Brother Copas Part 32

"--She hates Branny like poison, and I hate _her_. . . . 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 to _that_, 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 punis.h.i.+ng that child--sending her to bed supperless.

Now call me the a.s.s 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.

Corona undressed herself very deliberately; and, seating herself again on the edge of the bed, as deliberately undressed Timothy and clothed him for the night in his pyjamas.

"I am sorry, dear, that _you_ should suffer. . . . But I can't tell what isn't true, not even for your sake; and I can't take back what I said. Nurse Turner is a beast, if we starve for saying it--which,"

added Corona reflectively, "I don't suppose we shall. I couldn't answer back properly on Uncle Copas, because when you say a thing to grown-ups they look wise and ask you to prove it, and if you can't you look silly. But Nurse Turner is a beast. . . . Oh, Timmy! let's lie down and try to get to sleep. But it _is_ miserable to have all the world against us."

She remembered that she was omitting to say her prayers, and knelt down; but after a moment or two rose again.

"It's no use, G.o.d," she said. "I'm very sorry, and I wouldn't tell it to anyone but _You_--and perhaps Uncle Copas, if he was different: but I can't say 'forgive us our trespa.s.ses' when I can't abide the woman."

She had already pulled down the blind. Before creeping to bed she drew the curtains to exclude the lingering daylight. As she did so, she made sure that her window was hasped wide. Her bedroom (on the ground floor) looked out upon a small cabbage-plot in which Brother Bonaday, until warned by the doctor, had employed his leisure.

It was a wilderness now.

As a rule Corona slept with her lattice wide to the fullest extent: and at any time (upon an alarm of fire, for example) she could have slipped her small body out through the opening with ease.

To-night she drew the frame of the window closer than usual, and pinned it on the perforated bar; so close that her small body could not squeeze through it even if she should walk in her sleep.

She was a conscientious child. She only forbore to close it tight because it was wicked to go without fresh air.

She stole into bed and curled herself up comfortably. For some reason or other the touch of the cold pillow drew a tear or two.

But after a very little while she slept, still hugging her doll.

There was no sound to disturb her; no sound but the soft dripping, now and again, of a cinder in the grate before which Brother Bonaday sat, with misery in his heart.

"Corona!"

The voice was low and tremulous. It followed on the sound of a loud sneeze. Either the voice or the sneeze (or both) aroused her, and she sat up in bed with a start. Like Chaucer's Canace, of sleep "She was full mesurable, as women be."

"Corona!"

"Is that you, Daddy?" she asked, jumping out of bed and tiptoeing to the door.

What the hour was she could not tell: but she knew it must be late, for a shaft of moonlight fell through a gap in the window-curtains and shone along the floor.

"Are you ill? . . . Shall I run and call them up at the Nunnery?"

"I was listening. . . . I have been listening here for some time, and I could not hear you breathing."

"Dear Daddy . . . is that all? Go back to your bed--it's wicked of you to be out of it, with the nights turning chilly as they are.

I'll go back to mine and try to snore, if that's any comfort."

"I haven't been to bed at all. I couldn't . . . Corona!"

"You are not to turn the key!" she commanded in a whisper, for he was fumbling with it. "Uncle Copas pretended he was taking it away with him: or that was what I understood, and if he breaks an understanding it's _his_ affair."

"I--I thought, dear, you might be hungry."

"Well, and suppose I am?"

Corona, now she came to think of it, was ravenous.