Mary Olivier: a Life Part 37

"It isn't _you_? You aren't sending me away?"

"No; we're not sending you. But we think it's best for you to go. We can't bear to see your dear, unhappy little face going about the pa.s.sages."

"Does it mean that Mamma isn't happy without me?"

"Well--she _would_ miss her only daughter, wouldn't she?"

The miracle. The shining, lovely miracle.

"Mary Olivier is going! Mary Olivier is going!"

Actually the girls were sorry. Too sorry. The compa.s.sion in Rose G.o.dwin's face stirred a doubt. Doubt of the miracle.

She carried her books to the white curtained room where Miss Haynes knelt by her trunk, packing her clothes with little gentle, tender hands.

"Miss Haynes" (suddenly), "I'm not expelled, am I?"

"Expelled? My dear child, who's talking about expulsion?"

As if she said, When miracles are worked for you, accept them.

She lay awake, thinking what she should say to her mother when she got home. She would have to tell her that just at first she very nearly _was_ expelled. Then her mother would believe in her unbelief and not think she was shamming.

And she would have to explain about her unbelief. And about Pantheism.

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 G.o.d of the Old Testament or h.e.l.l. That would hurt her horribly. The only decent thing would be to let her see how beautiful Spinoza's G.o.d 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. G.o.d was the trees. He was the happy light and he was your happiness. There was Catty singing in the kitchen. G.o.d was Catty.

Oh--and there was Papa and Papa's temper. G.o.d would have to be Papa too.

Spinoza couldn't have meant it that way.

He meant that though G.o.d was all Papa, Papa was not all G.o.d. He was only a bit of him. He meant that if G.o.d 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 G.o.d was. That would be Papa himself, and it would be G.o.d too. And if G.o.d 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 G.o.d, Spinoza's was by far the nicest G.o.d, 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 G.o.d. All your life Mamma had dinned into you the agony of separation from G.o.d, 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 G.o.d.

She might say it looked bad. But if it wasn't inside G.o.d, it would have to be outside him, supporting itself and causing itself, and then where were you? You would have to say that G.o.d 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 G.o.d. 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 G.o.d 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."