Prisoners of Conscience

The first evidence of this new condition was a dignified reticence with Barbara Traill. She was conscious of the change in her lodger. She felt instinctively that he was no longer a child to be questioned, and there was a tone of authority in his refusal to discuss his aunt Sabiston with her which she could not but respect. Indeed, it was no longer possible to speak to him of Mistress Sabiston as Mistress Sabiston deserved to be spoken of. Her first censure was checked by David’s air of disapproval and his few words of apology:

“She is, however, my aunt; and when one is ninety years old it is a good excuse for many faults.”

Matilda’s utter refusal of his kin or kindness threw him more exclusively upon Nanna and her child. And as all his efforts to discover any other family connections were quite futile, he finally came to believe that they three were the last of a family that had once filled the lands of the Norsemen with the fame of their great deeds. Insensibly this thought drew the bond tighter and closer, though an instinct as pure as it was conventional taught him a scrupulous delicacy with regard to this friendship. Fortunately, in Shetland the blood-tie was regarded as a strong enough motive for all David’s attentions to a woman and child so desolate and helpless. People said simply, “It is a good thing for Nanna Sinclair that her cousin has come to Shetland.” And it did not enter their hearts to imagine an evil motive for kind deeds when there was one so natural and obligatory.

So Shetland became dear and pleasant to David, and he gradually grew into great favor. The minister made much of the young man, for he respected his integrity and earnest piety, and loved him for that tenderness and clearness of conscience which was sensitive to the first approaches of wrong. The fishers and sailors of the town gave him a warm admiration for his seamanship, and the praise David had looked for at the beginning, and felt disappointed in not receiving, was now given him by a kind of acclamation. Old sailors, telling yarns of their ships and the queer, bold things their ships had done, generally in some way climaxed their narratives by an allusion to David Borson. Thus, Peter Redlands, talking to a group of fishers one day, said:

“Where that lad learned the sea, and who taught him all the ways of it, is beyond me; but say as you will, he can make harbor when none of us could look at it. It is my belief David Borson can stick to anything that can float.”

“And to see how he humors a boat,” continued Jan Wyck, “you would think she was made out of flesh instead of out of three-inch planks. I was out with him near the Old Man’s Rocks last week, and he was watching the water; and I said, ‘What is it, David?’ ‘The sea,’ he said. ‘It will be at its old tricks again in an hour or less.’ And the ‘less’ was right, for in fifteen minutes the word was, ‘Reef, and quick about it!’ and then you know what–the rip and the roar, and the boat leaping her full length. But David did not worry a jot. He coaxed her beautifully, and kept her well in hand; and she shook herself a little, and then away like a gull before the wind.”

He was just as popular among the children and women of Lerwick. The boys made an idol of him, for David was always ready to give them a sail, or lend them his fowling-piece, or help them to rig their toy boats. As for the maidens, the prettiest ones in Lerwick had a shy smile for David Borson, and many wondered that such a beauty as Asta Fae should smile on him in vain; but David had taken Nanna and Vala into his heart, and his care and thought for them were so constant that there was no room for any other interest. Yet Barbara often talked to him about taking a wife; and even the minister, doubtless led to such advice by female gossip and speculation, thought it well to speak a word on the subject to him.

“You know, David,” he said, “there are good girls and beautiful girls that look kindly on you, and who wonder that your smiles are so cold and your words so few; and it is my duty to say to you that evil may come of your taking so much thought for your cousin and her child, and the way to help her best is to help her through your own wife.”

“I am not in the mind to marry, minister,” he answered. “There is no one girl dearer or fairer to me than another. And as for what I do for my cousins, I think that God sent me to do it, and I shall not be feared to make accounting to him for it.”

“That is my belief also, David. Yet we are told to avoid the very appearance of evil; and what is more, if it is not your pleasure to marry, it is your duty; and how will you win past that?”

“I have not seen it to be my duty, minister.”

“The promise is in the line of the righteous; the blessing is for you and for your children; but if you have no wife or children, then is the promise shortened and the blessing cut off. I think that you should choose some good woman’s daughter, and build yourself a home, and then marry a wife.”

The young man went out of the manse with this thought in his heart. And not far off he met pretty Asta Fae, and he spoke to her and walked with her as far as she was going; and he saw that she had the sweetest of blue eyes, and that her smile was tender and her ways gentle. And when he left her at her father’s door, he held her hand a moment and said, “It has been a pleasant walk to me, Asta.” And she looked frankly into his face and answered with rosy blushes, “And to me also, David.”

There was a warm glow at his heart as he went across the moor to Nanna’s; and he resolved to tell his cousin what the minister had said, and ask her advice about Asta Fae; but when he reached Nanna’s cot she was sitting on the hearth with Vala upon her knees, and telling her such a strange story that David would not for anything lose a word of it. And as Nanna’s back was to the open door she did not see David enter, but went on with her tale, in the high, monotonous tone of one telling a narrative whose every word is well known and not to be changed.

“You see, Vala,” she said, touching the child’s fingers and toes, “it was the old brown bull of Norraway, and he had a sore battle with the deil, and he carried off a great princess; and you may know how big he was, for he said to her, ‘Eat out of my left ear, and drink out of my right ear, and put by the leavings.’ And ay they rode, and on they rode, till they came to a dark and awesome glen, and there the bull stopped and the lady lighted down. And the bull said to her: ‘Here you must stay while I go on and fight the deil. And you must sit here on that stone, and move not hand or foot till I come back, or else I’ll never find you again. And if everything round about you turns blue, I shall have beaten the deil; but if all things turn red, then the deil will have conquered me.’”

“And so he left her, mammy, to go and fight the deil?”

“Ay, he did, Vala; and she sat still, singing.”

“Sing me the lady’s song, mammy.”

Then Nanna intoned softly the strangest, wildest little tune. It was like a Gregorian chant, and had but three notes, but to these she gave a marvelous variety. David listened spellbound to the entreating voice:

“‘Seven long years I served for thee,The glassy hill I clamb for thee,The bloody shirt I wrang for thee,And wilt thou not waken and come to me?’

But I’m thinking he never came back to the lady.”

“Oh, yes, he did, mammy,” said Vala, confidently. “Helga Storr told me he came back a fine prince with a gold crown on his head, and the deil went away empty and roaring mad.”

“What is it you are telling about, Nanna?” said David, his face eager and alight with interest.

She rose up then, with Vala in her arms, her eyes shining with her sweet, motherly story-telling. “It is only an old tale, David,” she answered. “I know not who made it up. My mother told it to me, and her mother to her, and so back through years that none can count. Yes, indeed; what little child does not know the story of the big brown bull of Norraway?”

“I never heard of it before,” said David.

“To be sure; your mother did not live to talk to you–poor little lad!”

“Now, then, Nanna, tell it to me for my mother’s sake.” And he sat down on the cricket by her side, and took Vala on his knee; and Nanna laughed, and then, with the little formal importance of the reciter, said: “Well, so it shall be, then. Here beginneth the story of the big brown bull of Norraway and his fight with the deil.” And the old tale fell from her lips full of charm, and David listened with all the delight of a child. And when it had been twice told, Nanna began to talk of the burnt Njal and the Icelandic sagas, and the more so as she saw David was full of strange wonder and delight, and that every word was fresh and enthralling to him.

“Yet it is a thing to be wondered at,” she said finally, “that you, David, know not these old histories better than I do; for I have often heard that no one in all the islands could tell a story so well as Liot Borson. Yes, and the minister once said, and I heard him, that he would walk ten miles to hear from your father’s lips once more the sad happenings of his ancestor, the brave, helpful Gisli.”

“This is a great thing to me, Nanna,” answered David, in a voice low and quiet, for he was feeling deeply. “And I look to you now for what has never been told me. Who, then, was my ancestor Gisli?”

“If your father held his peace about him, he surely thought it best to do so, and so ask me not to break a good resolve.”

“Nay, but I must ask you. My heart burns; I feel that there is a life behind me into which I must look. Help me, Nanna. And, more, the name Gisli went to my head. It is not like other strange names. I love this man whom I have not seen and never heard of until this hour. What has he to do with me?”

“He was one of us. And because he was so good and great the thrall’s curse fell the harder on him, and was the more regarded–hard enough it has been on all the Borsons; and perhaps your father thought it was well you heard not of it. Many a time and oft I have wished it had not entered my ears; for when one sorrow called to another sorrow, and one wrong trod on the heels of another wrong, I have been angry at the false, ungrateful man who brought such ill fortune upon his unborn generations.”

“Now you make me so anxious and wilful that nothing but the story of the thrall’s curse will do for me. I shall not eat or sleep till I hear it.”

“’Tis a tale of dishonor and unthankfulness, and not so well known to me as to Jorn Thorkel. He can tell it all, and will gladly do so.”

“But for all that, I will hear it from you, Nanna, and you only, for it concerns us only. Tell me what you know, and the rest can wait for Jorn.”

“So, then, you will have it; but if ill comes of the knowledge do not blame me. It began in the days of Harold Fairhair, one thousand years ago. There was a Gisli then, and he had a quarrel with a berserker called Bjorn, and they agreed to fight until one was dead. And the woman who loved Gisli told him that her foster-father, Kol, who was a thrall, had a sword that whoever wielded would win in any fight. And Gisli sent for Kol and asked him:

“‘Hast thou ever a good sword?’

“And Kol answered: ‘Many things are in the thrall’s cot, not in the king’s grange.’

“‘Lend me thy sword for my duel with Bjorn,’ said Gisli.

“And Kol said: ‘Then this thing will happen: thou wilt never wish to give it up. And yet I tell thee, this sword will bite whatever it falls on, nor can its edge be deadened by spells, for it was forged by the dwarfs, and its name is Graysteel. And make up thy mind,’ he said, ‘that I will take it very ill indeed if I get not my sword back when I ask for it.’

“So Gisli took the sword and slew Bjorn with it, and got good fame for this feat. And time rolled on, and he gave not back the sword; and one day Kol met him, and Gisli had Graysteel in his hand, and Kol had an ax.

“And Kol asked if the sword had done him good service at his great need, and Gisli was full of its praises.

“‘Well, now,’ said Kol, ‘I should like it back.’

“‘Sell it to me,’ said Gisli.

“‘No,’ said Kol.

“‘I will give thee thy freedom for it,’ said Gisli.

“‘I will not sell it,’ said Kol.

“‘I will also give thee land and sheep and cattle and goods as much as thou wantest,’ said Gisli.

“‘I will not sell it a whit more for that,’ said Kol.

“‘Put thy own price on it in money, and I will get thee a fair wife also,’ said Gisli.

“‘There is no use talking about it,’ said Kol. ‘I will not sell it, whatsoever thou offerest. It has come to what I said would happen: that thou wouldst not give me back my weapon when thou knewest what virtue was in it.’

“‘And I too will say what will happen,’ said Gisli. ‘Good will befall neither of us; for I will not give up the sword, and it shall never come into any man’s hand but mine, if I have my will.’

“Then Kol lifted his ax, and Gisli drew Graysteel, and they smote at each other. Kol’s blow fell on Gisli’s head, so that it sank into the brain; and Graysteel fell on Kol’s head, and his skull was shattered, and Graysteel broke asunder. Then, as Kol gave up the ghost, he said:

“‘It had been better that thou hadst given me my sword when I asked for it, for this is only the beginning of the ill fortune I will bring on thy kith and kin forever.’

“And so it has been. For a thousand years the tellings-up of our family are full of troubles that this thrall’s curse has brought upon us. Few of our men have grown gray-headed; in the sea and on the battlefield they have found their graves; and the women have had sorrow in marriage and death in child-bearing.”

“It was an evil deed,” said David.

“It was a great curse for it also; one thousand years it has followed Gisli’s children.”

“Not so! I believe it not! Neither the dead nor the living can curse those whom God blesses.”

“Yet always the Borsons have had the worst of ill fortune. We three only are now left of the great earls who ruled in Surnadale and in Fjardarfolk, and see how poor and sorrowful we are. My life has been woven out of grief and disappointment; Vala will never walk; and as for your own youth, was it not labor and sorrow only?”

“I believe not in any such spaedom. I believe in God the Father Almighty, and in Jesus Christ, and in the Holy Ghost. And as for the cursing of man, dead or alive, I will not fear what it can do to me. Gisli was indeed well served for his mean, ungrateful deed, and it would have been better if the berserker Bjorn had cut his false heart out of him.”

“Such talk is not like you, David. I can see now that your father did right to keep these bloody stories from your hearing. There is no help in them.”

“Well, I know not that. This night the minister was talking to me about taking a wife. If there be truth or power in Kol’s curse, why should any Borson be born, that he or she may bear his spite? No; I will not marry, and–”

“In saying that you mock your own words. Where, then, is your trust in God? And the minister is right; you ought to take a wife. People think wrong of a young man who cannot fix his heart on one good woman. There is Christina Hey. Speak to her. Christina is sweet and wise, and will make a good wife.”

“I met Asta Fae as I came here. Very pretty indeed is her face, and she has a way to win any heart.”

“For all that, I do not think well of Asta. She is at the dance whenever there is one, and she has more lovers than a girl should have.”

“Christina has land and money. I care not for a wife who is richer than myself.”

“Her money is nothing against her; it will be a help.”

“I know not,” he answered, but without interest. “You have given me something to think of that is better than wooing and wedding, Nanna. My heart is quite full. I am more of a man than I have ever been. I can feel this hour that there is life behind me as well as before me. But I will go now, for to-morrow is the Sabbath and we shall meet at the kirk; and I will carry Vala home for you if you say so, Nanna.”

“Well, then,” she answered, “to-morrow is not here, David; but it will come, by God’s leave. I dreamed a dream last night, and I look for a change, cousin. But this or that, my desire is that God would choose for me.”

“That also is my desire,” said David, solemnly.

“As for me, I have fallen into a great strait; only God can help me.”

She was standing on the hearth, looking down at Vala. Tears were in her eyes, and a divine pity and sorrow made tender and gentle her majestic beauty. David looked steadily at her, and something, he knew not what, seemed to pierce his very soul–a sweet, aching pain, never felt before, inexplicable, ineffable, and as innocent as the first holy adoration of a little child. Then he went out into the still, starry night, and tried to think of Christina Hey; but she constantly slipped from his consciousness, like a dream that has no message.

VII

SO FAR AND NO FARTHER

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 of a 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 had the dream that 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 haveAnswers, 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 I cannot 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 would plead 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 the Sea Rover!”