Orange Lily: Chapter XVIII

“When seven lang years had come and fled,

When grief was calm, and hope was dead,

When scarce was remembered Kilmeny’s name,

Late, late in a gloamin’ Kilmeny cam’ hame.

And O, her beauty was fair to see,

But still and steadfast was her e’e.

Her seymar was the lily flower,

And her cheek the moss-rose in the shower,

And her voice like the distant melodie

That floats along the twilight sea.

But she loved to rake the lonely glen,

And keepit afar frae the haunts of men.”

Hogg.

When two more years had come and gone, a report was fitfully and carelessly passed from one to another of the Ballyboly folk that old Coulter had died out in America—“him, ye mind, that lived down by the bog” (for Coulters thereabouts were as plenty as snipes in the old man’s marsh in winter weather). News of it had come to his aged sister away in the next parish; and one heard she took it so ill to heart that she had begun to fail, and was not expected to last long.

Some few in Ballyboly regretted him as a decent, quiet creature. “Ay, verily! The best of that lot,” said James Keag once, not knowing that his daughter overheard him. Her heart swelled more bitterly by far than his own, at that. For her part, although she had never allowed herself to despise the dead man, because, as Tom’s father, the loving little soul had tried to see only the best in him, she now secretly sided with those who replied that all his life long he had been but a “helpless body”—a dead-alive weight, that had to be supported by his brave young son.

Some wondered what had become of the latter, whose letter had said he was himself going further into the country; then he, too, after that vague mention, seemed as forgotten as though he had gone down into the grave.

After some more weeks, Lily Keag, carefully listening, but not daring to inquire, heard one say that the old aunt was dead too, and very decently buried. Then she knew that the last means of hearing news of the poor toiler, far away in a strange land, was gone. The friends he had before written to went away to work in England. Mr. Redhead, Tom’s good pastor and patron, had got a better living. If he ever again wrote home, she never knew it; and doubtless any letters were unclaimed. Thenceforth she never knew whether Tom Coulter was alive or dead.

A change came over her whole life at Ballyboly after that. Instead of straining her soul, as it were, to hear some news of him—ever expecting, even hoping one day, only to dread the next, being often thrilled all through her foolish country maid’s heart by such supposed auguries as the flight of three magpies for a wedding, a letter on the candle-snuff, or floating in the shape of a tea-leaf in her cup—she now subsided into an utter calm of mind.

After the inner restlessness, the hidden excitement of watching and waiting for two long years on some chance news, this seemed at first by comparison a rest that was good. Soon it would have turned to stagnation, but for the lesson taught by that previous pain: the grand lesson that some blessed few, like the child Samuel, seem to know from their childhood—that to far more it may be given to learn through excess of this world’s pleasures, but that we of the vast human crowd, alas, are taught (doubtless perforce!) by pain—that happiness for men and women must be sought in Him “with whom there is fulness of joy, and at whose right hand are pleasures forevermore.”

So Lily Keag learnt her lesson; and came to know that of her own free will she would not have received this blessing … and was even glad.

Time passed, and the children at the Keags’ farm grew bigger under Lily’s sisterly eyes; the father perceptibly aged. Little fresh interests sprang up and died away—other broods of chickens, new calves, more crops to watch and reap and house; and the summers waxed and waned. Meanwhile, Lily herself apparently lived heartily, did her quiet work without flagging, ate well enough, slept well enough. That she seldom laughed caused no remark, she had always been so quiet; but the smile that more often lit up her grave, comely face grew always sweeter, till at last some thought it the sweetest they had ever seen on human face.

Big John Gilhorn was one of these; the rest no lovers.

Orange Lily, since she had grown up (even though the gossip about her first fresh youth was never revived), seemed to have had none; for, though she went to most yearly Orange-gathering, fairs, and the few farm merry-makings like her fellows, and took a sober enjoyment therein, and though on summer evenings she might, and at times did, join other maidens and young men strolling down the road, and was singularly well liked by both—yet so it was. Most often she herself never thought about it. But again, at times, when her step-mother would bluntly wonder aloud at the young woman’s continued singleness, with intentional, if inconsiderate, kindness, giving her, unasked, the consoling assurance “that ’deed, perhaps, she was far better not to be caring about marriage like other girls”—in the next breath fervently hoping that Osilla would not take after her—at such times smiling doubtfully, Lill did feel something vexed that it was true, and that none seemed to desire her. Whiles she would, being an ordinary woman with some vanity in her still, say to herself with a half sigh, half smile that “maybe it was because she had just no heart that way;” then would go about her work again.

Little by little, Lily came in the succeeding years to be most highly thought of among the neighbors around. The parents praised her as the most hard-working daughter and God-fearing young woman they knew. The girls all liked her because she was so “quiet” (word of praise!); and because she sought no man’s admiration. None envied her.

The younger men looked likingly on her from a little distance, but came no nearer; kept off by that very quietness and goodness which awed most, they knew not wherefore, with the sense of one superior to themselves—purified, they knew not by what—looking higher than themselves, although living like themselves amidst ploughed fields, and busied with like cares of seed-time and harvest, of cattle-rearing and farm rent. Some few approached indeed; but silently felt she was not for such as they, and passed away to other flames, unsinged and even more friendly. With the quieter and older ones she was best understood, and talked more freely, for there was hardly an unmarried man of middle age in the countryside. But, naturally enough, her heart could not be altogether satisfied with their and their wives’ friendly almost reverent admiration, and yet—“Her heart was not in it; that was all!”

So the time slipped on, and she was fairly happy, like old folks in autumn; yet knew herself to be living but a half life—a dream-life, in which no wound hurt her deeply, and no joy gladdened her all through her soul.

Nevertheless, there was still mirth enough up at the farm, as of old; for the youngest children were still little, troublesome, and happy. James Keag, despite gathering wrinkles, could put away care for his crops and crack his quiet joke. The good wife was not a hair grayer, nor a day older, as she often lustily declared with laughter; and Osilla, who was now a lanky, dark young creature, with a child’s face and a woman’s figure, bid fair to be as merry and careless as her mother. The neighbors visited them readily; but most regularly of all, though at long enough intervals, came Big John Gilhorn. What he liked was to smoke quietly with the farmer; and what Mistress Keag liked was to retail him all her gossip meanwhile. And a quarter of an hour after some “quare joke,” to which he had silently listened, the big man would astonish everybody by bursting into a great quiet laugh; having only then come to understand its merits. He let the children romp with him as they willed, being especially fond of Osilla, whom he called his own wee girl. But the eldest sister he only watched in silence year by year, as she moved about gently; apparently evermore busied in tidying up matters in the rather disorderly farmhouse.

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.