Celibates Part 25

'One knows everything. You are not an artist, and see things in a different light.'

'I don't think that art has much to do with a book of that kind. You must have changed very much, Mildred.'

'No,' she said, 'that shows me how little you understand me. I have not changed at all.'

The word suggested the idea, and he said, 'you have changed your religion. You've become a Roman Catholic. I must say, if that book is---'

'That book has nothing to do with me. I glanced at it once, that was all, and, when I saw what it was, I put it down.'

The subject was a painful one, and Harold was willing to let it drop.

'But why,' he said, 'did you go over to Rome? Wasn't the religion you were brought up in good enough for you?'

'I was so unhappy at the time. I had suffered a great deal, I didn't believe in anything--I did not know what was going to become of me.'

'Didn't believe in anything, Mildred--I'm very sorry.... But, if you found difficulty in accepting Protestantism, Catholicism, I should have thought, would be still more impossible. It makes so much a larger demand on faith.'

The discovery of the book had for a moment forced her out of the part she was playing, but religious discussion afforded her ample facility, which she eagerly availed herself of, to return to it.

'You do not understand women.'

'But what has understanding women to do with a religious question?'

Harold asked a little more petulantly than usual.

These were the words and intonation she had expected, and she smiled inwardly.

'Women's lives are so different from men, we need a more intimate consolation than Protestantism can give us. Our sense of the beauty--'

'The old story, those who find difficulty in believing in the divinity of our Lord will swallow infallibility, transubstantiation, and the rest of it--all the miracles, and the entire hierarchy of the saints, male and female, if they may be gratified by music, candles, incense, gold vestments, and ceremonial display. ... It is not love of G.o.d, it is love of the senses.'

_'Ou fait la guerre avec de la musique, des panaches, des drapeaux, des harnais d'or, un deploiement de ceremonie.'_

'What's that?'

'That is from the _Tentation de Saint Antoine_. It comes in the dialogue between Death and l.u.s.t. They make war with music, with banners, with plumes, with golden trappings, and ceremonial display.'

'What's that got to do with what we were saying?'

'Only that you accidentally made use of nearly the same words as Flaubert. "Ceremonial display" is not so good as _deploiement de ceremonie_, but---'

'Mildred.'

'Well.'

She wore a little subdued look, and he did not detect the malice that it superficially veiled. She did not wish him to see that she was playing with him, but she wished to fret him with some slight suspicion that she was. She was at the same time conscious of his goodness, and her own baseness; she even longed to throw herself into his arms, and thank him for having come to Paris; she knew that it was in her interest that he had come, but an instinct stronger than her will forced her to continue improvising the words of her part, and it was her pleasure to provide it with suitable gesture, expression of face, and inflection of voice. She could hear the fiddles in the ball- room, and wished the wall away, and the company ranged behind a curtain. And, as these desires crossed her mind, she pitied poor Harold with his one idea, 'how he may serve _me_.' When she came to the word _me_ her heart softened towards him, but the temptation to discuss her conversion with him was imperative, and she watched him, guessing easily how his idea of Catholicism turned in his narrow brain, and she knew that turn it as he pleased, that he would get no nearer to any understanding of it or of her. Religion was a fixed principle in his life; it was there as his head, neck, and arms were there; and it played a very definite part in his life; his religion was not a doll that could be dressed to suit the humours of the day, but an unchanging principle that ruled, that was obeyed, and that visited all fallings away with remorse. So this opportunity to play with her brother's religious consciousness was to be gainsayed no more than an opportunity to persuade a lover into exhibition of pa.s.sion.

And she remembered how Harold and Alfred used to sit over the dining- room fire shaking their heads over the serious scandal that had been caused in the parish by the new Vicar, who had introduced the dangerous innovation of preaching in his surplice. She had laughed and sneered at her brother's hesitations and scruples about accepting the surplice for the black robe, and now she wondered if he would ask her if she considered it a matter of no importance if the priests put on vestments to say Ma.s.s, or if there were wine and water in the cruets.

She had, as she had told her brother, embraced Catholicism in a time of suffering and depression, when she had fancied herself very near to suicide, when she didn't know what else was going to become of her.

Her painting had failed, and she had gone to Barbizon a wreck of abandoned hopes. She had gone there because at that moment it was necessary to create some interest in her life. And Barbizon had succeeded in a way--she had liked Morton, and it was not her fault if he had failed to understand her, that was one of the reasons why she had left Barbizon, and her distress of mind on leaving was the result of indiscretions which she did not like to remember. True it was that she had not actually been his mistress, but she had gone further than she had intended to go, and she had felt that she must leave Barbizon at once. For her chast.i.ty was her one safeguard, if she were to lose that, she had always felt, and never more strongly than after the Barbizon episode, that there would be no safety for her. She knew that her safety lay in her chast.i.ty, others might do without chast.i.ty, and come out all right in the end, but she could not: an instinct told her so.

There had been moments when she had wondered if she were really quite sane. Something had to happen--Catholicism had happened, and she had gone to travel with the Delacours. Madame Delacour was a strict Catholic and was therefore interested in Mildred's conversion. And with her Mildred went to Ma.s.s, high and low, vespers and benediction.

She selected an old priest for confessor, who gave her absolution without hearing half she said; and she went to communion and besought of M. Delacour never to laugh at her when she was in one of her religious moods. These occurred at undetermined intervals, speaking broadly, about every two months; they lasted sometimes a week, sometimes a fortnight. In her moods she was a strict Catholic, but as they wore away she grew more loose, and Madame Delacour noticed Mildred's absentations from Ma.s.s. Mildred answered that she was a Newmanite and was more concerned with the essential spirit of Catholicism than with its outward practice; and she adopted the same train of argument when Harold asked her if she believed that the bread and wine consecrated and swallowed by the priest was the real Body and Blood of G.o.d. She replied:

'I take all that as a symbol.'

'But Catholicism imposes the belief that it is the real Body and Blood.'

Mildred pa.s.sed off her perplexity with a short laugh, 'You're always the same,' she said, 'you never get farther than externals. I remember how you and Alfred used to shake your heads over the surplice and the black robe question.... You're an enemy of ritualism, and yet I know no one more ritualistic than you are, only your ritual is not ours.

You cannot listen to a sermon if the preacher wears a surplice, you waive the entire merit of the sermon, and see nothing but the impudent surplice. All the beautiful instruction pa.s.ses unheeded, and your brows gather into a frown black as the robe that isn't there.... I believe that you would insist that Christ Himself should ascend into Heaven in a black robe, and you would send the goats to h.e.l.l draped in samite and white linen.' Her paradoxical imagination of the ascent into Heaven and the judgment-seat amused her, and the glimpse she had caught of her brother's portentous gravity curled her up like a cigarette paper. But he was too shocked for speech, and Mildred strove to curb her hilarity.

'No,' she said, 'you can never get farther than externals, you are the true ritualist, the Pope is not more so.' Harold's face now wore an expression of such awful gravity that Mildred could hardly contain herself, she bit her lips and continued: 'But ritual hardly concerns me at all. I was received into the Church before I had ever heard Ma.s.s. I am not interested in externals; I think of the essentials, and Catholicism seems to me to be essentially right. A great deal of it I look upon as symbolism. I am a Catholic, but my Catholicism is my own: I am a Newmanite. If there be no future life and all is mistake, then Catholicism is a sublime mistake; if there be a future life, then we're on the right side.'

'I'm afraid there is little use in our discussing this subject, Mildred. We feel religion very differently. You say that I don't understand women, it seems to me that some women do not understand religion.... They have never originated any religious movement.'

'There have been great saints among women; there have been great Roman Catholic saints.'

'Mildred, really this discussion is futile, not to say exasperating.

Don't you hear the fiddles in the next room, they're playing a waltz.'

Mildred had heard the fiddlers all the while, without them the conversation would have been shorn of most of its interest for her.

'We have wandered very far from the subject on which I came to talk to you--the matter which I came to Paris to talk to you about.'

Mildred suppressed a smile. She had annoyed him sufficiently, there was no reason why she should press this interview towards a quarrel.

Harold paused a moment and then said:

'I hear from our solicitors that you have drawn five thousand pounds out of first-cla.s.s mortgages. Now, this is a large sum of money. How do you intend to re-invest it? I don't see how you could get better interest than you have been getting unless you accept doubtful security. I hope that neither this paper _La Voix du Peuple_ or Panama has tempted you.'

'It is very kind of you, Harold, to come to Paris to inquire into this matter. You won't think that I am ungrateful, will you?'

'No.'

'Then I would sooner say nothing about this money.... I have re- invested it, and I think well invested it. I am satisfied, it is my own money. I am of age and quite capable of judging.'

'You know a great deal more than I do, Mildred, about art and literature and all that kind of thing, but I have had business experience that you have not, and I feel it my duty to tell you if you have invested your money in _La Voix du Peuple_ that I can only look upon it as lost.'

'Come, Harold. Let us admit, for the sake of argument, that I have invested the whole or part of my money in this paper.'

'Then you have done so. If you hadn't, you would not feel inclined to discuss hypothetical investments.'

'Why not? For you impugn the integrity of my dearest friends. The circulation of the paper is going up steadily. When we reach sixty thousand I shall have invested my money, supposing I have put it into the paper at twenty per cent., and will then receive not 250 pounds but 1000 pounds a year. You will admit there is a difference.'

'I should think there was. I wish I could get twenty per cent, for my money. But I thought that getting a big interest for money was against your principles. I thought that the Socialists said that interest was "unpaid labour." Isn't that the expression you use?'

'Yes, it is. I had scruples on this point, but M. Delacour overruled my scruples. Your objection is answered by the theory that individual sacrifice is unavailing: indeed, it is as useless as giving charity, quite. A case of intense suffering is brought under the notice of a _bourgeois;_ it awakens in him a certain hysterical pity, or, I should say, remorse, for he feels that a system that permits such things to be cannot be wholly right. He relieves this suffering, and then he thinks he is a virtuous man; he thinks he has done a good action; but a moment's reflection shows us that this good action is only selfishness in disguise--that it is nothing more than a personal gratification, a balm to his wound, which, by a sort of reflective action, he has received from outraged humanity. Charity is of no use; it is individual, and nothing individual is of any value; the movement must be general.'

'It seems to me that pity is a human sentiment, that it always existed. In all ages there has been pity for the blind, the lame, the deformed, never was pity so general, or so ardent as in the nineteenth century, but it always existed for the poor of spirit and the feeble of body, and these are not the victims of our social system; they are nature's victims.' Mildred did not answer, and they heard the fiddles, the piano, and then the cornet.