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+*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 14119 ***
+
+THE WHITE RIBAND
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+F. TENNYSON JESSE
+
+
+
+
+
+_By the Same Author_
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+  THE MILKY WAY
+  BEGGARS ON HORSEBACK
+  SECRET BREAD
+  THE SWORD OF DEBORAH
+  THE HAPPY BRIDE
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+NEW YORK: GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY
+
+
+
+
+[Illustration]
+
+
+
+
+THE WHITE RIBAND
+
+OR
+
+A YOUNG FEMALE'S FOLLY
+
+
+BY
+
+F. TENNYSON JESSE
+
+
+NEW YORK
+GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY
+1921
+
+
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+TO STELLA,
+
+A YOUNG FEMALE,
+
+I DEDICATE THIS TALE,
+
+In the hope that it will encourage her to persevere in that indifference
+to personal adornment for which she is conspicuous at present
+
+SHOULD IT FAIL IN THIS HIGH ENDEAVOUR,
+NEVERTHELESS
+THIS BOOK IS HERS IN ALL SISTERLY LOVE
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+
+
+       PROLOGUE
+
+  CHAPTER
+
+     I IN WHICH THE READER IS TAKEN BACK A FEW WEEKS IN POINT
+       OF TIME, AND DOWN SEVERAL STEPS IN THE SOCIAL SCALE
+
+    II IN WHICH THE ONION-SELLER'S DAUGHTER FOR THE FIRST TIME
+       FEELS AS A WOMAN
+
+   III IN WHICH SHE FOR THE FIRST TIME FEELS AS A GIRL
+
+    IV IN WHICH THE ONION-SELLER'S DAUGHTER FEELS HERSELF A GODDESS
+
+     V IN WHICH LOVEDAY ESSAYS THE WHITE GOWN
+
+    VI IN WHICH LOVEDAY ESSAYS TO OBTAIN THE WHITE SATIN RIBAND
+
+   VII IN WHICH LOVEDAY STILL ESSAYS TO OBTAIN THE WHITE SATIN RIBAND
+
+  VIII IN WHICH LOVEDAY CONTINUES HER QUEST AND ACHIEVES TENPENCE
+
+    IX IN WHICH LOVEDAY SETS ONE MAGPIE
+
+     X IN WHICH LOVEDAY DOES NOT ATTEND A FUNERAL
+
+    XI IN WHICH LOVEDAY ATTENDS THE FLORA
+
+   XII IN WHICH LOVEDAY DANCES
+
+       EPILOGUE
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+
+
+PROLOGUE
+
+
+
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+
+
+THE WHITE RIBAND
+
+OR
+
+A YOUNG FEMALE'S FOLLY
+
+
+Prologue
+
+
+That was how they spoke of her story in the duchy's drawing-rooms;
+for what had Loveday been, at the most charitable count, but a young
+female--less humanly speaking, even a young person? And what was the
+spring of her mad crimes but folly, mere weak, feminine folly? Even
+an improper motive--one of those over-powering passions one reads
+about rather surreptitiously in the delightful works of that dear,
+naughty, departed Lord Byron--would have been somehow more ...
+more ... satisfactory. One could only whisper such a sentiment, but
+it stirred in many a feminine breast when Loveday's story set the
+ripples of reprobation circling some twenty miles, till the incomparably
+bigger pebble of the Prince of Wales' nuptials made correspondingly
+greater waves, even though they took a month or so to spread all its
+fascinating details so far from the Metropolis. What, after all, as a
+topic of conversation, was Loveday's ill-gotten gaud compared with the
+thrill of the new Alexandra jacket with its pegtop sleeves? One should
+hold a right proportion in all things.
+
+Thus the duchy's drawing-rooms. In the back parlours of the little
+country-town shops, where an aristocracy as rigid in its own
+respectable--and respectful--way, held its courts of justice, Loveday's
+story was referred to with a slight difference. She had become a "young
+besom," and her crime was what you might have expected from the bye-blow
+of an ear-ringed foreigner, who bowed down to idols instead of the laws
+of God and the British Constitution.
+
+In her own little seaport and the farms of the countryside, Loveday
+descended lower still--she became a "faggot." Thus from one born to
+wield a broom we see how she descended, with the declination in scale of
+the chatterboxes, to the broom itself, and from that to the rough
+material for it. Which things are a parable, could one but fit the moral
+to them as neatly as did everyone who discussed Loveday, in whatever
+terms, fit the due warning on to her tale.
+
+And this moral, for all who ran, but more particularly for those who
+danced, to read, was as follows:--
+
+It all came of wanting things above your station.
+
+"How simply does your sex dispose of the problems of life, ma'am,"
+replied Mr. Constantine to Miss Flora Le Pettit, the heiress of Ignores
+Manor, when she supplied him with this moral as an epitaph oh the
+affair. Miss Le Pettit smiled on him amiably, but arched her already
+springing brows as well, for though everyone knew Mr. Constantine was
+reputed clever, there were the gravest doubts about his orthodoxy.
+
+"Problems of life, Mr. Constantine?" she demanded. "Surely over-fine
+words to apply to the crazy acts of a village girl deranged in her
+intellects." She would have added: "And a nameless one at that," if
+she had not remembered (what, in truth, she was never in danger of
+forgetting) that she was a lady talking to a gentleman.
+
+"A village girl is as capable of passion as you or I," replied he, and
+had he not remembered (what he was somewhat apt to forget) that he was a
+gentleman talking to a lady, he would have added: "And a great deal more
+so than you." Miss Le Pettit, who considered that he _had_ forgotten
+it, gave the little movement known as "bridling," which reared her
+ringletted head a trifle higher on her white shoulders, then decided to
+front the obnoxious word bravely as a woman of the world. She had met
+with it chiefly in books where it was used solely to denote anger.
+There had been, for instance, the tale of "Henry: or, the Fatal Effect
+of Passion." ... Henry had slain a school-fellow in his rage, and had
+been duly hanged; yet something told Miss Le Pettit that was not how
+Mr. Constantine was using the word.... She rose to it splendidly.
+
+"Passion ... and pray where do you find such a thing in this story of
+the vanity of a child of fifteen?"
+
+"In the usual place, ma'am," said Mr. Constantine (now entirely
+forgetting that which Miss Le Pettit ever remembered)--"in her soul.
+Did you think it merely a thing of the body? The body may be the
+objective of passion, but the quality itself is what is meant by the
+word. It is generated in the soul and may pour itself into strange
+vessels."
+
+"Or even shower its ardours upon a piece of white riband?" cried Miss Le
+Pettit, with a titter.
+
+"Shall we say upon Beauty itself?" corrected Mr. Constantine more
+gravely than he had yet spoken. Then, with a smile, he elaborated:
+"For as passion is in the soul, so is beauty in the heart, and hearts
+have differing vision. That was Loveday's desire. Translate this paltry
+thing into terms of other ambitions--and where is any one of us then?
+Unless, indeed, we are so bloodless, so without imagination, that we
+cannot but be content with our lot just as it is."
+
+Miss Le Pettit, who had never seen reason for anything but contentment,
+and looked upon it as a Christian virtue, demurred with:--
+
+"The whole affair is so ridiculously out of proportion."
+
+Mr. Constantine glanced, with admiration in his gallant though elderly
+eye, over Miss Le Pettit's figure as she lay back in the gilt chair;
+glanced from her high, polished forehead, round which the smooth
+chestnut hair showed as gleaming, from her parted red lips and bare,
+sloping shoulders to her tiny waist and the outward spring beneath it of
+the clouded tulle that lapped in a dozen baby waves over the globe of
+her swelling crinoline.
+
+"When I was a young man," he said, "the ladies went about in little
+robes, such as you would not wear nowadays as a shift. We thought them
+pretty then, and thought none the worse of them because they made the
+women look more or less as God saw fit to make 'em. Yet now we think you
+equally lovely as you float about the world like monstrous beautiful
+bubbles, so that a man must adore at a distance and only guess at
+Paradise in a gust of wind.... Yet to the next generation, believe me or
+not as you like, your garb will seem too preposterous to be true, and a
+generation later Time will pay you the unkindest cut of all--you will be
+picturesque, and your grand-daughters will revive you--for fancy dress.
+Proportion, ma'am, is nothing in the world but fashion."
+
+"Now we are talking about something I know more about than you, Mr.
+Constantine," cried Miss Le Pettit archly, "and I, for one, do not
+believe that the present style of dress can ever go completely out; it
+is too becoming. We shall have novelties, of course, but the idea will
+remain the same. And, talking of novelties, if you don't scorn such
+things, I will tell you a great secret. I am the first person to procure
+one of the new jackets--like the Princess of Wales wears, you know.
+You must have heard about them. Alexandra jackets they're called. Isn't
+that pretty? And they're just as pretty as she is. The sleeve...."
+
+And thus the great description flowed on, with a bevy of entranced
+girls, who had caught the raised tone, fluttering round in excitement
+like a crowd of butterflies round a blossom of extra sweetness.
+
+From which it will be seen that a month had already passed since Loveday
+had been the excitement of society, and that this conversation between
+the eccentric Mr. Constantine and the charming Miss Le Pettit was almost
+the last flickering of interest in her fate. The life of one moon had
+been enough to see the waxing and waning of what Mr. Constantine had
+surprisingly called her passion.
+
+Yet Miss Le Pettit, eager, nay, even anxious, as she had been to
+lead the gentleman away from the topic, reverted to it as though by
+a curious fascination, when he had taken his leave. To tell the truth,
+her conscience had some slight cause to make her uneasy on this very
+subject of the violent Loveday. The thing was ridiculous, of course ...
+she, Miss Le Pettit, could not conceivably have been even remotely to
+blame for such a fantastical happening, and yet that slight pricking
+remained....
+
+"An odd word to have used," she commented, in recounting the
+conversation she had had with Mr. Constantine to her eager friends, "a
+very odd word, indeed, for by it, apparently, he did not mean an access
+of anger such as the word signifies in all the books I have read...."
+
+"You mean in the books that you are _supposed_ to have read,
+Flora," interrupted one of the young ladies, a flighty girl, whose
+tongue often outran her discretion. "I have come across it meaning
+something quite different in books like--well, you know the sort of
+books I mean."
+
+"I do not think, though, that even _that_ was how Mr. Constantine
+used the word," replied Flora, with more of discernment than she
+commonly showed, "though I will not pretend to you, Ellen, that I do not
+recognise the sense in which you refer to it. To be candid, I don't
+think I know what he did mean, but he seemed to me to be paying a vast
+deal of attention to the matter, which surprised me in a person of his
+standing."
+
+"I have heard he is a man of much sensibility, though he is so
+satirical," murmured the romantic Emilia, bending over her netting so
+that her ebon curls shaded her suddenly flushing cheek.
+
+"Perhaps he knows more about the fair Loveday than we have guessed,"
+cried the careless Ellen; "perhaps he knows _too_ much, and cannot
+keep away from the subject for his guilty conscience, as they say
+murderers are drawn back to the spot where they have buried the body of
+their victim!"
+
+But this was too gross a departure from delicacy of thought and phrase,
+and Miss Le Pettit, the prick stirring, perchance, signified as much by
+the cold manner in which she brought back the conversation to the more
+correct and really more enthralling subject of the Alexandra jacket.
+
+It was generally agreed that Miss Belben, of Bugletown, could not go far
+wrong with the sleeves if Flora would be so infinitely good as to lend
+her jacket for a copy, and this favour she accorded graciously to her
+dear friend, Emilia.
+
+Mr. Constantine walked down the windy hill with his mind already clear
+both of Loveday and the elegant company in which he had been taking tea.
+He was, above all things, a philosopher, and that means that, though his
+imagination was easily touched, his heart remained unstirred, He had
+serious thoughts of ordering a new cabriolet, and on arriving at the
+market place, he turned into the coachbuilder's to renew the discussion
+as to whether red or canary yellow were the more fashionable hue for
+the wheels.
+
+
+
+    CHAPTER I: IN WHICH THE READER IS TAKEN
+      BACK A FEW WEEKS IN POINT OF TIME, AND
+      DOWN SEVERAL STEPS IN THE SOCIAL SCALE
+
+
+
+
+Chapter I
+
+IN WHICH THE READER IS TAKEN BACK A FEW WEEKS IN POINT OF TIME, AND DOWN
+SEVERAL STEPS IN THE SOCIAL SCALE
+
+
+It was on a balmy day in early Spring that Loveday had first met Miss Le
+Pettit. Loveday had gone to fetch the milk. For Loveday's aunt, Senath
+Strick, with whom she lived, was a shiftless, unthrifty woman, never
+able to keep prosperous enough to own a cow for as long as the beast
+took between calvings, and the times when Loveday had a fragrant,
+soft-eyed animal to cherish were mercifully rare. Mercifully, for
+Loveday, though she appeared sullen, had ever more sensibility than was
+good for one in her position, and each time Aunt Senath was forced to
+sell the cow, Loveday behaved as though she had as good a right to sit
+and cry herself silly as any young lady with whom nothing was more
+urgent than to spoil fine cambric with salt water.
+
+This, then, was a period of poverty with the Strick family, and Loveday
+was sent to fetch the evening milk from the farm at the crest of the
+hill. On the way, she came upon Cherry Cotton and Primrose Lear, seated
+upon a granite stile, their heads together over something Cherry held in
+her lap. Cherry heard approaching footsteps, and whipped her apron over
+the object she and her friend had been so busily discussing. Loveday was
+hurt rather than angered by the unkind action, for there was a reason,
+connected with Primrose, why she had felt a tender curiosity as to what
+the two girls were guarding so closely. Yet she was aware of bitterness
+also--for it was ever so when she appeared. Maids ceased their gossip,
+boys laughed and pointed after her. She was "different."
+
+Not in being a love-child, there were plenty of them in the village, but
+their parents generally married later, and even if they did not, then
+the female partner in crime would be one of the unmentionable women
+about whom other people talk so much.... She would live by the harbour
+plying a trade which allowed her to have a love-child or so without it
+being an occasion for undue remark, or, if she did not descend to those
+depths where no one expects anything better and censure consequently
+ceases through ineffectiveness, then at least everyone knew the author
+of her fall to be an honest, loutish Englishman, no worse than most of
+his neighbours.
+
+Loveday was without either of these two rights to existence. Her mother
+had been a respectable girl till her fall, and, as far as anyone was
+aware, since, for she had died of the fruit of her guilty connection,
+and though her portion was doubtless hell-fire, there is nothing to
+show that one cannot keep respectable even under such disquieting
+circumstances. The elder Loveday had clung obstinately to her
+self-respect under circumstances which her neighbours had tried to
+render nearly as trying on earth. She had died, as she had lived,
+impenitent and only crying for the foreigner who had seduced her,
+while he was then lying, had she but known it, in the lap of his first
+mistress, the sea, who, perhaps from jealousy at his straying, had taken
+him forcibly into her embrace on the same night that Loveday the younger
+was born.
+
+Old Madgy, the midwife, who was also more than suspected of being
+somewhat of a witch, declared that the expectant mother _did_ know
+it--that she had been made aware, through a supernatural happening, of
+the loss of her lover, and that that was why the babe saw the light in
+such undue haste, and the mother took her departure almost as swiftly
+to that place where alone she could ever hope to rejoin him. For, as
+evening drew on, Madgy, having called to see how Loveday did, though
+nothing was thought of yet for a clear week, found her in the dairy
+(the Stricks had not yet fallen on that poverty which came to their roof
+under Aunt Senath's shrewish management) standing as one wisht beside
+the great red earthen pan of scalded cream.
+
+"And 'ee can b'lieve me or no as it like 'ee, my dears," old Madgy would
+say to many a breathless circle in a farm kitchen during the intervals
+of her duties overstairs, "but there was the cream in the pan a-heavin'
+up an' down in gurt waves, like a rough sea, and her staring at 'en like
+one stricken, as she was poor sawl, sure enough. Eh, it was sent for a
+sign to her, and a true sign, for that avenen' her man was drowned on
+his way to her, with his fine cargo of oil and onions and all. And there
+was the cream heavin' in waves for a sign of the rough seas that took
+him, though wi' us the skies was fair and the water in the bay as smooth
+as silk."
+
+A story that filled simple souls in kitchens with awe, but naturally was
+treated more scornfully in drawing-rooms, where it was felt that signs
+and portents would hardly be sent to inform a cottage girl of the death
+of an onion-seller. For, after all, that is what he amounts to, and the
+horrid secret is out.... An onion-seller ... the very words stink in
+the nostrils and are fatal to romance.
+
+Fatal to romance in the minds of the fastidious, fatal to respectability
+in those of the common people, for only foreigners sold onions. Strange
+men with rings in their ears and long, dark curls like a woman's, and an
+eye that was at once bold and soft.
+
+Loveday the younger had that eye, save that it had never learned from
+life to be bold, and her face was milken white instead of showing the
+blown roses of the other girls, though the back of her slender neck was
+stained a faint golden brown as by the inherited memories of sun. She
+was most immodestly "different," and even the Vicar's lady, who had
+charitably seen to her baptism, had difficulty in bringing herself to
+believe the girl could be a Christian.
+
+Cherry and Primrose stared up at her as she stood with the red jar in
+her hand, and, seeing her look so black, so white, so thin, they leant
+their yellow heads together and drew their two aprons closely over their
+plump laps.
+
+Seen thus, fronted by Loveday, they seemed amazingly alike, because of
+the completeness of her differing, yet a longer look showed that, in
+spite of their sleek, fair heads and rounded shoulders, there was
+between them the deepest division there can be between women.
+
+Cherry was a maid, thoughtless, blowsy, still untouched enough for
+wonder; Primrose had been a wife, though only seventeen, these three
+months; in another three was to be a mother. Her eyes, blue as her
+friend's, showed an even greater assurance, because it was based on
+positives and not on a mere negation. Dark-circled as those eyes were,
+her glance, as it passed over Loveday, was the more merciless, because
+it came from behind the shelter of a ring-fence.
+
+
+
+    CHAPTER II: IN WHICH THE ONION-SELLER'S
+      DAUGHTER FOR THE FIRST TIME FEELS AS
+      A WOMAN
+
+
+
+
+Chapter II
+
+IN WHICH THE ONION-SELLER'S DAUGHTER FOR THE FIRST TIME FEELS AS A WOMAN
+
+
+For all her woodland timidity, Loveday was prone to those flashes of
+temper to which the weak in defence and the strong in feeling seem
+peculiarly exposed. She snatched the shielding apron back from the lap
+of the buxom Cherry, stamping her foot the while. Cherry, too amazed to
+protect her treasure, stared, slack-mouthed.
+
+Primrose flew into a temper that surpassed Loveday's, already failing
+her through dismay at her own action, even as the thunder, to children,
+surpasses in terrifying quality the lightning.... And, had they but
+known it, Primrose's sounding tantrums held as much possibility of
+danger, compared with Loveday's rage, as holds the crash compared with
+the flash. But they knew it not, and already Loveday stood panting a
+little and spent with her own storm, while Primrose gathered herself,
+undaunted, for the attack.
+
+A hail of words would have beaten about Loveday's drooping head had not
+Cherry, all unwitting, come to the rescue with a cry on the discovery
+that her treasures, thus disturbed, had fallen to the ground, which was
+muddy enough, owing to the habit of the cattle of trampling the soil
+around the stiles.
+
+"Oh, my fairings, my fairings!" cried Cherry, swooping at them from her
+height with all the headlong thump of a gannet after its prey. Loveday's
+dive was as the gull's for grace contrasted with it. Their hands met;
+Loveday divined in an instant, by the tug of Cherry's, that she was
+suspected of trying to snatch the fairings, instead of merely restoring
+them, and she straightened herself with a return of her sick anger.
+Cherry clutched the frail morsels of riband and lace in her lap, then,
+seeing there was no danger, began to straighten them out, scolding the
+while.
+
+"There, see, Primrose love, that edging is all crumpled ... did you ever
+see the like? Never mind, I'll press it out for 'ee, and it'll look as
+good as new. And this riband, that's the one I bought off Bendigo, the
+pedlar, for Flora Day--oh, my dear life, what'll I do with it now?"
+
+"'Tis a gurt shame, that's what 'tis," said Primrose, resentful both for
+her friend's riband and her own edging; "and I'd get my Willie to make
+her buy new, only 'tis no good asking paupers for money, because, even
+if they was to be sold up, all their sticks and cloam wouldn't fetch
+enough for a yard o' this riband."
+
+The vulgar taunt had sting enough to rouse Loveday to a wholesome
+contempt that saved her. She stood staring with a genuine scorn at the
+little articles of lace and artificial flowers which Cherry's beau had
+given her at the last fair. Yes, even at the riband which had been
+Cherry's special pride as bought by herself from the pedlar, and it was
+one that had taken Loveday's eye with its delicate beauty--for it was of
+palest rose, like the shells she picked up on the beach, not a crude red
+or blue, such as she saw in the shops at Bugletown when she went in on
+market days. Secretly, something in her marvelled that such a riband had
+been Cherry's choice, and her scorning of it now was the easier because
+she hated to think she and the blowsy damsel could have a taste in
+common.
+
+"You and your fal-lals!" she exclaimed; "here's a fine boutigo to make
+of a parcel of ribands and laces that'll make you look like a couple of
+the puppets at Corpus Fair. If you wear such as those to the Flora
+you'll be mistook for a Maypole, and folk'll dance round you."
+
+"Well, folks 'ull never dance even _round_ you, unless you're burnt
+as a guy in a bonfire, let alone dancing _with_ you, Loveday
+Strick," rejoined Primrose, "and so you do very well knaw, and that's
+why your heart's sick against us."
+
+A minute ago, and that had been true; it was for her isolation Loveday
+had raged, but when she had seen these two draw their aprons over their
+girl's treasures, she had not guessed those possessions aright. What she
+had imagined in her girl's heart, knowing Primrose's condition, it is
+not for us to pry at; whatever it was, it was so swift, so born of
+instinct, as to be holy. But when she saw the crumpled finery, she was
+suddenly too much of a child again to rate it worth envy. The things
+that Primrose, all unthinking, stood for, the things of warm hearth and
+hallowed bed that her house had never known, might have power to draw
+the woman out in her all too soon, but the things that merely charm the
+feminine still left her chill.
+
+She laughed, all the sting gone, when she saw what a milliner's paradise
+it was from which she was kept out, and put her foot on the first step
+of the stile.
+
+"By your lave, Cherry Cotton!" she said, and swung lightly over,
+balancing her jar, while they still stared at the change in her.
+
+
+
+    CHAPTER III: IN WHICH SHE FOR THE FIRST
+      TIME FEELS AS A GIRL
+
+
+
+
+Chapter III
+
+IN WHICH SHE FOR THE FIRST TIME FEELS AS A GIRL
+
+
+Primrose Lear was wife to the son of old Farmer Lear, of Upper Farm,
+whither Loveday was bound. Willie Lear, the young man, was gay and
+handsome, and generally off on any and every job that took him abroad,
+from buying a pig to selling his own senses for a few mugs of cider.
+Farmer Lear was usually out in the fields, and Mrs. Lear, wrinkled like
+a winter apple and tuneful as a winter robin, was as a rule alone in the
+big kitchen or cool dairy, for small help did her daughter-in-law give
+her about the house.
+
+To-day, however, Mrs. Lear was in the parlour, and no less a personage
+than Miss Le Pettit of Ignores was seated on the best horsehair
+armchair, her bonneted head, with its drooping feather, leaning
+gracefully against the lace antimacassar, and her small prunella boots
+elegantly crossed on the smiling cheeks of the beadwork cherub that
+adorned the footstool, and that seemed to be puffing the harder, as
+though to try and puff those little feet up to the heaven where he
+belonged, trusting to his wings (of the best pearl beads) to bear him
+after her.
+
+Loveday paused, stricken, not with embarrassment, but with awe, upon the
+threshold.
+
+Sight of Cherry and Primrose had deepened her sense of her own isolation
+and her pain. Sight of Miss Le Pettit made her forget all save what she
+saw.
+
+Blow, little cherub, puff your cherubic hardest, never can you waft
+Flora Le Pettit higher than she now is, at least in the sight of one
+pair of black eyes, higher, perhaps, than she will ever be again, even
+in that of her own not uncomplacent orbs.
+
+Blow, little cherub, but even if you burst the roseate beads from off
+your cheeks in your ardour, leaving forlornly drooping the grey threads
+that would show you as, after all, of mere mortal manufacture, you could
+not cast a doubt as big as the tiniest bead upon the heavenly origin of
+Miss Le Pettit--not, at least, in the heart of the devout worshipper
+born in that instant upon the black woollen doormat.
+
+The angelic visitant put up a tortoise-shell lorgnon and examined the
+newcomer with a flicker of condescending interest. For Flora was a young
+lady of great sensibility, and though, of course, all females are filled
+by nature with that interesting and appealing quality, the finer amongst
+them educate and make an art of it. Miss Le Pettit, then, encouraged her
+sensibility, nursed it, nourished it, on the most exquisite of novels
+and the rarest of romances, and these had taught her to show even more
+sensibility than usual at sight of a barefoot girl with black hair and
+eyes and an arresting, though wholly unconscious air that could but be
+described by Miss Le Pettit, to herself and afterwards to her friends,
+as Italianate.
+
+"What an interesting face and figure!" she now exclaimed, at gaze
+through the lorgnon, as though it were a celestial aid to vision needful
+for such a long range, as it must be even for angelic eyes looking from
+the skiey ramparts to a world where bare feet press the earth, to say
+nothing of woollen doormats.
+
+Loveday blenched before that searching gaze, the rare red burned in her
+cheek and her own eyes sank abashed. She rubbed the flexible sole of one
+foot in a stiffened curve of shyness against the slim ankle of the
+other. Mrs. Lear exclaimed aloud in her horror.
+
+"Loveday Strick, where are your manners to, that you come into the
+parlour without a curtsey?" said she. "And indeed, I must ask you to
+excuse her, ma'am, for she's but a nobody's girl from the village, and
+doesn't know how to behave before gentry."
+
+Mrs. Lear was a good soul, and had ever been kind to Loveday, but she
+too had her sensibilities, and they were outraged by this untimely
+intrusion of one world into another which was doubtless unaware even of
+its existence. But Miss Le Pettit put up a delicate gloved hand in
+protest.
+
+"Nay, you frighten the child, Mrs. Lear," she said kindly, "I am sure
+she means no disrespect. Did you ... what is your name, girl?'
+
+"Loveday, ma'am."
+
+"What a strange, old-fashioned name, to be sure," commented the taffetas
+angel, with a crystal sounding titter, "'tis as good as the heroine in a
+play. Whom were you called for, child?"
+
+"My mother, ma'am," said Loveday, and now her cheek had ceased to burn
+and looked pale, but she raised her eyes and confronted the vision
+steadily.
+
+Mrs. Lear coughed.
+
+"I declare I should like to do a watercolour drawing of you, Loveday,"
+went on Miss Le Pettit, "what do you say? Will you come up to the Manor
+one day and let me paint your portrait?"
+
+Loveday had not a notion what that process might be, but had she taken
+it to be the blackest witchcraft (as she very likely would if she saw
+it) she would still not have blenched. Her eye lightened, some instinct
+told her that had she been as all the other girls, the Cherries and
+Primroses, this wonderful lady would not have looked twice at her. At
+last her singularity was standing her in good stead. Confidence came to
+her, even a feeling of slight scorn for the world she knew, a feeling,
+indeed, to which she was not altogether a stranger, but which up till
+now she had stifled in affright at its presumption.
+
+"What do you say, Mrs. Lear?" asked Miss Le Pettit, turning with her
+charming condescension to the old woman, whom, after all, she was merely
+visiting on a little matter of a recipe for elderflower-water, "what do
+you say? Would she not look picturesque with an orange kerchief over her
+head and a basket of fruit in her arms, as a young street-vendor?"
+
+"She would certainly look outlandish, ma'am," was all Mrs. Lear could
+manage.
+
+Loveday's thoughts flew of a sudden to the ribands she had disturbed in
+Cherry's lap, and for the first time in her life, till now so proudly
+above such matters in its aloofness, she yearned over fineries. If such
+as those could admit her into the company of such as this! She thought
+enviously of that pale pink, even of the yellows and reds she had seen
+in Bugletown, since such deep tones seemed to the taste of this
+wonderful creature.
+
+But Miss Le Pettit, still staring at her, changed her note.
+
+"I was wrong," she exclaimed, "that face needs no gaudy hues, those
+white cheeks need nothing but that red mouth to set them off, and that
+black hair. She should be white, all white, should she not, Mrs. Lear?
+A tragic bride from the south, languishing in our cold land. 'Twould
+make a fine subject for a painting, though I fear beyond my brush.
+I never can get my faces to look as sad as I could wish them to."
+
+There was something engaging and almost childlike about the heiress as
+she spoke those words, but recollecting herself she resumed:
+
+"Never mind the portrait, but I vow I will have you for my attendant at
+the Flora, that I will. Now, Mrs. Lear, you shall not protest, I always
+have my way when I set my heart on a thing, you know. I am going to
+dance in the Flora this year, 'tis a charming rural custom, and the
+gentry should help to preserve it. Besides, my name is Flora, so I
+am doubly bound. And this child shall be my maid; she will be a rare
+contrast to me, I being chestnut and she so foreign looking. It would
+be indiscreet if I were to dance with a gentleman--you know what the
+gossips are--but if I am partnered by an attendant maid 'twill be very
+different."
+
+"Ma'am ..." from the scandalised Mrs. Lear, "if you are set on having
+a village girl ... there are many from good homes, respectable girls.
+Not that I've anything to say against this poor child, God knows, but
+her mother, ma'am.... I assure you 'tis impossible."
+
+Miss Le Pettit, who guessed very well the sort of tale Mrs. Lear's
+delicacy spared her, laughed the matter off.
+
+"It shall be as I say, Mrs. Lear, I can afford to be above these things.
+You shall dance with me, Loveday. You must have a white frock, of
+course, but I suppose you have a Sunday frock? Quite a simple thing,
+the simpler the better, and a white sash of satin riband. Don't forget.
+I shall expect to see you waiting for me at the Flora."
+
+And Miss Le Pettit rose, having carried her freak of sensibility on long
+enough, and sweeping past Loveday with a dazzling smile, was accompanied
+to the front door by Mrs. Lear, and after standing poised for a moment
+against the sunny verdure beyond, took wing with a flutter of white
+taffetas and was gone.
+
+Loveday was left with that most dangerous of all passions--the passion
+for an idea. Though she was ignorant of the fact, it was not Miss Le
+Pettit she adored, it was beauty; not silk underskirts that rustled
+in her ear, but the music of the spheres; a new ideal she saw not in
+the angelic visitant, but in herself. She, too, would be all white and
+dazzling, was accounted worthy to follow in the same steps, were it
+but in those of a dance. She made the common mistake of a lover--she
+imagined she was in love with another human being, while in reality she
+was in love with those feelings in herself which that other had evoked.
+
+Never did aspiring saint of old, impelled by ecstasy, cling closer to a
+crucifix as the symbol of the loved one than did Loveday to that notion
+of the white garb which must be hers. It was, indeed, a symbol to her,
+the symbol of everything she had unwittingly craved and starved for,
+of everything she had, could not but feel she had, in herself which was
+lacked by those who jeered at her. And, though she knew it not, nor
+would have understood it, she was a symbol-lover, than which there is no
+form of lover more dangerous in life--or more endangered by the chances
+of it. For he who loves another human being gives his heart in fee, but
+he who loves an idea gives his soul.
+
+
+
+    CHAPTER IV: IN WHICH THE ONION-SELLER'S
+      DAUGHTER FEELS HERSELF A GODDESS
+
+
+
+
+Chapter IV
+
+IN WHICH THE ONION-SELLER'S DAUGHTER FEELS HERSELF A GODDESS
+
+
+Loveday bore home the milk in a maze of bliss, and staying not for her
+supper, for no hunger of the body was upon her, turned and went out
+again into the glow of the evening. Had she been as full of sensibility
+as a young lady she would have wandered straight away from Upper Farm,
+forgotten the milk, and not thought of it again, till, returning with
+the upgetting of the moon, her aunt had met her with vulgar reproaches.
+What a charming scene could then have been staged, of sensitive genius
+misunderstood by coarse-grained labour; of vision-drunken youth berated
+by undreaming age! But she was not a young lady, and could derive no
+felicity from forgetfulness of such a kind, for with the poor the
+urgencies of the immediate task are raised to such compelling interest
+that only a genius could neglect them with satisfaction. Therefore
+Loveday never thought of forgetting the milk for her aunt, but her
+exultation was of such a powerful sort that it upheld her through the
+commonplaces of routine without her perceiving the incongruity which
+would have jarred on one of a finer upbringing.
+
+She placed the milk on the table, set out the bread and soaked
+pilchards, found what was left of the cheese, and went hastily forth
+lest her aunt should stay her.
+
+She was bound for the little wood that lay in a fold of the moorland
+above the sea. This wood was to her what a City of Refuge was to the
+Hebrews of the Old Testament, and, like them, she fled to it when the
+world's opinion of what was fit had proved at variance with her own.
+To-night she went to it not for sanctuary from others, but to commune
+with herself--in truth, for the first time she went not because of what
+she had left but because of what she would find. Her bare heels were
+winged along the road.
+
+The wood lay lapped in the shadow that the western ridge had cast on it
+an hour earlier than the rest of the world's bedtime, ever since the
+trees had been there to receive the chill caress, and that was for many
+a hundred years. Old Madgy swore that even in her young day the small
+folk had still held their revels on the mossy slopes amongst the fanlike
+roots, and who knows what larger folk had not fled there to wanton more
+sweetly than in close cottages, or, like Loveday, to play the more
+easily with their thoughts? The wood alone knew, and it held its
+memories as closely as it held the thousand tiny lives confided to its
+care; the bright-eyed shrew-mice that poked quivering noses through the
+litter of last year's leaves, the birds that nested behind the
+clustering twigs, the slow-worms that slipped along its grassy ditches.
+
+Loveday turned off from the road and approached the wood from the west,
+pausing when she reached the smooth grey boulders that were piled along
+the ridge. She stood there gazing out over the smiling champaign, pale
+and verdant from the farthest rim to the treetops that made as it were a
+sea of faint green at her feet, for already in that soft clime the twigs
+were misty with young leaf, and on the willows the velvety pearl-hued
+ovals had begun to deck themselves with a delicate powdering of gold,
+while from the hazels beside her the yellow lambs' tails hung still as
+tiny pennants in the evening air. The gold of nature was as yet more
+vivid than her green, which still showed tentative, enquiring of April
+what of betrayal might not lie in the careless plaits of her garment.
+To Loveday, high on her rock, between the gold of the sky and the gold
+of the blossom, it seemed that April must of a certainty stay as fair
+as this and lead to as bright a May, when that vision of her new self
+should become a yet brighter reality. She was confident of April because
+she was confident of life, lapped in an aureate glow that seemed to
+suffuse the very air she drew into her lungs so that it intoxicated her
+like the breath of a diviner ether from Olympian heights. She had seen
+beauty, and lo! it had been revealed to her not as a thing apart and
+unattainable, but as a quality within herself. Her "difference" had
+become a blazon, not a branding.
+
+Lying down on her rock, she told over with the rapture of a devotee the
+divine excellencies of Flora Le Pettit; her radiance, her swinging,
+shining curls, the wings that spread from her fair arms, the light that
+gleamed on her bright brow and in her glancing eyes, but it was not
+Flora, but Loveday, who danced before her mind's eye in white raiment,
+and held the sorrows of the South in her eyes and the joy of youth on
+her lips. Flora was the excuse for that new Loveday, as the beloved is
+ever the excuse for the raptures transmuting the lover. Even thus do we
+worship in our Creator the excellence of His handiwork, and one would
+think that to be alive is act of praise enough to satisfy the most
+exigent deity. Flora had called Loveday to life, and Loveday repaid her
+with a worship of that which she had awakened, the highest compliment
+the devout can pay, would the theologians but acknowledge it.
+
+The sun slipped slower down the field of the sky, now a pale green as
+delicate as the leaves burgeoning beneath it, and Loveday drew herself
+up in a bunch, knees to chin, her brown strong hands clasped and her
+slim feet curved over the slope of the smooth granite. The wood below
+was wrapping itself in mystery, and her eyes attempted to fathom its
+fastnesses. Ordinarily, she was fearful of venturing into the darkness
+under the trees when once the evening had fallen, and it was then she
+was accustomed to come out up to her boulder, but this evening she was
+strung to any courage, for she walked in that certainty which on rare
+occasions comes to all--the certainty of being immune to danger--which
+is of all sensations vouchsafed to mortals the most godlike.
+
+She rose to her feet, and swinging herself down from the rock, began the
+descent, ledge by ledge, to the shadows below. A last spring, and she
+was standing on the dark gold of drifted leaves, that rose about her
+ankles with a dry little rustling. It was the wood's caress of greeting,
+and she did not reflect that it was also the kisses of the dead.
+
+Indeed, she clapped her hands in the rush of strength she felt, both in
+her young muscles and her leaping spirit, and stood proudly listening
+to the echo dying away, unaffrighted. She was young and strong and
+beautiful; life, not dead leaves, lay at her feet. She was different,
+and in her difference lay power, she was at last herself, Loveday ...
+she was Loveday, Loveday ... Loveday...
+
+She darted hither and thither through the wood, noting with a pleasure
+keener than ever before how soft and sleek the moss was to her feet, how
+silky the flank of the beech to her leaning cheek, how sweetly sharp the
+intimate evening note of the birds.
+
+And she was quite unfitted to be the goddess of these rustic beauties,
+for all her mind could feel in that softness and sleekness and clear
+calling was their alikeness to artificiality. She felt thin slippers
+on her feet, rubbed an ecstatic cheek against the sheen of satin, and
+in her ears echoed no diviner music than the Tol-de-rol Tol-de-rol
+of the Bugletown band on Flora Day. Save in her sincerity, she was as
+artificial a goddess as ever graced a Versailles Fête Champêtre. What
+were leaf and bird to her but the stuff of her life, whereas white satin
+gleamed with the shimmer of the very heavens!
+
+Hers was not, it is true, the milliner's paradise of Cherry and
+Primrose, but it was one into which she could only penetrate fitly
+clad. What wonder then that, brought up without any tutoring in the
+excellencies of Nature, she should display the sad lack of true feeling
+so deplored in her later by that nice arbiter of taste, Miss Flora Le
+Pettit?
+
+
+
+    CHAPTER V: IN WHICH LOVEDAY ESSAYS THE
+      WHITE GOWN
+
+
+
+
+Chapter V
+
+IN WHICH LOVEDAY ESSAYS THE WHITE GOWN
+
+
+With morning came thoughts of the practical side of the business and,
+the worst of her daily duties performed, Loveday ascended to her chamber
+to examine the scanty contents of her small oaken chest. It was a
+sea-chest, legacy from her roving father, who had given it to her
+mother, and often enough had Aunt Senath expressed scruples about
+allowing her to keep a gift obtained so godlessly. Perhaps the fact that
+it was a good chest and better than anything she could have bought had
+something to do with Aunt Senath's complaisance in permitting it to
+remain. Perhaps Loveday's fierce look in defence of it was not without
+influence also. The chest stayed in the little attic room, and made of
+it, to Loveday's eyes, a place peculiarly her own, and rich because of
+its associations. There was something about the chest, its dark polish
+and coarse carving, that even led her to think hopefully of its poor
+contents.
+
+She crouched beside it now, upon her heels, and lifting the lid, gazed
+expectantly at what was revealed.
+
+After all, it did not look so bad, just a level surface of white linen...
+
+But, when she lifted it out, and all the yellow of age was revealed in
+the full gathers of the skirt, a shade passed over Loveday's spirit.
+How small and tight the bodice looked, how skimpy even the plaits of the
+skirt for the present modes ... yet it had been a good linen in its day,
+there was no doubt of that, this frock that had been stitched for her
+mother's wedding gown.
+
+For perhaps he had always been coming back to marry her, perhaps only
+their young blood and eager hearts beating so strongly within them had
+made the beat of wedding bells seem at first too slight a sound to catch
+their absorbed attention.... So Loveday the elder had always known,
+in spite of the sneers of the neighbours. So Loveday the younger had
+maintained to carping girl-critics, though in her inmost heart she had
+never been able to feel it mattered so vastly, for half the girls she
+knew would have been in her predicament had their fathers been cut
+off untimely. She knew it was not that she was born out of wedlock,
+a misfortune that might happen to anyone, which oppressed her youth,
+but the fact of her father having been a foreigner, and of that she
+was fiercely resolved to be proud. Neither mother nor father had she
+ever known, but the instinct of generous youth is ever to defend the
+oppressed, and with her defence had love sprung in Loveday's heart.
+Therefore, even with her sensation of disappointment at the sight of the
+yellowed linen, there was reverence and tenderness in her touch as she
+laid the gown across her narrow bed.
+
+She ripped off the coarse blue wrapper that enfolded her, and stood
+revealed in her little flannel under-bodice and linsey-woolsey petticoat
+of striped red and black, her thin girlish arms and young bosom making
+her look more childish than she did when fully clothed. She held the
+gown above her head and struggled into it. Her pale little face was red
+when she poked it triumphantly through the narrow opening and finally
+settled the neck, with its ruffled cambric frilling, round her throat,
+and pulled the puff sleeves as far as they would go down her arms in a
+vain attempt to make them conceal her red young girl's elbows. She could
+only see a small portion of herself at a time in the little mirror, yet
+that small portion, in spite of the skimpiness and yellowness of the
+gown, pleased her eye.
+
+For her dark tints were set off by the creamy folds, her slight shape
+revealed by the tight bodice, even her bare feet, which some fine
+prompting had made her wash carefully lest they should shame this essay,
+looked small and graceful beneath the full folds.
+
+But she could not dance in the Flora unshod, and so once again she bent
+to the sea-chest, and withdrew her only pair of shoes, bought for her in
+a generous moment last Michaelmas by Aunt Senath. She pulled on her
+Sunday pair of white cotton stockings, and then the stout shoes. They
+still fitted, and to her country eye looked well enough. She examined
+herself bit by bit in the mirror, from her smooth black head to her
+smooth black feet, and all the faintly yellowed linen that curved in and
+swelled out between.
+
+She was fair to look upon, not so much the mirror as her own awakened
+consciousness told her that. She was meet to dance with Miss Le Pettit
+at the Flora, could she but obtain one thing more--the white satin sash.
+
+
+
+    CHAPTER VI: IN WHICH LOVEDAY ESSAYS TO
+      OBTAIN THE WHITE SATIN RIBAND
+
+
+
+
+Chapter VI
+
+IN WHICH LOVEDAY ESSAYS TO OBTAIN THE WHITE SATIN RIBAND
+
+
+With a high heart Loveday began her quest for the work which was to earn
+for her the coveted white satin sash. She had but three weeks in which
+to make a matter of several shillings, and this meant that she must sell
+every moment of the time which was hers when her duties about her aunt's
+were discharged for the day. In the morning she was busy with cleaning
+and cooking till almost mid-day, and in the evenings she had the milk to
+fetch, but in the afternoons she could be sure of a few hours if Aunt
+Senath did not guess she wanted them for herself and invent tasks. On
+Mondays, of course, the washing kept her all day at the tub, and on
+Fridays at the mangle, on Saturdays there was the baking of the bread,
+while Thursday, being market day, she was supposed to keep house while
+Aunt Senath went in to Bugletown--a task that slut of a woman was too
+fond of for its chances of gossip to send her niece in her stead. On
+Thursdays Loveday was wont to stay in and see to the mending, but she
+reflected that, by sitting up in her bed at night to darn and patch by
+the light of the wick that floated in a cup of fish-oil, she might take
+charge of some neighbour's children on that day instead and Aunt Senath
+be none the wiser. Loveday had a sad lack of principle, doubtless an
+heritage from her heathen father.
+
+On the afternoons of Tuesdays and Wednesdays, she hoped to help in some
+house with the cleaning, or in some slattern's abode with the weekly
+wash, for, as all know, there are some such sluts that the washing gets
+put off from day to day, till Saturday finds it still cluttering the
+washhouse instead of being brought in clean and sweet from the
+gorse-bushes.
+
+Then there were always odd things to be done, such as running errands,
+at which she hoped to earn some pence here and there. The white riband
+seemed no impossible fantasy to Loveday when she started on her quest.
+
+She went first to visit old Mrs. Lear, at Upper Farm, for no one had
+shown such a kindly front to the girl in all the village as she. Loveday
+started out for the milk half-an-hour earlier than was her wont so that
+she might have time to discuss her hopes with the farmer's wife, and
+this time she did not meet young Mrs. Lear or her friend Cherry on the
+way. But she did come upon both Mrs. Lears in the big kitchen, the
+younger seated in the armchair in front of the fire and the elder
+anxiously regarding her. Primrose had been fretful ever since hearing
+from her mother-in-law of Miss Le Pettit's visit of the day before,
+and of the unaccountable interest the heiress had shown in that faggot
+of a Loveday, and by now her fretfulness had assumed the size of an
+indisposition. In vain did Mrs. Lear try and cosset and comfort her with
+potions both hot and cool; Primrose knew well that beneath the kindness
+of the farmer's wife lurked the feeling that it was not for one in her
+station to indulge in such vapours as might well befit the gentry, and
+that she would be cured sooner by taking a broom to the best carpet than
+by sitting and keeping the fire warm. Primrose sulked, and even handsome
+Willie, leaning by the window, wanting to be away yet dreading the
+outburst did he move, could not persuade his wife that nothing ailed her
+but too much idleness. Neither, though to their robust health it would
+have seemed so, would it have been all the truth, for Primrose was
+taking her condition more hardly than most girls who have had the good
+fortune to wed with a prosperous young farmer, and the thought that she
+would not be able to dance in the procession with the rest of the world
+at the Flora had for some time past embittered her. To enter the house,
+after her anger with Loveday and the flash of fear that the strange
+half-foreign girl had filled her with, only to find that the great Miss
+Le Pettit had offered that very girl to dance with her ... this was
+poisonous fare indeed for one in the discontented mood of Primrose Lear.
+The heaviness of her mind matched with that of her body as she hunched
+over the fire.
+
+Sight of Loveday, a Loveday oddly changed from that of the day earlier,
+did not ease her sickness; the light in Loveday's eye, the fresh
+exhilaration of her step--she, who was wont to slip along with so much
+of quiet aloofness--stung the other girl anew. Loveday greeted Mrs. Lear
+eagerly before she saw that Primrose was sitting half-hidden by the
+wings of the big chair, her face, paler than its wont, in shadow, pallid
+like a face seen through still water. Then she saw also handsome Willie,
+dark against the small square panes of the window, the April sun gilding
+the curve of his ruddy cheek and making the pots of red geraniums along
+the sill blaze as brightly as the beautiful blossoms of painted wax
+that, under their glass shade, held an example of neat perfection up
+to Nature.
+
+Willie nodded at Loveday with a trifle less of sulkiness in his manner,
+took a step forward and relapsed once more. A little silence seemed to
+catch them all, broken by good Mrs. Lear saying:
+
+"You'm early to-day, Loveday. Milken's not over yet."
+
+"I'm come to see you a moment, if 'tes possible," said Loveday, some of
+her shining confidence already fallen from her, she knew not why.
+
+"Well," said Primrose spitefully, guessing her presence would embarrass
+Loveday, "Mrs. Lear's here and I daresay'll speak to 'ee. Can't be any
+secret from me, of course, whatever 'tes."
+
+Mrs. Lear, suddenly sorry for Loveday, although Primrose on entering the
+day before had told her a tale that had angered her, said:
+
+"Come into dairy, Loveday; you can tell me what 'tes while I see to your
+aunt's bit of butter."
+
+Loveday followed her into the cool dairy, where on the scrubbed
+white wood shelves the great red earthen pans stood in rows holding
+their thick crinkled cream, which Loveday never saw without a thought
+of awe for her mother's miracle, and the waves that had surged over
+her father's head. Thought of it now restored her sense of her own
+power--the cream was ever for her a symbol of divine interposition, and
+if her own parents had been found worthy of such a sign, why should not
+she too have that something apart and strong which forced signs from the
+very heavens, that something apart which indeed she could not but feel
+sure she possessed, never with such a gladness in the certainty until
+the miraculous yesterday?
+
+Eagerly she unfolded her plans to Mrs. Lear, her words falling forth in
+a rush as hurried as a moorland stream after rain, yet as clear too, and
+as she spoke of her hopes and plans her black eyes scanned Mrs. Lear's
+face more in faith than anxiety. But Mrs. Lear wore a strange look that
+to one less eager than the girl would have shown as pity.
+
+"Softly, Loveday, softly," she said at last, "while I see if I can
+get to the rights of this. You want to earn money for yourself this
+next month to buy your white riband with. Have 'ee thought 'tes an
+extravagant purchase for a maid like you, who should be putten any
+money into warm flannel or a pair of good boots?"
+
+"I don't want boots, Mrs. Lear, I don't want nothing on the earth but my
+satin sash so I can dance with her in the Flora. I want it more than to
+save my soul, that I do; I'll go through anything to get it. I'll work
+like ten maids for 'ee and for anyone else that'll have me, so as I can
+dance in the Flora..."
+
+"Hush, hush," cried the good woman, justly scandalised by such
+unbalanced ravings from a maid of fifteen who should have had nothing
+but modesty in her mouth; "you mustn't say such wicked things or I can't
+stay here and listen to en."
+
+Fear attacked Loveday, not for her own impious words, but lest she had
+shocked Mrs. Lear past helping.
+
+"Mrs. Lear," she said urgently, "I don't mean any wickedness, but indeed
+I can't sufficiently tell 'ee what it means to me to get my length of
+riband and dance in the Flora come May. I do believe I'll die if I
+don't. I don't know how to find words to tell 'ee, but 'tes more to me
+than a white riband and a shaking of feet down Bugletown streets, 'tes
+my life, I do believe ..." She added no word of Flora Le Pettit, you
+perceive, but got a secret joy from being able to use her name thus
+unreproved in mention of the dance ... and who that has been a lover
+will not understand this?
+
+"I would have had 'ee up here to help now that Primrose is so wisht,"
+replied Mrs. Lear doubtfully, "but simmingly only yesterday you had
+words, and indeed it was ill done of you, Loveday Strick, towards one
+in her condition, as you do very well knaw."
+
+Loveday drooped her head. Idle to protest to Mrs. Lear that she had not
+been the first in fault. She waited breathless, the beating of her heart
+almost choking her. Mrs. Lear went on.
+
+"If only Primrose could be made to overlook it, then I'll have 'ee and
+welcome, Loveday, and pay you a florin a week too, which would soon add
+up to enough. I'd be glad for 'ee to stay on after the Flora too, for
+Primrose's time'll be near."
+
+Loveday had no interest in what happened after the dance. Life would
+be all golden ever after, something wonderful and new would certainly
+begin; it was to mark the great division in her life, but gratitude and
+the caution born of years of slights held her silent on that subject to
+the good Mrs. Lear.
+
+"Wait 'ee here," Mrs. Lear bade her, and herself went back into the
+kitchen. She was gone some minutes, that to Loveday dragged as weeks,
+though when she reappeared Loveday felt that the time of waiting had
+gone too soon, and she wished for it to begin once more, so much she
+dreaded to ask what had been said. Mrs. Lear spared her the need for
+questioning.
+
+"'Tes no manner of use, Loveday," she said, "Primrose won't hear of it,
+and being as she is, I can't contrairy her."
+
+Loveday felt the futility of argument, and, indeed, in the violent
+reaction that attacks such ardent natures, she felt too numb to make the
+attempt even had she wished. She stood staring at Mrs. Lear with her
+eyes dark in her pale face and the first presage of defeat in her heart.
+
+
+
+    CHAPTER VII: IN WHICH LOVEDAY STILL
+      ESSAYS TO OBTAIN THE WHITE SATIN RIBAND
+
+
+
+
+Chapter VII
+
+IN WHICH LOVEDAY STILL ESSAYS TO OBTAIN THE WHITE SATIN RIBAND
+
+
+It were a weary task to chronicle all the ways trodden by Loveday during
+the three weeks that followed her visit to Upper Farm, and yet, even so,
+it would not be as weary as was the treading of them to that still
+ardent though fearful girl. Hers grew to be a dread that would have
+seemed to a spectator disproportionate indeed--for what can one heart
+know of the sickness of another's, of its hurried beating when hope
+beckons, of its numb slackening when hope fails? How swift to Loveday
+seemed the relentless patter of the days past her questing feet, that,
+run hither and thither as she would, yet could not keep pace with Time's
+urgency! How slow to Loveday seemed the ticking of each moment, since
+each held hope and fear full-globed, as in bubbles that rise and rise
+only to burst into the empty air! So each moment rose, rounded, to meet
+Loveday, held, and broke, till her mind was but a daze which confounded
+speed with slowness, till she thought the future would never be the
+present and found perpetually that it was the past.
+
+After her failure with Mrs. Lear it occurred to Loveday to go where she
+should have gone in the first place--whither she might have gone had
+not some irk of conscience whispered her that her purpose was all too
+worldly--to the wife of the Vicar, Mrs. Veale. This Mrs. Veale was the
+good lady who had stood sponsor for Loveday on that day when Aunt Senath
+had perforce to blazon her sister's shame at the font. Ever since that
+day Mrs. Veale had done her duty by Loveday without fail, instructing
+her in the catechism regularly and occasionally presenting her with the
+clothing of Miss Letitia Veale--who was a couple of years older than
+Loveday--when the garments were outgrown and when they were suitable.
+Mrs. Veale was too thoughtful a Christian to give Loveday artificial
+flowers or silken petticoats unfitted to her station, but flannels,
+thickened by so much washing that Saint Anthony of Egypt himself could
+not have divined a female within their folds, were always forthcoming
+to protect the orphan girl from wintry winds.
+
+It was no day for flannel when Loveday knocked--with the timidity that
+always assailed her, to her own annoyance, when she was about to see her
+godmother--on the back door of the Vicarage. She heard her own voice,
+robbed of its warm eagerness, asking of the stout cook whether Mrs.
+Veale could see her for a minute. The cook sent the housemaid to the
+Vicar's lady with the request, and Loveday stood in the large, sunny
+kitchen smelling the strange rich foods preparing for the four o'clock
+dinner. There was butcher's meat, she could smell that (she had tasted
+it at the harvest feast at Upper Farm, where it was provided for the
+labourers once a year), and there was a sweet pudding that she could see
+stirred together in a big white bowl, a pudding that smelt of sweetness
+like a posy. A noisy fly, the first of his kind, buzzed over the plate
+where the empty eggshells lay beside the bowl, and from them crawled to
+the scattered sugar that sparkled carelessly upon the rim. Loveday, of
+old, would have had a second's envy of the fly that could thus browse on
+what smelt so good; now the fine aromas affected her nostrils merely as
+incense might have those of her papist father--as the savour of the
+great house where dwelt those to be propitiated. For upon Mrs. Veale she
+now felt hope was fastened; it was from her almost sacred hands that
+salvation would flow. Fear and expectation took Loveday by the throat,
+so stifling her that the wide kitchen, the stout blue-print-clad cook,
+the bright pots and pans, the leaping flames, the savoury odours and the
+buzzing of the fly, all blended together before her dizzied eyes.
+
+The figure of the housemaid, crisp in white and black, entered
+steadyingly, and with her voice, saying that the mistress would see
+Loveday Strick in the morning-room, the flow of the kitchen ebbed and
+subsided. Loveday followed the white and black through the long, narrow
+hall, where the fox's mask grinned at her from above the fanlight of the
+door, to the presence of the Vicar's wife.
+
+Mrs. Veale was a personable lady, with a high and narrow brow, and a
+penetrating eye that few in the village could evade if they had aught
+upon their conscience. It was said, indeed, that she was better than
+a curate to her husband, for she could pass where a man could not
+in delicacy have gone, and few were the maids, and fewer still the
+housewives, who had not benefited by her counsel. She fixed that eye
+benevolently upon Loveday now; the lady stately in her black silk, the
+locket containing the hair of her departed parent, one-time a canon of
+Exeter, lying upon her matronly bosom; the girl awkward in her homespun
+wrapper, her feet fearful of standing upon the flowered carpet.
+
+"Come in, Loveday," said Mrs. Veale kindly.
+
+Loveday advanced a step and dropped her curtsey, but not a word could
+she say to explain her visit.
+
+"What do you want to see me about?" asked Mrs. Veale briskly--for she
+was much busied in good works, and had no time to give over what was
+needful to each of them.
+
+"If you please, ma'am, I want work," said Loveday.
+
+Mrs. Veale looked her approval on hearing this most praiseworthy of the
+few sentences fit for use of the lower classes. Even when there is no
+work to be had such sentiments should be encouraged, and without them
+she never unloosed that charity which, when the supply of work failed,
+she exercised for the good of her parishioners' bodies and her own soul.
+
+Loveday felt the approval, and her heart took wings to the heaven of
+certain hope. Indeed, had Loveday but had the sense of what was fitting
+to tell the Vicar's lady, she might have attained what she wanted, but
+hope, like despair, ever made Loveday heady.
+
+"What work do you want?" asked Mrs. Veale. "I should have sent you out
+to service long ago, but I knew your aunt needed you at home. Has she
+sent you?"
+
+"No, ma'am," answered Loveday, "I came of myself. I want work I can do
+in my spare time, when Aunt Senath don't need me."
+
+So far all was well; the scheme sounded fit for encouragement by the
+Church, ever anxious for the welfare of even her humblest children.
+Mrs. Veale gave thought to her boots and knives ... no, the gardener's
+boy did them, and he was being prepared for confirmation and must not be
+unsettled. The mending ... that was done by the housemaid in her spare
+time, superintended by Mrs. Veale herself, and it would not be fair to
+the girl to leave her with idle hands for Satan's use when they could
+be employed instead upon sheets and stockings. The washing ... the
+housemaid's mother came to do that, glad to do so at a reasonable price
+for the opportunity of seeing how her daughter prospered from week to
+week under such care as Mrs. Veale bestowed on all the maids whom she
+trained. The spring cleaning ... a girl who did not know the ways of the
+house would make work instead of saving it. Yet Mrs. Veale felt, as a
+Christian woman, that it was her duty to encourage Loveday even at the
+cost of her own china. She resolved to do so.
+
+"Many people would not help you, Loveday," she said, "for it is
+very difficult to find work suddenly without upsetting the ways of a
+household, but you are my god-daughter, and so I have always taken a
+special interest in you. My spring-cleaning is not till May this year,
+as then the Vicar goes away to stay with his lordship, the Bishop of
+Exeter, and I will have you here under my own eye. You will not be of
+much assistance at first, but if you are willing and do as you are told
+you will be able to learn."
+
+At the mention of the month of May the wings of Loveday's heart folded
+once more and let her heart fall like a stone, then opened in a
+fluttering attempt to save it.
+
+"What--what time in May, ma'am?" she asked. Perhaps it would be the
+first week in that month and all would yet be well, since the Flora was
+held upon the eighth.
+
+At Mrs. Veale's next words the wings moulted away, and the bare quills
+left Loveday's heart prone and defenceless.
+
+"Not till the second week," said Mrs. Veale, "for the Vicar wishes to
+stay till the Flora, as we are permitting Miss Letitia to dance in the
+procession this year, and naturally he wishes to be there. The Vicar
+feels that these old innocent customs must not be allowed to fall into
+disuse."
+
+"Ah!" cried Loveday, "'tis no good to me!"
+
+At this shocking speech--imagine a village girl crying out that an offer
+of employment from the Vicarage is of no good to her!--Mrs. Veale drew
+such a breath of horror that the hair of the late Canon rose in its
+locket.
+
+"What on earth can you mean, Loveday Strick?"
+
+Thus Mrs. Veale, justly outraged. But Loveday, infatuated, rushed upon
+her fate--the fate of expulsion from those precincts.
+
+"Oh, ma'am, 'tis no manner of use to me unless I get work before the
+Flora. The Flora, ma'am" (repeating the beloved name as an invocation
+in time of trouble).
+
+"'Tis this way, I must get a white satin sash come Flora Day, 'cause
+if I do I'm to dance along with Miss Le Pettit in the procession.
+She's promised me that I should, and indeed I'll die if I don't. I will
+indeed. I've fixed my soul on it. I've got the gown and the stockings
+and the shoes, and all I want is the white riband, and I must someways
+make enough money to buy it come Flora Day. Oh, Mrs. Veale, ma'am, if
+you'll let me scrub and scour for you I'll do it on my knees so as only
+I can dance with her in the Flora."
+
+During this speech Mrs. Veale had risen to the full height and width of
+the black silk, feeling that thus only could she cope adequately with
+such a flood of ill-regulated and unseemly passions. She felt deeply
+wounded to think that any girl of her teaching should so betray it as
+this one did in every undisciplined word. She had not felt such a bitter
+stab of disappointment since a trusted and loved old nurse of the family
+had been found drinking the Vicar's port.
+
+"Loveday Strick," she said, "you are forgetting yourself."
+
+This was not exact, for Loveday had forgotten Mrs. Veale, but the rebuke
+drenched the impetuous girl like a cold wave. She stood defenceless.
+
+"I have not comprehended half this mad tale of yours," continued Mrs.
+Veale, "but I gather you have the presumption to say that Miss Le
+Pettit--_Miss Le Pettit_--has said you may dance with her at the
+Flora. Perhaps a young lady in her exalted position, and of what I
+believe are her modernising tendencies, may have formed such a project,
+but you should have known better than to have presumed on such an
+unsuitable condescension. As to a white satin sash, I can imagine
+nothing more unfitted for a girl in your unfortunate position, of which
+I am very sorry to be obliged to remind you. I had always hoped you
+would never forget it."
+
+"Ma'am ... you don't understand ..." began Loveday.
+
+"That is quite enough, Loveday. Let me hear no more on the subject. If
+you still want work, apart from this desire for unsuitable finery, since
+you are my god-daughter I will forget what has passed and still try you
+at the spring cleaning."
+
+Then it was that a horrid thing happened to Loveday.
+
+"What do I care for you and your spring-cleaning?" she stormed, "you and
+it can go up the chimney together for all I care. I only wanted you to
+give me work so as to get my satin sash, and I'll never come near you or
+church again as long as I do live. That I won't...." And Loveday turned
+and ran out of the front door, beneath the grinning fox, and not only
+ran out of the front door, but banged it behind her.
+
+Maids in the kitchen heard that unseemly sound, as they had heard,
+awe-struck, the raised voice, and Mrs. Veale felt she must read them a
+short but fitting lesson on the dire results of wanting things beyond
+one's station. The stout cook and the crisp housemaid soon knew of
+Loveday's presumptuous ambition, a knowledge they shared now with the
+Lear family and Cherry Cotton, and that soon was to spread to the
+accompaniment of many a titter about the twisted ways of the village.
+
+
+
+    CHAPTER VIII: IN WHICH LOVEDAY CONTINUES
+      HER QUEST AND ACHIEVES TENPENCE
+
+
+
+
+Chapter VIII
+
+IN WHICH LOVEDAY CONTINUES HER QUEST AND ACHIEVES TENPENCE
+
+
+Loveday ran down the path to the Vicarage gate so fast that the tears
+she had not been able to restrain blew off her cheeks as she went. Thus
+it came about that she did not see Miss Letitia until she had all but
+knocked her down in the urgency of her flight.
+
+Letitia Veale was no sylph such as Miss Le Pettit, however, and she
+caught hold of Loveday like the good-natured, rather romping, young lady
+that she was. Mrs. Veale always said of her that she would "fine down,"
+but persons less well disposed to her than her own mother, and who were
+the mothers of daughters themselves, said that Letitia Veale was a sad
+hoyden. She had ever a merry nod or word for Loveday, and dazed with
+anger as that ill-balanced maid was, Letitia's smile won her to
+comparative calm again, though it was a calm with which cunning
+intermingled. For:--
+
+"Oh, miss," cried Loveday, "I do beg your pardon ..." Then, seeing by
+the young lady's pleasant face that she had not offended by her
+clumsiness--"but I was so sick with misery I didn't rightly see where
+I was going."
+
+"Why, whatever is the matter, Loveday?" asked the lively girl.
+
+"Miss, I can't tell you, not now, but oh, miss, you've always been good
+to me, will you do something for me? I've never asked you for nothing
+before, have I?"
+
+"Why, no, you have not, Loveday. What is it?"
+
+"Have you such a thing as an old white sash you could let me have, miss?
+I just can't rightly tell you how I want it. It don't matter how old, so
+I can wash and iron it. Oh, miss...?"
+
+Letitia thought for a moment, then shook her brown ringlets.
+
+"I'm so sorry, Loveday, since you want it so much, but the only white
+sash I have is my new one for Flora Day. I have an old black one I could
+let you have though."
+
+"Black! Oh, Miss Letitia, that's no good. Couldn't you let me have the
+white one? I'll work and work to make the money to buy you another, and
+your mother'd get you a new one for the Flora."
+
+"Loveday, you know I couldn't. Mamma would insist on knowing what I'd
+done with it, you know she would."
+
+"You couldn't--you couldn't say you'd lost it, miss?" asked Loveday,
+even her tongue faltering at the suggestion.
+
+But though Letitia might be a romp, she was not a deceitful girl, and
+she respected her mother.
+
+"Oh, Loveday, how can you suggest such a thing? It would be telling
+mamma a lie. Besides, she would never believe me."
+
+At this moment Mrs. Veale, hearing voices, opened the door and looked
+out.
+
+"Letitia! Come in at once, and do not speak again to Loveday Strick."
+
+Letitia made round eyes at Loveday and sped up the path. Loveday pushed
+open the gate and went out.
+
+She went along the white dusty road, between the hedgerows of elder
+whose crumpled green leaves were unfolding in the sunny April weather,
+and her tears were the only rain that smiling country-side had seen for
+many a day, and they, to match the month, were already drying, for the
+fire burnt too high in Loveday for tears to hold her long. She fled
+along the road at first blindly, then more slowly as the exhaustion that
+follows on such rage as hers overcame her, and as she paused at last to
+sink against a mossy bank and rest, a horseman overtook her.
+
+It was Mr. Constantine on his white cob, looking a very dapper
+gentleman, but Loveday heeded him not, only raising her great black eyes
+unseeingly at the sound of the hoofs. Yet that so sombre gaze arrested
+Mr. Constantine, for it seemed to him an unwonted look in that land of
+buxom maids. He drew rein beside her.
+
+"Are you a gipsy, my girl?" he asked her kindly.
+
+Loveday shook her head.
+
+"Come, you have a tongue as well as that handsome pair of eyes, I
+suppose? No?"
+
+"My tongue's wisht, it brings ill-luck," said Loveday.
+
+Mr. Constantine studied her more attentively.
+
+"If all women thought that, there'd be more happy marriages," he said,
+slipping his hand into his pocket. "You've wisdom on your tongue,
+whether it's lucky or no. You say you're not a gipsy?"
+
+By this time it had dawned on Loveday what, in her absorption, she had
+not at first noticed, that she was speaking to one of the gentry, and
+to no less a one than Mr. Constantine, of Constantine. She stood up and
+dropped her curtsey out of habit, but sullenly. Oddly enough, it was the
+sullenness and not the curtsey that took Mr. Constantine's fancy.
+
+"No, sir," said Loveday. "I'm not a gipsy. I'm Loveday Strick."
+
+"Loveday ..." said the gentleman. "Loveday ... That's a beautiful name.
+No--it's more than a name, it's a phrase. A very beautiful phrase."
+
+Loveday raised her eyes at this strange talk. Mr. Constantine took his
+hand out of his pocket and held out a silver sixpence.
+
+"Gipsy or no, take that for your gipsy eyes, my dear," he said. Loveday
+stood hesitant. Even she, who had just begged of Miss Letitia, felt
+shame at taking a coin in charity. Yet she did so, for before her eyes
+she saw, not a silver sixpence, but the beginning of a length of white
+satin riband unrolling towards her through futurity. Perhaps, unknown
+to herself, her foreign blood prompted her to that sad Jesuitry which
+teaches all means are justifiable to the desired end. Perhaps she saw
+nothing beyond the beginning of her riband, but she held out her hand.
+Mr. Constantine dropped the sixpence into it, touched his cob with his
+heel and rode on. Loveday stayed in the hedge, the sixpence in her palm
+and hope once more in her soul. That hope was to faint and fall during
+the days that followed and saw her quest no nearer its fulfilment.
+
+For who wished to employ the strange, dark girl that had always been
+aloof and distrusted? And who could credit this violent conversion to
+the ordered ways of domesticity? Who had the money to squander on help
+from without, when, within, if there were not enough hands for the work,
+then the work itself, like an unanswered letter, slipped into that dead
+place of unremembered things where nothing matters any more? Last week's
+cleaning left undone adds nothing appreciable to this week's dirt that
+next week's exertions may not remedy as easily together as singly--or so
+argued the slovenly housewife, while for the industrious no hands save
+their own could have scrubbed and polished to their liking.
+
+Here and there Loveday earned a few odd pence, for a few hand's turns
+done when necessity or charity called in her vagrant services, but the
+Flora Dance of Bugletown was held upon the eighth of May, and when May
+Day dawned she had but tenpence for all her store--and the riband would
+cost as many shillings. Despair settled in her heart for the first time;
+often before it had knocked but been refused more than a glance within,
+but now her enfeebled arms could hold the door no longer, and that most
+dread of all visitors took possession of his own--for is not the human
+heart Despair's only habitation, without which he is but a homeless
+wanderer?
+
+
+
+    CHAPTER IX: IN WHICH LOVEDAY SEES ONE MAGPIE
+
+
+
+
+Chapter IX
+
+IN WHICH LOVEDAY SEES ONE MAGPIE
+
+
+Upon May Day, when boys blow the May horns and girls carry sprays of
+hawthorn and all good folk break their fast on bread and cream, Loveday
+had to go, as was her wont (and a mortifying one to her pride since
+Primrose's flouting of her), to Upper Farm. Twice before have we seen
+her on that errand--when she first was love-stricken for Miss Le Pettit
+in the farmhouse parlour, and again when on her search for work she saw
+the querulous young Mrs. Lear in the dim kitchen. Since then she had
+gone monotonously enough on her errand, avoiding speech even with the
+elder Mrs. Lear as much as possible, and seeing Primrose not at all--an
+easy matter, since the girl kept her room, or lay on the horsehair sofa,
+languidly stitching woollen roses on a handscreen, for all the world
+like the spoilt bride of some great gentleman.
+
+There seemed never any violence of thought or emotion at Upper Farm,
+even the sulks of Primrose were petty in nature, her jealousies made her
+voice shrill but did not take her by the throat with that intolerable
+aching stormier women know too well, while her graceless husband was
+irritated on the surface of his mind as some shallow pool is fretted
+over its bed of soft ooze, retaining no trace when the ripples have
+died. The elder Lear, as befits a good countryman content with his
+station in life, was too hard-worked for anything save a tired back on
+his entry at night, and the old wife too occupied with her Martha-like
+toil for searching into the sensibilities either of herself or of her
+daughter-in-law.
+
+Loveday, without reasoning on the matter, had yet ever been aware
+that this slight tide of feeling was all that ever lapped against the
+household at Upper Farm, therefore when she saw one magpie in the last
+field before the yard gate she accepted the sign for her own despairing
+heart alone. No young woman of education would have paid any attention
+to such a vulgar superstition, but Loveday had no learning other than
+what her elders had let fall in her hearing, both when she was supposed
+to be listening for her betterment, and when it was thought she would
+not understand the drift of their speech. And that a single magpie means
+sorrow was one of the few solid facts Loveday had gleaned by following
+the garnered sheaves of her elders.
+
+Now, as she stepped over the topmost ledge of the granite stile, there
+was a fanlike flutter of black and white in her very face, and she stood
+a moment watching the ill-omened bird wheel and dip behind the thick
+blossom of the hawthorn hedge.
+
+"There goes my white riband," thought the ignorant girl, and yet even
+with the quick fear there welled a fresh and fierce determination in her
+undisciplined heart.
+
+Her egotism, if not her superstition, was reproved when she reached
+the farmhouse, and old Madgy, the midwife, coming to the pump for more
+water, met her with news of what had happened not half an hour earlier.
+The shallow creek of Upper Farm had been invaded by a violent and dark
+tide, on whose ebb two lives had been borne away. Loveday, staring up
+at Primrose's room, saw the withered hand of old Mrs. Lear draw the
+curtains across the window behind which lay a dead mother and a babe
+that had never lived.
+
+
+
+    CHAPTER X: IN WHICH LOVEDAY DOES NOT
+      ATTEND A FUNERAL
+
+
+
+
+Chapter X
+
+IN WHICH LOVEDAY DOES NOT ATTEND A FUNERAL
+
+
+"A couple of months too soon her pains took her," said Madgy; "she has
+been fretting and wisht these weeks past, with her husband always after
+some young faggot up country and herself sick with envy at the girls
+that could still dance with the chaps. She had no woman's heart in her,
+poor soul, to carry her woman's burden. Ah! many's the strange things
+in women I see at my trade," and Madgy wrung out a cloth and mumbled to
+herself--her old mouth folded inwards, as though she perpetually turned
+all the secrets that she knew over and over within it.
+
+"Your mother died because she'd set her heart on death," she added, to
+Loveday, "but this one died because she dedn' know how to catch hold on
+life. She'd a weak hand on everything she touched, because she never
+wanted nawthen enough."
+
+"Wanting's not getting, however hard you want," said Loveday.
+
+"Ah! isn't it? It's getting, though you may have sorrow packed along wi'
+it. Out of my way, maid; I must be busy overstairs." And old Madgy went
+to ply the second part of her trade, for she washed the dead as well as
+the newly-born; she laid coins on the eyes of the old and flannels on
+the limbs of the young with the same smile between her rheumy lids and
+on her folded mouth.
+
+Loveday stayed awhile and helped Mrs. Lear, by milking the puzzled,
+lowing cows and pouring the milk into the pans, but all the time they
+worked the dead girl's name was never mentioned between them. It was
+as though Loveday were making amends for the ill words that had been
+between them by refraining her tongue from everything but her first
+few accents of pity and amaze.
+
+That pity was shared by all the neighbourhood, gentle and simple.
+Time was, just before her marriage, when Primrose was accounted a
+foolish and sinful maid enough, but married she had been, and into a
+highly-respected family, for the Lears' graves had lain in the next best
+position to those of the gentry for many generations, and, for their
+sakes more than for hers, tributes flowed in to the funeral.
+
+This poor, pale Primrose, who had died so young, though not unmarried,
+was laid to rest, with babe on arm, only a few days before the Flora
+dance, and her friend Cherry, who would none the less foot it gaily on
+that occasion, attended, with a length of black crape round her buxom
+waist and her eyes swollen by the easy tears of an easy nature.
+
+Loveday was not present, for, friendly as she had ever been with Mrs.
+Lear, the dead girl's petulance lay between them now; memory of it
+become to Loveday a pang of pity, and to Mrs. Lear a sacred duty.
+Nevertheless, an odd notion, such as Loveday was apt to take, made her
+feel that some tie, slight, but persistent, between Primrose and herself
+drew her, at least, to give the last look possible from behind the hedge
+screening the road.
+
+There, hidden as a bird, she saw how highly the world had thought of the
+girl to whom she had dared feel a flashing sense of superiority; she saw
+how true respectability is to be admired. For never at any funeral, save
+that of actual gentry, had there been seen so many of those elegant
+floral tokens of esteem which reflect, perhaps, even more honour upon
+those who bestow them than upon the dead who receive them. Primrose may
+have been a poor creature enough, but the Lears had always held their
+heads high among their fellows, without ever trying to push above their
+station. No unseemly ambitions, no fantastic desires, had ever drawn
+just censure upon Upper Farm, and wreaths and crosses decked with
+tasteful streamers bore witness to this fact. There was actually an
+exquisite white wreath from Miss Le Pettit of Ignores, laid proudly upon
+the humbler greener offerings of farmers and fisher folk, overpowering
+with its elegance even an artificial wreath under glass which came from
+the Bugletown corn-chandler, who was Mr. Lear's chief customer.
+
+Loveday, watching, knew suddenly that, when her time came, she would be
+an alien in death, as she was in life; that never for her would these
+costly tokens of respect be gathered. Yet, instead of this thought
+humbling her, instead of it teaching her the lesson that only by
+striving to do her duty in the lowly course set for her could she attain
+any measure of regard, it aroused in her once more, this time with an
+even fiercer intensity, her ardent desire to be as different from these
+good folk as possible. Miss Le Pettit had thought her different, had
+admired that difference, and to Miss Le Pettit, as supreme arbiter, her
+heart turned now. There was still that doorway to her future whose latch
+the fair Flora's hand could lift, and this door, ajar for her, would
+open wide if she were but fitly garbed to pass across its threshold.
+
+Watching the funeral procession, which should have suggested such far
+other thoughts even to her undisciplined soul, Loveday was taken only
+by an idea so rash and impious that it alarmed even herself. It was the
+penalty of her dark and ardent blood that fear, like despair, added to
+the force of her desires. That idea, which she should have driven from
+her as a serpent, she nourished in her bosom as though it were a dove.
+
+
+
+    CHAPTER XI: IN WHICH LOVEDAY ATTENDS
+      THE FLORA
+
+
+
+
+Chapter XI
+
+IN WHICH LOVEDAY ATTENDS THE FLORA
+
+
+The eighth of May dawned fair and clear, and from early morning the
+young men and maidservants of Bugletown, who had Spent the past week
+cleaning and polishing the houses, streamed out into the country to
+pluck green branches for their further adornment. Already the thought of
+the dance was in their heads, and its tripping in their feet, and they
+sang through the lanes.
+
+They waylaid strangers coming into Bugletown and drew contributions
+of silver from them, according to custom, and all they did went to a
+gay measure. By the time the gentry, both of the place itself and of
+outlying regions, were assembled for the dance every house in the main
+streets of the grey little old town was decked with boughs, its front
+and back doors opened wide for the dancers, who at the Flora always
+danced through every house set hospitably open for their passage.
+
+The band, that all day long plays but the one tune, hour after hour,
+was gathered together by noon, sleek and not yet heated, their trumpets
+shining in the sun, their fiddles glossy as their well-oiled hair, their
+big drum round as the portly figure of the bandmaster himself. Already,
+in many a bedchamber, young women had twirled this way and that before
+the mirror, studying the set of taffetas and tarletan, or young men
+had polished their high beavers anxiously against the sleeves of their
+brightest broadcloth frock coats. In speckless kitchens housewives
+prepared their cakes and cream, and the masters saw to the drawing of
+the cider, and, perhaps, tasted it, to make sure that it had not soured
+overnight. And in each heart different words were running to the Flora
+Day tune, words that suited with each heart's measure. The children in
+the streets sang aloud the doggerel words that long custom has fastened
+upon the tune:--
+
+  _"John the beau was walking home,_
+  _When he met with Sally Dover,_
+  _He kissed her once, he kissed her twice,_
+  _And he kissed her three times over!"_
+
+
+Thus the heedless children with their lips, but their little hearts
+probably beat to the even simpler words: "_I'm having a holiday!
+Having a holiday!_"
+
+More staidly, and almost unheard by their time-muffled ears, a voice,
+nevertheless, sang to the housewives, telling each her copper and silver
+was the brightest in the town, and adding, perhaps, little gusts of
+memory that half hurt, half pleased, of how nimbly she had danced at the
+Flora in years gone by, and how fair she had looked....
+
+The staid married men smiled to themselves, and would not have
+acknowledged that within them something seemed to chuckle: "_I'm not
+so old, after all; I'm not so old, after all_...."
+
+Frankly, the hearts of the young men nudged hopefully against their
+ribs, calling out: "_I'm going to dance with Her! I'm going to dance
+with Her! And perhaps ... for I always was lucky! I always was
+lucky_!"
+
+But who shall say what lilting voice, timid-bold and sly-sincere,
+whispered to the maidens, beating out its syllables against the new
+stays so tightly laced for the occasion? Perhaps the words of the
+children's doggerel, with a name or so altered, met the moment without
+need of further change....
+
+And Loveday's heart, as she walked the three miles from the fishing
+village to Bugletown, sang to her of joy and hope and triumph.
+
+When she reached the Market House, she found the band ready to strike up
+the famous tune, while the mayor, his chain of office about his neck,
+stood conversing with the ladies and gentlemen who were to lead the
+dance. For, as is but fitting, the couples at the Flora follow each
+other according to their social precedence, though all may join who
+choose, providing only that the females, be they gentry or tradespeople,
+wear white, and the men their best broadcloth and Sunday hats.
+
+Of all who had gathered for the dance there was none more highly placed
+than Miss Flora Le Pettit, and none as fair to see. She stood supreme in
+the sunshine and her beauty, her white muslin robes swelling round her
+like the petals of some full-blown rose, her white sash streaming over
+them, the white ribands that decked her hat of fine Dunstable straw
+flowing down to her shoulders and mingling with her auburn curls. Even
+the countless tiny bows that adorned her dress (as though they were a
+cloud of butterflies drawn to alight upon it by its freshness) were of
+white satin. Everything about her save her little sandalled feet danced
+already--the brim of the wide hat that waved above her dancing eyes, the
+flounces and floating ends of her attire which the soft breeze stirred,
+the corners of her smiling mouth, the dimple which came and went behind
+the curls that nodded by her cheek. What vision can have been fairer
+than that presented by Flora Le Pettit upon Flora Day? "None, none,
+none," thought eager Loveday, as she edged through the crowd and caught
+sight of her divinity. None ... and yet that sight caused Loveday a
+strange clutching in her breast.
+
+For she, too, had felt fair when she had gazed in her tiny mirror; the
+yellowed linen gown had gleamed pure and white, her young breast had
+swelled above the waist that looked so slim, and that was so finely
+girt.... Yet, now, something of splendour about Miss Le Pettit that
+she could not attain dimmed all herself and, with herself, her joy.
+Her face, already flushed by her walk, burned deeper still with shame.
+Yet the desire that three weeks of striving had swollen to a passion
+urged her forward, and, fingering the lovely thing about her waist to
+gain courage, she broke through the last ring of staring people and
+stood in front of Miss Le Pettit.
+
+The heiress of Ignores had not yet caught sight of her, being engaged in
+laughing conversation with several admiring gentlemen, but something of
+an almost painful intensity in the dark gaze of the village girl drew
+her face to meet it. The black eyes, so full of an extravagant passion,
+met the careless glance of the blue orbs that knew not even the passing
+shadow of such a thing.
+
+"Oh," stammered Loveday, the set speech she had been conning all the way
+to Bugletown dying upon her lips, "Oh, Miss Flora, I'm come. I've got my
+white sash and I'm come...."
+
+Over Flora's face passed a look of bewilderment, while Loveday, her
+moment of self-criticism gone, stood trembling with eager happiness.
+Then Miss Le Pettit spoke, lightly and kindly.
+
+"Surely I have seen you before, my girl?" she asked. And, turning to the
+little group of her friends, added:
+
+"She has such a striking air, 'twould be difficult to forget her."
+
+Yet, till this moment, Miss Le Pettit had forgotten everything save that
+air. Forgotten her careless suggestion, her prettily given promise, her
+praise. Forgotten even the pleasant glow such evident worship as this
+village girl's had stirred in her. She had had so much worship since!
+Who can blame her for not remembering some idle words her artistic
+perceptions had prompted three weeks earlier? It had been a fantastic
+suggestion at best, as a girl of sense would have known, treasuring it
+merely for its kindly intention. After all, Miss Le Pettit would be far
+more conspicuous dancing with a village maiden at the Flora than with a
+gentleman suited to her in rank and estate. Since that day at Upper Farm
+she had met just such a gentleman--he with the glossy whiskers and
+handsome form who was nearest to her now, smiling at this little
+encounter.
+
+"Why, child," said Flora to Loveday, "you look very nice, I am sure.
+But your place should be much further down the procession." Then, more
+sharply: "Why do you stare so, girl?"
+
+Loveday stood as one stricken, her cheek now as white as the sash she
+was still holding in her shaking hands.
+
+
+
+    CHAPTER XII: IN WHICH LOVEDAY DANCES
+
+
+
+
+Chapter XII
+
+IN WHICH LOVEDAY DANCES
+
+
+The Mayor had stepped forward, fearing lest this young person might be
+annoying the heiress; the bandsmen had turned from the final survey of
+their instruments to gaze; here and there various people who recognised
+Loveday were pressing through the crowd, eager to see and hear.
+Only Miss Le Pettit had drawn back against the protecting arm of the
+gentleman who was to be her partner. Loveday still stayed, her riband
+in her hands.
+
+There came comments from the crowd.
+
+"Loveday Strick! She'm mad! This month past she'm been like a crazy
+thing about the Flora!"
+
+"I thought all the time she must be mad to have imagined Miss Le Pettit
+meant to dance along wi' she!"
+
+"What's the maid got on? I can't rightly see."
+
+"Old white, but a brave new sash."
+
+At that Loveday raised her head and looked about her. A shrill voice
+from the crowd answered the last speaker.
+
+"A new sash; Ted'n possible. Us have all been laughing because she
+couldn' come by one nohow." And Cherry Cotton elbowed her way through
+the ring of curious folk to where Loveday stood. Suddenly Cherry gave a
+scream, and pointed an accusing finger at Loveday.
+
+"Ah, a new sash, sure enough.... Ask her where she got 'en. Ask her, I
+say."
+
+Loveday answered nothing, only turned her head a little to stare at
+Cherry.
+
+"You ask her where she took it from, Miss! You should know, seeing you
+gave it!"
+
+"I gave it to her? Nonsense."
+
+"Not to her, but to poor Primrose Lear. 'Tes the riband that tied up
+your wreath. She's robbed the dead. Loveday Strick's robbed the dead."
+
+Then indeed, after a moment's stupefaction following on the horrid
+revelation, a murmur of indignation ran from mouth to mouth.
+
+"She's robbed the dead!"
+
+"My soul! To rob the living's stealing, but to rob the dead's a profane
+thing."
+
+"'Tisn't man as can judge her, 'tis only God Almighty!" cried an old
+minister, aghast.
+
+"Look at the maid, how she stands.... Her own conscience judges her,
+I should say!"
+
+"She's no word to excuse herself, simmingly."
+
+"That's because she do know nothing can excuse what she's done...."
+
+And, indeed, Loveday stood without speech. Perhaps in all that buzz of
+murmuring she heard the voice of her own conscience at last, for she
+made no effort to defend herself, or, perhaps, even at that hour, she
+heard nothing but the dread whisper of defeat. She stood before Flora
+Le Pettit like a wilted rose whose petals hang limply, about to fall,
+fronting a bloom that spreads its glowing leaves in the full flush of
+noon. The one girl was triumphant in her beauty and her unassailable
+position, every flounce out-curved in freshness; the other drooped at
+brow and hem, her slender neck downbent, her sash-ends pendant as broken
+tendrils after rain upon her heavily hanging skirts.
+
+All she was heard to murmur, and that very low, was a halting sentence
+about her white sash: "But you said--you said you'd dance with me if
+I got my sash ..." or some such words, but only Miss Le Pettit caught
+all the muttered syllables, and she never spoke of them, save with a
+petulant reluctance to Mr. Constantine when he questioned her
+afterwards.
+
+"Girl," said the Mayor sharply, "is it true?'
+
+"Yes," said Loveday.
+
+"True!" cried Cherry, "I know 'tes true. I remember noticing that green
+mark on the riband when the wreath was laid on the grave. Ah, she'm a
+wicked piece, she is. She tormented my poor Primrose in life and she's
+robbed her in death. You aren't safe in your grave from she."
+
+Everyone was speaking against Loveday in rightful indignation by now,
+and the good wives expressed the opinion that she should be well
+whipped. Loveday turned suddenly to Miss Le Pettit. There were those
+there--notably Mr. Constantine, that observant philosopher--who said
+afterwards she seemed for one instant to be going to break into
+impassioned speech. She did half hold out her hands. The ends of the
+white sash, disregarded, fluttered from them as she did so. But Miss
+Le Pettit, shocked in all her sensibilities by this vulgar scene,
+turned away.
+
+"Surely," said she, "there has been enough time wasted already. Can we
+not begin the dance, Mr. Mayor?"
+
+At a sign from the Mayor the band struck up into the tune that was to
+echo all day through every head and, perhaps, afterwards, through a few
+kindly hearts.
+
+[Illustration: Music]
+
+played the band, and, still whispering together with excitement, the
+dancers fell into place.
+
+  "_John the beau was walking home_,
+  _When he met with Sally Dover_,
+  _He kissed her once, he kissed her twice_,
+  _And he kissed her three times over_."
+
+
+It seemed to Loveday that the whole world was dancing. The faces of the
+crowd, the bobbing ringlets, swelling skirts, the bright eyes and bright
+instruments, the houses that peered at her with their polished panes,
+all danced in a mad haze of mingled light and blackness. Sun, moon and
+stars joined in, heads and feet whirled so madly that none could have
+said which was upper-most. Creation was a-dancing, and she alone stood
+to be mocked at in a reeling world. This was the merry measure she had
+striven to join! She must have been mad indeed!
+
+Turning blindly, she ran through the crowd that gave at her approach,
+and all day the dancing went on without her. The flutter of her
+blasphemous sash did not profane the sunlight in the streets of
+Bugletown, nor pollute with its passing the houses of the good wives.
+Like a swallow's wing, it had but flashed across the ordered ways and
+was gone.
+
+Yet Loveday's ambition was, after all, fulfilled that day. For she
+danced--and danced a measure she could not have trod without the white
+satin sash.... Good folk in Bugletown footed it down the cobbled
+streets, and through paved kitchens; Loveday danced a finer step on
+insubstantial ether, into realms more vast. Were those realms dark for
+her, thus violated by her enforced entry of them? Who can say, save
+those folk of Bugletown who knew that to her first crime she had added
+a second even greater?
+
+They found her next day in the wood; the wind had risen, and blew
+against her skirts, so that her feet moved gently as though yet tracing
+their phantom paces upon the airy floors. Her head, like a snapped lily,
+lay forwards and a little to one side, so that her pale cheek rested
+against the taut white satin of the riband from which she hung. The wind
+blew the languid meshes of her hair softly, kissing her once, kissing
+her twice, and kissing her three times over.
+
+
+
+    EPILOGUE
+
+
+
+
+Epilogue
+
+
+Such is the shocking tale of Loveday Strick, a girl who gave her life
+for a piece of finery. Is it not small wonder that Miss Le Pettit
+lamented the sad lack of proportion in the affair?
+
+All for a length of white satin riband....
+
+And yet, there were two people who thought a little differently from the
+rest of Loveday's world on the subject. They were an odd couple to think
+alike in anything--it seemed as though even after her death Loveday's
+violent unsuitability must persist as a legacy. They were the refined
+and polished Mr. Constantine and old Madgy the midwife, a person whom,
+naturally, he had never met till the day after the Flora, when his
+philosophic curiosity drew him to search for the lost girl in company
+with a band of villagers. It was Madgy who led them to the wood, sure
+that there was what they sought. Mr. Constantine and Madgy stood looking
+at the pale girl when she had been laid upon last year's leaves at their
+feet. One of the men would have taken the riband from her, with some
+vague notion of returning it, though whether to the graveyard or to the
+Manor he could not have told. Mr. Constantine and Madgy put out each a
+hand to check him.
+
+"Leave it her," said Mr. Constantine curtly.
+
+"Ay," answered Madgy, speaking freely as was her wont, for she was,
+alas, no respecter of persons, "it was more than a white riband to the
+maid, for all that the fools say."
+
+Mr. Constantine nodded. He too saw in that length of satin, now soiled
+and crumpled, more than a white riband. He saw passion in it--passion
+of hope, of ambition, of love, of adoration, of despair. Not a piece
+of finery had ended Loveday's stormy course, but a symbol of life
+itself, with more in its stained warp and woof than many lives hold
+in three-score years and ten. Like religion, this riband held every
+experience. Primrose had known mating and childbearing, anxiety and
+content and jealousy and death; Mr. Constantine had, in his wandering
+life of the gentleman of leisure, experienced his moments of keen
+enjoyment, his tender and romantic interludes; Miss Le Pettit would know
+decorous wooing, prosperity, pain of giving birth as she duly presented
+her husband with an heir, sorrow as she saw her chestnut curls greying
+and her eye gathering the puckers of advancing years around its fading
+blue. Yet none of these would know as much as Loveday had known in the
+short life they all thought so wasted and so incomplete, would feel as
+much as she had felt--the whole pageant of passion symbolised by this
+insensate strip of satin. She alone had known ecstasy in her brief mad
+dance across their sylvan stage.
+
+Madgy folded the riband across the half-open eyes and wound the ends
+about the discoloured throat. And thus it was when Loveday was buried in
+unconsecrated ground, but with the thing she had desired most in life,
+striven for, sinned for, and finally attained, still with her. Of whom,
+after all, could a richer epitaph be written?
+
+
+THE END.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of Project Gutenberg's The White Riband, by Fryniwyd Tennyson Jesse
+
+*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 14119 ***
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+<title>The Project Gutenberg eBook of
+    The White Riband,
+    by F. Tennyson Jesse
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+<body>
+<div>*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 14119 ***</div>
+
+<center>
+<img src="images/fcover.jpg" width="100%"
+alt="Front Cover" />
+</center>
+
+<div style="height: 6em;"><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /></div>
+
+<h1>
+    THE WHITE RIBAND
+</h1>
+<hr />
+<h3>
+F. TENNYSON JESSE
+</h3>
+
+<center>
+    <i>By the Same Author</i>
+</center>
+<hr />
+
+<center>
+THE MILKY WAY<br />
+BEGGARS ON HORSEBACK<br />
+SECRET BREAD<br />
+THE SWORD OF DEBORAH<br />
+THE HAPPY BRIDE<br />
+</center>
+
+<hr />
+
+<center>
+<img src="images/frontis.jpg" width="100%"
+alt="Frontispiece" />
+</center>
+
+<a name="h2H_4_0002" id="h2H_4_0002"><!-- H2 anchor --></a>
+
+<div style="height: 4em;"><br /><br /><br /><br /></div>
+
+<h1>
+    THE WHITE RIBAND
+</h1>
+<h3>
+    OR
+</h3>
+<h2>
+A YOUNG FEMALE'S FOLLY
+</h2>
+<center><b>
+BY
+</b></center>
+<center><b>
+F. TENNYSON JESSE
+</b></center>
+
+<center><small>
+NEW YORK
+<br />
+GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY
+<br />
+<i>1921</i>
+<br />
+<br />
+PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
+</small></center>
+<hr />
+<div style="height: 4em;"><br /><br /><br /><br /></div>
+<center>
+TO STELLA,
+<br />
+A YOUNG FEMALE,
+<br />
+I DEDICATE THIS TALE,
+</center>
+<center>
+In the hope that it will encourage her to persevere in that indifference
+to personal adornment for which she is conspicuous at present
+</center>
+<center>
+SHOULD IT FAIL IN THIS HIGH ENDEAVOUR,
+<br />
+NEVERTHELESS
+<br />
+THIS BOOK IS HERS IN ALL SISTERLY LOVE
+</center>
+<hr />
+
+<div style="height: 4em;"><br /><br /><br /><br /></div>
+
+<h2>
+    CONTENTS
+</h2>
+
+<p class="toc"><a href="#h2H_PROL">PROLOGUE</a></p>
+<p class="toc"><a href="#h2HCH0002">I</a> IN WHICH THE READER IS TAKEN BACK A FEW WEEKS IN POINT OF TIME, AND DOWN SEVERAL STEPS IN THE SOCIAL SCALE</p>
+<p class="toc"><a href="#h2HCH0003">II</a> IN WHICH THE ONION-SELLER'S DAUGHTER FOR THE FIRST TIME FEELS AS A WOMAN</p>
+<p class="toc"><a href="#h2HCH0004">III</a> IN WHICH SHE FOR THE FIRST TIME FEELS AS A GIRL</p>
+<p class="toc"><a href="#h2HCH0005">IV</a> IN WHICH THE ONION-SELLER'S DAUGHTER FEELS HERSELF A GODDESS</p>
+<p class="toc"><a href="#h2HCH0006">V</a> IN WHICH LOVEDAY ESSAYS THE WHITE GOWN</p>
+<p class="toc"><a href="#h2HCH0007">VI</a> IN WHICH LOVEDAY ESSAYS TO OBTAIN THE WHITE SATIN RIBAND</p>
+<p class="toc"><a href="#h2HCH0008">VII</a> IN WHICH LOVEDAY STILL ESSAYS TO OBTAIN THE WHITE SATIN RIBAND</p>
+<p class="toc"><a href="#h2HCH0009">VIII</a> IN WHICH LOVEDAY CONTINUES HER QUEST AND ACHIEVES TENPENCE</p>
+<p class="toc"><a href="#h2HCH0010">IX</a> IN WHICH LOVEDAY SETS ONE MAGPIE</p>
+<p class="toc"><a href="#h2HCH0011">X</a> IN WHICH LOVEDAY DOES NOT ATTEND A FUNERAL</p>
+<p class="toc"><a href="#h2HCH0012">XI</a> IN WHICH LOVEDAY ATTENDS THE FLORA</p>
+<p class="toc"><a href="#h2HCH0013">XII</a> IN WHICH LOVEDAY DANCES</p>
+<p class="toc"><a href="#h2H_EPIL">EPILOGUE</a></p>
+<hr />
+
+<a name="h2H_PROL" id="h2H_PROL"><!-- H2 anchor --></a>
+
+<p class="prechapter">
+    <b>PROLOGUE</b>
+</p>
+
+
+<h2>
+    THE WHITE RIBAND
+</h2>
+<center>
+    OR
+</center>
+<h3>
+A YOUNG FEMALE'S FOLLY
+</h3>
+
+<h2>
+    Prologue
+</h2>
+<p>
+That was how they spoke of her story in the duchy's drawing-rooms;
+for what had Loveday been, at the most charitable count, but a young
+female&mdash;less humanly speaking, even a young person? And what was the
+spring of her mad crimes but folly, mere weak, feminine folly? Even
+an improper motive&mdash;one of those over-powering passions one reads
+about rather surreptitiously in the delightful works of that dear,
+naughty, departed Lord Byron&mdash;would have been somehow more ...
+more ... satisfactory. One could only whisper such a sentiment, but
+it stirred in many a feminine breast when Loveday's story set the
+ripples of reprobation circling some twenty miles, till the incomparably
+bigger pebble of the Prince of Wales' nuptials made correspondingly
+greater waves, even though they took a month or so to spread all its
+fascinating details so far from the Metropolis. What, after all, as a
+topic of conversation, was Loveday's ill-gotten gaud compared with the
+thrill of the new Alexandra jacket with its pegtop sleeves? One should
+hold a right proportion in all things.
+</p>
+<p>
+Thus the duchy's drawing-rooms. In the back parlours of the little
+country-town shops, where an aristocracy as rigid in its own
+respectable&mdash;and respectful&mdash;way, held its courts of justice, Loveday's
+story was referred to with a slight difference. She had become a "young
+besom," and her crime was what you might have expected from the bye-blow
+of an ear-ringed foreigner, who bowed down to idols instead of the laws
+of God and the British Constitution.
+</p>
+<p>
+In her own little seaport and the farms of the countryside, Loveday
+descended lower still&mdash;she became a "faggot." Thus from one born to
+wield a broom we see how she descended, with the declination in scale of
+the chatterboxes, to the broom itself, and from that to the rough
+material for it. Which things are a parable, could one but fit the moral
+to them as neatly as did everyone who discussed Loveday, in whatever
+terms, fit the due warning on to her tale.
+</p>
+<p>
+And this moral, for all who ran, but more particularly for those who
+danced, to read, was as follows:&mdash;
+</p>
+<p>
+It all came of wanting things above your station.
+</p>
+<p>
+"How simply does your sex dispose of the problems of life, ma'am,"
+replied Mr. Constantine to Miss Flora Le Pettit, the heiress of Ignores
+Manor, when she supplied him with this moral as an epitaph oh the
+affair. Miss Le Pettit smiled on him amiably, but arched her already
+springing brows as well, for though everyone knew Mr. Constantine was
+reputed clever, there were the gravest doubts about his orthodoxy.
+</p>
+<p>
+"Problems of life, Mr. Constantine?" she demanded. "Surely over-fine
+words to apply to the crazy acts of a village girl deranged in her
+intellects." She would have added: "And a nameless one at that," if
+she had not remembered (what, in truth, she was never in danger of
+forgetting) that she was a lady talking to a gentleman.
+</p>
+<p>
+"A village girl is as capable of passion as you or I," replied he, and
+had he not remembered (what he was somewhat apt to forget) that he was a
+gentleman talking to a lady, he would have added: "And a great deal more
+so than you." Miss Le Pettit, who considered that he <i>had</i> forgotten
+it, gave the little movement known as "bridling," which reared her
+ringletted head a trifle higher on her white shoulders, then decided to
+front the obnoxious word bravely as a woman of the world. She had met
+with it chiefly in books where it was used solely to denote anger.
+There had been, for instance, the tale of "Henry: or, the Fatal Effect
+of Passion." ... Henry had slain a school-fellow in his rage, and had
+been duly hanged; yet something told Miss Le Pettit that was not how
+Mr. Constantine was using the word.... She rose to it splendidly.
+</p>
+<p>
+"Passion ... and pray where do you find such a thing in this story of
+the vanity of a child of fifteen?"
+</p>
+<p>
+"In the usual place, ma'am," said Mr. Constantine (now entirely
+forgetting that which Miss Le Pettit ever remembered)&mdash;"in her soul.
+Did you think it merely a thing of the body? The body may be the
+objective of passion, but the quality itself is what is meant by the
+word. It is generated in the soul and may pour itself into strange
+vessels."
+</p>
+<p>
+"Or even shower its ardours upon a piece of white riband?" cried Miss Le
+Pettit, with a titter.
+</p>
+<p>
+"Shall we say upon Beauty itself?" corrected Mr. Constantine more
+gravely than he had yet spoken. Then, with a smile, he elaborated:
+"For as passion is in the soul, so is beauty in the heart, and hearts
+have differing vision. That was Loveday's desire. Translate this paltry
+thing into terms of other ambitions&mdash;and where is any one of us then?
+Unless, indeed, we are so bloodless, so without imagination, that we
+cannot but be content with our lot just as it is."
+</p>
+<p>
+Miss Le Pettit, who had never seen reason for anything but contentment,
+and looked upon it as a Christian virtue, demurred with:&mdash;
+</p>
+<p>
+"The whole affair is so ridiculously out of proportion."
+</p>
+<p>
+Mr. Constantine glanced, with admiration in his gallant though elderly
+eye, over Miss Le Pettit's figure as she lay back in the gilt chair;
+glanced from her high, polished forehead, round which the smooth
+chestnut hair showed as gleaming, from her parted red lips and bare,
+sloping shoulders to her tiny waist and the outward spring beneath it of
+the clouded tulle that lapped in a dozen baby waves over the globe of
+her swelling crinoline.
+</p>
+<p>
+"When I was a young man," he said, "the ladies went about in little
+robes, such as you would not wear nowadays as a shift. We thought them
+pretty then, and thought none the worse of them because they made the
+women look more or less as God saw fit to make 'em. Yet now we think you
+equally lovely as you float about the world like monstrous beautiful
+bubbles, so that a man must adore at a distance and only guess at
+Paradise in a gust of wind.... Yet to the next generation, believe me or
+not as you like, your garb will seem too preposterous to be true, and a
+generation later Time will pay you the unkindest cut of all&mdash;you will be
+picturesque, and your grand-daughters will revive you&mdash;for fancy dress.
+Proportion, ma'am, is nothing in the world but fashion."
+</p>
+<p>
+"Now we are talking about something I know more about than you, Mr.
+Constantine," cried Miss Le Pettit archly, "and I, for one, do not
+believe that the present style of dress can ever go completely out; it
+is too becoming. We shall have novelties, of course, but the idea will
+remain the same. And, talking of novelties, if you don't scorn such
+things, I will tell you a great secret. I am the first person to procure
+one of the new jackets&mdash;like the Princess of Wales wears, you know.
+You must have heard about them. Alexandra jackets they're called. Isn't
+that pretty? And they're just as pretty as she is. The sleeve...."
+</p>
+<p>
+And thus the great description flowed on, with a bevy of entranced
+girls, who had caught the raised tone, fluttering round in excitement
+like a crowd of butterflies round a blossom of extra sweetness.
+</p>
+<p>
+From which it will be seen that a month had already passed since Loveday
+had been the excitement of society, and that this conversation between
+the eccentric Mr. Constantine and the charming Miss Le Pettit was almost
+the last flickering of interest in her fate. The life of one moon had
+been enough to see the waxing and waning of what Mr. Constantine had
+surprisingly called her passion.
+</p>
+<p>
+Yet Miss Le Pettit, eager, nay, even anxious, as she had been to
+lead the gentleman away from the topic, reverted to it as though by
+a curious fascination, when he had taken his leave. To tell the truth,
+her conscience had some slight cause to make her uneasy on this very
+subject of the violent Loveday. The thing was ridiculous, of course ...
+she, Miss Le Pettit, could not conceivably have been even remotely to
+blame for such a fantastical happening, and yet that slight pricking
+remained....
+</p>
+<p>
+"An odd word to have used," she commented, in recounting the
+conversation she had had with Mr. Constantine to her eager friends, "a
+very odd word, indeed, for by it, apparently, he did not mean an access
+of anger such as the word signifies in all the books I have read...."
+</p>
+<p>
+"You mean in the books that you are <i>supposed</i> to have read,
+Flora," interrupted one of the young ladies, a flighty girl, whose
+tongue often outran her discretion. "I have come across it meaning
+something quite different in books like&mdash;well, you know the sort of
+books I mean."
+</p>
+<p>
+"I do not think, though, that even <i>that</i> was how Mr. Constantine
+used the word," replied Flora, with more of discernment than she
+commonly showed, "though I will not pretend to you, Ellen, that I do not
+recognise the sense in which you refer to it. To be candid, I don't
+think I know what he did mean, but he seemed to me to be paying a vast
+deal of attention to the matter, which surprised me in a person of his
+standing."
+</p>
+<p>
+"I have heard he is a man of much sensibility, though he is so
+satirical," murmured the romantic Emilia, bending over her netting so
+that her ebon curls shaded her suddenly flushing cheek.
+</p>
+<p>
+"Perhaps he knows more about the fair Loveday than we have guessed,"
+cried the careless Ellen; "perhaps he knows <i>too</i> much, and cannot
+keep away from the subject for his guilty conscience, as they say
+murderers are drawn back to the spot where they have buried the body of
+their victim!"
+</p>
+<p>
+But this was too gross a departure from delicacy of thought and phrase,
+and Miss Le Pettit, the prick stirring, perchance, signified as much by
+the cold manner in which she brought back the conversation to the more
+correct and really more enthralling subject of the Alexandra jacket.
+</p>
+<p>
+It was generally agreed that Miss Belben, of Bugletown, could not go far
+wrong with the sleeves if Flora would be so infinitely good as to lend
+her jacket for a copy, and this favour she accorded graciously to her
+dear friend, Emilia.
+</p>
+<p>
+Mr. Constantine walked down the windy hill with his mind already clear
+both of Loveday and the elegant company in which he had been taking tea.
+He was, above all things, a philosopher, and that means that, though his
+imagination was easily touched, his heart remained unstirred, He had
+serious thoughts of ordering a new cabriolet, and on arriving at the
+market place, he turned into the coachbuilder's to renew the discussion
+as to whether red or canary yellow were the more fashionable hue for
+the wheels.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p class="prechapter">
+<b>CHAPTER I:</b> IN WHICH THE READER IS TAKEN
+BACK A FEW WEEKS IN POINT OF TIME, AND
+DOWN SEVERAL STEPS IN THE SOCIAL SCALE
+</p>
+
+<a name="h2HCH0002" id="h2HCH0002"><!-- H2 anchor --></a>
+
+<div style="height: 4em;"><br /><br /><br /><br /></div>
+
+<h2>
+    Chapter I
+</h2>
+<h4>
+IN WHICH THE READER IS TAKEN BACK A FEW WEEKS IN POINT OF TIME, AND DOWN
+SEVERAL STEPS IN THE SOCIAL SCALE
+</h4>
+<p>
+It was on a balmy day in early Spring that Loveday had first met Miss Le
+Pettit. Loveday had gone to fetch the milk. For Loveday's aunt, Senath
+Strick, with whom she lived, was a shiftless, unthrifty woman, never
+able to keep prosperous enough to own a cow for as long as the beast
+took between calvings, and the times when Loveday had a fragrant,
+soft-eyed animal to cherish were mercifully rare. Mercifully, for
+Loveday, though she appeared sullen, had ever more sensibility than was
+good for one in her position, and each time Aunt Senath was forced to
+sell the cow, Loveday behaved as though she had as good a right to sit
+and cry herself silly as any young lady with whom nothing was more
+urgent than to spoil fine cambric with salt water.
+</p>
+<p>
+This, then, was a period of poverty with the Strick family, and Loveday
+was sent to fetch the evening milk from the farm at the crest of the
+hill. On the way, she came upon Cherry Cotton and Primrose Lear, seated
+upon a granite stile, their heads together over something Cherry held in
+her lap. Cherry heard approaching footsteps, and whipped her apron over
+the object she and her friend had been so busily discussing. Loveday was
+hurt rather than angered by the unkind action, for there was a reason,
+connected with Primrose, why she had felt a tender curiosity as to what
+the two girls were guarding so closely. Yet she was aware of bitterness
+also&mdash;for it was ever so when she appeared. Maids ceased their gossip,
+boys laughed and pointed after her. She was "different."
+</p>
+<p>
+Not in being a love-child, there were plenty of them in the village, but
+their parents generally married later, and even if they did not, then
+the female partner in crime would be one of the unmentionable women
+about whom other people talk so much.... She would live by the harbour
+plying a trade which allowed her to have a love-child or so without it
+being an occasion for undue remark, or, if she did not descend to those
+depths where no one expects anything better and censure consequently
+ceases through ineffectiveness, then at least everyone knew the author
+of her fall to be an honest, loutish Englishman, no worse than most of
+his neighbours.
+</p>
+<p>
+Loveday was without either of these two rights to existence. Her mother
+had been a respectable girl till her fall, and, as far as anyone was
+aware, since, for she had died of the fruit of her guilty connection,
+and though her portion was doubtless hell-fire, there is nothing to
+show that one cannot keep respectable even under such disquieting
+circumstances. The elder Loveday had clung obstinately to her
+self-respect under circumstances which her neighbours had tried to
+render nearly as trying on earth. She had died, as she had lived,
+impenitent and only crying for the foreigner who had seduced her,
+while he was then lying, had she but known it, in the lap of his first
+mistress, the sea, who, perhaps from jealousy at his straying, had taken
+him forcibly into her embrace on the same night that Loveday the younger
+was born.
+</p>
+<p>
+Old Madgy, the midwife, who was also more than suspected of being
+somewhat of a witch, declared that the expectant mother <i>did</i> know
+it&mdash;that she had been made aware, through a supernatural happening, of
+the loss of her lover, and that that was why the babe saw the light in
+such undue haste, and the mother took her departure almost as swiftly
+to that place where alone she could ever hope to rejoin him. For, as
+evening drew on, Madgy, having called to see how Loveday did, though
+nothing was thought of yet for a clear week, found her in the dairy
+(the Stricks had not yet fallen on that poverty which came to their roof
+under Aunt Senath's shrewish management) standing as one wisht beside
+the great red earthen pan of scalded cream.
+</p>
+<p>
+"And 'ee can b'lieve me or no as it like 'ee, my dears," old Madgy would
+say to many a breathless circle in a farm kitchen during the intervals
+of her duties overstairs, "but there was the cream in the pan a-heavin'
+up an' down in gurt waves, like a rough sea, and her staring at 'en like
+one stricken, as she was poor sawl, sure enough. Eh, it was sent for a
+sign to her, and a true sign, for that avenen' her man was drowned on
+his way to her, with his fine cargo of oil and onions and all. And there
+was the cream heavin' in waves for a sign of the rough seas that took
+him, though wi' us the skies was fair and the water in the bay as smooth
+as silk."
+</p>
+<p>
+A story that filled simple souls in kitchens with awe, but naturally was
+treated more scornfully in drawing-rooms, where it was felt that signs
+and portents would hardly be sent to inform a cottage girl of the death
+of an onion-seller. For, after all, that is what he amounts to, and the
+horrid secret is out.... An onion-seller ... the very words stink in
+the nostrils and are fatal to romance.
+</p>
+<p>
+Fatal to romance in the minds of the fastidious, fatal to respectability
+in those of the common people, for only foreigners sold onions. Strange
+men with rings in their ears and long, dark curls like a woman's, and an
+eye that was at once bold and soft.
+</p>
+<p>
+Loveday the younger had that eye, save that it had never learned from
+life to be bold, and her face was milken white instead of showing the
+blown roses of the other girls, though the back of her slender neck was
+stained a faint golden brown as by the inherited memories of sun. She
+was most immodestly "different," and even the Vicar's lady, who had
+charitably seen to her baptism, had difficulty in bringing herself to
+believe the girl could be a Christian.
+</p>
+<p>
+Cherry and Primrose stared up at her as she stood with the red jar in
+her hand, and, seeing her look so black, so white, so thin, they leant
+their yellow heads together and drew their two aprons closely over their
+plump laps.
+</p>
+<p>
+Seen thus, fronted by Loveday, they seemed amazingly alike, because of
+the completeness of her differing, yet a longer look showed that, in
+spite of their sleek, fair heads and rounded shoulders, there was
+between them the deepest division there can be between women.
+</p>
+<p>
+Cherry was a maid, thoughtless, blowsy, still untouched enough for
+wonder; Primrose had been a wife, though only seventeen, these three
+months; in another three was to be a mother. Her eyes, blue as her
+friend's, showed an even greater assurance, because it was based on
+positives and not on a mere negation. Dark-circled as those eyes were,
+her glance, as it passed over Loveday, was the more merciless, because
+it came from behind the shelter of a ring-fence.
+</p>
+
+<p class="prechapter">
+<b>CHAPTER II:</b> IN WHICH THE ONION-SELLER'S
+DAUGHTER FOR THE FIRST TIME FEELS AS
+A WOMAN
+</p>
+
+<a name="h2HCH0003" id="h2HCH0003"><!-- H2 anchor --></a>
+
+<div style="height: 4em;"><br /><br /><br /><br /></div>
+
+<h2>
+    Chapter II
+</h2>
+<h4>
+    IN WHICH THE ONION-SELLER'S DAUGHTER FOR THE FIRST TIME FEELS AS A WOMAN
+</h4>
+<p>
+For all her woodland timidity, Loveday was prone to those flashes of
+temper to which the weak in defence and the strong in feeling seem
+peculiarly exposed. She snatched the shielding apron back from the lap
+of the buxom Cherry, stamping her foot the while. Cherry, too amazed to
+protect her treasure, stared, slack-mouthed.
+</p>
+<p>
+Primrose flew into a temper that surpassed Loveday's, already failing
+her through dismay at her own action, even as the thunder, to children,
+surpasses in terrifying quality the lightning.... And, had they but
+known it, Primrose's sounding tantrums held as much possibility of
+danger, compared with Loveday's rage, as holds the crash compared with
+the flash. But they knew it not, and already Loveday stood panting a
+little and spent with her own storm, while Primrose gathered herself,
+undaunted, for the attack.
+</p>
+<p>
+A hail of words would have beaten about Loveday's drooping head had not
+Cherry, all unwitting, come to the rescue with a cry on the discovery
+that her treasures, thus disturbed, had fallen to the ground, which was
+muddy enough, owing to the habit of the cattle of trampling the soil
+around the stiles.
+</p>
+<p>
+"Oh, my fairings, my fairings!" cried Cherry, swooping at them from her
+height with all the headlong thump of a gannet after its prey. Loveday's
+dive was as the gull's for grace contrasted with it. Their hands met;
+Loveday divined in an instant, by the tug of Cherry's, that she was
+suspected of trying to snatch the fairings, instead of merely restoring
+them, and she straightened herself with a return of her sick anger.
+Cherry clutched the frail morsels of riband and lace in her lap, then,
+seeing there was no danger, began to straighten them out, scolding the
+while.
+</p>
+<p>
+"There, see, Primrose love, that edging is all crumpled ... did you ever
+see the like? Never mind, I'll press it out for 'ee, and it'll look as
+good as new. And this riband, that's the one I bought off Bendigo, the
+pedlar, for Flora Day&mdash;oh, my dear life, what'll I do with it now?"
+</p>
+<p>
+"'Tis a gurt shame, that's what 'tis," said Primrose, resentful both for
+her friend's riband and her own edging; "and I'd get my Willie to make
+her buy new, only 'tis no good asking paupers for money, because, even
+if they was to be sold up, all their sticks and cloam wouldn't fetch
+enough for a yard o' this riband."
+</p>
+<p>
+The vulgar taunt had sting enough to rouse Loveday to a wholesome
+contempt that saved her. She stood staring with a genuine scorn at the
+little articles of lace and artificial flowers which Cherry's beau had
+given her at the last fair. Yes, even at the riband which had been
+Cherry's special pride as bought by herself from the pedlar, and it was
+one that had taken Loveday's eye with its delicate beauty&mdash;for it was of
+palest rose, like the shells she picked up on the beach, not a crude red
+or blue, such as she saw in the shops at Bugletown when she went in on
+market days. Secretly, something in her marvelled that such a riband had
+been Cherry's choice, and her scorning of it now was the easier because
+she hated to think she and the blowsy damsel could have a taste in
+common.
+</p>
+<p>
+"You and your fal-lals!" she exclaimed; "here's a fine boutigo to make
+of a parcel of ribands and laces that'll make you look like a couple of
+the puppets at Corpus Fair. If you wear such as those to the Flora
+you'll be mistook for a Maypole, and folk'll dance round you."
+</p>
+<p>
+"Well, folks 'ull never dance even <i>round</i> you, unless you're burnt
+as a guy in a bonfire, let alone dancing <i>with</i> you, Loveday
+Strick," rejoined Primrose, "and so you do very well knaw, and that's
+why your heart's sick against us."
+</p>
+<p>
+A minute ago, and that had been true; it was for her isolation Loveday
+had raged, but when she had seen these two draw their aprons over their
+girl's treasures, she had not guessed those possessions aright. What she
+had imagined in her girl's heart, knowing Primrose's condition, it is
+not for us to pry at; whatever it was, it was so swift, so born of
+instinct, as to be holy. But when she saw the crumpled finery, she was
+suddenly too much of a child again to rate it worth envy. The things
+that Primrose, all unthinking, stood for, the things of warm hearth and
+hallowed bed that her house had never known, might have power to draw
+the woman out in her all too soon, but the things that merely charm the
+feminine still left her chill.
+</p>
+<p>
+She laughed, all the sting gone, when she saw what a milliner's paradise
+it was from which she was kept out, and put her foot on the first step
+of the stile.
+</p>
+<p>
+"By your lave, Cherry Cotton!" she said, and swung lightly over,
+balancing her jar, while they still stared at the change in her.
+</p>
+
+<p class="prechapter">
+<b>CHAPTER III:</b> IN WHICH SHE FOR THE FIRST
+TIME FEELS AS A GIRL
+</p>
+
+<a name="h2HCH0004" id="h2HCH0004"><!-- H2 anchor --></a>
+
+<div style="height: 4em;"><br /><br /><br /><br /></div>
+
+<h2>
+    Chapter III
+</h2>
+<h4>
+    IN WHICH SHE FOR THE FIRST TIME FEELS AS A GIRL
+</h4>
+<p>
+Primrose Lear was wife to the son of old Farmer Lear, of Upper Farm,
+whither Loveday was bound. Willie Lear, the young man, was gay and
+handsome, and generally off on any and every job that took him abroad,
+from buying a pig to selling his own senses for a few mugs of cider.
+Farmer Lear was usually out in the fields, and Mrs. Lear, wrinkled like
+a winter apple and tuneful as a winter robin, was as a rule alone in the
+big kitchen or cool dairy, for small help did her daughter-in-law give
+her about the house.
+</p>
+<p>
+To-day, however, Mrs. Lear was in the parlour, and no less a personage
+than Miss Le Pettit of Ignores was seated on the best horsehair
+armchair, her bonneted head, with its drooping feather, leaning
+gracefully against the lace antimacassar, and her small prunella boots
+elegantly crossed on the smiling cheeks of the beadwork cherub that
+adorned the footstool, and that seemed to be puffing the harder, as
+though to try and puff those little feet up to the heaven where he
+belonged, trusting to his wings (of the best pearl beads) to bear him
+after her.
+</p>
+<p>
+Loveday paused, stricken, not with embarrassment, but with awe, upon the
+threshold.
+</p>
+<p>
+Sight of Cherry and Primrose had deepened her sense of her own isolation
+and her pain. Sight of Miss Le Pettit made her forget all save what she
+saw.
+</p>
+<p>
+Blow, little cherub, puff your cherubic hardest, never can you waft
+Flora Le Pettit higher than she now is, at least in the sight of one
+pair of black eyes, higher, perhaps, than she will ever be again, even
+in that of her own not uncomplacent orbs.
+</p>
+<p>
+Blow, little cherub, but even if you burst the roseate beads from off
+your cheeks in your ardour, leaving forlornly drooping the grey threads
+that would show you as, after all, of mere mortal manufacture, you could
+not cast a doubt as big as the tiniest bead upon the heavenly origin of
+Miss Le Pettit&mdash;not, at least, in the heart of the devout worshipper
+born in that instant upon the black woollen doormat.
+</p>
+<p>
+The angelic visitant put up a tortoise-shell lorgnon and examined the
+newcomer with a flicker of condescending interest. For Flora was a young
+lady of great sensibility, and though, of course, all females are filled
+by nature with that interesting and appealing quality, the finer amongst
+them educate and make an art of it. Miss Le Pettit, then, encouraged her
+sensibility, nursed it, nourished it, on the most exquisite of novels
+and the rarest of romances, and these had taught her to show even more
+sensibility than usual at sight of a barefoot girl with black hair and
+eyes and an arresting, though wholly unconscious air that could but be
+described by Miss Le Pettit, to herself and afterwards to her friends,
+as Italianate.
+</p>
+<p>
+"What an interesting face and figure!" she now exclaimed, at gaze
+through the lorgnon, as though it were a celestial aid to vision needful
+for such a long range, as it must be even for angelic eyes looking from
+the skiey ramparts to a world where bare feet press the earth, to say
+nothing of woollen doormats.
+</p>
+<p>
+Loveday blenched before that searching gaze, the rare red burned in her
+cheek and her own eyes sank abashed. She rubbed the flexible sole of one
+foot in a stiffened curve of shyness against the slim ankle of the
+other. Mrs. Lear exclaimed aloud in her horror.
+</p>
+<p>
+"Loveday Strick, where are your manners to, that you come into the
+parlour without a curtsey?" said she. "And indeed, I must ask you to
+excuse her, ma'am, for she's but a nobody's girl from the village, and
+doesn't know how to behave before gentry."
+</p>
+<p>
+Mrs. Lear was a good soul, and had ever been kind to Loveday, but she
+too had her sensibilities, and they were outraged by this untimely
+intrusion of one world into another which was doubtless unaware even of
+its existence. But Miss Le Pettit put up a delicate gloved hand in
+protest.
+</p>
+<p>
+"Nay, you frighten the child, Mrs. Lear," she said kindly, "I am sure
+she means no disrespect. Did you ... what is your name, girl?'
+</p>
+<p>
+"Loveday, ma'am."
+</p>
+<p>
+"What a strange, old-fashioned name, to be sure," commented the taffetas
+angel, with a crystal sounding titter, "'tis as good as the heroine in a
+play. Whom were you called for, child?"
+</p>
+<p>
+"My mother, ma'am," said Loveday, and now her cheek had ceased to burn
+and looked pale, but she raised her eyes and confronted the vision
+steadily.
+</p>
+<p>
+Mrs. Lear coughed.
+</p>
+<p>
+"I declare I should like to do a watercolour drawing of you, Loveday,"
+went on Miss Le Pettit, "what do you say? Will you come up to the Manor
+one day and let me paint your portrait?"
+</p>
+<p>
+Loveday had not a notion what that process might be, but had she taken
+it to be the blackest witchcraft (as she very likely would if she saw
+it) she would still not have blenched. Her eye lightened, some instinct
+told her that had she been as all the other girls, the Cherries and
+Primroses, this wonderful lady would not have looked twice at her. At
+last her singularity was standing her in good stead. Confidence came to
+her, even a feeling of slight scorn for the world she knew, a feeling,
+indeed, to which she was not altogether a stranger, but which up till
+now she had stifled in affright at its presumption.
+</p>
+<p>
+"What do you say, Mrs. Lear?" asked Miss Le Pettit, turning with her
+charming condescension to the old woman, whom, after all, she was merely
+visiting on a little matter of a recipe for elderflower-water, "what do
+you say? Would she not look picturesque with an orange kerchief over her
+head and a basket of fruit in her arms, as a young street-vendor?"
+</p>
+<p>
+"She would certainly look outlandish, ma'am," was all Mrs. Lear could
+manage.
+</p>
+<p>
+Loveday's thoughts flew of a sudden to the ribands she had disturbed in
+Cherry's lap, and for the first time in her life, till now so proudly
+above such matters in its aloofness, she yearned over fineries. If such
+as those could admit her into the company of such as this! She thought
+enviously of that pale pink, even of the yellows and reds she had seen
+in Bugletown, since such deep tones seemed to the taste of this
+wonderful creature.
+</p>
+<p>
+But Miss Le Pettit, still staring at her, changed her note.
+</p>
+<p>
+"I was wrong," she exclaimed, "that face needs no gaudy hues, those
+white cheeks need nothing but that red mouth to set them off, and that
+black hair. She should be white, all white, should she not, Mrs. Lear?
+A tragic bride from the south, languishing in our cold land. 'Twould
+make a fine subject for a painting, though I fear beyond my brush.
+I never can get my faces to look as sad as I could wish them to."
+</p>
+<p>
+There was something engaging and almost childlike about the heiress as
+she spoke those words, but recollecting herself she resumed:
+</p>
+<p>
+"Never mind the portrait, but I vow I will have you for my attendant at
+the Flora, that I will. Now, Mrs. Lear, you shall not protest, I always
+have my way when I set my heart on a thing, you know. I am going to
+dance in the Flora this year, 'tis a charming rural custom, and the
+gentry should help to preserve it. Besides, my name is Flora, so I
+am doubly bound. And this child shall be my maid; she will be a rare
+contrast to me, I being chestnut and she so foreign looking. It would
+be indiscreet if I were to dance with a gentleman&mdash;you know what the
+gossips are&mdash;but if I am partnered by an attendant maid 'twill be very
+different."
+</p>
+<p>
+"Ma'am ..." from the scandalised Mrs. Lear, "if you are set on having
+a village girl ... there are many from good homes, respectable girls.
+Not that I've anything to say against this poor child, God knows, but
+her mother, ma'am.... I assure you 'tis impossible."
+</p>
+<p>
+Miss Le Pettit, who guessed very well the sort of tale Mrs. Lear's
+delicacy spared her, laughed the matter off.
+</p>
+<p>
+"It shall be as I say, Mrs. Lear, I can afford to be above these things.
+You shall dance with me, Loveday. You must have a white frock, of
+course, but I suppose you have a Sunday frock? Quite a simple thing,
+the simpler the better, and a white sash of satin riband. Don't forget.
+I shall expect to see you waiting for me at the Flora."
+</p>
+<p>
+And Miss Le Pettit rose, having carried her freak of sensibility on long
+enough, and sweeping past Loveday with a dazzling smile, was accompanied
+to the front door by Mrs. Lear, and after standing poised for a moment
+against the sunny verdure beyond, took wing with a flutter of white
+taffetas and was gone.
+</p>
+<p>
+Loveday was left with that most dangerous of all passions&mdash;the passion
+for an idea. Though she was ignorant of the fact, it was not Miss Le
+Pettit she adored, it was beauty; not silk underskirts that rustled
+in her ear, but the music of the spheres; a new ideal she saw not in
+the angelic visitant, but in herself. She, too, would be all white and
+dazzling, was accounted worthy to follow in the same steps, were it
+but in those of a dance. She made the common mistake of a lover&mdash;she
+imagined she was in love with another human being, while in reality she
+was in love with those feelings in herself which that other had evoked.
+</p>
+<p>
+Never did aspiring saint of old, impelled by ecstasy, cling closer to a
+crucifix as the symbol of the loved one than did Loveday to that notion
+of the white garb which must be hers. It was, indeed, a symbol to her,
+the symbol of everything she had unwittingly craved and starved for,
+of everything she had, could not but feel she had, in herself which was
+lacked by those who jeered at her. And, though she knew it not, nor
+would have understood it, she was a symbol-lover, than which there is no
+form of lover more dangerous in life&mdash;or more endangered by the chances
+of it. For he who loves another human being gives his heart in fee, but
+he who loves an idea gives his soul.
+</p>
+
+<p class="prechapter">
+<b>CHAPTER IV:</b> IN WHICH THE ONION-SELLER'S
+DAUGHTER FEELS HERSELF A GODDESS
+</p>
+
+<a name="h2HCH0005" id="h2HCH0005"><!-- H2 anchor --></a>
+
+<div style="height: 4em;"><br /><br /><br /><br /></div>
+
+<h2>
+    Chapter IV
+</h2>
+<h4>
+    IN WHICH THE ONION-SELLER'S DAUGHTER FEELS HERSELF A GODDESS
+</h4>
+<p>
+Loveday bore home the milk in a maze of bliss, and staying not for her
+supper, for no hunger of the body was upon her, turned and went out
+again into the glow of the evening. Had she been as full of sensibility
+as a young lady she would have wandered straight away from Upper Farm,
+forgotten the milk, and not thought of it again, till, returning with
+the upgetting of the moon, her aunt had met her with vulgar reproaches.
+What a charming scene could then have been staged, of sensitive genius
+misunderstood by coarse-grained labour; of vision-drunken youth berated
+by undreaming age! But she was not a young lady, and could derive no
+felicity from forgetfulness of such a kind, for with the poor the
+urgencies of the immediate task are raised to such compelling interest
+that only a genius could neglect them with satisfaction. Therefore
+Loveday never thought of forgetting the milk for her aunt, but her
+exultation was of such a powerful sort that it upheld her through the
+commonplaces of routine without her perceiving the incongruity which
+would have jarred on one of a finer upbringing.
+</p>
+<p>
+She placed the milk on the table, set out the bread and soaked
+pilchards, found what was left of the cheese, and went hastily forth
+lest her aunt should stay her.
+</p>
+<p>
+She was bound for the little wood that lay in a fold of the moorland
+above the sea. This wood was to her what a City of Refuge was to the
+Hebrews of the Old Testament, and, like them, she fled to it when the
+world's opinion of what was fit had proved at variance with her own.
+To-night she went to it not for sanctuary from others, but to commune
+with herself&mdash;in truth, for the first time she went not because of what
+she had left but because of what she would find. Her bare heels were
+winged along the road.
+</p>
+<p>
+The wood lay lapped in the shadow that the western ridge had cast on it
+an hour earlier than the rest of the world's bedtime, ever since the
+trees had been there to receive the chill caress, and that was for many
+a hundred years. Old Madgy swore that even in her young day the small
+folk had still held their revels on the mossy slopes amongst the fanlike
+roots, and who knows what larger folk had not fled there to wanton more
+sweetly than in close cottages, or, like Loveday, to play the more
+easily with their thoughts? The wood alone knew, and it held its
+memories as closely as it held the thousand tiny lives confided to its
+care; the bright-eyed shrew-mice that poked quivering noses through the
+litter of last year's leaves, the birds that nested behind the
+clustering twigs, the slow-worms that slipped along its grassy ditches.
+</p>
+<p>
+Loveday turned off from the road and approached the wood from the west,
+pausing when she reached the smooth grey boulders that were piled along
+the ridge. She stood there gazing out over the smiling champaign, pale
+and verdant from the farthest rim to the treetops that made as it were a
+sea of faint green at her feet, for already in that soft clime the twigs
+were misty with young leaf, and on the willows the velvety pearl-hued
+ovals had begun to deck themselves with a delicate powdering of gold,
+while from the hazels beside her the yellow lambs' tails hung still as
+tiny pennants in the evening air. The gold of nature was as yet more
+vivid than her green, which still showed tentative, enquiring of April
+what of betrayal might not lie in the careless plaits of her garment.
+To Loveday, high on her rock, between the gold of the sky and the gold
+of the blossom, it seemed that April must of a certainty stay as fair
+as this and lead to as bright a May, when that vision of her new self
+should become a yet brighter reality. She was confident of April because
+she was confident of life, lapped in an aureate glow that seemed to
+suffuse the very air she drew into her lungs so that it intoxicated her
+like the breath of a diviner ether from Olympian heights. She had seen
+beauty, and lo! it had been revealed to her not as a thing apart and
+unattainable, but as a quality within herself. Her "difference" had
+become a blazon, not a branding.
+</p>
+<p>
+Lying down on her rock, she told over with the rapture of a devotee the
+divine excellencies of Flora Le Pettit; her radiance, her swinging,
+shining curls, the wings that spread from her fair arms, the light that
+gleamed on her bright brow and in her glancing eyes, but it was not
+Flora, but Loveday, who danced before her mind's eye in white raiment,
+and held the sorrows of the South in her eyes and the joy of youth on
+her lips. Flora was the excuse for that new Loveday, as the beloved is
+ever the excuse for the raptures transmuting the lover. Even thus do we
+worship in our Creator the excellence of His handiwork, and one would
+think that to be alive is act of praise enough to satisfy the most
+exigent deity. Flora had called Loveday to life, and Loveday repaid her
+with a worship of that which she had awakened, the highest compliment
+the devout can pay, would the theologians but acknowledge it.
+</p>
+<p>
+The sun slipped slower down the field of the sky, now a pale green as
+delicate as the leaves burgeoning beneath it, and Loveday drew herself
+up in a bunch, knees to chin, her brown strong hands clasped and her
+slim feet curved over the slope of the smooth granite. The wood below
+was wrapping itself in mystery, and her eyes attempted to fathom its
+fastnesses. Ordinarily, she was fearful of venturing into the darkness
+under the trees when once the evening had fallen, and it was then she
+was accustomed to come out up to her boulder, but this evening she was
+strung to any courage, for she walked in that certainty which on rare
+occasions comes to all&mdash;the certainty of being immune to danger&mdash;which
+is of all sensations vouchsafed to mortals the most godlike.
+</p>
+<p>
+She rose to her feet, and swinging herself down from the rock, began the
+descent, ledge by ledge, to the shadows below. A last spring, and she
+was standing on the dark gold of drifted leaves, that rose about her
+ankles with a dry little rustling. It was the wood's caress of greeting,
+and she did not reflect that it was also the kisses of the dead.
+</p>
+<p>
+Indeed, she clapped her hands in the rush of strength she felt, both in
+her young muscles and her leaping spirit, and stood proudly listening
+to the echo dying away, unaffrighted. She was young and strong and
+beautiful; life, not dead leaves, lay at her feet. She was different,
+and in her difference lay power, she was at last herself, Loveday ...
+she was Loveday, Loveday ... Loveday...
+</p>
+<p>
+She darted hither and thither through the wood, noting with a pleasure
+keener than ever before how soft and sleek the moss was to her feet, how
+silky the flank of the beech to her leaning cheek, how sweetly sharp the
+intimate evening note of the birds.
+</p>
+<p>
+And she was quite unfitted to be the goddess of these rustic beauties,
+for all her mind could feel in that softness and sleekness and clear
+calling was their alikeness to artificiality. She felt thin slippers
+on her feet, rubbed an ecstatic cheek against the sheen of satin, and
+in her ears echoed no diviner music than the Tol-de-rol Tol-de-rol
+of the Bugletown band on Flora Day. Save in her sincerity, she was as
+artificial a goddess as ever graced a Versailles Fête Champêtre. What
+were leaf and bird to her but the stuff of her life, whereas white satin
+gleamed with the shimmer of the very heavens!
+</p>
+<p>
+Hers was not, it is true, the milliner's paradise of Cherry and
+Primrose, but it was one into which she could only penetrate fitly
+clad. What wonder then that, brought up without any tutoring in the
+excellencies of Nature, she should display the sad lack of true feeling
+so deplored in her later by that nice arbiter of taste, Miss Flora Le
+Pettit?
+</p>
+
+<p class="prechapter">
+<b>CHAPTER V:</b> IN WHICH LOVEDAY ESSAYS THE
+WHITE GOWN
+</p>
+
+<a name="h2HCH0006" id="h2HCH0006"><!-- H2 anchor --></a>
+
+<div style="height: 4em;"><br /><br /><br /><br /></div>
+
+<h2>
+    Chapter V
+</h2>
+<h4>
+    IN WHICH LOVEDAY ESSAYS THE WHITE GOWN
+</h4>
+<p>
+With morning came thoughts of the practical side of the business and,
+the worst of her daily duties performed, Loveday ascended to her chamber
+to examine the scanty contents of her small oaken chest. It was a
+sea-chest, legacy from her roving father, who had given it to her
+mother, and often enough had Aunt Senath expressed scruples about
+allowing her to keep a gift obtained so godlessly. Perhaps the fact that
+it was a good chest and better than anything she could have bought had
+something to do with Aunt Senath's complaisance in permitting it to
+remain. Perhaps Loveday's fierce look in defence of it was not without
+influence also. The chest stayed in the little attic room, and made of
+it, to Loveday's eyes, a place peculiarly her own, and rich because of
+its associations. There was something about the chest, its dark polish
+and coarse carving, that even led her to think hopefully of its poor
+contents.
+</p>
+<p>
+She crouched beside it now, upon her heels, and lifting the lid, gazed
+expectantly at what was revealed.
+</p>
+<p>
+After all, it did not look so bad, just a level surface of white linen...
+</p>
+<p>
+But, when she lifted it out, and all the yellow of age was revealed in
+the full gathers of the skirt, a shade passed over Loveday's spirit.
+How small and tight the bodice looked, how skimpy even the plaits of the
+skirt for the present modes ... yet it had been a good linen in its day,
+there was no doubt of that, this frock that had been stitched for her
+mother's wedding gown.
+</p>
+<p>
+For perhaps he had always been coming back to marry her, perhaps only
+their young blood and eager hearts beating so strongly within them had
+made the beat of wedding bells seem at first too slight a sound to catch
+their absorbed attention.... So Loveday the elder had always known,
+in spite of the sneers of the neighbours. So Loveday the younger had
+maintained to carping girl-critics, though in her inmost heart she had
+never been able to feel it mattered so vastly, for half the girls she
+knew would have been in her predicament had their fathers been cut
+off untimely. She knew it was not that she was born out of wedlock,
+a misfortune that might happen to anyone, which oppressed her youth,
+but the fact of her father having been a foreigner, and of that she
+was fiercely resolved to be proud. Neither mother nor father had she
+ever known, but the instinct of generous youth is ever to defend the
+oppressed, and with her defence had love sprung in Loveday's heart.
+Therefore, even with her sensation of disappointment at the sight of the
+yellowed linen, there was reverence and tenderness in her touch as she
+laid the gown across her narrow bed.
+</p>
+<p>
+She ripped off the coarse blue wrapper that enfolded her, and stood
+revealed in her little flannel under-bodice and linsey-woolsey petticoat
+of striped red and black, her thin girlish arms and young bosom making
+her look more childish than she did when fully clothed. She held the
+gown above her head and struggled into it. Her pale little face was red
+when she poked it triumphantly through the narrow opening and finally
+settled the neck, with its ruffled cambric frilling, round her throat,
+and pulled the puff sleeves as far as they would go down her arms in a
+vain attempt to make them conceal her red young girl's elbows. She could
+only see a small portion of herself at a time in the little mirror, yet
+that small portion, in spite of the skimpiness and yellowness of the
+gown, pleased her eye.
+</p>
+<p>
+For her dark tints were set off by the creamy folds, her slight shape
+revealed by the tight bodice, even her bare feet, which some fine
+prompting had made her wash carefully lest they should shame this essay,
+looked small and graceful beneath the full folds.
+</p>
+<p>
+But she could not dance in the Flora unshod, and so once again she bent
+to the sea-chest, and withdrew her only pair of shoes, bought for her in
+a generous moment last Michaelmas by Aunt Senath. She pulled on her
+Sunday pair of white cotton stockings, and then the stout shoes. They
+still fitted, and to her country eye looked well enough. She examined
+herself bit by bit in the mirror, from her smooth black head to her
+smooth black feet, and all the faintly yellowed linen that curved in and
+swelled out between.
+</p>
+<p>
+She was fair to look upon, not so much the mirror as her own awakened
+consciousness told her that. She was meet to dance with Miss Le Pettit
+at the Flora, could she but obtain one thing more&mdash;the white satin sash.
+</p>
+
+<p class="prechapter">
+<b>CHAPTER VI:</b> IN WHICH LOVEDAY ESSAYS TO
+OBTAIN THE WHITE SATIN RIBAND
+</p>
+
+<a name="h2HCH0007" id="h2HCH0007"><!-- H2 anchor --></a>
+
+<div style="height: 4em;"><br /><br /><br /><br /></div>
+
+<h2>
+    Chapter VI
+</h2>
+<h4>
+    IN WHICH LOVEDAY ESSAYS TO OBTAIN THE WHITE SATIN RIBAND
+</h4>
+<p>
+With a high heart Loveday began her quest for the work which was to earn
+for her the coveted white satin sash. She had but three weeks in which
+to make a matter of several shillings, and this meant that she must sell
+every moment of the time which was hers when her duties about her aunt's
+were discharged for the day. In the morning she was busy with cleaning
+and cooking till almost mid-day, and in the evenings she had the milk to
+fetch, but in the afternoons she could be sure of a few hours if Aunt
+Senath did not guess she wanted them for herself and invent tasks. On
+Mondays, of course, the washing kept her all day at the tub, and on
+Fridays at the mangle, on Saturdays there was the baking of the bread,
+while Thursday, being market day, she was supposed to keep house while
+Aunt Senath went in to Bugletown&mdash;a task that slut of a woman was too
+fond of for its chances of gossip to send her niece in her stead. On
+Thursdays Loveday was wont to stay in and see to the mending, but she
+reflected that, by sitting up in her bed at night to darn and patch by
+the light of the wick that floated in a cup of fish-oil, she might take
+charge of some neighbour's children on that day instead and Aunt Senath
+be none the wiser. Loveday had a sad lack of principle, doubtless an
+heritage from her heathen father.
+</p>
+<p>
+On the afternoons of Tuesdays and Wednesdays, she hoped to help in some
+house with the cleaning, or in some slattern's abode with the weekly
+wash, for, as all know, there are some such sluts that the washing gets
+put off from day to day, till Saturday finds it still cluttering the
+washhouse instead of being brought in clean and sweet from the
+gorse-bushes.
+</p>
+<p>
+Then there were always odd things to be done, such as running errands,
+at which she hoped to earn some pence here and there. The white riband
+seemed no impossible fantasy to Loveday when she started on her quest.
+</p>
+<p>
+She went first to visit old Mrs. Lear, at Upper Farm, for no one had
+shown such a kindly front to the girl in all the village as she. Loveday
+started out for the milk half-an-hour earlier than was her wont so that
+she might have time to discuss her hopes with the farmer's wife, and
+this time she did not meet young Mrs. Lear or her friend Cherry on the
+way. But she did come upon both Mrs. Lears in the big kitchen, the
+younger seated in the armchair in front of the fire and the elder
+anxiously regarding her. Primrose had been fretful ever since hearing
+from her mother-in-law of Miss Le Pettit's visit of the day before,
+and of the unaccountable interest the heiress had shown in that faggot
+of a Loveday, and by now her fretfulness had assumed the size of an
+indisposition. In vain did Mrs. Lear try and cosset and comfort her with
+potions both hot and cool; Primrose knew well that beneath the kindness
+of the farmer's wife lurked the feeling that it was not for one in her
+station to indulge in such vapours as might well befit the gentry, and
+that she would be cured sooner by taking a broom to the best carpet than
+by sitting and keeping the fire warm. Primrose sulked, and even handsome
+Willie, leaning by the window, wanting to be away yet dreading the
+outburst did he move, could not persuade his wife that nothing ailed her
+but too much idleness. Neither, though to their robust health it would
+have seemed so, would it have been all the truth, for Primrose was
+taking her condition more hardly than most girls who have had the good
+fortune to wed with a prosperous young farmer, and the thought that she
+would not be able to dance in the procession with the rest of the world
+at the Flora had for some time past embittered her. To enter the house,
+after her anger with Loveday and the flash of fear that the strange
+half-foreign girl had filled her with, only to find that the great Miss
+Le Pettit had offered that very girl to dance with her ... this was
+poisonous fare indeed for one in the discontented mood of Primrose Lear.
+The heaviness of her mind matched with that of her body as she hunched
+over the fire.
+</p>
+<p>
+Sight of Loveday, a Loveday oddly changed from that of the day earlier,
+did not ease her sickness; the light in Loveday's eye, the fresh
+exhilaration of her step&mdash;she, who was wont to slip along with so much
+of quiet aloofness&mdash;stung the other girl anew. Loveday greeted Mrs. Lear
+eagerly before she saw that Primrose was sitting half-hidden by the
+wings of the big chair, her face, paler than its wont, in shadow, pallid
+like a face seen through still water. Then she saw also handsome Willie,
+dark against the small square panes of the window, the April sun gilding
+the curve of his ruddy cheek and making the pots of red geraniums along
+the sill blaze as brightly as the beautiful blossoms of painted wax
+that, under their glass shade, held an example of neat perfection up
+to Nature.
+</p>
+<p>
+Willie nodded at Loveday with a trifle less of sulkiness in his manner,
+took a step forward and relapsed once more. A little silence seemed to
+catch them all, broken by good Mrs. Lear saying:
+</p>
+<p>
+"You'm early to-day, Loveday. Milken's not over yet."
+</p>
+<p>
+"I'm come to see you a moment, if 'tes possible," said Loveday, some of
+her shining confidence already fallen from her, she knew not why.
+</p>
+<p>
+"Well," said Primrose spitefully, guessing her presence would embarrass
+Loveday, "Mrs. Lear's here and I daresay'll speak to 'ee. Can't be any
+secret from me, of course, whatever 'tes."
+</p>
+<p>
+Mrs. Lear, suddenly sorry for Loveday, although Primrose on entering the
+day before had told her a tale that had angered her, said:
+</p>
+<p>
+"Come into dairy, Loveday; you can tell me what 'tes while I see to your
+aunt's bit of butter."
+</p>
+<p>
+Loveday followed her into the cool dairy, where on the scrubbed
+white wood shelves the great red earthen pans stood in rows holding
+their thick crinkled cream, which Loveday never saw without a thought
+of awe for her mother's miracle, and the waves that had surged over
+her father's head. Thought of it now restored her sense of her own
+power&mdash;the cream was ever for her a symbol of divine interposition, and
+if her own parents had been found worthy of such a sign, why should not
+she too have that something apart and strong which forced signs from the
+very heavens, that something apart which indeed she could not but feel
+sure she possessed, never with such a gladness in the certainty until
+the miraculous yesterday?
+</p>
+<p>
+Eagerly she unfolded her plans to Mrs. Lear, her words falling forth in
+a rush as hurried as a moorland stream after rain, yet as clear too, and
+as she spoke of her hopes and plans her black eyes scanned Mrs. Lear's
+face more in faith than anxiety. But Mrs. Lear wore a strange look that
+to one less eager than the girl would have shown as pity.
+</p>
+<p>
+"Softly, Loveday, softly," she said at last, "while I see if I can
+get to the rights of this. You want to earn money for yourself this
+next month to buy your white riband with. Have 'ee thought 'tes an
+extravagant purchase for a maid like you, who should be putten any
+money into warm flannel or a pair of good boots?"
+</p>
+<p>
+"I don't want boots, Mrs. Lear, I don't want nothing on the earth but my
+satin sash so I can dance with her in the Flora. I want it more than to
+save my soul, that I do; I'll go through anything to get it. I'll work
+like ten maids for 'ee and for anyone else that'll have me, so as I can
+dance in the Flora..."
+</p>
+<p>
+"Hush, hush," cried the good woman, justly scandalised by such
+unbalanced ravings from a maid of fifteen who should have had nothing
+but modesty in her mouth; "you mustn't say such wicked things or I can't
+stay here and listen to en."
+</p>
+<p>
+Fear attacked Loveday, not for her own impious words, but lest she had
+shocked Mrs. Lear past helping.
+</p>
+<p>
+"Mrs. Lear," she said urgently, "I don't mean any wickedness, but indeed
+I can't sufficiently tell 'ee what it means to me to get my length of
+riband and dance in the Flora come May. I do believe I'll die if I
+don't. I don't know how to find words to tell 'ee, but 'tes more to me
+than a white riband and a shaking of feet down Bugletown streets, 'tes
+my life, I do believe ..." She added no word of Flora Le Pettit, you
+perceive, but got a secret joy from being able to use her name thus
+unreproved in mention of the dance ... and who that has been a lover
+will not understand this?
+</p>
+<p>
+"I would have had 'ee up here to help now that Primrose is so wisht,"
+replied Mrs. Lear doubtfully, "but simmingly only yesterday you had
+words, and indeed it was ill done of you, Loveday Strick, towards one
+in her condition, as you do very well knaw."
+</p>
+<p>
+Loveday drooped her head. Idle to protest to Mrs. Lear that she had not
+been the first in fault. She waited breathless, the beating of her heart
+almost choking her. Mrs. Lear went on.
+</p>
+<p>
+"If only Primrose could be made to overlook it, then I'll have 'ee and
+welcome, Loveday, and pay you a florin a week too, which would soon add
+up to enough. I'd be glad for 'ee to stay on after the Flora too, for
+Primrose's time'll be near."
+</p>
+<p>
+Loveday had no interest in what happened after the dance. Life would
+be all golden ever after, something wonderful and new would certainly
+begin; it was to mark the great division in her life, but gratitude and
+the caution born of years of slights held her silent on that subject to
+the good Mrs. Lear.
+</p>
+<p>
+"Wait 'ee here," Mrs. Lear bade her, and herself went back into the
+kitchen. She was gone some minutes, that to Loveday dragged as weeks,
+though when she reappeared Loveday felt that the time of waiting had
+gone too soon, and she wished for it to begin once more, so much she
+dreaded to ask what had been said. Mrs. Lear spared her the need for
+questioning.
+</p>
+<p>
+"'Tes no manner of use, Loveday," she said, "Primrose won't hear of it,
+and being as she is, I can't contrairy her."
+</p>
+<p>
+Loveday felt the futility of argument, and, indeed, in the violent
+reaction that attacks such ardent natures, she felt too numb to make the
+attempt even had she wished. She stood staring at Mrs. Lear with her
+eyes dark in her pale face and the first presage of defeat in her heart.
+</p>
+
+<p class="prechapter">
+<b>CHAPTER VII:</b> IN WHICH LOVEDAY STILL
+ESSAYS TO OBTAIN THE WHITE SATIN RIBAND
+</p>
+
+<a name="h2HCH0008" id="h2HCH0008"><!-- H2 anchor --></a>
+
+<div style="height: 4em;"><br /><br /><br /><br /></div>
+
+<h2>
+    Chapter VII
+</h2>
+<h4>
+    IN WHICH LOVEDAY STILL ESSAYS TO OBTAIN THE WHITE SATIN RIBAND
+</h4>
+<p>
+It were a weary task to chronicle all the ways trodden by Loveday during
+the three weeks that followed her visit to Upper Farm, and yet, even so,
+it would not be as weary as was the treading of them to that still
+ardent though fearful girl. Hers grew to be a dread that would have
+seemed to a spectator disproportionate indeed&mdash;for what can one heart
+know of the sickness of another's, of its hurried beating when hope
+beckons, of its numb slackening when hope fails? How swift to Loveday
+seemed the relentless patter of the days past her questing feet, that,
+run hither and thither as she would, yet could not keep pace with Time's
+urgency! How slow to Loveday seemed the ticking of each moment, since
+each held hope and fear full-globed, as in bubbles that rise and rise
+only to burst into the empty air! So each moment rose, rounded, to meet
+Loveday, held, and broke, till her mind was but a daze which confounded
+speed with slowness, till she thought the future would never be the
+present and found perpetually that it was the past.
+</p>
+<p>
+After her failure with Mrs. Lear it occurred to Loveday to go where she
+should have gone in the first place&mdash;whither she might have gone had
+not some irk of conscience whispered her that her purpose was all too
+worldly&mdash;to the wife of the Vicar, Mrs. Veale. This Mrs. Veale was the
+good lady who had stood sponsor for Loveday on that day when Aunt Senath
+had perforce to blazon her sister's shame at the font. Ever since that
+day Mrs. Veale had done her duty by Loveday without fail, instructing
+her in the catechism regularly and occasionally presenting her with the
+clothing of Miss Letitia Veale&mdash;who was a couple of years older than
+Loveday&mdash;when the garments were outgrown and when they were suitable.
+Mrs. Veale was too thoughtful a Christian to give Loveday artificial
+flowers or silken petticoats unfitted to her station, but flannels,
+thickened by so much washing that Saint Anthony of Egypt himself could
+not have divined a female within their folds, were always forthcoming
+to protect the orphan girl from wintry winds.
+</p>
+<p>
+It was no day for flannel when Loveday knocked&mdash;with the timidity that
+always assailed her, to her own annoyance, when she was about to see her
+godmother&mdash;on the back door of the Vicarage. She heard her own voice,
+robbed of its warm eagerness, asking of the stout cook whether Mrs.
+Veale could see her for a minute. The cook sent the housemaid to the
+Vicar's lady with the request, and Loveday stood in the large, sunny
+kitchen smelling the strange rich foods preparing for the four o'clock
+dinner. There was butcher's meat, she could smell that (she had tasted
+it at the harvest feast at Upper Farm, where it was provided for the
+labourers once a year), and there was a sweet pudding that she could see
+stirred together in a big white bowl, a pudding that smelt of sweetness
+like a posy. A noisy fly, the first of his kind, buzzed over the plate
+where the empty eggshells lay beside the bowl, and from them crawled to
+the scattered sugar that sparkled carelessly upon the rim. Loveday, of
+old, would have had a second's envy of the fly that could thus browse on
+what smelt so good; now the fine aromas affected her nostrils merely as
+incense might have those of her papist father&mdash;as the savour of the
+great house where dwelt those to be propitiated. For upon Mrs. Veale she
+now felt hope was fastened; it was from her almost sacred hands that
+salvation would flow. Fear and expectation took Loveday by the throat,
+so stifling her that the wide kitchen, the stout blue-print-clad cook,
+the bright pots and pans, the leaping flames, the savoury odours and the
+buzzing of the fly, all blended together before her dizzied eyes.
+</p>
+<p>
+The figure of the housemaid, crisp in white and black, entered
+steadyingly, and with her voice, saying that the mistress would see
+Loveday Strick in the morning-room, the flow of the kitchen ebbed and
+subsided. Loveday followed the white and black through the long, narrow
+hall, where the fox's mask grinned at her from above the fanlight of the
+door, to the presence of the Vicar's wife.
+</p>
+<p>
+Mrs. Veale was a personable lady, with a high and narrow brow, and a
+penetrating eye that few in the village could evade if they had aught
+upon their conscience. It was said, indeed, that she was better than
+a curate to her husband, for she could pass where a man could not
+in delicacy have gone, and few were the maids, and fewer still the
+housewives, who had not benefited by her counsel. She fixed that eye
+benevolently upon Loveday now; the lady stately in her black silk, the
+locket containing the hair of her departed parent, one-time a canon of
+Exeter, lying upon her matronly bosom; the girl awkward in her homespun
+wrapper, her feet fearful of standing upon the flowered carpet.
+</p>
+<p>
+"Come in, Loveday," said Mrs. Veale kindly.
+</p>
+<p>
+Loveday advanced a step and dropped her curtsey, but not a word could
+she say to explain her visit.
+</p>
+<p>
+"What do you want to see me about?" asked Mrs. Veale briskly&mdash;for she
+was much busied in good works, and had no time to give over what was
+needful to each of them.
+</p>
+<p>
+"If you please, ma'am, I want work," said Loveday.
+</p>
+<p>
+Mrs. Veale looked her approval on hearing this most praiseworthy of the
+few sentences fit for use of the lower classes. Even when there is no
+work to be had such sentiments should be encouraged, and without them
+she never unloosed that charity which, when the supply of work failed,
+she exercised for the good of her parishioners' bodies and her own soul.
+</p>
+<p>
+Loveday felt the approval, and her heart took wings to the heaven of
+certain hope. Indeed, had Loveday but had the sense of what was fitting
+to tell the Vicar's lady, she might have attained what she wanted, but
+hope, like despair, ever made Loveday heady.
+</p>
+<p>
+"What work do you want?" asked Mrs. Veale. "I should have sent you out
+to service long ago, but I knew your aunt needed you at home. Has she
+sent you?"
+</p>
+<p>
+"No, ma'am," answered Loveday, "I came of myself. I want work I can do
+in my spare time, when Aunt Senath don't need me."
+</p>
+<p>
+So far all was well; the scheme sounded fit for encouragement by the
+Church, ever anxious for the welfare of even her humblest children.
+Mrs. Veale gave thought to her boots and knives ... no, the gardener's
+boy did them, and he was being prepared for confirmation and must not be
+unsettled. The mending ... that was done by the housemaid in her spare
+time, superintended by Mrs. Veale herself, and it would not be fair to
+the girl to leave her with idle hands for Satan's use when they could
+be employed instead upon sheets and stockings. The washing ... the
+housemaid's mother came to do that, glad to do so at a reasonable price
+for the opportunity of seeing how her daughter prospered from week to
+week under such care as Mrs. Veale bestowed on all the maids whom she
+trained. The spring cleaning ... a girl who did not know the ways of the
+house would make work instead of saving it. Yet Mrs. Veale felt, as a
+Christian woman, that it was her duty to encourage Loveday even at the
+cost of her own china. She resolved to do so.
+</p>
+<p>
+"Many people would not help you, Loveday," she said, "for it is
+very difficult to find work suddenly without upsetting the ways of a
+household, but you are my god-daughter, and so I have always taken a
+special interest in you. My spring-cleaning is not till May this year,
+as then the Vicar goes away to stay with his lordship, the Bishop of
+Exeter, and I will have you here under my own eye. You will not be of
+much assistance at first, but if you are willing and do as you are told
+you will be able to learn."
+</p>
+<p>
+At the mention of the month of May the wings of Loveday's heart folded
+once more and let her heart fall like a stone, then opened in a
+fluttering attempt to save it.
+</p>
+<p>
+"What&mdash;what time in May, ma'am?" she asked. Perhaps it would be the
+first week in that month and all would yet be well, since the Flora was
+held upon the eighth.
+</p>
+<p>
+At Mrs. Veale's next words the wings moulted away, and the bare quills
+left Loveday's heart prone and defenceless.
+</p>
+<p>
+"Not till the second week," said Mrs. Veale, "for the Vicar wishes to
+stay till the Flora, as we are permitting Miss Letitia to dance in the
+procession this year, and naturally he wishes to be there. The Vicar
+feels that these old innocent customs must not be allowed to fall into
+disuse."
+</p>
+<p>
+"Ah!" cried Loveday, "'tis no good to me!"
+</p>
+<p>
+At this shocking speech&mdash;imagine a village girl crying out that an offer
+of employment from the Vicarage is of no good to her!&mdash;Mrs. Veale drew
+such a breath of horror that the hair of the late Canon rose in its
+locket.
+</p>
+<p>
+"What on earth can you mean, Loveday Strick?"
+</p>
+<p>
+Thus Mrs. Veale, justly outraged. But Loveday, infatuated, rushed upon
+her fate&mdash;the fate of expulsion from those precincts.
+</p>
+<p>
+"Oh, ma'am, 'tis no manner of use to me unless I get work before the
+Flora. The Flora, ma'am" (repeating the beloved name as an invocation
+in time of trouble).
+</p>
+<p>
+"'Tis this way, I must get a white satin sash come Flora Day, 'cause
+if I do I'm to dance along with Miss Le Pettit in the procession.
+She's promised me that I should, and indeed I'll die if I don't. I will
+indeed. I've fixed my soul on it. I've got the gown and the stockings
+and the shoes, and all I want is the white riband, and I must someways
+make enough money to buy it come Flora Day. Oh, Mrs. Veale, ma'am, if
+you'll let me scrub and scour for you I'll do it on my knees so as only
+I can dance with her in the Flora."
+</p>
+<p>
+During this speech Mrs. Veale had risen to the full height and width of
+the black silk, feeling that thus only could she cope adequately with
+such a flood of ill-regulated and unseemly passions. She felt deeply
+wounded to think that any girl of her teaching should so betray it as
+this one did in every undisciplined word. She had not felt such a bitter
+stab of disappointment since a trusted and loved old nurse of the family
+had been found drinking the Vicar's port.
+</p>
+<p>
+"Loveday Strick," she said, "you are forgetting yourself."
+</p>
+<p>
+This was not exact, for Loveday had forgotten Mrs. Veale, but the rebuke
+drenched the impetuous girl like a cold wave. She stood defenceless.
+</p>
+<p>
+"I have not comprehended half this mad tale of yours," continued Mrs.
+Veale, "but I gather you have the presumption to say that Miss Le
+Pettit&mdash;<i>Miss Le Pettit</i>&mdash;has said you may dance with her at the
+Flora. Perhaps a young lady in her exalted position, and of what I
+believe are her modernising tendencies, may have formed such a project,
+but you should have known better than to have presumed on such an
+unsuitable condescension. As to a white satin sash, I can imagine
+nothing more unfitted for a girl in your unfortunate position, of which
+I am very sorry to be obliged to remind you. I had always hoped you
+would never forget it."
+</p>
+<p>
+"Ma'am ... you don't understand ..." began Loveday.
+</p>
+<p>
+"That is quite enough, Loveday. Let me hear no more on the subject. If
+you still want work, apart from this desire for unsuitable finery, since
+you are my god-daughter I will forget what has passed and still try you
+at the spring cleaning."
+</p>
+<p>
+Then it was that a horrid thing happened to Loveday.
+</p>
+<p>
+"What do I care for you and your spring-cleaning?" she stormed, "you and
+it can go up the chimney together for all I care. I only wanted you to
+give me work so as to get my satin sash, and I'll never come near you or
+church again as long as I do live. That I won't...." And Loveday turned
+and ran out of the front door, beneath the grinning fox, and not only
+ran out of the front door, but banged it behind her.
+</p>
+<p>
+Maids in the kitchen heard that unseemly sound, as they had heard,
+awe-struck, the raised voice, and Mrs. Veale felt she must read them a
+short but fitting lesson on the dire results of wanting things beyond
+one's station. The stout cook and the crisp housemaid soon knew of
+Loveday's presumptuous ambition, a knowledge they shared now with the
+Lear family and Cherry Cotton, and that soon was to spread to the
+accompaniment of many a titter about the twisted ways of the village.
+</p>
+
+<p class="prechapter">
+<b>CHAPTER VIII:</b> IN WHICH LOVEDAY CONTINUES
+HER QUEST AND ACHIEVES TENPENCE
+</p>
+
+<a name="h2HCH0009" id="h2HCH0009"><!-- H2 anchor --></a>
+
+<div style="height: 4em;"><br /><br /><br /><br /></div>
+
+<h2>
+    Chapter VIII
+</h2>
+<h4>
+    IN WHICH LOVEDAY CONTINUES HER QUEST AND ACHIEVES TENPENCE
+</h4>
+<p>
+Loveday ran down the path to the Vicarage gate so fast that the tears
+she had not been able to restrain blew off her cheeks as she went. Thus
+it came about that she did not see Miss Letitia until she had all but
+knocked her down in the urgency of her flight.
+</p>
+<p>
+Letitia Veale was no sylph such as Miss Le Pettit, however, and she
+caught hold of Loveday like the good-natured, rather romping, young lady
+that she was. Mrs. Veale always said of her that she would "fine down,"
+but persons less well disposed to her than her own mother, and who were
+the mothers of daughters themselves, said that Letitia Veale was a sad
+hoyden. She had ever a merry nod or word for Loveday, and dazed with
+anger as that ill-balanced maid was, Letitia's smile won her to
+comparative calm again, though it was a calm with which cunning
+intermingled. For:&mdash;
+</p>
+<p>
+"Oh, miss," cried Loveday, "I do beg your pardon ..." Then, seeing by
+the young lady's pleasant face that she had not offended by her
+clumsiness&mdash;"but I was so sick with misery I didn't rightly see where
+I was going."
+</p>
+<p>
+"Why, whatever is the matter, Loveday?" asked the lively girl.
+</p>
+<p>
+"Miss, I can't tell you, not now, but oh, miss, you've always been good
+to me, will you do something for me? I've never asked you for nothing
+before, have I?"
+</p>
+<p>
+"Why, no, you have not, Loveday. What is it?"
+</p>
+<p>
+"Have you such a thing as an old white sash you could let me have, miss?
+I just can't rightly tell you how I want it. It don't matter how old, so
+I can wash and iron it. Oh, miss...?"
+</p>
+<p>
+Letitia thought for a moment, then shook her brown ringlets.
+</p>
+<p>
+"I'm so sorry, Loveday, since you want it so much, but the only white
+sash I have is my new one for Flora Day. I have an old black one I could
+let you have though."
+</p>
+<p>
+"Black! Oh, Miss Letitia, that's no good. Couldn't you let me have the
+white one? I'll work and work to make the money to buy you another, and
+your mother'd get you a new one for the Flora."
+</p>
+<p>
+"Loveday, you know I couldn't. Mamma would insist on knowing what I'd
+done with it, you know she would."
+</p>
+<p>
+"You couldn't&mdash;you couldn't say you'd lost it, miss?" asked Loveday,
+even her tongue faltering at the suggestion.
+</p>
+<p>
+But though Letitia might be a romp, she was not a deceitful girl, and
+she respected her mother.
+</p>
+<p>
+"Oh, Loveday, how can you suggest such a thing? It would be telling
+mamma a lie. Besides, she would never believe me."
+</p>
+<p>
+At this moment Mrs. Veale, hearing voices, opened the door and looked
+out.
+</p>
+<p>
+"Letitia! Come in at once, and do not speak again to Loveday Strick."
+</p>
+<p>
+Letitia made round eyes at Loveday and sped up the path. Loveday pushed
+open the gate and went out.
+</p>
+<p>
+She went along the white dusty road, between the hedgerows of elder
+whose crumpled green leaves were unfolding in the sunny April weather,
+and her tears were the only rain that smiling country-side had seen for
+many a day, and they, to match the month, were already drying, for the
+fire burnt too high in Loveday for tears to hold her long. She fled
+along the road at first blindly, then more slowly as the exhaustion that
+follows on such rage as hers overcame her, and as she paused at last to
+sink against a mossy bank and rest, a horseman overtook her.
+</p>
+<p>
+It was Mr. Constantine on his white cob, looking a very dapper
+gentleman, but Loveday heeded him not, only raising her great black eyes
+unseeingly at the sound of the hoofs. Yet that so sombre gaze arrested
+Mr. Constantine, for it seemed to him an unwonted look in that land of
+buxom maids. He drew rein beside her.
+</p>
+<p>
+"Are you a gipsy, my girl?" he asked her kindly.
+</p>
+<p>
+Loveday shook her head.
+</p>
+<p>
+"Come, you have a tongue as well as that handsome pair of eyes, I
+suppose? No?"
+</p>
+<p>
+"My tongue's wisht, it brings ill-luck," said Loveday.
+</p>
+<p>
+Mr. Constantine studied her more attentively.
+</p>
+<p>
+"If all women thought that, there'd be more happy marriages," he said,
+slipping his hand into his pocket. "You've wisdom on your tongue,
+whether it's lucky or no. You say you're not a gipsy?"
+</p>
+<p>
+By this time it had dawned on Loveday what, in her absorption, she had
+not at first noticed, that she was speaking to one of the gentry, and
+to no less a one than Mr. Constantine, of Constantine. She stood up and
+dropped her curtsey out of habit, but sullenly. Oddly enough, it was the
+sullenness and not the curtsey that took Mr. Constantine's fancy.
+</p>
+<p>
+"No, sir," said Loveday. "I'm not a gipsy. I'm Loveday Strick."
+</p>
+<p>
+"Loveday ..." said the gentleman. "Loveday ... That's a beautiful name.
+No&mdash;it's more than a name, it's a phrase. A very beautiful phrase."
+</p>
+<p>
+Loveday raised her eyes at this strange talk. Mr. Constantine took his
+hand out of his pocket and held out a silver sixpence.
+</p>
+<p>
+"Gipsy or no, take that for your gipsy eyes, my dear," he said. Loveday
+stood hesitant. Even she, who had just begged of Miss Letitia, felt
+shame at taking a coin in charity. Yet she did so, for before her eyes
+she saw, not a silver sixpence, but the beginning of a length of white
+satin riband unrolling towards her through futurity. Perhaps, unknown
+to herself, her foreign blood prompted her to that sad Jesuitry which
+teaches all means are justifiable to the desired end. Perhaps she saw
+nothing beyond the beginning of her riband, but she held out her hand.
+Mr. Constantine dropped the sixpence into it, touched his cob with his
+heel and rode on. Loveday stayed in the hedge, the sixpence in her palm
+and hope once more in her soul. That hope was to faint and fall during
+the days that followed and saw her quest no nearer its fulfilment.
+</p>
+<p>
+For who wished to employ the strange, dark girl that had always been
+aloof and distrusted? And who could credit this violent conversion to
+the ordered ways of domesticity? Who had the money to squander on help
+from without, when, within, if there were not enough hands for the work,
+then the work itself, like an unanswered letter, slipped into that dead
+place of unremembered things where nothing matters any more? Last week's
+cleaning left undone adds nothing appreciable to this week's dirt that
+next week's exertions may not remedy as easily together as singly&mdash;or so
+argued the slovenly housewife, while for the industrious no hands save
+their own could have scrubbed and polished to their liking.
+</p>
+<p>
+Here and there Loveday earned a few odd pence, for a few hand's turns
+done when necessity or charity called in her vagrant services, but the
+Flora Dance of Bugletown was held upon the eighth of May, and when May
+Day dawned she had but tenpence for all her store&mdash;and the riband would
+cost as many shillings. Despair settled in her heart for the first time;
+often before it had knocked but been refused more than a glance within,
+but now her enfeebled arms could hold the door no longer, and that most
+dread of all visitors took possession of his own&mdash;for is not the human
+heart Despair's only habitation, without which he is but a homeless
+wanderer?
+</p>
+
+<p class="prechapter">
+<b>CHAPTER IX:</b> IN WHICH LOVEDAY SEES ONE MAGPIE
+</p>
+
+<a name="h2HCH0010" id="h2HCH0010"><!-- H2 anchor --></a>
+
+<div style="height: 4em;"><br /><br /><br /><br /></div>
+
+<h2>
+    Chapter IX
+</h2>
+<h4>
+    IN WHICH LOVEDAY SEES ONE MAGPIE
+</h4>
+<p>
+Upon May Day, when boys blow the May horns and girls carry sprays of
+hawthorn and all good folk break their fast on bread and cream, Loveday
+had to go, as was her wont (and a mortifying one to her pride since
+Primrose's flouting of her), to Upper Farm. Twice before have we seen
+her on that errand&mdash;when she first was love-stricken for Miss Le Pettit
+in the farmhouse parlour, and again when on her search for work she saw
+the querulous young Mrs. Lear in the dim kitchen. Since then she had
+gone monotonously enough on her errand, avoiding speech even with the
+elder Mrs. Lear as much as possible, and seeing Primrose not at all&mdash;an
+easy matter, since the girl kept her room, or lay on the horsehair sofa,
+languidly stitching woollen roses on a handscreen, for all the world
+like the spoilt bride of some great gentleman.
+</p>
+<p>
+There seemed never any violence of thought or emotion at Upper Farm,
+even the sulks of Primrose were petty in nature, her jealousies made her
+voice shrill but did not take her by the throat with that intolerable
+aching stormier women know too well, while her graceless husband was
+irritated on the surface of his mind as some shallow pool is fretted
+over its bed of soft ooze, retaining no trace when the ripples have
+died. The elder Lear, as befits a good countryman content with his
+station in life, was too hard-worked for anything save a tired back on
+his entry at night, and the old wife too occupied with her Martha-like
+toil for searching into the sensibilities either of herself or of her
+daughter-in-law.
+</p>
+<p>
+Loveday, without reasoning on the matter, had yet ever been aware
+that this slight tide of feeling was all that ever lapped against the
+household at Upper Farm, therefore when she saw one magpie in the last
+field before the yard gate she accepted the sign for her own despairing
+heart alone. No young woman of education would have paid any attention
+to such a vulgar superstition, but Loveday had no learning other than
+what her elders had let fall in her hearing, both when she was supposed
+to be listening for her betterment, and when it was thought she would
+not understand the drift of their speech. And that a single magpie means
+sorrow was one of the few solid facts Loveday had gleaned by following
+the garnered sheaves of her elders.
+</p>
+<p>
+Now, as she stepped over the topmost ledge of the granite stile, there
+was a fanlike flutter of black and white in her very face, and she stood
+a moment watching the ill-omened bird wheel and dip behind the thick
+blossom of the hawthorn hedge.
+</p>
+<p>
+"There goes my white riband," thought the ignorant girl, and yet even
+with the quick fear there welled a fresh and fierce determination in her
+undisciplined heart.
+</p>
+<p>
+Her egotism, if not her superstition, was reproved when she reached
+the farmhouse, and old Madgy, the midwife, coming to the pump for more
+water, met her with news of what had happened not half an hour earlier.
+The shallow creek of Upper Farm had been invaded by a violent and dark
+tide, on whose ebb two lives had been borne away. Loveday, staring up
+at Primrose's room, saw the withered hand of old Mrs. Lear draw the
+curtains across the window behind which lay a dead mother and a babe
+that had never lived.
+</p>
+
+<p class="prechapter">
+<b>CHAPTER X:</b> IN WHICH LOVEDAY DOES NOT
+ATTEND A FUNERAL
+</p>
+
+<a name="h2HCH0011" id="h2HCH0011"><!-- H2 anchor --></a>
+
+<div style="height: 4em;"><br /><br /><br /><br /></div>
+
+<h2>
+    Chapter X
+</h2>
+<h4>
+    IN WHICH LOVEDAY DOES NOT ATTEND A FUNERAL
+</h4>
+<p>
+"A couple of months too soon her pains took her," said Madgy; "she has
+been fretting and wisht these weeks past, with her husband always after
+some young faggot up country and herself sick with envy at the girls
+that could still dance with the chaps. She had no woman's heart in her,
+poor soul, to carry her woman's burden. Ah! many's the strange things
+in women I see at my trade," and Madgy wrung out a cloth and mumbled to
+herself&mdash;her old mouth folded inwards, as though she perpetually turned
+all the secrets that she knew over and over within it.
+</p>
+<p>
+"Your mother died because she'd set her heart on death," she added, to
+Loveday, "but this one died because she dedn' know how to catch hold on
+life. She'd a weak hand on everything she touched, because she never
+wanted nawthen enough."
+</p>
+<p>
+"Wanting's not getting, however hard you want," said Loveday.
+</p>
+<p>
+"Ah! isn't it? It's getting, though you may have sorrow packed along wi'
+it. Out of my way, maid; I must be busy overstairs." And old Madgy went
+to ply the second part of her trade, for she washed the dead as well as
+the newly-born; she laid coins on the eyes of the old and flannels on
+the limbs of the young with the same smile between her rheumy lids and
+on her folded mouth.
+</p>
+<p>
+Loveday stayed awhile and helped Mrs. Lear, by milking the puzzled,
+lowing cows and pouring the milk into the pans, but all the time they
+worked the dead girl's name was never mentioned between them. It was
+as though Loveday were making amends for the ill words that had been
+between them by refraining her tongue from everything but her first
+few accents of pity and amaze.
+</p>
+<p>
+That pity was shared by all the neighbourhood, gentle and simple.
+Time was, just before her marriage, when Primrose was accounted a
+foolish and sinful maid enough, but married she had been, and into a
+highly-respected family, for the Lears' graves had lain in the next best
+position to those of the gentry for many generations, and, for their
+sakes more than for hers, tributes flowed in to the funeral.
+</p>
+<p>
+This poor, pale Primrose, who had died so young, though not unmarried,
+was laid to rest, with babe on arm, only a few days before the Flora
+dance, and her friend Cherry, who would none the less foot it gaily on
+that occasion, attended, with a length of black crape round her buxom
+waist and her eyes swollen by the easy tears of an easy nature.
+</p>
+<p>
+Loveday was not present, for, friendly as she had ever been with Mrs.
+Lear, the dead girl's petulance lay between them now; memory of it
+become to Loveday a pang of pity, and to Mrs. Lear a sacred duty.
+Nevertheless, an odd notion, such as Loveday was apt to take, made her
+feel that some tie, slight, but persistent, between Primrose and herself
+drew her, at least, to give the last look possible from behind the hedge
+screening the road.
+</p>
+<p>
+There, hidden as a bird, she saw how highly the world had thought of the
+girl to whom she had dared feel a flashing sense of superiority; she saw
+how true respectability is to be admired. For never at any funeral, save
+that of actual gentry, had there been seen so many of those elegant
+floral tokens of esteem which reflect, perhaps, even more honour upon
+those who bestow them than upon the dead who receive them. Primrose may
+have been a poor creature enough, but the Lears had always held their
+heads high among their fellows, without ever trying to push above their
+station. No unseemly ambitions, no fantastic desires, had ever drawn
+just censure upon Upper Farm, and wreaths and crosses decked with
+tasteful streamers bore witness to this fact. There was actually an
+exquisite white wreath from Miss Le Pettit of Ignores, laid proudly upon
+the humbler greener offerings of farmers and fisher folk, overpowering
+with its elegance even an artificial wreath under glass which came from
+the Bugletown corn-chandler, who was Mr. Lear's chief customer.
+</p>
+<p>
+Loveday, watching, knew suddenly that, when her time came, she would be
+an alien in death, as she was in life; that never for her would these
+costly tokens of respect be gathered. Yet, instead of this thought
+humbling her, instead of it teaching her the lesson that only by
+striving to do her duty in the lowly course set for her could she attain
+any measure of regard, it aroused in her once more, this time with an
+even fiercer intensity, her ardent desire to be as different from these
+good folk as possible. Miss Le Pettit had thought her different, had
+admired that difference, and to Miss Le Pettit, as supreme arbiter, her
+heart turned now. There was still that doorway to her future whose latch
+the fair Flora's hand could lift, and this door, ajar for her, would
+open wide if she were but fitly garbed to pass across its threshold.
+</p>
+<p>
+Watching the funeral procession, which should have suggested such far
+other thoughts even to her undisciplined soul, Loveday was taken only
+by an idea so rash and impious that it alarmed even herself. It was the
+penalty of her dark and ardent blood that fear, like despair, added to
+the force of her desires. That idea, which she should have driven from
+her as a serpent, she nourished in her bosom as though it were a dove.
+</p>
+
+<p class="prechapter">
+<b>CHAPTER XI:</b> IN WHICH LOVEDAY ATTENDS
+THE FLORA
+</p>
+
+<a name="h2HCH0012" id="h2HCH0012"><!-- H2 anchor --></a>
+
+<div style="height: 4em;"><br /><br /><br /><br /></div>
+
+<h2>
+    Chapter XI
+</h2>
+<h4>
+    IN WHICH LOVEDAY ATTENDS THE FLORA
+</h4>
+<p>
+The eighth of May dawned fair and clear, and from early morning the
+young men and maidservants of Bugletown, who had Spent the past week
+cleaning and polishing the houses, streamed out into the country to
+pluck green branches for their further adornment. Already the thought of
+the dance was in their heads, and its tripping in their feet, and they
+sang through the lanes.
+</p>
+<p>
+They waylaid strangers coming into Bugletown and drew contributions
+of silver from them, according to custom, and all they did went to a
+gay measure. By the time the gentry, both of the place itself and of
+outlying regions, were assembled for the dance every house in the main
+streets of the grey little old town was decked with boughs, its front
+and back doors opened wide for the dancers, who at the Flora always
+danced through every house set hospitably open for their passage.
+</p>
+<p>
+The band, that all day long plays but the one tune, hour after hour,
+was gathered together by noon, sleek and not yet heated, their trumpets
+shining in the sun, their fiddles glossy as their well-oiled hair, their
+big drum round as the portly figure of the bandmaster himself. Already,
+in many a bedchamber, young women had twirled this way and that before
+the mirror, studying the set of taffetas and tarletan, or young men
+had polished their high beavers anxiously against the sleeves of their
+brightest broadcloth frock coats. In speckless kitchens housewives
+prepared their cakes and cream, and the masters saw to the drawing of
+the cider, and, perhaps, tasted it, to make sure that it had not soured
+overnight. And in each heart different words were running to the Flora
+Day tune, words that suited with each heart's measure. The children in
+the streets sang aloud the doggerel words that long custom has fastened
+upon the tune:&mdash;
+</p>
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<p>  <i>"John the beau was walking home,</i></p>
+<p>  <i>When he met with Sally Dover,</i></p>
+<p>  <i>He kissed her once, he kissed her twice,</i></p>
+<p>  <i>And he kissed her three times over!"</i></p>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>
+Thus the heedless children with their lips, but their little hearts
+probably beat to the even simpler words: "<i>I'm having a holiday!
+Having a holiday!</i>"
+</p>
+<p>
+More staidly, and almost unheard by their time-muffled ears, a voice,
+nevertheless, sang to the housewives, telling each her copper and silver
+was the brightest in the town, and adding, perhaps, little gusts of
+memory that half hurt, half pleased, of how nimbly she had danced at the
+Flora in years gone by, and how fair she had looked....
+</p>
+<p>
+The staid married men smiled to themselves, and would not have
+acknowledged that within them something seemed to chuckle: "<i>I'm not
+so old, after all; I'm not so old, after all</i>...."
+</p>
+<p>
+Frankly, the hearts of the young men nudged hopefully against their
+ribs, calling out: "<i>I'm going to dance with Her! I'm going to dance
+with Her! And perhaps ... for I always was lucky! I always was
+lucky</i>!"
+</p>
+<p>
+But who shall say what lilting voice, timid-bold and sly-sincere,
+whispered to the maidens, beating out its syllables against the new
+stays so tightly laced for the occasion? Perhaps the words of the
+children's doggerel, with a name or so altered, met the moment without
+need of further change....
+</p>
+<p>
+And Loveday's heart, as she walked the three miles from the fishing
+village to Bugletown, sang to her of joy and hope and triumph.
+</p>
+<p>
+When she reached the Market House, she found the band ready to strike up
+the famous tune, while the mayor, his chain of office about his neck,
+stood conversing with the ladies and gentlemen who were to lead the
+dance. For, as is but fitting, the couples at the Flora follow each
+other according to their social precedence, though all may join who
+choose, providing only that the females, be they gentry or tradespeople,
+wear white, and the men their best broadcloth and Sunday hats.
+</p>
+<p>
+Of all who had gathered for the dance there was none more highly placed
+than Miss Flora Le Pettit, and none as fair to see. She stood supreme in
+the sunshine and her beauty, her white muslin robes swelling round her
+like the petals of some full-blown rose, her white sash streaming over
+them, the white ribands that decked her hat of fine Dunstable straw
+flowing down to her shoulders and mingling with her auburn curls. Even
+the countless tiny bows that adorned her dress (as though they were a
+cloud of butterflies drawn to alight upon it by its freshness) were of
+white satin. Everything about her save her little sandalled feet danced
+already&mdash;the brim of the wide hat that waved above her dancing eyes, the
+flounces and floating ends of her attire which the soft breeze stirred,
+the corners of her smiling mouth, the dimple which came and went behind
+the curls that nodded by her cheek. What vision can have been fairer
+than that presented by Flora Le Pettit upon Flora Day? "None, none,
+none," thought eager Loveday, as she edged through the crowd and caught
+sight of her divinity. None ... and yet that sight caused Loveday a
+strange clutching in her breast.
+</p>
+<p>
+For she, too, had felt fair when she had gazed in her tiny mirror; the
+yellowed linen gown had gleamed pure and white, her young breast had
+swelled above the waist that looked so slim, and that was so finely
+girt.... Yet, now, something of splendour about Miss Le Pettit that
+she could not attain dimmed all herself and, with herself, her joy.
+Her face, already flushed by her walk, burned deeper still with shame.
+Yet the desire that three weeks of striving had swollen to a passion
+urged her forward, and, fingering the lovely thing about her waist to
+gain courage, she broke through the last ring of staring people and
+stood in front of Miss Le Pettit.
+</p>
+<p>
+The heiress of Ignores had not yet caught sight of her, being engaged in
+laughing conversation with several admiring gentlemen, but something of
+an almost painful intensity in the dark gaze of the village girl drew
+her face to meet it. The black eyes, so full of an extravagant passion,
+met the careless glance of the blue orbs that knew not even the passing
+shadow of such a thing.
+</p>
+<p>
+"Oh," stammered Loveday, the set speech she had been conning all the way
+to Bugletown dying upon her lips, "Oh, Miss Flora, I'm come. I've got my
+white sash and I'm come...."
+</p>
+<p>
+Over Flora's face passed a look of bewilderment, while Loveday, her
+moment of self-criticism gone, stood trembling with eager happiness.
+Then Miss Le Pettit spoke, lightly and kindly.
+</p>
+<p>
+"Surely I have seen you before, my girl?" she asked. And, turning to the
+little group of her friends, added:
+</p>
+<p>
+"She has such a striking air, 'twould be difficult to forget her."
+</p>
+<p>
+Yet, till this moment, Miss Le Pettit had forgotten everything save that
+air. Forgotten her careless suggestion, her prettily given promise, her
+praise. Forgotten even the pleasant glow such evident worship as this
+village girl's had stirred in her. She had had so much worship since!
+Who can blame her for not remembering some idle words her artistic
+perceptions had prompted three weeks earlier? It had been a fantastic
+suggestion at best, as a girl of sense would have known, treasuring it
+merely for its kindly intention. After all, Miss Le Pettit would be far
+more conspicuous dancing with a village maiden at the Flora than with a
+gentleman suited to her in rank and estate. Since that day at Upper Farm
+she had met just such a gentleman&mdash;he with the glossy whiskers and
+handsome form who was nearest to her now, smiling at this little
+encounter.
+</p>
+<p>
+"Why, child," said Flora to Loveday, "you look very nice, I am sure.
+But your place should be much further down the procession." Then, more
+sharply: "Why do you stare so, girl?"
+</p>
+<p>
+Loveday stood as one stricken, her cheek now as white as the sash she
+was still holding in her shaking hands.
+</p>
+
+<p class="prechapter">
+<b>CHAPTER XII:</b> IN WHICH LOVEDAY DANCES
+</p>
+
+<a name="h2HCH0013" id="h2HCH0013"><!-- H2 anchor --></a>
+
+<div style="height: 4em;"><br /><br /><br /><br /></div>
+
+<h2>
+    Chapter XII
+</h2>
+<h4>
+    IN WHICH LOVEDAY DANCES
+</h4>
+<p>
+The Mayor had stepped forward, fearing lest this young person might be
+annoying the heiress; the bandsmen had turned from the final survey of
+their instruments to gaze; here and there various people who recognised
+Loveday were pressing through the crowd, eager to see and hear.
+Only Miss Le Pettit had drawn back against the protecting arm of the
+gentleman who was to be her partner. Loveday still stayed, her riband
+in her hands.
+</p>
+<p>
+There came comments from the crowd.
+</p>
+<p>
+"Loveday Strick! She'm mad! This month past she'm been like a crazy
+thing about the Flora!"
+</p>
+<p>
+"I thought all the time she must be mad to have imagined Miss Le Pettit
+meant to dance along wi' she!"
+</p>
+<p>
+"What's the maid got on? I can't rightly see."
+</p>
+<p>
+"Old white, but a brave new sash."
+</p>
+<p>
+At that Loveday raised her head and looked about her. A shrill voice
+from the crowd answered the last speaker.
+</p>
+<p>
+"A new sash; Ted'n possible. Us have all been laughing because she
+couldn' come by one nohow." And Cherry Cotton elbowed her way through
+the ring of curious folk to where Loveday stood. Suddenly Cherry gave a
+scream, and pointed an accusing finger at Loveday.
+</p>
+<p>
+"Ah, a new sash, sure enough.... Ask her where she got 'en. Ask her, I
+say."
+</p>
+<p>
+Loveday answered nothing, only turned her head a little to stare at
+Cherry.
+</p>
+<p>
+"You ask her where she took it from, Miss! You should know, seeing you
+gave it!"
+</p>
+<p>
+"I gave it to her? Nonsense."
+</p>
+<p>
+"Not to her, but to poor Primrose Lear. 'Tes the riband that tied up
+your wreath. She's robbed the dead. Loveday Strick's robbed the dead."
+</p>
+<p>
+Then indeed, after a moment's stupefaction following on the horrid
+revelation, a murmur of indignation ran from mouth to mouth.
+</p>
+<p>
+"She's robbed the dead!"
+</p>
+<p>
+"My soul! To rob the living's stealing, but to rob the dead's a profane
+thing."
+</p>
+<p>
+"'Tisn't man as can judge her, 'tis only God Almighty!" cried an old
+minister, aghast.
+</p>
+<p>
+"Look at the maid, how she stands.... Her own conscience judges her,
+I should say!"
+</p>
+<p>
+"She's no word to excuse herself, simmingly."
+</p>
+<p>
+"That's because she do know nothing can excuse what she's done...."
+</p>
+<p>
+And, indeed, Loveday stood without speech. Perhaps in all that buzz of
+murmuring she heard the voice of her own conscience at last, for she
+made no effort to defend herself, or, perhaps, even at that hour, she
+heard nothing but the dread whisper of defeat. She stood before Flora
+Le Pettit like a wilted rose whose petals hang limply, about to fall,
+fronting a bloom that spreads its glowing leaves in the full flush of
+noon. The one girl was triumphant in her beauty and her unassailable
+position, every flounce out-curved in freshness; the other drooped at
+brow and hem, her slender neck downbent, her sash-ends pendant as broken
+tendrils after rain upon her heavily hanging skirts.
+</p>
+<p>
+All she was heard to murmur, and that very low, was a halting sentence
+about her white sash: "But you said&mdash;you said you'd dance with me if
+I got my sash ..." or some such words, but only Miss Le Pettit caught
+all the muttered syllables, and she never spoke of them, save with a
+petulant reluctance to Mr. Constantine when he questioned her
+afterwards.
+</p>
+<p>
+"Girl," said the Mayor sharply, "is it true?'
+</p>
+<p>
+"Yes," said Loveday.
+</p>
+<p>
+"True!" cried Cherry, "I know 'tes true. I remember noticing that green
+mark on the riband when the wreath was laid on the grave. Ah, she'm a
+wicked piece, she is. She tormented my poor Primrose in life and she's
+robbed her in death. You aren't safe in your grave from she."
+</p>
+<p>
+Everyone was speaking against Loveday in rightful indignation by now,
+and the good wives expressed the opinion that she should be well
+whipped. Loveday turned suddenly to Miss Le Pettit. There were those
+there&mdash;notably Mr. Constantine, that observant philosopher&mdash;who said
+afterwards she seemed for one instant to be going to break into
+impassioned speech. She did half hold out her hands. The ends of the
+white sash, disregarded, fluttered from them as she did so. But Miss
+Le Pettit, shocked in all her sensibilities by this vulgar scene,
+turned away.
+</p>
+<p>
+"Surely," said she, "there has been enough time wasted already. Can we
+not begin the dance, Mr. Mayor?"
+</p>
+<p>
+At a sign from the Mayor the band struck up into the tune that was to
+echo all day through every head and, perhaps, afterwards, through a few
+kindly hearts.
+</p>
+
+<center>
+<img src="images/music.png" width="100%"
+alt="Music" />
+</center>
+
+<p style="text-indent: 0em;">
+played the band, and, still whispering together with excitement, the
+dancers fell into place.
+</p>
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<p>  "<i>John the beau was walking home</i>,</p>
+<p>  <i>When he met with Sally Dover</i>,</p>
+<p>  <i>He kissed her once, he kissed her twice</i>,</p>
+<p>  <i>And he kissed her three times over</i>."</p>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>
+It seemed to Loveday that the whole world was dancing. The faces of the
+crowd, the bobbing ringlets, swelling skirts, the bright eyes and bright
+instruments, the houses that peered at her with their polished panes,
+all danced in a mad haze of mingled light and blackness. Sun, moon and
+stars joined in, heads and feet whirled so madly that none could have
+said which was upper-most. Creation was a-dancing, and she alone stood
+to be mocked at in a reeling world. This was the merry measure she had
+striven to join! She must have been mad indeed!
+</p>
+<p>
+Turning blindly, she ran through the crowd that gave at her approach,
+and all day the dancing went on without her. The flutter of her
+blasphemous sash did not profane the sunlight in the streets of
+Bugletown, nor pollute with its passing the houses of the good wives.
+Like a swallow's wing, it had but flashed across the ordered ways and
+was gone.
+</p>
+<p>
+Yet Loveday's ambition was, after all, fulfilled that day. For she
+danced&mdash;and danced a measure she could not have trod without the white
+satin sash.... Good folk in Bugletown footed it down the cobbled
+streets, and through paved kitchens; Loveday danced a finer step on
+insubstantial ether, into realms more vast. Were those realms dark for
+her, thus violated by her enforced entry of them? Who can say, save
+those folk of Bugletown who knew that to her first crime she had added
+a second even greater?
+</p>
+<p>
+They found her next day in the wood; the wind had risen, and blew
+against her skirts, so that her feet moved gently as though yet tracing
+their phantom paces upon the airy floors. Her head, like a snapped lily,
+lay forwards and a little to one side, so that her pale cheek rested
+against the taut white satin of the riband from which she hung. The wind
+blew the languid meshes of her hair softly, kissing her once, kissing
+her twice, and kissing her three times over.
+</p>
+
+<p class="prechapter">
+<b>EPILOGUE</b></p>
+
+<a name="h2H_EPIL" id="h2H_EPIL"><!-- H2 anchor --></a>
+
+<div style="height: 4em;"><br /><br /><br /><br /></div>
+
+<h2>
+    Epilogue
+</h2>
+<p>
+Such is the shocking tale of Loveday Strick, a girl who gave her life
+for a piece of finery. Is it not small wonder that Miss Le Pettit
+lamented the sad lack of proportion in the affair?
+</p>
+<p>
+All for a length of white satin riband....
+</p>
+<p>
+And yet, there were two people who thought a little differently from the
+rest of Loveday's world on the subject. They were an odd couple to think
+alike in anything&mdash;it seemed as though even after her death Loveday's
+violent unsuitability must persist as a legacy. They were the refined
+and polished Mr. Constantine and old Madgy the midwife, a person whom,
+naturally, he had never met till the day after the Flora, when his
+philosophic curiosity drew him to search for the lost girl in company
+with a band of villagers. It was Madgy who led them to the wood, sure
+that there was what they sought. Mr. Constantine and Madgy stood looking
+at the pale girl when she had been laid upon last year's leaves at their
+feet. One of the men would have taken the riband from her, with some
+vague notion of returning it, though whether to the graveyard or to the
+Manor he could not have told. Mr. Constantine and Madgy put out each a
+hand to check him.
+</p>
+<p>
+"Leave it her," said Mr. Constantine curtly.
+</p>
+<p>
+"Ay," answered Madgy, speaking freely as was her wont, for she was,
+alas, no respecter of persons, "it was more than a white riband to the
+maid, for all that the fools say."
+</p>
+<p>
+Mr. Constantine nodded. He too saw in that length of satin, now soiled
+and crumpled, more than a white riband. He saw passion in it&mdash;passion
+of hope, of ambition, of love, of adoration, of despair. Not a piece
+of finery had ended Loveday's stormy course, but a symbol of life
+itself, with more in its stained warp and woof than many lives hold
+in three-score years and ten. Like religion, this riband held every
+experience. Primrose had known mating and childbearing, anxiety and
+content and jealousy and death; Mr. Constantine had, in his wandering
+life of the gentleman of leisure, experienced his moments of keen
+enjoyment, his tender and romantic interludes; Miss Le Pettit would know
+decorous wooing, prosperity, pain of giving birth as she duly presented
+her husband with an heir, sorrow as she saw her chestnut curls greying
+and her eye gathering the puckers of advancing years around its fading
+blue. Yet none of these would know as much as Loveday had known in the
+short life they all thought so wasted and so incomplete, would feel as
+much as she had felt&mdash;the whole pageant of passion symbolised by this
+insensate strip of satin. She alone had known ecstasy in her brief mad
+dance across their sylvan stage.
+</p>
+<p>
+Madgy folded the riband across the half-open eyes and wound the ends
+about the discoloured throat. And thus it was when Loveday was buried in
+unconsecrated ground, but with the thing she had desired most in life,
+striven for, sinned for, and finally attained, still with her. Of whom,
+after all, could a richer epitaph be written?
+</p>
+<h4>
+THE END.
+</h4>
+
+<center>
+<img src="images/endpaper.png" width="100%"
+alt="Endpapers" />
+</center>
+
+<div style="height: 6em;"><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /></div>
+
+<div>*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 14119 ***</div>
+</body>
+</html>
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+
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+
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+Project Gutenberg (https://www.gutenberg.org) public repository for
+eBook #14119 (https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/14119)
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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of The White Riband, by Fryniwyd Tennyson Jesse
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: The White Riband
+       A Young Female's Folly
+
+Author: Fryniwyd Tennyson Jesse
+
+Release Date: November 22, 2004 [EBook #14119]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE WHITE RIBAND ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Juliet Sutherland, David Garcia and the PG Online
+Distributed Proofreading Team.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+THE WHITE RIBAND
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+F. TENNYSON JESSE
+
+
+
+
+
+_By the Same Author_
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+  THE MILKY WAY
+  BEGGARS ON HORSEBACK
+  SECRET BREAD
+  THE SWORD OF DEBORAH
+  THE HAPPY BRIDE
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+NEW YORK: GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY
+
+
+
+
+[Illustration]
+
+
+
+
+THE WHITE RIBAND
+
+OR
+
+A YOUNG FEMALE'S FOLLY
+
+
+BY
+
+F. TENNYSON JESSE
+
+
+NEW YORK
+GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY
+1921
+
+
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+TO STELLA,
+
+A YOUNG FEMALE,
+
+I DEDICATE THIS TALE,
+
+In the hope that it will encourage her to persevere in that indifference
+to personal adornment for which she is conspicuous at present
+
+SHOULD IT FAIL IN THIS HIGH ENDEAVOUR,
+NEVERTHELESS
+THIS BOOK IS HERS IN ALL SISTERLY LOVE
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+
+
+       PROLOGUE
+
+  CHAPTER
+
+     I IN WHICH THE READER IS TAKEN BACK A FEW WEEKS IN POINT
+       OF TIME, AND DOWN SEVERAL STEPS IN THE SOCIAL SCALE
+
+    II IN WHICH THE ONION-SELLER'S DAUGHTER FOR THE FIRST TIME
+       FEELS AS A WOMAN
+
+   III IN WHICH SHE FOR THE FIRST TIME FEELS AS A GIRL
+
+    IV IN WHICH THE ONION-SELLER'S DAUGHTER FEELS HERSELF A GODDESS
+
+     V IN WHICH LOVEDAY ESSAYS THE WHITE GOWN
+
+    VI IN WHICH LOVEDAY ESSAYS TO OBTAIN THE WHITE SATIN RIBAND
+
+   VII IN WHICH LOVEDAY STILL ESSAYS TO OBTAIN THE WHITE SATIN RIBAND
+
+  VIII IN WHICH LOVEDAY CONTINUES HER QUEST AND ACHIEVES TENPENCE
+
+    IX IN WHICH LOVEDAY SETS ONE MAGPIE
+
+     X IN WHICH LOVEDAY DOES NOT ATTEND A FUNERAL
+
+    XI IN WHICH LOVEDAY ATTENDS THE FLORA
+
+   XII IN WHICH LOVEDAY DANCES
+
+       EPILOGUE
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+
+
+PROLOGUE
+
+
+
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+
+
+THE WHITE RIBAND
+
+OR
+
+A YOUNG FEMALE'S FOLLY
+
+
+Prologue
+
+
+That was how they spoke of her story in the duchy's drawing-rooms;
+for what had Loveday been, at the most charitable count, but a young
+female--less humanly speaking, even a young person? And what was the
+spring of her mad crimes but folly, mere weak, feminine folly? Even
+an improper motive--one of those over-powering passions one reads
+about rather surreptitiously in the delightful works of that dear,
+naughty, departed Lord Byron--would have been somehow more ...
+more ... satisfactory. One could only whisper such a sentiment, but
+it stirred in many a feminine breast when Loveday's story set the
+ripples of reprobation circling some twenty miles, till the incomparably
+bigger pebble of the Prince of Wales' nuptials made correspondingly
+greater waves, even though they took a month or so to spread all its
+fascinating details so far from the Metropolis. What, after all, as a
+topic of conversation, was Loveday's ill-gotten gaud compared with the
+thrill of the new Alexandra jacket with its pegtop sleeves? One should
+hold a right proportion in all things.
+
+Thus the duchy's drawing-rooms. In the back parlours of the little
+country-town shops, where an aristocracy as rigid in its own
+respectable--and respectful--way, held its courts of justice, Loveday's
+story was referred to with a slight difference. She had become a "young
+besom," and her crime was what you might have expected from the bye-blow
+of an ear-ringed foreigner, who bowed down to idols instead of the laws
+of God and the British Constitution.
+
+In her own little seaport and the farms of the countryside, Loveday
+descended lower still--she became a "faggot." Thus from one born to
+wield a broom we see how she descended, with the declination in scale of
+the chatterboxes, to the broom itself, and from that to the rough
+material for it. Which things are a parable, could one but fit the moral
+to them as neatly as did everyone who discussed Loveday, in whatever
+terms, fit the due warning on to her tale.
+
+And this moral, for all who ran, but more particularly for those who
+danced, to read, was as follows:--
+
+It all came of wanting things above your station.
+
+"How simply does your sex dispose of the problems of life, ma'am,"
+replied Mr. Constantine to Miss Flora Le Pettit, the heiress of Ignores
+Manor, when she supplied him with this moral as an epitaph oh the
+affair. Miss Le Pettit smiled on him amiably, but arched her already
+springing brows as well, for though everyone knew Mr. Constantine was
+reputed clever, there were the gravest doubts about his orthodoxy.
+
+"Problems of life, Mr. Constantine?" she demanded. "Surely over-fine
+words to apply to the crazy acts of a village girl deranged in her
+intellects." She would have added: "And a nameless one at that," if
+she had not remembered (what, in truth, she was never in danger of
+forgetting) that she was a lady talking to a gentleman.
+
+"A village girl is as capable of passion as you or I," replied he, and
+had he not remembered (what he was somewhat apt to forget) that he was a
+gentleman talking to a lady, he would have added: "And a great deal more
+so than you." Miss Le Pettit, who considered that he _had_ forgotten
+it, gave the little movement known as "bridling," which reared her
+ringletted head a trifle higher on her white shoulders, then decided to
+front the obnoxious word bravely as a woman of the world. She had met
+with it chiefly in books where it was used solely to denote anger.
+There had been, for instance, the tale of "Henry: or, the Fatal Effect
+of Passion." ... Henry had slain a school-fellow in his rage, and had
+been duly hanged; yet something told Miss Le Pettit that was not how
+Mr. Constantine was using the word.... She rose to it splendidly.
+
+"Passion ... and pray where do you find such a thing in this story of
+the vanity of a child of fifteen?"
+
+"In the usual place, ma'am," said Mr. Constantine (now entirely
+forgetting that which Miss Le Pettit ever remembered)--"in her soul.
+Did you think it merely a thing of the body? The body may be the
+objective of passion, but the quality itself is what is meant by the
+word. It is generated in the soul and may pour itself into strange
+vessels."
+
+"Or even shower its ardours upon a piece of white riband?" cried Miss Le
+Pettit, with a titter.
+
+"Shall we say upon Beauty itself?" corrected Mr. Constantine more
+gravely than he had yet spoken. Then, with a smile, he elaborated:
+"For as passion is in the soul, so is beauty in the heart, and hearts
+have differing vision. That was Loveday's desire. Translate this paltry
+thing into terms of other ambitions--and where is any one of us then?
+Unless, indeed, we are so bloodless, so without imagination, that we
+cannot but be content with our lot just as it is."
+
+Miss Le Pettit, who had never seen reason for anything but contentment,
+and looked upon it as a Christian virtue, demurred with:--
+
+"The whole affair is so ridiculously out of proportion."
+
+Mr. Constantine glanced, with admiration in his gallant though elderly
+eye, over Miss Le Pettit's figure as she lay back in the gilt chair;
+glanced from her high, polished forehead, round which the smooth
+chestnut hair showed as gleaming, from her parted red lips and bare,
+sloping shoulders to her tiny waist and the outward spring beneath it of
+the clouded tulle that lapped in a dozen baby waves over the globe of
+her swelling crinoline.
+
+"When I was a young man," he said, "the ladies went about in little
+robes, such as you would not wear nowadays as a shift. We thought them
+pretty then, and thought none the worse of them because they made the
+women look more or less as God saw fit to make 'em. Yet now we think you
+equally lovely as you float about the world like monstrous beautiful
+bubbles, so that a man must adore at a distance and only guess at
+Paradise in a gust of wind.... Yet to the next generation, believe me or
+not as you like, your garb will seem too preposterous to be true, and a
+generation later Time will pay you the unkindest cut of all--you will be
+picturesque, and your grand-daughters will revive you--for fancy dress.
+Proportion, ma'am, is nothing in the world but fashion."
+
+"Now we are talking about something I know more about than you, Mr.
+Constantine," cried Miss Le Pettit archly, "and I, for one, do not
+believe that the present style of dress can ever go completely out; it
+is too becoming. We shall have novelties, of course, but the idea will
+remain the same. And, talking of novelties, if you don't scorn such
+things, I will tell you a great secret. I am the first person to procure
+one of the new jackets--like the Princess of Wales wears, you know.
+You must have heard about them. Alexandra jackets they're called. Isn't
+that pretty? And they're just as pretty as she is. The sleeve...."
+
+And thus the great description flowed on, with a bevy of entranced
+girls, who had caught the raised tone, fluttering round in excitement
+like a crowd of butterflies round a blossom of extra sweetness.
+
+From which it will be seen that a month had already passed since Loveday
+had been the excitement of society, and that this conversation between
+the eccentric Mr. Constantine and the charming Miss Le Pettit was almost
+the last flickering of interest in her fate. The life of one moon had
+been enough to see the waxing and waning of what Mr. Constantine had
+surprisingly called her passion.
+
+Yet Miss Le Pettit, eager, nay, even anxious, as she had been to
+lead the gentleman away from the topic, reverted to it as though by
+a curious fascination, when he had taken his leave. To tell the truth,
+her conscience had some slight cause to make her uneasy on this very
+subject of the violent Loveday. The thing was ridiculous, of course ...
+she, Miss Le Pettit, could not conceivably have been even remotely to
+blame for such a fantastical happening, and yet that slight pricking
+remained....
+
+"An odd word to have used," she commented, in recounting the
+conversation she had had with Mr. Constantine to her eager friends, "a
+very odd word, indeed, for by it, apparently, he did not mean an access
+of anger such as the word signifies in all the books I have read...."
+
+"You mean in the books that you are _supposed_ to have read,
+Flora," interrupted one of the young ladies, a flighty girl, whose
+tongue often outran her discretion. "I have come across it meaning
+something quite different in books like--well, you know the sort of
+books I mean."
+
+"I do not think, though, that even _that_ was how Mr. Constantine
+used the word," replied Flora, with more of discernment than she
+commonly showed, "though I will not pretend to you, Ellen, that I do not
+recognise the sense in which you refer to it. To be candid, I don't
+think I know what he did mean, but he seemed to me to be paying a vast
+deal of attention to the matter, which surprised me in a person of his
+standing."
+
+"I have heard he is a man of much sensibility, though he is so
+satirical," murmured the romantic Emilia, bending over her netting so
+that her ebon curls shaded her suddenly flushing cheek.
+
+"Perhaps he knows more about the fair Loveday than we have guessed,"
+cried the careless Ellen; "perhaps he knows _too_ much, and cannot
+keep away from the subject for his guilty conscience, as they say
+murderers are drawn back to the spot where they have buried the body of
+their victim!"
+
+But this was too gross a departure from delicacy of thought and phrase,
+and Miss Le Pettit, the prick stirring, perchance, signified as much by
+the cold manner in which she brought back the conversation to the more
+correct and really more enthralling subject of the Alexandra jacket.
+
+It was generally agreed that Miss Belben, of Bugletown, could not go far
+wrong with the sleeves if Flora would be so infinitely good as to lend
+her jacket for a copy, and this favour she accorded graciously to her
+dear friend, Emilia.
+
+Mr. Constantine walked down the windy hill with his mind already clear
+both of Loveday and the elegant company in which he had been taking tea.
+He was, above all things, a philosopher, and that means that, though his
+imagination was easily touched, his heart remained unstirred, He had
+serious thoughts of ordering a new cabriolet, and on arriving at the
+market place, he turned into the coachbuilder's to renew the discussion
+as to whether red or canary yellow were the more fashionable hue for
+the wheels.
+
+
+
+    CHAPTER I: IN WHICH THE READER IS TAKEN
+      BACK A FEW WEEKS IN POINT OF TIME, AND
+      DOWN SEVERAL STEPS IN THE SOCIAL SCALE
+
+
+
+
+Chapter I
+
+IN WHICH THE READER IS TAKEN BACK A FEW WEEKS IN POINT OF TIME, AND DOWN
+SEVERAL STEPS IN THE SOCIAL SCALE
+
+
+It was on a balmy day in early Spring that Loveday had first met Miss Le
+Pettit. Loveday had gone to fetch the milk. For Loveday's aunt, Senath
+Strick, with whom she lived, was a shiftless, unthrifty woman, never
+able to keep prosperous enough to own a cow for as long as the beast
+took between calvings, and the times when Loveday had a fragrant,
+soft-eyed animal to cherish were mercifully rare. Mercifully, for
+Loveday, though she appeared sullen, had ever more sensibility than was
+good for one in her position, and each time Aunt Senath was forced to
+sell the cow, Loveday behaved as though she had as good a right to sit
+and cry herself silly as any young lady with whom nothing was more
+urgent than to spoil fine cambric with salt water.
+
+This, then, was a period of poverty with the Strick family, and Loveday
+was sent to fetch the evening milk from the farm at the crest of the
+hill. On the way, she came upon Cherry Cotton and Primrose Lear, seated
+upon a granite stile, their heads together over something Cherry held in
+her lap. Cherry heard approaching footsteps, and whipped her apron over
+the object she and her friend had been so busily discussing. Loveday was
+hurt rather than angered by the unkind action, for there was a reason,
+connected with Primrose, why she had felt a tender curiosity as to what
+the two girls were guarding so closely. Yet she was aware of bitterness
+also--for it was ever so when she appeared. Maids ceased their gossip,
+boys laughed and pointed after her. She was "different."
+
+Not in being a love-child, there were plenty of them in the village, but
+their parents generally married later, and even if they did not, then
+the female partner in crime would be one of the unmentionable women
+about whom other people talk so much.... She would live by the harbour
+plying a trade which allowed her to have a love-child or so without it
+being an occasion for undue remark, or, if she did not descend to those
+depths where no one expects anything better and censure consequently
+ceases through ineffectiveness, then at least everyone knew the author
+of her fall to be an honest, loutish Englishman, no worse than most of
+his neighbours.
+
+Loveday was without either of these two rights to existence. Her mother
+had been a respectable girl till her fall, and, as far as anyone was
+aware, since, for she had died of the fruit of her guilty connection,
+and though her portion was doubtless hell-fire, there is nothing to
+show that one cannot keep respectable even under such disquieting
+circumstances. The elder Loveday had clung obstinately to her
+self-respect under circumstances which her neighbours had tried to
+render nearly as trying on earth. She had died, as she had lived,
+impenitent and only crying for the foreigner who had seduced her,
+while he was then lying, had she but known it, in the lap of his first
+mistress, the sea, who, perhaps from jealousy at his straying, had taken
+him forcibly into her embrace on the same night that Loveday the younger
+was born.
+
+Old Madgy, the midwife, who was also more than suspected of being
+somewhat of a witch, declared that the expectant mother _did_ know
+it--that she had been made aware, through a supernatural happening, of
+the loss of her lover, and that that was why the babe saw the light in
+such undue haste, and the mother took her departure almost as swiftly
+to that place where alone she could ever hope to rejoin him. For, as
+evening drew on, Madgy, having called to see how Loveday did, though
+nothing was thought of yet for a clear week, found her in the dairy
+(the Stricks had not yet fallen on that poverty which came to their roof
+under Aunt Senath's shrewish management) standing as one wisht beside
+the great red earthen pan of scalded cream.
+
+"And 'ee can b'lieve me or no as it like 'ee, my dears," old Madgy would
+say to many a breathless circle in a farm kitchen during the intervals
+of her duties overstairs, "but there was the cream in the pan a-heavin'
+up an' down in gurt waves, like a rough sea, and her staring at 'en like
+one stricken, as she was poor sawl, sure enough. Eh, it was sent for a
+sign to her, and a true sign, for that avenen' her man was drowned on
+his way to her, with his fine cargo of oil and onions and all. And there
+was the cream heavin' in waves for a sign of the rough seas that took
+him, though wi' us the skies was fair and the water in the bay as smooth
+as silk."
+
+A story that filled simple souls in kitchens with awe, but naturally was
+treated more scornfully in drawing-rooms, where it was felt that signs
+and portents would hardly be sent to inform a cottage girl of the death
+of an onion-seller. For, after all, that is what he amounts to, and the
+horrid secret is out.... An onion-seller ... the very words stink in
+the nostrils and are fatal to romance.
+
+Fatal to romance in the minds of the fastidious, fatal to respectability
+in those of the common people, for only foreigners sold onions. Strange
+men with rings in their ears and long, dark curls like a woman's, and an
+eye that was at once bold and soft.
+
+Loveday the younger had that eye, save that it had never learned from
+life to be bold, and her face was milken white instead of showing the
+blown roses of the other girls, though the back of her slender neck was
+stained a faint golden brown as by the inherited memories of sun. She
+was most immodestly "different," and even the Vicar's lady, who had
+charitably seen to her baptism, had difficulty in bringing herself to
+believe the girl could be a Christian.
+
+Cherry and Primrose stared up at her as she stood with the red jar in
+her hand, and, seeing her look so black, so white, so thin, they leant
+their yellow heads together and drew their two aprons closely over their
+plump laps.
+
+Seen thus, fronted by Loveday, they seemed amazingly alike, because of
+the completeness of her differing, yet a longer look showed that, in
+spite of their sleek, fair heads and rounded shoulders, there was
+between them the deepest division there can be between women.
+
+Cherry was a maid, thoughtless, blowsy, still untouched enough for
+wonder; Primrose had been a wife, though only seventeen, these three
+months; in another three was to be a mother. Her eyes, blue as her
+friend's, showed an even greater assurance, because it was based on
+positives and not on a mere negation. Dark-circled as those eyes were,
+her glance, as it passed over Loveday, was the more merciless, because
+it came from behind the shelter of a ring-fence.
+
+
+
+    CHAPTER II: IN WHICH THE ONION-SELLER'S
+      DAUGHTER FOR THE FIRST TIME FEELS AS
+      A WOMAN
+
+
+
+
+Chapter II
+
+IN WHICH THE ONION-SELLER'S DAUGHTER FOR THE FIRST TIME FEELS AS A WOMAN
+
+
+For all her woodland timidity, Loveday was prone to those flashes of
+temper to which the weak in defence and the strong in feeling seem
+peculiarly exposed. She snatched the shielding apron back from the lap
+of the buxom Cherry, stamping her foot the while. Cherry, too amazed to
+protect her treasure, stared, slack-mouthed.
+
+Primrose flew into a temper that surpassed Loveday's, already failing
+her through dismay at her own action, even as the thunder, to children,
+surpasses in terrifying quality the lightning.... And, had they but
+known it, Primrose's sounding tantrums held as much possibility of
+danger, compared with Loveday's rage, as holds the crash compared with
+the flash. But they knew it not, and already Loveday stood panting a
+little and spent with her own storm, while Primrose gathered herself,
+undaunted, for the attack.
+
+A hail of words would have beaten about Loveday's drooping head had not
+Cherry, all unwitting, come to the rescue with a cry on the discovery
+that her treasures, thus disturbed, had fallen to the ground, which was
+muddy enough, owing to the habit of the cattle of trampling the soil
+around the stiles.
+
+"Oh, my fairings, my fairings!" cried Cherry, swooping at them from her
+height with all the headlong thump of a gannet after its prey. Loveday's
+dive was as the gull's for grace contrasted with it. Their hands met;
+Loveday divined in an instant, by the tug of Cherry's, that she was
+suspected of trying to snatch the fairings, instead of merely restoring
+them, and she straightened herself with a return of her sick anger.
+Cherry clutched the frail morsels of riband and lace in her lap, then,
+seeing there was no danger, began to straighten them out, scolding the
+while.
+
+"There, see, Primrose love, that edging is all crumpled ... did you ever
+see the like? Never mind, I'll press it out for 'ee, and it'll look as
+good as new. And this riband, that's the one I bought off Bendigo, the
+pedlar, for Flora Day--oh, my dear life, what'll I do with it now?"
+
+"'Tis a gurt shame, that's what 'tis," said Primrose, resentful both for
+her friend's riband and her own edging; "and I'd get my Willie to make
+her buy new, only 'tis no good asking paupers for money, because, even
+if they was to be sold up, all their sticks and cloam wouldn't fetch
+enough for a yard o' this riband."
+
+The vulgar taunt had sting enough to rouse Loveday to a wholesome
+contempt that saved her. She stood staring with a genuine scorn at the
+little articles of lace and artificial flowers which Cherry's beau had
+given her at the last fair. Yes, even at the riband which had been
+Cherry's special pride as bought by herself from the pedlar, and it was
+one that had taken Loveday's eye with its delicate beauty--for it was of
+palest rose, like the shells she picked up on the beach, not a crude red
+or blue, such as she saw in the shops at Bugletown when she went in on
+market days. Secretly, something in her marvelled that such a riband had
+been Cherry's choice, and her scorning of it now was the easier because
+she hated to think she and the blowsy damsel could have a taste in
+common.
+
+"You and your fal-lals!" she exclaimed; "here's a fine boutigo to make
+of a parcel of ribands and laces that'll make you look like a couple of
+the puppets at Corpus Fair. If you wear such as those to the Flora
+you'll be mistook for a Maypole, and folk'll dance round you."
+
+"Well, folks 'ull never dance even _round_ you, unless you're burnt
+as a guy in a bonfire, let alone dancing _with_ you, Loveday
+Strick," rejoined Primrose, "and so you do very well knaw, and that's
+why your heart's sick against us."
+
+A minute ago, and that had been true; it was for her isolation Loveday
+had raged, but when she had seen these two draw their aprons over their
+girl's treasures, she had not guessed those possessions aright. What she
+had imagined in her girl's heart, knowing Primrose's condition, it is
+not for us to pry at; whatever it was, it was so swift, so born of
+instinct, as to be holy. But when she saw the crumpled finery, she was
+suddenly too much of a child again to rate it worth envy. The things
+that Primrose, all unthinking, stood for, the things of warm hearth and
+hallowed bed that her house had never known, might have power to draw
+the woman out in her all too soon, but the things that merely charm the
+feminine still left her chill.
+
+She laughed, all the sting gone, when she saw what a milliner's paradise
+it was from which she was kept out, and put her foot on the first step
+of the stile.
+
+"By your lave, Cherry Cotton!" she said, and swung lightly over,
+balancing her jar, while they still stared at the change in her.
+
+
+
+    CHAPTER III: IN WHICH SHE FOR THE FIRST
+      TIME FEELS AS A GIRL
+
+
+
+
+Chapter III
+
+IN WHICH SHE FOR THE FIRST TIME FEELS AS A GIRL
+
+
+Primrose Lear was wife to the son of old Farmer Lear, of Upper Farm,
+whither Loveday was bound. Willie Lear, the young man, was gay and
+handsome, and generally off on any and every job that took him abroad,
+from buying a pig to selling his own senses for a few mugs of cider.
+Farmer Lear was usually out in the fields, and Mrs. Lear, wrinkled like
+a winter apple and tuneful as a winter robin, was as a rule alone in the
+big kitchen or cool dairy, for small help did her daughter-in-law give
+her about the house.
+
+To-day, however, Mrs. Lear was in the parlour, and no less a personage
+than Miss Le Pettit of Ignores was seated on the best horsehair
+armchair, her bonneted head, with its drooping feather, leaning
+gracefully against the lace antimacassar, and her small prunella boots
+elegantly crossed on the smiling cheeks of the beadwork cherub that
+adorned the footstool, and that seemed to be puffing the harder, as
+though to try and puff those little feet up to the heaven where he
+belonged, trusting to his wings (of the best pearl beads) to bear him
+after her.
+
+Loveday paused, stricken, not with embarrassment, but with awe, upon the
+threshold.
+
+Sight of Cherry and Primrose had deepened her sense of her own isolation
+and her pain. Sight of Miss Le Pettit made her forget all save what she
+saw.
+
+Blow, little cherub, puff your cherubic hardest, never can you waft
+Flora Le Pettit higher than she now is, at least in the sight of one
+pair of black eyes, higher, perhaps, than she will ever be again, even
+in that of her own not uncomplacent orbs.
+
+Blow, little cherub, but even if you burst the roseate beads from off
+your cheeks in your ardour, leaving forlornly drooping the grey threads
+that would show you as, after all, of mere mortal manufacture, you could
+not cast a doubt as big as the tiniest bead upon the heavenly origin of
+Miss Le Pettit--not, at least, in the heart of the devout worshipper
+born in that instant upon the black woollen doormat.
+
+The angelic visitant put up a tortoise-shell lorgnon and examined the
+newcomer with a flicker of condescending interest. For Flora was a young
+lady of great sensibility, and though, of course, all females are filled
+by nature with that interesting and appealing quality, the finer amongst
+them educate and make an art of it. Miss Le Pettit, then, encouraged her
+sensibility, nursed it, nourished it, on the most exquisite of novels
+and the rarest of romances, and these had taught her to show even more
+sensibility than usual at sight of a barefoot girl with black hair and
+eyes and an arresting, though wholly unconscious air that could but be
+described by Miss Le Pettit, to herself and afterwards to her friends,
+as Italianate.
+
+"What an interesting face and figure!" she now exclaimed, at gaze
+through the lorgnon, as though it were a celestial aid to vision needful
+for such a long range, as it must be even for angelic eyes looking from
+the skiey ramparts to a world where bare feet press the earth, to say
+nothing of woollen doormats.
+
+Loveday blenched before that searching gaze, the rare red burned in her
+cheek and her own eyes sank abashed. She rubbed the flexible sole of one
+foot in a stiffened curve of shyness against the slim ankle of the
+other. Mrs. Lear exclaimed aloud in her horror.
+
+"Loveday Strick, where are your manners to, that you come into the
+parlour without a curtsey?" said she. "And indeed, I must ask you to
+excuse her, ma'am, for she's but a nobody's girl from the village, and
+doesn't know how to behave before gentry."
+
+Mrs. Lear was a good soul, and had ever been kind to Loveday, but she
+too had her sensibilities, and they were outraged by this untimely
+intrusion of one world into another which was doubtless unaware even of
+its existence. But Miss Le Pettit put up a delicate gloved hand in
+protest.
+
+"Nay, you frighten the child, Mrs. Lear," she said kindly, "I am sure
+she means no disrespect. Did you ... what is your name, girl?'
+
+"Loveday, ma'am."
+
+"What a strange, old-fashioned name, to be sure," commented the taffetas
+angel, with a crystal sounding titter, "'tis as good as the heroine in a
+play. Whom were you called for, child?"
+
+"My mother, ma'am," said Loveday, and now her cheek had ceased to burn
+and looked pale, but she raised her eyes and confronted the vision
+steadily.
+
+Mrs. Lear coughed.
+
+"I declare I should like to do a watercolour drawing of you, Loveday,"
+went on Miss Le Pettit, "what do you say? Will you come up to the Manor
+one day and let me paint your portrait?"
+
+Loveday had not a notion what that process might be, but had she taken
+it to be the blackest witchcraft (as she very likely would if she saw
+it) she would still not have blenched. Her eye lightened, some instinct
+told her that had she been as all the other girls, the Cherries and
+Primroses, this wonderful lady would not have looked twice at her. At
+last her singularity was standing her in good stead. Confidence came to
+her, even a feeling of slight scorn for the world she knew, a feeling,
+indeed, to which she was not altogether a stranger, but which up till
+now she had stifled in affright at its presumption.
+
+"What do you say, Mrs. Lear?" asked Miss Le Pettit, turning with her
+charming condescension to the old woman, whom, after all, she was merely
+visiting on a little matter of a recipe for elderflower-water, "what do
+you say? Would she not look picturesque with an orange kerchief over her
+head and a basket of fruit in her arms, as a young street-vendor?"
+
+"She would certainly look outlandish, ma'am," was all Mrs. Lear could
+manage.
+
+Loveday's thoughts flew of a sudden to the ribands she had disturbed in
+Cherry's lap, and for the first time in her life, till now so proudly
+above such matters in its aloofness, she yearned over fineries. If such
+as those could admit her into the company of such as this! She thought
+enviously of that pale pink, even of the yellows and reds she had seen
+in Bugletown, since such deep tones seemed to the taste of this
+wonderful creature.
+
+But Miss Le Pettit, still staring at her, changed her note.
+
+"I was wrong," she exclaimed, "that face needs no gaudy hues, those
+white cheeks need nothing but that red mouth to set them off, and that
+black hair. She should be white, all white, should she not, Mrs. Lear?
+A tragic bride from the south, languishing in our cold land. 'Twould
+make a fine subject for a painting, though I fear beyond my brush.
+I never can get my faces to look as sad as I could wish them to."
+
+There was something engaging and almost childlike about the heiress as
+she spoke those words, but recollecting herself she resumed:
+
+"Never mind the portrait, but I vow I will have you for my attendant at
+the Flora, that I will. Now, Mrs. Lear, you shall not protest, I always
+have my way when I set my heart on a thing, you know. I am going to
+dance in the Flora this year, 'tis a charming rural custom, and the
+gentry should help to preserve it. Besides, my name is Flora, so I
+am doubly bound. And this child shall be my maid; she will be a rare
+contrast to me, I being chestnut and she so foreign looking. It would
+be indiscreet if I were to dance with a gentleman--you know what the
+gossips are--but if I am partnered by an attendant maid 'twill be very
+different."
+
+"Ma'am ..." from the scandalised Mrs. Lear, "if you are set on having
+a village girl ... there are many from good homes, respectable girls.
+Not that I've anything to say against this poor child, God knows, but
+her mother, ma'am.... I assure you 'tis impossible."
+
+Miss Le Pettit, who guessed very well the sort of tale Mrs. Lear's
+delicacy spared her, laughed the matter off.
+
+"It shall be as I say, Mrs. Lear, I can afford to be above these things.
+You shall dance with me, Loveday. You must have a white frock, of
+course, but I suppose you have a Sunday frock? Quite a simple thing,
+the simpler the better, and a white sash of satin riband. Don't forget.
+I shall expect to see you waiting for me at the Flora."
+
+And Miss Le Pettit rose, having carried her freak of sensibility on long
+enough, and sweeping past Loveday with a dazzling smile, was accompanied
+to the front door by Mrs. Lear, and after standing poised for a moment
+against the sunny verdure beyond, took wing with a flutter of white
+taffetas and was gone.
+
+Loveday was left with that most dangerous of all passions--the passion
+for an idea. Though she was ignorant of the fact, it was not Miss Le
+Pettit she adored, it was beauty; not silk underskirts that rustled
+in her ear, but the music of the spheres; a new ideal she saw not in
+the angelic visitant, but in herself. She, too, would be all white and
+dazzling, was accounted worthy to follow in the same steps, were it
+but in those of a dance. She made the common mistake of a lover--she
+imagined she was in love with another human being, while in reality she
+was in love with those feelings in herself which that other had evoked.
+
+Never did aspiring saint of old, impelled by ecstasy, cling closer to a
+crucifix as the symbol of the loved one than did Loveday to that notion
+of the white garb which must be hers. It was, indeed, a symbol to her,
+the symbol of everything she had unwittingly craved and starved for,
+of everything she had, could not but feel she had, in herself which was
+lacked by those who jeered at her. And, though she knew it not, nor
+would have understood it, she was a symbol-lover, than which there is no
+form of lover more dangerous in life--or more endangered by the chances
+of it. For he who loves another human being gives his heart in fee, but
+he who loves an idea gives his soul.
+
+
+
+    CHAPTER IV: IN WHICH THE ONION-SELLER'S
+      DAUGHTER FEELS HERSELF A GODDESS
+
+
+
+
+Chapter IV
+
+IN WHICH THE ONION-SELLER'S DAUGHTER FEELS HERSELF A GODDESS
+
+
+Loveday bore home the milk in a maze of bliss, and staying not for her
+supper, for no hunger of the body was upon her, turned and went out
+again into the glow of the evening. Had she been as full of sensibility
+as a young lady she would have wandered straight away from Upper Farm,
+forgotten the milk, and not thought of it again, till, returning with
+the upgetting of the moon, her aunt had met her with vulgar reproaches.
+What a charming scene could then have been staged, of sensitive genius
+misunderstood by coarse-grained labour; of vision-drunken youth berated
+by undreaming age! But she was not a young lady, and could derive no
+felicity from forgetfulness of such a kind, for with the poor the
+urgencies of the immediate task are raised to such compelling interest
+that only a genius could neglect them with satisfaction. Therefore
+Loveday never thought of forgetting the milk for her aunt, but her
+exultation was of such a powerful sort that it upheld her through the
+commonplaces of routine without her perceiving the incongruity which
+would have jarred on one of a finer upbringing.
+
+She placed the milk on the table, set out the bread and soaked
+pilchards, found what was left of the cheese, and went hastily forth
+lest her aunt should stay her.
+
+She was bound for the little wood that lay in a fold of the moorland
+above the sea. This wood was to her what a City of Refuge was to the
+Hebrews of the Old Testament, and, like them, she fled to it when the
+world's opinion of what was fit had proved at variance with her own.
+To-night she went to it not for sanctuary from others, but to commune
+with herself--in truth, for the first time she went not because of what
+she had left but because of what she would find. Her bare heels were
+winged along the road.
+
+The wood lay lapped in the shadow that the western ridge had cast on it
+an hour earlier than the rest of the world's bedtime, ever since the
+trees had been there to receive the chill caress, and that was for many
+a hundred years. Old Madgy swore that even in her young day the small
+folk had still held their revels on the mossy slopes amongst the fanlike
+roots, and who knows what larger folk had not fled there to wanton more
+sweetly than in close cottages, or, like Loveday, to play the more
+easily with their thoughts? The wood alone knew, and it held its
+memories as closely as it held the thousand tiny lives confided to its
+care; the bright-eyed shrew-mice that poked quivering noses through the
+litter of last year's leaves, the birds that nested behind the
+clustering twigs, the slow-worms that slipped along its grassy ditches.
+
+Loveday turned off from the road and approached the wood from the west,
+pausing when she reached the smooth grey boulders that were piled along
+the ridge. She stood there gazing out over the smiling champaign, pale
+and verdant from the farthest rim to the treetops that made as it were a
+sea of faint green at her feet, for already in that soft clime the twigs
+were misty with young leaf, and on the willows the velvety pearl-hued
+ovals had begun to deck themselves with a delicate powdering of gold,
+while from the hazels beside her the yellow lambs' tails hung still as
+tiny pennants in the evening air. The gold of nature was as yet more
+vivid than her green, which still showed tentative, enquiring of April
+what of betrayal might not lie in the careless plaits of her garment.
+To Loveday, high on her rock, between the gold of the sky and the gold
+of the blossom, it seemed that April must of a certainty stay as fair
+as this and lead to as bright a May, when that vision of her new self
+should become a yet brighter reality. She was confident of April because
+she was confident of life, lapped in an aureate glow that seemed to
+suffuse the very air she drew into her lungs so that it intoxicated her
+like the breath of a diviner ether from Olympian heights. She had seen
+beauty, and lo! it had been revealed to her not as a thing apart and
+unattainable, but as a quality within herself. Her "difference" had
+become a blazon, not a branding.
+
+Lying down on her rock, she told over with the rapture of a devotee the
+divine excellencies of Flora Le Pettit; her radiance, her swinging,
+shining curls, the wings that spread from her fair arms, the light that
+gleamed on her bright brow and in her glancing eyes, but it was not
+Flora, but Loveday, who danced before her mind's eye in white raiment,
+and held the sorrows of the South in her eyes and the joy of youth on
+her lips. Flora was the excuse for that new Loveday, as the beloved is
+ever the excuse for the raptures transmuting the lover. Even thus do we
+worship in our Creator the excellence of His handiwork, and one would
+think that to be alive is act of praise enough to satisfy the most
+exigent deity. Flora had called Loveday to life, and Loveday repaid her
+with a worship of that which she had awakened, the highest compliment
+the devout can pay, would the theologians but acknowledge it.
+
+The sun slipped slower down the field of the sky, now a pale green as
+delicate as the leaves burgeoning beneath it, and Loveday drew herself
+up in a bunch, knees to chin, her brown strong hands clasped and her
+slim feet curved over the slope of the smooth granite. The wood below
+was wrapping itself in mystery, and her eyes attempted to fathom its
+fastnesses. Ordinarily, she was fearful of venturing into the darkness
+under the trees when once the evening had fallen, and it was then she
+was accustomed to come out up to her boulder, but this evening she was
+strung to any courage, for she walked in that certainty which on rare
+occasions comes to all--the certainty of being immune to danger--which
+is of all sensations vouchsafed to mortals the most godlike.
+
+She rose to her feet, and swinging herself down from the rock, began the
+descent, ledge by ledge, to the shadows below. A last spring, and she
+was standing on the dark gold of drifted leaves, that rose about her
+ankles with a dry little rustling. It was the wood's caress of greeting,
+and she did not reflect that it was also the kisses of the dead.
+
+Indeed, she clapped her hands in the rush of strength she felt, both in
+her young muscles and her leaping spirit, and stood proudly listening
+to the echo dying away, unaffrighted. She was young and strong and
+beautiful; life, not dead leaves, lay at her feet. She was different,
+and in her difference lay power, she was at last herself, Loveday ...
+she was Loveday, Loveday ... Loveday...
+
+She darted hither and thither through the wood, noting with a pleasure
+keener than ever before how soft and sleek the moss was to her feet, how
+silky the flank of the beech to her leaning cheek, how sweetly sharp the
+intimate evening note of the birds.
+
+And she was quite unfitted to be the goddess of these rustic beauties,
+for all her mind could feel in that softness and sleekness and clear
+calling was their alikeness to artificiality. She felt thin slippers
+on her feet, rubbed an ecstatic cheek against the sheen of satin, and
+in her ears echoed no diviner music than the Tol-de-rol Tol-de-rol
+of the Bugletown band on Flora Day. Save in her sincerity, she was as
+artificial a goddess as ever graced a Versailles Fête Champêtre. What
+were leaf and bird to her but the stuff of her life, whereas white satin
+gleamed with the shimmer of the very heavens!
+
+Hers was not, it is true, the milliner's paradise of Cherry and
+Primrose, but it was one into which she could only penetrate fitly
+clad. What wonder then that, brought up without any tutoring in the
+excellencies of Nature, she should display the sad lack of true feeling
+so deplored in her later by that nice arbiter of taste, Miss Flora Le
+Pettit?
+
+
+
+    CHAPTER V: IN WHICH LOVEDAY ESSAYS THE
+      WHITE GOWN
+
+
+
+
+Chapter V
+
+IN WHICH LOVEDAY ESSAYS THE WHITE GOWN
+
+
+With morning came thoughts of the practical side of the business and,
+the worst of her daily duties performed, Loveday ascended to her chamber
+to examine the scanty contents of her small oaken chest. It was a
+sea-chest, legacy from her roving father, who had given it to her
+mother, and often enough had Aunt Senath expressed scruples about
+allowing her to keep a gift obtained so godlessly. Perhaps the fact that
+it was a good chest and better than anything she could have bought had
+something to do with Aunt Senath's complaisance in permitting it to
+remain. Perhaps Loveday's fierce look in defence of it was not without
+influence also. The chest stayed in the little attic room, and made of
+it, to Loveday's eyes, a place peculiarly her own, and rich because of
+its associations. There was something about the chest, its dark polish
+and coarse carving, that even led her to think hopefully of its poor
+contents.
+
+She crouched beside it now, upon her heels, and lifting the lid, gazed
+expectantly at what was revealed.
+
+After all, it did not look so bad, just a level surface of white linen...
+
+But, when she lifted it out, and all the yellow of age was revealed in
+the full gathers of the skirt, a shade passed over Loveday's spirit.
+How small and tight the bodice looked, how skimpy even the plaits of the
+skirt for the present modes ... yet it had been a good linen in its day,
+there was no doubt of that, this frock that had been stitched for her
+mother's wedding gown.
+
+For perhaps he had always been coming back to marry her, perhaps only
+their young blood and eager hearts beating so strongly within them had
+made the beat of wedding bells seem at first too slight a sound to catch
+their absorbed attention.... So Loveday the elder had always known,
+in spite of the sneers of the neighbours. So Loveday the younger had
+maintained to carping girl-critics, though in her inmost heart she had
+never been able to feel it mattered so vastly, for half the girls she
+knew would have been in her predicament had their fathers been cut
+off untimely. She knew it was not that she was born out of wedlock,
+a misfortune that might happen to anyone, which oppressed her youth,
+but the fact of her father having been a foreigner, and of that she
+was fiercely resolved to be proud. Neither mother nor father had she
+ever known, but the instinct of generous youth is ever to defend the
+oppressed, and with her defence had love sprung in Loveday's heart.
+Therefore, even with her sensation of disappointment at the sight of the
+yellowed linen, there was reverence and tenderness in her touch as she
+laid the gown across her narrow bed.
+
+She ripped off the coarse blue wrapper that enfolded her, and stood
+revealed in her little flannel under-bodice and linsey-woolsey petticoat
+of striped red and black, her thin girlish arms and young bosom making
+her look more childish than she did when fully clothed. She held the
+gown above her head and struggled into it. Her pale little face was red
+when she poked it triumphantly through the narrow opening and finally
+settled the neck, with its ruffled cambric frilling, round her throat,
+and pulled the puff sleeves as far as they would go down her arms in a
+vain attempt to make them conceal her red young girl's elbows. She could
+only see a small portion of herself at a time in the little mirror, yet
+that small portion, in spite of the skimpiness and yellowness of the
+gown, pleased her eye.
+
+For her dark tints were set off by the creamy folds, her slight shape
+revealed by the tight bodice, even her bare feet, which some fine
+prompting had made her wash carefully lest they should shame this essay,
+looked small and graceful beneath the full folds.
+
+But she could not dance in the Flora unshod, and so once again she bent
+to the sea-chest, and withdrew her only pair of shoes, bought for her in
+a generous moment last Michaelmas by Aunt Senath. She pulled on her
+Sunday pair of white cotton stockings, and then the stout shoes. They
+still fitted, and to her country eye looked well enough. She examined
+herself bit by bit in the mirror, from her smooth black head to her
+smooth black feet, and all the faintly yellowed linen that curved in and
+swelled out between.
+
+She was fair to look upon, not so much the mirror as her own awakened
+consciousness told her that. She was meet to dance with Miss Le Pettit
+at the Flora, could she but obtain one thing more--the white satin sash.
+
+
+
+    CHAPTER VI: IN WHICH LOVEDAY ESSAYS TO
+      OBTAIN THE WHITE SATIN RIBAND
+
+
+
+
+Chapter VI
+
+IN WHICH LOVEDAY ESSAYS TO OBTAIN THE WHITE SATIN RIBAND
+
+
+With a high heart Loveday began her quest for the work which was to earn
+for her the coveted white satin sash. She had but three weeks in which
+to make a matter of several shillings, and this meant that she must sell
+every moment of the time which was hers when her duties about her aunt's
+were discharged for the day. In the morning she was busy with cleaning
+and cooking till almost mid-day, and in the evenings she had the milk to
+fetch, but in the afternoons she could be sure of a few hours if Aunt
+Senath did not guess she wanted them for herself and invent tasks. On
+Mondays, of course, the washing kept her all day at the tub, and on
+Fridays at the mangle, on Saturdays there was the baking of the bread,
+while Thursday, being market day, she was supposed to keep house while
+Aunt Senath went in to Bugletown--a task that slut of a woman was too
+fond of for its chances of gossip to send her niece in her stead. On
+Thursdays Loveday was wont to stay in and see to the mending, but she
+reflected that, by sitting up in her bed at night to darn and patch by
+the light of the wick that floated in a cup of fish-oil, she might take
+charge of some neighbour's children on that day instead and Aunt Senath
+be none the wiser. Loveday had a sad lack of principle, doubtless an
+heritage from her heathen father.
+
+On the afternoons of Tuesdays and Wednesdays, she hoped to help in some
+house with the cleaning, or in some slattern's abode with the weekly
+wash, for, as all know, there are some such sluts that the washing gets
+put off from day to day, till Saturday finds it still cluttering the
+washhouse instead of being brought in clean and sweet from the
+gorse-bushes.
+
+Then there were always odd things to be done, such as running errands,
+at which she hoped to earn some pence here and there. The white riband
+seemed no impossible fantasy to Loveday when she started on her quest.
+
+She went first to visit old Mrs. Lear, at Upper Farm, for no one had
+shown such a kindly front to the girl in all the village as she. Loveday
+started out for the milk half-an-hour earlier than was her wont so that
+she might have time to discuss her hopes with the farmer's wife, and
+this time she did not meet young Mrs. Lear or her friend Cherry on the
+way. But she did come upon both Mrs. Lears in the big kitchen, the
+younger seated in the armchair in front of the fire and the elder
+anxiously regarding her. Primrose had been fretful ever since hearing
+from her mother-in-law of Miss Le Pettit's visit of the day before,
+and of the unaccountable interest the heiress had shown in that faggot
+of a Loveday, and by now her fretfulness had assumed the size of an
+indisposition. In vain did Mrs. Lear try and cosset and comfort her with
+potions both hot and cool; Primrose knew well that beneath the kindness
+of the farmer's wife lurked the feeling that it was not for one in her
+station to indulge in such vapours as might well befit the gentry, and
+that she would be cured sooner by taking a broom to the best carpet than
+by sitting and keeping the fire warm. Primrose sulked, and even handsome
+Willie, leaning by the window, wanting to be away yet dreading the
+outburst did he move, could not persuade his wife that nothing ailed her
+but too much idleness. Neither, though to their robust health it would
+have seemed so, would it have been all the truth, for Primrose was
+taking her condition more hardly than most girls who have had the good
+fortune to wed with a prosperous young farmer, and the thought that she
+would not be able to dance in the procession with the rest of the world
+at the Flora had for some time past embittered her. To enter the house,
+after her anger with Loveday and the flash of fear that the strange
+half-foreign girl had filled her with, only to find that the great Miss
+Le Pettit had offered that very girl to dance with her ... this was
+poisonous fare indeed for one in the discontented mood of Primrose Lear.
+The heaviness of her mind matched with that of her body as she hunched
+over the fire.
+
+Sight of Loveday, a Loveday oddly changed from that of the day earlier,
+did not ease her sickness; the light in Loveday's eye, the fresh
+exhilaration of her step--she, who was wont to slip along with so much
+of quiet aloofness--stung the other girl anew. Loveday greeted Mrs. Lear
+eagerly before she saw that Primrose was sitting half-hidden by the
+wings of the big chair, her face, paler than its wont, in shadow, pallid
+like a face seen through still water. Then she saw also handsome Willie,
+dark against the small square panes of the window, the April sun gilding
+the curve of his ruddy cheek and making the pots of red geraniums along
+the sill blaze as brightly as the beautiful blossoms of painted wax
+that, under their glass shade, held an example of neat perfection up
+to Nature.
+
+Willie nodded at Loveday with a trifle less of sulkiness in his manner,
+took a step forward and relapsed once more. A little silence seemed to
+catch them all, broken by good Mrs. Lear saying:
+
+"You'm early to-day, Loveday. Milken's not over yet."
+
+"I'm come to see you a moment, if 'tes possible," said Loveday, some of
+her shining confidence already fallen from her, she knew not why.
+
+"Well," said Primrose spitefully, guessing her presence would embarrass
+Loveday, "Mrs. Lear's here and I daresay'll speak to 'ee. Can't be any
+secret from me, of course, whatever 'tes."
+
+Mrs. Lear, suddenly sorry for Loveday, although Primrose on entering the
+day before had told her a tale that had angered her, said:
+
+"Come into dairy, Loveday; you can tell me what 'tes while I see to your
+aunt's bit of butter."
+
+Loveday followed her into the cool dairy, where on the scrubbed
+white wood shelves the great red earthen pans stood in rows holding
+their thick crinkled cream, which Loveday never saw without a thought
+of awe for her mother's miracle, and the waves that had surged over
+her father's head. Thought of it now restored her sense of her own
+power--the cream was ever for her a symbol of divine interposition, and
+if her own parents had been found worthy of such a sign, why should not
+she too have that something apart and strong which forced signs from the
+very heavens, that something apart which indeed she could not but feel
+sure she possessed, never with such a gladness in the certainty until
+the miraculous yesterday?
+
+Eagerly she unfolded her plans to Mrs. Lear, her words falling forth in
+a rush as hurried as a moorland stream after rain, yet as clear too, and
+as she spoke of her hopes and plans her black eyes scanned Mrs. Lear's
+face more in faith than anxiety. But Mrs. Lear wore a strange look that
+to one less eager than the girl would have shown as pity.
+
+"Softly, Loveday, softly," she said at last, "while I see if I can
+get to the rights of this. You want to earn money for yourself this
+next month to buy your white riband with. Have 'ee thought 'tes an
+extravagant purchase for a maid like you, who should be putten any
+money into warm flannel or a pair of good boots?"
+
+"I don't want boots, Mrs. Lear, I don't want nothing on the earth but my
+satin sash so I can dance with her in the Flora. I want it more than to
+save my soul, that I do; I'll go through anything to get it. I'll work
+like ten maids for 'ee and for anyone else that'll have me, so as I can
+dance in the Flora..."
+
+"Hush, hush," cried the good woman, justly scandalised by such
+unbalanced ravings from a maid of fifteen who should have had nothing
+but modesty in her mouth; "you mustn't say such wicked things or I can't
+stay here and listen to en."
+
+Fear attacked Loveday, not for her own impious words, but lest she had
+shocked Mrs. Lear past helping.
+
+"Mrs. Lear," she said urgently, "I don't mean any wickedness, but indeed
+I can't sufficiently tell 'ee what it means to me to get my length of
+riband and dance in the Flora come May. I do believe I'll die if I
+don't. I don't know how to find words to tell 'ee, but 'tes more to me
+than a white riband and a shaking of feet down Bugletown streets, 'tes
+my life, I do believe ..." She added no word of Flora Le Pettit, you
+perceive, but got a secret joy from being able to use her name thus
+unreproved in mention of the dance ... and who that has been a lover
+will not understand this?
+
+"I would have had 'ee up here to help now that Primrose is so wisht,"
+replied Mrs. Lear doubtfully, "but simmingly only yesterday you had
+words, and indeed it was ill done of you, Loveday Strick, towards one
+in her condition, as you do very well knaw."
+
+Loveday drooped her head. Idle to protest to Mrs. Lear that she had not
+been the first in fault. She waited breathless, the beating of her heart
+almost choking her. Mrs. Lear went on.
+
+"If only Primrose could be made to overlook it, then I'll have 'ee and
+welcome, Loveday, and pay you a florin a week too, which would soon add
+up to enough. I'd be glad for 'ee to stay on after the Flora too, for
+Primrose's time'll be near."
+
+Loveday had no interest in what happened after the dance. Life would
+be all golden ever after, something wonderful and new would certainly
+begin; it was to mark the great division in her life, but gratitude and
+the caution born of years of slights held her silent on that subject to
+the good Mrs. Lear.
+
+"Wait 'ee here," Mrs. Lear bade her, and herself went back into the
+kitchen. She was gone some minutes, that to Loveday dragged as weeks,
+though when she reappeared Loveday felt that the time of waiting had
+gone too soon, and she wished for it to begin once more, so much she
+dreaded to ask what had been said. Mrs. Lear spared her the need for
+questioning.
+
+"'Tes no manner of use, Loveday," she said, "Primrose won't hear of it,
+and being as she is, I can't contrairy her."
+
+Loveday felt the futility of argument, and, indeed, in the violent
+reaction that attacks such ardent natures, she felt too numb to make the
+attempt even had she wished. She stood staring at Mrs. Lear with her
+eyes dark in her pale face and the first presage of defeat in her heart.
+
+
+
+    CHAPTER VII: IN WHICH LOVEDAY STILL
+      ESSAYS TO OBTAIN THE WHITE SATIN RIBAND
+
+
+
+
+Chapter VII
+
+IN WHICH LOVEDAY STILL ESSAYS TO OBTAIN THE WHITE SATIN RIBAND
+
+
+It were a weary task to chronicle all the ways trodden by Loveday during
+the three weeks that followed her visit to Upper Farm, and yet, even so,
+it would not be as weary as was the treading of them to that still
+ardent though fearful girl. Hers grew to be a dread that would have
+seemed to a spectator disproportionate indeed--for what can one heart
+know of the sickness of another's, of its hurried beating when hope
+beckons, of its numb slackening when hope fails? How swift to Loveday
+seemed the relentless patter of the days past her questing feet, that,
+run hither and thither as she would, yet could not keep pace with Time's
+urgency! How slow to Loveday seemed the ticking of each moment, since
+each held hope and fear full-globed, as in bubbles that rise and rise
+only to burst into the empty air! So each moment rose, rounded, to meet
+Loveday, held, and broke, till her mind was but a daze which confounded
+speed with slowness, till she thought the future would never be the
+present and found perpetually that it was the past.
+
+After her failure with Mrs. Lear it occurred to Loveday to go where she
+should have gone in the first place--whither she might have gone had
+not some irk of conscience whispered her that her purpose was all too
+worldly--to the wife of the Vicar, Mrs. Veale. This Mrs. Veale was the
+good lady who had stood sponsor for Loveday on that day when Aunt Senath
+had perforce to blazon her sister's shame at the font. Ever since that
+day Mrs. Veale had done her duty by Loveday without fail, instructing
+her in the catechism regularly and occasionally presenting her with the
+clothing of Miss Letitia Veale--who was a couple of years older than
+Loveday--when the garments were outgrown and when they were suitable.
+Mrs. Veale was too thoughtful a Christian to give Loveday artificial
+flowers or silken petticoats unfitted to her station, but flannels,
+thickened by so much washing that Saint Anthony of Egypt himself could
+not have divined a female within their folds, were always forthcoming
+to protect the orphan girl from wintry winds.
+
+It was no day for flannel when Loveday knocked--with the timidity that
+always assailed her, to her own annoyance, when she was about to see her
+godmother--on the back door of the Vicarage. She heard her own voice,
+robbed of its warm eagerness, asking of the stout cook whether Mrs.
+Veale could see her for a minute. The cook sent the housemaid to the
+Vicar's lady with the request, and Loveday stood in the large, sunny
+kitchen smelling the strange rich foods preparing for the four o'clock
+dinner. There was butcher's meat, she could smell that (she had tasted
+it at the harvest feast at Upper Farm, where it was provided for the
+labourers once a year), and there was a sweet pudding that she could see
+stirred together in a big white bowl, a pudding that smelt of sweetness
+like a posy. A noisy fly, the first of his kind, buzzed over the plate
+where the empty eggshells lay beside the bowl, and from them crawled to
+the scattered sugar that sparkled carelessly upon the rim. Loveday, of
+old, would have had a second's envy of the fly that could thus browse on
+what smelt so good; now the fine aromas affected her nostrils merely as
+incense might have those of her papist father--as the savour of the
+great house where dwelt those to be propitiated. For upon Mrs. Veale she
+now felt hope was fastened; it was from her almost sacred hands that
+salvation would flow. Fear and expectation took Loveday by the throat,
+so stifling her that the wide kitchen, the stout blue-print-clad cook,
+the bright pots and pans, the leaping flames, the savoury odours and the
+buzzing of the fly, all blended together before her dizzied eyes.
+
+The figure of the housemaid, crisp in white and black, entered
+steadyingly, and with her voice, saying that the mistress would see
+Loveday Strick in the morning-room, the flow of the kitchen ebbed and
+subsided. Loveday followed the white and black through the long, narrow
+hall, where the fox's mask grinned at her from above the fanlight of the
+door, to the presence of the Vicar's wife.
+
+Mrs. Veale was a personable lady, with a high and narrow brow, and a
+penetrating eye that few in the village could evade if they had aught
+upon their conscience. It was said, indeed, that she was better than
+a curate to her husband, for she could pass where a man could not
+in delicacy have gone, and few were the maids, and fewer still the
+housewives, who had not benefited by her counsel. She fixed that eye
+benevolently upon Loveday now; the lady stately in her black silk, the
+locket containing the hair of her departed parent, one-time a canon of
+Exeter, lying upon her matronly bosom; the girl awkward in her homespun
+wrapper, her feet fearful of standing upon the flowered carpet.
+
+"Come in, Loveday," said Mrs. Veale kindly.
+
+Loveday advanced a step and dropped her curtsey, but not a word could
+she say to explain her visit.
+
+"What do you want to see me about?" asked Mrs. Veale briskly--for she
+was much busied in good works, and had no time to give over what was
+needful to each of them.
+
+"If you please, ma'am, I want work," said Loveday.
+
+Mrs. Veale looked her approval on hearing this most praiseworthy of the
+few sentences fit for use of the lower classes. Even when there is no
+work to be had such sentiments should be encouraged, and without them
+she never unloosed that charity which, when the supply of work failed,
+she exercised for the good of her parishioners' bodies and her own soul.
+
+Loveday felt the approval, and her heart took wings to the heaven of
+certain hope. Indeed, had Loveday but had the sense of what was fitting
+to tell the Vicar's lady, she might have attained what she wanted, but
+hope, like despair, ever made Loveday heady.
+
+"What work do you want?" asked Mrs. Veale. "I should have sent you out
+to service long ago, but I knew your aunt needed you at home. Has she
+sent you?"
+
+"No, ma'am," answered Loveday, "I came of myself. I want work I can do
+in my spare time, when Aunt Senath don't need me."
+
+So far all was well; the scheme sounded fit for encouragement by the
+Church, ever anxious for the welfare of even her humblest children.
+Mrs. Veale gave thought to her boots and knives ... no, the gardener's
+boy did them, and he was being prepared for confirmation and must not be
+unsettled. The mending ... that was done by the housemaid in her spare
+time, superintended by Mrs. Veale herself, and it would not be fair to
+the girl to leave her with idle hands for Satan's use when they could
+be employed instead upon sheets and stockings. The washing ... the
+housemaid's mother came to do that, glad to do so at a reasonable price
+for the opportunity of seeing how her daughter prospered from week to
+week under such care as Mrs. Veale bestowed on all the maids whom she
+trained. The spring cleaning ... a girl who did not know the ways of the
+house would make work instead of saving it. Yet Mrs. Veale felt, as a
+Christian woman, that it was her duty to encourage Loveday even at the
+cost of her own china. She resolved to do so.
+
+"Many people would not help you, Loveday," she said, "for it is
+very difficult to find work suddenly without upsetting the ways of a
+household, but you are my god-daughter, and so I have always taken a
+special interest in you. My spring-cleaning is not till May this year,
+as then the Vicar goes away to stay with his lordship, the Bishop of
+Exeter, and I will have you here under my own eye. You will not be of
+much assistance at first, but if you are willing and do as you are told
+you will be able to learn."
+
+At the mention of the month of May the wings of Loveday's heart folded
+once more and let her heart fall like a stone, then opened in a
+fluttering attempt to save it.
+
+"What--what time in May, ma'am?" she asked. Perhaps it would be the
+first week in that month and all would yet be well, since the Flora was
+held upon the eighth.
+
+At Mrs. Veale's next words the wings moulted away, and the bare quills
+left Loveday's heart prone and defenceless.
+
+"Not till the second week," said Mrs. Veale, "for the Vicar wishes to
+stay till the Flora, as we are permitting Miss Letitia to dance in the
+procession this year, and naturally he wishes to be there. The Vicar
+feels that these old innocent customs must not be allowed to fall into
+disuse."
+
+"Ah!" cried Loveday, "'tis no good to me!"
+
+At this shocking speech--imagine a village girl crying out that an offer
+of employment from the Vicarage is of no good to her!--Mrs. Veale drew
+such a breath of horror that the hair of the late Canon rose in its
+locket.
+
+"What on earth can you mean, Loveday Strick?"
+
+Thus Mrs. Veale, justly outraged. But Loveday, infatuated, rushed upon
+her fate--the fate of expulsion from those precincts.
+
+"Oh, ma'am, 'tis no manner of use to me unless I get work before the
+Flora. The Flora, ma'am" (repeating the beloved name as an invocation
+in time of trouble).
+
+"'Tis this way, I must get a white satin sash come Flora Day, 'cause
+if I do I'm to dance along with Miss Le Pettit in the procession.
+She's promised me that I should, and indeed I'll die if I don't. I will
+indeed. I've fixed my soul on it. I've got the gown and the stockings
+and the shoes, and all I want is the white riband, and I must someways
+make enough money to buy it come Flora Day. Oh, Mrs. Veale, ma'am, if
+you'll let me scrub and scour for you I'll do it on my knees so as only
+I can dance with her in the Flora."
+
+During this speech Mrs. Veale had risen to the full height and width of
+the black silk, feeling that thus only could she cope adequately with
+such a flood of ill-regulated and unseemly passions. She felt deeply
+wounded to think that any girl of her teaching should so betray it as
+this one did in every undisciplined word. She had not felt such a bitter
+stab of disappointment since a trusted and loved old nurse of the family
+had been found drinking the Vicar's port.
+
+"Loveday Strick," she said, "you are forgetting yourself."
+
+This was not exact, for Loveday had forgotten Mrs. Veale, but the rebuke
+drenched the impetuous girl like a cold wave. She stood defenceless.
+
+"I have not comprehended half this mad tale of yours," continued Mrs.
+Veale, "but I gather you have the presumption to say that Miss Le
+Pettit--_Miss Le Pettit_--has said you may dance with her at the
+Flora. Perhaps a young lady in her exalted position, and of what I
+believe are her modernising tendencies, may have formed such a project,
+but you should have known better than to have presumed on such an
+unsuitable condescension. As to a white satin sash, I can imagine
+nothing more unfitted for a girl in your unfortunate position, of which
+I am very sorry to be obliged to remind you. I had always hoped you
+would never forget it."
+
+"Ma'am ... you don't understand ..." began Loveday.
+
+"That is quite enough, Loveday. Let me hear no more on the subject. If
+you still want work, apart from this desire for unsuitable finery, since
+you are my god-daughter I will forget what has passed and still try you
+at the spring cleaning."
+
+Then it was that a horrid thing happened to Loveday.
+
+"What do I care for you and your spring-cleaning?" she stormed, "you and
+it can go up the chimney together for all I care. I only wanted you to
+give me work so as to get my satin sash, and I'll never come near you or
+church again as long as I do live. That I won't...." And Loveday turned
+and ran out of the front door, beneath the grinning fox, and not only
+ran out of the front door, but banged it behind her.
+
+Maids in the kitchen heard that unseemly sound, as they had heard,
+awe-struck, the raised voice, and Mrs. Veale felt she must read them a
+short but fitting lesson on the dire results of wanting things beyond
+one's station. The stout cook and the crisp housemaid soon knew of
+Loveday's presumptuous ambition, a knowledge they shared now with the
+Lear family and Cherry Cotton, and that soon was to spread to the
+accompaniment of many a titter about the twisted ways of the village.
+
+
+
+    CHAPTER VIII: IN WHICH LOVEDAY CONTINUES
+      HER QUEST AND ACHIEVES TENPENCE
+
+
+
+
+Chapter VIII
+
+IN WHICH LOVEDAY CONTINUES HER QUEST AND ACHIEVES TENPENCE
+
+
+Loveday ran down the path to the Vicarage gate so fast that the tears
+she had not been able to restrain blew off her cheeks as she went. Thus
+it came about that she did not see Miss Letitia until she had all but
+knocked her down in the urgency of her flight.
+
+Letitia Veale was no sylph such as Miss Le Pettit, however, and she
+caught hold of Loveday like the good-natured, rather romping, young lady
+that she was. Mrs. Veale always said of her that she would "fine down,"
+but persons less well disposed to her than her own mother, and who were
+the mothers of daughters themselves, said that Letitia Veale was a sad
+hoyden. She had ever a merry nod or word for Loveday, and dazed with
+anger as that ill-balanced maid was, Letitia's smile won her to
+comparative calm again, though it was a calm with which cunning
+intermingled. For:--
+
+"Oh, miss," cried Loveday, "I do beg your pardon ..." Then, seeing by
+the young lady's pleasant face that she had not offended by her
+clumsiness--"but I was so sick with misery I didn't rightly see where
+I was going."
+
+"Why, whatever is the matter, Loveday?" asked the lively girl.
+
+"Miss, I can't tell you, not now, but oh, miss, you've always been good
+to me, will you do something for me? I've never asked you for nothing
+before, have I?"
+
+"Why, no, you have not, Loveday. What is it?"
+
+"Have you such a thing as an old white sash you could let me have, miss?
+I just can't rightly tell you how I want it. It don't matter how old, so
+I can wash and iron it. Oh, miss...?"
+
+Letitia thought for a moment, then shook her brown ringlets.
+
+"I'm so sorry, Loveday, since you want it so much, but the only white
+sash I have is my new one for Flora Day. I have an old black one I could
+let you have though."
+
+"Black! Oh, Miss Letitia, that's no good. Couldn't you let me have the
+white one? I'll work and work to make the money to buy you another, and
+your mother'd get you a new one for the Flora."
+
+"Loveday, you know I couldn't. Mamma would insist on knowing what I'd
+done with it, you know she would."
+
+"You couldn't--you couldn't say you'd lost it, miss?" asked Loveday,
+even her tongue faltering at the suggestion.
+
+But though Letitia might be a romp, she was not a deceitful girl, and
+she respected her mother.
+
+"Oh, Loveday, how can you suggest such a thing? It would be telling
+mamma a lie. Besides, she would never believe me."
+
+At this moment Mrs. Veale, hearing voices, opened the door and looked
+out.
+
+"Letitia! Come in at once, and do not speak again to Loveday Strick."
+
+Letitia made round eyes at Loveday and sped up the path. Loveday pushed
+open the gate and went out.
+
+She went along the white dusty road, between the hedgerows of elder
+whose crumpled green leaves were unfolding in the sunny April weather,
+and her tears were the only rain that smiling country-side had seen for
+many a day, and they, to match the month, were already drying, for the
+fire burnt too high in Loveday for tears to hold her long. She fled
+along the road at first blindly, then more slowly as the exhaustion that
+follows on such rage as hers overcame her, and as she paused at last to
+sink against a mossy bank and rest, a horseman overtook her.
+
+It was Mr. Constantine on his white cob, looking a very dapper
+gentleman, but Loveday heeded him not, only raising her great black eyes
+unseeingly at the sound of the hoofs. Yet that so sombre gaze arrested
+Mr. Constantine, for it seemed to him an unwonted look in that land of
+buxom maids. He drew rein beside her.
+
+"Are you a gipsy, my girl?" he asked her kindly.
+
+Loveday shook her head.
+
+"Come, you have a tongue as well as that handsome pair of eyes, I
+suppose? No?"
+
+"My tongue's wisht, it brings ill-luck," said Loveday.
+
+Mr. Constantine studied her more attentively.
+
+"If all women thought that, there'd be more happy marriages," he said,
+slipping his hand into his pocket. "You've wisdom on your tongue,
+whether it's lucky or no. You say you're not a gipsy?"
+
+By this time it had dawned on Loveday what, in her absorption, she had
+not at first noticed, that she was speaking to one of the gentry, and
+to no less a one than Mr. Constantine, of Constantine. She stood up and
+dropped her curtsey out of habit, but sullenly. Oddly enough, it was the
+sullenness and not the curtsey that took Mr. Constantine's fancy.
+
+"No, sir," said Loveday. "I'm not a gipsy. I'm Loveday Strick."
+
+"Loveday ..." said the gentleman. "Loveday ... That's a beautiful name.
+No--it's more than a name, it's a phrase. A very beautiful phrase."
+
+Loveday raised her eyes at this strange talk. Mr. Constantine took his
+hand out of his pocket and held out a silver sixpence.
+
+"Gipsy or no, take that for your gipsy eyes, my dear," he said. Loveday
+stood hesitant. Even she, who had just begged of Miss Letitia, felt
+shame at taking a coin in charity. Yet she did so, for before her eyes
+she saw, not a silver sixpence, but the beginning of a length of white
+satin riband unrolling towards her through futurity. Perhaps, unknown
+to herself, her foreign blood prompted her to that sad Jesuitry which
+teaches all means are justifiable to the desired end. Perhaps she saw
+nothing beyond the beginning of her riband, but she held out her hand.
+Mr. Constantine dropped the sixpence into it, touched his cob with his
+heel and rode on. Loveday stayed in the hedge, the sixpence in her palm
+and hope once more in her soul. That hope was to faint and fall during
+the days that followed and saw her quest no nearer its fulfilment.
+
+For who wished to employ the strange, dark girl that had always been
+aloof and distrusted? And who could credit this violent conversion to
+the ordered ways of domesticity? Who had the money to squander on help
+from without, when, within, if there were not enough hands for the work,
+then the work itself, like an unanswered letter, slipped into that dead
+place of unremembered things where nothing matters any more? Last week's
+cleaning left undone adds nothing appreciable to this week's dirt that
+next week's exertions may not remedy as easily together as singly--or so
+argued the slovenly housewife, while for the industrious no hands save
+their own could have scrubbed and polished to their liking.
+
+Here and there Loveday earned a few odd pence, for a few hand's turns
+done when necessity or charity called in her vagrant services, but the
+Flora Dance of Bugletown was held upon the eighth of May, and when May
+Day dawned she had but tenpence for all her store--and the riband would
+cost as many shillings. Despair settled in her heart for the first time;
+often before it had knocked but been refused more than a glance within,
+but now her enfeebled arms could hold the door no longer, and that most
+dread of all visitors took possession of his own--for is not the human
+heart Despair's only habitation, without which he is but a homeless
+wanderer?
+
+
+
+    CHAPTER IX: IN WHICH LOVEDAY SEES ONE MAGPIE
+
+
+
+
+Chapter IX
+
+IN WHICH LOVEDAY SEES ONE MAGPIE
+
+
+Upon May Day, when boys blow the May horns and girls carry sprays of
+hawthorn and all good folk break their fast on bread and cream, Loveday
+had to go, as was her wont (and a mortifying one to her pride since
+Primrose's flouting of her), to Upper Farm. Twice before have we seen
+her on that errand--when she first was love-stricken for Miss Le Pettit
+in the farmhouse parlour, and again when on her search for work she saw
+the querulous young Mrs. Lear in the dim kitchen. Since then she had
+gone monotonously enough on her errand, avoiding speech even with the
+elder Mrs. Lear as much as possible, and seeing Primrose not at all--an
+easy matter, since the girl kept her room, or lay on the horsehair sofa,
+languidly stitching woollen roses on a handscreen, for all the world
+like the spoilt bride of some great gentleman.
+
+There seemed never any violence of thought or emotion at Upper Farm,
+even the sulks of Primrose were petty in nature, her jealousies made her
+voice shrill but did not take her by the throat with that intolerable
+aching stormier women know too well, while her graceless husband was
+irritated on the surface of his mind as some shallow pool is fretted
+over its bed of soft ooze, retaining no trace when the ripples have
+died. The elder Lear, as befits a good countryman content with his
+station in life, was too hard-worked for anything save a tired back on
+his entry at night, and the old wife too occupied with her Martha-like
+toil for searching into the sensibilities either of herself or of her
+daughter-in-law.
+
+Loveday, without reasoning on the matter, had yet ever been aware
+that this slight tide of feeling was all that ever lapped against the
+household at Upper Farm, therefore when she saw one magpie in the last
+field before the yard gate she accepted the sign for her own despairing
+heart alone. No young woman of education would have paid any attention
+to such a vulgar superstition, but Loveday had no learning other than
+what her elders had let fall in her hearing, both when she was supposed
+to be listening for her betterment, and when it was thought she would
+not understand the drift of their speech. And that a single magpie means
+sorrow was one of the few solid facts Loveday had gleaned by following
+the garnered sheaves of her elders.
+
+Now, as she stepped over the topmost ledge of the granite stile, there
+was a fanlike flutter of black and white in her very face, and she stood
+a moment watching the ill-omened bird wheel and dip behind the thick
+blossom of the hawthorn hedge.
+
+"There goes my white riband," thought the ignorant girl, and yet even
+with the quick fear there welled a fresh and fierce determination in her
+undisciplined heart.
+
+Her egotism, if not her superstition, was reproved when she reached
+the farmhouse, and old Madgy, the midwife, coming to the pump for more
+water, met her with news of what had happened not half an hour earlier.
+The shallow creek of Upper Farm had been invaded by a violent and dark
+tide, on whose ebb two lives had been borne away. Loveday, staring up
+at Primrose's room, saw the withered hand of old Mrs. Lear draw the
+curtains across the window behind which lay a dead mother and a babe
+that had never lived.
+
+
+
+    CHAPTER X: IN WHICH LOVEDAY DOES NOT
+      ATTEND A FUNERAL
+
+
+
+
+Chapter X
+
+IN WHICH LOVEDAY DOES NOT ATTEND A FUNERAL
+
+
+"A couple of months too soon her pains took her," said Madgy; "she has
+been fretting and wisht these weeks past, with her husband always after
+some young faggot up country and herself sick with envy at the girls
+that could still dance with the chaps. She had no woman's heart in her,
+poor soul, to carry her woman's burden. Ah! many's the strange things
+in women I see at my trade," and Madgy wrung out a cloth and mumbled to
+herself--her old mouth folded inwards, as though she perpetually turned
+all the secrets that she knew over and over within it.
+
+"Your mother died because she'd set her heart on death," she added, to
+Loveday, "but this one died because she dedn' know how to catch hold on
+life. She'd a weak hand on everything she touched, because she never
+wanted nawthen enough."
+
+"Wanting's not getting, however hard you want," said Loveday.
+
+"Ah! isn't it? It's getting, though you may have sorrow packed along wi'
+it. Out of my way, maid; I must be busy overstairs." And old Madgy went
+to ply the second part of her trade, for she washed the dead as well as
+the newly-born; she laid coins on the eyes of the old and flannels on
+the limbs of the young with the same smile between her rheumy lids and
+on her folded mouth.
+
+Loveday stayed awhile and helped Mrs. Lear, by milking the puzzled,
+lowing cows and pouring the milk into the pans, but all the time they
+worked the dead girl's name was never mentioned between them. It was
+as though Loveday were making amends for the ill words that had been
+between them by refraining her tongue from everything but her first
+few accents of pity and amaze.
+
+That pity was shared by all the neighbourhood, gentle and simple.
+Time was, just before her marriage, when Primrose was accounted a
+foolish and sinful maid enough, but married she had been, and into a
+highly-respected family, for the Lears' graves had lain in the next best
+position to those of the gentry for many generations, and, for their
+sakes more than for hers, tributes flowed in to the funeral.
+
+This poor, pale Primrose, who had died so young, though not unmarried,
+was laid to rest, with babe on arm, only a few days before the Flora
+dance, and her friend Cherry, who would none the less foot it gaily on
+that occasion, attended, with a length of black crape round her buxom
+waist and her eyes swollen by the easy tears of an easy nature.
+
+Loveday was not present, for, friendly as she had ever been with Mrs.
+Lear, the dead girl's petulance lay between them now; memory of it
+become to Loveday a pang of pity, and to Mrs. Lear a sacred duty.
+Nevertheless, an odd notion, such as Loveday was apt to take, made her
+feel that some tie, slight, but persistent, between Primrose and herself
+drew her, at least, to give the last look possible from behind the hedge
+screening the road.
+
+There, hidden as a bird, she saw how highly the world had thought of the
+girl to whom she had dared feel a flashing sense of superiority; she saw
+how true respectability is to be admired. For never at any funeral, save
+that of actual gentry, had there been seen so many of those elegant
+floral tokens of esteem which reflect, perhaps, even more honour upon
+those who bestow them than upon the dead who receive them. Primrose may
+have been a poor creature enough, but the Lears had always held their
+heads high among their fellows, without ever trying to push above their
+station. No unseemly ambitions, no fantastic desires, had ever drawn
+just censure upon Upper Farm, and wreaths and crosses decked with
+tasteful streamers bore witness to this fact. There was actually an
+exquisite white wreath from Miss Le Pettit of Ignores, laid proudly upon
+the humbler greener offerings of farmers and fisher folk, overpowering
+with its elegance even an artificial wreath under glass which came from
+the Bugletown corn-chandler, who was Mr. Lear's chief customer.
+
+Loveday, watching, knew suddenly that, when her time came, she would be
+an alien in death, as she was in life; that never for her would these
+costly tokens of respect be gathered. Yet, instead of this thought
+humbling her, instead of it teaching her the lesson that only by
+striving to do her duty in the lowly course set for her could she attain
+any measure of regard, it aroused in her once more, this time with an
+even fiercer intensity, her ardent desire to be as different from these
+good folk as possible. Miss Le Pettit had thought her different, had
+admired that difference, and to Miss Le Pettit, as supreme arbiter, her
+heart turned now. There was still that doorway to her future whose latch
+the fair Flora's hand could lift, and this door, ajar for her, would
+open wide if she were but fitly garbed to pass across its threshold.
+
+Watching the funeral procession, which should have suggested such far
+other thoughts even to her undisciplined soul, Loveday was taken only
+by an idea so rash and impious that it alarmed even herself. It was the
+penalty of her dark and ardent blood that fear, like despair, added to
+the force of her desires. That idea, which she should have driven from
+her as a serpent, she nourished in her bosom as though it were a dove.
+
+
+
+    CHAPTER XI: IN WHICH LOVEDAY ATTENDS
+      THE FLORA
+
+
+
+
+Chapter XI
+
+IN WHICH LOVEDAY ATTENDS THE FLORA
+
+
+The eighth of May dawned fair and clear, and from early morning the
+young men and maidservants of Bugletown, who had Spent the past week
+cleaning and polishing the houses, streamed out into the country to
+pluck green branches for their further adornment. Already the thought of
+the dance was in their heads, and its tripping in their feet, and they
+sang through the lanes.
+
+They waylaid strangers coming into Bugletown and drew contributions
+of silver from them, according to custom, and all they did went to a
+gay measure. By the time the gentry, both of the place itself and of
+outlying regions, were assembled for the dance every house in the main
+streets of the grey little old town was decked with boughs, its front
+and back doors opened wide for the dancers, who at the Flora always
+danced through every house set hospitably open for their passage.
+
+The band, that all day long plays but the one tune, hour after hour,
+was gathered together by noon, sleek and not yet heated, their trumpets
+shining in the sun, their fiddles glossy as their well-oiled hair, their
+big drum round as the portly figure of the bandmaster himself. Already,
+in many a bedchamber, young women had twirled this way and that before
+the mirror, studying the set of taffetas and tarletan, or young men
+had polished their high beavers anxiously against the sleeves of their
+brightest broadcloth frock coats. In speckless kitchens housewives
+prepared their cakes and cream, and the masters saw to the drawing of
+the cider, and, perhaps, tasted it, to make sure that it had not soured
+overnight. And in each heart different words were running to the Flora
+Day tune, words that suited with each heart's measure. The children in
+the streets sang aloud the doggerel words that long custom has fastened
+upon the tune:--
+
+  _"John the beau was walking home,_
+  _When he met with Sally Dover,_
+  _He kissed her once, he kissed her twice,_
+  _And he kissed her three times over!"_
+
+
+Thus the heedless children with their lips, but their little hearts
+probably beat to the even simpler words: "_I'm having a holiday!
+Having a holiday!_"
+
+More staidly, and almost unheard by their time-muffled ears, a voice,
+nevertheless, sang to the housewives, telling each her copper and silver
+was the brightest in the town, and adding, perhaps, little gusts of
+memory that half hurt, half pleased, of how nimbly she had danced at the
+Flora in years gone by, and how fair she had looked....
+
+The staid married men smiled to themselves, and would not have
+acknowledged that within them something seemed to chuckle: "_I'm not
+so old, after all; I'm not so old, after all_...."
+
+Frankly, the hearts of the young men nudged hopefully against their
+ribs, calling out: "_I'm going to dance with Her! I'm going to dance
+with Her! And perhaps ... for I always was lucky! I always was
+lucky_!"
+
+But who shall say what lilting voice, timid-bold and sly-sincere,
+whispered to the maidens, beating out its syllables against the new
+stays so tightly laced for the occasion? Perhaps the words of the
+children's doggerel, with a name or so altered, met the moment without
+need of further change....
+
+And Loveday's heart, as she walked the three miles from the fishing
+village to Bugletown, sang to her of joy and hope and triumph.
+
+When she reached the Market House, she found the band ready to strike up
+the famous tune, while the mayor, his chain of office about his neck,
+stood conversing with the ladies and gentlemen who were to lead the
+dance. For, as is but fitting, the couples at the Flora follow each
+other according to their social precedence, though all may join who
+choose, providing only that the females, be they gentry or tradespeople,
+wear white, and the men their best broadcloth and Sunday hats.
+
+Of all who had gathered for the dance there was none more highly placed
+than Miss Flora Le Pettit, and none as fair to see. She stood supreme in
+the sunshine and her beauty, her white muslin robes swelling round her
+like the petals of some full-blown rose, her white sash streaming over
+them, the white ribands that decked her hat of fine Dunstable straw
+flowing down to her shoulders and mingling with her auburn curls. Even
+the countless tiny bows that adorned her dress (as though they were a
+cloud of butterflies drawn to alight upon it by its freshness) were of
+white satin. Everything about her save her little sandalled feet danced
+already--the brim of the wide hat that waved above her dancing eyes, the
+flounces and floating ends of her attire which the soft breeze stirred,
+the corners of her smiling mouth, the dimple which came and went behind
+the curls that nodded by her cheek. What vision can have been fairer
+than that presented by Flora Le Pettit upon Flora Day? "None, none,
+none," thought eager Loveday, as she edged through the crowd and caught
+sight of her divinity. None ... and yet that sight caused Loveday a
+strange clutching in her breast.
+
+For she, too, had felt fair when she had gazed in her tiny mirror; the
+yellowed linen gown had gleamed pure and white, her young breast had
+swelled above the waist that looked so slim, and that was so finely
+girt.... Yet, now, something of splendour about Miss Le Pettit that
+she could not attain dimmed all herself and, with herself, her joy.
+Her face, already flushed by her walk, burned deeper still with shame.
+Yet the desire that three weeks of striving had swollen to a passion
+urged her forward, and, fingering the lovely thing about her waist to
+gain courage, she broke through the last ring of staring people and
+stood in front of Miss Le Pettit.
+
+The heiress of Ignores had not yet caught sight of her, being engaged in
+laughing conversation with several admiring gentlemen, but something of
+an almost painful intensity in the dark gaze of the village girl drew
+her face to meet it. The black eyes, so full of an extravagant passion,
+met the careless glance of the blue orbs that knew not even the passing
+shadow of such a thing.
+
+"Oh," stammered Loveday, the set speech she had been conning all the way
+to Bugletown dying upon her lips, "Oh, Miss Flora, I'm come. I've got my
+white sash and I'm come...."
+
+Over Flora's face passed a look of bewilderment, while Loveday, her
+moment of self-criticism gone, stood trembling with eager happiness.
+Then Miss Le Pettit spoke, lightly and kindly.
+
+"Surely I have seen you before, my girl?" she asked. And, turning to the
+little group of her friends, added:
+
+"She has such a striking air, 'twould be difficult to forget her."
+
+Yet, till this moment, Miss Le Pettit had forgotten everything save that
+air. Forgotten her careless suggestion, her prettily given promise, her
+praise. Forgotten even the pleasant glow such evident worship as this
+village girl's had stirred in her. She had had so much worship since!
+Who can blame her for not remembering some idle words her artistic
+perceptions had prompted three weeks earlier? It had been a fantastic
+suggestion at best, as a girl of sense would have known, treasuring it
+merely for its kindly intention. After all, Miss Le Pettit would be far
+more conspicuous dancing with a village maiden at the Flora than with a
+gentleman suited to her in rank and estate. Since that day at Upper Farm
+she had met just such a gentleman--he with the glossy whiskers and
+handsome form who was nearest to her now, smiling at this little
+encounter.
+
+"Why, child," said Flora to Loveday, "you look very nice, I am sure.
+But your place should be much further down the procession." Then, more
+sharply: "Why do you stare so, girl?"
+
+Loveday stood as one stricken, her cheek now as white as the sash she
+was still holding in her shaking hands.
+
+
+
+    CHAPTER XII: IN WHICH LOVEDAY DANCES
+
+
+
+
+Chapter XII
+
+IN WHICH LOVEDAY DANCES
+
+
+The Mayor had stepped forward, fearing lest this young person might be
+annoying the heiress; the bandsmen had turned from the final survey of
+their instruments to gaze; here and there various people who recognised
+Loveday were pressing through the crowd, eager to see and hear.
+Only Miss Le Pettit had drawn back against the protecting arm of the
+gentleman who was to be her partner. Loveday still stayed, her riband
+in her hands.
+
+There came comments from the crowd.
+
+"Loveday Strick! She'm mad! This month past she'm been like a crazy
+thing about the Flora!"
+
+"I thought all the time she must be mad to have imagined Miss Le Pettit
+meant to dance along wi' she!"
+
+"What's the maid got on? I can't rightly see."
+
+"Old white, but a brave new sash."
+
+At that Loveday raised her head and looked about her. A shrill voice
+from the crowd answered the last speaker.
+
+"A new sash; Ted'n possible. Us have all been laughing because she
+couldn' come by one nohow." And Cherry Cotton elbowed her way through
+the ring of curious folk to where Loveday stood. Suddenly Cherry gave a
+scream, and pointed an accusing finger at Loveday.
+
+"Ah, a new sash, sure enough.... Ask her where she got 'en. Ask her, I
+say."
+
+Loveday answered nothing, only turned her head a little to stare at
+Cherry.
+
+"You ask her where she took it from, Miss! You should know, seeing you
+gave it!"
+
+"I gave it to her? Nonsense."
+
+"Not to her, but to poor Primrose Lear. 'Tes the riband that tied up
+your wreath. She's robbed the dead. Loveday Strick's robbed the dead."
+
+Then indeed, after a moment's stupefaction following on the horrid
+revelation, a murmur of indignation ran from mouth to mouth.
+
+"She's robbed the dead!"
+
+"My soul! To rob the living's stealing, but to rob the dead's a profane
+thing."
+
+"'Tisn't man as can judge her, 'tis only God Almighty!" cried an old
+minister, aghast.
+
+"Look at the maid, how she stands.... Her own conscience judges her,
+I should say!"
+
+"She's no word to excuse herself, simmingly."
+
+"That's because she do know nothing can excuse what she's done...."
+
+And, indeed, Loveday stood without speech. Perhaps in all that buzz of
+murmuring she heard the voice of her own conscience at last, for she
+made no effort to defend herself, or, perhaps, even at that hour, she
+heard nothing but the dread whisper of defeat. She stood before Flora
+Le Pettit like a wilted rose whose petals hang limply, about to fall,
+fronting a bloom that spreads its glowing leaves in the full flush of
+noon. The one girl was triumphant in her beauty and her unassailable
+position, every flounce out-curved in freshness; the other drooped at
+brow and hem, her slender neck downbent, her sash-ends pendant as broken
+tendrils after rain upon her heavily hanging skirts.
+
+All she was heard to murmur, and that very low, was a halting sentence
+about her white sash: "But you said--you said you'd dance with me if
+I got my sash ..." or some such words, but only Miss Le Pettit caught
+all the muttered syllables, and she never spoke of them, save with a
+petulant reluctance to Mr. Constantine when he questioned her
+afterwards.
+
+"Girl," said the Mayor sharply, "is it true?'
+
+"Yes," said Loveday.
+
+"True!" cried Cherry, "I know 'tes true. I remember noticing that green
+mark on the riband when the wreath was laid on the grave. Ah, she'm a
+wicked piece, she is. She tormented my poor Primrose in life and she's
+robbed her in death. You aren't safe in your grave from she."
+
+Everyone was speaking against Loveday in rightful indignation by now,
+and the good wives expressed the opinion that she should be well
+whipped. Loveday turned suddenly to Miss Le Pettit. There were those
+there--notably Mr. Constantine, that observant philosopher--who said
+afterwards she seemed for one instant to be going to break into
+impassioned speech. She did half hold out her hands. The ends of the
+white sash, disregarded, fluttered from them as she did so. But Miss
+Le Pettit, shocked in all her sensibilities by this vulgar scene,
+turned away.
+
+"Surely," said she, "there has been enough time wasted already. Can we
+not begin the dance, Mr. Mayor?"
+
+At a sign from the Mayor the band struck up into the tune that was to
+echo all day through every head and, perhaps, afterwards, through a few
+kindly hearts.
+
+[Illustration: Music]
+
+played the band, and, still whispering together with excitement, the
+dancers fell into place.
+
+  "_John the beau was walking home_,
+  _When he met with Sally Dover_,
+  _He kissed her once, he kissed her twice_,
+  _And he kissed her three times over_."
+
+
+It seemed to Loveday that the whole world was dancing. The faces of the
+crowd, the bobbing ringlets, swelling skirts, the bright eyes and bright
+instruments, the houses that peered at her with their polished panes,
+all danced in a mad haze of mingled light and blackness. Sun, moon and
+stars joined in, heads and feet whirled so madly that none could have
+said which was upper-most. Creation was a-dancing, and she alone stood
+to be mocked at in a reeling world. This was the merry measure she had
+striven to join! She must have been mad indeed!
+
+Turning blindly, she ran through the crowd that gave at her approach,
+and all day the dancing went on without her. The flutter of her
+blasphemous sash did not profane the sunlight in the streets of
+Bugletown, nor pollute with its passing the houses of the good wives.
+Like a swallow's wing, it had but flashed across the ordered ways and
+was gone.
+
+Yet Loveday's ambition was, after all, fulfilled that day. For she
+danced--and danced a measure she could not have trod without the white
+satin sash.... Good folk in Bugletown footed it down the cobbled
+streets, and through paved kitchens; Loveday danced a finer step on
+insubstantial ether, into realms more vast. Were those realms dark for
+her, thus violated by her enforced entry of them? Who can say, save
+those folk of Bugletown who knew that to her first crime she had added
+a second even greater?
+
+They found her next day in the wood; the wind had risen, and blew
+against her skirts, so that her feet moved gently as though yet tracing
+their phantom paces upon the airy floors. Her head, like a snapped lily,
+lay forwards and a little to one side, so that her pale cheek rested
+against the taut white satin of the riband from which she hung. The wind
+blew the languid meshes of her hair softly, kissing her once, kissing
+her twice, and kissing her three times over.
+
+
+
+    EPILOGUE
+
+
+
+
+Epilogue
+
+
+Such is the shocking tale of Loveday Strick, a girl who gave her life
+for a piece of finery. Is it not small wonder that Miss Le Pettit
+lamented the sad lack of proportion in the affair?
+
+All for a length of white satin riband....
+
+And yet, there were two people who thought a little differently from the
+rest of Loveday's world on the subject. They were an odd couple to think
+alike in anything--it seemed as though even after her death Loveday's
+violent unsuitability must persist as a legacy. They were the refined
+and polished Mr. Constantine and old Madgy the midwife, a person whom,
+naturally, he had never met till the day after the Flora, when his
+philosophic curiosity drew him to search for the lost girl in company
+with a band of villagers. It was Madgy who led them to the wood, sure
+that there was what they sought. Mr. Constantine and Madgy stood looking
+at the pale girl when she had been laid upon last year's leaves at their
+feet. One of the men would have taken the riband from her, with some
+vague notion of returning it, though whether to the graveyard or to the
+Manor he could not have told. Mr. Constantine and Madgy put out each a
+hand to check him.
+
+"Leave it her," said Mr. Constantine curtly.
+
+"Ay," answered Madgy, speaking freely as was her wont, for she was,
+alas, no respecter of persons, "it was more than a white riband to the
+maid, for all that the fools say."
+
+Mr. Constantine nodded. He too saw in that length of satin, now soiled
+and crumpled, more than a white riband. He saw passion in it--passion
+of hope, of ambition, of love, of adoration, of despair. Not a piece
+of finery had ended Loveday's stormy course, but a symbol of life
+itself, with more in its stained warp and woof than many lives hold
+in three-score years and ten. Like religion, this riband held every
+experience. Primrose had known mating and childbearing, anxiety and
+content and jealousy and death; Mr. Constantine had, in his wandering
+life of the gentleman of leisure, experienced his moments of keen
+enjoyment, his tender and romantic interludes; Miss Le Pettit would know
+decorous wooing, prosperity, pain of giving birth as she duly presented
+her husband with an heir, sorrow as she saw her chestnut curls greying
+and her eye gathering the puckers of advancing years around its fading
+blue. Yet none of these would know as much as Loveday had known in the
+short life they all thought so wasted and so incomplete, would feel as
+much as she had felt--the whole pageant of passion symbolised by this
+insensate strip of satin. She alone had known ecstasy in her brief mad
+dance across their sylvan stage.
+
+Madgy folded the riband across the half-open eyes and wound the ends
+about the discoloured throat. And thus it was when Loveday was buried in
+unconsecrated ground, but with the thing she had desired most in life,
+striven for, sinned for, and finally attained, still with her. Of whom,
+after all, could a richer epitaph be written?
+
+
+THE END.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of Project Gutenberg's The White Riband, by Fryniwyd Tennyson Jesse
+
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+<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Transitional//EN"
+    "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-transitional.dtd">
+<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml">
+<head>
+<meta http-equiv="Content-Type"
+    content="text/html; charset=iso-8859-1" />
+<meta content="pg2html (binary v0.18a)" name="generator" />
+<title>The Project Gutenberg eBook of
+    The White Riband,
+    by F. Tennyson Jesse
+</title>
+<style type="text/css">
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+    hr  { width: 50%; }
+    hr.full { width: 100%; }
+    .foot { margin-left: 10%; margin-right: 10%; text-align: justify; text-indent: -3em; font-size: 85%; }
+    .poem { margin-left: 10%; margin-right: 10%; margin-bottom: 1em; text-align: left; }
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+    .poem p     { margin: 0; padding-left: 3em; text-indent: -3em; }
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+    .poem p.i6  { margin-left: 6em; }
+    .quote { margin-left: 6%; margin-right: 6%; text-indent: 0em; font-size: 90%; }
+    .toc  { margin: 0 20% 1em 20%; font-size: 85%; text-indent: -2em;}
+    .prechapter { margin: 15% 4em 4em 15%; border: thin dotted; border-color: grey; padding: 1em 2em 1em 2em; text-indent: -1em; }
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+</head>
+<body>
+
+
+<pre>
+
+The Project Gutenberg EBook of The White Riband, by Fryniwyd Tennyson Jesse
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: The White Riband
+       A Young Female's Folly
+
+Author: Fryniwyd Tennyson Jesse
+
+Release Date: November 22, 2004 [EBook #14119]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE WHITE RIBAND ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Juliet Sutherland, David Garcia and the PG Online
+Distributed Proofreading Team.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+</pre>
+
+
+<center>
+<img src="images/fcover.jpg" width="100%"
+alt="Front Cover" />
+</center>
+
+<div style="height: 6em;"><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /></div>
+
+<h1>
+    THE WHITE RIBAND
+</h1>
+<hr />
+<h3>
+F. TENNYSON JESSE
+</h3>
+
+<center>
+    <i>By the Same Author</i>
+</center>
+<hr />
+
+<center>
+THE MILKY WAY<br />
+BEGGARS ON HORSEBACK<br />
+SECRET BREAD<br />
+THE SWORD OF DEBORAH<br />
+THE HAPPY BRIDE<br />
+</center>
+
+<hr />
+
+<center>
+<img src="images/frontis.jpg" width="100%"
+alt="Frontispiece" />
+</center>
+
+<a name="h2H_4_0002" id="h2H_4_0002"><!-- H2 anchor --></a>
+
+<div style="height: 4em;"><br /><br /><br /><br /></div>
+
+<h1>
+    THE WHITE RIBAND
+</h1>
+<h3>
+    OR
+</h3>
+<h2>
+A YOUNG FEMALE'S FOLLY
+</h2>
+<center><b>
+BY
+</b></center>
+<center><b>
+F. TENNYSON JESSE
+</b></center>
+
+<center><small>
+NEW YORK
+<br />
+GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY
+<br />
+<i>1921</i>
+<br />
+<br />
+PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
+</small></center>
+<hr />
+<div style="height: 4em;"><br /><br /><br /><br /></div>
+<center>
+TO STELLA,
+<br />
+A YOUNG FEMALE,
+<br />
+I DEDICATE THIS TALE,
+</center>
+<center>
+In the hope that it will encourage her to persevere in that indifference
+to personal adornment for which she is conspicuous at present
+</center>
+<center>
+SHOULD IT FAIL IN THIS HIGH ENDEAVOUR,
+<br />
+NEVERTHELESS
+<br />
+THIS BOOK IS HERS IN ALL SISTERLY LOVE
+</center>
+<hr />
+
+<div style="height: 4em;"><br /><br /><br /><br /></div>
+
+<h2>
+    CONTENTS
+</h2>
+
+<p class="toc"><a href="#h2H_PROL">PROLOGUE</a></p>
+<p class="toc"><a href="#h2HCH0002">I</a> IN WHICH THE READER IS TAKEN BACK A FEW WEEKS IN POINT OF TIME, AND DOWN SEVERAL STEPS IN THE SOCIAL SCALE</p>
+<p class="toc"><a href="#h2HCH0003">II</a> IN WHICH THE ONION-SELLER'S DAUGHTER FOR THE FIRST TIME FEELS AS A WOMAN</p>
+<p class="toc"><a href="#h2HCH0004">III</a> IN WHICH SHE FOR THE FIRST TIME FEELS AS A GIRL</p>
+<p class="toc"><a href="#h2HCH0005">IV</a> IN WHICH THE ONION-SELLER'S DAUGHTER FEELS HERSELF A GODDESS</p>
+<p class="toc"><a href="#h2HCH0006">V</a> IN WHICH LOVEDAY ESSAYS THE WHITE GOWN</p>
+<p class="toc"><a href="#h2HCH0007">VI</a> IN WHICH LOVEDAY ESSAYS TO OBTAIN THE WHITE SATIN RIBAND</p>
+<p class="toc"><a href="#h2HCH0008">VII</a> IN WHICH LOVEDAY STILL ESSAYS TO OBTAIN THE WHITE SATIN RIBAND</p>
+<p class="toc"><a href="#h2HCH0009">VIII</a> IN WHICH LOVEDAY CONTINUES HER QUEST AND ACHIEVES TENPENCE</p>
+<p class="toc"><a href="#h2HCH0010">IX</a> IN WHICH LOVEDAY SETS ONE MAGPIE</p>
+<p class="toc"><a href="#h2HCH0011">X</a> IN WHICH LOVEDAY DOES NOT ATTEND A FUNERAL</p>
+<p class="toc"><a href="#h2HCH0012">XI</a> IN WHICH LOVEDAY ATTENDS THE FLORA</p>
+<p class="toc"><a href="#h2HCH0013">XII</a> IN WHICH LOVEDAY DANCES</p>
+<p class="toc"><a href="#h2H_EPIL">EPILOGUE</a></p>
+<hr />
+
+<a name="h2H_PROL" id="h2H_PROL"><!-- H2 anchor --></a>
+
+<p class="prechapter">
+    <b>PROLOGUE</b>
+</p>
+
+
+<h2>
+    THE WHITE RIBAND
+</h2>
+<center>
+    OR
+</center>
+<h3>
+A YOUNG FEMALE'S FOLLY
+</h3>
+
+<h2>
+    Prologue
+</h2>
+<p>
+That was how they spoke of her story in the duchy's drawing-rooms;
+for what had Loveday been, at the most charitable count, but a young
+female&mdash;less humanly speaking, even a young person? And what was the
+spring of her mad crimes but folly, mere weak, feminine folly? Even
+an improper motive&mdash;one of those over-powering passions one reads
+about rather surreptitiously in the delightful works of that dear,
+naughty, departed Lord Byron&mdash;would have been somehow more ...
+more ... satisfactory. One could only whisper such a sentiment, but
+it stirred in many a feminine breast when Loveday's story set the
+ripples of reprobation circling some twenty miles, till the incomparably
+bigger pebble of the Prince of Wales' nuptials made correspondingly
+greater waves, even though they took a month or so to spread all its
+fascinating details so far from the Metropolis. What, after all, as a
+topic of conversation, was Loveday's ill-gotten gaud compared with the
+thrill of the new Alexandra jacket with its pegtop sleeves? One should
+hold a right proportion in all things.
+</p>
+<p>
+Thus the duchy's drawing-rooms. In the back parlours of the little
+country-town shops, where an aristocracy as rigid in its own
+respectable&mdash;and respectful&mdash;way, held its courts of justice, Loveday's
+story was referred to with a slight difference. She had become a "young
+besom," and her crime was what you might have expected from the bye-blow
+of an ear-ringed foreigner, who bowed down to idols instead of the laws
+of God and the British Constitution.
+</p>
+<p>
+In her own little seaport and the farms of the countryside, Loveday
+descended lower still&mdash;she became a "faggot." Thus from one born to
+wield a broom we see how she descended, with the declination in scale of
+the chatterboxes, to the broom itself, and from that to the rough
+material for it. Which things are a parable, could one but fit the moral
+to them as neatly as did everyone who discussed Loveday, in whatever
+terms, fit the due warning on to her tale.
+</p>
+<p>
+And this moral, for all who ran, but more particularly for those who
+danced, to read, was as follows:&mdash;
+</p>
+<p>
+It all came of wanting things above your station.
+</p>
+<p>
+"How simply does your sex dispose of the problems of life, ma'am,"
+replied Mr. Constantine to Miss Flora Le Pettit, the heiress of Ignores
+Manor, when she supplied him with this moral as an epitaph oh the
+affair. Miss Le Pettit smiled on him amiably, but arched her already
+springing brows as well, for though everyone knew Mr. Constantine was
+reputed clever, there were the gravest doubts about his orthodoxy.
+</p>
+<p>
+"Problems of life, Mr. Constantine?" she demanded. "Surely over-fine
+words to apply to the crazy acts of a village girl deranged in her
+intellects." She would have added: "And a nameless one at that," if
+she had not remembered (what, in truth, she was never in danger of
+forgetting) that she was a lady talking to a gentleman.
+</p>
+<p>
+"A village girl is as capable of passion as you or I," replied he, and
+had he not remembered (what he was somewhat apt to forget) that he was a
+gentleman talking to a lady, he would have added: "And a great deal more
+so than you." Miss Le Pettit, who considered that he <i>had</i> forgotten
+it, gave the little movement known as "bridling," which reared her
+ringletted head a trifle higher on her white shoulders, then decided to
+front the obnoxious word bravely as a woman of the world. She had met
+with it chiefly in books where it was used solely to denote anger.
+There had been, for instance, the tale of "Henry: or, the Fatal Effect
+of Passion." ... Henry had slain a school-fellow in his rage, and had
+been duly hanged; yet something told Miss Le Pettit that was not how
+Mr. Constantine was using the word.... She rose to it splendidly.
+</p>
+<p>
+"Passion ... and pray where do you find such a thing in this story of
+the vanity of a child of fifteen?"
+</p>
+<p>
+"In the usual place, ma'am," said Mr. Constantine (now entirely
+forgetting that which Miss Le Pettit ever remembered)&mdash;"in her soul.
+Did you think it merely a thing of the body? The body may be the
+objective of passion, but the quality itself is what is meant by the
+word. It is generated in the soul and may pour itself into strange
+vessels."
+</p>
+<p>
+"Or even shower its ardours upon a piece of white riband?" cried Miss Le
+Pettit, with a titter.
+</p>
+<p>
+"Shall we say upon Beauty itself?" corrected Mr. Constantine more
+gravely than he had yet spoken. Then, with a smile, he elaborated:
+"For as passion is in the soul, so is beauty in the heart, and hearts
+have differing vision. That was Loveday's desire. Translate this paltry
+thing into terms of other ambitions&mdash;and where is any one of us then?
+Unless, indeed, we are so bloodless, so without imagination, that we
+cannot but be content with our lot just as it is."
+</p>
+<p>
+Miss Le Pettit, who had never seen reason for anything but contentment,
+and looked upon it as a Christian virtue, demurred with:&mdash;
+</p>
+<p>
+"The whole affair is so ridiculously out of proportion."
+</p>
+<p>
+Mr. Constantine glanced, with admiration in his gallant though elderly
+eye, over Miss Le Pettit's figure as she lay back in the gilt chair;
+glanced from her high, polished forehead, round which the smooth
+chestnut hair showed as gleaming, from her parted red lips and bare,
+sloping shoulders to her tiny waist and the outward spring beneath it of
+the clouded tulle that lapped in a dozen baby waves over the globe of
+her swelling crinoline.
+</p>
+<p>
+"When I was a young man," he said, "the ladies went about in little
+robes, such as you would not wear nowadays as a shift. We thought them
+pretty then, and thought none the worse of them because they made the
+women look more or less as God saw fit to make 'em. Yet now we think you
+equally lovely as you float about the world like monstrous beautiful
+bubbles, so that a man must adore at a distance and only guess at
+Paradise in a gust of wind.... Yet to the next generation, believe me or
+not as you like, your garb will seem too preposterous to be true, and a
+generation later Time will pay you the unkindest cut of all&mdash;you will be
+picturesque, and your grand-daughters will revive you&mdash;for fancy dress.
+Proportion, ma'am, is nothing in the world but fashion."
+</p>
+<p>
+"Now we are talking about something I know more about than you, Mr.
+Constantine," cried Miss Le Pettit archly, "and I, for one, do not
+believe that the present style of dress can ever go completely out; it
+is too becoming. We shall have novelties, of course, but the idea will
+remain the same. And, talking of novelties, if you don't scorn such
+things, I will tell you a great secret. I am the first person to procure
+one of the new jackets&mdash;like the Princess of Wales wears, you know.
+You must have heard about them. Alexandra jackets they're called. Isn't
+that pretty? And they're just as pretty as she is. The sleeve...."
+</p>
+<p>
+And thus the great description flowed on, with a bevy of entranced
+girls, who had caught the raised tone, fluttering round in excitement
+like a crowd of butterflies round a blossom of extra sweetness.
+</p>
+<p>
+From which it will be seen that a month had already passed since Loveday
+had been the excitement of society, and that this conversation between
+the eccentric Mr. Constantine and the charming Miss Le Pettit was almost
+the last flickering of interest in her fate. The life of one moon had
+been enough to see the waxing and waning of what Mr. Constantine had
+surprisingly called her passion.
+</p>
+<p>
+Yet Miss Le Pettit, eager, nay, even anxious, as she had been to
+lead the gentleman away from the topic, reverted to it as though by
+a curious fascination, when he had taken his leave. To tell the truth,
+her conscience had some slight cause to make her uneasy on this very
+subject of the violent Loveday. The thing was ridiculous, of course ...
+she, Miss Le Pettit, could not conceivably have been even remotely to
+blame for such a fantastical happening, and yet that slight pricking
+remained....
+</p>
+<p>
+"An odd word to have used," she commented, in recounting the
+conversation she had had with Mr. Constantine to her eager friends, "a
+very odd word, indeed, for by it, apparently, he did not mean an access
+of anger such as the word signifies in all the books I have read...."
+</p>
+<p>
+"You mean in the books that you are <i>supposed</i> to have read,
+Flora," interrupted one of the young ladies, a flighty girl, whose
+tongue often outran her discretion. "I have come across it meaning
+something quite different in books like&mdash;well, you know the sort of
+books I mean."
+</p>
+<p>
+"I do not think, though, that even <i>that</i> was how Mr. Constantine
+used the word," replied Flora, with more of discernment than she
+commonly showed, "though I will not pretend to you, Ellen, that I do not
+recognise the sense in which you refer to it. To be candid, I don't
+think I know what he did mean, but he seemed to me to be paying a vast
+deal of attention to the matter, which surprised me in a person of his
+standing."
+</p>
+<p>
+"I have heard he is a man of much sensibility, though he is so
+satirical," murmured the romantic Emilia, bending over her netting so
+that her ebon curls shaded her suddenly flushing cheek.
+</p>
+<p>
+"Perhaps he knows more about the fair Loveday than we have guessed,"
+cried the careless Ellen; "perhaps he knows <i>too</i> much, and cannot
+keep away from the subject for his guilty conscience, as they say
+murderers are drawn back to the spot where they have buried the body of
+their victim!"
+</p>
+<p>
+But this was too gross a departure from delicacy of thought and phrase,
+and Miss Le Pettit, the prick stirring, perchance, signified as much by
+the cold manner in which she brought back the conversation to the more
+correct and really more enthralling subject of the Alexandra jacket.
+</p>
+<p>
+It was generally agreed that Miss Belben, of Bugletown, could not go far
+wrong with the sleeves if Flora would be so infinitely good as to lend
+her jacket for a copy, and this favour she accorded graciously to her
+dear friend, Emilia.
+</p>
+<p>
+Mr. Constantine walked down the windy hill with his mind already clear
+both of Loveday and the elegant company in which he had been taking tea.
+He was, above all things, a philosopher, and that means that, though his
+imagination was easily touched, his heart remained unstirred, He had
+serious thoughts of ordering a new cabriolet, and on arriving at the
+market place, he turned into the coachbuilder's to renew the discussion
+as to whether red or canary yellow were the more fashionable hue for
+the wheels.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p class="prechapter">
+<b>CHAPTER I:</b> IN WHICH THE READER IS TAKEN
+BACK A FEW WEEKS IN POINT OF TIME, AND
+DOWN SEVERAL STEPS IN THE SOCIAL SCALE
+</p>
+
+<a name="h2HCH0002" id="h2HCH0002"><!-- H2 anchor --></a>
+
+<div style="height: 4em;"><br /><br /><br /><br /></div>
+
+<h2>
+    Chapter I
+</h2>
+<h4>
+IN WHICH THE READER IS TAKEN BACK A FEW WEEKS IN POINT OF TIME, AND DOWN
+SEVERAL STEPS IN THE SOCIAL SCALE
+</h4>
+<p>
+It was on a balmy day in early Spring that Loveday had first met Miss Le
+Pettit. Loveday had gone to fetch the milk. For Loveday's aunt, Senath
+Strick, with whom she lived, was a shiftless, unthrifty woman, never
+able to keep prosperous enough to own a cow for as long as the beast
+took between calvings, and the times when Loveday had a fragrant,
+soft-eyed animal to cherish were mercifully rare. Mercifully, for
+Loveday, though she appeared sullen, had ever more sensibility than was
+good for one in her position, and each time Aunt Senath was forced to
+sell the cow, Loveday behaved as though she had as good a right to sit
+and cry herself silly as any young lady with whom nothing was more
+urgent than to spoil fine cambric with salt water.
+</p>
+<p>
+This, then, was a period of poverty with the Strick family, and Loveday
+was sent to fetch the evening milk from the farm at the crest of the
+hill. On the way, she came upon Cherry Cotton and Primrose Lear, seated
+upon a granite stile, their heads together over something Cherry held in
+her lap. Cherry heard approaching footsteps, and whipped her apron over
+the object she and her friend had been so busily discussing. Loveday was
+hurt rather than angered by the unkind action, for there was a reason,
+connected with Primrose, why she had felt a tender curiosity as to what
+the two girls were guarding so closely. Yet she was aware of bitterness
+also&mdash;for it was ever so when she appeared. Maids ceased their gossip,
+boys laughed and pointed after her. She was "different."
+</p>
+<p>
+Not in being a love-child, there were plenty of them in the village, but
+their parents generally married later, and even if they did not, then
+the female partner in crime would be one of the unmentionable women
+about whom other people talk so much.... She would live by the harbour
+plying a trade which allowed her to have a love-child or so without it
+being an occasion for undue remark, or, if she did not descend to those
+depths where no one expects anything better and censure consequently
+ceases through ineffectiveness, then at least everyone knew the author
+of her fall to be an honest, loutish Englishman, no worse than most of
+his neighbours.
+</p>
+<p>
+Loveday was without either of these two rights to existence. Her mother
+had been a respectable girl till her fall, and, as far as anyone was
+aware, since, for she had died of the fruit of her guilty connection,
+and though her portion was doubtless hell-fire, there is nothing to
+show that one cannot keep respectable even under such disquieting
+circumstances. The elder Loveday had clung obstinately to her
+self-respect under circumstances which her neighbours had tried to
+render nearly as trying on earth. She had died, as she had lived,
+impenitent and only crying for the foreigner who had seduced her,
+while he was then lying, had she but known it, in the lap of his first
+mistress, the sea, who, perhaps from jealousy at his straying, had taken
+him forcibly into her embrace on the same night that Loveday the younger
+was born.
+</p>
+<p>
+Old Madgy, the midwife, who was also more than suspected of being
+somewhat of a witch, declared that the expectant mother <i>did</i> know
+it&mdash;that she had been made aware, through a supernatural happening, of
+the loss of her lover, and that that was why the babe saw the light in
+such undue haste, and the mother took her departure almost as swiftly
+to that place where alone she could ever hope to rejoin him. For, as
+evening drew on, Madgy, having called to see how Loveday did, though
+nothing was thought of yet for a clear week, found her in the dairy
+(the Stricks had not yet fallen on that poverty which came to their roof
+under Aunt Senath's shrewish management) standing as one wisht beside
+the great red earthen pan of scalded cream.
+</p>
+<p>
+"And 'ee can b'lieve me or no as it like 'ee, my dears," old Madgy would
+say to many a breathless circle in a farm kitchen during the intervals
+of her duties overstairs, "but there was the cream in the pan a-heavin'
+up an' down in gurt waves, like a rough sea, and her staring at 'en like
+one stricken, as she was poor sawl, sure enough. Eh, it was sent for a
+sign to her, and a true sign, for that avenen' her man was drowned on
+his way to her, with his fine cargo of oil and onions and all. And there
+was the cream heavin' in waves for a sign of the rough seas that took
+him, though wi' us the skies was fair and the water in the bay as smooth
+as silk."
+</p>
+<p>
+A story that filled simple souls in kitchens with awe, but naturally was
+treated more scornfully in drawing-rooms, where it was felt that signs
+and portents would hardly be sent to inform a cottage girl of the death
+of an onion-seller. For, after all, that is what he amounts to, and the
+horrid secret is out.... An onion-seller ... the very words stink in
+the nostrils and are fatal to romance.
+</p>
+<p>
+Fatal to romance in the minds of the fastidious, fatal to respectability
+in those of the common people, for only foreigners sold onions. Strange
+men with rings in their ears and long, dark curls like a woman's, and an
+eye that was at once bold and soft.
+</p>
+<p>
+Loveday the younger had that eye, save that it had never learned from
+life to be bold, and her face was milken white instead of showing the
+blown roses of the other girls, though the back of her slender neck was
+stained a faint golden brown as by the inherited memories of sun. She
+was most immodestly "different," and even the Vicar's lady, who had
+charitably seen to her baptism, had difficulty in bringing herself to
+believe the girl could be a Christian.
+</p>
+<p>
+Cherry and Primrose stared up at her as she stood with the red jar in
+her hand, and, seeing her look so black, so white, so thin, they leant
+their yellow heads together and drew their two aprons closely over their
+plump laps.
+</p>
+<p>
+Seen thus, fronted by Loveday, they seemed amazingly alike, because of
+the completeness of her differing, yet a longer look showed that, in
+spite of their sleek, fair heads and rounded shoulders, there was
+between them the deepest division there can be between women.
+</p>
+<p>
+Cherry was a maid, thoughtless, blowsy, still untouched enough for
+wonder; Primrose had been a wife, though only seventeen, these three
+months; in another three was to be a mother. Her eyes, blue as her
+friend's, showed an even greater assurance, because it was based on
+positives and not on a mere negation. Dark-circled as those eyes were,
+her glance, as it passed over Loveday, was the more merciless, because
+it came from behind the shelter of a ring-fence.
+</p>
+
+<p class="prechapter">
+<b>CHAPTER II:</b> IN WHICH THE ONION-SELLER'S
+DAUGHTER FOR THE FIRST TIME FEELS AS
+A WOMAN
+</p>
+
+<a name="h2HCH0003" id="h2HCH0003"><!-- H2 anchor --></a>
+
+<div style="height: 4em;"><br /><br /><br /><br /></div>
+
+<h2>
+    Chapter II
+</h2>
+<h4>
+    IN WHICH THE ONION-SELLER'S DAUGHTER FOR THE FIRST TIME FEELS AS A WOMAN
+</h4>
+<p>
+For all her woodland timidity, Loveday was prone to those flashes of
+temper to which the weak in defence and the strong in feeling seem
+peculiarly exposed. She snatched the shielding apron back from the lap
+of the buxom Cherry, stamping her foot the while. Cherry, too amazed to
+protect her treasure, stared, slack-mouthed.
+</p>
+<p>
+Primrose flew into a temper that surpassed Loveday's, already failing
+her through dismay at her own action, even as the thunder, to children,
+surpasses in terrifying quality the lightning.... And, had they but
+known it, Primrose's sounding tantrums held as much possibility of
+danger, compared with Loveday's rage, as holds the crash compared with
+the flash. But they knew it not, and already Loveday stood panting a
+little and spent with her own storm, while Primrose gathered herself,
+undaunted, for the attack.
+</p>
+<p>
+A hail of words would have beaten about Loveday's drooping head had not
+Cherry, all unwitting, come to the rescue with a cry on the discovery
+that her treasures, thus disturbed, had fallen to the ground, which was
+muddy enough, owing to the habit of the cattle of trampling the soil
+around the stiles.
+</p>
+<p>
+"Oh, my fairings, my fairings!" cried Cherry, swooping at them from her
+height with all the headlong thump of a gannet after its prey. Loveday's
+dive was as the gull's for grace contrasted with it. Their hands met;
+Loveday divined in an instant, by the tug of Cherry's, that she was
+suspected of trying to snatch the fairings, instead of merely restoring
+them, and she straightened herself with a return of her sick anger.
+Cherry clutched the frail morsels of riband and lace in her lap, then,
+seeing there was no danger, began to straighten them out, scolding the
+while.
+</p>
+<p>
+"There, see, Primrose love, that edging is all crumpled ... did you ever
+see the like? Never mind, I'll press it out for 'ee, and it'll look as
+good as new. And this riband, that's the one I bought off Bendigo, the
+pedlar, for Flora Day&mdash;oh, my dear life, what'll I do with it now?"
+</p>
+<p>
+"'Tis a gurt shame, that's what 'tis," said Primrose, resentful both for
+her friend's riband and her own edging; "and I'd get my Willie to make
+her buy new, only 'tis no good asking paupers for money, because, even
+if they was to be sold up, all their sticks and cloam wouldn't fetch
+enough for a yard o' this riband."
+</p>
+<p>
+The vulgar taunt had sting enough to rouse Loveday to a wholesome
+contempt that saved her. She stood staring with a genuine scorn at the
+little articles of lace and artificial flowers which Cherry's beau had
+given her at the last fair. Yes, even at the riband which had been
+Cherry's special pride as bought by herself from the pedlar, and it was
+one that had taken Loveday's eye with its delicate beauty&mdash;for it was of
+palest rose, like the shells she picked up on the beach, not a crude red
+or blue, such as she saw in the shops at Bugletown when she went in on
+market days. Secretly, something in her marvelled that such a riband had
+been Cherry's choice, and her scorning of it now was the easier because
+she hated to think she and the blowsy damsel could have a taste in
+common.
+</p>
+<p>
+"You and your fal-lals!" she exclaimed; "here's a fine boutigo to make
+of a parcel of ribands and laces that'll make you look like a couple of
+the puppets at Corpus Fair. If you wear such as those to the Flora
+you'll be mistook for a Maypole, and folk'll dance round you."
+</p>
+<p>
+"Well, folks 'ull never dance even <i>round</i> you, unless you're burnt
+as a guy in a bonfire, let alone dancing <i>with</i> you, Loveday
+Strick," rejoined Primrose, "and so you do very well knaw, and that's
+why your heart's sick against us."
+</p>
+<p>
+A minute ago, and that had been true; it was for her isolation Loveday
+had raged, but when she had seen these two draw their aprons over their
+girl's treasures, she had not guessed those possessions aright. What she
+had imagined in her girl's heart, knowing Primrose's condition, it is
+not for us to pry at; whatever it was, it was so swift, so born of
+instinct, as to be holy. But when she saw the crumpled finery, she was
+suddenly too much of a child again to rate it worth envy. The things
+that Primrose, all unthinking, stood for, the things of warm hearth and
+hallowed bed that her house had never known, might have power to draw
+the woman out in her all too soon, but the things that merely charm the
+feminine still left her chill.
+</p>
+<p>
+She laughed, all the sting gone, when she saw what a milliner's paradise
+it was from which she was kept out, and put her foot on the first step
+of the stile.
+</p>
+<p>
+"By your lave, Cherry Cotton!" she said, and swung lightly over,
+balancing her jar, while they still stared at the change in her.
+</p>
+
+<p class="prechapter">
+<b>CHAPTER III:</b> IN WHICH SHE FOR THE FIRST
+TIME FEELS AS A GIRL
+</p>
+
+<a name="h2HCH0004" id="h2HCH0004"><!-- H2 anchor --></a>
+
+<div style="height: 4em;"><br /><br /><br /><br /></div>
+
+<h2>
+    Chapter III
+</h2>
+<h4>
+    IN WHICH SHE FOR THE FIRST TIME FEELS AS A GIRL
+</h4>
+<p>
+Primrose Lear was wife to the son of old Farmer Lear, of Upper Farm,
+whither Loveday was bound. Willie Lear, the young man, was gay and
+handsome, and generally off on any and every job that took him abroad,
+from buying a pig to selling his own senses for a few mugs of cider.
+Farmer Lear was usually out in the fields, and Mrs. Lear, wrinkled like
+a winter apple and tuneful as a winter robin, was as a rule alone in the
+big kitchen or cool dairy, for small help did her daughter-in-law give
+her about the house.
+</p>
+<p>
+To-day, however, Mrs. Lear was in the parlour, and no less a personage
+than Miss Le Pettit of Ignores was seated on the best horsehair
+armchair, her bonneted head, with its drooping feather, leaning
+gracefully against the lace antimacassar, and her small prunella boots
+elegantly crossed on the smiling cheeks of the beadwork cherub that
+adorned the footstool, and that seemed to be puffing the harder, as
+though to try and puff those little feet up to the heaven where he
+belonged, trusting to his wings (of the best pearl beads) to bear him
+after her.
+</p>
+<p>
+Loveday paused, stricken, not with embarrassment, but with awe, upon the
+threshold.
+</p>
+<p>
+Sight of Cherry and Primrose had deepened her sense of her own isolation
+and her pain. Sight of Miss Le Pettit made her forget all save what she
+saw.
+</p>
+<p>
+Blow, little cherub, puff your cherubic hardest, never can you waft
+Flora Le Pettit higher than she now is, at least in the sight of one
+pair of black eyes, higher, perhaps, than she will ever be again, even
+in that of her own not uncomplacent orbs.
+</p>
+<p>
+Blow, little cherub, but even if you burst the roseate beads from off
+your cheeks in your ardour, leaving forlornly drooping the grey threads
+that would show you as, after all, of mere mortal manufacture, you could
+not cast a doubt as big as the tiniest bead upon the heavenly origin of
+Miss Le Pettit&mdash;not, at least, in the heart of the devout worshipper
+born in that instant upon the black woollen doormat.
+</p>
+<p>
+The angelic visitant put up a tortoise-shell lorgnon and examined the
+newcomer with a flicker of condescending interest. For Flora was a young
+lady of great sensibility, and though, of course, all females are filled
+by nature with that interesting and appealing quality, the finer amongst
+them educate and make an art of it. Miss Le Pettit, then, encouraged her
+sensibility, nursed it, nourished it, on the most exquisite of novels
+and the rarest of romances, and these had taught her to show even more
+sensibility than usual at sight of a barefoot girl with black hair and
+eyes and an arresting, though wholly unconscious air that could but be
+described by Miss Le Pettit, to herself and afterwards to her friends,
+as Italianate.
+</p>
+<p>
+"What an interesting face and figure!" she now exclaimed, at gaze
+through the lorgnon, as though it were a celestial aid to vision needful
+for such a long range, as it must be even for angelic eyes looking from
+the skiey ramparts to a world where bare feet press the earth, to say
+nothing of woollen doormats.
+</p>
+<p>
+Loveday blenched before that searching gaze, the rare red burned in her
+cheek and her own eyes sank abashed. She rubbed the flexible sole of one
+foot in a stiffened curve of shyness against the slim ankle of the
+other. Mrs. Lear exclaimed aloud in her horror.
+</p>
+<p>
+"Loveday Strick, where are your manners to, that you come into the
+parlour without a curtsey?" said she. "And indeed, I must ask you to
+excuse her, ma'am, for she's but a nobody's girl from the village, and
+doesn't know how to behave before gentry."
+</p>
+<p>
+Mrs. Lear was a good soul, and had ever been kind to Loveday, but she
+too had her sensibilities, and they were outraged by this untimely
+intrusion of one world into another which was doubtless unaware even of
+its existence. But Miss Le Pettit put up a delicate gloved hand in
+protest.
+</p>
+<p>
+"Nay, you frighten the child, Mrs. Lear," she said kindly, "I am sure
+she means no disrespect. Did you ... what is your name, girl?'
+</p>
+<p>
+"Loveday, ma'am."
+</p>
+<p>
+"What a strange, old-fashioned name, to be sure," commented the taffetas
+angel, with a crystal sounding titter, "'tis as good as the heroine in a
+play. Whom were you called for, child?"
+</p>
+<p>
+"My mother, ma'am," said Loveday, and now her cheek had ceased to burn
+and looked pale, but she raised her eyes and confronted the vision
+steadily.
+</p>
+<p>
+Mrs. Lear coughed.
+</p>
+<p>
+"I declare I should like to do a watercolour drawing of you, Loveday,"
+went on Miss Le Pettit, "what do you say? Will you come up to the Manor
+one day and let me paint your portrait?"
+</p>
+<p>
+Loveday had not a notion what that process might be, but had she taken
+it to be the blackest witchcraft (as she very likely would if she saw
+it) she would still not have blenched. Her eye lightened, some instinct
+told her that had she been as all the other girls, the Cherries and
+Primroses, this wonderful lady would not have looked twice at her. At
+last her singularity was standing her in good stead. Confidence came to
+her, even a feeling of slight scorn for the world she knew, a feeling,
+indeed, to which she was not altogether a stranger, but which up till
+now she had stifled in affright at its presumption.
+</p>
+<p>
+"What do you say, Mrs. Lear?" asked Miss Le Pettit, turning with her
+charming condescension to the old woman, whom, after all, she was merely
+visiting on a little matter of a recipe for elderflower-water, "what do
+you say? Would she not look picturesque with an orange kerchief over her
+head and a basket of fruit in her arms, as a young street-vendor?"
+</p>
+<p>
+"She would certainly look outlandish, ma'am," was all Mrs. Lear could
+manage.
+</p>
+<p>
+Loveday's thoughts flew of a sudden to the ribands she had disturbed in
+Cherry's lap, and for the first time in her life, till now so proudly
+above such matters in its aloofness, she yearned over fineries. If such
+as those could admit her into the company of such as this! She thought
+enviously of that pale pink, even of the yellows and reds she had seen
+in Bugletown, since such deep tones seemed to the taste of this
+wonderful creature.
+</p>
+<p>
+But Miss Le Pettit, still staring at her, changed her note.
+</p>
+<p>
+"I was wrong," she exclaimed, "that face needs no gaudy hues, those
+white cheeks need nothing but that red mouth to set them off, and that
+black hair. She should be white, all white, should she not, Mrs. Lear?
+A tragic bride from the south, languishing in our cold land. 'Twould
+make a fine subject for a painting, though I fear beyond my brush.
+I never can get my faces to look as sad as I could wish them to."
+</p>
+<p>
+There was something engaging and almost childlike about the heiress as
+she spoke those words, but recollecting herself she resumed:
+</p>
+<p>
+"Never mind the portrait, but I vow I will have you for my attendant at
+the Flora, that I will. Now, Mrs. Lear, you shall not protest, I always
+have my way when I set my heart on a thing, you know. I am going to
+dance in the Flora this year, 'tis a charming rural custom, and the
+gentry should help to preserve it. Besides, my name is Flora, so I
+am doubly bound. And this child shall be my maid; she will be a rare
+contrast to me, I being chestnut and she so foreign looking. It would
+be indiscreet if I were to dance with a gentleman&mdash;you know what the
+gossips are&mdash;but if I am partnered by an attendant maid 'twill be very
+different."
+</p>
+<p>
+"Ma'am ..." from the scandalised Mrs. Lear, "if you are set on having
+a village girl ... there are many from good homes, respectable girls.
+Not that I've anything to say against this poor child, God knows, but
+her mother, ma'am.... I assure you 'tis impossible."
+</p>
+<p>
+Miss Le Pettit, who guessed very well the sort of tale Mrs. Lear's
+delicacy spared her, laughed the matter off.
+</p>
+<p>
+"It shall be as I say, Mrs. Lear, I can afford to be above these things.
+You shall dance with me, Loveday. You must have a white frock, of
+course, but I suppose you have a Sunday frock? Quite a simple thing,
+the simpler the better, and a white sash of satin riband. Don't forget.
+I shall expect to see you waiting for me at the Flora."
+</p>
+<p>
+And Miss Le Pettit rose, having carried her freak of sensibility on long
+enough, and sweeping past Loveday with a dazzling smile, was accompanied
+to the front door by Mrs. Lear, and after standing poised for a moment
+against the sunny verdure beyond, took wing with a flutter of white
+taffetas and was gone.
+</p>
+<p>
+Loveday was left with that most dangerous of all passions&mdash;the passion
+for an idea. Though she was ignorant of the fact, it was not Miss Le
+Pettit she adored, it was beauty; not silk underskirts that rustled
+in her ear, but the music of the spheres; a new ideal she saw not in
+the angelic visitant, but in herself. She, too, would be all white and
+dazzling, was accounted worthy to follow in the same steps, were it
+but in those of a dance. She made the common mistake of a lover&mdash;she
+imagined she was in love with another human being, while in reality she
+was in love with those feelings in herself which that other had evoked.
+</p>
+<p>
+Never did aspiring saint of old, impelled by ecstasy, cling closer to a
+crucifix as the symbol of the loved one than did Loveday to that notion
+of the white garb which must be hers. It was, indeed, a symbol to her,
+the symbol of everything she had unwittingly craved and starved for,
+of everything she had, could not but feel she had, in herself which was
+lacked by those who jeered at her. And, though she knew it not, nor
+would have understood it, she was a symbol-lover, than which there is no
+form of lover more dangerous in life&mdash;or more endangered by the chances
+of it. For he who loves another human being gives his heart in fee, but
+he who loves an idea gives his soul.
+</p>
+
+<p class="prechapter">
+<b>CHAPTER IV:</b> IN WHICH THE ONION-SELLER'S
+DAUGHTER FEELS HERSELF A GODDESS
+</p>
+
+<a name="h2HCH0005" id="h2HCH0005"><!-- H2 anchor --></a>
+
+<div style="height: 4em;"><br /><br /><br /><br /></div>
+
+<h2>
+    Chapter IV
+</h2>
+<h4>
+    IN WHICH THE ONION-SELLER'S DAUGHTER FEELS HERSELF A GODDESS
+</h4>
+<p>
+Loveday bore home the milk in a maze of bliss, and staying not for her
+supper, for no hunger of the body was upon her, turned and went out
+again into the glow of the evening. Had she been as full of sensibility
+as a young lady she would have wandered straight away from Upper Farm,
+forgotten the milk, and not thought of it again, till, returning with
+the upgetting of the moon, her aunt had met her with vulgar reproaches.
+What a charming scene could then have been staged, of sensitive genius
+misunderstood by coarse-grained labour; of vision-drunken youth berated
+by undreaming age! But she was not a young lady, and could derive no
+felicity from forgetfulness of such a kind, for with the poor the
+urgencies of the immediate task are raised to such compelling interest
+that only a genius could neglect them with satisfaction. Therefore
+Loveday never thought of forgetting the milk for her aunt, but her
+exultation was of such a powerful sort that it upheld her through the
+commonplaces of routine without her perceiving the incongruity which
+would have jarred on one of a finer upbringing.
+</p>
+<p>
+She placed the milk on the table, set out the bread and soaked
+pilchards, found what was left of the cheese, and went hastily forth
+lest her aunt should stay her.
+</p>
+<p>
+She was bound for the little wood that lay in a fold of the moorland
+above the sea. This wood was to her what a City of Refuge was to the
+Hebrews of the Old Testament, and, like them, she fled to it when the
+world's opinion of what was fit had proved at variance with her own.
+To-night she went to it not for sanctuary from others, but to commune
+with herself&mdash;in truth, for the first time she went not because of what
+she had left but because of what she would find. Her bare heels were
+winged along the road.
+</p>
+<p>
+The wood lay lapped in the shadow that the western ridge had cast on it
+an hour earlier than the rest of the world's bedtime, ever since the
+trees had been there to receive the chill caress, and that was for many
+a hundred years. Old Madgy swore that even in her young day the small
+folk had still held their revels on the mossy slopes amongst the fanlike
+roots, and who knows what larger folk had not fled there to wanton more
+sweetly than in close cottages, or, like Loveday, to play the more
+easily with their thoughts? The wood alone knew, and it held its
+memories as closely as it held the thousand tiny lives confided to its
+care; the bright-eyed shrew-mice that poked quivering noses through the
+litter of last year's leaves, the birds that nested behind the
+clustering twigs, the slow-worms that slipped along its grassy ditches.
+</p>
+<p>
+Loveday turned off from the road and approached the wood from the west,
+pausing when she reached the smooth grey boulders that were piled along
+the ridge. She stood there gazing out over the smiling champaign, pale
+and verdant from the farthest rim to the treetops that made as it were a
+sea of faint green at her feet, for already in that soft clime the twigs
+were misty with young leaf, and on the willows the velvety pearl-hued
+ovals had begun to deck themselves with a delicate powdering of gold,
+while from the hazels beside her the yellow lambs' tails hung still as
+tiny pennants in the evening air. The gold of nature was as yet more
+vivid than her green, which still showed tentative, enquiring of April
+what of betrayal might not lie in the careless plaits of her garment.
+To Loveday, high on her rock, between the gold of the sky and the gold
+of the blossom, it seemed that April must of a certainty stay as fair
+as this and lead to as bright a May, when that vision of her new self
+should become a yet brighter reality. She was confident of April because
+she was confident of life, lapped in an aureate glow that seemed to
+suffuse the very air she drew into her lungs so that it intoxicated her
+like the breath of a diviner ether from Olympian heights. She had seen
+beauty, and lo! it had been revealed to her not as a thing apart and
+unattainable, but as a quality within herself. Her "difference" had
+become a blazon, not a branding.
+</p>
+<p>
+Lying down on her rock, she told over with the rapture of a devotee the
+divine excellencies of Flora Le Pettit; her radiance, her swinging,
+shining curls, the wings that spread from her fair arms, the light that
+gleamed on her bright brow and in her glancing eyes, but it was not
+Flora, but Loveday, who danced before her mind's eye in white raiment,
+and held the sorrows of the South in her eyes and the joy of youth on
+her lips. Flora was the excuse for that new Loveday, as the beloved is
+ever the excuse for the raptures transmuting the lover. Even thus do we
+worship in our Creator the excellence of His handiwork, and one would
+think that to be alive is act of praise enough to satisfy the most
+exigent deity. Flora had called Loveday to life, and Loveday repaid her
+with a worship of that which she had awakened, the highest compliment
+the devout can pay, would the theologians but acknowledge it.
+</p>
+<p>
+The sun slipped slower down the field of the sky, now a pale green as
+delicate as the leaves burgeoning beneath it, and Loveday drew herself
+up in a bunch, knees to chin, her brown strong hands clasped and her
+slim feet curved over the slope of the smooth granite. The wood below
+was wrapping itself in mystery, and her eyes attempted to fathom its
+fastnesses. Ordinarily, she was fearful of venturing into the darkness
+under the trees when once the evening had fallen, and it was then she
+was accustomed to come out up to her boulder, but this evening she was
+strung to any courage, for she walked in that certainty which on rare
+occasions comes to all&mdash;the certainty of being immune to danger&mdash;which
+is of all sensations vouchsafed to mortals the most godlike.
+</p>
+<p>
+She rose to her feet, and swinging herself down from the rock, began the
+descent, ledge by ledge, to the shadows below. A last spring, and she
+was standing on the dark gold of drifted leaves, that rose about her
+ankles with a dry little rustling. It was the wood's caress of greeting,
+and she did not reflect that it was also the kisses of the dead.
+</p>
+<p>
+Indeed, she clapped her hands in the rush of strength she felt, both in
+her young muscles and her leaping spirit, and stood proudly listening
+to the echo dying away, unaffrighted. She was young and strong and
+beautiful; life, not dead leaves, lay at her feet. She was different,
+and in her difference lay power, she was at last herself, Loveday ...
+she was Loveday, Loveday ... Loveday...
+</p>
+<p>
+She darted hither and thither through the wood, noting with a pleasure
+keener than ever before how soft and sleek the moss was to her feet, how
+silky the flank of the beech to her leaning cheek, how sweetly sharp the
+intimate evening note of the birds.
+</p>
+<p>
+And she was quite unfitted to be the goddess of these rustic beauties,
+for all her mind could feel in that softness and sleekness and clear
+calling was their alikeness to artificiality. She felt thin slippers
+on her feet, rubbed an ecstatic cheek against the sheen of satin, and
+in her ears echoed no diviner music than the Tol-de-rol Tol-de-rol
+of the Bugletown band on Flora Day. Save in her sincerity, she was as
+artificial a goddess as ever graced a Versailles Fête Champêtre. What
+were leaf and bird to her but the stuff of her life, whereas white satin
+gleamed with the shimmer of the very heavens!
+</p>
+<p>
+Hers was not, it is true, the milliner's paradise of Cherry and
+Primrose, but it was one into which she could only penetrate fitly
+clad. What wonder then that, brought up without any tutoring in the
+excellencies of Nature, she should display the sad lack of true feeling
+so deplored in her later by that nice arbiter of taste, Miss Flora Le
+Pettit?
+</p>
+
+<p class="prechapter">
+<b>CHAPTER V:</b> IN WHICH LOVEDAY ESSAYS THE
+WHITE GOWN
+</p>
+
+<a name="h2HCH0006" id="h2HCH0006"><!-- H2 anchor --></a>
+
+<div style="height: 4em;"><br /><br /><br /><br /></div>
+
+<h2>
+    Chapter V
+</h2>
+<h4>
+    IN WHICH LOVEDAY ESSAYS THE WHITE GOWN
+</h4>
+<p>
+With morning came thoughts of the practical side of the business and,
+the worst of her daily duties performed, Loveday ascended to her chamber
+to examine the scanty contents of her small oaken chest. It was a
+sea-chest, legacy from her roving father, who had given it to her
+mother, and often enough had Aunt Senath expressed scruples about
+allowing her to keep a gift obtained so godlessly. Perhaps the fact that
+it was a good chest and better than anything she could have bought had
+something to do with Aunt Senath's complaisance in permitting it to
+remain. Perhaps Loveday's fierce look in defence of it was not without
+influence also. The chest stayed in the little attic room, and made of
+it, to Loveday's eyes, a place peculiarly her own, and rich because of
+its associations. There was something about the chest, its dark polish
+and coarse carving, that even led her to think hopefully of its poor
+contents.
+</p>
+<p>
+She crouched beside it now, upon her heels, and lifting the lid, gazed
+expectantly at what was revealed.
+</p>
+<p>
+After all, it did not look so bad, just a level surface of white linen...
+</p>
+<p>
+But, when she lifted it out, and all the yellow of age was revealed in
+the full gathers of the skirt, a shade passed over Loveday's spirit.
+How small and tight the bodice looked, how skimpy even the plaits of the
+skirt for the present modes ... yet it had been a good linen in its day,
+there was no doubt of that, this frock that had been stitched for her
+mother's wedding gown.
+</p>
+<p>
+For perhaps he had always been coming back to marry her, perhaps only
+their young blood and eager hearts beating so strongly within them had
+made the beat of wedding bells seem at first too slight a sound to catch
+their absorbed attention.... So Loveday the elder had always known,
+in spite of the sneers of the neighbours. So Loveday the younger had
+maintained to carping girl-critics, though in her inmost heart she had
+never been able to feel it mattered so vastly, for half the girls she
+knew would have been in her predicament had their fathers been cut
+off untimely. She knew it was not that she was born out of wedlock,
+a misfortune that might happen to anyone, which oppressed her youth,
+but the fact of her father having been a foreigner, and of that she
+was fiercely resolved to be proud. Neither mother nor father had she
+ever known, but the instinct of generous youth is ever to defend the
+oppressed, and with her defence had love sprung in Loveday's heart.
+Therefore, even with her sensation of disappointment at the sight of the
+yellowed linen, there was reverence and tenderness in her touch as she
+laid the gown across her narrow bed.
+</p>
+<p>
+She ripped off the coarse blue wrapper that enfolded her, and stood
+revealed in her little flannel under-bodice and linsey-woolsey petticoat
+of striped red and black, her thin girlish arms and young bosom making
+her look more childish than she did when fully clothed. She held the
+gown above her head and struggled into it. Her pale little face was red
+when she poked it triumphantly through the narrow opening and finally
+settled the neck, with its ruffled cambric frilling, round her throat,
+and pulled the puff sleeves as far as they would go down her arms in a
+vain attempt to make them conceal her red young girl's elbows. She could
+only see a small portion of herself at a time in the little mirror, yet
+that small portion, in spite of the skimpiness and yellowness of the
+gown, pleased her eye.
+</p>
+<p>
+For her dark tints were set off by the creamy folds, her slight shape
+revealed by the tight bodice, even her bare feet, which some fine
+prompting had made her wash carefully lest they should shame this essay,
+looked small and graceful beneath the full folds.
+</p>
+<p>
+But she could not dance in the Flora unshod, and so once again she bent
+to the sea-chest, and withdrew her only pair of shoes, bought for her in
+a generous moment last Michaelmas by Aunt Senath. She pulled on her
+Sunday pair of white cotton stockings, and then the stout shoes. They
+still fitted, and to her country eye looked well enough. She examined
+herself bit by bit in the mirror, from her smooth black head to her
+smooth black feet, and all the faintly yellowed linen that curved in and
+swelled out between.
+</p>
+<p>
+She was fair to look upon, not so much the mirror as her own awakened
+consciousness told her that. She was meet to dance with Miss Le Pettit
+at the Flora, could she but obtain one thing more&mdash;the white satin sash.
+</p>
+
+<p class="prechapter">
+<b>CHAPTER VI:</b> IN WHICH LOVEDAY ESSAYS TO
+OBTAIN THE WHITE SATIN RIBAND
+</p>
+
+<a name="h2HCH0007" id="h2HCH0007"><!-- H2 anchor --></a>
+
+<div style="height: 4em;"><br /><br /><br /><br /></div>
+
+<h2>
+    Chapter VI
+</h2>
+<h4>
+    IN WHICH LOVEDAY ESSAYS TO OBTAIN THE WHITE SATIN RIBAND
+</h4>
+<p>
+With a high heart Loveday began her quest for the work which was to earn
+for her the coveted white satin sash. She had but three weeks in which
+to make a matter of several shillings, and this meant that she must sell
+every moment of the time which was hers when her duties about her aunt's
+were discharged for the day. In the morning she was busy with cleaning
+and cooking till almost mid-day, and in the evenings she had the milk to
+fetch, but in the afternoons she could be sure of a few hours if Aunt
+Senath did not guess she wanted them for herself and invent tasks. On
+Mondays, of course, the washing kept her all day at the tub, and on
+Fridays at the mangle, on Saturdays there was the baking of the bread,
+while Thursday, being market day, she was supposed to keep house while
+Aunt Senath went in to Bugletown&mdash;a task that slut of a woman was too
+fond of for its chances of gossip to send her niece in her stead. On
+Thursdays Loveday was wont to stay in and see to the mending, but she
+reflected that, by sitting up in her bed at night to darn and patch by
+the light of the wick that floated in a cup of fish-oil, she might take
+charge of some neighbour's children on that day instead and Aunt Senath
+be none the wiser. Loveday had a sad lack of principle, doubtless an
+heritage from her heathen father.
+</p>
+<p>
+On the afternoons of Tuesdays and Wednesdays, she hoped to help in some
+house with the cleaning, or in some slattern's abode with the weekly
+wash, for, as all know, there are some such sluts that the washing gets
+put off from day to day, till Saturday finds it still cluttering the
+washhouse instead of being brought in clean and sweet from the
+gorse-bushes.
+</p>
+<p>
+Then there were always odd things to be done, such as running errands,
+at which she hoped to earn some pence here and there. The white riband
+seemed no impossible fantasy to Loveday when she started on her quest.
+</p>
+<p>
+She went first to visit old Mrs. Lear, at Upper Farm, for no one had
+shown such a kindly front to the girl in all the village as she. Loveday
+started out for the milk half-an-hour earlier than was her wont so that
+she might have time to discuss her hopes with the farmer's wife, and
+this time she did not meet young Mrs. Lear or her friend Cherry on the
+way. But she did come upon both Mrs. Lears in the big kitchen, the
+younger seated in the armchair in front of the fire and the elder
+anxiously regarding her. Primrose had been fretful ever since hearing
+from her mother-in-law of Miss Le Pettit's visit of the day before,
+and of the unaccountable interest the heiress had shown in that faggot
+of a Loveday, and by now her fretfulness had assumed the size of an
+indisposition. In vain did Mrs. Lear try and cosset and comfort her with
+potions both hot and cool; Primrose knew well that beneath the kindness
+of the farmer's wife lurked the feeling that it was not for one in her
+station to indulge in such vapours as might well befit the gentry, and
+that she would be cured sooner by taking a broom to the best carpet than
+by sitting and keeping the fire warm. Primrose sulked, and even handsome
+Willie, leaning by the window, wanting to be away yet dreading the
+outburst did he move, could not persuade his wife that nothing ailed her
+but too much idleness. Neither, though to their robust health it would
+have seemed so, would it have been all the truth, for Primrose was
+taking her condition more hardly than most girls who have had the good
+fortune to wed with a prosperous young farmer, and the thought that she
+would not be able to dance in the procession with the rest of the world
+at the Flora had for some time past embittered her. To enter the house,
+after her anger with Loveday and the flash of fear that the strange
+half-foreign girl had filled her with, only to find that the great Miss
+Le Pettit had offered that very girl to dance with her ... this was
+poisonous fare indeed for one in the discontented mood of Primrose Lear.
+The heaviness of her mind matched with that of her body as she hunched
+over the fire.
+</p>
+<p>
+Sight of Loveday, a Loveday oddly changed from that of the day earlier,
+did not ease her sickness; the light in Loveday's eye, the fresh
+exhilaration of her step&mdash;she, who was wont to slip along with so much
+of quiet aloofness&mdash;stung the other girl anew. Loveday greeted Mrs. Lear
+eagerly before she saw that Primrose was sitting half-hidden by the
+wings of the big chair, her face, paler than its wont, in shadow, pallid
+like a face seen through still water. Then she saw also handsome Willie,
+dark against the small square panes of the window, the April sun gilding
+the curve of his ruddy cheek and making the pots of red geraniums along
+the sill blaze as brightly as the beautiful blossoms of painted wax
+that, under their glass shade, held an example of neat perfection up
+to Nature.
+</p>
+<p>
+Willie nodded at Loveday with a trifle less of sulkiness in his manner,
+took a step forward and relapsed once more. A little silence seemed to
+catch them all, broken by good Mrs. Lear saying:
+</p>
+<p>
+"You'm early to-day, Loveday. Milken's not over yet."
+</p>
+<p>
+"I'm come to see you a moment, if 'tes possible," said Loveday, some of
+her shining confidence already fallen from her, she knew not why.
+</p>
+<p>
+"Well," said Primrose spitefully, guessing her presence would embarrass
+Loveday, "Mrs. Lear's here and I daresay'll speak to 'ee. Can't be any
+secret from me, of course, whatever 'tes."
+</p>
+<p>
+Mrs. Lear, suddenly sorry for Loveday, although Primrose on entering the
+day before had told her a tale that had angered her, said:
+</p>
+<p>
+"Come into dairy, Loveday; you can tell me what 'tes while I see to your
+aunt's bit of butter."
+</p>
+<p>
+Loveday followed her into the cool dairy, where on the scrubbed
+white wood shelves the great red earthen pans stood in rows holding
+their thick crinkled cream, which Loveday never saw without a thought
+of awe for her mother's miracle, and the waves that had surged over
+her father's head. Thought of it now restored her sense of her own
+power&mdash;the cream was ever for her a symbol of divine interposition, and
+if her own parents had been found worthy of such a sign, why should not
+she too have that something apart and strong which forced signs from the
+very heavens, that something apart which indeed she could not but feel
+sure she possessed, never with such a gladness in the certainty until
+the miraculous yesterday?
+</p>
+<p>
+Eagerly she unfolded her plans to Mrs. Lear, her words falling forth in
+a rush as hurried as a moorland stream after rain, yet as clear too, and
+as she spoke of her hopes and plans her black eyes scanned Mrs. Lear's
+face more in faith than anxiety. But Mrs. Lear wore a strange look that
+to one less eager than the girl would have shown as pity.
+</p>
+<p>
+"Softly, Loveday, softly," she said at last, "while I see if I can
+get to the rights of this. You want to earn money for yourself this
+next month to buy your white riband with. Have 'ee thought 'tes an
+extravagant purchase for a maid like you, who should be putten any
+money into warm flannel or a pair of good boots?"
+</p>
+<p>
+"I don't want boots, Mrs. Lear, I don't want nothing on the earth but my
+satin sash so I can dance with her in the Flora. I want it more than to
+save my soul, that I do; I'll go through anything to get it. I'll work
+like ten maids for 'ee and for anyone else that'll have me, so as I can
+dance in the Flora..."
+</p>
+<p>
+"Hush, hush," cried the good woman, justly scandalised by such
+unbalanced ravings from a maid of fifteen who should have had nothing
+but modesty in her mouth; "you mustn't say such wicked things or I can't
+stay here and listen to en."
+</p>
+<p>
+Fear attacked Loveday, not for her own impious words, but lest she had
+shocked Mrs. Lear past helping.
+</p>
+<p>
+"Mrs. Lear," she said urgently, "I don't mean any wickedness, but indeed
+I can't sufficiently tell 'ee what it means to me to get my length of
+riband and dance in the Flora come May. I do believe I'll die if I
+don't. I don't know how to find words to tell 'ee, but 'tes more to me
+than a white riband and a shaking of feet down Bugletown streets, 'tes
+my life, I do believe ..." She added no word of Flora Le Pettit, you
+perceive, but got a secret joy from being able to use her name thus
+unreproved in mention of the dance ... and who that has been a lover
+will not understand this?
+</p>
+<p>
+"I would have had 'ee up here to help now that Primrose is so wisht,"
+replied Mrs. Lear doubtfully, "but simmingly only yesterday you had
+words, and indeed it was ill done of you, Loveday Strick, towards one
+in her condition, as you do very well knaw."
+</p>
+<p>
+Loveday drooped her head. Idle to protest to Mrs. Lear that she had not
+been the first in fault. She waited breathless, the beating of her heart
+almost choking her. Mrs. Lear went on.
+</p>
+<p>
+"If only Primrose could be made to overlook it, then I'll have 'ee and
+welcome, Loveday, and pay you a florin a week too, which would soon add
+up to enough. I'd be glad for 'ee to stay on after the Flora too, for
+Primrose's time'll be near."
+</p>
+<p>
+Loveday had no interest in what happened after the dance. Life would
+be all golden ever after, something wonderful and new would certainly
+begin; it was to mark the great division in her life, but gratitude and
+the caution born of years of slights held her silent on that subject to
+the good Mrs. Lear.
+</p>
+<p>
+"Wait 'ee here," Mrs. Lear bade her, and herself went back into the
+kitchen. She was gone some minutes, that to Loveday dragged as weeks,
+though when she reappeared Loveday felt that the time of waiting had
+gone too soon, and she wished for it to begin once more, so much she
+dreaded to ask what had been said. Mrs. Lear spared her the need for
+questioning.
+</p>
+<p>
+"'Tes no manner of use, Loveday," she said, "Primrose won't hear of it,
+and being as she is, I can't contrairy her."
+</p>
+<p>
+Loveday felt the futility of argument, and, indeed, in the violent
+reaction that attacks such ardent natures, she felt too numb to make the
+attempt even had she wished. She stood staring at Mrs. Lear with her
+eyes dark in her pale face and the first presage of defeat in her heart.
+</p>
+
+<p class="prechapter">
+<b>CHAPTER VII:</b> IN WHICH LOVEDAY STILL
+ESSAYS TO OBTAIN THE WHITE SATIN RIBAND
+</p>
+
+<a name="h2HCH0008" id="h2HCH0008"><!-- H2 anchor --></a>
+
+<div style="height: 4em;"><br /><br /><br /><br /></div>
+
+<h2>
+    Chapter VII
+</h2>
+<h4>
+    IN WHICH LOVEDAY STILL ESSAYS TO OBTAIN THE WHITE SATIN RIBAND
+</h4>
+<p>
+It were a weary task to chronicle all the ways trodden by Loveday during
+the three weeks that followed her visit to Upper Farm, and yet, even so,
+it would not be as weary as was the treading of them to that still
+ardent though fearful girl. Hers grew to be a dread that would have
+seemed to a spectator disproportionate indeed&mdash;for what can one heart
+know of the sickness of another's, of its hurried beating when hope
+beckons, of its numb slackening when hope fails? How swift to Loveday
+seemed the relentless patter of the days past her questing feet, that,
+run hither and thither as she would, yet could not keep pace with Time's
+urgency! How slow to Loveday seemed the ticking of each moment, since
+each held hope and fear full-globed, as in bubbles that rise and rise
+only to burst into the empty air! So each moment rose, rounded, to meet
+Loveday, held, and broke, till her mind was but a daze which confounded
+speed with slowness, till she thought the future would never be the
+present and found perpetually that it was the past.
+</p>
+<p>
+After her failure with Mrs. Lear it occurred to Loveday to go where she
+should have gone in the first place&mdash;whither she might have gone had
+not some irk of conscience whispered her that her purpose was all too
+worldly&mdash;to the wife of the Vicar, Mrs. Veale. This Mrs. Veale was the
+good lady who had stood sponsor for Loveday on that day when Aunt Senath
+had perforce to blazon her sister's shame at the font. Ever since that
+day Mrs. Veale had done her duty by Loveday without fail, instructing
+her in the catechism regularly and occasionally presenting her with the
+clothing of Miss Letitia Veale&mdash;who was a couple of years older than
+Loveday&mdash;when the garments were outgrown and when they were suitable.
+Mrs. Veale was too thoughtful a Christian to give Loveday artificial
+flowers or silken petticoats unfitted to her station, but flannels,
+thickened by so much washing that Saint Anthony of Egypt himself could
+not have divined a female within their folds, were always forthcoming
+to protect the orphan girl from wintry winds.
+</p>
+<p>
+It was no day for flannel when Loveday knocked&mdash;with the timidity that
+always assailed her, to her own annoyance, when she was about to see her
+godmother&mdash;on the back door of the Vicarage. She heard her own voice,
+robbed of its warm eagerness, asking of the stout cook whether Mrs.
+Veale could see her for a minute. The cook sent the housemaid to the
+Vicar's lady with the request, and Loveday stood in the large, sunny
+kitchen smelling the strange rich foods preparing for the four o'clock
+dinner. There was butcher's meat, she could smell that (she had tasted
+it at the harvest feast at Upper Farm, where it was provided for the
+labourers once a year), and there was a sweet pudding that she could see
+stirred together in a big white bowl, a pudding that smelt of sweetness
+like a posy. A noisy fly, the first of his kind, buzzed over the plate
+where the empty eggshells lay beside the bowl, and from them crawled to
+the scattered sugar that sparkled carelessly upon the rim. Loveday, of
+old, would have had a second's envy of the fly that could thus browse on
+what smelt so good; now the fine aromas affected her nostrils merely as
+incense might have those of her papist father&mdash;as the savour of the
+great house where dwelt those to be propitiated. For upon Mrs. Veale she
+now felt hope was fastened; it was from her almost sacred hands that
+salvation would flow. Fear and expectation took Loveday by the throat,
+so stifling her that the wide kitchen, the stout blue-print-clad cook,
+the bright pots and pans, the leaping flames, the savoury odours and the
+buzzing of the fly, all blended together before her dizzied eyes.
+</p>
+<p>
+The figure of the housemaid, crisp in white and black, entered
+steadyingly, and with her voice, saying that the mistress would see
+Loveday Strick in the morning-room, the flow of the kitchen ebbed and
+subsided. Loveday followed the white and black through the long, narrow
+hall, where the fox's mask grinned at her from above the fanlight of the
+door, to the presence of the Vicar's wife.
+</p>
+<p>
+Mrs. Veale was a personable lady, with a high and narrow brow, and a
+penetrating eye that few in the village could evade if they had aught
+upon their conscience. It was said, indeed, that she was better than
+a curate to her husband, for she could pass where a man could not
+in delicacy have gone, and few were the maids, and fewer still the
+housewives, who had not benefited by her counsel. She fixed that eye
+benevolently upon Loveday now; the lady stately in her black silk, the
+locket containing the hair of her departed parent, one-time a canon of
+Exeter, lying upon her matronly bosom; the girl awkward in her homespun
+wrapper, her feet fearful of standing upon the flowered carpet.
+</p>
+<p>
+"Come in, Loveday," said Mrs. Veale kindly.
+</p>
+<p>
+Loveday advanced a step and dropped her curtsey, but not a word could
+she say to explain her visit.
+</p>
+<p>
+"What do you want to see me about?" asked Mrs. Veale briskly&mdash;for she
+was much busied in good works, and had no time to give over what was
+needful to each of them.
+</p>
+<p>
+"If you please, ma'am, I want work," said Loveday.
+</p>
+<p>
+Mrs. Veale looked her approval on hearing this most praiseworthy of the
+few sentences fit for use of the lower classes. Even when there is no
+work to be had such sentiments should be encouraged, and without them
+she never unloosed that charity which, when the supply of work failed,
+she exercised for the good of her parishioners' bodies and her own soul.
+</p>
+<p>
+Loveday felt the approval, and her heart took wings to the heaven of
+certain hope. Indeed, had Loveday but had the sense of what was fitting
+to tell the Vicar's lady, she might have attained what she wanted, but
+hope, like despair, ever made Loveday heady.
+</p>
+<p>
+"What work do you want?" asked Mrs. Veale. "I should have sent you out
+to service long ago, but I knew your aunt needed you at home. Has she
+sent you?"
+</p>
+<p>
+"No, ma'am," answered Loveday, "I came of myself. I want work I can do
+in my spare time, when Aunt Senath don't need me."
+</p>
+<p>
+So far all was well; the scheme sounded fit for encouragement by the
+Church, ever anxious for the welfare of even her humblest children.
+Mrs. Veale gave thought to her boots and knives ... no, the gardener's
+boy did them, and he was being prepared for confirmation and must not be
+unsettled. The mending ... that was done by the housemaid in her spare
+time, superintended by Mrs. Veale herself, and it would not be fair to
+the girl to leave her with idle hands for Satan's use when they could
+be employed instead upon sheets and stockings. The washing ... the
+housemaid's mother came to do that, glad to do so at a reasonable price
+for the opportunity of seeing how her daughter prospered from week to
+week under such care as Mrs. Veale bestowed on all the maids whom she
+trained. The spring cleaning ... a girl who did not know the ways of the
+house would make work instead of saving it. Yet Mrs. Veale felt, as a
+Christian woman, that it was her duty to encourage Loveday even at the
+cost of her own china. She resolved to do so.
+</p>
+<p>
+"Many people would not help you, Loveday," she said, "for it is
+very difficult to find work suddenly without upsetting the ways of a
+household, but you are my god-daughter, and so I have always taken a
+special interest in you. My spring-cleaning is not till May this year,
+as then the Vicar goes away to stay with his lordship, the Bishop of
+Exeter, and I will have you here under my own eye. You will not be of
+much assistance at first, but if you are willing and do as you are told
+you will be able to learn."
+</p>
+<p>
+At the mention of the month of May the wings of Loveday's heart folded
+once more and let her heart fall like a stone, then opened in a
+fluttering attempt to save it.
+</p>
+<p>
+"What&mdash;what time in May, ma'am?" she asked. Perhaps it would be the
+first week in that month and all would yet be well, since the Flora was
+held upon the eighth.
+</p>
+<p>
+At Mrs. Veale's next words the wings moulted away, and the bare quills
+left Loveday's heart prone and defenceless.
+</p>
+<p>
+"Not till the second week," said Mrs. Veale, "for the Vicar wishes to
+stay till the Flora, as we are permitting Miss Letitia to dance in the
+procession this year, and naturally he wishes to be there. The Vicar
+feels that these old innocent customs must not be allowed to fall into
+disuse."
+</p>
+<p>
+"Ah!" cried Loveday, "'tis no good to me!"
+</p>
+<p>
+At this shocking speech&mdash;imagine a village girl crying out that an offer
+of employment from the Vicarage is of no good to her!&mdash;Mrs. Veale drew
+such a breath of horror that the hair of the late Canon rose in its
+locket.
+</p>
+<p>
+"What on earth can you mean, Loveday Strick?"
+</p>
+<p>
+Thus Mrs. Veale, justly outraged. But Loveday, infatuated, rushed upon
+her fate&mdash;the fate of expulsion from those precincts.
+</p>
+<p>
+"Oh, ma'am, 'tis no manner of use to me unless I get work before the
+Flora. The Flora, ma'am" (repeating the beloved name as an invocation
+in time of trouble).
+</p>
+<p>
+"'Tis this way, I must get a white satin sash come Flora Day, 'cause
+if I do I'm to dance along with Miss Le Pettit in the procession.
+She's promised me that I should, and indeed I'll die if I don't. I will
+indeed. I've fixed my soul on it. I've got the gown and the stockings
+and the shoes, and all I want is the white riband, and I must someways
+make enough money to buy it come Flora Day. Oh, Mrs. Veale, ma'am, if
+you'll let me scrub and scour for you I'll do it on my knees so as only
+I can dance with her in the Flora."
+</p>
+<p>
+During this speech Mrs. Veale had risen to the full height and width of
+the black silk, feeling that thus only could she cope adequately with
+such a flood of ill-regulated and unseemly passions. She felt deeply
+wounded to think that any girl of her teaching should so betray it as
+this one did in every undisciplined word. She had not felt such a bitter
+stab of disappointment since a trusted and loved old nurse of the family
+had been found drinking the Vicar's port.
+</p>
+<p>
+"Loveday Strick," she said, "you are forgetting yourself."
+</p>
+<p>
+This was not exact, for Loveday had forgotten Mrs. Veale, but the rebuke
+drenched the impetuous girl like a cold wave. She stood defenceless.
+</p>
+<p>
+"I have not comprehended half this mad tale of yours," continued Mrs.
+Veale, "but I gather you have the presumption to say that Miss Le
+Pettit&mdash;<i>Miss Le Pettit</i>&mdash;has said you may dance with her at the
+Flora. Perhaps a young lady in her exalted position, and of what I
+believe are her modernising tendencies, may have formed such a project,
+but you should have known better than to have presumed on such an
+unsuitable condescension. As to a white satin sash, I can imagine
+nothing more unfitted for a girl in your unfortunate position, of which
+I am very sorry to be obliged to remind you. I had always hoped you
+would never forget it."
+</p>
+<p>
+"Ma'am ... you don't understand ..." began Loveday.
+</p>
+<p>
+"That is quite enough, Loveday. Let me hear no more on the subject. If
+you still want work, apart from this desire for unsuitable finery, since
+you are my god-daughter I will forget what has passed and still try you
+at the spring cleaning."
+</p>
+<p>
+Then it was that a horrid thing happened to Loveday.
+</p>
+<p>
+"What do I care for you and your spring-cleaning?" she stormed, "you and
+it can go up the chimney together for all I care. I only wanted you to
+give me work so as to get my satin sash, and I'll never come near you or
+church again as long as I do live. That I won't...." And Loveday turned
+and ran out of the front door, beneath the grinning fox, and not only
+ran out of the front door, but banged it behind her.
+</p>
+<p>
+Maids in the kitchen heard that unseemly sound, as they had heard,
+awe-struck, the raised voice, and Mrs. Veale felt she must read them a
+short but fitting lesson on the dire results of wanting things beyond
+one's station. The stout cook and the crisp housemaid soon knew of
+Loveday's presumptuous ambition, a knowledge they shared now with the
+Lear family and Cherry Cotton, and that soon was to spread to the
+accompaniment of many a titter about the twisted ways of the village.
+</p>
+
+<p class="prechapter">
+<b>CHAPTER VIII:</b> IN WHICH LOVEDAY CONTINUES
+HER QUEST AND ACHIEVES TENPENCE
+</p>
+
+<a name="h2HCH0009" id="h2HCH0009"><!-- H2 anchor --></a>
+
+<div style="height: 4em;"><br /><br /><br /><br /></div>
+
+<h2>
+    Chapter VIII
+</h2>
+<h4>
+    IN WHICH LOVEDAY CONTINUES HER QUEST AND ACHIEVES TENPENCE
+</h4>
+<p>
+Loveday ran down the path to the Vicarage gate so fast that the tears
+she had not been able to restrain blew off her cheeks as she went. Thus
+it came about that she did not see Miss Letitia until she had all but
+knocked her down in the urgency of her flight.
+</p>
+<p>
+Letitia Veale was no sylph such as Miss Le Pettit, however, and she
+caught hold of Loveday like the good-natured, rather romping, young lady
+that she was. Mrs. Veale always said of her that she would "fine down,"
+but persons less well disposed to her than her own mother, and who were
+the mothers of daughters themselves, said that Letitia Veale was a sad
+hoyden. She had ever a merry nod or word for Loveday, and dazed with
+anger as that ill-balanced maid was, Letitia's smile won her to
+comparative calm again, though it was a calm with which cunning
+intermingled. For:&mdash;
+</p>
+<p>
+"Oh, miss," cried Loveday, "I do beg your pardon ..." Then, seeing by
+the young lady's pleasant face that she had not offended by her
+clumsiness&mdash;"but I was so sick with misery I didn't rightly see where
+I was going."
+</p>
+<p>
+"Why, whatever is the matter, Loveday?" asked the lively girl.
+</p>
+<p>
+"Miss, I can't tell you, not now, but oh, miss, you've always been good
+to me, will you do something for me? I've never asked you for nothing
+before, have I?"
+</p>
+<p>
+"Why, no, you have not, Loveday. What is it?"
+</p>
+<p>
+"Have you such a thing as an old white sash you could let me have, miss?
+I just can't rightly tell you how I want it. It don't matter how old, so
+I can wash and iron it. Oh, miss...?"
+</p>
+<p>
+Letitia thought for a moment, then shook her brown ringlets.
+</p>
+<p>
+"I'm so sorry, Loveday, since you want it so much, but the only white
+sash I have is my new one for Flora Day. I have an old black one I could
+let you have though."
+</p>
+<p>
+"Black! Oh, Miss Letitia, that's no good. Couldn't you let me have the
+white one? I'll work and work to make the money to buy you another, and
+your mother'd get you a new one for the Flora."
+</p>
+<p>
+"Loveday, you know I couldn't. Mamma would insist on knowing what I'd
+done with it, you know she would."
+</p>
+<p>
+"You couldn't&mdash;you couldn't say you'd lost it, miss?" asked Loveday,
+even her tongue faltering at the suggestion.
+</p>
+<p>
+But though Letitia might be a romp, she was not a deceitful girl, and
+she respected her mother.
+</p>
+<p>
+"Oh, Loveday, how can you suggest such a thing? It would be telling
+mamma a lie. Besides, she would never believe me."
+</p>
+<p>
+At this moment Mrs. Veale, hearing voices, opened the door and looked
+out.
+</p>
+<p>
+"Letitia! Come in at once, and do not speak again to Loveday Strick."
+</p>
+<p>
+Letitia made round eyes at Loveday and sped up the path. Loveday pushed
+open the gate and went out.
+</p>
+<p>
+She went along the white dusty road, between the hedgerows of elder
+whose crumpled green leaves were unfolding in the sunny April weather,
+and her tears were the only rain that smiling country-side had seen for
+many a day, and they, to match the month, were already drying, for the
+fire burnt too high in Loveday for tears to hold her long. She fled
+along the road at first blindly, then more slowly as the exhaustion that
+follows on such rage as hers overcame her, and as she paused at last to
+sink against a mossy bank and rest, a horseman overtook her.
+</p>
+<p>
+It was Mr. Constantine on his white cob, looking a very dapper
+gentleman, but Loveday heeded him not, only raising her great black eyes
+unseeingly at the sound of the hoofs. Yet that so sombre gaze arrested
+Mr. Constantine, for it seemed to him an unwonted look in that land of
+buxom maids. He drew rein beside her.
+</p>
+<p>
+"Are you a gipsy, my girl?" he asked her kindly.
+</p>
+<p>
+Loveday shook her head.
+</p>
+<p>
+"Come, you have a tongue as well as that handsome pair of eyes, I
+suppose? No?"
+</p>
+<p>
+"My tongue's wisht, it brings ill-luck," said Loveday.
+</p>
+<p>
+Mr. Constantine studied her more attentively.
+</p>
+<p>
+"If all women thought that, there'd be more happy marriages," he said,
+slipping his hand into his pocket. "You've wisdom on your tongue,
+whether it's lucky or no. You say you're not a gipsy?"
+</p>
+<p>
+By this time it had dawned on Loveday what, in her absorption, she had
+not at first noticed, that she was speaking to one of the gentry, and
+to no less a one than Mr. Constantine, of Constantine. She stood up and
+dropped her curtsey out of habit, but sullenly. Oddly enough, it was the
+sullenness and not the curtsey that took Mr. Constantine's fancy.
+</p>
+<p>
+"No, sir," said Loveday. "I'm not a gipsy. I'm Loveday Strick."
+</p>
+<p>
+"Loveday ..." said the gentleman. "Loveday ... That's a beautiful name.
+No&mdash;it's more than a name, it's a phrase. A very beautiful phrase."
+</p>
+<p>
+Loveday raised her eyes at this strange talk. Mr. Constantine took his
+hand out of his pocket and held out a silver sixpence.
+</p>
+<p>
+"Gipsy or no, take that for your gipsy eyes, my dear," he said. Loveday
+stood hesitant. Even she, who had just begged of Miss Letitia, felt
+shame at taking a coin in charity. Yet she did so, for before her eyes
+she saw, not a silver sixpence, but the beginning of a length of white
+satin riband unrolling towards her through futurity. Perhaps, unknown
+to herself, her foreign blood prompted her to that sad Jesuitry which
+teaches all means are justifiable to the desired end. Perhaps she saw
+nothing beyond the beginning of her riband, but she held out her hand.
+Mr. Constantine dropped the sixpence into it, touched his cob with his
+heel and rode on. Loveday stayed in the hedge, the sixpence in her palm
+and hope once more in her soul. That hope was to faint and fall during
+the days that followed and saw her quest no nearer its fulfilment.
+</p>
+<p>
+For who wished to employ the strange, dark girl that had always been
+aloof and distrusted? And who could credit this violent conversion to
+the ordered ways of domesticity? Who had the money to squander on help
+from without, when, within, if there were not enough hands for the work,
+then the work itself, like an unanswered letter, slipped into that dead
+place of unremembered things where nothing matters any more? Last week's
+cleaning left undone adds nothing appreciable to this week's dirt that
+next week's exertions may not remedy as easily together as singly&mdash;or so
+argued the slovenly housewife, while for the industrious no hands save
+their own could have scrubbed and polished to their liking.
+</p>
+<p>
+Here and there Loveday earned a few odd pence, for a few hand's turns
+done when necessity or charity called in her vagrant services, but the
+Flora Dance of Bugletown was held upon the eighth of May, and when May
+Day dawned she had but tenpence for all her store&mdash;and the riband would
+cost as many shillings. Despair settled in her heart for the first time;
+often before it had knocked but been refused more than a glance within,
+but now her enfeebled arms could hold the door no longer, and that most
+dread of all visitors took possession of his own&mdash;for is not the human
+heart Despair's only habitation, without which he is but a homeless
+wanderer?
+</p>
+
+<p class="prechapter">
+<b>CHAPTER IX:</b> IN WHICH LOVEDAY SEES ONE MAGPIE
+</p>
+
+<a name="h2HCH0010" id="h2HCH0010"><!-- H2 anchor --></a>
+
+<div style="height: 4em;"><br /><br /><br /><br /></div>
+
+<h2>
+    Chapter IX
+</h2>
+<h4>
+    IN WHICH LOVEDAY SEES ONE MAGPIE
+</h4>
+<p>
+Upon May Day, when boys blow the May horns and girls carry sprays of
+hawthorn and all good folk break their fast on bread and cream, Loveday
+had to go, as was her wont (and a mortifying one to her pride since
+Primrose's flouting of her), to Upper Farm. Twice before have we seen
+her on that errand&mdash;when she first was love-stricken for Miss Le Pettit
+in the farmhouse parlour, and again when on her search for work she saw
+the querulous young Mrs. Lear in the dim kitchen. Since then she had
+gone monotonously enough on her errand, avoiding speech even with the
+elder Mrs. Lear as much as possible, and seeing Primrose not at all&mdash;an
+easy matter, since the girl kept her room, or lay on the horsehair sofa,
+languidly stitching woollen roses on a handscreen, for all the world
+like the spoilt bride of some great gentleman.
+</p>
+<p>
+There seemed never any violence of thought or emotion at Upper Farm,
+even the sulks of Primrose were petty in nature, her jealousies made her
+voice shrill but did not take her by the throat with that intolerable
+aching stormier women know too well, while her graceless husband was
+irritated on the surface of his mind as some shallow pool is fretted
+over its bed of soft ooze, retaining no trace when the ripples have
+died. The elder Lear, as befits a good countryman content with his
+station in life, was too hard-worked for anything save a tired back on
+his entry at night, and the old wife too occupied with her Martha-like
+toil for searching into the sensibilities either of herself or of her
+daughter-in-law.
+</p>
+<p>
+Loveday, without reasoning on the matter, had yet ever been aware
+that this slight tide of feeling was all that ever lapped against the
+household at Upper Farm, therefore when she saw one magpie in the last
+field before the yard gate she accepted the sign for her own despairing
+heart alone. No young woman of education would have paid any attention
+to such a vulgar superstition, but Loveday had no learning other than
+what her elders had let fall in her hearing, both when she was supposed
+to be listening for her betterment, and when it was thought she would
+not understand the drift of their speech. And that a single magpie means
+sorrow was one of the few solid facts Loveday had gleaned by following
+the garnered sheaves of her elders.
+</p>
+<p>
+Now, as she stepped over the topmost ledge of the granite stile, there
+was a fanlike flutter of black and white in her very face, and she stood
+a moment watching the ill-omened bird wheel and dip behind the thick
+blossom of the hawthorn hedge.
+</p>
+<p>
+"There goes my white riband," thought the ignorant girl, and yet even
+with the quick fear there welled a fresh and fierce determination in her
+undisciplined heart.
+</p>
+<p>
+Her egotism, if not her superstition, was reproved when she reached
+the farmhouse, and old Madgy, the midwife, coming to the pump for more
+water, met her with news of what had happened not half an hour earlier.
+The shallow creek of Upper Farm had been invaded by a violent and dark
+tide, on whose ebb two lives had been borne away. Loveday, staring up
+at Primrose's room, saw the withered hand of old Mrs. Lear draw the
+curtains across the window behind which lay a dead mother and a babe
+that had never lived.
+</p>
+
+<p class="prechapter">
+<b>CHAPTER X:</b> IN WHICH LOVEDAY DOES NOT
+ATTEND A FUNERAL
+</p>
+
+<a name="h2HCH0011" id="h2HCH0011"><!-- H2 anchor --></a>
+
+<div style="height: 4em;"><br /><br /><br /><br /></div>
+
+<h2>
+    Chapter X
+</h2>
+<h4>
+    IN WHICH LOVEDAY DOES NOT ATTEND A FUNERAL
+</h4>
+<p>
+"A couple of months too soon her pains took her," said Madgy; "she has
+been fretting and wisht these weeks past, with her husband always after
+some young faggot up country and herself sick with envy at the girls
+that could still dance with the chaps. She had no woman's heart in her,
+poor soul, to carry her woman's burden. Ah! many's the strange things
+in women I see at my trade," and Madgy wrung out a cloth and mumbled to
+herself&mdash;her old mouth folded inwards, as though she perpetually turned
+all the secrets that she knew over and over within it.
+</p>
+<p>
+"Your mother died because she'd set her heart on death," she added, to
+Loveday, "but this one died because she dedn' know how to catch hold on
+life. She'd a weak hand on everything she touched, because she never
+wanted nawthen enough."
+</p>
+<p>
+"Wanting's not getting, however hard you want," said Loveday.
+</p>
+<p>
+"Ah! isn't it? It's getting, though you may have sorrow packed along wi'
+it. Out of my way, maid; I must be busy overstairs." And old Madgy went
+to ply the second part of her trade, for she washed the dead as well as
+the newly-born; she laid coins on the eyes of the old and flannels on
+the limbs of the young with the same smile between her rheumy lids and
+on her folded mouth.
+</p>
+<p>
+Loveday stayed awhile and helped Mrs. Lear, by milking the puzzled,
+lowing cows and pouring the milk into the pans, but all the time they
+worked the dead girl's name was never mentioned between them. It was
+as though Loveday were making amends for the ill words that had been
+between them by refraining her tongue from everything but her first
+few accents of pity and amaze.
+</p>
+<p>
+That pity was shared by all the neighbourhood, gentle and simple.
+Time was, just before her marriage, when Primrose was accounted a
+foolish and sinful maid enough, but married she had been, and into a
+highly-respected family, for the Lears' graves had lain in the next best
+position to those of the gentry for many generations, and, for their
+sakes more than for hers, tributes flowed in to the funeral.
+</p>
+<p>
+This poor, pale Primrose, who had died so young, though not unmarried,
+was laid to rest, with babe on arm, only a few days before the Flora
+dance, and her friend Cherry, who would none the less foot it gaily on
+that occasion, attended, with a length of black crape round her buxom
+waist and her eyes swollen by the easy tears of an easy nature.
+</p>
+<p>
+Loveday was not present, for, friendly as she had ever been with Mrs.
+Lear, the dead girl's petulance lay between them now; memory of it
+become to Loveday a pang of pity, and to Mrs. Lear a sacred duty.
+Nevertheless, an odd notion, such as Loveday was apt to take, made her
+feel that some tie, slight, but persistent, between Primrose and herself
+drew her, at least, to give the last look possible from behind the hedge
+screening the road.
+</p>
+<p>
+There, hidden as a bird, she saw how highly the world had thought of the
+girl to whom she had dared feel a flashing sense of superiority; she saw
+how true respectability is to be admired. For never at any funeral, save
+that of actual gentry, had there been seen so many of those elegant
+floral tokens of esteem which reflect, perhaps, even more honour upon
+those who bestow them than upon the dead who receive them. Primrose may
+have been a poor creature enough, but the Lears had always held their
+heads high among their fellows, without ever trying to push above their
+station. No unseemly ambitions, no fantastic desires, had ever drawn
+just censure upon Upper Farm, and wreaths and crosses decked with
+tasteful streamers bore witness to this fact. There was actually an
+exquisite white wreath from Miss Le Pettit of Ignores, laid proudly upon
+the humbler greener offerings of farmers and fisher folk, overpowering
+with its elegance even an artificial wreath under glass which came from
+the Bugletown corn-chandler, who was Mr. Lear's chief customer.
+</p>
+<p>
+Loveday, watching, knew suddenly that, when her time came, she would be
+an alien in death, as she was in life; that never for her would these
+costly tokens of respect be gathered. Yet, instead of this thought
+humbling her, instead of it teaching her the lesson that only by
+striving to do her duty in the lowly course set for her could she attain
+any measure of regard, it aroused in her once more, this time with an
+even fiercer intensity, her ardent desire to be as different from these
+good folk as possible. Miss Le Pettit had thought her different, had
+admired that difference, and to Miss Le Pettit, as supreme arbiter, her
+heart turned now. There was still that doorway to her future whose latch
+the fair Flora's hand could lift, and this door, ajar for her, would
+open wide if she were but fitly garbed to pass across its threshold.
+</p>
+<p>
+Watching the funeral procession, which should have suggested such far
+other thoughts even to her undisciplined soul, Loveday was taken only
+by an idea so rash and impious that it alarmed even herself. It was the
+penalty of her dark and ardent blood that fear, like despair, added to
+the force of her desires. That idea, which she should have driven from
+her as a serpent, she nourished in her bosom as though it were a dove.
+</p>
+
+<p class="prechapter">
+<b>CHAPTER XI:</b> IN WHICH LOVEDAY ATTENDS
+THE FLORA
+</p>
+
+<a name="h2HCH0012" id="h2HCH0012"><!-- H2 anchor --></a>
+
+<div style="height: 4em;"><br /><br /><br /><br /></div>
+
+<h2>
+    Chapter XI
+</h2>
+<h4>
+    IN WHICH LOVEDAY ATTENDS THE FLORA
+</h4>
+<p>
+The eighth of May dawned fair and clear, and from early morning the
+young men and maidservants of Bugletown, who had Spent the past week
+cleaning and polishing the houses, streamed out into the country to
+pluck green branches for their further adornment. Already the thought of
+the dance was in their heads, and its tripping in their feet, and they
+sang through the lanes.
+</p>
+<p>
+They waylaid strangers coming into Bugletown and drew contributions
+of silver from them, according to custom, and all they did went to a
+gay measure. By the time the gentry, both of the place itself and of
+outlying regions, were assembled for the dance every house in the main
+streets of the grey little old town was decked with boughs, its front
+and back doors opened wide for the dancers, who at the Flora always
+danced through every house set hospitably open for their passage.
+</p>
+<p>
+The band, that all day long plays but the one tune, hour after hour,
+was gathered together by noon, sleek and not yet heated, their trumpets
+shining in the sun, their fiddles glossy as their well-oiled hair, their
+big drum round as the portly figure of the bandmaster himself. Already,
+in many a bedchamber, young women had twirled this way and that before
+the mirror, studying the set of taffetas and tarletan, or young men
+had polished their high beavers anxiously against the sleeves of their
+brightest broadcloth frock coats. In speckless kitchens housewives
+prepared their cakes and cream, and the masters saw to the drawing of
+the cider, and, perhaps, tasted it, to make sure that it had not soured
+overnight. And in each heart different words were running to the Flora
+Day tune, words that suited with each heart's measure. The children in
+the streets sang aloud the doggerel words that long custom has fastened
+upon the tune:&mdash;
+</p>
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<p>  <i>"John the beau was walking home,</i></p>
+<p>  <i>When he met with Sally Dover,</i></p>
+<p>  <i>He kissed her once, he kissed her twice,</i></p>
+<p>  <i>And he kissed her three times over!"</i></p>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>
+Thus the heedless children with their lips, but their little hearts
+probably beat to the even simpler words: "<i>I'm having a holiday!
+Having a holiday!</i>"
+</p>
+<p>
+More staidly, and almost unheard by their time-muffled ears, a voice,
+nevertheless, sang to the housewives, telling each her copper and silver
+was the brightest in the town, and adding, perhaps, little gusts of
+memory that half hurt, half pleased, of how nimbly she had danced at the
+Flora in years gone by, and how fair she had looked....
+</p>
+<p>
+The staid married men smiled to themselves, and would not have
+acknowledged that within them something seemed to chuckle: "<i>I'm not
+so old, after all; I'm not so old, after all</i>...."
+</p>
+<p>
+Frankly, the hearts of the young men nudged hopefully against their
+ribs, calling out: "<i>I'm going to dance with Her! I'm going to dance
+with Her! And perhaps ... for I always was lucky! I always was
+lucky</i>!"
+</p>
+<p>
+But who shall say what lilting voice, timid-bold and sly-sincere,
+whispered to the maidens, beating out its syllables against the new
+stays so tightly laced for the occasion? Perhaps the words of the
+children's doggerel, with a name or so altered, met the moment without
+need of further change....
+</p>
+<p>
+And Loveday's heart, as she walked the three miles from the fishing
+village to Bugletown, sang to her of joy and hope and triumph.
+</p>
+<p>
+When she reached the Market House, she found the band ready to strike up
+the famous tune, while the mayor, his chain of office about his neck,
+stood conversing with the ladies and gentlemen who were to lead the
+dance. For, as is but fitting, the couples at the Flora follow each
+other according to their social precedence, though all may join who
+choose, providing only that the females, be they gentry or tradespeople,
+wear white, and the men their best broadcloth and Sunday hats.
+</p>
+<p>
+Of all who had gathered for the dance there was none more highly placed
+than Miss Flora Le Pettit, and none as fair to see. She stood supreme in
+the sunshine and her beauty, her white muslin robes swelling round her
+like the petals of some full-blown rose, her white sash streaming over
+them, the white ribands that decked her hat of fine Dunstable straw
+flowing down to her shoulders and mingling with her auburn curls. Even
+the countless tiny bows that adorned her dress (as though they were a
+cloud of butterflies drawn to alight upon it by its freshness) were of
+white satin. Everything about her save her little sandalled feet danced
+already&mdash;the brim of the wide hat that waved above her dancing eyes, the
+flounces and floating ends of her attire which the soft breeze stirred,
+the corners of her smiling mouth, the dimple which came and went behind
+the curls that nodded by her cheek. What vision can have been fairer
+than that presented by Flora Le Pettit upon Flora Day? "None, none,
+none," thought eager Loveday, as she edged through the crowd and caught
+sight of her divinity. None ... and yet that sight caused Loveday a
+strange clutching in her breast.
+</p>
+<p>
+For she, too, had felt fair when she had gazed in her tiny mirror; the
+yellowed linen gown had gleamed pure and white, her young breast had
+swelled above the waist that looked so slim, and that was so finely
+girt.... Yet, now, something of splendour about Miss Le Pettit that
+she could not attain dimmed all herself and, with herself, her joy.
+Her face, already flushed by her walk, burned deeper still with shame.
+Yet the desire that three weeks of striving had swollen to a passion
+urged her forward, and, fingering the lovely thing about her waist to
+gain courage, she broke through the last ring of staring people and
+stood in front of Miss Le Pettit.
+</p>
+<p>
+The heiress of Ignores had not yet caught sight of her, being engaged in
+laughing conversation with several admiring gentlemen, but something of
+an almost painful intensity in the dark gaze of the village girl drew
+her face to meet it. The black eyes, so full of an extravagant passion,
+met the careless glance of the blue orbs that knew not even the passing
+shadow of such a thing.
+</p>
+<p>
+"Oh," stammered Loveday, the set speech she had been conning all the way
+to Bugletown dying upon her lips, "Oh, Miss Flora, I'm come. I've got my
+white sash and I'm come...."
+</p>
+<p>
+Over Flora's face passed a look of bewilderment, while Loveday, her
+moment of self-criticism gone, stood trembling with eager happiness.
+Then Miss Le Pettit spoke, lightly and kindly.
+</p>
+<p>
+"Surely I have seen you before, my girl?" she asked. And, turning to the
+little group of her friends, added:
+</p>
+<p>
+"She has such a striking air, 'twould be difficult to forget her."
+</p>
+<p>
+Yet, till this moment, Miss Le Pettit had forgotten everything save that
+air. Forgotten her careless suggestion, her prettily given promise, her
+praise. Forgotten even the pleasant glow such evident worship as this
+village girl's had stirred in her. She had had so much worship since!
+Who can blame her for not remembering some idle words her artistic
+perceptions had prompted three weeks earlier? It had been a fantastic
+suggestion at best, as a girl of sense would have known, treasuring it
+merely for its kindly intention. After all, Miss Le Pettit would be far
+more conspicuous dancing with a village maiden at the Flora than with a
+gentleman suited to her in rank and estate. Since that day at Upper Farm
+she had met just such a gentleman&mdash;he with the glossy whiskers and
+handsome form who was nearest to her now, smiling at this little
+encounter.
+</p>
+<p>
+"Why, child," said Flora to Loveday, "you look very nice, I am sure.
+But your place should be much further down the procession." Then, more
+sharply: "Why do you stare so, girl?"
+</p>
+<p>
+Loveday stood as one stricken, her cheek now as white as the sash she
+was still holding in her shaking hands.
+</p>
+
+<p class="prechapter">
+<b>CHAPTER XII:</b> IN WHICH LOVEDAY DANCES
+</p>
+
+<a name="h2HCH0013" id="h2HCH0013"><!-- H2 anchor --></a>
+
+<div style="height: 4em;"><br /><br /><br /><br /></div>
+
+<h2>
+    Chapter XII
+</h2>
+<h4>
+    IN WHICH LOVEDAY DANCES
+</h4>
+<p>
+The Mayor had stepped forward, fearing lest this young person might be
+annoying the heiress; the bandsmen had turned from the final survey of
+their instruments to gaze; here and there various people who recognised
+Loveday were pressing through the crowd, eager to see and hear.
+Only Miss Le Pettit had drawn back against the protecting arm of the
+gentleman who was to be her partner. Loveday still stayed, her riband
+in her hands.
+</p>
+<p>
+There came comments from the crowd.
+</p>
+<p>
+"Loveday Strick! She'm mad! This month past she'm been like a crazy
+thing about the Flora!"
+</p>
+<p>
+"I thought all the time she must be mad to have imagined Miss Le Pettit
+meant to dance along wi' she!"
+</p>
+<p>
+"What's the maid got on? I can't rightly see."
+</p>
+<p>
+"Old white, but a brave new sash."
+</p>
+<p>
+At that Loveday raised her head and looked about her. A shrill voice
+from the crowd answered the last speaker.
+</p>
+<p>
+"A new sash; Ted'n possible. Us have all been laughing because she
+couldn' come by one nohow." And Cherry Cotton elbowed her way through
+the ring of curious folk to where Loveday stood. Suddenly Cherry gave a
+scream, and pointed an accusing finger at Loveday.
+</p>
+<p>
+"Ah, a new sash, sure enough.... Ask her where she got 'en. Ask her, I
+say."
+</p>
+<p>
+Loveday answered nothing, only turned her head a little to stare at
+Cherry.
+</p>
+<p>
+"You ask her where she took it from, Miss! You should know, seeing you
+gave it!"
+</p>
+<p>
+"I gave it to her? Nonsense."
+</p>
+<p>
+"Not to her, but to poor Primrose Lear. 'Tes the riband that tied up
+your wreath. She's robbed the dead. Loveday Strick's robbed the dead."
+</p>
+<p>
+Then indeed, after a moment's stupefaction following on the horrid
+revelation, a murmur of indignation ran from mouth to mouth.
+</p>
+<p>
+"She's robbed the dead!"
+</p>
+<p>
+"My soul! To rob the living's stealing, but to rob the dead's a profane
+thing."
+</p>
+<p>
+"'Tisn't man as can judge her, 'tis only God Almighty!" cried an old
+minister, aghast.
+</p>
+<p>
+"Look at the maid, how she stands.... Her own conscience judges her,
+I should say!"
+</p>
+<p>
+"She's no word to excuse herself, simmingly."
+</p>
+<p>
+"That's because she do know nothing can excuse what she's done...."
+</p>
+<p>
+And, indeed, Loveday stood without speech. Perhaps in all that buzz of
+murmuring she heard the voice of her own conscience at last, for she
+made no effort to defend herself, or, perhaps, even at that hour, she
+heard nothing but the dread whisper of defeat. She stood before Flora
+Le Pettit like a wilted rose whose petals hang limply, about to fall,
+fronting a bloom that spreads its glowing leaves in the full flush of
+noon. The one girl was triumphant in her beauty and her unassailable
+position, every flounce out-curved in freshness; the other drooped at
+brow and hem, her slender neck downbent, her sash-ends pendant as broken
+tendrils after rain upon her heavily hanging skirts.
+</p>
+<p>
+All she was heard to murmur, and that very low, was a halting sentence
+about her white sash: "But you said&mdash;you said you'd dance with me if
+I got my sash ..." or some such words, but only Miss Le Pettit caught
+all the muttered syllables, and she never spoke of them, save with a
+petulant reluctance to Mr. Constantine when he questioned her
+afterwards.
+</p>
+<p>
+"Girl," said the Mayor sharply, "is it true?'
+</p>
+<p>
+"Yes," said Loveday.
+</p>
+<p>
+"True!" cried Cherry, "I know 'tes true. I remember noticing that green
+mark on the riband when the wreath was laid on the grave. Ah, she'm a
+wicked piece, she is. She tormented my poor Primrose in life and she's
+robbed her in death. You aren't safe in your grave from she."
+</p>
+<p>
+Everyone was speaking against Loveday in rightful indignation by now,
+and the good wives expressed the opinion that she should be well
+whipped. Loveday turned suddenly to Miss Le Pettit. There were those
+there&mdash;notably Mr. Constantine, that observant philosopher&mdash;who said
+afterwards she seemed for one instant to be going to break into
+impassioned speech. She did half hold out her hands. The ends of the
+white sash, disregarded, fluttered from them as she did so. But Miss
+Le Pettit, shocked in all her sensibilities by this vulgar scene,
+turned away.
+</p>
+<p>
+"Surely," said she, "there has been enough time wasted already. Can we
+not begin the dance, Mr. Mayor?"
+</p>
+<p>
+At a sign from the Mayor the band struck up into the tune that was to
+echo all day through every head and, perhaps, afterwards, through a few
+kindly hearts.
+</p>
+
+<center>
+<img src="images/music.png" width="100%"
+alt="Music" />
+</center>
+
+<p style="text-indent: 0em;">
+played the band, and, still whispering together with excitement, the
+dancers fell into place.
+</p>
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<p>  "<i>John the beau was walking home</i>,</p>
+<p>  <i>When he met with Sally Dover</i>,</p>
+<p>  <i>He kissed her once, he kissed her twice</i>,</p>
+<p>  <i>And he kissed her three times over</i>."</p>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>
+It seemed to Loveday that the whole world was dancing. The faces of the
+crowd, the bobbing ringlets, swelling skirts, the bright eyes and bright
+instruments, the houses that peered at her with their polished panes,
+all danced in a mad haze of mingled light and blackness. Sun, moon and
+stars joined in, heads and feet whirled so madly that none could have
+said which was upper-most. Creation was a-dancing, and she alone stood
+to be mocked at in a reeling world. This was the merry measure she had
+striven to join! She must have been mad indeed!
+</p>
+<p>
+Turning blindly, she ran through the crowd that gave at her approach,
+and all day the dancing went on without her. The flutter of her
+blasphemous sash did not profane the sunlight in the streets of
+Bugletown, nor pollute with its passing the houses of the good wives.
+Like a swallow's wing, it had but flashed across the ordered ways and
+was gone.
+</p>
+<p>
+Yet Loveday's ambition was, after all, fulfilled that day. For she
+danced&mdash;and danced a measure she could not have trod without the white
+satin sash.... Good folk in Bugletown footed it down the cobbled
+streets, and through paved kitchens; Loveday danced a finer step on
+insubstantial ether, into realms more vast. Were those realms dark for
+her, thus violated by her enforced entry of them? Who can say, save
+those folk of Bugletown who knew that to her first crime she had added
+a second even greater?
+</p>
+<p>
+They found her next day in the wood; the wind had risen, and blew
+against her skirts, so that her feet moved gently as though yet tracing
+their phantom paces upon the airy floors. Her head, like a snapped lily,
+lay forwards and a little to one side, so that her pale cheek rested
+against the taut white satin of the riband from which she hung. The wind
+blew the languid meshes of her hair softly, kissing her once, kissing
+her twice, and kissing her three times over.
+</p>
+
+<p class="prechapter">
+<b>EPILOGUE</b></p>
+
+<a name="h2H_EPIL" id="h2H_EPIL"><!-- H2 anchor --></a>
+
+<div style="height: 4em;"><br /><br /><br /><br /></div>
+
+<h2>
+    Epilogue
+</h2>
+<p>
+Such is the shocking tale of Loveday Strick, a girl who gave her life
+for a piece of finery. Is it not small wonder that Miss Le Pettit
+lamented the sad lack of proportion in the affair?
+</p>
+<p>
+All for a length of white satin riband....
+</p>
+<p>
+And yet, there were two people who thought a little differently from the
+rest of Loveday's world on the subject. They were an odd couple to think
+alike in anything&mdash;it seemed as though even after her death Loveday's
+violent unsuitability must persist as a legacy. They were the refined
+and polished Mr. Constantine and old Madgy the midwife, a person whom,
+naturally, he had never met till the day after the Flora, when his
+philosophic curiosity drew him to search for the lost girl in company
+with a band of villagers. It was Madgy who led them to the wood, sure
+that there was what they sought. Mr. Constantine and Madgy stood looking
+at the pale girl when she had been laid upon last year's leaves at their
+feet. One of the men would have taken the riband from her, with some
+vague notion of returning it, though whether to the graveyard or to the
+Manor he could not have told. Mr. Constantine and Madgy put out each a
+hand to check him.
+</p>
+<p>
+"Leave it her," said Mr. Constantine curtly.
+</p>
+<p>
+"Ay," answered Madgy, speaking freely as was her wont, for she was,
+alas, no respecter of persons, "it was more than a white riband to the
+maid, for all that the fools say."
+</p>
+<p>
+Mr. Constantine nodded. He too saw in that length of satin, now soiled
+and crumpled, more than a white riband. He saw passion in it&mdash;passion
+of hope, of ambition, of love, of adoration, of despair. Not a piece
+of finery had ended Loveday's stormy course, but a symbol of life
+itself, with more in its stained warp and woof than many lives hold
+in three-score years and ten. Like religion, this riband held every
+experience. Primrose had known mating and childbearing, anxiety and
+content and jealousy and death; Mr. Constantine had, in his wandering
+life of the gentleman of leisure, experienced his moments of keen
+enjoyment, his tender and romantic interludes; Miss Le Pettit would know
+decorous wooing, prosperity, pain of giving birth as she duly presented
+her husband with an heir, sorrow as she saw her chestnut curls greying
+and her eye gathering the puckers of advancing years around its fading
+blue. Yet none of these would know as much as Loveday had known in the
+short life they all thought so wasted and so incomplete, would feel as
+much as she had felt&mdash;the whole pageant of passion symbolised by this
+insensate strip of satin. She alone had known ecstasy in her brief mad
+dance across their sylvan stage.
+</p>
+<p>
+Madgy folded the riband across the half-open eyes and wound the ends
+about the discoloured throat. And thus it was when Loveday was buried in
+unconsecrated ground, but with the thing she had desired most in life,
+striven for, sinned for, and finally attained, still with her. Of whom,
+after all, could a richer epitaph be written?
+</p>
+<h4>
+THE END.
+</h4>
+
+<center>
+<img src="images/endpaper.png" width="100%"
+alt="Endpapers" />
+</center>
+
+<div style="height: 6em;"><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /></div>
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+<pre>
+
+
+
+
+
+End of Project Gutenberg's The White Riband, by Fryniwyd Tennyson Jesse
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+</body>
+</html>
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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of The White Riband, by Fryniwyd Tennyson Jesse
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: The White Riband
+       A Young Female's Folly
+
+Author: Fryniwyd Tennyson Jesse
+
+Release Date: November 22, 2004 [EBook #14119]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE WHITE RIBAND ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Juliet Sutherland, David Garcia and the PG Online
+Distributed Proofreading Team.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+THE WHITE RIBAND
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+F. TENNYSON JESSE
+
+
+
+
+
+_By the Same Author_
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+  THE MILKY WAY
+  BEGGARS ON HORSEBACK
+  SECRET BREAD
+  THE SWORD OF DEBORAH
+  THE HAPPY BRIDE
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+NEW YORK: GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY
+
+
+
+
+[Illustration]
+
+
+
+
+THE WHITE RIBAND
+
+OR
+
+A YOUNG FEMALE'S FOLLY
+
+
+BY
+
+F. TENNYSON JESSE
+
+
+NEW YORK
+GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY
+1921
+
+
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+TO STELLA,
+
+A YOUNG FEMALE,
+
+I DEDICATE THIS TALE,
+
+In the hope that it will encourage her to persevere in that indifference
+to personal adornment for which she is conspicuous at present
+
+SHOULD IT FAIL IN THIS HIGH ENDEAVOUR,
+NEVERTHELESS
+THIS BOOK IS HERS IN ALL SISTERLY LOVE
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+
+
+       PROLOGUE
+
+  CHAPTER
+
+     I IN WHICH THE READER IS TAKEN BACK A FEW WEEKS IN POINT
+       OF TIME, AND DOWN SEVERAL STEPS IN THE SOCIAL SCALE
+
+    II IN WHICH THE ONION-SELLER'S DAUGHTER FOR THE FIRST TIME
+       FEELS AS A WOMAN
+
+   III IN WHICH SHE FOR THE FIRST TIME FEELS AS A GIRL
+
+    IV IN WHICH THE ONION-SELLER'S DAUGHTER FEELS HERSELF A GODDESS
+
+     V IN WHICH LOVEDAY ESSAYS THE WHITE GOWN
+
+    VI IN WHICH LOVEDAY ESSAYS TO OBTAIN THE WHITE SATIN RIBAND
+
+   VII IN WHICH LOVEDAY STILL ESSAYS TO OBTAIN THE WHITE SATIN RIBAND
+
+  VIII IN WHICH LOVEDAY CONTINUES HER QUEST AND ACHIEVES TENPENCE
+
+    IX IN WHICH LOVEDAY SETS ONE MAGPIE
+
+     X IN WHICH LOVEDAY DOES NOT ATTEND A FUNERAL
+
+    XI IN WHICH LOVEDAY ATTENDS THE FLORA
+
+   XII IN WHICH LOVEDAY DANCES
+
+       EPILOGUE
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+
+
+PROLOGUE
+
+
+
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+
+
+THE WHITE RIBAND
+
+OR
+
+A YOUNG FEMALE'S FOLLY
+
+
+Prologue
+
+
+That was how they spoke of her story in the duchy's drawing-rooms;
+for what had Loveday been, at the most charitable count, but a young
+female--less humanly speaking, even a young person? And what was the
+spring of her mad crimes but folly, mere weak, feminine folly? Even
+an improper motive--one of those over-powering passions one reads
+about rather surreptitiously in the delightful works of that dear,
+naughty, departed Lord Byron--would have been somehow more ...
+more ... satisfactory. One could only whisper such a sentiment, but
+it stirred in many a feminine breast when Loveday's story set the
+ripples of reprobation circling some twenty miles, till the incomparably
+bigger pebble of the Prince of Wales' nuptials made correspondingly
+greater waves, even though they took a month or so to spread all its
+fascinating details so far from the Metropolis. What, after all, as a
+topic of conversation, was Loveday's ill-gotten gaud compared with the
+thrill of the new Alexandra jacket with its pegtop sleeves? One should
+hold a right proportion in all things.
+
+Thus the duchy's drawing-rooms. In the back parlours of the little
+country-town shops, where an aristocracy as rigid in its own
+respectable--and respectful--way, held its courts of justice, Loveday's
+story was referred to with a slight difference. She had become a "young
+besom," and her crime was what you might have expected from the bye-blow
+of an ear-ringed foreigner, who bowed down to idols instead of the laws
+of God and the British Constitution.
+
+In her own little seaport and the farms of the countryside, Loveday
+descended lower still--she became a "faggot." Thus from one born to
+wield a broom we see how she descended, with the declination in scale of
+the chatterboxes, to the broom itself, and from that to the rough
+material for it. Which things are a parable, could one but fit the moral
+to them as neatly as did everyone who discussed Loveday, in whatever
+terms, fit the due warning on to her tale.
+
+And this moral, for all who ran, but more particularly for those who
+danced, to read, was as follows:--
+
+It all came of wanting things above your station.
+
+"How simply does your sex dispose of the problems of life, ma'am,"
+replied Mr. Constantine to Miss Flora Le Pettit, the heiress of Ignores
+Manor, when she supplied him with this moral as an epitaph oh the
+affair. Miss Le Pettit smiled on him amiably, but arched her already
+springing brows as well, for though everyone knew Mr. Constantine was
+reputed clever, there were the gravest doubts about his orthodoxy.
+
+"Problems of life, Mr. Constantine?" she demanded. "Surely over-fine
+words to apply to the crazy acts of a village girl deranged in her
+intellects." She would have added: "And a nameless one at that," if
+she had not remembered (what, in truth, she was never in danger of
+forgetting) that she was a lady talking to a gentleman.
+
+"A village girl is as capable of passion as you or I," replied he, and
+had he not remembered (what he was somewhat apt to forget) that he was a
+gentleman talking to a lady, he would have added: "And a great deal more
+so than you." Miss Le Pettit, who considered that he _had_ forgotten
+it, gave the little movement known as "bridling," which reared her
+ringletted head a trifle higher on her white shoulders, then decided to
+front the obnoxious word bravely as a woman of the world. She had met
+with it chiefly in books where it was used solely to denote anger.
+There had been, for instance, the tale of "Henry: or, the Fatal Effect
+of Passion." ... Henry had slain a school-fellow in his rage, and had
+been duly hanged; yet something told Miss Le Pettit that was not how
+Mr. Constantine was using the word.... She rose to it splendidly.
+
+"Passion ... and pray where do you find such a thing in this story of
+the vanity of a child of fifteen?"
+
+"In the usual place, ma'am," said Mr. Constantine (now entirely
+forgetting that which Miss Le Pettit ever remembered)--"in her soul.
+Did you think it merely a thing of the body? The body may be the
+objective of passion, but the quality itself is what is meant by the
+word. It is generated in the soul and may pour itself into strange
+vessels."
+
+"Or even shower its ardours upon a piece of white riband?" cried Miss Le
+Pettit, with a titter.
+
+"Shall we say upon Beauty itself?" corrected Mr. Constantine more
+gravely than he had yet spoken. Then, with a smile, he elaborated:
+"For as passion is in the soul, so is beauty in the heart, and hearts
+have differing vision. That was Loveday's desire. Translate this paltry
+thing into terms of other ambitions--and where is any one of us then?
+Unless, indeed, we are so bloodless, so without imagination, that we
+cannot but be content with our lot just as it is."
+
+Miss Le Pettit, who had never seen reason for anything but contentment,
+and looked upon it as a Christian virtue, demurred with:--
+
+"The whole affair is so ridiculously out of proportion."
+
+Mr. Constantine glanced, with admiration in his gallant though elderly
+eye, over Miss Le Pettit's figure as she lay back in the gilt chair;
+glanced from her high, polished forehead, round which the smooth
+chestnut hair showed as gleaming, from her parted red lips and bare,
+sloping shoulders to her tiny waist and the outward spring beneath it of
+the clouded tulle that lapped in a dozen baby waves over the globe of
+her swelling crinoline.
+
+"When I was a young man," he said, "the ladies went about in little
+robes, such as you would not wear nowadays as a shift. We thought them
+pretty then, and thought none the worse of them because they made the
+women look more or less as God saw fit to make 'em. Yet now we think you
+equally lovely as you float about the world like monstrous beautiful
+bubbles, so that a man must adore at a distance and only guess at
+Paradise in a gust of wind.... Yet to the next generation, believe me or
+not as you like, your garb will seem too preposterous to be true, and a
+generation later Time will pay you the unkindest cut of all--you will be
+picturesque, and your grand-daughters will revive you--for fancy dress.
+Proportion, ma'am, is nothing in the world but fashion."
+
+"Now we are talking about something I know more about than you, Mr.
+Constantine," cried Miss Le Pettit archly, "and I, for one, do not
+believe that the present style of dress can ever go completely out; it
+is too becoming. We shall have novelties, of course, but the idea will
+remain the same. And, talking of novelties, if you don't scorn such
+things, I will tell you a great secret. I am the first person to procure
+one of the new jackets--like the Princess of Wales wears, you know.
+You must have heard about them. Alexandra jackets they're called. Isn't
+that pretty? And they're just as pretty as she is. The sleeve...."
+
+And thus the great description flowed on, with a bevy of entranced
+girls, who had caught the raised tone, fluttering round in excitement
+like a crowd of butterflies round a blossom of extra sweetness.
+
+From which it will be seen that a month had already passed since Loveday
+had been the excitement of society, and that this conversation between
+the eccentric Mr. Constantine and the charming Miss Le Pettit was almost
+the last flickering of interest in her fate. The life of one moon had
+been enough to see the waxing and waning of what Mr. Constantine had
+surprisingly called her passion.
+
+Yet Miss Le Pettit, eager, nay, even anxious, as she had been to
+lead the gentleman away from the topic, reverted to it as though by
+a curious fascination, when he had taken his leave. To tell the truth,
+her conscience had some slight cause to make her uneasy on this very
+subject of the violent Loveday. The thing was ridiculous, of course ...
+she, Miss Le Pettit, could not conceivably have been even remotely to
+blame for such a fantastical happening, and yet that slight pricking
+remained....
+
+"An odd word to have used," she commented, in recounting the
+conversation she had had with Mr. Constantine to her eager friends, "a
+very odd word, indeed, for by it, apparently, he did not mean an access
+of anger such as the word signifies in all the books I have read...."
+
+"You mean in the books that you are _supposed_ to have read,
+Flora," interrupted one of the young ladies, a flighty girl, whose
+tongue often outran her discretion. "I have come across it meaning
+something quite different in books like--well, you know the sort of
+books I mean."
+
+"I do not think, though, that even _that_ was how Mr. Constantine
+used the word," replied Flora, with more of discernment than she
+commonly showed, "though I will not pretend to you, Ellen, that I do not
+recognise the sense in which you refer to it. To be candid, I don't
+think I know what he did mean, but he seemed to me to be paying a vast
+deal of attention to the matter, which surprised me in a person of his
+standing."
+
+"I have heard he is a man of much sensibility, though he is so
+satirical," murmured the romantic Emilia, bending over her netting so
+that her ebon curls shaded her suddenly flushing cheek.
+
+"Perhaps he knows more about the fair Loveday than we have guessed,"
+cried the careless Ellen; "perhaps he knows _too_ much, and cannot
+keep away from the subject for his guilty conscience, as they say
+murderers are drawn back to the spot where they have buried the body of
+their victim!"
+
+But this was too gross a departure from delicacy of thought and phrase,
+and Miss Le Pettit, the prick stirring, perchance, signified as much by
+the cold manner in which she brought back the conversation to the more
+correct and really more enthralling subject of the Alexandra jacket.
+
+It was generally agreed that Miss Belben, of Bugletown, could not go far
+wrong with the sleeves if Flora would be so infinitely good as to lend
+her jacket for a copy, and this favour she accorded graciously to her
+dear friend, Emilia.
+
+Mr. Constantine walked down the windy hill with his mind already clear
+both of Loveday and the elegant company in which he had been taking tea.
+He was, above all things, a philosopher, and that means that, though his
+imagination was easily touched, his heart remained unstirred, He had
+serious thoughts of ordering a new cabriolet, and on arriving at the
+market place, he turned into the coachbuilder's to renew the discussion
+as to whether red or canary yellow were the more fashionable hue for
+the wheels.
+
+
+
+    CHAPTER I: IN WHICH THE READER IS TAKEN
+      BACK A FEW WEEKS IN POINT OF TIME, AND
+      DOWN SEVERAL STEPS IN THE SOCIAL SCALE
+
+
+
+
+Chapter I
+
+IN WHICH THE READER IS TAKEN BACK A FEW WEEKS IN POINT OF TIME, AND DOWN
+SEVERAL STEPS IN THE SOCIAL SCALE
+
+
+It was on a balmy day in early Spring that Loveday had first met Miss Le
+Pettit. Loveday had gone to fetch the milk. For Loveday's aunt, Senath
+Strick, with whom she lived, was a shiftless, unthrifty woman, never
+able to keep prosperous enough to own a cow for as long as the beast
+took between calvings, and the times when Loveday had a fragrant,
+soft-eyed animal to cherish were mercifully rare. Mercifully, for
+Loveday, though she appeared sullen, had ever more sensibility than was
+good for one in her position, and each time Aunt Senath was forced to
+sell the cow, Loveday behaved as though she had as good a right to sit
+and cry herself silly as any young lady with whom nothing was more
+urgent than to spoil fine cambric with salt water.
+
+This, then, was a period of poverty with the Strick family, and Loveday
+was sent to fetch the evening milk from the farm at the crest of the
+hill. On the way, she came upon Cherry Cotton and Primrose Lear, seated
+upon a granite stile, their heads together over something Cherry held in
+her lap. Cherry heard approaching footsteps, and whipped her apron over
+the object she and her friend had been so busily discussing. Loveday was
+hurt rather than angered by the unkind action, for there was a reason,
+connected with Primrose, why she had felt a tender curiosity as to what
+the two girls were guarding so closely. Yet she was aware of bitterness
+also--for it was ever so when she appeared. Maids ceased their gossip,
+boys laughed and pointed after her. She was "different."
+
+Not in being a love-child, there were plenty of them in the village, but
+their parents generally married later, and even if they did not, then
+the female partner in crime would be one of the unmentionable women
+about whom other people talk so much.... She would live by the harbour
+plying a trade which allowed her to have a love-child or so without it
+being an occasion for undue remark, or, if she did not descend to those
+depths where no one expects anything better and censure consequently
+ceases through ineffectiveness, then at least everyone knew the author
+of her fall to be an honest, loutish Englishman, no worse than most of
+his neighbours.
+
+Loveday was without either of these two rights to existence. Her mother
+had been a respectable girl till her fall, and, as far as anyone was
+aware, since, for she had died of the fruit of her guilty connection,
+and though her portion was doubtless hell-fire, there is nothing to
+show that one cannot keep respectable even under such disquieting
+circumstances. The elder Loveday had clung obstinately to her
+self-respect under circumstances which her neighbours had tried to
+render nearly as trying on earth. She had died, as she had lived,
+impenitent and only crying for the foreigner who had seduced her,
+while he was then lying, had she but known it, in the lap of his first
+mistress, the sea, who, perhaps from jealousy at his straying, had taken
+him forcibly into her embrace on the same night that Loveday the younger
+was born.
+
+Old Madgy, the midwife, who was also more than suspected of being
+somewhat of a witch, declared that the expectant mother _did_ know
+it--that she had been made aware, through a supernatural happening, of
+the loss of her lover, and that that was why the babe saw the light in
+such undue haste, and the mother took her departure almost as swiftly
+to that place where alone she could ever hope to rejoin him. For, as
+evening drew on, Madgy, having called to see how Loveday did, though
+nothing was thought of yet for a clear week, found her in the dairy
+(the Stricks had not yet fallen on that poverty which came to their roof
+under Aunt Senath's shrewish management) standing as one wisht beside
+the great red earthen pan of scalded cream.
+
+"And 'ee can b'lieve me or no as it like 'ee, my dears," old Madgy would
+say to many a breathless circle in a farm kitchen during the intervals
+of her duties overstairs, "but there was the cream in the pan a-heavin'
+up an' down in gurt waves, like a rough sea, and her staring at 'en like
+one stricken, as she was poor sawl, sure enough. Eh, it was sent for a
+sign to her, and a true sign, for that avenen' her man was drowned on
+his way to her, with his fine cargo of oil and onions and all. And there
+was the cream heavin' in waves for a sign of the rough seas that took
+him, though wi' us the skies was fair and the water in the bay as smooth
+as silk."
+
+A story that filled simple souls in kitchens with awe, but naturally was
+treated more scornfully in drawing-rooms, where it was felt that signs
+and portents would hardly be sent to inform a cottage girl of the death
+of an onion-seller. For, after all, that is what he amounts to, and the
+horrid secret is out.... An onion-seller ... the very words stink in
+the nostrils and are fatal to romance.
+
+Fatal to romance in the minds of the fastidious, fatal to respectability
+in those of the common people, for only foreigners sold onions. Strange
+men with rings in their ears and long, dark curls like a woman's, and an
+eye that was at once bold and soft.
+
+Loveday the younger had that eye, save that it had never learned from
+life to be bold, and her face was milken white instead of showing the
+blown roses of the other girls, though the back of her slender neck was
+stained a faint golden brown as by the inherited memories of sun. She
+was most immodestly "different," and even the Vicar's lady, who had
+charitably seen to her baptism, had difficulty in bringing herself to
+believe the girl could be a Christian.
+
+Cherry and Primrose stared up at her as she stood with the red jar in
+her hand, and, seeing her look so black, so white, so thin, they leant
+their yellow heads together and drew their two aprons closely over their
+plump laps.
+
+Seen thus, fronted by Loveday, they seemed amazingly alike, because of
+the completeness of her differing, yet a longer look showed that, in
+spite of their sleek, fair heads and rounded shoulders, there was
+between them the deepest division there can be between women.
+
+Cherry was a maid, thoughtless, blowsy, still untouched enough for
+wonder; Primrose had been a wife, though only seventeen, these three
+months; in another three was to be a mother. Her eyes, blue as her
+friend's, showed an even greater assurance, because it was based on
+positives and not on a mere negation. Dark-circled as those eyes were,
+her glance, as it passed over Loveday, was the more merciless, because
+it came from behind the shelter of a ring-fence.
+
+
+
+    CHAPTER II: IN WHICH THE ONION-SELLER'S
+      DAUGHTER FOR THE FIRST TIME FEELS AS
+      A WOMAN
+
+
+
+
+Chapter II
+
+IN WHICH THE ONION-SELLER'S DAUGHTER FOR THE FIRST TIME FEELS AS A WOMAN
+
+
+For all her woodland timidity, Loveday was prone to those flashes of
+temper to which the weak in defence and the strong in feeling seem
+peculiarly exposed. She snatched the shielding apron back from the lap
+of the buxom Cherry, stamping her foot the while. Cherry, too amazed to
+protect her treasure, stared, slack-mouthed.
+
+Primrose flew into a temper that surpassed Loveday's, already failing
+her through dismay at her own action, even as the thunder, to children,
+surpasses in terrifying quality the lightning.... And, had they but
+known it, Primrose's sounding tantrums held as much possibility of
+danger, compared with Loveday's rage, as holds the crash compared with
+the flash. But they knew it not, and already Loveday stood panting a
+little and spent with her own storm, while Primrose gathered herself,
+undaunted, for the attack.
+
+A hail of words would have beaten about Loveday's drooping head had not
+Cherry, all unwitting, come to the rescue with a cry on the discovery
+that her treasures, thus disturbed, had fallen to the ground, which was
+muddy enough, owing to the habit of the cattle of trampling the soil
+around the stiles.
+
+"Oh, my fairings, my fairings!" cried Cherry, swooping at them from her
+height with all the headlong thump of a gannet after its prey. Loveday's
+dive was as the gull's for grace contrasted with it. Their hands met;
+Loveday divined in an instant, by the tug of Cherry's, that she was
+suspected of trying to snatch the fairings, instead of merely restoring
+them, and she straightened herself with a return of her sick anger.
+Cherry clutched the frail morsels of riband and lace in her lap, then,
+seeing there was no danger, began to straighten them out, scolding the
+while.
+
+"There, see, Primrose love, that edging is all crumpled ... did you ever
+see the like? Never mind, I'll press it out for 'ee, and it'll look as
+good as new. And this riband, that's the one I bought off Bendigo, the
+pedlar, for Flora Day--oh, my dear life, what'll I do with it now?"
+
+"'Tis a gurt shame, that's what 'tis," said Primrose, resentful both for
+her friend's riband and her own edging; "and I'd get my Willie to make
+her buy new, only 'tis no good asking paupers for money, because, even
+if they was to be sold up, all their sticks and cloam wouldn't fetch
+enough for a yard o' this riband."
+
+The vulgar taunt had sting enough to rouse Loveday to a wholesome
+contempt that saved her. She stood staring with a genuine scorn at the
+little articles of lace and artificial flowers which Cherry's beau had
+given her at the last fair. Yes, even at the riband which had been
+Cherry's special pride as bought by herself from the pedlar, and it was
+one that had taken Loveday's eye with its delicate beauty--for it was of
+palest rose, like the shells she picked up on the beach, not a crude red
+or blue, such as she saw in the shops at Bugletown when she went in on
+market days. Secretly, something in her marvelled that such a riband had
+been Cherry's choice, and her scorning of it now was the easier because
+she hated to think she and the blowsy damsel could have a taste in
+common.
+
+"You and your fal-lals!" she exclaimed; "here's a fine boutigo to make
+of a parcel of ribands and laces that'll make you look like a couple of
+the puppets at Corpus Fair. If you wear such as those to the Flora
+you'll be mistook for a Maypole, and folk'll dance round you."
+
+"Well, folks 'ull never dance even _round_ you, unless you're burnt
+as a guy in a bonfire, let alone dancing _with_ you, Loveday
+Strick," rejoined Primrose, "and so you do very well knaw, and that's
+why your heart's sick against us."
+
+A minute ago, and that had been true; it was for her isolation Loveday
+had raged, but when she had seen these two draw their aprons over their
+girl's treasures, she had not guessed those possessions aright. What she
+had imagined in her girl's heart, knowing Primrose's condition, it is
+not for us to pry at; whatever it was, it was so swift, so born of
+instinct, as to be holy. But when she saw the crumpled finery, she was
+suddenly too much of a child again to rate it worth envy. The things
+that Primrose, all unthinking, stood for, the things of warm hearth and
+hallowed bed that her house had never known, might have power to draw
+the woman out in her all too soon, but the things that merely charm the
+feminine still left her chill.
+
+She laughed, all the sting gone, when she saw what a milliner's paradise
+it was from which she was kept out, and put her foot on the first step
+of the stile.
+
+"By your lave, Cherry Cotton!" she said, and swung lightly over,
+balancing her jar, while they still stared at the change in her.
+
+
+
+    CHAPTER III: IN WHICH SHE FOR THE FIRST
+      TIME FEELS AS A GIRL
+
+
+
+
+Chapter III
+
+IN WHICH SHE FOR THE FIRST TIME FEELS AS A GIRL
+
+
+Primrose Lear was wife to the son of old Farmer Lear, of Upper Farm,
+whither Loveday was bound. Willie Lear, the young man, was gay and
+handsome, and generally off on any and every job that took him abroad,
+from buying a pig to selling his own senses for a few mugs of cider.
+Farmer Lear was usually out in the fields, and Mrs. Lear, wrinkled like
+a winter apple and tuneful as a winter robin, was as a rule alone in the
+big kitchen or cool dairy, for small help did her daughter-in-law give
+her about the house.
+
+To-day, however, Mrs. Lear was in the parlour, and no less a personage
+than Miss Le Pettit of Ignores was seated on the best horsehair
+armchair, her bonneted head, with its drooping feather, leaning
+gracefully against the lace antimacassar, and her small prunella boots
+elegantly crossed on the smiling cheeks of the beadwork cherub that
+adorned the footstool, and that seemed to be puffing the harder, as
+though to try and puff those little feet up to the heaven where he
+belonged, trusting to his wings (of the best pearl beads) to bear him
+after her.
+
+Loveday paused, stricken, not with embarrassment, but with awe, upon the
+threshold.
+
+Sight of Cherry and Primrose had deepened her sense of her own isolation
+and her pain. Sight of Miss Le Pettit made her forget all save what she
+saw.
+
+Blow, little cherub, puff your cherubic hardest, never can you waft
+Flora Le Pettit higher than she now is, at least in the sight of one
+pair of black eyes, higher, perhaps, than she will ever be again, even
+in that of her own not uncomplacent orbs.
+
+Blow, little cherub, but even if you burst the roseate beads from off
+your cheeks in your ardour, leaving forlornly drooping the grey threads
+that would show you as, after all, of mere mortal manufacture, you could
+not cast a doubt as big as the tiniest bead upon the heavenly origin of
+Miss Le Pettit--not, at least, in the heart of the devout worshipper
+born in that instant upon the black woollen doormat.
+
+The angelic visitant put up a tortoise-shell lorgnon and examined the
+newcomer with a flicker of condescending interest. For Flora was a young
+lady of great sensibility, and though, of course, all females are filled
+by nature with that interesting and appealing quality, the finer amongst
+them educate and make an art of it. Miss Le Pettit, then, encouraged her
+sensibility, nursed it, nourished it, on the most exquisite of novels
+and the rarest of romances, and these had taught her to show even more
+sensibility than usual at sight of a barefoot girl with black hair and
+eyes and an arresting, though wholly unconscious air that could but be
+described by Miss Le Pettit, to herself and afterwards to her friends,
+as Italianate.
+
+"What an interesting face and figure!" she now exclaimed, at gaze
+through the lorgnon, as though it were a celestial aid to vision needful
+for such a long range, as it must be even for angelic eyes looking from
+the skiey ramparts to a world where bare feet press the earth, to say
+nothing of woollen doormats.
+
+Loveday blenched before that searching gaze, the rare red burned in her
+cheek and her own eyes sank abashed. She rubbed the flexible sole of one
+foot in a stiffened curve of shyness against the slim ankle of the
+other. Mrs. Lear exclaimed aloud in her horror.
+
+"Loveday Strick, where are your manners to, that you come into the
+parlour without a curtsey?" said she. "And indeed, I must ask you to
+excuse her, ma'am, for she's but a nobody's girl from the village, and
+doesn't know how to behave before gentry."
+
+Mrs. Lear was a good soul, and had ever been kind to Loveday, but she
+too had her sensibilities, and they were outraged by this untimely
+intrusion of one world into another which was doubtless unaware even of
+its existence. But Miss Le Pettit put up a delicate gloved hand in
+protest.
+
+"Nay, you frighten the child, Mrs. Lear," she said kindly, "I am sure
+she means no disrespect. Did you ... what is your name, girl?'
+
+"Loveday, ma'am."
+
+"What a strange, old-fashioned name, to be sure," commented the taffetas
+angel, with a crystal sounding titter, "'tis as good as the heroine in a
+play. Whom were you called for, child?"
+
+"My mother, ma'am," said Loveday, and now her cheek had ceased to burn
+and looked pale, but she raised her eyes and confronted the vision
+steadily.
+
+Mrs. Lear coughed.
+
+"I declare I should like to do a watercolour drawing of you, Loveday,"
+went on Miss Le Pettit, "what do you say? Will you come up to the Manor
+one day and let me paint your portrait?"
+
+Loveday had not a notion what that process might be, but had she taken
+it to be the blackest witchcraft (as she very likely would if she saw
+it) she would still not have blenched. Her eye lightened, some instinct
+told her that had she been as all the other girls, the Cherries and
+Primroses, this wonderful lady would not have looked twice at her. At
+last her singularity was standing her in good stead. Confidence came to
+her, even a feeling of slight scorn for the world she knew, a feeling,
+indeed, to which she was not altogether a stranger, but which up till
+now she had stifled in affright at its presumption.
+
+"What do you say, Mrs. Lear?" asked Miss Le Pettit, turning with her
+charming condescension to the old woman, whom, after all, she was merely
+visiting on a little matter of a recipe for elderflower-water, "what do
+you say? Would she not look picturesque with an orange kerchief over her
+head and a basket of fruit in her arms, as a young street-vendor?"
+
+"She would certainly look outlandish, ma'am," was all Mrs. Lear could
+manage.
+
+Loveday's thoughts flew of a sudden to the ribands she had disturbed in
+Cherry's lap, and for the first time in her life, till now so proudly
+above such matters in its aloofness, she yearned over fineries. If such
+as those could admit her into the company of such as this! She thought
+enviously of that pale pink, even of the yellows and reds she had seen
+in Bugletown, since such deep tones seemed to the taste of this
+wonderful creature.
+
+But Miss Le Pettit, still staring at her, changed her note.
+
+"I was wrong," she exclaimed, "that face needs no gaudy hues, those
+white cheeks need nothing but that red mouth to set them off, and that
+black hair. She should be white, all white, should she not, Mrs. Lear?
+A tragic bride from the south, languishing in our cold land. 'Twould
+make a fine subject for a painting, though I fear beyond my brush.
+I never can get my faces to look as sad as I could wish them to."
+
+There was something engaging and almost childlike about the heiress as
+she spoke those words, but recollecting herself she resumed:
+
+"Never mind the portrait, but I vow I will have you for my attendant at
+the Flora, that I will. Now, Mrs. Lear, you shall not protest, I always
+have my way when I set my heart on a thing, you know. I am going to
+dance in the Flora this year, 'tis a charming rural custom, and the
+gentry should help to preserve it. Besides, my name is Flora, so I
+am doubly bound. And this child shall be my maid; she will be a rare
+contrast to me, I being chestnut and she so foreign looking. It would
+be indiscreet if I were to dance with a gentleman--you know what the
+gossips are--but if I am partnered by an attendant maid 'twill be very
+different."
+
+"Ma'am ..." from the scandalised Mrs. Lear, "if you are set on having
+a village girl ... there are many from good homes, respectable girls.
+Not that I've anything to say against this poor child, God knows, but
+her mother, ma'am.... I assure you 'tis impossible."
+
+Miss Le Pettit, who guessed very well the sort of tale Mrs. Lear's
+delicacy spared her, laughed the matter off.
+
+"It shall be as I say, Mrs. Lear, I can afford to be above these things.
+You shall dance with me, Loveday. You must have a white frock, of
+course, but I suppose you have a Sunday frock? Quite a simple thing,
+the simpler the better, and a white sash of satin riband. Don't forget.
+I shall expect to see you waiting for me at the Flora."
+
+And Miss Le Pettit rose, having carried her freak of sensibility on long
+enough, and sweeping past Loveday with a dazzling smile, was accompanied
+to the front door by Mrs. Lear, and after standing poised for a moment
+against the sunny verdure beyond, took wing with a flutter of white
+taffetas and was gone.
+
+Loveday was left with that most dangerous of all passions--the passion
+for an idea. Though she was ignorant of the fact, it was not Miss Le
+Pettit she adored, it was beauty; not silk underskirts that rustled
+in her ear, but the music of the spheres; a new ideal she saw not in
+the angelic visitant, but in herself. She, too, would be all white and
+dazzling, was accounted worthy to follow in the same steps, were it
+but in those of a dance. She made the common mistake of a lover--she
+imagined she was in love with another human being, while in reality she
+was in love with those feelings in herself which that other had evoked.
+
+Never did aspiring saint of old, impelled by ecstasy, cling closer to a
+crucifix as the symbol of the loved one than did Loveday to that notion
+of the white garb which must be hers. It was, indeed, a symbol to her,
+the symbol of everything she had unwittingly craved and starved for,
+of everything she had, could not but feel she had, in herself which was
+lacked by those who jeered at her. And, though she knew it not, nor
+would have understood it, she was a symbol-lover, than which there is no
+form of lover more dangerous in life--or more endangered by the chances
+of it. For he who loves another human being gives his heart in fee, but
+he who loves an idea gives his soul.
+
+
+
+    CHAPTER IV: IN WHICH THE ONION-SELLER'S
+      DAUGHTER FEELS HERSELF A GODDESS
+
+
+
+
+Chapter IV
+
+IN WHICH THE ONION-SELLER'S DAUGHTER FEELS HERSELF A GODDESS
+
+
+Loveday bore home the milk in a maze of bliss, and staying not for her
+supper, for no hunger of the body was upon her, turned and went out
+again into the glow of the evening. Had she been as full of sensibility
+as a young lady she would have wandered straight away from Upper Farm,
+forgotten the milk, and not thought of it again, till, returning with
+the upgetting of the moon, her aunt had met her with vulgar reproaches.
+What a charming scene could then have been staged, of sensitive genius
+misunderstood by coarse-grained labour; of vision-drunken youth berated
+by undreaming age! But she was not a young lady, and could derive no
+felicity from forgetfulness of such a kind, for with the poor the
+urgencies of the immediate task are raised to such compelling interest
+that only a genius could neglect them with satisfaction. Therefore
+Loveday never thought of forgetting the milk for her aunt, but her
+exultation was of such a powerful sort that it upheld her through the
+commonplaces of routine without her perceiving the incongruity which
+would have jarred on one of a finer upbringing.
+
+She placed the milk on the table, set out the bread and soaked
+pilchards, found what was left of the cheese, and went hastily forth
+lest her aunt should stay her.
+
+She was bound for the little wood that lay in a fold of the moorland
+above the sea. This wood was to her what a City of Refuge was to the
+Hebrews of the Old Testament, and, like them, she fled to it when the
+world's opinion of what was fit had proved at variance with her own.
+To-night she went to it not for sanctuary from others, but to commune
+with herself--in truth, for the first time she went not because of what
+she had left but because of what she would find. Her bare heels were
+winged along the road.
+
+The wood lay lapped in the shadow that the western ridge had cast on it
+an hour earlier than the rest of the world's bedtime, ever since the
+trees had been there to receive the chill caress, and that was for many
+a hundred years. Old Madgy swore that even in her young day the small
+folk had still held their revels on the mossy slopes amongst the fanlike
+roots, and who knows what larger folk had not fled there to wanton more
+sweetly than in close cottages, or, like Loveday, to play the more
+easily with their thoughts? The wood alone knew, and it held its
+memories as closely as it held the thousand tiny lives confided to its
+care; the bright-eyed shrew-mice that poked quivering noses through the
+litter of last year's leaves, the birds that nested behind the
+clustering twigs, the slow-worms that slipped along its grassy ditches.
+
+Loveday turned off from the road and approached the wood from the west,
+pausing when she reached the smooth grey boulders that were piled along
+the ridge. She stood there gazing out over the smiling champaign, pale
+and verdant from the farthest rim to the treetops that made as it were a
+sea of faint green at her feet, for already in that soft clime the twigs
+were misty with young leaf, and on the willows the velvety pearl-hued
+ovals had begun to deck themselves with a delicate powdering of gold,
+while from the hazels beside her the yellow lambs' tails hung still as
+tiny pennants in the evening air. The gold of nature was as yet more
+vivid than her green, which still showed tentative, enquiring of April
+what of betrayal might not lie in the careless plaits of her garment.
+To Loveday, high on her rock, between the gold of the sky and the gold
+of the blossom, it seemed that April must of a certainty stay as fair
+as this and lead to as bright a May, when that vision of her new self
+should become a yet brighter reality. She was confident of April because
+she was confident of life, lapped in an aureate glow that seemed to
+suffuse the very air she drew into her lungs so that it intoxicated her
+like the breath of a diviner ether from Olympian heights. She had seen
+beauty, and lo! it had been revealed to her not as a thing apart and
+unattainable, but as a quality within herself. Her "difference" had
+become a blazon, not a branding.
+
+Lying down on her rock, she told over with the rapture of a devotee the
+divine excellencies of Flora Le Pettit; her radiance, her swinging,
+shining curls, the wings that spread from her fair arms, the light that
+gleamed on her bright brow and in her glancing eyes, but it was not
+Flora, but Loveday, who danced before her mind's eye in white raiment,
+and held the sorrows of the South in her eyes and the joy of youth on
+her lips. Flora was the excuse for that new Loveday, as the beloved is
+ever the excuse for the raptures transmuting the lover. Even thus do we
+worship in our Creator the excellence of His handiwork, and one would
+think that to be alive is act of praise enough to satisfy the most
+exigent deity. Flora had called Loveday to life, and Loveday repaid her
+with a worship of that which she had awakened, the highest compliment
+the devout can pay, would the theologians but acknowledge it.
+
+The sun slipped slower down the field of the sky, now a pale green as
+delicate as the leaves burgeoning beneath it, and Loveday drew herself
+up in a bunch, knees to chin, her brown strong hands clasped and her
+slim feet curved over the slope of the smooth granite. The wood below
+was wrapping itself in mystery, and her eyes attempted to fathom its
+fastnesses. Ordinarily, she was fearful of venturing into the darkness
+under the trees when once the evening had fallen, and it was then she
+was accustomed to come out up to her boulder, but this evening she was
+strung to any courage, for she walked in that certainty which on rare
+occasions comes to all--the certainty of being immune to danger--which
+is of all sensations vouchsafed to mortals the most godlike.
+
+She rose to her feet, and swinging herself down from the rock, began the
+descent, ledge by ledge, to the shadows below. A last spring, and she
+was standing on the dark gold of drifted leaves, that rose about her
+ankles with a dry little rustling. It was the wood's caress of greeting,
+and she did not reflect that it was also the kisses of the dead.
+
+Indeed, she clapped her hands in the rush of strength she felt, both in
+her young muscles and her leaping spirit, and stood proudly listening
+to the echo dying away, unaffrighted. She was young and strong and
+beautiful; life, not dead leaves, lay at her feet. She was different,
+and in her difference lay power, she was at last herself, Loveday ...
+she was Loveday, Loveday ... Loveday...
+
+She darted hither and thither through the wood, noting with a pleasure
+keener than ever before how soft and sleek the moss was to her feet, how
+silky the flank of the beech to her leaning cheek, how sweetly sharp the
+intimate evening note of the birds.
+
+And she was quite unfitted to be the goddess of these rustic beauties,
+for all her mind could feel in that softness and sleekness and clear
+calling was their alikeness to artificiality. She felt thin slippers
+on her feet, rubbed an ecstatic cheek against the sheen of satin, and
+in her ears echoed no diviner music than the Tol-de-rol Tol-de-rol
+of the Bugletown band on Flora Day. Save in her sincerity, she was as
+artificial a goddess as ever graced a Versailles Fete Champetre. What
+were leaf and bird to her but the stuff of her life, whereas white satin
+gleamed with the shimmer of the very heavens!
+
+Hers was not, it is true, the milliner's paradise of Cherry and
+Primrose, but it was one into which she could only penetrate fitly
+clad. What wonder then that, brought up without any tutoring in the
+excellencies of Nature, she should display the sad lack of true feeling
+so deplored in her later by that nice arbiter of taste, Miss Flora Le
+Pettit?
+
+
+
+    CHAPTER V: IN WHICH LOVEDAY ESSAYS THE
+      WHITE GOWN
+
+
+
+
+Chapter V
+
+IN WHICH LOVEDAY ESSAYS THE WHITE GOWN
+
+
+With morning came thoughts of the practical side of the business and,
+the worst of her daily duties performed, Loveday ascended to her chamber
+to examine the scanty contents of her small oaken chest. It was a
+sea-chest, legacy from her roving father, who had given it to her
+mother, and often enough had Aunt Senath expressed scruples about
+allowing her to keep a gift obtained so godlessly. Perhaps the fact that
+it was a good chest and better than anything she could have bought had
+something to do with Aunt Senath's complaisance in permitting it to
+remain. Perhaps Loveday's fierce look in defence of it was not without
+influence also. The chest stayed in the little attic room, and made of
+it, to Loveday's eyes, a place peculiarly her own, and rich because of
+its associations. There was something about the chest, its dark polish
+and coarse carving, that even led her to think hopefully of its poor
+contents.
+
+She crouched beside it now, upon her heels, and lifting the lid, gazed
+expectantly at what was revealed.
+
+After all, it did not look so bad, just a level surface of white linen...
+
+But, when she lifted it out, and all the yellow of age was revealed in
+the full gathers of the skirt, a shade passed over Loveday's spirit.
+How small and tight the bodice looked, how skimpy even the plaits of the
+skirt for the present modes ... yet it had been a good linen in its day,
+there was no doubt of that, this frock that had been stitched for her
+mother's wedding gown.
+
+For perhaps he had always been coming back to marry her, perhaps only
+their young blood and eager hearts beating so strongly within them had
+made the beat of wedding bells seem at first too slight a sound to catch
+their absorbed attention.... So Loveday the elder had always known,
+in spite of the sneers of the neighbours. So Loveday the younger had
+maintained to carping girl-critics, though in her inmost heart she had
+never been able to feel it mattered so vastly, for half the girls she
+knew would have been in her predicament had their fathers been cut
+off untimely. She knew it was not that she was born out of wedlock,
+a misfortune that might happen to anyone, which oppressed her youth,
+but the fact of her father having been a foreigner, and of that she
+was fiercely resolved to be proud. Neither mother nor father had she
+ever known, but the instinct of generous youth is ever to defend the
+oppressed, and with her defence had love sprung in Loveday's heart.
+Therefore, even with her sensation of disappointment at the sight of the
+yellowed linen, there was reverence and tenderness in her touch as she
+laid the gown across her narrow bed.
+
+She ripped off the coarse blue wrapper that enfolded her, and stood
+revealed in her little flannel under-bodice and linsey-woolsey petticoat
+of striped red and black, her thin girlish arms and young bosom making
+her look more childish than she did when fully clothed. She held the
+gown above her head and struggled into it. Her pale little face was red
+when she poked it triumphantly through the narrow opening and finally
+settled the neck, with its ruffled cambric frilling, round her throat,
+and pulled the puff sleeves as far as they would go down her arms in a
+vain attempt to make them conceal her red young girl's elbows. She could
+only see a small portion of herself at a time in the little mirror, yet
+that small portion, in spite of the skimpiness and yellowness of the
+gown, pleased her eye.
+
+For her dark tints were set off by the creamy folds, her slight shape
+revealed by the tight bodice, even her bare feet, which some fine
+prompting had made her wash carefully lest they should shame this essay,
+looked small and graceful beneath the full folds.
+
+But she could not dance in the Flora unshod, and so once again she bent
+to the sea-chest, and withdrew her only pair of shoes, bought for her in
+a generous moment last Michaelmas by Aunt Senath. She pulled on her
+Sunday pair of white cotton stockings, and then the stout shoes. They
+still fitted, and to her country eye looked well enough. She examined
+herself bit by bit in the mirror, from her smooth black head to her
+smooth black feet, and all the faintly yellowed linen that curved in and
+swelled out between.
+
+She was fair to look upon, not so much the mirror as her own awakened
+consciousness told her that. She was meet to dance with Miss Le Pettit
+at the Flora, could she but obtain one thing more--the white satin sash.
+
+
+
+    CHAPTER VI: IN WHICH LOVEDAY ESSAYS TO
+      OBTAIN THE WHITE SATIN RIBAND
+
+
+
+
+Chapter VI
+
+IN WHICH LOVEDAY ESSAYS TO OBTAIN THE WHITE SATIN RIBAND
+
+
+With a high heart Loveday began her quest for the work which was to earn
+for her the coveted white satin sash. She had but three weeks in which
+to make a matter of several shillings, and this meant that she must sell
+every moment of the time which was hers when her duties about her aunt's
+were discharged for the day. In the morning she was busy with cleaning
+and cooking till almost mid-day, and in the evenings she had the milk to
+fetch, but in the afternoons she could be sure of a few hours if Aunt
+Senath did not guess she wanted them for herself and invent tasks. On
+Mondays, of course, the washing kept her all day at the tub, and on
+Fridays at the mangle, on Saturdays there was the baking of the bread,
+while Thursday, being market day, she was supposed to keep house while
+Aunt Senath went in to Bugletown--a task that slut of a woman was too
+fond of for its chances of gossip to send her niece in her stead. On
+Thursdays Loveday was wont to stay in and see to the mending, but she
+reflected that, by sitting up in her bed at night to darn and patch by
+the light of the wick that floated in a cup of fish-oil, she might take
+charge of some neighbour's children on that day instead and Aunt Senath
+be none the wiser. Loveday had a sad lack of principle, doubtless an
+heritage from her heathen father.
+
+On the afternoons of Tuesdays and Wednesdays, she hoped to help in some
+house with the cleaning, or in some slattern's abode with the weekly
+wash, for, as all know, there are some such sluts that the washing gets
+put off from day to day, till Saturday finds it still cluttering the
+washhouse instead of being brought in clean and sweet from the
+gorse-bushes.
+
+Then there were always odd things to be done, such as running errands,
+at which she hoped to earn some pence here and there. The white riband
+seemed no impossible fantasy to Loveday when she started on her quest.
+
+She went first to visit old Mrs. Lear, at Upper Farm, for no one had
+shown such a kindly front to the girl in all the village as she. Loveday
+started out for the milk half-an-hour earlier than was her wont so that
+she might have time to discuss her hopes with the farmer's wife, and
+this time she did not meet young Mrs. Lear or her friend Cherry on the
+way. But she did come upon both Mrs. Lears in the big kitchen, the
+younger seated in the armchair in front of the fire and the elder
+anxiously regarding her. Primrose had been fretful ever since hearing
+from her mother-in-law of Miss Le Pettit's visit of the day before,
+and of the unaccountable interest the heiress had shown in that faggot
+of a Loveday, and by now her fretfulness had assumed the size of an
+indisposition. In vain did Mrs. Lear try and cosset and comfort her with
+potions both hot and cool; Primrose knew well that beneath the kindness
+of the farmer's wife lurked the feeling that it was not for one in her
+station to indulge in such vapours as might well befit the gentry, and
+that she would be cured sooner by taking a broom to the best carpet than
+by sitting and keeping the fire warm. Primrose sulked, and even handsome
+Willie, leaning by the window, wanting to be away yet dreading the
+outburst did he move, could not persuade his wife that nothing ailed her
+but too much idleness. Neither, though to their robust health it would
+have seemed so, would it have been all the truth, for Primrose was
+taking her condition more hardly than most girls who have had the good
+fortune to wed with a prosperous young farmer, and the thought that she
+would not be able to dance in the procession with the rest of the world
+at the Flora had for some time past embittered her. To enter the house,
+after her anger with Loveday and the flash of fear that the strange
+half-foreign girl had filled her with, only to find that the great Miss
+Le Pettit had offered that very girl to dance with her ... this was
+poisonous fare indeed for one in the discontented mood of Primrose Lear.
+The heaviness of her mind matched with that of her body as she hunched
+over the fire.
+
+Sight of Loveday, a Loveday oddly changed from that of the day earlier,
+did not ease her sickness; the light in Loveday's eye, the fresh
+exhilaration of her step--she, who was wont to slip along with so much
+of quiet aloofness--stung the other girl anew. Loveday greeted Mrs. Lear
+eagerly before she saw that Primrose was sitting half-hidden by the
+wings of the big chair, her face, paler than its wont, in shadow, pallid
+like a face seen through still water. Then she saw also handsome Willie,
+dark against the small square panes of the window, the April sun gilding
+the curve of his ruddy cheek and making the pots of red geraniums along
+the sill blaze as brightly as the beautiful blossoms of painted wax
+that, under their glass shade, held an example of neat perfection up
+to Nature.
+
+Willie nodded at Loveday with a trifle less of sulkiness in his manner,
+took a step forward and relapsed once more. A little silence seemed to
+catch them all, broken by good Mrs. Lear saying:
+
+"You'm early to-day, Loveday. Milken's not over yet."
+
+"I'm come to see you a moment, if 'tes possible," said Loveday, some of
+her shining confidence already fallen from her, she knew not why.
+
+"Well," said Primrose spitefully, guessing her presence would embarrass
+Loveday, "Mrs. Lear's here and I daresay'll speak to 'ee. Can't be any
+secret from me, of course, whatever 'tes."
+
+Mrs. Lear, suddenly sorry for Loveday, although Primrose on entering the
+day before had told her a tale that had angered her, said:
+
+"Come into dairy, Loveday; you can tell me what 'tes while I see to your
+aunt's bit of butter."
+
+Loveday followed her into the cool dairy, where on the scrubbed
+white wood shelves the great red earthen pans stood in rows holding
+their thick crinkled cream, which Loveday never saw without a thought
+of awe for her mother's miracle, and the waves that had surged over
+her father's head. Thought of it now restored her sense of her own
+power--the cream was ever for her a symbol of divine interposition, and
+if her own parents had been found worthy of such a sign, why should not
+she too have that something apart and strong which forced signs from the
+very heavens, that something apart which indeed she could not but feel
+sure she possessed, never with such a gladness in the certainty until
+the miraculous yesterday?
+
+Eagerly she unfolded her plans to Mrs. Lear, her words falling forth in
+a rush as hurried as a moorland stream after rain, yet as clear too, and
+as she spoke of her hopes and plans her black eyes scanned Mrs. Lear's
+face more in faith than anxiety. But Mrs. Lear wore a strange look that
+to one less eager than the girl would have shown as pity.
+
+"Softly, Loveday, softly," she said at last, "while I see if I can
+get to the rights of this. You want to earn money for yourself this
+next month to buy your white riband with. Have 'ee thought 'tes an
+extravagant purchase for a maid like you, who should be putten any
+money into warm flannel or a pair of good boots?"
+
+"I don't want boots, Mrs. Lear, I don't want nothing on the earth but my
+satin sash so I can dance with her in the Flora. I want it more than to
+save my soul, that I do; I'll go through anything to get it. I'll work
+like ten maids for 'ee and for anyone else that'll have me, so as I can
+dance in the Flora..."
+
+"Hush, hush," cried the good woman, justly scandalised by such
+unbalanced ravings from a maid of fifteen who should have had nothing
+but modesty in her mouth; "you mustn't say such wicked things or I can't
+stay here and listen to en."
+
+Fear attacked Loveday, not for her own impious words, but lest she had
+shocked Mrs. Lear past helping.
+
+"Mrs. Lear," she said urgently, "I don't mean any wickedness, but indeed
+I can't sufficiently tell 'ee what it means to me to get my length of
+riband and dance in the Flora come May. I do believe I'll die if I
+don't. I don't know how to find words to tell 'ee, but 'tes more to me
+than a white riband and a shaking of feet down Bugletown streets, 'tes
+my life, I do believe ..." She added no word of Flora Le Pettit, you
+perceive, but got a secret joy from being able to use her name thus
+unreproved in mention of the dance ... and who that has been a lover
+will not understand this?
+
+"I would have had 'ee up here to help now that Primrose is so wisht,"
+replied Mrs. Lear doubtfully, "but simmingly only yesterday you had
+words, and indeed it was ill done of you, Loveday Strick, towards one
+in her condition, as you do very well knaw."
+
+Loveday drooped her head. Idle to protest to Mrs. Lear that she had not
+been the first in fault. She waited breathless, the beating of her heart
+almost choking her. Mrs. Lear went on.
+
+"If only Primrose could be made to overlook it, then I'll have 'ee and
+welcome, Loveday, and pay you a florin a week too, which would soon add
+up to enough. I'd be glad for 'ee to stay on after the Flora too, for
+Primrose's time'll be near."
+
+Loveday had no interest in what happened after the dance. Life would
+be all golden ever after, something wonderful and new would certainly
+begin; it was to mark the great division in her life, but gratitude and
+the caution born of years of slights held her silent on that subject to
+the good Mrs. Lear.
+
+"Wait 'ee here," Mrs. Lear bade her, and herself went back into the
+kitchen. She was gone some minutes, that to Loveday dragged as weeks,
+though when she reappeared Loveday felt that the time of waiting had
+gone too soon, and she wished for it to begin once more, so much she
+dreaded to ask what had been said. Mrs. Lear spared her the need for
+questioning.
+
+"'Tes no manner of use, Loveday," she said, "Primrose won't hear of it,
+and being as she is, I can't contrairy her."
+
+Loveday felt the futility of argument, and, indeed, in the violent
+reaction that attacks such ardent natures, she felt too numb to make the
+attempt even had she wished. She stood staring at Mrs. Lear with her
+eyes dark in her pale face and the first presage of defeat in her heart.
+
+
+
+    CHAPTER VII: IN WHICH LOVEDAY STILL
+      ESSAYS TO OBTAIN THE WHITE SATIN RIBAND
+
+
+
+
+Chapter VII
+
+IN WHICH LOVEDAY STILL ESSAYS TO OBTAIN THE WHITE SATIN RIBAND
+
+
+It were a weary task to chronicle all the ways trodden by Loveday during
+the three weeks that followed her visit to Upper Farm, and yet, even so,
+it would not be as weary as was the treading of them to that still
+ardent though fearful girl. Hers grew to be a dread that would have
+seemed to a spectator disproportionate indeed--for what can one heart
+know of the sickness of another's, of its hurried beating when hope
+beckons, of its numb slackening when hope fails? How swift to Loveday
+seemed the relentless patter of the days past her questing feet, that,
+run hither and thither as she would, yet could not keep pace with Time's
+urgency! How slow to Loveday seemed the ticking of each moment, since
+each held hope and fear full-globed, as in bubbles that rise and rise
+only to burst into the empty air! So each moment rose, rounded, to meet
+Loveday, held, and broke, till her mind was but a daze which confounded
+speed with slowness, till she thought the future would never be the
+present and found perpetually that it was the past.
+
+After her failure with Mrs. Lear it occurred to Loveday to go where she
+should have gone in the first place--whither she might have gone had
+not some irk of conscience whispered her that her purpose was all too
+worldly--to the wife of the Vicar, Mrs. Veale. This Mrs. Veale was the
+good lady who had stood sponsor for Loveday on that day when Aunt Senath
+had perforce to blazon her sister's shame at the font. Ever since that
+day Mrs. Veale had done her duty by Loveday without fail, instructing
+her in the catechism regularly and occasionally presenting her with the
+clothing of Miss Letitia Veale--who was a couple of years older than
+Loveday--when the garments were outgrown and when they were suitable.
+Mrs. Veale was too thoughtful a Christian to give Loveday artificial
+flowers or silken petticoats unfitted to her station, but flannels,
+thickened by so much washing that Saint Anthony of Egypt himself could
+not have divined a female within their folds, were always forthcoming
+to protect the orphan girl from wintry winds.
+
+It was no day for flannel when Loveday knocked--with the timidity that
+always assailed her, to her own annoyance, when she was about to see her
+godmother--on the back door of the Vicarage. She heard her own voice,
+robbed of its warm eagerness, asking of the stout cook whether Mrs.
+Veale could see her for a minute. The cook sent the housemaid to the
+Vicar's lady with the request, and Loveday stood in the large, sunny
+kitchen smelling the strange rich foods preparing for the four o'clock
+dinner. There was butcher's meat, she could smell that (she had tasted
+it at the harvest feast at Upper Farm, where it was provided for the
+labourers once a year), and there was a sweet pudding that she could see
+stirred together in a big white bowl, a pudding that smelt of sweetness
+like a posy. A noisy fly, the first of his kind, buzzed over the plate
+where the empty eggshells lay beside the bowl, and from them crawled to
+the scattered sugar that sparkled carelessly upon the rim. Loveday, of
+old, would have had a second's envy of the fly that could thus browse on
+what smelt so good; now the fine aromas affected her nostrils merely as
+incense might have those of her papist father--as the savour of the
+great house where dwelt those to be propitiated. For upon Mrs. Veale she
+now felt hope was fastened; it was from her almost sacred hands that
+salvation would flow. Fear and expectation took Loveday by the throat,
+so stifling her that the wide kitchen, the stout blue-print-clad cook,
+the bright pots and pans, the leaping flames, the savoury odours and the
+buzzing of the fly, all blended together before her dizzied eyes.
+
+The figure of the housemaid, crisp in white and black, entered
+steadyingly, and with her voice, saying that the mistress would see
+Loveday Strick in the morning-room, the flow of the kitchen ebbed and
+subsided. Loveday followed the white and black through the long, narrow
+hall, where the fox's mask grinned at her from above the fanlight of the
+door, to the presence of the Vicar's wife.
+
+Mrs. Veale was a personable lady, with a high and narrow brow, and a
+penetrating eye that few in the village could evade if they had aught
+upon their conscience. It was said, indeed, that she was better than
+a curate to her husband, for she could pass where a man could not
+in delicacy have gone, and few were the maids, and fewer still the
+housewives, who had not benefited by her counsel. She fixed that eye
+benevolently upon Loveday now; the lady stately in her black silk, the
+locket containing the hair of her departed parent, one-time a canon of
+Exeter, lying upon her matronly bosom; the girl awkward in her homespun
+wrapper, her feet fearful of standing upon the flowered carpet.
+
+"Come in, Loveday," said Mrs. Veale kindly.
+
+Loveday advanced a step and dropped her curtsey, but not a word could
+she say to explain her visit.
+
+"What do you want to see me about?" asked Mrs. Veale briskly--for she
+was much busied in good works, and had no time to give over what was
+needful to each of them.
+
+"If you please, ma'am, I want work," said Loveday.
+
+Mrs. Veale looked her approval on hearing this most praiseworthy of the
+few sentences fit for use of the lower classes. Even when there is no
+work to be had such sentiments should be encouraged, and without them
+she never unloosed that charity which, when the supply of work failed,
+she exercised for the good of her parishioners' bodies and her own soul.
+
+Loveday felt the approval, and her heart took wings to the heaven of
+certain hope. Indeed, had Loveday but had the sense of what was fitting
+to tell the Vicar's lady, she might have attained what she wanted, but
+hope, like despair, ever made Loveday heady.
+
+"What work do you want?" asked Mrs. Veale. "I should have sent you out
+to service long ago, but I knew your aunt needed you at home. Has she
+sent you?"
+
+"No, ma'am," answered Loveday, "I came of myself. I want work I can do
+in my spare time, when Aunt Senath don't need me."
+
+So far all was well; the scheme sounded fit for encouragement by the
+Church, ever anxious for the welfare of even her humblest children.
+Mrs. Veale gave thought to her boots and knives ... no, the gardener's
+boy did them, and he was being prepared for confirmation and must not be
+unsettled. The mending ... that was done by the housemaid in her spare
+time, superintended by Mrs. Veale herself, and it would not be fair to
+the girl to leave her with idle hands for Satan's use when they could
+be employed instead upon sheets and stockings. The washing ... the
+housemaid's mother came to do that, glad to do so at a reasonable price
+for the opportunity of seeing how her daughter prospered from week to
+week under such care as Mrs. Veale bestowed on all the maids whom she
+trained. The spring cleaning ... a girl who did not know the ways of the
+house would make work instead of saving it. Yet Mrs. Veale felt, as a
+Christian woman, that it was her duty to encourage Loveday even at the
+cost of her own china. She resolved to do so.
+
+"Many people would not help you, Loveday," she said, "for it is
+very difficult to find work suddenly without upsetting the ways of a
+household, but you are my god-daughter, and so I have always taken a
+special interest in you. My spring-cleaning is not till May this year,
+as then the Vicar goes away to stay with his lordship, the Bishop of
+Exeter, and I will have you here under my own eye. You will not be of
+much assistance at first, but if you are willing and do as you are told
+you will be able to learn."
+
+At the mention of the month of May the wings of Loveday's heart folded
+once more and let her heart fall like a stone, then opened in a
+fluttering attempt to save it.
+
+"What--what time in May, ma'am?" she asked. Perhaps it would be the
+first week in that month and all would yet be well, since the Flora was
+held upon the eighth.
+
+At Mrs. Veale's next words the wings moulted away, and the bare quills
+left Loveday's heart prone and defenceless.
+
+"Not till the second week," said Mrs. Veale, "for the Vicar wishes to
+stay till the Flora, as we are permitting Miss Letitia to dance in the
+procession this year, and naturally he wishes to be there. The Vicar
+feels that these old innocent customs must not be allowed to fall into
+disuse."
+
+"Ah!" cried Loveday, "'tis no good to me!"
+
+At this shocking speech--imagine a village girl crying out that an offer
+of employment from the Vicarage is of no good to her!--Mrs. Veale drew
+such a breath of horror that the hair of the late Canon rose in its
+locket.
+
+"What on earth can you mean, Loveday Strick?"
+
+Thus Mrs. Veale, justly outraged. But Loveday, infatuated, rushed upon
+her fate--the fate of expulsion from those precincts.
+
+"Oh, ma'am, 'tis no manner of use to me unless I get work before the
+Flora. The Flora, ma'am" (repeating the beloved name as an invocation
+in time of trouble).
+
+"'Tis this way, I must get a white satin sash come Flora Day, 'cause
+if I do I'm to dance along with Miss Le Pettit in the procession.
+She's promised me that I should, and indeed I'll die if I don't. I will
+indeed. I've fixed my soul on it. I've got the gown and the stockings
+and the shoes, and all I want is the white riband, and I must someways
+make enough money to buy it come Flora Day. Oh, Mrs. Veale, ma'am, if
+you'll let me scrub and scour for you I'll do it on my knees so as only
+I can dance with her in the Flora."
+
+During this speech Mrs. Veale had risen to the full height and width of
+the black silk, feeling that thus only could she cope adequately with
+such a flood of ill-regulated and unseemly passions. She felt deeply
+wounded to think that any girl of her teaching should so betray it as
+this one did in every undisciplined word. She had not felt such a bitter
+stab of disappointment since a trusted and loved old nurse of the family
+had been found drinking the Vicar's port.
+
+"Loveday Strick," she said, "you are forgetting yourself."
+
+This was not exact, for Loveday had forgotten Mrs. Veale, but the rebuke
+drenched the impetuous girl like a cold wave. She stood defenceless.
+
+"I have not comprehended half this mad tale of yours," continued Mrs.
+Veale, "but I gather you have the presumption to say that Miss Le
+Pettit--_Miss Le Pettit_--has said you may dance with her at the
+Flora. Perhaps a young lady in her exalted position, and of what I
+believe are her modernising tendencies, may have formed such a project,
+but you should have known better than to have presumed on such an
+unsuitable condescension. As to a white satin sash, I can imagine
+nothing more unfitted for a girl in your unfortunate position, of which
+I am very sorry to be obliged to remind you. I had always hoped you
+would never forget it."
+
+"Ma'am ... you don't understand ..." began Loveday.
+
+"That is quite enough, Loveday. Let me hear no more on the subject. If
+you still want work, apart from this desire for unsuitable finery, since
+you are my god-daughter I will forget what has passed and still try you
+at the spring cleaning."
+
+Then it was that a horrid thing happened to Loveday.
+
+"What do I care for you and your spring-cleaning?" she stormed, "you and
+it can go up the chimney together for all I care. I only wanted you to
+give me work so as to get my satin sash, and I'll never come near you or
+church again as long as I do live. That I won't...." And Loveday turned
+and ran out of the front door, beneath the grinning fox, and not only
+ran out of the front door, but banged it behind her.
+
+Maids in the kitchen heard that unseemly sound, as they had heard,
+awe-struck, the raised voice, and Mrs. Veale felt she must read them a
+short but fitting lesson on the dire results of wanting things beyond
+one's station. The stout cook and the crisp housemaid soon knew of
+Loveday's presumptuous ambition, a knowledge they shared now with the
+Lear family and Cherry Cotton, and that soon was to spread to the
+accompaniment of many a titter about the twisted ways of the village.
+
+
+
+    CHAPTER VIII: IN WHICH LOVEDAY CONTINUES
+      HER QUEST AND ACHIEVES TENPENCE
+
+
+
+
+Chapter VIII
+
+IN WHICH LOVEDAY CONTINUES HER QUEST AND ACHIEVES TENPENCE
+
+
+Loveday ran down the path to the Vicarage gate so fast that the tears
+she had not been able to restrain blew off her cheeks as she went. Thus
+it came about that she did not see Miss Letitia until she had all but
+knocked her down in the urgency of her flight.
+
+Letitia Veale was no sylph such as Miss Le Pettit, however, and she
+caught hold of Loveday like the good-natured, rather romping, young lady
+that she was. Mrs. Veale always said of her that she would "fine down,"
+but persons less well disposed to her than her own mother, and who were
+the mothers of daughters themselves, said that Letitia Veale was a sad
+hoyden. She had ever a merry nod or word for Loveday, and dazed with
+anger as that ill-balanced maid was, Letitia's smile won her to
+comparative calm again, though it was a calm with which cunning
+intermingled. For:--
+
+"Oh, miss," cried Loveday, "I do beg your pardon ..." Then, seeing by
+the young lady's pleasant face that she had not offended by her
+clumsiness--"but I was so sick with misery I didn't rightly see where
+I was going."
+
+"Why, whatever is the matter, Loveday?" asked the lively girl.
+
+"Miss, I can't tell you, not now, but oh, miss, you've always been good
+to me, will you do something for me? I've never asked you for nothing
+before, have I?"
+
+"Why, no, you have not, Loveday. What is it?"
+
+"Have you such a thing as an old white sash you could let me have, miss?
+I just can't rightly tell you how I want it. It don't matter how old, so
+I can wash and iron it. Oh, miss...?"
+
+Letitia thought for a moment, then shook her brown ringlets.
+
+"I'm so sorry, Loveday, since you want it so much, but the only white
+sash I have is my new one for Flora Day. I have an old black one I could
+let you have though."
+
+"Black! Oh, Miss Letitia, that's no good. Couldn't you let me have the
+white one? I'll work and work to make the money to buy you another, and
+your mother'd get you a new one for the Flora."
+
+"Loveday, you know I couldn't. Mamma would insist on knowing what I'd
+done with it, you know she would."
+
+"You couldn't--you couldn't say you'd lost it, miss?" asked Loveday,
+even her tongue faltering at the suggestion.
+
+But though Letitia might be a romp, she was not a deceitful girl, and
+she respected her mother.
+
+"Oh, Loveday, how can you suggest such a thing? It would be telling
+mamma a lie. Besides, she would never believe me."
+
+At this moment Mrs. Veale, hearing voices, opened the door and looked
+out.
+
+"Letitia! Come in at once, and do not speak again to Loveday Strick."
+
+Letitia made round eyes at Loveday and sped up the path. Loveday pushed
+open the gate and went out.
+
+She went along the white dusty road, between the hedgerows of elder
+whose crumpled green leaves were unfolding in the sunny April weather,
+and her tears were the only rain that smiling country-side had seen for
+many a day, and they, to match the month, were already drying, for the
+fire burnt too high in Loveday for tears to hold her long. She fled
+along the road at first blindly, then more slowly as the exhaustion that
+follows on such rage as hers overcame her, and as she paused at last to
+sink against a mossy bank and rest, a horseman overtook her.
+
+It was Mr. Constantine on his white cob, looking a very dapper
+gentleman, but Loveday heeded him not, only raising her great black eyes
+unseeingly at the sound of the hoofs. Yet that so sombre gaze arrested
+Mr. Constantine, for it seemed to him an unwonted look in that land of
+buxom maids. He drew rein beside her.
+
+"Are you a gipsy, my girl?" he asked her kindly.
+
+Loveday shook her head.
+
+"Come, you have a tongue as well as that handsome pair of eyes, I
+suppose? No?"
+
+"My tongue's wisht, it brings ill-luck," said Loveday.
+
+Mr. Constantine studied her more attentively.
+
+"If all women thought that, there'd be more happy marriages," he said,
+slipping his hand into his pocket. "You've wisdom on your tongue,
+whether it's lucky or no. You say you're not a gipsy?"
+
+By this time it had dawned on Loveday what, in her absorption, she had
+not at first noticed, that she was speaking to one of the gentry, and
+to no less a one than Mr. Constantine, of Constantine. She stood up and
+dropped her curtsey out of habit, but sullenly. Oddly enough, it was the
+sullenness and not the curtsey that took Mr. Constantine's fancy.
+
+"No, sir," said Loveday. "I'm not a gipsy. I'm Loveday Strick."
+
+"Loveday ..." said the gentleman. "Loveday ... That's a beautiful name.
+No--it's more than a name, it's a phrase. A very beautiful phrase."
+
+Loveday raised her eyes at this strange talk. Mr. Constantine took his
+hand out of his pocket and held out a silver sixpence.
+
+"Gipsy or no, take that for your gipsy eyes, my dear," he said. Loveday
+stood hesitant. Even she, who had just begged of Miss Letitia, felt
+shame at taking a coin in charity. Yet she did so, for before her eyes
+she saw, not a silver sixpence, but the beginning of a length of white
+satin riband unrolling towards her through futurity. Perhaps, unknown
+to herself, her foreign blood prompted her to that sad Jesuitry which
+teaches all means are justifiable to the desired end. Perhaps she saw
+nothing beyond the beginning of her riband, but she held out her hand.
+Mr. Constantine dropped the sixpence into it, touched his cob with his
+heel and rode on. Loveday stayed in the hedge, the sixpence in her palm
+and hope once more in her soul. That hope was to faint and fall during
+the days that followed and saw her quest no nearer its fulfilment.
+
+For who wished to employ the strange, dark girl that had always been
+aloof and distrusted? And who could credit this violent conversion to
+the ordered ways of domesticity? Who had the money to squander on help
+from without, when, within, if there were not enough hands for the work,
+then the work itself, like an unanswered letter, slipped into that dead
+place of unremembered things where nothing matters any more? Last week's
+cleaning left undone adds nothing appreciable to this week's dirt that
+next week's exertions may not remedy as easily together as singly--or so
+argued the slovenly housewife, while for the industrious no hands save
+their own could have scrubbed and polished to their liking.
+
+Here and there Loveday earned a few odd pence, for a few hand's turns
+done when necessity or charity called in her vagrant services, but the
+Flora Dance of Bugletown was held upon the eighth of May, and when May
+Day dawned she had but tenpence for all her store--and the riband would
+cost as many shillings. Despair settled in her heart for the first time;
+often before it had knocked but been refused more than a glance within,
+but now her enfeebled arms could hold the door no longer, and that most
+dread of all visitors took possession of his own--for is not the human
+heart Despair's only habitation, without which he is but a homeless
+wanderer?
+
+
+
+    CHAPTER IX: IN WHICH LOVEDAY SEES ONE MAGPIE
+
+
+
+
+Chapter IX
+
+IN WHICH LOVEDAY SEES ONE MAGPIE
+
+
+Upon May Day, when boys blow the May horns and girls carry sprays of
+hawthorn and all good folk break their fast on bread and cream, Loveday
+had to go, as was her wont (and a mortifying one to her pride since
+Primrose's flouting of her), to Upper Farm. Twice before have we seen
+her on that errand--when she first was love-stricken for Miss Le Pettit
+in the farmhouse parlour, and again when on her search for work she saw
+the querulous young Mrs. Lear in the dim kitchen. Since then she had
+gone monotonously enough on her errand, avoiding speech even with the
+elder Mrs. Lear as much as possible, and seeing Primrose not at all--an
+easy matter, since the girl kept her room, or lay on the horsehair sofa,
+languidly stitching woollen roses on a handscreen, for all the world
+like the spoilt bride of some great gentleman.
+
+There seemed never any violence of thought or emotion at Upper Farm,
+even the sulks of Primrose were petty in nature, her jealousies made her
+voice shrill but did not take her by the throat with that intolerable
+aching stormier women know too well, while her graceless husband was
+irritated on the surface of his mind as some shallow pool is fretted
+over its bed of soft ooze, retaining no trace when the ripples have
+died. The elder Lear, as befits a good countryman content with his
+station in life, was too hard-worked for anything save a tired back on
+his entry at night, and the old wife too occupied with her Martha-like
+toil for searching into the sensibilities either of herself or of her
+daughter-in-law.
+
+Loveday, without reasoning on the matter, had yet ever been aware
+that this slight tide of feeling was all that ever lapped against the
+household at Upper Farm, therefore when she saw one magpie in the last
+field before the yard gate she accepted the sign for her own despairing
+heart alone. No young woman of education would have paid any attention
+to such a vulgar superstition, but Loveday had no learning other than
+what her elders had let fall in her hearing, both when she was supposed
+to be listening for her betterment, and when it was thought she would
+not understand the drift of their speech. And that a single magpie means
+sorrow was one of the few solid facts Loveday had gleaned by following
+the garnered sheaves of her elders.
+
+Now, as she stepped over the topmost ledge of the granite stile, there
+was a fanlike flutter of black and white in her very face, and she stood
+a moment watching the ill-omened bird wheel and dip behind the thick
+blossom of the hawthorn hedge.
+
+"There goes my white riband," thought the ignorant girl, and yet even
+with the quick fear there welled a fresh and fierce determination in her
+undisciplined heart.
+
+Her egotism, if not her superstition, was reproved when she reached
+the farmhouse, and old Madgy, the midwife, coming to the pump for more
+water, met her with news of what had happened not half an hour earlier.
+The shallow creek of Upper Farm had been invaded by a violent and dark
+tide, on whose ebb two lives had been borne away. Loveday, staring up
+at Primrose's room, saw the withered hand of old Mrs. Lear draw the
+curtains across the window behind which lay a dead mother and a babe
+that had never lived.
+
+
+
+    CHAPTER X: IN WHICH LOVEDAY DOES NOT
+      ATTEND A FUNERAL
+
+
+
+
+Chapter X
+
+IN WHICH LOVEDAY DOES NOT ATTEND A FUNERAL
+
+
+"A couple of months too soon her pains took her," said Madgy; "she has
+been fretting and wisht these weeks past, with her husband always after
+some young faggot up country and herself sick with envy at the girls
+that could still dance with the chaps. She had no woman's heart in her,
+poor soul, to carry her woman's burden. Ah! many's the strange things
+in women I see at my trade," and Madgy wrung out a cloth and mumbled to
+herself--her old mouth folded inwards, as though she perpetually turned
+all the secrets that she knew over and over within it.
+
+"Your mother died because she'd set her heart on death," she added, to
+Loveday, "but this one died because she dedn' know how to catch hold on
+life. She'd a weak hand on everything she touched, because she never
+wanted nawthen enough."
+
+"Wanting's not getting, however hard you want," said Loveday.
+
+"Ah! isn't it? It's getting, though you may have sorrow packed along wi'
+it. Out of my way, maid; I must be busy overstairs." And old Madgy went
+to ply the second part of her trade, for she washed the dead as well as
+the newly-born; she laid coins on the eyes of the old and flannels on
+the limbs of the young with the same smile between her rheumy lids and
+on her folded mouth.
+
+Loveday stayed awhile and helped Mrs. Lear, by milking the puzzled,
+lowing cows and pouring the milk into the pans, but all the time they
+worked the dead girl's name was never mentioned between them. It was
+as though Loveday were making amends for the ill words that had been
+between them by refraining her tongue from everything but her first
+few accents of pity and amaze.
+
+That pity was shared by all the neighbourhood, gentle and simple.
+Time was, just before her marriage, when Primrose was accounted a
+foolish and sinful maid enough, but married she had been, and into a
+highly-respected family, for the Lears' graves had lain in the next best
+position to those of the gentry for many generations, and, for their
+sakes more than for hers, tributes flowed in to the funeral.
+
+This poor, pale Primrose, who had died so young, though not unmarried,
+was laid to rest, with babe on arm, only a few days before the Flora
+dance, and her friend Cherry, who would none the less foot it gaily on
+that occasion, attended, with a length of black crape round her buxom
+waist and her eyes swollen by the easy tears of an easy nature.
+
+Loveday was not present, for, friendly as she had ever been with Mrs.
+Lear, the dead girl's petulance lay between them now; memory of it
+become to Loveday a pang of pity, and to Mrs. Lear a sacred duty.
+Nevertheless, an odd notion, such as Loveday was apt to take, made her
+feel that some tie, slight, but persistent, between Primrose and herself
+drew her, at least, to give the last look possible from behind the hedge
+screening the road.
+
+There, hidden as a bird, she saw how highly the world had thought of the
+girl to whom she had dared feel a flashing sense of superiority; she saw
+how true respectability is to be admired. For never at any funeral, save
+that of actual gentry, had there been seen so many of those elegant
+floral tokens of esteem which reflect, perhaps, even more honour upon
+those who bestow them than upon the dead who receive them. Primrose may
+have been a poor creature enough, but the Lears had always held their
+heads high among their fellows, without ever trying to push above their
+station. No unseemly ambitions, no fantastic desires, had ever drawn
+just censure upon Upper Farm, and wreaths and crosses decked with
+tasteful streamers bore witness to this fact. There was actually an
+exquisite white wreath from Miss Le Pettit of Ignores, laid proudly upon
+the humbler greener offerings of farmers and fisher folk, overpowering
+with its elegance even an artificial wreath under glass which came from
+the Bugletown corn-chandler, who was Mr. Lear's chief customer.
+
+Loveday, watching, knew suddenly that, when her time came, she would be
+an alien in death, as she was in life; that never for her would these
+costly tokens of respect be gathered. Yet, instead of this thought
+humbling her, instead of it teaching her the lesson that only by
+striving to do her duty in the lowly course set for her could she attain
+any measure of regard, it aroused in her once more, this time with an
+even fiercer intensity, her ardent desire to be as different from these
+good folk as possible. Miss Le Pettit had thought her different, had
+admired that difference, and to Miss Le Pettit, as supreme arbiter, her
+heart turned now. There was still that doorway to her future whose latch
+the fair Flora's hand could lift, and this door, ajar for her, would
+open wide if she were but fitly garbed to pass across its threshold.
+
+Watching the funeral procession, which should have suggested such far
+other thoughts even to her undisciplined soul, Loveday was taken only
+by an idea so rash and impious that it alarmed even herself. It was the
+penalty of her dark and ardent blood that fear, like despair, added to
+the force of her desires. That idea, which she should have driven from
+her as a serpent, she nourished in her bosom as though it were a dove.
+
+
+
+    CHAPTER XI: IN WHICH LOVEDAY ATTENDS
+      THE FLORA
+
+
+
+
+Chapter XI
+
+IN WHICH LOVEDAY ATTENDS THE FLORA
+
+
+The eighth of May dawned fair and clear, and from early morning the
+young men and maidservants of Bugletown, who had Spent the past week
+cleaning and polishing the houses, streamed out into the country to
+pluck green branches for their further adornment. Already the thought of
+the dance was in their heads, and its tripping in their feet, and they
+sang through the lanes.
+
+They waylaid strangers coming into Bugletown and drew contributions
+of silver from them, according to custom, and all they did went to a
+gay measure. By the time the gentry, both of the place itself and of
+outlying regions, were assembled for the dance every house in the main
+streets of the grey little old town was decked with boughs, its front
+and back doors opened wide for the dancers, who at the Flora always
+danced through every house set hospitably open for their passage.
+
+The band, that all day long plays but the one tune, hour after hour,
+was gathered together by noon, sleek and not yet heated, their trumpets
+shining in the sun, their fiddles glossy as their well-oiled hair, their
+big drum round as the portly figure of the bandmaster himself. Already,
+in many a bedchamber, young women had twirled this way and that before
+the mirror, studying the set of taffetas and tarletan, or young men
+had polished their high beavers anxiously against the sleeves of their
+brightest broadcloth frock coats. In speckless kitchens housewives
+prepared their cakes and cream, and the masters saw to the drawing of
+the cider, and, perhaps, tasted it, to make sure that it had not soured
+overnight. And in each heart different words were running to the Flora
+Day tune, words that suited with each heart's measure. The children in
+the streets sang aloud the doggerel words that long custom has fastened
+upon the tune:--
+
+  _"John the beau was walking home,_
+  _When he met with Sally Dover,_
+  _He kissed her once, he kissed her twice,_
+  _And he kissed her three times over!"_
+
+
+Thus the heedless children with their lips, but their little hearts
+probably beat to the even simpler words: "_I'm having a holiday!
+Having a holiday!_"
+
+More staidly, and almost unheard by their time-muffled ears, a voice,
+nevertheless, sang to the housewives, telling each her copper and silver
+was the brightest in the town, and adding, perhaps, little gusts of
+memory that half hurt, half pleased, of how nimbly she had danced at the
+Flora in years gone by, and how fair she had looked....
+
+The staid married men smiled to themselves, and would not have
+acknowledged that within them something seemed to chuckle: "_I'm not
+so old, after all; I'm not so old, after all_...."
+
+Frankly, the hearts of the young men nudged hopefully against their
+ribs, calling out: "_I'm going to dance with Her! I'm going to dance
+with Her! And perhaps ... for I always was lucky! I always was
+lucky_!"
+
+But who shall say what lilting voice, timid-bold and sly-sincere,
+whispered to the maidens, beating out its syllables against the new
+stays so tightly laced for the occasion? Perhaps the words of the
+children's doggerel, with a name or so altered, met the moment without
+need of further change....
+
+And Loveday's heart, as she walked the three miles from the fishing
+village to Bugletown, sang to her of joy and hope and triumph.
+
+When she reached the Market House, she found the band ready to strike up
+the famous tune, while the mayor, his chain of office about his neck,
+stood conversing with the ladies and gentlemen who were to lead the
+dance. For, as is but fitting, the couples at the Flora follow each
+other according to their social precedence, though all may join who
+choose, providing only that the females, be they gentry or tradespeople,
+wear white, and the men their best broadcloth and Sunday hats.
+
+Of all who had gathered for the dance there was none more highly placed
+than Miss Flora Le Pettit, and none as fair to see. She stood supreme in
+the sunshine and her beauty, her white muslin robes swelling round her
+like the petals of some full-blown rose, her white sash streaming over
+them, the white ribands that decked her hat of fine Dunstable straw
+flowing down to her shoulders and mingling with her auburn curls. Even
+the countless tiny bows that adorned her dress (as though they were a
+cloud of butterflies drawn to alight upon it by its freshness) were of
+white satin. Everything about her save her little sandalled feet danced
+already--the brim of the wide hat that waved above her dancing eyes, the
+flounces and floating ends of her attire which the soft breeze stirred,
+the corners of her smiling mouth, the dimple which came and went behind
+the curls that nodded by her cheek. What vision can have been fairer
+than that presented by Flora Le Pettit upon Flora Day? "None, none,
+none," thought eager Loveday, as she edged through the crowd and caught
+sight of her divinity. None ... and yet that sight caused Loveday a
+strange clutching in her breast.
+
+For she, too, had felt fair when she had gazed in her tiny mirror; the
+yellowed linen gown had gleamed pure and white, her young breast had
+swelled above the waist that looked so slim, and that was so finely
+girt.... Yet, now, something of splendour about Miss Le Pettit that
+she could not attain dimmed all herself and, with herself, her joy.
+Her face, already flushed by her walk, burned deeper still with shame.
+Yet the desire that three weeks of striving had swollen to a passion
+urged her forward, and, fingering the lovely thing about her waist to
+gain courage, she broke through the last ring of staring people and
+stood in front of Miss Le Pettit.
+
+The heiress of Ignores had not yet caught sight of her, being engaged in
+laughing conversation with several admiring gentlemen, but something of
+an almost painful intensity in the dark gaze of the village girl drew
+her face to meet it. The black eyes, so full of an extravagant passion,
+met the careless glance of the blue orbs that knew not even the passing
+shadow of such a thing.
+
+"Oh," stammered Loveday, the set speech she had been conning all the way
+to Bugletown dying upon her lips, "Oh, Miss Flora, I'm come. I've got my
+white sash and I'm come...."
+
+Over Flora's face passed a look of bewilderment, while Loveday, her
+moment of self-criticism gone, stood trembling with eager happiness.
+Then Miss Le Pettit spoke, lightly and kindly.
+
+"Surely I have seen you before, my girl?" she asked. And, turning to the
+little group of her friends, added:
+
+"She has such a striking air, 'twould be difficult to forget her."
+
+Yet, till this moment, Miss Le Pettit had forgotten everything save that
+air. Forgotten her careless suggestion, her prettily given promise, her
+praise. Forgotten even the pleasant glow such evident worship as this
+village girl's had stirred in her. She had had so much worship since!
+Who can blame her for not remembering some idle words her artistic
+perceptions had prompted three weeks earlier? It had been a fantastic
+suggestion at best, as a girl of sense would have known, treasuring it
+merely for its kindly intention. After all, Miss Le Pettit would be far
+more conspicuous dancing with a village maiden at the Flora than with a
+gentleman suited to her in rank and estate. Since that day at Upper Farm
+she had met just such a gentleman--he with the glossy whiskers and
+handsome form who was nearest to her now, smiling at this little
+encounter.
+
+"Why, child," said Flora to Loveday, "you look very nice, I am sure.
+But your place should be much further down the procession." Then, more
+sharply: "Why do you stare so, girl?"
+
+Loveday stood as one stricken, her cheek now as white as the sash she
+was still holding in her shaking hands.
+
+
+
+    CHAPTER XII: IN WHICH LOVEDAY DANCES
+
+
+
+
+Chapter XII
+
+IN WHICH LOVEDAY DANCES
+
+
+The Mayor had stepped forward, fearing lest this young person might be
+annoying the heiress; the bandsmen had turned from the final survey of
+their instruments to gaze; here and there various people who recognised
+Loveday were pressing through the crowd, eager to see and hear.
+Only Miss Le Pettit had drawn back against the protecting arm of the
+gentleman who was to be her partner. Loveday still stayed, her riband
+in her hands.
+
+There came comments from the crowd.
+
+"Loveday Strick! She'm mad! This month past she'm been like a crazy
+thing about the Flora!"
+
+"I thought all the time she must be mad to have imagined Miss Le Pettit
+meant to dance along wi' she!"
+
+"What's the maid got on? I can't rightly see."
+
+"Old white, but a brave new sash."
+
+At that Loveday raised her head and looked about her. A shrill voice
+from the crowd answered the last speaker.
+
+"A new sash; Ted'n possible. Us have all been laughing because she
+couldn' come by one nohow." And Cherry Cotton elbowed her way through
+the ring of curious folk to where Loveday stood. Suddenly Cherry gave a
+scream, and pointed an accusing finger at Loveday.
+
+"Ah, a new sash, sure enough.... Ask her where she got 'en. Ask her, I
+say."
+
+Loveday answered nothing, only turned her head a little to stare at
+Cherry.
+
+"You ask her where she took it from, Miss! You should know, seeing you
+gave it!"
+
+"I gave it to her? Nonsense."
+
+"Not to her, but to poor Primrose Lear. 'Tes the riband that tied up
+your wreath. She's robbed the dead. Loveday Strick's robbed the dead."
+
+Then indeed, after a moment's stupefaction following on the horrid
+revelation, a murmur of indignation ran from mouth to mouth.
+
+"She's robbed the dead!"
+
+"My soul! To rob the living's stealing, but to rob the dead's a profane
+thing."
+
+"'Tisn't man as can judge her, 'tis only God Almighty!" cried an old
+minister, aghast.
+
+"Look at the maid, how she stands.... Her own conscience judges her,
+I should say!"
+
+"She's no word to excuse herself, simmingly."
+
+"That's because she do know nothing can excuse what she's done...."
+
+And, indeed, Loveday stood without speech. Perhaps in all that buzz of
+murmuring she heard the voice of her own conscience at last, for she
+made no effort to defend herself, or, perhaps, even at that hour, she
+heard nothing but the dread whisper of defeat. She stood before Flora
+Le Pettit like a wilted rose whose petals hang limply, about to fall,
+fronting a bloom that spreads its glowing leaves in the full flush of
+noon. The one girl was triumphant in her beauty and her unassailable
+position, every flounce out-curved in freshness; the other drooped at
+brow and hem, her slender neck downbent, her sash-ends pendant as broken
+tendrils after rain upon her heavily hanging skirts.
+
+All she was heard to murmur, and that very low, was a halting sentence
+about her white sash: "But you said--you said you'd dance with me if
+I got my sash ..." or some such words, but only Miss Le Pettit caught
+all the muttered syllables, and she never spoke of them, save with a
+petulant reluctance to Mr. Constantine when he questioned her
+afterwards.
+
+"Girl," said the Mayor sharply, "is it true?'
+
+"Yes," said Loveday.
+
+"True!" cried Cherry, "I know 'tes true. I remember noticing that green
+mark on the riband when the wreath was laid on the grave. Ah, she'm a
+wicked piece, she is. She tormented my poor Primrose in life and she's
+robbed her in death. You aren't safe in your grave from she."
+
+Everyone was speaking against Loveday in rightful indignation by now,
+and the good wives expressed the opinion that she should be well
+whipped. Loveday turned suddenly to Miss Le Pettit. There were those
+there--notably Mr. Constantine, that observant philosopher--who said
+afterwards she seemed for one instant to be going to break into
+impassioned speech. She did half hold out her hands. The ends of the
+white sash, disregarded, fluttered from them as she did so. But Miss
+Le Pettit, shocked in all her sensibilities by this vulgar scene,
+turned away.
+
+"Surely," said she, "there has been enough time wasted already. Can we
+not begin the dance, Mr. Mayor?"
+
+At a sign from the Mayor the band struck up into the tune that was to
+echo all day through every head and, perhaps, afterwards, through a few
+kindly hearts.
+
+[Illustration: Music]
+
+played the band, and, still whispering together with excitement, the
+dancers fell into place.
+
+  "_John the beau was walking home_,
+  _When he met with Sally Dover_,
+  _He kissed her once, he kissed her twice_,
+  _And he kissed her three times over_."
+
+
+It seemed to Loveday that the whole world was dancing. The faces of the
+crowd, the bobbing ringlets, swelling skirts, the bright eyes and bright
+instruments, the houses that peered at her with their polished panes,
+all danced in a mad haze of mingled light and blackness. Sun, moon and
+stars joined in, heads and feet whirled so madly that none could have
+said which was upper-most. Creation was a-dancing, and she alone stood
+to be mocked at in a reeling world. This was the merry measure she had
+striven to join! She must have been mad indeed!
+
+Turning blindly, she ran through the crowd that gave at her approach,
+and all day the dancing went on without her. The flutter of her
+blasphemous sash did not profane the sunlight in the streets of
+Bugletown, nor pollute with its passing the houses of the good wives.
+Like a swallow's wing, it had but flashed across the ordered ways and
+was gone.
+
+Yet Loveday's ambition was, after all, fulfilled that day. For she
+danced--and danced a measure she could not have trod without the white
+satin sash.... Good folk in Bugletown footed it down the cobbled
+streets, and through paved kitchens; Loveday danced a finer step on
+insubstantial ether, into realms more vast. Were those realms dark for
+her, thus violated by her enforced entry of them? Who can say, save
+those folk of Bugletown who knew that to her first crime she had added
+a second even greater?
+
+They found her next day in the wood; the wind had risen, and blew
+against her skirts, so that her feet moved gently as though yet tracing
+their phantom paces upon the airy floors. Her head, like a snapped lily,
+lay forwards and a little to one side, so that her pale cheek rested
+against the taut white satin of the riband from which she hung. The wind
+blew the languid meshes of her hair softly, kissing her once, kissing
+her twice, and kissing her three times over.
+
+
+
+    EPILOGUE
+
+
+
+
+Epilogue
+
+
+Such is the shocking tale of Loveday Strick, a girl who gave her life
+for a piece of finery. Is it not small wonder that Miss Le Pettit
+lamented the sad lack of proportion in the affair?
+
+All for a length of white satin riband....
+
+And yet, there were two people who thought a little differently from the
+rest of Loveday's world on the subject. They were an odd couple to think
+alike in anything--it seemed as though even after her death Loveday's
+violent unsuitability must persist as a legacy. They were the refined
+and polished Mr. Constantine and old Madgy the midwife, a person whom,
+naturally, he had never met till the day after the Flora, when his
+philosophic curiosity drew him to search for the lost girl in company
+with a band of villagers. It was Madgy who led them to the wood, sure
+that there was what they sought. Mr. Constantine and Madgy stood looking
+at the pale girl when she had been laid upon last year's leaves at their
+feet. One of the men would have taken the riband from her, with some
+vague notion of returning it, though whether to the graveyard or to the
+Manor he could not have told. Mr. Constantine and Madgy put out each a
+hand to check him.
+
+"Leave it her," said Mr. Constantine curtly.
+
+"Ay," answered Madgy, speaking freely as was her wont, for she was,
+alas, no respecter of persons, "it was more than a white riband to the
+maid, for all that the fools say."
+
+Mr. Constantine nodded. He too saw in that length of satin, now soiled
+and crumpled, more than a white riband. He saw passion in it--passion
+of hope, of ambition, of love, of adoration, of despair. Not a piece
+of finery had ended Loveday's stormy course, but a symbol of life
+itself, with more in its stained warp and woof than many lives hold
+in three-score years and ten. Like religion, this riband held every
+experience. Primrose had known mating and childbearing, anxiety and
+content and jealousy and death; Mr. Constantine had, in his wandering
+life of the gentleman of leisure, experienced his moments of keen
+enjoyment, his tender and romantic interludes; Miss Le Pettit would know
+decorous wooing, prosperity, pain of giving birth as she duly presented
+her husband with an heir, sorrow as she saw her chestnut curls greying
+and her eye gathering the puckers of advancing years around its fading
+blue. Yet none of these would know as much as Loveday had known in the
+short life they all thought so wasted and so incomplete, would feel as
+much as she had felt--the whole pageant of passion symbolised by this
+insensate strip of satin. She alone had known ecstasy in her brief mad
+dance across their sylvan stage.
+
+Madgy folded the riband across the half-open eyes and wound the ends
+about the discoloured throat. And thus it was when Loveday was buried in
+unconsecrated ground, but with the thing she had desired most in life,
+striven for, sinned for, and finally attained, still with her. Of whom,
+after all, could a richer epitaph be written?
+
+
+THE END.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of Project Gutenberg's The White Riband, by Fryniwyd Tennyson Jesse
+
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