in the room. Motion helped him to no solution of the tremendous
difficulty. And Nanna's patient face, her fixed outward gaze, the
spiritual light of resolute decision in her eyes, gave to her
appearance an austere beauty that made him feel as if this offering
up of their love and all its earthly sweetness was a sacrifice
already tied to the horns of the altar, and fully accepted.
Now, the law of duty lay very close to David's thoughts; it was an
ever-present consciousness, haunting his very being; but the sensual
nature always shrinks away from it. David sat down and covered his
face with his hands, and began to weep--to sob as strong men sob when
their sorrow is greater than they can bear; as they never sob until
the last drop, the bitterest drop of all, is added--the belief that
God has forsaken them. This was the agony which tore David's great,
fond heart in two. It forced from him the first pitiful words of
reproach against his God:
"I was sure at last that I was going to be happy, and God is not
willing. From my youth up he has ay laid upon me the rod of
correction. I wish that I had never been born!"
"My poor lad! but you are not meaning it." And Nanna put her arms
around his neck and wept with him. For some minutes he let her do
so, for he was comforted by her sympathy; but at last he stood up,
passed his hand across his eyes, and said as bravely as he could:
"You are right, Nanna. If you feel in this way, I dare not force
your conscience. But I must go away until I get over the sore
disappointment."
"Where will you go to, David?"
"Who can tell? The countries in which I may have to earn and eat my
bread I know not. But if I was seeing you every day, I might get to
feel hard at God."
"No, no! He fashioned us, David, and he knows what falls and sore
hurts we must get before we learn to step sure and safe."
"In the end it may all be right. I know not. But this I know: pain
and cold and hunger and weariness and loneliness I have borne with a
prayer and a tight mouth, and I have never said before that I thought
him cruel hard."
"His ways are not cruel, my dear love; they are only past our finding
out. The eternal which makes for righteousness cannot be cruel.
And if we could see God with our eyes, and hear him with our ears,
and understand him with our reason, what grace would there be in
believing in him? Did not the minister say last Sabbath that our
life was hid with Christ in God, and that therefore God must first be
pierced ere we could be hurt or prejudiced? Then let us take what
comfort we can in each other's affection, David, and just try and
believe that God's ways are the very best of all ways for us."
"Sometime--perhaps--"
"And don't leave me, David. I can bear all things if you are near to
help and comfort me."
"Ay, ay; but women are different. I cannot fight the temptation when
I am in it; I must run away from it. Farewell! Oh, dear, dear Nanna,
farewell!"
He kissed the words upon her lips, and went hastily out of the house;
but when he had walked about one hundred yards he returned. Nanna
had thrown herself despairingly upon the rude couch made for Vala,
and on which the child had spent most of her life. There Nanna lay
like one dead. David knelt down by her; he took her within his arms,
kissed her closed eyes, and murmured again upon her lips his last
words of love and sorrow. Her patient acceptance of her hard lot
made him quiver with pain, but he knew well that for a time, at
least, they must each bear their grief alone.
Nanna's confession of her love for him had made everything different.
In her presence now he had not the power to control his longing
for reciprocal affection. He felt already a blind resentment and
rebellion against fate--a sense of wrong, which it was hard to
submit to. But how could he fight circumstances whose foundations
were in eternity? At this hour, at least, he had come to the limit of
his reason and his endurance. Again and again he kissed Nanna
farewell, and it was like tearing his life asunder when he put away
her clinging arms and left her alone with the terrible problem
that separated their lives.
There is something worse than the pang of keenest suffering--the
passive state of a subjugated heart. A dismal, sullen stillness
succeeded to David's angry sorrow. He avoided Barbara and shut
himself in his room. And his strong and awful prepossession in
favor of the Bible led him, first of all, to go to the book. But
he found no help there. His soul was tossed from top to bottom, and
he was vanquished by the war in his own bosom. For in our wrestling
alone angels do not always come. And David brought his dogmas over
and over to the Scriptures, and was crushed spiritually between them,
so that at last, worn out with the mental and heart struggle, he
submitted to the fatality he could not alter.
"I will go the right road," he said, "however cruel that road may
be. Then death may give me back to God a miserable man, but not a
guilty one."
And he did not comprehend that, in thus preferring an unseen duty
because it was right to a seen pleasure because it was pleasant, he
was consummating that sublime act of faith whose cry of victory is,
"Thy will be done."
Nanna did not suffer so much. In the first place, the pale, sad,
almost despairing woman was glad and dared, in her despair, because
the man she loved durst not sin, even for her. In the second, her
battle was practically over. She had been in the van of it for
months, and had come gradually to that state of submission which
fears to resist, lest resistance might be found to be fighting
against God. While David was yet in an agony of struggle with
his love and his desires, his tender conscience and his dread of
offending the Deity, Nanna had washed away her tears, and was
strengthening her heart by saying continually, as the glancing
needles glided to and fro:
My God and Father, while I stray
Far from my home, on life's rough way,
Oh, teach me from my heart to say,
"Thy will be done!"
For some dauntless, primitive confidence in the love of the Maker of
men is older than any creed. And there were yet hours when Nanna's
soul outleaped its mortal shadow and had mystic flashes, native
and sweet, beyond the reach of will and endeavor--intimations of
serenities and compensations which would be neither small nor long
delayed.
X
IN THE FOURTH WATCH
Holding despair at bay, David quickly made his preparations for an
extended absence. He hired his boat and lines to Groat's sons,
and on the morning of the second day, after bidding Nanna farewell,
he went to Minister Campbell's to complete his arrangements. The
minister was writing his sermon, and he was not pleased at the
interruption; but when he saw David's face, the shadow of annoyance
on his own passed away like a thought. He dropped his pen, and
turned in his chair so as to see the young man fairly, and then
he asked:
"What is wrong, David?"
"I am all at sea, minister, drifting--drifting--"
"Where's your anchor, David? Can't you steady yourself on God? Can't
you make harbor someway?"
David shook his head sadly.
"Then up sail and out to sea, and face the storm. What quarter is
it from?"
"It comes from a woman."
"Ah, David, that is bad to buffet. I have been through it. It was
that storm which brought me here. I know all about it."
[Illustration: GROAT.]
"Please, minister, I think not. It is Nanna Sinclair."
"I thought so. You love her, David?"
"Better than my life."
"And she does not love you?"
"She loves me as I love her."
"Then what is there to make you miserable? In a few months, David,
you will marry her and be happy."
"Nanna will not marry me in a few months--she will not marry me at
all."
"Nanna ought not to trouble a good man with such threats. Of course
she will marry. Why not?"
Then David told the minister "why not." He listened at first with
incredulity, and then with anger. "Nanna Sinclair is guilty of great
presumption," he answered. "Why should she sift God's ordination
and call in question results she is not able to understand? Marriage
is in the direct command of God, and good men and women innumerable
have obeyed the command without disputing. It is Nanna's place to
take gratefully the love God has sent her--to obey, and not to argue.
Obedience is the first round of the ascending ladder, David; and
when any one casts it off, he makes even the commencement of
spiritual life impossible."
He spoke rapidly, and more as if he was trying to convince himself
than to console David. His words, in any case, made no impression.
David listened in his shy, sensitive, uncomplaining way, but the
minister was quite aware he had touched only the outermost edge of
feeling. David's eyes, usually mild and large, had now his soul
at their window. It was not always there, but when present it
infected and went through those upon whom it looked. The minister
could not bear the glance. He rose, and gently pushed David into
a chair, and laid his hands on his shoulders, and looked steadily at
him. He could see that a gap had been made in his life, and that the
bright, strong man had emerged from it withered and stricken. He
sat down by his side and said:
"Talk, David. Tell me all."
And David told him all, and the two men wept together. Yet, though
much that David said went like a two-edged sword through the
minister's convictions, he resented the thrust, and held on to his
stern plan of sin and retribution like grim death, all the more so
because he felt it to be unconsciously attacked. And when David said:
"It is the Shorter Catechism, minister; it is a hard book for
women and bairns, and I wonder why they don't teach them from the
Scriptures, which are easy and full of grace," the answer came
with a passionate fervor that was the protest for much besides the
catechism.
"David! David! You must say nothing against the Shorter Catechism.
It is the Magna Charta of Calvinism, and woe worth the day for
dear old Scotland when its silver trumpet shall no longer be heard
and listened to. Its rules and bonds and externals are all very
necessary. Believe me, David, few men would remain religious without
rules and bonds and externals."
"I am, as I said, minister, all at sea. I find nothing within my
soul, nothing within my life-experience, to give me any hope, and
I am going away a miserable man."
"David, your hope is not to be grounded on anything within yourself
or your life-experience. When you wish to steady your boat, do you
fix your anchor on anything within it, or do you cast your anchor
outside?"
"I cast it out."
"So the soul must cast out its anchor, and lay hold, not on anything
within itself, but on the hope set before it. The anchor of your
boat often drags, David, and you drift in spite of it, for there
is no sure bottom; but the soul that anchors on the truth of God, the
immutability of his counsels, the faithfulness of his promises, is
surely steadfast. For I will tell you a great thing, David: God has
given us this double guaranty--he has not only said, but sworn it."
Thus the two men talked the morning away. Then David remembered
that he had come specially to ask the minister to write out his
will and take charge of the money he would leave behind and the rents
accruing from the hire of his boat and lines. There was nothing
unusual in this request. Minister Campbell had already learned how
averse Shetlanders are to having dealings with a lawyer, and he was
quite willing to take the charge David desired to impose upon him.
"I may not come back to Shetland," David said. "My father went
away and never returned. I am bound for foreign seas, and I may go
down any day or night. All I have is Nanna's. If she is sick or
in trouble, you will see to her relief, minister. And if I come not
back in five years, sell the boat and lines and make over all to
Nanna Sinclair."
Then a writing was drawn up to this effect; and David brushed the
tears from his eyes with his right hand, and put it, wet with them,
into the minister's. He had nothing more to say with his lips, but
oh, how eloquent were his great, sad, imploring eyes! They went
together to the manse door, and then the minister followed him to
the gate of the small croft. And as they stood, one on either side
of it, David murmured:
"Good-by, minister."
"Good-by, David, and see that you don't think hardly of either your
God or your creed. Your God will be your guide, even unto death; and
as for your creed, whatever faults men may find in it, this thing
is sure: Calvinism is the highest form ever yet assumed by the moral
life of the world."
The next morning, in the cold white light of the early dawn, David
left Lerwick. The blue moon was low in the west, the mystery and
majesty of earth all around him. At this hour the sea was dark
and quiet, the birds being still asleep upon their rocky perches,
and the only noise was the flapping of the sails, and the water
purring softly with little treble sounds among the clincher chains
and against the sides of the boat. David was a passenger on the
mail-boat. He had often seen her at a distance, but now, being
on board, he looked her over with great interest. She seemed to be
nearly as broad as she was long, very bluff at the bows, and so
strongly built that he involuntarily asked the man at the wheel:
"What kind of seas at all is this boat built for?"
"She's built for the Pentland Firth seas, my lad, _weather
permitting_. And there's no place on God's land or water where
them two words mean so much; for I can tell you, weather _not_
permitting, even this boat couldn't live in them."
Gradually David made his way to Glasgow, and from Glasgow to
London. Queen Victoria had then just been crowned, and one day
David saw her out driving. The royal carriage, with its milk-white
horses, its splendid outriders and appointments, and its military
escort, made a great impression on him, but the fair, girlish face of
the young, radiant queen he never forgot. Hitherto kings and queens
had been only a part of his Bible history; he had not realized their
relation to his own life. Shetland was so far from London that
newspapers seldom reached Lerwick. Politics were no factor in its
social or religious life. The civil lords came to try criminal
cases, but the minister was the abiding power. Until David saw the
young queen he had not heard of her accession to the throne, but with
the first knowledge of her "right" there sprang up in his heart
the loyalty she claimed. Had any one asked him in that hour to
enter her service, he would have stepped on board her war-ships
with the utmost enthusiasm.
But nobody did ask him, and he found more commonplace employment
on the _Elizabeth_, a trig, well-built schooner, trading to the
Mediterranean for fruits and other products of the Orient. The
position was the very one his father had so earnestly desired.
Touching first at one historic city and then at another, living in
the sunshine, and seeing the most picturesque side of civilization,
David added continually to the store of those impressions which
go to make up the best part of life.
The captain of the _Elizabeth_ owned the vessel and was very fond
of her; consequently he was not long in finding out the splendid
sea qualities of the young Shetlander. On the fourth voyage he made
David his mate, and together they managed the _Elizabeth_ so cleverly
that she became famous for her speed and good fortune. It was indeed
wonderful to see what consciousness and sympathy they endowed her
with.
"_Elizabeth_ is behaving well," the captain said one morning, as he
watched her swelling canvas and noted her speed.
"There isn't much sea on," answered David; "hardly more than what
we used to call in Shetland 'a northerly lipper.' But yet I don't
like the look to the east'ard and the nor'ard."
"Nor I. You had better tell _Elizabeth_. Talk to her, David; coax
her to hurry and get out of the bay. Promise her a new coat of paint;
say that I think of having her figurehead gilded."
David was used to hearing _Elizabeth_ treated as if she were a
living, reasonable creature, but he always smiled kindly at the
imputation; it touched something kindred in his own heart, and he
replied:
"She'll do her best if she's well handled. It's her life as well as
ours, you know."
"It is; anybody knows that. If you ever went into shipping and
insurance offices, David, you would hear even landsmen say so. They
make all their calculations on the average _life_ of a ship. My lad,
men build her of wood and iron, but there is something more in a
good ship than wood and iron."
"Look to the east, captain."
Then there was the boatswain's whistle, and the shout of sailormen,
and the taking in of sails, and that hurrying and scurrying to make a
ship trig which precedes the certain coming of a great storm. And
the Bay of Biscay is bad quarters in any weather, but in a storm
it defies adequate description. When the wind has an iron ring and
calls like a banshee, and the waves rise to its order as high as the
masthead, then God help the men and ships on the Bay of Biscay!
Five days after the breaking of this storm the _Elizabeth_ was
sorely in need of such potential help. Her masts were gone, the
waves were doubling over her, and her plunges were like the dive
of a whale. At the wheel there was a man lashed,--for the hull was
seldom above water,--and this man was David Borson. He was the
only sailor left strong enough for the work, and he was at the last
point of endurance. The icy gusts roared past him; the spray was
like flying whiplashes; and it was pitiful to see David, with his
bleeding hands on the wheel, stolidly shaking his head as the spray
cut him.
He had been on deck for forty hours, buffeted by the huge waves,
and he was covered with salt-water boils. His feet were flayed and
frozen, and his hands so gashed that he dared not close or rest
them, lest the agony of unclasping or moving them again should make
him lose his consciousness. He feared, also, that his feet were so
badly frozen that he would never be able to walk on them any more.
These miseries others were sharing with him; but David had been
struck by a falling spar at the beginning of the storm, and there
was now an abscess forming on his lung that tortured him beyond
his usual speechless patience. "God pity me!" he moaned. "God pity
me!"
When the storm ceased the _Elizabeth_ was as bare as a newly
launched hull, and wallowing like a soaked log. David had fallen
forward on his face, and was asleep or insensible. He did not hear
the handspike thumped upon the deck, and the cry, "_On deck! on deck!
Lord help us! she is going down!_" But some one lifted him on to
a raft which had been hastily lashed together, and the misery that
followed was only a part of some awful hours when physical pain
from head to feet drove him to the verge of madness. He never knew
how long it was before they were met by the _Alert_, a large
passenger packet going into the port of London, and taken on
board. Four of the men were then dead from exhaustion, and the
physician on the _Alert_ looked doubtfully at David's feet.
"But he is dying," he said, "and why give him further pain?"
Then a young man stepped forward and looked at David. There was
both pity and liking in his face, and he stooped, and said something
in the dying man's ear. A faint smile answered the words; and the
youth spoke to the doctor, and both of them went to work with a
will. The effort, even then so desperate, was ere long complicated
by fever and delirium, and when David came to himself it was almost
like a new birth. He was weaker than an infant--too weak, indeed,
to wonder or speculate, or even remember.
He only knew that he was in a large room and that two men were with
him. One was at his bedside, quiet and drowsy; the other was reading
in a Bible, sitting close by the shaded candle. David knew it was a
Bible. Who does not know a Bible, even afar off? No matter how it
may be bound, the book has a homely and familiar look that no other
book has. David shut his eyes again after seeing it; he felt as safe
and happy as if a dear friend had spoken to him. And in a few days
the man with the Bible began to come near him, and to read softly
the most tender and gracious words he could find in that tenderest of
all books.
This was the beginning of an interval of delicious rest to David.
It was as if some strong angel swung and hushed and wrapped him in
a drowsy, blissful torpor. He felt no pain, not even in his tortured
feet, and his hands lay at rest upon the white coverlet, healed
of all their smarting and aching. For once in his hard life they
were not tired or sore. He knew that he was fed and turned, that
his pillows were made soft and cool, and that there was the vague
sense of kind presence about him; that sometimes he heard, like
a heavenly echo, words of comfort that he seemed to have heard long
ago; that he slept and wakened, and slept again, with a conscious
pleasure in the transitions.
And he asked no questions. He was content to let life lie in blissful
quiescence, to be still, and keep his eyes closed to the world, and
his ears deaf to its cries. Gradually these sensations increased
in strength. One day he heard his nurse say that it would be well
to remove him into an entirely fresh room. And he knew that he
was lifted in strong arms, and anon breathed a clearer atmosphere,
and slept a life-giving sleep. When he awoke he had new strength.
He voluntarily opened his eyes, and saw a tree waving branches
covered with fresh, crinkly leaves before his window. It was like a
glimpse of heaven. And that afternoon his preserver came to his side
and said:
"Thee is much better. Can thee listen to me now?"
Then David looked at the young man and smiled; and their eyes met,
and their hands met, and the well man stooped to the sick man and
kissed his cheek.
"I am Friend John Priestly," he said. "What is thy name?"
"David--David Borson--Shetland."
"David, thee is going to live. That is good news, is it not?"
"No; life is hard--cruel hard."
"Yes, but thee can say, 'The Lord is mine helper.' Thee can pray now?"
"I have no strength."
"If thee cannot speak, lift up thy hand. He will see it and answer
thee."
And David's face shadowed, and he did not lift up his hand; also, if
the whisper in his heart had been audible, John Priestly would have
heard him say, "What is the use of prayer? The Lord has cast me off."
But John did not try the strength of his patient further at that
time. He sat by his side, and laid his hand upon David's hand, and
began to repeat in a slow, assuring voice the One Hundred and Third
Psalm. Its familiar words went into David's ears like music, and
he fell sweetly asleep to its promises. For, though men in their
weakness and haste are apt to say, "The Lord hath forgotten to be
gracious," they who have but once felt his love, though dimly and
far off, cannot choose but trust in it, even to the grave.
And souls fraternize in their common exile. John Priestly loved
the young man whom he had saved, and David felt his love. As he
came fully back to life the past came clearly back to memory. He
remembered Nanna as those who love white jasmine remember it when its
starry flowers are gone--with a sweet, aching longing for their
beauty and perfume. He remembered those terrible days when physical
pain had been acute in every limb and every nerve, when he had
fainted with agony, but never complained. He remembered his lonely
journey to the grave's mouth, and the dim human phantoms who had
stood, as it were, afar off, and helped and cheered him as best
they could. And he understood that he had really been born again:
a new lease of life had been granted him, and he had come back to
earth, as so many wish to come back, with all his old loves and
experiences to help him in the future.
If only God would love him! If only God would give him ever so
small a portion of his favor! If he would only let him live humbly
before him, with such comfort of home and friends as a poor fisherman
might have! He wondered, as he lay still, what he or his fathers had
done that he should be so sorely punished. Perhaps he had shown
too great partiality to his father's memory in the matter of Bele
Trenby. Well, then, he must bear the consequences; for even at this
hour he could not make up his mind to blame his father more than
his father had blamed himself.