"Important," Kitty repeated. "Queer word. Just what love and happiness aren't, you'd think. Comfortable—jolly—but not important.... Never you mind, Nicky, you'll be important always: Vernon is right about that. They'll put you somewhere where 'domestick selvishenesse' doesn't matter: perhaps they'll make you a peer...."
Chester said he would not be at all surprised.
Kitty said, "Shall we go and see your people?" and he replied gloomily, "I suppose we must. It will be ... rather trying."
"Will they condole with you?" she suggested, and he returned, "No. They'll congratulate me."
A fortnight later they went down to the west. Bishop Chester lived in a little old house in a slum behind his cathedral. Bishops' palaces were no longer bishops' homes; they had all been turned into community houses, clergy houses, retreat houses, alms houses, and so forth. Celibate bishops could live in them, together with other clergy of their diocese, but bishops with families had to find quarters elsewhere. And, married or unmarried, their incomes were not enough to allow of any style of living but that apostolic simplicity which the Church, directly it was freed from the State and could arrange its own affairs, had decided was right and suitable.
Not all bishops took kindly to the new régime; some resigned, and had to be replaced by bishops of the new and sterner school. But, to give bishops their due, which is too seldom done, they are for the most part good Christian men, ready to do what they believe is for the good of the Church. Many of their detractors were surprised at the amount of good-will and self-sacrifice revealed in the episcopal ranks when they were put to the test. If some failed under it—well, bishops, if no worse than other men, are human.
Bishop Chester had not failed. He had taken to plain living and plainer thinking (how often, alas, these two are to be found linked together!) with resignation, as a Christian duty. If it should bring any into the Church who had been kept outside it by his purple and fine linen, he would feel himself more than rewarded. If it should not, that was not his look-out. Which is to say that Bishop Chester was a good man, if not clever.
He and his wife were very kind to Chester and Kitty. Chester said he could not spare more than a day and night; he had to get back to town, where he had much business on hand, including the instituting of an action for malicious libel against Mr. Percy Jenkins and the publishers and proprietors of the Patriot. Kitty was not surprised at the shortness of the visit, for it was a humiliating visit. The bishop and Mrs. Chester, as their son had known they would, approved of his contravention of his own principles. They thought them, had always thought them, monstrous and inhuman principles.
The bishop said, "My dear boy, I can't tell you how thankful I am that you have decided at last to let humanity have its way with you. Humanity; the simple human things; love, birth, family life. They're the simple things, but, after all, the deep and grand things. No laws will ever supersede them."
And Mrs. Chester looked at Kitty with the indescribable look of mothers-in-law who hope that one day they may be grandmothers, and whispered to her when she said good-night, "And some day, dear...."