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