Prisoners of Conscience Part 25

"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 G.o.d who loved her."

"I--hope so."

"I know it is so. Nanna loved G.o.d, and those who love G.o.d 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 G.o.d 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 G.o.d. 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 G.o.d to deliver her from this life before she had to starve or take a beggar's portion."

"O minister, if G.o.d 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, G.o.d 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 G.o.d 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 G.o.d's time. G.o.d, 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 G.o.d's elect?' She said she believed herself to be the child of G.o.d, 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."

"G.o.d 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. G.o.d 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 G.o.d 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 G.o.d 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 G.o.d, 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.

[Ill.u.s.tration: "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 G.o.d."

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 n.o.bly 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 G.o.d 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 G.o.d 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."