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.'