“When the waves of death compassed me;“When the sorrows of hell compassed me about, and the snares of death prevented me,“In my distress I called upon the Lord, and cried to my God: and he did hear my voice out of his temple, and my cry did enter into his ears.”
“When the waves of death compassed me;
“When the sorrows of hell compassed me about, and the snares of death prevented me,
“In my distress I called upon the Lord, and cried to my God: and he did hear my voice out of his temple, and my cry did enter into his ears.”
“The sorrows of death compassed me, and the pains of hell gat hold upon me: I found trouble and sorrow.“Then called I upon the name of the Lord; O Lord, I beseech thee, deliver my soul....“Return unto thy rest, O my soul; for the Lord hath dealt bountifully with thee.“For thou hast delivered my soul from death, mine eyes from tears, and my feet from falling....“Precious in the sight of the Lord is the death of his saints.”
“The sorrows of death compassed me, and the pains of hell gat hold upon me: I found trouble and sorrow.
“Then called I upon the name of the Lord; O Lord, I beseech thee, deliver my soul....
“Return unto thy rest, O my soul; for the Lord hath dealt bountifully with thee.
“For thou hast delivered my soul from death, mine eyes from tears, and my feet from falling....
“Precious in the sight of the Lord is the death of his saints.”
Here David ceased. It was evident that the mighty words were no longer necessary. A smile, such as is never seen on mortal face until the light of eternity falls upon it, illumined the gaunt, stern features, and the outlooking eyes flashed a moment in its radiance.A solemn calm, a certain pomp of conscious grandeur in his victory over death and the grave, encompassed the dying man, and gave to the prone figure a majestic significance. As far as this world was concerned, Liot Borson was a dead man. For two days he lingered on life’s outermost shoal, but at sunrise the third morning he went silently away. It was full tide; the waves broke softly on the shingle, and the sea-birds on the lonely rocks were crying for their meat from God. Suddenly the sunshine filled the cabin, and David was aware of something more than the morning breeze coming through the wide-open door. A sense of loftypresencefilled the place. “It is the flitting,” he said with a great awe; and he stood up with bowed head until a feeling of indescribable loneliness testified that the soul which had hitherto dwelt with him was gone away forever.
He went then to the body. Death had given it dignity and grandeur. It was evident that in Liot’s case the great change had meant victory and not defeat. Almost for the first time in his life David kissed his father. Then he went into Uig and told the minister, and said simply to his mates, “My father is dead.” And they answered:
“It is a happy change for him, David. Is it to-morrow afternoon you would like us to come?”
And David said: “Yes; at three o’clock the minister will be there.”
He declined all companionship; he could wake alone with the dead. For the most part he sat on the door-step and watched the rising and setting of the constellations, or walked to and fro before the open door,ever awfully aware of that outstretched form, the house of clay in which his father and companion had dwelt so many years at his side. Sometimes he slept a little with his head against the post of the door, and then the sudden waking in the starlight made him tremble.
He had thought this night would be a session of solemnity never to be forgotten; but he found himself dozing and his thoughts drifting, and it was only by an effort that he could compel anything like the attitude he desired. For we cannot kindle when we will the sacred fire of the soul. And David was disappointed in his spiritual experience, and shocked at what he called his coldness and indifference, which, after all, were not coldness and indifference, but the apathy of exhausted feeling and physical weariness.
The next afternoon there was a quiet gathering in the cabin that had been Liot’s, and a little prayer and admonition; then, in the beauteous stillness of the summer day, the fishers made a bier of their crossed oars, and David laid his father upon it. There was no coffin; the long, majestic figure of humanity was only folded close in a winding-sheet and his own blue blanket. So, by the sea-shore, as the tide murmured and the sun glinted brightly through swirling banks of gray clouds, they carried him to his long home. No one spoke as he entered it. The minister dropped his kerchief upon the upturned face, and David cast the first earth. Then the dead man’s friends, each taking the spade in his turn, filled in the empty place, and laid over it the sod, and went silently away in twos and threes, each to his own home.
When all had disappeared, David followed. He hadnow an irresistible impulse to escape from his old surroundings. He did not feel as if he cared to see again any one who had been a part of his past. He went back to the cabin, ate some bread and fish, and then with a little reluctance opened his father’s chest. There was small wealth in it–only some letters, and Liot’s kirk clothes, and a leather purse containing sixteen sovereigns. David saw at a glance that the letters were written by his mother. He wondered a moment if his father had yet found her again, and then he kissed the bits of faded script and laid them upon the glowing peats. The money he put in his pocket, and the chest and clothing he resolved to take to Shetland with him. As for the cabin, he decided to give it to Bella Campbell. “She was sore put to it last winter to shelter her five fatherless bairns; and if my father liked any one more than others, it was Angus Campbell,” he thought.
Then he went out and looked at the boat. “It is small,” he said, “but it will carry me to Shetland. I can keep in the shadows of the shore. And though it is a far sail round Cape Wrath and Dunnet Head, it is summer weather, and I’ll win my way if it so pleases God.”
And thus it happened that on the first day of August this lonely wayfarer on cheerless seas caught sight of the gray cliffs of the Shetlands, lying like dusky spots in the sapphire and crimson splendors of the setting sun.
Book Second
DAVID BORSON
Between David and the misty Hebrides there was now many a league of the separating, changeful, dangerous, tragic sea, but the journey over this great waterway had been a singularly fortunate one. David, indeed, had frequently likened himself to the young Tobias on a similar errand; for his father had particularly pointed out this history, and had read aloud to him with an emphasis not to be forgotten the old Hebrew father’s parting charge: “Go! and God, which dwelleth in heaven, prosper your journey, and the angel of God keep you company.”
To David this angelic companionship was no impossible hope and reliance. As the south winds drove him north and the west winds sent him east just at the proper times, he believed that some wise and powerful pilot stood at the wheel unseen; and he went about his boat with the cheerful confidence of a child who is sure his father can take care of him. Sometimes he kept so close to the shore that he rippled the shadows of the great cliffs, and sometimes he ran intolittle coves and replenished his water-casks, or bought in the seaward clachans a supply of fresh cakes or fish. He met no very bad weather. The unutterable desolation of the misty miles of sullen water did give him times of such weariness as makes the soul sink back upon itself and retire from all hope and affection. But such hours were evanescent; they were usually ended by a brisk wind, bringing peril to the little bark, and then David’s first instinct was heavenward. He knew if the winds and waves rose mightily, as it was their wont in that locality, there was no human help, and his trust was instantly in the miraculous. Such hours were, however, rare. As a general thing the days and the nights followed each other with a stillness and beauty full of the presence of God. And in the sweetness of this presence he threw himself unperplexed upon infinite love and power, and seeking God with all his heart found him.
Also, he was not forgetful of the human interest of his journey. His father had always felt himself to be a stranger and an exile in Skye, and in his later years the “homing” instinct for the Shetlands had been a passionate longing, which had communicated itself to David. He had been glad to leave Uig, for he had not a single happy memory of the little hut in which they two had dwelt and suffered together. As for the bleak kirkyard, over which the great winds blew the sea-foam, it made his heart ache to remember it. He felt an unspeakable pity when he thought of one of its solitary graves, and he promised himself to sail back to Uig some day, and bring home the dust of his father, and lay it among his kindred.
Indeed, it was thoughts of home and kindred which made this long, lonely voyage happy and hopeful to David. He believed himself to be going home. Though his father at the last had not spoken much of his cousin Paul Borson, and though David had not found the letter which was to be his introduction to him, yet he had not a doubt of his welcome. Time might wither friendship and slay love, but his kindred were always his kindred; they were bound to him by the ineffaceable and imperishable ties of blood and race.
David approached Lerwick in that divine twilight which in the Shetland summer links day unto day; and in its glory the ancient homes of gray and white sandstone appeared splendid habitations. The town was very quiet; even the houses seemed to be asleep. He saw no living thing but a solitary sea-gull skimming the surface of the sea; he heard nothing but a drunken sailor fitfully singing a stave of “The Skaalds of Foula.” The clear air, the serene seas, the tranquil grandeur of the caverned rocks which guard the lonely isles, charmed him. And when the sun rose and he saw their mural fronts of porphyry, carved by storms into ten thousand castles in the air, and cloud-like palaces still more fantastic, he felt his heart glow for the land of his birth and the home of his forefathers.
To the tumult of almost impossible hopes, he brought in his little craft. He had felt certain that his appearance would awaken at once interest and speculation; that Paul Borson would hear of his arrival and come running to meet him; that his father’s old friends, catching the news, would stop him on the quay and the street, and ask him questions and give him welcome.He had also told himself that it was likely his father’s cousin would have sons and daughters, and if so, that they would certainly be glad to see him; besides which there was his mother’s family–the old Icelandic Sabistons. He was resolved to seek them all out, rich or poor, far or near; in his heart there was love enough and to spare, however distant the kinship might be.
For David’s conceptions of the family and racial tie were not only founded upon the wide Hebraic ideals, but his singularly lonely youth and affectionate nature had disposed him to make an exaggerated estimate of the obligations of kindred. And again, this personal leaning was greatly strengthened by the inherited tendency of Norse families to “stand by each other in all haps.” Therefore he felt sure of his welcome; for, though Paul was but his far-off cousin, they were both Borsons, sprung from the same Norse root, children of the same great ancestor, the wise and brave Norwegian Bor.
Lying in the Bay of Lerwick, the sense of security and of nearness to friends gave him what he had long missed–a night of deep, dreamless sleep. When he awoke it was late in the morning, and he had his breakfast to prepare and every spar and sail and rope to put in perfect order; then he dressed himself with care, and sailed into harbor, managing his boat with a deftness and skill he expected a town of fishermen and sailors to take notice of. Alas, it is so difficult to find a fortunate hour! David’s necessary delay had brought the morning nearly to the noon, and he could hardly have fallen on a more depressing time; for the tradeof the early morning was over, and the men were in their houses taking that sleep which those who work by night must secure in the daytime. The fishing-boats, all emptied of their last night’s “take” and cleaned, were idly rocking on the water. The utmost quiet reigned in the sunny streets, and the little pier was deserted. No one took any notice of David.
Greatly disappointed, and even wounded, by this very natural neglect, David made fast his boat and stepped on shore. He put his feet down firmly, as if he was taking possession of his own, and stood still and looked around. He saw a man with his hands in his pockets loitering down the street, and he went toward him; but as he came within speaking distance the man turned into a house and shut the door. Pained and curious, he continued his aimless walk. As he passed Fae’s store he heard the confused sound of a number of men talking, then silence, then the tingling notes of a fiddle very cleverly played. For a moment he was bewitched by the music; then he was sure that nothing but the little sinful fiddle of carnal dance and song could make sounds so full of temptation. And as Odysseus, passing the dwelling-place of the sirens, “closed his ears and went swiftly by, singing the praises of the gods,” so David, remembering his father’s counsels, closed his ears to the enchanting strains and hastened beyond their power to charm him.
A little farther on a lovely girl, with her water-pitcher on her head and her knitting in her hands, met him. She looked with a shy smile at David, and the glance from her eyes made him thrill with pleasure;but before he had a word ready she had passed, and he could only turn and look at her tall form and the heavy braids of pale-brown hair below the water-pitcher. He felt as if he were in a dream as he went onward again down the narrow street of gray and white houses–houses so tall, and so fantastic, and so much larger than he had ever seen, that they impressed him with a sense of grandeur in which he had neither right nor place; for, though he saw women moving about within them and children sitting on the door-steps, no one spoke to him, no one seemed interested in his presence; and yet he had come to them with a heart so full of love! Never for a moment did he reflect that his anticipations had rested only on his own desires and imaginations.
His disappointment made him sorrowful, but in no degree resentful. “It was not to be,” he decided. Then he resolved to return to a public house he had noticed by the pier. There he could get his dinner and make some inquiries about his kindred. As he turned he met face to face a middle-aged woman with a basket of turf on her back.
“Take care, my lad,” she said cheerfully; and her smile inspired David with confidence.
“Mother,” he said, doffing his cap with instinctive politeness, “mother, I am a stranger, and I want to find my father’s people–the Borsons. Where do they live?”
“My lad, the sea has them. It is Paul Borson you are asking for?”
“Yes, mother.”
“He went out in his boat with his four sons one night. The boat came back empty. It is two years since.”
“‘I WANT TO FIND MY FATHER’S PEOPLE.’”
“‘I WANT TO FIND MY FATHER’S PEOPLE.’”
“I am Liot Borson’s son.”
“You?”
“Yes. Have I any kin left?”
“There is your far-cousin Nanna. She was Paul’s one daughter, and he saw the sun shine through her eyes. She is but sadly off now. Come into my house, and I will give you a cup of tea and a mouthful of bread and fish. Thank God, there is enough for you and for me!”
“I will come,” said David, simply; and he took the basket from the woman, and flung it lightly over his own shoulder. Then they went together to a house in one of the numerous “closes” running from the main street to the ocean. It was a very small house, but it was clean, and was built upon a rock, the foundations of which were deep down in the sea. When the tide was full David could have sailed his boat under its small seaward window. It contained a few pieces of handsome furniture, and some old Delft earthenware which had been brought from Holland by seafaring kindred long ago; all else savored of narrow means.
But the woman set before David a pot of tea and some oat-cake, and she fried him a fresh herring, and he ate with the delayed hunger of healthy youth, heartily and with pleasure. And as he did so she talked to him of his father Liot, whom she had known in her girlhood; and David told her of Liot’s long, hard fight with death, and she said with a kind of sad pride:
“Yes; that way Liot was sure to fare to his long home. He would set his teeth and fight for his life. Was it always well between him and you?”
“He was hard and silent, but I could always lean on him as much as I liked.”
“That is a good deal to say.”
“So I think.”
Then they drew the past from the eternity into which it had fallen, that they two, brought so strangely together, might look at it between them. They talked of Liot’s hard life and hard death for an hour, and then the woman said:
“Paul Borson was of the same kind–silent, but full of deeds; and his daughter Nanna, she also has a great heart.”
“Show me now where she lives, and I will go and see her. Also, tell me your name.”
“I am Barbara Traill. When you have seen Nanna come back here, and I will give you a place to sleep and a little meat; and as soon as it is well with you it will be easy to pay my charges.”
“If there is no room for me in my cousin’s house I will come back to you.”
So Barbara walked with him to the end of the street, and pointed out a little group of huts on the distant moor.
“Go into the first one,” she said; “it is Nanna Sinclair’s. And be sure and keep to the trodden path, for outside of it there are bogs that no man knows the bottom of.”
Then David went forward alone, and his heart fell, and a somber look crept like a cloud over his face. This was not the home-coming he had anticipated–thispoor meal at a stranger’s fireside. He had been led to think that his cousin Paul had a large house and the touch of money-getting. “He and his will be well off,” Liot had affirmed more than once. And one day, while he yet could stand in the door of his hut, he had looked longingly northward and said, “Oh, if I could win home again! Paul would make a fourteen days’ feast to welcome me.”
The very vagueness of these remarks had given strength to David’s imagination. He had hoped for things larger than his knowledge, and he had quite forgotten to take into his calculations the fact that as the years wear on they wear out love and life, and leave little but graves behind them. At this hour he felt his destiny to be hard and unlovely, and the text learned as one of the pillars of his faith, “Jacob have I loved, Esau have I hated,” forced itself upon his reflection. A deadly fear came into his heart that the Borsons were among these hated ones. Why else did God pursue them with such sufferings and fatalities? And what could he do to propitiate this unfriendly Deity?
His road was upon the top of the cliff, over a moor covered with peat-bogs and withered heather. The sea was below him, and a long, narrow lake lay silent and motionless among the dangerous moss–a lake so old and dead-looking that it might have been the shadow of a lake that once was. Nothing green was near it, and no birds were tempted by its sullen waters; yet untold myriads of sea-birds floated and wheeled between sea and sky, and their hungry, melancholy cries and the desolate landscape stimulatedand colored David’s sad musings, though he was quite unaware of their influence.
When he came to the group of huts, he paused a moment. They were the abodes of poverty; there was none better than the rest. But Barbara had said that Nanna’s was the first one, and he went slowly toward it. No one appeared, though the door stood wide open; but when he reached the threshold he could see Nanna sitting within. She was busily braiding the fine Tuscan straw for which Shetland was then famous, and her eyes were so intently following her rapid fingers that it was unlikely she had seen him coming. Indeed, she did not raise them at once, for it was necessary to leave her work at a certain point; and in that moment’s delay David looked with a breathless wonder at the woman before him.
She was sitting, and yet even sitting she was majestic. Her face was large, but perfectly oval, and fair as a lily; her bright-brown hair was parted, passed smoothly behind the ears, and beautifully braided. Serenity and an unalterable calm gave to the young face something of the fixity of marble; but as David spoke she let her eyes fall upon a little child at her feet, and then lifted them to him with a smile as radiant and life-giving as sunshine.
“Who are you?” she asked, as she took her babe in her arms and went toward David.
“I am your far-cousin David Borson.”
“The son of my father’s cousin Liot?”
“Yes. Liot Borson is dead, and here am I.”
“You are welcome, for you were to come. My father talked often of his cousin Liot. They are both gone away from this world.”
“I think they have found each other again. Who can tell?”
“Among the great multitude that no man can number, it might not be easy.”
“If God willed it so?”
“That would be sufficient. This is your little cousin Vala; she is nearly two years old. Is she not very pretty?”
“I know not what to say. She is too pretty for words.”
“Sit down, cousin, and tell me all.”
And as they talked her eyes enthralled him. They were deep blue, and had a solar brilliancy as if they imbibed light–holy eyes, with the slow-moving pupils that indicate a religious, perhaps a mystical, soul. David sat with her until sunset, and she gave him a simple meal of bread and tea, and talked confidentially to him of Liot and of her own father and brothers. But of herself she said nothing at all; neither could David find courage to ask her a single question.
He watched her sing her child to sleep, and he sat down with her on the door-step, and they talked softly together of death and of judgment to come. And the women from the other huts gradually joined them, and the soft Shetland night glorified the somber land and the mysterious sea, until at last David rose and said he must go back to Lerwick, for the day was over.
A strange day it had been to him; but he was too primitive to attempt any reasoning about its events. When he left Nanna’s he was under that strong excitement which makes a man walk as if he were treadingupon the void, and there was a hot confusion in his thoughts and feelings. He stepped rapidly, and the stillness of the lovely night did not soothe or reason with him. As he approached the town he saw the fishing-boats leaving the harbor, and in the fairy light they looked like living things with outspread wings. Two fishers were standing at a house door with a woman, who was filling a glass. She held it aloft a moment, and then gave it to one with the words: “Death to the heads that wear no hair!”
“The herring and the halibut, the haddock and the sole,” answered the man; and he drank a little, and passed it to his comrade. Then up the street they hurried like belated men; and David felt the urging of accustomed work, and a sense of delinquency in his purposeless hands.
He found Barbara waiting. She knew that he would not stay at Nanna Sinclair’s, and she had prepared the room of her absent son for him. “If he can pay one shilling a day, it will be a godsend to me,” she thought; and when she told David so he answered, “That is a little matter, and no doubt there will be good between us.”
He saw then that the window was open, and the sea-water lippering nearly to the sill of it; and he took off his bonnet, and sat down, and let the cool breeze blow upon his hot brow. It was near midnight, but what then? David had never been more awake in all his life–yes, awake to his finger-tips. Yet for half an hour he sat by the window and never opened his mouth; and Barbara sat on the hearth, and raked the smoldering peats together, and kept a like silence.She was well used to talk with her own thoughts, and to utter words was no necessity to Barbara Traill; but she knew what David was thinking of, and she was quite prepared for the first word which parted his set lips.
“Is my cousin Nanna a widow?”
“No.”
“Where, then, is her husband?”
“Who can tell? He is gone away from Shetland, and no one is sorry for that.”
“One thing is sure–Nanna is poor, and she is in trouble. How comes that? Who is to blame in the matter?”
“Nicol Sinclair–he, and he only. Sorrow and suffering and ill luck of all kinds he has brought her, and there is no help for it.”
“No help for it! I shall see about that.”
“You had best let Nicol Sinclair alone. He is one of the worst of men, a son of the devil–no, the very devil himself. And he has your kinswoman Matilda Sabiston at his back. All the ill he does to Nanna he does to please her. To be sure, the guessing is not all that way, but yet most people think Matilda is much to blame.”
“How came Nanna Borson to marry such a man? Was not her father alive? Had she no brothers to stand between her and this son of the Evil One?”
“When Nanna Borson took hold of Nicol Sinclair for a husband she thought she had taken hold of heaven; and he was not unkind to her until after the drowning of her kin. Then he took her money and traded with it to Holland, and lost it all there, andcame back bare and empty-handed. And when he entered his home there was the baby girl, and Nanna out of her mind with fever and like to die, and not able to say a word this way or that. And Nicol wanted money, and he went to Matilda Sabiston and he got what he wanted; but what was then said no one knows, for ever since he has hated the Borsons, root and branch, and his own wife and child have borne the weight of it. That is not all.”
“Tell me all, then; but make no more of it than it is worth.”
“There is little need to do that. Before Nanna was strong again he sold the house which Paul Borson had given to her as a marriage present. He sold also all the plenishing, and whatever else he could lay his hands on. Then he set sail; but there was little space between two bad deeds, for no sooner was he home again than he took the money Paul Borson had put in the bank for his daughter, and when no one saw him–in the night-time–he slipped away with a sound skin, the devil knows where he went to.”
“Were there no men in Lerwick at that time?”
“Many men were in Lerwick–men, too, who never get to their feet for nothing; and no man was so well hated as Nicol Sinclair. But Nanna said: ‘I have had sorrow enough. If you touch him you touch me ten-fold. He has threatened me and the child with measureless evil if I say this or that against anything he does.’ And as every one knows, when Nicol is angry the earth itself turns inside out before him.”
“I do not fear him a jot–not I!”
“If you had ever seen him swaggering and rollingfrom one day into another, if you had ever seen him stroking his bare arms and peering round with wicked eyes for some one to ease him of his temper, you would not say such words.”
“I will not call my words back for much more than that, and I will follow up this quarrel.”
“If you are foolish, you may do so; if you are wise, you will be neither for nor against Nicol Sinclair. There is a wide and a safe way between these two. Let me tell you, Nanna’s life lies in it. I have not yet told you all.”
“Speak the last word, then.”
“Think what cruel things a bad man can always do to a good woman; all of them Nicol Sinclair has done to your cousin Nanna. Yes, it is so. When she was too weak to hold her baby in her arms he bade her ‘die, and make way for a better woman.’ And one night he lured her to the cliff-top, and then and there he quarreled with her; and men think–yes, and women think so too–that he threw the child into the water, and that Nanna leaped after it. That was the story in every one’s mouth.”
“Was it true? Tell me that.”
“There was more than guesswork to go on. Magnus Crawford took them out of the sea, and the child was much hurt, for it has never walked, nor yet spoken a word, and there are those who say it never will.”
“And what said my cousin Nanna?”
“She held her peace both to men and women; but what she said to God on the matter he knows. It is none of thy business. She has grown stronger and quieter with every sorrow; and it is out of a mother’sstrength, I tell thee, and not her weakness, that good can come.”
Then David rose to his feet and began to walk furiously about the small room. His face was white as death, and he spoke with a still intensity, dropping each word as if it were a separate oath.
“I wish that Sinclair were here–in this room! I would lay his neck across my knee, and break it like a dog’s. I would that!”
“It would be a joy to see thee do it. I would say, ‘Well done, David Borson!’”
“I am glad that God has made Tophet for such men!” cried David, passionately. “Often I have trembled at the dreadful justice of the Holy One; I see now how good it is. To be sure, when God puts his hook into the nose of the wicked, and he is made to go a way he does not want to go, then he has to cease from troubling. But I wish not that he may cease from being troubled. No, indeed; I wish that he may have weeping and wailing! I will stay here. Some day Sinclair will come back; then he shall pay all he owes.”
Suddenly David remembered his father’s sad confession, and he was silent. The drowning of Bele Trenby and all that followed it flashed like a fiery thought through his heart, and he went into his room, and shut the door, and flung himself face downward upon the floor. Would God count his anger as very murder? Would he enter into judgment with him for it? Oh, how should a sinful man order all his way and words aright! And in a little while Barbara heard him weeping, and she said to herself:
NANNA AND VALA
NANNA AND VALA
“He is a good man. God loves those who remember him when they are alone and weep. The minister said that.”
This day had indeed been to David a kind of second birth. He had entered into a new life and taken possession of himself. He knew that he was a different being from the youth who had sailed for weeks alone with God upon the great waters; but still he was a riddle to himself, and it was this feeling of utter confusion and weakness and ignorance that had sent him, weeping and speechless, to the very feet of the divine Father.
But if the mind is left quite passive we are often instructed in our sleep. David awakened with a plan of life clearly in his mind. He resolved to remain with Barbara Traill, and follow his occupation of fishing, and do all that he could to make his cousin Nanna happy. The intense strength of his family affection led him to this resolve. He had not fallen in love with Nanna. As a wife she was sacred in his eyes, and it never entered his mind that any amount of ill treatment could lessen Sinclair’s claim upon her. But though far off, she was his cousin; the blood of the Borsons flowed alike through both their hearts; and David, who could feel for all humanity, could feel most of all for Nanna and Vala.
Nanna herself had acknowledged this claim. He remembered how gladly she had welcomed him; he could feel yet the warm clasp of her hand, and the shining of her eyes was like nothing he had ever before seen. Even little Vala had been pleased to lie in his strong arms. She had put up her small mouth forhim to kiss, and had slept an hour upon his breast. As he thought of that kiss he felt it on his lips, warm and sweet. Yes, indeed; there was love in that poor little hut that David Borson could not bear to lose.
So he said to Barbara in the morning: “I will stay with you while it pleases us both.”
And Barbara answered: “A great help and comfort thou wilt be to me, and doubtless God sent thee.”
Shetland was, then, to be David’s home, and he accepted the destiny gladly. He felt near to the people, and he admired the old gray town, with its roving, adventurous population. His first duty was to remove his personal belongings from his boat to Barbara Traill’s house, and when this was done it was easy enough to set himself to business; for as soon as he went among the fishers and said, “My name is Borson, and I am the son of your old mate Liot Borson,” he found himself in a circle of outstretched hands. And as he had brought his nets and lines with him, he had no difficulty in getting men who were glad to help him with his fishing, and to instruct him in the peculiarities of the coast and the set of its tides and currents.
For the rest, there was no sailor or fisher in Lerwick who was so fearless and so wise in all sea-lore as David Borson. Sink or swim, he was every inch a seaman. He read the sea as a landsman reads a book; he knew all its moods and its deceitfulness, and themore placid it was the more David mistrusted its intentions; he was always watching it. The men of Uig had been wont to say that David Borson would not turn his back on the sea, lest it should get some advantage over him. This intimacy of mistrust was the result of his life’s training; it was the practical education of nearly twenty years.
His next move was to see the minister and present to him the letter from the minister of Uig, which authenticated his kirk standing and his moral character. He put on his kirk clothes for this call, and was sorry afterward that he had so hampered himself; for the good man met him with both hands outstretched, and blessed him in the name of the Lord.
“I married your father and mother, David,” he said. “I baptized you into the fold of Lerwick kirk, and I buried your sweet mother in its quiet croft. Your father was near to me and dear to me. A good man was Liot Borson–a good man! When that is said, what more is left to say? While my life-days last I shall not forget Liot Borson.” And then they talked of David’s life in Uig, and when he left the manse he knew that he had found a friend.
It was then Thursday night, and he did not care to go to the fishing until the following Monday. Before he began to serve himself he wished to serve God, and so handsel his six days’ work by the blessing of the seventh. This was the minister’s advice to him, and he found that every one thought it right and good; so, though he made his boat ready for sea, she was not to try her speed and luck on her new fishing-ground until David had offered up thanksgiving for his safejourney, and supplications for grace and wisdom to guide his new life aright.
“There is no more that I can do now until the early tide on Monday morning,” he said to Barbara Traill, “and I will see if I can find any more of my kin-folk. Are any of my mother’s family yet living?”
“The Sabistons have all gone south to the Orkneys. They are handy at money-getting, and the rumor goes abroad that they are rich and masterful, and ill to deal with; but they were ever all that, or the old tellings-up do them much wrong.”
“Few people are better spoken of than they deserve.”
“That is so. Yet no one in Lerwick is so well hated as your great-aunt Matilda Sabiston. She is the last of the family left in Shetland. Go and see her if you wish to; I have nothing to say against it; but I can give you a piece of advice: lean not for anything on Matilda Sabiston.”
“All I want of her is a little love for my mother’s sake; so I will go and see her. For the sake of the dead she will at least be civil.”
“Nothing will come of the visit. It is not to be expected that Matilda will behave well to you, when she behaves ill to every one else.”
“For all that, I would like to look upon her. We are blood-kin. I have a right to see her face; I have a right to offer her my service and my duty; whether she will take it or throw it from her is to be seen.”
“She willnottake it. However, here is your dinner ready, and after you have eaten it go and see your kinswoman. You will easily find her; she lives in the largest house in Lerwick.”
The little opposition to his desires confirmed David in his resolve. When he had eaten, and dressed himself in his best clothing, he went to Matilda Sabiston’s house. It was a large stone dwelling, and had been famous for the unusual splendor of its furnishing. David was astonished and interested, but not in the least abashed; for the absorbing idea in his mind was that of kindred, and the soft carpets, the velvet-covered chairs and sofas, the pictures and ornaments, were only the accessories of the condition. An old woman, grim and of few words, opened the heavy door, and then tottered slowly along a narrow flagged passage before him until they came to a somberly furnished parlor, where Mistress Sabiston was sitting, apparently asleep.
“Wake up, mistress,” said the woman. “Here be some one that wants to see you.”
“A beggar, then, either for kirk or town. I have nothing to give.”
“Not so; he is a fair, strong lad, who says you are his aunt.”
“He lies, whoever he is. Let me see the fool, Anita.”
“Here he is, mistress. Let him speak for himself.” And Anita stood aside and permitted David to enter the room.
Matilda sat in a large, uncushioned chair of black wood–the chair of her fore-elder Olaf, who had made it in Iceland from some rare drift, and brought it with his other household goods to Shetland ten generations past. It was a great deal too large for her shrunken form, and her old, old face against its blackness lookedas if it had been carved out of the yellow ivory of Sudan. Never had David seen a countenance so void of expression; it was like a scroll made unreadable by the wear and dust of years. Life appeared to have retreated entirely to her eyes, which were fierce and darkly glowing. And the weight and coldness of her great age communicated itself; he was chilled by her simple presence.
“What is your business?” she asked.
“I am the son of your niece Karen.”
“I have no niece.”
“Yea, but you have. Death breaks no kinship. It is souls that are related, not bodies; and souls live forever.”
“Babble! In a word, what brought you here?”
“I came only to see you.”
“Well, then, I sent not for you.”
“Yet I thought you would wish to see me.”
“I do not.”
“Liot Borson is dead.”
“I am glad of it. He was a murderer while he lived, and now I hope that he is a soul in pain forevermore.”
“I am his son, and you must not–”
“Then what brought you here? I have hoped you were dead for many a year. If all the Borsons, root and branch, were gone to their father the devil, it would be a pleasure to me. I have ever hated them; to all who knew them they were bringers of bad luck,” she muttered angrily, looking into David’s face with eyes full of baleful fire.
“Yet is love stronger than hate, and because mymother was of your blood and kin I will not hate you.”
“Hear a wonder!” she screamed. “The man will not hate me. Son of a murderer, I want not one kind thought from you.”
“There is no cause to call my father what neither God nor man has called him.”
“Cause enough! I know that right well.”
“Then it is only right you give proof of such assertions. Say what you mean and be done with it.”
“Ah! you are getting angry at last. Your father would have been spitting fire before this. But it was not with fire he slew Bele Trenby–no, indeed; it was with water. Did he not tell you so when he stood on the brink of Tophet?”
“God did not suffer his soul to be led near the awful place. When he gave up his ghost he gave it up to the merciful Father of spirits. It is wicked to speak lies of the living; it is abominable and dangerous to speak ill of the dead.”
“I fear neither the living nor the dead. I will say to my last breath that Liot Borson murdered Bele Trenby. He was long minded to do the deed; at last he did it.”
“How can you alone, of all the men and women in Lerwick, know this?”
“That night I dreamed a dream. I saw the moss and the black water, and Bele’s white, handsome face go down into it. And I saw your father there. What for? That he might do the murder in his heart.”
“The dream came from your own thoughts.”
“It came from Bele’s angel. The next day–yes,and many times afterward–I took to the spot the dog that loved Bele, and the creature whined and crouched to his specter. Men are poor, sightless creatures; animals see spirits where we are blind as bats.”
“Are these your proofs? Why do people suffer you to say such things?”
“Because in their hearts they believe me. Murders tell tales; secretly, in the night, crossing the moss, when men are not thinking, they breathe suspicion; they speak after being long dumb. Fifty years is not the date of their bond. They haunt the place of their tragedy, and men dream of the deed. So it is. The report sticks to Liot, and more will come of it yet. Oh, that he were in your shoes to-day! I would find the strength to slay him, if I died and went to hell for it.”
“Woman, why dost thou damn thyself while yet there is a hope of mercy?”
“Mercy! What have you to do with mercy? One thing rejoices me: it will not be long ere I meet that blessed thrall that cursed all the generations of the Borsons. He and I will strike hands in that quarrel; and it shall go ill with you and your children till the last Borson be cursed off the face of the earth.”
“I will flee unto the Omnipotent. He will keep even my shadow from the evil ones that follow after. Now I will go, for I see there is no hope of good-will between us two.”
“And it is my advice that you go away from Shetland.”
“That I willnotdo. There are my cousins Nanna and Vala here; and it is freely said that you have donethem much ill. I will stay here and do them all the good I can.”
“Then you will have Nicol Sinclair to settle with. That is the best of my wish. Nicol Sinclair is my third cousin, and I have given him five hundred pounds because he hates the Borsons and is ready to cross their happiness in all things possible. Pack, now, from my presence! I have no more to say to you. I am no kin to you, and I have taken good care to prevent the law making you kin. My will is made. All that I have not given to Nicol Sinclair goes to make free the slaves in Africa. Freedom! freedom! freedom!” she shrieked. “Nothing is cruel but slavery.”
It was the old Norse passion for liberty, strong and vital when every other love was ashes. It was a passion also to which David instantly responded. The slumbering sentiment awoke like a giant in his heart, and he comprehended it by a racial instinct as passionate as her own.
“You have done well,” he said. “Hunger and cold, pain and poverty, are nothing if one has freedom. It is a grand thing to set a man or a womanfree.”
“And yet you catch haddock and herring! Bah! we have nothing to do with each other.”
“Then farewell, aunt, and God give you mercy in the day you will need mercy.”
She was suddenly and stolidly silent. She fixed her eyes on the dull glow of the burning peats, and relapsed into the torpor that was her habitual mood. Its force was insurmountable. David went slowly out of her presence, and was unable for some time to cast off the depression of her icy influence. Yet the meetinghad not been without result. During it he had felt the first conscious throb of that new passion for freedom which had sprung into existence at the impetuous, glowing iteration of the mere word from his aunt’s lips. He felt its charm in the unaccustomed liberty of his own actions. He was now entirely without claims but those his love or liking voluntarily assumed. No one older than himself had the right to reprove or direct him. He had at last come to his majority. He was master of himself and his fate.
The first evidence of this new condition was a dignified reticence with Barbara Traill. She was conscious of the change in her lodger. She felt instinctively that he was no longer a child to be questioned, and there was a tone of authority in his refusal to discuss his aunt Sabiston with her which she could not but respect. Indeed, it was no longer possible to speak to him of Mistress Sabiston as Mistress Sabiston deserved to be spoken of. Her first censure was checked by David’s air of disapproval and his few words of apology:
“She is, however, my aunt; and when one is ninety years old it is a good excuse for many faults.”
Matilda’s utter refusal of his kin or kindness threw him more exclusively upon Nanna and her child. And as all his efforts to discover any other family connections were quite futile, he finally came to believe that they three were the last of a family that had once filled the lands of the Norsemen with the fame of their great deeds. Insensibly this thought drew the bond tighter and closer, though an instinct as pure as it was conventional taught him a scrupulous delicacy with regardto this friendship. Fortunately, in Shetland the blood-tie was regarded as a strong enough motive for all David’s attentions to a woman and child so desolate and helpless. People said simply, “It is a good thing for Nanna Sinclair that her cousin has come to Shetland.” And it did not enter their hearts to imagine an evil motive for kind deeds when there was one so natural and obligatory.
So Shetland became dear and pleasant to David, and he gradually grew into great favor. The minister made much of the young man, for he respected his integrity and earnest piety, and loved him for that tenderness and clearness of conscience which was sensitive to the first approaches of wrong. The fishers and sailors of the town gave him a warm admiration for his seamanship, and the praise David had looked for at the beginning, and felt disappointed in not receiving, was now given him by a kind of acclamation. Old sailors, telling yarns of their ships and the queer, bold things their ships had done, generally in some way climaxed their narratives by an allusion to David Borson. Thus, Peter Redlands, talking to a group of fishers one day, said:
“Where that lad learned the sea, and who taught him all the ways of it, is beyond me; but say as you will, he can make harbor when none of us could look at it. It is my belief David Borson can stick to anything that can float.”
“And to see how he humors a boat,” continued Jan Wyck, “you would think she was made out of flesh instead of out of three-inch planks. I was out with him near the Old Man’s Rocks last week, and he waswatching the water; and I said, ‘What is it, David?’ ‘The sea,’ he said. ‘It will be at its old tricks again in an hour or less.’ And the ‘less’ was right, for in fifteen minutes the word was, ‘Reef, and quick about it!’ and then you know what–the rip and the roar, and the boat leaping her full length. But David did not worry a jot. He coaxed her beautifully, and kept her well in hand; and she shook herself a little, and then away like a gull before the wind.”
He was just as popular among the children and women of Lerwick. The boys made an idol of him, for David was always ready to give them a sail, or lend them his fowling-piece, or help them to rig their toy boats. As for the maidens, the prettiest ones in Lerwick had a shy smile for David Borson, and many wondered that such a beauty as Asta Fae should smile on him in vain; but David had taken Nanna and Vala into his heart, and his care and thought for them were so constant that there was no room for any other interest. Yet Barbara often talked to him about taking a wife; and even the minister, doubtless led to such advice by female gossip and speculation, thought it well to speak a word on the subject to him.
“You know, David,” he said, “there are good girls and beautiful girls that look kindly on you, and who wonder that your smiles are so cold and your words so few; and it is my duty to say to you that evil may come of your taking so much thought for your cousin and her child, and the way to help her best is to help her through your own wife.”
“I am not in the mind to marry, minister,” he answered. “There is no one girl dearer or fairer to methan another. And as for what I do for my cousins, I think that God sent me to do it, and I shall not be feared to make accounting to him for it.”
“That is my belief also, David. Yet we are told to avoid the very appearance of evil; and what is more, if it is not your pleasure to marry, it is your duty; and how will you win past that?”
“I have not seen it to be my duty, minister.”
“The promise is in the line of the righteous; the blessing is for you and for your children; but if you have no wife or children, then is the promise shortened and the blessing cut off. I think that you should choose some good woman’s daughter, and build yourself a home, and then marry a wife.”
The young man went out of the manse with this thought in his heart. And not far off he met pretty Asta Fae, and he spoke to her and walked with her as far as she was going; and he saw that she had the sweetest of blue eyes, and that her smile was tender and her ways gentle. And when he left her at her father’s door, he held her hand a moment and said, “It has been a pleasant walk to me, Asta.” And she looked frankly into his face and answered with rosy blushes, “And to me also, David.”
There was a warm glow at his heart as he went across the moor to Nanna’s; and he resolved to tell his cousin what the minister had said, and ask her advice about Asta Fae; but when he reached Nanna’s cot she was sitting on the hearth with Vala upon her knees, and telling her such a strange story that David would not for anything lose a word of it. And as Nanna’s back was to the open door she did not seeDavid enter, but went on with her tale, in the high, monotonous tone of one telling a narrative whose every word is well known and not to be changed.
“You see, Vala,” she said, touching the child’s fingers and toes, “it was the old brown bull of Norraway, and he had a sore battle with the deil, and he carried off a great princess; and you may know how big he was, for he said to her, ‘Eat out of my left ear, and drink out of my right ear, and put by the leavings.’ And ay they rode, and on they rode, till they came to a dark and awesome glen, and there the bull stopped and the lady lighted down. And the bull said to her: ‘Here you must stay while I go on and fight the deil. And you must sit here on that stone, and move not hand or foot till I come back, or else I’ll never find you again. And if everything round about you turns blue, I shall have beaten the deil; but if all things turn red, then the deil will have conquered me.’”
“And so he left her, mammy, to go and fight the deil?”
“Ay, he did, Vala; and she sat still, singing.”
“Sing me the lady’s song, mammy.”
Then Nanna intoned softly the strangest, wildest little tune. It was like a Gregorian chant, and had but three notes, but to these she gave a marvelous variety. David listened spellbound to the entreating voice:
“‘Seven long years I served for thee,
The glassy hill I clamb for thee,
The bloody shirt I wrang for thee,
And wilt thou not waken and come to me?’
But I’m thinking he never came back to the lady.”
“Oh, yes, he did, mammy,” said Vala, confidently.“Helga Storr told me he came back a fine prince with a gold crown on his head, and the deil went away empty and roaring mad.”
“What is it you are telling about, Nanna?” said David, his face eager and alight with interest.
She rose up then, with Vala in her arms, her eyes shining with her sweet, motherly story-telling. “It is only an old tale, David,” she answered. “I know not who made it up. My mother told it to me, and her mother to her, and so back through years that none can count. Yes, indeed; what little child does not know the story of the big brown bull of Norraway?”
“I never heard of it before,” said David.
“To be sure; your mother did not live to talk to you–poor little lad!”
“Now, then, Nanna, tell it to me for my mother’s sake.” And he sat down on the cricket by her side, and took Vala on his knee; and Nanna laughed, and then, with the little formal importance of the reciter, said: “Well, so it shall be, then. Here beginneth the story of the big brown bull of Norraway and his fight with the deil.” And the old tale fell from her lips full of charm, and David listened with all the delight of a child. And when it had been twice told, Nanna began to talk of the burnt Njal and the Icelandic sagas, and the more so as she saw David was full of strange wonder and delight, and that every word was fresh and enthralling to him.
“Yet it is a thing to be wondered at,” she said finally, “that you, David, know not these old histories better than I do; for I have often heard that no one in all the islands could tell a story so well as LiotBorson. Yes, and the minister once said, and I heard him, that he would walk ten miles to hear from your father’s lips once more the sad happenings of his ancestor, the brave, helpful Gisli.”
“This is a great thing to me, Nanna,” answered David, in a voice low and quiet, for he was feeling deeply. “And I look to you now for what has never been told me. Who, then, was my ancestor Gisli?”
“If your father held his peace about him, he surely thought it best to do so, and so ask me not to break a good resolve.”
“Nay, but I must ask you. My heart burns; I feel that there is a life behind me into which I must look. Help me, Nanna. And, more, the name Gisli went to my head. It is not like other strange names. I love this man whom I have not seen and never heard of until this hour. What has he to do with me?”
“He was one of us.And because he was so good and great the thrall’s curse fell the harder on him, and was the more regarded–hard enough it has been on all the Borsons; and perhaps your father thought it was well you heard not of it. Many a time and oft I have wished it had not entered my ears; for when one sorrow called to another sorrow, and one wrong trod on the heels of another wrong, I have been angry at the false, ungrateful man who brought such ill fortune upon his unborn generations.”
“Now you make me so anxious and wilful that nothing but the story of the thrall’s curse will do for me. I shall not eat or sleep till I hear it.”
“’Tis a tale of dishonor and unthankfulness, andnot so well known to me as to Jorn Thorkel. He can tell it all, and will gladly do so.”
“But for all that, I will hear it from you, Nanna, and you only, for it concerns us only. Tell me what you know, and the rest can wait for Jorn.”
“So, then, you will have it; but if ill comes of the knowledge do not blame me. It began in the days of Harold Fairhair, one thousand years ago. There was a Gisli then, and he had a quarrel with a berserker called Bjorn, and they agreed to fight until one was dead. And the woman who loved Gisli told him that her foster-father, Kol, who was a thrall, had a sword that whoever wielded would win in any fight. And Gisli sent for Kol and asked him:
“‘Hast thou ever a good sword?’
“And Kol answered: ‘Many things are in the thrall’s cot, not in the king’s grange.’
“‘Lend me thy sword for my duel with Bjorn,’ said Gisli.
“And Kol said: ‘Then this thing will happen: thou wilt never wish to give it up. And yet I tell thee, this sword will bite whatever it falls on, nor can its edge be deadened by spells, for it was forged by the dwarfs, and its name is Graysteel. And make up thy mind,’ he said, ‘that I will take it very ill indeed if I get not my sword back when I ask for it.’
“So Gisli took the sword and slew Bjorn with it, and got good fame for this feat. And time rolled on, and he gave not back the sword; and one day Kol met him, and Gisli had Graysteel in his hand, and Kol had an ax.
“And Kol asked if the sword had done him goodservice at his great need, and Gisli was full of its praises.
“‘Well, now,’ said Kol, ‘I should like it back.’
“‘Sell it to me,’ said Gisli.
“‘No,’ said Kol.
“‘I will give thee thy freedom for it,’ said Gisli.
“‘I will not sell it,’ said Kol.
“‘I will also give thee land and sheep and cattle and goods as much as thou wantest,’ said Gisli.
“‘I will not sell it a whit more for that,’ said Kol.
“‘Put thy own price on it in money, and I will get thee a fair wife also,’ said Gisli.
“‘There is no use talking about it,’ said Kol. ‘I will not sell it, whatsoever thou offerest. It has come to what I said would happen: that thou wouldst not give me back my weapon when thou knewest what virtue was in it.’
“‘And I too will say what will happen,’ said Gisli. ‘Good will befall neither of us; for I willnotgive up the sword, and it shall never come into any man’s hand but mine, if I have my will.’
“Then Kol lifted his ax, and Gisli drew Graysteel, and they smote at each other. Kol’s blow fell on Gisli’s head, so that it sank into the brain; and Graysteel fell on Kol’s head, and his skull was shattered, and Graysteel broke asunder. Then, as Kol gave up the ghost, he said:
“‘It had been better that thou hadst given me my sword when I asked for it, for this is only the beginning of the ill fortune I will bring on thy kith and kin forever.’
“And so it has been. For a thousand years the tellings-upof our family are full of troubles that this thrall’s curse has brought upon us. Few of our men have grown gray-headed; in the sea and on the battlefield they have found their graves; and the women have had sorrow in marriage and death in child-bearing.”
“It was an evil deed,” said David.
“It was a great curse for it also; one thousand years it has followed Gisli’s children.”
“Not so! I believe it not! Neither the dead nor the living can curse those whom God blesses.”
“Yet always the Borsons have had the worst of ill fortune. We three only are now left of the great earls who ruled in Surnadale and in Fjardarfolk, and see how poor and sorrowful we are. My life has been woven out of grief and disappointment; Vala will never walk; and as for your own youth, was it not labor and sorrow only?”
“I believe not in any such spaedom. I believe in God the Father Almighty, and in Jesus Christ, and in the Holy Ghost. And as for the cursing of man, dead or alive, I will not fear what it can do to me. Gisli was indeed well served for his mean, ungrateful deed, and it would have been better if the berserker Bjorn had cut his false heart out of him.”
“Such talk is not like you, David. I can see now that your father did right to keep these bloody stories from your hearing. There is no help in them.”
“Well, I know not that. This night the minister was talking to me about taking a wife. If there be truth or power in Kol’s curse, why should any Borson be born, that he or she may bear his spite? No; I will not marry, and–”
“In saying that you mock your own words. Where, then, is your trust in God? And the minister is right; you ought to take a wife. People think wrong of a young man who cannot fix his heart on one good woman. There is Christina Hey. Speak to her. Christina is sweet and wise, and will make a good wife.”
“I met Asta Fae as I came here. Very pretty indeed is her face, and she has a way to win any heart.”
“For all that, I do not think well of Asta. She is at the dance whenever there is one, and she has more lovers than a girl should have.”
“Christina has land and money. I care not for a wife who is richer than myself.”
“Her money is nothing against her; it will be a help.”
“I know not,” he answered, but without interest. “You have given me something to think of that is better than wooing and wedding, Nanna. My heart is quite full. I am more of a man than I have ever been. I can feel this hour that there is life behind me as well as before me. But I will go now, for to-morrow is the Sabbath and we shall meet at the kirk; and I will carry Vala home for you if you say so, Nanna.”
“Well, then,” she answered, “to-morrow is not here, David; but it will come, by God’s leave. I dreamed a dream last night, and I look for a change, cousin. But this or that, my desire is that God would choose for me.”
“That also is my desire,” said David, solemnly.
“As for me, I have fallen into a great strait; only God can help me.”
She was standing on the hearth, looking down at Vala. Tears were in her eyes, and a divine pity and sorrow made tender and gentle her majestic beauty. David looked steadily at her, and something, he knew not what, seemed to pierce his very soul–a sweet, aching pain, never felt before, inexplicable, ineffable, and as innocent as the first holy adoration of a little child. Then he went out into the still, starry night, and tried to think of Christina Hey; but she constantly slipped from his consciousness, like a dream that has no message.