ised.

Crashaw toiled to the end, and no one knows how far his personal purpose
and spite were satisfied, but he could never impede any more that
elusive spirit of swiftness; it had run past him.

FOOTNOTES:

[4] Afterwards Lord Quainton.

CHAPTER XII

HIS INTERVIEW WITH HERR GROSSMANN

I

Crashaw must have suffered greatly just at that time; and the
anticipation of his defeat by the Committee was made still more bitter
by the wonderful visit of Herr Grossmann. It is true that that visit
feebly helped Crashaw's cause at the moment by further enlisting the
sympathies and strenuous endeavour of the Nonconformist Purvis; but no
effort of the ex-mayor could avail to upset the majority of the Local
Education Authority and the grocer, himself, was not a person acceptable
to Crashaw. The two men were so nearly allied by their manner of thought
and social origin; and Crashaw instinctively flaunted the splendid
throne of his holy office, whenever he and Purvis were together. Purvis
was what the rector might have described as an ignorant man. It is a
fact that, until Crashaw very fully and inaccurately informed him, he
had never even heard of Hugo Grossmann.

In that conversation between Crashaw and Purvis, the celebrated German
Professor figured as the veritable Anti-Christ, the Devil's personal
representative on earth; but Crashaw was not a safe authority on Science
and Philosophy.

Herr Grossmann's world-wide reputation was certainly not won in the
field of religious controversy. He had not at that time reached the
pinnacle of achievement which placed him so high above his brilliant
contemporaries, and now presents him as the unique figure and
representative of twentieth-century science. But his very considerable
contributions to knowledge had drawn the attention of Europe for ten
years, and he was already regarded by his fellow-scientists with that
mixture of contempt and jealousy which inevitably precedes the world's
acceptance of its greatest men.

Sir Deane Elmer, for example, was a generous and kindly man; he had
never been involved in any controversy with the professional scientists
whose ground he continually encroached upon, and yet he could not hear
the name of Grossmann without frowning. Grossmann had the German vice of
thoroughness. He took up a subject and exhausted it, as far as is
possible within the limits of our present knowledge; and his monograph
on Heredity had demonstrated with a det