Chapter XII
IN WHICH LOVEDAY DANCES
The Mayor had stepped forward, fearing lest this young person might be annoying the heiress; the bandsmen had turned from the final survey of their instruments to gaze; here and there various people who recognised Loveday were pressing through the crowd, eager to see and hear. Only Miss Le Pettit had drawn back against the protecting arm of the gentleman who was to be her partner. Loveday still stayed, her riband in her hands.
There came comments from the crowd.
"Loveday Strick! She'm mad! This month past she'm been like a crazy thing about the Flora!"
"I thought all the time she must be mad to have imagined Miss Le Pettit meant to dance along wi' she!"
"What's the maid got on? I can't rightly see."
"Old white, but a brave new sash."
At that Loveday raised her head and looked about her. A shrill voice from the crowd answered the last speaker.
"A new sash; Ted'n possible. Us have all been laughing because she couldn' come by one nohow." And Cherry Cotton elbowed her way through the ring of curious folk to where Loveday stood. Suddenly Cherry gave a scream, and pointed an accusing finger at Loveday.
"Ah, a new sash, sure enough.... Ask her where she got 'en. Ask her, I say."
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."
"'Tisn't man as can judge her, 'tis only God Almighty!" cried an old minister, aghast.
"Look at the maid, how she stands.... Her own conscience judges her, I should say!"
"She's no word to excuse herself, simmingly."
"That's because she do know nothing can excuse what she's done...."
And, indeed, Loveday stood without speech. Perhaps in all that buzz of murmuring she heard the voice of her own conscience at last, for she made no effort to defend herself, or, perhaps, even at that hour, she heard nothing but the dread whisper of defeat. She stood before Flora Le Pettit like a wilted rose whose petals hang limply, about to fall, fronting a bloom that spreads its glowing leaves in the full flush of noon. The one girl was triumphant in her beauty and her unassailable position, every flounce out-curved in freshness; the other drooped at brow and hem, her slender neck downbent, her sash-ends pendant as broken tendrils after rain upon her heavily hanging skirts.
All she was heard to murmur, and that very low, was a halting sentence about her white sash: "But you said—you said you'd dance with me if I got my sash ..." or some such words, but only Miss Le Pettit caught all the muttered syllables, and she never spoke of them, save with a petulant reluctance to Mr. Constantine when he questioned her afterwards.
"Girl," said the Mayor sharply, "is it true?'
"Yes," said Loveday.
"True!" cried Cherry, "I know 'tes true. I remember noticing that green mark on the riband when the wreath was laid on the grave. Ah, she'm a wicked piece, she is. She tormented my poor Primrose in life and she's robbed her in death. You aren't safe in your grave from she."
Everyone was speaking against Loveday in rightful indignation by now, and the good wives expressed the opinion that she should be well whipped. Loveday turned suddenly to Miss Le Pettit. There were those there—notably Mr. Constantine, that observant philosopher—who said afterwards she seemed for one instant to be going to break into impassioned speech. She did half hold out her hands. The ends of the white sash, disregarded, fluttered from them as she did so. But Miss Le Pettit, shocked in all her sensibilities by this vulgar scene, turned away.
"Surely," said she, "there has been enough time wasted already. Can we not begin the dance, Mr. Mayor?"
At a sign from the Mayor the band struck up into the tune that was to echo all day through every head and, perhaps, afterwards, through a few kindly hearts.
played the band, and, still whispering together with excitement, the dancers fell into place.
"John the beau was walking home,
When he met with Sally Dover,
He kissed her once, he kissed her twice,
And he kissed her three times over."
It seemed to Loveday that the whole world was dancing. The faces of the crowd, the bobbing ringlets, swelling skirts, the bright eyes and bright instruments, the houses that peered at her with their polished panes, all danced in a mad haze of mingled light and blackness. Sun, moon and stars joined in, heads and feet whirled so madly that none could have said which was upper-most. Creation was a-dancing, and she alone stood to be mocked at in a reeling world. This was the merry measure she had striven to join! She must have been mad indeed!
Turning blindly, she ran through the crowd that gave at her approach, and all day the dancing went on without her. The flutter of her blasphemous sash did not profane the sunlight in the streets of Bugletown, nor pollute with its passing the houses of the good wives. Like a swallow's wing, it had but flashed across the ordered ways and was gone.
Yet Loveday's ambition was, after all, fulfilled that day. 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. Were those realms dark for her, thus violated by her enforced entry of them? Who can say, save those folk of Bugletown who knew that to her first crime she had added a second even greater?
They found her next day in the wood; the wind had risen, and blew against her skirts, so that her feet moved gently as though yet tracing their phantom paces upon the airy floors. Her head, like a snapped lily, lay forwards and a little to one side, so that her pale cheek rested against the taut white satin of the riband from which she hung. The wind blew the languid meshes of her hair softly, kissing her once, kissing her twice, and kissing her three times over.
EPILOGUE