Episcopals can till the rich, juicy fields of England; but God's
hard work--yes, David, and his hard fighting--has to be done by
his Calvinists. They were the only fighting Protestants. But for
Calvinists, Puritans, Huguenots, there would have been no
Reformation. Philip and the Pope would have had their way, and we
should all have been papists or atheists."
"I know not. You say so, minister, and it is doubtless true."
"It is true. You have been born to a noble creed; accept it with
thankfulness and without demur. You are not called upon to understand
it or to reason about it. It is faith that conquers."
And after such an oration the young minister would go away with a
proud sense of duty well performed, burning with his own evangel,
and liking David well for being the invoker of his enthusiasm. But
David, after his departure, was always silent and depressed; his
intellect may have been quickened, but he was not comforted.
The sunshine that had brightened his life during the past year was
gone, for he had found out that all his happiness was bound up in
Nanna, and Nanna was on the verge of despair. Day by day she grew
thinner and whiter, more melancholy and more silent. She did only
work enough to supply the barest needs of life, and for the most
part sat hour after hour with dropped hands and closed eyes; or she
was seized with a restlessness that drove her to motion, and then
she walked the small bounds of her room until physical exhaustion
threw her into deep sleep.
David watched her with a sad patience. He had felt severely the
loss of Vala, and he did not presume to measure Nanna's sorrow by
his own. He knew it was natural that for some weeks she should weep
for a child so dear, whose little life had been so pitifully wronged,
so bound to suffering, so cruelly cut short. But when this natural
sorrow was not healed by time, when Nanna nursed her grief to despair
and dwelt with it in the valley of the shadow of death, he thought it
time to reason with her.
"You will kill yourself, Nanna," he said.
"Well, then, David, I hate life."
"Do you wish to die?"
"No; I am afraid to die. I know that I am sinning every day in
weeping for my poor lost bairn, and yet I am that way made that
I cannot help but weep for her. For it is my fault, David, all my
fault. Why, then, did He pursue the child with His anger from the
first hour of her sorrowful life to the last? And where is she now?
O David, where is she? If God would only let me go to her!"
"_Whist_, Nanna! You know not what you are saying. You might be
asking yourself away from His presence."
"I would rather be with Vala. If that be sinful, let me thole the
wages of my sin. Where is my dear bairn?"
"I heard Elder Kennoch say we may have a hope that God will
eventually take pity on those babes who have done no actual sin."
"But _when_ will he take pity? And until he does, how can the wee
souls endure his anger? O David, my heart will break! My heart will
break!"
"Nanna, listen to this: when Elga Wick's child died, the minister
said there was a benign interpretation of the doctrines which taught
us that _none but elect infants died_. It would be unjust, Nanna,
unless the child was elect, not to give it the offer of salvation."
"What good would eighty years of 'offers' do, if there was no
election to eternal life?"
"Nanna, your father was a child of God, and you have loved him from
your youth upward."
"Can that help Vala?"
"Even so. He keeps his mercy for children's children, to the third
and fourth generation of them that fear him. Vala was in the direct
succession of faith."
"You know what her father and his folk have been?"
"Yes, I know."
"Oh, why did my father let me marry the man? He should rather have
tied me hands and feet, and cast me into the depths of the sea. He
should have said to me, 'Nanna, you may have a bairn, and it may be a
child of sin, and thus foreordained to hell-fire.' Do you think then
I would have wed Nicol Sinclair?"
"Ay, I think you would."
"Do you believe that I was born for that end?"
"I think you had set your heart on Nicol at all risks."
"At that time Nicol was in good favor with all folk."
"You have told me that your father liked him not, and that he said
many things to you against a marriage with him; so, then, if your
heart had not been fully set on its own way, his 'no' would have
been sufficient. If we heed not fathers and mothers and teachers, we
should not heed, Nanna, no, not if one came from the dead to warn us."
"That is an awful truth, David."
"And one must speak truth to heal a wounded soul. If there be a
canker in the body, you know well the doctor must not spare the
sharp knife. But I would not put away hope for Vala--no, indeed!"
"Why, David? Oh, why?"
"Has she not kindred in His presence? Will He not remember His
promise to them? Will they forget to remind Him of it? I think not so
hardly of the dead."
"David, I will tell you the last awful truth. I never could get
the poor little one baptized,--things ay went so against it,--and
she died without being signed and sealed to His mercy; that is the
dreadful part of her death. I was ashamed--I was afraid to tell
you before. O David, if you had stayed by Vala instead of going to
that man, you might perhaps have won her this saving grace; but
it was not to be."
David almost fainted with the shock of this intelligence. He
understood now the anguish which was driving Nanna into the grave;
and he had no comfort to offer her, for Nanna seemed to make out a
terribly clear case of rejection and of foreordained refusal.
"I was feared to ask Nicol to stand with the child when it ought to
have been presented in the kirk," she said.
"But your father?" asked David.
"I was feared to ask my father to stand in Nicol's place, lest it
should make Nicol harder to me than he was. And," she continued,
weeping bitterly as she spoke, "I thought not of Vala dying, and
hoped that in the future there might be a way opened. If father had
lived he would have seen to the child's right, but he was taken just
when he was moving in the matter; and then Nicol grew harder and
harder, and as for the kirk, he would not go there at all, and I
had no kin left to take his place. Then the child was hurt, and I
was long ill, and Nicol went away, and my friends grew cold, fearing
lest I might want a little help, and even the minister was shy and
far off. So I came out here with my sorrow, and waited and watched
for some friend or some opportunity. 'To-morrow, perhaps to-morrow,'
I said; but it was not to be."
"Nanna, you should have told me this before. I would have made the
promises for Vala; I would have done so gladly. Surely you should
have spoken to me."
"Every day I thought about it, and then I was feared for what would
happen when Nicol found it out. And do you not think that Matilda
Sabiston would have sent him word that I had set you to do his
duty? She would have twitted him about it until he would have raged
like a roaring lion, and blackened my good name, and yours also, and
most likely made it a cause for the knife he was ever so ready to
use. And then, David, there are folks--kirk folks, and plenty of
them--who would have said, 'There must be something wrong to set
Nicol Sinclair to blood-spilling.' And Matilda Sabiston would have
spoken out plainly and said, 'There is something wrong'--and this
and that, and more to it."
"And well, then?"
"Well, then, being Matilda, no one would have thought of
contradicting her; for she gives much money to the kirk and the
societies, and has left all she has to free slaves. No; there was
nothing to be done but to thole and be quiet."
"There might be some excuse for being quiet when Vala was not in
danger, but when her life was going, why did you not send for the
minister?"
"This is what happened; for, David, God's will must be done. No
one came here but the doctor. On the second day he said, 'She is
not very sick.' At his next visit he said, 'She will die.' Then I
told him the child was not baptized, and prayed him to go for the
minister. And he said he would certainly do so. But he was called
here and there, and he forgot that day; and the next morning very
early he went to the manse, and the minister had gone away; and
the great storm kept him away for three days; so when he got back
the message had been overlaid by many others."
"O Nanna! Nanna!"
"Yes, it was so. After the storm the doctor came again, and Vala was
dying. And then he rode like a man riding for his life, and spoke
very angrily to the minister, who was not to blame at all, and the
minister was hurt at his words; but he came that afternoon, and it
was _too late_."
"O Nanna! O Vala! Vala! Vala!"
"So the minister was angry with me for my delays, and he spoke the
hard truth to me, and every word went to my soul like a sword. I
thought I should die that night, and I longed to die. There was no
friend to say to me one word of comfort, and I did not dare to pray.
I was feared God would ask me, 'Where is your child?' O David, what
for at all did God make us? For this life is full of sorrow, and
it is little comfort to be told that there is a worse one after it."
David took her hand, and a tear dropped upon her slender brown
fingers; but he did not answer her question. Indeed, he could
not. The same bewildering inquiry had haunted his own sad life.
So much sorrow and pain, and at the end perhaps to be "hardly
saved," while all around innumerable souls were going down, without
hope or helper, to eternal wrath! What for at all had God made man
for such a fate?
For that he had _not_ made man for such ends was a fact outside their
understandings, even as a possibility; and its very suggestion at
this hour would have appeared to both an impiety of the worst kind.
So they consoled each other in the only way possible to souls at
once so miserable and so submissive. With clasped hands they wept
together over the inscrutable fate which had set them so hard a
lesson to learn as life, with so little light to learn it by.
Natural events deepened the gloom of this spiritual thraldom. Storms
of unusual severity swept over the bare, brown land, and the fishing
was not only dangerous, but often impossible. But David regarded
frost and snow, stormy winds and raging seas, poverty, pestilence,
and death, as part of the eternal necessity pursuing its never-ending
work through discord and imperfection. When there was a possibility
of casting the fifty fathoms of ling-lines, David and his helpers
were sure to venture out; when it was clearly impossible, he went
to Nanna's and sat with her.
To the ordinary observer there did not seem to be pleasure enough
in these visits to reward him for the stormy walk over the moor.
His clothing was often wet or stiff with frost, or he was breathless
with fighting the strong wind, and not infrequently he lost himself
in the bewildering snow; but with some trifle in his pocket for
Nanna, he always managed to reach her. It might be only a fish, or a
loaf of bread which Barbara had baked for her, or a little fresh
milk in a bottle; but it was an offering made rich by that true
affection which counted weariness rest for her sake.
He generally found her sitting brooding by her peat fire. Now, peat
is cheap in Shetland, and Nanna had no stint of the fuel, but it
does not make a cheerful fire. Its want of flame and its dull-red
glow stimulate sorrowful musing; and as there is little radiation
of heat from it, those whom it warms must sit close to its embers.
Thus David and Nanna passed many hours of that sad winter. The snow
often veiled what light of day there was, and the great sea-winds
shrieked around the hut and blew the peat smoke down the chimney
into their faces; and there was little warmth or comfort, and none
of the pretty accessories that love generally delights in.
But David's love was not dependent upon accidentals. He had seen
Nanna when he thought her very finely dressed; he had watched her
when she was happy with her child and contented with his friendship;
but she was not then more beautiful than she was now, when her eyes
were haunted by despairing thoughts, and her face white and sad,
and her noble form was shrouded rather than dressed in the black
gown of her loss and woe.
To David she was ever Nanna. It was the woman beneath the outward
form he desired--the woman whose tears and fears and wounded love
were part of his own sufferings, whose despair was his despair, whose
personality, even, affected something far deeper and chaster than
that physical emotion too often misnamed love. He knew that he could
live for her, however sorrowful life might be; he knew that he could
gladly die for her, if his death could bring her spiritual peace
or hope.
Thus, in the red light of the glowing peats, with the stormy
world around them, to David and Nanna the winter months wore
away. When Nanna was able to weep she was then at her best--the
most companionable, the most grateful, and the most affectionate.
And few would think such circumstances favorable to the growth of
love; but that is a great mistake. Love is not perfect love until
it has been watered again and again with tears.
Of the growth of this affection it is not likely either was quite
unaware; but there is an instinctive dislike in a pure heart to
investigate the beginnings of love. It is like laying bare the roots
of a flower to see how it grows. And in Nanna's case there was even a
fear of such a condition. Love had brought her only heartbreak and
despair. Without deliberate intention, she yet grew a little more
shy of David; she began to restrain spiritual confidence and to weep
alone. He was not slow to feel the change, and it depressed him, and
made Barbara wonder at Nanna's ingratitude and womanish unreason.
"A good man fretting for her love, when there are hearts and hearts
full waiting for his asking," she said to her neighbor Sally Groat.
And Sally answered: "Well, well, there is a fool in every one's
sleeve sometimes; and David Borson is that daft about blood-kin,
there is no talking to him. But this is what I say: for all your
kindred, make much of your friends--and a friend you have been to
him, Barbara."
"Well, then, I have done my best; and friends are to be taken with
their faults. To-day I shall talk to David; for the spring comes on
so quickly, and I heard that my son's ship had been spoke in the
Iceland seas."
"It is long now since Nanna's baby died, and she still weeps without
end for her. She ought to try and forget. It was but a sickly child,
and never like to be world-wise or world-useful."
"I wouldn't say such words, Sally," answered Barbara, with some
warmth. "No one can tell a mother, 'Thy heart shall not remember.' I
have laid in earth five children, and do you think I ever slunk
away from heartache by forgetting them? No, indeed! I would have
counted _that_ treason against my own soul."
"God's blessing! there is none wants to contradict you, Barbara.
Don't be so hasty, woman. But you know there has been death and
weeping in many houses besides Nanna's this winter."
"To be sure," acknowledged Barbara. "Death has asked no man's leave
to enter; he has gone into the rich man's house as well as into poor
Nanna's hut."
"Every door is wide enough for a coffin."
"Yes; and the minister said last Sabbath that it was this which
dissatisfied us with these habitations of clay, and made us lift
our eyes to those eternal in the heavens."
"Well, then, to come back to David," said Sally, "he is good, and
able to marry. He has saved money, no doubt. Some young men spend
their last bawbee, and just live between ebb and flow. That isn't
David Borson. Besides, Barbara, you ought to tell him how people are
talking."
"I may do that. David is imprudent, and Nanna is too miserable to
care. Well, then, those who kindle the fire must put up with the
smoke; yet, for all that, I shall have a word or two for him, and
that very soon."
David had been at sea all night, and while this conversation was
going on he was sleeping; but in the afternoon, as Barbara saw him
preparing to go to Nanna's, she said:
"Stay a minute, David Borson. I want to speak to you. I had good news
early this morning. My son's ship was met not so far away, and he may
get home at any time, and me not thinking of it."
"I am glad to hear it, Barbara. Then, also, you will want my room. I
must look for a new place, and that is bad for me."
"I was thinking of Nanna Sinclair," said Barbara, in a musing manner.
"People do talk about you and her. I have heard say--"
"'I have heard say' is half a lie," answered David.
"I think that too; but Nanna's good name is to be thought of, and a
man does not go every day to see a woman for nothing."
Then David leaped to his feet with a face like a flame. "The shortest
and best answer is doing the thing," he muttered; and he walked
straight to Nanna's house, telling himself as he went, "I have been
too long about it; I must speak now, and she must answer me."
He was in his fishing-garb, for he intended going to sea with
the tide then rising; but he thought no more of dressing for the
interview than he thought of preparing his speeches. Hitherto he had
in a manner drifted with the current of his great affection, never
consciously asking himself where it was bearing him; but if people
were talking about Nanna, then he must take away all occasion for
suspicion--he must at once ask Nanna to be his wife. And as soon as
he took the first step toward her he felt how close and dear she
had become to him. He knew then that if Nanna was lost all the
world would be nothing. She had grown into his life as the sea and
the stars had grown, and he shrank from any thought that could imply
separation. He walked with rapid steps across the moor, feeling
dimly the beauty of the spring afternoon, with its haze of gold
and purple on the horizon, where the gray clouds opened out in
wistful stretches of daffodil skies.
The door of Nanna's house stood open, and the wind, full of the sharp
salt savor of the sea, blew life into the little room. Nanna was
busy with her knitting, and the soft, lace-like shawl lay upon her
knee. David shut the door and went to her side. His heart was too
full to hesitate or to choose words; the simplest were the best.
"Nanna, I have found out that I love you," he said. "Nanna, dearest
woman, do you hear me?"
Then her cheeks burned rosy, and she looked at David, and her hands
trembled, and the work fell from them.
"Love me a little, my dear! Love me, Nanna!"
"I do love you, David. Who in all the world have I but you?" And the
beautiful woman stood up, and he took her within his arms and kissed
her.
For a moment or two David was happy. His large, fair face shone;
he laughed softly as he drew Nanna to his breast. He was really as
intoxicated with joy as some men are with wine.
"We will be married next week, Nanna," he said; "this
week--to-morrow, if you will. It has come to this: I must leave
Barbara, and there is a house empty close to the quay, and it shall
be our home, Nanna; for I have sixty pounds, my dear woman, and
at last, at last--"
Before he reached this point he was sensible of some chill or
dissent, but he was not prepared for Nanna's answer:
"David, why do you talk of marrying? It is ever that. I will not
marry."
"Not yet, Nanna? Is it too soon? But why for a dead man will you keep
me waiting?"
"I think not of any dead man."
"Is it Vala? Vala would rejoice in our happiness."
"I will not marry--no, not any man living."
"Why did you say that you loved me?"
"I do love you."
"No; you do not."
He put her gently away from him, and looked at her with a somber
sternness. "You do not love me," he continued. "If you did, you
would put me first; you would say, 'I will be your wife.' You would
delight to make me happy--I, who have never been happy but in sharing
your joys and sorrows."
"O David, I do love you!"
"Then be my wife."
"I cannot! I cannot!"
"Then you love me as light, vain women love: to make slaves of men,
and bring them back and back to be hurt. It is not to be so with me.
No, indeed! Farewell, Nanna."
His voice failed him. He turned toward the door, and for a moment
Nanna could not realize that he was actually bidding her a final
farewell. When she did she flew to his side, and arrested his hand
as he was opening the door.
"Come back! Come back, David!" she entreated. "You are all wrong;
you are very cruel to me. If you leave me it will break my heart!
It will be the last blow, David. It is the very truth."
He hesitated enough to make Nanna weep with passionate distress,
and this emotion he was not able to bear. He took her within his
arm again, led her to a chair, and sat down at her side, and as he
kissed the tears from her face said:
"If indeed you do love me, Nanna--"
"_If_ I do love you!" she interrupted. "I love none but you. You are
heart of my heart and soul of my soul. I hear you coming when you
are half a mile away. I have no joy but when you are beside me. I
shall die of grief if you leave me in anger. I would count it heaven
and earth to be your wife, but I dare not! I dare not!"
She was sobbing piteously when she ended this protestation, and
David comforted her with caresses and tender words. "What fears
you, Nanna?" he asked. "Oh, my dear, what fears you?"
"This is what I fear," she answered, freeing herself from his
embrace, and looking steadily at him. "This is what I fear, David.
If we were married I might have another child--I might have many
children."
Then he clasped her hand tightly, for he began to see where Nanna was
leading him, as she continued with slow solemnity:
"Can you, can the minister, can any human being, give me assurance
they will be elect children? If you can, I will be your wife
to-morrow. If you cannot, as the God of my father lives, I will not
bring sons and daughters into life for sin and sorrow here, and for
perdition hereafter. The devil shall not so use my body! To people
hell? No; I will not--not even for your love, David!"
Her words, so passionate and positive, moved him deeply. He was
the old David again--the light, the gladness, all but the tender,
mournful love of the past, gone from his face. He held both her
hands, and he looked down at them lying in his own as he answered:
"Both of us are His children, Nanna. We are His by generations and
by covenant. He has promised mercy to such. Well, then, we may have
a reasonable hope--"
"Hope! No, no, David! I must have something better than hope. I hoped
for Vala, and my hope has been my hell. And as for the child--my God!
where is the child?"
"We love God, Nanna, and the children of the righteous--"
"Are no safer than the children of the wicked, David. I have thought
of this continually. There was John Beaton's son; he killed a man,
and died on the gallows-tree, to the shame and the heartbreak of
his good father and mother. The lad had been baptized, too,--given to
God when he drew his first breath,--and God must have rejected
him. Minister Stuart's son forged a note, and was sent with felons
across the sea. His father and mother had prayed for him all the
days of his life; he was brought to the kirk and given to God in
baptism; and God must have rejected him also. Think of good Stephen
and Anna Blair's children. Their daughter's name cannot be spoken
any more, and their sons are bringing down their gray hairs with
sorrow to the grave--with sorrow and shame too. Go through the
whole kirk, the whole town, the islands themselves, and you will
be forced to say, David, that it is the children of the righteous
that go to the devil."
"Nanna! Nanna!"
"It is the truth, David. How the good God can treat his bairns so, I
know not; but you and I may also deserve his wrath in like manner.
I am feared to hope different. O David, I am feared to be a mother
again!"
"Nanna! Nanna! what can I say?"
"There is nothing to say. If I should meet Vala in that place where
infants 'earnestly desire to see and love God, and yet are not able
to do so,' I should cover my face before the child. If she blamed me,
I should shiver in speechless agony; if she did not blame me, it
would be still harder to bear. Were we only sure--but we are not
sure."
"_We are not sure._" David repeated the words with a sad
significance. Nanna's argument, evolved from her own misery and
illustrated by that misery, had been before David's eyes for
months. He could not escape from such reasoning and from such
proof, and his whole life, education, and experience went to
enforce the pitiful dilemma in which their love had placed them.
"It is His will, and we must bear it to the uttermost," continued
Nanna, with a sorrowful resignation.
"I am very wretched, Nanna."
"So am I, David, very wretched indeed. I used to think monks and
nuns, and such as made a merit of not marrying, were all wrong; maybe
they are nearer right than we think for. Doubtless they have a tender
conscience toward God, and a tender conscience is what he loves."