The Altar Steps, page 149 by Compton MacKenzie
<< Return to Title Details & Download150
ations, or perhaps I'm not intended to go to Oxford."
"I beg you, my dear boy," said the Rector a little irritably, "not to apply such a loose fatalism to your career. What will you do if you don't go to the University?"
"It's not absolutely essential for a priest to have been to the University," Mark argued.
"No, but in your case I think it's highly advisable. You haven't had a public school education, and inasmuch as I stand to you in loco parentis I should consider myself most culpable if I didn't do everything possible to give you a fair start. You haven't got a very large sum of money to launch yourself upon the world, and I want you to spend what you have to the best advantage. Of course, if you can't get a scholarship, you can't and that's the end of it. But, rather than that you should miss the University I will supplement from my own savings enough to carry you through three years as a commoner."
Tears stood in Mark's eyes.
"You've already been far too generous," he said. "You shan't spend any more on me. I'm sorry I talked in that foolish way. It was really only a kind of affectation of indifference. I'm feeling pretty sore with myself for being such a failure; but I'll have another shot and I hope I shall do better."
Mark as a last chance tried for a close scholarship at St. Osmund's Hall for the sons of clergymen.
"It's a tiny place of course," said the Rector. "But it's authentic Oxford, and in some ways perhaps you would be happier at a very small college. Certainly you'd find your money went much further."
The examination was held in the Easter vacation, and when Mark arrived at the college he found only one other candidate besides himself. St. Osmund's Hall with its miniature quadrangle, miniature hall, miniature chapel, empty of undergraduates and with only the Principal and a couple of tutors in residence, was more like an ancient almshouse than an Oxford college. Mark and his rival, a raw-boned youth called Emmett who was afflicte