peace--peace! His will be done! Mercy--mercy--mercy--
These pitiful despairs and farewells were written in a large,
childish hand, and on a poor sheet of paper. David spread this
paper upon Vala's couch, and, kneeling down, covered it with tears
and kisses; but anon he lifted it up toward heaven, and prayed as
men pray when they feel prayer to be an immediate and veritable
thing--when they detain God, and clasp his feet, and cling to his
robe, and will not let him go until he bless them.
Christine Yell had seen David enter the cottage, and after an hour
had passed she went to the door intending to speak to him; but
she heard the solemn, mysterious voice of the man praying, and she
went away and called her neighbors, Margaret Jarl and Elga Fae and
Thora Thorson. And they talked of David a little, and then Magnus
Thorson, the father-in-law of Thora, being a very old man, went
alone into Nanna's cottage to see David. And after a while the
women were called, and Christine took with her a plate of fish and
bread which she had prepared; and David was glad of their sympathy.
They sat down outside the door. The tender touch of the gray gloaming
softened the bleak cliffs and the brown moorland, and the heavens
were filled with stars. Then softly and solemnly Christine spoke of
Nanna's long, hard fight with death, and of the spiritual despair
which had intensified her suffering.
"It was in season and out of season that she was at Vala's grave,"
said Christine, "and kneeling and lying on the cold ground above her;
and the end was--what could only be looked for--a cough and a fever,
and the slow consumption that wasted her away."
"Was there none of you to comfort her?"
"It is true, David, that the child was never baptized," said
Christine; "so, then, what comfort could there be for her? And
then she began to think that God had never loved her."
"Thanks to the Best, she knows now how far wrong she was," said
David, fervently; "she knows now that his love is from everlasting
to everlasting. Her poor heart, wearied with so many sorrows and
troubled by so many fears, has tasted one supreme happiness--that
God is love."
"She thought for sure that he was continually angry with her. 'If
he had cared for my soul,' she said to me, one day, 'he would not
have let me marry Nicol Sinclair. He would have kept his hand about
me until my cousin David Borson came from the Hebrides. And if he
had cared for my poor bairn he would not, by this and that, have
prevented the minister coming to baptize her."
"Was she long ill?" asked David.
"At the beginning of last winter she became too ill to go to the
ordinances, and too feared to open her Bible, lest she should read
her own condemnation in it; and so gradually she seemed to lose all
hope, either for this life or the next one. And folk wearied of her
complaining, I think."
"The elders and the minister, did they not try to comfort her?"
"At first Elder Peterson and Elder Hoag came to see her; but Nanna
put strange questions to them--questions they could not answer;
and they said the minister could not answer them, either--no, nor
the whole assembly of the kirk of Scotland. And I was hearing that
the minister was angered by her words and her doubting, and he
told her plainly 'women had no call to speer after the "why" of
God's purposes.' And indeed, David, she was very outspoken,--for she
was fretful with pain and fever,--and she told him that she was
not thankful to go to hell for the glory and honor of God, and that,
moreover, she did not want to go to heaven if Vala was not there.
And when the minister said, '_Whist_, woman!'--for he was frightened
at her words,--she would not be still, but went on to wonder how
fathers and mothers could be happy, even in the very presence of
God, if their sons and daughters were wandering in the awful outer
darkness; and, moreover, she said she was not grateful to God for
life, and she thought her consent to coming into life on such hard
terms ought to have been first asked."
And Christine looked at David, and ceased speaking, for she was
afraid that her words would both anger and trouble the young man.
But David's eyes were full of happy tears, and there was a tender
smile round his mouth. He was thinking of the glad surprises that
Nanna must have had--she who belonged to the God of compassions.
After all her shuddering questions and lamentable doubts and cruel
pain, the everlasting arms under her; Vala and her beloved dead to
comfort her; ineffable peace; unclouded joy; the night past; the
last tear wiped away! At that moment he felt that it was too late to
weep for Nanna; indeed, he smiled like one full of blessed thought.
And Christine, a little irritated by the unexpected mood, did not
further try to smooth over the hard facts of the lonely woman's
death-bed.
"The minister was angry with her, and he said God was angry. And
Nanna said, well, then, she knew that he did not care about her
perishing; it was all one to him. A little happiness would have
saved her, and he refused her the smallest joy; and she did not
see how crushing the poor and broken-hearted in the dust increased
his glory. The minister told her she was resisting God, and she said,
no; that was not possible. God was her master, and he smote her,
and perhaps had the right to do so; but she was not his child: no
father would treat a child so hardly as he had treated her. She
was a slave, and must submit, and weep and die at the corner of the
highway. And, to be sure, the minister did not think of her pain
and her woman's heart,--what men do?--and he thought it right to
speak hard words to her. And then Nanna said she wished they would
all leave her alone with her sorrow, and so they did."
Then, suddenly and swiftly as a flash of light, a word came to David.
His heart burned, and his tongue was loosened, and then and there
he preached to the old man and the three women the unsearchable
riches of the cross of Christ. He glorified God because Nanna had
learned Christ at the radiant feet of Christ, in the joy and love of
the redeemed. He took his Bible from his pocket, and repeated all
the blessed words he had marked and learned. Until the midnight
moon climbed cold and bright to the zenith he spoke. And old Magnus
Thorson stood up, leaning on his staff, full of holy wonder, and
the women softly sobbed and prayed at his feet. And when they parted
there was in every heart a confident acceptance of David's closing
words:
"Whoever rests, however feebly, on the eternal mercy shall live
forever."
After this "call" sleep was impossible to David. That insight
which changes faith into knowledge had comforted him concerning his
dead. He lay down on Vala's couch, and he felt sure that Nanna's
smile filled the silence like a spell; for there are still moments
when we have the transcendental faculties of the illuminated who,
as the apostle says, "have tasted of the powers of the world to
come"--still moments when we feel that Jacob's ladder yet stands
between heaven and earth, and that we can see the angels ascending
and descending upon it. He was so still that he could hear the
beating of his own heart, but clear and vivid as light his duty
spread out before him. He had found his vocation, and, oh, how
rapidly men grow under the rays of that invisible sun!
The next morning he went to see the minister. He was seated, writing
his sermon, precisely as David had found him on the occasion of his
last visit. So much had happened to David since that morning that he
found it difficult to believe nothing had happened to the minister.
He looked up at the interruption with the same slight annoyance, but
the moment he saw David his manner changed. He rose up quickly and
went to meet him, and as he clasped his hand looked with curious
intentness into his face.
"You are much changed, David," he said. "What has happened to you?"
"Everything, nearly, minister. The David Borson who left here two
years ago is dead and buried. I have been born again."
"That is a great experience. Sit down and tell me about it."
"Yes, minister, but first I must speak of Nanna Sinclair."
"She is dead, David; that is true."
"She has gone home. She has gone to the God who loved her."
"I--hope so."
"I know it is so. Nanna loved God, and those who love God in life
will find no difficulty in going to him after life is over."
"She had a hard life, and it was all in the dark to her."
"But at the death-hour it was light, though the light was not of this
world." And David told the minister about the farewell message
she had written him, and its final happy words, "_At last it is
peace--peace!_" He could not bear that any eyes should see the
paper, or any hand touch it, but his own; but he wished all to
know that at the death-hour God had comforted her.
"She suffered a great deal, David."
"What ailed her, minister?"
"What ails the lamp, David, when it goes out? There is no oil, that
is all. Nanna used up all her strength in weeping and feeling; the
oil of life wastes quickly in that way."
"O minister, I am so sorry that I left her! It was selfish and cruel.
I wish now that I could cover her hands with kisses, and ask her
pardon on my knees; but I find nothing but a grave."
"Ah, David, it is death that forces us to see the selfishness that
comes into our best affections. Self permitted you to give all you
had to Nanna, but forbade you to give yourself. There was self even
in your self-surrender to God. If you could have seen that long, long
disappointed look in Nanna's eyes, and the pale lips that asked so
little from you--"
"O minister, spare me! She asked only, 'Stay near me, David';
and I might have stayed and comforted her to the end. Oh, for one
hour--one hour only! But neither to-day nor to-morrow, nor through
all eternity, shall I have the opportunity to love and soothe
which I threw away because it hurt me and made my heart ache."
And David bowed his head in his hands and wept bitterly.
Alas! love, irreparably wronged, possesses these eternal memories;
and the soul, forced to weep for opportunities gone forever, has
these inconsolable refinements of tenderness. "One hour--one hour
only!" was the cry of David's soul. And the answer was, "No, never!
She has carried away her sorrow. You may, indeed, meet her where
all tears are dried and forgotten; but while she did weep you were
not there; you had left her alone, and your hour to comfort her has
gone forever."
After a short silence the minister went to his desk, and brought
from it David's purse, and he laid it, with the will that had been
written, before him. "It is useless now," he said. "Nanna has need
of nothing you can give her."
"Did it do any good, minister?"
"Yes, a great deal. When Nanna was no longer able to come to the
kirk, I went to see her. She was miserably sick and poor, and it
made my heart ache to watch her thin, trembling fingers trying to
knit. I took her work gently out of her hands, and said, 'You are
not able to hold the needles, Nanna, and you have no need to try to
do so. There is provision made for all your wants.' And she flared
up like whin-bushes set on fire, and said she had asked neither kirk
nor town for help, and that she trusted in God to deliver her from
this life before she had to starve or take a beggar's portion."
"O minister, if God had not comforted me concerning her, you would
break my heart. What did you say to the dear woman?"
"I said, 'It is neither kirk nor town nor almsgivers that have
provided for your necessity, Nanna; it is your cousin David Borson.'
And when she heard your name she began to cry, '_O David! David!_'
And after I had let her weep awhile I said, 'You will let your cousin
do for you at this hour, Nanna?' And she answered, 'Oh, yes; I
will take any favor from David. It was like him to think of me.
Oh, that he would come back!' So I sent her every week ten shillings
until she died, and then I saw that she was decently laid beside her
mother and her little child; and I paid all expenses from the
money you left. There is a reckoning of them in the papers. Count
it, with the money."
"I will not count after you, minister."
"Well, David, God has counted between us. It is all right to the
last bawbee. Now tell where you have been, and what you have seen
and suffered; for it is written on your face that you have seen many
hard days."
Then David told all about his wanderings and his shipwreck, and the
mercy of God to him through his servant John Priestly. But when he
tried to speak of the new revelation of the gospel that had come
to him, he found his lips closed. The fire that had burned on them
the night before, when he spoke under the midnight sky to the old
fisherman and the fisherwives, was dead and cold, and he could not
kindle it; so he said to himself, "It is not yet the hour." And he
went out of the manse without telling one of all the glorious things
he had resolved to tell. Neither was he troubled by the omission. He
could wait God's time. God, who has made the heart, can always touch
the heart, but he felt that just then his words would irritate
rather than move; besides, it was not necessary for him to speak
unless he got the message. He could not constrain another soul,
but there was One who led by invisible cords.
As they stood a moment at the manse door the minister said, "Your
aunt Sabiston has gone the way of all flesh."
"I heard tell," answered David. "How did she go?"
"Like herself--grim and steadfast to the last. She would not take
to her bed; she met death in her chair. When the doctor told her
Death was in the room, she stood up, and welcomed him to her house,
and said, 'I have long been waiting for your release.' I tried to
talk to her, but she told me to my face that I had nothing to do
with her soul. 'If I am lost, I am lost,' she said; 'and if I am
chosen, who shall lay anything to the charge of God's elect?' She
said she believed herself to be the child of God, and that, though
she had made some sore stumbles and been fractious and ill to
guide, she had done no worse than many of his well-loved bairns,
and she expected no worse welcome home. 'I have been long away,
minister,' she sighed, 'getting on to a century away, and I'll be
glad to win home again.' And those were her last words."
"God be merciful to her! In this world, I think, she was an unjust
and cruel woman."
"She was so, then, without moral disquietude. The sin had got into
her soul, and she was comfortable with it. God is her judge. He only
knew her aright. She left her money wisely and for good ends."
"I heard tell, to the kirk and the societies and the freedom fund.
Yet she had kinsfolk in the Orkneys."
"They are all very rich. They went to lawyers about her property,
but Mistress Sabiston had made all too fast and sure for any one to
alter. She was a woman that would have her way, dead or alive."
"Well, then, this time, it seems, her way is a good way."
After this David settled his life very much on the old lines. He
went to live in Nanna's cottage, and returned to the boats and
the fishing with Groat's sons. As for his higher duty, that vocation
that had come to him on that blessed night when God opened his
mouth and he spoke wonderful and gracious things of his law, he was
never for a moment recreant to it. But the kingdom of God frequently
comes without observation. To preach a sermon, that was a thing
far outside David's possibilities. The power of the church, and
its close and exclusive privileges, were at that day in Shetland
papal in prerogative. David never dreamed of encroaching on them;
nor, indeed, would public opinion have permitted him to do so.
As it was, there grew gradually a feeling of unrest about David.
Though he was humble and devout in all kirk exercises, it was known
that the people gathered round him not only in his own cottage,
but at Groat's and Barbara Traill's, and that he spoke to them of
the everlasting gospel as never man had spoken before to them. It
was known that when the boats lay stilly rocking on the water,
waiting for the "take," David, sitting among his mates, reasoned
with them on the love of God, until every face of clay flushed
with a radiance quite different from mere color--a radiance that
was a direct spiritual emanation, a shining of the soul through
mere matter. And as these men were all theologians in a measure,
with their "creed" and "evidences" at their tongues' end, it was
a wonderful joy to watch their doubts, like the needle verging to
the pole, tremble and tremble into certainty.
[Illustration: "WENT IN AND OUT AMONG HIS MATES."]
In about three years such opposition as David roused was strong
enough to induce the kirk to consider his behavior. The minister
sent for him, and in the privacy of his study David's opportunity
came at last. For he spoke so eloquently and mightily of the mercy
of the Infinite One that the minister covered his face, and when
the young man ceased speaking, he looked tenderly at him, and sent
him away with his blessing. And afterward he said to the elders:
"There is nothing to call a session anent. David Borson has been to
the school of Christ, and he is learned in the Scriptures. We will
not silence him, lest haply we be found to be fighting against God."
Thus for many a year David went in and out among his mates and
friends, living the gospel in their sight. The memory of Nanna
filled his heart; he loved no other woman, but every desolate and
sorrowful woman found in him a friend and a helper. And he drew the
little children like a magnet. He was the elder brother of every
boy and girl who claimed his love; his hands were ever ready to
help them, his heart was ever ready to love them. And in such blessed
service he grew nobly aged.
He had come to Shetland when the islands were very far off, when
the Norse element ruled them, and the Christianized men and women
of the sagas dwelt alone in the strong, quaint stone houses they
had built. He lived to see the influx of the southern race and
influences, the coming of modern travel and civilization; but he
never altered his life, for in its simple, pious dignity it befitted
any era.
Now, it is noticeable that good men very often have their desire
about the manner of their death. And God so favored his servant
David Borson. He went out alone one day in his boat, and a sudden
storm came up from the northeast. He did not return. Some said there
had been no time to take in the boat's sail, and that she must have
gone down with her canvas blowing; others thought she had become
unmanageable and drifted into some of the dangerous "races" near
the coast.
But, this manner or that manner, David went to heaven as he desired,
"by the way of the sea," and God found his body a resting-place
among its cool, clean graves--a sepulcher that no man knoweth of,
nor shall know until the mighty angel sets his right foot upon the
sea, and swears that there shall "be time no longer."
Transcriber Notes
Spelling and punctuation inaccuracies were silently corrected.
Archaic and variable spelling is preserved.
Author's punctuation style is preserved.
Passages in italics indicated by _underscores_.