A PEACE-OFFERING.
"'Fee, faw, fum! bubble and squeak!
Blessedest Thursday's the fat of the week!'"
Quoted Brother Copas from one of his favourite poems. This was in
the kitchen, three days later, and he made one of the crowd edging,
pushing, pressing, each with plate in hand, around the great table
where the joints stood ready to be carved and distributed. For save
on Gaudy Days and great festivals of the Church, the Brethren dine in
their own chambers, not in Hall; and on three days of the week must
fend for themselves on food purchased out of their small allowances.
But on Mondays, Tuesdays, Thursdays and Saturdays they fetch it from
the kitchen, taking their turns to choose the best cuts. And this
was Thursday and, as it happened, Brother Copas stood first on the
rota.
The rota hung on the kitchen wall in a frame of oak canopied with
faded velvet--an ingenious and puzzling contrivance, somewhat like
the calendar prefixed to the Book of Common Prayer, with the names of
the Brethren inserted on movable cards worn greasy with handling.
In system nothing could be fairer; but in practice, human nature
being what it is, and the crowd without discipline, the press and
clamour about the table made choosing difficult for the weaker ones.
"Brother Copas to choose! Brother Clerihew to divide!"
"Aye," sang out Brother Copas cheerfully, "and I'll take my time
about it. Make room, Woolcombe, if you please, and take your elbow
out of my ribs--don't I know the old trick? And stop pushing--you
behind there! . . . 'Rats in a hamper, swine in a sty, wasps in a
bottle.'--Mrs. Royle, ma'am, I am very sorry for your husband's
rheumatism, but it does not become a lady to show this indecent
haste."
"Indecent?" shrilled Mrs. Royle. "Indecent, you call me?--you that
pretend to ha' been a gentleman! I reckon, if indecency's the matter
in these times, I could talk to one or two of ye about it."
"Not a doubt of _that_, ma'am. . . . But really you ladies have no
right here: it's clean against the rules, and the hubbub you provoke
is a scandal."
"Do you mean to insinuate, sir--"
"With your leave, ma'am, I mean to insinuate myself between your
person and the table from which at this moment you debar me.
Ah!" exclaimed Brother Copas as the cook whipped off the first of the
great dish-covers, letting loose a cloud of savoury steam.
He sniffed at it.
"What's this? Boiled pork, and in June! We'll have a look at the
others, please . . . Roast leg of mutton, boiled neck and scrag of
mutton--aha! You shall give me a cut of the roast, please; and start
at the knuckle end. Yes, Biscoe--_at the knuckle end_."
Hate distorted Brother Biscoe's patriarchal face. He came second on
the rota, and roast knuckle of mutton was the tit-bit dearest of all
to his heart, as Brother Copas knew. Brother Biscoe also had a
passion for the two first cutlets of a mutton-neck; but he thought
nothing of this in his rage.
"Please God it'll choke ye!" he snarled.
"Dear Brother," said Copas amiably, "on Monday last you helped me to
the back of a duck."
"Hurry up there!" shouted Brother Woolcombe, and swung round.
"Are we all to get cold dinner when these two old fools have done
wrangling?"
"Fool yourself, Woolcombe!" Brother Biscoe likewise swung about.
"Here's Copas has brought two plates! Isn't it time to speak up,
when a rogue's caught cheating?"
One or two cried out that he ought to lose his turn for it.
"My friends," said Brother Copas, not at all perturbed, "the second
plate is for Brother Bonaday's dinner, when his turn arrives.
He has a heart-attack to-day, and cannot come for himself."
"A _heart_-attack!" sniggered Mrs. Royle, her voice rising shrill
above the din. "Oh, save us if we didn't all know _that_ news!"
Laughter crackled like musketry about Brother Copas's ears, laughter
to him quite meaningless. It was plain that all shared some joke
against his friend Bonaday; but he had no clue.
"And," pursued Mrs. Royle, "here's his best friend tellin' us as 'tis
a scandal the way women push themselves into St. Hospital--'when
they're not wanted,' did I hear you say, sir? Yes, 'a scandal' he
said, and 'indecent'; which I leave it to you is pretty strong
language as addressed to a woman what has her marriage lines I should
hope!"
Brother Copas, bewildered by this onslaught--or, as he put it later,
comparing the encounter with that between Socrates and Gorgias the
Sophist--drenched with that woman's slop-pail of words and blinded
for the moment, received his portion of mutton and drew aside,
vanquished amid peals of laughter, of which he guessed only from its
note that the allusion had been disgusting. Indeed, the whole
atmosphere of the kitchen sickened him; even the portion of mutton
cooling on his plate raised his gorge in physical loathing.
But Brother Bonaday lay helpless in his chamber, without food.
Remembering this, Brother Copas stood his ground and waited, with the
spare plate ready for the invalid's portion.
The babel went on as one after another fought for the spoil.
They had forgotten him, and those at the back of the crowd had found
a new diversion in hustling old Biscoe as he struggled to get away
with his two cutlets of half-warm mutton.
Brother Copas held his gaze upon the joints. His friend's turn came
all but last on the rota; and by perversity--but who could blame it,
in the month of June?--everyone eschewed the pork and bid emulously
for mutton, roast or boiled. He knew that Brother Bonaday abhorred
pork, which, moreover, was indigestible, and by consequence bad for a
weak heart. He stood and watched, gradually losing all hope except
to capture a portion of the mutton near the scrag-end. As for the
leg, it had speedily been cleaned to the bone.
At the last moment a ray of hope shot up, as an expiring candle
flames in the socket. Brother Inchbald--a notoriously stingy man--
whose turn came immediately before Brother Bonaday's, seemed to doubt
that enough of the scrag remained to eke out a full portion; and bent
towards the dish of pork, fingering his chin. Copas seized the
moment to push his empty plate towards the mutton, stealthily, as one
forces a card.
As he did so, another roar of laughter--coarser than before--drew him
to glance over his shoulder. The cause of it was Nurse Branscome,
entering by way of the refectory, with a hot plate held in a napkin
between her hands.
She paused on the threshold, as though the ribaldry took her in the
face like a blast of hot wind.
"Oh, I am late!" she cried. "I came to fetch Brother Bonaday's
dinner. Until five minutes ago no one told me--"
"It's all right," called back Brother Copas, still looking over his
shoulder while his right hand extended the plate. "His turn is just
called, and I am getting it for him."
Strange to say, his voice reached the Nurse across an almost dead
silence; for the laughter had died down at sight of a child--Corona--
beside her in the doorway.
"But your plate will be cold. Here, change it for mine!"
"Well thought upon! Wait a second!"
But before Brother Copas could withdraw the plate a dollop of meat
had been dumped upon it.
"Eh? but wait--look here!--"
He turned about, stared at the plate, stared from the plate to the
dish of scrag. The meat on the plate was pork, and the dish of scrag
was empty. Brother Inchbald had changed his mind at the last moment
and chosen mutton.
The Brethren, led by Mrs. Royle, cackled again at sight of his
dismay. One or two still hustled Brother Biscoe as he fought his way
to the foot of the refectory steps, at the head of which Nurse
Branscome barred the exit, with Corona holding fast by her hand and
wondering.
"But what is it all about?" asked the child.
"Hush!" The Nurse squeezed her hand, meaning that she must have
courage. "We have come too late, and the dinner is all shared up--or
all of it that would do your father good."
"But"--Corona dragged her small hand loose--"there is plenty left;
and when they know he is sick they will make it all right. . . .
If you please, sir," she spoke up, planting her small body in front
of Brother Biscoe as he would have pushed past with his plate, "my
father is sick, and Nurse says he must not eat the meat that's left
on the dish there. Won't you give me that on your plate?"
She stretched out a hand for it, and Brother Biscoe, spent with
senile wrath at this last interruption of his escape, was snatching
back the food, ready to curse her, when Brother Copas came battling
through the press, holding both his plates high and hailing
cheerfully.
"I forgot," he panted, and held up the plate in his left hand.
"Bonaday can have the knuckle. I had first choice to-day."
"He ought not to eat roasted meat," said Nurse Branscome slowly.
"I am sorry. You are good and will be disappointed. The smallest
bit of boiled, now--were it only the scrag--"
"Why," bustled Brother Copas, "Brother Biscoe has the very thing,
then--the two best cutlets at the bottom of the neck. And, what's
more, he'll be only too glad to exchange 'em for the roast knuckle
here, as I happen to know."
He thrust the tit-bit upon Brother Biscoe, who hesitated a moment
between hate and greed, and snatched the cutlets from him before hate
could weigh down the balance.
Brother Biscoe, clutching the transferred plate, fled ungraciously,
without a word of thanks. Nurse Branscome stayed but a moment to
thank Brother Copas for his cleverness, and hurried off with Corona
to hot-up the plate of mutton for the invalid.
They left Brother Copas eyeing his dismal pork.
"And in June, too!" he murmured. "No: a man must protect himself.
I'll have to eke out to-day on biscuits."