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

"Oh, no, I've nothing to do at all."

Yet only that morning he had held forth to Mark at great length on the
amount of work demanded for the management of an estate.

"Now, why do you want to join Burrowes?" Sir Charles inquired presently.

"Well, I hope to be a priest, and I think I should like to spend the
next two years out of the world."

"Yes, that is all very well," said Sir Charles, "but I don't know that I
altogether recommend the O.S.G. I'm not satisfied with the way things
are being run. However, they tell me that this fellow Brother George has
a good deal of common-sense. He has been running their house in Malta,
where he's done some good work. I gave them the land to build a mother
house so that they could train people for active service, as it were;
but Burrowes keeps chopping and changing and sending untrained novices
to take charge of an important branch like Sandgate, and now since
Rowley left he talks of opening a priory in Chatsea. That's all very
well, and it's quite right of him to bear in mind that the main object
of the Order is to work among soldiers; but at the same time he leaves
this place to run itself, and whenever he does come down here he plans
some hideous addition, to pay for which he has to go off preaching for
another three months, so that the Abbey gets looked after by a young
novice of twenty-five. It's ridiculous, you know. I was grumbling at the
Bishop; but really I can understand his disinclination to countenance
Burrowes. I have hopes of Brother George, and I shall take an early
opportunity of talking to him."

Mark was discouraged by Sir Charles' criticism of the Order; and that it
could be criticized like this through the conduct of its founder
accentuated for him the gulf that lay between the English Church and the
rest of Catholic Christendom.

It was not much solace to remember that every Benedictine community was
an independent congregation. One could not imagine the most independent
community's being placed in charge of a novice of twenty-five. It made
Mark's proposed monastic life appear amateurish; and when he was back in
the matchboarded guest-room the impulse to abandon his project was
revised. Yet he felt it would be wrong to return to Wych-on-the-Wold.
The impulse to come here, though sudden, had been very strong, and to
give it up without trial might mean the loss of an experience that one
day he should regret. The opinion of Sir Charles Horner might or might
not be well founded; but it was bound to be a prejudiced opinion,
because by constituting himself to the extent he had a patron of the
Order he must involuntarily expect that it should be conducted according
to his views. Sir Charles himself, seen in perspective, was a tolerably
ridiculous figure, too much occupied with the paraphernalia of worship,
too well pleased with himself, a man of rank and wealth who judged by
severe standards was an old maid, and like all old maids critical, but
not creative.

CHAPTER XXIV

THE ORDER OF ST. GEORGE

The Order of St. George was started by the Reverend Edward Burrowes six
years before Sir Charles Horner's gift of land for a Mother House led
him to suppose that he had made his foundation a permanent factor in the
religious life of England.

Edward Burrowes was the only son of a band-master in the Royal Artillery
who at an impressionable moment in the life of his son was stationed at
Malta. The religious atmosphere of Malta combined with the romantic
associations of chivalry and the influence of his mother determined the
boy's future. The band-master was puzzled and irritated by his son's
ecclesiastical bias. He thought that so much church-going argued an
unhealthy preoccupation, and as for Edward's rhapsodies about the
Auberge of Castile, which sheltered the Messes of the Royal Artillery
and the Royal Engineers, they made him sick, to use his own expression.

"You make me sick, Ted," he used to declare. "The sooner I get quit of
Malta and quartered at Woolwich again, the better I shall be pleased."

When at last the band-master was moved to Woolwich, he hoped that the
effect of such prosaic surroundings would put an end to Ted's mooning,
and that he would settle down to a career more likely to reward him in
this world rather than in that ambiguous world beyond to which his
dreams aspired. Edward, who was by this time seventeen and who had so
far submitted to his father's wishes as to be working in a solicitor's
office, found that the effect of being banished from Malta was to
stimulate him into a practical attempt to express his dreams of
religious devotion. He hired a small room over a stable in a back street
and started a club for the sons of soldiers. The band-master would not
have minded this so much, especially when he was congratulated on his
son's enterprise by the wife of the Colonel. Unfortunately this was not
enough for Edward, who having got the right side of an unscrupulously
romantic curate persuaded him to receive his vows of a Benedictine
oblate. The band-master, proud and fond though he might be of his own
uniform, objected to his son's arriving home from business and walking
about the house in a cassock. He objected equally to finding that his
own musical gifts had with his son degenerated into a passion for
playing Gregorian chants on a vile harmonium. It was only consideration
for his delicate wife that kept the band-master from pitching both
cassock and harmonium into the street. The amateur oblate regretted his
father's hostility; but he persevered with the manner of life he had
marked out for himself, finding much comfort and encouragement in
reading the lives of the saintly founders of religious orders.

At last, after a long struggle against the difficulties that friends and
father put in his way, Edward Burrowes managed at the age of
twenty-seven to get ordained in Canada, whither, in despair of escaping
otherwise from the solicitor's office, he had gone to seek his own
fortune. He took with him the oblate's cassock; but he left behind the
harmonium, which his father kicked to pieces in rage at not being able
to kick his son. Burrowes worked as a curate in a dismal lakeside town
in Ontario, consoling himself with dreams of monasticism and chivalry,
and gaining a reputation as a preacher. His chief friend was a young
farmer, called George Harvey, whom he succeeded in firing with his own
enthusiasm and whom he managed to persuade--which shows that Burrowes
must have had great powers of persuasion--to wear the habit of a
Benedictine novice, when he came to spend Saturday night to Monday
morning with his friend. By this time Burrowes had passed beyond the
oblate stage, for having found a Canadian bishop willing to dispense him
from that portion of the Benedictine rule which was incompatible with
his work as a curate in Jonesville, Ontario, he got himself clothed as a
novice. About this period a third man joined Burrowes and Harvey in
their spare-time monasticism. This was John Holcombe, who had emigrated
from Dorsetshire after an unfortunate love affair and who had been taken
on by George Harvey as a carter. Holcombe was the son of a yeoman farmer
that owned several hundred acres of land. He had been educated at
Sherborne, and soon by his capacity and attractive personality he made
himself so indispensable to his employer that George Harvey's farm was
turned into a joint concern. No doubt Harvey's example was the immediate
cause of Holcombe's associating himself with the little community: but
it still says much for Burrowes' powers of persuasion that he should
have been able to impress this young Dorset farmer with the serious
possibility of leading the monastic life in Ontario.

When another year had passed, an opportunity arose of acquiring a better
farm in Alberta. It was the Bishop of Alberta who had been so
sympathetic with Burrowes' monastic aspirations; and, when Harvey and
Holcombe decided to move to Moose Rib, Burrowes gave up his curacy to
lead a regular monastic life, so far as one could lead a regular
monastic life on a farm in the North-west.

Two more years had gone by when a letter arrived from England to tell
George Harvey that he was the heir to L12,000. Burrowes had kept all his
influence over the young farmer, and he was actually able to persuade
Harvey to devote this fortune to founding the Order of St. George for
mission work among soldiers. There was some debate whether Father
Burrowes, Brother George, and Brother Birinus should take their final
vows immediately; but in the end Father Burrowes had his way, and they
were all three professed by the sympathetic Bishop of Alberta, who
granted them a constitution subject to the ratification of the
Archbishop of Canterbury. Father Burrowes was elected Father Superior,
Brother George was made Assistant Superior, and Brother Birinus had to
concentrate in his person various monastic offices just as on the Moose
Rib Farm he had combined in his person the duties of the various hands.

The immediate objective of the new community was Malta, where it was
proposed to open their first house and where, in despite of the
outraged dignity of innumerable real monks already there, they made a
successful beginning. A second house was opened at Gibraltar and put in
charge of Brother Birinus. Neither Malta nor Gibraltar provided much of
a field for reinforcing the Order, which, if it was to endure, required
additional members. Father Burrowes proposed that he should go to
England and open a house at Aldershot, and that, if he could obtain a
hearing as a preacher, he should try to raise enough funds for a house
at Sandgate as well. Brother George and Brother Birinus in a solemn
chapter of three accepted the proposal; the house at Gibraltar was given
up; the Father Superior went to seek the fortunes of the Order in
England, while the other two remained at their work in Malta. Father
Burrowes was even more successful as a preacher than he hoped; ascribing
the steady flow of offertories to Divine favour, he instituted during
the next four years, priories at Aldershot and Sandgate. He began to
feel the need of a Mother House, having now more than enough candidates
for the Order of Saint George, where the novices could be suitably
trained to meet the stress of active mission work. One of his moving
appeals for this object was heard by Sir Charles Horner who, for reasons
he had already explained to Mark and because underneath all his
ecclesiasticism there did exist a genuine desire for the glory of God,
had presented the land at Malford to the Order. Father Burrowes preached
harder than ever, addressed drawing-room meetings, and started a monthly
magazine called _The Dragon_ to raise the necessary money to build a
mighty abbey. Meanwhile, he had to be contented with those three tin
tabernacles. Brother George, who had remained all these years in Malta,
suggested that it was time for somebody else to take his place out
there, and the Father Superior, although somewhat unwillingly, had
agreed to his coming to Malford. Not having heard of anybody whom at the
moment he considered suitable to take charge of what was now a distant
outpost of the Order, he told Brother George to close the house. It was
at this stage in the history of the Order that Mark presented himself as
a candidate for admission.

Father Burrowes arrived unexpectedly two days after the lunch at
Malford Lodge; and presently Brother Dunstan came to tell Mark that the
Reverend Father would see him in the Abbott's Parlour immediately after
Nones. Mark thought that Sir Charles might have given a mediaeval lining
to this room at least, which with its roll-top desk looked like the
office of the clerk of the works.

"So you want to be a monk?" said Father Burrowes contemptuously. "Want
to dress up in a beautiful white habit, eh?"

"I really don't mind what I wear," said Mark, trying not to appear
ruffled by the imputation of wrong motives. "But I do want to be a monk,
yes."

"You can't come here to play at it," said the Superior, looking keenly
at Mark from his bright blue eyes and lighting up a large pipe.

"Curiously enough," said Mark, who had forgotten the Benedictine
injunction to discourage newcomers that seek to enter a community, "I
wrote to my guardian a few days ago that my impression of Malford Abbey
was rather that it was playing at being monks."

The Superior flushed to a vivid red. He was a burly man of fair
complexion, inclined to plumpness, and with a large mobile mouth
eloquent and sensual. His hands were definitely fat, the backs of them
covered with golden hairs and freckles.

"So you're a critical young gentleman, are you? I suppose we're not
Catholic enough for you. Well," he snapped, "I'm afraid you won't suit
us. We don't want you. Sorry."

"I'm sorry too," said Mark. "But I thought you would prefer frankness.
If you will spare me a few minutes, I'll explain why I want to join the
Order of St. George. If when you've heard what I have to say you still
think that I'm not suitable, I shall recognize your right to be of that
opinion from your experience of many young men like myself who have been
tried and found wanting."

"Did you learn that speech by heart?" the Superior inquired, raising his
eyebrows mockingly.

"I see you're determined to find fault," Mark laughed. "But, Reverend
Father, surely you will listen to my reasons before deciding against
them or me?"

"My instinct tells me you'll be no good to us. But if you insist on
wasting my time, fire ahead. Only please remember that, though I may be
a monk, I'm a very busy man."

Mark gave a full account of himself until the present and wound up by
saying:

"I don't think I have any sentimental reasons for wanting to enter a
monastery. I like working among soldiers and sailors. I am ready to put
down L200 and I hope to be of use. I wish to be a priest, and if you
find or I find that when the time comes for me to be ordained I shall
make a better secular priest, at any rate, I shall have had the
advantage of a life of discipline and you, I promise, will have had a
novice who will have regarded himself as such, but yet will have learnt
somehow to have justified your confidence."

The Superior looked down at his desk pondering. Presently he opened a
letter and threw a quick suspicious glance at Mark.

"Why didn't you tell me that you had an introduction from Sir Charles
Horner?"

"I didn't know that I had," Mark answered in some astonishment. "I only
met him here a few days ago for the first time. He invited me to lunch,
and he was very pleasant; but I never asked him to write to you, nor did
he suggest doing so."

"Have you any vices?" Father Burrowes asked abruptly.

"I don't think--what do you mean exactly?" Mark inquired.

"Drink?"

"No, certainly not."

"Women?"

Mark flushed.

"No." He wondered if he should speak of the episode of St. John's eve
such a short time ago; but he could not bring himself to do so, and he
repeated the denial.

"You seem doubtful," the Superior insisted.

"As a matter of fact," said Mark, "since you press this point I ought
to tell you that I took a vow of celibacy when I was sixteen."

Father Burrowes looked at him sharply.

"Did you indeed? That sounds very morbid. Don't you like women?"

"I don't think a priest ought to marry. I was told by Sir Charles that
you vowed yourself to the monastic life when you were not much more than
seventeen. Was that morbid?"

The Superior laughed boisterously, and Mark glad to have put him in a
good humour laughed with him. It was only after the interview was over
that the echo of that laugh sounded unpleasantly in the caves of memory,
that it rang false somehow like a denial of himself.

"Well, I suppose we must try you as a probationer at any rate," said the
Superior. And suddenly his whole manner changed. He became affectionate
and sentimental as he put his hand on Mark's shoulder.

"I hope, dear lad, that you will find a vocation to serve our dear Lord
in the religious life. God bless you and give you endurance in the path
you have chosen."

Mark reproached himself for his inclination to dislike the Reverend
Father to whom he now owed filial affection, piety, and respect, apart
from what he owed him as a Christian of Christian charity. He should
gain but small spiritual benefit from his self-chosen experiment if this
was the mood in which he was beginning his monastic life; and when
Brother Jerome, who was acting novice-master, began to instruct him in
his monastic duty, he made up his mind to drive out that demon of
criticism or rather to tame it to his own service by criticizing
himself. He wrote on markers for his favourite devotional books:

_Observe at every moment of the day the good in others, the evil in
thyself; and when thou liest awake in the night remember only what good
thou hast found in others, what evil in thyself._

This was Mark's addition to Thomas a Kempis, to Mother Juliana of
Norwich, to Jeremy Taylor and William Law; this was Mark's sprout of
holy wisdom among the Little Flowers of Saint Francis.

The Rule of Malford was not a very austere adaptation of the Rule of
Saint Benedict; and, with the Reverend Father departing after Mark had
been admitted as a probationer and leaving the administration of the
Abbey to the priority of Brother Dunstan, a good deal of what austerity
had been retained was now relaxed.

The Night Office was not said at Malford, where the liturgical worship
of the day began with Lauds and Prime at six. On Mark devolved the duty
of waking the brethren in the morning, which was done by striking the
door of each cell with a hammer and saying: _The Lord be with you_,
whereupon the sleeping brother must rise from his couch and open the
door of his cell to make the customary response. After Lauds and Prime,
which lasted about half an hour, the brethren retired to their cells to
put them in order for the day and to meditate until seven o'clock,
unless they had been given tasks out of doors. At seven o'clock, if
there was a priest in the monastery, Mass was said; otherwise meditation
and study was prolonged until eight o'clock, when breakfast was eaten.
Those who had work in the fields or about the house departed after
breakfast to their tasks. At nine Terce was said, which was not attended
by the brethren working out of doors; at twelve Sext was said attended
by all the brethren, and at twelve-fifteen dinner was eaten. After
dinner, the brethren retired to their cells and meditated until one
o'clock, when their various duties were resumed, interrupted only in the
case of those working indoors by the office of None at three o'clock. At
a quarter to five the bell rang for tea. Simple silence was relaxed, and
the brethren enjoyed their recreation until six-fifteen when the bell
rang for a quarter of an hour's solemn silence before Vespers. Supper
was eaten after Vespers, and after supper, which was finished about
eight o'clock, there was reading and recreation until the bell rang for
Compline at nine-fifteen. This office said, solemn silence was not
broken until the response to the _dominus vobiscum_ in the morning. The
rule of simple silence was not kept very strictly at this period. Two
brethren working in the garden in these hot July days found that
permitted conversation about the immediate matter in hand, say the
whereabouts of a trowel or a hoe, was easily extended into observations
about the whereabouts of Brother So-and-So during Terce or the way
Brother Somebody-else was late with the antiphon. From the little
incidents of the Abbey's daily round the conversation was easily
extended into a discussion of the policy of the Order in general.
Speculations where the Reverend Father was preaching that evening or
that morning and whether his offertories would be as large during the
summer as they had been during the spring were easily amplified from
discussions about the general policy of the Order into discussions about
the general policy of Christendom, the pros and cons of the Roman
position, the disgraceful latitudinarianism of bishops and deans; and
still more widely amplified from remarks upon the general policy of
Christendom into arguments about the universe and the great philosophies
of humanity. Thus Mark, who was an ardent Platonist, would find himself
at odds with Brother Jerome who was an equally ardent Aristotelian,
while the weeds, taking advantage of the philosophic contest, grew
faster than ever.

Whatever may have been Brother Dunstan's faults of indulgence, they
sprang from a debonair and kindly personality which shone like a sun
upon the little family and made everybody good-humoured, even Brother
Lawrence, who was apt to be cross because he had been kept a postulant
longer than he expected. But perhaps the happiest of all was Brother
Walter, who though still a probationer was now the senior probationer, a
status which afforded him the most profound satisfaction and gave him a
kindly feeling toward Mark who was the cause of promotion.

"And the Reverend Father has promised me that I shall be clothed as a
postulant on August 10th when Brother Lawrence is to be clothed as a
novice. The thought makes me so excited that I hardly know what to do
sometimes, and I still don't know what saint's name I'm going to take.
You see, there was some mystery about my birth, and I was called Walter
because I was found by a policeman in Walter Street, and as ill-luck
would have it there's no St. Walter. Of course, I know I have a very
wide choice of names, but that is what makes it so difficult. I had
rather a fancy to be Peter, but he's such a very conspicuous saint that
it struck me as being a little presumptuous. Of course, I have no doubt
whatever that St. Peter would take me under his protection, for if you
remember he was a modest saint, a very modest saint indeed who asked to
be crucified upside down, not liking to show the least sign of
competition with our dear Lord. I should very much like to call myself
Brother Paul, because at the school I was at we were taken twice a year
to see St. Paul's Cathedral and had toffee when we came home. I look
back to those days as some of the happiest of my life. There again it
does seem to be putting yourself up rather to take the name of a great
saint like St. Paul. Then I thought of taking William after the little
St. William of Norwich who was murdered by the Jews. That seems going to
the other extreme, doesn't it, for though I know that out of the mouths
of babes and sucklings shall come forth praise, one would like to feel
one had for a patron saint somebody a little more conspicuous than a
baby. I wish you'd give me a word of advice. I think about this problem
until sometimes my head's in a regular whirl, and I lose my place in the
Office. Only yesterday at Sext, I found myself saying the antiphon
proper to St. Peter a fortnight after St. Peter's day had passed and
gone, which seems to show that my mind is really set upon being Brother
Peter, doesn't it? And yet I don't know. He is so very conspicuous all
through the Gospels, isn't he?"

"Then why don't you compromise," suggested Mark, "and call yourself
Brother Simon?"

"Oh, what a splendid idea!" Brother Walter exclaimed, clapping his
hands. "Oh, thank you, Brother Mark. That has solved all my
difficulties. Oh, do let me pull up that thistle for you."

Brother Walter the probationer resumed his weeding with joyful ferocity
of purpose, his mind at peace in the expectation of shortly becoming
Brother Simon the postulant.

What Mark enjoyed most in his personal relations with the community were
the walks on Sunday afternoons. Sir Charles Horner made a habit of
joining these to obtain the Abbey gossip and also because he took
pleasure in hearing himself hold forth on the management of his estate.
Most of his property was woodland, and the walks round Malford possessed
that rich intimacy of the English countryside at its best. Mark was not
much interested in what Sir Charles had to ask or in what Sir Charles
had to tell or in what Sir Charles had to show, but to find himself
walking with his monastic brethren in their habits down glades of mighty
oaks, or through sparse plantations of birches, beneath which grew
brakes of wild raspberries that would redden with the yellowing corn,
gave him as assurance of that old England before the Reformation to
which he looked back as to a Golden Age. Years after, when much that was
good and much that was bad in his monastic experience had been
forgotten, he held in his memory one of these walks on a fine afternoon
at July's end within the octave of St. Mary Magdalene. It happened that
Sir Charles had not accompanied the monks that Sunday; but in his place
was an old priest who had spent the week-end as a guest in the Abbey and
who had said Mass for the brethren that morning. This had given Mark
deep pleasure, because it was the Sunday after Esther's profession, and
he had been able to make his intention her present joy and future
happiness. He had been silent throughout the walk, seeming to listen in
turn to Brother Dunstan's rhapsodies about the forthcoming arrival of
Brother George and Brother Birinus with all that it meant to him of
responsibility more than he could bear removed from his shoulders; or to
Brother Raymond's doubts if it should not be made a rule that when no
priest was in the Abbey the brethren ought to walk over to Wivelrod, the
church Sir Charles attended four miles away, or to Brother Jerome's
disclaimer of Roman sympathies in voicing his opinion that the Office
should be said in Latin. Actually he paid little attention to any of
them, his thoughts being far away with Esther. They had chosen Hollybush
Down for their walk that Sunday, because they thought that the view over
many miles of country would please the ancient priest. Seated on the
short aromatic grass in the shade of a massive hawthorn full-berried
with tawny fruit, the brethren looked down across a slope dotted with
junipers to the view outspread before them. None spoke, for it had been
warm work in their habits to climb the burnished grass. It would have
been hard to explain the significance of that group, unless it were due
to some haphazard achievement of perfect form; yet somehow for Mark that
moment was taken from time and placed in eternity, so that whenever
afterward in his life he read about the Middle Ages he was able to be
what he read, merely by re-conjuring that monkish company in the shade
of that hawthorn tree.

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