Amanda Douglas - In Wild Rose Time

He knew he was paltering with a miserable subterfuge; but, oh! what could he say? Surely, ere violets bloomed again and buttercups were golden, Bess would have solved the great mystery. Ah, to think of her as well and rejoicing in heaven! It moved all one’s heart in gratitude.

Both children looked pitifully disappointed. Bess was first to recover. The tears shone in her eyes as she said, —

“Well, le’s wait. My clo’es is most worn out, an’ the cold pinches me up so, Dil, you know. An’ it’ll be nice to find how Christiana went. How’ll we get the book?”

“I will bring it to you,” he promised.

“An’ will there be wild roses in heaven?” Bess fingered the poor faded buds as if her conscience suddenly smote her.

“All beautiful things; and they will not wither in that divine air.”

She pressed them against her cheek with a touch so tender he could have blessed her for it. And there came the other vision of the soft white fingers that had torn them so ruthlessly in her anger; of the hot, passionate words! Would she forgive if he went to her, or would she tread his olive branch in the dust?

“Tell me something about yourselves;” and he roused from his dream abruptly. “Where is your father?”

“’Twas him that hurted Bess’s legs, an’ he got jugged for it. He beat mammy dreadful – he uster when he had the drink in him. An’ now mammy’s goin’ the same way. That’s why I’d like to take Bess somewhere – ”

“Are there just you two?”

“There’s Owen an’ Dan. They’re little chaps, but they’d get along. Boys soon get big enough to strike back. An’ some one else ’ud have to look out for the babies.”

“Babies! How many?” in amaze.

“I keep thim when their mothers go to work. Sometimes they’re cross, and it’s dreadful for poor Bess.”

“And your mother allows you to do that?”

“She’s got ter!” cried Bess, her smouldering indignation breaking out. “An’ keep the house. An’ when there’s only two or three mother swears she’ll send Dil to the shop to work. So we’d rather have thim, for it would be dreadful for me to be without Dil, don’t you see?”

Yes, he saw, and his heart ached. He had a vague idea of some of the comfortable homes, but to be without Dil! “Did his mother and sisters ever meet with any such lives, and such tender devotion?” he wondered. It was enough to break one’s heart. It almost broke his to think he could not rescue them. The picturesque aspects of poverty had appealed to him in the street-gamins and ragged old men who besieged him for “tin cints fer a night’s lodgin’,” that he knew would be spent for whiskey in the nearest saloon; but of the actual lives of the very poor he had but the vaguest idea.

“And your mother?” he ventured, dreading the reply.

“She goes out washin’. ’Tisn’t so very bad, you see,” returned Dil, with a certain something akin to pride. “Beggin’s worse.”

He had finished the sketches, – there were several of them, – and he began to gather up his pencils.

“Now that the work is done, we must have a picnic,” he said cheerfully. “I’ll find a fruit-stand somewhere. Keep right here until I return.”

The children gazed at each other in a sort of speechless wonder. There were no words to express the strange joy that filled each heart. Their eyes followed him in and out, and even when he was lost to sight their faith remained perfect. Then they looked at each other, still in amazement.

“It’s better’n Cunny Island,” said Bess. “I’ve wisht we could go sometime when mother’s startin’ out. But if she’d been good an’ tooken us, we wouldn’t a’ seen him . But I’m kinder sorry not to start right away, after all. Only there’s the cold, an’ I ain’t got no clo’es. Mebbe he knows best. An’ he’s so nice.”

“It’s curis,” Dil said after a long pause. “I wisht I could read quick an’ had some learnin’. There’s so many things to know. There’s so many people in the world, an’ some of thim have such nice things, an’ can go to places – ”

“Their folks don’t drink rum, mebbe,” returned the little one sententiously.

“I don’t s’pose you can get out of it ’cept by goin’ to heaven. But then, why – mebbe the others what’s havin’ good times don’t care to go. Mebbe he won’t,” drearily.

He soon returned with a bag of fruit. Such pears, such peaches, and bananas! And when he took out his silver fruit-knife, pared them, and made little plates out of paper, their wonder was beyond any words.

Dil eyed hers askance. She was so used to saving the best.

“Oh, do eat it,” cried Bess. “You never tasted anything like it! O mister, please tell her to. She’s alwers keepin’ things for me.”

“There will be plenty for you to take home. I must find you some flowers too. And this evening I am going to start on a journey – to be away several weeks. I’m sorry to lose sight of you, and I want to know how to find Barker’s Court. When I come back – would your mother mind your posing for me, do you think?”

“Posing?” Dil looked frightened.

“Just what you did this afternoon. Being put in a picture.”

It had suddenly come into his mind that he could lighten Dil’s burthen that way. He wanted to keep track of them.

“And what do you do with the pictures?”

“Sell them” – and he smiled.

“You couldn’t sell me; I’m not pritty enough,” she said, with the utter absence of all personal vanity, and a latent sense of amusement.

“When I come back we will talk about it. And I will bring you the book. You will learn more than I can tell you. I used to read it when I was a boy. And then we will talk about – going to heaven.”

He colored a little, and his heart beat with a new and unwonted emotion.

“You’re quite sure we can go nex’ spring?” queried Bess. “Do many people live there?”

“The Lord Jesus Christ and all his angels,” he answered reverently. “And the saints who have been redeemed, little children, and a multitude no man can number.”

A perplexing frown settled between Dil’s eyes.

“Seems as if I couldn’t never get the thing straight ’bout – ’bout Jesus Christ,” and a flush wavered over her face. “When the people in the court get drunk and fight, they swear ’bout him. If he jest gives people strength to beat and bang each other, how can he help ’em to be good? Maybe there’s more than one. An’ why don’t the one who lives in the beautiful heaven have a different name. I ast the Mission teacher once, an’ she said I was a wicked girl. Mammy said there wasn’t any God at all. How do you know?”

There was a brave, eager innocence in her eyes, and a curious urgency as well.

“’Cause,” she subjoined, “if God lives in heaven and keeps it for people, if there wasn’t any God, there couldn’t be any heaven. Some folks in the court have the Virgin Mary, but I never see God.”

There was no irreverence in her tone, but a perplexed wonder. And John Travis was helpless before it. How did the missionaries who went to the heathen ever make them understand? They had their idols of wood and stone, and had prayed to them; but this child had no God, not even an idol, though she loved Bess with every fibre of her being.

And he had almost said in his heart, “There is no God.” A first great cause, an atom rushing blindly about the darkness for another atom, a protoplasm, a long series of evolutions – how complacent he had been about it all! Could he teach these children science? He had heard the talk of the slums occasionally, blood-curdling oaths, threats, wishes, curses hurled at one another. These two little girls lived in it. Could any one enlighten them, unless they were taken to a new, clean world? Yet their souls seemed scarcely soiled by the contact, their faces bore the impress of purity.