Darwin had come since then. There were people … distinguished minds, who thought Darwin was true.
No God. No Creation. The struggle for existence. Fighting. … Fighting. … Fighting. … Everybody groping and fighting. … Fräulein. … Some said it was true … some not. They could not both be right. It was probably true … only old-fashioned people thought it was not. It was true. Just that—monkeys fighting. But who began it? Who made Fräulein? Tough leathery monkey. …
Then nothing matters. Just one little short life. …
“A few more years shall roll …
A few more seasons pass. …”
There was a better one than that … not so organ-grindery.
“Swift to its close ebbs out life’s little day;
Earth’s joys grow dim, its glories fade away;
Change and decay in all around I see.”
Wow-wow-wow-whiney-caterwauley. …
Mr. Brough quoted Milton in a sermon and said he was a materialist. … Pater said it was a bold thing to say. … Mr. Brough was a clearheaded man. She couldn’t imagine how he stayed in the Church. … She hoped he hated that sickening, sickening, idiot humbug, Eve … meek … with silly long hair … “divinely smiling” … Adam was like a German … English too. … Impudent bombastic creature … a sort of man who would call his wife “my dear.” There was a hymn that even Pater liked … the tune was like a garden in the autumn. …
O … Strengthen and Stay—up— … Holding—all
Cre‑ay‑ay‑tion. … Who … ever Dost
Thy … self—un … Moved—a‑Bide. …
Thyself unmoved abide … Thyself unmoved
abide … Unmoved abide. …
Unmoved abide. … Unmoved Abide …
… Flights of shining steps, shallow and very wide—going up and up and growing fainter and fainter, and far away at the top a faint old face with great rays shooting out all round it … the picture in the large Pilgrim’s Progress. … God in heaven. … I belong to Apollyon … a horror with expressionless eyes … darting out little spiky flames … if only it would come now … instead of waiting until the end. …
She clasped her hands closely one in the other. They felt large and strong. She stopped her thoughts and stared for a long while at the faint light in the room. … “It’s physically impossible” someone had said … the only hell thinkable is remorse … remorse. …
Sighing impatiently she turned about … and sighed again, breathing deeply and rattling and feeling very hungry. … There will be breakfast, even for me. … If they knew me they would not give me breakfast. … No one would … I should be in a little room and one after another would come and be reproachful and shocked … and then they would go away and be happy and forget. …
Sarah would come. Whatever it was, Sarah would come. She read the Bible and marked pieces. … But she would rush in without saying anything, with a red face and bang down a plate of melon. … What did God do about people like Sarah? Perhaps Apollyon could be made to come at once—sweeping in like a large bat—be torn to bits—those men at that college said he had come to them. They swore—one after the other and the devil came in through one of the carved windows and carried one of them away. … I have my doubts … Pater’s face laughing—I have my doubts, ooof—P‑ooof. She flung off the outer covering and felt the strong movements of her limbs. Hang! Hang! Hang! Damn. …
If there’s no God, there’s no Devil … and everything goes on. … Fräulein goes on having her school. … What does she really think? … Out in the world people don’t think. … They grimace. … Is there anywhere where there are no people? … be a gipsy. … There are always people. …
“What a perfect morning … what a perfect morning,” Miriam kept telling herself, trying to see into the garden. There was a bowl of irises on the breakfast table—it made everything seem strange. There had never been flowers on the table before. There was also a great dish of pumpernickel besides the usual food. Fräulein had enjoined silence. The silence made the impression of the irises stay. She hoped it might be a new rule. She glanced at Fräulein two or three times. She was pallid white. Her face looked thinner than usual and her eyes larger and keener. She did not seem to notice anyone. Miriam wondered whether she were thinking about cancer. Her face looked as it had done when once or twice she had said, “Ich bin so bange vor Krebs.” She hoped not. Perhaps it was the problem of evil. Perhaps she had thought of it when she put the irises on the table.
She gazed at them, half-feeling the flummery petals against the palm of her hand. Fräulein seemed cancelled. There was no need to feel self-conscious. She was not thinking of any of them. Miriam found herself looking at high grey stone basins, with ornamental stems like wine glasses and large square fluted pedestals, filled with geraniums and calceolarias. They had stood in the sunshine at the corners of the lawn in her grandmother’s garden. She could remember nothing else but the scent of a greenhouse and its steamy panes over her head … lemon thyme and scented geranium.
How lovely it would be today at the end of the day. Fräulein would feel happy then … or did elderly people fear cancer all the time. … It was a great mistake. You should leave things to Nature. … You were more likely to have things if you thought about them. But Fräulein would think and worry … alone with herself … with her great dark eyes and bony forehead and thin pale cheeks … always alone,
