Regardless of suspicion on either hand, regardless of
very distinct hints that he should "mind his own business," he exerted
himself in a search for methods of reconciliation. He sought out every
one who seemed likely to be influential on either side, and did his
utmost to discover the conditions of a settlement. As far as possible
and with the help of a not very efficient chaplain he tried to combine
such interviews with his more normal visiting.
At times, and this was particularly the case on this day, he seemed to
be discovering nothing but the incurable perversity and militancy of
human nature. It was a day under an east wind, when a steely-blue sky
full of colourless light filled a stiff-necked world with whitish high
lights and inky shadows. These bright harsh days of barometric high
pressure in England rouse and thwart every expectation of the happiness
of spring. And as the bishop drove through the afternoon in a hired
fly along a rutted road of slag between fields that were bitterly wired
against the Sunday trespasser, he fell into a despondent meditation upon
the political and social outlook.
His thoughts were of a sort not uncommon in those days.
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