"Every moving thing that liveth shall be meat for you; even
as the green herb have I given you all things."
But Ursula was not moved by the history this morning.
Multiplying and replenishing the earth bored her. Altogether it
seemed merely a vulgar and stock-raising sort of business. She
was left quite cold by man's stock-breeding lordship over beast
and fishes.
"And you, be ye fruitful and multiply; bring forth abundantly
in the earth, and multiply therein."
In her soul she mocked at this multiplication, every cow
becoming two cows, every turnip ten turnips.
"And God said; This is the token of the covenant which I make
between me and you and every living creature that is with you,
for perpetual generations; "I do set my bow in the cloud, and it shall be a token of a
covenant between me and the earth.
"And it shall come to pass, when I bring a cloud over the
earth, that a bow shall be seen in the cloud; "And I will remember my covenant, which is between me and you
and every living creature of all flesh, and the waters shall no
more become a flood to destroy all flesh."
"Destroy all flesh," why "flesh" in particular? Who was this
lord of flesh? After all, how big was the Flood? Perhaps a few
dryads and fauns had just run into the hills and the farther
valleys and woods, frightened, but most had gone on blithely
unaware of any flood at all, unless the nymphs should tell them.
It pleased Ursula to think of the naiads in Asia Minor meeting
the nereids at the mouth of the streams, where the sea washed
against the fresh, sweet tide, and calling to their sisters the
news of Noah's Flood. They would tell amusing accounts of Noah
in his ark. Some nymphs would relate how they had hung on the
side of the ark, peeped in, and heard Noah and Shem and Ham and
Japeth, sitting in their place under the rain, saying, how they
four were the only men on earth now, because the Lord had
drowned all the rest, so that they four would have everything to
themselves, and be masters of every thing, sub-tenants under the
great Proprietor.
Ursula wished she had been a nymph. She would have laughed
through the window of the ark, and flicked drops of the flood at
Noah, before she drifted away to people who were less important
in their Proprietor and their Flood.
What was God, after all? If maggots in a dead dog be but God
kissing carrion, what then is not God? She was surfeited of this
God. She was weary of the Ursula Brangwen who felt troubled
about God. What ever God was, He was, and there was no need for
her to trouble about Him. She felt she had now all licence.