So, for some hours or more, Meynell and the six grappled with the letter
that was to convey the challenge of the revolted congregations to the
general public through the _Times_. It was not an easy matter, and some
small jealousies and frictions lifted their heads that had been wholly
lost sight of in the white-hot feeling of the inauguration meeting.
Yet on the whole the seven men gathered in this room were not unworthy to
lead the "forlorn hope" they had long determined on. Darwen--young,
handsome, Spiritual, a Third Classic, and a Chancellor's medallist;
Waller, his Oxford friend, a man of the same type, both representing the
recent flowing back of intellectual forces into the Church which for
nearly half a century had abandoned her; Petitot, Swiss by origin, small,
black-eyed, irrepressible, with a great popularity among the hosiery
operatives of whom his parish was mainly composed; Derrick, the
Socialist, of humble origin and starved education, yet possessed
Of a natural sway over men, given him by a pair of marvellous blue
eyes, a character of transparent simplicity, a tragic honesty and the
bitter-sweet gift of the orator; Chesham, a man who had left the army for
the Church, had been grappling for ten years with a large parish of
secularist artisans, and was now preaching Modernism with a Franciscan
fervour and success; and Rollin, who owned a slashing literary style, was
a passionate Liberal in all fields, had done excellent work in the
clearing and cleaning of slums, with much loud and unnecessary talk by
the way, and wrote occasionally for the _Daily Watchman_. Chesham and
Darwen were Meynell's co-defendants in the suit brought by the Bishop.
Rollin alone seemed out of place in this gathering of men, drawing tense
breath under a new and almost unbearable responsibility. He was so in
love with the sensational, notoriety side of the business, so eager to
pull wires, and square editors, so frankly exultant in the "big row"
coming on, that Meynell, with the Bishop's face still in his mind, could
presently hardly endure him. He felt as Renan toward Gavroche. Was it
worth while to go through so much that Rollin might cut a figure, and
talk at large about "modern thought?"
However Darwen and Waller, Derrick also, were just as determined as
Meynell to keep down the frothy self-advertising element in the campaign
to the minimum that human nature seems unable to do without. So that
Rollin found himself gradually brought into line, being not a bad fellow,
but only a common one; and he abandoned with much inward chagrin the
project of a flaming "interview" for the _Daily Watchman_ on the
following day.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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