7
“What a perfectly extraordinary idea.”
“I know. But I don’t see how you can get away from it” mused Miriam, dreamily holding out against Jan’s absorbed sewing and avoiding for a moment Mag’s incredulously speculative eyes; “if it’s true,” she went on, the rich blur of the warm room becoming as she sent out her voice evenly, thinking eagerly on, a cool clear even daylight, “that everything that can possibly happen does happen, then there must be somewhere in the world, every possible kind of variation of us and this room.”
“D’you mean to say” gurgled Mag with a fling of her knickered leg and an argumentative movement of the hand that hung loosely dangling a cigarette over the fireside arm of the chair, “that there are millions of rooms exactly like this each with one thing different—say the stem of one narcissus broken instead of whole for instance.”
“My dear Miriam, infinitude couldn’t hold them.”
“Infinitude can hold anything—of course I can see the impossibility of a single world holding all the possible variations of everything at once—but what I mean is that I can think it and there must be something corresponding to it in life—anything that the mind can conceive is realised, somehow, all possibilities must come about, that’s what I mean I think.”
“You mean you can see, as it were in space, millions of little rooms—a little different” choked Mag.
“Yes I can—quite distinctly—solid—no end to them.”
“I think it’s a perfectly horrible idea” stated Jan complacently.
“It isn’t—I love it and it’s true ... you go on and on and on, filling space.”
“Then space is solid.”
“It is solid. People who talk of empty space don’t think ... space is more solid than a wall ... yes ... more solid than a diamond—girls, I’m sure.”
“Space is full of glorious stars....”
“Yes; I know but that’s such a tiny bit of it....”
“Millions and trillions of miles.”
“Those are only words. Everything is words.”
“Well you must use words.”
“You ought not to think in words. I mean—you can think in your brain by imagining yourself going on and on through it, endless space.”
“You can’t grasp space with your mind.”
“You don’t grasp it. You go through it.”
“I see what you mean. To me it is a fearful idea. Like eternal punishment.”
“There’s no such thing as eternal punishment. The idea is too silly. It makes God a failure and a fool. It’s a man’s idea. The men who take the hearthrug. Sitting on a throne judging everybody and passing sentence is a thing a man would do.”
“But humanity is wicked.”
“Then God is. You can’t separate God and humanity and that includes women who don’t really believe any of those things.”
“But. Look at the churches. Look at women and the parsons.”
“Women like ritual and things and they like parsons, some parsons, because they are like women, penetrable to light, as Wilberforce said the other day, and understand women better than most men do.”
“Miriam, are you a pantheist?”
“The earth the sea and the sky
“The sun the moon and the stars
“Are not these, oh soul,
“That’s the Higher Pantheism.”
“Nearer is he than breathing, closer than hands and feet. It doesn’t matter what you call it.”
“If you don’t accept eternal punishment there can’t be eternal happiness.”
“Oh punishment, happiness; tweedledum, tweedledee.”
“Well—look here, there’s remorse. That’s deathless. It must be. If you feel remorseful about anything the feeling must last as long as you remember the thing.”
“Remorse is real enough. I know what you mean. But it may be short-sightedness. Not seeing all round a thing. Is that Tomlinson? Or it may be cleansing you. If it were complete Mag it would kill you outright. I can believe that. I can believe in annihilation. I am prepared for it. I can’t think why it doesn’t happen to me. That’s just it.”
“I should like to be annihilated.”
“Shut up von Bohlen; you wouldn’t. But look here Miriam child, do you mean to say you think that as long as there is something that keeps on and on, fighting its way on in spite of everything one has, well, a right to exist?”
“Well, that may be the survival of the fittest which doesn’t mean the ethically fittest as Huxley had to admit. We kill the ethically fittest at present. We killed Christ. They go to Heaven. All of us who survive have things to learn down here in hell. Perhaps this is hell. There seems something, ahead.”
“Ourselves. Rising on the ashes of our dead selves. Lord, it’s midnight——”
The chill of the outside night, solitude and her cold empty room....
“I’m going to bed.”
“So am I. We shall be in bed, Miriam, five minutes after you have gone.”
Jan went off for the hot water bottles.
“All right, I’m going——” Miriam bent for her shoes. The soles were dry, scorching; they scorched her feet as she forced on the shoes; one sole cracked across as she put her foot to the ground ... she braced the muscles of her face and said nothing. It must be forgotten before she left the room that they were nearly new and her only pair; two horrid ideas, nagging and keeping things away.