Brother Copas Part 2

When he had pa.s.sed out of earshot, Brother Clerihew turned to Brother Woolcombe and said--

"The silly old '--' is beginning to show his age, seemin' to me."

"Oughtn't to," answered Brother Woolcombe. "If ever a man had a soft job, it's him."

"Well, I reckon we don't want to lose him yet, anyhow--'specially if Colt is to step into his old shoes."

Brother Clerihew's reference was to the Reverend Rufus Colt, Chaplain of St. Hospital.

"They never would!" opined Brother Woolcombe, meaning by "they" the governing body of Trustees.

"Oh, you never know--with a man on the make, like Colt. Push carries everything in these times."

"Colt's a hustler," Brother Woolcombe conceded. "But, d.a.m.n it all, they _might_ give us a gentleman!"

"There's not enough to go round, nowadays," grunted Brother Clerihew, who had been a butler, and knew. "Master Blanchminster's the real thing, of course . . ." He gazed after the retreating figure of the Master. "Seemed gay as a goldfinch, he did. D'ye reckon Colt has told him about Warboise?"

"I wonder. Where is Warboise, by the way?"

"Down by the river, taking a walk to cool his head. Ibbetson's wife gave him a dressing-down at tea-time for dragging Ibbetson into the row. Threatened to have her nails in his beard--I heard her.

That woman's a terror. . . . All the same, one can't help sympathising with her. 'You can stick to your stinking Protestantism,' she told him, 'if it amuses you to fight the Chaplain. You're a widower, with n.o.body dependent. But don't you teach my husband to quarrel with his vittles.'"

"All the same, when a man has convictions--"

"Convictions are well enough when you can afford 'em," Brother Clerihew grunted again. "But up against Colt--what's the use?

And where's his backing? Ibbetson, with a wife hanging on to his coat-tails; and old Bonaday, that wouldn't hurt a fly; and Copas, standing off and sneering."

"A man might have all the pains of Golgotha upon him before ever _you_ turned a hair," grumbled Brother Dasent, a few yards away.

He writhed in his chair, for the rheumatism was really troublesome; but he over-acted his suffering somewhat, having learnt in forty-five years of married life that his spouse was not over-ready with sympathy.

"T'cht!" answered she. "I ought to know what they're like by this time, and I wonder, for my part, you don't try to get accustomed to 'em. Dying one can understand: but to be worrited with a man's ailments, noon and night, it gets on the nerves. . . ."

"You're _sure_?" resumed Mrs. Royle eagerly, but sinking her voice-- for she could hardly wait until the Master had pa.s.sed out of earshot.

"Did you ever know me spread tales?" asked the comfortable-looking Nurse. "Only, mind you, I mentioned it in the strictest secrecy.

This is such a scandalous hole, one can't be too careful. . . . But down by the river they were, consorting and G.o.d knows what else."

"At his age, too! Disgusting, I call it."

"Oh, _she's_ not particular! My comfort is I always suspected that woman from the first moment I set eyes on her. Instinct, I s'pose.

'Well, my lady,' says I, 'if you're any better than you should be, then I've lived all these years for nothing.'"

"And him--that looked such a broken-down old innocent!"

"They get taken that way sometimes, late in life."

Nurse Turner sank her voice and said something salacious, which caused Mrs. Royle to draw a long breath and exclaim that she could never have credited such things--not in a Christian land. Her old husband, too, overheard it, and took snuff with a senile chuckle.

"Gad, that's spicy!" he crooned.

The Master, at the gateway leading to the home-park, turned for a look back on the quadrangle and the seated figures. Yes, they made an exquisite picture. Here--

"Here where the world is quiet"--

Here, indeed, his ancestor had built a haven of rest.

"From too much love of living, From hope and fear set free, We thank with brief thanksgiving Whatever G.o.ds may be That no life lives for ever; That dead men rise up never; That even the weariest river Winds somewhere safe to sea."

As the lines floated across his memory, the Master had a mind to employ them in his peroration (giving them a Christian trend, of course) in place of the sonnet he had meant to quote. This would involve reconstructing a longish paragraph; but they had touched his mood, and he spent some time pacing to and fro under the trees before his taste rejected them as facile and even cheap in comparison with Wordsworth's--

"Men unto whom sufficient for the day, And minds not stinted or untill'd are given, --Sound healthy children of the G.o.d of heaven-- Are cheerful as the rising sun in May."

"Yes, yes," murmured the Master, "Wordsworth's is the better.

But what a gift, to be able to express a thought just _so_--with that freshness, that n.o.ble simplicity! And even with Wordsworth it was fugitive, lost after four or five marvellous years. No one not being a Greek has ever possessed it in permanence. . . ."

Here he paused at the sound of a footfall on the turf close behind him, and turned about with a slight frown; which readily yielded, however, and became a smile of courtesy.

"Ah, my dear Colt! Good evening!"

"Good evening, Master."

Mr. Colt came up deferentially, yet firmly, much as a nurse in a good family might collect a straying infant. He was a tall, noticeably well-grown man, a trifle above thirty, clean shaven, with a square and obstinate chin. He wore no hat, and his close black hair showed a straight middle parting above his low and somewhat protuberant forehead. The parting widened at the occiput to a well-kept tonsure.

At the back the head wanted balance; and this lent a suggestion of brutality--of "thrust"--to his abounding appearance of strength.

He walked in his priestly black with the gait and carriage proper to a heavy dragoon.

"A fine evening, indeed. Are you disengaged?"

"Certainly, certainly"--in comparison with Mr. Colt's grave voice the Master's was almost a chirrup--"whether for business or for the pleasure of a talk. Nothing wrong, I hope?"

For a moment or two the Chaplain did not answer. He seemed to be weighing his words. At length he said--

"I should have reported at once, but have been thinking it over.

At Early Celebration this morning Warboise insulted the wafer."

"Dear, dear, you don't say so!"

--"Took it from me, held it derisively between finger and thumb, and muttered. I could not catch all that he said, but I distinctly heard the words 'biscuit' and 'Antichrist.' Indeed, he confesses to having used them. His demeanour left no doubt that he was insolent of set purpose. . . . I should add that Ibbetson, who was kneeling next to him and must have overheard, walked back from the altar-rail straight out of chapel; but his wife a.s.sures me that this was purely a coincidence, and due to a sudden weakness of the stomach."

"You have spoken to Warboise?"

"Yes, and he is defiant. Says that bread is bread, and--when I pressed him for a definition--asked (insolently again) if the Trustees had authorised our subst.i.tuting biscuit for bread in the Wayfarers' Dole. Advised us to 'try it on' there, and look out for letters in the _Merchester Observer_. He even threatened--if you'll believe me--to write to the Press himself. In short, he was beyond all self-control."

"I was afraid," murmured the Master, flus.h.i.+ng a little in his distress, "you would not introduce this--er--primitive use--or, I should say, restore it--without trouble. Brother Warboise has strong Protestant prejudices; pa.s.sionate, even."

"And ignorant."