Orange Lily: Chapter XXIII

“Noon—and the north-west sweeps the empty road,

The rain-washed fields from hedge to hedge are bare.

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Shalt thou not wonder that it liveth yet,

The useless hope, the useless craving pain,

That made thy face, that lonely noontide, wet

With more than beating of the chilly rain.”

Morris.

Twelve months had passed away; another year was gone.

It was a soft, spring day in Ballyboly. The skies above were like a great sponge that was trying to blot the parish out of the province of Ulster; already the outlines of the more distant hills and trees were blurred out, and horizon and sea along the coast seemed merged together in one watery, gray island-setting.

Up the high-road, two young women, huddled in shawls, but not much protected thereby against the insinuating rain, were dejectedly picking their way, side by side, through the mud. It was wet overhead; it was wet underfoot. And their eyes were wet too, for both were softly crying, as if since many a day (like the weather) they had got into the way of it, and did not now mean much more than usual thereby!

As they came in sight of a long, cleanly whitewashed farmhouse,—with only a low wall, and a strip of garden two yards wide, along its front, separating it from the road—the elder said,

“There is his house. We must dry our eyes now, Osilla, and make the best of it … Dear child, won’t you—won’t you help me? I would rather cut my hand off than ask him!”

“We are like beggars—the pair of us!” replied the other, with a momentary flaring-up, it seemed, of a passionate emotion that had nearly exhausted itself. “Ask him yourself. You have only got to marry him, if he says—yes. Is that a hard thing?”

The elder sister sighed.

Just then, as the women passed the out-buildings flanking the farmhouse, Big John Gilhorn met them as he came out of his yard gate, and lustily exclaimed,

“Is it yourselves? Bless my heart and soul, James Keag’s two daughters! And where are the two of yez going this soft day?”

The young woman glanced entreatingly at the girl; the girl avoided her elder’s beseeching gray eyes. Then Lily Keag said, with a great effort,

“My father has sent us with a message to you, Mr. Gilhorn.”

“Step inside, step inside,” cried John, hospitably; and taking two strides through his garden, he threw open his house-door and ushered them into the kitchen. Here he made them take off their wet shawls before they spoke, drew chairs up to the fire for them, while he himself only shook his big body like a dog fresh out of the water, and sitting down exactly between both sisters, with his hands on his knees and a broad smile on his face, presently began to steam in patches.

“What a—a nice kitchen you have!” said Orange Lily, making a manifest effort to say something, and gazing dully at the coal-fire, which was an improvement on their own plain hearthstone for peat at home.

“Well,” said John, slapping his knees and looking around with an air of some exultation, “It’s the first time you’ve been in it, Miss Keag; but I hope … but I hope—!”

As this plainly implied a tender declaration, both girls became even more embarrassed; and there was a silence. It was a pleasant kitchen, if dark, compared with that of the Keags’ home; there were geraniums in the little windows and muslin blinds; a well-filled dresser and good chairs betokened carefulness and comfort.

Big John now asked heartily after Mistress Keag.

“Is her foot better yet, of thon scalding?” said he, slapping one knee.

“She’s very lame still, or she would have come herself, murmured Osilla. “Still she put treacle enough on it at the first.”

“Ah! treacle—treacle is the thing for a burn,” returned John, slapping the other knee. “And how is your father?”

“He’s far from well—he’s very ill, or he would have come! It was the red cow done it on him,” again replied Osilla.

“How? Did she toss him?” cried John.

“No,” interposed Lily—“she died last night.”

“Ach! bad scran to her! She could not have done worse! … I never had a good opinion of that beast, now,” slowly observed John, scratching his head as if meditating over the iniquity of the red cow; then, being accustomed to show sympathy, like his neighbors, by dwelling on the sorrows of the afflicted, he added—“Well, well, well! You have had troubles, indeed, this past twelvemonth. One thing after another; ay, ay!”

“Bad weather and bad crops,” said poor Lily; who, like others, also felt consoled in rehearsing her miseries, and hoped likewise to attain her end circuitously hereby, since she could not find courage to speak it openly. “And my poor Osilla, there, ailing since last spring.”

(“There was nothing the matter with me,” muttered the young girl, almost crossly, but her pale cheeks and wistful dark eyes contradicted her.)

“Yes—yes. And worst of all, poor Henry-Thomas being banished, as you may say, to America; just when he was grown to be a man, and able to work for your father,” chimed in Big John, comfortably crossing his legs. A sudden burst of sobbing came from Osilla. “Bless my soul!” John ejaculated, and rapidly uncrossed them, as if they were to blame.

“Don’t take notice on her, please Mr. Gilhorn—she’ll be better soon,” said Lily, soothingly, and wiped her own eyes very quietly. For on the last Twelfth of July their part of the North had been the scene of the worst party riots remembered for years; and Henry-Thomas, who loved the Orange cause not wisely but too well, had taken a hot part therein, having gone up expressly to Belfast to stay a week with a cousin “for the fun!” Being young, and indiscreet, and excited with several days’ fighting and stone-throwing, he and some others “went further nor loyal Orangemen should” as his father euphemistically explained the matter—which was merely the killing by accident of some Roman Catholics who tried to kill them! Some of the lad’s comrades were captured by the police. He himself escaped, but thought it wisest to betake himself quietly to America. In the Keag family such an occurrence could hardly be considered any disgrace; but it was a sad misfortune.

“And now my father so ill the-day!” resumed the Orange Lily, after a pause. “He’s breaking his heart about the cow—! And—and he was in arrears with the rent last November, Mr. Gilhorn.” (The last words seemed spoken quite small and fine, and a thrill of exceeding pain shook them.)

“Ochone—oné! It’s far easier to find the way into debt than the way out,” said John, moralizing, and kindly clacking his tongue with fellow-feeling. At that moment even Osilla thought him stupid, as the two girls looked despairingly at each other. Then the young one cried out,

“Oh! Mr. Gilhorn, don’t you see—he wants to know, will you help him? For tomorrow week is the rent day, and he meant to sell the cow, before then, at Black Abbey Fair … and, if not, we must leave the farm, and—!”

She covered her face with her shawl; her sister had already done so. But Osilla sobbed violently, the elder was still as death.

“Don’t, now—Och! don’t!” exclaimed poor John, in almost ludicrous terror, jumping up and walking round and round the kitchen to relieve his mind, that could never endure women’s tears. “Silla—Miss Keag—sure I’ll do … I’ll do … what I can. But for any sake stop crying.”

After a little, Osilla did again control herself.

“And you will help my father,” she murmured, her sister being still silent.

“I will so!” said John emphatically; then a shamefaced smile stole gradually over his round face, and he added, But … but …but—I like to be sure of my money’s worth.”

A quiver of pain and shame tingled through poor Lill at that. She started, roused up from her dulness, and gazed with piteous earnestness at him.

“Indeed—indeed, Mr. Gilhorn, we can pay you back—surely! Do you think we would let you suffer … I spoke to Miss Alice the other day, who was wanting a maid; and I could pay you myself out of my own wages a wee-thing at a time, in two years at the worst—”

“Hut-tut,” interrupted Big John, in a mild agony, from where he had propped himself, buttress-fashion, against the dresser, wrinkling his forehead, and waving one arm like a windmill sail to express that she did not understand him rightly at all, at all! Then he worked his hands frantically in his pockets, as if searching there for new modes of expression; and, lastly, looked round in much reproach at his old ally, Osilla.

“You understand … Och! now, can’t ye speak a word for me?” he exclaimed. “Sure, now, you’d marry me fast enough if I asked you.”

“I would,” returned the young girl, hotly, her cheeks flushing crimson, and her eyes lighting up. “Lill, can’t you marry him and have done with it? You owe it to him, if we take his money—my father told you so—”

“Naw—did he?” cried John, in a rapture. “Och! Silla, you’re the girl to stand up for me. Miss Keag, listen till her.”

Lill turned her head slowly. She never spoke; but looked at them both with a dull, patient expression, and eyes as if she was hunted. Both somehow turned silent at that look, although hardly thinking there was much wrong with her, being neither close observers nor fine-fibred folk. They only waited, feeling uncomfortable, till at last she said, under her breath, as if to herself,

“Ay! … he told me it was but fair; and that all the rest would suffer if I did not give up my own wishes to yours and theirs. I’ve heard nought else this year past!” then, with a touch of passionate emotion, “And yet to stand up beside you in church, Mr. Gilhorn, with a lie in my mouth—”

“Hut-tut. Easy now; take it easy!” interrupted Big John, with a broad grin of delight he could not suppress, evidently treating her last words as he would the freaks of his young mare when put in harness at first. “No fears! you’ll take kindly to it yet,” and he began patting her on the shoulder, and uttering soothing sounds suggestive of the stable.

Osilla, who had been watching them both anxiously, sprang to her feet at that, as if stung with nettles.

“Mr. Gilhorn,” said she, “I think—I think I’d like to look round your parlor, if you please.”

“Ay—ay—ay!” cried John, and he winked and nodded broadly from behind Orange Lily’s chair in vast approval of the young girl’s tact in leaving them alone. “There’s a very nice bunch of wax-flowers there, that I’m sure you’d like to see.” Left together in the kitchen, however, with Lily, the big man’s courage began to ooze, and before it vanished he had only time to ejaculate, “Ah! now, Miss Keag—you will have me? Ah! now, do … Ah, now!”

Poor Lill put up her hands to her head. It was so dazed and heavy with long thinking and night-vigils, and the way every one talked at her, that she longed—tired soul!—for stillness. Her face was whiter than ever, and her gray eyes pale and wild—then her hands dropped, and looking up at John as if she were pouring out her whole soul before him, she cried out—but low,

“O, Mr. Gilhorn, if I only knew what was right to do! but I don’t know! There are my father and mother and you, all wanting me to marry you and make every one happy, they say; and, on the other hand, it presses on my mind day after day and night after night that it would be a sin for a wife not to love her husband better nor I can you—though I like you very well. I am in a sore strait—a sore strait! And surely one path must be right and one wrong; but I have been so sinful and foolish most of my life in not using the wits the Lord gave me to discern betwixt right and wrong that now I can not tell one from the other—and that is a sin in me, too. And I have prayed to be guided in this—it is my whole life that is to be decided—but I have had no answer.” (Her voice had died away at the last; then she collected herself again.) “Mr. Gilhorn, my good friend—say you understand me.”

“Troth! and I do not—not one haporth!” quoth John, plump and plain, with a most determinedly puzzled air. “Women’s capers beats me entirely.” For a moment he seemed in doubt whether to consider himself aggrieved or not; but then his goodness of heart triumphed. Besides, the young woman was so plainly at a loss for right judgment that he waxed in wisdom at the very sight. And, his good humor restored by feeling his own superiority of mind-weight as a man, with pity for her feminine wits that went all to scatterment at a pinch (like butter for the market in summer-time), he seemed to enlarge his breadth of shoulder and swell his voice, as he went on, in kindly condescending expostulation—“See now! Is there another man ye like better—in the country?”

“No.”

“Isn’t—thon one—out in America most likely dead or married?” John continued, so eager to unroll his argument, he absolutely forgot that she did not consider that a good riddance, too—like himself.

“Most likely,” she just murmured.

“Then what’s to hinder us? … Come along; take me and try me, and I’ll hould you, you’ll like me!” cried John, triumphantly clinching his argument with a sounding clap on his thigh.

There followed a considerably long silence, most painful to the sorrowful girl, most surprising to the overjoyed man; then she pleaded low, never once looking him in the face—

“Give me to the next Twelfth of July. And then, if—if he doesn’t come back—”

“We’ll be happy thegether!” gallantly ended Big Gilhorn; in his amazing satisfaction, overlooking kindly the foolish feminine scruples that alone withheld her from being blessed with such an excellent bargain; then wiping his mouth on his sleeve with preparatory enjoyment, he came slowly nearer.

“And now,” he grinned, “we’ll seal the agreement.”

Lily Keag sprang up.

“Not now; not now—not till then! Silla, are you never coming back?”

In came Osilla with her eyes fixed on the floor and a guilty look, as if curiosity had kept her behind the door, although consideration for them had taken her away.

“Well,” said poor John, annoyed at being baffled, yet always good-humored, “Please the pigs! I’ll—I’ll have a kiss, anyhow; so, Silla, if your sister objects, I’ll be bound you won’t!” and with a most brotherly air he loudly verified his words with a sounding smack on her cheek.

The young girl turned upon him with hot anger; and that for the first time in her life, since he had made a favorite of her from her childhood.

“Leave me alone! What have you to do with me!”

“The dear help a man betwixt the pair o’ ye!” exclaimed the ill-used lover, in chagrin, unexpectedly rebuffed here, also. “Why, Silla, you’re but a lump of a child! Leastways, that’s how I still consider you.”

At this, Osilla, who was proud of being grown-up, showed a strong disposition to re-melt into the tearful state in which she had already passed most of her visit. Her elder sister had to remind her, in a hasty whisper, how much they would now owe to John Gilhorn. This succeeded—and both feeling, in truth, the kindliness the man had shown when acceding to the request they had made in reluctance and grief, thanked him, before leaving, again and again in trembling, mingling voices.

Poor John’s complacency, which had suffered some severe shocks during the visit, was now completely restored; and the smile which they lured out again on his round visage grew broader and broader. Even their utter refusal of his wish to “convoy them home” was not unpalatable; since, they assured him, the matter coupled with their visit might cause too much talk among the neighbors.

So when they gently, and as quickly as they could, said good-by and stole away, John, with his thumbs in his waistcoat arm-holes, filled up the doorway and gazed after them with a jovial air. After which, looking forward with placid satisfaction to the coming Twelfth of July, he began whistling to himself “Boyne Water.”

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.