I suppose I ought not to show you this; the fire is its only proper receptacle--"
"Poison?" echoed Brother Copas. "And about Bonaday? who, good soul, never hurt a fly!"
"I rejoice to hear you say it," said the Master, plainly relieved, and he appeared half-minded to withdraw and pocket the sc.r.a.p of paper for which Copas held out a hand. "It is an anonymous letter, and-- er--evidently the product of a foul mind--"
Brother Copas took it and, fumbling for his gla.s.ses, gazed around in search of the handiest light by which to read it.
Master Blanchminster hurried to catch up the electric lamp and set it on the mantel-shelf above his shoulder. Its coil of silk-braided wire dragging across the papers on the table, one or two dropped on the floor; and whilst the Master stooped to collect them Brother Copas read the letter, first noting at a glance that the paper was cheap and the handwriting, though fairly legible, at once uneducated and painfully disguised.
It ran--
"Master,--This is to warn you that you are too kind and anyone can take you in. It wasn"t enough Bonaday should get the best rooms in S. Hospital but now you give him leave for this child which every one in S. Hospital knows is a b.a.s.t.a.r.d. If you want to find the mother, no need to go far. Why is Nurse B--hanging about his rooms now. Which they didn"t carry it so far before, but they was acquainted years ago, as is common talk.
G.o.d knows my reasons for writing this much are honest, but I hate to see your goodness put upon, and a scandal which the whole S. Hospital feels bitter about--such letchery and wickedness in our midst, and n.o.body knowing how to put a stop to it all.
"Yours obdtly.,
"A Well Wisher."
"The handwriting," said Brother Copas, "is a woman"s, though disguised."
The Master, erect again, having collected his papers, eyed Brother Copas as if surprised by his calm tone.
"You make nothing of it, then?"
"P"st!"
"I--I was hoping so." The Master"s voice was tremulous, apologetic.
"It came by this evening"s post, not half an hour ago. . . . I am not used to receive such things: yet I know what ought to be done with them--toss them into the fire at once and dismiss them from your mind. I make no doubt I should have burnt it within another ten minutes: as for cleansing one"s mind of it so quickly, that must be a counsel of perfection. But you were shown in, and I--I made certain that you could contradict this disgraceful report and set my mind at rest. Forgive me."
"Ah, Master"--Brother Copas glanced up with a quick smile-- "it almost looks as if you were right after all, and one is never too old to confess!" He bent and held the edge of the paper close to the blaze. "May I burn it?"
"By all means."
"Nay, then, I won"t. But since you have freely parted with it, may I keep it? . . . I have had some little experience with ma.n.u.scripts, and it is just possible I may trace this to the writer--who is a.s.suredly a woman," added Brother Copas, studying the letter again.
"You have my leave to do so."
"And you ask no further question?"
The Master hesitated. At length he said firmly--
"None. I have no right. How can so foul a thing confer any right?"
Brother Copas was silent for a s.p.a.ce.
"Nay, that is true, Master; it cannot. . . . Nevertheless, I will answer what was in your mind to ask. When I came into the room you were pondering this letter. The thought of it--pah!--mixed itself up with a thought of the appointment you had set for me--with the Pet.i.tion; and the two harked back together upon a question you put to me just now. "Why was not Brother Bonaday among the signatories?"
Between them they turned that question into a suspicion. Guilty men are seldom bold: as the Scots say, "Riven breeks sit still." . . .
Was not this, or something like it, in your mind, sir?"
"I confess that it was."
"Why then, Master, I too will confess--I that came to you to denounce the practice. Of what this letter hints Bonaday is innocent as--as you are. He approved of the Pet.i.tion and was on the point of signing it; but he desired your good leave to make a home for his child.
Between parent and Protestant my friend was torn, and moreover between conscience and loyalty. He could not sue for this favour from you, his soul weighted with an intention to go straightway and do what must offend you."
Master Blanchminster faced Brother Copas squarely, standing of a sudden erect. It seemed to add inches to his stature.
"Had he so poor a trust in me, after these years?"
"No, Master." Brother Copas bent his head. "That is where I come in.
All this is but preparatory. . . . I am a fraud--as little Protestant as Catholic. I found my friend in straits, and made a bargain with those who were pressing him--"
"Do I understand, Brother Copas, that this Pet.i.tion--of which all the strength lies in its scholarship and wording--is yours, and that on these terms only you have given me so much pain?"
"You may put it so, Master, and I can say no more than "yes"--though I might yet plead that something is wrong with St. Hospital, and--"
"Something is very wrong with St. Hospital," interrupted the Master gravely. "This letter--if it come from within our walls--But I after all, as its Master, am ultimately to blame." He paused for a moment and looked up with a sudden winning smile. "We have both confessed some sins. Shall we say a prayer together, Brother?"
The two old men knelt by the hearth there. Together in silence they bowed their heads.
CHAPTER XI.
BROTHER COPAS ON THE ANGLO-SAXON.
"You ought to write a play," said Mrs. Simeon.
Mr. Simeon looked up from his dinner and stared at his wife as though she had suddenly taken leave of her senses. She sat holding a fork erect and close to her mouth, with a morsel of potato ready to be popped in as soon as she should finish devouring a paragraph of _The People_ newspaper, folded beside her plate. In a general way Mrs. Simeon was not a reader; but on Mondays (washing-days) she regularly had the loan of a creased copy of _The People_ from a neighbour who, having but a couple of children, could afford to buy and peruse it on the day of issue. There is much charity among the working poor.
"I--I beg your pardon, my dear?" Mr. Simeon murmured, after gently admonishing his second son (Eustace, aged 11, named after the Master) for flipping bread pills across the table. "I am afraid I did not catch--"
"I see there"s a man has made forty thousand pounds by writing one.
And he did it in three weeks, after beginning as a clerk in the stationery. . . . Forty thousand pounds, only think! That"s what I call turning cleverness to account."
"But, my love, I don"t happen to be clever," protested Mr. Simeon.
His wife swallowed her morsel of potato. She was a worn-looking blonde, peevish, not without traces of good looks. She wore the sleeves of her bodice rolled up to the elbows, and her wrists and forearms were bleached by her morning"s work at the wash-tub.
"Then I"m sure I don"t know what else you are!" said she, looking at him straight.
Mr. Simeon sighed. Ever on Mondays he returned at midday to a house filled with steam and the dank odour of soap-suds, and to the worst of the week"s meagre meals. A hundred times he had reproached himself that he did ungratefully to let this affect him, for his wife (poor soul) had been living in it all day, whereas his morning had been spent amid books, rare prints, statuettes, soft carpets, all the delicate luxuries of Master Blanchminster"s library. Yet he could not help feeling the contrast; and the children were always at their most fractious on Mondays, chafed by a morning in school after two days of freedom.
"Where are you going this afternoon?" his wife asked.
"To blow the organ for Windeatt."
Dr. Windeatt (Mus. Doc. Oxon.) was the Cathedral organist.
"Has he offered to pay you?"