CHAPTER XVIII.

'Now learn ye to love who loved never—nowye who have loved, love anew!It is Spring, it is chorussing Spring: 'tis thebirthday of earth, and for you!It is Spring; and the Loves and the birdswing together, and woo to accordWhere the bough to the rain has unbraidedher locks as a bride to her lord.For she walks—She our Lady, our Mistressof Wedlock,—the woodlands atween,And the bride-bed she weaves them, withmyrtle enlacing, with curtains of green.Look, list ye the law of Dione, aloft andenthroned in the blue:—Now learn ye to love who loved never—nowye who have loved, love anew!'

"H'm, h'm—tolerable only! 'Aloft and established in blue'—is that better?"

"Uncle Copas, whatever are you doing?"

Corona looked up from her page of irregular verbs, and across to her preceptor as he sat muttering and scribbling.

"The idlest thing in the world, child. Translating."

"But you told me that next week, if I learned these verbs, you would let me begin to translate."

"To be sure I did. You must go on translating and translating until, like me, you ought to know better. Then you throw it all away."

"I suppose I shall understand, one of these fine days," sighed Corona. "But, uncle, you won't mind my asking a question? I really do want to find out about these things.… And I really do want to learn Latin, ever since you said it was the only way to find out all that St. Hospital means."

"Did I say that? I ought, of course, to have said that Latin was worth learning for its own sake."

"I guess," said Corona sagely, "you thought you'd take the likeliest way with me."

"O woman! woman!… But what was your question?"

"Sometimes I wake early and lie in bed thinking. I was thinking, only yesterday morning, if people are able to put into English all that was ever written in Latin, why don't they do it and save other people the trouble?"

"Now I suppose," said Brother Copas, "that in the United States of America—land of labour-saving appliances—that is just how it would strike everyone?"

He knew that this would nettle her. But, looking up hotly, she caught his smile and laughed.

"Well, but why?" she demanded.

"Because the more it was the same thing the more it would be different. There's only one way with Latin and Greek. You must let 'em penetrate: soak 'em into yourself, get 'em into your nature slowly, through the pores of the skin."

"It sounds like sitting in a bath."

"That's just it. It's a baptism first and a bath afterwards; but the more it's a bath, the more you remember it's a baptism."

"I guess you have that right, though I don't follow," Corona admitted. "There'ssomethingin Latin makes you proud. Only yesterday I was gassing to three girls about knowingamo, amas, amat; and, next thing, you'll say, 'I'd like you to know Ovid,' and I'll say,' Mr. Ovid, I'm pleased to have met you'—like what happens in the States when you shake hands with a professor. All the same, I don't see what there is inamo, amas, amatto make the gas."

"Wait till you come tocras amet qui nunquam amavit."

"Is that what you were translating?"

"Yes."

"Then translate it for me, please."

"You shall construe for yourself. Cras means 'to-morrow.'Amet—"

"That's the present subjunctive. Let me see—'he may love.'"

"Try again."

"Or 'let him love.'"

"Right. 'To-morrow let him love.'Qui?"

"'Who.'"

"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 nobody 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 thePervigilium Veneris; that's to sayThe 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 forme, let's say. Didn't I tell you I was wasting my time? And Venus is the goddess 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, rainbowedand bespent of its dew:—Now learn ye to love who loved never—nowye who have loved, love anew!She, she, with her gem-dripping fingerenamels the wreath of the year;She, she, when the maid-bud is nubile andswelling, winds—whispers anear,Disguising her voice in the Zephyr's—'Sosecret the bed! and thou shy?'She, she, when the midsummer night isa-hush draws the dew from on high;Dew bright with the tears of its origin, dewwith its weight on the bough,Misdoubting 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 noble. 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, 'whilethe myrtle is green in the grove,Take the Boy to your escort.' But 'Ah!'cry the maidens, 'What trust is in LoveKeeping holiday too, while he weareth hisarchery, tools of his trade?'—'Go: he lays them aside, an apprenticereleased—you may wend unafraid:See, I bid him disarm, he disarms. Mother-naked I bid him to go,And he goes mother-naked. What flamecan he shoot without arrow or bow?'—Yet beware ye of Cupid, ye maidens! Be-ware most of all when he charmsAs a child: for the more he runs naked,the more he's a strong man-at-arms."

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 faggots, applied the torch, set the heather afire. He canvassed the Bishop, the Dean and Chapter, the Sunday Schools, the Church Lads' Brigade, the Girls' Friendly Society, the Boy Scouts. He canvassed the tradespeople, the professional classes, 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 hell 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 assured 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 dashing 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 itslongueurseven 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 petition.

She assented to it with a very pretty grace. Her speech at the Sale of Work was charming, and she talked to her audience about the Empire; reminded them that they were all members of one body; called them her "dear Girl Friendlies": and hoped, though a new-comer, in future to see a great deal more of them. They applauded this passagede bon coeur, and indeed pronounced the whole speech "So womanly!" At its close Mr. Colt, proposing a vote of thanks, insinuated something "anent a more ambitious undertaking, in which (if we can only engage Lady Shaftesbury's active sympathy) we may realise a cherished dream. I fear," proceeded Mr. Colt, "that I am a sturdy beggar. I can only plead that the cause is no mere local one, but in the truest sense national—nay imperial. For where but in the story of Merchester can be found the earliest inspiration of those countless deeds which won the Empire?"

Later, when Lady Shaftesbury asked to what he alluded, he discoursed on the project of the Pageant with dexterity and no little tact.

"What a ripping idea!… Now I come to remember, my husbanddidsay casually, the other day, that Mr. Bamberger had been sounding him about something of the sort. But Jack is English, you know, and a Whig at that. The mere notion of dressing-up or play-acting makes him want to run away and hide.… Oh, my dear sir, I know all about pageants! I saw one at Warwick Castle—was it last year or the year before?… There was a woman on horseback—I forget what historical character she represented: it wasn't Queen Elisabeth, I know, and it couldn't have been Lady Godiva because—well, because to begin with, she knew how to dress. She wore a black velvet habit, with seed-pearls, which sounds like Queen Henrietta Maria. Anyway, everyone agreed she had a perfect seat in the saddle. Is that the sort of thing—'Fair Rosamund goes a-hawking with King, er, Whoever-he-was?'"

Mr. Colt regretted that Fair Rosamund had no historical connection with Merchester.… No, and equally out of the question was Mary, Queen of Scots laying her neck on the block.

"Besides, she couldn't very well do that on horseback. And Maseppa was a man, wasn't he?"

"If," said Mr. Colt diplomatically, "we can only prevail upon one or two really influential ladies to see the thing in that light, details could be arranged later. We have not yet decided on the Episodes. … But notoriously where there's a will there's a way."

Lady Shaftesbury pondered this conversation while her new car whirled her homewards. She had begun to wish that Jack (as she called her lord) would strike out a bolder line in county affairs, if his ambition confined him to these. He was already (through no search of his own) Chairman of the County Council, and Chairman of Quarter Sessions, and was pricked to serve as High Sheriff next year. He ought to do something to make his shrievalty memorable… and, moreover, the Lord-Lieutenant was an old man.

In the library that evening after dinner she opened fire. The small function at the Girls' Friendly had been a success; but she wished to do something more for Merchester—"where we ought to be a real influence for good—living as we do so close to it."

She added, "I hear that Mr. Bamberger's seat is by no means safe, and another General Election may be on us at any moment.… I know how little you like Mr. Bamberger personally: but after all, and untilyouwill consent to take his place—Mr. Bamberger stands between us and the rising tide of Socialism. I was discussing this with Mr. Colt to-day."

"Who is Mr. Colt?" asked Sir John.

"You must have met him. He is Chaplain of St. Hospital, and quite a personality in Merchester… though I don't know," pursued Lady Shaftesbury, musing, "that one would altogether describe him as a gentleman. But ought we to be too particular when the cause is at stake, and heaven knows how soon the Germans will be invading us?"

The end was that Sir John, who loved his young wife, gave her a free hand, of which she made the most. Almost before he was aware of it, he found himself Chairman of a General Committee, summoning a Sub-Committee of Ways and Means. At the first meeting he announced that his lady had consented to set aside, throughout the winter months, one day a week from hunting, and offered Shaftesbury Hall as head-quarters of the Costume Committee.

Thereupon it was really astonishing with what alacrity not only the "best houses" around Merchester, but the upper-middle-class (its damsels especially) caught the contagion. Within a week "Are you Pageantising?" or, in more condensed slang, "Do you Padge?" became the stock question at all social gatherings in the neighbourhood of the Close. To this a stock answer would be—

"Oh, I don't know! I suppose so." Here the respondent would simulate a slight boredom. "One will have to mix with the most impossible people, of course"—Lady Shaftesbury had won great popularity by insisting that, in a business so truly national, no class distinctions were to be drawn—"but anyhow it will fill up the off-days this winter."

Lady Shaftesbury herself, after some pretty deliberation, decided to enact the part of the Empress Maud, and escape on horseback from King Stephen of Blois. Mr. Colt and Mr. Isidore Bamberger together waited on Brother Copas with a request that he would write the libretto for this Episode.

"But it was only last week you turned me on to Episode VI—King Hal and the Emperor Charles the Fifth," Copas protested.

"We are hoping you will write this for us too," urged Mr. Colt. "It oughtn't to take you long, you know. To begin with, no one knows very much about that particular period."

"The less known the better, if we may trust theAnglo-Saxon Chronicle. A few realistic pictures of the diversions of the upper classes—"

"Hawking was one, I believe?" opined Mr. Colt.

"Yes, and another was hanging the poor by their heels over a smoky fire, and yet another was shutting them up in a close cell into which had been inserted a few toads and adders."

"Her ladyship suggests a hawking scene, in the midst of which she is surprised by King Stephen and his, er, myrmidons—if that be the correct term—"

"It is at least as old as Achilles."

"She escapes from him on horseback.… At this point she wants to know if we can introduce a water-jump."

"Nothing could be easier, in a blank verse composition," assented Brother Copas gravely.

"You see, there is very little writing required. Just enough dialogue to keep the thing going.… Her ladyship is providing her own riding-habit and those of her attendant ladies, for whom she has chosen six of the most beautiful maidens in the neighbourhood, quite irrespective of class. The dresses are to be gorgeous."

"They will form a pleasing contrast, then, to King Stephen, whose riding-breeches, as we know, 'cost him but a crown.'… Very well, I will 'cut the cackle and come to the hosses.' And you, Mr. Isidore? Do I read in your eye that you desire a similar literary restraint in your Episode of King Hal?"

"Ach, yes," grinned Mr. Isidore. "Cut ze caggle—cabital! I soggest in zat Ebisode we haf a Ballet."

"A Ballet?"

"A Ballet of Imberial Exbansion—ze first English discofferies ofer sea—ze natives brought back in brocession to mek sobmission—"

"Devilish pretty substitute for Thomas Cromwell and the Reformation!"

"It waszerelay ze future of Englandt,hein?"

"I see," said Brother Copas thoughtfully; "provided you make the ballets of our nation, you don't care if your brother makes its laws."

These preparations (he noted) had a small byproduct pleasantly affecting St. Hospital. Mr. Colt, in his anxiety to enlist the whole-hearted services of the Brethren (who according to design were to serve as a sort of subsidiary chorus to the Pageant, appearing and reappearing, still in their antique garb, in a succession of scenes supposed to extend over many centuries), had suddenly taken the line of being 'all things to all men,' and sensibly relaxed the zeal of his proselytising as well as the rigour of certain regulations offensive to the more Protestant of his flock.

"You may growl," said Brother Copas to Brother Warboise: "but this silly Pageant is bringing us more peace than half a dozen Petitions."

Brother Warboise was, in fact, growling because for three months and more nothing had been heard of the Petition.

"You may depend," said Copas soothingly, "the Bishop put the thing away in his skirt pocket and forgot all about it. I happen to know that he must be averse to turning out his skirt pockets, for I once saw him surreptitiously smuggle away a mayonnaise sandwich there. It was at a Deanery garden party; and I, having been invited to hand the ices and look picturesque, went on looking picturesque and pretended not to see.… I ought to have told you, when you asked me to write it, that such was the invariable fate of my compositions."

Meanwhile, it certainly seemed that a truce had been called to the internal dissensions of St. Hospital. On the pageant-ground one afternoon, in the midst of a very scratchy rehearsal, Brother Copas found himself by chance at the Chaplain's side. The two had been watching in silence for a full five minutes, when he heard Mr. Colt addressing him in a tone of unusual friendliness.

"Wonderful how it seems to link us up, eh?"

"I beg your pardon, sir?"

"I was thinking, just then, of the St. Hospital uniform, which you have the honour to wear. It seems—or Mr. Isidore has the knack of making it seem—the, er,foilof the whole Pageant. It outlasts all the more brilliant fashions."

"Poverty, sir, is perduring. It is in everything just because it is out of everything. We inherit time, if not the earth."

"But particularly," said Mr. Colt, "I was thinking of the corporate unity it seems to give us, and to pass on, through us, to the whole story of Merchester."

"Aye, we are always with you."

Afterwards Brother Copas repented that he had not answered more graciously: for afterwards, looking back, he perceived that, in some way, the Pageant had actually helped to bring back a sense of "corporate unity" to St. Hospital.

Even then, and for months later, he missed to recognise Corona's share in it. What was she but a child?

"Is it true what I hear?" asked Mrs. Royle, intercepting him one day as he carried his plate of fast-cooling meat from the kitchen.

"Probably not," said Brother Copas.

"They tell me Bonaday's daughter has been singled out among all the school children—Greycoats and others—to be Queen of the May, or something of the kind, in this here Pageant."

"Yes, that is a fact."

"Oh!… I suppose it's part of your sneering way to make little of it.Icall it an honour to St. Hospital."

"The deuce you do?"

"And what's more," added Mrs. Royle, "she mustn't let us down by appearing in rags."

"I hope we can provide against that."

"What I meant to say," the woman persisted, "was that you men don't probably understand. If there's to be a dance, or any such caper, she'll be lifting her skirts. Well, for the credit of St. Hospital, I'd like to overhaul the child's under-clothing, and see that she goes shipshape and Bristol fashion."

Brother Copas thanked her. He began to perceive that Mrs. Royle, that detestable woman, had her good points—or, at any rate, her soft spot.

It became embarrassing, though, when Mrs. Clerihew accosted him next day with a precisely similar request.

"And I might mention," added Mrs. Clerihew, "that I have a lace stomacher-frill which was gove to me by no less than the late honourable Edith, fifth daughter of the second Baron Glantyre. She died unmarried, previous to which she used frequently tohonour me with her confidence. This being a historical occasion, I'd spare it."

Yes; it was true. Corona was to be a Queen, among many, in the Merchester Pageant.

It all happened through Mr. Simeon.

Mr. Simeon's children had, one and all, gone for their education to the Greycoats' School, which lies just beyond the west end of the Cathedral. He loved to think of them as growing up within its shadow.… One Tuesday at dinner the five-year-old Agatha popped out a question—

"Daddy, if the Cafederal fell down while we were in school, would it fall on top of us?"

"God forbid, child. But why ask such a question?"

"Because when we went to school this morning some workpeople had dug a hole, close by that end—quite a big pit it was. So I went near the edge to look down, and one of the men said, 'Take care, missy, or you'll tumble in and be drowned.' I told him that I knew better, because people couldn't build cafederals on water. He told me that was the way they had built ours, and he held my hand for me to have a look. He was right, too. The pit was half-full of water. He said that unless we looked sharp the whole Cafederal would come down on our heads.… I don't think it's safe for me to go to school any more, do you?" insinuated small Agatha.

Now it chanced that Mr. Simeon had to visit the Greycoats that very afternoon. He had written a little play for the children—boys and girls—to act at Christmas. It was not a play of the sort desiderated by Mrs. Simeon—the sort to earn forty thousand pounds in royalties; nor, to speak accurately, had he written it. He had in fact patched together a few artless scenes from an old Miracle Play—The Life of Saint Meriadoc—discovered by him in the Venables Library; and had tinkered out some rhymes (the book being a prose translation from the Breton original). "A poor thing," then, and very little of it his own—but Miss Champernowne opined that it would be a novelty, while the children enjoyed the rehearsals, and looked forward to the fun of "dressing-up."

Rehearsals were held twice a week, on Tuesdays and Thursdays, in the last hour of the afternoon session. This afternoon, on his way to the school, Mr. Simeon found that Agatha had indeed spoken truth. Five or six men were busy, digging, probing, sounding, around a large hole close under the northeast corner of the Lady Chapel. The foreman wore a grave face, and in answer to Mr. Simeon's inquiries allowed that the mischief was serious; so serious that the Dean and Chapter had sent for a diver to explore the foundations and report. The foreman further pointed out certain ominous cracks in the masonry overhead.

Just then the great clock chimed, warning Mr. Simeon away.… But the peril of his beloved Cathedral so haunted him that he arrived at the school-door as one distraught.

Rehearsal always took place in the girls' schoolroom, the boys coming in from their part of the building to clear the desks away and arrange them close along the walls. They were busy at it when he entered. He saw: but—

"He heeded not—his eyesWere with his heart,"

And that was in the Close outside—

From the start he allowed the rehearsal to get hopelessly out of hand. The children took charge; they grew more and more fractious, unruly. Miss Champernowne chid them in vain. The schoolroom, in fact, was a small pandemonium, when of a sudden the door opened and two visitors entered—Mr. Colt and Mr. Isidore Bamberger.

"A—ach so!" intoned Mr. Isidore, and at the sound of his appalling guttural Babel hushed itself, unable to compete. He inquired what was going forward; was told; and within five minutes had the children moving through their parts in perfect discipline, while with a fire of cross-questions he shook Mr. Simeon back to his senses and rapidly gathered the outline of the play. He terrified all.

"Bardon my interference, ma'am!" he barked, addressing Miss Champernowne. "I haf a burbose."

The scene engaging the children was that of the youthful St. Meriadoc's first school-going; where his parents (Duke and Duchess of Brittany) call with him upon a pedagogue, who introduces him to the boys and girls, his fellow scholars. For a sample of Mr. Simeon's version—

PEDAGOGUE—"Children look on your books.If there be any whisperingIt will be great hindering,And there will be knocks."FIRST SCHOLAR (chants)—"God bless A, Band C!The rest of the song is D:That is all my lore.I came late yesterday,I played truant by my fay!I am a foul sinner.Good master, after dinnerI will learn more."SECOND SCHOLAR—"E, s, t, that isest,I know not what comes next—"

Whilst the scholars recited thus, St. Meriadoc's father and mother—each with a train of attendants—walked up and down between the ranks 'high and disposedly,' as became a Duke and Duchess of Brittany.

Mr. Isidore of a sudden threw all into confusion again. He shot out a forefinger and screamed—yes, positively screamed—

"Ach! zat is ze child—ze fourt' from ze end! I will haf her and no ozzer—you onderstandt?" Here he swung about upon the Chaplain. "Ob-serf how she walk! how she carry her chin! If I haf not her for ze May Queen I will haf non.… Step vorwards, liddle one. Whad is your name?"

"Corona."

Seeing that Mr. Isidore's finger pointed at her, she stepped forward, with a touch of defiance in her astonishment, but fearlessly. The touch of defiance helped to tilt her chin at the angle he so much admired.

"Cohrona—zat must mean ze chrowned one. Cabital!… You are not afraid of me,hein?"

"No," answered Corona simply, still wondering what he might mean, but keeping a steady eye on him. Why should she be afraid of this comic little man?

"So?… I engage you. You are to be ze May Queen in ze great Merchester Bageant.… But you must be goot and attend how I drill you. Ozzerwise I dismees you."

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 mass 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 scaleOf awful notes, whose concord shall not fail…Truth fails not; but her outward forms that bearThe longest date… drop like the tower sublimeOf yesterday, which royally did wearHis crown of weeds, but could not even sustainSome 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.

"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 sex 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 institution where one underpaid female grapples with sixty children in a class, 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 hitherto 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 towhipher?" 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 assistant 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. Simcox should be spared the degradation whilst in my employ. I went to his class-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 Simcox, '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—abeast—a BEAST!"

Corona's face whitened, and her voice shrilled higher at each repetition.

"—She hates Branny like poison, and I hateher.… There! And now you must take and punish me as much as you please. What's it going to be?" She rocked her small body as she looked up with straight eyes, awaiting sentence.

"You are to go to bed at once, and without any supper," said Brother Copas, keeping his voice steady on the words he loathed to utter.

Again Corona seemed to weigh them.

"That seems fair enough," she decided. "Are you going to lock me in?"

"That had not occurred to me."

"You'd better," she advised. "And take the key away in your pocket. … Is that all, Uncle Copas?"

"That is all, Corona. But as for taking the key, you know that I would far sooner trust to your honour."

"You can trust tothat, right enough," said she, getting off the edge of the bed. "I was thinking of daddy.… Good night, Uncle Copas!—if you don't mind, I am going to undress."

Brother Copas withdrew. He shut and locked the door firmly, and made a pretence, by rattling the key, of withdrawing it from the lock. But his nerve failed him, and he could not actually withdraw it. "Suppose the child should be taken ill in the night: or suppose that her nerve breaks down, and she cries for her father.… It might kill him if he could not open the door instantly. Or, again, supposing that she holds out until he has undressed and gone to bed? He will start up at the first sound and rush across the open quadrangle—Lord knows if he would wait to put on his dressing-gown— to get the key from me. In his state of health, and with these nights falling chilly, he would take his death."

So Brother Copas contented himself with turning the key in the wards and pointing to it.

"She is going to bed," he whispered. "Supperless, you understand. … We must show ourselves stern: it will be the better for her in the end, and some day she will thank us."

Brother Bonaday eyed the door sadly.

"To be sure, we must be stern," he echoed. As for being thanked for this severity, it crossed his mind that the thanks must come quickly, or he would probably miss them. But he muttered again, "To be sure— to be sure!" as Brother Copas tiptoed away and left him.

On his way back to his lonely rooms, Brother Copas met and exchanged "Good evenings" with Nurse Branscome.

"You are looking grave," she said.

"You might better say I am looking like a humbug and a fool. I have just been punishing that child—sending her to bed supperless. Now call me the ass that I am."

"Why, what has Corona been doing?"

"Does it matter?" he snarled, turning away. "She has been naughty; and the only way with naughty children is to be brutal."

"I expect you have made a mess of it," said Nurse Branscome.

"I am sure I have," said Brother Copas.

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