Prisoners of Conscience by Amelia Edith Huddleston Barr (mini ebook reader txt) 📕

him, and a long, narrow lake lay silent and motionless among the dangerous moss--a lake so old and dead-looking that it might have been the shadow of a lake that once was. Nothing green was near it, and no birds were tempted by its sullen waters; yet untold myriads of sea-birds floated and wheeled between sea and sky, and their hungry, melancholy cries and the desolate landscape stimulated and colored David's sad musings, though he was quite unaware of their influence.

When he came to the group of huts, he paused a moment. They were the abodes of poverty; there was none better than the rest. But Barbara had said that Nanna's was the first one, and he went slowly toward it. No one appeared, though the door stood wide open; but when he reached the threshold he could see Nanna sitting within. She was busily braiding the fine Tuscan straw for which Shetland was then famous, and her eyes were so intently following her rapid fingers that it was unlikely she had seen him coming. Indeed, she did not raise them at once, for it was necessary to leave her work at a certain point; and in that moment's delay David looked with a breathless wonder at the woman before him.

She was sitting, and yet even sitting she was majestic. Her face was large, but perfectly oval, and fair as a lily; her bright-brown hair was parted, passed smoothly behind the ears, and beautifully braided. Serenity and an unalterable calm gave to the young face something of the fixity of marble; but as David spoke she let her eyes fall upon a little child at her feet, and then lifted them to him with a smile as radiant and life-giving as sunshine.

"Who are you?" she asked, as she took her babe in her arms and went toward David.

"I am your far-cousin David Borson."

"The son of my father's cousin Liot?"

"Yes. Liot Borson is dead, and here am I."

"You are welcome, for you were to come. My father talked often of his cousin Liot. They are both gone away from this world."

"I think they have found each other again. Who can tell?"

"Among the great multitude that no man can number, it might not be easy."

"If God willed it so?"

"That would be sufficient. This is your little cousin Vala; she is nearly two years old. Is she not very pretty?"

"I know not what to say. She is too pretty for words."

"Sit down, cousin, and tell me all."

And as they talked her eyes enthralled him. They were deep blue, and had a solar brilliancy as if they imbibed light--holy eyes, with the slow-moving pupils that indicate a religious, perhaps a mystical, soul. David sat with her until sunset, and she gave him a simple meal of bread and tea, and talked confidentially to him of Liot and of her own father and brothers. But of herself she said nothing at all; neither could David find courage to ask her a single question.

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 glass. 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 passed 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 godsend 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 space 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 God 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 God has made Tophet for such men!" cried David, passionately. "Often I have trembled at the dreadful justice of the Holy One; I see now how good it is. To be sure, when God 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