THE VIRGIN
Christine went into the oratory of St. Philip at Brompton on a Sunday
morning in the following January, dipped her finger into one of the
Italian basins at the entrance, and signed herself with the holy
water. She was dressed in black; she had the face of a pretty martyr;
her brow was crumpled by the world's sorrow; she looked and actually
was at the moment intensely religious. She had months earlier chosen
the Brompton Oratory for her devotions, partly because of the name of
Philip, which had been murmured in accents of affection by her
dying mother, and partly because it lay on a direct, comprehensible
bus-route from Piccadilly. You got into the motor-bus opposite the end
of the Burlington Arcade, and in about six minutes it dropped you in
front of the Oratory; and you could not possibly lose yourself in the
topographical intricacies of the unknown city. Christine never took a
taxi except when on business.
The interior was gloomy with the winter forenoon; the broad
Renaissance arches showed themselves only faintly above; on every side
there were little archipelagos of light made by groups of candles in
front of great pale images. The church was comparatively empty, and
most of the people present were kneeling in the chapels; for Christine
had purposely come, as she always did, at the slack hour between the
seventh and last of the early morning Low Masses and the High Mass at
eleven.
She went up the right aisle and stopped before the Miraculous Infant
Jesus of Prague, a charming and naive little figure about eighteen
inches high in a stiff embroidered cloak and a huge symbol upon his
curly head. She had put herself under the protection of the Miraculous
Infant Jesus of Prague. She liked him; he was a change from the
Virgin; and he stood in the darkest corner of the whole interior,
behind the black statue of St. Peter with protruding toe, and within
the deep shadow made by the organ-loft overhead. Also he had a motto
in French: "Plus vous m'honorerez plus je vous favoriserai."
Christine hesitated, and then left the Miraculous Infant Jesus of
Prague without even a transient genuflexion. She was afraid to devote
herself to him that morning.
Of course she had been brought up strictly in the Roman Catholic
faith. And in her own esteem she was still an honest Catholic. For
years she had not confessed and therefore had not communicated. For
years she had had a desire to cast herself down at a confessional-box,
but she had not done so because of one of the questions in the _Petit
Paroissien_ which she used: "Avez-vous péché, par pensée, parole,
ou action, contre la pureté ou la modestie?" And because also of
the preliminary injunction: "Maintenant essayez de vous rappeler vos
péchés, _et combien de fois vous les avez commis_." She could not
bring herself to do that. Once she had confessed a great deal to a
priest at Sens, but he had treated her too lightly; his lightness
with her had indeed been shameful. Since then she had never confessed.
Further, she knew herself to be in a state of mortal sin by reason of
her frequent wilful neglect of the holy offices; and occasionally, at
the most inconvenient moments, the conviction that if she died she was
damned would triumph over her complacency. But on the whole she had
hopes for the future; though she had sinned, her sin was mysteriously
not like other people's sin of exactly the same kind.
And finally there was the Virgin Mary, the sweet and dependable
goddess. She had been neglecting the very clement Virgin Mary in
favour of the Miraculous Infant Jesus of Prague. A whim, a thoughtless
caprice, which she had paid for! The Virgin Mary had withdrawn her
defending shield. At least that was the interpretation which Christine
was bound to put upon the terrible incident of the previous night in
the Promenade. She had quite innocently been involved in a drunken
row in the lounge. Two military officers, one of whom, unnoticed by
Christine, was intoxicated, and two women--Madame Larivaudière and
Christine! The Belgian had been growing more and more jealous of
Christine.... The row had flamed up in the tenth of a second like an
explosion. The two officers--then the two women. The bright silvery
sound of glass shattered on marble! High voices, deep voices! Half the
Promenade had rushed vulgarly into the lounge, panting with a gross
appetite to witness a vulgar scene. And as the Belgian was jealous of
the French girl, so were the English girls horribly jealous of all the
foreign girls, and scornful too. Nothing but the overwhelming desire
of the management to maintain the perfect respectability of its
Promenade had prevented a rough-and-tumble between the officers.
As for Madame Larivaudière, she had been ejected and told never to
return. Christine had fled to the cloak-room, where she had remained
for half an hour, and thence had vanished away, solitary, by the side
entrance. It was precisely such an episode as Christine's mother would
have deprecated in horror, and as Christine herself intensely loathed.
And she could never assuage the moral wound of it by confiding the
affair to Gilbert. She was mad about Gilbert; she thrilled to be his
slave; she had what seemed an immeasurable confidence in him; and yet
never, never could she mention another individual man to him, much
less tell him of the public shame that had fallen upon her in the
exercise of her profession. Why had fate been thus hard on her? The
answer was surely to be found in the displeasure of the Virgin. And so
she did not dare to stay with the Miraculous Infant Jesus of Prague,
nor even to murmur the prayer beginning: "Adorable Jésus, divin modèle
de la perfection ..."
She glanced round the great church, considering what were to her
the major and minor gods and goddesses on their ornate thrones: St.
Antony, St. Joseph, St. Sebastian, St. Philip, the Sacred Heart, St.
Cecilia, St. Peter, St. Wilfrid, St. Mary Magdelene (Ah! Not at that
altar could she be seen!), St. Patrick, St. Veronica, St. Francis,
St. John Baptist, St. Teresa, Our Lady, Our Lady of Good Counsel. No!
There was only one goddess possible for her--Our Lady of VII Dolours.
She crossed the wide nave to the severe black and white marble chapel
of the VII Dolours. The aspect of the shrine suited her. On one side
she read the English words: "Of your charity pray for the soul of
Flora Duchess of Norfolk who put up this altar to the Mother of
Sorrows that they who mourn may be comforted." And the very words
were romantic to her, and she thought of Flora Duchess of Norfolk as a
figure inexpressibly more romantic than the illustrious female figures
of French history. The Virgin of the VII Dolours was enigmatically
gazing at her, waiting no doubt to be placated. The Virgin was
painted, gigantic, in oil on canvas, but on her breast stood out
a heart made in three dimensions of real silver and pierced by the
swords of the seven dolours, three to the left and four to the right;
and in front was a tiny gold figure of Jesus crucified on a gold
cross.
Christine cast herself down and prayed to the painted image and the
hammered heart. She prayed to the goddess whom the Middle Ages had
perfected and who in the minds of the simple and the savage has
survived the Renaissance and still triumphantly flourishes; the Queen
of heaven, the Tyrant of heaven, the Woman in heaven; who was so
venerated that even her sweat is exhibited as a relic; who was softer
than Christ as Christ was softer than the Father; who in becoming a
goddess had increased her humanity; who put living roses for a sign
into the mouths of fornicators when they died, if only they had been
faithful to her; who told the amorous sacristan to kiss her face and
not her feet; who questioned lovers about their mistresses: "Is she as
pretty as I?"; who fell like a pestilence on the nuptial chambers of
young men who, professing love for her, had taken another bride; who
enjoyed being amused; who admitted a weakness for artists, tumblers,
soldiers and the common herd; who had visibly led both opponents on
every battlefield for centuries; who impersonated absent disreputable
nuns and did their work for them until they returned, repentant, to
be forgiven by her; who acted always on her instinct and never on her
reason; who cared nothing for legal principles; who openly used her
feminine influence with the Trinity; who filled heaven with riff-raff;
and who had never on any pretext driven a soul out of heaven.
Christine made peace with this jealous and divine creature. She felt
unmistakably that she was forgiven for her infidelity due to the
Infant in the darkness beyond the opposite aisle. The face of the
Lady of VII Dolours miraculously smiled at her; the silver heart
miraculously shed its tarnish and glittered beneficent lightnings.
Doubtless she knew somewhere in her mind that no physical change had
occurred in the picture or the heart; but her mind was a complex, and
like nearly all minds could disbelieve and believe simultaneously.
Just as High Mass was beginning she rose and in grave solace left the
Oratory; she would not endanger her new peace with the Virgin Mary by
any devotion to other gods. She was solemn but happy. The conductor
who took her penny in the motor-bus never suspected that on the pane
before her, where some Agency had caused to be printed in colour the
words "Seek ye the _Lord_" she saw, in addition to the amazing oddness
of the Anglo-Saxon race, a dangerous incitement to unfaith. She kept
her thoughts passionately on the Virgin; and by the time the bus
had reached Hyde Park Corner she was utterly sure that the horrible
adventure of the Promenade was purged of its evil potentialities.
In the house in Cork Street she took out her latch-key, placidly
opened the door, and entered, smiling at the solitude. Marthe, who
also had a soul in need of succour, would, in the ordinary course,
have gone forth to a smaller church and a late mass. But on this
particular morning fat Marthe, in déshabille, came running to her from
the little kitchen.
"Oh! Madame!... There is someone! He is drunk."
Her voice was outraged. She pointed fearfully to the bedroom.
Christine, courageous, walked straight in. An officer in khaki was
lying on the bed; his muddy, spurred boots had soiled the white
lace coverlet. He was asleep and snoring. She looked at him, and,
recognising her acquaintance of the previous night, wondered what the
very clement Virgin could be about.