Malvina of BrittanyJerome, Jerome K. (Jerome Klapka)
Science
Malvina of Brittany
Jerome, Jerome K. (Jerome Klapka)
Brittany (France) -- Fiction; Short stories, English
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.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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