Page:The Works of H G Wells Volume 11.pdf/126

 my son but to the dying penguin roasted alive for a farthing's worth of oil. There must be an answer to the men who go in ships to do such things. There has to be a justification for all the filth and wretchedness of louse and fluke. I will not have you slipping by on the other side, chattering of planes of living and sublimated atoms, while there is a drunken mother or a man dying of cholera in this world. I will not hear of a God who is just a means for getting away. Whatever foulness and beastliness there is, you must square God with that. Or there is no universal God, but only a coldness, a vast cruel indifference

"I would not make my peace with such a God if I could

"I tell you of these black and sinister realities, and what do you reply? That it is all right, because after death we shall get away from them. Why? if presently I go down under the surgeon's knife, down out of this hot and weary world, and then find myself being put together by a spirit doctor in this beyond of yours, waking up to a new world of amiable conversations and artificial flowers, having my hair restored and the gaps among my teeth filled up, I shall feel like someone who has deserted his kind, who has sneaked from a sick-room into a party Well—my infection will go with me. I shall talk of nothing but the tragedy out of which I have come—which still remains—which continues—tragedy.

"And yet I believe in Immortality!"

Dr. Barrack, who had hitherto been following Mr. Huss with evident approval, started, sounded a note