Brother Copas | Page 7

sneering."
"A man might have all the pains of Golgotha upon him before ever you turned a hair," grumbled Brother Dasent, a few yards away.
He writhed in his chair, for the rheumatism was really troublesome; but he over-acted his suffering somewhat, having learnt in forty-five years of married life that his spouse was not over-ready with sympathy.
"T'cht!" answered she. "I ought to know what they're like by this time, and I wonder, for my part, you don't try to get accustomed to 'em. Dying one can understand: but to be worrited with a man's ailments, noon and night, it gets on the nerves. . . ."
"You're sure?" resumed Mrs. Royle eagerly, but sinking her voice-- for she could hardly wait until the Master had passed out of earshot.
"Did you ever know me spread tales?" asked the comfortable-looking Nurse. "Only, mind you, I mentioned it in the strictest secrecy. This is such a scandalous hole, one can't be too careful. . . . But down by the river they were, consorting and God knows what else."
"At his age, too! Disgusting, I call it."
"Oh, she's not particular! My comfort is I always suspected that woman from the first moment I set eyes on her. Instinct, I s'pose. 'Well, my lady,' says I, 'if you're any better than you should be, then I've lived all these years for nothing.'"
"And him--that looked such a broken-down old innocent!"
"They get taken that way sometimes, late in life."
Nurse Turner sank her voice and said something salacious, which caused Mrs. Royle to draw a long breath and exclaim that she could never have credited such things--not in a Christian land. Her old husband, too, overheard it, and took snuff with a senile chuckle.
"Gad, that's spicy!" he crooned.
The Master, at the gateway leading to the home-park, turned for a look back on the quadrangle and the seated figures. Yes, they made an exquisite picture. Here--
"Here where the world is quiet"--
Here, indeed, his ancestor had built a haven of rest.
"From too much love of living, From hope and fear set free, We thank with brief thanksgiving Whatever gods may be That no life lives for ever; That dead men rise up never; That even the weariest river Winds somewhere safe to sea."
As the lines floated across his memory, the Master had a mind to employ them in his peroration (giving them a Christian trend, of course) in place of the sonnet he had meant to quote. This would involve reconstructing a longish paragraph; but they had touched his mood, and he spent some time pacing to and fro under the trees before his taste rejected them as facile and even cheap in comparison with Wordsworth's--
"Men unto whom sufficient for the day, And minds not stinted or untill'd are given, --Sound healthy children of the God of heaven-- Are cheerful as the rising sun in May."
"Yes, yes," murmured the Master, "Wordsworth's is the better. But what a gift, to be able to express a thought just so--with that freshness, that noble simplicity! And even with Wordsworth it was fugitive, lost after four or five marvellous years. No one not being a Greek has ever possessed it in permanence. . . ."
Here he paused at the sound of a footfall on the turf close behind him, and turned about with a slight frown; which readily yielded, however, and became a smile of courtesy.
"Ah, my dear Colt! Good evening!"
"Good evening, Master."
Mr. Colt came up deferentially, yet firmly, much as a nurse in a good family might collect a straying infant. He was a tall, noticeably well-grown man, a trifle above thirty, clean shaven, with a square and obstinate chin. He wore no hat, and his close black hair showed a straight middle parting above his low and somewhat protuberant forehead. The parting widened at the occiput to a well-kept tonsure. At the back the head wanted balance; and this lent a suggestion of brutality--of "thrust"--to his abounding appearance of strength. He walked in his priestly black with the gait and carriage proper to a heavy dragoon.
"A fine evening, indeed. Are you disengaged?"
"Certainly, certainly"--in comparison with Mr. Colt's grave voice the Master's was almost a chirrup--"whether for business or for the pleasure of a talk. Nothing wrong, I hope?"
For a moment or two the Chaplain did not answer. He seemed to be weighing his words. At length he said--
"I should have reported at once, but have been thinking it over. At Early Celebration this morning Warboise insulted the wafer."
"Dear, dear, you don't say so!"
--"Took it from me, held it derisively between finger and thumb, and muttered. I could not catch all that he said, but I distinctly heard the words 'biscuit' and 'Antichrist.' Indeed, he confesses to having used them. His demeanour left no doubt that he was insolent of set purpose. . . .