The Altar Steps

Frightened by some alarm of sleep that was forgotten in the moment of waking, a little boy threw back the bedclothes and with quick heart and breath sat listening to the torrents of darkness that went rolling by. He dared not open his mouth to scream lest he should be suffocated; he dared not put out his arm to search for the bell-rope lest he should be seized; he dared not hide beneath the blankets lest he should be kept there; he could do nothing except sit up trembling in a vain effort to orientate himself.

Had the room really turned upside down? On an impulse of terror he jumped back from the engorging night and bumped his forehead on one of the brass knobs of the bedstead. With horror he apprehended that what he had so often feared had finally come to pass. An earthquake had swallowed up London in spite of everybody's assurance that London could not be swallowed up by earthquakes. He was going down down to smoke and fire . . . or was it the end of the world? The quick and the dead . . . skeletons . . . thousands and thousands of skeletons. . . .

"Guardian Angel!" he shrieked.

Now surely that Guardian Angel so often conjured must appear. A shaft of golden candlelight flickered through the half open door. The little boy prepared an attitude to greet his Angel that was a compound of the suspicion and courtesy with which he would have welcomed a new governess and the admiring fellowship with which he would have thrown a piece of bread to a swan.

"Are you awake, Mark?" he heard his mother whisper outside.

He answered with a cry of exultation and relief.

"Oh, Mother," he sighed, clinging to the soft sleeves of her dressing-gown. "I thought it was being the end of the world."

"What made you think that, my precious?"

"I don't know. I just woke up, and the room was upside down. And first I thought it was an earthquake, and then I thought it was the Day of Judgment." He suddenly began to chuckle to himself. "How silly of me, Mother. Of course it couldn't be the Day of Judgment, because it's night, isn't it? It couldn't ever be the Day of Judgment in the night, could it?" he continued hopefully.

Mrs. Lidderdale did not hesitate to reassure her small son on this point. She had no wish to add another to that long list of nightly fears and fantasies which began with mad dogs and culminated in the Prince of Darkness himself.

"The room looks quite safe now, doesn't it?" Mark theorized.

"It is quite safe, darling."

"Do you think I could have the gas lighted when you really must go?"

"Just a little bit for once."

"Only a little bit?" he echoed doubtfully. A very small illumination was in its eerie effect almost worse than absolute darkness.

"It isn't healthy to sleep with a great deal of light," said his mother.

"Well, how much could I have? Just for once not a crocus, but a tulip. And of course not a violet."

Mark always thought of the gas-jets as flowers. The dimmest of all was the violet; followed by the crocus, the tulip, and the water-lily; the last a brilliant affair with wavy edges, and sparkling motes dancing about in the blue water on which it swam.

"No, no, dearest boy. You really can't have as much as that. And now snuggle down and go to sleep again. I wonder what made you wake up?"

Mark seized upon this splendid excuse to detain his mother for awhile.

"Well, it wasn't ergzackly a dream," he began to improvise. "Because I was awake. And I heard a terrible plump and I said 'what can that be?' and then I was frightened and. . . ."

"Yes, well, my sweetheart, you must tell Mother in the morning."

Mark perceived that he had been too slow in working up to his crisis and desperately he sought for something to arrest the attention of his beloved audience.

"Perhaps my Guardian Angel was beside me all the time, because, look! here's a feather."

He eyed his mother, hoping against hope that she would pretend to accept his suggestion; but alas, she was severely unimaginative.

"Now, darling, don't talk foolishly. You know perfectly that is only a feather which has worked its way out of your pillow."

"Why?"

The monosyllable had served Mark well in its time; but even as he fell back upon this stale resource he knew it had failed at last.

"I can't stay to explain 'why' now; but if you try to think you'll understand why."

"Mother, if I don't have any gas at all, will you sit with me in the dark for a little while, a tiny little while, and stroke my forehead where I bumped it on the knob of the bed? I really did bump it quite hard-I forgot to tell you that. I forgot 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.

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