The Altar Steps | Page 8

that history was not. There were no dates in
"mystery:" Mark even at seven years, such was the fate of intelligent
precocity, had already had to grapple with a few conspicuous dates in
the immense tale of humanity. He knew for instance that William the
Conqueror landed in 1066, and that St. Augustine landed in 596, and
that Julius Cæsar landed, but he could never remember exactly when.
The last time he was asked that date, he had countered with a request to
know when Noah had landed.
"The Holy Trinity is a mystery."
It belonged to the category of vanished rolling-pins and dead bodies
huddled up in dustbins: it had no date.
But what Mark liked better than speculations upon the nature of God
were the tales that were told like fairy tales without its seeming to
matter whether you remembered them or not, and which just because it

did not matter you were able to remember so much more easily. He
could have listened for ever to the story of the lupinseeds that rattled in
their pods when the donkey was trotting with the boy Christ and His
mother and St. Joseph far away from cruel Herod into Egypt and how
the noise of the rattling seeds nearly betrayed their flight and how the
plant was cursed for evermore and made as hungry as a wolf. And the
story of how the robin tried to loosen one of the cruel nails so that the
blood from the poor Saviour drenched his breast and stained it red for
evermore, and of that other bird, the crossbill, who pecked at the nails
until his beak became crossed. He could listen for ever to the tale of St.
Cuthbert who was fed by ravens, of St. Martin who cut off his cloak
and gave it to a beggar, of St. Anthony who preached to the fishes, of
St. Raymond who put up his cowl and floated from Spain to Africa like
a nautilus, of St. Nicolas who raised three boys from the dead after they
had been killed and cut up and salted in a tub by a cruel man that
wanted to eat them, and of that strange insect called a Praying Mantis
which alighted upon St. Francis' sleeve and sang the Nunc Dimittis
before it flew away.
These were all stories that made bedtime sweet, stories to remember
and brood upon gratefully in the darkness of the night when he lay
awake and when, alas, other stories less pleasant to recall would
obtrude themselves.
Mark was not brought up luxuriously in the Lima Street Mission House,
and the scarcity of toys stimulated his imagination. All his toys were
old and broken, because he was only allowed to have the toys left over
at the annual Christmas Tree in the Mission Hall; and since even the
best of toys on that tree were the cast-offs of rich little children whose
parents performed a vicarious act of charity in presenting them to the
poor, it may be understood that Mark's share of these was not
calculated to spoil him. His most conspicuous toy was a box of
mutilated grenadiers, whose stands had been melted by their former
owner in the first rapture of discovering that lead melts in fire and who
in consequence were only able to stand up uncertainly when stuck into
sliced corks.

Luckily Mark had better armies of his own in the coloured lines that
crossed the blankets of his bed. There marched the crimson army of St.
George, the blue army of St. Andrew, the green army of St. Patrick, the
yellow army of St. David, the rich sunset-hued army of St. Denis, the
striped armies of St. Anthony and St. James. When he lay awake in the
golden light of the morning, as golden in Lima Street as anywhere else,
he felt ineffably protected by the Seven Champions of Christendom;
and sometimes even at night he was able to think that with their bright
battalions they were still marching past. He used to lie awake, listening
to the sparrows and wondering what the country was like and most of
all the sea. His father would not let him go into the country until he was
considered old enough to go with one of the annual school treats. His
mother told him that the country in Cornwall was infinitely more
beautiful than Kensington Gardens, and that compared with the sea the
Serpentine was nothing at all. The sea! He had heard it once in a
prickly shell, and it had sounded beautiful. As for the country he had
read a story by Mrs. Ewing called _Our Field_, and if the country was
the tiniest part as wonderful as that, well . . . meanwhile Dora brought
him back from