The Altar Steps. Compton Mackenzie

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СКАЧАТЬ to tell you because when it was you I was so excited that I forgot."

      "Now listen, Mark. Mother wants you to be a very good boy and turn over and go to sleep. Father is very worried and very tired, and the Bishop is coming tomorrow."

      "Will he wear a hat like the Bishop who came last Easter? Why is he coming?"

      "No darling, he's not that kind of bishop. I can't explain to you why he's coming, because you wouldn't understand; but we're all very anxious, and you must be good and brave and unselfish. Now kiss me and turn over."

      Mark flung his arms round his mother's neck, and thrilled by a sudden desire to sacrifice himself murmured that he would go to sleep in the dark.

      "In the quite dark," he offered, dipping down under the clothes so as to be safe by the time the protecting candle-light wavered out along the passage and the soft closing of his mother's door assured him that come what might there was only a wall between him and her.

      "And perhaps she won't go to sleep before I go to sleep," he hoped.

      At first Mark meditated upon bishops. The perversity of night thoughts would not allow him to meditate upon the pictures of some child-loving bishop like St. Nicolas, but must needs fix his contemplation upon a certain Bishop of Bingen who was eaten by rats. Mark could not remember why he was eaten by rats, but he could with dreadful distinctness remember that the prelate escaped to a castle on an island in the middle of the Rhine, and that the rats swam after him and swarmed in by every window until his castle was—ugh!—Mark tried to banish from his mind the picture of the wicked Bishop Hatto and the rats, millions of them, just going to eat him up. Suppose a lot of rats came swarming up Notting Hill and unanimously turned to the right into Notting Dale and ate him? An earthquake would be better than that. Mark began to feel thoroughly frightened again; he wondered if he dared call out to his mother and put forward the theory that there actually was a rat in his room. But he had promised her to be brave and unselfish, and … there was always the evening hymn to fall back upon.

      Now the day is over, Night is drawing nigh, Shadows of the evening Steal across the sky.

      Mark thought of a beautiful evening in the country as beheld in a Summer Number, more of an afternoon really than an evening, with trees making shadows right across a golden field, and spotted cows in the foreground. It was a blissful and completely soothing picture while it lasted; but it soon died away, and he was back in the midway of a London night with icy stretches of sheet to right and left of him instead of golden fields.

      Now the darkness gathers, Stars begin to peep, Birds and beasts and flowers Soon will be asleep.

      But rats did not sleep; they were at their worst and wake-fullest in the night time.

      Jesu, give the weary Calm and sweet repose, With thy tenderest blessing May mine eyelids close.

      Mark waited a full five seconds in the hope that he need not finish the hymn; but when he found that he was not asleep after five seconds he resumed:

      Grant to little children Visions bright of Thee; Guard the sailors tossing On the deep blue sea.

      Mark envied the sailors.

      Comfort every sufferer Watching late in pain.

      This was a most encouraging couplet. Mark did not suppose that in the event of a great emergency—he thanked Mrs. Ewing for that long and descriptive word—the sufferers would be able to do much for him; but the consciousness that all round him in the great city they were lying awake at this moment was most helpful. At this point he once more waited five seconds for sleep to arrive. The next couplet was less encouraging, and he would have been glad to miss it out.

      Those who plan some evil From their sin restrain.

      Yes, but prayers were not always answered immediately. For instance he was still awake. He hurried on to murmur aloud in fervour:

      Through the long night watches May Thine Angels spread Their white wings above me, Watching round my bed.

      A delicious idea, and even more delicious was the picture contained in the next verse.

      When the morning wakens, Then may I arise Pure, and fresh, and sinless In Thy Holy Eyes.

      Glory to the Father, Glory to the Son, And to thee, blest Spirit, Whilst all ages run. Amen.

      Mark murmured the last verse with special reverence in the hope that by doing so he should obtain a speedy granting of the various requests in the earlier part of the hymn.

      In the morning his mother put out Sunday clothes for him.

      "The Bishop is coming to-day," she explained.

      "But it isn't going to be like Sunday?" Mark inquired anxiously. An extra Sunday on top of such a night would have been hard to bear.

      "No, but I want you to look nice."

      "I can play with my soldiers?"

      "Oh, yes, you can play with your soldiers."

      "I won't bang, I'll only have them marching."

      "No, dearest, don't bang. And when the Bishop comes to lunch I want you not to ask questions. Will you promise me that?"

      "Don't bishops like to be asked questions?"

      "No, darling. They don't."

      Mark registered this episcopal distaste in his memory beside other facts such as that cats object to having their tails pulled.

CHAPTER II

       Table of Contents

THE LIMA STREET MISSION

       Table of Contents

      In the year 1875, when the strife of ecclesiastical parties was bitter and continuous, the Reverend James Lidderdale came as curate to the large parish of St. Simon's, Notting Hill, which at that period was looked upon as one of the chief expositions of what Disraeli called "man-millinery." Inasmuch as the coiner of the phrase was a Jew, the priests and people of St. Simon's paid no attention to it, and were proud to consider themselves an outpost of the Catholic Movement in the Church of England. James Lidderdale was given the charge of the Lima Street Mission, a tabernacle of corrugated iron dedicated to St. Wilfred; and Thurston, the Vicar of St. Simon's, who was a wise, generous and single-hearted priest, was quick to recognize that his missioner was capable of being left to convert the Notting Dale slum in his own way.

      "If St. Simon's is an outpost of the Movement, Lidderdale must be one of the vedettes," he used to declare with a grin.

      The Missioner was a tall hatchet-faced hollow-eyed ascetic, harsh and bigoted in the company of his equals whether clerical or lay, but with his flock tender and comprehending and patient. СКАЧАТЬ