Brother Copas Part 19

"I can well understand, sir," said Brother Copas, as Mr. Colt drew breath; "and I thank you for telling 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? Suppose 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 Hounslow Heath?"

"Let us, then," said Mr. Colt, "leave arguing this question of compulsory National Service until another occasion, when I shall hope to convince you. For the moment you'll 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 pa.s.sions 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 onslaught of authority and the explosive language in 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 position, began to show signs of mutiny. Mr. Julius Bamberger mopped a perspiring brow as he ran about vainly trying to interpose.

"Isidore, this is d.a.m.ned 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 gromble 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 greensward, over which the elms now began to lengthen their shadows.

"The Chaplain was right," said Brother Copas. "Mr. Isidore certainly does not let the gra.s.s grow under his feet."

"If I were the gra.s.s, I shouldn't want to," said Corona.

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 interrupted 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 intention of telling him."

"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 becoming 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 G.o.d pity us if our corruption infects this child! . . . You take me?"

Nurse Branscome looked at him squarely.

"If I could save her from that!"

"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 'w's' 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 ambulatory 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 vegetables, 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 pale yellow b.u.t.terflies 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, companions. Uncle Copas's doll--well meant and priced at 1s. 3d.--had somehow missed to engage her affections. 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, "Children and chicken be always a-pickin'--the mischief'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.