The Altar Steps by Compton MacKenzie

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The Vicarage was not so far from the church as the church was from the
village, but it was some way from both. It was reached from Nancepean by
a road or rather by a gated cart-track down one of the numerous valleys
of the parish, and it was reached from the church by another cart-track
along the valley between Pendhu and the towans. Probably it was an
ancient farmhouse, and it must have been a desolate and austere place
until, as at the date when Mark first came there, it was graced by the
perfume and gold of acacias, by wistaria and jasmine and honeysuckle, by
the ivory goblets of magnolias, by crimson fuchsias, and where formerly
its grey walls grew mossy north and east by pink and white camelias and
the waxen bells of lapagerias. The garden was a wilderness of scarlet
rhododendrons from the thickets of which innumerable blackbirds and
thrushes preyed upon the peas. The lawns were like meadows; the lily
ponds were marbled with weeds; the stables were hardly to be reached on
account of the tangle of roses and briers that filled the abandoned
yard. The front drive was bordered by evergreen oaks, underneath the
shade of which blue hydrangeas flowered sparsely with a profusion of
pale-green foliage and lanky stems.

Mark when he looked out of his window on the morning after his arrival
thought that he was in fairyland. He looked at the rhododendrons; he
looked at the raindrops of the night sparkling in the morning sun; he
looked at the birds, and the blue sky, and across the valley to a
hillside yellow with gorse. He hardly knew how to restrain himself from
waking his mother with news of the wonderful sights and sounds of this
first vision of the country; but when he saw a clump of daffodils
nodding in the grass below, it was no longer possible to be considerate.
Creeping to his mother's door, he gently opened it and listened. He
meant only to whisper "Mother," but in his excitement he shouted, and
she suddenly roused from sleep by his voice sat up in alarm.

"Mother, there are seven daffodils growing wild under my window."

"My darling, you frightened me so. I thought you'd hurt yourself."

"I don't know how my voice came big like that," said Mark
apologetically. "I only meant it to be a whisper. But you weren't
dreadfully frightened? Or were you?"

His mother smiled.

"No, not dreadfully frightened."

"Well, do you think I might dress myself and go in the garden?"

"You mustn't disturb grandfather."

"Oh, mother, of course not."

"All right, darling. But it's only six o'clock. Very early. And you must
remember that grandfather may be tired. He had to wait an hour for us at
Rosemarket last night."

"He's very nice, isn't he?"

Mark did not ask this tentatively; he really did think that his
grandfather was very nice, although he had been puzzled and not a little
frightened by his bushy black eyebrows slanting up to a profusion of
white hair. Mark had never seen such eyebrows, and he wondered whatever
grandfather's moustache would be like if it were allowed to grow.

"He's a dear," said Mrs. Lidderdale fervidly. "And now, sweetheart, if
you really intend to dress yourself run along, because Mother wants to
sleep a little longer if she can."

The only difficulty Mark had was with his flannel front, because one of
the tapes vanished like a worm into its hole, and nothing in his armoury
was at once long enough and pointed enough to hook it out again. Finally
he decided that at such an early hour of the morning it would not matter
if he went out exposing his vest, and soon he was wandering in that
enchanted shrubbery of rhododendrons, alternating between imagining it
to be the cave of Aladdin or the beach where Sinbad found all the
pebbles to be precious stones. He wandered down hill through the
thicket, listening with a sense of satisfaction to the increasing
squelchiness of the peaty soil and feeling when the blackbirds fled at
his approach with shrill quack and flapping wings much more like a
hunter than he ever felt in the nursery at Lima Street. He resolved to
bring his gun with him next time. This was just the place to find a
hippopotamus, or even a crocodile. Mark had reached the bottom of the
slope and discovered a dark sluggish stream full of decayed vegetable
matter which was slowly oozing on its course. Or even a crocodile, he
thought again; and he looked carefully at a half-submerged log. Or even
a crocodile . . . yes, but people had often thought before that logs
were not crocodiles and had not discovered their mistake until they were
half way down the crocodile's throat. It had been amusing to fancy the
existence of crocodiles when he was still close to the Vicarage, but
suppose after all that there really were crocodiles living down here?
Feeling a little ashamed of his cowardice, but glossing it over with an
assumption of filial piety, Mark turned to go back through the
rhododendrons so as not to be late for breakfast. He would find out if
any crocodiles had been seen about here lately, and if they had not, he
would bring out his gun and . . . suddenly Mark was turned inside out by
terror, for not twenty yards away there was without any possibility of
self-deception a wild beast something between an ant-eater and a
laughing hyena that with nose to the ground was evidently pursuing him,
and what was worse was between him and home. There flashed through
Mark's mind the memories of what other hunters had done in such
situations, what ruses they had adopted if unarmed, what method of
defence if armed; but in the very instant of the panoramic flash Mark
did what countless uncelebrated hunters must have done, he ran in the
opposition direction from his enemy. In this case it meant jumping over
the stream, crocodile or not, and tearing his away through snowberries
and brambles until he emerged on the moors at the bottom of the valley.

It was not until he had put half a dozen small streams between himself
and the unknown beast that Mark paused to look round. Behind him the
valley was lost in a green curve; before him another curve shut out the
ultimate view. On his left the slope of the valley rose to the sky in
tiers of blazing yellow gorse; to his right he could see the thickets
through which he had emerged upon this verdant solitude. But beyond the
thickets there was no sign of the Vicarage. There was not a living thing
in sight; there was nothing except the song of larks high up and
imperceptible against the steady morning sun that shed a benign warmth
upon the world, and particularly upon the back of Mark's neck when he
decided that his safest course was to walk in the direction of the
valley's gradual widening and to put as many more streams as he could
between him and the beast. Having once wetted himself to the knees, he
began to take a pleasure in splashing through the vivid wet greenery. He
wondered what he should behold at the next curve of the valley; without
knowing it he began to walk more slowly, for the beauty of the day was
drowsing his fears; the spell of earth was upon him. He walked more
slowly, because he was passing through a bed of forget-me-nots, and he
could not bear to blind one of those myriad blue eyes. He chose most
carefully the destination of each step, and walking thus he did not
notice that the valley would curve no more, but was opening at last. He
looked up in a sudden consciousness of added space, and there serene as
the sky above was spread the sea. Yesterday from the train Mark had had
what was actually his first view of the sea; but the rain had taken all
the colour out of it, and he had been thrilled rather by the word than
by the fact. Now the word was nothing, the fact was everything. There it
was within reach of him, blue as the pictures always made it. The
streams of the valley had gathered into one, and Mark caring no more
what happened to the forget-me-nots ran along the bank. This morning
when the stream reached the shore it broke into twenty limpid rivulets,
each one of which ploughed a separate silver furrow across the
glistening sand until all were merged in ocean, mighty father of streams
and men. Mark ran with the rivulets until he stood by the waves' edge.
All was here of which he had read, shells and seaweed, rocks and cliffs
and sand; he felt like Robinson Crusoe when he looked round him and saw
nothing to break the solitude. Every point of the compass invited
exploration and promised adventure. That white road running northward
and rising with the cliffs, whither did it lead, what view was outspread
where it dipped over the brow of the high table-land and disappeared
into the naked sky beyond? The billowy towans sweeping up from the beach
appeared to him like an illimitable prairie on which buffaloes and
bison might roam. Whither led the sandy track, the summit of whose long
diagonal was lost in the brightness of the morning sky? And surely that
huddled grey building against an isolated green cliff must be
grandfather's church of which his mother had often told him. Mark walked
round the stone walls that held up the little churchyard and, entering
by a gate on the farther side, he looked at the headstones and admired
the feathery tamarisks that waved over the tombs. He was reading an
inscription more legible than most on a headstone of highly polished
granite, when he heard a voice behind him say:

"You mind what you're doing with that grave. That's my granfa's grave,
that is, and if you touch it, I'll knock 'ee down."

Mark looked round and beheld a boy of about his own age and size in a
pair of worn corduroy knickerbockers and a guernsey, who was regarding
him from fierce blue eyes under a shock of curly yellow hair.

"I'm not touching it," Mark explained. Then something warned him that he
must assert himself, if he wished to hold his own with this boy, and he
added:

"But if I want to touch it, I will."

"Will 'ee? I say you won't do no such a thing then."

Mark seized the top of the headstone as firmly as his small hands would
allow him and invited the boy to look what he was doing.

"Lev go," the boy commanded.

"I won't," said Mark.

"I'll make 'ee lev go."

"All right, make me."

The boy punched Mark's shoulder, and Mark punched blindly back, hitting
his antagonist such a little way above the belt as to lay himself under
the imputation of a foul blow. The boy responded by smacking Mark's face
with his open palm; a moment later they were locked in a close struggle,
heaving and panting and pushing until both of them tripped on the low
railing of a grave and rolled over into a carefully tended bed of
primroses, whence they were suddenly jerked to their feet, separated,
and held at arm's length by an old man with a grey beard and a small
round hole in the left temple.

"I'll learn you to scat up my tombs," said the old man shaking them
violently. "'Tisn't the first time I've spoken to you, Cass Dale, and
who's this? Who's this boy?"

"Oh, my gosh, look behind 'ee, Mr. Timbury. The bullocks is coming into
the churchyard."

Mr. Timbury loosed his hold on the two boys as he turned, and Cass Dale
catching hold of Mark's hand shouted:

"Come on, run, or he'll have us again."

They were too quick for the old man's wooden leg, and scrambling over
the wall by the south porch of the church they were soon out of danger
on the beach below.

"My gosh, I never heard him coming. If I hadn't have thought to sing out
about the bullocks coming, he'd have laid that stick round us sure
enough. He don't care where he hits anybody, old man Timbury don't. I
belong to hear him tap-tapping along with his old wooden stump, but darn
'ee I never heard 'un coming this time."

The old man was leaning over the churchyard wall, shaking his stick and
abusing them with violent words.

"That's fine language for a sexton," commented Cass Dale. "I'd be
ashamed to swear like that, I would. You wouldn't hear my father swear
like that. My father's a local preacher."

"So's mine," said Mark.

"Is he? Where to?"

"London."

"A minister, is he?"

"No, he's a priest."

"Does he kiss the Pope's toe? My gosh, if the Pope asked me to kiss his
toe, I'd soon tell him to kiss something else, I would."

"My father doesn't kiss the Pope's toe," said Mark.

"I reckon he does then," Cass replied. "Passon Trehawke don't though.
Passon Trehawke's some fine old chap. My father said he'd lev me go
church of a morning sometimes if I'd a mind. My father belongs to come
himself to the Harvest Home, but my granfa never came to church at all
so long as he was alive. 'Time enough when I'm dead for that' he used to
say. He was a big man down to the Chapel, my granfa was. Mostly when he
did preach the maids would start screeching, so I've heard tell. But he
were too old for preaching when I knawed 'un."

"My grandfather is the priest here," said Mark.

"There isn't no priest to Nancepean. Only Passon Trehawke."

"My grandfather's name is Trehawke."

"Is it, by gosh? Well, why for do 'ee call him a priest? He isn't a
priest."

"Yes, he is."

"I say he isn't then. A parson isn't a priest. When I'm grown up I'm
going to be a minister. What are you going to be?"

Mark had for some time past intended to be a keeper at the Zoological
Gardens, but after his adventure with the wild beast in the thicket and
this encounter with the self-confident Cass Dale he decided that he
would not be a keeper but a parson. He informed Cass of his intention.

"Well, if you're a parson and I'm a minister," said Cass, "I'll bet
everyone comes to listen to me preaching and none of 'em don't go to
hear you."

"I wouldn't care if they didn't," Mark affirmed.

"You wouldn't care if you had to preach to a parcel of empty chairs and
benches?" exclaimed Cass.

"St. Francis preached to the trees," said Mark. "And St. Anthony
preached to the fishes."

"They must have been a couple of loonies."

"They were saints," Mark insisted.

"Saints, were they? Well, my father doesn't think much of saints. My
father says he reckons saints is the same as other people, only a bit
worse if anything. Are you saved?"

"What from?" Mark asked.

"Why, from Hell of course. What else would you be saved from?"

"You might be saved from a wild beast," Mark pointed out. "I saw a wild
beast this morning. A wild beast with a long nose and a sort of grey
colour."

"That wasn't a wild beast. That was an old badger."

"Well, isn't a badger a wild beast?"

Cass Dale laughed scornfully.

"My gosh, if that isn't a good one! I suppose you'd say a fox was a wild
beast?"

"No, I shouldn't," said Mark, repressing an inclination to cry, so much
mortified was he by Cass Dale's contemptuous tone.

"All the same," Cass went on. "It don't do to play around with badgers.
There was a chap over to Lanbaddern who was chased right across the Rose
one evening by seven badgers. He was in a muck of sweat when he got
home. But one old badger isn't nothing."

Mark had been counting on his adventure with the wild beast to justify
his long absence should he be reproached by his mother on his return to
the Vicarage. The way it had been disposed of by Cass Dale as an old
badger made him wonder if after all it would be accepted as such a good
excuse.

"I ought to be going home," he said. "But I don't think I remember the
way."

"To Passon Trehawke's?"

Mark nodded.

"I'll show 'ee," Cass volunteered, and he led the way past the mouth of
the stream to the track half way up the slope of the valley.

"Ever eat furze flowers?" asked Cass, offering Mark some that he had
pulled off in passing. "Kind of nutty taste they've got, I reckon. I
belong to eat them most days."

Mark acquired the habit and agreed with Cass that the blossoms were
delicious.

"Only you don't want to go eating everything you see," Cass warned him.
"I reckon you'd better always ask me before you eat anything. But furze
flowers is all right. I've eaten thousands. Next Friday's Good Friday."

"I know," said Mark reverently.

"We belong to get limpets every Good Friday. Are you coming with me?"

"Won't I be in church?" Mark inquired with memories of Good Friday in
Lima Street.

"Yes, I suppose they'll have some sort of a meeting down Church," said
Cass. "But you can come afterward. I'll wait for 'ee in Dollar Cove.
That's the next cove to Church Cove on the other side of the Castle
Cliff, and there's some handsome cave there. Years ago my granfa knawed
a chap who saw a mermaid combing out her hair in Dollar Cove. But
there's no mermaids been seen lately round these parts. My father says
he reckons since they scat up the apple orchards and give over drinking
cider they won't see no more mermaids to Nancepean. Have you signed the
pledge?"

"What's that?" Mark asked.

"My gosh, don't you know what the pledge is? Why, that's when you put a
blue ribbon in your buttonhole and swear you won't drink nothing all
your days."

"But you'd die," Mark objected. "People must drink."

"Water, yes, but there's no call for any one to drink anything only
water. My father says he reckons more folk have gone to hell from drink
than anything. You ought to hear him preach about drink. Why, when it
gets known in the village that Sam Dale's going to preach on drink there
isn't a seat down Chapel. Well, I tell 'ee he frightened me last time I
sat under him. That's why old man Timbury has it in for me whenever he
gets the chance."

Mark looked puzzled.

"Old man Timbury keeps the Hanover Inn. And he reckons my pa's preaching
spoils his trade for a week. That's why he's sexton to the church. 'Tis
the only way he can get even with the chapel folk. He used to be in the
Navy, and he lost his leg and got that hole in his head in a war with
the Rooshians. You'll hear him talking big about the Rooshians
sometimes. My father says anybody listening to old Steve Timbury would
think he'd fought with the Devil, instead of a lot of poor leary
Rooshians."

Mark was so much impressed by the older boy's confident chatter that
when he arrived back at the Vicarage and found his mother at breakfast
he tried the effect of an imitation of it upon her.

"Darling boy, you mustn't excite yourself too much," she warned him. "Do
try to eat a little more and talk a little less."

"But I can go out again with Cass Dale, can't I, mother, as soon as I've
finished my breakfast? He said he'd wait for me and he's going to show
me where we might find some silver dollars. He says they're five times
as big as a shilling and he's going to show me where there's a fox's
hole on the cliffs and he's . . ."

"But, Mark dear, don't forget," interrupted his mother who was feeling
faintly jealous of this absorbing new friend, "don't forget that I can
show you lots of the interesting things to see round here. I was a
little girl here myself and used to play with Cass Dale's father when he
was a little boy no bigger than Cass."

Just then grandfather came into the room and Mark was instantly dumb; he
had never been encouraged to talk much at breakfast in Lima Street. He
did, however, eye his grandfather from over the top of his cup, and he
found him less alarming in the morning than he had supposed him to be
last night. Parson Trehawke kept reaching across the table for the
various things he wanted until his daughter jumped up and putting her
arms round his neck said:

"Dearest father, why don't you ask Mark or me to pass you what you
want?"

"So long alone. So long alone," murmured Parson Trehawke with an
embarrassed smile and Mark observed with a thrill that when he smiled he
looked exactly like his mother, and had Mark but known it exactly like
himself.

"And it's so wonderful to be back here," went on Mrs. Lidderdale, "with
everything looking just the same. As for Mark, he's so happy that--Mark,
do tell grandfather how much you're enjoying yourself."

Mark gulped several times, and finally managed to mutter a confirmation
of his mother's statement.

"And he's already made friends with Cass Dale."

"He's intelligent but like his father he thinks he knows more than he
does," commented Parson Trehawke. "However, he'll make quite a good
companion for this young gentleman."

As soon as breakfast was over Mark rushed out to join Cass Dale, who
sitting crosslegged under an ilex-tree was peeling a pithy twig for a
whistle.

CHAPTER VII

LIFE AT NANCEPEAN

For six years Mark lived with his mother and his grandfather at
Nancepean, hearing nothing of his father except that he had gone out as
a missionary to the diocese of some place in Africa he could never
remember, so little interested was he in his father. His education was
shared between his two guardians, or rather his academic education; the
real education came either from what he read for himself in his
grandfather's ancient library of from what he learnt of Cass Dale, who
was much more than merely informative in the manner of a sixpenny
encyclopaedia. The Vicar, who made himself responsible for the Latin and
later on for the Greek, began with Horace, his own favourite author,
from the rapid translation aloud of whose Odes and Epodes one after
another he derived great pleasure, though it is doubtful if his grandson
would have learnt much Latin if Mrs. Lidderdale had not supplemented
Horace with the Primer and Henry's Exercises. However, if Mark did not
acquire a vocabulary, he greatly enjoyed listening to his grandfather's
melodious voice chanting forth that sonorous topography of Horace, while
the green windows of the study winked every other minute from the flight
past of birds in the garden. His grandfather would stop and ask what
bird it was, because he loved birds even better than he loved Horace.
And if Mark was tired of Latin he used to say that he wasn't sure, but
that he thought it was a lesser-spotted woodpecker or a shrike or any
one of the birds that experience taught him would always distract his
grandfather's attention from anything that he was doing in order that he
might confirm or contradict the rumour. People who are much interested
in birds are less sociable than other naturalists. Their hobby demands a
silent and solitary pursuit of knowledge, and the presence of human
beings is prejudicial to their success. Parson Trehawke found that
Mark's company was not so much of a handicap as he would have supposed;
on the contrary he began to find it an advantage, because his grandson's
eyes were sharp and his observation if he chose accurate: Parson
Trehawke, who was growing old, began to rely upon his help. It was only
when Mark was tired of listening to the translation of Horace that he
called thrushes shrikes: when he was wandering over the cliffs or
tramping beside his grandfather across the Rhos, he was severely
sceptical of any rarity and used to make short work of the old
gentleman's Dartford warblers and fire-crested wrens.

It was usually over birds if ever Parson Trehawke quarrelled with his
parishioners. Few of them attended his services, but they spoke well of
him personally, and they reckoned that he was a fine old boy was Parson.
They would not however abandon their beastly habit of snaring wildfowl
in winter with fish-hooks, and many a time had Mark seen his grandfather
stand on the top of Pendhu Cliff, a favourite place to bait the hooks,
cursing the scattered white houses of the village below as if it were
one of the cities of the plain.

Although the people of Nancepean except for a very few never attended
the services in their church they liked to be baptized and married
within its walls, and not for anything would they have been buried
outside the little churchyard by the sea. About three years after Mark's
arrival his grandfather had a great fight over a burial. The blacksmith,
a certain William Day, died, and although he had never been inside St.
Tugdual's Church since he was married, his relations set great store by
his being buried there and by Parson Trehawke's celebrating the last
rites.

"Never," vowed the Parson. "Never while I live will I lay that
blackguard in my churchyard."

The elders of the village remonstrated with him, pointing out that
although the late Mr. Day was a pillar of the Chapel it had ever been
the custom in Nancepean to let the bones of the most obstinate Wesleyan
rest beside his forefathers.

"Wesleyan!" shouted the Parson. "Who cares if he was a Jew? I won't have
my churchyard defiled by that blackguard's corpse. Only a week before he
died, I saw him with my own eyes fling two or three pieces of white-hot
metal to some ducks that were looking for worms in the ditch outside his
smithy, and the wretched birds gobbled them down and died in agony. I
cursed him where he stood, and the judgment of God has struck him low,
and never shall he rest in holy ground if I can keep him out of it."

The elders of the village expressed their astonishment at Mr. Trehawke's
unreasonableness. William Day had been a God-fearing and upright man all
his life with no scandal upon his reputation unless it were the rumour
that he had got with child a half lunatic servant in his house, and that
was never proved. Was a man to be refused Christian burial because he
had once played a joke on some ducks? And what would Parson Trehawke
have said to Jesus Christ about the joke he played on the Gadarene
swine?

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