“And do you believe in morality?”
Nielsen sighed.
“Ah! What is morrality?”
He plucked a long blade of spikey grass from the bank, and said, twisting it in his fingers—
“What we call morrality—I believe in it,” and he shrugged his shoulders. “Certainly. Why? Because there it is, don’t you know? One can see it, it is quite thick, one can cut it with a knife. Every peoples has its own, and every peoples disobeys it more or less, don’t you know; that is natural.” He took out another cigarette, and began to nod his head up and down.
“Yes, yes,” he said, continuing to nod his head. Presently he went on, fixing his eyes on the driftweed, where the end of the cigarette was giving up the ghost of its tobacco, and speaking to himself rather than to her. “Ah! it is a little thing, our morrality; but there is a big morrality, yes, yes, a big morrality; over there, don’t you know,” he pointed with his spike of grass towards the sweep of glistening water and the woods beyond.
“Over there!” he repeated, “everrywhere! Yes, yes, Nature is verry morral. Ah! she is big, but she is morral. She has to be, you know. Look at that grass, my dear young lady,” he said, holding up his spike of grass, and drawing it once or twice gently through his fingers, “she can’t play frreaks, she has got her place, you know. It is wonderful to think, isn’t it, if that little blade of grass vanished quite away, all the world would come undone. Ah! I think that is wonderful, that is morrality.” He lit his cigarette and puffed at it thoughtfully.
“I think you know, everry man and woman has his place according to the big morrality—so have flies”—he went on, stabbing with his spike at an early fly which had settled on the rim of his cup—“and in spite of everrything they come to it at the last.” He did not see Jocelyn’s face. A wave of colour had rushed suddenly into it, and her eyes looked eager and startled; her lips moved—she was repeating to herself his words. A chance current swept the disembodied cigarette gently back past the boat, the paper and tobacco floated apart, pathetically close to each other.
“Ah!” said Nielsen, “there you are, my frriend; when we come apart like you, perrhaps we shall know all about it—this morrality.” He straightened himself on his seat with a sudden jerk, and looking at Jocelyn remarked in an apologetic drawl—
“I am afrraid I have bored you drreadfully.”