The refreshing atmosphere and the tranquil, beautiful pictures all about her intensified the thought of the heaven she was going to “make b’leve” about. She could picture it out, up and up, through country ways and flowers, wild roses maybe. Houses where they took you in and fed you, and put you to bed in such soft, clean beds. Queer people too, who couldn’t understand, and were wanting to turn back,—people who were afraid of lions and Giant Grim. She called up all the pictures she could remember, and they floated before her like a panorama.
“Though I can’t get it out straight myself,” and she sighed in helpless confusion. “I ain’t smart as little Bess was, an’ can’t see into things. But I could push Bess along, an’ Mr. Travis would be Mr. Greatheart for us, an’ he’d know the way on ’count of his being book learned. An’ we’d just be kerful an’ not get into briars and bad places.”
Was that Bess laughing softly, as she did sometimes when her poor back didn’t hurt, and her head didn’t ache. The sweet, lingering sound seemed to pervade the summer air. She could see the time-worn wagon, the rug made of odds and ends, that they had both considered such a great achievement. There was the sweet, pallid face, not quite as it had looked in those last days, but resembling more the beautiful picture that had gone to the flames, the crown of golden hair, the mysterious, fathomless eyes, with a new knowledge in them, that Dil felt had not been garnered in that old, pinched life.
Her own soul was suddenly informed with a mysterious rapture. She knew nothing of the Incarnation, of the love that came down and tasted pain and anguish, that others, in the suffering laid upon them, might also know of the joy of redemption. At that moment Dilsey Quinn was not far from the kingdom.
“O Bess! can’t you come back?” she cried in a breathless, entreating manner, her eyes luminous with the rare insight of faith, the evidence of things unseen. “O Bess, you must be somewhere! I don’t b’leve you died jes’ like other folks! Can’t you come back an’ tell me how it happened, ’cause I know you wouldn’t have gone and leaved me free of your own will?”
A tremendous longing surged at Dil’s heart, and almost swept her away. Her breath came in gasps, her heart beat in great bounds, and then well nigh stopped. She was suddenly attuned to spiritual influences in that sweet, solemn solitude. Was it really Bess’s voice in the softly penetrative summer air—was the strange, shadowy presence, so near that she could reach out and touch it—almost—that of the child?
She sat there rapt, motionless, seeing nothing with her mortal eyes; but in that finer illumination Bess moved slowly toward her, not walking, but floating, veiled in a soft, cloud-like drapery, stretching out her small, white hands. Dil took them, and they were not cold. She glanced into the starry eyes, and for moments that was enough.
“O Bess!” in the softest, tenderest whisper, “if you was in heaven I couldn’t touch you, you’d be so far away. An’ it’s so sweet. But how did it all happen?”
“When he comes, an’ I ’most know now that he will come soon, Bess, dear, he c’n tell me how to go to where you are—waitin’, an’ we’ll start. There’s somethin’ I don’t know ’bout, an’ can’t get straight. I never was real smart at ketchin’ hold; but it’s so beautiful to remember that his Lord Jesus took little children in his arms. An’ mebbe he’s took you up out o’ the place they buried you, an’ is keepin’ you safe. You ain’t there in the ground—you must be ris’ up some way—”
The very birds sang of an unknown land in their songs; the wind murmuring gently through the trees thrilled her with an unutterable certainty. Her slow-moving eyes seemed to penetrate the very sky. Clear over the edge of the horizon it almost opened in its glory, as when Christiana was entering in; and she felt certain now that she should walk through its starry gates with Bess’s little hand held tight in hers.