Marigold A story
through the window he made a rare picture, with the little cripple
crept up so happily against his shoulder.”
The proud lips closed rather tightly. “Oh yes, I dare say he is very
clever and very kind, and he didn’t look exactly like a quack, but--but
he is horribly rude--rude and unkind, without occasion.”
“He didn’t approve of your dancing. No religious man would. That
twirling and twisting was never meant for righteous people.”
“He never saw me dance--and it wasn’t that. He was jealous of me,
Alice.”
“Jealous? A full-grown man jealous of a woman, Princess?”
“Why not? The little cripple boy loves me; before, he loved no one but
him.”
Alice looked perfectly unconvinced, and Marigold continued:
“You don’t believe me, yet it’s true. But still we won’t argue it. I
want you to bring me the patchwork quilt. I’m going to make a dress of
it as neat as neat can be. It will please little Patches to see all the
pretty colours, and as for Dr Quack--actually he told me to sweep the
floor, and called my dancing antics.”
“And you mean to go in to-morrow when he is there?”
“Oh no. I’ll make the dress to-morrow, and go in the day after.”
And so not long afterwards they retired for the night.
CHAPTER XII
“I hear you walked home from the Temple,” St Armand remarked lightly.
“Now, that’s what I call sensible. Nothing like a healthy walk! It
stirs the megrims.”
“I almost agree with you. I enjoyed it, I believe--if I remember
anything about enjoyment. And on my way home I paid a call.”
“A professional one?”
“Well, partly. Yes, wholly, I suppose. I called upon the beggar girl.”
“I saw her at vespers to-night. I like the little beggar girl. She has
a rather interesting face.”
“She is scarcely more than a child. When you see her with her hat off,
she looks ridiculously young.”
“Pretty?”
“Yes. I should say very pretty, and an exceptionally sweet voice. But
she reminds me of some one--I cannot think whom; but every now and
then her eyes bring back the strongest recollection of--I don’t know
what.”
“Some half-forgotten love affair perhaps.”
“No; the only woman I ever cared at all about had dark eyes.”
St Armand did not even smile; you cannot afford to be flippant when you
are acting Father Confessor to the highest priest.
“Then I can make no other suggestion. What is the colour of her eyes?”
“Truth is sometimes stranger than fiction. If they were not green, I
would swear they were blue. As it is, I believe oftentimes they are the
next best thing to black.”
“You say her eyes are green?”
“I’m bound to say so.”
“Whom do we know with green eyes?”
“No one with pretensions to any beauty--no one at all.”
“Except the Serpent.” How easily and subtly the words fell out, linking
the two names together--woman and the God of Lucifram!
“Ah, yes! the Serpent,” said Alphonso, almost with a start. “But her
eyes convey no impression of power--only beauty.”
“When will you see her again?” St Armand asked the question
thoughtfully, as if taking it quite for granted he must see her soon.
“I do not know. Perhaps never. Our lives lie so very far apart.”
The other’s lips curled almost, yet not quite imperceptibly, and he
knocked the ash from the end of his cigar. “Why should the lives of the
poor always lie so far from the lives of the rich? Can’t you make her
into a respectable woman?”
“I believe she is respectable. Her aunt with whom she lives looked
bourgeois and respectable enough for the most fastidious.”
“Oh, I thought she lived with her father and a large family.”
Alphonso laughed. “I’m afraid it was all a pack of lies--from some
childish whim to gain admittance to the Palace.”
“When will you see her again?”
“I’m afraid I shall never see her.”
Then for the first time in their short friendship--for their personal
introduction had taken place within the month--St Armand turned the
blaze of his strong eyes on to the less powerful ones, and from them
gleamed all those strange passions and desires that men feel in their
weaker moments and scarcely understand. And as he looked into the human
eyes before him, probing their weakness with no mercy nor forbearance,
the High Priest’s shell-like armour invisibly gave way. Neither shame
nor dismay came over him; he did not know the shell was broken--he
felt only some tight band had loosened, giving him--was it relief? And
how the dark eyes fascinated him! He read in them so many things long
since forgotten--so many feelings years since passed away.
And then they blame a woman--her beauty or her fascination--and God,
the Afterthought, stands silent.
“Can it be you don’t intend to see her after going this far?” He spoke
with neither passion nor hurry, neither contempt, only wonder perfectly
feigned--and his eyes turned slowly to the fireplace, his hand shading
his face.
Alphonso sat still looking at him, wishing weakly the eyes would turn
again back towards him. But, as if reading his thoughts, St Armand
continued:
“She has very pretty eyes, and she is fond of you. I think, child-like,
she would never tire of looking at you, and you would learn from the
changing light in her eyes all that a man has ever need to know. I am
old, my eyes are growing dim and duller; but she is young--what she has
not learnt you can teach her it, and grow young again listening to the
light chattering of youth.”
The other moved restlessly in his chair.
“I can never see her, St Armand. I am bound in by priests and servants
and machine-like routine.”
“I think I will be your servant. As your friend I will walk out with
you. For a week or two you shall take the light holiday that your
state of health requires. Give Eaglestone a rest; I will become
Vice-Chaplain,” and he laughed a light, pleasant laugh suggestive of
good-nature and light-heartedness.
“What do you mean?”
“I mean that in the morning you and I shall take a stroll through the
Temple Close. I am engaged upon a few poor sketches to fill my leisure
hours. We shall neither of us find the time dull, I promise you.”
Just then some guests of the evening were announced--high dignitaries
in that golden church; and all were stiff and formal like their master.
But before his eyes all evening danced a vision--a pretty face, a
sylph-like figure, fairy fingers, and a voice ridiculously sweet
and child-like too, and above all, the blazing coal-black eyes,
blinding his vision, yet compelling him to feel as they dictated--to
_feel_, the first time for over twenty years.
CHAPTER XIII
So next morning, when Dr Quack called upon Timothy, he found no rival,
nor stew, nor upset kitchen--only the little sufferer quite alone;
and little Tim was worse that morning, for he had such a nasty pain
when he coughed, and he looked thinner and more wasted than ever;
and Marigold, tired of cutting and sewing, went out for a ramble all
alone amongst the Temple grounds, whilst Alice cooked the dinner. And
Marigold, being one of those people who can’t keep away from things,
wended her way towards the creeper-covered arch, the splendid ruins of
a portion long disused. The sun shone in all its glory, yet without any
of that stifling and oppressive heat that so often characterises our
climate here on earth, and the quaint broken arches cast long shadows
on the sunlit path. And there was no Alice there, the Board-School
product of materialism--no one but Marigold. And as she came along the
pathway, she saw St Armand sitting there on the gnarled tree roots, a
sketch-block on his knee; and there beside him, the great High Priest
upon a camp-stool. For men who sit on thrones rarely get the pleasure
of sitting on the ground, and if you sit on a throne long enough, after
a while you don’t appreciate the pleasure of it--the ground, of course.
But Marigold did not draw back. Why should she? She had just come away
from a looking-glass, and seen a picture through it that she kissed to
annoy Alice; and so she called out gaily to the artist, not the priest:
“I’ve come on purpose, just so that I may spoil your picture.”
“On the contrary, you’ve just brought the finishing-touches.”
“You didn’t say that the last time I came here.”
“I believe you wore clogs and a jacket, and worse still, you brought a
companion who was thick-set and uneducated.”
“No; she has been very well educated at one of the best Board-Schools.”
“Sure sign she knows nothing. They fiddle too much at the
Board-Schools--make too much fuss over teaching, and neglect the
learning.”
Marigold was not interested in this, so she turned to the High Priest,
and smiled a little more sweetly, and certainly a little more shyly,
than at St Armand.
“You will find it very cool and shady under this big tree,” said she;
and the octogenarian bent his head and went on with his sketching, for
of all things he was a humorist, and never failed to find human beings
amusing in their love affairs.
“Yes, we are taking a morning’s holiday--the first with me for, I might
say, many a year”; and he rose from the camp-stool and stood looking
down at her, with an interest Marigold noticed was different from any
he had ever taken in her before--different even from last night.
“How you must be enjoying it then,” said she. “But I thought you
would have gone a long way off from the Temple for a holiday; people
generally do go as far off from their work as they can.”
“A priest’s work is slightly different from that of any other calling.”
“Yes; you’re never done, are you? even on Sundays when everybody else
is resting.”
No one could have resisted Marigold’s tone; it was not familiar, it
was full of delightful sympathy. Alphonso smiled. He could have gone
on listening to that voice indefinitely, so long as the subject was
himself.
“No; I’m afraid we’re never done. Now your life, I suppose, is one long
holiday?”
“No; I’ve been dressmaking ever since six o’clock. I came out
because--oh! because of the sunshine, you know. I love it best of
anything.”
“Yes, I think you must have borrowed all this pretty hair from the sun.”
“You said once you didn’t approve of it.”
“When can that have been?”
“The first night I saw you--when I begged the money off you.”
“Yes, I remember.” And then Marigold laughed, and, wonder of wonders!
he laughed too.
“I like coming here,” said she; “you quite forget there are hundreds
and thousands of people all round you. I wonder how it is the Temple is
so very, very beautiful?”
“The Serpent made it.”
“Yes,” said she, a mystic kind of beauty creeping in her eyes, and she
looked at him with reverence and awe, but with beauty uppermost.
No man could have easily stood that glance of Marigold’s. It was as
if she had set him on a pedestal, not too high, and worshipped him
from not too far a distance--almost as if the golden hair fell on his
feet and the soft lips kissed them. So felt the great High Priest,
changed from last night into a man again, no more the frozen statue;
and neither of them noticed the silence following, for in love, that
kind as well as others, closer bonds are knit in silence than in any
sparkling talk or thrilling conversation. And St Armand sketched them
as they stood there, so oblivious were they of his presence--sketched
them, laughing the while. But shortly another step sounded on the
gravel, coming towards the archway; Marigold turned, St Armand looked
up, the High Priest likewise.
“Sacred Serpent! Barringcourt!” said the latter in electric accents.
Marigold heard the old man at their feet give a low whistle, and saw
him close the sketch-book quickly; and she herself felt a wave of
faintness for the instant--something like little Patches spoke of, but
perhaps from other causes than affected him. So they all met face to