Marigold A story
and laughter and no small amount of fear in her eyes.
“Ugly? No--ugly isn’t the word. Why don’t the women of fashion take a
change and dress themselves in rags? But oh! Serpent, why was I put to
look after her, when she even talks of boiling the great High Priest?
Thank the Serpent’s three tails I went to the Board-School and learnt
self-control and morality, and--and--increased the taxes.”
The Princess of Ellel once out of the shadow of the cottage, crossed
the narrow street into the precincts of the Temple. The air was crisp,
and the sun setting in accordance with the vesper hour; and she
walked up the broad front steps with a heart that beat with much more
anticipation than actual love. She had not been there long before the
High Priest’s carriage drew up in the spacious square below--and an
extravagant lamplighter began lighting the round-glassed street lamps.
All this excited her curiosity, for she was young enough to notice
everything, but her ears followed the rumbling of the organ inside,
and by it she judged the progress of the Service. At last it was over,
and the few people who had been in attendance came away. Then a pause
followed, and at last the smaller door was again flung open, and this
time the High Priest came out, followed by those personally attached
to him. For a moment she was seized with such shyness that she stepped
back quickly into the shadow, but this was momentary, and the reaction
absolute.
“Sir! I beg a penny of you. Please a penny. My mother is dead, my
father is drunk, my little sisters and brothers are dependent on me.
Please give me a penny, sir; just a penny.”
So she followed him down the many steps with frequent repetition, but
he--being a great man--was eaten up with thought, and his Chaplain
tried to rebuke her, but she paid no heed. At last, when the august
foot was placed on the carriage step, Marigold could stand his absent
mind no longer--her tiny fingers clutched at the long sleeve of his
gown.
“If you have no copper, sir, give me silver; if no silver, gold. We are
dying of hunger, and the Serpent is kind to the poor who believe on
him. Sir, if you have none other, give me gold.”
Thus adjured, Alphonso stood and looked at her--the hard, disappointed
eyes into the enigmatical eyes of youth.
“Gold!” replied he, with great displeasure and rebuke. “In rags, and
asking gold! What is Lucifram coming to? Tell her, Eaglestone, she may
come round to the Palace for a bread ticket,” and he got inside.
“Young woman,” said the Chaplain, not unkindly, “the side door of
the Palace is open every day at noon that bread and soup may be
distributed. Bring your children then--they will be well fed if they
are hungry.”
“But supper,” she cried, tears rising in abundance; “we have no food,
we have eaten nothing all day. We’ll be dead to-morrow,” and her pretty
shoulders shook with the grim hardness of it.
“Eaglestone! I have a meeting at eight. No time for my dinner,
absolutely no time. If you’ve promised her the ticket, come.”
“My Lord, she says they’ve nothing in the house to-night.”
“I don’t approve of the colour of her hair--I----”
“Oh, sir, I don’t approve of it myself. I hate my hair, I always have
done. Take it if you will, only--only give me something in return.”
The High Priest’s face relaxed almost to a smile--the suffering of
beauty is not unpleasant, especially when beauty is in a reckless
generous mood.
“Here! silly child, take this silver. It is against my rule to give
beggars anything but bread. Get what you want, and thank the Serpent.”
“Indeed I will, your holiness. Indeed I will. I will do both.”
And laughing and smiling, holding the coins to her bosom--its
loveliness the more revealed by rags--she watched them drive away.
And the High Priest leaned back and laughed, and rather wished the
Chaplain were not present. For what had taken him back to over twenty
years ago, he a younger man in the zenith of his power? Why, nothing
that he could unravel; only, as they neared the Palace, he suddenly sat
up, banging the light stick he walked with on the ground.
“Damn it!” said he, as when Mr Barringcourt’s disciple, “where have I
seen those eyes before?”
CHAPTER III
Marigold flew home, up the respectable little alley, where their
cottage was, with feelings altogether mixed.
She threw herself in the easy-chair that Alice had enjoyed so lately,
and sighed and laughed in a breath.
“Oh, Alice! I don’t like him! When you come near him, he is like a bit
of stone--a bit of crumbly stone. I wouldn’t mind if he were marble. I
would throw my heart against him and it would break, and then the poets
would club together and write nice things about me--and so I’d easily
become immortal.”
“I knew your royal highness would soon be cured of your infatuation.”
“My--my what?”
“Your love.”
She leant forward dreamily, and looked in the fire quite a long time,
and you noticed the extreme delicacy and beauty of her face, and,
above all, the sweetness and the merriness and recklessness so finely
blended--that, whilst you thought one was uppermost, you found the
other laughing at you right ahead.
And at last, looking up at the more stolid woman, she said slowly:
“All the same, I cannot help myself. I shall behave exactly as if I
were in love.”
“The Serpent will certainly punish us for this, Princess. I feel
somehow you’re not behaving right.”
“I’m playing a game. I feel like the queen on a chess-board. Somebody
nips me up between their fingers and thumb, and then I’m off--all over
the place, you know.”
“Take care you don’t get nipped off the board.”
“Yes. For then the king would be left unprotected.
And if--we--were--checkmate--I--wonder---- Oh, Alice!
if--we--were--checkmate I should die.”
“Princess, are you ill? You’re not accustomed to wandering through the
streets in rags. The High Priest or his servants have spoken roughly to
you.”
“Indeed, no. Not more than I deserved. But give me your hand, Alice. It
is so strong, and big and unbeautiful except to such as me who have no
strength. Alice--do you ever feel you _have_ to do a thing, and
you hate it very much?”
“Yes; I hate this cottage business.”
Marigold laughed.
“Ah! but I mean something unseen--something spiritual.”
“No. I went to school when Materialism was at its height. We were
taught to subdue the spirit and pay proper deference to the flesh.”
“It would keep you from hysteria and hysterics, did it not?”
“Yes. For myself, I always consider the spirit more dangerous than the
flesh.”
“So do I. Now, I haven’t much flesh, Alice. Look at me. I’m not big in
any way--and I’m not heavy. But oh! Serpent of Lucifram! I am weighed
down with spirit. I feel everything--from the sight of a cockroach up
to the Silence in the Temple.”
“It is a form of hysteria, madam. They taught us so at school. Make up
your mind and you’ll feel nothing.”
But Marigold shook her head.
“I was born to feel, and I pray God the Serpent, that as soon as I
cease to feel I may die.”
“Then there is no hope for you, Princess. If you will pet yourself up
to insist on feeling, you will either die of a broken heart or become
the--the--the----”
“The biggest actress under the sun.”
“Heaven forbid! They are a bad lot--a shocking bad lot--and they have
to act pretty strong things before people admit they’re big at all.”
“Well, if I were put to it, _I_ could act something strong.”
“Your character’s gone as soon as you’ve acted it well--_really_
well.”
“I don’t require a character. I don’t make my own living.
Respectability is no necessity to me.”
“You’ll need a character for Heaven, Princess.”
“But that’s just it, Alice. You know I think all the people on Lucifram
were born to go to Hell. No--don’t exclaim--I really mean it.”
“My mother heard the angels sing before she died. I am certain she has
gone to Heaven.”
“What was the tune like?”
“Madam!”
“Your mother was unkind and selfish. Had I been dying and heard the
angels sing, I should have come round again just to write out the
score. It was the echo of an anthem at the Temple that she heard--no
more.”
“Now, Princess, _you_ are the Materialist.”
“I liked your mother, Alice. I don’t think she went to Hell. I think
she went--nowhere.”
“She was a most religious woman.”
“Most women are. It’s born in them. But it won’t get them to Heaven. It
is the common form of hysteria--the big deception. Oh dear! the Shadow
of the Temple affects even one’s conversation. If I live here much
longer I shall turn nun.”
“That necessitates an orthodox religion.”
“I _am_ orthodox. I love the great High Priest.”
“But you must love the Serpent.”
“It isn’t in the nature of a reasonable woman to love anything
reasonably but a man.”
“Then I hope the great High Priest, through the Holy Serpent, will
teach you differently.”
“When he sees me--as I really am--he will forget the Serpent for a
time.”
“Do you mean when he sees you as a Princess?”
“Oh no--my nose is just the same, beggar or Princess--so is the whole
of me. I mean when he sees _me_--not the little nonentity in rags
he saw this afternoon.”
“How is he to see you?”
“I’m going there for a bread ticket to-morrow afternoon.”
“Going with the beggars to the Palace?”
“Why not?”
“But you will not see the great High Priest.”
“I shall see his Chaplain anyway. I liked his Chaplain. Coming down the
steps he said to me: ‘Go away, little girl, go away’--just as in the
comic opera. But afterwards, when we stood by the carriage, he couldn’t
make out for the life of him what I was--girl or woman--neither could
the bigger man.”
“I also often wonder which you are.”
“You must go on wondering, Alice, dear, and then some day you’ll find
out--and so will I. Perhaps the big man will tell us.”
CHAPTER IV
When Marigold awoke, it was not to the beauties of a palace
grounds--nor yet to silence and privacy. She had slept long and
peacefully in a bed as hard as it was clean, and the carpetless boards
showed evidence of recent scrubbing. Neither cockroach nor mouse had
disturbed her slumbers, and from below came the appetising smell of
approaching breakfast. It was not the sunshine which awoke her--it was
the matins bell of the Temple, and, unlike the clanking single bell
of most churches, it was wondrously sweet--so sweet and pure that she
stood by the tiny opened window a long time listening to it, and her
light eyes were dark with untold thoughts.
The ragged costume arranged with a gleam of white arm here--and bosom
there--she went downstairs, still laughing at the novel situation. The
smudges on her cheeks could not hide the soft flush of health, nor
the fair brow, nor the delicate blue shadows round her eyes, not the
outcome of sickness, but of that thoughtfulness which in the midst of
merriment had often made her sad--the tiny shadows that enhanced her
beauty, the nearest approach to womanhood she yet possessed.
After breakfast both she and Alice put on plain jackets and hats
and went into the shady, silent grounds of the Temple. The roar of
the city round about was not heard here. The birds twittered and
quarrelled about the grand grey walls and lofty trees as importantly
as if man were out of the consideration altogether. The grass was
green, and smoothly kept; and over all there hung the spirit of a great
refinement--the brooding master-spirit of the ages. The leafy courts
were quite deserted--men were at work, women at home, children at
school. From an open distant window came the clear voices of choir boys
practising scales--just now higher and higher, then gradually down. A
wondrous red creeper covered this southern wall like a heavy curtain,
vying in colouring with that richer one that hung before the glittering