CORONA'S BIRTHDAY.
The May-fly season had come around again, and Corona was spending her
Saturday--the Greycoats' holiday--with Brother Copas by the banks of
Mere. They had brought their frugal luncheon in the creel which was
to contain the trout Brother Copas hoped to catch. He hoped to catch
a brace at least--one for his sick friend at home, the other to
replenish his own empty cupboard: for this excursion meant his
missing to attend at the kitchen and receive his daily dole.
There may have been thunder in the air. At any rate the fish refused
to feed; and after an hour's patient waiting for sign of a rise--
without which his angling would be but idle pains--Brother Copas
found a seat, and pulled out a book from his pocket, while Corona
wandered over the meadows in search of larks' nests. But this again
was pains thrown away; since, as Brother Copas afterwards explained,
in the first place the buttercups hid them, and, secondly, the nests
were not there!--the birds preferring the high chalky downs for their
nurseries. She knew, however, that along the ditches where the
willows grew, and the alder clumps, there must be scores of warblers
and other late-breeding birds; for walking here in the winter she had
marvelled at the number of nests laid bare by the falling leaves.
These warblers wait for the leaves to conceal their building, and
Winter will betray the deserted hiding-place. So Brother Copas had
told her, to himself repeating--
"_Cras amorum copulatrix inter umbras arborum
Inplicat casas virentes de flagello myrteo_...."
Corona found five of these nests, and studied them: flimsy things,
constructed of a few dried grasses, inwoven with horsehair and
cobwebs. Before next spring the rains would dissolve them and they
would disappear.
She returned with a huge posy of wild flowers and the information
that she, for her part, felt hungry as a hunter. . . . They disposed
themselves to eat.
"Do you know, Uncle Copas," she asked suddenly, "why I have dragged
you out here to-day?"
"Did I show myself so reluctant?" he protested; but she paid no heed
to this.
"It is because I came home here to England, to St. Hospital, just a
year ago this very afternoon. This is my Thanksgiving Day," added
Corona solemnly.
"I am afraid there is no turkey in the hamper," said Brother Copas,
pretending to search. "We must console ourselves by reflecting that
the bird is out of season."
"You didn't remember the date, Uncle Copas. Did you, now?"
"I did, though." Brother Copas gazed at the running water for a space
and then turned to her with a quick smile. "Why, child, _of course_
I did! . . . And I appreciate the honour."
Corona nodded as she broke off a piece of crust and munched it.
"I wanted to take stock of it all. (We're dining out of doors, so
please let me talk with my mouth full. I'm learning to eat slowly,
like a good English girl: only it takes so much time when there's a
lot to say.) Well, I've had a good time, and nobody can take _that_
away, thank the Lord! It--it's been just heavenly."
"A good time for all of us, little maid."
"Honest Indian? . . . But it can't last, you know. That's what we
have to consider: and it mayn't be a gay thought, but I'd hate to be
one of those folks that never see what's over the next fence. . . .
Of course," said Corona pensively, "it's up to you to tell me I
dropped in on St. Hospital like one of Solomon's lilies that take no
thought for to-morrow. But I didn't, really: for I always knew this
was going to be the time of my life."
"I don't understand," said Copas. "Why should it not last?"
"I guess you and I'll have to be serious," she answered. "Daddy gets
frailer and frailer. . . . You can't hide from me that you know it:
and please don't try, for I've to think of--of the _afterwards_, and
I want you to help."
"But suppose that I have been thinking about it already--thinking
about it hard?" said Brother Copas slowly. "Ah, child, leave it to
me, and never talk like that!"
"But why?" she asked, wondering.
"Because we old folks cannot bear to hear a child talking, like one
of ourselves, of troubles. That has been our business: we've seen it
through; and now our best happiness lies in looking back on the
young, and looking forward for them, and keeping _them_ young and
happy so long as the gods allow. . . . Never search out ways of
rewarding us. To see you just going about with a light heart is a
better reward than ever you could contrive for us by study.
Child, if the gods allowed, I would keep you always like Master
Walton's milkmaid, that had not yet attained so much age and wisdom
as to load her mind with any fears of many things that will never be,
as too many men too often do. But she cast away care--"
"I think she must have been a pretty silly sort of milkmaid," said
Corona. "Likely she ended to slow music while the cows came home.
But what worries me is that I'm young and don't see any way to hurry
things. Miss Champernowne won't let me join the cookery class
because I'm under the age for it: and I see she talks sense in her
way. Even if I learnt cookery and let down my skirts, who's going to
engage me for a cook-general at _my_ time of life?"
"Nobody, please God," answered Brother Copas, copying her
seriousness. "Did I not tell you I have been thinking about all
this? If you must know, I have talked it over with the Master . . .
and the long and short of it is that, if or when the time should
come, I can step in and make a claim for you as your only known
guardian. My dear child, St. Hospital will not let you go."
For a moment Corona tried to speak, but could not. She sat with her
palms laid on her lap, and stared at the blurred outline of the
chalk-hills--blurred by the mist in her eyes. Two great tears welled
and splashed down on the back of her hand.
"The years and years," she murmured, "before I can begin to pay it
back!"
"Nay"--Brother Copas set down his half-filled glass, took the hand
and gently wiped it with the sleeve of his frayed gown; and so held
it, smoothing it while he spoke, as though the tear had hurt it--"it
is we who are repaying you. Shall I tell you what I told the
Master? 'Master,' I said, 'all we Brethren, ever since I can
remember, have been wearing gowns as more or less conscious humbugs.
Christ taught that poverty was noble, and such a gospel might be
accepted by the East. It might persevere along the Mediterranean
coast, and survive what St. Paul did to Christianity to make
Christianity popular. It might reach Italy and flame up in a crazed
good soul like the soul of St. Francis. It might creep along as a
pious opinion, and even reach England, to be acknowledged on a king's
or a rowdy's death-bed--and Alberic de Blanchminster,' said I,
'(saving your presence, sir) was a rowdy robber who, being afraid
when it came to dying, caught at the Christian precept he has most
neglected, as being therefore in all probability the decentest.
But no Englishman, not being on his death-bed, ever believed it:
and we knew better--until this child came along and taught us.
The Brethren's livery has always been popular enough in the streets
of Merchester: but she--she taught us (God bless her) that it can be
honoured for its own sake; that it is noble and, best of all, that
its _noblesse oblige_' . . . Ah, little maid, you do not guess your
strength!"
Corona understood very little of all this. But she understood that
Uncle Copas loved her, and was uttering these whimsies to cover up
the love he revealed. She did better than answer him in words: she
nestled to his shoulder, rubbing her cheek softly against the
threadbare gown.
"When is your birthday, little one?"
"I don't know," Corona confessed. "Mother never would tell me.
She would get angry about birthdays, and say she never took any truck
with them. . . . But, of course, everyone ought to have a birthday,
of sorts, and so I call this my real one. But I never told you
that--did I?"
"I heard you say once that you left a little girl behind you
somewhere in the States, but that you only came to yourself the day
you reached England."
"Yes; and I _do_ feel sorry for that other little girl sometimes!"
"You need not. She'll grow up to be an American woman: and the
American woman, as everybody knows, has all the fun of the fair.
. . . To-day is your birthday, then; and see! I have brought along a
bottle of claret, to drink your health. It isn't--as the Irish
butler said--the best claret, but it's the best we've got. Your good
health, Miss Corona, and many happy returns!"
"Which," responded Corona, lifting her cupful of milk, "I looks
towards you and I likewise bows. . . . _Would_ you, by the way,
_very_ much object if I fetched Timothy out of the basket?
He gets so few pleasures."
For the rest of the meal, by the clear-running river, they talked
sheer delightful nonsense. . . . When (as Brother Copas expressed it)
they had "put from themselves the desire of meat and drink," he lit a
pipe and smoked tranquilly, still now and again, however, sipping
absent-mindedly at his thin claret.
"But you are not to drink more than half a bottle," Corona commanded.
"The rest we must carry home for supper."
"So poor a vintage as this, once opened, will hardly bear the
journey," he protested. "But what are you saying about supper?"
"Why, you wouldn't leave poor old Daddy quite out of the birthday, I
hope! . . . There's to be a supper to-night. Branny's coming."
"Am I to take this for an invitation?"
"Of course you are. . . . There will be speeches."
"The dickens is, there won't be any trout at this rate!"
"They'll be rising before evening," said Corona confidently.
"And, anyway, we can't hurry them."
From far up stream, where the grey mass of the Cathedral blocked the
vale, a faint tapping sound reached them, borne on 'the cessile air.'
It came from the Pageant Ground, where workmen were hammering busily
at the Grand Stand. It set them talking of the Pageant, of Corona's
'May Queen' dress, of the lines (or, to be accurate, the line and a
half) she had to speak. This led to her repeating some verses she
had learnt at the Greycoats' School. They began--
"I sing of brooks, of blossoms, birds and bowers."
And Corona was crazy over them, because (as she put it) "they made
you feel you were smelling all England out of a bottle."
Brother Copas told her of the man who had written them; and of a
lovelier poem he had written _To Meadows_--
"Ye have been fresh and green,
Ye have been filled with flowers,
And ye the walks have been
Where maids have spent their hours.
"You have beheld how they
With wicker arks did come
To kiss and bear away
The richer cowslips home. . . .
"But now we see none here--"
He broke off.
"Ah, there he gets at the pang of it! Other poets have wasted pity
on the dead-and-gone maids, but his is for the fields they leave
desolate."
This puzzled Corona. But the poem had touched her somehow, and she
kept repeating snatches of it to herself as she rambled off in search
of more birds' nests. Left to himself, Brother Copas pulled out book
and pencil again, and began botching at the last lines of the
_Pervigilium Veneris_--
"Her favour it was filled the sail of the Trojan
for Latium bound;
Her favour that won her AEneas a bride on
Laurentian ground;
And anon from the cloister inveigled the
Vestal, the Virgin, to Mars,
As her wit by the wild Sabine rape recreated
her Rome for its wars
With the Ramnes, Quirites, together
ancestrally proud as they drew
From Romulus down to our Ceesar--last,
best of that bone and that thew.--
Now learn ye to love who loved never--now ye
who have loved, love anew!"
Brother Copas paused to trim his pencil, which was blunt. His gaze
wandered across the water-meadows and overtook Corona, who was wading
deep in buttercups.
"Proserpine on the fields of Enna!" he muttered, and resumed--
"Love planteth a field; it conceives to the
passion, the pang, of his joy.
In a field was Dione in labour delivered of
Cupid the Boy:
And the field in its fostering lap from her
travail receiv'd him: he drew
Mother's milk from the delicate kisses of
flowers; and he prospered and grew.--
Now learn ye to love who loved never--now ye
who have loved, love anew!"
"Why do I translate this stuff? Why, but for the sake of a child who
will never see it--who if she read it, would not understand a word?"
"Lo! Behold ye the bulls, with how lordly a
flank they besprawl on the broom!
--Yet obey the uxorious yoke and are tamed
by Dione her doom.
Or behear ye the sheep, to the husbanding
rams how they bleat to the shade!
Or behear ye the birds, at the Goddess'
command how they sing unafraid!--
Be it harsh as the swannery's clamour that
shatters the hush of the lake;
Be it dulcet as where Philomela holds
darkling the poplar awake,
So melting her soul into music, you'd vow
'twas her passion, her own,
She chanteth--her sister forgot, with the
Daulian crime long-agone.
Hush! Hark! Draw around to the circle . . .
Ah, loitering Summer, say when
For me shall be broken the charm, that I
chirp with the swallow again?
I am old: I am dumb: I have waited to
sing till Apollo withdrew.
--So Amyclae a moment was mute, and for
ever a wilderness grew.--
Now learn ye to love who loved never--now ye
who have loved, love anew!"
"_Perdidi musam tacendo_," murmured Brother Copas, gazing afield.
"Only the young can speak to the young. . . . God grant that, at the
right time, the right Prince may come to her over the meadows, and
discourse honest music!"
_Splash!_
He sprang up and snatched at his rod. A two-pound trout had risen
almost under his nose.