“I can’t see you, but I know you’re speaking the truth,” said Aunt May, after a pause. “In the darkness and silence of the night I will make a confession. I look weather-worn and fifty, I know, but I feel absurdly romantic, only there’s no man in this case. I used to write novels, my dear—an absurd thing for any spinster to do, but they paid, and I’ve got the itch for self-expression. That’s the one outlet I miss in this new world of ours. Sally Grant and I can’t agree, and, in any case, she wants to do all the talking. And sometimes I’m idiot enough to go on writing little bits even now when I have become a capable, practical woman with at least four lives dependent upon me. Well, it shows, anyhow, that we writing women weren’t all fools....” She hung on that for a moment or two, and then continued.
“Are you religious?”
“I don’t know—I suppose so. We always went to Church at home,” said Blanche. “I thought every one was, almost. Not quite like Mrs Pollard, of course.”
“Oh, well!” said Aunt May. “There’s no harm and a lot of good in being religious, if you go about it in the right way. I don’t want to change your opinions, my dear. It’s just a question to me of the right way. And I can’t see that Fanny’s way is right. Here we are, and we’ve got to make the best of it; and to my mind that means facing life, and not shutting yourself into one room with a Bible and spending half your time on your knees. Fanny never was good for much. She brought up Alfred—my nephew, you know—with only one idea, and she stuffed him so full of holiness that the English Church couldn’t hold him, and he had to work some of it off by going over to Rome. He thought he’d have better chances of saintship there. He was a poor, pale thing, anyway. Of course, that was anathema to Fanny. She might have forgiven him for committing a murder, but to become a Roman Catholic——! Oh, Lord! She’s been praying for him ever since. And, my dear, what difference can it make? Alfred’s apostasy, I mean. Do you think it matters what particular form of worship or pettifogging details of belief you adopt? Why can’t the Churches take each other for granted, and be generous enough to suppose that all roads lead to Heaven, which is, according to all accounts, a much better place than Rome? But, oh! above all, if you have a religion, do be practical! Come out and do your work, instead of sighing and psalm-singing, and wearying dumb Heaven with fulsome praise and lamentations of your unworthiness, as if you were trying to propitiate a rich customer!
“There, my dear, I won’t say any more. My last cigarette’s done, and wasted, because I was too excited to enjoy it. I know I’ve been disloyal; but it’s my temperament. I could slap Fanny sometimes. And she shan’t have Allie.... It’s the night that has affected me. To-morrow I shall be just as practical as ever, and you’ll forget that you’ve seen this side of me. Come along. We must go to bed.”
“This is the greatest night of my life,” thought Blanche as they walked back in silence to the house.
Even when she was in bed, she did not go to sleep at once. She lay and listened to the heavy breathing of her mother and Millie, and she wondered. Everything, indeed, was different, but everybody was just the same, only, in some curious way, individualities seemed more pronounced.
Could it be that everybody was more natural, that there was less restraint?
Blanche was not introspective. She did not test the theory on herself. She thought of the women she had met that day, and of her mother and Millie.