Sir Michael thought it well that even his professed opponents should meet at his table, for it gave both him and his lieutenants new data and fresh impressions for use in the campaign. Sir Michael's convictions were perfectly unalterable, but to find out how others—and those hostile—really regarded them only added to the weapons in his armoury.
And, as one London priest once remarked to another, the combination of a Jewish brain and a Christian heart was one which had already revolutionised Society nearly two thousand years ago in the persons of eleven distinguished instances.
As Father Ripon drove to Liverpool Street Station after lunch, to catch the afternoon train to the eastern counties, he was reading a letter as his cab turned into Cheapside and crawled slowly through the heavy afternoon traffic of the city.
" ... It will be as well for you to see the man à huisclos and form your own opinions. There can be no doubt that he is a force to be reckoned with, and he is, moreover, as I think you will agree after inspection, far more brilliant and able than any other professed antichristian of the front rank. Then there will also be Mrs. Hubert Armstrong. She is a pseudo-intellectual force, but her writings have a certain heaviness and authoritative note which I believe to have real influence with the large class of semi-educated people who mistake an atmosphere of knowledge for knowledge itself. A very charming woman, by the way, and I think sincere. Matthew Arnold and water!
"The Duke of Suffolk will stop a night on his way home. He writes that he wishes to see you. As you know, he is just back from Rome, and now that they have definitely pronounced against the validity of Anglican orders he is most anxious to have a further chat with you in order to form a working opinion as to our position. From his letter to me, and the extremely interesting account he gives of his interview at the Vatican, I gather that the Roman Church still utterly misunderstands our attitude, and that hopes there are high of the ultimate "conversion" of England. I hope that as a representative of English Churchmen you will be able to define what we think in an unmistakable way. This will have value. Among my other guests you will meet Canon Walke. He is preaching in Lincoln Cathedral on the Sunday, fresh from Windsor. "Render unto Cæsar" will, I allow myself to imagine, not be an unlikely text for his homily.—I am, Father, yours most sincerely,
"M. M."
Still thinking carefully over Sir Michael's letter, Father Ripon bought his ticket and made his way to the platform.
He got into a first-class carriage. While in London the priest lived a life of asceticism and simplicity which was not so much a considered thing as the outcome of an absolute and unconscious carelessness about personal and material comfort; when he went thus to a great country house, he complied with convention because it was politic.
He was the grandson of a peer, and, though he laughed at these small points, he wished to meet his friend's opinions in any reasonable way, rather than to flout them.
The carriage was empty, though a pile of newspapers and a travelling rug in one corner showed Father Ripon that he was to have one companion at any rate upon the journey.