“And does your mother keep a nursery?”
“I ain’t got any mother now. I took the babies ’cause I liked them.”
“But where do you live?”
“With my brother an’ – an’ the boys. I keep house.”
How unchildishly reticent she seemed. And most of the children were ready to tell everything.
The little household was called in for their evening singing.
XIV – VIRGINIA DEERING
Wednesday’s visitor was a tall, slim girl with an abundance of soft, light hair, that fell in loose waves and dainty little curls. Her gown was so pretty, a sort of grayish-blue china silk with clusters of flowers scattered here and there. Her wide-brimmed, gray chip hat was just a garden of crushed roses, that looked as if they might shake off.
There was a charm about her, for the children who had seen her the week before ran to her with joyful exclamations. They kissed her white hands, they caught hold of her gown, and presently she dropped on the grass and they all huddled about her. She told them a story, very amusing it must have been, they laughed so. Sadie Carr, the little deformed girl, seemed to lay instant claim to her.
Dil had a strange, homesick yearning to-day. She longed so to see the boys. Her eyes overflowed with tears as she thought of them and their warm, vital love. She seemed almost to have lost Bess. Could she see her again at Cent’l Park she wondered? She would ask Patsey to take her there as soon as she went home.
A great hay wagon had come and taken a load of the children down to the meadows. Three were in disgrace for being naughty, and had to spend an hour sitting on the stoop. Some were reading. The German girl was crocheting.
Dil sat out under the old branching apple-tree, whose hard red apples would be delightful along in the autumn. She was counting up the days. To-night they would be half gone. Would they let her go on Saturday she wondered? She looked at her poor little hands – they hadn’t grown any fat.
“Who is that little girl? and why does she keep apart from the others?” asked Miss Deering.
“I don’t know. She seems strange and hard to get on with. But she looks so weakly that even sitting still may do her good. Go and see what you can make of her, Miss Virginia.”
Miss Deering had several roses in her hand. She sauntered slowly down to Dil, and dropped the roses in her lap on the thin white hands.
“Oh, thank you!” Dil exclaimed gravely. She did not pick them up with the enthusiasm Miss Deering expected.
“Don’t you care for flowers?” Miss Deering seated herself beside the quiet child, and studied the face turned a little from her.
“Yes, I like thim so much,” glancing at them with a curiously absent air. Her manner was so formal and old-fashioned, and she roused a sense of elusiveness that puzzled the young lady.
“I think I must have seen you before. I can’t just remember – ”
Dil raised her soft brown eyes, lustrous still with the tears of longing that were in them a moment ago. The short curved upper lip, the tumbled hair, the gravely wondering expression – how curiously familiar it seemed.
“I hope you are happy here?” she said gently.
“I like it better home,” Dil returned, but with no emphasis of ungraciousness. “I’m used to the boys, ’n’ they’re so good to me. But they wanted me to come an’ get well. I wasn’t reel sick only – Patsey don’t like me to look like a skiliton, he says. Everybody here’s so nice.”
“And who is Patsey – your brother?”
She seemed to study Virginia Deering in her turn. It was a proud face, yet soft and tender, friendly. It touched the reticent little soul.
“No; Owen’s my brother. There’s some more boys, an’ we keep house. Patsey is – Patsey’s alwers been good to me an’ Bess.”
There was a touching inflection in her tone.
“Who is Bess?” with a persuasive entreaty that found its way to the lonely heart.
“Bess is – Bess was” – The voice trembled and died out. Virginia Deering slipped her arm about the small figure with a sympathetic nearness. Dil made another effort.
“Bess was my poor little hurted sister. I didn’t ever have no other one.”
“Don’t you want to tell me about her? I should so like to hear. How did she get hurt?”
Virginia Deering had of late been taking lessons in divine as well as human sympathy. She was willing to begin at the foundation with the least of these.
Dil looked across the sunny field to the shaded, waving woods. There had never been any one to whom she could tell all of Bess’s story. Mrs. Brian, tender and kindly, had not understood. A helpless feeling came over her.
“I wonder if she loved roses? Did she ever have any?” Miss Deering laid her finger on those in Dil’s hand, then felt under and clasped the hand itself.
Dil was suddenly roused. The grave face seemed transfigured. Where had she seen it – under far different auspices?
“She had some wild roses wunst. Oh, do you know what wild roses is? I looked in the woods for some yest’day.”
Wild roses! She had set herself to bear her lot, bruised and wrecked in an evil moment, with all the bravery of true repentance.
“Yes,” in a soft, constrained tone. “I have always loved them. And last summer where I was staying there were hundreds of them.”
“Oh,” cried Dil eagerly, “that was jest what he said. It was clear away to las’ summer. Patsey was up to Grand Cent’l deepo’. He carried bags an’ such. An’ a beautiful young lady gev him a great bunch. Casey made a grab fer thim, but Patsey snatched, an’ he’s strongest, ’n’ he gev it to Casey good till a cop come, ’n’ then he run all the way to Barker’s Court an’ brought thim to Bess an’ me.”
“A great bunch of wild roses! Oh, then I know something about Patsey. It was one day in August. And – and I had the roses.”
Dil’s face was a rare study. Virginia Deering bent over and kissed it. Then the ice of strangeness was broken, and they were friends.
This was Patsey’s “stunner.” She was very sweet and lovely, with pink cheeks, and teeth like pearls. Dil looked into the large, serious eyes, and her heart warmed until she gave a soft, glad, trusting laugh.
“Patsey’ll be so glad to have me find you! They were the beautifullest things, withered up some, but so sweet. Me an’ Bess hadn’t never seen any; an’ I put them in a bowl of water, an’ all the baby buds come out, an’ they made Bess so glad she could a-danced if she’d been well, ’cause she used to ’fore she was hurted, when the hand-organs come. They was on the winder-sill by where she slept, an’ every day we’d take out the poor dead ones. ’N’ there was jes’ a few Sat’day when we went up to the Square an’ met the man. ’N’ I allers had to wheel Bess, ’cause she couldn’t walk.”
“What hurt her?”
“Well – pappy did. He was dreadful that night along a-drinkin’, an’ he slammed her against the wall, an’ her poor little hurted legs never grew any more. An’ the man said jes’ the same as you, – that he’d been stayin’ where there was hundreds of thim, an’ he made the beautifullest picture of Bess – she was pritty as an angel.”
Miss Deering’s eyes fell on the little trail of freckles across Dil’s nose. They were very small, but quite distinct on the waxen, pale skin.
“And he painted a picture of you! He put you in that wild-rose dell. I know now. I thought I must have seen your face.”
Dil looked almost stupidly amazed.
“Bess was so much prittier,” she said simply. “Do you know ’bout him? He went away ever so far, crost the ’Lantic Oshun. But he said he’d come back in the spring.”
She lifted her grave, perplexed eyes to a face whose wavering tints were struggling with keen emotion.
“He couldn’t come back in the spring. He went abroad with a cousin who loved him very much, who was ill, and hoped to get well; but he grew worse and weaker, and died only a little while ago. And Mr. Travis came in on Monday, I think.”
Her voice trembled a little.
“Oh, I knew he would come!” The glad cry was electrifying.
And she, this little being, one among the waifs of a big city, had looked for him, had a right to look for him.
“He ain’t the kind to tell what he don’t mean. Bess was so sure. An’ I want to ast him so many things I can’t get straight by myself. I ain’t smart like Bess was, an’ we was goin’ to heaven when he come back; he said he’d go with us. An’ now Bess is dead.”
“My dear little girl,” Virginia held her close, and kissed the cool, waxen cheek, the pale lips, “will you tell me all the story, and about going to heaven?”
It was an easy confidence now. She told the plans so simply, with that wonderful directness one rarely finds outside of Bible narratives. Her own share in the small series of tragedies was related with no consciousness that it had been heroic. Virginia could see the Square on the Saturday afternoon, and Bess in her wagon, when she “ast Mr. Travis to go to heaven with them.” And the other time – the singing. Ah, she well knew the beauty and pathos of the voice. How they had hoped and planned – and that last sad night, with its remembrance of wild roses. Dil’s voice broke now and then, and she made little heart-touching pauses; but Virginia was crying softly, moved from the depths of her soul. And Dil’s wonderful faith that she could have brought Bess back to life bordered on the sublime.
“Oh, my dear,” and Virginia’s voice trembled with tenderness, “you need never doubt. Bess is in heaven.”
“No,” returned Dil, with a curious certainty in her tone, “she ain’t quite gone, ’cause I’ve seen her. We all went up to Cent’l Park, Sunday week ago. I was all alone, the boys goin’ off walkin’, an’ me bein’ tired. I wanted her so much, I called to her; an’ she come, all beautiful an’ well, like his picture of her. I c’n talk to her, but she can’t answer. There’s a little ketch in it I can’t get straight, not bein’ smart like to understand. But she’s jes’ waitin’ somewheres, ’n’ he kin tell me how it is. You see, Bess wouldn’t go to heaven ’thout me, an’ he would know just where she is. For she couldn’t get crost the river ’n’ up the pallis steps ’les I had hold of her hand. For she never had any one to love her so, ’n’ she wouldn’t go back on me for a whole world.”
Miss Deering could readily believe that. But, oh, what should she say to this wonderful faith? Had it puzzled John Travis as well?
“And who sent you here?” she asked, to break the tense strain.
Dil told of the fainting spell, and Mrs. Wilson and Miss Lawrence, who had been so good.
“But now he’s come, you see, I must get well an’ go down. He’ll be there waitin’. I’d like to stay with the boys, but somethin’ draws me to Bess. I feel most tore in two. An’ ther’s a chokin’ in my throat, an’ my head goes round, an’ I can’t hardly wait, I want to see her so. When I tell Patsey and Owny all about it, I’m most sure they’ll want me to go, for they know how I loved Bess. An’ when he comes, he’ll know what’s jes’ right.”
They were silent a long while. The bees crooned about, now and then a bird lilted in the gladness of his heart. Virginia Deering was asking herself if she had ever loved like this, and what she had suffered patiently for her love. For her self-will and self-love there had been many a pang. But she let her soul go down now to the divinest humiliation. Whatever he did henceforth, even to the dealing out of sorest punishment, must be right evermore in her eyes.
The children were coming back from their ride, joyous, noisy, exuberant; their eyes sparkling, their cheeks beginning to color a little with the vivifying air and pleasurable excitement. Dil glanced at them with a soft little smile.
“I think they want you,” she said. “They like you so. An’ I like you too, but I’ve had you all this time.”
“You are a generous little girl.” Virginia was struck by the simple self-abnegation. “I will come back again presently.”
She did not let the noisy group miss anything in her demeanor. And yet she was thinking of that summer day, and the poor roses she had taken so unwillingly. How she had shrunk from them all through the journey! How she had tossed them out, poor things, to be fought over by street arabs. They had come back to her with healing on their wings. And that John Travis should have seen them, and the two little waifs of unkind fortune. Ah, how could she have been so fatally blind and cruel that day among the roses? And all for such a very little thing.
What could she say to this simple, trustful child? If her faith and her beliefs had gone outside of orthodox lines, for lack of the training all people are supposed to get in this Christian land, was there any way in which she could amend it? No, she could not even disturb it. John Travis should gather in the harvest he had planted; for, like Dil, she believed him in sincere earnest. She “almost knew that he meant to set out on the journey to heaven,” if not in the literal way poor, trusting little Dil took it. And she honored him as she never had before.
She came back to Dil for a few moments.
“Don’t you want to hear about the picture?” she asked. “It quite went out of my mind. Mr. Travis exhibited it in London, and a friend bought it and brought it home. I saw it a fortnight ago. So you brought him a great deal of good fortune and money.”
“I’m so glad,” her eyes shone with a soul radiance; “for he gev us some money – it was for Bess, an’ we buyed such lots of things. We had such a splendid time! Five dollars – twicet – an’ Mrs. Bolan, an’ she was so glad ’bout the singin’. But I wisht it had been Bess. He couldn’t make no such beautiful picture out’n me. Bess looked jes’ ’s if she could talk.”
“He put you in that beautiful thicket of roses.” Ah, how well he had remembered it! “I do not think any one would have you changed, but you were not so thin then.”
“No;” Dil gave the soft little laugh so different from the other children. “I was quite a little chunk, mammy alwers said, an’ I don’t mind, only Patsey wants me to get fatter. Mebbe they make people look beautifuller in pictures,” and she gave a serious little sigh.
Then the supper-bell rang. Dil held tightly to the slim hand.
“They’re all so good,” she said earnestly. “But folks is diff’rent. Some come clost to you,” and she made an appealing movement of nearness. “Then they couldn’t understand ’bout me an’ Bess – that she’s jes’ waitin’ somewheres till I kin find out how to go to her, an’ then he’ll tell us which way to start for heaven. I’m so glad you know him.”
Dil tried again to eat, but did not accomplish much. She was brimful of joy. Her eyes shone, and a happy smile kept fluttering about her face, flushing it delicately.
“You have made a new child of her,” said Miss Mary delightedly. “I thought her a dull and unattractive little thing, but such lives as theirs wear out the charms and graces of childhood before they have time to bloom. We used to think the poor had many compensations, and amongst them health, that richer people went envying. Would any mother in comfortable circumstances change her child’s physique for these stunted frames and half-vitalized brains?”
Virginia Deering made some new resolves. It was not enough to merely feed and clothe. She thought of Dilsey Quinn’s love and devotion; of Patsey Muldoon’s brave endeavor to rescue Owen, and keep him from going to the bad, and his generosity in providing a home for Dil, to save her from her brutalized mother. Ah, yes; charity was a grander thing, – a love for humanity.
Dil came to say good-night. Virginia was startled by the unearthly beauty, the heavenly content, in her eyes that transfigured her.
“You breathe too short and fast,” she said. “You are too much excited.”
“I d’n’ know – I think it’s ’cause he’s comin’. ’N’ I’ve waited so, ’n’ now it’s all light ’n’ beautiful, ’n’ I don’t feel worried no more.”
“You must go to sleep and get rested, and – get well.” Yes, she must get well, and have the different kind of life Virginia began to plan for her.
A soft rain set in. There was such a tender patter on the leaves that Dil almost laughed in sympathetic joy. Such delightful fragrance everywhere! For a moment she loathed the city, and it seemed as if she could not go back to the crowded rooms and close air. But only for a little while. John Travis would set her on the road to heaven.
It was curious how bits of the hymn came back to her. She could not have repeated the words consecutively – it was like the strain of remembered melody one follows in one’s brain, and yet cannot give it voice. She seemed actually to see it.
“O’er all those wide extended plains,
Shines one eternal day.”
Eternal day! and no night. Forever to be walking about with Bess, when the Lord Jesus had taken her in his arms and made her like other children. Oh, did Sadie Carr know that in heaven she would be straight and nice and beautiful? She must ask Miss Deering to tell her. Then her heart went out with trembling, yearning tenderness toward her mother. Couldn’t the Lord Jesus do something to keep her from drinking gin and going up to the Island? Was little Dan in a happy home like this, with plenty to eat? – boys were always hungry. She used to be before Bess went away, but it seemed as if she should never be hungry again.
The little girls around her were breathing peacefully. They were still well enough to have a good time when beneficent fortune favored. They had run and played and shouted, and were healthily tired. Dil remembered how sleepy she used to be when she was crooning songs to Bess. But since the day at Central Park it had been so different. The nights were all alight with fancies, and she was being whirled along in an air full of music and sweetness.
Toward morning it stopped raining. Oh, how the birds sang at daylight! She dropped off to sleep then, but presently something startled her. She was back with the boys, and there was breakfast to get. She heard the eager voices, and sprang out of bed, glancing around.
It was only the children chattering as they dressed. Perhaps she looked strange to them, for one little girl uttered a wild cry as Dil slipped down on the floor a soft little heap.
The nurses thought at first that she was dead, it was so long before there was any sign of returning animation, and then it was only to lapse from one faint to another.
“We must have the doctor,” said Miss Mary. “And we will take her to my room. There are three children in the Infirmary, one with a fever.”
The room was not large, but cheerful in aspect. A tree near by shut out the glare of the sunshine, and sifted it through in soft, changeful shadows.
“She looks like death itself. Poor little girl! And Miss Lawrence was so interested in her. Will you mind staying a bit, Miss Virginia? There are so many things for me to do, and the doctor will be in soon.”
Virginia did not mind. She had been keeping a vigil through the night. She had taken a pride in what she called shaping her life on certain noble lines. How poor and small and ease-loving to the point of selfishness they looked now! What could there ever be as simply grand and tender as Dilsey Quinn’s love for her little sister, and her cheerful patience with the evils of a hard and cruel life?
She had been in the wrong, she knew it well. She had waited for him to make an overture; but he had gone without a word, and that had heightened her anger. Then had come a bitter sense of loss, a tender regret deepening into real and fervent sorrow. Out of it had arisen a nobler repentance, and acceptance of the result of her evil moment. She had hoped some time, and in some unlooked-for way, they would meet.
But since she had given the offence, could she not be brave enough to put her fate to the touch and
“Win or lose it all”?
The words that had always seemed so hard to say came readily enough, as she told the story of the human blighted rose that had brought a new faith to her.
Dil seemed to rally before the doctor came. She opened her eyes, and glanced around with the old bright smile.
“It’s all queer an’ strange like,” she said; “but you’m here, an’ it’s all right. Did I faint away? ’Cause my head feels light an’ wavery as it did that Sunday night.”
“Yes, you fainted. But you are better now. And the doctor will give you a tonic to help you get well. We all want you to get well.”
“I ain’t never been sick, ’cept when I was in the hospital, hurted. I only feel tired, for I ain’t got no pain anywhere, an’ I’ll soon get rested. ’Cause I want to go down home an’ see him. If I could go over to the Square on Sat’day. I ’most know he’ll be waitin’ for me.”
Should she tell the poor child? Oh, was she sure John Travis would come? He need not see her. She had not asked for herself.
The kindly, middle-aged doctor looked in upon them at this moment, accompanied by Miss Mary. Dil smiled with such cheerful brightness that it almost gave the contradiction to her pale face. He sat down beside her, counted her pulse, talked pleasantly until she no longer felt strange, but answered his questions, sometimes with a shade of diffidence when they reflected on her mother’s cruelty, but always with a frank sort of innocence. Then he listened to her breathing, heart and lungs, and the spot where the two ribs were broken, “that hadn’t ever felt quite good when you rubbed over it,” she admitted. He held up her hand, and seemed to study its curious transparency.
“So you are only a little tired? Well, you have done enough to tire one out, and now you must have a good long rest. Will you stay here content?” he asked kindly.
“Everybody’s so good!” and her eyes shone with a glad, grateful light. “But I’d like to go by Sat’day. There’s somethin’ – Miss Deerin’ knows” – and an expectant smile parted her lips.
“Well, to-day’s Thursday, and there’s Friday. We’ll see about it. I’d like you to stay in bed and be pretty quiet – not worry – ”
“I ain’t got nothin’ to worry ’bout,” with her soft little laugh. “It’s all come round right, an’ what I wanted to know most of all, I c’n know on Sat’day. I kin look out o’ the winder and see the trees ’n’ the sunshine, an’ hear the birds sing. An’ everybody speaks so sweet an’ soft to you, like ’s if their voices was makin’ music. O no, I don’t mind, only the children’ll want Miss Deerin’, and I want her too.”
“Your want is the most needful. She shall stay with you.”
The brown quartz eyes irradiated with luminous gleams.
“Very well,” he said, with an answering smile.
Miss Deering came out in the hall. He shut the door carefully.
“If she wants anything or anybody, let her have it. Keep her generally quiet, and in bed. Though nothing can hurt her very much. It is too late to help or hinder.”
“O surely you do not mean” – Miss Deering turned white to the very lips.
“She’s as much worn out as a woman of eighty ought to be. If you could look at her, through her, with the eye of science, you would wonder how the machinery keeps going. It is worn to the last thread, and her poor little heart can hardly do its work. Her cheerfulness is in her favor. But some moment all will stop. There will be little suffering; it is old age, the utter lack of vitality. And she’s hardly a dozen years old.”
“She is fifteen – yes, I think she is right, though I could hardly believe it at first.”
“That poor little thing! I hope with all my soul there is a heaven where the lost youth is made up to these wronged little ones. She has been doing a woman’s work on a child’s strength.”
“O can nothing save her?” cried Virginia Deering, with longing desire. “For her life might be so happy. She has found friends – ”
“It all comes too late. If you should ever be tempted to reason away heaven, think of her and hundreds like her, and what else shall make amends? I will be in again this afternoon,” and he turned away abruptly.
He met Miss Mary in the lower hall, and left her amazed at the intelligence. She came up-stairs and found Virginia with her eyes full of tears.
“And I thought last night she looked so improved. It is so sudden, so unexpected.”
“How long?” asked Virginia, with a great tremble in her voice.
“Any time, my dear. A day or two, an hour may be. We must keep it from the children. So many have improved, and no one has died. I can’t believe it.”
“I want to stay with her,” the girl said in a low tone.
“We shall be so grateful to you. You young girls are so good to give up your own pleasures, and help us in our work.”
Virginia went back quietly. Dil’s face was turned toward the window, and she was listening to the children’s voices, as they ran around tumultuously.
“They do be havin’ such a good time,” she said, with a thrill of satisfaction in her tone.
“I wish you were well enough to join them,” Virginia replied softly.
Dil laughed. “I’ve been such a big, big girl this long time,” she returned with a sense of amusement, but no longing in her tone. “I don’t seem to know ’bout playin’ as they do; for mammy had so many babies, an’ Bess was hurted, an’ there wasn’t never no room to play in Barker’s Court, ’count o’ washin’ an’ such. ’Pears like I’d feel strange runnin’ an’ careerin’ round like thim,” and she made a motion with her head. “I’d rather lay here an’ get well. Oh, do you think the doctor’ll let me go on Sat’day?”
“My dear, I have written to Mr. Travis. I think he will be up then.”
“Oh!” Such a joyful light illumined the face, that Virginia had much ado to keep the tears from her own eyes. “You’re so good,” she said softly. “Everybody’s so good.”
“And the children don’t disturb you?”
“Oh, no; I like it. I c’n jest shut my eyes ’n’ see ‘Ring around a rosy.’ Oh,” with a long, long sigh, “Bess would ’a’ liked it so! I’m so sorry she couldn’t come ’n’ see it all, the beautiful flowers ’n’ trees ’n’ the soft grass you c’n tumble on ’n’ turn summersets as they did yest’day. Don’t you s’pose, Miss Deerin’, there’ll be a whole heaven for the children by themselves? For he told me somethin’ ’bout ’many mansions’ the Lord Jesus went to fix for thim all. Ain’t it queer how things come to you?”