The Altar Steps | Page 3

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
THE LIMA STREET MISSION
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. The only indulgence he accorded to his senses was in the forms and ceremonies of his ritual, the vestments and furniture of his church. His vicar was able to give him a free hand in the obscure squalor of Lima Street; the ecclesiastical battles he himself had to fight with bishops who were pained or with retired military men who were disgusted by his own conduct of the services at St. Simon's were not waged within the hearing of Lima Street. There, year in, year out for six years, James Lidderdale denied himself nothing in religion, in life everything. He used to preach in the parish church during the penitential seasons, and with such effect upon the pockets of his congregation that the Lima Street Mission was rich for a long while afterward. Yet few of the worshippers in the parish church visited the object of their charity, and those that did venture seldom came twice. Lidderdale did not consider that it was part of the Lima Street religion to be polite to well-dressed explorers of the slum; in fact he rather encouraged Lima Street to suppose the contrary.
"I don't like these dressed up women in my church," he used to tell his vicar. "They distract my people's attention from the altar."
"Oh, I quite see your point," Thurston would agree.
"And I don't like these churchy young fools who come simpering down in top-hats, with rosaries hanging out of their pockets. Lima Street doesn't like them either. Lima Street is provoked to obscene comment, and that just before Mass. It's no good, Vicar.