The Altar Steps by Compton MacKenzie

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"I say, Lidderdale," said Emmett, when they came out of the lecture room
where the examination was being held. "I had a tremendous piece of luck
this afternoon."

"Did you?"

"Yes, I've just been reading the fourth Georgics last term, and I don't
think I made a single mistake in that unseen."

"Good work," said Mark.

"I wonder when they'll let us know who's got the scholarship," said
Emmett. "But of course you've won," he added with a sigh.

"I did very badly both yesterday and to-day."

"Oh, you're only saying that to encourage me," Emmett sighed. "It sounds
a dreadful thing to say and I ought not to say it because it'll make you
uncomfortable, but if I don't succeed, I really think I shall kill
myself."

"All right, that's a bargain," Mark laughed; and when his rival shook
hands with him at parting he felt that poor Emmett was going home to
Rutland convinced that Mark was just as hard-hearted as the rest of the
world and just as ready to laugh at his misfortune.

It was Saturday when the examination was finished, and Mark wished he
could be granted the privilege of staying over Sunday in college. He had
no regrets for what he had done; he was content to let this experience
be all that he should ever intimately gain of Oxford; but he should like
to have the courage to accost one of the tutors and to tell him that
being convinced he should never come to Oxford again he desired the
privilege of remaining until Monday morning, so that he might
crystallize in that short space of time an impression which, had he been
successful in gaining the scholarship, would have been spread over four
years. Mark was not indulging in sentiment; he really felt that by the
intensity of the emotion with which he would live those twenty-four
hours he should be able to achieve for himself as much as he should
achieve in four years. So far as the world was concerned, this
experience would be valueless; for himself it would be beyond price. So
far as the world was concerned, he would never have been to Oxford; but
could he be granted this privilege, Oxford would live for ever in his
heart, a refuge and a meditation until the grave. Yet this coveted
experience must be granted from without to make it a perfect experience.
To ask and to be refused leave to stay till Monday would destroy for him
the value of what he had already experienced in three days' residence;
even to ask and to be granted the privilege would spoil it in
retrospect. He went down the stairs from his room and stood in the
little quadrangle, telling himself that at any rate he might postpone
his departure until twilight and walk the seven miles from Shipcot to
Wych-on-the-Wold. While he was on his way to notify the porter of the
time of his departure he met the Principal, who stopped him and asked
how he had got on with his papers. Mark wondered if the Principal had
been told about his lamentable performance and was making inquiries on
his own account to find out if the unsuccessful candidate really was a
lunatic.

"Rather badly, I'm afraid, sir."

"Well, I shall see you at dinner to-night," said the Principal
dismissing Mark with a gesture before he had time even to look
surprised. This was a new perplexity, for Mark divined from the
Principal's manner that he had entirely forgotten that the scholarship
examination was over and that the candidates had already dined with him.
He went into the lodge and asked the porter's advice.

"The Principal's a most absent-minded gentleman," said the porter. "Most
absent-minded, he is. He's the talk of Oxford sometimes is the
Principal. What do you think he went and did only last term. Why, he was
having some of the senior men to tea and was going to put some coal on
the fire with the tongs and some sugar in his cup. Bothered if he didn't
put the sugar in the fire and a lump of coal in his cup. It didn't so
much matter him putting sugar in the fire. That's all according, as they
say. But fancy--well, I tell you we had a good laugh over it in the
lodge when the gentlemen came out and told me."

"Ought I to explain that I've already dined with him?" Mark asked.

"Are you in any what you might call immediate hurry to get away?" the
porter asked judicially.

"I'm in no hurry at all. I'd like to stay a bit longer."

"Then you'd better go to dinner with him again to-night and stay in
college over the Sunday. I'll take it upon myself to explain to the Dean
why you're still here. If it had been tea I should have said 'don't
bother about it,' but dinner's another matter, isn't it? And he always
has dinner laid for two or more in case he's asked anybody and
forgotten."

Thus it came about that for the second time Mark dined with the
Principal, who disconcerted him by saying when he arrived:

"I remember now that you dined with me the night before last. You should
have told me. I forget these things. But never mind, you'd better stay
now you're here."

The Principal read second-hand book catalogues all through dinner just
as he had done two nights ago, and he only interrupted his perusal to
inquire in courtly tones if Mark would take another glass of wine. The
only difference between now and the former occasion was the absence of
poor Emmett and his paroxysms. After dinner with some misgivings if he
ought not to leave his host to himself Mark followed him upstairs to the
library. The principal was one of those scholars who live in an
atmosphere of their own given off by old calf-bound volumes and who
apparently can only inhale the air of the world in which ordinary men
move when they are smoking their battered old pipes. Mark sitting
opposite to him by the fireside was tempted to pour out the history of
himself and Emmett, to explain how he had come to make such a mess of
the examination. Perhaps if the Principal had alluded to his papers Mark
would have found the courage to talk about himself; but the Principal
was apparently unaware that his guest had any ambitions to enter St.
Osmund's Hall, and whatever questions he asked related to the ancient
folios and quartos he took down in turn from his shelves. A clock struck
ten in the moonlight without, and Mark rose to go. He felt a pang as he
walked from the cloudy room and looked for the last time at that tall
remote scholar, who had forgotten his guest's existence at the moment he
ceased to shake his hand and who by the time he had reached the doorway
was lost again in the deeps of the crabbed volume resting upon his
knees. Mark sighed as he closed the library door behind him, for he knew
that he was shutting out a world. But when he stood in the small silver
quadrangle Mark was glad that he had not given way to the temptation of
confiding in the Principal. It would have been a feeble end to his first
denial of self. He was sure that he had done right in surrendering his
place to Emmett, for was not the unexpected opportunity to spend these
few more hours in Oxford a sign of God's approval? _Bright as the
glimpses of eternity to saints accorded in their mortal hour._ Such was
Oxford to-night.

Mark sat for a long while at the open window of his room until the moon
had passed on her way and the quadrangle was in shadow; and while he sat
there he was conscious of how many people had inhabited this small
quadrangle and of how they too had passed on their way like the moon,
leaving behind them no more than he should leave behind from this one
hour of rapture, no more than the moon had left of her silver upon the
dim grass below.

Mark was not given to gazing at himself in mirrors, but he looked at
himself that night in the mirror of the tiny bedroom, into which the
April air came up sweet and frore from the watermeadows of the Cherwell
close at hand.

"What will you do now?" he asked his reflection. "Yet, you have such a
dark ecclesiastical face that I'm sure you'll be a priest whether you go
to Oxford or not."

Mark was right in supposing his countenance to be ecclesiastical. But it
was something more than that: it was religious. Even already, when he
was barely eighteen, the high cheekbones and deepset burning eyes gave
him an ascetic look, while the habit of prayer and meditation had added
to his expression a steadfast purpose that is rarely seen in people as
young as him. What his face lacked were those contours that come from
association with humanity; the ripeness that is bestowed by long
tolerance of folly, the mellowness that has survived the icy winds of
disillusion. It was the absence of these contours that made Mark think
his face so ecclesiastical; however, if at eighteen he had possessed
contours and soft curves, they would have been nothing but the contours
and soft curves of that rose, youth; and this ecclesiastical bonyness
would not fade and fall as swiftly as that.

Mark turned from the glass in sudden irritation at his selfishness in
speculating about his appearance and his future, when in a short time he
should have to break the news to his guardian that he had thrown away
for a kindly impulse the fruit of so many months of diligence and care.

"What am I going to say to Ogilvie?" he exclaimed. "I can't go back to
Wych and live there in pleasant idleness until it's time to go to
Glastonbury. I must have some scheme for the immediate future."

In bed when the light was out and darkness made the most fantastic
project appear practical, Mark had an inspiration to take the habit of a
preaching friar. Why should he not persuade Dorward to join him?
Together they would tramp the English country, compelling even the
dullest yokels to hear the word of God . . . discalced . . . over hill,
down dale . . . telling stories of the saints and martyrs in remote inns
. . . deep lanes . . . the butterflies and the birds . . . Dorward
should say Mass in the heart of great woods . . . over hill, down dale
. . . discalced . . . preaching to men of Christ. . . .

Mark fell asleep.

In the morning Mark heard Mass at the church of the Cowley Fathers, a
strengthening experience, because the Gregorian there so strictly and so
austerely chanted without any consideration for sentimental humanity
possessed that very effect of liberating and purifying spirit held in
the bonds of flesh which is conveyed by the wind blowing through a grove
of pines or by waves quiring below a rocky shore.

If Mark had had the least inclination to be sorry for himself and
indulge in the flattery of regret, it vanished in this music. Rolling
down through time on the billows of the mighty Gregorian it were as
grotesque to pity oneself as it were for an Arctic explorer to build a
snowman for company at the North Pole.

Mark came out of St. John's, Cowley, into the suburban prettiness of
Iffley Road, where men and women in their Sunday best tripped along in
the April sunlight, tripped along in their Sunday best like newly
hatched butterflies and beetles. Mark went in and out of colleges all
day long, forgetting about the problem of his immediate future just as
he forgot that the people in the sunny streets were not really
butterflies and beetles. At twilight he decided to attend Evensong at
St. Barnabas'. Perhaps the folk in the sunny April streets had turned
his thoughts unconsciously toward the simple aspirations of simple
human nature. He felt when he came into the warm candle-lit church like
one who has voyaged far and is glad to be at home again. How everybody
sang together that night, and how pleasant Mark found this
congregational outburst. It was all so jolly that if the organist had
suddenly turned round like an Italian organ-grinder and kissed his
fingers to the congregation, his action would have seemed perfectly
appropriate. Even during the _Magnificat_, when the altar was being
censed, the tinkling of the thurible reminded Mark of a tambourine; and
the lighting and extinction of the candles was done with as much
suppressed excitement as if the candles were going to shoot red and
green stars or go leaping and cracking all round the chancel.

It happened this evening that the preacher was Father Rowley, that
famous priest of the Silchester College Mission in the great naval port
of Chatsea. Father Rowley was a very corpulent man with a voice of such
compassion and with an eloquence so simple that when he ascended into
the pulpit, closed his eyes, and began to speak, his listeners
involuntarily closed their eyes and followed that voice whithersoever it
led them. He neither changed the expression of his face nor made use of
dramatic gestures; he scarcely varied his tone, yet he could keep a
congregation breathlessly attentive for an hour. Although he seemed to
be speaking in a kind of trance, it was evident that he was unusually
conscious of his hearers, for if by chance some pious woman coughed or
turned the pages of a prayer-book he would hold up the thread of his
sermon and without any change of tone reprove her. It was strange to
watch him at such a moment, his eyes still tightly shut and yet giving
the impression of looking directly at the offending member of the
congregation. This evening he was preaching about a naval disaster which
had lately occurred, the sinking of a great battleship by another great
battleship through a wrong signal. He was describing the scene when the
news reached Chatsea, telling of the sweethearts and wives of the lost
bluejackets who waited hoping against hope to hear that their loved ones
had escaped death and hearing nearly always the worst news.

"So many of our own dear bluejackets and marines, some of whom only
last Christmas had been eating their plum duff at our Christmas dinner,
so many of my own dear boys whom I prepared for Confirmation, whose
first Confession I had heard, and to whom I had given for the first time
the Body and Blood of Our Lord Jesus Christ."

He spoke too of what it meant in the future of material suffering on top
of their mental agony. He asked for money to help these women
immediately, and he spoke fiercely of the Admiralty red tape and of the
obstruction of the official commission appointed to administer the
relief fund.

The preacher went on to tell stories from the lives of these boys,
finding in each of them some illustration of a Christian virtue and
conveying to his listeners a sense of the extraordinary preciousness of
human life, so that there was no one who heard him but was fain to weep
for those young bluejackets and marines taken in their prime. He
inspired in Mark a sense of shame that he had ever thought of people in
the aggregate, that he had ever walked along a crowded street without
perceiving the importance of every single human being that helped to
compose its variety. While he sat there listening to the Missioner and
watching the large tears roll slowly down his cheeks from beneath the
closed lids, Mark wondered how he could have dared to suppose last night
that he was qualified to become a friar and preach the Gospel to the
poor. While Father Rowley was speaking, he began to apprehend that
before he could aspire to do that he must himself first of all learn
about Christ from those very poor whom he had planned to convert.

This sermon was another milestone in Mark's religious life. It
discovered in him a hidden treasure of humility, and it taught him to
build upon the rock of human nature. He divined the true meaning of Our
Lord's words to St. Peter: _Thou art Peter and on this rock I will build
my church and the gates of Hell shall not prevail against it._ John was
the disciple whom Jesus loved, but he chose Peter with all his failings
and all his follies, with his weakness and his cowardice and his vanity.
He chose Peter, the bedrock of human nature, and to him he gave the keys
of Heaven.

Mark knew that somehow he must pluck up courage to ask Father Rowley to
let him come and work under him at Chatsea. He was sure that if he could
only make him grasp the spirit in which he would offer himself, the
spirit of complete humility devoid of any kind of thought that he was
likely to be of the least use to the Mission, Father Rowley might accept
his oblation. He would have liked to wait behind after Evensong and
approach the Missioner directly, so that before speaking to Mr. Ogilvie
he might know what chance the offer had of being accepted; but he
decided against this course, because he felt that Father Rowley's
compassion might be embarrassed if he had to refuse his request, a point
of view that was characteristic of the mood roused in him by the sermon.
He went back to sleep for the last time in an Oxford college, profoundly
reassured of the rightness of his action in giving up the scholarship to
Emmett, although, which was characteristic of his new mood, he had by
this time begun to tell himself that he had really done nothing at all
and that probably in any case Emmett would have been the chosen scholar.

If Mark had still any doubts of his behaviour, they would have vanished
when on getting into the train for Shipcot he found himself in an
otherwise empty third-class smoking carriage opposite Father Rowley
himself, who with a small black bag beside him, so small that Mark
wondered how it could possibly contain the night attire of so fat a man,
was sitting back in the corner with a large pipe in his mouth. He was
wearing one of those square felt hats sometimes seen on the heads of
farmers, and if one had only seen his head and hat without the grubby
clerical attire beneath one might have guessed him to be a farmer. Mark
noticed now that his eyes of a limpid blue were like a child's, and he
realized that in his voice while he was preaching there had been the
same sweet gravity of childhood. Just at this moment Father Rowley
caught sight of someone he knew on the platform and shouting from the
window of the compartment he attracted the attention of a young man
wearing an Old Siltonian tie.

"My dear man," he cried, "how are you? I've just made a most idiotic
mistake. I got it into my head that I should be preaching here on the
first Sunday in term and was looking forward to seeing so many
Silchester men. I can't think how I came to make such a muddle."

Father Rowley's shoulders filled up all the space of the window, so that
Mark only heard scattered fragments of the conversation, which was
mostly about Silchester and the Siltonians he had hoped to see at
Oxford.

"Good-bye, my dear man, good-bye," the Missioner shouted, as the train
moved out of the station. "Come down and see us soon at Chatsea. The
more of you men who come, the more we shall be pleased."

Mark's heart leapt at these words, which seemed of good omen to his own
suit. When Father Rowley was ensconced in his corner and once more
puffing away at his pipe, Mark thought how ridiculous it would sound to
say that he had heard him preach last night at St. Barnabas' and that,
having been much moved by the sermon, he was anxious to be taken on at
St. Agnes' as a lay helper. He wished that Father Rowley would make some
remark to him that would lead up to his request, but all that Father
Rowley said was:

"This is a slow train to Birmingham, isn't it?"

This led to a long conversation about trains, and slow though this one
might be it was going much too fast for Mark, who would be at Shipcot in
another twenty minutes without having taken any advantage of his lucky
encounter.

"Are you up at Oxford?" the priest at last inquired.

It was now or never; and Mark took the opportunity given him by that one
question to tell Father Rowley twenty disjointed facts about his life,
which ended with a request to be allowed to come and work at Chatsea.

"You can come and see us whenever you like," said the Missioner.

"But I don't want just to come and pay a visit," said Mark. "I really do
want to be given something to do, and I shan't be any expense. I only
want to keep enough money to go to Glastonbury in four years' time. If
you'd only see how I got on for a month. I don't pretend I can be of any
help to you. I don't suppose I can. But I do so tremendously want you
to help me."

"Who did you say your father was?"

"Lidderdale, James Lidderdale. He was priest-in-charge of the Lima
Street Mission, which belonged to St. Simon's, Notting Hill, in those
days. St. Wilfred's, Notting Dale, it is now."

"Lidderdale," Father Rowley echoed. "I knew him. I knew him well. Lima
Street. Viner's there now, a dear good fellow. So you're Lidderdale's
son?"

"I say, here's my station," Mark exclaimed in despair, "and you haven't
said whether I can come or not."

"Come down on Tuesday week," said Father Rowley. "Hurry up, or you'll
get carried on to the next station."

Mark waved his farewell, and he knew, as he drove back on the omnibus
over the rolling wold to Wych that he had this morning won something
much better than a scholarship at St. Osmund's Hall.

CHAPTER XVI

CHATSEA

When Mark had been exactly a week at Chatsea he celebrated his
eighteenth birthday by writing a long letter to the Rector of Wych:

St. Agnes' House,

Keppel Street,

Chatsea.

St. Mark's Day.

My dear Rector,

Thank you very much for sending me the money. I've handed it over
to a splendid fellow called Gurney who keeps all the accounts
(private or otherwise) in the Mission House. Poor chap, he's
desperately ill with asthma, and nobody thinks he can live much
longer. He suffers tortures, particularly at night, and as I sleep
in the next room I can hear him.

You mustn't think me inconsiderate because I haven't written
sooner, but I wanted to wait until I had seen a bit of this place
before I wrote to you so that you might have some idea what I was
doing and be able to realize that it is the one and only place
where I ought to be at the moment.

But first of all before I say anything about Chatsea I want to try
to express a little of what your kindness has meant to me during
the last two years. I look back at myself just before my sixteenth
birthday when I was feeling that I should have to run away to sea
or do something mad in order to escape that solicitor's office, and
I simply gasp! What and where should I be now if it hadn't been for
you? You have always made light of the burden I must have been, and
though I have tried to show you my gratitude I'm afraid it hasn't
been very successful. I'm not being very successful now in putting
it into words. I know my failure to gain a scholarship at Oxford
has been a great disappointment to you, especially after you had
worked so hard yourself to coach me. Please don't be anxious about
my letting my books go to the wall here. I had a talk about this
with Father Rowley, who insisted that anything I am allowed to do
in the district must only be done when I have a good morning's work
with my books behind me. I quite realize the importance of a
priest's education. One of the assistant priests here, a man called
Snaith, took a good degree at Cambridge both in classics and
theology, so I shall have somebody to keep me on the lines. If I
stay here three years and then have two years at Glastonbury I
don't honestly think that I shall start off much handicapped by
having missed both public school and university. I expect you're
smiling to read after one week of my staying here three years! But
I assure you that the moment I sat down to supper on the evening of
my arrival I felt at home. I think at first they all thought I was
an eager young Ritualist, but when they found that they didn't get
any rises out of ragging me, they shut up.

This house is a most extraordinary place. It is an old
Congregational chapel with a gallery all round which has been made
into cubicles, scarcely one of which is ever empty or ever likely
to be empty so far as I can see! I should think it must be rather
like what the guest house of a monastery used to be like in the old
days before the Reformation. The ground floor of the chapel has
been turned into a gymnasium, and twice a week the apparatus is
cleared away and we have a dance. Every other evening it's used
furiously by Father Rowley's "boys." They're such a jolly lot, and
most of them splendid gymnasts. Quite a few have become
professional acrobats since they opened the gymnasium. The first
morning after my arrival I asked Father Rowley if he'd got anything
special for me to do and he told me to catalogue the books in his
library. Everybody laughed at this, and I thought at first that
some joke was intended, but when I got to his room I found it
really was in utter confusion with masses of books lying about
everywhere. So I set to work pretty hard and after about three days
I got them catalogued and in good order. When I told him I had
finished he looked very surprised, and a solemn visit of inspection
was ordered. As the room was looking quite tidy at last, I didn't
mind. I've realized since that Father Rowley always sets people the
task of cataloguing and arranging his books when he doubts if they
are really worth their salt, and now he complains that I have
spoilt one of his best ordeals for slackers. I said to him that he
needn't be afraid because from what I could see of the way he
treated books they would be just as untidy as ever in another week.
Everybody laughed, though I was afraid at first they might consider
it rather cheek my talking like this, but you've got to stand up
for yourself here because there never was such a place for turning
a man inside out. It's a real discipline, and I think if I manage
to deserve to stay here three years I shall have the right to feel
I've had the finest training for Holy Orders anybody could possibly
have.

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