The Altar Steps Part 23

"Are you up at Oxford?" the priest at last inquired.

It was now or never; and Mark took the opportunity given him by that one question to tell Father Rowley twenty disjointed facts about his life, which ended with a request to be allowed to come and work at Chatsea.

"You can come and see us whenever you like," said the Missioner.

"But I don't want just to come and pay a visit," said Mark. "I really do want to be given something to do, and I shan't be any expense. I only want to keep enough money to go to Glas...o...b..ry in four years' time. If you'd only see how I got on for a month. I don't pretend I can be of any help to you. I don't suppose I can. But I do so tremendously want you to help me."

"Who did you say your father was?"

"Lidderdale, James Lidderdale. He was priest-in-charge of the Lima Street Mission, which belonged to St. Simon's, Notting Hill, in those days. St. Wilfred's, Notting Dale, it is now."

"Lidderdale," Father Rowley echoed. "I knew him. I knew him well. Lima Street. Viner's there now, a dear good fellow. So you're Lidderdale's son?"

"I say, here's my station," Mark exclaimed in despair, "and you haven't said whether I can come or not."

"Come down on Tuesday week," said Father Rowley. "Hurry up, or you'll get carried on to the next station."

Mark waved his farewell, and he knew, as he drove back on the omnibus over the rolling wold to Wych that he had this morning won something much better than a scholarship at St. Osmund's Hall.

CHAPTER XVI

CHATSEA

When Mark had been exactly a week at Chatsea he celebrated his eighteenth birthday by writing a long letter to the Rector of Wych:

St. Agnes' House,

Keppel Street,

Chatsea.

St. Mark's Day.

My dear Rector,

Thank you very much for sending me the money. I've handed it over to a splendid fellow called Gurney who keeps all the accounts (private or otherwise) in the Mission House. Poor chap, he's desperately ill with asthma, and n.o.body thinks he can live much longer. He suffers tortures, particularly at night, and as I sleep in the next room I can hear him.

You mustn't think me inconsiderate because I haven't written sooner, but I wanted to wait until I had seen a bit of this place before I wrote to you so that you might have some idea what I was doing and be able to realize that it is the one and only place where I ought to be at the moment.

But first of all before I say anything about Chatsea I want to try to express a little of what your kindness has meant to me during the last two years. I look back at myself just before my sixteenth birthday when I was feeling that I should have to run away to sea or do something mad in order to escape that solicitor's office, and I simply gasp! What and where should I be now if it hadn't been for you? You have always made light of the burden I must have been, and though I have tried to show you my grat.i.tude I'm afraid it hasn't been very successful. I'm not being very successful now in putting it into words. I know my failure to gain a scholarship at Oxford has been a great disappointment to you, especially after you had worked so hard yourself to coach me. Please don't be anxious about my letting my books go to the wall here. I had a talk about this with Father Rowley, who insisted that anything I am allowed to do in the district must only be done when I have a good morning's work with my books behind me. I quite realize the importance of a priest's education. One of the a.s.sistant priests here, a man called Snaith, took a good degree at Cambridge both in cla.s.sics and theology, so I shall have somebody to keep me on the lines. If I stay here three years and then have two years at Glas...o...b..ry I don't honestly think that I shall start off much handicapped by having missed both public school and university. I expect you're smiling to read after one week of my staying here three years! But I a.s.sure you that the moment I sat down to supper on the evening of my arrival I felt at home. I think at first they all thought I was an eager young Ritualist, but when they found that they didn't get any rises out of ragging me, they shut up.

This house is a most extraordinary place. It is an old Congregational chapel with a gallery all round which has been made into cubicles, scarcely one of which is ever empty or ever likely to be empty so far as I can see! I should think it must be rather like what the guest house of a monastery used to be like in the old days before the Reformation. The ground floor of the chapel has been turned into a gymnasium, and twice a week the apparatus is cleared away and we have a dance. Every other evening it's used furiously by Father Rowley's "boys." They're such a jolly lot, and most of them splendid gymnasts. Quite a few have become professional acrobats since they opened the gymnasium. The first morning after my arrival I asked Father Rowley if he'd got anything special for me to do and he told me to catalogue the books in his library. Everybody laughed at this, and I thought at first that some joke was intended, but when I got to his room I found it really was in utter confusion with ma.s.ses of books lying about everywhere. So I set to work pretty hard and after about three days I got them catalogued and in good order. When I told him I had finished he looked very surprised, and a solemn visit of inspection was ordered. As the room was looking quite tidy at last, I didn't mind. I've realized since that Father Rowley always sets people the task of cataloguing and arranging his books when he doubts if they are really worth their salt, and now he complains that I have spoilt one of his best ordeals for slackers. I said to him that he needn't be afraid because from what I could see of the way he treated books they would be just as untidy as ever in another week.

Everybody laughed, though I was afraid at first they might consider it rather cheek my talking like this, but you've got to stand up for yourself here because there never was such a place for turning a man inside out. It's a real discipline, and I think if I manage to deserve to stay here three years I shall have the right to feel I've had the finest training for Holy Orders anybody could possibly have.

You know enough about Father Rowley yourself to understand how impossible it would be for me to give any impression of his personality in a letter. I have never felt so strongly the absolute goodness of anybody. I suppose that some of the great mediaeval saints like St. Francis and St. Anthony of Padua must have been like that. One reads about them and what they did, but the facts one reads don't really tell anything. I always feel that what we really depend on is a kind of tradition of their absolute saintliness handed on from the people who experienced it. I suppose in a way the same applies to Our Lord. I always feel it wouldn't matter a bit to me if the four Gospels were proved to be forgeries to-morrow, because I should still be convinced that Our Lord was G.o.d. I know this is a plat.i.tude, but I don't think until I met Father Rowley that I ever realized the force and power that goes with exceptional goodness. There are so many people who are good because they were born good. Richard Ford, for example, he couldn't have ever been anything else but good, but I always feel that people like him remain practically out of reach of the ordinary person and that the goodness is all their own and dies with them just as it was born with them. What I feel about a man like Father Rowley is that he probably had a tremendous fight to be good. Of course, I may be perfectly wrong and he may have had no fight at all. I know one of the people at the Mission House told me that, though there is n.o.body who likes smoking better than he or more enjoys a pint of beer with his dinner, he has given up both at St.

Agnes merely to set an example to weak people. I feel that his goodness was with such energy fought for that it now exists as a kind of complete thing and will go on existing when Father Rowley himself is dead. I begin to understand the doctrine of the treasury of merit. I remember you once told me how grateful I ought to be to G.o.d because I had apparently escaped the temptations that attack most boys. I am grateful; but at the same time I can't claim any merit for it! The only time in my life when I might have acquired any merit was when I was at Haverton House. Instead of doing that, I just dried up, and if I hadn't had that wonderful experience at Whitsuntide in Meade Cantorum church nearly three years ago I should be spiritually dead by now.

This is a very long letter, and I don't seem to have left myself any time to tell you about St. Agnes' Church. It reminds me of my father's mission church in Lima Street, and oddly enough a new church is being built almost next door just as one was being built in Lima Street. I went to the children's Ma.s.s last Sunday, and I seemed to see him walking up and down the aisle in his alb, and I thought to myself that I had never once asked you to say Ma.s.s for his soul. Will you do so now next time you say a black Ma.s.s? This is a wretched letter, and it doesn't succeed in the least in expressing what I owe to you and what I already owe to Father Rowley. I used to think that the Sacred Heart was a rather material device for attracting the mult.i.tude, but I'm beginning to realize in the atmosphere of St. Agnes' that it is a gloriously simple devotion and that it is human nature's attempt to express the inexpressible. I'll write to you again next week. Please give my love to everybody at the Rectory.

Always your most affectionate

Mark.

Father Rowley had been at St. Agnes' seven or eight years when Mark found himself attached to the Mission, in which time he had transformed the district completely. It was a small parish (actually of course it was not a parish at all, although it was fast qualifying to become one) of something over a thousand small houses, few of which were less than a century old. The streets were narrow and crooked, mostly named after bygone admirals or forgotten sea-fights; the romantic and picturesque quarter of a great naval port to the casual glance of a pa.s.ser-by, but heartbreaking to any except the most courageous resident on account of its overcrowded and tumbledown condition. Yet it lacked the dreariness of an East End slum, for the sea winds blew down the narrowest streets and alleys, sailors and soldiers were always in view, and the windows of the p.a.w.nbrokers were filled with the relics of long voyages, with idols and large sh.e.l.ls, with savage weapons and the handiwork of remote islands.

When Mark came to live in Keppel Street, most of the brothels and many of the public houses had been eliminated from the district, and in their place flourished various clubs and guilds. The services in the church were crowded: there was a long roll of communicants; the civilization of the city of G.o.d was visible in this Chatsea slum. One or two of the lay helpers used to horrify Mark with stories of early days there, and when he seemed inclined to regret that he had arrived so late upon the scene, they used to tease him about his missionary spirit.

"If he can't reform the people," said Cartwright, one of the lay helpers, a tall thin young man with a long nose and a pleasant smile, "he still has us to reform."

"Come along, Mark Anthony," said Warrender, another lay helper, who after working for seven years among the poor had at last been charily accepted by the Bishop for ordination. "Come along. Why don't you try your hand on us?"

"You people seem to think," said Mark, "that I've got a mania for reforming. I don't mean that I should like to see St. Agnes' where it was merely for my own personal amus.e.m.e.nt. The only thing I'm sorry about is that I didn't actually see the work being done."

Father Rowley came in at this moment, and everybody shouted that Mark was going to preach a sermon.

"Splendid," said the Missioner whose voice when not moved by emotion was rich in a natural unction that encouraged everyone round to suppose he was being successfully humorous, such a savour did it add to the most innutritious chaff. Those who were privileged to share his ordinary life never ceased to wonder how in the pulpit or in the confessional or at prayer this unction was replaced by a remote beauty of tone, a plangent and thrilling compa.s.sion that played upon the hearts of all who heard him.

"Now really, Father Rowley," Mark protested. "Do I preach a great deal?

I'm always being chaffed by Cartwright and Warrender about an alleged mania for reforming people, which only exists in their imagination."

Indeed Mark had long ago grown out of the desire to reform or to convert anybody, although had he wished to keep his hand in, he could have had plenty of practice among the guests of the Mission House. n.o.body had ever succeeded in laying down the exact number of casual visitors that could be accommodated therein. However full it appeared, there was always room for one more. Taking an average, day in, day out through the year, one might fairly say that there were always eight or nine casual guests in addition to the eight or nine permanent residents, of whom Mark was soon glad to be able to count himself one. The company was sufficiently mixed to have been offered as a proof to the sceptical that there was something after all in simple Christianity. There would usually be a couple of prefects from Silchester, one or two 'Varsity men, two or three bluejackets or marines, an odd soldier or so, a naval officer perhaps, a stray priest sometimes, an earnest seeker after Christian example often, and often a drunkard who had been dumped down at the door of St. Agnes' Mission House in the hope that where everybody else had failed Father Rowley might succeed. Then there were the tramps, some who had heard of a comfortable night's lodging, some who came whining and cringing with a pretence of religion. This last cla.s.s was discouraged as much as possible, for one of the first rules of the Mission House was to show no favour to any man who claimed to be religious, it being Father Rowley's chief dread to make anybody's religion a paying concern. Sometimes a jailbird just released from prison would find in the Mission House an opportunity to recover his self-respect. But whoever the guest was, soldier, sailor, tinker, tailor, apothecary, ploughboy, or thief, he was judged at the Mission House as a man. Some of the visitors repaid their host by theft or fraud; but when they did, n.o.body uttered proverbs or plat.i.tudes about mistaken kindness. If one lame dog bit the hand that was helping him over the stile, the next dog that came limping along was helped over just as freely.

"What right has one miserable mortal to be disillusioned by another miserable mortal?" Father Rowley demanded. "Our dear Lord when he was nailed to the cross said 'Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do.' He did not say, 'I am fed up with these people I have come down from Heaven to save. I've had enough of it. Send an angel with a pair of pincers to pull out these nails.'"

If the Missioner's patience ever failed, it was when he had to deal with High Church young men who made pilgrimages to St. Agnes' because they had heard that this or that service was conducted there with a finer relish of Romanism than anywhere else at the moment in England. On one occasion a pietistic young creature, who brought with him his own lace cotta but forgot to bring his nightshirt, begged to be allowed the joy of serving Father Rowley at early Ma.s.s next morning. When they came back and were sitting round the breakfast table, this young man simpered in a ladylike voice:

"Oh, Father, couldn't you keep your fingers closed when you give the _Dominus vobisc.u.m_?"

"Et c.u.m spiritu tuo," shouted Father Rowley. "I can keep my fingers closed when I box your ears."

And he proved it.

It was a real box on the ears, so hard a blow that the ladylike young man burst into tears to the great indignation of a Chief Petty Officer staying in the Mission House, who declared that he was half in a mind to catch the young swab such a snitch on the conk as really would give him something to blubber about. Father Rowley evidently had no remorse for his violence, and the young man went away that afternoon saying how sorry he was that the legend of the good work being done at St. Agnes'

had been so much exaggerated.

Mark wrote an account of this incident, which had given him intense pleasure, to Mr. Ogilvie. Perhaps the Rector was afraid that Mark in his ambition to avoid "churchiness" was inclining toward the opposite extreme; or perhaps, charitable and saintly man though he was, he felt a pang of jealousy at Mark's unbounded admiration of his new friend; or perhaps it was merely that the east wind was blowing more sharply than usual that morning over the wold into the Rectory garden. Whatever the cause, his answering letter made Mark feel that the Rector did not appreciate Father Rowley as thoroughly as he ought.

The Rectory,

Wych-on-the-Wold.

Oxon.

Dec. 1.