In
Protestant countries the process is not infrequently reversed, the Church
giving its children to the World, and that with an alacrity which argues
remarkable faith and courage--of a sort! Archdeacon Verity had carefully
planned this visit for his son, although it obliged the young man to
leave home two days earlier than he need otherwise have done. It was
illuminating to note how the father brought all the resources of a fine
presence, an important manner and full-toned archidiaconal voice to bear
upon proving the expediency of the young man visiting this particular
relation, over whose career and reputation he had so often, in the past,
pursed up his lips and shaken his head for the moral benefit of the
domestic circle.
For the Archdeacon, in common with the majority of the Verity family, was
animated by that ineradicable distrust of anything approaching genius
which distinguishes the English country, or rather county, mind. And that
Sir Charles Verity had failed to conform to the family tradition of
solid, unemotional, highly respectable, and usually very wealthy,
mediocrity was beyond question.
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