHER COPAS it into an Old Men's Mutual Improvement Society. Since the Wesleyans took over the Westminster Aqua- rium " You need not add insult to injury." "'Injury'? My good Warboise, a truce is not a treaty: still less is it a defeat. . . . Now look here. You are in a raging bad temper this evening, and you tell yourself it 's because the Bishop, with my artless aid, has as you express it put you in the cart. Now I am going to prove to you that the true reason is a quite different one. For why ? Because, though you may not know it, you have been in a raging bad tem- per ever since this business was broached, three months ago. Why again? I have hinted the answer more than once; and now I will put it as a question. Had Zimri peace, who slew His Master?" "I do not understand." " Oh, yes, you do! You are in a raging bad temper, being at heart more decent than any of your silly con- victions, because you have wounded for their sake the eminent Christian gentleman now coming towards us along the river-path. He has been escorting the Bishop for some distance on his homeward way, and has just parted from him. I '11 wager that he meets us without a touch of resentment. . . . Ah, Brother, you have cause to be full of wrath!" Sure enough the Master, approaching and recognis- ing the pair, hailed them gaily. 262 MR. SIMEON MAKES A CLEAN BREAST "Eh? Brother Copas Brother Warboise a fine evening! But the swallows will be leaving us in a week or two." For a moment it seemed he would pass on, with no more than the usual nod and fatherly smile. He had indeed taken a step or two past them as they stood aside for him in the narrow path: but on a sudden thought he halted and turned about. "By the way that sick friend of yours, Brother Warboise. ... I was intending to ask about him. Paralysed, I think you said? Do I know him?" " He is not my friend," answered Brother Warboise gruffly. " His name is Weekes," said Brother Copas, answer- ing the Master's puzzled look. "He was a master- printer in his time, an able fellow, but addicted to drink and improvident. His downfall assisted that of Brother Warboise's stationery business, and Brother Warboise has never forgiven him." "Dear, dear!" Master Blanchminster passed a hand over his brow. " But if that's so, I don't see " It 's a curious story," said Brother Copas, smiling. " It 's one you have no right to meddle with, any way," growled Brother Warboise; "and, what 's more, you can't know anything about it." " It came to me through the child Corona," pursued Brother Copas imperturbably. "You took her to Weekes's house to tea one afternoon, and she had 263 BROTHER COPAS it from Weekes's wife. It 's astonishing how these women will talk." "I 've known some men too, for that matter " " It 's useless for you to keep interrupting. The Master has asked for information, and I am going to tell him the story that is, sir, if you can spare a few minutes to hear it." "You are sure it will take but a few minutes?" asked Master Blanchminster doubtfully. "Eh, Master?" Brother Copas laughed. "Did you, too, find me somewhat prolix this afternoon?" "Well, you shall tell me the story. But since it is not good for us to be standing here among the river damps, I suggest that you turn back with me towards St. Hospital, and where the path widens so that we can walk three abreast you shall begin." "With your leave, Master, I would be excused," said Brother Warboise. " Oh, no, you won't," Brother Copas assured him. " For unless you come too, I promise to leave out all the discreditable part of the story and paint you with a halo. ... It began, sir, in this way," he took up the tale as they reached the wider path, "when the man Weekes fell under a paralytic stroke, Warboise took occasion to call on him. Perhaps, Brother, you will tell us why?" " I saw in his seizure the visitation of God's wrath," said Warboise. "The man had done me a notorious 264 MR. SIMEON MAKES A CLEAN BREAST wrong. He had been a swindler, and my business was destroyed through him." " Mrs. Weeks said that even the sight of the wretch's affliction did not hinder our Brother from denouncing him. He sat down in a chair facing the paralytic, and talked of the debt: 'which now/ said he, 'you will never be able to pay.' . . . Nay, Master, there is better to come. When Brother Warboise got up to take his leave, the man's lips moved, and he tried to say something. His wife listened for some time, and then reported, ' He wants you to come again.' Brother Warboise wondered at this; but he called again next day. WTiereupon the pleasure in the man's face so irritated him, that he sat down again and began to talk of the debt and God's judgment, in words more op- probrious than before. . . . His own affairs, just then, were going from bad to worse: and in short he found so much relief in bullying the author of his misfortunes, who could not answer back, that the call became a daily one. As for the woman, she endured it, seeing that in some mysterious way it did her husband good.' " There was nothing mysterious about it," objected Brother Warboise. "He knew himself a sinner, and desired to pay some of his penance before meeting his God." "I don't believe it," said Copas. "But whether you 're right or wrong, it doesn't affect the story much. ... At length some friends extricated our Brother 265 BROTHER COPAS from his stationery business, and got him admitted to the Blanchminster Charity. The first afternoon he paid a visit in his black gown, the sick man's face so lit up at the sight that Warboise flew into a passion did you not, Brother?" "Did the child tell you all this?" "Aye: from the woman's lips." "I was annoyed, because all of a sudden it struck me that, in revenge for my straight talk, Weekes had been wanting me to call day by day that he might watch me going downhill; and that now he was gloat- ing to see me reduced to a Blanchminster gown. So I said, 'You blackguard, you may look your fill, and carry the recollection of it to the Throne of Judgment, where I hope it may help you. But this is your last sight of me.'" "Quite correct," nodded Copas. "Mrs. Weekes corroborates. . . . Well, Master, our Brother trudged back to St. Hospital with this resolve, and for a week paid no more visits to the sick. By the end of that time he had discovered, to his surprise, that he could not do without them that somehow Weekes had be- come as necessary to him as he to Weekes." "How did you find that out?" asked Brother War- boise sharply. "Easily enough, as the child told the story. . . . At any rate, you went. At the door of the house you met Mrs. Weekes. She had put on her bonnet, and 266 MR. SIMEON MAKES A CLEAN BREAST was coming that very afternoon to beseech your re- turn. You have called daily ever since to talk about your debt, though the Statute of Limitations has closed it for years. . . . That, Master, is the story." "You have told it fairly enough," said Warboise. " Now, since the Master knows it, I 'd be glad to be told if that man is my friend or my enemy. Upon my word I don't rightly know, and if he knows he '11 never find speech to tell me. Sometimes I think he 's both." " I am not sure that one differs very much from the other, in the long run," said Copas. But the Master, who had been musing, turned to Warboise with a quick smile. " Surely," he said, " there is one easy way of choos- ing. Take the poor fellow some little gift. If you will accept it for him, I shall be happy to contribute now and then some grapes or a bottle of wine or other small comforts." He paused, and added with another smile, still more penetrating "You need not give up talking of the debt, you know!" By this time they had reached the gateway of his lodging, and he gave them a fatherly good night just as a child's laugh reached them through the dusk at the end of the roadway. It was Corona, returning from rehearsal; and the Chaplain the redoubtable 267 BROTHER COPAS William the Conqueror was her escort. The two had made friends on their homeward way, and were talking gaily. "Why, here is Uncle Copas!" called Corona, and ran to him. Mr. Colt relinquished his charge with a wave of the hand. His manner showed that he accepted the new truce de bon casur. "Is it peace, you two?" he called, as he went past. Brother Warboise growled. What hast thou to do with peace ? Get thee behind me, the growl seemed to suggest. At all events, it suggested this answer to Brother Copas " If you and Jehu the son of Nimshi start exchang- ing rdles," he chuckled, "where will Weekes come in?" Master Blanchrninster let himself in with his latch- key, and went up the stairs to his library. On the way he meditated on the story to which he had just listened, and the words that haunted his mind were Wordsworth's "Alas! the gratitude of men Hath oftener left me mourning." A solitary light burned in the library the electric lamp on his table beside the fire-place. It had a 268 MR. SIMEON MAKES A CLEAN BREAST green shade, and for a second or two the Master did not perceive that some one stood a pace or two from it in the penumbra. "Master!" "Hey!" with a start "Is it Simeon? ... My good Simeon, you made me jump. What brings you back here at this hour? You 've forgotten some paper, I suppose." "No, Master." "What then?" By the faint greenish light the Master missed to observe that Mr. Simeon's face was deadly pale. "Master, I have come to make confession to throw myself on your mercy! For a long time for a year almost I have been living dishonestly. . . . Master, do you believe in miracles?" For a moment there was no answer. Master Blanchminster walked back to an electric button be- side the door, and turned on more light with a finger that trembled slightly. "If you have been living dishonestly, Simeon, I certainly shall believe in miracles." " But I mean real miracles, Master." "You are agitated, Simeon. Take a seat and tell me your trouble in your own way beginning, if you please, with the miracle." " It was that which brought me. Until it happened I could not find courage ' 269 BROTHER COPAS Mr. Simeon's eyes wandered to this side and that, as though they still sought a last chance of escape. "The facts, if you please?" The Master's voice had of a sudden become cold, even stern. He flung the words much as one dashes a cupful of water in the face of an hysterical woman. They brought Mr. Simeon to himself. His gaze shivered and fixed itself on the Master's, as in a com- pass-box you may see the needle tremble to magnetic north. He gripped the arms of his chair, caught his voice, and went on desperately. "This afternoon it was. . . . On my way here I went around, as I go daily, by the Cathedral, to hear if the workmen have found any fresh defects. . . . They had opened a new pit by the south-east corner, a few yards from the first, and as I came by one of the men was levering away with a crowbar at a large stone not far below the surface. I waited while he worked it loose, and then, lifting it with both hands, he flung it on to the edge of the pit. . . . By the shape we knew it at once for an old grave-stone that, falling down long ago, had somehow sunk and been covered by the turf. There was lettering, too, upon the undermost side when the man turned it over. He scraped the earth away with the flat of his hands, and together we made out what was written." Mr. Simeon fumbled in his waistcoat pocket, drew forth a scrap of paper, and handed it to the Master. 270 MR. SIMEON MAKES A CLEAN BREAST "I copied it down then and there: no, not at once. At first I looked up, afraid to see the whole building falling, falling upon me " The Master did not hear. He had unfolded the paper. Adjusting his spectacles, he read, God have Mercy on the Soul of Giles Tonkin. Obiit. Dec. 17th, 1643. No man can serve two masters. "A strange text for a tombstone," he commented. "And the date 1643? That is the year when our city surrendered in the Parliament wars. . . . Who knows but this may have marked the grave of a man shot because he hesitated too long in taking sides ... or perchance in his flurry he took both, and tried to serve two masters." " Master, I am that man. ... Do not look at me so! I mean that, whether he knew it or not, he died to save me ... that his stone has risen up for witness, driving me to you. Ah, do not weaken me, now that I am here to confess!" And leaning forward, his elbows on his knees, his hands spread to hide his face, Mr. Simeon blurted out his confession. When he had ended there was silence in the room for a space. "Tarbolt!" murmured the Master, just audibly and no more. "If it had been anyone but Tarbolt!" There was another silence, broken only by one slow sob. 271 BROTHER COPAS "For either he will hate the one and love the other; or else he will hold to the one and despise the other. . . . Simeon, which was I?" Mr. Simeon forced himself to look up. Tears were in his eyes, but they shone. "Master, can you doubt?" " I am sorry to appear brutal," said Master Blanch- minster, coldly and wearily, "but my experiences to- day have been somewhat trying for an old man. May I ask if, on taking your resolution to confess, you came straight to me; or if, receiving just dismissal from my service, you yet hold Canon Tarbolt in reserve?" Mr. Simeon stood up. " I have behaved so badly to you, sir, that you have a right to ask it. But as a fact I went to Canon Tar- bolt first, and said I could no longer work for him." "Sit down, please. . . . How many children have you, Mr. Simeon?" "Seven, sir. . . . The seventh arrived a fortnight ago yesterday fortnight, to be precise. A fine boy, I am happy to say." He looked up pitifully. The Master stood above him, smiling down; and while the Master's stature seemed to have taken some additional inches, his smile seemed to irradiate the room. " Simeon, I begin to think it high time I raised your salary." 272 CHAPTER XXIII CORONA'S BIRTHDAY THE May-fly season had come around again, and Corona was spending her Saturday the Greycoats' holiday with Brother Copas by the banks of Mere. They had brought their frugal luncheon in the creel which was to contain the trout Brother Copas hoped to catch. He hoped to catch a brace at least one for his sick friend at home, the other to replenish his own empty cupboard: for this excursion meant his missing to attend at the kitchen and receive his daily dole. There may have been thunder in the air. At any rate the fish refused to feed; and after an hour's patient waiting for sign of a rise without which his angling would be but idle pains Brother Copas found a seat, and pulled out a book from his pocket, while Corona wandered over the meadows in search of larks' nests. But this again was pains thrown away; since, as Brother Copas afterwards explained, in the first place the buttercups hid them, and secondly the nests were not there! the birds preferring the high chalky downs for their nurseries. She knew, 273 BROTHER COPAS however, that along the ditches where the willows grew, and the alder clumps, there must be scores of warblers and other late-breeding birds; for walking here in the winter she had marvelled at the number of nests laid bare by the fall ng leaves. These war- blers wait for the leaves to conceal their building, and Winter may an it will betray the deserted hiding-place. So Brother Copas had told her, to himself repeating "Cras amorum copulatrix inter umbras arborum Inplicat gazas virentes de flagello myrteo. ..." Corona found five of these nests, and studied them: flimsy things, constructed of a few dried grasses, in- woven with horsehair and cobwebs. Before next spring the rains would dissolve them and they would disappear. She returned with a huge posy of wild flowers and the information that she, for her part, felt hungry as a hunter. . . . They disposed themselves to eat. " Do you know, Uncle Copas," she asked suddenly, "why I have dragged you out here to-day?" "Did I show myself so reluctant?" he protested; but she paid no heed to this. " It is because I came home here to England, to St. Hospital, just a year ago this very afternoon. This is my Thanksgiving Day," added Corona solemnly. "I am afraid there is no turkey in the hamper," said Brother Copas, pretending to search. " We must 274 CORONA'S BIRTHDAY console ourselves by reflecting that the bird is out of season." " You didn't remember the date, Uncle Copas. Did you, now?" " I did, though." Brother Copas gazed at the run- ning water for a space and then turned to her with a quick smile. " Why, child, of course I did ! . . . And I appreciate the honour." Corona nodded as she broke off a piece of crust and munched it. " I wanted to take stock of it all. (We 're dining out of doors, so please let me talk with my mouth full. I 'm learning to eat slowly, like a good English girl: only it takes so much time when there 's a lot to say.) Well, I 've had a good time, and nobody can take that away, thank the Lord! It it 's been just heavenly." " A good time for all of us, little maid." " Honest Indian ? . . . But it can't last, you know. That 's what we have to consider: and it mayn't be a gay thought, but I 'd hate to be one of those folks that never see what 's over the next fence. ... Of course," said Corona pensively, " It 's up to you to tell me I dropped in on St. Hospital like one of Solomon's lilies that take no thought for to-morrow. But I didn't, really: for I always knew this was going to be the time of my life." "I don't understand," said Copas. "Why should it not last?" 275 BROTHER COPAS " I guess you and I '11 have to be serious," she an- swered. "Daddy gets frailer and frailer. . . . You can't hide from me that you know it: and please don't try, for I 've to think of of the afterwards, and I want you to help." "But suppose that I have been thinking about it already thinking about it hard ? " said Brother Copas slowly. " Ah, child, leave it to me, and never talk like that!" "But why?" she asked, wondering. "Because we old folks cannot bear to hear a child talking, like one of ourselves, of troubles. That has been our business: we 've seen it through; and now our best happiness lies in looking back on the young, and looking forward for them, and keeping them young and happy so long as the gods allow. . . . Never search out ways of rewarding us. To see you just going about with a light heart is a better reward than ever you could contrive for us by study. Child, if the gods allowed, I would keep you always like Master Walton's milkmaid, that had not yet attained so much age and wisdom as to load her mind with any fears of many things that will never be, as too many men too often do. But she cast away care " I think she must have been a pretty silly sort of milkmaid," said Corona. " Likely she ended to slow music while the cows came home. But what wor- ries me is that I 'm young and don't see any way to 276 CORONA'S BIRTHDAY hurry things. Miss Champernowne won't let me join the Cookery class because I 'm under the age for it: and I see she talks sense in her way. Even if I learnt cookery and let down my skirts, who 's going to en- gage me for a cook-general at my time of life?" "Nobody, please God," answered Brother Copas, copying her seriousness. " Did I not tell you I have been thinking about all this? If you must know, I have talked it over with the Master . . . and the long and short of it is that, if or when the time should come, I can step in and make a claim for you as your only known guardian. My dear child, St. Hospital will not let you go." For a moment Corona tried to speak, but could not. She sat with her palms laid on her lap, and stared at the blurred outline of the chalk-hills blurred by the mist in her eyes. Two great tears welled and splashed down on the back of her hand. "The years and years," she murmured, "before I can begin to pay it back!" "Nay" Brother Copas set down his half-filled glass, took the hand and gently wiped it with the sleeve of his frayed gown; and so held it, smoothing it while he spoke, as though the tear had hurt it " it is we who are repaying you. Shall I tell you what I told the Master ? ' Master/ I said, ' all we Brethren, ever since I can remember, have been wearing gowns as more or less conscious humbugs. Christ taught that poverty 277 BROTHER COPAS was noble, and such a gospel might be accepted by the East. It might persevere along the Mediterranean coast, and survive what St. Paul did to Christianity to make Christianity popular. It might reach Italy and flame up in a crazed good soul like the soul of St. Francis. It might creep along as a pious opinion, and even reach England, to be acknowledged on a king's or a rowdy's deathbed and Alberic de Blanchmin- ster/ said I, ' (saving your presence, sir) was a rowdy robber who, being afraid when it came to dying, caught at the Christian precept he has most neglected as be- ing therefore in all probability the decentest. But no Englishman, not being on his deathbed, ever believed it: and we knew better until this child came along and taught us. The Brethren's livery has always been popular enough in the streets of Merchester: but she she taught us (God bless her) that it can be honoured for its own sake; that it is noble and, best of all, that its noblesse oblige' . . . Ah, little maid, you do not guess your strength!" Corona understood very little of all this. But she understood that Uncle Copas loved her, and was utter- ing these whimsies to cover up the love he revealed. She did better than answer him in words: she nestled to his shoulder, rubbing her cheek softly against the threadbare gown "When is your birthday, little one?" "I don't know," Corona confessed. "Mother 278 CORONA'S BIRTHDAY never would tell me. She would get angry about birthdays, and say she never took any truck with them. . . . But of course everyone ought to have a birthday, of sorts, and so I call this my real one. But I never told you that did I?" " I heard you say once that you left a little girl be- hind you somewhere in the States, but that you only came to yourself the day you reached England." "Yes; and I do feel sorry for that other little girl sometimes!" " You need not. She '11 grow up to be an American woman: and the American woman, as everybody knows, has all the fun of the fair. . . . To-day is your birthday, then; and see! I have brought along a bottle of claret, to drink your health. It isn't as the Irish butler said the best claret, but it 's the best we 've got. Your good health, Miss Corona, and many happy returns!" "Which," responded Corona, lifting her cupful of milk, " I looks towards you and I likewise bows. . . . Would you, by the way, very much object if I fetched Timothy out of the basket ? He gets so few pleasures/ For the rest of the meal, by the clear-running river, they talked sheer delightful nonsense. . . . When^ (as Brother Copas expressed it) they had "put from themselves the desire of meat and drink," he lit a pipe and smoked tranquilly, still now and again, however, sipping absent-mindedly at his thin claret. 279 BROTHER COPAS " But you are not to drink more than half a bottle," Corona commanded. " The rest we must carry home for supper." " So poor a vintage as this, once opened, will hardly bear the journey," he protested. " But what are you saying about supper?" " ^Tiy, you wouldn't leave poor old Daddy quite out of the birthday, I hope! . . . There 's to be a supper to-night. Branny 's coming." "Am I to take this for an invitation?" " Of course you are. . . . There will be speeches." "The dickens is, there won't be any trout at this rate!" " They '11 be rising before evening," said Corona confidently. "And, anyway, we can't hurry them." From far up stream, where the grey mass of the Cathedral blocked the vale, a faint tapping sound reached them, borne on " the cessile air." It came from the Pageant Ground, where workmen were ham- mering busily at the Grand Stand. It set them talking of the Pageant, of Corona's " May Queen" dress, of the lines (or, to be accurate, the line and a half) she had to speak. This led to her repeating some verses she had learnt at the Greycoats' School. They began "I sing of brooks, of blossoms, birds, and bowers." And Corona was crazy over them, because (as she put it) " they made you feel you were smelling all Eng- 280 CORONA'S BIRTHDAY land out of a bottle." Brother Copas told her of the man who had written them; and of a lovelier poem he had written To Meadows "Ye have been fresh and green, Ye have been filled with flowers, And ye the walks have been Where maids have spent their hours. "You have beheld how they With wicker arks did come. To kiss and bear away The richer cowslips home. . . . "But now we see none here " He broke off. "Ah, there he gets at the pang of it! Other poets have wasted pity on the dead-and-gone-maids, but his is for the fields they leave desolate." This puzzled Corona. But the poem had touched her somehow, and she kept repeating snatches of it to herself as she rambled off in search of more birds' nests. Left to himself, Brother Copas pulled out book and pencil again, and began botching at the last lines of the Pervigilium Veneris "Her favour it was filled the sail of the Trojan for Latium bound; Her favour that won her sEneas a bride on Laurentian ground; 281 BROTHER COPAS And anon from the cloister her wit wooed the Vestal, the Vir- gin, to Mars, As her wit by the wild Sabine rape recreated her Rome for its wars With the Ramnes, Quirites, together ancestrally proud as they drew From Romulus down to our Ccesar last, best of that bone and that thew. Now learn ye to love who loved never now ye who have loved, love anew!" Brother Copas paused to trim his pencil, which was blunt. His gaze wandered across the water-meadows and overtook Corona, who was wading deep in butter- cups. "Proserpine on the fields of Enna!" he muttered, and resumed "Love planteth a field; it conceives to the passion, the pang, of his joy. In afield was Dione in labour delivered of Cupid the Boy: And the field in its fostering lap from her travail receiv'd him: he drew Mother's milk from the delicate kisses of flowers; and he prospered and grew. Now learn ye to love who loved never now ye who have loved, love anew!" "Why do I translate this stuff? Why, but for the sake of a child who will never see it who, if she read it, would not understand a word?" 282 CORONA'S BIRTHDAY "I/o/ Behold ye the bulls, with how lordly a flank they be- sprawl on the broom! Yet obey the uxorious yoke and are tamed by Dione her doom. Or behear ye the sheep, to the husbanding rams how they bleat to the shade! Or behear ye the birds, at the Goddess 1 command how they sing unafraid! Be it harsh as the swannery's clamour that shatters the hush of the lake; Be it dulcet as where Philomela holds darkling the poplar awake, So melting her soul into music, you 'd vow 'twas her pas- sion, her own, She chanteth her sister forgot, with the Daulian crime long-agone. Hush! Hark! Draw around to the circle. . . . Ah, loiter- ing Summer, say when For me shall be broken the charm, that I chirp with the swallow again? I am old: I am dumb: I have waited to sing till Apollo withdrew. So Amycla-. a moment was mute, and for ever a wilderness qrew. Now learn ye to love who loved never now ye who have loved, love anew!" " Perdidi musam tacendo," murmured Brother Co- pas, gazing afield. " Only the young can speak to the young. . . . God grant that, at the right time, the 283 BROTHER COPAS right Prince may come to her over the meadows, and discourse honest music!" Splash! He sprang up and snatched at his rod. A two- pound trout had risen almost under his nose. 284 CHAPTER XXIV FINIS CORONAT OPUS THE great day dawned at last: the day to which all Merchester had looked forward for months, for which so many hundreds had been working, on which all must now pin their hopes: the opening day of Pageant Week. I suppose that never in Merchester's long history had her citizens so frequently or so nervously studied their weather-glasses. "Tarbolt, of all people!" murmured Brother Copas one afternoon in the Venables Free Library. He had just met the Canon coming down the stairs, and turned to watch the retreating figure to the door- way. " I am suffering from a severe shock," he announced five minutes later to Mr. Simeon, whom he found at work in Paradise. " Did you ever know your friend Tarbolt patronise this institution before?" "Never," answered Mr. Simeon, flushing. " Well, I met him on the stairs just now. For a moment I knew not which alternative to choose 285 BROTHER COPAS whether your desertion had driven him to the extreme course of reading a book or two for himself, or he had come desperately in search of you to promise that if you returned all should be forgiven. . . . No, you need not look alarmed. He came in search of a newspaper." "But there are no newspapers in the Library." "Quite so: he has just made that discovery. Thereupon, since an animal of that breed cannot go anywhere without leaving his scent behind him, he has scrawled himself over half a page of the Sugges- tion Book. He wants this Library to take in the Times newspaper, 'if only for the sake of its foreign corre- spondence and its admirable weather-charts.' Signed, 'J. Tarbolt/ What part is the humbug sustaining, that so depends on the weather?" "He takes Bishop Henry of Blois in the Fourth Episode. He wears a suit of complete armour, and you cannot conceive how much it it improves him. I helped him to try it on the other day," Mr. Simeon explained with a smile. "Maybe," suggested Brother Copas, "he fears the effect of rain upon his 'h's.'" But the glass held steady, and the great day dawned without a cloud. Good citizens of Merchester, aris- ing early to scan the sky, were surprised to find their next-door neighbours already abroad, and in consulta- 286 FINIS CORONAT OPUS tion with neighbours opposite over strings of flags to be suspended across the roadway. Mr. Simeon, for example, peeping out, with an old dressing-gown cast over his nightshirt, was astounded to find Mr. Magor, the contiguous pork-seller, thus engaged with Mr. Sillifant, the cheap fruiterer across the way. He had accustomed himself to think of them as careless citizens and uncultured, and their unexpected patriotism gave him perhaps less of a shock than the discovery that they must have been moving faster than he with the times, for they both wore pajamas. They were kind to him, however: and, lifting no eyebrow over his antiquated night-attire, consulted him cheerfully over a string of flags which (as it turned out) Mr. Magor had paid yesterday a visit to South- ampton expressly to borrow. I mention this because it was a foretaste, and signi- ficant, of the general enthusiasm. At ten in the morning Fritz, head waiter of that fine old English coaching house, " The Mitre," looked out from the portico where he stood surrounded by sporting prints, and announced to the young lady in the bar that the excursion trains must be "bringing them in hundreds." By eleven o'clock the High Street was packed with crowds that whiled away their time staring at the flags and decorations. But it was not until 1 p.m. that there began to flow, always towards the Pageant 287 BROTHER COPAS Ground, a stream by which that week, among the in- habitants of Merchester, will always be best remem- bered; a stream of folk in strange dresses knights in armour, ladies in flounces and ruffs, ancient Britons, greaved Roman legionaries, monks, cavaliers, Geor- gian beaux and dames. It appeared as if all the dead generations of Mer- chester had arisen from their tombs and reclaimed possession of her streets. They shared it, however, with throngs of modern folk, in summer attire, hurry- ing from early luncheons to the spectacle. In the roadway near the Pageant Ground crusaders and nuns jostled amid motors and cabs of commerce. For an hour this mad medley poured through the streets of Merchester. Come with them to the Pa- geant Ground, where all is arranged now and ready, waiting the signal! Punctually at half-past two, from his box on the roof of the Grand Stand, Mr. Isidore gave the signal for which the orchestra waited. With a loud out- burst of horns and trumpets and a deep rolling of drums the overture began. It was the work of a young musician, ambitious to seize his opportunity. After stating its theme largely, simply, in sixteen strong chords, it broke into variations in which the audience for a few moments might read nothing but cacophonous noise, until a gateway opened 288 FINIS CORONAT OPUS in the old wall, and through it a band of white-robed Druids came streaming towards the stone altar which stood the sole stage "property" in the centre of the green area. Behind them trooped a mob of skin- clothed savages, yelling as they dragged a woman to the sacrifice. It was these yells that the music inter- preted. The Pageant had opened, and was chanting in high wild notes to its own prelude. Almost before the spectators realised this, the Arch-Druid had mounted his altar. He held a knife to the victim's throat. But meanwhile the low beat of a march had crept into the music, and was asserting itself more and more insistently beneath the discon- nected outcries. It seemed to grow out of distance, to draw nearer and nearer, as it were the tramp of an armed host. ... It was the tramp of a host. . . . As the Arch-Druid, holding his knife aloft, dragged back the woman's head to lay her throat the barer, all turned to a sudden crash of cymbals; and, to the stern marching-tune now silencing all clamours, the ad- vance-guard of Vespasian swung in through the gate- way. . . . So for an hour Saxon followed Roman, Dane fol- lowed Saxon, Norman followed both. Alfred, Canute, William all controlled (as Brother Copas cynically remarked to Brother Warboise, watching through the palings from the allotted patch of sward which served them for green-room) by one small Jew, per- 289 BROTHER COPAS spiring on the roof and bawling orders here, there, everywhere, through a gigantic megaphone; bawling them in a lingua franca to which these mighty puppets moved obediently, weaving English history as upon a tapestry swiftly, continuously unrolled. "Which things," quoted Copas mischievously, "are an alle- gory, Philip." To the waiting performers it seemed incredible that to the audience, packed by thousands in the Grand Stand, this scolding strident voice immediately above their heads should be inaudible. Yet it was. All those eyes beheld, all those ears heard, the puppets as they postured and declaimed. The loud little man on the roof they saw not nor heard. " Which things again are an allegory," said Brother Copas. The Brethren of St. Hospital had no Episode of their own. But from the time of the Conquest down- ward they had constantly to take part in the moving scenes as members of the crowd, and the spectators constantly hailed their entry. " Our coat of poverty is the wear to last, after all," said Copas, regaining the green-room and mopping his brow. " We have just seen out the Plantagenets." In this humble way, when the time came he looked on at the Episode of Henry the Eighth's visit to Mer- chester, and listened to the blank verse which he him- self had written. The Pageant Committee had ruled 290 FINIS CORONAT OPUS out the Reformation, but he had slyly introduced a hint of it. The scene consisted mainly of revels, dances, tournays, amid which a singing man had chanted, in a beautiful tenor, Henry's own song of Pastime with good Companye. "Pastime with good Companye, I love and shall until I die: Grudge who lust, but none deny, So God be pleased, thus live will I. For my pastance, Hunt, sing and dance, My heart is set. All goodly sport For my comfdrt Who shall me let?" With its chorus "For Idleness Is chief mistress Of vices all. Then who can say But mirth and play Is best of all?" As to the tune of it their revels ended, Henry and Catherine of Aragon and Charles the Emperor passed from the sunlit stage, one solitary figure the blind Bishop of Merchester lingered, and stretched out his hands for the monks to come and lead him home, stretched out his hands towards the Cathedral behind the green elms. 291 BROTHER COPAS "Being blind, I trust the light. Ah, Mother Church! If fire must purify, If tribulation search thee, shall I plead Not in my time, Lord ' Nay let me know All dark, yet trust the dawn remembering The order of thy services, thy sweet songs, Thy decent ministrations Levite, priest And sacrifice those antepasts of heaven. We have sinn'd, we have sinn'd! But never yet went out The flame upon the altar, day or night; And it shall save thee, O Jerusalem! Jerusalem!" "And I stole that straight out of Jeremy Taylor," murmured Brother Copas, as the monks led off their Bishop, chanting "Crux in caelo lux superna, Sis in carnis hoc taberna Mihi pedibus lucerna "Quo vexillum Dux cohortis Sistet, super flumen mortis, Te, flammantibus in portis!" -" while I wrote that dog-Latin myself," said Brother Copas, musing, forgetful that he, the author, was lingering on the stage from which he ought to have removed himself three minutes ago with the rest of the crowd. 292 FINIS CORONAT OPUS "Ger' out! Get off, zat olt fool! What ze devil you mean by doddling!" It was the voice of Mr. Isidore screeching upon him through the megaphone. Brother Copas turned about, uplifting his face to it for a moment with a dazed stare. ... It seemed that, this time, every one in the Grand Stand must have heard. He fled: he made the most ignominious exit in the whole Pageant. The afternoon heat was broiling. ... He had no sooner gained the green-room shade of his elm than the whole of the Brethren were summoned forth anew; this time to assist at the spousals of Queen Mary of England with King Philip of Spain. And this Episode (Number VII on the programme) was Corona's. He had meant and again he cursed his forgetful- ness to seek her out at the last moment and whisper a word of encouragement. The child must needs be nervous. . . . He had missed his chance now. He followed the troop of Brethren back into the arena and dressed rank with the others, salaaming as the mock poten- tates entered, uttering stage cheers, while inwardly groaning in spirit. His eye kept an anxious sidewise watch on the gateway by which Corona must tmake her entrance. She came. But before her, leading the way, strew- ing flowers, came score upon score of children in regiments of colour pale blue, pale yellow, green, 293 BROTHER COPAS rose, heliotrope. They conducted her to the May Queen's throne, hung it with wreaths, and having paid their homage, ranged off, regiment by regiment, to take their station for the dance. And she, mean- while ? ... If she were nervous, no sign of it betrayed her. She walked to her throne with the air of a small queen. . . . Vera incessu patuit Corona; walked, too, without airs or minaudcries, unconscious of all but the solemn glory. This was the pageant of her be- loved England, and hers for the moment was this proud part in it. Brother Copas brushed his eyes. In his ears buzzed the verse of a psalm She shall be brought unto the King in raiment of needle-work: the virgins that be her fellows shall bear her company . . . The orchestra struck up a quick-tripping minuet. The regiments advanced on curving lines. They interwove their ranks, making rainbows of colour; they rayed out in broadening bands of colour from Corona's footstool. Through a dozen of these evolu- tions she sat, and took all the homage imperially. It was not given to her, but to the idea for which she was enthroned; and sitting, she nursed the idea in her heart. The dance over and twice or thrice as it proceeded the front of the Grand Stand shook with the clapping 294 FINIS CORONAT OPUS of thousands of hands, all agitated together as when a wind passes over a wheatfield. Corona had to arise from her throne, a wreath in either hand, and deliver a speech before Queen Mary. The length of it was just a line and three quarters "Lady, accept these perishable flowers. Queen May brings to Queen Mary. . . ." She spoke them in a high, clear voice, and all the Grand Stand renewed its clapping as the child did obeisance. "First-class!" grunted Brother Warboise at Co- pas's elbow. "Pity old Bonaday couldn't be here to see the girl!" "Aye," said Copas; but there was that in his throat which forbade his saying more. So the Pageant went on unfolding its scenes. Some of them were merely silly; all of them were false to fact, of course, and a few even false to sentiment. No entry, for example, received a heartier round of British applause than did Nell Gwynn's (Episode IX). Tears actually sprang to many eyes when an orange- girl in the crowd pushed forward offering her wares, and Nell with a gay laugh bought fruit of her, an- nouncing " / was an orange-girl once ! " Brother Copas snorted, and snorted again more loudly when Preben- 295 BROTHER COPAS dary Ken refused to admit the naughty ex-orange-girl within his episcopal gates. For the audience applauded the protest almost as effusively, and again clapped like mad when the Merry Monarch took the rebuke like a sportsman, promising that " the next Bishopric that falls vacant shall be at this good old man's disposal!" Indeed, much of the Pageant was extremely silly. Yet, as it progressed, Brother Copas was not alone in feeling his heart lift with the total effect of it. Here, after all, thousands of people were met in a com- mon pride of England and her history. Distort it as the performers might, and vain, inadequate, as might be the words they declaimed, an idea lay behind it all. These thousands of people were met for a purpose in itself ennobling because unselfish. As often happens on such occasions, the rite took possession of them, seizing on them, surprising them with a sudden glow about the heart, sudden tears in the eyes. This was history of a sort. Towards the close, when the elm shadows began to stretch across the green stage, even careless spectators began to catch this infection of nobility this feeling that we are indeed greater than we know. In the last act all the characters from early Briton to Georgian dame trooped together into the arena. In groups marshalled at haphazard they chanted with full hearts the final hymn, and the audience unbidden joined in chorus 296 FINIS CORONAT OPUS "O God! our help in ages past, Our hope for years to come, Our shelter from the stormy blast And our eternal home!" "Where is the child?" asked Brother Copas, glanc- ing through the throng. He found her in the thick of the press, unable to see anything for the crowd about her, and led her off to a corner where, by the southern end of the Grand Stand, some twenty Brethren of St. Hospital stood shouting in company "A thousand evenings in Thy sight Are like an evening gone, Short as the watch that ends the night Before the rising sun." "She can't see. Lift her higher!" sang out a voice Brother Royle's. By happy chance at the edge of the group stood tall, good-natured Alderman Chope who had impersonated Alfred the Great. The Brethren begged his shield from him, and mounted Corona upon it, all holding it by its rim while they chanted "The busy tribes of flesh and blood, With all their hopes and fears, Are carried downward by the flood And lost in following years. 297 BROTHER COPAS "Time, like an ever-rolling stream, Bears all its sons away; They fly forgotten, as a dream Dies at the opening day. "O God! our help in ages past, Our hope for years to come; Be Thou our guard while troubles last And our perpetual home!" Corona lifted her voice and sang with the old men; while among the excited groups the swallows skimmed boldly over the meadow, as they had skimmed every summer's evening since English History began. 298 CONCLUSION BROTHER COPAS walked homeward along the river- path, his gaunt hands gathering his Beauchamp robe behind him for convenience of stride. Ahead of him and around him the swallows circleted over the water- meads or swooped their breasts close to the current of Mere. Beside him strode his shadow, and lengthened as the sun westered in a haze of potable gold. In the haze swam evening odours of mints, grasses, herbs of grace and virtue named in old pharmacopoeias as most medicinal for man, now forgotten, if not nameless. The sunset breathed benediction. To many who walked homeward that evening it seemed in that benediction to enwrap the centuries of history they had so feverishly been celebrating, and to fold them softly away as a garment. But Brother Copas heeded it not. He was eager to reach St. Hospital and carry report to his old friend. "Upon my word, it was an entire success. ... I have criticised the Bambergers enough to have earned a right to admit it. In the end a sort of sacred fury took hold of the whole crowd, and in the midst of it we held her up Corona on a shield " 299 BROTHER COPAS Brother Bonaday lay panting. He had struggled through an attack sharper than any previous one so much sharper that he knew the end to be not far distant, and only asked for the next to be swift. " And she was just splendid," said Brother Copas. " She had that unconscious way of stepping out of the past, with a crown on her head. My God, old friend, if I had that child for a daughter " Brother Bonaday lay and panted, not seeming to hear, still with his eyes upturned to the ceiling of his narrow cell. They scanned it as if feebly groping a passage through. "I ought to have told you," he muttered "More than once I meant tried to tell you." "Hey?" Brother Copas bent lower. "She Corona never was my child. . . . Give me your hand. . . . No, no; it *s the truth, now. Her mother ran away from me ... and she, Corona, was born ... a year after ... in America . . . Coronation year. The man her father died when she was six months old, and the woman . . . knowing that I was always weak " He panted, very feebly. Brother Copas, still hold- ing his hand, leaned forward. "Then she died, too. . . . What does it matter? Her message. . . . 'Bluff/ you would call it. ... But she knew me. She was always decided in her 300 CONCLUSION dealings ... to the end. I want to sleep now. . . . That's a good man!" Brother Copas, seeking complete solitude, found it in the dusk of the garden beyond the Ambulatory. There, repelling the benediction of sunset that still lingered in the west, he lifted his face to the planet Jupiter, already establishing its light in a clear space of sky. " Lord ! " he ingeminated, " forgive me who counted myself the ironeist of St. Hospital!" THE END 301 Novels and Stories by "Q" PUBLISHED BY CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS BROTHER COPAS This story deals with an English charitable hos- pital for elderly gentlemen a sort of blend of the Charterhouse and St. Cross at Winchester. The in- mates of the hospital having nothing to do but squabble, have reduced this happy home to a little cockpit of bad blood and scandalous gossip. The community is ruled by a dear old easy-going warden, full of beautiful in- tentions, but too indolent to grasp the nettle, and actively governed by a domineering sub-warden of the new high-churchman type; and the gist of the tale is the reclamation of this effete brotherhood by the presence of a small child within its walls, its innocence teaching them to forget their selfishness and their hopelessness for they are all shipwrecked lives in a new hope for the child's success. $1.20 net; postpaid $1.30 LADY GOOD-FOR-NOTHING "She is in fact an adorable girl, fine-grained and superbly faithful, a heroine one is bound to remember with affection. She gives the book its atmosphere. She wakes our sympathies and she is amusing. Decidedly " Q " has never done better. We congratulate him on this book and we congratulate the many readers who will turn its pages." New York Tribune. $1.20 net; postpaid $1.30 NOVELS AND STORIES BY "0" TRUE TILDA " The story is one of the most human and refreshing of humorous and sympathetic chronicles. Every page gleams." Philadelphia Ledger. $1.50 FORT AMITY " The emotions of war and the passions of the heart carry its characters along in a whirlwind of action, and the reader will linger over its final pages." Boston Transcript. $1.50 MAJOR VIGOUREUX " His hero is delightful, the heroine is charming and poetic. As usual, Mr. Quiller-Couch is at his best in the description of the minor characters." New York Sun. $1.50 TWO SIDES OF THE FACE Midwinter Tales " Worthily sustains the author's deserved reputation as a master of fine story-telling." Philadelphia Record. $1.50 NOVELS AND STORIES BY "0" THE SHIP OF STARS " It is good to get a book as well written as is ' The Ship of Stars.' A pleasant, wholesome story this, full of the salt-bracing air of the Cornish coast." New York Sun. With Frontispiece, $1.50 POISON ISLAND " Mr Quiller-Couch is a wonderful story-teller and his entertaining tale of dramatic force sparkles with incident and good-humor." Boston Times. $1.50 SIR JOHN CONSTANTINE "As a tale of romantic adventure we have hardly had anything since Stevenson's time so good." The Outlook. $1.50 THE MAYOR OF TROY " If a more whimsical, delightfully written, and satis- fying story could result, it is safe to say that the public will demand that the whole gallery of Cornwall mayors be represented by ' Q.' "New York Evening Post. $1.50 SHINING FERRY " The humor and pathos of the narrative are so true that every page breathes a spirit of pure humanity. It is an old-fashioned tale, sincere and sweet." New York Tribune. $1.50 NOVELS AND STORIES BY "Q" THE LAIRD'S LUCK Eight Stories "They are ingenious and original; they are written with ' Q's ' most facile and descriptive pen." The Nation. $1.50 OLD FIRES AND PROFIT- ABLE GHOSTS " They reveal that artistic charm and power of sug- gestion for which the author is noted." Chicago Tribune. $1.50 HISTORICAL TALES FROM SHAKESPEARE " He does for the ' histories ' what was done by the Lambs for the other plays." The Dial. $1.50 IA: A Love Story Published in the Ivory Series only, i6mo, 75 cents "No story was ever more fearlessly and more thoughtfully aimed at the very heart of life." The Bookman. Uniform Binding. Each i2mo, $1.25 The Splendid Spur Noughts and Crosses I Saw Three Ships Wandering Heath Dead Man's Rock Troy Town The Delectable Duchy A 000 OS 944*?