1 
 
 THE INCIDENTAL BISHOP 
 
^mmmm 
 
 I 
 
 > 'a 
 
 J 
 
 % 
 
 I 
 
THE INCIDENTAL BISHOP 
 
 BY 
 
 GRANT ALLEN 
 
 AUTHOR OF "what's BRED IN THE BONE," ETC., ETC. 
 
 n0 3<^J 
 
 ^«> 
 
 •fe/b^ 
 
 LONDON 
 
 C ARTHUR PEARSON LIMITED 
 
 HENRIETTA STREET, W.C. 
 
 1898 
 
'■ -y- 
 
 ■'1 
 
 ■si 
 
 
 <''?3 
 
 i 
 
 mi' 
 
 Printed by Hazell, Watson, & Viney, Ld., London and Aylesbury. 
 
 t 
 
 r ■ 
 < 7M 
 
 ikS 
 
CONTENTS, 
 part I. 
 
 AUSTRALASIA. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 yi AMONG THE ISLANDS 3 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 A BRUSH WITH THE NATIVES .... 10 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 RIVAL PIONEERS OF CIVILISATION .... 20 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 THE missionary's ILLNESS 26 
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 BULLY ford's LIVE-STOCK 32 
 
 CHAPTER VI. . 
 THE OTHER SIDE OF IT . ^""^\ • 40 
 
 V 
 
Vi CONTENTS 
 
 CHAPTER VII. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 LAW AND ORDER ... • • • 45 
 
 CHAPTER VIII. 
 
 A GENTLEMAN AGAIN 5^ 
 
 CHAPTER IX. 
 ENTANGLEMENT 60 
 
 CHAPTER X. 
 THE COMPLETE CASUIST 70 
 
 CHAPTER XI. 
 TOM PLUNGES 79 
 
 CHAPTER XII. 
 
 THE INEVITABLE • ^7 
 
 CHAPTER XIII. 
 
 VITA NUOVA 96 " 
 
 CHAPTER XIV. 
 
 CROSSING THE RUBICON IO4 
 
CONTENTS vii 
 
 part IL 
 
 ENGLAND 
 
 CHAPTER XV. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 THE PALACE, DORCHESTER II5 
 
 CHAPTER XVI. 
 PERPLEXITY 127 
 
 CHAPTER XVII. 
 TO GO OR NOT TO GO I37 
 
 CHAPTER XVIII. 
 LOVE UP TO DATE 1 43 
 
 CHAPTER XIX. 
 THE EPISCOPATE STOOPS 154 
 
 CHAPTER XX. \ 
 
 THE lion's mouth 1 62 
 
 CHAPTER XXI. 
 
 A QUESTION OF ORDINATION . . . .I/O 
 
viii CONTENTS 
 
 CHAPTER XXII. 
 
 rAGE 
 
 A LIGHTER TREATMENT l8C 
 
 CHAPTER XXIII. 
 
 AN OFFICIAL INTERVIEW 1 88 
 
 CHAPTER XXIV. 
 
 SUCH SWEET SORROW 1 96 
 
 CHAPTER XXV. 
 
 THE CLOUDS THICKEN 201 
 
 CHAPTER XXVI. 
 
 AT BAY . . 209 
 
 CHAPTER XXVII. 
 
 EVELYN ACTS 219 
 
 CHAPTER XXVIII. 
 OFFICIAL INTELLIGENCE 
 
 CHAPTER XXIX. 
 THE BISHOP TURNS 
 
 CHAPTER XXX. 
 THE BISHOP DECIDES .... 
 
 • • 
 
 • • 
 
 224 
 
 232 
 
 4 
 
 339 
 
•.'.4,1 
 
 Ipart !♦ 
 
 AUSTRALASIA, 
 
'•1 
 
CHAPTER I. 
 AMONG THE ISLANDS. 
 
 " Hard a-starboard ! " 
 
 The John Wesley turned her slow length ; and the 
 two tall cocoa-nut palms on the distant hill-top, 
 which served as seamarks to ships engaged in what 
 was euphemistically called "the Labour Traffic," 
 having been brought into line, she proceeded to steam 
 at a cautious rate into the harbour of Temuka. Its 
 reefs have wrecked many better vessels. 
 
 And what a beautifully-chosen name for its purpose, 
 the John Wesley I It smacked of peace and the 
 London Missionary Society. If any meddlesome 
 gunboat of Her Britannic Majesty's fleet, engaged in 
 superintending or suppressing the Labour Traffic 
 aforesaid, had chanced to encounter that long slim 
 steamer, on the prowl after " apprentices," surely the 
 mere sight of the words " John Wesley," legibly carved 
 in gilt letters on her stern, must have disarmed at 
 the first blush the most officious and suspicious of 
 naval officers. The John Wesley ^ look you ! so well- 
 meaning ! so innocent ! doubtless a vessel engaged 
 in distributing Sunday-School books, and tracts, and 
 cotton pocket-handkerchiefs to the mild but unfor- 
 tunately heathen inhabitants of those isles of summer. 
 Who could suspect a ship with such a name as the 
 
 3 
 
4 THE INCIDENTAL BISHOP 
 
 John Wesley of anything blacker than ecclesiastical 
 nonconformity ? 
 
 That was Tom Pringle's idea when he first signed 
 articles for his memorable voyage. The skipper had 
 assured him (with just a faint quiver of the left eyelid, 
 it is true) that the expedition was wholly concerned 
 with the purchase of biche-de-mery for export to China, 
 and the peaceful collection of dried cocoa-nut or 
 copra from the Melanesian islands. 
 
 Nevertheless, it struck Tom as odd that all hands 
 were on deck when they approached the coast, and 
 that even the sleepy Malay cook with the fat red 
 eyes had an air of alertness and a revolver in his 
 hand, as the shore drew near ; it looked as if they 
 were prepared for something more exciting than the 
 peaceable exchange of tobacco and hollands, (known 
 locally as " square gin ") for sea-slugs and dried 
 fibres. He began to suspect the meaning of the two 
 dozen sniders on the rack in the cabin, and the hand- 
 cuffs hung up by the Captain's locker. 
 
 Those were the good old days of the early Queens- 
 land Labour Traffic. And one may as well admit, 
 without making further ado about it, that the micro- 
 scopic distinction between the Labour Traffic and 
 the Slave Trade, as they existed thirty years ago, 
 would have puzzled the brains of the minutest casuist. 
 The Traffic, to say the truth, was usually conducted 
 by the primitive method of descending upon an 
 island, buying sturdy young blackfellows, if you 
 could, from their affectionate relations, and stealing 
 them if you could not, by force and arms, without 
 pretence of purchase. Either proceeding was, of 
 course, just equally illegal ; but once get your cargo 
 
 t 
 
AMONG THE ISLANDS 5 
 
 of human live-stock safe landed in Queensland, and 
 either was winked at by the indulgent labour-employ- 
 ing planter magistrates. To ask no questions, and 
 to take " indentured " servants on the importer's 
 warranty, were the ethics of the times ; the John 
 Wesley perhaps was no better and no worse than 
 most other ships then engaged in the Traffic. 
 
 Tom Pringle, however, knew nothing of all this ; 
 as indeed, how could he ? A simple-natured, gently- 
 bred Canadian young man, who had run away to 
 sea as a lad of sixteen from a home in the interior, 
 and spent the last eight years before the mast, he 
 took it for granted that all other sailors were as 
 indifferent honest as himself ; and he accepted a 
 berth on a Labour Traffic steamer as readily as he 
 would have accepted it on a Canadian four-master 
 in the grain trade on lake Ontario. He was not 
 specially good, but he was not wholly bad : he was 
 just the average well-educated, adventurous youth 
 who goes to sea or to an African diamond-mine, in 
 search of sensation. 
 
 The night before, lolling in the forecastle on a 
 balmy, star-lit, tropical evening, he had observed to 
 the mate, a most accomplished ruffian of the name 
 of Hemmings : " Do you have much trouble in getting 
 the blackfellows to sign their indentures ? " 
 
 Hemmings stared at him contemptuously for a 
 moment, and sucked in a copious draught of the 
 tobacco-smoke of contemplation. Then he blew it 
 out through his nose in a long, slow stream, and 
 waited to consider. Should he enlighten this green- 
 horn now, or let events enlighten him? After all, 
 there's no teacher on earth to equal experience. The 
 
6 THE INCIDENTAL BISHOP 
 
 mate was a New England blackguard of the first 
 water, trained to humanity on a Louisiana estate, 
 before the war. He watched the last white curl of 
 smoke disappear in the luminous southern starlight 
 before he answered with the usual seafaring embellish- 
 ments : " Well, I can't say the niggers give us much 
 trouble, anyhow. They're fond of civilisation. Stands 
 to reason they should be. Just see what it has done 
 for 'em ! It's brought 'em big ships, and cloth, and 
 beads, and square gin, and Winchester breech-loaders, 
 , and tobacco, and measles, and missionaries, and small- 
 pox, and rum, and the Labour Traffic. Why, a few 
 years ago, say, what outlet was there for an enterprising 
 ysung native on Temuka, I'd like to know? If he 
 was a chief, well and good ; as the sailor said to the 
 Port Admiral : * You've got a blooming fine berth, old 
 chap ; mind you stick to it.' But if he warn't a chief, 
 he couldn't do anything ; every durned thing he ever 
 wanted to do was safe as houses to be taboo, and he 
 couldn't even try it. He had jest to lie on his back in 
 the sun and grow fat ; and as soon as he was fat 
 enough, by George, if the chiefs didn't use to eat 
 him." 
 
 " And now ? " Tom asked, looking up. 
 
 The mate eyed him again in the mellow starlight 
 with a curious glance of dubious inquiry. He was a 
 green 'un, and no mistake ; appeared to the mate 
 they'd made a little error in bringing such a raw chap 
 on a job like this one. He took another long pull at 
 his pipe, and blew another curl of most meditative 
 smoke up into the calm, soft tropical air. "Well, 
 naow," he answered slowly, weighing his words as he 
 went, "an in-telligent young native — and some of 
 
AMONG THE ISLANDS f 
 
 'em is almost as intelligent as a dog, I kin tell you — 
 an intelligent young native, with a spark of enterprise 
 in him, . . . kin take advantage of the opportunities 
 afforded him by the Labour Traffic. He kin sign his 
 indentures — " the mate glanced sideways again at his 
 unconscious hearer ; " — or rather, not knowing how to 
 write, he kin put his cross agin his name on a paper ; 
 and then he kin be taken over sea to Queensland, 
 free of charge, in a fcommodious steamer ; while our 
 own flesh and blood, if they want to emigrate, have 
 to pay their passage in the steerage quarter of a 
 beastly emigrant vessel. Then he kin work seven 
 years, all found, on an estate in Queensland, where 
 the Queen's government gives him medical attend- 
 ance, and everything else thrown in, gratis. And he 
 kin get converted ; he kin find religion ; he kin have 
 the blessings of Christianity conferred upon him for 
 nothing, with as much square gin as he wants, into the 
 bargain. And at the end of his time, — well, he kin 
 return to his own home, with a felt hat, an' a pair of 
 pants, an' a breech-loader rifle, and be as good as a 
 chief himself, and shoot other blackfellows, and cook 
 'em, and eat 'em. Oh, there ain't any denying it, no 
 flies on the Labour Traffic : it's been a durned fine 
 thing for the march of intellect in the South Sea 
 Islands ; it's brought home to their own doors the 
 blessings of civilisation." The mate took another 
 pull, as he spoke, at the particular blessing which 
 was nearest, save one, to his own heart ; the solitary 
 exception being of course hollands. 
 
 "Do they ever give any trouble?" Tom inquired 
 again, musing. " — Want to fight and so forth ? " 
 
 Hemmings laughed . outright. " Oh, you are an 
 
8 THE INCIDENTAL BISHOP 
 
 innocent one!" he cried. "Why, mister, you don't 
 suppose savages lift their hats politely when they 
 meet you on the beach, and say : * Mr. Hemmings, 
 I reckon? Step in and have a drink, sir.* Black- 
 fellows is blackfellows ; and there ain't no counting 
 on 'em. They're always a bit suspicious of the man 
 that tries to civilise 'em. Didn't they kill Captain 
 Cook? and wasn't it Captain Cook that first intro- 
 duced the blessings of civilisation to the Pacific 
 islands, when the natives in their blindness knew no 
 better nor to bow down to stocks and stones, instead 
 of buying bottled beer, and couldn't so much as tell 
 you the right word for tobacco? Didn't they kill 
 Bishop Patteson — and sarve him right, too ; what in 
 thunder did he want to come interfering for in a 
 sphere as is better left to the pioneers of civilisation 
 in the square gin and labour trades ? Thefre the 
 people for the South Seas ; you bet your bottom 
 dollar on it. They understand the natives, and they 
 understand the trade, and they ain't hampered by 
 any of your all-fired Exeter Hall nonsense. A man 
 must make money." And the mate brought down 
 his fist on his own lean knee with a fervour of con- 
 viction which there was no gainsaying. 
 
 *' Then we may have a brush with them ? " Tom 
 inquired. He was an average young Briton, neither 
 better nor worse than most others of his age, though 
 superior to the run of sailors in education ; and to 
 say the truth, he would not wholly have minded the 
 chance of a fight, provided he believed the natives 
 to be the aggressors. 
 
 Hemmings stroked his goatee beard. This was 
 more like the right spirit ! *' Don't you be afeard, 
 
AMONG THE ISLANDS 9 
 
 young man," he answered, staring hard at him. " If 
 it's a brush you want, you stand as fair a chance of 
 seeing some fun with the blackfellows aboard the 
 John Wesley as aboard any other vessel engaged in 
 the Traffic on the South Pacific. Captain Ford ain't 
 the build of man to stand their nonsense. Every 
 blackfellow has got to mind his p's and q's when 
 Captain Ford's about. A nigger in these latitudes 
 ain't got any p's, no doubt, and don't know any q's, 
 being just a poor benighted heathen, ignorant of his 
 alphabet ; but he's bound to acquire 'em where Cap- 
 tain Ford's around, I kin tell you ; for Captain Ford 
 takes care a blackfellow shall mind 'em, whether he's 
 got 'em or not ; and mind 'em he must, or Captain 
 Ford will ask the reason why, with the muzzle of a 
 Winchester." 
 
 Tom laughed unconcernedly. He did not realise 
 the full import of the mate's remarks ; and if they 
 only meant that aggressive natives would be kept at 
 arm's length, why, Tom rather looked forward than 
 otherwise to the fun of a skirmish. He turned into 
 his berth that night, when his watch was over, with- 
 out much compunction ; but he fell asleep, repeating 
 to himself a stray line of Horace, which he had learnt '' 
 when he was a boy at the Grammar School in 
 Canada ; for he was not without the rudiments of a 
 polite education. He hadn't thought of Horace for 
 six years or so, he fancied ; but the mate had said : 
 " A man must make money " ; which brought him 
 back by a curious side-touch to a forgotten hexameter 
 — something about " Rem facias, rem : si possis, 
 recte : si non, quocunque modo, rem." 
 
CHAPTER II. 
 
 A BRUSH WITH THE NATIVES. 
 
 This morning, however, Tom was clearly aware that 
 something unusual was now expected. Every one 
 was on deck, and every one's face wore an eager look 
 of keen expectation. 
 
 They were steaming cautiously round a headland 
 into a dark, open harbour. Black basalt crags 
 hemmed it in. Tom took it for the crater of an 
 extinct volcano. In shape it was absolutely circular, 
 with tall walls of cliff, broken only by a single narrow 
 and shallow opening, which he judged at sight to be 
 the lip through which lava had flowed in prehistoric 
 eruptions. Just opposite this lip, three conical hills 
 rose abruptly in the foreground, backed up by the 
 great rampart of sheer basalt precipice. Tom was no 
 geologist, but he could see at a glance that this 
 rampart represented the old funnel of the crater, 
 while the three small hills were clearly cones of 
 erupted ash and pumice-stone. A merciless tropical 
 sun beat hard on black cliff and white hillock. The 
 whole was thickly covered, however, by a beautiful 
 mantle of tropical greenery ; cocoa-nut palms waved 
 on the slopes of the three hills, and bamboos sprang 
 feathery from the black clefts of the precipice. In 
 
 10 
 
A BRUSH WITH THE NATIVES II 
 
 and out among the bush that draped the lesser hills 
 rose groups of native huts, surrounded by flaming 
 crimson hibiscus bushes. It was one of the most 
 glorious harbours Tom had ever beheld ; and its 
 beauty was increased by the numberless small water- 
 falls which tumbled in sheets of white foam from the 
 precipice above down the ravines to the foreshore. 
 They suggested delicious pictures of romantic bathing- 
 places — deep basins shaded by thick forest foliage, 
 where one could spend the whole day in swimming 
 and diving. 
 
 Tom was the only person on deck, however, who 
 paid the slightest attention to this exquisite scene. 
 The others were all standing in very attentive at- 
 titudes, engaged in watching the hurry and bustle 
 that possessed the native town, at the sudden appear- 
 ance of a European steamer. 
 
 Tom looked round also, and saw at once that the 
 arrival of these pioneers of civilisation had unaccount- 
 ably thrown the Melanesian population into a fervour 
 of panic. Before the John Wesley had rounded the 
 point, almost, (among rocks and reefs most perilous 
 to seamen) he could see hasty preparations going 
 on in the wattled villages that crowned the three 
 hillocks. Mothers caught up their naked black 
 children in their arms, and fled shrieking to the 
 paths that wound in zigzag up the precipice. Young 
 girls rushed after them with every sign of terror. 
 Men emerged from the huts with long spears in their 
 hands, and advanced towards the shore, threateningly, 
 brandishing their weapons as they went, and crying 
 aloud with fierce and angry gestures. The whole 
 district looked at once like an ant-hill stirred up 
 
12 THE INCIDENTAL BISHOP 
 
 by the foot ; the black human ants were removing 
 their young, or saving their own skins, or showing 
 fight against the intruder, in a way that absurdly 
 recalled their insect prototypes. And a blazing hot 
 sun revealed it all with tropical distinctness. 
 
 As Tom stood and gazed, immensely interested in 
 this strange sight — for it was his first voyage to the 
 South Pacific — a voice at his side suddenly roused 
 him from his inaction. It was Hemmings who spoke. 
 " Here, you, Pringle," he cried, catching Tom by 
 the arm, "what are you standing staring there for? 
 This is business, young man ! Just you catch that 
 revolver ! " 
 
 He handed it as he spoke, with a cutlass into 
 the bargain. Tom took them, half bewildered. He 
 began to be aware with a sudden start of surprise 
 that the " little brush " was at hand in real earnest. 
 
 " And mind you," Hemmings went on ; " none 
 of your durned Puritanical nonsense here ! You've 
 shipped on a Labour Vessel, and you've got to 
 accommodate yourself. We don't want no passengers, 
 and we don't want no neutrals. It's fight, or get 
 speared ; either the niggers will do it, or a civilised 
 six-shooter." 
 
 Tom hurried to the gunwale, and looked across 
 towards the shore, whence canoes were shoving off 
 through the surf as fast as the excited natives could 
 man them. 
 
 Captain Ford stood close by, with a very resolute 
 air, — a large, loose man, with a Napoleonic nose, 
 inflamed by drinking. He was not quite such a 
 ruflfian, to look at, as the mate ; but he was a 
 determined person, and his business was slave- 
 
 .{■:.'•■• 
 
A BRUSH WITH THE NATIVES I3 
 
 making. On occasions like this, he kept studiously 
 sober. Glancing at the foremost canoes, he held his 
 hand up for a sign. Tom guessed at once it meant 
 " Is it peace or war ? " for even the skipper preferred 
 buying coolies to fighting for them. But the men of 
 Temuka knew the JoJm Wesley and its ways too well. 
 A shout of defiance and a fierce clatter of spears was 
 the instant answer. 
 
 " Show them the square gin," the skipper said, 
 very calmly. He was a phlegmatic scoundrel. 
 
 A sailor held up three of the coveted bottles, 
 while another displayed an empty case with inviting 
 gestures. The mate himself flung out a few packages 
 of tobacco. But the natives proceeded to shout 
 threateningly as before ; meanwhile, the women and 
 children kept flying to the hills, while all in the 
 villages was bustle of preparation. 
 
 " Fair trade's no go," the skipper said, turning to 
 Hemmings. " It's no use trying them with square gin 
 this journey. They remember old Noumau. Give 
 'em a shot, Hemmings ; give 'em a shot. That'll 
 bring 'em to reason ! " 
 
 In a second, a loud boom resounded from the big 
 gun, and a shot ploughed its way through the 
 canoes, dashing foam right and left, and upsetting 
 one of them. There was a scramble for life. The 
 natives swam and struggled in the water like tad- 
 poles. It was clear some of them were wounded. 
 The skipper paused a moment to judge the effect 
 of this practical warning. 
 
 For a minute or two, the blackfellows shouted and 
 chattered incoherently. Then a retreat was beat. 
 The canoes began to put back, the men still brand- 
 
14 THE INCIDENTAL BISHOP 
 
 ishing their spears in anger. " We can't do anything 
 just yet," the skipper said, turning to his second in 
 command. " No business here this morning. They 
 won't come near now, and we can't land in the face of 
 them ; if we wait till night, they'll have made up their 
 differences with the nearest villages, and they'll all 
 swarm out in their canoes to surround us. Hemmings, 
 we must steam out again and land a party to take 
 them at their dances from the shore in the rear. Then 
 we can fire a shot or two to divert the main body, 
 and keep the rest engaged till you've crept round to 
 surprise them." 
 
 The John Wesley steamed out again, obedient to 
 the bell, in her slow majestic fashion. Tom could see 
 the natives had very rudimentary notions of strategy ; 
 for the moment she turned, they seemed to consider 
 the game was up, and put off again in their canoes, 
 deriding and insulting her. It was evident they 
 thought their mere show of opposition had frightened 
 away the well-armed white men. Captain Ford 
 smiled grimly at this childish demonstration, for he 
 knew they would find out their mistake before long. 
 He took action calmly. The John Wesley steamed 
 off some four miles to northward, past a region of 
 mangrove swamps, to a hard surf-beaten beach 
 where landing was possible. Then the boats were 
 put out, and most hands ordered into them. Tom 
 went with the rest, a little doubtful now as to the 
 legality of this method of recruiting apprentices, 
 but too full of the excitement and novelty of the 
 occasion to find much room just then for mere moral 
 compunctions. 
 
 They rowed through the sobbing breakers of a 
 
A BRUSH WITH THE NATIVES 15 
 
 great white reef towards a shelving beach, and landed, 
 unseen, in a bay by the shore a few miles from the 
 harbour. A native or two rushed out from a group of 
 huts close by ; but a well-directed shot or so drove 
 them into the bush once more. There, they skulked 
 behind the trees, and fired, for they were armed with 
 old patterns of discarded rifles ; but it was impossible 
 to see them. " Single file ! " the skipper called out in 
 a military voice ; and the men, forming in single file, 
 followed him along a track that led tortuously 
 through the forest. The skipper walked first ; it was 
 a tangled path, along which two men could not go 
 abreast. Tom had never had a harder march in his 
 life, for the gnarled roots and twisted stems of the 
 creepers were troublesome, and the ground was 
 boggy ; besides which, every now and again, with a 
 sudden clash, the natives beat tom-toms, and yelled, 
 and peppered them from behind a tree, disappearing 
 as instantly. The jungle was close and damp : the 
 J air steamed : it was the climate of an orchid house. 
 
 Still, the skipper marched on, as along a road that 
 he knew ; while the natives fell behind, not caring for 
 the rest, as soon as they saw their own little group 
 of huts in the ravine by the bay was not seriously 
 menaced. Even then, the mosquitoes made each 
 step an annoyance, while leeches dropped from the 
 trees as they passed beneath them. 
 
 The whites continued through the wood for a 
 mile or two in silence. Not a word was spoken. 
 Suddenly, a turn in the tortuous path led them again 
 to the shore. There, a glade opened up, and to 
 Tom's great surprise, they burst upon a body of 
 young people dancing. It was a strange, weird scene. 
 
 m^ 
 
 mil 
 
l6 THE INCIDENTAL BISHOP 
 
 The whole party halted and drew itself up in line for 
 a moment. The dancers, too much occupied in their 
 dance to be conscious of anything else, never even 
 observed the arrival of the white men. In a second 
 the skipper saw he had reached his aim in the nick 
 of time : this was a great annual religious ceremony. 
 Dozens of young men and women, with their smooth 
 black limbs half draped in garlands, were moving up 
 and down in a measured rhythm, with painted faces. 
 " It's a mek^" the skipper said low ; " stand aside, 
 boys, and take care ; I thought this would be on : 
 we can catch the whole lot of them." 
 
 The young men and women swayed voluptuously 
 backward and forward in the shade of the trees, their 
 shining black bodies silhouetted against the foam on 
 the shore. They moved like the figures on a Celtic 
 cross, in strange rhythmic curves and intertwining 
 circles. Clearly, they had heard nothing of the arrival 
 of the steamer at Temuka harbour : their tom-toms 
 must have drowned even the noise of the cannon. 
 Besides, in their ecstasy of religious abandonment, all 
 outer events were wholly forgotten. Tom could se 
 their festival was the Eleusinian mystery of some 
 South Se- Ashtaroth. It was at once a dance, a 
 prayer, a hymn, a procession. Men and women 
 chanted slow their mystic chorus in line, keeping time 
 to the tom-toms. Louder and louder grew the 
 strains : quicker and quicker became the motions of 
 their bodies. " Hold back till I give the word," the 
 skipper muttered in a low voice ; " then, the moment 
 I say. Go, rush forward and seize them ! " 
 
 At the time, it struck Tom this was the merest 
 slave-raid. But though it revolted his sense of right 
 
A BRUSH WITH THE NATIVES 1/ 
 
 to take part in such an attack, he had not depth of 
 moral conviction enough to make him hold back 
 from joining in it. He awaited the signal breath- 
 lessly. " Now, go ! " the skipper cried ; and almost 
 before Tom could realise what was happening, the 
 sailors had rushed forward, like a body of , wild 
 beasts, and were securing the likeliest young men 
 and women with cords and handcuffs. 
 
 The whole thing took but a moment. At once, 
 the shore was alive with tumult. The natives were 
 numerous, but unarmed ; for though they used spears 
 in their dance, the points were blunted ; they were 
 like ornamental fencing foils. A few of the medicine 
 men or sorcerers behind, beating tom-toms and 
 directing the dance, had long knives, to be sure ; 
 but these were of little use against the white man's 
 fire-arms. Captain Ford stood close by, with his 
 revolver raised ; four sailors, beside him, pointed 
 rifles at the natives. The men were cowed ; the 
 women, screaming and terrified, rushed wildly towards 
 the bush, and were allowed for the most part to 
 escape, for the planters only require girls in the 
 proportion of one to every four "apprentices." In 
 an incredibly short time, some forty or fifty young 
 men had been secured and handcuffed ; they grovelled 
 now on the ground at the skipper's feet, with the 
 muzzles of the rifles covering them all in turn, and 
 waited to learn what fate was reserved for them. 
 
 As Tom, too, waited and wondered, the John 
 Wesley hove in sight, while the boats in which they 
 had landed came paddling slowly round the corner. 
 Then Tom saw the whole attack had been carefully 
 planned and ably executed. The skipper knew of 
 
 2 
 
1 8 THE INCIDENTAL BISHOP 
 
 this festival, and had counted upon its occurrence. 
 He had created a diversion at Temuka harbour, 
 to take off the attention of the main body of 
 blackfellows, and then had surprised the unarmed 
 young men and women where their capture was 
 easiest. 
 
 The empty boats rowed landward. One by one, 
 the captured natives were marched to the shore and 
 huddled into them carelessly, tied hand and foot, 
 — bundled into the boats much as one has seen fowls 
 packed in crates for railway travelling. They re- 
 sisted very little, for they saw all was up : but those 
 who did resist were quietly knocked on the head 
 with the butt-end of a rifle, and, half-stunned by the 
 blow, forced hastily into the gig. Then, a strong 
 net was fastened across them, beneath the thwarts, 
 as one has seen it fastened over a calf in a market 
 cart. Altogether, not the slightest recognition was 
 given to the fact that a Melanesian, after all, is a 
 vertebrate animal. Tom began to perceive the true 
 inwardness of that extremely elastic phrase, the 
 Labour Traffic, and to understand that he had been 
 inveigled into a man-stealing expedition. 
 
 As they busied themselves about putting off, the 
 natives behind, now recovering from their panic, 
 began to show their heads once more among the 
 bush in the background, or even to advance towards 
 the shore, with sticks and stones and other im- 
 provised weapons. The skipper's cue was not to 
 hesitate. " Fire ! " he said shortly to the four men 
 with rifles ; and at the word, four bullets whizzed 
 in among the blackfellows. Two of them fell 
 wounded ; the rest, not waiting to help them or to 
 
 ' ''rt' 
 
A BRUSH WITH THE NATIVES 
 
 19 
 
 see whether they were dead, rushed back pell-mell 
 under cover of the jungle. 
 
 " Now, row off ; " the skipper said. " To the ship 
 at once ! We've got as much stock as we shall get 
 at Temuka." 
 
CHAPTER III. 
 RIVAL PIONEERS OF CIVILISATION. 
 
 Tom took his place at the oars, feeling decidedly 
 uncomfortable. It was an ugly business. For all he 
 knew, those two blackfellows might be dead, and he 
 himself might have been accessory to their murder. 
 In any case, he had been inveigled, however little 
 on his own account by malice aforethought, into 
 a slave-making raid on a Pacific island. To increase 
 his discomfort, the skipper gazed across at him with 
 a sardonic smile. " Biche-de-mer and copra, you 
 see ! " he said calmly. " And in a ship like this ! 
 Oh, my soul, Tom Pringle, you are a fresh one ! " 
 
 Tom rowed on in silence towards the hateful 
 black hull of the slim John Wesley. 
 
 They had passed the reef, where the sea swirled 
 and seethed like a boiling cauldron, and were nearing 
 the ship, when a sudden cry from the skipper made 
 Tom look up in astonishment. 
 
 " Why, what's this, Hemmings ? " the skipper ex- 
 claimed, looking anxiously forward. " Blessed if 
 that canoe there ain't flying the British colours ! " 
 
 All hands looked in front. The skipper was quite 
 right. Four well-manned canoes were sweeping 
 round the point from Temuka harbour ; and the 
 
 30 
 
RIVAL PIONEERS OF CIVILISATION 
 
 21 
 
 first of them displayed the Union Jack, waved 
 prominently in front by a man in a pith helmet. 
 
 The skipper gazed again. Then he whistled long 
 and hard. "Blamed if it ain't one of them confounded 
 missionaries ! " 
 
 Still, the four canoes rowed straight on, heading 
 steadily between the boats and the John Wesley. 
 " And he means to cut us off," Hemmings put in, 
 acquiescing. 
 
 " I shall fire," the skipper said briefly. 
 
 " He's a white man," Hemmings answered. " It's 
 an act of piracy. You're boss on your own ship, 
 of course ; but if I was you. Captain Ford, I'd be 
 careful." 
 
 " White man or no white man, what does he want 
 to come interfering with the Labour Traffic for ? " 
 the skipper answered angrily. " We've got to have 
 labourers ; and we've got to get 'em the best way 
 we can. If it wasn't for these confounded white- 
 livered missionaries, we wouldn't have half the 
 trouble. I shall give him a piece of my mind. — Fire 
 a shot across her bows, Jim." 
 
 The man he had ordered fired without a second's 
 hesitation. But the canoe, never heeding the shot, 
 came on till it was within hailing distance. 
 
 Then a weather-beaten man, with an open honest 
 face, stood up in her bow and shouted. "Don't 
 shoot," he said quietly. "We come on a mission 
 of peace. We only want to ask what you are doing 
 in our waters." 
 
 " What the blank is that to you ? " the skipper 
 answered, scowling. " We're trading among the islands. 
 Don't interfere with free trade. Keep your distance, 
 
22 THE INCIDENTAL BISHOP 
 
 or we'll fire." Then he added lower : " He don't know 
 we've got 'em already. If he comes near enough to 
 see we have stock aboard, he'll make mischief in 
 Sydney." 
 
 The man with the open face took no notice of the 
 prohibition. If skippers can be resolute, so too can 
 missionaries ; and Tom realised at that moment that 
 it needs a brave man to take his life in his hands and 
 settle down alone among these savage islanders. 
 
 He waved his hand to his crew and drew a little 
 nearer ; then he called out again : " Are you Bully 
 Ford ? " 
 
 " My name is Ford," the skipper answered. "If 
 you choose to call me Bully, that's your own affair. 
 It's a name I've been called by. And I allow I ain't 
 one to stand any blamed nonsense, from blackfellows 
 or from missionaries." 
 
 The weather-beaten man gave some order in an 
 unknown tongue to his men. They seemed to have 
 implicit confidence in him, for they went on rowing. 
 The canoe was now quite close, and the missionary 
 stood up in the bows. Then he gave a sudden start 
 " Why, you've got natives aboard ! " he exclaimed, 
 half incredulously. 
 
 The skipper made up his mind with the rapid 
 decision of a man of action, engaged in a dangerous 
 trade, and accustomed to face emergencies with 
 instant resolution. He turned to his men. " Fire 
 at them," he said quietly. 
 
 Two of the men hesitated. It is one thing to 
 shoot unknown and nameless savages ; quite another 
 thing to shoot an English missionary. But the other 
 two had no such scruples. The South Seas in those 
 
RIVAL PIONEERS OF CIVILISATION 2$ 
 
 days were fairly remote ; the Queen's writ did not 
 run beyond Fiji. Two rifles snapped sharply ; in 
 the canoe, a black man disappeared into the water, 
 and the white man fell back, wounded, into the 
 arms of his followers. 
 
 Still, the foremost canoe, in which he lay, moved 
 steadily on. The others followed it at a cautious 
 distance. 
 
 The missionary came alongside. He was bleeding 
 profusely. "Bully Ford," he said slowly, "I think 
 you have killed me. But thank God, you have 
 killed this iniquitous traffic." 
 
 The skipper gazed at him with a shade of remorse 
 and horror. Then his coarse nature reasserted itself. 
 " Row back," he cried to the men. " Back at once 
 to the steamer ! " 
 
 Tom flung down his oar. " Back ? " he cried. 
 " And leave him here ? " 
 
 " Young fellow," the skipper said, " if you're insubor- 
 dinate, I shall know how to deal with you." 
 
 " Oughtn't never to have shipped him," Hemmings 
 murmured slowly. 
 
 But Tom's blood was up now. " You shall not row 
 back," he cried. "You shall take him aboard and 
 nurse him. The man's dying ; that's clear ; but you 
 shall not abandon him. — Look here, you mates," he 
 went on, turning to his fellow-sailors. " He's a white 
 man, anyhow. Bring him on board, and let him die, 
 and give him Christian burial." 
 
 There was a moment's hesitation. Then Hemmings 
 bent forward. " Better do as he says," he suggested. 
 " It'll save trouble afterwards. Things are getting 
 rough on the islands for the Labour Traffic." 
 
24 THE INCIDENTAL BISHOP 
 
 The skipper gave way sullenly. " Pull him on 
 board ! " he answered. 
 
 Three of the sailors took hold of the wounded man. 
 The Temukans, raising a loud cry, seemed as if they 
 would resist. Tom could not understand them, of 
 course, but he guessed fairly enough the general 
 meaning of their wild cries of " Oh, my father, stop 
 with us ! " " Do not take him away ! " " He is our 
 friend, our father ! " 
 
 The wounded man raised his hand and said some- 
 thing in Melanesian to his body-guard of converts. 
 The natives gave way at once. With loud wailings, 
 they let him go, and rested on their paddles in 
 impressive silence. 
 
 "Anyhow," the skipper said calmly, "we've put a 
 spoke in his wheel ! He won't try any more to 
 interfere with the Labour Traffic." 
 
 Tom laid the wounded man's head on his own 
 lap, and resumed his oar, much incommoded by 
 the struggling and writhing natives on the bottom. 
 " Row on ! " the skipper said again ; and they rowed 
 on steadily. Ten minutes more brought them up to 
 the John Wesley. 
 
 They lifted the wounded man aboard ; then they 
 began one by one to transfer the live-stock. As fast 
 as each native was put on board, he was carefully 
 ironed. The women wailed a little with low savage 
 growls, but the men for the most part took the whole 
 affair quietly. They knew well enough for what 
 they were wanted, now, and they resigned them- 
 selves to their fate with the stoicism of the savaj^e. 
 After all, it was better than being cooked and eaten, 
 the usual end of their race when captured by enemies 
 
 .,-il*',-f i-. ■ 'TJ • -•' ■ f..- ' ■.., , - , i.>r.*'«.. 
 
RIVAL PIONEERS OF CIVILISATION 
 
 25 
 
 of their own people. Some of them even laughed 
 at each other's plight ; and all took blows with in- 
 credible composure. The sailors knocked them about 
 as drovers knock about sheep. Nobody seemed to 
 regard them as anything more than so much useful 
 and insensitive merchandise. 
 
 "Now," the skipper said, when all was taut on 
 board, and the " stock " had been carefully secured 
 on deck, " off to Brisbane at once ! The sooner the 
 better, before these devils can get together their war- 
 canoes to attack us." 
 
I 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 THE MISS/ONARrS ILLNESS. 
 
 Tom had wondered on the journey from Singapore 
 
 to Temuka why the /o/in Wesley carried so large a 
 
 crew ; she had more hands aboard, he saw, than any 
 
 steamer of her size, peaceably engaged in local trade 
 
 of dried cocoa-nut, could be expected to require. 
 
 But he was unaccustomed to the South Seas and 
 
 harboured no mean suspicions ; indeed, he had never 
 
 heard of the Labour Traffic before he signed articles 
 
 at Singapore ; nor had he sailed east of Calcutta on 
 
 any previous voyage. Now, he understood that the 
 
 crew was not a crew alone ; it was also an armed 
 
 body. Bully Ford needed a compact force of men, 
 
 both to assist him in securing native lads and 
 
 women, and to prevent them from rising in case 
 
 of emergency. The consequence was that Tom's 
 
 services were not much needed on the return voyage. 
 
 The skipper saw at once he was little to be trusted 
 
 on such an errand, and preferred to tell him off as 
 
 sick-room attendant upon the wounded missionary, ' i^ | 
 
 rather than let him see too much of what went on 
 
 on deck with the captured Melanesians. " He's a 
 
 sniveller at heart," he observed to Hemmings. ^ 
 
 The missionary was seriously wounded, in addition 
 
 26 
 
 if'i 
 
 
 \ 
 
 W'i 
 
THE missionary's ILLNESS 27 
 
 to which he had suffered severely for some years past 
 from the climate and its hardships ; Tom did not 
 think he could reach Brisbane alive. Neither did 
 the skipper, — which was why he tolerated him. From 
 the skipper's point of view, it was safer business to 
 give out that the missionary had been wounded in 
 an accidental scuffle with the natives ; and that to 
 prevent his being killed and eaten by his flock, the 
 John Wesley had taken him off and tended him care- 
 fully. Bully Ford could thus turn his act of piracy 
 into one of humanity. The man was sure to die 
 before they hove in sight of Brisbane. As soon as 
 he was dead, nothing could be easier than to clap 
 that fellow Pringle into irons as an insubordinate 
 sailor ; and who then would believe his unsupported 
 evidence ? 
 
 The missionary was a young man about Tom's 
 own age — tall, wiry, sunburnt. He had a bushy 
 beard, and a generally unkempt appearance ; but 
 beneath it all, Tom could see marks of a generous 
 disposition and a profound enthusiasm. His name 
 was Cecil Glisson. When Tom first heard that 
 name, he could hardly have believed how deeply 
 familiar it was destined to become to him in future. 
 
 The missionary's wound was in his right lung ; but 
 Glisson took little notice of it. He had known his 
 days were numbered even before he was shot ; and 
 his one hope now was that he might manage to live 
 till he reached Brisbane, so as to put an end by his 
 martyrdom to this infamous traffic. Tom told him 
 the plain truth about his presence on the John 
 Wesley : honesty understands honesty ; and Glisson 
 believed him. As Tom sat by the wounded man's 
 
28 THE INCIDENTAL BISHOP 
 
 bedside, preparing arrowroot with Swiss milk, a friend- 
 ship gradually sprang up between them. " Could 
 you read to mc ? " Glisson asked wistfully, in an 
 interval of his fever. 
 
 Tom hesitated. " Read what ? We have nothing 
 to read here." 
 
 "Not a Bible?" 
 
 "No, nothing at all, except the charts and the 
 South-Sea Sailing Directions." 
 
 The dying man hesitated. " I have a Greek 
 Testament," he said ; " it's in my pocket there, 
 hanging up. I always carry it about with me. But 
 my eyes are too weak, and of course you can't read 
 it." 
 
 " I haven't read Greek for some time," Tom said, 
 hesitating : " and I don't suppose I should under- 
 stand it. But I think I could just manage to read 
 out the words, if that would be any good. I'll have 
 a try, anyhow." 
 
 Glisson opened his weary eyes and looked up at 
 the sailor in surprise. " You, read Greek ? " he 
 exclaimed in astonishment. " No, no ! You must 
 be mistaken." 
 
 Tom felt in the missionary's pocket, and found 
 what he sought — a small and much thumb-marked 
 Testament. He opened it at the place where it 
 naturally bent back, the third of Second Corinthians. 
 Then, in a clear soft voice, he began reading slowly 
 the sonorous Greek, giving the full value to his open 
 Eta's and Omega's. 
 
 Glisson listened with dreamy eyes. " How did you 
 learn ? " he asked at last slowly. 
 
 " I was at a grammar school in Canada," Tom 
 
THE missionary's ILLNESS 29 
 
 answered. " I learnt a tidy bit of Latin there, and a 
 little Greek. But what surprises me most is this ; I 
 never knew much : yet I think I understand the 
 Greek better now, though I haven't looked at it 
 since, than I did when I was a schoolboy." 
 
 " That's natural," Glisson replied. " Mere age often 
 does it. You catch at things better now. Can you 
 follow what you read ? " 
 
 " I think, every word of it." 
 
 " You read as if you did. You must read to me 
 often. Go on now. It soothes me." 
 
 Tom read on and on, and saw that Glisson was 
 right. Mere age told. He could recollect fairly well 
 the run of the epistle in the English version ; and the 
 Greek suggested it to him wherever he forgot it. 
 Besides, he knew he had a natural gift of languages. 
 He had picked up some words of Arabic when he 
 was cruising in the Red Sea ; and even on board the 
 John Wesley he was le'arning already a phrase or two 
 in Melanesian from the talk of the poor creatures tied 
 up in pairs on the deck of the steamer. 
 
 Glisson listened with his eyes shut. At last he 
 opened them slowly. " It's like old times," he said. 
 " It reminds me of the days when I was reading for 
 orders." 
 
 " You are a clergyman of the Church of England ? " 
 Tom asked. 
 
 " Yes ; ordained in England." 
 
 " An Oxford man ? " 
 
 Glisson gave a little start as of surprise. " Oh, 
 nothing like that," he answered. " A poor waif and 
 stray. I was an orphan in a Liverpool foundling 
 hospital. I had no friends on earth, except good 
 
30 THE INCIDENTAL BISHOP 
 
 Bishop Patteson. He befriended me as a boy ; and 
 when I was growing up, he had me sent to a theo- 
 logical college, where I learnt these things. It was 
 he who had me ordained, and brought me out here to 
 help him." 
 
 That made Tom feel more at home at once with 
 his patient. The honest desire not to seem more 
 than he was drew Tom towards him instantly. 
 
 From that moment forth, they talked much to- 
 gether ; much, that is to say, considering Glisson's 
 condition. The missionary told his sailor friend all 
 about his youth at the orphanage, and his life at the 
 theological college ; more still about his work among 
 the savages of Temuka. Most of them, of course, 
 were still heathen and cannibals ; but Glisson had 
 collected a little band about him. He loved his 
 blackfellows ; and Tom could clearly see that he 
 longed to live till they reached Brisbane, mainly 
 because he thought his own death might redound 
 to the putting down of this infamous slave-trade. 
 
 But he grew worse daily, in the stifling heat of his 
 cabin, in spite of all Tom could do for him. His 
 wound was serious. Each time Tom came on deck, 
 the skipper asked with a grim smile : " Well, how's 
 your patient ? " And each time, when Tom answered : 
 "Growing worse, I fear," the skipper nodded, well 
 pleased, and muttered the same words : " What do 
 these people want to go interfering with free trade 
 for ? " 
 
 At last, about three days off from Brisbane, Tom 
 was watching by the wounded man's side, when he 
 saw Glisson suddenly start and lift one hand up. 
 Then a red stream gurgled from mouth and nostrils. 
 
,,,..,,,-.;-:• v'.'vyy- :.;■■;:(;;:, 
 
 THE missionary's ILLNESS 
 
 31 
 
 Tom knew what had happened. Haemorrhage of 
 the wounded lung. He was bleeding to death in- 
 ternally. It was all up with him. 
 
 He held Glisson in his arms, very white and pallid. 
 The missionary's lips just moved. Tom bent over 
 to listen. " Tell them in England what has happened 
 — let my blood be the last that is shed in this wicked 
 traffic." 
 
 He fell back, dead. And Tom knew that Bully 
 Ford was that innocent man's murderer. 
 
CHAPTER V. 
 
 BULLY FORD'S LIVE-STOCK. 
 
 On deck, the skipper sat discoursing business with his 
 assistant, Hemmings. " First-rate stock, Hemmings," 
 he ejaculated. He was a judge of slave-flesh. 
 
 " Lot of trouble to get 'em, though," the mate 
 responded. 
 
 " Ay, these missionaries are ruining the trade," the 
 skipper admitted, pensively. "There ain't no two 
 ways about it. This is as fine-looking, clean, healthy 
 a lot of stock as you'd wish to see : yet he wants to 
 stop us from taking them. Why, when I first began 
 supplying labour to the Brisbane market, we could 
 recruit economically : hands could be sold at a pound 
 a head, easy. No nonsense then about indentures 
 or contracts. We just came down on an island, 
 carried 'em off without a word, and sold 'em, open, 
 to the highest bidder. Now, they've got all this new- 
 fangled rubbish about apprentices. There's no know- 
 ing where it'll end. Last time I was in Sydney, I 
 heard talk of a Government Inspector to sail on 
 every vessel, and the owners to pay him twenty 
 pound a month. It ain't fair to capital. It 'ud be 
 the ruin of the Traffic." (The amenities of literature 
 compel me to suppress the running fire of oaths 
 
 32 
 
 .'I,/' 
 
 ■,.W.: . 
 
BULLY ford's LIVE-STOCK 33 
 
 which agreeably diversified Bully Ford's style, adding 
 point and picturesqueness to his mildest sentence : 
 but I do so with regret, for the skipper's conversation 
 was estimated to contain a larger percentage of 
 coarseness and profanity to the square mile than any 
 other man's on the South Pacific.) 
 
 " That's so," the mate assented. " We are a sight 
 too much governed. Same at Brisbane. When we 
 got there, do you mind, we used to march the stock 
 in gangs to the verandah of the store, and leave 'em 
 there for inspection by intending purchasers. Now, 
 what have you got to do? You've got to clothe 
 'em, and feed 'em, and see they don't resist when 
 folks come to buy them, or the magistrates '11 say they 
 ain't willing immigrants. Willing immigrants, indeed ! 
 As if anybody believed it ! What I hate in this 
 world is its confounded humbug. If you're doing a 
 trade in slaves, why the thunder can't you say so ? " 
 
 "You're right there," Ford replied. "If things 
 goes on like this, we shall have to do everywhere like 
 they do in Fiji — take off your hat to the natives and 
 beg 'em to be kind enough to do a day's work for 
 you. How's work to be done, I'd like to know, if 
 you can't get the boys? We shall have to do like 
 they do in Fiji, I say. ' Very good ; you go along a 
 Melbourne along a me ? Very good ki-ki. Pay very 
 good. Pay money. Plenty shop. You buy what you 
 like. You very good fellow ; me very good master.' 
 Cringing to a Kanaka ! Yah ! I couldn't stoop to it ! " 
 " Nor me," the mate continued. " It makes me 
 sick to hear 'em. ' Master no take you, suppose you 
 no like : me put you ashore at place belong a you.' 
 And then, all that rot about eighteen pounds clear 
 
 3 
 
34 THE INCIDENTAL BISHOP 
 
 at the end of three yam crops ! * You no be 
 frightened. Captain good fellow man ; he no fight ; 
 he no swear at you ; plenty eat ; plenty square gin ; 
 plenty Mary belong a Malo ; plenty young man 
 belong a your place ; all missionary boy ; me mis- 
 sionary man.' Is that the sort of way for a white 
 man to behave to niggers ? " 
 
 " Besides, it ain't humane," Bully Ford said, apolo- 
 getically ; for even blackguards make apologies to 
 virtue. " Natives bring a woman down to your boat, 
 tied hand and foot ; and they want a stick of tobacco 
 for her. She's got into a row, and they're bound to 
 punish her. But she ain't a willing recruit, and you 
 say : ' Can't take her.' Well, what do them natives 
 do? Just carry her back, and roast her." 
 
 As he spoke the words, Tom Pringle's head ap- 
 peared above the companion. 
 
 " What does that sneaking chap want ? " the 
 skipper asked. 
 
 " He's dead," Tom answered. 
 
 "A good job too," the skipper said. " Well, throw 
 him overboard ! " 
 
 "What, now — without waiting? and without burial?" 
 Tom exclaimed. 
 
 The skipper eyed him curiously. " Young man," 
 he said, with philosophic calm, "it strikes me very 
 forcibly you've mistaken your vocation. A labour 
 vessel don't pretend to be a missionary ship." 
 
 Tom glanced at the " stock," packed on deck like 
 sardines, in the baking heat, and admitted at once 
 the truth of this reflection. 
 
 But before anything more could pass between 
 them, the mate jumped up with a sudden exclama- 
 
BULLY ford's LIVE-STOCK 35 
 
 tion. " Hullo there," he cried. " Look to starboard, 
 captain ! " 
 
 Bully Ford looked round and gave a long, low whistle. 
 
 Tom's eyes followed theirs. Away off on the hori- 
 zon, a steamer was in sight, bearing down at full steam 
 in the direction of the John Wesley. The skipper 
 seized his binoculars. Tom's unaided sight did not 
 avail to tell him it was a gun-boat cruiser; but he 
 guessed as much from the skipper's sudden look of 
 dismay and disappointed anger. 
 
 " Full steam ahead ? " the mate inquired. 
 
 The skipper stared again. '' No good," he answered, 
 with his usual quick determination ; for, bully and 
 scoundrel as he was, he was a born commander. " She 
 steams faster than us. If we run for. it, she'll run us 
 down, and the chase will tell against us. We must 
 chuck the stock. That's the only way. If they come 
 here and catch us, it's piracy, I reckon." 
 
 Tom hardly yet understood what this prompt 
 determination involved ; but whatever it was, he 
 saw Bully Ford intended it. 
 
 " Bring up that dead devil-dodger first," Ford went 
 on, closing his mouth like a rat-trap. 
 
 The mate disappeared. In another minute, he and 
 a sailor came up, carrying Glisson's body like a dead 
 weight between them. 
 
 Nobody spoke a word. One of the sailors fastened 
 to it a heavy leaden shape, of a sort that Tom had 
 noticed in a bunker on the main deck, and had 
 examined with no little wonder as to what might be 
 their purpose. 
 
 "Chuck it over to leeward!" Bully Ford said. 
 The gunboat was coming from windward. 
 
•' '■ '"?' • i* f; 
 
 36 THE INCIDENTAL BISHOP 
 
 Without a word of reply, the sailors carried the 
 body to the lee gunwale, which was also the side 
 remotest from the gunboat, and flung it over heavily. 
 One — two — three, and it disappeared with a slight 
 splash into the angry water. The wake closed over 
 it. For a fair sea was running, and the wind rose 
 steadily. 
 
 " Now, below with the stock ! " Ford exclaimed, 
 without a shudder. 
 
 The sailors proceeded to hurry the men and women 
 to the hold, one by one ; Tom hardly knew why ; 
 but a minute later, he saw it was to prevent resistance 
 and the chance of a rising. Handcuffed as they 
 were, they might still have given trouble had they 
 known what was coming. 
 
 One man alone was left on deck at the last. 
 Meanwhile, the John Wesley continued on her course, 
 as if she had never even noticed the gunboat, though 
 it was signalling now from its distant position. 
 
 "Weight!" the skipper said. Quick as lightning, 
 two sailors fastened a weight to the blackfellow's 
 feet. " Now, over ! " They lifted him, struggling 
 and screaming, in their arms, carried him to the 
 lee gunwale, and dropped him quietly into the dark 
 sea like a bale of goods, as they had dropped the 
 corpse. With a wild shriek he fell. The shriek was 
 choked by the rushing water. He sank like lead 
 to the bottom. The rollers closed over him. " Good 
 money gone ! " was all the skipper's comment. 
 
 " Next ! " Bully Ford said calmly. The sailors 
 brought up another in turn from the hold, where 
 Tom could see two of their number standing guard 
 with six-shooters over the excited blackfellows. The 
 
 .-..,.- .,,^,.- . ■_^.....-...\...fe^-y..-.- ^^ - 
 
■-> 
 
 BULLY ford's LIVE-STOCK 
 
 37 
 
 natives did not know exactly what was happening, 
 indeed, but they suspected mischief, and rushed about 
 wildly or crouched in terror. Quickly and silently, 
 with military order, the sailors brought up one man 
 after another. As each reached the deck, a weight 
 was fastened with mechanical regularity to his feet, 
 he was carried to the edge, and, with a " One, two, 
 three," heaved over into the black water. The mono- 
 tonous repetition of the loud cries, the sudden shriek, 
 the dull thud upon the surface, the immediate and 
 ghastly silence as the shriek was stifled, sickened 
 Tom as he looked. He had a vague suspicion that 
 his turn would come next, when they had finished 
 with the blackfellows. 
 
 Time after time the same horrible scene recurred. 
 They worked their way through the men, and pro- 
 ceeded to the women. These met their fate with 
 more sullen resignation. Perhaps they were better 
 accustomed to brutal treatment. As the last was 
 just reached, a shot across their bows ploughed up 
 the water. Bully Ford glanced aside. " Ha, she's 
 angry," he said, " because we don't notice her signals. 
 But I'd knock this ship's brains out on a reef, if I 
 could, sooner'n let her catch us." 
 
 He rang the bell to stop her. The engine reversed. 
 Then he glanced with cold eyes at Tom. " Go 
 below, sir," he said shortly. " I ain't got time left 
 to chuck you overboard just now ; but by George, 
 if once we run past this tight place, I'll break every 
 bone in your sneaking white body. A white man, and 
 you'd want to side with niggers ! He's under arrest, 
 Hemmings. Mind you keep your eye on him." 
 
 What happened next, Tom never really knew. 
 
,'. \T*'.i. ->>''.'; • 7, '••'-■;/; ''!V'*»^-'*^. I,.''. ■ •/• ■ 
 
 38 THE INCIDENTAL BISHOP 
 
 He slank down the companion, but Hemmings did 
 not follow him. By a sort of blind instinct, he took 
 refuge in the empty bunk where Glisson had lain 
 dying. The missionary's clothes hung idly on a peg 
 by the door of the cabin. A sudden idea seized 
 Tom. If the gunboat come up and searched, as 
 likely as not every man on board would be arrested 
 on a charge of piracy ; for pirates they were, and 
 now he knew it. In that case, his protestations of 
 innocence would avail him little, especially as all 
 the crew would turn against him. But supposing 
 he put on the missionary's clothes ? The suggestion 
 was a good one. Almost before he had time to 
 know what he was doing, he had taken action — the 
 action that was to turn him into a different person. 
 
 It is always one minute that decides our lives 
 for us. 
 
 He changed his clothes rapidly. Glisson and he 
 ran fairly of a size ; but what was more important 
 still, the missionary's kit was of a rough-and-ready 
 make which rendered fit unimportant. His garments 
 were not what in temperate climates we should regard 
 as a strictly clerical garb, it is true ; a white flannel 
 shirt, with a red cross embroidered on it, and a pair 
 of flannel trousers — that was Glisson's simple uniform. 
 But at any rate they were quite unlike Tom's sailor 
 costume, which would have stamped him at once as 
 belonging to the crew of the /o/in Wesley. 
 
 He thrust his hand in his pocket, and drew out 
 a worn leather case. It contained a few official 
 letters, addressed to the Rev. Cecil Glisson, Temuka, 
 with some other papers which he had not time at 
 the moment to examine. Then he stuck the Greek 
 
BULLY ford's LIVE-STOCK 
 
 39 
 
 Testament into the other pocket, and sat down on 
 a bunk, to await in silence the next development. 
 Naturally, after what he had seen, he was trembling 
 with excitement ; but he tried to calm himself and 
 to expect the gunboat. 
 
 Another gun went off. The John Wesley lay to, 
 in the trough of the waves. Night was rushing on 
 the sea with tropical rapidity. Below, all was dark. 
 Presently, he heard noises above, noises that sounded 
 like hurried consultation. Next, a boat shimmered 
 quickly past the port-hole by his side. They were 
 lowering it from the davits. In it, he could just 
 make out the dim heads of Ford and Hemmings 
 and some dozen others. He guessed then what was 
 happening. Terrified at the last moment, they were 
 abandoning the John Wesley^ and hurrying to seek 
 their fate on the open Pacific. Perhaps some of the 
 sailors had shown a disposition at the last moment 
 to turn Queen's evidence. He thought so afterward. 
 But just at that second, he thought no more about 
 anything. For — rVr' — a sudden explosion resounded 
 in his ears. The ship shook from stem to stern. 
 He was dimly aware that Ford had tried to blow up 
 the steamer. That was all he knew. The explosion 
 stunned him. He closed his eyes, with a conscious- 
 ness of having been violently hit on the forehead by 
 some flying fragment. And in that moment of 
 unconsciousness, so far as the rest of the world 
 was concerned, Tom Pringle faded for ever from 
 existence. 
 
 When he came to again, he had changed his 
 personality. He was no longer himself, but Cecil 
 Glisson. 
 
CHAPTER VI. 
 THE OTHER SIDE OF IT. 
 
 The few breathless minutes that Tom had employed 
 in tremulously changing his clothes down below for 
 Glisson's were a time of wild haste and sudden con- 
 sternation on deck for the other occupants of the 
 John Wesley. As the gunboat approached, steaming 
 ominously on, an embodied representative of the 
 British empire, their courage began to fail them. 
 Civilisation and law stared at them from her muzzles. 
 They had murdered the blackfellows without a 
 second's compunction, and now, it occurred to them 
 that they had done it in vain. For they had a traitor 
 on board. That man Pringle, if he chose, might round 
 and peach on them. 
 
 " I reckon we ought to shoot him," Hemmings 
 suggested calmly, as Tom disappeared down the 
 ladder like a rabbit to its burrow. 
 
 " Can't shoot without making a mess," the skipper 
 answered hurriedly. " If they board us, they'll 
 search us ; and if they search us and find blood 
 on the decks, there'll be the devil to pay ; they'll 
 carry us off to Sydney and try us all for piracy." 
 
 " That's so," Hemmings admitted. " It's a bad 
 
 look-out either way." 
 
 " We'd ought to have chucked him over at first with 
 
 40 
 
.•'■■' 
 
 THE OTHER SIDE OF IT 4I 
 
 the nigs," Bully Ford continued, glancing round him 
 for support. " That's the only safe way of dealing with 
 a chap who turns traitor." 
 
 He said it tentatively, for he knew it was a 
 question whether his crew would obey if he gave such 
 an order. They were ready enough, it is true, to 
 drop blackfellows overboard, in case of emergency ; 
 blackfellows are cargo — so much "stock" for the 
 market, to be flung away when it becomes necessary 
 to lighten ship, like any other form of merchandise. 
 But a white man — that was different. He was one 
 of themselves, a fellow sailor and a fellow creature ; 
 and if once Bully Ford began flinging white men 
 overboard, nobody could tell how soon his own turn 
 might come ; it was a dangerous precedent. 
 
 So no one responded. 
 
 " Shall we chuck him ? " the skipper asked in a low 
 voice of Hemmings. 
 
 Hemmings cleared his throat. " It's pretty 
 dangerous now," he answered slowly. " She's drawing 
 too near. They've got an eye on us through their 
 glasses ; if they happen to see us chuck anything 
 alive, it'll be all the worse for us." 
 
 " I'll risk it ! " the skipper answered, making up his 
 mind quick. " It's growing dark now, and we could 
 
 chuck him to leeward next time she lurches " 
 
 he paused, and looked significantly at the angry 
 water. 
 
 Hemmings pursed his lips. "They'll refuse," he 
 answered low. " They won't chuck a white man." 
 
 The skipper turned to two of the sailors. " Fetch 
 up Pringle," he said calmly, in an authoritative voice. 
 " I'm a-going to chuck him." 
 
42 THE INCIDENTAL BISHOP 
 
 The men stared at him stonily. " No you don't," 
 one of them answered. " Not with a gunboat bearing 
 down on us. I've had enough of you, Bully Ford, 
 and I tell you so, flat. If you try on that game, I 
 turn Queen's evidence." 
 
 Without another word, Bully Ford drew his 
 revolver. " You mean it ? " he asked, covering 
 the man. 
 
 Quick as lightning, the sailor had whipped out 
 a revolver in return. " Aye, I mean it," he answered, 
 pointing the muzzle at the skipper. "Take care of 
 yourself, Bully Ford ! It's rope, or bullet ! " 
 
 Bully Ford sprang back. He eyed the other 
 sailor, who had not yet spoken. In his silent face, 
 he read the same resolution. A second hand went 
 up, and two revolvers covered him. The skipper 
 was a resolute man, making his mind up easily. He 
 saw the game was played. " Lower a boat ! " he 
 cried to Hemmings. " There's traitors about ! Man 
 her, those of you who are with me ! Better run for 
 it than cave in ! It's the mercy of the sea, or to be 
 hanged at Sydney ! " 
 
 Swiftly, silently, with the sudden throbbing 
 consciousness of a great emergency, the sailors who 
 were loyal to the cause of piracy lowered the boat 
 and manned her. It was a hurried moment. Ford 
 and Hemmings stepped into her first. The sea ran 
 high, but they lowered her all the same and put her 
 off successfully. Till the last second, Ford kept his 
 revolver pointed at the two recalcitrant sailors who 
 had refused to chuck Tom Pringle overboard. Then, 
 as the boat rose once on the curling crest of the 
 wave, he took aim steadily. 
 
 -.tl. .t-V.-i;-.. 
 
THE OTHER SIDE OF IT 43 
 
 " What arc you doing ? " Hemmings asked, seizing 
 the skipper's arm. 
 
 " Let me go," the skipper cried, shaking it free and 
 firing. " Do you think I always told you chaps 
 everything on the JoJui Wesley ? I'm a-going to 
 blow her up ! I've a powder reserve, — and gun- 
 cotton ! " 
 
 He fired with a steady hand, aiming straight at a 
 particular spot between decks on the John Wesley. 
 The shot took effect. A white puff of smoke rose 
 almost instantly, where the bullet struck, in a huge 
 dense column. Then came a terrible thud ; a throb 
 thrilled through the water. The hull reeled : the air 
 trembled. As the smoke cleared away, the place 
 where the two sailors had stood was vacant. Only 
 a mangled limb or two, seen vaguely through the 
 gloom, represented what had been two hurian lives 
 one moment earlier. 
 
 Ford glanced at the hull through the dusk. " Hasn't 
 sunk her ! " he muttered with a slight tinge of regret. 
 " But it's killed those beggars, any way ! And the 
 other skunk, too, I hope. Well, we're in for it, now, 
 boys : civilisation's all over : there's nothing left us 
 but to try our luck with the savages in the Islands ! " 
 
 And the boat rowed off through the gathering 
 dusk, before a rising wind, away from the explosion 
 and the pursuing gunboat. 
 
 It had all been so rapid, indeed, that half the 
 sailors in the boat hardly realised what was happening, 
 till they found themselves alone in the dark Pacific, 
 a crew of proscribed pirates, rowing off for dear life 
 in an open gig, between the devil and the deep sea — 
 an angry gunboat behind, a stormy ocean in front, 
 
44 THE INCIDENTAL BISHOP 
 
 and Bully Ford at the stern to steer them to per- 
 dition. 
 
 One thought was uppermost in every man's breast ; 
 one voice alone uttered it. " It's done now, and 
 there's no help for it ; but if only I'd knowed, I'm 
 blessed if I'd have started with Bully Ford for the 
 Islands. I'd rather have faced it out, and stood my 
 chance for my life at Sydney." 
 
 ,1^ 
 
CHAPTER VII. 
 LAW AND ORDER. 
 
 Captain Peachey, of H.M.S. Avenger, stood on 
 deck with his Navigating Lieutenant. " By Jove, 
 Byers," he exclaimed, taking a good look through 
 the telescope, " it's that rascal Bully Ford, in the 
 John Wesley ! " 
 
 " And we've caught him red-handed ? " 
 
 " Red-handed ? yes. It's my belief, he's chucking his 
 blackfellows overboard to prevent our finding them ! " 
 
 " Another shot across his bows, sir ? " the officer 
 beyond inquired. 
 
 " No ! That one has brought him to. He'll have 
 to wait now till we come within hailing distance." 
 
 The Avenger stea.med on, till she was almost along- 
 side the slaver. Then in the dusk the Captain saw 
 strange proceedings aboard. " Hang me," he cried 
 again, "if I don't believe they're going to abandon 
 her ! " 
 
 " They daren't, on such a night, and five hundred 
 miles from the nearest island." 
 
 "Bully Ford would dare anything. Yes, they're 
 putting out boats. We must man ours and follow. 
 Hullo, what's that?" And the Captain paused 
 suddenly. 
 
 45 
 
46 THE INCIDENTAL BISHOP 
 
 A column of white smoke rose in the gloom from 
 the John Wesley. Then came a loud dull rumbling. 
 They had blown up the steamer. 
 
 In an incredibly short time, the Avenger had put 
 out one of her boats, and rowed through the angry 
 sea to the suspicious steamer. They rowed with 
 caution ; for where there has been one explosion 
 there may always be another. But no further noise 
 disturbed them. A party boarded her and examined 
 the derelict. They found two or three mangled bodies 
 of sailors close to the explosion, and nothing else alive 
 on deck or near it. 
 
 " These fellows must have been sick of their devil's 
 work," the officer in charge said ; " they must have 
 threatened to peach ; and Bully Ford has had his 
 revenge on them. It's no use trying to follow him 
 on a night like this. But the sea will have them 
 yet. They never can get away alive to the New 
 Hebrides." 
 
 " What next, sir ? " the quartermaster asked. 
 
 " Search her hold, and see if there are blackfellows 
 below. Though no doubt the rogue has chucked 
 them all overboard." 
 
 The sailors went below. In a few minutes, a cry 
 from them brought the officer to the companion. 
 " What's up ? " he inquired. 
 
 " A wounded man, sir ; not one of the crew. Has 
 a red cross on his shirt. Looks as if he might be a 
 missionary." 
 
 " Bring him up," the officer said. 
 
 The sailors came up, bearing a half lifeless body 
 between them. 
 
 The officer bent over it and searched its pockets. 
 

 LAW AND ORDER 47 
 
 " A Greek Testament ! " he exclaimed. " You don't 
 expect to find Greek Testaments on a Labour vessel ! 
 And a letter-case too ! Let's see. ' The Rev. Cecil 
 Glisson, Temuka, by occasion, via Sydney.' Must 
 be a missionary. What the dickens was a missionary 
 doing in this lot, though, I wonder. He can't have 
 been their chaplain. Here's his ordination lines — 
 the Archbishop of Canterbury. Well, they've blown 
 kim up as well. Lower him gently, boys ; lower 
 him gently." 
 
 They lowered Tom into the boat, and rowed him 
 back to the Avenger. A crew was put in the John 
 Wesley^ to carry her safe to Sydney ; and Tom, no 
 longer Tom, was taken cautiously down to a berth 
 in the gunboat. 
 
 He lay insensible for two days, for a splinter had 
 struck him on the temple arid wounded him badly. 
 
 When he came to again, the doctor on the Avenger 
 forbade him to talk for awhile. But he treated him 
 as a missionary. Tom did not even have to tell a 
 lie upon the matter. Nobody questioned him. They 
 took it for granted he was Cecil Glisson. The 
 clothes, the letter-case, the ordination papers, the 
 Greek Testament, all told the same story. It never 
 even occurred to the officers to doubt him. Tom 
 drank his beef tea and held his peace prudently. 
 After all, it was only till they landed at Sydney. 
 Once safe ashore, he could disappear in the crowd, 
 and find a berth on some other ship either there or 
 at Melbourne. 
 
 He did not yet realise how hard it is to disappear 
 in a crowd, when once you have done anything to 
 attract attention. Tom Pringle, the unknown 
 
48 
 
 THE INCIDENTAL BISHOP 
 
 Canadian sailor, could vanish into space, and no one 
 would miss him ; but Cecil Glisson, the missionary 
 from Temuka, was a marked man ; his movements 
 would be chronicled ; he could no more vanish 
 unobserved than a prince of the house royal. 
 
 As he began to mend, indeed, the ship's officers 
 questioned him about details of his capture. The 
 ship's doctor, on the other hand, counselled quiet and 
 moderation in talking. Tom was glad of that, for 
 when inquiries grew too hot and answers were 
 dubious, he could plead fatigue and gain time for 
 reflection. " I'll tell you by and bye," he would say, 
 and lie back in the folding chair which they had 
 brought out on deck for the convalescent's use. It 
 was only a temporary deception, just to save his own 
 life and to avoid being included in a charge which 
 would be false in essence. He salved his conscience 
 with the thought that if he told the truth, nobody 
 would believe him, and that to tell a white lie was to 
 serve in the end the real cause of justice. 
 
 So he threw himself frankly, for this voyage only, 
 into Glisson's part. He answered everything as if he 
 were the missionary. " The ship was Bully Ford's," 
 he said ; " and we knew him of old as a desperate 
 slave-stealer. So, when his vessel hove in sight, I 
 went out in our canoes, with my little band of 
 converts, just to let the man feel he was observed 
 and that his proceedings would be reported. I found 
 he had already captured a body of men and girls 
 who were engaged in a religious dance upon the 
 shore ; and I paddled up with my crew to look into 
 the matter. All at once, he fired upon us, wounding 
 several of my men, and myself slightly. Then he 
 
 r> •' 
 
LAW AND ORDER 49 
 
 took me on board, I believe with the intention of 
 letting me die there ; but one of his sailors, who was 
 blown up, poor fellow, as well as I can judge, nursed 
 me most carefully, and I was getting convalescent 
 when the Avenger came in sight. Then Ford horri- 
 fied me by flinging all the stock, as he called it, 
 overboard ; and while I was waiting for my turn to 
 come, this explosion occurred ; and that's practically 
 all I know about the matter." 
 
 " He shall be caught and hanged," the Captain 
 said, "if the Avenger can catch him. He's the worst 
 rogue unhung on the South Pacific ! " 
 
 Which was saying a great deal as those days went 
 among the Islands. 
 
 But the Avenger never found him. Whether the 
 boats foundered in the high seas, or whether they 
 came to shore in one or other of the remoter archi- 
 pelagoes, was never known. But traders to the 
 Caroline Islands will sometimes tell you that a grey- 
 haired old beach-comber, with three brown families, 
 who is suspected of having tasted human flesh, and 
 is universally known as Cannibal Dick, is really 
 Bully Ford, in the lowest stage of drunken degrada- 
 tion. The story goes that he shot and eat his last 
 companion, and landed, half dead, after many weeks 
 of exposure, at the harbour of Ponape. 
 
CHAPTER VIII. 
 A GENTLEMAN AGAIN 
 
 It was a relief to Tom when after five days' sail 
 they sighted the Macquarie lighthouse at the mouth 
 of Sydney Harbour. For now, he said to himself, 
 he would be able to shuffle off this false personality 
 which he had unwillingly assumed, and be once 
 more plain Tom Pringle. " The Reverend " did not 
 suit him. As they passed between the Heads into 
 that magnificent port — the most beautiful in the 
 world — Tom was little engaged in observing the 
 bold and rocky shore, the fantastic hills, the luxuriant 
 vegetation of Australian shrubs and orange-trees and 
 bananas. His mind was wholly occupied with the 
 consoling thought that he had fairly escaped the 
 peril of being numbered among the pirates, and 
 could now disappear into his primitive obscurity. 
 
 Still, he was invalided as yet, and unable to move. 
 He suggested to his kind hosts on board the Avenger 
 that a few days' stay at the hospital might be 
 necessary. But the Captain pooh-poohed the idea. 
 " Preposterous," he said ; " preposterous ! Why, the 
 Sydney people wouldn't even dream of it. As soon 
 as they know who you are, bless you, they'll be 
 delighted to take you in. One or other of the parsons 
 
 So 
 
 
 ) t3 
 
 ^ 
 
 I 
 
 
A GENTLEMAN AGAIN 5 1 
 
 in the town is sure to annex you. They're the most 
 hospitable set in the world, the Sydney folk. They 
 would feel it a slight on the fame of their hospitality 
 if you ventured to suggest going into a common 
 hospital." 
 
 " But I prefer to be independent," Tom said, making 
 a feeble resistance. "I'm a rough South Sea Island 
 missionary, unaccustomed to towns, and I have no 
 clothes with me but those I stand up in : I should 
 get on much better among my blackfellows at 
 Temuka than in parson's dress in a Sydney drawing- 
 room." 
 
 "Nonsense," the Captain answered, good-humour- 
 edly. "A clergyman is a clergyman, and must 
 behave as sich. He's none the worse for going out 
 like a man to risk his life among savages. I don't say 
 as a rule I'm fond of missionaries, Glisson — seen a 
 deal too many of them — they're always giving us 
 trouble on the Pacific stations : but hang it all, when 
 a man is a man, as you are, and goes among such 
 rough savages as those Temuka fellows, prepared to 
 die for what he believes the truth — whether it's true 
 or isn't — why, I don't see how one can help liking and 
 admiring him." 
 
 Tom winced a little. This was hard to endure. 
 To be modest under praise for what you have never 
 done is trying to the nerves. But he consoled himself 
 by thinking it was only for a time, and he would 
 soon escape from it. 
 
 "Besides," the Captain went on, "you've got no 
 precious parson nonsense about you. You're a Man 
 — that's what I like about you. You can laugh and 
 talk and join in with the rest of us. If a sailor 
 
52 THE INCIDENTAL BISHOP 
 
 like myself happens accidentally to let drop an 
 occasional damn, you don't pull a long face over it as 
 if you thought he was straight on the road to perdition. 
 I admire a parson who can fight for his beliefs, but 
 doesn't want to thrust them down other people's 
 throats. Leave your quarters to me, Glisson : when 
 we get into port, I'll take jolly good care you're 
 properly looked after by a decent sort of family." 
 
 This was just what Tom didn't want ; but he dared 
 not say nay. He only murmured feebly : " But I've 
 got no clothes except these that I wear. And I've 
 got no money. Everything I had is left at Temuka." 
 
 " All the more reason you should be taken in and 
 looked after by some good Samaritan. If you landed 
 with your pocket full of money, and a clean white 
 choker, you could go at once to the best hotel in 
 Sydney. But, hang it all, if people won't look after a 
 wounded parson, who's been blown up by slavers 
 because he tried to take care of his own people, and 
 who returns to civilisation with a shirt to his back 
 and nothing else much to brag about — what's our 
 Christianity good for, I wonder? Just you leave that 
 to me. /'// take care that Sydney doesn't lose its 
 reputation for hospitality." 
 
 Tom winced again. These laudations hurt him. 
 But he was forced to submit. He must keep up this 
 farce till he was well enough to move, and could run 
 away by rail or sea to Melbourne. There, he would 
 have a chance of picking up a vessel. 
 
 Captain Peachey v/as quite right in his prognosti- 
 cation. As soon as all Sydney knew that a wounded 
 missionary from the South Seas was aboard the 
 Avenger ^ and that he had come aboard from an 
 
A GENTLEMAN AGAIN 53 
 
 abandoned and blown up Labour vessel with nothing 
 in the world save the clothes he wore, all Sydney- 
 was eager to show him its harbour and its hospitality 
 — those being in point of fact the two things on 
 which proud Sydney most especially prides itself. 
 Half-a-dozen clergymen in the town were eager to 
 put him up. Tom, seeing there was nothing else for 
 it, selected from among them the one who seemed to 
 him least obtrusively clerical. This was a certain Mr. 
 Strong, a rector in the town, with a pleasant house 
 in one of the most fashionable suburbs. Almost 
 before he had realised the step he was taking, he 
 found himself lifted into a comfortable carriage, and 
 driven slowly through the streets to his host's home 
 by the Parramatta river. 
 
 Two things buoyed him up at this trying moment. 
 He had never been at Sydney before ; and he knew 
 from Cecil Glisson's own lips that the dead man he 
 was half innocently personating had never been 
 there either. So the chance of meeting any one who 
 could detect the deception either way — who could 
 say with confidence " This is Tom Pringle," or " This 
 is not Cecil Glisson " — was in so far lessened. 
 
 The carriage drew up at a pretty suburban house, 
 ringed round by a verandah, and covered with bright 
 creepers. A girl of twenty stood waiting at the 
 door. " Olive, my dear," his host said, " this is Mr. 
 Glisson." 
 
 By this time, Tom was beginning to get sick of it. 
 His first impulse was to cry out : " Oh, no, it isn't ; 
 it's only Tom Pringle, a sailor out of work, from the 
 steamer John Wesley'' But two things restrained 
 him. One was the fear that if he told the truth he 
 
54 THE INCIDENTAL BISHOP 
 
 might be indicted as one of a gang of sea murderers ; 
 the other was the apparently irrelevant fact that Olive 
 Strong was distinctly pretty. 
 
 A serious question in the history of orders in the 
 English Church hung ultimately on Olive Strong's 
 appearance that moment. Had she been less attrac- 
 tive, the doubt as to the validity of ordinations in 
 the diocese of Dorchester which afterwards agitated 
 the soul of a bishop might never have arisen. 
 
 Tom looked at her shyly. Olive Strong was a vigor- 
 ous, well-built girl, of what we should nowadays call 
 the lawn-tennis-playing type, but which was rarer in 
 those days, lawn-tennis not having yet been invented. 
 She was tall, after the frequent Australian fashion, and 
 very supply knit ; her movements made a pleasing 
 compromise between grace and strength ; her step 
 was light, but her poise was self-confident with the 
 just self-confidence of youth, health, and vigour, in 
 a beautiful woman's body. That was Tom's first 
 impression : what he noticed most of all as he looked 
 at her that moment was this abundant sense of life 
 and fitness. Olive Strong was, above everything else, 
 a capable woman. 
 
 He looked again, and saw next that his host's 
 daughter was also pretty. Not violently, obtrusively, 
 aggressively pretty ; certainly not pretty in the 
 common acceptation, with prettiness of the coloured 
 chocolate-box order. Quiet strength of character 
 gave the key-note to her face ; she was pretty 
 with the prettiness that is an index of effectiveness. 
 Till then, Tom had always vaguely admired, after 
 the fashion of very young men, the mere pink-and- 
 white complexion, the fluffy hair, the somewhat hot- 
 
'■• /.>?■■" '-.•' '".f i''< 
 
 A GENTLEMAN AGAIN 55 
 
 house beauty of the artificial young woman. He had 
 admired small hands, enclosed in still smaller dainty 
 kid gloves ; small feet, jammed close in tight high- 
 heeled boots ; a waist, too narrow for the organs it 
 should contain, and still further cramped by the art 
 of the corset-maker. He had admired that soft white 
 skin which comes of insufficient exercise and lack of 
 exposure to healthy sun and air ; he had admired in 
 one word what is considered " feminine," but what is 
 really a mere product of the boudoir and the hair- 
 dresser's shop, — violet powder, bloom of Ninon, 
 bandoline, and lip-salve. 
 
 Admired it from afar, for the most part, of course, 
 for Tom's own position as a common sailor had not 
 allowed him of late years to see much more of such 
 women than a passing glimpse in a street when he 
 was in port for a fortnight. Still, that was hitherto 
 his ideal — the laced and bandaged woman of the 
 fashion-plate, the blanched and etiolated product of 
 an exotic culture. 
 
 He gazed at Olive Strong, and felt his notions 
 undergo a sudden expansion, an instantaneous 
 reversal. For Olive was quite other than this pre- 
 conceived model, yet she struck him at sight as far 
 more truly beautiful than any other girl he had ever 
 yet hit upon. Her skin was brown, a rich transparent 
 creamy brown, not unburnt by the strong sun of 
 the southern heavens. But in spite of its brownness, 
 the bright colour on her cheek glowed through it 
 with a red flush, which deepened somewhat as Tom's 
 eyes fixed themselves upon hers for a moment with 
 too frank a glance. He had to recall his clericalism 
 and curb his eagerness for a second. Then the 
 
56 THE INCIDENTAL BISHOP 
 
 sailor in him overcame the pretended parson, and 
 he gazed back once more, to note that Olive had 
 quietly beautiful eyes — not eyes of tropical splendour 
 or of arch coquetry, like the ladies of the stage whom 
 he had most admired, but calm, serene, strong, able 
 eyes, eyes that gave assurance of steadfastness and 
 capacity. Her features might not seem very 
 delicately moulded to an unobservant eye ; they 
 were the features of a good woman and a powerful 
 character rather than those of a professed beauty. 
 Yet when Tom looked closer, he saw with the rapid 
 intuition of a man for the help that is meet for him 
 that they were really modelled with underlying 
 firmness and elusive delicacy. Even at a first glance, 
 he noticed in particular a certain dainty cutting away 
 of the lid of the nostrils, which gave a singular quiver 
 to her charming smile, and reminded him somehow 
 of a high-bred Arab. Taken as a whole, Olive 
 Strong was not fair to outer view with the fairness 
 that would take the most casual observer ; but Tom 
 Pringle, who had more in him than he himself 
 suspected, saw at once that she possessed a deeper 
 and a more perfect type of beauty than any that he 
 had ever yet learned to think beautiful. 
 
 He was sorry as he gazed at her that he was not 
 a missionary. 
 
 What had ailed him to run away to sea and turn 
 common sailor ? That was his real great error. 
 After all, he was better born and better bred than 
 Glisson. But he had thrown away his chances for 
 a boyish freak ; and though he loved the sea, and 
 had never before complained of it, it occurred to 
 him now with a pang of regret that he had made 
 
A GENTLEMAN AGAIN 57 
 
 it impossible for himself ever to marry a girl of the 
 same class and stamp as Olive. 
 
 It is so delightful to find oneself with "a real 
 lady." 
 
 Fully to realise what those hackneyed words mean, 
 however, you must have lived, like Tom, for some 
 years as a common sailor. 
 
 Olive stood on the step of the door and welcomed 
 him. " You must make yourself quite at home," 
 she said, with that quivering smile. " I'm accustomed 
 to invalids, Mr. Glisson, and I'm so very glad you 
 were able to come to us. Not too quick up the 
 steps — we know how you must have been shaken. 
 Captain Peachey told Papa what the Avenger's doctor 
 said — the real wonder was that you should have 
 escaped at all, when the men by your side were killed 
 in the explosion." 
 
 " Oh, I feel all right now," Tom answered — and, 
 to do him justice, at that moment he did. " I can 
 walk quite well ; it's only my head that gives me 
 any trouble." 
 
 Olive led him to a long wicker chair on the 
 verandah. A passion-flower draped it in lithe 
 festoons. " You'd better sit here awhile," she said, 
 " and rest, before you go to your room. The doctor 
 told us we mustn't let you exert yourself at all for 
 some days. You must have perfect quiet." 
 
 Perfect quiet ! And in such society ! With his 
 heart beating ten extra beats per minute ! Tom 
 began to feel more wretched and more guilty than 
 ever. Oh, why had. he consented to himself to begin 
 this deception ? He had half a mind even now to 
 brazen it all out, and declare himself a member of 
 
58 THE INCIDENTAL BISHOP 
 
 the crew of pirates. Fancy living for some days in 
 the bosom of a family, with this charming girl, and 
 palming oneself off as a pious missionary ! Could 
 he keep it up, he wondered, — he, the most careless 
 and happy-go-lucky of sailors. And even if he could, 
 how heartily he must despise himself! 
 
 " Oh, I dare say by to-morrow or next day I 
 shall be well enough to — to think about getting 
 back," Tom began, growing hot. Then, seeing the 
 look of surprise on Olive's face, he added quickly : 
 " Of course I mustn't presume to trespass one day 
 longer than is necessary on your kind hospitality." 
 
 " Why not ? " Olive asked, astonished at this strange 
 haste. " We're delighted to see you. And then, we 
 sympathise so much with your work, you see. I 
 think it so brave of you to go and risk your life 
 like that, all for a pure idea, among those dreadful 
 savages. Captain Peachey told Papa you almost 
 gave up your own safety for your people — and 
 you were taken, defending them, by those horrid 
 slavers. Of course one ought to be glad one's allowed 
 to do anything for those who will do so much for 
 others." 
 
 Tom's face was fiery hot. This was more than 
 he could endure. " I — I have done nothing," he 
 answered. " Nothing, nothing at all, I assure you. 
 I'm afraid you misunderstand. I — I couldn't help 
 being taken prisoner." Then a certain sense of 
 loyalty to poor dead Glisson closed his lips once 
 more. It was of Glisson she was speaking, not of 
 his own doings. How could he dissociate the tangled 
 personalities? how venture to make light of that 
 brave fellow's acts ? For though he had only been 
 
''y'.a*?/^:-- ,. ";-,*;s «^?':'- 
 
 A GENTLEMAN AGAIN Jp 
 
 a few days in Glisson's company on the John Wesley ^ 
 he had learned to appreciate and admire to the full 
 the strength and devotion of that simple, manly, 
 single-hearted young Englishman. 
 
 He grew hotter and redder still as he thought of 
 this treachery. And Olive, who saw it, put it all 
 down to the brave young missionary's excessive 
 modesty. His very discomfiture told in his favour. 
 The more he floundered, the better she thought of 
 him. 
 
CHAPTER IX. 
 
 ENTANGLEMENT. 
 
 Three days later, the Rev. Cecil Glisson, alias Tom 
 
 Pringle, sat on the verandah of the Strongs' house on 
 
 the Parramatta River, looking out with dazed eyes 
 
 towards the beautiful harbour. He was a Reverend 
 
 indeed : in the clothes which he wore, Tom hardly 
 
 knew himself For there he sat, rigged out in a 
 
 complete suit of black clerical broadcloth, hastily 
 
 made to measure by the best tailor in Sydney. It 
 
 was in vain that he had protested on four different 
 
 grounds, personal, economical, moral, and sartorial, 
 
 against this complete transformation of his outer 
 
 man : his host maintained that a clergyman in 
 
 Sydney must dress as Sydney does : he must wear 
 
 the accepted clerical clothes of a civilised parish : and 
 
 Tom, after fighting a losing battle all along the line, 
 
 had finally retired from the contest, discomfited. 
 
 The financial argument was a strong one. He 
 
 declared he had no means to pay for his new suit, 
 
 having arrived in Sydney without a penny to bless 
 
 himself : Mr. Strong replied that as local secretary of 
 
 the Church of England Missionary Society it was Jiis 
 
 duty to see to the proper clothing of shipwrecked or 
 
 destitute missionaries, and that Tom must submit to 
 
 te 
 
 '% 
 
 t 4 
 
ENTANGLEMENT 6l 
 
 his superior officer. Then Tom urged feebly that he 
 could never wear it when he returned to Temuka ; 
 to which Mr. Strong rejoined that his return to 
 Temuka was a problematical event, after the harm 
 inflicted upon him by the fight and the explosion. 
 " We like enthusiasm," he said, smiling ; " but we 
 don't desire our missionaries to court martyrdom too 
 easily ; the palm should be won, not snatched ; and 
 you want to snatch it." Tom blushed uneasily 
 again ; in point of fact, no man on earth felt less 
 anxious for martyrdom than he did. He relapsed 
 into silence, and allowed himself to be passively 
 measured for his clerical suit without further remon- 
 strance. 
 
 And now, the hateful blacl things had come home 
 in due course, and Tom found himself, to his own 
 intense discomfort, masquerading in that very uncon- 
 genial costume before Olive Strong on her own 
 verandah. 
 
 " I don't even know how to wear them. Miss 
 Strong," he said apologetically, conscious of his own 
 awkwardness — for a clerical suit is not precisely 
 adapted to the habits and attitudes of the British 
 
 sailor. " You see " he paused again, for at heart 
 
 he was a tolerably honest young man, and he shrank 
 from lying : — " at Temuka, I never wo.'e them. In 
 the islands, of course, we go about always in nothing 
 but flannels. And I've lived so long in rough 
 places now that I've almost forgotten how to be 
 civilised." 
 
 " I like you best in your flannel shirt and red cross," 
 Olive answered with naive confidence. 
 
 Tom fingered his moustache nervously : he was 
 
62 THE INCIDENTAL BISHOP 
 
 glad of that ; for in the flannel shirt he was at least 
 himself And he admired Olive intensely : so he 
 was pleased she preferred him in a rougher garb. 
 Indeed, it began to strike him that after three or 
 four days in that comfortable home with that bright 
 young girl, it would be hard to go back again to 
 the coarse life of the forecastle. He remembered all 
 at once that he had been brought up a gentleman. 
 
 " One feels so much more at home in flannels," 
 he went on. " I really don't believe I could ever 
 get used to these stiff black things. They run 
 counter to my ideas. I'm a man of adventure. 1 
 don't love civilisation." 
 
 " I suppose you've never worn a white tie — not 
 since you were first ordained," Olive suggested. 
 " You went straight out from ordination to Temuka, 
 didn't you ? " 
 
 She was right as to Glisson. Glisson had told 
 him so much ; but still, why did she know it ? 
 " How did you find that out ? " Tom asked, looking 
 up quickly. 
 
 The colour deepened on the dark cheek. " I saw 
 it in the Missionary Record," she answered after a 
 conscious pause. 
 
 Then she had hunted him up in it. Or hunted 
 up Glisson — which ? This confusion of persons was 
 growing most unpleasant. Once more, for a second, 
 Tom was minded to make a clean breast of it and 
 cry out with fervour : " I am no parson, no mis- 
 sionary, but plain Tom Pringle ! " Then he bethought 
 him of what the Sydney papers were saying ; if Bully 
 Ford and his crew could only be caught, not one 
 man of them should be allowed to escape hanging. 
 
f^'.v,^-;* - ■*.;.v^7 
 
 ENTANGLEMENT 63 
 
 And this first false step only made things worse. 
 Had he told the truth at first, he might have run 
 some chance of being believed, by virtue of his 
 frankness ; now that he had complicated matters 
 by passively accepting Cecil Glisson's personality, 
 there was nothing left but to go through with it 
 boldly. 
 
 He saved himself by a prevarication. " The Mis- 
 siotiary Record is quite right," he said. This com- 
 mitted him to nothing. For the Missionary Record 
 declared that Cecil Glisson had gone out from his 
 ordination straight to Temuka ; and in declaring so 
 much, the Missionary Record had merely confirmed 
 what Cecil Glisson himself had told him. 
 
 He paused a moment. He was a very poor liar. 
 Then he added : " I shall be glad to get them off 
 again. Of course, when I go back to the Islands, 
 I shall never wear them. It seems wasteful to have 
 bought them for so short a visit." 
 
 Olive Strong fixed her eyes on him. " So short a 
 visit ! " she repeated. " Why, how long do you think 
 you will stop at Sydney ? " 
 
 Tom was aware, with a thrill, that she asked it 
 almost anxiously. Then he remembered once more, 
 with a pang of disillusion, that her anxiety was all 
 for Cecil Glisson. And yet ! — And yet, it was he 
 himself, not Cecil Glisson, that she saw before her. 
 If she was interested in anybody, it was surely 
 himself. The disentanglement of the personalities 
 grew each moment more difficult. 
 
 " As soon as I am well enough, I think I ougJit to 
 go back," he answered slowly. 
 
 " Oh, Mr. Glisson ! " 
 
64 
 
 THE INCIDENTAL BISHOP 
 
 She said no more than that, but then, she looked 
 at him. Tom felt her eyes go through and through 
 him. He wriggled uncomfortably in his stiff new 
 suit. He was aware that this evident eagerness to 
 run away was a poor return for the Strongs' marked 
 kindness. Was ever fellow placed in a more awk- 
 ward predicament ? He had to choose betv/een rude 
 ingratitude on the one side, and continued deception 
 on the other. Which of the two should it be? 
 He looked hard at Olive's face, — and deception 
 carried it. 
 
 "Well, everybody at Sydney has been so kind," 
 he said evasively, " that of course I should like to 
 stop as long as possible ; on some accounts," — his eye 
 met hers — " I should like to stop ... for an indefinite 
 period. But then — I have duties ; my duties call 
 me." His face was now in a fine red glow. He 
 paused, and felt himself a consummate hypocrite. 
 
 Olive looked up sharply. " But you're not going 
 back to Temuka?" she said, with a distinct flutter. 
 
 Tom's heart, like the Homeric hero's, stood divided 
 two ways within him. As Tom Pringle, he felt 
 inclined to say : " Oh, certainly not ; " as Cecil Glisson, 
 he felt constrained to affect a professional interest 
 in the well-being of the natives. He took refuge 
 once more in a safe generality. " A man mustn't be 
 daunted by one first disappointment," he answered 
 vaguely ; " by one first difficulty. To put one's hand 
 to the plough and then turn back is bad. Apart 
 from anything else, it shows lack of courage." 
 
 " I don't think anybody would suspect yoii of want 
 of courage," Olive answered with conviction. And 
 once more Tom coloured. The remark was true 
 
 ifM 
 
^ -^v^ 'y^ ■ 
 
 ENTANGLEMENT 6$ 
 
 enough, even as applied to himself; for Tom had 
 the usual endowment of the British sailor in that 
 respect ; he was by no means a coward : but he 
 knew the praise was intended for Glisson, and it 
 made him uncomfortable. Olive noticed his blush, 
 and thought all the better of him for it. " He's as 
 modest as he's brave," she said to herself admiringly. 
 As a rule, to be sure, she was not attracted by 
 curates ; but this bronzed and weather-beaten young 
 missionary (as she naturally thought him), with his 
 frank sailor face and his shy sailor manners, was only 
 a parson by the accident of orders. In essence she 
 felt — and felt more truly than she knew — he was of 
 the genus explorer, a daring young fellow who took 
 his life in his hands, and accepted mission work with 
 the eager delight of a boy in a dangerous adventure. 
 She noticed, indeed, that when he talked of his own 
 life (which was seldom) he dwelt little on professional 
 details, but spoke much of the sea, the fight with the 
 labour vessel, the delights of roughing it, the savagery 
 of the natives. Olive had lived .long enough in a 
 clerical family to be just a trifle sick of the slang 
 of parochialism ; but this South Sea Island parson 
 in the flannel shirt seemed to her a totally new 
 species — and no wonder. 
 
 " I don't think you ou^/it to go back," she inter- 
 posed after a pause. " You know now how dangerous 
 it is. Even if you don't mind for yourself, you 
 should consider others — your mother, for instance, 
 or your sisters." 
 
 " I have no mother," Tom answered, turning 
 towards her as he spoke, and catching his neck on 
 that horrid round collar. " She died years ago, my 
 
 5 
 
^■i 
 
 ^ THE INCIDENTAL BISHOP 
 
 dear good mother. And I never had a sister." Which 
 was true, every word of it, both of himself and the 
 man he personated. Then he prevaricated again. 
 "If you looked up the name of Glisson in the 
 Missionary Record," he added, "didn't it mention 
 that the fellow came out of a Liverpool orphanage ? " 
 
 " It did," Olive replied, admiring him still more 
 for his honest frankness and complete absence of 
 snobbery. " But then, I thought perhaps that might 
 only mean that you had lost your father." 
 
 " I have lost both parents," Tom answered, " and 
 I was an only son." Which again was equally true 
 of himself and of Glisson. Then he plunged once 
 more. " I think," he went on, the thought really 
 occurring to him on the spur of the moment, " only 
 people without home ties ought ever to undertake 
 missionary work. It's too dangerous for men with 
 mothers and sisters — it puts too great a strain on 
 their affections. Apart from the possibilities of 
 being killed and eaten, just think what torture it 
 must be for a mother who loves one to wait months 
 together without the chance of a letter — and with 
 all the terrors of a tropical climate and the caprices 
 of savages vividly before her mind all the time in 
 the night watches." 
 
 " You're quite right," Olive answered. " I never 
 thought of that before. But I see it now. It must 
 be really terrible. . . . Yet some missionaries even 
 take their wives out with them." 
 
 " And have children born to them in the Islands ; 
 yes ; they do : but do you think it is right, it is fair to 
 a woman ? / don't. A man may risk his own life if 
 he likes, especially in a good cause ; it's his own to 
 
' ,1 "^,, ■ 
 
 ENTANGLEMENT 67 
 
 chuck away, his own to gamble with — I mean, to use 
 for what he thinks the highest purpose." (Very- 
 difficult for a sailor to assume all at once this new 
 professional manner ! ) " But his wife's and his 
 children's, — no ! There are dangers to which no man 
 should expose a woman — least of all a woman he 
 loves. And his little children ! Do you remember 
 how those missionaries' families were massacred and 
 tortured in Madagascar? It makes me feel that no 
 man should ever take a v/ife with him on such an 
 expedition." And he shuffled in his clothes, for the 
 collar galled him. 
 
 Olive paused to consider. " I think you're right," 
 she said at last, — " as a matter of principle, for the man. 
 And yet — it's very hard that men who are exposed 
 to such risks should not be cheered and encouraged 
 by the consolation of a wife's care, a wife's help, a 
 wife's sympathy." 
 
 After that, there was a long pause. Tom spent it 
 in reflecting that if he were a missionary, and he kad 
 a chance of winning such a girl as Olive, he would cer- 
 tainly no^ take her to Temuka, to be cooked and eaten. 
 It was all very well to talk about putting one's hand 
 to the plough and not looking back ; for celibate 
 clergy, that was an excellent rule. A monk might 
 stick to it. But if you were going to marry a wife 
 like Olive — hang it all, you ought to govern yourself 
 accordingly, and make a home fit for her. There 
 could be no great merit in marrying a wife, and 
 exposing her to risks too horrible to contemplate. 
 Such vicarious martyrdom in no way suited Tom's 
 sailor nature. 
 
 As for Olive, she spent the same moments in 
 
68 THE INCIDENTAL BISHOP 
 
 reflecting that Mr. Glisson was a charming young 
 man,— so simple, so brave, so candid, so honest ; 
 and that it was a pity he thought of going back 
 to Temuka— especially if he meant to go alone, and 
 thought it positively wrong to take a wife out with 
 him. She certainly wouldn't care to live at Temuka 
 herself; the isolation and the danger must both be 
 terrible : and if a young man such as Mr. Glisson 
 were to ask her to marry him — which of course was 
 improbable— she would much prefer he should make 
 her a home in New South Wales or in England. 
 Theoretically, she was an ardent supporter of foreign 
 missions — it was her duty as her father's daughter 
 to be so ; but practically and personally she felt 
 that not every one is called to this difficult work, 
 and that, unless you have a call, it would be foolish 
 to embark in it. Which showed Olive's good sense ; 
 for no more people are fitted to be missionaries 
 than to be scientific explorers ; and a missionary 
 who is not to the manner born makes his own 
 life wretched, without doing much good to anybody 
 else's. 
 
 Glisson, the real Glisson, was a missionary born. 
 He had that ardent love of universal humanity, 
 black, white, or brown, which is essential to success 
 in his chosen calling : and he had also that buoyant 
 hope, that unfailing energy which alone can sustain 
 a man through the disappointments and failures 
 of a life spent in trying to raise lower natures to 
 a height far above them. He had the enthusiasm 
 of humanity. Tom, who was only an amiable 
 and adventurous young sailor, felt conscious how 
 difficult it was for him to sustain the part of such 
 
■iF-"-f\ . i-r • 
 
 ENTANGLEMENT 
 
 69 
 
 a fervent apostle. Fortunately, he thought to 
 himself, he had only to do it for a few days longer, 
 and then, he could get away and be once more 
 a mere boisterous British sailor. 
 
 In which case, of course, he must say good-bye, 
 for ever, to Olive. 
 
 That was a painful consequence of his half- 
 unwilling deception. For he began to be aware 
 that in those few short days Olive had come to 
 mean a great deal to him. 
 
CHAPTER X. 
 THE COMPLETE CASUIST 
 
 Accident, I hold, is answerable for much in most 
 human lives ; it was answerable for almost everything 
 in Tom Pringle's. When he first decided to change 
 his clothes hurriedly for Cecil Glisson's in the cabin of 
 the John Wes/ej/, on that critical evening, he had 
 certainly no deeper intention than to escape for the 
 moment from an awkward predicament into which 
 chance had led him. He had taken a berth on the 
 labour vessel without the faintest idea of the true 
 nature of the trade in which she was engaged ; that 
 first unfortunate step had involved his taking an 
 unwilling part in the fight and the capture of the 
 blackfellows. 
 
 When he saw the Avenger bearing down upon 
 Bully Ford, he had had no thought beyond that 
 of putting himself visibly on the right side, and 
 disclaiming all share in the John Wesley's nefarious 
 proceedings. Most assuredly he had not anticipated 
 masquerading for a whole week in clerical dress as 
 the dead man's representative. As soon as he dis- 
 covered into what difficulties this one false step had 
 landed him, his sole anxiety was next to get free || 
 
 from the coils of his deception. He desired to leave 
 
 70 
 
,;''''.'»M 
 
 THE COMPLETE CASUIST 71 
 
 Sydney as early as possible ; he wanted to find some 
 homeward-bound ship on which he could bury him- 
 self once more in his native obscurity. Meanwhile, 
 he had a sense that he was acting in private 
 theatricals, dressed up for the singularly uncongenial 
 part of an English curate. 
 
 But the stars in their courses fought against Tom 
 Pringle, and slowly compelled him to a continued 
 deception. He was not well enough to go out for a 
 week after he reached Sydney. As soon as he could 
 move with safety, he determined in his own soul that 
 he would slink away in Glisson's red-cross shirt ; sell 
 his uncomfortable new black parson suit for what it 
 would fetch at a marine store dealer's ; buy such 
 other clothes as he could obtain with the money ; 
 and then sign articles for any voyage to any port on 
 earth, provided only he could at once shuffle off this 
 uncomfortable personality which his own rash act had 
 foolishly thrust upon him. 
 
 Here again, however, the fates were unpropitious. 
 On the morning when he confidently hoped to get 
 away, he had a relapse, no doubt through nervous 
 anxiety, and had to yield himself up once more to 
 Olive's nursing. And Olive's nursing was always 
 so delightful that he felt in his heart he could 
 be only half sorry for it. Of course, he would not 
 allow himself to fall m love with that girl. It would 
 be madness— under the circumstances : nay, worse, 
 it would be dishonourable. He was only a common 
 sailor, however well born — for his father had been 
 a gentleman ; and if Olive showed some slight liking 
 for him, no doubt that was only because she thought 
 he was Cecil Glisson. Though to be sure, if it came 
 

 y2 TH£ INCIDENTAL BlSttOP 
 
 to that, is it not rather the concrete man now and 
 here before a girl that she falls in love with, not his 
 name or antecedents ? If you fall in love, do you 
 not fall in love with a person rather than with a 
 profession ? These were pregnant questions. Still, 
 it was absurd in any case for him to think about 
 Olive. And if Olive thought about him, his clear 
 duty as a man of honour was to pretend to ignore 
 it. Indeed, what else could he do? It would be 
 useless to win Olive's heart as the Reverend Cecil 
 Glisson, and then have to confess he was plain Tom 
 Pringle, able-bodied mariner, without a penny in the 
 world, and with not the faintest chance of ever sup- 
 porting a wife of her quality. 
 
 Meanwhile, to make things worse, Sydney did not 
 allow the supposed parson to rest at peace in his 
 convalescence. They had caught a hero, and they 
 meant to lionise him. On the Thursday of that 
 week, two clergymen called, with Mr. Strong to back 
 them up, and made the unexpected, the wholly 
 incredible request that Tom would preach in aid of 
 the Mission Fund to the South Seas on Sunday ! 
 
 Tom preach ! He had never even dreamt of that 
 appalling possibility. It was too absurd. His horror 
 and consternation showed themselves legibly on his 
 face. Preach — in a church ! Oh, dear saints, deliver 
 us ! 
 
 " Not at all," his host said blandly — for he was a 
 suave parson. " We don't want a set sermon, Glisson. 
 What our people would like best to hear is a plain 
 account in simple language of your own mission." 
 
 Temuka indeed ! Where he had spent one wild 
 day ! What on earth could he tell them of it ? 
 
THE COMPLETE CASUIST 73 
 
 There is a legal and moral maxim that no one 
 becomes of a sudden a blackguard — nemo repente fit 
 turpissimus. And Tom did not descend at once into 
 the lowest depths of duplicity. I tell you all this, 
 at some length, because, unless I told you step by 
 step how the great deception arose, you would think 
 more hardly of him than the circumstances justify. 
 You would set him down, sans phrase^ as an un- 
 mitigated scoundrel ; when, as a matter of fact, he 
 was to some extent merely the victim of circum- 
 stances. 
 
 This first naked suggestion that he should clothe 
 himself in a surplice and mount the steps of a pulpit 
 to expound the Word struck his mind, indeed, as 
 a horrible profanity. He did not plot and scheme 
 to personate a clergyman ; certainly he did not rush 
 into it with deliberate hypocrisy. On the contrary 
 he drew back from the consequences of his act with 
 genuine fear and unfeigned horror. " Oh, no," he 
 said, taken aback. " I could never dream of preach- 
 ing." Then, the necessity for keeping up the farce 
 recurred to him, and he added hastily, as an after- 
 thought, "before an educated congregation such as 
 one would have at Sydney." It was only just in 
 time that he remembered to say " congregation " 
 instead of " audience " — the word that had first 
 naturally occurred to him. 
 
 Mr. Strong, however, would hear of no refusal. 
 Tom pleaded ill-health. Very well, then ; if not 
 this week, why, next. Tom declared he had never 
 preached to a body of English hearers. Oh, that 
 was not what they wanted ; they did not care for 
 a discourse full of orthodox doctrine ; they would 
 
74 THE INCIDENTAL BISHOP 
 
 like to have just some plain account of his own 
 work and his strange adventures. Much talking 
 at last wears down all opposition. Overborne by 
 their importunity, Tom consented in the end, for 
 the sake of peace and 4uiet, reserving in his own 
 soul the silent determination to contract on the fatal 
 day a sudden indisposition. 
 
 Olive for her part was much interested in this 
 sermon. " I don't think, Mr. Glisson," she said, " you 
 ought exactly to preach to them.'* She liked and 
 admired her young missionary, and she thought him 
 clever, too ; but she doubted whether his cleverness 
 ran in the direction oi hortatory discourse. " Why 
 shouldn't you talk to them just as you've talked to 
 us here, about the wickedness of this labour trade, 
 and the necessity for doing something to put down 
 its horrors ? " 
 
 " That would hardly be churchy," Tom interposed, 
 very dubiously. 
 
 " I don't think the apostles cared much whether 
 things were churchy," Olive answered with common 
 sense. "And I know that's not yourself. At 
 Temuka, I'm sure, you didn't think about churchi- 
 ness. You were satisfied to be simple. Here, 
 you're filled with the idea that Sydney's a great 
 town, and that what was good enough for Temuka 
 wouldn't be good enough for us. But I can see 
 you are horrified and indignant at this wicked 
 slave-trading that goes on almost unchecked under 
 our own flag ^ why don't you just stand up in a 
 pulpit and say so in your own way — tell them 
 what you've told Papa and me here alone in the 
 evenings? It would be real: it would be genuine. 
 
THE COMPLETE CASUIST 75 
 
 And it would do more good than a great many 
 sermons— which you and I know nobody ever listens 
 to." 
 
 Tom thought the notion a good one — as far as it 
 went. He didn't mean to go in for the profanation 
 of preaching in church at all — he must back out of 
 it somehow. Still, if he had to preach, (he, in a 
 clean white surplice !) he really thought he would 
 do as Olive suggested. While he had nothing par- 
 ticular to say about justification by faith — and he 
 felt himself lamentably weak in that direction — 
 he had a great deal to say about Bully Ford and 
 his proceedings. What he had seen on the John 
 Wesley had stirred his indignation. His blood boiled 
 at it. 
 
 Queensland pretended it knew nothing of these 
 things : but Queensland was built up on a virtual 
 slave trade. And then, he reflected that he was 
 now in a sense Cecil Glisson's representative. A 
 strange feeling of loyalty to the dead man pos- 
 sessed him. As long as this miserable deception 
 lasted, and people still believed him to be Cecil 
 Glisson, he ought at least to behave in a way that 
 would bring no discredit upon the ardent young 
 missionary whose place he had usurped. If Glisson 
 were alive, Tom thought, he would certainly go into 
 a Sydney pulpit and preach such and such a sermon. 
 
 As he lay awake at night, wondering how he was 
 ever to creep out of this hole into which he had let 
 himself, he thought that sermon all out in his head, 
 just as Glisson would have preached it — ^just as he 
 would preach it himself if he were a real registered 
 A I parson. Part of it he made up from his vivid 
 
^6 THE INCIDENTAL BISHOP 
 
 recollection of the stirring things Cecil Glisson had 
 said to him when he lay dying on the John Wesley^ 
 filled even in death with that unquenchable enthusi- 
 asm of humanity ; part of it he supplied from his 
 own experiences on the hateful labour vessel. 
 
 He was almost sorry he couldn't preach such a 
 sermon ; it might do much good ; more good by 
 many lengths than half the sermons one hears — mere 
 strings of commonplace droned out to order by 
 perfunctory parsons. He had something to say, and 
 he thought he could say it. It was a pity, after 
 all, the chance could never occur for him. If he 
 had been a parson, how hot he would make it for 
 the smugly respectable Queensland planter ! 
 
 He thought that sermon all out in every sentence 
 and every epithet. He was not aware of it himself, 
 but, being half Irish by descent, he had the natural 
 Irish gift of eloquence. Going on with his sermon, 
 he worked himself up to a pitch of enthusiasm in the 
 dead hours of the morning. He half rehearsed it 
 to himself in an impassioned undertone. He was 
 enslaved by his own phrases. What a pity he 
 couldn't deliver it as a lecture at least ! He found 
 himself carried away by the sense of his own message. 
 And he had a message. He was Cecil Glisson for 
 the moment, with a burning story to tell of wrong 
 and cruelty. If only he could tell it, he felt sure he 
 had the power to make people listen. 
 
 He talked of it next day to Olive. She listened 
 certainly. She was enthusiastic about the necessity 
 for putting down this vile traffic, and preaching a new 
 crusade. " I believe, Mr. Glisson," she said with 
 confidence, " you would be twice as well employed 
 
THE COMPLETE CASUIST 77 
 
 in opening the eyes of people in Australia and 
 England to the wickedness of this labour trade as 
 in evangelising Temuka. It is a larger work. You 
 would be doing more real service to your people, 
 I'm sure, than by merely teaching. And besides, 
 you wouldn't have to settle down again in the Islands 
 then ; and yet you wouldn't feel you were turning 
 back your hand from the plough either ! " 
 
 Tom was a modest enough young fellow, not apt 
 to suppose such a girl as Olive was likely to care 
 for him ; but when he posed as Glisson, he felt at 
 once that a certain new element was imported into 
 the situation. As she said those last words, with a 
 faint flush on the dark cheek, and a slight droop of 
 the downcast eyes, as if half afraid she was showing 
 too obvious an interest in her hearer's welfare, it 
 did occur to Tom as possible that Olive Strong was 
 falling in love, if not with him, at any rate with 
 Cecil Glisson. Now, if you are acting a part, and 
 a woman falls in love with that part you are acting, 
 it is difficult for you to dissever the character from 
 the actor. So Tom felt at that moment. It was 
 a queer conundrum. Supposing Olive Strong was 
 in love with Cecil Glisson, was not Tom the Cecil 
 Glisson Olive Strong was in love with? 
 
 From that moment forth, his life became one long 
 attempt both to entangle and to disentangle those 
 two diverse personalities. They puzzled even himself. 
 The Cecil Glisson of the future was an artificial 
 compromise between the real Tom Pringle and the 
 dead missionary of Temuka. 
 
 And when Olive said those words, it occurred to 
 Tom that by doing his best against that iniquitous 
 
78 THE INCIDENTAL BISHOP 
 
 slave traffic he would, in a certain sense, be carry- 
 ing out Cecil Glisson's wishes. Fate rather than 
 deliberate design had forced him into this impersona- 
 tion of a dead man whom he could not help respect- 
 ing ; surely the way in which he could at any rate 
 do least dishonour to the part he had been driven 
 by accident to assume would be by acting as Cecil 
 Glisson himself would have acted had he been really 
 living. 
 
 Tom was turned by circumstances into a complete 
 casuist. 
 
CHAPTER XI. 
 TOM PLUNGES. 
 
 Temptation creeps from point to point. Sunday 
 came at last — that eventful Sunday, which formed 
 the real turning-point in the history of Tom Pringle's 
 half-unwilling deception. Till Sunday, retreat was 
 still always possible ; by Monday, it was not : he 
 had raised meanwhile an impassable barrier between 
 the new Cecil Glisson and the old Tom Pringle. 
 
 He came down to breakfast half undecided how 
 to act. He still clung to the hope that he might 
 plead indisposition. But as he entered the breakfast- 
 room, with a furtive smile, his host dispelled that 
 illusion by saying at once : " Oh, how much better 
 you look this morning, Glisson ! You're a man 
 again, I see. You've picked up wonderfully in our 
 bracing climate. Next to its harbour, Sydney prides 
 itself on its air : it is as good as England after a 
 year or two of the tropics." 
 
 " I'm so glad you're so well," Olive went on, 
 looking up from the tea-tray, where she was occupied 
 as housewife. " We've all set our hearts, you know, 
 upon your undertaking this crusade ; and indeed, 
 when you can do it so well, we can none of us 
 imagine why you want to shirk it." 
 
 79 
 
80 THE INCIDENTAL BISHOP 
 
 " Too much modesty," her father answered. " But 
 then, modesty is not always an unalloyed virtue. 
 A man should have just confidence in his own 
 powers. However, you're fit enough, Glisson ; that's 
 one good point ; and I haven't a doubt you will 
 find our people enthusiastic." 
 
 What could poor Tom do ? He was not ecclesias- 
 tical, and the act did not occur to him as a great 
 sacrilege — ^just then at least ; the honest historian 
 is bound to admit that he considered it rather as 
 an awkward social fix, out of which he must extricate 
 himself by a disagreeable piece of solemn masquer- 
 ading. Yet of one thing he was sure ; it was no use 
 now to plead indisposition. As Mr. Strong said, 
 he was fit — undeniably fit. He felt it ; he looked 
 it ; and he felt he looked it. The fresh air of a 
 temperate country had revived him wonderfully 
 after his illness on the Avenger \ and the unwonted 
 luxury of that comfortable home, with the equally 
 unwonted pleasure of a lady's society, had succeeded 
 in making him happy and lively in spite of his 
 anxiety. He was adventurous by nature. If chance 
 thrust this adventure upon him against his will, 
 why, he must embrace it, that was all, and pull 
 himself out of it as well as he was able. Though 
 he did draw a line at personating a parson in the 
 very pulpit. 
 
 He got through breakfast somehow. How, he 
 hardly knew himself. He crumbled his bread and 
 gulped down his coffee. He was too tremulous even 
 to be conscious of his stiff white choker. After 
 breakfast, Olive spoke to her father in the study for 
 a moment. " He's terribly nervous," she said ; (and 
 
TOM PLUNGES 8 1 
 
 her father, who was a student of human nature, 
 observed for the first time that she spoke of their 
 visitor as " He," not as " Mr. Glisson," as though 
 there were no other he's in the world worth consider- 
 ing.) " Did you notice that he hardly eat anything, 
 and that he seemed quite frightened ? " 
 
 " He is nervous," her father answered, pulling his 
 clerical tie straight in front of the glass. "But is 
 that to be wondered at ? Remember, it is practically 
 his first sermon. He never preached at Temuka. 
 He just talked and explained things in a very crude 
 language to a set of savages. I was nervous myself 
 when I preached my first sermon. But that was 
 before a bishop, and I was an unknown man ; where- 
 as Glisson has the advantage of a congregation 
 entirely predisposed in his favour." 
 
 " I shall make him take a glass of port in a 
 medicine bottle," Olive exclaimed, " and drink it in 
 the vestry just before the sermon." 
 
 " An excellent thing," her father answered. " With 
 an egg beaten up in it. But he will be all right, 
 I'm sure, when once he begins. His heart is in this 
 matter, and therefore he'll speak well about it." 
 
 At a quarter to eleven, a neighbour's carriage 
 called for Tom by appointment. As the fatal hour 
 drew nigh, he grew whiter and more terrified. The 
 real seriousness of the step he was taking did not 
 even now appeal to him from the point of view of 
 sacrilege : but he was increasingly conscious of the 
 social ordeal. He drove to church in silence, with 
 trembling knees. He had not felt half so frightened 
 in the jungle at Temuka, when the blackfellows were 
 peppering them from behind the brushwood. 
 
 6 
 
82 THE INCIDENTAL BISHOP 
 
 Through the earh'er part of the service he sat in 
 a white surplice and a face somewhat whiter. The 
 terror of the task increased upon him each instant. 
 When at length the dreaded moment arrived, he 
 had one last impulse to rise in his place and cry- 
 aloud : " I am not Cecil Glisson ; I have been 
 fooling you all : I am only Tom Pringle, an able- 
 bodied mariner." But he caught Olive's eye, and 
 the sight of her restrained him. The crucial moment 
 went by, and went by for ever. Next instant, in 
 a breathless turmoil, and with legs that scarcely 
 bore him, he felt himself mounting the pulpit stairs, 
 as if by some strange external compulsion, and 
 saw a sea of up-turned faces all looking towards him 
 and waiting. 
 
 As he stood there for one second, pausing and 
 drawing breath, it occurred to him all at once that 
 though he had quite decided in his own mind what sort 
 of sermon he should preach, if he had to preach a 
 sermon, the trifling initial formality of a text had 
 entirely escaped him. In an agony of dismay, he 
 opened the big Bible on the rail in front of him ; 
 opened it at random, and gave out the first words 
 on which his eye lighted. They happened luckily 
 to be these — " And I, brethren, when I came to 
 you, came not with excellency of speech or wisdom." 
 Tom uttered them mechanically ; then he looked at 
 his congregation. A sudden sense of their con- 
 gruity overcame him. " That is true," he said simply. 
 " I will ask you to listen to me, not for my poor 
 manner of delivering my message, but because I 
 have a message to give to the people of Sydney." 
 
 After that, he paused again and looked round. 
 
TOM PLUNGES 83 
 
 Then, conscious of the unique importance of the 
 moment, he dropped his voice suddenly to a col- 
 loquial tone and began to tell his hearers, in his 
 homely sailor way, the story of what he had seen 
 on board the John Wesley. He forgot for the 
 moment he was supposed to be Cecil Glisson ; but 
 as he spoke impersonally, that lapse did not much 
 matter. He told them how skippers such as Bully 
 Ford, sailing under the British flag, and making 
 that flag hateful to the people of the South Pacific 
 descended suddenly, like birds of prey that swoop 
 from the sky, upon those beautiful islands. He 
 described with simple but graphic eloquence the 
 harbour of Temuka, its rampart of rock, its palms, 
 its waterfalls. He told them how the white men 
 were armed and trained ; how ruthless was their 
 method ; how their business was that of organised 
 slave-stealers. He painted in the telling touches of 
 an eye-witness the landing on the white beach ; the 
 terror of the first villagers ; the toilsome march 
 through the tangled forest ; the fierce swoop of on- 
 slaught upon the defenceless natives ; the seizure 
 and handcuffing of men and women ; the swift retreat 
 to the boats ; the utter carelessness of life ; the treat- 
 ment of the slaves as though they were bales of 
 merchandise. It was a picture from life : as he 
 spoke, his hearers seemed to see it all before 
 them. 
 
 Then, still in an impersonal way, as if he were 
 neither himself nor Cecil Glisson, he described in 
 few words how a missionary living among these 
 people, and anxiously endeavouring to teach them 
 higher and better ways, found his work disturbed 
 
84 THE INCIDENTAL BISHOP 
 
 and his precepts nullified by the descent of these 
 cruel white fiends upon his community. " Oh father," 
 his poor natives would pray to their ancestors, 
 "defend us from sailing gods who come to steal us 
 in fire-vessels." He spoke of the canoes of native 
 Christians putting forth with courage from the little 
 bay ; the unexpected shot discharged at them from 
 the slaver ; the surprise of the missionary ; the con- 
 sternation of his flock ; the episode of the single sailor 
 who would not let a white man die untended ; the 
 nameless horrors of the passage ; the natives cooped 
 up in their quarters like pigs or fowls ; the total lack 
 of either comfort or decency : then, the approach 
 of the gun- boat ; the callous cruelty of the skipper 
 and his crew ; the vile talk about the " stock " ; the 
 sternly practical way in which the order " Chuck 
 them overboard" was given and obeyed. It was a 
 graphic narrative. He had seen with his own eyes, 
 and he made his hearers feel the reality of what 
 he told them. The congregation listened spell-bound. 
 This was not a sermon ; it was a genuine piece of 
 native oratory. When he spoke of the thud as each 
 shrieking slave struck the water, with the silence 
 that followed, a hush fell upon his hearers : the whole 
 church was still in an awed access of horror. 
 
 But the oddest part of it all was this ; as soon 
 as Tom once warmed up to his subject, he forgot 
 where he was ; he forgot what he was pretending ; 
 he did not even recollect that he must speak 
 in the formal dialect of the pulpit: he remem- 
 bered only his own burning indignation that such 
 things should be done, and that the flag of his 
 country should be used to cover them. Now and 
 
TOM PLUNGES 85 
 
 then, indeed, he slipped out unawares some sailor-like 
 colloquialism, for which he forgot to apologise. His 
 hearers smiled ; but the earnestness and the natveti 
 of the man and his speech made them not only 
 forgive but actually appreciate these curious little 
 lapses. His sunburnt face, his seafaring manners, his 
 plain English wording, all contributed to his success. 
 Everybody could see — or thought they could see — 
 he was a plain rough missionary, accustomed to 
 the simple life of a Melanesian island, and without 
 graces of manner such as one gets in town churches ; 
 but they could also see that he spoke from his 
 very heart, and that the things he described had filled 
 his own soul with the most thrilling horror. 
 
 At last he finished with one simple appeal. " Now, 
 what I tell you is no distant fable. These things 
 are being done, to-day, within a fortnight's sail of this 
 port of Sydney. They are being done under cover of 
 the British flag, — the flag that we all love — in 
 order to supply cheap Melanesian labour to British 
 capitalists in a British colony. The people who do 
 them are making that flag hated throughout the 
 South Pacific. Wherever it appears, men fly, and 
 women cower. England is far away: we cannot 
 move her. But I ask you, men and women of 
 Australia, will you help us to rouse her heart and 
 conscience ? Will you help us to put down this 
 loathsome blot on our national honour? Will you 
 say at once : * These things shall not be. The labour 
 traffic must cease, or must at the very least be 
 civilised and Christianised ? ' " 
 
 Everybody said it was a most stirring heart-cry. 
 Even capitalists with " interests " in Queensland were 
 
86 THE INCIDENTAL BISHOP 
 
 moved. " It was not a sermon," Mr. Strong said 
 afterwards, with professional criticism, " but it was an 
 excellent speech, and it carried its audience with it." 
 All Sydney crowded round at the door of St. Jude's 
 to shake hands with the orator. Even Tom himself 
 was dimly aware that day that his fate was now 
 sealed ; he could never go back ; he had made 
 himself a parson. 
 
 When all the others had dropped off, Olive Strong 
 came up. " Thank you, Mr. Glisson," she said. " It 
 was a wonderful description. As you spoke of 
 what you had seen, we all seemed to see it. I 
 knew you could do this thing; and you did it 
 splendidly. I see now quite clearly what your 
 work must be in future. You must stir this matter 
 up in Australia and in England." 
 
 Tom was boyishly delighted and pleased with 
 her praise ; yet it made him feel more of an impostor 
 and a rogue than ever. 
 
CHAPTER XII. 
 THE INEVITABLE. 
 
 When, long years afterwards, it first began to be 
 privately whispered in England that Cecil Glisson 
 rj^s everybody called him) was not a clergyman at 
 all, but in forged orders, the few who were inclined 
 to accept that startling rumour took it for granted 
 at once that Cecil Glisson was an unmitigated 
 scoundrel. The crime of personating a priest is 
 one which seems peculiarly heinous to all who 
 accept the inherent sanctity of the clerical calling. 
 Therefore I almost despair of making you under- 
 stand by what gradual stages, and through what 
 persistent freaks of fate, Tom Pringle fell slowly into 
 this life-long deception. On board the Avenger^ he 
 said to himself, it was only till he could reach Sydney. 
 At Sydney, it was only till he could steal away 
 to Melbourne. After that fatal Sunday, it was 
 only still till he could escape from the Strongs. 
 And when once he had fled, Olive Strong must 
 fade away behind him with the rest of this strange 
 phantasmagoric episode in the life of an adventurous 
 Canadian sailor. 
 
 That he was a Canadian, too, must be allowed to 
 count for a little in whatever exculpation an apologist 
 
 87 
 
 ..;K 
 
88 THE INCIDENTAL BISHOP 
 
 may find possible for Tom Pringle's conduct. Not 
 that I am myself concerned to defend or to condemn 
 him ; the historian's task is but to state facts as they 
 occur, leaving judgment of good and evil to his 
 readers. Still, it must be admitted in fairness 
 that in European lands the sense of some inherent 
 sanctity in holy orders is stronger by far than in 
 Protestant America, where the man who feels an 
 inner call to preach goes forth and preaches, with 
 or without credentials. And when Tom Pringle 
 grew suddenly conscious that morning at Sydney 
 that he had a message to give to the people of 
 Australia, and that the people would listen to it, he 
 felt himself in some ways more or less justified in 
 the r61e of deception which chance and circumstance 
 had forced upon him. 
 
 He lay awake that night none the less, however, 
 and reflected very seriously on his present position. 
 What was he going to do next? For as yet his 
 thoughts were all concentrated on the project of 
 getting free from this awkward fix ; he had no 
 idea so far of embarking in a deliberate and life- 
 long deception. He still wanted to steal away to 
 Melbourne or elsewhere ; and he had still no design 
 of any other permanent path in life than that of a 
 casual British sailor. 
 
 One thing alone stood a little in the way ; he 
 would be sorry to say good-bye for ever to Olive. 
 
 For Olive was a revelation, an ideal, an epoch. 
 Not since he was a boy in Canada had it happened 
 to him before to speak on equal terms with an 
 English lady. Gently born and bred, he had flung 
 away his ancestral birthright of gentility — the only 
 
THE INEVITABLE 89 
 
 birthright he had ever possessed— for a boy's love 
 of the sea, a love that rarely lasts much beyond five- 
 and-twenty. And now that he had spent ten days 
 in a house with Olive Strong, he saw his mistake ; 
 he began to regret his altered position in society. 
 
 Received frankly in that cultivated home as an 
 equal, it suddenly came back to him that he could 
 still be a gentleman. He had had a good many 
 hours alone — when Olive was out — and those hours 
 he had spent for the most part in the library. 
 They suggested to him the idea that after all he 
 did really like books ; that he was good for some- 
 thing better, something higher in the world, than 
 reefing sails and lowering jolly-boats. But Olive 
 herself, after all, was the strongest argument. He 
 was aware that if he left Sydney he would leave 
 a great part of himself behind there. As he lay 
 in bed and thought over that distracting day — 
 that day of unexpected and glorious triumph — that 
 day of shameful and incredible deceit — he was most 
 of all conscious that he did not now wish to be a 
 sailor any more, because he was in love with Olive. 
 
 And Olive had said one thing, too, that touched 
 him to the core. She talked it all over with him 
 in the drawing-room that evening ; and she ex- 
 claimed more than once : " That sailor who took 
 you from the canoes and nursed you on the John 
 Wesley must have been a good fellow too. How sad 
 that he should have been blown up in the explosion 
 afterwards! It seems to me he must have been 
 really brave to venture upon having his own way 
 at such a time against that horrid captain." 
 
 And Tom could only look down and say : " Oh, 
 
 J 
 
r'<-. 
 
 90 THE INCIDENTAL BISHOP 
 
 yes, he was a good fellow enough ; " which under 
 the circumstances seemed painfully luke-warm. 
 This odd conflict of real modesty with the curious 
 fear of seeming to underrate the man who, according 
 to the official story, had saved his life, was difficult 
 to carry off with a becoming demeanour. Before 
 he quite knew what was happening he found himself 
 engaged in a glowing eulogy of his own tenderness 
 as a nurse and a touching tribute to his own dead 
 memory. 
 
 In the small hours of the night, he half laughed 
 to himself at the absurdity of the situation. It would 
 have been immensely comic, if it were not so 
 embarrassing. But he felt none the less that the 
 affair was growing a trifle too complicated. Sooner 
 or later, he must go. And the sooner the better. 
 
 Filled with this idea, he rose early next morning, 
 determined, like a foolish young sailor that he was, 
 on a somewhat precipitate line of action. It was no 
 use loitering. He must break away at once. He 
 must get rid for ever of these lying black clothes ; he 
 must return to the sea and be an honest sailor. 
 
 Determined to act, he dressed himself in Cecil 
 Glisson's red cross shirt, and descended to the 
 dining-room. A fever of penitence was on him — 
 the first of many from which he suffered during a 
 life of alternate emotions, all fiercely suppressed 
 under a calm exterior. He had behaved abominably ; 
 he could feel that now ; yet he had taken the only 
 possible alternative that he could see to being un- 
 justly hanged for participation in acts which horrified 
 and revolted him. Nay, would it not even have been 
 wrong in him to let such a travesty of justice take its 
 
-^ I T-ir ' f » v.- 
 
 THE INEVITABLE 9I 
 
 course without an effort to prevent it ? And how else 
 could he prevent it save in the way he had chosen ? 
 
 Yet he was really penitent. Above all, for his 
 attitude towards that innocent Olive. He had un- 
 willingly and almost unwittingly deceived her ; but 
 he had deceived her for all that ; and he respected 
 her so much that the sense of having deceived her 
 was odious and unendurable to his candid nature. 
 
 So now he had made up his mind to steal away 
 without even saying good-bye to her ; to embark 
 on a ship for some distant port ; and then to write 
 in general and non-committing terms about the 
 gross deception he had practised upon her. 
 
 If so, how could he sign it? Cecil Glisson ? To 
 do that would be to put a hateful slight upon 
 the memory of the man whom he had nursed 
 and admired and wronged and personated. Tom 
 Pringle? To do that would be to play once more 
 into the hands of injustice and secure his own hang- 
 ing ; for Tom knew that in these days the police 
 of the world, like a banded brotherhood, can track 
 a suspected criminal from Sydney to San Francisco 
 and from Temuka to Constantinople, Rio, or Peters- 
 burg. This, however, was a remoter difficulty, which 
 he was not now called upon for the moment to 
 solve ; though it occurred to him even then that if 
 he fled away suddenly, he might suggest the notion 
 that he was not Cecil Glisson ; and if that notion 
 were once suggested, and inquiry aroused, it would 
 go hard under the circumstances if they did not 
 hang him. For if, when he first landed, he had 
 proclaimed himself as Tom Pringle, and told the 
 whole truth, it was just conceivable, though scarcely 
 
92 THE INCIDENTAL BISHOP 
 
 probable, that people might have believed him ; but 
 now that he had played the part of the missionary 
 successfully for ten days together, and even preached 
 with unction an affecting sermon, all the world would 
 conclude he was one of the pirate gang, unless he 
 was Glisson ; and hanged he would be more certainly 
 than ever. 
 
 Yet he was prepared to risk that last terrible 
 chance itself rather than continue any longer his 
 gross deception of the girl he was beginning to 
 confess himself in love with. 
 
 It was early morning, and he had crept down 
 furtively into the dining-room. He was on the 
 prowl after food, for even in such desperate straits, 
 a man must feed ; and he had just succeeded in 
 finding a loaf of bread in the sideboard, when steps 
 on the stairs aroused him. He paused and listened. 
 It was a woman's tread. He listened again and 
 felt sure it was Olive descending. Now, Tom was 
 quite prepared to face mere hanging, but he was 
 not prepared to face such a ridiculous position as 
 being caught by that angel in the act of stealing a 
 loaf of bread from her sideboard. He beat a hasty 
 retreat, and, finding no other way open, retired on 
 to the verandah. Then, terrified lest Olive should 
 look out and see him, he crouched for a while behind 
 a long wicker chair, and waited to fly till Olive 
 should disappear again. 
 
 He heard her open the dining-room door and 
 peer in. He heard her approach the window. He 
 had left it unfastened, of course. She looked out 
 glanced around, and surveyed the garden. At the 
 same moment, he heard the study door open. He 
 
THE INEVITABLE 93 
 
 knew that Mr. Strong used to rise very early to 
 write his sermons, but he had hardly expected him 
 quite as early as this. A voice called out : " Olive ! " 
 
 " Yes, Papa." 
 
 " What are you doing, up at this hour ? " 
 
 Mr. Strong had come into the dining-room by 
 this time, and Olive had left the window open. 
 Tom, crouched behind his wicker chair, could hear 
 every word they spoke as easily as if he had been 
 in the room with them. Olive's tone had something 
 of hesitation in it as she answered uneasily : " I 
 thought I heard Mr. Glisson come down, and I was 
 afraid he might be ill or in want of something ; so 
 I slipped on my dress and just ran down to ask him." 
 
 " Olive, you are thinking too much of this Mr. 
 Glisson." 
 
 " Am I, Papa ? " He could feel her heart beating 
 in the voice with which she said it. 
 
 " Yes, my child, you are. I have seen it for some 
 days. I have watched till 1 was sure. And I'm 
 doubly sorry for it. In the first place, he means 
 nothing ; he's too full of his work, and too eager 
 to get back again, to think of anything else. And 
 in the second place, you know very well, you don't 
 want to go to Temuka." 
 
 Olive paused a second. Then she answered slowly : 
 " That's quite true in one way ; I don't want to 
 go to Temuka. But I could go anywhere, Papa, 
 with — a man that loved me." 
 
 Mr. Strong drew an audible breath. " It's as bad 
 as that, then, is it ? " he asked. " You've been 
 thinking it over, and you'd be prepared to go, even 
 to Temuka?" 
 
94 THE INCIDENTAL BISHOP 
 
 "How do I know, Papa?" Olive answered 
 demurely. "Nobody has asked me yet. If I were 
 asked — by somebody — I would take time, I suppose, 
 to consider my answer." 
 
 She said it as lightly as she could ; but Tom 
 was aware where he lurked that she said it with a 
 restrained air which meant a great deal. She was 
 trying to laugh it off because it meant so much to her. 
 
 " Olive, you're in love with this young man." 
 
 She dropped her voice. 
 
 " I — I suppose so." 
 
 " And he has nothing to marry upon." 
 
 " That doesn't matter. He has courage, and 
 cleverness, and a great deal beside. Everyone 
 said on Sunday they never heard such a sermon." 
 
 " Ah, that was because he was describing what 
 he had seen and gone through. He forgot himself 
 wholly in his dramatic story. I don't know whether 
 he could preach at all on any ordinary subject." 
 
 " I don't know either. He can do better than that. 
 He can make one listen when he talks about what he 
 knows. And as to going to Temuka, why should he 
 ever go back again ? He has better work to do here, 
 a thousand times better, and you ought to tell him so. 
 He would be of infinitely more use in New South 
 Wales than thrown away on a Melanesian island." 
 
 " Olive, take care ! you overrate his abilities." 
 
 "No I don't. Papa. He's far cleverer than he 
 knows ; only, he's much too modest. He could do 
 anything that he tried. I can hear by all he tells 
 us how extremely clever he is, if only he had some 
 one to spur him on, and if he lived where he could 
 make any use of his cleverness." 
 
THE INEVITABLE 95 
 
 " I ought never to have asked him here," Mr. 
 Strong broke out. " I might have foreseen, of course, 
 that this would happen. But as local secretary of 
 the Society, I thought I must ask him ; and he's a 
 nice young fellow too, and I confess, I took a fancy 
 to him." 
 
 " So did I," Olive answered simply. 
 
 Her father laughed. Poor Tom, behind the chair, 
 felt guiltier than ever. His face was fiery red ; 
 he could feel it burning. He hardly knew what to 
 do. Oh, suppose they were only to find him hiding 
 there ! 
 
 " Well, where is he ? " the father asked. 
 
 " I don't know," Olive answered. " He must have 
 come down, because his bedroom door's open ; and 
 besides, he has unfastened this window ; you shut 
 it yourself last night, you know, and none of the 
 servants are down yet. I'm afraid he's ill, or else 
 he's gone out in the garden." 
 
 The father went off to search the grounds for the 
 truant. Olive turned into the drawing-room. The 
 moment she was gone, Tom felt it was now or 
 never. He must bolt for the front gate and be 
 done for ever with this impossible situation. He 
 crept noiselessly to the steps, and made a dart for 
 the gate. As he did so, Olive stepped out once more 
 on to the verandah. Tom stood facing her for a 
 second, in his red cross shirt, with his face somewhat 
 redder. Then, overcome by shame, he sank into 
 the long wicker chair, covered his face with his 
 hands, and half laughed, half cried, half groaned, 
 half sobbed in his perplexity and confusion. 
 
CHAPTER XIII. 
 V/TA NUOVA. 
 
 Olive's face, too, was crimson, for she dimly felt 
 the young man had heard all. She looked down 
 at him with her steady eyes, now troubled for a 
 second. " Where were you going, Mr. Glisson ? " 
 she asked very tremulously. 
 
 Tom told the truth for once, and shamed the 
 devil. " I — I was going away. Miss Strong," he 
 answered slowly. " Stealing away, unperceived, like 
 a thief in the night. I ought never to have come. 
 And I was trying to undo the first false step — by 
 taking a second." 
 
 He could face her like a man, now, for he was no 
 longer dressed up in those ridiculous canonicals. 
 
 Olive gazed at him, irresolute. Her face was 
 flushed ; her cheeks were burning. " I don't under- 
 stand you," she cried, grasping a chair for support, 
 and feeling the world reel round her. "You — were 
 going to leave us ? " 
 
 Tom leant over her, in an agony, torn asunder 
 between despair and love. " I was going to leave 
 you," he repeated resolutely. " It was the only way 
 out. I have put myself in a false position : I was 
 trying to escape from it. I did wrong to come at all. 
 And — your father does not want me." 
 
 96 
 

 
 VITA NUOVA 97 
 
 " You heard us ? " Olive gasped, with a wild flush 
 of shame. 
 
 Tom put the devil to the blush again. " Yes, 
 unintentionally, unwillingly, I heard you. I was 
 trying to slink away from the house un perceived, when 
 you came down hurriedly. I stepped out here on 
 the verandah, and did my best to hide. I could not 
 foresee what was going to happen. Then your father 
 called ; and — Miss Strong, Miss Strong— forgive me, 
 believe me — I really couldn't help it." 
 
 Olive stood glued to the spot. Her face was on 
 
 fire now. Her heart stood still. Her breath came 
 
 and went with difficulty. She could only repeat in 
 
 a dazed and terrified undertone : " You heard us ! 
 
 Yoti heard us ! " 
 
 Tom seized her hand in his. There was nothing 
 else left to do. " Yes, Miss Strong," he cried ; 
 " Olive — I have surprised your ^ret. But you 
 have surprised mine too. Wha> j/d« feel, / feel. I 
 did not mean to tell you. I knew I had no right. 
 I had thought every word of what your father 
 said, before he said it. It would be wrong of me 
 to ask such a woman as you to link your life with 
 mine. I knew it ; I recognised it. And yet, . . . 
 every day that I spent in this house, I admired and 
 longed for you more each minute." He leaned 
 eagerly forward. " I loved you, Olive. And because 
 I loved you, and because I knew I could never ask 
 you to be my wife, I was trying to steal away — when 
 you came down and prevented me. What else could 
 I do? Ask your own heart that. If I stayed, I 
 must fall deeper and deeper in love with you. And I 
 knew from the very first my love was quite hopeless." 
 
 7 
 
98 THE INCIDENTAL BISHOP 
 
 Olive looked up at him through the tears that 
 began to fill her eyes. " Why, Mr. Glisson ? " she 
 asked slowly. 
 
 The delicious simplicity and unexpectedness of 
 that answer took Tom's breath away with a tremor 
 of delight and happiness. So Olive wanted him ! 
 His voice had the clear ring of truth in it ; and 
 Olive had recognised it at once. She saw this man 
 loved her ; and if he loved her, what else could 
 matter? She knew that in these matters there is 
 no such word as impossible. And when she asked 
 " Why, Mr. Glisson ? " Tom's heart gave one wild 
 bound. It would have bounded harder if she had 
 said " Why, Mr. Pringle ? " The sense of that con- 
 tinued deception alone prevented him from rising 
 to the seventh heavens. 
 
 He grasped her hand tighter. "Because — " he 
 answered, scarcely knowing what he said, and casting 
 about him for some adequate reason, " I am quite 
 a poor man, with nothing to depend upon but my 
 very small salary." (What was Glisson's salary, he 
 wondered, and who the dickens paid it ?) " Because 
 — I could never dream of taking you to Temuka. 
 Because — your father would not give his consent. 
 Because — it would be mean to repay his hospitality 
 so ill. Because — it would be wrong of me to tie 
 a life like yours to my own poor fortunes." 
 
 " And — you were really going to leave me ? " 
 Olive repeated, clinging to his hand with a sense of 
 terror as if she thought he woald withdraw it — which, 
 to do Tom justice, was far at that moment from his 
 intention. " To leave me without one word, without 
 a good-bye, even ! " 
 
T'sfi?!?'?, 
 
 VITA NUOVA 99 
 
 Tom had an irresistible impulse. Parson or no 
 parson, impostor or honest man, he was only aware 
 at that instant that a woman who loved him was 
 clinging to his hand ; and with a great flood of 
 feeling, he stooped down and kissed her. He did 
 it with reverence, with reluctance almost ; he was 
 profoundly aware as his lips touched hers how 
 unworthy he was of that pure, calm woman. Even 
 if he had not been playing a part, a mean, deceptive 
 part, he would have felt it more than a little ; for 
 Tom had that kind of chivalry which recognises at 
 once its own infinite inferiority to a good woman's 
 heart. But as things stood, he hated himself for 
 the desecration he was committing. To be perfectly 
 frank, Tom, who was no ecclesiast, felt much more 
 acutely the desecration of which he was guilty by 
 that kiss to Olive than he had felt the desecration of 
 mounting the pulpit steps as an ordained priest on 
 Sunday morning. The one was a thing that he could 
 fully understand ; it came within his purview : the 
 other belonged to a special range of thought, as yet 
 unfamiliar to him. He had still to learn it, in sack- 
 cloth and ashes. 
 
 Still, he stooped down and kissed her. And 
 unworthy as he knew himself to touch those pure 
 lips, he was yet aware as he did so of a strange in- 
 rush of feeling, a sort of ineffable wave from heaven. 
 He lingered on them for a second. As for Olive, she 
 took the kiss with a sense as of her right. She loved 
 him ; he loved her ; that was all she thought about. 
 
 Her hand tightened on his. The blush died away 
 from her face. If Ju felt like that, she had no cause 
 to be ashamed. Their secret was mutual. She looked 
 
 a:.^ 
 
100 THE INCIDENTAL BISHOP 
 
 up into his face and murmured gently: "Then, you 
 love me — Cecil ? " 
 
 " Cecil ! " That " Cecil " brought Tom back with 
 a horrid thud to solid earth again. The seventh 
 heavens melted away. A pang darted through his 
 heart. More than ever before, he knew the die was 
 cast now. There was no going back from this. He 
 had sealed his fate, and bound himself in honour 
 for life to Olive. 
 
 Yet, what a horrible outlook ! Must he go on for 
 years with this odious deception ? Must he begin 
 love's dream under false pretences ? Must he marry 
 the woman he loved under another man's name ? 
 Must he shuffle off himself and pass his life hence- 
 forth with somebody else's personality ? The thought 
 was hateful to him. Had he had time to reflect, he 
 would probably have decided that such a course was 
 too dangerous. Apart even from its wickedness, he 
 would have doubted his own ability to sustain for 
 long years so difficult a deception. But it was Tom 
 Pringle's misfortune that he had never time to reflect, 
 to deliberate, to resolve, at any one of these great 
 crises. Events forced him to act at once ; and, acting 
 at once on the spur of the moment, without any fixed 
 intention of embarking on a career of crime, he yet 
 found himself led step by step, half against his will, 
 into abysses unfathomable. 
 
 So now, a man's virile instinct compelled him to 
 refrain from serious thought, and to lean down and 
 murmur : " Why, Olive, I loved you from the moment 
 I first saw you, here on the verandah." 
 
 Her fingers tightened on his hand again, and she 
 gave a little satisfied gasp. If he really loved her — if 
 
VITA NUOVA lOI 
 
 she had not forced him into an unwilling avowal — she 
 cared for nothing else. He might see into her heart 
 — if only his was hers already. 
 
 " And yet," she whispered, half chiding, " you were 
 going to run away from me ! " 
 
 He gave a despairing gesture. "Olive, what else 
 could I do ? What else can I do now ? I have no 
 right to make love to you. What will your father 
 say? He will think I have taken a dishonourable 
 advantage of his hospitable kindness. He will say 
 I should never have ventured to dream of you." 
 
 Olive looked deep into his eyes again. " I wouldn't 
 mind that" she answered. " This is a question for me. 
 1 love Papa dearly — he is the kindest and best of 
 fathers. But a girl's heart is her own. Her own, not 
 her father's." 
 
 " To you and me, yes. But fathers do not think'so." 
 
 " He will think so soon. Cecil, I have no fear for 
 you. I know you are cleverer and greater than you 
 think. That is one of the very things that makes 
 me love you. I see you are so modest about your 
 own abilities. But — where did you mean to go ? 
 What were you going to do with yourself? If you 
 ran away from Papa like that, you could never have 
 gone back as a missionary to Temuka." 
 
 "Olive, I will tell you the truth. I was going 
 back — to be a common sailor." 
 
 With a mighty effort he had braced himself up 
 for it. He meant to confess all. And if only Olive 
 had understood his meaning, he would really have 
 confessed it. But the same moral ill luck pursued 
 him throughout. Olive did not notice the ambiguous 
 phrase "going back." She fastened only on the 
 
102 THE INCIDENTAL BISHOP 
 
 last words of his sentence. " To be a common 
 sailor ! " she cried. " How do you mean ? You 
 would have given up the church, and gone to sea 
 for always ? " 
 
 The horror in her voice at the bare idea checked 
 him. He answered evasively, with a hang-dog air : 
 " What else was open to me ? I couldn't have returned 
 to Temuka, if I slank away like a thief from your 
 father's house ; and I couldn't tell your father I 
 meant to leave because I had fallen in love with his 
 daughter and knew myself utterly unworthy to ask 
 for her." The psychological moment had passed, and 
 he had not taken advantage of it. 
 
 " And for my sake, you would have given up 
 everything, and begun life over again ? " 
 
 Tom reflected to himself that he had not much 
 to give up — a common sailor's off-chance : and this 
 false ascription of heroism was hateful to his real 
 nature. But what could he say? He had not 
 strength of mind to confess the whole truth when it 
 came to the push — especially as to confess would be 
 to make Olive hate him. He could only murmur : 
 " I could begin life over again easily enough, for I 
 should only be giving up a savage hut in a wild island. 
 And a sailor's place can hardly be much worse than 
 a missionary's in Melanesia." 
 
 " But I mean you to be something much more 
 than that," Olive cried, with a girl's confidence in 
 her chosen lover, her eyes growing prouder. " I 
 mean you to do work that all the world will praise 
 and admire. You are mine now, and it is my place 
 to inspire you. / know what you are worth, and 7^?/ 
 do not. For that, I love you. But I am going to 
 
VITA NUOVA 103 
 
 take care that you realise your own value. You 
 shall never be thrown away on a Pacific Island." 
 
 Tom looked at her admiringly. With a woman 
 like this to spur one on to great things, a man might 
 surely rise to be anything. He had no exalted 
 opinion of his own abilities — indeed, Olive was right ; 
 he was much too modest : but he knew he had a 
 good memory and a taste for languages ; and as 
 to intelligence, why, hang it all 
 
 Mem., that if he was really going to be a parson 
 henceforth, he must dismiss for the future this tell- 
 tale sailor habit of saying "hang it all," or worse, 
 at every turn of the conversation. 
 
 Well, hang it all, then, or don't hang it ; he had 
 surprised himself the other day by the ease with 
 which he read Cecil Glisson's Greek Testament. 
 Perhaps he had more brains than he had ever 
 suspected. 
 
 He gazed back at Olive with unaffected delight. 
 " Do you really think," he said, " I might be good 
 for something — in Australia, for instance ? " 
 
 Olive gazed back at him with a girl's proud trust 
 in the man who has won her. " I think," she answered 
 with the ring of conviction, " you could do anything 
 you liked. And now you are mine, I mean to make 
 you do it." 
 
 Even as she said it, a voice came from behind the big 
 wattle-bush on the edge of the lawn. " I've searched 
 for him everywhere, Olive, and I can't find him, up or 
 down. He's not in the garden, I'm certain." 
 
 " No, Papa," Olive answered, growing suddenly hot 
 again. " He's here on the verandah, — and I am with 
 him." 
 
CHAPTER XIV. 
 CROSSING THE RUBICON. 
 
 There was something in her tone which told her 
 father that much had happened while he went round 
 the garden. He moved up the steps hurriedly. Olive 
 had dropped Tom's hand, and stood opposite him 
 now with a sweet new expression lighting up her 
 face ; her eyes were downcast, but she did not attempt 
 otherwise to conceal her feelings. Tom had a guilty 
 look upon his countenance, but was nevertheless as 
 mitigatedly happy as a man can be who has won 
 a good girl's love by a regrettable subterfuge. The 
 father took it all in at once. To say the truth, it 
 needed no Columbus to make that discovery. 
 "Well," he murmured slowly. "You have found 
 him ? " 
 
 " Yes," Olive answered with meaning, lifting her 
 calm eyes to his face. " We have found one another." 
 
 There was a long pause. Then Mr. Strong re- 
 marked curtly : " So I see." Nobody said much else. 
 But all three understood one another. 
 
 Olive stood for a minute, undecided. After a very 
 short pause, she took Tom's hand in hers. " Good- 
 bye for the present," she said, letting it drop. And 
 she glided upstairs again. 
 
 104 
 
CROSSING THE RUBICON 10$ 
 
 Tom was left, flushed and trembling, face to face 
 with the hostile element of a father. 
 
 Again there was a pause. Mr. Strong waited for 
 Tom to begin. Tom waited for Mr. Strong. Neither 
 felt quite easy. At last, a faint smile played round 
 the clergyman's lips. He knew Olive well, and he 
 knew therefore that if Olive had made up her mind, 
 a father was, after all, a mere spectator, called in at 
 the last moment to ratify her decisions. " Well ? " 
 he observed once more, interrogatively. 
 
 Tom sank into a chair, a picture of perplexity. 
 
 " What do you propose to do next ? " the elder 
 man asked with emphasis. 
 
 Thus driven to bay, Tom rushed into it at once. 
 " I don't knew," he answered. " That's just what 
 puzzles me. It has all come upon me so suddenly. 
 I didn't guess it myself at all till just now. That is 
 to say," he corrected, " I didn't mean to confess it. 
 But — but circumstances were too strong for me. An 
 Occasion arose three minutes since — and the Occasion 
 was inevitable. It wasn't really my fault. Set it 
 down to coincidence." 
 
 He stammered and stumbled. Mr. Strong more 
 than half understood the situation — so far as Olive 
 was concerned, at least ; for he knew already she 
 was in love with the new comer. "And you have 
 arrived at an understanding ? " he put in tentatively 
 at last. 
 
 " Oh, dear me, no ! " Tom exclaimed. " I would 
 not venture to presume. We — we just read one 
 another's eyes, that's all — little more. An under- 
 standing — far from it. But, — in a way, I think Miss 
 Strong — well, no, not that : I don't know how to 
 
I06 THE INCIDENTAL BISHOP 
 
 put it. Nothing at all has passed ; still, perhaps, 
 she infers from what I said to her just now that I 
 — admire her greatly." 
 
 " I see," the father answered with chilly reserve. 
 
 Tom threw himself at once on the elder man's 
 mercy. "But I didn't mean to speak," he cried. 
 " I assure you I didn't mean it. You must really 
 forgive me. I know how unjustifiable it was ; how 
 wrong ; how foolish. I have nothing to ofifer her ; 
 absolutely nothing : and I would not have dared 
 to offer it — did not offer it in fact — only — well, I 
 think I had better explain exactly. I felt I was 
 falling in love, and I felt it was wrong of me, and 
 I didn't want to repay your hospitality so ill ; so — I 
 got up this morning meaning to slink away from 
 Sydney, and then to write to you explaining my 
 reasons ; because I was too nervous to say to your 
 face that—" He broke down utterly "Oh, Mr. 
 Strong," he cried, trembling, and leaning eagerly 
 forward, with his brown hands clasped, " you must 
 make some allowances for me. I am a rough man 
 from the sea, and I'm not used now to the ways 
 of civilisation. And a lady is strange to me — so 
 strange, so novel, so wonderful, so to be worshipped. 
 The mere touch of her hand thrilled me. It wasn't 
 my fault if I fell in love at sight ; and having fallen 
 in love, what could I do as a man of honour but run 
 away at once when I knew it was impossible ? " 
 
 " You are not quite articulate," the father said, 
 smiling grimly. 
 
 " I know it," Tom answered. " I am quite inarticu- 
 late. I am no great speaker. And that was one 
 reason why I felt it was absurd, impossible for me to 
 
CROSSING THE RUBICON 107 
 
 dream of her. I would not have dreamt of her. I 
 refrained from dreaming of her. I tried to leave her. 
 But if I find she dreams of me — Mr. Strong, I am 
 a man ; and we are most of us human ! " 
 
 " Do I understand," the father asked, half annoyed, 
 half amused, at his evident earnestness, " that you 
 really contemplated running away from this house 
 without so much as even saying good-bye to us ? " 
 
 Tom gave a gesture of deprecation. " I was driven 
 to it," he answered. ^^J/' 
 
 "And do you think that is conduct of a sort to 
 encourage a father in entrusting you for life with his 
 daughter's happiness ? " 
 
 " No, I don't," Tom blurted out doggedly. " If 
 you want the plain truth, I think I was a fool ; but 
 I think I was hard put to it ; and when a man's a 
 fool, and is also hard put to it, — I ask you as a 
 man, is it kind to make him feel his position too 
 acutely ? " 
 
 Mr. Strong sat down and gazed at him. " Now, 
 this is serious," he said slowly. "You have told 
 me nothing ; but you have told me enough to see 
 that it is serious. Am I to understand that you 
 consider yourself engaged to my daughter Olive ? " 
 
 " I'm sure I don't know," Tom cried. " I have 
 said hardly anything to her. It wasn't what we 
 said'y it was — the way we looked at one another." 
 
 " And does Olive consider herself engaged to 
 you?" 
 
 " I can't tell you," Tom cried, growing more and 
 more helpless. Then a happy thought struck him. 
 " You had better ask her." 
 
 Mr. Strong gave him a respite of five minutes 
 
I08 THE INCIDENTAL BISHOP 
 
 while he went upstairs. Now was a chance for Tom 
 to get away if he wanted. Half an hour ago he 
 would have seized it. The half hour between had 
 completely altered the face of life for him. There 
 was no more going back. He realised now that he 
 was bound to Olive ; which implied that henceforth 
 he was Cecil Glisson. 
 
 He sat there, deeply in love, as happy as a king, 
 and supremely miserable. 
 
 " Olive," the father asked, when after a short delay 
 she opened her door to him, " I want to ask, is this 
 young man engaged to you ? " 
 
 Olive's eyes were wet with happy tears. She 
 met her father's gaze fearlessly. " I don't know 
 whether he's engaged to me," she answered ; "he 
 said nothing about engagement ; but /'/;/ engaged 
 to him ; I am his, for ever." 
 
 She said it so simply, so strongly, so resolutely, 
 that her father, who knew her, accepted her word 
 as irrevocable. " Very well," he said in a slow voice ; 
 " if that is so, what do you propose he should do 
 for the future?" 
 
 Olive reflected a second. " It's all so new," she 
 answered; "so fresh; so undecided. It broke upon 
 us so suddenly. We haven't any plans. We have 
 said nothing to one another, asked each other no 
 questions. I only know I love him, and I'm sure 
 he loves me. We have neither of us gone beyond 
 that stage for the present." 
 
 " Doesn't that seem to you unwise ? " her father 
 asked with the voice of parental prudence. 
 
 " We mustn't be precipitate," Olive answered with 
 the wisdom of youth. "We haven't thought about 
 
CROSSING THE RUBICON IO9 
 
 these things yet. But of one thing I am sure. Cecil 
 will not go back any more to Temuka." 
 
 " Are you certain of that ? He seemed so set 
 upon it." 
 
 " Yes ; that was before. And it didn't really mean 
 that he wanted himself to go back to Temuka ; it 
 meant, he was afraid to stop here any longer ; 
 because he knew beforehand in his heart what was 
 coming." 
 
 " This is very foolish, Olive. You are engaging 
 yourself to a man without a chance of marrying." 
 
 " It would be foolish, with some men. But not 
 with him. 1 feel quite sure of him. He is better 
 than rich. If he has nothing, that will only be a 
 spur to exertion." 
 
 An hour later, in the drawing-room, Olive told 
 Tom so, plainly. She was not in the least shy of him 
 now. Perfect love casteth out fear ; and she was far 
 too much in love to think of anything else save what 
 she needed to tell him. 
 
 " Do you think I can ever do anything ? " Tom 
 asked once more. 
 
 " I'm sure of it," Olive answered with an overflowing 
 confidence that inspired him in turn. "You would 
 have done great things already if you hadn't been 
 wasted on a Pacific Island. You have been set to 
 teach savages when you were fit for much higher work. 
 What you have to do now is to begin a crusade 
 — here, at once, in New South Wales — against this 
 traffic that you hate and that almost killed you. You 
 mustn't go back to Temuka — Papa can arrange all 
 that. He pulls the wires of the Society. You must 
 stop here and organise. You will be serving the 
 
no THE INCIDENTAL BISHOP 
 
 mission far better so than by returning to the Islands. 
 And Papa can settle with the Society at home" — 
 "at home" meaning England — "that you shall be 
 engaged upon this work instead of the other." 
 
 " But — am I fit for work in Australia ? " Tom asked. 
 "Remember, I am only a wild man of the sea. I 
 have never laid myself out for a civilised congre- 
 gation." 
 
 " Then what you have to do now is to lay yourself 
 out for it. You can do that if you try ; you must 
 know it yourself as well as I know it. You can fit 
 yourself for anything. It is only your modesty that 
 prevents you from seeing it." 
 
 Tom gave a slight sigh. " But it will be years," he 
 
 said, " such years, before I can ever hope " 
 
 Olive waved her capable hand. " What does that 
 matter? I can wait years for you if necessary. 
 But it will not be necessary. You will be asked to 
 take some big church soon ; I feel quite certain of it." 
 Her very voice inspired him with unwonted confi- 
 dence. He began to think better of himself than ever 
 before. If Tom Pringle was loyal to anything in his 
 future life, he was loyal to Olive. He admired, 
 respected, and loved her intensely ; he had reason to 
 love her ; for it was she who had made him. But 
 when the terrible doubt came at last, and he saw 
 his own act in ecclesiastical colours, he used often 
 to console himself with the thought that it was not 
 altogether his own fault that he had become a false 
 clergyman ; it was Olive who did it, unwittingly, 
 innocently. Olive had made up her mind that he 
 was to advance in the Church, not for filthy lucre's 
 sake, but because she believed in him ; because she 
 
►;'. ■ \'^'^ -. \'r:7r;^ -r^i-^r- ,--- --y" ^ Jrr^ f"- -','-"'> 
 
 ite-ifl-.--^ v 'I i • 
 
 CROSSING THE RUBICON III 
 
 loved him ; she was sure he could do great things, 
 and therefore she made him do them. "Surely," 
 he thought to himself often, "some allowance will 
 be made, when my life is judged, for the magnitude 
 of the temptation, for the concatenation of events, 
 for the inevitableness of my action." He did it all, 
 he knew, not wholly for mere love of Olive, but partly 
 for love, and partly because he saw no other way 
 out of an impossible situation. 
 
 However, since Olive had decided that a clergyman 
 he was to be, and a town clergyman at that, he must 
 honestly set to work to prepare for his vocation. 
 He must fit himself for his position. And Tom 
 Pringle's habit was to do with his heart whatever 
 he undertook. So that very morning saw him seated 
 at a table in Mr. Strong's study, with Cecil Glisson's 
 Greek Testament spread out before him, flanked by 
 Pearson on the Creed, Liddell and Scott's Lexicon, 
 and a large blank note-book. As yet, to be sure, 
 Tom had no views of his own on the nature of holy 
 orders ; or to be more strictly accurate his views were 
 a sailor's ; but he had a certain honest dogged British 
 determination that if he were really Cecil Glisson, 
 and a parson to boot, he must do his work like a 
 man, and prove himself a labourer worthy of his 
 hire. 
 
 You will think, no doubt, the two points of view 
 inconsistent. But that is possibly because you are 
 not an able-bodied mariner. 
 
■ r. -f . ' 'j. , ■'■ .' i */'. 
 
 part II. 
 
 E N G L A N D . 
 
 "3 
 
 8 
 
 '• '■ ' '^*- ■*- - ■»^*'^- 
 
N 
 
 V 
 
 St. 
 
.-rsTgi** ■ 
 
 CHAPTER XV. 
 
 THE PALACE, DORCHESTER. 
 
 The Bishop of Dorchester sat at his dinner table 
 with Sir Edward Colbeck. It was a cool June even- 
 ing, after a clear westerly-blowing day, and countless 
 throats of nightingales were discoursing vespers in 
 the grounds of the Palace. The Bishop had a 
 dignified, clean-cut face, with a philanthropic ex- 
 pression that was not entirely professional. Mrs. 
 Glisson sat opposite him, calm, sedate, matronly, her 
 beautiful smooth hair just beginning to be touched 
 with no unkindly hand of time by the gentle grey 
 of comely middle age. Evelyn faced Sir Edward. 
 It was a family party. 
 
 Dorchester Palace is not, as many ill-informed 
 people suppose, in Dorsetshire. The house stands 
 in a bight of the chalk downs on the banks of the 
 Thames, near the Oxfordshire town of the same name; 
 its beautiful grounds slope down to the water's edge 
 with a smooth declivity of green English turf, broken 
 here and there by tall flowering clumps of rhodo- 
 dendron and azalea. It has no wide view, indeed, 
 but makes up for it by what the eighteenth century 
 would have described as 2i prospect — a pretty glimpse 
 over a lawn, past a spreading copper beech and some 
 noble cedars, to a blue reach of the river. 
 

 Il6 THE INCIDENTAL BISHOP 
 
 The Palace itself, though comparatively new, has 
 been quickly draped over by fast-growing creepers. 
 A huge wistaria hangs its pendent blue clusters in a 
 cataract of bloom along the river front ; a large- 
 leaved aristolochia mantles the posts of the verandah 
 with its pale green foliage ; banksia roses and honey- 
 suckle fall in a riot of blossom over the upper floors ; 
 Virginia creeper droops in waving sprays from the 
 finials of the gable end. The grey stone of the wall 
 and the jutting corbels show just enough in between 
 to make the architecture of the present day pass 
 muster at a hasty glance for that of the fifteenth 
 century. Seen from the Thames, indeed, Dorchester 
 Palace ranks, says the local guide book, as the most 
 picturesque house between Windsor and Oxford. 
 The dining-room looks out in one direction on the 
 Thames, while it commands in the other a delicious 
 glimpse of the mouldering old minster. 
 
 " Yes," Sir Edward remarked, helping himself to 
 another olive ; " it was lucky you put in that post- 
 script about your county. When I saw your 
 address at the head of your note-paper, * Dorchester 
 Palace, Oxfordshire,' I didn't pay any particular 
 attention to the last word ; and, knowing but one 
 Dorchester, in Dorset, I naturally would have run 
 down there, if you hadn't warned me that this was 
 another place of the same name." 
 
 " Most people make that mistake," Evelyn put in. 
 " I always tell Papa he ought to add in italics on the 
 die, * not Dorset ' ; but he thinks that would be infra 
 dig. I hate dig. for my part. He says everybody 
 ought to know the dioceses of England." 
 
 "Well, / didn't, anyhow," Sir Edward answered 
 
THE PALACE, DORCHESTER II7 
 
 frankly. He was a portly and thick-set Philistine, 
 of the self-complacent moneyed order. " Never heard 
 till to-day there was more than one Dorchester. And 
 with a cathedral, too ; a real old cathedral ; not one 
 of these new-fangled modern things like Truro, but 
 a mediaeval minster ! " 
 
 " It was not a cathedral in the middle ages," the 
 Bishop put in anxiously : — " at least, I mean, not the 
 existing building. The building you now see was 
 only a monastery church of the Augustinian abbey. 
 It's mostly thirteenth century, and we've just restored 
 it. But earlier still, of course, this Oxfordshire 
 Dorchester was a place of great importance. It ranks 
 as one of our earliest English cathedral towns. In 
 a certain sense," — the Bishop poised his two hands 
 before him with the finger-tips meeting — " I may be 
 said to occupy the chair of Birinus." 
 
 He said it with the conscious air of a man who 
 imparts to his hearer a striking piece of information. 
 
 " Oh, indeed ? " Sir Edward murmured, pouring 
 out a second glass of port. " That's very interesting." 
 Then native curiosity overcame him. " Though, now 
 I come to think of it," he went on, eyeing the port 
 with the light through it, " who or what was Birinus?" 
 
 Evelyn looked up at him mischievously. " Oh, Sir 
 Edward," she said, "you don't know what you've 
 let yourself in for. When once Papa gets started 
 upon the subject of Birinus, we know that the history 
 of Dorchester in six volumes is bound to follow, 
 with digressions on the dioceses of Winchester and 
 Lincoln, and the various sees into which they have 
 been divided. When you said, * That's very interest- 
 ing,' in such a voice of conviction, Papa thought you 
 
-.'r 
 
 Il8 THE INCIDENTAL BISHOP 
 
 knew all about Birinus already, and was going to let 
 you off. Now you fly straight into it, as Bigwood 
 says about the partridges when Mr. Watson shoots, 
 and you'll have the whole subject in the regulation 
 six volumes." 
 
 Mrs. Glisson looked across at her daughter with 
 gentle reproof in her eyes. " Evelyn dear," she said 
 softly, " Papa knows so much more than anybody 
 else about the history of the church that visitors are 
 naturally glad to hear all about it from him." 
 
 " Besides," Sir Edward interposed, " now the ques- 
 tion has been raised, I really want to know about this 
 fellow Birinus who made the chair the Bishop is 
 sitting in. I'm fond of old furniture. I suppose he 
 was some mediaeval Chippendale or Sheraton." 
 
 The Bishop coughed slightly. " When I said I sat 
 in the seat of Birinus," he answered, looking sideways 
 with a repressive glance at Evelyn, who was disposed 
 to laugh ; " I employed a metaphor : I did not mean 
 it literally but figuratively. Birinus, in point of fact, 
 was the first bishop of Dorchester ; or, to be more 
 strictly accurate, the first bishop in Dorchester ; for 
 bishoprics at that time were tribal rather than local ; 
 there was a Bishop of the West Saxons, not a Bishop 
 of Wessex nor a Bishop of Winchester ; there was 
 a Bishop of the Kentings, not a Bishop of Kent nor 
 a Bishop of Canterbury ; there was a Bishop of the 
 Mercians, not a Bishop of Mercia nor a Bishop of 
 Lichfield. In the Anglo-Saxon language " — Evelyn 
 made a wry face — " a bishopric is oftenest described 
 as a bishop-stool — a literal translation, of course, of 
 see, the Latin sedes. So when I say that I sit in the 
 chair of Birinus, I mean merely to convey that I 
 
THE PALACE, DORCHESTER II9 
 
 occupy in a sense the pastoral direction of the same 
 diocese, or part of it." 
 
 " Ah, I see," Sir Edward answered, glancing sym- 
 pathetically at Evelyn. He began to perceive the 
 nature of her objection to starting the Bishop on 
 mediaeval history. 
 
 But the Bishop was started now, and was not to be 
 easily stopped. " Dorchester," he continued, putting 
 the forefingers and thumbs of both hands together 
 once more in a sort of leaf-shape above his finger- 
 glass, " Dorchester, you will recollect, was the original 
 capital of the West-Saxon kings ; this Oxfordshire 
 Dorchester, Dorchester-on-Thames, not in Oxford- 
 shire then, for neither Oxford nor counties as yet 
 existed. It was the royal city of Cynegils," — " I beg 
 your pardon," Sir Edward ejaculated. "Cynegils," 
 the Bishop repeated blandly, — " the first Christian 
 king of the West-Saxons. In 635, you must be 
 aware, the Pope sent Birinus, a North Italian monk, 
 to convert the West-Saxons, about forty years after 
 St. Augustine of Canterbury had converted the 
 Kentishmen. Now, Cynegils had his court here at 
 Dorchester ; so to Dorchester accordingly Birinus 
 came ; and unless I mistake, he baptised the English 
 king over yonder in the Thames, at a spot close to 
 that large clump of rhododendrons which we planted 
 last autumn. Baptism by immersion was then still 
 universal ; Baeda — the Venerable Bede, as people call 
 him nowadays — mentions no other method." 
 
 "We planted white rhododendrons," Mrs. Glisson 
 interposed, " as a memento of the fact — white being of 
 course the symbolical colour of baptismal regeneration." 
 
 " There's such a funny little picture of the baptism 
 
• •y-.r^r: 
 
 1 20 THE INCIDENTAL BISHOP 
 
 of this king with the dreadful name," Evelyn put in 
 once more, "in an illuminated missal Papa has up- 
 stairs in his library. It shows the old gentleman and 
 his nobles all undressing on the bank — with the 
 ladies as well — and such a funny little bishop, in a 
 mitre and a dalmatic or whatever you call it, standing 
 on the river shore with two fingers up, like this, 
 blessing them. It is so comical." 
 
 " And that illumination," the Bishop added, " has 
 fortunately enabled me to identify the precise spot 
 pointed out by tradition as being the scene of the 
 admission of the people of Wessex into the Christian 
 church. It was drawn from nature by an Augustinian 
 monk of this very abbey about 1430, and it clearly 
 points to the bank just below the clump of white 
 rhododendrons as being the actual place where 
 Birinus administered the sacrament of baptism. It 
 is a very precious document." (If the Bishop /lad a 
 fault, it was a faint deficiency in the sense of humour.) 
 
 " Dear me ! " Sir Edward murmured, beginning to 
 yawn. " How very interesting ! " 
 
 When a man says " How very interesting ! " twice 
 over in the same conversation, wise people know that 
 the subject bores him, and (unless they are prigs) 
 they proceed at once to another. But the Bishop 
 still retained too much of Tom Pringle's pristine 
 innocence ever to recognise that a subject which 
 interested h'm might bore other people. So he 
 merely answered : " Yes, it is very interesting. One 
 feels that here one has got down, so to speak, to the 
 very bed-rock of British Christianity. At Dorchester, 
 we touch bottom. There, in this self-same Thames, 
 which has gone on flowing unceasingly from that day 
 
THE PALACE, DORCHESTER 121 
 
 to this, by yonder tussock of sedge, the Latin monk 
 from Lombardy, dispatched by Pope Honorius, 
 baptised in running water after the older form the 
 heathen king of the West-Saxons, and so founded 
 the bishopric which I now — unworthily — occupy. Is 
 it not a strange thought that I here, to-day, am the 
 representative of Birinus in the seventh century ? " 
 
 " I don't think anybody else feels this continuity 
 of history quite so vividly as my husband," Mrs. 
 Glisson added with a look of deep wifely admiration. 
 
 " It is you who have made me feel it, dear," the 
 Bishop replied, returning her look with interest. 
 " Not, of course, that the continuity is here quite 
 unbroken. I said that, in a sense, I occupy to-day 
 the bishop-stool of Birinus. But it is only in a sense ; 
 I admit that unreservedly. In one way — the truest 
 way, my excellent colleague, the Bishop of Winchester, 
 represents the original see of the West-Saxon king- 
 dom ; which is why, of course, the Bishop of Win- 
 chester ranks first after the Primates among English 
 bishops." 
 
 " Indeed," Sir Edward interjected. He was a 
 Member of Parliament from an industrial Lancashire 
 borough, and history began for him with the inven- 
 tion of the cotton jenny. 
 
 " Yes," the unconscious Bishop continued, toying 
 aimlessly with his wineglass. " The descent, I must 
 admit, is indirect. Birinus, who baptised Cynegils 
 over yonder by the rhododendrons — St. Oswald of 
 Northumbria, you know, was his sponsor — Birinus 
 was Bishop of the West-Saxons ; and the West- 
 Saxons at that early age held the whole Thames 
 valley. Their kingdom extended as far as the 
 
■r\' 
 
 122 THE INCIDENTAL BISHOP 
 
 Severn. But later, Wulfherc of Mercia drove them 
 across the Thames, and annexed all what was 
 afterwards known as Oxfordshire. Owing to that 
 conquest, the West-Saxon kings retired to Winchester, 
 which became thenceforth their capital. Indeed, 
 when the kings of Wessex grew into kings of 
 England in the person of Edgar — not as is usually 
 but incorrectly stated of Egbert — " at this point 
 the Bishop made a rhetorical pause so as to lay 
 especial stress on his own pet hobby — " Winchester 
 was really the capital of the whole country." 
 
 " Is that so ? " Sir Edward exclaimed, not knowing 
 exactly what remark was expected of him, and 
 fingering the heavy gold seal on his heavy gold 
 watch-chain. The chain and the waistcoat that 
 formed its background were the salient points of 
 Sir Edward's physiognomy. 
 
 " Oh, yes," the Bishop answered, warming up to 
 his subject ; " Winchester was the capital of England, 
 not only under Alfred, but even under William 
 the Conqueror. It was but slowly superseded by 
 London, or rather by Westminster, owing to the 
 importance of Edward the Confessor's minster. In 
 that sense, then, that he is still the representative 
 West-Saxon Bishop, my dear friend at Winchester 
 is the successor of Birinus. Then again, Dorchester 
 was afterwards the seat of the Mercian bishops from 
 Wulfhere's conquest till 1073 — or was it 1074? — I 
 forget the exact date, but at any rate, some time 
 in William the Conqueror's reign ; when Remigius 
 removed the see to Lincoln. In that sense, therefore, 
 Dr. Blenkinsopp is really the successor of Birinus, or 
 at any rate of the historical bishopric of Dorchester." 
 
THE TALACE, DORCHESTER 1 23 
 
 " I sec," Sir Edward answered with a mute look of 
 appeal to Evelyn. But Evelyn only smiled a familiar 
 little smile and expanded her hands as who should say : 
 " You would rush into it. If you get it all now, you've 
 only yourself to blame. Don't say I didn't warn 
 you." 
 
 " J need hardly add," the Bishop went on, " that 
 not one stone of the existing cathedral dates back to 
 the days when Dorchester was still an old Saxon 
 bishopric. The minster which Remigius deserted 
 for the Roman hill of Lincoln was no doubt a wooden 
 one. But the site had always ecclesiastical import- 
 ance ; and in the later middle ages, when the Thames 
 became the main highway of Plantagenet England, 
 the Augustinian monks built the beautiful church over 
 which I am now permitted to preside — " he uttered 
 that word " permitted " with a touch of something 
 more than conventional episcopal modesty ; — ' the 
 greater part of it being of the thirteenth century, as 
 you can see for yourself by glancing out of this 
 window." 
 
 Sir Edward rose and looked at it casually. He 
 could see nothing of the sort ; for his knowledge of 
 architecture was a negative quantity ; but he contented 
 himself with saying in a tone of cheap conviction : 
 " Dear me, you don't say so." 
 
 " And when the crying need for an increase in the 
 episcopate began to be deeply felt," the Bishop went 
 on, quite unconscious of his hearer's boredom, " it was 
 natural that a site so long connected with the Church 
 in one form or another, and possessing so splendid an 
 old historical building, should be chosen as the seat 
 of one of the new dioceses. I urged it myself; I 
 
'•J?-. 
 
 124 THE INCIDENTAL BISHOP 
 
 advocated the division of the diocese from the begin- 
 ning ; I always said, long before it occurred to me 
 that anybody could consider me worthy to occupy 
 a place on the episcopal bench 'Dorchester is the 
 proper seat for the new bishop.' " 
 
 " Oh, but he did much more than that. Sir Edward," 
 Mrs, Glisson put in with wifely zeal ; " he made the 
 bishopric. Cecil never thought of himself or his own 
 comfort. He went up and down the country preach- 
 ing like an apostle ; and he collected all the funds 
 with his magnetic eloquence. Then they offered 
 him the see ; but he didn't want to take it. He 
 said his heart was more at home among his poor 
 people in the Black Country : he would not desert his 
 chain-makers. — Now, you know you did, Cecil. — 
 But the Prime Minister insisted ; and in the end he 
 took it." 
 
 " After promising me, Olive, you must remember/' 
 the Bishop continued, " that he would transfer me to 
 Wolverhampton as soon as that projected diocese is 
 constituted. I made this one for Reading, you see, 
 Sir Edward, with its enormous biscuit factories; I 
 take an interest in my people there ; but my heart 
 is always with the puddlers and the chain-makers." 
 
 " And he was killing himself at Cradley," Evelyn 
 put in ; " and if he hadn't been sent here to vegetate 
 by the Thames for a year or two, in peace, he'd have 
 died in harness. I told the Prime Minister so, and 
 he said to me : ' Miss Glisson, I know your father. 
 He's a willing horse, and will work himself to death. 
 He needs a curb, not a spur. We'll give him 
 Dorchester for a year or two to quiet him. He'll 
 have to rest there, comparatively, and it will do his 
 
THE PALACE, DORCHESTER 12$ 
 
 health good. By and by, if he's good, he may go 
 back to his chain-makers. Or at least, we'll promise 
 him that he shall, to pacify him.' For my part, I 
 hope we shall stop here always. I just love this dear 
 place ; and I don't want to go back to that beastly 
 Cradley." 
 
 The Bishop smiled. "My dear," he said not 
 unkindly, " I cannot be expected to regulate the 
 acceptance or rejection of the work cut out for me 
 by your personal preferences. I must go wherever I 
 think I can be most useful." 
 
 " Papa's so dreadfully in earnest," Evelyn added. 
 " He takes bishoping seriously. If I were a bishop, 
 I'd go in for chasubles. But Papa takes it out in 
 episcopal supervision. He's so full of its being a 
 man's duty, however he gets thrown into any walk of 
 life, to do the best he can in it." 
 
 The Bishop's brow clouded. "Yes," he repeated 
 slowly ; " however he gets thrown into it. If chance 
 makes you a sailor, be a sailor with a will. If chance 
 makes you — I mean, if Providence makes you a 
 bishop, by whatever strange steps, be a bishop 
 with a will, and try to make the best of it." 
 
 " Now, Cecil dear, I will not let you say, ' by what- 
 ever strange steps,'" Mrs. Glisson interrupted. " There 
 never was anyone so absurdly modest as my husband. 
 Sir Edward. He has risen in the Church purely by dint 
 of his own hard work and his devotedness of purpose ; 
 and he always talks as if he were there by chance, 
 and had dropped into a bishopric through a hole in 
 the ceiling. Isn't that so, Cecil ? " 
 
 The Bishop started. He was in a deep reverie. 
 Her words had roused again that eternal remorse. 
 
126 THE INCIDENTAL BISHOP 
 
 Could no amount of well-doing atone for the way 
 he had climbed into the fold by stealth like a thief 
 in the night ? After thirty years of outer conformity 
 and hard work for the office he had assumed by 
 chance, was he not yet a clergyman? 
 
CHAPTER XVI. 
 
 PERPLEXITY. 
 
 " Cecil is in a brown study," Mrs. Glisson remarked 
 in an undertone to Sir Edward. " He often gets so. 
 I sometimes think he has worked too hard in both 
 ways, — at clerical work and in his library." They 
 had strolled out into the garden through the open 
 French window, and Mrs. Glisson was pacing the 
 lawn, hatless, in the warm June twilight. *' You know, 
 my husband had not the usual advantages of a univer- 
 sity education ; and when he began to take seriously 
 to clerical work — other than missionary work, I mean 
 — he felt the want of deeper knowledge. The conse- 
 quence was, being a very thorough man, he set about 
 studying hard at theological literature ; and he worked 
 in so many ways together — at the Fathers, you 
 know " 
 
 " I beg your pardon," Sir Edward put in, inter- 
 rupting her and looking puzzled. "The Fathers? 
 What Fathers ? " 
 
 Mrs. Glisson smiled. She had helped her husband 
 so long in his editions of Jerome and Cyril that 
 patristic literature was to her quite familiar. " Oh, 
 the Fathers of the Church, you know," she answered 
 with a little apologetic wave of her hand towards the 
 
 127 
 
-■'..■'\ : , ■ f'-^ ■:/"-'?^-;rj f '' > :.. > ~:j>; 
 
 128 THE INCIDENTAL BISHOP 
 
 figure of the retreating Bishop, who stood gazing 
 at the spot where Birinus had baptised the gentleman 
 with the unpronounceable name. " My husband is 
 much interested in them— St. Augustine and St. 
 Ambrose and St. Gregory, don't you know; he has 
 worked much at all of them. But then, at the same 
 time, he was working at his Comparative Grammar of 
 the Melanesian Languages, and at his evangelising 
 labour among the Queensland immigrants, and at 
 so many other things. Then again later, when he 
 was doing so much for the Cradley chain-makers, 
 he was also engaged on his Epistles of St. Cyril. 
 People will tell you it was his Cradley work that got 
 him made Canon and then Bishop ; but Mr. Glad- 
 stone told me himself one main reason for his 
 appointment was that he thought so highly of my 
 husband's Hellenistic Concordance to the Synoptic 
 Gospels." 
 
 " That was extremely gratifying ! " Sir Edward 
 exclaimed, with heavy dignity, beginning to think 
 the Bishopess almost as serious as the Bishop. The 
 Bishopina, indeed, was the only member of the family 
 he could quite comprehend. What sort of Gospel a 
 synoptic might be he hadn't the faintest notion. As 
 he remarked to Lady Colbeck the moment he got safe 
 home again, Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John were 
 good enough for him, and he didn't much care to 
 know any new ones. 
 
 " Papa does work too hard," the Bishopina put in. 
 She was of a mundane nature. " That's what makes 
 him so moody. He's the dearest father any girl ever 
 had ; but sometimes when I go into his study in the 
 morning, to ask him some question, he's sitting there 
 
PERPLEXITY 129 
 
 mooning, with Cyril or somebody open on the table 
 before him, and looking up at the ceiling, as if he was 
 waiting for inspiration, so that he doesn't even know 
 I'm there till I've spoken three times to him." 
 
 " He seems unduly absorbed," Sir Edward admitted. 
 " Such an onerous position." 
 
 " Too many irons in the fire, poor dear," Evelyn 
 responded with youthful frankness of criticism. To 
 a bishop's daughter, even a bishop is human. Rococo, 
 but human. 
 
 " I think you said he began life as a missionary," 
 Sir Edward interposed. " Odd beginning for such an 
 end. Not exactly the place most of our bishops come 
 from." He was an emphatic man, and he rapped out 
 his remarks with manufacturing jerkiness. 
 
 Mrs. Glisson sat down on the garden seat and 
 began a glowing account of dear Cecil's early difficul- 
 ties and how by earnestness, energy, and pure single- 
 ness of spirit he had gradually overcome them. She 
 did not add that whatever he had done she had helped 
 him to do ; that was not Olive Glisson's way ; she 
 worshipped her husband, and she gave him the glory. 
 " He's not an ornamental bishop," she said. " He has 
 worked hard' all his Hfe. And now I'm afraid his hard 
 work is beginning to tell upon him." 
 
 " He wants rest," Evelyn put in. " Sir Edward, 
 1 wish he could have accepted your invitation to go 
 yachting to Norway." 
 
 " I'm not so sure of that," her mother answered. 
 " On a yacht, he would have been idle. I often fancy, 
 Evelyn, Papa is best when he has most to do. Since 
 we've been here at Dorchester and he has had time 
 to think, it seems to me he has worried much more 
 
 9 
 
'; ■-.;;■• :-^' 
 
 130 THE INCIDENTAL BISHOP 
 
 than he used to do at Cradley. The chain-makers 
 were good for him. He is happiest when he is bearing 
 other people's troubles. If he feels he is doing good ; 
 that makes him happiest of anything." 
 
 Meanwhile, the Bishop, strolling slowly by himself, 
 had paused by the brink, with his gaitered legs in the 
 episcopal attitude of close attention, and was gazing 
 into the baptismal stream of Birinus. He was trying 
 his best to fix his attention upon those schools at 
 Wallingford. They were sorely needed. And he 
 loved to do good, as Olive had said of him. Two 
 lines of an Elizabethan dramatist often seemed to 
 help him ; Ford put them into Jane Shore's mouth, 
 but they served for him equally : 
 
 "Although my good can not redeem my ill 
 Yet to do good I will remember still." 
 
 He sat down by the brink, where Birinus had stood 
 so many centuries before, and gazed again into the 
 water. The long reflection of the trees on the opposite 
 bank fell half across the river. Something that night 
 made it all come back to him : he seemed to see 
 his past life in the flickers of the beech-trees. He 
 thought how he had gone away from Sydney, with 
 Mr. Strong's commission, to preach down the labour 
 traffic in all the towns of Australia. He thought 
 how Olive's strength of character had helped him 
 to do it. He recalled those crowded days, when he 
 poured forth streams of eloquent denunciation on 
 Sundays and holidays, and gave up his nights to dili- 
 gent study of Greek and of the Melanesian tongue he 
 was supposed to have learned long before at Temuka. 
 
 Then the rest recurred in all its long order. He 
 
PERPLEXITY 131 
 
 saw himself working hard to make a home for 
 Olive — as soon as he thought he was enough of a 
 parson to bear the daily scrutiny of a parson's 
 daughter. How eagerly he had thrown himself into 
 the task of denouncing the horrors he had seen with 
 his own eyes ; how he had worked with a will not to 
 disgrace the name he had taken upon him by so 
 strange a set of accidents ! He succeeded at last in 
 his efforts at breaking down the worst evils of the 
 hateful slave-traffic, and then was appointed Govern- 
 ment inspector and chaplain to the immigrants in 
 Queensland. Sent to England finally, five years after 
 he married Olive, he had come in fear and trembling, 
 on a missionary trip, alarmed at every turn lest in 
 London or Liverpool some sailor who had been a 
 shipmate might see and recognise him. But, gradually, 
 these earlier terrors wore away. His metamorphosis 
 was too complete. Twice he had met shipmates who 
 gazed at him and went their way, unsuspicious ; it 
 was clear they never dreamt of recognising Tom 
 Pringle the seaman in the close-shaven, clerically 
 dressed man who stood before them. 
 
 His missionary trip was an immense success ; his 
 native gift of eloquence excited attention in England ; 
 and his own Society interested itself in finding him 
 a parish in the Black Country, where it thought he 
 might be more useful to it than in Queensland or 
 Sydney. Cecil Glisson — as he now called himself — 
 accepted the change with a certain passive calm which 
 had become habitual with him since his total loss of 
 his own personality. Eager always to escape from 
 his torturing thoughts by plunging into work, he had 
 thrown himself body and soul into the service of the 
 
■IT.. 
 
 ■■■'Tii:'- 
 
 132 THE INCIDENTAL BISHOP 
 
 chain-makers, and had succeeded in greatly alleviating 
 the hardships of their condition. He had preached the 
 gospel of a fair wage, and had not been so studious 
 of literary grace as of convincing his hearers. So, 
 step by step, Olive always assisting, he had worked 
 his way up, without thought of self, to a canonry and 
 a bishopric, rather by honest hard work than by 
 cultivating what is known as clerical influence. 
 
 Yet at each upward step, his life grew ever more and 
 more unendurable to him. Had he been a really bad 
 man, like Blackburne, the Buccaneer Bishop of the 
 eighteenth century, he would not have felt it so deeply. 
 Had he been a complete unbeliever, he might only 
 have been impressed by the moral wrong of his 
 deception. But what made it worst was that he was 
 now in essence a churchman and an ecclesiologist. 
 
 At the outset, to be sure, the Tom Pringle who 
 was now practically no more had possessed just an 
 ordinary sailor's modicum of Christian doctrine. In 
 a vague and careless way he had passively accepted 
 the religion of his fathers, without concerning himself 
 much as to its details or its formularies. He thought 
 it was all true, but that it was the business of clergy- 
 men. Still, he was by nature a hard worker ; and 
 once turned by chance into the outer show of a 
 parson, a parson he had become, to all intents and 
 purposes, save those of the sacerdotalist. His stand- 
 point was now that of the historically minded 
 Anglican. He was never one of those modern 
 philosophic clergymen who generously condescend to 
 patronise Christianity. He believed — and trembled. 
 And the very fact that intellectually he took a serious 
 view of the priestly functions made the knowledge 
 
;■:■ 
 
 PERPLEXITY 133 
 
 that in reality he was not a priest at all more and 
 more alarming to him. 
 
 So he stood gazing at the trees that flickered in 
 the water where Birinus had introduced Christianity 
 into Wessex with a vague sort of wish that Birinus 
 could come back with a private ordination to remove 
 secretly the blot on his own episcopal scutcheon. 
 
 " Let us go back to the Bishop," Mrs. Glisson said, 
 looking towards him. " I never like to leave him 
 alone when he falls into one of these reveries." 
 
 They strolled back, still talking. " Yes, it is an 
 unusual career," Mrs. Glisson said. " Few bishops 
 have seen so many varied phases of life. But then, 
 my husband is so clever, so earnest, so hard-working. 
 You should have seen the way he rode all round 
 Queensland, from station to station, looking after his 
 blackfellows." 
 
 " And could he speak their language ? " Sir Edward 
 asked, as they reached the spot where the Bishop was 
 standing. He had the usual exaggerated respect of 
 half-educated men for mere linguistic attainments. 
 
 The Bishop answered for himself, looking up 
 suddenly from his dream at the touch of his wife's 
 hand. " Oh, yes, I spoke their language quite 
 fluently ; I speak it still. I learnt it while 1 was 
 labouring among them in Northern Queensland." 
 
 " But you knew it before, Cecil," Mrs. Glisson 
 interposed, correcting him. " You spoke it, of course, 
 on Temuka." 
 
 The Bishop's face flushed fiery red. He seldom 
 allowed himself these verbal slips, though he avoided 
 them as far as possible by vague generalities ; for a 
 lie direct was intensely distasteful to him. " Ah 
 
a ,•*► w.T f . T--.',', ,-,. ■r-,:.,..'\' 
 
 134 THE INCIDENTAL BISHOP 
 
 yes, on Temuka," he answered. " Yes — of course — on 
 Temuka. But then, though the language is essen- 
 tially the same throughout all the islands, the dialects 
 differ so much, you know. It's all a question of 
 dialect." And he looked up appealingly. 
 
 " He was a missionary at Temuka," Mrs. Glisson 
 went on, " before I met him. Evelyn has told you the 
 story of his capture and his marvellous rescue from 
 the piratical labour vessel. Most romantic, isn't it ? " 
 
 " But Papa will never talk about Temuka," Evelyn 
 put in once more, in her irreverent manner. " A 
 bishop has never a Past, of course, or I should almost 
 believe Papa's Past was on Temuka. He so carefully 
 avoids saying anything about it. My own belief is, 
 he was glad to get away from it." 
 
 " Evelyn, my dear, how can you talk so ? " Mrs. 
 Glisson exclaimed, horrified. " Why, he was longing 
 to get back, and if I hadn't insisted that he mustn't 
 waste the great talents which Providence had given 
 him on a single small island — hide them in a napkin, 
 so to speak — I believe he would have gone back and 
 lived and died there." 
 
 " That's just it," Evelyn insisted, with a mischievous 
 voice — she was no respecter of bishops — " That was 
 his Past, you may be certain. She was waiting for 
 him on the island. Having got rid of the Past with 
 a violent effort, and married you, dear, he naturally 
 doesn't care to dwell upon the subject. I always 
 notice he declines to say much about anything that 
 occurred before he first met you, Mother. Isn't that 
 so, Daddy ? " And she looked up at him quizzically. 
 For Evelyn, you will perceive, was a very modern 
 young lady. 
 
PERPLEXITV 135 
 
 The Bishop's face wore an anxious expression as 
 he stooped down and kissed her. " My child," he 
 said evasively, " if you rattle on like this, Sir Edward 
 will think I have failed egregiously in one main 
 apostolic requirement in a bishop, ' One that ruleth 
 well his own house, having his children in subjection 
 with all gravity.' You are distinctly lacking in gravity, 
 Evelyn." 
 
 He said it half playfully, but Mrs. Glisson saw a 
 shadow of pain cross his face, and hastened to turn 
 aside the conversation into some lighter channel. 
 She called attention to the copper beeches. 
 
 " Yes, you have a lovely place here," Sir Edward 
 admitted, firing off his pompous commonplaces with 
 a ponderous air of profound originality. " Nature is 
 very charming. Her works are all so complete. 
 Their minuteness ! their beauty ! A shell now ! or 
 a flower ! The perfection of her smallest handicraft, 
 it often strikes me, Mrs. Glisson, contrasts marvel- 
 lously with the roughness of man's best productions. 
 A fragment of Manchester piece-goods under the 
 microscope, for example " 
 
 The Bishop turned upon him suddenly. "It is the 
 ^perfection of nature that oftener puzzles w^," he 
 said with a real sense of mystery. " Her cruelty, 
 her tyranny, her armed emphatic lawlessness. Look 
 at that fly in the twilight — ^joyous, airy, unconscious 
 of fate : and, swoop, it has disappeared into the 
 gaping beak of a swift. A little thing, you say. Yes, 
 but why should it suffer at all} The origin of evil 
 has troubled the theologians : it is the origin of 
 suffering that troubles me. How can a beneficent 
 and omnipotent Being permit, even for a time, this 
 
136 THE INCIDKNTAL BISIIO]* 
 
 reign of pain, of physical agony, of mental torture ? 
 I cannot understand it — that what revolts man's 
 moral sense should be permitted, nay carefully pro- 
 vided for, by man's Maker ! " 
 
 Sir Edward looked up sharply. He was positively 
 shocked. That a bishop should permit himself to 
 think like this ! And that he should presume to see 
 two sides of a question ! Sir Edward didn't like it : 
 for he had always been a fervent admirer of the 
 commonplace. 
 
CHAPTER XVII. 
 TO GO OR NOT TO GO. 
 
 When the Bishop was left alone with Mrs. Glisson 
 that evening, the watchful wife saw at once from his 
 face that something had gone wrong with him. She 
 could read his expression like an open book. " Well, 
 Cecil," she asked, " what was this business of Sir 
 Edward's that is troubling you, darling ? " 
 
 The Bishop sighed deeply. " I knew it would 
 come," he replied in a sad, slow voice. " Sooner or 
 later, I knew it would come. They have written 
 more than once ; and as I refuse by letter, they've now 
 sent down a personal ambassador to speak to me." 
 
 " Who have sent ? " Mrs. Glisson asked. 
 
 The Bishop paused again for a second. Then he 
 jerked it out with a wrench. "Why, the Liverpool 
 orphanage. They want me to go down and open 
 a new school for them." 
 
 " Well," Mrs. Glisson answered quietly. " Why 
 don't you sayj^^?" 
 
 The Bishop gave a hasty gesture of dislike and 
 despair with one hand. " If you knew how I hate 
 that place, Olive ! I can't bear to go near it." 
 
 " I know that, Cecil. And though I can never 
 imagine why, I won't bother you any more to tell 
 
 137 
 
 v'.> 
 
138 THE INCIDENTAL BISHOP 
 
 me the reason. Vou feel it : that is enough for mc. 
 Still, couldn't you rrlake the effort — ^just this once ? 
 Perhaps if you went there you would find it wasn't 
 as bad after all as you expected. Do try, for my 
 sake, Cecil." And her hand sought his soothingly. 
 
 " Olive, when you talk like that, you don't know 
 how you lacerate me ! I can't bear not to do what 
 you ask me in this way. And yet — I can't go. You 
 haven't a notion how I shrink from it." 
 
 " I have, darling ; I see it : but I feel you ought. 
 Cecil, I don't like even to hint such a thing to you, 
 it is so wholly different from your real character ; 
 but doesn't it strike you that if you persistently stop 
 away, people will imagine you're ashamed of having 
 been brought up at an orphanage ? / know, of 
 course, that such an idea could never enter your dear 
 head ; but the world doesn't know it, and it will 
 think you snobbish." 
 
 The Bishop snapped one hand impatiently again. 
 " The world, the world ! " he said with an unwonted 
 touch of irony in his tone. " The dear, good world ! 
 For each of us, some hundred or so of foolish and ill- 
 natured gossips ! Have I ever minded the world ? 
 Do I care what people think? Have I ever cared 
 what people thought about anything? Am I not 
 here to-day just because I have always persistently 
 disregarded what the foolish world cackled, and gone 
 straight for what I believed to be right and justice ? " 
 
 " Yes, I know that, dear ; nobody knows it better 
 than I do : you fought for the chain-makers against 
 rank and capital, when everybody said you were 
 ruining your prospects ; and you answered : 'Let them 
 be ruined, but be just to the chain-makers.' Nobody 
 
TO GO OR NOT TO GO 1 39 
 
 respects you for all that as I respect you, dearest. 
 Still," she lifted his hand in hers and soothed it 
 gently ; " this case is somewhat different. It is only 
 a personal repugnance you have to overcome here ; 
 and if people think you won't go because you are too 
 proud to acknowledge your connection with the insti- 
 tution that brought you up, that will surely tend to 
 lessen your influence for good in the diocese and the 
 country. Think of all that, darling. While you were 
 only a canon, I never urged you hard ; but now that 
 you are a bishop, I do think you ought really to make 
 an effort and go to them. The orphanage is naturally 
 proud of having produced a bishop ; you should let 
 people see you are not ashamed to own it." 
 
 The Bishop folded his hands on his apron, leaned 
 back in his chair, and closed his eyes wearily. 
 Strange to say, it was not at first that the deception 
 had cost him dear, but at last. The longer he lived, 
 the higher he rose in life, the more earnestly he strove 
 to do such good as he could in his false position, 
 the more terribly did the dead past rise up and accuse 
 him. 
 
 His own innate truthfulness and honesty were his 
 worst enemies now. A wickeder man would have 
 gone down to the orphanage boldly and brazened it 
 out with lies ; but the Bishop shrank from lies with 
 an honest shrinking. It wasn't merely the fear of 
 detection that disturbed him. Who, after all these 
 years, was likely to know into what manner of man 
 the Cecil Glisson of the orphanage might by this time 
 have developed? No ; what he really dreaded was 
 the deception and the pretence. He could not bear 
 to go down to the place where he had never lived, 
 
i':vV'y '■!"''!• 'I ■>^>fi'^:.-\'^\r*'p;- 
 
 140 THE INCIDENTAL BISHOP 
 
 and pretend to remember the things he had never 
 seen. So he leaned back in his chair and murmured 
 feebly, once more : " If you knew how hateful it all 
 was to me, Olive, you would never ask me." 
 
 " Yes, yes, dear ; I do know ; and I can understand 
 that in those days the boys may have been roughly 
 treated ; I always see that you have the utmost 
 repugnance to talking of your boyhood there ; and 
 I feel sure it is because you think the system then 
 was cruel. But all that must be quite changed by 
 now. The world moves. You needn't be afraid 
 of opening their new school because you believe 
 the lads are ill-treated nowadays. Sir Edward was 
 talking to me about that matter just now, and he 
 says a jollier or healthier set of little fellows he 
 never saw in his life — perfect pictures of merry happy- 
 go-lucky English schoolboys." 
 
 The Bishop started. "Olive, dearest," he cried, 
 " I never once suggested that the system was cruel. 
 I deny it. I disclaim it. It distresses me that you 
 should hint it. I — I never heard one word of com- 
 plaint against the school from — from any boy who 
 was educated there." As a matter of fact, he recol- 
 lected that the real Cecil Glisson, the Cecil Glisson 
 whose bones lay bleaching beneath the Pacific waves, 
 had always spoken in the most affectionate terms 
 of the orphanage and its masters. " No, dearest one, 
 it isn't that. I should feel it most unjust if anyone 
 carried away the impression that I declined to go 
 because I bore any ill-will to the institution." He 
 felt he ought to add, as Cecil Glisson : " On the con- 
 trary, I'm most grateful to it ; " but the words stuck 
 in his throat. He altered them slowly to : ** On the 
 
(-•"•.vr"v^'/. 
 
 TO GO OR NOT TO GO I41 
 
 contrary, I see no reason to doubt that every boy who 
 was brought up there has good grounds for gratitude." 
 
 Mrs. Glisson read in his face the struggle and the 
 reservation. But she did not pursue that part of the 
 subject. She was content to know that some internal 
 feeling made Cecil unwilling to talk freely with her 
 about his youth. So she altered the mode of attack. 
 
 " At any rate, dear," she said, " you must feel that 
 your stopping away now is open to misconstruction, 
 and that the misconstruction does wrong both to the 
 orphanage itself and to your own chances of usefulness. 
 People will say : * Here is Dr. Glisson, who sets up to 
 be the democratic bishop, the people's bishop, the 
 poor man's bishop ; yet he's ashamed to own the 
 orphanage that bred him.' And that must do harm 
 in the end to every cause you have most at heart, 
 mustn't it ? " 
 
 The Bishop flared up. " Have I ever been ashamed 
 of anything like that ? " he asked, petulantly. " You 
 are unjust to me, Olive. Have I not always said 
 I crept into the church by the smallest of side doors, 
 and that I desire no pretence of social distinction ? 
 I hate it when they My-Lord me. Nobody that I 
 know of My- Lorded the apostles. But this is quite 
 different ; this is a personal and sentimental objection. 
 I'll give them a subscription, if they wish, with all my 
 heart ; but I can't endure to go and open their school 
 for them." 
 
 Mrs. Glisson desisted. "Very well, dear," she 
 answered with a disappointed look. "If you feel it 
 so strongly, it would be wrong of me to urge it." 
 
 Her face was distressed. The Bishop saw it and 
 groaned inwardly. For Olive had become to him 
 
• ■ ;T '♦ ■■•n-f ;'. i .*■ 
 
 142 THE INCIDENTAL BISHOP 
 
 a perfect religion. He knew in his heart that it was 
 she who had made him ; she who had developed 
 whatever there was of strong and good within him ; 
 and he hated to distress her. " If you look like that," 
 he cried, " I must do violence to myself and go down 
 to Liverpool." 
 
 " No, darling ; you mustn't do it if you do it on 
 that ground. I couldn't bear to feel I was sending 
 you anywhere against your better judgment." 
 
 " It's not my better judgment ; it's my feelings, 
 OHve." 
 
 " Well, against your feelings, then, Cecil." 
 
 The Bishop paced the room, agitated. He re- 
 flected for some minutes. Then he made up his 
 mind. " Perhaps you're right, dear," he said slowly, 
 bending over her and kissing her. " Indeed, when 
 are you not right? I see abstention lays me open 
 to a painful misconception. I suppose I must go ; 
 though few things have cost me such a wrench 
 of late years. . . . It's a most painful visit to pay. 
 But, Olive, I will pay it. You may tell Sir Edward 
 to-morrow morning I've reconsidered my determin- 
 ation, and will run down next week, if Providence 
 permits, to open the new school at the Liverpool 
 orphanage." 
 
 It would cost him dear, but he could not bear to 
 differ from Olive. 
 
CHAPTER XVIII. 
 LOVE UP TO DATE. 
 
 Next morning at eleven, a little above Day's Lock, 
 a tall young man in a Canadian canoe sat paddling 
 about disconsolately. He had the irresolute, dispirited, 
 watchful air of one who has come to time to an 
 appointment and finds the other party to the bargain 
 absent. His face at once betrayed the undergraduate. 
 But he was a nice-looking specimen of that aggressive 
 class, in an Oxford blazer ; and he kept paddling to 
 one side of the river and then to the other, glancing 
 first at his watch and then up and down stream with 
 the unmistakable look of a person who says to him- 
 self : *' Why doesn't she come? I'm sure I made no 
 blunder about the hour." 
 
 He continued reconnoitring the side-streams for 
 several minutes together, and then, evidently dejected, 
 ran himself into a thick bed of iris-leaves by the 
 bank, and assumed an attitude of profound melancholy. 
 Suddenly, another canoe shot quick round the corner, 
 and a young girl approached, paddling well and 
 deftly with an air of assured mastery of the craft. 
 She was a slight, dark girl, with abundant black hair ; 
 not exactly pretty, but with haunting eyes, and a 
 wistful gipsy air that was better than prettiness : she 
 
 »43 
 
-A— ;•. r 
 
 144 THE INCIDENTAL BISHOP 
 
 wore a loose pink blouse and a hat with wild roses. 
 The man's face and attitude altered at once as she 
 appeared. In a moment, he was alert, attentive, 
 eager, smiling. He paddled out to meet her down 
 a backwater to which it was evident they were both 
 well accustomed. The girl's face was aglow. They 
 came up with one another under shelter of a mass of 
 tall purple loose-strife, which hid them from observa- 
 tion from the field beside them. 
 
 " Well, Alex, you thought I was never coming, I 
 suppose," she broke out, drawing close to him. " Now, 
 don't look at your watch ; it was all my fault. You 
 said half past ten. But I couldn't get away earlier. 
 It's just this beastly bishoping. A certain Sir Edward 
 Colbeck, who is something or other in iron or cotton 
 down in Warrington or elsewhere, came to the Palace 
 last night to persuade Daddy he ought to go some- 
 where and open something he doesn't want to open — 
 oysters, or orphanages, or ginger-beer or something ; 
 and Mums was on Sir Edward's side ; she's always 
 in favour of Daddy fulfilling his duty in that station 
 of life, etc., etc., as per the Church Catechism ; and 
 Daddy said no, but Mums stuck to it like a leech : 
 and the upshot of it is Daddy's going, of course ; 
 so there's an end of it. But after breakfast, Mums 
 said : * Evelyn, you must take Sir Edward through 
 the grounds ; ' and I tried to cry off ; but Mums was 
 blind as a bat ; it's the way of mothers ; and I 
 couldn't get away. And Sir Edward's a bore ; and 
 he talked on and on, and made himself middle-aged 
 agreeable. And the consequence was, I couldn't give 
 him the slip till just this moment ; and if Mums finds 
 I've gone off now, she'll be in a state of mind about 
 
LOVE UP TO DATE I45 
 
 it ; because she wants me to keep Sir Edward from 
 worrying Daddy while he's seeing these people about 
 the clergyman at Reading who has run away from his 
 parish. So that's why I'm late. And you mustn't 
 blame me for it, but set it down to the bothering old 
 diocese." 
 
 Alex gazed at her admiringly as she turned on 
 him with a defiant air. " I couldn't blame you for 
 anything, darling," he said ; " and of course I see 
 it wasn't your fault. But I'm happy now youVe 
 come. I was so afraid you couldn't get away at all ; 
 and I'd taken a pony-cart over from Oxford, of 
 course — the last time, I'm afraid, for I'm dead broke 
 now, and can't afford any more pony-carts over this 
 term, let alone the Schools beginning on Monday. 
 And it would have been horrid to miss you." 
 
 Evelyn drove her canoe a little farther into the 
 loose-strife. The purple clump rose round them like 
 a thicket, screening them effectually both from the 
 river-side and the shore. " Well, here I am, at last," 
 she answered, with a bewitching smile, for she was 
 bewitching when she was not provoking. " I managed 
 to give Sir Edward the slip while he was talking 
 to Mums ; and off I darted to the canoe, and I've 
 paddled down so fast that I've no doubt by this 
 time I'm unbecomingly hot ; but — I dare say you'll 
 excuse it." 
 
 She was hot, but tempting. The undergraduate 
 drew his canoe quite close to hers, and executed 
 a manoeuvre which only persons accustomed to 
 Canadian canoes can permit themselves with im- 
 punity. He leaned over the edge, caught Evelyn 
 in his arms, and clasped her tight for a moment. 
 
 10 
 
146 THE INCIDENTAL BISHOP 
 
 The sound that followed is one for which typography- 
 has as yet no symbol. Evelyn flushed rosy red and 
 recovered equilibrium with some little difficulty. 
 " There, you wicked boy," she said ; " you've nearly 
 upset me ! " But she did not seem seriously dis- 
 pleased for all that, nor did she withdraw her canoe 
 with more than a formal protest. 
 
 Alex Thornbuiy stood off at paddle's length and 
 surveyed her. As she sat there, flushed with excite- 
 ment, in the first full flower of opening womanhood, 
 she looked as beautiful as her mother had looked 
 thirty years before, but with a stranger and more 
 elusive type of beauty. Her great weird eyes thrilled 
 him. She had the conscious pride of youth, too, 
 which sat on her not ungracefully ; and her air was 
 high-bred, though her phrases were so modern and 
 sometimes so slangy. In one word, she was the 
 typical Ibsenite, the high-spirited over-strung girl of 
 the later nineteenth century — a type which our 
 mothers would have considered unladylike, but which 
 our sons agree in finding most pleasantly piquant. 
 
 " You must make the most of me to-day, Evey," he 
 said, with the quiet presumption of an assured lover ; 
 " for I shan't be able to come at all next week. I 
 shall be in the Schools all the week — examinations, 
 don't you know ; and then, as I shall be sitting over 
 papers all day long, from nine to five, there won't be 
 a chance even if I walked over to see you." 
 
 " You could come in the evenings, couldn't you ? " 
 Evelyn asked in response, gazing eagerly and 
 wistfully. 
 
 Alex shook his head. " No, that won't work," he 
 answered. " Out of the Schools at five ; well, say even 
 
LOVE UP TO DATE 1 47 
 
 I missed Hall, and didn't get any dinner, I couldn't 
 be over here much before eight or nine. Then it 
 would be late for you to get out ; and besides, I should 
 have to be back in college by eleven. I'm gated this 
 term at eleven you know, on account of that row about 
 the Tutor's window. So it wouldn't be possible." 
 
 Evelyn pouted just enough to look engaging. 
 " What a nuisance," she cried. " Shall I have to go a 
 whole week without seeing you ? " 
 
 " It is a deprivation, isn't it ? " Alex answered. 
 
 " You conceited boy ! You shouldn't take that for 
 granted. Though it's true, for all that." And she 
 nodded at him deliciously. 
 
 Alex coloured to the ears. " Oh, I didn't mean for 
 you," he said. " I'm not so coxy as that. I meant 
 for myself, darling. But there's really no help for it. 
 Besides, you know, I otight to do well in the Schools ; 
 ow future depends upon it. Unless I get a good 
 class, there'll be no chance of our marrying for oh, 
 ever and ever so long." 
 
 " What has coming to see me got to do with that ? 
 I thought a woman's love was supposed to be an 
 incentive — isn't that the word they always use in 
 novels ? — an incentive to a man to do his very best in 
 everything. You horrid creature — " but she drew a 
 little nearer again — " you ought to say that you feel 
 coming here inspires you ; that it stimulates your 
 efforts ; that you'd willingly walk over every night by 
 moonlight and see me at all risks, in order to be able 
 to answer the questions ten times better in the 
 morning. — There, don't do that again ; oh, Alex, take 
 care ; if you pull me so far I'm sure I'll go over." 
 
 " No, you won't," Alex answered, releasing her 
 
>;■-.•.■<;,';■ TV. 
 
 148 THE INCIDENTAL BISHOP 
 
 after an interval which I can only represent by a 
 series of full stops. " But you know very well 
 you're talking nonsense. The driving-power of love 
 is as true as gospel ; it's made me read this term every 
 minute of my time — when I wasn't coming over 
 here ; it's made me read like a steam engine, if steam 
 engines do read : I never read before as I've read 
 since you've been so sweet to me. Still, the driving 
 power has its limits. It must be applied scientifically. 
 You know as well as I do that if I come over and 
 see you every night, I won't be able to think of a 
 blessed thing all next day except how much I love 
 you. Now it's no use telling the examiners in Greek 
 hexameters, * I love Evelyn Glisson ; she's the 
 dearest, sweetest, provokingest girl that ever was 
 born.' They'd only remark in their bleak way that 
 that wasn't the piece set for translation into tragic 
 senarii — and that ' provokingest ' was ungrammatical 
 — though it's true, for all that." 
 
 " Oh, Alex, don't ; you hurt my arm so ! " 
 " Still, you must see for yourself it's no good 
 trying that way. I've got to go into the Schools all 
 day, and read up the subject for the next morning 
 all night. That's the way the driving-power of love 
 acts on me. Miss Glisson. (I call you Miss Glisson 
 by way of variety.) It makes me work like a horse 
 — for your sake, Evey." 
 
 " But Mr. Beddingley was saying a man in examin- 
 ation ought never to read at night. He ought to 
 throw it all off, as soon as the day's work is over, 
 and go out on the river. I call that common sense. 
 And / should think that for throwing it all off there's 
 nothing on earth to equal " 
 
LOVE UP TO DATE 149 
 
 " When was Beddingley over here ? " 
 
 " Oh, my, who's jealous now ? Mr. Beddingley 
 was over here yesterday, sir, by Mums's invitation. 
 Such a good young man, Mr. Beddingley ! So very 
 well connected ! His uncle's a judge ; and haven't 
 you observed that judges* nephews invariably marry 
 into bishopy families? There, I've done it again! 
 Mums says I mustn't say bishopy^ but episcopal ; 
 you know, she hasn't found out yet that bishops are 
 out of date : she tells me bishopy gives away the 
 show, or words to that effect ; is unbecoming my 
 father's daughter ; but, do I look episcopal ? " And 
 to do her justice, she certainly didn't. 
 
 " No ; you look a charming heathen. What did 
 Beddingley want ? " 
 
 " Me, I suppose ; though I didn't ask him. Mums 
 thinks I'm incorrigible; but even / don't say to a 
 young man when he calls : ' Pray what have you come 
 for?'" 
 
 " I hate Beddingley." 
 
 " Thafs not episcopal. It's not even Christian. 
 You should love your enemies. And Mr. Beddingley 
 isn't an enemy ; he says he's a friend of yours. He's 
 an excellent young man. I know that for certain, 
 because Mums is always telling me so, ten times a 
 day. He will go into the church, — the church loves 
 the middling — and as soon as he's old enough, and 
 in priest's orders, the Lord Chancellor will stick 
 him into a nice fat living. He will deserve it, Mr. 
 Beddingley. There's an oozing goodness about him 
 that shows at a glance he's cut out for a parson. He 
 will marry a wife after his own pattern, and become 
 the parent of ten assorted offspring, all congenially 
 
ISO THE INCIDENTAL BISHOP 
 
 and stupidly commonplace. He will interest himself 
 in foreign missions and in old women's rheumatism. 
 He will make contributions to theological literature. 
 I hate such young men. There! who says I'm 
 episcopal ? " 
 
 " Oh, Evey, if Mrs. Glisson could hear you ? " 
 
 " She hears me often enough, dear old Mums. She 
 thinks it's original sin coming out in me. Not that 
 she really minds. Mums is no more bishopy at heart 
 than Daddy and I are. And Daddy is only an 
 incidental Bishop. But she has more sense of the 
 dignity of the episcopal position than we. You see, 
 .she was brought up In a clergyman's family ; while I 
 was brought up in Daddy's ; and he's no clergyman. 
 It did him heaps of good being among the black- 
 fellows when he was young — took a lot of the starch 
 out of him." 
 
 Alex gazed admiration again. " Do you know, 
 Evey," he said, looking hard at her, " I love you 
 for your lawlessness. You're the incarnation of an 
 age of revolt. I am so glad you never went to 
 Cambridge. It would have spoilt you utterly." 
 
 "Oh, I don't think even Cambridge would have 
 made much out of me. It would have run off me 
 like water off a something-or-other's back. A duck, 
 is it? thank you. Resist the higher education, and 
 it will flee from you. When Daddy first spoke to 
 me about going to Cambridge, I said ' Get thee behind 
 me, Girton,' and it gat thee behind me ; at least, that 
 was the last I heard of it." 
 
 "You provoking angel, I do declare, I love you 
 more " 
 
 " Now, no Georgey-porgeying ! I won't be Georgey- 
 
•'« V T.ri, - > •• ) 
 
 LOVE UP TO DATE 151 
 
 porgeyed. I'm sure little Beddinglcy would always 
 Georgcy-porgey ! " 
 
 " Then Beddingley doesn't interest you ? " 
 " Silly boy to ask such a thing. He disinterests 
 me altogether. There, don't look so critical. We 
 say ' disinterested/ so I suppose we can say * disin- 
 terests me.' That's logical, isn't it ? Women are 
 always logical." 
 
 " You wouldn't like to marry a parson ? " 
 " Oh, my, what a question ! Don't you see me 
 doing it ? Was I cut out to teach in a Sunday school 
 and to organise Dorcas meetings? Why, Dorcas 
 herself died of it — bored to death, I expect, and sorry 
 enough to be resuscitated for a second edition over 
 again of the same sort of dulness. I wouldn't marry 
 a parson if there wasn't another man left alive on 
 earth. I'd sooner run away with — with a dentist or 
 an organist." 
 
 " It's all very well laughing at organists, Evey ; but 
 what do you think Pin to turn to when I've taken my 
 degree ? I shall probably be a schoolmaster. Remem- 
 ber, we can't marry till I've got on enough to ask 
 a bishop's blessing." 
 
 Evelyn grew suddenly graver. " Well, I had an 
 idea the other day," she said, looking wise. " If only 
 I dare tell Daddy — not that I'm afraid of /«';//, of 
 course ; but there's Mums to think of. It's this ; they 
 say Daddy is the only bishop in the whole batch 
 whose recommendation for an Inspector of Schools 
 is not a positive disadvantage to a candidate. But 
 Daddy's such a favourite at the Education Office, or 
 whatever they call the place, that if lie recommends a 
 man they almost always appoint him. Now, my idea 
 
••? -f " ;* rt'lT'vrS'.i'iv:'"'. _■>■'.' .:'^7-^' .<*;"" 
 
 152 THE INCIDENTAL BISHOP 
 
 is that after you've taken your degree, I should present 
 you to Daddy one day and say : * Dads, this is the man 
 I'm going to marry ; and we've got nothing to marry 
 on ; and we object on principle to long engage- 
 ments, as wearing to the feelings ; and we want you to 
 get him an Inspector-of-Schoolship.* Rather noble, 
 isn't it ? " 
 
 " Intensely noble," Alex answered with alacrity. 
 " As noble as a Marquis ; and Marquises, you know, 
 are always Most Noble. In fact, an idea worthy of 
 your intelligence, Evey. The worst of it is, I must 
 get a First for that ; and I'm so terribly weak in my 
 Politics, I'm afraid." 
 
 " Politics ? why, what have politics got to do with 
 it ? " Evelyn exclaimed, surprised. " You don't mean 
 to say they won't give you a First because you're a 
 thingumbob, do you ? " 
 
 Alex smiled. " No, not because I'm a thingumbob," 
 he answered. "Thingumbobs, as such, are eligible 
 for the highest offices in the university, just the same 
 as what-you-may-call-its. But I meant Aristotle's 
 Politics, don't you know ; it's one of the books one 
 has to take up for greats. And I'm so beastly bad 
 at it." 
 
 " Oh, you'll pull through," Evelyn responded, with 
 a girl's confidence in her lover's ability to do anything 
 that is expected of him. " You'll get a First all 
 right. Mr. Beddingley said yesterday : ' There's no 
 doubt about Thornbury. He's safe of his First ; he's 
 read so hard since Christmas.' And I knew what 
 had made you ; so there, sir." 
 
 " But, Evelyn, I say, that's a splendid idea about 
 the Inspectorship of Schools ! " 
 
LOVE UP TO DATE I 53 
 
 " / said, Inspector-of-Schoolship, which I venture 
 to think much more neat and appropriate." 
 
 " So it is, of course ; it's the right idiom, obviously ; 
 only, idioms are generally made by idiots, and when 
 a clever person like you strikes out the right one off- 
 hand, one's afraid to use it. But, Inspectorship or 
 Schoolship, it's a noble idea ; we must work that, 
 you know ; why, then, we might get married in 
 rather less than no time ! " 
 
 " Really ? " 
 
 " Yes, really." 
 
 " Then, my dear old boy, go in and win ! Get a 
 First, and it's done, as conjurors always tell one. 
 Daddy and the Education Office won't know what 
 it is to have a quiet night till they've given you the 
 appointment. I'll nobble Sir Nathaniel : he's a dear 
 old friend of mine. Church schools ; schedule C ; oh, 
 I know all about it ; I've been looking it up to-day 
 in Daddy's School Manager's Assistant, a Complete 
 Digest of the Education Act and the Revised Code, 
 for the Use of the Unmitigated Old Bores who sit 
 upon the Committees. I dare say I haven't got the 
 title * with textual accuracy,' as Daddy would say ; 
 but it's near enough for all practical purposes." And 
 she looked up at him saucily. 
 
 She had taken off her hat. He ran his hand 
 through her hair. " I love you, Evey," he said. " I 
 wonder why I love you ! " 
 
 She laughed a pleased laugh. " Interrogate your 
 consciousness ! " 
 
 He paused and reflected. " I think," he said, " it 
 is, because you're a double acrostic." 
 
CHAPTER XIX. 
 
 THE EPISCOPATE STOOPS. 
 
 The episode of the opening was fixed to take place 
 on the following Tuesday. By Thursday of the week 
 before the date arranged for it, the poor harassed 
 Bishop, turning things over in his mind, this way and 
 that, arrived all at once at a notable resolution. It 
 was clear he could not go down to the orphanage, 
 where according to the authorities he had been bred 
 and taught, without the slightest idea what manner 
 of place it was. He must sally forth on an exploring 
 expedition to Liverpool, incog., before trusting himself 
 to make a speech of effusive gratitude and misplaced 
 humility at the opening of the new school where he 
 had never been educated. 
 
 But what a sordid, what a hateful, what an 
 undignified necessity — a necessity that revolted all 
 the manhood within him ; for whatever else he was, 
 the man who had once been Tom Pringle remained a 
 man to the end, in spite of his apron. He had 
 preached down coal-mines, and chummed with chain- 
 makers, and helped puddlers at their work, and 
 fought drunken navvies, and shown himself in fifty 
 unconventional ways a muscular Christian. But this 
 surreptitious creeping about in disguise, like a thief or 
 
 154 
 
THE EPISCOPATE STOOPS 155 
 
 a detective, was wholly repugnant to him. Still, he 
 had made his bed and he must lie on it. Or rather, 
 as he said bitterly to himself more than once, a 
 chance moment had made it, and a life-time must lie 
 on it. 
 
 He opened the study door with a consciously 
 furtive air, ill-disguised under a pretence of trans- 
 parent candour, for he was a mighty poor dissembler. 
 " Watkins," he said to his servant, in the most casual 
 voice he could summon, " do you happen to have 
 kept that old suit I used to wear at Cradley for 
 visiting the chain-works ? " 
 
 " Yes, my lord ; it's in the box-room." 
 
 " Then bring it out, Watkins, and pack it in my 
 Gladstone bag." His look was guilty. " I'm going 
 down — to Birmingham." Birmingham was on the 
 way, and he must change there to get on the North 
 Western for Liverpool. He salved his conscience as 
 usual with one of the verbal subterfuges he despised 
 and hated. 
 
 " Yes, my lord. And what else shall I put in ? " 
 
 The Bishop paused. " The usual things for one 
 night," he answered, hesitating. " And a coloured 
 tie, if I have any. No, no ; I shan't want one," he 
 continued, reflecting after a moment that it was 
 safer to buy one than to give himself away to his 
 own man-servant. " Just the Cradley suit and the 
 usual night things, Watkins." 
 
 " Yes, my lord," Watkins answered stolidly. He 
 was too much accustomed to the eccentricities of 
 " the slumming bishop," as his clergy called him, to 
 feel or express much astonishment at these episcopal 
 vagaries. 
 
'*i '.I'''' •-■'" T ^>'' <• ,-•'•'; '. ', -i ■■ .■ -, ■ -IV ".V; •■■>,, '-■r;'^',' ,<■-',> ''■.'^"■^/.~ . '■■•f^:'" 'Ti (fr,""' ^f»* :•".'■ 
 
 156 THE INCIDENTAL BISHOP 
 
 " And Watkins, tell Rees I shall want to be driven 
 to the station to catch the 11. 30. And when Mrs. 
 Glisson comes home, say I was suddenly called away 
 on pressing business connected with this forged orders 
 question." That was, alas, too true. He need not 
 tell a lie this time ; though the case of forged orders 
 which called him away had nothing to do with the 
 clergyman at Reading. 
 
 " Yes, my lord," Watkins answered in the same 
 impassive voice — the colourless voice of the trained 
 man-servant who would answer "Yes, my lord," if 
 you told him the moon was made of green cheese 
 or commanded him to cut off the head of his grand- 
 mother. 
 
 With infinite loathing, the Bishop took the next 
 train to Birmingham. On his way thence to Liver- 
 pool, he managed to secure a solitary first class 
 compartment ; and during the longest unbroken run, 
 changed his clothes in the carriage in terror, 
 reappearing with a very workmanlike suit in place 
 of his gaiters, and substituting a crush felt hat for 
 his episcopal head-gear. 
 
 Arrived at Lime Street Station, he felt his 
 difficulties thicken round him. It would be danger- 
 ous to proceed too openly to the orphanage, for if 
 he let himself be seen, he might be recognised 
 again in his episcopal dress on Tuesday. On the 
 other hand, it would not do to skulk about too 
 clandestinely with the air of one who would escape 
 observation, and so run the risk of being apprehended 
 by the police in his present masquerade on a charge 
 of loitering with intent to commit a burglary. He 
 split the difference ; drove to a third-rate hotel, 
 
THE EPISCOPATE STOOPS 1 57 
 
 instead of the one he meant to patronise on Tuesday ; 
 and then lounged quietly round, with the aid of a 
 map, to the place where the orphanage was marked as 
 existing. 
 
 It would have been a disagreeable task for any- 
 body ; for a bishop, it was insupportable. In his 
 working-man suit, he felt like a mountebank. The 
 sense of skulking about those buildings in order to 
 assume a familiarity with them which he did not 
 really possess, was almost more than his honest heart 
 could endure. For after all, his heart was still 
 honest. He was a truthful man, utterly warped and 
 turned aside from his own proper nature by one 
 lasting error. He hoped, indeed, to avoid a lie direct, 
 which his soul hated ; but he hardly saw how he 
 could succeed in avoiding a certain amount of pre- 
 varication. " Ah, here's the old school-room," he 
 must say, with a tone of conviction and of ancient ac- 
 quaintance ; " and here's the dormitory. This is 
 where the boys used to play rounders on half 
 holidays ; and that's the window erected in memory 
 of the three poor fellows who were killed in the 
 Crimea." All these details he must get up before- 
 hand as far as possible ; and to get them up he had 
 but his unaided intelligence. To ask questions, he 
 felt, would be absolutely fatal. The town hummed 
 with affairs, but the Bishop disregarded them. He 
 made his way straight to a straggling suburb. 
 
 He found the building, a gaunt brick block upon a 
 windy hill-top, standing a mile or two from the 
 centre, in a forbidding garden, with the usual desolate 
 air of a great British charity. Its mien and aspect 
 were strictly utilitarian. The gates stood open, 
 
.-_), M-'T. vv.v 'T; .Vi ■r.'f.rr I.'.'.;::' 'C\.\v 
 
 158 THE INCIDENTAL BISHOP 
 
 thank heaven, and he walked in, unchallenged. As 
 always happens on such occasions — 'tis a human 
 peculiarity — the work was behindhand, and all hands 
 were impressed into the service making diligent 
 efforts to get the building ship-shape for the date of 
 the opening. It is the humour of contractors to put 
 off everything till the last moment. Accustomed as 
 he was to see his own name and office placarded, it 
 still gave him a strange start today to read the 
 notices on the gate, in large red type : " The New 
 School House will be opened on Tuesday, June the 
 27th, by the Right Reverend the Lord Bishop of 
 Dorchester." He feared to enter. If anybody were 
 to see him now and then recognise him next week, 
 what an appalling disclosure ! 
 
 However, whatever else the Bishop was, he was a 
 brave man, and he pushed his way in boldly. It was 
 not his habit to quail or whimper. He walked round 
 the building with a certain assured air in his upright 
 carriage which secured him from inquiry. Even at 
 the worst of times the Bishop respected himself 
 This was the old school-room, then ; not a doubt 
 about that ; he could hear the hum and buzz of 
 voices inside, the unmistakable drone of boys repeat- 
 ing rote-lessons. He measured it with the eye, 
 length, breadth, and height, and observed its relation 
 to the surrounding buildings. Then he scanned the 
 bricks curiously. Yes, he should say from the colour 
 they must have been laid for more than thirty 
 years ; probably forty ; so that the room must hav ^ 
 been there in the otJier Cecil Glisson's time ; for 
 since Cecil Glisson had been his own name now for 
 more than a quarter of a century, he had grown 
 
-■^'iS^'i '.f7'»-* ,%'■■.;•;; ...■.•<; -v- ■-,. ■•^' \ r, . r^n, 
 
 THE EPISCOPATE STOOPS I 59 
 
 to regard its original owner as merely "the other 
 
 one." 
 
 Was he right in judging that this school-room was 
 so old, though? Liverpool is a smoky place, and 
 brick would discolour there quickly. These walls were 
 certainly newer than those just to the right of them ; 
 not quite so new as those to the left beyond. A 
 mistake on this matter would be, — not indeed quite 
 conclusive, for so many years had passed since, — but, 
 to say the least of it, suspicious. The Bishop recalled 
 the blunders of the Tichborne claimant. He looked 
 carefully from this point of view at every part of the 
 building, except that now in progress. The new 
 works he left intentionally out of consideration, so 
 that they might strike him with as much unfamiliarity 
 by comparison as possible. 
 
 Presently, he drew near the workmen's chief hut. 
 The clerk of the works was there, holding a plan in 
 his hand. The Bishop approached him and mur- 
 mured in his suave episcopal manner : " Might I be 
 permitted to glance at it?" 
 
 " Certainly, sir," the clerk answered ; and that sir 
 struck cold into the Bishop's heart ; he had expected 
 rather to be addressed as mate, for he was clad as 
 a working man on the borderland of the class — a 
 foreman or its equivalent — and he was dimly aware 
 that his voice had bewrayed him. " Thank you so 
 much," he continued, trying his hardest to be gruff ; 
 but it was all in vain ; for even Tom Pringle had had 
 a soft and peculiarly gentle manner of speech, which 
 was one of the first points Olive had noted and 
 admired in him. And now that he was a bishop, 
 his tones had the correct episcopal silveriness. 
 
l60 THE INCIDENTAL BISHOP 
 
 The clerk of the works pointed out some of the 
 details. The Bishop pretended to look and listen ; 
 but his eyes were really elsewhere on other parts 
 of the plan. For as good luck would have it, this 
 was a small-scale elevation of the entire buildings, old 
 and new, with their junctions of passages. More still, 
 it had in its corner a ground plan of the orphanage, 
 marking in red, blue, and black figures the dates 
 of the various successive layers, so to speak. The 
 Bishop glanced at these hastily, and took them in at 
 a glance. Necessity is the mother of memory as well 
 as of invention. He never knew before how well he 
 could take in and carry away a plan ; in two minutes, 
 he had committed the whole thing to the tablets of 
 his brain, and was prepared to recognise every part 
 or not, exactly in proportion as it antedated or post- 
 dated the real Cecil Glisson's sojourn in the institution. 
 
 "Thank you immensely," he said with a genuine 
 sigh of relief to the clerk ; for he had learnt from this 
 chart by how little he had avoided one tremendous 
 pitfall ; the dubious school-room had 7iot been there in 
 Cecil Glisson's day at all ; it was the middle one in 
 time of three successive buildings ; and it was begun 
 in the year after Cecil Glisson went to the Theological 
 College. Thank heaven, that particular Theological 
 College had wholly failed in the struggle for exist- 
 ence between seminaries of budding parsons, and 
 was now a retreat for decayed licensed victuallers ; 
 and therefore he would never be called upon to gush 
 over an apocryphal stay in that building, at any rate ! 
 
 So he said, " Thank you immensely," with a real 
 touch of gratitude. 
 
 "Not at all, sir," the clerk answered, staring hard 
 
THE EPISCOPATE STOOPS l6l 
 
 at him from head to foot, and beginning to wonder 
 whether or not this smooth-voiced stranger was a 
 gentlemanly burglar or a swell-mob pickpocket. 
 
 The Bishop ventured on a question. " Shall you 
 be here on Tuesday ? " he asked nervously after a 
 moment's hesitation. 
 
 The clerk stared again and hesitated in turn. " Not 
 insidel^ he answered. That was a relief, anyhow. 
 Yet the Bishop began to wonder whether it would 
 not be well for him to contract a sudden indisposition 
 and telegraph regrets at the last moment to the 
 committee. For the clerk had taken stock of him 
 with a most suspicious scrutiny. 
 
 He returned to his shabby hotel not a little per- 
 turbed in soul. He was not quite sure that this 
 unpleasant visit had not rather increased than lessened 
 his difficulties. 
 
 II 
 

 CHAPTER XX. 
 
 THE LION'S MOUTH. 
 
 Worry kills. As a matter of fact, through fatigue 
 and worry, the Bishop was very far indeed from being 
 well on the succeeding Monday. His head swam 
 ominously. 
 
 " Olive, dear," he said to his wife when he got up 
 in the morning, " I'm really afraid, after all, I shall 
 have to telegraph and disappoint those Liverpool 
 people. I feel really ill, more than a passing head- 
 ache. I don't believe I shall be up to it." 
 
 " Well, of course, dear, if you're unable to go, you 
 mustn't go," Mrs. Glisson answered, with a luminous 
 platitude. " But at least we might set out and get as 
 far as Liverpool. Then you could see how you are 
 tomorrow. We can sleep tonight at the Adelphi ; 
 the Adelphi's so comfortable : and if you're no better 
 in the morning, we can write and explain. Still, your 
 little ailment will probably pass off ; you know your 
 head is almost always better for the change of a 
 journey." 
 
 The Bishop groaned ; but there was nothing for it 
 but to obey. He was an obedient husband. He 
 went to Liverpool, and, strange to say, felt better 
 next morning, with the usual incredible incalculability 
 
 162 
 
.»:'-. ■ ■■;• '■ , \\ -:, v - ..■•"4, 
 
 THE lion's mouth 163 
 
 of nervous troubles. And when the dreaded hour 
 arrived, he opened the new school with great solemnity 
 and dignity. Fortunately, he had little to say about 
 the institution, himself, or his own supposed connec- 
 tion with it. The Mayor and the others did that part 
 of the speechifying : they dilated on the pleasure it 
 gave them to see that a Spiritual Peer in Dr. Glisson's 
 exalted position had come originally from their own 
 institution ; they enlarged upon the fact that the 
 Lord Bishop of Dorchester, in all his glory, was not 
 ashamed now to own his indebtedness to their Orphan's 
 Home ; and they pointed the usual fallacious moral 
 that every boy there present that day had it open to 
 him to pursue a similar career of usefulness which 
 might lead him at last, if not to so conspicuous and 
 honoured a position, at least to high posts in the 
 Church and Commonwealth. It is annoying to any 
 man to have to sit still and hear himself thus publicly 
 belauded ; to the Bishop, under the circumstances, it 
 was an unspeakable ordeal. Every now and again 
 he caught Olive's eye and gave a profound sigh of 
 impatient resignation. Olive encouraged him silently. 
 Without that wifely aid, he almost believed he must 
 have risen in his place and protested openly. 
 
 For himself, when it came to his turn, the Bishop 
 did little more than briefly allude to the much too 
 kind and flattering things which the Mayor had said 
 about him ; and then passed on to a short and 
 obviously heart-felt phrase about his own exceeding 
 unworthiness. That was one of the little traits that 
 had made Dr. Glisson the most popular of bishops ; 
 his real modesty was undeniable ; consciousness of 
 his false claim saved him at every turn from the 
 
l64 THE INCIDENTAL BISHOP 
 
 besetting episcopal sin of self-complacency. To the 
 orphanage he referred in safe generalities only ; it 
 was his stereotyped way of avoiding direct falsehood. 
 
 He said, with his silvery intonation, that every boy 
 who had been educated in that Home must always 
 look back to his sojourn there with pleasure and 
 gratitude. If any inmate who owed his career of 
 usefulness to the Institution where they were now 
 assembled was ashamed in after life of the sheltering 
 school which had made him what he was, that 
 inmate showed a mean and contemptible spirit. 
 Lads educated under this roof had recalled their 
 boyhood with pride and delight beneath the starry 
 splendours of the Southern Cross and among the 
 waving palms and tree-ferns of the Pacific. (For 
 he remembered what the real Cecil Glisson had told 
 him.) No tie save the tie of parent and child could 
 be closer than the link which bound the pupils of that 
 school in almost filial piety to the Home that had 
 proved itself a father to the fatherless. And never 
 in a long life had he felt more profoundly thankful 
 to have discharged the part he had been called upon 
 to play than he should feel that night when he 
 returned once more with the memory of this duty 
 fulfilled to his home at Dorchester. He added a 
 few general moral and religious platitudes — the 
 inevitable stock-in-trade of an episcopal orator : and 
 then, amid . much applause, and with the usual 
 ceremonies, he solemnly declared this institution 
 open. 
 
 He did not, however, return that night to Dorchester 
 Palace. Mrs. Glisson was so much alarmed at the 
 strain he had obviously endured that she would not 
 
THE lion's mouth 165 
 
 allow him to try the journey back after the fatigue 
 of the ceremony and the accompanying banquet. 
 They remained at the Adelphi, for the Bishop would 
 never consent on such occasions to accept private 
 hospitality. Indeed, the watchful wife began to fear 
 she had done wrong in urging him to come at all ; 
 whatever was the reason, she said to herself, it was 
 perfectly clear that Cecil could not bear to return 
 to Liverpool. 
 
 In the evening, after dinner, they went into the 
 comfortable drawing-room of the hotel ; Mrs. Glisson 
 fancied it might cheer Cecil up to have a little 
 distracting talk with the strangers he met there. 
 An American liner had arrived that day ; and among 
 the guests were not a few of her passengers. The 
 Bishop sat on a sofa trying to make conversation 
 with one or two of these. Both parties, however, 
 were distraught ; the Bishop, by the events of that 
 day of Purgatory ; the Americans, by the novelty of 
 the episcopal gaiters, and the strange apparition of 
 the episcopal apron, both which they surveyed with 
 irresistible amusement. 
 
 At last, one stranger strolled up and sat close by 
 the Bishop. He was a solid-looking ruddy-haired 
 man, with a farmer-like air, and when he spoke, the 
 Bishop recognised at once the familiar Canadian 
 accent of his boyhood. He had heard it twice or 
 thrice during the intervening years ; nay, more, he 
 had even passed unrecognised among people whose 
 names at least he had known at Brantford. But 
 tonight, the coincidence was particularly distasteful 
 to him. He was just about to say : " Olive, my dear, 
 I think I shall go upstairs," when the new-comer 
 
■■»-'■-"■■;;■." :'.'"• ,'» '"^■■■; 
 
 l66 THE INCIDENTAL BISHOP 
 
 leaned across and began conversation abruptly : " The 
 Bishop of Dorchester, they tell me ? " 
 
 The episcopal neck gave a faint inclination of 
 assent. 
 
 " Well, you were Dr. Cecil Glisson, before you were 
 made a bishop, I fancy," the stranger continued. 
 
 Something vaguely familiar about the voice and 
 face made the Bishop falter. " I was," he answered 
 tremulously. 
 
 "Then you must have met my poor cousin Tom 
 Pringle," the Canadian went on, unconscious of the 
 bomb-shell he was so carelessly letting drop : " he 
 sailed on ^ho, John Wesley r 
 
 The room swam round the Bishop. He grew 
 white and red alternately. Olive came to the rescue 
 at the very nick of time. " It was a most painful 
 episode in my husband's life," she put in softly. " The 
 memory of it never ceases to disturb him to this 
 present day. It almost killed him. You know he 
 was shot by the captain of the John Wesley ; and 
 he had been tenderly nursed, before the explosion, by 
 your cousin, Tom Pringle." 
 
 "Oh, I know about all that," Hiram Pringle 
 answered — for the Bishop now recognised his cousin 
 after thirty-five years of absence. " I made lots of 
 inquiries about poor Tom in Australia. He was 
 blown up in the explosion, the same time that you 
 were. Only, he didn't come to again. Well, Bishop, 
 any way, I'm glad to meet you." He used the 
 familiar Canadian mode of address which was the 
 only one he knew. " I was fond of Tom, and I 
 should like to hear from you anything you can tell 
 me about the poor fellow's last voyage." 
 
THE lion's mouth 167 
 
 What was the Bishop to do ? Under these trying 
 circumstances, he could not seem cold and cruel 
 toward the dead sailor who was supposed to have 
 tended him carefully through a severe illness and 
 probably to have died through his devotion to duty 
 and his unwillingness to join Bully Ford and his 
 comrades. In five minutes he found himself launching 
 forth on a touching tribute to his own dead self; 
 extolling his own tenderness, his care, his womanly 
 nursing ; making a hero and a martyr out of the 
 very Tom Pringle who sat there that moment in a 
 falsely-gained episcopal garb, hating himself inwardly 
 for his own cowardice and deception. Tom Pringle 
 — why the Tom Pringle who signed articles on the 
 John Wesley was a moral innocent compared with 
 the black heart of the Cecil Glisson who now wore 
 his body. 
 
 The ruddy-haired man listened to him with real 
 emotion. " Poor old Tom," he mused, with tears in 
 his eyes, in spite of all the years ; " he was a real 
 good sort. Many's the time he and I played truant 
 from school to go fishing for black bass and hunting 
 mink in the creek — the creek down by Brantford — 
 let me see, what did we call it ? " 
 
 It was on the Bishop's tongue to answer " Little 
 Cataraqui Creek," but he pulled himself up in time, 
 and held a prudent silence. 
 
 " And you have prospered in this world, I suppose," 
 he ventured to say at last, in his bland clerical voice, 
 seeing that Hiram had the air of a man of money. 
 
 " Oh, pretty well," his cousin answered ; " pretty 
 well : I've made my pile : though you mustn't think, 
 either, my cousin Tom was no more than a common 
 
1 68 THE INCIDENTAL BISHOP 
 
 seaman by birth because he was sailing as one when 
 you happened to meet him. Tom was a better 
 schol ir than me, and a good-looking fellow, too : he 
 might have been a gentleman if he hadn't chosen to 
 run away to sea like a foolish young donkey. He 
 had plenty of brains, Tom had. Yes, I've done 
 pretty well for myself; gone into the lumber trade 
 on the Upper Ottawa, and got tolerable concessions. 
 I don't want to boast, but I ought to be worth to-day, 
 say my million dollars." 
 
 " Two hundred thousand pounds ! " the Bishop 
 echoed, with perhaps more alacrity than was to be 
 expected from a man who ought by his own account 
 never to have set foot on the American continent. 
 " That's a very large fortune. Well, perhaps your 
 cousin Tom, if he had stopped in Canada, might have 
 done as well in the end. There's no accounting for 
 the wonderful dispensations of Providence." 
 
 " Though, mind you," Hiram interposed, " I think 
 so well of Tom that I wouldn't think better of him 
 not if he was wearing that pair of gaiters you have 
 on this minute." 
 
 The Bishop reddened again ; but fortunately Olive 
 set his confusion down to what she considered an 
 unsuitable allusion to the episcopal leggings. 
 
 Hiram scanned him from head to foot, with a slow 
 long .stare. " You're not unlike him either," he said. 
 Then for a second a queer feeling came over him. 
 He was just about to add slowly : " Why — you — are 
 Tom Pringle " — when the ab^w^rdity of the identifica- 
 tion burst upon him all at once, and he contented 
 himself with saying : " You might be his brother." 
 
 The Bishop marked the look and the hesitating 
 
THE lion's mouth 169 
 
 manner. He dared not risk it any longer. "We 
 were considered like one another on the John Wesley l^ 
 he admitted stiffly. Then he rose and shook his 
 cousin's hand. "Well, good night, Mr. Pringle," he 
 went on, as cordially as he could manage. " I — I am 
 glad to have met you." Oh, appalling falsehood ! 
 " I cannot fail to cherish the most friendly feelings 
 towards any relation or friend of poor Tom Pringle, 
 whom I remember with affection and gratitude and — 
 and — Olive, my dear, give me your arm. I — I feel 
 far from well. Mr. Pringle must excuse me. And 
 the sun was so hot ! This day has been too much 
 for me ! " 
 
 Olive helped him to his room. He waved his hand 
 to Hiram. Once safely upstairs, he broke down 
 utterly. He sat on the side of the bed and cried like 
 a baby. Olive blamed herself bitterly for bringing 
 him there against his will. His nerves were out of 
 gear. She decided she would never again urge him 
 to take part in one of these horrid distasteful func- 
 tions. 
 
 After all, she thought, he was quite right. She 
 applied his own favourite test. The apostles never 
 attended the laying of foundation stones with masonic 
 honours. 
 
 But as he sat there that night, the Bishop made up 
 his mind. This must cease for ever. He could not 
 go on living this lie for a life-time. Each day that 
 passed made the rdle more hateful. While he was a 
 mere country parson, it had been easier to carry it 
 off ; but now, his very conspicuousncss made his irk- 
 some task harder. 
 
v:^- ■ • . ■ J t »•=.•,. ,-»;^- ,-\ 
 
 CHAPTER XXI. 
 
 A QUESTION OF ORDINATION. 
 
 A WEEK or two later, there was a dinner party at 
 the Palace ; a clerical dinner party ; what Evelyn 
 irreverently described in her own curt dialect as 
 " feeding the diocese." Evelyn was a " sport " in an 
 episcopal family. Her language was based on the 
 undergraduate model : her ideas were surreptitiously 
 derived from yellow French romances. 
 
 Throughout the whole of dinner, Evelyn's manner 
 had been uneasy. A Canon of Christ Church was 
 among the guests, fresh over from the House. 
 Evelyn asked him at dessert, having bottled up her 
 eagerness so long with difficulty, whether the class- 
 list in Greats was out yet. Oh, yes, out this after- 
 noon, the Canon answered. Evelyn wondered, uncon- 
 cernedly, who had got Firsts. " Two Christ Church 
 men," the Canon believed. " I forget their names." 
 Evelyn's anxiety controlled itself admirably. 
 
 That's the worst of a secret engagement, she 
 thought to herself ; you can't even have a telegram. 
 Still, where would the fun of an engagement come in 
 if it weren't secret ? A girl who has the misfortune 
 to belong to an episcopal household is hard put to 
 it for romance ; and Evelyn, for all her slanginess, 
 
 170 
 
A QUESTION OF ORDINATION 171 
 
 was essentially romantic. The excitement of secrecy 
 was worth to her mind even the consequent necessity 
 for foregoing a telegram. 
 
 " Do you happen to remember whether Mr. 
 Beddingley of Oriel got a Second ? " she inquired in 
 the same unconcerned tone. " He comes here some- 
 times." 
 
 " Why a Second, Evelyn ? " the Bishop asked. 
 " You prejudge the case, my child. It would have 
 been kinder to ask whether he had got a First, 
 wouldn't it?" 
 
 Evelyn shrugged her shoulders faintly. " A Second 
 would be good bizz for poor little Beddingley," she 
 answered. 
 
 " He's an excellent young man," Mrs. Glisson 
 interposed, not even venturing to object to bizz as 
 an element in a young lady's vocabulary. " He has 
 such very high principles." 
 
 " I haven't measured them," Evelyn retorted, " so I 
 don't know exactly how high they run ; but if they're 
 more than five feet five, they must stick up above his 
 head, which would be uncomfortable for walking." 
 
 " My dear," her father interposed, " you are unjust 
 to young Beddingley. He is precisely the sort of 
 man I should choose by preference to assist me in 
 the arduous work of a diocese." 
 
 " Cut out for an examining chaplain," Evelyn 
 responded with a snap. " That's just how I 
 measured him myself. He was born examining. 
 But the Canon hasn't told us whether he got his 
 Second." 
 
 " I forget whether his name was in the list," the 
 Canon answered, pressing his lips together with a 
 
172 THE INCIDENTAL BISHOP 
 
 dubitative air, as when one judges an unknown 
 vintage. " Beddingley ; Beddingley ; no," he shook 
 his head ; " I can't recall him." 
 
 " Then there was a Mr. Thornbury of Merton 
 whom I met at the Dean's," Evelyn continued, with 
 a carefully casual manner which Mrs. Glisson noted 
 as a sure mark of much more active interest. " He 
 was going in this term. Such a jolly young man. 
 He won the hundred yards at the 'Varsity grinds. 
 Do you happen to know whether he got a First ? " 
 
 " Why not a Second ? " Mrs. Glisson asked mis- 
 chievously. 
 
 Evelyn betrayed herself by a faint blush. " Because 
 he's really clever," she answered, — " and probably has 
 principles several inches shorter than Mr. Beddingley's. 
 At least, he's six inches taller ; so perhaps on what 
 Daddy calls the law of compensation, he may make 
 up in height for what he lacks in principles. For my 
 own part, I prefer them to take it out that way. I 
 can never understand why people are so dead stuck 
 on principles." And she looked about her defiantly. 
 
 " Thornbury ? " the Canon repeated, rolling the 
 name on his palate, as one rolls an uncertain port, 
 to see whether he recognised it. " Thornbury ? 
 Thornbury ? Of Merton, did you say ? Yes, I 
 think he got a Third ; in fact, I recall it now, — 
 Thornbury of Merton." 
 
 But Evelyn was not looking or listening. Suddenly 
 her eyes had wandered at a bound from the table 
 and across the lawn ; and had fixed themselves on a 
 fluttering white object that flickered strangely above 
 the green of the rhododendrons. She knew that 
 sign well. It was Alex Thornbury, creeping close in 
 
A QUESTION OF ORDINATION I73 
 
 his canoe under the garden bank, and giving her the 
 signal that he was there to meet her. 
 
 In a second, she had forgotten the strawberries on 
 her plate, and was full of the adventure. Her own 
 handkerchief fluttered unobtrusively in reply. She 
 must slip out somehow and learn from Alex himself 
 whether or not he had really taken a Third in the 
 Schools and thereby wrecked his chance of an in- 
 spectorship. 
 
 "What are you doing about Greenslade of Reading? " 
 the Canon asked, changing the subject abruptly. 
 
 The Bishop's face grew dark. Two vertical lines 
 marked his broad forehead. " Greenslade of Reading," 
 he repeated. " Ah, it's a very sad business. One 
 cannot help being grieved at it. It appears there 
 can now be no shadow of doubt that the poor fellow 
 was never ordained at all. His ordination letters 
 have turned out on examination, I regret to say, to 
 be a complete forgery." 
 
 " I'm sorry you've introduced the question. Canon," 
 Mrs. Glisson broke in. "I've never known the Bishop 
 so distressed and absorbed about anything since we 
 came to Dorchester. It has been a terrible blow 
 to him." 
 
 " He was such an excellent clergyman, you see," 
 the Bishop continued. " Or rather, one thought him 
 so. There was hardly a man in the diocese whom 
 I respected and trusted more than I did poor 
 Greenslade." 
 
 " It's a shocking disclosure," the Canon assented, 
 helping himself to burnt almonds. " A most shocking 
 disclosure. This is excellent Madeira." 
 
 " The interesting question to my mind," a country 
 
174 THE INCIDENTAL BISHOP 
 
 rector put in, " is this ; how about the validity of 
 the marriages he celebrated ? " 
 
 Evelyn rose with sham dignity. " Oh, if you're 
 going to discuss the validity of marriage," she observed 
 in a mock serious voice, " this is no place for me. 
 The episcopacy I can stand : episcopacy today is 
 a social figment. But not the marriage question. I 
 draw a line there. I think I had better go out into 
 the garden." And she seized the opportunity. 
 Mrs. Glisson breathed freely. 
 
 " The marriages are valid," the Bishop went on, not 
 heeding Evelyn's parenthesis. " That point has been 
 decided for us already by the law courts. I have 
 looked up the precedents and I find the case is fully 
 provided for. A marriage is valid if solemnised in a 
 church by the de facto incumbent, or by any person 
 who has been accepted as a clergyman by the bishop 
 of the diocese, and whom the parties involved have 
 both regarded as a bona fide priest in holy orders of 
 the Church of England." 
 
 " Yes ; legally," the rector assented : he was a 
 close-shaven person, thin-lipped, austere, with a very 
 advanced cassock and a stiff white collar. " That is 
 a question for the law. But ecclesiastically and 
 sacramentally ? That's the point for our considera- 
 tion. What I ask is this — Can the Church regard 
 such persons as in any true sense married ? " 
 
 The Bishop's lips were white. His voice faltered. 
 " I cannot allow the word * sacramentally ' to pass 
 without protest," he interposed, diverging to a side 
 issue. " Marriage has never been admitted as a 
 sacrament by the authoritative voice of the Church of 
 England." 
 
A QUESTION OF ORDINATION 175 
 
 But the rector was not to be turned aside. " I. 
 waive that point," he said tartly ; " though I do not 
 allow that I unreservedly accept your lordship's 
 correction. But, omitting the word sacrament, the 
 important question for us as churchmen is this — a 
 question for churchmen of all shades of opinion, 
 sacramental or evangelical ; are couples married by 
 this iTian Greenslade, who was never a priest, or even 
 a deacon, to be considered as married at all, in the 
 Church's sense ? or are they not rather to be 
 regarded as living together in a legalised union, a 
 meretricious union, in the same way as if they had 
 merely been married, or rather united (for I cannot 
 consent to call it marriage) by civil contract before a 
 registrar? " 
 
 The Bishop paused. " It is a very grave problem," 
 he answered, with true episcopal caution, for a bishop 
 must never give a categorical answer about anything 
 on earth without reserving to himself some chance of 
 hedging. " I would not care to decide it offhand 
 without due deliberation." 
 
 " In my opinion," the rector observed with decision, 
 " such couples are living in unconscious sin : they 
 ought certainly to be remarried at once by an 
 ordained clergyman. The bond in which they 
 remain is a purely human one." 
 
 " I don't quite see that," the Canon interposed. 
 He was a safe Moderate. "You are pushing the 
 doctrine of priestly sanction one degree too far. 
 Surely the children born already of such marriages 
 are lawful children ? " 
 
 " Lawful — yes — before the law ; but born in Chris- 
 tian wedlock, no. The union, though unfortunate, 
 
176 THE INCIDENTAL BISHOP 
 
 is obviously not a Christian marriage. I would call 
 such persons innocent but irregular." 
 
 The Bishop deliberated. His manner was dis- 
 traught. *• May we not say," he began, raising one 
 didactic forefinger, " that here we must distinguish 
 between the fact and the intention ? The persons 
 who unfortunately presented themselves to be married 
 by our friend Grecnslade — I mean, by this unhappy 
 man who has so deeply disappointed our just ex- 
 pectations — presented themselves under the belief that 
 they were being married by a bona fide priest of the 
 Church of England. Their intention being thus 
 ecclesiastically and formally correct, they are surely 
 guiltless as laymen in the matter. Many of them 
 may never chance to hear that Greenslade was not 
 a priest at all ; and such persons cannot, I should 
 say, be considered as anything other than truly 
 married. Charity, my dear sir, charity ! Do not 
 let us substitute an ecclesiastical figment for the plain 
 fact that these people have conformed as far as they 
 were able to the rules of the Church, and so have 
 been as nearly married as they could manage. The 
 intention, after all, is not the intention everything ? " 
 
 But the rector was not to be silenced by mere 
 episcopal opinion. His reverence for bishops was 
 greater in the abstract than in the concrete — as often 
 happens with members of his school of thought. 
 " I do not say such people are living in open sin," 
 he answered, bristling up. " That would be ignoring, 
 as your lordship suggests, their innocence in intention. 
 Or rather, I would put it, they are living in sin, but 
 with innocent ignorance of the fact ; and to commit a 
 sinful act not knowing that you commit it leaves the 
 
A QUESTION OF ORDINATION \^^ 
 
 nature of the act in itself unchanged, though it may of 
 course excuse the person. I would not assert that such 
 people arc actually doing wrong ; but I do assert that 
 the moment they discover the true state of the case, 
 it becomes their boundcn duty as members of the 
 Church to put themselves right by getting remarried 
 at once — or, to speak more correctly, by substituting 
 a regular and canonical marriage for the irregular 
 and really impious ceremony in which they have 
 unwittingly and unwillingly taken part" 
 
 " It would no doubt be safer," the Canon admitted. 
 He preferred constitutionally to be on the safe side. 
 
 " Put it this way," the rector went on, warming up 
 to his subject. " Suppose, for argument's sake, a 
 person understood to be a bishop, and acting as such, 
 were found some day to be in reality a pretender " 
 
 *' WHAT? " the Bishop exclaimed, giving a sudden 
 start from his chair and turning white with emotion. 
 " A bishop in forged orders ! " 
 
 " I put the case argiiinenti gratia, my lord," the 
 rector went on, still blandly, though taken aback 
 by the startled way his diocesan received this appalling 
 suggestion. *' If it is permitted by Providence that 
 a simple priest should deceive the faithful, it might 
 surely be permitted that a bishop should do likewise. 
 Indeed I believe it is historically true that just as 
 there have been antipopes, there have been anti- 
 episcopi. Now, do you mean to assert that the 
 persons ordained, or apparently ordained, by such 
 a mock bishop, are really priests \x\ any ecclesiastical 
 sense ? Could such persons for a moment be per- 
 mitted to administer the sacraments of the Church 
 for instance ? " 
 
 12 
 
178 THE INCIDENTAL BISHOP 
 
 " Certainly not," the Canon answered. 
 
 But the Bishop said nothing. It was not the 
 rector's argument that silenced him. He leant back 
 in his chair, very deeply perturbed. He had tried 
 for years to keep from asking himself these very 
 questions, and now he could delay them no longer. 
 This case of Mr. Greenslade had made a solution of 
 the point imperative. Do what he would, there was 
 no way out of it. He must face the question from 
 the ecclesiastical point of view ; what enormity had 
 he committed by pretending to be a bishop when he 
 was not even a priest ? and what was the status of 
 the priests and deacons ordained by him, and all the 
 persons admitted by him to confirmation and other 
 rites of the Church ? 
 
 Lost in his own reverie, the Bishop leaned back in 
 his place and let the stream of dialectics flow by him 
 unperceived, while the Canon, the rector, and the 
 other clergymen at table took sides either way as to 
 the validity of acts performed by one who was not a 
 priest but supposed to be so. 
 
 "If such an interloper were never discovered," the 
 Canon objected, " he might even become a bishop ; 
 and in that case, apostolic succession might altogether 
 be vitiated." 
 
 " The Welsh and Cornish clergy of the old Celtic 
 Church were not lawfully consecrated," another 
 disputant objected. " It is doubtful, according to the 
 latest authorities, whether they were even priests. 
 They were certainly not bishops. The way in which 
 they received the apostolic succession, if any, is far 
 from certain. They were undoubtedly heretics. The 
 way in which they conformed is still unknown ; and 
 
 ^k 
 
A QUESTION OF ORDINATION 1 79 
 
 we cannot discover whether they were ever really 
 reconciled to the Church, and admitted to orders, or 
 whether their status was irregularly recognised by 
 the See of Canterbury. So that the whole of the 
 Church in Wales and Cornwall may suffer from the 
 very irregularity you mention." 
 
 " And that irregularity," the Canon continued, 
 " must have affected the entire body of the Church of 
 England ; for priests ordained by Welsh and Cornish 
 Britons may have risen in time to be English 
 bishops." 
 
 " More than that," said the historian of the party. 
 "For since Nicholas Breakspear, who became pope 
 as Adrian IV., was ordained in the West Country, he 
 had probably some taint of these irregular Celtic 
 orders ; and that taint, he, as pope, may have 
 imported into universal Latin Christendom." 
 
 The Bishop caught that last phrase and gave a 
 sigh of relief. After all, he was not the only man 
 through whom offences had come ; though he knew 
 it was better that a millstone should be tied round 
 his neck and he should be cast into the sea than that 
 he should thus vitiate the whole stream of the Church 
 of England. 
 
CHAPTER XXII. 
 
 A LIGHTER TREATMENT. 
 
 Meanwhile, Evelyn had slipped from the table 
 half unperceived, and strolled down with ostentatious 
 carelessness to the weeping willow by the water's edge. 
 
 She did not get into her canoe at once, however, 
 though the boat-house lay close beside the willow. 
 To have done so, before her mother's eyes, and in her 
 light evening dress, would have been to court inquiry, 
 if not prohibition. So she wandered about aimlessly 
 among the rhododendron beds, instead, picking a 
 white pink now and again and smelling at it ostenta- 
 tiously, as if she were merely engaged in walking 
 around to cool herself after the heat of the dining- 
 room and the theological discussion. Thence, by 
 slow degrees, she disappeared behind the rose-bushes, 
 and gradually worked her way back again unperceived 
 to the boat-house. There, she slipped in quietly, 
 while Mrs. Glisson's eyes were fixed with mute atten- 
 tion on the silent white face of the Bishop ; and, 
 seating herself in her canoe, pushed it out under the 
 bank, bending low as she did so lest her mother should 
 perceive her. In two minutes more, she was safe 
 behind the loose-strife, and paddling at all speed for 
 Day's Lock and the backwater. 
 
 A second canoe awaited her among the irises. 
 
A LIGHTER TREATMENT l8l 
 
 Evelyn paddled up with rapid strokes till she was 
 within talking distance. " Well ? " she called out in 
 haste, and in a very eager voice. " A First ? Now 
 wasn't it ? " 
 
 Alex nodded in reply. " Yes, a First," he answered 
 gaily. " They say, the best First of the year." And 
 he laughed aloud in his triumph. 
 
 Evelyn affected not to be relieved, though the 
 Canon's false report had really alarmed her. " I 
 knew it," she answered carelessly. " I hadn't the 
 slightest fear, dear old man, that you wouldn't get 
 one." But she showed her relief in her face, for all 
 that; and she permitted herself to be kissed with a 
 tender yielding which was not quite her wont. As 
 a rule, she pretended that demonstrations of affection 
 were detrimental to her bodice, her hair, or her laces. 
 " Maud took the kiss sedately," says Tennyson. A 
 lady should take it so. But Evelyn did not always 
 rise to this standard of taste ; she was apt to make 
 believe she did not care about kissing — a pretence 
 more common at a lower level. 
 
 She withdrew her face, flushed. "Then, in that 
 case," she said slowly, "it occurs to me, we are 
 engaged, Alex." 
 
 " I believe so," Alex answered, still clinging to her 
 hand. " You said you wouldn't be engaged to me till 
 I had got through my Schools. Though what precise 
 difference being engaged makes to us I don't quite 
 know, Evey. It seems to be a purely grammatical 
 distinction. I never could understand it." 
 
 " 1 think," Evelyn answered, " it makes this differ- 
 ence — that we look forward to getting married, more 
 or less, some time or other." 
 
1 82 THE INCIDENTAL BISHOP 
 
 " Oh, that's it, is it ? " Alex asked, seizing her hand 
 once more. 
 
 Evelyn nodded her head sagely. " So I've always 
 understood," she answered. 
 
 " But meanwhile, Evey — I may ? " 
 
 " Yes, if you like, Alex. . . . There, that's quite 
 enough now. Suppose somebody were to come, dear." 
 
 " Nobody '11 come." 
 
 " Well, they're all in the dining-room at present> 
 discussing the validity of orders or something. Mums 
 is looking after Daddy. He's got apostolical succes- 
 sion awfully bad on the brain this evening. So I 
 expect we're all right. Apostolical succession is 
 always a safe draw for an hour's discussion. . . . Well, 
 the next thing is, we must see about this inspector- 
 ship." 
 
 " I might get a fellowship, Evey, if it weren't for " 
 
 " No, you'd never get a fellowship, dear boy. I've 
 asked one or two men — dons, don't you know ; and 
 they told me that was out of the question, because of 
 screwing up the Tutor. / know it was all right ; but 
 they say it wouldn't do as a matter of discipline. 
 The episode was too public. So you must try the 
 inspectorship." 
 
 " Even then, we couldn't marry, I'm afraid, for ever 
 and ever so long." 
 
 " I don't care. If only we're engaged. Being 
 engaged is nice enough. It's rather a mistake being 
 in such a precious hurry to get married. Men are 
 always like that. I believe most girls prefer a 
 tolerably long engagement. Just tolerably long, 
 don't you know ; not quite as long as the face you're 
 making ; but just about so long. It gives one time 
 
A LIGHTER TREATMENT 1 83 
 
 to roll about the fact of being engaged on one's 
 palate. One gets the taste of it so. You men want 
 to bolt it. You're always so greedy." 
 
 " How can one help it, Evey, when you look so 
 sweetly saucy ? " 
 
 " Well, that's not business. I'm ever so glad you've 
 got this First though, Alex : but I always knew 
 you'd get it. Didn't I say so when you told me you 
 hadn't read all last term? I said: 'Oh, nonsense; 
 you're clever enough to do it on your own, if you 
 choose, without reading.' And you were, you see. 
 So I was right. There are men, like Mr. Beddingley, 
 who can mug and grub and just manage to scrape 
 through with a Third, after reading for ages ; and 
 there are men like you who can pull through without 
 trying, and get a First into the bargain. By the 
 bye, where did poor little Beddingley come out ? " 
 
 " A Third." 
 
 " I told you so ! Mums will be angry. She has 
 destined me in her own mind for poor dear little 
 Beddingley. She's gone on that man : he has ' such 
 very high principles!' She means him to be Daddy's 
 examining chaplain ; and me to marry him ; and 
 she intends to push him into a minor canonry ; and 
 so, through the regular gradation, till he's a pre- 
 bendary or something. He's so thoroughly mediocre 
 that he's sure to succeed. Don't you fancy me 
 married to a prebendary, Alex ! I wonder what pre- 
 bendaries are supposed to do. It's a worse puzzle 
 than archdeacons. And I look as if I were cut out 
 for one ! " 
 
 She held her paddle at an angle which indicated 
 the expectation of an immediate advance from the 
 
184 THE INCIDENTAL BISHOP 
 
 opposite side. Alex accepted the hint. "You 
 wicked little pagan, you look like the sauciest, 
 naughtiest little girl that ever disgraced an episcopal 
 palace," he answered, leaning over and kissing her. 
 " Evey, it's all too delightful, tonight. I've got my 
 First ; and I've got you with me ; and I'm going to 
 marry you ; and I won't go home to Oxford till I 
 don't know what hour ; and as for the proctor, I 
 don't care a " 
 
 " Oh, hush ; naughty boy ; " she clapped her hand 
 on his mouth. "And in the Palace grounds too! If 
 
 Mums were to hear you she'd Now, Alex, take 
 
 care ! you'll really upset me." 
 
 So they continued to discuss the possibilities of an 
 inspectorship, and the probable length of their 
 engagement — Evelyn's preference for length growing 
 restrained each time to more and more modest 
 limits — while the party in the dining-room were 
 occupied at the same time in discussing the validity 
 of early Celtic orders. Mrs. Glisson's eyes were 
 fixed hard upon the Bishop. His look was vacant. 
 More than ever she feared the strain of the diocese 
 was telling upon him. So deeply intent was she 
 upon her husband that she almost forgot for the time 
 her watchful care of her daughter. And indeed, in 
 that party, she had no reason to fear for Evelyn ; 
 though Evelyn, she admitted to herself, was the sort 
 of girl who could get into mischief whenever one 
 turned one's back ; but what harm could a girl, with 
 the best intentions of mischief, manage to extract 
 from the rhododendron beds at the Palace or the 
 dear old Canon ? And Cecil this evening was more 
 distraught than ever ; she feared the double care of 
 
 
A LIGHTER TREATMENT 1 85 
 
 the diocese and of his weight of learning was begin- 
 ning to tell even upon that fine physique which he 
 had brought from Australia. 
 
 So for an hour or two she never thought more of 
 Evelyn. After coffee had been served, however, and 
 the details of the Wallingford Ruridecanal Associa- 
 tion discussed at full, it suddenly occurred to her that 
 Evelyn was still missing. Could she have gone out 
 in the canoe — in her thin evening dress — and at this 
 hour of the evening? and if so, could she have 
 managed to upset herself and get into the river ? 
 Visions of Evelyn drowned rose vivid before her 
 maternal eyes. Yet even in her momentary dread, 
 she would not unnecessarily disturb or frighten 
 dear Cecil. He had more than enough burdens of 
 his own already. She would stroll out into the 
 grounds and look herself for Evelyn. 
 
 She walked along the bank as far as the boat- 
 house. It was even as she feared. The canoe was 
 missing ! If nothing worse had happened, the child 
 would catch her death of cold in that light Roumanian 
 embroidered muslin blouse, and not even a shawl to 
 throw over her shoulders. Much alarmed for Evelyn's 
 safety, she continued her way along the water's edge, 
 till she had reached the backwater. There, a confused 
 murmur of voices struck her ear, coming from a thick 
 bed of wild yellow irises. Mrs. Glisson paused. Her 
 first feeling was one of sincere thankfulness. Evelyn 
 v/as not drowned, at any rate ; that was her voice, for 
 one. But the other — was a man's. And what man 
 could Evelyn have picked up with at Dorchester ? 
 
 Maternal solicitude made Mrs. Glisson risk a 
 wetting of her feet. She stepped down on to a knoll 
 
1 86 THE INCIDENTAL BISHOP 
 
 of tufted sedge among the irises. Then she craned 
 her neck and looked over softly. 
 
 An alarming vision burst upon her eyes. Evelyn 
 and a man whom she did not even know by sight 
 were bidding one another an affectionate adieu, with 
 the usual demonstrations of their age and relation. 
 
 Mrs. Glisson was taken aback. " Evelyn," she 
 called out severely, " is that you ? " 
 
 " Yes, Mums," the Bishopina answered, unmoved, 
 taking the bull by the horns. " And this is Mr. 
 Thornbury. Alex, dear, my mother." 
 
 Mrs. Glisson gasped. " But, my child, you are out 
 here — at this hour — in that very thin frock — and 
 alone ! " 
 
 " No, Mamma ; not alone ; with Mr. Thornbury." 
 
 " But — we do not know him ! " 
 
 " Oh, that doesn't matter, Mums ; it's all right. 
 He^s Alex. There's no harm in that. You see, I'm 
 engaged to him." 
 
 For a moment Mrs. Glisson was inclined to be 
 miserable. Then it recurred to her at once that she 
 too had been a girl ; and that she too had got 
 engaged to dear Cecil without the parental sanction. 
 Though to be sure, that was to Cecil — while this was 
 only to some unknown person. Still, she recognised 
 at once that Evelyn was a very peculiar girl, who 
 would have her own way, and to give Evelyn her 
 way was the only safe course with her. So she made 
 up her mind at once. "In that case," she said 
 promptly, with unexpected acquiescence, " I think 
 Mr. Thornbury had better step up to the house and 
 see your Papa, and we can put things at once on a 
 re'gular basis." 
 
 ;l;^>- 
 
A LIGHTER TREATMENT 1 87 
 
 Alex stood up in his canoe, with his hat in his 
 hand, looking peculiarly sheepish. A man always 
 finds such positions trying. But Evelyn was quite un- 
 abashed. " Very well, dear," she answered. " That's 
 just as you wish. Sooner or later, I suppose, we 
 must tell Daddy about it. And the betting is always 
 five to one on sooner against later. Alex is at 
 Merton, Mums, and he was just going to catch the 
 last train to Oxford when you came and interrupted us. 
 I expect now you've made him lose it. So he'll have 
 to sleep at the Palace all night, and Daddy'll have to 
 write and tell his Tutor he was delayed with us by 
 accident." 
 
 She said it with gusto ; for this sort of adventure 
 exactly suited her. 
 
CHAPTER XXIII. 
 AN OFFICIAL INTERVIEW. 
 
 "Sir Nathaniel will see you at once," said the 
 
 Private Secretary, in the most deferential of his 
 
 twenty-seven carefully graduated manners. " But he 
 
 hopes your business will be brief, my lord : for he 
 
 expects a deputation from the Congregationalists and 
 
 Baptists at 11.30 ; in spite of which, he would really 
 
 like to give you a few minutes. This way, if you 
 
 please. Lovely morning, isn't it ? " 
 
 The Bishop followed the underling into the great 
 
 man's inner room. Sir Nathaniel Merriton raised 
 
 his head from a pile of papers, which he thrust away 
 
 wearily. " Ah, Dr. Glisson ? " he said in his big 
 
 languid voice, as of a tired giant. '* Delighted to see 
 
 you, my dear bishop. I don't think we've met since 
 
 you've worn a mitre. Do you wear a mitre, by the 
 
 way? Dr. Gregory of Lindisfarne was at Oxford 
 
 with me, you know, and in those days had hardly 
 
 more theology, I'm afraid, than the rest of us. He 
 
 preferred Catullus to the Pauline Epistles. But I 
 
 went down to Northumberland a few weeks since — 
 
 on official business, I need hardly say — I am the slave 
 
 of the office ; and whom should I see at a function in 
 
 the Minster, but Charlie Gregory, if you please, as 
 
 my Lord Bishop in excelsiSy wearing a pea-green 
 
 188 
 
 .a' 
 
AN OFFICIAL INTERVIEW 1 89 
 
 object on his back which I should describe in my 
 ignorance as probably a cope, and carrying in his 
 hands what I should also be inclined (under correc- 
 tion) to designate as a crozier. It was awfully funny. 
 And I remember when Charlie Gregory lighted a fire 
 in Tom-Quad, and was promptly sent down for it." 
 
 "A man outlives such things," the Bishop said 
 wearily. (He does not outlive being a wolf in sheep's 
 clothing.) 
 
 "Some people do — and some people don't," the 
 representative of governmental education replied with 
 cheerful tolerance. " It's the old story, you know ; 
 one man may steal a horse, and another mayn't look 
 over the hedge. That's popular wisdom. We have it 
 exemplified here. Yoii are the only bishop on the 
 bench I would have received this morning. Very 
 undiplomatic to tell you so, you think. Not at all ; 
 not at all : most diplomatic. For does not true 
 diplomacy consist in knowing and understanding 
 your man ? If I had said that to the Bishop of 
 Lindisfarne, for example, he would have commented 
 upon it at a Church Congress as a gross slight to 
 the episcopate. But when I say it to you^ I know 
 that you will accept it as a personal compliment to 
 the most reasonable and moderate bishop on the 
 bench. So, having greased the wheels of conversation 
 with a little judicious compliment, let's get to 
 business. I'm expecting these interminable Baptists 
 at half past eleven. I call them interminable to you 
 in strict confidence. Believe me, my dear sir. Baptists 
 are almost as exacting as bishops ; and between the 
 two, the upper and nether grindstones of the educa- 
 tional mill, you behold me crushed — annihilated." 
 
190 THE INCIDENTAL BISHOP 
 
 Sir Nathaniel drew himself up to his six feet four, 
 with shoulders to match, and looked about as little 
 crushed as any man in England. But the Bishop 
 understood him. What he said was true. He could 
 talk the usual circumlocutory dialect of Government 
 offices whenever that tongue was necessary ; but he 
 could also unbend when he chose with a very effec- 
 tive candour which committed him to nothing, while 
 it flattered his companion with a sense of belonging 
 to the inner circle. 
 
 The Bishop discussed for ten minutes or so the 
 affairs of the Church schools in the diocese of 
 Dorchester, which were the object of his visit. Sir 
 Nathaniel listened ; assented ; stifled a yawn ; smiled 
 genially ; was cordial in generalities, and when it came 
 to particulars would give his best consideration (but 
 no immediate answer) to all practical suggestions 
 the Bishop had to urge upon him. He was suave 
 and non-committing. " By the way," he said at last, 
 turning over some papers listlessly, " there will be 
 a vacancy, I see, for a junior examiner in your 
 district by Christmas. It is strictly irregular ; but 
 I ask between ourselves. I ask for information 
 merely ; it being my duty to make things as comfort- 
 able as I can for all parties concerned, without, if 
 I may be excused the expression, making hay of the 
 public service. Now, is there any candidate or any 
 existing inspector whom you would particularly like 
 to see transferred to your circuit? Because, if so, 
 we make it a rule never to be influenced in the 
 slightest degree by the private wishes of anybody 
 and more especially of bishops ; but we might con- 
 sider the person in the oidinary rotation ; and z/" he 
 
 ^A 
 
AN OFFICIAL INTERVIEW 191 
 
 happened to be in all respects by far the most 
 suitable public servant we could find for the place, 
 and if we felt disposed to risk appointing him, the 
 fact that you desired to have him there at your side, 
 might possibly not be allowed to tell against him. 
 I say, it might possibly not ; and on the other hand 
 it might possibly be fatal to his chances. Govern- 
 ment is government. So if you care to hazard it, 
 and will mention anyone, this department will 
 endeavour to forget the person's name at once, and 
 will appoint entirely in the public interest." 
 
 " I understand that, of course," the Bishop an- 
 swered in his guileless way. " And I shall not be 
 surprised if I find my candidate is not appointed." 
 
 " Nor if you find he is," Sir Nathaniel interposed, 
 smiling. " We are impartial, recollect, im-partial. 
 These things cut both ways." 
 
 " Oh, certainly," the Bishop said, smiling in turn, 
 he knew not why. 
 
 " Well, what name ? " the Secretary went on, 
 glancing aside at the clock. 
 
 " His name? " the Bishop answered ; "oh, his name 
 — I forgot — is Alexander Thornbury. He has just 
 taken his degree — First in Greats — at Oxford. His 
 college— Merton. And I ought to inform you at 
 once, lest I should seem to hold back the fact at 
 the outset, that he has got himself engaged, without 
 my consent, to my daughter Evelyn." 
 
 The great man laughed. "But has obtained that 
 consent ex post facto ? " he chimed in. 
 
 "That is about the true state of the case, Sir 
 Nathaniel." 
 ; " Well, so far as it goes, that circumstance does 
 
192 THE INCIDENTAL BISHOP 
 
 not seem to tell against him. If you are prepared to 
 entrust him with your daughter's happiness, ex post 
 facto or otherwise, you have probably confidence in 
 his abilities and his honour." 
 
 " At any rate, Evelyn has," the Bishop responded 
 with the parental dutifulness of the nineteenth 
 century. 
 
 " Miss Evelyn is a young lady of great discrimina- 
 tion," the Secretary observed. 
 " I trust so," the Bishop assented. 
 Sir Nathaniel reflected. " His name is down ? " 
 he queried at last. 
 
 " Yes ; but only since a week ago." 
 " Well, if this department were going to appoint 
 him at all," the Secretary continued, in an abstracted 
 voice, "it had better be soon. Delay is dangerous. 
 Is the engagement announced ? " 
 
 " No," the guileless Bishop answered promptly. 
 " But why ? " 
 
 Sir Nathaniel stroked his chin and looked across at 
 his caller with a comical air of amusement. " Well," 
 he answered slowly ; " if I were you, I would not 
 announce it, — till after somebody or other has been 
 appointed to this vacancy. We must avoid a job. 
 Whoever happens to be appointed, it would be quite 
 in the natural course of events that your daughter 
 should thereafter by chance be thrown in with him, 
 and proceed to fall in love with him, or he with her, 
 whichever is the fashionable phrase of the moment. 
 Therefore, I advise your daughter to wait — I am 
 speaking unofficially, without involving the department 
 — and only to get herself engaged to whatever person 
 we may happen to appoint, after we have appointed 
 
. 
 
 AN OFFICIAL INTERVIEW 
 
 19: 
 
 him. If we were to do anything else, don't you see 
 there might be a suspicion of jobbery." 
 
 " But my dear sir," the Bishop cried, warming up 
 " you know Evelyn ; and you don't mean to say yoi 
 suppose she is the sort of girl who could fall in lov( 
 to order with whatever young man you may happei 
 to send us ! " 
 
 Sir Nathaniel gazed down at him through hi: 
 pince-nez with a pitying smile, as one might gaze at ; 
 specimen of a rare and interesting but almost extinc 
 animal. " My dear Bishop," he said at last, fingering 
 the ends of his moustache ; " you do not understanc 
 official language yet ; — and it's my belief you neve 
 will, either. You are a very difficult man to whom t( 
 do a service. Here am I positively putting mysel 
 into a position that might endanger the administratioi 
 all through my personal feeling of liking for yoursel 
 — giving away the show, so to speak — creating ; 
 possible public scandal— and telling you so as plainb 
 as a public servant can dare to tell it in thesi 
 degenerate days — all because I consider a recom 
 mendation from you worth ten reams at least 
 ordinary testimonials ; and you refuse to understand 
 Oh, you unsophisticated person ! Please go awa; 
 and inform everybody but Miss Glisson how 
 assured you — as I do now assure you — that nothinj 
 save merit on the part of the candidate can ever b 
 taken into consideration by this department ; and te! 
 Miss Glisson that I send her my kindest regards- 
 my very kindest regards — it used to be 'love' an^ 
 * Evelyn,' I recollect, when she was smaller — an 
 that only a sense of public duty prevents my bein 
 able to make the slightest concession in favour of an 
 
 13 
 
194 THE INCIDENTAL BISHOP 
 
 candidate in whom she happens to be interested. 
 But a sense of public duty renders it quite impossible 
 for me. She will understand, if you don't. She's a 
 sensible girl, and she knows what a man means when 
 he tells her his intentions in painfully plain and most 
 unofficial language." 
 
 " I'll write your message down, I think," the Bishop 
 said, taking out his note-book. " You said : ' Tell 
 Miss Glisson '" 
 
 " Oh no, you won't ! " Sir Nathaniel answered, 
 with an uncontrollable fit of laughter, seizing his 
 hand and pencil. " Put up that note-book ! I'm not 
 going to let you say you took down my very words, 
 my ipsissima verba, in writing. This is a private 
 and wholly unofficial interview. I will shorten my 
 message and spare your memory. Tell your 
 daughter that if she looks in the Times daily for 
 the next six weeks she will find out whether or not 
 her proUg^ is appointed. Remark that I say prot^g^. 
 Bear that word in mind. For, if you venture to say 
 fiand^ — you upset the Government." 
 
 The Bishop returned to Dorchester bewildered ; 
 officialdom was one of those things he could not 
 understand, though he had written a book on the 
 Comparative Grammar of the Melanesian Languages. 
 But when he told Evelyn, word for word, as far as he 
 was able to remember, what the Education Office had 
 said, she laughed and kissed him, and answered : 
 " There's a dear old Dad ; Alex has got the appoint- 
 ment ! " And though the Bishop couldn't for the life 
 of him make out how Evelyn knew, he was sure she 
 was right ; and he was relieved when she added : " But 
 I won't mention it to anybody, and we'll keep the 
 
AN OFFICIAL INTERVIEW 195 
 
 engagement dark ; and when next I see Sir Nathaniel 
 I shall set his mind at rest by telling him I'm deter- 
 mined not to wreck so admirable a Government." 
 
 These things are hidden from the wise and prudent, 
 the Bishop thought, and revealed (in our days) to 
 babes and sucklings ! 
 
 t. 
 
CHAPTER XXIV. 
 SUCH SWEET SORROW. 
 
 " Well, good bye, Evey ; it's dreadful to say good 
 bye ; but there's no way out of it. I can't stop at 
 Oxford after all the men have gone down ; and I've 
 got no money to go to London and live, as I should 
 like to, running down here twice a week. So I must 
 just go home till work turns up somewhere." 
 
 Parting made Evelyn almost old-fashioned in her 
 tenderness. " It's so far, Northumberland," she said 
 wistfully. " I do wish it was nearer. But I shall 
 write to you every day, Alex ; and it won't be so 
 very long. Oh, I can't think why your people go 
 and bury themselves in Northumberland ! " 
 
 " Nor can I. It's out of the world. You can't 
 get from there anywhere. But beggars and parsons 
 can't be choosers." 
 
 " People ought to be able to live where they d.p.," 
 Evelyn exclaimed with emphasis, — the depth of her 
 emotion almost justifying her mitigated profanity. 
 " And a country rectory, too ! I know the horrid 
 holes. There's one comfort, anyhow — you'll have 
 lots of time for writing to me." 
 
 " Oh, won't I just ! Evey, I'll write you such letters 
 
 — as long as that. And I'll leave no stone unturned 
 
 to get work immediately." 
 
 196 
 
SUCH SWEET SORROW 197 
 
 " Oh, as to work, I'm not a bit afraid. Sir 
 Nathaniel says positively you shall have the first 
 appointment he can find to give you." 
 
 " But your father told me just the opposite ; he 
 said Sir Nathaniel assured him it was impossible 
 nowadays to make interest with government depart- 
 ments, and that nothing but merit could be considered 
 in filling up public appointments." 
 
 " You silly boy ! you're just as bad as Daddy ! 
 How innocent you men are ! Isn't it precisely the 
 same thing ? What was language made for ? " 
 
 " To say : ' What a darling you are, Evey ! ' And 
 lips were made to kiss you with. When you call 
 me a silly boy, I always feel it's the highest com- 
 pliment. Isn't it funny to think that thousands and 
 thousands of lovers have said just the same things 
 to one another in their time as you and I say now ? 
 and yet, you and I are never tired of saying them." 
 
 " I don't think they can have said quite such nice 
 things," Evelyn faltered, with a mist in her eyes. 
 
 " Just the very same, I'm told ; but, Evey, they 
 couldn't have/i?/^ them as you and I feel them ! " 
 
 "Oh, dear no," Evelyn cried, clenching her little 
 fists hard. " Fancy Daddy and Mums ever having 
 talked like this — or held hands as we do. But people 
 were different in those days, I suppose. And yet, 
 I don't quite know ; for Romeo and Juliet was written 
 ever and ever so long ago ; I was reading it last 
 night : — and Romeo and Juliet talk much the same 
 as we do." 
 
 " That's rather a compliment to us, Evey, isn't it ? " 
 
 " Rude boy ; you shouldn't say so." 
 
 "Another for that. Thank you. Well, I wish I 
 
 .^^ 
 
198 THE INCIDENTAL BISHOP 
 
 was sure Sir Nathaniel really meant it. But your 
 father gave me quite the opposite impression. And 
 it was your father who saw him." 
 
 "But he's written to me," Evelyn cried. "Look 
 here ; this is his letter. He couldn't speak plainer ! " 
 
 Alex took it and read — 
 
 "My dear Miss Glisson, 
 
 ("It was * Evey ' once. Ah, these cruel years ; how 
 they rob us of everything !) Well, I am sorry to have to 
 write and disappoint you. Your father tells me there is a 
 young Oxford man (I forget his name) whom you desire 
 to see appointed to an inspectorship in your district. Now, 
 if I were not a government servant, I should hasten at once 
 to oblige a lady. Unfortunately, however, placed as I am, 
 it is impossible for me, consistently with the rules of the 
 service, to exert any personal influence in favour of any 
 particular candidate. Appointments are made by the 
 department etitirely by merit. No doubt, your prot^g^ has 
 merit ; and if so, his chances will be as good as anyone 
 else's. But not otherwise. Government is government. 
 
 " We hope to be on the river shortly, when my wife 
 promises herself the pleasure of bringing the electric launch 
 round to Dorchester, and will ask you to go for a few picnics 
 with us. Meanwhile, I am, with — it used to be, love, 
 
 " Yours most sincerely, 
 
 " Nathaniel Merriton." 
 
 Alex scanned it dubiously. " Well, I can't say," he 
 said in a disappointed tone, " I see anything in it of 
 the nature of a promise." 
 
 " Oh, you ineffable goose ! " Evelyn exclaimed. 
 " What could he say plainer, unless he wrote * I will 
 make a job of it and appoint your man, if he's as 
 ignorant as a turkey-cock'? Though why turkey- 
 
SUCH SWEET SORROW 1 99 
 
 cocks should be more ignorant than any other birds 
 I haven't the faintest conception. But look here — he 
 underlines 'entirely by merit.* And he says, 'no 
 doubt your protege has merit ; if so — ' What could 
 be clearer than that — without absolutely rendering 
 himself liable to be sent to the Tower, or whatever else 
 they do nowadays with wicked ministers ? And then he 
 puts : ' It was Evey once.* And he goes out of his way 
 to tell me Lady Merriton will call with the electric 
 launch. Why, he's a dear, Sir Nathaniel ! If I had 
 him here this minute, I do declare, I'd just throw my 
 arms right round his neck and kiss him ! " 
 
 "In that case, I have no reason to regret his 
 absence." 
 
 "There you are with your horrid little sneering 
 
 Oxford epigrams. I know that style, sir. Little 
 
 Beddingley can talk like that. But, Alex, you're 
 
 going away ; so I'll forgive you anything." 
 
 " And you're sure he'll appoint me ? " 
 
 " Sure ? A gun isn't in it. I know he means it. 
 
 Before Christmas, too. And then, Alex " She 
 
 nestled up to him. 
 
 " You women are not in such a hurry, you know," 
 Alex put in maliciously. ''Yow prefer long engage- 
 ments ! " 
 
 " I said ' moderately long.' And then, you weren't 
 going away. Just think, I shan't see you, perhaps, 
 till Christmas ! But I shall write to you every day. 
 Oh, dear, oh dear ; Dorchester will seem so unfur- 
 nished without you ! " 
 
 " Well, good bye, Evey. I think we ought to say 
 good bye now. I must catch that last train ; and I 
 have to take an official farewell of your mother in 
 
V ■ • ■■: 
 
 200 THE INCIDENTAL BISHOP 
 
 the drawing-room. She's been awfully good, as 
 mothers go, to let us have such a nice long time out 
 here alone together. Mothers never were young, you 
 see ; they don't know how we long to be left to 
 ourselves. But she's good, as mothers go. I must 
 go back to her." 
 
 " Good bye, darling ; good bye ! You are such a 
 dear. I wish you weren^t such a dear ; I wish I'd 
 taken little Beddingley — for I could say good bye to 
 him for ever and never mind it. But you^ Alex, — 
 oh dear, I don't know how I'm ever to get on for six 
 months, six whole months without you ! " 
 
 <: 
 
CHAPTER XXV. 
 THE CLOUDS THICKEN. 
 
 All that evening, the Bishop sat close in his study. 
 He was consulting books — books, books, books, in- 
 numerable. It was a question of conscience he was 
 engaged in resolving. And how resolve it ? What 
 reparation could a man make for such a sin as he had 
 committed ? 
 
 For years he had shirked it ; now, he could shirk 
 it no longer. He must escape at last from this false 
 position in the best way possible. 
 
 His first idea was to make reparation for his wrong 
 by bringing down upon himself some fitting punish- 
 ment. Suppose, for example, he were to forge a 
 cheque in such a way that it was certain of detection ? 
 Then he would doubtless be tried, found guilty, and 
 duly imprisoned. But, what difficulties in the way ! 
 In the first place, if the signature was obviously false, 
 all the world would merely say poor Dr. Glisson had 
 gone mad ; and instead of punishing him, they would 
 pack him off to a comfortable private asylum, with 
 all the consideration his age and rank suggested. Or, 
 even if he succeeded, he would be punished, not for 
 the wrong he had really done, but for a wrong he had 
 only formally and penitentially committed. No, the 
 cheque was useless. It shirked the real difficulty. 
 
 201 
 
'. f 
 
 202 THE INCIDENTAL BISHOP 
 
 He must in some way atone for his own actual crime ; 
 and the only true atonement implied confession. 
 
 Confession ! There was the horror. He could 
 have borne it for himself ; but Olive, Olive ! How 
 could he ever let her know that all his life with her, 
 all his life since the very first day he met her, was 
 a deception and a falsehood — that he was not Cecil 
 GHsson but Torn Pringle the sailor — that he had 
 never been a clergyman — that everything she believed 
 about him was lies, lies, lies, from the very beginning? 
 All the rest of the world counted for nothing to him 
 now ; but to let Olive know that the man she had 
 loved, believed in, trusted never existed at all — oh, it 
 was more than he could even endure to think of. 
 
 And behind this dread of disillusionment for Olive 
 rose another terrible spectre which he feared to look 
 upon. A professional spectre. He was not, he had 
 never been, a priest at all. Yet you cannot live for 
 thirty years as a priestj you cannot hold the cure of 
 souls and rise to be a bishop, without growing by 
 degrees thoroughly ecclesiastical in your ideas and 
 feelings. Tom Pringle, Cecil Glisson, whatever he 
 called himself— for even to himself he had half for- 
 gotten by this time his own original name — was now 
 in all essentials, save the spiritual ones recognised by 
 high sacerdotalists, an Anglican bishop. He thought 
 and felt and saw things bishop-wise. And his terrible 
 responsibility came home to him that night with a 
 bishop's acquired professional sentiment. He magni- 
 fied his office — the office that was not and had never 
 been his ; he knew he had been instrumental in 
 ordaining false priests who thought themselves true 
 ones ; in marrying couples who in the eyes of the 
 
 LSI 
 
THE CLOUDS THICKEN 203 
 
 Church were never married; in upsetting in a thousand 
 ways the organisation of Christianity in his various 
 parishes and his present diocese. His offence was 
 rank. He was an interloper and a fraud ; he had 
 caused many men to sin unwittingly ; he had polluted 
 and distorted the true stream of the means of grace ; 
 his guilt before heaven was great and unutterable. 
 He was not even sure that he had not committed 
 that unforgivable sin on which he had preached in his 
 time more than one eloquent sermon. He stood 
 abased before his God, a self-convicted offender. 
 
 Yet deep as was his sense of that ecclesiastical 
 wrong, his feeling of shame before Olive was profounder 
 even now than his consciousness of wrong before the 
 eyes of the Almighty. Omniscience knew always 
 the full extent of his criminality ; Olive did not. 
 Omniscience could allow for the chain of accident ; but 
 how confess to Olive the long-continued deception ? 
 
 Indeed, in his heart of hearts, it was not the sense 
 of sin at all that oppressed the Bishop ; it was the 
 sense of a deep wrong done to others. Like all 
 greater natures, when brought face to face with the 
 consequences of their acts, 'twas not forgiveness for 
 himself that he asked, but some chance of making 
 reparation to others, some loophole of escape from 
 the injustice he was doing them. If he broke Olive's 
 heart, what mattered forgiveness ? if he caused others 
 to go astray, what could personal repentance avail 
 to repair that evil ? Nay rather, would it not comfort 
 him to hide his head in nethermost hell that night 
 if only so he could undo the harm he had done to 
 his innocent Olive? 
 
 All night long, he tossed and turned on his bed, 
 
204 THE INCIDENTAL BISHOP 
 
 unable to sleep, unable to dismiss this appalling 
 torment. He stood at the parting of two impossible 
 ways. He could no longer go on as he had been 
 going for years ; he could not yet turn aside and 
 own the truth to Olive. 
 
 Early next morning, distracted with doubt, before 
 the first cart rumbled over the bridge, he rose and 
 dressed himself. He eat no breakfast, — in his 
 present fierce mood it was a sort of cold comfort 
 to him to mortify the flesh — but started on foot for 
 the railway station, whence he took the first train 
 of the day to Oxford. 
 
 Dr. Littlemore of Oriel was a saintly man — the 
 last survivor of the famous group which had included 
 Newman, Pusey, and Keble. To Dr. Littlemore he 
 would go, then, and lay before him, under the seal 
 of confession, this difficult question. 
 
 He arrived, all breathless, at the gates of Oriel. 
 It was still early in the day, and the doctor had 
 not breakfasted. His servant doubted whether he 
 could yet see anyone. But the Bishop was uijent. 
 This was a questio*:! of discipline ; could Dr. Little- 
 more give him an interview immediately? 
 
 He was ushered into a formal oak-panelled study. 
 Presently, the great casuist crept in, — a little white- 
 haired, ferret-faced man, thin, spare, and bent, with 
 ascetic features, and keen grey eyes that even in 
 age had not lost their sharpness. He shook the 
 Bishop's hot hand. Full of fierce emotion, the 
 Bishop fell on his knees at once before the great 
 confessor, and asked whether the father would receive 
 a confession, treating it, whatever came, as sacrosanct 
 and inviolable? 
 
'-..•:- v';--'.r-vj:;<. r;'ijS*.„-> 
 
 THE CLOUDS THICKEN 205 
 
 Dr. Littlemore, with a fox-like smile, answered at 
 once and unhesitatingly : " Yes, — if it were murder." 
 
 " But if it were a sin against the Church — a sin 
 against the Holy Ghost ? " the Bishop cried, with 
 his livid white face uplifted. " A sin that may have 
 caused many to go astray? Would you keep it 
 secret still, under the seal of confession ? " 
 
 The confessor hesitated. "If it were something 
 the suppression of which entailed danger to souls," 
 he answered slowly — " I hardly know as yet : give 
 me time to consider. The point is one which has 
 not practically occurred to me." He suspected that 
 unbelief had overcome the Bishop. 
 
 " I cannot give time," the Bishop answered, trem- 
 bling with anxiety. " I must have an answer now. 
 Will you hear me, and keep my secret ? " 
 
 " I will," Dr. Littlemore replied after a short 
 pause for thought. "It is best to hear. A man in 
 your position in the Church would not come to 
 me thus were it not for some grave and urgent 
 reason." 
 
 The Bishop knelt before him like a little child, in a 
 fervour of repentance, and poured forth in one wild 
 flood the whole story of the secret that he had caged 
 in his own breast for so many years of gnawing 
 silence. He told all, without the slightest attempt 
 at palliation or self-vindication. He explained the 
 whole suite of accidents that led to the deception, 
 indeed ; but the deception itself he acknowledged 
 without reserve or excuse. He made things if any- 
 thing rather worse than they were instead of making 
 them better. A fever of penitence and self-abasement 
 was upon him. He longed to utter the whole truth, 
 
"• ". ; 
 
 206 THE INCIDENTAL BISHOP 
 
 to have it out for once, to gain a moment's sympathy, 
 or if not sympathy at least a hearing, from some 
 fellow-creature. 
 
 The one person to whom under any other circum- 
 stances he would have poured forth everything was 
 naturally Olive ; and Olive was now the one person 
 on earth to whom it was most impossible he should 
 let out one word of it. 
 
 Dr. Littlemore listened with an awed and horrified 
 face. The shock was unutterable. To the tremulous 
 old priest, this was the worst crime the heart of man 
 could conceive, a sin of the deepest blackness against 
 the majesty of heaven. More than that, it was a 
 sin the far-reaching consequences of which were be- 
 yond calculation. Theft and murder were nothing 
 to it. It was a conspiracy against souls. Men and 
 women were living in unblessed unions, unconsecrated 
 hands were dispensing the sacramental mysteries, 
 endless confusion had crept into the divine order of 
 things, all because this one man had rashly dared 
 to constitute himself what only the organised voice 
 of the divine Church itself could suffice to make him. 
 He had sinned the sin of Korah, Dathan, and Abiram. 
 Dr. Littlemore almost waited to see earth open wide 
 and swallow him up visibly as it swallowed up the 
 pretenders to the office of Aaron. 
 
 At the end, he shut his eyes and remained long 
 silent. Words failed his emotion. The Bishop bent 
 his awed head and awaited judgment. 
 
 " The first question for me," the casuist said at 
 last, speaking slowly and deliberately, with deep 
 suppressed feeling, "is, ought I to have promised 
 to keep your secret ? Shall I do right in allowing 
 
THE CLOUDS THICKEN 207 
 
 a man who is not even a priest to continue fulfilling 
 episcopal functions ? " 
 
 The Bishop brushed away that question with one 
 conclusive phrase. " Whatever comes, I am done 
 with all that ; I will never again act either as priest 
 or as bishop." 
 
 " Even so," the old man faltered, his lips too grown 
 white, " am I doing my duty by the Church of God 
 in concealing the fact of such grave irregularities ? " 
 
 The Bishop bowed his head. " That is for you," 
 he said, " to answer, Father." 
 
 They sat long in counsel. Dr. Littlemore prayed, 
 exhorted, deliberated. But slowly the Bishop began 
 to perceive that they two were attacking opposite 
 problems. The casuist was thinking mainly of how he 
 could save this erring soul by confession and repent- 
 ance. The Bishop cared nothing for his individual 
 soul — his soul might answer for its wrong-doing, and 
 welcome, if only he could save Olive from that 
 terrible disillusion. It was not eternal torment for 
 himself he dreaded ; he could welcome eternal torment 
 like many other brave men ; but a moment of fierce 
 suffering, of incredible horror for the woman he had 
 loved and deceived and worshipped was more than 
 he could face : his whole soul shrank from it. 
 
 " I cannot tell my wife," he cried ; " I cannot tell 
 my wife ! What becomes of myself, here or hereafter, 
 I care very little ; let Heaven punish my sin : but I 
 must shield my dear wife — I must shield her at all 
 hazards." 
 
 Dr. Littlemore was shocked. In his narrower 
 creed, a man's first duty was to save his own soul, 
 and after his own, the souls of others. That a person 
 
208 THE INCIDENTAL BISHOP 
 
 in a fever of repentance should wholly disregard his 
 own future welfare seemed to him incredible. But 
 the Bishop was built on broader lines. " Let my 
 soul burn for ever, in burning hell, if such atonement 
 is needful," he cried with passionate self-abandonment : 
 " what is my one poor soul to Olive's happiness ? " 
 
 They wrestled together for an hour. At the end 
 of that time, the Bishop went forth, no more relieved 
 in mind than when he entered. The saintly man 
 had suggested no way out of this hopeless difficulty, 
 save the one hateful way of telling Olive — which 
 made the difficulty. Telling the world as well — that 
 was easy enough to do ; but telling Olive also ; that 
 was far more impossible. 
 
CHAPTER XXVI. 
 AT BAY. 
 
 When he returned to Dorchester, Mrs. Glisson 
 noticed his worn and drawn expression. He had the 
 face of a man who has spent the night in fighting 
 wild beasts at Ephesus. His mouth was rigid ; deep 
 wrinkled lines marked the corners of his eyes ; his 
 lips were ashy pale ; his cheek was colourless. 
 
 She asked anxiously what was wrong. He put 
 her off with an evasive answer. No, no, he was 
 quite well ; it was only this question of forged orders 
 that was troubling his peace ; he musi get to the 
 bottom of it. He had consulted the Fathers, and 
 would consult them further. Now the question was 
 once raised, he could have no peace as bishop of this 
 diocese till he felt he had settled it. He salved his con- 
 science at the same time by saying to himself that this 
 was literally true ; it was indeed a question of forged 
 orders or their equivalent that disturbed his spirit. 
 
 His confession, he found, had brought him no 
 nearer the end. For 'twas not of repentance, of 
 forgiveness, of his own poor soul that he thought, 
 but of restitution, of reparation for the wrong he 
 had done, and of Olive. An assurance at that 
 moment that his sin was forgiven would have availed 
 him little. The wrong not the sin it was that 
 
 209 14 
 
210 THE INCIDENTAL BISHOP 
 
 troubled him. Forgiveness of his sin would have left 
 Olive untouched, Olive's disillusion was the one 
 dread that haunted him. 
 
 He shut himself up in his study once more, and 
 locked the door behind him lest anyone should 
 chance to come in and disturb him. Then he seated 
 himself by his desk, buried his head in his hands, and 
 proceeded to think out this insoluble problem. 
 
 The longer he thought of it, the more insoluble 
 it grew. He could only arrive at one conclusion for 
 the moment. Never again from that day forth would 
 he perform any clerical or episcopal function. He 
 was done with lying, and with acting out the lie. 
 How to carry out this resolve he had no clear 
 conception ; but the resolve was there. For Olive's 
 sake, he shrank from revealing what he ought to 
 reveal — that he was not and never had been really 
 a clergyman. But at least he could refrain in future 
 from adding to his wrong-doing, and from extending 
 the possible field of evil by ordaining men who were 
 not canonically ordained and by confirming children 
 without proper authority. That meant, of course, 
 that he must resign his see : " His bishopric let 
 another take " rang in his ears perpetually. 
 
 And when he reflected (in his honestly professional 
 way) what " a sphere of usefulness " the bishopric 
 afforded him, he was truly sorry for it. But give it up 
 he must. That was the one thing certain. Though 
 it struck him as curious, for all his humility, that he, 
 the one bishop who had never been even a priest, 
 should be the only man on the bench then strenuously 
 engaged in fighting the battle of the poor, the unem- 
 ployed, the downcast, the miserable. He would have 
 
 ihiHii^i^MHtiiMlia 
 
AT BAY 211 
 
 been a good Christian, but for the misfortune of 
 circumstances ; what a pity that circumstances must 
 deprive God's poor of their chief protector in the 
 English episcopate ! 
 
 More than that, he must give up at once every 
 advantage he had gained from his false position. 
 That meant poverty for Olive and Evelyn, of course ; 
 but Olive could bear poverty better than disgrace ; 
 and as to Evelyn, why Evelyn would shortly marry, 
 and then 
 
 But would Evelyn marry? When he came to 
 think of it, her marriage depended upon young 
 Thornbury receiving that problematical appointment 
 at the Education Office. And his receiving that 
 appointment was dependent again upon the Bishop's 
 recommendation. But the recommendation was effec- 
 tive only because Sir Nathaniel believed that he, Tom 
 Pringle or Cecil Glisson, was and would continue to 
 be Bishop of Dorchester. Supposing today he were 
 to write to Sir Nathaniel that he was about to resign 
 his office and let another man take his bishopric, 
 would Sir Nathaniel still think it desirable to appoint 
 young Thornbury ? Nay ; if this change of front 
 was to be effective at all, must he not try from this 
 moment forth to prevent any new step being taken 
 on any hand which could add to the sum of his 
 unauthorised action? A recommendation to the 
 Education Office was not in itself, to be sure, an epis- 
 copal act ; but it had been made by him as bishop ; 
 and not having taken effect as yet, it must be nipped 
 at once, at whatever hazard. 
 
 The Bishop, however, did not act precipitately. 
 Episcopal training militates against precipitancy. 
 
212 THE INCIDENTAL BISHOP 
 
 He sat long in an absorbed attitude before he pro- 
 ceeded to write that irrevocable letter. But at last he 
 wrote it. Nor did he give away his case and his 
 cause all at once. He wrote, not as one might have 
 expected, in a turmoil of remorse, but carefully, 
 calmly, deliberately, guardedly. He left loop-holes of 
 escape ; he abstained from saying the worst with too 
 abrupt an insistence. He explained to Sir Nathaniel 
 that since their last interview a considerable change 
 had come over his convictions. He felt he could no 
 longer be Bishop of Dorchester. "Do not ask," he 
 wrote, " what private reasons have moved me to this 
 tardy resolve. I have not yet made them public, nor 
 do I know whether I shall ever make them public. 
 But the resolve itself exists. It is absolute and imper- 
 ative. You will conjecture as your first guess that my 
 faith is shaken ; in these days of growing doubt, that 
 is a natural inference. But it is nevertheless a wrong 
 one. My convictions as to the fundamental truths of 
 the constitution of the universe remain unaltered. 
 Purely personal and private causes lead me to feel I 
 can no longer fulfil the office of bishop. You will ask, 
 once more, why I make you in particular the first 
 confidant of this strange determination. I answer, 
 because you are the person of whom, as Bishop, I last 
 asked an official favour. Under all these circum- 
 stances, I cannot persist in my recommendation of Mr. 
 Alexander Thornbury of Merton College for an 
 Inspectorship of Church Schools in the diocese of 
 Dorchester. I ask you, therefore, so far as I am 
 concerned, to cancel this recommendation ; though I 
 feel it would be wrong in any other way to interfere 
 with Mr. Thornbury's natural chances. He is an able 
 
•jvvvv V .- ' .■■:•: ',\<. ■■'..•;»•''•' 
 
 AT BAY 213 
 
 young man, whose merits arc wholly outside the 
 present question." 
 
 He read the letter over many times before dis- 
 patching it. It did not say enough ; and yet it said 
 too much. He realised that to send it was to commit 
 himself irrevocably. Yet he would send it for all 
 that ; and to make sure of its going, he would even 
 adopt the unusual course of carrying it out himself to 
 the neighbouring post-box — for he was, as you will 
 have perceived, an unconventional bishop. Strange 
 to say, for one of his office, he had no petty pride. 
 He looked about him for a stamp. There were none 
 on the desk. He unlocked the door and called out 
 softly : " Evelyn ! " 
 
 " Yes, Daddy," Evelyn answered. 
 
 Her unconcerned girlish voice smote the Bishop 
 to the quick. Could she have answered so blithely 
 if she knew why he called her ? The thought made 
 his voice unusually solemn. " My child," he said in 
 an austere tone, " I want a penny stamp." He said 
 no more than that, but his accent and his look fairly 
 terrified Evelyn. 
 
 " Why, Papa, what's the matter ? " she cried, 
 looking hard at him. His face was twitching. 
 
 " Nothing, nothing, my child," the Bishop answered 
 hastily. " That is to say, nothing physical. I have 
 been troubled, as you know, Evelyn, about this — this 
 question of forged orders ; and it has caused me, I 
 confess, much mental agony. I have been writing a 
 letter, my dear, which I wish to post myself; and 
 I want a penny stamp for it." 
 
 He spoke with confusion, in a hesitating way which 
 struck Evelyn as doubtful. She snatched up the 
 
214 THE INCIDENTAL BISHOP 
 
 letter, as it lay, face downward, on the blotting-book. 
 " Why, it's to Sir Nathaniel ! " she exclaimed eagerly. 
 " Ye-es," the Bishop admitted, trembling, " it is to 
 Sir Nathaniel." 
 
 Evelyn's face flushed fiery red. " This is my 
 business," she said, leaning over it and suddenly 
 tearing it open. " Papa, Papa, you haven't said 
 anything foolish ? " 
 
 " I don't know, Evey," the Bishop answered, thank- 
 ful this time to circumstances. " I have said — what 
 was inevitable." 
 
 Evelyn read the letter all through, and then laid it 
 down, white-faced. In a second, she realised that this 
 was a very serious matter. For Evelyn was no fool. 
 Then, as often happens with girls of her sort, so great 
 a crisis brought out all the latent gentleness of her 
 heart, concealed as a rule under a purely conventional 
 garb of outer flippancy. She was not angry ; she 
 was not indignant. She merely bent down a very 
 sobered face and kissed the poor soul-wearied man 
 twice, tenderly, on the forehead. 
 
 " If you must send it. Papa," she said slowly, "you 
 must send it." 
 
 " I must send it, darling," her father answered, find- 
 ing suddenly the relief of tears. " But, oh, Evey, — 
 your mother ! " 
 
 Evelyn looked at him with a bursting heart. " I 
 
 don't know what it means," she answered. " But it 
 
 means something very bad. And — it will kill mother." 
 
 " She believes in me so," the poor man burst out, 
 
 almost yielding up his secret. 
 
 " She ought to believe in you," Evelyn answered 
 with pride : " for we all believe in you, and we have 
 
AT BAY 215 
 
 somebody worth believing in. Daddy, Daddy, I have 
 sometimes made fun of your scruples, but, darling, in 
 my soul I have always honoured them. I have a 
 father and a mother I can respect from my heart ; 
 and I know you can have done nothing Mother and I 
 could be ashamed of." 
 
 She flung her arms round his neck and kissed him, 
 passionately. But just at that second, such a declara- 
 tion of faith, made from a full heart in a moment of 
 emotion, was the very worst blow the poor wavering 
 Bishop could have received. If only she had re- 
 proached him ! He wiped his brow and held her off 
 from him, trembling, as though afraid lest he should 
 pollute her. " My child, my child," he cried, in his 
 agony of self-abasement, " you lacerate me with your 
 kindness. You are wrong ; you are wrong. I have 
 done things to plunge your mother and yourself into 
 shame and misery. You could be angry with me 
 and sin not." 
 
 " I don't believe it," Evelyn answered stoutly. 
 
 The Bishop groaned. " But it is true," he reiterated. 
 " Yet, Evey, for heaven's sake, don't let your mother 
 know it. 1 didn't mean to tell you ; but if she were 
 to know, it would kill her ; it would kill her." 
 
 " She doesn't know ; she shall never know," Evelyn 
 cried. " And whatever it is, it isn't true ; I know 
 that beforehand. You didn't do it ; I know you 
 couldn't ; or if you did it, it was right and good, 
 though all the world and all the churches as well were 
 to rise and say it was anathema maranatha. I know 
 you well enough to know this, dear Daddy — that 
 whatever you do is right, right, right ; and that even 
 if I thought it wrong till I knew you had done it, I 
 
2l6 THE INCIDENTAL BISHOP 
 
 should see it was right when I could know and under- 
 stand exactly Jiow you came to do it." 
 
 The Bishop rose, agitated. Her faith in him almost 
 seemed to justify him to himself. He took her in his 
 arms and kissed her passionately. " My child," he said, 
 quivering, ** if you knew all, I think you would forgive 
 me. You would see how it was forced upon me by a 
 strange concurrence of circumstance. But your mother 
 — your dear mother — who has trusted me so long and 
 believed in me so fully, how can I ever tell her ? " 
 
 " She is an angel ! " Evelyn cried. " And I have 
 behaved like a little beast to her all my life. I see 
 that now. Mother, dear Mother — she must never 
 know. Tell me^ if you like ; but never tell Mother. 
 I can bear anything ; I am strong enough and young 
 enough, and I know I shall understand. But Mother, 
 who trusts you — her trust is not like mine ; she trusts 
 you because she thinks you are incapable of doing 
 the things she believes to be wrong ; / trust you be- 
 cause I know that even if you did the things I once 
 thought wrong, it \s>you who have done them. And 
 that makes them all right. It guarantees them, so to 
 speak. You know I care nothing for your rules and 
 your laws. It is the man 1 care for. Not what a 
 man does, but what he is, stamps him. If a man 
 whom I know to be as good as you does anything 
 that seems wrong, I know there must be a difference 
 in the way he does it. That's all very modern and 
 wicked, I dare say, but it's the way I'm built. So 
 you can tell me all. Whatever it is, I know before- 
 hand I shall sympathise." 
 
 The Bishop sank into his chair, covered his face 
 with his hands once more, and burst out with a low 
 
'. .) 
 
 AT BAY 217 
 
 wail : " Evcy, Evey, I am not a clergyman. I was 
 never ordained at all. I am a mere pretender." 
 
 Evelyn bent over him wildly, caught him hard in 
 her arms, and kissed him with a sudden flood of 
 desperate tears. " Is that all ? " she cried, half laugh- 
 ing. "Only that, dear Daddy?" 
 
 " All? " the Bishop exclaimed, aghast, drawing 
 back, and staring at her. "What do you mean by 
 all? Isn't that bad enough, Evey?" 
 
 Evelyn hugged him in her relief. " Oh, if that's 
 all," she answered, drawing her breath, " I don't mind 
 about that. I thought it was much worse : — something 
 really dreadful, don't you know— something that 
 would have worried and killed dear Mother — some- 
 thing about someone else — you understand what 
 I mean. Daddy ! " 
 
 The Bishop stared at her in surprise. He did not 
 realise that her mind had turned at once, as a woman's 
 mind always turns at the vague suggestion of im- 
 pending evil, to woman's worst bugbear — superseded 
 affection. Evelyn had jumped at the conclusion that 
 there was a woman in it somewhere. A mere ecclesi- 
 astical doubt was to her quite trifling. 
 
 "This is worse, darling, worse," the Bishop cried, 
 shaking his head solemnly. "Evelyn, I am not in 
 orders at all. I may have sinned the unforgivable 
 sin, who knows ?— Not that I mind for that, but for 
 your mother, darling." 
 
 Evelyn hugged him again wildly. "Oh, that's 
 nothing," she answered; "let the unforgivable sin 
 go : " for she had truly said that she was not bishopy. 
 " If it's only that, I don't care a pin. I was afraid 
 it v/as much worse— a previous marriage, perhaps ; — 
 
21 8 THE INCIDENTAL BISHOP 
 
 or another woman ; one reads about such things in 
 books : though even then, I should have known it 
 was you^ and understood everything : and we might 
 have managed to keep her away for always from 
 dear Mother. But if it's only false orders, it was 
 accident, of course. I don't need you to explain ; 
 I know about it all in my heart already." 
 
 The Bishop began to tell her in a very few words 
 the tale of the John Wesley. Evelyn listened to 
 his story with evident impatience. " Don't bother 
 about details, dear," she cried. "We must only 
 think now about sparing Mother. You have written 
 that letter, and you had better post it. It will ease 
 your mind, I dare say. Never mind about Alex. 
 We can wait. I'll get you a penny stamp, and 
 then I'll run out with it." 
 
 The Bishop clutched it hard. " No, no," he said ; 
 " you won't, my child. I shall post it myself I 
 won't trust it to anybody. I have begun this matter, 
 and now I shall pull through with it." 
 
 Evelyn noted the way he clutched it, and her 
 suspicion deepened. " Very well, dear," she answered. 
 " I'll get you the stamp ; and then, you and I will go 
 out and post it together." 
 
 The Bishop felt relieved even by this partial con- 
 fession. He leaned back in his chair and looked up 
 at the ceiling. When Evelyn returned with the stamp, 
 she found him still gazing, with his eyes on vacancy 
 and muttering to himself incoherently : " The sin of 
 Korah, Dathan, and Abiram. They and all that 
 appertained to them went down alive into the pit, and 
 the earth closed upon them ; and they perished from 
 among the congregation." 
 
CHAPTER XXVII. 
 
 EVELYN ACTS. 
 
 As they returned from the post, Evelyn caught sight 
 suddenly of a well-known figure, in a grey tweed 
 suit, hurrying up from the railway station. 
 
 She started in surprise and rushed up to the wearer 
 of the suit, excited. " Why, Alex ! " she exclaimed, 
 forgetting to be flippant. " And without telegraphing 
 beforehand to tell me you were coming ! " 
 
 " I didn't know I could manage it, darling, till 1 
 passed through Birmingham. It was a close fit of 
 two trains, and I was afraid of disappointing you. 
 But I'm on my way to town, to see Sir Nathaniel 
 Merriton. He has written to make me an appoint- 
 ment for an interview. So I expect it's all right — 
 unless, of course, when he sees me, he doesn't like 
 the look of me." 
 
 " He couldn't help liking the look of you — unless 
 he was a donkey ; which he isn't, I know, but a dear ; 
 a second class dear, you stupid ; the middle-aged 
 sort of dear that you needn't look like that over." 
 
 " But Evey, what's the matter ? You've been 
 crying, I can see, and you look so worried." 
 
 Evelyn drew him down towards the river, behind 
 the bushes of the shrubbery, where she sank on a 
 
 ai9 
 
220 THE INCIDENTAL BISHOP 
 
 garden seat, and burst into tears immediately. The 
 very unwontedness of such conduct on her part, as 
 the modern young lady, made it only the more im- 
 pressive. 
 
 " Darling," she exclaimed, all her bravado failing 
 her ; " a dreadful thing is happening ; and nobody 
 else knows. I'm so glad you've come, to help me 
 and advise me. This bother about the parson at 
 Reading who wasn't in orders at all is unhinging 
 Daddy's mind. I don't know what has happened 
 to him. He thinks he isn't a clergyman himself at 
 all. I'm afraid to leave him one minute alone, for 
 fear he should tell Mother. So far, he has told no 
 one but myself, I believe ; but this morning he's full 
 of it. He ran over to Oxford before breakfast, like 
 a madman, and came back quite flurried. He's firmly 
 convinced he has done the same thing himself, and 
 committed the sin of Korah, Dathan, and A-what's- 
 his-name." 
 
 Alex took her hand in his. " Dearest," he whispered 
 very low ; " and I thought I was coming to make 
 you so happy." 
 
 " So you do, Alex ; so you do ; I love to have you 
 with me : but, it's so dreadful about Daddy. And 
 do you know what he's just done — posted a letter to 
 Sir Nathaniel to say that he withdraws his recom- 
 mendation." 
 
 Alex whistled to himself. "That's bad," he 
 answered. " We must counteract that. Though I 
 suppose, of course, he gave the real reason." 
 
 " Yes, in part ; but not quite as badly as he gave 
 it to me. Not so definitely I mean. He dealt more 
 in generalities. But I can see his mind is going ; 
 
EVELYN ACTS 221 
 
 I've been afraid of it for weeks. I never knew him 
 worry, not even over the chain-makers' strike at 
 Cradley, as he's worried over this business. And he 
 came to me this morning with the wildest story. Oh, 
 quite an absurd story ! " 
 
 "About himself?" 
 
 " Yes. He says he isn't himself at all, but some 
 other person. A common sailor. You know, there 
 was a man blown up by those pirate people in the 
 Pacific somewhere when Daddy was nearly killed ; — 
 I've heard the story so often that I forget the details — 
 and it told upon him terribly at the time, I've heard 
 Mums say, so that he could never be induced to 
 allude to it afterwards. Well, that was one thing 
 that unhinged his mind a little once ; and now, this 
 other thing coming up, he's gone back to that again, 
 and declares he isn't himself at all, that his name 
 was never Cecil Glisson, and that he's really this 
 dead sailor, Tom Pringle or something." 
 
 " What an extraordinary idea ! But Evey, you 
 ought at once to see a doctor." 
 
 " It would break Mother's heart. And then, the 
 disgrace of it ! " 
 
 " But you can't keep it all to yourself. Other people 
 must know soon. And the trouble is too much for 
 you. You must have advice about it." 
 
 " When do you go up to town ? " 
 
 " Tomorrow morning, darling. I suppose I can 
 sleep here ? " 
 
 " Of course. Oh, I am so glad you came. Yes, 
 I'll do as you say. I'll go up with you tomorrow." 
 
 " But your mother " 
 
 " Mother or no ; this is no time to stand upon 
 
222 THE INCIDENTAL BISHOP 
 
 trifles. Besides, chaperons are abolished : Madge 
 says they're an anachronism. I'll go with you, Alex ; 
 and I'll see Sir Nathaniel." 
 
 " Evey ; you're sure it's a delusion ? You're sure 
 he has fancies ? It can't be true ? You see, we 
 mustn't force his hand, — drive him into a confession, 
 must we?" 
 
 " Alex, do you think I don't know my own father 
 better than that — the dear darling ? Why, he couldnH 
 tell a lie, not if his life depended on it. Even now, 
 in this delusion, he never thinks of himself ; he thinks 
 only of the effect upon me and mother. It's just a 
 freak of conscience. He has brooded on the wicked- 
 ness of this man at Reading so long that he begins 
 to believe he's done the same himself But he 
 couldn't do it, poor dear ; he's a vast deal too innocent. 
 Why, he couldn't go on with it for two days together. 
 He'd let it out in half an hour ; he could never keep 
 up a great organised deception. Though if he'd 
 really done it, it wouldn't much matter either ; for 
 whatever he does, it's his nature to do it for sufficient 
 reasons." 
 
 " Evey, what faith you have ! You are a true 
 woman." 
 
 " Faith in the men I love, Alex ; yes, faith to the 
 very end. Not faith that they'll never do wrong ; 
 I don't care for that kind ; but faith in them still 
 even if I know they have done it. I told him so 
 just now. It doesn't matter to me whether it's true 
 or not, so far as that goes. He's still himself And 
 do you think something he once did before I was 
 born is going to blot out the memory of all these 
 years that I have lived and known him — the memory 
 
EVELYN ACTS 223 
 
 of what he is and always has been ? I should think 
 of him the same if you could prove to me this minute 
 that he committed a murder in New South Wales 
 thirty years ago. I should say : ' Poor dear ; what 
 could have driven him to do it ? 
 
 1 » » 
 
CHAPTER XXVIII. 
 OFFICIAL INTELLIGENCE. 
 
 By the first train next morning, Evelyn went up to 
 Paddington. In these latter days of the decline and 
 fall of the chaperon, on which she had insisted, her 
 mother did not even attempt to prevent her. The 
 bicycle has entailed a general decadence of chaperon- 
 age. She went openly with Alex, and accompanied 
 him to the door of the Education Office. There, she 
 sent up her card to Sir Nathaniel, with the pencilled 
 words "A. T. is here also; but he can wait. My 
 need is urgent." 
 
 In a few minutes, a Private Secretary with a most 
 official face, a big black moustache, and a languid 
 drawl, came down to the waiting room. " Sir 
 Nathaniel will see you at once," he drawled out. 
 Very pale and trembling, Evelyn followed him up 
 to the great man's sanctum. 
 
 As soon as the door was closed. Sir Nathaniel 
 leaned back in his revolving chair, folded his hands 
 before him, and stared hard in her face with comical 
 resignation. " So you are bent upon making a job 
 of it?" he murmured slowly. "You mean to turn 
 out the Government ! Are you aware, my dear 
 young lady, that this action of yours makes the 
 
 234 
 
OFFICIAL INTELLIGENCE 22$ 
 
 appointment of your protege— let us call him your 
 protdg6 still — it prevents complications — absolutely 
 impossible ? " 
 
 Evelyn half broke down ; tears floated in her eyes. 
 " Oh, Sir Nathaniel," she burst out, " I haven't come 
 about that. I've come about Papa. A terrible thing 
 has happened. Have you read his letter?" 
 
 " God bless my soul, no," the Secretary answered, 
 astonished. " Is it as bad as all that ? " He turned 
 over a great pile of correspondence that lay littered 
 in front of him. " Here it is," he said, " unread. 
 Tutnell told me it was important ; but I haven't 
 had time to glance at it." He skimmed through it 
 hastily. Then his face grew graver. " Well, what 
 does this mean ? " he asked, with a dim misgiving. 
 It seemed to forebode evil. He half suspected what 
 Evelyn herself had fancied — an open scandal. Could 
 the Bishop have run away with some other man's 
 housemaid ? 
 
 " Papa wrote that letter," Evelyn said, schooling 
 herself to talk calmly, " under the influence of — well, 
 very intense emotion. I saw it when he had finished ; 
 and I'm afraid — Sir Nathaniel, help me out with this, 
 do ; I'm afraid he wrote it in a fit of delusion." 
 
 " Clearly," Sir Nathaniel answered with the promp- 
 titude of an official whose business it is to explain 
 away everything. 
 
 " Well, — that's all," Evelyn said, and glanced up at 
 him tearfully. 
 
 She looked so much prettier, so much tenderer, so 
 much more womanly that day, in her simple morning 
 dress v/ith her tearful eyes, than he had ever before 
 seen her that Sir Nathaniel was touched. He rose 
 
 15 
 
226 THE INCIDENTAL BISHOP 
 
 and moved over toward her. Then he laid one hand 
 on her shoulder and took hers in the other. He was 
 a kind old friend, and Evelyn let him hold it. 
 
 " My poor child," he said, in a voice of unwonted 
 softness, " that is enough. I see it clearly now. This 
 trouble about that rascal at Reading has told upon 
 his overworked brain. But we may set all straight 
 yet. Does Mrs. Glisson know of it?" 
 
 " No," Evelyn answered. " Thank Heaven, no." 
 She had grown into a woman at once. " And I want 
 to spare her," she went on. "If she knows, it will 
 kill her. Daddy has been everything in the world to 
 Mother. Nobody has heard but myself. I only tell 
 you because he wrote that letter. I want you to take 
 no notice ; and I want you to advise me what to do 
 about it." 
 
 Sir Nathaniel took counsel with his watch. He 
 was accustomed to acting with promptitude. " Is 
 young Thornbury here now ? " he asked. 
 
 " Yes. He came up to town with me." 
 
 Sir Nathaniel hummed and hawed, and beat a 
 devil's tattoo with his fingers on the table. " He 
 mustn't stop," he answered, after a deliberative pause. 
 " Under the circumstances, it would be impossible 
 for me to see him today. Let me think ; he must 
 go ; but where can he meet you later ? Say at the 
 confectioner's at the bottom of Regent Street. You 
 know it, I suppose. That will do, won't it ? " 
 
 " Perfectly," Evelyn answered. 
 
 The great man wrote three lines and placed them 
 in an envelope. Then he rang a hand-bell. "For 
 Mr. Thornbury," he said; "in the waiting room below ; 
 to cancel appointment." 
 
, f*''.'!,!^ : :■■.'■, vrv.,, -^ V '■,-'''','-.,;' '"7'. •', \. , ' '-■■ ■:,■(■' 
 
 OFFICIAL INTELLIGENCE 227 
 
 The Private Secretary took it and nodded. 
 
 " Now, look here, Evey," Sir Nathaniel went on — 
 " I may call you Evey, mayn't I, as I'm just going 
 to disappoint you ? You are a young lady who 
 thoroughly understands official language." 
 
 " I trust so," Evelyn answered with a faint access 
 of hope. 
 
 "Yes, you do," the man of office said, clinching 
 it. " And you also understand official necessities. 
 Most girls are born fools ; you happen to belong 
 to the opposite category. You will see at once that 
 your coming here this morning with Mr. Thornbury 
 and trying to see me was extremely ill-timed. In 
 point of fact, fatal. Therefore I should like to assure 
 you categorically that before you arrived — last night 
 in fact — I had already made up my mind nol to 
 appoint Mr. Thornbury, but another person. To that 
 resolution I must adhere. Do you thoroughly com- 
 prehend me ? " 
 
 He looked her full in the face. His eyes met hers. 
 Evelyn glanced at them from under her eyelids with 
 unwonted timidity. Even /ier irreverent soul was 
 awed for the moment by the gravity of the situa- 
 tion. " I — I think I follow," she faltered dubiously. 
 
 " I'm not quite sure that you do," Sir Nathaniel 
 answered, laying his hand again gently on the poor 
 child's shoulder. " I'm sorry to disappoint you, 
 Evey ; but — exigencies of state, you know : the 
 service is the service, and the country is exacting. 
 Therefore, your friend must not expect this appoint- 
 ment." 
 
 Evelyn lifted her eyes timidly. " Oh, thank you," 
 she said with a very short gasp. 
 
228 THE INCIDENTAL BISHOP 
 
 Sir Nathaniel froze. "There is nothing at all to 
 thank me for ; quite the contrary," he answered. 
 
 Evelyn smiled in spite of herself. " Then thank 
 you for nothing," she broke out with a spice of her 
 usual devilry. 
 
 " That's better ; that's better ! Now we understand 
 one another. You will break it to young Thornbury 
 — unofficially, of course ? That's excellent — excellent. 
 Evey, you're one of the most intelligent and sensible 
 girls I know. If you were a man, I think I would 
 appoint you my private secretary. You have a head 
 on your shoulders." 
 
 " Thank you again. Sir Nathaniel." 
 
 The official smiled coldly. But the corner of his 
 eye belied his mouth. It was almost human. " Well, 
 having dismissed that point for ever," he said dryly, 
 " and made it quite clear that nothing can be done, 
 we may as well get on to the other business. Stop ; 
 one moment ; before we pass on, tell Thornbury that 
 he had better say nothing about it. I think I shall 
 now delay the appointment for a fortnight, in order to 
 make inquiries about suitable persons. You may tell 
 him — not from me, but as a private hint from yourself, 
 — that you believe the other man will receive the post, 
 let us say in ten days or so." 
 
 Evelyn nodded her head. " Oh, thank you, thank 
 you." 
 
 " Not at all," Sir Nathaniel continued. " I wish 
 you wouldn't say thank you. It's embarrassing, very. 
 Such a compromising word. If Tutnell happened to 
 come in, he might foolishly suppose I had been pro- 
 mising you something. And it is against our principles 
 in this office ever to make any promises to anybody." 
 
OFFICIAL INTELLIGENCE 229 
 
 " I will take care not to countenance such a foolish 
 misconception," Evelyn replied demurely. 
 
 " That's well," the official went on. " Now, let us 
 talk about your father. This is bad news, Evey. 
 I'm distressed to hear it." 
 
 Evelyn broke down again, this time sobbing out- 
 right. Sir Nathaniel leant over her in comical 
 agitation. " My dear child," he cried, " my dear child, 
 not that^ whatever you do ! Suppose somebody were 
 to come in ? So very unofficial ! " 
 
 Evelyn did her best to dry her eyes, not quite 
 successfully. Sir Nathaniel bent over her, and tried 
 to soothe her. After a while she grew calmer, and 
 told her little story as well as she was able, suppress- 
 ing part, but mentioning enough to let the Secretary 
 judge the gravity of the situation. He listened 
 attentively ; then he said at last : " Of course this is 
 all delusion. His letter to me shows even that he had 
 not fully made up his mind at the moment when he 
 wrote, what particular form the delusion should take. 
 It is vague and general. But I don't think there is 
 cause for any serious alarm. Your father is not a 
 man of the insane temperament. He has systemati- 
 cally overworked himself, and may have a passing 
 attack like this, due to nothing more than disordered 
 nerves. But he will never go mad ; you may take 
 my word for it." 
 
 "You think not?" Evelyn cried, grasping at this 
 ray of hope with profuse gratitude. 
 
 " No, certainly not," the man of experience answered. 
 " Remember, I was a doctor myself before I went into 
 politics ; and I can tell you one thing about madness 
 that may comfort you. Insanity is a disease of the 
 
230 THE INCIDENTAL HISHOP 
 
 selfish temperament. It occurs only or almost only 
 among the self-centred. Go to an asylum any day 
 and hear what the patients have to tell you ; it is I, I, 
 I, from beginning to end. Never some other person. 
 / am the Queen of England, / am the prophet Ma- 
 homet, / am the Archbishop of Canterbury, / have 
 come into a large sum of money, / am in the depths 
 of misery and destitution, / am being persecuted by 
 the police, / am the victim of a conspiracy which 
 haunts me everywhere. But not one patient is ever 
 thinking : That man there is the Emperor of Germany ; 
 that woman is the wife of the prophet Mahomet ; 
 my friends are being persecuted ; my son or my 
 cousin has come into an immense fortune. It is all as 
 personal as personal can be ; no love, no sympathy, 
 no thought for others." 
 
 "That's not in the least like Daddy," Evelyn 
 answered with conviction. " Whatever is the matter, 
 he is always the same — the most unselfish of men. 
 He thinks about Mums, about me, about the chain- 
 makers, about his poor people, till I sometimes feel 
 inclined to say : * Oh, bother the poor, Daddy ; do 
 remember that you too have a soul to save and a 
 body to take care of ! * Even since this began, I 
 can see it's the marriages he has performed and the 
 people he has ordained that most of all trouble him. 
 He never thinks of himself; he thinks about the 
 scandal and the disgrace to the episcopacy, and the 
 way dear Mother would be horrified to learn it." 
 
 " Then you may be sure it will pass," Sir Nathaniel 
 said with promptitude. "That is not serious madness. 
 Madness has only two springs : one is selfishness, 
 pure piggish selfishness : the other is like unto it — 
 
 
'•>\ ' ' -r:, / • .1^ ,.•.'-■"■. .■'.■<r> 
 
 OFFICIAL INTELLIGENCE 23 1 
 
 stolid family placidity. A man of varied interests 
 never goes mad. And I'll tell you what you'd better 
 do ; you'd better get Yate-Westbury to run down 
 with you accidentally, and report upon your father. 
 Stop a minute ! " Sir Nathaniel consulted his watch 
 once more. "Shall I? Yes, hang it all, I 2vi/l ; I 
 can talk out the deputation in twenty minutes. Sheer 
 politeness will do it : agree with them all round, and 
 commit myself to nothing. The deputation with- 
 draws, much pleased with its reception. There's a 
 train at ?. quarter to three. I could catch that, I 
 think. I know Yate-Westbury. I'll go round and 
 drag him away, patients or no patients. Your 
 father's condition is clearly critical ; and such a man 
 as he is worth many sparrows. Yate-Westbury's 
 patients arc mostly jackdaws. Yate-Westbury must 
 come. I'll meet you at Paddin^^-on. Now, off to 
 your disappointed friend, and break the nev/s to him 
 gently that he must give up all hopes of obtaining 
 an inspectorship ! " He bowed her out with a soft 
 touch on the shoulder. 
 
 Ten minutes later Evelyn was lunching with Alex 
 at a cafe in Regent Street, and exclaiming with 
 effusion : " Well, Alex, Sir Nathaniel's the greatest 
 dear, bar one, that ever was born ! He's been just 
 sweet to me. And he told me, officially you know, — 
 I mean, in official topsy-turvey — that in spite of 
 Daddy's letter you should have the inspectorship 
 before the end of a fortnight." 
 
 
CHAPTER XXIX. 
 THE BISHOP TURNS. 
 
 TllEY travelled down to Dorchester together — Sir 
 Nathaniel, Yate-Westbury, Evelyn, and Alex Thorn- 
 bury, the only four people, save old Dr. Littlemore, 
 who had learned the secret of the Bishop's delusion. 
 
 The great specialist was very consoling, on the way, 
 to Evelyn. He made light of the danger. It was 
 arranged that he should assume the part of a person 
 who had come down in search of a building site 
 somewhere near the river, and should be introduced 
 to the Palace by Sir Nathaniel, who was supposed to 
 have met him casually at the station. This would 
 prevent unnecessary alarm on the patient's part. But 
 Yate-Westbury echoed Sir Nathaniel's own opinion 
 as to the Bishop's state of mind. He made Evelyn 
 retail to him her father's symptoms ; then he leaned 
 back at last on the padded cushions of his first class 
 carriage and answered with easy conviction : " Oh, 
 there can't be much the matter with hiniy Miss Glisson. 
 It doesn't take them so. Not that way madness lies. 
 A passing hysterical illusion, perhaps ; no more. 
 He'll get better of it soon with rest and change — a 
 month in the Engadine. Dismiss the trouble from 
 your mind for the present. I'll tell you more about 
 
 it after I've had a chat with him." 
 
 232 
 
 t.. ■■<->. ... .X.' 
 
:'--^,'-.» V ',-..;,v---.--^r=^.T7:-Tij*?: -I 
 
 THE BISHOP TURNS 233 
 
 At the station, they separated. Evelyn and Alex 
 walked up by themselves to the Palace ; Sir Nath- 
 aniel and Yate-Westbury drove after them in a fly 
 twenty minutes later. Might they see the Bishop ? 
 The Bishop, much perturbed, came out into the 
 drawing-room to see them. 
 
 Sir Nathaniel played his part like a diplomatist 
 that he was. He had run down to call upon the 
 Bishop about that little matter of the letter, which 
 had somewhat disquieted him ; but at the same time, 
 he had happened to meet at the station his friend 
 Mr. Augustus Egerton, a North Country manufacturer 
 — "you know the firm — Wells, Egerton, and Back- 
 house," he interposed in a stage aside — who was 
 looking out for a place on the river where he could 
 build a bungalow and a suitable boat-house for his 
 electric launch. He wanted some pretty reach within 
 easy distance of Oxford. " I've ventured to bring 
 him along with me," he said, " knowing that you were 
 a good authority as to this part of the country ; and 
 besides" — confidentially, in another stage whisper, 
 "the diocese of Dorchester, you know: — no large 
 industrial towns — rich men are not abundant ; so if 
 you fixed him here betimes, you might see the com- 
 pletion of the new transept." 
 
 The Bishop turned to him with a troubled far- 
 away smile. " Thank you," he said slowly, " thank 
 you. I have much to think about. But stone and 
 mortar are the least. And the transept is not just 
 now my first object." 
 
 They strolled out upon the lawn through the open 
 window. Yate-Westbury began asking some per- 
 functory questions as to land and houses and depth 
 
234 THE INCIDENTAL BISHOP 
 
 of water in-shore for steam launches to approach, 
 which the Bishop answered in the same pre-occupied 
 manner. It was clear his mind was not in the 
 subject. But gradually they drew apart round the 
 far end of the shrubbery. There, close to the spot 
 where Birinus had baptised the first Christians in 
 Wessex, the Bishop dropped into a seat, and to 
 Yate-Westbury's immense surprise, turned with 
 sudden fierceness on his unexpected visitor. "This 
 is a plot," he said bitterly. "A mean, lying plot. 
 An attempt against my sanity. I know you, sir : I 
 know you. Evelyn should not have done this. It 
 is a wicked conspiracy." 
 
 The specialist eyed him hard. His mind was 
 shaken at first from the decision he had given 
 beforehand to Miss Glisson. Conspiracy? — a plot? 
 Surely the very vocabulary of madness ! 
 
 " Why, how do you mean ? " he asked in his most 
 honeyed and candid manner — with the mock candour 
 of the mad doctor, transparently artificial. 
 
 The Bishop astonished him by flaring out his 
 answer at once. " Yes, a conspiracy, I tell you ; 
 and I am not well pleased that my daughter should 
 have contrived it. She is driving me to bay, and 
 heaven only knows what misfortune may come of 
 it — for my poor dear wife, to spare whom I would 
 gladly die in torture. Ah, you think I don't know 
 you ; but I do, very well. I saw through this thing 
 the moment Sir Nathaniel introduced you just now 
 under an assumed name. You are not Mr. Egerton ; 
 you are Dr. Yate-Westbury, the specialist on in- 
 sanity. I sat with you nine months ago on the same 
 platform at a meeting in St. James's Hall ; and I 
 
I, n.T^ -tf.y "-,■ :- 1'^ • .-/ly ;•.•;::• ir .<,■ ■/■ ^.\s.-,j. i ,^- , „■ ■ . :•...- \t ■ 
 
 THE BISHOP TURNS 235 
 
 have seen you since more than once in the street in 
 London." 
 
 The specialist was taken aback. "Oh, indeed?" 
 was all he could answer. " I go about a good deal 
 up and down in England." 
 
 " Yes ; and you have come here today to see 
 whether I am mad. Well, Dr. Yate-Westbury, I 
 wish to heaven I was. It would save a great deal 
 of misery to everybody. But I am worse than mad ; 
 that would be disgrace enough in itself for my poor 
 wife and daughter ; yet not so bad as the disgrace 
 I must ultimately bring upon them. What has 
 Evelyn told you? Let me hear that first. She is 
 driving me hard, and I must know how far she has 
 driven me in this matter." 
 
 " Miss Glisson merely said," the specialist answered, 
 making a clear breast of it, " that you had told her 
 what she frankly described as a cock-and-bull story, 
 about your life in Melanesia ; that the cock-and-bull 
 story was so obviously false that it had alarmed her 
 for your safety ; and that acting on Sir Nathaniel 
 Merriton's advice, — very sound advice, as a rule — she 
 wished me to see you and to report upon your sanity. 
 There now, you observe, I have unreservedly exposed 
 the whole wicked conspiracy. I have been perfectly 
 frank with you ; be frank with me in return, and tell 
 me the nature of this trouble that weighs upon you." 
 
 The Bishop turned upon him and looked him 
 through and through. " Dr. Yate-Westbury," he said 
 slowly, " this is no case for you, but for a higher 
 tribunal. It was asked long ago of one of your sort, 
 * Canst thou minister to a mind diseased ? ' and the 
 disease was of the same kind as with me, — remorse, 
 
236 THE INCIDENTAL BISHOP 
 
 and horror for wrong done, irrevocable. What that 
 wrong was, I am not going to tell you. My daughter 
 has not told you ; for that crumb of comfort I am 
 grateful to Providence. I have lain awake all night 
 long, wondering whether the easiest way out of it 
 would not be by flinging myself here into the river. 
 I am a good swimmer ; I could stem the weir there : 
 yet I am sure I have self-control enough to abstain 
 from swimming, even when I felt the death-gurgle 
 fighting in my throat, if that were necessary for 
 my wife's and my daughter's happiness. But I 
 have weighed suicide in the balance, and come to 
 the conclusion that suicide is not the best way out. 
 What I say to you now, I say in confidence. I 
 have wrestled in prayer all night long, beseeching 
 the Lord to let me die before this secret is out, for 
 my wife's sake and my daughter's ; and I almost feel 
 as though my prayer would be answered. I have 
 not prayed for forgiveness for myself, but that my 
 sin should not be visited on those innocent heads. 
 But I cannot kill myself, for their sake, though to 
 kill myself would perhaps be the safest way in the 
 end to save them. That is all I think about. If 
 only I could die, and still keep this secret, everything 
 would be well. But Evelyn is making it hard 
 for the secret to be kept. The very wife and child 
 for whose sake I would die, carrying my secret 
 with me, are striving their best to drag the truth 
 out of me." 
 
 Yate-Westbury leaned forward with professional 
 interest and watched the patient closely. He was 
 probing the man's eyes, scanning the twitch of his 
 mouth, noting his eager fingers. By dexterous side- 
 
 tfi^ 
 
THE BISHOP TURNS 237 
 
 questions — seeming to agree, seeming to differ — 
 acquiescing, expostulating — the great specialist slowly 
 drew him out. On the subject of his supposed sin, 
 the Bishop firmly declined to say anything ; he was 
 reticence itself ; he merely declared that he had made 
 up his mind irrevocably never again to perform any 
 sacred office. " I put the thing from me," he said 
 succinctly. But on the subject of his general health, 
 his devotion to Olive and Evelyn, his remorse and 
 anguish, he was articulate and even voluble. He 
 did not wish to be thought mad; and he knew him- 
 self sane. The stigma on Evelyn alone would have 
 deterred him from seeking that outlet. Nay more, 
 it was part of his penance that he must endure his 
 punishment ; and if the punishment came, he would 
 endure it manfully. But to be taken for mad would 
 be to shirk the penalty : nor could he have Evelyn 
 falsely branded as a madman's daughter. What he 
 had done he would pay for ; but he would not let his 
 innocent daughter pay for what he had never done, 
 nor been, nor dreamt of. 
 
 He spoke long and earnestly. Yate-Westbury 
 listened with keen professional eagerness. At the 
 end of the interview, the doctor went off to seek the 
 man of office. Sir Nathaniel was in the drawing 
 room, stretching his big legs uneasily in a long wicker 
 chair, and trying to make conversation with Mrs. 
 Glisson and Evelyn. Yate-Westbury drew him aside 
 and beckoned him out on to the lawn. They paused 
 behind the lilacs. " Well ? " Sir Nathaniel said in- 
 quiringly. " You find his brain touched ? " 
 
 Yate- Wcstbury's confident answer came with crush- 
 ing force. " No ; not in the least degree ; the man's 
 
238 THE INCIDENTAL BISHOP 
 
 as sane as you are. Whatever it was, he has really 
 done it." 
 
 " You are sure ? " 
 
 "Never was more certain of a case in my life. 
 The symptoms are obvious. Remorse, not madness. 
 I've watched his face, his eyes, his gestures. He's 
 deeply agitated, acting under the influence of some 
 profound emotion ; but it's strictly normal. Emotion, 
 I should say, of an overpowering character, affecting 
 a man built on the exact opposite lines from the 
 insane temperament — a many-sided, wholesome, hard- 
 working, honest, well-meaning man, who has been 
 hurried into some crime, perhaps a small one, and is 
 suffering for it exaggerated regret and agony." 
 
 Sir Nathaniel gave a long low " Whew ! " " That's 
 bad," he answered, stopping dead short : " about as 
 bad as it can be. The other thing would be better. 
 If he isn't mad, my dear fellow, he's — well, whatever 
 he is, he's not a bishop." 
 
 "You think it " 
 
 " Yes : criminal." 
 
 There was a long pause. Then they talked it over 
 for a while. Sir Nathaniel, on second thoughts, regret- 
 ting at once his hasty admission. " At least," he said 
 after a while, "you will treat this expression of 
 opinion as confidential. You are here professionally, 
 and you will not divulge a professional secret. We 
 may save a scandal yet. What will you say to Miss 
 Glisson ? " 
 
 " The simple truth ; it is always easiest. * I have 
 examined your father, and find him perfectly sane and 
 normal. He is suffering merely from excessive emo- 
 tion.' She must put her own explanation upon it." 
 
CHAPTER XXX. 
 THE BISHOP DECIDES. 
 
 It was Saturday evening. Sir Nathaniel and Yate- 
 Westbury spent the night at the Palace. The great 
 specialist had doubts at first whether it was well for 
 him to stay ; he feared lest his presence might be 
 misinterpreted both by the Bishop and by others. 
 But Evelyn settled the question for him with the 
 imperiousness of her age and generation. " You must 
 stop," she said quietly. " It's better for Daddy, and 
 better for Mums too. You have reassured our minds ; 
 and whatever is the matter with him, he's not afraid 
 of you. So you had better wait on and see how he 
 is in the morning." 
 
 It was a gloomy dinner party. The cloud brooded 
 over them all. Evelyn and Alex made a vain pre- 
 tence of keeping things lively ; and the man of politics 
 tried to engage the Bishop in talk about the progress 
 of events in that eternal East, which resembles the 
 poor in being always with us. But nothing could 
 dispel the deep gloom that had settled on the Bishop. 
 He eat his dinner in silence, conscious of doom, and 
 with the fate of thousands of souls weighing down his 
 conscience. Worst of all, he had still the deadly pro- 
 blem of Olive. As she sat and faced him, with her 
 
 239 
 
240 THE INCIDENTAL BISHOP 
 
 calm middle-aged comeliness, as beautiful in his eyes 
 that evening as when he saw her first on the verandah 
 at Sydney, he could not conceive how he was ever to 
 break the truth to her. That he had never been ; 
 that she had never married him ; that all their life 
 together was a lie and a delusion ! No wonder he 
 shrank from that terrible confession, that the man she 
 had loved, had honoured, had married, was utterly 
 non-existent, and that in his place stood a mendacious 
 run-away sailor, masquerading as priest, as bishop, 
 and as philanthropist. 
 
 That he was all these save in the accident of 
 ordination was nothing to the purpose. He was too 
 ecclesiasticised himself, and had too much trained his 
 wife to the ecclesiastical standpoint, for that to matter 
 to either of them. 
 
 The Bishop retired early. He went to his own 
 room, not because he hoped for sleep, — sleep was 
 now a rare visitor — but because he thought it easier 
 at least to be alone than to make the hateful pretence 
 of talking about trifles when his soul was elsewhere. 
 He locked his door and knelt down to pray. Not 
 originally or by instinct a religious man, prayer had 
 become to him with time a professional reality. He 
 had grown devout by mere clerical habit. It was his 
 nature to throw himself vividly into all that he under- 
 took. He had never allowed the irregularity of his 
 manner of entering the fold to interfere with his 
 whole-hearted acceptance of the priestly position once 
 he was within it. He had always prayed ; of late, 
 indeed, he had prayed without ceasing. He acknow- 
 ledged to heaven, as he acknowledged to himself, the 
 wrongfulness of his deception ; he was too honest in 
 
 OBI 
 
THE p.isiior DECIDES 241 
 
 soul to palter with omnipotence : but he trusted that 
 the Searcher of hearts, in whom he fully believed, 
 knowing all, would make allowance for the subtlety 
 and strength of the temptation. It was without fear, 
 therefore, that the Bishop threw himself on his knees 
 before the Throne of Grace ; he was praying from 
 his heart, an earnest prayer for others ; and that 
 prayer he felt sure the worst of men might pray with- 
 out sin at so fateful a crisis. 
 
 He did not pray for himself, — for forgiveness, for 
 heaven, for some way out of his difficulties. He was 
 utterly oblivious of his own salvation. He prayed for 
 Olive ; he prayed for Evelyn. He wrestled with his 
 Lord that his innocent wife and child might be spared 
 this humiliation. For himself, he had sinned, and he 
 was willing to expiate that sin with whatever punish- 
 ment Eternal Justice might see fit to inflict upon him ; 
 but he prayed, with trembling lips, that the sins of 
 the fathers might not be visited on the children, that 
 the innocent wife might not suffer for the guilty 
 husband. He prayed with a solemn dread, for he 
 remembered only too well that his was the sin of 
 Korah, Dathan, and Abiram, and that Korah, Dathan, 
 and Abiram had been swallowed alive by the earth, 
 not themselves alone, but with all that appertained 
 to them. Yet he wrestled none the less, with great 
 drops of perspiration standing on his brow. He 
 begged hard to be punished to the utmost of his sin, 
 both here and hereafter, if only these little ones 
 might not suffer with him. 
 
 It was a terrible expiation. He endured it like a 
 man. His one thought throughout was that he must 
 save his beloved ones. 
 
 16 
 
242 THE INCIDENTAL BISHOP 
 
 Hour after hour he prayed on, with feverish eager- 
 ness. Then slowly, out of the darkness, a gleam of 
 light came to him. He saw it visibly stealing over 
 the tower of the Cathedral. Day was dawning, and 
 hope dawned with it. 
 
 He knew not why he had this sudden sense of 
 unaccountable relief — this strange feeling that some- 
 how all would yet be well with him. Well, that is 
 to say, rathnr, with Olive and Evelyn. But he did 
 feel it for all that ; a curious instinct which seemed 
 to tell him he was doomed himself — that his body 
 should pay in endless torture for his sin — but that 
 Olive and Evelyn should be spared that last misery 
 of a broken idol. For a while he was calmer ; some- 
 thing in his head made him feel light and at peace. 
 He did not sleep, indeed, or desire to sleep ; but he 
 lay back in his easy chair, closed his eyes, and thought 
 more calmly. Had his prayer been answered ? 
 Were Olive and Evelyn to be saved from this expo- 
 sure ? 
 
 All night he had sat and watched by the open 
 window : as the light grew clearer above the Cathedral 
 tower, his heart grew happier each moment. He 
 knew not why, but he had confidence that his prayer 
 had been heard. Yet he was dimly conscious too 
 that he must make reparation. And how could he 
 make reparation save only by confession ? And how 
 could he confess save by ruining Olive's life for her ? 
 If he could but die ! He leaned out of the window, 
 and saw the river flow fast past the spot where Birinus 
 had brought the faith of Christ to Wessex. In that 
 river he could expiate his sin no doubt — and save 
 Olive. But what a poor way of saving her ! To 
 
THE rJISHOP DECIDES 243 
 
 leave to her and Evelyn the stigma of a suicide's 
 widow and orphan — no, no, he shrank from it. Easy 
 enough to drown, of course ; but what would come 
 after drowning? Not for himself, not for himself; 
 he would welcome hell, if hell were the appointed 
 way for him to make Olive happy, and to expiate 
 his crime ; he was manly enough to wish to bear 
 his proper penalty. But for Olive ? No, no ; that 
 was not the way the Power that rules the affairs of 
 men had ordained for her delivery. He would have 
 faith that it would come ; and come it would with 
 morning. 
 
 And with morning it came. A messenger at the 
 door, post haste from Oxford. 
 
 About five o'clock the Bishop had felt that strange 
 sense of relief. And about five o'clock there had 
 died suddenly at Oxford the one man to whom he 
 had told the whole tale of his deception. Dr. Little- 
 more of Oriel. 
 
 He knew instinctively, as he opened the letter 
 which the messenger brought that it was a message 
 from the grave. He read it through in silence. 
 " Dr. Littlemore died this morning at five. In his 
 last moments, seized suddenly with a spasm of heart 
 disease, he was inarticulately anxious about the safety 
 of your soul, and about some evil which he expected 
 the Church to suffer from you. He could not be 
 happy till I had promised him that the moment he 
 was dead I would send a messenger at once to tell 
 you so. He murmured frequently : ' Tell the Bishop 
 of Dorchester he must confess before men. As he 
 sinned before men, so must he confess, openly.' I 
 have no idea to what our dear friend referred, and 
 
244 THE INCIDENTAL BISHOP 
 
 I have little doubt he was labouring under a delusion. 
 But as he made me promise him most solemnly that 
 I would report his words at once, I am sure you will 
 forgive my bringing a dying man's last wish to your 
 immediate notice." It was signed by a scarcely less 
 famous Canon of Christ Church. 
 
 Then the Bishop knew all. He saw his Lord's 
 way, and with a deadly struggle, he endeavoured to 
 accept it. 
 
 He cast himself down on his knees once more, and 
 prayed with all his soul that this trial might pass from 
 him. But the longer he prayed, the more profoundly 
 did the sense steal over him that he must tell all 
 out — must confess to Olive. If she was to hear 
 it at all, she would hear it better from his own lips 
 than from any other's. Yet how was he to tell her ? 
 Well, well, we must quit us like men, whatever 
 happens ; and the Bishop felt now that to quit him- 
 self like a man was all that was left for him. He rose 
 from his knees once more with a profound sense 
 of a duty imposed upon him. He would drink his 
 cup to the dregs, and save Olive what he could of 
 this unspeakable exposure. 
 
 With a whirling head, he staggered rather than 
 walked into the breakfast room, and shook hands 
 mechanically with Yate-Westbury and Sir Nathaniel. 
 Although he shook hands with them, he was not 
 conscious of their presence. Then he turned to his 
 wife, who had spent the night in her own room, 
 almost as sleepless as himself. To stand near Olive 
 was like coming to anchor after a storm. "Olive, 
 dearest," he said, with his never-failing tenderness 
 more apparent than ever ; " I want to speak alone 
 
 _-.i^^».«ij;i^^.>ii •'»._ 
 
THE msiiop DECIDES 245 
 
 with you. I must speak at once — in the study — 
 before breakfast. No, Evelyn, no — " for Evelyn 
 darted forward with a glance of deprecating horror ; 
 " I must have this out now alone with your mother ; 
 there is no other way possible." He waved her aside 
 gently, and took his wife's hand in his own. " Come, 
 darling," he said, in a soothing voice. " Come with 
 me to the study. I have something to say. And — I 
 had better say it." 
 
 Mrs. Glisson followed him into the study with a 
 strange foreboding. The Bishop seated her in a 
 chair, and knelt beside her, with his face laid against 
 her, like a lover. For a moment he was silent. The 
 same pressure in his head which he noticed during 
 the night oppressed and numbed him. But he began 
 very softly. " Olive," he said, " my Olive, for nearly 
 thirty years we have lived together. We have loved 
 each other dearly. You have been to me the best 
 wife God ever gave any man. You have sympathised 
 with my work ; you have been light and warmth to 
 me. I love you now as I have loved you ever, more 
 than I think any other man can ever have loved and 
 honoured the woman that God gave him. To cause 
 you a moment's pain has always been hateful to me. 
 I cannot bear to think" — he paused and hesitated, 
 stroking her hand meanwhile with infinite tenderness. 
 " Olive," he said once more, " I love you so profoundly 
 that — that — that," he let her hand drop suddenly and 
 leant his head against her once more. " My darling," 
 
 he whispered, " my dar — my d-d-d " The words 
 
 stuck in his throat. He could get no further. 
 
 With a terrible effort, he strove to speak ; but 
 speech would not come to him. He tried to move his 
 

 246 THE INCIDENTAL BISHOr 
 
 tongue. It was tied and immovable. A sudden 
 burst of meaning told him all was up. He knew now 
 what it meant. This was clearly paralysis. 
 
 And he could see the meaning of that sense of relief 
 in his head about five o'clock that morning. A small 
 blood-vessel on the brain must have given way then, 
 and a second one this moment. His speech was gone. 
 He cou/d not confess to Olive ! 
 
 But he must ! But he must ! Or at least he must 
 try. Though God grant his trying fail ! Yet at 
 least he must make the effort. 
 
 He prayed hard for failure. He, who had never 
 once prayed for success, accepting it passively. But 
 he staggered towards the table, and seized a pen with 
 manful resolution. 
 
 Trembling and dazed, he wrote down the first few 
 words of an attempted confession, which came to no- 
 thing. But before the first line was finished, his hand 
 had dropped by his side. He could do no more. 
 Arm and tongue both failed him. 
 
 He stood there, mumbling. Mrs. Glisson rang the 
 bell and called loudly for help. Sir Nathaniel and 
 Yate-Westbury came at once at her cry ; so, a minute 
 later, did Alex and Evelyn. 
 
 They carried the Bishop to bed. He lay on his 
 pillow, very quiet. Though unable to speak or move, 
 he was conscious of all that was passing around him. 
 Yate-Westbury bent over him and examined him 
 carefully. When he had finished, he gave a look 
 which those about could interpret. Olive burst into 
 tears. The Bishop, with a single fierce effort, took 
 her hand in his, and pressed it gratefully. His lips 
 moved again. No sound escaped them ; but the 
 
THE BISHOP DECIDES 247 
 
 words he framed were " Thank God," and Evelyn 
 instantly read them. 
 
 Hour after hour passed away through that fatal 
 Sunday. By seven at night, the Bishop rallied a 
 little in a dying flicker. He held up one hand as 
 if he wished to speak. Evelyn, who was nearest at 
 the moment, bent over him. 
 
 The Bishop whispered in her ear. His voice, 
 though thick, was distinctly audible. "The Lord 
 has been good to me," he said. " He has spared me 
 that last humiliation, and your mother that sorrow. 
 Let him punish me now as he will ! I shall never 
 speak again. I am coming into port. Good bye, 
 dear, and kiss me ! " 
 
 She kissed him passionately. So did Olive. Then 
 he fell back and said no more. Five minutes later, 
 the heavy breathing ceased. Olive hid her face in 
 her hands. Evelyn stooped again and kissed the lips 
 of a man who, whatever his sin, had died heroically. 
 
 Sir Nathaniel drew Yate-Westbury aside into the 
 passage. " Under these circumstances," he said, " it 
 is unnecessary for anybody to inquire whether the 
 story which you and I alone know, and that very 
 partially, was true or a delusion." 
 
 " Oh, certainly," Yate-Westbury answered. " I 
 shall tell Mrs. Glisson and her daughter that he died 
 from nervous strain, resulting in paralysis ; and that 
 the strain was due to his excessive anxiety about the 
 affairs of his diocese." 
 
 Evelyn came out to them, in tears. " Mother need 
 never know," she said, " what troubled him in his last 
 few days." 
 
 " Nobody will ever know," Yate-Westbury answered, 
 
;.;;» -'.v. :.■;■';■«■:„'., ,; ^..■•"■■; ■ -';.;:/••" -v'^' ^■^':",il:iT;^'v'fV-^ 
 
 248 THE INCIDENTAL BISHOP 
 
 lying like a gentleman and a Christian, " There was 
 nothing in it. I am convinced it was all premonition 
 of this paralysis, acting upon an abnormally excited 
 brain. He had been worrying over this question of 
 the pretended orders ; and it killed a frame already 
 weary with much toil for others. Your father was a 
 good man. We could more easily have spared half 
 a dozen stock bishops." 
 
 " Then you don't believe it was true ? " Evelyn 
 cried, herself half doubting. 
 
 The specialist perjured himself like a man. " Not 
 one word of it ! " he answered. 
 
 Evelyn broke down utterly. " Oh thank you," she 
 cried. " Thank you ! I am so glad for Mother ! 
 Though myself, I should have loved him just the 
 same, no matter what he had done. He was my 
 father, Sir Nathaniel, and the best and sweetest father 
 any girl ever had. I should have believed in him if 
 he had committed a dozen murders. I should have 
 known they were right — because he did them ! " 
 
 THE END. 
 
 Printed by Hazell, V/atson, & Viney, Ld., London and Aylesbury. 
 
 Mii^^n . ... .iJtL 
 
G^ 
 
 g 
 
 Qj 
 
 ^^(^K^d^ 
 
 1 LB M 
 
 
 mi 
 
 
 
 . . Messrs. . . 
 
 C. ARTHUR PEARSON Ltd. 
 
 List of Publications 
 
 And Announcements. 
 
 SPRING, 1898. 
 
 LONDON: 
 HENRIETTA STREET, W.C. 
 
 ^Xi::1KJ^^^ 
 
 \9 
 
 Please note that all communications concerning this List should be 
 addressed " Book Department." 
 
i ■■'•..,!:-•■/'••-- ■'•; ''I'.. .''*:■■',]," 
 
 Book buyers are desired to place their 
 orders for books in this List through their local 
 booksellers ; but should any difficulty arise in 
 obtaining themf they can be sent direct from 
 this office on receipt of the published price, 
 except in the case of books published at a nett 
 price, when the cost of postage must be added. 
 
 C. ARTHUR PEARSON LIMITED, 
 *' Book Department " 
 
 Henrietta Street, W.C. 
 
 Telegraphic Address: ^^ Humoursome, Loudon.'^ 
 
 Telephone : 5161 Gerrard. V- 
 
^'f'T 
 
 C. ARTHUR PEARSON'S ANNOUNCEMENTS. 3 
 
 A MAGNIFICENT EDITION OF 
 
 THE PILGRIM'S PROGRESS. 
 
 Illustrated by the celebrated Artists, the Brothers Rhead, 
 
 With a Special Preface by the Rev. H. R. Haweis, M.A. 
 
 This Edition of " The Pil^ritn's Progress " has been specially 
 prepared for Messrs. C. Arthur Pearson Limited by 
 George Woolliscroft Rhead, R.E., Frederick 
 A. Rhead, and Louis Rhead, who have been actively 
 engaged for the last three years in illustrating this 
 favourite English classic. The drawings themselves 
 have recently been on exhibition in London, Parist 
 and New York, and are unique. Speaking of them 
 
 The AthencBum says:— "These excellent examples of the right way of illustrating 
 Bunyan possess those masculine qualities, that directness, and the robust energy that 
 the themes demand. As to the higher elements we associate under the name of design, 
 there is not the slightest doubt Bunyan, could he go to Bond Street and study the worlcs 
 of the Messrs. Rhead, would recognise in them a crowning mercy, specially reserved 
 till now for himself." 
 
 The Daily News says: — "At first glance these drawings, which are done in pen 
 and ink, with occasional aid of the brush, appear to acorl in strong family resemblance, 
 but in reality the three brothers differ considerably. They have worked, of course, on 
 the same lines to some extent, evolving a curiously archaic representation of the 
 principal personages as they suppose thetn to have existed in the imagination of John 
 Bunyan. . . . Mr. G. Woolliscroft Rhead has chosen the more weird and draaaatio 
 scenes in the journey, such as Christian entering the Valley of Death, and the men 
 among the tombs and congregation of the Dead, the Land of Beulah, a by-way to Hell, 
 the appearance of Apollyon and the escape from Doubting Castle, these and many 
 other episodes being conceived with considerable invention and imagination, with 
 realism and symbolism blended profusely. Mr. Frederick Rhead has aimed rather at 
 facial expressions of character in detail, contrasting the greater virtues and vices as 
 well as the lesser comedy of manners appertaining to humanity in an emphatic way 
 that approaches grotesqueness in several instances. The incident of Pliable's return 
 home to a boisterous welcome, the vivacity of the group where Talkative is at the 
 ale-bench, the crowded assembly of Vanity Fair, and similar episodes, are done with 
 skill and a bold touch." 
 
 The Daily Mail says : — " Messrs. C. Arthur Pearson Limited, are about to publish a 
 new e,lition-de-luxe of Banyan's " Pilgrims Progress,' and to three brothers — Mr. George 
 Woolliscroft Rhead, Mr. Frederick A. Rhead, and Mr. Louis Rhead— has been entrusted 
 the task of doing the drawings. Most of these are fine, virile pieces of work; all of 
 them are full of imagination and reverent feeling. It is interesting to notice that, 
 although the methods of the brothers are closely akin, there is just sufi&cient tempera- 
 mental difference in the work of each to suggest individuality." 
 
 This Work will be issued in Twelve Monthly Parts, with 
 Coloured Wrapper, Price 6d., and will be embellished 
 with Artistic Borders and Initials. 
 
 =!-'..,-!' An Edition de Luxe of this Work will he issued, limited to 
 200 Copies for England and America, numbered and signed by the 
 Artists, printed on hand-made paper, and bound in buckram. A 
 Prospectus will shortly be issued, and will be forwarded on application 
 
4 C. ARTHUR PEARSON'S ANNOUNCEMENTS. 
 
 WITH PEARY NEAR THE POLE. 
 
 By EiviND AsTRUP. Illustrated with Sketches and Photographs 
 by the Author. Demy 8vo, cloth gilt, gilt top. Price 
 los. 6d. 
 
 A tragic interest attaches to this work on Folar exploration, since it is Mr. Astrup's 
 first and last book. Only a few months ago he met his death when on a solitary 
 mountaineering expedition. A great personal friend of Lieut. Peary, he accompanied 
 that intrepid pioneer on his two expeditions northward, and, taking care to avoid a 
 repetition of the scientific story of their travels, has devoted himself to giving us a vivid 
 picture of the adventures that befell their parties, of the wonderful life they led, and 
 die strange animals and the stranger people they encountered. 
 
 NEW WORK BY G. F. WRIGHT, D.D., Professor of the Harmony of 
 Science and Revelation, Oberlin College. 
 
 SCIENTIFIC ASPECT5 OF CHRISTIAN EVIDENCES. 
 
 By G. F. Wright, D.D. Crown 8vo, cloth. Illustrated. Price 
 js. 6d. 
 This volume is an attempt by this well-known writer to show that Science is not in 
 opposition to the Evidences of Christianity. 
 
 MAD HUMANITY. 
 
 By Dr. Forbes Winslow. Crown 8vo, cloth. 
 
 In this book Dr. Winslow, the celebrated " mad " Doctor, deals largely with hia 
 personal reminiscences. Separate chapters are devoted to insanity in relation to genius, 
 in relation to crime, and in relation to sex. In fact the whole subject is treated 
 exhaustively and in popular style. 
 
 NevT Six Shilling Novels. 
 
 THE INCIDENTAL BISHOP. 
 
 By Grant Allen, Author of " What's Bred in the Bone" &c. 
 
 Crown 8vo, cloth. Price 6s. {March 4). 
 
 Mr. Grant Allen has made a new departure in this powerful story that begins with a 
 graphic picture of South Sea Island life, and then with a sudden shift of scene carries 
 us back to England. He ingeniously depicts the struggles of an innocent man who, by 
 dint of circumstances, is thrust into a position which, although amply qualified for, he 
 has no right to occupy. The story is brimful of adventure, and the latter part of it ia 
 distinguished by the painful intensity with which the victim of a moral problem strives 
 to find a way of escape from his crushing envii onment. 
 
 NEW BOOK BY THE AUTHOR OF ''THE MYSTERY OF A 
 
 HANSOAf CAB." 
 
 LADY JEZEBEL. 
 
 By Fergus Hume. Crown 8vo, cloth. Price 6s. 
 
 The clever author of the " Mystery of a Hansom Cab" has a no less attractive story 
 in " Lady Jezebel," who guards her horrible and loathsome secret so cleverly that it in 
 impossible for the reader to guess it until the author cumes to his assistance. 
 
 NEW BOOK BY THE AUTHOR OF ' THE HOUSE ON THE 
 
 MARSH." 
 
 THE MASTER-KEY. 
 
 (' Love is the Master Key that opens every ward of the heart of man.') 
 By Florence Warden. Crown 8vo, cloth. Price 6s. 
 
 The most exciting and mysterious story by this author which has appeared since 
 The House on the Marsh." It has all the vividness and stien(;th of Miss Warden'.^ 
 earlier work. * 
 
C ARTHUR PEARSON'S ANNOUNCEMENTS. 
 
 THE VIRGIN OF THE SUN. 
 
 A Tale of the Conquest of Peru. 
 
 By George Griffith, Author of'TheAngdoftheRevolutionr 
 *'Valdar the Oft-Born,'' ''Men Who Have Made the 
 Empire," &c., &c. Crown 8vo, cloth. With Frontispiece 
 by Stanley L. Wood. Price 6s. 
 
 T>7r^^MZ?^?u^' '^^''^^ ^^^^J^ *°.^° f°^/^« marvellous exploits of Francisco Pizarro 
 Sfp fnw?,nic ./*VT*"''^^ have done for those of Hernando Cortez in Mexico, traces 
 tw,^ V* ® of the Conqueror and his companions from their lowest ebb to their higheat 
 r»?o „«,„ '^ fu the first senous attempt that has been made to re-construct in story 
 J^^^?^^?^ '^^^n" °^,*^^ '°^^ civilisation of the Incas.and to make live again thehero«i 
 who fought so gallantly to avert the catastrophe which finally overwhelmed it. 
 
 THE Rev. ANNABEL LEE. 
 
 By Robert Buchanan, Author of "God and the Man.** 
 Crown 8vo, cloth. Price 6s. 
 
 The author's object in writing this novel is to show that, if all religions were destroyed 
 and perfect material prosperity arrived at, Humanity would reach, not perfection, but 
 stagnation. The story starts with the 21st Century, and deals with the efforts of a 
 charming and beautiful maiden, the Rev. Annabel Lee, to lead back her race to the 
 precepts of a forgotten Christianity. 
 
 THE SHROUDED FACE. 
 
 By Owen Rhoscomyl, Author of " Battlement and Tower" 
 •* The Jewel of Ynys Galon." Crown 8vo, cloth. Price 6s. 
 
 This is a tale of the time of Elizabeth, and the scene is placed in Wales. At that 
 period many Welsh gentlemen took to the sea as rovers, finding their swordland on the 
 Spanish main, as their fathers had found a swordland on the English marches. 
 
 THE KEEPERS OF THE PEOPLE. 
 
 By Edgar Jepson. Crown Svo, cloth, Price 6s. 
 
 Mr. Edgar Jepson's new novel tells the story of the ruling of a kingdom in the East 
 by an linglish family, who make the maxim, " It is expedient that one man die for the 
 people," the first principle of their Govsrnment, and follow it to its extreme logical 
 conclusions. Ralph Falcon, the son of the reigning Prince, is the central figure, and 
 the book sets forth his adventures in England seeking a wife ; his falling in love with 
 Lady Lisdor ; his quarrel with the Russian Prince Melinsky ; his marrying an advanced 
 young lady, and his taking her to the East. There, in a conflict of ideals, husband and 
 wife fall apart; he rules the kingdom; she quarrels with him; Lady Lisdor comes to 
 their Court, and the Russians, under Prince Melinsky, invade the country, and are 
 destroyed. 
 
 HAQAR OF HOMERTON. 
 
 By H. E. DuDENEY. Crown Svo, cloth. Price 6s. 
 
 This is a study of lower middle-class life in London, and shows with photographic 
 fidelity how the elements of tragedy can be evolved from the most unlikely surroundings. 
 The tragedy of the book is so unexpected that it takes the reader entirely by surprise. 
 
'- I ' y^-T ■ "V , . -, . 
 
 
 6 C. ARTHUR PEARSON'S ANNOUNCEMENTS. 
 
 Neiv 3s. 6d. Fiction. 
 
 THREE WOMEN AND MR. FRANK CARDWELL. 
 
 By W. Pett Ridge, Author of *^ A Clever Life." Crown 8vOy 
 cloth. Price ^s. 6d. 
 
 It must not be inferred from the title of Mr. Pett Ridge's story that three women are 
 in love with the hero ; but it is true that all his interests in lite are bound up in them, 
 and that the most devoted of the three does not gain credit for her self-sacrihce until it 
 is almost too late. The story itself is so fresh and original, and its humour so genuine, 
 that the reader is alternately moved to laughter and tears. 
 
 THE MARQUIS OF VALROSE. 
 
 From the French of Charles Foley. Translated by Alys 
 Hallard. Price 3s. 6d. 
 
 This is a stirring story, taken from one of the most touching episodes of the Civil War 
 of LaVendde. Since l-al/ac, there has been no more vivid tud interesting story of the 
 savage internecine warfare waged between the triumphant republicans and the militant 
 aristocrats who had survived the Revolution. 
 
 LUCKY BARGEE. 
 
 By Harry Lander. Crown 8vo, cloth. Price ^s. 6d. 
 
 " Lucky Bargee " is brought by his spendthrift dying father within sight of that 
 aristocratic ne'er-dowell's father's estate. Dying, Lucky Bargee's father makes his 
 son promise to visit once a year the head ot the family, and to shock him as nmch as 
 possible by the ditJEerence between him and his grandson. "Lucky Bargee" takes to 
 the river, and his life there is depicted with a marvellous realism ; later on he is edu- 
 cated as a gentleman, and ultimately ceases to be a mere polished savage by the gentle 
 influence of one ot the most charming heroines of modern tiction. Some of the East- 
 end scenes in this powerfully-written story would be almost too painful were it not lor 
 the fact that the heroine's presence redeems them from their apparent brutality. _,_ . 
 
 PAUL BECK: The Rule -of -Thumb Detective. 
 
 By M. McDonnell Bodkin, Q.C. Crown 8vo, cloth. Price ^s. 6d. 
 
 Paul Beck, the Rule-of-Thumb Detective, is an Irish Sherlock Holmes, with a very 
 original yet logical method lor the detection of crime. Hitherto we have had every 
 species of detective, except an Irish one, and it has been reserved lor Mr. McDonnell 
 Bodkin to set right this injustice to the Sister Isle. 
 

 C^ARTHUR PEARSON'S ANNOUNCEMENTS. 7 
 
 EXERCISE FOR HEALTH : Its Science and Practice. 
 
 By H. H. HuLBERT, B.A. Oxon., M.R.C.S., L.R.C.P., Medical 
 Officer Physical Health Culture School, formerly House 
 Surgeon St. Thomas' Hospital, Prosector to Examining 
 Board of the Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons; 
 and Luis J. Phelan, Rowing Champion U.S. and Canada 
 1892, Winner of Wrestling Match Manhattan A.C. 1893, 
 and Swimming (10 miles) 1894. Crown 8vo, cloth. 
 Illustrated. Price 3s. 6d. net. 
 
 Summary of Contents. 
 The Body and its Machinery— The Effect of Exercise upon the Functions of the 
 Body— The Choice of the Particular Form of Exercise— The Art of Training— The 
 Relative Value of Different Kinds of Foods— The Ideal Form of Daily Exercise— The 
 Different Types of Muscular Development— The Need of Exercise for Women and 
 Children— Use Made of the Whitely Health Exerciser by the Medical Profession- 
 Treatment of Weaknesses of the Vital Organs by Exercise— Treatment of Deformities 
 by Exercise— Health in the City, &c., &c. 
 
 SIDE-SLIPS; or, Misadventures on a Bicycle. 
 
 By R. Andom, Author of *^We Three and Troddles." With numer- 
 ous Sketches by A. Frederics. Crown 8vo, cloth. 
 Price 3s. 6d. 
 
 This volume deals in a lively way with the manifold humorous and practical affairs 
 incidental to cycling and cyclists. It contains details of a brief but not uneventful tour 
 in the Eastern counties, and much supplementary matter of a fictitious and factitious 
 nature of interest to all cyclists, would-be cyclists, and have-been cyclists. The sketches 
 by Mr. Frederics, who illustrated " Three Men in a Boat," give a good idea of the 
 various misadventures experienced by the characters ot the book. 
 
 IN A CHINESE GARDEN. 
 
 By Annis Lennoys. Illustrated by Lawson Wood. Fcap. 
 Svo. Price 2s. 6d, 
 
 A unique book of Chinese Stories taken down from the lips of the Chinese peasantry 
 by the Author. Its quaint humours and old-world wisdom will commend it equally to 
 young and old. 
 
 THE MISTAKES WE MAKE. 
 
 Compiled by C. E. Clark, with index. Fcap Svo, cloth. 
 Price IS. 6i. 
 
 This book forms a collection of the most remarkable errors into which people fall on 
 every conceivable subject. The mistakes we make about people, about plants, about 
 animals, mistakes in history, in geography, in reading and writing, are all brought 
 together to form an invaluable book of reference. It has been compiled in such a way 
 that it may be taken up and read from the first page to the last with unab .ting interest. 
 
-%F •'- .. ,', 
 
 8 C. ARTHUR PEARSON'S ANNOUNCEMENTS. 
 
 New Yolumes of the " Isobel " Handbooks. 
 
 Small crown 8vo, cloth. Price is. each. 
 
 A HEALTHY HOME AND HOW TO ATTAIN IT. 
 
 By Dr. Andrew Wilson. (February), 
 
 In this book the famous specialist deals in an interestingway with all those subjects 
 an understanding of which is essential to a happy home. The question of the site for a 
 house, the soil it should be built upon, its ventilation, drainage, and so on, are entered 
 into in a way which is at once practical and popular. 
 
 OUR FOODS AND DRINKS. 
 
 By the same Author. (Ready May.) 
 
 NEW EDITION, COMPLETING TWENTY-FIFTH THOUSAND. 
 
 DAINTY DISHES FOR SLENDER INCOMES. 
 
 Being Volume i of The Isobel Handbooks, edited by " Isobel," of 
 Home Notes. 
 
 ALREADY ISSUED IN SAME SERIES. 
 
 HOUSEHOLD HINTS. 
 
 PLAIN NEEDLEWORK. 
 
 The above dainty volumes are especially valuable to newly- 
 married couples whose domestic experiences are some- 
 what limited. The covers have been designed with a 
 view to durability, so that the books will withstand the 
 wear and tear of every-day use. 
 
 Invaluable to Housekeepers. 
 
 HOME NOTES. 
 
 Volumes I. to XVI. of " Home Notes " are now on Sale. Price, 
 2s. each ; post free, 2s. 3d. Containing 16 complete 
 Novels by famous writers, over 100 brilliant Short 
 Stories, and in addition everything a woman wants to . 
 know on every subject. 
 
T J^, il •.'-'■■ : • \ .' ' • I i' •• 
 
 C. ARTHUR PEARSON'S ANNOUNCEMENTS. 9 
 
 " Latter-Day Stories." 
 
 A uew series of novels by well-known Authors is in preparation 
 for issue monthly, with portraits. Each volume will 
 be well printed, on good paper, with clear type, and 
 piettily bound in tasteful cloth covers. Pnce zs. 6d. each. 
 
 MISS BETTY. 
 
 By Bram Stoker, Autlwr of ^^ Dracula.'' [February). 
 
 VAN WAQENER'S WAYS. 
 
 By W. L. Alden, Author of ^'11 is Daughter," &c. (March). 
 
 AN EGYPTIAN COQUETTE. 
 
 By Clive Holland, Author of ''My fapanese Wife,'' &c. 
 
 IN MALE ATTIRE. 
 
 By Joseph Hatton, Author of ''By Order of the Czar,'' &c. 
 
 AN EPISODE IN ARCADY. 
 
 By Halliwell Sutcliffe. 
 
 TRINCOLOX. 
 
 By Douglas Sladen, Author of "On and Off the Cars," &c. 
 
 A ROMANCE OF A GROUSE MOOR. 
 
 By M. E. Stevenson, Author of "Juliet," " Mrs. Severn," &c. 
 
 A RUSSIAN VAGABOND. 
 
 By Fred. Whishaw, Author of "A Boyer of the Terrible," 
 "A Czar's Gratitude," &c. 
 
 TAMMER'S DUEL. 
 
 By E. and H. Heron. 
 
 FROM VELD AND MINE. 
 
 By George Griffith, AiUhor vf " Valdar,' " Virgin of the 
 Sun," &c. 
 
 THE SHADOW OF LIFE. 
 
 By Marten Strong. 
 
*"wi i» »^; 
 
 lo C. ARTHUR PEARSON'S PUBLICATIONS. 
 
 Already Published. 
 
 THE COMPLETE WORKS OF SHAKESPEARE. 
 
 {Pearson's Guinea Edition). 
 
 Edited by Howard Staunton. With 824 Illustrations, by Sir 
 John Gilbert, R.A. In Three Volumes. Royal 8vo, 
 cloth, gilt top. Price £1 is. the set. 
 
 SECOND EDITION. 
 
 IN JOYFUL RUSSIA. 
 
 By John A. Logan, Jun. Crown 8vo, cloth, bevelled boards, 
 
 gilt top. With numerous illustrations. Price los. 6d. 
 
 " This book is one of the most attractive additions to the literature of travel that 
 recent years have made." — Spectator. 
 
 SECOND EDITION. 
 
 MEN WHO HAVE MADE THE EMPIRE. 
 
 By George Griffith. With Sixteen full-page Illustrations 
 by Stanley L. Wood. Demy 8vo, cloth gilt, gilt edges. 
 Price ys. 6d. 
 
 A series of twelve pictures of the men who have done most to build up the 
 greatest Imperial Fabric that the sun has ever shone upon. It begins with William, 
 Duke of Normandy, and ends with Cecil Rhodes, of Rhodesia, tracing out their lineal 
 succession from one to the other by right divine of genius. 
 
 " It is impossible not to be thoroughly interested by this treatment of the Empire 
 builders and impressed with the lofty patriotic spirit which pervades the whole book." 
 — Scotsman. 
 
 Popular 6s. Novels. 
 
 AN AMERICAN EMPEROR. 
 
 By Louis Tracy, Author of *' The Final War.'' Square crown 
 8vo, cloth, sixteen full-page illustrations. Price 6s. 
 
 "The plot is a daring one, but, in pite of its apparent impossibility, it is well 
 
 worked out The descripti )ns of the versatile nature of the French people 
 
 are very graphic." — Newcastle Leader. 
 
 " Is a bold and lively romance. Its hero is a charming American millionaire, who, 
 for love of a woman, seeks to gain the throne of France. He has the wealth of a 
 Croesus, and does not mind spending it. The reader soon gets interested in his 
 campaign, the details of which are not without a certain air 01 truthfulness despite 
 the essential extravagance of the main idea. The story is cleverly told, and is well 
 illustrated." — Yorkshire Post. 
 
 " In the whole volume there is not a dull page. The action is continuous and boldly 
 attractive." — Slieffield Independent. 
 
 THE FINAL WAR. 
 
 By Louis Tracy. A Story of the Great Betrayal. Illustrated 
 by Ernest F. Sherie. Square crown 8vo, cloth. Price 6s. 
 
 " To all those who glory in the greatness of Britain — and who does not ?— this 
 should prove a most fascinating volume. The story forms a glorious picture, painted 
 in colours little short of realistic, and sustaining interest to the last page." — 
 Dundee Courier, 
 
C. ARTHUR PEARSON'S PUBLICATIONS, ii 
 
 QUEEN OF THE JESTERS. 
 
 By Max Pemberton, Author of ''Christine 0/ the Hills," &c., &c. 
 Crown 8vo, cloth, with eight fiiil-pago Illustrations. 
 Price 6s. 
 " This writer is seen at his best in ' Queen of the Jesters.' .... The booii is one to 
 be emoyed by every one who takes it up,"—Scotsman. 
 
 "Mr. Max Pemberton has not iiitherto ^iven us so excellent a bit of work as his new 
 collection of Stories, ' Quoen of the Jesters.' "Sketch. 
 
 " Mdlle. de Montosson is an altogether delightful, hlKli-spirited young woman, and 
 Mr. Pemberton ' sets out ' iier adventures with exhilarating briskness and crispness." 
 — Daily Chronicle. 
 
 " Mr. Max Pemberton has done nothing better than this enjoyable volume."— 
 Yorkshire Post. 
 
 THE RAID OF THE ••DETRIMENTAL." 
 
 Beiufj the True History of the Great Disappearance of 1862. Related 
 by Several of those Implicated and Others. 
 
 And now first set forth by the Eakl of DESAirr. Crown Svo, 
 cloth. Price 6s. 
 
 " Cleverly written and replete with original interest Unique and entirely out 
 
 of the common run of fiction."— /-"Mt/jc Opinion. 
 
 " Of its brilliance there can be no doubt. The story is quite remarkable."— 
 Dundee Advertiser. 
 
 " We can assure the reader that he will not have a dull moment during the perusal 
 of this fantastic romance, nor will his curiosity as to the final fateof tlie' Detrimental's' 
 living cargo be satisfied before the last page."— G/asgou; Daily Mail. 
 
 THE ZONE OF FIRE. 
 
 By Headon Hill, Author of ** Guilty Gold." Crown Svo, cloth. 
 Price 6s. 
 " An exciting story of adventure with our troops in the Soudan." 
 " Of the stirring adventure story, young or old, we never tire. Its life and movement, 
 changing scene, and succession of exciting episodes lift us out of tlie dull monotony and 
 worry of every-day existence, and if its pages happen to be marked by the imaginative 
 vigour and brilliancy of colouring displayed in Headon Hill's latest work, 'The Zone 
 of Fire,' it only whets the appetite for more." — Scotsman. 
 
 " Mr. Hill, has, we think, surpasseid himself in the amount of exciting matter he has 
 managed to compress into his latest work .... is one of the most engrossing 
 romances the most fastidious of readers could desire."— North British Daily Mail, 
 
 QUILTY GOLD : A Romance of Financial Fraud and City Crime. 
 
 By Headon Hill, Author of ''The Zone of Fire." Square 
 crown Svo, cloth. Price 6s. 
 This cleverly-written story deals with the customary young lovers in financial 
 difficulties whose footsteps are dogged by the wealtny villain, a bogus company- 
 promoter. The story is filled with excitmg incidents, and is strikingly illustrated 
 by Mr. Raymond Potter. 
 
 VALDAR-THE OFT- BORN. 
 
 A Saga of Seven Ages. By Geo. Griffith, Author of "The 
 
 Angel of the Revolution" &c., &c. Illustrated by Harold 
 
 PiFFARD. Square crown Svo, cloth. Price 6s. 
 
 "This thrilling and exciiing story is dedicated to those whose faith in the ages-old 
 
 doctrine of re-incarnation will reveal to them something more than romance In Its 
 
 pages, Mr. Griffith contends that the myths of to-day were the faiths of yesterday, 
 
 and the dreams of one age have been the deeds of the next. From the arena and the 
 
 wild beasts of Imperial Rome it Is but a step to the flames of the Inquisition. It is not 
 
 often, even in fiction, that a man wins the same woman seven times ; but Mr. Griffith » 
 
 hero accomplishes this feat after wondrous deeds of " derrlng-do," and affords many 
 
 an exciting hour to the reader In describing how he did it." 
 
12 C. ARTHUR PEARSON'S PUBLICATIONS. 
 
 Popular 3s. 6d. Fiction. 
 
 THE INVISIBLE MAN. 
 
 By H. G. Wells, Author of ** The Time Machine" &c. 2nd 
 Edition. Crown 8vo, cloth. Price 3s. 6d. 
 
 " Without exception one of the most weird and creepy books we ever remember to 
 have read. . , . The invisible man becomes the enemy of the human race, and the 
 story of the tracking him down is full of most thrilling incidents." — Wukly Sun, 
 
 " Mr. Wells has worked it out with that sombre humour and remorseless logic which 
 stamp him as a disciple, conscious or unconscious, of the author of 'Gulliver.' Swift, 
 however, excelled in the logical conduct to its extreme consequences of some absurd 
 proposition ; Mr. Wells's method is in its essentials much more realistic. ' The 
 Invisible Man ' is an amazingly clever performance, of engrossing interest throughout." 
 — Spectator, 
 
 THE SKIPPER'S WOOING 
 
 AND 
 
 THE BROWN MAN'S SERVANT. 
 
 By W. \V. Jacobs, Author of " Many Cargoes." Second Edition. 
 Crown 8vo, cloth. Price 3s. 6d. 
 
 The spectator. — "In the 'Skipper's Wooing,' as in 'Many Cargoes,' Mr. W. W. 
 Jacobs proves himself to belong to the tribe of oenefactors. The story of how Captain 
 \yilson, master and owner of the schooner Seamew, won the hand of Miss Annie 
 Gething, is one which few people, to use an expressive vulgarism, will be able to read 
 ' with a straight face.' . . . T.iose who have read Mr. Jacobs's earlier stories can 
 easily imagine how irresistibly ludicrous are the developmeats of the plot." 
 
 Daily Telegraph, — " It contains scenes which we shall not be able to recall without 
 a smile for many weeks to come. . . . It is a good story well told and full of humour 
 and drollery." 
 
 Dundee Advertiser. — " Will induce many a hearty laugh. . . . The story is vigorous 
 as befits its characters, but it is devoid of profanity or grossness." 
 
 North British Daily Mail, — " We have seldom read a tale over which we have laughed 
 more than over this really humorous account of the adventures that befel Captain 
 Wilson of the Seamew and his crew in their search after the father of the captain's 
 sweetheart." 
 
 THE TYPE-WRITER GIRL. 
 
 By Olive Pratt Rayner. Crown 8vo, cloth. Price 3s. 6d. 
 
 " There is not a dull page in the book, and it is one that is well suited to take a fore- 
 most place in the lists of a firm which has only just undertaken the publishing of library 
 books on a large scale." — Sunday Times. 
 
 " Clever, fi-esh, and original, this tale by an unknown writer ought to command an 
 immediate success. . . . Must be considered one of the success^js of the season, and 
 lovers of smart and original writing will look out eagerly for further efforts from Mrs. 
 Olive Pratt Rayner's witty and racy pen." — bheffuld Independent, 
 
 THE DUKE AND THE DAMSEL. 
 
 By Richard IAkrsh, Author of ^^ The Beetle " &c. Crown Svo. 
 
 Price 3s. 6(i. 
 
 " Clever and amusing. . . . The situations, the ch.iracters, the literary handling, and 
 the dramatic action are all smart, piquant, and intensely enjoyable." — Scotsman. 
 
 "This is a delightful book — witty, huinorou;?, interesting, and entertaining from 
 beginning to end. The dialogue is capital, and the plot and its working out alike 
 uncunventional." — Birmingham Daily Gazette. 
 
C. ARTHUR PEARSON'S PUBLICATIONS. 13 
 
 JOHN OF 5TRATHB0URNE. 
 
 A Romance of the days of Francis I. By R. D. Chetwode. 
 Crown 8vo, cloth. Price 3s. 6d. 
 
 " We can only say that had it appeared anonymously it might have passed for the 
 handiwork of Mr. Stanley Weyman, and it would be difficult to give higher praise."— 
 Times. 
 
 " Exceedingly well told, and the interest is sustained on every paige."— Scotsman. 
 
 " So rapid is the succession of incident, and so vividly is everything portrayed, that 
 the reader becomes perfectly oblivious of his surroundings from the moment he begins 
 to read, nor does he recover his normal state till he reaches the last page, when the 
 emotional tension is released and the hero's affairs satisfactorily seitled."— Glasgow 
 Daily Mail. ^ 
 
 FORTUNE'S FOOTBALLS. 
 
 By G. B. BvRGiu, Author of *' • Old Man's ' Marriage,^' &c. Crown 
 8vo, cloth. Price 3s. 6i. 
 
 " A clever story agreeably told .... distinctly above the average, eminently 
 readable, and competent to convince the most sensitive reader that he is being treated 
 as an honest man by an author whose honest worli speaks for itself in the sustained 
 interest of every page." — Pall Mali Gazette. 
 
 HER ROYAL HIOHNESS'S LOVE AFFAIR. 
 
 By J. Maclaren Cobban. Author of " The Cure of Souls," &c. 
 Crown 8vo. Price 3s. 6d. 
 
 " Mr. J. Maclaren Cobban's ' Her Royal Highness's Love Affair' is quite unlike niostof 
 his other works, being a highly romantic tale of modern life. An innocent and beautiful 
 Princess has been bicycling alone in the Park. In returning she is rescued from an 
 accident by a perfect Prince of shopmen. They meet again — for the shopman is ex- 
 ceedingly well connected, and is, indeed, not far off a peerage himself, and so has useful 
 friends. The Princess is threatened with an unpleasant marriage, and naturally appeals 
 to him. He places himself at her service, and thereafter follows a bright and amusing 
 tale that should be as popular as the best of the stories of the class to which it 
 belongs."— iJ/ac/t and White. 
 
 THE IRON CROSS. 
 
 By R. H. Sherard. Author of *' Rogues " &c. 
 cloth. Price 3s. 6d. 
 
 Crown 8vo, 
 
 •' Sufficiently novel in its scene, which is a fishing village in the Landes, situate in 
 the Bay of Biscay and about 30 miles from the Spanish frontier, to be interesting; 
 sufficiently rouiauiic in its theme, which is the search for hidden treasure and the 
 things which resulted therefrom, to satisfy the popular taste for romance; and 
 sufficiently short and smartly written to be acceptable to critics to whom htorary form 
 counts for something." — Glasf^ow Herald, 
 
I- 
 
 14 C. ARTHUR PEARSON'S PUBLICATIONS. 
 
 WHEN THE BIRDS BEGIN TO SING. 
 
 By Winifred Graham, Author of '*0» the Down Grade." 
 With sixteen illustrations by Harold Piffard. 
 Square crown 8vo. Price 3s. 6d. 
 
 " A striking and interesting tale. The autiioress has evidently a strong imagination 
 and a gift for story-telling."— Dundee Courier. 
 
 THE IMPUDENT COMEDIAN, AND OTHERS. 
 
 By Frankfort Moore. Illustrated by Robert Sauber. Large 
 
 crown 8vo, cloth. Price 5s. 
 
 " Mr. Frankfort Moore has not only an uncommon talent for dramatic dialogue — 
 dialogue, that is to say, which contributes at the same time to the development of 
 character and the conduct of a plot— he is also particularly cunning in devising a 
 telling situation.." — The Referee. 
 
 THE PRIVATE LIFE OF THE QUEEN. 
 
 By One of Her Majesty's Servants. With Portrait and 
 numerous illustrations. Crown 8vo, cloth. Price 2s. 6d. 
 
 " "It gives a charming sketch of Her Majesty as the mistress of her own household 
 
 i , ; and as the head of her large family."— P«// Mall Gazette. 
 
 "A delightful little haoli." —V unity Fair. 
 
 Books for Children. 
 
 JUMBLES. 
 
 By Lewis Baumer. With 48 pages illustrated by the Author, 
 printed in colours, and bound in paper boards with 
 cloth back. Price 2s. td. 
 
 " Mr. Baumer is a clever and vigorous draughtsman, with a true gift of irresponsible 
 fun — of nonsense, in fact — which he is able to express with pencil and with pen. His 
 verses are crisp and simple, and in no way self-conscious. They serve to introduce 
 the picture, and then their work is done. The pictures themselves— some in colours 
 and some in monotint— are merry and sufiicient. They teem with drollery of the 
 exquisite obvious variety. There is a scene of two lady pigs on bicycles, which may 
 become a nursery classic. But all Mr. Eaumcr's pigs are a delight. He loves little 
 pigs with a love not exceeded by Charles Lamb." — The Academy, 
 
 THE BOOK OF f MRPRISES. 
 
 In stiff wrapper, tastefully printed in colours. Price is. 
 
 The "Book of Surprises" is something of rather a novel sort in children's books, 
 The illustrations are beautifully prinied i;i colours, and on the opposite page appears 
 the story in rhyme in a bold and clear typi;. 
 
 " By an ingenious mechanical contrivance producing delightfully comic changing 
 effects." — Sun. 
 
C. ARTHUR PEARSON'S PUBLICATIONS, i 
 
 Price 6s. Nett Each Volume . 
 
 Small 4to. Bevelled boards, gilt edges. Each volume 
 profusely illustrated. 
 
 PEARSON'S MAGAZINE, VoL /. 
 
 January to June, 1896. 
 RUDYARD Kipling, S. R. Crockett, Bret Harte, Barry Pain 
 Stanley Weyman, Anthony Hope, Frankfort Moore' 
 The Marquis of Lorne, Sir Evelyn Wood, Ian Maclaren' 
 and H. J. W. Dam, are included in the long list of prominent 
 writers who have contributed to this volume. 
 
 There are striking pictures on nearly every page. 
 
 PEARSON'S MAGAZINE, Vol. 11, 
 
 July to December, 1896. 
 
 THE SECRETS OF THE COURTS OF EUROPE, by ALLEN UPWARD. 
 
 THE WHITE SLAVES OF ENGLAND, by R. H. Sherard. 
 
 Are two of the most striking features in this volume. 
 
 Nearly 50 splendid Short Stories and as many Articles of special interest, profusely 
 illustrated, are also included. 
 
 PEARSON'S MAGAZINE, Vol. III. 
 
 January to June, 1897. 
 
 Contains amongst numerous features of striking interest, 
 
 THE ADVENTURES OF CAPTAIN KETTLE, by C. J. CUTCLIFFE Hyne. 
 
 THE PRINCE OF SWINDLERS, a series of short stories by GUY Boothby, 
 
 QUEEN OF TflE JESTERS, a series of short stories by Max Pemberton. 
 
 TALES OF THE HIGH SEAS, by A. CONAN Doyle. 
 
 Volumes II. and III. contain Mr. Rudyard Kipling's latest Novell 
 " Captain's Courageous." 
 
 EARSON'S MAGAZINE, Vol. IV. 
 
 July to December, 1897. 
 
 Containing H. G. Wells' latest Work, '• The War of the 
 U'orUs:' 
 
 Also Stories by Rtidyard Kipling, Conan Doyle, Guy Boothby, 
 Robert Barr, L. T. Meade and Clifford Halifax, George 
 Griffith, &c., together with numerous Articles of popular interest. 
 
 This Volume includes the Splendid Christmas Number, which so rapidly 
 ran out of print, containing over 70 pages printed in colours, with 
 a Supplement, consisting of Four Magnificent Oil Paintings, by 
 Abbey Altson, R.B.A. Reproduced in facsimile in all the perfect 
 Colourings of the Originals. Illustrating a new Poem by Sir 
 Lewis Morris. 
 
 Volume V. now appearing.