III.

Noises above me, I think, on the edge of the precipice. Something coming

down, oh, how slowly. Something comes, and fumbles about a yard or so

away. Then I cry out feebly, and the something approaches. M. Claude's

hearty voice calls out cheerily, "Enfin, le voila!" and I am saved.

They let down ropes and pulled me up to the top of the little crag,

clumsily, so as to cause me great pain: and then three men carried me

home to the farmhouse on a stretcher. M. Claude was one of the three,

the others were labourers from the village.

"How did you know I was lost, M. Claude?" I asked feebly, as they

carried me along on the level.

He did not answer for a moment; then he said, rather gloomily, in

German, "The Fraeulein was watching you with a telescope from Les

Pentes." He did not say Fraeulein Isaline, and I knew why at once: he did

not wish the other carriers to know what he was talking about.

"And she told you?" I said, in German too.

"She sent me. I did not come of my own accord. I came under orders." He

spoke sternly, hissing out his gutturals in an angry voice.

"M. Claude," I said, "I have done very wrong, and I ask your

forgiveness. You have saved my life, and I owe you a debt of gratitude

for it. I will leave Les Pentes and the Fraeulein to-morrow, or at least

as soon as I can safely be moved."

He shook his head bitterly. "It is no use now," he answered, with a

sigh; "the Fraeulein does not wish for me. I have asked her, and she has

refused me. And she has been watching you up and down the Aiguille the

whole day with a telescope. When she saw you had fallen, she rushed out

like one distracted, and came to tell me at the school in the village.

It is no use, you have beaten me."

"M. Claude," I said, "I will plead for you. I have done you wrong, and I

ask your forgiveness."

"I owe you no ill-will," he replied, in his honest, straightforward,

Swiss manner. "It is not your fault if you too have fallen in love with

her. How could any man help it? Living in the same house with her, too!

Allons," he went on in French, resuming his alternative tongue (for he

spoke both equally), "we must get on quick and send for the doctor from

Glion to see you."

By the time we reached the farmhouse, I had satisfied myself that there

was nothing very serious the matter with me after all. The soft snow had

broken the force of the concussion. I had strained my spine a good deal,

and hurt the tendons of the thighs and back, but had not broken any

bones, nor injured any vital organ. So when they laid me on the

old-fashioned sofa in my little sitting-room, lighted a fire in the wide

hearth, and covered me over with a few rugs, I felt comparatively happy

and comfortable under the circumstances. The doctor was sent for in hot

haste; but on his arrival, he confirmed my own view of the case, and

declared I only needed rest and quiet and a little arnica.

I was rather distressed, however, when madame came up to see me an hour

later, and assured me that she and monsieur thought I ought to be moved

down as soon as possible into more comfortable apartments at Lausanne,

where I could secure better attendance. I saw in a moment what that

meant: they wanted to get me away from Isaline. "There are no more

comfortable quarters in all Switzerland, I am sure, madame," I said: but

madame was inflexible. There was an English doctor at Lausanne, and to

Lausanne accordingly I must go. Evidently, it had just begun to strike

those two good simple people that Isaline and I could just conceivably

manage to fall in love with one another.

Might I ask for Mademoiselle Isaline to bring me up a cup of tea? Yes,

Isaline would bring it in a minute. And when she came in, those usually

laughing black eyes obviously red with crying, I felt my heart sink

within me when I thought of my promise to M. Claude; while I began to be

vaguely conscious that I was really and truly very much in love with

pretty little Isaline on my own account.

She laid the tray on the small table by the sofa, and was going to leave

the room immediately. "Mademoiselle Isaline," I said, trying to raise

myself, and falling back again in pain, "won't you sit with me a little

while? I want to talk with you."

"My mamma said I must come away at once," Isaline replied demurely. "She

is without doubt busy and wants my aid." And she turned to go towards

the door.

"Oh, do come back, mademoiselle," I cried, raising myself again, and

giving myself, oh, such a wrench in the spine: "don't you see how much

it hurts me to sit up?"

She turned back, indecisively, and sat down in the big chair just beyond

the table, handing me the cup, and helping me to cream and sugar. I

plunged at once _in medias res_.

"You have been crying, mademoiselle," I said, "and I think I can guess

the reason. M. Claude has told me something about it. He has asked you

for your hand, and you have refused him. Is it not so?" This was a

little bit of hypocrisy on my part, I confess, for I knew what she had

been crying about perfectly: but I wished to be loyal to M. Claude.

Isaline blushed and laughed. "I do not cry for M. Claude," she said. "I

may have other matters of my own to cry about. But M. Claude is very

free with his confidences, if he tells such things to a stranger."

"Listen to me, Mademoiselle Isaline," I said. "Your father and mother

have asked me to leave here to-morrow and go down to Lausanne. I shall

probably never see you again. But before I go, I want to plead with you

for M. Claude. He has saved my life, and I owe him much gratitude. He

loves you; he is a brave man, a good man, a true and earnest man; why

will you not marry him? I feel sure he is a noble fellow, and he will

make you a tender husband. Will you not think better of your decision? I

cannot bear to leave Les Pentes till I know that you have made him

happy."

"Truly?"

"Truly."

"And you go away to-morrow?"

"Yes, to-morrow."

"Oh, monsieur!"

There isn't much in those two words; but they may be pronounced with a

good deal of difference in the intonation; and Isaline's intonation did

not leave one in much doubt as to how she used them. Her eyes filled

again with tears, and she half started up to go. Ingrate and wretch that

I was, forgetful of my promise to M. Claude, my eyes filled

responsively, and I jumped to catch her and keep her from going, of

course at the expense of another dreadful wrench to my poor back.

"Isaline," I cried, unconsciously dropping the mademoiselle, and letting

her see my brimming eyelids far too obviously, "Isaline, do wait awhile,

I implore you, I beseech you! I have something to say to you."

She seated herself once more in the big chair. "Well, mon pauvre

monsieur," she cried, "what is it?"

"Isaline," I began, trying it over again; "why won't you marry M.

Claude?"

"Oh, that again. Well," answered Isaline boldly, "because I do not love

him, and I love somebody else. You should not ask a young lady about

these matters. In Switzerland, we do not think it _comme il faut_."

"But," I went on, "why do you not love M. Claude? He has every good

quality, and----"

"Every good quality, and--he bores me," answered Isaline. "Monsieur,"

she went on archly, "you were asking me the other day what books I had

read in English. Well, I have read Longfellow. Do you remember Miles

Standish?"

I saw what she was driving at, and laughed in spite of myself. "Yes," I

said, "I know what you mean. When John Alden is pleading with Priscilla

on behalf of Miles Standish, Priscilla cuts him short by saying----"

Isaline finished the quotation herself in her own pretty clipped

English, "Why don't you speak for yourself, John?"

I laughed. She laughed. We both looked at one another; and the next

thing I remember was that I had drawn down Isaline's plump little face

close to mine, and was kissing it vigorously, in spite of an acute

darting pain at each kiss all along my spine and into my marrow-bones.

Poor M. Claude was utterly forgotten.

In twenty minutes I had explained my whole position to Isaline: and in

twenty minutes more, I had monsieur and madame up to explain it all to

them in their turn. Monsieur listened carefully while I told him that I

was an English advocate in no practice to speak of; that I had a few

hundreds a year of my own, partly dependent upon my mother; that I had

thoughts of settling down permanently in Switzerland; and that Isaline

was willing, with her parents' consent, to share my modest competence.

Monsieur replied with true Swiss caution that he would inquire into my

statements, and that if they proved to be as represented, and if I

obtained in turn my mother's consent, he would be happy to hand me over

Isaline. "Toutefois," he added quietly, "it will be perhaps better to

rescind your journey to Lausanne. The Glion doctor is, after all, a

sufficiently skilful one." So I waited on in peace at Les Pontes.

Madame had insisted upon telegraphing the news of my accident to my

mother, lest it should reach her first in the papers ("Je suis mere

moi-meme, monsieur," she said, in justification of her conduct). And

next morning we got a telegram in reply from my mother, who evidently

imagined she must hurry over at once if she wished to see her son alive,

or at least must nurse him through a long and dangerous illness.

Considering the injuries were a matter of about three days' sofa, in all

probability, this haste was a little overdone. However, she would arrive

by the very first _rapide_ from Paris; and on the whole I was not sorry,

for I was half afraid she might set her face against my marrying "a

foreigner," but I felt quite sure any one who once saw Isaline could

never resist her.

That afternoon, when school was over, M. Claude dropped in to see how I

was getting on. I felt more like a thief at that moment than I ever felt

in my whole life before or since. I knew I must tell him the simple

truth; but I didn't know how to face it. However, as soon as I began, he

saved me the trouble by saying, "You need not mind explaining.

Mademoiselle Isaline has told me all. Yon did your best for me, I feel

sure; but she loves you, and she does not love me. We cannot help these

things; they come and go without our being able to govern them. I am

sorry, more than sorry; but I thank you for your kind offices.

Mademoiselle Isaline tells me you said all you could on my behalf, and

nothing on your own. Accept my congratulations on having secured the

love of the sweetest girl in all Switzerland." And he shook my hand with

an honest heartiness that cost me several more twinges both in the spine

and the half-guilty conscience. Yet, after all, it was not my fault.

"Monsieur Claude," I said, "you are an honest fellow, and a noble

fellow, and I trust you will still let me be your friend."

"Naturally," answered M. Claude, in his frank way. "I have only done my

duty. You have been the lucky one, but I must not bear you a grudge for

that; though it has cost my heart a hard struggle;" and, as he spoke,

the tears came for a moment in his honest blue eyes, though he tried to

brush them away unseen.

"Monsieur Claude," I said, "you are too generous to me. I can never

forgive myself for this."

Before many days my mother came to hand duly; and though her social

prejudices were just a trifle shocked, at first, by the farmhouse, with

its hams and maize, which I had found so picturesque, I judged rightly

that Isaline would soon make an easy conquest of her. My mother readily

admitted that my accent had improved audibly to the naked ear; that

Isaline's manners were simply perfect; that she was a dear, pretty,

captivating little thing; and that on the whole she saw no objections,

save one possible one, to my marriage. "Of course, Charlie," she said,

"the Clairons are Protestants; because, otherwise, I could never think

of giving my consent."

This was a poser in its way; for though I knew the village lay just on

the borderland, and some of the people were Catholics while others were

Reformed, I had not the remotest notion to which of the two churches

Isaline belonged. "Upon my soul, mother dear," I said, "it has never

struck me to inquire into Isaline's private abstract opinion on the

subject of the Pope's infallibility or the Geneva Confession. You see,

after all, it could hardly be regarded as an important or authoritative

one. However, I'll go at once and find out."

Happily, as it turned out, the Clairons were Reformed, and so my

mother's one objection fell to the ground immediately. M. Clairon's

inquiries were also satisfactory; and the final result was that Isaline

and I were to be quietly married before the end of the summer. The good

father had a nice little vineyard estate at Pic de la Baume, which he

proposed I should undertake to cultivate; and my mother waited to see

us installed in one of the prettiest little toy chalets to be seen

anywhere at the Villeneuve end of the lovely lake. A happier or sweeter

bride than Isaline I defy the whole world, now or ever, to produce.

From the day of our wedding, almost, Isaline made it the business of her

life to discover a fitting wife for good M. Claude; and in the end she

succeeded in discovering, I will freely admit (since Isaline is not

jealous), the second prettiest and second nicest girl in the whole Pays

de Vaud. And what is more, she succeeded also in getting M. Claude to

fall head over ears in love with her at first sight; to propose to her

at the end of a week; and to be accepted with effusion by Annette

herself, and with coldness by her papa, who thought the question of

means a trifle unsatisfactory. But Isaline and I arranged that Claude

should come into partnership in our vineyard business on easy terms, and

give up schoolmastering for ever; and the consequence is that he and his

wife have now got the companion chalet to ours, and between our two

local connections, in Switzerland and England, we are doing one of the

best trades in the new export wine traffic of any firm along the lake.

Of course we have given up growing Yvorne, except for our own use,

confining ourselves entirely to a high-priced vintage-wine, with very

careful culture, for our English business: and I take this opportunity

of recommending our famous phylloxera-proof white Pic de la Baume,

London Agents ----. But Isaline says that looks too much like an

advertisement, so I leave off. Still, I can't help saying that a dearer

little wife than Isaline, or a better partner than Claude, never yet

fell to any man's lot. They certainly are an excellent people, these

Vaudois, and I think you would say so too if only you knew them as well

as I do.

_PROFESSOR MILLITER'S DILEMMA._

The Gospel Evangelists were naturally very proud of Professor Milliter.

A small and despised sect, with not many great, not many rich, not many

noble among them, they could comfort themselves at least with the

reflection that they numbered in their fold one of the most learned and

justly famous of modern English scientific thinkers. It is true, their

place of meeting at Mortiscombe was but an upper chamber in a small

cottage; their local congregation consisted of hardly more than three

score members; and their nickname among their orthodox churchy

neighbours was the very opprobrious and very ridiculous one of "the

Shivering Ranters." Still, the Gospel Evangelists felt it was a great

privilege to be permitted the ministrations of so learned and eloquent a

preacher as Professor Milliter. The rector of the parish was an Oxford

M.A., of the usual decorously stereotyped conventional pattern; but in

point even of earthly knowledge and earthly consideration, said the

congregation at Patmos Chapel, "he is not worthy to unloose the latchet

of our pastor's shoe." For Professor Milliter was universally allowed to

be the greatest living authority in England on comparative anatomy, the

rising successor of Cuvier, and Owen, and Milne-Edwards, and Carpenter,

in the general knowledge of animal structure.

Mortiscombe, as everybody knows, is the favourite little suburban

watering-place, close by the busy streets and noisy wharves of a great

English manufacturing centre. It is at Mortiscombe that the Western

Counties College of Science is situated, away from the smoke and bustle

of the whirring city: and it was in the Western Counties College of

Science that Cyril Milliter ably filled the newly founded chair of

Comparative Anatomy. When he was first appointed, indeed, people

grumbled a little at the idea of a Professor at the College undertaking

every Sunday to preach in a common conventicle to a low assembly of

vulgar fanatics, as in their charitable Christian fashion they loved to

call the Gospel Evangelists. But Cyril Milliter was a man of character

and determination: he had fully made up his own mind upon theological

questions; and having once cast in his lot with the obscure sect of

Gospel Evangelists, to which his parents had belonged before him, he was

not to be turned aside from his purpose by the coarse gibes of the

ordinary public or the cynical incredulity of more cultivated but

scarcely more tolerant polite society. "Not a Gospel Evangelist really

and truly: you must surely be joking, Mr. Milliter," young ladies said

to him at evening parties with undisguised astonishment; "why, they're

just a lot of ignorant mill-hands, you know, who meet together in an

upper room somewhere down in Ford's Passage to hear sermons from some

ignorant lay preacher."

"Quite so," Cyril Milliter would answer quietly; "and _I_ am the

ignorant lay preacher who has been appointed to deliver those sermons to

them. I was brought up among the Gospel Evangelists as a child, and now

that I am a man my mature judgment has made me still continue among

them."

Mortiscombe is well known to be a very advanced and liberal-minded

place; so, after a time, people ceased to talk about the curious

singularity of Cyril Milliter's Sunday occupation. All through the week

the young professor lectured to his class on dry bones and the other

cheerful stock-in-trade of his own department; and on Sundays he walked

down erect, Bible in hand, to his little meeting-room, and there

fervently expounded the Word, as it approved itself to his soul and

conscience, before the handful of earnest artisans who composed his

faithful but scanty congregation. A fiery and enthusiastic preacher was

Cyril Milliter, devoured with zeal for what seemed to him the right

doctrine. "There is only one thing worth living for in this fallen

world," he used to say to his little group of attentive hearers, "and

that is Truth. Truth, as it reveals itself in the book of nature, must

be our quest during the working week: Truth, as it reveals itself in the

written Word, must be our quest on these happy blessed seventh-day

Sabbaths." There was a high eager light in his eye as he spoke, mingled

with a clear intellectual honesty in his sharply cut features, which

gave at once the stamp of reality to that plain profession of his

simple, manly, earnest creed.

One other subject, however, beside the pursuit of truth, just at that

moment deeply interested Cyril Milliter; and that subject assumed bodily

form in the pretty little person of Netta Leaworthy. Right in front of

Cyril, as he expounded the Word every Sunday morning, sat a modest,

demure, dimpled English girl, with a complexion like a blushing

apple-blossom, and a mouth like the sunny side of a white-heart cherry.

She was only the daughter of an intelligent mill-hand, a foreman at one

of the great factories in the neighbouring city, was dainty,

whitefingered, sweet-voiced little Netta; but there was a Puritan

freshness and demureness and simplicity about her that fairly won the

heart of the enthusiastic young professor. Society at Mortiscombe had

made itself most agreeable to Cyril Milliter, in spite of his

heterodoxy, as Society always does to eligible young bachelors of good

education; and it had thrown its daughters decorously in his way, by

asking him to all its dinners, dances, and at-homes, with most profuse

and urgent hospitality. But in spite of all the wiles of the most

experienced among Society's mothers, Cyril Milliter had positively had

the bad taste to fix his choice at last upon nobody better than simple,

unaffected, charming little Netta.

For one sunny Sunday morning, after worship, Cyril had turned out into

the fields behind the Common, for a quiet stroll among the birds and

flowers: when, close by the stile in the upper meadow, he came

unexpectedly upon Netta Leaworthy, alone upon the grass with her own

fancies. She was pulling an ox-eye daisy carelessly to pieces as he

passed, and he stopped a minute unperceived beside the hedge, to watch

her deft fingers taking out one ray after another quickly from the

blossom to the words of a foolish childish charm. Netta blushed crimson

when she saw she was observed at that silly pastime, and Cyril thought

to himself he had never seen anything in his life more lovely than the

blushing girl at that moment. Learned and educated as he was, he had

sprung himself from among the ranks of the many, and his heart was with

them still rather than with the rich, the noble, and the mighty. "I will

never marry among the daughters of Heth," he said to himself gently, as

he paused beside her: "I will take to myself rather a wife and a

helpmate from among the Lord's own chosen people."

"Ah, Miss Leaworthy," he went on aloud, smiling sympathetically at her

embarrassment, "you are following up the last relics of a dying

superstition, are you? 'One for money, two for health, Three for love,

and four for wealth.' Is that how the old saw goes? I thought so. And

which of the four blessings now has your daisy promised you I wonder?"

The tone he spoke in was so very different from that which he had just

been using in the chapel at worship that Netta felt instinctively what

it foreboded; and her heart fluttered tremulously as she answered in the

quietest voice she could command, "I haven't finished it yet, Mr.

Milliter; I have made five rounds already, and have a lot of rays left

still in the middle of the daisy."

Cyril took it from her, laughingly, and went on with the rhyme--his

conscience upbraiding him in an undertone of feeling meanwhile for such

an unworthy paltering with old-world superstition--till he had gone

twice round the spell, and finished abruptly with "Three for love!"

"Love it is!" he cried gaily. "A good omen! Miss Leaworthy, we none of

us love superstition: but perhaps after all it is something more than

that; there may be a Hand guiding us from above, even in these everyday

trifles! We must never forget, you know, that every hair of our heads is

numbered."

Netta's heart fluttered still more violently within her as he looked at

her so closely. Could it be that really, in spite of everything, the

great, learned, good, clever young professor was going to ask her to be

his wife? Netta had listened to him with joy Sunday after Sunday from

his simple platform pulpit, and had felt in her heart that no man never

expounded the gospel of love as beautifully as he did. She had fancied

sometimes--girls cannot help fancying, be they as modest and retiring as

they may--that he really did like her just a little. And she--she had

admired and wondered at him from a distance. But she could hardly

believe even now that that little vague day-dream which had sometimes

floated faintly before her eyes was going to be actually realized in

good earnest. She could answer nothing, her heart beat so; but she

looked down to the ground with a flushed and frightened look which was

more eloquent in its pretty simplicity than all the resources of the

most copious language.

Cyril Milliter's mind, however, was pretty well made up already on this

important matter, and he had been waiting long for just such an

opportunity of asking Netta whether she could love him. And now, even

without asking her, he could feel at once by some subtle inner sense

that his eager question was answered beforehand, and that modest,

maidenly little Netta Leaworthy was quite prepared to love him dearly.

For a moment he stood there looking at her intently, and neither of them

spoke. Then Netta raised her eyes from the ground for a second's flash;

and Cyril's glance caught hers one instant before she bent them down

again in haste to play nervously with the mangled daisy. "Netta," he

said, the name thrilling through his very marrow as he uttered it,

"Netta, I love you."

She stood irresolute for a while, listening to the beating of her own

heart, and then her eye caught his once more, timidly, but she spoke

never a syllable.

Cyril took her wee white hand in his--a lady's hand, if ever you saw

one--and raised it with chivalrous tenderness to his lips. Netta allowed

him to raise it and kiss it without resistance. "Then you will let me

love you?" he asked quickly. Netta still did not answer, but throwing

herself back on the bank by the hedgerow began to cry like a frightened

child.

Cyril sat down, all tremulous beside her, took the white hand unresisted

in his, and said to her gently, "Oh, Netta, what is this for?"

Then Netta answered with an effort, through her tears, "Mr. Milliter,

Mr. Milliter, how can you ever tell me of this?"

"Why not, Netta? Why not, my darling? May I not ask you to be my wife?

Will you have me, Netta?"

Netta looked at him timidly, with another blush, and said slowly, "No,

Mr. Milliter; I cannot. I must not."

"Why not, Netta? Oh, why not? Tell me a reason."

"Because it wouldn't be right. Because it wouldn't be fair to you.

Because it wouldn't be true of me. You ought to marry a lady--some

one in your own rank of life, you know. It would be wrong to tie

your future down to a poor nameless nobody like me, when you might

marry--marry--almost any lady you chose in all Mortiscombe."

"Netta, you pain me. You are wronging me. You know I care nothing for

such gewgaws as birth or wealth or rank or station. I would not marry

one of those ladies even if she asked me. And, as to my own position in

life, why, Netta, my position is yours. My parents were poor God-fearing

people, like your parents; and if you will not love me, then, Netta,

Netta, I say it solemnly, I will never, never marry anybody."

Netta answered never a word; but, as any other good girl would do in her

place, once more burst into a flood of tears, and looked at him

earnestly from her swimming eyes in speechless doubt and trepidation.

Perhaps it was wrong of Cyril Milliter--on a Sunday, and in the public

pathway too--but he simply put his strong arm gently round her waist,

and kissed her a dozen times over fervidly without let or hindrance.

Then Netta put him away from her, not too hastily, but with a lingering

hesitation, and said once more, "But, Mr. Milliter, I can never marry

you. You will repent of this yourself by-and-by at your leisure. Just

think, how could I ever marry you, when I should always be too

frightened of you to call you anything but 'Mr. Milliter!'"

"Why, Netta," cried the young professor, with a merry laugh, "if that's

all, you'll soon learn to call me, 'Cyril.'"

"To call you 'Cyril,' Mr. Milliter! Oh dear, no, never. Why, I've looked

at you so often in meeting, and felt so afraid of you, because you were

so learned, and wise, and terrible: and I'm sure I should never learn to

call you by your Christian name, whatever happened."

"And as you can't do that, you won't marry me! I'm delighted to hear it,

Netta--delighted to hear it; for if that's the best reason you can

conjure up against the match, I don't think, little one, I shall find it

very hard to talk you over."

"But, Mr. Milliter, are you quite sure you won't regret it yourself

hereafter? Are you quite sure you won't repent, when you find Society

doesn't treat you as it did, for my sake? Are you quite sure nothing

will rise up hereafter between us, no spectre of class difference, or

class prejudice, to divide our lives and make us unhappy?"

"Never!" Cyril Milliter answered, seizing both her hands in his eagerly,

and looking up with an instinctive glance to the open heaven above them

as witness. "Never, Netta, as long as I live and you live, shall any

shadow of such thought step in for one moment to put us asunder."

And Netta, too proud and pleased to plead against her own heart any

longer, let him kiss her once again a lover's kiss, and pressed his hand

in answer timidly, and walked back with him blushing towards

Mortiscombe, his affianced bride before the face of high heaven.

When Society at Mortiscombe first learnt that that clever young

Professor Milliter was really going to marry the daughter of some

factory foreman, Society commented frankly upon the matter according to

the various idiosyncrasies and temperaments of its component members.

Some of it was incredulous; some of it was shocked; some of it was

cynical; some of it was satirical; and some of it, shame to say, was

spitefully free with suggested explanations for such very strange and

unbecoming conduct. But Cyril Milliter himself was such a transparently

honest and straightforward man, that, whenever the subject was alluded

to in his presence, he shamed the cynicism and the spitefulness of

Society by answering simply, "Yes, I'm going to marry a Miss Leaworthy,

a very good and sweet girl, the daughter of the foreman at the Tube

Works, who is a great friend of mine and a member of my little Sunday

congregation." 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. But that was not what the

Truth told them. On the fourth day of creation, simultaneously with the

fish and every living creature that moveth in the ocean, the waters

brought forth "fowl that might fly above the earth in the open firmament

of heaven." Such on this subject was the plain and incontrovertible

statement of the inspired writer in the holy Scripture.

And now, how did science confirm this statement, and scatter at once to

the winds the foolish, brain-spun cobwebs of our windy, vaporous, modern

evolutionists? These diagrams which he held before him would

sufficiently answer that important question. He would show them that

there was no real community of structure in any way between the two

classes of birds and reptiles. Let them observe the tail, the wings, the

feathers, the breast-bone, the entire anatomy, and they would see at

once that Darwin's ridiculous, ill-digested theory was wholly opposed to

all the plain and demonstrable facts of nature. It was a very learned

discourse, certainly; very crushing, very overwhelming, very convincing

(when you heard one side only), and not Netta alone, but the whole

congregation of intelligent, inquiring artisans as well, was utterly

carried away by its logic, its clearness, and its eloquent rhetoric.

Last of all, Cyril Milliter raised his two white hands solemnly before

him, and uttered thus his final peroration.

"In conclusion, what proof can they offer us of their astounding

assertions?" he asked, almost contemptuously. "Have they a single fact,

a single jot or tittle of evidence to put in on this matter, as against

the universal voice of authoritative science, from the days of

Aristotle, of Linnaeus, or of Cuvier, to the days of Owen, of Lyell, and

of Carpenter? Not one! Whenever they can show me, living or fossil, an

organism which unites in itself in any degree whatsoever the

characteristics of birds and reptiles--an organism which has at once

teeth and feathers; or which has a long lizard-like tail and true wings;

or which combines the anatomical peculiarities I have here assigned to

the one class with the anatomical peculiarities I have here assigned to

the other: then, and then only, will I willingly accede to their absurd

hypothesis. But they have not done it. They cannot do it. They will

never do it. A great gulf eternally separates the two classes. A vast

gap intervenes impassably between them. That gulf will never be

lessened, that gap will never be bridged over, until Truth is finally

confounded with falsehood, and the plain facts of nature and the Word

are utterly forgotten in favour of the miserable, inconsistent figments

of the poor fallible human imagination."

As they walked home from worship that morning, Netta felt she had never

before so greatly admired and wondered at her husband. How utterly he

had crushed the feeble theory of these fanciful system-mongers, how

clearly he had shown the absolute folly of their presumptuous and

arrogant nonsense! Netta could not avoid telling him so, with a flush of

honest pride in her beautiful face: and Cyril flushed back immediately

with conscious pleasure at her wifely trust and confidence. But he was

tired with the effort, he said, and must go for a little walk alone in

the afternoon: a walk among the fields and the Downs, where he could

commune by himself with the sights and sounds of truth-telling nature.

Netta was half-piqued, indeed, that he should wish even so to go without

her; but she said nothing: and so after their early dinner, Cyril

started away abstractedly by himself, and took the lane behind the

village that led up by steep inclines on to the heavy moorland with its

fresh bracken and its purple heather.

As he walked along hastily, his mind all fiery-full of bones and

fossils, he came at last to the oolite quarry on the broken hillside.

Feeling tired, he turned in to rest awhile in the shade on one of the

great blocks of building stone hewn out by the workmen; and by way of

occupation he began to grub away with his knife, half-unconsciously as

he sat, at a long flat slab of slaty shale that projected a little from

the sheer face of the fresh cutting. As he did so, he saw marks of

something very like a bird's feather on its upper surface. The sight

certainly surprised him a little. "Birds in the oolite," he said to

himself quickly; "it's quite impossible! Birds in the oolite! this is

quite a new departure. Besides, such a soft thing as a feather could

never conceivably be preserved in the form of a fossil."

Still, the queer object interested him languidly, by its odd and timely

connection with the subject of his morning sermon; and he looked at it

again a little more closely. By Jove, yes, it was a feather, not a doubt

in the world of that now; he could see distinctly the central shaft of a

tail-quill, and the little barbed branches given off regularly on either

side of it. The shale on which it was impressed was a soft, light-brown

mudstone; in fact, a fragment of lithographic slate, exactly like that

employed by lithographers for making pictures. He could easily see how

the thing had happened; the bird had fallen into the soft mud, long ages

since, before the shale had hardened, and the form of its feathers had

been distinctly nature-printed, while it was still moist, upon its

plastic surface. But a bird in the oolite! that was a real discovery;

and, as the Gospel Evangelists were no Sabbatarians, Cyril did not

scruple in the pursuit of Truth to dig away at the thin slab with his

knife, till he egged it out of the rock by dexterous side pressure, and

laid it triumphantly down at last for further examination on the big

stone that stood before him.

Gazing in the first delight of discovery at his unexpected treasure, he

saw in a moment that it was a very complete and exquisitely printed

fossil. So perfect a pictorial representation of an extinct animal he

had never seen before in his whole lifetime; and for the first moment or

two he had no time to do anything else but admire silently the exquisite

delicacy and extraordinary detail of this natural etching. But after a

minute, the professional interest again asserted itself, and he began to

look more carefully into the general nature of its curious and

unfamiliar anatomical structure.

As he looked, Cyril Milliter felt a horrible misgiving arise suddenly

within him. The creature at which he was gazing so intently was not a

bird, it was a lizard. And yet--no--it was not a lizard--it was a bird.

"Why--these are surely feathers--yes, tail feathers--quite

unmistakable.... But they are not arranged in a regular fan; the quills

stand in pairs, one on each side of each joint in a long tail, for all

the world exactly like a lizard's.... Still, it must be a bird; for,

see, these are wings ... and that is certainly a bird's claw.... But

here's the head; great heavens! what's this?... A jaw, with teeth in

it...." Cyril Milliter leaned back, distractedly, and held his beating

forehead between his two pale hands. To most scientific men it would

have been merely the discovery of an interesting intermediate

organism--something sure to make the reputation of a comparative

anatomist; to him, it was an awful and sudden blow dealt unexpectedly

from the most deadly quarter at all his deepest and most sacred

principles. Religion, honour, Truth, the very fundamental basis of the

universe itself--all that makes life worth living for, all that makes

the world endurable--was bound up implicitly that moment for Cyril

Milliter in the simple question whether the shadowy creature, printed in

faint grey outline on the slab of shaly oolite before him, was or was

not half bird and half lizard.

It may have been foolish of him: it may have been wrong: it may have

been madness almost; but at that instant he felt dazzled and stunned by

the crushing weight of the blow thus unexpectedly dealt at his whole

preconceived theory of things, and at his entire mental scheme of

science and theology. The universe seemed to swim aimlessly before him:

he felt the solid ground knocked at once from beneath his feet, and

found himself in one moment suspended alone above an awful abyss, a

seething and tossing abyss of murky chaos. He had pinned all his

tottering faith absolutely on that single frail support; and now the

support had given way irretrievably beneath him, and blank atheism,

nihilism, utter nothingness, stared him desperately in the face. In one

minute, while he held his head tight between his two palms to keep it

from bursting, and looked with a dull, glazed, vacant eye at the ghastly

thing before him--only a few indistinct fossil bones, but to him the

horridest sight he had ever beheld--a whole world of ideas crowded

itself on the instant into his teeming, swimming brain. If we could

compress an infinity of thought into a single second, said Shelley once,

that second would be eternity; and on the brink of such a compressed

eternity Cyril Milliter was then idly sitting. It seemed to him, as he

clasped his forehead tighter and tighter, that the Truth which he had

been seeking, and for which he had been working and fighting so long,

revealed itself to him now and there, at last, in concrete form, as a

visible and tangible Lie. It was no mere petrified lizard that he saw

beneath his eyes, but a whole ruined and shattered system of philosophic

theology. His cosmogony was gone; his cosmos itself was dispersed and

disjointed; creation, nay, the Creator Himself, seemed to fade away

slowly into nonentity before him. He beheld dimly an awful vision of a

great nebulous mist, drifting idly before the angry storm-cyclones of

the masterless universe--drifting without a God or a ruler to guide it;

bringing forth shapeless monstrosities one after another on its wrinkled

surface; pregnant with ravine, and rapine, and cruelty; vast, powerful,

illimitable, awful; but without one ray of light, one gleam of love, one

hope of mercy, one hint of divine purpose anywhere to redeem it. It was

the pessimistic nightmare of a Lucretian system, translated hastily into

terms of Cyril Milliter's own tottering and fading theosophy.

He took the thing up again into his trembling hands, and examined it a

second time more closely. No, there could be no shadow of a doubt about

it: his professional skill and knowledge told him that much in a single

moment. Nor could he temporize and palter with the discovery, as some of

his elder brethren would have been tempted to do; his brain was too

young, and fresh, and vigorous, and logical not to permit of ready

modification before the evidence of new facts. Come what might, he must

be loyal to the Truth. This thing, this horrid thing that he held

visibly before him, was a fact, a positive fact: a set of real bones,

representing a real animal, that had once lived and breathed and flown

about veritably upon this planet of ours, and that was yet neither a

true bird nor a true lizard, but a half-way house and intermediate link

between those two now widely divergent classes. Cyril Milliter's mind

was at once too honest and too intelligent to leave room for any doubts,

or evasions, or prevarications with itself upon that fundamental

subject. He saw quite clearly and instantly that it was the very thing

the possibility of whose existence he had so stoutly denied that

self-same morning. And he could not go back upon his own words,

"Whenever they show me an organism which unites in itself the

characteristics of birds and reptiles, then, and then only, will I

accede to their absurd hypothesis." The organism he had asked for lay

now before him, and he knew himself in fact a converted evolutionist,

encumbered with all the other hideous corollaries which his own peculiar

logic had been accustomed to tack on mentally to that hated creed. He

almost felt as if he ought in pure consistency to go off at once and

murder somebody, as the practical outcome of his own theories. For had

he not often boldly asserted that evolutionism was inconsistent with

Theism, and that without Theism, any real morality or any true

right-doing of any kind was absolutely impossible?

At last, after long sitting and anxious pondering, Cyril Milliter rose

to go home, carrying a heavy heart along with him. And then the question

began to press itself practically upon him, What could he ever do with

this horrible discovery? His first impulse was to dash the thing to

pieces against the rock, and go away stealthily, saying naught about the

matter to any man. But his inborn reverence for the Truth made him

shrink back in horror, a moment later, from this suggestion of Satan, as

he thought it--this wicked notion of suppressing a most important and

conclusive piece of scientific evidence. His next idea was simply to

leave it where it was, thus shuffling off the responsibility of

publishing it or destroying it upon the next comer who chanced by

accident to enter the quarry. After all, he said to himself,

hypocritically, he wasn't absolutely bound to tell anybody else a word

about it; he could leave it there, and it would be in much the same

position, as far as science was concerned, as it would have been if he

hadn't happened to catch sight of it accidentally as it lay that morning

in the mother stone. But again his conscience told him next moment that

such casuistry was dishonest and unworthy; he had found the thing, and,

come what might, he ought to abide by the awful consequences. If he left

it lying there in the quarry, one of the workmen would probably smash it

up carelessly with a blow of his pick to-morrow morning--this unique

survivor of a forgotten world--and to abandon it to such a fate as that

would be at least as wicked as to break it to pieces himself of set

purpose, besides being a great deal more sneakish and cowardly. No,

whatever else he did, it was at any rate his plain duty to preserve the

specimen, and to prevent it from being carelessly or wilfully destroyed.

On the other hand, he couldn't bear, either, to display it openly, and

thereby become, as the matter envisaged itself to his mind, a direct

preacher of evolutionism--that is to say, of irreligion and immorality.

With what face could he ever rise and exhibit at a scientific meeting

this evident proof that the whole universe was a black chaos, a gross

materialistic blunder, a festering mass of blank corruption, without

purpose, soul, or informing righteousness? His entire moral being rose

up within him in bitter revolt at the bare notion of such cold-blooded

treachery. To give a long-winded Latin classificatory name, forsooth, to

a thing that would destroy the faith of ages! At last, after long

pondering, he determined to carry the slab carefully home inside his

coat, and hide it away sedulously for the present in the cupboard of his

little physiological laboratory. He would think the matter over, he

would take time to consider, he would ask humbly for light and guidance.

But of whom? Well, well, at any rate, there was no necessity for

precipitate action. To Cyril Milliter's excited fancy, the whole future

of human thought and belief seemed bound up inextricably at that moment

in the little slab of lithographic slate that lay before him; and he

felt that he need be in no hurry to let loose the demon of scepticism

and sin (as it appeared to him) into the peaceful midst of a still

happily trusting and unsuspecting humanity.

He put his hand into his pocket, casually, to pull out his handkerchief

for a covering to the thing, and, as he did so, his fingers happened to

touch the familiar clasp of his little pocket Bible. The touch thrilled

him strangely, and inspired him at once with a fresh courage. After all,

he had the Truth there also, and he couldn't surely be doing wrong in

consulting its best and most lasting interests. It was for the sake of

the Truth that he meant for the present to conceal his compromising

fossil. So he wrapped up the slab as far as he was able in his

handkerchief, and hid it away, rather clumsily, under the left side of

his coat. It bulged a little, no doubt; but by keeping his arm flat to

his side he was able to cover it over decently somehow. Thus he walked

back quickly to Mortiscombe, feeling more like a thief with a stolen

purse in his pocket than he had ever before felt in the whole course of

his earthly existence.

When he reached his own house, he would not ring, lest Netta should run

to open the door for him, and throw her arms round him, and feel the

horrid thing (how could he show it even to Netta after this morning's

sermon?), but he went round to the back door, opened it softly, and

glided as quietly as he could into the laboratory. Not show it to

Netta--that was bad: he had always hitherto shown her and told her

absolutely everything. How about the Truth? He was doing this, he

believed, for the Truth's sake; and yet, the very first thing that it

imposed upon him was the necessity for an ugly bit of unwonted

concealment. Not without many misgivings, but convinced on the whole

that he was acting for the best, he locked the slab of oolite up,

hurriedly and furtively, in the corner cupboard.

He had hardly got it safely locked up out of sight, and seated himself

as carelessly as he could in his easy chair, when Netta knocked softly

at the door. She always knocked before entering, by force of habit, for

when Cyril was performing delicate experiments it often disturbed him,

or spoilt the result, to have the door opened suddenly. Netta had seen

him coming, and wondered why he had slunk round by the back door: now

she wondered still more why he did not "report himself," as he used to

call it, by running to kiss her and announce his return.

"Come in," he said gravely, in answer to the knock; and Netta entered.

Cyril jumped up and kissed her tenderly, but her quick woman's eye saw

at once that there was something serious the matter. "You didn't ring,

Cyril darling," she said, half reproachfully, "and you didn't come to

kiss your wifie."

"No," Cyril answered, trying to look quite at his ease (a thing at which

the most innocent man in the world is always the worst possible

performer), "I was in a hurry to get back here, as there was something

in the way of my work I wanted particularly to see about."

"Why, Cyril," Netta answered in surprise; "your work! It's Sunday."

Cyril blushed crimson. "So it is," he answered hastily; "upon my word,

I'd quite forgotten it. Goodness gracious, Netta, shall I have to go

down to meeting and preach again to those people this evening?"

"Preach again? Of course you will, Cyril. You always do, dear, don't

you?"

Cyril started back with a sigh. "I can't go to-night, Netta darling," he

said wearily. "I can't preach to-night. I'm too tired and out of

sorts--I'm not at all in the humour for preaching. We must send down

somehow or other, and put off the brethren."

Netta looked at him in blank dismay. She felt in her heart there was

something wrong, but she wouldn't for worlds ask Cyril what it was,

unless he chose to tell her of his own accord. Still, she couldn't help

reading in his eyes that there was something the matter: and the more

she looked into them, the more poor Cyril winced and blinked and looked

the other way in the vain attempt to seem unconcerned at her searching

scrutiny. "I'll send Mary down with a little written notice," she said

at last, "to fix on the door: 'Mr. Milliter regrets he will be unable,

through indisposition, to attend worship at Patmos this evening.' Will

that do, Cyril?"

"Yes," he answered uneasily. "That'll do, darling. I don't feel quite

well, I'm afraid, somehow, after my unusual exertions this morning."

Netta looked at him hard, but said nothing.

They went into the drawing-room and for a while they both pretended to

be reading. Then the maid brought up the little tea-tray, and Cyril was

obliged to lay down the book he had been using as a screen for his

crimson face, and to look once more straight across the room at Netta.

"Cyril," the little wife began again, as she took over his cup of tea to

his easy chair by the bow window, and set it down quietly on the tiny

round table beside him, "where did you go this afternoon?"

"On the Downs, darling."

"And whom did you meet there?"

"Nobody, Netta."

"Nobody, Cyril?"

"No, nobody."

Netta knew she could trust his word implicitly, and asked him no

further. Still, a dreadful cloud was slowly rising up before her. She

felt too much confidence in Cyril to be really jealous of him in any

serious way; but her fears, womanlike, took that personal shape in

which she fancied somebody or something must be weaning away her

husband's love gradually from her. Had he seen some girl at a distance

on the Downs, some one of the Mortiscombe ladies, with whom perhaps he

had had some little flirtation in the days gone by--some lady whom he

thought now would have made him a more suitable, companionable wife than

poor little Netta? Had he wandered about alone, saying to himself that

he had thrown himself away, and sacrificed his future prospects for a

pure, romantic boyish fancy? Had he got tired of her little, simple,

homely ways? Had he come back to the house, heartsick and disappointed,

and gone by himself into the working laboratory on purpose to avoid her?

Why was he so silent? Why did he seem so preoccupied? Why would he not

look her straight in the face? Cyril could have done nothing to be

ashamed of, that Netta felt quite sure about, but why did he behave as

if he was ashamed of himself--as if there was something or other in his

mind he couldn't tell her?

Meanwhile, poor Cyril was not less unhappy, though in a very different

and more masculine fashion. He wasn't thinking so much of Netta (except

when she looked at him so hard and curiously), but of the broken gods of

his poor little scientific and theological pantheon. He was passing

through a tempest of doubt and hesitation, compelled to conceal it under

the calm demeanour of everyday life. That horrid, wicked,

system-destroying fossil was never for a moment out of his mind. At

times he hated and loathed the godless thing with all the concentrated

force of his ardent nature. Ought he to harbour it under the shelter of

his hospitable roof? Ought he to give it the deadly chance of bearing

its terrible witness before the eyes of an innocent world? Ought he not

to get up rather in the dead of night, and burn it to ashes or grind it

to powder--a cruel, wicked, deceiving, anti-scriptural fossil that it

was? Then again at other times the love of Truth came uppermost once

more to chill his fiery indignation. Could the eternal hills lie to him?

Could the evidence of his own senses deceive him? Was not the creature

there palpably and visibly present, a veritable record of real

existence; and ought he not loyally and reverently to accept its

evidence, at whatever violence to his own most cherished and sacred

convictions? If the universe was in reality quite other than what he had

always hitherto thought it; if the doctrines he had first learned and

then taught as certain and holy were proved by plain facts to be mere

ancient and fading delusions, was it not his bounden duty manfully to

resign his life-long day-dream, and to accept the Truth as it now

presented itself to him by the infallible evidence of mute nature, that

cannot possibly or conceivably lie to us?

The evening wore away slowly, and Cyril and Netta said little to one

another, each absorbed in their own thoughts and doubts and

perplexities. At last bedtime came, but not much sleep for either. Cyril

lay awake, looking out into the darkness which seemed now to involve the

whole physical and spiritual world; seeing in fancy a vast chaotic

clashing universe, battling and colliding for ever against itself,

without one ray of hope, or light, or gladness left in it anywhere.

Netta lay awake, too, wondering what could have come over Cyril; and

seeing nothing but a darkened world, in which Cyril's love was taken

away from her, and all was cold, and dull, and cheerless. Each in

imagination had lost the keystone of their own particular special

universe.

Throughout the next week, Cyril went on mechanically with his daily

work, but struggling all the time against the dreadful doubt that was

rising now irresistibly within him. Whenever he came home from college,

he went straight to his laboratory, locked the door, and took the

skeleton out of the cupboard. It was only a very small skeleton indeed,

and a fossil one at that; but if it had been a murdered man, and he the

murderer, it could hardly have weighed more terribly than it actually

did upon Cyril Milliter's mind and conscience. Yet it somehow fascinated

him; and in all his spare time he was working away at the comparative

anatomy of his singular specimen. He had no doubts at all about it now:

he knew it perfectly for what it was--an intermediate form between birds

and reptiles. Meanwhile, he could not dare to talk about it even to

Netta; and Netta, though the feeling that there was something wrong

somewhere deepened upon her daily, would not say a word upon the subject

to Cyril. But she had discovered one thing--that the secret, whatever it

was, lay closed up in the laboratory cupboard; and as her fears

exaggerated her doubts, she grew afraid at last almost to enter the room

which held that terrible, unspeakable mystery.

Thus more than a fortnight passed away, and Cyril and Netta grew daily

less and less at home with one another. At last, one evening, when Cyril

seemed gloomier and more silent than ever, Netta could bear the suspense

no longer. Rising up hastily from her seat, without one word of warning,

she went over to her husband with a half-despairing gesture of alarm,

and, flinging her arms around him with desperate force, she cried

passionately through her blinding tears, "Cyril, Cyril, Cyril, you

_must_ tell me all about it."

"About what, darling?" Cyril asked, trembling with half-conscious

hypocrisy, for he knew in his heart at once what she meant as well as

she did.

"Cyril," she cried again, looking him straight in the face steadily,

"you have a secret that you will not tell me."

"Darling," he answered, smoothing her hair tenderly with his hand, "it

is no secret. It is nothing. You would think nothing of it if you knew.

It's the merest trifle possible. But I can't tell you. I can _not_ tell

you."

"But you must, Cyril," Netta cried bitterly. "You had never any secret

from me, I know, till that dreadful Sunday, when you went out alone, and

wouldn't even let me go with you. Then you came back stealthily by the

back door, and never told me. And you brought something with you: of

that I'm certain. And you've got the something locked up carefully in

the laboratory cupboard. I don't know how I found it all out exactly,

but I have found it out, and I can't bear the suspense any longer, and

so you _must_ tell me all about it. Oh, Cyril, dear Cyril, do, do tell

me all about it!"

Cyril faltered--faltered visibly; but even so, he dare not tell her. His

own faith was going too terribly fast already; could he let hers go too,

in one dreadful collapse and confusion? It never occurred to him that

the fossil would mean little or nothing to poor Netta; he couldn't help

thinking of it as though every human being on earth would regard it with

the same serious solemnity and awe as he himself did. "I cannot tell

you, Netta," he said, very gently but very firmly. "No, I dare not tell

you. Some day, perhaps, but not now. I must not tell you."

The answer roused all Netta's worst fears more terribly than ever. For a

moment she almost began to doubt Cyril. In her terror and perplexity she

was still too proud to ask him further; and she went back from her

husband, feeling stung and repulsed by his cruel answer, and made as

though she did not care at all for his strange refusal. She took up a

scientific paper from the heap on the table, and pretended to begin

reading it. Cyril rose and tried to kiss her, but she pushed him away

with an impatient gesture. "Never," she said haughtily. "Never, Cyril,

until you choose to tell me your private secret."

Cyril sank back gloomily into his chair, folded his hands into one

another in a despondent fashion, and looked hard at the vacant ceiling

without uttering a single word.

As Netta held the paper aimlessly before her that minute, by the merest

chance her eye happened to fall upon her husband's name printed in the

article that lay open casually at the middle page. Even at that supreme

moment of chagrin and torturing doubt, she could not pass by Cyril's

name in print without stopping to read what was said about him. As she

did so, she saw that the article began by hostile criticism of the

position he had taken up on the distinction between birds and reptiles

in a recent paper contributed to the Transactions of the Linnaean

Society. She rose from her place silently, put the paper into his hands

and pointed to the paragraph with her white forefinger, but never

uttered a single syllable. Cyril took it from her mechanically, and read

on, not half thinking what he was reading, till he came to a passage

which attracted his attention perforce, because it ran somewhat after

this fashion--

"Professor Milliter would have written a little less confidently had he

been aware that almost while his words were passing through the press a

very singular discovery bearing upon this exact subject was being laid

before the Academy of Sciences at Berlin. Dr. Hermann von Meyer has just

exhibited to that body a slab of lithographic slate from the famous

oolitic quarry at Solenhofen, containing the impression of a most

remarkable organism, which he has named _Archaeopteryx lithographica_.

This extraordinary creature has the feathers of a bird with the tail of

a lizard; it is entirely destitute of an _os coccygis_; it has

apparently two conical teeth in the upper jaw; and its foot is that of a

characteristic percher." And so forth for more than a column, full of

those minute anatomical points which Cyril had himself carefully noticed

in the anatomy of his own English specimen.

As he read and re-read that awful paragraph, Netta looking on at him

half angrily all the time, he grew more and more certain every moment

that the German professor had simultaneously made the very same

discovery as himself. He drew a long sigh of relief. The worst was over;

the murder was out, then; it was not to be he who should bear the

responsibility of publishing to the world the existence and

peculiarities of that wicked and hateful fossil. A cold-blooded German

geologist had done so already, with no more trace of remorse and

punctiliousness in the business than if it had been the merest old

oyster-shell or spider or commonplace cockroach! He could hardly keep in

his excited feelings; the strain of personal responsibility at least was

lightened; and though the universe remained as black as ever, he could

at any rate wash his own hands of the horrid creature. Unmanly as it may

seem, he burst suddenly into tears, and stepped across the room to throw

his arms round Netta's neck. To his surprise--for he scarcely remembered

that she could not yet realize the situation--Netta repelled him with

both hands stretched angrily before her, palm outwards.

"Netta," he said, imploringly, recognizing immediately what it was she

meant, "come with me now into the laboratory, and see what it is that I

have got in the cupboard."

Netta, all trembling and wondering, followed him in a perfect flutter of

doubt and anxiety. Cyril slowly unlocked the cupboard, then unfastened a

small drawer, and last of all took out a long flat object, wrapped up

mysteriously in a clean handkerchief. He laid it down reluctantly upon

the table, and Netta, amazed and puzzled, beheld a small smooth slab of

soft clay-stone, scored with what seemed like the fossil marks of a few

insignificant bones and feathers. The little woman drew a long breath.

"Well, Cyril?" she said interrogatively, looking at it in a dubious

mood.

"Why, Netta," cried her husband, half angry at her incomprehensible

calmness, "don't you see what it is? It's terrible, terrible!"

"A fossil, Cyril, isn't it? A bird, I should say."

"No, not a bird, Netta; nor yet a lizard; but that half-way thing, that

intermediate link you read about just now over yonder in the paper."

"But why do you hide it, Cyril? You haven't taken it anywhere from a

museum."

"Oh, Netta! Don't you understand? Don't you see the implications? It's a

creature, half bird and half reptile, and it proves, absolutely proves,

Netta, beyond the faintest possibility of a doubt, that the

evolutionists are quite right--quite scientific. And if it once comes to

be generally recognized, I don't know, I'm sure, what is ever to become

of religion and of science. We shall every one of us have to go and turn

evolutionists!"

It is very sad to relate, but poor Netta, her pent-up feelings all let

loose by the smallness of the evil, as it seemed to her, actually began

to smile, and then to laugh merrily, in the very face of this awful

revelation. "Then you haven't really got tired of me, Cyril?" she cried

eagerly. "You're not in love with somebody else? You don't regret ever

having married me?"

Cyril stared at her in mute surprise. What possible connection could

these questions have with the momentous principles bound up implicitly

in the nature-printed skeleton of _Archaeopteryx lithographica_? It was a

moment or so before he could grasp the association of ideas in her

womanly little brain, and understand the real origin of her natural

wife-like fears and hesitations.

"Oh, Cyril," she said again, after a minute's pause, looking at the

tell-tale fossil with another bright girlish smile, "is it only that?

Only that wretched little creature? Oh, darling, I am so happy!" And she

threw her arms around his neck of her own accord, and kissed him

fervently twice or thrice over.

Cyril was pleased indeed that she had recovered her trust in him so

readily, but amazed beyond measure that she could look at that horrible

anti-scriptural fossil absolutely without the slightest symptom of

flinching. "What a blessed thing it must be," he thought to himself, "to

be born a woman! Here's the whole universe going to rack and ruin,

physically and spiritually, before her very eyes, and she doesn't care a

fig as soon as she's quite satisfied in her own mind that her own

particular husband hasn't incomprehensibly fallen in love with one or

other of the Mortiscombe ladies!" It was gratifying to his personal

feelings, doubtless; but it wasn't at all complimentary, one must admit,

to the general constitution of the universe.

"What ought I to do with it, Netta?" he asked her simply, pointing to

the fossil; glad to have any companionship, even if so unsympathetic, in

his hitherto unspoken doubts and difficulties.

"Do with it? Why, show it to the Geological Society, of course, Cyril.

It's the Truth, you know, dearest, and why on earth should you wish to

conceal it? The Truth shall make you perfect."

Cyril looked at her with mingled astonishment and admiration. "Oh,

Netta," he answered, sighing profoundly, "if only I could take it as

quietly as you do! If only I had faith as a grain of mustard-seed! But I

have been reduced almost to abject despair by this crushing piece of

deadly evidence. It seems to me to proclaim aloud that the evolutionists

are all completely right at bottom, and that everything we have ever

loved and cherished and hoped for, turns out an utter and absolute

delusion."

"Then I should say you were still bound, for all that, to accept the

evidence," said Netta quietly. "However, for my part, I may be very

stupid and silly, and all that sort of thing, you know, but it doesn't

seem to me as if it really mattered twopence either way."

Cyril looked at her again with fresh admiration. That was a point of

view that had not yet even occurred to him as within the bounds of

possibility. He had gone on repeating over and over again to his

congregation and to himself that if evolution were true, religion and

morality were mere phantoms, until at last he had ceased to think any

other proposition on the subject could be even thinkable. That a man

might instantly accept the evidence of his strange fossil, and yet be

after all an indifferent honest citizen in spite of it, was an idea that

had really never yet presented itself to him. And he blushed now to

think that, in spite of all his frequent professions of utter fidelity,

Netta had proved herself at last more loyal to the Truth in both aspects

than he himself had done. Her simple little womanly faith had never

faltered for a moment in either direction.

That night was a very happy one for Netta: it was a somewhat happier one

than of late, even for Cyril. He had got rid of the cloud between

himself and his wife: he had made at least one person a confidante of

his horrid secret: and, above all, he had learnt that some bold and

ruthless German geologist had taken off his own shoulders the

responsibility of announcing the dreadful discovery.

Still, it was some time before Cyril quite recovered from the gloomy

view of things generally into which his chance unearthing of the strange

fossil had temporarily thrown him. Two things mainly contributed to this

result.

The first was that a few Sundays later he made up his mind he ought in

common honesty to exhibit his compromising fossil to the congregation in

the upper chamber, and make a public recantation of his recent confident

but untenable statements. He did so with much misgiving, impelled by a

growing belief that after all he must trust everything implicitly to the

Truth. It cost him a pang, too, to go back upon his own deliberate

words, so lately spoken; but he faced it out, for the Truth's sake, like

an honest man, as he had always tried to be--save for those few days

when the wicked little slab of slate lay carefully hidden away in the

inmost recesses of the laboratory cupboard. To his immense surprise,

once more, the brethren seemed to think little more of it than Netta

herself had done. Perhaps they were not so logical or thorough-going as

the young professor: perhaps they had more of unquestioning faith:

perhaps they had less of solid dogmatic leaven; but in any case they

seemed singularly little troubled by the new and startling geological

discovery. However, they were all much struck by the professor's honesty

of purpose in making a straightforward recantation of his admitted

blunder; he had acted honest and honourable, they said, like a man, and

they liked him better for it in the end, than if he'd preached, and

hedged, and shilly-shallied to them about it for a whole year of Sundays

together. Now, the mere fact that his good congregation didn't mind the

fossil much reacted healthily on Cyril Milliter, who began to suspect

that perhaps after all he had been exaggerating the religious importance

of speculative opinions on the precise nature of the cosmogony.

The second thing was that, shortly after the great discovery, he

happened to make the acquaintance of the brilliant young evolutionist

from London, and found to his surprise that on the whole most of their

opinions agreed with remarkable unanimity. True, the young evolutionist

was not a Gospel Evangelist, and did not feel any profound interest in

the literal or mystical interpretation of the first chapter of Genesis.

But in all essentials he was as deeply spiritual as Cyril Milliter

himself; and the more Cyril saw of him and talked with him, the more did

he begin to suspect that the truth may in reality have many facets, and

that all men may not happen to see it in exactly the self-same aspect.

It dawned upon him slowly that all the illumination in the world might

not be entirely confined to the narrow circle of the Gospel

Evangelists. Even those terrible evolutionists themselves, it seemed,

were not necessarily wholly given over to cutting throats or robbing

churches. They might have their desires and aspirations, their faith and

their hope and their charity, exactly like other people, only perhaps in

a slightly different and more definite direction. In the end, Cyril and

his former bugbear became bosom friends, and both worked together

amicably side by side in the self-same laboratory at the College of

Science.

To this day, Professor Milliter still continues to preach weekly to the

Gospel Evangelists, though both he and they have broadened a good deal,

in a gradual and almost imperceptible fashion, with the general

broadening of ideas and opinions that has been taking place by slow

degrees around us during the last two decades. His views are no doubt a

good deal less dogmatic and a good deal more wide and liberal now than

formerly. Netta and he live happily and usefully together; and over the

mantelpiece of his neat little study, in the cottage at Mortiscombe,

stands a slab of polished slate containing a very interesting oolitic

fossil, of which the professor has learnt at last to be extremely proud,

the first discovered and most perfect existing specimen of _Archaeopteryx

lithographica_. He can hardly resist a quiet smile himself, nowadays,

when he remembers how he once kept that harmless piece of pictured stone

wrapt up carefully in a folded handkerchief in his laboratory cupboard

for some weeks together, as though it had been a highly dangerous and

very explosive lump of moral dynamite, calculated to effect at one fell

swoop the complete religious and ethical disintegration of the entire

divine universe.

_IN STRICT CONFIDENCE._