Lilies

It was noon. Save for an attendant or two, the flowers had the great building to themselves. Exquisite hothouse “exotics” stared at wholesome “garden blooms” and claimed no kinship, but the perfume mingled without snobbery, and the smell of the flowershow was one smell, immense, magnificent.

Tyler’s lily exhibit occupied the centre of the great hall. Tyler specialized in lilies. Tyler’s Madonna lilies filled the churches at Easter. Potted Madonnas, carefully swathed in transparent wrappings, were exchanged with Easter greetings, or soothed invalids, or decorated graves.

This show, Tyler had outdone himself. In a glorious mass of shining white, the mount of blossoms towered, up, up, into the dazzling light under the great glass dome. So “unearthly lovely” were they that people caught their breath and held it, as if they could not let the delight of their perfume go; while the white purity of the lilies held their tongues silent.

Mr Tyler’s only son Nat was in charge of the exhibit. The hot heavy air sent him dozing. Were those footsteps dream or reality? His own neatly shod feet dropped from the flowerpot. The legs of his chair settled squarely, but he did not open his eyes. Time enough to offer the catalogue when the bombardment of superlatives began.

Silence—then a long-drawn quivering “Oh!”

Nat’s eyes opened. A substantial motherly woman was gazing up at the blooms with shining, worshipful eyes. Beside her stood an undersized girl, wide-mouthed, red-haired, freckled, looking, not at the flowers, but at the woman.

“You do love lilies, Ma!”

“Yes, Janie, there ain’t nothin’ hits me so hard as Madonnas.”

Nat stepped forward with his catalogue.

“No, thanks,” said the girl. “We can’t afford to buy, and Ma likes looking better than print. She’s dreadful fond of lilies.” Her smile was in her mother’s pleasure, not for Nat. She turned to the woman. “Lil’s gone to see the peonies, she don’t care much about her name-flower. Says they make her head ache. Say, Ma, why’d you call her Lily Madonna?”

“She were my first, Janie, and she were so lovely, seemed like it were the best I could do for her.”

“Why didn’t you call me Tiger after the speckled kind?”

“You was Pa’s namin’. He says, ‘She’s Jane.’ ‘For who?’ says I. ‘Aunt o’ mine and a good woman,’ says Pa. So Jane you be.”

Before Nat’s eyes swam the corner of his father’s nursery garden, where a riot of speckled faces, under upcurling crimson petals, sprang up each year, unsown, uncultivated, growing for the sheer joy of life. He did not give the girl a second glance, because Lily Madonna was crossing the hall to join her people. When anyone’s eyes fell on Lily Madonna they stayed there. Tall, slim, gold and white, no wonder Ma had named her so. All the superlatives folk showered on “Tyler’s Madonnas” shrivelled to commonplace before Ma’s Lily Madonna.

“Well, Ma, so you found all the other ‘Me’s’? Whew! how they smell!” Her quick glance took in Nat’s well-set figure, the nice colour of his suit and tie; she did not notice the colour of his eyes, it was only what the eyes told her about herself that interested her. Lily used people as mirrors. Suddenly a pair of small useless hands fluttered out, catching at the end of the stall. “Oh—” she said, and closed her eyes, “oh—the perfume makes me—”

Nat rushed and brought his chair. Faintly smiling, Lily Madonna sank into it.

Jane turned. “Got any water, mister? Or can I tip some out of this vase?”

At the suggestion Lily gasped a little and straightened. “I’m all right now.”

“Course you are. Get up and let Ma have the chair. She’s tired and will want a long spell with her lilies.” She tilted the lovely one out, and planted the seat squarely beneath her mother.

“Huh, old girl,” was Nat’s mute comment, “you sure should have tagged your other girl ‘Tiger’.”

Lily had no further return of faintness during the hour that Ma worshipped and Nat’s pleasant voice poured the contents of the catalogue, from orchids to parsley, into her dainty roseleaf ear.

When at parting he put the catalogue into her hand, his fingers touched her fingers—his eyes met her eyes. That night, and for many nights. Ma Bunday, and Nat Tyler, dreamt of Madonnas, while Lily Madonna dreamed of the things Nat’s eyes had said, and of how she could get another peep into them. Ah!—Ma’s birthday was coming soon; she saw a way in which it could be arranged.

Lily was the only member of the Bunday family who ever had any spending money.

The Bundays lived in a mean little row of workingmen’s houses, hooked together like a line of more or less dirty-faced children climbing Harry Hill hand in hand. The Bundays’ house was a “middle child”, and had a clean face. The late Pa Bunday’s insurance barely covered the rent. Jane baked and washed and mended for the family of the overdriven Mrs Swatt, and received inadequate pay at irregular intervals—when Mr Swatt worked. Lily went every morning to sit beside a wealthy invalid who had servants in plenty but who employed the girl solely for the delight she had in her exquisite beauty. To watch the movement of Lily Madonna’s lips as she read, or her rosy fingers playing hide-and-seek in some fine bit of lace she was mending—the shadow of long lashes on her cheek, the glints of gold in the glory of her hair—these were tonic to the invalid. Lily’s money was easy-earned. On Saturdays she turned it over to Ma, knowing well that Ma’s right hand would receive it, with a “Good girl, Lily Madonna,” and Ma’s left hand would slip back a generous coin for the girl’s own spending. Moreover, Lily’s invalid liked her tonic in attractive wrappings. She delighted in planning and giving her favourite pretty clothes. So Lily tripped up Harry Hill in raiment white and shining as her name-flower, while Jane trudged down to Swatts’ in dark print with an apron of stout unbleached under her arm. Ma, standing on the pavement in front of the door, pressed reverent lips to the brow of her lovely daughter, but gathered Jane in motherly arms and slapped a kiss among the freckles. Together they would watch Lily flittering up the hill and Ma would say, “How’d anything so marvellous beautiful come to me. Jane, when Pa and me and you be so ordinary-faced?”

And Jane would reply, “Dunno, Ma. Maybe she broke loose from Heaven, or maybe your naming her after the lilies had something to do with it.” Then Ma would say, “You’re powerful comfortin’, Janie,” and little freckle-faced Jane would run down the hill with her wide mouth wider, and Ma would mount the three steps, pass through the parlour, drop another step into the kitchen, and two more into the garden, where her stunted cabbages and onions sat in melancholy rows.

“Hearten, me dears,” she would say to them, “it’s a grand slop o’ suds I’ll be givin’ ye come washday.” But neither dishwater nor wash suds could cheer vegetables and flowers starving in the impoverished soil that generations of cabbages and onions before them had depleted. For tenants do not fertilize other folk’s ground, or perhaps, like Mrs Bunday, were too poor to do so.

The Bundays’ house consisted of a parlour and a kitchen, with a steep, black little stair squeezing in between, which led to an attic bedroom. When Ma breasted the stair squarely, her right arm touched one wall, her left arm the other, and the pinched steps squeaked under each footfall. Mrs Bunday and Lily shared the big bed in the attic room. Jane had a cot in the corner. When, like today, it was hot, the attic was very hot.

Jane had done a big washing. She was sprawled on her bed resting. “What’s up?” she exclaimed, as she saw Lily slip out of a dainty dress and lay a daintier one on the bed ready for use.

Lily Madonna took out the pins and shook hair like sunshine over her face and shoulders. “Brush it for me, Janie,” she coaxed, “and I’ll tell you.”

When the long strokes were sweeping through the glory of Lily’s hair, Jane said, “Well?”

“I’m going up to Tyler’s nursery and get some Madonna bulbs for Ma’s birthday.”

Jane stopped brushing. “Oh, Lil! How splendid! How perfectly splen—” She choked a little because Mr Swatt had not been working. She had no present for Ma.

“I suppose you couldn’t—lend? I’ll pay back as soon as Mr Swatt gets his job.”

“Sorry, Jane. Bulbs, show, cake will take all there is.” Lily put on her shiniest and went out.

Jane wanted to cry: sniffed twice, jumped up, got Lily’s catalogue and read: “ ‘Madonnas . . . greedy feeders . . . require rich ground . . . plenty manure.’ Poor Ma. Oh poor, poor Ma! It would almost be better if she did not have them.”

“Janie! Run up to Dyatt’s farm and get the eggs, will ye?” Seemed like the little stair loved to do something for Ma. If it couldn’t squeak under her foot it echoed her voice softly.

“I’ll go. Ma,” was Jane’s quick response. As she climbed Harry Hill she said, over and over, “Greedy feeders—rich soil—manure.”

Mr Dyatt was in his lower field, and he was spreading manure.

“Good day, Mr Dyatt. How is Mrs Dyatt?”

“Porely, Jane, very porely. Seems she don’t hearten none between washdays.”

Jane looked out across the rich field. The light in her brown eyes was mellow as the sun on the soil. “Mr Dyatt, how many washes do you reckon would pay for a load of manure?”

“A load of manure? Nobody hereabouts buys manure. Folks takes and takes and takes the very vitals from the soil, but they don’t put nothin’ back, they just moves on.”

“I’ll do Mrs Dyatt three washings for a load. That will give her a chance to hearten a bit.”

Having clinched her bargain, Jane came singing down the hill with the egg-basket on her arm and overtook a radiant Lily. Old Tyler had appreciated Nat’s telling of the woman who called her beautiful child for the lilies that were the pride of his heart. That and Lily’s face won for her a grand bulb bargain, and Nat had shown her over the greenhouses and the gardens. When she paused for breath in the recital of her doings, Jane said:

“I got a present for Ma too.”

“Where’d you get the money? What is it?”

“Didn’t get money, traded washings. It’s bigger and use-fuller and smellier than your present. You’ll see when it comes.”

Ma’s birthday was one grand day. Mrs Bunday held the little bulbs between her palms. “Oh, Lily Madonna! I never thought as how I’d ever have any of my very own in this world. I thought Madonna lilies was only for the rich. Oh to sum all the power, and growth, and beauty, and smell, tied up in the wee things!” She laid her cheek down against the little white bulbs, realizing them into maturity and blossom. “Oh deary me, oh deary, deary me, if our soil was only a mite richer for the poor dears!”

Jane jumped up. “I’ll be back from Dyatt’s washtubs at noon, Ma. My present will be coming then. Here’s on account,” and she gave Ma a kiss for each of her years.

They had hardly finished their noon dinner of pork and the least emaciated of Ma’s cabbages when Jane jumped up, exclaiming, “I can hear your present coming, Ma!” Dyatt’s wagon rumbled up. Dyatt removed a bar, and Jane’s hard-earned gift tumbled over the pavement.

“My lilies! My lilies! Oh, what a dear thought, Janie! An’ the pore cabbages an’ the onions too! It’s beautiful to think of what my garden will be!” Tears stood in Ma’s eyes.

“I call it utterly filthy and disgusting!” cried Lily, behind her handkerchief. “An insult to the street! It shames and disgusts and sickens me!”

“No, no, Lily,” said Ma gently. “It be the very wholesomeness of the beauty—it be for nourishin’.” Suddenly Ma’s jaw dropped. “But—but, Janie—how ever’s it to be toted back, when there ain’t no through way?”

“All fixed with the fairies, Ma,” laughed Jane, her nose mocking Lily’s offended one. “You toddle off to the show with Ma, Lil. Your smeller, your eye, and your help aren’t needed here.”

Alone, Jane wasted no time. Ma’s presents had a date in the back yard. There was only one way. Decked out in her worst, with Pa’s old whitewash-spattered hat jammed down over her red hair, and armed with two buckets and a shovel, Jane attacked.

“Luck that the back door is smack opposite the front,” she commented as she paved the direct route with newspaper.

Soon her young body was swaying to the rhythm. “Four shovels—lift—mount three—pace eight. Drop one—pace six—drop two—dump!” Over and over the process repeated itself. The pile sank slowly. The girl’s arms ached.

“Does Miss Lily Bunday live here?” Nat addressed Pa’s hat, bobbing behind the manure pile.

“One, two, three, four. She does, and she’s out. One, two, three, four.” The buckets lifted.

Nat held a dainty scarf out, tenderly, as if the precious thing were breakable. “She left this at the nursery.”

“She would. Just chuck it inside, will you? I’m pressed.” Without pause Jane paced the newspaper path, dumped, returned, set her buckets down with a clank, pushed Pa’s hat back, and ran her fingers through her damp red hair. “Whew!” She straightened her tired back. Suddenly her eyes popped. On Ma’s work-table lay a dainty florist’s parcel, and the smell of lilies wrestled with the smell of manure.

“Oh,” she said. “For Ma? Oh, oh, won’t she just—!”

“My father sent them,” stammered Nat. “Miss Lily said it was your mother’s birthday, and I saw at the show how she loved lilies.”

“What a birthday—bulbs, and manure, and now these!” Her freckled hands halted in the middle of a clap. “What you doing?”

Nat had taken off his coat and was rolling up his sleeves. He grinned down at her. “Got another shovel, and some more pails?”

“Oh, no, please dress up again, Mr Tyler, I really couldn’t let you—it’s my job. My present to Ma.”

Nat’s determination could not be shifted. So Jane insisted on Pa’s overalls, and without further argument they fell to work, wasting no time on chatter. Soon Nat had fallen into the swing of “four shovels—lift—mount three—pace eight—drop one—pace six—drop two—dump”.

When the rich odoriferous pile was in the back, and Jane was folding the papers and Nat brooming the pavement, and the bobbing hats of Ma and Lily had just come in sight, Jane smiled up into Nat’s face. “I’d never have got through till Christmas, without your help.” Flushed and smiling, she looked almost pretty. Then Lily came, and was wholly beautiful. “How could Jane let you?” she said, but her eyes added, “I am glad she kept you for me.”

Then followed tea and birthday cake, and laughter, and lovemaking. The glowing loveliness of Lily Madonna. Nat’s lilies filling the house with delicious sweetness. And Ma, the birthday queen, sitting before them, yet not there at all, but out, out in the lily world, carried there by their purity and shine. Perhaps something in the emptiness of Pa’s overalls, hanging on the kitchen wall, made Nat say, “I’m coming to dig the manure in for you—Ma,” and blush, and say, “Good night, Mrs Bunday,” and blush again, happily, when strong motherly hands fell on his shoulders, and Ma said, “Thank you, Nat. Good night, my boy.”

Old Tyler, sitting up for the boy he both fathered and mothered, saw that in Nat’s eyes which made the face of Lily Madonna play hide-and-seek among the blooms in his greenhouses all night.

When the moonbeams back on Harry Hill lay still and white across the eyelids of Lily Madonna, Ma crept down the squeaky stair. In the quiet dark of the room below, the lilies were a vague blur. Ma drew a deep breath, lifted the best vase, and carried the flowers upstairs. “Sleepin’ noses don’t smell, Janie,” she whispered as she passed the cot.

“I’m glad you brought them, Ma. Good night.”

The grey head bent close to the red one. “The boy’s clean gone on our Lily, Jane. Would any young man shovel manure his half-day, just to get a glint of a girl, if he wasn’t deep in?”

“No, Ma.” Oh, kind moon that did not poke into the corner and show Jane’s face.

Nat was budder and grafter for his father. This year the budding was not as successful as usual. Often Mr Tyler surprised Lily seated on a box close to Nat in the long cool nursery rows.

Old Tyler shook his head. “The girl’s too ornamental and the boy’s too young,” said he, and shipped Nat off to Agricultural College. He called on Mrs Bunday. “A year apart won’t do that young pair no harm, marm. It’ll show them where they’re at. Ho-hum, tadpoles will turn into frogs. It’s lonesome without the boy, and—drat it!—there’s the budding. Why can’t tadpoles stay tadpoles? Pest ’em!”

Next day a freckled little person stood in Tyler’s nursery, and, looking Mr Tyler straight in eyes that till this moment had been unaware of her existence, said, “Mr Tyler, do you think that I could learn to bud? Ma says I’m tolerable tidy-fingered.”

“Then I believe you could,” returned the old man, and he enjoyed teaching Jane, she was so quick and deft. Before long she was employed at the nursery earning a good wage.

“I’d sooner you did not tell Nat,” she said to Lily, who wrote every Sunday, covering the sheet slowly, and looking here and there as if trying to scare up news. Mr Tyler for reasons of his own did not tell Nat either about his new budder.

The year slipped quietly by. Lily’s invalid was growing weaker, more irritable; Lily’s money was not so easily earned now, and she was required most afternoons now as well as the mornings, to amuse and soothe her employer. Some Sundays she complained of being tired and did not write. Ma saw the look of hungry indignation on Jane’s face the first time Nat’s letter lay unopened for two days.

Ma’s figure folded and unfolded like a huge accordion, as she bent and straightened over her garden. In a little round bed all to themselves, the lilies were blooming. Mr Tyler had been to see them and pronounced them fine as his own. The cabbages were firm and round, the pumpkins plumping, the third crop of radishes trying to keep their blushes underground and not succeeding. Roots, bulbs, and cuttings found their way to Ma’s garden through the kindness of Mr Tyler.

“Give up, Ma, let the weeds and cutworms have a mite of a rest,” called Jane. “Come away, I’ve made you a cup of tea.” Jane had a half-day. Lily was with her invalid. The parlour was quiet and cool. Ma sank into her chair prepared to enjoy her rest and her tea.

Suddenly a whirl of white in the sunshine of the open door. “Oh, Ma! Oh, Jane! I’m married!” Lily burst into the little parlour, and, with a frightened cry, hurled herself into her mother’s arms in a passion of wild hysterical weeping.

A swift look of hurt swept across Ma’s face, even as her tears fell and her hands patted her lovely one. Her child, who had never been known to distort her face by crying.

Smash went the tray of china, and the tea Jane was setting before her mother. Nat’s unopened letter lay on top of the family Bible. Jane longed to snatch it to her bosom. Instead, she seized the broom from the kitchen door and swept the food and the china and herself in a broken jumble down into the kitchen, and shut the door. The coal-scuttle was nearest; she sat down upon the coal and rocked herself to and fro. Lily married! Nat coming tomorrow! Poor, poor Nat. “Jane, Jane,” she cried. “Of course you’re sorry for Nat. Nat that loves Lily so. He’ll never come here again. He’ll never want to see the beastly Bundays again.” Then she jumped up from the scuttle, her spine taut. She shook the stinging salt tears from her face. “Maybe it’s Nat Lil has married!” she gasped. “Lil said he was coming the end of the week and this is Friday. I must know! I must!”

She stuck her head under the tap. The roller screeched as she tugged the towel down and buried her face in the coarse crash. Bursting open the parlour door—“Lily!” she demanded. “Who did you marry?”

Lily did not look married at all, lying there in Ma’s lap like a baby. She and Ma were both smiling.

“Janie, Janie! I forgot!” Lily sprang out of Ma’s arms and ran to the Bible. From on top, and beneath, and between the leaves, she took Nat’s unopened letters. “They’re yours, Jane, all yours. Nat sent them that way to help me keep the secret. I dassn’t tell, because of her being so sick, and wanting her folks to think I was safe because I was engaged to Nat. Nat and I never were loves, Jane. It was only my face and those pesky flowers got in the way, just at first. Everything I wrote him was about you, only I did not tell about the budding because you said not to.” Lily stopped for breath, and Ma took up the story.

“You see, Lily’s invalid ain’t got long, Jane, an’ nobody dassn’t vex her. Them gawpin’ relatives was snoopin’ round tryin’ to fix a match between her son and his cousin. An’ all the while he an’ our Lily was lovin’ these many months. Which his ma let her tell Nat, on the swear of ’em both it wasn’t to go no further. Today the sick woman asks for parson, and the relatives, thinkin’ the pore soul’s dyin’, snivels proper. And in comes Lily in her prettiest, and there’s Joe an’ the ring poppin’ out of his pocket, an’ it’s done.” Ma caught her breath, and on a quick gasp, with a beam that signified this was the crux of matrimony, she added, “They love true, Janie. An’—an’ everybody’s free—free for lovin’.”

With her letters clutched tight to her breast, like a humming-bird on the wing, Jane swooped and delivered a kiss on Ma’s cheek and one on Lily’s, then darted up to the attic on a wide golden stair of joy.

“Goodness!” exclaimed Lily Madonna. “Am I me, or a lily, or a crocus, or—or Mrs Joseph Haldean? And here is Joe, so I must be her.” And she began to preen and straighten like a wonderful bird.

Mr Tyler read the births, deaths, and marriages; folded the paper and groaned between every gulp of coffee. “Poor boy! Poor boy! But better he should know the cream wa’n’t solid right through than pine off later on skim. If only he had chose the one with the heart, now, instead of the one with the face! Well, we’ll see. Step soft, Dad Tyler; hearts is touch an’ go.”

The old man’s meditations were shattered by a shouting and stamping, and a hilarious Nat burst in. “Hello, Dad! No, don’t bother draping your napkin over the paper, I read it on the train. Any coffee left?” He drank it steaming hot, holding the cup high, and crying, “Good luck to the bride!”

“How are the show blooms, Dad? Madonnas shaping well?”

“Right enough. I’m not specializing in Madonnas this year, Nat.”

“Not specializing in Madonnas! But—Dad—everyone looks for ‘Tyler’s Madonnas’.”

“Everyone will stare at ‘Tyler’s Tigers’ this year instead, Nat. Drat it, I’m sick of them greedy saints, wantin’ this and wantin’ that. Look what half the fussin’s done for Tigers, lad.” He led the way to the greenhouses.

Nat drew a deep, sharp breath when he saw the riot of joyous speckled faces, their crimson caps jauntily tilted—vigorous—sturdy—rich—sprightly-leafed—exultant! He strode down between the gay rows and threw open the door of the Madonna house. After the crude earthy smell of the Tigers, the sickly fragrance of the Madonnas was overpowering. There the Madonnas stood in their pale glistening purity—aloof.

Dad Tyler, watching Nat narrowly, saw his eyes pass from Tigers to Madonnas, from Madonnas to Tigers. “Pretty subtle for a boy of my years,” chuckled the old man.

Reverently, Nat closed the door of the Madonna house, and turned to his father. “It was wonderful of you to understand, Dad. I—I was afraid you had sort of built the face of Lily Madonna in here among your show blooms and would despise me for a turncoat. It—it always was ‘Tiger’, Dad, but it took a Madonna to show me. Do you mind if I run up to—to Harry Hill now?”

“Trot along, Nat. On the way, just drop through the budding rows, will you, and tell that jim-dandy budder of mine she can have the day off.”

“O.K., Dad.”

“He-he,” chuckled Dad Tyler, “I done that dainty,” and stomped through the lily houses to give orders regarding the cleaning out of a certain little cottage on the far side.

Pausing where Nat had stood, Tyler shook an admonitory finger towards his beloved blossoms. “Listen, you lilies!” he said. “This is a top-notch-year-at-Tyler’s, and we’re a-goin’ to bust the record of all the lilies Tyler ever growed.”