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 God within.
“I think when you are poor you see things differently. This great building seems alive with majesty to-day. At other times I have felt its beauty and a certain grandeur, but never as now after our simple cottage.”
Just then, on passing through a ruined arch overgrown with ivy and red sprays of creepers, they came upon an artist sitting making sketches. He was a little man with white hair and intensely black eyes, and a crooked thin-lipped mouth, very humorous. His hands were long and claw-like and very white, full of an intellectual beauty. He was sitting on an old tree-stump, that had big gnarled roots sprouting away from it like coils of serpents. His whole appearance presented some subtle jest--to Marigold at least. She could have laughed--was laughing--when suddenly the cold blaze of those black eyes turned on her as he looked up for the moment from his work. The spirit died out of her laughter, though her lips still remained parted in a smile--a frozen, mirthless kind of thing to the observant eye; and suddenly she put her hand in Alice’s--Alice, so big and broad and unbeautiful, brought up a Materialist, with vague ideas of Heaven for all that. And Alice, slow to feel, yet very motherly with all her limitations, pressed the soft white hand in hers, unconscious of the suddenly chilled blood running in her mistress’s veins. Marigold hastened her steps with the intention of passing him, but once having looked at her, he continued doing so, and he took no pains to hide that her evident embarrassment amused him.
“Good-morning, ladies,” said he, and there was a certain richness in his voice that almost miraculously attracted one. “You have just succeeded in spoiling a very pretty picture.”
What was there in his tone that set all Marigold’s blood rebelling? She so free from vanity, yet till now so gaily beautiful--what childish, wrong desire perhaps, to throw away the stiff hat and formless jacket and clumsy clogs, and stamp her pretty feet and make the picture still more beautiful? Was it some subtle poison in the words, or something else? But now she reddened and suddenly pitied the poor who have no tricks of graceful dress to help them in their actions. And it was Alice, stolid and fairly insensible, who replied with sturdy nonchalance:
“I was just thinking the same of you, sir.”
For one second the dark eyes rested on her, then back to Marigold, and, for all his movements were so rapid, there was a deliberation in them quite unaccountable, so that he seemed to have given Alice the coolest of long stares, and it affected the easiness of her tongue somewhat--a certain frozen feeling settled there.
With the same easy, graceful motion, almost like a serpent’s movement, he bent forward, leaning his arms upon his knees, finger-tips lightly touching, looking still up at Marigold.
“It’s strange that women, who were originally intended to be so beautiful, have such a knack of spoiling things. Is it not?” he said.
“I do not understand you, sir,” and she walked on quicker past him, her head suddenly drawn up as by some invisible bearing rein--her hat, coat, and clogs taking on a dignity it had never been their province to wear before.
When they got to the corner, Alice, in curiosity, peeped discreetly round. There he sat in the distance, going on unconcernedly with his work, taking no further notice of them.
“It is all right, ma’am. He’s forgotten all about us. Of all the eyes----”
“Be quiet, Alice! Not a word! Take me home--take me home quickly.”
They were scarcely a hundred yards from where they lived, and Alice, well accustomed to the city, soon led her there. The door closed quietly upon them. Then the storm burst.
Marigold flung off her hat and jacket--the one in the fire, the other in the coal-bucket; the clumsy clogs followed suit--anywhere so they were off.
“I’ll never go out like that again! Never, never! I’ll be a beggar or I’ll be a princess, but no respectable, thick-set, clumsy-looking charwoman. I looked a fright, a perfect fright--and--and--and he was laughing at us. He was laughing, Alice.”
“Let him laugh,” answered Alice sturdily, now that the eyes had gone recovering somewhat her customary sturdiness.
“No,” retorted the Princess, clenching her white hands and knocking one lot of ivory knuckles on the table, “he had no business to laugh--no right to laugh. The get-up was absurd--a cat would have laughed at it.”
“That’s what I say. Let him laugh.”
“That I, in my position, should have come to this--to be laughed at by a man!”
“Yes--Royalty escapes a lot that ordinary folk have to go through every day. It wasn’t his laughing that I objected to--but his eyes. Did you notice them, Princess?”
“Don’t call me Princess; haven’t I told you not to?”
“His eyes were the softest and most beautiful I ever saw.”
“Alice!”
“Yet for all that he made me feel cold. Perhaps it was damp under that arch. There’s been a lot of rain lately; I expect it was damp. Your hand was quite cold, Princess, when you took hold of mine.”
Then suddenly Marigold stood quite still, and the restless air of violent temper suddenly left her. Her face was pale, and her eyes looked bigger than usual as she turned to her companion.
“Alice, if I get knocked off the chess-board, that man does it.”
“What do you mean, Princess?”
“I instinctively disliked him when I saw him. You say the place was damp--where he was it was deathly cold. And yet--and yet--Alice, have you the sense to understand me?--had he been younger, less wizened-looking, I think he might have gained the kiss I’ve promised to the great High Priest.”
Alice, usually so dense, simply nodded.
“His eyes made you feel like that--did they not?”
“No--I disliked his eyes. They were deep and dark and treacherous--no, no, not treacherous, but heartless and cold. It was his voice. It was the nearest approach to one I have always heard in my dreams. It was the kind of voice that could persuade you or compel you. If you closed your eyes it would be a pleasure to give way.”
“He didn’t ask anything of us.”
“No; and whilst I have my eyes open he never will, the Serpent helping me. But clean rags and soft shoes for me in the future. I think the very--very devil got into those clogs--they were like millstones round my feet--a perfect nightmare. Tooth of the Serpent! what exquisite torture the poor must undergo!”
