Pretty Lady — Chapters 16 & 17

"Truly, it is very romantic, thy London!"

Chapter 16 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.

Chapter 17 SUNDAY AFTERNOON

"What is Madame going to do?"

whispered Marthe, still alarmed and shocked, when they had both stepped back out of the bedroom; and she added: "He has never been here before."

Marthe was a woman of immense experience but little brains, and when phenomena passed beyond her experience she became rather like a foolish, raw girl.

She had often dealt with drunken men; she had often--especially in her younger days--satisfactorily explained a situation to visitors who happened to call when her mistress for the time being was out.

But only on the very rarest occasions had she known a client commit the awful solecism of calling before lunch;

and that a newcomer, even intoxicated, should commit this solecism staggered her and left her trembling.

"What am I going to do?

Nothing!"

answered Christine.

"Let him sleep."

Christine, too, was dismayed.

But Marthe's weakness gave her strength, and she would not show her fright.

Moreover, Christine had some force of character, though it did not often show itself as sudden firmness.

She condescended to Marthe.

She also condescended to the officer, because he was unconscious, because he had put himself in a false position, because sooner or later he would look extremely silly.

She regarded the officer's intrusion as tiresome, but she did not gravely resent it.

After all, he was drunk; and before the row in the Promenade he had asked her for her card, saying that he was engaged that night but would like to know where she lived.

Of course she had protested--as what woman in her place would not?

--against the theory that he was engaged that night, and she had been in a fair way to convince him that he was not really engaged that night--except morally to her, since he had accosted her--when the quarrel had supervened and it had dawned on her that he had been in the taciturn and cautious stage of acute inebriety.

He had, it now seemed, probably been drinking through the night.

There were men, as she knew, who simply had to have bouts, whose only method to peace was to drown the demon within them.

She would never knowingly touch a drunken man, or even a partially intoxicated man, if she could help it.

She was not a bit like the polite young lady above, who seemed to specialise in noisy tipplers.

Her way with the top-heavy was to leave them to recover in tranquillity.

No other way was safe.

Nevertheless, in the present instance she did venture again into the bedroom.

The plight of the lace coverlet troubled her and practically drove her into the bedroom.

She got a little towel, gently lifted the sleeper's left foot, and tied the towel round his boot; then she did the same to his other foot.

The man did not stir; but if, later, he should stir, neither his boots nor his spurs could do further harm to the lace coverlet.

His cane and gloves were on the floor; she picked them up.

His overcoat, apparently of excellent quality, was still on his back; and the cap had not quite departed from his head.

Christine had learned enough about English military signs and symbols to enable her to perceive that he belonged to the artillery.

"But how will madame change her dress?"

Marthe demanded in the sitting-room.

Madame always changed her dress immediately on returning from church, for that which is suitable for mass may not be proper to other ends.

"I shall not change," said Christine.

"It is well, madame."

Christine was not deterred from changing by the fact that the bedroom was occupied.

She retained her church dress because she foresaw the great advantage she would derive from it in the encounter which must ultimately occur with the visitor.

She would not even take her hat off.

The two women lunched, mainly on macaroni, with some cheese and an apple.

Christine had coffee.

Ah, she must always have her coffee.

As for a cigarette, she never smoked when alone, because she did not really care for smoking.

Marthe, however, enjoyed smoking, and Christine gave her a cigarette, which she lighted while clearing the table.

One was mistress, the other servant, but the two women were constantly meeting on the plane of equality.

Neither of them could avoid it, or consistently tried to avoid it.

Although Marthe did not eat with Christine, if a meal was in progress she generally came into the sitting-room with her mouth more or less full of food.

Their repasts were trifles, passovers, unceremonious and irregular peckings, begun and finished in a few moments.

And if Marthe was always untidy in her person, Christine, up till three in the afternoon, was also untidy.

They went about the flat in a wonderful state of unkempt and insecure slovenliness.

And sometimes Marthe might be lolling in the sitting-room over the illustrations in _La Vie Parisienne_, which was part of the apparatus of the flat, while Christine was in the tiny kitchen washing gloves as she alone could wash them.

The flat lapsed into at any rate a superficial calm.

Marthe, seeing that fate had deprived her of the usual consolations of religion, determined to reward herself by remaining a perfect slattern for the rest of the day.

She would not change at all.

She would not wash up either the breakfast things or the lunch things.

Leaving a small ring of gas alight in the gas stove, she sat down all dirty on a hard chair in front of it and fell into a luxurious catalepsy.

In the sitting-room Christine sat upright on the sofa and read lusciously a French translation of _East Lynne_.

She was in no hurry for the man to waken; her sense of time was very imperfect; she was never pricked by the thought that life is short and that many urgent things demand to be done before the grave opens.

Nor was she apprehensive of unpleasant complications.

The man was in the flat, but it was her flat; her law ran in the flat; and the door was fast against invasion.

Still, the gentle snore of the man, rising and falling, dominated the flat, and the fact of his presence preoccupied the one woman in the kitchen and the other in the sitting-room....

Christine noticed that the thickness of the pages read had imperceptibly increased to three-quarters of an inch, while the thickness of the unread pages had diminished to a quarter of an inch.

And she also noticed, on the open page, another phenomenon.

It was the failing of the day--the faintest shadow on the page.

With incredible transience another of those brief interruptions of darkness which in London in winter are called days was ending.

She rose and went to the discreetly-curtained window, and, conscious of the extreme propriety of her appearance, boldly pulled aside the curtain and looked across, through naked glass, at the hotel nearly opposite.

There was not a sound, not a movement, in Cork Street.

Cork Street, the flat, the hotel, the city, the universe, lay entranced and stupefied beneath the grey vapours of the Sabbath.

The sensation to Christine was melancholy, but it was exquisitely melancholy.

The solid hotel dissolved, and in its place Christine saw the interesting, pathetic phantom of her own existence.

A stern, serious existence, full of disappointments, and not free from dangerous episodes, an existence which entailed much solitude and loss of liberty; but the verdict upon it was that in the main it might easily have been more unsatisfactory than it was.

With her indolence and her unappeasable temperament what other vocation indeed, save that of marriage, could she have taken up?

And her temperament would have rendered any marriage an impossible prison for her.

She was a modest success--her mother had always counselled her against ambition--but she was a success.

Her magic power was at its height.

She continued to save money and had become a fairly regular frequenter of the West End branch of the Crédit Lyonnais.

(Incidentally she had come to an arrangement with her Paris landlord.

) But, more important than money, she was saving her health, and especially her complexion--the source of money.

Her complexion could still survive the minutest examination.

She achieved this supreme end by plenty of sleep and by keeping to the minimum of alcohol.

Of course she had to drink professionally; clients insisted; some of them were exhilarated by the spectacle of a girl tipsy; but she was very ingenious in avoiding alcohol.

When invited to supper she would respond with an air of restrained eagerness: "Oh, yes, with pleasure!"

And then carelessly add: "Unless you would prefer to come quietly home with me.

My maid is an excellent cook and one is very comfortable _chez-moi_."

And often the prospect thus sketched would piquantly allure a client.

Nevertheless at intervals she could savour a fashionable restaurant as well as any harum-scarum minx there.

Her secret fear was still obesity.

She was capable of imagining herself at fat as Marthe--and ruined; for, though a few peculiar amateurs appreciated solidity, the great majority of men did not.

However, she was not getting stouter.

She had a secret sincere respect for certain of her own qualities; and if women of the world condemned certain other qualities in her, well, she despised women of the world--selfish idlers who did nothing, who contributed nothing, to the sum of life, whereas she was a useful and indispensable member of society, despite her admitted indolence.

In this summary way she comforted herself in her loss of caste.

Without Gilbert, of course, her existence would have been fatally dull, and she might have been driven to terrible remedies against ennui and emptiness.

The depth and violence of her feeling for Gilbert were indescribable--at any rate by her.

She turned again from the darkening window to the sofa and sat down and tried to recall the figures of the dozens of men who had sat there, and she could recall at most six or eight, and Gilbert alone was real.

What a paragon!...

Her scorn for girls who succumbed to _souteneurs_ was measureless; as a fact she had met few who did....

She would have liked to beautify her flat for Gilbert, but in the first place she did not wish to spend money on it, in the second place she was too indolent to buckle to the enterprise, and in the third place if she beautified it she would be doing so not for Gilbert, but for the monotonous procession of her clients.

Her flat was a public resort, and so she would do nothing to it.

Besides, she did not care a fig about the look of furniture; the feel of furniture alone interested her; she wanted softness and warmth and no more.

She moved across to the piano, remembering that she had not practised that day, and that she had promised Gilbert to practise every day.

He was teaching her.

At the beginning she had dreamt of acquiring brilliance such as his on the piano, but she had soon seen the futility of the dream and had moderated her hopes accordingly.

Even with terrific efforts she could not make her hands do the things that his did quite easily at the first attempt.

She had, for example, abandoned the _Rosenkavalier_ waltz, having never succeeded in struggling through more than about ten bars of it, and those the simplest.

But her French dances she had notably improved in.

She knew some of them by heart and could patter them off with a very tasteful vivacity.

Instead of practising, she now played gently through a slow waltz from memory.

If the snoring man was wakened, so much the worse--or so much the better!

She went on playing, and evening continued to fall, until she could scarcely see the notes.

Then she heard movements in the bedroom, a sigh, a bump, some English words that she did not comprehend.

She still, by force of resolution, went on playing, to protect herself, to give herself countenance.

At length she saw a dim male figure against the pale oblong of the doorway between the two rooms, and behind the figure a point of glowing red in the stove.

"I say--what time is it?"

She recognised the heavy, resonant, vibrating voice.

She had stopped playing because she was making so many mistakes.

"Late--late!"

she murmured timidly.

The next moment the figure was kneeling at her feet, and her left hand had been seized in a hot hand and kissed--respectfully.

"Forgive me, you beautiful creature!"

begged the deep, imploring voice.

"I know I don't deserve it.

But forgive me!

I worship women, honestly."