"You understand, Master," said Brother Copas, slightly embarrassed, and slightly the more embarrassed because the Master, after asking the question, seemed inclined to relapse into his own thoughts, "the Petition was not mine only. I had to compose it for all the signatories; and that, in any public business, involves striking a mean."
"I understand even more," said the Master, rousing himself, and reaching for a copy of the Petition, which lay among his papers. "I understand that I have no right to cross-question a man on his share in a document which six or eight others have signed. Shall it be further understood"—he looked up with a quick smile of goodness, whereat Brother Copas felt ashamed—"that I sent for you as a friend, and that you may speak frankly, if you will so honour me, without fear of my remembering a word to your inconvenience?"
"And since you so honour me, Master," said Brother Copas, "I am ready to answer all you ask."
"Well, then, I have read with particular interest, what you have to say here about the practice of Confession. (This, by the way, is a typed copy, with which the Bishop has been kind enough to supply me.) You have, I assume, no belief in it or in the efficacy of the Absolution that follows it."
The Master, searching for a paragraph, did not perceive that Brother Copas flushed slightly.
"And," he continued, as he found the passage and laid his finger on it, "although you set out your arguments with point—with fairness, too, let me add—I am perhaps not very far wrong in guessing that you have for Confession an instinctive dislike which to your own mind means more than any argument you use."
The Master looked up with a smile; but by this time Brother Copas's flush had faded.
"You may say that, Master, of the whole document. I am an old man— far too old to have my beliefs and disbeliefs quickened by argument. They have long since hardened into prejudices; and, speaking generally, I have a prejudice against this setting of old men by the ears with a lot of Neo-Catholic stuff which irritates half of us while all are equally past being provoked to any vital good."
The Master sighed, for he understood.
"I, too, am old," he answered, "older even than you; and as death draws nearer I incline with you, to believe that the fewer our words on these questions that separate us the better. (There's a fine passage to that effect in one of Jowett's Introductions, you may remember—the Phædo, I think.) Least said is soonest mended, and good men are too honest to go out of the world professing more than they know. Since we are opening our minds a little beyond our wont, let me tell you exactly what is my own prejudice, as you would call it. To me Confession has been a matter of happy experience—I am speaking now of younger days, at Cuddesdon—"