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Title: The New Paul and Virginia; Or, Positivism on an Island

Author: W. H. Mallock

Release date: October 7, 2011 [eBook #37651]
                Most recently updated: April 3, 2024

Language: English

Credits: Produced by Christine Bell and Marc D'Hooghe (From images generously made available by the Internet Archive)


*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE NEW PAUL AND VIRGINIA; OR, POSITIVISM ON AN ISLAND ***

THE NEW PAUL AND VIRGINIA

or

POSITIVISM ON AN ISLAND

BY

W.H. MALLOCK

AUTHOR OF 'THE NEW REPUBLIC' ETC.


LONDON

CHATTO & WINDUS, PICCADILLY

1890




_'Pessimism as to the essential dignity of man is one of the surest
marks of the enervating influence of this dream of a celestial glory.'_

                                                 Mr Frederic Harrison




'Those who can read the signs of the times read in them
that the kingdom of man is at hand'--Professor CLIFFORD

Thou art smitten, o God, thou art smitten; thy curse is
   upon thee, O Lord!
And the love song of earth as thou diest, resounds through
   the wind of its wings,
Glory to man in the highest, for man is the master of
   things
                              _Songs before Sunrise_




CONTENTS.

  Chapter I.
  Chapter II.
  Chapter III.
  Chapter IV.
  Chapter V.
  Chapter VI.
  Chapter VII.
  Chapter VIII.
  Chapter IX.
  Chapter X.
  Chapter XI.
  Chapter XII.
  Chapter XIII.
  Chapter XIV.
  Chapter XV.
  Chapter XVI.
  Chapter XVII.
  Chapter XVIII.

  Notes



_THE NEW PAUL AND VIRGINIA._




CHAPTER I.


The magnificent ocean-steamer the _Australasian_ was bound for England,
on her homeward voyage from Melbourne, carrying Her Majesty's mails and
ninety-eight first-class passengers. Never did vessel start under
happier auspices. The skies were cloudless; the sea was smooth as glass.
There was not a sound of sickness to be heard anywhere; and when
dinner-time came there was not a single absentee nor an appetite
wanting.

But the passengers soon discovered they were lucky in more than weather.
Dinner was hardly half over before two of the company had begun to
attract general attention; and every one all round the table was
wondering, in whispers, who they could possibly be.

One of the objects of this delightful curiosity was a large-boned,
middle-aged man, with gleaming spectacles, and lank, untidy hair; whose
coat fitted him so ill, and who held his head so high, that one saw at a
glance he was some great celebrity. The other was a beautiful lady of
about thirty years of age, the like of whom nobody present had ever seen
before. She had the fairest hair and the darkest eyebrows, the largest
eyes and the smallest waist conceivable; art and nature had been plainly
struggling as to which should do the most for her; whilst her bearing
was so haughty and distinguished, her glance so tender, and her dress so
expensive and so fascinating, that she seemed at the same time to defy
and to court attention.

Evening fell on the ship with a soft warm witchery. The air grew purple,
and the waves began to glitter in the moonlight. The passengers gathered
in knots upon the deck, and the distinguished strangers were still the
subject of conjecture. At last the secret was discovered by the wife of
an old colonial judge; and the news spread like wildfire. In a few
minutes all knew that there were on board the _Australasian_ no less
personages than Professor Paul Darnley and the superb Virginia St.
John.




CHAPTER II.


Miss St. John had, for at least six years, been the most renowned woman
in Europe. In Paris and St. Petersburg, no less than in London, her name
was equally familiar both to princes and to pot-boys; indeed, the gaze
of all the world was fixed on her. Yet, in spite of this exposed
situation, scandal had proved powerless to wrong her; she defied
detraction. Her enemies could but echo her friends' praise of her
beauty; her friends could but confirm her enemies' description of her
character. Though of birth that might almost be called humble, she had
been connected with the heads of many distinguished families; and so
general was the affection she inspired, and so winning the ways in which
she contrived to retain it, that she found herself, at the age of
thirty, mistress of nothing except a large fortune. She was now
converted with surprising rapidity by a Ritualistic priest, and she
became in a few months a model of piety and devotion. She made lace
trimmings for the curate's vestments; she bowed at church as often and
profoundly as possible; she enjoyed nothing so much as going to
confession; she learnt to despise the world. Indeed, such utter dross
did her riches now seem to her, that, despite all the arguments of her
ghostly counsellor, she remained convinced that they were far too
worthless to offer to the Church, and she saw nothing for it but to
still keep them for herself. The mingled humility and discretion of this
resolve so won the heart of a gifted colonial bishop, then on a visit to
England, that, having first assured himself that Miss St. John was
sincere in making it, he besought her to share with him his humble
mitre, and make him the happiest prelate in the whole Catholic Church.
Miss St. John consented. The nuptials were celebrated with the most
elaborate ritual, and after a short honeymoon the bishop departed for
his South Pacific diocese of the Chasuble Islands, to prepare a home for
his bride, who was to follow him by the next steamer.

Professor Paul Darnley, in his own walk of life, was even more famous
than Virginia had been in hers. He had written three volumes on the
origin of life, which he had spent seven years in looking for in
infusions of hay and cheese; he had written five volumes on the entozoa
of the pig, and two volumes of lectures, as a corollary to these, on the
sublimity of human heroism and the whole duty of man. He was renowned
all over Europe and America as a complete embodiment of enlightened
modern thought. He criticised everything; he took nothing on trust,
except the unspeakable sublimity of the human race and its august
terrestrial destinies. And, in his double capacity of a seer and a
_savant_, he had destroyed all that the world had believed in the past,
and revealed to it all that it is going to feel in the future. His mind
indeed was like a sea, into which the other great minds of the age
discharged themselves, and in which all the slight discrepancies of the
philosophy of the present century mingled together and formed one
harmonious whole. Nor was he less successful in his own private life.
He married, at the age of forty, an excellent evangelical lady, ten
years his senior, who wore a green gown, grey corkscrew curls, and who
had a fortune of two hundred thousand pounds. Deeply pledged though she
was to the most vapid figments of Christianity, Mrs. Darnley was yet
proud beyond measure of her husband's worldwide fame, for she did but
imperfectly understand the grounds of it. Indeed, the only thing that
marred her happiness was the single tenet of his that she had really
mastered. This, unluckily, was that he disbelieved in hell. And so, as
Mrs. Darnley conceived that that place was designed mainly to hold those
who doubted its existence, she daily talked her utmost and left no text
unturned to convince her darling of his very dangerous error. These
assiduous arguments soon began to tell. The Professor grew moody and
brooding, and he at last suggested to his medical man that a voyage
round the world, unaccompanied by his wife, was the prescription most
needed by his failing patience. Mrs. Darnley at length consented with a
fairly good grace. She made her husband pledge himself that he would not
be absent for above a twelvemonth, or else, she said, she should
immediately come after him. She bade him the tenderest of adieus, and
promised to pray till his return for his recovery of a faith in hell.

The Professor, who had but exceeded his time by six months, was now on
board the _Australasian_, homeward bound to his wife. Virginia was
outward bound to her husband.




CHAPTER III.


The sensation created by the presence of these two celebrities was
profound beyond description; and the passengers were never weary of
watching the gleaming spectacles and the square-toed boots of the one,
and the liquid eyes and the ravishing toilettes of the other. Virginia's
acquaintance was made almost instantly by three pale-faced curates, and
so well did their friendship prosper, that they soon sang at nightfall
with her a beautiful vesper hymn. Nor did the matter end here, for the
strains sounded so lovely, and Virginia looked so devotional, that most
of the passengers the night after joined in a repetition of this
touching evening office.

The Professor, as was natural, held quite aloof, and pondered over a new
species of bug, which he had found very plentiful in his berth. But it
soon occurred to him that he often heard the name of God being uttered
otherwise than in swearing. He listened more attentively to the sounds
which he had at first set down as negro-melodies, and he soon became
convinced that they were something whose very existence he despised
himself for remembering--namely, Christian hymns. He then thought of the
three curates, whose existence he despised himself for remembering also.
And the conviction rapidly dawned on him that, though the passengers
seemed fully alive to his fame as a man of science, they could yet know
very little of all that science had done for them; and of the death-blow
it had given to the foul superstitions of the past. He therefore
resolved that next day he would preach them a lay-sermon.

At the appointed time the passengers gathered eagerly round him--all but
Virginia, who retired to her cabin when she saw that the preacher wore
no surplice, as she thought it would be a mortal sin to listen to a
sermon without one.

The Professor began amidst a profound silence. He first proclaimed to
his hearers the great primary axiom on which all modern thought bases
itself. He told them that there was but one order of things--it was so
much neater than two; and if we would be certain of anything, we must
never doubt this. Thus, since countless things exist that the senses
_can_ take account of, it is evident that nothing exists that the senses
can _not_ take account of. The senses can take no account of God;
therefore God does not exist. Men of science can only see theology in a
ridiculous light, therefore theology has no side that is not ridiculous.
He then told them a few of the names that enlightened thinkers had
applied to the Christian deity--how Professor Tyndall had called him an
'atom-manufacturer,' and Professor Huxley a 'pedantic drill-sergeant'.
The passengers at once saw how demonstrably at variance with fact was
all religion, and they laughed with a sense of humour that was quite new
to them. The Professor's tones then became more solemn, and, having
extinguished error, he at once went on to unveil the brilliant light of
truth. He showed them how, viewed by modern science, all existence is a
chain, with a gas at one end and no one knows what at the other; and how
Humanity is a link somewhere; but--holy and awful thought!--we can none
of us tell where. 'However,' he proceeded, 'of one thing we can be quite
certain; all that is, is matter; the laws of matter are eternal, and we
cannot act or think without conforming to them; and if,' he said, 'we
would be solemn and high, and happy, and heroic, and saintly, we have
but to strive and struggle to do what we cannot for an instant avoid
doing. Yes,' he exclaimed, 'as the sublime Tyndall tells us, let us
struggle to attain to a deeper knowledge of matter, and a more faithful
conformity to its laws!'

The Professor would have proceeded, but the weather had been rapidly
growing rough, and he here became violently sea-sick.

'Let us,' he exclaimed hurriedly, 'conform to the laws of matter and go
below.'

Nor was the advice premature. A storm arose, exceptional in its
suddenness and its fury. It raged for two days without ceasing. The
_Australasian_ sprang a leak; her steering gear was disabled; and it was
feared she would go ashore on an island that was seen dimly through the
fog to the leeward. The boats were got in readiness. A quantity of
provisions and of the passengers' baggage was already stowed in the
cutter; when the clouds parted, the sun came out again, and the storm
subsided almost as quickly as it rose.




CHAPTER IV.


No sooner were the ship's damages in a fair way to be repaired than the
Professor resumed his sermon. He climbed into the cutter, which was
still full of the passengers' baggage, and sat down on the largest of
Virginia's boxes. This so alarmed Virginia that she incontinently
followed the Professor into the cutter, to keep an eye on her property;
but she did not forget to stop her ears with her fingers, that she
might not be guilty of listening to an unsurpliced minister.

The Professor took up the thread of his discourse just where he had
broken it off. Every circumstance favoured him. The calm sea was
sparkling under the gentlest breeze; all Nature seemed suffused with
gladness; and at two miles' distance was an enchanting island, green
with every kind of foliage, and glowing with the hues of a thousand
flowers. The Professor, having reminded his hearers of what nonsense
they now thought all the Christian teachings, went on to show them the
blessed results of this. Since the God that we once called all-holy is
a fable, that Humanity is all-holy must be a fact. Since we shall never
be sublime, and solemn, and unspeakably happy hereafter, it is evident
that we can be sublime, and solemn, and unspeakably happy here. 'This,'
said the Professor, 'is the new Gospel. It is founded on exact thought.
It is the Gospel of the kingdom of man; and had I only here a microscope
and a few chemicals, I could demonstrate its eternal truth to you. There
is no heaven to seek for; there is no hell to shun. We have nothing to
strive and live for except to be unspeakably happy.'

This eloquence was received with enthusiasm. The captain in particular,
who had a wife in every port he touched at, was overjoyed at hearing
that there was no hell; and he sent for all the crew, that they might
learn the good news likewise. But soon the general gladness was marred
by a sound of weeping. Three-fourths of the passengers, having had time
to reflect a little, began exclaiming that as a matter of fact they were
really completely miserable, and that for various reasons they could
never be anything else. 'My friends,' said the Professor, quite
undaunted, 'that is doubtless completely true. You are not happy now;
you probably never will be. But that, I can assure you, is of very
little moment. Only conform faithfully to the laws of matter, and your
children's children will be happy in the course of a few centuries; and
you will like that far, far better than being happy yourselves. Only
consider the matter in this light, and you yourselves will in an instant
become happy also; and whatever you say, and whatever you do, think only
of the effect it will have five hundred years afterwards.'

At these solemn words, the anxious faces grew calm. An awful sense of
the responsibility of each one of us, and the infinite consequences of
every human act, was filling the hearts of all; when by a faithful
conformity to the laws of matter, the boiler blew up, and the
_Australasian_ went down. In an instant the air was rent with yells and
cries; and all the Humanity that was on board the vessel was busy, as
the Professor expressed it, uniting itself with the infinite azure of
the past. Paul and Virginia, however, floated quietly away in the
cutter, together with the baggage and provisions.

Virginia was made almost senseless by the suddenness of the catastrophe;
and on seeing five sailors sink within three yards of her, she fainted
dead away. The Professor begged her not to take it so much to heart, as
these were the very men who had got the cutter in readiness; 'and they
are, therefore,' he said, 'still really alive in the fact of our happy
escape.' Virginia, however, being quite insensible, the Professor turned
to the last human being still to be seen above the waters, and shouted
to him not to be afraid of death, as there was certainly no hell, and
that his life, no matter how degraded and miserable, had been a glorious
mystery, full of infinite significance. The next moment the struggler
was snapped up by a shark. Our friends, meanwhile, borne by a current,
had been drifting rapidly towards the island. And the Professor,
spreading to the breeze Virginia's beautiful lace parasol, soon brought
the cutter to the shore on a beach of the softest sand.




CHAPTER V.


The scene that met Paul's eyes was one of extreme loveliness. He found
himself in a little fairy bay, full of translucent waters, and fringed
with silvery sands. On either side it was protected by fantastic rocks,
and in the middle it opened inland to an enchanting valley, where tall
tropical trees made a grateful shade, and where the ground was carpeted
with the softest moss and turf.

Paul's first care was for his fair companion. He spread a costly
cashmere shawl on the beach, and placed her, still fainting, on this. In
a few moments she opened her eyes; but was on the point of fainting
again as the horrors of the last half-hour came back to her, when she
caught sight in the cutter of the largest of her own boxes, and she
began to recover herself. Paul begged her to remain quiet whilst he went
to reconnoitre.

He had hardly proceeded twenty yards into the valley, when to his
infinite astonishment he came on a charming cottage, built under the
shadow of a bread-tree, with a broad verandah, plate-glass windows, and
red window-blinds. His first thought was that this could be no desert
island at all, but some happy European settlement. But, on approaching
the cottage, it proved to be quite untenanted, and from the cobwebs
woven across the doorway it seemed to have been long abandoned. Inside
there was abundance of luxurious furniture; the floors were covered with
gorgeous Indian carpets; and there was a pantry well stocked with plate
and glass and table-linen. The Professor could not tell what to make of
it, till, examining the structure more closely, he found it composed
mainly of a ship's timbers. This seemed to tell its own tale, and he at
once concluded that he and Virginia were not the first castaways who had
been forced to make the island for some time their dwelling-place.

Overjoyed at this discovery, he hastened back to Virginia. She was by
this time apparently quite recovered, and was kneeling on the cashmere
shawl, with a rosary in her hands designed especially for the use of
Anglo-Catholics, alternately lifting up her eyes in gratitude to heaven,
and casting them down in anguish at her torn and crumpled dress. The
poor Professor was horrified at the sight of a human being in this
degrading attitude of superstition. But as Virginia quitted it with
alacrity as soon as ever he told his news to her, he hoped he might soon
convert her into a sublime and holy Utilitarian.

The first thing she besought him to do was to carry her biggest box to
this charming cottage, that she might change her clothes, and appear in
something fit to be seen in. The Professor most obligingly at once did
as she asked him; and whilst she was busy at her toilette, he got from
the cutter what provisions he could, and proceeded to lay the table.
When all was ready, he rang a gong which he found suspended in the
lobby; Virginia appeared shortly in a beautiful pink dressing-gown,
embroidered with silver flowers; and just before sunset the two sat down
to a really excellent meal. The bread tree at the door of the cottage
contributed some beautiful French rolls; close at hand also they
discovered a butter-tree; and the Professor had produced from the cutter
a variety of salt and potted meats, _paté de foie gras_, cakes,
preserved fruits, and some bottles of fine champagne. This last helped
much to raise their spirits. Virginia found it very dry, and exactly
suited to her palate. She had but drunk five glasses of it, when her
natural smile returned to her, though she was much disappointed,
because Paul took no notice of her dressing-gown, and when she had drunk
three glasses more she quietly went to sleep on the sofa.

The moon had by this time risen in dazzling splendour, and the Professor
went out and lighted a cigar. All during dinner there had been a feeling
of dull despair in his heart, which even the champagne did not
dissipate. But now, as he surveyed in the moonlight the wondrous
Paradise in which his strange fate had cast him, his mood changed. The
air was full of the scents of a thousand night-smelling flowers; the sea
murmured on the beach in soft, voluptuous cadences. The Professor's
cigar was excellent. He now saw his situation in a truer light. Here was
a bountiful island, where earth unbidden brought forth all her choicest
fruits, and most of the luxuries of civilisation had already been wafted
thither. Existence here seemed to be purified from all its evils. Was
not this the very condition of things which all the sublimest and
exactest thinkers of modern times had been dreaming and lecturing and
writing books about for a good half-century? Here was a place where
Humanity could do justice to itself, and realise those glorious
destinies which all exact thinkers take for granted must be in store for
it. True, from the mass of Humanity he was completely cut away; but
Virginia was his companion. Holiness, and solemnity, and unspeakably
significant happiness did not, he argued, depend on the multiplication
table. He and Virginia represented Humanity as well as a million
couples. They were a complete humanity in themselves, and humanity in a
perfectible shape; and the very next day they would make preparations
for fulfilling their holy destiny, and being as solemnly and unspeakably
happy as it was their stern duty to be.

The Professor turned his eyes upwards to the starry heavens, and a sense
came over him of the eternity and the immensity of Nature, and the
demonstrable absence of any intelligence that guided, it. These
reflections naturally brought home to him with more vividness the
stupendous and boundless importance of Man. His bosom swelled violently,
and he cried aloud, his eyes still fixed on the firmament, 'Oh,
important All! oh, important Me!'

When he came back to the cottage he found Virginia just getting off the
sofa, and preparing to go to bed. She was too sleepy even to say
good-night to him, and with evident want of temper was tugging at the
buttons of her dressing-gown. 'Ah!' she murmured as she left the room,
'if God, in His infinite mercy, had only spared my maid!'

Virginia's evident discontent gave profound pain to Paul. 'How solemn,'
he exclaimed, 'for half Humanity to be discontented!' But he was still
more disturbed at the appeal to a chimerical manufacturer of atoms; and
he groaned in tones of yet more sonorous sorrow, 'How solemn for half
Humanity to be sunk lower than the beasts by superstition!'

However, he hoped that these stupendous evils might, under the present
favourable conditions, vanish in the course of a few days' progress; and
he went to bed, full of august auguries.




CHAPTER VI.


Next morning he was up betimes; and the prospects of Humanity looked
more glorious than ever. He gathered some of the finest pats from the
butter-tree, and some fresh French rolls from the bread-tree. He
discovered a cow close at hand, that allowed him at once to milk it; and
a little roast pig ran up to him out of the underwood, and fawning on
him with its trotters, said, 'Come, eat me.'

The Professor vivisected it before Virginia's door, that its automatic
noise, which the vulgar call cries of pain, might awaken her; and he
then set it in a hot dish on the table.

'It has come! it has come!' he shouted, rapturously, as Virginia entered
the room, this time in a blue silk dressing-gown, embroidered with
flowers of gold.

'What has come?' said Virginia, pettishly, for she was suffering from a
terrible headache, and the Professor's loud voice annoyed her. 'You
don't mean to say that we are rescued, are we?'

'Yes,' answered Paul, solemnly; 'we are rescued. We are rescued from all
the pains and imperfections of a world that has not learnt how to
conform to the laws of matter, and is but imperfectly acquainted with
the science of sociology. It is therefore inevitable that, the evils of
existence being thus removed, we shall both be solemnly, stupendously,
and unspeakably happy.'

'Nonsense!' said Virginia, snappishly, who thought the Professor was
joking.

'It is not nonsense,' said the Professor, 'It is deducible from the
teachings of John Stuart Mill, of Auguste Comte, of Mr. Frederic
Harrison, and of all the exact thinkers who have cast off superstition,
and who adore Humanity.'

Virginia meanwhile ate _paté de foie gras_, of which she was
passionately fond; and, growing a little less sullen, she at last
admitted that they were lucky in having at least the necessaries of life
left to them. 'But as for happiness--there is nothing to do here, there
is no church to go to, and you don't seem to care a bit for my
dressing-gown. What have we got to make us happy?'

'Humanity,' replied the Professor eagerly,--'Humanity, that divine
entity, which is necessarily capable of everything that is fine and
invaluable, and is the object of indescribable emotion to all exact
thinkers. And what is Humanity?' he went on more earnestly; 'you and I
are Humanity--you and I are that august existence. You already are all
the world to me; and I very soon shall be all the world to you. Adored
being, it will be my mission and my glory to compel you to live for me.
And then, as modern philosophy can demonstrate, we shall both of us be
significantly and unspeakably happy.'

For a few moments Virginia merely stared at Paul. Suddenly she turned
quite pale, her lips quivered, and exclaiming, 'How dare you!--and I,
too, the wife of a bishop!' she left the room in hysterics.

The Professor could make nothing of this. Though he had dissected many
dead women, he knew very little of the hearts of live ones. A sense of
shyness overpowered him, and he felt embarrassed, he could not tell
why, at being thus left alone with Virginia. He lit a cigar and went
out. Here was a to-do indeed, he thought. How would progress be possible
if one half of Humanity misunderstood the other?

He was thus musing, when suddenly a voice startled him; and in another
moment a man came rushing up to him, with every demonstration of joy.

'Oh, my dear master! oh, emancipator of the human intellect! and is it
indeed you? Thank God!----I beg pardon for my unspeakable blasphemy--I
mean, thank circumstances over which I have no control.'

It was one of the three curates, whom Paul had supposed drowned, but who
now related how he had managed to swim ashore, despite the extreme
length of his black clerical coat. 'These rags of superstition,' he
said, 'did their best to drown me. But I survive in spite of them, to
covet truth and to reject error. Thanks to your glorious teaching,' he
went on, looking reverentially into the Professor's face, 'the very
notion of an Almighty Father makes me laugh consumedly, it is so absurd
and so immoral. Science, through your instrumentality, has opened my
eyes. I am now an exact thinker.'

'Do you believe, said Paul, 'in solemn, significant, and unspeakably
happy Humanity?

'I do,' said the curate, fervently. 'Whenever I think of Humanity, I
groan and moan to myself out of sheer solemnity.'

'Then two thirds of Humanity,' said the Professor, 'are thoroughly
enlightened. Progress will now go on smoothly.'

At this moment Virginia came out, having rapidly recovered composure at
the sound of a new man's voice.

'You here--you, too!' exclaimed the curate. 'How solemn, how
significant! This is truly Providential----I mean this has truly
happened through conformity to the laws of matter.'

'Well,' said Virginia, 'since we have a clergyman amongst us, we shall
perhaps be able to get on.'




CHAPTER VII.


Things now took a better turn. The Professor ceased to feel shy; and
proposed, when the curate had finished an enormous breakfast, that they
should go down to the cutter, and bring up the things in it to the
cottage. 'A few hours' steady progress,' he said, 'and the human race
will command all the luxuries of civilisation--the glorious fruits of
centuries of onward labour.'

The three spent a very busy morning in examining and unpacking the
luggage. The Professor found his favourite collection of modern
philosophers; Virginia found a large box of knick-knacks, with which to
adorn the cottage; and there was, too, an immense store of wine and of
choice provisions.

'It is rather sad,' sighed Virginia, as she dived into a box of French
chocolate-creams, 'to think that all the poor people are drowned that
these things belonged to.'

'They are not dead,' said the Professor: 'they still live on this holy
and stupendous earth. They live in the use we are making of all they had
got together. The owner of those chocolate-creams is immortal because
you are eating them.'

Virginia licked her lips and said, 'Nonsense!'

'It is not nonsense,' said the Professor. 'It is the religion of
Humanity.'

All day they were busy, and the time passed pleasantly enough. Wines,
provisions, books, and china ornaments were carried up to the cottage
and bestowed in proper places. Virginia filled the glasses in the
drawing-room with gorgeous leaves and flowers and declared by the
evening, as she looked round her, that she could almost fancy herself in
St. John's Wood.

'See, said the Professor, 'how rapid is the progress of material
civilisation! Humanity is now entering on the fruits of ages. Before
long it will be in a position to be unspeakably happy.'

Virginia retired to bed early. The Professor took the curate out with
him to look at the stars; and promised to lend him some writings of the
modern philosophers, which would make him more perfect in the new view
of things. They said good-night, murmuring together that there was
certainly no God, that Humanity was very important, and that everything
was very solemn.




CHAPTER VIII.


Next morning the curate began studying a number of essays that the
Professor lent him, all written by exact thinkers, who disbelieved in
God, and thought Humanity adorable, and most important. Virginia lay on
the sofa, and sighed over one of Miss Broughton's novels; and it
occurred to the Professor that the island was just the place where, if
anywhere, the missing link might be found.

'Ah!' he exclaimed; 'all is still progress. Material progress came to an
end yesterday. Mental progress has begun to-day. One third of Humanity
is cultivating sentiment; another third is learning to covet truth. I,
the remaining and most enlightened third, will go and seek it. Glorious,
solemn Humanity! I will go and look about for its arboreal ancestor.'

Every step the Professor took he found the island more beautiful. But he
came back to luncheon, having been unsuccessful in his search. Events
had marched quickly in his absence. Virginia was at the beginning of her
third volume; and the curate had skimmed over so many essays, that he
professed himself able to give a thorough account of the want of faith
that was in him.

After luncheon the three sat together in easy chairs, in the verandah,
sometimes talking, sometimes falling into a half-doze. They all agreed
that they were wonderfully comfortable, and the Professor said--

'All Humanity is now at rest, and in utter peace. It is just taking
breath, before it becomes unspeakably and significantly happy.'

He would have said more, but he was here startled by a piteous noise of
crying, and the three found themselves confronted by an old woman
dripping with sea-water, and with an expression on her face of the
utmost misery. They soon recognised her as one of the passengers on the
ship. She told them how she had been floated ashore on a spar, and how
she had been sustained by a little roast pig, that kindly begged her to
eat it, having first lain in her bosom to restore her to warmth. She was
now looking for her son.

'And if I cannot find him,' said the old woman, 'I shall never smile
again. He has half broken my heart,' she went on, 'by his wicked ways.
But if I thought he was dead--dead in the midst of his sins--it would be
broken altogether; for in that case he must certainly be in hell.'

'Old woman,' said the Professor, very slowly and solemnly, 'be
comforted. I announce to you that your son is alive.'

'Oh, bless you, sir, for that word!' cried the old woman. 'But where is
he? Have you seen him? Are you sure that he is living?'

'I am sure of it,' said the Professor, 'because enlightened thought
shows me that he cannot be anything else. It is true that I saw him sink
for a third time in the sea, and that he was then snapped up by a shark.
But he is as much alive as ever in his posthumous activities. He has
made you wretched after him; and that is his future life. Become an
exact thinker, and you will see that this is so. Old woman,' added the
Professor solemnly, 'old woman, listen to me--_You and your son are in
hell._'

At this the old woman flew into a terrible rage.

'In hell, sir!' she exclaimed; 'me in hell!--a poor lone woman like me!
How dare you!' And she sank back in a chair and fainted.

'Alas!' said the Professor, 'thus is misery again introduced into the
world. A fourth part of Humanity is now miserable.'

The curate answered promptly that if no restoratives were given her,
she would probably die in a few minutes. 'And to let her die,' he said,
'is clearly our solemn duty. It will be for the greatest happiness of
the greatest number.'

'No,' said the Professor; 'for our sense of pity would then be wounded,
and the happiness of all of us would be marred by that.'

'Excuse me,' said the curate; 'but exact thought shows me that pity for
others is but the imagining of their misfortune falling on ourselves.
Now, we can none of us imagine ourselves exactly in the old woman's
case; therefore it is quite impossible that we can pity her.'

'But,' said the Professor, 'such an act would violate our ideas of
justice.'

'You are wrong again,' said the curate, 'for exact thought shows me that
the love of justice is nothing but the fear of suffering injustice. If
we were to kill strong men, we might naturally fear that strong men
would kill us. But whatever we do to fainting old women, we cannot
expect that fainting old women will do anything to us in return.'

'Your reasoning cannot be sound,' said the Professor, 'for it would lead
to the most horrible conclusions. I will solve the difficulty better. I
will make the old woman happy, and therefore fit to live. Old woman,' he
exclaimed, 'let me beg you to consider this. You are yourself by your
own unhappiness expiating your son's sins. Do but think of that, and you
will become unspeakably happy.'

Meanwhile, however, the old woman had died. When the Professor
discovered this he was somewhat shocked; but at length with a sudden
change of countenance, 'We neither of us did it,' he exclaimed; 'her
death is no act of ours. It is part of the eternal not-ourselves that
makes for righteousness--righteousness, which is, as we all know, but
another name for happiness. Let us adore the event with reverence.'

'Yes,' said the curate, 'we are well rid of her. She was an immoral old
woman, for happiness is the test of morality, and she was very unhappy.'

'On the contrary,' said the Professor, 'she was a moral old woman; for
she has made us happy by dying so very opportunely. Let us speak well of
the dead. Her death has been a holy and a blessed one. She has conformed
to the laws of matter. Thus is unhappiness destined to fade out of the
world. Quick! let us tie a bag of shot to all the sorrow and evil of
Humanity, which, after all, is only a fourth part of it, and let us sink
her in the bay close at hand, that she may catch lobsters for us.'




CHAPTER IX.


At last,' said the Professor, as they began dinner that evening, 'the
fulness of time has come. All the evils of Humanity are removed, and
progress has come to an end because it can go no further. We have
nothing now to do but to be unspeakably and significantly happy.'

The champagne flowed freely. Our friends ate and drank of the best,
their spirits rose, and Virginia admitted that this was really 'jolly.'
The sense of the word pleased the Professor, but its sound seemed below
the gravity of the occasion; so he begged her to say 'sublime' instead.
'We can make it mean,' he said, 'just the same, but we prefer it for the
sake of its associations.'

It soon, however, occurred to him that eating and drinking were hardly
delights sufficient to justify the highest state of human emotion, and
he began to fear he had been feeling sublime prematurely; but in another
moment he recollected he was an altruist, and that the secret of their
happiness was not that any one of them was happy, but that they each
knew the others were.

'Yes, my dear curate,' said the Professor, 'what I am enjoying is the
champagne that you drink, and what you are enjoying is the champagne
that I drink. This is altruism; this is benevolence; this is the sublime
outcome of enlightened modern thought. The pleasures of the table, in
themselves, are low and beastly ones; but if we each of us are only glad
because the others are enjoying them, they become holy and glorious
beyond description.'

'They do,' cried the curate rapturously, 'indeed they do. I will drink
another bottle for your sake. It is sublime!' he said, as he tossed off
three glasses. 'It is significant!' he said as he finished three more.
'Tell me, my dear, do I look significant?' he added, as he turned to
Virginia, and suddenly tried, to crown the general bliss by kissing her.

Virginia started back, looking fire and fury at him. The Professor was
completely astounded by an occurrence so unnatural, and exclaimed in a
voice of thunder, 'Morality, sir--remember morality! How dare you upset
that which Professor Huxley tells us must be for ever strong enough to
hold its own?'

But the last glass of champagne had put the curate beyond the reach of
exact thought. He tumbled under the table, and the Professor carried him
off to bed.




CHAPTER X.


The Professor, like most serious thinkers, knew but little of that
trifle commonly called 'the world.' He had never kissed any one except
his wife; even that he did as seldom as possible; and the curate lying
dead drunk was the first glimpse he had of what, _par excellence_, is
described as 'life.' But though the scene just recounted was thus a
terrible shock to him, in one way it gave him an unlooked-for comfort.
He had felt that even yet things were not quite as sublime as they
should be. He now saw the reason. 'Of course,' he said, 'existence
cannot be perfect so long as one third of Humanity makes a beast of
itself. A little more progress must be still necessary.'

He hastened to explain this next morning to Virginia, and begged her not
to be alarmed at the curate's scandalous conduct. 'Immorality,' he said,
'is but a want of success in attaining our own happiness. It is
evidently most immoral for the curate to be kissing you; and therefore
kissing you would not really conduce to his happiness. I will convince
him of this solemn truth in a very few moments. Then the essential
dignity of human nature will become at once apparent, and we shall all
of us at last begin to be unspeakably happy.'

The curate, however, altogether declined to be convinced. He maintained
stoutly that to kiss Virginia would be the greatest pleasure that
Humanity could offer him. 'And if it is immoral as well as pleasant,' he
added, 'I should like it all the better.'

At this the Professor gave a terrible groan; he dropped almost fainting
into a chair; he hid his face in his hands; and murmured
half-articulately, 'Then I can't tell what to do!' In another instant,
however, he recovered himself; and fixing a dreadful look on the
curate, 'That last statement of yours,' he said, 'cannot be true; for if
it were, it would upset all my theories. It is a fact that can be proved
and verified, that if you kissed Virginia it would make you miserable.'

'Pardon me,' said the curate, rapidly moving towards her, 'your notion
is a remnant of superstition; I will explode it by a practical
experiment.'

The Professor caught hold of the curate's coat-tails, and forcibly
pulled him back into his seat.

'If you dare attempt it,' he said, 'I will kick you soundly, and,
shocking, immoral man! you will feel miserable enough then.'

The curate was a terrible coward, and very weak as well. 'You are a
great hulking fellow,' he said, eyeing the Professor; 'and I am of a
singularly delicate build. I must, therefore, conform to the laws of
matter, and give in.' He said this in a very sulky voice; and, going out
of the room, slammed the door after him.

A radiant expression suffused the face of the Professor. 'See,' he said
to Virginia, 'the curate's conversion is already half accomplished. In a
few hours more he will be rational, he will be moral, he will be
solemnly and significantly happy.'

The Professor talked like this to Virginia the whole morning; but in
spite of all his arguments, she declined to be comforted. 'It is all
very well,' she said, 'whilst you are in the way. But as soon as your
back is turned, I know he will be at me again.'

'Will you never,' said Paul, by this time a little irritated, 'will you
never listen to exact thought? The curate is now reflecting; and a
little reflection must inevitably convince him that he does not really
care to kiss you, and that it would give him very little real pleasure
to do so.'

'Stuff!' exclaimed Virginia, with a sudden vigour at which the Professor
was thunderstruck. 'I can tell you,' she went on, 'that better men than
he have borne kicks for my sake; and to kiss me is the only thing that
that little man cares about.--What _shall_ I do?' she exclaimed,
bursting into tears. 'Here is one of you insulting me by trying to kiss
me; and the other insulting me by saying that I am not worth being
kissed!'

'Ah, me!' groaned the poor Professor in an agony, 'here is one third of
Humanity plunged in sorrow; and another third has not yet freed itself
from vice. When, when, I wonder, will the sublimity begin?'




CHAPTER XI.


At dinner, however, things wore a more promising aspect. The curate had
been so terrified by the Professor's threats, that he hardly dared to so
much as look at Virginia; and to make up for it, he drank and drank
champagne, till the strings of his tongue were loosed, and he was
laughing and chattering at a rate that was quite extraordinary.
Virginia, seeing herself thus neglected by the curate, began to fear
that, as Paul said, he really did not so much care to kiss her after
all. She, therefore, put on all her most enticing ways; she talked,
flirted, and smiled her best, and made her most effective eyes, that the
curate might see what a prize was for ever beyond his reach.

This state of affairs seemed full of glorious promise. Virginia's tears
were dried, she had never looked so radiant and exquisite before. The
curate had foregone every attempt to kiss Virginia, and yet apparently
he was happiness itself; and Paul took him aside, as soon as the meal
was over, to congratulate him on the holy state to which exact thought
had conducted him. 'You see,' Paul said, 'what a natural growth the
loftiest morality is. Virginia doesn't want to be kissed by you. I
should be shocked at your doing so shocking a thing as kissing her. If
you kissed her, you would make both of us miserable; and, as a necessary
consequence, you would be in an agony likewise; in addition to which, I
should inevitably kick you.'

'But,' said the curate, 'suppose I kissed Virginia on the sly,--I merely
put this as an hypothesis, remember,--and that in a little while she
liked it, what then? She and I would both be happy, and you ought to be
happy too, because we were.'

'Idiot!' said the Professor. 'Virginia is another man's wife. Nobody
really likes kissing another man's wife; nor do wives ever like kissing
any one except their husbands. What they really like is what Professor
Huxley calls "the undefined but bright ideal of the highest good,"
which, as he says, exact thought shows us is the true end of existence.
But, pooh! what is the use of all this talking? You know which way your
higher nature calls you; and, of course, unless men believe in God, they
cannot help obeying their higher nature.'

'I,' said the curate, 'think the belief in God a degrading superstition;
I think every one an imbecile who believes a miracle possible. And yet
I do not care two straws about the highest good. What you call my lower
nature is far the strongest; I mean to follow it to the best of my
ability; and I prefer calling it my higher, for the sake of the
associations.'

This plunged the Professor in deeper grief than ever. He knew not what
to do. He paced up and down the verandah, or about the rooms, and moaned
and groaned as if he had a violent toothache. Virginia and the curate
asked what was amiss with him. 'I am agonising,' he said, 'for the sake
of holy, solemn, unspeakably dignified Humanity.'

The curate, seeing the Professor thus dejected, by degrees took heart
again, and as Virginia still continued her fascinating behaviour to him,
he resolved to try and prove to her that, the test of morality being
happiness, the most moral thing she could do would be to allow him to
kiss her. No sooner had he begun to propound these views, than the
Professor gave over his groaning, seized the curate by the collar, and
dragged him out of the room with a roughness that nearly throttled him.

'I was but propounding a theory--an opinion,' gasped the curate. 'Surely
thought is free. You will not persecute me for my opinions?'

'It is not for your opinions,' said the Professor, 'but for the
horrible effect they might have. Opinions,' he roared, 'can only be
tolerated which have no possible consequences. You may promulgate any of
those as much as you like; because to do that would be a self-regarding
action.'




CHAPTER XII.


'Well,' said the curate, 'if I may not kiss Virginia, I will drink
brandy instead. That will make me happy enough; and then we shall all be
radiant.'

He soon put his resolve into practice. He got a bottle of brandy, he sat
himself down under a palm-tree, and told the Professor he was going to
make an afternoon of it.

'Foolish man!' said the Professor; 'I was never drunk myself, it is
true; but I know that to get drunk makes one's head ache horribly. To
get drunk is, therefore, horribly immoral; and therefore I cannot permit
it.'

'Excuse me,' said the curate; 'it is a self-regarding action. Nobody's
head will ache but mine; so that is my own look-out. I have been
expelled from school, from college, and from my first curacy for
drinking. So I know well enough the balance of pains and pleasures.'

Here he pulled out his brandy bottle, and applied his lips to it.

'Oh, Humanity!' he exclaimed, 'how solemn this brandy tastes!'

Matters went on like this for several days. The curate was too much
frightened to again approach Virginia. Virginia at last became convinced
that he did not care about kissing her. Her vanity was wounded, and she
became sullen; and this made the Professor sullen also. In fact, two
thirds of Humanity were overcast with gloom. The only happy section of
it was the curate, who alternately smoked and drank all day long.

'The nasty little beast!' said Virginia to the Professor, 'he is nearly
always drunk. I am beginning quite to like you, Paul, by comparison
with him. Let us turn him out, and not let him live in the cottage.'

'No,' said the Professor; 'for he is one third of Humanity. You do not
properly appreciate the solidarity of mankind. His existence, however, I
admit is a great difficulty.'

One day at dinner-time, shortly afterwards, Paul came in radiant.

'Oh holy, oh happy event!' he exclaimed; 'all will go right at last.'

Virginia inquired anxiously what had happened, and Paul informed her
that the curate, who had got more drunk than usual that afternoon, had
fallen over a cliff, and been dashed to pieces.

'What event,' he asked, 'could be more charming more unspeakably holy?
It bears about it every mark of sanctity. It is for the greatest
happiness of the greatest number. Come,' he continued, 'let you and me
together, purged of sin, and purged of sorrow as we are--let us begin
our love-feast. Let us each seek the happiness of the other. Let us
instantly be sublime and happy.'




CHAPTER XIII.


'The supreme moment is come,' said Paul solemnly, as they sat down to
dinner. 'Let us prepare ourselves for realising to the full the
essential dignity of Humanity--that _grand être_, which has come, in the
course of progress, to consist of you and me. Virginia, consider this.
Every condition of happiness that modern thinkers have dreamed of is now
fulfilled. We have but to seek each the happiness of the other, and we
shall both be in a solemn, a significant, and unspeakable state of
rapture. See, here is an exquisite leg of mutton. I,' said Paul, who
liked the fat best, 'I will give up all the fat to you.'

'And I,' said Virginia, resignedly, 'will give up all the lean to you,'

A few mouthfuls made Virginia feel sick. 'I confess,' said she, 'I can't
get on with this fat.'

'I confess,' the Professor answered, 'I don't exactly like this lean.'

'Then let us,' said Virginia, 'be like Jack Sprat and his wife.'

'No,' said the Professor, meditatively, 'that is quite inadmissible. For
in that case we should be egoistic hedonists. However, for to-day it
shall be as you say. I will think of something better to-morrow.'

Next day he and Virginia had a chicken apiece; only Virginia's was put
before Paul, and Paul's before Virginia; and they each walked round the
table to supply each other with the slightest necessaries.

'Ah!' cried Paul, 'this is altruism indeed. I think already I can feel
the sublimity beginning.'

Virginia liked this rather better. But soon she committed the sin of
taking for herself the liver of Paul's chicken. As soon as she had eaten
the whole of it her conscience began to smite her. She confessed her
sin to Paul, and inquired, with some anxiety, if he thought she would go
to hell for it? 'Metaphorically,' said Paul, 'you have already done so.
You are punished by the loss of the pleasure you would have had in
giving that liver to me, and also by your knowledge of my knowledge of
your folly in foregoing the pleasure.'

Virginia was much relieved by this answer; she at once took several more
of the Professor's choicest bits, and was happy in the thought that her
sins were expiated in the very act of their commission, by the latent
pain she felt persuaded they were attended by. Feeling that this was
sufficient, she took care not to add Paul's disapproval to her
punishment, so she never told him again.

For a short time this practice of altruism seemed to Virginia to have
many advantages. But though the Professor was always exclaiming, 'How
significant is human life by the very nature of its constitution!' she
very soon found it a trifle dull. Luckily, however, she hit upon a new
method of exercising morality, and, as the Professor fully admitted, of
giving it a yet more solemn significance.

The Professor having by some accident lost his razors, his moustaches
had begun to grow profusely, and Virginia had watched them with a deep
but half-conscious admiration. At last, in a happy moment, she
exclaimed, 'Oh, Paul, do let me wax the ends for you,' Paul at first
giggled, blushed, and protested, but, as Virginia assured him it would
make her happy, he consented. 'Then,' she said, 'you will know that I am
happy, and that in return will make you happy also. Ah!' she exclaimed
when the operation was over, 'do go and examine yourself in the glass. I
declare you look exactly like Jack Barley--Barley-Sugar, as we used to
call him--of the Blues.'

Virginia smiled; suddenly she blushed; the Professor blushed also. To
cover the blushes she begged to be allowed to do his hair. 'It will make
me so much happier, Paul,' she said. The Professor again assented, that
he might make Virginia happy, and that she might be happy in knowing
that he was happy in promoting her happiness. At last the Professor, shy
and awkward as he was, was emboldened to offer to do Virginia's hair in
return. She allowed him to arrange her fringe, and, as she found he did
no great harm to it, she let him repeat the operation as often as he
liked.

A week thus passed, full, as the Professor said, of infinite solemnity.
'I admit, Paul,' sighed Virginia, 'that this altruism, as you call it,
is very touching. I like it very much. But,' she added, sinking her
voice to a whisper, 'are you quite sure, Paul, that it is perfectly
moral?'

'Moral!' echoed the Professor, 'moral! Why, exact thought shows us that
it is the very essence of all morality!'




CHAPTER XIV.


Matters now went on charmingly. All existence seemed to take a richer
colouring, and there was something, Paul said, which, in Professor
Tyndall's words, 'gave fulness and tone to it, but which he could
neither analyse nor comprehend.' But at last a change came. One morning,
whilst Virginia was arranging Paul's moustaches, she was frightened
almost into a fit by a sudden apparition at the window. It was a
hideous hairy figure, perfectly naked but for a band of silver which it
wore about its neck. For a moment it did nothing but grin and stare;
then, uttering a discordant scream, it flung into Virginia's lap a
filthy piece of carrion, and in an instant it had bounded away with an
almost miraculous activity.

Virginia shrieked with disgust and terror, and clung to Paul's knees for
protection. He, however, in some strange way, seemed unmoved and
preoccupied. All at once, to her intense surprise, she saw his face
light up with an expression of triumphant eagerness. 'The missing link!'
he exclaimed, 'the missing link at last! Thank God.--I beg pardon for
my unspeakable blasphemy--I mean, thank circumstances over which I have
no control. I must this instant go out and hunt for it. Give me some
provisions in a knapsack, for I will not come back till I have caught
it.'

This was a fearful blow to Virginia. She fell at Paul's feet weeping,
and besought him in piteous accents that he would not thus abandon her.

'I must,' said the Professor solemnly, 'for I am going in pursuit of
Truth. To arrive at Truth is man's perfect and most rapturous happiness.
You must surely know that, even if I have forgotten to tell it to you.
To pursue truth--holy truth for holy truth's sake--is a more solemn
pleasure than even frizzling your hair.'

'Oh,' cried. Virginia, hysterically, 'I don't care two straws for truth.
What on earth is the good of it?'

'It is its own end,' said the Professor. 'It is its own exceeding great
reward. I must be off at once in search of it. Good-bye for the present.
Seek truth on your own account, and be unspeakably happy also, because
you know that I am seeking it.'

The Professor remained away for three days. For the first two of them
Virginia was inconsolable. She wandered about mournfully with her head
dejected. She very often sighed; she very often uttered the name of
Paul. At last she surprised herself by exclaiming aloud to the
irresponsive solitude, 'Oh, Paul, until you were gone, I never knew how
passionately I loved you.' No sooner were these words out of her mouth
than she stood still, horror-stricken. 'Alas!' she cried, 'and have I
really come to this? I am in a state of deadly sin, and there is no
priest here to confess to! Alone, alone I must conquer my forbidden love
as I may. But, ah me, what a guilty thing I am!'

As she uttered these words, her eyes fell on a tin box of the
Professor's, marked 'Private,' which he always kept carefully locked,
and which had before now excited her curiosity. Suddenly she became
conscious of a new impulse. 'I will pursue truth!' she exclaimed. 'I
will break that box open, and I will see what is inside it. Ah!' she
added, as with the aid of the poker she at last wrenched off the
padlock. 'Paul may be right, after all. There is more interest in the
pursuit of truth than I thought there was.'

The box was full of papers, letters, and diaries, the greater part of
which were marked 'Strictly private.' Seeing this, Virginia's appetite
for truth became keener than ever. She instantly began her researches.
The more she read, the more eager she became; and the more private
appeared the nature of the documents, the more insatiable did her
thirst for truth grow. To her extreme surprise, she gathered that the
Professor had begun life as a clergyman. There were several photographs
of him in his surplice; and a number of devout prayers, apparently
composed by himself for his own personal use. This discovery was the
result of her labours.

'Certainly,' she said, 'it is one of extreme significance. If Paul was a
priest once, he must be a priest now. Orders are indelible--at least in
the Church of England I know they are.'




CHAPTER XV.


Paul came back, to Virginia's extreme relief, without the missing link.
But he was still radiant in spite of his failure; for he had discovered,
he said, a place where the creature had apparently slept, and he had
collected in a card-paper box a large number of its parasites.

'I am glad,' said Virginia, 'that you have not found the missing link:
though as to thinking that we really came from monkeys, of course that
is too absurd. Now if you could have brought me a nice monkey, I should
really have liked that. The Bishop has promised that I shall have a
darling one, if I ever reach him--ah me!--if----Paul,' continued
Virginia, in a very solemn voice, after a long pause, 'do you know that
whilst you have been away I have been pursuing truth? I rather liked it;
and I found it very, very significant.'

'Oh, joy!' exclaimed the Professor. 'Oh, unspeakable radiance! Oh, holy,
oh essentially dignified Humanity! it will very soon be perfect! Tell
me, Virginia, what truths have you been discovering?'

'One truth about you, Paul,' said Virginia, very gravely, 'and one
truth about me. I burn--oh, I burn to tell them to you!'

The Professor was enraptured to hear that one half of Humanity had been
thus studying human nature; and he began asking Virginia if her
discoveries belonged to the domain of historical or biological science.
Meanwhile Virginia had flung herself on her knees before him, and was
exclaiming, in piteous accents--

'By my fault, by my own fault, by my very grievous fault, holy father, I
confess to you----'

'Is the woman mad?' cried the Professor, starting up from his seat.

'You are a priest, Paul,' said Virginia; 'that is one of the things I
have discovered. I am in a state of deadly sin; that is the other: and I
must and will confess to you. Once a priest, always a priest. You cannot
get rid of your orders, and you must and shall hear me.'

'I was once in orders, it is true,' said Paul, reluctantly; 'but how did
you find out my miserable secret?'

'In my zeal for truth,' said Virginia, 'I broke open your tin box; I
read all your letters; I looked at your early photographs; I saw all
your beautiful prayers.'

'You broke open my box!' cried the Professor. 'You read my letters and
my private papers! Oh, horrible! oh, immoral! What shall we do if one
half of Humanity has no feeling of honour?'

'Oh!' said Virginia, 'it was all for the love of truth--of solemn and
holy truth. I sacrificed every other feeling for that. But I have not
told you my truth yet; and I am determined you shall hear it, or I must
still remain in my sins. Paul, I am a married woman; and I discover, in
spite of that, that I have fallen in love with you. My husband, it is
true, is far away; and whatever we do, he could never possibly be the
wiser. But I am in a state of mortal sin, nevertheless; and I would
give anything in the world if you would only kiss me.'

'Woman!' exclaimed Paul, aghast with fright and horror, 'do you dare to
abuse truth, by turning it to such base purposes?'

'Oh, you are so clever,' Virginia went on, 'and when the ends of your
moustaches are waxed, you look positively handsome; and I love you so
deeply and so tenderly, that I shall certainly go to hell if you do not
give me absolution.'

At this the Professor jumped up, and, staring very hard at Virginia,
asked her if, after all that he had said on the ship, she really
believed in such exploded fallacies as hell, God, and priestcraft.

She reminded him that he had preached there without a surplice, and that
she had therefore not thought it right to listen to a word he said.

'Ah!' cried the Professor, with a sigh of intense relief, 'I see it all
now. How can Humanity ever be unspeakably holy so long as one half of it
grovels in dreams of an unspeakably holy God? As Mr. Frederic Harrison
truly says, a want of faith in "the essential dignity of man is one of
the surest marks of the enervating influence of this dream of a
celestial glory."' The Professor accordingly re-delivered to Virginia
the entire substance of his lectures in the ship. He fully impressed on
her that all the intellect of the world was on the side of Humanity; and
that God's existence could be disproved with a box of chemicals. He was
agreeably surprised at finding her not at all unwilling to be convinced,
and extremely unexacting in her demands for proof. In a few days she had
not a remnant of superstition left. 'At last!' exclaimed the Professor;
'it has come at last. Unspeakable happiness will surely begin now.'




CHAPTER XVI.


No one now could possibly be more emancipated than Virginia. She
tittered all day long and whenever the Professor asked her why, she
always told him she was thinking of 'an intelligent First Cause,' a
conception which she said 'was really quite killing.' But when her first
burst of intellectual excitement was over, she became more serious. 'All
thought, Paul,' she said, 'is valuable mainly because it leads to
action. Come, my love, my dove, my beauty, and let us kiss each other
all daylong. Let us enjoy the charming license which exact thought shows
us we shall never be punished for.'

This was a result of freedom that the Professor had never bargained for.
He could not understand it, 'because,' he argued, 'if people were to
reason in that way, morality would at once cease to be possible.' But he
had seen so much of the world lately, that he soon recovered himself,
and recollecting that immorality was only ignorance, he began to show
Virginia where her error lay---her one remaining error. 'I perceive,' he
said, 'that you are ignorant of one of the greatest triumphs of exact
thought--the distinction it has established between the lower and the
higher pleasures. Philosophers, who have thought the whole thing over in
their studies, have become sure that as soon as the latter are presented
to men they will at once leave all and follow them.'

'They must be very nice pleasures,' said Virginia, 'if they would make
me leave kissing you for the sake of them.'

'They _are_ nice,' said the Professor. 'They are the pleasures of the
imagination, the intellect, and the glorious apprehension of truth.
Compared with these, kissing me would be quite insipid. Remain here for
a moment, whilst I go to fetch something, and you shall then begin to
taste them.'

In a few moments Paul came back again, and found Virginia in a state of
intense expectancy.

'Now--,' he exclaimed triumphantly.

'Now--,' exclaimed Virginia, with a beating heart.

The Professor put his hand in his pocket, and drew slowly forth from it
an object which Virginia knew well. It reminded her of the most innocent
period of her life; but she hated the very sight of it none the less. It
was a Colenso's Arithmetic.

'Come,' said the Professor, 'no truths are so pure and necessary as
those of mathematics; you shall at once begin the glorious apprehension
of them.'

'Oh, Paul,' cried Virginia, in an agony, 'but I really don't care for
truth at all; and you know that when I broke your tin box open and read
your private letters in my search for it, you were very angry with me.'

'Ah!' said Paul, holding up his finger, 'but those were not necessary
truths. Truths about human action and character are not necessary
truths; therefore men of science care nothing about them, and they have
no place in scientific systems of ethics. Pure truths are of a very
different character; and, however much you may misunderstand your own
inclinations, you can really care for nothing so much as doing a few
sums. I will set you some very easy ones to begin with, and you shall do
them by yourself, whilst I magnify in the next room the parasites of the
missing link.'

Virginia saw that there was no help for it. She did her sums by herself
the whole morning, which, as at school she had been very good at
arithmetic, was not a hard task for her, and Paul magnified parasites in
the next room, and prepared slides for his microscope.

When they met again, Paul began skipping and dancing, as if he had gone
quite out of his senses, and every now and then between the skips he
gave a sepulchral groan. Virginia asked him in astonishment what on
earth was the matter with him.

'Matter!' he exclaimed. 'Why, Humanity is at last perfect! All the evils
of existence are removed; we neither of us believe in a God or a
celestial future; and we are both in full enjoyment of the higher
pleasures and the apprehension of scientific truth. And therefore I skip
because Humanity is so unspeakably happy, and I groan because it is so
unspeakably solemn.'

'Alas! alas!' cried Virginia, 'and would not you like to kiss me?'

'No,' said the Professor, sternly; 'and you would not like me to kiss
you. It is impossible that one half of Humanity should prefer the
pleasure of unlawful love to the pleasure of finding out scientific
truths.'

'But,' pleaded Virginia, 'cannot we enjoy both?'

'No,' said the Professor, 'for if I began to kiss you I should soon not
care two straws about the parasites of the missing link.'

'Well, said Virginia, 'it is nice of you to say that; but still----Ah
me! Ah me!'

And her bosom heaved slowly with a soft, long sigh.




CHAPTER XVII.


Virginia was preparing, with a rueful face, to resume her enjoyment of
the higher pleasures, when a horrible smell, like that of an open drain,
was suddenly blown in through the window.

Virginia stopped her nose with her handkerchief. The Professor's conduct
was very different.

'Oh, rapture!' he cried, jumping up from his seat, 'I smell the missing
link.' And in another instant he was gone.

'Well,' said Virginia, 'here is one comfort. Whilst Paul is away I shall
be relieved from the higher pleasures. Alas!' she cried, as she flung
herself down on the sofa, 'he is so nice-looking, and such an
enlightened thinker. But it is plain he has never loved, or else very
certainly he would love again.'

Paul returned in about a couple of hours, again unsuccessful in his
search.

'Ah!' cried Virginia, 'I am so glad you have not caught the creature!'

'Glad!' echoed the Professor, 'glad! Do you know that till I have caught
the missing link the cause of glorious truth will suffer grievously?
The missing link is the token of the solemn fact of our origin from
inorganic matter. I did but catch one blessed glimpse of him. He had
certainly a silver band about his neck. He was about three feet high. He
was rolling in a lump of carrion. It is through him that we are related
to the stars--the holy, the glorious stars, about which we know so
little.'

'Bother the stars!' said Virginia; 'I couldn't bear, Paul, that anything
should come between you and me. I have been thinking of you and longing
for you the whole time you have been away.'

'What!' cried Paul, 'and how have you been able to forego the pleasures
of the intellect?'

'I have deserted them,' cried Virginia, 'for the pleasures of the
imagination, which I gathered from you were also very ennobling. And I
found they were so; for I have been imagining that you loved me. Why is
the reality less ennobling than the imagination? Paul, you shall love
me; I will force you to love me. It will make us both so happy: we shall
never go to hell for it; and it cannot possibly cause the slightest
scandal.'

The Professor was more bewildered than ever by these appeals. He
wondered how Humanity would ever get on if one half of it cared nothing
for pure truth, and persisted in following the vulgar impulses that had
been the most distinguishing feature of its benighted past--that is to
say, those ages of its existence of which any record has been preserved
for us. Luckily, however, Virginia came to his assistance.

'I think I know, Paul,' she said, 'why I do not care as I should do for
the intellectual pleasures. We have both been seeking them by ourselves;
and we have been therefore egoistic hedonists. It is quite true, as you
say, that selfishness is a despicable thing. Let me,' she went on,
sitting down beside him, 'look through your microscope along with you.
I think perhaps, if we shared the pleasure, the missing link's parasites
might have some interest for me.'

The Professor was overjoyed at this proposal. The two sat down side by
side, and tried their best to look simultaneously through the eye-piece
of the microscope. Virginia in a moment expressed herself much
satisfied. It is true they saw nothing; but their cheeks touched. The
Professor too seemed contented, and said they should both be in a state
of rapture when they had got the right focus. At last Virginia
whispered, with a soft smile--

'Suppose we put that nasty microscope aside; it is only in the way. And
then, oh, Paul; dear love, dove of a Paul! we can kiss each other to our
heart's content.'

Paul thought Virginia quite incorrigible, and rushed headlong out of the
room.




CHAPTER XVIII.


'Alas!' cried Paul, 'what can be done to convince one half of Humanity
that it is really devoted to the higher pleasures and does not care for
the lower--at least nothing to speak of?' The poor man was in a state of
dreadful perplexity, and felt wellnigh distracted. At last a light broke
in on him. He remembered that as one of his most revered masters,
Professor Tyndall, had admitted, a great part of Humanity would always
need a religion, and that Virginia now had none. He at once rushed back
to her. 'Ah!' he exclaimed, 'all is explained now. You cannot be in love
with me, for that would be unlawful passion. Unlawful passion is
unreasonable, and unreasonable passion would quite upset a system of
pure reason, which is what exact thought shows us is soon going to
govern the world. No! the emotions that you fancy are directed to me are
in reality cosmic emotion--in other words, are the reasonable religion
of the future. I must now initiate you in its solemn and unspeakably
significant worship.'

'Religion!' exclaimed Virginia, not knowing whether to laugh or cry.
'It is not kind of you to be making fun of me. There is no God, no soul,
and no supernatural order, and above all there is no hell. How then can
you talk to me about religion?'

'You,' replied Paul, 'are associating religion with theology, as indeed
the world hitherto always has done. But those two things, as Professor
Huxley well observes, have absolutely nothing to do with each other. "It
may be," says that great teacher, "that the object of a man's religion
is an ideal of sensual enjoyment, or----"'

'Ah!' cried Virginia, 'that is my religion, Paul.'

'Nonsense!' replied Paul; 'that cannot be the religion of half Humanity,
else high, holy, solemn, awful morality would never be able to stand on
its own basis. See, the night has fallen, the glorious moon has arisen,
the stupendous stars are sparkling in the firmament. Come down with me
to the sea-shore, where we may be face to face with nature, and I will
show you then what true religion--what true worship is.'

The two went out together. They stood on the smooth sands, which
glittered white and silvery in the dazzling moonlight All was hushed.
The gentle murmur of the trees, and the soft splash of the sea, seemed
only to make the silence audible. The Professor paused close beside
Virginia, and took her hand. Virginia liked that, and thought that
religion without theology was not perhaps so bad after all. Meanwhile
Paul had fixed his eyes on the moon. Then, in a voice almost broken with
emotion, he whispered, 'The prayer of the man of science, it has been
said, must be for the most part of the silent sort. He who said that was
wrong. It need not be silent; it need only be inarticulate. I have
discovered an audible and a reasonable liturgy which will give utterance
to the full to the religion of exact thought. Let us both join our
voices, and let us croon at the moon.'

The Professor at once began a long, low howling. Virginia joined him,
until she was out of breath.

'Oh, Paul,' she said at last, 'is this more rational than the Lord's
Prayer?'

'Yes,' said the Professor, 'for we can analyse and comprehend that; but
true religious feeling, as Professor Tyndall tells us, we can neither
analyse nor comprehend. See how big nature is, and how little--ah, how
little!--we know about it. Is it not solemn, and sublime, and awful?
Come let us howl again.'

The Professor's devotional fervour grew every moment. At last he put his
hand to his mouth, and began hooting like an owl, till it seemed that
all the island echoed to him. The louder Paul hooted and howled, the
more near did he draw to Virginia.

'Ah!' he said, as he put his arm about her waist, 'it is in solemn
moments like this that the solidarity of mankind becomes apparent.'

Virginia, during the last few moments, had stuck her fingers in her
ears. She now took them out, and, throwing her arms round Paul's neck,
tried, with her cheek on his shoulder, to make another little hoot; but
the sound her lips formed was much more like a kiss. The power of
religion was at last too much for Paul.

'For the sake of cosmic emotion,' he exclaimed, 'O other half of
Humanity, and for the sake of rational religion, both of which are
showing themselves under quite a new light to me, I will kiss you.'

The Professor was bending down his face over her, when, as if by magic,
he started, stopped, and remained as one petrified. Amidst the sharp
silence, there rang a human shout from the rocks.

'Oh!' shrieked Virginia, falling on her knees, 'it is a miracle! it is a
miracle! And I know--merciful heavens--I know the meaning of it. God is
angry with us for pretending that we do not believe on Him.'

The Professor was as white as a sheet; but he struggled with his
perturbation manfully.

'It is not a miracle,' he cried, 'but an hallucination. It is an axiom
with exact thinkers that all proofs of the miraculous are
hallucinations.'

'See,' shrieked Virginia again, 'they are coming, they are coming. Do
not you see them?'

Paul looked, and there sure enough, were two figures, a male and a
female, advancing slowly towards them, across the moonlit sand.

'It is nothing,' cried Paul; 'it cannot possibly be anything. I protest,
in the name of science, that it is an optical delusion.'

Suddenly the female figure exclaimed, 'Thank God, it is he!'

In another moment the male figure exclaimed, 'Thank God, it is she!'

'My husband!' gasped Virginia.

'My wife!' replied the bishop, for it was none other than he. 'Welcome
to Chasuble Island. By the blessing of God it is on your own home you
have been wrecked, and you have been living in the very house that I had
intended to prepare for you. Providentially, too, Professor Darnley's
wife has called here, in her search for her husband, who has overstayed
his time. See, my love, my dove, my beauty, here is the monkey I
promised you as a pet, which broke loose a few days ago, and which I was
in the act of looking for when your joint cries attracted us, and we
found you.'

A yell of delight here broke from the Professor. The eyes of the others
were turned on him, and he was seen embracing wildly a monkey which the
bishop led by a chain. 'The missing link! he exclaimed, 'the missing
link!'

'Nonsense!' cried the sharp tones of a lady with a green gown and grey
corkscrew curls. 'It is nothing but a monkey that the good bishop has
been trying to tame for his wife. Don't you see her name engraved on
the collar?'

The shrill accents acted like a charm upon Paul. He sprang away from the
creature that he had been just caressing. He gazed for a moment on
Virginia's lovely form, her exquisite toilette, and her melting eyes.
Then he turned wildly to the green gown and the grey corkscrew curls.
Sorrow and superstition, he felt, were again invading Humanity. 'Alas!'
he exclaimed at last, 'I do now indeed believe in hell.'

'And I,' cried Virginia, with much greater tact, and rushing into the
arms of her bishop, 'once more believe in heaven.'




NOTES.


'We now find it (_the earth_) not only swathed by an atmosphere, and
covered by a sea, but also crowded with living things. The question is,
how were they introduced?... The conclusion of science would undoubtedly
be, that the molten earth contained within it elements of life, which
grouped themselves into their present forms as the planet cooled. The
difficulty and reluctance encountered by this conception arise _solely_
from the fact that the theologic conception obtained a prior footing in
the human mind.... Were not man's origin implicated, we should accept
without a murmur the derivation of animal and vegetable life from what
we call inorganic nature. The conclusion of pure intellect points this
way, and no other.' PROFESSOR TYNDALL.

'Is this egg (_from which the human being springs_) matter? I hold it to
be so, as much as the seed of a fern or of an oak. Nine months go to
the making of it into a man. Are the additions made during this period
of gestation drawn from matter? I think so, undoubtedly. If there be
anything besides matter in the egg, or in the infant subsequently
slumbering in the womb, what is it?' PROFESSOR TYNDALL.

'Matter I define as the mysterious thing by which all this is
accomplished.' PROFESSOR TYNDALL.

'I do not think that the materialist is entitled to say that his
molecular groupings and motions explain everything. In reality, they
_explain_ nothing. PROFESSOR TYNDALL.

'Who shall exaggerate the deadly influence on personal morality of those
theologies which have represented the Deity ... as a sort of pedantic
drill-sergeant of mankind, to whom no valour, no long-tried loyalty,
could atone for the misplacement of a button of the uniform, or the
misunderstanding of a paragraph of the "regulations and instructions"?'
PROFESSOR HUXLEY.

'(_To the Jesuit imagination_) God is obviously a large individual, who
holds the leading-strings of the universe, and orders its steps from a
position outside it all.... According to it (_this notion_) the Power
whom Goethe does not dare to name, and whom Gassendi and Clark Maxwell
present to us under the guise of a manufacturer of atoms, turns out
annually, for England and Wales alone, a quarter of a million of new
souls. Taken in connection with the dictum of Mr. Carlyle, that this
annual increment to our population are "mostly fools," but little profit
to the human heart seems derivable from this mode of regarding the
divine operations.... In the presence of this mystery (_the mystery of
life_) the notion of an atomic manufacturer and artificer of souls,
raises the doubt whether those who entertain it were ever really
penetrated by the solemnity of the problem for which they offer such a
solution.' PROFESSOR TYNDALL.

'I look forward, however, to a time when the strength, insight, and
elevation which now visit us in mere hints and glimpses, during moments
of clearness and vigour, shall be the stable and permanent possession
of purer and mightier minds than ours--purer and mightier, partly
because of their deeper knowledge of matter, and their more faithful
conformity to its laws.' PROFESSOR TYNDALL.

'The world, as it is, is growing daily dimmer before my eyes. The world,
as it is to be, is ever growing brighter.' HARRIET MARTINEAU.

'... When you and I, like streaks of morning cloud, shall have melted
into the infinite azure of the past.' PROFESSOR TYNDALL.

'We, too, turn our thoughts to that which is behind the veil. We strive
to pierce its secret with eyes, we trust, as eager and as fearless, and
even, it may be, more patient in searching for realities behind the
gloom. That which shall come _after_ is no less solemn to us than to
you.' MR. FREDERIC HARRISON.

'Theological hypotheses of a new and heterogeneous existence have
deadened our interest in the realities, the grandeur, and the perpetuity
of an earthly life.' MR. FREDERIC HARRISON.

'As we read, the calm and humane words of Condorcet, on the very edge of
his yawning grave, we learn, from the conviction of posthumous activity
(not posthumous fame), how the consciousness of a living incorporation
with the glorious future of his race, can give a patience and happiness
equal to that of any martyr of theology.... Once make it (_i.e._ "this
sense of posthumous participation in the life of our fellows") the basis
of philosophy, the standard of right and wrong, and the centre of a
religion, and this (_the conversion of the masses_) will prove, perhaps,
an easier task than that of teaching Greeks and Romans, Syrians and
Moors, to look forward to a life of ceaseless psalmody in an immaterial
heaven.' MR. FREDERIC HARRISON.

'We make the future life, in the truest sense, social, inasmuch as our
future is simply an active existence prolonged by society; and our
future life rests not in any vague yearning, of which we have as little
evidence as we have definite conception: it rests on a perfectly certain
truth ... that the actions, feelings, thoughts, of each one of us, do
marvellously influence and mould each other.... Can we conceive a more
potent stimulus to rectitude, to daily and hourly striving after a true
life, than this ever-present sense that we are indeed immortal; not that
we have an immortal something within us--but that in very truth we
ourselves, our thinking, feeling, acting personalities, are immortal?'
MR. FREDERIC HARRISON.

'As we _live for others_ in life, so we _live in others_ after death....
How deeply does such a belief as this bring home to each moment of life
the mysterious perpetuity of ourselves! For good, for evil, we cannot
die. We cannot shake ourselves free from this eternity of our
faculties.' MR. FREDERIC HARRISON.

'We cannot even say that we shall continue to love; but we know that we
shall be loved.' MR. FREDERIC HARRISON.

'It is only when an earthly future is the fulfilment of a worthy earthly
life, that we can see the majesty, as well as the glory, of the world
beyond the grave; and then only will it fulfil its moral and religious
purpose as the great guide of human conduct.' MR. FREDERIC HARRISON.

'I am confident that a brighter day is coming for future generations.'
HARRIET MARTINEAU.

'The humblest life that ever turned a sod sends a wave--no, more than a
wave, a life--through the evergrowing harmony of human society.' MR.
FREDERIC HARRISON.

'Not a single nature, in its entirety, but leaves its influence for good
or for evil. _As a fact, the good prevail_.' MR. FREDERIC HARRISON.

'To our friends and loved ones we shall give the most worthy honour and
tribute if we never say nor remember that they are dead, but,
contrariwise, that they have lived; that hereby the brotherly force and
flow of their action and work may be carried over the gulf of death, and
made immortal in the true and healthy life which they worthily had and
used.' PROFESSOR CLIFFORD.

'It cannot be doubted that the "spiritual body" of this book (_The
Unseen Universe_) will be used to support a belief that the dead are
subject either to the _shame and suffering of a Christian Heaven_ and
Hell, or to the degrading service of a modern witch. From _each_ of
these _unspeakable profanities_ let us hope and endeavour that the
memories of great and worthy men may be finally relieved.' PROFESSOR
CLIFFORD.

'I choose the noble part of Emerson, when, after various
disenchantments, he exclaimed, "I covet truth." The gladness of true
heroism visits the heart of him who is really competent to say this.'
PROFESSOR TYNDALL.

'The highest, as it is the only, content is to be attained, not by
grovelling in the rank and steaming valleys of sense, but by continually
striving towards those high peaks, when, resting in eternal calm, reason
discerns the undefined but bright ideal of the highest good--"a cloud by
day, a pillar of fire by night."' PROFESSOR HUXLEY.

'If it can be shown by observation and experiment, that theft, murder,
and adultery, do not tend to diminish the happiness of society, then, in
the absence of any but natural knowledge, they are not social
immoralities.' PROFESSOR HUXLEY.

'For my own part, I do not for one moment admit that morality is not
strong enough to hold its own.' PROFESSOR HUXLEY.

'I object to the very general use of the terms religion and theology, as
if they were synonymous, or _indeed had anything whatever to do with one
another_.... Religion is an affair of the affections. It may be that the
object of a man's religion--the ideal which he worships--is an ideal of
sensual enjoyment.' PROFESSOR HUXLEY.

'In his hour of health ... when the pause of reflection has set in, the
scientific investigator finds himself overshadowed with the same awe. It
associates him with a power which gives fulness and tone to his
existence, but which he can neither analyse nor comprehend.' PROFESSOR
TYNDALL.

'He will see what drivellers even men of strenuous intellects may
become,' though exclusively dwelling and dealing with theological
chimeras. PROFESSOR TYNDALL.

'The two kinds of cosmic emotion run together and become one. The
microcosm is viewed only in relation to human action, nature is
presented to the emotions as the guide and teacher of humanity. And the
microcosm is viewed only as tending to complete correspondence with the
external; human conduct is subject for reverence only in so far as it is
consonant to the demiurgic law, in harmony with the teaching of divine
Nature.' PROFESSOR CLIFFORD.

'The world will have religion of some kind, even though it should fly
for it to the intellectual whoredom of "spiritualism."' PROFESSOR
TYNDALL.

'All positive methods of treating man, of a comprehensive kind, adopt to
the full all that has ever been said about the dignity of man's moral
and spiritual life.... I do not confine my language to the philosophy or
religion of Comte; for the same conception of man is common to many
philosophies and many religions.' MR. FREDERIC HARRISON.





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