Prisoners of Conscience

Then he was awfully silent. The mortal agony was dealing its last sharp blows, and every instinct impelled him to cry out against the torment. But Liot Borson had put his mortality beneath his feet; nothing could have forced a cry from him. His face changed as a green leaf might change if a hot iron was passed over it; but he sat grasping the rude arms of his wooden chair, disdaining the torture while it lasted, and smiling triumphantly as it partly passed away.

“A few more such pangs and the fight will be over, David. So I will swither and scruple no longer; I will tell the whole truth about the drowning of Bele Trenby. Bele and I were never friends; but I hated him when he began to meddle between me and Karen Sabiston. He had no shadow of right to do so, for I had set my heart on her and she had given me her promise; and I said then, and I say it now with death at my elbow, that he had no right to step between me and Karen. Yet he tried to do that thing, and if it had not been for the minister I had stabbed him to his false heart. But the minister bade me do no wrong, because I was of the household of faith, and a born and baptized child of God, having come–mind this, David–of generations of his saints. He said if Bele had done me wrong, wrong would come to Bele, and I would live to see it.”

“‘Vengeance is Mine; I will repay’,” quoted David, in a low voice. But Liot answered sharply:

“The Lord sends by whom he will send. And it so happened that one night, as Bele and I were walking together, I knew the hour had come.”

“You took not the matter in your own hands surely, father?”

“There was none there but me. I laid no finger on him; he fell into his own snare. I had said a thousand times–and the Lord had heard me say it–that if one word of mine would save Bele Trenby from death, I would not say that one word. Could I break my oath for a child of the Evil One? Had Bele been of the elect I would have borne that in mind; but Bele came of bad stock; pirates and smugglers were his forebears, and the women not to name with the God-fearing–light and vain women. So I hated Bele, and I had a right to hate him; and one night, as I walked from Quarf to Lerwick, Bele came to my side and said, ‘Good evening, Liot.’ And I said, ‘It is dark,’ and spoke no more. And by and by we came to a stream swollen with rain and snow-water, and Bele said, ‘Here is the crossing.’ And I answered him not, for I knew it was not the crossing. So as I delayed a little–for my shoe-string was loose–Bele said again, ‘Here is the crossing.’ And I told him neither yes nor no. And he said to me, ‘It seemeth, Liot, thou art in a devil’s temper, and I will stay no longer with thee.’ And with the ill words on his lips he strode into the stream, and then overhead into the moss he went, and so to his own place.”

“Father, I am feared for a thing like that. There would be sin in it.”

“I lifted no finger against him; my lips lied not. It was the working out of his own sin that slew him.”

“I would have warned him–yes, I would. Let me go for the minister; he will not be feared to say, ‘Liot, you did wrong,’ if so he thinks.”

“I have had my plea out with my Maker. If I did sin, I have paid the price of the sin. Your mother was given to me, and in two years the Lord took her away. I thought to fill my eyes with a sight of the whole world, and I was sent to this desolate place for a life-sentence, to bide its storm and gloom and gust and poverty, and in this bit cabin to dree a long, fierce wrestle with Death, knowing all the time he would get the mastery over me in the end.” Then, suddenly pausing, his gray face glowed with passionate rapture, and lifting up his right hand he cried out: “No, no, David; I am the conqueror! There are two ways of dying, my lad–victory and defeat. Thank God, I have the victory through Jesus Christ, my Lord and Saviour!”

“Who is the propitiation for all sin, father.”

“Sin!” cried the dying man, “sin! I have nothing to do with sin. ‘Who shall lay anything to the charge of God’s elect?’ for, ‘Whosoever is born of God doth not commit sin–he cannot sin, for he is born of God.’ I did indeed make a sore stumble; so also did David, and natheless he was a man after God’s own heart. What has man to do with my fault? He has entered into judgment with me, and I have gladly borne the hand of the smiter.”

“Gladly, father?”

“Ay, David, gladly. For had I not been his son, he would have ‘let me alone,’ as he does those joined to their idols; but because he loved me he chastised me; and I have found that his rod as well as his staff can comfort in affliction. Some of his bairns deserve and get the rod of iron. Be good, David, and he will stretch out to you only his golden scepter.”

“And also you have the Intercessor.”

“If I had not I would plead my own cause, as Job did. I would rise up and answer him like a man, for he is a just God. Mercy may have times and seasons, but justice is the same yesterday, to-day, and forever. ‘Shall not the Judge of all the earth do right?’”

“Would you say that, father, if justice sent you to the place of torment?”

“Ay, would I! ‘Though he slay me, yet will I trust in him.’ But I am not fearing the place of torment, David. And as for this world, it is at my feet like a cast-off shoe, and all its gold and gear is as the wrack of the sea. But you will find a few sovereigns in my chest, and a letter for your cousin Paul Borson; and the ship and the house you may do your will with.”

“It is your will in all things that I care to do, father. And now, if you would but let me away for the minister, maybe you could say a word to him you are not caring to say to me–a word of sorrow or remorse–”

“Remorse! remorse! No, no, David! Remorse is for feeble souls; remorse is the virtue of hell; remorse would sin again if it could. I have repented, David, and repentance ends all. See to your Larger Catechism, David–Question 76.”

Throughout this conversation speech had been becoming more and more painful to him. The last words were uttered in gasps of unconquerable agony, and a mortal spasm gave a terrible emphasis to this spiritual conviction. When it had passed he whispered faintly, “The pains of hell get hold on me–on my body, David; they cannot touch my soul. Lay me down now–at His feet–I can sit in my chair no longer.”

So David laid him in his bunk. “Shall I say the words now–the words you marked, father?” he asked.

“Ay; the hour has come.”

Then David knelt down and put his young, fresh face very close to the face of the dying man, and said solemnly and clearly in his very ear the chosen words of trust:

“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.”

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 lofty presence filled 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 had now 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

V

A NEW LIFE

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 into little 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 trade of 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 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–this poor 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?