If you had asked Laura what heaven was like, she would have answered,
almost involuntarily—“‘A bald head,’” and Wilfred and James would have
tumbled over each other in their anxiety to join in the chorus—“‘Because
it is a bright and shining place where there is no parting,’” and to
watch the effect upon you of that dazzling joke.
But after the twins came to live at Brackenhurst, Laura laid a taboo
upon it. One might joke _with_ Mother, but to joke about her, about
anything connected with her, was sacrilege. Heaven, the twins were once
and for all to understand, was not in the least like a bald head. It was
in the Bible, a very beautiful place, a sort of hospital, and Mother was
staying there just now to get well, and if Wilfred or James ever
mentioned that riddle again, Laura would tell Jesus about it when she
said her prayers, and Jesus would tell Mother, and Mother would not
bring them one little bit of chocolate when she came back. (You see, she
was learning already how to manage her men-folk.) The twins were
impressed and obedient; yet the phrase, more illuminating than all Aunt
Adela’s theology, stuck in their minds, and as no child attempts to
imagine an abstraction, Laura’s bright and shining heaven lived on in
hers as a pile of summer clouds lined with pink and silver, on which
Mother lay as on a bed, with her beautiful long plaits disordered and
her arm flung out weakly.
In haymaking time, when Laura was tired of cocking hay for the twins to
pull down again, and the lemonade and bread-and-dripping had vanished,
and the jolly sun, like Bacchus on a barrel, sat astride the midday sky,
the indefatigable twins would trot away on their private business that
was not unconnected with forbidden strawberry beds, and Laura, lying on
her back in the uncut hay, would stare up through the sorrel and the
toddling grass, and the tall daisies, and watch the slow clouds coming
up like ships over the edge of the world, and screw up her eyes till
there were little white crowsfeet in the tan, to peer the better at each
dazzling brightness that might be heaven itself for all she knew.
Sometimes the cloud line was broken by a wisp of vapour, and then Laura
tried to be sure that it was her mother’s thin hand waving to her from
over the edge of heaven. But she was never quite sure.
Generally the clouds—it was a summer of northerly winds—came sailing up
over a slope whose crest of beeches, a mile away, flanked Green Gates
and the road; so that when she discovered _The Pilgrim’s Progress_, and
a drifting cloud-heaven had become a stationary _Cœlestial City_, it was
behind Beech Hill that it lay, and towards Beech Hill that, suddenly
grown acquiescent in the matter of walks and picnics, she would urge the
nurse and the perambulator: and it was on the sky-line beyond Beech Hill
that she and _Christian_ did at last, one autumn day, see it shining.
For though she poured over the unfamiliar print till her eyes ached, it
was autumn before she had mastered the book and her instructions, and
could prepare for her own private expedition.
It was _Christian’s_ fault: he simply wouldn’t be hurried. Stumbling
along beside him over the difficult words, she was out of patience
twenty times a day with his credulous, open-mouthed simplicity. He was
no better than Wilfred and James who always believed every word that the
coachman told them, or the gardener’s boy, or the chattering, black-eyed
Frenchmen who came to the yard on Saturdays to sell onions. She had no
patience with them or with conversational _Christian_, wasting his time
and losing his way. Did he think that she, Laura, would have been taken
in like that, over and over again, by _Vain Confidence_ and _Flatterer_
and _Mr. Worldly Wiseman_? Why, the very names were enough to put even
the twins on their guard, and _Christian_ was grown-up! _Byways
Meadow_—there she acknowledged that she too might have strayed: she
hankered after little cross-country paths herself, though Nurse and Aunt
Adela always insisted on the dull, dusty, put-on-your-gloves high-road;
but she would never have pounded off to _Sinai_, or stood by the hour
arguing and disputing and contradicting about unintelligible things like
_Carnal Cogitations_ and _The Carcase of Religion_, long before she had
got to heaven and found Mother.
But though _Christian_ would go his own gait, and skipping was unsafe
because the adventure were tucked away among the arguments like
strawberries in a bed of leaves, he did at last bring her past the
_Enchanted Ground_ (disappointingly unproductive of fairies) to the
_Land of Beulah_ and a clear view of the _Cœlestial City_ itself.
Absorbed Laura, curled-up by Gran’papa’s fire on that clear October
morning, reading of the _Reflexion of the sun on the City_ (_for the
City was of pure gold_) and dutifully looking up _Rev. xxi. 28_, had
just stumbled upon a more marvellous heaven than even Bunyan drew, when
the nursemaid, as it always happened, pounced upon her and brushed her
and buttoned her and gloved her and stuck a hat upon her and hurried her
off for a walk, too dazed to protest, with her head full of rivers of
life and fruit trees and gates that were one pearl (like Mother’s ring)
and strange, intoxicating, unpronounceable names—_the third, chalcedony,
and the seventh, chrysolite, and the eighth, beryl_. She was far too
absorbed to notice the way they went, and Wilfred and James were pelting
each other with fallen leaves, and Nurse was leaning panting against the
perambulator, before she realized that they had climbed the long Beech
Hill Road that Nurse disliked because it was steep and lonely, but
which, as the highest point of the highest village in a hilly county,
did certainly satisfy Aunt Adela’s belief in fresh air.
She stripped off her gloves, dreamily accepting her goodluck, and
leaving the nurse to spread rugs beneath the little wooden seat, and
unwrap the biscuits and the bottle of milk, she wandered off aimlessly
through the sun-splashed grove, her thoughts still caught like flies in
a web of make-believe, yet aware and enjoying with all her sensitive
little soul the gallantry of the autumn morning.
It was perfect day. Its colours shone through the clear air like pebbles
freshened in water, and away upon the sky-line the threadlike roads and
midget trees were as cleanly defined as the great trunks of the beeches
themselves, that stood, brown and naked and stately, like a troop of
tall savages, against the brilliant sky. Overhead the jolly wind that
lived on the hill-top and never went to sleep, was hard at work as
usual, scattering the clouds in every direction, like a bad dog
frightening sheep, tugging and tearing at the beech boughs, and sending
down the last of the leaves in golden gusts into the deep pits at the
roots of the trees, that were half filled already by generations of
leaves, and were as safe and soft to jump into as a feather-bed. Laura,
forced into a trot and then a run, was caught up at last in a sudden
scamper of twigs and dust and stray leaves, and whirled along till she
felt as if she were flying, and clutched at a trail of bramble to steady
herself and get her breath; but the peremptory wind would have no
lagging, and, catching at her little round hat, lifted it off her head
and trundled it along in front of her like a schoolboy dribbling a
football, till they were clear of the trees, when it turned tail in its
sudden whimsical way, leaving the hat upon the ground and Laura panting
beside it.
For some slow, pleasant minutes she lay still, listening to the
footsteps of the wind and her own heart-beats, with her cheek pressed
close to the thymy earth, still besprinkled, late as it was, with
milk-wort and rest-harrow and yellow sparks of tormentil, that glimmered
like flung match-ends in fuel that was a clump of spent brown heather.
The bright, thin sunshine settled lightly upon her like a gossamer scarf
or a baby’s breath upon your cheek before it kisses you. Through shut
eyes she enjoyed the spacious peace of the hill-top, and the delicate
warmth seemed a physical expression of the sensation of well-being that
was stealing over her, a sensation that, in the old days, had been but
another word for her mother’s presence. The wind, raging again in the
beech-grove, was a turbulent giant guarding the entrance to enchanted
lands: its far-away fury heightened the impression of expectant silence.
Through her pleasant drowsiness she had an odd feeling that something,
something important, was about to happen.
Lazily she sat up and looked about her.
She had never before strayed further than their shadows’ length from the
beeches: the low-banked trench, where the twins played ‘King of the
Castle’ and the sheep huddled against the rain, had fenced off
adventure. But today she and the wind had cleared it in a flying leap
and had run out to the very edge of the wide level table-land that had
bounded her view, and before her lay unknown valleys and ridges, valleys
and ridges, rolling away to the sky-line like waves of the sea.
And on the sky-line itself, trembling between earth and heaven as if it
were a great diamond swinging on a silver chain, hung a glancing,
shimmering translucency in the shape of a house—a castle—a king’s
pavilion—with a central arch that glistered like a high priest’s
breast-plate, and twin towers reflecting the sun in glints and rays and
flashes of white and golden light.
For a long minute Laura sat motionless, staring—staring. Then her heart
began to beat so wildly that she felt the thud of it as a sharp pain,
and her cold little fingers dug and clutched at the soft turf. She could
hardly breathe: she was choking, drowning in the flood of joy that
swirled over her like waters set free. She sat, white and sick with
ecstasy, her eyes devouring the miracle, while in her ears remembered
phrases pealed like wedding bells.
_The Reflexion of the Sun upon the City._...
... _and the city was of pure gold, like unto pure glass._...
... _a bright and shining place, where there is no parting._...
_Her light was like unto a stone most precious, as it were a jasper
stone, clear as crystal._...
The uncounted minutes tiptoed past.
She spoke at last, in a little whispering voice—
“I’ve found it,” said Laura. “It’s here. It was here all the time. And
Mother——”
She counted the easy ridges that seemed so clear and near, traced, with
a finger that quivered, the merry white road playing bo-peep in and out
of the woods.
“They’re the _Delectable Mountains_,” said Laura. “Of course, the
_Delectable Mountains_ and the _Cœlestial City_. And I can get there by
tea-time. If I run—if I don’t stop once—oh, Mother, I can get to you by
tea-time.”
------------------------------------------------------------------------