White Lilac; or the Queen of the May Part 1

White Lilac; or the Queen of the May.

by Amy Walton.

CHAPTER ONE.

A BUNCH OF LILAC.

"What's in a name?"--_Shakespeare_.

Mrs James White stood at her cottage door casting anxious glances up at the sky, and down the hill towards the village. If it were fine the rector's wife had promised to come and see the baby, "and certainly,"

thought Mrs White, shading her eyes with her hand, "you might call it fine--for April." There were sharp showers now and then, to be sure, but the sun shone between whiles, and sudden rays darted through her little window strong enough to light up the whole room. Their searching glances disclosed nothing she was ashamed of, for they showed that the kitchen was neat and well ordered, with bits of good substantial furniture in it, such as a long-bodied clock, table, and dresser of dark oak. These polished surfaces smiled back again cheerfully as the light touched them, and the row of pewter plates on the high mantelshelf glistened so brightly that they were as good as so many little mirrors.

But beside these useful objects the sunlight found out two other things in the room, at which it pointed its bright finger with special interest. One of these was a large bunch of pure white lilac which stood on the window sill in a brown mug, and the other was a wicker cradle in which lay something very much covered up in blankets. After a last lingering look down the hill, where no one was in sight, Mrs White shut her door and settled herself to work, with the lilac at her elbow, and the cradle at her foot. She rocked this gently while she sewed, and turned her head now and then, when her needle wanted threading, to smell the delicate fragrance of the flowers. Her face was grave, with a patient and rather sad expression, as though her memories were not all happy ones; but by degrees, as she sat there working and rocking, some pleasant thought brought a smile to her lips and softened her eyes.

This became so absorbing that presently she did not see a figure pa.s.s the window, and when a knock at the door followed, she sprang up startled to open it for her expected visitor.

"I'd most given you up, ma'am," she said as the lady entered, "but I'm very glad to see you."

It was not want of cordiality but want of breath which caused a beaming smile to be the only reply to this welcome. The hill was steep, the day was mild, and Mrs Leigh was rather stout. She at once dropped with a sigh of relief, but still smiling, into a chair, and cast a glance full of interest at the cradle, which Mrs White understood as well as words.

Bending over it she peeped cautiously in amongst the folds of flannel.

"She's so fast, it's a sin to take her up, ma'am," she murmured, "but I _would_ like you to see her."

Mrs Leigh had now recovered her power of speech. "Don't disturb her for the world," she said, "I'm not going away yet. I shall be glad to rest a little. She'll wake presently, I dare say. What is it," she continued, looking round the room, "that smells so delicious? Oh, what lovely lilac!" as her eye rested on the flowers in the window.

Mrs White had taken up her sewing again.

"I always liked the laylocks myself, ma'am," she said, "partic'ler the white ones. It were a common bush in the part I lived as a gal, but there's not much hereabouts."

"Where did you get it?" asked Mrs Leigh, leaning forward to smell the pure-white blossoms; "I thought there was only the blue in the village."

"Why, no more there is," said Mrs White with a half-ashamed smile; "but Jem, he knows I'm a bit silly over them, and he got 'em at Cuddingham t'other day. You see, the day I said I'd marry him he gave me a bunch of white laylocks--and that's ten years ago. Sitting still so much more than I'm used lately, with the baby, puts all sorts of foolishness into my head, and when you knocked just now it gave me quite a start, for the smell of the laylocks took me right back to the days when we were sweetheartin'."

"How _is_ Jem?" asked Mrs Leigh, glancing at a gun which stood in the chimney corner.

"He's _well_, ma'am, thank you, but out early and home late. There's bin poaching in the woods lately, and the keepers have a lot of trouble with 'em."

"None of _our_ people, I _hope_?" said the rector's wife anxiously.

"Oh dear, no, ma'am! A gipsy lot--a cruel wild set, to be sure, from what Jem says, and fight desperate."

There was a stir amongst the blankets in the cradle just then, and presently a little cry. The baby was _awake_. Very soon she was in Mrs Leigh's arms, who examined the tiny face with great interest, while the mother stood by, silent, but eager for the first expression of admiration.

"What a beautifully fair child!" exclaimed Mrs Leigh.

"Everyone says that as sees her," said Mrs White with quiet triumph.

"She features my mother's family--they all had such wonderful white skins. But," anxiously, "you don't think she looks weakly, do you, ma'am?"

"Oh, no," answered Mrs Leigh in rather a doubtful tone. She stood up and weighed the child in her arms, moving nearer the window. "She's a little thing, but I dare say she's not the less strong for that."

"It makes me naturally a bit fearsome over her," said Mrs White; "for, as you know, ma'am, I've buried three children since we've bin here.

Ne'er a one of 'em all left me. It seems when I look at this little un as how I _must_ keep her. I don't seem as if I _could_ let her go too."

"Oh, she'll grow up and be a comfort to you, I don't doubt," said Mrs Leigh cheerfully. "Fair-complexioned children are very often wonderfully healthy and strong. But really," she continued, looking closely at the baby's face, "I never saw such a skin in my life. Why, she's as white as milk, or snow, or a lily, or--" She paused for a comparison, and suddenly added, as her eye fell on the flowers, "or that bunch of lilac."

"You're right, ma'am," agreed Mrs White with a smile of intense gratification.

"And if I were you," continued Mrs Leigh, her good-natured face beaming all over with a happy idea, "I should call her 'Lilac'. That would be a beautiful name for her. Lilac White. Nothing could be better; it seems made for her."

Mrs White's expression changed to one of grave doubt.

"It do _seem_ as how it would fit her," she said; "but that's not a Christian name, is it, ma'am?"

"Well, it would make it one if you had her christened so, you see."

"I was thinking of making so bold as to call her 'Annie', and to ask you to stand for her, ma'am."

"And so I will, with pleasure. But don't call her Annie; we've got so many Annies in the parish already it's quite confusing--and so many Whites too. We should have to say 'Annie White on the hill' every time we spoke of her. I'm always mixing them up as it is. _Don't_ call her Annie, Mrs White, Lilac's far better. Ask your husband what he thinks of it."

"Oh! Jem, he'll think as I do, ma'am," said Mrs White at once; "it isn't _Jem_."

"Who is it, then? If you both like the name it can't matter to anyone else."

"Well, ma'am," said Mrs White hesitatingly, as she took her child from Mrs Leigh, and rocked it gently in her arms, "they'll all say down below in the village, as how it's a fancy sort of a name, and maybe when she grows up they'll laugh at her for it. I shouldn't like to feel as how I'd given her a name to be made game of."

But Mrs Leigh was much too pleased with her fancy to give it up, and she smilingly overcame this objection and all others. It was a pretty, simple, and modest-sounding name, she said, with nothing in it that could be made laughable. It was short to say, and above all it had the advantage of being uncommon; as it was, so many mothers had desired the honour of naming their daughters after the rector's wife, that the number of "Annies" was overwhelming, but there certainly would not be two "Lilac Whites" in the village. In short, as Mrs White told Jem that evening, Mrs Leigh was "that set" on the name that she had to give in to her. And so it was settled; and wonderfully soon afterwards it was rumoured in the village that Mrs James White on the hill meant to call her baby "Lilac."

This could not matter to anyone else, Mrs Leigh had said, but she was mistaken. Every mother in the parish had her opinion to offer, for there were not so many things happening, that even the very smallest could be pa.s.sed over without a proper amount of discussion when neighbours met. On the whole they were not favourable opinions. It was felt that Mrs White, who had always held herself high and been severe on the follies of her friends, had now in her turn laid herself open to remark by choosing an outlandish and fanciful name for her child.

Lilies, Roses, and even Violets were not unknown in Danecross, but who had ever heard of Lilac?

Mrs Greenways said so, and she had a right to speak, not only because she lived at Orchards Farm, which was the biggest in the parish, but because her husband was Mrs White's brother. She said it at all times and in all places, but chiefly at "Dimbleby's", for if you dropped in there late in the afternoon you were pretty sure to find acquaintances, eager to hear and tell news; and this was specially the case on Sat.u.r.day, which was shopping day.

Dimbleby's was quite a large shop, and a very important one, for there was no other in the village; it was rather dark, partly because the roof was low-pitched, and partly because of the wonderful number and variety of articles crammed into it, so that it would have puzzled anyone to find out what Dimbleby did not sell. The air was also a little thick to breathe, for there floated in it a strange mixture, made up of unbleached calico, corduroy, smockfrocks, boots, and bacon. All these articles and many others were to be seen piled up on shelves or counters, or dangling from the low beams overhead; and, lately, there had been added to the stock a number of small clocks, stowed away out of sight. Their hasty ceaseless little voices sounded in curious contrast to the slowness of things in general at Dimbleby's: "Tick-tack, tick-tack,--Time flies, time flies", they seemed to be saying over and over again. Without effect, for at Dimbleby's time never flew; he plodded along on dull and heavy feet, and if he had wings at all he dragged them on the ground. You had only to look at the face of the master of the shop to see that speed was impossible to him, and that he was justly known as the slowest man in the parish both in speech and action. This was hardly considered a failing, however, for it had its advantages in shopping; if he was slow himself, he was quite willing that others should be so too, and to stand in unmoved calm while Mrs Jones fingered a material to test its quality, or Mrs Wilson made up her mind between a spot and a sprig. It was therefore a splendid place for a bit of talk, for he was so long in serving, and his customers were so long in choosing, that there was an agreeable absence of pressure, and time to drink a cup of gossip down to its last drop of interest.

"I don't understand myself what Mary White would be at," said Mrs Greenways.

She stood waiting in the shop while Dimbleby thoughtfully weighed out some sugar for her; a stout woman with a round good-natured face, framed in a purple-velvet bonnet and nodding flowers; her long mantle matched the bonnet in stylishness, and was richly trimmed with imitation fur, but the large strong basket on her arm, already partly full of parcels, was quite out of keeping with this splendid attire. The two women who stood near, listening with eager respect to her remarks, were of very different appearance; their poor thin shawls were put on without any regard for fashion, and their straight cotton dresses were short enough to show their clumsy boots, splashed with mud from the miry country lanes. The edge of Mrs Greenways' gown was also draggled and dirty, for she had not found it easy to hold it up and carry a large basket at the same time.

"I thought," she went on, "as how Mary White was all for plain names, and homely ways, and such-like."

"She _do say_ so," said the woman nearest to her, cautiously.

"Then, as I said to Greenways this morning, 'It's not a consistent act for your sister to name her child like that. Accordin' to her you ought to have names as simple and common as may be.' Why, think of what she said when I named my last, which is just a year ago. 'And what do you think of callin' her?' says she. 'Why,' says I, 'I think of giving her the name of Agnetta.' 'Dear me!' says she; 'whyever do you give your girls such fine names? There's your two eldest, Isabella and Augusta; I'd call this one Betsy, or Jane, or Sarah, or something easy to say, and suitable.'"

"_Did_ she, now?" said both the listeners at once.

"And it's not only that," continued Mrs Greenways with a growing sound of injury in her voice, "but she's always on at me when she gets a chance about the way I bring my girls up. 'You'd a deal better teach her to make good b.u.t.ter,' says she, when I told her that Bella was learning the piano. And when I showed her that screen Gusta worked-- lilies on blue satting, a re'lly elegant thing--she just turned her head and says, 'I'd rather, if she were a gal of mine, see her knit her own stockings.' Those were her words, Mrs Wishing."

"Ah, well, it's easy to talk," replied Mrs Wishing soothingly, "we'll be able to see how she'll bring up a daughter of her own now."