Part 37 (2/2)
John Travis lifted her up. She was so small and light; a child who was never to know any earthly joy or hope of girlhood, who would learn all the blessedness of life in the world to come. Virginia folded the soft blanket about her, and her face rested against the shoulder that would have been glad to bear a far heavier burthen for her. He took the cool little hands in his, and noted the fluttering, feeble pulse, the faint, irregular beating of the tired heart against his.
Sometimes both voices came to a pause through emotion. He remembered the other scene in the stuffy little room, and could see Bess's enraptured face.
Then Dilsey Quinn gave a little start, and raised her head, turning her eyes to him.
”I c'n understand it all now,” she said joyously. ”The Lord Jesus wanted me to wait till you come back, so I could tell Bess. An', Miss Virginia, she'll be so glad to know who gave the wild roses to Patsey. An' you promised her-you'd come. We was all goin' to heaven-together-”
The head dropped. The heart was still. The labor of the hands was done.
The slow brain had the wisdom of the stars. But her eyes still kept the subtle glory; a radiance not of this world shone in her face as she left the night behind her and stepped into the dawn of everlasting life.
”She has seen Bess.”
Then John Travis laid her reverently on the cot, and sprinkled a baptism of roses over her. The two left behind, clasped hands, their whole lives sanctified by the brave sweetness and devotion of this one gone up to G.o.d.
No one told the ”little mothers” that one of their number lay up-stairs in Miss Mary's room waxen white and still in her last sleep. They sang and played and ran and shouted, perhaps jangled as well. Death often met them in the byways of the slums, but in this land of enchantment they were not looking for it. Their holidays were brief enough; their days of toil and deprivation stretched out interminably. How could they sorrow for this pale, quiet little girl who had not even played with them?
In the afternoon John Travis brought up Patsey and Owen, who were stunned by the unlooked-for tidings. Dil had on her white frock, Patsey's gift, that had been both pride and pleasure to him.
Owen looked at her steadily and in great awe, winking hard to keep back the tears. Patsey wiped his away with his coat-sleeve.
”Ther' wasn't ever no girl like Dil Quinn,” he said brokenly. ”She was good as gold through and through. n.o.body never loved any one as she loved Bess. Seems like she couldn't live a'thout her. O mister, do you think ther's railly a heaven as they preach 'bout? Fer if ther' is, Dilly Quinn an' Bess are angels, sure as sure. An' Owen, we've got to be tip top, jes' 's if she was watchin' us all the time. But it's norful to think she can't never come down home to us.”
He leaned over and kissed the thin hands, and then sobbed aloud. But all his life long the tender remembrance followed him.
In a corner of the pretty burying-ground where they laid her, there is a simple marble shaft, with this quaint, old-fas.h.i.+oned inscription:-
”Sacred to the Memory of BESS AND DILSEY QUINN.”
For, even if Bess is elsewhere in an unknown grave, her unfailing and sweetest remembrance is here with Dilsey.
And in one home in the city, made beautiful by love and earnest endeavor, and a wide, kindly charity that never wearies in the Master's work for the poor, the sinful, and the unthankful, there hangs a picture that Patsey Muldoon adores. It is Dilsey Quinn idealized, as happiness and health might have made her. The sunrise gleam in her eyes stirs one with indescribable emotion. She looks out so bravely sweet, so touched and informed by the most sacred of all knowledges. The high courage is illumined by the love that considered not itself; the tenderness seems to say, ”to the uttermost,” through pain and toil and discouragements; never quenched in the darkest of times, but, even when blown about by adverse winds, still lighting some soul. The face seems ripened to bloom and fragrance, and speaks of a heavenly ministry begun when the earthly was laid down.
And the old story comes true oftener than we think. Two put in the garden to keep and dress it, to watch over the little wild roses of adverse circ.u.mstances, crowded out of even the s.p.a.ce and the sun needed to grow rightfully, out of the freshness and dew of happiness, yet making their way up from noisome environments, and struggling for the light and human care to fit them for the Garden of the Lord.
And these two, who go on their way in reunited love, understand the mystery of Dilsey Quinn's short life, and that the strange fine threads that connect us here are so many chords of the greater harmony of human love in its redemption. All their days will be hallowed by its tender remembrance, their work more fervent, their faith more enduring.
And thus it came to pa.s.s that the little bruised flowers of the slums lived not in vain.
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