The Altar Steps by Compton MacKenzie

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The hour of recreation before Compline, which upon great Feasts was wont
to be so glad, lay heavily upon the brethren that night, so that Mark
could not bear to sit in the Cloister; there being no guests in the
Abbey for his attention, he sat in the library and wrote to the Rector.

The Abbey,

Malford, Surrey.

Easter Sunday.

My dear Rector,

I should have written before to wish you all a happy Easter, but
I've been making up my mind during the last fortnight to leave the
Order, and I did not want to write until my mind was made up. That
feat is now achieved. I shall stay here until St. George's Day, and
then the next day, which will be St. Mark's Eve, I shall come home
to spend my birthday with you. I do not regret the year and six
months that I have spent at Malford and Aldershot, because during
that time, if I have decided not to be a monk, I am none the less
determined to be a priest. I shall be 23 this birthday, and I hope
that I shall find a Bishop to ordain me next year and a Theological
College to accept responsibility for my training and a beneficed
priest to give me a title. I will give you a full account of myself
when we meet at the end of the month; but in this letter, written
in sad circumstances, I want to tell you that I have learnt with
the soul what I have long spoken with the lips--the need of God. I
expect you will tell me that I ought to have learnt that lesson
long ago upon that Whit-Sunday morning in Meade Cantorum church.
But I think I was granted then by God to desire Him with my heart.
I was scarcely old enough to realize that I needed Him with my
soul. "You're not so old now," I hear you say with a smile. But in
a place like this one learns almost more than one would learn in
the world in the time. One beholds human nature very intimately. I
know more about my fellow-men from association with two or three
dozen people here than I learnt at St. Agnes' from association with
two or three hundred. This much at least my pseudo-monasticism has
taught me.

We have passed through a sad time lately at the Abbey, and I feel
that for the Community sorrows are in store. You know from my
letters that there have been divisions, and you know how hard I
have found it to decide which party I ought to follow. But of
course the truth is that from the moment one feels the inclination
to side with a party in a community it is time to leave that
community. Owing to an unfortunate disagreement between Brother
George and the Reverend Andrew Hett, who came down to act as
chaplain during the absence of the Reverend Father, Andrew Hett
felt obliged to leave us. The consequence is we have had no Mass
this Easter, and thus I have learned with my soul to need God. I
cannot describe to you the torment of deprivation which I
personally feel, a torment that is made worse by the consciousness
that all my brethren will go to their cells to-night needing God
and not finding Him, because they like myself are involved in an
earthly quarrel, so that we are incapable of opening our hearts to
God this night. You may say that if we were in such a state we
should have had no right to make our Easter Communion. But that
surely is what Our Blessed Lord can do for us with His Body and
Blood. I have been realizing that all this Holy Week. I have felt
as I have never felt before the consciousness of sinning against
Him. There has not been an antiphon, not a versicle nor a response,
that has not stabbed me with a consciousness of my sin against His
Divine Love.

"What are these wounds in Thy Hands: Those with which I was wounded
in the house of My friends."

But if on Easter eve we could have confessed our sins against His
Love, and if this morning we could have partaken of Him, He would
have been with us, and our hearts would have been fit for the
presence of God. We should have been freed from this spirit of
strife, we should have come together in Jesus Christ. We should
have seen how to live "with the unleavened Bread of sincerity and
truth." God would have revealed His Will, and we, submitting our
Order to His Will, should have ceased to think for ourselves, to
judge our brethren, to criticize our seniors, to suspect that
brother of personal ambition, this brother of toadyism. The
Community is being devoured by the Dragon and, unless St. George
comes to the rescue of his Order on Thursday week, it will perish.
Perhaps I have not much faith in St. George. He has always seemed
to me an unreal, fairy-tale sort of a saint. I have more faith in
St. Benedict and his Holy Rule. But I have no vocation for the
contemplative life. I don't feel that my prayers are good enough to
save my own soul, let alone the souls of others. I _must_ give
Jesus Christ to my fellow-men in the Blessed Sacrament. I long to
be a priest for that service. I don't feel that I want by my own
efforts to make people better, or to relieve poverty, or to thunder
against sin, or to preach them up to and through Heaven's gates. I
want to give them the Blessed Sacrament, because I know that
nothing else will be the slightest use to them. I know it more
positively to-night than I have ever known it, because as I sit
here writing to you I am starved. God has given me the grace to
understand why I am starved. It is my duty to bring Our Lord to
souls who do not know why they are starved. And if after nearly two
years of Malford this passion to bring the Sacraments to human
beings consumes me like a fire, then I have not wasted my time, and
I can look you in the face and ask for your blessing upon my
determination to be a priest.

Your ever affectionate

Mark.

When Mark had written this letter, and thus put into words what had
hitherto been a more or less nebulous intention, and when in addition to
that he had affixed a date to the carrying out of his intention, he felt
comparatively at ease. He wasted no time in letting the Father Superior
know that he was going to leave; in fact he told him after he had
confessed to him before making his Communion on Easter Thursday.

"I'm sorry to lose you, my dear boy," said Father Burrowes. "Very sorry.
We are just going to open a priory in London, though that is a secret
for the moment, please. I shall make the announcement at the Easter
Chapter. Yes, some kind friends have given us a house in Soho.
Splendidly central, which is important for our work. I had planned that
you would be one of the brethren chosen to go there."

"It's very kind of you, Reverend Father," said Mark. "But I'm sure that
you understand my anxiety not to lose any time, now that I feel
perfectly convinced that I want to be a priest."

"I had my doubts about you when you first came to us. Let me see, it was
nearly two years ago, wasn't it? How time flies! Yes, I had my doubts
about you. But I was wrong. You seem to possess a real fixity of
purpose. I remember that you told me then that you were not sure you
wanted to be a monk. Rare candour! I could have professed a hundred
monks, had I been willing to profess them within ten minutes of their
first coming to see me."

The Father Superior gave Mark his blessing and dismissed him. Nothing
had been said about the dispute between the Prior and the Chaplain, and
Mark began to wonder if Father Burrowes thought the results of it would
tell more surely in favour of his own influence if he did not allude to
it nor make any attempt to adjudicate upon the point at issue. Now that
he was leaving Malford in little more than a week, Mark felt that he was
completely relieved of the necessity of assisting at any conventual
legislation, and he would gladly have absented himself from the Easter
Chapter, which was held on the Saturday within the Octave, had not
Father Burrowes told him that so long as he wore the habit of a novice
of the Order he was expected to share in every side of the Community's
life.

"Brethren," said the Father Superior, "I have brought you back news that
will gladden your hearts, news that will show I you how by the Grace of
God your confidence in my judgment was not misplaced. Some kind friends
have taken for us the long lease of a splendid house in Soho Square, so
that we may have our priory in London, and resume the active work that
was abandoned temporarily last Christmas. Not only have these kind
friends taken for us this splendid house, but other kind friends have
come forward to guarantee the working expenses up to L20 a week. God is
indeed good to us, brethren, and when I remember that next Thursday is
the Feast of our great Patron Saint, my heart is too full for words.
During the last three or four months there have been unhappy differences
of opinion in our beloved Order. Do let me entreat you to forget all
these in gratitude for God's bountiful mercies. Do let us, with the
arrival once more of our patronal festival, resolve to forget our doubts
and our hesitations, our timidity and our rashness, our suspicions and
our jealousies. I blame myself for much that has happened, because I
have been far away from you, dear brethren, in moments of great
spiritual distress. But this year I hope by God's mercy to be with you
more. I hope that you will never again spend such an Easter as this. I
have only one more announcement to make, which is that I have appointed
Brother Dominic to be Prior of St. George's Priory, Soho Square, and
Brother Chad and Brother Dunstan to work with him for God and our
soldiers."

In the morning, Brother Simon, whose duty it was nowadays to knock with
the hammer upon the doors of the cells and rouse the brethren from sleep
with the customary salutation, went running from the dormitory to the
Prior's cell, his hair standing even more on end than it usually did at
such an hour.

"Reverend Brother, Reverend Brother," he cried. "I've knocked and
knocked on Brother Anselm's door, and I've said 'The Lord be with you'
nine times and shouted 'The Lord be with you' twice, but there's no
answer, and at last I opened the door, though I know it's against the
Rule to open the door of a brother's cell, but I thought he might be
dead, and he isn't dead, but he isn't there. He isn't there, Reverend
Brother, and he isn't anywhere. He's nowhere, Reverend Brother, and
shall I go and ring the fire-alarm?"

Brother George sternly bade Brother Simon be quiet; but when the
Brethren sat in choir to sing Lauds and Prime, they saw that Brother
Anselm's stall was empty, and those who had heard Brother Simon's
clamour feared that something terrible had happened.

After Mass the Community was summoned to the Chapter room to learn from
the lips of the Father Superior that Brother Anselm had broken his vows
and left the Order. Brother Dunstan, who wore round his neck the nib
with which Brother Anselm signed his profession, burst into tears.
Brother Dominic looked down his big nose to avoid the glances of his
brethren. If Easter Sunday had been gloomy, Low Sunday was gloomier
still, and as for the Feast of St. George nobody had the courage to
think what that would be like with such a cloud hanging over the
Community.

Mark felt that he could not stay even until the patronal festival. If
Brother George or Brother Birinus had broken his vows, he could have
borne it more easily, for he had not witnessed their profession; fond he
might be of the Prior, but he had worked for human souls under the
orders of Brother Anselm. He went to Father Burrowes and begged to leave
on Monday.

"Brother Athanasius and Brother Chad are leaving tomorrow," said the
Father Superior, "Yes, you may go."

Brother Simon drove them to the station. Strange figures they seemed to
each other in their lay clothes.

"I've been meaning to go for a long time," said Brother Athanasius, who
was now Percy Wade. "And it's my belief that Brother George and Brother
Birinus won't stay long."

"I hoped never to go," said Brother Chad, who was now Cecil Masters.

"Then why are you going?" asked the late Brother Athanasius. "I never do
anything I don't want to do."

"I think I shall be more help to Brother Anselm than to soldiers in
London," said the late Brother Chad.

Mark beamed at him.

"That's just like you, Brother. I am so glad you're going to do that."

The train came in, and they all shook hands with Brother Simon, who had
been cheerful throughout the drive, and even now found great difficulty
in looking serious.

"You seem very happy, Brother Simon," said Mark.

"Oh, I am very happy, Brother Mark. I should say Mr. Mark. The Reverend
Father has told me that I'm to be clothed as a novice on Wednesday. All
last week when we sung, '_The Lord is risen indeed, and hath appeared
unto Simon_,' I knew something wonderful was going to happen. That's
what made me so anxious when Brother Anselm didn't answer my knock."

The train left the station, and the three ex-novices settled themselves
to face the world. They were all glad that Brother Simon at least was
happy amid so much unhappiness.

CHAPTER XXX

THE NEW BISHOP OF SILCHESTER

The Rector of Wych thought that Mark's wisest plan if he wished to be
ordained was to write and ask the Bishop of Silchester for an interview.

"The Bishop of Silchester?" Mark exclaimed. "But he's the last bishop I
should expect to help me."

"On the contrary," said the Rector, "you have lived in his diocese for
more than five years, and if you repair to another bishop, he will
certainly wonder why you didn't go first to the Bishop of Silchester."

"But I don't suppose that the Bishop of Silchester is likely to help
me," Mark objected. "He wasn't so much enamoured of Rowley as all that,
and I don't gather that he has much affection or admiration for
Burrowes."

"That's not the point; the point is that you have devoted yourself to
the religious life, both informally and formally, in his diocese. You
have shown that you possess some capacity for sticking to it, and I
fancy that you will find the Bishop less unsympathetic than you expect."

However, Mark was not given an opportunity to put the Bishop of
Silchester's good-will to the test, for no sooner had he made up his
mind to write to him than the news came that he was seriously ill, so
seriously ill that he was not expected to live, which in fact turned out
a true prognostication, for on the Feast of St. Philip and St. James the
prelate died in his Castle of High Thorpe. He was succeeded by the
Bishop of Warwick, much to Mark's pleasure and surprise, for the new
Bishop was an old friend of Father Rowley and a High Churchman, one who
might lend a kindly ear to Mark's ambition. Father Rowley had been in
the United States for nearly two years, where he had been treated with
much sympathy and where he had collected enough money to pay off the
debt upon the new St. Agnes'. He had arrived home about a week before
Mark left Malford, and in answer to Mark he wrote immediately to Dr.
Oliphant, the new Bishop of Silchester, to enlist his interest. Early in
June Mark received a cordial letter inviting him to visit the Bishop at
High Thorpe.

The promotion of Dr. Aylmer Oliphant to the see of Silchester was
considered at the time to be an indication that the political party then
in power was going mad in preparation for its destruction by the gods.
The Press in commenting upon the appointment did not attempt to cast a
slur upon the sanctity and spiritual fervour of the new Bishop, but it
felt bound to observe that the presence of such a man on the episcopal
bench was an indication that the party in power was oblivious of the
existence of an enraged electorate already eager to hurl them out of
office. At a time when thinking men and women were beginning to turn to
the leaders of the National Church for a social policy, a government
worn out by eight years of office that included a costly war was so
little alive to the signs of the times as to select for promotion a
prelate conspicuously identified with the obscurantist tactics of that
small but noisy group in the Church of England which arrogated to itself
the presumptuous claim to be the Catholic party. Dr. Oliphant's learning
was indisputable; his liturgical knowledge was profound; his eloquence
in the pulpit was not to be gainsaid; his life, granted his sacerdotal
eccentricities, was a noble example to his fellow clergy. But had he
shown those qualities of statesmanship, that capacity for moderation,
which were so marked a feature of his predecessor's reign? Was he not
identified with what might almost be called an unchristian agitation to
prosecute the holy, wise, and scholarly Dean of Leicester for appearing
to countenance an opinion that the Virgin Birth was not vital to the
belief of a Christian? Had he not denounced the Reverend Albert Blundell
for heresy, and thereby exhibited himself in active opposition to his
late diocesan, the sagacious Bishop of Kidderminster, who had been
compelled to express disapproval of his Suffragan's bigotry by
appointing the Reverend Albert Blundell to be one of his examining
chaplains?

"We view with the gravest apprehension the appointment of Dr. Aylmer
Oliphant to the historic see of Silchester," said one great journal.
"Such reckless disregard, such contempt we might almost say, for the
feelings of the English people demonstrates that the present government
has ceased to enjoy the confidence of the electorate. We have for Dr.
Oliphant personally nothing but the warmest admiration. We do not
venture for one moment to impugn his sincerity. We do not hesitate to
affirm most solemnly our disbelief that he is actuated by any but the
highest motives in lending his name to persecutions that recall the
spirit of the Star Chamber. But in these days when the rapid and
relentless march of Scientific Knowledge is devastating the plain of
Theological Speculation we owe it to our readers to observe that the
appointment of Dr. Aylmer Oliphant to the Bishopric of Silchester must
be regarded as an act of intellectual cowardice. Not merely is Dr.
Oliphant a notorious extremist in religious matters, one who for the
sake of outworn forms and ceremonies is inclined to keep alive the
unhappy dissensions that tear asunder our National Church, but he is
also what is called a Christian Socialist of the most advanced type, one
who by his misreading of the Gospel spreads the unwholesome and perilous
doctrine that all men are equal. This is not the time nor the place to
break a controversial lance with Dr. Oliphant. We shall content
ourselves with registering a solemn protest against the unparagoned
cynicism of a Conservative government which thus gambles not merely with
its own security, but what is far more unpardonable with the security of
the Nation and the welfare of the State."

The subject of this ponderous censure received Mark in the same room
where two and a half years ago the late Bishop had decided that the
Third Altar in St. Agnes' Church was an intolerable excrescence.
Nowadays the room was less imposing, not more imposing indeed than the
room of a scholarly priest who had been able to collect a few books and
buy such pieces of ancient furniture as consorted with his severe taste.
Dr. Oliphant himself, a tall spare man, seeming the taller and more
spare in his worn purple cassock, with clean-shaven hawk's face and
black bushy eyebrows most conspicuous on account of his grey hair, stood
before the empty summer grate, his long lean neck out-thrust, his arms
crossed behind his back, like a gigantic and emaciated shadow of
Napoleon. Mark felt no embarrassment in genuflecting to salute him; the
action was spontaneous and was not dictated by any ritualistic
indulgence. Dr. Oliphant, as he might have guessed from the anger with
which his appointment had been received, was in outward semblance all
that a prelate should be.

"Why do you want to be a priest?" the Bishop asked him abruptly.

"To administer the Sacraments," Mark replied without hesitation.

The Bishop's head and neck wagged up and down in grave approbation.

"Mr. Rowley, as no doubt he has told you, wrote to me about you. And so
you've been with the Order of St. George lately? Is it any good?"

Mark was at a loss what to reply to this. His impulse was to say firmly
and frankly that it was no good; but after not far short of two years at
Malford it would be ungrateful and disloyal to criticize the Order,
particularly to the Bishop of the diocese.

"I don't think it is much good yet," Mark said. He felt that he simply
could not praise the Order without qualification. "But I expect that
when they've learnt how to combine the contemplative with the active
side of their religious life they will be splendid. At least, I hope
they will."

"What's wrong at present?"

"I don't know that anything's exactly wrong."

Mark paused; but the Bishop was evidently waiting for him to continue,
and feeling that this was perhaps the best way to present his own point
of view about the life he had chosen for himself he plunged into an
account of life at Malford.

"Capital," said the Bishop when the narrative was done. "You have given
me a very clear picture of the present state of the Order and
incidentally a fairly clear picture of yourself. Well, I'm going to
recommend you to Canon Havelock, the Principal of the Theological
College here, and if he reports well of you and you can pass the
Cambridge Preliminary Theological Examination, I will ordain you at
Advent next year, or at any rate, if not in Advent, at Whitsuntide."

"But isn't Silchester Theological College only for graduates?" Mark
asked.

"Yes, but I'm going to suggest that Canon Havelock stretches a point in
your favour. I can, if you like, write to the Glastonbury people, but in
that case you would be out of my diocese where you have spent so much of
your time and where I have no doubt you will easily find a beneficed
priest to give you a title. Moreover, in the case of a young man like
yourself who has been brought up from infancy upon Catholic teaching, I
think it is advisable to give you an opportunity of mixing with the
moderate man who wishes to take Holy Orders. You can lose nothing by
such an association, and it may well happen that you will gain a great
deal. Silchester Theological College is eminently moderate. The
lecturers are men of real learning, and the Principal is a man whom it
would be impertinent for me to praise for his devout and Christian
life."

"I hardly know how to thank you, my lord," said Mark.

"Do you not, my son?" said the Bishop with a smile. Then his head and
neck wagged up and down. "Thank me by the life you lead as a priest."

"I will try, my lord," Mark promised.

"Of that I am sure. By the way, didn't you come across a priest at St.
Agnes' Mission House called Mousley?"

"Oh rather, I remember him well."

"You'll be glad to hear that he has never relapsed since I sent him to
Rowley. In fact only last week I had the satisfaction of recommending
him to a friend of mine who had a living in his gift."

Mark spent the three months before he went to Silchester at the Rectory
where he worked hard at Latin and Greek and the history of the Church.
At the end of August he entered Silchester Theological College.

CHAPTER XXXI

SILCHESTER THEOLOGICAL COLLEGE

The theological students of Silchester were housed in a red-brick alley
of detached Georgian houses, both ends of which were closed to traffic
by double gates of beautifully wrought iron. This alley known as Vicar's
Walk had formerly been inhabited by the lay vicars of the Cathedral,
whose music was now performed by minor canons.

There were four little houses on either side of the broad pavement, the
crevices in which were gay with small rock plants, so infrequent were
the footsteps that passed over them. Each house consisted of four rooms
and each room held one student. Vicar's Walk led directly into the
Close, a large green space surrounded by the houses of dignitaries, from
a quiet road lined with elms, which skirted the wall of the Deanery
garden and after several twists and turns among the shadows of great
Gothic walls found its way downhill into the narrow streets of the small
city. One of the houses in the Close had been handed over to the
Theological College, the Principal of which usually occupied a Canon's
stall in the Cathedral. Here were the lecture-rooms, and here lived
Canon Havelock the Principal, Mr. Drakeford the Vice-Principal, Mr.
Brewis the Chaplain, and Mr. Moore and Mr. Waters the Lecturers.

There did not seem to be many arduous rules. Probably the most ascetic
was one that forbade gentlemen to smoke in the streets of Silchester.
There was no early Mass except on Saints' days at eight; but gentlemen
were expected, unless prevented by reasonable cause, to attend Matins in
the Cathedral before breakfast and Evensong in the College Oratory at
seven. A mutilated Compline was delivered at ten, after which gentlemen
were requested to retire immediately to their rooms. Academic Dress was
to be worn at lectures, and Mark wondered what costume would be designed
for him. The lectures took place every morning between nine and one, and
every afternoon between five and seven. The Principal lectured on
Dogmatic Theology and Old Testament history; the Vice-Principal on the
Old and New Testament set books; the Chaplain on Christian worship and
Church history; Mr. Moore on Pastoralia and Old Testament Theology; and
Mr. Waters on Latin, Greek, and Hebrew.

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