Brother Copas Part 40

"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.

"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, everyone 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 a.s.sist 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 forgetfulness--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 potentates entered, uttering stage cheers, while inwardly groaning in spirit. His eye kept an anxious sidewise watch on the gateway by which Corona must make her entrance.

She came. But before her, leading the way, strewing flowers, came score upon score of children in regiments of colour--pale blue, pale yellow, green, 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, meanwhile? . . . 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 _minauderies_, unconscious of all but the solemn glory. This was the pageant of her beloved 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 evolutions 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 of thousands of hands, all agitated together as when a wind pa.s.ses 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-cla.s.s!" grunted Brother Warboise at Copas'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, announcing "_I_ was an orange-girl once!"

Brother Copas snorted, and snorted again more loudly when Prebendary 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 common 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 enn.o.bling 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 n.o.bility-- 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--

"O G.o.d! 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, glancing 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 ages 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 s.h.i.+eld 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.

"Time, like an ever-rolling stream, Bears all its sons away; They fly forgotten, as a dream Dies at the opening day.

"O G.o.d! 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 before and since English History began.

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 b.r.e.a.s.t.s 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, gra.s.ses, 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 s.h.i.+eld--"

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 G.o.d, 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 pa.s.sage 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 holding 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 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 establis.h.i.+ng its light in a clear s.p.a.ce of sky.