"You can say _that_, with your poor father lying in this grave--"
It was the third evening after the funeral. A minute ago they were at
perfect peace, and now the everlasting dispute about religion had begun
again. There had been no Prayers since Papa died, because Mamma couldn't
trust herself to read them without breaking down. At the same time, it
was inconceivable to her that there should be no Prayers.
"I should have thought, if you could read the Burial Service--"
"I only did it because you asked me to."
"Then you might do this because I ask you."
"It isn't the same thing. You haven't got to believe in the Burial
Service. But either you believe in Prayers or you don't believe in them.
If you don't you oughtn't to read them. You oughtn't to be asked to read
them."
"How are we going on, I should like to know? Supposing I was to be laid
aside, are there to be no Prayers, ever, in this house because you've set
yourself up in your silly self-conceit against the truth?"
The truth. The truth about God. As if anybody really knew it; as if it
mattered; as if anything mattered except Mamma.
Yet it did matter. It mattered more than anything in the whole world, the
truth about God, the truth about anything; just the truth. Papa's death
had nothing to do with it. It wasn't fair of Mamma to talk as if it had;
to bring it up against you like that.
"Let's go to bed," she said.
Her mother took no notice of the suggestion. She sat bolt upright in her
chair; her face had lost its look of bored, weary patience; it flushed
and flickered with resentment.
"I shall send for Aunt Bella," she said.
"Why Aunt Bella?"
"Because I must have someone. Someone of my own."