The Altar Steps by Compton MacKenzie

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"What more do we give them?" Mr. Smillie shrilled. "What more can we
give them after we've given them Christ Jesus? We're sitting here
offering you Christ Jesus at this moment. You're sitting there mocking
at us. But Mr. Bullock and me don't mind how much you mock. We're ready
to stay here for hours if we can bring you safe to the bosom of
Emmanuel."

"Yes, but suppose I told you that I believe in Our Lord Jesus Christ
without any persuasion from you?" Mark inquired.

"Well, then you're saved," said Mr. Bullock decidedly. "And you can ask
the landlord for our bill, Mr. Smillie."

"But is nothing more necessary?" Mark persisted.

"_By faith are ye justified_," Mr. Bullock and Mr. Smillie shouted
simultaneously.

Mark paused for a moment to consider whether argument was worth while,
and then he returned to the attack.

"I'm afraid I think that people like you do a great deal of damage to
Christianity. You only flatter human conceit. You get hold of some
emotional creature and work upon his feelings until in an access of
self-absorption he feels that the universe is standing still while the
necessary measures are taken to secure his personal salvation. You
flatter this poor soul, and then you go away and leave him to work out
his own salvation."

"If you're dwelling in Christ Jesus and Christ Jesus is dwelling in you,
you haven't got to work out your own salvation. He worked out your
salvation on the Cross," said Mr. Bullock contemptuously.

"And you think that nothing more is necessary from a man? It seems to me
that the religion you preach is fatal to human character. I'm not trying
to be offensive when I tell you that it's the religion of a tapeworm.
It's a religion for parasites. It's a religion which ignores the Holy
Ghost."

"Perhaps you'll explain your assertion a little more fully?" Mr. Bullock
invited with a scowl.

"What I mean is that, if Our Lord's Atonement removed all responsibility
from human nature, there doesn't seem much for the Holy Ghost to do,
does there?"

"Well, as it happens," said Mr. Bullock sarcastically, "Mr. Smillie and
I here do most of our work with the help of the Holy Ghost, so you've
hit on a bad example to work off your sneers on."

"I'm not trying to sneer," Mark protested. "But strangely enough just
before you came along I was thinking to myself how much I should like to
travel over England preaching about Our Lord, because I think that
England has need of Him. But I also think, now you've answered my
question, that _you_ are doing more harm than good by your
interpretation of the Holy Ghost."

"Mr. Smillie," interrupted Mr. Bullock in an elaborately off-hand voice,
"if you've counted the change and it's all correct, we'd better get a
move on. Let's gird up our loins, Mr. Smillie, and not sit wrestling
here with infidels."

"No, really, you must allow me," Mark persisted. "You've had it so much
your own way with your tracts and your talks this last few weeks that by
now you must be in need of a sermon yourselves. The gospel you preach is
only going to add to the complacency of England, and England is too
complacent already. All Northern nations are, which is why they are
Protestant. They demand a religion which will truckle to them, a
religion which will allow them to devote six days of the week to what is
called business and on the seventh day to rest and praise God that they
are not as other men."

"_Render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar's and unto God the things
that are God's_," said Mr. Smillie, putting the change in his pocket and
untying the nosebag from the horse.

"_Ye cannot serve God and mammon_," Mark retorted. "And I wish you'd let
me finish my argument."

"Mr. Smillie and I aren't touring the Midlands trying to find grapes on
thorns and figs on thistles," said Mr. Bullock scathingly. "We'd have
given you a chance, if you'd have shown any fruits of the Spirit."

"You've just said you weren't looking for grapes or figs," Mark laughed.
"I'm sorry I've made you so cross. But you began the argument by asking
me if I was saved. Think how annoyed you would have been if I had begun
a conversation by asking you if you were washed."

"My last words to you is," said Mr. Bullock solemnly, looking out of
the caravan window, "my last words to you are," he corrected himself,
"is to avoid beer. You can touch up the horse, Mr. Smillie."

"I'll come and touch you up, you big-mouthed Bible thumpers," a rich
voice shouted from the inn door. "Yes, you sit outside my public-house
and swill minerals when you're so full of gas already you could light a
corporation gasworks. Avoid beer, you walking bellows? Step down out of
that travelling menagerie, and I'll give you 'avoid beer.' You'll avoid
more than beer before I've finished with you."

But the gospel bearers without paying any attention to the tirade went
on their way; and Mark who did not wait to listen to the innkeeper's
abuse of all religion and all religious people went on his way in the
opposite direction.

Swinging homeward over the Cotswolds Mark flattered himself on a victory
over heretics, and he imagined his adversaries entering Wield that
afternoon, the prey of doubt and mortification. At the highest point of
the road he even ventured to suppose that they might find themselves at
Evensong outside St. Andrew's Church and led within by the grace of the
Holy Spirit that they might renounce their errors before the altar.
Indeed, it was not until he was back in the Rectory that the futility of
his own bearing overwhelmed him with shame. Anxious to atone for his
self-conceit, Mark gave the Rector an account of the incident.

"It seems to me that I behaved very feebly, don't you think?"

"That kind of fellow is a hard nut to crack," the Rector said
consolingly. "And you can't expect just by quoting text against text to
effect an instant conversion. Don't forget that your friends are in
their way as great enthusiasts probably as yourself."

"Yes, but it's humiliating to be imagining oneself leading a revival of
the preaching friars and then to behave like that. What strikes me now,
when it's too late, is that I ought to have waited and taken the
opportunity to tackle the innkeeper. He was just the ordinary man who
supposes that religion is his natural enemy. You must admit that I
missed a chance there."

"I don't want to check your missionary zeal," said the Rector. "But I
really don't think you need worry yourself about an omission of that
kind so long before you are ordained. If I didn't know you as well as I
do, I might even be inclined to consider such a passion for souls at
your age a little morbid. I wish with all my heart you'd gone to
Oxford," he added with a sigh.

"Well, really, do you know," said Mark, "I don't regret that. Whatever
may be the advantages of a public school and university, the education
hampers one. One becomes identified with a class; and when one has
finished with that education, the next two or three years have to be
spent in discovering that public school and university men form a very
small proportion of the world's population. Sometimes I almost regret
that my mother did not let me acquire that Cockney accent. You can say a
lot of things in a Cockney accent which said without any accent sound
priggish. You must admit, Rector, that your inner comment on my tale of
the gospellers and the innkeeper is 'Dear me! I am afraid Mark's turning
into a prig.'"

"No, no. I laid particular stress on the point that if I didn't know you
as well as I do I might perhaps have thought that," the Rector
protested.

"I don't think I am a prig," Mark went on slowly. "I don't think I have
enough confidence in myself to be a prig. I think the way I argued with
Mr. Bullock and Mr. Smillie was a bit priggish, because at the back of
my head all the time I was talking I felt in addition to the arrogance
of faith a kind of confounded snobbishness; and this sense of
superiority came not from my being a member of the Church, but from
feeling myself more civilized than they were. Looking back now at the
conversation, I can remember that actually at the very moment I was
talking of the Holy Ghost I was noticing how Mr. Bullock's dicky would
keep escaping from his waistcoat. I wonder if the great missionary
saints of the middle ages had to contend with this accumulation of
social conventions with which we are faced nowadays. It seems to me
that in everything--in art, in religion, in mere ordinary everyday life
and living--man is adding daily to the wall that separates him from
God."

"H'm, yes," said the Rector, "all this only means that you are growing
up. The child is nearer to God than the man. Wordsworth said it better
than I can say it. Similarly, the human race must grow away from God as
it takes upon itself the burden of knowledge. That surely is inherent in
the fall of man. No philosopher has yet improved upon the first chapter
of Genesis as a symbolical explanation of humanity's plight. When man
was created--or if you like to put it evolved--there must have been an
exact moment at which he had the chance of remaining where he was--in
other words, in the Garden of Eden--or of developing further along his
own lines with free will. Satan fell from pride. It is natural to assume
that man, being tempted by Satan, would fall from the same sin, though
the occasion, of his fall might be the less heroic sin of curiosity.
Yes, I think that first chapter of Genesis, as an attempt to sum up the
history of millions of years, is astoundingly complete. Have you ever
thought how far by now the world would have grown away from God without
the Incarnation?"

"Yes," said Mark, "and after nineteen hundred years how little nearer it
has grown."

"My dear boy," said the Rector, "if man has not even yet got rid of
rudimentary gills or useless paps he is not going to grow very visibly
nearer to God in nineteen hundred years after growing away from God for
ninety million. Yet such is the mercy of our Father in Heaven that,
infinitely remote as we have grown from Him, we are still made in His
image, and in childhood we are allowed a few years of blessed innocency.
To some children--and you were one of them--God reveals Himself more
directly. But don't, my dear fellow, grow up imagining that these
visions you were accorded as a boy will be accorded to you all through
your life. You may succeed in remaining pure in act, but you will find
it hard to remain pure in heart. To me the most frightening beatitude is
_Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God._ What your
present state of mind really amounts to is lack of hope, for as soon as
you find yourself unable to be as miraculously eloquent as St. Anthony
of Padua you become the prey of despair."

"I am not so foolish as that," Mark replied. "But surely, Rector, it
behoves me during these years before my ordination to criticize myself
severely."

"As severely as you like," the Rector agreed, "provided that you only
criticize yourself, and don't criticize Almighty God."

"But surely," Mark went on, "I ought to be asking myself now that I am
twenty-one how I shall best occupy the next three years?"

"Certainly," the Rector assented. "Think it over, and be sure that, when
you have thought it over and have made your decision with the help of
prayer, I shall be the first to support that decision in every way
possible. Even if you decide to be a preaching friar," he added with a
smile. "And now I have some news for you. Esther arrives here tomorrow
to stay with us for a fortnight before she is professed."

CHAPTER XXII

SISTER ESTHER MAGDALENE

Esther's novitiate in the community of St. Mary Magdalene, Shoreditch,
had lasted six months longer than was usual, because the Mother Superior
while never doubting her vocation for the religious life had feared for
her ability to stand the strain of that work among penitents to which
the community was dedicated. In the end, her perseverance had been
rewarded, and the day of her profession was at hand.

During the whole of her nearly four years' novitiate Esther had not been
home once; although Mark and she had corresponded at long intervals,
their letters had been nothing more than formal records of minor events,
and on St. John's eve he drove with the dogcart to meet her, wondering
all the way how much she would have changed. The first thing that struck
him when he saw her alight from the train on Shipcot platform was her
neatness. In old days with windblown hair and clothes flung on anyhow
she had belonged so unmistakably to the open air. Now in her grey habit
and white veil of the novice she was as tranquil as Miriam, and for the
first time Mark perceived a resemblance between the sisters. Her
complexion, which formerly was flushed and much freckled by the open
air, was now like alabaster; and although her auburn hair was hidden
beneath the veil Mark was aware of it like a hidden fire. He had in the
very moment of welcoming her a swift vision of that auburn hair lying on
the steps of the altar a fortnight hence, and he was filled with a wild
desire to be present at her profession and gathering up the shorn locks
to let them run through his fingers like flames. He had no time to be
astonished at himself before they were shaking hands.

"Why, Esther," he laughed, "you're carrying an umbrella."

"It was raining in London," she said gravely.

He was on the point of exclaiming at such prudence in Esther when he
blushed in the remembrance that she was a nun. During the drive back
they talked shyly about the characters of the village and the Rectory
animals.

"I feel as if you'd just come back from school for the holidays," he
said.

"Yes, I feel as if I'd been at school," she agreed. "How sweet the
country smells."

"Don't you miss the country sometimes in Shoreditch?" he asked.

She shook her head and looked at him with puzzled eyes.

"Why should I miss anything in Shoreditch?"

Mark was abashed and silent for the rest of the drive, because he
fancied that Esther might have supposed that he was referring to the
past, rather than give which impression he would have cut out his
tongue. When they reached the Rectory, Mark was moved almost to tears by
the greetings.

"Dear little sister," Miriam murmured. "How happy we are to have you
with us again."

"Dear child," said Mrs. Ogilvie. "And really she does look like a nun."

"My dearest girl, we have missed you every moment of these four years,"
said the Rector, bending to kiss her. "How cold your cheek is."

"It was quite chilly driving," said Mark quickly, for there had come
upon him a sudden dismay lest they should think she was a ghost. He was
relieved when Miriam announced tea half an hour earlier than usual in
honour of Esther's arrival; it seemed to prove that to her family she
was still alive.

"After tea I'm going to Wych Maries to pick St. John's wort for the
church. Would you like to walk as far?" Mark suggested, and then stood
speechless, horrified at his want of tact. He had the presence of mind
not to excuse himself, and he was grateful to Esther when she replied in
a calm voice that she should like a walk after tea.

When the opportunity presented itself, Mark apologized for his
suggestion.

"By why apologize?" she asked. "I assure you I'm not at all tired and I
really should like to walk to Wych Maries."

He was amazed at her self-possession, and they walked along with
unhastening conventual steps to where the St. John's wort grew amid a
tangle of ground ivy in the open spaces of a cypress grove, appearing
most vividly and richly golden like sunlight breaking from black clouds
in the western sky.

"Gather some sprays quickly, Sister Esther Magdalene," Mark advised.
"And you will be safe against the demons of this night when evil has
such power."

"Are we ever safe against the demons of the night?" she asked solemnly.
"And has not evil great power always?"

"Always," he assented in a voice that trembled to a sigh, like the
uncertain wind that comes hesitating at dusk in the woods. "Always," he
repeated.

As he spoke Mark fell upon his knees among the holy flowers, for there
had come upon him temptation; and the sombre trees standing round
watched him like fiends with folded wings.

"Go to the chapel," he cried in an agony.

"Mark, what is the matter?"

"Go to the chapel. For God's sake, Esther, don't wait."

In another moment he felt that he should tear the white veil from her
forehead and set loose her auburn hair.

"Mark, are you ill?"

"Oh, do what I ask," he begged. "Once I prayed for you here. Pray for me
now."

At that moment she understood, and putting her hands to her eyes she
stumbled blindly toward the ruined church of the two Maries, heavily
too, because she was encumbered by her holy garb. When she was gone and
the last rustle of her footsteps had died away upon the mid-summer
silence, Mark buried his body in the golden flowers.

"How can I ever look any of them in the face again?" he cried aloud.
"Small wonder that yesterday I was so futile. Small wonder indeed! And
of all women, to think that I should fall in love with Esther. If I had
fallen in love with her four years ago . . . but now when she is going
to be professed . . . suddenly without any warning . . . without any
warning . . . yet perhaps I did love her in those days . . . and was
jealous. . . ."

And even while Mark poured forth his horror of himself he held her image
to his heart.

"I thought she was a ghost because she was dead to me, not because she
was dead to them. She is not a ghost to them. And is she to me?"

He leapt to his feet, listening.

"Should she come back," he thought with beating heart. "Should she come
back . . . I love her . . . she hasn't taken her final vows . . . might
she not love me? No," he shouted at the top of his voice. "I will not do
as my father did . . . I will not . . . I will not. . . ."

Mark felt sure of himself again: he felt as he used to feel as a little
boy when his mother entered on a shaft of light to console his childish
terrors. When he came to the ruined chapel and saw Esther standing with
uplifted palms before the image of St. Mary Magdalene long since put
back upon the pedestal from which it had been flung by the squire of
Rushbrooke Grange, Mark was himself again.

"My dear," Esther cried, impulsively taking his hand. "You frightened
me. What was the matter?"

He did not answer for a moment or two, because he wanted her to hold his
hand a little while longer, so much time was to come when she would
never hold it.

"Whenever I dip my hand in cold water," he said at last, "I shall think
of you. Why did you say that about the demons of the night?"

She dropped his hand in comprehension.

"You're disgusted with me," he murmured. "I'm not surprised."

"No, no, you mustn't think of me like that. I'm still a very human
Esther, so human that the Reverend Mother has made me wait an extra year
to be professed. But, Mark dear, can't you understand, you who know what
I endured in this place, that I am sometimes tempted by memories of
him, that I sometimes sin by regrets for giving him up, my dead lover
so near to me in this place. My dead love," she sighed to herself, "to
whose memory in my pride of piety I thought I should be utterly
indifferent."

A spasm of jealousy had shaken Mark while Esther was speaking, but by
the time she had finished he had fought it down.

"I think I must have loved you all this time," he told her.

"Mark dear, I'm ten years older than you. I'm going to be a nun for what
of my life remains. And I can never love anybody else. Don't make this
visit of mine a misery to me. I've had to conquer so much and I need
your prayers."

"I wish you needed my kisses."

"Mark!"

"What did I say? Oh, Esther, I'm a brute. Tell me one thing."

"I've already told you more than I've told anyone except my confessor."

"Have you found happiness in the religious life?"

"I have found myself. The Reverend Mother wanted me to leave the
community and enter a contemplative order. She did not think I should be
able to help poor girls."

"Esther, what a stupid woman! Why surely you would be wonderful with
them?"

"I think she is a wise woman," said Esther. "I think since we came
picking St. John's wort I understand how wise she is."

"Esther, dear dear Esther, you make me feel more than ever ashamed of
myself. I entreat you not to believe what the Reverend Mother says."

"You have only a fortnight to convince me," said Esther.

"And I will convince you."

"Mark, do you remember when you made me pray for his soul telling me
that in that brief second he had time to repent?"

Mark nodded grimly.

"You still do think that, don't you?"

"Of course I do. He must have repented."

She thanked him with her eyes; and Mark looking into their depths of
hope unfathomable put away from him the thought that the damned soul of
Will Starling was abroad to-night with power of evil. Yes, he put this
thought behind him; but carrying an armful of St. John's wort to hang in
sprays above the doors of the church he could not rid himself of the
fancy that his arms were filled with Esther's auburn hair.

CHAPTER XXIII

MALFORD ABBEY

Mark left Wych-on-the-Wold next day; although he did not announce that
he should be absent from home so long, he intended not to return until
Esther had gone back to Shoreditch. He hoped that he was not being
cowardly in thus running away; but after having assured Esther that she
could count on his behaving normally for the rest of her visit, he found
his sleep that night so profoundly disturbed by feverish visions that
when morning came he dreaded his inability to behave as both he would
wish himself and she would wish him to behave. Flight seemed the only
way to find peace. He was shocked not so much by being in love with
Esther, but by the suddenness with which his desires had overwhelmed
him, desires which had never been roused since he was born. If in an
instant he could be turned upside down like that, could he be sure that
upon the next occasion, supposing that he fell in love with somebody
more suitable, he should be able to escape so easily? His father must
have married his mother out of some such violent impulse as had seized
himself yesterday afternoon, and resentiment about his weakness had
spoilt his whole life. And those dreams! How significant now were the
words of the Compline hymn, and how much it behoved a Christian soul to
vanquish these ill dreams against beholding which the defence of the
Creator was invoked. He had vowed celibacy; yet already, three months
after his twenty-first birthday, after never once being troubled with
the slightest hint that the vow he had taken might be hard to keep, his
security had been threatened. How right the Rector had been about that
frightening beatitude.

Mark had taken the direction of Wychford, and when he reached the
bridge at the bottom of the road from Wych-on-the-Wold he thought he
would turn aside and visit the Greys whom he had not seen for a long
time. He was conscious of a curiosity to know if the feelings aroused by
Esther could be aroused by Monica or Margaret or Pauline. He found the
dear family unchanged and himself, so far as they were concerned,
equally unchanged and as much at his ease as he had ever been.

"And what are you going to do now?" one of them asked.

"You mean immediately?"

Mark could not bring himself to say that he did not know, because such a
reply would have seemed to link him with the state of mind in which he
had been thrown yesterday afternoon.

"Well, really, I was thinking of going into a monastery," he announced.

Pauline clapped her hands.

"Now I think that is just what you ought to do," she said.

Then followed questions about which Order he proposed to join; and Mark
ashamed to go back on what he had said lest they should think him
flippant answered that he thought of joining the Order of St. George.

"You know--Father Burrowes, who works among soldiers."

When Mark was standing by the cross-roads above Wychford and was
wondering which to take, he decided that really the best thing he could
do at this moment was to try to enter the Order of St. George. He might
succeed in being ordained without going to a theological college, or if
the Bishop insisted upon a theological course and he found that he had a
vocation for the religious life, he could go to Glastonbury and rejoin
the Order when he was a priest. It was true that Father Rowley
disapproved of Father Burrowes; but he had never expressed more than a
general disapproval, and Mark was inclined to attribute his attitude to
the prejudice of a man of strong personality and definite methods
against another man of strong personality and definite methods working
on similar lines among similar people. Mark remembered now that there
had been a question at one time of Father Burrowes' opening a priory in
the next parish to St. Agnes'. Probably that was the reason why Father
Rowley disapproved of him. Mark had heard the monk preach on one
occasion and had liked him. Outside the pulpit, however, he knew nothing
more of him than what he had heard from soldiers staying in the Keppel
Street Mission House, who from Aldershot had visited Malford Abbey, the
mother house of the Order. The alternative to Malford was Clere Abbey on
the Berkshire downs where Dom Cuthbert Manners ruled over a small
community of strict Benedictines. Had Mark really been convinced that he
was likely to remain a monk for the rest of his life, he would have
chosen the Benedictines; but he did not feel justified in presenting
himself for admission to Clere on what would seem impulse. He hoped that
if he was accepted by the Order of St. George he should be given an
opportunity to work at one of the priories in Aldershot or Sandgate, and
that the experience he might expect to gain would help him later as a
parish priest. He could not confide in the Rector his reason for wanting
to subject himself to monastic discipline, and he expected a good deal
of opposition. It might be better to write from whatever village he
stayed in to-night and make the announcement without going back at all.
And this is what in the end he decided to do.

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