Marigold A story
saw the High Priest walk away, forgetting her, the beggar girl who had
smiled, and given him a greater intimacy than ever any man before.
Again she heard the doctor’s laugh--that light insolence that galled
her spirit to the quick, and called up all the long centuries of
fighting pride that mingled with her blood.
And again the soft voice tempting her to fling aside all the carping
responsibilities of life, and take a side in the big game--winning or
losing. To fight against the Master, this Mr Barringcourt, this quack
insufferable--to fight as spirits do--the body, that tame servant,
working its little part in the big argument, for the universal end.
“What is my body?” said she, laughing at her reflection in the glass.
“Something that will wear out and die, and never come again to me.
Something I may give away to any man, provided that I don’t forget
and then repeat the gift to some one else--like some kind ladies do.
Why should I feel his laugh this morning? I should have laughed as
well. I’ll give my body to the great High Priest, if he begs hard
enough--only if he begs very, very hard; and I’ll keep my soul to give
to no man--not even elderly gentlemen who sit on camp-stools to escape
the indignity of sitting on the ground.”
Thus was Marigold, so lately doleful, once more herself again.
With ribbons and strings and laughter she set out to sing for Patches,
dancing all the way.
Like those who are very, very ill, Patches looked worse to-day, though
yesterday you would have thought he never could look worse. Yet his
face brightened up wonderfully when she appeared.
“I knew you’d come,” said he.
“Of course,” said Marigold. “I couldn’t stay away, because I’ve really
come to love you, Patches, dear.”
“To love _me_?” he said, looking up with big dark eyes.
“Yes. You’re good, and you make me feel good. When I go away from you,
I begin to have all kinds of see-saw feelings--up and down, every
way. I think you must be one of the little green men who live within
the magic circle. That’s how it is you know so many kings and queens,
because kings and queens always like to be where no one else can get,
though they don’t always manage it.”
“Do they have any pain in the magic circle?”
“No, never. There’s a big notice on the outside ring, saying ‘Pain not
admitted on penalty of Death’; and so he keeps out, because he wants to
live like most things else--though it isn’t very kind of him.”
“Then I’m not a green man, because I have pain?”
“Well, if you’re not, you will be some day.”
“Miss Rags,” he said, suddenly sitting up in his chair eagerly,
“I’ll--I’ll tell you what I’ll do. When it comes my turn to go in, I’ll
grab hold of Pain ever so tight and not leave go of him, and then he’ll
be forced to go in with me--and then they’ll kill him--and everybody
else outside here will be quite safe then.”
“But how brave you’ll have to be to keep tight hold of him!”
“Yes, I know. But if I’d been all right and had my leg, I was going to
be a soldier. Why--why--do your eyes keep filling with tears, like
that?”
“Oh! I don’t know. I expect I’m not the right one to come to you. You
should have Dr Quack all the time. He’s got a big hard heart, and he
doesn’t know how to cry, so--so he can’t.”
“No. He never cries. I wouldn’t like him to. But you’re different. I
don’t mind you. It’s company for when I do myself.”
“Timothy, which of us do you like best--him or me?”
A silence followed--and Marigold wondered why she should hear her own
heart beating so in the stillness.
At last he said:
“I love you both. But I love him best, because he found me first--and
he is strong and kind with me.”
Then Marigold was silent, with a dull disappointment, because,
unreasonably, she had hoped so much from this reply.
“Yes,” she said at length, “he is strong and kind and good to you. And
I am frivolous and giddy. But you like me second best, don’t you?”
“Yes, second best. Mother I love different, you know.”
“And even if Dr Quack doesn’t like me, you will still let me come,
won’t you, Patches?”
“Oh yes. But I think he does like you--at least, I think he doesn’t
mind much, either way. He said this morning if you would only
dress respectable and be tidy, you might make a very nice little
nurse--seeing I’d taken a fancy to you. He told your aunt when she was
in here and they were talking.”
“Oh! and what did she say?”
“She said she’d argued with you every way, but that you had never had
any taste in dress. And that’s all they said about you.”
“Would you like me for a nurse, Patches?”
“Oh! I should love it.”
“But if I’m the nurse, I’ll have to stay in when the doctor comes.”
“I expect it will all depend on him,” said Patches. “Perhaps, if he
once got used to you, he’d like you--especially if you only had another
dress.”
CHAPTER XV
That night the patchwork dress was finished, and it was really very
beautiful. It just cleared the ground very gracefully, and it was so
plain that it showed every line of Marigold’s exquisite figure off to
perfection. Alice laughed when she saw it on, and shook her head and
said:
“Well, I never!” and “On my word!”--but got no further.
That night also the High Priest and St Armand sat after dinner, all
alone once more, St Armand smoking.
“Your dream was true enough, Alphonso,” said he presently.
“You mean in connection with Barringcourt?”
“Yes. He has certainly not altered in the least--or, if at all, much
for the better.”
“And I----”
“Am older. When you stand together as this morning, the difference
shows at once. I marvel that you never felt it.”
“I did at first--when first he came to us. But afterwards, our
conversation took me back to the days when I was young.”
“In memory only, not reality. And to be young in memory is to be old
in years. Youth lives in the present, not the past. To-night you look
older than ever I remember seeing you. Do you think it wise, this
friendship with so young, so well-preserved a man?”
“Why not? If only to discover his great secret that brings redoubled
youth when the first wear and tear of age begins to creep out from its
sad resting-place.”
“_He_ will never give you the secret, you may depend upon it.
Mr Barringcourt is not your friend; remember you parted quarrelling
twenty-five years since.”
“But he’s forgotten that, and so have I.”
“Oh no, he has not forgotten. You hunted down, in bigotry and
high-handedness, a girl who was peculiarly his property. He is not so
easy-going as to forgive you that.”
“Then why should he appear so pleased to see me?”
“Because, being your worst, your subtlest enemy, he perceives you are
nothing but a wreck of what you used to be.”
The deep, dull colour of anger rose in the High Priest’s face.
“He may be mistaken in that, as he has been in other things.”
“How will you prove it to him?”
“Advise me.”
“Then you remember the girl we met this morning?”
“Sacred Serpent! how you do harp on women!”
“Sacred Serpent! were you born a man or a stone?”
“Go on. Go on with your advice.”
“You remember the girl this morning?”
“I remember her, and I must say I felt her--her fascination--till--till
she showed such unmannerly temper before us all. Passion of any sort in
a woman is fatal to beauty both of mind and body.”
Now St Armand, as a rule, had great patience with his--his followers
until they were well disciplined and broken in to obedience. But
occasionally he was known to laugh long and heartily, especially when
they passed some wise remark.
And he laughed now. He laughed so long and so genuinely, that the High
Priest began to feel uncomfortable, and thought over what he had said
once more, but could find no fault with it.
“Be careful, Alphonso! Soon they’ll be christening you the great
High Hypocrite, or, worse still, ‘the sleeping mole.’ Women have been
developing all kinds of things since you last looked out upon Lucifram
with fleshly eyes. However, if you object to temper, Barringcourt
doesn’t. He admires the little beggar girl.”
The stray shot hit.
“Pardon me, you’re wrong. He spoke to her with absolutely no respect.”
“Will you get it out of your head once and for all?” said St Armand
abruptly; “you’re looking for a _wife_? Meek temper and
respectability are insufferable in any other woman. But you’ve given up
the beggar girl, and he will step in to gather the plum you’ve let slip
so easily through your palsied fingers.”
“I have not let her slip.”
“Indeed you have. Did you not walk away this morning without one look,
one word of farewell? Did he do so? No. His last look was to her, his
last smile.”
“He does not know her.”
“Oh! he is young. He makes friends easily. He has not got the ice of
age clinging round him as you. He does not love her, but he will win
her, whilst you grow cold--shivering on the brink of passion.”
“He shall _not_ win her. She is mine, since I looked into
her eyes in the Temple close this morning. He has robbed me of
many things--now I look back on it, he has robbed me of many, many
things--but he shall not take this last. She shall belong to me--to me
alone!”
“Are you going now?”
He looked up involuntarily at the timepiece.
“It--it is after ten o’clock. It is too late.”
“Yes. Now the respectable community is making ready for sleep, and the
other half is only just awaking. I, too, am respectable. I go to bed.
Life in a monastery is dull at times, and deathly fatiguing.”
And so he left the room, and went to his own bed-chamber.
And there alone, with no borrowed, artificial light but that subdued
from his own presence and the signet-ring, he sat and wrote a letter
to his wife--in the surrounding darkness. Often he laughed--sometimes
he frowned whilst writing--and of the great High Priest he said, with
other things:
“He is worse to drive than a young calf, and worse to lead than an
old bull--so that, even with the ring in his nose, I can never be
quite sure of him. I have taken so much pains with him, that at last I
have become impatient, and I find it does not answer badly. But these
simpletons are really too much trouble. He is insolent enough to
take anything I give him, without so much as ‘Thank you’--but in that
they’re all alike. He forced my hand the other night into giving him
some of my own power of feeling, but that hasn’t answered--it rarely
does unless, of course, the girl were present--which she was not.
And this familiarity--this living with an awkward brute who fancies
himself infallible, and who, I am beginning to find, has only the one
weak spot, vanity, like his less cooped-up neighbours--is beginning
to tell upon my temper. Had I not you to fall back upon in reverie, I
should throw him up and be quit of him; for breathing the same air with
these mortals for any length of time is insufferable--they contaminate
everything. But when I think of you----”
Was it not Merriman--so lately dead; by some, perhaps, soon
forgotten--who, in that last, sad book with its prophetic, mournful
ending, even in light, spoke of the sacredness of certain letters--even
mortal?
CHAPTER XVI
Next morning, Marigold, in the patchwork gown and a pretty muslin
apron, went in very early to take Patches his breakfast. He was still
in bed, so she went upstairs, calling:
“Patches! here’s your breakfast, and the nurse.”
It was such a little cupboard of a bedroom, and such a tiny
make-believe of a bed, and everything was so poor and shabby, that
Marigold’s throat went quite lumpy again.
Only, on the wall, opposite the bed, was a beautiful painting of a
woman’s head--a very tender, delicate face, with a haunting look in the
eyes, half-laughter, half-tenderness.
When Marigold saw that face, the lumps went out of her throat, and she