The sun was shining in the street. It was one of those clear, clean,
frosty mornings when the very air of London, even in the worst places,
seems to be washed by the sunlight from the sin and drink of the night
before.
I was on my way to that church among the mews of Mayfair to which I had
gone so frequently during the early days of my marriage when I was
struggling against the mortal sin (as I thought it was) of loving
Martin.
Just as I reached the church and was ascending the steps, a gorgeous
landau with high-stepping horses and a powdered footman drew up at the
bottom of them.
The carriage, which bore a coronet on the door, contained a lady in long
furs, a rosy-faced baby-girl in squirrel skins with a large doll in her
arms, and a nurse.
I could see that, like myself, the lady (a young mother) had come to
confess, for as she rose from her seat she told the child to sit quiet
and be good and she would not keep her long.
"Tum out soon, mummy, and dolly will lub you eber and eber," said the
child.
The lady stooped and kissed the little one, and then, with a proud and
happy look, stepped out of the carriage and passed into the church,
while the door-keeper opened the vestibule door for her and bowed
deeply.
I stood at the top of the steps for a moment looking back at the
carriage, the horses, the footman, the nurse, and, above all, the
baby-girl with her doll, and then followed the lady into the church.
Apparently mass was just over. Little spirelets of smoke were rising
from the candles on the altar which the sacristan was putting out, a few
communicants were still on their knees, and others with light yet
echoing footsteps were making for the door.
The lady in furs had already taken her place at one of the confessional
boxes, and as there seemed to be no other that was occupied by a priest,
I knelt on a chair in the nave and tried to fix my mind on the prayers
(once so familiar) for the examination of conscience before confession:
"_Oh, Lord Jesus Christ, dispel the darkness of my heart, that I may
bewail my sins and rightly confess them_."
But the labouring of my spirit was like the flight of a bat in the
daylight. Though I tried hard to keep my mind from wandering, I could
not do so. Again and again it went back to the lady in furs with the
coroneted carriage and the high-stepping horses.
She was about my own age, and she began to rise before my tightly closed
eyes as a vision of what I might have been myself if I had not given up
everything for love--wealth, rank, title, luxury.
God is my witness that down to that moment I had never once thought I
had made any sacrifice, but now, as by a flash of cruel lightning, I saw
myself as I was--a peeress who had run away from her natural condition
and was living in the slums, working like any other work-girl.
Even this did not hurt me much, but when I thought of the rosy-faced
child in the carriage, and then of my own darling at Mrs. Oliver's as I
had seen her last, so thin and pale, and with her little bib stained by
her curdled milk, a feeling I had never had before pierced to my very
soul.
I asked myself if this was what God looked down upon and permitted--that
because I had obeyed what I still believed to be the purest impulse of
my nature, love, my child must be made to suffer.
Then something hard began to form in my heart. I told myself that what I
had been taught to believe about God was falsehood and deception.
All this time I was trying to hush down my mind by saying my prayer,
which called on the gracious Virgin Mary to intercede for me with my
Redeemer, and the holy Saints of God to assist me.
"_Assist me by thy grace, that I may be able to declare my sins to the
priest, thy Vicar_."
It was of no use. Every moment my heart was hardening, and what I had
intended to confess about my wicked thoughts of the night before was
vanishing away. At last I rose to my feet and, lifting my head, looked
boldly up at the altar.
Just at that moment the young peeress, having finished her confession,
went off with a light step and a cheerful face. Her kneeling-place at
the confessional box was now vacant, yet I did not attempt to take it,
and some minutes passed in which I stood biting my lips to prevent a
cry. Then the priest parted his curtains and beckoned to me, and I moved
across and stood stubbornly by the perforated brass grating.
"Father," I said, as firmly as I could, for my throat was fluttering, "I
came here to make my confession, but something has come over me since I
entered this church, and now I cannot."
"What has come over you, my child?" asked the priest.
"I feel that what is said about God in a place like this, that He is a
kind and beneficent Father, who is just and merciful and pities the
sufferings of His children, is untrue. It is all wrong and false. _God
does not care_."
The priest did not answer me immediately, but after a moment of silence
he said in a quivering voice:
"My child, I feel just like that myself sometimes. It is the devil
tempting you. He is standing by your side and whispering in your ear, at
this moment."