E-text prepared by Lionel Sear
BROTHER COPAS
by
ARTHUR THOMAS QUILLER-COUCH.
1911
TO THE GENTLE READER.
In a former book of mine, _Sir John Constantine_, I expressed
(perhaps extravagantly) my faith in my fellows and in their capacity
to treat life as a noble sport. In _Brother Copas_ I try to express
something of that corellative scorn which must come sooner or later
to every man who puts his faith into practice.. I have that faith
still; but that
"He who would love his fellow men
Must not expect too much of them"
is good counsel if bad rhyme. I can only hope that both the faith
and the scorn are sound at the core.
For the rest, I wish to state that St. Hospital is a society which
never existed. I have borrowed for it certain features from the
Hospital of St. Cross, near Winchester. I have invented a few
external and all the internal ones. My "College of Noble Poverty"
harbours abuses from which, I dare to say, that nobler institution is
entirely free. St Hospital has no existence at all outside of my
imagining.
ARTHUR QUILLER-COUCH.
The Haven, Fowey.
February 16th, 1911.
"And a little Child shall lead them."--ISAIAH xi. 6.
CONTENTS.
Chapter
I. THE MASTER OF ST. HOSPITAL.
II. THE COLLEGE OF NOBLE POVERTY.
III. BROTHER COPAS HOOKS A FISH.
IV. CORONA COMES.
V. BROTHER COPAS ON RELIGIOUS DIFFERENCES.
VI. GAUDY DAY.
VII. LOW AND HIGH TABLES.
VIII. A PEACE-OFFERING.
IX. BY MERE RIVER.
X. THE ANONYMOUS LETTER.
XI. BROTHER COPAS ON THE ANGLO-SAXON.
XII. MR. ISIDORE TAKES CHARGE.
XIII. GARDEN AND LAUNDRY.
XIV. BROTHER COPAS ON THE HOUSE OF LORDS.
XV. CANARIES AND GREATCOATS.
XVI. THE SECOND LETTER.
XVII. PUPPETS.
XVIII. THE PERVIGILIUM.
XVIX. MERCHESTER PREPARES.
XX. NAUGHTINESS, AND A SEQUEL.
XXI. RECONCILIATION.
XXII. MR. SIMEON MAKES A CLEAN BREAST.
XXIII. CORONA'S BIRTHDAY.
XXIV. FINIS CORONAT OPUS.
CONCLUSION.
BROTHER COPAS.
CHAPTER I.
THE MASTER OF ST. HOSPITAL.
'As poor, yet making many rich; as having nothing, and yet
possessing all things . . .'
The Honourable and Reverend Eustace John Wriothesley Blanchminster,
D.D., Master of St. Hospital-by-Merton, sat in the oriel of his
library revising his Trinity Gaudy Sermon. He took pains with these
annual sermons, having a quick and fastidious sense of literary
style. "It is," he would observe, "one of the few pleasurable
capacities spared by old age." He had, moreover, a scholarly habit
of verifying his references and quotations; and if the original,
however familiar, happened to be in a dead or foreign language, would
have his secretary indite it in the margin. His secretary, Mr.
Simeon, after taking the Sermon down from dictation, had made out a
fair copy, and stood now at a little distance from the corner of the
writing-table, in a deferential attitude.
The Master leaned forward over the manuscript; and a ray of afternoon
sunshine, stealing in between a mullion of the oriel and the edge of
a drawn blind, touched his bowed and silvery head as if with a
benediction. He was in his seventy-third year; lineal and
sole-surviving descendant of that Alberic de Blanchminster (Albericus
de Albo Monasterio) who had founded this Hospital of Christ's Poor in
1137, and the dearest, most distinguished-looking old clergyman
imaginable. An American lady had once summed him up as a Doctor of
Divinity in Dresden china; and there was much to be allowed to the
simile when you noted his hands, so shapely and fragile, or his
complexion, transparent as old ivory--and still more if you had
leisure to observe his saintliness, so delicately attuned to this
world.
"_As having nothing, and yet possessing all things_."--The Master
laid his forefinger upon the page and looked up reproachfully.
"os meden echontes--my good Simeon, is it possible? A word so common
as os! and after all these years you make it perispomenon!"
Mr. Simeon stammered contrition. In the matter of Greek accents he
knew himself to be untrustworthy beyond hope. "I can't tell how it
is, sir, but that os always seems to me to want a circumflex, being
an adverb of sorts." On top of this, and to make things worse, he
pleaded that he had left out the accent in os ptochoi, just above.
"H'm--as poor, and yet thankful for small mercies," commented the
Master with gentle sarcasm. He had learnt in his long life to
economise anger. But he frowned as he dipped a pen in the ink-pot
and made the correction; for he was dainty about his manuscripts as
about all the furniture of life, and a blot or an erasure annoyed
him. "Brother Copas," he murmured, "never misplaces an accent."
Mr. Simeon heard, and started. It was incredible that the Master,
who five-and-twenty years ago had rescued Mr. Simeon from a school
for poor choristers and had him specially educated for the sake of
his exquisite handwriting, could be threatening dismissal over a
circumflex. Oh, there was no danger! If long and (until the other
day) faithful service were not sufficient, at least there was
guarantee in the good patron's sense of benefits conferred.
Moreover, Brother Copas was not desirable as an amanuensis. . . .
None the less, poor men with long families will start at the shadow
of a fear; and Mr. Simeon started.
"Master," he said humbly, choosing the title by which his patron
liked to be addressed, "I think Greek accents must come by gift of
the Lord."
"Indeed?"
The Master glanced up.
"I mean, sir"--Mr. Simeon extended a trembling hand and rested his
fingers on the edge of the writing-table for support--"that one man
is born with a feeling for them, so to speak; while another, though
you may teach and teach him--"
"In other words," said the Master, "they come by breeding. It is
very likely."
He resumed his reading:
'--and yet possessing all things. We may fancy St. Paul's
actual words present in the mind of our Second Founder, the
Cardinal Beauchamp, as their spirit assuredly moved him,
when he named our beloved house the College of Noble Poverty.
His predecessor, Alberic de Blanchminster, had called it after
Christ's Poor; and the one title, to be sure, rests implicit in
the other; for the condescension wherewith Christ made choice of
His associates on earth has for ever dignified Poverty in the
eyes of His true followers.'
"And you have spelt 'his' with a capital 'H'--when you know my
dislike of that practice!"
Poor Mr. Simeon was certainly not in luck to-day. The truth is that,
frightened by the prospect of yet another addition to his family
(this would be his seventh child), he had hired out his needy pen to
one of the Canons Residentiary of Merchester, who insisted on using
capitals upon all parts of speech referring, however remotely, to
either of the Divine Persons. The Master, who despised Canon Tarbolt
for a vulgar pulpiteer, and barely nodded to him in the street, was
not likely to get wind of this mercenage; but if ever he did, there
would be trouble. As it was, the serving of two masters afflicted
Mr. Simeon's conscience while it distracted his pen.
"I will make another fair copy," he suggested.
"I fear you must. Would you mind drawing back that curtain?
My eyes are troublesome this afternoon. Thank you."--
'Nevertheless it was well done of the great churchman to declare
his belief that the poor, as poor, are not only blessed--as Our
Lord expressly says--but noble, as Our Lord implicitly taught.
Nay, the suggestion is not perhaps far-fetched that, as Cardinal
Beauchamp had great possessions, he took this occasion to
testify how in his heart he slighted them. Or again--for
history seems to prove that he was not an entirely scrupulous
man, nor entirely untainted by self-seeking--that his tribute to
Noble Poverty may have been the assertion, by a spirit netted
among the briars of this world's policy, that at least it saw
and suspired after the way to Heaven. _Video meliora,
proboque_--
"O limed soul, that struggling to be free
Art more engaged!"
'But he is with God: and while we conjecture, God knows.
'Lest, however, you should doubt that the finer spirits of this
world have found Poverty not merely endurable but essentially
noble, let me recall to you an anecdote of Saint Francis of
Assisi. It is related that, travelling towards France with a
companion, Brother Masseo, he one day entered a town
wherethrough they both begged their way, as their custom was,
taking separate streets. Meeting again on the other side of the
town, they spread out their alms on a broad stone by the
wayside, whereby a fair fountain ran; and Francis rejoiced that
Brother Masseo's orts and scraps of bread were larger than his
own, saying, "Brother Masseo, we are not worthy of such
treasure." "But how," asked Brother Masseo, "can one speak of
treasure when there is such lack of all things needful?
Here have we neither cloth, nor knife, nor plate, nor porringer,
nor house, nor table, nor manservant, nor maidservant."
Answered Francis, "This and none else it is that I account wide
treasure; which containeth nothing prepared by human hands, but
all we have is of God's own providence--as this bread we have
begged, set out on a table of stone so fine, beside a fountain
so clear. Wherefore," said he, "let us kneel together and pray
God to increase our love of this holy Poverty, which is so noble
that thereunto God himself became 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 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.