The Autobiography of a Slander Part 3

And then again they fell into the talk which I could not fathom. And so I left them in their brief happiness, for my time of idleness was over, and I was ordered to attend Mrs. Milton-Cleave without a moment's delay.

MY FOURTH STAGE

Oh, the little more, and how much it is!

R. BROWING.

Mrs. Milton-Cleave had one weakness--she was possessed by an inordinate desire for influence. This made her always eagerly anxious to be interesting both in her conversation and in her letters, and to this end she exerted herself with unwearying activity. She liked influencing Mr.

Blackthorne, and spared no pains on him that afternoon; and indeed the curate was a good deal flattered by her friends.h.i.+p, and considered her one of the most clever and charming women he had ever met.

Sigismund and Gertrude returned to the ordinary world just as Mrs. Milton- Cleave was saying good-bye to the hostess. She glanced at them searchingly.

"Good-bye, Gertrude," she said a little coldly. "Did you win at tennis?"

"Indeed we did," said Gertrude, smiling. "We came off with flying colours. It was a love set."

The girl was looking more beautiful than ever, and there was a tell-tale colour in her cheeks and an unusual light in her soft grey eyes. As for Zaluski, he was so evidently in love, and had the audacity to look so supremely happy, that Mrs. Milton-Cleave was more than ever impressed with the gravity of the situation. The curate handed her into her victoria, and she drove home through the sheltered lanes musing sadly over the story she had heard, and wondering what Gertrude's future would be. When she reached home, however, the affair was driven from her thoughts by her children, of whom she was devotedly fond. They came running to meet her, frisking like so many kittens round her as she went upstairs to her room, and begging to stay with her while she dressed for dinner. During dinner she was engrossed with her husband; but afterwards, when she was alone in the drawing-room, I found my opportunity for working on her restless mind.

"Dear me," she exclaimed, throwing aside the newspaper she had just taken up, "I ought to write to Mrs. Selldon at Dulminster about that G.F.S.

girl!"

As a matter of fact she ought not to have written then, the letter might well have waited till the morning, and she was over-tired and needed rest. But I was glad to see her take up her pen, for I knew I should come in most conveniently to fill up the second side of the sheet.

Before long Jane Stiggins, the member who had migrated from Muddleton to Dulminster, had been duly reported, wound up, and made over to the Archdeacon's wife. Then the tired hand paused. What more could she say to her friend?

"We are leading our usual quiet life here," she wrote, "with the ordinary round of tennis parties and picnics to enliven us. The children have all been wonderfully well, and I think you will see a great improvement in your G.o.d-daughter when you next come to stay with us"--"Oh dear!" sighed Mrs. Milton-Cleave, "how dull and stupid I am to-night! I can't think of a single thing to say." Then at length I flashed into her mind, and with a sigh of relief and a little rising flush of excitement she went on much more rapidly.

"It is such a comfort to be quite at rest about them, and to see them all looking so well. But I suppose one can never be without some cause of worry, and just now I am very unhappy about that nice girl Gertrude Morley whom you admired so much when you were last here. The whole neighbourhood has been dominated this year by a young Polish merchant named Sigismund Zaluski, who is very clever and musical and knows well how to win popularity. He has taken Ivy Cottage for four mouths, and is, I fear, doing great mischief. The Morleys are his special friends, and I greatly fear he is making love to Gertrude. Now I know privately, on the very best authority, that although he has so completely deceived every one and has managed so cleverly to pose as a respectable man, that Mr.

Zaluski is really a Nihilist, a free-lover, an atheist, and altogether a most unprincipled man. He is very clever, and speaks English most fluently, indeed he has lived in London since the spring of 1881--he told me so himself. I cannot help fancying that he must have been concerned in the a.s.sa.s.sination of the late Czar, which you will remember took place in that year early in March. It is terrible to think of the poor Morleys entering blindfold on such an undesirable connection; but, at the same time, I really do not feel that I can say anything about it. Excuse this hurried note, dear Charlotte, and with love to yourself and kindest remembrances to the Archdeacon,

"Believe me, very affectionately yours,

"GEORGINA MILTON-CLEAVE.

"P.S. It may perhaps be as well not to mention this affair about Gertrude Morley and Mr. Zaluski. They are not yet engaged, as far as I know, and I sincerely trust it may prove to be a mere flirtation."

I had now grown to such enormous dimensions that any one who had known me in my infancy would scarcely have recognised me, while naturally the more I grew the more powerful I became, and the more capable both of impressing the minds which received me and of injuring Zaluski. Poor Zaluski, who was so foolishly, thoughtlessly happy! He little dreamed of the fate that awaited him! His whole world was bright and full of promise; each hour of love seemed to improve him, to deepen his whole character, to tone down his rather flippant manner, to awaken for him new and hitherto unthought-of realities.

But while he basked in his new happiness I travelled in my close stuffy envelope to Dulminster, and after having been tossed in and out of bags, shuffled, stamped, thumped, tied up, and generally shaken about, I arrived one morning at Dulminster Archdeaconry, and was laid on the breakfast table among other appetising things to greet Mrs. Selldon when she came downstairs.

MY FIFTH STAGE

Also it is wise not to believe everything you hear, not immediately to carry to the ears of others what you have either heard or believed.

THOMAS A KEMPIS.

Though I was read in silence at the breakfast table and not pa.s.sed on to the Archdeacon, I lay dormant in Mrs. Selldon's mind all day, and came to her aid that night when she was at her wits' end for something to talk about.

Mrs. Selldon, though a most worthy and estimable person, was of a phlegmatic temperament; her sympathies were not easily aroused, her mind was lazy and torpid, in conversation she was unutterably dull. There were times when she was painfully conscious of this, and would have given much for the ceaseless flow of words which fell from the lips of her friend Mrs. Milton-Cleave. And that evening after my arrival chanced to be one of these occasions, for there was a dinner-party at the Archdeaconry, given in honour of a well-known author who was spending a few days in the neighbourhood.

"I wish you could have Mr. Shrewsbury at your end of the table, Thomas,"

Mrs. Selldon had remarked to her husband with a sigh, as she was arranging the guests on paper that afternoon.

"Oh, he must certainly take you in, my dear," said the Archdeacon. "And he seems a very clever, well-read man, I am sure you will find him easy to talk to."

Poor Mrs. Selldon thought that she would rather have had some one who was neither clever nor well-read. But there was no help for her, and, whether she would or not, she had to go in to dinner with the literary lion.

Mr. Mark Shrewsbury was a novelist of great ability. Some twenty years before, he had been called to the bar, and, conscious of real talent, had been greatly embittered by the impossibility of getting on in his profession. At length, in disgust, he gave up all hopes of success and devoted himself instead to literature. In this field he won the recognition for which he craved; his books were read everywhere, his name became famous, his income steadily increased, and he had the pleasant consciousness that he had found his vocation. Still, in spite of his success, he could not forget the bitter years of failure and disappointment which had gone before, and though his novels were full of genius they were pervaded by an undertone of sarcasm, so that people after reading them were more ready than before to take cynical views of life.

He was one of those men whose quiet impa.s.sive faces reveal scarcely anything of their character. He was neither tall nor short, neither dark nor fair, neither handsome nor the reverse; in fact his personality was not in the least impressive; while, like most true artists, he observed all things so quietly that you rarely discovered that he was observing at all.

"Dear me!" people would say, "Is Mark Shrewsbury really here? Which is he? I don't see any one at all like my idea of a novelist."

"There he is--that man in spectacles," would be the reply.

And really the spectacles were the only noteworthy thing about him.

Mrs. Selldon, who had seen several authors and auth.o.r.esses in her time, and knew that they were as a rule most ordinary, hum-drum kind of people, was quite prepared for her fate. She remembered her astonishment as a girl when, having laughed and cried at the play, and taken the chief actor as her ideal hero, she had had him pointed out to her one day in Regent Street, and found him to be a most commonplace-looking man, the very last person one would have supposed capable of stirring the hearts of a great audience.

Meanwhile dinner progressed, and Mrs. Selldon talked to an empty-headed but loquacious man on her left, and racked her brains for something to say to the alarmingly silent author on her right. She remembered hearing that Charles d.i.c.kens would often sit silent through the whole of dinner, observing quietly those about him, but that at dessert he would suddenly come to life and keep the whole table in roars of laughter. She feared that Mr. Shrewsbury meant to imitate the great novelist in the first particular, but was scarcely likely to follow his example in the last. At length she asked him what he thought of the cathedral, and a few tepid remarks followed.

"How unutterably this good lady bores me!" thought the author.

"How odd it is that his characters talk so well in his books, and that he is such a stick!" thought Mrs. Selldon.

"I suppose it's the effect of cathedral-town atmosphere," reflected the author.

"I suppose he is eaten up with conceit and won't trouble himself to talk to me," thought the hostess.

By the time the fish had been removed they had arrived at a state of mutual contempt. Mindful of the reputation they had to keep up, however, they exerted themselves a little more while the _entrees_ went round.

"Seldom reads, I should fancy, and never thinks!" reflected the author, glancing at Mrs. Selldon's placid unintellectual face. "What on earth can I say to her?"

"Very unpractical, I am sure," reflected Mrs. Selldon. "The sort of man who lives in a world of his own, and only lays down his pen to take up a book. What subject shall I start?"

"What delightful weather we have been having the last few days!" observed the author. "Real genuine summer weather at last." The same remark had been trembling on Mrs. Selldon's lips. She a.s.sented with great cheerfulness and alacrity; and over that invaluable topic, which is always so safe, and so congenial, and so ready to hand, they grew quite friendly, and the conversation for fully five minutes was animated.

An interval of thought followed.