Brother Copas Part 22

Brother Copas inhaled his snuff, sideways eyeing this friend whose weakness he understood to a hair's-breadth. But he, too, had his weakness--that of yielding to be led away by dialectic on the first temptation.

"Aye, to be sure. The hereditary--principle, did you say?

My dear fellow, the House of Lords never had such a principle.

The hereditary right to legislate slipped in by the merest slant of a side wind, and in its origin was just a handy expedient of the sort so dear to our Const.i.tution, logically absurd, but in practice saving no end of friction and dispute."

"You will grant at any rate that, having once adopted it, the Lords exalted it to rank as a principle."

"Yes, and for a time with amazing success. That was their capital error. . . . Have you never observed, my good Bonaday, how fatally miracles come home to roost? Jonah spends three days and three nights in the whale's belly--why? Simply to get his tale believed.

_Credo quia impossibile_ seldom misses to work well for a while.

He doesn't foresee, poor fellow, that what makes his fortune with one generation of men will wreck his credit with another. . . . So with the House of Lords--though here a miracle triumphantly pointed out as happening under men's eyes was never really happening at all.

That in the loins of every t.i.tled legislator should lie the germ of another is a miracle (I grant you) of the first order, and may vie with Jonah's sojourn in the whale's belly; nay, it deserved an even longer run for its money, since it persuaded people that they saw the miraculous succession. But Nature was taking care all the time that it never happened. Actually our peerages have perished, and new ones have been born at an astonis.h.i.+ng rate; about half of them at this moment are younger than the great Reform Bill. A shrewd American remarked the other day, that while it is true enough a son may not inherit his father's ability, yet if the son of a Rothschild can keep the money his father made he must in these days of liquid securities be a pretty able fellow. Weaklings (added my American) don't last long, at any rate in our times. 'G.o.d and Nature turn out the incompetents almost as quickly as would the electorate.' . . .

But my point is that the House of Lords, having in the past exploited this supposed miracle for all it was worth, are now (if the Liberals have any sense) to be faced with the overdraft which every miracle leaves to be paid sooner or later. The longer-headed among the Peers perceived this some years ago; they all see it now, and are tumbling over each other in their haste to dodge the 'hereditary principle'

somehow. It is for the Liberals to hold them firmly to the dear old miracle and rub their noses in it. So, and so only, will this electorate of ours rid itself, under a misapprehension, of a real peril, to which, if able to see the thing in its true form and dimensions, it would in all likelihood yield itself grovelling."

"Eh? I don't follow--"

"I tell you, Bonaday, the House of Lords is in fact no hereditary curse at all. What the devil has it to do with the claims of old descent? Does it contain a man whose ancestor ever saw Agincourt?

Bankers, brewers, clothiers, mine-owners, company-promoters, journalists--our Upper House to-day is a compact, fairly well-selected body of men who have pushed to success over their fellows. Given such a body of supermen, well agreed among themselves, and knowing what they want, supplied with every temptation to feed on the necessities of the weak, armed with extravagant legal powers, even fortified with a philosophy in the sham Darwin doctrine that, with nations as with men, the poverty of one is the wealth of another--there, my dear sir, you have a menace against which, could they realise it, all moderate citizens would be fighting for their lives. . . . But it is close upon dinner-time, and I refuse to extend these valuable but parenthetical remarks on the House of Lords one whit farther to please your irresolution. . . .

It's high time Corona went to school."

"I have not been well lately, as you know, Brother. I meant all along, as soon as I picked up my strength again, to--"

"Tilly vally, tilly vally!" snapped Brother Copas. "Since we are making excuses shall we add that, without admitting ourselves to be sn.o.bs, we have remarked a certain refinement--a delicacy of mind--in Corona, and doubt if the bloom of it will survive the rough contact of a public elementary school? . . . Come, I've thought of that, as a G.o.dfather should. You're aware that, a couple of years ago, a small legacy dropped in upon me--a trifling windfall of ten guineas a year.

Well, I've been wasting it on luxuries--a few books I don't read, a more expensive brand of tobacco, which really is no better than the old s.h.a.g, some extra changes of body-linen. Now since the Education Act of 1902 the fees in the public secondary day schools have been cut down to a figure quite ridiculously low, and the private day schools have been forced to follow suit. I dare say that seven pounds a year will send Corona, say, to Miss d.i.c.kinson's genteel seminary--nay, I'll undertake to beat the lady down to that sum--and I shall still be left with three pounds and ten s.h.i.+llings to squander on s.h.i.+rts. Now if you start thanking me--Ah, there goes the dinner-bell! Hurry, man--you're first on the roster!"

CHAPTER XV.

CANARIES AND GREYCOATS.

So Corona was sent to school; but not, as it befell, to Miss d.i.c.kinson's.

Brother Copas, indeed, paid a visit to Miss d.i.c.kinson, and, warned by some wise instinct, took the child with him.

Miss d.i.c.kinson herself opened the front door, and explained with an accent of high refinement that her house-parlourmaid was indisposed that morning, and her cook busy for the moment.

"You have some message for me?" she asked graciously; for the Brethren of St. Hospital pick up a little business as letter-carriers or _commissionaires_.

On learning her visitor's errand, of a sudden she stiffened in demeanour. Corona, watching her face intently, noted the change.

"Dear me, what a very unusual application!" said Miss d.i.c.kinson, but nevertheless invited them to step inside.

"We can discuss matters more freely without the child," she suggested.

"As you please, ma'am," said Copas, "provided you don't ask her to wait in the street."

Corona was ushered into an apartment at the back--the boudoir, its mistress called it--and was left there amid a din of singing canaries, while Miss d.i.c.kinson carried off Brother Copas to the drawing-room.

The boudoir contained some scholastic furniture and a vast number of worthless knick-knacks in poker-work, fret-work, leathern _applique_-work, gummed sh.e.l.l-work, wool-work, tambour-work, with crystoleum paintings and drawings in chalk and water-colour.

On a table in front of the window stood a cage with five canaries singing in it. Corona herself felt a sense of imprisonment, but no desire to sing. The window looked upon a walled yard, in which fifteen girls of various ages were walking through some kind of drill under an instructress whose appearance puzzled her until she remembered that Miss d.i.c.kinson's cook was "busy for the moment."

Corona watched their movements with an interest begotten of pity.

The girls whispered and prinked, and exchanged confidences with self-conscious airs. They paid but a perfunctory attention to the drill. It was clear they despised their instructress. Yet they seemed happy enough in a way.

"I wonder why?" thought Corona. "I don't like Miss d.i.c.kinson; first, because she has the nose of a witch, and next because she is afraid of us. I think she is afraid of us because we're poor. Well, I'm not afraid of her--not really; but I'd feel mighty uncomfortable if she had dear old daddy in there alone instead of Uncle Copas."

Meanwhile in the drawing-room--likewise resonant with canaries--Miss d.i.c.kinson was carefully helping Brother Copas to understand that as a rule she excluded all but children of the upper cla.s.ses.

"It is not--if you will do me so much credit--that I _look down_ upon the others; but I find that the children themselves are not so happy when called upon to mix with those of a different station.

The world, after all, is the world, and we must face facts as they are."

"You mean, ma'am, that your young ladies--or some of them--might twit Corona for having a father who wears the Beauchamp robe."

"I would not say _that_. . . . In fact I have some influence over them, it is to be hoped, and should impress upon them beforehand that the--er--subject is not to be alluded to."

"That would be extremely tactful," said Brother Copas.

He rose.

"Pray be seated. . . . As I dare say you know, Mr.--"

"Copas."

"--As I dare say you know, Mr. Copas, higher education in England just now is pa.s.sing through a--er--phase: it is (to use a forcible, if possibly vulgar, expression) in a state of flux. I do not conceal from myself that this must be largely attributed to the Education Act of 1902."

"Ah!"

Brother Copas dived finger and thumb into his waistcoat pocket in search of his snuff-box, but, recollecting himself, withdrew them hastily.

"Mr Balfour, whether he meant it or no, hit the private-venture schools beyond a doubt."

"One may trust that it is but a temporary blow. I have, let me say, the utmost confidence in Mr. Balfour's statesmans.h.i.+p. I believe-- far-sighted man that he is, and with his marvellous apprehension of the English character--"

"'Tis a Scotchman's first apt.i.tude," murmured Brother Copas, nodding a.s.sent.

"--I believe Mr. Balfour looked beyond the immediate effect of the Act and saw that, after the Munic.i.p.alities' and County Councils'

first success in setting up secondary schools of their own, each with its quota of poor, non-paying children, our st.u.r.dy British independence would rise against the--er--contact.

The self-respecting parent is bound to say in time, 'No, I will _not_ have my son, still less my daughter, sitting with Tom, d.i.c.k and Harry.' Indeed, I see signs of this already--most encouraging signs.

I have two more pupils this term than last, both children of respectable station."

"I congratulate you, ma'am, and I feel sure that Mr. Balfour would congratulate himself, could he hear. But meantime the private-venture schools have been hit, especially those not fortunate enough to be 'recognised' by the Board of Education."

"I seek no such recognition, sir," said Miss d.i.c.kinson stiffly.

Brother Copas bowed.

"Forgive, ma'am, the intrusive ghost of a professional interest.