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?"
A light began to break upon the Professor.
"What do you think has happened?" he asked.
"Well," explained Marigold, "I take it that your young foreign friend
has met my wife and talked politics to her, and that what has happened
is the result. She must be a young person of extraordinary ability;
but it would be only losing one convert, and I could make it up to her
in--in other ways." He spoke with unconscious pathos. It rather
touched the Professor.
"It might mean," said the Professor--"that is, assuming that it can be
done at all--Mrs. Marigold's returning to her former self entirely,
taking no further interest in politics whatever."
"I should be so very grateful," answered Marigold.
The Professor had mislaid his spectacles, but thinks there was a tear
in Marigold's eye.
"I'll do what I can," said the Professor. "Of course, you mustn't
count on it. It may be easier to start a woman thinking than to stop
her, even for a--" The Professor checked himself just in time. "I'll
talk to her," he said; and Marigold gripped his hand and departed.
It was about time he did. The full extent of Malvina's activities
during those few midsummer weeks, till the return of Flight Commander
Raffleton, will never perhaps be fully revealed. According to the
Doctor, the whole business has been grossly exaggerated. There are
those who talk as if half the village had been taken to pieces, altered
and improved and sent back home again in a mental state unrecognisable
by their own mothers. Certain it is that Dawson, R.A., generally
described by everybody except his wife as "a lovable little man," and
whose only fault was an incurable habit of punning, both in season--if
such a period there be--and more often out, suddenly one morning
smashed a Dutch interior, fifteen inches by nine, over the astonished
head of Mrs. Dawson. It clung round her neck, recalling biblical
pictures of the head of John the Baptist, and the frame-work had to be
sawn through before she could get it off. As to the story about his
having been caught by Mrs. Dawson's aunt kissing the housemaid behind
the waterbutt, that, as the Doctor admits, is a bit of bad luck that
might have happened to anyone. But whether there was really any
evidence connecting him with Dolly Calthorpe's unaccountable missing of
the last train home, is of course, a more serious matter. Mrs. Dawson,
a handsome, high-spirited woman herself, may have found Dawson, as
originally fashioned, trying to the nerves; though even then the
question arises: Why have married him? But there is a difference, as
Mrs. Dawson has pointed out, between a husband who hasn't enough of the
natural man in him and a husband who has a deal too much. It is
difficult to regulate these matters.
Altogether, and taking an outside estimate, the Doctor's opinion is
that there may have been half a dozen, who, with Malvina's assistance,
succeeded in hypnotising themselves into temporary insanity. When
Malvina, a little disappointed, but yielding quite sweetly her own
judgment to that of the wise and learned Christopher, consented to
"restore" them, the explanation was that, having spent their burst of
ill-acquired energy, they fell back at the first suggestion to their
former selves.
Mrs. Arlington does not agree with the Doctor. She had been trying to
reform herself for quite a long time and had miserably failed. There
was something about them--it might almost be described as an
aroma--that prompted her that evening to take the twins into her
confidence; a sort of intuition that in some way they could help her.
It remained with her all the next day; and when the twins returned in
the evening, in company with the postman, she knew instinctively that
they had been about her business. It was this same intuitive desire
that drew her to the Downs. She is confident she would have taken that
walk to the Cross Stones even if the twins had not proposed it.
Indeed, according to her own account, she was not aware that the twins
had accompanied her. There was something about the stones; a sense as
of a presence. She knew when she reached them that she had arrived at
the appointed place; and when there appeared to her--coming from where
she could not tell--a diminutive figure that seemed in some mysterious
way as if it were clothed merely in the fading light, she remembered
distinctly that she was neither surprised nor alarmed. The diminutive
lady sat down beside her and took Mrs. Arlington's hands in both her
own. She spoke in a strange language, but Mrs. Arlington at the time
understood it, though now the meaning of it had passed from her. Mrs.
Arlington felt as if her body were being taken away from her. She had a
sense of falling, a feeling that she must make some desperate effort to
rise again. The strange little lady was helping her, assisting her to
make this supreme effort. It was as if ages were passing. She was
wrestling with unknown powers. Suddenly she seemed to slip from them.
The little lady was holding her up. Clasping each other, they rose and
rose and rose. Mrs. Arlington had a firm conviction that she must
always be struggling upward, or they would overtake her and drag her
down again. When she awoke the little lady had gone, but that feeling
remained with her; that passionate acceptance of ceaseless struggle,
activity, contention, as now the end and aim of her existence. At
first she did not recollect where she was. A strange colourless light
was around her, and a strange singing as of myriads of birds. And then
the clock struck nine and life came back to her with a rush. But with
it still that conviction that she must seize hold of herself and
everybody else and get things done. Its immediate expression, as
already has been mentioned, was experienced by the twins.
When, after a talk with the Professor, aided and abetted by Mr.
Arlington and the eldest Arlington girl, she consented to pay that
second visit to the stones, it was with very different sensations that
she climbed the grass-grown path. The little lady had met her as
before, but the curious deep eyes looked sadly, and Mrs. Arlington had
the impression, generally speaking, that she was about to assist at her
own funeral. Again the little lady took her by the hands, and again
she experienced that terror of falling. But instead of ending with
contest and effort she seemed to pass into a sleep, and when she opened
her eyes she was again alone. Feeling a little chilly and unreasonably
tired, she walked slowly home, and not being hungry, retired supperless
to bed. Quite unable to explain why, she seems to have cried herself
to sleep.
One supposes that something of a similar nature may have occurred to
the others--with the exception of Mrs. Marigold. It was the case of
Mrs. Marigold that, as the Doctor grudgingly admits, went far to weaken
his hypothesis. Mrs. Marigold, having emerged, was spreading herself,
much to her own satisfaction. She had discarded her wedding ring as a
relic of barbarism--of the days when women were mere goods and
chattels, and had made her first speech at a meeting in favour of
marriage reform. Subterfuge, in her case, had to be resorted to.
Malvina had tearfully consented, and Marigold, M.P., was to bring Mrs.
Marigold to the Cross Stones that same evening and there leave her,
explaining to her that Malvina had expressed a wish to see her
again--"just for a chat."
All might have ended well if only Commander Raffleton had not appeared
framed in the parlour door just as Malvina was starting. His Cousin
Christopher had written to the Commander. Indeed, after the Arlington
affair, quite pressingly, and once or twice had thought he heard the
sound of Flight Commander Raffleton's propeller, but on each occasion
had been disappointed. "Affairs of State," Cousin Christopher had
explained to Malvina, who, familiar one takes it with the calls upon
knights and warriors through all the ages, had approved.
He stood there with his helmet in his hand.
"Only arrived this afternoon from France," he explained. "Haven't a
moment to spare."
But he had just time to go straight to Malvina. He laughed as he took
her in his arms and kissed her full upon the lips.
When last he had kissed her--it had been in the orchard; the Professor
had been witness to it--Malvina had remained quite passive, only that
curious little smile about her lips. But now an odd thing happened. A
quivering seemed to pass through all her body, so that it swayed and
trembled. The Professor feared she was going to fall; and, maybe to
save herself, she put up her arms about Commander Raffleton's neck, and
with a strange low cry--it sounded to the Professor like the cry one
sometimes hears at night from some little dying creature of the
woods--she clung to him sobbing.
It must have been a while later when the chiming of the clock recalled
to the Professor the appointment with Mrs. Marigold.
"You will only just have time," he said, gently seeking to release her.
"I'll promise to keep him till you come back." And as Malvina did not
seem to understand, he reminded her.
But still she made no movement, save for a little gesture of the hands
as if she were seeking to lay hold of something unseen. And then she
dropped her arms and looked from one of them to the other. The
Professor did not think of it at the time, but remembered afterwards;
that strange aloofness of hers, as if she were looking at you from
another world. One no longer felt it.
"I am so sorry," she said. "It is too late. I am only a woman."
And Mrs. Marigold is still thinking.