Delphi Complete Works of Jerome K. Jerome (Illustrated) (Series Four) (293 page)

“You wish it?” said Malvina.

It was not at all fair, as the Professor told himself afterwards, her laying the responsibility on him. If she really was the original Malvina, lady-in-waiting to Queen Harbundia, then she was quite old enough to have decided for herself. From the Professor’s calculations she must now be about three thousand eight hundred. The Professor himself was not yet sixty; in comparison a mere babe! But Malvina’s eyes were compelling.

“Well, it can’t do any harm,” said the Professor. And Malvina seems to have accepted that as her authority.

“Let her come to the Cross Stones at sundown,” directed Malvina.

The Professor saw the twins to the door. For some reason the Professor could not have explained, they all three walked out on tiptoe. Old Mr. Brent, the postman, was passing, and the twins ran after him and each took a hand. Malvina was still standing where the Professor had left her. It was very absurd, but the Professor felt frightened. He went into the kitchen, where it was light and cheerful, and started Mrs. Muldoon on Home Rule. When he returned to the parlour Malvina was gone.

The twins did not talk that night, and decided next morning not to say a word, but just to ask their mother to come for an evening walk with them. The fear was that she might demand reasons. But, quite oddly, she consented without question. It seemed to the twins that it was Mrs. Arlington herself who took the pathway leading past the cave, and when they reached the Cross Stones she sat down and apparently had forgotten their existence. They stole away without her noticing them, but did not quite know what to do with themselves. They ran for half a mile till they came to the wood; there they remained awhile, careful not to venture within; and then they crept back. They found their mother sitting just as they had left her. They thought she was asleep, but her eyes were wide open. They were tremendously relieved, though what they had feared they never knew. They sat down, one on each side of her, and each took a hand, but in spite of her eyes being open, it was quite a time before she seemed conscious of their return. She rose and slowly looked about her, and as she did so the church clock struck nine. She could not at first believe it was so late. Convinced by looking at her watch — there was just light enough for her to see it — she became all at once more angry than the twins had ever known her, and for the first time in their lives they both experienced the sensation of having their ears boxed. Nine o’clock was the proper time for supper and they were half an hour from home, and it was all their fault. It did not take them half an hour. It took them twenty minutes, Mrs. Arlington striding ahead and the twins panting breathless behind her. Mr. Arlington had not yet returned. He came in five minutes afterwards, and Mrs. Arlington told him what she thought of him. It was the shortest supper within the twins’ recollection. They found themselves in bed ten minutes in advance of the record. They could hear their mother’s voice from the kitchen. A jug of milk had been overlooked and had gone sour. She had given Jane a week’s notice before the clock struck ten.

It was from Mr. Arlington that the Professor heard the news. Mr. Arlington could not stop an instant, dinner being at twelve sharp and it wanting but ten minutes to; but seems to have yielded to temptation. The breakfast hour at the Manor Farm was now six a.m., had been so since Thursday; the whole family fully dressed and Mrs. Arlington presiding. If the Professor did not believe it he could come round any morning and see for himself. The Professor appears to have taken Mr. Arlington’s word for it. By six-thirty everybody at their job and Mrs. Arlington at hers, consisting chiefly of seeing to it for the rest of the day that everybody was. Lights out at ten and everybody in bed; most of them only too glad to be there. “Quite right; keeps us all up to the mark,” was Mr. Arlington’s opinion (this was on Saturday). Just what was wanted. Not perhaps for a permanency; and, of course, there were drawbacks. The strenuous life — seeing to it that everybody else leads the strenuous life; it does not go with unmixed amiability. Particularly in the beginning. New-born zeal: must expect it to outrun discretion. Does not do to discourage it. Modifications to be suggested later. Taken all round, Mr. Arlington’s view was that the thing must be regarded almost as the answer to a prayer. Mr. Arlington’s eyes on their way to higher levels, appear to have been arrested by the church clock. It decided Mr. Arlington to resume his homeward way without further loss of time. At the bend of the lane the Professor, looking back, observed that Mr. Arlington had broken into a trot.

This seems to have been the end of the Professor, regarded as a sane and intelligent member of modern society. He had not been sure at the time, but it was now revealed to him that when he had urged Malvina to test her strength, so to express it, on the unfortunate Mrs. Arlington, it was with the conviction that the result would restore him to his mental equilibrium. That Malvina with a wave of her wand — or whatever the hocus-pocus may have been — would be able to transform the hitherto incorrigibly indolent and easy-going Mrs. Arlington into a sort of feminine Lloyd George, had not really entered into his calculations.

Forgetting his lunch, he must have wandered aimlessly about, not returning home until late in the afternoon. During dinner he appears to have been rather restless and nervous—”jumpy,” according to the evidence of the little serving maid. Once he sprang out of his chair as if shot when the little serving maid accidentally let fall a table-spoon; and twice he upset the salt. It was at mealtime that, as a rule, the Professor found his attitude towards Malvina most sceptical. A fairy who could put away quite a respectable cut from the joint, followed by two helpings of pie, does take a bit of believing in. To-night the Professor found no difficulty. The White Ladies had never been averse to accepting mortal hospitality. There must always have been a certain adaptability. Malvina, since that fateful night of her banishment, had, one supposes, passed through varied experiences. For present purposes she had assumed the form of a jeune fille of the twentieth century (anno Domini). An appreciation of Mrs. Muldoon’s excellent cooking, together with a glass of light sound claret, would naturally go with it.

One takes it that he could not for a moment get Mrs. Arlington out of his mind. More than once, stealing a covert glance across the table, it seemed to him that Malvina was regarding him with a mocking smile. Some impish spirit it must have been that had prompted him. For thousands of years Malvina had led — at all events so far as was known — a reformed and blameless existence; had subdued and put behind her that fatal passion of hers for change: in other people. What madness to have revived it! And no Queen Harbundia handy now to keep her in check. The Professor had a distinct sensation, while peeling a pear, that he was being turned into a guinea-pig — a curious feeling of shrinking about the legs. So vivid was the impression, that involuntarily the Professor jumped off his chair and ran to look at himself in the mirror over the sideboard. He was not fully relieved even then. It may have been the mirror. It was very old; one of those things with little gilt balls all round it; and it looked to the Professor as if his nose was growing straight out of his face. Malvina, trusting he had not been taken suddenly ill, asked if there was anything she could do for him. He seems to have earnestly begged her not to think of it.

The Professor had taught Malvina cribbage, and usually of an evening they played a hand or two. But to-night the Professor was not in the mood, and Malvina had contented herself with a book. She was particularly fond of the old chroniclers. The Professor had an entire shelf of them, many in the original French. Making believe to be reading himself, he heard Malvina break into a cheerful laugh, and went and looked over her shoulder. She was reading the history of her own encounter with the proprietor of tin mines, an elderly gentleman disliking late hours, whom she had turned into a nightingale. It occurred to the Professor that prior to the Arlington case the recalling of this incident would have brought to her shame and remorse. Now she seemed to think it funny.

“A silly trick,” commented the Professor. He spoke quite heatedly. “No one has any right to go about changing people. Muddling up things they don’t understand. No right whatever.”

Malvina looked up. She gave a little sigh.

“Not for one’s own pleasure or revenge,” she made answer. Her tone was filled with meekness. It had a touch of self-reproach. “That is very wrong, of course. But changing them for their own good — at least, not changing, improving.”

“Little hypocrite!” muttered the Professor to himself. “She’s got back a taste for her old tricks, and Lord knows now where she’ll stop.”

The Professor spent the rest of the evening among his indexes in search of the latest information regarding Queen Harbundia.

Meanwhile the Arlington affair had got about the village. The twins in all probability had been unable to keep their secret. Jane, the dismissed, had looked in to give Mrs. Muldoon her version of Thursday night’s scene in the Arlington kitchen, and Mrs. Muldoon, with a sense of things impending, may unconsciously have dropped hints.

The Marigolds met the Arlingtons on Sunday, after morning service, and heard all about it. That is to say, they met Mr. Arlington and the other children; Mrs. Arlington, with the two elder girls, having already attended early communion at seven. Mrs. Marigold was a pretty, fluffy, engaging little woman, ten years younger than her husband. She could not have been altogether a fool, or she would not have known it. Marigold, rising politician, ought, of course, to have married a woman able to help him; but seems to have fallen in love with her a few miles out of Brussels, over a convent wall. Mr. Arlington was not a regular church-goer, but felt on this occasion that he owed it to his Maker. He was still in love with his new wife. But not blindly. Later on a guiding hand might be necessary. But first let the new seed get firmly rooted. Marigold’s engagements necessitated his returning to town on Sunday afternoon, and Mrs. Marigold walked part of the way with him to the station. On her way back across the fields she picked up the Arlington twins. Later, she seems to have called in at the cottage and spoken to Mrs. Muldoon about Jane, who, she had heard, was in want of a place. A little before sunset she was seen by the Doctor climbing the path to the Warren. Malvina that evening was missing for dinner. When she returned she seemed pleased with herself.

VI. AND HOW IT WAS FINISHED TOO SOON.

Some days later — it may have been the next week; the exact date appears to have got mislaid — Marigold, M.P., looked in on the Professor. They talked about Tariff Reform, and then Marigold got up and made sure for himself that the door was tight closed.

“You know my wife,” he said. “We’ve been married six years, and there’s never been a cloud between us except one. Of course, she’s not brainy. That is, at least...”

The Professor jumped out of his chair.

“If you take my advice,” he said, “you’ll leave her alone.” He spoke with passion and conviction.

Marigold looked up.

“It’s just what I wish to goodness I had done,” he answered. “I blame myself entirely.”

“So long as we see our own mistakes,” said the Professor, “there is hope for us all. You go straight home, young man, and tell her you’ve changed your mind. Tell her you don’t want her with brains. Tell her you like her best without. You get that into her head before anything else happens.”

“I’ve tried to,” said Marigold. “She says it’s too late. That the light has come to her and she can’t help it.”

It was the Professor’s turn to stare. He had not heard anything of Sunday’s transactions. He had been hoping against hope that the Arlington affair would remain a locked secret between himself and the twins, and had done his best to think about everything else.

“She’s joined the Fabian Society,” continued Marigold gloomily. “They’ve put her in the nursery. And the W.S.P.U. If it gets about before the next election I’ll have to look out for another constituency — that’s all.”

“How did you hear about her?” asked the Professor.

“I didn’t hear about her,” answered Marigold. “If I had I mightn’t have gone up to town. You think it right,” he added, “to — to encourage such people?”

“Who’s encouraging her?” demanded the professor. “If fools didn’t go about thinking they could improve every other fool but themselves, this sort of thing wouldn’t happen. Arlington had an amiable, sweet-tempered wife, and instead of thanking God and keeping quiet about it, he worries her out of her life because she is not the managing woman. Well, now he’s got the managing woman. I met him on Wednesday with a bump on his forehead as big as an egg. Says he fell over the mat. It can’t be done. You can’t have a person changed just as far as you want them changed and there stop. You let ’em alone or you change them altogether, and then they don’t know themselves what they’re going to turn out. A sensible man in your position would have been only too thankful for a wife who didn’t poke her nose into his affairs, and with whom he could get away from his confounded politics. You’ve been hinting to her about once a month, I expect, what a tragedy it was that you hadn’t married a woman with brains. Well, now she’s found her brains and is using them. Why shouldn’t she belong to the Fabian Society and the W.S.P.U? Shows independence of character. Best thing for you to do is to join them yourself. Then you’ll be able to work together.”

“I’m sorry,” said Marigold rising. “I didn’t know you agreed with her.”

“Who said I agreed with her?” snapped the Professor. “I’m in a very awkward position.”

“I suppose,” said Marigold — he was hesitating with the door in his hand—”it wouldn’t be of any use my seeing her myself?”

“I believe,” said the Professor, “that she is fond of the neighbourhood of the Cross Stones towards sundown. You can choose for yourself, but if I were you I should think twice about it.”

“I was wondering,” said Marigold, “whether, if I put it to her as a personal favour, she might not be willing to see Edith again and persuade her that she was only joking?”