And, somehow, when once Cyril Milliter had said that in
his quiet natural way to anybody, however cynical, the somebody never
cared to talk any more gossip thenceforward for ever on the subject of
the professor's forthcoming marriage. Indeed, so fully did the young professor manage to carry public
sentiment with him in the end, that when the wedding-day actually
arrived, almost every carriage in all Mortiscombe was drawn up at the
doors of the small chapel where the ceremony was performed; and young
Mrs. Milliter had more callers during the first fortnight after her
honeymoon than she knew well how to accommodate in their tiny
drawing-room. In these matters, Society never takes any middle course. Either it disapproves of a "mixed marriage" altogether, in which case it
crushes the unfortunate offender sternly under its iron heel; or else it
rapturously adopts the bride into its own magic circle, in which case
she immediately becomes a distinct somebody, in virtue of the very
difference of original rank, and is invited everywhere with
_empressement_ as a perfect acquisition to the local community. This
last was what happened with poor simple blushing little Netta, who found
herself after a while so completely championed by all Mortiscombe that
she soon fell into her natural place in the college circle as if to the
manner born. All nice girls, of whatever class, are potentially ladies
(which is more than one can honestly say for all women of the upper
ranks), and after a very short time Netta became one of the most popular
young married women in all Mortiscombe. When once Society had got over
its first disappointment because Cyril Milliter had not rather married
one of its own number, it took to Netta with the greatest cordiality. After all, there is something so very romantic, you know, in a gentleman
marrying a foreman's daughter; and something so very nice and liberal,
too, in one's own determination to treat her accordingly in every way
like a perfect equal. And yet, happy as she was, Netta could never be absolutely free from a
pressing fear, a doubt that Cyril might not repent his choice, and feel
sorry in the end for not having married a real lady. That fear pursued
her through all her little triumph, and almost succeeded in making her
half jealous of Cyril whenever she saw him talking at all earnestly (and
he was very apt to be earnest) with other women. "They know so much more
than I do," she thought to herself often; "he must feel so much more at
home with them, naturally, and be able to talk to them about so many
things that he can never possibly talk about with poor little me." Poor
girl, it never even occurred to her that from the higher standpoint of a
really learned man like Cyril Milliter the petty smattering of French
and strumming of the piano, wherein alone these grand girls actually
differed from her, were mere useless surface accomplishments, in no way
affecting the inner intelligence or culture, which were the only things
that Cyril regarded in any serious light as worthy of respect or
admiration. As a matter of fact, Netta had learnt infinitely more from
her Bible, her English books, her own heart, and surrounding nature,
than any of these well-educated girls had learnt from their
parrot-trained governesses; and she was infinitely better fitted than
any of them to be a life companion for such a man as Cyril Milliter. For the first seven or eight months of Netta's married life all went
smoothly enough with the young professor and his pretty wife. But at the
end of that time an event came about which gave Netta a great deal of
unhappiness, and caused her for the very first time since she had ever
known him to have serious doubts about Cyril's affection. And this was
just how it all happened. One Sunday morning, in the upper chamber at Patmos, Cyril had announced
himself to preach a discourse in opposition to sundry wicked scientific
theories which were then just beginning seriously to convulse the little
world of religious Mortiscombe. Those were the days when Darwin's
doctrine of evolution had lately managed to filter down little by
little to the level of unintelligent society; and the inquiring
working-men who made up Cyril Milliter's little congregation in the
upper chamber were all eagerly reading the "Origin of Species" and the
"Descent of Man." As for Cyril himself, in his austere fashion, he
doubted whether any good could come even of considering such heterodox
opinions. They were plainly opposed to the Truth, he held, both to the
Truth as expressed in the written Word, and to the Truth as he himself
clearly read it in the great open book of nature. This evolution they
talked about so glibly was a dream, a romance, a mere baseless figment
of the poor fallible human imagination; all the plain facts of science
and of revelation were utterly irreconcilable with it, and in five
years' time it would be comfortably dead and buried for ever, side by
side with a great load of such other vague and hypothetical rubbish. He
could hardly understand, for his part, how sensible men could bother
their heads about such nonsense for a single moment. Still, as many of
his little flock had gone to hear a brilliant young lecturer who came
down from London last week to expound the new doctrine at the Literary
and Philosophical Institute, and as they had been much shaken in their
faith by the lecturer's sophistical arguments and obvious
misrepresentations of scientific principles, he would just lay before
them plainly what science had to say in opposition to these fantastic
and immature theorists. So on Sunday morning next, with Bible in one
hand and roll of carefully executed diagrams in the other (for Cyril
Milliter was no conventional formalist, afraid of shocking the sense of
propriety in his congregation), he went down in militant guise to the
upper chamber and delivered a fervent discourse, intended to smite the
Darwinians hip and thigh with the arms of the Truth--both Scriptural and
scientific--to slay the sophists outright with the sword of the Lord and
of Gideon. Cyril took for his text a single clause from the twenty-first verse of
the first chapter of Genesis--"Every winged fowl after his kind." That,
he said impressively, was the eternal and immutable Truth upon the
matter. He would confine his attention that morning entirely to this one
aspect of the case--the creation of the class of birds. "In the
beginning," the Word told us, every species of bird had been created as
we now see it, perfect and fully organized after its own kind. There was
no room here for their boasted "development," or their hypothetical
"evolution." The Darwinians would fain force upon them some old wife's
tale about a monstrous lizard which gradually acquired wings and
feathers, till at last, by some quaint Ovidian metamorphosis (into such
childish heathenism had we finally relapsed), it grew slowly into the
outward semblance of a crow or an ostrich.