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.