Brother Copas Part 25

Brother Bonaday gazed up as if appealing for mercy, but shook his head.

"I cannot, sir."

"Come, come--as to a friend, if you won't as to a priest? . . .

Hang it all, my good man, you might give me credit for _that_, considering the chance I'm holding out! You don't surely suppose that St. Hospital will continue to suffer this scandal in its midst?"

Still as Brother Bonaday shook his head, the Chaplain with a sign of impatience enlarged his hint. "Copas knows: I have it on the best authority. Was it he that dropped the hint to Nurse Branscome? or did she herself scent the discovery and give over attending on you?"

"You won't--send her--away!" pleaded Brother Bonaday, thinking only of Corona.

His voice came in a whisper, between gasps for breath.

Mr. Colt stared.

"Well, of all the calm requests--!" he began.

But here the sound of a light running footstep cut him short.

The door was pushed open, and on the threshold stood Corona, flushed, excited.

"Daddy, guess! Oh, but you'll never! I'm a real live Greycoat, and if I don't tell Timmy before you ask a single question I shall burst!"

She came to a halt, her eyes on Mr. Colt.

"'Tis the truth," announced Brother Copas, overtaking her as she paused in the doorway. "We shot at a canary, and--Good G.o.d!" he exclaimed, catching sight of Brother Bonaday's face. "Slip away and fetch the nurse, child!"

Corona ran. While she ran Brother Copas stepped past Mr. Colt, and slid an arm under his friend's head as it dropped sideways, blue with anguish. He turned on the tall Chaplain fiercely.

"What devil's game have you been playing here?"

CHAPTER XVII.

PUPPETS.

Throughout the night Brother Bonaday hovered between life and death, nor until four days later did the doctor p.r.o.nounce him out of danger--that is to say, for the time, since the trouble in his heart was really incurable, and at best the frail little man's remaining days could not be many. Nurse Turner waited on him a.s.siduously, always with her comfortable smile. No trouble came amiss to her, and certainly Nurse Branscome herself could not have done better.

In a sense, too, Corona's first experiences of school-going befell her most opportunely. They would distract her mind, Brother Copas reflected, and tore up the letter he had written delaying her noviciate on the ground of her father's illness. They did; and, moreover, the head mistress of the Greycoats, old Miss Champernowne, aware that the child's father was ill, possibly dying, took especial pains to be kind to her.

Corona was dreadfully afraid her father would die. But, in the main most mercifully, youth lives for itself, not for the old. At home she could have given little help or none. The Brethren's quarters were narrow--even Brother Bonaday's with its spare chamber--and until the crisis was over she could only be in the way. She gave up her room, therefore, to Nurse Turner for the night watching, and went across to the Nunnery to lodge with Nurse Branscome. This again was no hards.h.i.+p, but rather, under all her cloud of anxiety, a delightful adventure; for Branny had at once engaged with her in a conspiracy.

The subject--for a while the victim--of this conspiracy was her black doll Timothy. As yet Timothy knew nothing, and was supposed to suspect nothing, of her goings to school. She had carefully kept the secret from him, intending to take him aback with it when she brought home the Greycoat uniform--frock and cloak and hood of duffle grey-- for which Miss Champernowne had measured her. Meanwhile it was undoubtedly hard on him to lie neglected in a drawer, and be visited but twice in the twenty-four hours, to have his garments changed.

Corona, putting him into pyjamas, would (with an aching heart) whisper to him to be patient for a little while yet, and all would come right.

"It _is_ hard, Branny," she sighed, "that I can't even take him to bed with me. . . . But it's not to be thought of. I'd be sure to talk in my sleep."

"He seems to be a very unselfish person," observed Branny.

"At any rate, you treat him as such, making him wait all this while for the delight of seeing you happy."

Corona knit her brow.

"Now you're talking upsi-downly, like Uncle Copas," she said.

"You don't mean that Timmy's unselfish, but that I'm selfish.

Of course, you don't _realise_ how good he is; n.o.body does but me, and it's not to be es-pected. But all the same, I s'pose I've been thinking too much about myself."

Corona's was a curiously just mind, as has already been said.

Nurse Branscome had a happy inspiration.

"Couldn't we make new clothes for Timmy, and surprise him with them at the same time?"

Corona clapped her hands.

"Oh, Branny, how beautiful! Yes--a Beauchamp gown, just like Daddy's!

Why-ever didn't we think of it before?"

"A _what_?"

"A Beauchamp gown. . . . Do you know," said Corona gravely, "it's a most 'stonis.h.i.+ng thing I never thought of it, because-- I'll tell you why. When I first came to St. Hospital often and often I couldn't get to sleep for thinking how happy I was. Daddy got worried about it, and told me it was a good cure to lie still and fancy I saw a flock of sheep jumping one after another through a hedge. . . . Well, that didn't answer--at least, not ezactly; for you see I wanted to be _coaxed_ off, and I never took any partic'lar truck in sheep. But one night--you know that big stone by the gate of the home-park? the one Uncle Copas calls the Hepping-stone, and says the great Cardinal used to climb on to his horse from it when he went hunting?" (Nurse Branscome nodded.) "Well, one night I closed my eyes, and there I saw all the old folks here turned into children, and all out and around the Hepping-stone, playing leap-frog. . . .

The way they went over each other's backs! It beat the band. . . .

Some were in Beauchamp gowns and others in Blanchminster--but all children, you understand? Each child finished up by leap-frogging over the stone; and when he'd done that he'd run away and be lost among the trees. I wanted to follow, but somehow I had to stand there counting. . . . And that's all there is _to_ it," concluded Corona, "'cept that I'd found the way to go to sleep."

Nurse Branscome laughed, and suggested that no time should be lost in going off to call on Mr. Colling, the tailor, and begging or borrowing a sc.r.a.p of the claret-coloured Beauchamp cloth. Within ten minutes--for she understood the impatience of children--they had started on this small expedition. They found in Mr. Colling a most human tailor. He not only gave them a square yard of cloth, unsoiled and indeed brand-new, but advised Nurse Branscome learnedly on the cutting-out. There were certain peculiarities of cut in a Beauchamp gown: it was (he could tell them) a unique garment in its way, and he the sole repository of its technical secret. On their way back Corona summarised him as "a truly Christian tradesman."

So the miniature gown was cut out, shaped, and sewn, after the unsuspecting Timothy had been measured for it on a pretence of Corona's that she wanted to discover how much he had grown during his rest-cure. (For I regret to say that, as one subterfuge leads to another, she had by this time descended to feigning a nervous breakdown for him, due to his outgrowing his strength.) Best of all, and when the gown was finished, Nurse Branscome produced from her workbox a lucky threepenny-bit, and sewed it upon the breast to simulate a Beauchamp rose.

When Corona's own garments arrived--when they were indued and she stood up in them, a Greycoat at length from head to heel--to hide her own feelings she had to invent another breakdown (emotional this time) for Timothy as she dangled the gown in front of him.

"Be a man, Timmy!" she exhorted him.

Having clothed him and clasped him to her breast, she turned to Nurse Branscome, who had been permitted, as indeed she deserved, to witness the _coup de theatre_.

"If you _don't_ mind, Branny, I think we'll go off somewhere-- by ourselves."

She carried the doll off to the one unkempt corner of Mr.

Battershall's garden, where in the shadow of a stone dovecot, ruinated and long disused, a rustic bench stood deep in nettles.

On this she perched herself, and sat with legs dangling while she discoursed with Timothy of their new promotion.

"Of course," she said, "you have the best of it. Men always have."

Nevertheless, she would have him know that to be a Greycoat was good enough for most people. She described the schoolroom.

"It's something like a chapel," she said, "and something like a long whitewashed bird-cage, with great beams for perches. You could eat your dinner off the floor most days; and Miss Champernowne has the dearest little mole on the left side of her upper lip, with three white hairs in it. When she looks at you over her gla.s.ses it's like a bird getting ready to drink; and when she plays 'Another day is done' on the harmonium and pitches the note, it's just the way a bird lifts his throat to let the water trickle down inside.

She has the loveliest way of putting things, too. Only yesterday, speaking of China, she told us that words would fail her to describe one-half the wonders of that enchanted land. . . . After that there's going to be no rest for me until I've seen China for myself.

Such a nice lot of children as they are, if it weren't for Marty Jewell. She sits next to me and copies my sums, and when I remind her of it she puts out her tongue; but she has a sister in the infant cla.s.s at the end of the room with the same trick, so I s'pose it runs in the family. . . . I'm forgetting, though," she ran on.

"You're Brother Timothy now, a Beauchamp Brother, and the Lord knows how I'm to make you sensible of it! I heard Brother Clerihew taking a party around yesterday, and played around close to hear what he had to tell about the place. All he said was that if these old walls could speak what a tale might they not unfold? And then a lady turned round and supposed that the child (meaning me) was following them on the chance of a copper. So I came away. . . . I've my belief," announced Corona, "Brother Clerihew was speaking through his hat. There's n.o.body but Uncle Copas knows anything about this place--him and the Lord Almighty; and as the chief engineer told me aboard the _Carnatic_, when I kept asking him how soon we should get to England, He won't split under a quart. The trouble is, Uncle Copas won't lay up for visitors. Manby, at the lodge, says he's too proud. . . . But maybe he'll take me round some day if I ask him nicely, and then you can come on my arm and pretend you're not listening. . . . No," announced Corona, after musing awhile, "that would be deception. I'll have to go to him and make a clean breast of it."

It occurred to her that Brother Manby was a friend of hers.

He didn't know much, to be sure; but he was capable of entering into a joke and introducing Timothy to the Wayfarers' Dole. She tucked the doll under her arm and wended towards the porter's lodge, where, as it happened, she met Brother Copas coming through the gateway in talk with the Chaplain.