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.”