“The bishop coming here?” Edmund asked, shying from the idea like a nervous horse. “But must he be told all this?”
“He has been told everything. That is, everything I knew up to now.”
“And he would still meet me?”
“He is most anxious to meet you, and Welfare too for that matter. He has a project that he will tell you of himself. He knows that Jakoub is our one danger.”
“But surely,” Edmund exclaimed, “he would not approve of our sheltering Jakoub?”
“If he does not approve, I cannot consent to do it. I don’t know, but I think he would approve. I am sure he would if he had any reason to think that so we might save Jakoub. ‘Save’ him I mean in the only true sense, which is to make a true man of him again.”
“Nothing would make a true man of Jakoub,” said Edmund.
“To refuse to believe that is the real meaning of what we call Faith,” I answered.
There was another long pause between us, and then Edmund said very thoughtfully, “I cannot understand this bishop of yours.”
“It is not to be expected that you should,” I assured him. “I doubt if anyone understands him. Probably I understand more of him than anyone else, and I know only a little of him. But I know this, that he sees men as they are, not as ‘trees walking.’ He is not half-blinded like so many of us parsons. He knows the residuum of decency there is in all human nature, and how it is buried under the silt of mere majorities. But never mind all that. I hope he will be here to-morrow, and he will tell us what to do.”