The Bishop, who was seated beside Rose at one end of the table, noticed the black patch on Meynell's temple, and inquired its origin. Rose gave him a graphic account both of the accident and the riot. The Bishop raised his eyebrows.
"How does he contrive to live the two lives?" he said in a tone slightly acid. "If he continues to lead this Movement, he will have to give up fighting mobs and running up and down mines."
"What is going to happen to the Movement?" Rose asked him, with her most sympathetic smile. Socially and in her own house she was divinely all things to all men. But the Bishop was rather suspicious of her.
"What can happen to it but defeat? The only other alternative is the break-up of the Church. And for that, thank God, they are not strong enough."
"And no compromise is possible?"
"None. In three months Meynell and all his friends will have ceased to belong to the English Church. It is very lamentable. I am particularly sorry for Meynell himself—who is one of the best of men."
Rose felt her colour rising. She longed to ask—"But supposing England has something to say?—suppose she chooses to transform her National Church? Hasn't she the right and the power?"
But her instincts as hostess stifled her pugnacity. And the little Bishop looked so worn and fragile that she had no heart for anything but cossetting him. At the same time she noticed—as she had done before on other occasions—the curious absence of any ferocity, any smell of brimstone, in the air! How different from Robert's day! Then the presumption underlying all controversy was of an offended authority ranged against an apologetic rebellion. A tone of moral condemnation on the one side, a touch of casuistry on the other, confused the issues. And now—behind and around the combatants—the clash of equal hosts!—over ground strewn with dead assumptions. The conflict might be no less strenuous; nay! from a series of isolated struggles it had developed into a world-wide battle; but the bitterness between man and man was less.
Yes!—for the nobler spirits—the leaders and generals of each army. But what of the rank and file? And at the thought of Barron she laughed at herself for supposing that religious rancour and religious slander had died out of the world!
"Can we have some talk somewhere?" said Norham languidly, in Meynell's ear, as the gentlemen left the dining-room.