Part 10 (2/2)
It was no use wondering. I was so entirely ignorant of her surroundings that I had not even a starting-place for speculation. So I went in, leaving the window open. It seemed that this being so made one barrier the less between us. I gathered the cus.h.i.+ons and rugs from before the fire, which was no longer leaping, but burning with a steady glow, and put them back in their places. Aunt Janet might come in the morning, as she had done before, and I did not wish to set her thinking. She is much too clever a person to have treading on the heels of a mystery--especially one in which my own affections are engaged. I wonder what she would have said had she seen me kiss the cus.h.i.+on on which my beautiful guest's head had rested?
When I was in bed, and in the dark save for the fading glow of the fire, my thoughts became fixed that whether she came from Earth or Heaven or h.e.l.l, my lovely visitor was already more to me than aught else in the world. This time she had, on going, said no word of returning. I had been so much taken up with her presence, and so upset by her abrupt departure, that I had omitted to ask her. And so I am driven, as before, to accept the chance of her returning--a chance which I fear I am or may be unable to control.
Surely enough Aunt Janet did come in the morning, early. I was still asleep when she knocked at my door. With that purely physical subconsciousness which comes with habit I must have realized the cause of the sound, for I woke fully conscious of the fact that Aunt Janet had knocked and was waiting to come in. I jumped from bed, and back again when I had unlocked the door. When Aunt Janet came in she noticed the cold of the room.
”Save us, laddie, but ye'll get your death o' cold in this room.” Then, as she looked round and noticed the ashes of the extinct fire in the grate:
”Eh, but ye're no that daft after a'; ye've had the sense to light yer fire. Glad I am that we had the fire laid and a wheen o' dry logs ready to yer hand.” She evidently felt the cold air coming from the window, for she went over and drew the curtain. When she saw the open window, she raised her hands in a sort of dismay, which to me, knowing how little base for concern could be within her knowledge, was comic. Hurriedly she shut the window, and then, coming close over to my bed, said:
”Yon has been a fearsome nicht again, laddie, for yer poor auld aunty.”
”Dreaming again, Aunt Janet?” I asked--rather flippantly as it seemed to me. She shook her head:
”Not so, Rupert, unless it be that the Lord gies us in dreams what we in our spiritual darkness think are veesions.” I roused up at this. When Aunt Janet calls me Rupert, as she always used to do in my dear mother's time, things are serious with her. As I was back in childhood now, recalled by her word, I thought the best thing I could do to cheer her would be to bring her back there too--if I could. So I patted the edge of the bed as I used to do when I was a wee kiddie and wanted her to comfort me, and said:
”Sit down, Aunt Janet, and tell me.” She yielded at once, and the look of the happy old days grew over her face as though there had come a gleam of suns.h.i.+ne. She sat down, and I put out my hands as I used to do, and took her hand between them. There was a tear in her eye as she raised my hand and kissed it as in old times. But for the infinite pathos of it, it would have been comic:
Aunt Janet, old and grey-haired, but still retaining her girlish slimness of figure, pet.i.te, dainty as a Dresden figure, her face lined with the care of years, but softened and enn.o.bled by the unselfishness of those years, holding up my big hand, which would outweigh her whole arm; sitting dainty as a pretty old fairy beside a rec.u.mbent giant--for my bulk never seems so great as when I am near this real little good fairy of my life--seven feet beside four feet seven.
So she began as of old, as though she were about to soothe a frightened child with a fairy tale:
”'Twas a veesion, I think, though a dream it may hae been. But whichever or whatever it was, it concerned my little boy, who has grown to be a big giant, so much that I woke all of a tremble. Laddie dear, I thought that I saw ye being married.” This gave me an opening, though a small one, for comforting her, so I took it at once:
”Why, dear, there isn't anything to alarm you in that, is there? It was only the other day when you spoke to me about the need of my getting married, if it was only that you might have children of your boy playing around your knees as their father used to do when he was a helpless wee child himself.”
”That is so, laddie,” she answered gravely. ”But your weddin' was none so merry as I fain would see. True, you seemed to lo'e her wi' all yer hairt. Yer eyes shone that bright that ye might ha' set her afire, for all her black locks and her winsome face. But, laddie, that was not all--no, not though her black een, that had the licht o' all the stars o'
nicht in them, shone in yours as though a hairt o' love an' pa.s.sion, too, dwelt in them. I saw ye join hands, an' heard a strange voice that talked stranger still, but I saw none ither. Your eyes an' her eyes, an'
your hand an' hers, were all I saw. For all else was dim, and the darkness was close around ye twa. And when the benison was spoken--I knew that by the voices that sang, and by the gladness of her een, as well as by the pride and glory of yours--the licht began to glow a wee more, an' I could see yer bride. She was in a veil o' wondrous fine lace. And there were orange-flowers in her hair, though there were twigs, too, and there was a crown o' flowers on head wi' a golden band round it. And the heathen candles that stood on the table wi' the Book had some strange effect, for the reflex o' it hung in the air o'er her head like the shadow of a crown. There was a gold ring on her finger and a silver one on yours.” Here she paused and trembled, so that, hoping to dispel her fears, I said, as like as I could to the way I used to when I was a child:
”Go on, Aunt Janet.”
She did not seem to recognize consciously the likeness between past and present; but the effect was there, for she went on more like her old self, though there was a prophetic gravity in her voice, more marked than I had ever heard from her:
”All this I've told ye was well; but, oh, laddie, there was a dreadful lack o' livin' joy such as I should expect from the woman whom my boy had chosen for his wife--and at the marriage coupling, too! And no wonder, when all is said; for though the marriage veil o' love was fine, an' the garland o' flowers was fresh-gathered, underneath them a' was nane ither than a ghastly shroud. As I looked in my veesion--or maybe dream--I expect.i.t to see the worms crawl round the flagstane at her feet. If 'twas not Death, laddie dear, that stood by ye, it was the shadow o'
Death that made the darkness round ye, that neither the light o' candles nor the smoke o' heathen incense could pierce. Oh, laddie, laddie, wae is me that I hae seen sic a veesion--waking or sleeping, it matters not!
I was sair distressed--so sair that I woke wi' a shriek on my lips and bathed in cold sweat. I would hae come doon to ye to see if you were hearty or no--or even to listen at your door for any sound o' yer being quick, but that I feared to alarm ye till morn should come. I've counted the hours and the minutes since midnight, when I saw the veesion, till I came hither just the now.”
”Quite right, Aunt Janet,” I said, ”and I thank you for your kind thought for me in the matter, now and always.” Then I went on, for I wanted to take precautions against the possibility of her discovery of my secret.
I could not bear to think that she might run my precious secret to earth in any well-meant piece of bungling. That would be to me disaster unbearable. She might frighten away altogether my beautiful visitor, even whose name or origin I did not know, and I might never see her again:
”You must never do that, Aunt Janet. You and I are too good friends to have sense of distrust or annoyance come between us--which would surely happen if I had to keep thinking that you or anyone else might be watching me.”
RUPERT'S JOURNAL--_Continued_.
_April_ 27, 1907.
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