The Altar Steps by Compton MacKenzie

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Yours very truly,

Eustace Pomeroy.

P.S. I suggest that instead of L6 6s. 0d. I should pay L5 5s. 0d.
for this term, plus, of course, the usual extras.

The pulse in Mr. Lidderdale's temple had never throbbed so remarkably
as while Mark was reading this letter.

"A fine thing," he ranted, "if this story gets about in Slowbridge. A
fine reward for all my kindness if you ruin my school. As for this man
Ogilvie, I'll sue him for damages. Don't look at me with that expression
of bestial defiance. Do you hear? What prevents my thrashing you as you
deserve? What prevents me, I say?"

But Mark was not paying any attention to his uncle's fury; he was
thinking about the unfortunate martyr under lock and key in The Limes,
Cranborne Road, Slowbridge. He was wondering what would be the effect of
this violent removal to the Antipodes and how that fundamental weakness
of character would fare if Cyril were left to himself at his age.

"I think Mr. Pomeroy is a ruffian," said Mark. "Don't you, Uncle Henry?
If he writes to the Bishop about Mr. Ogilvie, I shall write to the
Bishop about him. I hate Protestants. I hate them."

"There's your father to the life. You'd like to burn them, wouldn't
you?"

"Yes, I would," Mark declared.

"You'd like to burn me, I suppose?"

"Not you in particular."

"Will you listen to him, Helen," he shouted to his sister. "Come here
and listen to him. Listen to the boy we took in and educated and clothed
and fed, listen to him saying he'd like to burn his uncle. Into Mr.
Hitchcock's office you go at once. No more education if this is what it
leads to. Read that letter, Helen, look at that book, Helen. _Catholic
Prayers for Church of England People by the Reverend A.H. Stanton._ Look
at this book, Helen. _The Catholic Religion by Vernon Staley._ No wonder
you hate Protestants, you ungrateful boy. No wonder you're longing to
burn your uncle and aunt. It'll be in the _Slowbridge Herald_ to-morrow.
Headlines! Ruin! They'll think I'm a Jesuit in disguise. I ought to have
got a very handsome sum of money for the good-will. Go back to your
class-room, and if you have a spark of affection in your nature, don't
brag about this to the other boys."

Mark, pondering all the morning the best thing to do for Cyril,
remembered that a boy called Hacking lived at The Laurels, 36, Cranborne
Road. He did not like Hacking, but wishing to utilize his back garden
for the purpose of communicating with the prisoner he made himself
agreeable to him in the interval between first and second school.

"Hullo, Hacking," he began. "I say, do you want a cricket bat? I shan't
be here next summer, so you may as well have mine."

Hacking looked at Mark suspicious of some hidden catch that would make
him appear a fool.

"No, really I'm not ragging," said Mark. "I'll bring it round to you
after dinner. I'll be at your place about a quarter to two. Wait for me,
won't you?"

Hacking puzzled his brains to account for this generous whim, and at
last decided that Mark must be "gone" on his sister Edith. He supposed
that he ought to warn Edith to be about when Mark called; if the bat was
not forthcoming he could easily prevent a meeting. The bat however
turned out to be much better than he expected, and Hacking was on the
point of presenting Cressida to Troilus when Troilus said:

"That's your garden at the back, isn't it?"

Hacking admitted that it was.

"It looks rather decent."

Hacking allowed modestly that it wasn't bad.

"My father's rather dead nuts on gardening. So's my kiddy sister," he
added.

"I vote we go out there," Mark suggested.

"Shall I give a yell to my kiddy sister?" asked Pandarus.

"Good lord, no," Mark exclaimed. "Don't the Pomeroys live next door to
you? Look here, Hacking, I want to speak to Cyril Pomeroy."

"He was absent this morning."

Mark considered Hacking as a possible adjutant to the enterprise he was
plotting. That he finally decided to admit Hacking to his confidence was
due less to the favourable result of the scrutiny than to the fact that
unless he confided in Hacking he would find it difficult to communicate
with Cyril and impossible to manage his escape. Mark aimed as high as
this. His first impulse had been to approach the Vicar of Meade
Cantorum, but on second thoughts he had rejected him in favour of Mr.
Dorward, who was not so likely to suffer from respect for paternal
authority.

"Look here, Hacking, will you swear not to say a word about what I'm
going to tell you?"

"Of course," said Hacking, who scenting a scandal would have promised
much more than this to obtain the details of it.

"What will you swear by?"

"Oh, anything," Hacking offered, without the least hesitation. "I don't
mind what it is."

"Well, what do you consider the most sacred thing in the world?"

If Hacking had known himself, he would have said food; not knowing
himself, he suggested the Bible.

"I suppose you know that if you swear something on the Bible and break
your oath you can be put in prison?" Mark demanded sternly.

"Yes, of course."

The oath was administered, and Hacking waited goggle-eyed for the
revelation.

"Is that all?" he asked when Mark stopped.

"Well, it's enough, isn't it? And now you've got to help him to escape."

"But I didn't swear I'd do that," argued Hacking.

"All right then. Don't. I thought you'd enjoy it."

"We should get into a row. There'd be an awful shine."

"Who's to know it's us? I've got a friend in the country. And I shall
telegraph to him and ask if he'll hide Pomeroy."

Mark was not sufficiently sure of Hacking's discretion or loyalty to
mention Dorward's name. After all this business wasn't just a rag.

"The first thing is for you to go out in the garden and attract
Pomeroy's attention. He's locked in his bedroom."

"But I don't know which is his bedroom," Hacking objected.

"Well, you don't suppose the whole family are locked in their bedrooms,
do you?" asked Mark scornfully.

"But how do you know his bedroom is on this side of the house?"

"I don't," said Mark. "That's what I want to find out. If it's in the
front of the house, I shan't want your help, especially as you're so
funky."

Hacking went out into the garden, and presently he came back with the
news that Pomeroy was waiting outside to talk to Mark over the wall.

"Waiting outside?" Mark repeated. "What do you mean, waiting outside?
How can he be waiting outside when he's locked in his bedroom?"

"But he's not," said Hacking.

Sure enough, when Mark went out he found Cyril astride the party wall
between the two gardens waiting for him.

"You can't let your father drag you off to Australia like this," Mark
argued. "You'll go all to pieces there. You'll lose your faith, and take
to drink, and--you must refuse to go."

Cyril smiled weakly and explained to Mark that when once his father had
made up his mind to do something it was impossible to stop him.

Thereupon Mark explained his scheme.

"I'll get an answer from Dorward to-night and you must escape to-morrow
afternoon as soon as it's dark. Have you got a rope ladder?"

Cyril smiled more feebly than ever.

"No, I suppose you haven't. Then what you must do is tear up your sheets
and let yourself down into the garden. Hacking will whistle three times
if all's clear, and then you must climb over into his garden and run as
hard as you can to the corner of the road where I'll be waiting for you
in a cab. I'll go up to London with you and see you off from Waterloo,
which is the station for Green Lanes where Father Dorward lives. You
take a ticket to Galton, and I expect he'll meet you, or if he doesn't,
it's only a seven mile walk. I don't know the way, but you can ask when
you get to Galton. Only if you could find your way without asking it
would be better, because if you're pursued and you're seen asking the
way you'll be caught more easily. Now I must rush off and borrow some
money from Mr. Ogilvie. No, perhaps it would rouse suspicions if I were
absent from afternoon school. My uncle would be sure to guess,
and--though I don't think he would--he might try to lock me up in my
room. But I say," Mark suddenly exclaimed in indignation, "how on earth
did you manage to come and talk to me out here?"

Cyril explained that he had only been locked in his bedroom last night
when his father was so angry. He had freedom to move about in the house
and garden, and, he added to Mark's annoyance, there would be no need
for him to use rope ladders or sheets to escape. If Mark would tell him
what time to be at the corner of the road and would wait for him a
little while in case his father saw him going out and prevented him, he
would easily be able to escape.

"Then I needn't have told Hacking," said Mark. "However, now I have told
him, he must do something, or else he's sure to let out what he knows. I
wish I knew where to get the money for the fare."

"I've got a pound in my money box."

"Have you?" said Mark, a little mortified, but at the same time relieved
that he could keep Mr. Ogilvie from being involved. "Well, that ought to
be enough. I've got enough to send a telegram to Dorward. As soon as I
get his answer I'll send you word by Hacking. Now don't hang about in
the garden all the afternoon or your people will begin to think
something's up. If you could, it would be a good thing for you to be
heard praying and groaning in your room."

Cyril smiled his feeble smile, and Mark felt inclined to abandon him to
his fate; but he decided on reflection that the importance of
vindicating the claims of the Church to a persecuted son was more
important than the foolishness and the feebleness of the son.

"Do you want me to do anything more?" Hacking asked.

Mark suggested that Hacking's name and address should be given for Mr.
Dorward's answer, but this Hacking refused.

"If a telegram came to our house, everybody would want to read it. Why
can't it be sent to you?"

Mark sighed for his fellow-conspirator's stupidity. To this useless clod
he had presented a valuable bat.

"All right," he said impatiently, "you needn't do anything more except
tell Pomeroy what time he's to be at the corner of the road to-morrow."

"I'll do that, Lidderdale."

"I should think you jolly well would," Mark exclaimed scornfully.

Mark spent a long time over the telegram to Dorward; in the end he
decided that it would be safer to assume that the priest would shelter
and hide Cyril rather than take the risk of getting an answer. The final
draft was as follows:--

Dorward Green Lanes Medworth Hants

Am sending persecuted Catholic boy by 7.30 from Waterloo Tuesday
please send conveyance Mark Lidderdale.

Mark only had eightpence, and this message would cost tenpence. He took
out the _am_, changed _by 7.30 from Waterloo_ to _arriving 9.35_ and
_send conveyance_ to _meet_. If he had only borrowed Cyril's sovereign,
he could have been more explicit. However, he flattered himself that he
was getting full value for his eightpence. He then worked out the cost
of Cyril's escape.

s. d.
Third Class single to Paddington 1 6
Third Class return to Paddington (for self) 2 6
Third Class single Waterloo to Galton 3 11
Cab from Paddington to Waterloo 3 6?
Cab from Waterloo to Paddington (for self) 3 6?
Sandwiches for Cyril and Self 1 0
Ginger-beer for Cyril and Self (4 bottles) 8
________
Total 16 7

The cab of course might cost more, and he must take back the eightpence
out of it for himself. But Cyril would have at least one and sixpence
in his pocket when he arrived, which he could put in the offertory at
the Mass of thanksgiving for his escape that he would attend on the
following morning. Cyril would be useful to old Dorward, and he (Mark)
would give him some tips on serving if they had an empty compartment
from Slowbridge to Paddington. Mark's original intention had been to
wait at the corner of Cranborne Road in a closed cab like the proverbial
postchaise of elopements, but he discarded this idea for reasons of
economy. He hoped that Cyril would not get frightened on the way to the
station and turn back. Perhaps after all it would be wiser to order a
cab and give up the ginger-beer, or pay for the ginger-beer with the
money for the telegram. Once inside a cab Cyril was bound to go on.
Hacking might be committed more completely to the enterprise by waiting
inside until he arrived with Cyril. It was a pity that Cyril was not
locked in his room, and yet when it came to it he would probably have
funked letting himself down from the window by knotted sheets. Mark
walked home with Hacking after school, to give his final instructions
for the following day.

"I'm telling you now," he said, "because we oughtn't to be seen together
at all to-morrow, in case of arousing suspicion. You must get hold of
Pomeroy and tell him to run to the corner of the road at half-past-five,
and jump straight into the fly that'll be waiting there with you
inside."

"But where will you be?"

"I shall be waiting outside the ticket barrier with the tickets."

"Supposing he won't?"

"I'll risk seeing him once more. Go and ask if you can speak to him a
minute, and tell him to come out in the garden presently. Say you've
knocked a ball over or something and will Master Cyril throw it back. I
say, we might really put a message inside a ball and throw it over. That
was the way the Duc de Beaufort escaped in _Twenty Years After_."

Hacking looked blankly at Mark.

"But it's dark and wet," he objected. "I shouldn't knock a ball over on
a wet evening like this."

"Well, the skivvy won't think of that, and Pomeroy will guess that
we're trying to communicate with him."

Mark thought how odd it was that Hacking should be so utterly blind to
the romance of the enterprise. After a few more objections which were
disposed of by Mark, Hacking agreed to go next door and try to get the
prisoner into the garden. He succeeded in this, and Mark rated Cyril for
not having given him the sovereign yesterday.

"However, bunk in and get it now, because I shan't see you again till
to-morrow at the station, and I must have some money to buy the
tickets."

He explained the details of the escape and exacted from Cyril a promise
not to back out at the last moment.

"You've got nothing to do. It's as simple as A B C. It's too simple,
really, to be much of a rag. However, as it isn't a rag, but serious, I
suppose we oughtn't to grumble. Now, you are coming, aren't you?"

Cyril promised that nothing but physical force should prevent him.

"If you funk, don't forget that you'll have betrayed your faith and
. . ."

At this moment Mark in his enthusiasm slipped off the wall, and after
uttering one more solemn injunction against backing out at the last
minute he left Cyril to the protection of Angels for the next
twenty-four hours.

Although he would never have admitted as much, Mark was rather
astonished when Cyril actually did present himself at Slowbridge station
in time to catch the 5.47 train up to town. Their compartment was not
empty, so that Mark was unable to give Cyril that lesson in serving at
the altar which he had intended to give him. Instead, as Cyril seemed in
his reaction to the excitement of the escape likely to burst into tears
at any moment, he drew for him a vivid picture of the enjoyable life to
which the train was taking him.

"Father Dorward says that the country round Green Lanes is ripping. And
his church is Norman. I expect he'll make you his ceremonarius. You're
an awfully lucky chap, you know. He says that next Corpus Christi, he's
going to have Mass on the village green. Nobody will know where you
are, and I daresay later on you can become a hermit. You might become a
saint. The last English saint to be canonized was St. Thomas Cantilupe
of Hereford. But of course Charles the First ought to have been properly
canonized. By the time you die I should think we should have got back
canonization in the English Church, and if I'm alive then I'll propose
your canonization. St. Cyril Pomeroy you'd be."

Such were the bright colours in which Mark painted Cyril's future; when
he had watched him wave his farewells from the window of the departing
train at Waterloo, he felt as if he were watching the bodily assumption
of a saint.

"Where have you been all the evening?" asked Uncle Henry, when Mark came
back about nine o'clock.

"In London," said Mark.

"Your insolence is becoming insupportable. Get away to your room."

It never struck Mr. Lidderdale that his nephew was telling the truth.

The hue and cry for Cyril Pomeroy began at once, and though Mark
maintained at first that the discovery of Cyril's hiding-place was due
to nothing else except the cowardice of Hacking, who when confronted by
a detective burst into tears and revealed all he knew, he was bound to
admit afterward that, if Mr. Ogilvie had been questioned much more, he
would have had to reveal the secret himself. Mark was hurt that his
efforts to help a son of Holy Church should not be better appreciated by
Mr. Ogilvie; but he forgave his friend in view of the nuisance that it
undoubtedly must have been to have Meade Cantorum beleaguered by half a
dozen corpulent detectives. The only person in the Vicarage who seemed
to approve of what he had done was Esther; she who had always seemed to
ignore him, even sometimes in a sensitive mood to despise him, was full
of congratulations.

"How did you manage it, Mark?"

"Oh, I took a cab," said Mark modestly. "One from the corner of
Cranborne Road to Slowbridge, and another from Paddington to Waterloo.
We had some sandwiches, and a good deal of ginger-beer at Paddington
because we thought we mightn't be able to get any at Waterloo, but at
Waterloo we had some more ginger-beer. I wish I hadn't told Hacking. If
I hadn't, we should probably have pulled it off. Old Dorward was up to
anything. But Hacking is a hopeless ass."

"What does your uncle say?"

"He's rather sick," Mark admitted. "He refused to let me go to school
any more, which as you may imagine doesn't upset me very much, and I'm
to go into Hitchcock's office after Christmas. As far as I can make out
I shall be a kind of servant."

"Have you talked to Stephen about it?"

"Well, he's a bit annoyed with me about this kidnapping. I'm afraid I
have rather let him in for it. He says he doesn't mind so much if it's
kept out of the papers."

"Anyway, I think it was a sporting effort by you," said Esther. "I
wasn't particularly keen on you until you brought this off. I hate pious
boys. I wish you'd told me beforehand. I'd have loved to help."

"Would you? I say, I am sorry. I never thought of you," said Mark much
disappointed at the lost opportunity. "You'd have been much better than
that ass Hacking. If you and I had been the only people in it, I'll bet
the detectives would never have found him."

"And what's going to happen to the youth now?"

"Oh, his father's going to take him to Australia as he arranged. They
sail to-morrow. There's one thing," Mark added with a kind of gloomy
relish. "He's bound to go to the bad, and perhaps that'll be a lesson to
his father."

The hope of the Vicar of Meade Cantorum and equally it may be added the
hope of Mr. Lidderdale that the affair would be kept out of the papers
was not fulfilled. The day after Mr. Pomeroy and his son sailed from
Tilbury the following communication appeared in _The Times_:

Sir,--The accompanying letter was handed to me by my friend the
Reverend Eustace Pomeroy to be used as I thought fit and subject to
only one stipulation--that it should not be published until he and
his son were out of England. As President of the Society for the
Protection of the English Church against Romish Aggression I feel
that it is my duty to lay the facts before the country. I need
scarcely add that I have been at pains to verify the surprising and
alarming accusations made by a clergyman against two other
clergymen, and I earnestly request the publicity of your columns
for what I venture to believe is positive proof of the dangerous
conspiracy existing in our very midst to romanize the Established
Church of England. I shall be happy to produce for any of your
readers who find Mr. Pomeroy's story incredible at the close of the
nineteenth century the signed statements of witnesses and other
documentary evidence.

I am, Sir,

Your obedient servant,

Danvers.

The Right Honble. the Lord Danvers, P.C.

President of the Society for the Protection of the English Church
against Romish Aggression.

My Lord,

I have to bring to your notice as President of the S.P.E. C.R.A.
what I venture to assert is one of the most daring plots to subvert
home and family life in the interests of priestcraft that has ever
been discovered. In taking this step I am fully conscious of its
seriousness, and if I ask your lordship to delay taking any
measures for publicity until the unhappy principal is upon the high
seas in the guardianship of his even more unhappy father, I do so
for the sake of the wretched boy whose future has been nearly
blasted by the Jesuitical behaviour of two so-called Protestant
clergymen.

Four years ago, my lord, I retired from a lifelong career as a
missionary in New Guinea to give my children the advantages of
English education and English climate, and it is surely hard that I
should live to curse the day on which I did so. My third son Cyril
was sent to school at Haverton House, Slowbridge, to an educational
establishment kept by a Mr. Henry Lidderdale, reputed to be a
strong Evangelical and I believe I am justified in saying rightly
so reputed. At the same time I regret that Mr. Lidderdale, whose
brother was a notorious Romanizer I have since discovered, should
not have exercised more care in the supervision of his nephew, a
fellow scholar with my own son at Haverton House. It appears that
Mr. Lidderdale was so lax as to permit his nephew to frequent the
services of the Reverend Stephen Ogilvie at Meade Cantorum, where
every excess such as incense, lighted candles, mariolatry and
creeping to the cross is openly practised. The Revd. S. Ogilvie I
may add is a member of the S.S.C., that notorious secret society
whose machinations have been so often exposed and the originators
of that filthy book "The Priest in Absolution." He is also a member
of the Guild of All Souls which has for its avowed object the
restoration of the Romish doctrine of Purgatory with all its
attendant horrors, and finally I need scarcely add he is a member
of the Confraternity of the "Blessed Sacrament" which seeks openly
to popularize the idolatrous and blasphemous cult of the Mass.

Young Lidderdale presumably under the influence of this disloyal
Protestant clergyman sought to corrupt my son, and was actually so
far successful as to lure him to attend the idolatrous services at
Meade Cantorum church, which of course he was only able to do by
inventing lies and excuses to his father to account for his absence
from the simple worship to which all his life he had been
accustomed. Not content with this my unhappy son was actually
persuaded to confess his sins to this self-styled "priest"! I
wonder if he confessed the sin of deceiving his own father to
"Father" Ogilvie who supplied him with numerous Mass books, several
of which I enclose for your lordship's inspection. You will be
amused if you are not too much horrified by these puerile and
degraded works, and in one of them, impudently entitled "Catholic
Prayers for Church of England People" you will actually see in cold
print a prayer for the "Pope of Rome." This work emanates from that
hotbed of sacerdotal disloyalty, St. Alban's, Holborn.

These vile books I discovered by accident carefully hidden away in
my son's bedroom. "Facilis descensus Averni!" You will easily
imagine the humiliation of a parent who, having devoted his life to
bring the Gospel of Jesus Christ to the heathen, finds that his own
son has fallen as low as the lowest savage. As soon as I made my
discovery, I removed him from Haverton House, and warned the
proprietor of the risk he was running by not taking better care of
his pupils. Having been summoned to a conference of missionaries in
Sydney, N.S.W., I determined to take my son with me in the hope
that a long voyage in the company of a loving parent, eager to help
him back to the path of Truth and Salvation from which he had
strayed, might cure him of his idolatrous fancies, and restore him
to Jesus.

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