Malvina of Brittany. Джером К. Джером
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then he came again and stood beside her on the yellow sands.
"England!" he explained with a wave of his hand. One fancies she had the impression that it belonged to him. Graciously she repeated the name. And somehow, as it fell from her lips, it conjured up to Commander Raffleton a land of wonder and romance.
"I have heard of it," she added. "I think I shall like it."
He answered that he hoped she would. He was deadly serious about it. He possessed, generally speaking, a sense of humour; but for the moment this must have deserted him. He told her he was going to leave her in the care of a wise and learned man called "Cousin Christopher"; his description no doubt suggesting to Malvina a friendly magician. He himself would have to go away for a little while, but would return.
It did not seem to matter to Malvina, these minor details. It was evident—the idea in her mind—that he had been appointed to her. Whether as master or servant it was less easy to conjecture: probably a mixture of both, with preference towards the latter.
He mentioned again that he would not be away for longer than he could help. There was no necessity for this repetition. She wasn't doubting it.
Weymouth with its bathing machines and its gasometer faded away. King Rufus was out a-hunting as they passed over the New Forest, and from Salisbury Plain, as they looked down, the pixies waved their hands and laughed. Later, they heard the clang of the anvil, telling them they were in the neighbourhood of Wayland Smith's cave; and so planed down sweetly and without a jar just beyond Cousin Christopher's orchard gate.
A shepherd's boy was whistling somewhere upon the Downs, and in the valley a ploughman had just harnessed his team; but the village was hidden from them by the sweep of the hills, and no other being was in sight. He helped Malvina out, and leaving her seated on a fallen branch beneath a walnut tree, proceeded cautiously towards the house. He found a little maid in the garden. She had run out of the house on hearing the sound of his propeller and was staring up into the sky, so that she never saw him until he put his hand upon her shoulder, and then was fortunately too frightened to scream. He gave her hasty instructions. She was to knock at the Professor's door and tell him that his cousin, Commander Raffleton, was there, and would he come down at once, by himself, into the orchard. Commander Raffleton would rather not come in. Would the Professor come down at once and speak to Commander Raffleton in the orchard.
She went back into the house, repeating it all to herself, a little scared.
"Good God!" said Cousin Christopher from beneath the bedclothes. "He isn't hurt, is he?"
The little maid, through the jar of the door, thought not. Anyhow, he didn't look it. But would the Professor kindly come at once? Commander Raffleton was waiting for him—in the orchard.
So Cousin Christopher, in bedroom slippers, without socks, wearing a mustard-coloured dressing-gown and a black skull cap upon his head—the very picture of a friendly magician—trotted hastily downstairs and through the garden, talking to himself about "foolhardy boys" and "knowing it would happen"; and was much relieved to meet young Arthur Raffleton coming towards him, evidently sound in wind and limb. And then began to wonder why the devil he had been frightened out of bed at six o'clock in the morning if nothing was the matter.
But something clearly was. Before speaking Arthur Raffleton looked carefully about him in a manner suggestive of mystery, if not of crime; and still without a word, taking Cousin Christopher by the arm, led the way to the farther end of the orchard. And there, on a fallen branch beneath the walnut tree, Cousin Christopher saw apparently a khaki coat, with nothing in it, which, as they approached it, rose up.
But it did not rise very high. The back of the coat was towards them. Its collar stood out against the sky line. But there wasn't any head. Standing upright, it turned round, and peeping out of its folds Cousin Christopher saw a child's face. And then looking closer saw that it wasn't a child. And then wasn't quite sure what it was; so that coming to a sudden halt in front of it, Cousin Christopher stared at it with round wide eyes, and then at Flight Commander Raffleton.
It was to Malvina that Flight Commander Raffleton addressed himself.
"This," he said, "is Professor Littlecherry, my Cousin Christopher, about whom I told you."
It was obvious that Malvina regarded the Professor as a person of importance. Evidently her intention was to curtsy, an operation that, hampered by those trailing yards of clinging khaki, might prove—so it flashed upon the Professor—not only difficult but dangerous.
"Allow me," said the Professor.
His idea was to help Malvina out of Commander Raffleton's coat, and Malvina was preparing to assist him. Commander Raffleton was only just in time.
"I don't think," said Commander Raffleton. "If you don't mind I think we'd better leave that for Mrs. Muldoon."
The Professor let go the coat. Malvina appeared a shade disappointed. One opines that not unreasonably she may have thought to make a better impression without it. But a smiling acquiescence in all arrangements made for her welfare seems to have been one of her charms.
"Perhaps," suggested Commander Raffleton to Malvina while refastening a few of the more important buttons, "if you wouldn't mind explaining yourself to my Cousin Christopher just exactly who and what you are—you'd do it so much better than I should." (What Commander Raffleton was saying to himself was: "If I tell the dear old Johnny, he'll think I'm pulling his leg. It will sound altogether different the way she will put it.") "You're sure you don't mind?"
Malvina hadn't the slightest objection. She accomplished her curtsy—or rather it looked as if the coat were curtsying—quite gracefully, and with a dignity one would not have expected from it.
"I am the fairy Malvina," she explained to the Professor. "You may have heard of me. I was the favourite of Harbundia, Queen of the White Ladies of Brittany. But that was long ago."
The friendly magician was staring at her with a pair of round eyes that in spite of their amazement looked kindly and understanding. They probably encouraged Malvina to complete the confession of her sad brief history.
"It was when King Heremon ruled over Ireland," she continued. "I did a very foolish and a wicked thing, and was punished for it by being cast out from the companionship of my fellows. Since then"—the coat made the slightest of pathetic gestures—"I have wandered alone."
It ought to have sounded so ridiculous to them both; told on English soil in the year One Thousand Nine Hundred and Fourteen to a smart young officer of Engineers and an elderly Oxford Professor. Across the road the doctor's odd man was opening garage doors; a noisy milk cart was clattering through the village a little late for the London train; a faint odour of eggs and bacon came wafted through the garden, mingled with the scent of lavender and pinks. For Commander Raffleton, maybe, there was excuse. This story, so far as it has gone, has tried to make that clear. But the Professor! He ought to have exploded in a burst of Homeric laughter, or else to have shaken his head at her and warned her where little girls go to who do this sort of thing.
Instead of which he stared from Commander Raffleton to Malvina, and from Malvina back to Commander Raffleton with eyes so astonishingly round that they might have been drawn with a compass.
"God bless my soul!" said the Professor. "But this is most extraordinary!"
"Was there a King Heremon of Ireland?" asked Commander Raffleton. The Professor was a well-known authority on these matters.
"Of course there was a King Heremon of Ireland," answered the Professor quite petulantly—as if the Commander had wanted to know if there had ever been a Julius Caesar or a Napoleon. "And so there was a Queen Harbundia. Malvina is always spoken of in connection with her."
"What did she do?" inquired Commander Raffleton. They both of them seemed to be oblivious of Malvina's presence.
"I forget for the moment," confessed the professor. "I must look it up. Something, if I remember rightly, in connection with the daughter of King Dancrat. He founded the Norman dynasty. William the Conqueror and all that