Orange Lily: Chapter XIII

“March was it, but a fortaste of the June

The earth had, and the budding linden-grove

About the homestead with the brown bird’s tune

Was happy, and the faint blue sky above

The blackthorn blossoms made meet roof for love.”—W. Morris.

“Soon as the gray-eyed morning streaks the skies,

And in the doubtful day the woodcock flies,

Her cleanly pail the pretty housewife bears,

And when the plains with ev’ning dews are spread,

The milky burthen smokes upon her head.”—Gay.

All through the summer, autumn, and winter months after that Twelfth of July matters went on between the inmates of the Keags’ and Gilhorns’ farms, and with Tom Coulter, much as they had gone upon that unlucky day.

“Except worse,” said James Keag’s young daughter to herself. “Just the same, but worse!”

Then she, poor child!—for though seventeen now, that is over-young for trouble—would sigh and work the harder at her milking or churning or baking, for thinking did her no good; it only puzzled her honest little brain. Thoroughly obedient and simple as was her nature, she tried duly to please her father and step-mother by subduing ill-will to young Daniel Gilhorn. who began to pay her more and more attention during his regular visits to the country—tried, too, to please poor Tom, and thereby herself, in what small ways she could.

Slowly she had come to feel, rather than know, that she could no longer behave towards Tom, her father’s servant, as she had towards her former little playmate. Quietly she acted thereupon—so quietly that even her parents saw no change in her manner, except the becoming reserve natural to her years. But what she and Tom silently felt at this slow sundering was another matter; and would have considerably astonished the elder good couple.

“But they don’t mind how much we were together once: they’ve clean forgotten,” thought poor Lily, fairly wondering at times that they never guessed what this anticipated obedience to their yet unaroused wishes cost her.

She did not avoid Tom’s company: that was more than she had strength to do. She only avoided yielding to her own wishes to be more with him than was simply necessary—strove to make no occasions for so being; and a strong, continuous, daily temptation she had to struggle against. On the other hand, when the natural events of farm life did bring them together, her secret joy was all the more intense—was shared even more deeply by Tom. She guessed that, indeed; just from a mere look, at times a simple word, that all the rest of the world might, and mostly did, hear and see without noting—all saving herself! And Tom appeared curiously to understand and second her conduct. In silence (for no actual words of explanation crossed their lips) they seemed to agree that thus they must act; as silently resolved that outward necessity should make no difference to their inner feelings.

For their years, such self-control might have seemed to hotter natures impossible. But to them, steadfast, almost stolid, Northerners that they were, it was less difficult than may be imagined. Many a girl round the country had carried on a love affair, not like Lily repressed one, under the very eyes of her unseeing parents. It was but too common. And they were facilitated by a certain amount of free-and-easiness allowed them in behavior, which made a fair-sized cloak for phlegmatic courtship.

Tom indeed bore the oppression caused by this concealment of their feelings far less patiently than the girl. He was moody at his work, and seemed best pleased when alone for hours with his plough and horses; at last, Lily grew aware with secret pain that he frequently avoided her company. She did not know it was to spare himself the necessity of a studied behavior that, to his honest nature, seemed at times unendurable. She had never heard that

“Women can with pleasure feign,

Men dissemble still with pain—”

what cynical truth therein lies being, perhaps, in its root-origin far more unflattering to men than to women. For are not concealment and subterfuge among all animals, human or otherwise, the resource of the weak oppressed by the strong, and their sad inheritance through generations? God speed the coming of that good time when there shall be no more fear, no more pain of concealment; when all timid, tender natures, often miscalled cunning, shall lose both that semblance and evil reality, and dare to show themselves true in his light—brighter than earthly sun!

And always Lily tried to cheer herself, thinking—“When the new year comes—when next year comes—there must be some change.” But the new year came, and slipped on; and no change at all came with it, but the lengthening of daylight.

At last, one spring Sunday in church, as she worshipped in her father’s pew, and when Tom Coulter had by chance got a seat, with other pewless young men like himself, near her, she grew aware of his eyes seeking her during the lesson. As their glances met, his sought his book again with hasty significance. In some confusion the girl, whose thoughts had been wandering, did likewise, believing that Tom had somehow detected her neglect and was reproaching her, his own attention during service being steadfast. Then, for the first time, she became aware of what words were being uttered by the clergyman. It was the beautiful old love-tale of Genesis; how, ages ago, Jacob served Laban fourteen years, holding them as nothing for the love he bore Rachel, his master’s daughter.

At that, Lily bent her eyes downward, and never dared to raise them again during the whole of the service; quiet as she usually was, she became even stiller. But she prayed that day with a sudden frightened fervor, a desperate humility very unusual to her sober soul, feeling her heart strangely stirred, and its excitement thus overflowing.

One day in the following week there was some talk up at the farm about a wedding to be held on the morrow in the village of Blackabbey, about a mile away. The Keags were all bidden to it; but James Keag said, with a smile, that “verily, he had something else to do.” And the mistress declared that she also was “too throng” with work to gad about to weddings, her youngest-born being ailing. Otherwise, no one would have gone more readily.

That evening, as Lily was feeding the calves, Tom Coulter, coming out from the byre close by, stopped a moment; and looking at her, and then away at the sweet pale spring sky, remarked quietly—“So you’re going to this wedding the morn’?”

“Yes,” said Lily very softly; she did not know why. Then aloud she reproached the calves who had started at Tom’s approach, lifting their dripping, soft muzzles out of the milk-pail, to transfix him with a great dark-eyed stare. “Sukey, Sukey, … surely you needn’t be scared at Tom.”

“Would you—be afraid of coming back your lone?” asked Tom, in a voice still more curiously subdued.

“A—wee thing. At least—that is—I’m glad of company—sometimes,” murmured Lily, stroking the youngest calf’s red head; then, womanlike, found voice to add, “Why—?”

“There’s a till-iron” (crowbar) “there needs sharpening. I’ll maybe be taking it to the smiddy about the time you’d be coming back,” he answered very low; not as if afraid of being overheard, but rather as if awed and quieted by his own words.

As he spoke, his eyes had been fixed upon the half-cut winter-worn ricks behind them, brightened by the dying sunbeams. Now they came back, to rest a moment on her smooth auburn hair and meek young face, down-bent. Other folk, accustomed to more beauty than is mostly found in that mixed northern race, might hardly have called Lily Keag handsome. But in the eyes of that simple and steadfast-hearted young ploughman she was—from her neat head to the hem of her winsey gown—more bonny and sonsy and douce than any other lass he knew—or ever cared to know.

As he looked, there came a wild, twittering rush of brown sparrows, whirring out from the ricks and down from the eaves in a winged cloud past their heads. The old tortoise-shell cat was peering out of the hole in the hayrick, wherein she had deposited her kittens, with a stealthy air of half gravity, half contempt.

Tom turned away without another word, and left Lily still holding the pail for the calves, that still dallied playfully with their milk. Whish! whirr! … back rushed the sparrows with more noise, as if they had all been startled by a false alarm, or had only been indulging in frolics before roosting time.

The whole farmyard scene around those two would have made a pretty enough picture; but only the cat was there to see it.

Order the new paperback edition of Orange Lily which includes an introduction, footnotes and a glossary of words by Dr Philip Robinson. The book also includes the short stories The Witch of Windy Hill and An Old Maid’s Marriage.