The Autobiography of a Slander | Page 7

a moment her whole mind was full of me. She was an excitable, impressionable sort of girl, and when once I had obtained an entrance into her mind I found it the easiest thing in the world to dominate her thoughts. Though she stood, and sat, and knelt, and curtseyed, and articulated words, her thoughts were entirely absorbed in me. I crowded out the Magnificat with a picture of Zaluski and Gertrude Morley. I led her through more terrible future possibilities in the second lesson than would be required for a three-volume novel. I entirely eclipsed the collects with reflections on unhappy marriages; took her off via Russia and Nihilism in the State prayers, and by the time we arrived at St. Chrysostom had become so powerful that I had worked her mind into exactly the condition I desired.
The congregation rose. Lena Houghton, still dominated by me, knelt longer than the rest, but at last she got up and walked down the aisle, and I felt a great sense of relief and satisfaction. We were out in the open air once more, and I had triumphed; I was quite sure that she would tell the first person she met, for, as I have said before, she was entirely taken up with me, and to have kept me to herself would have required far more strength and unselfishness than she at that moment possessed. She walked slowly through the churchyard, feeling much pleased to see that the curate had just left the vestry door, and that in a few moments their paths must converge.
Mr. Blackthorne had only been ordained three or four years, and was a little younger, and much less experienced in the ways of the world, than Sigismund Zaluski. He was a good well-meaning fellow, a little narrow, a little prejudiced, a little spoiled by the devotion of the district visitors and Sunday School teachers; but he was honest and energetic, and as a worker among the poor few could have equalled him. He seemed to fancy, however, that with the poor his work ended, and he was not always so wise as he might have been in Muddleton society.
"Good afternoon, Miss Houghton," he exclaimed. "Do you happen to know if your brother is at home? I want just to speak to him about the choir treat."
"Oh, he is sure to be in by this time," said Lena.
And they walked home together.
"I am so glad to have this chance of speaking to you," she began rather nervously. "I wanted particularly to ask your advice."
Mr. Blackthorne, being human and young, was not unnaturally flattered by this remark. True, he was becoming well accustomed to this sort of thing, since the ladies of Muddleton were far more fond of seeking advice from the young and good-looking curate than from the elderly and experienced rector. They said it was because Mr. Blackthorne was so much more sympathetic, and understood the difficulties of the day so much better; but I think they unconsciously deceived themselves, for the rector was one of a thousand, and the curate, though he had in him the makings of a fine man, was as yet altogether crude and young.
"Was it about anything in your district?" he asked, devoutly hoping that she was not going to propound some difficult question about the origin of evil, or any other obscure subject. For though he liked the honour of being consulted, he did not always like the trouble it involved, and he remembered with a shudder that Miss Houghton had once asked him his opinion about the 'Ethical Concept of the Good.'
"It was only that I was so troubled about something Mrs. O'Reilly has just told me," said Lena Houghton. "You won't tell any one that I told you?"
"On no account," said the curate, warmly.
"Well, you know Mr. Zaluski, and how the Morleys have taken him up?"
"Every one has taken him up," said the curate, with the least little touch of resentment in his tone. "I knew that the Morleys were his special friends; I imagine that he admires Miss Morley."
"Yes, every one thinks they are either engaged or on the brink of it. And oh, Mr. Blackthorne, can't you or somebody put a stop to it, for it seems such a dreadful fate for poor Gertrude?"
The curate looked startled.
"Why, I don't profess to like Mr. Zaluski," he said. "But I don't know anything exactly against him."
"But I do. Mrs. O'Reilly has just been telling me."
"What did she tell you?" he asked with some curiosity.
"Why, she has found out that he is really a Nihilist--just think of a Nihilist going about loose like this, and playing tennis at the rectory and all the good houses! And not only that, but she says he is altogether a dangerous, unprincipled man with a