The Altar Steps Part 17

Sir,--The accompanying letter was handed to me by my friend the Reverend Eustace Pomeroy to be used as I thought fit and subject to only one stipulation--that it should not be published until he and his son were out of England. As President of the Society for the Protection of the English Church against Romish Aggression I feel that it is my duty to lay the facts before the country. I need scarcely add that I have been at pains to verify the surprising and alarming accusations made by a clergyman against two other clergymen, and I earnestly request the publicity of your columns for what I venture to believe is positive proof of the dangerous conspiracy existing in our very midst to romanize the Established Church of England. I shall be happy to produce for any of your readers who find Mr. Pomeroy's story incredible at the close of the nineteenth century the signed statements of witnesses and other doc.u.mentary evidence.

I am, Sir,

Your obedient servant,

Danvers.

The Right Honble. the Lord Danvers, P.C.

President of the Society for the Protection of the English Church against Romish Aggression.

My Lord,

I have to bring to your notice as President of the S.P.E. C.R.A.

what I venture to a.s.sert is one of the most daring plots to subvert home and family life in the interests of priestcraft that has ever been discovered. In taking this step I am fully conscious of its seriousness, and if I ask your lords.h.i.+p to delay taking any measures for publicity until the unhappy princ.i.p.al is upon the high seas in the guardians.h.i.+p of his even more unhappy father, I do so for the sake of the wretched boy whose future has been nearly blasted by the Jesuitical behaviour of two so-called Protestant clergymen.

Four years ago, my lord, I retired from a lifelong career as a missionary in New Guinea to give my children the advantages of English education and English climate, and it is surely hard that I should live to curse the day on which I did so. My third son Cyril was sent to school at Haverton House, s...o...b..idge, to an educational establishment kept by a Mr. Henry Lidderdale, reputed to be a strong Evangelical and I believe I am justified in saying rightly so reputed. At the same time I regret that Mr. Lidderdale, whose brother was a notorious Romanizer I have since discovered, should not have exercised more care in the supervision of his nephew, a fellow scholar with my own son at Haverton House. It appears that Mr. Lidderdale was so lax as to permit his nephew to frequent the services of the Reverend Stephen Ogilvie at Meade Cantorum, where every excess such as incense, lighted candles, mariolatry and creeping to the cross is openly practised. The Revd. S. Ogilvie I may add is a member of the S.S.C., that notorious secret society whose machinations have been so often exposed and the originators of that filthy book "The Priest in Absolution." He is also a member of the Guild of All Souls which has for its avowed object the restoration of the Romish doctrine of Purgatory with all its attendant horrors, and finally I need scarcely add he is a member of the Confraternity of the "Blessed Sacrament" which seeks openly to popularize the idolatrous and blasphemous cult of the Ma.s.s.

Young Lidderdale presumably under the influence of this disloyal Protestant clergyman sought to corrupt my son, and was actually so far successful as to lure him to attend the idolatrous services at Meade Cantorum church, which of course he was only able to do by inventing lies and excuses to his father to account for his absence from the simple wors.h.i.+p to which all his life he had been accustomed. Not content with this my unhappy son was actually persuaded to confess his sins to this self-styled "priest"! I wonder if he confessed the sin of deceiving his own father to "Father" Ogilvie who supplied him with numerous Ma.s.s books, several of which I enclose for your lords.h.i.+p's inspection. You will be amused if you are not too much horrified by these puerile and degraded works, and in one of them, impudently ent.i.tled "Catholic Prayers for Church of England People" you will actually see in cold print a prayer for the "Pope of Rome." This work emanates from that hotbed of sacerdotal disloyalty, St. Alban's, Holborn.

These vile books I discovered by accident carefully hidden away in my son's bedroom. "Facilis descensus Averni!" You will easily imagine the humiliation of a parent who, having devoted his life to bring the Gospel of Jesus Christ to the heathen, finds that his own son has fallen as low as the lowest savage. As soon as I made my discovery, I removed him from Haverton House, and warned the proprietor of the risk he was running by not taking better care of his pupils. Having been summoned to a conference of missionaries in Sydney, N.S.W., I determined to take my son with me in the hope that a long voyage in the company of a loving parent, eager to help him back to the path of Truth and Salvation from which he had strayed, might cure him of his idolatrous fancies, and restore him to Jesus.

What followed is, as I write this, scarcely credible to myself; but however incredible, it is true. Young Lidderdale, acting no doubt at the instigation of "Father" Ogilvie (as my son actually called him to my face, not realizing the blasphemy of according to a mortal clergyman the t.i.tle that belongs to G.o.d alone), entered into a conspiracy with another Romanizing clergyman, the Reverend Oliver Dorward, Vicar of Green Lanes, Hants, to abduct my son from his own father's house, with what ultimate intention I dare not think. Incredible as it must sound to modern ears, they were so far successful that for a whole week I was in ignorance of his whereabouts, while detectives were hunting for him up and down England. The abduction was carried out by young Lidderdale, with the a.s.sistance of a youth called Hacking, so coolly and skilfully as to indicate that the abettors behind the scenes are USED TO SUCH ABDUCTIONS. This, my lord, points to a very grave state of affairs in our midst. If the son of a Protestant clergyman like myself can be spirited away from a populous but nevertheless comparatively small town like s...o...b..idge, what must be going on in great cities like London? Moreover, everything is done to make it attractive for the unhappy youth who is thus lured away from his father's hearth.

My own son is even now still impenitent, and I have the greatest fears for his moral and religious future, so rapid has been the corruption set up by evil companions.h.i.+p.

These, my lord, are the facts set out as shortly as possible and written on the eve of my departure in circ.u.mstances that militate against elegance of expression. I am, to tell the truth, still staggered by this affair, and if I make public my sorrow and my shame I do so in the hope that the Society of which your lords.h.i.+p is President, may see its way to take some kind of action that will make a repet.i.tion of such an outrage upon family life for ever impossible.

Believe me to be,

Your lords.h.i.+p's obedient servant,

Eustace Pomeroy.

The publication of this letter stirred England. _The Times_ in a leading article demanded a full inquiry into the alleged circ.u.mstances. _The English Churchman_ said that nothing like it had happened since the days of b.l.o.o.d.y Mary. Questions were asked in the House of Commons, and finally when it became known that Lord Danvers would ask a question in the House of Lords, Mr. Ogilvie took Mark to see Lord Hull who wished to be in possession of the facts before he rose to correct some misapprehensions of Lord Danvers. Mark also had to interview two Bishops, an Archdeacon, and a Rural Dean. He did not realize that for a few weeks he was a central figure in what was called THE CHURCH CRISIS.

He was indignant at Mr. Pomeroy's exaggeration and perversions of fact, and he was so evidently speaking the truth that everybody from Lord Hull to a reporter of _The Sun_ was impressed by his account of the affair, so that in the end the Pomeroy Abduction was decided to be less revolutionary than the Gunpowder Plot.

Mr. Lidderdale, however, believed that his nephew had deliberately tried to ruin him out of malice, and when two parents seized the opportunity of such a scandal to remove their sons from Haverton House without paying the terminal fees, Mr. Lidderdale told Mark that he should recoup himself for the loss out of the money left by his mother.

"How much did she leave?" his nephew asked.

"Don't ask impertinent questions."

"But it's my money, isn't it?"

"It will be your money in another six years, if you behave yourself.

Meanwhile half of it will be devoted to paying your premium at the office of my friend Mr. Hitchc.o.c.k."

"But I don't want to be a solicitor. I want to be a priest," said Mark.

Uncle Henry produced a number of cogent reasons that would make his nephew's ambition unattainable.

"Very well, if I can't be a priest, I don't want the money, and you can keep it yourself," said Mark. "But I'm not going to be a solicitor."

"And what are you going to be, may I inquire?" asked Uncle Henry.

"In the end I probably _shall_ be a priest," Mark prophesied. "But I haven't quite decided yet how. I warn you that I shall run away."

"Run away," his uncle echoed in amazement. "Good heavens, boy, haven't you had enough of running away over this deplorable Pomeroy affair?

Where are you going to run to?"

"I couldn't tell you, could I, even if I knew?" Mark asked as tactfully as he was able. "But as a matter of fact, I don't know. I only know that I won't go into Mr. Hitchc.o.c.k's office. If you try to force me, I shall write to _The Times_ about it."

Such a threat would have sounded absurd in the mouth of a schoolboy before the Pomeroy business; but now Mr. Lidderdale took it seriously and began to wonder if Haverton House would survive any more of such publicity. When a few days later Mr. Ogilvie, whom Mark had consulted about his future, wrote to propose that Mark should live with him and work under his superintendence with the idea of winning a scholars.h.i.+p at Oxford, Mr. Lidderdale was inclined to treat his suggestion as a solution of the problem, and he replied encouragingly:

Haverton House,

s...o...b..idge.

Jan. 15.

Dear Sir,

Am I to understand from your letter that you are offering to make yourself responsible for my nephew's future, for I must warn you that I could not accept your suggestion unless such were the case?

I do not approve of what I a.s.sume will be the trend of your education, and I should have to disclaim any further responsibility in the matter of my nephew's future. I may inform you that I hold in trust for him until he comes of age the sum of 522 8s. 7d.

which was left by his mother. The annual interest upon this I have used until now as a slight contribution to the expense to which I have been put on his account; but I have not thought it right to use any of the capital sum. This I am proposing to transfer to you.

His mother did not execute any legal doc.u.ment and I have nothing more binding than a moral obligation. If you undertake the responsibility of looking after him until such time as he is able to earn his own living, I consider that you are ent.i.tled to use this money in any way you think right. I hope that the boy will reward your confidence more amply than he has rewarded mine. I need not allude to the Pomeroy business to you, for notwithstanding your public denials I cannot but consider that you were as deeply implicated in that disgraceful affair as he was. I note what you say about the admiration you had for my brother. I wish I could honestly say that I shared that admiration. But my brother and I were not on good terms, for which state of affairs he was entirely responsible. I am more ready to surrender to you all my authority over Mark because I am only too well aware how during the last year you have consistently undermined that authority and encouraged my nephew's rebellious spirit. I have had a great experience of boys during thirty-five years of schoolmastering, and I can a.s.sure you that I have never had to deal with a boy so utterly insensible to kindness as my nephew. His conduct toward his aunt I can only characterize as callous. Of his conduct towards me I prefer to say no more. I came forward at a moment when he was likely to be sunk in the most abject poverty, and my reward has been ingrat.i.tude. I pray that his dark and stubborn temperament may not turn to vice and folly as he grows older, but I have little hope of its not doing so. I confess that to me his future seems dismally black. You may have acquired some kind of influence over his emotions, if he has any emotions, but I am not inclined to suppose that it will endure.

On hearing from you that you persist in your offer to a.s.sume complete responsibility for my nephew, I will hand him over to your care at once. I cannot pretend that I shall be sorry to see the last of him, for I am not a hypocrite. I may add that his clothes are in rather a sorry state. I had intended to equip him upon his entering the office of my old friend Mr. Hitchc.o.c.k and with that intention I have been letting him wear out what he has. This, I may say, he has done most effectually.

I am, Sir,

Yours faithfully,

Henry Lidderdale.

To which Mr. Ogilvie replied:

The Vicarage,

Meade Cantorum,

Bucks.

Jan. 16.

Dear Mr. Lidderdale,