The Altar Steps | Page 6

of England, and would Mr.
Lidderdale pay him a visit at Fulham Palace as soon as possible.
Lidderdale went, and he argued with the Bishop until the Chaplain
thought his Lordship had heard enough, after which the argument was
resumed by letter. Then Lidderdale was invited to lunch at Fulham
Palace and to argue the whole question over again in person. In the end
the Bishop was sufficiently impressed by the Missioner's sincerity and
zeal to agree to withhold his decision until the Lord Bishop Suffragan
of Devizes had paid a visit to the proposed new parish. This was the
visit that was expected on the day after Mark Lidderdale woke from a
nightmare and dreamed that London was being swallowed up by an
earthquake.

CHAPTER III
RELIGIOUS EDUCATION
When Mark was grown up and looked back at his early childhood--he
was seven years old in the year in which his father was able to see the
new St. Wilfred's an edifice complete except for consecration--it
seemed to him that his education had centered in the prevention of his
acquiring a Cockney accent. This was his mother's dread and for this
reason he was not allowed to play more than Christian equality
demanded with the boys of Lima Street. Had his mother had her way,

he would never have been allowed to play with them at all; but his
father would sometimes break out into fierce tirades against snobbery
and hustle him out of the house to amuse himself with half-a-dozen
little girls looking after a dozen babies in dilapidated perambulators,
and countless smaller boys and girls ragged and grubby and
mischievous.
"You leave that kebbidge-stalk be, Elfie!"
"Ethel! Jew hear your ma calling you, you naughty girl?"
"Stanlee! will you give over fishing in that puddle, this sminute. I'll
give you such a slepping, you see if I don't."
"Come here, Maybel, and let me blow your nose. Daisy Hawkins, lend
us your henkerchif, there's a love! Our Maybel wants to blow her nose.
Oo, she is a sight! Come here, Maybel, do, and leave off sucking that
orange peel. There's the Father's little boy looking at you. Hold your
head up, do."
Mark would stand gravely to attention while Mabel Williams' toilet was
adjusted, and as gravely follow the shrill raucous procession to watch
pavement games like Hop Scotch or to help in gathering together
enough sickly greenery from the site of the new church to make the
summer grotto, which in Lima Street was a labour of love, since few of
the passers by in that neighbourhood could afford to remember St.
James' grotto with a careless penny.
The fact that all the other little boys and girls called the Missioner
Father made it hard for Mark to understand his own more particular
relationship to him, and Lidderdale was so much afraid of showing any
more affection to one child of his flock than to another that he was less
genial with his own son than with any of the other children. It was
natural that in these circumstances Mark should be even more
dependent than most solitary children upon his mother, and no doubt it
was through his passion to gratify her that he managed to avoid that
Cockney accent. His father wanted his first religious instruction to be
of the communal kind that he provided in the Sunday School. One

might have thought that he distrusted his wife's orthodoxy, so strongly
did he disapprove of her teaching Mark by himself in the nursery.
"It's the curse of the day," he used to assert, "this pampering of children
with an individual religion. They get into the habit of thinking God is
their special property and when they get older and find he isn't, as often
as not they give up religion altogether, because it doesn't happen to fit
in with the spoilt notions they got hold of as infants."
Mark's bringing up was the only thing in which Mrs. Lidderdale did not
give way to her husband. She was determined that he should not have a
Cockney accent, and without irritating her husband any more than was
inevitable she was determined that he should not gobble down his
religion as a solid indigestible whole. On this point she even went so
far as directly to contradict the boy's father and argue that an intelligent
boy like Mark was likely to vomit up such an indigestible whole later
on, although she did not make use of such a coarse expression.
"All mothers think their sons are the cleverest in the world."
"But, James, he is an exceptionally clever little boy. Most observant,
with a splendid memory and plenty of imagination."
"Too much imagination. His nights are one long circus."
"But, James, you yourself have insisted so often on