Rab and His Friends | Page 7

was motionless, all but
his eye, which followed every one. Ailie got worse; began to wander in
her mind, gently; was more demonstrative in her ways to James, rapid
in her questions, and sharp at times. He was vexed, and said, "She was
never that way afore,--no, never." For a time she knew her head was
wrong, and was always asking our pardon,--the dear, gentle old woman:
then delirium set in strong, without pause. Her brain gave way, and

then came that terrible spectacle,--
"The intellectual power, through words and things, Went sounding on
its dim and perilous way;"
she sang bits of old songs and Psalms, stopping suddenly, mingling the
Psalms of David, and the diviner words of his Son and Lord, with
homely odds and ends and scraps of ballads.
Nothing more touching, or in a sense more strangely beautiful, did I
ever witness. Her tremulous, rapid, affectionate, eager, Scotch voice,
the swift, aimless, bewildered mind, the baffled utterance, the bright
and perilous eye, some wild words, some household cares, something
for James, the names of the dead, Rab called rapidly and in a "fremyt"
voice, and he starting up, surprised, and slinking off as if he were to
blame somehow, or had been dreaming he heard. Many eager questions
and beseechings which James and I could make nothing of, and on
which she seemed to set her all and then sink back ununderstood. It was
very sad, but better than many things that are not called sad. James
hovered about, put out and miserable, but active and exact as ever; read
to her, when there was a lull, short bits from the Psalms, prose and
metre, chanting the latter in his own rude and serious way, showing
great knowledge of the fit words, bearing up like a man, and doting
over her as his "ain Ailie." "Ailie, ma woman!" "Ma ain bonnie wee
dawtie!"
The end was drawing on: the golden bowl was breaking; the silver cord
was fast being loosed; that animula blandula, vagula, hospes, comesque,
was about to flee. The body and the soul--companions for sixty years--
were being sundered, and taking leave. She was walking, alone,
through the valley of that shadow into which one day we must all enter;
and yet she was not alone, for we know whose rod and staff were
comforting her.
One night she had fallen quiet, and, as we hoped, asleep; her eyes were
shut. We put down the gas, and sat watching her. Suddenly she sat up
in bed, and, taking a bed-gown which was lying on it rolled up, she
held it eagerly to her breast,--to the right side. We could see her eyes
bright with a surprising tenderness and joy, bending over this bundle of
clothes. She held it as a woman holds her sucking child; opening out
her night-gown impatiently, and holding it close, and brooding over it,
and murmuring foolish little words, as over one whom his mother

comforteth, and who sucks and is satisfied. It was pitiful and strange to
see her wasted dying look, keen and yet vague,--her immense love.
"Preserve me!" groaned James, giving way. And then she rocked
backward and forward, as if to make it sleep, hushing it, and wasting on
it her infinite fondness. "Wae's me, doctor! I declare she's thinkin' it's
that bairn." "What bairn?" "The only bairn we ever had; our wee Mysie,
and she's in the Kingdom forty years and mair." It was plainly true: the
pain in the breast, telling its urgent story to a bewildered, ruined brain,
was misread and mistaken; it suggested to her the uneasiness of a breast
full of milk, and then the child; and so again once more they were
together, and she had her ain wee Mysie in her bosom.
This was the close. She sank rapidly: the delirium left her; but, as she
whispered, she was "clean silly;" it was the lightening before the final
darkness. After having for some time lain still, her eyes shut, she said,
"James!" He came close to her, and, lifting up her calm, clear, beautiful
eyes, she gave him a long look, turned to me kindly but shortly, looked
for Rab but could not see him, then turned to her husband again, as if
she would never leave off looking, shut her eyes and composed herself.
She lay for some time breathing quick, and passed away so gently that,
when we thought she was gone, James, in his old- fashioned way, held
the mirror to her face. After a long pause, one small spot of dimness
was breathed out; it vanished away, and never returned, leaving the
blank clear darkness without a stain. "What is our life? it is even a
vapor, which appeareth for a little time, and then vanisheth away."