Brother Copas | Page 3

a servitor."'
The declining sun, slanting in past the Banksia roses, touched the edge of a giant amethyst which the Master wore, by inheritance of office, on his forefinger; and, because his hand trembled a little with age, the gem set the reflected ray dancing in a small pool of light, oval-shaped and wine-coloured, on the white margin of the sermon. He stared at it for a moment, tracing it mistakenly to a glass of Rhone wine--a Chateau Neuf du Pape of a date before the phylloxera--that stood neglected on the writing-table. (By his doctor's orders he took a glass of old wine and a biscuit every afternoon at this hour as a gentle digestive.)
Thus reminded, he reached out a hand and raised the wine to his lips, nodding as he sipped.
"In Common Room, Simeon, we used to say that no man was really educated who preferred Burgundy to claret, but that on the lower Rhone all tastes met in one ecstasy. . . . I'd like to have your opinion on this, now; that is, if you will find the decanter and a glass in the cupboard yonder--and if you have no conscientious objection."
Mr. Simeon murmured, amid his thanks, that he had no objection.
"I am glad to hear it. . . . Between ourselves, there is always something lacking in an abstainer--as in a man who has never learnt Greek. It is difficult with both to say what the lack precisely is; but with both it includes an absolute insensibility to the shortcoming."
Mr. Simeon could not help wondering if this applied to poor men who abstained of necessity. He thought not; being, for his part, conscious of a number of shortcomings.
"Spirits," went on the Master, wheeling half-about in his revolving-chair and crossing one shapely gaitered leg over another, "Spirits--and especially whisky--eat out the health of a man and leave him a sodden pulp. Beer is honest, but brutalising. Wine--certainly any good wine that can trace its origin back beyond the Reformation--is one with all good literature, and indeed with civilisation. Antiquam exquirite matrem: all three come from the Mediterranean basin or from around it, and it is only the ill-born who contemn descent."
"Brother Copas--" began Mr. Simeon, and came to a halt.
He lived sparely; he had fasted for many hours; and standing there he could feel the generous liquor coursing through him--nay could almost have reported its progress from ganglion to ganglion. He blessed it, and at the same moment breathed a prayer that it might not affect his head.
"Brother Copas--?"
Mr. Simeon wished now that he had not begun his sentence. The invigorating Chateau Neuf du Pape seemed to overtake and chase away all uncharitable thoughts. But it was too late.
"Brother Copas--you were saying--?"
"I ought not to repeat it, sir. But I heard Brother Copas say the other day that the teetotallers were in a hopeless case; being mostly religious men, and yet having to explain in the last instance why Our Lord, in Cana of Galilee, did not turn the water into ginger-pop."
The Master frowned and stroked his gaiters.
"Brother Copas's tongue is too incisive. Something must be forgiven to one who, having started as a scholar and a gentleman, finds himself toward the close of his days dependent on the bread of charity."
It was benignly spoken; and to Mr. Simeon, who questioned nothing his patron said or did, no shade of misgiving occurred that, taken down in writing, it might annotate somewhat oddly the sermon on the table. It was spoken with insight too, for had not his own poverty, or the fear of it, sharpened Mr. Simeon's tongue just now and prompted him to quote Brother Copas detrimentally? The little man did not shape this accusation clearly against himself, for he had a rambling head; but he had also a sound heart, and it was uneasy.
"I ought not to have told it, sir. . . . I ask you to believe that I have no ill-will against Brother Copas."
The Master had arisen, and stood gazing out of the window immersed in his own thoughts.
"Eh? I beg your pardon?" said he absently.
"I--I feared, sir, you might think I said it to his prejudice."
"Prejudice?" the Master repeated, still with his back turned, and still scarcely seeming to hear. "But why in the world? . . . Ah, there he goes!--and Brother Bonaday with him. They are off to the river, for Brother Copas carries his rod. What a strange fascination has that dry-fly fishing! And I can remember old anglers discussing it as a craze, a lunacy."
He gazed out, still in a brown study. The room was silent save for the ticking of a Louis Seize clock on the chimney-piece; and Mr. Simeon, standing attentive, let his eyes travel around upon the glass-fronted bookcases, filled with sober riches in vellum