THE ALTAR STEPS
BY
COMPTON MACKENZIE
_Author of "Carnival," "Youth's Encounter,"
"Poor Relations," etc._
NEW YORK
GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY
1922
_The only portrait in this book is
of one who is now dead_
THIS BOOK, THE PRELUDE TO
_The Parson's Progress_
I INSCRIBE
WITH DEEPEST AFFECTION
TO MY MOTHER
_S. Valentine's Day, 1922._
CONTENTS
I The Bishop's Shadow
II The Lima Street Mission
III Religious Education
IV Husband and Wife
V Palm Sunday
VI Nancepean
VII Life at Nancepean
VIII The Wreck
IX Slowbridge
X Whit-Sunday
XI Meade Cantorum
XII The Pomeroy Affair
XIII Wych-on-the-Wold
XIV St. Mark's Day
XV The Scholarship
XVI Chatsea
XVII The Drunken Priest
XVIII Silchester College Mission
XIX The Altar for the Dead
XX Father Rowley
XXI Points of View
XXII Sister Esther Magdalene
XXIII Malford Abbey
XXIV The Order of St. George
XXV Suscipe Me, Domine
XXVI Addition
XXVII Multiplication
XXVIII Division
XXIX Subtraction
XXX The New Bishop of Silchester
XXXI Silchester Theological College
XXXII Ember Days
THE ALTAR STEPS
CHAPTER I
THE BISHOP'S SHADOW
Frightened by some alarm of sleep that was forgotten in the moment of
waking, a little boy threw back the bedclothes and with quick heart and
breath sat listening to the torrents of darkness that went rolling by.
He dared not open his mouth to scream lest he should be suffocated; he
dared not put out his arm to search for the bell-rope lest he should be
seized; he dared not hide beneath the blankets lest he should be kept
there; he could do nothing except sit up trembling in a vain effort to
orientate himself. Had the room really turned upside down? On an impulse
of terror he jumped back from the engorging night and bumped his
forehead on one of the brass knobs of the bedstead. With horror he
apprehended that what he had so often feared had finally come to pass.
An earthquake had swallowed up London in spite of everybody's assurance
that London could not be swallowed up by earthquakes. He was going down
down to smoke and fire . . . or was it the end of the world? The quick
and the dead . . . skeletons . . . thousands and thousands of skeletons.
. . .
"Guardian Angel!" he shrieked.
Now surely that Guardian Angel so often conjured must appear. A shaft of
golden candlelight flickered through the half open door. The little boy
prepared an attitude to greet his Angel that was a compound of the
suspicion and courtesy with which he would have welcomed a new governess
and the admiring fellowship with which he would have thrown a piece of
bread to a swan.
"Are you awake, Mark?" he heard his mother whisper outside.
He answered with a cry of exultation and relief.
"Oh, Mother," he sighed, clinging to the soft sleeves of her
dressing-gown. "I thought it was being the end of the world."
"What made you think that, my precious?"
"I don't know. I just woke up, and the room was upside down. And first I
thought it was an earthquake, and then I thought it was the Day of
Judgment." He suddenly began to chuckle to himself. "How silly of me,
Mother. Of course it couldn't be the Day of Judgment, because it's
night, isn't it? It couldn't ever be the Day of Judgment in the night,
could it?" he continued hopefully.
Mrs. Lidderdale did not hesitate to reassure her small son on this
point. She had no wish to add another to that long list of nightly fears
and fantasies which began with mad dogs and culminated in the Prince of
Darkness himself.
"The room looks quite safe now, doesn't it?" Mark theorized.
"It is quite safe, darling."
"Do you think I could have the gas lighted when you really _must_ go?"
"Just a little bit for once."
"Only a little bit?" he echoed doubtfully. A very small illumination was
in its eerie effect almost worse than absolute darkness.
"It isn't healthy to sleep with a great deal of light," said his mother.
"Well, how much could I have? Just for once not a crocus, but a tulip.
And of course not a violet."
Mark always thought of the gas-jets as flowers. The dimmest of all was
the violet; followed by the crocus, the tulip, and the water-lily; the
last a brilliant affair with wavy edges, and sparkling motes dancing
about in the blue water on which it swam.
"No, no, dearest boy. You really can't have as much as that. And now
snuggle down and go to sleep again. I wonder what made you wake up?"
Mark seized upon this splendid excuse to detain his mother for awhile.
"Well, it wasn't ergzackly a dream," he began to improvise. "Because I
was awake. And I heard a terrible plump and I said 'what can that be?'
and then I was frightened and. . . ."
"Yes, well, my sweetheart, you must tell Mother in the morning."
Mark perceived that he had been too slow in working up to his crisis and
desperately he sought for something to arrest the attention of his
beloved audience.
"Perhaps my Guardian Angel was beside me all the time, because, look!
here's a feather."
He eyed his mother, hoping against hope that she would pretend to accept
his suggestion; but alas, she was severely unimaginative.
"Now, darling, don't talk foolishly. You know perfectly that is only a
feather which has worked its way out of your pillow."
"Why?"
The monosyllable had served Mark well in its time; but even as he fell
back upon this stale resource he knew it had failed at last.
"I can't stay to explain 'why' now; but if you try to think you'll
understand why."
"Mother, if I don't have any gas at all, will you sit with me in the
dark for a little while, a tiny little while, and stroke my forehead
where I bumped it on the knob of the bed? I really did bump it quite
hard--I forgot to tell you that. I forgot to tell you because when it
was you I was so excited that I forgot."
"Now listen, Mark. Mother wants you to be a very good boy and turn over
and go to sleep. Father is very worried and very tired, and the Bishop
is coming tomorrow."
"Will he wear a hat like the Bishop who came last Easter? Why is he
coming?"
"No darling, he's not that kind of bishop. I can't explain to you why
he's coming, because you wouldn't understand; but we're all very
anxious, and you must be good and brave and unselfish. Now kiss me and
turn over."
Mark flung his arms round his mother's neck, and thrilled by a sudden
desire to sacrifice himself murmured that he would go to sleep in the
dark.
"In the quite dark," he offered, dipping down under the clothes so as to
be safe by the time the protecting candle-light wavered out along the
passage and the soft closing of his mother's door assured him that come
what might there was only a wall between him and her.
"And perhaps she won't go to sleep before I go to sleep," he hoped.
At first Mark meditated upon bishops. The perversity of night thoughts
would not allow him to meditate upon the pictures of some child-loving
bishop like St. Nicolas, but must needs fix his contemplation upon a
certain Bishop of Bingen who was eaten by rats. Mark could not remember
why he was eaten by rats, but he could with dreadful distinctness
remember that the prelate escaped to a castle on an island in the middle
of the Rhine, and that the rats swam after him and swarmed in by every
window until his castle was--ugh!--Mark tried to banish from his mind
the picture of the wicked Bishop Hatto and the rats, millions of them,
just going to eat him up. Suppose a lot of rats came swarming up Notting
Hill and unanimously turned to the right into Notting Dale and ate him?
An earthquake would be better than that. Mark began to feel thoroughly
frightened again; he wondered if he dared call out to his mother and put
forward the theory that there actually was a rat in his room. But he had
promised her to be brave and unselfish, and . . . there was always the
evening hymn to fall back upon.
_Now the day is over,_
_Night is drawing nigh,_
_Shadows of the evening_
_Steal across the sky._
Mark thought of a beautiful evening in the country as beheld in a Summer
Number, more of an afternoon really than an evening, with trees making
shadows right across a golden field, and spotted cows in the foreground.
It was a blissful and completely soothing picture while it lasted; but
it soon died away, and he was back in the midway of a London night with
icy stretches of sheet to right and left of him instead of golden
fields.
_Now the darkness gathers,_
_Stars begin to peep,_
_Birds and beasts and flowers_
_Soon will be asleep._
But rats did not sleep; they were at their worst and wake-fullest in the
night time.
_Jesu, give the weary_
_Calm and sweet repose,_
_With thy tenderest blessing_
_May mine eyelids close._
Mark waited a full five seconds in the hope that he need not finish the
hymn; but when he found that he was not asleep after five seconds he
resumed:
_Grant to little children_
_Visions bright of Thee;_
_Guard the sailors tossing_
_On the deep blue sea._
Mark envied the sailors.
_Comfort every sufferer_
_Watching late in pain._
This was a most encouraging couplet. Mark did not suppose that in the
event of a great emergency--he thanked Mrs. Ewing for that long and
descriptive word--the sufferers would be able to do much for him; but
the consciousness that all round him in the great city they were lying
awake at this moment was most helpful. At this point he once more
waited five seconds for sleep to arrive. The next couplet was less
encouraging, and he would have been glad to miss it out.
_Those who plan some evil_
_From their sin restrain._
Yes, but prayers were not always answered immediately. For instance he
was still awake. He hurried on to murmur aloud in fervour:
_Through the long night watches_
_May Thine Angels spread_
_Their white wings above me,_
_Watching round my bed._
A delicious idea, and even more delicious was the picture contained in
the next verse.
_When the morning wakens,_
_Then may I arise_
_Pure, and fresh, and sinless_
_In Thy Holy Eyes._
_Glory to the Father,_
_Glory to the Son,_
_And to thee, blest Spirit,_
_Whilst all ages run. Amen._
Mark murmured the last verse with special reverence in the hope that by
doing so he should obtain a speedy granting of the various requests in
the earlier part of the hymn.
In the morning his mother put out Sunday clothes for him.
"The Bishop is coming to-day," she explained.
"But it isn't going to be like Sunday?" Mark inquired anxiously. An
extra Sunday on top of such a night would have been hard to bear.
"No, but I want you to look nice."
"I can play with my soldiers?"
"Oh, yes, you can play with your soldiers."
"I won't bang, I'll only have them marching."
"No, dearest, don't bang. And when the Bishop comes to lunch I want you
not to ask questions. Will you promise me that?"
"Don't bishops like to be asked questions?"
"No, darling. They don't."
Mark registered this episcopal distaste in his memory beside other facts
such as that cats object to having their tails pulled.