第18章 AND HOW IT WAS FINISHED TOO SOON.(1)

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.