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:—