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diff --git a/14119-0.txt b/14119-0.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..93abc0e --- /dev/null +++ b/14119-0.txt @@ -0,0 +1,2102 @@ +*** 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 *** |