David Borson was stirred to the very seat of life by the things Nanna had told him. It did not enter his heart to doubt their truth. The shameful deed of the first Gisli, and the still strong order of its consequences, which neither the guilt of his children hastened, nor their innocence delayed, nor their expiation arrested, was the dominant feeling aroused by her narrative. The whole story, with its terrible Nemesis, fitted admirably into the system of Calvinistic theology, and David had not yet come to the hour in which faith would crush down fatalism. The words of these ancient sagas went singing and swinging through his brain and heart, and life seemed so wonderful and bewildering, its sorrows so great and certain, its needs so urgent and present, and heaven, alas! so far off.
There came to him also, as he slowly trod the lonely moor, the most awful of all conceptions of eternity–the revelation ofa repentance that could undo nothing. He was righteously angry at Gisli’s base ingratitude;he was sorry for his sin; but others had doubtless felt the same anger and sorrow, and it had been ineffectual. Helpless and passive in the hands of destiny, a nameless dread, an urgent want of help and comfort, forced him to feel out into the abyss for something more than flesh and blood to lean on; and then he found that God is best of all approached in indefinite awe and worship, and that moments of tender, vague mystery, haunted by uncertain presentiments, bring him near.
“Well, then,” he said as he came to the door of his house, “the wicked may be a rod, and smite for generations; but the rod is in the hand of God, and I will remind myself that my God is the Everlasting, Almighty, Infinite One; and I will ask him to give sentence with me, and to deliver me from the wicked, whether they be in the body or out of the body.” And he walked through the house-place where Barbara was sitting, and saw her not; for he was saying to himself, “‘Why art thou so vexed, O my soul? and why art thou disquieted within me? O put thy trust in God: for I will yet give him thanks, which is the help of my countenance, and my God.’”
Nanna sat motionless for long after David left her. She had many causes for anxiety. She was fearful of losing her work, and absolute poverty would then be her lot. It was a fear, however, and not a certainty; and after a little reflection she also threw her care upon the Preserver of men. “Be at peace,” she said to her heart. “God feeds the gulls and the ravens, and he will not starve Nanna and Vala.”
It was harder to combat her spiritual anxieties. She was sorry she had told David about the thrall’s curse.Her first instinct was to ask his father and mother to forgive her; then she suddenly remembered that praying to or for the dead was a sin for a kirk session to meet on. And this thought led her easily to the dream that had troubled her last night’s sleep and made her day dark with sorrowful fears. All her life she had possessed something of that sixth sense by which we see and anticipate things invisible. And it is noticeable that many cripples have often a seraphic intelligence, a far-reaching vision, and very sensitive spiritual aptitudes. Vala was of this order. She too had been singularly depressed; she had seen more than she could tell; she was as restless and melancholy as birds just before their migrations, and she looked at her mother with eyes so wistful, so full of inquiry, so “far off,” that Nanna trembled under their fearfully prescient intimations. Alas for the dangerous happiness of maternity! How prodigious are its inquietudes! How uncertain its consolations!
She told David that she had dreamed a dream, and that she looked for a change; and she had made this statement as simply and as confidently as if she had said, “The wind is from the north, and I look for a storm.” Repeated experiences had taught her, as they teach constantly, that certain signs precede certain events, and that certain dreams are dictated by that delicate antenna of spiritual instinct which feels danger to be near and warns of it.
Nanna had hadthe dreamthat ever forecast her misfortunes, and she sat thinking of its vague intimations, and tightening her heart for any sorrow. She had been forewarned that she might be forearmed,and she regarded this warning as a mark of interest and favor from beyond the veil. God had always spoken to his children in dreams and by the oracles that abide in darkness, and Nanna knew that in many ways “dreams are large possessions.” She fell asleep pondering what her vision of the preceding night might mean, and awoke next morning, while it was still dark, with a dim sense of fear and sorrow encompassing her.
“But everything frightens one when night, the unknown, takes the light away,” she thought. And she rose and lighted a lamp, and looked at Vala. The child was in a deep and healthy slumber, and the sight of its face calmed and satisfied her. Yet she was strangely apprehensive, and there was a weight on her heart that made her faint and trembling. She knew right well that some hitherto unknown sorrow was creeping like a mist over her life, and she had not yet the strength and the pang of conflict.
Have we not too? Yes, we have
Answers, and we know not whence;
Echoes from beyond the grave,
Recognized intelligence.
Yet the secret silence of the night, the vague terror and darkness of that occult world which we all carry with us, created in her, at first, fear, and then a kind of angry, desperate resentment.
“Oh, how helpless I am!” she sighed. “I can think and feel, I can fear and love, and I am not here by my own will; I did not place myself here; I cannot keep myself here. My life is in the grasp of a Power Icannot control. What am I to do? What can I do? Oh, how miserable I am! All my life long I have seen ’Not for you’ written on all I wished. Life is very hard,” she said with a little sob. And then she made no further complaint, but her heart grew so still, she was sure something must have died there. Alas! was it hope?
“Life is very hard.” With these words she lay down again, and between sleeping and waking the hours wore on, and she rose at last from her shivery sleep, even later than usual. Then she hurried breakfast a little, and as the light grew over land and sea she tidied her room and dressed Vala and herself for the kirk. As the sound of the first service bell traveled solemnly over the moor she was ready to leave the house. Her last duty was to put a peat or two upon the fire, and as she was doing this she heard some one lift the sneck and push open the door.
“It is David to carry Vala,” she thought. “How good he is!”
But when she turned she saw that it was not David. It was her husband, Nicol Sinclair. He walked straight to the fireside, and sat down without a word. Nanna’s heart sank to its lowest depths, and a cold despair made her feet and hands heavy as lead; but she slowly spread the cloth on the table, and bit by bit managed to recollect the cup and saucer, the barley-cake, the smoked goose, and the tea.
There was a terrible account between the man sitting on the hearth and herself, and words of passionate reproach burned at her lips; but she held her peace. Long ago she had left her cause with God; he wouldplead it thoroughly. Even now, when her enemy was before her, she had no thought of any other advocate.
Her pallor, her slow movements, her absolute dumbness, roused in Sinclair an angry discomfort. And when Vala made a movement he lifted her roughly, and with a brutal laugh said, “A nice plaything you will be on board theSea Rover!”
Nanna shivered at the words. She comprehended in a moment the torture this man had probably come purposely to inflict upon her. Already his cruel hands had crippled her child; and what neglect, what terrors, what active barbarities, might he not impose on the little one in the hell of his own ship! Who there could prevent him? Little did Nicol Sinclair care for public opinion on land; but out at sea, where Vala’s tears and cries could bring her no help, what pitiless inhumanities might he not practise?
“Fly with the child!”
The words were struck upon her heart like blows. But how should she fly? and where to? Far or near, the law would find her out and would give Vala to her father’s authority. And she had no friend strong enough to protect her. Only by death could she defy separation. Thus, while she was pouring the boiling water on the tea-leaves, she was revolving questions more agonizing than words have power to picture.
At length the food was on the table, and, save for those few threatening words, the silence was unbroken. Sinclair sat down to his meal with a bravado very near to cursing, and at that moment the kirk bells began to ring again. To Nanna they were like a voice from heaven. Quick as thought she lifted her child and fled from the house.
“BUT SHE HELD HER PEACE.”
“BUT SHE HELD HER PEACE.”
Oh, what stress of life and death was in her footsteps! Only to reach the kirk! If she could do that, she would cling to the altar and die there rather than surrender Vala to unknown miseries. Love and terror gave her wings. She did not turn her head; she did not feel the frozen earth or the cutting east wind; she saw nothing but Vala’s small face on her breast, and she heard nothing but the echo in her heart of those terrible words threatening her with the loss of her child.
When she reached the kirk the service had begun. The minister was praying. She went into the nearest pew, and though all were standing, she laid Vala on the seat, and slipped to her knees beside her. She could not now cry out as she longed to do, and sob her fright and anguish away at God’s feet. “Folk would wonder at me. I would disturb the service.” These were her thoughts as soon as the pressure of her flight was over. For the solemn voice of the minister praying, the strength of numbers, the holy influence of the time and place, cooled her passionate sense of wrong and danger, and she was even a little troubled at her abandonment of what was usual and Sabbath-like.
The altar now looked a long way off; only Sinclair at touch could have forced her down that guarded aisle to its shelter. Heaven itself was nearer, and God needed no explanations. He knew all. What was the law of man to him? And he feared not their disapproval. Thus in her great strait she overleapedher creed, and cast herself on him who is “a God of the afflicted, an helper of the oppressed, an upholder of the weak, a protector of the forlorn, a savior of them that are without hope.”
When the preaching was over David and Barbara came to her; and David knit his brows when he saw her face, for it was the face of a woman who had seen something dreadful. Her eyes were full of fear and anguish, and she was yet white and trembling with the exertion of her hard flight.
“Nanna,” he said, “what has happened?”
“My husband has come back.”
“I heard last night that his ship was in harbor.”
“He has come for Vala. He will take her from me. She will die of neglect and hard usage. He may give her to some stranger who will be cross to her. O David! David!”
“He shall not touch her.”
“O David!”
“Put her in my armsnow.”
“Do you mean this?”
“I do.”
“Can I trust you, David?”
“You may put it to any proof.”
“Pass your word to me, cousin.”
“As the Lord God Almighty lives, I will put my life between Vala and Nicol Sinclair!”
“But how?”
“I will take her to sea if necessary, for my boat can go where few will dare to follow.”
Then he turned to Barbara and said: “Nicol Sinclair has indeed come back. He says he has come for Vala.”
AT THE KIRK.
AT THE KIRK.
“Then the devil has led him here,” answered Barbara, flashing into anger. “As for Vala, let her stay with me. She has a good guard at my house. There is Groat and his four sons on one side, and Jeppe Madson and his big brother Har on the other side; and there is David Borson, who is worth a whole ship’s crew, to back them in anything for Vala’s safety. Stay with me to-day, Nanna, and we will talk this matter out.”
But Nanna shook her head in reply. As she understood it, duty was no peradventure; it was an absolute thing from which there was no turning away. And her duty was to be at home when her husband was there. But she put Vala’s hand into David’s hand, and then looked at the young man with eyes full of anxiety. He answered the look with one strong word:
“Yes!”
And she knew he would redeem it with his life, if that should be necessary.
Then she turned homeward, and walked with a direct and rapid energy. She put away thought; she formed no plan, she said no prayer. Her petition had been made in the kirk; she thought there would be a want of faith in repeating a request already promised. She felt even the modesty of a suppliant, and would not continually press into the presence of the Highest; for to the reverent there is ever the veil before the Shechinah.
And this conscious putting aside of all emotion strengthened her. When she saw her home she had no need to slacken her speed or to encourage herself. She walked directly to the door and opened it. Therewas no one there; the place was empty. The food on the table was untouched. Nothing but a soiled and crumpled handkerchief remained of the dreadful visitor. She lifted it with the tongs and cast it into the fire. Then she cleared away every trace of the rejected meal.
Afterward she made some inquiries in the adjoining huts. One woman only had seen his departure. “I could not go to kirk this morning,” she said with an air of apology, “for my bairn is very sick; and I saw Nicol Sinclair go away. It was near the noon hour. Drunk he was, and worse drunk than most men can be. His face was red as a hot peat, and he swayed to and fro like a boat on the Gruting Voe. There was something no’ just right about the man.”
That was all she could learn, and she was very unhappy, for she could imagine no good reason for his departure. In some way or other he was preparing the blow he meant to deal her; and though it was the Sabbath, there would be no difficulty in finding men whom he could influence. And there was also his cousin Matilda Sabiston, that wicked old woman who had outlived all human passions but hatred. Against this man and the money and ill-will that would back him she could do nothing, but she “trusted in God that he would deliver her.”
So she said to herself, “Patience”; and she sat down to wait, shutting her eyes to the outside world, and drawing to a focus all the strength that was in her. The closed Bible lay on the table beside her, and occasionally she touched it with her hand. She had not been able to read it; but there was comfort inseeing the old, homely-looking book, with its everyday aspect and its pages full of kindly blessing, and still more comfort in putting herself in physical contact with its promises. They seemed to be more real. And as she sat hour after hour, psalms learned years before, and read many and many a time without apprehension of their meaning, began to speak to her. She saw the words with her spiritual sight, and they shone with their own glory. And she obtained what she so sorely needed:
A little comforting shadow
From the hot sun’s fiery glow;
A little rest by the fountain
Where the waters of comfort flow.
When midnight struck she looked at the clock and thanked God. Surely she was safe for that night; and she turned the key in her door and went to sleep. And her sleep was that which God giveth to his beloved when they are to be strengthened for many days–a deep, dreamless suspense of all thought and feeling.
Yet, heavenly as the sleep had been, the awakening was a shock. And as the day grew toward noon she was as much troubled by the silence of events as her husband had been by the silence of her lips. Human hearts are nests of fear. Her whole soul kept going to the window, and she said, with the impatience of suspended suffering, “Now! now!I have no fortitude for to-morrow, but I can bear anythingnow.” Finally she resolved to go to Barbara’s, and see Vala, and hear whatever there was to hear. But as shewas putting on her cloak she saw David coming over the moor, and he was carrying Vala in his arms.
“So,” she said, “I see that I will not need to run after my fate; it will come to me; and there will be no use striving against it. For what must be is sure to happen.”
Then she turned back into the house, and David followed with unusual solemnity, and laid Vala upon her bed. “She is sleeping,” he said, “and there is something to tell you, Nanna.”
“About my husband?”
“Yes.”
“Say it out at once, then.”
“Last night he was carried to his own ship.” And David’s face was grave almost to sternness.
“Carried! Have you then hurt him, David?”
“No; he is a self-hurter. But this is what I know. He went from here to Matilda Sabiston’s house. She had gone to kirk with two of her servants, and when she came back she found him delirious on the sofa. Then the doctor was sent for, and when he said the word ‘typhus,’ Matilda shrieked with passion, and demanded that he should be instantly taken away.”
“But no! Surely not!”
“Yes; it was so. Both the minister and the doctor said it was right and best for him to be taken to his own ship. The town–yes, indeed, and the whole islands were in danger. And when they took him on board theSea Rover, they found that two of the sailors were also very ill with the fever. They had been ill for a week, and Sinclair knew it; yet he came among the boats, and went through the town, speaking to many people. It was a wicked thing for him to do.”
“It was just like him. Where is theSea Rovernow lying?”
“She has been taken to the South Voe. The fishing-boats will watch lest the men are landed, and the doctor will go to the ship every day the sea will let him go.”
“David, is it my duty–”
“No, it is not; there are five men with Sinclair. Three of them are, I believe, yet well men, and three can care for the sick and the ship. On the deck of theSea Rovera woman should not put her foot.”
“But a ship with typhus on board?”
“Is a hell indeed! In this case, Nanna, it is a hell of their own making. They got the fever in a dance-house at Rotterdam. Sinclair knew of its presence, and laughed it to scorn. It was his mate who told the doctor so. Also, Nanna, there is Vala.”
She went swiftly to the side of the sleeping child, and she was sure there was a change in her. David would not acknowledge it, but in forty-eight hours the signs of the fatal scourge were unmistakable. Then Nanna’s house was marked and isolated, and she sat down to watch her dying child.
During the awful days of Vala’s dying no one came near Nanna. She watched her child night and day, and saw it go out into the darkness that girds our life around, in unutterable desolation of soul. From the first Vala was unconscious, and she went away without a word or token of comfort to the despairing mother. There was unspeakable suffering and decay, and then the little breathing-house in which Vala had sojourned a short space was suddenly vacant. For a moment Nanna stood on the border-lands of being, where life hardly draws breath.A little more, and she would have pushed apart the curtains that divide us from that spiritual world which lies so close and which may claim us at any moment.A little more, and she would, in her loving agony, have pressed beyond manifestations to that which is ineffable and nameless.
But at the last moment the flesh-and-blood conductor of spirit failed; a great weakness and weariness made her passive under the storm of sorrow thatdrove like rain to the roots of her life. When she was able to move, Vala lay sad and still. All was over, and Nanna stood astonished, smitten, dismayed, on a threshold she could not pass. The Eternal had given, and it was a gift; he had taken away, and it was an immeasurable loss, and she could not say, “Blessed be the name of the Lord.” She was utterly desolate; and when she washed for the last time the little feet that had never trod the moor or street or house, she thought her heart would break.Whohad led them through the vast spaces of the constellations?Whitherhad they been led? There was no answer to her moaning question. She looked from her dead Vala to God, and all was darkness. She could not see him.
It was a hurried burial in a driving storm. The sea rolled in fateful billows, the winds whistled loud and shrill, the rain soaked Nanna through and through. Two or three of her neighbors followed afar off; they wished her to see they were not oblivious of her grief and loss, but they dared not break the ordinance of town and kirk and voluntarily and without urgent reason come in contact with the contagion; for the island not many years previously had been almost decimated by the same scourge, and every man and woman was the guardian, not only of his or her own life, but of the lives of the community.
Nanna understood this. She saw the dark, cloaked figures of her friends standing in the storm at a distance, and she knew the meaning of their upraised hands; but she had no heart to answer the signal of sympathy. Alone, she stood by the small open graveand saw it filled. The rain beat on it, and she was glad that it beat on her. It was with difficulty, and only with some affected anger, the two men who had buried the child got her to return to her home.
How vacant it was! How unspeakably lonely! The stormy dreariness outside the cot, the atmosphere of sorrow and loss within it, were depressing beyond words. And what can be said of the loneliness and sorrow within the soul? But in every bitter cup there is one drop bitterest of all; and in Nanna’s case this was David’s neglect and apparent desertion. She had received no message from him, nor had he come near her in all her trouble. Truly, he must have broken the law to do so; but Nanna was sure no town ordinance would have kept her from David’s side in such an hour, and she despised that obedience to law which could teach him such cowardly neglect.
Day after day passed, and he came not. The fever was by this time in all the cottages around her, and the little hamlet was a plague-spot that every one avoided. But, for all that, Nanna’s heart condemned her cousin. She tried him by her own feelings, and found him guilty of unpardonable selfishness and neglect. And oh, how dreary are those waste places left by the loved who have deserted us! With what bitter tears we water them! Vala and David had been her last tie to love and happiness. “Thank God,” she cried out in her misery, “it can only be broken once!”
Vala had been in her grave a week–a week of days that turned the mother’s heart gray–before Nanna heard a word of comfort. Then once more David lifted the latch of the cot and entered her presence. Shewas sitting still and empty-handed, and her white face and the quivering of her lips pierced him to the heart.
“Nanna! Nanna!” he said.
Then she rose, and looked round the lonely room, and David understood what she meant.
“Nanna! Nanna!” was still all that he could say. He could find no words fit for such sorrow; but there was the truth to speak, and that might have some comfort in it. So he took her hands in his, and said gently:
“Nanna! dear Nanna! your husband is dead.”
“I am glad of it!” she answered. “He killed Vala twice over.” Her voice was low and weary, and she asked no question about the matter.
“Did you think I had forgotten you, Nanna?”
“Well, then, yes.”
“Forgotten you and Vala?”
“It looked most like it. I thought you were either feared for yourself or the law.”
“No wonder men think ill of God, whom they do not know, when they are so ready to think ill of men, whom they do know.”
“O David! how could you desert me? Can you think of all that I have suffered alone? God nor man has helped me.”
“Poor, poor Nanna!”
“If you had been ill to death, neither the words of men nor the power of the law could have kept me from your sick-bed. No, indeed! I would have risked everything to help you. Where were you at all, David?”
“I was on theSea Rover.”
“TheSea Rover! That is Nicol’s ship. What did he do to you? What were you there for?”
“I was on theSea Rovernursing your husband.”
“My God!”
“That is the truth, Nanna. I have just finished my task.”
“Who sent you?”
“The minister came to me with the order, and I could not win by it and face God and man again.”
“What said he? O David! David!”
“He said, ‘David Borson, there are four men ill with typhus this morning on theSea Rover. The one man yet unstricken is quite broken down with fright and fatigue. The doctor says some one ought to go there. What do you think?’ And I said, ‘Minister, do you mean me?’ And he smiled a bit and answered, ‘I thought you would know your duty, David.’”
“But whyyourduty, David? Surely Vala was dearer and nearer.”
“The minister said, ‘You are a lone man, David, and you fear God; so, then, you need not fear the fever.’”
“And he knew that you hated Sinclair! Knew that Sinclair had come to my house with the fever on him–knew that he had lifted my poor bairn, only that he might give her the death-kiss!”
“No, no! How could any father, any man, be as bad as that, Nanna?”
“You know not how bad the devil can make a man when he enters into him. And how could the minister send you such a hard road?”
“It was made easy to me; it was indeed, Nanna. The sensible presence of God, and the shining of his face on me, though only for a moment, made me willing to give up all my anger and all my revenge, and wait on my enemy, and do what I could for him to the last moment.”
“And Vala? How could you forget her?”
“I did not forget her. I was feared for the child, though I would not say that to you. Barbara told me she had fret all night, and when I said it would be for her mother, the woman shook her head in a way that made me tremble. I was on my way to see her and you when I met the minister, and he sent me the other way.”
“Why did you not tell him that you feared for Vala?”
“I said that, and he said, ‘Nanna will be able to care for the little one; but there is a strong man needed to care for her husband; Nicol Sinclair will be hard to manage.’ And then he minded me of the man’s sinful life, and he said peradventure it might be the purpose of God even yet to give him another opportunity for repentance through me.”
“If he had known Nicol Sinclair as I–”
“Yes, Nanna, but it is an awful thing to die eternally. If I could help to save any one from such a fate, even my worst enemy,–even your enemy and Vala’s,–what should I have done? Tell me.”
“Just what you did. You have done right. Yes; though the man killed Vala, you have done right! You have done right!”
“I knew that would be your last word.”
“Did he have one good thought, one prayer, to meet death with?”
“He did not. It was a wild night when he was in the dead thraws–a wild night for the flitting; and he went out in storm and darkness, and the sea carried him away.”
“God have mercy upon him! I have not a tear left for Nicol Sinclair.”
“It was an awful death; but on the same night there was a very good death after a very good life. You have heard, Nanna?”
“I have heard nothing. For many days all has been still and tidingless. The fever is in every house, and no one comes near but the doctor, and he speaks only to the sick.”
“Well, then, the good minister has gone home. He was taken with the fever while giving the sacrament to Elder Somerlid. And he knew that he would die, for he said, ‘John Somerlid, we shall very soon drink this cup together in the house of our Father in heaven.’ So when he got back to the manse he sent for Elder Peterson, and gave him his last words.”
“And I know well that they would be good words.”
“They were like himself, full of hope. He spoke about his books, and the money in his desk to pay all his debts, and then he said:
“‘The days of my life are ended, but I have met the hand of God, Peter, and it is strong to lead and to comfort me. A word was brought to me even as I held the blessed cup in my hand. Read to me from the Book while I can listen to it.’ And Peterson asked, ‘What shall I read?’ And the minister said, ‘Takethe Psalms. There is everything in the Psalms.’ So Peterson read the ones he called for, and after a little the minister said:
“‘That will do, Peter. I turn now from the sorrow and pain and darkness of earth to the celestial city, to infinite serenities, to love without limit, to perfect joy. And when I am dead, see you to my burying, Peter. Lay me in the grave with my face to the east, and put above me Jesus Christ’s own watchword, “Thy kingdom come.”’ After that he asked only for water, and so he died.”
“Blessed are such dead. There is no need to weep for them.”
“That is one thing sure; but I have seen this, Nanna: that the wicked is unbefriended in his death-pang.”
“And after it, David? O David, after it?”
“There is no darkness nor shadow of death where the worker of iniquity may hide,” he answered with an awful solemnity.
“O David, we come into the world weeping, and we go out fearing. It is a hard travail, both for body and soul.”
And David walked to the little table on which the Book lay, and he turned the leaves until he found the words he wanted. And Nanna watched him with eyes purified by that mysterious withdrawal into the life of the soul which comes through a great sorrow.
“It was not always so, Nanna,” he said. “Listen!
“For their sakes I made the world, and when Adam transgressed my statutes, then was decreed that now is done.
“For their sakes I made the world, and when Adam transgressed my statutes, then was decreed that now is done.
“Then were the entrances of this world made narrow, full of sorrow and travail; they are but few and evil, full of perils and very painful.“For the entrances of the elder world were wide and sure, and brought immortal fruit.
“Then were the entrances of this world made narrow, full of sorrow and travail; they are but few and evil, full of perils and very painful.
“For the entrances of the elder world were wide and sure, and brought immortal fruit.
But yet there is to be a restoration, Nanna.”
“I know not,” she answered wearily. “It is so far off–so far away.”
“But it is promised. It is sure.
“The world shall be turned into the old silence seven days, like as in former judgments, so that no man shall remain.“And after seven days, the world, that yet awaketh not, shall be raised up; and that shall die that is corrupt.“And the earth shall restore those that are asleep in her; and the dust, those that dwell in silence; and the secret places shall deliver those souls that were committed unto them.“And the Most High shall appear upon the seat of judgment, and misery shall pass away, and the long suffering shall have an end.“But judgment shall remain; truth shall stand; and faith shall wax strong.”
“The world shall be turned into the old silence seven days, like as in former judgments, so that no man shall remain.
“And after seven days, the world, that yet awaketh not, shall be raised up; and that shall die that is corrupt.
“And the earth shall restore those that are asleep in her; and the dust, those that dwell in silence; and the secret places shall deliver those souls that were committed unto them.
“And the Most High shall appear upon the seat of judgment, and misery shall pass away, and the long suffering shall have an end.
“But judgment shall remain; truth shall stand; and faith shall wax strong.”
“I know nothing of these things, David; I cannot think of them. What I want is some word of comfort about Vala–a little word from beyond would make all the difference.Whyis it not given?Whyis there no answering voice from the other side? There is none on this.Whydoes God pursue a poor, broken-hearted woman so hardly? Even now, when I have wept my heart cold and dumb, I do not please him. One thing only is sure–my misery. Oh,why, why, David?”
And David could only drop his eyes before the sad, inquiring gaze of Nanna’s. He murmured somethingabout Adam and the cross, and told her sorrowfully that He who hung upon it, forsaken, in the dark, also asked, “Why?” The austerity and profound mystery of his creed gave him no more comforting answer to the pathetic inquiry.
He spent the day in the little hamlet, and, the weather being dry and not very cold, he persuaded Nanna to take a walk upon the cliff-top with him. She agreed because she had not the strength to oppose his desire; but if David had had any experience with suffering women, he would have seen at once how ineffectual his effort would be. The gray, icy, indifferent sea had nothing hopeful to say to her. The gray gulls, with their stern, cold eyes, watchful and hungry, filled her ears with nothing but painful clamoring. There was no voice in nature to cry, “Comfort,” to a bruised soul.
She said the wind hurt her, that she was tired, that she would rather sit still in the house and shut her eyes and think of Vala. She leaned so heavily on him that David was suddenly afraid, and he looked with more scrutiny into her face. If his eyes had been opened he would have seen over its youth and beauty signs of a hand that writes but once; for when despair assumes the dignity of patience it carries with it the warrant of death.
They went slowly and silently back to the house, and as they approached it David said, “Some one has called, for the door is open.” And they walked a little faster, so that Nanna’s cheeks flushed with the movement and the wind.
Matilda Sabiston sat on the hearthstone grumblingat the cold, while the man-servant who had brought her so far was piling the peats upon the fire to warm her feet and hands. When David and Nanna entered she did not move, but she turned her eyes upon them with a malignant anger that roused in both a temper very different from that in which their hopeless walk had been taken. It was immediately noticeable in Nanna. She dropped David’s hand and walked forward to her visitor, and they looked steadily at each other for a few moments. Then Matilda said:
“Think shame of yourself, to be so soon at the courting again, and, above all, with him!”
Nanna took no notice of the remark, but asked, “Why are you here? I wish to have no dealings with you, for no good can come of them.”
“Would I come here for good? There is no good in any of your kind. I came here to tell you that I was glad that there is one Borson less.”
“There has been death among your own kin, mistress,” said David, “and such death as should make the living fear to bring it to remembrance.”
“I know it. You ought to fear. Did you slay Nicol, as your father slew Bele Trenby, by water? or did you poison him with drugs? or is your hand red with his life-blood? And now, before the fish have had time to pick his bones, you are wooing his wife.”
“Will you let Nanna alone? She is ill.”
“Ill? Babble! Look at her rosy cheeks! She has been listening to your love-words. Who sent you to theSea Rover? What were you doing there? A great plot! A wicked plot against poor Nicol!”
“I went to theSea Roverbecause–”
“Very ready you were to go to Nicol’s ship and to do your will there! Oh, it was a great opportunity! None to see! none to tell tales! But I know you! I know you! The black drop of murder is in every Borson’s veins.”
“Mistress, you are an old woman, and you may say your say. If you were a man it would be different. I would cut out your lying tongue, or make it eat its own words.”
With railing and insolence she defied him to the act, and David stood looking at her with his hands in his pockets. As for Nanna, she had thrown off her cloak and seated herself on Vala’s couch. She was trying to control her temper; but the little room was already impregnated with Matilda’s personality, and Nanna could not escape from those indirect but powerful influences that distil from an actively evil life.
“I wish, Matilda Sabiston, that you would leave my house,” she said. “I think that you have brought the devil in with you.”
Then Matilda turned in her chair and looked at Nanna. Her face, handsomely prominent in youth, had become with sin and age like that of a bird of prey; it was all nose and two fierce, gleaming eyes.
“Do you talk of the devil?” she screamed. “You, who drove your husband to sin, and sent your baby to hell!”
Then Nanna, with a pitiful cry, buried her face in Vala’s pillow; and David, full of anger, said:
“I will take you from this house, mistress. You were not asked to come here, and you cannot stay here.”
“I will stay until I have said what you shall listento. The child of this woman has been taken for your father’s sin. The mother will go next. Thenyouwill bite the last morsel of Kol’s curse. I am living only to see this.”
“I fear not the curse of any man,” said David, in a passion. “There is no power in any mortal’s curse that prayer cannot wither. Keep it to yourself–you, who believe in it. As for me–”
“As for you, I will give you some advice. When the new minister is placed, go and tell him what Liot Borson told you at his death-hour. For I know well he did not die without boasting of his revenge on Bele Trenby. Death couldn’t shut Liot’s mouth till the words were out of it. Make the confession your father ought to have made, and let me hear it. I have said it, and fools have laughed at me, and wise men have hid the words in their hearts; and I will not die till my words are made true. And if you will not make them true, then the dead will have their satisfaction, and love will go to the grave and not to the bridal. Now, then, do what is before you. I have set you your task.”
She spoke with a rapid passion that would not be interrupted, and then, still muttering threats and accusations, tottered out of the cot on her servant’s arm. David was speechless. The truth bound him. What powers of divination this evil woman had, he knew not, but she at least had driven home the unacknowledged fear in his heart. He sat down by Nanna and tried to comfort her, but she could not listen to him. “Leave me alone to-day,” she pleaded. “I have had all I can bear.”
So he went back to Lerwick, feeling with every stephe took that the task Matilda had set him would have to be accomplished. The humiliation would indeed be great, but if by confession he could ward off punishment from Nanna he must accept the alternative. Himself he took not into consideration. No threat and no fear of personal suffering could have forced him to speak; but if, peradventure, silence was sin, and sin brought sorrow, then his duty to others demanded from him the long-delayed acknowledgment. However, he was not yet certain of the right, and the new minister had not yet come, and there is always some satisfaction in putting off what is dubious and questionable.
The new minister was not finally settled until Christmas. He proved to be a young man with the air of theological schools still around him. David was afraid of him. He thought of the tender, mellowed temper of the old man whose place he was to fill, and wished that his acknowledgment had been made while he was alive. He feared to bring his father’s spiritual case before one who had never known him, who had grown up “southward” under very different influences, who would likely be quite unable to go a step beyond the letter of the law.
He talked to Nanna frequently about the matter, and she was more than inclined to silence. “Let well alone, David,” she said. “What good can come of calling back old sins and sorrows? Who has set you this task? One who has always hated you. If God had sent, would he have sent byher? No; but when the devil wants a cruel, wicked messenger, he can get none so fit for his purpose as a bad old woman.”
However, while David hesitated Matilda went to the new minister. She prefaced her story by a gift of ten pounds for the replenishing of the manse, and then told it according to her own wishes and imagination.
“The minister dead and gone would not listen to me,” she said. “He was a poor creature, and Liot Borson was one of his pets. The man could do no wrong in his eyes. So I have been sin-bearer for more than twenty years. Now, then, I look to you to clear this matter to the bottom, and let the talk about it come to an end once for all.”
“It is a grave matter,” said Minister Campbell, “and I am astonished that my predecessor let it rest so long–though doubtless he did it for the best, for there will be two sides to this, as to all other disputes.”
“There is not,” answered Matilda, angrily. “All is as I have told you.”
“But, according to your testimony, Liot Borson’s guilt rests on your dreams. That is a poor foundation.”
“I have always been a foresighted woman–a great dreamer–and I dream true.”
“But I know not how to call a kirk meeting on a dream.”
“Was the Bible written for yesterday or for to-day?”
“It was written for every day, unto the end of time.”
“Then look to it. Ask it how many of its great events hang upon dreams. Take the dream life out of the Bible, minister, and where are you?”
“Mistress Sabiston, I am not used to arguing with women, but I will remind you that the dream life of the Bible does not rest on female authority. It wasthe men of the Bible that saw visions and dreamed dreams. As I remember, only one woman–a pagan, Pilate’s wife–is recorded as being in this way instructed. I should not be inclined to discipline the memory of Liot Borson on the strength of your dream.”
“There is, or there was, other evidence; for much of it has now gone away through the door of death. What I want is Liot’s own confession. He made it to his son before he gave up the ghost. Now, then, let David speak for his father.”
“That is a different thing. If David has a message to deliver, he must deliver it, or he is recreant to his trust.”
“See to it, then. It is all I ask, but I have a right to ask it.”
“What right?”
“Bele was my adopted son. I loved him. He was my heir. I was a lone-living woman, and he was all I had. As I have told you, Liot wished to marry my niece Karen, that he might heir my property. He had every reason to get Bele out of his way, and he did it. Ask his son.”
“I will.”
With these words he became silent, and Matilda saw that there was an end of the conversation for that time. But she was now more eager and passionate for the impeachment of Liot’s good name than she had ever been, and she vowed to herself that if Minister Campbell did not give her satisfaction he should have all the petty misery and trouble her money and influence could give him.
The young minister, however, did not hesitate. It was a most unpleasant legacy to his charge, and he was straitened until he had done his duty concerning it. He went to see David at once, and heard from his lips the whole truth. And he was greatly impressed with the story, for the young man told it with such truth and tenderness that every word went heartwise. He could think of nothing better than to call a meeting in the kirk, and summon David to tell the congregation just what he had told him. And as it had been Liot’s intention to do this very thing himself, the minister could not see that David would be guilty of any unkindness to his father’s memory. Quite the contrary. He would be fulfilling his desire and doing for him the duty he had been unable personally to perform.
David had nothing to say against the proposal. It turned him faint, and he wondered if it would be possible for him to stand up in the presence of his fellows, and in the sight of all the women who admired and respected him, and do what was required. A cold sweat covered his face; his large hands felt powerless; he looked at the minister appealingly, but could not utter a word.
“You must speak for your father, David. Perhaps you ought to have spoken before this. We can do so little for the dead that any wish of theirs that is positive ought to be sacredly granted. What do you say?”
“It is hard, minister. But what you say is right, that I will do.”
“We will not touch the Sabbath day, David. I will ask the people to come to the kirk next Wednesday afternoon. The men will not be at sea, and the women will be at leisure then. What do you think?”