Orange Lily: Chapter IX

“Now let the sacred organ blow,

With solemn pause and sounding slow;

Now let the voice due measure keep,

In strains that sigh and words that weep,

Till all the vocal current blended roll,

Not to depress, but lift the soaring soul.”—Mallet.

“The muffled goodwives making haste to leave

The gusty minster porch, whose windows shone

With the first-litten candles, while the drone

Of the great organ shook the leaded panes.”—Morris.

On the first night of the choir-practice at the Castle, Tom dressed himself in his best; then sallied up to the farm on the hill above, to meet Orange Lily. He felt manly in doing so. All the young men of the country above his age of fourteen years who were bidden also, would be escorting their sweet-hearts: so would he.

It was dark enough on the earth below; but overhead the stars were such a glory that his heart felt quite full, and he stumbled now and again up the lane, not being able to take his eyes off that thousandfold silver glitter in the blackness. He thought of all the expressions he had read about them in the books lent him from the Castle, of spangled skies, studded vaults, of Lily’s notion, when a wee child, that they were the nails in heaven’s flooring; and he wished that he, too, could just invent something new and grand to say of them. But, after thinking in vain, he only said to himself, looking up at the Plough in the north-east, “It must be a grand angel that drives yon through the furrows.” For he had lately been promoted to hold a plough, so had a hearty fellow-feeling with that angel; liking the work hugely, and thoroughly believing there was no wholesomer or sweeter smell than that of the fresh-turned brown earth.

Tom’s soul felt opened to all good, sweet, and holy influences, and he was just meditating whether he could not make some poetry upon the stars, when three shadowy figures came round the corner. Lily!—Orange Lily herself, in company with another girl and a young fellow, the latter apparently about Tom’s own age. They stopped short.

“Well, Tom Coulter, and how are you?” said the new comer, patronizingly. “We’ve not met these several years, so most likely you don’t remember me.”

“O, I remember ye—finely,” retorted Tom, though taken aback for one brief moment. Though town-varnished, more mincing than of old, how could he forget the voice of “the fallow” that had left Lily to drown—his enemy as a child—Daniel Gilhorn? “I never heard tell ye were come back. You’ll be staying with your grand-father again?”

“Just came yesterday on a visit … Met the Cassel ladies this very day; and charmed them by showing you country folks how we sing in town … Got a little vacation from our place in Belfasst,” fluently replied young Gilhorn, speaking more would-be finely than ever, and dodging to get beside Lily as she moved on.

“I did hear word ye were selling ribbons in a shop there,” grunted Tom, surlily enough, dodging him in turn by getting on Lily’s other side, the path being only wide enough for two; and so they went stumbling up against the hedges.

A moment or so this continued, then our hero stopped abruptly and said—

“Daniel Gilhorn, Lily Keag trysted herself to walk to the Castle with me; so I’ll trouble you either to go behind or in front of us. Please yourself.

“Well, and she has promised since to go with me; ladies can change their minds. You were late at the meeting place, my dear friend, I apprehend,” simpered the city youth.

“There are no ladies here,” said Tom, in a tone that boded evil; his suppressed anger being likely to explode with all the worse after-bang. “Is this true, Lily?”

“Oh, Tom dear,” murmured that most forgiving little maiden, “I thought it would not seem neighborly else, because you can always have me; and he might have thought I hadn’t forgotten the—the bog—otherwise.”

Tom fell back without a word.

“I could not well walk with my own sister—he, he, he!” complacently observed Danny, with a smirk; and then looking back over his shoulder, “Coulter, you don’t seem to remember my sister Susan. Let me (ahem) introdjuice you.”

A smartly-dressed girl, or who seemed such in the darkness, bowed. Tom, who had never been “introduced” in his life before, simply stared with blazing eyes, keeping his hands in his pockets; recognizing with some difficulty in the mincing damsel a little school-mate of long ago, who had seemed to him then as ill-featured and crooked-minded as her brother himself. Then he gruffly said,

“So you are Shusy—are you?”

“Well, upon my word, Mr. Coulter, time hasn’t mended your manners!” replied his companion, in a sharp voice of anger and contempt, and she stepped on briskly after the others. I’ll trouble you to call me Miss Gilhorn; and not to bring up whatever low, vulgar name the ignorant set in the country here used to call me by.”

They came to a stile just then.

“I beg your pardon,” said Tom, most deliberately; “it was ill-mannered of me.” And he helped her over.

“So you’re not ashamed of owning to having been in the wrong?” cried Miss Gilhorn, in a sprightly manner, believing she had made a sudden conquest.

“No,” said Tom, but without a spark of answering vivacity; almost sullenly. “It’s easy enough to do things wrong—there’s nothing easier in life; so what for need I be ashamed of owning till it? It’s sticking knowingly in the wrong that would shame me—nought else.”

Miss Gilhorn found the conversation taking too moral a turn for her taste, and changed it by giving him unasked a lively description of the delightfulness of living in town … and seeing life, and the fashions, and the bustle of the streets and their shops …instead of being stuck down like a turnip among miles of dirty fields, with only a few old-fashioned country folk in some farmhouses to talk to. She would have added, “and ill-dressed farmers’ sons to keep company with,” but refrained for the moment—half a loaf being better than no bread.

“And are you in the same shop as Dan—as your brother?” asked Tom, at last.

“Not I, indeed; goodness be thanked! He’d know too much of my fun, and spoil sport, maybe,” answered Miss Gilhorn, with affected giggles that made Tom long to take and shake her soundly; but he also refrained, and quietly remarked—

“Well, if I had a sister, I’d like to look after her.”

Then they arrived at the side-door of the Castle, and his ordeal was over. She was like nasty physic to Tom’s mind, and the worst was that he could not feel the better for her; she altogether disagreed mentally with him, he concluded. There was an organ in the Castle, kept in the cold, lofty hall that was all floored in black and white stone, diamond-patterned. Miss Alice was seated at the instrument, like a gray nun, as the choir shuffled in. Miss Edith nervously fingered a pile of worn music in the shadows. A big iron-ribbed lamp swung from the domed ceiling, throwing bands of light above, but leaving shadows below. Cold airs whistled from the chinks of the great hall-door; from the passages to the servant’s regions. The steps of the incomers, who now mustered some dozen and a half, echoed dismally on the stone; and they traversed the empty space with chilled, discomforted minds, for the most part.

“Oh, Tom, it looks so cheerless! I’d rather be at home,” whispered Lily, almost frightened.

“I like to see it. It’s like a picture,” he replied; but could not have told why like a picture to his mind; or why the ill-lit vaulted apartment pleased him, as did also the severe lines of the organ pipes, rising from the shadowed end of the hall, giving him a vague idea of an instrument made for heavenward aspirations.

Two tall wax candles in silver sconces showed two patches of light against the gilded pipes, and faintly shed rays on Miss Alice’s meek head, and on her thin fingers, touching idly the key-board. Her silver-gray silk gown just caught the sheen here and there, its severe folds sweeping far behind on the floor. Beside stood her sister, as like her as could be, pale, thin, angular, but gentlewomanly, even gracious, from head to feet. In the background some suits of armor were ranged against the wall. Lily fearfully believed she saw eyes gazing at her from the hollow casques, and crept nearer Susan Gilhorn, all the girls clustering together. Tom half imagined the same; but felt a thrill of pleasure in his fancy. The gloom, emptiness, and loftiness of the hall were in keeping with its furnishing, he thought, and caused a curious severe pleasure in his simple northern mind. Now he
could picture to himself the surroundings to many a group of high-born cavaliers and dames of whom he had read in his borrowed romances.

The younger lads were ranged together, and Dan Gilhorn, whose eyes were roving too, now whispered to Tom, next whom he stood—

“What a place for rats and mice! Ugh! I feel quite uncomfortable.”

“Glad to hear it,” growled Tom, but too low to be distinctly heard.

“What’s that you say?” went on his neighbor; then, with a superior air, “Now, if I were Captain Alexander, I’d smarten up this old barn a bit, I can tell you.”

“If you were who?” said Tom, ironically; having heard well enough.

Gilhorn raised his nose, and continued, with a smile of disgusting conceit, in Tom’s opinion; and with a fluency of speech which marked him also in our hero’s mind as a “talking fool”—

“You’d see! There is a Kidderminster going cheap at our place now, I’d cover the floor with; and paper the walls with roses to match. Looking-glasses everywhere for the girls to see themselves—he! he! he!—and gilding. Gilding is the thing! Up in town, Coulter, we learn taste, you see; we learn the fashion; we learn—”

“Blathers!” said Tom; no more. But that single expression of his sentiment was enough. Young Gilhorn looked at him with furious, piggish eyes; small blue ones they were, white-lashed, and weak of gaze. Neither dared use his voice in more speech to the other, however, for the hymn singing began; and peace and good will alone came from the lads’ lips in vocal harmony, though each just longed to shy his hymn-book at the other’s head.

“I fear it is very dark here,” said Miss Edith, nervously, coming up as the hymn ended. “I heard that you were obliged to miss many of your words, Tom. Perhaps you and your friend will hold this candlestick between you?”

And she handed them a tall silver one.

Tom, who knew well he had omitted of set purpose all the Christian sentiments to which his heart was not then attuned (for he hated hypocrisy), groaned within himself as they began again.

You be—” (treated like Haman), muttered Daniel Gilhorn, after a minute.

“You’re dropping all the grease on my coat. D’ye think it’s a shoddy-bag stitched up in the village here, like your own?”

“Mind what your tongue is wanted here for; and keep your bad language till I can answer it,” sternly retorted Tom.

“You’re blowing the light out,” went on Danny, maliciously raising his voice.

“You’re sticking the can’le down my mouth!—so how would I be able to help it?” burst out angry Tom, with truthfulness, but also incautious loudness.

There was a horrible pause; and every one looked round at them. Then Miss Edith spoke, with a gentleness that reduced Tom to utter quiet at once, and made even Gilhorn feel reproved, though in a slighter degree.

“I am afraid you two cannot sing well—together.”

“Really, Madam,” interrupted young Gilhorn—and his quick reply made all present, to whom slowness of speech to superiors seemed a due courtesy, gaze up amazed—while he waved one hand gracefully, as if inviting a customer to a seat on the other side of the counter, till he, with reluctant truthfulness, should depreciate the goods of the shop over the way. “Really, Madam, I regret to say it, but Mr. Keag sings so flat it is puffed agony to be beside him; while as to time or tune—”

The gentle youth’s voice died mildly away, as if he would say no more—albeit his nerves had been excruciated.

“Flat! Let me once get a grip, and I’ll flatten you!” thought Tom; all the more bitterly that he did not understand the accusation. Aloud he said doggedly, and very slowly—

“I’ll acknowledge till this, Miss Alexander … that I can not lift the tune beside—him. But if you’ll kindly try me myself a minute, I’ll engage I’ll raise her.”

The ladies gazed with unimpassioned yet discerning eyes on the two youths who stood singled out from the rest. The town shop-boy was tallest, with a slender waist he was proud of; the most color he had was in his reddish head, which drooped on one side of a long neck. He simpered would-be pleasantly, and expanded the palm of one hand, turning his fingers down, to illustrate thereby the emptiness of his rival’s claims to any consideration in singing. The peasant lad stood with his shoulders a little raised, and his mouth doggedly closed. Stout, square-headed, with black hair and eyes, and rich coloring, due, perhaps, to a dash of true Irish blood in him—he was undoubtedly handsomer, like the few other dark men and boys, through the country, than the fairer-haired, purer Scotch race which King James had planted in the homes of the “meere natives.”

It was but natural the ladies should eye with most favor the ruddy ploughboy. However gruff and awkward, he looked filled with respect for them; with sturdy self-reliance amongst his fellows. Yet Miss Edith corrected herself. It was human duty to think as kindly (nay, more so!) of the reddest-haired, piggiest-eyed specimen of our race that God made, as purposely as the handsome ones. Would not she herself be a deep-bosomed, grandly-wrought woman, of a fair countenance, if she could? Did not her spirit cry out still at times—though youth was past—that its clothing of flesh and blood was ugly and mean, and niggardly eked out?

“Still surely he might have been a gentleman, had he been born among us,” she said within herself of Tom; with the vagueness peculiar to her uttered speech in general.

“Surely he has some of the feelings of a gentleman,” thought Miss Alice, who was slightly bolder-minded.

If neither went further, and said, as they ought, that a ploughboy not only might have, but in many an instance has, all the feelings, though not habits, of a gentleman—courage, gentleness, and hatred of all things mean—forgive them! since the mind-shackles of their breeding, traditions, and habits of speech were weighty upon them; and women in their days were not expected to let the flame of their own thinking burn up much under the heaped slaked-coal of their ancestors’ opinions. Besides, Tom was still undeveloped; they knew him little; and it would cost him tough struggles yet before he should cast out the dross of his nature. Maybe it would need to be burnt out by fire.

The choir-singing had ended. Then Miss Alice said, gently, “Now, Coulter, will you try that hymn once by yourself; to be sure of it by Sunday?’’ and Tom stepped forward alone to fulfil his offer, and stand a fair trial. He was in no humor for half-measures, for gentleness, or any expression save that of defiance to his rival. The consequence was that he bellowed like a young bull of Bashan, though he did stick to the air well enough.

“And now, Gilhorn,” said Miss Edith; her quiet face inexpressive of opinion as ever.

The last-named youth, with an elegant bow to the company, began in his turn; his head more sideways than before; his very nose trying to keep up the simper his mouth was forced temporarily to drop. A shadow of vexation passed through the ladies’ minds. In all fairness, his was the sweeter voice—the somewhat trained one.

“Thank you, Gilhorn. You would be of use to us, but I understand that you live in town now. Had we known that sooner, we need hardly have troubled you to come; although we are much obliged to you for doing so,” said Miss Alice, with her grave politeness.

“Pray don’t mention it, ladies. Anything I can do to assist any of”—(“your sex,” he was nearly saying, but some grain of sense in his windbag of a brain rattled very likely, and he substituted)—“your family, I am only too happy, I am sure … I’ll be taking a run into the country, occasionally, for my health, and to visit our people here, from the Saturdays till Mondays, and will be glad to give you what help I can, at such times.”

His air implied that they might use him as a model if they particularly wished it; though by nature he was modest.

The ladies now gravely rose. Then, turning to the whole choir-group, Miss Edith, as nominally the eldest, nervously said in dismissal—

“We are very much obliged, indeed, to you all for coming to sing for us … though, of course, we know that it is not for us at all, but—but solely to help in the service in church …”

“Ach, sure! we’d come for your own sakes, too, if ye wanted us,” came in a murmured interruption; and poor Miss Edith, who was not prepared to have the ground cut away from under her, felt quite discomposed.

“It is very right of you … especially on such a cold night, too—that is, I mean—”

“Och, never mind, miss,” in another many-voiced murmur.

“We are very anxious that you should not take cold,” burst out Miss Edith, now desperate, “and will feel really—obliged—if you will all muffle well; especially at the throat; and we thought a little hot drink now before going—”

She stopped short, and an agreeable thrill ran through the choir.

“Would be good,” took up Miss Alice. “Though, of course, we do not approve of anything strong; and tea or coffee is bad for the nerves and voice—”

“And always prevents us from sleeping at night,” went on Miss Edith. “So we can but hope you will like what we—ah—have provided.”

“Ah! no fears,” encouragingly grumbled the three oldest of the singing men; the singing women smiled and giggled.

And so—good evening,” said the poor ladies, with a last effort.

“Good evening, and thank you kindly,” said all the choir-group, and shuffled out whispering, “Man! is it whiskey and water, hot?” “Woman dear! it’ll be wine.” “Boys, O! but this is a spree.”

Ranged on a table in the back hall were noble sized cups apiece of hot—whey.

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.