The Altar Steps by Compton MacKenzie

C >> Compton MacKenzie >> The Altar Steps

Pages:
1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 | 18 | 19 | 20 | 21 | 22 | 23 | 24 | 25 | 26 | 27 | 28 | 29

"I thought we agreed after your last display here that you'd give this
cursed chapel the go by?"

"I can't escape from it," Esther cried. "You don't understand, Will,
what it means. You never have understood."

"Dearest Essie, I understand only too well. I've paid pretty handsomely
in having to listen to reproaches, in having to dry your tears and stop
your sighs with kisses. Your damned religion is a joke. Can't you grasp
that? It's not my fault we can't get married. If I were really the
scoundrel you torment yourself into thinking I am, I would have married
and taken the risk of my strumpet of a wife turning up. But I've treated
you honestly, Essie. I can't help loving you. I went away once. I went
away again. And a third time I went just to relieve your soul of the sin
of loving me. But I'm sick of suffering for the sake of a myth, a
superstition."

Esther had moved close to him, and now she put a hand upon his arm.

"To you, Will. Not to me."

"Look here, Essie," said her lover. "If you knew that you were liable to
these dreadful attacks of remorse and penitence, why did you ever
encourage me?"

"How dare you say I encouraged you?"

"Now don't let your religion make you dishonest," he stabbed. "No man
seduces a woman of your character without as much goodwill as deserves
to be called encouragement, and by God _is_ encouragement," he went on
furiously. "Let's cut away some of the cant before we begin arguing
again about religion."

"You don't know what a hell you're making for me when you talk like
that," she gasped. "If I did encourage you, then my sin is a thousand
times blacker."

"Oh, don't exaggerate, my dear girl," he said wearily. "It isn't a sin
for two people to love each other."

"I've tried my best to think as you do, but I can't. I've avoided going
to church. I've tried to hate religion, I've mocked at God . . ." she
broke off in despair of explaining the force of grace, against the gift
of which she had contended in vain.

"I always thought you were brave, Essie. But you're a real coward. The
reason for all this is your fear of being pitchforked into a big bonfire
by a pantomime demon with horns and a long tail." He laughed bitterly.
"To think that you, my adored Essie, should really have the soul of a
Sunday school teacher. You, a Bacchante of passion, to be puling about
your sins. You! You! Girl, you're mad! I tell you there is no such thing
as damnation. It's a bogey invented by priests to enchain mankind. But
if there is and if that muddle-headed old gentleman you call God really
exists and if he's a just God, why then let him damn me and let him give
you your harp and your halo while I burn for both. Essie, my mad foolish
frightened Essie, can't you understand that if you give me up for this
God of yours you'll drive me to murder. If I must marry you to hold you,
why then I'll kill that cursed wife of mine. . . ."

It was his turn now to break off in despair of being able to express his
will to keep Esther for his own, and because argument seemed so hopeless
he tried to take her in his arms, whereupon Mark who was aching with the
effort to maintain himself unobserved upon the bough of the yew-tree
said his _Paternosters_ and _Aves_ faster than ever, that she might have
the strength to resist that scoundrel of Rushbrooke Grange. He longed to
have the eloquence to make some wonderful prayer to the Blessed Virgin
and St. Mary Magdalene so that a miracle might happen and their images
point accusing hands at the blasphemer below.

And then it seemed as if a miracle did happen, for out of the jangle of
recriminations and appeals that now signified no more than the noise of
trees in a storm he heard the voice of Esther gradually gain its right
to be heard, gradually win from its rival silence until the tale was
told.

"I know that I am overcome by the saving grace of God," she was saying.
"And I know that I owe it to them." She pointed to the holy women above
the door. The squire shook his fist; but he still kept silence. "I have
run away from God since I knew you, Will. I have loved you as much as
that. I have gone to church only when I had to go for my brother's sake,
but I have actually stuffed my ears with cotton wool so that no word
there spoken might shake my faith in my right to love you. But it was
all to no purpose. You know that it was you who told me always to come
to our meetings through the wood and past the chapel. And however fast I
went and however tight I shut myself up in thoughts of you and your love
and my love I have always felt that these images spoke to me
reproachfully in passing. It's not mere imagination, Will. Why, before
we came to Wych-on-the-Wold when you went away to the Pacific that I
might have peace of mind, I used always to be haunted by the idea that
God was calling me back to Him, and I would run, yes, actually run
through the woods until my legs have been torn by brambles."

"Madness! Madness!" cried Starling.

"Let it be madness. If God chooses to pursue a human soul with madness,
the pursuit is not less swift and relentless for that. And I shook Him
off. I escaped from religion; I prayed to the Devil to keep me wicked,
so utterly did I love you. Then when my brother was offered
Wych-on-the-Wold I felt that the Devil had heard my prayer and had
indeed made me his own. That frightened me for a moment. When I wrote to
you and said we were coming here and you hurried back, I can't describe
to you the fear that overcame me when I first entered this hollow where
you lived. Several times I'd tried to come down before you arrived here,
but I'd always been afraid, and that was why the first night I brought
Mark with me."

"That long-legged prig and puppy," grunted the squire.

Mark could have shouted for joy when he heard this, shouted because he
was helping with his _Paternosters_ and his _Aves_ to drive this
ruffian out of Esther's life for ever, shouted because his long legs
were strong enough to hold on to this yew-tree bough.

"He's neither a prig nor a puppy," Esther said. "I've treated him badly
ever since he came to live with us, and I treated him badly on your
account, because whenever I was with him I found it harder to resist the
pursuit of God. Now let's leave Mark out of this. Everything was in your
favour, I tell you. I was sure that the Devil. . . ."

"The Devil!" Starling interrupted. "Your Devil, dear Essie, is as
ridiculous as your God. It's only your poor old God with his face
painted black like the bogey man of childhood."

"I was sure that the Devil," Esther repeated without seeming to hear the
blasphemy, "had taken me for his own and given us to each other. You to
me. Me to you, my darling. I didn't care. I was ready to burn in Hell
for you. So, don't call me coward, for mad though you think me I was
ready to be damned for you, and _I_ believe in damnation. You don't. Yet
the first time I passed by this chapel on my way to meet you again after
that endless horrible parting I had to run away from the holy influence.
I remember that there was a black cow in the field near the gates of the
Grange, and I waited there while Mark poked about in this chapel, waited
in the twilight afraid to go back and tell him to hurry in case I should
be recaptured by God and meet you only to meet you never more."

"I suppose you thought my old Kerry cow was the Devil, eh?" he sneered.

She paid no attention, but continued enthralled by the passion of her
spiritual adventure.

"It was no use. I couldn't come by here every day and not go back. Why,
once I opened the Bible at hazard just to show my defiance and I read
_Her sins which are many are forgiven for she loved much._ This must be
the end of our love, my lover, for I can't go on. Those two stone Maries
have brought me back to God. No more with you, my own beloved. No more,
my darling, no more. And yet if even now with one kiss you could give me
strength to sin I should rejoice. But they have made my lips as cold as
their own, and my arms that once knew how to clasp you to my heart they
have lifted up to Heaven like their own. I am going into a convent at
once, where until I die I shall pray for you, my own love."

The birds no longer sang nor twittered nor cheeped in the thickets
around, but all passion throbbed in the voice of Esther when she spoke
these words. She stood there with her hair in disarray transfigured like
a tree in autumn on which the sunlight shines when the gale has died,
but from which the leaves will soon fall because winter is at hand. Yet
her lover was so little moved by her ordeal that he went back to
mouthing his blasphemies.

"Go then," he shouted. "But these two stone dolls shall not have power
to drive my next mistress into folly. Wasn't Mary Magdalene a sinner?
Didn't she fall in love with Christ? Of course, she did! And I'll make
an example of her just as Christians make an example of all women who
love much."

The squire pulled himself up by the ivy and struck the image of St. Mary
Magdalene on the face.

"When you pray for me, dear Essie, in your convent of greensick women,
don't forget that your patron saint was kicked from her pedestal by your
lover."

Starling was as good as his word; but the effort he made to overthrow
the saint carried him with it; his foot catching in the ivy fell head
downward and striking upon a stone was killed.

Mark hesitated before he jumped down from his bough, because he dreaded
to add to Esther's despair the thought of his having overheard all that
went before. But seeing her in the sunlight now filled again with the
voices of birds, seeing her blue eyes staring in horror and the nervous
twitching of her hands he felt that the shock of his irruption might
save her reason and in a moment he was standing beside her looking down
at the dead man.

"Let me die too," she cried.

Mark found himself answering in a kind of inspiration:

"No, Esther, you must live to pray for his soul."

"He was struck dead for his blasphemy. He is in Hell. Of what use to
pray for his soul?"

"But Esther while he was falling, even in that second, he had time to
repent. Live, Esther. Live to pray for him."

Mark was overcome with a desire to laugh at the stilted way in which he
was talking, and, from the suppression of the desire, to laugh wildly at
everything in the scene, and not least at the comic death of Will
Starling, even at the corpse itself lying with a broken neck at his
feet. By an effort of will he regained control of his muscles, and the
tension of the last half hour finding no relief in bodily relaxation was
stamped ineffaceably upon his mind to take its place with that afternoon
in his father's study at the Lima Street Mission which first inspired
him with dread of the sexual relation of man to woman, a dread that was
now made permanent by what he had endured on the bough of that yew-tree.

Thanks to Mark's intervention the business was explained without
scandal; nobody doubted that the squire of Rushbrooke Grange died a
martyr to his dislike of ivy's encroaching upon ancient images. Esther's
stormy soul took refuge in a convent, and there it seemed at peace.

CHAPTER XV

THE SCHOLARSHIP

The encounter between Esther and Will Starling had the effect of
strengthening Mark's intention to be celibate. He never imagined himself
as a possible protagonist in such a scene; but the impression of that
earlier encounter between his mother and father which gave him a horror
of human love was now renewed. It was renewed, moreover, with the light
of a miracle to throw it into high relief. And this miracle could not be
explained away as a coincidence, but was an old-fashioned miracle that
required no psychical buttressing, a hard and fast miracle able to
withstand any criticism. It was a pity that out of regard for Esther he
could not publish it for the encouragement of the faithful and the
confusion of the unbelievers.

The miracle of St. Mary Magdalene's intervention on his seventeenth
birthday was the last violent impression of Mark's boyhood.
Thenceforward life moved placidly through the changing weeks of a
country calendar until the date of the scholarship examination held by
the group of colleges that contained St. Mary's, the college he aspired
to enter, but for which he failed to win even an exhibition. Mr. Ogilvie
was rather glad, for he had been worried how Mark was going to support
himself for three or four years at an expensive college like St. Mary's.
But when Mark was no more successful with another group of colleges, his
tutors began to be alarmed, wondering if their method of teaching Latin
and Greek lacked the tradition of the public school necessary to
success.

"Oh, no, it's obviously my fault," said Mark. "I expect I go to pieces
in examinations, or perhaps I'm not intended to go to Oxford."

"I beg you, my dear boy," said the Rector a little irritably, "not to
apply such a loose fatalism to your career. What will you do if you
don't go to the University?"

"It's not absolutely essential for a priest to have been to the
University," Mark argued.

"No, but in your case I think it's highly advisable. You haven't had a
public school education, and inasmuch as I stand to you _in loco
parentis_ I should consider myself most culpable if I didn't do
everything possible to give you a fair start. You haven't got a very
large sum of money to launch yourself upon the world, and I want you to
spend what you have to the best advantage. Of course, if you can't get a
scholarship, you can't and that's the end of it. But, rather than that
you should miss the University I will supplement from my own savings
enough to carry you through three years as a commoner."

Tears stood in Mark's eyes.

"You've already been far too generous," he said. "You shan't spend any
more on me. I'm sorry I talked in that foolish way. It was really only a
kind of affectation of indifference. I'm feeling pretty sore with myself
for being such a failure; but I'll have another shot and I hope I shall
do better."

Mark as a last chance tried for a close scholarship at St. Osmund's Hall
for the sons of clergymen.

"It's a tiny place of course," said the Rector. "But it's authentic
Oxford, and in some ways perhaps you would be happier at a very small
college. Certainly you'd find your money went much further."

The examination was held in the Easter vacation, and when Mark arrived
at the college he found only one other candidate besides himself. St.
Osmund's Hall with its miniature quadrangle, miniature hall, miniature
chapel, empty of undergraduates and with only the Principal and a couple
of tutors in residence, was more like an ancient almshouse than an
Oxford college. Mark and his rival, a raw-boned youth called Emmett who
was afflicted with paroxysms of stammering, moved about the precincts
upon tiptoe like people trespassing from a high road.

On their first evening the two candidates were invited to dine with the
Principal, who read second-hand book catalogues all through dinner, only
pausing from their perusal to ask occasionally in a courtly tone if Mr.
Lidderdale or Mr. Emmett would not take another glass of wine. After
dinner they sat in his library where the Principal addressed himself to
the evidently uncongenial task of estimating the comparative fitness of
his two guests to receive Mr. Tweedle's bounty. The Reverend Thomas
Tweedle was a benevolent parson of the eighteenth century who by his
will had provided the money to educate the son of one indigent clergyman
for four years. Mark was shy enough under the Principal's courtly
inquisition, but poor Emmett had a paroxysm each time he was asked the
simplest question about his tastes or his ambitions. His tongue
appearing like a disturbed mollusc waved its tip slowly round in an
agonized endeavour to give utterance to such familiar words as "yes" or
"no." Several times Mark feared that he would never get it back at all
and that Emmett would either have to spend the rest of his life with it
protruding before him or submit it to amputation and become a mute. When
the ordeal with the Principal was over and the two guests were strolling
back across the quadrangle to their rooms, Emmett talked normally and
without a single paroxysm about the effect his stammer must have had
upon the Principal. Mark did his best to reassure poor Emmett.

"Really," he said, "it was scarcely noticeable to anybody else. You
noticed it, because you felt your tongue getting wedged like that
between your teeth; but other people would hardly have noticed it at
all. When the Principal asked you if you were going to take Holy Orders
yourself, I'm sure he only thought you hadn't quite made up your mind
yet."

"But I'm sure he did notice something," poor Emmett bewailed. "Because
he began to hum."

"Well, but he was always humming," said Mark. "He hummed all through
dinner while he was reading those book catalogues."

"It's very kind of you, Lidderdale," said Emmett, "to make the best of
it for me, but I'm not such a fool as I look, and the Principal
certainly hummed six times as loud whenever he asked me a question as
he did over those catalogues. I know what I look like when I get into
one of those states. I once caught sight of myself in a glass by
accident, and now whenever my tongue gets caught up like that I'm
wondering all the time why everybody doesn't get up and run out of the
room."

"But I assure you," Mark persisted, "that little things like that--"

"Little things like that!" Emmett interrupted furiously. "It's all very
well for you, Lidderdale, to talk about little things like that. If you
had a tongue like mine which seems to get bigger instead of smaller
every year, you'd feel very differently."

"But people always grow out of stammering," Mark pointed out.

"Thanks very much," said Emmett bitterly, "but where shall I be by the
time I've grown out of it? You don't suppose I shall win this
scholarship, do you, after they've seen me gibbering and mouthing at
them like that? But if only I could manage somehow to get to Oxford I
should have a chance of being ordained, and--" he broke off, perhaps
unwilling to embarrass his rival by any more lamentations.

"Do forget about this evening," Mark begged, "and come up to my room and
have a talk before you turn in."

"No, thanks very much," said Emmett. "I must sit up and do some work.
We've got that general knowledge paper to-morrow morning."

"But you won't be able to acquire much more general knowledge in one
evening," Mark protested.

"I might," said Emmett darkly. "I noticed a Whitaker's almanack in the
rooms I have. My only chance to get this scholarship is to do really
well in my papers; and though I know it's no good and that this is my
last chance, I'm not going to neglect anything that could possibly help.
I've got a splendid memory for statistics, and if they'll only ask a few
statistics in the general knowledge paper I may have some luck
to-morrow. Good-night, Lidderdale, I'm sorry to have inflicted myself on
you like this."

Emmett hurried away up the staircase leading to his room and left his
rival standing on the moonlit grass of the quadrangle. Mark was turning
toward his own staircase when he heard a window open above and Emmett's
voice:

"I've found another Whitaker of the year before," it proclaimed. "I'll
read that, and you'd better read this year's. If by any chance I did win
this scholarship, I shouldn't like to think I'd taken an unfair
advantage of you, Lidderdale."

"Thanks very much, Emmett," said Mark. "But I think I'll have a shot at
getting to bed early."

"Ah, you're not worrying," said Emmett gloomily, retiring from the
window.

When Mark was sitting by the fire in his room and thinking over the
dinner with the Principal and poor Emmett's stammering and poor Emmett's
words in the quad afterwards, he began to imagine what it would mean to
poor Emmett if he failed to win the scholarship. Mark had not been so
successful himself in these examinations as to justify a grand
self-confidence; but he could not regard Emmett as a dangerous
competitor. Had he the right in view of Emmett's handicap to accept this
scholarship at his expense? To be sure, he might urge on his own behalf
that without it he should himself be debarred from Oxford. What would
the loss of it mean? It would mean, first of all, that Mr. Ogilvie would
make the financial effort to maintain him for three years as a commoner,
an effort which he could ill afford to make and which Mark had not the
slightest intention of allowing him to make. It would mean, next, that
he should have to occupy himself during the years before his ordination
with some kind of work among people. He obviously could not go on
reading theology at Wych-on-the-Wold until he went to Glastonbury. Such
an existence, however attractive, was no preparation for the active life
of a priest. It would mean, thirdly, a great disappointment to his
friend and patron, and considering the social claims of the Church of
England it would mean a handicap for himself. There was everything to be
said for winning this scholarship, nothing to be said against it on the
grounds of expediency. On the grounds of expediency, no, but on other
grounds? Should he not be playing the better part if he allowed Emmett
to win? No doubt all that was implied in the necessity for him to win a
scholarship was equally implied in the necessity for Emmett to win one.
It was obvious that Emmett was no better off than himself; it was
obvious that Emmett was competing in a kind of despair. Mark remembered
how a few minutes ago his rival had offered him this year's Whitaker,
keeping for himself last year's almanack. Looked at from the point of
view of Emmett who really believed that something might be gained at
this eleventh hour from a study of the more recent volume, it had been a
fine piece of self-denial. It showed that Emmett had Christian talents
which surely ought not to be wasted because he was handicapped by a
stammer.

The spell that Oxford had already cast on Mark, the glamour of the
firelight on the walls and raftered ceiling of this room haunted by
centuries of youthful hope, did not persuade him how foolish it was to
surrender all this. On the contrary, this prospect of Oxford so
beautiful in the firelight within, so fair in the moonlight without,
impelled him to renounce it, and the very strength of his temptation to
enjoy all this by winning the scholarship helped him to make up his mind
to lose it. But how? The obvious course was to send in idiotic answers
for the rest of his papers. Yet examinations were so mysterious that
when he thought he was being most idiotic he might actually be gaining
his best marks. Moreover, the examiners might ascribe his answers to ill
health, to some sudden attack of nerves, especially if his papers to-day
had been tolerably good. Looking back at the Principal's attitude after
dinner that night, Mark could not help feeling that there had been
something in his manner which had clearly shown a determination not to
award the scholarship to poor Emmett if it could possibly be avoided.
The safest way would be to escape to-morrow morning, put up at some
country inn for the next two days, and go back to Wych-on-the-Wold; but
if he did that, the college authorities might write to Mr. Ogilvie to
demand the reason for such extraordinary behaviour. And how should he
explain it? If he really intended to deny himself, he must take care
that nobody knew he was doing so. It would give him an air of
unbearable condescension, should it transpire that he had deliberately
surrendered his scholarship to Emmett. Moreover, poor Emmett would be so
dreadfully mortified if he found out. No, he must complete his papers,
do them as badly as he possibly could, and leave the result to the
wisdom of God. If God wished Emmett to stammer forth His praises and
stutter His precepts from the pulpit, God would know how to manage that
seemingly so intractable Principal. Or God might hear his prayers and
cure poor Emmett of his impediment. Mark wondered to what saint was
entrusted the patronage of stammerers; but he could not remember. The
man in whose rooms he was lodging possessed very few books, and those
few were mostly detective stories.

It amused Mark to make a fool of himself next morning in the general
knowledge paper. He flattered himself that no candidate for a
scholarship at St. Osmund's Hall had ever shown such black ignorance of
the facts of every-day life. Had he been dropped from Mars two days
before, he could scarcely have shown less knowledge of the Earth. Mark
tried to convey an impression that he had been injudiciously crammed
with Latin and Greek, and in the afternoon he produced a Latin prose
that would have revolted the easy conscience of a fourth form boy.
Finally, on the third day, in an unseen passage set from the Georgics he
translated _tonsisque ferunt mantelia villis_ by _having pulled down the
villas (i. e. literally shaved) they carry off the mantelpieces_ which
he followed up with translating _Maeonii carchesia Bacchi_ as the _lees
of Maeonian wine (i.e. literally carcases of Maeonian Bacchus)_.

Pages:
1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 | 18 | 19 | 20 | 21 | 22 | 23 | 24 | 25 | 26 | 27 | 28 | 29