As a bishop he had less spare money, and far less leisure than I had, to devote to our common hobby. He professed to envy me as an “authority.” As a matter of fact I am but a painstaking student. What my few books possess of merit in the way of generalisation, of inference or speculation, they owe entirely to Parminter’s inspiration.
He is one of those men born to distinction, who show the fact from schoolboy days. At this time he was in his early fifties, some eight years older than myself, but quite among our younger bishops. He was a young man, and indeed still is, in mind and heart, and even in physique.
But he was already a power and influence in both Church and State, and had managed to avoid the hatred and mistrust of all parties in the Church although he wore the label of none of them.
I believe I alone knew the extent of his heterodoxy. It was indeed my greatest honour to have been chosen as his confidant.
Whenever it was possible, he loved to come to my vicarage for what he called “a night’s holiday,” and the one mystery of my household was that the bishop kept here, and always wore, an ordinary layman’s dinner-jacket and trousers!
“This is dreadfully short notice,” he said as I met him at the hall-door, “but I know you would have told me if my coming was a nuisance.”
“I would. If you could ever be a nuisance, I’m the man to say it. Come along in.”
He could not abide any ceremony in my house, and insisted on my calling him “Parminter” when we were alone. Before Bates I addressed him as “bishop” and if anyone else were present I put in all the necessary “My Lords.”
“We shall not be alone to-night,” I told him as we lit cigarettes in the study.
“Oh. I’m sorry, if it’s not rude to say so. Who have you got with you?”