Brother Copas. Arthur Quiller-Couch

a party of twelve that came in motor-cars. I was jealous the cast wouldn't go round, for they all insisted on having the dole, and a full slice, too—the gentlemen declaring they were hungry after their drive. But," added Brother Manby, with a glance at a card affixed by the archway and announcing that tickets to view the hospital could be procured at sixpence a head, "they were most appreciative, I must say."

      The Master smiled, nodded, and passed on. He gathered that someone had profited by something over and above the twelve sixpences.

      But how gracious, how serenely beautiful, how eloquent of peace and benediction, the scene that met him as he crossed the threshold of the great quadrangle! Some thousands of times his eyes had rested on it, yet how could it ever stale?

      "In the evening there shall be light."—The sun, declining in a cloudless west behind the roof-ridge and tall chimneys of the Brethren's houses, cast a shadow even to the sundial that stood for centre of the wide grass-plot. All else was softest gold—gold veiling the sky itself in a powdery haze; gold spread full along the front of the 'Nunnery,' or row of upper chambers on the eastern line of the quadrangle, where the three nurses of St. Hospital have their lodgings; shafts of gold penetrating the shaded ambulatory below; gold edging the western coigns of the Norman chapel; gold rayed and slanting between boughs in the park beyond the railings to the south. Only the western side of the quadrangle lay in shadow, and in the shadow, in twos and threes, beside their doors and tiny flower-plots (their pride), sat the Brethren, with no anxieties, with no care but to watch the closing tranquil hour: some with their aged wives (for the Hospital, as the Church of England with her bishops, allows a Brother to have one wife, but ignores her existence), some in monastic groups, withdrawn from hearing of women's gossip.

      The Master chose the path that, circumventing the grass-plot, led him past these happy-looking groups and couples. To be sure, it was not his nearest way to the home-park, where he intended to think out his peroration; but he had plenty of time, and moreover he delighted to exchange courtesies with his charges. For each he had a greeting—

      —"Fine weather, fine weather, Brother Dasent! Ah, this is the time to get rid of the rheumatics! Eh, Mrs. Dasent? I haven't seen him looking so hale for months past."

      —"A beautiful evening, Brother Clerihew—yes, beautiful indeed. … You notice how the swallows are flying, both high and low, Brother Woolcombe? … Yes, I think we are in for a spell of it."

      —"Ah, good evening, Mrs. Royle! What wonderful ten-week stocks! I declare I cannot grow the like of them in my garden. And what a perfume! But it warns me that the dew is beginning to fall, and Brother Royle ought not to be sitting out late. We must run no risks, Nurse, after his illness?"

      The Master appealed to a comfortable-looking woman who, at his approach, had been engaged in earnest talk with Mrs. Royle—talk to which old Brother Royle appeared to listen placidly, seated in his chair.

      —And so on. He had a kindly word for all, and all answered his salutations respectfully; the women bobbing curtseys, the old men offering to rise from their chairs. But this he would by no means allow. His presence seemed to carry with it a fragrance of his own, as real as that of the mignonette and roses and sweet-Williams amid which he left them embowered.

      When he had passed out of earshot, Brother Clerihew turned to Brother Woolcombe and said—

      "The silly old '—' is beginning to show his age, seemin' to me."

      "Oughtn't to," answered Brother Woolcombe. "If ever a man had a soft job, it's him."

      "Well, I reckon we don't want to lose him yet, anyhow—'specially if Colt is to step into his old shoes."

      Brother Clerihew's reference was to the Reverend Rufus Colt, Chaplain of St. Hospital.

      "They never would!" opined Brother Woolcombe, meaning by "they" the governing body of Trustees.

      "Oh, you never know—with a man on the make, like Colt. Push carries everything in these times."

      "Colt's a hustler," Brother Woolcombe conceded. "But, damn it all, they might give us a gentleman!"

      "There's not enough to go round, nowadays," grunted Brother Clerihew, who had been a butler, and knew. "Master Blanchminster's the real thing, of course … " He gazed after the retreating figure of the Master. "Seemed gay as a goldfinch, he did. D'ye reckon Colt has told him about Warboise?"

      "I wonder. Where is Warboise, by the way?"

      "Down by the river, taking a walk to cool his head. Ibbetson's wife gave him a dressing-down at tea-time for dragging Ibbetson into the row. Threatened to have her nails in his beard—I heard her. That woman's a terror. … All the same, one can't help sympathising with her. 'You can stick to your stinking Protestantism,' she told him, 'if it amuses you to fight the Chaplain. You're a widower, with nobody dependent. But don't you teach my husband to quarrel with his vittles.'"

      "All the same, when a man has convictions—"

      "Convictions are well enough when you can afford 'em," Brother Clerihew grunted again. "But up against Colt—what's the use? And where's his backing? Ibbetson, with a wife hanging on to his coat-tails; and old Bonaday, that wouldn't hurt a fly; and Copas, standing off and 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