Prisoners of Conscience Part 9

He watched her sing her child to sleep, and he sat down with her on the door-step, and they talked softly together of death and of judgment to come. And the women from the other huts gradually joined them, and the soft Shetland night glorified the somber land and the mysterious sea, until at last David rose and said he must go back to Lerwick, for the day was over.

A strange day it had been to him; but he was too primitive to attempt any reasoning about its events. When he left Nanna's he was under that strong excitement which makes a man walk as if he were treading upon the void, and there was a hot confusion in his thoughts and feelings. He stepped rapidly, and the stillness of the lovely night did not soothe or reason with him. As he approached the town he saw the fishing-boats leaving the harbor, and in the fairy light they looked like living things with outspread wings. Two fishers were standing at a house door with a woman, who was filling a gla.s.s. She held it aloft a moment, and then gave it to one with the words: "Death to the heads that wear no hair!"

"The herring and the halibut, the haddock and the sole," answered the man; and he drank a little, and pa.s.sed it to his comrade. Then up the street they hurried like belated men; and David felt the urging of accustomed work, and a sense of delinquency in his purposeless hands.

He found Barbara waiting. She knew that he would not stay at Nanna Sinclair's, and she had prepared the room of her absent son for him.

"If he can pay one shilling a day, it will be a G.o.dsend to me," she thought; and when she told David so he answered, "That is a little matter, and no doubt there will be good between us."

He saw then that the window was open, and the sea-water lippering nearly to the sill of it; and he took off his bonnet, and sat down, and let the cool breeze blow upon his hot brow. It was near midnight, but what then? David had never been more awake in all his life--yes, awake to his finger-tips. Yet for half an hour he sat by the window and never opened his mouth; and Barbara sat on the hearth, and raked the smoldering peats together, and kept a like silence. She was well used to talk with her own thoughts, and to utter words was no necessity to Barbara Traill; but she knew what David was thinking of, and she was quite prepared for the first word which parted his set lips.

"Is my cousin Nanna a widow?"

"No."

"Where, then, is her husband?"

"Who can tell? He is gone away from Shetland, and no one is sorry for that."

"One thing is sure--Nanna is poor, and she is in trouble. How comes that? Who is to blame in the matter?"

"Nicol Sinclair--he, and he only. Sorrow and suffering and ill luck of all kinds he has brought her, and there is no help for it."

"No help for it! I shall see about that."

"You had best let Nicol Sinclair alone. He is one of the worst of men, a son of the devil--no, the very devil himself. And he has your kinswoman Matilda Sabiston at his back. All the ill he does to Nanna he does to please her. To be sure, the guessing is not all that way, but yet most people think Matilda is much to blame."

"How came Nanna Borson to marry such a man? Was not her father alive?

Had she no brothers to stand between her and this son of the Evil One?"

"When Nanna Borson took hold of Nicol Sinclair for a husband she thought she had taken hold of heaven; and he was not unkind to her until after the drowning of her kin. Then he took her money and traded with it to Holland, and lost it all there, and came back bare and empty-handed. And when he entered his home there was the baby girl, and Nanna out of her mind with fever and like to die, and not able to say a word this way or that. And Nicol wanted money, and he went to Matilda Sabiston and he got what he wanted; but what was then said no one knows, for ever since he has hated the Borsons, root and branch, and his own wife and child have borne the weight of it. That is not all."

"Tell me all, then; but make no more of it than it is worth."

"There is little need to do that. Before Nanna was strong again he sold the house which Paul Borson had given to her as a marriage present. He sold also all the plenishing, and whatever else he could lay his hands on. Then he set sail; but there was little s.p.a.ce between two bad deeds, for no sooner was he home again than he took the money Paul Borson had put in the bank for his daughter, and when no one saw him--in the night-time--he slipped away with a sound skin, the devil knows where he went to."

"Were there no men in Lerwick at that time?"

"Many men were in Lerwick--men, too, who never get to their feet for nothing; and no man was so well hated as Nicol Sinclair. But Nanna said: 'I have had sorrow enough. If you touch him you touch me ten-fold. He has threatened me and the child with measureless evil if I say this or that against anything he does.' And as every one knows, when Nicol is angry the earth itself turns inside out before him."

"I do not fear him a jot--not I!"

"If you had ever seen him swaggering and rolling from one day into another, if you had ever seen him stroking his bare arms and peering round with wicked eyes for some one to ease him of his temper, you would not say such words."

"I will not call my words back for much more than that, and I will follow up this quarrel."

"If you are foolish, you may do so; if you are wise, you will be neither for nor against Nicol Sinclair. There is a wide and a safe way between these two. Let me tell you, Nanna's life lies in it. I have not yet told you all."

"Speak the last word, then."

"Think what cruel things a bad man can always do to a good woman; all of them Nicol Sinclair has done to your cousin Nanna. Yes, it is so. When she was too weak to hold her baby in her arms he bade her 'die, and make way for a better woman.' And one night he lured her to the cliff-top, and then and there he quarreled with her; and men think--yes, and women think so too--that he threw the child into the water, and that Nanna leaped after it. That was the story in every one's mouth."

"Was it true? Tell me that."

"There was more than guesswork to go on. Magnus Crawford took them out of the sea, and the child was much hurt, for it has never walked, nor yet spoken a word, and there are those who say it never will."

"And what said my cousin Nanna?"

"She held her peace both to men and women; but what she said to G.o.d on the matter he knows. It is none of thy business. She has grown stronger and quieter with every sorrow; and it is out of a mother's strength, I tell thee, and not her weakness, that good can come."

Then David rose to his feet and began to walk furiously about the small room. His face was white as death, and he spoke with a still intensity, dropping each word as if it were a separate oath.

"I wish that Sinclair were here--in this room! I would lay his neck across my knee, and break it like a dog's. I would that!"

"It would be a joy to see thee do it. I would say, 'Well done, David Borson!'"

"I am glad that G.o.d has made Tophet for such men!" cried David, pa.s.sionately. "Often I have trembled at the dreadful justice of the Holy One; I see now how good it is. To be sure, when G.o.d puts his hook into the nose of the wicked, and he is made to go a way he does not want to go, then he has to cease from troubling. But I wish not that he may cease from being troubled. No, indeed; I wish that he may have weeping and wailing! I will stay here. Some day Sinclair will come back; then he shall pay all he owes."

Suddenly David remembered his father's sad confession, and he was silent. The drowning of Bele Trenby and all that followed it flashed like a fiery thought through his heart, and he went into his room, and shut the door, and flung himself face downward upon the floor.

Would G.o.d count his anger as very murder? Would he enter into judgment with him for it? Oh, how should a sinful man order all his way and words aright! And in a little while Barbara heard him weeping, and she said to herself:

[Ill.u.s.tration: NANNA AND VALA]

"He is a good man. G.o.d loves those who remember him when they are alone and weep. The minister said that."

This day had indeed been to David a kind of second birth. He had entered into a new life and taken possession of himself. He knew that he was a different being from the youth who had sailed for weeks alone with G.o.d upon the great waters; but still he was a riddle to himself, and it was this feeling of utter confusion and weakness and ignorance that had sent him, weeping and speechless, to the very feet of the divine Father.

But if the mind is left quite pa.s.sive we are often instructed in our sleep. David awakened with a plan of life clearly in his mind. He resolved to remain with Barbara Traill, and follow his occupation of fishing, and do all that he could to make his cousin Nanna happy. The intense strength of his family affection led him to this resolve. He had not fallen in love with Nanna. As a wife she was sacred in his eyes, and it never entered his mind that any amount of ill treatment could lessen Sinclair's claim upon her. But though far off, she was his cousin; the blood of the Borsons flowed alike through both their hearts; and David, who could feel for all humanity, could feel most of all for Nanna and Vala.

Nanna herself had acknowledged this claim. He remembered how gladly she had welcomed him; he could feel yet the warm clasp of her hand, and the shining of her eyes was like nothing he had ever before seen.

Even little Vala had been pleased to lie in his strong arms. She had put up her small mouth for him to kiss, and had slept an hour upon his breast. As he thought of that kiss he felt it on his lips, warm and sweet. Yes, indeed; there was love in that poor little hut that David Borson could not bear to lose.

So he said to Barbara in the morning: "I will stay with you while it pleases us both."

And Barbara answered: "A great help and comfort thou wilt be to me, and doubtless G.o.d sent thee."

VI

KINDRED--THE QUICK AND THE DEAD

Shetland was, then, to be David's home, and he accepted the destiny gladly. He felt near to the people, and he admired the old gray town, with its roving, adventurous population. His first duty was to remove his personal belongings from his boat to Barbara Traill's house, and when this was done it was easy enough to set himself to business; for as soon as he went among the fishers and said, "My name is Borson, and I am the son of your old mate Liot Borson," he found himself in a circle of outstretched hands. And as he had brought his nets and lines with him, he had no difficulty in getting men who were glad to help him with his fishing, and to instruct him in the peculiarities of the coast and the set of its tides and currents.

For the rest, there was no sailor or fisher in Lerwick who was so fearless and so wise in all sea-lore as David Borson. Sink or swim, he was every inch a seaman. He read the sea as a landsman reads a book; he knew all its moods and its deceitfulness, and the more placid it was the more David mistrusted its intentions; he was always watching it. The men of Uig had been wont to say that David Borson would not turn his back on the sea, lest it should get some advantage over him. This intimacy of mistrust was the result of his life's training; it was the practical education of nearly twenty years.

His next move was to see the minister and present to him the letter from the minister of Uig, which authenticated his kirk standing and his moral character. He put on his kirk clothes for this call, and was sorry afterward that he had so hampered himself; for the good man met him with both hands outstretched, and blessed him in the name of the Lord.