Prisoners of Conscience

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 stimulated and 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 treading upon 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, and came 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 rolling from 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’s strength, 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:

“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 for him 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.”

VI

KINDRED–THE QUICK AND THE DEAD

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 the more 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 safe journey, 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 will not take 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 looked as 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 my mother 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 will not do. There are my cousins Nanna and Vala here; and it is freely said that you have done them 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 woman free.”

“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 meeting had 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.