A LERWICK MAN.
A LERWICK MAN.
In the mean time the preparations for his marriage with Karen Sabiston went rapidly forward. He strove to keep his mind and heart in tune with them, but it was often hard work. Sometimes Karen questioned him concerning his obvious depression; sometimes she herself caught the infection of his sadness; and there were little shadows upon their love that she could not understand. On the day before her marriage she went to visit her aunt Matilda Sabiston. Matilda did not deny herself, but afterward Karen wished she had done so. Almost her first words were of Bele Trenby, for whom she was mourning with the love of a mother for an only son.
“What brings you into my sight?” she asked the girl. “Bele is dead and gone, and you are living! and Liot Borson knows all about it!”
“How dare you say such a thing, aunt?”
“I can dare the truth, though the devil listened to it. As for ‘aunt,’ I am no aunt of yours.”
“I am content to be denied by you; and I will see that Liot makes you pay dearly for the words that you have said.”
“No fear! he will not dare to challenge them! I know that.”
“You have called him a murderer!”
“He did the deed, or he has knowledge of it.Onewho never yet deceived me tells me so much. Oh, if I could only bring thatoneinto the court I would hang Liot higher than his masthead! I wish to dieonly that I may follow Liot, and give him misery on misery every one of his life-days. I would also poison his sleep and make his dreams torture him. If there is yet one kinsman behind my back, I will force him to dog Liot into the grave.”
“Liot is in the shelter of God’s hand; he need not fear what you can do to him. He can prove you liar far easier than you can prove him murderer. On the last day of Bele’s life Liot was at sea all day, and there were three men with him. He spent the evening with John Twatt and myself, and then sat until the midnight with Paul Borson.”
“For all that, he was with Bele Trenby! I know it! My heart tells me so.”
“Your heart has often lied to you before this. I see, however, that our talk had better come to an end once for all. I will never come here again.”
“I shall be the happier for that. Why did you come at this time?”
“I thought that you were in trouble about Bele. I was sorry for you. I wished to be friends with every one before I married.”
“I want no pity; I want vengeance; and from here orthereI will compass it. While my head is above the mold there is no friendship possible between us–no, nor after it. Do you think that Bele is out of your way because he is out of the body? He is now nearer to you than your hands or feet. And let Liot Borson look to himself. The old thrall’s curse was evil enough, but Bele Trenby will make it measureless.”
“Such words are like the rest of your lying; I willnot fear them, since God is himself, and he shall rule the life Liot and I will lead together. When a girl is near her bridal every one but you will give her a blessing. I think you have no heart; surely you never loved any one.”
“I have loved–yes!” Then she stood up and cried passionately: “Begone! I will speak no more to you–only this: ask Liot Borson what was the ending of Bele Trenby.”
She was the incarnation of rage and accusation, and Karen almost fled from her presence. Her first impulse was to go to Liot with the story of the interview, but her second was a positive withdrawal of it. It was the eve of her bridal day, and the house was already full of strangers. Paul Borson was spending his money freely for the wedding-feast. In the morning she was to become Liot’s wife. How could she bring contention where there should be only peace and good-will?
Besides, Liot had told her it was useless to visit Matilda; he had even urged her not to do so, for all Lerwick knew how bitterly she was lamenting the loss of her adopted son Bele; and Liot had said plainly to Karen: “As for her good-will, there is more hope of the dead; let her alone.” As she remembered these words a cold fear invaded Karen’s heart; it turned her sick even to dismiss it. What if Liot did know the ending of Bele! She recalled with a reluctant shiver his altered behavior, his long silences, his gloomy restlessness, the frequent breath of some icy separation between them. If Matilda was right in any measure–if Liot knew! Merciful God, if Liot hadhad any share in the matter! She could not face him with such a thought in her heart. She ran down to the sea-shore, and hid herself in a rocky shelter, and tried to think the position down to the bottom.
It was all a chaos of miserable suspicion, and at last she concluded that her fear and doubt came entirely from Matilda’s wicked assertions. She would not admit that they had found in her heart a condition ready to receive them. She said: “I will not again think of the evil words; it is a wrong to Liot. I will not tell them to him; he would go to Matilda, and there would be more trouble, and the why and the wherefore spread abroad; and God knows how the wicked thought grows.”
Then she stooped and bathed her eyes and face in the cold salt water, and afterward walked slowly back to Paul Borson’s. The house was full of company and merry-making, and she was forced to fall into the mood expected from her. Women do such things by supreme efforts beyond the power of men. And Karen’s smiles showed nothing of the shadow behind them, even when Liot questioned her about her visit.
“She is a bad woman, Liot,” answered Karen, “and she said many temper-trying words.”
“That is what I looked for, Karen. It is her way about all things to scold and storm her utmost. Does she trouble you, dear one?”
“I will not be word-sick for her. There is, as you said, no love lost between us, and I shall not care a rap for her anger. Thanks to the Best, we can live without her.” And in this great trust she laid her hand in Liot’s, and all shadows fled away.
It was then a lovely night, bright with rosy auroras; but before morning there was a storm. The bridal march to the kirk had to be given up, and, hooded and cloaked, the company went to the ceremony as they best could. There was no note of music to step to; it was hard enough to breast the gusty, rattling showers, and the whole landscape was a little tragedy of wind and rain, of black, tossing seas and black, driving clouds. Many who were not at the bridal shook their heads at the storm-drenched wedding-guests, and predicted an unhappy marriage; and a few ventured to assert that Matilda Sabiston had been seen going to the spaewife Asta. “And what for,” they asked, “but to buy charms for evil weather?”
All such dark predictions, however, appeared to be negatived by actual facts. No man in Lerwick was so happy as Liot Borson. The home he had built Karen made a marvel of neatness and even beauty; it was always spotless and tidy, and full of bits of bright color–gay patchwork and crockery, and a snow-white hearth with its glow of fiery peat. Always she was ready to welcome him home with a loving kiss and all the material comforts his toil required.And they loved each other!When that has been said, what remains unsaid? It covers the whole ground of earthly happiness.
How the first shadow crossed the threshold of this happy home neither Liot nor Karen could tell; it came without observation. It was in the air, and entered as subtly and as silently. Liot noticed it first. It began with the return of Brent. When he gave Bele the piece of cloth and the gold brooch for his wife, he wason the point of leaving Amsterdam for Java. Fever and various other things delayed his return, but in the end he came back to Lerwick and began to talk about Bele. For Auda, reticent until her husband’s return, then told him of Bele’s visit; and one speculation grew on the top of another until something like the truth was in all men’s minds, even though it was not spoken. Liot saw the thought forming in eyes that looked at him; he felt it in little reluctances of his mates, and heard it, or thought he heard it, in their voices. He took home with him the unhappy hesitation or misgiving, and watched to see if it would touch the consciousness of Karen. The loving wife, just approaching the perilous happiness of maternity, kept asking herself, “What is it? What is it?” And the answer was ever the same–the accusing words that Matilda Sabiston had said, and the quick, sick terror of heart they had awakened.
On Christmas day Karen had a son, a child of extraordinary beauty, that brought his soul into the world with him. The women said that his eyes instantly followed the light, and that his birth-cry passed into a smile. Liot was solemnly and silently happy. He sat for hours holding his wife’s hand and watching the little lad sleeping so sweetly after his first hard travail; for the birth of this child meant to Liot far more than any mortal comprehended. He knew himself to be of religiously royal ancestry, and the covenant of God to such ran distinctly, “To you and your children.” So, then, if God had refused him children, he would certainly have believed that for his sin in regard to Bele Trenby the covenant between God andthe Borsons was broken. This fair babe was a renewal of it. He took him in his arms with a prayer of inexpressible thanksgiving. He kissed the child, and called him David with the kiss, and said to his soul, “The Lord hath accepted my contrition.”
For some weeks this still and perfect happiness continued. The days were dark and stormy, and the nights long; but in Liot’s home there was the sunlight of a woman’s face and the music of a baby’s voice. The early spring brought the first anxiety, for it brought with it no renewal of Karen’s health and strength. She had the look of a leaf that is just beginning to droop upon its stem, and Liot watched her from day to day with a sick anxiety. He made her go to sea with him, and laughed with joy when the keen winds brought back the bright color to her cheeks. But it was only a momentary flush, bought at far too great a price of vitality. In a few weeks she could not pay the price, and the heat of the summer prostrated her. She had drooped in the spring; in the autumn she faded away. When Christmas came again there was no longer any hope left in Liot’s broken heart; he knew she was dying. Night and day he was at her side, there was so much to say to each other; for only God knew how long they were to be parted, or in what place of his great universe they should meet again.
At the end of February it had come to this acknowledgment between them. Sometimes Liot sat with dry eyes, listening to Karen’s sweet hopes of their reunion; sometimes he laid his head upon her pillow and wept such tears as leave life ever afterward dry at its source. And the root of this bitterness was Bele Trenby. Ifit had not been for this man Liot could have shared his wife’s hopes and said farewell to her with the thought of heaven in his heart; but the very memory of Bele sank him below the tide of hope. God was even then “entering into judgment with him,” and what if he should not be able to endure unto the end, and so win, though hardly, a painful acceptance? In every phase and form such thoughts haunted the wretched man continually. And surely Karen divined it, for all her sweet efforts were to fill his heart with a loving “looking forward” to their meeting, and a confident trust in God’s everlasting mercy.
One stormy night in March she woke from a deep slumber and called Liot. Her voice had that penetrating intelligence of the dying which never deceives, and Liot knew instantly that the hour for parting had come. He took her hands and murmured in tones of anguish, “O Karen, Karen! wife of my soul!”
She drew him closer, and said with the eagerness of one in great haste, “Oh, my dear one, I shall soon be nearer to God than you. At his feet I will pray. Tell me–tell me quick, what shall I ask for you? Liot, dear one, tell me!”
“Ask that I may be forgivenallmy sins.”
“Is there one great sin, dear one? Oh, tell me now–one about Bele Trenby? Speak quickly, Liot. Did you see him die?”
“I did, but I hurt him not.”
“He went into the moss?”
“Yes.”
“You could have saved him and did not?”
“If I had spoken in time; there was but a singlemoment–I know not what prevented me. O Karen, I have suffered! I have suffered a thousand deaths!”
“My dear one, I have known it. Now we will pray together–I in heaven, thou on earth. Fear not, dear, dear Liot; he spareth all; they are his. The Lord is the lover of souls.”
These were her last words. With clasped hands and wide-open eyes she lay still, watching and listening, ready to follow when beckoned, and looking with fixed vision, as if seeing things invisible, into the darkness she was about to penetrate. Steeped to his lips in anguish, Liot stood motionless until a dying breath fluttered through the room; and he knew by his sudden sense of loss and loneliness that she was gone, and that for this life he was alone forevermore.
[2]Shoes made of untanned cowhide.
Shoes made of untanned cowhide.
All Lerwick had been anticipating the death of Karen, but when it came there was a shock. She was so young and so well loved, besides which her affectionate heart hid a great spirit; and there was a general hope that for her husband’s and child’s sake she would hold on to life. For, in spite of all reasoning, there remains deep in the heart of man a sense of mastery over his own destiny–a conviction that we do not die until we are willing to die. We “resign” our spirits; we “commit” them to our Creator; we “give upthe ghost”; and it did not seem possible to the wives and mothers of Lerwick that Karen would “give up” living. Her mortality was so finely blended with her immortality, it was hard to believe in such early dissolution. Alas! the finer the nature, the more readily it is fretted to decay by underlying wrong or doubt. When Matilda Sabiston drove Karen down to the sea-shore on the day before her bridal she really gave her the death-blow.
For Karen needed more than the bread and love ofmortal life to sustain her. She belonged to that high order of human beings who require a sure approval of conscience even for their physical health, and whose house of life, wanting this fine cement, easily falls to dissolution. Did she, then, doubt her husband? Did she believe Matilda’s accusations to be true? Karen asked herself these questions very often, and always answered them with strong assurances of Liot’s innocence; but nevertheless they became part of her existence. No mental decisions, nor even actual words, could drive them from the citadel they had entered. Though she never mentioned the subject to Liot, though she watched herself continually lest any such doubts should darken her smiles or chill her love, yet they insensibly impregnated the house in which they dwelt with her. Liot could not say he felt them here or there, but they were all-pervading.
Karen withered in their presence, and Liot’s denser soul would eventually have become sick with the same influence. It was, therefore, no calamity that spared their love such a tragic trial, and if Liot had been a man of clearer perceptions he would have understood that it was not in anger, but in mercy to both of them, that Karen had been removed to paradise. Her last words, however, had partially opened his spiritual vision. He saw what poison had defiled the springs of her life, and he knew instinctively that Matilda Sabiston was the enemy that had done the deed.
It was, therefore, little wonder that he sent her no notice of her niece’s death. And, indeed, Matilda heard of it first through the bellman calling the funeral hour through the town. The day was of the stormiest,and many remembered how steadily storm and gust had attended all the great events of Karen’s short life. She had been born in the tempest which sent her father to the bottom of the sea, and she herself, in coming from Yell to Lerwick, had barely escaped shipwreck. Her bridal garments had been drenched with rain, and on the day set for her baby’s christening there was one of the worst of snow-storms. Indeed, many said that it was the wetting she received on that occasion which had developed the “wasting” that killed her. The same turmoil of the elements marked her burial day. A cold northeast wind drove through the wet streets, and the dreary monotony of the outside world was unspeakable.
But Matilda Sabiston looked through her dim windows without any sense of the weather’s depressing influence–the storm of anger in her heart was so much more imperative. She waited impatiently for the hour appointed for the funeral, and then threw over her head and shoulders a large hood and cloak of blue flannel. She did not realize that the wind blew them backward, that her gray hairs were dripping and disarranged, and her clothing storm-draggled and unsuitable for the occasion; her one thought was to reach Liot’s house about the time when the funeral guests were all assembled. She lifted the latch and entered the crowded room like a bad fate. Every one ceased whispering and looked at her.
She stepped swiftly to the side of the coffin, which was resting on two chairs in the middle of the room. Liot leaned on the one at the head; the minister stood by the one at the foot, and he was just opening thebook in his hands. He looked steadily at Matilda, and there was a warning in the look, which the angry woman totally disdained. Liot never lifted his eyes; they were fixed on Karen’s dead face; but his hands held mechanically a Bible, open at its proper place. But though he did not see Matilda, he knew when she entered; he felt the horror of her approach, and when she laid her hand on his arm he shook it violently off and forced himself to look into her evilly gleaming eyes.
She laughed outright. “So the curse begins,” she said, “and this is but the first of it.”
“This is no hour to talk of curses, Mistress Sabiston,” said the minister, sternly. “If you cannot bring pity and pardon to the dead, then fear to come into their presence.”
“I have nothing to fear from the dead. It is Liot Borson who is ‘followed,’ not me; I did not murder Bele Trenby.”
“Now, then,” answered the minister, “it is time there was a stop put to this talk. Speak here, before the living and the dead, the evil words you have said in the ears of so many. What have you to say against Liot Borson?”
“Look at him!” she cried. “He dares to hold in his hands the Holy Word, and I vow those hands of his are red with the blood of the man he murdered–I mean of Bele Trenby.”
Liot kept his eyes fixed on her until she ceased speaking; then he turned them on the minister and said, “Speak for me.”
“Speak for thyself once and for all, Liot. Speak here before God and thy dead wife and thy mates andthy townsmen. Did thy hands slay Bele Trenby? Are they indeed red with his blood?”
“I never lifted one finger against Bele Trenby. My hands are clear and clean from all blood-guiltiness.” And he dropped the Word upon Karen’s breast, and held up his hands in the sight of heaven and men.
“You lie!” screamed Matilda.
“God is my judge, not you,” answered Liot.
“It is the word of Liot Borson. Who believes it?” asked the minister. “Let those who do so take the hands he declares guiltless of blood.” And the minister clasped Liot’s hands as he spoke the words, and then stepped aside to allow others to follow him. And there was not one man or woman present who did not thus openly testify to their belief in Liot’s innocence. Matilda mocked them as they did so with output tongue and scornful laughs; but no one interfered until the minister said:
“Mistress Sabiston, you must now hold your peace forever.”
“I will not. I will–”
“It is your word against Liot’s, and your word is not believed.”
Then the angry woman fell into a great rage, and railed on every one so passionately that for a few moments she carried all before her. Some of the company stood up round the coffin, as if to defend the dead; and the minister looked at Grimm and Twatt, two big fishermen, and said, “Mistress Sabiston is beside herself; take her civilly to her home.” And they drew her arms within their own, and so led her storming out into the storm.
Liot had the better of his enemy, but he felt no sense of victory. He did not even see the manner of her noisy exit, for he stood in angry despair, looking down at the calm face of his dead wife. Then the door shut out the turmoil, and the solemn voice of the minister called peace into the disquieted, woeful room. Liot was insensible to the change. His whole soul was insurgent; he was ready to accuse heaven and earth of unutterable cruelty to him. Strong as his physical nature was, at this hour it was almost impotent. His feet felt too heavy to move; he saw, and he saw not; and the words that were spoken were only a chaos of sounds.
Andrew Vedder and Hal Skager took his right arm and his left, and led him to his place in the funeral procession. It was only a small one. Those not closely connected with the Borsons went to their homes after the service; for, besides the storm, the hour was late and the night closing in. It seemed as if nature showed her antagonism to poor Karen even to the last scene of her mortal drama; for the tide flowed late, and a Shetlander can only be buried with the flowing tide. The failing light, however, was but a part of the great tragedy of Liot’s soul; it seemed the proper environment.
He bared his head as he took his place, and when urged to put on his hat flung it from him. The storm beat on Karen’s coffin; why not on his head also? People looked at him pitifully as he passed, and an old woman, as she came out of her cottage to cast the customary three clods of earth behind the coffin, called out as she did so, “The comforts of the Father, Son,and Holy Ghost be with you, Liot.” It was Margaret Borson, and she was a century old. She tottered into the storm, and a little child handed her the turf clods, which she cast with the prayer. It came from kindred lips, and so entered Liot’s ears. He lifted his eyes a moment, looked at the eldrich, shadowy woman trembling in the gray light, and bowing his head said softly, “Thank you, mother.”
There was not a word spoken at the open grave. Liot stood in a breathing stupor until all was over, and then got back somehow to his desolate home. Paul Borson’s wife had taken the child away with her, and other women had tidied the room and left a pot of tea on the hob and a little bread and meat on the table. He was alone at last. He slipped the wooden bolt across the door, and then sat down to think and to suffer.
But the mercy of God found him out, and he fell into a deep sleep; and in that sleep he dreamed a dream, and was a little comforted. “I have sinned,” he said when he awoke; “but I am His child, and I cannot slip beyond His mercy. My life shall be atonement, and I will not fear to fall into His hands.”
And, thank God, no grief lasts forever. As the days and weeks wore away Liot’s sorrow for his wife grew more reasonable; then the spring came and the fishing was to attend to; and anon little David began to interest his heart and make him plan for the future. He resolved to save money and send the lad to St. Andrew’s, and give him to the service of the Lord. All that he longed for David should have; all that he had failed to accomplish David should do. He would give hisown life freely if by this sacrifice he could make David’s life worthy to be an offering at His altar.
The dream, though it never came true, comforted and strengthened him; it was something to live for. He was sure that, wherever in God’s universe Karen now dwelt, she would be glad of such a destiny for her boy. He worked cheerfully night and day for his purpose, and the work in itself rewarded him. The little home in which he had been so happy and so miserable was sold, and the money put in the bank for “David’s education.” All Liot’s life now turned upon this one object, and, happily, it was sufficient to restore to him that hope–that something to look forward to–which is the salt of life.
Matilda gave him no further trouble. She sent him a bill for Karen’s board, and he paid it without a word; and this was the last stone she could throw; besides which, she found herself compelled by public opinion to make some atonement for her outrageous behavior, since in those days it would have been as easy to live in St. Petersburg and quarrel with the czar as to live in Shetland and not have the minister’s approval. So Mistress Sabiston had a special interview with the Rev. Magnus Ridlon, and she also sent a sum of money to the kirk as a “mortification,” and eventually was restored to all sacred privileges, except the great one of the holy table. This depended inexorably on her public exoneration of Liot and her cultivation of good-will toward him. She utterly refused Liot, and preferred to want the sacred bread and wine rather than eat and drink them with Liot Borson. And though Liot declared his willingness to forgive Matilda fully,in his heart he was not sorry to be spared the spiritual obligation.
So the seasons wore away, and summer and winter brought work and rest, until David was nearly six years old. By this time the women of Lerwick thought Liot should look for another wife. “There is Halla Odd,” said Jean Borson; “she is a widow of thine own age and she is full-handed. It is proper for thee now to make a home for thyself and David. When a wife has been dead four years there has been mourning enough.”
Impatient of such talk at first, Liot finally took it into some consideration; but it always ended in one way: he cast his eyes to that lonely croft where Karen slept, and remembered words she had once spoken:
“In a little while I shall go away, Liot, and people will say, ‘She is in her grave’;but I shall not be there.”
That was exactly Liot’s feeling–Karen was not there. She had loved God and believed in heaven, and he was sure that she had gone to heaven. And from every spot on the open sea or the streeted town or the solitary moors he had only to look up to the place where his beloved dwelt. He did, however, as Jean Borson desired: he thought about Halla Odd; he watched her ways, and speculated about her money and her house skill and the likelihood of her making a good stepmother to David.
Probably, if events had taken their usual course, he would have married Halla; but at the beginning of the summer this thing happened: a fine private yacht was brought into harbor with her sails torn to rags and her mainmast injured. Coming down from the north,she had been followed and caught by a storm, and was in considerable distress when she was found by some Lerwick fisher-smacks. Then, as Liot Borson was the best sailmaker in the town, he was hired to put the yacht’s canvas in good condition; and while doing so the captain of the yacht, who was also her owner, talked often with him about the different countries he had visited. He showed him paintings of famous places and many illustrated volumes of travel, and so fired Liot’s heart that his imagination, like a bird, flew off in all directions.
In a short time the damaged wayfarer, with all her new sails set, went southward, and people generally forgot her visit. But Liot was no more the same man after it. He lived between the leaves of a splendid book of voyages which had been left with him. Halla went out of his thoughts and plans, and all his desires were set to one distinct purpose–to see the world, and the whole world. David was the one obstacle. He did not wish to leave him in Shetland, for his intention was to bid farewell forever to the island. It had suddenly become a prison to him; he longed to escape from it. So, then, David must be taken away or the boy would draw him back; but the question was, where should he carry the child?
He thought instantly of his sister, who was married to a man in comfortable circumstances living at Stornoway, in the Outer Hebrides, and he resolved to take David to her. He could now afford to pay well for his board and schooling, and he was such a firm believer in the tie of blood-kinship that the possibility of the child not being kindly treated never enteredhis mind. And as he was thinking over the matter a man came from Stornoway to the Shetland fishing, and spoke well of his sister Lizzie and her husband. He said also that their only child was in the Greenland whaling-fleet, and that David would be a godsend of love to their solitary hearts.
This report satisfied Liot, and the rest was easily managed. Paul Borson urged him to stay until the summer fishing was over; but Liot was possessed by the sole idea of getting away, and he would listen to nothing that interfered with this determination. He owned half the boat in which he fished, and as it was just at the beginning of the season he was obliged to buy the other half at an exorbitant price. But the usually prudent man would make no delays; he paid the price asked, and then quickly prepared the boat for the voyage he contemplated.
One night after David was asleep he carried him on board of her; and Paul divined his purpose, though it was unspoken. He walked with him to the boat, and they smoked their last pipe together in the moonlight on her deck, and were both very silent. Paul had told himself that he had a great deal to say to his cousin, yet when it came to the last hour they found themselves unable to talk. At midnight both men stood up.
“The tide serves,” said Liot, softly, holding out his hand.
And Paul clasped it and answered: “God be with thee, Liot.”
“We shall meet no more in this life, Paul.”
“Then I tryst thee for the next life; that will be a good meeting. Fare thee well. God keep thee!”
“THE WATERS OF THE GREAT DEEP.”
“THE WATERS OF THE GREAT DEEP.”
“And thee also.”
“Then we shall be well kept, both of us.”
That was the last of Shetland for Liot Borson. He watched his kinsman out of sight, and then lifted his anchor, and in the silence and moonlight went out to sea. When the Lerwick people awoke in the morning Liot was miles and miles away. He was soon forgotten. It was understood that he would never come back, and there was no more interest in him than there is in the dead. Like them, he had had his time of sojourn, and his place knew him no more.
As for Liot, he was happy. He set his sails, and covered David more warmly, and then lay down under the midnight stars. The wind was at his back, and the lonely land of his birth passed from his eyes as a dream passes. In the morning the islands were not to be seen; they were hidden by belts of phantom foam, wreathed and vexed with spray and spindrift. There was, fortunately, no wrath in the morning tide, only a steady, irresistible set to the westward; and this was just what Liot desired. For many days these favorable circumstances continued, and Liot and David were very happy together; but as they neared the vexed seas which lash Cape Wrath and pour down into the North Minch, Liot had enough to do to keep his boat afloat.
He was driven against his will and way almost to the Butt of Lewis; and as his meal and water were very low, he looked for death in more ways than one. Then the north wind came, and he hoped to reach the broad Bay of Stornoway with it; but it was soon so strong and savage that nothing could be done but make all snug as possible for the gale and then runbefore it. It proved to be worse than Liot anticipated, and, hungry and thirsty and utterly worn out, the helpless boat and her two dying occupants were picked up by some Celtic coasters from Uig, and taken to the little hamlet to which they were going.
There Liot stayed all summer, fishing with the men of the place; but he was not happy, for, though they were Calvinists as to faith, they were very different from the fair, generous, romantic men of his own islands. For the fishers of Uig were heavy-faced Celts, with the impatient look of men selfish and greedy of gain. They made Liot pay well for such privileges as they gave him; and he looked forward to the close of the fishing season, for then he was determined to go to Stornoway and get David a more comfortable and civilized home, after which he would sell his boat and nets. And then? Then he would take the first passage he could get to Glasgow, for at Glasgow there were ships bound for every port in the world.
It was on the 5th of September that he again set sail for Stornoway, and on the 11th he was once more brought back to Uig. A great storm had stripped him of everything he possessed but his disabled boat. David was in a helpless, senseless condition, and Liot had a broken arm, and fainted from suffering and exhaustion while he was being carried on shore. In some way he lost his purse, and it contained all his money. He looked at the sea and he looked at the men, and he knew not which had it. So there was nothing possible for another winter but poverty and hard toil, and perchance a little hope, now and then, of a better voyage in the spring.
With endless labor and patience he prepared for this third attempt, and one lovely day in early June set sail for the Butt of Lewis. He had good weather and fair winds for two days; then the norther came and drove him round Vatternish, and into the dangerous whirlpools and vexed waterways of that locality. His boat began to leak, and he was forced to abandon her, and for thirty hours to thole the blustering winds and waves that tossed the little cockle-shell, in which they took a last refuge, like a straw upon the billows. Again the men of Uig brought them to shore; and this time they were sulky, and expressed no sympathy for Liot’s disappointment, loss, and suffering. They had become superstitious about him, and they speculated and wondered at the ill luck that always drove him back to Skye. Roy Hunish, a very old man, spoke for the rest when he said, “It seems to me, Liot Borson, that the Lord has not sent you to Stornoway; he is against the journey.” And Liot answered sadly: “He is against all I desire.”
When they had been warmed and fed and rested in one of the nearest cottages, Liot took David in his arms and went back to his old hut. He put the sleeping child in the bunk, and then sat down on the cold, dark hearthstone. What Hunish expressed so plainly was the underlying thought in his own heart. He could not escape from a conclusion so tragically manifested. In sorrow too great for tears, he compelled himself to resign all his hopes and dreams–a renunciation as bitter as wormwood, but not as cruelly bitter as the one it included; for his rejection was also the rejection of his son. God had not forgiven him, norhad he accepted David’s dedication to his service, for he had stripped him of all means to accomplish it. He might have permitted him to reach Stornoway and leave the boy among his kindred; he had chosen rather to include David in the sin of his father. This was the thought that wounded his heart like a sword. He went to the sleeping boy and kissed his face, weeping most of all for the sorrow he had brought on the innocent one.
If this earth be a penal world, Liot that night went down to one of its lowest hells. Sorrow of many kinds brutally assailed him. He hid nothing from his consciousness. He compelled himself to see over again the drowning of Bele–that irreparable wrong which had ruined all his happiness; he compelled himself to stand once more by Karen’s coffin, and listen to his own voice calling God to witness his innocence; he compelled himself to admit that he had thought God had forgotten his sin of seven years ago. And when these things had been thought out to the end, his heart was so full that he quite unconsciously gave utterance to his thoughts in audible speech. The tones of his voice in the darkness were like those of a man praying, and the hopeless words filled the sorrowful room with a sense of suffering:
“So, then, it is for a life-sentence that I am sent here. There is to be no pardon till I have dreed out the years appointed me in the gust and poverty of this dreadful place, among its hard, unfriendly men. My God! I am but thirty-three years old. How long wilt thou be angry with me? And the little lad! Pass me by, but oh, be merciful to him!”
A great silence followed this imploration. The man was waiting. For hours he sat motionless; but just before dawn he must have heard a word of strength or comfort, for he rose to his feet and bowed his head. He was weeping bitterly, and his voice was like a sob; but from that hut on the wild Skye coast there arose with a heartbroken cry the sublimest of mortal prayers–“Thy will be done.”
Resignation is not always contentment, and though Liot accepted God’s will in place of his own will, he took it rather with a dour patience than with a cheerful satisfaction. Yet in a certain way life gets made independent of our efforts. A higher power than our own brings events about, finds a way across the hills of difficulty, smooths out the rough places, and makes straight what our folly has made crooked. When it became certain that Liot would make his life-home near Uig the men on that coast began to treat him with more friendliness, and the women pitied and cared a little for his motherless boy. And by and by there came a new minister, who found in Liot a man after his own heart. The two men became familiars, and the friendship made life more supportable to both.
It was a hard existence, however, for the child. Liot loved his son, but he was not a demonstrative father, and he thought more of doing his duty to David than of showing him affection or providing him withpleasure. For when all hopes of making him a minister were over David lost something in Liot’s estimation. He was, then, just a common lad, in whose heart, as a matter of course, folly and disobedience were bound up. It was his place to exorcise everything like joy, and with the phantoms of a gloomy creed to darken and terrify his childhood.
Before David had shed his baby teeth, hell and the devil were tremendous realities to him. An immaculate, pitiless God, who delighted in taking vengeance on his enemies, haunted all his boyhood’s dreams; and the “scheme of salvation,” by which perchance this implacable Deity might be conciliated, was the beginning and the end of his education. With an amazing distinctness in question and answer, this “scheme” was laid before him, and by the word and the rod of admonition he was made familiar with the letter of its awful law.
Here, then, was a child whom a sad destiny had led far away from happiness. His nature was singularly affectionate, yet he had no memory of a mother’s kiss, or, indeed, of any tender human kindness. No one petted or loved him; no one heeded his childish sorrows and sufferings. He had toothaches and earaches, about which he felt it useless to speak. He went into the boats with his father as soon as he could bait a line, and was forced to endure all that men endured from salt-water boils, chilblains, frost-bites, and the lashing of spray-laden winds. Cold and hunger, heat and thirst, and the frequent intolerable sleepiness of overtaxed strength made up the sad drama of his childhood; and he played his part in it with a patientsubmission that sometimes won from his father astonishment and a few words of praise or admiration.
Such words made glorious epochs in the boy’s life; he could remember every one of them. Once, when Liot could get no one to launch a boat and go with him to the help of four men drowning before their eyes, the ten-year-old lad came radiantly forward and said, “Take me, father; I will go with you.” And the two went on the desperate errand together, and brought back safely the men ready to perish. Then, when all was well over and the child stood trembling with exhaustion, Liot drew him close to his side, and pushed his wet hair from his brow, and said with proud tenderness, “You are a good, brave boy. God bless you, David!” And the happy upward look of the child had his mother’s smile in it, and before Liot knew what he was doing he had stooped and kissed him. The event was a wonderful one, and it made a tie between the father and the son that it was beyond the power of time to loosen.
Liot’s own boyhood had been filled with the dreams and stories of the elder world. He had been conscious all his life of this influence streaming up from the centuries behind him, and coloring, and even moving, his present existence. The fierce hatred he felt for Bele Trenby came from unchristened ancestors, and the dumb murder, which had darkened his life and sent him to Uig, from the same source. He told David none of these stirring sagas. He was resolved that the knowledge of the thrall’s curse should not call sorrow to him. He never named the heroic Gisli in his hearing. And once, when he found an old fishermanreciting “Ossian” to David, he fell into such anger as terrified every one. Indeed, he said words at that hour which would have made much trouble and ill-will if the minister had not justified them and called Liot’s anger a “righteous one.”
And in those days there was absolutely no literature for the people. Books were dear and scarce; ten years might pass without a new one drifting into a hamlet; and newspapers were few and for the rich alone. David, then, had but one book–the Holy Scriptures. He read them, and read them again, and found everything in them. Fortunately, the wonderful wisdom and stories of the Apocrypha had not then been discarded; the book had its place between the Old and the New Testament. And David was wise with Solomon, and saw beautiful visions with Esdras, and lived and glowed and fought with the heroic Maccabees.
And we who have far more books than we can read can hardly understand how David loved the Bible. It was his poetry, his philosophy, his history; it was, above all, the speech of God to man. Through it he breathed the air of the old, old East, and grew up under the shadows of Judea’s palms and olives; so that the rainy gloom of the coast of Skye was but an accident of his existence. Abraham and Joseph, Moses and Joshua, were far more real personages to David Borson than the Duke of Wellington or Napoleon and his twelve marshals. Through the stormy days when it was impossible to go to sea, and in the long winter nights, when he stretched himself before the red peats with a little oil-cruse, he and the Bible were friends and companions. It kept him in directrelation with God and heaven; it fed him on faith; it made him subject to duty; it gave him a character at once courageous and gentle, calm and ideal–such a character as is very rare in our days, and which, where it does exist, willnotbe transmitted.
So that, with all his hard work and many deprivations, David had his happy hours. And the years went by, and he grew up to a fair and stately manhood, not rebelling against his fate, but taking it as a part of the inscrutable mystery of life and death constantly before his eyes. Others around him suffered in like manner, and at the end one thing happened to all. No; it was not the tyranny of nature nor of his material life that troubled David as he approached manhood; it was the spiritual tyranny under which he lived and prayed which darkened his days and filled his nights with thoughts which he dared not follow to their proper conclusion and was equally afraid to dismiss.
This was his dilemma. He had been taught by a father whom he trusted implicitly that life was only a short and precarious opportunity for working out his salvation with fear and trembling; peradventure he might be counted among the remnant whom God would elect to save from eternal misery. And in a measure the constant east winds and cloudy heavens, the cold and stormy seas, and the gloom and poverty of all his surroundings were so many confirmations of this unhappy conviction. Yet it was very hard for him to believe that the God of the Bible, “like a father pitying his children,” was the God of his Shorter and Longer Catechisms. As his twentieth year approachedthese doubts and questions would not be put away, and yet he dared not speak of them either to the minister or to his father.
Then, one night, as he was watching his lines and hooks, something happened which broke the adamantine seal upon his soul. He was quite alone in his boat, and she was drifting slowly under the full moon; there was not a sound upon the ocean but the wash of the water against her sides. He was sitting motionless, thinking of the sadness and weariness of life, and wishing that God would love him, though ever so little, and, above all, that he would give him some word or sign of his care for him. His hands were clasped upon his knees, his eyes fixed on the far horizon; between him and the God whom he so ignorantly feared and desired there was apparently infinite space and infinite silence.
All at once some one seemed to come into the boat beside him. An ineffable peace and tenderness, a sweetness not to be described, encompassed the lonely youth. He was sensible of a glory he could not see; he was comforted by words that were inaudible to his natural ears. During this transitory experience he scarcely breathed, but as it slowly passed away he rose reverently to his feet. “An angel has been with me,” he thought.
After this event the whole fabric of his creed vanished at times before the inexplicable revelation. Yet the terrible power of early impressions is not easily eradicated, even by the supernatural; and whenever he reasoned about the circumstance he came to the conclusion that it might have been a snare and a delusionof the Evil One. For why should an angel be sent with a word to him? or why should he dare to hope that his longing after God’s love had touched the heart of the Eternal? Yet, though the glory was dissolved by the doubting, nothing could quite rob him of his blessing; in the midst of the sternest realities of his rough daily toil he found himself musing on those wonderful days when angels went and came among men as they threshed their wheat or worked at their handicrafts, when prayer was visibly answered and the fire dropped from heaven on the accepted sacrifice.
He thought the more on this subject because his father was visibly dying from some internal disease, which was dissolving with rapid, inexorable suffering the house of clay in which the soul of Liot Borson dwelt. Liot was aware of it, and had borne with silent courage the enemy’s advances toward the citadel of life. Very reluctantly he had given up his duties one by one, until the day came when nothing remained for him to do but to wait and to suffer; then he spoke plainly to David. It happened to be the lad’s twenty-sixth birthday, and Liot had his own memories of the first one. Almost inadvertently the name of Karen passed his lips, and then he talked long of her goodness, her love, and her beauty; and David listened with an interest that tempted more confidence than Liot had ever thought to give.
“If you had such a wife as Karen Sabiston was to me,” he said, “then, David, you would be happy even in this place. But you will not stay here. When I am gone away to the land very far off, then you willgo back to Shetland–to your own land and your own people.”
“I will do as you wish, father.”
“You will marry; that is to be looked for. I have seen that girl of Talisker’s watching you, and luring you with her sly smiles and glances. Give her no notice. I like not these Celtic women, with their round black eyes and their red color and black hair. In Shetland you will see women that you may safely love–good and beautiful girls of your own race; there must be no strange women among the Borsons. Your Bible tells you what sorrow comes from marrying daughters of Heth and their like. Go to Shetland for your wife.”
“I will, father.”
“You will find friends and kindred there–my good cousin Paul, and his sons and daughters, and your mother’s family in Yell, and Matilda Sabiston. I would say something of her, but she is doubtless in the grave by this time, and gone to the mercy of the Merciful.”
“Was she of our kindred, then?”
“Of your mother’s kin. They were ill friends here, but yonder all may–allwillbe different.”
During this conversation Liot made his son understand that the messenger of release might come at any hour; but in the morning he felt so free from pain that David thought he could safely go to the early fishing. When he reached the pier, however, the boat had sailed without him, and he walked into Uig and told the minister how near the end it was. And the minister answered:
“We have had our farewell, David. We shall meet no more till we meet in the city of God.” He spoke with a subdued enthusiasm, and his grave face was luminous with an interior transfiguration. Suddenly the sun came from behind a cloud, and the flying shower was crowned with a glorious rainbow. He drew David to the window, and said in a rapture of adoration:
“The token of His covenant! It compasseth the heavens about with a glorious circle, andthe hands of the Most High have bended it. Could any words be more vitally realistic, David? Tell your father what you have seen–the token of His covenant! The token of His covenant!”
And David went away, awed and silent; for there was in the minister’s eyes that singular brilliance which presages a vision of things invisible. They looked straight into the sunshine. Did they see beyond it to where the “innumerable company of angels” were singing, “Holy, holy, holy”?
Indeed, he was so much impressed that he took the longest way home. He wanted to think over what his father and the minister had said, and he wanted that solitude of nature which had so often been to him the voice of God. The road itself was only a foot-path across a melancholy moor, covered with heather and boulders, and encompassed by cyclopean wrecks of mountains, the vapory outlines of which suggested nothing but endless ruin. Although the season was midsummer, there had been sharp, surly whiffs of rain all day long, and the dreary levels were full of little lochs of black moss water. So David kept tothe seaward side, where the land was higher, and where he could see the roll of a spent gale swinging round Vatternish toward the red, rent bastions of Skye, and hear its thunder amid the purple caves of the basalt and the whitened tiers of the oölite, silencing all meaner sounds.
After a trailing, thoughtful walk of a mile, he came to a spot where a circle of druidical monoliths stood huge and pale in the misty air. He went straight into the haunted place with the manner of one familiar with it, cast his nets on the low central stone which had once been the sacrificial altar of the dead creed, and then leaned wearily against one of the sheltering pillars.
His person was at this time remarkably handsome and in wonderful harmony with its surroundings. He was large and strong–a man not made for the narrow doorways of the town, but for the wide, stormy spaces of the unstreeted ocean. The sea was in his eyes, which were blue and outlooking; his broad breast was bared to the wind and rain; his legs were planted apart, as if he was hauling up an anchor or standing on a reeling deck. An air of somber gravity, a face sad and mystical, distinguished his solitary figure. He was the unconscious incarnation of the lonely land and the stormy sea.
Leaning against the pagan pillar, he revolved in his mind those great questions that survive every change of race and dynasty: Whence come we? Where go we? How can a man be justified with God? Though the rain smote him east and west, he was in the sunshine of the Holy Land; he was drawing nets with Simon Peter on the Sea of Galilee; he was listeningto Him who spake as never man spake. Suddenly the sharp whistle of a passing steamer roused him. He turned his eyes seaward, and saw thePolly Annhastening to the railway port with her load of fish for the Glasgow market. The sight set him again in the nineteenth century. Then he felt the rain, and he drew his bonnet over his brows, and lifted his nets, and began to walk toward the little black hut on the horizon. It was of large stones roughly mortared together, and it had a low chimney, and a door fastened with a leather strap; but the small window wanted the screen of white muslin usual in Highland cots, and was dim with dust and cobwebs.
It was David’s home, and he knew his father waited there for his coming; so he hastened his steps; but the radiant, dreamy look which had made him handsome was gone, and he approached the door with the air of a man who is weary of to-day and without hope for the morrow. At the threshold he threw off this aspect, and entered with a smile. His father, sitting wearily in a wooden arm-chair, turned his face to meet him. It was the face of a man walking with death. Human agony grimly borne without complaint furrowed it; gray as ashes were the cheeks, and the eyes alone retained the “spark of heavenly flame” which we call life.
“There has been a change, David,” he said, “and it is well you are come; for I know I must soon be going, and there is this and that to say–as there always is at the parting.”
“I see that you are worse, father. Let me go for the doctor now.”
“I will have no man meddle with the hour of my death; no one shall either hurry or delay it.”
“The doctor might give you some ease from your sore pain.”
“I will bear His will to the uttermost. But come near to me, David; I have some last words to say, and there is One at my side hasting me forward.”
“Tell me your wish now, father. I will do all that you desire.”
“When you have put me in my grave, go to Shetland for me. I thought to do my own errand–to get there just in time to do it, and die; but it is hard counting with Death–he comes sooner than you expect. David, I have brought you up in the way of life. Think no wrong of me when I am gone away forever. Indeed, you’ll not dare to,” he said with a sudden flash of natural pride in himself; “for though I may have had a sore downfall, I could not get away from His love and favor.”
“None living shall say wrong of you in my hearing, father.”
“But, David, there are those of the unregenerate who would make much of my little slip. I might die, lad, and say nothing to any man about it. Put a few peats on the fire; death is cold, and my feet are in the grave already; so I may tell the truth now, for at this hour no man can make me afraid. And there is no sin, I hope, in letting Matilda Sabiston know, if she is still alive, that I owe Bele Trenby nothing for the wrong he did me. St. Paul left the Almighty to pay the ill-will he owed Alexander the coppersmith; but I could not ask that much favor, being only Liot Borson;and no doubt the Lord suffered me to pay my own debt–time and place being put so unexpected into my hand.”
Then he was awfully silent. The mortal agony was dealing its last sharp blows, and every instinct impelled him to cry out against the torment. But Liot Borson had put his mortality beneath his feet; nothing could have forced a cry from him. His face changed as a green leaf might change if a hot iron was passed over it; but he sat grasping the rude arms of his wooden chair, disdaining the torture while it lasted, and smiling triumphantly as it partly passed away.
“A few more such pangs and the fight will be over, David. So I will swither and scruple no longer; I will tell the whole truth about the drowning of Bele Trenby. Bele and I were never friends; but I hated him when he began to meddle between me and Karen Sabiston. He had no shadow of right to do so, for I had set my heart on her and she had given me her promise; and I said then, and I say it now with death at my elbow, that he had no right to step between me and Karen. Yet he tried to do that thing, and if it had not been for the minister I had stabbed him to his false heart. But the minister bade me do no wrong, because I was of the household of faith, and a born and baptized child of God, having come–mind this, David–of generations of his saints. He said if Bele had done me wrong, wrong would come to Bele, and I would live to see it.”
“‘Vengeance is Mine; I will repay’,” quoted David, in a low voice. But Liot answered sharply:
“The Lord sends by whom he will send. And it sohappened that one night, as Bele and I were walking together, I knew the hour had come.”
“You took not the matter in your own hands surely, father?”
“There was none there but me. I laid no finger on him; he fell into his own snare. I had said a thousand times–and the Lord had heard me say it–that if one word of mine would save Bele Trenby from death, I would not say that one word. Could I break my oath for a child of the Evil One? Had Bele been of the elect I would have borne that in mind; but Bele came of bad stock; pirates and smugglers were his forebears, and the women not to name with the God-fearing–light and vain women. So I hated Bele, and I had a right to hate him; and one night, as I walked from Quarf to Lerwick, Bele came to my side and said, ‘Good evening, Liot.’ And I said, ‘It is dark,’ and spoke no more. And by and by we came to a stream swollen with rain and snow-water, and Bele said, ‘Here is the crossing.’ And I answered him not, for I knew it wasnotthe crossing. So as I delayed a little–for my shoe-string was loose–Bele said again, ‘Here is the crossing.’ And I told him neither yes nor no. And he said to me, ‘It seemeth, Liot, thou art in a devil’s temper, and I will stay no longer with thee.’ And with the ill words on his lips he strode into the stream, and then overhead into the moss he went, and so to his own place.”
“Father, I am feared for a thing like that. There would be sin in it.”
“I lifted no finger against him; my lips lied not. It was the working out of his own sin that slew him.”
“I would have warned him–yes, I would. Let me go for the minister; he will not be feared to say, ‘Liot, you did wrong,’ if so he thinks.”
“I have had my plea out with my Maker. If I did sin, I have paid the price of the sin. Your mother was given to me, and in two years the Lord took her away. I thought to fill my eyes with a sight of the whole world, and I was sent to this desolate place for a life-sentence, to bide its storm and gloom and gust and poverty, and in this bit cabin to dree a long, fierce wrestle with Death, knowing all the time he would get the mastery over me in the end.” Then, suddenly pausing, his gray face glowed with passionate rapture, and lifting up his right hand he cried out: “No, no, David;Iam the conqueror! There are two ways of dying, my lad–victory and defeat. Thank God, I have the victory through Jesus Christ, my Lord and Saviour!”
“Who is the propitiation for all sin, father.”
“Sin!” cried the dying man, “sin! I have nothing to do with sin. ‘Who shall lay anything to the charge of God’s elect?’ for, ‘Whosoever is born of God doth not commit sin–he cannot sin, for he is born of God.’ I did indeed make a sore stumble; so also did David, and natheless he was a man after God’s own heart. What has man to do with my fault?Hehas entered into judgment with me, and I have gladly borne the hand of the smiter.”
“Gladly, father?”
“Ay, David, gladly. For had I not beenhisson, he would have ‘let me alone,’ as he does those joined to their idols; but because he loved me he chastisedme; and I have found that his rod as well as his staff can comfort in affliction. Some of his bairns deserve and get the rod of iron. Be good, David, and he will stretch out to you only his golden scepter.”
“And also you have the Intercessor.”
“If I had not I would plead my own cause, as Job did. I would rise up and answer him like a man, for he is a just God. Mercy may have times and seasons, but justice is the same yesterday, to-day, and forever. ‘Shall not the Judge of all the earth do right?’”
“Would you say that, father, if justice sent you to the place of torment?”
“Ay, would I! ‘Though he slay me, yet will I trust in him.’ But I am not fearing the place of torment, David. And as for this world, it is at my feet like a cast-off shoe, and all its gold and gear is as the wrack of the sea. But you will find a few sovereigns in my chest, and a letter for your cousin Paul Borson; and the ship and the house you may do your will with.”
“It is your will in all things that I care to do, father. And now, if you would but let me away for the minister, maybe you could say a word to him you are not caring to say to me–a word of sorrow or remorse–”
“Remorse! remorse! No, no, David! Remorse is for feeble souls; remorse is the virtue of hell; remorse would sin again if it could. I have repented, David, and repentance ends all. See to your Larger Catechism, David–Question 76.”
Throughout this conversation speech had been becoming more and more painful to him. The last words were uttered in gasps of unconquerable agony, and amortal spasm gave a terrible emphasis to this spiritual conviction. When it had passed he whispered faintly, “The pains of hell get hold on me–on my body, David; they cannot touch my soul. Lay me down now–at His feet–I can sit in my chair no longer.”
So David laid him in his bunk. “Shall I saythe wordsnow–the words you marked, father?” he asked.
“Ay; the hour has come.”
Then David knelt down and put his young, fresh face very close to the face of the dying man, and said solemnly and clearly in his very ear the chosen words of trust: