The Altar Steps | Page 9

the greengrocer's a pot of musk, which Mark used to
sniff so enthusiastically that Dora said he would sniff it right away if he
wasn't careful. Later on when Lima Street was fetid in the August sun
he gave this pot of musk to a little girl with a broken leg, and when she
died in September her mother put it on her grave.

CHAPTER IV
HUSBAND AND WIFE
Mark was impressed by the appearance of the Bishop of Devizes; a
portly courtly man, he brought to the dingy little Mission House in
Lima Street that very sense of richness and grandeur which Mark had
anticipated. The Bishop's pink plump hands of which he made such use
contrasted with the lean, scratched, and grimy hands of his father; the
Bishop's hair white and glossy made his father's bristly, badly cut hair
look more bristly and worse cut than ever, and the Bishop's voice ripe
and unctuous grew more and more mellow as his father's became

harsher and more assertive. Mark found himself thinking of some lines
in The Jackdaw of Rheims about a cake of soap worthy of washing the
hands of the Pope. The Pope would have hands like the Bishop's, and
Mark who had heard a great deal about the Pope looked at the Bishop
of Devizes with added interest.
"While we are at lunch, Mr. Lidderdale, you will I am sure pardon me
for referring again to our conversation of this morning from another
point of view--the point of view, if I may use so crude an expression,
the point of view of--er--expediency. Is it wise?"
"I'm not a wise man, my lord."
"Pardon me, my dear Mr. Lidderdale, but I have not completed my
question. Is it right? Is it right when you have an opportunity to
consolidate your great work . . . I use the adjective advisedly and with
no intention to flatter you, for when I had the privilege this morning of
accompanying you round the beautiful edifice that has been by your
efforts, by your self-sacrifice, by your eloquence, and by your devotion
erected to the glory of God . . . I repeat, Mr. Lidderdale, is it right to
fling all this away for the sake of a few--you will not misunderstand
me--if I call them a few excrescences?"
The Bishop helped himself to the cauliflower and paused to give his
rhetoric time to work.
"What you regard, my lord, as excrescences I regard as fundamentals of
our Holy Religion."
"Come, come, Mr. Lidderdale," the Bishop protested. "I do not think
that you expect to convince me that a ceremony like the--er--Asperges
is a fundamental of Christianity."
"I have taught my people that it is," said the Missioner. "In these days
when Bishops are found who will explain away the Incarnation, the
Atonement, the Resurrection of the Body, I hope you'll forgive a
humble parish priest who will explain away nothing and who would
rather resign, as I told you this morning, than surrender a single one of

these excrescences."
"I do not admit your indictment, your almost wholesale indictment of
the Anglican episcopate; but even were I to admit at lunch that some of
my brethren have been in their anxiety to keep the Man in the Street
from straying too far from the Church, have been as I was saying a little
too ready to tolerate a certain latitude of belief, even as I said just now
were that so, I do not think that you have any cause to suspect me of
what I should repudiate as gross infidelity. It was precisely because the
Bishop of London supposed that I should be more sympathetic with
your ideals that he asked me to represent him in this perfectly
informal--er--"
"Inquest," the Missioner supplied with a fierce smile.
The Bishop encouraged by the first sign of humour he had observed in
the bigoted priest hastened to smile back.
"Well, let us call it an inquest, but not, I hope, I sincerely and devoutly
hope, Mr. Lidderdale, not an inquest upon a dead body." Then
hurriedly he went on. "I may smile with the lips, but believe me, my
dear fellow labourer in the vineyard of Our Lord Jesus Christ, believe
me that my heart is sore at the prospect of your resignation. And the
Bishop of London, if I have to go back to him with such news, will be
pained, bitterly grievously pained. He admires your work, Mr.
Lidderdale, as much as I do, and I have no doubt that if it were not for
the unhappy controversies that are tearing asunder our National Church,
I say I do not doubt that he would give you a free hand. But how can he
give you a free hand when his