The house vibrated to the trains in the adjacent underground railway.  There was a lady next door but one who was very pluckily training a contralto voice that most people would have gladly thrown away.  At the end of Restharrow Street was a garage, and a yard where chauffeurs were accustomed to “tune up” their engines.  All these facts were persistently audible to any one sitting down in the little back study to think out this project of “writing something,” about a change in the government of the whole world.  Petty inconveniences no doubt all these inconveniences were, but they distressed a rather oversensitive mind which was also acutely aware that even upon this scale living would cost certainly two hundred and fifty pounds if not more in excess of the little private income available.

(5)

These domestic details, irrelevant as they may seem in a spiritual history, need to be given because they added an intimate keenness to Scrope’s readiness for this private chapel enterprise that he was discussing with Lady Sunderbund.  Along that line and along that line alone, he saw the way of escape from the great sea of London dinginess that threatened to submerge his family.  And it was also, he felt, the line of his duty; it was his “call.”

At least that was how he felt at first.  And then matters began to grow complicated again.

Things had gone far between himself and Lady Sunderbund since that letter he had read upon the beach at Old Hunstanton.  The blinds of the house with the very very blue door in Princhester had been drawn from the day when the first vanload of the renegade bishop’s private possessions had departed from the palace.  The lady had returned to the brightly decorated flat overlooking Hyde Park.  He had seen her repeatedly since then, and always with a fairly clear understanding that she was to provide the chapel and pulpit in which he was to proclaim to London the gospel of the Simplicity and Universality of God.  He was to be the prophet of a reconsidered faith, calling the whole world from creeds and sects, from egotisms and vain loyalties, from prejudices of race and custom, to the worship and service of the Divine King of all mankind.  That in fact had been the ruling resolve in his mind, the resolve determining his relations not only with Lady Sunderbund but with Lady Ella and his family, his friends, enemies and associates.  He had set out upon this course unchecked by any doubt, and overriding the manifest disapproval of his wife and his younger daughters.  Lady Sunderbund’s enthusiasm had been enormous and sustaining....

Almost imperceptibly that resolve had weakened.  Imperceptibly at first.  Then the decline had been perceived as one sometimes perceives a thing in the background out of the corner of one’s eye.