Malvina of Brittany | Page 8

demons of
poetry and romance and mystery chanting their witches' music in his
ears, against the marvel and the glory of her as she stood beside him,
clothed in the purple of the night, Flight Commander Raffleton fought
the good fight for common sense.
Young persons who, scantily clad, go to sleep on the heather, five miles
from the nearest human habitation, are to be avoided by
well-brought-up young officers of His Majesty's Aerial Service. The
incidence of their being uncannily beautiful and alluring should serve
as an additional note of warning. The girl had had a row with her
mother and wanted to get away. It was this infernal moonlight that was
chiefly responsible. No wonder dogs bayed at it. He almost fancied he
could hear one now. Nice, respectable, wholesome-minded things, dogs.
No damned sentiment about them. What if he had kissed her! One is
not bound for life to every woman one kisses. Not the first time she had
been kissed, unless all the young men in Brittany were blind or white
blooded. All this pretended innocence and simplicity! It was just put on.
If not, she must be a lunatic. The proper thing to do was to say
good-bye with a laugh and a jest, start up his machine and be off to
England--dear old practical, merry England, where he could get
breakfast and a bath.
It wasn't a fair fight; one feels it. Poor little prim Common Sense, with
her defiant, turned-up nose and her shrill giggle and her innate
vulgarity. And against her the stillness of the night, and the music of
the ages, and the beating of his heart.
So it all fell down about his feet, a little crumbled dust that a passing

breath of wind seemed to scatter, leaving him helpless, spellbound by
the magic of her eyes.
"Who are you?" he asked her.
"Malvina," she answered him. "I am a fairy."

III. HOW COUSIN CHRISTOPHER BECAME MIXED UP WITH IT.

It did just occur to him that maybe he had not made that descent quite
as successfully as he had thought he had; that maybe he had come
down on his head; that in consequence he had done with the
experiences of Flight Commander Raffleton and was now about to
enter on a new and less circumscribed existence. If so, the beginning, to
an adventuresome young spirit, seemed promising. It was Malvina's
voice that recalled him from this train of musing.
"Shall we go?" she repeated, and this time the note in her voice
suggested command rather than question.
Why not? Whatever had happened to him, at whatever plane of
existence he was now arrived, the machine apparently had followed
him. Mechanically he started it up. The familiar whir of the engine
brought back to him the possibility of his being alive in the ordinary
acceptation of the term. It also suggested to him the practical
advisability of insisting that Malvina should put on his spare coat.
Malvina being five feet three, and the coat having been built for a man
of six feet one, the effect under ordinary circumstances would have
been comic. What finally convinced Commander Raffleton that
Malvina really was a fairy was that, in that coat, with the collar
standing up some six inches above her head, she looked more like one
than ever.
Neither of them spoke. Somehow it did not seem to be needed. He
helped her to climb into her seat and tucked the coat about her feet. She
answered by the same smile with which she had first stretched out her
hand to him. It was just a smile of endless content, as if all her troubles
were now over. Commander Raffleton sincerely hoped they were. A
momentary flash of intelligence suggested to him that his were just
beginning.
Commander Raffleton's subconscious self it must have been that took
charge of the machine. He seems, keeping a few miles inland, to have

followed the line of the coast to a little south of the Hague lighthouse.
Thereabouts he remembers descending for the purpose of replenishing
his tank. Not having anticipated a passenger, he had filled up before
starting with a spare supply of petrol, an incident that was fortunate.
Malvina appears to have been interested in watching what she probably
regarded as some novel breed of dragon being nourished from tins
extricated from under her feet, but to have accepted this, together with
all other details of the flight, as in the natural scheme of things. The
monster refreshed, tugged, spurned the ground, and rose again with a
roar; and the creeping sea rushed down.
One has the notion that for Flight Commander Raffleton, as for the rest
of us, there lies in wait to test the heart of him the ugly