The Golden Virgin

The author is indebted to the Hon. Lady Salmond for permission to quote, in the story, verses from
Into
Battle,
by Captain the Hon. Julian Grenfell, D.S.O., who died of wounds in May, 1915.

The version used in the following pages, which differs slightly from that printed in
The
Oxford
Book
of
English
Verse
(New Edition 1939) and also from another version in
Bright
Armour,
Memories
of
Four
Years
of
War,
by Monica Salmond (Faber & Faber Ltd.), is taken from ‘the rough copy scribbled and hardly altered in Julian’s small pocket diary’.

In 1910 a company was formed in London with the style and title of Temperance Billiard Halls Ltd. Its object was to build the sort of places where youth of the poorer classes might enjoy companionship other than that found in street and public house, of the kind synonymous with all that was dreaded by parents who hoped that their boys would not go wrong. Several of these halls were built in the suburbs during the most optimistic period of Liberalism in power, if not in flower, in the first decade of the twentieth century.

The word
billiards
was, among the aspiring classes which dwelt in the new suburbs of red and yellow brick, in uneasy association with Victorian liquor, bar lights, and unmentionable worse things connected with women. To help overcome existing prejudice, and lest any doubts arise as to the spirit and capability of the impulse towards the setting up of healthy, innocent recreation for the young, Temperance Billiard Halls Ltd. had caused to be let into the outside wall of each building a panel of glazed green tiles with letters and figures announcing the reassuring fact that the company had a capital of £100,000.

One such hall had been built in south-east London, beside a high road leading into Kent, where cabbage and potato fields were still under cultivation only a mile or so away, despite the extension of new roads of creosoted blocks of jarra wood and rails for the brown and yellow electric trams of the L.C.C. The hall stood on what had been grazing land below the South Eastern and Chatham Railway embankment. The site had been chosen, among other reasons, for its nearness to the Conservative Club across the road, a high-toned place where even the most successful in trade had not yet succeeded in rubbing shoulders with the old and established professions of the borough. True, the entrance to the garden surrounding the Club was almost hidden by a most unfortunate jerry-building which had sprung up almost overnight owing to a lapse of the steward of the ground landlord,
the Earl of Dartford: an oversight the more strange since the solicitor concerned was a member of the Club, and presumably had put a restrictive covenant upon the use to which the ninety-nine-year leasehold of the parcel of land beside the Club entrance would be put by the emptor. It was a case of the old tag in reverse,
caveat
vendor
;
for now, where once lilacs and laburnums had grown, stood a pawn shop, its three large gilt balls hanging beside the Club entrance for all to see, and many, including Dr. Dashwood, to make jokes about. “So convenient for the Members, don’t you know.”

*

The entrance into the billiard hall was well back from the kerb of the wide pavement which had taken the place of the original sidewalk. Once over the threshold, no parent was likely to continue in doubt as to the hall’s respectability, for the walls of the porch were decorated with two panels in plaster, Law on the left, and Commerce on the right; groups of female figures made familiar by Burne-Jones and others of the fashion in art. Law stood with bandaged eyes and sword, holding scales, Commerce with ball and sceptre among some of the subject races of Empire. With artistic daring, Queen Victoria had become a young woman with blonde hair hanging down her back, swathed all in white.

Over the porch was fixed the legend:

the letters of which gleamed but dully on a raw Saturday night in the late autumn of 1915. Owing to Zeppelin raids the glass lanterns of street lamps had been covered with deep blue paint except for a small margin around their bases, and the only other lights in the street came from passing tramcars, and negligible wavering yellow spots from bicycles and horse-drawn carts.

Outside the porch two girls were standing in hesitation. One of them was peering into the well of light coming through glass doors, beyond which could be seen a floor possibly of marble, set with tables at which young people were sitting, looking about them, or playing some game among cups of coffee.

“Why, it’s only dominoes, it’s just an ordinary place after all, Nina!”

“I told you it was, Mavis! Only you wouldn’t believe me.”

“Well, what does he come here for, then?”

“Phil has to go somewhere, I suppose.”

“Why? Why can’t he stay at home sometimes, with Mother? I’ll tell you what! It’s like one of the Mecca coffee rooms in the City, where men go to spoon with the waitresses!”

“Anyway, let’s go in and see, shall we?”

They entered into warmth and light, amidst a murmur of young voices, of girls in large black straw hats and pigtails—flappers, in fact—and youths, some of them in uniform, sitting at tables amidst laughter and the sliding rattle of dominoes. In the centre of the floor was a sunken circular pool in which goldfish moved languidly. Beyond other glass doors could be seen a multiplication of hanging dark green cones casting pyramids of light upon arms, heads, and faces intent around little emerald lawns, whereon rolled white and multi-coloured balls.

The taller of the two girls led the way to a table in a far corner, and sat down with her companion. “Well,” she said, with a trace of disappointment, “I don’t see him anywhere, do you, Nina?”

“Are you sure he hasn’t gone to the Hippodrome?”

“Oh, he never goes there on Saturday nights! Too rough. No, I bet he’s in Freddy’s bar, with Desmond, who sponges on him!”

The waitress came, and the fair girl, who was short and sturdily built, ordered coffee. When the two cups came she passed the sugar bowl to her friend, who helped herself and then appeared to fall into a state of dream, as slowly she stirred her coffee and stared before her. Nina waited, wondering what was upsetting her now. She had learned never to ask questions, which almost invariably brought forth a startled, “Why do you ask?”

Mavis of the brown eyes reflective with inward thoughts that often held a fixed stare of mournful vagueness usually told her perplexities and troubles to her great friend Nina; Nina so considerate of the feelings of the imperious Mavis, always ready to give, to put herself out to help the often-unhappy and (to Nina) the beautiful Mavis. No young man had looked twice at Nina, an Anglo-Saxon young woman who might have been any age between eighteen and twenty-eight. So the fair ruddy-faced Nina lived much in the feelings of the brunette, cream-complexion’d Mavis, who at times had a radiant expression, her large eyes filling with light and animation, which caused men covertly to observe her, and some to pay direct attention to her. But Mavis, to Nina’s relief, wanted none of them: she said she
did not like men, because of their crude ways, and lack of the things of the soul.

Mavis had a blank in her; in part, life for her was a dark tunnel in which her soul dreamed of celestial, ideal things. The tunnel was akin to fear, and death: the dead image of the father she had adored, until without warning he had kissed her, when she was thirteen, in a strange way; a distressing way, for immediately afterwards he had become blank and cold with guilt; and having no self-consciousness, no self-knowledge, had transferred his self-dislike upon the object of its cause, the figure in bud of Mavis. For a long time afterwards the words of his angry voice had the power to darken her to hopelessness.
I
do
not
love
you,
he had cried; and never resurrected himself from the tomb of his guilt, under which love lay buried. The child’s hazel eyes had become blackthorn-dark with brooding, the spines grown dully inwards.

“I think it’s
terribly
unfair, Nina!”

“Life often is unfair,” replied Nina, who had got that thought from one of John Galsworthy’s novels.

“I mean,” said Mavis, “that my only brother should behave as he does.”

“I don’t quite know what it is you have against him, Mavis. After all, soldiers drink rum in the trenches, and Phillip’s been out to France twice, you know.”

“Yes, but look how
much
he drinks!” Mavis sipped her coffee. “Not bad, is it? Still, for tuppence—— Why aren’t you having yours?”

“I was waiting for the sugar, Mavis.”

“Well, you are silly! Why didn’t you ask me to pass it?”

“I didn’t like to interrupt your thoughts.”

“Oh, don’t be so fussy!”

Nina put on a mild and pleasant expression. She was used to soothing her friend, whom she secretly loved: Mavis of the delicate ears and profile, the wistful lips, the limpid brown eyes which made Nina think of shadowed forest pools.

“Do you swear to keep a secret, Nina?”

“I never breathe word of what you tell me, you must know that, Mavie.”

“It is Mother. She is worrying herself to death over Phillip. He’s her favourite, you know. Oh yes! Neither I nor Doris get a look in where Phillip is concerned. Well, she is so upset now by what is happening, that she told me she was thinking of going to
see the landlord of the public house he haunts, for he is killing himself, the way he is going on! He’s getting all this sick leave, and all he’s doing is making himself worse.”

“But perhaps he is ill, Mavie. He was gassed at Loos, didn’t you tell me?”

“That’s what
he
said, but I don’t believe it! There’s nothing wrong with him, except that he drinks! I hear him being sick in his room when he comes back, night after night! He has his own key, and opens the front door and shuts it very slowly, hardly a sound. I can hear distinctly at the end of the passage, with my door open, you know. It’s like a sounding board. I hear him coming up the stairs on hands and knees, then creeping over the oilcloth down the passage, and into his room. No, you ought not to laugh! It isn’t really funny. Now you’ve made me laugh!” But she checked herself, “No, it’s really tragic!” Her eyes held tears. “You see, it’s Mother! I always know when he’s going to be sick, for I hear the pot slide from under the bed, then he gets off the bed and draws up his elbows and knees, I think, and so tries to minimise the noise of retching! It’s horrid, I tell you, to have a brother people talk about, Nina! You aren’t his sister, so you can’t possibly understand what the feeling is!”

“I’ve never heard anyone say anything about him, Mavie.”

“Ah, but you live more than a mile away, you would if you lived near Randiswell! There everyone knows he ran away from the Germans at Messines, while Peter Wallace and his brothers stayed, and were bayonetted, defending the doctor, who was kneeling by the wounded! No, don’t stop me, I know what you are going to say about gossip, but I know it’s true! One of the men who was with Phillip then, called Martin, has a father who is one of our messengers at Head Office, and Martin told his father that Phillip deserted him, when the two of them were bringing up ammunition, to save his own skin!”

“Oh, Mavie, I don’t believe it! People say things about everyone, if you listen to them!”

“But Phillip himself told Mother that it
was
true! He said he left Martin because he lay down, and wouldn’t get up. Then again, he says that he pretended to be a chemist before he joined the army, to avoid being sent over the top at Loos. So they made him a gas officer, and he says, quite openly, that he gassed all his own men! And everybody knows our father is half-German, though he hates the Germans, for what they have done. Phillip doesn’t mind telling Mr. Jenkins in that public house that the
German soldiers are as good as ours! That’s the awful thing about it—he has no shame at all. It will break Mother’s heart! And on top of it all, there’s this horrible drinking!”

*

On returning from the battle of Loos some weeks before, having transferred to a home unit, Second-lieutenant Phillip Maddison had obtained a week’s leave, ostensibly to replace kit lost in battle; and after that week, he had got a further week’s sick-leave. This luck, as he called it, had come about through Dr. Dashwood, a recent acquaintance, who in the Conservative Club, over double whiskeys, had said, “I don’t like the sound of your pipes, Middleton, come along and let me sound your bellows.” Leading Phillip into the billiard-room, Dr. Dashwood, with professional fixity upon his purple face, listened through the worn and grubby pink rubber tubes of a stethoscope pressed upon selected places of a thin chest and ribs. A murmur, a distinct murmur, the doctor announced, stuffing his apparatus back into his overcoat pocket.

“Can’t let you go back like that, Middleton. You’ve had two spells at the Front, so let someone else have a turn. I’ll give you a note to Toogood at the Workhouse. D’you know ’im?”

“I’ve heard of Dr. Toogood, that’s all,” replied Phillip, not liking to ask why he should be sent to a Workhouse doctor. Was Dashwood blotto? One could never quite tell.

“Toogood’s now a colonel in the R.A.M.C.,” remarked Dr. Dashwood, as though he had read his thoughts. “The Infirmary has been turned into a hospital for Tommies, Middleton.” Dr. Dashwood staggered sideways, recovered, hooked his umbrella over his elbow, and putting on his bowler hat, led the way back to the bar. There he ordered two more double whiskeys.

“If you don’t mind, I won’t have any more, Doctor. But will you have one with me?”

“Thank you, my dear Middleton,” said Dr. Dashwood, bowing. “But the rules of the Club forbid. You are my guest. Help yourself to seltzer.” Courteously he placed the syphon by Phillip’s glass. Not wanting to hurt the old boy’s feelings, Phillip sipped the whiskey, suppressing a shudder, while hoping that it would not make him shoot his bundle. Making his expression amiable, he refrained from watching while Dr. Dashwood scrawled something with his big fat fountain pen on Club writing paper, and signed it with a flourish. Then waving the paper to and fro, to dry the ink before putting it in an envelope, he gave it to Phillip, with another bow.

Would the Club address give the game away? For Dr. Dashwood, according to Mrs. Neville, was well-known for his tippling.

Furthermore, had Dr. Dashwood written
Middleton,
when his name was Maddison? He had not liked to correct the doctor, lest it spoil the genial spirit of himself being Middleton.