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.”
