VII
She wondered how she would set about it. It wouldn’t do to start suddenly by saying you didn’t believe in Jesus or the God of the Old Testament or Hell. That would hurt her horribly. The only decent thing would be to let her see how beautiful Spinoza’s God was and leave it to her to make the comparison.
You would have to make it quite clear to yourself first. It was like this. There were the five elm trees, and there was the happy white light on the fields. God was the trees. He was the happy light and he was your happiness. There was Catty singing in the kitchen. God was Catty.
Oh—and there was Papa and Papa’s temper. God would have to be Papa too.
Spinoza couldn’t have meant it that way.
He meant that though God was all Papa, Papa was not all God. He was only a bit of him. He meant that if God was the only reality, Papa wouldn’t be quite real.
But if Papa wasn’t quite real then Mamma and Mark were not quite real either.
If Spinoza had meant that—
But perhaps he hadn’t. Perhaps he meant that parts of Papa, the parts you saw most of—his beard, for instance, and his temper—were not quite real, but that some other part of him, the part you couldn’t see, might be real in the same way that God was. That would be Papa himself, and it would be God too. And if God could be Papa, he would have no difficulty at all in being Mamma and Mark.
Surely Mamma would see that, if you had to have a God, Spinoza’s was by far the nicest God, besides being the easiest to believe in. Surely it would please her to think like that about Papa, to know that his temper was not quite real, and that your sin, when you sinned, was not quite real, so that not even your sin could separate you from God. All your life Mamma had dinned into you the agony of separation from God, and the necessity of the Atonement. She would feel much more comfortable if she knew that there never had been any separation, and that there needn’t be any Atonement.
Of course she might not like the idea of sin being somehow inside God. She might say it looked bad. But if it wasn’t inside God, it would have to be outside him, supporting itself and causing itself, and then where were you? You would have to say that God was not the cause of all things, and that would be much worse.
Surely if you put it to her like that—? But somehow she couldn’t hear herself saying all that to her mother. Supposing Mamma wouldn’t listen?
And she couldn’t hear herself talking about her happiness, the sudden, secret happiness that more than anything was like God. When she thought of it she was hot and cold by turns and she had no words for it. She remembered the first time it had come to her, and how she had found her mother in the drawing-room and had knelt down at her knees and kissed her hands with the idea of drawing her into her happiness. And she remembered her mother’s face. It made her ashamed, even now, as if she had been silly. She thought: I shall never be able to talk about it to Mamma.
Yet—perhaps—now that the miracle had happened—
VIII
In the morning Miss Lambert took her up to London. She had a sort of idea that the kind lady talked to her a great deal, about God and the Christian religion. But she couldn’t listen; she couldn’t talk; she couldn’t think now.
For three hours, in the train, in the waiting-room at Victoria, while Miss Lambert talked to Papa outside, in the cab, alone with Papa—Miss Lambert must have said something nice about her, for he looked pleased, as if he wouldn’t mind if you did stroke his hand—in Mr. Parish’s wagonette, she sat happy and still, contemplating the shining, lovely miracle.
IX
She saw Catty open the front door and run away. Her mother was coming slowly down the narrow hall.
She ran up the flagged path.
“Mamma!” She flung herself to the embrace.
Her mother swerved from her, staggering back and putting out her hands between them. Aware of Mr. Parish shouldering the trunk, she turned into the open dining-room. Mary followed her and shut the door.
Her mother sat down, helplessly. Mary saw that she was crying; she had been crying a long time. Her soaked eyelashes were parted by her tears and gathered into points.
“Mamma—what is it?”
“What is it? You’ve disgraced yourself. Everlastingly. You’ve disgraced your father, and you’ve disgraced me. That’s what it is.”
“I haven’t done anything of the sort, Mamma.”
“You don’t think it’s a disgrace, then, to be expelled? For infidelity.”
“But I’m not expelled.”
“You are expelled. And you know it.”
“No. They said I wasn’t. They didn’t want me to go. They told me you wanted me back again.”
“Is it likely I should want you when you hadn’t been gone three weeks?”
She could hear herself gasp, see herself standing there, open-mouthed, idiotic.
Nothing could shake her mother in her belief that she had been expelled.
“Of course, if it makes you happier to believe it,” she said at last, “do. Will you let me see Miss Lambert’s letter?”
“No,” her mother said. “I will not.”
Suddenly she felt hard and strong, grown-up in her sad wisdom. Her mother didn’t love her. She never had loved her. Nothing she could ever do would make her love her. Miracles didn’t happen.
She thought: “I wonder why she won’t let me see Miss Lambert’s letter?”
She went upstairs to her room. She leaned on the sill of the open window, looking out, drinking in the sweet air of the autumn fields. The five elms raised golden heads to a blue sky.
Her childhood had died with a little gasp.
Catty came in to unpack her box. Catty, with wet cheeks, kissed
