The Altar Steps Part 16

"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 a.s.sume 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 Cla.s.s single to Paddington 1 6 Third Cla.s.s return to Paddington (for self) 2 6 Third Cla.s.s 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 Ma.s.s 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 s...o...b..idge 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 s...o...b..idge 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 Ma.s.s on the village green. n.o.body 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 a.s.sumption 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 s...o...b..idge, 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 a.s.s."

"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 Hitchc.o.c.k'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 a.s.s 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_: