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Updated: June 1, 2025
I do not regret the year and six months that I have spent at Malford and Aldershot, because during that time, if I have decided not to be a monk, I am none the less determined to be a priest. I shall be 23 this birthday, and I hope that I shall find a Bishop to ordain me next year and a Theological College to accept responsibility for my training and a beneficed priest to give me a title.
Mark, who was by now growing tired of his own company in the guest-room, accepted Sir Charles' invitation with alacrity; and they walked down from the Abbey to the village of Malford, which was situated at the confluence of the Mall and the Nodder, two diminutive tributaries of the Wey, which itself is not a mighty stream.
Perhaps if Mark had not been educated at Haverton House, had not experienced conversion, had not spent those years at Chatsea and Malford, but like his fellow students had gone decorously from public school to University and still more decorously from University to Theological College, he might with his temperament have wondered if this red-brick alley closed to traffic at either end by beautifully wrought iron gates was the best place to prepare a man for the professional service of Jesus Christ.
The Night Office was not said at Malford, where the liturgical worship of the day began with Lauds and Prime at six. On Mark devolved the duty of waking the brethren in the morning, which was done by striking the door of each cell with a hammer and saying: The Lord be with you, whereupon the sleeping brother must rise from his couch and open the door of his cell to make the customary response.
And if after nearly two years of Malford this passion to bring the Sacraments to human beings consumes me like a fire, then I have not wasted my time, and I can look you in the face and ask for your blessing upon my determination to be a priest. Your ever affectionate Mark.
A pompous ass whose wife ran away from him a little time ago. Served him right, Dorward told me in confidence. You must come and have lunch with me. There's only Lady Landells. I can't afford to live in the big place. Huge affair with Doric portico and all that, don't you know. It's let to Lord Middlesborough, the shipping man. I live at Malford Lodge. Quite a jolly little place I've made of it.
Did he really think that the spectacle of moderation in the moulding was good for me? Did he fancy that I was a young zealot who required putting in his place? Or did he more subtly realize from the account I gave him of Malford that I was in danger of becoming moderate, even luke-warm, even tepid, perhaps even stone-cold?
On the last occasion, some three and a half years before this Market Malford election, when Tressady had seen Fontenoy before starting himself on a long Eastern tour, he had been conscious of a lively curiosity as to what might have happened to "Dicky" by the time he came back again.
His impulse was to say firmly and frankly that it was no good; but after not far short of two years at Malford it would be ungrateful and disloyal to criticize the Order, particularly to the Bishop of the diocese. "I don't think it is much good yet," Mark said. He felt that he simply could not praise the Order without qualification.
The patron himself had gone away for the winter to Rome and Florence, and Mark was glad that he had, for he was sure that otherwise his inquisitiveness would have been severely snubbed by the Prior. Father Burrowes went away as usual to preach after Christmas; but before he went Mark was clothed as a novice together with two other postulants who had been at Malford since September.
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