Brother Copas Part 31

It appeared that Mr. Isidore had spent the afternoon with Mr. Colt, hunting the schools of Merchester in search of a child to suit his fastidious requirements. He had two of the gifts of genius-- unwearying patience in the search, unerring swiftness in the choice.

Mr. Simeon, the rehearsal over, walked home heavily. On his way he paused to study the pit, and look up from it to the threatened ma.s.s of masonry. '_Not in my time, O Lord!_'

And yet--

"From low to high doth dissolution climb, And sink from high to low along a scale Of awful notes, whose concord shall not fail . . .

Truth fails not; but her outward forms that bear The longest date . . . drop like the tower sublime Of yesterday, which royally did wear His crown of weeds, but could not even sustain Some casual shout that broke the silent air, Or the unimaginable touch of Time."

But Corona, breaking away from her playfellows and gaining the road to St. Hospital, skipped as she ran homeward, treading clouds of glory.

CHAPTER XX.

NAUGHTINESS, AND A SEQUEL.

"She has behaved very naughtily," said Brother Copas.

"I don't understand it at all," sighed Brother Bonaday.

"Nor I."

"It's not like her, you see."

"It was a most extraordinary outburst. . . . Either the child has picked up some bad example at school, to copy it (and you will remember I always doubted that her s.e.x gets any good of schooling)--"

"But," objected Brother Bonaday, "it was you who insisted on sending her."

"So I did--in self-defence. If we had not done our best the State would have done its worst, and put her into an inst.i.tution where one underpaid female grapples with sixty children in a cla.s.s, and talks all the time. Now we didn't want Corona to acquire the habit of talking all the time." Here Brother Copas dropped a widower's sigh.

"In fact, it has. .h.i.therto been no small part of her charm that she seldom or never spoke out of her turn."

"It has been a comfort to have her company," put in Brother Bonaday, eager to say a good word for the culprit.

"She spoke out of her turn just now," said Brother Copas sternly.

"Her behaviour to Nurse Turner was quite atrocious. . . . Now either she has picked this up at school, or--the thought occurs to me--she has been loafing around the laundry, gossiping with the like of Mrs.

Royle and Mrs. Clerihew, and letting their evil communications corrupt her good manners. This seems to me the better guess, because the women in the laundry are always at feud with the nurses; it's endemic there: and 'a nasty two-faced spy' smacks, though faintly, of the wash-tub. In my hearing Mrs. Clerihew has accused Nurse Branscome of 'carrying tales.' 'A nasty two-faced spy'--the child was using those very words when we surprised her, and the Lord knows what worse before we happened on the scene."

"Nurse Turner would not tell, and so we have no right to speculate."

"That's true. . . . I'll confine myself to what we overheard.

Now when a chit of a child stands up and hurls abuse of that kind at a woman well old enough to be her mother, two things have to be done.

. . . We must get at the root of this deterioration in Corona, but first of all she must be punished. The question is, Which of us will undertake it? You have the natural right, of course--"

Brother Bonaday winced.

"No, no--" he protested.

"I should have said, the natural obligation. But you are frail just now, and I doubt if you are equal to it."

"Copas! . . . You're not proposing to _whip_ her?" Brother Copas chuckled grimly. But that the child was in the next room, possibly listening, he might have laughed aloud.

"Do they whip girls?" he asked. "I used to find the whipping of boys disgusting enough. . . . I had an a.s.sistant master once, a treasure, who remained with me six years, and then left for no reason but that I could not continue to pay him. I liked him so much that one day, after flogging a boy in hot blood, and while (as usual) feeling sick with the revulsion of it, I then and there resolved that, however much this trade might degrade me, this Mr. Simc.o.x should be spared the degradation whilst in my employ. I went to his cla.s.s-room and asked to have a look at his punishment-book. He answered that he kept none. 'But,' said I, 'when you first came to me didn't I give you a book, and expressly command you, whenever you punished a boy, to write an entry, giving the boy's name, the nature of his offence, and the number of strokes with which you punished him?' 'You did, sir,' said Simc.o.x, 'and I have lost it.' 'Lost it!' said I.

'You but confirm me in my decision that henceforth, when any boy in this school needs caning, I will do it with my own hands.' 'Sir,' he replied, 'you have done that for these five years. Forgive me, but I was pleased to find that you never asked to see the book; for I really couldn't bring myself to flog a boy merely for the sake of writing up an entry.' In short, that man was a born schoolmaster, and almost dispensed with punishments, even the slightest."

"He ruled the boys by kindness, I suppose?"

"He wasn't quite such a fool."

"Then what was his secret?"

"Bad temper. They held him in a holy terror; and it's all the queerer because he wasn't even just."

Brother Bonaday shook his head.

"I don't understand," he said; "but if you believe so little in punishment, why are we proposing to punish Corona?"

"Obviously, my dear fellow, because we can find no better way.

The child must not be suffered to grow up into a termagant--you will admit that, I hope? . . . Very well, then: feeble guardians that we are, we must do our best."

He knocked at the bedroom door and, after a moment, entered.

Corona sat on the edge of her bed, dry-eyed, hugging Timothy to her breast.

"Corona!"

"Yes, Uncle Copas?"

"You have been extremely naughty, and probably know that you have to be punished."

"I dare say it's the best you can do," said Corona, after weighing this address or seeming to do so. The answer so exactly tallied with the words he had spoken a moment ago that Brother Copas could not help exclaiming--

"Ah! You overheard us, just now?"

"I may have my faults," said Corona coldly, candidly, "but I am not a listener."

"I--I beg your pardon," stammered Brother Copas, somewhat abashed.

"But the fact remains that your behaviour to Nurse Turner has been most disrespectful, and your language altogether unbecoming.

You have given your father and me a great shock: and I am sure you did not wish to do that."

"I'm miserable enough, if that's what you mean," the child confessed, still hugging her golliwog and staring with haggard eyes at the window. "But if you want me to say that I'm sorry--"

"That is just what I want you to say."

"Well, then, I can't. . . . Nurse Turner's a beast--a _beast_--a BEAST!"

Corona's face whitened, and her voice shrilled higher at each repet.i.tion.