“While the sheltered people are flushed with breakfast table-talk—”
“Or awkward silences.”
“The deep damned silence of disillusionment.”
“And thinking about getting ready for church.”
“The men smoke.”
“Stealthily and sleepily in armchairs like cats—ever seen a cat smoke?—like cats—with the wife or somebody they are tired of talking to on the doormat—as it were—tentatively, I speak tentatively … in a dead-alley—Dedale—Dedalus—coming into the room any minute in Sunday clothes—”
“To stand on the hearthrug.”
“No hanging about the room. If there’s any hearthrug standing it’s the men who do it, smoking blissfully alone, and trying to look weary and wise and important if anyone comes in.”
“Like Cabinet ministers?”
“Yes; when they are really—er.”
“Cabinets.”
“Footstools; office stools; you never saw a sheltered woman venture on to the hearthrug except for a second if she’s shortsighted to look at the clock.” Miriam sprang to the hearthrug and waved her cigarette. “Con‑fu‑sion to the sheltered life!” The vast open of London swung, welcoming, before her eyes.
“Hoch! Hoch!”
“Banzai!”
“We certainly have our compensations.”
“Com‑pen‑sa‑tions?”
“Well—for all the things we have to give up.”
“What things?”
“The things that belong to us. To our youth. Tennis, dancing—er, irresponsibility in general. …”
“I’ve never once thought about any of those things; never once since I came to town,” said Miriam grappling with little anxious pangs that assailed her suddenly; dimly seeing the light on garden trees, hearing distant shouts, the sound of rowlocks, the lapping of water against smoothing swinging sculls. But all that life meant people, daily association with sheltered women and complacent abominable men, there half the time and half the time away on their own affairs which gave them a sort of mean advantage, and money. There was nothing really to regret. It was different for Mag. She did not mind ordinary women. Did not know the difference; or men.
“Yes but anyhow. If we were in the sheltered life we should either have done with that sort of thing and be married—or still keeping it up and anxious about not being married. Besides anyhow; think of the awful people.”
“Intolerant child.”
“Isn’t she intolerant. What a good thing you met us.”
“Yes of course; but I’m not intolerant. And look here. Heaps of those women envy us. They envy us our freedom. What we’re having is wanderyahre; the next best thing to wanderyahre.”
“Women don’t want wanderyahre.”
“I do, Jan.”
“So do I. I think the child’s quite right there. Freedom is life. We may be slaves all day and guttersnipes all the rest of the time but ach Gott, we are free.”
“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 shortsightedness. Not seeing all round a thing. Is that Tomlinson? Or
