In Wild Rose Time

V – A SONG IN THE NIGHT

In the twenty-four years of John Travis’s life he had not done much but please himself. There was never any special pinch in the Travis household, any choice of two things, with the other to be given up entirely. His father was an easy-going man, his mother an amiable society woman, proud, of course, of her good birth. As I said before, excesses were not to John’s taste. He didn’t look like a fastidious young fellow, but the Travises were clean, wholesome people. Perhaps this was where their good blood really showed itself.

Mr. Travis had a little leaning toward the law for his son; the young fellow fancied he had a little leaning toward medicine. He dallied somewhat with both; he wrote a few pretty society verses; he etched very successfully, and he painted a few pictures, which roused an art ambition within him. He fell in love with a sweet girl in the winter, and in the late summer they had quarrelled and gone separate ways.

There had been another factor in his life, – his cousin, Austin Travis, some twelve years older than himself, his father’s eldest brother’s only child, and the eldest grandson. Travis farm had been his early home; and there John, the little boy, had fallen in love with the big boy.

Austin was one of the charming society men that women delight in. Every winter girls tried their best for him; and John was made much of on his account, for they were almost inseparable. It was Austin who soothed his uncle’s disappointment in the law business. It was Austin who compelled the rather dilatory young fellow to paint in earnest.

Austin had planned a September tour. They would spend a few days with grandmother, and then go to the Adirondacks. He knew a camping-out party of artists and designers that it would be an advantage for John to meet.

John had packed his traps and sent them down to the boat, that was to go out at six. There was nothing special to do. He would walk down, and presently stop in at Brentano’s, then take the car. He was very fond of seeing people group themselves together and change like a kaleidoscope. But his heart was sore and indignant, and then his quick eye fell on the withered rose-buds in the shrunken hand of the child, and after that adventure he had barely time to catch his boat.

He hardly knew himself as he sat on the deck till past midnight. Two little poverty-stricken waifs had somehow changed his thoughts, his life. When he was a little boy at Travis Farm a great many curious ideas about heaven had floated through his brain. And when his grandmother sang in her soft, limpid voice, —

 
“There is a land of pure delight,
Where saints immortal reign;
Infinite day excludes the night,
And pleasures banish pain,”
 

he used to see it all as a vision. Perhaps his ideas were not much wiser than those of poor little ignorant Bess. He had travelled with Pilgrim; he had known all the people on the way, and they were real enough to him at that period.

Oh, how long ago that seemed! Everything had changed since then. Science had uprooted simple faith. One lived by sight now. The old myths were still beautiful, of course. But long before Christ came, the Greek philosophers had prayed, and the Indian religions had had their self-denying saviours.

But he had promised to find the way to heaven for them, and they were so ignorant. He had promised to go thither himself, and he had dipped into so many philosophies; he knew so much, and yet he was so ignorant. But there must be a heaven, that was one fact; and there must be a way to go thither.

Sunday morning he was in Albany with Austin and two young men he had known through the winter. One of them was very attentive to a pretty cousin who would be found at Travis Farm. They had a leisurely elegant breakfast, they took a carriage and drove about to points of interest, had a course dinner, smoked and talked in the evening. But the inner John was a little boy again, and had gone to church with his grandmother. The sermon was long, and he did not understand it; but he read the hymns he liked, and chewed a bit of fennel, and went almost asleep. The singing was delightful, the spirited old “Coronation.”

They went out to Travis Farm the next morning. There was grandmother and Aunt Maria, the single Miss Travis, Daisy Brockholst and her dear friend Katharine Lee. Of course the young people had a good time. They always did at Travis Farm, and they were fond of coming.

“Grandmother,” John said, in a hesitating sort of way, “you used to sing an old hymn I liked so much,”

“There is a land of pure delight.”

“Have you forgotten it? I wish you would sing it for me,” and his hand slipped over hers.

“Why – yes, dear. I go singing about the house for company when no one is here; but old voices are apt to get thin in places, you know.”

He did not say he had hunted up an old hymn-book, and read the words over and over. He was ashamed that the children’s talk had taken such hold of him. But presently he joined in, keeping his really fine tenor voice down to a low key, and they sang together.

Then there was the soft silence of a country afternoon – the hushed sweetness of innumerable voices that are always telling of God’s wonders.

“John,” she said, in her low, caressing sort of tone that she had kept from girlhood, “I think heaven won’t be quite perfect to me until I hear your voice among the multitude no man can number.”

That was all. She had let her life of seventy-four years do her preaching. But she still prayed for her sheaves.

How had he come to have so much courage on Saturday afternoon, and so little now? Of course he could not be quite sure. And there would be Austin’s incredulous laugh.

They went on to the Adirondacks. He made a sketch of Bess, and sent it to a photographer’s with instructions. He was delighted with the artist group. He was planning out his winter. He would take a studio with some one. He would see what he could do for the Quinn children, and paint his fine picture. She would see it when it was exhibited somewhere. There would be a curious satisfaction in it. And yet he was carrying around with him every day three faded, shrivelled wild-rose buds.

And then one day they brought in Austin Travis insensible – dead, maybe. There was a little blood stain on his face and his golden brown beard; and it was an hour before they could restore him to consciousness. Just by a miracle he had been saved. A bit of rock that seemed so secure, had been secure for centuries perhaps, split off, taking him down with it. He had the presence of mind to throw away his gun, but the fall had knocked him insensible. He had lain some time before the others found him. There were bruises, a dislocated shoulder, and three broken ribs. Surgery could soon mend those. But there was a puncture in the magnificent lungs, such a little thing to change all one’s life; and at first he rebelled with a giant’s strength. Life was so much to him, all to him. He could not go down into nothingness with his days but half told.

Out of all the plans and advice it was settled to try the south of France, and perhaps the Madeira Isles, to take such good care and have such an equable climate that the wound might heal. And John was to be his companion and nurse and friend for all the lighter offices. Austin had hardly allowed him to go out of his sight.

They had returned to New York. Everything was arranged. Austin was impatient to be off before cold weather. For three days John never had a moment; but Bess and Dil had not been out of his mind, and he could steal this afternoon; so, with book and picture, he set out for Barker’s Court, not much clearer about the way to heaven than he had been six weeks before.

Barker’s Court was not inviting to-day, with its piles of garbage, and wet clothes hanging about like so many miserable ghosts.

“Is it Misses Quinn ye want, or old Granny Quinn?” queried the woman he questioned. “Granny lives up to th’ end, an’ Misses Quinn’s is the third house, up-stairs.”

It was semi-twilight. He picked his way up and knocked gently.

So gently, Dil was sure of a customer for her mother. The babies were asleep. Bess was fixed in her wagon. Dil had some patches of bright colors that she was going to sew together, and make a new carriage rug.

She opened the door just a little way. He pushed it wider, and glanced in.

“Oh, have you forgotten me?” he exclaimed. “Did you think I would not come?”

Dil stood in a strange, sweet, guilty abasement. She had disbelieved him. Bess gave a soft, thrilling cry of delight, and stretched out her hands.

“I knew you would come,” and there was a tremulous exaltation in her weak voice.

“I’ve only been in town a few days. I have been staying with a cousin who met with a sad accident and is still ill. But I have run away for an hour or two; and I have brought Bess’s picture.”

He was taking a little survey of the room. The stove shone. The floor was clean. The white curtain made a light spot in the half gloom. The warmth felt grateful, coming out of the chilly air, though it was rather close. Dil did not look as well as on the summer day. Her eyes were heavy, with purple shadows underneath; the “bang” of the morning had left some traces. And Bess was wasted to a still frailer wraith, if such a thing was possible.

They both looked up eagerly, as he untied the package, and slipped out of an envelope a delicately tinted photograph.

“There, blue eyes, will it do for Dil?”

The child gave a rapturous cry. Dil stood helpless from astonishment.

“There ain’t no words good enough,” Dil said brokenly. “Leastways, I don’t know any. O Bess, he’s made you look jes’ ’s if you was well. O mister, will she look that way in heaven?” For Dil had a vague misgiving she could never look that way on earth.

“She will be more beautiful, because she will never be ill again.”

“Dil’s right – there ain’t no words to praise it,” Bess said simply. “If we was rich we’d give you hundreds and hundreds of dollars, wouldn’t we, Dil?”

Dil nodded. Her eyes were full of tears. Something she had never known before struggled within her, and almost rent her soul.

“And here is your book. You can read, of course?”

“I can read some. Oh, how good you are to remember.” She was deeply conscience stricken.

The tone moved him immeasurably. His eyelids quivered. There were thousands of poor children in the world, some much worse off than these. He could not minister to all of them, but he did wish he could put these two in a different home.

“I must go away again with my cousin, and I am sorry. I meant to” – what could he do, he wondered – “to see more of you this winter; but a friend of mine will visit you, and bring you a little gift now and then. You must have spent all your money long ago,” flushing at the thought of the paltry sum.

“We stretched it a good deal,” said Dil quaintly. “You see, I bought Bess some clo’es, there didn’t seem much comin’ in for her. An’ the fruit was so lovely. She’s been so meachin’.”

“Well, I am going to be – did you ever read Cinderella?” he asked eagerly.

“I ain’t had much time for readin’, an’ Bess couldn’t go to school but such a little while.”

“And no one has told you the story?”

There was a curious eagerness in the sort of blank surprise.

“Well, this little Cinderella did kitchen work; and sat in the chimney-corner when her work was done, while her sisters dressed themselves up fine and went to parties. One evening a curious old woman came, a fairy godmother, and touched her with a wand, a queer little stick she always carried, and turned her old rags into silks and satins, and made a chariot for her, and sent her to the ball at the king’s palace.”

“Oh,” interposed Dil breathlessly, “she didn’t have to come back to her rags, an’ chimney, an’ all, did she?”

“She did come back, because her fairy godmother told her to. But the king’s son sent for her and married her.”

“Oh, if she’d only come to us, Dil!” Bess had a quicker and more vivid imagination. She had not been so hard worked, nor had her head banged so many times. “We’d have the char – what did you call it? an’ go to heaven. Then you wouldn’t have to wheel me, Dil, an’ we’d get along so much faster.” She laughed with a glad, happy softness, and her little face was alight with joy. “Say, mister, you must think I’ve got heaven on the brain. But if you’d had hurted legs so long, you’d want to get to the Lord Jesus an’ have ’em made well. I keep thinkin’ over what you told us ’bout your Lord Jesus, an’ I know it’s true because you’ve come back.”

Such a little thing; such great faith! And he had been comparing claims, discrepancies, and wondering, questioning, afraid to believe a delusion. Was he truly his Lord Jesus? The simple belief of the children touched, melted him. It was like finding a rare and exquisite blossom in an arid desert. He wished he were not going away. He would like to care for little Bess until the time of her release came. Ah, would they be disillusioned when they came to know what the real pilgrimage was?

“There ain’t no fairies truly,” said Dil with pathetic gravity. “There ain’t much of anything for poor people.”

“I can’t take you to a palace; but when I come back I mean you shall have a nice, comfortable home in a prettier place – ”

“Mother wouldn’t let Dil go on ’count of the babies. There ain’t but two to-day, ’n’ she was awful mad! ’N’ I wouldn’t go athout Dil. No one else ’d know how to take care of me.”

“We will have that all right. And while I am gone you must have some money to buy medicines and the little luxuries your mother cannot afford.”

“She don’t buy nothin’ ever. I ain’t no good, ’cause I’ll never walk, ’n’ only Dil cares about me,” Bess said, as if she had so long accepted the fact the sting was blunted.

“Yes, I care; and I will send a friend here to see you, a young lady, and you need not be afraid to tell her of whatever you want. And Dil may like to know – that I am going to put her in a picture, and the money will be truly her own.”

He was not sure how much pride or personal delicacy people of this class possessed.

“O Dil!” Bess was electrified with joy. “Oh, I hope you made Dil look – just as she’d look if we lived in one of them beautiful houses, ’n’ had a maid ’n’ pretty clo’es, ’n’ no babies to take care of. We never knowed any one like you afore. Patsey’s awful good to us, but he ain’t fine like an’ soft spoken. Are you very rich, mister?”

He laughed.

“Only middling, but rich enough to make life a little pleasanter for you when I come back.”

She seemed to be studying him.

“You look as if you lived in some of the fine, big houses. I’d like to go in wan. An’ you know so much! You must have been to school a good deal. Oh, how soft your hands are!”

She laughed delightedly as she enclosed one in both of hers, and then pressed it to her cheek.

He stooped and kissed her. No one ever did that but Dil and Patsey.

“You’ll surely come back in time to go to heaven, soon as it’s pleasant weather,” she said suddenly. “An’ Dil couldn’t be leaved behind. Mother threatens to put her in a shop, an’ she does bang her head cruel. But I wouldn’t want to be in a pallis an’ have everything, if I couldn’t have Dil. An’ you’ll get it all fixed so’s we can go?”

Ah, ah! before that time Bess would have been folded in the everlasting arms. There was a lump in his throat, and he began to untie the string of the book to evade a more decisive answer.

It was an illustrated edition, simplified for children’s reading. He turned some of the leaves and found one picture – Christiana ascending the palace steps amid a host of angels.

From this squalid place and poverty, to that – how could he explain the steps between? When he came back Bess would be gone —

“Past night, past day,”

and he would give Dil a new and better chance in spite of her mother.

Dil drew a long, long breath.

“Can we all get to the pallis?” she asked, with a soft awe in her tone.

“Yes, there are many things to do – you will see what Christiana and Mercy did. And if you love the Lord Jesus and pray to him – ”

Poor Dil was again conscience smitten. Only this morning she had said praying wasn’t any good. She glanced up through tears, —

“’Pears as if I couldn’t ever get to understand. I wasn’t smart at school – ”

“But you are smart,” interposed Bess. “An’ now we’ve got the book we’ll find just how Christiana went. There’s only six months left. You’ll surely be back by April?”

“I shall be back.” His heart smote him. He was a coward after all. Ah, could he ever undertake any of the Master’s business?

“Do you remember a hymn an old lady sang for you once?” he said, glad of even this faltering way out. “I have been learning the words.”

“’Bout everlasting spring?” and Bess’s eyes were alight. “Oh, do please sing it! I’m in such an awful hurry for spring to come. Sometimes my breath gets so short, as if I reely couldn’t wait.”

Dil raised her eyes with a slow, beseeching movement. He pushed a chair beside the wagon, and held Bess’s small hands, that were full of leaping pulses.

The sweet old hymn, almost forgotten amid the clash of modern music. Ah, there was some one who would love and care for Dil in her desolation – his grandmother. He would write to her. Then he began, and at the first note the children were enraptured: —

 
“There is a land of pure delight,
Where saints immortal reign;
Infinite day excludes the night,
And pleasures banish pain.
 
 
Oh, the transporting, rapturous scene,
That dawns upon my sight;
Sweet fields arrayed in living green,
And rivers of delight.
 
 
There everlasting spring abides,
And never-withering flowers;
Death, like a narrow sea, divides
This heavenly land from ours.
 
 
No chilling winds nor poisonous breath
Can reach that blessed shore;
Sickness and sorrow, pain and death,
Are felt and feared no more.
 
 
O’er all those wide extended plains,
Shines one eternal day;
There Christ the Son forever reigns,
And scatters night away.
 
 
Filled with delight, my raptured soul
Can here no longer stay;
Though Jordan’s waves around me roll,
Fearless I launch away.”
 

John Travis had a tender, sympathetic voice. Just now he was more moved by emotion than he would have imagined. Dil turned her face away and picked up the tears with her fingers. It was too beautiful to cry about, for crying was associated with sorrow or pain. A great inarticulate desire thrilled through her, a blind, passionate longing for a better, higher life, as if she belonged somewhere else. And, like Bess, an impatience pervaded her to be gone at once.

“Oh, please do sing it again!” besought Bess in a transport, her face spiritualized to a seraphic beauty. “Did they sing like that in the Mission School, Dil?”

Dil shook her head in speechless ecstasy.

There was a knock, and then the door opened softly. It was Mrs. Murphy, with her sick baby in her arms.

“Ah, dear,” she began deprecatingly, with an odd little old country courtesy, “I heard the singing, an’ I said to poor old Mis’ Bolan, ‘That’s never the Salvation Army, for they do make such a hullabaloo; but it must be a Moody an’ Sankey man that I wunst haird, with the v’ice of an angel.’ An’ the pore craythur is a hankerin’ to get nearer. Will ye lit her come down, plaise, or will ye come up?”

John Travis flushed suddenly. Dil glanced at her visitor aghast. Some finer instinct questioned whether he were offended. But he smiled. If it would give a poor old woman a pleasure —

Dil was considering a critical point. She had learned to be wise in evading the fury of a half-drunken woman. There were many things she kept to herself. But Mrs. Murphy would talk him over. A Moody and Sankey man, – she had not a very clear idea; but if Mrs. Murphy knew, it might be wisdom to have some one here who would speak a good word for her if it should be needed.

“Ye can bring her down,” she answered, still looking at John Travis with rising color.

She simply stepped into the hall; but the old woman was half-way down-stairs, and needed no further summons.

“Ah, dear, it’s the v’ice of an angel shure. An’ though I’m not given to them kind of maytins, on account of the praist, they do be beautiful an’ comfortin’ whiles they sing. Come in. It’s Dilly Quinn that’ll bid ye welcome. For it’s the Moody an’ Sankey man.”

“Yer very good, Dilly Quinn, very good, to ask in a poor old woman; though I’m main afeared of yer mother in a tantrum.” Her voice was shrill and shaky, though she was not seventy; but poverty and hardships age people fast. A bowed and shrunken woman, with thin, white, straggling hair, watery, hungry-looking eyes, a wrinkled, ashen skin, her lips a leaden blue and sunken from lack of teeth. She had one of Mrs. Murphy’s rooms since the head of the house was safely bestowed within prison limits. Mrs. Bolan’s only son had been killed in the war, and she had her pension. Now and then some one gave her a little work out of pity.

She dropped down on the lounge. “When I heard that there hymn,” she went on quaveringly, “it took me back forty year an’ more. There was great revival meetin’s. My poor old mother used to sing it. But meetin’s don’t seem the same any more, or else we old folks kinder lost the end er r’ligion.”

She was so pitiful, with her timorous, lonely look, and the hard struggles time had written on her everywhere.

“Will you sing it for her?” Dil asked timidly, glancing up at Travis.

Some one else paused to listen and look in, and stared with strange interest at the fine young fellow, whose rich, deep voice found a way to their hearts. And as he sang, a realization of their pinched, joyless lives filled him with dismay. Mrs. Bolan rocked herself too and fro, her hands clutched tightly over her breast, as if she was hugging some comfort she could not afford to let go. The tears rolled silently down her furrowed cheeks.

The foreign part of the audience was more outspoken.

“Ah, did yez iver listen to the loikes! Shure, it would move the heart of a sthone. It’s enough to take yez right t’ro’ to heaven widout the laste taste o’ purgatory. Shure, Mrs. Kelly, it’s like a pack o’ troubles fallin’ off, an’ ye step out light an’ strong to yer work agen. There’ll be a blissin’ for ye, young man, for the pleasure ye’ve given.”

Mrs. Bolan shuffled forward and caught his hand in hers, which seemed almost to rattle, they were so bony.

“God bless you, sir.” Her voice was so broken it sounded like sobs. “An’ there’s something ’bout makin’ his face shine on you – I disremember, it’s so long since I’ve read my Bible, more shame to me; but my eyes are so old and bad, I hope the Lord won’t lay it up agen me. I’m a poor old body, pushed outen the ranks. And you get kicked aside. Ye see, ’tain’t every voice that takes one to heaven. Lord help us ’bout gettin’ in. But mebbe he’ll be merciful to all who go astray. An’ – if ye wouldn’t mind sayin’ a bit of prayer, ’pears like ’twould comfort me to my dyin’ day.”

Her hungry eyes pleaded through their tears.

A bit of prayer! He had been praying a little for himself of late, but it came awkward after his years of intellectual complacency. A youngish woman was glancing at him in frightened desperation, as if she waited for something to turn her very life. There was but one thing he could think of in this stress – the divine mandate. Could anything be more complete? When ye pray, say, —

“Our Father which art in heaven – ”