undergraduate days he had said a thing or two in the modern vein,

affected the socialism of William Morris and learnt some
Swinburne by heart, it was out of a conscious wildness. He did

not wish to be a prig. He had taken a far more genuine interest
in the artistry of ritual.

Through all the time of his incumbency of the church of the
Holy Innocents, St. John's Wood, and of his career as the bishop

suffragan of Pinner, he had never faltered from his profound
confidence in those standards of his home. He had been kind,

popular, and endlessly active. His undergraduate socialism had
expanded simply and sincerely into a theory of administrative

philanthropy. He knew the Webbs. He was as successful with
working-class audiences as with fashionable congregations. His

home life with Lady Ella (she was the daughter of the fifth Earl
of Birkenholme) and his five little girls was simple, beautiful,

and happy as few homes are in these days of confusion. Until he
became Bishop of Princhester--he followed Hood, the first

bishop, as the reign of his Majesty King Edward the Peacemaker
drew to its close--no anticipation of his coming distress fell

across his path.
(2)

He came to Princhester an innocent and trustful man. The home
life at the old rectory of Otteringham was still his standard of

truth and reality. London had not disillusioned him. It was a
strange waste of people, it made him feel like a missionary in

infidel parts, but it was a kindly waste. It was neither
antagonistic nor malicious. He had always felt there that if he

searched his Londoner to the bottom, he would find the completest
recognition of the old rectory and all its data and implications.

But Princhester was different.
Princhester made one think that recently there had been a

second and much more serious Fall.
Princhester was industrial and unashamed. It was a countryside

savagely invaded by forges and mine shafts and gaunt black
things. It was scarred and impeded and discoloured. Even before

that invasion, when the heather was not in flower it must have
been a black country. Its people were dour uncandid individuals,

who slanted their heads and knitted their brows to look at you.
Occasionally one saw woods brown and blistered by the gases from

chemical works. Here and there remained old rectories, closely
reminiscent of the dear old home at Otteringham, jostled and

elbowed and overshadowed by horrible iron cylinders belching
smoke and flame. The fine old abbey church of Princhester, which

was the cathedral of the new diocese, looked when first he saw it
like a lady Abbess who had taken to drink and slept in a coal

truck. She minced apologetically upon the market-place; the
parvenu Town Hall patronized and protected her as if she were a

poor relation....
The old aristocracy of the countryside was unpicturesquely

decayed. The branch of the Walshinghams, Lady Ella's cousins, who
lived near Pringle, was poor, proud and ignoble. And extremely

unpopular. The rich people of the country were self-made and
inclined to nonconformity, the working-people were not strictly

speaking a "poor," they were highly paid, badly housed, and
deeply resentful. They went in vast droves to football matches,

and did not care a rap if it rained. The prevailing wind was
sarcastic. To come here from London was to come from atmospheric

blue-greys to ashen-greys, from smoke and soft smut to grime and
black grimness.

The bishop had been charmed by the historical associations of
Princhester when first the see was put before his mind. His

realization of his diocese was a profound shock.
Only one hint had he had of what was coming. He had met during

his season of congratulations Lord Gatling dining unusually at
the Athenaeum. Lord Gatling and he did not talk frequently, but

on this occasion the great racing peer came over to him. "You
will feel like a cherub in a stokehole," Lord Gatling had

said....
"They used to heave lumps of slag at old Hood's gaiters," said

Lord Gatling.
"In London a bishop's a lord and a lark and nobody minds him,"

said Lord Gatling, "but Princhester is different. It isn't used
to bishops.... Well,--I hope you'll get to like 'em."

(3)
Trouble began with a fearful row about the position of the

bishop's palace. Hood had always evaded this question, and a
number of strong-willed self-made men of wealth and influence,

full of local patriotism and that competitive spirit which has
made England what it is, already intensely irritated by Hood's

prevarications, were resolved to pin his successor to an
immediate decision. Of this the new bishop was unaware. Mindful

of a bishop's constant need to travel, he was disposed to seek a
home within easy reach of Pringle Junction, from which nearly

every point in the diocese could be simply and easily reached.
This fell in with Lady Ella's liking for the rare rural quiet of

the Kibe valley and the neighbourhood of her cousins the
Walshinghams. Unhappily it did not fall in with the inflexible

resolution of each and every one of the six leading towns of the
see to put up, own, obtrude, boast, and swagger about the biggest

and showiest thing in episcopal palaces in all industrial
England, and the new bishop had already taken a short lease and

gone some way towards the acquisition of Ganford House, two miles
from Pringle, before he realized the strength and fury of these

local ambitions.
At first the magnates and influences seemed to be fighting only

among themselves, and he was so ill-advised as to broach the
Ganford House project as a compromise that would glorify no one

unfairly, and leave the erection of an episcopal palace for some
future date when he perhaps would have the good fortune to have

passed to "where beyond these voices there is peace," forgetting
altogether among other oversights the importance of architects

and builders in local affairs. His proposal seemed for a time to
concentrate the rich passions of the whole countryside upon

himself and his wife.
Because they did not leave Lady Ella alone. The Walshinghams

were already unpopular in their county on account of a poverty
and shyness that made them seem "stuck up" to successful captains

of industry only too ready with the hand of friendship, the iron
grip indeed of friendship, consciously hospitable and eager for

admission and endorsements. And Princhester in particular was
under the sway of that enterprisingweekly, The White Blackbird,

which was illustrated by, which indeed monopolized the gifts of,
that brilliant young caricaturist "The Snicker."

It had seemed natural for Lady Ella to acquiesce in the
proposals of the leading Princhester photographer. She had always

helped where she could in her husband's public work, and she had
been popular upon her own merits in Wealdstone. The portrait was

abominable enough in itself; it dwelt on her chin, doubled her
age, and denied her gentleness, but it was a mere starting-point

for the subtle extravagance of The Snicker's poisonous gift....
The thing came upon the bishop suddenly from the book-stall at

Pringle Junction.
He kept it carefully from Lady Ella.... It was only later that

he found that a copy of The White Blackbird had been sent to her,
and that she was keeping the horror from him. It was in her vein

that she should reproach herself for being a vulnerable side to
him.

Even when the bishop capitulated in favour of Princhester, that
decision only opened a fresh trouble for him. Princhester wanted

the palace to be a palace; it wanted to combine all the best
points of Lambeth and Fulham with the marble splendours of a good

modern bank. The bishop's architectural tastes, on the other
hand, were rationalistic. He was all for building a useful palace

in undertones, with a green slate roof and long horizontal lines.
What he wanted more than anything else was a quite remote wing

with a lot of bright little bedrooms and a sitting-room and so
on, complete in itself, examination hall and everything, with a

long intricate connecting passage and several doors, to prevent
the ordination candidates straying all over the place and getting