Brother Copas Part 28

"_Nunquam?_"

"'Never'--I know that too."

"_Amavit?_"

"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 begin with, the original is in verse; a late Latin poem in a queer metre, and by whom written n.o.body knows. 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 Veneris_; that's to say _The Vigil of Venus_. But I suppose that conveys 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 G.o.ddess of Love: some day--alas the day!--you'll be proud to make her acquaintance. . . . _Cras amet qui nunquam amavit_."

"Perhaps if you read it to me--"

He shook his head.

"No, child: the thing is late in half a dozen different ways.

The young, whom it understands, cannot understand it: the old, who arrive at understanding, 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 another hour in translating--

Time was that a rain-cloud begat her, impregning the heave of the deep.

'Twixt hooves of sea-horses a-scatter, stam- peding the dolphins 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 anear, Disguising her voice in the Zephyr's--'So secret the bed! and thou shy?

'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, Mis...o...b..ing and clinging and trembling-- 'Now, now must I fall? Is it now?'

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 translate 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 n.o.ble. 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 essential. 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, attempting 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:--

"'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?'

--'Go: he lays them 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 bow?'

--Yet beware ye of Cupid, ye maidens! Be- ware most of all when he charms As a child: for the more he runs naked, the more he's a strong man-at-arms."

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 f.a.ggots, applied the torch, set the heather afire. He canva.s.sed the Bishop, the Dean and Chapter, the Sunday Schools, the Church Lads' Brigade, the Girls'

Friendly Society, the Boy Scouts. He canva.s.sed the tradespeople, the professional cla.s.ses, 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 magnates; men who, once committed, would not retract; ponderable subscribers to the Guarantee Fund; neither tinder nor brushwood, but logs to receive the 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 flatter, 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 influential batrons? . . . You wandt a Bageant, _hein?_ Var'y well, I brovide it: It is I will mek a sogcess. Go to h.e.l.l for your influenzial batrons: 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 a.s.sured 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 Girls' Friendly Society. Sir John Shaftesbury, somewhat late in life, had married a wife many years his junior; a dazzling beauty, a das.h.i.+ng horsewoman, 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 living 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 pet.i.tion.