Orange Lily: Chapter XV

“All my life long

I have beheld with most respect the man

Who knew himself and knew the ways before him,

And from amongst them chose considerately,

With a clear foresight, not a blindfold courage,

And, having chosen, with a steadfast mind

Pursued his purposes.”

Sir H. Taylor.

“Now banish’d from sweet Erin’s shore,

O’er trackless seas forlorn I go,

In distant climates to deplore

My Ulican dubh, oh!

“Our flame from every eye to hide

With anxious care we strove,

For stately was her father’s pride,

And I had nought but love.

Oh! woe is me, in evil hour

That secret love he came to know,

And I must fly to shun his power,

My Ulican dubh, oh!”

From the Irish—Miss Balfour.

Next day, down at the sea-shore, a cart and horse from every farm round the country was to be seen on the wet, gray sands. There had been a spring tide over night, and a strong gale, so that the surf line was all heaped with wrack, which the young men were busied collecting to cart inland for manure.

Among the rest worked Tom Coulter—hardest of all. The smell of the fresh seaweed, the salt breeze that blew strongly in his face, the sight of the heavy green waves rolling in, still tossed and troubled, were all welcome to him and invigorating.

During the past night he had slept little; but thought much and long. A crisis, he knew, had come in his life, and he must act like a true man. After all, the lad was young, but gallantly tried his best to think over the matter wisely and rightly; and now by morning light he knew his resolve, which, if not altogether pleasant, he yet meant to stick to because right, and felt all the better man therefore. No more easy-going days; farm work that was a pleasure; habits, scenes, and companionship dear since childhood. He would go out into the wilderness and strive to earn bread for two by the sweat of his brow, relying only on his own courage and perseverance, and must wait with long patience. He must rise in the world—ay! higher than the best of his fellows here on the shore. He could do it. He would do it!

And he pitch-forked the wrack into his cart with such vigor, as if to prove to himself what power was in his strong, young arms, that the other men, in passing, called out rough jests to him. “Plainly, James Keag took his work out of him for the wages,” they shouted; not that Tom heeded them a bit.

When Tom returned to the farm, he managed, in the course of his work, to meet his young mistress, likewise busied, and he whispered, shortly—

“I would like a word with you this evening”

She nodded, faintly reddening. All day she had gone about like one in a thrice happy dream, and only now, at his voice, roused up to any sense of reality at all. She had been verily mazed.

“In the byre, then, at milking-time?” Coulter hastily asked.

“No, no! The folk are running in and out so much,” she interposed, with some vexation.

Her foolish little heart was set on spending those few minutes—however few—alone with her lover. But, whilst she would be seated on her creepie-stool, busily milking, Osilla, who was never happy away from her, would be, maybe, leaning on the crib, and the baby toddling in at the open door, and Hans and Henry-Thomas and Mistress Keag coming to and fro.

“I’ll go there a bit later—after supper-time,” she offered, in a bashful, pretty murmur.

Tom’s brow wrinkled deeply with care.

“As you will, then,” he reluctantly answered; “but I have a call” (a right) to be there at milking-time, and none later.”

Duty was strong in him—so strong that her love felt jealous for pre-eminence.

And, all that day, Lily was even more tender with the children than ever before, and more helpful to her step-mother; she seemed to have opened her heart in love to the whole world in utter abandonment of self-seeking. Nothing was too disagreeable to her, no work too much, so that she could spare any one; she loved them all so much. Bonny and pleasant though she always was, that day she seemed a very house-angel; although now and again she would stand a second still—lost in a dream.

At supper-time the farmer was grave and preoccupied, and seemed hardly to notice how his gentle daughter at times did or said some little, foolish, loving thing to the children, with a happy face. But Mistress Keag cried out once or twice—

“Lassie dear! what has come over you? It’s heartsome to see you.” And the buxom, comfort-liking woman smiled on her, well pleased.

An hour later, when the March twilight had come softly over the land, when the cattle were housed, and the noises few, and rest had begun to brood over the farm and its buildings, two figures stood together in the darkening byre close by the farmhouse.

Outside the air was keen enough, but in here the three red cows were roofed snug and warm. Tom was saying, as in haste—

“I daren’t keep you long, my own lass, for this very night I must make shift to speak with your father.”

“What for, Tom—Tom, what for?”

“To notice him I must quit work here—the first day he can spare me.”

“Quit?” the girl gasped, then remained dumbfounded, whilst Tom mistook her silence for sorrowful acquiescence, and went on more softly, betraying his own regret—

“Ay! ay! Well, labor is slack next week, and I know of a boy would suit him. I’d have gone many’s the day ago,” he added, with a half-sigh, “but I saw how he was thronged with work, and the wee boys too young to help him; and I feared none would do, in my place, all should be done. For the work is heavy, dear, and things thriving ill lately, and he’s not as strong as he was; so I hadn’t the heart to go—sooner.”

“And must you go now?” she murmured, knowing well it was true that Tom had stayed at low wages, for her sake, and wrought like two men for her father.

“Would you have me stay on as his hired servant, and be courting his daughter unknownst to him? Would you be honest dealing?” returned Tom, his voice truly very hoarse, but the sterner that he knew all the determination for both must come from himself. “Lill, Lill, don’t” (for, putting up her hands, the girl had silently hid her face in her white apron). “Don’t hinder me from doing right!”

Poor Lily! All that day she had been so foolishly, indescribably happy; but now!—Tom himself had awakened her by those few honest words to remember their true relations to each other. Yet, O!—she had loved him since childhood almost without knowing it; so slowly had grown to know it that the knowledge had never startled her. He had been as one of themselves, “only far cleverer—all granted that;” that had balanced his inferior position whenever, on this matter, she had put herself through that most difficult process—thinking. And, even then, any vision of marriage was so far away! And always between came dreams that Tom’s cleverness would make him rise, somehow, some time; she knew not how, but most surely; she thought not when, for she was very patient. And if even he were never as well-to-do as her father, she could yet manage. Although her father was but
a very small farmer, at best, still that had never troubled his contented daughter. But now!—Tom himself made her feel that the man of her choice was, in the eyes of their little world, only her father’s farm-servant. She was good and patient, but the sudden revulsion of feeling from foolish love-happiness to mortification brought the tears to her innocent gray eyes.

Neither had spoken since a wee while. The sweet breath of the milch kine was pleasant about them; the silence of the dusky byre was complete, save for the sound of the patient beasts chewing the cud as they lay, or the rattle of a chain, as a cow would turn her head to stare wonderingly at the human beings whose souls so troubled them.

Tom did not see the girl’s tears, for he dared not trust himself to look at her face just then. With downbent head, and almost a dogged air, he was nerving himself to tell her all his plan—and have their trial over; for he himself found it worse to bear than he had thought.

“I’ll engage to work up at the Castle for Captain Alexander for a bit; so I’ll still see you on Sundays,” he went on, assuming a brave air, and trying to cheer her.

See him on Sundays!—when it had been every day! The young girl winced, but suppressing all sign of pain, from a modest shame that rose in her heart against showing a greater wish for his company than he for hers, she only murmured in echo—

“For a bit—! Why, where else would you go? Is there a better place anywhere around here?”

“Here!—no. But I can’t stay here! How could I rise—has a prophet, even, honor in his own country? No, no! Go I must, if ever I am to come back fit to claim you,” burst out poor Tom passionately; tenderness for her, vain, wild regrets that fortune had dealt so hardly with him, honest young ambition, and above all hot love, all stirring so strongly within him that he felt well-nigh beside himself. But Lily could no longer restrain her anguish at the thought of verily losing him outright. It seemed as if she could far better have endured his being as poor as now always—but near her. It was all too much. She covered her face with her apron again, while low bitter sobs shook her whole body. Tom’s heart was wrung. He caressed her, reasoned, pleaded, tried to comfort her; and so a few—a very few—moments passed.

Then the door beside them suddenly opened, and James Keag stood on the threshold, peering into the partial shadow of the byre, that was now but dimly lighted in the gloaming. Both started asunder; how they knew not. There was a silence so still it seemed loud.

The farmer spoke hoarsely then, in the voice both knew betokened that the slow-tempered, quiet man was roused to unusual anger.

“What brings the two of you here?”

No answer.

James Keag swore a big oath now.

“—! What call have either of ye here at this hour?”

Still both were dumb; only Tom groaned in heart—“What call indeed?’’ Had he not foretold that question?

“Did I see ye with your arms about her?” demanded the farmer again, leaning forward, with a dangerous quiet, but his eyes blazing in his gray, weather-beaten face on them both.

“You did,” said Tom, brave, but still more intensely quiet; and he stepped up beside the girl as he said it.

She gave a little moan, no louder than the cry of a field-mouse in terror, and, leaning against the end of a cow-stall, stole out her hand to rest on Tom’s arm, in mute appeal, as it were, praying—

“Help me—tell him.”

At that beseeching (it seemed almost caressing) gesture, the father’s wrath and disgust burst the dam of self-restraint. Did she demean herself by touching his serving boy before his very face, he vociferated with white, trembling lips, his love for and pride in his first-born, his Orange Lily, his heart’s core, that were far deeper than any had ever guessed at, working in him to such wrath that she shrank back horrified.

Then he dared Tom to stand within a yard of her, to ever approach her again; but the latter never stirred. The lad’s quietness had a stilling effect upon old James Keag for a moment, yet he stuttered as he went on—

“Beggar! viper! that we hatched unbeknownst to us! There was one told me this day that ye daured look up to my daughter, but I would not believe it of ye.”

“It’s true enough,” said poor Tom.

In those few words he said all. They were so full-fraught with love, manly self-respect, steadfastness, but sadness—since cause of reproach might justly be found against him—that other ears would have recognized therein the whole pathetic tale. But even the lad’s noble bearing, as he stood upright, with arms folded, as if to receive his sentence, only his head a little bent, his features lightly working despite himself—all in the unwittingly grand attitude of the peasant lad that must have appealed to all fair men—seemed to James Keag but impudence, and worse—insolence—defiance!

For one moment he was staggered at the bold avowal; then from his very soul he cursed the lad for taking advantage of being brought near her as their farm-servant, to ensnare the girl’s affections. (No need to ask whether he had succeeded. One glance at the weeping, cowering, childish figure told that.)

“That is what I did not wish to do,” most solemnly declared young Coulter, his eyes glowing with earnestness as he spoke. “It was but yesterday we said the word, and that, God knows, by chance; and I intended going this very evening to tell you I must quit.”

“It’s a lie!” shouted the farmer in his face.

“Oh! father,” shrieked Lily, throwing herself between them, “it’s true—he told me so.”

Her father turned and struck her.

· · · · · · · · · ·

That night, very late, Tom Coulter walked into his father’s cottage.

“Where have ye been, my son?” asked the old man, dully rousing from sleep to greet his handsome boy, the one human being whom the poor, listless, lazy, but loving-hearted body apparently cared to keep still alive for, or who could keep him from the whiskey bottle.

“I’ve been out along the bogs, father, thinking.”

A silence next. The father guessed something ailed his strong son, but, knowing his reserve, from apathy and a shrinking from ill news forbore to question him. The son could not speak it yet.

By and by, however, he sat down on the other’s bedside slowly, as in his boyish days he had often done, when needing some of the paternal sympathy—which was all, indeed, he could reckon on—and using the old familiar term to a father he had long dropped, said—

“Da, we must flit the country—we must go to America. Dinna ask me why.”

“Ochone-och! Must we so, my son?” sighed the old man, whose faculties of mind, always dull, seemed more obscured than usual by sleep, and perhaps some surreptitiously-obtained drink. Then—after some minutes, without surprise, but with dreamy patience, as if having well foreknown that his stirring son would not bide at home content, and that now some scrape, doubtless, had put him in fear of the law—he added—“Well, if we must—we must.”

And thus they agreed upon 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.