The Altar Steps Part 22

It was obvious that Emmett was no better off than himself; it was obvious that Emmett was competing in a kind of despair. Mark remembered how a few minutes ago his rival had offered him this year's Whitaker, keeping for himself last year's almanack. Looked at from the point of view of Emmett who really believed that something might be gained at this eleventh hour from a study of the more recent volume, it had been a fine piece of self-denial. It showed that Emmett had Christian talents which surely ought not to be wasted because he was handicapped by a stammer.

The spell that Oxford had already cast on Mark, the glamour of the firelight on the walls and raftered ceiling of this room haunted by centuries of youthful hope, did not persuade him how foolish it was to surrender all this. On the contrary, this prospect of Oxford so beautiful in the firelight within, so fair in the moonlight without, impelled him to renounce it, and the very strength of his temptation to enjoy all this by winning the scholars.h.i.+p helped him to make up his mind to lose it. But how? The obvious course was to send in idiotic answers for the rest of his papers. Yet examinations were so mysterious that when he thought he was being most idiotic he might actually be gaining his best marks. Moreover, the examiners might ascribe his answers to ill health, to some sudden attack of nerves, especially if his papers to-day had been tolerably good. Looking back at the Princ.i.p.al's att.i.tude after dinner that night, Mark could not help feeling that there had been something in his manner which had clearly shown a determination not to award the scholars.h.i.+p to poor Emmett if it could possibly be avoided.

The safest way would be to escape to-morrow morning, put up at some country inn for the next two days, and go back to Wych-on-the-Wold; but if he did that, the college authorities might write to Mr. Ogilvie to demand the reason for such extraordinary behaviour. And how should he explain it? If he really intended to deny himself, he must take care that n.o.body knew he was doing so. It would give him an air of unbearable condescension, should it transpire that he had deliberately surrendered his scholars.h.i.+p to Emmett. Moreover, poor Emmett would be so dreadfully mortified if he found out. No, he must complete his papers, do them as badly as he possibly could, and leave the result to the wisdom of G.o.d. If G.o.d wished Emmett to stammer forth His praises and stutter His precepts from the pulpit, G.o.d would know how to manage that seemingly so intractable Princ.i.p.al. Or G.o.d might hear his prayers and cure poor Emmett of his impediment. Mark wondered to what saint was entrusted the patronage of stammerers; but he could not remember. The man in whose rooms he was lodging possessed very few books, and those few were mostly detective stories.

It amused Mark to make a fool of himself next morning in the general knowledge paper. He flattered himself that no candidate for a scholars.h.i.+p at St. Osmund's Hall had ever shown such black ignorance of the facts of every-day life. Had he been dropped from Mars two days before, he could scarcely have shown less knowledge of the Earth. Mark tried to convey an impression that he had been injudiciously crammed with Latin and Greek, and in the afternoon he produced a Latin prose that would have revolted the easy conscience of a fourth form boy.

Finally, on the third day, in an unseen pa.s.sage set from the Georgics he translated _tonsisque ferunt mantelia villis_ by _having pulled down the villas (i. e. literally shaved) they carry off the mantelpieces_ which he followed up with translating _Maeonii carchesia Bacchi_ as the _lees of Maeonian wine (i.e. literally carcases of Maeonian Bacchus)_.

"I say, Lidderdale," said Emmett, when they came out of the lecture room where the examination was being held. "I had a tremendous piece of luck this afternoon."

"Did you?"

"Yes, I've just been reading the fourth Georgics last term, and I don't think I made a single mistake in that unseen."

"Good work," said Mark.

"I wonder when they'll let us know who's got the scholars.h.i.+p," said Emmett. "But of course you've won," he added with a sigh.

"I did very badly both yesterday and to-day."

"Oh, you're only saying that to encourage me," Emmett sighed. "It sounds a dreadful thing to say and I ought not to say it because it'll make you uncomfortable, but if I don't succeed, I really think I shall kill myself."

"All right, that's a bargain," Mark laughed; and when his rival shook hands with him at parting he felt that poor Emmett was going home to Rutland convinced that Mark was just as hard-hearted as the rest of the world and just as ready to laugh at his misfortune.

It was Sat.u.r.day when the examination was finished, and Mark wished he could be granted the privilege of staying over Sunday in college. He had no regrets for what he had done; he was content to let this experience be all that he should ever intimately gain of Oxford; but he should like to have the courage to accost one of the tutors and to tell him that being convinced he should never come to Oxford again he desired the privilege of remaining until Monday morning, so that he might crystallize in that short s.p.a.ce of time an impression which, had he been successful in gaining the scholars.h.i.+p, would have been spread over four years. Mark was not indulging in sentiment; he really felt that by the intensity of the emotion with which he would live those twenty-four hours he should be able to achieve for himself as much as he should achieve in four years. So far as the world was concerned, this experience would be valueless; for himself it would be beyond price. So far as the world was concerned, he would never have been to Oxford; but could he be granted this privilege, Oxford would live for ever in his heart, a refuge and a meditation until the grave. Yet this coveted experience must be granted from without to make it a perfect experience.

To ask and to be refused leave to stay till Monday would destroy for him the value of what he had already experienced in three days' residence; even to ask and to be granted the privilege would spoil it in retrospect. He went down the stairs from his room and stood in the little quadrangle, telling himself that at any rate he might postpone his departure until twilight and walk the seven miles from s.h.i.+pcot to Wych-on-the-Wold. While he was on his way to notify the porter of the time of his departure he met the Princ.i.p.al, who stopped him and asked how he had got on with his papers. Mark wondered if the Princ.i.p.al had been told about his lamentable performance and was making inquiries on his own account to find out if the unsuccessful candidate really was a lunatic.

"Rather badly, I'm afraid, sir."

"Well, I shall see you at dinner to-night," said the Princ.i.p.al dismissing Mark with a gesture before he had time even to look surprised. This was a new perplexity, for Mark divined from the Princ.i.p.al's manner that he had entirely forgotten that the scholars.h.i.+p examination was over and that the candidates had already dined with him.

He went into the lodge and asked the porter's advice.

"The Princ.i.p.al's a most absent-minded gentleman," said the porter. "Most absent-minded, he is. He's the talk of Oxford sometimes is the Princ.i.p.al. What do you think he went and did only last term. Why, he was having some of the senior men to tea and was going to put some coal on the fire with the tongs and some sugar in his cup. Bothered if he didn't put the sugar in the fire and a lump of coal in his cup. It didn't so much matter him putting sugar in the fire. That's all according, as they say. But fancy--well, I tell you we had a good laugh over it in the lodge when the gentlemen came out and told me."

"Ought I to explain that I've already dined with him?" Mark asked.

"Are you in any what you might call immediate hurry to get away?" the porter asked judicially.

"I'm in no hurry at all. I'd like to stay a bit longer."

"Then you'd better go to dinner with him again to-night and stay in college over the Sunday. I'll take it upon myself to explain to the Dean why you're still here. If it had been tea I should have said 'don't bother about it,' but dinner's another matter, isn't it? And he always has dinner laid for two or more in case he's asked anybody and forgotten."

Thus it came about that for the second time Mark dined with the Princ.i.p.al, who disconcerted him by saying when he arrived:

"I remember now that you dined with me the night before last. You should have told me. I forget these things. But never mind, you'd better stay now you're here."

The Princ.i.p.al read second-hand book catalogues all through dinner just as he had done two nights ago, and he only interrupted his perusal to inquire in courtly tones if Mark would take another gla.s.s of wine. The only difference between now and the former occasion was the absence of poor Emmett and his paroxysms. After dinner with some misgivings if he ought not to leave his host to himself Mark followed him upstairs to the library. The princ.i.p.al was one of those scholars who live in an atmosphere of their own given off by old calf-bound volumes and who apparently can only inhale the air of the world in which ordinary men move when they are smoking their battered old pipes. Mark sitting opposite to him by the fireside was tempted to pour out the history of himself and Emmett, to explain how he had come to make such a mess of the examination. Perhaps if the Princ.i.p.al had alluded to his papers Mark would have found the courage to talk about himself; but the Princ.i.p.al was apparently unaware that his guest had any ambitions to enter St.

Osmund's Hall, and whatever questions he asked related to the ancient folios and quartos he took down in turn from his shelves. A clock struck ten in the moonlight without, and Mark rose to go. He felt a pang as he walked from the cloudy room and looked for the last time at that tall remote scholar, who had forgotten his guest's existence at the moment he ceased to shake his hand and who by the time he had reached the doorway was lost again in the deeps of the crabbed volume resting upon his knees. Mark sighed as he closed the library door behind him, for he knew that he was shutting out a world. But when he stood in the small silver quadrangle Mark was glad that he had not given way to the temptation of confiding in the Princ.i.p.al. It would have been a feeble end to his first denial of self. He was sure that he had done right in surrendering his place to Emmett, for was not the unexpected opportunity to spend these few more hours in Oxford a sign of G.o.d's approval? _Bright as the glimpses of eternity to saints accorded in their mortal hour._ Such was Oxford to-night.

Mark sat for a long while at the open window of his room until the moon had pa.s.sed on her way and the quadrangle was in shadow; and while he sat there he was conscious of how many people had inhabited this small quadrangle and of how they too had pa.s.sed on their way like the moon, leaving behind them no more than he should leave behind from this one hour of rapture, no more than the moon had left of her silver upon the dim gra.s.s below.

Mark was not given to gazing at himself in mirrors, but he looked at himself that night in the mirror of the tiny bedroom, into which the April air came up sweet and frore from the watermeadows of the Cherwell close at hand.

"What will you do now?" he asked his reflection. "Yet, you have such a dark ecclesiastical face that I'm sure you'll be a priest whether you go to Oxford or not."

Mark was right in supposing his countenance to be ecclesiastical. But it was something more than that: it was religious. Even already, when he was barely eighteen, the high cheekbones and deepset burning eyes gave him an ascetic look, while the habit of prayer and meditation had added to his expression a steadfast purpose that is rarely seen in people as young as him. What his face lacked were those contours that come from a.s.sociation with humanity; the ripeness that is bestowed by long tolerance of folly, the mellowness that has survived the icy winds of disillusion. It was the absence of these contours that made Mark think his face so ecclesiastical; however, if at eighteen he had possessed contours and soft curves, they would have been nothing but the contours and soft curves of that rose, youth; and this ecclesiastical bonyness would not fade and fall as swiftly as that.

Mark turned from the gla.s.s in sudden irritation at his selfishness in speculating about his appearance and his future, when in a short time he should have to break the news to his guardian that he had thrown away for a kindly impulse the fruit of so many months of diligence and care.

"What am I going to say to Ogilvie?" he exclaimed. "I can't go back to Wych and live there in pleasant idleness until it's time to go to Glas...o...b..ry. I must have some scheme for the immediate future."

In bed when the light was out and darkness made the most fantastic project appear practical, Mark had an inspiration to take the habit of a preaching friar. Why should he not persuade Dorward to join him?

Together they would tramp the English country, compelling even the dullest yokels to hear the word of G.o.d . . . discalced . . . over hill, down dale . . . telling stories of the saints and martyrs in remote inns . . . deep lanes . . . the b.u.t.terflies and the birds . . . Dorward should say Ma.s.s in the heart of great woods . . . over hill, down dale . . . discalced . . . preaching to men of Christ. . . .

Mark fell asleep.

In the morning Mark heard Ma.s.s at the church of the Cowley Fathers, a strengthening experience, because the Gregorian there so strictly and so austerely chanted without any consideration for sentimental humanity possessed that very effect of liberating and purifying spirit held in the bonds of flesh which is conveyed by the wind blowing through a grove of pines or by waves quiring below a rocky sh.o.r.e.

If Mark had had the least inclination to be sorry for himself and indulge in the flattery of regret, it vanished in this music. Rolling down through time on the billows of the mighty Gregorian it were as grotesque to pity oneself as it were for an Arctic explorer to build a snowman for company at the North Pole.

Mark came out of St. John's, Cowley, into the suburban prettiness of Iffley Road, where men and women in their Sunday best tripped along in the April sunlight, tripped along in their Sunday best like newly hatched b.u.t.terflies and beetles. Mark went in and out of colleges all day long, forgetting about the problem of his immediate future just as he forgot that the people in the sunny streets were not really b.u.t.terflies and beetles. At twilight he decided to attend Evensong at St. Barnabas'. Perhaps the folk in the sunny April streets had turned his thoughts unconsciously toward the simple aspirations of simple human nature. He felt when he came into the warm candle-lit church like one who has voyaged far and is glad to be at home again. How everybody sang together that night, and how pleasant Mark found this congregational outburst. It was all so jolly that if the organist had suddenly turned round like an Italian organ-grinder and kissed his fingers to the congregation, his action would have seemed perfectly appropriate. Even during the _Magnificat_, when the altar was being censed, the tinkling of the thurible reminded Mark of a tambourine; and the lighting and extinction of the candles was done with as much suppressed excitement as if the candles were going to shoot red and green stars or go leaping and cracking all round the chancel.

It happened this evening that the preacher was Father Rowley, that famous priest of the Silchester College Mission in the great naval port of Chatsea. Father Rowley was a very corpulent man with a voice of such compa.s.sion and with an eloquence so simple that when he ascended into the pulpit, closed his eyes, and began to speak, his listeners involuntarily closed their eyes and followed that voice whithersoever it led them. He neither changed the expression of his face nor made use of dramatic gestures; he scarcely varied his tone, yet he could keep a congregation breathlessly attentive for an hour. Although he seemed to be speaking in a kind of trance, it was evident that he was unusually conscious of his hearers, for if by chance some pious woman coughed or turned the pages of a prayer-book he would hold up the thread of his sermon and without any change of tone reprove her. It was strange to watch him at such a moment, his eyes still tightly shut and yet giving the impression of looking directly at the offending member of the congregation. This evening he was preaching about a naval disaster which had lately occurred, the sinking of a great battles.h.i.+p by another great battles.h.i.+p through a wrong signal. He was describing the scene when the news reached Chatsea, telling of the sweethearts and wives of the lost bluejackets who waited hoping against hope to hear that their loved ones had escaped death and hearing nearly always the worst news.

"So many of our own dear bluejackets and marines, some of whom only last Christmas had been eating their plum duff at our Christmas dinner, so many of my own dear boys whom I prepared for Confirmation, whose first Confession I had heard, and to whom I had given for the first time the Body and Blood of Our Lord Jesus Christ."

He spoke too of what it meant in the future of material suffering on top of their mental agony. He asked for money to help these women immediately, and he spoke fiercely of the Admiralty red tape and of the obstruction of the official commission appointed to administer the relief fund.

The preacher went on to tell stories from the lives of these boys, finding in each of them some ill.u.s.tration of a Christian virtue and conveying to his listeners a sense of the extraordinary preciousness of human life, so that there was no one who heard him but was fain to weep for those young bluejackets and marines taken in their prime. He inspired in Mark a sense of shame that he had ever thought of people in the aggregate, that he had ever walked along a crowded street without perceiving the importance of every single human being that helped to compose its variety. While he sat there listening to the Missioner and watching the large tears roll slowly down his cheeks from beneath the closed lids, Mark wondered how he could have dared to suppose last night that he was qualified to become a friar and preach the Gospel to the poor. While Father Rowley was speaking, he began to apprehend that before he could aspire to do that he must himself first of all learn about Christ from those very poor whom he had planned to convert.

This sermon was another milestone in Mark's religious life. It discovered in him a hidden treasure of humility, and it taught him to build upon the rock of human nature. He divined the true meaning of Our Lord's words to St. Peter: _Thou art Peter and on this rock I will build my church and the gates of h.e.l.l shall not prevail against it._ John was the disciple whom Jesus loved, but he chose Peter with all his failings and all his follies, with his weakness and his cowardice and his vanity.

He chose Peter, the bedrock of human nature, and to him he gave the keys of Heaven.

Mark knew that somehow he must pluck up courage to ask Father Rowley to let him come and work under him at Chatsea. He was sure that if he could only make him grasp the spirit in which he would offer himself, the spirit of complete humility devoid of any kind of thought that he was likely to be of the least use to the Mission, Father Rowley might accept his oblation. He would have liked to wait behind after Evensong and approach the Missioner directly, so that before speaking to Mr. Ogilvie he might know what chance the offer had of being accepted; but he decided against this course, because he felt that Father Rowley's compa.s.sion might be embarra.s.sed if he had to refuse his request, a point of view that was characteristic of the mood roused in him by the sermon.

He went back to sleep for the last time in an Oxford college, profoundly rea.s.sured of the rightness of his action in giving up the scholars.h.i.+p to Emmett, although, which was characteristic of his new mood, he had by this time begun to tell himself that he had really done nothing at all and that probably in any case Emmett would have been the chosen scholar.

If Mark had still any doubts of his behaviour, they would have vanished when on getting into the train for s.h.i.+pcot he found himself in an otherwise empty third-cla.s.s smoking carriage opposite Father Rowley himself, who with a small black bag beside him, so small that Mark wondered how it could possibly contain the night attire of so fat a man, was sitting back in the corner with a large pipe in his mouth. He was wearing one of those square felt hats sometimes seen on the heads of farmers, and if one had only seen his head and hat without the grubby clerical attire beneath one might have guessed him to be a farmer. Mark noticed now that his eyes of a limpid blue were like a child's, and he realized that in his voice while he was preaching there had been the same sweet gravity of childhood. Just at this moment Father Rowley caught sight of someone he knew on the platform and shouting from the window of the compartment he attracted the attention of a young man wearing an Old Siltonian tie.

"My dear man," he cried, "how are you? I've just made a most idiotic mistake. I got it into my head that I should be preaching here on the first Sunday in term and was looking forward to seeing so many Silchester men. I can't think how I came to make such a muddle."

Father Rowley's shoulders filled up all the s.p.a.ce of the window, so that Mark only heard scattered fragments of the conversation, which was mostly about Silchester and the Siltonians he had hoped to see at Oxford.

"Good-bye, my dear man, good-bye," the Missioner shouted, as the train moved out of the station. "Come down and see us soon at Chatsea. The more of you men who come, the more we shall be pleased."

Mark's heart leapt at these words, which seemed of good omen to his own suit. When Father Rowley was ensconced in his corner and once more puffing away at his pipe, Mark thought how ridiculous it would sound to say that he had heard him preach last night at St. Barnabas' and that, having been much moved by the sermon, he was anxious to be taken on at St. Agnes' as a lay helper. He wished that Father Rowley would make some remark to him that would lead up to his request, but all that Father Rowley said was:

"This is a slow train to Birmingham, isn't it?"

This led to a long conversation about trains, and slow though this one might be it was going much too fast for Mark, who would be at s.h.i.+pcot in another twenty minutes without having taken any advantage of his lucky encounter.