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.