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.