the scent of the lilies and violets from the garden below him, he
began to think of Shetland with a great longing. The bare, brown,
treeless land called him with a hundred voices, and thoughts of
Nanna came like a small bird winging the still, blue air. For sorrow
can endear a place as well as joy; and the little hut on the bare
moor, in which he could see Nanna working at her braiding or her
knitting, was the spot on all the earth that drew his soul with an
irresistible desire.
Oh, how he wanted to see Nanna! Oh, how he wanted to see her! Just to
hold her hand, and kiss her face, and sit by her side for an hour
or two! He did not wish either her conscience or his own less tender,
but he thought that now, perhaps, they might be cousins and friends,
and so comfort and help each other in the daily trials of their
hard, lonely lives.
One day, when he was much stronger, as he sat by the open window
thinking of these things, John Priestly came to read to him. John
had a faculty of choosing the sweetest and most comfortable
portions of the Book in his hand. This selection was not without
purpose. He had learned from David's delirious complainings the
intense piety of the youth, and the spiritual despair which had
intensified his sufferings. And he hoped God, through him, would
say a word of comfort to the sorrowful heart. So he chose, with
the sweet determination of love, the most glorious and the most
abounding words of the divine Father.
David listened with a reserved acceptance. It was in a measure a new
Scripture to him. It appeared partial. When John read, with a kind
of triumph, that the Lord "is long-suffering to us-ward, not willing
that _any_ should perish, but that _all_ should come to repentance,"
David made a slight movement of dissent; and John asked:
"Is not that a noble love? Thee believes in it, David?"
"No."
The word was softly but positively uttered.
"What then, David?"
"'Some men and angels are predestined unto everlasting life, and
others foreordained to everlasting death; and their number is so
certain and definite that it cannot be either increased or
diminished.'" And David quoted these words from the Confession of
Faith with such confidence and despair that John trembled at them.
"David! David!" he cried. "Jesus Christ came to seek and to save the
lost."
"It is impossible for the lost to be saved," answered David, with a
somber confidence; "only the elect, predestined to salvation."
"And the rest of mankind, David? what of them?"
"God has been pleased to ordain them to wrath, that his justice may
be satisfied and glorified."
"David, who made thee such a God as this? Where did thee learn about
him? How can thee love him?"
"It is in the Confession of Faith. And, oh, John Priestly, I do love
him! Yes, I love him, though he has hid his face from me and, I fear,
cast me off forever."
"Dear heart," said John, "thee is wronging thy best Friend."
"If I could think so! Oh, if I could think so!"
"Well, then, as we are inquiring after God, and nothing less, is it
not fair to take him at his own word?"
David looked inquiringly at John, but made no answer.
"I mean, will it not be more just to believe what God says of himself
than to believe what men,--priests,--long ago dead, have said about
him?"
"I think that."
Then, one after another, the golden verses, full of God's love,
dropped from John's lips in a gracious shower. And David was
amazed, and withal a little troubled. John was breaking up all his
foundations for time and for eternity. He was using the Scriptures
to grind to powder the whole visible church as David understood it.
It was a kind of spiritual shipwreck. His slow nature took fire
gradually, and then burned fiercely. Weak as he was, he could
not sit still. John Priestly was either a voice in the wilderness
crying "Peace!" and "Blessing!" to him, or he was the voice of a
false prophet crying "Peace!" where there was no peace. He looked
into the face of this new preacher, frank and glowing as it was,
with inquiry not unmixed with suspicion.
"Well, then," he cried, "if these things be so, let God speak to me.
Bring me a Bible with large letters. I want to see these words with
my eyes, and touch them with my fingers."
The conversation thus begun was constantly continued, and David
searched the Scriptures from morning to night. Often, as the spring
grew fairer and warmer, the two young men sat in the garden with
the Bible between them; and while the sunshine fell brightly on
its pages they reasoned together of fate and free will, and of
that divine mercy which is from everlasting to everlasting. For
where young men have leisure spiritual things employ them much
more frequently than is supposed. Indeed, it is the young who are
most earnestly troubled about the next life; the middle-aged are too
busy with this one, and the aged do not speculate, because they
will soon know.
Thus, daily, little by little, through inlets and broader ways
known only to God and himself, the light grew and grew unto perfect
day, and flooded not only the great hills and promontories of his
soul, but also shone into all its secret caves and gloomy valleys
and lonely places. Then David knew how blind and ignorant he had
been; then he was penetrated with loving amazement, and humbled
to the dust with a sense of the wrong he had done the Father of
his spirit; and he locked himself in his room, and fell down on
his face before his God. But into that awful communion, in which
so much was confessed and so much forgiven, it is not lawful to
inquire.
XI
THE LOWEST HELL
After this the thought of Nanna became an irresistible longing. He
could not be happy until she sat in the sunshine of God's love with
him. He went into the garden and tested his strength, and as soon
as he was in the open air he was smitten with a homesickness not
to be controlled. He wanted the sea; he wanted the great North Sea;
he longed to feel the cradling of its salt waves under him; and
the idea of a schooner reefed down closely, and charging along over
the stormy waters, took possession of him. Then he remembered the
fishermen he used to know--the fishermen who peopled the desolate
places of the Shetland seas.
"I must go home!" he said with a soft, eager passion. "I must go home
to Shetland." And there was in his voice and accent that pride and
tenderness with which one's home should be mentioned in a strange
land.
When he saw John next he told him so, and they began to talk of
his life there. John had never asked him of his past. He knew him
to be a child of God, however far away from his Father, and he had
accepted his spiritual brotherhood with trustfulness. He understood
that it was David's modesty that had made him reticent. But when
David was ready to leave he also felt that John had a right to know
what manner of man he had befriended. So, as they sat together that
night, David began his history.
"I was in the boats at six years old," he said; "for there was always
something I could do. During the night-fishing, unless I went with
father, I was alone; and I had hours of such awful terrors that I am
sad only to remember them; it was better to freeze out on the sea,
if father would let me go with him. I was often hungry and often
weary; I had toothaches and earaches that I never spoke of; I was
frequently so sleepy that I fell down in the boat. And I had no
mother to kiss me or pity me, and the neighbors were shy and far off.
Father was not cross or unkind; he just did not understand. Even in
those days I wondered why God made little lads to be so miserable
and to suffer so much."
He spoke then in a very guarded way about that revelation in the
boat, for he felt rebuked for his want of faith in it; and he said
sorrowfully, as he left the subject, "Why, then, should God send
angels to men? They are feared of them while they are present, and
they doubt them when they are gone away. He sent one to comfort me,
and I denied it to my own heart; yes, even though I sorely needed
the comfort."
Then he took John to Shetland with him. He showed him, in strong,
simple words, the old Norse town, with its gray skies and its
gray seas, and its fishing-smacks hanging to the rushing sides of
foaming mountains. He described the hoary cliffs and their world
of sea-birds, the glorious auroras, the heavenly summers, and the
deadly chillness of the winter fogs as one drift after another
passed in dim and desolate majesty over the sea and land.
Slowly and with some hesitation he got to Nanna in her little stone
hut, braiding her straw and nursing her crippled baby. The tears
came into his eyes, he clasped his knees with his hands as if to
steady himself, while he spoke rapidly of her marriage with Nicol
Sinclair, the drowning of her father and brothers, the cruelty of her
husband, his desertion, his return, Nanna's terror of losing Vala,
the fatal typhus, her desolation, and her spiritual anguish about
Vala's condition. All these things he told John with that powerful
eloquence which is born of living, intense feeling.
John was greatly moved by the whole simple, tragic story, but he
spoke only on the last topic, for it seemed to him to dwarf all
other sorrow. It roused his indignation, and he said it was a
just and holy anger. He wondered how men, and especially mothers,
could worship a God who was supposed to damn little children before
they were born. He vowed that neither Moloch nor Baal, nor any pagan
deity, had been so brutal. He was amazed that ministers believing
such a doctrine dared to marry. What special right had they to
believe their children would all be elect? And if there was a shadow
of doubt on this subject, how awful was their responsibility! Nanna's
scruples, he said, were the only possible outcome of a conscientious,
unselfish soul believing the devilish doctrine. And he cried out
with enthusiasm:
"Nanna is to be honored! Oh, for a conscience as tender and void of
offense toward God! I will go to Shetland and kiss the hem of her
garment! She is a woman in ten thousand!"
"Well, then," said David, softly, "I shall take comfort to her."
"To think," said John, who was still moved by a holy anger, "to
think that God should have created this beautiful world as a nursery
for hell! that he should have made such a woman as Nanna to suckle
devils! No, no, David!" he said, suddenly calming himself; "thee
could never believe such things of thy God."
"I was taught them early and late. I can say the Confession of Faith
backward, I am sure."
"Let no man-made creed impose itself on thee, David--enter into thee,
and possess thee, and take the place of thy soul. The voice that
spoke from Sinai and from Bethlehem is still speaking. And man's
own soul is an oracle, if he will only listen to it--the inward,
instant sense of a present God, and of his honorable, true, and only
Son Christ Jesus."
"I will listen, if God will speak."
"Never thee mind catechisms and creeds and confessions. The Word of
God was before them, and the Word will be the Word when catechisms
and confessions are cast into the dusty museums of ancient things,
with all the other shackles of the world in bondage. David, there
is in every good man a spiritual center, answering to a higher
spiritual center in the universe. All controversies come back to
this."
"I wish, John Priestly, that you could see Nanna, and speak comfort
to her heart."
"That must be thy message, David. And be sure that thee knows well
the children's portion in the Scriptures. Thee must show Nanna that
_theirs is the kingdom_. What we win through great tribulation they
inherit through the love of the Father. _Theirs is the kingdom_; and
there is no distinction of elect or non-elect, as I read the title."
"I count the hours now until I am able to travel. I long for the sea
that stretches nor'ard to the ice, and the summer days, when the
sunset brightens the midnight. No need to egg me on. I am all the
time thinking of the old town growing out of the mist, and I know
how I shall feel when I stand on the pier again among the fishers,
when I hurry through the clean, quiet streets, while the kind people
nod and smile, and call to each other, 'Here is David Borson come
back again.'"
"And Nanna?"
"She is the heart of my longing."
"And thee is taking her glad tidings of great joy."
"I am that. So there is great hurry in my heart, for I like not to
sit in the sunshine and know that Nanna is weeping in the dark."
"Thee must not be discouraged if she be at first unable to believe
thy report."
"The hour will come. Nanna was ever a seeker after God. She will
listen joyfully. She will take the cup of salvation, and drink it
with thanksgiving. We shall stand together in the light, loving God
and fearing God, but not afraid of him. Faith in Christ will set her
free."
"But lean hard upon God's Word, David. There is light enough and
help enough for every strait of life in it. Let thy creed lie at
rest. There are many doors to scientific divinity, but there is only
one door to heaven. And I will tell thee this thing, David: if men
had to be good theologians before they were good Christians, the
blessed heaven would be empty."
"Yet, John, my theology was part of my very life. Nothing to me was
once more certain than that men and women were in God's hand as clay
in the potter's. And as some vessels are made to honor, and some to
dishonor, so some men were made for salvation and honor, and others
for rejection and dishonor."
"Clay in the potter's hand! And some for honor, and some for
dishonor! We will even grant that much; but tell me, David, does
the potter ever make his vessels for _the express purpose of
breaking them_? No, no, David! He is not willing that _any_ should
perish. Christ is not going to lose what he has bought with his
blood. The righteous are planted as trees by the watercourses,
but God does not plant any tree for fuel."
"He is a good God, and his name is Love."
"So, then, thee is going back to Shetland with glad tidings for many
a soul. What will thy hands find to do for thy daily bread?"
"I shall go back to the boats and the nets and lines."
"Would thee like to have a less dangerous way of earning thy bread?
My father has a great business in the city, and thee could drive one
of the big drays that go to the docks."
"I could not. I can carry a ship through any sea a ship can live
in; I could not drive a Shetland shelty down an empty street. I
am only a simple sea-dog. I love the sea. Men say for sure it is in
my heart and my blood. I must live on the sea. When my hour comes
to die, I hope the sea will keep my body in one of her clean, cool
graves. If God gives me Nanna, and we have sons and daughters, they
shall have a happy childhood and a good schooling. Then I will put
all the boys in the boats, and the girls shall learn to grow like
their mother, and, if it please God, they shall marry good men and
good fishers."
"It seems to me that the life of a fisher is a very hard one, and
withal that it hath but small returns."
"Fishers have their good and their bad seasons. They take their
food direct from the hand of God; so, then, good or bad, it is all
right. Fishers have their loves and joys and sorrows; birth and
marriage and death come to them as to others. They have the same
share of God's love, the same Bible, the same hope of eternal life,
that the richest men and women have. It is enough."
"And hard lives have their compensations, David. Doubtless the
fisherman's life has its peculiar blessings?"
"It has. The fisher's life is as free from temptation as a life can
be. He _has_ to trust God a great deal; if he did not he would very
seldom go into the boats at all."
"Yet he holds the ocean 'in the hollow of his hand.'"
"That is true. I never feel so surely held in the hollow of his hand
as when the waves are as high as my masthead, and my boat smashes
into the black pit below. There is none but God then. Thank you,
Friend John, but I shall live and die a fisherman."
"Would thee care to change Shetland for some warmer and less stormy
climate?"
"Would a man care to change his own father and mother for any other
father and mother? Stern and hard was my poor father, and he knew not
how to love; but his memory is dear to me, and I would not break
the tie between us--no, not to be the son of a king! My native land
is a poor land, but I have thought of her green and purple moors
among gardens full of roses. Shetland is my _home_, and home is sweet
and fair and dear."
"Traveling Zionward, David, we have often to walk in the wilderness.
Thee hast dwelt in Skye and in Shetland; what other lands hast thee
seen?"
"I have been east as far as Smyrna. I sat there and read the message
of 'the First and the Last' to its church. And I went to Athens,
and stood where St. Paul had once stood. And I have seen Rome and
Naples and Genoa and Marseilles, and many of the Spanish and French
ports. I have pulled oranges from the trees, and great purple grapes
from the vines, and even while I was eating them longed for the
oat-cakes and fresh fish of Shetland."
"Rome and Naples and Athens! Then, David, thee hast seen the fairest
cities on the earth."
"And yet, Friend John, what hells I saw in them! I was taken through
great buildings where men and women die of dreadful pain. I saw other
buildings where men and women could eat and sleep, and could not
think or love or know. I saw drinking-hells and gambling-hells. I saw
men in dark and awful prisons, men living in poverty and filth
and blasphemy, without hope for this world or the next. I saw men
die on the scaffold. And, John, I have often wondered if this world
were hell. Are we put here in low, or lower, or lowest hell to work
out our salvation, and so at last, through great tribulation, win
our weary way back to heaven?"
John Priestly was silent a few moments ere he answered: "If that were
even so, there is still comfort, David. For if we make our bed in
any of such hells,--mind, _we_ make it,--even there we are not beyond
the love and the pity of the Infinite One. For when the sorrows of
hell compassed David of old, he cried unto God, and he delivered
him from his strong enemy, and brought him forth into a large place.
So, then, David, though good men may get into hell, they do not need
to stay there."
"I know that by experience, John. Have I not been in the lowest pit,
in darkness, in the deeps, in that lowest hell of the soul where
I had no God to pray to? For how could I pray to a God so cruel that
I did not dare to become a father, lest he should elect my children
to damnation? a God so unjust that he loved without foresight of
faith or good works, and hated because it was his pleasure to hate,
and to ordain the hated to dishonor and wrath?"[4]
"And yet, David?"
"In my distress my soul cried out, '_God pity me! God pity me!_' And
even while I so wronged him he sent from above--he sent you, John;
he took me, he drew me out of many waters,--for great was his mercy
toward me,--and he delivered my soul from the lowest hell."
-----
[Footnote 4: Confession of Faith, chap. 3, secs. v-vii; chap. 16,
sec. vii.]
XII
"AT LAST IT IS PEACE"
A week after this conversation David was near Lerwick. It was very
early in the morning, and the sky was gray and the sea was gray,
and through the vapory veiling the little town looked gray and silent
as a city in a dream. During the voyage he had thought of himself
always as hastening at once to Nanna's house, but as soon as his
feet touched the quay he hesitated. The town appeared to be asleep;
there was only here and there a thin column of peat smoke from the
chimneys, and the few people going about their simple business in
the misty morning were not known to him. Probably, also, he had
some unreasonable expectation, for he looked sadly around, and,
sighing, said:
"To be sure, such a thing would never happen, except in a dream."
After all, it seemed best that he should go first to Barbara
Traill's. She would give him a cup of tea, and while he drank it
he could send one of Glumm's little lads with a message to Nanna.
There was nothing of cowardice in this determination; it was
rather that access of reverential love which, as it draws nearer,
puts its own desire and will at the feet of the beloved one.
Barbara's door stood open, and she was putting fresh fuel under
the hanging tea-kettle. The smell of the peat smoke was homely and
pleasant to David; he sniffed it eagerly as he called out:
"Well, then, mother, good morning!"
She raised herself quickly, and turned her broad, kind face to him.
A strange shadow crossed it when she saw David, but she answered
affectionately:
"Well, then, David, here we meet again!"
Then she hastened the morning meal, and as she did so asked question
after question about his welfare and adventures, until David said a
little impatiently:
"There is enough of this talk, mother. Speak to me now of Nanna
Sinclair. Is she well?"
"Your aunt Sabiston is dead. There was a great funeral, I can tell
you that. She has left all her money to the kirk and the societies;
and a white stone as high as two men has come from Aberdeen for her
grave. Well, so it is. And you must know, also, that my son has
married himself, and not to my liking, and so he has gone from me;
and your room is empty and ready, if you wish it so; and--"
"Yes, yes, Barbara! Keep your room for me, and I will pay the price
of it."
"I will do that gladly; and as for the price, we shall have no words
about that."
"All this is well enough, but, mother! mother! what is there to hide
from me? Speak with a straight tongue. Where is Nanna?"
Then Barbara said plainly, "Nanna is dead."
With a cry of amazed anguish David leaped to his feet, instinctively
covering his ears with his hands, for he could not bear such words to
enter them. "_Dead!_" he whispered; and Barbara saw him reeling and
swaying like a tottering pillar. She pushed a chair toward him, and
was thankful that he had strength left to take its support. But
she made no outcry, and called in none of the neighbors. Quietly she
stood a little way off, while David, in a death-like silence,
fought away the swooning, drowning wave which was making his heart
stand still and his limbs fail him. For she knew the nature of the
suffering man--knew that when he came to himself there would be
none but God could intermeddle in his heart's bitterness and loss.
After a sharp struggle David opened his eyes, and Barbara gave him a
drink of cold water; but she offered neither advice nor consolation.
Only when David said, "I am sick, mother, and I will go to my room
and lie down on my bed," she answered:
"My dear lad, that is the right way. Sleep, if sleep you can."
About sunsetting David asked Barbara for food; and as she prepared it
he sat by the open window, silent and stupefied, dominated by the
somber inertia of hopeless sorrow. When he began to eat, Barbara took
from a china jar two papers, and gave them to him.
"I promised Nanna to put them into your hands," she said.
[Illustration: ON THE WAY TO NANNA'S COTTAGE.]
"When did she die?"
"Last December, the fourteenth day."
"Did you see her on that day?"
"I was there early in the morning, for I saw there was snow to fall.
She was dead at the noon hour."
"You saw her go away?"
"No; I was afraid of the storm. I left her at ten o'clock. She could
not then speak, but she gave me the papers. We had talked of them
before."
"Then did she die alone?"
"She did not. I went into the next cottage and told Christine Yell
that it was the last hour with Nanna; and she said, 'I will go to
her,' and so she did."
"You should have stayed, mother."
"My lad, the snow was already falling, and I had to hasten across
the moor, as there was very good reason to do."
Then David went out, and Barbara watched him take the road that led
to Nanna's empty cottage. The door opened readily to the lifted
latch, and he entered the forsaken room. The peat fire had long
ago burned itself to ashes. The rose-plant, which had been Nanna's
delight, had withered away on its little shelf by the window. But
the neighbors had swept the floor and put the simple furniture in
order. David drew the bolt across the door, and opened the papers
which Nanna had left for him. The first was a bequest to him of the
cottage and all within it; the second was but a little slip on which
the dying woman had written her last sad messages to him:
Oh, my love! my love! Farewell forever! I am come to the end
of my life. I am going away, and I know not where to. All is
dark. But I have cast myself at His feet, and said, "Thy will
be done!"
* * * * *
I am still alive, David. I have been alone all night, and every
breath has been a death-pang. How can His eternal purpose need
my bitter suffering? Oh, that God would pity me! His will be
done!
* * * * *