Read Ebook: Prisoners of Conscience by Barr Amelia E

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Ebook has 549 lines and 31010 words, and 11 pages

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. There was 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 in seeing 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.

"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!"

"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--"

"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.

THE JUSTIFICATION OF DEATH

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 grave and 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. She was 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?"

"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!"

"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."

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