The Altar Steps Part 48

CHAPTER x.x.xII

EMBER DAYS

Mark, having been notified that he had been successful in pa.s.sing the Bishop's examination for Deacons, was summoned to High Thorpe on Thursday. He travelled down with the other candidates from Silchester on an iron-grey afternoon that threatened snow from the louring North, and in the atmosphere of High Thorpe under the rule of Dr. Oliphant he found more of the spirit of preparation than he would have been likely to find in any other diocese at this date. So many of the preliminaries to Ordination had consisted of filling up forms, signing doc.u.ments, and answering the questions of the Examining Chaplain that Mark, when he was now verily on the threshold of his new life, reproached himself with having allowed incidental details and petty arrangements to make him for a while oblivious of the overwhelming fact of his having been accepted for the service of G.o.d. Luckily at High Thorpe he was granted a day to confront his soul before being hara.s.sed again on Ember Sat.u.r.day with further legal formalities and signing of doc.u.ments. He was able to spend the whole of Ember Friday in prayer and meditation, in beseeching G.o.d to grant him grace to serve Him worthily, strength to fulfil his vows, and that great _donum perseverantiae_ to endure faithful unto death.

"Not everyone that saith unto me, Lord, Lord," Mark remembered in the damasked twilight of the Bishop's Chapel, where he was kneeling. "Let me keep those words in my heart. Not everyone," he repeated aloud. Then perversely as always come volatile and impertinent thoughts when the mind is concentrated on lofty aspirations Mark began to wonder if he had quoted the text correctly. He began to be almost sure that he had not, and on that to torment his brain in trying to recall what was the exact wording of the text he desired to impress upon his heart. "Not everyone that saith unto me, Lord, Lord," he repeated once more aloud.

At that moment the tall figure of the Bishop pa.s.sed by.

"Do you want me, my son?" he asked kindly.

"I should like to make my confession, reverend father in G.o.d," said Mark.

The Bishop beckoned him into the little sacristy, and putting on rochet and purple stole he sat down to hear his penitent.

Mark had few sins of which to accuse himself since he last went to his duties a month ago. However, he did have upon his conscience what he felt was a breach of the Third Commandment in that he had allowed himself to obscure the mighty fact of his approaching ordination by attaching too much importance to and fussing too much about the preliminary formalities.

The Bishop did not seem to think that Mark's soul was in grave peril on that account, and he took the opportunity to warn Mark against an over-scrupulousness that might lead him in his confidence to allow sin to enter into his soul by some unguarded portal which he supposed firmly and for ever secure.

"That is always the danger of a temperament like yours?" he mused. "By all means keep your eyes on the high ground ahead of you; but do not forget that the more intently you look up, the more liable you are to slip on some unnoticed slippery stone in your path. If you abandoned yourself to the formalities that are a necessary preliminary to Ordination, you did wisely. Our Blessed Lord usually gave practical advice, and some of His miracles like the turning of water into wine at Cana were reproofs to carelessness in matters of detail. It was only when people worshipped utility unduly that He went to the other extreme as in His rebuke to Judas over the cruse of ointment."

The Bishop raised his head and gave Mark absolution. When they came out of the sacristy he invited him to come up to his library and have a talk.

"I'm glad that you are going to Galton," he said, wagging his long neck over a crumpet. "I think you'll find your experience in such a parish extraordinarily useful at the beginning of your career. So many young men have an idea that the only way to serve G.o.d is to go immediately to a slum. You'll be much more discouraged at Galton than you can imagine.

You'll learn there more of the difficulties of a clergyman's life in a year than you could learn in London in a lifetime. Rowley, as no doubt you've heard, has just accepted a slum parish in Sh.o.r.editch. Well, he wrote to me the other day and suggested that you should go to him. But I dissented. You'll have an opportunity at Galton to rely upon yourself.

You'll begin in the ruck. You'll be one of many who struggle year in year out with an ordinary parish. There won't be any paragraphs about St. Luke's in the Church papers. There won't be any enthusiastic pilgrims. There'll be nothing but the thought of our Blessed Lord to keep you struggling on, only that, only our Blessed Lord Jesus Christ."

The Bishop's head wagged slowly to and fro in the silence that succeeded his words, and Mark pondering them in that silence felt no longer that he was saying "Lord, Lord," but that he had been called to follow and that he was ready without hesitation to follow Him whithersoever He should lead.

The quiet Ember Friday came to an end, and on the Sat.u.r.day there were more formalities, of which Mark dreaded most the taking of the oath before the Registrar. He had managed with the help of subtle High Church divines to persuade himself that he could swear he a.s.sented to the Thirty-nine Articles without perjury. Nevertheless he wished that he was not bound to take that oath, and he was glad that the sense in which the Thirty-nine Articles were to be accepted was left to the discretion of him who took the oath. Of one thing Mark was positive. He was a.s.suredly not a.s.senting to those Thirty-nine Articles that their compilers intended when they framed them. However, when it came to it, Mark affirmed:

"I, Mark Lidderdale, about to be admitted to the Holy Order of Deacons, do solemnly make the following declaration:--I a.s.sent to the Thirty-nine Articles of Religion, and to the Book of Common Prayer, and the ordering of Bishops, Priests, and Deacons. I believe the doctrine of the Church of England, as therein set forth, to be agreeable to the Word of G.o.d; and in Public Prayer and Administration of the Sacraments I will use the Form in the said Book prescribed, and none other, except so far as shall be ordered by lawful authority.

"I, Mark Lidderdale, about to be admitted to the Holy Order of Deacons, do swear that I will be faithful and bear true Allegiance to His Majesty King Edward, his heirs and successors according to law.

"So help me G.o.d."

"But the strange thing is," Mark said to one of his fellow candidates, "n.o.body asks us to take the oath of allegiance to G.o.d."

"We do that when we're baptized," said the other, a serious young man who feared that Mark was being flippant.

"Personally," Mark concluded, "I think the solemn profession of a monk speaks more directly to the soul."

And this was the feeling that Mark had throughout the Ordination of the Deacons notwithstanding that the Bishop of Silchester in cope and mitre was an awe-inspiring figure in his own Chapel. But when Mark heard him say:

_Receive the Holy Ghost for the office and work of a Priest in the Church of G.o.d_,

he was caught up to the Seventh Heaven and prayed that, when a year hence he should be kneeling thus to hear those words uttered to him and to feel upon his head those hands imposed, he should receive the Holy Ghost more worthily than lately he had received authority to execute the office of a Deacon in the Church of G.o.d.

Suddenly at the back of the chapel Mark caught sight of Miriam, who must have travelled down from Oxfordshire last night to be present at his Ordination. His mind went back to that Whit-Sunday in Meade Cantorum nearly ten years ago. Miriam's plume of grey hair was no longer visible, for all her hair was grey nowadays; but her face had scarcely altered, and she sat there at this moment with that same expression of austere sweetness which had been shed like a benison upon Mark's dreary boyhood.

How dear of Miriam to grace his Ordination, and if only Esther too could have been with him! He knelt down to thank G.o.d humbly for His mercies, and of those mercies not least for the Ogilvies' influence upon his life.

Mark could not find Miriam when they came out from the chapel. She must have hurried away to catch some slow Sunday train that would get her back to Wych-on-the-Wold to-night. She could not have known that he had seen her, and when he arrived at the Rectory to-morrow as glossy as a beetle in his new clerical attire, Miriam would listen to his account of the Ordination, and only when he had finished would she murmur how she had been present all the time.

And now there was still the oath of canonical obedience to take before lunch; but luckily that was short. Mark was hungry, since unlike most of the candidates he had not eaten an enormous breakfast that morning.

Snow was falling outside when the young priests and deacons in their new frock coats sat down to lunch; and when they put on their sleek silk hats and hurried away to catch the afternoon train back to Silchester, it was still falling.

"Even nature is putting on a surplice in our honour," Mark laughed to one of his companions, who not feeling quite sure whether Mark was being poetical or profane, decided that he was being flippant, and looked suitably grieved.

It was dusk of that short winter day when Mark reached Silchester, and wandered back in a dream toward Vicar's Walk. Usually on Sunday evenings the streets of the city pattered with numerous footsteps; but to-night the snow deadened every sound, and the peace of G.o.d had gone out from the Cathedral to shed itself upon the city.

"It will be Christmas Day in a week," Mark thought, listening to the Sabbath bells m.u.f.fled by the soft snow-laden air. For the first time it occurred to him that he should probably have to preach next Sunday evening.

_And the Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us._

That should be his text, Mark decided; and, pa.s.sing from the snowy streets, he sat thinking in the golden glooms of the Cathedral about his sermon.

EXPLICIT PRaeLUDIUM