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.