"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 pass
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 passed 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
Saturday, 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 butter,' 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."
"I'm not saying," pursued Mrs Greenways, turning a watchful eye on Mr
Dimbleby's movements, "that Mary White haven't a perfect right to name
her child as she chooses. I'm too fair for that, I _hope_. What I do
say is, that now she's picked up a fancy sort of name like Lilac, she
hasn't got any call to be down on other people. And if me and Greenways
likes to see our girls genteel and give 'em a bit of finishing
eddication, and set 'em off with a few accomplishments, it's our own
affair and not Mary White's. And though I say it as shouldn't, you
won't find two more elegant gals than Gusta and Bella, choose where you
may."
During the last part of her speech Mrs Greenways had been poking and
squeezing her parcel of sugar into its appointed corner of her basket;
as she finished she settled it on her arm, clutched at her gown with the
other hand, and prepared to start.
"And now, as I'm in a hurry, I'll say good night, Mrs Pinhorn and Mrs
Wishing, and good night to you, Mr Dimbleby."
She rolled herself and her burden through the narrow door of the shop,
and for a moment no one spoke, while all the little clocks ticked away
more busily than ever.
"She's got enough to carry," said Mrs Pinhorn, breaking silence at
last, with a sideway nod at her neighbour.
"She have _so_," agreed Mrs Wishing mildly; "and I wonder, that I do,
to see her carrying that heavy basket on foot--she as used to come in
her spring cart."
Mrs Pinhorn pressed her lips together before answering, then she said
with meaning: "They're short of hands just now at Orchards Farm, and
maybe short of horses too."
"You don't say so!" said Mrs Wishing, drawing nearer.
"My Ben works there, as you know, and he says money's scarce there, very
scarce indeed. One of the men got turned off only t'other day."
"Lor', now, to think of that!" exclaimed Mrs Wishing in an awed manner.
"An' her in that bonnet an' all them artificials!"
"There's a deal," continued Mrs Pinhorn, "in what Mrs White says about
them two Greenways gals with their fine-lady ways. It 'ud a been better
to bring 'em up handy in the house so as to help their mother. As it
is, they're too finnicking to be a bit of use. You wouldn't see either
of _them_ with a basket on their arm, they'd think it lowering
themselves. And I dare say the youngest 'll grow up just like 'em."
"There's a deal in what Mrs Greenways's just been saying too," remarked
the woman called Mrs Wishing in a hesitating voice, "for Mrs James
White _is_ a very strict woman and holds herself high, and `Lilac' is a
fanciful kind of a name; but _I_ dunno." She broke off as if feeling
incapable of dealing with the question.
"I can't wonder myself," resumed Mrs Pinhorn, "at Mrs Greenways being
a bit touchy. You heard, I s'pose, what Mrs White up and said to her
once? You didn't? Well, she said, `You can't make a silk purse out of
a sow's ear, and you'll never make them girls ladies, try all you will,'
says she. `Useless things you'll make 'em, fit for neither one station
or t'other.'"
"That there's plain speaking!" said Mrs Wishing admiringly.
Mr Dimbleby had not uttered a word during this conversation, and was to
all appearance entirely occupied in weighing out, tying up parcels, and
receiving orders. In reality, however, he had not lost a word of it,
and had been getting ready to speak for some time past. Neither of the
women, who were well acquainted with him, was at all surprised when he
suddenly remarked: "It were Mrs Leigh herself as had to do with the
name of Mrs James White's baby."
"Re'lly, now?" said Mrs Wishing doubtfully.
"An' it were Mrs Leigh herself as I heard it from," continued Dimbleby
ponderously, without noticing the interruption.
"Well, that makes a difference, don't it now?" said Mrs Pinhorn. "Why
ever didn't you name that afore, Mr Dimbleby?"
"And," added Dimbleby, grinding on to the end of his speech regardless
of hindrance, like a machine that has been wound up; "and Mrs Leigh
herself is goin' to stand for the baby."
"Lor'! I do wish Mrs Greenways could a heard that," said Mrs Pinhorn;
"that'll set Mrs White up more than ever."
"It will so," said Mrs Wishing; "she allers did keep herself _to_
herself did Mrs White. Not but what she's a decent woman and a kind.
Seems as how, if Mrs Leigh wished to name the child `Lilac', she
couldn't do no other than fall in with it. But _I_ dunno."
"And how does the name strike you, Mr Snell?" said Mrs Pinhorn,
turning to a newcomer.
He was an oldish man, short and broad-shouldered, with a large head and
serious grey eyes. Not only his leather apron, but the ends of his
stumpy fingers, which were discoloured and brown, showed that he was a
cobbler by trade. When Mrs Pinhorn spoke to him, he fingered his cheek
thoughtfully, took off his hat, and passed his hand over his high bald
forehead.
"What name may you be alludin' to, ma'am?" he enquired very politely.
"The name `Lilac' as Mrs James White's goin' to call her child."
"Lilac--eh! Lilac White. White Lilac," repeated the cobbler musingly.
"Well, ma'am, 'tis a pleasant bush and a homely; I can't wish the maid
no better than to grow up like her name."
"Why, you wouldn't for sure wish her to grow up homely, would you now,
Mr Snell?" said Mrs Wishing with a feeble laugh.
"I _would_, ma'am," replied Mr Snell, turning rather a severe eye upon
the questioner, "I _would_. For why? Because to be homely is to make
the common things of home sweet and pleasant. She can't do no better
than that."
Mrs Wishing shrank silenced into the background, like one who has been
reproved, and the cobbler advanced to the counter to exchange greetings
with Mr Dimbleby, and buy tobacco. The women's voices, the sharp
ticking of the clocks, and the deeper tones of the men kept up a steady
concert for some time undisturbed. But suddenly the door was thrown
violently back on its hinges with a bang, and a tall man in labourer's
clothes rushed into their midst. Everyone looked up startled, and on
Mrs Wishing's face there was fear as well as surprise when she
recognised the newcomer.
"Why, Dan'l, my man," she exclaimed, "what is it?"
Daniel was out of breath with running. He rubbed his forehead with a
red pocket handkerchief, looked round in a dazed manner at the assembled
group, and at length said hoarsely: "Mrs Greenways bin here?"
"Ah, just gone!" said both the women at once.
"There's trouble up yonder--on the hill," said Daniel, pointing with his
thumb over his shoulder, and speaking in a strange, broken voice.
"Mary White's baby!" exclaimed Mrs Pinhorn.
"Fits!" added Mrs Wishing; "they all went off that way."
"Hang the baby," muttered Daniel. He made his way past the women, who
had pressed up close to him, to where the cobbler and Dimbleby stood.
"I've fetched the doctor," he said, "and she wants the Greenways to know
it; I thought maybe she'd be here."
"What is it? Who's ill?" asked the cobbler.
"Tain't anyone that's ill," answered Daniel; "he's stone dead. They
shot him right through the heart."
"Who? Who?" cried all the voices together.
"I found him," continued Daniel, "up in the woods; partly covered up
with leaves he was. Smiling peaceful and stone dead. He was always a
brave feller and done his dooty, did James White on the hill. But he
won't never do it no more."
"Poachers!" exclaimed Dimbleby in a horror-struck voice.
"Poachers it was, sure enough," said Daniel; "an' he's stone dead, James
White is. They shot him right through the heart. Seems a pity such a
brave chap should die like that."
"An' him such a good husband!" said Mrs Wishing. "An' the baby an' all
as we was just talking on," said Mrs Pinhorn; "well, it's a fatherless
child now, anyway."
"The family ought to allow the widder a pension," said Mr Dimbleby,
"seeing as James White died in their service, so to speak."
"They couldn't do no less," agreed the cobbler.
The idea of fetching Mrs Greenways seemed to have left Daniel's mind
for the present: he had now taken a chair, and was engaged in answering
the questions with which he was plied on all sides, and in trying to fix
the exact hour when he had found poor James White in the woods. "As it
might be here, and me standing as it might be there," he said,
illustrating his words with the different parcels on the counter before
him. It was not until all this was thoroughly understood, and every
imaginable expression of pity and surprise had been uttered, that Mrs
Pinhorn remembered that the "Greenways ought to know. And I don't see
why," she added, seizing her basket with sudden energy, "I shouldn't
take her up myself; I'm goin' that way, and she's a slow traveller."
"An' then Dan'l can go straight up home with me," said Mrs Wishing,
"and we can drop in as we pass an' see Mrs White, poor soul. She
hadn't ought to be alone."
Before nightfall everyone knew the sad tidings. James White had been
shot by poachers, and Daniel Wishing had found him lying dead in the
woods.
As the days went on, the excitement which stirred the whole village
increased rather than lessened, for not even the oldest inhabitant could
remember such a tragical event. Apart from the sadness of it, and the
desolate condition of the widow, poor Jem's many virtues made it
impressive and lamentable. Everyone had something to say in his praise,
no one remembered anything but good about him; he was a brave chap, and
one of the right sort, said the men, when they talked of it in the
public-house; he was a good husband, said the women, steady and sober,
fond of his wife, a pattern to others. They shook their heads and
sighed mournfully; it was strange as well as pitiful that Jem White
should a been took. "There might a been _some_ as we could mention as
wouldn't a been so much missed."
Then came the funeral; the bunch of white lilac, still fresh, which he
had brought from Cuddingham, was put on Jem's newly-made grave, and his
widow, passing silently through the people gathered in the churchyard,
toiled patiently back to her lonely home.
They watched the solitary figure as it showed black against the steep
chalky road in the distance.
"Yon's an afflicted woman," said one, "for all she carries herself so
high under it."
"She's the only widder among all the Whites hereabouts," remarked Mrs
Pinhorn. "We needn't call her `Mrs White on the hill' no longer, poor
soul."
"It's a mercy she's got the child," said another neighbour, "if the Lord
spares it to her."
"The christening's to be on Sunday," added a third. "I do wonder if
she'll call it that outlandish name _now_."
There was not much time to wonder, for Sunday soon came, and the Widow
White, as she was to be called henceforth, was at the church, stern,
sad, and calm, with her child in her arms. It was an April morning,
breezy and soft; the uncertain sunshine darted hither and thither, now
touching the newly turned earth of Jem's grave, and now peering through
the church window to rest on the tiny face of his little daughter in the
rector's arms at the font. All the village had come to see, for this
christening was felt to be one of more than common interest, and while
the service went on there was not one inattentive ear.
Foremost stood Mrs Greenways, her white handkerchief displayed for
immediate use, and the expression in her face struggling between real
compassion and an eager desire to lose nothing that was passing;
presently she craned her neck forward a little, for an important point
was reached--
"Name this child," said the rector.
There was such deep silence in the church that the lowest whisper would
have been audible, and Mrs Leigh's voice was heard distinctly in the
farthest corner, when she answered "Lilac."
------------------------------------------------------------------------
"Not that it matters," said Mrs Greenways on her way home afterwards,
"what they call the poor little thing--Lilac White, or White Lilac, or
what you will, for she'll never rear it, never. It'll follow its father
before we're any of us much older. You mark my words, Greenways: I'm
not the woman to discourage Mary White by naming it to her now she's so
deep in trouble, but you mark my words, she'll _never_ rear that child."