As the new church drew near its completion, Mark apprehended why Father Rowley attached so much importance to as much of the money for it as possible coming directly from Silchester.  He apprehended how the Missioner felt that he was building Silchester in a Chatsea slum; and from that moment that landscape like a mirage of the sunlight, that landscape into which he had been unable to fit himself when he first beheld it became his own, for now beyond the chimneypots he could always see the bald hills of Berkshire and the trees and towers of Silchester, and at the end of all the meanest alleys there were cattle in the meadows and birds in the air above.

Silchester was not the only place that Mark visited with Father Rowley.  It became a recognized custom for him to travel up to London whenever the Missioner was preaching, and in London he was once more struck by the variety of Father Rowley’s worldly knowledge and secular friends.  One week-end will serve as a specimen of many.  They left Chatsea on a Saturday morning travelling up to town in a third class smoker full of bluejackets and soldiers on leave.  None of them happened to know the Missioner, and for a time they talked surlily in undertones, evidently viewing with distaste the prospect of having a Holy Joe in their compartment all the way to London; but when Father Rowley pulled out his pipe, for always when he was away from St. Agnes’ he allowed himself the privilege of smoking, and began to talk to them about their ships and their regiments with unquestionable knowledge, they unbent, so that long before Waterloo was reached it must have been the jolliest compartment in the whole train.  It was all done so easily, and yet without any of that deliberate descent from a pedestal, which is the democratic manner of so many parsons; there was none of that Friar Tuck style of aggressive laymanhood, nor that subtler way of denying Christ (of course with the best intentions) which consists of salting the conversation with a few “damns” and peppering it with a couple of “bloodies” to show that a parson may be what is called human.  Father Rowley was simply himself; and a month later two of the bluejackets in that compartment and one of the soldiers were regular visitors to the Mission House, and what is more regular visitors to the Blessed Sacrament.

They reached London soon after midday and went to lunch at a restaurant in Jermyn Street famous for a Russian salad that Father Rowley sometimes spoke of with affection in Chatsea.  After lunch they went to a matinee of Pelleas and Melisande, the Missioner having been given two stalls by an actor friend.  Mark enjoyed the play and was being stirred by the imagination of old, unhappy, far off things until his companion began to laugh.  Several clever women who looked as if they had been dragged through a hedge said “Hush!”; even Mark, compassionate of the players’ feelings should they hear Father Rowley laugh at the poignant nonsense they were uttering on the stage, begged him to control himself.