"You have already been sufficiently punished, I hope," said the Missioner, "by the humiliations you have inflicted on yourself both outside and inside this house."
"My thoughts are always humiliating," said Mr. Mousley. "I think perhaps that nowadays these humiliating thoughts are my chief temptation to drink. Since I have been here and shared in your hospitality I have felt more sharply than ever my disgrace. I have several times been on the point of asking you to let me be given some kind of work, but I have always been too much ashamed when it came to the point to express my aspirations in words."
"Only yesterday afternoon," said Father Rowley, "I wrote to the Bishop of Warwick, who has continued to interest himself in you notwithstanding the many occasions you have disappointed him, yes, I wrote to the Bishop of Warwick to say that since you came to St. Agnes' your behaviour had justified my suggesting that you should once again be allowed to say Mass."
"You wrote that yesterday afternoon?" Mr. Mousley exclaimed. "And the instant afterwards I went out and got drunk?"
"You mean you took a pick-me-up and two glasses of beer," corrected Father Rowley.
"No, no, no, it wasn't a pick-me-up. I went out and got drunk on brandy quite deliberately."
Father Rowley looked quickly across at Mark, who hastily left the two priests together. He divined from the Missioner's quick glance that he was going to hear Mr. Mousley's confession. A week later Mr. Mousley asked Mark if he would serve at Mass the next morning.
"It may seem an odd request," he said, "but inasmuch as you have seen the depths to which I can sink, I want you equally to see the heights to which Father Rowley has raised me."
It was never allowed to be forgotten at St. Agnes' that the Mission was the Silchester College Mission; and there were few days in the year on which it was possible to visit the Mission House without finding there some member of the College past or present. Every Sunday during term two or three prefects would sit down to dinner; masters turned up during the holidays; even the mighty Provost himself paid occasional visits, during which he put off most of his majesty and became as nearly human as a facetious judge. Nor did Father Rowley allow Silchester to forget that it had a Mission. He was not at all content with issuing a half yearly report of progress and expenses, and he had no intention of letting St. Agnes' exist as a subject for an occasional school sermon or a religious tax levied on parents. From the first moment he had put foot in Chatsea he had done everything he could to make St. Agnes' be what it was supposed to be--the Silchester College Mission. He was particularly anxious that the new church should be built and beautified with money from Silchester sources, even if he also accepted money for this purpose from outside. Soon after Mark had become recognized as Father Rowley's confidential secretary, he visited Silchester for the first time in his company.