The White Riband Part 5

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 Let.i.tia, 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 Pett.i.t 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 st.i.tching 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 superst.i.tion, 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 superst.i.tion, 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 f.a.ggot 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 c.r.a.pe 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 Pett.i.t of Ignores, laid proudly upon the humbler greener offerings of farmers and fisher folk, overpowering with its elegance even an artificial wreath under gla.s.s 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 Pett.i.t had thought her different, had admired that difference, and to Miss Le Pett.i.t, 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 pa.s.s 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