F. Tennyson Jesse

“ Loveday answered nothing, only turned her head a little to stare at Cherry.
"You ask her where she took it from, Miss! You should know, seeing you gave it!"
"I gave it to her? Nonsense."
"Not to her, but to poor Primrose Lear. 'Tes the riband that tied up your wreath. She's robbed the dead. Loveday Strick's robbed the dead."
Then indeed, after a moment's stupefaction following on the horrid revelation, a murmur of indignation ran from mouth to mouth.
"She's robbed the dead!"
"My soul! To rob the living's stealing, but to rob the dead's a profane thing." ”

“ To Loveday, high on her rock, between the gold of the sky and the gold of the blossom, it seemed that April must of a certainty stay as fair as this and lead to as bright a May, when that vision of her new self should become a yet brighter reality. She was confident of April because she was confident of life, lapped in an aureate glow that seemed to suffuse the very air she drew into her lungs so that it intoxicated her like the breath of a diviner ether from Olympian heights. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Strange men with rings in their ears and long, dark curls like a woman's, and an eye that was at once bold and soft.
Loveday the younger had that eye, save that it had never learned from life to be bold, and her face was milken white instead of showing the blown roses of the other girls, though the back of her slender neck was stained a faint golden brown as by the inherited memories of sun. She was most immodestly "different," and even the Vicar's lady, who had charitably seen to her baptism, had difficulty in bringing herself to believe the girl could be a Christian. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Already, in many a bedchamber, young women had twirled this way and that before the mirror, studying the set of taffetas and tarletan, or young men had polished their high beavers anxiously against the sleeves of their brightest broadcloth frock coats. In speckless kitchens housewives prepared their cakes and cream, and the masters saw to the drawing of the cider, and, perhaps, tasted it, to make sure that it had not soured overnight. And in each heart different words were running to the Flora Day tune, words that suited with each heart's measure. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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 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." ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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 Pettit of Ignores, laid proudly upon the humbler greener offerings of farmers and fisher folk, overpowering with its elegance even an artificial wreath under glass 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 ”

“ 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. ”

“ It was on a balmy day in early Spring that Loveday had first met Miss Le Pettit. Loveday had gone to fetch the milk. For Loveday's aunt, Senath Strick, with whom she lived, was a shiftless, unthrifty woman, never able to keep prosperous enough to own a cow for as long as the beast took between calvings, and the times when Loveday had a fragrant, soft-eyed animal to cherish were mercifully rare. ”

“ But she was not a young lady, and could derive no felicity from forgetfulness of such a kind, for with the poor the urgencies of the immediate task are raised to such compelling interest that only a genius could neglect them with satisfaction. Therefore Loveday never thought of forgetting the milk for her aunt, but her exultation was of such a powerful sort that it upheld her through the commonplaces of routine without her perceiving the incongruity which would have jarred on one of a finer upbringing. ”

“ For, as evening drew on, Madgy, having called to see how Loveday did, though nothing was thought of yet for a clear week, found her in the dairy (the Stricks had not yet fallen on that poverty which came to their roof under Aunt Senath's shrewish management) standing as one wisht beside the great red earthen pan of scalded cream. ”

“ 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. ”

“ She was young and strong and beautiful; life, not dead leaves, lay at her feet. She was different, and in her difference lay power, she was at last herself, Loveday ... she was Loveday, Loveday ... Loveday... ”

“ 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. ”

“ Old Madgy swore that even in her young day the small folk had still held their revels on the mossy slopes amongst the fanlike roots, and who knows what larger folk had not fled there to wanton more sweetly than in close cottages, or, like Loveday, to play the more easily with their thoughts? ”

“ Even thus do we worship in our Creator the excellence of His handiwork, and one would think that to be alive is act of praise enough to satisfy the most exigent deity. Flora had called Loveday to life, and Loveday repaid her with a worship of that which she had awakened, the highest compliment the devout can pay, would the theologians but acknowledge it. ”

“ For she danced—and danced a measure she could not have trod without the white satin sash.... Good folk in Bugletown footed it down the cobbled streets, and through paved kitchens; Loveday danced a finer step on insubstantial ether, into realms more vast. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Ordinarily, she was fearful of venturing into the darkness under the trees when once the evening had fallen, and it was then she was accustomed to come out up to her boulder, but this evening she was strung to any courage, for she walked in that certainty which on rare occasions comes to all—the certainty of being immune to danger—which is of all sensations vouchsafed to mortals the most godlike. ”

“ In the morning she was busy with cleaning and cooking till almost mid-day, and in the evenings she had the milk to fetch, but in the afternoons she could be sure of a few hours if Aunt Senath did not guess she wanted them for herself and invent tasks. On Mondays, of course, the washing kept her all day at the tub, and on Fridays at the mangle, on Saturdays there was the baking of the bread, while Thursday, being market day, she was supposed to keep house while Aunt Senath went in to Bugletown—a task that slut of a woman was too fond of for its chances of gossip to send her niece in her stead. ”

“ 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." ”

“ Loveday ran down the path to the Vicarage gate so fast that the tears she had not been able to restrain blew off her cheeks as she went. Thus it came about that she did not see Miss Letitia until she had all but knocked her down in the urgency of her flight. ”

“ Loveday was without either of these two rights to existence. Her mother had been a respectable girl till her fall, and, as far as anyone was aware, since, for she had died of the fruit of her guilty connection, and though her portion was doubtless hell-fire, there is nothing to show that one cannot keep respectable even under such disquieting circumstances. The elder Loveday had clung obstinately to her self-respect under circumstances which her neighbours had tried to render nearly as trying on earth. ”

“ IN WHICH THE ONION-SELLER'S DAUGHTER FEELS HERSELF A GODDESS
Chapter IV IN WHICH THE ONION-SELLER'S DAUGHTER FEELS HERSELF A GODDESS
Loveday bore home the milk in a maze of bliss, and staying not for her supper, for no hunger of the body was upon her, turned and went out again into the glow of the evening. Had she been as full of sensibility as a young lady she would have wandered straight away from Upper Farm, forgotten the milk, and not thought of it again, till, returning with the upgetting of the moon, her aunt had met her with vulgar reproaches. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Neither, though to their robust health it would have seemed so, would it have been all the truth, for Primrose was taking her condition more hardly than most girls who have had the good fortune to wed with a prosperous young farmer, and the thought that she would not be able to dance in the procession with the rest of the world at the Flora had for some time past embittered her. To enter the house, after her anger with Loveday and the flash of fear that the strange half-foreign girl had filled her with, only to find that the great Miss Le Pettit had offered that very girl to dance with her ... ”

“ 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? ”