“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.”