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.'