Part 17 (1/2)
CHAPTER XI.
The autumn was now on the wane; the robins sang clear, wild little songs in the shrubberies, the suns.h.i.+ne fell slanting across the gra.s.s. And at night, the stars twinkled with a frosty brilliancy, and the flowers were cut down by cruel invisible hands. The long dark evenings and the shrieking winds of winter were before them.
With the shortening of the days, and the sweeping away of great shoals of leaves, in the frequent gales, Miss Du Prel's mood grew more and more sombre. At last she announced that she could stand the gloom of this wild North no longer. She had made arrangements to return to London, on the morrow. As suddenly as she had appeared on the scene, she vanished, leaving but one day to grieve at the prospect of parting.
It was through an accidental turn in the conversation, on this last day, that the difference between her creed and the Professor's was brought to light, accounting to Hadria for many things, and increasing, if possible, her admiration for the unconscious Professor.
As for her own private and personal justification for hope, Valeria a.s.serted that she had none. Not even the thought of her work--usually a talisman against depression--had any power to comfort. Who cared for her work, unless she perjured herself, and told the lies that the public loved to hear?
”What should we all do,” asked Hadria, ”if there were not a few people like you and Professor Fortescue, in the world, to keep us true to our best selves, and to point to something infinitely better than that best?”
Miss Du Prel brightened for a moment.
”What does it matter if you do not provide mental food for the crowd, seeking nourishment for their vulgarity? Let them go starve.”
”But they don't; they go and gorge elsewhere. Besides, the question of starvation faces _me_ rather than them.”
Miss Du Prel was still disposed to find fault with the general scheme of things, which she regarded as responsible for her own woes, great and little. Survival of the fittest! What was that but another name for the torture and ma.s.sacre of the unfit? Nature's favourite instruments were war, slaughter, famine, misery (mental and physical), sacrifice and brutality in every form, with a special malignity in her treatment of the most highly developed and the n.o.blest of the race.
The Professor in vain pointed out that Valeria's own revolt against the brutality of Nature, was proof of some higher law in Nature, now in course of development.
”The horror that is inspired in human beings by that brutality is just as much a part of Nature as the brutality itself,” he said, and he insisted that the supreme business of man, was to evolve a scheme of life on a higher plane, wherein the weak shall not be forced to agonize for the strong, so far as mankind can intervene to prevent it. Let man follow the dictates of pity and generosity in his own soul. They would never lead him astray. While Miss Du Prel laid the whole blame upon natural law, the Professor impeached humanity. Men, he declared, cry out against the order of things, which they, in a large measure, have themselves created.
”But, good heavens! the whole plan of life is one of rapine. _We_ did not fas.h.i.+on the spider to prey upon the fly, or the cat to play with the wounded mouse. _We_ did not ordain that the strong should fall upon the weak, and tear and torture them for their own benefit. Surely we are not responsible for the brutalities of the animal creation.”
”No, but we are responsible when we _imitate them_,” said the Professor.
Miss Du Prel somewhat inconsequently attempted to defend such imitation, on the ground that sacrifice is a law of life, a law of which she had just been bitterly complaining. But at this, the Professor would only laugh. His opponent indignantly cited scientific authority of the most solemn and weighty kind; the Professor shook his head. Familiarity with weighty scientific authorities had bred contempt.
”Vicarious sacrifice!” he exclaimed, with a sudden outbreak of the scorn and impatience that Hadria had seen in him on one other occasion, ”I never heard a doctrine more insane, more immoral, or more suicidal!”
Miss Du Prel hugged herself in the thought of her long list of scouted authorities. They had a.s.sured her that our care of the weak, by interfering with the survival of the fittest, is injuring the race.
”Go down into the slums of our great cities, or to the pestilential East, and there observe the survival of the fittest, undisturbed by human knowledge or human pity,” recommended the Professor.
Miss Du Prel failed to see how this proved anything more than bad general conditions.
”It proves that however bad general conditions may be, _some_ wretches will always survive; the 'fittest,' of course, to endure filth and misery. Selection goes on without ceasing; but if the conditions are bad, the surviving type will be miserable. Mere unaided natural selection obviously cannot be trusted to produce a fine race.”
Nothing would convince Miss Du Prel that the preservation of weakly persons was not injurious to the community. To this the Professor replied, that what is lost by their salvation is more than paid back by the better conditions that secured it. The strong, he said, were strengthened and enabled to retain their strength by that which saves the lives of the weak.
”Besides, do you suppose a race could gain, in the long run, by defiance of its best instincts? Never! If the laws of health in body and in mind were at variance, leaving us a hard choice between physical and moral disease, then indeed no despair could be too black. But all experience and all insight testify to the exact opposite. Heavens, how short-sighted people are! It is not the protection of the weak, but the evil and stupid deeds that have made them so, that we have to thank for the miseries of disease. And for our redemption--powers of the universe!
it is not to the cowardly sacrifice of the unfortunate that we must trust, but to a more brotherly spirit of loyalty, a more generous treatment of all who are defenceless, a more faithful holding together among ourselves--weak and strong, favoured and luckless.”
Miss Du Prel was silent for a moment. Her sympathy but not her hope had been roused.
”I wish I could believe in your scheme of redemption,” she said; ”but, alas! sacrifice has been the means of progress from the beginning of all things, and so I fear it will be to the end.”
”I don't know what it will be at the end,” said the Professor, dryly; ”for the present, I oppose with the whole strength of my belief and my conscience, the cowardly idea of surrendering individuals to the ferocity of a jealous and angry power, in the hope of currying favour for the rest. We might just as well set up national altars and sacrifice victims, after the franker fas.h.i.+on of the ancients. Morally, the principles are precisely the same.”
”Scarcely; for _our_ object is to benefit humanity.”