With languid step she ascended the stair, and was presently beside her great-grandaunt, Patricia Bower. Twilight was dropping her wing, and the shadows were fast collecting round the square windows, which, narrow and grated, would scarcely at noonday let in light enough to enliven the human eye. There, solitary and in the gloom, sat the creature of the prior century, whose birth could only be arrived at by going through generations back ninety and five years before; but not gloom to her, to whom the light of memory was as a necromancer, arraying before the gleg eye of her spirit the images of persons and things and circumstances of the far past, with all the vividness of enchantment, and still even raising again those very loves and sympathies they elicited when they were of the passing hour. Yet the doings in this house of Bell's Tower at the time, so far removed from the period of the living archetypes of her dreams, had got to her ear, where still the word marriage was a charm, against which the dry impassable nerve resisted in vain.
"I will go to this marriage, Marjory," she said, as the maiden entered, and without appearing to notice her distress.
"No, aunt," replied Marjory, as she sat down opposite to her.
"And shall I not?" continued the ancient maiden, as her eyes seemed to come forward out of the deep sockets into which they had long sunk, and emitted an unearthly lustre. "And shall I not? It is four times a score of years bating five since I was at a bridal; and when all were waiting, ay, Marjory, expecting the young bridegroom, the door was opened, and four men carried in Walter Ogilvy's bleeding corpse, and laid him in the bridal hall; for he had been stabbed by a rival in the Craig Glen, down by there; and where could they take the body but to Bell's Tower, where his bride waited for him? But she did not go mad, Sweet Marjory; no, no."
And as the image grew more distinct in the internal chambers, so did the eyes shine more lustrously, like stars peering through between grey clouds; and the shrivelled muscles, obeying once more the excited nerve, imparted to her almost the appearance of youth. Gradually a humming tone essayed to take form in words; but the wavering treble disconcerted her, till, calming herself by some effort, she recited, in solemn see-saw—
"The guests they came from the grey mountain side,—
The bride she was fair, and the bride she was fain;
But where was the lover, who sought not his bride?
Oh! a maid she is now, as a maid she was then;
And her cheek it is pale, and her hair it is grey,
Since the long long time of her bridal day."
The last line descended into a quavering whisper.
With the effusion, adopted probably from an old ditty, and brought forth from its long-retaining chamber of the brain by the inspiration of one of her often-returning visions, the fervour of the tasked spirit died away, and, reclining her head, she sat before the wondering Marjory—who had heard, as a tale of the family, and applicable to Patricia herself, the circumstances she had related—as one suspended between death and life; nor did it seem that it required more than a rude vibration to decide to which of the two worlds she would in a few minutes belong. Only a short time sufficed to restore her to her ordinary composure, and, waving her shrivelled hand, she said—
"Open the door to the bartisan, Marjory, that I may have air, and see the moon, who, amidst all the changes of life, is ever the same to the miserable and the happy."
Marjory obeyed her; and as she looked forth, the moon was rising over the tops of the trees, as if to chase away the envious shades, ready to follow the departure of twilight. There was solace in her soft splendour for the melancholy of the youthful girl, which might be ameliorated by a turn of fortune, as well as for the sadness of her aged friend, which was not only beyond the influence of worldly change, but so like the forecast gloom of the grave, as if the inexorable tyrant, long disappointed, was already rejoicing in his victim. But no sooner was the door casement opened, than the sound of voices entered. Then Marjory stepped out on the bartisan, not to listen, for her spirit was superior to artifice; and, leaning over the bartisan, she soon recognised the voices of Isobel and Ogilvy; nor could she escape the words—