Orange Lily: Chapter IV

“Bogs, purgatory, wolves, and ease, by fame

Are counted Ireland’s earth, mistake, curse, shame.”

Barten Holyday.

“It was a lad and a little lass,

And they went to school together;

Blow high, blow low, in shine or snow,

In fair or stormy weather.

“They spell’d their words from the self-same book,

Like sister and like brother;

They shared their seat, they shared the rod,

And learn’d—to love each other.”

The winter passed with such rains that down by the marsh Coulter the elder believed that he and his would be rotted off the face of the earth; and took, poor soul, to whiskey-drinking to put some warmth in him in his damp, miserable abode.

Before Christmas-time, his wife had dutifully fulfilled his prophecy, and been laid in the wet churchyard. A few days later her babe died too, and that cost two coffins; worse luck! If it had gone to a better place at the same time as its mother, one would have served “the pair of them,” said the sympathizing neighbors.

Then March came, with wilder winds than had almost ever blown within memory of old John McConnel, who was one hundred and four years old; and had shouldered a pike (on the wrong side) in the Rebellion.

“It’s remar-r-kable weather, ladies! The coarsest ever I recollect—most remar-r-kable!” said Keag one of those days to the Alexander ladies, meeting them on the high-road. “Verily, it is.” (From this last trick of speech, and that of rolling his r’s as if he relished the taste of them, he had gained the nick-name of Verily James.)

“We hope you have not suffered from the wind,” said Miss Edith, with grave politeness. She did not use the pronoun in a royal sense, but as one to whom duality, implying herself and her sister, was a more natural form of thought than singularity of consciousness.

“Well, no, ladies, the Lord be thankit—though, verily, it was a wunner I didn’t catch the cowld,” said Keag, with hearty reverence, yet a humorous twinkle in his eye. “For I had to rise from bed, with but little clothes on, saving yer ladyship’s presence, and sit all the night through i’ the roof o’ my cow-house houlding it on!”

“Holding it on—the roof?”

“Ay, verily—that same; for the wind was so remar-r-kable, I thought it would have blown the both of us clean and clever across till Scotland, sure-lie! But it is a new roof, and good; and, more by token, har’ly finished. So, says I, we’ll no be parted till we’re better acquent; and holds on by her, as if she was a sweetheart—like deith.”

Knowing he always spoke the truth, but not knowing exactly how much he dressed it out for company, the Misses Alexander gazed at him with bewildered eyes, till a gust of wind almost blew both the feeble women down—the storm, indeed, being tremendous.

“Och!—och!—och!” exclaimed Keag, fearing it would be “making too free” to “take a good grup of them both,” much as his kind heart prompted him thereto. Then came a lull, and he added—“Go home, ladies dear; go home. For there was a wummun yesterday that the wind just took and cowpit” (threw down), “and broke her leg—clean and clever.”

“You don’t say so! Has she had a doctor?” asked the sisters, in one breath, roused to hear of any fresh case in which they could “do good.”

“Och, no! Shure, I misdoubt that it was fairly broken; though she let on” (yelled) “as much as if it was,” said Keag, afraid that his love of talk might mislead them. “She’s, at best, a poor body.”

“Poor! We’ll go and see her.”

“Aw, verily, ladies dear, ye’d not think much of her; a wee, miserable creature, always picking and stealing. One day I caught her, and she down on her two knees before me. ‘Och, bloody murder! Keag darlin’, forgive me,’ says she. ‘For it’s all because I’m desolate orphant!”

“Poor little thing! How old is she?” cried the sisters.

“She’s better than sixty,” replied Keag, and could not restrain a grin.

There was a moment’s silence; then Miss Edith said—

“No matter if she is a humbug. She is poor, and miserable, and old. We will go to see her.” And, after asking where she lived, they beat down the road to windward, like a couple of feeble rooks. James Keag looked after them.

“I mind a missionary preaching once,” he meditated, “and he telled us of Indian beggars that, the dirtier and poorer they were, the holier folk thought them. And I’m feared our ladies is that ways inclined.”

Since his mother and the baby died, Tom went regularly to school; at the express request of his new patronesses, the Castle ladies. He had another companion along the lonesome bog road now. Some old people living in a big, untidy farm on the far side of Keag’s hill had a grandson on a visit with them, Daniel Gilhorn by name, to which young man, of eleven years, our Tom conceived a deep aversion. It was not only that “the fallow” had carroty hair, pig-eyes, and a disgusting trick of sniggering whenever Tom made mistakes in class; not only that he would push Tom unawares when going along the bogs, and nearer than usual one or other of the deep water-courses that yawned on either side of their way, so that Tom would “get a start,” and with reason—more than one person having perished within even his memory in those black, sluggish peat-waters. Tom did as much and more to him. It was not all this alone; but it was just—that they disliked one another.

One windy morning—“Hooroo, boys!” cried Tom—didn’t he see Orange Lily herself, hale and recovered, and in a tidier dress than ever, trotting to school in front of him. It was the first day for many weeks that she had been allowed to go to school. Alongside of her was Daniel Gilhorn. This was a few days after that one on which Keag met the Misses Alexander. The wind had abated between whiles, but this day blew fiercer than ever, as if rested. That was remembered, long afterwards, as the Spring-day of the Big Storm.

“Hi!—hi!—Danny, wait upon me, bellowed Tom down the wind; making a speaking-trumpet of his fists. Lily looked back, and hesitated. Little Gilhorn pulled her on. “Wait upon me, I tell ye,” howled our hero, losing his temper.

“The fallow” looked behind, and was plainly making faces at his rival; uglier even, thought Tom, than his own ugly one.

“None of us wants ye—ye beggar.”

“Bad scran to ye!” roared the virtuous-feeling Tom, now in a furious passion, and he seized a stone to clod therewith the dastard. But, bethinking himself that it might chance to hit and hurt wee Lily instead, he dropped it; contenting himself with using abusive language as he trotted behind them—too proud to go nearer.

How it blew! Every other minute Tom had to clap his hand to his cap to keep it on; had at last to hold it thus permanently, and put his head down to bore his way sidelong against the nor’-easter which smote them on the left. Had he been in better humor, he would have laughed out to feel the strong blast, which seemed tempting him to leave his footing on mother earth, and be whirled on its breast away above fields and hedges. But Lily, in front, was staggering, buffeted about by the gale; for her petticoats acted as a sail, and her broad straw hat was almost carried away, though she clung by it persistently. Dear little lass, she could hardly breathe at moments, and felt as if she would be lifted off her booted feet—bare toes cling better.

Then came a narrow piece of road all broken away at the sides. A stronger blast than any previous one howled across the dark waste around; past black peat-stacks and blacker intersecting water-courses. An agonized shriek, a boy’s yell, rang through the chill airs up to the cold gray sky. Wee Lily—she knew not how—was blown over the edge of the road, and clinging desperately by a projecting stump of an old bog-oak down the side of the bank, below which the deepest bog-ditch lay.

“Help me, Danny, Danny, Danny!” the child screamed. But the boy stood still, and only howled at the top of his voice. Lily was slipping into the awful black water below; going—gone! Her boots slid slowly from their treacherous hold on the bank; she felt the cold flood rise up to her breast; her little hands still clutched the jagged oak-stump, but more feebly now. Tom behind saw all … saw her waver on the brink … totter over … disappear from his horrified gaze.

“Coward! Hould on till her,” he yelled, seeing his little fellow-being—his dear friend—going down alive into the black grave before his eyes: the while his legs flew under him he knew not how—but as if they must cover all the intervening yards at every stride.

The other boy turned and rushed along the causeway, calling wildly for help—too frightened even to look back.

Then Tom had reached the spot, and battling, himself, against the wind, peered over trembling, expecting either to see some drowning struggles, or, maybe, to see—nothing. A small white face gazed up at him beseechingly, just above the thick dark peat-waters; its lips parted, but no sound came.

“Hould on—hould on till I grip ye!” was all Tom could utter as, squatting on the bank edge, he carefully and bravely slid down; calculating that the old stump would come between his legs, and thus hold him up also, just above her. So it indeed happened. Next moment, he had grasped the little lass’s arms, and held them with all his might: they should come out of their sockets before he let her go.

“I’m sorry till hurt ye, Lily,” he said, after a few breathless moments; with a wonderful gentleness, newly come to him. “Dinna fear—but keep hold a wee-thing longer, till your da comes—till people comes.”

“My feet is on a wee something that keeps them up—but I’m feared it’ll break from under me soon,” gasped the child. “Tom! Tom! … dinna let me go!”

“I’ll not let ye go; we’ll both go in thegether first.”

Tom set his teeth hard. The boy’s muscles were being terribly strained, and always more. He knew that Lily’s toes, which she must have dug desperately into the bank, were slowly slipping from that treacherous footing. She knew it too; but neither dared waste their breath. Instinct told them some strength would go from them therewith. O, the long moments! O, the terrible long-drawn moments! And each seemed to those children only charged with the thought, “Hould on, hould—hould!” or else, “Slip …slip … slip!”

Then the bairn gave a wee moan, no louder than that of a dying mouse. It was almost over with her. Tom wriggled himself well-nigh over the edge of the stump, gaining thus an inch of nearness; and lying back along it, managed to put his toes under the little one’s armpits, so low was she under him. A few more moments, and by the pain in his muscles, both of legs and arms, he knew her weight would pull him down into death with her. But yet he only thought of holding on while both could; the idea that he could save himself and leave her never even embodied itself—though the knowledge that it was possible to do so was existing in his mind.

“Oh, God!” poor little Lily gasped, noiselessly; for her breath could hardly fill her lungs, and no longer issue in sound.

“Oh, God, please—please pull me out—and Tom too!”

A halloo came down the wind. Another, and nearer; fresh strength came to both the trembling children.

“Yer da, Lily,” muttered Tom, well-nigh spent, and setting his teeth closer.

It was so, indeed. Warned by Danny Gilhorn’s shrieks, the father had left his work in the field beyond the moss, and, followed by a neighbor, was running like a madman through the bog, leaping drains and dykes, as if nothing could stop him. A few seconds more, and he came up to the strugglers, and that only just in time, for then Tom’s strength vanished clean away, and he slipped plump in beside Lily. But nevertheless, one hardly knew how, the children were grasped by their hair and clothes, dragged out, and soon carried towards Keag’s farm.

“For I’ll take him too. Ay! ay! It’s nearer hand,” cried the good man.

So to the farm Tom was carried and well dried at the fire by the hands of the friendly neighbor who had helped to save him; and soon recovered himself enough to partake of the lunches of bread and the noonday tea brewed all expressly for himself to “warm his inside,” so soon as anxiety about Lily a little abated. For both father, mother, and servant-girl had much ado for a while, trying to take the chill out of her body; she having been so much longer in the water than Tom. Yet all that evening the little maid was still fearful and shivering, though flushed with fever; and continually kept crying, as her mind wandered—

“Save me from the water, Tom! … Oh, it’s deep!—it’s deep!”

“I’ll never forget it till ye, wee Tom Cowltert; never,” said the father, with tears in his eyes and a moved voice, as he shook the little lad’s childish hand in his own hard fist. And he said that again on meeting Tom a week later, when Lily was running about again, quite well.

The former suffered no further harm than a frightful nightmare in the testered-bed he shared with his father. He imagined himself bobbing again up and down in the foul peat-waters that filled his mouth as he gurgled—“Lily is off the kash! Lily’s in the shough!” while Danny Gilhom and all Tom’s un-friends gibbered and danced on the bank. Then suddenly the scene changed to the school-house again, and Lily was observing with grave contempt—“You do speak so broad, Tom; say path, not kash.” Whereupon the Misses Alexander, the schoolmaster, and all the children gave full chase after Tom, crying out—“Spell kash! spell kash!” and jumping the forms and desks, ran round and round unendingly like mad, with such a whullabaloo … !

“Wake up, my sonny,” said his father’s voice in the darkness. “I’m feared ye’re something ill, ye’re crying and jumping that much. Give over, dear, give over; ye’re safe.” And he pulled the thin coverlet better about his little lad, and put his arm protectingly round him.

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.