White Lilac; or the Queen of the May - Amy Walton (mystery books to read TXT) 📗

and smiles and sunshine all round her, and the blue sky above. In this happy mood everything along the well-known road had new beauties, and when she turned up the hill and felt the keener air blow against her face, it was like the greeting of an old friend. The very flowers in the tall overgrown hedges were different to those which grew in the valley, and much sweeter; she pulled sprays of them as she went along until she had a large straggling bunch to carry as well as her basket, and so at last entered Joshua's cottage with both hands full.

"Now, Uncle Joshua," she said, when the first greetings over he had settled to his work again, "I've come to dinner with you, and I've brought it along with me, and until it's ready you're not to look once into the kitchen. You couldn't never guess what it is, so you needn't try; and you mustn't smell it more nor you can help while it's cooking."

It was a proud moment for Lilac when, the fowl being roasted to a turn, the table nicely laid, and the bunch of flowers put exactly in the middle, she led the cobbler up to the feast. Even if Joshua had smelt the fowl he concealed it very well, and his whole face expressed the utmost astonishment, while Lilac watched him in an ecstasy of delight.

"My word!" he exclaimed, "its fit for a king. I feel," looking down at his clothes, "as if I ought to have on my Sunday best."

Lilac was almost too excited to eat anything herself, and presently, when she saw Joshua pause after his first mouthful, she enquired anxiously:

"Isn't it good, Uncle?"

"Fact is," he answered, "it's _too_ good. I don't really feel as how I ought to eat such dillicate food. Not being ill, or weak, or anyway picksome in my appetite."

"I made sure you'd say that," said Lilac triumphantly; "and I just made up my mind I'd cook it without telling what it was. You've got to eat it now, Uncle Joshua. You couldn't never be so ungrateful as to let it spoil."

"There's Mrs Wishing now," said Joshua, stilt hesitating, "a sickly ailing body as 'ud relish a morsel like this."

It was not until Lilac had set his mind at rest by promising to take some of the fowl to Mrs Wishing before she returned, that he was able to abandon himself to thorough enjoyment. Lilac knew then by his silence that her little feast was heartily appreciated, and she would not disturb him by a word, although there were many things she wanted to say. But at last Joshua had finished.

"A fatter fowl nor a finer, nor a better cooked one couldn't be," he said, as he laid down his knife and fork. "Not a bit o' dryness in the bird: juicy all through and as sweet as a nut."

Ready now for a little conversation, he puffed thoughtfully at his pipe while Lilac stood near washing the dishes and plates.

"It's thirty years ago," he said, speaking in a jerky voice so as not to interfere with the comfort of his pipe, "since I had a fowl for dinner-- and I mind very well when it was. It was my wedding-day. Away up in the north it was, and parson gave the feast."

"Was that when you used to play the clar'net in church, Uncle?" asked Lilac.

Joshua nodded.

"We was a clar'net and a fiddle and a bass viol," he said reflectively. "Never kept time--the bass viol didn't. Couldn't never get it into his head. He wasn't never any shakes of a player--and he was a good feller too."

"Did they play at your wedding?" asked Lilac.

"They did that," he answered; "in church and likewise after the ceremony. Lor'! to hear how the bass viol did tag behind in _Rockingham_. I can hear him now. 'Twas like two solos being played, as one might say. No unity at all. I never hear that tune now but what it carries me back to my wedding-day and the bass viol; and the taste of that fowl's done the same thing. It's a most pecooliar thing, is the memory."

Lilac liked to hear Joshua talk about old days, but she was eager too to tell her own news. There was so much that he did not know: all about hay-harvest, and her butter-making, about Lenham fete, and her cousins, and, finally, all about None-so-pretty and Peter. "I do think," she added, "as how I like him best of any of 'em, for all they say he's so common."

"Common or uncommon, they'd do badly without him," muttered Joshua. "He's the very prop and pillar of the place, is Peter; if a wall's strong enough to hold the roof up, you don't ask if it's made of marble or stone."

"Are common things bad things?" asked Lilac suddenly.

Joshua took his pipe out of his mouth and looked at her in some surprise.

"Common things--eh?" he repeated.

"Yes, Uncle," said Lilac hesitatingly, and trying to think of how to make it clear. But she could only add:

"They call the pigs common too."

"Well, as to pigs," said Joshua, "I wish they was commoner still. I don't despise a bit of bacon myself. I call that a good thing anyhow. When one comes to look at it," he continued after a few puffs at his pipe, "the best things of all is common. The things as is under our feet and nigh to our hand and easy to be got. There's the flowers now-- the common ones which grow so low as any child can pick 'em in the fields, daisies and such. There's the blue sky as we can all see, poor as well as rich. There's rain and sunshine and air and a heap else as belongs to all alike, and which we couldn't do without. The common things is the best things, don't you make any mistake about that. There's your own name now--Lilac. It's a common bush lilac is; it grows every bit as well in a little bit of garden nigh the road as in a grand park, and it hasn't no rare colours to take the eye. And yet on a sunshiny day after rain the folks passing'll say, `Whatever is it as smells so beautiful?' Why it's just the common lilac bush. You ought to be like that in a manner of speaking--not to try and act clever and smart so as to make folks stare, but to be good-tempered and peaceful and loving, so as they say when you leave 'em, `What made the place so pleasant? Why, it was Lilac White. She ain't anything out of the common, but we miss her now she's gone--'"

The frequent mention of her name reminded Lilac of something she wanted to say, and she broke in suddenly:

"Why, I've never thought to thank you, Uncle, for all that bloom you got me on May Day. What a long way back it do seem!"

Joshua looked perplexed.

"What's the child talking on?" he said. "I didn't get no flowers."

"Whoever in all the world could it a been then?" said Lilac slowly. "You're sure you haven't forgotten, Uncle Joshua?"

"Sartain sure!"

"You didn't ask no one to get it?"

"Never mentioned a word to a livin' bein'." Lilac stared thoughtfully at the cobbler, who had now gone back to his little shed and was hard at work.

"P'r'aps, then," she said, "'twarn't you neither who sent Mother's cactus down to the farm?"

"Similarly," replied he, "it certainly was _not_; so you've got more friends than you reckoned for, you see."

Lilac stood in the doorway, her bonnet dangling in one hand, her eyes fixed absently on Joshua's brown fingers.

"I made sure," she said, "as how it was you. I couldn't think as there was anybody else to mind."

It was getting late. Without looking at the clock she knew that her holiday would soon be over, because through Joshua's little window there came a bright sun beam which was never there till after five. She tied on her bonnet, prepared a choice morsel of chicken for Mrs Wishing, and set out on her further journey after a short farewell to the cobbler. Joshua never liked saying goodbye, and did it so gruffly that it might have sounded sulky to the ear of a stranger, but Lilac knew better. She had a "goodish step" before her, as she called it to herself, and if she were to get back to the farm before dusk she must make haste. So she hurried on, and soon in the distance appeared the two little white cottages side by side, perched on the edge of the steep down. The one in which she had lived with her mother was empty, and as she got close to it and stopped to look over the paling into the small strip of garden, she felt sorry to see how forlorn and deserted it looked. It had always been so trim and neat, and its white hearthstone and open door had invited the passer-by to enter. Now the window shutters were fastened, the door was locked, the straggling flowers and vegetables were mixed up with tall weeds and nettles--it was all lifeless and cold. It was a pity. Mother would not have liked to see it. Lilac pushed her hand through the palings and managed to pick some sweet-peas which were trailing themselves helplessly about for want of support, then she went on to the next gate. Poor Mrs Wishing was very lonely now that her only neighbour was gone; very few people passed over that way or came up so far from Danecross. Sometimes when Dan'l had a job on in the woods he was away for days and she saw no one at all, unless she was able to get to the cobbler's cottage, and that was seldom. Lilac knocked gently at the half-open door, and hearing no answer went in.

Mrs Wishing was there, sitting asleep in a chair by the hearth with her head hanging uncomfortably on one side; her dress was untidy, her hair rough, and her face white and pinched. Lilac cast one glance at her and then looked round the room. There were some white ashes on the hearth, a kettle hanging over them by its chain, and at Mrs Wishing's elbow stood an earthenware teapot, from which came a faint sickly smell; and when Lilac saw that she nodded to herself, for she knew what it meant. The next moment the sleeper opened her large grey eyes and gazed vacantly at her visitor.

"It's me," said Lilac. "It's Lilac White."

Mrs Wishing still gazed without speaking; there was an unearthly flickering light in her eyes. At last she muttered indistinctly:

"You're just like her."

Not in the least alarmed or surprised at this condition, Lilac glanced at the teapot and said reproachfully:

"You've been drinking poppy tea, and you promised Mother you wouldn't do it no more."

Mrs Wishing struggled feebly against the drowsiness which overpowered her, and murmured apologetically:

"I didn't go to do it, but it seemed as if I couldn't bear the pain."

Lilac set