Bildungsromans; Domestic fiction; Mothers and daughters -- Fiction
Aunt Lavvy was getting ready to go away. She held up her night gown to
her chin, smoothing and folding back the sleeves. You thought of her
going to bed in the ugly, yellow, flannel night gown, not caring, lying
in bed and thinking about God.
Mary was sorry that Aunt Lavvy was going. As long as she was there
you felt that if only she would talk everything would at once become
more interesting. She thrilled you with that look of having something--
something that she wouldn't talk about--up her sleeve. The Encyclopaedia
man said that Unitarianism was a kind of Pantheism. Perhaps that was it.
Perhaps she knew the truth about God. Aunt Lavvy would know whether she
ought to tell her mother.
"Aunt Lavvy, if you loved somebody and you found out that their religion
wasn't true, would you tell them or wouldn't you?"
"It would depend on whether they were happy in their religion or not."
"Supposing you'd found out one that was more true and much more
beautiful, and you thought it would make them happier?"
Aunt Lavvy raised her long, stubborn chin. In her face there was a cold
exaltation and a sudden hardness.
"No religion was ever more true or more beautiful than Christianity," she
said.
"There's Pantheism. Aren't Unitarians a kind of Pantheists?"
Aunt Lavvy's white face flushed. "Unitarians Pantheists? Who's been
talking to you about Pantheism?"
"Nobody. Nobody knows about it. I had to find out."
"The less you find out about it the better."
"Aunt Lavvy, you're talking like Mr. Propart. Supposing I honestly think
Pantheism's true?"
"You've no right to think anything about it," Aunt Lavvy said.
"Now you're talking like Papa. And I did so hope you wouldn't."
"I only meant that it takes more time than you've lived to find out what
honest thinking _is_. When you're twenty years older you'll know what
this opinion of yours is worth."
"I know what it's worth to me, now, this minute."
"Is it worth making your mother miserable?"
"That's what Mark would say. How did you know I was thinking of Mamma?"
"Because that's what my brother Victor said to me."
VI.
The queer thing was that none of them seemed to think the truth could
possibly matter on its own account, or that anything mattered besides
being happy or miserable. Yet everybody, except Aunt Lavvy, was
determined that everybody else should be happy in their way by believing
what they believed; and when it came to Pantheism even Aunt Lavvy
couldn't live and let live. You could see that deep down inside her it
made her more furious than Unitarianism made Papa.
Mary saw that she was likely to be alone in her adventure. It appeared to
her more than ever as a journey into a beautiful, quiet yet exciting
country where you could go on and on. The mere pleasure of being able to
move enchanted her. But nobody would go with her. Nobody knew. Nobody
cared.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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