The Altar Steps Part 4

"Mark? Oh yes, he can come. But I hope he'll keep quiet, because I shall be rather busy."

Mark had felt a kind of hostility in his father's manner which had chilled him; and after that, whenever his mother used to suggest his going to sit quietly in the study, he had always made some excuse not to go. But if his father was out he used to like going in, because there were always books lying about that were interesting to look at, and the smell of tobacco smoke and leather bindings was grateful to the senses.

The room smelt even more strongly than usual of tobacco smoke this afternoon, and Mark inhaled the air with relish while he debated which of the many volumes he should pore over. There was a large Bible with pictures of palm-trees and camels and long-bearded patriarchs surrounded by flocks of sheep, pictures of women with handkerchiefs over their mouths drawing water from wells, of Daniel in the den of lions and of Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego in the fiery furnace. The frontispiece was a coloured picture of Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden surrounded by amiable lions, benevolent tigers, ingratiating bears and leopards and wolves. But more interesting than the pictures were some pages at the beginning on which, in oval s.p.a.ces framed in leaves and flowers, were written the names of his grandfather and grandmother, of his father and of his father's brother and sister, with the dates on which they were born and baptized and confirmed. What a long time ago his father was born! 1840. He asked his mother once about this Uncle Henry and Aunt Helen; but she told him they had quarrelled with his father, and she had said nothing more about them. Mark had been struck by the notion that grown-up people could quarrel: he had supposed quarrelling to be peculiar to childhood. Further, he noticed that Henry Lidderdale had married somebody called Ada Prewbody who had died the same year; but nothing was said in the oval that enshrined his father about his having married anyone. He asked his mother the reason of this, and she explained to him that the Bible had belonged to his grandfather who had kept the entries up to date until he died, when the Bible came to his eldest son who was Mark's father.

"Does it worry you, darling, that I'm not entered?" his mother had asked with a smile.

"Well, it does rather," Mark had replied, and then to his great delight she took a pen and wrote that James Lidderdale had married Grace Alethea Trehawke on June 28th, 1880, at St. Tugdual's Church, Nancepean, Cornwall, and to his even greater delight that on April 25th, 1881, Mark Lidderdale had been born at 142 Lima Street, Notting Dale, London, W., and baptized on May 21st, 1881, at St. Wilfred's Mission Church, Lima Street.

"Happy now?" she had asked.

Mark had nodded, and from that moment, if he went into his father's study, he always opened the Family Bible and examined solemnly his own short history wreathed in forget-me-nots and lilies of the valley.

This afternoon, after looking as usual at the entry of his birth and baptism written in his mother's pretty pointed handwriting, he searched for Dante's _Inferno_ ill.u.s.trated by Gustave Dore, a large copy of which had recently been presented to his father by the Servers and Choir of St. Wilfred's. The last time he had been looking at this volume he had caught a glimpse of a lot of people buried in the ground with only their heads sticking out, a most attractive picture which he had only just discovered when he had heard his father's footsteps and had closed the book in a hurry.

Mark tried to find this picture, but the volume was large and the pictures on the way of such fascination that it was long before he found it. When he did, he thought it even more satisfying at a second glance, although he wished he knew what they were all doing buried in the ground like that. Mark was not satisfied with horrors even after he had gone right through the Dante; in fact, his appet.i.te was only whetted, and he turned with relish to a large folio of Chinese tortures, in the coloured prints of which a feature was made of blood profusely outpoured and richly tinted. One picture of a Chinaman apparently impervious to the pain of being slowly sawn in two held him entranced for five minutes.

It was growing dusk by now, and as it needed the light of the window to bring out the full quality of the blood, Mark carried over the big volume, propped it up in a chair behind the curtains, and knelt down to gloat over these remote oriental barbarities without pausing to remember that his father might come back at any moment, and that although he had never actually been forbidden to look at this book, the thrill of something unlawful always brooded over it. Suddenly the door of the study opened and Mark sat transfixed by terror as completely as the Chinaman on the page before him was transfixed by a sharpened bamboo; then he heard his mother's voice, and before he could discover himself a conversation between her and his father had begun of which Mark understood enough to know that both of them would be equally angry if they knew that he was listening. Mark was not old enough to escape tactfully from such a difficult situation, and the only thing he could think of doing was to stay absolutely still in the hope that they would presently go out of the room and never know that he had been behind the curtain while they were talking.

"I didn't mean you to dress yourself and come downstairs," his father was saying ungraciously.

"My dear, I should have come down to tea in any case, and I was anxious to hear the result of your conversation with Mr. Astill."

"You can guess, can't you?" said the husband.

Mark had heard his father speak angrily before; but he had never heard his voice sound like a growl. He shrank farther back in affright behind the curtains.

"You're going to give way to the Bishop?" the wife asked gently.

"Ah, you've guessed, have you? You've guessed by my manner? You've realized, I hope, what this resolution has cost me and what it's going to cost me in the future. I'm a coward. I'm a traitor. _Before the c.o.c.k crow twice, thou shalt deny me thrice._ A coward and a traitor."

"Neither, James--at any rate to me."

"To you," the husband scoffed. "I should hope not to you, considering that it is on your account I am surrendering. Do you suppose that if I were free, as to serve G.o.d I ought to be free, do you suppose then that I should give up my principles like this? Never! But because I'm a married priest, because I've a wife and family to support, my hands are tied. Oh, yes, Astill was very tactful. He kept insisting on my duty to the parish; but did he once fail to rub in the position in which I should find myself if I did resign? No bishop would license me; I should be inhibited in every diocese--in other words I should starve. The beliefs I hold most dear, the beliefs I've fought for all these years surrendered for bread and b.u.t.ter! _Woman, what have I to do with thee?_ Our Blessed Lord could speak thus even to His Blessed Mother. But I! _He that loveth son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me. And he that taketh not his cross, and followeth after me, is not worthy of me._"

The Missioner threw himself into his worn armchair and stared into the unlighted grate. His wife came behind him and laid a white hand upon his forehead; but her touch seemed to madden him, and he sprang away from her.

"No more of that," he cried. "If I was weak when I married you I will never be weak again. You have your child. Let that be enough for your tenderness. I want none of it myself. Do you hear? I wish to devote myself henceforth to my parish. My parish! The parish of a coward and a traitor."

Mark heard his mother now speaking in a voice that was strange to him, in a voice that did not belong to her, but that seemed to come from far away, as if she were lost in a snowstorm and calling for help.

"James, if you feel this hatred for me and for poor little Mark, it is better that we leave you. We can go to my father in Cornwall, and you will not feel hampered by the responsibility of having to provide for us. After what you have said to me, after the way you have looked at me, I could never live with you as your wife again."

"That sounds a splendid scheme," said the Missioner bitterly. "But do you think I have so little logic that I should be able to escape from my responsibilities by planting them on the shoulders of another? No, I sinned when I married you. I did not believe and I do not believe that a priest ought to marry; but having done so I must face the situation and do my duty to my family, so that I may also do my duty to G.o.d."

"Do you think that G.o.d will accept duty offered in that spirit? If he does, he is not the G.o.d in Whom I believe. He is a devil that can be propitiated with burnt offerings," exclaimed the woman pa.s.sionately.

"Do not blaspheme," the priest commanded.

"Blaspheme!" she echoed. "It is you, James, who have blasphemed nature this afternoon. You have committed the sin against the Holy Ghost, and may you be forgiven by your G.o.d. I can never forgive you."

"You're becoming hysterical."

"How dare you say that? How dare you? I have loved you, James, with all the love that I could give you. I have suffered in silence when I saw how you regarded family life, how unkind you were to Mark, how utterly wrapped up in the outward forms of religion. You are a Pharisee, James, you should have lived before Our Lord came down to earth. But I will not suffer any longer. You need not worry about the evasion of your responsibilities. You cannot make me stay with you. You will not dare keep Mark. Save your own soul in your own way; but Mark's soul is as much mine as yours to save."

During this storm of words Mark had been thinking how wicked it was of his father to upset his mother like that when she had a headache. He had thought also how terrible it was that he should apparently be the cause of this frightening quarrel. Often in Lima Street he had heard tales of wives who were beaten by their husbands and now he supposed that his own mother was going to be beaten. Suddenly he heard her crying. This was too much for him; he sprang from his hiding place and ran to put his arms round her in protection.

"Mother, mother, don't cry. You are bad, you are bad," he told his father. "You are wicked and bad to make her cry."

"Have you been in the room all this time?" his father asked.

Mark did not even bother to nod his head, so intent was he upon consoling his mother. She checked her emotion when her son put his arms round her neck, and whispered to him not to speak. It was almost dark in the study now, and what little light was still filtering in at the window from the grey nightfall was obscured by the figure of the Missioner gazing out at the lantern spire of his new church. There was a tap at the door, and Mrs. Lidderdale s.n.a.t.c.hed up the volume that Mark had let fall upon the floor when he emerged from the curtains, so that when Dora came in to light the gas and say that tea was ready, nothing of the stress of the last few minutes was visible. The Missioner was looking out of the window at his new church; his wife and son were contemplating the picture of an impervious Chinaman suspended in a cage where he could neither stand nor sit nor lie.

CHAPTER V

PALM SUNDAY

Mark's dream from which he woke to wonder if the end of the world was at hand had been a shadow cast by coming events. So far as the world of Lima Street was concerned, it was the end of it. The night after that scene in his father's study, which made a deeper impression on him than anything before that date in his short life, his mother came to sleep in the nursery with him, to keep him company so that he should not be frightened any more, she offered as the explanation of her arrival. But Mark, although of course he never said so to her, was sure that she had come to him to be protected against his father.

Mark did not overhear any more discussions between his parents, and he was taken by surprise when one day a week after his mother had come to sleep in his room, she asked him how he should like to go and live in the country. To Mark the country was as remote as Paradise, and at first he was inclined to regard the question as rhetorical to which a conventional reply was expected. If anybody had asked him how he should like to go to Heaven, he would have answered that he should like to go to Heaven very much. Cows, sheep, saints, angels, they were all equally unreal outside a picture book.

"I would like to go to the country very much," he said. "And I would like to go to the Zoological Gardens very much. Perhaps we can go there soon, can we, mother?"

"We can't go there if we're in the country."

Mark stared at her.

"But really go in the country?"

"Yes, darling, really go."

"Oh, mother," and immediately he checked his enthusiasm with a sceptical "when?"

"Next Monday."

"And shall I see cows?"

"Yes."

"And donkeys? And horses? And pigs? And goats?"

To every question she nodded.

"Oh, mother, I will be good," he promised of his own accord. "And can I take my grenadiers?"

"You can take everything you have, darling."