Whit Sunday morning. She would walk home with Mark after church while
Mamma stayed behind for the Sacrament.
But it didn't happen. Mark scowled as he turned out into the aisle to
make way for her. He went back into the pew and sat there, looking stiff
and stubborn. He would go up with Mamma to the altar rails. He would eat
the bread and drink the wine.
That afternoon she took her book into the garden. Mark came to her there.
Mamma, tired with the long service, dozed in the drawing-room.
Mark read over her shoulder: "'Wir haben in der Transcendentalen
Aesthetik hinreichend bewiesen.' Do it in English."
"'In the Transcendental Aesthetic we have sufficiently proved that all
that is perceived in space or time, and with it all objects of any
experience possible to us are mere Vorstellungen--Vorstellungen--
ideas--presentations, which, so far as they are presented, whether as
extended things or series of changes, have no existence grounded in
themselves outside our thoughts--'"
"Why have you taken to that dreadful stodge?"
"I'm driven to it. It's like drink; once you begin you've got to go on."
"What on earth made you begin?"
"I wanted to know things--to know what's real and what isn't, and what's
at the back of everything, and whether there _is_ anything there or not.
And whether you can know it or not. And how you can know anything at all,
anyhow. I'd give anything ... Are you listening?"
"Yes, Minky, you'd give anything--"
"I'd give everything--everything I possess--to know what the
Thing-in-itself is."
"I'd rather know Arabic. Or how to make a gun that would find its own
range and feed itself with bullets sixty to the minute."
"That would be only knowing a few; more things. I want _the_ thing.
Reality, Substance, the Thing-in-itself. Spinoza calls it God. Kant
doesn't; but he seems to think it's all the God you'll ever get, and
that, even then, you can't know it. Transcendental Idealism is just
another sell."
"Supposing," Mark said, "there isn't any God at all."
"Then I'd rather know _that_ than go on thinking there was one when there
wasn't."
"But you'd feel sold?"
"Sort of sold. But it's the risk--the risk that makes it so exciting ...
Why? Do _you_ think there isn't any God?"
"I'm afraid I think there mayn't be."
"Oh, Mark--and you went to the Sacrament. You ate it and drank it."
"Why shouldn't I?"
"You don't believe in it any more than I do."
"I never said anything about believing in it."
"_You ate and drank it_."
"Poor Jesus said he wanted you to do that and remember him. I did it and
remembered Jesus."
"I don't care. It was awful of you."
"Much more awful to spoil Mamma's pleasure in God and Jesus. I did it to
make her happy. Somebody had to go with her. You wouldn't, so I did ...
It doesn't matter, Minky. Nothing matters except Mamma."
"Truth matters. You'd die rather than lie or do anything dishonourable.
Yet that was dishonourable."
"I'd die rather than hurt Mamma ... If you make her unhappy, Minky, I
shall hate you."