A More Excellent Way. In two books

Chapter I

It was on the afternoon of an October day, in the year 1865, that a lady sat in the drawing-room of her bunga low in one of the stations of the North-West Provinces of India. The sunshine streamed into the room, and fell upon her and the small table at which she was sitting, lighting up the tea-equipage, and the table cover, which was of vivid scarlet, ornamented with gold thread. She was the wife of the Collector, and, judging by appearance and surroundings, her lot in life was a fortunate one. Still in her prime (she was thirty), healthful and handsome, having a distinguished hus band who was generous to her, and a little son five years old, with wealth at command, and an assured future, Mrs. Hathaway might be regarded as enjoying a very enviable position; and yet, with the exception of the time when her baby was born, this was the first day she had felt really happy since her honeymoon was over.

For it had taken her but a month to discover that she and her husband were not, by mental and moral temperament, suited to each other. They met first at a garden-party in England, and after about half a dozen such meetings in society, Mr. Hathaway proposed. He admired Miss Gwynne greatly; he had come home to look for a wife ; her family was A MO BE EXCELLENT WAY. unexceptionable ; his furlough was short ; there was no reason for hesitation, while there was every reason for haste. And she, on her part, admired him; heard him well spoken of on all sides ; was assured by her friends that she was very lucky; gave him credit for all the qualities which she had not opportunity to discover; loved him, and accepted him. They passed a month in some rural retreat, came to London, spent a few days in a whirl of shopping and farewell visits, and sailed for India.

And then she had seven quiet years in which to find out what sort of a man her life long companion was. Though excellent and prosperous, Mr. Hathaway was the last man she would have married, had she under stood him and herself as she grew to understand them afterwards. Between him and her there was no con geniality of thought. He was Conservative, and she was Radical ; not that either cared about politics, or that she knew anything about them ; but the bent of their minds on all subjects that came up for discussion was as far apart as it was possible to be. He was all for privilege, and she for equity. He had the prejudices of the past, she had the advanced ideas of the future. In a word — he would have been happier had he been born a hundred years sooner, and she would have been happier could she have been born a hundred years later.

Nor was there any great affection to make up for these mental differences. The ardour of the honeymoon over, Mr. Hathaway showed little disposition for his wife's company, and returned to his bachelor habits of studiousness. In her solitude of mind and of emotion, she wondered often why he had chosen her rather than another ; it is a question that many wives ask silently, a question that many husbands would be puzzled to answer — even to themselves. It may be thought that the husband and wife were equally to be pitied — that if he was unsuited to her, she must have been also unsuited to him ; but, in truth, their opinion of their married state was not at all the same. He was scarcely aware, and had never acknow ledged to himself, that the marriage was a mistake. Being older than herself, and of a cooler disposition, he had never expected the early rapture to last through seven years, nor even through one; and he had such an exaggerated reverence for ceremonies — the marriage ceremony above all — -that it would have required some scandalous conduct on her part to shake his approval of the person who had shared that ceremony with him.

Had she been a flirting woman of the style so general around him, he would have regretted having given her his name ; but she was decorous. Had she been of passionate temper, raising her voice at him and making scenes, he would have felt uncomfortable, and have probably sent her on some excuse to England ; but she was only rather silent, and it never occurred to him to wonder what feelings lay behind that reticence. When he questioned himself about his marriage, he found himself complacent. His wife was admirable as the mistress of his house, as a hostess, as a nurse when he was ill. She was beautiful to look at, intelligent to talk to — too intelligent, perhaps ; too apt to have opinions of her own which were not his ; but if she was not as frivolous as he might have desired, who (he would have asked) is perfect ?

Her greatest virtue of all was that she had given him a son, and her next that she did not give him any more children. He would not have changed her for any woman he knew. And nothing would have astonished him more than to hear that she was a disappointed wife. His whole life would have been disturbed by the suggestion ; he would have been incredulous, offended, overwhelmed. " Do I ever give her cause for jealousy ? " he would have said. " Or have I ever spoken a cross word to her ? Has she not her child, her carriage, her servants, her jewels and dresses ? Has she not health, friends, ease ? If a woman cannot be satisfied who has everything in the world to make her so, she must be utterly unworthy." It was true that she had everything — except the one thing. Mr. Hathaway's egotism was of a kind that included his belongings; she must be considered in all possible ways, not because she was herself, but because she was his wife ; she deserved respect and honour, not because of any characteristics or actions of her own, but because he had married her; not because she was Agatha, but because she was Mrs. Hathaway.

His esteem for conventionality was such that he would have done as much for, have felt the same towards, any woman who — even from a sordid motive — had placed herself in the unassailable relationship of wifehood to wards him, and who behaved herself ordinarily well. His regard being thus more for the position than the woman, it was hard for this individual woman to feel content with it; and it was only her child who kept her from perpetual heartache. During the last six months, however, a hope had come to her that she and her husband might yet draw together on firm mutual ground, agreeing both in speech and practice on one subject — and that a most important one. She had been reading much and think ing much ; and this hope had been forming itself and gaining strength, though she had not said a word of it to him.

"At last," she murmured, with a smile, clasping closer the book she held on her lap. " At last, at last ! " She sat waiting, and listening, and happily anticipa ting, until there was a sound of wheels coming along the drive, a carriage and pair drew up at the door, and Mr. Hathaway crossed the large antechamber and entered the drawing-room. He was a tall, fair man, with grey eyes, a pleasant though rather stern countenance, and the composed look of one whose mind is habitually immersed in study. No greeting passed be tween him and his wife, for Mr. Hathaway had only been absent since luncheon at cutcherry, where it was his duty to go twice a day to hear cases and transact other business connected with his appointment as magistrate of the district ; and it was never their custom to be especially demonstrative ; so he sank into a long cane chair, and busied himself with lighting the pipe that the native servant handed to him.

Even when the man had left them, Mrs. Hathaway did not speak. Her heart was beating a little inconveniently, with impatience for the disclosure to be made and her hope to be realised. It was Mr. Hathaway who broke the silence. " It seems you were not at church yesterday, Aga tha ? " he remarked carelessly. Her heart gave a leap, but she only said : " What makes you ask me that ? " There was something husky in her voice that caused him to glance up at her before answering. " I met Miss Withers in my early ride this morning, and she stopped me and asked if you were well, because she had not seen you there. I explained that you had stayed away through the hot weather because the church was so hot — that was so, was it not ? — but she said that yesterday it was quite cool. And, indeed, it must have been.

So you had better go next Sunday." He went on puffing at his pipe, and Mrs. Hathaway felt inclined to reply, " Miss Withers is a meddlesome old maid ; " but she did not want to be drawn into side issues just then. This was the very topic she had been about to introduce. " It is true that I could not have gone for the last six months, if I had wished it ever so much," she replied ; "the heat was so fearful. But, Adrian, it is also true that I am never going again." He looked at her in more surprise, and said, " My dear ! " in a tone as if she had stumbled unawares into saying something improper. It was his social prejudices that were jarred, not his religious, for Mr. Hathaway was an Atheist. She disregarded the intonation. "You know that I have been reading Renan's 'Life of Christ,'" she went on, slightly lifting the book that lay in her lap ; " and other sceptical works besides ?

" " Yes ; I know it." " Well," she said, the colour coming up into her face at the thought of all that the avowal she was making would mean for him and for herself, "well — I agree with them." And then she sat and gazed at him with intent eyes, waiting for her reward. An amused smile crossed his face as he looked more curiously at her than before, for he could not fail to hear and see how greatly she was agitated. " Well, my dear ? " he said quietly. There was a pause of a few moments. " Do you not see, Adrian," then Agatha said, with a little catch in her breath, " that as I have ceased to be a Christian, I cannot go on living as a Christian ? Church-going is at an end for me. I am glad that this experience befell me in the summer, for I have been spared the perplexity of keeping up a form while my mind was in a state of transition."

Mr. Hathaway was here conscious of a distinct wish that he had sent her to the hills when the hot season began, to fritter away her time, even if it had been at the expense of a little gentle flirtation. He would rather she had danced all night than studied and reflected all day. ""But now my hesitation is over, and it is such a relief to me. It is a comfort to know that we think alike on one subject, and this the most important of all. Or nearly alike," she corrected herself. "You are an Atheist, and I am not that. But I am a Theist. We are both Freethinkers ! " "No, no," said Mr. Hathaway, with an embarrassed little laugh, "it is too bad of you to call me an Atheist, Agatha." And he trifled with the tobacco in his pipe-bowl, while she sat watching him, her eyes wide open. "Why," she remonstrated, after a pause, "I have often heard you say that there is no evidence of the existence of God ?

" "Probably. Yes, you may have heard me say that. But I object to the word Atheist, because it is used commonly as a term of reproach. An Atheist is always considered a wicked person; Atheism is associated in most people's minds with murders and all sorts of crimes. If such words were to get attached to me in the station, it might affect me socially and even professionally. Miss Withers attacks me sometimes, as you know ; but I contrive to put her off with a jest. I abstain from going to church, but many gentlemen do that. I have excuses — I am busy, and so forth ; and you go instead of me, and that makes it all right." "Well," said Mrs. Hathaway, after some consideration, " we will leave the title of Atheist, since you object to it. We will call ourselves Freethinkers." " Freethinkers ? " cried her husband, with sudden irritation.

" Pray do not tar me with that brush, Agatha. Free thought suggests to me free love, free trade, and all kinds of abominations. Freedom means licence ; it is the cry of the Liberal and Radical gang, and will be the ruin of every civilised country before long." There was reason for his repudiation of the term ; he could not call himself a Freethinker in theology, when in truth there was scarcely any subject on which he had thought less. But his wife did not understand this. She had been informed by his mother before their marriage that he had never had any religious belief since he went to college ; and she supposed that he had passed many years ago through the same phases of doubt and of feeling from which she had lately emerged so triumphantly. As she heard him, there came over her the sensation of amazement and chill with which she had been used often to listen to his conversation on other matters.

She almost thought he must be saying this out of perversity, to vex her. He had been a Free thinker all his life, and how could he say seriously that the word suggested " all sorts of abominations " ? Surely he must be proud of it ? "If you are not that," she said, more coldly, "what are you ? " He took a few puffs at his pipe before answering. " I prefer not to label myself," he stated uneasily. " But if you must call me something, call me a sceptic. That sounds better. And if you ask my opinion, my dear girl, I am sorry that you have been disturbing your mind with these books. They will not do you any good." " You knew that I was reading them, and you made no objection." " No ; I saw no cause to interfere. I did not know you would startle me with such a wild proposal as you have just been putting forth.

Now you will forget all about it, and we will go for our drive. Bearer, peg ! " The servant came in again from the verandah, poured some brandy into a tall tumbler, and opening a soda water bottle, added its contents. Mr. Hathaway sipped the peg, then stood the tumbler on the broad wooden arm of his chair, and gave the bearer a few orders in Hindustani. Mrs. Hathaway felt no impatience for the man to be gone. Her husband had spoken his last few phrases to her quite cheerfully, and she felt that she was not able to answer him just then. She hardly believed that she had heard him correctly. Forget ! How could she forget the truths she had been slowly admitting into her mind for months past ? How order her life according to the old faith, when she had new knowledge, new light, new beliefs ? Did he know what it was that he was expecting of her ?

When the bearer left the room, Mr. Hathaway made some indifferent remark to her, but it only turned her excitement into anger and offence. She made no attempt to answer it. " What is the matter, little woman ? " her husband said playfully, while he regarded her with some attention. " Still brooding over that matter, eh ? My dear, it is rather late in the day for you and me to have differences about religion. We have got on very well hitherto, have we not ? I have never worried you about it, never said a word to offend your prejudices. You have had full liberty to attend whatever forms and ceremonies were binding on your conscience. We have not had family prayers certainly, because, in point of fact, there was no family to assemble — no household ; we could not call the servants in. And we have not said grace at table, because in India that is not the custom, except at a formal dinner-party.

But I have never prevented you from doing what you wished." " No," interrupted Agatha, her manner warming, and her voice taking a kindly tone that had been absent from it for some time since the conversation began. " And I have often thought it very kind and good of you. I am very grateful to you for it, Adrian. But still, I have been lonely in my pew at church ; and I have felt sad to think you could not share my feelings — that we were so far apart in all our ideas on this sub ject. I felt it very much at the time of our wedding, though I did not say anything. And I have sometimes been sure that you must feel it too, though you have been too considerate to say so. You know, Adrian, there are very few subjects about which we ever agree. I mean — I do not mean that we quarrel, but we are not of one mind about anything we discuss.

But now that I am converted from Christianity, here is a ground on which we can meet ; we think alike about it, or sufficiently alike to sympathise with each other and to act together. I still believe there is a God, but I have given up the Bible God. I have given up all the doctrines of Christianity. Are you not glad ? " she cried, putting into the short question all the assu rance, wonderment, and doubt she had felt at different stages of the conversation as to his state of mind. She bent forward towards him ; had he only stretched out his hand, she would have risen and given him the kiss with which they should fitly have entered on a more satisfactory union than they had had yet. Her earnest pleading discomposed her husband. He was touched by the references to himself in her speech ; and yet he was gravely annoyed by what she had been saying.

He could only hope that her conversion, as she called it, was not as real as she fancied. " My dear girl," he said firmly, " you have quite misunderstood me on this point. I have wanted no change in you of the sort you speak of. I have always wished my wife to be religious ; I could not have pro posed to any woman who was not, however much I might have admired her. And your church-going has been no vexation to me, but the reverse." " You do not go yourself ? " " No ; I send you to represent me. But I would have gone, if you had made it a particular request. And I will go with you, next Sunday, if you like." This amiable proposal, which he imagined would put everything straight between them, had just the contrary effect. Agatha could not understand it ; she could not respect it. " For what purpose ?

" she asked coldly. " Why should you inconvenience yourself to do that ? " " It would be a bore," he admitted; "but I could put up with it for once." " But why should you so outrage all your ideas of right and wrong as to sit and listen to falsehoods ?" Her voice was growing harder and more distant. " It would not outrage them," he answered, frowning slightly. " I may as well explain to you what my position is upon the religious question. I do not believe in any religion ; my intellect forbids me to do so. But I have no antipathy to religion ; I have even a friendly feeling towards Christianity. I think it does a great deal of good." Agatha was becoming more and more shocked and repelled. With her, to discover that anything was fraudulent, was to dislike it and reject it ; she could not have respected herself otherwise.

She could not understand this complacency toward falsehood, this patronising of an imposture ; there seemed to her no sense or meaning in it. " Do you not remember," she said, with all the enthu siasm of a convert, " that the history of Christianity has been marked by bloodshed from end to end ? Have you forgotten the Crusades, the Inquisition ? Have you forgotten that Christians have always persecuted each other, whichever party of them became uppermost? Are all those groans and tears nothing to you ? and all the hatred and despair ? Do you not know that in the present day, many people are driven mad by their religion, and that our prisons and asylums hold religious criminals and lunatics ? Do you not remember those horrible cases we were reading of a few weeks ago — the parents who stabbed their sleeping child to imitate Abraham ; and the other poor wretches who drowned themselves — one, that he might go the quicker to heaven, and the other, because he was distracted by the fear of hell ?

" "Yes," said Mr. Hathaway slowly. "But still I keep to what I say. Christianity does good ; it has a most important influence ; we could not do without it in a society constituted like ours is. If I were in Eng land, I should think it my duty to go to church — occa sionally — just for the sake of example." " Example to whom ? " enquired Agatha. "To women — and children — and to the poorer classes." She pondered over this, but could make nothing of it. " But why should it be your duty to set an example of listening to untruths ? If Atheism is right — as you believe it to be — it must be good for women and chil dren as well as men. Science is against revealed reli gion, and science is the sum of what is known. Why should error be for women and children, and knowledge only for men ? " "As regards the boys," said Mr. Hathaway reluc tantly, " they can throw off the religious teaching when they become adults."

" And the girls ? " " They must retain it always," he answered, with decision. " It helps to keep them straight. An irre ligious woman would be an anomaly; it is to women that all civilised nations look for the maintenance of religious bonds. It is they who throng the churches, and they keep society together by setting this example." " Example to whom ? " questioned Agatha again. " To the lower classes." She paused, for she felt that now she was approach ing the gist of the matter. But still she did not per ceive what he meant. She turned the idea over and over in her mind. "The lower classes" were a subject unfamiliar to her. If she had spent her youth in a country village, she might have taken easily to teaching in the Sunday school, and to district-visiting ; but living in London nearly all her unmarried life, it had not seemed, either to her or her mother, that it was especially her duty to seek out the poor in their homes.

And the last seven years she had been in India, where were no poor except the natives, whom it was impossible to visit, and the soldiers' wives and children, whom it was the province of the officers' wives to look after. She had thus never been brought into contact with the lower orders of society, and had never thought about them. It struck her however, at this moment, that as they had but a small share of the good things of life, it was hard on them to withhold from them one other good thing — knowledge. Nay, it was harder to make their poverty a reason for this privation. " And would you, as an Atheist, have this so ? " " Of course I would have it so," he answered shortly, with an inward smile of wonder at her obtuseness. " I should have thought," she began, " that when we — you and I — believe that we have found out the truth, it should rather be our duty to spread it everywhere.

Am I to commit an act of hypocrisy, in order that persons poorer than I may go on believing the teaching that I have shaken off? Why should I do them this great wrong ? I will not do it. I cannot understand — Adrian, I cannot understand why you, of all men, should choose to go to church in England." "My dear," said Mr. Hathaway, with some impatience, " this is, at bottom, not a theological but a social matter. The lower classes must be kept in their place, and religion is an excellent means of keeping them there. There is no other to be compared with it. Their lives, poor devils, are wretched. Well, Christianity threatens them with hell, and points them to a heaven. It teaches the virtues of content, of submission, of obedience to the powersthat be. It says ' Fear God, and honour the king ; ' it tells them that adversity is ' sent,' that poverty is ' ordained ; ' it keeps them on their knees.

If Atheism were spread among them as you say, they would rise up." "Well," said Agatha cordially, "and I should like to see them rise." " They would rise up in another sense than yours. Do you want a revolution ? Do you want us all to have our throats cut ? " Agatha sat aghast. " My dear child," resumed her husband, smiling in a superior way, " have you ever considered that it is no easy matter to keep masses of human beings quiet in a state of misery, and in daily sight of luxuries that they must not have, and can never have ? Ignorance will do it, religious training will do it; but if you once let them understand that this life is all, that there is nothing to make up for it after death, that there is no C Deity above, marking their actions and sure to punish and reward, then what on earth will you hold them by?"

" I would not have them taught that there is no God," said Agatha. "But you have given up the doctrines of Christianity. You have given up heaven and hell, and the Bible in which they can read about these places. You have no other book to take its place, and to speak to them with divine authority. Pooh ! your Theism is a puny thing that would be no restraint at all." " I have always supposed," said Agatha wonderingly, " that it was the police and army that kept the jieople in order." " The clergy are their valuable auxiliaries," returned Mr. Hathaway drily. " And every Government knows that. Church and State go together. The police are a numerically weak body, and can only keep order as long as the majority of the population are willing to obey. The soldiery would be useful, no doubt, in putting down a rising ; but it is better far to avoid the rising.

And if Freethought is to be proclaimed upon the house tops, it is as well to remember that policemen and soldiers belong to the working-class, and might per chance become Freethinkers too. The matter has been cleverly summed up in these words : ' Philosophers regard all religions as equally false, the people regard them as equally true, and magistrates regard them as equally useful.' Yes, my dear Agatha, depend upon it, Voltaire was right when he said, ' If God did not exist, it would be necessary to invent him. Because the people must have a religion.' And, indeed, their lives are such that I should be sorry to take from them the only comfort they have. The tighter the hold that Christianity has upon a nation, the more easily it can be guided ; and that is why, in some respects, I look upon Roman Catholicism as more valuable than Protes tantism.

It speaks with a firmer voice ; it will have no divergence in doctrinal matters or daily practice ; whereas Protestantism inconsistently allows freedom of thought — up to a certain point. Fortunately, it is a privilege that most individuals do not avail themselves of." He paused, and then added : " You see, my dear, this affair has an aspect which had not occurred to you." But Agatha did not respond to his affectionate smile ; her mind was not in accord with his. There was some thing to her so selfish, so immoral in the course that he expected her to take, that she did not dwell upon it as possible for her. "Would it not be better," she suggested, "to destroy the poverty that requires such a safeguard ?" " It is not the poverty that requires a safeguard," he replied good-humouredly, " but the riches.