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Jeff Cicolani

Beginning Robotics with Raspberry Pi

and Arduino
Using Python and OpenCV
Jeff Cicolani
Pflugerville, Texas, USA

Any source code or other supplementary material referenced by the author in this
book is available to readers on GitHub via the book’s product page, located at
www.apress.com/978-1-4842-3461-7 . For more detailed information, please
visit http://www.apress.com/source-code .

ISBN 978-1-4842-3461-7 e-ISBN 978-1-4842-3462-4

https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4842-3462-4

Library of Congress Control Number: 2018937971

© Jeff Cicolani 2018

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For Martha, my beautiful and patient wife, for putting up with random robot
parts strewn about the house, pretty much constantly
Introduction
Robotics does not have to be difficult. In this book, I introduce you to the field
of robotics. The journey will be challenging; it’s intended to be. But by the end
of the book, you will have hands-on exposure to many of the fundamental—and
not so fundamental—aspects of robotics. You will work with hardware,
assemble and solder a circuit board, write code in two programming languages,
install and configure a Linux environment, and work with computer vision.
Everything else you do with robots will be an extension of the lessons learned in
this book.
Who This book Is For
This book is for those who are new to electronics and IoT; those who have never
used a Raspberry Pi or Arduino separately, let alone together.
This book is for the hobbyist who is interested in learning a little more about
working with robots. Perhaps you’ve built a few circuits with an Arduino or a
custom home entertainment system with a Raspberry Pi, and now you are
curious about what goes into building a robot. You will learn how these two
devices work together to provide very powerful capabilities.
This book is for the entrepreneur who needs to learn more about technology;
someone who doesn’t necessarily have the time to read through many different
books on Arduino, Raspberry Pi, electronics, or programming; someone who is
looking for a broad yet condensed introduction to some of the fundamentals.
This book is also for the student who wants to take their robot-building
experience beyond bricks and puzzle-piece programming; someone who wants
to work with hardware and software that more closely resembles what they
might see in college or in the professional world.
No assumptions are made about experience or background in technology. As
you go through the chapters, you may find parts that you are already familiar
with, and you can skip ahead. But if you are new to these topics, I try to provide
you with a quick but easy introduction.
Chapter Overview
You start by learning about the Raspberry Pi and how to work with it. You
download and install the Raspbian operating system, and then configure the Pi
for our project. The goal is to set up your system to be able to easily access your
robot and write your code directly on it.
Once you are able to access your Pi remotely, in Chapter 3 , you delve into
programming with Python. I’ll show you how to write simple programs on the
Raspberry Pi. I also take you beyond the basics and cover some intermediate
topics, such as modules and classes. This is one of the longest chapters since
there is a lot of material to cover.
From there, you learn how to interface the Raspberry Pi with external
electronics, such as sensors and LEDs, through the Pi’s GPIO header. Chapter 4
discusses the different ways of addressing the pins on the header, some of the
functionality exposed through the header, and how to use an ultrasonic
rangefinder to detect objects. This gets you ready for the next chapter, which
introduces the Arduino.
In Chapter 5 , you connect the Arduino to the Raspberry Pi. I discuss some
of the reasons you want to do this. I show you how to work with the Arduino
IDE to write programs. I cover serial communication between the two boards
and how to pass information back and forth between them. We do this using the
same ultrasonic rangefinder used in the previous chapter.
Chapter 6 has you turning motors with your Raspberry Pi. You use a special
board called a hat , or plate , to control the motors. This is where I introduce
another skill that you will inevitably need in robotics: soldering. The header and
terminals need to be soldered on to the board that was selected for this purpose.
The nice thing about soldering headers and terminal blocks is that it’s hard to
damage anything, and you will get plenty of practice.
Chapter 7 is where we bring it all together. You build the robot, and I discuss
some of the physical characteristics of robotics. I cover some of the design
considerations that you will need to keep in mind when you design your own
chassis. Although I am listing a specific chassis kit for this project, you do not
need to use the same one. In fact, I encourage you to explore other options to
find the one that is right for you.
In Chapter 8 , I introduce another type of sensor—the IR sensor, and I show
you how to use a very common control algorithm called a PID controller. I talk
about the various types of IR sensors and where you want to use them. (The
chapter on PID control discusses what it is and why you want to use it.) Chapter
9 is about computer vision, where you see the true power of the Raspberry Pi. In
this chapter, I cover an open source package called OpenCV. By the end of
Chapter 9 , your little robot will be chasing a ball around the table.
I leave you with some parting thoughts in Chapter 10 . I provide a few tips
that I picked up, and I give you a glimpse into my workflow and tools. After
that, you will be ready to begin your own adventures in robotics.
Table of Contents
Chapter 1: Introduction to Robotics

Robotics Basics

Linux and Robotics

Sensors and GPIO

Motion and Control

Raspberry Pi and Arduino

Project Overview

The Robot

Bill of Materials (BOM)

Summary

Chapter 2: An Introduction to Raspberry Pi

Downloading and Installing Raspbian

Raspbian with OpenCV

The “Hard” Way

The “Easy” Way

Connecting Raspberry Pi

Configuring Your Pi

Using raspi-config

Users
 Connecting to a Wireless Network

Going Headless

Remote Access

Summary

Chapter 3: A Crash Course in Python

Python Overview

Downloading and Installing Python

Python Tools

The Python Shell

The Python Editor

The Zen of Python

Writing and Running a Python Program

Hello World

Basic Structure

Running a Program

Programming in Python

Variables

Data Types

A Final Note on Variables

Control Structures

Functions
 Adding Functionality through Modules

Classes

Styling

Summary

Chapter 4: Raspberry Pi GPIO

Raspberry Pi GPIO

Pin Numbering

Connecting to the Raspberry Pi

Limitations of Raspberry Pi’s GPIO

Accessing GPIO with Python

Simple Output: LED Example

Simple Input

Summary

Chapter 5: Raspberry Pi and Arduino

Raspberry Pi’s GPIO in Review

Real-Time or Near Real-Time Processing

Analog Input

Analog Output

Arduino to the Rescue

Using Arduino

Installing the Arduino IDE

 Connecting an Arduino

Programming Arduino

Sketches

A Brief Introduction to the Arduino Language

Including Other Files

Variables and Data Types

Control Structures

Working with Pins

Objects and Classes

Serial

Arduino to Pi and Back Again

Pinguino

Setting up the Circuit

Summary

Chapter 6: Driving Motors

Motors & Drivers

Types of Motors

Motor Properties

Motor Drivers

Working with Motor Controllers

Adafruit DC & Stepper Motor HAT

 L298N Generic Motor Driver

Summary

Chapter 7: Assembling the Robot

Assembling the Chassis

Choosing a Material

The Whippersnapper

Mounting the Electronics

Wiring

Mounting Sensors

The Finished Robot

Making the Robot Mobile

Summary

Chapter 8: Working with Infrared Sensors

Infrared Sensors

Types of IR Sensors

Working with IR Sensors

Connecting an IR Sensor

Mounting the IR Sensors

The Code

Understanding PID Control

Control Loops
 Implementing the PID Controller

Summary

Chapter 9: An Introduction to OpenCV

Computer Vision

OpenCV

Selecting a Camera

Installing the Camera

OpenCV Basics

Working with Images

Capturing Images

Image Transformations

Working with Color

Blobs and Blob Detection

Ball-Chasing Bot

Summary

Chapter 10: Conclusion

Types of Robotics

Tools

Software

Hardware

Summary
Index
Other documents randomly have
different content
should thus have got the better of him—to the extent at least of
controlling the offer or withdrawal of a prospective income of four
hundred a year. A hundred and fifty of it depended on his remaining
in the local ministry; that did not so much matter; but the rest
depended on his remaining in the connection at the very height of
his powers; and that he did not for a moment intend. No; even in
the shock of disappointment and all the callowness of untried youth,
he knew that he was worth more. And in a moment he had decided:
henceforth his career was to be a tussle between him and old Uncle
Trimblerigg; they would see which would come out first.
While thus he straightened out his problem below, Uncle Phineas
was being straightened out upstairs. It was the easier job of the two
and would soon be over; Jonathan had no time to lose. And so
collectedly, with presence of mind, he restored the letter to its
envelope, licked and sealed it, and returned letter and will to the
drawer from which he had taken them, leaving them to be found by
others.
Three days later he prayed and preached at the funeral with great
success. People flocked to hear him, for it was already known in the
surrounding district, which had sampled his early efforts, that he
was going to become a great orator. Within a year he was due to
enter the ministry: and the True Believers swelled with a sense of
triumph that once more they were going to have among them a
shining light.
In the domestic privacy of the Trimblerigg family, when the funeral
was over, the will was ceremonially opened and read; and Jonathan
received with Christian resignation the announcement that Davidina
was her uncle’s chief beneficiary.
A few days later he gave Davidina a chance to speak of the thing he
knew, by inquiring:
‘Uncle Phineas left a letter for you, didn’t he?’
‘Yes,’ said Davidina, and was for saying no more. But Mr. Trimblerigg
could not quite let it stop at that.
‘Anything that concerns others besides yourself?’
‘Yes,’ said Davidina again. ‘He told me that you were going to marry
Caroline, and sent you his love.’
So apparently Davidina meant that he was not to know. For once he
had beaten her; and even if it were to bring him nothing in the end
there was satisfaction in that thought.
 CHAPTER NINE
Some Women and a Moral
MR. TRIMBLERIGG’S call to be minister to the true Believers of
Horeb was independent of the theological test of his College which
qualified him for election to a pastorate among the Free
Evangelicals. But practically it gave him a two-years’ start; the Free
Evangelicals did not as a rule adopt pastors unless they were either
twenty-three, or married. Mr. Trimblerigg was only twenty-one, but
there among the True Believers the vacancy was waiting for him,
and he reckoned that two preliminary years devoted to establishing
his fame as a preacher and emancipating himself from the narrower
doctrines of True Belief would not be spent amiss.
In the short while which must elapse before his marriage with
Caroline, she and Davidina changed places domestically; and brother
and sister lived queerly together at the house adjoining the chapel;
an arrangement which, more than anything else could have done,
decided Mr. Trimblerigg that his engagement should be short.
Of course it was impossible from the first that Horeb should absorb
all his energies. He started at once as a mid-week missioner, first
among the neighbouring chapels of the connection, then going
further afield; and so as to avoid for the present the problem of an
exchange of pulpits with easier denominations contrary to the
traditions of True Belief, speaking in hired halls where connection did
not count; thus, without taking up the revolutionary standpoint, he
began to sit loose to the exclusiveness into which the True Believers
had reduced themselves, and to make himself known among the
Free Churches.
He had passed his theological degree brilliantly; a brilliancy slightly
reduced in his own estimation by the fact that Miss Isabel Sparling
had tied with him for first place. Thus, except for the sex-barrier, her
qualification for the ministry was mathematically the same as his
own.
Now among Free Believers the idea of women in the ministry had
been so unthought of that in their constitution there was no word
against it; and Mr. Trimblerigg was, by his outspoken advocacy of
their claim during his college career, a predestined champion of the
cause.
He had not occupied his pulpit a month before Miss Isabel Sparling
reminded him. She asked for three things: that he would circulate a
Women’s Ministry petition to the Annual Conference for the
signatures of his congregation, that he would himself present the
petition and make an accompanying motion in his ministerial
capacity, and that meanwhile he would invite her as a lay-preacher
to his own chapel.
Mr. Trimblerigg was of a divided mind: had the proposition at that
time been welcome among the Free Evangelicals, he could not have
wished for a better means of effecting a breach between himself and
the True Believers, when occasion was ripe for it. But among the
Free Evangelicals vacancies in the pastorate were not going begging
as they were among the True Believers; and for that and other
reasons the rank and file of Free Evangelicalism were either opposed
or indifferent. The question had indeed already been debated in that
great body of Free Churchmen, and they had decisively turned it
down as inopportune. The opposition ranged from support of the
Pauline doctrine of womanly silence in the assembly, to the
argument that as they could not go out as missionaries to be eaten
by savages they had not a complete qualification for ministerial
office; and when some protested that they were quite willing to take
their chance of being eaten like the rest, it was pointed out that
savages did other things to women besides eating them; at which
point it was considered that the discussion had become unsuitable
for open debate; and the previous question was moved and carried.
After considering the matter for awhile, therefore, Mr. Trimblerigg
decided to plead his youth and inexperience. It was the only time
that he ever did so; as a rule he revelled in the sense of freedom
attaching to both, finding inexperience quite as valuable as youth in
the formation of those momentary opinions on which he ran his
career. Tentatively, however, as a sop to self-approbation he put the
matter to his own chapel-members,—did they wish to have a woman
come and preach to them? The shade of Uncle Phineas presided
over the gathering: they were startled—emphatically they did not.
Mr. Trimblerigg, fortified by this verdict, told Miss Sparling that being
nothing if not democratic, and his own local democracy having
decided against it, he could go no further at present in that
particular direction; but that in his own time and in his own way he
would work for the enlargement of popular opinion, and as soon as
he saw an opening resume advocacy of the cause.
Thereupon ensued a long dispute between Mr. Trimblerigg and Miss
Sparling as to what ‘democracy’ really meant. Was democracy, in
matters spiritual, the will of a single congregation or community, or
of the whole Church Militant? Mr. Trimblerigg said that democracy
was merely what you could make it, a thing not of theory but of
practice; and the whole Church Militant being highly divided on party
lines, democracy was divided also.
Miss Sparling then created an argumentative diversion by asking,
‘Why did you kiss me when you converted me to True Belief?’ And
thereafter the duel which went on between them was mainly upon
those two questions—what democracy meant, and what the kiss had
meant. Mr. Trimblerigg gave to both alike a spiritual and a brotherly
interpretation. Whereupon Miss Sparling adumbrated a letter in
which he had signed his name with five crosses after it: what did the
five crosses mean? Mr. Trimblerigg said that they stood for an
unfinished communication—unfinished for lack of time; and that
educated people called them ‘asterisks.’ Miss Sparling refused to be
so educated, and thenceforward was his enemy.
In the holiday season she took lodgings in the neighbourhood, and
became a member of his congregation. Mr. Trimblerigg found that he
could no longer preach and pray freely, while Isabel Sparling sat with
her eye upon him, saying ‘Amen’ in a loud voice whenever he came
to a full stop, pretending to think then that his prayer had finished.
Thus by attacking his nerves she destroyed his spiritual efficiency.
Constantly he received letters which he did not answer.
She followed him up on weekdays also, attended his mission
services in the neighbouring villages and towns; and though he had
ceased to speak to her, was to be seen following him at a few paces
distance, as though somehow he belonged to her.
Mr. Trimblerigg walked fast, and sometimes, on turning a corner, ran
to get quit of her. One day, in front of his gate, she was seen to
make five crosses in the mud, indicative of an unfinished
communication. She left it at that.
In desperation he was driven at last to consult Davidina, who had
remained silently aware of what was going on, amused but saying
nothing.
Davidina asked how many crossed letters she had had from him.
Only one, he assured her. ‘One may be enough,’ was her comment,
which he did not deny.
Davidina thought awhile, then said:
‘Have you forbidden her the house?’
‘She has never come.’
‘If you forbade it, she would.’
‘Then I won’t.’
‘You had much better. Tell her that you are in to-morrow between
four and five, and that you will not see her.’
‘And what if she comes?’
‘You have only got to be out; I’ll see to her myself. It’s a pathological
case, and the sooner you get married the better.’
For once he trusted her; and as Davidina arranged it, so the thing
happened. Miss Sparling called; Davidina opened the door, and said,
in reply to inquiry, that Mr. Trimblerigg was out. Miss Sparling, not
believing her, walked in. Davidina requested her curtly but civilly to
walk out again; and when she refused, closed the door and fell upon
her.
In the struggle that ensued Miss Sparling was no match for
Davidina. Within two minutes her bosom was rifled of its guilty
contents, and so far as written documents were concerned Mr.
Trimblerigg’s reputation was safe again; that is to say Davidina had it
in her keeping.
She explained her course of action quite coolly to the flabbergasted
Isabel: ‘You forced my door; I forced your buttons. Now we are
equals; you’d better go.’
She opened the door again as she spoke. Eye to eye they looked at
each other; then Miss Sparling walked out. And as Davidina watched
her depart, she said to herself, ‘I wonder whether she’s going to be
the making of him?’
Davidina had got it firmly into her head that it was better to provide
Jonathan with enemies than with friends. She saw that popularity
might be the ruin of him; it was sisterly partiality which made her
think that unpopularity would be a corrective.
In the event Isabel had the making of him in a direction that
Davidina could never have dreamed.
When Mr. Trimblerigg came home, creeping in by the back way after
dark, Davidina presented him with the letter ending in five crosses,
saying that Miss Sparling had left it for him.
‘Have you read it,’ he inquired uncomfortably.
‘No; did you want me to?’ said Davidina in a calculated tone of
surprise.
He could not quite credit her with not having read it; but it was a
great comfort to pretend she had not read it, and to have the
pretence shared.
And if a human can understand that state of mind he will understand
a good deal of the mind of Mr. Trimblerigg.
Mr. Trimblerigg as soon as he was alone, read the letter carefully
through. He remembered the occasion of it, but had forgotten the
actual phrasing; he was astonished at its moderation.
‘I don’t believe she could ever have used it!’ he exclaimed to himself.
Then he put it into the fire and watched it burn; and as he did so, he
remembered Davidina’s advice: ‘The sooner you get married’
(meaning to Caroline) ‘the better.’
It may be—I am not quite sure—that this was what really decided
him to marry Caroline. His feelings toward Caroline had undergone,
since his uncle’s death, not a revulsion, but a diminution. He had
begun to have his doubts whether he was the right husband for her;
if she could find another and a better, he did not wish to be selfish.
There were episodes in their courtship which had disappointed him;
she was still pleasant to touch; but her mind was the sort which
seemed only capable of responding with a ‘just so’ to whatever was
said to it: equable, comfortable, and contented, but not stimulating.
Like a soft cushion, leaning on which you leave an impression, and
the mark stays for awhile then slowly effaces itself, so she. Looking
ahead he could see the sort of wife and mother that she would be;
and if ever it should chance that one of her children were taken from
her, or if he himself were to die young—she would be more like a
mother cow separated from its milk than from its calf. Caroline was
uneventful.
It was not an exciting prospect to look forward to. Nevertheless—
and perhaps Miss Sparling had something to do with it—within a
year of his uncle’s death, Jonathan Trimblerigg married Caroline.
And Davidina, out of her newly inherited wealth, gave them £100 to
start their housekeeping; returning herself to the parental roof,
where she stayed till a couple of years later Mr. and Mrs. Trimblerigg
senior shared an influenza and died in the same week, and in the
same bed.
After that, for some while Mr. Trimblerigg was comfortably rid of her.
She developed a craze for travelling. But regularly every year, when
a new child was born to them, Davidina sent them a present of £20.
 CHAPTER TEN
He Rides for a Fall
IT would not have been well for Mr. Trimblerigg—for his training as
an adept in the art of getting on—had his early ministerial career
been entirely without obstacles. Had circumstances not kept him on
the jump, his native agility might possibly have diminished; but from
the very beginning obstacles presented themselves, and they were
not all of one kind.
The first which confronted him was intellectual and temperamental.
It had been all very well in his early novitiate to act as occasional
lay-preacher to that sect of rigid Believers with bottle-necked minds;
a callow and undogmatic theology was then permissible. But now,
being called to the ministry, he must get to the heart of things, and
let his light shine there. True Believers expected it; and elders from
afar, men placed in authority, came to listen to this young and rising
hope of a diminished community, in order to discover whether his
oratory had weight and substance, or was merely words.
It was Mr. Trimblerigg’s fixed intention to get himself driven out of
that narrow communion so soon as he could afford it; but meantime
he had to maintain the verbal verities of the faith, a difficult matter
when his ministry extended to three discourses a week, two on the
Sabbath and one every Wednesday.
For awhile he kept himself going on the Song of Songs, the literal
interpretation of which provided him with poetic flights and passages
of local colour congenial to his youthful temperament. Poetry in the
pulpit was a new thing. His spiritual interpretations of love attracted
the courting couples of the neighbourhood; youth flocked to hear
him, with occasional results which made the watchful elders uneasy.
It is true that on Sunday evenings the chapel was always crowded,
but his congregation of youths and maidens, coming from a
distance, showed more punctuality in arriving than in returning
home; and now and then, as a consequence, marriages had to be
hasty.
Before long Mr. Trimblerigg’s Watch Committee called upon him to
talk less of love, with its bundles of myrrh, its vineyards and gardens
of spice, and to concentrate a little more on those starker and more
characteristic verities of the faith—sin, death, judgment and
damnation.
Under this doctrinal pressure Mr. Trimblerigg became futurist. He
started a course on the literal interpretation of prophecy. It was a
branch of theology which the modern school of Free Evangelicalism
had neglectfully allowed to go out of fashion, fearing perhaps what
definite repudiation might involve. Here Mr. Trimblerigg saw his way.
Unfulfilled prophecy had this advantage: it could always be
apprehended and never disproved. Also the sleeping atavisms of
human nature favoured it; just as they favour palmistry and table-
turning, and the avoidance of going under ladders or looking at the
new moon through glass. When these currents of instinctive
credulity are wisely drawn into the service of religion they may do
great things. And so it was that Mr. Trimblerigg made a slight
mistake when without meaning to do great things in his present
connection, he let himself go.
Before he had realized the danger, his chapel became full to
overflowing; crowds far larger than it would hold waited at the door;
and through that, and through windows set wide, his word went
forth into the world and stirred it more than he wished it to be
stirred.
Reporters came to listen to him; Free Evangelicals of the older
school wobbled and came over; and while his own congregations
increased, down at the larger chapel below Grandfather Hubback’s
diminished, and relations became strained.
This was not what Mr. Trimblerigg had intended; meaning only to
temporize he had exalted himself to a height from which it would be
difficult, when the time came for it, to make an unconspicuous
descent. He did not wish his ministry among the True Believers to
remain memorable; but when upon the platform the word came to
him with power, it was very difficult to refrain. It was also very
difficult to remember afterwards what he had actually said: Mr.
Trimblerigg had too much verbal inspiration of a momentary kind. If
this sort of thing went on long, he might establish a record against
himself fatal to his future career.
The Free Evangelicals were beginning to feel sore; the door which
he wished kept open for him in a friendly spirit, might narrow, might
even close against him in the day of his need.
And then two things happened which he turned briskly to account.
The first was an invitation from the Synod of True Believers to
deliver the set discourse at the Annual Congress.
It was a great, an unexpected, and an embarrassing honour; for the
set discourse, by unwritten tradition, was always given in defiance of
modern theology and in defence of the literal interpretation of
Scripture.
If he did this to the satisfaction of the True Believers, his secession
to the Ministry of Free Evangelicalism in the immediate future would
become almost impossible.
But Mr. Trimblerigg, though his other virtues might be fleeting or
fluctuating, had a nimble courage which stayed fixed. After humbly
and fervently informing me of his intention, under the guise of a
request for guidance, he accepted the invitation and sat down to
write the thesis which precipitated his career two years ahead of the
course he had planned for it.
The second circumstance, embarrassing but helpful to the same end,
was the reappearance of Isabel Sparling, heading a deputation of
women who, feeling called to the ministry, now saw an opportunity
which they were not going to let slip. As select preacher before the
Assembly it was, they told him, his bounden duty to crown his
allegiance to their cause in public advocacy of the ministration of
women; and when he pleaded that the literal interpretation of
Scripture must be his theme, they replied by requiring him to
concentrate on the literal interpretation of certain texts—mainly in
the Old Testament—conclusive of their claim.
In the discussion that followed, the deputation saw their opportunity
slipping away from them. Mr. Trimblerigg was willing to support their
cause, but only, as he said, ‘in his own time and in his own way.’ And
that time was not now, and his way was not theirs. Tempers grew
hot, words flew, the deputation went forth in dudgeon; Isabel
Sparling gave him a parting look; it meant business, it also meant
mischief. She was, he knew, a woman of high ability, and a
determined character: and now, on public and on private ground,
she was become his enemy.
In the six months which intervened before the day of Congress, the
women’s spiritual movement broke into flame and heat, and they
began that phenomenal campaign of Church Militancy which has
since made history. They began by entering a motion for Congress in
support of their claim; but as women, though congregational
electors, could not sit in the Assembly, and as they could get no
member to give his name to their motion, it was ruled out of order
and returned to them.
Then in the chapels of the True Believers the word of the Lord was
heard by the mouths of women; what Congress sought to silence, at
meeting they made known; they went forth in bands of three or four,
or sometimes they went solitary, and entering into the congregations
like lambs became as wolves.
When it seemed good to them that the preacher should end his
prayer, they cried ‘Amen’, and in the midst of his discourse they
spoke as the spirit gave them utterance. It was a demonstration that
the gift of prophecy, like murder, must out, and that if a place in
order be not found for it, it must come by disorder. So they
presented their case, by example and not by argument, and the
congregations of True Belief dealt with them, or tried to deal with
them, in various ways painful or persuasive, but none prevailed. For
this phenomenon, they claimed, was spiritual, and could only be
cured spiritually in the granting of their demand; while the coercion
practised on them, being merely material, must necessarily fail.
And so spiritually chaining themselves to their chairs, they were
materially carried out, and spiritually interrupting the eloquence of
others were materially suppressed under extinguishers which
deprived them of breath; and for what they truly believed to be their
unconquerable right True Belief could find no remedy.
From the moment when it had first sparkled into life, this sacred
flame had, of course, found at Mount Horeb an altar for its fires, and
in Mr. Trimblerigg a victim suited to its need. There Isabel Sparling
came in person, for the first time openly, but afterwards in disguise,
and there they wrestled together for an eloquence which tried to be
simultaneous but failed. And though, with preparation and practice,
he did better against interruption than she, yet even there she beat
him; for if her remarks were disjointed and ejaculatory it did not
much matter, whereas for him sound alone was not sufficient, but he
must keep up the thread of his discourse, rise superior in eloquence
as well as in sense to the reiterated ‘Alleluias’ of Miss Sparling’s
inspired utterance, and all the while put a Christian face upon the
matter, which was the most difficult thing of all.
Three times was Miss Sparling cast forth from the midst of the
congregation, before the doorkeepers became efficient in
penetrating her disguise. The third time Mr. Trimblerigg, losing his
temper, had used what sounded like incitement to violence, and Miss
Sparling getting her leg broken, brought an action and obtained
damages, fifty pounds.
This was regarded by the movement as a great spiritual victory, and
a victory it was. The law of the land, finding that True Believers had
no fixed ritual of public worship, and that male members of its
congregations might preach or pray without comment when the
spirit moved them, acquitted Miss Sparling either of brawling or of
conduct conducive to a breach of the peace, and held responsible for
the damage those who had so ruthlessly ejected her. It admitted,
however, that they would be within their rights in keeping her out.
This for the future they did, and when, as her next spiritual exercise,
Miss Sparling returned and broke all the chapel windows as a way of
joining in worship, they got her sent to prison for it. There, still led
by the spirit, she hunger-struck and got out again; just too late
unfortunately to hear Mr. Trimblerigg deliver his sensational
discourse to the Annual Congress, a discourse to the force of which
she had, without knowing it, contributed: for six months of the
women’s Church Militancy had been enough to convince Mr.
Trimblerigg that a connection in which they had become active was
one from which he himself must sever.
And so, on the opening day of Congress, setting the note for all that
was to follow, Mr. Trimblerigg delivered his mercurial and magnetic
address on ‘The Weight of Testimony.’ Therein he upheld without a
quiver of doubt the verbal inspiration of Scripture; it was, he argued,
the true and literal setting forth of things actually said and done by a
chosen people finding their spiritual way and losing it; but in that to-
and-fro history of loss and gain many things were recorded for our
learning upon the sole testimony of men whose minds still stumbled
in darkness, and who, therefore, had not the whole truth in them;
but where their fallible testimony infallibly recorded by Scripture
actually began, or where it ended, was not a matter of inspiration at
all but of textual criticism, because in ancient Hebrew manuscripts
quotation marks were left out. Thus Holy Scripture, once written,
had become subject to vicissitudes at the hands of expurgators,
emendators, and copyists, even as the sacred ark of the Covenant
which, having at one time fallen into the hands of the Philistines,
and at another been desecrated by the polluting touch of Uzzah, was
finally carried away in triumph to pagan Rome, and there lost.
Having thus shown how the most sacred receptacles of the Divine
purpose were not immune from the accidents of time, he drew and
extended his parallel, and from this, his main thesis, proceeded to
give instances, and to restore quotation marks as an indication of
where textual criticism might be said to begin and inspiration to end.
Before long holy fear like a fluttered dove fleeing from a hawk had
entered that assembly, and beards had begun to shake with
apprehension as to what might come next.
Mr. Trimblerigg warmed to his work; his sensations were those of a
fireman who, in order to display his courage and efficiency in the
fighting of flames, has set a light to his own fire-station; and while it
crackles under his feet, he strikes an attitude, directs his hose and
pours out a flood of salvation.
When he started to give his instances, their devastating effect was
all that he could desire. He tackled Joshua’s command to the sun to
stand still, restored the quotation marks, pointed out how in that
instance Holy Scripture had expressly referred it back to its only
authority, the Book of Jassher: and how the Book of Jassher being
outside the canon of Scripture was of no standing to impose its
poetic legends on the mind of a True Believer. Why then, it might be
asked, had reference been made to it at all? He adumbrated a
prophetic significance, a spiritual value, to which by that parable the
human race was afterwards to attain.
Joshua’s command to the sun now found its true address in the
human heart, and the reason why Scripture had recorded it at so
early a date was in order that it might find fulfilment and illustration
in that greater Scripture uttered upwards of a thousand years later
by St. Paul in his Epistle to the Ephesians, ‘Let not the sun go down
upon your wrath.’ That was the true meaning of Joshua’s command
for those who read Scripture, not by picking at it in parts, but by
reading it as it ought to be read as one great harmonious,
consistent, homogeneous, and indivisible whole.
On that uplifting string of adjectives Mr. Trimblerigg stopped to
breathe, and his hearers breathed with him loud and deep.
That answering sound, whatever it might mean, gave Mr. Trimblerigg
the poetic push which the gasp of a listening audience always
supplied, ‘Yea, I say unto you, yea!’ he cried, and paused. He was in
deep waters, he knew; so, breaking into an eloquent passage about
ships—ships at sea, ships that pass in the night, ships that have
Jonahs on board, ships that cling to the anchor, and ships that have
no anchor wherewith to cling, ships of the desert seeking for water
and finding none, ships that making for the North Pole stick fast in
ice, yet continue moving toward their destined goal, ships that go
out like ravens and return no more, ships that come home like doves
to roost carrying their sheaves with them—so experimenting on
wings of poesy in that seaward direction to which, though he had
never been there, his pulpit oratory so often carried him, he almost
succeeded, or almost seemed to succeed, in carrying his audience
with him; for indeed it is very difficult, when beautiful spiritual
similes are being uttered, for an audience to remain cold and critical,
and remind itself that figures of speech have nothing to do with
sound doctrine.
It is also difficult when a speaker speaks with so much beauty and
fervour and imaginative mimicry, as on this occasion did Mr.
Trimblerigg, not to see him as he sees himself; for the self-
hypnotism of the orator is a catching thing—and nations have often
been caught by it to their destruction, and churches to heresy
almost before they knew.
But the True Believers, though momentarily moved, were not carried
away; and when Mr. Trimblerigg returned to his instances his
audience was still against him.
He took the characters of the Hebrew prophets and examined them;
he showed that the sins and shortcomings of Eli’s judgeship, for
which Eli had been condemned, were reproduced under the
judgeship of Samuel when he, in his turn, grew old, and that it was
really only as Samuel’s own word for it that the people stood
condemned in asking for a King. Holy Scripture had truly recorded
that incident; but was Samuel, the ineffective ruler whose sons took
bribes and perverted judgment, was he a witness altogether above
suspicion when his own deposition from power was the question to
be decided on? And so round the testimony of Samuel he put
quotation marks, and relieved Scripture of the burden of that unjust
judgment the approval of which was Samuel’s, and Samuel’s alone.
And then he took Elisha and the cursing of the children, and the she-
bears tearing of them, and there, too, he restored the quotation
marks. He threw no doubt upon the incident, but its reading as a
moral emblem was the reading of Elisha, and the tearing of the
forty-two children had found its interpretation in the wish of the
prophet misreading it as the will of God. Other instances followed:
there with the testimony of Scripture before him, stood Mr.
Trimblerigg inserting quotation marks for the restoration of its
morals, dividing the sheep from the goats, trying to show where
inspiration ended and where textual criticism began.
Judged by outside standards it was not a learned discourse, even Mr.
Trimblerigg would not have claimed that for it; but it was vivacious
and eloquent, and not lacking in common sense; and as common
sense was preeminently the quality for which in relation to the
interpretation of Scripture the True Believers had no use, the result
was a foregone conclusion.
When he had finished Mr. Trimblerigg sat down to a dead silence,
and the presiding minister rose. Deeply, bitterly, unsparingly Mr.
Trimblerigg’s thesis was there and then condemned as utterly
subversive of the revealed Word. More than that, Congress by a
unanimous vote expunged it from the record of its proceedings; not
by the most diligent search in the archives of True Belief will any
reference to Mr. Trimblerigg’s address on ‘the Weight of Testimony’
be found.
But the discourse had done its work, and Mr. Trimblerigg knew that
he left the Congress theologically free for the new-shaping of his
career.
It was true that the Chapel of Mount Horeb, with house attached,
was still his own; but within a week the stipend pertaining thereto
had been withdrawn, and the Trustees, believing themselves to be
deprived of the chapel, had already begun the hire of temporary
premises.
But Mr. Trimblerigg’s instinct did not play him false; and when
acknowledging his dismissal at the hands of the Trustees he
informed them that the chapel was still open to them, free of charge
and without condition. He was sure, he said, that this was what his
uncle would have wished.
And having done all this, he felt that he had committed a great act
of faith; he felt also that he had done at last something which could
not fail to win the admiration of Davidina.
Davidina was not herself a True Believer; but she had done him the
compliment to come from a distance to hear his discourse; and
much he wanted to know what she thought of it. There was the
added circumstance that she had a direct interest—not theological
but financial—in the severance which had now taken place, and it
was with elated curiosity that he looked her in the eyes—with a look
more straight and unembarrassed than he could usually muster—to
see how she had taken it.
He found her waiting for him outside.
‘Well, what d’you think of that?’ he inquired.
‘I think you’d have made a wonderful jockey,’ she replied. ‘You’d
have made your fortune.’
‘Jockey?’ he said, puzzled. ‘I didn’t exactly pull it off this time, at any
rate.’
‘No,’ she replied. ‘Did you mean to?’
‘Yes; I did my best.’
‘That I’m sure.’
‘How d’you define a jockey?’ he asked uneasily, irritated by her fixed
abstention from further comment.
‘There’s your own definition,’ she said, ‘you wrote it in a school
essay. I kept it because I thought it was good. I won’t spoil it; I’ll
send it you.’
And the next day the essay, which he had entirely forgotten, written
in a round boyish hand, reached him by post.
‘A jockey,’ he read, ‘is one who had trained himself from early years
in the dangerous and delicate art of falling from a horse.’
Accompanying it was a cheque for a hundred pounds. ‘No wonder!’
said Mr. Trimblerigg, ‘she feels that she owes me something now.’
For by what he had just done he was giving her the right, twelve
years hence, to continue as main beneficiary under the will of Uncle
Phineas.
Nevertheless he was pleased that he had pleased her. It was almost
the first time he had known it happen. Davidina’s opinion of him
counted much more than he liked. All his growing years he had tried
to escape from her, and still he had failed.
 CHAPTER ELEVEN
Scene-shifting
MR. TRIMBLERIGG’S fall from the grace of true Belief—or from the
good graces of the True Believers—had a famous reverberation in
the Free Church Press; and at the age of twenty-four he became for
the time being—next to the great Dr. Giffard himself—the most
controversially talked-of person among the high lights of
Nonconformity.
For just at that time the Free Churches had nothing on which to grit
their teeth, and badly wanted a new bone. The New Theology of Dr.
Ramble had come almost to nothing: its author had deserted it upon
the door-step of the more ancient faith into which he had retired;
and the fight about it had died down. But here was a fight, not more
suddenly sprung than ended; and in a single round this young
Jonathan of a David had been knocked out by the older Goliath. The
common sympathies were with him, for the True Believers were not
a popular sect; a time had come when it was generally felt that they
were doing harm rather than good by an insistence on the literal
truth of things which no one really believed. Nevertheless many old
school Free Evangelicals considered that Mr. Trimblerigg’s method of
attack had been inconsiderate and rash; for if one started to put
quotation marks round everything one did not wish to accept, where
would the process end? The world still believed in punishment for
the wicked; Samuel and Elisha stood high among the prophets; and
if harvests were not liable to be cursed for a nation’s sins, how then
consistently could they—or alterations in the weather—be prayed
for? As for the tearing of the she-bears, in primitive times primitive
punishments were not regarded as they are now. Besides, as
somebody pointed out in the correspondence which followed in The
Rock of Ages, the she-bears may only have torn them slightly
though sufficiently, killing none; merely teaching them to behave
better in the future.
But though then, as always, Mr. Trimblerigg’s plunges in exegesis
provoked criticism, they had at least abundantly released him from
the restricting inhibitions of True Belief, and the way to wider pulpits
now lay open.
And then in the very nick of time, on a Saturday night of all days
and hours in the week, Grandfather Hubback was taken ill, and Mr.
Trimblerigg, who had been much in doubt where to go for his next
Sunday’s worship, came down at short notice and preached at
Bethesda so beautifully, so movingly, and in so charitable and
resigned a spirit, that there was no question of asking anyone else
to come the following Sunday and take his place.
And so, informally, with the goodwill of a congregation where he was
native and known, Mr. Trimblerigg became temporary preacher to
the Free Evangelicals; and when, after a six weeks’ illness, Pastor
Hubback died, Mr. Trimblerigg was congregationally recommended to
take his place; and after a certain amount of prayer, deliberation,
and inquisition before a Committee, in answering which Mr.
Trimblerigg found no difficulty at all, his ministerial status was
confirmed and the appointment made.
In the month following, to make it as easy as might be for the
faithful at Horeb to find and accommodate a new pastor, Mr.
Trimblerigg moved his wife, family, and furniture to the larger abode
of his late grandfather. But though the chapel was then left to them
free of charge, and the house at a fair rental, the True Believers of
the locality thenceforth dwindled to a small remnant; while the
congregation at Bethesda increased and multiplied.
Mr. Trimblerigg, however, had made his exit so handsomely that
though henceforth a suspended and disconnected minister (for the
fiat of the Synod had gone forth against him to that effect) there
was nevertheless between him and his old congregation a certain
measure of goodwill; those who parted from him parted with regret;
a few, younger members mostly, came out and followed him.
In that matter, indeed, more followed him than he could have
wished; for no sooner had he been cut off from the communion of
True Belief, than it became evident that in that narrow and
reactionary following the woman’s ministry propaganda had not a
dog’s chance of success. Possibly also, with him out of it, the sect
ceased to attract the forward spirits of feminism. Whatever the
cause, within a few weeks the agitation, so far as True Belief was
concerned, died the death; but unfortunately came to life elsewhere,
more vigorously and more abundantly than ever.
The long struggle of women, in the broad fold of Free
Evangelicalism, to obtain sex-equality is not to be told here. Its main
importance, so far as we are concerned, is the effect it had on the
career of Mr. Trimblerigg. The recrudescence of Isabel Sparling and
her followers in congregations drawn together by his growing
reputation as a preacher became a sad impediment to the flow of his
oratory. The manifestations were epidemic through all the loosely-
knit communions of the Free Churches; but against himself they
were directed with a personal animus of which only he and Isabel
Sparling knew the full inwardness. For public purposes it was
sufficient that, after first disclaiming all further obligation to their
cause—since only in the bonds of True Belief had he stood fully
committed thereto—he now sought to postpone the question of their
admission until the corporate union of the Free Churches, and a few
other reforms (Disestablishment amongst others), on which he had
set his heart, had been accomplished. A piecemeal extension of the
ministerial function to women would, he maintained, have a
disturbing and a disuniting effect on communions which he sought
to draw together in closer bonds of brotherhood. ‘I am in favour of
it,’ he said (to the deputations which continued to wait on him), ‘but
I am not so much in favour of it, as of other and more fundamental
things which must come first.’
Fundamental: the word kindled in the hearts of women who had felt
that fundamental call of the spirit, a flame of resentment that
crackled and spread. Who was he, who was anybody to dictate times
and seasons, when the signs of that spiritual outpouring were here
and now?
And so there was War in all the Free Churches which strove to fulfil
themselves under the ministry of one sex alone; and Mr.
Trimblerigg’s prayers and preachings were in consequence broken
into shorter paragraphs than was good for them.
But the violence with which those spiritual interruptions were carried
out could not go on for ever; it was not in human, it was not in
heavenly nature to utter messages born of the spirit with the drilled
regularity and mechanism of a firing-squad. The things they said
lacked conviction, did not come from their hearts or their heads, but
only from their tongues and their tempers; and when in certain
selected cases, Mr. Trimblerigg was inspired to pause so that they
might speak as the spirit gave them utterance, the spirit left them
badly in the lurch, they faltered and became dumb. For Isabel
Sparling had enlisted in her cause many who were the poorest of
poor speakers and had no wish whatever to become ministers; and
when these heard themselves speak to a congregation which was
artfully prevailed upon to listen they trembled and were afraid, and
felt themselves fools.
And so, for a while, in his own particular congregation, it almost
seemed that Mr. Trimblerigg was on the way to restore order and
recover the undivided attention of his audiences.
But once again the pin-prick policy of Isabel Sparling got the better
of him; and in the third year of her Church Militancy, forces of a
new, a more placid, and a more undefeatable type were let loose
against him.
They came, they behaved themselves, they said not a word, cloven
tongues of inspiration no longer descended upon them; but in the
most moving passage of prayer or sermon, they would feel
imperatively moved to get up and go. And with much deprecatory
fuss and whispered apology, always from the centre of a well-
occupied row—they would go forth and presently return again,
finding that they had left book, or handbag, or handkerchief behind
them, or that they had taken away their neighbour’s in mistake for
their own. And it was all so politely and apologetically done that
everybody, except the preacher, had to forgive them.
And so it came about that after Mr. Trimblerigg had been at
Bethesda for a little more than two years, he accepted with alacrity a
post at the Free Evangelical centre for the organization of foreign
missions. And when he went out to preach it was at short notice
here, there and everywhere, where the sedulous attentions of Miss
Isabel Sparling and her followers had not time to overtake him.
That great work of organization, and the addressing of meetings for
men only, gave his energies the outlet, the flourish, and the
flamboyance which they imperatively demanded; and while he
discovered in himself a head for business and a leaning toward
speculative finance, in the great Free Evangelical connection his
spiritual and oratorical reputation continued to grow.
And meanwhile, in his domestic circumstances, Mr. Trimblerigg was
living an enlarged life and doing well. His wife had presented him
with three children; and he in return, by moving them from a remote
country district of primitive ways to one of the big centres of
civilization, had presented her with a house containing a basement
and a bathroom.
The basement enabled them to keep a servant; while the bathroom
—a matter of more importance—enabled me to obtain a clearer view
(which is not quite the same as a complete explanation), of Mr.
Trimblerigg’s character.
 CHAPTER TWELVE
Theory and Practice
IT is as a rule (though not always) when men are not under the
observation of others, that they most surely reveal themselves. Word
and face and gesture are not then the concealment which at other
times they may become; and though when a man talks or
gesticulates to himself he is often very far from telling the truth, he
is generally near to revealing it.
And that, I suppose, is why writers of fiction have so generally taken
the impossible liberty of following their characters into places of
solitude and the privacy of their own thoughts; and from this godlike
vantage-ground have pulled the strings of their puppets, imposing
upon the reader a shoddy romanticism which pretends to be science.
But the gods can very seldom gaze into the secrecy of the things
they have made, with so omniscient and cocksure a spirit. Between
mortal man and his maker there is a remove which sometimes
baffles each alike. Free-will, inside a fixed radius of determined
environment, creates an obscurity. The outer integument, the limited
viewpoint, the competing interests and motives, which go to make
up one of those small self-centred individualities called man, are
often obstructive to the larger and more serene intelligence which
accompanies the spiritual standpoint; and I confess that in his
privacy Mr. Trimblerigg used often to puzzle me.
It was seeing the puzzle at work—putting itself elaborately together,
then pulling itself to pieces again—which gave me the clearer view;
though it remained a puzzle still. But it was something to discover,
suddenly and unexpectedly, that Mr. Trimblerigg had a passion for
sincerity—towards himself at any rate—which took him to strange
lengths; and though I recount what came under my observation, I
do not pretend that I am able to explain it.
It was my privilege, more frequently at this particular point of his
career than ever before, to see Mr. Trimblerigg take his bath; a
function which, so far as his wife and the outside world knew, took
place every morning of his life. It is more accurate to say that he
went to the bathroom every morning, and that every morning, to
anyone who cared to listen, the sounds of a bath being taken came
through the door.
Mr. Trimblerigg had committed himself to the bath-habit with
characteristic enthusiasm from the day when, with enlarged means,
he found himself in a house containing a bathroom. But the house
did not—in the first instance at any rate—contain a hot-water
system; except on occasions of special preparation the baths
remained cold.
But Mr. Trimblerigg’s tenancy began in the summer quarter, when
cold baths are almost as much a pleasure as a virtue. He was young,
robust, vigorous, a preacher of the strenuous life; and facilities for
the daily cold bath having come his way, he first boldly proclaimed
his faith, and then got into it.
His faith carried him on, even when colder weather made it a trial;
and often it was beautiful to see, after a timid bird-like hovering on
the brink, how boldly he would plunge in, and with pantings and
rapid spongings cross the rubicon of agony which leads to the
healthy glow of a stimulated circulation.
On these occasions he would be very proud of himself, and standing
before the glass gaze with approval on the ruddy blush which
suffused his body and limbs under the hard rubbings of the towel.
But a day came when he quailed and could not bring himself to get
in at all; for the bath-habit was not in his blood as it is in the blood
of those who have had a public-school training. The hill-side-chapel
clan from which he sprang bathed only on the day of its baptism, or
medicinally at the order of a doctor; and early habit, or the lack of it,
counts with people as they grow older. So now there was
controversy between Mr. Trimblerigg and his bath.
He tried it first with his hand, then with his foot: then he drew a
breath and said ‘Brrrr!’ loudly and resolutely, and continued saying it
as he drove the water up and down the bath with his sponge. He
splashed it artfully across the wooden splash-board, and down on to
the floor; he dipped his feet and made wet marks on the bath-mat,
and all the while he spluttered and panted, and at intervals stirred
the bath-water to and fro, and round and round with his sponge.
Then he stood in front of the glass and rubbed himself hard with his
towel until he felt quite warm, until his body glowed with a similar
glow to that which followed an actual bathing. And, as he did so, he
looked at himself roguishly in the glass; and shaking his head at
himself—‘Naughty boy!’ he said.
He was quite frank about it—to himself; and when he had done the
same trick several times, as the mornings remained cold, he gave
himself what he called ‘a good talking to.’
‘You are getting fat!’ he said, ‘you are getting self-indulgent; you
want whipping!’ And so saying he let out at himself two or three
quite hard flicks with the towel—flicks that hurt.
It was a new invention for the establishment of pleasant relations
between his comic and his moral sense; and when occasion required
he repeated it. That little bit of self-discipline always restored his
self-esteem, leaving his conscience without a wound; and he would
come out of the bathroom feeling as good as gold, and sometimes
would even remark to his wife how fresh a really cold bath on a
frosty morning made one feel. And she would assent quite
pleasantly, only begging him not to overdo it; whereupon he would
explain how constant habit hardens a man even to the extremities of
water from an iced cistern. And who, to look at her, would have any
suspicion that she did not entirely believe him?
But on more than one occasion on very cold mornings, when Mr.
Trimblerigg was safely downstairs, I have seen her go into the
bathroom and inspect, with a woman’s eye for details: appraise the
amount of moisture left in the towel, and various other minute
points for the confirmation of her hope that he was not overdoing it.
And when she has quite satisfied herself, I have seen her smile and
go on down to breakfast, a good contented soul, full of the
comfortable assurances wives often have, that though husbands
may be clever in their way, to see through them domestically is not
difficult.
Later on, when Mr. Trimblerigg moved to a house efficiently supplied
with a hot-water system, his baths were taken daily, but they were
not always cold ones; and though he still pretended that they were,
the modifications were so various and so habitual, that he left off
saying ‘naughty boy!’ when he looked at himself in the glass. Also,
when he really did begin to become chubby he left off telling himself
that he was getting fat. Sometimes he would look at himself a little
sadly, and in order to avoid the moral conclusion that you cannot
have the fat things of life without the adipose tissue, preferred to
reflect that he was ‘getting middle-aged,’ which was still ten years
away from the truth.
But the sadness was only momentary; he had so good an opinion of
himself that he was almost always cheerful, and easy to get on with.
And if after he had turned thirty he did begin to become a little ball
of a man, he kept the ball rolling with energy. The amount of work
he could do, and do happily, was phenomenal; and under his
stimulus the foreign mission work of the Free Evangelicals grew and
flourished.
 CHAPTER THIRTEEN
A Virtuous Adventure
NOBODY who has followed this narrative with any intelligence can
suppose that Mr. Trimblerigg was a man who did not have his
temptations. What happened when he immersed Davidina in the
stream without intending it, what happened when he did not
immerse himself in the bath on a cold morning, has been faithfully
told. But what he did to Davidina had hurt him far more than what
he did to himself. It had hurt him because Davidina had found him
out, and then had not allowed him to explain.
He liked explaining. Explaining always made him feel right again with
his own conscience. Even the look of understanding which he
exchanged with himself in the glass, after some involuntary
reversion to type, was sufficient as a rule to restore him to his own
good opinion. To explain things, therefore, which generally meant to
explain them away, was spiritual meat and drink to him.
But there were two people in the world to whom he very seldom
explained anything: his wife, the quiet Caroline, who understood so
little that it was not worth while; and his sister Davidina who
understood so much that it was dangerous.
And between these two Guardian angels—who should have been his
confidantes, but were not—he led a life of temptations. Not gross, or
serious in kind, or extreme in degree, but temptations none the less,
and all having their root in a very laudable trait of his character, his
abounding love of adventure.
All his life Mr. Trimblerigg had been respectable: when he married he
had no bachelor episodes to conceal from his wife, except perhaps
that sixpenny sale of a kiss to Lizzie Seebohm, of which he had
ceased to be proud, and his temporary infatuation for Isabel Sparling