第4章 MY SECOND STAGE(1)

Bear not false witness, slander not, nor lie; Truth is the speech of inward purity.THE LIGHT OF ASIA.

In my first stage the reader will perceive that I was a comparatively weak and harmless little slander, with merely that taint of original sin which was to be expected in one of such parentage.But I developed with great rapidity; and I believe men of science will tell you that this is always the case with low organisms.That, for instance, while it takes years to develop the man from the baby, and months to develop the dog from the puppy, the baby monad will grow to maturity in an hour.

Personally I should have preferred to linger in Mrs.O'Reilly's pleasant drawing-room, for, as I said before, my victim interested me, and I wanted to observe him more closely and hear what he talked about.But I received orders to attend evensong at the parish church, and to haunt the mind of Lena Houghton.

As we passed down the High Street the bells rang out loud and clear, and they made me feel the same slight sense of discomfort that I had felt when I looked at Zaluski; however, I went on, and soon entered the church.It was a fine old Gothic building, and the afternoon sunshine seemed to flood the whole place; even the white stones in the aisle were glorified here and there with gorgeous patches of colour from the stained glass windows.But the strange stillness and quiet oppressed me, I did not feel nearly so much at home as in Mrs.O'Reilly's drawing-room--to use a terrestrial simile, I felt like a fish out of water.

For some time, too, I could find no entrance at all into the mind of Lena Houghton.Try as I would, I could not distract her attention or gain the slightest hold upon her, and I really believe I should have been altogether baffled, had not the rector unconsciously come to my aid.

All through the prayers and psalms I had fought a desperate fight without gaining a single inch.Then the rector walked over to the lectern, and the moment he opened his mouth I knew that my time had come, and that there was a very fair chance of victory before me.Whether this clergyman had a toothache, or a headache, or a heavy load on his mind, Icannot say, but his reading was more lugubrious than the wind in an equinoctial gale.I have since observed that he was only a degree worse than many other clerical readers, and that a strange and delightfully mistaken notion seems prevalent that the Bible must be read in a dreary and unnatural tone of voice, or with a sort of mournful monotony; it is intended as a sort of reverence, but I suspect that it often plays into the hands of my progenitor, as it most assuredly did in the present instance.

Hardly had the rector announced, "Here beginneth the forty-fourth verse of the sixteenth chapter of the book of the prophet Ezekiel," than a sort of relaxation took place in the mind I was attacking.Lena Houghton's attention could only have been given to the drearily read lesson by a very great effort; she was a little lazy and did not make the effort, she thought how nice it was to sit down again, and then the melancholy voice lulled her into a vague interval of thoughtless inactivity.I promptly seized my opportunity, and in 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 thatthe curate had just left the vestry door, and that in a few moments their paths must converge.