Marigold A story
them, I believe, because they’re plain Mister. Perhaps he’s a surgeon,
and so doesn’t trouble about putting it outside. Private means, maybe.”
With the assurance, therefore, of ignorance, she advanced and rang the
bell.
The door was opened swiftly, noiselessly, and inside stood one--not
Everard, but one trained to a silent perfection, even as he.
“Can I see the doctor?”
It was well or ill for Alice that at this moment she remembered the
card--Timothy’s card that Marigold had given her when she should have
come to Marble House before, on Timothy’s pathetic little message. It
was still in her pocket, neatly wrapped in white paper just as then,
and, with the instinct that she wasn’t going to get in, and with the
firm determination that she would do so, she produced it.
It had the decided effect, when he had looked at it back and front,
of admitting her into the large hall with which you are already well
acquainted. And he went off to the west wing, leaving her sitting on an
uncomfortably high chair, and everything around quite dark and gloomy.
“Poor man!” said she, with that ignorant pity we so often feel for
our neighbours. “No wife, therefore no taste! Now, who in their right
senses would furnish a house like this? Plenty of money--piles, I
should say, from the look of things--but nothing homely. Rather have
the cottage than this! Now, if only the Princess would take a fancy
to him--make love to _him_ instead of to his holiness--all this
would be kicked out of the door in a month’s time, or--or made to look
different. A very good idea! I’ll work upon it. He’s taken an interest
in her ever since the first--I know, because I’ve seen him looking at
her--but she was so taken up with Patches she never saw; and, besides,
a sensible man never did interest her--never any one, unless she could
be mimicking about like them.”
Here the doorkeeper re-entered the hall.
“The Master is busy. He cannot see you.”
The tone was as brusque and decided as possible, but Alice, being in
earnest, paid no heed to it.
“I _must_ see him. It’s very important. Something very serious has
happened.”
“It is no use, I’m afraid. He cannot see you.”
“But he must--I really must see him. It is about something that
happened this morning, and he knows nothing about it at all.”
“I should advise you to go.”
“I won’t go,” she said stubbornly.
“If you won’t go,” said he politely, “the only thing I can do is to go
back and get orders to put you out forcibly.”
“All right, go!” said Alice, the spirit of the lower orders beginning
to assert itself, and a sharp suspicion rising in her about the
morning’s thief.
For one minute he stood waiting her decision, but it did not alter, and
he went away.
And Alice, suspicion being roused in her, found it very quickly
followed by dislike. Why should an honest man be too busy to see an
honest woman? Her mind could not perceive such limitations to the path
of honesty.
Then again the door to the west wing opened, and out came Mr
Barringcourt, followed by the servant.
“What is it?”
The shadowy eyes were bent on her--steel shining through the shadow.
“Timothy’s dead--and my--my niece has collapsed altogether.
She’s--dangerously ill.”
“Hysterical, you mean. Leave her alone--she’ll be all right in the
morning.”
“Look here, sir, I know my niece. She isn’t hysterical, though she may
be flighty. And she’s got a nasty wound on her neck--nails, sir--human
nails, I call them.”
“You are very melodramatic, you beggar-folk!” he said, turning to leave
her.
“We’re not beggar-folk. I’ll tell you what, she’s a better born woman
than you are a man--now!”
“Very possibly--very possibly. Is this all you’ve come to tell me?”
“No; I came, honestly believing you an honest doctor, to ask you to
come and see her.”
“I don’t understand women’s ailments--never studied them. A douche of
cold water is all I can think of to recommend.”
“You big brute!” said Alice, and such a healthily untrained voice had
never, never been heard in Marble House before.
“I told your niece, or your daughter, or whatever she is,” he said,
suddenly turning again to her and bending his dark eyes to hers; “I
told her she was not to nurse Timothy. She persisted in the teeth of
everything--first snubs, then, I may say, insults. She has nursed
him--and incidentally she fell in love with me. I tell you all the
phases of her disease, so that in nursing her you may understand
the symptoms. She lost him, he was bound to die from the beginning.
I told her so. And now she has lost me, I suppose, and sent you to
bring me back. But I am not coming, Aunt Alice. She will die of
consumption--slowly--very slowly. You’ll have plenty of time to get
used to it, so don’t look so pale. And she has no one but herself to
thank for it. It used to irritate me to see her in the room.”
“You’re a liar! You loved her more than she loved you.”
“Oh! has she told you of--of this morning?”
“No, but I guessed. You’re a thief, too.”
Alice was thinking of the picture, for she had not heard of its history.
“I’m everything that’s bad. You can tell your niece so--it may cure her
of her infatuation.”
“I’ll tell her nothing. She isn’t the one to break her heart over any
man, though it pleases you to think so. But just you wait, sir, and
one of these nice days you’ll jump finely. Just you wait, and even a
douche of cold water won’t cure _you_.”
And so Alice, strung to the fine pitch of irony, turned her back and
trudged away through the echoing hall, and the door closed behind her.
Then from there, pulling herself together, for the interview, short as
it was, had terribly upset her, she went on to Crescent Park. Mrs Wiggs
received the news as most of her class, and was sent home in a cab
loudly bemoaning.
And Marigold heard her get out of the conveyance and sob loudly as she
entered the house, where a neighbour was now awaiting. And Marigold
shivered.
But Alice walked home in the dusk, and crossing the large deserted
space before the Temple, she met St Armand. He knew her, though only
having seen her once; and not only that, he must have known her name.
“Good-evening, Alice. Is anything wrong at your place?”
Oh! balm on wounds, to be spoken to with such sympathetic interest by
one gentleman when so rudely snubbed by another.
“Wrong?” she cried, breaking down despite her efforts. “Mistress is
ill. The little boy she was nursing died this morning, and she’s quite
broken down.”
“Ah! and the little boy had a doctor, I believe--a quack doctor?”
“Yes, indeed; a hateful man--a hypocrite who took everybody in.”
“What’s the matter with your mistress?”
“Why, he says she’s got consumption. But I can’t bear to think of
it--indeed I can’t.”
“He knows nothing. He makes as many mistakes as a fashionable doctor.”
“How do you know she hasn’t?” said Alice, longing to be assured.
“Well, I’m not quite sure. But if I saw her I could easily tell.”
“Are you a doctor too, then?”
“No; but I know as much about it as he does--perhaps more. He hasn’t
the sympathy with women that I have. He hasn’t got a wife, you see.”
Alice, remembering the Master’s words, felt what an admirable thing a
wife must be.
“Come and see her, will you?” she asked bluntly.
“When did the little boy die?”
“This morning.”
“Oh! bless me, the symptoms haven’t had time to develop yet. When did
she last see the doctor?”
“This morning, too.”
“Ah! he has probably an excellent reason for thinking she has
consumption then. It will enable him to still come to see her.”
“Heaven forbid!” said Alice. “He spoke to-night as no godly gentleman
ever would have done, and he’ll never cross our threshold again. But
wait!” she went on triumphantly; “wait! When he finds out who he’s
been insulting and flinging impudence at, he may alter his tone. The
hignoramus!”
“Can it really be true he took your mistress for nothing better than a
beggar girl?”
“Of course. And he was too proud to fall in love with her. Too proud!
He! with an old hull of a house, furnished with nothing else but odds
and ends of furniture meant for a musty museum. If he’d known she was
a Princess, he’d have jumped at her--though, no doubt, when it came to
the test, she’d have been too proud to marry him. Hignoramus!”
“He or she?”
“Oh, he! calling her my ‘niece’ or my ‘daughter’.” (Alice minced the
words as it is only fair to Mr Barringcourt to say he never did do.)
“But that is the worst of being trained like me in the best houses. You
get out of the way of giving cheek when it’s needed.”
“Any one could see you have been most admirably trained.”
“My word! the old housekeeper at Ellel Palace was a terror to the worst
of us.”
“Oh! ah! the Princess Marigold has very well disguised herself.”
“Holy Serpent! what have I told you?”
“Nothing. Nothing at all, my good woman. And, if you have, I am not
likely to repeat it. Now I must go. But see--here’s my address. If your
mistress is no better to-morrow, send for me, and I’ll provide the very
best physicians.”
CHAPTER XXI
But, when she was gone, St Armand stood under a gas lamp, and leant
against the post, and laughed, held his sides with laughing, just
as Marigold had done--only from different reasons. Then, when he
had laughed, he went off to the Priest’s Palace and his own private
apartments, because he and his holiness were not really on the best
of terms just then, because the High Priest persisted in sacrificing
his inclinations to respectability and habit, and St Armand would have
kicked the last two to Jericho--that is, from one planet on to another,
you perceive. True, the morning after meeting Marigold, and the bitter
jealousy occasioned in Alphonso by St Armand’s conversation of that
night, he had gone again with his strange lingering guest into the
Temple grounds. But no vision in rags appeared upon the scene. Piqued,
as a child might be, after an hour’s wait he insisted on going home.
And not all St Armand’s persuasion could get him to repeat his visit to
the cottage. It is likewise true the lithe octogenarian had frequently
passed through Friar’s Court to try his blandishments upon the lady.
But she, as has been said, was passing through those fires invisible to
the mortal eye, which he, by long experience, had learnt not to burn
his hands upon.
“Good fit, this,” said he whimsically to himself; “I wonder when it
will pass away? One of these days she’ll feel too good, then the
reaction will set in. Meanwhile I must lie cooped up in that wretched
hen-roost of a monastery--_waiting_. Of all things I detest, it’s
waiting. There’s one thing, though. When I have properly subdued them,
I make them wait--to the wretched state of being forgotten.”
When Alice left him she hurried home, conscious of being much later
than she had any excuse for being. And when she got there, she found
that Marigold had lit the lamp, laid the cloth, and set the tea-cups,
all to her unutterable surprise.
“Why,” said she in amazement, “I thought you were on the brink of high
fever?”
Marigold smiled.
“Oh no! I’m not one of those women with a convenient constitution that
breaks down just when things get unendurable.”
“Are things unendurable to you, Princess?”
“They are just about. If I were a real beggar girl, I think I should
take poison.”
“Heaven forbid!”
“As it is, I’m going back to my own house to-morrow.”
“To Fairy Sky?”
“Oh no! Here. You can send them word to-night. There are one or two
more interesting people this side of Lucifram than there were a month
or two ago. I shall stay here a little longer.”
“I’ll be glad to be back again, Princess.”
“So shall I. I consider the life of the poor unendurable. Or perhaps
it is you’re flattered so idiotically when you’re rich that you can’t