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.