Orange Lily: Chapter XIV

Author: May Crommelin

Date: 1879

Source: Orange Lily

Comments: A novel set in Carrowdore, County Down, in the 1860s

“I told my nymph, I told her true,

My fields were small, my flocks were few;

While faltering accents spoke my fear,

That Flavia might not prove sincere.

“Of crops destroyed by vernal cold,

And vagrant sheep that left my fold;

Of these she heard, yet bore to hear;

And is not Flavia then sincere?

“How chang’d by fortune’s fickle wind,

The friends I lov’d became unkind,

She heard, and shed a generous tear;

And Is not Flavia then sincere?

“Go shear your flocks, ye jovial swains,

Go reap the plenty of your plains;

Despoil’d of all which you revere,

I know my Flavia’s love’s sincere.”

Shenstone.

In the following afternoon Orange Lily was sedately tripping homewards after the wedding. She was rather early, she thought, for—meeting any one; so took her time, and gazed about her with enjoyment.

It was late March, and the road was white with dust before her, to her gladness; thinking, like a sensible daughter, of her father’s crops, and the farmer’s proverb that “A bushel of March dust is worth a bushel of gold.” Behind her the noise from the distant village had almost died away. Overhead the sky was brightly blue, swept clean of clouds by late roaring gales, and the sun was smiting in a broad white flash on the land locked salt waters of a lough running up among the low round hills by the south there, while away eastward she caught glimpses through the hedges of the true sea itself, a sapphire edging to the emerald isle.

The gorse hedges around were a golden blaze of yellow blossom, cleanly and sweetly smelling. And Lill felt glad, she did not know why, at sight of the bonny flowers set on their dark-green prickles; the gray slate-cuttings on either side the road; the very gray-green fields, with tufted herbage, where yet the hew grass had not sprung; the brown plough-lands; the low hills roundly rising, one after another, away to the dim blue peaks of the Morne mountains, and Slieve Donard—all broadly lying under that laughing spring sun.

“If Tom was here, but—he would liken it to something for me; and put, what I’m only thinking, into words. He has such beautiful language,” the farm-maiden thought, and a tender smile came slowly over her face, making it almost lovely, like the bare land around her, under the influence of the sun-light.

The road ahead took a sharp turn, and round that corner she heard footsteps coming. A sweet blush quickly joined the glad smile on Lily’s face, her eyes brightened lovingly, but still she tried to preserve perfect composure; and next moment met face to face—only Daniel Gilhorn!

“O—my! Is it you?” she ejaculated, giving a little jump back at sight of him; then, collecting herself, she more slowly added, “I never expected to see you here in the middle of a week, too.”

“He! he!—a pleasant little surprise,” said Dan. and smiled at her with his head on one side, fascinatingly. “Well, indeed, the fact of the matter is that me and the heads of our place yonder” (and he inclined his head in contrary direction, as indicating the shop he was employed in, in a certain street of Belfast), “we couldn’t agree. So, as I reelly wouldn’t put up with them any longer, I just gave them a day’s notice and left.”

“Humph! Maybe you got ‘the turn-out!’ ” thought Lily, with sober doubt, but only said—“And so you came this way by accident. You were, maybe, bound for the wedding?”

“Not I. I was up a bit ago to call upon ye-ou,” replied her admirer, with a smile that was insinuating like a wriggle. “And I heard you’d be on the road; so I’m come to escort you, miss … if my company is not disagreeable.”

What could poor Lily do? With an inward groan she looked down the straight road for nearly a mile before them. Not a living speck was to be seen on it—no Tom. She was obliged to accept the inevitable.

“And what has become of the weddingers—of the bride and groom?” asked her companion softly, twisting his long neck to fix a gaze of weak-eyed admiration upon her.

“They are gone with their friends on a drive round the country; themselves in an inside car, and two jaunting-cars full, besides. All very nicely done,” said Lily, pursing up her lips, as she uttered her verdict of commendation, with quite an old-fashioned air.

“Happy pair!” sighed Danny, in yet more dulcet tones, passing his arm round her waist.

“Och, be off!” retorted Lily, vigorously repulsing him.

He had attempted such endearments before this day; and, like an unsentimental country girl that she was—where her own heart was not concerned—Lill had snubbed him soundly just as often. But now an unpleasant thought struck her from the fatuous expression of his face. He must have passed through the village after his visit to the farm. “And he’s been at the drink,” she thought. He had not taken much; but “some” he had had.

“You’re always so prim and stand-off in your manners,” answered Gilhorn, rather crossly. “All the country says it of you.”

Which was true enough: but the greater propriety of our poor Orange Lily’s behavior, over that of other country lassies, served her but little this day. Whilst they walked on for a mile or two all her wits were busied with trying to keep as much distance as possible betwixt herself and her companion, without attracting his suspicions. She talked, with incessant and demure nervousness, on the most unsentimental subjects; the crops and the weather; what a good price her father had got for his last pigs; and how the baby at home had taken the measles.

In vain! Again and again she was obliged to avoid or downrightly repulse Gilhorn’s advances, as before; which only drew on the weak youth into greater eagerness, and tickled his peculiar sense of humor so much that between his jests and continued efforts at teasing, as he regarded them, he found his walk quite delightful—and her timidity emboldened him. Poor Lily’s real refinement of mind made her exaggerate moment after moment fears which bolder-minded girls would never have entertained. So that between fretting as to what neighbors would say were they seen walking together, and naturally supposed to be courting, and visions of Tom’s feelings thereupon—together with growing dislike to Gilhorn himself—she worked herself into such a state that at last she felt ready to burst out crying.

“So I’m off to Glasgow next week for a situation,” said Dan, ending a fresh recital of his wrongs, and again drawing near her.

Lill gave one miserable glance up the road, for not one soul was to be seen on it; and yet he had said he would meet her—! On one side their highway skirted a belt of Scotch fir-trees, with an undergrowth of gorse, through which could be perceived the surrounding rocks and scree of a long disused slate quarry. On the other lay the open country, with its neat mapping of fields and scrubby hedges, and never a house near, save the smithy far down a lane which neared this one at right-angles. That lane had been the goal of her hope; but she could see no sign of Tom, or other living being, behind its banks topped with whin-bushes. “I’ll be soon far from you, across the watter,” sighed the young shop-assistant, his mincing town accent sounding odiously in Lily’s ears.

Dan succeeded in gazing into her face with spirituous tenderness as he spoke, and noticed its nervous expression, and that her large gray eyes were swimming with frightened tears. With an offensive laugh of delight, believing she was crying at losing him, he rudely caught her again, and, despite struggles and outcries, she felt his lips touch her face with horrified disgust. At that she gave a loud scream of indignation. A shout answered it from the lane. Then, leaping the intervening bank, Tom Coulter himself, stalwart and active, made but a few bounds across the angle of field between, and jumped into the highroad beside them—flinging, as he did so, a crowbar, that he carried on his shoulder, into the ditch, with an impulse that was a strong contrast with Danny’s corresponding first instinct, for, to avoid Tom’s upraised arm, he sprang behind the girl.

“Coward!” uttered young Coulter between his teeth.

Next instant, however, he was faced by Gilhorn, who dodged successfully one sledge-hammer blow, then attacked him in turn. While the lads fought, Lily stood by, giving fresh little screams at each blow that seemed likely to hurt Tom; but very soon perceiving he could not only protect himself, but was giving his rival a terrible punishment, she calmed in a wonderful degree, yet still fluttered round them, crying, with pitiful entreaties—

“Quit now, Tom dear—ah! quit; don’t hurt him more, he’s had enough.”

“Go, then,” said Tom, releasing his victim with a parting kick, “and thank the girl you thought no shame to insult for being let off with a whole bone in your body.”

So, recovering his breath with difficulty, slowly picking up his hat, and glaring at them both with dazed eyes the curses he feared to utter, down the road Danny crept.

“What did he to ye?” asked Tom, turning to the young girl, and still heaving with excitement and passion.

She told him.

“Ill-mannered brute!” was Tom’s only comment.

Then he turned on his heel, and in a methodical manner began to pick up his crowbar and search for a bag of nails he had dropped somewhere in the lane. Slowly he came back, and found Lily sitting on the bank and still gazing disconsolately down the road at her late persecutor’s retreating figure, which had now dwindled to a speck.

“Do you think he’ll go to my father and tell on us?” she asked in a timorous voice, dreading that somehow the same view might not be taken by her parents of her defender’s conduct as by herself.

“Let him,” answered Tom, with a face still sullen with unvented anger; then added, more kindly, “Will ye come home now by the road, or the pad through the fields?”

“Och, through the fields—we’ll meet no one,” murmured the poor Orange Lily, as ashamed of encountering any neighbor then, as if all could see on her cheeks what had occurred.

“It is more lonesome, certainly; but ye’ve no need to be feared with me, said Tom, with a sarcastic touch in his voice; then again, “I was wondering a bit ago whether you and he would not take to it, and enjoy yourselves more than in the road.”

“You saw us then; though I looked and looked and never could see you. When did you—? Oh! Tom, why did you not come sooner?”

“I saw you both a good while ago. Why should I have joined you sooner? For aught I knew, I might have been disturbing good company.”

The young girl looked up quickly. She saw his face still dark, while his voice had the offended but truly virtuous “there’s-nothing-to-forgive” ring, with which angry folk often aggravate those who love them. What had made Tom so hard and unlike himself? She did not know, and her eyes again silently filled.

They were going through the little wood now, amongst bluish slate-rock and brushwood and reddish-stemmed, dark-topped Scotch firs; and descending a hollow, came into a little opening towards the cultivated country. On either hand beside them rose a bed of rock, all ablaze with such a golden glory of gorse as one great man once dropped on his knees to thank God for giving him to see; and in and out of this whirred the wee brown birds and linties, and droned the early bumblebees. Behind and above them, on either side, was the wood, itself a pleasure in that mostly treeless country, and away in front sloped meadow and plough-land down to the broad band of sea, that “blue end of the world,” dotted this day with many a sail of lately wind-bound vessels. It was a bonny nook.

Orange Lily’s steps lingered as they entered it; soon she stood still.

“Are you not a wee bit tired with carrying that heavy till-iron, Tom?” she hesitatingly asked, glancing at the crowbar on his shoulder.

Tom looked sharply round with an inquiring glance in his dark eyes; then, despite himself, smiled.

“You’re tired yourself, and won’t own to it. Well—rest awhile,’’ said he; and, merely dropping one end of his burden on the ground, he leant against the rock. As to his master’s young daughter, she did as he bade her with a dutiful air, and, finding a resting-place close beside him, let her hands drop in her lap as if weary, and her eyelids droop patiently over her sweet meek eyes. It could not surely be real fatigue that ailed her, that was ridiculous; nor yet nervousness, even considering the scene she had lately gone through, for she would not allow herself to think she had such poor nerves as a fine lady. Still she did feel secretly weak, and, as her step-mother would have said, “all-in-a-tremmle,” and was ashamed of her emotion.

But she had been so “put about,” she thought, in self-excuse; and so sorely troubled to guess what ailed Tom. That was worst!

Once or twice she strove to command her voice and ask him what was amiss; but could not speak. So they remained there silently in the sunlight. At last, good child that she was, Lill looked softly up at him and asked, with a gentleness that made the words creep softly into his heart—

“Tom, what is wrong with ye? Are you angry still about Daniel Gilhorn?”

He started, touched to emotion at her tone. The brooding look in his face changed swiftly to one of visible passion, to love and anger mingled, that shook his voice unrestrainedly, too, as he answered—

“He kissed ye; and I never even offered [attempted] to do it!”

The answer came low, but clear—

Well, Tom—and why didn’t ye?”

Tom looked at her, so staggered, he could not believe his astonished ears.

“Eh!—what?” he uttered, after a moment or two; then burst into a mighty roar of laughter, which, simply as she had taken the matter, made her shamefaced. Then putting his arm about her, for the first time since they had stood as boy and girl under the beanstacks together and sworn to be sweethearts one winter night, Tom took her at her word; although, now that she saw how much greater store he set by the matter than she had (who remembered their childish endearments), the Orange Lily would have drawn back.

A little time later, they were no longer glooming apart, but sitting side by side, and now and then smiling at each other. Any passer-by might have thought them a most soberly-behaved and silent young couple resting there in the sunshine; while in truth they felt giddy with foolish happiness, and did not speak because their bliss was so exquisite they dared not—also because they had known each other so long and so well. After a while Tom gently broke the stillness, in a voice so low and fond that, well as she had thought she knew him, the girl looked up surprised—feeling as if she never had known him.

“Did ye not guess, Lill, why I was so backward this good time past in speaking the word?”

Her lips framed a modest “No,” bravely uttered.

“How could I name such a thing to you?” the lad asked, with deep feeling,” when I had no right so much as to think you would even look at the like of me—and no more have I now.”

Orange Lily’s eyes widened, her lips parted; her whole round, comely face seemed to unclose itself, as it were, from its usual expression of modest reticence to one of open wonder. It was as if a heretofore folded flower had opened its petals wide and displayed its heart.

“But, oh!” she said, “I always looked to marrying you, Tom, and no one else. You surely knew I never thought of any other man!”

“I won’t deny but I did think—something—of that sort, hesitatingly replied Tom; for, with true refinement and delicacy of feeling, he was loth to admit that he had known well her attachment to himself, the while he had struggled to keep aloof from her, and had never fairly asked it. “But there was so much to sunder us—and is still,’’ he ended, with a sigh.

“What is there?” asked Lily simply. “Did we not agree, when we were wee things, that you were to work, and I was to wait for you?”

Again Tom looked round at her in pure surprise. So that one idea had so sunk into and colored all her simple mind that it seemed now the most natural one possible to her, the only thought of future she was capable of entertaining; whilst he—! For days and days, weeks, months back, had he not been on the rack under the pain of alternate plans, doubts, despairs; and yet again hopes that seemed midsummer madness to himself? These had in a perceptible degree sobered him, so that, by common consent, he was granted to be steady now beyond his years, although given to occasional outbreaks of wildness—to himself, when, in desponding moods, he seemed to bear a head grizzled and wrinkled with care already on his young shoulders.

So now, as he still looked at his sweetheart’s placid face, and the gray clear eyes that looked back into his with so comfortable an assurance that all would go with them as they wished—because they wished it!—the contrast so vastly tickled his inner self, that seemed conscious of such a dreary store of worldly wisdom, unknown to her, that he surprised both himself and her, and the birds around, by exploding in a long-sustained fit of laughter.

“Don’t, Tom—I don’t like to be laughed at,” said the young girl, with a new and rather pretty pettishness of tone, as being sure of him.

He put his arm about her again, laying his hand on her shoulder in a kindly, protecting manner, and said, with a sigh, and a touch of superior wisdom, rubbing his wrinkled forehead—

“Och! never mind me, dear. I was but laughing at myself …and by reason of being—just too happy.”

“But what should sunder us now?” she persisted, more fretted by trifles than by greater trials, like many women.

“Let be, dear. No matter! Let us be happy the now,” cried Tom, with a wild impatience of surging, quick-thronging warnings, that were even then trying to force themselves on his blissful mind—with eagerness to taste unalloyed joy, he, too, Tom Coulter, for that one most blessed afternoon.

Had he not foreseen all the obstacles between himself, the farm-servant, and his master’s daughter; and kept long silence, whilst his heart had been hot within him.
And now, at last, chance had tempted him too strongly; love had mastered prudence.

Let be!—for that one day he would be as happy as a king. Afterwards—why both would do the best they could, with God’s blessing, the young ploughman trusted, thinking the same with a sigh, yet with brave humility and reverence. His Orange Lily had, in a manner, stepped down to his lower estate of her own will; otherwise, self-contained as he was, he knew not when, or if ever, his poverty-pride and dread of selfishness would have suffered him to have openly asked her.

So now, for another sunny half hour, they sat there among the gorse and talked. And yet, with the peculiar reticence of their northern race, little, if aught, was ever said about their mutual affection, as, till then, it had been barely mentioned. All that was understood between them.

“Would ye not nearly believe the sun up yonder was smiling down on the pair of us, and the whole country looking happy-like this day? Why, the very sea is laughing—look at the shine and sparkle of it!” said Lily, who felt again all the joy she had taken an hour or more ago in the sweet, faint beauty of the spring day, but in whom joy was now intensified.

“I’m thinking it’s the mind within ye that just makes ye see it rightly the day,” answered Tom, staring dreamily and happily over the land, every rood of which was so dearly familiar to him. “For the earth is always full of joy in the Lord, no doubt; though whiles, like winter-times, we’ll not can rightly take up the notion of that. But, whilst each new spring is being wrought from within her, she seems to sing a new song of praise—‘and the field is joyful, and all that is therein, and all the trees of the wood rejoice.’”

By and by both slowly rose and left with lingering feet that bonny nook, with its wood and whins, and rocks; then passed through the network of small fields before them, homewards. Now they skirted the marsh, and could just see opposite the chimney of Tom’s lonely cottage; soon they would be at the Keags’ farm.

The afternoon was drawing on. Shortly, too shortly, they must separate, and both go about their several duties; or, if they did meet again a moment, must do so in a common work-a-day manner.

Both, as by silent consent, paused, however, at a gate leading to the Keags’ last hill-field, that marched with the Coulters’ meadow—that field down which, as a little child, Lily had so often trotted to talk to Tom across the “gap,” as he herded his father’s cow, or else would help to “shoo” it home.

“Do you mind that Sunday in church, when it was read out about Jacob serving Laban fourteen years for Rachel?” asked Tom suddenly, seeming half ashamed of betraying any feeling that was out of the common.

“I do—well,” replied the girl.

“Don’t forget it,” he impressively ended.

That was all; but, sure enough, she never did forget the earnestness and strength of purpose he put into those few words. Then they separated. The lassie would in her heart have gladly lingered; but Tom’s duties of stabling the horses, feeding all the beasts, and seeing everything to rights before six o’clock, weighed so plainly on his mind that he was ashamed to show a sign of her wish. But they smiled in parting, and the face of each seemed to the other as its sun—and, when they turned their backs on one another to go their separate ways, some portion of light and glory seemed to have faded out of the evening sky.

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.

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