The Altar Steps Part 36

"I'm going to show Mr. Lidderdale some of our pictures before lunch,"

said Sir Charles.

Lady Landells paid no attention; Mark, supposing her to be on the verge of a poetic frenzy, was glad to leave her in that wicker alcove under the tulip tree and to follow Sir Charles into the house.

It was an astonis.h.i.+ng house inside, with Gothic carving everywhere and with ancient leaded cas.e.m.e.nts built inside the sashed windows of the exterior.

"I took an immense amount of trouble to get this place arranged to my taste," said Sir Charles; and Mark wondered why he had bothered to retain the outer sh.e.l.l, since that was all that was left of the original. In every room there were copies, excellently done of pictures by Botticelli and Mantegna and other pre-Raphaelite painters; the walls were rich with antique brocades and tapestries; the ceilings were gilded or elaborately moulded with fan traceries and groining; great candlesticks stood in every corner; the doors were all old with floriated hinges and huge locks--it was the sort of house in which Victor Hugo might have put on his slippers and said, "I am at home."

"I admit nothing after 1520," said Sir Charles proudly.

Mark wondered why so fastidious a medievalist allowed the Order of St.

George to erect those three tin tabernacles and to matchboard the interior of the Abbey. But perhaps that was only another outer sh.e.l.l which would gradually be filled.

Lunch was a disappointment, because when Sir Charles began to talk about the monastery, which was what Mark had been wanting to talk about all the morning, Lady Landells broke in:

"I am sorry, Charles, but I'm afraid that I must beg for complete silence at lunch, as I'm in the middle of a sonnet."

The poetess sighed, took a large mouthful of food, and sighed again.

After lunch Sir Charles took Mark to see his library, which reminded him of a Rossetti interior and lacked only a beautiful long-necked creature, full-lipped and auburn-haired, to sit by the cas.e.m.e.nt languis.h.i.+ng over a cithern or gazing out through bottle-gla.s.s lights at a forlorn and foreshortened landscape of faerie land.

"Poor Lady Landells was a little tiresome at lunch," said Sir Charles half to himself. "She gets moods. Women seem never to grow out of getting moods. But she has always been most kind to me, and she insists on giving me anything I want for my house. Last year she was good enough to buy it from me as it stands, so it's really her house, although she has left it back to me in her will. She took rather a fancy to you by the way."

Mark, who had supposed that Lady Landells had regarded him with aversion and scorn, stared at this.

"Didn't she give you her hand when you said good-bye?" asked Sir Charles.

"Her left hand," said Mark.

"Oh, she never gives her right hand to anybody. She has some fad about spoiling the magnetic current of Apollo or something. Now, what about a walk?"

Mark said he should like to go for a walk very much, but wasn't Sir Charles too busy?

"Oh, no, I've nothing to do at all."

Yet only that morning he had held forth to Mark at great length on the amount of work demanded for the management of an estate.

"Now, why do you want to join Burrowes?" Sir Charles inquired presently.

"Well, I hope to be a priest, and I think I should like to spend the next two years out of the world."

"Yes, that is all very well," said Sir Charles, "but I don't know that I altogether recommend the O.S.G. I'm not satisfied with the way things are being run. However, they tell me that this fellow Brother George has a good deal of common-sense. He has been running their house in Malta, where he's done some good work. I gave them the land to build a mother house so that they could train people for active service, as it were; but Burrowes keeps chopping and changing and sending untrained novices to take charge of an important branch like Sandgate, and now since Rowley left he talks of opening a priory in Chatsea. That's all very well, and it's quite right of him to bear in mind that the main object of the Order is to work among soldiers; but at the same time he leaves this place to run itself, and whenever he does come down here he plans some hideous addition, to pay for which he has to go off preaching for another three months, so that the Abbey gets looked after by a young novice of twenty-five. It's ridiculous, you know. I was grumbling at the Bishop; but really I can understand his disinclination to countenance Burrowes. I have hopes of Brother George, and I shall take an early opportunity of talking to him."

Mark was discouraged by Sir Charles' criticism of the Order; and that it could be criticized like this through the conduct of its founder accentuated for him the gulf that lay between the English Church and the rest of Catholic Christendom.

It was not much solace to remember that every Benedictine community was an independent congregation. One could not imagine the most independent community's being placed in charge of a novice of twenty-five. It made Mark's proposed monastic life appear amateurish; and when he was back in the matchboarded guest-room the impulse to abandon his project was revised. Yet he felt it would be wrong to return to Wych-on-the-Wold.

The impulse to come here, though sudden, had been very strong, and to give it up without trial might mean the loss of an experience that one day he should regret. The opinion of Sir Charles Horner might or might not be well founded; but it was bound to be a prejudiced opinion, because by const.i.tuting himself to the extent he had a patron of the Order he must involuntarily expect that it should be conducted according to his views. Sir Charles himself, seen in perspective, was a tolerably ridiculous figure, too much occupied with the paraphernalia of wors.h.i.+p, too well pleased with himself, a man of rank and wealth who judged by severe standards was an old maid, and like all old maids critical, but not creative.

CHAPTER XXIV

THE ORDER OF ST. GEORGE

The Order of St. George was started by the Reverend Edward Burrowes six years before Sir Charles Horner's gift of land for a Mother House led him to suppose that he had made his foundation a permanent factor in the religious life of England.

Edward Burrowes was the only son of a band-master in the Royal Artillery who at an impressionable moment in the life of his son was stationed at Malta. The religious atmosphere of Malta combined with the romantic a.s.sociations of chivalry and the influence of his mother determined the boy's future. The band-master was puzzled and irritated by his son's ecclesiastical bias. He thought that so much church-going argued an unhealthy preoccupation, and as for Edward's rhapsodies about the Auberge of Castile, which sheltered the Messes of the Royal Artillery and the Royal Engineers, they made him sick, to use his own expression.

"You make me sick, Ted," he used to declare. "The sooner I get quit of Malta and quartered at Woolwich again, the better I shall be pleased."

When at last the band-master was moved to Woolwich, he hoped that the effect of such prosaic surroundings would put an end to Ted's mooning, and that he would settle down to a career more likely to reward him in this world rather than in that ambiguous world beyond to which his dreams aspired. Edward, who was by this time seventeen and who had so far submitted to his father's wishes as to be working in a solicitor's office, found that the effect of being banished from Malta was to stimulate him into a practical attempt to express his dreams of religious devotion. He hired a small room over a stable in a back street and started a club for the sons of soldiers. The band-master would not have minded this so much, especially when he was congratulated on his son's enterprise by the wife of the Colonel. Unfortunately this was not enough for Edward, who having got the right side of an unscrupulously romantic curate persuaded him to receive his vows of a Benedictine oblate. The band-master, proud and fond though he might be of his own uniform, objected to his son's arriving home from business and walking about the house in a ca.s.sock. He objected equally to finding that his own musical gifts had with his son degenerated into a pa.s.sion for playing Gregorian chants on a vile harmonium. It was only consideration for his delicate wife that kept the band-master from pitching both ca.s.sock and harmonium into the street. The amateur oblate regretted his father's hostility; but he persevered with the manner of life he had marked out for himself, finding much comfort and encouragement in reading the lives of the saintly founders of religious orders.

At last, after a long struggle against the difficulties that friends and father put in his way, Edward Burrowes managed at the age of twenty-seven to get ordained in Canada, whither, in despair of escaping otherwise from the solicitor's office, he had gone to seek his own fortune. He took with him the oblate's ca.s.sock; but he left behind the harmonium, which his father kicked to pieces in rage at not being able to kick his son. Burrowes worked as a curate in a dismal lakeside town in Ontario, consoling himself with dreams of monasticism and chivalry, and gaining a reputation as a preacher. His chief friend was a young farmer, called George Harvey, whom he succeeded in firing with his own enthusiasm and whom he managed to persuade--which shows that Burrowes must have had great powers of persuasion--to wear the habit of a Benedictine novice, when he came to spend Sat.u.r.day night to Monday morning with his friend. By this time Burrowes had pa.s.sed beyond the oblate stage, for having found a Canadian bishop willing to dispense him from that portion of the Benedictine rule which was incompatible with his work as a curate in Jonesville, Ontario, he got himself clothed as a novice. About this period a third man joined Burrowes and Harvey in their spare-time monasticism. This was John Holcombe, who had emigrated from Dorsets.h.i.+re after an unfortunate love affair and who had been taken on by George Harvey as a carter. Holcombe was the son of a yeoman farmer that owned several hundred acres of land. He had been educated at Sherborne, and soon by his capacity and attractive personality he made himself so indispensable to his employer that George Harvey's farm was turned into a joint concern. No doubt Harvey's example was the immediate cause of Holcombe's a.s.sociating himself with the little community: but it still says much for Burrowes' powers of persuasion that he should have been able to impress this young Dorset farmer with the serious possibility of leading the monastic life in Ontario.

When another year had pa.s.sed, an opportunity arose of acquiring a better farm in Alberta. It was the Bishop of Alberta who had been so sympathetic with Burrowes' monastic aspirations; and, when Harvey and Holcombe decided to move to Moose Rib, Burrowes gave up his curacy to lead a regular monastic life, so far as one could lead a regular monastic life on a farm in the North-west.

Two more years had gone by when a letter arrived from England to tell George Harvey that he was the heir to 12,000. Burrowes had kept all his influence over the young farmer, and he was actually able to persuade Harvey to devote this fortune to founding the Order of St. George for mission work among soldiers. There was some debate whether Father Burrowes, Brother George, and Brother Birinus should take their final vows immediately; but in the end Father Burrowes had his way, and they were all three professed by the sympathetic Bishop of Alberta, who granted them a const.i.tution subject to the ratification of the Archbishop of Canterbury. Father Burrowes was elected Father Superior, Brother George was made a.s.sistant Superior, and Brother Birinus had to concentrate in his person various monastic offices just as on the Moose Rib Farm he had combined in his person the duties of the various hands.

The immediate objective of the new community was Malta, where it was proposed to open their first house and where, in despite of the outraged dignity of innumerable real monks already there, they made a successful beginning. A second house was opened at Gibraltar and put in charge of Brother Birinus. Neither Malta nor Gibraltar provided much of a field for reinforcing the Order, which, if it was to endure, required additional members. Father Burrowes proposed that he should go to England and open a house at Aldershot, and that, if he could obtain a hearing as a preacher, he should try to raise enough funds for a house at Sandgate as well. Brother George and Brother Birinus in a solemn chapter of three accepted the proposal; the house at Gibraltar was given up; the Father Superior went to seek the fortunes of the Order in England, while the other two remained at their work in Malta. Father Burrowes was even more successful as a preacher than he hoped; ascribing the steady flow of offertories to Divine favour, he inst.i.tuted during the next four years, priories at Aldershot and Sandgate. He began to feel the need of a Mother House, having now more than enough candidates for the Order of Saint George, where the novices could be suitably trained to meet the stress of active mission work. One of his moving appeals for this object was heard by Sir Charles Horner who, for reasons he had already explained to Mark and because underneath all his ecclesiasticism there did exist a genuine desire for the glory of G.o.d, had presented the land at Malford to the Order. Father Burrowes preached harder than ever, addressed drawing-room meetings, and started a monthly magazine called _The Dragon_ to raise the necessary money to build a mighty abbey. Meanwhile, he had to be contented with those three tin tabernacles. Brother George, who had remained all these years in Malta, suggested that it was time for somebody else to take his place out there, and the Father Superior, although somewhat unwillingly, had agreed to his coming to Malford. Not having heard of anybody whom at the moment he considered suitable to take charge of what was now a distant outpost of the Order, he told Brother George to close the house. It was at this stage in the history of the Order that Mark presented himself as a candidate for admission.

Father Burrowes arrived unexpectedly two days after the lunch at Malford Lodge; and presently Brother Dunstan came to tell Mark that the Reverend Father would see him in the Abbott's Parlour immediately after Nones. Mark thought that Sir Charles might have given a mediaeval lining to this room at least, which with its roll-top desk looked like the office of the clerk of the works.

"So you want to be a monk?" said Father Burrowes contemptuously. "Want to dress up in a beautiful white habit, eh?"

"I really don't mind what I wear," said Mark, trying not to appear ruffled by the imputation of wrong motives. "But I do want to be a monk, yes."

"You can't come here to play at it," said the Superior, looking keenly at Mark from his bright blue eyes and lighting up a large pipe.

"Curiously enough," said Mark, who had forgotten the Benedictine injunction to discourage newcomers that seek to enter a community, "I wrote to my guardian a few days ago that my impression of Malford Abbey was rather that it was playing at being monks."

The Superior flushed to a vivid red. He was a burly man of fair complexion, inclined to plumpness, and with a large mobile mouth eloquent and sensual. His hands were definitely fat, the backs of them covered with golden hairs and freckles.

"So you're a critical young gentleman, are you? I suppose we're not Catholic enough for you. Well," he snapped, "I'm afraid you won't suit us. We don't want you. Sorry."

"I'm sorry too," said Mark. "But I thought you would prefer frankness.

If you will spare me a few minutes, I'll explain why I want to join the Order of St. George. If when you've heard what I have to say you still think that I'm not suitable, I shall recognize your right to be of that opinion from your experience of many young men like myself who have been tried and found wanting."

"Did you learn that speech by heart?" the Superior inquired, raising his eyebrows mockingly.

"I see you're determined to find fault," Mark laughed. "But, Reverend Father, surely you will listen to my reasons before deciding against them or me?"

"My instinct tells me you'll be no good to us. But if you insist on wasting my time, fire ahead. Only please remember that, though I may be a monk, I'm a very busy man."

Mark gave a full account of himself until the present and wound up by saying:

"I don't think I have any sentimental reasons for wanting to enter a monastery. I like working among soldiers and sailors. I am ready to put down 200 and I hope to be of use. I wish to be a priest, and if you find or I find that when the time comes for me to be ordained I shall make a better secular priest, at any rate, I shall have had the advantage of a life of discipline and you, I promise, will have had a novice who will have regarded himself as such, but yet will have learnt somehow to have justified your confidence."