“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 sunshine. 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, petite, dainty as a Dresden figure, her face lined with the care of years, but softened and ennobled 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 recumbent 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’ passion, 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 expectit 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: