Brother Copas | Page 4

"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 and gilt leather, on the
rare prints in black frames, the statuette of Diane Chasseresse, the bust
of Antinous, the portfolios containing other prints, the Persian carpets
scattered about the dark bees'-waxed floor, the Sheraton table with its
bowl of odorous peonies.
"Eh? I beg your pardon--" said the Master again after three minutes or
so, facing around with a smile of apology. "My wits were
wool-gathering, over the sermon--that little peroration of mine does not
please me somehow. . . . I will take a stroll to the home-park and back,
and think it over. . . . Thank you, yes, you may gather up the papers.
We will do no more work this afternoon."
"And I will write out another fair copy, sir."
"Yes, certainly; that is to say, of all but the last page. We will take the
last page to-morrow."
For a moment, warmed by the wine and by the Master's cordiality of
manner, Mr. Simeon felt a wild impulse to make a clean breast, confess
his trafficking with Canon Tarbolt and beg to be forgiven. But his

courage failed him. He gathered up his papers, bowed and made his
escape.
CHAPTER II.
THE COLLEGE OF NOBLE POVERTY.
If a foreigner would apprehend (he can never comprehend) this
England of ours, with her dear and ancient graces, and her foibles as
ancient and hardly less dear; her law-abidingness, her staid,
God-fearing citizenship; her parochialism whereby (to use a Greek
idiom) she perpetually escapes her own notice being empress of the
world; her inveterate snobbery, her incurable habit of mistaking
symbols and words for realities; above all, her spacious and beautiful
sense of time as builder, healer and only perfecter of worldly things; let
him go visit the Cathedral City, sometime the Royal City, of
Merchester. He will find it all there, enclosed and casketed--"a box
where sweets compacted lie."
Let him arrive on a Saturday night and awake next morning to the note
of the Cathedral bell, and hear the bugles answering from the barracks
up the hill beyond the mediaeval gateway. As he sits down to breakfast
the bugles will start sounding nigher, with music absurd and barbarous,
but stirring, as the Riflemen come marching down the High Street to
Divine Service. In the Minster to which they wend, their disused
regimental colours droop along the aisles; tattered, a hundred years
since, in Spanish battlefields, and by age worn almost to
gauze--"strainers," says Brother Copas, "that in their time have clarified
much turbid blood." But these are guerdons of yesterday in comparison
with other relics the Minster guards. There is royal dust among
them--Saxon and Dane and Norman--housed in painted chests above
the choir stalls. "Quare fremuerunt gentes?" intone the choristers'
voices below, Mr. Simeon's weak but accurate tenor among them. "The
kings of the earth stand up, and the rulers take counsel together . . ."
The Riflemen march down to listen. As they go by ta-ra-ing, the douce
citizens of Merchester and their wives and daughters admire from the
windows discreetly; but will attend their Divine Service later. This,

again, is England.
Sundays and week-days at intervals the Cathedral organ throbs across
the Close, gently shaking the windows of the Deanery and the Canons'
houses, and interrupting the chatter of sparrows in their ivy. Twice or
thrice annually a less levitical noise invades, when our State visits its
Church; in other words, when with trumpeters and javelin-men the
High Sheriff escorts his Majesty's Judges to hear the Assize Sermon.
On these occasions the head boy of the great School, which lies a little
to the south of the Cathedral, by custom presents a paper to the learned
judge, suing for a school holiday; and his lordship, brushing up his
Latinity, makes a point of acceding in the best hexameters he can
contrive. At his time of life it comes easier to try prisoners; and if he lie
awake, he is haunted less by his day in Court than by the fear of a false
quantity.
The School--with its fourteenth-century quadrangles, fenced citywards
behind a blank brewhouse-wall (as though its Founder's first precaution
had been to protect learning from siege), and its precincts opening
rearwards upon green playing-fields and river-meads--is like few
schools