Page:Neatby - A history of the Plymouth Brethren.djvu/320

 London Cronin had called uninvited upon him, and the interview had been friendly. It was not Darby’s way to acknowledge his faults, but it may well be that he felt some compunction. Another old friend, Andrew Miller, was dangerously ill at Bournemouth at the same time. The recent disruption had severed him from the chief whose standard he had faithfully followed for close upon thirty years, but Darby sent daily to enquire of his welfare. A certain gloom seemed to settle down on Darby from the time that the division became inevitable. Physical decay might account for it, but there were surely other influences at work. He had survived precisely to the tragic moment—just long enough to see his work go to pieces in his hands by his own act. It has been conjectured that he expected to carry his point at the last, as he had so often carried it before; but for once the matchless sagacity that had borne him safely through so many critical junctures betrayed him to his undoing.

It was no question now of a secession limited enough to be negligible. It was the formation of a rival party, at least as weighty in gifts as the party of his own adherents, and not hopelessly inferior in numbers. It was only left to the old man to recognise his defeat in the dearest object of his life, when to retrieve the disaster was beyond all hope.

Not often have men been called to mark the passing of a stranger or more complex personality. The saint of patient, tranquil contemplation, the theologian of deep,