Orange Lily: Chapter VIII

Author: May Crommelin

Date: 1879

Source: Orange Lily

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

“Herbs too she knew, and well of each could speak.

That in her garden sipp’d the silvery dew;

Where no vain flower disclos’d a gawdy streak,

But herbs for use, and physic, not a few,

Of grey renown, within those borders grew;

The tufted basil, pun-provoking thyme.

Fresh baum, and marigold of chearful hue;

· · · · · · · · · ·

And plantain ribb’d, that heals the reaper’s wound;

And marjoram sweet, in shepherd’s posie found;

And lavender, whose spikes of azure bloom

Shall be, erewhile, in arid bundles bound,

To lurk amidst the labors of her loom,

And crown her kerchiefs clean with mickle rare perfume.”—Shenstone.

A northern expression for any news, or unusual behavior, is “newuns!” This may be used with regard to Tom Coulter, on that day when he resolved within himself to go to Sunday school. Long had Lily tried thereunto to induce him; but the old Adam was still too strong in him, and he averred that week-day schooling was sufficient. Sunday, after service, was his one holiday.

First, the little maid, who in some few matters loved influencing him (woman-like, those pertaining specially to his mental and spiritual improvement), persuaded him to come to church with herself, instead of attending meeting, as he was wont. This at first occurred but fitfully, and was not made a regular practice by Tom for “nearhand” two years. The more honor to him! as the church service was, secretly, more enticing to his nature.

Then came a new clergyman, whom Tom met but once or twice in school and at the cottage, received a few words from, and felt ready to worship. He was a spare, tall gentleman, ill-dressed and angular; but with a loud, cheery voice that warmed the hearts of those he spoke to, and gray, quick eyes that loved all those he looked at—and that most who looked at him loved. A parson who had led a stirring life half his years as an officer in the Cape Rifles, as a gold-digger, lastly in the diamond-fields, and had finally enlisted with all his heart in Christ’s army, to light therein upon earth till death.

“Yon’s a man,” cried James Keag, after first he heard him—“a man in a hunnered.”

“A man in a thousand!” answered young Tom Coulter, to everybody’s surprise; for “what call” had a boy of his age to venture on an opinion so freely?

Anyway, the clergyman came one day to the marsh; and, after delighting Tom’s heart by stories of Africa, suddenly asked him to come to Sunday school.

“I will,” said Tom.

“When?” said the parson.

“The morrow,” said Tom. And forthwith he walked out of his cottage, and up the back fields to the farm on the hill, to borrow a prayer-book from Orange Lily, and have a shy at his catechism. Notwithstanding worthy efforts, however, he had only about three quarters of it learnt by Sunday.

“Keep near me, Lily, to encourage me, like,” he said, on starting for the Sunday school with his favorite companion.

All went excellently well at first. Tom was most attentive whenever the clergyman was near, and began the catechism in grand style, especially at the first question of “What is your name?” giving a manful “Tom Coulter,” with great heartiness. The next answers were naturally not so good; and though he brightened up over his Commandments, he went boggling through all the rest, more or less, till at last, on being asked the outward sign or form of baptism, he fairly came to a most unhesitating stop.

“Think over it, Tom,” said his friend the parson encouragingly. “You have seen Mrs. Keag’s youngest boy baptized lately.”

“Ay,” quoth Tom, his earnest dark eyes and firm-set, rosy face showing that much working was going on behind that broad forehead of his; for within his brain he was ransacking memories of all the fuss made over the babe by mother, Lily, and weemen-neighbors, to deduce therefrom his answer. Then his brow cleared, and his eyes lightened. Every gaze was turned upon him.

“You have it?” asked the clergyman.

“I have so,” said Tom.

“And what is it?”

“It’s the baby’s pelisse!”

One sunny Sunday afternoon, a few days later, the young owner of the Castle strolled up to the Keags’ farmhouse with his good, elderly step-sisters, to gratify his tenants with a visit. Surely enough, as they approached the door, all three heard a sudden little inward stir, and next minute Mrs. Keag rushed to the doorway, smiling like a summer sun.

“Och, and och! is it the Captain himself? You’re welcome home! Dear! but we’re proud to see ye,” she cried, courtesying oddly, so that her black stuff quilted petticoat kept covering her feet. She appeared very slow to rise again, and held the door by one hand, while the other seemed pulling at something behind her.

“Well, shake hands!” cried her merry landlord, pulling that tanned fist of hers from the door-post gayly; for they two were old friends.

Next instant, Mrs. Keag’s stout body tottered—and she fell forward on the young Guardsman’s neck, with her arms thrown wildly about him, in an apparently ecstatic clasp. The gray-silken clad sisters looked galvanized, so suddenly did amazement convulse their unaccustomed features with mirth. The Captain staggered back under the shock of that loving but unexpected embrace—and a roll together on the farmyard seemed imminent—when, with one mighty heave, he restored their equilibrium. The good woman stood again on her feet—but one was bare!

“Ochoné—oné!” she burst out, hardly knowing whether to cry or laugh. “It was my dishabilities done it, Captain dear! Oh, ladies, but I’m the ashamed woman this day! … for my boots were tight at church, and I just took them off, to cool my feet upon the floor, when there ye come! … so I thought to slip them on unbeknownst, and was holding by the door to steady myself on the one foot, while—”

She stopped; for her visitors were laughing so much that, feeling more apologies superfluous, she joined loudly in the mirth herself, shaking as if she was a fine human jelly. Behind, James Keag was giving vent to a hoarse roar of great merriment; whilst the children’s voices chimed in with cackling trebles. Then the visitors, declining the honor of the parlor, sat down in the pleasant kitchen, and the Captain, knowing how to please the parents’ hearts, good-humoredly “took notice to” the children.

“And this is the eldest?” said he.

“Ay, Orange Lily, as the ladies once called her,” smiled the rough-featured father, with but half-concealed pride. “’Deed, I took a terrible fancy to the name, and so it sticks to her; it’s just a queer and nice one.”

“Yes, for your first-born,” laughed the landlord; then, looking with interest on the fresh-faced child, he liked her thick hair turned off her face in a reddish wave that her round comb could hardly bind—liked her dark stuff gown and long white pinafore, a contrast to the well-to-do untidiness of the rest—liked her douce, sonsy expression; so he said, “Your mother was maid to my mother, do you know, Orange Lily, so we ought to be friends. And I hear you can write and read like anything! What more can you do, eh?”

“Sew,” said the rosy lips, whilst the big grayish-blue eyes looked coyly up at him, full of smiling light, from under her long lashes.

“’Deed and ’deed she does that, I will allow,” chimed in Mistress Keag, eager to be talking again, and ready to praise all that belonged to her, “though where she gets the time beats me; for I do be always slatterin’ through the dirt!”

This last remark as to her “through-other” self was so true that her young landlord took out his handkerchief to hide a smile.

“Dear me, now—do you use a thing as small as the like of that?” ejaculated the good woman, with a pitying air. “Hoot! ye should see the two pocket-naipkins I bought at the fair, for my James there!”

And, on the Captain’s solicitation, she dived into a big chest, flinging out clothes behind her, much, one must own, as a dog flings back earth from a burrow, unheeding some murmured remonstrances from husband and daughter.

“Och! hould yer whisht, now. Sure the Captain asked to see them, and I’m not the woman to disappoint him!” cried she; then in triumph unrolled an (apparently) fine young table-cloth.

“Come! that is a pocket-napkin and a half!” heartily assented the Captain; and she clapped him on the back.

“Ay, I’ll hould ye, one would make a dozen of your flimsy touch-me-nots!”

Miss Edith and Miss Alice sank on their chairs, feeling weak. For they had for once in their lives a positive desire to laugh, yet a fear of being unkind restrained them. To change the subject, Captain Alexander said—

“Can your Orange Lily sing, Keag? For here are my sisters, who are getting up a choir for the old church, and mean to play the harmonium at last; instead of hearing old McWhirter lifting the tune of the psalms without any instrument except his nose—eh?”

Thus he dashed into the thick of a matter which the sisters would have approached with cautious hesitations. Verily men are impetuous, thought both spinsters, yet looked with smiles of forgiving admiration at their fair, fine young brother. Then they uttered a mutual vague—

“We were only thinking—thinking, you know, about it.”

Lily blushed with delight. Her step-mother cried out readily—

“Och! she can sing, and so can wee Osilla; and Hans and Henery-Thomas are always bumming round the house. We’ll be glad to send them all to sing; if your honor and the ladies wish it.”

“Even that fellow in your arms. He’d make noise enough.” And the Captain smiled at an eight-month-old infant. “Come, Keag; what do you think of it?”

James Keag rubbed one hard hand slowly over his weather-tanned brow.

“Well,” began he, smiling apologetically, as folk do who have but a poor other excuse to offer for themselves, “verily, no doubt the quality knows best; and maybe I am making too free to differ. Still I’m thinking that them new-fangled hymns is no part o’ Scripture, so we ought to stick to David’s Psalms. And as to the tunes that they play at Maghrenagh yonder, I’d as soon listen to a jig.”

“Well; but in our church none sing together. It is the most hideous noise! … all squalling just as they like; and even if old McWhirter does know the air, nobody seems to believe him. Would you not like some trained to sing properly and in tune?”

James Keag’s eyes shrewdly twinkled, as much as to say, He may be right—but I doubt it.” Aloud, he slowly replied—

“Weel, sir, I can not think the Lord cares what tunes we’re at, so long as each one sings out as loud as they’re able. Sure he knows we’re doing our best; and likes to hear us, every yun. And in heaven won’t we all be singing different tunes, one Mistley, and one Stillorgan, and one the Ould Hundredth; but the Scripture says it’ll just be bee-utiful harmony! … Och! David bids us ‘make a cheerful noise’—that’s the thing!”

He spoke most familiarly, but by no means irreverently. To him God was his father, heaven his home; he felt warranted to talk about both with an ease which some folk might consider freedom. But their reverence goes so far, often, as to keep them from ever mentioning their Master’s name save at stated seasons. James Keag would have said that respect went “ratherly too far.” For himself he would have added he meant no harm; and no harm, therefore, he was certain sure, would be put down to his account.

Which service pleases God best? thought the young squire; then, smiling, said—

“Very likely singing, and many another thing, will come natural to us there, Keag; but meanwhile we shall all be the better for some schooling in it here, I think, as your children are in reading and writing. So I am sure my sisters will like to see Orange Lily up at the Castle next Wednesday evening.”

We shall be very pleased,” said the gentle sisters.

“We’ll be very proud,” said the parents.

Only Lily herself hesitated, rolled her apron, and, eying the earthen kitchen-floor, murmured something to her father.

“She says Tom Cowltert sings better nor herself,” laughed he, caressing her.

“O! Tom Coulter—my particular friend. Of course we must have him too,” cried the squire. “And now, Mrs. Keag, we must be going.”

But first, the good-wife declared, he must see their “garden;” a flower-plot, along the house-wall, of marigolds, wall-flowers, and orange-lilies—only weeded indeed by the human namesake of the latter.

“For I know you are terrible fond of a wee posy in your coat,” quoth the farm-mistress.

“Very,” said the Captain, and his sisters rather gravely smiled; for he was indeed a Sybarite in this respect, and what he spent on flowers alone was a small fortune, they feared.

“Aw, well now; I can give you some with a darling smell,” cried Mrs. Keag, generously, plucking handfuls of peppermint, mint, and thyme for him; then stopped at one bush, and smiled.

“Captain dear—a word with you!” said she, enticing him nearer with one forefinger, a knowing look of sympathy playing on her merry, broad face. Then, raising her voice to a loud and audible whisper, “Ach, now, maybe there is some beautiful young lady in London you’ll be courting?”

“Maybe,” laughed the Guardsman, and felt a moment almost discomposed, since there was a certain hard-hearted angel …and he felt his sisters’ eyes instantly upon him. Though too delicate-minded to breathe a question, they felt and looked curiosity often, as he was aware; and at such times he felt their worship of himself inconvenient.

“Maybe; there is no knowing.”

Mistress Keag pulled a branch off the bush.

“Then I’ll bestow that upon ye; and if ye’ll just eat a leaf before you go to see her, it is known to be the beautifullest smell—at all, at all! Not a boy or girl coorting through the country but comes begging for a bit, for it makes their breath sweeter—O!—nor peppermint lozenges. Bless ye!” with a clap on his arm, “I wonder you have not got that in your own Castle gardens. There is some sense in that bush.”

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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