|George Haldane returned home in the best of spirits. His paper had
been received with enthusiasm by the _savants_ of France, and his
life in Paris had been one pleasant succession of visits, learned
conversaziones, and private entertainments. Thanks to his happy
pre-occupation, he scarcely noticed that his wife’s manner was
constrained, nervous, yet deeply solicitous; that she looked pale
and worn, as if with constant watching; and that, in answer to his
careless questioning as to affairs at home, she made only fragmentary
replies.
On entering his dressing-room to change his apparel, he found
Baptisto, who was quietly undoing his portmanteau and selecting the
necessary things with a calm air, as if his services had never been
interrupted.
“So, my Baptisto,” he said, clapping that worthy on the shoulder, “you
are not dead or buried, I see? Ah, you may smile, but I am quite aware
of the trick you played me. Well, you have been the loser. You would
have had a pleasant time of it in Paris, the best of entertainment,
and nothing whatever to do.”
“I am glad you have returned, senor,” replied Baptisto, with his
customary solemnity.
“I hope you have given satisfaction to your mistress during my
absence?”
“I hope so, senor.”
“Humph! we shall see what report she has to make concerning you, and
if that is favourable, I may forgive your freak of laziness.”
“I have not been lazy, senor,” said Baptisto, quietly preparing the
toilette.
“Indeed! Pray, how have you been employing yourself?”
Baptisto did not reply, but smiled again.
“How is your inamerata and her family? I saw the little woman
curtsying as I passed through the lodge-gates.”
Baptisto shook his head solemnly.
“Ah, senor,” he said, “you are mistaken. The woman of the lodge is a
stupid person; and for the rest, I put no faith in women. _Cuerpo di
Baccho_, no! They smile upon us when we are near; but no sooner do we
turn our backs, than they smile upon some other man.”
“Pretty philosophy,” returned Haldane, with a laugh. “Why, you are a
downright misogynist, my Baptisto. But I don’t believe one word you
say, for all that. Men who talk like you are generally very easy
conquests, and I would bet twenty to one on the little widow still.”
“Ah, senor, if all women were like your signora, it would be
different. She is so good, so pure, so faithful at her devotions. It
is a great thing to have religion.”
As Baptisto spoke his back was turned to his master, so that the
extraordinary expression of his face was unnoticed, and there was no
indication in his tone that he spoke satirically. Haldane shrugged his
shoulders and said nothing, not caring to discuss his wife’s virtues
with a servant, however familiar. Presently he went downstairs to
dinner. All that evening he was very affectionate and merry, talking
volubly of his adventures in Paris, of his scientific acquaintances,
and of such new discoveries as they had brought under his notice.
In the course of his happy chat he spoke frequently of a new
acquaintance, one Dr. Dupré, whom he had met in the French capital.
“The French, however far behind the Germans in speculative affairs,”
he observed, “are far their superiors, and ours, in physiology. Take
this Dupré, for example. He is a wonderful fellow! His dissections and
vivisections’ have brought him to such a point of mastery that he is
almost certain that he has discovered the problem poor Lewes broke his
heart over--how and by what mechanism we can’t think. I don’t quite
believe he has succeeded in that great discovery, but some of his
minor discoveries are extraordinary. Did you read the account in the
papers of his elixir of death?”
Ellen shook her head. The very name seemed horrible.
“His elixir of death?” she repeated.
“Yes. A chemical preparation, the fundamental principle of which is
morphine. By its agency he can so produce in a living organism the
ordinary phenomena of death, that even _rigor mortis_ is simulated. I
saw the experiment tried on two rabbits, a Newfoundland dog, and, to
crown all, on the human subject. They were all, to every appearance,
dead; the rabbits for twenty-four hours, the dog for half a day, and
the woman for an hour and a half.”
“Horrible!” exclaimed Ellen, with a shudder. “Do you actually mean he
experimented on a living woman?”
“Yes; on a strapping wench, the daughter of his housekeeper; and a
very fine thing she made of it. We subscribed together, and presented
her with a purse of a thousand francs.”
“I think such things are wicked,” cried Ellen, with some warmth. “Mere
mortals have no right to play, in that way, with the mystery of life
and death.”
“My dear Nell,” cried Haldane, laughing, “it is in the interests of
science!”
“But I am sure it is not right. Life is given and taken by God alone.”
“Your argument, if accepted, would make all mankind accept the
religion of the Peculiar People, who will cure no diseases by human
intervention. As to this business of suspended animation, it is merely
a part of our discoveries in anodynes. Dupré’s experiment, I know, is
perfectly safe.”
“But that is not the question.”
“How so, my dear?”
“What I mean is, that death is too solemn and awful a thing to imitate
as you describe. Such experiments are simply blasphemous, in my
opinion.”
“Come, come,” cried the philosopher. “There is no blasphemy where
there is no irreverence. According to your religious people, your
priests of the churches, there was blasphemy in circumnavigating the
globe; in discovering the circulation of the blood; in ascertaining
the age of the earth; and, still later, in using chloroform to lessen
the pangs of parturition.”
“But what purpose can be served by such experiments as _that?_”
“A good many,” was the reply. “For example, it may help us to the
discovery of the nature of life itself, which has puzzled everybody,
from Parmenides down to Haeckel. If we can by a simple anodyne suspend
the vital mechanism for a period, and then by a vegetable antidote
restore it again to action, the resurrection of Lazarus will cease to
be a miracle, and the pretensions of Christianity----”
Ellen rose impatiently, with an expression of sincere pain.
“My dear Nell, what is the matter?” cried her husband.
“I cannot bear to hear you discuss such a thing. Oh, George, if you
would leave such wicked speculations alone, and try to believe in the
mystery and sovereignty of God!”
“You mean, burn my books, and go to hear your seraphic friend every
Sunday?”
Had he not touched, unconsciously, on another painful chord? Why,
otherwise, did his wife flush scarlet and partially avert her face?
Conquering herself with an effort, she went over to him, and bending
over him, looked fondly into his face.
“You are so much cleverer than I, so much wiser, and do you think I am
not proud of your wisdom? But, all the same, dear, I wish you did not
think as you do. When life becomes a mere experiment, a mere thing of
mechanism, what will be left? If we knew everything, even what we are,
and why we exist, the world would be a tomb--with no place in it for
the Living God.”
Touched by her manner, Haldane drew her down by his side and kissed
her; then, with more earnestness than he had yet exhibited, he
answered her, holding her hand in his own and pressing it softly.
“My dear Nell, do me the justice to believe that I am not quite a
materialist; simple agnosticism is the very converse of materialism.
There is not living a scientific philosopher of any eminence who
does not, in his calculations, postulate a mystery which can never be
solved by the finest intellect. Even if we had fully completed, with
the poet--=
```'The new creed of science, which showeth to man
`````How he darkly began,
```How he grew from a cell to a soul, without plan;
```How he breaks like a wave of the ocean, and goes
`````To eternal repose--
```A tone that must fade, tho’ the great Music grows!
even then, we should know nothing of the First Cause. That must for
ever remain inscrutable.”
“But how horrible it would be to believe in annihilation? _Can_ you
believe in it?”
“Certainly not,” replied the philosopher.
Ellens face brightened.
“Oh, I am so glad to hear you say that!”
“My dear Nell, annihilation is absurd.”
“Now, isn’t it?” she cried triumphantly.
“It is refuted, on the face of it, by the doctrine of the conservation
of force. Life is eternal, in one shape or another; no force can be
destroyed, be sure of that!”
“I wish Mr. Santley could hear you! He wouldn’t call you an atheist
then!”
Haldane’s face darkened angrily.
“What? Does the man actually----”
“Don’t misunderstand,” cried Ellen, flushing scarlet. “I do not mean
that he really calls you an atheist, but he is so sorry, so deeply
sorry, that you do not believe. He does not know you, dear, and takes
all my bear’s satirical growling for solemn earnest. Now, when I tell
him----”
“You will tell him nothing,” exclaimed Haldane, with sudden sternness.
“I will have no priest coming between my wife and me!”
“Mr. Santley would never do that,” she returned, now trembling
violently.
“Mr. Santley is like all his tribe, I suppose--a meddler and a
mischief-maker. That is the worst of other-worldliness; it gives these
traders in the Godhead, these peddlers who would give us in exchange
for belief in their superstitions a _bonus_ in paradise, an excuse for
making this world unbearable. Well, my atheism, if you choose to call
it so, against his theism. Mine at least keeps me a man among men,
while his keeps him a twaddler among women.”
Haldane spoke with heat, for the word “atheist” had somehow stung him
to the quick. This man, who rejected all outward forms of belief, and
whose conversation was habitually ironical, was in his inmost nature
deeply and sincerely religious; humbly reverent before the forces of
nature; spiritually conscious of that Power beyond ourselves which
makes for righteousness. True, he rejected the ordinary forms of
theism; but he had, on the other hand, a deep though dumb reverence
for the character of Christ, and he had no sympathy with such
out-and-out materialists as Haeckel and _hoc genus omne_. For the
rest, he was liberal-minded, and had no desire to interfere with his
wife’s convictions; could smile a little at her simplicity, and would
see no harm in her clerical predispositions, so long as the clergyman
didn’t encroach too far on the domain of married life and domestic
privacy.
His indignation did not last. Seeing his wife greatly agitated, and
fearing that he had caused her pain, he drew her forehead down and
kissed it; then, patting her cheek, he said--
“Forgive me, Nell. I did not mean to scold; but one does not like hard
names. When any one calls me ‘atheist,’ I am like the old woman whom
Cobbett called a ‘parallelogram;’ it is not the significance of the
epithet, but its opprobrium, that rouses me. Besides, I do not like
any man to abuse me--to my own wife.”
“No one does that,” she cried. “You know I would not listen.”
“I hope not, my dear.” He added after a little, looking at her
thoughtfully and sadly, “Man and wife have fallen asunder before
now, on this very question of religion. Well, rather than that should
happen, I will let you convert me. Will that satisfy you?”
“I shall never be quite satisfied till I know that you believe as I
do.”
“What is that, pray?”
“That there is a just God, who made and cherishes us; and that,
through the blood of His Son we shall live again although we die!”
“Well, it is a beautiful creed, my dear.”
“And true?”
“Why not? I will go with you thus far. I believe that, if there is a
God, He is just, and that we shall certainly live again, if it is for
our good.”
The emphasis with which he spoke the last words attracted her
attention.
“For our good?” she queried.
“I am quoting the saddest words ever written, by the saddest and best
man I ever knew. * He, too, believed that a God might spare us, and
give us eternal life, if--mark the proviso--eternal life were indeed
_for our good._ But suppose the contrary--suppose God knew better, and
that it would be an evil and unhappy gift? Alas! who knows?”
* J. S. Mill.
He rose from his chair, still encircling his wife’s waist, and moved
towards the door.
“Come to the drawing-room,” he cried gaily. “After so much offhand
theology, a little music will be delightful. Ah, Nell, one breath of
Beethoven is worth all the prosings of your parsons. Play to me, and,
while the music lasts, I will believe what you will.”