“I mean for your vows and promises, Mamma darling. If you’ll let me off my responsibility I’ll let you off yours.”
“Now,” her mother said, “you’re prevaricating.”
“That means you’ll never let me off. If I don’t do it now I’ll have to do it next year, or the next?”
“You may feel more seriously about it next year. Or next week,” her mother said. “Meanwhile you’ll learn the Thirty-Nine Articles. Read them through first.”
“—‘Nine. Of Original or Birth-sin. Original Sin … is the fault and corruption of the Nature of every man … whereby man is far gone from original righteousness and is of his own nature inclined to evil, so that the flesh lusteth always contrary to the spirit; and therefore in every person born into this world it deserveth God’s wrath and damnation.’ ”
“Don’t look like that,” her mother said, “as if your wits were woolgathering.”
“Wool?” She could see herself smiling at her mother, disagreeably.
Woolgathering. Gathering wool. The room was full of wool; wool flying about; hanging in the air and choking you. Clogging your mind. Old grey wool out of pew cushions that people had sat on for centuries, full of dirt.
Wool, spun out, wound round you, woven in a net. You were tangled and strangled in a net of unclean wool. They caught you in it when you were a baby a month old. Mamma, Papa and Uncle Victor. You would have to cut and tug and kick and fight your way out. They were caught in it themselves, they couldn’t get out. They didn’t want to get out. The wool stopped their minds working. They hated it when their minds worked, when anybody’s mind worked. Aunt Lavvy’s—yours.
“ ‘Thirteen. Of Works before Justification. Works done before the grace of Christ, and the Inspiration of His Spirit, are not pleasant to God, forasmuch as they spring not of faith in Jesus Christ … : yea, rather, for that they are not done as God hath willed and commanded them to be done, we doubt not but they have the nature of sin.’ ”
“Do you really believe that, Mamma?”
“Of course I believe it. All our righteousness is filthy rags.”
—People’s goodness. People’s kindness. The sweet, beautiful things they did for each other. The brave, noble things, the things Mark did: filthy rags.
This—this religion of theirs—was filthy; ugly, like the shiny black covers of their Bibles where their fingers left a grey, greasy smear. Filthy and frightful; like funerals. You might as well be buried alive, five coffins deep in a pit of yellow clay.
Mamma couldn’t really believe it. You would have to tell her it wasn’t true. Not telling her meant that you didn’t think she cared about the truth. You insulted her if you supposed she didn’t care. Mark would say you insulted her. Even if it hurt her a bit at first, you insulted her if you thought she couldn’t bear it. And afterwards she would be happy, because she would be free.
“It’s no use, Mamma. I shan’t ever want to be confirmed.”
“Want—want—want! You ought to want, then. You say you believe the Christian Faith—”
Now—now. A clean quick cut. No jagged ends hanging.
“That’s it. I don’t believe a single word of it.”
She couldn’t look at her mother. She didn’t want to see her cry.
“You’ve found that out, have you? You’ve been mighty quick about it.”
“I found it out ages ago. But I didn’t mean to tell you.”
Her mother was not crying.
“You needn’t tell me now,” she said. “You don’t suppose I’m going to believe it?”
Not crying. Smiling. A sort of cunning and triumphant smile.
“You just want an excuse for not learning those Thirty-Nine Articles.”
Chapter IV
I
Mamma was crying.
Papa had left the dining-room. Mary sat at the foot of the table, and her mother at the head. The space between was covered and piled with Mark’s kit: the socks, the pocket-handkerchiefs, the vests, the fine white pyjamas. The hanging white globes of the gaselier shone on them. All day Mary had been writing “M.E. Olivier, M.E. Olivier,” in clear, hard letters, like print. The iridescent ink was grey on the white linen and lawn, black when you stamped with the hot iron: M.E. Olivier. Mamma was embroidering M.E.O. in crimson silk on a black sock.
Mark was in the Army now; in the Royal Field Artillery. He was going to India. In two weeks, before the middle of April, he would be gone. They had known this so long that now and then they could forget it; they could be glad that Mark should have all those things, so many more, and more beautiful, than he had ever had. They were appeased with their labour of forming, over and over again, the letters, clear and perfect, of his name.
Then Papa had come in and said that Dan was not going to live at home any more. He had taken rooms in Bloomsbury with young Vickers.
Dan had not gone to Cambridge when he left Chelmsted, as Mamma had intended. There hadn’t been enough money.
Uncle Victor had paid for Mark’s last year at Woolwich and for his outfit now. Some day Mamma would pay him back again.
Dan had gone first into Papa’s office; then into Uncle Edward’s office. He was in Uncle Victor’s office now. Sometimes he didn’t get home till after midnight. Sometimes when you went into his room to call him in the morning he wasn’t there; but there were the bedclothes turned down as Catty had left them, with his nightshirt folded on the top.
Her mother said: “I hope you’re content now you’ve finished your work.”
“My work?” her father said.
“Yes, yours. You couldn’t rest till you’d got the poor boy out of your office, and now you’ve turned him out of the house. I suppose you thought that with Mark going you’d better make a clean sweep. It’ll be Roddy next.”
“I didn’t turn him out of the house. But it was about time he went. The young cub’s temper is getting unbearable.”
“I
