Brother Copas Part 21

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 'Was.h.i.+ng 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 was always careful of this, having lived with gentlefolks. She burned to know if Brother Copas had heard her call Mrs. Royle a b.i.t.c.h. Mrs. Royle (to do her justice) when enraged recked neither what she said nor who overheard. But Mrs. Clerihew, between her lapses, clung pa.s.sionately 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 you, ma'am."

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 t.i.tled folks in my time. One of these days, I hope, you'll 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 disapproving hush.

Mrs. Clerihew talked on, gaining confidence. She crimped beautifully, and this was the more remarkable 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 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 explained 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 Bonaday, and then, seeing that Corona's face was woebegone, 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 s.h.i.+rt b.u.t.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!"

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 pa.s.s that Corona, who already possessed two pink and waxen girl-dolls, and treated them with the merest contempt, took this black manikin 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 Nunnery.

"I'm afraid," she said in her best society manner, "this is a perf.e.c.kly ridiklous hour. But you are responsible 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. 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 st.i.tch here and there, but on the whole he'll unb.u.t.ton 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'll only show me how to cut out.

I can sew quite nicely. Mamma taught me. I was making a sampler all through her illness--_Corona 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 trespa.s.ses_.

When we got to that she died. . . . I want to begin with a suit of pajamas--no, I forgot; they're _py_jamas 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 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'll credit it to them if you will; and there at once you have a capital reason why our little Miss Bull should wors.h.i.+p 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 wors.h.i.+ps the 'accident of birth,' as you might call it. To her King Edward is nothing less than the Lord's Anointed."

"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 accident--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 fortuitously?"

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.

"Maybe," 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 corrugated 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. Probably she supposes that on these means our ancient n.o.bility 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 demean 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 attendance 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 instinct in shying away from the call to decide.

"But we were talking about the House of Lords," he suggested feebly.

"The hereditary principle--"