§ 14
But after that Joan changed rapidly. Colour crept back into her skin, and a faintly rollicking quality into her bearing. She became shorter again and visibly sturdier, and her hair frizzed more and stuck out more. Her laugh and her comments upon the world became an increasingly frequent embroidery upon the quiet of The Ingle-Nook. She seemed to have a delusion that Peter was just within earshot, but only just.
Oswald wondered how far her recent experiences had vanished from her mind. He thought they might have done so altogether until one day Joan took him into her confidence quite startlingly. He was smoking in the little arbour, and she came and stood beside him so noiselessly that he did not know she was there until she spoke. She was holding her hands behind her, and she was regarding the South Downs with a pensive frown. She was paying him the most beautiful compliment. She had come to consult him.
“Mrs. Pybus said,” she remarked, “that every one who doesn’t believe there’s a God goes straight to Hell....
“I don’t believe there’s a God,” said Joan, “and Peter knows there isn’t.”
For a moment Oswald was a little taken aback by this simple theology. Then he said, “D’you think Peter’s looked everywhere, Joan?”
Then he saw the real point at issue. “One thing you may be sure about, Joan,” he said, “and that is that there isn’t a Hell. Which is rather a pity in its way, because it would be nice to think of this Mrs. Pybus of yours going there. But there’s no Hell at all. There’s nothing more dreadful than the dreadful things in life. There’s no need to worry about Hell.”
That he thought was fairly conclusive. But Joan remained pensive, with her eyes still on the distant hills. Then she asked one of those unanswerable children’s questions that are all implication, imputation, assumption, misunderstanding, and elision.
“But if there isn’t a Hell,” said Joan, “what does God do?”